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Melanoma blood vessel
Melanoma blood vessel
Designing tumor vaccines presents a bunch of problems that anti-pathogen vaccines don’t. One of those problems is identifying an appropriate antigen. There’s been a lot of interest in finding tumor antigens that cytotoxic T lymphocytes will recognize, and in fact hundreds have been identified. The database of tumor antigens at Cancer Immunity lists some 750 of them, divided into various categories:
• Unique antigens result from point mutations in genes that are expressed ubiquitously. They are unique to the tumor of an individual patient or restricted to very few patients;
• Shared tumor-specific antigens are expressed in many tumors but not in normal tissues;
• Differentiation antigens are also expressed in the normal tissue of origin of the malignancy;
• Overexpressed antigens are expressed in a wide variety of normal tissues and overexpressed in tumors
Overall, shared tumor-specific antigens may be the ideal target. Because they’re found in multiple tumors, a vaccine can be pre-designed and go through a time-consuming optimization and validation process; because they’re only found in tumors, there’s less concern about safety. That is, the risk of the vaccine precipitating an autoimmune reaction to normal cells is low.
MHC expression in eye (Palmer 2008 Fig 4)
MHC expression in eye
before and after vaccination
The problem with this class is that there just aren’t all that many tumor-specific antigens. The database lists 20-odd such antigens, and many of them are only found in a limited subsets of tumors (mostly melanomas). What’s more, I think it’s not merely that the targets are out there yet haven’t been identified. More likely, there simply are not many shared tumor-specific antigens.
The next-best category, as far as safety and effectiveness is concerned, is the unique antigens. These may be great as far as safety and effectiveness are concerned, but there are major technical problems in identifying them in a clinical context. Because they’re unique, you can’t pre-design the vaccine; you need to customize the antigen to each patient. And (at least with present techniques) by the time there is enough tumor available to look for unique antigens, the disease is likely to be pretty far advanced (and advanced tumors are more likely to be resistant to vaccination, for several reasons). There’s a lot of interest in making preparations of tumors that would contain unique antigens, without the trouble of identifying the antigen, but as far as I know that hasn’t made it very far into clinical trials yet.
So that leaves overexpressed and differentiation antigens. These are both, by definition, found in normal cells, and that means either the immune system is already tolerized to the antigen, or that targeting these antigens with a vaccine risks triggering an autoimmune reaction.
In fact, clinical trials using these kinds of vaccines against melanomas have found that successful tumor attack is almost invariably associated with an autoimmune effect, usually manifesting as vitiligo (de-pigmented patches on the skin).
It is expected that immune responses to such peptides will be compromised by self-tolerance or, alternatively, that stimulation of effective immune responses will be accompanied by autoimmune vitiligo. 1
I believe the first record of this goes back to 1964.2 Vitiligo is not, as autoimmune diseases go, a terrible problem, and certainly one would be delighted to trade melanoma for vitiligo. However, there are more serious potential problems as well, and one of them was recently reported by Nick Restifo’s group. 3 In this case, a highly active anti-melanoma vaccine not only killed the tumor, it also triggered severe autoimmune destruction of the eye; and the more effective the vaccine, the worse the autoimmune disease:
Thus, in the present model, the efficacies of the antitumor immune therapies were directly correlated with the induction of autoimmunity in the eye. … Our data suggest that, as tumor immunotherapies improve, these autoimmune manifestations may become more prevalent.
(My emphasis.) The autoimmune disease in these melanoma patients is still probably manageable (they mention using 30 months of steroid treatment in one of the most severely affected patients), and even if not, again the tradeoff is one most people would probably take (blindness vs. death). But other tumors may make the decision much more difficult:
Although the autoimmune side effects of melanocyte/melanoma-targeted therapies have been manageable, the unintended autoimmunity of therapies targeting colorectal, brain, or lung cancer might prove more severe.
1. Antigens derived from melanocyte differentiation proteins: self-tolerance, autoimmunity, and use for cancer immunotherapy. Engelhard VH, Bullock TN, Colella TA, Sheasley SL, Mullins DW. Immunol Rev. 2002 Oct;188:136-46. []
2. Vitiligo In A Case Of Vaccinia Virus-Treated Melanoma. Burdick Kh, Hawk Wa. Cancer. 1964 Jun;17:708-12.[]
3. Palmer, D.C., Chan, C., Gattinoni, L., Wrzesinski, C., Paulos, C.M., Hinrichs, C.S., Powell, D.J., Klebanoff, C.A., Finkelstein, S.E., Fariss, R.N., Yu, Z., Nussenblatt, R.B., Rosenberg, S.A., Restifo, N.P. (2008). From the Cover: Effective tumor treatment targeting a melanoma/melanocyte-associated antigen triggers severe ocular autoimmunity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(23), 8061-8066. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0710929105 [] |
The average person spends about eight hours of the day sleeping. That equals out to 33% percent of the day. The rest of the day is split between family, friends, and work. Don't you wish you could just have some time to yourself? Maybe you wish there were more hours in a day so you could play video games, read a book, or maybe work on all those article ideas you have been meaning to write? What if I told you that with the uberman sleep schedule you could reduce that 33% of sleep time to 8% and still feel alert?
The uberman sleep schedule is a version of polyphasic sleep that cuts down sleeping once a day for a long while into sleeping several different times a day in smaller nap versions. There are many different phases of polyphasic sleep including biphasic (twice a day), triphasic (three times a day), tetraphasic ( four times a day), and pentaphasic (five times a day). Those might be some easier alternatives before tackling the uberman sleep schedule which is a hexaphasic (six times a day) sleep schedule. However, the uberman sleep schedule does allow for the most awake time.
uberman sleep schedule
So What Is The Uberman Sleep Schedule Anyway?
The uberman, as mentioned above is a sleeping schedule in which you do not sleep for one long block of the day, but instead break your sleeping into six different naps throughout the day.
The traditional sleep schedule is to take six 20-minute naps every 4 hours. This results in only 2 hours of sleep compared to the average 8 hour sleeps normal people have. Some choose to take four 30-minute naps every 6 hours, but that is not a true uberman schedule, though it also results in 2 hours of sleep per day.
The first three or so weeks of this new sleep schedule will be absolute hell for those that try it. You will be groggy and feel like a walking zombie until your body adapts to it. This is something you have to have an adaptable work schedule in order to let your body get used to only sleeping for short periods of time. When changing from monophasic to polyphasic your body does not have enough time to go through the stages of sleep. Your naps will not be long enough to let your body reach REM sleep and without REM sleep your mind tends to lag quite a bit.
person working
Benefits of the Uberman Sleep Schedule
Once you can get past the adaption period where you feel like the living dead sans the urge to eat flesh. Your mind will adapt itself and every time you take a nap you will enter REM sleep almost immediately.
Since you enter REM so quickly, many believe that there is a large potential for extremely vivid dreams and even lucid dreams. Lucid dreams are vivid dreams where you can control your actions, what happens in the dream, and even what the dream is about. Those who chase lucid dreaming often attempt some form of multiphase sleep pattern to trigger them.
The biggest benefit of this sleep pattern is the new amount of free time you have. Now you can have the day for your family, friends, and work. The night is now for you and your own projects. Though many people with 9-to-5 jobs find it hard to have a multiphase sleep pattern because they cannot find the time for their naps. It works well for freelancers though. The more hours in your day means more time you can work, thus the more money you can make.
Many people who swear that sleeping this way can solve sleep problems such as sleep apnea and insomnia. Personally, I can see why it can help sleep apnea as you are not asleep long enough for it to be a problem, however I would think insomnia would make it harder to adapt to this schedule.
sleep deprived
Disadvantages of the Uberman Sleep Schedule
There have, to date, been no studies of long term polyphasic sleep. Many people end up quitting after a couple of months because they miss people or miss sleeping next to their loved one. Being up 22 hours a day can get lonely at times. Introverts tend to have more success with this kind of sleeping as they like to be by themselves and do not often crave times with people. Their need for human company can be fulfilled simply be being around them in the day time when everyone is awake. Extroverts have a much harder time sticking to this pattern of sleeping. They are fulfilled during the day, but often miss human company during the night time hours.
Some have also quit because medical problems started showing up, this suggests that this might not be the healthiest sleep schedule. Though most of the time it is because they are extroverted and get lonely at night, in a lot of the journals I have read anyway.
Many theorize that health problems start showing up because they are going through the improper stages of sleep. We need REM sleep for our body to essentially do repair work on the body and mind. However, people believe that we also need the stages leading up to sleep to help regulate our breathing, blood pressure, and circulation. By skipping these stages of sleep and entering immediately into REM, it gets the repair time we need, but it also stresses our body to wind down faster.
However, probably the biggest disadvantage, as you many have guessed, is the adaption period. I have read a blog of a man who did it for a couple months and it was exhausting just reading it. Many people fail during the first month because they just do not have the will power. Whether it be simply sleeping through their alarm for literal hours or not being able to ignore the allure of the bed. What ever it is, the uberman is no simple thing to get started. To get adapted you have to commit and determine whether the suffering of a few weeks is really something you want to do. |
Is Learning Enough?
He or she’s always tested If a child is in school. Every week you will find chapter evaluations on a regular basis, and there’s standardized testing. Parents of public school pupils decide that when the grades coming home on report cards and evaluation papers are great, then their son or daughter has to be studying.
If your student moves through their homework, starts their day prepared to go to college, and so are hungry to get info, it’s safe to state that the pupil is studying. When pupils are pulled out of a conventional school setting and put in school it is hard for the parent whether the pupil is learning to keep up with their regular peers to understand. ..
There is an issue that students have a tendency not to be analyzed as public school pupils. However, is it an issue and is analyzing the only way to know whether there is a student studying enough? Since the instructor in addition to the parent, it’s likely to find the pupil.
You see them answer questions are going to realize your student work during the material, and also be in a position to judge for yourself whether your pupil is learning. It is tough to tell whether there is a young child learning because schooling takes less time. Kids generally do not invest as much time on a subject as pupils that are educated since they’re neither forward nor behind their classmates.
Part of the reason behind this is your child is getting focus. They don’t need to await other people to catch up, nor are they currently holding up pupils back should they should invest time. If the subject is understood by the pupil then they are able to proceed straight away. It seems cheesy to say whether your kid is studying you will know but the truth is you will know whether your kid is learning. You and you may view it and progress, respectively. |
How to Make Peanut Butter?
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Update time : 2016-11-29 14:16:44
Peanut, as a large amount of planting, eating a wide range of nuts, has been well received by people around the world.
Studies have shown that peanuts are rich in protein, fat, carbohydrate, vitamin A, vitamin B6, vitamin E, vitamin K, as well as minerals calcium, phosphorus, iron and other nutrients. So it can promote the development of human brain cells, promote bone development in children, enhance memory, prevent tumor, slow down the role of aging.
Peanut because of high nutritional value, thousands of years, people in real life, developed a lot of food methods. Such as raw food, fried, cooking, or make soup and so on.
The fried peanuts made of peanut butter, is the most popular method of eating one.
Family tradition of peanut butter production, nothing more than with my mother with a hard object slowly mashed, to produce the most authentic mother's taste.
The market for peanut butter came into being as peanut butter became more popular. So the traditional pounding method is a stone roller grinding method instead of the production has also been greatly improved.
With the progress of science and technology, peanut butter production is also a revolutionary change. A wide variety of home food machines and shredders in the mall can help us quickly create a delicious peanut butter to meet our daily needs.
As for the industrialization of large-scale production, LPMIE new SGJ series of peanut butter mill, fully meet the needs of industrial production.
The machine contact with the material part uses the emery mill disc, in full compliance with food hygiene requirements. Each hour can produce peanut butter up to 1000 kg.
The machine is novel, safe and practical. Set crushing, grinding in one, from peanut butter to peanut butter at one go.
As a result of the optimal design of temperature control, the effective ingredients and flavor of peanut butter are well preserved.
The machine is good, and the user’s evaluation is the most important: "the machine is good, taste better!” |
The subatomic roots of ferromagnetism
The discovery of the link between electricity and magnetism less than two centuries ago had a profound impact on our world where electronic devices and electrical power are ubiquitous. But while engineers have harnessed electromagnetic forces on a global scale, physicists still struggle to describe the dance between electrons that creates magnetic fields.
Two theoretical physicists from Rice University are reporting initial success in that area in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Their new conceptual model, which was created to learn more about the quantum quirks of high-temperature superconductors and other high-tech materials, has also proven useful in describing the origins of ferromagnetism — the everyday “magnetism” of compass needles and refrigerator magnets.
“As a theorist, you strive to have exact solutions, and even though our new model is purely theoretical, it does produce results that match what’s observed in the real world,” said Rice physicist Qimiao Si, the lead author of the paper. “In that sense, it is reassuring to have designed a model system in which ferromagnetism is allowed.”
Ferromagnets are what most people think of as magnets. They’re the permanently magnetic materials that keep notes stuck to refrigerators the world over. Scientists have long understood the large-scale workings of ferromagnets, which can be described theoretically from a coarse-grained perspective. But at a deeper, fine-grained level — down at the scale of atoms and electrons — the origins of ferromagnetism remain fuzzy.
“When we started on this project, we were aware of the surprising lack of theoretical progress that had been made on metallic ferromagnetism,” Si said. “Even a seemingly simple question, like why an everyday refrigerator magnet forms out of electrons that interact with each other, has no rigorous answer.”
Si and graduate student Seiji Yamamoto’s interest in the foundations of ferromagnetism stemmed from the study of materials that were far from ordinary. Si’s specialty is an area of condensed matter physics that grew out of the discovery more than 20 years ago of high-temperature superconductivity. In 2001, Si offered a new theory to explain the behaviour of the class of materials that includes high-temperature superconductors. This class of materials — known as “quantum correlated matter” — also includes more than ten known types of ferromagnetic composites.
Si’s 2001 theory and his subsequent work have aimed to explain the experimentally observed behaviour of quantum-correlated materials based upon the strangely correlated interplay between electrons that goes on inside them. In particular, he focuses on the correlated electron effect that occur as the materials approach a “quantum critical point,” a tipping point that’s the quantum equivalent of the abrupt solid-to-liquid change that occurs when ice melts.
The quantum critical point that plays a key role in high-temperature superconductivity is the tipping point that marks a shift to antiferromagnetism, a magnetic state that has markedly different subatomic characteristics from ferromagnetism. Because of the key role in high-temperature superconductivity, most studies in the field have focused on antiferromagnetism. In contrast, ferromagnetism — the more familiar, everyday form of magnetism — has received much less attention theoretically in quantum-correlated materials.
“So our initial theoretical question was, ‘What would happen, in terms of correlated electron effects, when a ferromagnetic material moves through one of these quantum tipping points?” said Yamamoto, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Fla.
To carry out this thought experiment, Si and Yamamoto created a model system that idealizes what exists in nature. Their jumping off point was a well-studied phenomenon known as the Kondo effect — which also has its roots in quantum magnetic effects. Based on what they knew of this effect, they created a model of a “Kondo lattice,” a fine-grained mesh of electrons that behaved like those that had been observed in Kondo studies of real-world materials.
Si and Yamamoto were able to use the model to provide a rigorous answer about the fine-grained origins of metallic ferromagnetism. Furthermore, the ferromagnetic state that was predicted by the model turned out to have quantum properties that closely resemble those observed experimentally in heavy fermion ferromagnets.
“The model is useful because it allows us to predict how real-world materials might behave under a specific set of circumstances,” Yamamoto said. “And, in fact, we have been able to use it to explain experimental observations on heavy fermion metals, including both the antiferromagnets as well as the less well understood ferromagnetic materials.”
Source: original article
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Saturday, February 23, 2008
The investigation continues ...
So I've been on a mission to figure out what exactly the doctor was talking about with Payton's palate and it seems it is called "submucous cleft palate". Sob sob sob. What in the heck?! The description of this explains it exactly and part of this ... which the doctor also mentioned ... is that the uvula is split. The uvula is the little punching bag thing that hangs in the back of the throat. So WHY has nobody ever noticed this before when they have looked in her mouth? Because they don't even really look! Here goes my beef with doctors. GRR! Here is a little of what I have found about this condition ...
A submucous cleft is a cleft in which the surface tissue of the palate is intact but the musculature beneath the surface is not adequately or properly joined. Usually the only outward sign of the cleft is a bifid uvula (the punching bag in the back of the throat is split). However, it is often completely not detected at all until the child develops speech difficulties (at about age 2).
Even though there is not an actual hole between the oral and nasal cavities, the musculature does not work as it should, and sometimes the growth, particularly of the maxilla (upper jaw) and the alveolar ridge (upper gum line) is compromised.
The most significantly noticeable loss of function is in the soft palate. The soft palate is absolutely vital to proper speech development. It must be flexible enough to make the kinds of closures necessary to produce normal speech. If closure is not reached, air will escape into the nasal area because it is simply not blocked off at the back of the throat as it should be.
Kids with submucous clefts do not always have to have corrective surgery. Sometimes the cleft is not large enough to create insurmountable problems and the problems that the child experiences can be overcome with aggressive speech therapy and orthodontia. On the other hand, many times the surgery is necessary in order for the child to achieve the kind of control needed.
I'm so mad. I'm mad that the doctor sort of blew it off as nothing. I'm mad that she made it seem like leaving a little adenoid tissue in there would help the situation. From what I can tell, even if you have all your adenoid tissue, there are still issues! As if Payton doesn't already have enough speech hurdles to jump, now we have to deal with this. Does it ever end?! Can ANYTHING in her life be normal!? It so isn't fair.
1 comment:
1. submucous cleft palate can cause problems with pressure sounds you make in your mouth...I think if I can remember 'g' is one of those sounds. Kallie ENT also just did a partial adenoidectomy as well. Kallie does not speak nasaly sounding but she had speech therapy for years to help her with the pressure sounds and proper formation of words. I know this is scary and new and ANOTHER freaking diagnosis but it is treatable with good speech therapy. Also, Kallie still had her uvula(tonsils) and her's are not split so maybe that was the case with Peyton? I sent you and IM feel free to IM me back or email me if you want any other information. |
FITT Principle & Running
FITT Principle online personal training
Written by Runnergirl Training
Are all running workouts created equal? Does pace, intensity, duration all play a role in helping to achieve goals? The answer is yes.
There is a principle called the FITT principle. It stands for Frequency, Intensity, Type, and Time. All workout programs are constructed upon those factors.
Frequency is how often the workout will occur; let’s say within a training week. For example, a long run should occur one time within a training week.
Intensity is how hard you are working. A speed workout should be 85-90% of maximum effort.
Type is the mode of exercise. Cycling is a type of cross training for a running program.
Time is the duration for a workout. Thirty minutes of hill repeats is an example.
Based upon those principles, a running program should include a weekly long run, speed workout, tempo workout, easy runs, and cross training. Hill repeats and speed workouts can be used on alternate weeks.
Easy runs or cross training should follow the day after long runs, speed, or hill workouts. Easy runs, cross training, & rest days are used to allow the body to recover from the high intensity or high energy demanding workouts.
Contact me for online personal training programs!
1. This is very helpful information, thanks for explaining it!
2. @Marnie Thanks for your feedback! Glad it was helpful for you!
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Implement a book recommendation system with TensorFlow
Recommendation engines are an essential functionality for all global marketplaces, no matter if they are offering books, mobile apps or music. As the number of different products offered within such marketplaces grew into the millions, human users simply cannot handle that amount of information anymore.
Historically, there are different approaches how humans take the decision on what to buy next. Many of us rely on friends with similar taste that recommend a good book for reading next. Most of us are also somehow influenced by the advertisements and marketing that large enterprises use to promote their latest products.
Even if you are a very critical consumer and you decide to scroll down all the available books at Amazon you will not reach the end of the list due to lack of lifetime. Recommender systems and algorithms are one way of learning your personal taste and to suggest products that you did not knew before.
One well known methodology for calculating a recommendation is to use all the collected information from other users’ preferences.
Collaborative filtering, also known as crowd intelligence, is one methodology to predict the taste of a user by using the collected knowledge of millions of users.
Imagine a simple rating matrix U x B where U represents each individual user and B all books within a marketplace. The matrix values are all ratings that all users have assigned to the individual books. This is typically a sparse matrix where there are more non rated books within the matrix that actual user ratings.
See an example for such a user / book rating matrix:
Billy Sarah Klara Joseph Bob Sue
Harry Potter 3 5
Sherlock Holmes 5 3 5
Alice in Wonderland 3
Game of Thrones 1 5 3
Pretty Little Liars 5 4
Twilight 1 4 2 5
The Innocent 1 1
Pride and Prejudice 5
The goal of our recommendation system is to estimate all the missing ratings within this sparse matrix. We will use Google TensorFlow for implementing our recommendation system as it offers one of the most mature machine learning frameworks.
To find a number of K latent factors, or hidden features between a list of books and a list of users we have to model a function P x Q that approximates our ratings matrix:
R ≈ P x Q
Where the matrices are defined as P = Users x Features and Q = Books x Features.
The TensorFlow model is a simple multiplication of two variable nodes P and Q, while the loss is calculated as the square sum of the difference between the actual ratings and the product of P and Q:
# prepare data
R = np.array(BOOKS)
N = len(BOOKS)
M = len(BOOKS[0])
K = 2 # number of hidden features
P = np.random.rand(N,K)
Q = np.random.rand(M,K)
# input placeholders
ratings = tf.placeholder(tf.float32, name = 'ratings')
# model variables
tP = tf.Variable(P, dtype=tf.float32, name='P')
tQ = tf.Variable(Q, dtype=tf.float32, name='Q')
# build model
pMultq = tf.matmul(tP, tQ, transpose_b=True)
squared_deltas = tf.square(pMultq - ratings)
loss = tf.reduce_sum(squared_deltas)
tf.summary.scalar('loss', loss)
tf.summary.scalar('sumP', tf.reduce_sum(tP))
tf.summary.scalar('sumQ', tf.reduce_sum(tQ))
The final step is to create a TensorFlow GradientDescentOptimizer that learns both variable matrices P and Q:
# create an optimizer towards minimizing the loss value
optimizer = tf.train.GradientDescentOptimizer(0.01)
train = optimizer.minimize(loss)
And we start the TensorFlow training loop as it is shown below:
sess = tf.Session();
init = tf.global_variables_initializer()
# write summaries to TensorBoard log directory
summary_op = tf.summary.merge_all()
file_writer = tf.summary.FileWriter('./logs', sess.graph)
# now run the training loop to reduce the loss
for i in range(5000):
# also execute a summary operation together with the train node for TensorBoard
_, summary =[train, summary_op], {ratings: R})
file_writer.add_summary(summary, i)
The result is a matrix of approximated book ratings for all the given users:
[[ 1.38 1.60 0.31 1.49 2.50 1.69]
[ 3.12 -0.54 -0.81 3.49 4.99 1.78]
[-0.18 0.84 0.34 -0.23 -0.16 0.28]
[ 1.92 0.29 -0.27 2.13 3.17 1.40]
[-0.55 4.82 1.86 -0.78 -0.17 1.96]
[ 1.02 4.49 1.43 0.99 2.34 2.84]
[ 0.49 -0.05 -0.11 0.55 0.79 0.30]
[-0.31 3.70 1.40 -0.47 0.04 1.58]]
If you like to read more about TensorFlow and neural networks, refer to my Kindle eBook here:
eBook Applied Artificial Intelligence - Neural networks and deep learning with Python and TensorFlow |
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
The Old Hardware Stores
Hardware. Today that word is related to computers more than it's original connotation which was implements and tools. The grandfather of tools is the hammer. It's partner is the nail which was invented around the 8th century B.C. and was preceded by the peg. Nails used to be so rare and valuable that early settlers in the western U.S. reportedly burned down their homes before moving to recover the nails. With every nail being hand forged back then, it is no surprise.
Also no surprise is that stores carrying nails, hammers, lanterns and saws were the first one's to set up in a new town, carrying a variety of other goods as well. T.J. Archer opened one of Tulsa's first as did the Lynch Brothers and H.O. McClure.
Eventually these stores evolved into ones that carried just about any and everything. Chances are that at one time or another everyone will find themselves at a hardware store in their lifetime. Of course, we now relate the term "hardware store" to two big chain stores out there. But, as with grocery stores, back in the day there was at least one in every neighborhood. Here are a few from Tulsa's past:
Shepherd Furniture & Hardware
Alhambra Appliances and Hardware - 15th and Peoria 1959
Clark Darland owned at least 2 stores; one downtown on Cincinnati and the other in Utica Square
Gates Hardware was on the NE corner of Elgin and Brady in the 1930s
During WWII hardware stores sold glue by the pound, resembling bricks of taffy. A furniture store would melt it and use it for making furniture. And paper sacks were not available during that time, so newspaper was used to wrap up a dozen bolts. Nails, nuts, bolts and screws were sold by the pound.
And it was the only place you could have a key made
Swinney's Hardware in Whittier Square, was a place to go for hard-to-find items. They kept their niche by carrying items such as plumbing parts for older fixtures, pumice stone polishing powder, tung oil, window glaze as well as bat houses and parts for old Zink furnaces. The store opened near Admiral and Lewis in 1934 as a used furniture store. Then, in 1941 they switched to selling hardware and took over Blakely Hardware at 14 N Lewis. They moved twice after that, always within the same neighborhood with their last location being 32 S. Lewis where they stayed for 67 years until 2008, when they closed.
Best Hardware is still around in Brookside!
"Every hardware store is a repository of literally centuries of knowledge and experience; that the tools and products they sell represent some of the most artfully--and practically--engineered items in existence." - The History Channel
DrillerAA09 said...
I do remember Alhambra appliances and hardware.
Love the first photo..."Furniture & Undertaker".
Okie Dog said...
I was so sad to see Swinney's close, had been a long time customer, and had even grown up in that neighborhood. My dentist was above the Circle Theater, even, Dr. Rozen. Loved to eat at the Silver Castle across the street from the theater, too. Shopped at Oklahoma Tire and Supply, went to school at Whittier. Played throughout the clothes at Robert Hall at first and Lewis, too. Fun memories. Thanks.
LyndaV said...
Re Swinney's Hardware.
You are correct about Swinney's moving several times. I grew up in the neighborhood. Spent untold hours at the Circle on a Saturday afternoon.
Growing up Sinney's was on the same block. Only it was on the Admiral side. Where Swinney's ended their run in the 1950's was a place that sold meat by the order. Later when they left It was remodled and T.G.& Y. moved from around the corner on Admiral into that space. The blue around the top was from that period. T.G.&Y. Stayed there, I believe until the company closed. I do know for a fact that it was there at the end of the 1960's as I applied for a job there when I legally could, which would have been in 1967. After T.G.&Y. closed it's doors Swinney's then moved from around the the corner.
My mom, my parents still live in the neighborhood, was very sad when Swinney's closed shop. She knew she could always get what she needed there. And other hardware stores are not close to the Whitter area.
Anonymous said...
Does anyone remember the name of the old hardware store on Southwest Blvd? Thanks! Susan
Anonymous said...
The old hardware store on Southwest Blvd. was Burgess.
I worked for The Swinney's when Big John painted the blue on their building. He came up with that color from mixing a bunch of paint that he had that had been mixed wrong. We called it Swinney blue. I sure do miss him and Mrs. Swinney too. John Jr. is gone now. Those were surely the good old days when I worked for them
Unknown said...
I was sad to see that Burgess Hardware wasn't mentioned in your post, since I definitely feel like it belongs here but I'm glad someone brought it up in the comments!! Here's a video someone thankfully put on YouTube I'd love to share. Ray Burgess was my dad, so it's extra special for me to have this to watch. http://youtu.be/il9c3oqhlkQ
Brooke M said...
Hi, I'd love to see that video. Is it still available? The link above isn't working :(
Unknown said...
I liked that l could find just about anything there |
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Keeping "A Yard" Away Is Hard: My Thoughts on the CF "3 Foot Rule"
The CF 3 foot rule (or even further away if desired) is the agreed upon safe distance that the CFers should stay apart from each other since the risk of cross contamination was discovered in the early 1990's. (It may have been discovered before then, but that's when I recall noticing it as a kid.)
The purpose of this rule is to protect the cystic fibrosis community from sharing bacterium with each other, thus creating super bacterium bugs that are immune to our current antibiotic treatments. Think of the movie "Starship Troopers" going on within your body. Yuck.
It also protects us against contracting burkholderia cepacia (AKA b. cepecia) or MRSA from one another. These are two very nasty bacterium that some people within the CF Community have. They can cause a major decline in our health and - in the case of b.cepecia - prevent potential lung transplant candidates from getting on the transplant list! Of course, there are many CFers with b.cepecia and/or MRSA that are doing marvelously, but because these bugs affect everyone differently, people who knowingly have them are restricted from attending CF events. (At least b. cepecia patient are restricted. I'm not sure about MRSA, but I would guess so.)
Had we known about cross contamination sooner, perhaps some of the people with CF that we've loved and lost would still be here. Perhaps we wouldn't have some of the "super bugs" we currently have in the CF Community. It's little bit of wishful thinking on my part because I want my sister back so badly.
