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Mammalian heart, Biology Mammalian Heart The division of heart and separation of systemic and pulmonary circulation is complete in birds and mammals. The structure of mammalian heart and also how the volume of fluid pumped by the heart is adjusted according to the oxygen needs of the body. 774_Mammalian Heart.png Figure: Mammalian Heart The mammalian heart is a muscular organ covered by a tough fibrous sheath the pericardium. It consists of four chambers. Each half consists of a thin walled atrium and a thick walled ventricle. There are two sets of valves. Atrioventricular valve separates the cavities of the atrium and ventricle and prevents backflow of blood. Semilunar valves are present where the pulmonary artery leaves the right ventricle and the aorta leaves the left ventricle, preventing backflow. The contraction of heart is called systole and the relaxation, diastole. A heartbeat consists of a rhythmic contraction and relaxation of the whole muscle mass. The heart rests only during the short interval between contractions. Posted Date: 1/15/2013 11:29:51 PM \| Location : United States Related Discussions:- Mammalian heart, Assignment Help, Ask Question on Mammalian heart, Get Answer, Expert's Help, Mammalian heart Discussions Write discussion on Mammalian heart Your posts are moderated Related Questions Q. What is the function of the feet in molluscs? How is the mollusc foot related to the name given to the classes of the phylum? The mollusc foot has the function of support, l Cells regulate their level of activity by regulating the amount of proteins present in the cell at any given time, so an up regulation of enzymes would be expected to A. increase t Q. Pathophysiology of mitral stenosis? Normally there is no pressure gradient between left atrium and the left ventricle during diastole. However, as the valve orifice size dec Symptoms of digitalis toxicity include anorexia, nausea, headache, blurring or yellowing of vision, and disorientation. Cardiac toxicity may take the form of atrioventricular condu Which of the following processes assist in the maintenance of high levels of dissolved solutes in the interstitial spaces of the kidney medulla? A. Net flux of sodium ions from Q. What are the two major ions that participate in the electrical impulse transmission in neurons? The two major ions that participate in the electrical impulse transmission in What are the Abnormalities of gaze Normal gaze is when visual axes both eyes are parallel in primary gaze. when visual axes are not parallel in primary gaze, it is abnormal ga
Amanita Christmas - Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer ! Buy Fly Agarics So why do Fly agarics appear on Christmas Cards and New Year Cards? Why do Amanitas function as Christmas Tree decorations ? Why does Santa Claus Wear a Red & White suit ? Its popular belief that the Christmas Tradition is not based on last minute shopping sprees to crowded department stores in the cold weather, but on the Fly Agaric Mushroom, Amanita muscaria. Here are the Facts and Myths: Traditionally Fly Agarics/Amanitas are collected in sacks, which can be related to Santa's sack of gifts. The Santa Claus tradition of hanging stockings over the fireplace is based centrally upon the fly agaric mushroom itself, and that mushrooms in stockings were hung over the fire place to dry prior to consuming. Santa's traditional red & white suit is related to the Amanitas color scheme. The famous Christmas carol song about flying reindeer with red-noses are also due to the red Fly Agarics hanging from the reindeers mouths whilst eating - and lets not forget their prancing around in an intoxicating manner afterwards. I guess if there were songs about Santa's magical urine then the connection would be easier to believe. The North Star was considered sacred, since all other stars in the sky rotate around this fixed point in the sky. This point was believed to be the top of the “world tree” and is the reason that it is customary to top Christmas Trees with stars today, and is the reason that Santa lives in the North Pole (directly under the north star). When shamans ate the hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria, they were said to “elevate” or “fly” to the top of the metaphoric World Tree to the North Star. Its been told that an ancient shaman threw a sack of Fly Agaric mushrooms through the smoke hole in a yurt (Siberian hut pictured below) as a gift and surprise to his family members inside. Hence, Santa Claus entering the home with his sack of gifts - through the chimney. Buy Amanitas Kazakhstan Yurt Here are some interesting Christmas decorations relating to the Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) mushroom: Amanita Muscaria Effects
Also found in: Dictionary, Medical, Wikipedia. Related to caseous: caseation, gangrenous necrosis, liquefactive necrosis • adj Words related to caseous of damaged or necrotic tissue Related Words References in periodicals archive ? Confirmatory diagnosis was made by biopsy and histopathology in all cases reported in literature with typical granulomatous lesion with caseous necrosis surrounded by epithelioid and Langhans-type giant cells. 5,10] Kidney size may either be increased due to caseous lesions or decreased due to autonephrectomy. As host defenses decline, the granulomas grow, coalesce, and ultimately result in caseous necrosis. Within these crypts, foreign particles, keratin, and exfoliated epithelium collect and calcify over time, changing from soft gels to caseous concretions known as tonsilloliths. In HIV-positive individuals there is poor granuloma formation, little or absent caseous necrosis, poor containment of mycobacteria with large organism loads and haematogenous dissemination. Caseated lymph nodes were enlarged, hard in consistency, indurated and contained greyish-white caseous mass. These goats have Caseous lymphadenitis (CL), a common but highly contagious and chronic bacterial disease. In all the patients with tuberculosis, caseous changes had affected many groups of visceral lymph nodes. Finally, rabbit granulomas, with their caseous centers, closely resemble the human granuloma. All Band-tailed Pigeons found dead or dying had clinical signs of trichomoniasis including low body weight, listlessness, caseous or cheesy, yellowish lesions in the mouth, throat, and around the beak, and tendency to fall over when forced to move (Stabler and Braun 1975, 1979; Cover et al. The term caseous necrosis describes the remains of multiple dead macrophages at the centre of the granuloma. These tuberculomas are composed of a necrotic caseous center surrounded by a capsule containing collagenous tissue, epithelioid cells, Langhans giant cells, and lymphocytes. 8) Thus, not many people use such CAs as haemal (~ blood), osseous (~ bone), caseous (~ cheese), etc. 28] Microscopic findings of TB involve chronic granuloma reaction with caseous formation. Patrick and the Archdruid, Tristopher and Hilary, Fester King and Pegger Festy, the Mookse and the Gripes, the Ondt and the Gracehoper, Burrus and Caseous, Justius and Mercius, time and space, a tree and a stone, etc.
Money Bank to Bank A wire transfer is an efficient way to move money from one bank account to another. They work electronically, and the transferred money usually arrives at its destination within one or two business days, possibly longer with an international transfer. There is no hold on wired funds once they reach their destination, unlike standard bank policies regarding checks and similar instruments. In order to request and complete a wire transfer, there are a number of steps that need to be followed. Not following them can result in an incomplete transfer, in which the money either ends up in limbo or is returned to the sender. Transfer Paperwork Fill out a bank account withdrawal slip or check for the amount of money being wired from your account, plus the amount of the wire fee. This is necessary in order to remove the money from your bank account. If you want to wire cash, you will first need to deposit it into your account, due to federal banking guidelines designed to reduce money laundering and terrorism. Use ink to fill out the wire transfer form with your information, plus the recipient’s complete information, including bank routing number and account number. The recipient’s full name and address are also required. In order for the wired money to electronically reach its destination. This information must be very accurate. The bank routing number is found to the left of the account number on a check. However, if you do not have the recipient’s bank routing number, you or a bank representative will need to verify it with the receiving bank. Also, some larger banks have special wire transfer routing numbers. All of this needs to be verified before the wire transfer paperwork is submitted, otherwise the money may not end up where it needs to go. Sign the form at the bottom. This is necessary, as your signature approves the wire transfer request. Wire transfer forms are kept as official bank records, so if anything should occur later, such as the recipient not receiving the funds, the signed form provides the first step in the verification process needed to trace the money. Hand your withdrawal slip or check, and the wire transfer form to the appropriate bank employee. The employee will look over the form to ensure that it is properly filled out. Once the employee verifies the information on the form, he or she will then process the wire, which involves removing the money from your account and placing it in the bank’s official wire account. Personal Bank Loan A personal bank loan is unsecured financing for use in a variety of endeavors. In contrast to secured debt, a personal loan involves an application review based on your income, credit rating and additional financial data. Loan Process Materials and Decision Factors With a secured loan, the bank has recourse in that it can repossess your property if you don’t pay. An unsecured personal loan is a bit more risky. Therefore, the lender relies more on your proven credit worthiness. Your FICO score and overall credit report are big factors in a personal loan decision. The higher your score, the more you can borrow and the better your interest rate normally. Documentation and materials commonly required for a loan include: • Income documentation: On small loans, or in cases where you have excellent credit, you may not have to submit proof of income. If you do, you may need to provide W-2 tax forms, recent pay stubs or both. Lender Options In additional to traditional banks, credit unions are another option for applying for a personal loan. There also are online crowdfunded platforms where people who have less-than-stellar credit can apply for loans funded by investors looking to make money on the interest. Community Trust Bank A community trust bank is a type of bank that has its operation in a local area. This type of financial institution is typically owned by someone from the local community who is among the residents of the area. The way it works is pretty simple. There may be a resident who wants to run a business locally. He or she may require funds for it. The community trust bank will provide the funds to that person. But the funds are not just given for the business purposes. If the local family has some personal financial issues, they can also contact the bank. Community Trust Bank Community trust bank works on a rather personal note. The people who run the bank are also those who know the area and the residents well. They are personally aware of the local families and businesses. The decision whether the money is to be given to someone or not is more or less the subjective discretion of the bank owner or owners. All in all, it means that this type of bank runs locally and serves locally. Community trust bank does have its impact on the economy of the country as well. The local people trust these banks and hence they find it a safe haven to save their money. They also sometimes prove to be the only source of funds for the locally operated businesses. Many experts say that the community banks such as the community trust bank Surrey is more reliable when it comes to funding the local business as compared to the larger financial institutions. The bigger banks have a number of clients to cater to across the country and sometimes even internationally. Although they have the local branches but their employees may not necessarily be from the local community. In fact, they hardly have any local employees. Most of the recruitment for these banks happen centrally. This means that they do not have the pulse of the local people, businesses, and the residents. Things are different with the community trust banks. The employee is from the same area and thus evaluating risks and benefits becomes much easier.
Stealth Amateur Radio In the episode of the famous TV comedy series "Hancock's Half Hour" called "The Radio Ham", Tony Hancock says: "It's a wonderful hobby. I have friends all over the world. None in this country, but all over the world!" pic If you live in a modern urban or suburban development, it can be difficult to be a radio amateur and stay on good terms with your neighbours. Times have changed since the days when power and telephone cables were routed overhead on poles, every house had a large H or X antenna for TV reception, and a ham antenna would go largely unnoticed - or at least, not make the skyline look any worse than it did already. Nowadays, phone and power lines are buried, most houses have nothing more in the way of antennas than a UHF TV antenna and a small satellite dish, and an elevated dipole, full-sized vertical or tower and beam would stick out like a sore thumb. Your housing development may have restrictions on the types of antenna you are allowed to have, or you may simply wish to avoid being the person who spoils the look of the neighbourhood by putting up something that most non-hams will find visually offensive. The more people value the look of a neighbourhood and spend time and money making their home and garden look nice, the more they are likely to object to anything that spoils the view. So whenever I see this subject discussed in online forums and someone (inevitably) replies: "Tell the neighbours to go to hell, it's your property and you have the right to put up an antenna" I always think of that line from Tony Hancock. Is your hobby more important than being liked by your neighbours? Not to me, it isn't. Good neighbourliness is not the only reason for wanting to avoid conspicuous antennas. If you live in an apartment or a small town house with no garden, outside antennas may simply not be possible. But all is not lost. The solution is to restrict yourself to antennas that are small, invisible or hard to see. This is stealth ham radio. Realistic expectations Contrary to popular belief, an inability or desire not to have large, high antennas does not mean that you should take up a different hobby. Sure, a beam or tower are out of the question, so you'll never be a "big gun" top DXer or contest winning station able to get instant replies to your CQs. But there are many other ways of being able to enjoy the hobby than chasing the rarest DX or participating competitively in contests. It's possible to win DX awards, even using low power and modest antennas. It just takes longer. If you like taking part in contests then you can compete against yourself, trying to beat previous scores, or use them as an opportunity to log some DX that would be hard to work at other times. Besides a less than ideal antenna, it may also be necessary to restrict the power you run so as to avoid the RFI problems that can occur with indoor antennas, or to avoid blowing your cover by causing RFI to a neighbour. This may seem like a double blow to your chances of success. But operating low power (QRP) can actually increase your fun. The key to not being disappointed with what you can achieve with low power and a restricted antenna system is to develop realistic expectations. Compare your results to other similarly equipped stations, not big guns. Join QRP clubs and take part in QRP contests. The number of participants is smaller and the playing field is more level, making the chances of winning actually greater than if you were one of hundreds of "average" participants running 100W into dipoles or other modest outdoor antennas. Part of the fun of amateur radio is in improving your station to get better results. Improving your station performance within the parameters of complete stealth, low visibility or whatever limits on your activity your particular situation dictates becomes part of the challenge. Stealth antenna options High Sierra whip used as a stealth antenna If you want to get on the air without highly visible antennas then the best solution will depend very much on your personal situation and what you can get away with. One of the first decisions you need to make is whether to go for stealth or covert operation. I don't know if there is an official definition of these terms, but for my purposes, stealth operation means "under the radar". It implies the use of outside antennas that are hard to see, whereas covert operation requires that your activities are completely undetectable. Covert operation may be required in a neighbourhood that has covenants or CCVs specifically banning antennas, but many hams in that situation opt for the stealth approach, and get away with it because nobody notices. While researching compact antenna options I discovered the following rule of thumb: • An antenna may have two of the attributes small, efficient or broadband (work over a wide frequency range without retuning) but never all three. This is something you should always bear in mind when considering your options for low profile or hidden antennas. If it's small, it is either going to be inefficient or have a narrow bandwidth. Stealth antennas that work very well are: • Flagpole vertical. In the USA, I am given to understand, it is the right of every citizen to erect a flagpole on their property, so that they can show they are patriotic Americans by flying the Stars and Stripes. A flagpole can easily be used as, or conceal, a full sized vertical to make an efficient disguised antenna. You can even buy ready made flagpole antennas. In the UK, however, we have no such right, and blatant displays of patriotism tend to be regarded with suspicion, so for most of us it is not an option. • Invisible wire or dipole. Another good option is a long wire or inverted L made of thin wire which is hard to see from a distance. If the feeder can be disguised then a centre-fed dipole or doublet is also possible. This option does rather depend on the availability of suitably high supports to hang the wire from. Personally I don't like this idea because I'm also a birdwatcher and fond of wildlife and I don't want to risk injury to birds who fly in to the invisible wire. Also, in the high density housing developments here in the UK where antenna restrictions are likely to apply, the plots are not big enough to accommmodate an effective long wire, and not far enough apart for such a wire to be really invisible to neighbours. But it is a good option if you can use it. • Magnetic loops. My top choice for use where disguised or hidden full-sized antennas cannot be erected, a magnetic loop can give full-sized antenna performance for a fraction of the size. Because a magnetic loop does not look like how most people expect an antenna to look, and doesn't need to be mounted up high, you may be able to install one without anyone realizing what it is. Try mounting it on top of a pole from which you hang bird feeders, or on top of one of those metal obelisks you grow climbing plants up. • Short vertical dipoles such as the TransWorld Adventurer. I haven't tried one, but I have heard nothing but great reports on them. They stand about 8.5ft (less than 3m) high, and actually work better (with lower angle radiation) close to the ground than elevated on a mast. Coated matt black, they are pretty hard to see. • Loaded whip (a.k.a. "screwdriver") antennas. Loaded whips are mobile antennas. Even the most efficient loaded whip won't perform as well as a full sized vertical, but by choosing one with a very high Q loading coil such as a High Sierra, you'll still radiate a reasonable signal, at a cost of needing to retune whenever you QSY any distance. Due to its small size, you may be able to plant your whip in the garden without drawing attention to it. Use a base extension to increase performance, and as many ground radials as possible. Another possibility is to install the antenna on your car or truck and use a trailing cable to connect it to your shack. (If you try this, use a push fit connector such as an RCA phono jack and socket that will part easily if you forget to disconnect the antenna before driving away!) Multiband antennas Creating stealth wire or vertical antennas for a single band is relatively easy. Creating stealthy antennas that work on multiple bands is more difficult. Wire is fairly easy to conceal. Traps and loading coils are not. Non-resonant antennas tuned using an ATU in the shack ideally need to be fed using open wire, which again is hard to conceal. A flagpole vertical could be made of fibreglass pole (yacht mast?) and a conventional trapped vertical fitted inside. Long wires can be effective radiators, but they require a good RF ground, which can be problematic to create in a restricted situation. Without a good ground, long wires are more prone to RF in the shack, which can cause RFI. That can be particularly undesirable if you are trying to keep your operation covert. Because it may not be possible to get the wire up really high, most radiation will be at higher angles, so local contacts will be easier than DX. A dipole requires no RF ground and no tuner, but will be good for only a single frequency. A more versatile choice is a doublet, which is essentially a non-resonant dipole. Because the feedpoint impedance is far from being 50 ohms on most bands, a doublet should be fed with open wire feeder when tuned using an ATU in the shack, to avoid feeder losses. This may present an obstacle to achieving low visibility. One way round this may be to use a battery powered remote auto-tuner at the feedpoint in the centre of the antenna, which would allow the doublet to be fed with thin coaxial cable and minimize feeder losses over a wide range of frequencies. Small antennas If it becomes necessary to reduce the size of the antenna in order to achieve stealth operation then some performance compromise is almost inevitable. The secret of success is to compromise as little as possible. This is where you need to be careful, as there are many antennas on the market, often with hefty price tags, that claim to defy the laws of physics by offering high performance and broadband operation in something a couple of metres long or high. Well, it just ain't possible! Antennas that I just do not believe to be worth considering include the Crossed Field Antenna (CFA), the EH Antenna and the Isotron. They cost a lot of money, but I would have been willing to purchase any one of them if I was convinced that they lived up to the claims made about them. However, after spending much time searching for reviews and other reports of how well these antennas perform I came to the conclusion that these antennas work on the principle that anything will radiate some kind of signal as long as you can match it to a transmitter, and that customers who have low expectations are easily satisfied. I have never worked anyone using any of these antennas. If the manufacturers of these products feel I am wrong, they are welcome to lend me an example to evaluate. I am just not convinced enough to risk my own money finding out. Ones to avoid Other small HF antennas often suggested for attic installation or temporary outdoor deployment which I consider to be a waste of time and money include: • Hamstick dipoles. These are dipoles made from two helically wound mobile whips mounted back to back. The problem with these is that they are simply too inefficient. Helical whips have been tested to be more than 10dB down on a full sized dipole. • Tripod mounted helical verticals. Another type of antenna often marketed as the solution for antenna restricted locations is a helical whip such as an Outbacker, mounted on a tripod stand. Outbackers are electrically a lot like Hamsticks, except that they have taps and a flylead to short out turns and enable one antenna to cover multiple bands, so the same issue of inherent inefficiency applies. The High Sierra, with its high Q loading coil and a base extension, would be a far better bet. The problem of inefficiency is compounded if the whip relies solely on coupling between the tripod and the earth for a ground. Even full sized verticals need lots of ground radials to achieve best efficiency, and short mobile whips are no exception. • Tripod mounted loaded dipoles such as the Buddipole. Although more efficient than a tripod mounted vertical, short loaded dipoles suffer from the fact that they have a very narrow bandwidth, and so need constant retuning whenever you QSY. This has to be done manually, by adjusting taps on a coil, making them tiresome to use. Short loaded trapped dipoles with fixed frequency coils, as offered by some Japanese manufacturers, will be very inefficient. And at the low height attained by tripod mounting, DX performance will be poor. • Slinky dipoles made using those steel spring Slinky toys. A dipole made from one Slinky each side stretched to about 15 feet end to end will have a broad resonance on 40m; a pair of Slinkies soldered together to make each dipole leg, stretched to about 30 feet will resonate on 80m. They will radiate a signal on those bands but it is clear that they are still very inefficient, and it is a struggle to make contacts on 80m at night with 100W. Contrary to the claims made by those who advertise these antennas commercially they are not multi-band. Performance on bands other than the one the dipole is resonant on is very poor. There are various compact HF base antennas from Japanese manufacturers such as Maldol, Comet and Diamond that may seem suitable for stealth operation. Their slimline appearance and fixed tuning on each band deny the use of any high Q components and I simply don't believe that these manufacturers have managed to discover a new law of physics that allows an HF antenna to be small, efficient and broadband! Narrow bandwidth is good! Many people find it inconvenient to have to retune an antenna every time they move a few kHz in frequency but, remembering the rule of thumb mentioned earlier, narrow bandwidth is normally proof of a high Q which suggests that the antenna should work better than you would expect for its size. So if you are forced to use an electrically small antenna look at the SWR bandwidth figures. Contrary to what you might think when choosing an antenna, in this case, the narrower the bandwidth the better. That means that you really want the antenna to be tunable unless you wish to confine your operation to a narrow section of each band. This is one more reason to consider the magnetic loop. Using an ATU may compensate for a small antenna's narrow bandwidth to some extent, but though it will keep your finals happy a high Q antenna will not radiate as good a signal when it is a long way from its resonant frequency. Indoor and attic antennas If you need to keep your operation covert, then you probably need your antennas to be indoors, either in the attic or, in the last resort, in the shack itself. Whether or not this is possible in practise depends a lot on the form of construction used for your house, or its roof. If you have metal walls or a metal roof, or your roof lining is foil backed, then you are out of luck. If you can't have an indoor antenna, then there are still a few options left. Some operators have laid dipoles in the plastic guttering - or better, pinched the wire between the guttering and the fixing brackets, so it doesn't lay in the water and impede the run-off of mud and leaves from the roof. I've even heard of people who have metal guttering using that as the antenna, though you'd need to ensure good electrical contact between the sections. Another possibility is to tape a wire to the back of a plastic downpipe and use that as a vertical, fed at the top or bottom against a counterpoise, or in the middle as a dipole. If you have an attic you can use, then it can be turned into an effective antenna farm, ideal for experimentation. There is no need to bother about making your antennas water- or weather-proof and you don't have to work at heights - a major plus as far as I am concerned. If your garden or yard is as small as ours is, you'll be sacrificing little in terms of the size of the antenna you can put up, and it will be hard to gain any extra height while maintaining full stealth. The most significant downside is the proximity to wiring radiating the noise of all the switched mode power supplies used to power your electronic devices. Antennas that work well in the attic include: • Dipoles. Dipoles are cheap and easy to make, easy to put up and easy to match, since on the frequency they are designed for they present a close to 50 ohm load. The main disadvantage is that you need a dipole for each band, and that dipoles for the lower bands are too long to fit in the average British attic. (Even a 20m dipole would need to be bent in to a U shape to fit into mine.) The solution for multiband access is to make a fan dipole, as described (with pictures) by M0WYM (who clearly has an attic much bigger than ours.) I would endorse Peter's use of a balun at the feedpoint, to eliminate radiation from the feeder - a potential cause of RFI. • Doublets. A doublet is a dipole that is operated over a much wider range of frequencies than those for which it provides a good match. For this to work, you must either use a remote ATU at the feedpoint, or use open wire feeder and a special ATU designed to tune open wire such as the MFJ-993B. • Horizontal loop. This is similar to a doublet, except the antenna is a continuous loop of wire instead of two separate elements. This is often a better solution than a dipole/doublet, as you can get more wire in the air (or in the attic) and a loop tends to pick up less noise. Since you will be tuning it over a wide range of frequencies matching arrangements will be the same as for the doublet. • Magnetic loop. As already mentioned, a remotely tuned magnetic loop is my top recommendation for an antenna in situations where a full sized antenna mounted at optimum height cannot be used. It is small enough to fit any attic, radiates a better signal than anything that even approaches its size, and can be tuned for a perfect match on any frequency within its design range. It is also inherently less sensitive to electrical noise than a dipole - a useful attribute for an antenna that is used indoors. This is my current main antenna, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. • Short vertical dipole. If you have sufficient height in the attic, and enough space to allow siting away from metal or pipework, then one of the portable vertical antennas such as the TransWorld Adventurer can give good results. Perhaps someone will come up with a design for a home-brew QRP version. Using low power Though not an essential for stealth or covert operation, it can be advisable to use low power when using an indoor (or in-attic) antenna. It's hard to avoid EMC problems when the antenna is so close to your electronic appliances and house wiring. You should also ensure that you or other family members are not exposed to excessively high RF power levels through proximity to your transmitting antennas. 5 watts, the generally accepted level for QRP operation, will not do any harm. 100 watts might do. If you are concerned about your ability to make contacts, remember that the difference between 100 watts and 5 watts is only two S-points, which is usually a lot less than the QSB at any given time. This means that if you can work someone using 100 watts you can almost certainly still work them using low power, with a bit more patience. The best way to compensate for using lower power and a less effective antenna is to use the most efficient modes of communication. CW and PSK31 will enable you to get the same kind of results you'd need 100W and a full sized dipole to manage on SSB, or even better. I have had rag-chew contacts with Stateside stations on PSK using 4 watts to a loop of wire strung round the perimeter of my attic. Who needs QRO and tons of aluminium? Despite the fact that I don't get a lot of time to go on the air I have worked North and South America, Antarctica, Japan, South Africa and the Philippines. The only continent I haven't yet worked is Australia. European contacts are always possible. And I have fun doing it. Antenna restrictions are no reason for giving up ham radio. It's still possible to enjoy the hobby without spoiling the enjoyment of the view from their back garden for your suburban neighbours. So don't be deterred. Become a covert radio operator and get on the air! You have eQSLs waiting! Enter your call and click Check Locations of visitors to this page
I've always felt that folks who set out decoys, squat in duck blinds, blow duck calls and wield shotguns weren't playing fair. But nature, not burdened by a conscience, also resorts to bird trickery. Plants, for example, have evolved ways to achieve pollination and seed dispersal by deceiving birds - but with happy rather than lethal results. A dramatic and unique example of this deception is provided by several species of Osmoxylon trees and shrubs, which are native to hundreds of Tropical Pacific islands. Osmoxylon plants (previously called Boerlagiodendron) had baffled botanists because they seem to bear bunches of ripe fruit below their lovely flower clusters. This, botanically speaking, is impossible, as famed plantsman David Fairchild wrote in "Garden Islands of the Great East." "To a botanist, it was an amazing sight to see at the same time, ripe fruits and flowers full of pollen, in the same cluster." This puzzle was sorted out by the Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari, who studied the plants on Borneo. He discovered that the tasty, temptingly displayed fruit are false fruit-entirely seedless structures that serve only to attract native wood pigeons which, while feeding on them, inadvertently coat their breasts with pollen. And when the pigeons fly to the next Osmoxylon, they dust the pollen onto the flowers above that plant's fake fruit. The true seed-bearing fruit develop only after the false fruit have been devoured by pigeons unaware of their role as cross-pollinators. Unfortunately for Florida gardeners who would like to grow an Osmoxylon, these plants are rare in cultivation despite their great beauty and interesting reproductive cycle. Another plant that employs fraudulent fruit to mislead our feathered friends is podocarpus (P. macrophyllus), a Japanese species used extensively in Florida landscapes for hedges, screens, and specimen trees. Podocarpus plants are either male or female, and while male individuals don't resort to avian deceit, females use a method of seed dispersal that strikes me as taking advantage of bird-brained creatures. The spherical, gray-green seeds of podocarpus are individually and conspicuously positioned atop appendages called arils, which are not uncommon structures in the plant kingdom. But podocarpus arils, plump and purple, look exactly like fruit to hungry birds. The aim of this artifice is to trick birds into seizing and detaching the false fruits, flying off and dropping the attached seeds away from the mother plant, thus ensuring widespread dispersal. The only problem with this fruit fakery is that the arils, though they appear delectable, are insipid, with only a hint of flavor and sweetness. In fact Florida birds, unimpressed by the fruit-like arils of podocarpus, rarely consume them. Happy gardening! Cloves: Used for flavoring foods, cloves are unopened flower buds of the West Indian clove tree. (Charles Reynolds has an associate's degree in horticulture and is a member of the Garden Writers Association of America. He writes for The Ledger in Lakeland, Fla.)
Robots Can't Think These robots might not have brains, but their arms are ten times as strong as human arms! That's why they can climb walls, and even stick to the ceiling: they defy gravity easily! In each level the robots are tested in a different way. You'll have to think for them, because they themselves can only carry out instructions. So think carefully about how to proceed when you need to place a cube on a kind of cover with a key beneath it, so that the door you'll have to pass, will stay open. The robot's don't manage to climb walls when they carry a cube in their hands, so everything has to be done and moved in the right order. You can use the 'translocator' as an aid to do so! Press the down arrow to pick up items. If you want to throw an item, use the up arrow and if you want to drop the item, press the down arrow. Press X to activate the 'translocator', that will temporarily move your 'other me', until the effect has worn off. Press C to influence time. This game is Score 6.0 of 10
The 5 E's of Economics I. What Is Economics? Just what is the study of economics? A common "textbook-like" definition might be: Economics is the study of how we choose to use limited resources to obtain the maximum satisfaction of unlimited human wants This definition has four parts that we need to discuss: 1. the "study of" economics 2. choice 3. scarcity 4. maximizing satisfaction A definition of "economics" that I used when I first taught is: ( NOTE: I am Mark and soon after I moved to Illinois I bought a house in Wonder Lake in McHenry County. Wonder Lake is a nice lake, private, but we didn't own a boat.) My definition highlights an important component of economics: SCARCITY. The reason why I didn't have a boat, or the reason why you don't have everything that you want is because of SCARCITY. The term "scarcity" has a slightly different definition in an economics class than it does in the "real" world. NOTE: Many words have different meanings in an economics class than the definition that you may already know. For example, let's take the word DEMAND. If I ask you "What happens to the demand for boats when the price of boats goes up?" If the price of boats goes up, then demand for boats goes . . . . . . NO! THE DEMAND DOES NOT GO DOWN. The quantity demanded goes down, but not demand itself. BECAUSE ECONOMISTS HAVE A DIFFERENT DEFINITION FOR DEMAND. We'll talk more about that later. Another example is the word INVESTMENT. In an economics class the term "investment" does NOT mean the stock market, money markets. or mutual funds. We will have to call such things "financial investments" because the term "investment" has a different meaning in economics. So back to the term SCARCITY. Scarcity does not mean that only a little of something is available. For example, I grew up in northeastern Minnesota . About 30 miles away from my hometown was the town of Erskine, Minnesota. Just outside of town a certain type of rock exists that occurs nowhere else in the world. They have named it "Erskinite". Erskinite is only found near Erskine, Minnesota and only a little of it has ever been found. BUT IT IS NOT SCARCE. -- WHY? - - Because nobody wants it. For there to be scarcity things must be LIMITED and WANTED. There is plenty of ERSKINITE and it IS NOT SCARCE because nobody wants it. Goods and services are scarce. These are the things that we want. Goods are tangible things that satisfy our wants (like boats, computers, cars, etc.), services are intangible things that satisfy our wants (like the services of an accountant, or a dentist, or a lawyer). Even in the United States - one of the richest countries in the world - goods and services are scarce. WHY? This brings us to another important principle in economics. After teaching economics for a year or so, I bought a boat. Since I defined economics as the study of why I didn't have a boat - I had a problem. But then I simply changed my definition slightly. Now economics is: the study of why Mark doesn't have a . . a . . .a what? This brings us to that second principle: economists assume that humans have UNLIMITED WANTS. Once I got a boat, I wanted a bigger boat. After getting a bigger boat I wanted a sailboat. then a row boat, and . . . and the list goes on and on. (I now own 5 boats and I want a jetski.) Do we ever have EVERYTHING that we could ever want? Since human wants are unlimited, and resources used to satisfy those wants are limited - there is scarcity. Even in the US, one of the richest countries in the world, there is scarcity -- if we use our new definition of SCARCITY. Do you have everything that you want? There is always scarcity, because human wants are unlimited. This then brings use to a third important idea: Because of scarcity we MUST MAKE CHOICES. Some economists call this the "economizing problem". We can't have everything that we want so we have to choose. This is what economics is really all about - MAKING CHOICES. Because of scarcity we as individuals, and our society as a whole, must make choices. For example when I was thinking about buying a boat, I also needed shoes for my daughter. If we assume that I couldn't afford both (again - can you afford everyhting that you want?) I had a choice to make a boat or shoes? Hm-m-m-m-m? ? ? - - - - - I have a nice boat! Our goal is to make choices that reduce scarcity as much as we can. Because of unlimited wants we can never eliminate scarcity, but it can be reduced by the right choices. Hopefully, this is what governements attempt to do: make the right choices to reduce scarcity and increase the standard of living for their citizens. Another way to say this is that we want to get the MAXIMUM SATISFACTION possible out of our limited resources. We don't want to make just any choice, we want to make the BEST choice. There are three, and only three, options (choices) for society to deal with scarcity, and all societies must deal with scarcity because there are limited resources and unlimited wants. Those three options are: 1. economic growth 2. reduce our wants, and 3. use our existing resources wisely (Don't waste the few resources that we do have.) Let's look at each of these briefly. Economic Growth (the first "E") Let's define Economic Growth as an increase in the ABILITY to produce goods and services. This is not the way the term is normally defined. Later this semester we'll discuss the various definitions of Economic Growth, but here we'll use this more fundamental definition: Economic Growth is an increase in the ABILITY to produce goods and services. This means we are ABLE to produce more, but it doesn't necessarily mean we do produce more. More on this later. This type of Economic Growth is caused by: a) more resources b) better resources c) better technology If we only had more resources we could produce more goods and services and satisfy more of our wants. This will reduce scarcity and give us more satisfaction (more good and services). All societies therefore try to achieve economic growth. Reducing Wants A second way for a society to handle scarcity is to reduce its wants. If we just didn't want so much then there would be less scarcity. For example we know that gasoline is scarce. (Can you get all that you want for the price you want? If you have to pay a price for something, then it is scarce.) Space on our roads is also often very scarce. Let's say that the president of the United States decides to do something about these problems by initiating a new program called: SHARE A CAR WITH YOUR NEIGHBOR. It includes a law that says there can only be ONE CAR FOR EVERY TWO FAMILIES. This would reduce the scarcity of gasoline and space on our roadways, but . . . . let's impeach that president!!! The option of REDUCING WANTS is one of the options that societies have for dealing with scarcity, but it is not a very good option. Maybe during war time, if our president asks us to "share a car with our neighbor", we would. But it is not a long-term solution to the problem of scarcity that most of us would accept. Although it is an option that we should keep in mind. That brings us to the third option for dealing with scarcity (and to the remaining 4 "E's" of economics.) Using our existing resources wisely = maximizing satisfaction Societies can reduce scarcity not just by (1) getting more resources, better resources, or better technology (i.e. ECONOMIC GROWTH), or by (2) REDUCING ITS WANTS, but also by (3) USING ITS EXISTING RESOURCES WISELY There are four ways that societies can use their EXISTING resources to reduce scarcity. I call these the 4 Es of economics - four ways to use our existing resources to reduce scarcity and obtain the maximum satisfaction possible. The fifth E (economic growth) also reduces scarcity and gives us more satisfaction but it does it by using ADDITIONAL resources. Societies will try to achieve all 5 Es of economics. The four ways that societies can use their EXISTING resources to reduce scarcity are: 1. Productive Efficiency 2. Allocative Efficiency 3. Full Employment, and 4. Equity Maximizing Satisfaction -- [Four More Es: Efficiency, Efficiency, Equity, Employment] Let's discuss each of these individually keeping in mind 1. their definition, 2. examples of each, and most importantly 3. how do they reduce scarcity and help society achieve the MAXIMUM SATISFACTION from their available resources? Productive efficiency can be defined as, or achieved by, producing at a minimum cost By producing at a minimum cost, FEWER RESOURCES are used and MORE can be produced. This reduces scarcity and gives us more satisfaction from our existing resources. We can produce at a minimum cost and achieve productive efficiency by: a. not using more resources than necessary b. using resources where they are best suited c. using appropriate technology Let's look at each of these individually using some examples. REMEMBER our goal is to understand how they reduce scarcity and help society achieve the maximum satisfaction possible from its existing resources. This is the goal of economics. You must keep this goal in mind as we go through these examples. not using more resources than necessary If businesses use extra resources that they do not need, then these resources are wasted. Since we know that resources are limited and human wants are unlimited, let's not waste any of the few resources that we do have. By not using more resources than necessary, we free up resources that can be used somewhere else and we PRODUCE MORE. (a) Janitors at Harper Let's assume that Harper College employs 50 janitors to clean its buildings and that's enough to do a good job. If Harper then hired 25 more janitors this would be wasteful. Even though they could probably find something to do to keep busy, they aren't needed. Fifty janitors can do the job. So society would be better off if Harper did NOT employ these additional janitors so that they could go get a job somewhere else (like maybe at a boat factory) where they would produce more for society. It would be productively inefficient to employ 75 janitors at Harper. Harper's costs will be higher (productive inefficiency) and society's output would be lower (less satisfaction). (b) Grocery stores: USSR Several years ago, one of my students gave me this example. She had visited Moscow when the communist Soviet Union still existed. She said that she was surprised when she entered a grocery store and saw four employees at every cash register! What a waste of labor resources. In the US we find one, or two, workers at a checkout stand and only a few will be open. In Moscow ALL stands were open with four employees each. This is productively inefficient. Their costs are higher and since labor is being wasted, they will produce less. They are not achieving the maximum satisfaction possible from their limited resources (productive inefficiency). (c) Motorola/Sears/AT&T/etc. lay off 1,000s of workers Take a brief look at one or a few of the following news articles. (When you click on the link they should appear in a new browser window.) Are these layoffs good for society? If each company was able to continue producing the same amount of output after laying off thousands of workers then they must have been productively inefficient before the layoffs. So, if it would be good for Harper to only employ 50 janitors (and layoff the extra 25) or if it would be good for the grocery stores in the Soviet Union to lay off some of their employees, THEN THESE LAYOFFS ARE GOOD FOR SOCIETY. I realize that this may be a bit controversial. If you have questions let's discuss them on our discussion forum. (When you click on the link it should appear in a new browser window.) Keep in mind the GOAL: reducing scarcity and achieving the maximum satisfaction possible from our limited resources. If these companies can still produce the same amount of output with thousands fewer employees, by laying them off they become available to work somewhere else producing MORE for society. BUT, will they find another job? These articles indicate that in today's economy they probably will: WHAT IF THEY DON'T FIND A JOB? Would it be better for society to have them stay at companies where they are not needed or to be unemployed collecting unemployment compensation or welfare? I would consider the possibility that it would it be BETTER for society to have them be unemployed collecting unemployment compensation or welfare. That way we know they are AVAILABLE for any new boat companies that may want to build a new factory. Not all layoffs are good for society. See: lay-offs.htm using resources where they are best suited The second way to produce at a minimum cost and achieve productive efficiency is to use resources where they are best suited. If businesses use resources where they are best suited then MORE can be produced from the same amount of resources. (a) secretaries / truck drivers Let's say I own a company which employs secretaries and truck drivers. Normally the secretaries type letters and the truck drivers drive trucks. One day I decide to try something new . I had the secretaries drive the trucks and the truck drivers type letters. What happened to the COST per load delivered or the COST per letter typed? Hopefully you were thinking "they went up." Therefore we are not producing at a minimum cost and we are productively inefficient. Furthermore, and most importantly, LESS WILL BE PRODUCED. Therefore, to be productively efficient and achieve the maximum satisfaction possible from our existing resources we must use resources where they are best suited. (b) doctors/engineers Doctors should work in the hospitals and engineers should build the bridges. This would be productively efficient. More bridges will be built and more lives saved . It would be productively inefficient (i.e. more costly) to have engineers work in the hospitals and doctors build the bridges. Fewer bridges would be built and fewer lives saved. This would be productively inefficient - a waste of existing resources. (c) Illinois-corn/Alabama-cotton - another example, but with something new Illinois has resources (weather, machinery, soil, etc.) better suited to grow corn, whereas Alabama has resources better suited to grow cotton. So it makes sense for Illinois to grow corn and for Alabama to grow cotton since this way we get more corn and more cotton from the same amount of resources. This is productively efficient. But there is just one problem. In Illinois we have a lot to eat (corn) but no clothes (cotton). And in Alabama they have cotton clothing, but they are staving. So what do we do? We exchange or trade. We in Illinois sell corn to those in Alabama and they sell cotton to us. If we didn't trade then we would have to grow both corn and cotton and Alabama would have do the same. The result would be LESS CORN and LESS COTTON being produced. from the same resources we would have fewer goods because we are not using resources where they are best suited - i.e. productive inefficiency. (d) North Dakota-potatoes / Honduras-sugar North Dakota has resources suited to growing potatoes (cold climate, good soil, etc.). Honduras, in Central America, has resources suited to growing sugar, or sugar cane (hot wet climate, poorer soils, etc.). So it is productively efficient to grow potatoes in North Dakota and to grow sugar in Honduras. Costs are lower, and more importantly, more can be grown with the existing resources. this helps society get the maximum satisfaction possible from its existing resources. Why, then, do they grow sugar (sugar beets) in North Dakota? The sugar that we get from sugar beets is very expensive. Why do we grow sugar beets in North Dakota when we can get cheap, high quality, sugar from Honduras? The answer has to do with trade. There is free trade between Illinois and Alabama. Free trade means that the government does not try to restrict trade with taxes or other barriers. Therefore, Alabama and Illinois can use their resources where they are best suited and achieve productive efficiency, i.e. they produce more with the resources available. But there are trade restrictions on sugar between the US and Honduras. This, then, encourages the farmers to be productively inefficient. The barriers to free trade results in higher prices and this encourages North Dakota farmers to grow sugar resulting in productive inefficiency and LESS BEING PRODUCED. (e) free trade Free trade, then, is a necessary condition to achieve productive efficiency since it allows resources to be used where they are best suited - regardless of the state, or the country. (f) discrimination Economists have a slightly different view of discrimination. They would ask, "How does discrimination affect the quantity of boats (and everything else) that are produced with the resources available?" Since discrimination is by definition NOT USING RESOURCES WHERE THEY ARE BEST SUITED, it results in higher costs and less output - or productive inefficiency. using appropriate technology The third way to produce at a minimum cost and achieve productive efficiency is to use the appropriate technology. By "appropriate" we mean the technology that minimizes the costs. Sometimes this is termed the "best "technology. But I prefer "appropriate" because "best" my infer "high tech" or computer technology. But the most up-to-date technology is not always the most appropriate (lowest cost). By using the technology that minimizes costs, it minimizes the amount of resources used, since it is the resources that make up the costs of production. (a) farming: US / Kenya For example, in the US farmers use tractors to plow their fields, whereas in the country of Kenya (in East Africa) most field are plowed by hand. It could be argued that both farmers ARE being productively efficient. The cheapest way to plow in the US is my using a $100,000 tractor. In Kenya, tractors, fuel, repairs, etc., are very expensive and labor is relatively inexpensive, so it makes economic sense to plow by hand. (b) farming: tractors / helicopter Why don't US farmers use "modern" technology and plow their fields with helicopters and laser beams (sort of like the Jetsons)? The answer is easy, it would be too costly. There are cheaper, and more productively efficient, ways to get the job done. Allocative Efficiency The second way to use our existing resources to maximize society's satisfaction is allocative efficiency. Allocative efficiency is using our limited resources to produce: If we want to achieve the maximum satisfaction possible from our limited resources, we not only have to be productively efficient (use as few resources as possible, use our resources where they are best suited, and use the appropriate technology), BUT WE ALSO HAVE TO PRODUCE THE RIGHT GOODS AND SERVICES. It would be a waste of our limited resources to produce a lot of things that we don't want and few of the things that we do want. For example: a. steel: horseshoes or cars It would be a waste of our limited supply of steel to produce billions of horseshoes that nobody wants and only a few cars that people do want. This would be allocatively inefficient. b. crude oil: gasoline or kerosene People want more gasoline and very little kerosene. Therefore to use our resources wisely, we should use our crude oil to produce more gasoline and less kerosene. c. small cars or SUVs As consumer tastes have moved away from small cars to large Sport Utility Vehicles, an allocatively efficient society would use its resources to produce more SUVs and fewer small cars. Allocative INefficiency occurs when we use our limited resources to produce TOO MUCH or TOO LITTLE. This results in surpluses and shortages. How does allocative inefficiency affect scarcity and our attempt to maximize our satisfaction? Whenever we produce too much (surplus) or too little (shortage) we are allocatively inefficient. We are NOT using our resources in a way that would achieve the maximum satisfaction possible. Examples of allocative inefficiency: (1) US agriculture producing mountains of unwanted grain US (and European) farmers used to produce mountains of grain that they couldn't sell. WHY? Pizza Hut doesn't produce piles of pizza that they cannot sell. Homebuilders do not build hundreds of homes that they cannot sell. Why did US grow more grain than they knew they could sell? The answer is - the government. The US government would buy the surplus grain form the farmers. This encouraged them to plant even more. The allocative inefficiency here is not the mountains of grain that nobody wants, but rather the loss of the resources farmers used to grow that grain. Labor, land, energy, chemicals, machinery, etc. was wasted producing something that society didn't want. The real loss are the products that we COULD HAVE HAD if farmers hadn't used so many resources producing excess grain. This is allocative inefficiency and it reduces the satisfaction that society receives from its resources. (NOTE: changes in government policy have reduced the amount of excess grain being produced.) Long lines in Poland Prior to 1989 when communism in Eastern Europe collapsed, Poland and other countries had severe shortages of consumer products resulting in long lines (queues). This is a good example of allocative inefficiency. Severe shortages reduces society's satisfaction. (3) Super Bowl tickets (another example which something new) There is a shortage of Super Bowl tickets. Hundreds of thousands of fans want to attend the game but only about 80,000 seats are available. This is allocative inefficiency. WHAT CAN BE DONE? Build a bigger stadium? Play a 2 out of 3 (or 4 out of 7) series? OR - why not simply raise the price? The price of a regular Super Bowl ticket is around $200. At this low price, hundreds of thousands of people want to go. But what if the price was raised to $1000 or $2000, or to whatever price will result in only 80,000 tickets being sold. If they raise the price, there will be no shortage. SHORTAGES ARE CAUSED BY A PRICE THAT IS TOO LOW. This results in allocative inefficiency and less satisfaction for society. (4) Natural disasters: "price-gouging" Let's try another example to illustrate the importance of getting the price right to achieve allocative efficiency. After hurricane Hugo struck Florida a few years ago the price of plywood, water, hotel rooms, and many other things increased dramatically. Were these price increases BAD for the people living in Florida? This may seem controversial to many of you, but let me explain and I think you will agree with me. After Hurricane Hugo, the people of Florida did not have all the plywood that they wanted, or needed. This is allocative inefficiency. To help them we would want two things to occur: (1) more plywood should be shipped to Florida, and (2) the people of Florida should try to conserve the plywood that they do have. This is good for the people in Florida. Let's say that the price of plywood increased from $15 a sheet to $60 a sheet. WHAT HAPPENS? Well, people standing in line to buy plywood to fix their walls, their decks, and their doghouses, will buy less and maybe decide to only fix their walls now, i.e. they conserve. ALSO, maybe somebody sitting in the back of their pickup truck drinking beer on a Friday night in Chicago will hear a news report on the high price of plywood in Florida. And they may start to calculate: 100 sheets that would fit in the back of the pickup would cost, in Chicago, $1500 (100 sheets times $15 a sheet). If they drove to Florida they could sell the sheets for $6000 (100 sheets times $60 a sheet). This is a profit of $4500 in one weekend! Trucks full of plywood would be heading for Florida from all parts of the country. This is good for the people in Florida. Now, let's say that the government of Florida wants to "help" its citizens by preventing this "price-gouging" - higher prices after a natural disaster. So they pass a law making price-gouging illegal. Let's assume that if you sell plywood for more than $15 a sheet you will be arrested. (See links below.) WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN? Does this Law help the people in Florida who need plywood? First, if the people in all those pickup trucks full of plywood hear of this anti-price-gouging law, they will turn right around and drive home. This is bad for the people of Florida. Also, those people standing at the front of the lines at the lumber yards, seeing that the price is still only $15 a sheet, will buy extra to repair their decks and fix their doghouses. This is bad for the people of Florida. The result of the anti-price-gouging law is a SHORTAGE. A shortage CREATED by the law, not by the hurricane. When the price of plywood rises to $60 a sheet after a hurricane it is allocatively efficient and GOOD for the people of Florida. They will CONSERVE the plywood that they have and MORE will be shipped in. This is good. Do you agree? Oftentimes students say, "what about the poor people who can't afford the higher prices?" Will the anti-price-gouging laws help them? NO, because there will be a shortage. This means NO PLYWOOD is available for anyone (unless they just happen to be at the front of the line). There are better ways to help the poor. This is especially true if we can agree that the laws keeping the prices down actually hurt the poor by creating a shortage. The government could give the poor money, or haul in more plywood - but a law that keeps prices low hurts all. Articles on "price-gouging" in Florida: (5) food price controls The government-created low prices in Florida after a hurricane CREATED A SHORTAGE. What if a government keeps food prices too low? What do you call a shortage of food? -- FAMINE! Millions of people have been killed by governments that have lowered food prices creating a famine. The purpose of keeping food prices low was to help the poor and the hungry. The effects of keeping food prices low is famine. Two things happen when governments lower food prices: (1) farmers make less so they work less and grow less, and (2) since prices are low those who do find food buy more. the result is a shortage. (6) gasoline Different government policies concerning gasoline prices have had different effects. (a) W.W.II During World War II, the US government kept the price of gasoline down. This created a shortage. To handle the shortage they had to issue ration coupons. If you wanted to buy gas, you first needed a coupon. The government created the shortage. The government created allocative inefficiency. (b) 1970s: Arab oil embargo In the 1970s, Israel attacked its Arab neighbors and the US supported Israel. In response, the Arab oil producers refused to sell oil tot he US. This would have caused the price of gasoline to increase greatly, but President Nixon prevented the price from rising. This created a shortage. Gas stations had long lines (queues). Some would only sell gasoline on certain days or limit a purchase to 5 gallons. The government created the shortage. The government created allocative inefficiency. (c) during Gulf War In the early 1990's the government of Iraq invaded the country of Kuwait disrupting oil exports from the Persian Gulf. But there was no shortage of gasoline! If you wanted to buy gas you just had to drive to a gas station and fill 'er up. Why wasn't there a shortage of gasoline this time? Because the government allowed the market to work and the price increased. As a result two things happened: (1) gasoline producers did all they could to produce more gasoline, and (2) drivers conserved, carpooled, and drove less. Hence, NO SHORTAGE. This was allocatively efficient. WHAT CAN BE DONE to achieve allocative efficiency? In a market economy, or pure capitalism, the price will adjust to achieve allocative efficiency. Inefficiency occurs when the government interferes or if one or a few firms have control over the market. The third way to use our existing resources to achieve the maximum satisfaction possible is equity. Equity is a "fair" distribution of income, or goods and services. (NOTE: this is not the same definition used by accountants.) One problem with this definition is agreeing on what "fair" means. Fair does not mean "equal". Would an equal distribution of income be good for society? Would it be good if doctors were paid the same as janitors? Probably not. If we paid doctors the same as janitors we would have few doctors, and the would not put in the time needed to learn medicine. We know that equity is good for society (it is one of the five Es). So equitable cannot mean the same as equal. But we can't measure "fairness". This is a problem for economists. But we can DESCRIBE the actual distribution of income and I will also try to explain how equity does help society achieve the maximum satisfaction possible from its limited resources. The Distribution of Income. When economists describe the distribution of income they usually divide the population into groups of equal sizes (usually five called quintiles) according to their income levels. In the first quintile the put the poorest fifth (20%) of the population. In the fifth quintile they put the richest twenty percent. and they divide the remainder into the other three groups according to their incomes. For data on the distribution of income in the US see: For 1998 the US distribution of income was: Lowest Fifth Second Fifth Third Fifth Fourth Fifth Highest Fifth Top 5 % Comments (discussion forum) ? How does equity help society achieve the maximum possible satisfaction from its limited resources? President Bush example Since it is difficult for us to agree on a definition of "fairness", let me see if I can come up with an extreme example on which we can all agree. What if President Bush owned everything? I mean EVERYTHING - all the land, all the buildings, all the food, all the clothes all the cars, -- everything in the country. Therefore, the rest of us own nothing. We are homeless, starving, and naked. Not a pretty picture, but can we all agree that this is not fair (not equitable)? Now, let's say that President Bush gives us each a pair of pants. We should be able to agree that this is more fair, more equitable, right? So what happens to society's satisfaction? By "society" I mean all of us AND President Bush. We are more satisfied since each of us has a pair of pant., but President Bush is less satisfied because he has 260 million fewer pairs of pants. So what happens to society's TOTAL satisfaction? It depends on HOW MUCH happier we are and HOW MUCH less happy President Bush is. This brings us to the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. Utility is the reason we consume a goods or services. You might call it satisfaction. I get satisfaction (utility) when I drive my boat. I get utility (satisfaction?) when I go to the dentist. "Marginal" means EXTRA or ADDITIONAL. According to the law of diminishing marginal utility the EXTRA (not the total) utility diminishes for each additional unit consumed. The first time I drive my boat in the Spring I really enjoy it. But after a few weekends of boating it doesn't give me as much additional satisfaction as the first time. I still go boating. My total utility still goes up. But the MARGINAL (extra) utility I get from one more day goes down. OPTIONAL: For more information or a different explanation see: Since we start with no pants, the first pair we get from President Bush gives us a lot of utility (satisfaction). Also since President Bush still has millions (or billions) of pairs of pants left, giving us 260 million causes his utility (satisfaction) to go down only a little. OVERALL the society's utility (all of us plus President Bush ) increases. From the same amount of resources we are receiving more satisfaction. Full Employment The last E is full Employment. Here we will define full employment as using ALL available resources, not just labor. This means that if we have full employment we are using all of our labor, factories, mines, fields, etc. How does full employment help society achieve the maximum satisfaction from its limited resources? Even though it seems simple to me, students have a difficult time understanding why employment of all our resources is necessary if we are to produce all we can and achieve the maximum satisfaction possible from our existing resources. If we have full employment, we produce MORE. If we have unemployed resources, we produce LESS. This is why society's strive for full employment - it reduces scarcity and helps achieve the maximum satisfaction possible. ECO 212 ONLINE! is a course in MACROECONOMICS. In a Macroeconomics course we will study the WHOLE ECONOMY or the ECONOMY OF A COUNTRY. The Macroeconomic Issues are: 1. Unemployment (UE) 2. Inflation (IN), and 3. Economic Growth (EG) If we use our 5 Es framework, in a course in Macroeconomics you would study ECONOMIC GROWTH and FULLEMPLOYMENT. In a course in MICROECONOMICS you study the INDIVIDUAL parts of an economy. Issues would include the determination of prices of individual products, studying individual industries, or making individual consumer choices. Using our 5Es framework, a course in Microeconomics would study ALLOCATIVE EFFICIENCY, PRODUCTIVE EFFICIENCY, and EQUITY.The The only component of economnics not included in either a Macroeconomics course or a Microeconomics course is "Reducing consumer wants.' Why Study Economics? One last thing I'd like to discuss briefly in this introductory lecture is "why study economics?" Most of you are taking this class because it is REQUIRED for your major. Right? Most of you are probably business majors (management, finance, marketing, accounting, etc.), but other majors sometimes also require a course in economics (political science, engineering, dietetics, education, nursing,). Another reason to take an economics course is to become a more informed voter and citizen. Much of what the candidates and political leaders discuss can be better understood with a knowledge of economics. This semester let's pay attention to the economic and political news. We can use the discussion forum to discuss what we see and hear.