Separation from one another is a good thing for our physical health. Unfortunately, it wasn't until the invention of the internet that we'd regain the small piece of our lives that we'd lost. That piece that everyone needs: real life interaction with our kindred spirits. Relationships that only someone who has walked a similar path would truly understand. For example:
Cancer patients are very susceptible to illness while on chemotherapy, so they are kept a part from others. Hopefully, the chemo works it's magic and makes the cancer goes away (which kicks ass because cancer is a bastard that I don't wish on anyone!). If it does, then those cancer patients can reconnect with each other, embracing like long lost relatives, and showing solidarity by walking hand in hand at the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure.
That's what we USED to do too...
Before the 3 foot rule, CFers were sharing hospital rooms, going to CF camps, holiday parties, and exchanging affectionate handshakes, high fives, hugs, and smooches. A lot of my sister's life was spent as hospital roommate with her CF sisters, swapping war stories, crying on each others shoulders, and holding each others hands during IV pokes and daily blood draws. This was her "CF family" who just "got it." But it's not like that anymore. Now it's private rooms, isolation, and doctors with masks and gowns that look like hazmat suits. It can make you feel like you are some kind of a freak with the bubonic plague. When the isolation protocol happened, it was a pretty tough transition for a generation of CFers who were so used to the close quarters and camaraderie. It's a security blanket that will never be here again.
When we CFers walk at the CFF's Great Strides Event it's at least three feet away from each other, but sometimes it feels like a mile.
To quote A Tale of Two Cities:
Joshland Note: Is anyone else crying from laughter because I used the terribly cheesy sci-fi movie "Starship Troopers" and the classic novel "A Tale of Two Cities" in the same blog post? Sweet Lord, I hope so because I just realized it and I had to stop writing to compose myself. I'm glad I can amuse myself even while I'm being serious. Now, where was I? Oh yes, 3 feet...
It kills me that I can't give my CF friends a hug when I see them because I love them so much. Anyone who has ever met me knows that I'm the huggiest hugger that ever hugged. And, as I recently discovered, now it's even harder for me when I'm at events because those little CF kids love Moganko and want to connect with this puppet who makes them happy. That means they also want to meet the guy that he hangs out with (That would be me for those of you keeping track at home). Believe me, I'd love to be able to sit down and play with you or your kids without worrying about getting them sick. Sadly, I do worry. That's why I do my best to keep my distance...
But when you're in the moment, mistakes can happen. I'm talking to so many people and someone asks for something so genuine and normally harmless - a quick photo with a gentle squeeze or a handshake to wish you well. All of the sudden we'll remember we both have CF and sometimes say "Oh shit, you have CF!" At that point, I'll back away and politely excuse myself to go wash my hands. Or the CF kids who sweetly reach out to touch Moganko even though we are observing the 3 foot rule (I know we are because I measured my arm with Moganko on it and it's over 3 feet at my full puppet/arm extension). If they happen to touch or get too close for comfort, then I go wipe down Moganko while their parents go to scrub off the germs. I do the best I can, but I ain't perfect.
What about CF clinic appointments? CF readers, how many times have you gone to your clinic and wondered how often they really clean the waiting rooms or who was just sitting in the seat you are sitting in right now? What about touching the elevator buttons? What about the door handles? Holy hanna, if you were to dwell on it too much it would make your head spin! I don't usually wear a mask when I go to clinic, but I watch what I touch and where I sit because of the high traffic of CFers and sick people going in and out of there on a daily basis. It's so frustrating to live in "red alert mode" during those CF-related situations. When the first words out of my mouth aren't: "Hello, nice to meet you!", They're often: "Do you have CF and are you sick?"
I'd rarely ever act that way under normal circumstances. Do you think I'd say something like this to a waiter at a restaurant:
"Say there sir or madame, what do you think of the chicken here? Oh, and by the way, do you have cystic fibrosis? If so, could you make sure not to touch anything on my plate or slobber on my chicken? Thanks."
Sorry, I'm not that big of a germophobe. I have to live my life, for goodness sakes! I could get sick anywhere I go, but not going to fret about going to a public place just because I MIGHT get sick or run into another CFer. I can't control my environment, I can only control my reaction to it and do my best to prevent illness by washing my hands, covering my mouth when I cough, and keeping my distance from sick people.
If you have kids with CF, you need to take care of them. I get that. While I think it's really important to be cautious with your kids health, they also need to live their lives! They will get sick. It's a certainty. Find your boundaries by letting them explore the world. Let them build their immune system. Let them go play and get dirty. Let them be in sports or after school activities. Let them have sleepovers without worrying about germs at other people's houses. LET THEM BE KIDS! You only get one crack at that in life. I'm so glad my parents let me be a kid. It's one of the best things they ever did for me. Love you, Mom and Dad.
Joshland Note: I fully realize that some of my readers and/or their kids have immune systems that are compromised for one reason or another and, therefore, they have limited public activity. I have nothing but respect for you because I watched a life similar to yours through Angela. She was restricted too, but she did her best to be social when she could because she needed to live her life and feel normal. Be smart and do what's best for you.
The "living life" state of mind is why there are CFers that don't necessarily follow the "3 foot rule". They just live for each day and feel like if they don't give energy to things like cross contamination, then it won't happen. I see their point. Who the hell wants to live there life in fear? I used to be that way too. Most of the CFers I know who don't follow the rule are VERY RESPECTFUL of those that do. That's all we can ask of them.
Here are some of the well-meaning questions I've been asked regarding the CF 3 foot rule:
Q: Why can't you be around other CFers? You and Angie lived together and you both had CF.
Yes we lived together, but we were brother and sister, so cross contamination happened by circumstance. This happens with all relatives and it can't be avoided. However, CFers outside of our family circle have different bugs surrounding them that our immune systems might not be able to combat because it's new to our environment. It's like introducing an new animal into ecosystem that can't sustain it's needs. It wreaks havoc on that environment and can wipe out a whole area if it's not controlled.
Q: Can you (insert activity here) together?
We CAN do anything our hearts desire as long as we maintain that three foot distance. Sometimes we'll even don masks so we can get a little closer, but more often than not we stay away from one another to protect ourselves. The invention of the internet has given us blogs and social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Skype, and - the CF social networking site - CysticLife to keep connected to one another. Thank goodness for all of them! However, nothing will ever replace that face to face contact and those moments where all you need is a hand on the shoulder or an embrace to shelter you from pain that only another CF patient can understand.
Q: If cross contamination is so bad, can CFers get married?
Yes, but you run the same risks of swapping bugs and such as a family with multiple CFers in it. There are CF adults who have gotten married to one another. I say more power to them. Sometimes the heart wants what it wants and we can't control who we fall in love with. If they are happy, that's all that matters. They are adults and can make their own decisions.
Q: But weren't you all in the same studio for the "Breathe Song Event"?
Yes, but on different days. Each individual would record their part and then the crew would go through and sterilize the begeezus out of everything in the studio several times over before the next person came to record a day or so later. We were never really supposed to meet each other in person, though I saw Tess in the lobby as she was leaving and Rose and I had a drink one night at the bar where we sat at opposite ends of a table, which was very hard for both of us to do because she is a hugger too.
In closing, If you have CF and you ever get to meet me out and about, it's my top priority to be safe around you. It would absolutely break my heart if we got each other sick. I stay three feet away from you because I love you. Again: I'm not a germaphobe. I'm just taking care of myself. You would too if you lived my life and you've seen what I've seen.
Your best rule of thumb as a CFer is to use the "3 foot rule". If you choose not to follow that rule, please respect others who do and ask before giving that great big hug or firm handshake you want to give. Respecting boundaries is an important part of life, CF or not.
Check out my buddy Colleen's blog about cross contamination. She's much less wordy than I am. :-)
Peaceful Things, Lots of Love, and "Safe Distancey" Things,
Josh & Moganko
1. ^_^ I loved this post! I must tell about the 3 foot rule to the big family (my parents and brothers now about them very well) people seems to not understand us too much, but we must have patience I guess ^_- post more please :) thank you so much for everything, you bright our days a lot!
2. Good write Josh (thought provoking as usual)! I love the pic of you & Moganko at the top :)
My little guy has MRSA, and I asked about cross-contamination and whether it was okay to bring him to CF events. I was told it was not a problem (only for b. cepacia). So we have gone to CF walks, but we too always maintain the 3ft rule (okay, really it's often more like a 6ft rule because I have become a bit of a germaphobe now...but for his protection and others). I would LOVE for it to be different, for him to get to really be friends and play with kids who have the same struggles. I can't imagine how much more isolated one must feel with b. cepacia. :(
3. Love this always make me laugh :) So funny that I read this the day after Matthew's (he's 12) clinic visit because yesterday as we are getting off the elevator (no accessable steps to this office)another child and his family were getting on the elevator. Normally I would not notice this but the little boy in the group was coughing into his elbow but his elbow was not really covering his mouth. I could "see" the germs coming out and couldn't help but wonder if he had CF. Matthew has never cultured anything but staph aureus and I would love the keep it that way for a long time.
4. I never knew the immune risks with CF and you that I really think about it, I should probably be more careful with germs myself with Celiac...I get EVERYTHING that comes around and I probably wouldn't if I wasn't so un-careful about germs and closeness--thanks for posting this..
The internet Was the best invention for people like you CFers that have the 3 foot can talk for hours and never have to worry about germs! Hope you are doing well!! haha I LOVE the photo with the shoes..cute idea!!
5. great post. i love your thoughts on the "shared environment" with your sister and how that makes a difference than cross-contamination with other cfers. I think about that often having 2 kids with cf. Your words may help me explain this to others who have asked me about the sibling thing! but i actually do wonder ALL the time when we are at the park and the kids start playing with strangers "how would i know if those kids had cf too!" --- what a complicated life we all live!!!
6. Beautifully written. I was almost brought to tears due to my frustration in this particular area of the CF life. I'm very much a people person and I love connecting with people. I met a cyster a few weeks ago and it took every bit of will power not to hug her!
I would say, for me, this is the worst thing about this disease... the isolation is worst than anything else it can throw at me.
But you're right: thank God we have the internet.... it's almost the same. :]
Keep posting!
7. You're an amazing writer, Josh :).
I love this post because it is EXACTLY how I feel.
I'm a sophomore in high school. Last year, upon entering as a freshman, I learned that there are TWO other people at my school with CF; one my age, one a junior (now a senior).
The one my age, who is a boy named Cole, is a really cool guy. I met him face-to-face once, through my school nurse, and we were like 10 feet apart. So anyways, he's really cool BUT he wasn't really educated on the cross-contamination thing. Need an example? A couple days after meeting him he invited me over to his house to go swim in his pool.
No offense, Cole, but EWW.
All I can imagine is pseudomonas everywhere.
Needless to say, I'm smart enough to deny that request :)
So we connected on facebook and update ever so often on our health and stuff. I've also told him how mportant it is that we stay away from each other, for our own health (believe me Cole, I want to hang out with you SO bad.)
But yeah, there are those times where I want to invite my CF friends over and have a long, venting sleepover, because I feel very normal. But I can't. I'm extremely cautious when it comes to cross-infection; I carry hand-sanitizer everywhere, I wear masks when I'm in clinic, I'm constantly washing my hands. I guess its working, because my last PFT's were in the 90's.
Anyways, this reply is getting long and drawn out. So, thanks for this blog post. It makes me feel less like a germaphobe :)
P.S. *hugs to you*
P.P.S. Say hi to your wife Carly for me! From Carly :)
8. Great post, Sir Josh of Moganko Land.
9. I just love you and all you do for our community. thank you
10. I give the ol' "CF High Five" to all my CF friends when we meet up. Very much like the high five except we stop about 12 inches from each other's hand. It works :)
1. This is so awesome a you are such a wonderful role model for us parents and our kids. Thx for being you!!
AND- the CFF found that 3 feet is not enough. Sputum droplets travel further than that so they increased the guidelines to SIX feet now. Here's a link from Hopkins with the guidlines on page 4 under Ambulatory:
What'd You Think?
Peaceful Things ~ Josh
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Humboldt’s Vision of Nature
Humboldt portrait 1806 Friedrich Georg Weitsch (Wikipedia)
An artist’s imagining of young Humboldt at work in 1806, by Friedrich Georg Weitsch (Wikipedia)
Our ecological imagination—our sense of nature as a global, interconnected and sacred whole—has roots in many sources. A relatively unfamiliar one is the work of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), a manic, prolific explorer and naturalist of the German Romantic era. Humboldt’s life and work are the subject of an outstanding biography by Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World (2015).
Humboldt’s trademark was the web of connections he drew around whatever he observed. Nature, he insisted, could not be grasped in the slices and pieces into which other scientists chopped it but only as a whole. He looked at each specimen, whether a plant or a human institution, in its relation to global patterns of terrain, weather, and behavior. Such a perspective called for not only information but imagination and emotion as well. His works are as full of poetry as they are of data.
His seminal journey during his thirties took him on a five-year exploration of Latin America. Wherever he traveled, he compared. In the Andes, a moss reminded him of a moss in northern Germany. In Mexico he found trees similar to those in Canada. Measuring temperature and altitude as he climbed stormy volcanoes and crawled across frozen ridges in the Andes, he envisioned the plants of the world in vegetation zones consistent around the planet. He published a large diagram of a mountain with labels for plants at their respective altitudes around the world, from mushrooms at the depths to lichens just below the snow line. No one had ever seen a graphic of ecosystems from a global perspective like this.
Humboldt (
Humboldt was the first to note that cutting down a forest set off a cascade of environmental problems, triggering the loss of topsoil, the rapid runoff of rainwater, the flooding of rivers, the drying up of springs, the decline of agriculture. He observed how the farming of single crops for trade, such as indigo in Peru, ruined the soil ‘like a mine,’ and impoverished the people. “He debated nature, ecological issues, imperial power and politics in relation to each other. He criticized unjust land distribution, monocultures, violence against tribal groups and indigenous work conditions” (105).
During his return from South America, Humboldt stopped by the White House to visit another scholar of agricultural economy, Thomas Jefferson. The two saw eye-to-eye on all subjects except one. Humboldt had seen enough slavery in South America to convince him that it was butchery without justification, economic or otherwise. For Humboldt, “What is against nature is unjust, bad, and without validity,” and humans, like plants, all come from one root. “’Nature is the domain of liberty,’ Humboldt said, because nature’s balance was created by diversity” (108). Jefferson agreed but never freed all his slaves (106).
Humboldt noted similarities between the mountains of South America and Africa and argued that those continents had been joined in the past, anticipating the modern theory of plate tectonics.
In his later years in Berlin, he gave a series of free public lectures that packed halls with people from all walks of life. Traffic clogged the city on the lecture days. “He talked about poetry and astronomy but also about geology and landscape painting….He roamed from fossils to the northern lights, and from magnetism to flora, fauna, and the migration of the human race” (194). He spoke from notes layered with clippings, bits of book pages, scribbled post-its, illustrations.
humboldt kosmos(
From Kosmos, a map of cultures and peoples in South America (
He convened gatherings of scientists from across Europe to exchange information and ideas, establishing in effect the modern scientific conference. Fascinated by the earth’s magnetic field, he successfully urged governments to build a network of magnetic stations across the globe, setting a new level of international scientific cooperation.
In consultation with specialists, Humboldt spent his last years writing Kosmos, a multi-volume survey of what was then known about outer space, the climate and geology of earth, the relation among plants, animals, and humans, the history of science, and the perceptions of nature by artists and poets through the ages.
In 1831, the 22-year-old Charles Darwin boarded the Beagle for his own formative voyage and brought with him Humboldt’s seven-volume narrative of the Latin American expedition. Darwin followed Humboldt in seeing nature as a grand ecological system in constant flux and precarious balance. But while Humboldt looked for the integration of nature, Darwin looked for beginnings. On the Origin of Species appeared a few months after Humboldt’s death in 1859.
In her epilogue, Andrea Wulf writes that Humboldt’s name remains unfamiliar to many because, as the last scientist to study his field so broadly, he has been eclipsed by modern specialists famous for singular discoveries and theories. (Darwin is one example.) Yet when I read today about reverence for nature, anxiety about the climate, and the fused destinies of humans and the environment, I hear Humboldt loud and clear. |
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Climate Change and the Decarbonisation of Transport
Climate Change and the Decarbonisation of Transport
Jorge Cachinero el
Headline environmental catastrophes have an immediate effect on keeping climate change in the media and, subsequently, high on governments’ agendas.
And rightly so. Climate change has a devastating impact on peoples’ lives and livelihoods.
Shifts in weather patterns, rising sea levels, extreme flooding, droughts, are the face of climate change that we are used to seeing almost daily.
One of the main causes of climate change is carbon dioxide emissions, often associated with the burning of fossil fuels such as natural gas, crude oil and coal.
These, in turn, contribute to air pollution.
With air quality closely linked to not only the health of the earth’s global climate and ecosystems, but also to our own global health issues, policies to reduce air pollution and an industry uptake of solutions to reduce their carbon footprint is crucial.
On an individual level, we can all of course save energy by, for example, carpooling, using public transport, cycling, but it’s difficult to make a substantial impact on air pollution alone.
The good news is that governments are making a tangible difference by putting in place successful policies which can substantially reduce the harmful effects of air pollution in areas such as industry, power generation, urban planning and transport.
And individual industry sectors are also making a tangible difference.
Take, for example, the road transport sector and their drive to decarbonise transport.
Decarbonisation does in fact pose a significant and specific challenge to the road transport industry, bearing in mind that it relies on oil for 92% of its energy.
However, the challenge is being fully embraced by operators taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint.
Alongside sweeping changes that will transform the sector, there are also opportunities for operators.
Fuel equates to 30% of operators’ costs, and they are constantly seeking ways to reduce their fuel consumption and thereby also reduce their CO2 emissions.
With environmental sustainability at the heart of all transport operations, IRU has a 2050 Decarbonisation Vision which will guide the industry with five key pillars paving the way towards decarbonising road transport:
Boosting operational efficiency by using measures such as improving load factor optimization, digitization and greater use of collaborative transport platforms, could contribute to CO2 savings of 10% in the EU.
Eco-driver training is a low-hanging fruit which helps the sector reduce its carbon impact.
Increasing the use of alternative fuels is another key pillar of decarbonisation with a range of solutions needed for a complex market.
Improving fuel efficiency will have a significant benefit on decarbonising road transport. Further development and uptake of the latest technologies, such as engine efficiency improvements, waste-heat recovery and improved aerodynamics, is one of the key ways in which operators can reduce their CO2 emissions.
A strong collective transport system offering a viable alternative to private car use is one of the clearest ways to decarbonise the transport sector. The commercial road transport sector is an essential pillar of the global economy and a well-functioning logistics chain also ensures less dependence on private car use thereby both reducing congestion and CO2 emissions.
However, the sector can’t get there alone – it needs other key stakeholders to play their part, including the decision-makers who must ensure that there is an enabling environment.
Investments in infrastructure and in traffic management are essential, as is a legislative framework that encourages innovation and allows industry the flexibility to reduce CO2 emissions in the most cost-effective manner.
The International Transport Forum’s (ITF) Decarbonising Transport initiative facilitates just that – it helps governments and industry to transform climate ambitions into reality by making evidence-based policy decisions related to decarbonisation.
The initiative, launched in 2016, involves a wide range of stakeholders, including IRU, the private sector, intergovernmental organisations, and sector associations.
It helps governments and industry specifically by building a catalogue of effective CO2 mitigation measures, providing targeted analytical assistance for countries to identify actions that work, gathering and sharing best practices, and shaping the climate change debate by bringing the transport perspective to the broader discussion.
With the transport sector contributing around 23% of global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, possibly reaching 40% by 2030, and with demand for transport set to grow exponentially in the coming decades, ITF’s Decarbonising Transport initiative is going a long way towards helping the transport sector meet its obligations as part of the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change.
Photo: Mr Young Tae Kim, Secretary-General, International Transport Forum (ITF).
With the contribution of Janet Waring, Marie-Hélène Vanderpool, Jens Hügel and John Kidd.
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Maintaining Heifer Performance in Cold Stress
Published on Thu, 10/27/2016 - 3:22pm
By Pat Hoffman
We're all feeling the immense chill right now, especially as we're out working with animals. We place particular focus on young calves as changes in feeding and management are required to help calves not only survive, but also grow to their potential despite the temperature outside.
What we might now focus on as much are the effects of winter weather on older heifers.
The effects of winter are more profound on calves, but that does not mean older heifers are immune to cold conditions. Because older dairy heifers are frequently reared in a wide array of environmental conditions, it challenges our ability to universally define the exact energy requirements of a dairy heifer in the winter. However, most heifers - regardless of age or size - will require more energy in the diet during winter. Calculating exactly how much extra dietary energy to keep heifers growing on pace in the winter is a little bit of science and a lot of experience and art.
So let’s start with a little science.
As a heifer grows, she gains body mass and rumen capacity. As a result, she is more adept at handling cold. But extraneous winter or housing conditions can have an additional effect on heifers’ maintenance energy needs.
For example, at the same winter temperature, a heifer lying on wet bedding requires more energy than a heifer lying on dry bedding. Likewise, a heifer with a dirty hair coat has less insulation than a heifer with a clean, dry, long hair coat.
Do our heifers frequently stand or lie in the winter sun? Do the cold winter night winds blow on them? Are they walking on lumpy, icy, jagged walking surfaces or standing in a cold rain? Can they get to water or has it become an ice sculpture? All these winter conditions can occur and require more maintenance energy by the heifer.
What does this mean management-wise?
With younger lighter heifers (less than 600 pounds), we should provide a good environment and perfect resting areas before relying on feeding more energy to overcome winter conditions. For these heifers, walk the pens and ask, “Do we need more feed energy or should we improve the bedding?”
For all heifers, walking pens, noting environmental conditions and proactively discussing those notes with your nutritionist can pay dividends. The walkthrough checklist should include bodyweight, resting surfaces, coat conditions, crowding, lot conditions, walking surfaces, body condition, etc.
Generally, for dairy heifers, you should reduce dietary NDF 2 to 3 percentage units in the winter. For tougher winter conditions (wind, frozen or wet bedding, or frozen, uneven walking surfaces), reduce dietary NDF 3 to 4 percentage units, but always monitor heifer growth and body condition frequently.
Reducing dietary NDF in winter heifer diets accomplishes two things. First, the diet will have more caloric density and, second, heifers will eat more feed. In general, for every 2-percentage-unit reduction in dietary NDF, heifers will eat 1 pound more of dry matter.
Finally, remember winter to a heifer is where she lives, not where we live.
In freestall or other confinement barns, winter may end in March. That’s because heifers are fully protected from precipitation, wind and internal barn temperatures may rise to above 50 degrees F. Thus, don’t continue winter diets too long or over-conditioning may occur. Winter may end much later for heifers with outside exposure due to cold winds, icy rains and muddy lots.
About the author: Pat Hoffman is a Vita Plus dairy technical support specialist. He received professor emeritus status after completing a 35-year career with the UW-Madison Department of Dairy Science. Based at the Marshfield ag research Station, Hoffman's UW-Extension services included application of dairy research and the development of dairy outreach education programs. His research focused on development of dairy replacement heifers. Hoffman earned his bachelor's degree from UW-Platteville and his master's in dairy science from UW-Madison. He is a member of the American Dairy Science Association and previously served as president of the Midwest Branch. |
Monthly Archives: July 2015
Frequently Asked Question’s Regarding Stretch Marks
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stretch marks on stomach
Stretch marks, which are usually called striae, are purplish or red scars that are extremely find as well as they frequently show up on the physical body as a result of skin that is promptly stretched. Skin stretches out quickly for a variety of reasons, consisting of maternity, muscle mass growth, weight gain, as well as due to development surges. While the skin does have some suppleness to it, when it is overstretched, the dermis can be torn, which creates these marks to happen. Fascinated in learning even more about stretch marks? Below are some solution to several of one of the most faqd concerning stretch marks.
Frequently Asked Question 1
Just what do stretch marks look like?
Stretch marks typically show up red or purple in the beginning; nevertheless, with time they fade to a white or silver color that is not as prominent. Often you’ll find that the stretch marks show up like they are sunken right into your skin and also their texture is a bit different than the rest of your skin. Normally they look like extended lines that are fine and also they are generally with each other in numerous locations of your body.
Frequently Asked Question 2
Where can you obtain stretch marks?
You could locate stretch marks practically anywhere on your physical body; nevertheless, there are specific locations that are more prone to them, as well as these are the locations that have higher quantities of fat cells. This can include the stomach area, the outer and also internal thighs, underarms, derriere, arms, hips, and also busts. Certainly usually you’ll find that women are a lot more susceptible to getting stretch marks, however men do obtain them too.
Frequently Asked Question 3
Who can obtain stretch marks?
Practically anyone could to become stretch marks, yet you will discover that particular individuals are more susceptible to them compared to other people. Often it is expecting ladies that are more susceptible to obtaining stretch marks, because their stomach grows and also the skin actually stretches during their pregnancy. Also, teenagers that are undergoing adolescence can also get stretch marks. Typically they wind up with stretch marks as a result of development eruptions that happen rapidly. Bodybuilders which construct muscle mass quick could also obtain stretch marks, along with people who acquire or shed weight swiftly.
Frequently Asked Question 4
Are there any type of health threats to stress over?
No, there actually is no health and wellness risk to having stretch marks. Stretch marks are very common as well as they are only as deep as your skin. However, most people do find that they are undesirable to look like and they intend to do every little thing feasible to get rid of them.
Frequently Asked Question 5
How can I deal with the stretch marks?
There are quite a few different alternatives readily available for dealing with stretch marks. There are a range of stretch marks lotions as well as creams that can assist to make sure that your stretch marks fade.
Stretch marks, which are commonly called striae, are red or purplish marks that are quite locate as well as they often appear on the physical body as an outcome of skin that is promptly flexed. Of course typically you’ll discover that women are a lot more prone to obtaining stretch marks, yet men do get them too.
Simply regarding anybody can get stretch marks, yet you will certainly find that particular individuals are a lot more vulnerable to them than various other individuals. Often it is pregnant ladies which are more vulnerable to getting stretch marks, considering that their belly grows as well as the skin truly stretches throughout their maternity. There are a range of stretch marks creams and creams that could assist to make certain that your stretch marks discolor. |
Digestive problems? What types of food to avoid?
Digestive problems? What types of food to avoid?
A good digestion means a good health. It’s not only the food you eat, it’s how it’s processed, how your body reacts to it and how you digest it. Even the so-called healthy food is not doing you any good if your stomach and intestines fail to extract the nutrients in your meal. Unfortunately, nowadays the number of people who suffer from poor digestion is frighteningly high. And the reasons are quite simple, meaning everyone can overcome the causes of bad digestion.
Sometimes it is the food that we eat, sometimes it’s medicines, sometimes it’s stress and sometimes it’s all of these. The bad news is that your health is negatively affected because between 60% and 80% of your immune system depends on your intestines. Undoubtedly, we all feel our stomachs uncomfortable at times. There are several types of food that can cause constipation, gas, diarrhea, cramping or heartburn.
Junk food
junk food - hamburgerLet’s face it, we all eat fast food. However, some people tend to spend more than half of their food budget in the drive-thru(s). The problem stems from the way the meals are treated before you take the first bite. In most cases, hamburgers are pre-processed and are just warmed up and handed to you. They often lack the nutrition you need to keep you energized. The absence of key ingredients such as fiber, minerals and vitamins, healthy bacteria, electrolyte, potassium, and antioxidants in junk food is severe. Instead, it is freaky rich in sugars (they feed the bad bacteria in your intestines), fat and salt. However, there is another problem with junk food that is often underestimated. Most of the people wolf it way too fast. Thus your meal ends up in your stomach badly chewed, meaning your stomach hardly processes it the way it should.
Fat-rich food
corn-dogsAcid reflux and heartburn are often caused by meals rich in fat. If you often suffer from those conditions, it is advisable to avoid fried pies, pastries, pizza dough, crackers, and cookies. Fat not only leads to obesity but it also increases the levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol, lowers HDL(good) cholesterol and increases your chance of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Dairy/ Corn
bowl of muesli and milkCorn and dairy products are healthy and there is no doubt about that. However, not everybody can digest them properly due to the fact that some people lack lactase (the enzyme that breaks down lactose). Corn is a great source a fiber that is an important nutrient but corn is also rich in cellulose, which we cannot process because we lack the necessary enzyme. Scientists suggest that thousands of years ago humans were able to break it down. If you are lactose intolerant or corn makes you feel abdominal pain or causes gas it’s better you stay away from corn and dairy products.
In order to keep your digestive system smoothly running, you have to balance your diet because poor eating habits can first disrupt your digestive enzymes and then ruin your health.
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Slavery in Sudan and the people trying to stop it
Prior to the trip we had both subconsciously flagged Sudan as one of the more intimidating places that we will visit on our route. What we knew about Sudan, was there was a lot of sand and a lot of trouble in the South. What we saw about Sudan on the news was the unrest and suffering in Darfur so that was the image we had of Sudan. How wrong we were!