Log In Wednesday 7th December 2016 Gut flora 'had role' in China's milk scandal 19th February 2013 Chinese infants who drank infant formula milk contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine were probably more likely to develop severe kidney disease if a certain type of microbe was present in their gut, new research suggests. "Good" gut bacteria have evolved in a symbiotic relationship with humans over millions of years, and have a profound influence on health, affecting muscular function, mood, immune system performance and even our metabolic rate, experts say. Researchers led by professor Wei Jia at the University of North Carolina found that the presence of the Klebsiella family of microbes in the gut could affect the severity of the kidney disease brought on by melamine poisoning. According to official figures, around 300,000 children were hospitalised with kidney disease in 2008 after milk manufacturers and suppliers deliberately adulterated infant formula milk with melamine, to make it seem as if the milk had a higher protein content. The melamine combined with uric acid in the children's bodies to produce kidney stones. However, researchers have not yet fully understood how different children may have reacted differently to the contaminants. The researchers studied how rats fed melamine developed kidney stones, and concluded from the experiments that gut bacteria could play a key role in the development of melamine-induced kidney failure in humans. Kidney stones occur when cyanuric acid is produced from a reaction between the melamine and uric acid, naturally found in the body. Writing in the journal Science Translational Medicine, Jia and his colleagues said that Klebsiella are responsible for converting melamine into the toxic cyanuric acid. They concluded that the toxicity of melamine depends on the make-up of gut bacteria in the organism that ingests it. This suggests that the bacteria in a person's gut could affect how they react to contaminants and poisons in their environment. The diversity of microorganisms that live in a healthy gut is currently being probed for possible treatments for C. diff, anorexia and irritable bowel syndrome. The melamine-tainted milk scandal was first exposed by Shanghai's Oriental Morning Post reporter Jian Guanzhou, who was the first journalist to name Sanlu as the source of contaminated milk powder in September 2008. Jian shot to national fame after he began investigating the cases of 14 babies in Gansu province with kidney problems. Jian deduced that what the cases had in common was their use of Sanlu powder, publishing his conclusions on his paper's website in spite of huge pressure from powerful company executives. Melamine was later found in a number of other brands of infant formula milk. Share this page Post your comment Your email address: Mayden - Innovative cloud-based applications for healthcare © Mayden Foundation 2016
Juno Mayru: Torpedoed By British Submarine HMS Tradewind \| HistoryNet MENU Juno Mayru: Torpedoed By British Submarine HMS Tradewind 6/12/2006 • World War II During World War II, 70,000 or more Allied prisoners of war and conscripted Asian laborers were moved in Japanese merchant ships across the vast expanse of the occupied East. These vessels were called ‘hell ships, and with good reason. POWs and slave laborers were crammed into stinking holds, filthy with coal dust, congealed sugar syrup and horse manure left over from previous voyages. Without water, or nearly so, sick, abused and neglected, they baked in unimaginable heat inside their steel prisons. Many died. Some went mad. Others were murdered. Some of the cruelty they experienced was extraordinary even for prisoners of the Japanese. On one ship jammed with prisoners in blazing heat, the water lowered into the holds was far too little and, one POW remembered, foul and polluted, covered with a thick, greenish scum. Two more containers sent down from the deck contained only seawater and urine. You are bred like rats, the ship’s interpreter sneered, and you will die like rats. Something on the order of 62,000 prisoners were moved by 56 ships. As many as 22,000 perished from murder, starvation, sickness and neglect–or were killed unknowingly by their friends, since Japanese prison ships did not display the red cross required by the Geneva Convention when prisoners were being transported. That callous act made the jammed freighters targets for any Allied aircraft or submarine, and no pilot or sub skipper could know that his quarry carried men of his own or Allied nations. Arisan Maru, for example, was torpedoed east of Hong Kong in October 1944 by an American submarine–either Snook or Shark (neither boat returned from that patrol). Of about 1,800 POWs on board Arisan Maru, only eight survived, five of whom, naked and emaciated, managed to find their way to freedom in China. Oryoku Maru was bombed and sunk by American aircraft off the Philippines’ Bataan Peninsula in mid-December 1944. On board were more than 1,600 American POWs, about 1,340 of whom lived through the ordeal. The survivors were then split up between Brazil Maru and Enoura Maru, which carried about 1,000. Both ships sailed for Japan via Takao Harbor, Formosa, where they were attacked again by U.S. planes. Enoura Maru went down, taking with her a large, undetermined number of prisoners. Fuku Maru was sunk by U.S. Navy aircraft in Subic Bay, in the Philippines, during September 1944, killing more than 1,200 British and Dutch prisoners. Sixty-three men survived, but for them there was more horror to come: They were transferred to the ill-fated Oryoku Maru. Two more prison ships, known to history only as PS 3 and PS 4, were sunk by Allied forces, the first bombed in Manila Bay, the second torpedoed between Hong Kong and Formosa. Between them, some 2,700 prisoners were killed. Kachidoki Maru, torpedoed by USS Pampanito off Hainan Island, took about 400 British POWs to the bottom with her, and an unknown number more died when HMS Truculent sank Harukiku Maru in the Strait of Malacca. A total of 1,159 American and British prisoners perished when USS Sealion sent Rokyo Maru to the bottom near Hainan Island in September 1944, and USS Paddlefish sank Shiniyo Maru off Mindanao in the same month, killing nearly 700 more Americans. Prisoners trying to escape from the sinking Shiniyo Maru were shot by the Japanese guards as the Americans struggled from the holds or in the water. And Lisbon Maru, torpedoed by USS Grouper in October 1944, went down with another 846 POWs, the only bright memory being an unarmed rush by men of the Middlesex Regiment, who overran and killed several Japanese sentries assigned to keep the prisoners cooped up in the holds of the sinking ship. As tragic as the losses were on board Arisan Maru, Shiniyo Maru and the others, as ugly as Japanese indifference and cruelty were on those vessels, they were not the worst tragedy among the thousands of POW deaths from friendly fire. That distinction belongs to the sinking, in October 1944, of Junyo Maru. Junyo Maru was an old three-island, single-stack merchantman, displacing about 5,000 tons and sailing under the orders of the Japanese government. She was reportedly built in Glasgow in 1913, although one prisoner on her last run later said that somebody had seen a plaque on board bearing the legend Liverpool, 1908. She had been owned by three British lines at various times, then passed through three Japanese owners. She had gone through five name changes. Her last–Junyo–means hawk in Japanese. Maru is simply the standard Japanese designation for merchant ship. Junyo Maru was a little over 400 feet long, with a beam of 53 feet, and was accurately characterized by one prisoner as a rustbucket. On September 18, 1944, she was underway from Batavia (now Jakarta), Java, crammed with about 2,300 POWs–Dutch, British, Australians, Indonesians and a few Americans–and some 4,200 Javanese slave laborers, called romushas. She was bound for Padang, up the west coast of Sumatra. Her human cargo was to labor on the infamous Sumatran railway that was being built to transport coal from the west to the east coast of Sumatra, from where it would be shipped on to Singapore. As was common on the hell ships, conditions on Junyo Maru were appalling. Between decks, the Japanese had inserted a layer of bamboo scaffolding to make extra decks, and the holds were crammed with bunks, three or four deep. Every level was jammed with prisoners, many of them sick, weak and emaciated. The bunks filled up quickly. Many men could only stand; the others sat with their legs pulled up or squatted in holds coated with a glutinous black substance, probably the melted remains of a cargo of sugar cane mixed with remnants of later loads of coal or iron ore. Both forward holds–numbers one and two–and the forward deck were crammed with the miserable romushas. Aft, holds three and four held the POWs. There was not enough water, and there were no latrine facilities, save for a few boxes suspended outboard on the upper deck. Some prisoners were too weak even to reach these primitive privies, and human excrement accumulated in the holds and dripped down from the hatch covers. Some prisoners remained on the upper deck, exposed to wind and chilly rain at night and brutal tropical sun throughout the day; the rest baked in the iron ovens below. Men sat on cargo derricks and on the hatch covers, from which every other plank had been removed to admit a vestige of air. Before the ship ever sailed, the stench of human bodies and human waste was overpowering. Many prisoners suffered from malaria or dysentery or both. Some died; others went mad. The sick and the weak sank further toward death.There was virtually no lifesaving gear on board. A lifeboat hung outboard on either side of the center island; some life rafts were piled on deck. That was all, and all that the prisoners could hope for. One account says the Japanese donned their own life vests as soon as the ship put to sea, but there were no vests for the prisoners. Before Junyo Maru departed, one English prisoner made a desperate attempt to escape by diving overboard and swimming for shore. He was cut off by some of the Japanese crew in a small boat, beaten up, returned to the hell ship and locked up. If anybody else tried to escape, the prisoners were told, the penalty would be death. Junyo Maru sailed from Batavia on September 16. Turning west through Sunda Strait, she passed the volcanic island of Krakatoa and set a course northwest, parallel to the western seaboard of Sumatra. On the 17th, she headed on toward the port of Padang, about halfway up the coast of that long island. On that night came a torrential rain, drenching the men on deck and streaming into the hold to mix with the sticky mess in which the prisoners already sat or squatted. The prisoners on deck, unprotected, shook with cold, but there was no shelter. The ship steamed some 15 or 20 miles from the coast, escorted by two vessels that one prisoner described as a corvette and a gunboat, and for most of the day also covered by one or two aircraft. While the escorts sometimes circled the freighter, they spent most of the voyage trailing her, one on each beam. The escort commander may have been careless, lazy or both, or maybe he was convinced that this voyage was a milk run. If so, he would soon find out just how wrong he was. Out in the blue water of the Indian Ocean a sleek steel shark waited, haunting the Japanese shipping lanes along the Sumatran coast. No escorts were going to get between her and her prey. She was the submarine Tradewind, a twin-screw Triton-class boat of the Royal Navy, commanded by Lt. Cmdr. S.L.C. Maydon. A new boat, commissioned just a year before at Chatham, England, Tradewind displaced over 1,300 tons. She could do more than 15 knots on the surface and almost 9 submerged. And she packed a real punch: She was armed with 11 21-inch torpedo tubes with 17 reloads, and boasted surface armament of a 4-inch gun, a 20mm Oerlikon AA cannon and three machine guns. Her range extended to 8,000 miles at 8 knots. Tradewind had left the port of Trincomalee, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), on September 8. By the 17th, she was cruising in her patrol area, though she was severely handicapped by the failure of both her radar and her high-power periscope. But her skipper was made of stern stuff, and he was determined to carry on with his patrol for another day. He and Tradewind’s 61-man crew quickly scored a couple of small successes against the Japanese. On the 13th, Tradewind surfaced to board a sampan in Sungei Pinang Bay, took off her five man and one monkey crew–the monkey had earned his keep throwing coconuts down from palm trees–and sank her. Then, three days later off Indrapura Point, Tradewind stopped and boarded Bintang Pasisir (Star of the Shore), a large sailing prau, sending her on her way when a quick search revealed she was loaded only with nutmegs and cinnamon bark. Only the ship’s papers were taken. An hour or so after leaving Bintang Pasisir behind, Tradewind’s crew boarded still another prau, and found this one loaded with cement for the Japanese. Seven of the eight-man crew were sent ashore in a small boat–the eighth said he’d rather be a British prisoner–and the British boarding party primed the prau with two demolition charges. She blew up, as Commander Maydon’s report said, with a most satisfactory scattering of Japanese cement. But now someone on the submarine took a close look at Bintang Pasisir’s papers, which revealed she was also carrying cement, iron and barrels of nails, in addition to her innocent cargo of nuts and bark. Like the cement Tradewind had just satisfactorily scattered, that cargo was also bound for the Japanese at Benkulen, on the coast of southern Sumatra. So Tradewind turned back to find the prau, which she did a couple of hours later. The vessel’s crew was sent ashore, and Maydon ordered Bintang Pasisir set afire, then riddled her with rounds from the sub’s Oerlikon. As the prau settled beneath the waves, Tradewind went on to look for bigger game. Two days later, on the 18th, she found it. At about 3 p.m., the officer of the watch, reserve Sub-Lt. P.C. Daley, spotted a tiny plume of smoke through the secondary periscope, about 13,000 yards to the south. Maydon accordingly ordered full speed toward the target. Because, as Maydon’s report stated, range taking and hence estimation of speed through a low-power periscope is very inaccurate over 4,000 yards, he had to close the range. As he did so, he found he was stalking an old fashioned merchantman, a 4,000- to 5,000-ton, three-island vessel with a single thin funnel and two masts. Maydon guessed she was about two-thirds fully loaded. At long range, without his high-power periscope, he could not guess what that load was. Tradewind’s skipper could see that the freighter had two escorts–one to her starboard, the other on her port quarter. They were identified in Tradewind’s patrol report as motor launches–and his crew picked up their radar echoes. In spite of their presence, however, Maydon pressed his attack, guessing his target’s speed at about 8 knots, estimated from the echoes of his asdic (sonar). His target was zig-zagging, but obligingly zig-zagged back to her original course. And so, a little before 4 p.m., Tradewind was in position at a right angle to the plodding merchant ship’s course and about 1,800 yards away. A few moments later, Tradewind fired four torpedoes at 15-second intervals, dived and turned away. About a minute and a half later, her crew heard an explosion, and 15 seconds later came a second blast. Junyo Maru’s escorts put in a depth-charge attack, dropping three charges, but by then the submarine was deep beneath the surface and moving away. A little over a quarter of an hour after the strike of the last torpedo, Tradewind’s asdic picked up the crackling sounds of the target breaking up. Because her main periscope was out of commission, Tradewind could not closely search for hostile aircraft or get a good look at the armament carried by the little escorts. Had Maydon been able to judge the strength of their armament, as he said in his report, it might have been profitable to have waited until they were well laden with survivors and then to have surfaced and gunned them. Under the circumstances this was not considered prudent. And so Maydon reloaded his tubes and wisely waited until just after 5 before he returned to periscope depth and risked a look through the secondary periscope. The sea was empty, except for the outline of one of the escorts about three miles away. The target was gone, and Tradewind turned away. As night fell, she surfaced, moving southeast through torrents of rain. Behind her in the darkness the sea was full of dying men. Junyo Maru had indeed gone to the bottom, and gone quickly. One torpedo had smashed into her forward, a second aft, the first hurling a shower of debris into the air–metal, wood and human beings. The stricken freighter soon began to go down by the stern, her siren screaming. There was panic in the crowded holds. The prisoners down below had only a single iron ladder by which to escape their steel trap, and the men struggled and fought to reach their only way out. Others climbed high enough to pull themselves up by the braces supporting the planks covering the hatch. Some men already on deck helped others out of the struggling mass in the hold. Up on deck the senior POW officer, an English captain named Upton, was giving orders to clear prisoners’ dunnage away from the stacks of life rafts and get them over the side. Many of the captives pitched in to follow his directions. Meanwhile, the Japanese guards ran aimlessly back and forth–some jumping into the sea, still carrying their rifles. The crew struggled to release the two lifeboats slung outboard toward the rear of the center island, and POWs began to throw into the sea not only life rafts, but pieces of timber and anything else that would float. More and more of them began to jump overboard as the dying freighter settled deeper by the stern. The men in the water could see the torpedo holes in her sides, gaping gashes some 20 feet across. As the gunboat circled the area dropping depth charges, the corvette began to pick up survivors. Some prisoners were saved, but most of those rescued were Japanese, each of whom waved a small Japanese flag, apparently part of their equipment. The terrified romushas huddled together toward the bow. Only a few of them tried to save themselves by jumping overboard, and a few tried to climb the foremast to escape the rising water. By now the Japanese had gotten one lifeboat overboard, but it flooded quickly because of a hole in the side. When swimming prisoners tried to grasp the sides of the swamped boat, the Japanese in the boat beat them off with an ax. As Junyo Maru settled deeper in the water, her bow rose more sharply into the air and the cluster of romushas began to slide toward the stern and the remorseless rising water. As the angle of her deck rose, men began to lose their grip and fall into the sea. And then the freighter slid quickly beneath the surface, her bow rising almost to the vertical, and she was gone, leaving the surface of the Indian Ocean littered with struggling men. Night fell and the stars came out. Survivors clung to rafts and debris while their strength held out. All around them other men were dying in the night, crying for help in the darkness, but there was no help to come. One group pulled their most exhausted comrades onto their almost submerged raft, then swam away from other desperate cries in the night, fearful that their raft would not support another human being. Some swimmers finally gave up, letting themselves slip beneath the water. One man bit another prisoner in the neck and drank his blood. At daybreak, the Japanese corvette returned, and some of those still living were pulled from the water. The rest were gone. Of the 1,700 or so Western POWs and about 500 Indonesian prisoners, some 1,500 died. Of the romushas, more than 4,300 of them, only a couple of hundred survived. As closely as it is possible to estimate, 4,320 men went down with Junyo Maru or died in the water later. And that does not count the survivors who were worked to death, murdered or died of disease in 120-degree heat during the construction of the Sumatran railway. Of 680 saved from the sea and sent to build the railroad, one survivor wrote, only 96 of the POWs survived; there were no survivors among the miserable romushas. Tradewind and her captain survived the war. The submarine served until she was put into fleet reserve at Portsmouth in 1953. She was scrapped two years later. For a long time Maydon did not know about the cargo of the ship he had sunk off western Sumatra. It was not until many years after the sinking that he corresponded with a survivor, asking what the cargo of Junyo Maru had been. The submariners had always been afraid, he wrote, that we would scupper our own people. Only then did he learn, from the survivor, that his torpedoes had in fact killed thousands of his own, and Allied, troops. The effect of that knowledge on Maydon can only be imagined. No blame attaches to Tradewind’s skipper, a fighting sailor carrying out his orders, or to the other Western fighting men whose bombs and torpedoes took the lives of their own countrymen or allies. The real blame lies with the Japanese, not only for their callous and brutal treatment of prisoners and slave laborers but also because they neglected to display the red cross as a warning that the hell ships carried POWs. Displaying that respected talisman would have cost next to nothing. And it would have saved thousands of lives.Some things are hard to forgive. This article was written by Robert Barr Smith and originally appeared in the March 2002 issue of World War II. For more great articles subscribe to World War II magazine today! , , , ,
How-To Geek What Are The Plastic Lumps Found On The Ends Of Computer Cables Called? Impedance Rings EMI Loops RF Clamps Ferrite Beads Answer: Ferrite Beads That clunky cylinder of hard plastic on the end of many of the cables you’ll find around your home and office–USB cables, VGA cables, and so on–has a specific function. Inside the hard plastic casing is a chunk of ferrite-infused ceramic designed to suppress high-frequency noise. Essentially the ferrite bead acts as a passive low-pass filter that both absorbs energy or reflects it back into the cable. The majority of energy is absorbed by the bead and then released as tiny amounts of heat into the surrounding air. Why is it important to suppress the high-frequency noise? The noise suppression serves two primary purposes. First, it prevents electrical noise generated within the computer from interfering with other components–so, for example, interference from the computer doesn’t interfere with the performance of your monitor. Second, it prevents the electrical and radio energy from leaking out and interfering with surrounding equipment like television sets and radios. Enter Your Email Here to Get Access for Free: Go check your email!
Who is Maslow? Abraham Harold Maslow was an American psychologist, who was born in New york on April 1, 1908. In 1967, he was named as ‘Humanist of the year’ by the American Humanist Association. He died on June 8, 1970 because of a heart attack. He was considered as the founder of humanistic psychology. For more information see here:
TERTIS, LIONEL (1876–1975), violist. Born in England, Tertis was a viola soloist. This instrument, popular in the 18th century, had been neglected, and it was due to Tertis' exceptional playing that the viola was recognized as a solo instrument. Pieces were written especially for him and he designed a viola that was widely manufactured (the Tertis model).
Design within context -A A +A A separated bikeway makes more sense By Khalil J. Spencer Readers can refer to the blog for details (www.labikes.blogspot.com.) Cycling facilities, which are included in street design to improve both safety and efficiency, have to be designed within a context including the type of street and the kind of cyclist that is being considered. A heavily used arterial or high speed highway will likely have a different treatment than a collector or a quiet residential street. Some streets will likely require no modifications at all — the road is, after all, the “bikeway” as well as the “car-way.” Specific considerations, too, are given to locations where we expect children, the elderly, or the inexperienced might be riding. When we (the Bicycling Subcommittee of the Transportation Board and county Staff) wrote the county bike plan, passed by council in 2005, we explicitly recognized differences among street types and also considered the needs of the Safe Routes to School program. Cycling facilities also have the express purpose of encouraging those citizens who don’t currently ride to do so. People don’t ride for a variety of reasons, but the perception that it is unsafe to ride in traffic is usually at the top of the list. In work done elsewhere in the U.S. and elsewhere and noted by the League of American Bicyclists, much higher numbers of non-cyclists or occasional cyclists (10s of percent) can be attracted to cycling as a regular part of their transportation mix if provided their own separated right of way on major roads (such as arterials), while only a few percent are likely to be attracted to riding regularly if only provided with on-road facilities on these roads. Thus, the context of my comment in the Los Alamos Monitor is that if Los Alamos wants to provide a “bicyclist friendly” Trinity corridor that would appeal to more than a few percent of our residents and thus provide taxpayers the most bang for their bucks, it makes more sense to build a separated bikeway rather than include a set of on street bike lanes on what will be, under almost any set of design criteria, a heavily trafficked arterial. None of the various A options proposed for Trinity would, in my estimation, make that road attractive to those who are not already experienced, confident cyclists, i.e., that few percent. The specific designs proposed by MIG would have new or inexperienced bicyclists having to merge in and out of arterial traffic at every roundabout or alternatively, dismount and tediously use side paths at every roundabout. Further, the specific designs shown the Transportation Board, in my estimation, could have encouraged cyclist and motorist error and thus discourage those new riders from using the facility once they had a bad experience. As far as safety, I think I agree with Mr. Neale Pickett. Single lane roundabouts are the least problematic for cyclists while multilane roundabouts carry higher risks due to their more complex traffic patterns. As far as riding in traffic, a cyclist who takes a riding safety course or otherwise develops reasonable riding skills is likely to be as safe in a single lane roundabout environment as that cyclist would be using the present design or any other one, which meets the county’s recently adopted set of street design criteria. But bikeways are only part of the solution to a bike-friendly environment. Cyclists need to develop reasonable cycling skills if they are to be confident enough to ride in an urban environment, rather than depending on facility design alone. Hence, the reason that the League of American Bicyclists works to promote both bicycle-friendly design criteria and formalized traffic skills instruction for cyclists. Khal Spencer Transportation Board League Cycling
Archives for July 2011 Caring for the Poor and the Needy The budget debate is a mess right now. U.S. politicians are facing quite the challenge as they make policy decisions to keep the country going. President Obama’s recent speech called all Americans to weigh into the debate and contact their federal representatives. Whatever side you are on, you have the right and ability to influence public policy through your representatives. If you haven’t yet, weigh in: If you are on the conservative side, The Heritage Foundation provides a public petition to Congress. And on the liberal/progressive side, takes the opposing tack. One of the central features of the debate in government spending is social services for the poor and the needy. A common argument against government funding for social services is that it is not the government’s responsibility to care for charity cases. However, it is less common to hear proposals that would meet the needs of the poor and the needy residing in the United States, without using government funding to do so. And yet, there are petitions encouraging U.S. policymakers to give money to other countries struggling with extreme poverty. If the United States cannot provide for the needs of its own poor, how can it conscionably appropriate funds to relieve poverty of other countries? For the record, I agree that governments ideally would not use taxpayer money to the care of people in other countries, especially when there are such severe needs in our own country. With the proposed budget cuts, there will be low-income elderly, children in poverty and disabled who will be without heat this winter, facing exposure and increasing the likelihood of health complications. And government funded heating programs are just one area expecting to be cut. At the same time, I recognize the Christian and humanist duty for all people of the world to care for the poor and the needy. Though, the people of the United States may feel the need to prioritize the people of their own communities and country first, the suffering of people in developing countries are equal in value and importance. Peter Singer, in The Life You Can Save, promotes the idea that everyone, especially those blessed with the affluence of the developed world have a percentage of their income to share with those who are in more need than they. The Live You Can Save has been called the Billionaire’s pledge for people of all income groups. Since I doubt we have any billionaire’s reading this blog, the pledge calculator conservatively estimates the percentage of income that a given household can comfortably donate to charitable and humanitarian organizations. Giving What We Can‘s donation calculator can tell you which percentage of the world is more wealthy than you. Chances are, if you are lower-middle to upper middle class, in a developed country, you are in the 20% percent of the world’s wealthiest and your earnings are 4 or more times those of the typical person. So, the proposal: Over a period of a few years, the United States government passes off the responsibility for social services to its citizens through incentivizing freewill donations to private sector non-profit organizations that take over service delivery. A suggestion for organizing and making needs known and accessible to potential donors is to use a website organization much like the one already in use by Global Giving. The incentive from the government may be in the form of a tax credit or a tax deduction that is exempt from itemizing. A PSA and public education campaign similar to Let’s Move, maybe called Let’s Give, can be developed and promoted around the country. While at the same time promoting citizen donations to social services, the proverbial Let’s Give campaign can encourage giving to international humanitarian efforts like those recommended by The Life You can Save, Giving What We Can and Global Giving. Singer asserts, “If everyone who can afford to contribute to reducing extreme poverty were to give a modest proportion of their income to effective organizations fighting extreme poverty, the problem could be solved. It wouldn’t take a huge sacrifice.” All it requires is the coordinated will, cooperation and some effective marketing. What exactly does “Equal Partnership” look like? Likely the most misunderstood and sometimes debated phrase in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” is “In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.” Most Mormons seem to believe that the division of labor between mother as nurturer and father as provider is a form of “separate but equal” each in their own sphere providing for the needs of children and family. The debate in that phrase comes from those who hope that it suggests each partner working equally in each “primary” responsibility, and that those tasks are shared equally. Maybe there is a chance that the church and its leadership is moving to a time where women are encouraged and supported in President Hinckley’s declaration “The whole gamut of human endeavor is now open to women” where they can do just as the prophet said which is to: “Set your priorities in terms of marriage and family, but also pursue educational programs which will lead… to a sense of security and fulfillment in the event you do marry.” (1)(2) If there were to be a way where mothers could work and continue in their ever important role as the nurturers of children, it seems that Equally Shared Parenting would be that way. The basic premise is that fathers and mothers share all family responsibilities equally: about half and half with childcare, household upkeep and employment. Families live within their means, love and nurture their children with little reliance on outside childcare, and find personal fulfillment and unity as parents and partners. In fact, it has recently been said that this concept of equally shared parenting is a close cousin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Likely, this concept appeals to feminists since both husband’s and wife’s all around needs are taken in account, with each helping the other in all aspects. Its a far cry from the feminist agenda of the 1960’s where feminists advocated for women to assimilate into the male workforce and keep the same rules expected of male employees while at the same time being the mothers their children needed (or never becoming mothers at all) and doing the majority of the housework and daily living responsibilities of a household and family. Feminists of the era have since admitted that their ideas caused a great disservice to women who heeded their call Its not a matter of women being in or out of the workforce now, however. Just like Apostle Quinten L. Cook counseled members, “we should all be careful not to be judgmental or assume that sisters are less valiant if the decision is made to work outside the home. We rarely understand or fully appreciate people’s circumstances.”(3) In a time of economic downturn with husbands unemployed for long stretches at a time, many mothers find that they must work to meet the needs of their families. Stay at home dads are learning what many stay at home mothers have known: something vital is missing from a parent’s life when his/her education and skills are removed from the workplace. Betty Freidan called it “housewife’s syndrome” and perhaps now, many house husbands are feeling it too. The Women’s Service Mission has covered this topic in a couple of different ways in the past. The review of Radical Homemaker’s found gospel principles in the idea of husband and wives sharing household responsibility by cutting consumerism and creating families that produce more than they consume–what the author called “units of production.” On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, WSM featured the book The War on Moms: On Life in a Family Un-Friendly Nation which called for national reforms to the employment system to create jobs that allow families to provide for their needs and contribute to their overall well-being rather than continue to enslave them to a workforce that stretches parents too thin and places children in the care of people other than their parents for the majority of the time. Another book on this topic, written by the advocacy organization MomsRising, entitled The Motherhood Manifesto, outlines the MomsRising platform that calls for flex time work options for men and women in additional to supplemental (not primary or full-time) child care for families who need to make use of it. The book Equally Shared Parenting takes a step back from the policy debate and tells stories of families who are living the lifestyle they love without waiting for society to change for them. The authors interviewed 40 families most of whom have two parents working part-time to full-time, with little to no outside childcare needed. Many families are homeschooling their children. Fathers are just as capable of preparing lunches, soothing owies and teaching school lessons while mothers did their share of nurturing and homemaking and later being an integral part of their workplace. (4) It sounds idealistic and it is, unabashedly so. Families across the country are making this work, even without the family friendly public policy advocated by feminists and apostles. (5) As more and more families embrace this way of living and enjoying life, these policies will be in greater demand and Mormons may learn exactly what “equal partners” really look like. Have you heard of Equally Shared Parenting? Are you or any one you know living this arrangement? What does the phrase “equal partners” from the Proclamation mean to you? Please respond in the comments. Are you involved in advocacy for family friendly policies? Tell us about your efforts by writing a guest post. Email to Since this topic is focused women with children, the quoted was edited to leave out women who are do not marry or have children. If you are a single woman or are married but do not have children yet, would you consider the concept of equally shared parenting in your future family? Gordon B. Hinckley “Ten Gifts from the Lord,” Ensign, Nov. 1985, 89. Quentin L. Cook “LDS Women are incredible!” Ensign, May 2011. You can hear from the authors of Equally Shared Parenting in their interview with KRCL Salt Lake’s RadioActive. In Quentin L. Cook’s address linked above, he counseled, “I would hope that Latter-day Saints would be at the forefront in creating an environment in the workplace that is more receptive and accommodating to both women and men in their responsibilities as parents.”
Herpes Cure And Treatment Cold Sores Common Cold sores (also known as fever blisters) are pretty common and lots of people get them. So what causes them and what can you do? Remember, not everyone’s cold sore is triggered by the same thing. But there are common factors that may cause your cold sore outbreaks. Want to avoid them before things get ugly? Read on. The HSV1 virus that causes cold sores or fever blisters is so common that you have probably had it in your system since you were a kid. Cold sores are blisters on the lips and the edge of the mouth that are caused by an infection with the herpes simplex virus (HSV). Some common triggers that cause cold sores to return include: Cold sores are quite common. There is no cure or prevention for infected people, but steps can be taken to reduce their frequency and duration. So if you are getting repeated cold sores, then you probably have herpes simplex type 1. Oral sex is a common way of passing on cold sores from one person’s mouth to another person’s genitals (genital herpes) – or vice versa. Cold Sores-symptoms Cold Sores are viral infections which cause recurrent groups of irritating, even painful blisters on the lips. It is second only to the common cold in frequency. Mouth sores are common ailments that affect about 80 percent of Americans at some point in their lives. Herpes simplex causes cold sores, or fever blisters, and is highly contagious. My roommate has been getting cold sores around her mouth since she was a little girl. While the thought of the virus infecting your body may seem really serious, its actually relatively harmless and quite common. Herpes simplex viruses (HSVs) cause raised and oozing sores or blisters. When your child develops a herpes infection for the first time (primary HSV infection) , mouth sores, fever, and swollen, tender lymph glands are the most common symptoms, usually seen after swelling and reddening of the gums. Cold sores are small, fluid-filled blisters that develop around the lips or inside the mouth. Cold sores are caused by herpes simplex virus (HSV). HSV infection is passed on through skin-to-skin contact such as kissing. The winter is supposed to be the most joyous time of the year. That’s why it’s so frustrating that it’s the primary season for cold sores. There’s nothing more frustrating than showing up to a family gathering with a cold sore. Medications for the treatment of cold sores do not cure or rid the body of the virus. They may help to reduce the number of days an outbreak may last and may reduce discomfort. Antiviral Agents. Common names include: It may result in small blisters in groups often called cold sores or fever blisters or may just cause a sore throat. Common infection of the skin or mucosa may affect the face and mouth (orofacial herpes) , genitalia (genital herpes) , or hands (herpetic whitlow). Is A Cold Sore Always Permanent? The Chart Cold sores, despite the name, are not caused by the common cold. They are caused by a virus, specifically, the herpes simplex virus (HSV). Cold sores are contagious and are passed to others through direct contact or contact with body fluid. Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV1) is the common cause of cold sores (oral herpes) around the mouth. HSV2 normally causes genital herpes. However, through sexual activity, HSV1 can cause infections in the genital area, and HSV2 can infect the mouth area. Cold sores and fever blisters are caused by the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) , a virus that passes from person-to-person by direct contact with infected skin or secretions, including saliva. HSV-1 infections are very common in the United States, and most of us are infected by the time we reach adulthood. A guide to recognising and treating cold sores in young children. Antibiotics are almost never needed to treat a common cold. Although they are different to the flu, having the symptoms of a cold – like a cough, sore throat and runny nose – can be bothersome. A severe cold can make you feel weak and ill too. Caught a cold sore lately? Then, you are a more likely candidate for Alzheimer’s than someone who never had cold sores in his or her lifetime. Cold sores are very common. It is estimated that 80 percent of the American population have been exposed to the Herpes simplex virus (which is the virus that causes cold sores). Facial herpes is very common and is also known as cold sores, fever blisters, sun blisters, oro-facial herpes, herpes labialis and herpes febrilis. Facial herpes is characterised by groups of fluid-filled blisters that appear on red swollen areas of the skin or on the mucous membranes. Real Time Web Analytics Scroll To Top Herpes Cure Herpes Cure
Exactly 100 years ago, Joe Fordney, who would become Michigan’s most powerful congressman, was first elected to the House of Representatives from Saginaw. His career is worth noting because it is a classic example of how supporting tariffs can win votes in the short run, but cost consumers—and the country—in the long run. The story of Fordney’s meteoric rise from illiterate farm boy to chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is fascinating. Born in 1853, he grew up on a farm in Indiana and had only three months of formal education. When he was fifteen, his family moved to the booming lumber town of Saginaw, Michigan. Fordney, with a strong body and willing spirit, started as a chore boy and cook in Saginaw’s lumber camps and moved up from there to investor and entrepreneur in timber all over the U. S. With a fortune in hand, Fordney, after his fortieth birthday, turned to politics as his next world to conquer. He served two terms as alderman in Saginaw and, in 1898, made the big decision to run for Congress as a Republican in Michigan’s eighth congressional district, one that often elected Democrats. That year he won the first of twelve straight elections that would eventually take him to the pinnacle of power in the House as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the body responsible for writing the nation’s tax laws. Fordney made his wealth in the free market, but he made his political career using government to dole out favors for special interests in Saginaw. Right from the start he supported a high protective tariff on imported lumber and sugar—two products dear to mid-Michigan voters. Lumber was Saginaw’s leading industry, but by the late 1890s that city was beginning to diversify into beet sugar. With high protective tariffs on foreign lumber and sugar, Saginaw’s local businessmen could charge higher-than-market prices for the wood and sweetener they produced. As a result, consumers in the rest of the United States had to pay more to build their houses, make their apple pies, or do anything else that required lumber or sugar. Fordney was soon nicknamed "Sugar Beet Joe" because he eagerly defended his strategy of using government to help protect the key industries in his home town. "All legislation," he rationalized, "must be the results of compromise. . . . [A] concession here and sacrifice there [means] that the whole country may enjoy an average of happy and prosperous living." On the contrary, Fordney’s tariff meddling encouraged more congressmen to bring subsidies to their districts and impose higher costs on everyone else. What’s more, the tariff sometimes backfired on Fordney. The tariff on lumber, for example, became a bounty for the speedy harvest of Michigan’s forests. Soon Saginaw had no more pine trees, but the tariff remained—so Saginaw had to buy wood from Oregon instead of cheaper and closer lumber from Canada. In 1922, with Fordney in charge of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, Congress passed what was then the highest tariff in U. S. history: the Fordney-McCumber Tariff. Duties on sugar almost doubled and Fordney added a high tariff on imported German chemicals to help nearby Dow Chemical Company. Other congressmen were astonished at the steep tariff walls Fordney was erecting. Claude Kitchin, also a member of the Ways and Means Committee, asked Fordney, "Is it not true that if you had your way you would build a tariff wall around this country so high that it would be practically insurmountable?" Fordney at first denied it, then he hesitated, turned, and said, "But you know, that wouldn’t be such a darned bad idea." But it was a bad idea—especially for all the Europeans trying to recover from World War I. The U. S., these Europeans discovered, would not buy their goods because of tariff barriers, so they often retaliated and refused to buy American products. America’s high tariff strategy continued into the 1930s and many historians have argued that these tariffs prolonged and deepened the Great Depression. Car and truck sales, for example, plunged from 5.3 million in 1929 to 1.8 million four years later—if Americans wouldn’t buy Canadian lumber, Cuban sugar, and a host of other foreign products, then why should other nations buy anything from the U. S.? The best answer to high tariffs was given by another Michiganian, J. Sterling Morton, born in Monroe, Michigan, educated at the University of Michigan, and the Secretary of Agriculture in the 1890s under Grover Cleveland. "It is the business of Government," Morton said, "to give to each citizen an equal chance for life, liberty, and the acquisition and enjoyment of property; but those who raise corn should not be taxed to encourage those who desire to raise beets."
Definition of NFC abbreviation from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary BrE BrE//ˌen ef ˈsiː// ; NAmE NAmE//ˌen ef ˈsiː// American football jump to other results 1. 1 the NFC (in the US) the National Football Conference (one of the two groups of teams in the National Football League) Culture The National Football Conference has 16 teams, and the winner goes to the Super Bowl to play the team that wins the American Football Conference. See related entries: American football 2. 2near field communication (a type of technology that allows communication over short distances between mobile/cell phones and other electronic devices in order to make payments, etc.) an NFC device/payment Other results All matches
June 14 - 20, 2010 Bacteria and sediment can be removed from water satisfactorily by inexpensive treatment processes. A plentiful supply of water is clearly one of the most important factors in the development of modern societies. Availability of water for cleansing is directly related to the control or elimination of disease. The convenience of water available in the home improves the quality of life. Inexpensive water allows individuals and communities to beautify their surroundings and to use water as a carrier for household wastes. The residents of most communities could, in fact, reduce water consumption by 10 to 25 percent without significantly changing the life style. Forced reduction in water use due to droughts have been experienced in most areas of the world. Use bathwater by more than one person, saving bath and washer water for lawn and shrub watering, and flushing toilets only once or twice a day result in more than inconvenience. Most of the water used by humans can be classified as fresh water because the concentration of dissolved constituent is low. Fresh water is derived from surface sources and ground water aquifers. Surface water includes lakes, rivers and those waters stored as ice or snow. Surface water tends to be turbid a property caused by the presence of clays and other light scattering colloidal particles, and the treatment for the turbidity removal is usually necessary prior to use other than irrigation. Ground waters usually have higher TDS concentration than surface waters because of mineral pickup from soil and rocks, and many grounds water are noted for high concentrations of particles ions or elements such as calcium and fluoride. Ground water is a preferred source of water for individual homes and small communities. Large communities often find surface water sources in remote mountain areas attractive for their more desirable chemical characteristics and reliability. Domestic 150 - 480 220 36.7 Commercial & Industrial 40 - 400 260 43.3 Public Service 20 - 80 30 5 Unaccounted system losses and leakage 40 - 160 90 15 Total 250 - 160 600 100 Based on typical figure given in the table water required to meet the needs of Pakistani population is average water consumption near about 600 liter/day per person. Nature has blessed Pakistan with adequate surface and groundwater resources. The extended droughts and non-development of additional water resources have further aggravated the water scarcity situation. The increasing gap between water supply and demand has led to severe water shortage in almost all sectors. The water shortage and increasing competition for multiple uses of water adversely affected the quality of water. Most of the reported health problems are directly or indirectly related to water. The projected population figures for 2010 and 2025 are 173 million and 221 million respectively. These estimates suggest that the country will slip below the limit of 1000 cubic meters of water per capita per year from 2010 onwards. The principal source of drinking water for the majority in Pakistan is groundwater. Most of the rural areas and many major cities rely on it, although some cities such as Islamabad, Karachi, Hyderabad etc. get water from a number of other sources. About 80 per cent of Punjab has fresh groundwater, with some saline water in the south and in desert areas. There are also some evidences of high fluoride or arsenic content locally in Punjab. A number of locations have also been contaminated by industrial wastewater discharges. In Sindh, less than 30 per cent of groundwater is fresh. Much of the province is underlain by highly brackish water and some instances of elevated fluoride levels. In NWFP, increasing abstraction has resulted in wells now reaching into saline layers, and much of Balochistan also has saline groundwater According to the government figures, Punjab has the best rural water supply amongst the provinces. The vast majority of the rural population has either piped water or water from a hand pump or motor pump. It is stated that only 7 per cent of the rural population depends on a dug well or a river, canal or stream. The situation in Sindh is considerably worse: some 24 per cent of the rural population depend on these sources. The situation in rural Sindh also appears to have deteriorated. The rural water supply situation in NWFP is worse still, and is worst of all in Balochistan. In these two provinces, 46 per cent and 72 per cent of the rural population respectively depend on water from a dug well or from a river/canal/stream Some what more than 60 per cent of the population gets their drinking water from hand or motor pumps, with the figure in rural areas being over 70 per cent. In almost all urban centers, groundwater quantity and quality has deteriorated to the extent that the availability of good quality raw water has become a serious issue. Over abstraction has also resulted in declining groundwater levels. Uncontrolled extraction of groundwater and extended dry periods has also caused its depletion and drying up of some of the sources. Also the water table has dropped by 3 meters per year on average. The drying up of wells has important social consequences, particularly on the women and children responsible for water collection. In Islamabad, the drop has been 50 feet between 1986 and 2001 while in Lahore the drop has been about 20 feet between 1993 and 2001. It is important to note that although there is a clear evidence that groundwater is being overexploited, yet tens of thousands of additional wells are being put into service every year. 1951 340 5300 1961 460 3950 1971 650 2700 1981 840 2100 1991 1150 1600 2000 1480 1200 2013 2070 850 2025 2670 659 COUNTRY 1955 1990 2025 China 4597 2427 1818 Mexico 11396 4226 2597 Philippines 13507 5173 3072 Iraq 184414 6029 2356 USA 14934 9913 7695 Pakistan 4490 1672 659 Pakistan's first reheat type Multi-Effect Distillation (MED) desalination plant was installed in 1995 and commissioned in 1996. It was manufactured by Sasakura-Japan and supplied by Ishikiwajima Heavy Industries (IHI), also of Japan. The MED Plant is part of HUB Power Station, which is around 60 kilometers from Karachi. Hub Power Station is situated at a coastal area where no fresh water source is available, therefore these desalination plants have very important and critical role in smooth operation of the power plant. Each desalination unit consists of four effects where seawater vapors are condensed to generate distillate under vacuum. Salt reduction is over 99.99 per cent during normal operation. The internals of the effects have neoprene rubber coating that guarantees a longer life without operational problems such as fouling and corrosion. Scaling becomes significant only where temperature controls are not proper or feed flow is insufficient. Sasakura has selected best combination of materials. It is mostly stainless steel. Thermal energy required to operate the plant is extracted from a boiler. On the coastal belt of Pakistan, Hub Power Station is the only power plant, which has desalination plant to produce water for boiler and auxiliary services. For the last fourteen years, the desalination plant is in service without any major repair or maintenance work and seems to be very reliable source for water production. Since its installation, only routine maintenance and inspection have been carried out with minimum downtime and maintenance cost. Out of three installed, one has some problem therefore it is generating 80 per cent out of designed capacity, where as other two are generating 100 per cent designed capacity. They are in service since their installation in 1996. The quality of product water remains very good and consistent. Salt reduction is over 99.99 per cent during normal operation. The smooth running may continue indefinitely without any major break down with minimum maintenance that is usually required. The DCL project was planned to generate 105 megawatts (MW) of electricity and five million gallons of water. The desalination plant has been established by DHA Cogen Ltd, a company set up under joint venture between DHA and Sacoden (Pvt) Ltd from Singapore. The plant has been built on 10 acres of land in DHA phase-VIII alongside Arabian Sea with an approximately cost of $185 million/day. The DCL Plant was designed to in take sea water with two-meter diameter pipeline suspended five meters above the sea and at a distance of 26 meters long toward the sea. The intake pipe is open and, to control growth of marine organisms, chlorinating is restored to in addition to which divers are sent down to clean the intake piping at interval. Although the DCL plant has an access to filter out the fishes, spores, and jelly fish etc., all of which can cause problems and eventual shutdown of the plant. The main disadvantage of the plant is the lacking of working capital faced by the current management of the DHA Cogen Ltd and due to this lack of capital it could not readily arrange for finances needed for replacement of equipment of the plant that is not covered under the warranty given by Siemens. The DHA Cogen management needed a minimum of $1.5 million for replacement of faulty equipment of the plant not covered by the warranty. The incoming seawater is de-aerated and preheated in the heat rejection condenser, and then divided into two streams. One stream is discharged as coolant (e.g. back to the sea), and the other becomes feed for the distillation process. The feed is pretreated with a scale inhibiting additive and introduced into the lowest temperature group of heat recovery effects. A spray nozzle system distributes it over the top rows of tubes in each effect, where it flows in thin films down each bank of tubes. The production capacity of the MED unit is proportional to, and inherently follows, the motive steam input. Therefore, the MED unit production rate can be varied automatically by regulating the steam input rate. For instance, in dual purpose installations (power and water product), the system will produce maximum quantities of fresh water during peak demand periods up to 110 per cent of the nominal rated output. During non-peak hours of production, the MED unit can turn down to as low as 65 per cent of its nominal capacity without operator intervention, and the surplus steam may then be used for increased electrical energy production. The input motive steam is fed into the tubes of the hottest effect where it condenses, releasing its latent heat to the saline water flowing over the outer surface of the tubes. In the MSF process, sea water is heated in a vessel called the brine heater. This is generally done by condensing steam on a bank of tubes that passes through the vessel which in turn heats the sea water. This heated sea water then flows into another vessel, called a stage, where the ambient pressure is such that the water will immediately boil. The sudden introduction of the heated water into the chamber causes it to boil rapidly, almost exploding or flashing into steam. Generally, only a small percentage of this water is converted to steam (water vapor), depending on the pressure maintained in this stage since boiling will continue only until the water cools (furnishing the heat of vaporization) to the boiling point. The concept of distilling water with a vessel operating at a reduced pressure is not new and has been used for well over a century. In the 1950s, a unit that used a series of stages set at increasingly lower atmospheric pressures was developed. In this unit, the feed water could pass from one stage to another and be boiled repeatedly without adding more heat. Typically, an MSF plant can contain anywhere from 4 to 40 stages. The steam generated by flashing is converted to fresh water by being condensed on tubes of heat exchangers that run through each stage. The tubes are cooled by the incoming feed water going to the brine heater. This, in turn, warms up the feed water so that the amount of thermal energy needed in the brine heater to raise the temperature of the sea water is reduced. Shortage of fresh water is a very important problem that is continuously increasing, due to population growth and changes in weather conditions, and affects many countries in the world. These countries usually have abundant seawater resources and a good level of solar radiation, which could be used to produce drinking water from seawater. Although everybody recognizes the strong potential of solar thermal energy to seawater desalination, the process is not yet developed at commercial level. The main reason for this is that the existing technology, although already demonstrated as technically feasible, cannot presently compete, on produced water cost basis, with conventional distillation and reverse osmosis technologies. Nevertheless, it is also recognised that there is still important room to improve desalination systems based on solar thermal energy. Among low capacity production systems, solar ponds represent the best alternative in case of both low fresh water demand and land price. For higher desalting capacities, it is necessary to choose conventional distillation plants coupled to a solar thermal system, which is known as indirect solar desalination. Distillation methods used in indirect solar desalination plants are multi-stage flash (MSF) and multi-effect distillation (MED). MSF plants, due to factors such as cost and apparent high efficiency pushed out MED systems in the sixties, and only small size MED plants were built. However, in the last decade, interest in multi-effect distillation has been significantly renewed and currently MED process is competing technically and economically with MSF technology. Recent advances in research of low temperature processes have resulted in an increase of the desalting capacity and a reduction in the energy consumption of MED plants, providing long-term operation under remarkable steady conditions. The system operates with synthetic oil that is heated as it circulates through the solar collectors. The solar energy is thus converted into thermal energy in the form of sensible heat of the oil, and is then stored in the thermal storage tank. In the last years, a considerable reduction in fresh water cost from desalination plants has been achieved. On the other hand, water produced in conventional treatment plants has risen due to over-exploitation of aquifers, contamination of ground water and saline intrusion. In countries such as the Persian Gulf region seawater desalination is, since many years ago, a fully competitive and used technique, and this situation is also increasingly close to become a reality in many other world areas due to continuously water demand increase and a parallel reduction in water availability due to previously mentioned reasons. Water scarcity is an increasing problem around the world and everybody agrees that seawater desalination can help to palliate this situation. Among the energy sources suitable to drive desalination processes, solar energy is one of the most promising options, due to the coupling of the disperse nature and availability of solar radiation with water demand supply requirements in many world locations. This technology cannot currently compete, from an economic point of view, with other conventional desalting technologies, without further improvements. A new project has been initiated in 2002 trying to improve the existing system. The Project objective is the development of a least costly and more energy efficient seawater desalination technology based on Multi-Effect Distillation process with zero brine discharge.
It is estimated that England produces more than 700 types of cheese, more than any other country in the world. The most famous English cheese is cheddar, but it is also well known for several other varieties. We’ll talk about cheddar in another post, but here is an overview of some of the other delicious English cheeses. (Want to try these out for yourself? Shop our selection of English cheeses!) Caerphilly is a crumbly cheese similiar to Cheshire, young Lancashire, and Wensleydale. It originated in a South Wales mining town of the same name. It became popular among the mine workers because its tough coat made it easy to eat with dirty hands and the salty flavor helped replace the minerals lost sweating away in the mine. Cheshire is one of England’s oldest cheeses, dating back to the Roman era. It is said that the Roman soldiers would stick a block of Cheshire cheese on their swords and melt it over the fire. Most Cheshire cheeses are made in factories now and have a mild flavor, but the Cheshire cheeses that are made on the farms of Chesire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire have a nice, slightly marine taste because of the salt in the soil there. It is a firm, crumbly cheese that pairs well with fruit and wine. It also melts well, lending itself well to cooking. Derby cheese was traditionally made directly on the dairy farms where the cows lived who produced the milk, but has the distinction of being made in the first creamery in the United Kingdom when a group of farmers pooled their milk to make the cheese on a large scale. It was generally sold at a younger age than cheddar and Cheshire and as a result is softer and more moist. As a young cheese, it is springy and mild, but develops a subtle sweet flavor and a firmer texture as it ages.