Sudan is home to probably the most hospitable people on the planet and none more so than Rifaat who welcomed us at his office for a fantastic cup of coffee.
Rifaat is the founder and Director of the Peoples Legal Aid Center for Sudan (PLACE). He founded the organisation in 1998 in order to provide legal aid for marginalised people in Sudan. 20 years on PLACE now has offices all over Sudan and is a vital service for people who can’t afford access to justice. As part of their work, PLACE regularly provide legal aid to victims of human trafficking and modern slavery in Sudan. We went to visit Rifaat to find out more about slavery in Sudan and the work he does to fight it.
Rifaat told us that in the past 5 – 10 years he’s been presented with more and more cases of modern slavery and human trafficking. He said that maybe they just didn’t know about the issue as much before but at the moment they’re having people come in from all walks of life. He’s supporting both Sudanese nationals and people who have been trafficked in to Sudan from places like Bangladesh. He said most of the people who come to him have escaped forced labour but he has also come across cases of forced marriage.
It’s not surprising to hear that Rifaat has a lot of forced labour cases because the majority of people enslaved in Sudan are in forced labour. The Global Slavery Index estimates that 454,700 people are living in slavery in Sudan – that’s just over one in every hundred people. They also estimate that over two thirds of the population are at risk of being trapped in modern slavery. High levels of poverty and low literacy rates make much of the Sudanese population vulnerable to slavery so as part of their work, PLACE run workshops in communities to educate people about their legal rights.
As we walked through the PLACE headquarters we could physically see the work that they were doing to fight modern slavery in Sudan. So much so that we met with a group of Bangladeshi guys who had been told they would come to Sudan to work as tailors, in fact, they were trafficked in to forced labour and paid nothing for years of work. Rifaat told us that they were tortured when they had tried to escape. PLACE are now trying to prosecute the people who had enslaved the group but Rifaat didn’t hold out much hope for a conviction. He said that, as always, they would try their very best but a prosecution requires the assistance of the police and the government who are usually very reluctant to help.
We asked Rifaat what he thought about the issue of modern slavery and the future of slavery in Sudan. He said that he wishes PLACE could do more to help but the issue is just too large and that it requires a concerted effort from law enforcement to make any real impact. He said that in order for the situation to improve in Sudan there needs to be a real improvement in the governments response to the issue. A statement that is echoed by the Global Slavery Index. You can find out more about slavery in Sudan here.
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Posts Tagged ‘Ass’
Buffon’s Scepticism of Evolution
May 6, 2013
From the way the history of the theory of evolution is presented, you could be forgiven for believing that no-one had considered it as a possible explanation for the origin of life before Charles Darwin in the mid-19th century. Other theorists of evolution had appeared earlier in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century – Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus, Lamarck, Chambers, the author of the Vestiges of a Natural History of Creation, and finally the co-discoverer of Natural Selection with Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace. Yet as Rebecca Stott has demonstrated in her book, Darwin’s Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists, some philosophers had considered that life had evolved as far back as the time of Aristotle and one of his followers, Theophrastus. One of the pioneers of modern evolutionary theory was G.L. leclerc, Comte de Buffon. His Natural History, published from 1749 to 1767 was an encyclopedic discussion of the history of the Earth and its creatures. It created a taste for natural history amongst the French public, and shaped the way it was investigated in France for over a century. His esxsay on the pig is considered one of the classics of French Enlightenment writing. Examining the animal’s physiology, Buffon argued that it contained vestiges indicating its descent from an earlier species. Buffon was cautious about expressing his personal views of the history of the Earth. It appears, however, that he was probably much more sceptical about the Genesis account of the creation of the world than he appeared in his writings. In his History and Theory of the Earth of 1749 he argued that the world was formed through gradual, uniform geological processes. His essay in the same volume ‘An Examination of Other Theories of the Earth’ attacked scholars who attempted to mix natural history with theology. While Buffon acknowledged the possibility that animals could be formed through evolution, he was sceptical of its ability to do so.
Buffon opens his essay, ‘The Ass’ with the statement that ‘This animal, even when examined iwth minute attention, has the appearance of a degenerated horse’. He then proceeds to describe the similarities and differences between the two animals. He then expanded this argument to consider the similarity, in body plan, between humans, horses, and other kinds of animals, including birds, reptiles, whales and fish. He suggested that this showed
‘that the Supreme Being, in creating animals, employed only one idea, and, at the same time, diversified it in every possible manner, to give men an opportunity of admiring equally the magnificence of the execution and the simplicity of the design’. Buffon was sceptical of the existence of the taxonomic families into which contemporary biologists grouped animals. For him the only animal divisions that really existed were those of species. ‘If these families really existed’, he argued, ‘they could only be produced by the mixture and successive variation and degeneration of the primary species: and if it be once admitted, that there are families among plants and animals, that the ass belongs to the family of hte horse, and differs from his only be degeneration; with equal propriety may it be concluded, that the monkey belongs to the family of man; that the monkey is a man degenerated; tha tman and the monkey have sprung from a common stock, like the horse and ass; that each family, either among animals or vegetables, has been derived from the same origin; and even that all animated beinigs have proceeded from a singlespecies, which, in the course of ages, has produced, by improving and degenerating, all the different races that now exist’. If this was true, it would mean that ‘no bounds could be fixed to the powers of Nature; she might, with equal reason, be supposed to have been able, in the course of time, to produce from a single individual, all the organised bodies in the universe’.
Buffon rejected this, first arguing from Scripture that God had formed each creature individually. He then stated that since the time of Aristotle twenty centuries previously, no new species had been seen to emerge. He noted that although Nature proceeded with gradual and often imperceptible steps, the gap between different creatures was not always equal. He then went on to suggest the number of variations that had to be produced to form a creature of a different species from, and which could not breed with, those of its parents. He believed that if evolution existed, it always acted through degeneration, which invitably produced weak and infertile offspring. Buffon therefore concluded that
‘Though, therefore, we cannot demonstrate, that the formation of a new species, by means of degeneration, exceeds the power of Nature; yet the number of improbabilities attentind such a supposition, renders it totally incredible: for, if one species could be produced by the degeneration of another, if the ass actually originated from the horse, this metamorphosis could only have been effected by a long succession of imperceptible degrees. Between the horse and ass, there must have ben many intermediate animals, the first of which would gradually recede from the nature and qualities of the horse, and the last would make great advances to that of the ass. What is become of these intermediate beings? Why are their representatives and descendants now extinguished? Why should the two extremes alone exist?’
Buffon concluded that the ass was a unique animal, not at all descended from the horse.
‘We may, therefore, without hesitation, pronounce the ass to be an ass, and not a degerated horse, a horse with a naked tail. The ass is not a marvellous production. He is neither an intruder nor a bastard. Like all other animals, his family, his species, and his rank, are ascertained and peculiar to himself. His blood is pure and untainted; and, though his race be less noble and illustrious, it is equally unalloyed, as ancient as that of the horse.’ Buffon ends his discussion of the ass by arguing for its good qualities, qualities that also demanded respect.
Now Buffon was clearly hindered in considering the potential of evolution of create new species through the lack of fossil evidence for them available in his time and the lack of knowledge of geological deep time. It was only decades later, with Hutton and Lyell, that biologists were able to provide ages of the Earth that allowed for the development of species by the gradual, imperceptible steps of time that biologists required. What Buffon’s essay also shows, is that many biologists and natural historians in Buffon’s day also rejected evolution because they did not see it as a scientifically viable theory, apart from its conflict with the authority of Scripture. This attitude continued into the 19th century. Most of Darwin’s opponents were other scientists, not theologians.
My point here is that the conflict over the theory of evolution in the 18th and 19th centuries was not simply that of theology versus scripture, but also over scientific validity of the theory itself. When Bishop Samuel Wilberforce famously debated Huxley over Darwin’s theory, he opened the debate by saying that even if the theory was theologically offensive, it would still have to be accepted if it was true scientifically. Unfortunately, the 18th and 19th century debates and conflicts over Evolution tend to be presented as simply between advancing science and backwards religion. While one element of the conflict was on religious grounds, the scientific element of the debate also needs to be remembered and included. |
What is preventing the bitcoin client from switching to a fake block chain that would be longer that current official chain? The faked chain would contain fictional transactions, but within the faked chain the transaction would be valid (e.g. like no double spends etc.).
Bitcoin clients always accept the longest valid chain. On one hand, clients check the received blocks for validity, on the other hand length is defined by another metric than many assume. The length of the blockchain is the sum of the difficulty of all its blocks, not the number of blocks. So, in order to create a fake chain, the attacker would have to actually create a valid chain at the same difficulty. This is either possible for very short chains (double spend attack) or requires a major share of the network's power (51% attack).
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Full blockchain nodes actually check not only the block headers, but also every transaction in the block body before accepting that block. If any transaction in the block doesn't "add up" (i.e. its inputs do not match the current accepted balance of those addresses, signatures, etc) then the block will not be accepted as valid.
This is where "light" bitcoin clients (the ones that do not download the full blockchain) have to trust a full-mode node to tell them the "truth" about previous transactions. If the full-mode node is malicious it can certainly trick these light client peers that are connected to it.
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At Pruning the branches in Merkle Tree Nick ODell writes "A leaf (transaction) can be pruned when all of its outputs have been spent." So I was thinking that if a transaction is one of the last few in a block, a miner can copy the transaction into the new block being mined. That way the miner (and the rest of the network) no longer needs that block for validation, and it can be release into the ether.
Nick also wrote that Bitcoin core won't prune that way anyway because it operates "on the assumption that you download and validate all blocks." I am exploring the reasons for this to see if they can be addressed without keeping everything.
The idea behind downloading the entire blockchain before starting pruning mode is that you want to make sure what you start with is valid. The only known way to do that is to get the whole thing. Or is it? It seems that the ubiquity of the blockchain itself is matched by the ubiquity of the valid UTXO set, so if you get a valid UTXO set and it matches what every other node says, you're good to go. Except for Sybil attacks, right? Would such a successful Sybil attack also allow the blockchain itself to be faked?
One difficulty with my move-a-transaction approach is that when a new node is downloading the blockchain (however much of it is still needed) it will want to verify each block, and if block X is missing, then all the blocks that contain inputs that were created in block X can't be validated, if that means validating that the transactions in it are valid. However, the blockheader itself can still be validated. Block X's header can't be validated because it's contents are missing. But isn't the fact that the hash from block X is required in block X+1 enough to trust that block X was valid, and that, therefore, so are blocks X+1, X+2, X+3, etc., all the way up to and including whatever block-being-validated contains a transaction that uses an output (presumably) created in block X?
When a transaction finally shows up that does spend an unspent output from the moved transaction, it won't be possible to validate it because block X is missing. However, if the index that identifies which block holds which transaction were updated by the miner who moves the transaction, then this is simple to solve.
Would that index-update have to address all the immediate-child transactions of the moved transactions as well so that existing, previously valid transactions could still be validated by finding the source transaction in the newly mined block? I don't think it's necessary to re-validate transactions that are in blocks with validated headers, is it?
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This post is convoluted, and based on assumptions that should first be addressed separately, e.g. whether it is necessary to parse the complete blockchain, and reliance on a UTXO set provided by other users. Also, a copied transaction causes the including block to be invalid under current rules. Finally, the UTXO information is sufficient to validate an input, so you don't need "block X". That's why pruning as implemented works, and pruning as described never got followed-up on. In the result, I don't find the question as it is useful and suggest that it should be reworked and condensed. – Murch Jun 13 '16 at 16:06
• I would like to thank you for responding to my suggestion by actually asking more questions and investigating the points. So often, I've been insulted or attacked for such feedback that what may seem as natural is a pleasant surprise. – Murch Jun 15 '16 at 8:07
This seems a lot of effort for absolutely no benefit.
In the Bitcoin pruning model you discard ALL those old blocks anyway, and JUST keep the utxo set. It doesn't matter whether a utxo is in an old block or a new block, you're still keeping it in the utxoset. Any blocks you keep around is merely for convenience and to assist other nodes that request those blocks.
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• The largest portion of bitcoiners who will contribute to the network is nearly always going to be far larger than the number who have all the data they need to help the newcomers. Those newcomers are facing ever larger downloads to get started. Pruning doesn't fix that. Pruning only fixed the persistent storage problem, which is relatively insignificant to the startup cost. My aim is to make participation easier to begin. – Dave Scotese May 24 '16 at 22:40
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Much simpler solution: commit a proof of the utxoset in the block header every N blocks, and nodes make that utxoset available for download. The chain can be verified on block headers alone, and the utxoset can be verified based on the commitment in the header. – Riaan Swart May 25 '16 at 2:35
• If block 414000 is the first one with that UTXO commitment then I'm guessing that at block 414550, it's safe to download less than the entire blockchain. The newcomer determines whether or not the UTXO set they download (from source 1) is correct by waiting N blocks to make sure that the next commitment (which they get from Source 2) includes the changes those N blocks made. If it fails that check, they start all over again, but they can't tell which of the two sources is the problem. I guess that easily fixed by using multiple sources. – Dave Scotese May 26 '16 at 16:09
• So headers would be downloaded from multiple sources to be cross-checked, and after N blocks the newcomer can verify that the transactions in them produce the correct new UTXO commitment. I'm trying to identify ways to exploit the lack of validation of all the blocks before the last 550 because I like the idea, but I worry that it is giving up too much independent validation. – Dave Scotese May 26 '16 at 16:17
The simple answer is YES, but there are better solutions. While it allows all transactions to be represented in more recent blocks, the presence of a transaction in a very old block is NOT what prevents the kind of pruning that I envisioned. To make the earliest blocks unnecessary for validating the history of Bitcoin only requires proof that any UTXOs in them actually exist, and that they have not yet been spent. A current UTXO Set would accomplish that, but it has to be proven. Jonas Schnelli suggested something very similar in February.
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Find the harmony between native and JavaScript to build fast-working and easy-to-maintain apps
An introduction
The following article is a part of The Ultimate Guide to React Native Optimization and describes the fourth point of this guide: finding the balance between native and JavaScript.
Why is it important?
Developing with React Native may help you to create a fast-working and easy-to-maintain apps. But what you need to remember that it’s essential to find the balance between native and JavaScript to make your app work as good as possible. If you won’t do it, your app will slow down significantly because, in simple words, it will be overloaded. Having in mind that it can harm the performance of your products, we decided to share with you some best practices on how to find that harmony.
In previous parts of our guide, we have discussed:
Be sure, to check them out.
Now, let’s move to our main topic.
Find the balance between native and JavaScript
Issue: while working on the native modules, you draw the line in the wrong place between native and JavaScript abstractions.
When working with React Native, you’re going to be developing JavaScript most of the time. However, there are situations when you need to write a bit of native code. For example, you’re working with a 3rd party SDK that doesn’t have an official React Native support yet. In that case, you need to create a native module that wraps the underlying native methods and exports them to the React Native realm.
All native methods need real-world arguments to work. React Native builds on top of an abstraction called bridge, which provides bidirectional communication between JavaScript and native worlds. As a result, JavaScript can execute native APIs and pass the necessary context to receive the desired return value. That communication itself is asynchronous – it means that while the caller is waiting for the results to arrive from the native side, the JavaScript is still running and may be up for another task already.
diagram that shows the communication between the bridge and React Native and the JSON serialization
The number of JavaScript calls that arrive over to the bridge is not deterministic and can vary over time, depending on the number of interactions that you do within your application. Additionally, each call takes time, as the JavaScript arguments need to be stringified into JSON, which is the established format that can be understood by these two realms.
For example, when your bridge is busy processing the data, another call will have to block and wait. If that interaction was related to gestures and animations, it is very likely that you have a dropped frame – the certain operation wasn’t performed causing jitters in the UI.
React Native frames
Certain libraries, such as Animated provide special workarounds – in this case, use NativeDriver – which serializes the animation, passes it once upfront to the native thread and doesn’t cross the bridge while the animation is running – preventing it from being subject to accidental frame drops while another kind of work is happening.
That’s why it is important to keep the bridge communication efficient and fast.
More traffic flowing over the bridge means less space for other things.
Passing more traffic over the bridge means that there is less space for other important things that React Native may want to transfer at that time. As a result, your application may become unresponsive to gestures or other interactions while you’re performing native calls.
If you are seeing a degraded UI performance while executing certain native calls over the bridge or seeing substantial CPU consumption, you should take a closer look at what you are doing with the external libraries. It is very likely that there is more being transferred than it should be.
Solution: Use the right amount of abstraction on the JS side – validate and check types ahead of time.
When building a native module, it is tempting to proxy the call immediately to the native side and let it do the rest. However, there are cases such as invalid arguments, that end up causing an unnecessary round-trip over the bridge only to learn that we didn’t provide the correct set of arguments.
Let’s take a simple JavaScript module that does nothing more but proxies the call straight to the underlying native module.
Bypassing arguments to native module
In case of an incorrect or missing parameter, the native module is likely to throw an exception. The current version of React Native doesn’t provide an abstraction for ensuring the JavaScript parameters and the ones needed by your native code are in sync. Your call will be serialized to JSON, transferred to the native side, and executed.
That operation will perform without any issues, even though we haven’t passed the complete list of arguments needed for it to work. The error will arrive in the next tick when the native side processes the call and receives an exception from the native module.
In such a simple scenario, you have lost a bit of time waiting for the exception that you could’ve checked for beforehand.
Using native module with arguments validation
The above is not only tied to the native modules itself. It is worth keeping in mind that every React Native primitive component has its native equivalent and component props are passed over the bridge every time there’s a rendering happening – just like you execute your native method with the JavaScript arguments.
To put this into better perspective, let’s take a closer look at styling within React Native apps.
Read more:
The easiest way to style a component is to pass it an object with styles. While it works, you will not see it happening too much. It is generally considered an anti-pattern, unless you’re dealing with dynamic values, such as changing the style of the component based on the state.
Read more:
React Native uses StyleSheet API to pass styles over the bridge most of the time. That API processes your styles and makes sure they’re passed only once over the bridge. During runtime, it substitutes the value of style prop with a numeric unique identifier that corresponds to the cached style on the native side.
As a result, rather than sending a large array of objects every time React Native is to re-render its UI, the bridge has to now deal with an array of numbers, which is much easier to process and transfer.
Benefits: The codebase is faster and easier to maintain
Whether you’re facing any performance challenges right now, it is a good practice to implement a set of best practices around native modules as the benefits are not just about the speed but also the user experience.
traffic light symbolizing the traffic on the bridge between native and javascript
Sure, keeping the right amount of the traffic flowing over the bridge will eventually contribute to your application performing better and working smoothly. As you can see, certain techniques mentioned in this section are already being actively used inside React Native to provide you a satisfactory performance out of the box. Being aware of them will help you create applications that perform better under heavy load.
However, one additional benefit that is worth pointing out is the maintenance.
Keeping the heavy and advanced abstractions, such as validation, on the JavaScript side, will result in a very thin native layer that is nothing more but just a wrapper around an underlying native SDK. In other words, the native part of your module is going to look more like a straight copy-paste from the documentation – very simple and easy to understand.
Mastering this approach to the development of native modules is why a lot of JavaScript developers can easily extend their applications with additional functionality without getting specialized in Objective-C or Java.
To sum up, keeping the right balance between native and JavaScript allows you to build apps that work fast and are easier to maintain. In consequence, by implementing the aforementioned practices in your projects, you will be able to reduce spendings for this process.
Note: If you would like to find out more about app maintenance costs, read this article.
In the next article, we are going to give you some practices to achieve animations at 60FPS in your apps.
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COMBONIANUM – Spiritualità e Missione
The Imperfection of Perfectionism
Most successful people set very high standards for themselves. They use these guidelines or principles for comparison or approval, or to measure achievement.
Standards can stimulate personal growth and push a person to reach a peak level of performance, ideally bringing enjoyment and developing confidence. Problems arise, though, when the standards a person sets for herself or for others are unrealistically high and inflexible. Standards become problematic when they lapse into perfectionism.
What Is Perfectionism?
Perfectionism is defined as “strict standards or expectations for oneself or others that either cannot be met or can only be met at a great cost”1. We see perfectionism manifested in people who are perpetually stressed and constantly dissatisfied with their achievement and relationships.
It may seem counterintuitive, but perfectionists often achieve less than those with healthier attitudes. Perfectionists feel immobilized by their perceived inability to get things “right.” They are overly critical of their own behavior, are less likely to be aware of their strengths, and are unable to derive real satisfaction from successful performance.
Perfectionists also have chronic concerns about others’ criticism and expectations, and are often unable to delegate tasks for fear of being disappointed by any performance that proves less-than-perfect. Healthy individuals who strive for excellence can interpret mistakes as an incentive to work harder or smarter, whereas perfectionists consider their mistakes as confirmation of their suspected personal defects.
Roots of Perfectionism
Perfectionism is frequently an adaptation to a hypercritical, high-pressure, invalidating environment, and it becomes a psychological self-defense strategy.
Many perfectionists have parents with narcissistic traits who tend to seek much of their status from the performance of their children. Through repeated learning, children raised in an environment that is hyper-focused on mistakes become hyper-focused on potential mistakes.
Society also promotes the idea that things are done only in a particular way, and that it is essential not to make mistakes. Punishment for mistakes can make a child develop distorted beliefs (e.g., “I must never make a mistake!”) and become preoccupied with a fear of failure. This keeps the child from engaging in challenging experiences, reduces playfulness and the assimilation of knowledge, and prevents discovering his/her true identity.
Instead, a child learns that approval is contingent upon performance. (e.g., “People will only be proud of me if I am successful”). Self-worth becomes dependent upon success and achievement. Unfortunately, over time such a belief becomes rigid and inflexible and is carried into adulthood.
Thought and Behavior Cycle
Perfectionism can lead a person to become trapped in an unhelpful cycle of thoughts, physical sensations, emotions, and behavioral impulses. The dysfunctional “all or nothing” and “catastrophic” thinking of perfectionism can lead to faulty assumptions and worsen moods. A person can take beliefs as facts and respond to a distorted interpretation of what is happening around him or her, rather than taking a more realistic and objective perspective.
To alleviate the anxiety evoked by obsessive and catastrophic thinking, perfectionists engage in behaviors such as excessive checking, reassurance-seeking, correcting, repeating, list-making, and excessive organizing. Plagued with self-doubt and prone to self-criticism, perfectionists are more likely to avoid, quit, or procrastinate to evade what they believe is inevitable failure.
Psychological Functioning
Perfectionism can also put a person at risk for developing various psychological disorders. Examples are depression, anxiety, and, indirectly, obsessive-compulsive disorder. Research indicates perfectionists experience more hopeless thoughts and life stress. There is a higher risk for self-harm and suicide.
Learning how to set realistic standards can help perfectionists do one’s best without disruption to other areas of life (e.g., family, physical and mental health, and leisure time).
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has been shown to successfully help perfectionists recognize irrational thinking and find alternative ways to approach situations. In therapy, one can learn how to examine evidence that either confirms or contradicts a certain belief. This is achieved through reflecting on past experiences, taking another perspective, accepting imperfections while embracing reality, and compromising with self and others.
It is important that perfectionists repeatedly encounter the “imperfection” that causes emotional distress and discomfort until it no longer generates high anxiety. This helps one discover the capacity to confront fears and more effectively manage feelings of anxiety. Strategies such as prioritizing, setting time limits, and breaking up the task into smaller more manageable pieces help prevent fear-based avoidance, procrastination, and quitting.
The essential goal is to assist perfectionists with gradually identifying more realistic standards that will be accepted or at least tolerated, and to learn that even when a mistake is made, the consequences are not dire.
Maja K. Triantafilou, MA, LCPC, is a senior outpatient therapist at Caritas Counseling Center in Towson, MD.
1Antony, M. & Swinson, R. (2009). When Perfect Isn’t Good Enough: Strategies for Coping with Perfectionism. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.
Case Study: Father John
Father John, 35, recently was assigned to be parochial vicar for an active suburban parish. He previously had been in a smaller parish.
Father Michael, the pastor at his new assignment, began to notice that Fr. John seemed constantly stressed, irritable, and absent-minded. He observed that he was chronically late for meetings and appeared unprepared and anxious.
Fr. Michael became more worried when Fr. John began to isolate himself for prolonged periods of time. When he checked in on him, he often found him working in disorganized, inefficient way. He noticed that Fr. John was struggling with routine tasks, such as visiting a home-bound parishioner or setting up altar server training. It would take days for him to complete simple things.
A few parishioners began to complain that Fr. John was not responding to their emails and he often appeared “down” and “tired all the time.” Fr. Michael suggested that Fr. John utilize administrative staff for support, but the younger priest immediately rejected this, saying, “Thank you, but I want to do my own work. I just need more time.”
Eventually, Fr. Michael spoke very directly with Fr. John about his concerns. Fr. John acknowledged he was feeling overwhelmed, which was leading to the self-defeating behaviors Fr. Michael had noticed. After some convincing by Fr. Michael that he may benefit from professional assistance, Fr. John contacted Saint Luke Institute’s outpatient center.
In therapy, Fr. John spoke about being chronically sleep deprived from staying up late trying to complete his daily tasks. He claimed each of his ministerial duties were equally important to him, and he spent hours trying to prioritize and complete tasks “perfectly,” since he feared he would miss important details.
These dynamics often meant he failed to complete his work on time. This led to an accumulation of unfinished tasks, which made him feel stressed and self-conscious about his competence. He feared the bishop would reassign him due to incompetence.
Fr. John shared that when he was growing up, he strived to please his parents and live up to their high expectations, knowing their approval was dependent upon his good behavior and “having all A’s.”
When he underperformed, he experienced a significant amount of guilt and shame, and feared being punished or rejected. He was an “A” student, but that distinction came at a great price. He would take an inordinate amount of time to organize and complete his work, even with simple projects. He recalled often being up all night working on his assignments.
Eventually, Fr. John recognized his life was out of balance. He did not have time to socialize, nor did he truly enjoy leisure activities due to his preoccupation with his responsibilities.
Awareness and New Skills
In therapy, Fr. John developed greater awareness of how his rigid upbringing shaped the self defeating behavior he had carried into adulthood. He started practicing mindfulness skills, which helped him begin to let go of self-judgment. That enhanced his self-acceptance.
He also started stepping back from the ruminative, catastrophic thinking and anticipatory worry that typically characterized his thought patterns. This enabled him to become more present in the moment, and helped spiritually ground him when he prayed.
Through therapy, Fr. John learned how his fears of failure and rejection guided his obsessive thinking and corresponding compulsive behaviors while undermining his self-confidence and self-direction. He learned to look at the big picture, assessing the overall impact of a particular event, situation, or outcome in his life without focusing on insignificant details. When he accepted that an ideal reality existed only in his mind, and that he had pursued imaginary perfection, he began accepting reality for what it was at any given moment.
Practicing how to resist acting on his obsessive thinking helped Fr. John stabilize his compulsive behaviors. He learned to stop himself from checking written documents for mistakes more that once. When deciding where to devote his energy and effort, he ranked his tasks in order of importance and urgency, and assessed possible consequences of not completing tasks to verify if they were as important as they seemed.
He began to complete his tasks more easily and grew more comfortable delegating assignments and utilizing offered support. Fr. Michael noticed that he was balancing pastoral and administrative responsibilities better, and appeared less stressed and more engaged with others.
Fr. John recognized the progress he had made in therapy, but also learned that assessing and managing his perfectionism would be an ongoing process.
For confidentiality reasons, names, identifying data, and other details of treatment have been altered
Lukenotes, Spring 2019
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Questa voce è stata pubblicata il 09/09/2019 da in ENGLISH, News, Society, Culture con tag , , .
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Spectrum of Life
‘Paint talks, if you allow it,’ says artist Elsa Duault as she discusses her upcoming exhibition Spectrum of Life at Berman Contemporary with Lucinda Jolly.
Artist Elsa Duault crouches barefoot on the floor, pouring bright pigments onto a large stretch of paper like a small, pale god creating worlds. Duault is in the throes of generating a body of work called Spectrum of Life, comprising 60 oval pieces, some sculptures, collages and photographs. Her method loosely refers to the ancient marbled paper technique known as ebri in Persia and ebru in Turkey (both meaning ‘cloud’), and the Japanese suminagashi, meaning ‘floating ink’.
But what precisely is marbled paper? Its origins are said to be as ungraspable as the instability of the process, which is shrouded in secrecy. This is partly because recipes were closely guarded, but also because marbled papers were never signed, the artist’s identity was never known. Historians indicate that the name comes from its similarity in appearance to veins in marble stone. Briefly, the technique involves floating pigment on a liquid to create a pattern. A piece of paper is then placed over the liquid to receive the patterns.
Berman Contemporary The bible of this technique must be Richard J. Wolfe’s book, Marbled Paper: Its History, Techniques and Patterns. Wolfe suggests that the precursor of marbling was as early as the 6th century in China, where paper was dyed in orange, yellow and red mixtures as a protection from the ravages of insects.