Using technology to gain 'situational awareness' Consortium works to improve operator understanding of alarm management Figure 1: According to the Abnormal Situation Management (ASM) Consortium, human performance accounts for about 40% of all abnormal situations in process facilities: Courtesy: HoneywellThe Deepwater Horizon well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 cost BP and its operating partners billions of dollars. High-profile accidents such as the well explosion linger in the public's mind, but behind closed doors at a typical process plant, a different kind of accident is more likely to occur. Less-severe incidents, while not as tantalizing as an oil spill, are more likely to impact a plant's daily operations, as these types of accidents result in off-specification production and increased costs. As a response, the Abnormal Situation Management Consortium now records and tracks global industrial incidents and researches prevention methods. The consortium's research estimates the cost of incidents to equal 3% to 8% of a company's production throughput, which makes finding a solution to these problems paramount. Preventable factors such as an employee and work environment account for 42% of incidents. On average, between 70% and 80% of equipment problems are a result of incorrect operation of equipment. Further, the UK Health and Safety Executive, an independent watchdog organization, reports human performance impacts 70% to 80% of abnormal situations. Recognizing that human performance is an integral component of reducing the impact of abnormal situations, the consortium focuses on understanding the implications of human performance in process operations. If a control room operator, for example, is continuously monitoring a human machine interface (HMI) for more than eight hours at a time, the process becomes taxing on the operator’s cognitive system. A critical requirement in situations such as this is the operator’s ability to maintain high levels of situational awareness, which is the ability to perceive process information, understand a situation, and project the future status to take appropriate action. The sophistication of a HMI With advancements in technology and automation, process plant operations have become more sophisticated and complex. This has led to a heavy flow of process information to the control room operator through communication tools such as sensors, transmitters, analyzers, and enunciators. This immense information flow is mostly displayed to the control room operator in the form of HMI screens that feature objects with dynamic values, color changes, alarms, event lists, and pop-ups. The time needed to process this huge information flow can lead to an unsafe environment, missed alarms, longer response times, and a higher probability of operator error. This type of unsafe environment happens because of the demand on an operator’s cognitive system to orient and evaluate the current situation, predict the future status of a process, and apply an appropriate action based on the current situation. Ultimately, information gaps such as these can reduce an operator's situational awareness. It is essential that information systems such as operator graphics and alarm displays enhance an operator’s situational awareness. The information systems should provide a supportive context to reduce the time an operator needs to orient and evaluate a situation. The information should be cognitively and physically useable for the operator, allowing him or her to make decisions with less mental stress. Alarm tracker: A case study The consortium demonstrates improved alarm system performance through effective alarm rationalization methods and effective alarm system maintenance practices. But even the best efforts will not eliminate the occurrence of all alarm flooding. Effective display design techniques can help operators cope with inevitable alarm floods. In 2009, the consortium began researching how to develop and evaluate interface techniques that could improve an operator’s ability to handle disturbances that would generate alarm flooding. The research began to focus on enhancing an operator’s situational awareness in an alarm flood situation. In the event of an alarm flood, the list-based alarm summary display does not help the operator understand the origin of a process deviation. The operator may not understand the alarm or the root cause of the first alarm because the length of the alarm list increases quickly, and the first alarm is typically buried deep down in the list. This leads to a delay in operator response as the operator takes more time to understand which alarm should be addressed first. Even when an operator takes action, it is difficult to understand whether the original problem is resolved. The research team developed the concept of an alarm tracker to overcome this problem. The tracker visualizes the alarms on a timeline, enhancing an operator's situational awareness through highlighting the origin of an alarm flood. This design allows an operator to see the initial alarm first, which might have been triggered by the first process deviation or the first equipment malfunction. Figure 2: The Abnormal Situation Management (ASM) Consortium finds that huge amounts of data actually can inhibit action taken by an operator in an emergency situation. Courtesy: Honeywell In addition, the alarm tracker spatially represents separate alarms by specific equipment areas. This type of visualization supports an operator's problem identification and prioritization of a problem response. The alarm tracker visualization also retains the original alarm list representation so the operator can use the list for further troubleshooting. The consortium found that by using this visualization method, an operator's situational awareness and performance were improved. The results showed that an operator's response-to-process upsets increased by 6% with 9% fewer false-positive responses to unrelated process conditions. The evaluations further revealed the subjective rating for usability increased, and the workload subjective rating decreased. Enhancing situational awareness Abnormal-situation management is a challenge. Operators must deal with abnormal situations in real time, in highly complex, dynamic environments. Tools that can enhance an operator's situational awareness, such as the alarm tracker, can be deployed to help the operator manage abnormal situations safely and effectively. Subhankar Dey is a senior marketing specialist, Anand Tharanathan is a principal research scientist, and Tom Williams is consortium director for Honeywell. For more information on the ASM Consortium, visit No comments Annual Salary Survey Read more: 2015 Salary Survey click me
Just in time for the 200th anniversary of the beloved British scribe’s birthday, Jenny Hartley, head of English and Creative Writing at Roehampton University in London, pored through the 12-volume British Academy Pilgrim collection of Charles Dickens’s correspondence to produce The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens (Oxford University), an invaluable treasure for fans of the legendary British scribe who don’t have the time or patience to go through the 14,000 letters themselves. Tip Sheet spoke with Hartley through the epistolary medium of the day, e-mail, from her home in the U.K. So how long does it take to go through 14,000 letters? Well, it took me about two years to do the selection—but I have a university post, so the editing wasn't a full-time thing. But it was hugely enjoyable—if agonising, as so many good ones didn't make the final cut. What kind of criteria did you use to narrow the field? The first priority had to be letters to do with the novels, because they are mainly what we know and love Dickens for. So I chose letters to illustrators, letters to or about originals of his characters, letters about his creative process, or the progress of a novel. After that I was keen to get in as many facets of Dickens's life as I could: the journalist, the magazine editor, the traveller, the lover, husband, father and family man, the organiser of amateur dramatics, the friend, the man with an active social conscience. What would the average Dickens fan be surprised to find in these letters? The variety, I think, and the range. Here was a man who wasn't only a novelist, but so many other things besides, and other things into which he threw himself with the energy of twenty men. Take, for instance, his letters to would-be contributors to his magazine. Rather than deputing a sub-editor or assistant, Dickens writes lengthy letters of constructive criticism, virtual tutorials by post to suggest improvements and explain why they're necessary. Also, I have to say, many of the letters are very funny—but that shouldn't be a surprise to Dickens fans. Do you have a favorite letter? My favourite letter has to be the one about the death of his pet raven. “My Dear Maclise/ You will be greatly shocked and grieved to hear that the Raven is no more.” And my favourite lost letter (we know there are many lost letters, some destroyed on purpose, some by accident) has to be the one he wrote to the raven who was being looked after by the artist Edwin Landseer while Dickens was out of London. What contemporary author do you think is doing the most satisfactorily Dickensian work? I loved the sense of time and the city evoked by Jennifer Egan in A Visit from the Goon Squad.
Opportunity Rover’s 10th Anniversary Honored By Ray Arvidson January 23, 2014 Opportunity Rover’s 10th Anniversary Honored By Ray Arvidson [ Watch The Video: Celebrating the Opportunity Rover’s 10th Anniversary ] Washington University in St. Louis Ten years ago, on Jan. 24, 2004, the Opportunity rover landed on a flat plain in the southern highlands of the planet Mars and rolled into an impact crater scientists didn't even know existed. The mission team, understandable giddy that it hadn't crashed or mysteriously gone silent during the descent (as other Mars missions have done) called it "a hole in one." In honor of the rover's 10th anniversary, Ray Arvidson, PhD, deputy principal investigator of the dual-rover mission, recently took an audience at Washington University in St. Louis on a whirlwind tour of the past decade's exploration of Mars, cheered on by students holding signs reading "Boffins." ("Boffin" is British slang for "scientist.") Introducing Arvidson, Bill McKinnon, PhD, a fellow WUSTL planetary scientist, said Arvidson had done graduate work under Tim Mutch of Brown University, who led the Lander Imaging Team for the Viking mission to Mars. When Mutch stepped down as team leader in 1977, Arvidson took over for him. Arvidson, the James S. McDonnelll Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences, has been involved in every significant US interplanetary mission to Mars and Venus since then, McKinnon said. Arvidson had a good story to tell. The 10-year-old rover, dirty and arthritic though it may be, just found evidence of conditions that would support the chemistry of life in the planet's past, work that earned it a spot in the Jan. 24 issue of Science magazine, just in time for Opportunity's anniversary. Why are we on Mars? "We're exploring Mars to better understand Earth," Arvidson said. "On Mars, we can learn about geological processes and environmental processes — maybe habitability, maybe life, that remains to be seen — for a period of time that's lost on Earth. "Mars preserves the whole geologic record," he said, "because there's so little erosion there. We have the whole stratigraphic section; minerals are well preserved. So by touring and exploring Mars, we can travel back into early geologic time. "The punch line is that the farther back we look in the rock record, the more we find evidence of the interaction of relatively mild waters with the Martian crust. And the farther back we look, the better the chemical conditions for life. "Today, Mars is dry and cold. But in the past, there were exploding volcanoes with hydrothermal vents, there were fumaroles (steam-charged vents), there were rivers, there were dendritic streams, there were lakes. "The older you look, the better it gets in terms of warm and wet," Arvidson said. The MER rovers "The rovers are really field geologists," Arvidson said. "They're robotically driven, but they're doing what we would be doing if we had boots on Mars with rock hammers, collection bags, microscopes and little huts where we could do some chemical analyses. "What people don't realize is that on any given day, in the afternoon Mars time, when the data come down through the Deep Space Net, we get just 100 to 200 megabits. That's a soda straw, not a fire hose. So we have to be really careful about what we command and prioritize what we acquire. "But operating at 100 to 200 megabits per sol, we've attempted to reconstruct the past environment from the geologic record just as a field geologist would do. (Sols, or Martian days, are 39 minutes longer than Earth days.) "We lost Spirit, Opportunity's twin, back in 2010," Arvidson said. Stuck in the sand, it was unable to point its solar arrays in the correct direction to survive winter, and it went quiet March 22, 2010, or sol 2,210. But Arvidson is not complaining; the rovers were expected to survive only about 90 to 180 sols. "They were supposed to last three or six months and it's been 10 years," he said. "They were supposed to drive maybe a thousand meters, and Opportunity is now about to break 40,000 meters." Crater-hopping on Mars Early in its mission although already past its expiry date (on sol 134), Opportunity drove into a 430-foot-wide crater named Endurance. It spent the next half-year exploring sedimentary layers exposed in the crater wall. They were named the Burns formation for Roger Burns, a geologist who predicted the importance of sulfate mineralogy on Mars based on results obtained by the Viking missions and his laboratory analyses. "The formation consists of many thin layers of sulfate sandstone that formed in ancient lakebeds, were reworked into sand dunes by the wind, and then recemented into rock by rising groundwater," Arvidson said. Looking at the chemistry of the rocks, the mission scientists inferred that they had formed under acidic and oxidizing conditions. The rover, they quipped, had discovered evidence not of water but of acid on Mars. Nothing daunted, Opportunity struggled out of Endurance and trundled off toward Argo, the next-nearest crater. It was to crater-hop for the next nine years, checking out Argo, Vostok, Erebus, Victoria, Conception and Santa Maria, but encountering the Burns Formation everywhere it went. And then, finally, it drove to Endeavour, a monster crater, measuring a full 14 miles across. Formed by the impact of an asteroid or a comet, perhaps 4 billion years ago, the crater has been filled in by Burns Formation sandstones, but a few islands of rock still stand exposed on the rim. "They're ancient rocks that predate the Endeavour impact," Arvidson said. Rather than enter the crater, Opportunity stayed on its rim to look at those rocks. "We drove to a spot on the rim called Cape York because the CRISM instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had identified the spectral signature of clay materials on its eastern side," Arvidson explained. At Cape York, the rover ground into a rock called Espérance. The deeper it ground, the more the rock's composition resembled that of an aluminum-rich clay called montmorillonite. "To make an aluminum-rich clay," Arvidson explained, "you have to leach many other elements out of the rock, such as iron and magnesium. So this is a place a lot of water flowed through, probably because fracturing made the rock very permeable. "If you go through the chemistry and infer characteristics of the water, it was mildly acidic at best and reducing, not oxidizing, and those are habitable conditions. We think this kind of environment existed many places on Mars," he said. What happened to Mars? But if Mars was once warm and wet, what happened to turn it cold and dry? "Early Mars was volcanically active," Arvidson said. "The volcanoes would have pumped greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that warmed the planet. It also had an internal magnetic field that deflected the solar wind, preventing it from stripping away the atmosphere. But as the core of the planet froze, its magnetic field diminished, the solar wind scoured away the atmosphere, and without a dense atmosphere, it became the cold, dry planet we know today. "That's what the geologists think," he said. "So we're convincing the atmosphere modelers to give us enough greenhouse oomph, with whatever gas they want, in order to get up to temperature where there would be liquid water on the surface. Because the geological evidence says, 'That's a fact, Jack.'" The Boffins-in-training all stood up and cheered. On The Net:
The Non-Cheat’s Way to Predict Job Interview Questions 03 Nov 2011 job interview questions in Singapore You can predict interview questions Job interviews can be pretty nerve-wracking experiences, and not surprisingly so when you bear in mind that things like promotions, higher salaries and better developmental opportunities, depend on how well interviewees perform. Another reason why they are so terrifying though, is because candidates typically have no idea what they are going to be asked and they are afraid that they are either going to be completely wrong-footed, or left sitting there like lemons with nothing to say. What if I were to tell you then, that with a little bit of effort and research, you could fairly reliably predict the type of job interview questions that will come up? In this, the first of a whole series of articles on job interviews, you can find out how to do just that. Okay, let’s start with the fact that interview questions are never asked completely at random. After all, what would be the point in that? What typically happens when companies have vacancies to fill is that the people in HR and/or the hiring managers sit down and look at the role description for the jobs in question. They take into account the nature of the tasks and responsibilities that the roleholder would have to deal with, the skills they would need to possess to be able to do the job successfully and the personal qualities that would help them to be more effective in the role. Any half-decent recruiter will also consider the culture of the company so as to try and draw in applications from those people who would be more likely to fit in and share the same values. Once all of this information has been assembled, they would then create a job advertisement which would probably include a few words about the organization itself, a job description, a person specification and instructions on how potential applicants should go about putting themselves forward for the position. Around the same time that the job advertisement is put together, those who are going to be involved in conducting the interviews, review the ad itself, as well as the job description, and design a set of questions which is explicitly aimed at establishing who would be the best fit for the role. There’s no trickery involved and none of the questions are designed to catch candidates out. If the role involves lots of customer-facing activity, therefore, then you can bet that a good proportion of the questions will seek to establish how much experience each of the candidates has in this area, how they have handled certain challenging experiences involving customers in the past and what the outcomes of those experiences were. Alternatively, they might involve hypothetical scenarios which call upon candidates to explain how they would deal with these situations if they were to encounter them. In each case, the questions themselves would give interviewees an opening to talk about the skills and qualities they have used or would use to deal with these situations and so to demonstrate their suitability for the position. Look carefully, therefore, at the job tasks and responsibilities as they appear in the job ad or job description and think about the skills and qualities that would be required to succeed in the role, and the questions that you are likely to be asked will become self-evident. Sometimes job advertisements are not very descriptive/informative. For such cases, have a look at more detailed descriptions for the same role, posted by other companies. You can also consult an occupational database (such as Career Compass or O*NET) , to get a general idea of what a particular job is all about. This, however, isn’t where your preparation should stop. The same role in the same company can look completely different depending upon the organization’s priorities at any given time. A business that’s going through tough economic times, for example, might expect quite different things from certain of its staff members than it would if it had just won a huge new contract. Ambitions to expand, mergers and reorganizations, strong competitors and a whole host of other things can change a business’ priorities enormously, and they can change the expectations of staff beyond recognition. For you to be able to understand where those priorities lie and what types of things your job interview questions are likely to focus on, you need to research the hiring company thoroughly. Ask yourself what the main issues are, that are facing the company and the industry at this moment in time, who the organization’s main competitors are, what they up to and what the hiring company is doing to try to stay ahead of them. Then look for answers on the company website, in press releases and news reports, in trade journals and on relevant online discussion forums to find your answers. Also, think about how these concerns are likely to affect the recruiter’s idea of what success would look like in the role that you are applying for. Would it, for example, mean more emphasis on saving the organization lots of money as opposed to trying to bring in new clients or customers? Would it mean earning the company the reputation as the best in customer service rather than delivering high volumes of sales? Again, if you can get to the bottom of the recruiter’s current situation and uncover the pain points that the organization is experiencing, you can more easily work out the direction that the job interview questions are likely to take. Another thing that interviewers could very well query are aspects of your own resume, so take a good, hard look at this too. Are there any gaps in your work history that they might want to explore for example, or are there any skills or achievements that they might want you to back up with explanations? Study your resume through a recruiter’s eyes and see whether there is anything that you would want to query in his or her position. Predicting interview questions, or at least the most important ones, really isn’t that difficult. It just takes a bit of time and research and for you to think like the recruiter. Most of the clues are actually right there in the job ad, and those that aren’t can easily be found elsewhere. If you do your homework thoroughly at this stage, you’ll be able walk into the interview feeling fully prepared and brimming with confidence. Our Career Counselling Services Find out what careers are a good fit for you, based on your personality, interests, skills, values, goals and other preferences. Find out more Conduct a quick and effective job search. Optimise your resume, cover letters, job search techniques and interviews. Find out more Advance your career and increase your earning potential, by improving your effectiveness in the workplace. Find out more Have a quick discussion with a career counsellor, to speak about and resolve any situation or issue you are facing at work. Find out more About The Author Julia is a professional writer, who has helped write 10 books on various aspects of careers, job searching and HR on behalf of some of the leading experts in the field, as well as numerous others on a variety of management topics and personal performance. She comes from a professional background in account management, marketing and business development. Share Your Opinions & Questions
Talc from Massachusetts Talc from Massachusetts C001/4416 Rights Managed Request low-res file 530 pixels on longest edge, unwatermarked Request/Download high-res file Uncompressed file size: 28.2MB Downloadable file size: 2.6MB Price image Pricing Please login to use the price calculator Caption: Talc, hydrous magnesium silicate, is the softest known mineral and is number 1 on the Mohs hardness scale. When ground up into fine particles, it is sold as 'talcum powder' and used as a drying agent. It forms as an alteration product of other silicates in localities worldwide. Talc is usually massive or 'foliated' (in sheets) and has a pearly luster and a 'soapy' or greasy feel. The material found in digging the Hoosac Tunnel in Massachusetts is extremely typical of the species. Keywords: arem collection, crystal, crystals, foliated, geology, hydrous magnesium silicate, luster, mineral, mineralogy, minerals, nature, object, ores, pearly, silicate, specimen, specimens, still life
sedia90 di sedia90 Genius 9848 punti The number thirteen is very unlucky. This is true in many countries. But Why? One suggestion is that twelve was a lucky number in ancient times so thirteen is unlucky. Another suggestion is that at the Last Supper there were twelve apostles and Jesus. Friday the thirteen is a very unlucky day. This is because a lot of bad things such as the death of Jesus happened on a Friday. Some countries do not have a thirteenth floor! Breaking a mirror brings seven years’ bad luck. The Romans believed the reflection in a mirror was a picture of a person’s spirit. As a result it was very bad luck break one. Spilling salt is also very unlucky. This is because salt was very valuable in the past. At the time f the Roman Empire soldiers received salt instead of money. This is the origin of the word ‘salary’. Salt was also used as a medicine. If you spill salt, you must throw it over your left shoulder so that you don’t become ill. In Britain, it is good luck if a black cat crosses in front of you. This is because in ancient Egypt the cat was sacred. Many people believed that cats have nine lives. Horseshoes are also lucky. Witches are afraid of horse and a horseshoes on the door protects the people inside. A horseshoe is also the shape of the crescent moon which brings good luck. Today you often find small silver horseshoes and wedding cakes. Finally, touching wood is good luck and comes from the time when the Celts believed that gods lived in trees. Registrati via email
Math 161 Sample First Midterm Problem 4c Dr. Wilson 4c. Find the first and second derivative. To get the first derivative, we rewrite the function as and use the chain rule. Haul the exponent down in front, raise the quantity inside the parentheses to one smaller power and multiply by the derivative of the inside function. This can be rewritten as The 2's cancel andwe are left with
Foot and Heel Injuries Plantar fasciitis assessment and diagnosisInjuries to the foot can be acute meaning sudden onset or chronic which come on gradually often through overuse. If you are not sure what your injury is why not try our symptom checker? Or below we outline the most common causes of foot and heel pain. Heel pain Gradual onset: Plantar fasciitis causes pain under the heel which comes on gradually and may radiate underneath the foot. It is likely to be worse first thing in the morning. Bruised heel also causes comes on gradually with pain underneath the heel which doesn't radiate under the foot and improves with rest. Severs disease is a foot injury which affects children between the ages of 8 and 15 years old causing gradual onset pain at the back of the heel. Achilles bursitis causes pain at the back of the heel which comes on gradually, often with a prominant lump or swelling at the back of the heel. Sudden onset: Calcaneal fracture is a broken heel bone and is a sudden traumatic injury caused by a heavy landing with severe pain and swelling. One of the more severe sudden onset foot injuries. View all causes of heel pain Midfoot pain Gradual onset: Navicular stress fracture is a stress fracture of the navicular bone in the middle of the foot. Symptoms include poorly localized ache in the midfoot which gets worse with exercise. Extensor tendonitis is gradual onset pain and inflammation of the extensor tendons which run along the top of the foot and straighten the toes. Stress fracture of the foot has symptoms of gradual onset pain through overuse and can apply to any of the bones in the midfoot area including the navicular bone mentioned above. Sudden onset: Midtarsal joint sprain is an injury to the ligaments in the midfoot area. Pain will be felt on the outside middle of the foot and there may be swelling on the outside top of the joint. View all causes of midfoot pain Forefoot pain Gradual onset Extensor tendinitis is inflammation of the tendons which run along the top of the foot and straighten the toes. Pain is felt along the top of the foot. Mortons Neuroma or Mortons syndrome is a condition resulting in pain between the third and forth toes cause by compression of a nerve. Metatarsal stress fracture is a fine fracture in one of the long metatarsal bones in the foot which occurs through overuse and / or poor foot biomechanics. Metatarsalgia is a general term used to cover any forefoot pain but usually refers to inflammation which occurs in the joints between the metatarsal bones in the foot and phalanges bones of the toes. Bunion (Halux valgus) is a painful swelling of the soft tissue on the inside of the joint at the base of the big toe. Often the big toe will look as if it is bent in towards the other toes or even can lie across them. Gout is a form of arthritis caused by a build up of uric acid within the body which is a waste product of metabolism. Symptoms which include intense pain in the joint around the big toe tend to come on quickly and then last for around a week before easing off. Sudden onset Turf toe can occur after a very vigorous upward bending of the big toe causing a sprain to the ligaments under the toe. Symptoms include swelling and pain at the joint. View all causes of forefoot pain Toe injuries Gradual onset Sudden onset Broken toe is a fracture to any of the bones in the toes, usually the big toe. Symptoms include pain at which is felt instantly and swelling which comes on quickly. Dislocated toe usually occurs from a direct trauma to the to resulting in intense pain. A visible deformity may be obvious but this is not always the case. Skin conditions and other foot problems Athletes foot, also known as Tinea Pedis is a fungal skin infection causing itchy, often peeling or flaking skin is present. A mild case of athletes foot may appear as just dry skin. Corns & Calluses occur when there is excess or thickening of the skin, usually on the soles of the feet. Calluses form on weight bearing parts of the body and corns on non weight bearing areas. Verruca is also known as a plantar wart and appears on the sole of the foot. They are the same as warts on any other body part and are caused by a virus, known as human papilloma virus (HPV). Over pronation is where the foot rolls in or flattens too much. Over supination is where the foot rolls out, usually athletes have a high arch also. Gait analysis can be done to identify any biomechanical issues such as overpronation or oversupination. When should I see a doctor? • Severe pain, especially on walking • Severe swelling (oedema) Immediate first aid for acute foot injuries The PRICE principles (protection, rest, ice, compression and elevation) are the gold standard set for treating acute sports injuries. PRICE should be applied as early as possible and continued for at least the first 24-72 hours. The application of ice to an injury: • Reduces pain (pain gate theory) • Reduces muscle spasm Read more on PRICE principles
Effective But Simple Home Remedies For Boils Boils used to be considered a plague laid on us as a punishment from God for being bad. Perhaps it is therefore unsurprising that they have become a socially unaccepted condition. Not least because they can be rather unsightly if you are misfortunate enough to suffer with them. Boils, although painful, are a relatively harmless condition that will last about ten days and then disappear. Because they are relatively harmless, home remedies for boils are often an ideal way to deal with them. Essentially, boils are an infection that occurs in a hair follicle or oil gland that has been traumatised or become blocked. When a boil develops and grows, it will turn yellow/white on the head of the boil and red and inflamed around the surrounding and nearby area of the boil itself. Home remedies for boils will often work by drawing the pus from under the skin and then healing the open sore that is left behind. Lancing of a boil is not usually recommended, as this can lead to scaring once the boil has healed. There are other methods to draw out the pus from the boil are widely used home remedies for boils. For example, cornmeal is a food that can be used as a poultice to draw out the pus in the boil. This works because cornmeal has properties that readily absorb moisture. Mix the cornmeal into a paste with a little warm water and then apply to the boil and wrap in a clean cloth. This is an ideal way to begin bringing the boil out. Believe it or not, keeping the boil wet and warm is yet another one of the home remedies for boils that has been proven to work well. However, the cloth needs to be kept wet as opposed to damp and the warmth must be maintained. Keeping the compress at the desired warmth and wetness may take some organising, but if repeated four or five times during the day for about ten minutes each time, this is a great one to add to the list of old home remedies. In the same way as the cornmeal works, so does the wet and warm compress. Additionally, there are other food stuffs that will work just as well. Onions and garlic have long been famous for their medicinal properties. Place a chunk of onion or three or four cloves of garlic directly to the boil, as these are great ways to draw the boil to a head. Once you have applied the above home remedies for boils and the boil begins to drain away, it is imperative to ensure that you do not allow the pus to contaminate the encompassing skin, as this can cause additonal problems. You can find a lot more home remedies for various ailments. For natural over-the-counter remedies visit www.choose4yourself.com, your sure to find something you need! This entry was posted in Boils and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink. 2 Responses to Effective But Simple Home Remedies For Boils 1. Karess says: It’s much eiaser to understand when you put it that way! 2. Kraig Limauro says:
“Aggressive marketing, unscrupulous businessmen who create a market for children” This measure is derived from the recommendations of the German centre for Cancer Research (DKFZ), published one year ago under the direction of Dr. Martina Pötschke-Langer. Within this institution, she supervises the cancer prevention unit, a WHO “Collaborating Centre” for Tobacco Control. She gave an interview to the German media Deutsche Welle. On reading her statements, saying that Ms. Pötschke-Langer does not like the electronic cigarette is a euphemism . She abhors it. “The feeling of inhaling the taste of apple or peach or other fruits” She accuses the professionals of the electronic cigarette to conduct aggressive marketing campaigns that target children and adolescents. The proof? They put on the market flavors like “bubblegum”, the design of the products are “catchy”, “colorful” with “shiny stones” and can “sell for about €1.” Thirty percent of German from 12 to 17 years old have already tried the electronic cigarette. She acknowledges that they are not all smokers, but it shows that they had been sold the product. The e-cigarettes are designed to replace tobacco cigarettes and help smokers quit gradually. Why do children have been targeted as consumers? asks the journalist. “Manufacturers have used unscrupulous strategies to create a market made up of children and teenagers. This was intentional and we have studies on the subject”. She recommends to closely watch the Internet and the social media as the aggressive advertising for the products of the vape is very problematic. “Respirable particles that remain in the lungs and are then absorbed by the rest of the body” Asked about the “secondhand vaping” of e-cigarettes and the danger it represents in relation to tobacco smoke, the German physician indicates that vaping deteriorates the quality of indoor air. If several people “vape on an e-cigarette” in the same room there is “a strong increase of respirable particles that remain in the lungs and are then absorbed by the rest of the body”, she explains. Air measurements have shown carcinogenic substances she adds, acetaldehyde, formaldehyde, and metals. For her it is irrevocable: e-cigarettes should be treated as cigarettes and tobacco. And is not very good news for German vapers.
Place:Gunness, Lincolnshire, England Alt namesGunhousesource: John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72: TypeTownship, Civil parish Coordinates53.5936°N 0.7276°W Located inLincolnshire, England Also located inLindsey, England (1889 - 1974) Humberside, England (1974 - 1996) North Lincolnshire District, Lincolnshire, Englandunitary authority covering the area since 1996 source: Family History Library Catalog Gunness (or Gunhouse) is a village and civil parish in North Lincolnshire, England. It is situated 3 miles (5 km) west from Scunthorpe, and on the east bank of the River Trent. (Source:Wikipedia) A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Gunhouse from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72: "GUNHOUSE, a township in West Halton and Frodingham parishes, and a chapelry partly also in Bottesford parish, Lincoln. The township lies on the river Trent, nearly opposite Keadby [railway] station, and 4¼ miles ESE of Crowle; has a wharf for shipment of iron ore, brought by rail from Scunthorpe; has also ironworks, erected since 1861. Population: 197. Houses: 35. The chapelry includes Burringham township, and was constituted in 1862. Post town, Burringham, under Bawtry. Population: 829. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Lincoln. Value: £148. Patron: the Bishop of Norwich. The church is plain; and there are a recent chapel of ease and three Methodist chapels." Research Tips
What Is Equilibrium GDP? Article Details • Written By: B. Turner • Edited By: W. Everett • Last Modified Date: 01 November 2016 • Copyright Protected: Conjecture Corporation • Print this Article Free Widgets for your Site/Blog Gross domestic product (GDP) is an important economic indicator used to evaluate the financial health of a nation as a whole. It is calculated by adding together the total financial worth of all of the goods and services that were produced in a country within a year. For example, the GDP for the United States (US) is more than $14 trillion US Dollars (USD) as of 2011, though this value changes every year. Equilibrium GDP occurs when the businesses within a nation produce exactly the amount of goods and services that people want to buy. In economic terms, equilibrium GDP can be defined as the level of GDP where aggregate demand and aggregate supply are equal. Aggregate demand represents the total amount of goods and services that people are willing and able to buy. In the US, for example, aggregate demand is equal to all the products and services produced in the US that are purchased by people domestically or internationally. Graphically, aggregate demand is shown as a downsloping curve, where demand is higher at low price points and lower at high price points. Aggregate supply is the total value of goods and services produced in a country within a single year. If every resource within the country is put to work at its maximum level of efficiency, aggregate supply and GDP will always be equal. These resources include everything from labor to equipment and natural resources. Given that this type of efficiency is rare, aggregate supply tends to rise as price levels increase. This can be shown graphically as an upsloping line, where price and GDP increase proportionally to one another. Graphically, equilibrium GDP can be found by locating the point where aggregate supply and demand curves intersect. Given that these values change over time, shifting the curves, equilibrium GDP is also always changing. For example, aggregate supply can increase over time, even if all resources are already being used at maximum efficiency. This occurs when technological advances allow businesses to generate more output from the same amount of input. In real-world scenarios, most economies can increase aggregate supply and equilibrium GDP by simply improving overall efficiency. Changes in aggregate demand can also impact equilibrium GDP. When price levels increase, people can afford fewer products and services, leading to a decline in aggregate demand. This results in a decrease in equilibrium GDP. The inverse is also true, where lower prices lead to an increase in aggregate demand, as well as an increase in equilibrium GDP. You might also Like Discuss this Article Post your comments Post Anonymously forgot password?
What is the Parallel Axis Theorem? Article Details • Written By: C.B. Fox • Edited By: Jenn Walker • Last Modified Date: 28 November 2016 • Copyright Protected: Conjecture Corporation • Print this Article Free Widgets for your Site/Blog The parallel axis theorem is used in physics to determine an object’s moment of inertia as it rotates about any axis. The theorem states that there is a relationship between the inertia of an object rotating around its center of gravity and an axis parallel to this center. This theorem applies to any solid object in rotation, including irregular shapes. An object’s resistance to change in rotational speed or direction in terms of its inertia is measured by the parallel axis theorem. Inertia is the resistance a physical object shows to a change in its state of motion. When an object is moving in a linear direction, this resistance is represented by an object’s mass. In rotational dynamics, when describing angular momentum, angular velocity, torque and angular acceleration, this resistance is called moment of inertia. With regard to regular objects, such as spheres, rods and cylinders, moment of inertia can be solved using simple formulas, specific to the shape of these objects. For irregular shapes, the moment of inertia can be solved using calculus, which allows for the use of continuous variables. In an irregular shape, the rotation of the object around an axis involves a continuous distribution of mass. In an object that is not symmetrical, the mass will not be evenly distributed as it rotates, which means that solving for its moment of inertia will require using multiple variables. The moment of inertia is one variable in the parallel axis theorem equation. The lowest amount of force needed to change an object’s speed or direction about its center of mass is its moment of inertia. Center of mass, also known as center of gravity, is the point in an object wherein the mass is balanced evenly on all sides. For instance, a see-saw will have a center of mass in the center of the board, which can be demonstrated by balancing the board on a pivot point placed in the center. If an adult and a small child are placed at opposite ends of the see saw, the center of mass will shift toward the adult, until the total mass is even on both sides. In the parallel axis theorem, the moment of inertia for any axis parallel to the axis in the center of mass can be given with a single formula. The inertia of the parallel axis is equal to the inertia of the center of mass plus the point mass of the object multiplied by the square of the distance between the center of mass and the parallel axis. This formula holds true for any rigid body rotating about an axis. You might also Like Discuss this Article Post your comments Post Anonymously forgot password?
Skip to definition. Adjective: spurting spur-ting 1. Propelled violently in a usually narrow stream "I pulled the shard out just as his wound began spurting blood"; - jetting, spouting, squirting Verb: spurt spurt 1. Gush forth in a sudden stream or jet "water spurted forth"; - spirt, gush, spout - forge, spirt See also: running Type of: go, locomote, move, pour, travel Encyclopedia: Spurt
Bachelor's Degrees in Visual Communications By obtaining a Bachelor's Degree in Visual Communications degree you will learn the necessary skills to combine art and technology to produce creative projects. Visual communications is use of all that is considered art and designed and made attainable through technological means. The idea is to bring the world of art and the world of technology together in order to produce quality projects efficiently. If you have a desire to combine your artistic talents and gain knowledge of how to combine that with technology, then a degree in Visual Communications is the right choice for you. Bachelor's Degrees in Visual Communications Curriculum The four-year program to gain a Bachelor's Degree in Visual Communications consists of many courses that will prepare you for a successful career in visual communications. The most common focus areas are graphic design, art and multimedia technology. The primary focus is to prepare students for the world of mass communications using art and graphics. The idea is to reach as many people as possible in order to express an idea, sell a product, or create a stronger support base. The use of technology is vital for this goal because it ensures that projects will be distributed faster and viewed more easily. Upon graduation, students will understand how to implement art into technology to be able to communicate their artistic ability for the world to see. Art and technology are both areas of study for the Bachelor's Degree in Visual Communications degree. Some of the most common courses available in this program are: Graphic Design, Computer Programming, Web Design and Animation. There are also many computer program courses available to ensure that students are up to date with the most recent software to use to facilitate their artistic design. This degree is meant to ensure that every artistic and technological component is understood in order to advance in the career. Upon graduation many students will have created a lengthy portfolio as well as gained experience through training. It is noted that students should expect to learn more by hands on training while working since different companies use different kinds of software as well as focus their artistic and technological abilities in different areas. Bachelor's Degrees in Visual Communications Jobs By having a degree in visual communications, you have quite a few options of job titles. Since the field focuses on both and technology any field that involves one or both of these elements are likely to be suitable with this degree. Graphic designers that work in print on the web, web page designers that focus on making web pages for personal and business uses appealing to viewers, programmers that focus on software that assists in design and artistic capabilities, and work in advertisement creating eye catching signs and billboards. Anywhere there is a need for artistic design through technology, then there is a need for visual communications. With so many forms of communication at our finger tips, the world of visual communication is always expanding to adjust to the demand for it.
How To Attach An Earhook And Thick Tube To A Hearing Aid An earhook and thick tube combination are often used when a hearing aid needs to deliver more sound to the ear than the typical standard thin tube can produce. The logic is simple – the thick tubes have a greater diameter of tube available which allows more sound to transmit to the ear. The earhook is simply an adapter that allows for the thicker tube to connect with the hearing aid. Attach your hearing aid parts 2. Attach the larger, female thread side of the earhook adapter to the male threaded part at the top of the hearing aid and screw in firmly. 5. Note where the tube and earhook intersect each other outside of your ear at a comfortable length. Ideally this means keeping the earhook snug, but not tight to the top of your ear and making sure the tube extends upwards toward the top of your ear and not outwards away from your ear. Mark this spot on the tube and then add 1/8” extra tube length from this spot to allow for overlap onto the earhook when attaching. 6. Cut the tube at this spot 7. Remove both pieces from your ear and attach the tube to the earhook by inserting the small end of the earhook into the open end of the tube until tight 8. The hearing aid is now ready to wear Put on your hearing aid
Explore BrainMass Ecosystem Valuation See the attached files. Solution Preview In the Pendleton case, there seems to be a situation where there is an inverse relationship between the realities of the pollution problem within the Pacific Ocean, and what individuals perceive to be the level pollution in the Pacific Ocean. It seems that the individuals in this area have not taken the time to verify their perceptions, by taking the time to read the bacteriological measurement outcomes. This is due to the fact that the scientific measurements provide indications that the pollution level is much less than what individuals in that area perceive it to be. This article also illuminates the fact that the individuals in the Los Angeles area are much more reluctant to utilize the beaches for recreational purposes, due to their distorted perception of the level ... Solution Summary This solution describes important aspects of ecosystem valuation.
What is a Semite? Image: Tee shirt with the words “Yo Semite.” Photo courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History Museum Store. Actually, there’s no such thing. “Semitic” is a designation for a language group that includes Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, Tigrinya, and Hebrew. The term was coined in the late 18th century by August Ludwig von Schlözer, a historian, and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, a German Protestant theologian. They derived it from Shem, the name of one of the three sons of Noah in Genesis 10, via the Greek pronunciation Σημ (“seem.”) As critics at the time pointed out, this was problematic because in that passage, the Canaanites (who also spoke a language from this group) were descended from another brother, Ham. Academics began to refer to Jews as “Semites” in the 19th century. Pseudoscientific theories about race abounded in the West and were used to justify hatred towards Jews and other people deemed undesirable by those in power. Targeted groups included people of African descent, Irish descent, Asian descent, and those with brown skin. So-called scientists strove to identify physical characteristics which “proved” that those groups of individuals were inferior to whites. Jews were also one of the targeted groups and were referred to as “Hebrews” or “Semites” to underline the notion of a Jewish race (a concept that completely ignores Judaism’s long history of accepting converts.) German journalist Wilhelm Marr used the term “antisemitismus” [antisemitism] as a more scientific-sounding, more elegant alternative to “Jew hatred.” in 1880 he published a pamphlet, Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum (The Way to Victory of the Germanic Spirit over the Jewish Spirit, which outlined his theory that Jews were infiltrating and damaging German culture. In the same year he founded the Antisemiten-Liga [Antisemitism League] in Germany and the term antisemitism moved into popular use. It is probably more useful to use the term “Jew hatred” for the fear and hatred of Jews, rather than to get embroiled in arguments about whether or not Arabs are also “Semites” and therefore subject to “antisemitism.” However, courtesy of some 19th century Germans, we seem to be stuck with this misnomer. Jewish tradition as well as Christian tradition teaches that all human beings are made in the image of God and are therefore equal: And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. – Genesis 1:27 Islam also asserts the equality of human beings, as established in the Quran. God makes distinctions among people only according to their individual righteousness: Therefore the hatred of any group of people merely because of their designation as a member of that group is wrong according to all three Abrahamic religions. Nor does science perceive any difference among homo sapiens: despite differences in coloration or belief, we are all one humanity. A Visit to the Anne Frank House Whenever Linda or I told anyone we were going to Amsterdam, the first question was usually, “Are you going to get stoned?” (No.) The second question was, “Are you going to the Anne Frank House?” The Anne Frank Huis (its Dutch name) is the third largest tourist attraction in the city, after the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. It is the building where eight Jews hid from the Nazis for two years during WWII, only to be ratted out by an unknown person near the end of the war. Only one of the eight survived, Otto Frank. After the Nazi raid on the house, a friend found a collection of books and papers that she recognized to be the diary of Anne Frank, Otto’s teenaged daughter. The Diary of a Young Girl became a bestseller, a play, and has been made into a movie as well. To get a sense of the popularity of this museum, look at the photo above. This is the line of people waiting to buy a ticket early on a weekday morning. We’d been told it was best to get tickets online before we even left home, but there were already no tickets available for the dates when we’d be there. At our hotel, we were assured that the best thing to do was get over there and wait in line before the doors opened. I had visited the “Secret Annexe” in the summer of 1973, and I knew that it was not accessible for a person on wheels. A quick check of the website told me that that was still the case. So that day we split up: Linda went to visit the Anne Frank House and I had other adventures. She arrived at 8 a.m. to find the line in the photograph above. I don’t know how long those people had been waiting, but it was a long line even so early. Linda tells me that the museum and the hiding place itself were very educational and very moving. Certainly the hiding place had made a huge impression on me when I visited there at age 18. Anne’s diary comes to life there, when the reader can feel how cramped the rooms are, and how careful one must be to be utterly quiet when anyone else in on the premises. As an American kid used to moving about at will, I remember marveling that the eight people hiding there for over two years managed to hang onto their sanity. It is unbearably sad to know that they went to the camps, after all they’d been through, so near to the liberation of Holland. If you wish to get a sense of the Anne Frank House, the museum website has an excellent online exhibit complete with a virtual tour. I know that Linda’s glad she went; I’m glad I saw it when I could climb all those stairs. Why Do Some People Think All Jews are Rich? Image: Stacks of coin in front of shadowy figures. Art by Pete Linforth via pixabay.com. You’ve heard the stereotypes, and the nasty little comments: “Jews are all rich.” “Jews control all the banks.” “All Jews are obsessed with money.” Some Jewish readers may have had pennies thrown at them. As a reader asked recently, where does this come from? First, notice something: the word “all.” Any time you see that word, put on your skeptical hat! Global statements are a sign that there’s irrationality involved. “All Jews are rich.” – Not true. Half a million Jews live under the poverty line in New York City alone, according to a study by the UJA-Federation of New York. So why do people say that or think it? In purely contemporary terms, it is true that a higher percentage of Jews earn more than $100,000 than any other “faith group” in America, according to this chart from GOOD and Column Five. It is also true that there are individual Jews who are famous for their wealth, for example, George Soros and Sheldon Adelson. But no, not all Jews are rich, and the majority of rich people are not Jewish. According to the Pew Research Center’s study of religious groups in the U.S. and income distribution, 44% of American Jewish households make above $100,000 per year, the highest percentage of any group. Some possible reasons for this: • Jewish culture values education highly, and higher education correlates with higher earning power. • Until recently, in each generation, Jews have been shut out of “old” professions and have therefore sought careers in emerging fields. For instance, when the American film industry was getting started, most white Americans looked down on people in entertainment. Jews established many of the first studios because that field was open to them. Being early in new fields means higher risk, but higher rewards for those who succeed. • Jews in America benefitted from a coincidence: Antisemitism decreased dramatically in the US after WWII, at the beginning of the post-war boom. Jews were not “redlined” out of the housing market, unlike other minorities. The growth in the housing market was the single greatest builder of middle-class wealth in US history. • The Jewish practice of tzedakah encourages the giving of low- or no-interest loans within the community. Jews who have “made it” contribute to organizations like the Hebrew Free Loan Society that give assistance to entrepreneurs that qualify, and to households in temporary distress. While it is not true that all Jews are rich or have access to wealth, it is true that as a group, Jews have prospered in America. Jews faced considerable prejudice but were able to establish themselves in newer, riskier industries where the initial return is high. Partly they were able to do that because within the Jewish community there is a tradition of helping young people get educations and start businesses. Furthermore, while Jews faced prejudice in America, including redlining, they did not face the systematic institutional racism that African Americans have faced. The linking of Jews and money goes back to the Middle Ages. The Bible forbids usury [taking or paying interest on a loan “from your brother.” (See Exodus 22:24, Deuteronomy 23:20-21, and Leviticus 25:35-37 for examples.)] Jewish law discouraged lending to non-Jews as well as forbidding lending at interest to other Jews. However, sources of income for European Jews prior to about 1800 were extremely limited. Jews were barred from most professions and guilds. Moneylending was a viable way to make a living, especially since Christians were barred by their own laws from lending money. Thus moneylending became a niche for Jews. It was a dangerous niche, however: no one likes their creditors. Financial skills are also portable. Jews were uprooted again and again from their homes in Europe, and those with portable skills were the best equipped to survive. One side-effect of the various expulsions was that families were often scattered to different cities. Having trusted family members in financial centers like Amsterdam, London, Paris, etc meant that money could be moved easily across the continent. For a more detailed history of Jews and banking, there’s an excellent article in the Virtual Jewish Library. So yes, there are connections between Jews and money. But not all Jews are rich and not all Jews have access to wealth. One way that these ideas spread was a hoax called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was produced sometime in the early 20th century in Russia or the Ukraine. It purports to be a blueprint for world domination by a Jewish conspiracy. It claimed that Jews plan to dominate the world by economic means. So even today, “All Jews are rich” is a central belief for many antisemites. A Very Important Class It’s that time again – I’m teaching the class on antisemitism tonight. I looked over my old lesson plan, and almost changed it. We’re in a different world all of a sudden. We’ve had antisemitic “incidents” in Europe ranging from murder to riots, and an ugly inquisition at a student government meeting in California. I decided to stick with my old lesson plan, because it is the basis for what my students need to know. Hatred of Jews goes way back in history. It has taken various forms over the centuries. Roman and Greek thinkers believed Jews lazy and disrespectful by nature. Christian antisemitism began as a set of religious beliefs about Jews. Religous antisemitism gradually took political forms, as Christianity became the established religion of Europe. By the 16th century in Spain, there was talk about “Jewish blood” and a sense of Jews as a race began to creep into the European vocabulary. Judaism was no longer an error of belief: it was a physical characteristic. Meanwhile, justifications for doing worse and worse things to Jews piled up. And then, yes, the 20th century came and with it the horrors of the Holocaust. What I want my students to understand is that the Holocaust wasn’t just “a German thing” and it wasn’t just an episode. All of European history led up to it, and unfortunately, many of the same beliefs and attitudes that gave rise to it are with us today. Some things have changed for the better: Vatican II brought a radical change of doctrine from the Roman Catholic Church, repudiating its old antisemitism. In the United States and in some parts of Europe, there is a strong feeling of “never again.” Organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center track hate speech and hate crimes. But we have also slid backwards in other ways. Nazi propaganda made its way into the Arab world during WWII, and so the blood libel and other horrors are still circulating, believed as fact. The Protocols of the Elders of Zionan ugly antisemitic hoax, is still circulating, too. And there are hate groups in the West as well: anyone who searches for “Jew” on Google will be greeted by an avalanche of filth. The modern state of Israel has become a magnet for antisemitic rhetoric. Criticism of Israel is certainly a valid activity – I am not madly in love with many policies of the State of Israel and its government – but a frightening amount of the anti-Israel rhetoric one hears tumbles over the line into antisemitism. So that’s what’s on my mind tonight. I need to make sure that those studying towards conversion understand that they are signing up for this, and that it isn’t going away. I want to communicate ways of responding, and ways to stay centered while reading the news. It’s a big job, and I feel one of the most important things I do as an “Intro to Judaism” teacher. I’ll finish with questions I’m going to ask the students: What do you do when you hear someone say something antisemitic? How do you decide what you are going to do? What about hatred aimed at other groups such as people of color or Muslims? When did it last happen, and what did you do? How I Deal With Antisemitic Comments Visibility is a mixed bag for Jews. This weekend in all the excitement of being Freshly Pressed this blog saw a burst of traffic, “follows,” and “likes,” – thank you very much to those who contributed to that and welcome to new readers! It also got some really ugly antisemitic comments. I’ve been sitting quietly for while, thinking about how I want to handle the mixed blessings. My comment policy has been pretty simple. Simple is good. I decided though to reiterate my old policy and give it its own page, so that I can point to the comment policy without having to look it up. I will continue to delete antisemitic comments as soon as I see them. My experience in raising children and training dogs is that the less attention paid to bad behavior, the better. That doesn’t mean “ignore it” – it means don’t reward it by lavishing attention on it. Therefore I shall zap antisemitic comments and then look around and say to myself with deepest satisfaction: “What antisemitic comment? Heh.” Questions are different. A question is at least on the surface a request for information. “Is it true that Jews are [fill in antisemitic stereotype here]?” will get a straight up serious reply from me, with historical background on its origins. Even if I suspect a question is cover for a nasty comment, I’ll entertain it because it’s an opportunity to teach. In life, that’s how I try to deal with antisemitism also. If I am pretty sure a comment was made simply to get a rise out of me, I say, “That comment’s beneath my attention,” and move right on. If I think the comment was made out of ignorance, that’s a different matter: I’ll counter it with facts in as calm and kind a manner as I can muster. If people are listening who may be misled by the antisemitic statement, then it’s even more important for me to pursue the teaching moment, even if the ignorance is willful. To anyone visiting this blog who wants attention (and goodness knows, most of us don’t get enough of it, unless we’re tabloid fodder) – ask a question. I love questions. I crave them. They give me topics for posts, and they give me a chance to have a conversation with the questioner, and get to know you a bit. Thank you for reading, and bless you for asking questions! Antisemitism, Again. Photo credit: Beny Shlevich Photo credit: Beny Shlevich Antisemitism is alive and well in Europe. The news in the past few weeks has been grim: a shooting and murder outside a synagogue in Copenhagen and the kosher supermarket murders in Paris are the most serious. There has also been a disturbing video of a man being harrassed as he walks around Paris in a kippah. These things are frightening, no doubt about it. My heart goes out to the Jews of France and Denmark. I am disturbed, though, by something I’m seeing on social media. Jews all over the world are upset, and are talking loudly about being upset, but a lot of the conversation is not constructive. Some thoughts: 1. If we are worried about antisemitism, we should learn more about it. The media are not reliable when it comes to this issue (remember the reporting about Israel last summer?) If you are interested in learning more about the intersection of anti-Zionism and antisemitism, I recommend this article by Eve Garrard, an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Manchester. There are some excellent new books on the subject as well, both antisemitism in the past and the so-called “new” antisemitism. Better yet, organize a study group at your synagogue – not a coffee klatch to worry, but a group that will study and learn. 2. It is true that the gunmen in Paris and Copenhagen have identified as Muslims. However, blaming the current wave of antisemitism in Europe and elsewhere on Islam is far too simplistic. White Americans who identified as Christians bombed synagogues in Sacramento, CA as recently as 1999. Again, I recommend learning about antisemitism, which has deep roots in history and Western culture. 3. Instead of worrying and ranting, how about doing something? Support the Anti-Defamation League. Send letters or emails of support to synagogues in Paris and Denmark. Many have websites, and you can search for them at the World Union for Progressive Judaism website. Ask your rabbi for more suggestions: maybe there is a local group you can join or support or a class you can take. I am currently taking a class on the history of antisemitism, and doing the reading connected with it. When I feel ready I’ll post to this blog about some of the things I’m learning. It is a sad fact that antisemitism has been with us in one form or another for many centuries, since classical times. We need not feel helpless in confronting it. Hysterics won’t help, nor will denial. What will make a difference is educating ourselves and supporting one another. The Class I Hate to Teach English: Antisemitic graffiti in Venezuela English: Antisemitic graffiti in Venezuela (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search 16 32 64 Floating point precision ×½ ×1 ×2 ×4 ×8 Floating point decimal precision 32 64 128 In computer architecture, 32-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are at most 32 bits (4 octets) wide. Also, 32-bit CPU and ALU architectures are those that are based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. 32-bit is also a term given to a generation of microcomputers in which 32-bit microprocessors are the norm. Range for storing integers[edit] A 32-bit register can store 232 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 4,294,967,295 (232 - 1) for representation as an (unsigned) binary number, and -2,147,483,648 (-231) through 2,147,483,647 (231 - 1) for representation as Two's complement. One important consequence is that a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access at most 4 GiB of byte-addressable memory (though in practice the limit may be lower). Technical history[edit] Memory, as well as other digital circuits and wiring, was expensive during the first decades of 32-bit architectures (the 1960s to the 1980s).[1] Older 32-bit processor families (or simpler, cheaper variants thereof) could therefore have many compromises and limitations in order to cut costs. This could be a 16-bit ALU, for instance, or external (or internal) buses narrower than 32 bits, limiting memory size or demanding more cycles for instruction fetch, execution and/or write back. Despite this, such processors could be labeled "32-bit," since they still had 32-bit registers and instructions able to manipulate 32-bit quantities. For example, the original Motorola 68000 had a 16-bit data ALU and a 16-bit external data bus, but had 32-bit registers and a 32-bit based instruction set. Such designs were sometimes referred to as "16/32-bit".[2] However, the opposite is often true for newer 32-bit designs. For example, the Pentium Pro processor is a 32-bit machine, with 32-bit registers and instructions that manipulate 32-bit quantities, but the external address bus is 36 bits wide, giving a larger address space than 4 GB, and the external data bus is 64 bits wide, primarily in order to permit a more efficient prefetch of instructions and data.[3] Prominent 32-bit instruction set architectures used in general-purpose computing include the IBM System/360 and IBM System/370 (which had 24-bit addressing) and the System/370-XA, ESA/370, and ESA/390 (which had 31-bit addressing), the DEC VAX, the NS320xx, the Motorola 68000 family (the first two models of which had 24-bit addressing), the Intel IA-32 32-bit version of the x86 architecture, and the 32-bit versions of the ARM,[4] SPARC, MIPS, PowerPC and PA-RISC architectures. 32-bit instruction set architectures used for embedded computing include the 68000 family and ColdFire, x86, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, and Infineon TriCore architectures. On the x86 architecture, a 32-bit application normally means software that typically (not necessarily) uses the 32-bit linear address space (or flat memory model) possible with the 80386 and later chips. In this context, the term came about because DOS, Microsoft Windows and OS/2[5] were originally written for the 8088/8086 and/or 80286, 16-bit microprocessors with a segmented address space where programs had to switch between segments to reach more than 64 kilobytes of code and/or data. As this is quite time-consuming in comparison to other machine operations, the performance may suffer. Furthermore, programming with segments tend to become complicated; special far and near keywords and/or memory models had to be used (with care), not only in assembly language but also in high level languages such as Pascal, compiled BASIC, Fortran, C, etc. The 80386 and its successors fully support the 16-bit segments of the 80286 but also segments for 32-bit address offsets (using the new 32-bit width of the main registers). If the base address of all 32-bit segments is set to 0, and segment registers are not used explicitly, the segmentation can be forgotten and the processor appears as having a simple linear 32-bit address space. Operating systems like Windows or OS/2 provide the possibility to run 16-bit (segmented) programs as well as 32-bit programs. The former possibility exists for backward compatibility and the latter is usually meant to be used for new software development. A 32-bit floating point image of Nahal Amud In Israel. The format allows for modification of exposure and gamma for high dynamic range results. In digital images/pictures, 32-bit usually refers to RGBA color space; that is, 24-bit truecolor images with an additional 8-bit alpha channel. Other image formats also specify 32 bits per pixel, such as RGBE. In digital images, 32-bit sometimes refers to high-dynamic-range imaging (HDR) formats that use 32 bits per channel, a total of 96 bits per pixel. 32-bit-per-channel images are used to represent values brighter than what sRGB color space allows (brighter than white); these values can then be used to more accurately retain bright highlights when either lowering the exposure of the image or when it is seen through a dark filter or dull reflection. For example, a reflection in an oil slick is only a fraction of that seen in a mirror surface. HDR imagery allows for the reflection of highlights that can still be seen as bright white areas, instead of dull grey shapes. File formats[edit] A 32-bit file format is a binary file format for which each elementary information is defined on 32 bits (or 4 bytes). An example of such a format is the Enhanced Metafile Format. See also[edit] 1. ^ Patterson, David; Ditzel, David (2000). Readings in Computer Architecture. San Diego: Academic Press. p. 136. ISBN 9781558605398. 2. ^ "68000 users manual" (PDF). 3. ^ Gwennap, Linley (16 February 1995). "Intel's P6 Uses Decoupled Superscalar Design" (PDF). Microprocessor Report. Retrieved 3 December 2012. 4. ^ "ARM architecture overview" (PDF). 5. ^ There were also variants of UNIX for the 80286. External links[edit]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Silfra fissure. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge passing through Þingvellir Silfra lies in the Þingvellir valley and within the Þingvellir National Park. The valley, and Silfra itself, were formed by the divergent tectonic drift of the Eurasian and North American plates. The plates drift about 2 cm farther apart every year, building up tension between the plates and the earth mass above. This tension is relieved through periodic major earthquakes at approximately ten year intervals, which have caused cracks and fissures to form in Þingvellir valley; Silfra lies at the rim of the Þingvallavatn Lake [1] and is one of the largest and deepest of these fissures. The Silfra fissure intercepts a major aquifer, which feeds multiple springs at its base.[2] Boulders and rocks falling into the widening cracks have formed caves within the fissures.[1][3] Silfra is spring fed by groundwater originating as meltwater from Langjökull, Iceland's second largest glacier, about fifty kilometres north of the Þingvallavatn Lake. In the distant past, this Langjökull meltwater ran through a river directly and unimpeded into the Þingvallavatn Lake. This river was blocked a few thousand years ago by lava flows from the Skjaldbreiður volcano causing the meltwater to pond and seep underground into the porous lava rock to form an aquifer. This water then percolates through the aquifer for thirty to a hundred years before emerging from the fissure springs in the Þingvallavatn Lake fifty kilometres to the south. The emerging, highly filtered, groundwater is exceptionally clear and potable.[2][4][5] Scuba diving[edit] The diver's right hand is on the North American Plate and the left hand on the Eurasian Plate Scuba divers and snorkelers are attracted to Sifra's exceptionally clear, fresh, water, its geological significance and the rare opportunity to swim between continental plates.[6][7][8] The rift offers exceptional visibility of 70–80 metres.[citation needed]. The site has been placed on the world's top fifty diving destinations by at least one travel site.[9] There are three main dive sites: Silfra Hall, Silfra Cathedral and Silfra Lagoon. The most spectacular section is the Cathedral, which is a 100 metres long fissure with visibility almost from end to end.[10] Shallow at the entry points at the ends of the fissure, Silfra descends to a maximum depth of 63 metres but diving to this depth is seldom done as it requires technical diving skills. The water temperature is between 2–4 °C (36–39 °F) but can be comfortably dived using a dry suit. See also[edit] 1. ^ a b Geology of Silfra, – website 2. ^ a b Water in Silfra, – website 3. ^ Silfra Caves, – website 4. ^ Top Diving Destination, Dive Iceland 5. ^ Missing or empty \|title= (help), diving Video of Silfra 6. ^ Detailed information and photos of Silfra, – website 7. ^ Diving, Þingvellir National Park website 8. ^ Detailed description of Silfra, DIVE.IS website 9. ^ Into the deep: World’s 50 best dive sites, CNN Travel 10. ^ Three sections of Silfra, Total Iceland Coordinates: 64°15′18″N 21°07′23″W / 64.255°N 21.123°W / 64.255; -21.123
Solar radiation management From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search refer to caption and image description Proposed solar radiation management using a tethered balloon to inject sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere. Climate engineering projects have been proposed in order to reduce global warming. The effect of rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere on global climate is a warming effect on the planet. By modifying the albedo of the Earth's surface, or by preventing sunlight reaching the Earth by using a solar shade, this warming effect can be cancelled out—although the cancellation is imperfect, with regional discrepancies remaining.[3] Therefore, solar radiation management, or albedo modification, is considered to be a potential option for addressing climate change. As the National Academy of Sciences states in its 2015 report: "The two main options for responding to the risks of climate change involve mitigation—reducing and eventually eliminating human-caused emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs)—and adaptation—reducing the vulnerability of human and natural systems to changes in climate. A third potentially viable option, currently under development but not yet widely deployed, is carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere accompanied by reliable sequestration. A fourth, more speculative family of approaches called albedo modification seeks to offset climate warming by greenhouse gases by increasing the amount of sunlight reflected back to space."[4] In this context, solar radiation management is widely viewed as a complement, not a substitute, to climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. As The Royal Society concluded in its 2009 report: "Geoengineering methods are not a substitute for climate change mitigation, and should only be considered as part of a wider package of options for addressing climate change."[5] Or put another way: "The safest and most predictable method of moderating climate change is to take early and effective action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. No geoengineering method can provide an easy or readily acceptable alternative solution to the problem of climate change. Geoengineering methods could, however, potentially be useful in future to augment continuing efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing emissions, and so should be subject to more detailed research and analysis."[5] The phenomenon of global dimming is widely known, and is not necessarily a climate engineering technique. It already occurs under current conditions, due to aerosols caused by pollution, or caused naturally as a result of volcanoes and major forest fires. However, its deliberate manipulation is a tool of the geoengineer. By intentionally changing the Earth's albedo, or reflectivity, scientists propose that we could reflect more heat back out into space, or intercept sunlight before it reaches the Earth through a literal shade built in space. A 2% albedo increase would roughly halve the effect of CO2 doubling.[6] The National Academy of Sciences describes several of the potential benefits and risks of solar radiation management: "Modeling studies have shown that large amounts of cooling, equivalent in scale to the predicted warming due to doubling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, can be produced by the introduction of tens of millions of tons of aerosols into the stratosphere. ... Preliminary modeling results suggest that albedo modification may be able to counter many of the damaging effects of high greenhouse gas concentrations on temperature and the hydrological cycle and reduce some impacts to sea ice. Models also strongly suggest that the benefits and risks will not be uniformly distributed around the globe."[7] The applicability of many techniques listed here has not been comprehensively tested. Even if the effects in computer simulation models or of small-scale interventions are known, there may be cumulative problems such as ozone depletion, which become apparent only from large scale experiments.[8] Various small-scale experiments have been carried out on techniques such as cloud seeding, increasing the volume of stratospheric sulfate aerosols and implementing cool roof technology. As early as 1974, Russian expert Mikhail Budyko suggested that if global warming became a problem, we could cool down the planet by burning sulfur in the stratosphere, which would create a haze. The annual cost of delivering a sufficient amount of sulfur to counteract expected greenhouse warming is estimated at 2 to 8 billion USD.[9] A preliminary study by Edward Teller and others in 1997 presented the pros and cons of various relatively "low-tech" proposals to mitigate global warming through scattering/reflecting sunlight away from the Earth via insertion of various materials in the upper stratosphere, low earth orbit, and L1 locations.[10] Solar radiation management has certain advantages relative to emissions cuts, adaptation, and carbon dioxide removal. Its effect of counteracting climate change would be experienced very rapidly, on the order of months after implementation, whereas the effects of emissions cuts and carbon dioxide removal are delayed because the climate change that they prevent is itself delayed. Some proposed solar radiation management techniques are expected to have very low direct financial costs of implementation. This creates a different problem structure. Whereas the provision of emissions reduction and carbon dioxide removal present collective action problems (because ensuring a lower atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is a public good), a single countries or a handful of countries could implement solar radiation management. Finally, the direct climatic effects of solar radiation management are reversible on short timescales. Limitations and risks[edit] As well as the imperfect cancellation of the climatic effect of greenhouse gases,[11] there are other significant problems with solar radiation management as a form of climate engineering. Incomplete solution to CO2 emissions[edit] Solar radiation management does not remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and thus does not reduce other effects from these gases, such as ocean acidification.[12] While not an argument against solar radiation management per se, this is an argument against reliance on climate engineering to the exclusion of greenhouse gas reduction. Control and predictability[edit] Most of the information on solar radiation management is from models and computer simulations. The actual results may differ from the predicted effect. The full effects of various solar radiation management proposals are not yet well understood.[13] It may be difficult to predict the ultimate effects of projects,[14] with models presently giving varying results.[15] In the cases of systems which involve tipping points, effects may be irreversible. Furthermore, most modeling to date consider the effects of using solar radiation management to fully counteract the increase in global average surface temperature arising from a doubling or a quadrupling of the preindustrial carbon dioxide concentration. Under these assumptions, it overcompensates for the changes in precipitation from climate change. Solar radiation management is more likely to be optimized in a way that balances counteracting changes to temperature and precipitation, to compensate for some portion of climate change, and/or to slow down the rate of climate change. Side effects[edit] There may be unintended climatic consequences of solar radiation management, such as significant changes to the hydrological cycle[16][17][18] that might not be predicted by the models used to plan them.[14] Such effects may be cumulative or chaotic in nature.[19] Ozone depletion is a risk of techniques involving sulfur delivery into the stratosphere.[20] Not all side effects are negative, and an increase in agricultural productivity has been predicted by some studies due to the combination of more diffuse light and elevated carbon dioxide concentration.[21] Termination shock[edit] If solar radiation management were masking a significant amount of warming and then were to abruptly stop, the climate would rapidly warm.[22] This would cause a sudden rise in global temperatures towards levels which would have existed without the use of the climate engineering technique. The rapid rise in temperature may lead to more severe consequences than a gradual rise of the same magnitude. Leaders of countries and other actors may disagree as to whether, how, and to what degree solar radiation would be used. This could exacerbate international tensions. In 1976, 85 countries signed the U.N. Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques.[23] The Environmental Modification Convention generally prohibits weaponising climate engineering techniques. However, this does not eliminate the risk. If perfected to a degree of controllability and accuracy that is not considered possible at the moment, climate engineering techniques could theoretically be used by militaries to cause droughts or famines.[24] Theoretically they could also be used simply to make battlefield conditions more favourable to one side or the other in a war.[25] Carnegie's Ken Caldeira said, "It will make it harder to achieve broad consensus on developing and governing these technologies if there is suspicion that gaining military advantage is an underlying motivation for its development..."[26] Effect on sunlight, sky and clouds[edit] Managing solar radiation using aerosols or cloud cover would involve changing the ratio between direct and indirect solar radiation. This would affect plant life[27] and solar energy.[28] It is believed that there would be a significant effect on the appearance of the sky from stratospheric aerosol injection projects, notably a hazing of blue skies and a change in the appearance of sunsets.[29] Aerosols affect the formation of clouds, especially cirrus clouds.[30] SRM has been suggested to control regional climate,[31] but precise control over the geographical boundaries of the effect is not possible. SRM is temporary in its effect, and thus and long-term restoration of the climate would rely on long-term SRM, unless carbon dioxide removal was subsequently used. However, short-term SRM programs are potentially beneficial.[32] Forms of proposed solar radiation management[edit] Atmospheric proposals[edit] These projects seek to modify the atmosphere, either by enhancing naturally occurring stratospheric aerosols, or by using artificial techniques such as reflective balloons. Stratospheric aerosols[edit] Injecting reflective aerosols into the stratosphere is the proposed solar radiation management method that has received the most sustained attention. This technique could give much more than 3.7 W/m2 of globally averaged negative forcing,[33] which is sufficient to entirely offset the warming caused by a doubling of CO2, which is a common benchmark for assessing future climate scenarios. Sulfates are the most commonly proposed aerosols for climate engineering, since there is a good natural analogue with (and evidence from) volcanic eruptions. Explosive volcanic eruptions inject large amounts of sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere, which form sulfate aerosol and cool the planet. Alternative materials such as using photophoretic particles, titaniun dioxide, and diamond have been proposed.[34][35][36] Delivery could be achieved using artillery, aircraft (such as the high-flying F15-C) or balloons.[37][38][39] Broadly speaking, stratospheric aerosol injection is seen as a relatively more credible climate engineering technique, although one with potential major risks and challenges for its implementation. Risks include changes in precipitation and, in the case of sulfur, possible ozone depletion. Marine cloud brightening[edit] Various cloud reflectivity methods have been suggested,[40][41][42] such as that proposed by John Latham and Stephen Salter,[43][44] which works by spraying seawater in the atmosphere to increase the reflectivity of clouds.[45] The extra condensation nuclei created by the spray will change the size distribution of the drops in existing clouds to make them whiter.[46] The sprayers would use fleets of unmanned rotor ships known as Flettner vessels to spray mist created from seawater into the air to thicken clouds and thus reflect more radiation from the Earth.[40][47] The whitening effect is created by using very small cloud condensation nuclei, which whiten the clouds due to the Twomey effect. This technique can give more than 3.7 W/m2 of globally averaged negative forcing,[33][47] which is sufficient to reverse the warming effect of a doubling of CO2. Ocean sulfur cycle enhancement[edit] Main article: ocean fertilization Enhancing the natural marine sulfur cycle by fertilizing a small portion with iron—typically considered to be a greenhouse gas remediation method—may also increase the reflection of sunlight.[48][49] Such fertilization, especially in the Southern Ocean, would enhance dimethyl sulfide production and consequently cloud reflectivity. This could potentially be used as regional solar radiation management, to slow Antarctic ice from melting. Such techniques also tend to sequester carbon, but the enhancement of cloud albedo also appears to be a likely effect. Terrestrial proposals[edit] Cool roof[edit] The albedo of several types of roofs Main article: cool roof Painting roof materials in white or pale colours to reflect solar radiation, known as 'cool roof' technology, is encouraged by legislation in some areas (notably California).[50] This technique is limited in its ultimate effectiveness by the constrained surface area available for treatment. This technique can give between 0.01-0.19 W/m2 of globally averaged negative forcing, depending on whether cities or all settlements are so treated.[33] This is small relative to the 3.7 W/m2 of positive forcing from a doubling of CO2. Moreover, while in small cases it can be achieved at little or no cost by simply selecting different materials, it can be costly if implemented on a larger scale. A 2009 Royal Society report states that, “the overall cost of a ‘white roof method’ covering an area of 1% of the land surface (about 1012 m2) would be about $300 billion/yr, making this one of the least effective and most expensive methods considered.”[51] However, it can reduce the need for air conditioning, which emits CO2 and contributes to global warming. Reflective sheeting[edit] Adding reflective plastic sheets covering 67,000 square miles (170,000 km2) of desert every year between 2010 and 2070 to reflect the Sun’s energy.[52][53] may be able give globally averaged 1.74 W/m2 of negative forcing.[33] Although insufficient to fully offset the 3.7 W/m2 of positive forcing from a doubling of CO2, this would still be a significant contribution thereto, and would offset the current level of warming (approx. 1.7 W/m2). However, the effect would be strongly regional, and would not be ideal for controlling Arctic shrinkage, which is one of the most significant problems resulting from global warming. Furthermore, desert albedo modification would be expensive, would compete with other land uses, and would have strongly negative ecological consequences.[5] Finally, the total area required during 2010-70 is larger than all non-polar deserts combined. Ocean changes[edit] An early geoengineering idea was to use pale coloured floating litter within certain stable oceanic gyres.[54] This litter would tend to group into large and stable areas, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.[55] Oceanic foams have also been suggested,[56] using microscopic bubbles suspended in the upper layers of the photic zone. Farming, forestry, and land proposals[edit] Reforestation in tropical areas has a cooling effect. Deforestation of high-latitude and high-altitude forests exposes snow and this increases albedo.[57] Grassland management[edit] Changes to grassland have been proposed to increase albedo.[58] This technique can give 0.64 W/m2 of globally averaged negative forcing,[33] which is insufficient to offset the 3.7 W/m2 of positive forcing from a doubling of CO2, but could make a minor contribution. High-albedo crop varieties[edit] Selecting or genetically modifying commercial crops with high albedo has been suggested.[59] This has the advantage of being relatively simple to implement, with farmers simply switching from one variety to another. Temperate areas may experience a 1 °C cooling as a result of this technique.[60] This technique is an example of bio-geoengineering. This technique can give 0.44 W/m2 of globally averaged negative forcing,[33] which is insufficient to offset the 3.7 W/m2 of positive forcing from a doubling of CO2, but could make a minor contribution. Space-based proposals[edit] Main article: Space sunshade Space-based climate engineering projects are seen by many commentators and scientists as being very expensive and technically difficult, with the Royal Society suggesting that "the costs of setting in place such a space-based armada for the relatively short period that SRM geoengineering may be considered applicable (decades rather than centuries) would likely make it uncompetitive with other SRM approaches."[61] Space mirrors[edit] Mirrors in space: proposed by Roger Angel with the purpose to deflect a percentage of solar sunlight into space, using mirrors orbiting around the Earth.[45][62] Moon dust[edit] Mining moon dust to create a shielding cloud was proposed by Curtis Struck at Iowa State University in Ames.[63][64][65] Dispersive solutions[edit] The basic function of a space lens to mitigate global warming. In reality, a 1000 kilometre diameter lens is enough, much smaller than what is shown in the simplified image. In addition, as a Fresnel lens it would only be a few millimeters thick. Several authors have proposed dispersing light before it reaches the Earth by putting a very large diffraction grating (thin wire mesh) or lens in space, perhaps at the L1 point between the Earth and the Sun. Using a Fresnel lens in this manner was proposed in 1989 by J. T. Early.[66] Using a diffraction grating was proposed in 1997 by Edward Teller, Lowell Wood, and Roderick Hyde.[10] In 2004, physicist and science fiction author Gregory Benford calculated that a concave rotating Fresnel lens 1000 kilometres across, yet only a few millimeters thick, floating in space at the L1 point, would reduce the solar energy reaching the Earth by approximately 0.5% to 1%. He estimated that this would cost around US$10 billion up front, and another $10 billion in supportive cost during its lifespan.[67] One issue with implementing such a solution is the need to counteract the effects of the solar wind moving such megastructures out of position. Climate engineering poses several challenges in the context of governance because of issues of power and jurisdiction.[23] Climate engineering as a climate change solution differs from other mitigation and adaptation strategies. Unlike a carbon trading system that would be focused on participation from multiple parties along with transparency, monitoring measures and compliance procedures; this is not necessarily required by climate engineering. Bengtsson[68] (2006) argues that "the artificial release of sulphate aerosols is a commitment of at least several hundred years". Yet this is true only if a long-term deployment strategy is adopted. Under a short-term, temporary strategy, implementation would instead be limited to decades.[69] Both cases, however, highlight the importance for a political framework that is sustainable enough to contain a multilateral commitment over such a long period and yet is flexible as the techniques innovate through time. There are many controversies surrounding this topic and hence, climate engineering has been made into a very political issue. Most discussions and debates are not about which climate engineering technique is better than the other, or which one is more economically and socially feasible. Discussions are broadly on who will have control over the deployment of climate engineering and under what governance regime the deployment can be monitored and supervised. This is especially important due to the regional variability of the effects of many climate engineering techniques, benefiting some countries while damaging others. The challenge posed by climate engineering is not how to get countries to do it. It is to address the fundamental question of who should decide whether and how climate engineering should be attempted – a problem of governance.[70] Solar radiation management raises a number of governance challenges. David Keith argues that the cost is within the realm of small countries, large corporations, or even very wealthy individuals.[71] David Victor suggests that climate engineering is within the reach of a lone "Greenfinger," a wealthy individual who takes it upon him or herself to be the "self-appointed protector of the planet".[72][73] However, it has been argued that a rogue state threatening solar radiation management may strengthen action on mitigation.[74] Legal and regulatory systems may face a significant challenge in effectively regulating solar radiation management in a manner that allows for an acceptable result for society. There are, however, significant incentives for states to cooperate in choosing a specific climate engineering policy, which make unilateral deployment a rather unlikely event.[75] Some researchers have suggested that building a global agreement on climate engineering deployment will be very difficult, and instead power blocs are likely to emerge.[76] Public attitudes[edit] There have been a handful of studies into attitudes to and opinions of solar radiation management. These generally find low levels of awareness, uneasiness with the implementation of solar radiation management, cautious support of research, and a preference for greenhouse gas emissions reduction.[77][78] As is often the case with public opinions regarding emerging issues, the responses are highly sensitive to the questions' particular wording and context. One cited objection to implementing a short-term temperature fix is that there might then be less incentive to reduce carbon dioxide emissions until it caused some other environmental catastrophe, such as a chemical change in ocean water that could be disastrous to ocean life.[79] See also[edit] 1. ^ "A Framework to Prevent the Catastrophic Effects of Global Warming using Solar Radiation Management (Geo-Engineering)" (PDF). Retrieved 2013-10-16. 2. ^ "Metapress Hosting Services for Academic Publishers". Retrieved 2013-10-16. 3. ^ Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance, and Uncertainty. London: The Royal Society. September 2009. 4. ^ "Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth \| The National Academies Press". Retrieved 2015-09-11. 5. ^ a b c "The Royal Society" (PDF). Retrieved 2015-09-11. 6. ^ "The Royal Society" (PDF). Retrieved 2015-10-20. 7. ^ "Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth \| The National Academies Press". Retrieved 2015-09-14. 8. ^ Mark, Jason (2009). "Hacking the Sky: Geo-Engineering Could Save the Planet... And in the Process Sacrifice the World". Earth Island Journal. San Francisco, CA: Earth Island Institute. 24 (3): 40–46. ISSN 1041-0406. 472240324. 9. ^ McClellan, Justin; Keith, David W.; Apt, Jay (1 January 2012). "Cost analysis of stratospheric albedo modification delivery systems". Environmental Research Letters. p. 034019. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/3/034019. 10. ^ a b Edward Teller; Roderick Hyde; Lowell Wood (1997). "Global Warming and Ice Ages: Prospects for Physics-Based Modulation of Global Change" (PDF). Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Retrieved 21 January 2015. See pages 10-14 in particular. 11. ^ Moreno-Cruz, Juan B.; Ricke, Katharine L.; Keith, David W. (2011). "A simple model to account for regional inequalities in the effectiveness of solar radiation management". Climatic Change. 110 (3–4): 649. doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0103-z. 12. ^ Archived 14 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine. 14. ^ a b Keith Bower et al., 2006 Computational assessment of a proposed technique for global warming mitigation via albedo-enhancement of marine stratocumulus clouds. Atmos. Res., vol. 82, no. 1-2, 2006, pp. 328–336 15. ^ 16. ^ Bala, G.; Duffy, B.; Taylor, E. (June 2008). "Impact of geoengineering schemes on the global hydrological cycle" (Free full text). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 105 (22): 7664–7669. Bibcode:2008PNAS..105.7664B. doi:10.1073/pnas.0711648105. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2409412Freely accessible. PMID 18505844. 17. ^ Tilmes, S.; Fasullo, J.; Lamarque, J. F.; Marsh, D. R.; Mills, M.; Alterskjaer, K.; Muri, H.; Kristjánsson, J. N. E.; Boucher, O.; Schulz, M.; Cole, J. N. S.; Curry, C. L.; Jones, A.; Haywood, J.; Irvine, P. J.; Ji, D.; Moore, J. C.; Karam, D. B.; Kravitz, B.; Rasch, P. J.; Singh, B.; Yoon, J. H.; Niemeier, U.; Schmidt, H.; Robock, A.; Yang, S.; Watanabe, S. (2013). "The hydrological impact of geoengineering in the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP)". Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. 118 (19): 11,036. doi:10.1002/jgrd.50868. 18. ^ "Geoengineering Could Slow Down Global Water Cycle". 2008-05-28. Retrieved 2013-10-16. 19. ^ Robock, Alan (May–June 2008). "20 reasons why geoengineering may be a bad idea". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 64 (2): 14–18. doi:10.2968/064002006. Retrieved 2009-08-04. 20. ^ The Sensitivity of Polar Ozone Depletion to Proposed Geoengineering Schemes", Science, vol. 320, no. 5880, 30 May 2008, pp. 1201–1204, doi:10.1126/science.1153966 21. ^ Pongratz, J.; Lobell, D. B.; Cao, L.; Caldeira, K. (2012). "Crop yields in a geoengineered climate". Nature Climate Change. 2 (2): 101. Bibcode:2012NatCC...2..101P. doi:10.1038/nclimate1373. 22. ^ Ross, A.; Damon Matthews, H. (2009). "Climate engineering and the risk of rapid climate change". Environmental Research Letters. 4 (4): 045103. Bibcode:2009ERL.....4d5103R. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/045103. 23. ^ a b Robock, A., A. Marquardt, B. Kravitz, and G. Stenchikov (2009). Benefits, Risks, and costs of stratospheric geoengineering, Geophysical Research Letters, 36, D19703, doi:10.1029/2009GL039209 24. ^ "Battlefield Earth". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 2012-09-06. 25. ^ "AF2025 v3c15-1 \| Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning... \| (Ch 1)". Retrieved 2012-09-06. 26. ^ Caldiera, Ken; Various (March 18, 2009). "DARPA and Geoengineering". Climate Intervention Google group. Retrieved 2009-03-21. 27. ^ L. Gu et al., "Responses of Net Ecosystem Exchanges of Carbon Dioxide to Changes in Cloudiness: Results from Two North American Deciduous Forests", Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 104, no. 31, pp. 421–31, 434 (1999); L. Gu et al., "Advantages of Diffuse Radiation for Terrestrial Ecosystem Productivity", Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 107, (2002); L. Gu et al., "Response of a Deciduous Forest to the Mount Pinatubo Eruption: Enhanced Photosynthesis", Science, vol. 299, pp. 2,035–38 (2003) 28. ^ Balan Govindasamy and Ken Caldeira, "Geoengineering Earth's Radiation Balance to Mitigate CO2-Induced Climate Change", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 27, pp. 2,141–44 (2000). For the response of solar power systems, see Michael C. MacCracken, "Geoengineering: Worthy of Cautious Evaluation?" Climatic Change, vol. 77, pp. 235–43 (2006) 29. ^ NASA - Geoengineering: Why or Why Not? 30. ^ K. Sassen et al., ";The 5–6 December 1991 FIRE IFO II Jet Stream Cirrus Case Study: Possible Influences of Volcanic Aerosols", Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, vol. 52, pp. 97–123 (1993) 31. ^ Bernstein, D. N.; Neelin, J. D.; Li, Q. B.; Chen, D. (2013). "Could aerosol emissions be used for regional heat wave mitigation?". Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 13 (13): 6373. doi:10.5194/acp-13-6373-2013. 32. ^ Keith, David W.; MacMartin, Douglas G. (2015). "A temporary, moderate and responsive scenario for solar geoengineering". Nature Climate Change. 5 (3): 201. doi:10.1038/nclimate2493. 33. ^ a b c d e f Lenton, T. M., Vaughan, N. E. (2009). "The radiative forcing potential of different climate geoengineering options" (PDF). Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss. 9 (1): 2559–2608. doi:10.5194/acpd-9-2559-2009. 34. ^ Keith, D. W. (2010). "Photophoretic levitation of engineered aerosols for geoengineering". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (38): 16428–16431. doi:10.1073/pnas.1009519107. PMC 2944714Freely accessible. PMID 20823254. 35. ^ Weisenstein, D. K.; Keith, D. W. (2015). "Solar geoengineering using solid aerosol in the stratosphere". Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions. 15 (8): 11799–11851. doi:10.5194/acpd-15-11799-2015. 38. ^ Davidson, P.; Burgoyne, C.; Hunt, H.; Causier, M. (2012). "Lifting options for stratospheric aerosol geoengineering: Advantages of tethered balloon systems". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 370 (1974): 4263. Bibcode:2012RSPTA.370.4263D. doi:10.1098/rsta.2011.0639. 39. ^ "Can a Million Tons of Sulfur Dioxide Combat Climate Change?". 23 June 2008. Retrieved 2013-10-16. 41. ^ Latham, J.; Salter, S. "Preventing global warming by increasing cloud albedo" (PDF). Retrieved 20 April 2008. (A brief handout, with artist's renderings.) 42. ^ Keith Bower; et al. (2006). "Assessment of a Proposed Technique for Global Warming Mitigation via Albedo-Enhancement of Marine Stratocumulus Clouds". Atmospheric Research. 82 (1–2): 328–336. Bibcode:2006AtmRe..82..328B. doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2005.11.013. 43. ^ Latham, J. (2002). "Amelioration of global warming by controlled enhancement of the albedo and longevity of low-level maritime clouds" (PDF). Atmos. Sci. Lett. 3 (2–4): 52–58. Bibcode:2002AtScL...3...52L. doi:10.1006/asle.2002.0099. 45. ^ a b "Programmes \| Five Ways To Save The World". BBC News. 2007-02-20. Retrieved 2013-10-16. 47. ^ a b Latham, J., P.J. Rasch, C.C.Chen, L. Kettles, A. Gadian, A. Gettelman, H. Morrison, K. Bower, T.W.Choularton (2008). "Global Temperature Stabilization via Controlled Albedo Enhancement of Low-level Maritime Clouds". Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A. 366 (1882): 3969–87. Bibcode:2008RSPTA.366.3969L. doi:10.1098/rsta.2008.0137. PMID 18757272. 48. ^ Wingenter, Oliver W.; Haase, Karl B.; Strutton, Peter; Friederich, Gernot; Meinardi, Simone; Blake, Donald R.; Rowland, F. Sherwood (2004-06-08). "Changing concentrations of CO, CH4, C5H8, CH3Br, CH3I, and dimethyl sulfide during the Southern Ocean Iron Enrichment Experiments". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 101 (23): 8537–8541. doi:10.1073/pnas.0402744101. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 423229Freely accessible. PMID 15173582. 49. ^ Wingenter, Oliver W.; Elliot, Scott M.; Blake, Donald R. (November 2007). "New Directions: Enhancing the natural sulfur cycle to slow global warming". Atmospheric Environment. 41 (34): 7373–5. doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2007.07.021. 50. ^ Hashem Akbari; et al. (2008). "Global Cooling: Increasing World-wide Urban Albedos to Offset CO2" (PDF). 51. ^ "The Royal Society" (PDF). Retrieved 2015-11-09. 52. ^ Alvia Gaskill. "Desert Area Coverage". Global Albedo Enhancement Project. 53. ^ "Global Albedo Enhancement Project: Surface Albedo Enhancement Principle". Retrieved 2013-10-16. 54. ^ "Solar Radiation Management (GeoEngineering)". Retrieved 23 April 2011. 55. ^ "What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?". 21st Century Challenges. Retrieved 23 April 2011. 57. ^ [1] Archived 21 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine. 58. ^ Hamwey, Robert M. (2005). "Active Amplification of the Terrestrial Albedo to Mitigate Climate Change: An Exploratory Study". Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. 12 (4): 419. arXiv:physics/0512170Freely accessible. doi:10.1007/s11027-005-9024-3. 59. ^ "A high-albedo diet will chill the planet - environment - 15 January 2009". New Scientist. Retrieved 2013-10-16. 60. ^ Ridgwell, A; Singarayer, J; Hetherington, A; Valdes, P (2009). "Tackling Regional Climate Change By Leaf Albedo Bio-geoengineering". Current Biology. 19 (2): 146–50. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.12.025. PMID 19147356. 62. ^ David W. Keith (2000). "Geoengineering the climate: History and Prospect". Annual Review of Energy and the Environment. 25 (1): 245–284. doi:10.1146/ 63. ^ Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol 60, p 1 64. ^ Roger Angel; S. Pete Worden (Summer 2006). "Making Sun-Shades from Moon Dust". National Space Society, Ad Astra. 18 (1). 65. ^ "Space Ring Could Shade Earth and Stop Global Warming". LiveScience. 2005-06-27. Retrieved 2013-10-16. 66. ^ J. T. Early (1989). "Space-Based Solar Shield To Offset Greenhouse Effect". Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. 42. pp. 567–569. This proposal is also discussed in footnote 23 of Edward Teller; Roderick Hyde; Lowell Wood (1997). "Global Warming and Ice Ages: Prospects for Physics-Based Modulation of Global Change" (PDF). Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Retrieved 21 January 2015. 67. ^ See Russell Dovey, "Supervillainy: Astroengineering Global Warming and Bill Christensen, "Reduce Global Warming by Blocking Sunlight". 68. ^ Bengtsson, L. (2006) 'Geo-engineering to confine climate change: is it at all feasible?' Climatic Change 77: 229–234 69. ^ 70. ^ Barrett, S (2007) Why cooperate? The incentive to supply global public goods. Oxford University Press, Oxford 71. ^ David Keith. "Engineering the Planet" (PDF). pp. "3–4,8". Retrieved 2008-04-08. 72. ^ David G. Victor (2008). "On the regulation of geoengineering". Oxford Review of Economic Policy. Oxford University Press. 24 (2): 322–336. doi:10.1093/oxrep/grn018. 73. ^ "The Geoengineering Option". Foreign Affairs. Retrieved 2015-11-18. 75. ^ Joshua Horton (2011). "Geoengineering and the myth of unilateralism: pressures and prospects for international cooperation". Stanford J Law Sci Policy (2): 56–69. 76. ^ Ricke, K. L.; Moreno-Cruz, J. B.; Caldeira, K. (2013). "Strategic incentives for climate geoengineering coalitions to exclude broad participation". Environmental Research Letters. 8: 014021. Bibcode:2013ERL.....8a4021R. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014021. 77. ^ Mercer, A. M.; Keith, D. W.; Sharp, J. D. (2011). "Public understanding of solar radiation management". Environmental Research Letters. 6 (4): 044006. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044006. 78. ^ Merk, Christine; Pönitzsch, Gert; Kniebes, Carola; Rehdanz, Katrin; Schmidt, Ulrich (2015-02-10). "Exploring public perceptions of stratospheric sulfate injection". Climatic Change. 130 (2): 299–312. doi:10.1007/s10584-014-1317-7. ISSN 0165-0009. 79. ^ Gregory Benford (Comments at the 64th World Science Fiction Convention, August 2006.) Further reading[edit]
Importance of Data Management for Business People, by Lyndsay Wise We’re repeating this great article by a new writer to Hub Designs, Lyndsay Wise, who makes her debut here with an article about the growing importance of data management initiatives to business professionals In the quest for successful business intelligence, many organizations look at how they can access information through dashboards and scorecards, or interactive analysis and reporting. Self-service models and the increasing ability to interact with information more easily let more people access analytics and gain broader business insights. But this process also tends to overlook the increasing role of data management in delivering valuable, reliable, and relevant information to the business. After all, without a strong data infrastructure it is difficult to achieve confidence in the data being delivered. Although front-end applications may provide organizations with the insights they need to identify opportunities and make better decisions, the reality is that the only way to successfully achieve this on a long-term basis is through a commitment to best practices in data management. And with an increasing focus on self-service BI and broader data discovery for business people, the reality is that BI initiative management is slowly shifting to become the responsibility of those outside traditional IT roles. Consequently, this means that business decision makers need to have a better understanding of data management, how it works, and why it is important to overall success for both analytical and operational applications. Why is data important – what happens without access Historically, data was managed exclusively by IT departments. Any changes, additions, discrepancies, etc. that needed to be addressed, were done so behind the scenes. Business units submitted requests and then IT would implement the changes. With business intelligence becoming more user-driven, and with business decision makers wanting direct access to various types of data, the importance of information management has never been greater. Having business analysts and other end users interact with and manipulate data in Excel to meet their business needs no longer works, and most likely never did. Although valid data may have been extracted from reliable data sources, once it was in the hands of an individual, its reliability and accuracy could not be guaranteed. Adding calculations, information from disparate data sources, and trying to balance discrepancies from multiple reports are just some of the ways in which spreadsheets have been used over time. Unfortunately, the lack of security, data quality, ability to meet compliance requirements, and the like, are just some of the reasons why independent management of data does not work. Others include lack of trust in data, inability to consolidate information to get a broad view of the organization, inability to manage metrics effectively, and a lack of visibility into opportunities and challenges. The bottom line for organizations is that in order to maintain valid, accurate, and reliable information access, data management challenges need to be addressed. Without access to the information needed to make better business decisions, companies cannot compete with the broader market landscape. With information requirements expanding, organizations cannot simply piece together their data sources randomly – they require a strong data management organization to ensure that data is transformed into valuable and actionable information. And luckily, the vendor landscape has expanded to provide data management platforms that address these challenges. Introductory data management considerations for organizations Although disparate industries may require different types of data to become better decision makers, there are some overarching considerations across vertical industries that all businesses need to look at in order to identify how to best manage their data. Formalized data management initiatives are becoming an essential aspect for many organizations, with the management of data assets delegated to those within business units who understand the business rules behind the data itself. This means that a wider variety of people within the organization require broader insights into their data. After all, data management involves more than databases, consolidated information, and master records. Business decision makers require an understanding of how business rules affect data flow and what areas of data management are essential versus “nice to have”. In order to do so, companies should start by asking the following questions: 1. What are the three most important challenges we’re currently facing? Even though data management assumes that an organization will be managing large and/or diverse data sets, it is always important to make sure that any data-oriented initiative integrates tightly with current gaps in business visibility or performance. For instance, companies may look at Customer MDM (Customer Master Data Management) as a starting point due to the fact that they cannot currently understand the value of individual customers, how to target up-selling campaigns, or why retention levels are low. 2. Which stakeholders should be involved in the process? Taking the Customer MDM example one step further means identifying what information is needed to provide a more complete customer picture, and who are the various people who understand each of the aspects of a customer, for instance, accounts receivable, sales, customer service, etc. 3. What technologies are already in place, if any, to support the process? Although data management should be based on addressing business pains, the reality is that a strong IT infrastructure is still required. Organizations cannot overlook the potential need for more servers, better processing speeds, new types of storage and analysis, as well as how this may affect current or future resource requirements. 4. How should progress be tracked? There is a constant struggle to identify return on investment (ROI) within data-related projects. What organizations hope to achieve and how this will be measured ends up defining overall success. Developing metrics that include both short-term and longer-term goals can help sell the project to sponsors and ensure proper project management throughout the process. Fitting all of the pieces together The development and rollout of a data management program requires many pieces. The questions above provide a glimpse at what’s required to get an initiative off the ground. As organizations become more mature within their analytics applications, the ability to manage that data across the business to provide a consistent and accurate view of what’s happening becomes essential to continued success. This requires looking at how data can be used as a business asset by “connecting the dots” across disparate units to make sure that companies can support their supply chain, partners, and customers on a broader level. Tags: , , , , 3 Comments on “Importance of Data Management for Business People, by Lyndsay Wise” 1. Nancy Beckman 09/26/2012 at 3:44 pm # One error can ripple backwards and have a profound impact on your organization. When everyone is managing their own data it’s hard to ensure consistency from one employee to the next. Where does that leave your business? 1. Why you need Business Intelligence - SQL Server Blog - SQL Server - Telligent - 03/14/2013 […] Importance of Data Management for Business People […] 2. Why you need Business Intelligence \| James Serra's Blog - 04/25/2013 %d bloggers like this:
Chimps communicate using 'human-like gestures' London, July 15 (ANI): A Stirling University researcher has found that wild chimpanzees use gestures similar to humans to communicate with each other. Dr Anna Roberts from Stirling University said she had identified about 20 to 30 manual gestures used by chimpanzees, up to a third of which were similar to those used by humans. The chimps' gestures included beckoning to make someone approach or flailing their arms to make someone leave. It is hoped the finding may help researchers understand how humans evolved language. Dr Roberts, who studied chimpanzees in the wild in Uganda over an eight-month period, believes the gestures suggest that a common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees must have used similar manual gestures. "Chimpanzees use these gestures intentionally to elicit a desired response from other chimpanzees and they may be the missing link between ape and human communication," the BBC quoted Dr Roberts as saying. "We now know that these gestures must have been in the repertoire of our common ancestor and might have been the starting point for language evolution," she added. The study found the animals used gestures to communicate a range of activities including nursing, feeding, sex, aggression and defence. Dr Roberts also discovered that chimpanzees not only communicate using manual gestures, but are able to work out what the signaller means from both gesture and accompanying context. "The defining way that people understand communication with others is by figuring out what someone really means by 'mind-reading' their intentions and we have discovered that chimpanzees may have a similar ability," she said. Dr Roberts said the research showed that the basic elements for the evolution of language appeared to be present in our closest living relatives. (ANI)
Pertussis Tests Print this article Share this page: Also known as: Whooping Cough Tests At a Glance Why Get Tested? To detect and diagnose a Bordetella pertussis infection, commonly known as whooping cough When to Get Tested? When you have persistent spasms or fits of coughing (paroxysms) that the healthcare practitioner suspects is due to pertussis (whooping cough); when you have symptoms of a cold and have been exposed to someone with pertussis Sample Required? A nasopharyngeal (NP) swab or a nasal aspirate; occasionally, a blood sample drawn from a vein in your arm Test Preparation Needed?
The algorithm for a perfectly balanced photo gallery Remember the days in college when you learned all about the big Oh!’s and re-implemented all these sort-algorithms for the hundredth time? If you are a web developer like me, chances are you never had to touch a single one of these algorithms ever again. I mean, hands down, 99% of the hard work in web development is working around browser quirks and messing with other people’s code. And then, all the sudden, that algorithm knowledge actually becomes very useful. The idea Ever since we started working on Chromatic we knew we wanted the photos to be as big as possible. No tiny thumbnails, no square-cropping, no wasting of precious screen real estate. Galleries typically have between 10 and 100 photos with various aspect ratios (that’s width divided by height) and we want them to be equally distributed over the rows, taking up all the space available. Here’s the kicker: While it looks like all the photos are the same height, each row is scaled slightly as a whole to fit in the horizontal space. The problem But how do we know how to distribute them? As soon as you leave the well-trodden paths of how-do-I-get-library-x-to-do-y it gets much harder to elicit an answer from StackOverflow. Then we started thinking of our problem in an algorithmic sense: Might this be a well-known standard problem? Or can it be turned into one? If so, chances are high someone already came up with an algorithm to solve it. Turns out it actually was: The partition problem. And even better, there was a working Python implementation which we ported to Coffeescript. The solution Once we got that down, the rest was fairly easy. To find the number of rows (k) needed, we first scale the photos to half the window’s height (we found the photos look best when scaled to roughly half the window’s height), sum up their widths, then divide by the window’s width. That’s probably not a whole number, so we round it. The photos’ aspect ratios (multiplied by 100 and rounded) serve as a set (S) of weights. We now use our newly gained algorithmic superpowers to find the perfect distribution of set S over k. The result tells us the number of photos in each row. All we have left to do is fill the row with the appropriate range of photos and scale it to fit in the horizontal space available. Here’s the relevant code from the Backbone gallery view. The actual linear partition algorithm can be found here. It’s taken a considerable effort, but hey, look at the outcome! If you liked this article, you should follow me on Twitter.
Editorial Statement Liberty, Prudence, Imperfection, and Law Nomocracy In Politics is a new web magazine dedicated to exploring Liberty, Prudence, Imperfection, and Law. These core themes will be examined within the subject areas of Politics, Law, and History. Here we hope to make a unique contribution because few social-political-legal websites now specifically focus on all such themes in tandem. Thus, we will strive to address many topics that would otherwise be left insufficiently examined. Our focus on the above themes is elaborated below. Law is a primary theme of the site. A political order marked by the rule of law is a necessary condition for liberty. The freedom of individuals and communities, vis-à-vis one another and vis-à-vis the government, is significantly enhanced when intervening processes and procedures govern the intercourse of such parties. Even more, a government that is not constrained by tentacles of elaborate processes and procedures is one that is left untethered to commit mischief against the citizens and communities that it putatively serves. Furthermore, we are guided by Oakeshott’s insight, which has also been incorporated by American thinkers such as M.E. Bradford and George W. Carey, that nomocracy (a polity ordered primarily by the rule of law and NOT one constitutionally committed to apriori ideals and normative ends) should be the guiding criteria for evaluating political order. Here law and nomocracy function to protect human Liberty, which we consider primarily in terms of the negative freedom of individuals and groups within a political order. Such freedom is often conceptualized in terms of individual rights and a healthy respect for protecting citizens’ freedoms and realms of privacy. This seems especially important given the ever growing panopticon character of today’s nation-state governments. Nevertheless, such negative liberty should also be conceived as the rights (in varying degrees) of human communities within a political order especially vis-à-vis the highest level of government in a given constitutional system. These groups, themselves, can vary significantly in their degree of rightful political autonomy: from those that lack law-making discretion to those that are rightful sovereign entities, even though they may function within a larger political order (e.g., a federation of sovereign states). Guarding the liberty of such sovereign political communities against the centralizing tendencies of the federal-level government is a very important manifestation of protecting valuable liberty. Even with nomocracy, law, and the protection of liberty, however, the human political order will inevitably be marked by Imperfection. This includes the existence of various tragic implications that, although not intended, often must be tolerated to avoid even more unacceptable tyrannical implications for the political order as a whole. Recognizing this, braces one to avoid gnostic fancies about realizing an ideological vision of perfection here on Earth. When one recognizes that tragedy (often in the form of miscarriages of justice) is often inevitable to the human condition, one becomes more patient about the rough and tumble of worldly imperfections that manifest themselves in different human associations to varying degrees. One is definitely less prone to think in terms of pursuing certain ideals and manifestations of justice independently of considering likely unintended consequences. In other words, such awareness of imperfection (i.e., a tragic vision of politics) makes one better equipped to rely upon Prudence, as opposed to a criteria of idealistic ideals, to guide and resolve the ordering of human affairs. Prudence includes one’s capacity for practical reasoning, but it also can become highly improved and refined via the course of human experience. Such refining experience can be either in direct form—e.g., a life lived deliberately to glean practical wisdom from personal experiences—or indirectly—e.g., vicariously acquiring practical wisdom through the study of others and through (as Burke famously discussed) relying upon the latent wisdom inherent within time-tested institutions. The depths of such latent wisdom can transcend the capacity of any one mind in one lifetime. The priority of prudence also stands in contrast to an over reliance on idealistic, philosophical principles as normative guides to human behavior. Such a priori approaches to politics tend to stifle the consideration of important factors that prudence in conjunction with a full non-ideological openness to reality can appropriately identify and guide.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Bread at a bakery Different types of bread Bread is a type of baked food. It is mainly made from dough, which is made mainly from flour and water. Usually, salt and yeast are added. Bread is often baked in an oven. Bread can be toasted or used to make sandwiches. Pizza is a food based on bread. There are many different kinds of bread. The two main types of bread are: 1. Leavened bread is made by adding yeast or other leavening to the dough. The yeast produces gas that makes the dough lighter. Leavened bread can be made into larger loaves baked in an oven. This is the main type of bread eaten in Europe, America, and many parts of Asia. 2. Unleavened flatbread is baked from a dough of water and flour, with no yeast. It is baked in flat rounds like tortilla or chapati. This type of bread cannot be made thick as it would be too dense to eat. Unleavened bread is eaten throughout the Middle East, Africa, parts of Asia, and as the Central American tortilla. Baking can be done on a metal plate or hot stone, or in an oven. The color and taste of the bread depend on the kind of flour used and the style of baking. Flour made from the whole grain gives darker bread. Flour made just from the polished wheat grain gives a very white bread. Rye and barley flour give darker types of bread. The type of flour also changes how long the bread can be kept before going bad. Some strains of wheat are resistant to fungus, but may not produce a bread as tasty as a weaker strain. Religious breads[change \| change source] Christianity and Judaism have rules about the use of bread in their religions. Unleavened bread is eaten by Jews during the Passover. The Catholic celebration of the Eucharist uses unleavened wafers. Orthodox churches forbid the use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist (Old Testament) and permit leavened bread only as a symbol of the New. This was one of the three points of contention that brought about the schism between Eastern and Western churches in 1054.[1] Types of bread[change \| change source] Bread is an important part of life in many countries, because so many people eat it. In many cultures, bread is so important that it is part of religious rituals. Cake is made in a similar way to bread but sugar, fat and milk are added to the dough and often more ingredients. References[change \| change source] 1. Ware, Timothy (1964), The Orthodox Church, London: Penguin Books, p. 66, ISBN 0-14-020592-6
Home‎ > ‎ Basic Parts of a Tree: Interactive Lesson Hello Students! Today you will be learning about Trees. Objective, Objective! What we will learn! While working in pairs, you will be able to label and talk about the main parts of a tree. You will use technology to discover new information. 1. Click on this document. At the end of this lesson you will be able to fill in the missing parts of the tree. 2. You are tree detectives. Look at these websites to find out everything about trees. 1. http://www.ecokidsonline.com/pub/eco_info/topics/forests/parts_of_a_tree.cfm 2. http://www.ecomagic.org/fruition/parts.html 3. http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/olympia/kids/terrific_trees.htm *go down to what are the main parts of a tree 1. Work quietly and look at the different pages to learn about the main parts of trees, their functions and where they live. 2. While looking at the websites, begin to fill in the tree diagram. 3. Double click on the boxes to add text. Type your answers in each box. 4. Answer the question at the bottom of the page. 5. Print out the picture of the tree. Follow these steps: 1. Click on file on the top left. Go down to the word print and click on it. 6. Now you are ready to share your project! Lisa Woodend, Feb 27, 2009, 10:19 AM
Kwajalein consists of a group of 90 coral islets that surround the third largest lagoon in the world. The total land area is 6.2 square miles and the atoll is 78 miles long. The islets of Kwajalein and Roi-Namur were the first of the Marshall Islands captured by U.S. troops in World War II. The atoll serves as a seaport, air stop and U.S. military missile testing site.