Paper marbling really comes into its own in Japan in the 10th century at the time when, as Wolfe explains, Japan was extricating itself from the strong influence of China and finding its own autonomy. For 400 years, marbled paper was reserved exclusively for the Imperial House of Japan and nobility.
In the 15th century, marbled paper took hold in Turkey and Persia. It was used there for official documents as it eliminated forgery and was given as gifts by nobility to other nobility. It is not known for certain whether the adoption by these countries had any connection with Asia.
Wolfe writes that marbled paper became known to the West via charmed travellers to Turkey and Persia in the middle of the 16th century who brought samples home to Europe. Once marbled paper found its way to the West, it became prevalent in everyday life from the lining of cupboards to drug powder wrappings and wall coverings. It remained popular from the mid-17th to mid- 19th centuries. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution and its emphasis on mechanisation, it faded into obscurity along with many hand-crafted processes. However, since the 1970s there has been a revival of the craft.
Duault first came across marbled paper unexpectedly, unaware of its existence, on the cover of her artist grandfather’s portfolio. She says, ‘I was drawn to its hand-made quality.’
Although Duault’s works echo traditional marbled paper in technique and abstraction, strictly speaking, they are probably closer to fluid painting. Fluid painting is defined as an abstract art utilising acrylic paints which, when combined, react to create organic-looking forms.
Berman Contemporary An example of fluid painting with a spin is French artist Frédéric Fontenoy’s Blood and Milk series, where the elements of blood and milk are combined and captured on film with dramatic effect. Duault became aware of the relatively new fluid paintings ‘everywhere’.
‘I’m always looking for the new,’ she says. In fact, fluid painting was used in an advertisement for the Apple iPhone. But it was the British fluid painter, Mark Chadwick, who Duault found online five years ago, that turned her on to her current process.
Duault experimented for two years, culminating in a paper marbling workshop in 2016 in Avignon, France, at the historical Palais des Papes. Her approach is a highly focused, physical one. As an ex-figure skater, she understands how ‘in synchronised skating, you have to break up the body with movement to make it interesting.’ She applies the same principle to her art pieces.
‘The process expresses natural forces,’ she explains. It involves the forces of both gravity and balance, the allowance for the element of chance and the acknowledgement that there is ‘no sole creator’ and that ‘other forces are at work.’ Ironically, she adds, ‘You have to control the gesture.’
Ultimately, ‘you want your viewer to feel the energy of the process,’ she says. The outcome is work with a dynamic feel, suggestive of having caught and captured movement mid-stream.
Duault’s works are both meditative and complex pieces ‘inspired by the natural environment’. ‘Nature is all around us – even in utilitarian objects such as furniture,’ she says. Her work celebrates the natural world, and her inspiration is entirely appropriate given the current scarcity of natural resources, pollution, greed and plundering.
Her visual influences are, understandably, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, both masters of process and chance. Intellectually, she is in thrall of the writings and thoughts of the astrophysicist Hubert Reeves and cosmologist Stephen Hawkings.
Although her current work may be more complex than in the past, it maintains its original organic and aerial view feel. In this way, viewers can look forward to a slight shift in Duault’s modus operandi – with the introduction of the human element. The start being a self-portrait using a combination of marbling and fluid painting techniques.
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Pub/Sub Messaging
Asynchronous message and task processing with Pub/Sub
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In a previous topic we covered the Asynchronous Messaging architectural pattern, its advantages and some high-level examples.
Pub/Sub is one way of implementating this type of architecture, and now we are going to cover it more in depth.
What is Pub/Sub
Pub/Sub (or Publish/Subscribe) pattern is a way for multiple services to communicate with eachother by publishing messages to a topic, which are then distributed to subscribers of that topic.
Differently than a Message Queue, each topic can have multiple subscribers (or consumers, as it would be called in a Queue model).
Another difference is that messages published to a topic are delivered immediately to all subscribers. As a result, Pub/Sub does not offer many options in terms of message delivery.
Pub/Sub Messaging
Multi-task processing in parallel
The Pub/Sub model allows for one message to be delivered to multiple subscribers. Each of them can perform a different task in parallel.
This pattern can also prove to be a good solution for controlling data processing workflows, as well as for implementing a Fan-Out strategy to conquer larger tasks.
Eliminates Polling
Since topics will notify subscribers when new messages come in, there is no need to continuouslly poll the topic and check for new data. This can save resources and speed up processing of tasks.
It is easy to add new subscribers to an existing topic. New jobs can be performed for the same types of messages without Publishers having to control a list of destinations.
Multi-protocol delivery
Most Pub/Sub systems will provide multiple protocols to deliver messages. These are some of the protocols commonly available:
• Serverless functions (e.g. AWS Lambda)
• E-mail
• Mobile push notifications
• Message Queues 1
Filtering Capabilities
Pub/Sub systems usually provide a way for subscribers to filter messages that are relevant to them. This can save resources and also increases flexibility for how messages are distributed across a set of compute services.
Options to Implement
Serverless / Managed Services
Pub/Sub can be easily be deployed in any project by leveraging modern cloud services. AWS, for example, offers SNS, a serverless Pub/Sub system, fully managed by their team.
This releases teams to work on aspects of the software that are really going to differentiate it in the market. Another benefit of using a managed service is faster time-to-market.
Open Source Projects
Nonetheless, for larger teams with access to advanced DevOps skills and enough financial resources, there are also great open source projects, so that development teams don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Some options are:
1. It is possible to combine a Pub/Sub with a Message Queue. If one Service needs to process messages but may not be able to scale as fast as the volume of messagees coming from the Pub/Sub topic at some point, having a Message Queue in front of it will increase the overall reliability of the architecture. ↩︎
2. Although Apache Kafka is not originally designed for Pub/Sub, it can be used as such. ↩︎
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That Unruly X….Chromosome That Is
Something is wrong with the X chromosome. More specifically, something is amiss with trying to use it, the way we normally use recombinant chromosomes for genealogy. In short, there’s a problem.
If you don’t understand how the X chromosome recombines and is passed from generation to generation, now would be a good time to read my article, “X Marks the Spot” about how this works. You’ll need this basic information to understand what I’m about to discuss.
The first hint of this “problem” is apparent in Jim Owston’s “Phasing the X Chromosome” article. Jim’s interest in phasing his X, or figuring out where it came from genealogically, was spurred by his lack of X matches with his brothers. This is noteworthy, because men don’t inherit any X from their father, so Jim’s failure to share much of his X with his brothers meant that he had inherited most of his X from just one of his mother’s parents, and his brothers inherited theirs from the other parent. Utilizing cousins, Jim was able to further phase his X, meaning to attribute portions to the various grandparents from whence it came. After doing this work, Jim said the following”
“Since I can only confirm the originating grandparent of 51% my X-DNA, I tend to believe (but cannot confirm at the present) that my X-chromosome may be an exact copy of my mother’s inherited X from her mother. If this is the case, I would not have inherited any X-DNA from my grandfather. This would also indicate that my brother Chuck’s X-DNA is 97% from our grandfather and only 3% from our grandmother. My brother John would then have 77% of his X-DNA from our grandfather and 23% from our grandmother.”
As a genetic genealogist, at the time Jim wrote this piece, I was most interested in the fact that he had phased or attributed the pieces of the X to specific ancestors and the process he used to do that. I found the very skewed inheritance “interesting” but basically attributed it to an anomaly. It now appears that this is not an anomaly. It was, instead the tip of the iceberg and we didn’t recognize it as such. Let’s look at what we would normally expect.
The X chromosome does recombine when it can, or at least has the capacity to do so. This means that a female who receives an X from both her father and mother receives a recombined X from her mother, but receives an X that is not recombined from her father. That is because her father only receives one X, from his mother, so he has nothing to recombine with. In the mother, the X recombines “in the normal way” meaning that parts of both her mother’s and her father’s X are given to her children, or at least that opportunity exists. If you’re beginning to see some “weasel words” here or “hedge betting,” that’s because we’ve discovered that things aren’t always what they seem or could be.
The 50% Rule
In the statistical world of DNA, on the average, we believe that each generation receives roughly half of the DNA of the generations before them. We know that each child absolutely receives 50% of the DNA of both parents, but how the grandparents DNA is divided up into that 50% that goes to each offspring differs. It may not be 50%. I am in the process of doing a generational inheritance study, which I will publish soon, which discusses this as a whole.
However, let’s use the 50% rule here, because it’s all we have and it’s what we’ve been working with forever.
In a normal autosomal, meaning non-X, situation, every generation provides to the current generation the following approximate % of DNA:
Autosomal % chart
Please note Blaine Bettinger’s X maternal inheritance chart percentages from his “More X-Chromosome Charts” article, and used with his kind permission in the X Marks the Spot article.
Blaine's maternal X %
I’m enlarging the inheritance percentage portion so you can see it better.
Blaine's maternal X % cropped
Taking a look at these percentages, it becomes evident that we cannot utilize the normal predictive methods of saying that if we share a certain percentage of DNA with an individual, then we are most likely a specific relationship. This is because the percentage of X chromosome inherited varies based on the inheritance path, since men don’t receive an X from their fathers. Not only does this mean that you receive no X from many ancestors, you receive a different percentage of the X from your maternal grandmother, 25%, because your mother inherited an X from both of her parents, versus from your paternal grandmother, 50%, because your father inherited an X from only his mother.
The Genetic Kinship chart, below, from the ISOGG wiki, is the “Bible” that we use in terms of estimating relationships. It doesn’t work for the X.
Mapping cousin chart
Let’s look at the normal autosomal inheritance model as compared to the maternal X chart fan chart percentages, above, and similar calculations for the paternal side. Remember, the Maternal Only column applies only to men, because in the very first generation, men’s and women’s inheritance percentages diverge. Men receive 100% of their X from their mothers, while women receive 50% from each parent.
Generational X %s
Recombination – The Next Problem
The genetic genealogy community has been hounding Family Tree DNA incessantly to add the X chromosome matching into their Family Finder matching calculations.
On January 2, 2014, they did exactly that. What’s that old saying, “Be careful what you ask for….” Well, we got it, but “it” doesn’t seem to be providing us with exactly what we expected.
First, there were many reports of women having many more matches than men. That’s to be expected at some level because women have so many more ancestors in the “mix,” especially when matching other women.
23andMe takes this unique mixture into consideration, or at least attempts to compensate for it at some level. I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing or if it’s useful, truthfully. While their normal autosomal SNP matching threshold is 7cM and 700 matching SNPs within that segment, for X, their thresholds are:
• Male matched to male – 1cM/200 SNPs
• Male matched to female – 6cM/600 SNPs
• Female matched to female – 6cM/1200 SNPs
Family Tree DNA does not use the X exclusively for matching. This means that if you match someone utilizing their normal autosomal matching criteria of approximately 7.7cM and 500 SNPs, and you match them on the X chromosome, they will report your X as matching. If you don’t match someone on any chromosome except the X, you will not be reported as a match.
The X matching criteria at Family Tree DNA is:
• 1cM/500 SNPs
However, matching isn’t all of the story.
The X appears to not recombine normally. By normally, I don’t mean something is medically wrong, I mean that it’s not what we are expecting to see in terms of the 50% rule. In essence, we would expect to see approximately half of the X of each parent, grandfather and grandmother, passed on to the child from the mother in the maternal line where recombination is a possibility. That appears to not be happening reliably. Not only is this not happening in the nice neat 50% number, the X chromosome seems to be often not recombining at all. If you think the percentages in the chart above threw a monkey wrench into genetic genealogy predictions, this information, if it holds up in a much larger test, in essence throws our predictive capability, at least as we know it today, out the window.
The X Doesn’t Recombine as Expected
In my generational study, I noticed that the X seemed not to be recombining. Then I remembered something that Matt Dexter said at the Family Tree DNA Conference in November 2013 in Houston. Matt has the benefit of having a full 3 generation pedigree chart where everyone has been tested, and he has 5 children, so he can clearly see who got the DNA from which of their grandparents.
I contacted Matt, and he provided me with his X chromosomal information about his family, giving me permission to share it with you. I have taken the liberty of reformatting it in a spreadsheet so that we can view various aspects of this data.
Dexter table
First, note that I have sorted these by grandchild. There are two females, who have the opportunity to inherit from 3 grandparents. The females inherited one copy of the X from their mother, who had two copies herself, and one copy of the X from her father who only had his mother’s copy. Therefore, the paternal grandfather is listed above, but with the note “cannot inherit.” This distinguishes this event from the circumstance with Grandson 1 where he could inherit some part of his maternal grandfather’s X, but did not.
For the three grandsons, I have listed all 4 grandparents and noted the paternal grandmother and grandfather as “cannot inherit.” This is of course because the grandsons don’t inherit an X from their father. Instead they inherit the Y, which is what makes them male.
According to the Rule of 50%, each child should receive approximately half of the DNA of each maternal grandparent that they can inherit from. I added the columns, % Inherited cM and % Inherited SNP to illustrate whether or not this number comes close to the 50% we would expect. The child MUST have a complete X chromosome which is comprised of 18092 SNPs and is 195.93cM in length, barring anomalies like read errors and such, which do periodically occur. In these columns, 1=100%, so in the Granddaughter 1 column of % Inherited cM, we see 85% for the maternal grandfather and about 15% for the maternal grandmother. That is hardly 50-50, and worse yet, it’s no place close to 50%.
Granddaughter 1 and 2 must inherit their paternal grandmother’s X intact, because there is nothing to recombine with.
Granddaughter 2 inherited even more unevenly, with about 90% and 10%, but in favor of the other grandparent. So, statistically speaking, it’s about 50% for each grandparent between the two grandchildren, but it is widely variant when looking at them individually.
Grandson 1, as mentioned, inherited his entire X from his maternal grandmother with absolutely no recombination.
Grandsons 2 and 3 fall much closer to the expected 50%.
The problem for most of us is that you need 3 or 4 consecutive generations to really see this happening, and most of us simply don’t have data that deep or robust.
A recent discussion on the DNA Genealogy Rootsweb mailing list revealed several more of these documented occurrences, among them, two separate examples where the X chromosome was unrecombined for 4 generations.
Robert Paine, a long-time genetic genealogy contributor and project administrator reported that in his family medical/history project, at 23andMe, 25% of his participants show no recombination on the X chromosome. That’s a staggering percentage. His project consists of 21 people in with 2 blood lines tested 5 generations deep and 2 bloodlines tested at 4 generations
One woman’s X matches her great-great-grandmother’s X exactly. That’s 4 separate inheritance events in a row where the X was not recombined at all.
The graphic below, provided by Robert, shows the chromosome browser at 23andMe where you can see the X matches exactly for all three participants being compared.
The screen shot is of the gg-granddaughter Evelyn being compared to her gg-grandmother, Shevy, Evelyn’s g-grandfather Rich and Evelyn’s grandmother Cyndi. 23andme only lets you compare 3 individuals at a time so Robert did not include Evelyn’s mother Shay, who is an exact match with Evelyn.
Paine X
Where Are We?
So what does this mean to genetic genealogy? It certainly does not mean we should throw the baby out with the bath water. What it is, is an iceberg warning that there is more lurking beneath the surface. What and how big? I can’t tell you. I simply don’t know.
Here’s what I can tell you.
• The X chromosome matching can tell you that you do share a common ancestor someplace back in time.
• The amount of DNA shared is not a reliable predictor of how long ago you shared that ancestor.
• The amount of DNA shared cannot predict your relationship with your match. In fact, even a very large match can be many generations removed.
• The absence of an X match, even with someone closely related whom you should match does not disprove a descendant relationship/common ancestor.
• The X appears to not recombine at a higher rate than previously thought, the previous expectation being that this would almost never happen.
• The X, when it does recombine appears to do so in a manner not governed by the 50% rule. In fact, the 50% rule may not apply at all except as an average in large population studies, but may well be entirely irrelevant or even misleading to the understanding of X chromosome inheritance in genetic genealogy.
The X is still useful to genetic genealogists, just not in the same way that other autosomal data is utilized. The X is more of an auxiliary chromosome that can provide information in addition to your other matches because of its unique inheritance pattern.
Unfortunately, this discovery leaves us with more questions than answers. I found it incomprehensible that this phenomenon has never been studied in humans, or in animals, for that matter, at least not that I could find. What few references I did find indicated that the X seems to recombine with the same frequency as the other autosomes, which we are finding to be untrue.
What is needed is a comprehensive study of hundreds of X transmission events at least 3 generations deep.
As it turns out, we’re not the only ones confused by the behavior of the X chromosome. Just yesterday, the New York Times had an article about Seeing the X Chromosome in a New Light. It seems that either one copy of the X, or the other, is disabled cell by cell in the human body. If you are interested in this aspect of science, it’s a very interesting read. Indeed, our DNA continues to both amaze and amuse us.
A special thank you to Jim Owston, Matt Dexter, Blaine Bettinger and Robert Paine for sharing their information.
Additional sources:
Polymorphic Variation in Human Meiotic
Recombination (2007)
Vivian G. Cheung
University of Pennsylvania
A Fine-Scale Map of Recombination Rates and Hotspots Across the Human Genome, Science October 2005, Myers et al
Supplemental Material
Thank you so much.
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212 thoughts on “That Unruly X….Chromosome That Is
1. Hello Roberta, I have a a X chromosome situation going on here :-). My mother, her brother, me and my son all have share a considerable amount of X DNA with another family but no autosomal DNA. My daughter does not share any X DNA with the other family, Have you come across anyone sharing so much XDNA (50.4 cM) and no autosomal DNA.
This is my mother’s shared XDNA with someone from the other family
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 1982358 30249248 50.4 3921
This my mother’s brother with the same person of the other family
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 1982358 30232847 50.4 3242
Largest segment = 50.4 cM
Total of segments > 7 cM = 50.4 cM Actual.
This is me with the same person of the family
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 22803814 30230136 9.3 922
Largest segment = 9.3 cM
Total of segments > 7 cM = 9.3 cM Actual.
This is my son with the same person of the other family
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 22906823 30230136 8.7 897
Largest segment = 8.7 cM
Total of segments > 7 cM = 8.7 cM Actual.
• The X is sometimes passed intact from one ancestor. In other words, your daughter may have received one of your X chromosomes from one ancestor and none from the other. To sort through this would take some map-drawing and maybe some additional relatives.
2. I found out through that I have 3 % British ancestry in me but my family comes from eastern Europe (Germany, Poland, Austria, Slovakia) How would I know where this gene came from and from what generation? Where would I look to find out the family that contributed that gene.
3. I am wondering what impact on my X Chromosome does it make where my mother’s father’s mother’s mother (g-g-grandmother) is the same person as my father’s mother’s mother’s mother (g-g-grandmother). The chart shows I would get 12.5% from each one due to their position but does it increase the % that I would get from her? Or increase the likelihood of getting more?
• So let’s say that on FTDNA, Katie matches me at 29cm on my X chromosome (and she also matches me on other various chromosomes at a level making her around a 2nd cousin something or other). I downloaded the full chromosome browser spreadsheet, and found all of the people who overlap with Katie on the X. However, when I did a Matrix Match with them on Katie, then they don’t match autosomally. So although they overlap on the X with Katie, they don’t appear to be genetically related to Katie. Is that correct?
• By the way, I have already matched and Matrix Matched the autosomal matches (we need less ambiguous terminology) with Katie, so I know who her true matches (lol – IBD) are. I’m trying to make sense out of the X-overlap people with Katie but who don’t match her autosomally.
• Keep in mind that the matrix only looks at people who match above the threshold of total 20cM and a largest segment of 7cM. When you download your matching segments, you get much smaller ones than that too.
4. Roberta, I enjoyed your article very much and learned a lot from it, but I want to make sure I am seeing typos and not assertions of fact in two places. In your first two column spreadsheet it looks like you missed the 3G-GP generation and that threw off your percentages. Please confirm. Secondly in both spreadsheets you use 12% as the contribution of GP’s, which I believe (from other numbers in the article) should actually be 12.5%. Please confirm. Otherwise, well done, thanks.
5. Hi Roberta, on Gedmatch, I have a female match of X CM only of 30.6, no Autosomal match. In comparison, I share 35.7 X CM with my 1/2 sister. (of course I also share Autosomal). When I compared her Gedmatch list to mine, we have 22 common names. Can you tell me if I am related to this X match?
6. I am hoping you can shed some light on a mystery. I have recently connected to a young man that could be as closely related as my first cousin. Neither he nor I know who our biological fathers are but do know our mothers. We have not found a link between the families yet but clearly there is one between the two of us. Can you give me your impression of what the results could mean? After doing an x-dna comparison this is the result:
Chr St loc. End loc. cM. SNPs
X. 488604. 133841337. 150.5. 13818
7. Hi Roberta–
Thanks for this posting. I am curious about your heading that the “X chromosome doesn’t recombine as expected”–isn’t this outcome a result of the fact that the X chromosome is only one chromosome, 180 centiMorgans long, while the autosomes are both more numerous and represent many times more opportunities for recombination? So, one could apply the same reasoning to any individual chromosome, it is just that the math of the autosomes works out so that the inheritance looks more evenly distributed. Wouldn’t you see a similar pattern if you were focused on a particularly large segment on a single autosome? I just wanted to clarify this for my own understanding.
• Jonathan, you are correct that any chromosome can be inherited in an all-or-none fashion from a grandparent. Look at generation 2 in Figure 2 of Graham Coop’s blog:
I have a case in my own family where the entire length of chromosome 4 has been inherited intact through at least five and maybe six transmission events.
I suspect there’s a bit of ascertainment bias going on here: if you notice something that strikes you as “odd,” you are more likely to notice if it happens again, and other people will chime in if they’ve seen the same thing. AFAIK, no one has collected a *random* sample looking at the X chromosome to see if it behaves any differently than other chromosomes of a similar size.
• By the way, the autosomal match is 23 cm, longest match 9 cm. I will let you all know if I ever get more information.
8. Thanks for a facinating article Roberta!
I happen to be so lucky that I was able to test both of my grandmothers (paternal and maternal) and thus with my parents tested I have been able to determine many very interesting things about my personal autosomal DNA and how much of it I did inherit from which grandparent.
But my point is that as your article points out X chromosome does not seem to recombine “normally” – I myself have inherited my X chromosome completely from my maternal grandmother (I am a male, thus I have only one X chromosome) with nothing from my grandfather.
So I have been able to determine I have inherited 21,6% from my paternal grandfather, 28,4% from my paternal grandmother, 20,5% from my maternal grandfather and 29,5,% from my maternal grandmother.
• Vernon, it’s an interesting theory to think that inactivation and recombination are somehow connected, but a quick look at the data in this article shows it’s unlikely.
There are two granddaughters in the table above. Both inherited a single chromosome from their mother, which is a combination of the mother’s chromosomes which she inherited from the maternal grandparents. Yet there is no preference for one or the other. One chromosome is highly-favored in one instance (granddaughter 1 inheriting 168cM from her MGF and only 29cM from her MGM) while the other chromosome is favored in the other (granddaughter 2 inheriting only 20 cM from her MGF and 176 cM from her MGM).
Since, in females, the same x-chromosome is switched off in every cell of the body, there seems to be no correlation in this data set between the inactive X and whether it is favored or unfavored during crossing over.
• Dave, it may be that X-inactivation has nothing with X-inheritance, but what you said in your comment is not true. The inactivation takes place in the embryo stage and at that stage some cells have one X inactivated while other cells have the other X inactivated and it is random. When the embryo develops these cells replicate so regions of the female have one X active and other regions have the other X active. This is the explanation for calico and tortoiseshell cats having 3 color coats, since in cats the coat color is X linked. The following quotation is from this article (
9. X inactivation is a fascinating topic, but I don’t know of any research to show that it affects recombination. The inactivated chromosome uncoils during replication for cell division and recombination. Roberta posted another blog just yesterday, where she demonstrates that the all-or-nothing inheritance of a grandparental chromosome happens on the autosomes as well. As I mentioned above, I suspect there was a bit of ascertainment bias in reports of this happening on the X. People just noticed (and thus reported) it more.
• To your point, Dr. Turner, the genome comparison between my father and daughter at 23andMe shows matching across all of chromosomes 9 and 21. It also shows that on chromosomes 7, 15, 17, 18, and 22, they have no matching at all.
So altogether, it looks as if my daughter inherited seven autosomes from me with this “all or nothing” characteristic. The remaining autosomes varying from having “just a little sharing” to “quite a lot”, and it seems to balance out overall. The total sharing between my father and daughter is 47.5%.
So, to get back to the X chromosome …
I fully expected my three sisters to match on the entirety of their paternal X chromosome, and they did. But what I hadn’t really expected was that one of my sisters matches one of my brothers on the entirety of their maternal X chromosome.
What’s more, I match both of these siblings on the X chromosome — with the exception of a 20 cM region surrounding the centromere.
Thanks to several matches in this region, I’ve been able to identify its source as my maternal grandmother.
The rest of the chromosome is from my maternal grandfather — which I’ve been able to confirm on the basis of dozens of matches. One match, in particular, is a good illustration.
There is an individual who shares three segment with me on the X chromosome, versus only two segments with my siblings. However, while the first segment is the same for all three of us, my siblings’ second segment begins where my second segment does and ends where my third segment does. I’m “missing” 20 cM my siblings’ match on our grandfather’s side, thanks to the “intrusion” of DNA from our grandmother.
I have three other siblings (the other two sisters and another brother). Two of them inherited more of the X chromosome from our grandmother than from our grandfather, while the third inherited all but 49.4 cM at the beginning of the chromosome from our grandfather.
You might think that among the six of us, we’d have inherited all of both of our mother’s X chromosomes. Instead it looks as if there’s at least an 18 cM stretch at the end of the long arm of the chromosome where we only inherited DNA from our grandfather.
I might also add that the brother whose X chromosome came only from our grandfather also has a daughter. That means it’s possible for her to trace the source of one of her X chromosomes to a single great, great grandparent: the paternal grandmother of her father’s maternal grandfather.
10. Roberta, would a 3.41 cM X-chromosome match even be worth looking at? It’s the only X-match (other than me and one of our female first cousins) that my brother has on FTDNA, and the Total cM is 20.27 with this person.
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12. Phased data from Gedmatch
X chromosome
1/2 brothers-same mother
Comparing Kit PF404852M1 (Michael)(M) and PFN80425M1 (D R )(M)
Minimum threshold size to be included in total = 700 SNPs
Mismatch-bunching Limit = 350 SNPs
Minimum segment cM to be included in total = 7.0 cM
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 2,710,157 10,013,642 23.5 1,086
X 128,787,527 149,034,194 37.2 2,701
1/2 sibs, same mother
Comparing Kit PF404852M1 (Michael )(M) and PF204898M1 (cynthia)(F)
Minimum threshold size to be included in total = 700 SNPs
Mismatch-bunching Limit = 350 SNPs
Minimum segment cM to be included in total = 7.0 cM
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 2,710,157 9,225,116 19.9 908
X 148,374,123 154,551,755 14.2 943
full sibs
Comparing Kit PFN80425M1 (D R)(M) and PF204898M1 (cynthia)(F)
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 2,710,157 9,225,116 19.9 957
X 9,921,481 129,060,072 123.2 12,612
13. X chromosome
1/2 brothers-same mother
Comparing Kit PF404852M1 (Michael Schlegel)(M) and PFN80425M1 (D R Smith)(M)
Minimum threshold size to be included in total = 700 SNPs
Mismatch-bunching Limit = 350 SNPs
Minimum segment cM to be included in total = 7.0 cM
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 2,710,157 10,013,642 23.5 1,086
X 128,787,527 149,034,194 37.2 2,701
1/2 sibs, same mother
Minimum threshold size to be included in total = 700 SNPs
Mismatch-bunching Limit = 350 SNPs
Minimum segment cM to be included in total = 7.0 cM
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 2,710,157 9,225,116 19.9 908
X 148,374,123 154,551,755 14.2 943
full sibs
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 2,710,157 9,225,116 19.9 957
X 9,921,481 129,060,072 123.2 12,612
Comparing Kit F404852 (Michael)(M) and FN80425 (D R)(M) 1/2 sibs same mother
Minimum threshold size to be included in total = 700 SNPs
Mismatch-bunching Limit = 350 SNPs
Minimum segment cM to be included in total = 7.0 cM
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 2,710,157 10,013,642 23.5 1,092
X 128,787,527 148,644,876 36.5 2,712
Comparing Kit F404852 (Michael)(M) and F204898 (cynthia)(F) 1/2 sibs same mother
Minimum threshold size to be included in total = 700 SNPs
Mismatch-bunching Limit = 350 SNPs
Minimum segment cM to be included in total = 7.0 cM
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 2,710,157 9,225,116 19.9 913
X 148,374,123 154,551,755 14.2 963
Comparing Kit FN80425 (D R)(M) and F204898 (cynthia)(F) full sibs
Minimum threshold size to be included in total = 700 SNPs
Mismatch-bunching Limit = 350 SNPs
Minimum segment cM to be included in total = 7.0 cM
Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 2,710,157 9,225,116 19.9 961
X 9,921,481 129,060,072 123.2 12,663
14. Read this blog item again after observing the data I show below which seems to fall perfectly into your discussion. As surrogate for my mother in matching, I’ve been using her only surviving sister – I call her “Aunt Sue” below. I am male, the others are female.