Large Intestine The large intestine is about 1.5 m (5 feet) long and is characterized by the following components: • The cecum is a dead‐end pouch at the beginning of the large intestine, just below the ileocecal valve. • The appendix (vermiform appendix) is an 8‐cm (3‐inch) long, fingerlike attachment to the cecum that contains lymphoid tissue and serves immunity functions. • The colon, representing the greater part of the large intestine, consists of four sections: the ascending, transverse, descending, and sigmoid colons. At regular distances along the colon, the smooth muscle of the muscularis layer causes the intestinal wall to gather, producing a series of pouches called haustra. The epithelium facing the lumen of the colon is covered with openings of tubular intestinal glands that penetrate deep into the thick mucosa. The glands consist of absorptive cells and goblet cells. The absorptive cells absorb water and the goblet cells secrete mucus. The mucus lubricates the walls of the large intestine to smooth the passage of feces. • The rectum is the last 20 cm (8 inches) of the large intestine. The mucosa in the rectum forms longitudinal folds called anal columns. • The anal canal, the last 3 cm (1 inch) of the rectum, opens to the exterior at the anus. An involuntary (smooth) muscle, the interior anal sphincter, and a voluntary (skeletal) muscle, the external anal sphincter, control the release of the feces through the anus. The functions of the large intestine include the following: • Peristalsis: Rhythmic contractions of the large intestine produce a form of segmentation called haustral contractions in which food residues are mixed and forced to move from one haustrum to the next. Peristaltic contractions produce mass movements of larger amounts of material. • Bacterial digestion: Bacteria that colonize the large intestine digest waste products. They break down indigestible material by fermentation, releasing various gases. Vitamin K and certain B vitamins are also produced by bacterial activity. • Absorption: Vitamins B and K, some electrolytes (Na + and Cl ), and most of the remaining water is absorbed by the large intestine. • Defecation: Mass movement of feces into the rectum stimulates a defecation reflex that opens the internal anal sphincter. Unless the external sphincter is voluntarily closed, feces will be evacuated through the anus. Back to Top
How do the ancient Greeks perceive brute strength in the Odyssey? 1 Answer \| Add Yours rrteacher's profile pic rrteacher \| College Teacher \| (Level 2) Educator Emeritus Posted on Clearly, Odysseus, the hero of the Odyssey, does not simply represent brute strength. Rather, he represents cunning and mental toughness. Throughout the Odyssey, he overcomes brute strength by using his wiles. Perhaps the most obvious example is when he and a handful of his men escape the Cyclops in Book IX, using his wits to blind the creature and escape by clinging to the underbellies of his sheep. Had Odysseus lashed out blindly against the Cyclops, killing him while he slept, he would have been trapped in the cave by the huge stone he used to seal up the exit. So he was required to use his wits. Indeed, Odysseus is proudest of his wits, referring to himself as "crafty" and laughing "inwardly at my clever strategem." It is this pride in his wits that lands him in trouble, as he unwisely tells the Cyclops, who happens to by the son of Poseidon, his name as they escape. Odysseus's wits are on display elsewhere, as well, as he overcomes the suitors and determines his wife and son's loyalty by adopting a convincing disguise with the help of Athena. So clearly the Odyssey is intended to show how wit and cunning, when combined with physical strength and courage, are superior to brute force alone. We’ve answered 318,948 questions. We can answer yours, too. Ask a question
What is an iso osmotic solution 1 Answer \| Add Yours pacorz's profile pic pacorz \| High School Teacher \| (Level 3) Educator Posted on An iso osmotic solution, which is more commonly called an isotonic solution, is a solution which has the same concentration of water as whatever it is being compared to. Osmosis, which is the movement of water across a membrane, is a physical process driven by the concentration of solutes in the water on either side of the membrane. In the case of cells, we can predict whether water will move into the cell, leave the cell, or remain constant, as long as we know the concentration of water both within the cell and around it. A hypertonic solution is one that has greater solute concentration (and therefore less water) than the cell; submerging a cell in a hypertonic solution will cause water to leave the cell, because the water will move toward the region where the water concentration is lower. A hypotonic solution is the opposite - it has more water than the cell, and a cell in a hypotonic solution will gain water and swell up. An isotonic solution, because it has the same relative concentrations of water and solute as the cell, will be in equilibrium with it. A cell in an isotonic solution will neither gain nor lose water. We’ve answered 318,950 questions. We can answer yours, too. Ask a question
장바구니에 선택된 아이템 수량 가격 주문금액: ₩0.00 Eating Probiotics Promotes Digestive Health Probiotics can be found in the foods you eat daily or taken as supplements. Learn more about these tiny organisms that keep your tummy happy. The world we live in abounds with microorganisms -- tiny, living organisms only visible under a microscope. Microorganisms include bacteria, viruses and yeast. This may make you instantly think of infection and disease, but not all bacteria are bad. In fact, we need both to stay healthy. The Good There are various bacteria and microorganisms found in your digestive system that are beneficial to your health. These are your natural intestinal microflora or gut flora. They abound in the digestive tract, from the mouth all the way to the anus. However, most of these microorganisms are concentrated in the intestines. They provide support for various digestive processes as well as boosting the immune system to fight infection. Another benefit of these microorganisms is they protect the linings of the intestines and facilitate cell regeneration. The Bad While the majority of the microorganisms in your digestive system can be classified as good bacteria, there are also bad bacteria lurking in your system. These are the pathogens that can cause disease and infection and bring about serious digestive problems. Pathogens can also damage the linings of the intestines and attack your immune system. The Balance A ratio of 80 percent good bacteria and 20 percent bad bacteria is necessary to maintain a healthy balance of microorganisms in the body. At birth, you start out with a relatively balanced intestinal microflora. As you age the balance of good and bad bacteria in your digestive system can become disrupted due to a number of factors including poor diet, alcohol, stress and the natural aging process. Taking antibiotic substances to treat occasional infections and sickness also accounts for a decrease in beneficial microorganisms. Antibiotics not only ward off disease-causing germs and microorganisms, but also target the good bacteria in your system. Once the balance is disrupted, harmful bacteria can take over and cause serious problems such as diarrhea, constipation, gastrointestinal infection, ulcers and colon cancer. An overgrowth of bad bacteria can also lead to immune system disorders. The Importance of Probiotics Probiotics are among the good bacteria that are beneficial to your health. They are aptly named because these microorganisms are essential to life due to their many functions, especially in the digestive process. Probiotics can be obtained from the food you eat or from dietary supplements. Taking probiotic supplements and consuming food and drinks fortified with probiotics is a good way to restore the balance of good microorganisms in your system. They also help the natural gut flora to recover and thrive again, and make sure the population of harmful bacteria are kept at a minimum. Probiotics help reduce cases of constipation and diarrhea. They also strengthen the immune system against infection. Another benefit of probiotics is the enhancement of nutrient absorption during digestion. Probiotics help break down the amino acids, vitamins and minerals in the food you eat and facilitate their passage through the intestinal walls. Because they fight the growth of harmful bacteria, probiotics also help free your body from harmful toxins that can cause serious disorders. Examples of food sources for probiotics are fermented milk, yogurt and soy milk. The probiotics in these food sources can be naturally present or artificially added during preparation. Choosing Your Probiotics The most common groups of probiotics are Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. These groups are further subdivided into species and each species also has different varieties called “strains.” Some probiotic strains are called "residents" because they are naturally found in the digestive system. If you take these kinds of probiotic supplements, they can easily reestablish themselves in the intestinal environment. "Transient" strains are those that just pass through the digestive system, but are very effective in fighting infection while present in your body. Now that you know about probiotics, you may never look at bacteria the same way again. Just remember, not all bacteria are bad -- they are just misunderstood. 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owserver man page owserver — Backend server (daemon) for 1-wire control owserver [ -c config ] -d serialport \| -u \| -s [host:]port -p tcp-port OWFS design OWFS is a suite of programs that designed to make the 1-wire bus and its devices easily accessible. The underlying principle is to create a virtual filesystem, with the unique Id being the directory, and the individual properties of the device are represented as simple files that can be read and written. owserver (1) is the backend component of the OWFS 1-wire bus control system. owserver (1) arbitrates access to the bus from multiple client processes. The physical bus is usually connected to a serial or USB port, and other processes connect to owserver (1) over network sockets (tcp port). Communication can be local or over a network. Secure tunneling can be implemented using standard techniques. Frontend clients include a filesystem representation: owfs (1) , and a webserver: owhttpd (1). Direct language bindings are also available, e.g: owperl (3). Several instances of each client can be initiated. Each client can also connect directly to the physical bus, skipping owserver (1) but only one client can connect to the physical bus safely. Simultaneous access is prevented by the operating system for USB ports, but unfortunately not serial ports. The safe way to share access to the 1-wire bus is via owserver (1) with the clients connecting. Note: owserver (1) can connect to another owserver (1) process, though the utility of this technique is limited (perhaps as a readonly buffer?) owserver (1) is by default multithreaded. Optional data caching is in the server, not clients, so all the clients gain efficiency. Device Options (1-wire Bus Master) These options specify the device (bus master) connecting the computer to the 1-wire bus. The 1-wire slaves are connected to the 1-wire bus, and the bus master connects to a port on the computer and controls the 1-wire bus. The bus master is either an actual physical device, the kernel w1 module, or an owserver (1). At least one device option is required. There is no default. More than one device can be listed, and all will be used. (A logical union unless you explore the /bus.n/ directories.) Linux and BSD enforce a security policy restricting access to hardware ports. You must have sufficient rights to access the given port or access will silently fail. * Serial devices port specifies a serial port, e.g. /dev/ttyS0 If OWFS was built with libftdi support, you may be able to use the ftdi: prefix to address a FTDI-based USB device. For details, see the Ftdi Addressing section. -d port \| --device=port (DS2480B) DS2480B-based bus master (like the DS9097U or the LINK in emulation mode). If the adapter doesn't respond, a passive type (DS9907E or diode/resistor) circuit will be assumed. --serial_flextime \| --serial_regulartime (DS2480B) Changes details of bus timing (see DS2480B datasheet). Some devices, like the Swart LCD cannot work with flextime. --baud=1200\|9600\|19200\|38400\|57600\|115200 (DS2480B,LINK,HA5) Sets the initial serial port communication speed for all bus masters. Not all serial devices support all speeds. You can change the individual bus master speed for the LINK and DS2880B in the interface/settings directory. The HA5 speed is set in hardware, so the command line buad rate should match that rate. Usually the default settings (9600 for LINK and DS2480B ) and 115200 for the HA5 are sane and shouldn't be changed. --straight_polarity \| --reverse_polarity (DS2480B) Reverse polarity of the DS2480B output transistors? Not needed for the DS9097U, but required for some other designs. --link=port (LINK) iButtonLink LINK adapter (all versions) in non-emulation mode. Uses an ascii protocol over serial. This supports the simplified ftdi:<serial> addressing scheme. --ha7e=port (HA7E) Embedded Data Systems HA7E adapter ( and HA7S ) in native ascii mode. --ha5=port \| --ha5=port:a \| --ha5=port:acg (HA5) Embedded Data Systems HA5 mutidrop adapter in native ascii mode. Up to 26 adapters can share the same port, each with an assigned letter. If no letter specified, the program will scan for the first response (which may be slow). --checksum \| --no_checksum (HA5) Turn on (default) or off the checksum feature of the HA5 communication. --passive=port \| --ha2=port \| --ha3=port \| --ha4b=port (Passive) Passive 1-wire adapters. Powered off the serial port and using passive electrical components (resitors and diodes). --8bit \| --6bit (Passive) Synthesize the 1-wire waveforme using a 6-bit (default) serial word, or 8-bit word. Not all UART devices support 6 bit operation. Timeout (in seconds) for all serial communications. 5 second default. Can be altered dynamically under /settings/timeout/serial * USB devices The only supported true USB bus masters are based on the DS2490 chip. The most common is the DS9490R which has an included 1-wire Id slave with family code 81. There are also bus masters based on the serial chip with a USB to serial conversion built in. These are supported by the serial bus master protocol. DS2490 based bus master (like the DS9490R). Use the second USB bus master. (The order isn't predicatble, however, since the operating system does not conssitently order USB devices). Use all the USB devices. --usb_flextime \| --usb_regulartime Changes the details of 1-wire waveform timing for certain network configurations. Willy Robion's alternative USB timing. Timeout for USB communications. This has a 5 second default and can be changed dynamically under /settings/timeout/usb * I2C devices I2C is 2 wire protocol used for chip-to-chip communication. The bus masters: DS2482-100, DS2482-101 and DS2482-800 can specify (via pin voltages) a subset of addresses on the i2c bus. Those choices are 0x1C,0x1D,0x1E,0x1F (DS2482-800 only) port for i2c masters have the form /dev/i2c-0, /dev/i2c-1, ... -d port \| --device=port This simple form only permits a specific port and the first available i2c_address --i2c=port \| --i2c=port:i2c_address \| --i2c=port:ALL Specific i2c port and the i2c_address is either the first, specific, or all or them. The i2c_address is 0,1,2,... --i2c \| --i2c=: \| --i2c=ALL:ALL Search the available i2c buses for either the first, the first, or every i2c adapter. The DS2482-800 masters 8 1-wire buses and so will generate 8 /bus.n entries. * Network devices These bus masters communicate via the tcp/ip network protocol and so can be located anywhere on the network. The network_address is of the form tcp_address:port E.g. or localhost:3000 LinkHubE network LINK adapter by iButtonLink --ha7net=network_address \| --ha7net HA7Net network 1-wire adapter with specified tcp address or discovered by udp multicast. By Embedded Data Systems --timeout_ha7=60 specific timeout for HA7Net communications (60 second default). Etherweather adapter -s network_address \| --server=network_address Location of an owserver (1) program that talks to the 1-wire bus. The default port is 4304. Timeout for network bus master communications. This has a 1 second default and can be changed dynamically under /settings/timeout/network * Simulated devices Used for testing and development. No actual hardware is needed. Useful for separating the hardware development from the rest of the software design. is a list of comma-separated 1-wire devices in the following formats. Note that a valid CRC8 code is created automatically. Hexidecimal family codes (the DS18S20, DS2405 and DS1921 in this example). A more complete hexidecimal unique address. Useful when an actual hardware device should be simulated. The 1-wire device name. (Full Id cannot be speciifed in this format). Random address and random values for each read. The device Id is also random (unless specified). --temperature_low=12 --temperature_high=44 Specify the temperature limits for the fake adapter simulation. These should be in the same temperature scale that is specified in the command line. It is possible to change the limits dynamically for each adapter under /bus.x/interface/settings/simulated/[temperature_low\|temperature_high] Predictable address and predictable values for each read. (See the website for the algorhythm). * w1 kernel module This a linux-specific option for using the operating system's access to bus masters. Root access is required and the implementation was still in progress as of owfs v2.7p12 and linux 2.6.30. Bus masters are recognized and added dynamically. Details of the physical bus master are not accessible, bu they include USB, i2c and a number of GPIO designs on embedded boards. Access is restrict to superuser due to the netlink broadcast protocol employed by w1. Multitasking must be configured (threads) on the compilation. Use the linux kernel w1 virtual bus master. Timeout for w1 netlink communications. This has a 10 second default and can be changed dynamically under /settings/timeout/w1 Ftdi Addressing FTDI is a brand of USB-to-serial chips which are very common. If your serial device is connected via a USB serial dongle based on a FTDI chip, or if your adapter uses a built-in FTDI USB chip (for example, the LinkUSB), you can use this FTDI addressing. The main benifit with this mode of access is that we can decrease the communication delay, yielding twice as fast 1-Wire communication in many cases. The following values for port can be used to identify a specific FTDI port. Note that this requires that OWFS is built with libftdi support. path of bus and device-node (e.g. "003/001") within usb device tree (usually at /proc/bus/usb/) first device with given vendor and product id, ids can be decimal, octal (preceded by "0") or hex (preceded by "0x") as above with index being the number of the device (starting with 0) if there are more than one first device with given vendor id, product id and serial string The above formats are parsed fully by libftdi (minus the ftdi: prefix). Simplified device serial-only support An additional format is supported, for certain bus types. This only specifies the USB serial number. Identifies a FTDI device by serial only. Currently, this is only valid for the VID/PID found on the LinkUSB (i.e. --link). Note that those VID/PID's are the default for any FT232R device, and in no way exclusive to LinkUSB. Specific Options TCP port or IPaddress:port for owserver Other OWFS programs will access owserver via this address. (e.g. owfs -s IP:port /1wire) If no port is specified, the default well-known port (4304 -- assigned by the IANA) will be used. Temperature Scale Options -C --Celsius -F --Fahrenheit -K --Kelvin -R --Rankine Temperature scale used for data output. Celsius is the default. Can also be changed within the program at /settings/units/temperature_scale Pressure Scale Options --mbar (default) Pressure scale used for data output. Millibar is the default. Can also be changed within the program at /settings/units/pressure_scale Format Options Choose the representation of the 1-wire unique identifiers. OWFS uses these identifiers as unique directory names. Although several display formats are selectable, all must be in family-id-crc8 form, unlike some other programs and the labelling on iButtons, which are crc8-id-family form. -f --format=“f[.]i[[.]c]” Display format for the 1-wire devices. Each device has a 8byte address, consisting of: family code, 1 byte Id number, 6 bytes CRC checksum, 1 byte Possible formats are f.i (default, 01.A1B2C3D4E5F6), fi fic f.ic f.i.c and fi.c All formats are accepted as input, but the output will be in the specified format. The address elements can be retrieved from a device entry in owfs by the family, id and crc8 properties, and as a whole with address. The reversed id and address can be retrieved as r_id and r_address. Job Control Options -r --readonly -w --write Do we allow writing to the 1-wire bus (writing memory, setting switches, limits, PIOs)? The write option is available for symmetry, it's the default. -P --pid-file filename Places the PID -- process Id of owfs into the specified filename. Useful for startup scripts control. --background \| --foreground Whether the program releases the console and runs in the background after evaluating command line options. background is the default. default mixed destination: stderr foreground / syslog background syslog only stderr only /dev/null (quiet mode). default errors only all high level calls data summary for each call details level debugging chaff --error_level=9 produces a lot of output Configuration File -c file \| --configuration file Name of an owfs (5) configuration file with more command line parameters Help Options See also this man page and the web site http://www.owfs.org -h --help=[device\|cache\|program\|job\|temperature] Shows basic summary of options. 1-wire bus master options cache and communication size and timing mountpoint or TCP server settings control and debugging options Unique Id display format and temperature scale -V --version Version of this program and related libraries. Time Options Timeouts for the bus masters were previously listed in Device options. Timeouts for the cache affect the time that data stays in memory. Default values are shown. Seconds until a volatile property expires in the cache. Volatile properties are those (like temperature) that change on their own. Can be changed dynamically at /settings/timeout/volatile Seconds until a stable property expires in the cache. Stable properties are those that shouldn't change unless explicitly changed. Memory contents for example. Can be changed dynamically at /settings/timeout/stable Seconds until a directory listing expires in the cache. Directory lists are the 1-wire devices found on the bus. Can be changed dynamically at /settings/timeout/directory Seconds until the presence and bus location of a 1-wire device expires in the cache. Can be changed dynamically at /settings/timeout/presence There are also timeouts for specific program responses: Seconds until the expected response from the owserver (1) is deemed tardy. Can be changed dynamically at /settings/timeout/server Seconds that an ftp session is kept alive. Can be changed dynamically at /settings/timeout/ftp Persistent Threshold Options These settings control the behavior of owserver (1) in granting and dropping persistent tcp connections. The default settings are shown. In general no changes should be needed. In general the purpose is to limit total resource usage from an errant or rogue client. Minimum seconds that a persistent tcp connection to owserver (1) is kept open. This is the limit used when the number of connections is above --clients_persistent_low Maximum seconds that a persistent tcp connection to owserver (1) is kept open. This is the limit used when the number of connections is below --clients_persistent_low Maximum number of persistent tcp connections to owserver (1) before connections start getting the more stringent time limitation --timeout_persistent_low Maximum number of persistent tcp connections to before no more are allowed (only non-persistent at this point). owserver (1) before no more are allowed (only non-persistent at this point). Developer Options Reject DIRALL messages (requests directory as a single message), forcing client to use older DIR method (each element is an individual message) Reject GET messages (lets owserver determine if READ or DIRALL is appropriate). Client will fall back to older methods. Reject persistence in requests. All transactions will have to be new connections. Interject many "keep-alive" (PING) responses. Usually PING responses are only sent when processing is taking a long time to inform client that owserver is still there. owserver -p 3001 -d /dev/ttyS0 runs owserver on tcp port 3001 and connects to a physical 1-wire bus on a serial port. See Also Configuration and testing owfs (5) owtap (1) owmon (1) Language bindings owtcl (3) owperl (3) owcapi (3) DS2401 (3) DS2411 (3) DS1990A (3) DS1922 (3) DS2450 (3) DS2890 (3) Multifunction (current, voltage, temperature) DS2423 (3) LCD Screen LCD (3) DS2408 (3) DS1977 (3) DS2406 (3) -- TAI8570 Paul Alfille ([email protected]) Referenced By collectd.conf(5), DS1821(3), DS1822(3), DS1825(3), DS18B20(3), DS18S20(3), DS1921(3), DS1963L(3), DS1963S(3), DS1977(3), DS1991(3), DS1992(3), DS1993(3), DS1995(3), DS1996(3), DS2401(3), DS2404(3), DS2405(3), DS2406(3), DS2408(3), DS2409(3), DS2413(3), DS2415(3), DS2423(3), DS2430A(3), DS2431(3), DS2433(3), DS2436(3), DS2437(3), DS2438(3), DS2450(3), DS2502(3), DS2505(3), DS2506(3), DS2720(3), DS2740(3), DS2751(3), DS2755(3), DS2760(3), DS2770(3), DS2780(3), DS2781(3), DS2890(3), DS28E04(3), DS28EA00(3), DS28EC20(3), EDS(3), EEEF(3), LCD(3), mAM001(3), mCM001(3), mDI001(3), mRS001(3), owcapi(1), owfs(1), owfs(5), owftpd(1), owhttpd(1), owmon(1), ownet(1), owperl(3), owshell(1), owtap(1), owtcl(n). 2004 OWSERVER Manpage One-Wire File System
Dismiss Notice Join Physics Forums Today! Infinity ? 1. Jul 8, 2005 #1 With the real number line. 0 is before -1 and 1. Both zero, and infinity are undefined. How does 0 touch infinity. Both are the same value, and start at 0, so for there to be infinity either infinity starts from infinity, or infinity starts from 0. In fact infinity has both values. It starts from 0, and infinity. Because infinity travels to 0, and zero travels to infinity. 0 Goes both ways. Positive and negative, so infinity must also. So Infinity must touch zero by traveling to zero, and zero also travels to infinity. Then does negative infinity change the polarization of positive infinity traveling through 0, or do both infinities move towards zero from infinity. Then both factors of infinity, the positive and negative, move towards 0. So is there really infinity if both the positive and negative aspects of it move to 0. 2. jcsd 3. Jul 8, 2005 #2 0 is undefined? 4. Jul 8, 2005 #3 Polarization of positive infinity? 5. Jul 8, 2005 #4 User Avatar Staff Emeritus Science Advisor Gold Member This is nonsensical. Have something to add? Similar Discussions: Infinity ? 1. Is infinity = infinity? (Replies: 20)
What does the phrase "dropped the ball" mean? Quick Answer The idiom "to drop the ball" means to make a mistake, to make a blunder or to fail at something. For example, if John is always dropping the ball on his projects, that means that he consistently makes mistakes. Continue Reading Full Answer The phrase is an American idiom that comes from ball games such as football or baseball, where dropping the ball is a mistake and can inhibit a team's ability to succeed. Also, dropping the ball in football means that play stops, so "dropping the ball" stops all momentum of the game. The phrase began being used for more general mistakes sometime around the 1950s. Learn more about Education Related Questions
What was the pterodactyl dinosaur? Quick Answer The pterodactyl was a winged reptile of the Jurassic period that lived roughly 150 million years ago. As the term "dinosaur" generally refers to creatures walking upright on two or four feet, and the pterodactyl flew or waddled on its back legs, the animal is actually a pterosaur. Continue Reading Full Answer The name of the specimen comes from the combination of the Greek words for "wing" and "finger." Pterodactyls flew using wings that stretched from their bodies to an elongated fourth finger and had a wingspan stretching roughly 3 feet. The birds used their long beaks, which were filled with roughly 90 teeth, to prey on a variety of fish. Learn more about Dinosaurs Related Questions
How to Finally Get Over Your Fear of Investing She watching scary movie being alone at home It’s no secret that Presidential Elections always bring up concerns about the economy and the stock market. In fact, that’s dominated a lot of the news for the last year. It’s also no secret that most people, and it seems that especially millennials, are afraid to invest. Earlier this year, Bankrate conducted a study that found that 54% of Americans don’t invest and that millennials, in particular, are wary of trying it. Let’s be real. People are afraid of losing their money. It’s a valid concern, but it’s one that could hinder us far more than it can help us. Why this is a problem Before getting into how to get over this fear, we must first address why not investing is a major problem. While there are several reasons why you should be investing, I would argue that one of the main ones is because of this little thing called inflation. Inflation refers to the cost of goods going up over time. This means that the liquid cash you have sitting in the bank won’t be worth as much decades from now because it’s going to cost more money to buy the same things. There are only two ways to beat this. Either earn more money, which is not happening during retirement, or find a way to build wealth in which the rate of return is higher than the rate of inflation. One of those methods is investing in the stock market. The average rate of inflation in the U.S. is 3.22% whereas as the average rate of return of the stock market is around 7 percent. That’s a 4 percent difference and it’s way easier than constantly needing to earn more (though that’s not a bad idea either!) So how do you get over yourself and dive in? The fear of investing is an easy one to get over if you consider some of the following points. By taking these into account, you’ll be able to at least start thinking about investing in the stock market. Investing is a long-term game Investing is not a get rich quick game. It’s also not gambling. The reality is that the market goes up and down all the time because that’s its very nature. It’s normal for it to do that. That’s why it’s important to note that investing is a long-term game. That’s also why it’s important to start young. You have time on your side so you can ride out the market dips. You also don’t want to be in a position where you have to play catch-up later. Diversifying is key One of the reasons people lose so much money when the market dips is because they put all of their eggs in one basket. The reality is that even if the market is not performingwellin general, some sector of it probably is. That’s why diversifying is so important - because it helps you minimize loss. I personally investinindex funds because it automatically invests into top companies in the U.S. economy. If one falls off, it just gets replaced by the next one. However, this is surely not the only way to add diversity to your portfolio. You have to keep your emotions out of it Warren Buffet has a famous quote that says, “Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.” The more I invest, the more this has become my mantra. The reality is most people will let their emotions get the best of them and they’ll proceed to do something stupid. The smart investor knows when this is happening and, instead of getting wrapped up in the mayhem, seizes the opportunity. For example, when the stock market started tanking on election night I immediately scheduled some investments for first thing in the morning. This was despite my personal feelings about the election. Everyone was freaking out, but I saw a sale going on and decided to invest. The end result was I made money when the market rebounded the next day. Investing doesn’t need to be scary. If you understand how the market actually works and the psychology of investing, you can get over your fear and start investing. Education also helps. For that, I recommend checking out TradeKing’s educational resources.
Flickering Problems With Plasma TVs By Charles Watson Plasma televisions work by electrically charging ions in plasma to create a picture. This process produces more heat and uses more electricity than standard tube television technology. As it ages, the television may begin to flicker due to overheating, picture degradation or screen problems. Check the television's fan to see if it is working properly. A plasma TV should contain a cooling system. These televisions produce a lot of heat. Thus, most problems are caused by a failed cooling system. Picture Degradation Leaving your plasma television on for long periods while displaying a static image can cause "burn in." This is a phenomenon in which the image burns itself onto the screen and is always visible. It can also be caused by leaving the television on the same channel, with a logo at the bottom of the screen. Over time this can cause flickering on your screen as well. Screen Problems Check your plasma for cracks or breaks in the screen. These can cause pixels to burn out and appear to be flickering. Each pixel consists of three sub-pixels containing the colors red, blue and green. If one of these sub-pixels is burned out, the screen will flicker.
The basic principles behind the social control theory Social Control Theories. Many criminological theories always explain why do people commit crime, or to find out what are the most influential factors motivate people commit crime and violate the social norms. Instead, social control theories have been already assumed humans are potentially committing crime. Moreover, the social control or social bond theory is emphasizing why a person do not be a criminal. In social control theorists' assumptions, individuals have the capacity to violate the laws rather than obey the laws. Law-abiding behaviors are not the nature of human beings. People choose to commit crime because the forces or constrains of society is not strongest enough. It portrays people are standing in the dilemma between deviance and conformity. It shows the tension of everyone either commit deviant act or accepts the norms. Therefore, social control theorists propose a few elements to pull people back from the side of deviance, especially relationship, commitments, values, norms, and beliefs. Family and peer group become a crucial agencies that affect people's conduct. Albert J Reiss The understanding of those early control theorist's arguments are very important because they presented a framework or some basic propositions within the many theories of delinquency and crime. Each social control theorist had also been done an empirical study of their findings to support their point of views. Starting from an article wrote by Albert J Reiss (1951), his argument might be reproduced from Freud's concept of ego or superego mainly. He aims at noticing the prediction of probation revocation among juvenile offenders. He thought youths have a lower personal controls that might more likely to become juvenile delinquency. That is, those younger people lack of ability to refrain from desiring their needs when having conflict with the rules or norms of the society. Nevertheless, his explanation of juvenile delinquency is weak when discussing the relationship between probation revocation and school performance as truancy. Jackson Toby In 1957, Jackson Toby, a second social control theorist, offered a new concept called "stake in conformity" which as the fundamental mechanism to affect delinquent's comportment. He also agreed that people are intrinsically and temptingly rupturing the laws, especially all youths. Some of them are having a high risk of the violation of laws due to this temptation. He believes students perform well in school not only they are being punished by school, but also endanger their future chances of success. Under the special academic-oriented circumstance, if the society allows students having a better career path when they got an excellent school result; therefore, some students who do poorly in school might have a great chance of committing crime because they seems lose lesser things than others. Apart from the academic result of an individual is an influential factor, peer support for deviant act could lead those youths with low stakes in conformity as well. However, even youths have low stake in conformity, they are not become delinquents when lacking of peer support. F. Ivan Nye In 1958, Nye then concentrated on the issue of family relationship. He though that family is a single most crucial root of social control for adolescents. He divided diffent forms of control such as direct control, internal control, and indirect control. Direct control means the obvious restriction or punishments of a person. Internal control refered to a inward monitor or consciences. Indirect control linked to affectional or emotional identification with parents, noncriminals or legal codes. He stated that if all the above controls are sufficient, then those adolescents are more conform the rules of society. Nye's study had been tested by an empircal experiment. However, his experiment had been challenged by Toby already. First, altough Nye called the sample group as 'most delinquent', but many criminologist called them 'nondelinquents'. Due to the sample group was selected in high school which was not included any youths age 15 or younger, and any youths age 16 with dropped out of school. Furthermore, the questions being asked in questionnaires were too trivial such as taking things worth less than $2, and damaging public or private property. Therefore, Nye cannot recognize the strongly relationship between family bonding and serious delinquent behaviours. Walter C. Reckless In 1961, another social control theorist called Reckless, who proposed a containment theory. The main concept is that all individuals are influenced by different forces such as social pressure, social pulls, biological/ psychological pushes. Those forces are driving people to commit deviant act. However, these forces are againsted by both external and inner containments. For instance, social pressure can be defined as living conditions, family conflict, minority group, status, and lack of opportunities. Then the term 'social pulls' is refered to the accepted norm of all individuals from their companions, criminal subculture, mass media and so on. Biological or psychological pushes can be easily linked to how those biological and psychological factors affect people fail to conform the norms of society, such as restlessness, inner tension, aggressiveness and so on. On the contrary, external containment is talking about the surroundings of a person. For instance, how parents or support groups promote right moral values, discipline, enforce the sense of identity and so on. Moreover, inner containment are those invisible stuffs which internalized our self-control; that related to how the goals/ abilities of a person against to commit crime. David Matza & Travis Hirschi Matza's Delinquency and Drift (1964) and Hirschi's Causes of Delinquency (1969) also advoacted two famous concepts in the later development of control theories. Alternatively, Matza has been already protraried the image of 'drifter'. Emphasizing how social conditions shape people become a drifter. (However, he did not mention about what kinds of constraints and control that keep youngsters from drifting.) In Hirschi's theory, he proposed four main 'social bonds' that could determine one's involvement in delinquency, namely attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. Attachment contains the interpersoanl and emotional bonds among others, especially parents and teachers. Commitment refers to how youths make use of the time, energy, effort expended in traditional path of success, such as saving money for the future and abtaining a high academic qualification. Involvement means the degree of one's involvement in those conventional activities, such as school, recreation, and family. Due to society will share common moral values normally, therefore, beliefs of a person are very important. People might more easily commit criminal act if these moral values are absent or weakened. In short, Hirschi's social bond theory emphasized all people are potential criminals, however, people will conform the norm or obey the law because they do not want to destroy the bondings with others. There are few criticisms on social control theory. First, according to the assumption of it, social control theorists assumed human are potential law-violators. What if the youths commit crime just because they are 'fun'? Another issuse is that such theories cannot be explained the causes of gang delinquency and adult criminality. Furthermore, most studies were referring the involvement of trivial offenses of nondelinquent youths. Hirschi also confessed that delinquents actually active in conventional events, which rejected his original theory (Vold & Bernard, 1986). Social Learning perspectives Edwin Sutherland Differential Association Theory was the most direct and clear theory that proposed by Edwin Sutherland in 1947 from social learning perspectives. In 1978, Sutherland and Cressey consisted nine propositions of Differential Association Theory: "1. Criminal behaviour is learned... 2. Criminla behaviour is learned in interaction with other persons in a process... 3. The principal part of the learning of criminal behaviour occurs within intimate personal groups... 4. When criminal behaviour is learned, the learning includes techniques of committing the crime, which are sometimes very complicated, sometimes very simple; the specific direction of the motives, drives, rationlization, and attitudes... 5. The specific directions of motives and drives is learned from definitions of the legal codes as favourable or unfavourable... 6. The person becomes delinquent because of an excess of favourable definitions to violation of law over unfavourable definitions to law-violation... 8. Process of learning criminal behaviour by association with criminal and anti-criminal patterns involves all of the mechanisms involved in any other learning... 9. While criminal act is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those general needs and values..." (Sutherland & Cressey, 1978, pp.80-82.) Here will be discussed each propositions respectively. First, it is clearly stated that criminal act is not inborn which is learned. Then, Sutherland provided how people learned to become delinquent which is learned in interaction with others, especially family, friends, and colleagues. Also, techniques of commiting crime are needed which are sometimes quite complicated/simple such as how to unlock a safe or steal a car on the street. Moral justifications also crucial that make people think their acts are reasonable. For example, a poor person steal foods in supermarket because they do not have money to buy enough foods to their sons. Therefore, they will justify they act as make sense. Fifth, it refers to the views of legal codes from an individiuals. The person may not want to obey the law because such laws are just controlling him/her, and killing his/her free will. The favourable definitions of law violation and the unfavourable definitions of law violation are two sides on the balance that lead a person commit crime if the favourable definitions of law violation is excess. Moreover, how often are criminal contacts made, how long do the contacts last, and how significant to the individual are the criminal contacts are always being considered. Sutherland (1978) also though that there will be greater the chance to commit crime if people have been contacted criminals since early childhood. Role modeling or direct teaching is another way to learn the criminal acts. In chinese words, that means "one who mixes with vermilion will turn red, one who touches pitch shall be defiled therewith"; which implies good companions have good influence while bad ones have bad influence. Law-violation behaviours cannot be explained by fulfilling those general needs becauses those criminal acts are illogical. In brief, he emphasized the the significance of personal contact, and all individuals are follower. There will be discussed a few main critiques of this theory. Differential association theory neglected that why some youths seems exposed to delinquent definitions, but finally they choose to stop the delinquent acts. Another major criticism is the problem of the principle differential association, which assumes criminal behaviours to be rational and systematics. However, this theory is very hard to illustrate the acts of those psychopathic killing or serial rapists (Sigel, 2009). Also, delinquents might seek like-minded peers rather than follow others which drafted another relationship between deviant peers and criminality. Writing Services Essay Writing Assignment Writing Service Dissertation Writing Service Coursework Writing Service Dissertation Proposal Service Report Writing Essay Skeleton Answer Service Marking & Proofreading Service Exam Revision
History And The Introduction To Psychology Psychology Essay The history of psychology consists of several differing philosophies and models believed to comprise of fundamental definitions that assist in unraveling the mysteries of human behaviour and development. In this Essay I will identify two schools of psychology. The first Psychology school chosen to research is that of Humanism describing Abraham Maslow's theory in relation to his Hierarchy of needs. The second school chosen is that of Behaviorism explaining Bernard F Skinner's theory in relation to operant conditioning. For each school and theory, I will specify relevance to nature versus nurture followed by demonstrating contrasts and comparisons of both schools whilst explaining the application of both theories in a practice environment. I will take in to consideration cross cultural aspects of these theories signifying implications in relation to gender, age or disability. Lastly, I will conclude the essay by illustrating an understanding of my new found knowledge and learning's. The Humanist school has had an impact on psychology by "highlighting the importance of subjective views of oneself and for confronting the question of what makes for a healthy personality" (Weiten, 2007, p. 491); Humanistic methodologies focuses on distinctively human aspects of personality (Weiten, 2007). Abraham Maslow's theory for personality development involved the belief that a healthy personality starts with exceptional mental health (Weiten, 2007). Maslow believed that in order to experience this, you must reach a sense of self-actualisation which is the need to realise one's own human potential as depicted in his "Hierarchy of needs". This model has five levels consisting of both psychological and physiological needs. Maslow believed that "once a person manages to satisfy a level of needs that this satisfaction will activate needs in the next level" (Weiten, 2007, p. 488). The last of the levels is discovering self-actualisation. According to Maslow's theory, once at this level, individuals experience a profound sense of reality produced from one's own personal experiences and continued self-growth (Weiten, 2007). In regards to the Nature and nurture debate, Maslow's theory is that of "Nurture"; "he believed people have no fixed nature and must therefore create themselves "(Burton, L. 2009, p. 15). Maslow believed that personality is not predetermined by genetics but is influenced by our environment and how we choose to manage life's many obstacles and experiences. The Behaviourist school has had an impact on psychology by focusing on observational learning. It studies the way environmental events control behaviour through experimenting and only taking in to account observable reactions or responses (Weiten, 2007). The term Behaviour refers to all of a person's overt actions that others can directly observe. Bernard. F. Skinner; specialised in Behavioural psychology. Skinners theory involved the belief that humans did not have free choice - rather that we are products of our conditioning, or schedules of reinforcement as he believed behaviour is controlled by operant conditioning. This model implies that learning occurs because responses come to be influenced by the outcomes that follow them suggesting that operant conditioning is attained through voluntary responses (Weiten, 2007). For example, if the behaviour is positive, the consequences will also be positive. "Essentially, Skinner's theory states that good behaviour is reinforced while bad behaviour is reprimanded. This states that not only is good behaviour rewarded, but the subject can learn to manipulate the system by continuing the positive behaviour so that reinforcement is consistently given" (Dany, Yahoo.com, 2006). In regards to the nature and nurture debate, Skinners theory is based around that of "nurture"; He alleged "there is no place in a scientific analysis of behaviour for a mind or self" (B.F.Skinner, 1990, p. 1209) He claimed "that behaviour is learned and selected by environmental consequences" (Burton, L. 2009, p. 24). Therefore, this model and theory eliminates all likelihood of nature being a contributory influential component. Maslow's theory is based around motivation; he believed that each individual had the innate need to want to strive for personal excellence gained through self-growth and personal experience. He believed we adaptively or maladaptively learnt to deal with life's experiences and situations in order to reach our full potential. Maslow believed that we needed both basic psychological and physiological needs meet before we could attain what he thought was the pinnacle of developed mental health; Maslow also believed in unconscious motivation. Unconscious Motivation refers to hidden and unknown desires that are the real reasons for things that people do. Skinner did not believe in the power of the unconscious and its effects on human behaviour. Skinners theory also has "less applicability when the clients concerns or problems are related primarily to decision making, value conflicts and distorted thinking" (Bradford, 2008, p. 97). This could contribute to a less empathetic attitude to the situation or client whereas Maslow's approach took those elements into consideration as they are believed to be a dominant factor in Humanistic development theory. (Bradford, 2008, p. 97). Like Maslow, Skinner believed that personality behaviour consisted more of nurture than nature but unlike Maslow, Skinner believed that behaviour is purely shaped through conditioning as opposed to believing that individuals possess inborn intuition of behaviour. Like Maslow's five stage hierarchy of needs, Skinner also identified three levels of behaviour in regards to types of responses resulting from operant conditioning that can aid in subsequent behaviour. "One being Neutral operants, second being reinforcers and thirdly, Punishers (Mcleod, 2007). Understanding these concepts of behaviour in Skinners theory and understanding Maslow's stages in his hierarchy of needs both have in common the passion to understanding human behaviour but from two dissimilar interpretations. One theory does not have more precedence over the other as each theory will apply to different client's situation and needs. However, it has been argued that Maslow's theory is only applicable in predominantly white western ideology and cultures where Skinners theory is perceived to be more significant and feasible in today's societies. Maslow's theory can be applied to social work practices as a self-motivational, group motivational or goal setting tool. An example of a this theory being used as a self-motivational encourager in a social work environment would be helping people to interpret and realise that their own selves are valid and worthwhile which is a positive start to realising one's own potential. This initiation influences positive goal setting which aids in continued self-growth and discovery. In a group environment, the Humanistic approach can influence new beginnings as the principles allow peoples participation in working together on an equal basis to help achieve a common purpose or goal (Payne, 2005). This theory can also be considered from a strength perspective meaning it is an "orientation or a philosophical stance that anticipates the existence of positive and constructive elements" (Bradford, 2008, p. 97). It encourages the social worker to look for these elements ensuring that they are used during the helping process; recognising these strengths can increase client motivation revealing new possibilities. This encourages a helping relationship between social worker and client that is collaborative in nature; the basis of a strong foundation in which to build upon. Skinners theory can be applied to social work practices as a learning tool. For example, as an intervention objective it can be used to learn a new behaviour or modify an existing one (Bradford, 2008); operant conditioning can be put into practice when there is need to increase desired behaviour or reduce undesired behaviour/s in a client. It can be used to change (train) thoughts and feelings which can influence a client's behaviour. For instance, the client can be taught how to modify his or her own behaviour through self-administration of reinforces (Bradford, 2008). This theory can also be used to help a client understand why they do the things they do which can help target certain problem areas in their behavioural patterns. With this clearer understanding comes a need to discover new ways to rectify and change certain behaviour as only when you understand why you behave the way you do can you see clearly what steps and changes need to be made. This is only possible through close observation leading to an improved understanding of your behaviour because you will be more self-aware. A cross cultural aspect for Maslow's theory in regards to race is that his theory was developed around white male psychologists where the theory was based on findings from white middle class university students. In today's multi-cultural societies, Maslow's theory may not suite other races or cultures outside of white westernised culture; for example, those from far eastern countries have different views, values and beliefs on how life should be lived and abided by. They may have their own ideology of what achieving happiness is and the path to reach this may be different as well; Maslow may have five levels, Eastern cultures may have three which omit needs and necessities mentioned in Maslow's theory. For example, many eastern cultures have strong spiritual beliefs that differ from westernised spiritual beliefs; this can influence greatly the way in which a culture or society views or chooses its norms and guidelines in which it exists by. The implication of this is that Maslow's theory or parts of it may not apply to a client who associates with a different culture or background as they may find it restricting or completely unusable for their needs and way of life. Another example of an implication to Maslow's theory in regards to race is that westernised culture is based around very individualistic needs whereas many other cultures believe working together as a collective group is a main contributory factor in achieving happiness. A cross cultural aspect of Skinners theory in regards to other races and cultures is that language barriers and differences can cause people to behave in different ways that are considered to be un-normal in western culture and societies as language determines the way we see and think about the world. From a behaviourist view using operant conditioning as a helping tool with a client from a different race where English is not their first language could cause undesired effects; for example, the way in which you approach a client experiencing communication difficulties due to a language barrier may interoperate your body language first instead of understanding the actual words you have used. This could cause the client to react or respond in a completely different way than anticipated as other cultures communicate more through body language and gestures whereas westernised cultures speak forthrightly and the words we use are the main focus. The implication of this is that a behaviourist may misinterpret a client's reactions or behaviours when trying to determine behavioural or target behavioural patterns where adjustment is needed. Missing these queues could mean on-going problems for the client as the attention needed to help in certain areas of their lives could be missed. In conclusion to this essay, I believe I have shown a good depth of understanding in how the school of Humanism coincides with Abraham Maslow's theory in relation to his hierarchy of needs and how the school of Behaviour is strongly influenced by Bernard.F.Skinners theory on operant conditioning. I now feel that I have gained a deeper knowledge of how Humanism and Behaviourism are relevant to that of nurture and how they can both be applied to Social work practices. I believe I have demonstrated an appropriate understanding of how both schools and theories could have implications when used in a situation where the client is from a different culture or race as I did not entirely comprehend these situations before now. Due to this essay, I now feel a profound appreciation for those who strived before us in the endeavour to unravel the many intricacies of Psychology as I see now that there are no limits to understanding Psychology which makes it all the more fascinating to learn. Writing Services Essay Writing Assignment Writing Service Dissertation Writing Service Coursework Writing Service Dissertation Proposal Service Report Writing Essay Skeleton Answer Service Marking & Proofreading Service Exam Revision
Twenty Six Journal Prompts for Asthma Can Writing Improve Your Asthma? Writing Prompt: Mother and Child Writing Prompt: Mother and Child. Getty Images Taxi Journal prompts for asthma may be just what you need to get started in journal writing. Sometimes if you are trying to write or encouraging your child to express their thoughts and feelings about how asthma has impacted their life, you may find yourself or your child just staring at a blank piece of paper or computer screen. Journal prompts are a great way to get started writing. It does not really matter what you write but, you do want to begin to get words on paper in order to see the following benefits from your journaling such as: • Clarify your thoughts and feelings • Get to know yourself better • Decrease your stress • Solve your problems more effectively • Improve interpersonal communication skills A journal prompt is an effective technique that can help you jump start your writing. It provides you with a question to answer (e.g. What was your worst asthma day?), a quote to consider and comment on (e.g. “We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” – Einstein), or just something for you to think about and ponderer as a topic for your journaling (e.g. How does asthma make you feel?). A journal is really just a kickstarter for your creativity. Other journal prompts could include a picture (see the photos for this article) that causes you to experience emotion (e.g. A mother and child), it could be a single word (e.g. Love or leadership) or a whole paragraph. If you are having a hard time getting started consider the journal prompts below to get you started. Some are asthma specific and some are not. The goal is to get you started writing. When you answer one questions or write about a topic you may have something that feels very polished and complete while other times you may have disjointed notes. He are 26 journal prompts: 1. Write a letter to your future self about your asthma 2. Who are your current best friends? Write about why it might be important for you to get better control of your asthma 3. Describe your dream day as an asthmatic: job, school, activities. 4. How would you like your life to be when you’re older? How does asthma fit in? 6. Who is a famous asthmatic you might like to meet? 7. What magic power would you like to have? How would you use it? What would it feel like? Would it help your asthma? 8. If you won the lottery, what would you do? Do your finances currently impact your asthma care? 9. What is something you do well? Does your asthma make it harder to do this? 10. Write about what it felt like to go back to school/ work with your asthma. 11. Describe what scares you about your asthma and how you think you can deal with the fear. 12. Write about a time where your asthma suddenly got worse. What happened? How could you prevent it from happening in the future? 1. What’s a country you’d like to visit or travel to? How do you imagine your time there? Would you need to make special travel plans related to your asthma? 2. What kind of day are you having, and why? Is asthma making it worse? If so how might you prevent this from occurring in the future. 3. What’s your favorite color, place, food, book, song, or movie, and why? Does asthma remind you or make you think of your favorite color, place, food, book, song, or movie, and why? 4. What do you like to do? How does it make you feel? How does your asthma impact this? 5. Where are you happiest? Describe that place. Does asthma prevent you from getting to this place? If so describe some strategies that might get you there more often. 6. What’s something you’re good at? What makes you good at it? 7. What would you change about yourself or your life? Is there a way for you to change it? What would you change about your asthma? 8. What is your relationship like with members of your family? Does asthma impact these relationships? How? What could you do to improve those relationships? 9. If you have brothers or sisters, how are you similar to them or different from them? What about with your friends? How does asthma make you different? 10. What keeps you up at night worrying? Are your worries realistic? Is there anything you can do about them? Does asthma increase your worry? If so what steps could you take to decrease worry? 11. Do you have a philosophy of life? If so, what is it? If not, what is your method for making important decisions? How does asthma impact the decisions you make? 12. In what areas are you optimistic, and in what areas are you pessimistic? How does asthma increase your optimism or pessimism? 13. What is something someone else has that you envy? Describe it and your feelings about it. Describe something you think others envy in you 14. What’s something you disagree with about the way your doctor is treating your asthma? What would you like to do differently? Continue Reading
Affordable Solar Power Don’t pay for electricity and longer. Let the electric company pay you. Use this step-by-step fully illustrated manual with the easy to follow videos and generate your own electricity for less than $200. ==>Find out how you can save here. The world today is changing in a dramatic way. Within the last year we have seen upward swings of $2 and $3 in the price of gasoline. Carbon fuels are continuing to change the world climate. The world population is growing and as a result so is the demand for energy especially now that under developed countries like China are beginning to expand and require more and more of the earth’s resources. However, nature has given us an unending power source that does not impact the earth in any harmful way but is the very energy that is absorbed by life itself. This energy source is the sun and we are now beginning to find ways to utilize this infinite power that can be used by businesses and homes alike. Affordable solar power is finally making its way onto the world stage and it is here where we must put our efforts if we are to prevent the climatic change that is occurring on the planet. Solar energy is the radiant heat from the sun. This power of the sun has been harnessed in various ways by mankind for many centuries. There is a simple experiment that anyone can do to see the power that exists in sunlight. Use a magnifying glass to focus the sun into a small dot on a piece of paper. It won’t take long before the paper begins to burn. I saw this effect happen once in real life when the outside Christmas lights caught a bush on fire by focusing the sun’s energy on the dried twigs of the bush. concentrating solar power future market trendSolar power today is performed through the use of solar panels which convert the sun’s energy into electrical energy using photovoltaics. How does this work? Well, sunlight is made up of small particles called photons. As these photons hit the solar cell they smash into electrons on the solar panel which are then knocked into a high state of energy and thus create electricity. The use of solar panels was first used to power satellites. These solar panels are made up of solar cells which produce direct current electricity from light. The direct current in turn can be used to power equipment or recharge a battery. The price to create a kilowatt of electricity from solar power has been decreasing over time as more and more panels are put into use. In 2006 the average cost for a residential system per installed watt was between $7.50 and $9.50. The price is now around $4 per watt. For a residential consumer, solar electric prices are around 20 cents per kilowatt hour which is 2-5 times the going price of electricity. However, in remote areas the price is reduced to approximately 0.2 to 0.8 times the cost of a competing energy source. So, as can be seen from this, if remote areas can save money from solar power, it is possible to reduce your current energy bill by converting certain functions into an affordable solar power application. A few of the early applications of affordable solar power include hot water systems for the home as well as for business. Today along the highways and local streets phone boxes, street lights, speed monitors, and video cams are all powered with solar power. You can purchase residential low voltage outside lights that are power by solar cells. These and other affordable application for business residential use is covered in this site. photovoltaic energy in buildings Affordable Solar Power Kits Affordable solar power for your home is now on the horizon. If you haven’t considered converting your home to solar you should. It’s now within your reach to do so and there are many reasons why. Solar Electricity The good news is that if you haven’t looked into solar power for homes recently, you will be in for quite a surprise. Where once it would take thousands of dollars of investment for you to switch to solar power and install solar panels to your house, there are now do-it-yourself solar panel kits on the market. These kits are affordable and relatively easy for a seasoned do-it-yourself-er to install. Affordable Solar-Powered Fridge A British college student has invented a solar-powered fridge made of cheap everyday materials that can be used in Third World countries.
YOU ARE HERE: LAT HomeCollectionsNews (Page 2 of 2) Sweden makes U-turn on nuclear power Faced with global warming, the argument across Europe goes, the energy source may be the lesser of two evils. December 20, 2009\|By Henry Chu "It's basically luck that we did not have a very serious accident," Tillman said. "I don't think anyone sees nuclear as a true sustainable power source. It's just something we need to have in between." The choice set up by some politicians -- nuclear power versus more carbon emissions -- is a false one, Tillman said. Sweden has virtually eliminated the use of fossil fuels for electricity; nuclear energy, hydropower and, to a smaller extent, wind power account for the entire power supply. Fossil fuels do contribute to heating, but only about 10%, and that is supposed to be eased out by 2020, Altera said. No one is seriously advocating the construction of coal-fired plants. Environmentalists say that if any country should be exploiting the potential of renewable energy, it's Sweden. Blessed with rivers for hydropower, plenty of gusty areas for harnessing the wind and vast expanses of forest for biomass, Sweden could gradually close down its nuclear plants and make up for their loss purely through alternative energy sources, activists say. That, along with increased investment in improving energy efficiency, would make a nuclear-free Sweden an achievable goal. "We have potential for producing large amounts of renewable energy which can't be produced anywhere else," said Bolund, the member of parliament. "Right now, we have to decide what energy future we want in Sweden, whether we want to be dependent on nuclear power or use the fantastic potential for renewable power we have." Los Angeles Times Articles
Thursday, December 27, 2007 Does Religion Make One a Better Ruler? I missed an opportunity to take part in a BBC broadcast yesterday regarding the question, “. . . whether religion helps make better politicians.” My answer to that question would have been generally no, it does not. Put quite simply, religions are collections of false beliefs, and false beliefs generally provide a poor foundation for policy. We see this in the mundane cases of false beliefs about who performed a particular crime, false beliefs about the safety of certain medications, and false beliefs about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These problems are even more severe when we are talking about two different religions having false beliefs about who God gave a particular strip of land to, beliefs that we can control the course of hurricanes and thwart terrorist attacks by sacrificing the interests of homosexuals, and beliefs that the end of the world is near so we do not need to worry about the long-term consequences of our actions. Having said this, it is also the case that religions are not the only false beliefs that exist. Consequently, the fact that a person is not religious does not imply that he will automatically be a better leader. That depends (in part) on the quality of his non-religious false beliefs. In other words, religion makes an individual a worse leader – but non-religious faults can make an individual an even worse leader, leaving the religious individual as the least of all possible evils. There is also the question of religion on a person’s moral character. Even where religion gives a person false beliefs, is it the case (for example) that fear of punishment in an afterlife will make it more likely that the leader will be moral? There are several problems with this option. The first is that, if you are going to threaten a person into doing the right thing, then you need to make sure that what you are threatening him into doing is indeed the right thing. Biblical scriptures were written centuries ago by primitive tribesmen whose access to moral truth was no better than their access to scientific truth. Many of their moral beliefs were simply mistaken. When moral mistakes are then attributed to God, and people are told that they must obey God or face eternal damnation, then those people are being given an incentive to do evil, not good. A moral commandment to kill anybody who works on the Sabbath, or anybody who denies the existence of God, or anybody who has sex with somebody of the same gender, is a commandment to do evil to another human being. In these cases, using the fear of eternal damnation in order to motivate individuals to enforce God’s law is not a way of motivating them to do good that atheists are inclined to ignore. It is a way of motivating them to do evil that atheists are inclined to ignore. In these cases, the belief that there is no divine punishment is a good thing. The second problem with this method is its disregard for truth. Philosophers call this type of system a ‘noble lie’ – a falsehood that is made a part of the popular culture in the hopes that those who believe the myth will be better people as a result. There is an intrinsic conflict between telling people that they need to adopt a belief, not because it is true, but because it is convenient, and creating a culture in which people prize and seek truth. A culture that lives a ‘noble lie’ cannot value truth. A culture that values truth cannot stomach a ‘noble lie’. Above, I described all of the problems with false beliefs. Because false beliefs cause so many problems, we have good reason to promote in people a love of true belief. This includes a love of learning and of knowledge, a love of intellectual responsibility, and an aversion to deceit. None of these virtues are easily practiced in a society that embraces a ‘noble lie’. The noble lie is quite incompatible with learning and knowledge because it tells people that there is an area of learning that they must not investigate. It uses intellectually irresponsible forms of reasoning to persuade people of the lie and encourages them to embrace this suspect behavior. It teaches that truth has value only when it is useful – and when a fiction is useful, then it is better than truth. Of course, religious people will deny that their beliefs are false. They would assert that my objections above all beg the question – beg the question of the truth of religious claims. However, the question that I was asked was whether religion makes a person a better leader. Of course it is true that people who have different opinions about the truth of religious claims will give different answers to that question. However, my answer to that question comes from the perspective of somebody who holds that religious beliefs are false. In this case, religion makes an individual a worse ruler, but not necessarily worse than an atheist ruler who has different (and worse) false beliefs. The idea that not all beliefs are equally bad is important here. I may believe, for example, that Tyrannosaurus Rex was a predator, when it was in fact a scavenger. However, my false belief has almost no relevance to the real world. It is not likely to be the case that any living person will be made to suffer as a result of my false belief about the nature of T-Rex. On the other hand, a false belief that a particular button in a nuclear power plant is safe to push could do a great deal of damage. It is a far worse belief. It is so bad, in fact, that I may well be obligated to assume that no button in a nuclear power plant is safe to push unless I have been informed otherwise by a trained expert. Where religion gives a group of people a false belief that they will be rewarded in the afterlife if they spend this life tending to the starving, sick, injured, and homeless, this false belief is not all that bad. We still have to deal with the fact that the agent needs more reliable tools for distinguishing true beliefs from false. However, that is a minor problem made up for with the good deeds that he has done. On the other hand, where religion gives people a belief that they may or must act in ways that are destructive of the life of millions of other people, this belief is much worse. We can tolerate the first belief in the grounds that, given that we do not have the resources to challenge every mistake, we must focus our attention on the worst beliefs. On this metric, beliefs that are relatively harmless are set aside while we focus on fighting beliefs that prompt people to act in ways harmful to others. There are some religions that are worse than others. There are some religions that we need to take steps to exterminate because their religion tells their members to engage in behavior harmful to others – to kill others, to block the access that others need to life-saving medical care, to pose limits on the freedoms of others that deprive others of a quality life. These religions add to misery and suffering on a grand scale. No leader who is a member of any of these religions is made a better leader as a result. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The best we can hope for is a religion that does a minimal amount of harm. Yet, as I said at the beginning, and I want to repeat here, religion is not the only source of error and can, on occasion, consist of a set of false beliefs that do far less harm that the available non-religious alternatives. sattvicwarrior said... great blog!!!!!!!! well stated paulv said... If we take it for granted that not everything is known, then we are forced to make certain conjectures about what is not known. Everyone is forced have certain beliefs, that are un-testable assumptions about what is important. I agree with most of what you say, except for the statement that religion is just a set of false beliefs. Scott Atran's view that religion represents the value choices of our ancestors (which while represented in fictitious causality (tree spirits is one of his examples) is more than just the sum of all these fictitious myths. If the fictitious beliefs of our ancestors may be benefitial, even though they are false, because they provide secondary benefits against either more dangerous fictions or against real dangers like addictions, or infection. The belief that religion is nothing but false beliefs seems unreasonable to me. Alonzo Fyfe said... I did not see anything in your comment that I did not cover in my post in discussing the 'noble lie' - the hypothesis that religion is a set of useful false beliefs. Though I will confess that there is more that I can say on the issue. I will, in fact, be getting to Scott Atran's view in my weekend Beyond Belief series, since he was one of the presenters there. Atheist Observer said... I was following you right up until your concluding tatement “religion may … consist of a set of false beliefs that do far less harm that the available non-religious alternatives.” I’m puzzled by the circumstance in which one’s only available non-religious beliefs would be far more harmful than religious ones. I can envision one choosing harmful beliefs, but not having no alternatives except harmful ones. Alonzo Fyfe said... Atheist Observer That was poor, ambiguous writing on my part. I meant to be talking about an instance where the false beliefs of a theist candidate may be less harmful than the false beliefs of available non-theist candidates. An instance, for example, where a moderate theist candidate is running against an anarcho-capitalist atheist candidate. Of the available candidates, the theist would be the better candidate.
Katie’s Healthy Bites: 6 Energy-Saving Kitchen Tips by in Uncategorized, April 18, 2010 reusable container Rethink food storage containers. Instead of plastic baggies, foil and plastic wrap, use reusable containers to store and wrap food. Cover up those pots! Want an easy way to cut your mealtime energy use in half? Cover pots of water as you bring them to a boil. Bonus: You won’t have to wait as long for that rolling boil. Buy a pressure cooker. Pressure cookers can decrease energy use by up to 70 percent, because they speed up the process of slow-cooking (and budget-friendly) ingredients like bean and tough meats. Make fewer slow-cooked meals. Cut back a bit on slow-cooked meals, like stews and braises. Simmering a pot on the stove for hours uses lots of energy! Reuse your cooking water. Bring a pot of water to a boil (covered of course), cook your veggies, then remove them using a strainer. Toss pasta in the same hot water, or use the cooking liquid to make rice, grains or even soup. You’ll use less agua, and get all the veggie nutrients that would have gone down the drain. Make one pot meals. One -pot meals (like this stir fry) use less energy to whip up and less water to clean up. TELL US: What ways do you reduce energy waste in the kitchen? More posts from . Similar Posts 7 Back-to-School Dishes That Kids Can Help Make
Gun Control: A Great Start, and it is Not What You Think Taking a serious look at Gun Control requires an unemotional and historical perspective. And, some patience. Besides, what we are really talking about is Gun-Violence Control The U. S. Constitution was written to include the Right to Bear Arms. The American Revolutionary War was the result of the government oppression and taxation without representation. The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution has its origins in the need to protect the citizenry from its own government and that of other governments. One conclusion that could be drawn from the timing and the wording in this Constitutional Amendment is that the citizens have the right to be every bit as armed and able to protect themselves as the governments they seek protection from. With this, the question arises… Is the U. S. Government, or any other government (I.e. United Nations, state & local governments) able to impose any restrictions whatsoever? Similarly, there are examples of what some have argued are another infringement of our Constitutional Rights via government imposed restrictions. It is not permissible to yell ‘FIRE!’ in a crowded theater. It is no longer permissible to advertise cigarettes on television. Verbal outbursts in Courtrooms are often met with criminal sanctions. Of these three, the restriction on the advertisement of Cigarettes on Television is the most interesting. Most would agree that Cigarettes are dangerous. Cigarettes cause fires. Cigarettes are a health hazard. Cigarettes are responsible for millions of premature deaths. Subsequent to the cessation of television advertising of cigarettes, cigarette use as a percentage of the population has plummeted in the United States. The implementation of anti-smoking public service messages has also had a positive role in reducing the number of smokers. What we do know is that if a child or young adult does not begin smoking cigarettes by the age of 21 years of age, the chance of that person ever smoking are relatively remote. What we have learned about cigarette smoking and our children… If we reduce their exposure to clever marketing and we continually remind them of the long term health hazards, we reduce the number of children and adults that acquire and become addicted to the smoking habit. How does the government’s restrictions of first amendment rights relate to arguments for Gun Control? We know Alcohol Control didn’t work. We know Drug Control hasn’t worked. We know we can’t Legislate morality. We can, however, influence morality. Tens of thousands of businesses know that marketing to our children at a young age produces lifelong customers and clients. These same businesses spend billions of dollars marketing their goods to our children. Television shows and movies take advantage of this knowledge. Television and movies are a tremendous influence on our children. Common sense dictates that if business marketing through commercials influences the viewer; television, movies and electronic games also influence our children. Hollywood and the motion picture industry have created a clever method of indoctrinating our children through the movie and television rating systems. These industries, through the so-called ‘Ratings’ system, continually ramp up violence and the perverted behavior that they serve to our children. All with the disclaimers of: Parental Guidance and Viewer Discretion advised. The Parental Guidance and Viewer Discretion Warnings are tantamount to the Drug Dealer warning his customers to: ‘Use Discretion and Exercise Caution’ while selling them Cocaine and other addictive and dangerous drugs. Knowing what we know about television and movies’ influence on their viewing audience and knowing the success of removing cigarette commercials and adding public service messages, it can be argued that Gun Control on television and in the movies is the logical start to reducing long term gun violence. What follows is a simple and rational means of Gun Control. As a bonus, we can begin to curb and control Violence against Women. Introducing a new and simplified television, movies, and electronics game ratings system. ‘G’ Rated: The mention of, suggestion of, display or use of firearms is prohibited. Nudity, partial nudity, sex acts and simulated sex acts are prohibited. Sexual Slavery and other forms of Violence against Women are prohibited. Movies, television shows and electronic games with a ‘G’ rating are accessible to anyone. ‘21’ Rated: The mention of, suggestion of, presence and use of firearms is allowed. Nudity, partial nudity, sex acts and simulated sex acts are allowed. Sexual Slavery and other forms of Violence against women are prohibited. No one under the age of 21 is allowed to view or utilize them. My personal opinion is, of course, that only a moron would believe that the motion picture industry and their television counterparts are not significant contributors to Gun Violence and Violence against Women. Beta Testing can begin immediately including a test group. We should allow the motion picture industry, television and electronic games to utilize any and all violence (except violence against women) involving knives, hatchets, axes, ice-picks, baseball bats and chainsaws as long as firearms are not used. We should then, within the next 20 years, see a significant decline in gun violence and an upswing in violence involving death and dismemberment via knives, hatchets, axes, ice-picks, baseball bats and chainsaws. The logical outcome that will then follow will be the ‘hue and cry’ for control of baseball bats, knives, chainsaws, etc. It is really quite simple. Prevent Gun crimes and Violence against Women via responsible movie, television and electronic game content and Ratings System. Mark Eberwine
Wednesday, July 08, 2009 Not So Fast, Sonnet 116! Dr. Carl Atkins is the author of Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary as well as a prolific commenter here at ShakespeareGeek, both while holding down a day job as a medical doctor. Instead of a typical author interview with press blurbs and bio questions we decided to do something different – Carl’s going to guest blog a series for us based on your questions. Context : Starting with the premise that most people know about only a handful of sonnets – 18, 116, 130, and such – I asked Dr. Atkins if he felt there were any that in particular did not deserve the praise that’s been heaped upon them. In a later installment we’ll look at the opposite question, which sonnets are the undiscovered gems that people haven’t really noticed, but should? Great question, but difficult to answer. First of all, there is not one of Shakespeare's sonnets that I can't stand. There are a couple that are not on my list of highlights (like 105 and 145), but I am still able to find redeeming qualities in them. But of the popular ones, the one that I think is the most overrated is probably 116. I certainly think it does not deserve to be better known than many others. Additionally, I agree with Helen Vendler that the sonnet is probably most often misread. From my book: She suggests it is a rebuttal to an “anterior utterance” made by the beloved: “You would like the marriage of true minds to have the same permanence as the sacramental marriage of bodies. But this is unreasonable — there are impediments to such constancy.” The major effect this has on the reading is one of tone, which is brought out at the outset by emphasis on the word “me” in the first line: “Let me not (as you have done) admit impediments to the marriage of true minds, etc.” ... Kerrigan also finds an unorthodox reading: “This sonnet has been misread so often and so mawkishly that it is necessary to say at once, if brutally, that Shakespeare is writing about what cannot be obtained. The convoluted negatives of the last line the poet protesting too much...” Yet those negatives are anything but convoluted. The couplet is a simple statement of fact. As Ramsey says: “The implied completion is ‘But I have written and men have loved; so this is not error,’ precisely fulfilling the valid logical paradigm: If A, then B; not B, therefore not A. A sufficient proof that he has written and that men have loved is the poem itself, which verifies the claim.” You should try reading this sonnet with Vendler's mindset. It changes it from a lovely, romantic piece into an angry, passionate outburst. It is still a great poem, and it fits with many others in the series, but its tenor is entirely different. About the Author This book brings together the scholarship of dozens of the most brilliant commentators who have written about Shakespeare's Sonnets over the past three hundred years. This edition adds the significant work done by modern editors to the most important commentary culled from the two variorum editions of the last century. Atkins presents a straightforward edition without jargon with the simple goal of finding out how the poems work and how they may be interpreted. He is the first to collate the modern texts so that differences among them can be fully appreciated and compared. His discussion of meter and verse is more substantial than that of any other edition, adding particular dimension to this text. Those coming to "The Sonnets" for the first time and those seeking a fresh look at an old friend will equally find this edition scholastically rigorous and a pleasure to read. Carl D. Atkins is a practicing medical oncologist in New York. Got a question for the author? Send it in and we’ll see if we can get it in the queue! Willshill said... Does the overly strong voicing of 'me', necessary to get the point across successfully, then do anything dynamically to the rest of the line? It seems that 'not' could be affected (though less so in weight) in succession, and could possibly create a trochee in combination with 'to'. 'to the' becomes almost elided, and pyrrhic as it would then stand. It seems a temptation, anyway, to read it that way. (?) catkins said... Willshill, are you playing my shill to allow me to expound on my favorite subject, Shakespearean meter? Let's first talk about some basics so everyone can understand. The basic structure of a sonnet is the iambic pentameter: 5 metrical feet made up of two syllables each, an unstressed beat followed by a stressed beat (da-DUM). In practice, though, good poets, like Shakespeare, allowed for variation from this structure so that some of the feet were not iambs but were stressed differently. A trochee is a reversed iamb, a stressed beat followed by an unstressed beat (DA-dum). A pyrrhic has two unstressed beats (da-da). A spondee has two stressed beats (DUM-DUM). Elision is when adjacent words are slurred together to eliminate a beat (as when "the marriage" becomes "th'marriage.") So, to answer your question, I think the meter is changed entirely. The usual reading is: LET me NOT to the MARriage of TRUE MINDS (Troche, troche, iamb, pyrrhic, spondee.) With Vendler's reading, I would suggest: Let ME not TO the MARriage of TRUE minds (all iambs). Note the change from a highly irregular meter to a perfect iambic pentameter. catkins said... Oops. Counted my beats wrong there. The reading with Vendler's version is: iamb, iamb, iamb, pyrrhic, troche. Not a completely regular rhythm, but much more regular than the usual reading. (Sorry, I got lazy and did not put / lines in between the feet, which helps when figuring out what is what.) Willshill said... To answer your question honestly Carl, a little of both I suppose. But it's one of my favorite subjects as well, so I'm quite possibly "shillin" for meself as well. I do think it's an important topic that's often ignored at the peril of Shakespeare and also of anyone interested in understanding what he might have been doing. I thought I heard some possible variations, but as you can see, the change in the "regular" analysis prompted me to look for its affect closer to its initial occurrence. On the subject of 'correct' scansion, it seems that the sometimes many different viewpoints would make it difficult for someone like yourself to come to any absolute conclusions. As important as it can be to interpretation, did you sometimes find yourself at hair-pulling over some of it? :) P.S. Your expertise is much appreciated, as the application--even for someone such as myself, with not a little experience in the technique-- can often be confusing as well as enlightening. Thanks catkins said... Well, I don't think I got to the point of hair-pulling, but of course it can be difficult to decide how to "scan" a poem (i.e., decide on its rhythm). With meter, the only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain and many interpretations are possible. And sometimes the differences are very subtle. In our example, reading TRUE MINDS or TRUE minds is a very slight difference in emphasis. There are other situations where the difference between a spondee and an iamb is more striking, but subtleties like this are common. I often bring up such variations in readings in my commentary to point out the fluidity possible in metrical interpretation. Some sonnets I had no trouble scanning and I would feel very secure that my reading was the best I could come up with (like a pianist deciding he had an interpretation down just right). That doesn't mean it was the correct reading, just my best reading. Other sonnets, I might read a different way each time I approach it, just because I am ambivalent about what is best. On the other hand, I have come across scansions by other editors that I have thought were just dead wrong. If a reading makes a sonnet sound bad, or violates principles that Shakespeare otherwise abides by religiously, one must view it skeptically. Willshill said... One more question and I'll stop bugging you--for now...:) I know this is about the sonnets but I think there's a definite connection vis a vis Shakespeare's form. It's thrilling to find someone so interested in the importance of the original texts in that regard. I'm curious if you're familiar with Dr. Richard Flatter's work on the plays, specifically the First Folio, re: scansion? catkins said... I am not familiar with Richard Flatter. The only authors I have read on Shakespeare's meter are George T. Wright* (brilliant), Peter Ramsey (interesting if you don't take him too strictly) and Marina Tarinskaja (barely understandable). Do you have a reference? I am always interested. *"Shakespeare's Metrical Art"--a must buy for those interested in the topic. Willshill said... There are booksellers who have it. I found a not expensive copy on the net. "Shakespeare's Producing Hand" , Richard Flatter. First published 1948 by W W Norton-I have a 1969 Greenwood Press first printing. The basis for his findings was a theoretical part of my stage training. (no--it wasn't THAT long ago) I only this past year went looking for the book. Flatter's something of a genius at illustrating Shakespeare's handling of blank verse and how it was geared to the dramatics, while still embodying the essence of the poetic form. He shows quite clearly how he was the iconoclast among dramatic poets. And also, why the academicians needn't have bothered to "fix" (attempt to make pristine iambus out of it) what would otherwise seem as though it had been written by an illiterate hack who couldn't count to ten or "finish" a line in the right number of feet. Great stuff. YLS said... Ok i believe that sonnet 116 should be taken in context with 115: Those lines that i before have writ do lie, and 117 Accuse me thus! You can find a parallel with sonnets 15, 16, and 17. Also this first line is a run-on and that cannot be ignored in the speaking of it. I think the phrasal aspect overrules the metrical aspect. As such the let ME reading doesn't sit well in the ear. think on other similar uses of 'let me' in the sonnets. 'let me' , unless it is imperative, is never stressed. let me excuse thee oh let me suffer let me confess that oh let me true in love in the number let me pass untold no, let me be obsequious let not my love let not winter's ragged hand not let that copy die let no unkind (there are another 17 or so locutions with 'let' in Q1609 Sonnets followed by unstressed pronouns and one adjective) arguably the personal pronoun could be stressed but my training taught me not to. I have not heard this sonnet with the stress as carl is suggesting and seeing as it comes at the very beginning of the first line, the idea of the actor setting in to what is a run-on line by stressing the second syllable already stilts it. i prefer the phrasing: let me not/ to the marriage of true minds/ Admit impediments. And damn the metre. He ran the line on for a reason. His line is impeded by admitting impediments. See how the stress lies on the iambic at the beginning of the 2nd line and the stress lies with the 'ped' which is the latin root 'foot' is it not? metrics be damned our man seems to be saying. (He knew his metrics btw Abraham Fraunce off the top of my head) Add to the above the parallelism of the 2nd line running on to the end of the third line it requires the actor to pause (caesura) and steady his mind for the antitheses about to come. love/not love alters/alteration and remover/remove in the 4th lineto end this very busy first quatrain. sorry this is so convoluted but i love this stuff too and i have to go to work so i'm throwing ideas out. I guess i'm agreeing with willshill's first comment about the dynamics. I appreciate good scholarship like Carl is presenting but i also know the world of acting and its effect and affect on lines the writer may have thought inviolable. That this sonnet becomes mawkish is the fault of the actor delivering it. look forward to hearing a reply. Willshill said... personally, I don't think the meter be damned in that reading. Sometimes an implied but unvoiced "O" (or other emotional inference ) is implied by Shakespeare in his dramatic work, to the beginning of a "headless" line; (one in which there seems to be a missing beat) simply as a starting point; sort of an invivible head of steam to carry into the the beginning, and as a transitional segue FROM somewhere. In this case, the thought which preceeds the opening of one's mouth to speak it. Thought of this way here--not literally, of course, but as a way to help in the realistic voicing of Carl's reading (which I like a lot)-- we get an invisible half of a reversed front foot: (O) let ME The character of the emotional intent of the "O" would of course be implied by the speaker. It's much, much, quicker than the length of an actual beat-- (almost) imperceptible. I still feel as though the "not" would be affected somehow even in this case, as a realistic support for the emphasis given to "me". And as YLS noted, there is a rhetorical pause inferred between "not/to" (I always look for those consonant "separations" for help and inspiration, as I was taught to do, and almost every time find something to think about in them). With the emphasis on ME, (O) let ME NOT to the MAR riage of/TRUE MINDS is initially how I heard it. Seemingly out of place spondaic feet, and indeed, even three strong beats in succession aren't unusual occurrences-- in the plays, at least. As Carl has said, ambivalence can sometimes rule interpretation. I believe that ambivalence to be Shakespeare's gift to his actors. Possibly some of the same feeling bled through, as force of habit, in his construction of the sonnets? He was an actor first, then a "director", then an author--in that order, I believe. And I was taught to look first, not for the limitations, but rather for the Choices "imposed" on the line by Shakespeare. Of course, it's up to me as an actor to prove the possible legitimacy of those choices in the actual voicing of them. catkins said... This is great stuff! Don't focus too much on the specifics of the meter, though. Be willing to accept variations and all is good. YLS, I do not see your point about the run-on line, since I think it flows nicely: Let ME/ not TO/ the MAR/ riage of/ TRUE minds/ ad MIT/ im PED/ i MENTS./LOVE is/ not LOVE/ etc. We have iamb/iamb/iamb/pyrrhic/trochee then iamb/iamb/iamb/trochee/iamb. I am more impressed with your argument about the frequency with which "let me" is pronounced with an unstressed "me." This is certainly how one would read this at first sight. So perhaps we can keep the usual irregular reading and just put in a petulant tone. I think it works as well in effect and keeps from jarring the ear in the way that bothers you. It also gives Willshill the emphasis on NOT he is looking for. But, please folks, remember, the sonnets are not just read by actors, they are read by readers. Anyone can do this. One more thing, YLS, I appreciate your looking for context in surrounding sonnets, but the interrelationships among the sonnets are quite complex. Some of them are clearly in groups that relate to one another, some of them are doublets written as a pair (and there is even one triplet), some are linked by theme, some by verbal similarities, but some have no clear relation to others. There is nothing about 115 or 117 that makes me feel they have a contextual relationship to 116. Is there something in particular that draws them together for you, or is it just their proximity in the series? Willshill said... " Be willing to accept variations and all is good." Carl, there will be some (most probably, many) that will question the veracity of the following statement: But you just made my day with the one I quoted above. YLS said... Vocabulary parallels: i before have writ/I never writ change decress + alt'ring things/alters...alteration time's tyranny/love's not Time's fool strong minds/true minds vows/bonds (legal terminology) love you dearer/your dearest love full flame + full growth/wilfulness upon me prove/on just proof + strive to prove strong minds/true minds/unknown minds Imagery 116/117: ev'ry wandering bark/hoisted sail to all the winds To me it reads like a triptych where in 115 the poet reflects on why he feels his poetry can never express his fullest love. Time creeps in as antagonist. Love as a babe (cupid) is invoked to prove the whole ie it never stops growing. In 116 is the flip side of 115 how negation works on love. Their love (which by this point in the sequence is falling apart, is held together seemingly only by the poet's love) is examined and and shown not to be affected by time's tyranny. His writing proves it so. though that gives the first line of 115 the lie. In 117 he calls out the FYM for not accepting the love he is offering despite admitting his guilt that he has strayed from his subject. In the end his appeal is to show the FYM's love as the most important thing. That binds them together for me. The 1st opens the argument of love battling time for the sake of the FYM (a red line in many other sonnets too). The 2nd continues the argument and introduces the nautical metaphor closing with the legal metaphor. The 3rd runs with legal metaphor echoes the nautical and personalises the whole to the ingrate who receives them. Sort of how dare you how double dare you i did it all for you. The complexities of these sonnets are not unbeknown to me. I have them memorised and practice them daily. and i love these discussions. more later. Dear shakespeare geek, i'm unsure as to whether my comment has posted or not. sorry for being a techno-knob if i keep sending too many. catkins said... And just to stir the pot a bit, there is no reason why my original metrical interpretation of Vendler's reading could not be the exception that proves the rule, i.e., the one time that Shakespeare does emphasize "me" in "let me." It just strongly depends on our imagining ourselves coming in in the middle of a conversation whose beginning we have not been privy to, but must infer. This is possible, but it is pure supposition, or fancy, if you will. It is also interesting, intriguing, and I think fun, because it makes us think about the sonnet in an entirely different way. Of course, that doesn't make it right. It just makes it worthy of our attention. The standard reading still has a quiet, beautifully restrained loveliness to it. I often read it both ways. YLS said... Yeah stir the pot. Only one triplet? Which? Obviously not 15, 16, 17. Your point about the reader is well taken and the distinction i want to make is that they were written for actor and reader, by an actor, reader, and writer. And his name was Will. (Solipsism abounds here) This doesn't mean only actors read them the 'correct' way. it means they were written by somebody who in his craft embodied those attributes. and therefore one might find clues derived from such practices, in addition to the holy broken chalice of metrics. Willshill pointed out the phonetic stop/poise of the tongue at alveolar ridge of 'let me not / to the marriage of true minds' from which ridge it rarely strays for the rest of the line. physics demands it i.e. place and manner of articulation; the actor/reaader (it matters not which) can manipulate this moment, the release of air, tongue and vowel. (long, short, sharp etc) And all this quicker than lightning. After all how long does it take to say final t/initial t? do you release it and say it again thereby making two distinct t's: one final/ one initial. or do you hold the oh of not and make a big fat t that ends the one word and starts the other at the same time. Either way something physical is happening. A pause is being created however slight. there is somebody at the reins of the verse line steering it as best they can. This is a place where the writer manipulates the actor/reader. however he pronounced his words, or you do. Right down to the microscopic aspect of the phoneme and the dynamics of tongue blade stopping the gap at Alveolar Ridge. I believe our writer acknowledged the action of his words as he composed them. this moment where thought and action meet and become one. Creating silence within sound, sight within hearing. knowing that all tongues must stop at not/ to.. and builds it into the artifice of his edifice for amusement's sake. So the phonetics is a kind of punctuation if you will. This is not to the exclusion of any other method of examining the sonnets. Like you Carl i don't have any sonnet that i hate. except maybe 145 because it just reeks of I don't belong here in this sequence. unless to accompany the huzzif, in modern spelling housewife, running after the chicken in 143. Why did the chicken run away? Why did it want to cross the road? ok maybe a' hate sonnet 90 too. Away. Not so fast! The triplet, doctor? Which will live? Willshill said... "Which will live?" --And it's literal--or so I truly believe. Beethoven hearing the pianissimo he only saw, Mozart seeing the notes he'd memorized before they had finished buzzing in his larynx. "Which WILL Live?" Every one of Him it would appear, YLS. For no one here forgets to Marke the Musicke. Many thanks for this wonderful discussion. catkins said... The triplet is 91/92/93. They read as one poem with the syntax continuing from the beginning of the first through the end of the last. That is an interesting analysis of 115-117. Of course, all the interrelationships that you highlight are there and that is a perfectly reasonable why to bridge this series of sonnets together. However, I see the triumph over time occurring within 115 itself. The speaker doesn't really believe his own words (he calls himself a liar at the outset). The poem is one big joke: "I lied when I said I could not love you more; my love is always growing so I love you more and more each day!" What separates these poems for me is their tone. 115 is jocular. 116 is either serious (standard reading) or petulant (Vendler's reading). 117 is, well, scolding is the best term I can come up with. Needless to say, I am not implying that I am right and you are wrong, I am trying to emphasize how different readers can have very different experiences reading the same sonnets, even with very close readings. I think it is enriching to look at different points of view. Don't you? And, oh, I sympathize with you about 145. Peter Ramsey, however, quite likes this sonnet. He calls it “charming and flawless, a little masterpiece of tone.” And Seymour-Smith says “it makes a pleasant enough interlude in this waste of shame” (quoting, of course, from Sonnet 129). I will, however, defend Sonnet 90 against all detractors. What a brilliant couplet, those "other strains of woe"!!! YLS said... Hi again, I'd like to say how much I've enjoyed this little round of discussing sonnet 116. Carl, yes i think it is imporytant to keep an open mind on how opinions differ, with a proviso that no one is 100% correct. I love how protective people are with their version of Shakespeare. I was just joshing about sonnet 90 (btw definitely a pair with 89) and 145 both of which contain 'hate'. It's rare to find poeple who can share an in-joke on the sonnets. Anyway your triplet i put within the series 91-96. The rhetorical opener ín 91: some glory in their birth', some in their skill, and closer in 96: some say thy fault is youth, some wantoness. The differences in tone don't bother me. They are part and parcel of the actor's palette, different days different moods. Like I say i'm more about performing them. And yes that is one kick-ass final couplet. My favourite has to be sonnet 81 f.c. 'You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen) Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.' catkins said... Well, that's a good favorite couplet. But I can't possibly choose one favorite, so I'll pick two: 29: For thy sweet love remembred such wealth brings/ That then I scorne to change my state with kings. 23: O learne to read what silent love hath writ/ To heare with eies belongs to loves fine wit. Anonymous said... Reading these comments has been very insightful. I am rather new to the reading and observation of the Sonnets, and I am curious about the opinions of Willshill, catkins and YLS concerning the authors participation in the 1609 printing process, and whether any of you believe that the apparent incorrect number for 116 (119) was accidental or purposeful, I believe it was purposeful. Anonymous said... I don't believe Shakespeare had a hand in the printing process of his sonnets, though i don't exclude the possibility. His two narrative poems on the other hand I believe he saw through the press. The dedications attest to this care. Compare sonnet 26 to the dedication for The Rape of Lucrece. This press belonged to his erstwhile school buddy, Richard Field and is presumably the place where Shakespeare did a lot of reading. The big printing errors and 'mistakes' are the duplication of the final couplet in sonnets 36 and 96, 'But do not so, I love thee in such sort, as thou being mine, mine is thy good report' And the repetition of the last words of the first line and beginning of the second line in sonnet 146, the phrase 'my sinful earth'. The numerical anomaly you point out I noticed when I first read through an original Quarto. It looked/s to me the type of error a busy/tired compositor would make. Compositors actually set the type and Mac Donald P. jackson has tentatively identified the two compositors who set Q1609 Sonnets. He has a great paper on it and you can read the first page here: Obviously Mac D. doesn't believe the punctuation of the sonnets gives a clue to the reading of them as I like to think but hey. Thanks for asking this question and let us know why you think this anomaly of 116 119 was purposeful. William S. Anonymous said... Wouldn't the author have to be deeply involved in the printing process in order for us to make these intensely involved critiques of every syllable, rhyme and meter? Do we believe that Thorpe got his hands on an original handwritten copy of the sonnets, from the poet's pen? Sonnets 116/119 and 119 are on opposite sides of the same leaf, and they share 5 lines of type with each other, starting with "Within his bending sickles compasse come," with the word 'sickles' under the number 119. These two sonnets are tied together in a fascinating and dramatic interaction, implied by the words and meanings in each. I won't give it away yet, in case you want to give it a go first. Let me know if you just want me to tell you my observation. catkins said... I think it very unlikely that Shakespeare had anything to do with the printing of The Sonnets. There are far too many errors for the author to have had any careful involvement in the process. The printer almost certainly worked from a handwritten copy given the numerous "their" for "thy" errors, presumambly due to a misread contraction (noted in other works of the era by Malone). It is a very easy compositor's error to print a "9" instead of a "6." When a page is finished, the print must be taken out of the form and "distributed" back into the case. If the compositor is not careful, he might take a 6 out and forget what it was, look at it and think it was a 9 and put it in the "9" box instead of the "6" box, leading to a "foul case" error. When reaching in the "6" box to make the number "116" he would put it in the form thinking it was a 6, but would orient it properly for the character as a "9" because of the notch on the stem put there for the purpose of guiding him. This is a much better theory than imagining Shakespeare overseeing the printing, indicating the number of the sonnets, and specifying that the 116th should be misnumbered 119. (Most likely, the sonnets had no numbers before they were printed; if they were numbered, and one were numbered out of order, the compositor would likely "correct" it.) catkins said... BTW, I disagreee with Professor Jackson that there were two compositors of The Sonnets. See my article: The Application of Bibliographical Principles to the Editing of Punctuation in Shakespeare’s “Sonnets” Author(s): Carl D. Atkins Source: Studies in Philology, Vol. 100, No. 4 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 493-513. Anonymous said... What do you think of the last line on the next to the last page of the long poem 'A Lovers Complaint' that reads: "That not a heart which in his levell came,", that is followed 5 lines later with the line that reads: "When he most burnt in hart-wisht luxurie," and when you look through the word 'hart' to the other side of the page, it is exactly centered in the word 'leaveld' in the line that reads: "Whose sights till then were leaveld on my face,". The letters 'h a r t' align with the letters 'e v a e' (the letters in reverse order when looking through the page). This perfect alignment only occurs in the copy at the John Rylands Library, the two others that I have access to, are at the Folger Shakespeare Libray (online), and their alignments are not as exact. The reason that the John Rylands copy is so exact may have to do with the inscription at the bottom of the last page, which has an interesting alignment of it's own. YLS said... Hi Carl, I'd love to read your article refuting Mac D. only the website that holds it is great for institutions not for individuals ie you have to pay. I'll look next time I'm at the university of amsterdam to see if they have a hard copy and photocopy it. Something tells me that i may have read it before but i'll let you know on that. And Dave you'll have to expound further on your theory about 116 and 119 as I don't see it on my copy of Q1609. Anonymous said... Hi Will, I use the Folger Library Digital copies online to view the text closely enough (zoom) to be able to see the text through the text on the reverse side of the page, while having the reverse side of the page open also to be able to read reverse text more completely. To give you a hint, I found the 6th and 7th syllables of line one of Sonnet 116/119 to be a key indicator, along with many of the phrases in Sonnet 116/119. The 'bending sickles compass'/'119' alignment begs the question: is it to 'reap what you sow' or 'sow what you'd reap'?
Aim higher, reach further. The Short Answer What Are the Hamas Tunnels in Gaza? • Destroying an elaborate network of tunnels that lie below the Gaza Strip and burrow under Israel’s borders is a main aim of the ongoing Israeli military campaign against Hamas in the Palestinian territory. Since ground operations began about two weeks ago, Israel’s army says it has found 32 tunnels and more than 60 entrances to them. Dozens of Hamas militants have tried to infiltrate into Israel through the tunnels during the conflict. Five Israeli soldiers died on Monday trying to thwart a tunnel attack inside Israel. • Why is the tunnel network a big deal for Israel? Tunnels are important military assets for Hamas, Israel’s rival and the governing faction in the Gaza Strip. Hamas militants use them to transport weapons and people without being detected by Israeli air surveillance. Tunnels also give militants places to hide and move between houses undetected. But what scares Israelis most are the tunnels that cross the Gaza border, ending in the rolling farmland of southern Israel. Militants have used these tunnels – the Israeli government calls them “terror tunnels” – to infiltrate across the border and attempt killings and kidnappings. • Are the tunnels a recent phenomenon? No. Gazans have been building tunnels for well over a decade. An infrastructure of tunnels crisscrossing the border with Egypt was built to smuggle over goods as big as cars, although Egypt destroyed more than 1,600 of those this year alone. Infiltration tunnels into Israel have also existed for some time. Hamas used tunnels in the 2006 abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was released five years later in exchange for the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian and Arab prisoners. • How many tunnels are there? That’s not entirely clear, but Israeli military figures suggest they are aware of about 50 of them. There are dozens more entrances and smaller side tunnels, the military says. • Are they big? Tunnel construction varies, but the more sophisticated ones are reinforced with concrete and are high enough for a man of average height to stand up in. They often include power and communication lines. • How is Israel destroying them? With explosives and armored bulldozers.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Globe Article on Cost of Aging Canada Jeffrey Simpson has this excellent piece in today's Globe on the cost of Canada's aging population and the reasons why no political party is serious about meeting these challenges. Here is an excerpt: How far ahead do politicians usually think? In a minority government, politicians think an hour ahead sometimes, a month more often, a year ahead occasionally. In a majority government, parties have the luxury of preparing for electoral combat in four or five years, and governments can plan for something other than tomorrow's survival. ....What kind of pressure lies ahead? Pierre Fortin of the University of Quebec at Montreal, one of the very best public finance economists in Canada, tried to tackle the question of how much aging will cost. His answer: about $40-billion a year (in 2008 dollars) by 2020. In other words, in about a decade, even if Ottawa balanced the budget today – let alone run $100-billion in deficits in coming years – it would still be heading into the fiscal hole. ....Who in politics is talking seriously about this demographic fact? Which politicians have you noticed saying: We need to get the federal budget balanced, and then run surpluses as fast as we can after the recession ends, so that our country will be ready for what Prof. Fortin properly calls the “fiscal squeeze?” Saturday, September 26, 2009 Obesity and Aging Linked Sometimes it is tricky to make the link between important related (even complementary) societal goals. Over the years I have emphasized the importance of tackling obesity. See, for example, my 3 part post on childhood obesity (here) or my post on how exercise can help prevent depression here. Over the years I have also exerted a lot of energy emphasizing the importance of tackling aging itself. A search for "aging" on the search function for my blog gives this lengthy list of posts. Many people would of course agree that obesity is a problem. And thus they would agree that we, as both individuals and societies, ought to tackle obesity in an effort to reduce the risks of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. Yet when it comes to aging I know most people's attitudes become very different. Either they think (a) talk of mitigating aging (unlike obesity) is pure science fiction (which is what I actually thought before I started to follow the scientific developments in the field); or (b) they think it is unethical to intervene in the aging process. And so over the past few years I have spent most of time arguing against what Richard Miller calls “gerontologiphobia” which he defines as follows: And so I have published articles arguing that sufficiency is an inappropriate principle to invoke for the good of health, I have argued that equality requires us to mitigate age-related disadvantage, I have argued that the time has come to take on time itself, I have argued that the concerns about aggregation that arise in the case of tackling aging are not valid objections to prioritizing aging research, I have argued that we need a more inclusive vision of the medical sciences, and I have argued that it is both rational and reasonable to aspire to decelerate the rate of aging. So I think the reasons for tackling aging are many, diverse and, most importantly, compelling! And yet the struggle to overcome gerontologiphobia goes on. Well, this article in the latest issue of Nature Medicine illustrates why the we ought to be consistent in our attitudes towards health when it comes to tackling both obesity and aging. It turns out that obesity actually accelerates aging! Here is a brief excerpt from the News and Views section on the study: As technology has improved hygiene, the food supply and living standards overall, there has been a rise in such age-related illnesses as cardiovascular disease, cancer, degenerative diseases of the brain and other organs, and metabolic disorders such as diabetes. Age-related disorders have become widespread throughout the world, replacing infectious diseases as the leading cause of death in developed countries. As we age, many people develop the metabolic syndrome, characterized by central (visceral) obesity, insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance or overt diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia and cardiovascular complications. Diabetes is also a recognized cause of accelerated aging, but the mechanisms linking diabetes and aging are not well understood. Work from Minamino et al.1 in this issue of Nature Medicine offers insights into how obesity affects the aging of adipose tissue, influencing inflammation and glucose homeostasis. ...In obese states, adipose tissue is subjected to oxidative stress, resulting in aging, accumulation of macrophages, production of proinflammatory cytokines and suppression of adiponectin. Activation of p53 tumor suppressor is pivotal in the aging process, stimulates inflammation and possibly attenuates the capacity of stem cell renewal. The aging of adipose tissue induces insulin resistance in adipose tissue, liver and muscle and mediates the progression to diabetes. And here is the abstract of the study: Various stimuli, such as telomere dysfunction and oxidative stress, can induce irreversible cell growth arrest, which is termed 'cellular senescence'1, 2. This response is controlled by tumor suppressor proteins such as p53 and pRb. There is also evidence that senescent cells promote changes related to aging or age-related diseases3, 4, 5, 6. Here we show that p53 expression in adipose tissue is crucially involved in the development of insulin resistance, which underlies age-related cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. We found that excessive calorie intake led to the accumulation of oxidative stress in the adipose tissue of mice with type 2 diabetes–like disease and promoted senescence-like changes, such as increased activity of senescence-associated beta-galactosidase, increased expression of p53 and increased production of proinflammatory cytokines. Inhibition of p53 activity in adipose tissue markedly ameliorated these senescence-like changes, decreased the expression of proinflammatory cytokines and improved insulin resistance in mice with type 2 diabetes–like disease. Conversely, upregulation of p53 in adipose tissue caused an inflammatory response that led to insulin resistance. Adipose tissue from individuals with diabetes also showed senescence-like features. Our results show a previously unappreciated role of adipose tissue p53 expression in the regulation of insulin resistance and suggest that cellular aging signals in adipose tissue could be a new target for the treatment of diabetes. OK, so bringing the insights of the link between obesity and aging together with attitudes towards biological aging in general... When it comes to a disease like progeria, which is an extreme form of accelerated aging, I assume we would all agree that we should seek ways of preventing the disadvantage that comes with the disease. No child deserves to be robbed of the opportunity to have a healthy childhood and develop into a healthy adult. Progeria is very rare, affecting about 1 in 8 million births. When it comes to obesity, which also accelerates aging (though is less severe than progeria, but much, much more prevalent) we also think we should strive to prevent this. No one deserves diabetes or heart disease in their 50's or 60's. But what about the "regular" rate of aging, which is less severe but much, much more prevalent than obesity, what should our attitude be? The inborn aging process limits average life expectancy of humans to around 85. Shouldn't we aspire to retard that rate of molecular and cellular damage if it would help prevent disease and death? Does anyone actually believe people (our to make the point more vivid, their parents, children or spouse) deserve heart disease, stroke, AD, cancer, etc. in late life? The prevalence of gerontologiphobia is among the most perverse features of our culture for it eschews the most importance science of our day. These means aging research is grossly underfunded and that young scientists who want to make the world a better place gravitate towards goals like trying to control the global climate or finding a cure for just one disease of aging (e.g. cancer) rather than investigating the aging process itself. So this study in Nature Medicine, which suggests there is a link between aging and obesity, shows why our attitude towards aging and obesity ought to be the same. Those who believe that the "obesity status quo" is unacceptable should also view the more general "aging status quo" as unacceptable. Both subject today's populations to high risks of morbidity and mortality, risks we should seek to minimize as far as possible. Wednesday, September 23, 2009 Evolution and Immunosenescence As we age our immune system declines. Why is this so? This paper in the June issue of Trends in Immunology tackles that question. Here is the abstract: There is an accumulating body of evidence that a decline in immune function with age is common to most if not all vertebrates. For instance, age-associated thymic involution seems to occur in all species that possess a thymus, indicating that this process is evolutionary ancient and conserved. The precise mechanisms regulating immunosenescence remain to be resolved, but much of what we do know is consistent with modern evolutionary theory. In this review, we assess our current knowledge from an evolutionary perspective on the occurrence of immunosenescence, we show that life history trade-offs play a key role and we highlight the possible advantages of the age-related decline in thymic function. And a sample: Potential pathogens—viral, bacterial, fungal, macroparasite and dysfunctional host cells—present a major threat to survival, and the innate and adaptive immune systems have evolved a series of defence networks to protect the individual from such harmful agents. These systems are not without fault, however, and with increasing age, problems arise in functional activity. There is clear evidence of an age-related decline in effectiveness of the immune systems of vertebrates and some invertebrates, which renders older individuals more vulnerable to infection. ....The adaptive immune system with high specificity to antigens first appeared some 350 million years ago in jawed fish, and its value is demonstrated by the fact that it has been retained, albeit with a variety of modifications, by all vertebrates. ....The force of natural selection declines with age, leading to a particular value being placed on survival to maturity and on reproductive output thereafter. An ability to mount a strong inflammatory response early in life and the finely tuned repression of the immune response to accommodate successful reproduction are clearly in support of this. The Folly of our Times (Part Two) This is a continuation of the themes from this previous post. This situation thus creates a real pickle for us once we attempt to tackle very complex, long-term challenges. Perhaps one of the sagest insights from the history of moral philosophy, which can help us out in such cases, is Jeremy Bentham's "calculus of happiness" (see my previous posts on Bentham here and here). Today I don't want to invoke all of Bentham's calculus, but just 3 important components of rational, long-term priority setting. (1) We have to come up with some criteria for determining what makes an issue a "BIG" issue. So let's say that "harm", generally construed, helps determine the magnitude of a particular problem. So harm could be disease, death, poverty, etc. If the harm of A is 10 times larger than the harm of B (say A =10 cancer deaths and B= 1 cancer death), then (all else being equal) A is a much bigger problem than B. Or if the probability of X occurring is only 0.0001% and the probability of Y occurring is 50% then, even if the magnitude of Y is half that of X, Y is a much bigger problem as the expected disutility of Y outweighs that of X. This provides us with a "rule of thumb" by which we can determine what the biggest problems are: the larger and more probable the harm in question, all else being equal, the stronger the imperative to mitigate it (i.e. the higher up on the list of priorities it should be). (2) Once we have come up with the list of "The Biggest Problems", that is only have the battle. A big problem that you cannot do much about is not a problem worth worrying about too much. So the other important issue to bear in mind when thinking about priorities is the likelihood of success. All else being equal, the greater the chances are that you can actually mitigate the harms in question the greater the case for making the issue in question a higher priority. So if the harms of Y outweigh the harms of X on both the magnitude and certainty criteria, but you can't do anything about Y but could do something about X, it would be irrational to prioritize Y over X. (3) You must also consider the cost trying to realize the benefits of the intervention in question. Spending all available resources on trying to mitigate the harms of X means you have no funds left for tackling Y and Z and Z'. But if the good realized in mitigating Y, Z and Z' are larger than the good realized in X, it would have been more prudent to tackle less major harms (but more of them) for lower cost. These three issues- (1) the magnitude and certainty of the harm in question, (2) the probability of a successful intervention and (3) the cost of the intervention- ought to be the central considerations at play in determining societal priorities. Of course the devil is in the details. It is notoriously difficult to estimate what the long-term consequences of something might be. And there are issues of discounting: do we give equal weight to the interests of those alive now and those that will follow us in a century or millenia from now? When I reflect upon the issues of what constitutes a harm for humans (as both individuals and collectively as a society), and what it may be possible to do this century if we invest in certain areas of knowledge and innovation, one particular issue stands out far above the rest--- global aging. Why not climate change, the threat of terrorism or an asteroid hitting the planet, you ask? Let me tell you why (though I'll only focus on climate change as that dominates the news today). (1) First let's take stock of the harms of biological aging. The inborn aging process is the leading cause of disease and death today. But to see that we need to focus on the ultimate (rather than proximate) causes of disease and death. Disease and death are bad for an individual as they jeopardize or remove the opportunities for flourishing. Disease and death are also bad for societies. Dramatic rises in chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease and stroke present enormous challenges to the economic prosperity of a country. So the magnitude of the harms of senescence are unprecedented in human history (in terms of the number of people negatively affected by it). Furthermore, these harms are a 100% certainty if we do not modify the aging process. We don't need computer models to accurately predict that middle aged people today will age and become frail. Unless an infectious disease comes along and kills today's young and middle aged, they will live to be tomorrow's aged persons and they will suffer the same chronic diseases of late life that killed their parents. Contrast this with the magnitude and certainty of the harms of climate change. The climate is of course always changing. But unlike biological aging, that leads to an exponential increase in risk of morbidity and mortality, when the climate warms or cools a few degrees it brings a complex mix of harms and benefits. Warmer temperatures could boost agricultural production in certain regions of the world (like Russia), but harm agricultural production in other areas. With respect to infectious diseases like malaria (see here), warmer temperatures will result in lower risk of malaria for some areas as temperature fluctuation around means >21°C slows parasite development, whereas fluctuation around <21°C speeds development. So changes in climate are not "unconditionally" good or bad. There are some good things for some people, and some bad things for others. And it is immensely difficult to anticipate what any of these will be 50 or 100 years from now. And observing temperatures is not like observing biological changes in a mammal. We can accurately predict what will happen to most humans after the age of 80 (they will become more frail and suffer one of the diseases of aging and most likely die before age 100). But the climate? Predictions are on much, much more precarious grounds. Even though we still have a lot to learn about human biology, we are light years ahead in our understanding of human biology than we are with understanding what influences global temperature (humans are complex, but the not as complex as all of the external enviroment). There is no climate science equivalent to Darwin's Origins of the Species that was published over 150 years ago and has withstood more than a century of rigorous scientific testing. So climate science is an infantile science. To say that is simply to state a fact (so critics who claim it is "anti-scientific" don't understand what science actually is). The main reason climate science enjoys the popularity and influence it now enjoys is because it has become policitized. It is not because of major scientific breakthroughs in our knowledge of the workings of the climate. This is not to say there are no important issues worth investigating here and that these insights shouldn't inform policy. I believe there are. But the confidence many have in the magnitude and certainty of the potential harms in question are unfounded and are simply scare tactics that, like the "war on terrorism", people use to persuade people to accept when they have little else to invoke. Taken in the abstract, the harms of climate change might appear enormous and probable. But when placed in the context of all the other things that can occur this century, they are less prominent and concerning. But perhaps the greatest contrast between prioritizing the effort to retard global aging rather than global warming concerns criteria (2) and (3) noted above. Let's start with (2). Is there reason to believe we could retard aging, thereby increasing the human healthspan and compressing morbidity and mortality at the end of life? Yes. Since the 1930's we have known that calorie restriction extends the lifespan of a variety of different organisms (e.g. yeast, fruit flies,), including mammals. More recently "longevity genes" had been identified. And the first human clinical trials involving anti-aging molecules are already under way. How many experiments have we done to see if humans can control global temperatures? 