1. My X chromosome matches Aunt Sue with 129cM total / 69cM longest segment.
2. My sister Sally matches Aunt Sue with 156 total / 97 longest segment.
3. My niece Martha – the daughter of another (deceased) sister – matches Aunt Sue (her great aunt) with 195 cM total / 165 longest segment.
4. I match sister Sally for 137 total / 69 longest segment
5. I match niece Martha 69 total / 59 longest segment.
6. Sister Sally matches niece Martha 120 total / 96 longest segment
My understanding is that the X Chromosome is 197 cMs. If so, since she matches her great aunt with 195 cM, my niece Martha must have inherited almost the exact X Chromosome of her great aunt Sue from Sue’s sister – Martha’s grandmother – who then must have had virtually the identical X Chromosome (of course Martha’s mother must also have had the near-identical X chr). But if I, a male, inherited only my mother’s X Chromosome, should I not match niece Martha for the entire X Chromosome rather than just 69 cM? Where have I gone wrong in my thinking? What else might I infer from these data and how might I use it to best advantage elsewhere?
• Hi Wallace,
I am going to make a stab at trying to answer your question. You don’t give a name for your mother. I will call her Jane. Jane and Sue are sisters. They received an X from their mother and one from their father. The X from their father was identical for both of them, as he only has one to give them. But the X that Sue and Jane received from their mother, your maternal grandmother, was most likely not identical. It could, and likely was, an unpredictable mixture of dna from recombination of the X from your maternal grandmother’s mother and father.
If Martha matches her grandmother, then it appears that for two generations, there was very little recombination of the X in her line. It also seems to indicate that your mother and her sister, Sue, did not inherit identical X chromosomes from their mother. This is why you do not match with Martha more than you do.
Interestingly, if recombination in the X fails to take place in a fair number of eggs as they are formed, it is possible that there would be instances where two brothers do not share any dna on their X chromosomes! One inherits the mother’s paternal X and the other inherits the mother’s maternal X. That seems like an amazing result and might raise a few eyebrows!
• Thank you for the clear explanation, Marley! Yes, I failed to account for the recombination, thinking erroneously that the X was passed intact similar to Y-dna.
15. OK…. i Have one for the books:
One of My daughters did not get any X DNA From my mother only from my father”on my side of the genetic tree”
From her Grandpa my Dad she got A {2040.8 Total cM} {176 largest cM}
X {196 Total cM} {196 largest cM}
From her Grandmother My Mother she got {1560.7 Total cM} {largest cM 138.4}
X {0 Total cM} {0 largest cM}
Me to my dad.. A{3587.1Total cM} {largest cM 281.5}
X {196 Total cM} {196 largest cM}
Me to my Mom A{3586.3Total cM} {largest cM 281.5}
X {196.1 Total cM} {196.1 largest cM}
• This is exactly what the article is talking about. You did not recombine your Xes and sent your father’s X unchanged to your daughter.
16. Hello,my name is randy,i have a real head scratcher here.on gedmatch my kit A675212 matches a female A246857,we share on the autosomal 292.8 cM total 48.8 cM largest.but now the x is the problem total 195.9cm largest 195.9 now on my tree she is to be my mothers half siblings daughter.but we are thinking maybe something else going on.i haven’t been able to match and dna to my mothers so called moms side of tree.i have over 30,000 people.but nothing pointing to the called grandmother or on up her it possible that my mother was somehow an aunt to edna???there where a lot of lies told down the wife and I have uncovered a ton of it.and set it right.but my mom is the only mystery hoping some one here can tell me more about this match.on facebook a few people told me that this match was very very rare.for a male and female to have like this thanks also my tree on ancestry randy_m6219 user name and tree is mystery roots thanks again
17. Seems to me that match is in the range of a 2nd cousin, not a half-first cousin – the latter would likely be closer to 600-700 cM. My example: a 1st cousin shares 1,700 cm with me, my 2nd cousin shares 287 with me. The unpredictable X chromosome shows that she is on your mother’s side but I’d guess that it doesn’t mean much more than that (again, my example: a niece shares 195cM X chr. with her maternal great-aunt but only 1/2 to 1/3 of that with any of her aunts or uncles.)
18. I have a GEDmatch with another female of 47.2 cM on the X chromosome with no autosomal match at all. We seem to have no immediate correlation between four generations of ancestors – would this be an example of a guerilla X chromosome at work?
Start location = 40,748,881, End location = 110,071,352, SNPs = 8,026
19. Interesting article. I found it after noticing that I shared none of my x-chromosome with my brother. I have two other brothers, who have not been tested yet. I went to and did x-chromosome matching and found only two people who matched me: my daughter (of course), and one other person. This other person is someone who I have worked out shares a common ancestor with me – my 7th-great grandparents. She shares about 13 cM with me. It surprises me that nobody else on gedmatch is a match at all, even though there are hundreds with somatic matches. My brother has zero matches.
20. Is it really possible that second cousins could only share 85cm on the x chromosome and no autosomal? Could it possibly mean that the grandfathers do not have the same father?(the mothers are first cousins and the grandfathers brothers)
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22. Hi, I am new to DNA, and understand SORT of, and normally ignore it due to ignorance and confusion, but after doing my DNA and my paternal sister’s DNA to confirm that she was indeed related, I had more questions, so ordered another test for my bio maternal 1/2 brother, and my maternal second cousin. My 2nd cousins results just came back and all looks fine, BUT the X. Both my paternal aunt and my maternal cousin have extremely high X match to me (GEDmatch). One on one comparison says the 2 are not related, and I am so confused. According to paperwork, there is no shared ancestry between sides that I can find. Interestingly enough, my cousin matches a large amount of family, but I do not. I think my mom was adopted maybe?
• I’m sorry, I am female. So would the X be carried down from way way back in the past if that is the case? Or am I opening another bag of worms? For females, how can it be helpful?
23. I think I may have been given incorrect Information. A kit that I manage (female) had a match on Ancestry (another female) at 1,950 cms across 63 segments. Someone said if I uploaded to Gedmatch and ran the one to one, the X would be 196 for half-sisters and anything less would be aunt/niece. We know these are the only two possibilities between these two matches given the info from the new match. Is that incorrect though? My understanding from this article is that is not true. Thanks.
• That is incorrect. I’m not sure why one would think this. Even full siblings could have received one maternal X chromosome (the mother’s mother’s) for one child and a second maternal X chromosome (mother’s father’s) for the second child.
• Roberta,
Not only are you entirely right in your reply to Kim, I have a situation in my own family in which what Kim was told would lead a person to think that a niece was actually a half sister.
Two of my siblings — a brother named Bernie and a sister coincidentally named Kim — match across the entire X chromosome. Obviously, since it’s the only one my brother has, this is obviously the maternal X.
Anyway, Bernie has a daughter named Stephanie. Stephanie hasn’t tested yet, but as Bernie’s daughter her paternal X chromosome must match her father’s only X. Therefore, it would also match Kim’s maternal X chromosome.
Since Bernie and Kim are full siblings, Stephanie would also be expected to share somewhere around 25% of her DNA with Kim — same as with half sisters.
You can see the problem. Anyone who believed in the “test” mentioned by the other Kim would unavoidably reach the mistaken conclusion that Kim and Stephanie are half sisters.
• Just thought I’d update this reply, since my niece Stephanie has now tested.
My sister Kim’s overall matching with our niece is 26.5%. But as expected, they match across the full length of the X chromosome. Obviously, this is Stephanie’s paternal X and Kim’s maternal X.
I will also note that since Bernie and I also match across the entire X — with the exception of a 20 cM region surrounding the centromere — my daughter Kathryn and her 1st cousin Stephanie match across the entire X apart from that same 20 cM.
• It would be true if the half-sisters shared a father. He only has the one X chromosome to give them, so they’d share all of it. If the half-sisters shared a mother, anything from 0 to 196 is possible
24. My daughter’s are half siblings and they share 1710 centimorgans across 72 DNA segments. On gedmatch they share 165.7 cM’ s on the X.
25. Would love anyone sharing any ideas… I’ve tried to absorb the material but not sure its all clicking:
Background: I originally believed my Father to be an NPE due to various reasons – late in life pregnancy, lack of resemblence to father, extreme size differences, etc.
Had my Father and his half-sister (significantly older, from a more normal age pregnancy) tested. They shared about 925 cMs of DNA and 0 X-DNA. This suggests to me 1st cousins and that my Father is probably the son of my Grandmother’s only sibling, a brother.
Combing through many DNA matches, I apparently have gotten fairly close and got a 149 cM match which then prompted me to reach out to a candidate and give them a test which resulted in a 198 cM match with 47 cM of X-DNA match.
These results suggest to me a 2nd cousin match (though the 149 could suggest a 2nd cousin once removed but they’re both on equivalent levels on the family tree).
Either way, this cements a set of Great Grandparents.
The 198cM/47cM match’s Mother’s Mother’s parents are those Great Grandparents, meaning he should have received all of this X-DNA from his Mother who received half of hers from her Mother but ultimately only half of her total, who received all of hers from those Great Grandparents but ultimately all of her GrandFather’s and half of her available Mothers.
Now, I know my Father received all of his X-DNA from his Mother but I don’t know if his Mother is the daughter of a son of the Great Grandparents or the daughter of a daughter. Can the 47 cM tell me any info?
26. I agree, there are some odd things about X matches that need to be explored!
However, I think it may be time to throw in another monkey wrench. While females evidently can pass on an X chromosome intact, and males must do so, I believe this tendency, if it is indeed something out of the ordinary, must ALREADY be factored into the human genetic map distances (in centiMorgans). The map distance between any two markers is simply 100 times the number of recombinant progeny divided by the total number of progeny. (In constructing the genetic map, these distances are corrected or adjusted by only considering the marker pairs that are closest together, so that double crossovers don’t artificially reduce the apparent distance between markers that are far apart.) In other words, the genetic map for the human X chromosome is by definition a statistical summary of the occurrence of recombination in whatever population or populations provided the data from which it has been constructed. (The gender of the offspring should have nothing to do with it, because gender is determined at the time of fertilization, well after meiosis has been completed, by the male gamete.)
None of this, to my mind, explains the extreme difference in the number of X matches observed for apparently random males versus females (on GEDmatch, for example, using the default criteria). A quick tabulation of half a dozen of each this morning showed that females (unphased kits) get about 115 X-matches for every 1 X-match that males get (using the GEDmatch metric labeled “rows” on the X match report). Until this discrepancy can be explained and modeled mathematically, I don’t see how we can properly interpret our X matches.
27. I am trying to come up with a practical application of this information. If x does not necessarily recombine as one would expect, and males get their x from their mother, and I am trying to find the father of a female adoptee, wouldn’t comparing x matches help to identify the mother or maternal line of her father, if I was focusing on a male with an x-match I highly suspect is on the adoptee’s paternal line?
I am in the process of a detailed x match study on gedmatch and am amazed at the number of overlapping matches taking note of the supposed generational identifiers and how they may impact the matches. It is quite amazing.
29. By luck with a little help from some 2cd and 3rd cousins I was able to fully phase my X-Chromosome (a male so only the one), my sister’s, my maternal Aunt’s and my mother’s although she is no longer alive; My sister received her X-Chromosome from our mother with no crossovers; it is identical with my mother’s X-Chromosome from her mother. I had one crossover at position 100M; My mother actually had 2 crossovers from her mother, and her sister, my aunt, had 3 crossovers. So this is an average of 1.5 crossovers per person, with a range of 0 to 3; given the known range of crossovers per chromosome which obviously relate to their total length, this small sample appears to fall within a range that I would have anticipated as average behavior
30. I have 5 full siblings. All of us have tested at 23andMe. My brother Bernie and my sister Kim match from 1-155,092,794 — or for 181.84 cM (which seems to be the full length of the chromosome, at 23andMe). This appears to have all come from our mother’s father, which would also mean it came from *his* mother.
This has been very helpful, since I’ve come to believe that the people who raised him as were not his biological parents — even though that’s what we were always told, and what his birth record claims. (I should note, however, that my grandfather’s birth wasn’t officially recorded until 1963, when he was 59 years old.) Anyone matching my brother on his X chromosome is likely to be related through our maternal grandfather’s mother. (Not counting more recent relatives, of course.)
I match both Bernie and Kim from 1-41,061,864 (65.58 cM) and 71,279,956-155,092,794 (96.31 cM). This basically means I only inherited about 20 cM of my X chromosome from my grandmother.
The sibling who inherited the least from our maternal grandfather is my sister CJ. CJ matches Bernie from 9,855,801-51,585,484 (62.93 cM) and 142,626,795-155,092,794 (21.99 cM). Of course, she matches Kim for *all* of the X chromosome, but only because both sisters inherited a copy of our father’s X.
Even at that, CJ still inherited over half of her maternal X chromosome from our grandfather — 96.92 cM versus 84.92 cM.
Oddly enough, even with six of us we still managed not to inherit all of our mother’s X chromosome pair. There’s about a roughly 18 cM stretch at the end of our mother’s maternal X chromosome that wasn’t passed on to any of us.
32. I still don’t understand all of this. I am wondering if someone estimated to be a second cousin could actually be my brother’s first cousin. I believe that they share the same grandfather, but they have different grandmothers. In addition for my brother the lineage is grandfather to my father and then to him. The person I believe is a first cousin has a lineage from the same grandfather to his mother and then to him. Again, they do not share the same grandmother. 23 & me has my brother’s cousin and him sharing 4.23% of DNA and 11 overlapping segments. Other documentation indicates that they are first cousins. Is this possible?
33. Roberta, I just now noticed that my new found cousin, the biological son of my uncle, shares 10.1 X Chromosome match with his aunt. So, if her brother can’t pass along any X to his son, then I guess this means that this X has filtered down from his mother’s side? If I’m looking at this correctly, then that means we have a distant common ancestor with his mother. Right?
34. I have been fascinated and baffled by my X matches and this explanation has certainly helped. I recently found 45 matches on GEDMATCH with whom I share at least one segment of X of at least 20 cM and yet the most autosomal dna I share with any of them is less than 200 cM. In fact, most of them share less than 100 cM of dna with me – some as little as 20 cM so obviously the shared X must have come from a long way back. I’m now feeling more confident of this possibility.
35. Is an X match between two females a reliable indicator of affinity somewhere along our lines when no matches can be found on any other chromosomes? Thank you for your time.
36. I have two females matching at 1391cm, but nothing on the X. Is it possible for them to be maternal half siblings? I was told that it is impossible, they have to be 1st cousins.
37. So glad to have found this article, Roberta, thank you. I’ve just located a 2nd cousin, based on “regular” autosomal sharing with a group of 4 known cousins, and using some chunky X-DNA matches. And everything was exactly as expected except for one of the 4 known cousins whose X-DNA simply wasn’t there, and I was beginning to get very worried and confused. I can see now that she has apparently just failed to inherit X-DNA from her maternal grandfather.
38. One thing that must always be kept in mind when matches aren’t as expected, sometimes the reason is that something is off on 23andMe’s end.
Why do I say this?
Well, recently my first sister’s daughter got her results back from 23andMe, and she has an 11.06 cM region at the beginning the X chromosome at which she matches none of my family members except for her mother and my father.
Now, it’s fine that my niece doesn’t match any of her three maternal uncles at this location. The three of us didn’t inherit an X chromosome from our father. But, my niece doesn’t match either of her maternal aunts.
This is odd, because they both match our father’s X here — and remember, he only has the one — and they match our niece’s mother. So, why don’t they match our niece? Well, the answer is: they do. The chromosome painting simply isn’t reflecting that fact. Why, I don’t know.
I’d thought at first it could be a length issue, but the segment is 11.09 cM and includes over 700 SNPs. So this isn’t like a segment at which I match one of my sisters, but my daughter does not. In that case, the problem is that the segment includes fewer than 700 SNPs, and it is shown for me because it’s a female-male match; it isn’t shown for my daughter because it’s female-female. The SNP requirement is higher.
I suppose what it might be is a chip issue, since my niece’s results would be from version 5 (which I personally think is a lousy chip), and everyone else’s are from v4 or v2-v3.
My point is, there can be reasons other than the DNA itself why results may seem to be just a little “off”. [Note: this doesn’t account for things like not sharing any DNA at all with someone.]
39. Hi, Roberta,
Thank you very much for this article, it has clarified my doubts about the inheritance of the X chromosome. I have 68 matches in the same segment of the X chromosome in Gedmatch, between 10 and 20 cM. With some of them I share autosomal dna too. I have been told that this amount is rare and even more rare, that the surnames are of different ethnicities: British, Germans, French, Spanish, Russians, Poles, Italians, Jews and a Portuguese.
In FTDNA I have 20% matches on the X chromosome, also with varied surnames but I am struck by the fact that I have 25% matches in the same segment of chromosome 9, some of which are also matches on the X chromosome.
They are 3rd to 5th cousins or remote cousins.
I do not know how to interpret this data. What do you think?
Thank you very much and greetings!
• Every situation is different. Before looking at X seriously, I require twice the number of cMs, and then I look at my pileup chart for things like you are asking. Then, use triangulation.
• Thank you very much for the response, Roberta.
I understand that the cM that I share are not significant and therefore very difficult to trace a common ancestor. I thought that they could indicate IBD or IBP but with so many different nationalities (with family trees of the last 400 years living in the same place) I discarded it. Maybe it’s about IBC.
I’m not sure of my origin, it’s what I’m trying to find out. The different calculators do not fit at all in my family tree. I thought the matches on the X chromosome would give me some clue, but I see no. I have to wait for closer matches to appear.
40. According to my understanding of my chromosome painting in 23andMe, my X is likely an exact copy from an ancestor at least 6 generations ago, from 200 to 300 years ago. This seems very unlikely unless certain X’s can simply turn off recombination entirely, which seems to have happened in this case. The X chromosome in question is North African, and the rest of my genes are nearly all European, so this entirely North African chromosome sticks out like a sore thumb. Unfortunately, I only have my mother’s DNA to look at, no more generations than that. She, too, has almost no DNA from this ancestor except one entire X chromosome, seemingly verifying that the ancestor is rather distant since she appears to have so little DNA from that ancestor. It seems that the idea that the X will recombine something like 75% of the time when it can doesn’t apply to some X’s which simply don’t ever recombine. If you are interested in checking this out, I can send you some screen shots. — David
• Obviously, what counts here is the number of generations, not the number of years — generations can actually be long or short. For example, my mother had my brother when she was 18 years old. My father’s mother had her youngest son when she was 44 years old (and that wasn’t setting any records).
While I can’t give you an example of an X chromosome being passed on from someone 6 generations ago, I can give an example of one passed on over 4 generations.
The 4 generations are from my great grandmother (my maternal grandfather’s mother), to her 2nd great granddaughter (my brother’s daughter).
I know that my brother’s X chromosome contains DNA only from our maternal grandfather — none from our maternal grandmother. We also have a sister whose maternal X chromosome fully matches our brother’s single X chromosome, and I’ve been able to confirm that the two of them have matches that collectively span the chromosome; and that all of these matches are on our maternal grandfather’s side. In addition, I match both of these siblings on my only X chromosome, EXCEPT for a roughly 20 cM region surrounding the centromere. Outside of this region, I have the same matches on the X that my brother and sister do. Within this region, I have matches to several folks who are descended from one or another of my grandmother’s maternal half sisters.
So this accounts for three generations to receive an X chromosome from the same woman — (1) my grandfather; (2) my mother; (3) my brother and sister, and me (except for that 20 cM from my grandmother). Where does the 4th generation come in?
My brother has a daughter, and of course since my brother only has the one X chromosome, that’s what he passed on to his daughter. Like her father, she matches our aunt across the entire X. She also matches my daughter in exactly the same way that her father matches me — everywhere on the X except for that 20 cM region.
It’s possible that there’s actually a 5th generation to receive this same X chromosome. My niece has 5 children, including at least one son. (I *think* she has a 2nd son, as well, but I’ve lost track for the moment.)
Since none of them has been DNA tested yet — as far as I know — there’s currently no way to tell whether any of them received an exact copy of their mother’s paternal X chromosome. If any of them did, that would be the 5th generation. And if it was a son, then there would definitely also be a 6th generation *if* that son eventually has a daughter.
So, again, I’d say that it’s not only possible, it’s bound to have happened for someone. Based of the ethnicities involved in the rest of the genome and on the X by itself, I’d say you make that case.
41. I am male. My mother, three full sisters, and myself all had are DNA tested at FTDNA. I have one match, a woman named Julia whom I share 7.71 cM of autosomal DNA and 195.93 cM of X DNA. FTDNA shows that I share 183.07 cM of X DNA with my mother. FTDNA does not show Julia as a match to my mother or any of my sisters. How is it possible for me to share X DNA with Julia when my mother does not?
• It’s not possible for you to share more X DNA with Julia than you do with your mother. I would suggest that you contact support.
• I am not concerned about the total amount of cMs that FTDNA states that I share with my mother, as Gedmatch indicates that we share 196.1 cMs. I agree with Danielle’s reply. My autosomal match with Julia appears to be on my father’s side and the reason I do not see Julia in my mother’s DNA matches is because she and Julia do not share any autosomal DNA. I understand that to mean that my mother must have passed me 196.1 cMs in X DNA that did not recombine in recent generations, which is why I match distant cousin Julia at 195.93 cMs on the X chromosome.
• I have had a similar issue previously. It is possible that the autosomal dna comes through your father and then the X chromosome will not show up as a match to your mother because FTDNA will not match her with anyone who does not have autosomal dna with her even if the length of the whole X chromosome.matches. If you, your family and this female match were to transfer to Gedmatch you could see the matches that were only X matches.
• It is certainly possible for an X chromosome to remain unrecombined over multiple generations. I mentioned my niece, for example, whose paternal X chromosome is 100% from a single 2nd great grandmother. A copy of this chromosome, apparently with no crossovers, was passed on my niece’s great grandfather to her grandmother to her father to her.
That means it’s *possible* that my niece could share her entire paternal X chromosome with a 3rd cousin descended from the same 2nd great grandmother — although it would require that the same lack of crossovers also occur on the other line.
It would also require that virtually no autosomal DNA be passed on. But this, too, is possible. The Shared cM Project shows the range of sharing between 3rd cousins as 0-217 cM.
The single 7.7 cM autosomal segment shared between Jerry and Julia is small enough that it might not be “real”; or that even if “real”, a couple of no calls or miscalls for his mother might mean the segment would not show up for her — even if it should.
The explanation that the autosomal segment could be from Jerry’s father’s side — so it wouldn’t be expected to show up for his mother — is also a possibility.
But even if that explains the lack of X chromosome sharing between Jerry and Julia, it still doesn’t explain why Jerry shares less X chromosome DNA with her son than Julia does. As Roberta points out, no one can actually share more X chromosome DNA with Jerry than his own mother does — since 100% of any man’s X chromosome is from that man’s mother.
The likeliest explanation would be no calls/miscalls. (Or, if either of them tested at a company other than FTDNA, there might simply not be enough SNPs on one side or the other for complete matching.)
42. Amen! A very recent autosomal match with a 193.5 cm X match of a personally unknown relative with only 23.21 centimorgans greater than 1 cm. match, ( longest 9.4 ) in the other chromosomes, putting this relative well into 5th cousin or greater territory. As a male, an exact copy of my maternal grandmother or maternal grandfather. As Matt Dexler’s experience shows the probability of a mother passing on to a daughter and grandkids unmixed is above 0. While the paternal grandmother is good for 100 percent passing unchanged to their son’s daughters. The most likely but not certain heritage paths are father daughter father daughter etc.
• If that’s on a kit where you used a service like Mapmy23, or DNA.Land where they “impute” or fix things, they may have imputed the X and then someone uploaded the file to another site. I’m seeing invalid X matches due to this. Just FYI.
• Yes, I think it’s likely that the match is due to a synthetic kit based on DNA.Land’s imputation. They do not include any X data at all. FTDNA is looking for contradictions to a match to determine segment boundaries. If there is no data, there are no contradictions. Matt could contact his match to see if that’s the case.
43. I (Female) have a DNA Match with a man who I share 504.8 cM’s of DNA with. I’m also a DNA Match with his sister who I share 349.8 cM’s of DNA with her + we’re an X-Match, Total segments = 69.2 cM (36.405 Pct). What would you say is the most likely relationship between my matches and I?
• The brother and sister’s X-Match is Total segments = 86.1 cM (45.349 Pct) if that helps at all. I don’t understand X-Matches but it looks pretty close.
44. Hi, I don`t understand why I have only 180 cM whith my daughter in genesis gedmatch. Why I don´t have 196cM?
This is the chart:
Chr B37 Start Pos’n B37 End Pos’n Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
X 2,710,840 52,019,512 82.5 2,225
X 77,372,275 110,649,855 22.7 939
X 111,178,742 154,758,477 75.0 1,898
45. Genesis introduces “hard breaks” in areas of low SNP density. Put a check in the box to prevent hard breaks.
46. Greetings, I see this is an older article but I have an interestingly anomalous X story. I think it may be a situation of either A: a cousin with a distant cousin X (NO ONE ELSE has a trace of X on that side and we link from a grandfather’s father, unless my tree is out of whack) The match is as high as 87cM according to 23andme data. It is a contiguous block as well. It is literally my Grandmother’s largest segment, and between my Grandmother, mother and myself it degrades only slightly, and the same is true for her daughter as well. Still working to triangulate using 23andme spread.
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Fix Your Tennis Elbow!
Virtually everyone that is moderately active has or will experience tendonitis at some point in their life. One of the most common forms of tendonitis is pain in the lateral part of the elbow where the muscles responsible for extending the wrist attach. The most common muscle affected in this condition is the Extensor Carpi Radialis Brevis (ECRB), which helps to stabilize the wrist when the arm is straight. Pain and inflammation of this region is known as Lateral Epicondylitis aka “Tennis Elbow.”
What Causes It?
Lateral Epicondylitis is an over-use injury, and affects people of all ages. In fact, you don’t have to be a tennis player to get this condition. Anyone whose work requires repetitive motions is susceptible (painters, laborers, carpenters etc.) Muscle imbalances also exacerbate the condition. Over-time micro tears form in these muscles from over-use or imbalances leading to pain and inflammation. The elbow may even appear swollen. The position of the ECRB muscle is more susceptible to injury due to increased friction. With repeated use this muscle can become worn passing over the bones in your elbow leading to micro-tears and ultimately inflammation.
Some symptoms include:
• Pain at the lateral aspect of the elbow worse with activity
• Weakness in grip strength
• Swelling in the lateral part of the elbow
What Can You Do To Fix It?
The first thing you should do is try to avoid activities that seem to aggravate the condition. This may mean altering certain activities, or even taking a break from certain activities. I often recommend taking an entire week off from exercise then trying to modify activities that seem to irritate it. Most cases are non-surgical and can be helped effectively by physical medicine. My treatment typically involves a passive modality to decrease inflammation such as Ultrasound. We then look at the surrounding muscles and begin to release the tight muscles causing the inflammation. Consider a practitioner who uses Instrument Assisted Soft-Tissue Mobilization (IASTM) such as ConnecTX® as this serves to break up the adhesions in the muscles that are causing the irritation and inflammation allowing the muscles to breathe and heal. Lastly, we must stretch and strengthen the muscles of the arm to promote proper function and balance.
A few self help tips!
• Consider a counter force brace for the elbow. This will allow the muscles of the elbow to rest.
• Alternate ice and moist heat until swelling subsides
• Stretch out the forearm extensors and flexors
As always, consult your chiropractic physician to rule out other conditions before beginning to self treat.
Keep Moving!
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Meter Information
Getting a New Meter
Are you considering a second water meter, possibly for your irrigation system? With a second meter, you can eliminate the sewer charge for water that does not return to the sanitation system. Typically, in a residential setting, this is not cost effective because of the Winter Quarter Averaging Program (WQAP). With the WQAP, your sewer charge is a set amount (recalculated annually) based on the three lowest consumption periods during the winter months.
However, if you continue normal landscape watering through the winter months, you may still benefit from a second meter for your irrigation system. As part of your calculations, it should be noted that each meter is assessed a minimum monthly charge. If you would like an estimate on installation, please contact Building Inspections at 972-941-7140.
How Meters Are Read
Reading Water Meters is Easy, Right?
Reading a water meter looks pretty easy. You could probably read your water meter in just a few minutes. But how about over 80,000 water meters?! All 80,000 plus water meters in Plano are read every month.
The city is divided into 20 geographic cycles for meter reading purposes. Your water meter is read about the same date each month for billing give or take a day or two, depending on weekends and holidays.
If something is blocking access to the water meter box, repeat visits are made to obtain a meter reading or the customer is contacted prior to billing. Meters are normally read between the hours of 7:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday (Saturday occasionally). They are identified by a shirt with the City logo on it.
How Do They Collect All Those Meter Readings?
For over 20 years now, the meter readers have used hand-held computers to capture meter readings. When the meter reader enters the reading, the computer quickly calculates the amount of water used and compares it with water usage for the previous month. If the current water usage exceeds the previous water usage by more than expected, the computer alerts the meter reader, who must then re-read the meter and re-enter the meter reading. This is this first audit of the meter reading.
In the summer of 2008, the city began installing its second generation meter reading system. This Fixed Network System eliminates the need to send a person to physically read the meter. A unit called an MTU (meter transmitting unit) is attached by wire to an electronic meter register. The unit records a reading from the meter four times daily and transmits the reading using a radio frequency signal to a device called a DCU (data collector unit). The DCU relays all readings received each day to the Billing office via the city's Wi-Fi system.
What Does a Meter Reading Look Like?
Meter Box Maintenance
Meter Box Functions
Your water meter box is usually round, with a cast iron or plastic top and steel sides. Some meter boxes are rectangular and made of concrete. A very few are made of totally plastic. In residential areas, it is usually, but not always, located between the sidewalk and the street, or in the sidewalk. (Not to be confused with your private, irrigation meter box - if you have one - which is green, rectangular plastic.)
Lowering the Meter Reading Cost
The faster the Meter Readers can get to your meter, collect the meter reading, and be off to the next meter, the lower the meter reading cost. There are a few things you can do to expedite this process:
• Keep items off of the meter box such as trash canisters, potted plants, vehicles and debris.
• Keep shrubbery and other landscaping from obstructing a clear and easy access to the meter box.
• Trim the grass around the meter box.
Turning Off Your Water
Know How to Turn Off Your Water
There may be occasions when you need to turn your water supply off, such as when repairing a simple drippy faucet, replacing the water heater, installing an irrigation system. Most homes are equipped with interior and exterior shut-off valves for this purpose.
Note: Most additions including plumbing additions, require a permit. Please contact Building Inspections at 972-941-7140 or before beginning the project.
Interior Shut-Off Valves These are typically found in the following places:
• Above water heaters
• Behind toilets
• Inside bathroom and kitchen cabinets, under the sink
Exterior (private) Shut-Off Valves
With this valve, you can shut water off for the entire house, a specific exterior faucet or an irrigation system. The valve for this is located in a valve box outside the house. This rectangular, plastic (sometimes concrete) valve box is usually black or green and is set in the ground near the front faucet. The box may be difficult to find because it is seldom used and over the years may become covered with a layer of dirt or shrubbery. This box may also be erroneously marked "water meter." However, it is not the water meter.
Inside the box there can be up to five wheel valves and will require a trial-and-error process to determine the function of each valve. Some valves will turn water off and some valves may be designed to drain or "bleed" water from the water lines.
Irrigation systems can usually be shut-off at two points - at the automatic control box or a valve control box. The valve control boxes are set in the ground, sometimes near the water meter. They too, are rectangular, green plastic, or concrete and can be covered by a layer of dirt and grass. Inside the box there will be two wheel valves and a series of smaller bleed valves. Either of the wheel valves will shut-off the water.
Exterior Shut-Off at the Meter Box
If you have the tools to access the meter box, then the water can be turned off at the city’s meter. Most residential meter boxes are located by the street between the sidewalk and curb. After inserting the key, turn the key counter clockwise one-half turn, lean the key toward the outer edge of the box and lift up. To re-close the lid, reverse the process. Some types of meter box keys do not work in our meter boxes and will turn only about a quarter of a turn.
The 1" x 1/2" wedge-shaped valve will usually be on the street side of the meter. An arrow showing water flow direction will be stamped on top of the valve. Using a wrench (water shut-off wrench, crescent wrench, pipe wrench, or pliers), turn the valve 180 degrees clockwise. The water will be off when the arrow points away from the meter. To restore water service, turn the valve in the reverse direction.
If none of the options above work, the city can turn off your water at the meter during normal business hours. There is a $20 cost recovery charge, per trip. You may contact our office at 972-941-7105, Monday - Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Water Leaks
Find Out if You Have a Water Leak
Have you ever wondered if you have a water leak? You can use your water meter to help you find out. The only tool you need is a meter key to open the water meter box. If you do not have one, you can purchase one at most hardware stores.
Checking for a Leak at the Water Meter
When you open the water meter box, the meter should be in the center of the box in a level position. On occasion, you will find the meter tilted slightly. It still works fine, but it is harder to read the odometer.
If water is in the meter box, it does not mean that you have a leak in your water line. It usually comes from ground moisture due to rain or sprinkler systems. To be sure, you should dip the water out of the box. You may have to do this several times due to ground saturation.
If you notice water spewing from the meter or the meter connections (the nuts and bolts that connect the meter to the cut-of valve or your water line) call Utility Operations for repairs at 972-769-4160.
Checking for a Leak Beyond the Water Meter
Checking for a Leak Beyond the Water Meter If no leak is detected in the meter box, your next step is to look at the water meter register. You may have to wipe the register face off with a wet towel to see the entire meter face. Do not tamper with the electronic meter reading device. Dirt usually settles on the meter from month to month due to rain, irrigation and other moisture getting into the meter box.
Here’s where it gets a little complicated, but you can do it. Some of the numbers on your meter are part of the odometer and they move. One or two numbers to the right of the odometer are painted-on (fixed) zeroes and they tell you the units the water usage is being measured in.
One fixed zero tells you that the red dial is registering one gallon as it moves from one number to the next. The lines between numbers indicate a tenth of a gallon.
Two fixed zeros tell you that the red dial is registering ten gallons between each number. The lines between numbers indicate one gallon.
To detect a leak, turn off all water in the house and watch the red dial for movement. (Remember: If you have an icemaker or some other device that automatically turns water on, it will be detected at the water meter.)
Example: If the red dial moves two tenths of a gallon in one minute you are using one gallon of water every five minutes or 12 gallons of water per hour. If all water in the house is turned off, there should be no flow of water through the meter. If the red dial is continually moving forward, and all water is turned off in the house, you may be losing water by several methods.
Dripping Faucets are easily recognized. You will have a faucet that does not completely turn off, and you may hear an annoying "drip, drip, drip".
Leaking toilets are more difficult to detect. Water loss may be caused by leaking parts or an incorrect setting. You may not always hear the problem.
If the flapper valve in the toilet tank is not seating well, water will flow from the tank to the bowl and eventually down the drain as the bowl fills to a certain level. This problem can be detected by putting some food coloring into the tank. Wait a while and see if the water in the bowl has begun to change color. If so, the flapper valve is the problem. Check more than once. The flapper valve may seat properly some of the time, but not all of the time. This can make this type of water loss difficult to detect.
Another way that water loss can occur in a toilet is through the overflow in the tank. The overflow is the open pipe, usually located in the middle of the tank. If the float allows water to rise too high, water will go into the overflow pipe and down the drain. The best way to detect this is to take the top off the tank and see if water is at the top of the overflow pipe. If it is, the float may need to be adjusted.
Landscape irrigation problems can also result in water loss. These problems normally occur when sprinklers are on. There may be a break in the line or a malfunction in one of the sprinkler heads. Check to see if some parts of your lawn remain wet even when the sprinklers have not been on.
Remember: These are just suggested places to look for water loss first and is not intended to be all-inclusive |
Version control (pt. 1): An introduction
This post is the first part of a series on version control. It provides an introduction by explaining what that actually is, why you should probably use it and how it works in general.
Important terms
Version control (also: revision control) is a means of preserving various versions of a file or of multiple files. This can be done in a lot of different ways but over time some best-practices have emerged that are more or less followed in all modern version control systems.
There are lots of cases where version control makes sense. One of the most common ones is software development where using version control is virtually mandatory. That is why there’s even a separate term describing this form of version control: source (code) control or source code management.
We can group various version control systems together in two groups: local as well as network-based systems. The latter can be further differentiated between centralized and distributed ones.
In short: Why you may need it
Depending on the choice of the tool there can be various situation where you can benefit from version control:
• Version control enables you to quickly return to an older, known-good state in case something broke
• Version control gives you the possibility to precisely document any changes you made and thus provides both tractability and a quick overview of changes
• Version control solves a lot of the problems that occur if multiple people work on the same files at the same time
• Version control makes it simple to clearly find out the author of any change
Or as a former colleague of mine put it (in a very vivid way):
Why to use version control!
Manual version control
The simplest form of version control is working with a backup copy. You make a copy of e.g. a configuration file before making a change to the live file. Afterwards you test your changes and if they seem to work you either delete the backup or keep it for reference. If the changes had undesired effects, the original is overwritten with the backup (and the latter usually deleted again). This is actually a (rather primitive but sometimes sufficient) form of version control: Thanks to the backup copy you have two versions of the file at your hands!
Backup copy – we’ve all done it
Another variant is to make a copy after a fixed amount of time (or at random). Often people prepend the date to the file name. If all you want to accomplish is that e.g. the data as it was at of the first of each month is preserved for one year, that’s also a sufficient method (along with rotating the backup copies so that you don’t keep around more of them than you need).
Those means of manual version control are however pretty limited. And worse: There’s plenty of room for making mistakes!
Manual version control
How a version control system (VCS) works
Let’s think about a simplified versioning process by pretending to do things by hand. For each recorded change of a file you’d make a copy of the file and keep all the old versions of it. A VCS does not forget a single version of a file it monitors! That’s what it is meant to do, after all. Each new version of the file gets a comment that is meant to briefly sum up the changes that were made.
Keeping probably dozens or even hundreds of files around because one file has that many revisions, would really clutter your disk. Also it would not make sense to keep nearly the same file twice if only one line was changed! That’s why local VCS which also version on a per-file base, keep a “history file” around for each versioned file. That file records only the changes between the various versions as well as the comments.
Network-based VCS are able to organize a whole project (multiple files together instead of each one separately). They also record the changes instead of the full files for each revision as well as the comments. All of that data is collected in a so-called repository.
If a new team member wants to start working on the project, he or she first needs to get the files of that project. For centralized VCS this is done by checking out the most current revisions of all the project files from the remote repository. By doing so, a local working copy of the project files is created to be worked on by the user. When using a distributed VCS the remote repository is cloned instead (thus receiving the full repository with all revisions and not just the most current version of each file). The working copy is then checked out from the local repository clone.
At the beginning of a new project there is no repository, yet. In this case either an empty repository is created, checked out and the new working directory is populated with files. In a next step, those files are placed under version control (which means that the VCS is told to watch them and record changes). Then all changes (all of the files since they are all new right now) are placed into the repository by doing a commit.
After every change made to the project you do a commit again, recording the changed state inside the repository. Other project members can now get a current copy from the repository. This way it’s easy to work together on the same project without the risk of (unknowingly) get into the way of somebody else. |
“Now when Jesus
Rose early
On the first day
Of the week,
He appeared first
To Mary Magdalene,
From whom
He had cast out
Seven demons.”
Where will you prepare the Passover (Mk 14:12-14:12)
“On the first day
Of the Unleavened Bread,
When the Passover lamb
Is sacrificed,
His disciples
Said to him.
‘Where do you want
Us to go
And make
The preparations
For you
To eat
The Passover?’”
Καὶ τῇ πρώτῃ ἡμέρᾳ τῶν ἀζύμων, ὅτε τὸ πάσχα ἔθυον, λέγουσιν αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ Ποῦ θέλεις ἀπελθόντες ἑτοιμάσωμεν ἵνα φάγῃς τὸ πάσχα;
This is similar to Matthew, chapter 26:17, and Luke, chapter 22:7-8, but in Luke, Jesus was speaking to Peter and John explicitly. All three synoptic gospel writers said that this was the 1st day of the Unleavened Bread (Καὶ τῇ πρώτῃ ἡμέρᾳ τῶν ἀζύμων). Mark explained that the Passover lamb was sacrificed then (ὅτε τὸ πάσχα ἔθυον), but Matthew did not feel the need to explain that to his Jewish Christian readers. Some unnamed disciples spoke to Jesus (λέγουσιν αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ). They wanted to know where Jesus wished that they prepare to eat the Passover meal amonst themselves (Ποῦ θέλεις ἀπελθόντες ἑτοιμάσωμεν ἵνα φάγῃς τὸ πάσχα). At that time, it was the custom to go to Jerusalem to eat the Passover, not in their homes as later, after the destruction of the Temple. The question of whether this was the Passover or the day before the Passover seems somewhat moot, since this was the 1st day of the Unleavened Bread, when they ate the matzah bread, the Hebrew word for unleavened bread. The Passover meal itself usually included a lamb.
The Marys visit the tomb (Mt 28:1-28:1)
“After the Sabbath,
As the first day
Of the week
Was dawning,
Mary Magdalene
And the other Mary
Went to see
The tomb.”
Ὀψὲ δὲ σαββάτων, τῇ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ εἰς μίαν σαββάτων, ἦλθεν Μαριὰμ ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ καὶ ἡ ἄλλη Μαρία θεωρῆσαι τὸν τάφον.
There is no confusion about the day of the week when the empty tomb was first found. All 4 gospel stories have it take place after the Sabbath, on the early morning of the first day of the week, Sunday. Interesting enough the same Greek word is used for the day Sabbath and the week “σαββάτων.” Thus, this would have been the 3rd day since the death of Jesus on Friday. Mark, chapter 16:1-2, has something similar. However, the other Mary was identified as the mother of James, but also with Salome, the mother of the sons of Zebedee. Luke, chapter 23:56-24:1, said that it was the women from Galilee who brought spices to anoint the body. Only Luke did not mention Mary Magdalene. John, chapter 20:1, said that it was Mary Magdalene alone who came to the tomb. In all these stories, there was either one or more women, no men, who came to the tomb. Matthew said that after the sabbath (Ὀψὲ δὲ σαββάτων), as the first day of the week was dawning (τῇ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ εἰς μίαν σαββάτων), Mary Magdalene (ἦλθεν Μαριὰμ ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ) and the other Mary (καὶ ἡ ἄλλη Μαρία) went to see or experience the tomb (θεωρῆσαι τὸν τάφον). The idea of visiting a tomb or grave site would not have been out of the question, since this was a common practice.
The burnt sin offerings of various animals (Ezek 43:22-43:24)
“On the second day,
You shall offer
A male goat
Without blemish
For a sin offering.
The altar
Shall be purified,
As it was purified
With the bull.
When you have finished
Purifying it,
You shall offer
A bull
Without blemish.
You shall offer
A ram
From the flock
Without blemish.
You shall present them
Before Yahweh.
The priests
Shall sprinkle salt
On them.
They will offer them up
As a burnt offering
To Yahweh.”
After the first day of consecrating the altar, the following day they were to offer an unblemished male goat as a sin offering. However, the altar had to be purified as it had been the previous day. Then, they were to offer another unblemished bull, as well as an unblemished ram. These burnt offerings were to be offered to Yahweh. The priests should sprinkle salt on them, before they were offered up to Yahweh.
The difficult day of your birth (Ezek 16:4-16:5)
“As for your birth,
On the day
You were born
Your navel cord
Was not cut.
You were not washed
With water
To cleanse you.
You were not rubbed
With salt.
You were not wrapped
In clothes.
No eye pitied you.
No one did
Any of these things
For you
Out of compassion
For you.
But you were
Thrown out
In the open field.
You were abhorred
On the day
You were born.”
Apparently when Jerusalem was born, she did not have the usual amenities of child birth. The following things seemed to have happened at child birth at that time. Obviously, the navel cord, which would normally have been cut, was not done so. There was no washing of the child, nor the rubbing with salt as a protective element, nor being wrapped in clothing. No one pitied Jerusalem or had compassion for this city. She was simply thrown out into the open field to fend for herself. She was abhorred from the day of her birth. She had a difficult first day. |
Page 0348
ing to the establishment of Greek nationality; but the spirit of localism, which, in some
shape or other, was the bane of the Greeks in all their subsequent history, was too strong
to be overcome, and the suggestion of Thales was of little practical effect.
In the meantime Harpagus continued his conquests. Forming a large force of mercenaries,
composed chiefly of Ionians and Aeolians, he marched into Caria and easily overran the
country. The Greeks also of the Dorian towns on the coast gave up without a struggle and
became tributary to the Persian king. The Lycians, however, in alliance with the Caunians,
made a stubborn resistance. The story of their defense is one of tragic heroism.
Overpowered by the superior forces of Harpagus, they retreated into their two towns,
Caunus and Xanthus, and when these could be defended no longer, they applied the torch to
their own homes, burned their wives and children, and then rushing forth fell upon their
enemies and fought till the last man perished.
On reaching his own capital, after the conquest of Lydia, Cyrus immediately turned his
attention to the countries on his eastern borders. Of these the most important was
Bactria. Inhabited, like Media and Persia, by people of the Iranic race, having its own
traditions and history, famous as the home of Zoroaster, this land had an affinity in
language, customs, and population with the best parts of the Empire. During the time of
the Median ascendancy Bactria had been nominally dependent upon that power, but no actual
reduction of the people to the extent of incorporating them with the other nations
subjugated by Cyaxares had taken place. The Bactrians were brave and warlike, but less
skillful in tactics and discipline than their invaders. Cyrus, however, in his campaign
against them, found them a formidable foe; and it was his superiority in numbers and
equipment, combined with the impetus of victory which his army had now acquired, rather
than naked valor, which led to his success. The Bactrians were subdued, made their
submission, and were incorporated in the Empire.
The next campaign-following immediately after the Bactrian-was directed against the great
nation of the Sacae. These multitudinous barbarians were excellent soldiers, fighting
desperately both on foot and on horseback, wielding the bow and the battle-axe with
terrible effect, wheeling and whirling in battle like swift clouds driven by angry winds.
Men and women fought side by side in the ranks, and there was little difference in the
effectiveness of their blows or courage. They came into the field a half-million strong to
resist the coming of Cyrus. In one terrible battle they had some advantage. Their king-
Amorges-was taken by the Persians, but the queen-Sparethra-took his place at the head of
the battle, which was fought with such desperation that several Persian officers of
distinction fell into the hands of the Sacae and enabled them to get back their king by an
exchange of prisoners. Nevertheless, the prowess of the Persians proved too much for the
undisciplined rage of the barbarians, and they were overcome. Like the other tribes, they
submitted to the Persian yoke and became tributary to the conqueror.
After this success Cyrus rapidly overran the territories of nearly all those nations which
have been described in a preceding chapter as provincial dependencies of the Empire.
Hyrcania, Parthia, Chorasmia, Sogdiana, Arya, Sattagydia, and Gandaria, each in turn fell
before the resistless arms of Persia. As far north as the Jaxartes- on whose banks a town
named Cyropolis for generations bore witness to the presence of the conqueror-and as far
east as Afghanistan, and southward to Seistan, the Persian king continued his triumphant
march, repeating in each province the drama of victory. At the close of the great campaign
the whole vast region bounded on the north by the Jaxartes, on the east by the valley of
the Indus, on the south by the deserts of Khorassan, and on the west by the Caspian sea,
had been reduced to Submission and added to the Persian dominions.
According to the Greek historian, Arrian, who was Roman prefect of Cappadocia in |
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Martial law
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Martial law
Tanks during martial law in Poland, December 1981. The communist government deployed ZOMO squads and Polish secret police to brutally pacify protesters and throttle political opposition. 91 individuals were killed and thousands were detained.
Dunmore's Proclamation declaring martial law in the Colony of Virginia on 27 May 1775
Ferdinand Marcos with generals during the martial law in the Philippines, 1972
Martial law is the imposition of direct military control of normal civil functions or suspension of civil law by a government, especially in response to a temporary emergency where civil forces are overwhelmed, or in an occupied territory.[1][2]
Martial law can be used by governments to enforce their rule over the public, as seen in multiple countries listed below. Such incidents may occur after a coup d'état (Thailand in 2006 and 2014, and Egypt in 2013); when threatened by popular protest (China, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989); to suppress political opposition (martial law in Poland in 1981); or to stabilize insurrections or perceived insurrections (Canada, the October Crisis of 1970). Martial law may be declared in cases of major natural disasters; however, most countries use a different legal construct, such as a state of emergency.
Martial law has also been imposed during conflicts, and in cases of occupations, where the absence of any other civil government provides for an unstable population. Examples of this form of military rule include post World War II reconstruction in Germany and Japan, the recovery and reconstruction of the former Confederate States of America during Reconstruction Era in the United States of America following the American Civil War, and German occupation of northern France between 1871 and 1873 after the Treaty of Frankfurt ended the Franco-Prussian War.
By country/region
The Black War was a period of violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Australians in Tasmania from the mid-1820s to 1832. With an escalation of violence in the late 1820s, Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur declared martial law in November 1828—effectively providing legal immunity for killing Aboriginal people.[3] It would remain in force for more than three years, the longest period of martial law in Australian history.
Brunei has been under a martial law since a rebellion occurred on 8 December 1962 known as the Brunei Revolt and was put down by British troops from Singapore. The Sultan of Brunei, Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah, is presently the head of state and also the Minister of Defense and Commander in Chief of Royal Brunei Armed Forces
The War Measures Act was a Parliament of Canada statute that allowed the government to assume sweeping emergency powers, stopping short of martial law, i.e., the military did not administer justice, which remained in the hands of the courts. The act was invoked three times: During World War I, World War II, and the October Crisis of 1970. In 1988, the War Measures Act was replaced by the Emergencies Act.
During the colonial era, martial law was proclaimed and applied in the territory of the Province of Quebec during the invasion of Canada by the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War in 1775–1776. It was also applied twice in the Province of Lower Canada during the 1837–1838 insurrections. On December 5, following the events of November 1837, martial law was proclaimed in the district of Montreal by Governor Gosford, without the support of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada. It was imposed until April 27, 1838. Martial law was proclaimed a second time on November 4, 1838, this time by acting Governor John Colborne, and was applied in the district of Montreal until August 24, 1839.[4]
Martial law in Egypt: Egyptian tanks used in a checkpoint near midtown Tahrir during the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
In Egypt, a State of Emergency has been in effect almost continuously since 1967. Following the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981, a state of emergency was declared. Egypt has been under state of emergency ever since with few short exceptions. Parliament had renewed emergency laws every three years since they were imposed. The legislation was extended in 2003 and were due to expire at the end of May 2006; plans were in place to replace it with new anti-terrorism laws. But after the Dahab bombings in April of that year, state of emergency was renewed for another two years.[5][6] In May 2008 there was a further extension to June 2010.[7] In May 2010, the state of emergency was further extended, albeit with a promise from the government to be applied only to 'Terrorism and Drugs' suspects.
The Icelandic constitution provides no mechanism for the declaration of war, martial law nor state of emergency.
On May 18, 2003, during a military activity in Aceh, under the order of the president, Indonesian Army Chief imposed martial law for a period of six months to offensively eliminate the Acehnese separatists.
On September 7, 1978, in response to public demonstrations protesting the perceived government involvement in the death of the son of Ayatollah Khomeini, Mostafa Khomeini, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi appointed Chief of Army Staff General Gholam Ali Oveisi as the military governor of the capital city of Tehran.[8] On September 8, the government effectively declared martial law on the capital along with several other cities throughout the country, after which further protests erupted that lead to the army opening fire on a group of protesters in Tehran's Jaleh Square on the same day. Estimates on the number of casualties vary; However, according to Iranian human rights activist Emadeddin Baghi, the number of people killed was 88 of which 64 were gunned down in Jaleh Square.[9] The day is often referred to as Black Friday. Unable to control the unrest, the Shah dissolved the civil government headed by Prime Minister Jafar Sharif-Emami on November 6 and appointed General Gholam Reza Azhari as the prime minister whom ultimately failed in his efforts to restore order to the country. As he was preparing to leave the country, the Shah dissolved the military government and appointed Shapour Bakhtiar, a reformist critic of his rule, as the new prime minister on January 4, 1979. Bakhtiar's government fell on February 11 and gave rise to the Islamic Republic and the creation of a new constitution.[8]
Article 79 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran forbids the proclamation of martial law without the approval of the Islamic Consultative Assembly.[10][11]
The current Irish Constitution allows for martial law if the government declares a state of emergency, however capital punishment is prohibited in all circumstances, including a state of emergency.
Military administrative government was in effect from 1949 to 1966 over some geographical areas of Israel having large Arab populations, primarily the Negev, Galilee, and the Triangle. The residents of these areas were subject to martial law.[12][13] The Israel Defense Forces enforced strict residency rules. Any Arab not registered in a census taken during November 1948 was deported.[14] Permits from the military governor had to be procured to travel more than a given distance from a person's registered place of residence, and curfew, administrative detentions, and expulsions were common.[12] Although the military administration was officially for geographical areas, and not people, its restrictions were seldom enforced on the Jewish residents of these areas. In the 1950s, martial law ceased to be in effect for those Arab citizens living in predominantly Jewish cities, but remained in place in all Arab localities within Israel until 1966.
Following the 1967 war, in which the Israeli army occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights in Syria, and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, martial law over the Palestinian population as well as the Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian populations in these areas was put in place. In 1993, the Oslo I agreements facilitated limited self-rule for Palestinians under the Palestinian National Authority. Officially, only parts of Area C in the West Bank are under martial law.[15]
Instructions of the Home Front Command are obligatory under martial law, rather than merely recommended.[16] The order signed by Peretz was in effect for 48 hours[16] and was extended by the Cabinet and the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee over the war's duration.[citation needed]
Mauritius is known as being a "Westminster" style of democracy but a peculiar system that was imposed in Mauritius during a period of civil unrest in 1968 as an emergency measure, has never been repealed and is still used by the police force there to this day.[17] The system, which has no apparent foundation in the constitution of Mauritius, enables the police to arrest without having to demonstrate reasonable suspicion that a crime has been carried out but simply on the submission of "provisional information" to the magistrate. The accused is then placed on remand or bail and required to report to the police or the court on a regular basis, sometimes every day. There are examples of this system being used to intimidate or coerce individuals in civil litigations.[18]
The third was imposed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the first civilian to hold this post in Pakistan after the Bangladesh Liberation War. On 21 December 1971, Bhutto took this post as well as that of President.[citation needed]
During the Second World War, President José P. Laurel placed the Philippines (then a client state of Imperial Japan) under martial law via Proclamation № 29, dated 21 September 1944 and enforced the following day at 09:00 PST. Proclamation № 30 was issued on 23 September, declaring the existence of a state of war between the Philippines and the United States and the United Kingdom, effective 10:00 that day.
The country was under martial law again from 1972 to 1981 under President Ferdinand Marcos. Proclamation № 1081 ("Proclaiming a State of Martial Law in the Philippines") was signed on 21 September 1972 and came into force on 22 September. The official reason behind the declaration was to suppress increasing civil strife and the threat of a communist takeover, particularly after a series of bombings (including the Plaza Miranda bombing) and an assassination attempt on Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile in Mandaluyong.
The policy of martial law was initially well received, but it eventually proved unpopular as the military's human rights abuses (e.g. use of torture in intelligence gathering, forced disappearances), along with the decadence and excess of the Marcos family and their allies, had emerged. Coupled with economic downturns, these factors fermented dissent in various sectors (e.g. the urban middle class) that crystallised with the assassination of jailed oppositionist senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. in 1983, and widespread fraud in the 1986 snap elections. These eventually led to the 1986 People Power Revolution that ousted Marcos and forced him into exile in Hawaii where he died in 1989; his rival presidential candidate and Aquino's widow, Corazon, was installed as his successor.
During this 9-year period, curfews were implemented as a safety measure. Majority of radio and television networks were suspended. Journalists who were accused of speaking against the government were taken as political prisoners, some of them to be physically abused and tortured by the authorities.
Others have stated that the implementation of Martial Law was taken advantage by the Marcos regime. Billion pesos worth of property and ill-gotten wealth was said to be acquired by Marcos' consort, First Lady Imelda Marcos. This alleged money laundering issue was brought back recently, particularly in the PiliPinas Debates 2016 for the recently held Philippine Presidential Elections on May 9, 2016. Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr., Marcos' son, ran for the Vice Presidency and lost.
There were rumours that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was planning to impose martial law to end military coup d'etat plots, general civilian dissatisfaction, and criticism of her legitimacy arising from the dubious results of the 2004 presidential elections. Instead, a State of National Emergency was imposed in 2006 from 24 February to 3 March, in order to quash a coup attempt and quell protesters.
On 4 December 2009, President Arroyo officially placed the Province of Maguindanao under a state of martial law through Proclamation № 1959.[19] As with the last imposition, the declaration suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the province.[20] The announcement came days after hundreds of government troops were sent to the province to raid the armories of the powerful Ampatuan clan. The Ampatuans were implicated in the massacre of 58 persons, including women from the rival Mangudadatu clan, human rights lawyers, and 31 media workers. Cited as one of the bloodiest incidents of political violence in Philippine history, the massacre was condemned worldwide as the worst loss of life of media professionals in one day.[19]
On 23 May 2017, President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law throughout the main southern island of Mindanao, through Proclamation No. 216, due to the attack of Maute Group in Marawi City, Lanao del Sur. It was announced in a briefing in Moscow by Secretary Ernesto Abella,[21] and will be in effect until December 2019.