0. Now consider (3). How much would it cost to make serious headway on aging? Proponents of the "Longevity Dividend" campaign recommend a $3 billion investment. Slowing aging by just 7 years would reduce the risk of disability, disease and death by 50% at every age in adulthood. Whereas the Stern Report recommends spending 1% of global GDP each year to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Looking up the global GDP for the year 2008, that would put the investment for 2008 at $600 billion dollars. And this would of course rise over the next two decades as the global GDP rises. So advocates of tackling climate change are proposing we (including poor countries, I might add) spend much, much more money trying to mitigate smaller and less certain (and immediate) harms that are premised on a more imcomplete observational science. Such a project would amount to the most expensive scientific experiment in human history. And it would be the first time any such "climate experiment" would be pursued. So the way I see it, we face a choice. Those that want to create the greatest good for those alive today and those to come in the future can champion one of two causes as the defining cause of our times: Cause #1 Slowing global aging Cause #2 Slowing or reversing climate change The certainty and magnitude of the harms of permitting the status quo with respect to aging far outweigh what will occur with respect to climate change. Secondly, as both an observational and experimental science, biogerontology is much, much further advanced than climate science. And so the likelihood of the benefits of doing something about #1 is much higher than #2. And the magnitude of the potential benefits are also much higher. And finally, in terms of cost-- reprogramming the human metabolism via a drug that mimics the effects of CR will cost a lot less than aspiring to control the climate. So the real debate we need to have today is this: Which cause ought to be the greater priority- decelerating human aging or trying to control global temperatures. For me at least, the choice is clear. Friday, September 18, 2009 Life Expectancy, Priorities and Aging Research There are many different ways to arrive at a list of the top priorities a society should set for itself. One could set priorities based on the intuitions or "gut instincts" people happen to have at any given time. Or, alternatively, one could base priorities on the empirical data we have concerning what harms individuals and societies and what the magnitude of the benefits of mitigating such harms would be. I prefer the latter approach. Indeed it is my preference for the latter that leads me to be a strong advocate for aging research rather than an advocate for tackling terrorism, trying to control the climate, etc. Most people alive today will most likely develop, and die from, one of the chronic diseases of aging like cancer, heart disease or stroke. So tackling chronic disease is the greatest challenge of this century. However, unlike infectious diseases, eliminating any one chronic disease will have a minimal impact on a population's health prospects. Why? Because of the fact of co-morbidity. "Now that comorbidity has become the rule rather than the exception, even if a “cure” was found for any of the major fatal diseases, it would have only a marginal effect on life expectancy and the overall length of healthy life" (source) To drive home the reality of co-morbidity, and the challenges it raises for promoting the health of aging populations, take a look at the United States life tables for eliminating certain causes of death here (it's a bit dated (1990)... if anyone can find a more recent version of this life table with gains for eliminating causes of death please let me know). Let's start first with Table A. "Probability at birth of eventually dying from specified causes of death by race and sex: United States, 1989–91". The probability (for the total population at birth) of dying from infectious and parasitic diseases in the US is 2%. Death in car accident 1.4%. Homicide 0.7%. Sudden infant death syndrome 0.13%. The highest probabilities are the chronic diseases that mostly afflict the aged. Probability of dying from cancer is 22%, and for cardiovascular diseases (e.g. heart disease and stroke) the probability is 47%. These statistics make vivid what is the greatest threat to the health prospects of a population- chronic diseases- and who is most at risk (i.e. those over the age of 60). But suppose we eliminate a specific disease. How much would this increase life expectancy at birth? Scroll down to Table 22. Gain in expectation of life due to elimination of specified causes of death, by exact age for the total population for the answer. If newborns in the United States were born into a society with 0% risk of infectious disease life expectancy would increase by 164 days. With 0% risk of ever developing cancer life expectancy would increase by 3.36 years. With 0% risk of Alzheimer's disease life expectancy for the coherent born today would increase by 18 days. For a baby born today who would survived long enough to die from AD, they would live an extra 6.8 years if AD was eliminated. And with no major cardiovascular diseases to kill you life expectancy would increase by 6.7 years, which is 1.5 years more than the difference in life expectancy between being born female rather than male. The striking thing about these gains in life expectancy is how low they really are. We just assume a world with no cancer would dramatically increase life expectancy, but this is not so. Of course a cure for an early onset disease would result in large benefits to the life expectancy of those who would die from that specific disease (and those stats are also there). But the reason the numbers are not bigger is that eliminating one cause of death in late life simply delays the time one will most likely develop another disease of aging (the reality of co-morbidity). So if you don't die from cancer in your 80's you most likely have a stroke or heart disease, etc. These kinds of data should be the basis of a rational approach to health extension. And that is why aging research ought to be a top priority today. Retarding aging would help us delay all age-related disorders simultaneously, thus yielding healthy dividends that far exceed what a cure for cancer or AD or stroke could yield. So one of our top priorities should be to increase the health prospects of humans in late life. Thus aging research ought to be at the top of our priorities. Thursday, September 17, 2009 Where the Action As: On the Site of the Playful Life (as told in song) Recently I have posted a series of posts on the importance of play. But Cat Stevens makes the same points much more concisely and effectively in the form of song. Enjoy. Gene Therapy for Colour Blindness NatureNews has this story about how two monkeys had their colour vision restored with gene therapy. Here is a brief excerpt: Neitz and his colleagues introduced the human form of the red-detecting opsin gene into a viral vector, and injected the virus behind the retina of two male squirrel monkeys — one named Dalton in honour of the British chemist, John Dalton, who was the first to describe his own colour blindness in 1794, and the other named Sam.... After 20 weeks, the monkeys' colour skills improved dramatically, indicating that Dalton and Sam had acquired the ability to see in three shades (see video). Both monkeys have retained this skill for more than two years with no apparent side effects, the researchers report in Nature1. Adding the missing gene was sufficient to restore full colour vision without further rewiring of the brain even though the monkeys had been colour blind since birth. "There is this plasticity still in the brain and it is possible to treat cone defects with gene therapy," says Alexander Smith, a molecular biologist and vision researcher at University College London, who did not contribute to the study. "It doesn't seem like new neural connections have to be formed," says Komáromy. "You can add an additional cone opsin pigment and the neural circuitry and visual pathways can deal with it." Wednesday, September 16, 2009 Study on Genes and Age of First Sexual Intercourse The latest issue of Child Development has this interesting study which suggests that genetics plays an important role in explaining why children raised in homes without a father are more likely to have sex earlier than those raised in homes with a father. This study illustrates how complex the interaction between our environment and our biology really is, and how far we still have to go in terms of our understanding of the different things (like the genes we inherit from our parents) that influence human behaviour. Here is the abstract of the study: Children raised without a biological father in the household have earlier average ages of first sexual intercourse than children raised in father-present households. Competing theoretical perspectives have attributed this either to effects of father absence on socialization and physical maturation or to nonrandom selection of children predisposed for early sexual intercourse into father-absent households. Genetically informative analyses of the children of sister dyads (N = 1,382, aged 14–21 years) support the selection hypothesis: This association seems attributable to confounded risks, most likely genetic in origin, which correlated both with likelihood of father absence and early sexual behavior. This holds implications for environmental theories of maturation and suggests that previous research may have inadvertently overestimated the role of family structure in reproductive maturation. And here is a sample from the EurekAlert! on the study: Previous research has found that children raised in homes without a biological father have sex earlier than children raised in traditional nuclear families. Now a new study that used a novel and complex design to investigate why this is so challenges a popular explanation of the reasons. Among prior explanations of why children who live in homes without fathers have sex earlier are that early childhood stress accelerates children's physical development, that children who see their parents dating may start dating earlier, and that it's harder for a single parent to monitor and supervise children's activities and peers. All of these are environmental explanations. "Our study found that the association between fathers' absence and children's sexuality is best explained by genetic influences, rather than by environmental theories alone," according to Jane Mendle, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, who led the study. Sunday, September 13, 2009 Political Theory and Aging Research As a political theorist who works on issues that intersect the biological sciences and medicine, I frequently get puzzled looks when I tell students and colleagues I am working on aging and longevity science. Their puzzlement is understandable, as these topics do not currently receive much attention in the discipline. When we one thinks of the subject "the study of politics", we tend to think of voting behaviour and political parties, or institutions like the Supreme Court or Congress. It is only natural to associate the study of politics with the study of the issues that dominate the evening news- so high-profile government decisions like the war on terror, the economic bailout or tackling climate change. Images like these three thus capture the stakes and concerns we currently associate with the study of politics: These images resonate with our understanding of political science. Political scientists are interested in power: what is it?, who has it?, how do different institutions and cultures influence power?, and when (if ever) can power be legitimate? The different sub-fields of political science reflect the diversity of concerns that arise here- comparative politics, international relations, political theory, etc. While these images and sub-disciplines are important and cover many diverse issues, I also think it is important for us, as political scientists, to critically reflect upon the adequacy of the tools and concepts we utilize to adequately diagnosis the pressing challenges we face today in the twenty-first century. The first (and in my opinion the best) political scientist was the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. For Aristotle politics is a normative practical science. The primary concern of politics is the good of humans. And this made politics the most authoritative of all the sciences as the political scientist could prescribe which sciences ought to be studied (e.g. economics, biology, etc.). Aristotle inspires me, and when I reflect upon the current state of contemporary political theory I feel we have forgotten how sage Aristotle's insights are. A concern with the good of humans has given way to the concerns which the professionalization of the discipline places a premium on- like narrow specialization. The puzzlement I encounter when I tell people I am a political theorist who has an interest in aging and longevity science confirms this sad state-of-affairs. Unlike Aristotle, who was genuinely concerned with the good of humans and had a curious intellect that ranged across many different disciplines (philosophy, biology, politics, etc.), political theory in the twenty-first century reflects the constraints and incentive structure of academia. The concern for tenure and promotion and RAE submissions underlies a great deal of the research in the field today. And this creates pressures to become more and more specialized and risk-adverse. If there is a sub-field in political science that should not be overtly specialized and risk-adverse it is political theory. So when I reflect upon the state of contemporary political theory the thing that strikes me most is how parochial and atemporal we theorists have become. Debates in theory move slowly, very slowly. In some ways this is a good thing. Theorists like to take our time to think things through. This is important. Rushing things usually doesn't yield sage insights. There are often subtle, yet important, distinctions and provisos that need to be made. So I want to emphasise that I recognise that and agree it is important. However, the pace of technological innovation today means that novel and unprecedented challenges face humanity. Challenges that theorists ought to be investing their thoughts and energies into tackling. And, at least for me my tastes, we are moving too slowly, and our focus is too narrow. This inertia stems mostly from the fact that we wear "blinders" that shield us from the realities of today's world and the new knowledge which evolutionary biology yields. Aristotle would scoff at the insularity and specialization of contemporary political theory. While concerns for the good of humans do populate debates in the field (some more than others), that concern is peripheral rather than central. So, how does one go about linking political theory to aging research? This is my project. It is one that constantly weighs on my mind given that one does not encounter journal articles on this topic, nor conferences addressing these themes, etc. But this challenge helps sharpen my intellect. If I chose to work on multiculturalism or global justice I wouldn't have to justify my chosen topic to anyone. Those are topics almost all theorists work on. And thus one can just display the "membership" badge to the club and proceed with little or even no justification for why one has chosen to work on these topics. So tackling something new or neglected in a field comes with risks. Maybe others don't write on this topic because it actually is unimportant. I have taken this prospect very seriously. But after researching these topics for the past few years my confidence in the importance of aging research, for both society and political theorists, has grown. There will be 2 billion humans over age 60 by mid-century and these people will be at a high risk of chronic disease. We live in an "aged-world". A world where most humans alive today will die from the diseases that afflict us in old age. Death and disease are very serious things. They ought to be among the top few things on our list of what undermines the good of humans. And this means we ought to place a premium on the knowledge and innovation that could help us alter the biological clocks we have inherited from our evolutionary history. Even though the evening news does not report breaking headlines concerning the unprecedented numbers of people suffering chronic disease does not mean it is not an important issue worthy of serious study and reflection. Rather than have the media shape my research interests, or simply follow the existing trends in my field, I have adopted a different approach (at least for this stream of my research). To see why aging is so important I want you to consider the importance of fossil records. If we examine the fossil records of our distant ancestors from thousands of years ago we see what posed the greatest threats to their health and prosperity. The fossil records of our distant ancestors reveal the toll inflicted by violence, poverty and infectious disease. Very few humans lived long enough to suffer from the chronic diseases of aging. The fossil records from the twenty-first century, however, will reveal something truly unique in human history- that the inborn aging process is now the leading cause of disease and death. Of course it's possible that an asteroid could destroy humanity this century, or we could destroy ourselves in a nuclear war. But the most likely scenario is that most humans alive today will die from cancer, heart disease and stroke, and these diseases will kill them after the age of 60. These future projected fossil records, rather than the evening news or a chapter in Rawls's A Theory of Justice, is what shapes my thinking about these issues. But we may be able to alter this likely future. It is irrational for humanity to ignore the leading cause of disease and death. Of all the things to ignore, the last thing should be the leading cause of disease and death! So, let me be more precise as to why this matters to us political theorists. Much of course depends on what we take political theory to be. Recall my account of what theory is. Here is an excerpt from that earlier post: Dunn claims that the purpose of political theory is to diagnose practical predicaments and to show us how best to confront them. Doing this, he adds, requires us to develop the following three distinct skills. So the theorist in me says that understanding our evolutionary biology and aging research apply to all of these. Let me fill in the relevant details. 1. How did we get to the situation where 220 million humans will die from the chronic diseases in just the 10 years from 2005-2015? The first part of the story is the story of the triumph of human ingenuity. Over the past 200 years we have been able to increase life expectancy at birth from below 30 to over 67 years by reducing early and mid-life mortality. This has been an amazing accomplishment. Yet it is important to recognise that preventing death and disease early in life has brought about the dramatic rise in population and age-related disorders. Why do we age? And why does aging make us vulnerable to frailty, disease and death? To make a long story short- because the force of natural selection does not apply to the post-reproductive period of the human lifespan. So most disease and death today are caused by evolutionary neglect. And given the size of today's populations, unprecedented numbers of humans will suffer the ravages of chronic disease. 2. What is the ideal? Less disease, more health! 3. How to get there? To put things very generally- We need to think outside the box. The medical sciences are currently dominated by the "disease-model" approach to health extension. This approach is costing more and more money, and yielding smaller health dividends. The real culprit is aging itself. Retarding aging would bring individuals and societies greater opportunities to flourish. For political theorists we must transcend our fixation on the distribution of external goods like wealth and income and take more seriously the natural determinants of health. Rather than start from Rawls's A Theory of Justice we should start from Darwin's Origins of the Species. Rather than assuming all members of society are healthy and productive we should strive to understand the constrains which an aging population face. Rather than bury our heads in the sand with respect to science we must stay abreast of the incredible progress being made, especially in the biomedical sciences. This has been a long post. Thanks for your patience in permitting me to work these issues out in my own mind as I attempt to strengthen my case to get political theorists to take people for what they really are (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). So I want to finish by appealing to my fellow theorists to take more seriously the importance of images like these: These images illustrate the real challenges of the 21st century. With adequate funding, creativity and innovation, today's governments might help us achieve one of the most laudable of goals- modulating the biological clocks we have inherited from our evolutionary history. The sooner we begin to think seriously about addressing this issue the better. Wednesday, September 02, 2009 Happiness, Success and Genetics The American Journal of Sociology has an interesting issue on "Exploring Genetics and Social Structure". This paper considers the influence of genes on happiness and success. Here is the abstract: And a sample: Despite this evidence, most sociologists continue to emphasize the proximate environment and to empirically unravel its many elements... Even among those interested in genetic influence, most focus on interpreting heritability appropriately, rather than examining the implications of heritability for theories of environmental influence (for an exception, see Guo and Stearns 2002). The former enterprise is laudable and informative, but the latter is more promising insofar as it allows sociology to speak to other disciplines in an emerging transdisciplinary dialogue. In this study, I seek to reevaluate the relationship between success and happiness in light of endowments, and I do so with an eye toward sharpening sociology’s theoretical apparatus. I explore a variety of features of success, focusing on those features that have been most central to the discipline, including marital status, schooling, income, and occupational self‐direction. For leverage against endowments, I use data consisting of unrelated individuals, ordinary siblings, and identical twins. ....A more general point is that the serious consideration of genes hardly undermines the relevance of sociology and, indeed, might allow sociologists to address the kinds of action/structure questions that have long animated the discipline. To be sure, current research on social structure and personality has explored how individuals select themselves into environments in ways that promote or hinder their well‐being (see McLeod and Lively 2007). Yet, even when demonstrating the importance of selection, sociologists have generally shown little appreciation of the origins of this action or the strategy it reflects. Genes are useful in this regard in that they provide a mechanism for understanding how individuals respond to and shape their environment, and, as demonstrated here, investigating genes hardly obviates the importance of the environment. Among potential engines of action reflected in genes are personality, tolerance of risk, cognitive abilities, and time preferences (see Freese 2008).
Ever get picked on as a kid? Chances are you have at least one memory of feeling bullied. And what advice did your sage mother/ father/ teacher/ camp counselor offer you? Just ignore it. This is terrible advice. You knew that as a kid – – and as an adult you would never say it to a friend. And that’s not because there’s not truth in it, but because it feels impossible. If we were able to ignore it, we would- duh! The reason why bullying is so upsetting is because it gets under our skin, sits there, and festers. This is the difference between someone being rude and being bullied (or in adult talk- being emotionally abused, but same diff). We can walk away from an insult and be annoyed, and then let it go. Bulling stays with us, and it makes us feel a little bit crazy. Being told just ignore it only adds to that feeling. We’ll come back to this… why bullying bothers us So, why can’t we walk away from bullying the same way we do from an insult? I’ve been thinking about this question a lot. Why is that that I can brush off being silently yelled at through a windshield in carpool line, but a snide comment from another mom on the playground makes me want to run and hide (or punch the other mom in the nose)? This is how bullying works. It isn’t about the insult- it’s about undoing the other person’s sense of self. An insult is “That’s an ugly coat.” Bullying is “Oh, that coat is exactly something you would wear,” with a sneer added at the end. The first is offensive. The second? Crazy-making.I think what it comes down to is that we feel most hurt when we feel misunderstood or misrepresented. I talked this over with a friend, who contended that the reason bullies are so powerful is because they pick up on our insecurities and instinctually know how to use them against us. I think there’s a lot of truth in this – – but I think it goes beyond that. The experience of being bullied feels like the world is out of order. If someone insults me, I can be hurt, but I can move on. That’s not what a bully does, though. A bully engages in an on-going attack that takes away your sense of personhood. A bully makes you feel like what you think is completely wrong. You think you look okay in those pants? Wrong. You think your child is pretty normal and okay? Wrong. You think you are reasonably intelligent? Wrong. You think you’re menu choice for lunch is a good one? Wrong. A bully cuts us to our core (often using our insecurities) and makes us feel like we are delusional in the way we see ourselves. It reminds me of that blue/black/white/gold dress that blew up the internet. When I first saw it, I got the same sick feeling of being bullied- as if maybe there was some sort of joke going on that I didn’t understand. I saw white and gold, and was so confused by people who were doing the internet version of screaming “IT’S BLACK AND BLUE.” What was I missing? How could someone see something totally different from me? And how dare that person act like I’m an idiot, when obviously they are wrong? Feeling like another person is unable to see your truth is completely unsettling. I don’t mind someone disagreeing with me, as long as I feel like they understand what I’m saying. What puts me through the roof is feeling like my version of how the world works is seen as stupid and wrong. In its most insidious form, this becomes gaslighting and can become totally overwhelming, but we can have this same feeling in small doses anytime and by anyone. This is how bullying works. It isn’t about the insult- it’s about undoing the other person’s sense of self. An insult is “That’s an ugly coat.” Bullying is “Oh, that coat is exactly something you would wear,” with a sneer added at the end. The first is offensive. The second? Crazy-making. how to deal with mom bullies So now to ask the age-old question, how do you actually handle a bully? If there was an easy answer, we wouldn’t have to still be asking the question. The truth is, there is an answer, but it takes two steps, and it’s not easy. step one: find compassion I know, I know- that’s not at all what you want to hear. But, the compassion for a bully is going to end up looking really different that the compassion you feel for other people in your life. In finding compassion for a bully, you bring your world back into equilibrium. Bullies make us crazy by distorting our view of ourselves and the world around u, and we can’t understand why. It doesn’t make sense, and we feel incredibly vulnerable. Now, what would your mother say you were being picked on? “Oh, she’s just jealous of you” right? Did that make any sense at the time? Probably not. I’ll tell you why people bully, for real. It’s to make themselves feel better. It has nothing to do with you. You are just a victim in an endless stream of the bullied. You’ll probably never fully understand the exact reason for how and why bullying makes any one person feel better; just understand that this is the dynamic. Maybe she needs to feel power, or maybe she’s trying to mask her own insecurities by creating flaws in others. There’s even research that shows that bulling can release dopamine in the brain, creating a sensation of pleasure for the bully. Whatever the reason, remember that it’s not about you, and if you think about it, it’s really pretty pathetic. Here’s the compassion {{repeat after me}}: “It’s really sad that (fill in name here) need to make herself feel better by being cruel to others. That must be a horrible way to live.” That’s it. Compassion no more beyond this point- just allow yourself to get to the place where you can see that the pain being inflicted on you probably belongs to the bully. Let her keep it. Step two: disengage Remember earlier when I said the “just ignore it” is horrible advice? The part that makes it horrible is the word “just.” It’s really hard to simply let a bully’s comments and actions just roll off your back. One thing I find myself saying all the time to my clients is: you can’t control other people’s actions. The only thing you can control is your own reactions. It sounds simple, but it’s not. Disengaging from a bully takes a huge amount of effort, but ultimately it’s the only option you have and it does work. Sometimes disengaging is just something you have to do in your own mind. Forcing yourself to stop stewing about the snarky comment and learning to think of these comments of manifestation of the bully’s pain (cue the compassion mantra). Sometimes, it means you have to take a bolder action, by dropping out of a carpool or asking for a transfer at work. Removing yourself from a bully isn’t weak and it’s not letting them win. It takes courage to know your own boundaries and respect them. However you have to do it, the way to end bulling is by not allowing the bully to upset your world anymore. This begins by you understanding that 1) you are not wrong, you are being bullied; 2) there is nothing wrong with you and there is no need for you to defend yourself; and 3) there is nothing you can do to get the other person to stop acting like there is something wrong with you. Knowing these three things is the path out of being bullied. Easy? No. Possible? Absolutely! Big Little Lies This article is part of our Big Little Lies book discussion, part of the #coolmomsread series. Join us to discuss the book!
Saturday, May 30, 2009 Carbon Taxes, Cap and Trade, and All That Suppose something some people do has substantial, widely dispersed, negative effects on other people; the standard example is air pollution. Since I am not bearing the cost of my actions, I may do things, such as light a fire in my fireplace, even when the net cost, to me and others, is larger than the benefit, and fail to do things, such as install a scrubber in the smokestack of my power plant or switch to low sulfur coal, even when the benefit of doing them would be larger than the cost. The obvious solution is direct regulation. Have some government agency tell power plants to install scrubbers, use low sulfur coal, and in various other ways modify their acts to take account of external effects. There are at least two things wrong with this solution. The first is that the agency is very unlikely to know enough to do it right. How is it to figure out what the lowest cost way is of reducing pollution—scrubbers, low sulfur coal, both, or one for some power plants and some for others? How, indeed, is it to figure out when pollution ought to be reduced and when the cost of the reduction is more than the benefit? Carbon dioxide, after all, is said to be a pollutant via global warming; it does not follow that we should all stop breathing. The second problem is that even if the agency had the information, it might not be in its interest to use it correctly, to require reductions of pollution if and only if they are worth their cost and by the least costly means. Such an agency is run, after all, not by philosopher kings but by bureaucrats appointed by elected politicians. If states that produce high sulfur coal are politically influential, it might be wise to impose regulations designed to discourage utilities from switching to low sulfur coal even when that is the lowest cost way of reducing the amount of air pollution they produce (a real world example, as it happens; see Regulation Magazine Vol. 14 no.4). If the steel industry has made generous campaign contributions to the majority party, perhaps it should be spared, in the national interest, the rigors of regulation of its emissions. An alternative which many economists prefer is a "Pigouvian Tax," named after the economist who came up with the idea. Let the agency determine the external cost imposed by each ton of sulfur dioxide released into the atmosphere. Firms are free to pollute as much as they want, provided they pay for their pollution. It is then in the private interest of each firm to find the lowest cost ways of reducing its pollution and implement them, provided that the cost of the reduction is less than the benefit. This does not eliminate all of the problems, since the agency still has to measure cost and still may be biased in its estimates of the differing costs of different effluents in different places by political considerations. But it looks like a considerable improvement on direct regulation. A very similar alternative is currently being discussed under the label of "cap and trade." The government sets the total amount of effluent that may be emitted—say 80% of the pre-regulation level. Each firm is issued permits for its share of that amount, 80% of the sulfur dioxide it produced last year. A firm that reduces its emissions below that level can sell the excess permits to other firms; a firm that pollutes above the level it has permits for must buy additional permits. In effect, the price of the permit is the equivalent of the effluent fee under Pigouvian taxation. A firm that pollutes more than its share must pay that price for each additional ton of effluent. A firm polluting less than its share gives up, for each ton it emits, the opportunity to sell a permit for that price. Once the level of emissions is set, the market determines the cost of reducing emissions to that level and sets the required tax. In a system run by philosopher kings, there is one important difference between the two alternative versions. A straight Pigouvian tax requires the agency to estimate the damage done by an additional ton of the pollutant. A cap and trade system requires it to estimate what the optimal amount of the pollutant is, how far it is worth reducing it. One can imagine some situations where the former information is more readily available, some where the latter is. In a system run by elected politicians, there is another large difference—who gets the money. With an effluent fee, the tax goes to the government. With cap and trade, the payments are by one firm to another. Firms that can easily reduce their output of effluent end up richer than they would be without the scheme, since they can sell their excess permits to other firms for whom reduction is more difficult. Indeed, the regulated industry as whole may end up richer as a result of the regulation. Depending on the details of the situation, the increased income from the higher price for (say) electric power due to the higher cost due to the regulation might be more than the cost to the firms of reducing their emissions to meet the limit. Which brings us to current proposals for cap and trade of carbon dioxide as a solution to problems of global warming. In a system run by philosopher kings, the only important difference between that and a carbon tax is the information required to set the level of emissions or amount of tax. In the real world, cap and trade has the (political) advantage of getting large parts of the regulated industry in favor of the regulation and thus eliminating a lot of potential opposition. The cost, possibly more than a hundred percent of it, is shifted to the customers, which is to say the general public—a dispersed and politically impotent interest group. And if the government retains considerable flexibility in just how emission permits get allocated, it can use some of them to buy political support from other groups or to reward them for past support. Cap and trade has a political disadvantage as well, of course; a carbon tax would bring in lots of money. But that money would show up in the budget, get labelled taxation, and so make it harder for the administration to deny that it is raising taxes to pay for its programs. And much of it might end up spent to get the carbon tax passed by buying off organized interest groups that were potential opponents. Think of the cap and trade version as eliminating the middle man. Tuesday, May 26, 2009 The Rising Marginal Cost of Originality or What is Wrong with Modern____ Sunday, May 24, 2009 Two Great Depressions Current economic problems have brought back beliefs and arguments concerning the Great Depression. One account I have encountered goes roughly as follows: "After the stock market crash, Hoover cut taxes and government expenditure in order to revive the economy. Instead of reviving, things got worse and worse until Roosevelt came in, introduced the New Deal, and so eventually ended the Depression." The obvious conclusion is that we should deal with present problems, as the administration is dealing with them, by vastly expanding government expenditure. The first half of this is a simple factual claim, easily checked. The current Statistical Abstract of the United States is conveniently webbed, but does not go back far enough to provide figures for expenditure under Hoover; Historical Statistics of the United States, so far as I can tell, is webbed only in a for-pay version. But earlier volumes of the Statistical Abstract are also webbed. The 1935 volume contains figures both for federal expenditure and for prices in the relevant years. Federal expenditure was: 1929 3,298,859 1930 3,440,269 1931 3,779,868 1932 4,861,696 Far from being cut, it increased every year. These figures greatly understate the increase, because during this period prices and national income were falling. Measured in purchasing power rather than in dollars, federal expenditure roughly doubled over the final three years of Hoover's administration. Relative to GDP, it nearly tripled. The second half of the story is trickier, because it depends on assumptions about what would have happened without the New Deal—that the Depression would have continued forever, or at least for much longer. That seems implausible, judging by other depressions and recessions; the Great Depression was unusually long, not unusually short. Arguing that since the economy eventually recovered the New Deal was a success is like arguing that if the doctor bleeds the patient and the patient survives and eventually recovers, the treatment was a success. We can learn a little more by looking at a different Great Depression—the one that didn't happen. From 1920 to 1921, the consumer price index fell by 10.8%, more than in any year of the Great Depression; it fell another 2.3% in the next year. Unemployment rose to about its 1931 level. Looking just at that data, it's obviously the start of a depression. Thursday, May 21, 2009 Fairness in Sports: A Modest Proposal To increase agricultural output on a fixed amount of land, you increase labor and fertilizer. If a nuclear limitation treaty limits the number of missiles, a nation that wants to maintain its arsenal does it by increasing the size of warheads, the number of warheads per missile, or both. Consider the same principle in the context of sports. A football team faces an artificial constraint on the resources used to produce victory—it is only allowed eleven men on the field at a time. It responds, naturally enough, by making them big men. Very big. The obvious solution to the manifest unfairness of this result—blatant bigism—is a small change in the rules. Instead of limiting the number of players on the field, limit their total weight. A team is allowed to have up to 2400 pounds of players on the field at one time. That can be a ten man team averaging 240 lbs, a fifteen man team averaging 160 lbs, or any other mix that produces the same total. For basketball, perhaps the constraint should be on total height instead of total weight. It should be interesting. Tuesday, May 19, 2009 Does Free Love Promote or Impede Successful Marital Search? Listening to satellite radio while driving, I occasionally come across the Cosmo channel. The assumed target audience seems to consist of women engaged simultaneously in a search for a long-term partner—a "keeper"—and a dating pattern involving a good deal of relatively casual sex. This raises an interesting question: does the latter make success in the former more or less likely? It is an old question, but the sexual revolution may provide new evidence. On theoretical grounds, the answer is unclear. There are two obvious arguments against the modern pattern. The first is that, in a society where sex is readily available without marriage, the incentive to engage in a protracted search for a long term partner, costly in time, effort, and emotion, is much lower than in a society with more traditional mating patterns. The second is that sex, at least in humans, has emotional consequences—you feel differently about someone after sleeping with her (or him) than before. Arguably, in humans, one consequence is to reinforce emotional bonds that promote long term pairing—plausible both on subjective evidence and on obvious evolutionary grounds, given that human infants require extended care. That makes it at least plausible that the bonds forged with your fiftieth sex partner will be weaker than the ones forged with your first or second, making marital stability, when the keeper is finally found, less likely. There are two obvious arguments in the other direction. The first is that if individuals very much desire sex and cannot get much of it outside of marriage, there is an incentive to marry in haste and repent at leisure, wed the first moderately acceptable partner willing to say yes. The second is that a successful sexual relationship makes a successful marriage more likely, so the parties are less likely to regret their choice if they try before they buy. My question is whether anyone has produced good empirical data to tell us which side of the argument turns out to be more important. It is not enough to observe that divorce rates have gone up along with rates of non-marital sex. That might be due to other causes, most obviously easier divorce. Better evidence would be some sort of large scale longitudinal study, aimed at distinguishing the success in establishing marital (or long term non-marital) partnerships of people as a function of their prior willingness to engage in relatively casual sex. Even that, of course, has problems, since we don't have any way of creating a true controlled experiment—but an ingenious researcher might find a natural experiment that came close. Monday, May 18, 2009 A Healthcare Idea: Insurance That Doesn't Pay One obvious, arguably ideal, solution to the problem of paying for healthcare is for the consumer to pay for ordinary costs out of pocket, just as we pay for food and housing, while using insurance to cover extraordinary costs, just as we use it in other contexts. That is not the usual pattern of medical insurance in the U.S., however—typically it covers a large part of the cost of annual doctor's visit, ordinary dental care, and the like. That arrangement has some obvious disadvantages. The customer has no incentive to hold down costs, making it necessary for the insurance company to play a major role in the decision of what services the customer gets from what providers. One reason for this arrangement is that health care you pay for directly is paid with after-tax dollars, health insurance via your employer with before-tax dollars, giving a substantial advantage to the latter. But there may be another reason as well. From time to time one sees accounts of a patient who was billed for something and discovered that the cost was much more than what the hospital charged an insurance company for the same treatment. Such anecdotes are not, by themselves, very strong evidence, and I do not know how common the pattern is—I have also seen stories in which the discrepancy was in the other direction, after some bargaining by the patient. But it does make a certain amount of sense. The insurance company is a well informed purchaser bargaining in advance on behalf of lots of customers, so it wouldn't be surprising if it were able to get better terms than the hospital offers to an individual who requires treatment. This suggests an obvious possibility—"insurance" companies whose main function is not insurance but negotiating prices. Within the current framework, that would mean a policy with a very large deductible, large enough so that the customer ended up paying for all ordinary medical care, giving him an incentive to hold down its cost as best he could. In the limiting case it would mean a company that provided no insurance at all, simply the service of negotiating for its customers, in advance, prices for medical service, and perhaps offering customers advice as to what they ought to purchase from what provider. To what extent do such arrangement already exist? Is there a problem with them that I am missing? They don't deal with the implicit tax subsidy issue, but they would seem to solve the other problem. Wednesday, May 13, 2009 Sea Ice II: Reading Graphs My previous post contained a graph of northern hemisphere sea ice from which it seemed clear that the past trend of declining area, rather than continuing as the JPL claimed, had reversed. The first comment on that post claimed that I had cherry picked my data, offering as evidence another graph presenting the information in a different form which, the commenter said, supported the JPL claim. As I pointed out in my response, his graph did not support the claim either, although it did not contradict it as strikingly as mine did. That raises the question of why two graphs from the same web page presenting the same information looked so different. While it might be possible to answer it by searching out additional information on the web site, I thought it would be more interesting to see what one can figure out simply by looking at the graphs. I will refer to his graph as graph A and mine as graph B. Both are shown below. Graph A shows swings within each year over a range of about ten million square kilometers, presumably reflecting expansion and contraction of the area of sea ice with the seasons. The variation in Graph B within each year is much smaller and less regular. Pretty obviously that means that the data in Graph B is seasonally adjusted. The figure for, say, January of 2009 shows how much higher or lower the area of sea ice was than the average for Januaries over the reference period, eliminating the seasonal variation. That fits the title. The graph is showing, not the area, but the anomaly, the difference between the area at that time and its previous average. That way of drawing the graph makes it easier to see trends, since changes over the years aren't masked by the much larger changes within each year. A more subtle difference is that, looking at graph A, one loses almost all of the relevant data. The month to month difference is so large that one cannot tell by eye whether sea ice area in January of 2008 was more or less than in 2009. All you can see is that sea ice area in the month when it was largest was about the same in 2008 as in 2009, and sea ice area in the month when it was smallest was a little larger in the second year. You are left trying to interpret trends based only on the extremes of the cycle—data from two observations a year instead of about twelve. Graph B, by eliminating the seasonal effect, gives a much clearer picture. If sea ice area was larger in ten months of the second year than in the corresponding months of the first year and lower in two, that will show as a rising trend with a couple of downticks—even if the low months happened to also be the extremes. What the commenter viewed as noise on Graph B—the shifts up and down month by month—is information, information obscured by the large seasonal variation on Graph A. [To see the webbed graphs, which are larger and clearer than the images here, click on the Graph A and Graph B links] As a result of a comment to this post, I found a graph showing April sea ice cover from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the source that the JPL article cites. Here is the graph. It shows ice extent rising for the past two years. (Later addition) The data from the same source for May are now in. May sea ice extent has risen for the past three years, bringing it back to about its level in the late 1980's early 1990's. On the other hand, poking around the same source, I found the graph for March, which provides at least a little support for the JPL comment I have been attacking, which was published in April. It shows March sea ice rising a lot for two years, but falling a little in the most recent year. To describe that as "continues to shrink" strikes me as clearly misleading, but it's an exaggeration to describe it as a flat lie. Tuesday, May 12, 2009 Global Sea-ice, Deceptive Reporting, and Truthful Lies That statement, from the JPL, is dated April 2009. The actual data for northern hemisphere sea ice, measured as the deviation from its 1978-2000 mean, are shown below. The source is "The Cryosphere Today," a web site of the Polar Research Group, Department of Atmosphere Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, not a site devoted to critics of global warming. If your browser doesn't show the complete graph, click on the image to get to the webbed original. Looking at the graph, the pattern is pretty clear. For about ten years, from 1997 to late 2007, the area of sea ice was decreasing. That trend then reversed, and the area has now been increasing for more than a year. The claim quoted from the JPL is a flat lie. Reading further in the article, one finds: "that this winter had the fifth lowest maximum ice extent on record. The six lowest maximum events since satellite monitoring began in 1979 have all occurred in the past six years (2004-2009)." That's a nice example of how to lie while telling the truth. The trend has reversed—whether temporarily or permanently we don't know. But since the area had been trending down for a decade and has only recently started to trend up, the current figure is still low relative to the past. Except for the recent past, which is all that is relevant in judging whether the current trend is continuing. Monday, May 04, 2009 Other Worlds and Wasted Talents Over the course of my life, I've spent a good deal of time in what I think of as "other worlds"--The Society for Creative Anachronism, World of Warcraft, interacting online in Usenet news groups, and the like. One thing that strikes me about such worlds is the presence of competent, energetic, talented people whose life in the ordinary world reflects little or none of that. I was reminded of this recently when someone I know in WoW as an unusually competent and charismatic leader, organizer, and player, mentioned the problem of "parental agro." He is apparently a college student, possibly a graduate student, living with his parents. Older examples are friends in the SCA of whose abilities and energy I think highly, who made their living as school teachers or secretaries or the like—respectable jobs, but not particularly high status or high paying ones. The pattern is not entirely surprising. It makes sense that an energetic individual who doesn't find much outlet for his energies in his current career will direct them towards his hobbies. Adam Smith long ago observed that, in the British universities of the time, a professor got no benefit by doing a good job of teaching, since the professors were on salary rather than, as in at least some of the Scottish universities, paid by the students. He concluded that if the professor were naturally energetic, he would spend his energies doing something that might be of some benefit to him rather than doing his job, which would not. Nowadays we call it "consulting." At the same time, it seems a terrible waste. Starting a business, running a restaurant, doing scientific research, any of a myriad of "real world" activities, have the same potential for employing human talents as organizing a guild in WoW or an event in the SCA. They also produce other benefits, most obviously the opportunity to combine fun and profit in a way rarely possible with one's hobbies. I am glad that these people spend the time and talents they do in worlds we share, since I benefit from their doing so. But I wonder what keeps them from employing the same talents more successfully in the part of the world where they spend forty hours a week making a living. Is it that they prefer for that part of their life to make fewer demands on them? Or is it rather a case of wasted talents, a failure of current institutions to do as good a job as they might of letting potentially productive individuals find suitable employment for their abilities? Sunday, May 03, 2009 More Harald Podcasts For anyone interested in my novel Harald, I have now webbed some more recordings of chapters. If you enjoy them let me know and I'll record more. Current fiction projects are Salamander, which is complete but can use more revision, and its sequel Eirick, which is a bit more than half written. I also have written the beginning of a sequel to Harald but am not currently working on it. If you want to see and comment on any of them, email me. Labels: , , , The VP and the Power of Tie Breaking In a recent online exchange, a poster trying to defend Biden's mistaken claim that Article I of the Constitution put the VP in the executive branch argued that the VP's role in the Senate, which is what Article I actually describes, is a trivial one, since all he gets to do is to chair the Senate and break ties, and that giving him a trivial role in the legislative branch impled that his real role was in the executive. That started me thinking about tie breaking. On the face of it, the power to break a tie isn't worth much, since votes are rarely ties. But that way of looking at it is misleading. An ordinary vote is only decisive, after all, if it either breaks a tie or creates one, which is also, in most contexts, a rare situation. The question is how much less power a vote that can be used only to break a tie provides. Consider a motion in an assembly. For simplicity assume that, absent my vote, the probabilities that the motion will fail by one vote, tie, or pass by one vote—the situations in which my vote might affect the outcome—are equal. Call the common probability p. Assume there is a chairman with the power to break ties, and assume, again for simplicity, that he is equally likely to vote either way on the motion and never abstains. Finally, assume that I want the motion to pass. If without my vote the motion would fail by one, then I can vote for it and make it a tie. That affects the outcome only if the tie breaker also votes for it. So the probability that I will be able to make it pass by making it into a tie is p/2. If without my vote it would be a tie, then I can vote for it making it pass, but that only affects the outcome if the tie breaker would not have himself voted for it. That gives us another probability of p/2. If without my vote it would pass by one, then my support is not needed and has no effect on the outcome. So the total probability that my support for the bill will affect the outcome is p. What about the situation from the point of view of the tie breaker? Assuming that a motion fails on a tied vote, he can only affect the outcome if the vote is a tie and he supports the motion. Probability p/2. What this simple analysis suggests is that the voting power of the VP, if he chooses to exercise it, is half that of an ordinary senator. Whether that plus chairing the Senate, as I gather VP's used to routinely do before LBJ, adds up to more or less than the equivalent of one senator is a question I will leave to others who know more about the subject. Labels: , , , Saturday, May 02, 2009 How to Lie With Statistics—Sometimes Without Even Trying Some time back, there were news stories reporting on studies of several communities that showed smoking bans to be followed by reductions in heart attacks. There are now reports of a much larger study done at the NBER which finds no such effect. How can one explain the discrepancy? The simple answer is that in some communities heart attack deaths went up after smoking bans, in some they went down, in some they remained more or less unchanged. Hence a study of a single community could find a substantial reduction even if it was not true on average over all communities. How did the particular communities reported in the early stories get selected? There are two obvious possiblities. The first is that the studies were done by people trying to produce evidence of the dangers of second hand smoke. To do so, they studied one community after another until they found one where the evidence fit their theory, then reported only on that one. If that is what happened the people responsible were deliberately dishonest; no research results they publish in the future should be taken seriously. There is, however, an alternative explanation that gives exactly the same result with no villainy required. Every year lots of studies of different things get done. Only some of them make it to publication, and only a tiny minority of those make it into the newspapers. A study finding no effect from smoking bans is much less likely to be publishable than one that finds an effect. A study finding the opposite of the expected result is more likely to be dismissed as an anomaly due to statistical variation or experimental error than one confirming the expected result. And, among published studies, one that provides evidence for something that lots of people want to believe is more likely to make it into the newspapers than one that doesn't.
[ih-skey-pol-uh-jee, es-key-] /ɪ skeɪˈpɒl ə dʒi, ˌɛs keɪ-/ noun, Chiefly British. the method or skill of extricating oneself from handcuffs, chains, etc., as of a magician or other performer. Read Also: • Escargot [es-kar-goh; English es-kahr-goh] /ɛs karˈgoʊ; English ˌɛs kɑrˈgoʊ/ noun, plural escargots [es-kar-goh; English es-kahr-gohz] /ɛs karˈgoʊ; English ˌɛs kɑrˈgoʊz/ (Show IPA). French. 1. an edible snail. /ɛskarɡo/ noun 1. a variety of edible snail, usually eaten with a sauce made of melted butter and garlic n. “edible snail,” 1892, from French escargot, from Old French […] • Escarole [es-kuh-rohl] /ˈɛs kəˌroʊl/ noun 1. a broad-leaved form of Cichorium endivia, used in salads. Compare (def 1). /ˈɛskərəʊl/ noun 1. (US & Canadian) a variety of endive with broad leaves, used in salads n. 1897, from French escarole, from Italian scariola, from Late Latin escariola. • Escarp [ih-skahrp] /ɪˈskɑrp/ noun 1. Fortification. the inner slope or wall of the ditch surrounding a rampart. 2. any similar steep slope. verb (used with object) 3. to make into an escarp; give a steep slope to; furnish with escarps. /ɪˈskɑːp/ noun 1. (fortifications) the inner side of the ditch separating besiegers and besieged Compare counterscarp […] • Escarpment [ih-skahrp-muh nt] /ɪˈskɑrp mənt/ noun 1. Geology. a long, precipitous, clifflike ridge of land, rock, or the like, commonly formed by faulting or fracturing of the earth’s crust. Compare (def 1). 2. ground cut into an around a fortification or defensive position. /ɪˈskɑːpmənt/ noun 1. 2. a steep artificial slope immediately in front of the […]
encapsulation (n.) Look up encapsulation at Dictionary.com 1859, "act of surrounding with a capsule," noun of action from encapsulate. Figurative use by 1934. encase (v.) Look up encase at Dictionary.com encaustic Look up encaustic at Dictionary.com c. 1600 (n.), "art of encaustic painting;" 1650s (adj.) "produced by burning in," from Greek enkaustikos, from enkaiein "to burn in" from en (see en- (2)) + kaiein "to burn" (see caustic). "Strictly applicable only to painting executed or finished by the agency of heat" [Century Dictionary]. enceinte (adj.) Look up enceinte at Dictionary.com encephalitis (n.) Look up encephalitis at Dictionary.com "inflammation of the brain," 1843, from encephalo- "the brain" + -itis "inflammation." Related: Encephalitic. encephalo- Look up encephalo- at Dictionary.com before vowels encephal-, word-forming element meaning "brain, of the brain," from comb. form of medical Latin encephalon, from Greek enkephalos "the brain," literally "within the head," from en "in" (see en- (2)) + kephale "head;" see cephalo-. enchain (v.) Look up enchain at Dictionary.com late 14c., "become linked together;" mid-15c., "to secure with a chain," from Old French enchainer, from Medieval Latin incatenare "enchain," from in (see in) + catenare, from catena "a chain" (see chain (n.)). Related: Enchained; enchaining. enchant (v.) Look up enchant at Dictionary.com late 14c., literal and figurative, from Old French enchanter "bewitch, charm, cast a spell" (12c.), from Latin incantare "to enchant, fix a spell upon" (see enchantment). Or perhaps a back-formation from enchantment. enchanted (adj.) Look up enchanted at Dictionary.com "delighted," 1590s, past participle adjective from enchant (v.). enchanter (n.) Look up enchanter at Dictionary.com late 13c., agent noun from enchant, or from Old French enchanteor "magician; singer; mountebank," from Latin incantator. enchanting (adj.) Look up enchanting at Dictionary.com 1590s, "having magical power," present participle adjective from enchant (v.). Meaning "bewitched" is from 1712. Related: Enchantingly. enchantment (n.) Look up enchantment at Dictionary.com c. 1300, "act of magic or witchcraft; use of magic; magic power," from Old French encantement "magical spell; song, concert, chorus," from enchanter "bewitch, charm," from Latin incantare "enchant, cast a (magic) spell upon," from in- "upon, into" (see in- (2)) + cantare "to sing" (see chant (v.)). Figurative sense of "allurement" is from 1670s. Compare Old English galdor "song," also "spell, enchantment," from galan "to sing," which also is the source of the second element in nightingale. enchantress (n.) Look up enchantress at Dictionary.com late 14c., "witch," from enchanter + -ess. Meaning "charming woman" is from 1713. encharge (v.) Look up encharge at Dictionary.com late 14c., "impose (something) as a duty or obligation," from Old French enchargier, from Medieval Latin incaricare "load, charge," from in- "in" (see in- (2)) + caricare "to load," from Vulgar Latin carricare "to load a car" (see charge (v.)). enchilada (n.) Look up enchilada at Dictionary.com 1876, American English, from Mexican Spanish enchilada, fem. past participle of enchilar "season with chili," from en- "in" + chile "chili" (see chili). You never ate enchilada, did you? I hope you never will. An enchilada looks not unlike an ordinary flannel cake rolled on itself and covered with molasses. The ingredients which go to make it up are pepper, lye, hominy, pepper, onions chopped fine, pepper, grated cheese, and pepper. ["The Health Reformer," December 1876] enchiridion (n.) Look up enchiridion at Dictionary.com 1540s, "a handbook," from Late Latin, from Greek enkheiridion, neuter of enkheiridios "that which is held in the hand," from en "in" (see en- (2)) + kheir "hand" (see chiro-) + diminutive suffix -idion. encircle (v.) Look up encircle at Dictionary.com c. 1400, from en- (1) "make, put in" + circle (n.). Related: Encircled; encircling. encirclement (n.) Look up encirclement at Dictionary.com 1809, from encircle + -ment. enclave (n.) Look up enclave at Dictionary.com "small portion of one country which is entirely surrounded by the territory of another," 1868, from French enclave, from Old French enclaver "enclose, comprise, include" (13c.), from Late Latin inclavare "shut in, lock up," from Latin in- "in" (see in- (2)) + clavis "key" (see slot (n.2)). Enclaved "surrounded by land owned by another" is attested in English from mid-15c., from Old French enclaver. enclitic Look up enclitic at Dictionary.com 1650s (adj.); 1660s (n.), in grammar, from Late Latin encliticus, from Greek enklitikos "throwing its accent back," literally "leaning on," from verbal adjectival stem of enklinein "to bend, lean on," from en "in" (see en- (2)) + klinein "to lean" (see lean (v.)). enclose (v.) Look up enclose at Dictionary.com early 14c., from en- (1) + close, and partially from Old French enclos, past participle of enclore "surround; confine; contain." Specific sense of "to fence in waste or common ground" for the purpose of cultivation or to give it to private owners is from c. 1500. Meaning "place a document with a letter for transmission" is from 1707. Related: Enclosed; enclosing. enclosure (n.) Look up enclosure at Dictionary.com mid-15c., "action of enclosing," from enclose + -ure. Meaning "that which is enclosed" is from 1550s. encode (v.) Look up encode at Dictionary.com 1917, from en- (1) "make, put in" + code (n.). Computing sense is from 1955, usually shortened colloquially or for clarity to code. Related: Encoded; encoding. encomiast (n.) Look up encomiast at Dictionary.com c. 1600, from Greek enkomiastes "one who praises," from enkomiazein, from enkomion (see encomium). Related: Encomiastic (1590s). encomienda (n.) Look up encomienda at Dictionary.com "estate granted to a Spaniard in America with powers to tax the Indians," 1810, from Spanish, literally "commission," from or related to encomendar "to commit, charge," from assimilated form of Latin in- "in" (see in- (2)) + Medieval Latin commendam, from Latin commendare "commit to one's care, commend" (see commend). encomium (n.) Look up encomium at Dictionary.com "discriminating expression of approval," 1580s, from Late Latin encomium, from Greek enkomion (epos) "laudatory (ode), eulogy," from en "in" (see en- (2)) + komos "banquet, procession, merrymaking" (see comedy). encompass (v.) Look up encompass at Dictionary.com 1550s, from en- (1) "make, put in" + compass (n.). Related: Encompassed; encompasses; encompassing. encore (interj.) Look up encore at Dictionary.com 1712, from French encore "still, yet, again, also, furthermore" (12c.), generally explained as being from Vulgar Latin phrase hinc ad horam "from then to this hour," or (in) hanc horam "(to) this hour" (Italian ancora "again, still, yet" is said to be a French loan-word). There appears to be no evidence that either the Fr. or It. word was ever similarly used in its native country. The corresponding word both in Fr. and It. is bis; in It. da capo was formerly used. [OED] As a noun, from 1763; as a verb, from 1748. Related: Encored. encounter (n.) Look up encounter at Dictionary.com encounter (v.) Look up encounter at Dictionary.com c. 1300, "to meet as an adversary," from Old French encontrer "meet, come across; confront, fight, oppose," from encontre (see encounter (n.)). Weakened sense of "meet casually or unexpectedly" first recorded in English early 16c. Related: Encountered; encountering. encourage (v.) Look up encourage at Dictionary.com early 15c., from Old French encoragier "make strong, hearten," from en- "make, put in" (see en- (1)) + corage "courage, heart" (see courage). Related: Encouraged; encouraging; encouragingly. encouragement (n.) Look up encouragement at Dictionary.com 1560s, from encourage + -ment, or from Middle French encoragement. As a general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers. [Hawthorne, "House of Seven Gables"] encrease Look up encrease at Dictionary.com obsolete or archaic form of increase. encroach (v.) Look up encroach at Dictionary.com late 14c., "acquire, get," from Old French encrochier "seize, fasten on, hang on (to), cling (to); hang up, suspend," literally "to catch with a hook," from en- "in" (see en- (1)) + croc "hook," from Old Norse krokr "hook" (see crook (n.)). Sense extended to "seize wrongfully" (c. 1400), then "trespass" (1530s). Related: Encroached; encroaches; encroaching. encroachment (n.) Look up encroachment at Dictionary.com mid-15c., "obtruding structure," from encroach + -ment, or an equivalent Old French compound. encrust (v.) Look up encrust at Dictionary.com also incrust, 1640s, from Middle French encruster, incruster (Modern French encroûter), from Latin incrustare "to coat or cover with crust," from in- (see in- (2)) + crusta (see crust (n.)). Related: Encrusted; encrusting. encrypt (v.) Look up encrypt at Dictionary.com 1968 in telecommunications, a back-formation from encryption (1964), or from en- (1) + crypt (n.) on the notion of "hidden place" (see crypto-). Related: Encrypted; encrypting. enculturation (n.) Look up enculturation at Dictionary.com 1948 (Herskovits), from en- (1) + culturation (compare acculturation). encumber (v.) Look up encumber at Dictionary.com early 14c., "burden, vex, inconvenience," from Old French encombrer "to block up, hinder, thwart," from Late Latin incombrare, from in- "in" (see in- (2)) + combrus "barricade, obstacle," probably from Latin cumulus "heap" (see cumulus). Meaning "hinder, hamper" is attested in English from late 14c. Related: Encumbered; encumbering. encumbrance (n.) Look up encumbrance at Dictionary.com c. 1300, "trouble, difficulty; ensnarement, temptation," from Old French encombrance "encumbrance, obstruction; calamity, trouble," from encombrer (see encumber). Meaning "that which encumbers, impediment, obstacle" is from late 14c. in English. encyclical (adj.) Look up encyclical at Dictionary.com in reference to ecclesiastical letters meant for wide circulation (for example, a letter sent by a pope to all bishops), 1640s, from Late Latin encyclicus, from Latin encyclius, from Greek enkyklios "in a circle, circular" (see encyclopedia). As a noun, from 1837. encyclopaedia (n.) Look up encyclopaedia at Dictionary.com see encyclopedia. The Latin spelling survives as a variant because many of the most prominent ones (such as Britannica) have Latin names. encyclopedia (n.) Look up encyclopedia at Dictionary.com 1530s, "general course of instruction," from Modern Latin encyclopaedia (c. 1500), thought to be a false reading by Latin authors of Greek enkyklios paideia taken as "general education," but literally "training in a circle," i.e. the "circle" of arts and sciences, the essentials of a liberal education; from enkyklios "circular," also "general" (from en "in;" see in + kyklos "circle;" see cycle (n.)) + paideia "education, child-rearing," from pais (genitive paidos) "child" (see pedo-). Modern sense of "reference work arranged alphabetically" is from 1640s, often applied specifically to the French "Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers" (1751-65). Related: Encyclopedist. encyclopedic (adj.) Look up encyclopedic at Dictionary.com 1816, from encyclopedia + -ic. end (n.) Look up end at Dictionary.com Old English ende "end, conclusion, boundary, district, species, class," from Proto-Germanic andja (source also of Old Frisian enda, Old Dutch ende, Dutch einde, Old Norse endir "end;" Old High German enti "top, forehead, end," German Ende, Gothic andeis "end"), originally "the opposite side," from PIE antjo "end, boundary," from root ant- "opposite, in front of, before" (see ante). Worldly wealth he cared not for, desiring onely to make both ends meet. [Thomas Fuller, "The History of the Worthies of England," 1662] Original sense of "outermost part" is obsolete except in phrase ends of the earth. Sense of "destruction, death" was in Old English. Meaning "division or quarter of a town" was in Old English. The end "the last straw, the limit" (in a disparaging sense) is from 1929. The end-man in minstrel troupes was one of the two at the ends of the semicircle of performers, who told funny stories and cracked jokes with the middle-man. U.S. football end zone is from 1909 (end for "side of the field occupied by one team" is from 1851). The noun phrase end-run is attested from 1893 in U.S. football; extended to military tactics by 1940. End time in reference to the end of the world is from 1917. To end it all "commit suicide" is attested by 1911. Be-all and end-all is from Shakespeare ("Macbeth" I.vii.5). end (v.) Look up end at Dictionary.com Old English endian "to end, finish, abolish, destroy; come to an end, die," from the source of end (n.). Related: Ended; ending. end-paper (n.) Look up end-paper at Dictionary.com in book-binding, "blank leaves before and after the text of a book," 1818, from end (n.) + paper (n.). endanger (v.) Look up endanger at Dictionary.com late 15c., from en- (1) "make, put in" + danger. Related: Endangered; endangering. Endangered species recorded by 1958. endangerment (n.) Look up endangerment at Dictionary.com 1640s (Milton), from endanger + -ment. Earlier was endangering (1580s). endear (v.) Look up endear at Dictionary.com 1580s, "to enhance the value of," also "win the affection of," from en- (1) "make, put in" + dear (adj.). Meaning "to make dear," the main modern sense, is from 1640s. Related: Endeared; endearing.