Polish ZOMO squads with police batons preparing to violently disperse protesters during martial law in Poland, 1981–1983. The sarcastic caption reads "outstretched hands of understanding" or "outstretched hands for agreement", with batons ironically symbolizing hands. 91 protesters died at the hands of the ZOMO and the Secret Services (SB)
Martial law was introduced in communist Poland on December 13, 1981 by General Wojciech Jaruzelski to prevent the democratic opposition from gaining popularity and political power in the country. Thousands of people linked to the Solidarity Movement, including Lech Wałęsa, were arbitrarily arrested and detained. Approximately 91 deaths are attributed to the martial law, including 9 miners shot by the police force during the pacification of striking Wujek Coal Mine. Curfews, censorship and food rationing were in place. A nationwide travel ban was imposed. The martial law was eventually lifted July 22, 1983. Contemporary Polish society is divided in opinion on the necessity of introducing martial law in 1981. It is viewed by some as a lesser evil that was necessary to stop a potential Soviet military intervention as the Warsaw Pact, which Poland signed in 1955, enabled other Eastern Bloc countries to intervene if they believed that communism was in danger.
South Korea
In October 1946, United States Army Military Government in Korea declared martial law as a result of the Daegu Riot.[22] On November 17, 1948, President Syngman Rhee regime proclaimed a martial law in order to quell the Jeju Uprising.[23] On April 19, 1960 Syngman Rhee government proclaimed a martial law in order to suppress the April Revolution.[24]
The martial law regime between the 1963 Syrian coup d'état and 2011 is the longest ranging period of active martial law.[disputed ][27]
Following World War II, the island of Taiwan came back to China's control given the impending withdrawal of Japanese forces and colonial government. Martial law was declared in 1949 despite the democracy promised in the Constitution of the Republic of China (the Republic of China refused to implement the constitution on Taiwan until after 1949). After the Nationalist-led Republic of China government lost control of the mainland to the Communist Party of China and retreated to Taiwan in 1949, the perceived need to suppress Communist activities in Taiwan was utilised as a rationale for not lifting martial law until thirty-eight years later in 1987, just prior to the death of then President Chiang Ching-kuo. Taiwan's period of martial law was one of the longest in modern history, after that of Syria (1967–2011).[27]
Martial law in Thailand derives statutory authority from the Act promulgated by King Vajiravudh following the abortive Palace Revolt of 1912, entitled "Martial Law, B.E. 2457 (1914)". Many coups have been attempted or succeeded since then, but the Act governing martial law, amended in 1942, 1944, 1959 and 1972, has remained essentially the same.[28] In January 2004, the Prime Minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, declared a state of martial law in the provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat in response to the growing South Thailand insurgency. On September 19, 2006, the Royal Thai Armed Forces declared martial law following a bloodless military coup in the Thai capital of Bangkok, declared while Prime Minister Shinawatra was in New York City to address the United Nations General Assembly. General Sonthi Boonyaratglin took the control of the government, and soon after handed the premiership to ex-Army Chief General Surayud. Sonthi himself is Chief of the Administrative Reform Council. At 3 am, on May 20, 2014, following seven months of civil and political unrest, Army Commander-in-Chief Gen. Prayut Chan-ocha, declared martial law nationwide.[29]
Since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 the Turkish Armed Forces conducted three coups d'état and announced martial law. Martial law between 1978 and 1983 was replaced by a state of emergency in a limited number of provinces that lasted until November 2002. On July 15, 2016 the Peace at Home Council was said to have implied martial law in a broadcast on TRT during the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt.[30]
2018 martial law in parts of Ukraine
The restrictions from martial law were defined in a 2015 law "On the Legal Regime of Martial Law". The President decides on the declaration of martial law and then Verkhovna Rada must approve it.[31][32]
On 26 November 2018, lawmakers in the Verkhovna Rada overwhelmingly backed President Petro Poroshenko's imposition of martial law along Ukraine's coastal regions and those bordering the Russian Federation and Transnistria, an unrecognized breakaway state of Moldova which has Russian troops stationed in its territory, in response to the firing upon and seizure of Ukrainian naval ships by Russia near the Crimean Peninsula a day earlier. A total of 276 lawmakers in Kiev backed the measure, which took effect on 28 November 2018 and will automatically expire in 30 days.[33]
United States
In the United States martial law has been declared for a state or other locality under various circumstances including after a direct foreign attack (Hawaii after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; New Orleans during the Battle of New Orleans); after a major disaster (Chicago after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871; San Francisco after the earthquake of 1906); and in response to chaos associated with protests and mob action (San Francisco during the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike; Montgomery, Alabama, following the mob actions against the Freedom Riders). It has also been declared by renegade local leaders seeking to avoid arrest or challenges to their authority (Nauvoo, Illinois by Joseph Smith during the Illinois Mormon War and Utah by Governor Brigham Young during the Utah War).[34]
The martial law concept in the United States is closely tied with the right of habeas corpus, which is in essence the right to a hearing on lawful imprisonment, or more broadly, the supervision of law enforcement by the judiciary. The ability to suspend habeas corpus is related to the imposition of martial law.[35] Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution states, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." There have been many instances of the use of the military within the borders of the United States, such as during the Whiskey Rebellion and in the South during the Civil Rights Movement, but these acts are not tantamount to a declaration of martial law. The distinction must be made as clear as that between martial law and military justice: deployment of troops does not necessarily mean that the civil courts cannot function, and as the Supreme Court has noted, that is one of the keys to martial law.
In United States law, martial law is limited by several court decisions handed down between the American Civil War and World War II. In 1878, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act, which, depending on the circumstances, can forbid U.S. military involvement in domestic law enforcement without congressional approval.[citation needed]
See also
1. ^ Anonymous (19 August 2010). "Martial Law". LII / Legal Information Institute.
2. ^ "martial law".
3. ^ Boyce, James (2010). Van Diemen's Land. Black Inc. p. 266. ISBN 978-1-921825-39-2.
5. ^ Simon Apiku. Egypt to lift 25-year-old emergency laws. Middle East On-line, 23 March 2006."Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2006-08-24. Retrieved 2006-04-16.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
6. ^ Joelle Bassoul. Egypt renews state of emergency for two years. Middle East On-line, 1 May 2005. [1] Archived 2015-02-18 at the Wayback Machine
7. ^ Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani. "Egypt: Despair Over Two More Years of Martial Law." Inter Press Service News Agency. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-05-18. Retrieved 2009-06-20.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
8. ^ a b "The Iranian Revolution | King Pahlavi (the Shah) against Dissent". MacroHistory: World History. Retrieved 2010-12-23.
9. ^ "Emad Baghi :: English".
10. ^ "Article 79", Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1989, retrieved 17 September 2017, The proclamation of martial law is forbidden.
11. ^ "Iranian Constitution" (PDF). WIPO. Retrieved November 25, 2018.
12. ^ a b Valerie Féron (2001). Palestine(s): Les déchirures. Paris, Editions du Felin. ISBN 2-86645-391-3.
14. ^ "The authorities did not recognise the legality of residence in the country of anyone not registered during the November 1948 census and issued with an identity card or military pass. Anyone who had left the country for any reason before the census, and was not registered and in possession of a card or pass was regarded as an "absentee". If he subsequently infiltrated back into the country (including to his home village), he was regarded "as illegal" and could be summarily deported. The IDF repeatedly raided villages, sorted out legal from illegal residents and, usually, expelled the "returnees."" Morris, Benny (1987) The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947–1949. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-33028-9. p. 240
15. ^ Cohen, Amichai; Cohen, Stuart (2012). Israel's National Security Law: Political Dynamics and Historical Development. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-54914-1.
16. ^ a b c Katz, Yaakov; Mizroch, Amir (July 15, 2006). "Martial Law Declared in the North". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
17. ^ Gulbul, Raouf. "Arbitrary arrest". Defi. Archived from the original on 2014-05-12.
18. ^ Cupren, Indradev. "Human Rights in Mauritius". Le Defi. Archived from the original on 2014-05-12.
19. ^ a b "Arroyo declares martial law in Maguindanao province".
20. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-12-07. Retrieved 2009-12-05.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
21. ^ News, ABS-CBN. "Duterte declares Martial Law in Mindanao".
22. ^ "Special Project – Having an Accurate Understanding of Korea's Modern History". Pyungkangcheil Church. Retrieved 2013-05-05.
25. ^ P, Bundeskanzlei. "SR 510.10 Bundesgesetz vom 3. Februar 1995 über die Armee und die Militärverwaltung (Militärgesetz, MG)".
26. ^ "Historischer Abriss zum Thema Ordnungsdienst". (in German). Retrieved 2018-11-27.
27. ^ a b "Syria's Assad ends state of emergency". Reuters. 2017-09-04. Archived from the original on 2017-09-04. Retrieved 2019-10-30.
28. ^ Pakorn Nilprapunt (April 2, 2012). "Martial Law, B.E. 2457 (1914) unofficial translation" (PDF). Thailand Law Forum. Office of the Council of State (Thailand). Archived from the original (PDF) on April 16, 2013. Retrieved May 30, 2014. Reference to Thai legislation in any jurisdiction shall be to the Thai version only. This translation has been made so as to establish correct understanding about this Act to the foreigners.
29. ^ "Thailand Crisis: Army Declares Martial Law" (May 20, 2014). Retrieved 2018-09-14.
30. ^ Arango, Tim; Yeginsu, Ceylan (15 July 2016). "Turkish President Returns to Istanbul in Sign Military Coup Is Faltering" – via
31. ^ Matthew Kupfer (26 November 2018). "What martial law in Ukraine could mean for nation". Kyiv Post. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
32. ^ "Verkhovna Rada adopts Law "On legal regime of martial law"". Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. 12 May 2015. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
34. ^ "Church History in the Fulness of Times Student Manual". 2003. p. 276,368. Retrieved March 30, 2020.
35. ^ G. Edward White (2012). Law in American History: Volume 1: From the Colonial Years Through the Civil War. Oxford University Press. p. 442. ISBN 978-0-19-972314-0. As the above details suggest, the imposition of martial law and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus are related, but do not perform identical functions.
Further reading
External links |
Medical Malpractice News
Clinical Decision Support Systems and Malpractice Risk
Tags: , , , , , | Comments: 0 | February 4th, 2015
decision making concept on blackboard
Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSSs) comprise one of the fastest growing and most widely discussed areas of Health Information Technology (HIT) in existence today. CDSSs have been defined as “Active knowledge systems which use two or more items of patient data to generate case specific advice,” (Wyatt J, Spiegelhalter D, 1991); or there’s this from Robert Hayward of the Center for Health Evidence, “Clinical Decision Support Systems link health observations with health knowledge to influence health choices by clinicians for improved health care.”
Put more succinctly, a CDSS is a computerized system that assists health care professionals with some part of the process of providing patient care. This of course is a very broad definition, and intentionally so. CDSSs range from very specialized tools used to help determine diagnosis within a narrow spectrum of possibilities to far reaching systems integrated into Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems designed to seamlessly assist and alert healthcare professionals as records are being made and updated. One of the most broadly implemented types of CDSS at this time are those that monitor drug prescriptions and provide alerts for potential negative interactions between medications.
But CDSSs can do more than just monitor drug interaction, or provide specialized assistance in a narrow field. As technology develops, and particularly as EHR systems become the norm, the potential for CDSSs becomes great. On the one hand you have knowledge based CDSSs. These are the more common type, and consist of a knowledge database, an inference drawing system, and a means of receiving input. The user inputs specific data about a patient, the system integrates that data with knowledge from its database, and then, typically through a very complex series of “if, then” queries, the inference engine is able to provide information, whether probable/possible diagnosis, suggested treatment options, etc. These systems work very well, but require a great deal of information as a base.
Alternatively, non-knowledge based CDSSs may be even more impressive. While still less common and more often used in the narrower, more specialized applications mentioned above, non-knowledge based CDSSs use artificial intelligence technology that allows them to “learn” as they go. These systems use very sophisticated algorithms modeled on systems like neural networks and genomes to learn as they process information. The benefit of this is that they do not require the massive databases knowledge-based systems do; however, in some ways it is less transparent to the user how the system is arriving at its conclusion.
As we mentioned above, the functions CDSSs can serve are fairly broad. While the idea of machines that crank out diagnoses or treatments is perhaps the most likely idea to draw a headline, CDSSs are just as likely to be used for more mundane tasks that, far from taking the place of doctors, could free them up to focus more on patients. L. Perreault and J.A. Metzger identify four common uses.
1. “Administrative: Supporting clinical coding and documentation, authorization of procedures, and referrals.
2. “Managing clinical complexity and details: Keeping patients on research and chemotherapy protocols; tracking orders, referrals follow-up, and preventive care.
3. “Cost control: Monitoring medication orders; avoiding duplicate or unnecessary tests.
1. “Decision support: Supporting clinical diagnosis and treatment plan processes; and promoting use of best practices, condition-specific guidelines, and population-based management. “
Risk Management
So what about risk management? Legislators and policy makers in Washington clearly think that CDSSs are keys to reducing risk in the long run. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 requires not only the implementation and meaningful use of EHR systems, but also the implementation of at least one CDSS type rule in the first round. Failure to do so could mean reductions in Medicare and Medicaid payments.
But most of us want more than just what Washington thinks. Thankfully, we’re beginning to get more and more hard data on the impact that implementation of CDSSs have on risk management. For instance, a recent study that tracked malpractice claims over a seven year period found that over half of the substantiated claims “were potentially preventable with CDS[S].” This seems to be consistent with other studies, most of which indicate that, broadly speaking, the implementation of CDSSs leads to reduced malpractice.
However, specific types of CDSSs produce more mixed results. For instance, a known issue with one of the most common types of CDSS, that which tracks patient medications, is what is known as alert fatigue. This occurs when the systems provide alerts for every possible drug-drug interaction (DDI), including the most rare and/or least likely to be harmful. When this happens the tendency is for physicians to pay less attention to alerts in general, or even to turn the feature off. Unfortunately this leaves an electronic audit trail that could actually expose the physician to greater liability. The obvious solution to this seems to be to provide alerts only for clinically significant potential interactions; however, vendors that provide the systems have been unwilling to do this in many cases because they fear liability reverting to them. There are solutions to problems like this, and they are being actively pursued, but it will take time to work these kinds of kinks out.
Overall, we think there is room to be optimistic about the development and implementation of CDSSs. Medicine is such a complex and deeply human field that no fears of machines taking over the roles of doctors need worry us. There may be some back and forth between regulators, insurers, and doctors over what and how much should be automated, but ultimately we foresee CDSSs, like so many technologies, settling into a role that truly supports the more efficient, effective, and safe practice of medicine.
For Further Reading |
Intelligent Design Icon Intelligent Design
Electroactive Bacteria: A “Mind-Blowing” Case of Intelligent Design
Otangelo Grasso
Editor’s note: We are delighted to welcome Otangelo Grasso, a graduate of the Summer Seminar on Intelligent Design, as a contributor.
As journalist Carl Zimmer reported not long ago in the New York Times, “Wired Bacteria Form Nature’s Power Grid: ‘We Have an Electric Planet.’” Electroactive bacteria were running current through “wires” long before humans discovered electricity. Now that is worthy of note and analysis. How did they learn this very sophisticated trick?
In a tweet, Zimmer did not hide his amazement, admitting that that the “discovery that microbes build electric wires all over the world is mind-blowing.” Though an outspoken advocate of unguided Darwinian evolution, Zimmer in his article did not explain how bacteria might have gotten that ability by evolutionary means.
Zimmer isn’t the only one to confess his astonishment. Electroactive bacteria were unknown until 1993, when Derek Lovley at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst discovered and described Geobacter metallireducens. As Lovley told New Scientist in 2010:
They grow biological wires to share energy in the form of electrons…. I think it’s probably one of the most surprising things I’ve seen working in microbiology. [Emphasis added.]
How We Breathe
Some background on respiration may be helpful here. For advanced multicellular organisms, oxygen is essential to life. During aerobic respiration, it is the final acceptor of electrons in the electron transport chain. In anaerobic (non-oxygen breathing) respiration, on the other hand, as in some bacteria, a variety of acceptors other than oxygen exist. Such bacteria thus can survive without oxygen, which is good thing for them. Some bacteria grow in places where there is no oxygen, or too little oxygen for respiration, or where other chemicals that will do the job are more abundant. Indeed oxygen is poisonous to many bacteria. One group of anaerobic bacteria are electroactive. Living meters below the Earth’s surface, and even on the ocean floor, these bacteria are adapted to live in environments inhospitable to most other life forms.
Geobacter bacteria “breathe” using elements such as iron, sulfur, and uranium. They employ microbial nanowires that conduct electricity (as flowing electrons). Geobacter nanowires are filaments called “pili,” according to Wikipedia. Pili (plural of pilus) is Latin for “hairs.” These “hairs” are thin rod-like appendages, about 1/100,000 the width of a human hair.
Bacteria may have dozens of pili on their surfaces. Bacteria use pili for various functions, including adhesion to surfaces, DNA transfer, locomotion, and gliding. In the most fascinating case, that of electroactive bacteria, they make electrical connections with minerals.
According to another 2010 article in New Scientist:
Some researchers believe that bacteria in ocean sediments are connected by a network of microbial nanowires. These fine protein filaments could shuttle electrons back and forth, allowing communities of bacteria to act as one super-organism. Now Lars Peter Nielsen of Aarhus University in Denmark and his team have found tantalising evidence to support this controversial theory. “The discovery has been almost magic,” says Nielsen. “It goes against everything we have learned so far. Microorganisms can live in electric symbiosis across great distances. Our understanding of what their life is like, what they can and can’t do — these are all things we have to think of in a different way now.”
Specialized pili of the bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens conduct electrons from inside the cell to the iron external to the cell. The metal functions as the terminal electron acceptor for respiration. This, again, is in contrast to humans (and most animals, fungi, and plants) where the terminal electron acceptor is oxygen. In our case, during respiration, electrons are removed from oxidized fuels, such as hydrocarbons, or glucose, inside cells. Oxidation entails the loss of electrons. These electrons are then combined with oxygen, from the air you breathe. The oxygen is reduced to water, since reduction is the gain of electrons. Without a terminal electron acceptor, the flow of electrons stops. This means respiration stops, along with the supply of energy from fuels.
If the terminal electron acceptor is solid, like iron, then it cannot be easily imported into the cell. The solution is to leave it outside the cell and to send the electrons to it. The specialized pili conduct electrons from the respiratory system — that is, the electron transport system required to make ATP, the energy currency in the cell — to the final electron acceptor. Nanowires are among the smallest known electrical wires. And remember, they were doing their job long before humans discovered electricity.
A Marvel of Microtechnology
The architecture involved in nanowires is an ultracomplex, microtechnological marvel. Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Virginia made a significant advance in unraveling nanowire structure. Nanowires, it turns out, have a core of precisely stacked, ordered, and spaced metal-containing hemes (the active part of hemoglobin in red blood cells). These line up to create a continuous path along which electrons travel:
“The technology [to understand nanowires] didn’t exist until about five years ago, when advances in cryo-electron microscopy allowed high resolution,” said [Edward H.] Egelman, of UVA’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. “We have one of these instruments here at UVA, and, therefore, the ability to actually understand at the atomic level the structure of these filaments.” According to the report of his research, “Scientists had believed Geobacter sulfurreducens conducted electricity through common, hair-like appendages called pili. Instead, a researcher at the School of Medicine and his collaborators have determined that the bacteria transmit electricity through immaculately ordered fibers made of an entirely different protein. These proteins surround a core of metal-containing molecules, much like an electric cord contains metal wires. This ‘nanowire,’ however, is 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.”
So Geobacter used highly specialized pili, rather than ordinary pili, to conduct electricity.
The UVA scientists published their results in the journal Cell. The technical details give a sense of the complexity involved:
G. sulfurreducens nanowires are assembled by micrometer-long polymerization of the hexaheme cytochrome OmcS, with hemes packed within 3.5–6 Å [ 1 Å = 10−10 m] of each other. The inter-subunit interfaces show unique structural elements such as inter-subunit parallel-stacked hemes and axial coordination of heme by histidines from neighboring subunits. Wild-type OmcS filaments show 100-fold greater conductivity than other filaments from a DomcS strain, highlighting the importance of OmcS to conductivity in these nanowires. This structure explains the remarkable capacity of soil bacteria to transport electrons to remote electron acceptors for respiration and energy sharing.
Nature’s Ingenious Solutions
Facing daunting technical problems, nature comes up with solutions that are in most cases far more advanced than those in equivalent devices made by man. For example, the journal Environmental Science, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, reports that some microbes can link with each other to form longer, living electrical cables that allow them to penetrate even deeper into oxygen-free areas. As researchers came to appreciate such ingenious innovations, biomimetics has become a growing field of scientific investigation. Nanowires, among the other wonders of biology, have much to teach us. As Derek Lovley has explained:
Microbial nanowires are a revolutionary electronic material with substantial advantages over man-made materials. Chemically synthesizing nanowires in the lab requires toxic chemicals, high temperatures and/or expensive metals. The energy requirements are enormous. By contrast, natural microbial nanowires can be mass-produced at room temperature from inexpensive renewable feedstocks in bioreactors with much lower energy inputs. And the final product is free of toxic components.
Evolutionary Origins
How electrons in this context are transported across long distances was unknown until the 1990s, after many physiological, biochemical, and electrochemical experiments. For electron transfer to work, the architecture of G. sulfurreducens pili must be precisely arranged. As in other living systems, this order is only functional once it is fully set up. How unguided evolutionary mechanisms could produce such a system remains very unclear. One of the few papers to address the origin of electron-conductive pili makes the following claim:
The results suggest that e-pili of Geobacter sulfurreducens and Geobacter metallireducens, and presumably close relatives, are a relatively recent evolutionary development.
But considerable nanotechnology is required to assemble these marvelous wires. The claim above is not accompanied by any detailed or convincing explanation of how this “evolutionary development” was accomplished.
Somehow, G. sulfurreducens “know” how to assemble molecules in their pili in an exact sequential and functional order. The steps involved require the assistance of many elements, including assembly chaperones. Whether these amazing pili can be explained by evolution, without recourse to intelligent design, is of course the key question. The irreducible precision of their construction, though, strongly suggests design. The wires require their several parts to be arranged in just the right way, ordered and stacked in the right sequence, to be able to conduct electrons. Several experiments have demonstrated that if this arrangement of the filaments is not exactly right, electron transfer is not possible.
So, where did nanowires come from? How did they arise? That is a question worth putting to Carl Zimmer.
Image: Nanowires, by Asw-hamburg [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons. |
Starting Point: University and State Capitol
Organizing Strategy: Create a lively, culturally rich environment
Tools: Music, arts, small business
Outcomes: Progressive politics, playful environment, lots of tourists
Primary Resources:,_Texas
As of July 1, 2014, Austin had a population of 912,791 (U.S. Census Bureau estimate). The city is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 1,943,299 as of July 1, 2014.
The city grew throughout the 19th century and became a center for government and education with the construction of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas at Austin.[7] After a lull in growth from the Great Depression, Austin resumed its development into a major city and, by the 1980s, it emerged as a center for technology and business.[8] A number of Fortune 500 companies have headquarters or regional offices in Austin including Advanced Micro Devices, Apple Inc., Cisco,eBay, Google, IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments, 3M, Oracle Corporation and Whole Foods Market.[9] Dell‘s worldwide headquarters is located in nearby Round Rock, asuburb of Austin.
Residents of Austin are known as Austinites.[10] They include a diverse mix of government employees (e.g., university faculty and staff, law enforcement, political staffers); foreign and domestic college students; musicians; high-tech workers; blue-collar workers and businesspeople.[11] The city is home to development centers for many technology corporations; it adopted the “Silicon Hills” nickname in the 1990s. However, the current official slogan promotes Austin as “The Live Music Capital of the World”, a reference to the many musicians and live music venues within the area, and the long-running PBS TV concert series Austin City Limits.[12][13] In recent years, some Austinites have also adopted the unofficial slogan “Keep Austin Weird“.[14] This interpretation of the classic “Texas-style” sense of independence refers to a desire to protect small, unique, local businesses from being overrun by large corporations.[15] In the late 1800s, Austin also became known as the City of the “Violet Crown” for the wintertime violet glow of color across the hills just after sunset.[16] Even today, many Austin businesses use the term “violet crown” in their name. Austin is known as a “clean-air city” for the city’s stringent no-smoking ordinances that apply to all public places and buildings, including restaurants and bars.[17] The FBI ranked Austin as the second-safest major city in the U.S. for the year 2012.[18] |
Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States. Knowing the signs and symptoms of stroke and getting emergency treatment are critical for preventing death and disability from stroke.
Stroke Overview
Reviewed: May 22, 2014
Approximately 185,000 people die from stroke each year, making it the fifth leading cause of death in America. It is also a leading cause of adult disability for those who survive stroke.
Symptoms of stroke are:
• sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding speech
• sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
• sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance, or coordination
• sudden severe headache with no known cause
If you have any of these symptoms, you must get to a hospital quickly to begin treatment. Therapies try to stop a stroke while it is happening by quickly dissolving the blood clot or by stopping the bleeding. Post-stroke rehabilitation helps individuals overcome disabilities that result from stroke damage. Drug therapy with blood thinners is the most common treatment for stroke.
Stroke Symptoms
These signs and symptoms may be present if you or someone else is having a stroke:
Use the acronym "FAST" to help you remember what to do during a stroke:
• Time. If you observe any of these signs, call 911 immediately. Do not wait to see if symptoms go away. Every minute counts. The longer a stroke goes untreated, the greater the potential for brain damage and disability.
Stroke Causes
A stroke occurs when the blood supply to your brain is interrupted or reduced. A stroke may be caused by a blocked artery (ischemic stroke) or the leaking or bursting of a blood vessel (hemorrhagic stroke). Some people may experience only a temporary disruption of blood flow to their brain (transient ischemic attack or TIA).
Most strokes (about 85 percent) are ischemic strokes. Ischemic strokes occur when the arteries to your brain become narrowed or blocked, causing severely reduced blood flow (ischemia). The most common ischemic strokes include thrombotic stroke and embolic stroke. A thrombotic stroke occurs when a blood clot (thrombus) forms in one of the arteries that supply blood to your brain. A clot may be caused by fatty deposits (plaque) that build up in arteries and cause reduced blood flow (atherosclerosis) or other artery conditions. An embolic stroke occurs when a blood clot or other debris forms away from your brain — commonly in your heart — and is swept through your bloodstream to lodge in narrower brain arteries. This type of blood clot is called an embolus.
Hemorrhagic stroke occurs when a blood vessel in your brain leaks or ruptures. Brain hemorrhages can result from many conditions that affect your blood vessels, including uncontrolled high blood pressure (hypertension), overtreatment with anticoagulants, and weak spots in your blood vessel walls (aneurysms).
Types of hemorrhagic stroke include intracerebral hemorrhage and subarachnoid hemorrhage. In an intracerebral hemorrhage, a blood vessel in the brain bursts and spills into the surrounding brain tissue, damaging brain cells. Brain cells beyond the leak are deprived of blood and also damaged. High blood pressure, trauma, vascular malformations, use of blood-thinning medications, and other conditions may cause an intracerebral hemorrhage.
A TIA — also known as a mini-stroke — is a brief period of symptoms similar to those you would have in a stroke. A temporary decrease in blood supply to part of your brain causes TIAs, which often last less than five minutes. Like an ischemic stroke, a TIA occurs when a clot or debris blocks blood flow to part of your brain. A TIA does not leave lasting symptoms because the blockage is temporary. A TIA is a warning sign for a future stroke, and more than one-third of people who have a TIA have a stroke within 1 year if they do not receive treatment.
It is not possible to tell if you are having a stroke or a TIA only on the basis of your symptoms.
Many factors can increase your risk of a stroke, including:
• being overweight or obese
• physical inactivity
• heavy or binge drinking
• using illicit drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamines
• high blood pressure
• cigarette smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke
• high cholesterol
• diabetes
• obstructive sleep apnea — a sleep disorder in which the oxygen level intermittently drops during the night
• cardiovascular disease, including heart failure, heart defects, heart infection, or abnormal heart rhythm
• personal or family history of stroke, heart attack or transient ischemic attack.
• being age 55 or older
• African-American race
• being male
Stroke Diagnosis
If you are having signs and symptoms of a stroke, an emergency team must evaluate the type of stroke you are having and the areas of your brain affected by the stroke. They also need to rule out other possible causes of your symptoms. Several tests may be used as part of this evaluation. Some of these tests may also be used to evaluate your risk factors for future strokes.
• Physical examination. Your doctor will ask you or a family member what symptoms you have been having, when they started, and what you were doing when they began. Your doctor then will evaluate whether these symptoms are still present. Your doctor will check your blood pressure and use a stethoscope to listen to your heart. Your doctor may also use an ophthalmoscope to check for signs of tiny cholesterol crystals or clots in the blood vessels at the back of your eyes.
• Computerized tomography (CT) scan. A CT scan uses a series of X-rays to create a detailed image of your brain. A CT scan can show a hemorrhage, tumor, stroke, and other conditions. Doctors may inject a dye into your bloodstream to view your blood vessels in your neck and brain in greater detail (computerized tomography angiography).
Living With Stroke
A stroke is a life-changing event that can affect your emotional well-being as much as your physical function. You may experience feelings of helplessness, frustration, depression and apathy. You may also have mood changes. Maintaining your self-esteem, connections to others and interest in the world are essential parts of your recovery. Several strategies may help you and your caregivers.
• Stay active and engaged, even if it’s difficult. Try not to be discouraged or self-conscious if you move slowly and need a cane, walker or wheelchair to get around.
One of the most frustrating effects of stroke is that it can affect your speech and language. Several things can help you and your caregivers cope with communication challenges.
• Practice. Try to have a conversation at least once a day. It will help you learn what works best for you, feel connected, and rebuild your confidence.
• Relax and be patient. Talking may be easiest and most enjoyable in a relaxing situation when you have plenty of time.
• Change how you communicate. When you are recovering from a stroke, you may need to use fewer words, rely on gestures, or use your tone of voice to communicate. You may find it helpful to use cue cards showing frequently used words, pictures of close friends and family members, or daily activities.
To prevent a stroke, know your stroke risk factors, follow your doctor's recommendations, and adopt a healthy lifestyle. If you've had a stroke or a transient ischemic attack (TIA), these measures may help you avoid having another stroke. The follow-up care you receive in the hospital and afterward will also play a role.
Many stroke prevention strategies are the same as those to prevent heart disease. In general, healthy lifestyle recommendations include:
• controlling high blood pressure (hypertension)
• lowering the amount of cholesterol and saturated fat in your diet
• quitting tobacco use
• controlling diabetes
• maintaining a healthy weight
• eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables
• exercising regularly
• drinking alcohol only in moderation, if at all
• treating obstructive sleep apnea or other conditions that affect your risk of stroke, if present
• avoiding illicit drugs
Stroke Treatments
Emergency treatment for stroke depends on the type of stroke you are having.
• Aspirin. Aspirin prevents blood clots from forming. Aspirin is an immediate treatment given in the emergency room to reduce the likelihood of having another stroke.
• Intravenous injection of tissue plasminogen activator (TPA). Some people can benefit from an injection of a recombinant TPA, such as alteplase (Activase), reteplase (Retavase), tenecteplase (TNKase). An injection of TPA is usually given through a vein in the arm. This potent clot-busting drug needs to be given within 4.5 hours after stroke symptoms begin if it is given in the vein. TPA restores blood flow by dissolving the blood clot causing your stroke, and it may help people who have had strokes recover more fully. Your doctor will consider certain risks, such as potential bleeding in the brain, to determine if TPA is appropriate for you.
Doctors sometimes treat ischemic strokes with procedures that must be performed as soon as possible, depending on features of the blood clot. Doctors may insert a long, thin tube (catheter) through an artery in your groin and thread it to your brain to deliver TPA directly into the area where the stroke is occurring. The time window for this treatment is somewhat longer than for intravenous TPA but is still limited. Doctors may also use a catheter to maneuver a tiny device into your brain to physically break up or grab and remove the clot.
Emergency treatment of hemorrhagic stroke focuses on controlling the bleeding and reducing pressure in your brain. Surgery also may be performed to help reduce future risk.
• Surgery may be used to repair blood vessel abnormalities associated with hemorrhagic strokes. Your doctor may recommend surgical clipping or endovascular embolization (coiling) or other procedures after a stroke or if an aneurysm or other type of vascular malformation caused your hemorrhagic stroke.
After emergency treatment, stroke care focuses on helping you regain your strength, recover as much function as possible, and return to independent living. The impact of your stroke depends on the area of the brain involved and the amount of tissue damaged.
• You may have problems with movement or sensation on one side of your body and you may experience trouble with breathing, swallowing, balancing, and vision.
• Most stroke survivors receive treatment in a rehabilitation program. Your doctor will recommend the most rigorous therapy program you can handle based on your age, overall health, and your degree of disability from your stroke. Your doctor will take into consideration your lifestyle, interests and priorities, and the availability of family members or other caregivers.
• If you have had an ischemic stroke or TIA, your doctor may recommend medications to help reduce your risk of having another stroke, including:
• Anti-platelet drugs. Platelets are cells in your blood that initiate clots. Anti-platelet drugs make these cells less sticky and less likely to clot. The most commonly used anti-platelet medication is aspirin. Dipyridamole (in Aggrenox) and clopidogrel (Plavix) are anti-platelet drugs that can be used if you cannot take aspirin or if aspirin has not prevented a stroke in the past.
• Anticoagulants. These drugs, which include heparin and warfarin (Coumadin, Jantoven), reduce the blood’s ability to clot.
Stroke Other Treatments
Stroke Prognosis |
The Invisible Male Victims of Sexual Trauma
by Riana Fisher, Trauma Blog, York University
December 13, 2019
"No one comes running for young boys who cry rape" ~ Kevin Kantor 1
Anthony Edwards, an American actor and director, widely known for his role as Dr. Mark Greene on the series ER, is also a child sexual abuse survivor. He was molested by Hollywood producer Gary Goddard. In his 2017 essay on Medium, Anthony revealed:
"I met Goddard when I was 12, and he quickly became a dominant force in my life. He taught me about the value of acting, respect for friendship, and the importance of studying. Pedophiles prey on the weak. My father, who suffered from undiagnosed PTSD from WWII, was not emotionally available. Everyone has the need to bond, and I was no exception. My vulnerability was exploited. I was molested by Goddard, my best friend was raped by him - and this went on for years. The group of us, the gang, stayed quiet."
Other famous male survivors of sexual abuse, assault or harassment include Terry Crews, James Van Der Beek, Anthony Rapp, Alex Winter, and Ryan Locke, Robyn Sinclair and Terron Wood.
People who commit sexual violations against males can be male or female, family members, neighbours, co-workers, colleagues or peers, baby-sitters, current or past partners, sport teammates, military personnel, and people who hold positions of authority or power.
About 1 in 6 males have experienced child sexual abuse or adult sexual assault. As of 1998, 2.78 million men in the U.S. had been victims of attempted or completed rape. The mental health effects of sexual victimization are severe. Victims are at greater risk of suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs, and to contemplate suicide. One study found that these males experience an increased sense of vulnerability, increased anger/irritability and damaged self-image, concluding that the immediate and long-term responses were similar to those described in female victims of rape, contradicting the myth that sexual abuse and assault is less harmful for males than females. And a study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that the sexual abuse of boys was more likely to involve penetration of some kind, which is associated with greater psychological distress.
Both men and women experience characteristics of post-traumatic stress disorder. Still, there is general reluctance to recognize and validate the pain it causes men. And there is limited research on sexual abuse and assault on males. When seeking supportive resources, such as homeless shelters, rape crisis centres, or therapy centres, sexually abused men find there are few, if any, services specifically designed for male victims.
A scan of support services in Canada for male survivors of sexual abuse found only three organizations in the country were dedicated to providing services to this population. Unwanted sexual experiences for males are "common, under-reported, under-recognized, and under-treated".
Social pressures surrounding male identity play a role. Boys and men report shame for having been victimized in a sexual manner, as well as fear of having their sexuality questioned and for expressing vulnerable emotions. As Rick Goodwin, clinical MSW, from 1in6 and Men and Healing describes:
"We all grew up, regardless of gender, with these dictates of the male code. It's not just boys who grew up with these values. It's their siblings, fathers and mothers. Part of the understanding of masculinity is that boys are invulnerable. So, the conception of male victimization is hard for us to wrap our heads around. We know that there are components of masculinity that prevent guys from talking out. So, if part of masculinity is invulnerability, we also have to consider that vulnerability might make men shame-prone because it runs counter to what is expected of their gender".
Men who have been sexually abused or assaulted feel as though their masculinity has been compromised, Jordan (name changed), a survivor of child sexual abuse, confirms:
"I feel inadequate, like I am not a real man. And when people ask, 'How could you have let that happen to yourself,' it makes things worse because that is precisely what I have spent two decades trying to come to terms with."
Men have difficulty acknowledging their experiences as traumatic. A study about childhood sexual abuse found that only 16 percent of men with documented histories of sexual abuse considered themselves to have been sexually abused compared to 64 percent of women with similar documented sexual abuse histories. Rick explains:
"Males take a longer time to identify that they've had a harming, abusive, traumatic experience. The average age at which men come into our clinic here in Ottawa is 45. Women don't take that long. We also think that the average age for sexual abuse for boys is between the ages of 9 or 10. So, we're talking about 3 and a half decades of males keeping quiet about this."
Rick further emphasizes the need to recognize and support male victims:
"The number one regret for males I work with who are survivors of childhood trauma is, 'Why didn't I do this work 20 years ago, 30 years ago?' They realize their experience changed them so profoundly. And that's a painful acknowledgment because, of course, you can't turn back time."
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Environmentally Sound Management – Its status and role in the sea-land interface regulation of wastes
Författare Gabriela Argüello Moncayo
Datum för examination 2018-06-15
Opponent at public defense professor Nele Matz-Lück
ISBN 978-91-7833-061-4
Förlag Göteborgs universitet
Förlagsort Göteborg
Publiceringsår 2018
Publicerad vid Juridiska institutionen
Språk en
Ämnesord Environmentally Sound Management (ESM), ship wastes, transboundary movements of wastes, ship source pollution, port reception facilities
Ämneskategorier Internationell privat- och processrätt
Waste management is essential for ensuring the earth’s resilience and it remains one of the greatest challenges for our and future generations. As societies experience further population growth and economic development, waste management poses both challenges for the protection of the environment and human health. To face these challenges, environmental law requires shifting attention from media-specific pollution regimes to integrative life-cycle approaches of waste management, i.e., from the prevention of waste generation to the actual handling of wastes. Currently, wastes are regulated incidentally within media-specific pollution regimes, or in relation to certain hazardous substances. In cases where wastes are directly regulated, this regulation is concerned with a particular activity. Additionally, waste management has been traditionally considered as a national affair except in cases dealing with pollution transfer and transboundary movements of wastes. This thesis is concerned with the management of wastes generated on board vessels while at sea and after they are discharged to port reception facilities. Ship wastes are studied from an international and EU law perspective. These wastes were chosen for three reasons. First, ship wastes are incidentally regulated within the regime of marine pollution. Second, the prevention of ship-source pollution is heavily reliant on the provision of adequate port reception facilities on land. However, the coordination between these facilities and further downstream management operations is still an unresolved issue. Finally, ship wastes were chosen due to incidents related to the unsafe management of ship wastes on land. These incidents increased the attention towards the management of ship wastes after their discharge on land and framed the analysis of such management from a conflict of law perspective. Particularly, whether the transboundary movement of waste regime is applicable to ship wastes while at sea and after their discharge on land. This thesis examined the regimes set up to deal with the transboundary movement of wastes and ship-source pollution so as to elucidate the obligations and legal principles governing such regimes. Considering the rationale behind these regimes, the author concludes that treaty obligations concerning transboundary movements of wastes are inapplicable to ship wastes while on board ships and on land. Despite the limitations of the transboundary movement of wastes regime, the thesis argues that the principle of Environmentally Sound Management (ESM) embodied in this regime has gradually transformed into a legal principle. The most important contribution of ESM is its integrative function. This integrative function has several outcomes. First, ESM is the point of departure for addressing legal gaps in the regulation of wastes, and consequently it provides the desired coherence to the legal system since it acts as a bridge between several regulatory and sectoral levels. Second, ESM offers a new light with which to understand and interpret existing obligations. Finally, ESM provides a renewed impetus to regimes that directly and indirectly govern wastes. This impetus translates into greater coordination and the establishment of cross-sectional policies.
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Fulfilment, 1905 by Gustav Klimt
Fulfilment reworks the theme from the last section of the Beethoven Frieze, The Choir of the Angels of Paradise, and predates The Kiss. The three couples are very similar, with the man's back turned towards the viewer, shielding his lover's body while exposing her rapt face. In all three versions the man's head is bent over so that it is on a level with hers; in The Kiss this is achieved by having the woman kneel, while in the other paintings Klimt simply makes the man taller. All three works place the couple against a broadly gold background, whether flat, patterned or speckled, which has the effect of setting them from ordinary, earthly love.
On the man's robe is a square with further squares - albeit some distorted - inside it, picked out in black, white, shades of grey and gold, Klimt often seems to have contrasted square or rectangular shapes with circles and spirals to illustrate the difference between masculinity and femininity. The overlapping of the two shapes seems to suggest a sort of physical and spiritual union achieved by the couple, as in The Kiss. |
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Investing in Systems Change
Systems change means improving how systems work in order to achieve greater well-being and impact for all people, particularly people who have been marginalized or underserved.
At HealthSpark Foundation, we believe that our best investment is in creating a financially resilient safety net system that is accessible and effective for everyone who needs it. Because of this belief, we choose to invest our limited resources in enhancing the safety net system itself rather than in isolated programs or services. By investing in the system, we are addressing how the underlying components of the safety net system work together- ideally creating a more effective, equitable, and efficient system that has the capacity to deliver better outcomes at sustained scale over time.
What are the parts of the safety net system?
The safety net system in Montgomery County includes many parts: it includes the organizations that fund or provide human services, such as government, nonprofits, philanthropy, the faith community, and civic groups, among others.
The system also includes the rules and regulations that guide human services programs, contracts, funding streams, and mandates. Additionally, the safety net system includes policies, procedures, and practices that structure how services are carried out.
Finally, it includes cultural norms and incentives that guide how services are provided and how safety net partners interact with each other and with service users.
What is systems change?
Systems change means working to improve how these component parts work together, in order to achieve better outcomes for all people. Systems change could look like projects that realign relationships between funders, service providers, the community, and system users, shifting and redistributing power dynamics to create a more equitable playing field.
Systems change could alternatively include redeveloping rules and regulations or adjusting policies and practices to eschew those that create or reinforce inequity, ineffectiveness, or inefficiency.
Systems change also needs to address problematic cultural norms and incentives that reinforce current power imbalances, in order to achieve greater well-being and impact for all people, particularly people who have been marginalized or underserved.
Grantmaking for Systems Change
HealthSpark’s primary grantmaking is completed through The Innovation Lab grant program. Designed by our community partners, the Innovation Lab is a unique grant program that supports safety net providers while they design and implement systems change projects in Montgomery County. Click here to learn more about the Innovation Lab grant program, or here to see past projects.
Growing Capacity for Systems Leadership
Distinct from organizational leadership, systems leadership means crafting a set of skills and capacities that can effectively carry out systems change work. This includes skills in building effective collaborations, understanding and applying data to solve community problems, and effectively managing through change and transition. Our System Leadership Capacity Building Program trains a cohort of nonprofit leaders and their board members in these skills through a six-month training program available only through HealthSpark. Click here to learn more. |
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top internet browsers- types of web browsers?-information-ideasforsure
what is web browsers? Which are the top internet browsers?
Web browsers are software you can install on your PC to access the internet. Currently to navigate to my site you must be using some web browser. Browsing or surfing is nothing but navigating through pages of information.
The top internet browsers are internet explorer, google chrome, firefox, edge. other internet browsers are Netscape, opera, safari, lynx etc
Internet explorer top internet browsers from 2002
First of all,Internet explorer is a product of Microsoft a giant in the software arena. Further,this is the most common top internet web browser in 2002. Thus this was introduced in 1995 along with windows 1995. Now,it has surpassed Net scape popularity since 1998. Since January 12,2016 Microsoft has dropped all support for Internet explorer all versions other than version 11. Windows 8.1 and windows7 users can have access to Internet Explorer version 11
What happens if we use some other version of IE ?
First of all they will get some security problems which is difficult to discover. Further,if such problems appear their fixation is impossible making it vulnerable to attack. Also all those users of windows vista, xp windows 8, windows 7. windows RT etc. can switch to latest internet browser Edge a current browser of Microsoft and is the future of Microsoft. Alternately use google browser like chrome browser or Mozilla Firefox
Netscape top internet browsers of 1990’s
First of all, Netscape is one of the original best web browsers. Further in 1994, introduction of proprietary web browser and original web browser of Netscape line came into effect. Thus it was product of Netscape communication corporation. It was dominant user in terms of usage in 1990’s.The Netscape corporation did not sustain Netscape navigators technical innovation in the late 1990’s. Similarly the increased use of Microsoft Internet explorer lead to the down fall of this browser in 2002. The business demise of Netscape a central premise of Microsoft ‘s antitrust trial wherein the court ruled Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer with the windows operating system was a monopolistic and illegal business practise. The decision came too late for Netscape. However by then Internet Explorer had become the dominant web browser for windows.
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft creates Microsoft Edge. It is a proprietary software. In 2015 Microsoft edge was the fast browser of windows 10 and Xbox one. Thereafter Android and iOS . Edge includes integration with Cortana and has extensions hosted on Microsoft store. It is 100% safe and virus free. Edge integrates with Microsoft online platforms in order to provide voice control, search functionality, and dynamic information related to searcher within the address bar. Users can make annotation to web pages that can store and shared with one drive but can’t save HTML pages to their own computer. Preliminary support for browser extension was in 2016.
Browsers based on Mozilla code is the second largest browser family on the internet today representing 30% of internet community. Mozilla is a open source web browser design for standards, compliance, performance and portability. Discussion forums, software engineering tools, releases, bug tracking etc helps in coordinating browsers development and testing.
chrome top internet browsers of today
google creates chrome. so, it is google software. Now, it is free and licenced software. Also, it is used with Linux, MacOS, Windows, Android OS. Nowadays Google chrome is one of the top internet browsers.
Firefox top internet browsers in 2009
Firefox is a new browser derived from Mozilla.Its release in 2004 made it second most popular internet browser. It is used across all platforms. It is compatible with OS 10.9,Linux, windows 7,Android jelly bean, IOS 11, various unix system. However, its usage is less than4.66% .In 2009 Firefox usage grew to 32% With version 3.5 overtaking IE7.
However usage then declined in competition with chrome. As of March2019, Firefox has 9.57% usage. In cuba enteria usage is more than 75%.
Actually it was called phoenix in the beginning a mythical firebird that rose triumphantly from ashes of dead predecessor I.e. Netscape after it had been Killed by Microsoft Internet explorer in the first Browser war. Firefox is a widely localized web browser. It was released in 24 different languages.
Having given you information about web browsers can you tell me which browser do you choose? Why?
outbound links
1. wikipedia
Web Browser Types – Tutorialspoint
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Tourist places of India
India is one of the famous tourist place in the world. Because India has all types of tourists destination in one place. Spiritual places, adventurous places, natural places, desert, wild safaris, historical places were in India. Especially, India is famous for its spices and our cuisine is world famous. The most visited state by foreign people in India is Maharashtra. Over 4.5million foreigners arrived in 2014. It has a large number of popular and many religious places were there. Maharashtra was the most attractive state in India. India’s prettiest state is Kerala. Kerala is also known as “God’s own country”. It has the most stunning beaches in Varkala, Kovalam, and many more.
Kashmir is known as”the heaven of India “. The natural beauty that exists in the place makes it one of the most beautiful places on earth and particularly in India. Madhya Pradesh has unique features than other states in cultural history and in rich natural resources. It is considered as the ” heart of India” because of its geographical location. India is also famous for its unique food culture from various states. Various types of dishes like biryani, samosas, dal makhani, tandoori meat, chat are the most preferable foods by foreigners. India is a country which has one of the richest and vivid histories and heritage. Our country is the home to ancient Indus Valley Civilization. The country is famous across hundreds of things. |
Duration Arrays
Definition and use of duration arrays for MATLAB Function blocks
The values in a duration array represent elapsed times in units of fixed length, such as hours, minutes, and seconds. You also can create elapsed times in terms of fixed-length (24-hour) days and fixed-length (365.2425-day) years. With duration arrays, you can represent lengths of time in MATLAB® code intended for code generation.
MATLAB FunctionInclude MATLAB code in models that generate embeddable C code
Code Generation for Duration Arrays
Use duration arrays in MATLAB code intended for code generation.
Duration Array Limitations for Code Generation
Adhere to code generation restrictions for duration arrays. |
Weird and Wonderful Classics: Warfare and Weapons
Apologies for getting slightly carried away with the alliteration in the title; it’s to make up for the fact that I wanted to call this ‘Classics and Explosions’ but couldn’t, because frankly there just weren’t much in the way of explosives in the ancient Mediterranean. As already discussed, the closest we really get is ‘Greek Fire’, the mysterious substance invented by the Byzantines: since it couldn’t be extinguished by water, it came in pretty handy in sea-battles. That definitely comes under the W&W heading, but sadly it’s a little bit late for ‘Classics’, and it didn’t really explode as such. However, it turns out on further investigation that there are easily enough other weird and wonderful weapons to make up for this lack.
‘The Claw of Archimedes’ by Giulio Parigi (1571–1635)
Of course we have to start with Archimedes’ weapons, used against the Roman besiegers of Syracuse. Plutarch (Life of Marcellus 17) reports that he not only hurled rocks at enemy ships with catapults, but also used a giant iron claw to lift them out of the sea and dash them against the cliffs; he’s also supposed to have set ships on fire by focusing the sun’s rays on them with giant mirrors.
However improbable the mirrors may seem (they are, apparently, scientifically possible, but fairly unlikely at this period; not to mention the fact that none of the earliest sources mention it at all), it seems it wasn’t just the Byzantines who were good at setting things on fire. Thucydides 4.100 describes how the Boeotian besiegers of Delium invented a flamethrower out of a large log, some bellows, and a cauldron of coal, sulphur and pitch. Needless to say, the defenders fled.
Romans with an onager
Ancient catapults are, of course, best known in the form of the Roman ballista and onagerbut also existed in ancient Greece, and were even used by Alexander the Great, as reconstructed in this episode of “Man, Moment, Machine” (I highly recommend watching at least the first few minutes for a truly great combination of massively over-simplified history, over-dramatic voiceovers, slow-motion battle scenes with soldiers in improbably plastic helmets, and a whole bunch of academics trying to pretend they’re taking part in a serious scholarly programme. Look out for appearances from two of our own Faculty members!)
But what is this? I hear my regular readers cry. Half-way through a Weird and Wonderful blogpost, and no mention of any animals?! But fear not, reader, for thankfully people in the ancient world, in their infinite resourcefulness when it came to killing people, made use of whatever materials came to hand. In the course of the Mithridatic Wars, the inhabitants of the besieged city of Themiscyra, realising that the attacking Roman army was tunnelling under the walls, retaliated by digging into the tunnels themselves and releasing ‘bears and other wild beasts and swarms of bees’ (Appian, Mithridates 78). Quite what the bears were doing in the city is not explained.
A special mention for ingenuity goes to the swineherds of Aelian 8.19 (translation A.F. Scholfield, Loeb Classical Library, 1959):
“Some miscreants beached their pirate vessel on the shore of Etruria, and proceeding inland came upon a fold belonging to some swineherds and containing a large number of Sows. These they seized, put them on board, loosed their cables, and continued on their voyage. Now so long as the pirates were on shore the swineherds kept quiet, but when they were offshore…then the swineherds with their accustomed cry called the Swine back to them. And when the Swine heard it they pressed together to one side of the vessel and capsized it. And the miscreants were drowned forthwith, but the Swine swam away to their masters.”
Pigs could also be put to good use against the most well-known battle animals, elephants: according to tradition the mere sound of a pig squealing was enough to terrify them. Alexander the Great is supposed to have used this tactic (according to the Letter to Aristotle about India*); the Megarians, beseiged by the Macedonians, took it a step further by covering the pigs with pitch and setting them alight to make them squeal even more loudly (Polyaenus 4.6.3).
But the W&W first prize has to go to Hannibal the Carthaginian. Not for his famous elephants, but for his rather less well-known invention of a kind of early hand-grenade, recounted in Cornelius Nepos’ Hannibal X-XI: pots which, when thrown onto the deck of an enemy ship, would shatter to release large numbers of poisonous snakes. The tactic was later copied by the inhabitants of Hatra in Mespotamia, who fought off Septimius Severus’ troops by dropping clay pots full of poisonous insects, and possibly even scorpions, on their heads. Snake grenades and scorpion bombs: now *that* is Weird and Wonderful.
Source credit: some stories courtesy of J.C. McKeown’s A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities (OUP, 2010), R. Stoneman’s Alexander the Great: A Life in Legend (Yale U.P., 2008), and A. Mayor’s Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World (Duckworth, 2009).
*I can only find a translation of the Old English version of this text online. This Letter was originally composed in Greek but, since it became a major component of the Alexander Romance, was translated into various languages. I highly recommend the book by Stoneman listed above for anyone interested in the transmission of the various Alexander legends.
Author: Anna P. Judson
Classics researcher at Cambridge
4 thoughts on “Weird and Wonderful Classics: Warfare and Weapons”
1. My favourite part of Archimedes’ superweapons is that they turned into a form of psychological warfare (Plutarch, Life of Marcellus 17):
At last the Romans became so fearful that, whenever they saw a bit of rope or a stick of timber projecting a little over the wall, ‘There it is,’ they cried, ‘Archimedes is training some engine upon us,’ and turned their backs and fled.
1. That’s what’s so cunning about using them. The enemy take one look and think, aww, how sweet, that can’t possibly be dangerous….
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Jacques Mattheij
Technology, Coding and Business
The API Paradox
APIs are great, they allow companies to expose parts of their engine for inclusion into the products of others to increase adoption and to facilitate the development of features and products around a common set of data.
In theory APIs are a win-win, both for the party that exposes the API as well as for the party that uses it and since the mid 90’s APIs have become more and more common.
API is short for ‘application program interface’. An API defines a fairly rigid (as in, not changing on a daily basis) boundary where two pieces of software (typically, on the web a service and some client software) meet and where data is exchanged based on certain criteria.
In practice though, APIs are a double edged sword, both for the exposer as well as for the user. In this article I’ll try to outline what the shadowside is of exposing an API, and why this is a potential problem for any users of that API.
When a company first gains traction there often exists a stage where the need to develop software to meet demands greatly exceeds the ability of the company to execute. The bottle-necks are typically it’s ability to attract talent fast enough, possibly the ability to pay for that talent and/or the ability to plan and execute across a wide enough swath of the problem space to serve all those in need.
Enter the API. An API is then defined that allows others to apply their talent and these others are then given (limited) access to the company data in order to be able to serve a particular need.
So far so good, this situation can persist for quite a while. But sooner or later in the life of every company there comes a time when the bottom line starts to matter more than the interests of outsiders.
Now the API gets turned on its head. Instead of a synergistic device would-be competitors that have become dependant on the company for the API it exposes can be cut off at will or can be acquired for peanuts because of the hold the company has over its API clients.
On top of that any API customer that has created a viable niche has provided the company with free validation of some market segment and unless that API customer is extremely well entrenched in its niche it will be easy to dislodge it by cutting off access and re-implementing whatever was needed to serve that niche. Small time players can be continued to be granted access to the API since they don’t consume much in terms of resources allowing the company to claim they are more open than they really are.
So the API Paradox has a timing component. A company that just starts out can use an API in order to leverage the developer community to serve markets that it does not have time or resources to serve itself, with an option right of sorts to take over those markets/companies when the time is right and resources permit a change in attitude. It is not healthy to be found in competition with the sole provider of your company’s life-blood.
If you’re a developer or start-up and you are basing your corporate future on the data provided by some company keep in mind what the future could very well bring and try to ascertain that in the long run too your interests will be aligned. If you do not heed that then chances are that at some point you will find your precious API access cut off and you’ll go the way of many before you that thought that API access is a right, instead of a privilege granted in times of plenty, easily withdrawn in times of scarcity.
Warning signs that you are basing your project/product on quicksand:
• You are not paying for the API
• The API is rate-limited and there is no paid option to exceed the limits
• The company that exposes that API is still very young or in a phase of hyper-growth and is resource limited and addressing only a subset of the market they could theoretically serve
• There are no terms of service or there are terms of service that allow the terms of service to be changed without notice and/or API access to be cut off for any reason at all
• Exposing the API does not form a core part of the strategy of the business
• It is possible to create a competing business using that very same API
• The API offers no (or very little) prospect for being monetized in the future
If one or more of those are true for APIs that are crucial to the operation of your (proposed) business then you had better be very careful and you’ll need to have a ‘plan B’ in case your API access gets cut off at some point in the future.
If your business plan really needs access to certain data then you should at least try to negotiate a solid contract with terms that stipulate how much data you can consume, how much it will cost you and what kind of termination clauses are applicable. Then and only then would it make sense to build a business on someone else’s API.
If you use API exposed widgets as sugar on your cake then of course none of the above applies but for business critical API usage you have to be fully aware of the API Paradox. |
Subsets and Splits