Movable shelving is every librarian's dream. It works under the following assumption: books that are requested to be pulled from the library stacks are done so one at a time. It therefore follows that only one aisle, the aisle the requested book is in, is needed at any given moment. Therefore more books can be stored in any given place by keeping them compressed and just moving the aisle around. Sound like some strange 6th dimensional fairy tale? Don't be too hasty. In their most primitive form, movable shelves are human powered - cranks at the end of each stack wheel the shelves left or right and, in the process, move all the shelves in the line creating a aisle. Clamps on each stack would lock them in place to reduce the risk of injury. The cream of the crop are computer controlled monstrosities with keys to prevent unauthorized access. Because these particular versions are motor-driven, the risk of getting crushed by some other unsuspecting page is much greater than with the lower-tech versions. To combat this, pressure sensitive floor panels are generally installed that (as well as controlling the aisle's lighting) also act as an emergency cut-off switch to keep the shelves from moving if they detect anyone in the aisles. The only problem with that system is in libraries with incredibly high stacks - these movable systems negate the possibility of movable ladders, so some shelf climbing is necessary. If you're clambering up a 20-foot high bookshelf, your feet aren't in contact with the floor and... To combat this, pages (hopefully!) bring their library carts into the aisle with them to keep the floor weighted down. Log in or registerto write something here or to contact authors.
Thomas Barret Thomas Barret was born in November 1742. He was the son of Albany residents Robert and Maria Martin Barret. He grew up on Albany's Southside but lost his mother in 1754. His father died two years later. In November 1765, he married Albany native Elizabeth Van Zandt at the Albany Dutch church. The marriage probably was childless. He was a member of St. Peter's Anglican church. After first living with his mother-in-law, his modest home on the corner of South Pearl and Beaver Streets was an Albany landmark for almost fifty years. He was a cooper who operated a cooperage on a lot near his home. In 1790, his household included his wife, a boy, and two slaves. A decade later, the census showed only the aging couple living in their first ward home. In 1767, Thomas Barret was a private in the Albany militia. In May 1775, he was elected captain in the first ward watch. A month later, he "resigned" that commission. In May 1775, he was paid for making flour casks for the Albany Committee. In June 1776, his fortunes took an abrupt turn when this Albany native was one of those loyalists arrested and jailed for drinking to the King's health. At first, he refused to sign the non importation Association but later relented and was released from jail. The nature of his objection was not stated. He may have continued without incident until 1778 when he was among those exempted from military service. After the war, he was able to resume coopering at his landmark location near the Presbyterian meeting house. In 1785, he was appointed roadmaster for the first ward and later was paid for services by the city government. Thomas Barret filed a will in January 1788. He died in December 1813. The will passed probate in March 1818. biography in-progress the people of colonial Albany Sources: The life of Thomas Barret is CAP biography number 7235. This sketch is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources. first posted: 1/10/07
The idea of separated medications that only mix inside the body at a desired location is an old one, but it’s never been possible with something that can be injected directly into the bloodstream. Made with three needles, a blast of electricity, and a thorough knowledge of fluid dynamics, these capsules are the first step toward achieving that goal. In a new paper in Applied Physics Letters, scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China and Ohio State University describe a way to produce medicine that is small enough to be injected into the bloodstream, but remains in two parts outside of its target area. It can then be mixed together once it’s already inside the body. For physically taxing treatments, like those involving chemotherapy drugs, this could vastly reduce damage to the body—and consequently, the suffering of the patient. The production involves two needles running inside yet another needle. All three have fluid running through them. In the case of the capsules pictured, it’s red and blue paraffin wax for the two finer needles, and sodium alginate in the other. Sodium alginate is made from the walls of algae and is used as a gelling agent in foods like jellies, ice cream, and milkshakes. When it breaks up into drops and falls into a solution of calcium chloride (used in foods like tofu and soybean curds), it turns from a liquid to a gel. This gel has little, separate micro-droplets of wax inside, but the most inventive part of the experiment is determining how many wax droplets are in each gel drop. The tiny wax droplets and the larger flow of sodium alginate all drop from the same place. When they leave the needle, they’re blasted with high-speed gas, which makes them break up into drops. They also drop through an electric field. This ensures that the water droplets are a uniform size, with roughly the same content. The team can use the needle size and the flow rate to vary the size of the capsules. Right now they are 100 microns across. The team hopes to get the capsules down to six microns across, at which point they’ll be able to go safely careening through the bloodstream. Once inside the body, the inner contents of the capsules can be mixed at certain points using vibrations. The outer capsules can also be dissolved. This means that a person can get medication that mixes at only one place (near the tissue that actually needs the medication), and that it can be dispersed when no longer needed. [Steady cone-jet mode in compound-fluidic electro-flow focusing for fabricating multicompartment microcapsules]
The pantheon, codified by Pavar in ancient times, contains five Gods and five Cohorts of Stability as well as five Gods and five Cohorts of Change. These are the normal gods that characters will find it helpful to serve. The gods are immanent and active in the world of men, myth, and legend. History describes the appearances of gods, cohorts, demons, and lesser creatures fighting on one side or the other. The gods are powerful but not very responsive. The cohorts are less powerful but slightly more responsive. The Concordat prevents direct conflict between worshipers of the various gods, in civilized areas. The pantheon of Pavar is characterized by balance and symmetry: the five Lords of Stability, each attended by his/her respective Cohort, standing in eternal opposition to the five Lords of Change and their attendant Cohorts. Rulership, Wisdom, War, Feminine Concerns, and the Afterlife are all arranged in two opposing ranks, one striving for Stability, Light, Peace, etc. while the other strives for Change, Darkness, Violence, and Selfishness. Much of the intrigue surrounding the succession of Tsolyani emperors has to do with whether Stability or Change will control the Petal Throne and Avanthar itself. The struggle is a perpetual "see-saw" in character: of the sixty-two Tsolyani emperors, roughly half worshipped one of the Tlomitlanyal (Lords of Stability), and half one of the Tlokiriqaluyal (Lords of Change). Again, the reigning characteristics are balance and symmetry. But is this truly so? Close inspection soon reveals that the situation is more complex than ten gods of light forever fighting ten gods of darkness. Within the ranks of the Tlomitlanyal, Hnalla, Thumis, and Belkhanu are closer to one another than they are to either Avanthe or Karakan. The latter two often bitterly oppose the pacifism of the "gentle" three. Even so, Thumis is one of the most mythologically active deities in the pantheon. Karakan's concern with warfare often forces his alignment with Vimuhla, his counterpart among the Tlokiriqaluyal. The same goes for Avanthe, she often sides with Dlamelish over feminine issues. Vimuhla and Dlamelish also have sharp antipathies toward Sarku, the God of the Undead. Sarku aligns most closely with Hru'u and Ksarul, but even this isn't that solid an alliance. Neither cold and devious Hru'u nor secretive Ksarul seem to like Sarku much (and yet the three make up the so-called "Dark Trinity"). But then, no one likes Sarku much. Just take a look at a pair of Kevuk dice: Vimuhla is opposed not by Karakan, as one would expect, but rather by Sarku. There are also pariah deities who want either to eliminate every atom of every molecule in each of the multiverse's infinite planes (the Goddess of the Pale Bone), or to return Tekumel back to the universe of humanspace (the One Other). The One Who Is, the One of Fears, the Mad One of Hl'kku are also known. The worshipers of these gods are killed when found and are not protected by the Concordat. When requesting Intervention from a God or Cohort, use the requesting Priest's Religion skill. Once the ceremony is performed the priest rolls against a Target Number based on whither they are requesting from a God or a Cohort. Retribution is likely regardless of the God or Cohort. On a simple success there is NO effect. If they get better than a normal success, the God or Cohort responds grudgingly. Failure brings Retribution. The following offerings can improve your chances of helpful divine intervention. For each 5,000 Kaitars value offered, For each Amulet offered, For each enchanted weapon, suit of armour, helmet, or shield offered, For each spell on a scroll of spells offered, For each Eye offered, For each Miscellaneous Magical item offered, For each magical book offered The Gods and Cohorts of Change will except sacrifice of intelligent beings. For each slave or torchbearer, For each average intelligent captive, For each intelligent "Notable" captive The Gods and Cohorts of Stability will only except Undead and large or dangerous creatures as sacrifices. Both will except self sacrifices. For each average intelligent being, For each intelligent "Notable" being
Dangerous Animals in the World I'm writing about deadly animals who will use sheer power, speed, and muscle to hunt prey. Check out some of my future hubs to see venomous hunters and other types of hunters in the wild! Great White Shark The Great White Shark is one of the most feared predators in the world. A full-grown adult can reach lengths up to 25 feet and weigh over two tons. Rows of serrated teeth help to rip through flesh. Surprisingly enough, the bite force of a Great White isn't too threatening to humans. That is why sharks will latch onto prey and violently shake it, utilizing the serrated teeth. Great Whites are the only known fish species to 'spy hop' or stick their head above the surface of the water to look for prey. In fact, sight is so important to Great Whites that the moment before striking prey, the shark will roll its eyes back into its head to protect them from harm. Many Great Whites have scars from prey fighting back, which justifies the rolling back of the eyes. Great Whites can hear extremely well and even can detect motions from over a mile away. The Great White's face contains jelly-filled pouches that can detach muscle movement and heartbeats using electric fields. A struggling fish nearby can be detected easily and is equivalent to a ringing of the dinner bell. That is why shark experts say to be calm when encountered with a shark because they can literally sense your fear. Great Whites are also the only species that has been spotted leaping out the water to attach prey. They race at speeds of thirty MPH and rush at prey from below. Green Anaconda Weighing over 200 pounds and twenty feet long, South America's Green Anaconda makes the list. Most Green Anacondas will eat anything, but in the plains of South America, the majority of their diet consists of coppabara. Copabara is the largest rodent on Earth, weighing in at over 100 pounds. The Green Anaconda is considered to be a constrictor, meaning it uses its tremendous body and incredible strength to squeeze its prey to death. Every time the prey exhales, the anaconda will tighten its grip, constricting air and blow flow, soon causing strokes and cardiac arrest. Using its six rows of teeth, the entire meal is swallowing whole. Anacondas' lower jaws are not fused to their skulls, so flexible ligaments permit the jaw to open extremely wide. The meal, however big it may be, must be swallowed whole and digested. A Green Anaconda may eat a meal up to half its body weight in one gulp. Such a meal can hold this reptile for months but will actually take weeks to fully digest. Australia's Dingo is the top predator on its continent. Although it may look like the family pet, herds of Dingo are the most dangerous animals in the world. The main diet consists of Gray Kangaroos, which are nearly twice the size of an average Dingo. The Dingo pack will actually take turns chasing a large and faster prey, eventually tiring it out. This relay method reveals the intelligence of Dingos. Dingos are also seen feasting on domesticated cattle (sheep, cows). Most packs work as a hierarchy, with a pecking order in line. Grizzly Bear Despite common knowledge, grizzly bears are not just carnivores. They have a row of flat teeth used for grinding on grass and plants, prying open shells, and for, well, eating anything else imaginable. A grizzly bear has been spotted eating garbage from a garbage can. Weighing in at over 1,000 pounds and close ten feet, the grizzly's main two methods of eating requires tremendous speed and tremendous concentration. Grizzlies will chase down elk or bison, reaching speeds of 25 miles per hour or even faster. They will also sit by a river to feast on fish swimming by. The famous image of grizzles snatching fish traveling upstream is true. An average-sized adult grizzly must eat around thirty to forty pounds of food to hold itself and be able to store for winter months. Crocodiles, particularly saltwater Crocodiles, are one of the most scariest species on Earth. Reaching lengths of twenty feet or more, crocodiles rely on stealth and brute bite force to hunt prey. A crocodile can exerted a bite force of 1500 pounds per square inch (psi). That is five times stronger than that of a Great White Shark. That bite, combined with the famous "death roll" (in which the crocodile will roll over in the water to finish off prey) offers no second chances to its prey. Crocodiles have extremely sensitive senses, which allows for them to stealth under water and wait for prey to come to them. Most crocodiles can easily take down an animal twice its weight. Spanish Fighting Bull In Spain, the Spanish Fighting Bull is an honored animal. Used for entertainment, these animals are captured and put in the arena to fight a matador. Although it is the bull's "job" to die, sharp horns, incredible speeds, and brute strength allow the Spanish Fighting Bull to make the list. Weighing in at 1500 pounds and clocking in at speeds of thirty MPH, the Spanish Fighting Bull poses a threat to any unlucky soul in its path. Unfortunately, these animals have been responsible for the death of matadors and spectators in the arena. The Tiger is the largest of the four big cat species. These animals use stealth and bursts of speed to take down prey. Despite common knowledge, tigers actually have poor stamina. If the prey prolongs the chase enough, the tiger will tire and force to give up. Every single tiger in the world has its own distinct pattern of stripes. Tigers utilize these stripes to sneak up on prey and make a quick strike. A tiger must eat about twelve pounds of meat a day to survive. Tigers tend to be loners; they hunt solo and, except for mating season, are very territorial towards other tigers. This explains why tigers tend to be unsuccessful when hunting: they have no help. Despite common knowledge, the Hippopotamus, or "Hippo", is extremely aggressive and territorial. Reaching heights of fifteen feet and weights of 8,000 pounds, an angry Hippo is a dangerous sight. They have been known to charge and chase down humans to defend themselves. The Hippo spends most of its time in the water grazing on vegetation. If disturbed, it will open its mouth to show two canines nearly eight inches long (sometimes longer). Hippos frequently have scars or bruises all over their bodies. This is because they work as a group in a hierarchy system. More by this Author Comments 2 comments peanutroaster profile image peanutroaster 5 years ago from New England Don't forget to include the deadliest animal - humans. the50marathons17 profile image the50marathons17 5 years ago from Long Island, New York Author Very true! Forgot about those humans! 0 of 8192 characters used Post Comment Click to Rate This Article
We have yet to make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. If they're out there — and surely they must be — we haven't the foggiest idea what they might be like. Or do we? Given what we know about the universe and our own civilization, we should be able to make some educated guesses. And in fact, several decades ago, a Russian astrophysicist came up with a classification system to describe hypothetical aliens. Here's how the Kardashev Scale works. Top image by Steve Burg. The scale was devised by Nikolai S. Kardashev, a Soviet-era cosmologist who is still active today. Though he's 81, Kardashev works as the deputy director of the Russian Space Research Institute at Moscow's Russian Academy of Sciences. During the 1950s, while both his parents were in Stalin's slave labor camps, he became an astronomy student at Moscow University's Mechanics and Mathematics department. His primary interest was in astrophysics and the theoretic potential for wormholes, but he also shared a fascination with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETIs). It was around this time that Frank Drake launched Project Ozma — a pioneering attempt to locate ETI's by scanning the sky for radio emissions. Accordingly, Kardashev began to wonder if a good number of alien civilizations might be millions of years ahead of us, and if so, what their radio signatures might be like. Just how "loud," he surmised, could alien transmissions truly get? This prompted Kardashev to write his seminal 1963 paper, "Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations." In it, he proposed a simple numbering system — from one to three — that could be used to classify hypothetical alien civilizations according to the amount of energy at their disposal. More specifically, he wanted to quantify the power available to them for their radio transmissions. Today, Kardashev's scale has been expanded and re-interpreted to include more than just the capacity for communications technology. Astrobiologists and cosmologists now use the scale to simply describe the amount of energy available to an ETI for any kind of purpose. As a result, the scale is often used to speculate about the kinds of technologies and existential modalities that characterize advanced civilizations. Here's how it works. Kardashev Type I In his paper, Kardashev wrote that a Type I civilization would be at a "technological level close to the level presently attained on the Earth, with energy consumption ~4 x 1019 erg/sec." That's about 4 x 1012 Watts. Kardashev's initial intention was to describe a civilization not too far removed from our own (again, for the purpose of rating its communicative capacities) — but one that has yet to exploit all of the solar system's resources (i.e. a pre-stellar ETI). A Type I is typically associated with a hypothetical civilization that has harnessed all the power available to it on its home planet. As physicist Michio Kaku has said, it's a planetary scale civilization that can "control earthquakes, the weather — and even volcanoes." It will have taken advantage of every inch of space, and build "cities on the oceans." For a civilization to attain Type I status, therefore, it needs to capture all of the solar energy that reaches the planet, and all the other forms of energy it produces as well, like thermal, hydro, wind, ocean, and so on. More radically, Type I status would only truly be achieved once the entire planet is physically reconfigured to maximize its energy producing potential. For example, the entire mass of a planet could be reconstituted to take the form of a massive solar array to energize a civilization's power-hungry machinery. Quite obviously, we are not a Type I civilization (at least not by this re-imagining of Kardashev's original description). Not even close. But Kaku predicts that we'll get there eventually, perhaps in a century or two. But it could happen sooner if computational growth continues at its current breakneck pace (see Moravec, Kurzweil, and Bostrom). Hypothetically speaking, an artificial superintelligence (SAI) could get started in about three to four decades (either unilaterally, or by design). Kardashev Type II The next step is a big jump. And indeed, each increment of the Kardashev scale is an order of magnitude greater than the last. Pre-dating Moore's Law and Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Kardashev noticed that the rate of humanity's energy consumption was increasing steadily. He wrote, "...the annual increase in this energy expenditure is placed at 3-4% over the next 60 years, on the basis of statistical findings." Consequently, he predicted that, in about 3,200 years, "the energy consumption will be equal to the output of the Sun per second...i.e. 4 x 1033 erg/sec." This led him to speculate about a Type II civilization. For an ETI to reach K2, it would need to capture the entire energy output of its parent star. The best way to achieve this, of course, is to build a Dyson Sphere. Conjured by Freeman Dyson in 1959, this hypothetical megastructure would envelope a star at a distance of 1 AU and cover an inconceivably large area of 2.72 x 1017 km2, which is around 600 million times the surface area of the Earth. The sun has an energy output of around 4 x 1026 Watts, of which most would be available to do useful work. It's difficult to predict when we ourselves could become a Type II, but physicist Stuart Armstrong says we could start the project in a few decades. And once underway, it would be subject to rapidly escalating construction speeds (fleets of robots would be powered by the newly-constructed portions of the Dyson shell). With all this energy, an advanced civilization — probably one that's postbiological in nature — would use it to power its supercomputers and fuel its other endeavors (like interstellar colonization waves). Kardashev Type III Which leads to the next increment in the scale. Kardashev described a Type III like this: "A civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy, with energy consumption at ~4 x 1044 erg/sec." Needless to say, that's a tremendous amount of energy — somewhere between 1036 Watts to 1037 Watts (give or take a few). Every inch of a K3 galaxy would be colonized, with every scrap of matter — and all its billions of stars — exploited for energy. From the perspective of an outside observer, a galaxy occupied by a K3 civ would appear completely invisible, save for the heat leakage which would register in the far infrared (around 10 microns in wavelength). It would take a civilization anywhere from 100,000 to a million years to transition itself from a Type II to a Type III. Even at modest speeds, it wouldn't take a civilization very long (from a cosmological perspective) to completely colonize a galaxy. From our vantage point, this would look like a hole in a galaxy, or an inexplicably large swath of open space. Take the Boötes Void, for example, a huge chunk of the universe that's almost completely devoid of stars and galaxies. Speculatively speaking, this could be a large portion of the universe that has been overtaken by K3 civilizations. Interestingly, Fermilab's Richard Carrigan has argued that we should look for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations not in our own galaxy, but in neighboring galaxies. His idea is that we should look for civilizations that are transitioning from Type II to Type III. These colonization waves would look like a massive bubble that's spreading outwards from the originating star. Discovery's Ray Villard elaborates: What would an advanced civ do with all this energy? Well, if many futurists are to be believed, flipping one's and zero's. A Type II and III civilization may be completely based in digital substrate. Kardashev Type IV? V? Though Kardashev never went past a Type III, others have taken his idea to the next level. A Type IV would be an ETI (or merging groups of ETIs) that has harnessed all the power of a galactic supercluster, and a type V would — you guessed it — have the entire power of the universe at its disposal. Unfounded assumptions? While the Kardashev scale offers considerable food for thought, it is not without its problems. First and foremost, and stating the obvious, no empirical evidence exists indicating the presence of K2 or K3 civilizations in our galaxy and/or galactic neighborhood. In fact, the Fermi Paradox — what's been dubbed "The Great Silence" — would indicate that civilizations never become migratory, thus making a Type III very unlikely. If Kardashev civilizations exist, we should expect to see large swaths of neighboring galaxies "disappear" from the visual spectrum — yet we do not. We haven't found any Dyson spheres, either. But that doesn't mean they don't exist. Dysonian SETI is largely underway — an attempt to find the "gaps" in the stars. Another problem with the Kardashev Scale is the assumption that advanced civilizations have an insatiable appetite for energy. No doubt, a K3 civ seems a bit excessive. It's not a stretch to suggest that a Type II civilization might be as far as these things go. Even a Type I for that matter. Ultimately, it all comes down to the consumptive needs of an "end stage" civilization — one that has successfully adapted to postbiological, post-SAI existence. Alternately, civilizations may choose to avoid these trajectories, either to honor some kind of Prime Directive, or for self-preservational purposes. Indeed, turning a galaxy into a massive supercomputer may be the last thing an advanced civilization wants to do. ETIs may have other desires and goals that preclude it from this kind of intergalactic imperialism. But we don't know for sure. So in the meantime, let's be sure to keep listening and looking. Images: David Darling, National News and Pictures, "Trantor from Space" by Slawek Wojtowicz.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012 An Interview with Herodotus To celebrate the publication of Reading Herodotus (on Kindle - paperback and hardback versions out 31st July) by Debra Hamel, I am delighted to present an interview with the man himself... Herodotus by R. Seidemann Questions about Reading Herodotus. CD: So, Herodotus - who exactly are you? H: Well, some millennia ago the answer to that question would have been fairly straightforward. I'm a travel writer, really. I was born in Halicarnassus, in what you moderns call Turkey, on the coast of the Aegean Sea. It was a multilingual community--people in the street speaking in the various Greek dialects, of course, but also Carians and Persians and traders from the Levant. It sparked my interest in faraway places. I spent a good portion of my prime--we're talking the fifth century here, mind, and that's B.C.--traveling around the then known world, and I wrote about the things I saw and learned. They call me the Father of History, because no one before me had written anything quite like what I came up with--my researches, the History, as it's called. So, that's me. The complicating factor is that it's currently 2012 A.D. My survival into your modern era is a mysterious issue best left to scientists and philosophers. CD: Tell us a little more about your greatest work. Why did you write it, for instance. H: A general curiosity about the unknown sparked, as I suggested, by the multicultural milieu in which I spent my formative years. There was a lot of unknown back then, too. I dare say it was easier to be an explorer then than it is now as there was so very much left to explore. At any rate, my History is, generally speaking, an account of the expansion of the Persian Empire under its first four kings--Cyrus, Darius, Cambyses, and Xerxes. But that's the general framework of the thing, onto which I pack a lot of stories and geographic and ethnographic information. All of it culminates in the two Persian Wars of the early fifth century B.C., when Persia invaded Greece and was twice repulsed by the Greeks, first by the Athenians, fighting more or less on their own, and the second time by a coalition of Greek allies--people who regularly fought wars against one another and couldn't agree on much other than that the Persians could not be allowed to take over Greece. They, the Greeks, were vastly outnumbered and yet, against all odds, they survived, beat back the Persians, and went on to thrive in subsequent decades. The battles were the stuff of legend in my day, and rightly so: it sounds almost trite to say it, but the future of civilization really was hanging in the balance at Marathon and Salamis and Plataea. We're all living in a world that was shaped by the Greeks who fought those battles. CD: And why do you feel Ms Hamel needs to update it now? H: It's been a long time since I wrote the History, and it goes without saying that a lot has changed since then. Back in the day my audience used to listen, rapt, as I described the eight principal rivers that bisected Scythia. Now, not so much. Tastes have changed, and information is much easier to come by now. Any child nowadays can log onto Google Maps and see for himself what rivers run through Scythia. No need to read about it from me. So, if you're out to introduce the History to a new audience, your task is two-fold. You'll want to cull some of the information I included that is not especially interesting to the modern reader. And you'll want to provide readers with the background information I neglected to include because I could assume my audience was familiar with it. Hamel does both while maintaining the general outline of my work. I think the whole project is rather exciting. CD: I have noticed you are on Twitter. Please tell me what you think of 'Social Networking'. H: It's the closest thing to magic that I know of. A global dialogue. A global agora, with ideas and information shared virtually instantaneously. How amazing is that? It's the kind of thing where you catch yourself thinking about how astonished people in my day would have been if the capacity to tweet were suddenly available to them. But you can't do that, of course. The existence of Twitter implies the existence of the internet and all the other modern technologies that led to this point in history. Besides, a Twittering man, 2500 years ago, would have been a magician, or a god. Men have become gods. Kind of you to mention my Twitter account, @iHerodotus. I'm using it to post an abbreviated version of my History, one section per tweet, one tweet per day. We're in book four now. The whole thing should be finished in January of 2015. All the tweets, by the way are collected at, so people can catch up on what they've misse CD: What are the bare essentials for a classical period travel writer/historian? In other words - what do you pack? H: Very different from what I'd pack today! A GPS would have been nice. Or a halfway decent map. But I had parchment, of course, for notes, a good knife or two, a blanket, a sturdy hat. Various types of currency, though Athenian owls could open a lot of doors. Onions. Olive oil. A towel. CD: If you had to pick out the most weird finding in your Histories - what would it be? H: What leaps to mind is the way in which the Scythians memorialized their kings. A year after a king died the Scythians killed fifty of his servants and fifty horses and they stuffed the corpses and arranged them in a merry-go-round-like display around his tomb. I go into more detail in my book, but you get the idea. I'm not particularly judgmental, but people do some strange things. General Questions. CD: Do you have any connection with snails? H: Not to harp on the Scythians, but I refer to them somewhere in my History [4.46] as phereoikos, which means "house carrier," that is, someone or something that carries its house with them. The Scythians were house carriers because they were nomads. The term has also been used of snails, though, who of course carry around their shells. Someone once told me that in northern Europe there were giant, man-sized snails that the locals hunted for food. After they'd killed and eaten the snails they'd clean out the shells and live in them as if they were snails themselves, and there were whole villages of these snail homes. But I never saw any of this myself and I'm not sure that I believe it, frankly. When I was a boy one of the stories that got told a lot was about Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos (before my time), who ostensibly had it all: he'd enjoyed a string of military successes; he had more than adequate wealth and everything that went with it. For all his success, though, and however worthy a man he may have been, he was destined to die a horrible, really awful death. And it happened that there was simply no way for him to avoid this fate. I found his predicament...maybe sad isn't the right word, but chilling, not so much because of his individual fate, awful though it was, but because of the larger truth to which it pointed: that even the most fortunate of us can fall utterly. Fate, as they say, can turn on a dime. It's the wretched lot of humanity. CD: What is happiness? H: A life, lived well, that also ends well. H: I usually go online. I check my Twitter account, Google myself, that sort of thing. Blogger Anne S said... Wonderful interview - very amusing. Herodotus sounds kinda cool. Will check out Debra Hamel's book. Fri Jul 20, 11:14:00 am Blogger Clare Dudman said... Thanks Anne - it sure is! I highly recommend. Fri Jul 20, 11:21:00 am Blogger Paul Halpern said... Fun interview. I'm wondering if he revealed his secret to longevity. Maybe it's his Mediterranean diet! Sun Jul 22, 03:47:00 pm Blogger Clare Dudman said... Could be, Paul! I read that one of the reasons for the current Greek economic crisis was the longevity of Herodotus's ancestors. Mon Jul 23, 08:58:00 pm Post a Comment Comments are subject to moderation. << Home
Culture Explains Why Smoking Declines Faster in Certain Countries Image: Flickr, Julie In January 1964, the U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health published a landmark report warning of the serious health effects of tobacco. It was not the first such report but it is probably the most famous because it kick-started a global campaign to reduce the levels of smoking and the deaths it causes. In the 50 years since then, the patterns of smoking all over the world have changed dramatically. In the U.S., the numbers of smokers peaked in 1965 and have fallen precipitously since then. Similar patterns have occurred in all industrialized countries. But here’s a curious thing. While the general pattern of smoking has been similar—an increase in numbers followed by a decrease—the rate of change has been dramatically different from one country to another. In other words, some countries adopted smoking more quickly and stopped smoking more quickly than others. That raises an important question. How is smoking behavior transmitted through a population and why does it differ from one country to another? a graph of social trend data modelling Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of John Lang at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a couple of pals. These guys have gathered the largest historical data set on smoking ever compiled and study how its prevalence is correlated with the types of societies involved. Finally, they create a mathematical model of how smoking behavior is transmitted through a society. Treating smoking like an epidemic in this way finally reveals what’s going on. They say their results can explain the rate of change of smoking in various industrialized countries. And they say the crucial difference is the level of individualism in each society. Perhaps the most extreme difference in smoking patterns come from the U.S. and Sweden (see graphic above). In 1920, a relatively small portion of both populations smoked, less than 10%. In the U.S. this proportion rose dramatically to just under 40% of the population in 1965 and then fell to just under 20% in 2010. By contrast, in Sweden the number of smokers peaked at around 30% in the early ’70s and then declined to around 20% in 2010. So the Swedes adopted smoking more slowly, peaked later, and then stopped smoking at a slower rate than people in America. And yet the Swedes had access to the same data about the dangers of smoking at more or less the same time. One crucial difference between Swedish and American society is the level of individualism. This is essentially the emphasis on the worth of the individual as opposed to the emphasis on the interdependence of individuals: individualism versus collectivism. This measure of society was promoted in the 1960s by Geert Hofstede, a Dutch social psychologist who developed ways to measure a set of cultural dimensions for comparing cultures. These include things like uncertainty avoidance; the strength of the social hierarchy; masculinity versus femininity and so on. In the 1960s and 1970s, Hofstede surveyed more than 100,000 IBM employees to measure how these dimensions varied in different countries around the world. And since then, his ideas have become increasingly influential. Hofstede found that societies in countries such as the U.S., the U.K., and Australia tend to emphasize individualism while societies in countries such as Sweden, France, and Japan place much greater emphasis on collectivism. In other words, in these countries there is greater social pressure to conform. Psychologists have always assumed that patterns of behavior change more quickly in countries that emphasize collectivism. Once an idea has taken hold, the pressure to conform means it spreads rapidly. “It has previously been argued that social support mechanisms in collectivistic societies make it more likely that a person will stop smoking,” say Lang and co. And conversely, in countries that emphasize individualism, patterns of behavior must change more slowly because there is less social pressure to conform. The puzzle is that the data on smoking shows exactly the reverse. Sweden was much slower to adopt smoking and much slower to stop. Now Lang and co. think they know why. They’ve created a mathematical model that includes the effects of social pressure allowing them to simulate the way behavior spreads through societies with different levels of individualism. The model reveals why Sweden stopped smoking more slowly. “Our model suggests that … social inertia will inhibit decisions to stop smoking more strongly in collectivistic societies than in individualistic societies,” say Lang and co. Conversely, the social freedoms in individualistic societies allow anybody to make a decision to stop smoking more easily. That’s an interesting result with significant implications for government health policies. It shows that differences in culture affect the dynamics of social spreading processes in a measurable way. That will be crucial for the way that governments design strategies to help people stop smoking. “Interventions designed to discourage smoking should be tailored diﬀerently in societies or social groups whose cultures diﬀer in how they value individualism versus collectivism,” say Lang and co. What’s more, smoking behavior is just one example of a socially contagious phenomenon. Lang and co’s approach should also apply to other forms of cultural transmission. In general, this kind of transmission should lead to slower change in societies that value collectivism versus individualism. And that’s an idea that could influence everything from drugs policy to social network studies to the marketing of beef burgers. Ref: : The Influence of Societal Individualism on a Century of Tobacco Use: Modelling the Prevalence of Smoking This article originally published at MIT Technology Review here
It's been such a long time since I was in school that I can't remember whether the problem I am dealing with would be classed as Algebra or whether it would belong in another category so please forgive me if this is not the right forum. This is also my first post here. I am trying to create a formula that will express a calculation that involves data collection so I suspect this might be PreCalculus, which I remember almost failing my freshman year of college (fall of 1976). Possibly I had a bad teacher as up until then I had always done very well in math. The formula that I am looking for is complex and probably has sub-formulas, so I will describe the situation rather than jumping into my version of it. Please move this post to the appropriate forum. Situation: I want to award a group of people for doing various good behaviors. I've divided these up into twelve tasks or activities I can measure. Each time they do one of these activities I assign certain points. I call each task an "activity" so I've assigned it the symbol A. And each of the tasks has a sub name. So, for instance, A_{a} would represent the performance of the first type of task. To even communicate this idea is hard for me because I would like to be able to also represent multiple performances of the same type of task. So, for instance, A_{a1} might be the first time that type of activity is done and A_{a2} the second time. I am afraid to express it this way though, because, from my recollection, to place a number next to a letter means to multiply it. Here I am simply wishing to represent it. (And, of course, the second challenge will be learning Latex so I can communicate with you here in the first place). In any event, let me describe the situation further. The activities are performed by many people in many locations. Each location has several classes: a village (z for zipcode), a city (c), a county (a for area), a state (s), a region (r), a nation (n) and the globe (g). I wish to designate a specific dollar amount for each of these location classes that I will distribute to qualifying participants. I wish to also assign a value, or number of points, to each type of activity that I can change from time to time. Let's call that v, but there would be a v for activities a-z, etc. So I suppose, (am I correct?), that this would be expressed v_{a} and v_{b} etc. - the value of activity a, the value of activity b. No? Next, I want two special types of good behavior- time donated and dollars donated - to be used in the calculation in such a way that the total activity points will be multiplied by the product of a formula that involves these. The formula is still more complex. There are an unlimited number of charitable organizations. Each of these gets a unique value, (1-7), that is the result of votes by the participants. The voting process is itself not simply an average score. Each voter has an influence value that is based on another formula. I will get to that formula in some other post. For now, I suppose we could call the influence value i. And we might call the influence value for participant 1 i_{p1}, (though again here, I am concerned that this actually means multiplying rather than representing: please help me disambiguate!). I am looking for a rating from 1-7 for each charity. I understand what I want but my ability to express mathematical formulas is poor. There is much more to all this but I'll start here. Once a charity has a value, then I want to sum all donations of time and of money to any charity a participant has made, multiply that sum by that value, total all such giving to every charity for that participant, and give that total a name, such as r (for radiance). I will then take the radiance value and compare it with the radiance value of all of the other participants so that I can place their radiance value as compared to others on a curve. The curve will have values from 1-7, just as the charity values will. The curved value I will call the halo effect (H). To figure out what dollar amount to send each participant I will multiply their total activity points (A) times their halo effect (H) so points (P) are determined P=AH. I will take the dollar amount designated for each location class and distribute it proportionately to each participant in that class. So, say in the zip code 12345 there are 100 participants and the award amount for that zip code is designated as $1000. All participants in that zip code counted together and considered apart from other zip codes have earned halo effect adjusted activity points (P) of 1,000,000. The formula that I am looking for is the calculation for a single participant. So let's say Tom Smith has P=10,000. That means he has 1% of P for zip 12345. Since the designation is $1000 to be distributed to participants of that zip code he gets an award of $10. How would I express this algebraically for Tom Smith? Tom would then have rewards coming for city, area, county, state, region, nation and globe that would be added together. The result would be Tom's total reward. I hope I have asked this question in the right place and in a way that is clear. I have a good idea that I would like to implement but I need to communicate it accurately. Thanks in advance for any help.
computed tomography (CT) (redirected from computed tomography CT) computed tomography (CT) used in sports medicine to image the internal structure of joints (e.g. meniscal tears) or to ascertain the extent of brain damage following a head injury. any method that produces images of single tissue planes. In conventional radiology, tomographic images (body-section radiographs) are produced by motion of the x-ray tube and film or by motion of the patient that blurs the image except in a single plane. In reconstruction tomography (CT and PET) the image is produced by a computer program. Called also laminagraphy, planigraphy, body-section technique. computerized axial tomography see computed tomography (below). computed tomography (CT) a revolutionary radiological imaging modality that uses computer processing to generate an image (CT scan) of the tissue density in a 'slice' about 0.5 inch thick through the patient's body. Called also computerized axial tomography (CAT) and computerized transaxial tomography (CTAT). Because CT is noninvasive and has high contrast resolution, it has replaced some radiographic procedures using contrast media. However, in some areas the injection of contrast further enhances the image. CT also has a better spatial resolution than scintillation imaging (about 1 mm for CT compared with 15 mm for a scintillation camera). positron emission tomography (PET) a combination of computed tomography and scintillation scanning. Natural biochemical substances or drugs tagged with a positron-emitting radioisotope are administered to the subject. After injection, the tagged substance (tracer) is localized in specific tissues like its natural analog. When the isotope decays, it emits a positron, which then annihilates with an electron of a nearby atom, producing two 511 keV gamma rays traveling in opposite directions 180° apart. When the gamma rays trigger a ring of detectors around the subject, the line between the detectors on which the decay occurred is stored in the computer. A computer program (reconstruction algorithm), like those used in computed tomography, produces an image of the distribution of the tracer in the plane of the detector ring. ultrasonic tomography Full browser ?
Members Please log in. • Tweet This • Facebook • RSS First Person: Should Israel Return the Tablets of the Law to Egypt? By Hershel Shanks In 1969, barely two years after the 1967 Six-Day War, a team of Israeli archaeologists made an exploratory excavation at the base of one of the numerous sites in the Sinai Peninsula proposed as Biblical Mt. Sinai. It was not long before a member of the team exposed a piece of rock with a single Hebrew letter on it. This naturally led to more intensive excavation in this area, as a result of which additional, larger pieces of inscribed stones were recovered. They were taken to Israel for further study. When examined by paleographers, experts in dating inscriptions by the shape and form of the letters, they were in agreement that this inscription dated to about 1200 B.C.E. Gradually, the pieces of stone were fitted together. In the end, a few pieces from the end and on the side were missing, but they did not appear to have contained letters. What could be read was clear. Word for word, the inscription was identical to the text of the Ten Commandments. This text appears in the Bible twice, once in Exodus 20 and again in Deuteronomy 5. There are some differences, but the most important is in the Fourth Commandment’s reasons for the observance of the Sabbath. Surprisingly, the text on the reconstructed stone tablets from Sinai follows Deuteronomy more closely than Exodus. It was difficult for the scholars to resist the obvious conclusion: These were the original Tablets of the Law that Moses destroyed when he came down from the mountain and found the Israelites worshiping the Golden Calf. The scholars agreed that, all things considered, it was best to keep the discovery secret, at least for the time being. The tablets as reconstructed were placed in the university vault and forgotten. Since the Arab Spring and the revolution in Egypt, the new Egyptian government has learned of this archaeological discovery and made a formal demand for the return to Egypt of the two Tablets of the Law, claiming that they were recovered in territory under the sovereignty of Egypt. There can be no doubt is where they were found. Is Israel obligated to return them under international law if found in an excavation in the Sinai? In law school this is called a hypothetical; that is, a hypothetical case that tests the application of a legal rule. In this instance: Would Israel be obligated to turn over to Egypt the original Tablets of the Law if they had been discovered in Sinai? The rule generally recognized (like many rules of international law, it has not been formally “enacted” or enunciated in haec verba) is that archaeological objects, especially recently recovered objects, belong to the nation with sovereignty over the place where the object was found unless it was removed legally. Often this makes sense. Sometimes, it doesn’t.a This hypothetical case would surely be one of them. While the nation where the object was found certainly has some claim to the object, so does the culture that produced it. This is especially so where a modern nation has no cultural connection to the culture/nation that ruled the area when the object was created. In this case, modern Egypt occupies largely the same space occupied by ancient Egypt, but it has no cultural relationship to ancient Egypt. Egyptians don’t speak the same language (ancient Egyptians spoke Egyptian; most modern Egyptians speak Arabic), they don’t use the same writing system (hieroglyphic vs. the Arabic alphabet), don’t worship the same gods, don’t revere the same texts, and there is no resonance of ancient Egyptian culture in modern Egyptian culture. The opposite, of course, is true of Israel. If the outcome of this case is not clear, at least it should be discussed. As far as I can tell, it is not. The only cases that are discussed involve demands by Egypt, Greece, Italy, Turkey and perhaps a few other countries for the return of objects from Western, mostly American, museums and universities. The “culture” element may well come up in contexts other than our hypothetical. The caves near Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found lie just within the West Bank. The Palestinians claim the scrolls as part of their heritage. (So does Jordan, which claimed this area when the scrolls were found.) Indeed, much of Israel today occupies ancient Philistia, rather than ancient Israel. Much of Biblical Israel lies in the West Bank. Other questions involve not what Israel has that others could claim but what Israel could claim from others. For instance, the Gezer Calendar, which is a contender for the oldest Hebrew inscription,b was found in the early 20th century at Tel Gezer, a site that lies about halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. This treasure can be seen only in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. The famous Siloam Inscription found in Hezekiah’s tunnel in Jerusalem was also discovered under Ottoman control and taken to Constantinople; it, too, now resides in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. Long ago, I pleaded with the Turkish government to return the Siloam Inscription to Jerusalem.c I did not even get a response. The inscription’s importance to Turkey is reflected in the fact that at that time the inscription was not displayed in a public gallery. Later, I urged the Turkish embassy to consider a short-term loan in connection with the observance of Jerusalem’s 3,000th anniversary in 1996. Same response—no response. Ironically enough, as I write, the Turkish government has refused to lend objects to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London unless they return disputed artifacts. Adding irony to irony, some of the objects Turkey refused to lend the Met were excavated in Saudi Arabia and were taken to Turkey in Ottoman times.1 I confess it is hard to imagine Israel’s giving up the Dead Sea Scrolls. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine the Jordanians giving up one of the most important and intriguing of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is exhibited in the Amman archaeological museum—the Copper Scroll, which probably records the location of hidden treasures from the Jerusalem Temple. There are no easy answers to these questions.
Aussie Space Portal For the Australian Aborigines, the sky was a textbook of morals and stories retold around campfires. They had their own zodiac made of birds, fishes and dancing men and it was the backdrop to their existence for tens of thousands of years. In winter the bright stars we call Arcturus and Vega appeared and the Arnhem Land tribes knew that it was time to make fish traps. Also at that time, tribes in Victoria would look for the pupa of the wood ant. The appearance of the stars we call the Pleiades - or the Seven Sisters - was the sign of the start of the dingo-hunting season. Aborigines saw Magellanic clouds as an old man and woman The Aborigines knew about the white, blue and red stars and had explanations for all of them. They understood the concept of circumpolar stars, that is, those that never dip below the horizon. Eclipses and exploding stars were never regarded as good or bad omens - they were merely part of nature. The Aborigines made bark paintings of the sky as well as rock carvings. Dr Ragbir Bhathal Australian Aboriginies represented our Milky Way Galaxy as a ladder Two Brothers & The Pointer Stars How The Sun Came To Be How The Moon Came To Be The First Fire More Dreamtime Stories..... Two Brothers & The Pointer Stars This is a legend from the Dreamtime about two young brothers who went up into the Northern Fliders Ranges of South Australia to hunt There were two young brothers of the tribe who were known as very clever hunters. The tribe desperately needed meat so the brothers decided to make a hunting trip up into the mountains that we now call the Flinders Ranges. Soon after they had begun to climb they spotted an emu hiding among the boulders and they quickly caught and killed it. They carried it with them as they continued on up into the mountains. However by midday the emu was covered in flies. The brothers tried to drive them away but whatever they did the flies kept returning and increasing in numbers. The brothers became worried that the meat would be spoiled so they eventually decided to light a fire, hoping that the flames and smoke would drive the flies away. It did, but a strong wind blew up and fanned the fire so that it quickly began to spread through the dry grass that was all around. In a short time the whole side of the mountain side was on fire and the two young brothers were trapped. There was no way they could get back down onto the plains so they scrambled onto a rocky ledge and watched terrified as the fire grew stronger and more widespread. The flames coming closer and closer to them. The brothers were frantic, they could barely breathe because of the smoke and with a great effort they began to climb higher up the cliff until they reached the uppermost tip. Even here they were not safe. The fire reached out to them and the flames burned their skin. There was nothing they could do, there was nowhere else to go. In desperation they began to scream and suddenly they discovered they could fly. They flew up high over the flames and smoke of the fire. Higher and higher into the distant world of the night sky. The ancestors, who had been watching, had taken pity on them and given them the power of flight to escape the flames. With relief the two men realised they were at last safe and they made their camp in the sky world where they remain till this day. At night their camp fires can still be seen as 'The Pointers', the two bright stars that point to the 'Southern Cross'. Back To Top How The Sun Came To Be All tribes have their own stories of how the sun first came to be. This tale comes from Central Victoria Early in the Dreamtime, before the sun had begun to shine, there was a young woman who decided to leave her group because the elders would not allow her to marry the lover of her choice. She went a long way from the tribe and hid in a dry, rocky area. There was very little food and water here and no safe place to sleep. The young woman was hungry, thirsty and tired but she would not give up and return to her people. Then she saw that a group of men from her tribe were coming to take her back by force. She ran even further into the most barren part of the land. Soon she was exhausted and bruised by branches and rocks, she was near to death but somehow she managed to keep going. Eventually her ancestor spirits became so concerned for the young woman, they lifted her gently away in to the sky world, where she slept peacefully for a long time. When she awoke she found plenty of food and water and lit a camp fire. She was all alone but not afraid and grateful that she was at last warm and safe. She was as determined as ever to live alone forever rather than return to her tribe but as she looked down on them she saw that most of the men and women were sad that she had gone and her heart began to soften. After a few days she found she was feeling very homesick but now she belonged to the sky world and was unable to return home. As she watched her people she saw that they were cold. Being occupied with the chores of daily life, they could not sit by their camp fires and keep warm as she now could. The young woman decided to build up her camp fire and make it so big that it would warm all the people down below as they went about their day. So all day long she built up her fire to give warmth to her people and as night came she let her fire die down as they were then able to sit by their own camp fires. When she saw how happy this made her people, she made up her mind to light her camp fire afresh each day. Soon her people began to look each morning for her sky-world fire. They were very grateful for the warmth it gave them and they called it 'The Sun'. Back To Top How The Moon Came To Be One of the best known stories of Moon creation, this tale comes from the Northern Territory Japara lived in the Dreamtime and was an excellent hunter. He had a wife and a little son whom he loved dearly. One day, when Japara was out on the plains hunting, a man called Parukapoli visited Japara's wife. He was a lazy man who preferred telling stories to hunting. That day he told many stories to Japara's wife and told them so cleverly that she forgot everything else as she listened and laughed. She even forgot her baby son who crawled out to a nearby stream and toppled in to the water. Japara's wife heared the splash and ran to the water, pulling the boy out, but it was too late, the child had drowned. For many hours she sat by the stream, holding the little dead body in her arms and sobbing as she waited for Japara to return home. When Japara at last arrived and heard the story he was at first very sad but then he became extremely angry with his wife, blaming her for the loss of his precious boy. He took up his hunting weapons and in a blaze of anger, killed his wife. Then he had a fierce fight with Parukapoli. They fought for a long time but at last Parukapoli was also killed. Japara was left with many painful wounds from his fight and a great sadness for the death of his child. The rest of the tribe saw that Japara was badly wounded and distressed but they were very angry with him. They gathered around shouting "You should not have killed your wife. She loved your boy very much and did not mean for such a terrible accident to happen." Dispite his great distress, Japara slowly began to listen to his people and realised that was they said was true. He became very sorry for what he had done. He hurried to where he had left his poor dead wife and son but their bodies had disappeared. Immediately he understood that kind spirits had taken them away to finish their lives in some better place. He called to the spirits to forgive him for being so cruel and told them that he really loved his wife and wanted nothing more than to be with her and their little boy again. The spirits heard his pleas and they knew he was telling the truth. They assured him that his wife and boy were safe with them in the sky world. They would allow Japara to leave the earth world too but as punishment for his cruel deeds he must search the lonely sky world until he found his family. The story tellers say that the moon is the reflection of Japara's camp fire. The lines that are visible on the moon are the reminder of his scars. Some say the moon changes because Japara is forever changing camp as he moves across the dark sky world still searching for his family. Others believe that he has now found his wife and son and that they are exploring the mysterious sky world together. Back To Top The First Fire All cultures have legends to explain how fire was first discovered. This legend comes from the Aboriginal people who lived on the north coast of New South Wales Long ago, before even the Dreamtime, there was a tribe of people who did not live on the earth. They lived in the sky world and their camp was near the two brightest stars so that they could light their fire-sticks from them. They were the only people anywhere who had the use of fire. The people on earth had to manage without it. As even in the sky world, life is not always perfect, there came a time when there was not enough food. Some of the most adventurous of the sky world people decided to come down to the earth world to hunt. "We will hunt possums and collect nuts and berries. It won't take long and we can bring back enough food for everyone," they told their companions. Two brothers, named Kanbi and Jitabidi, brought their fire-sticks down to earth with them and left them smouldering while they went off hunting. Hunting possums turned out to be a lot more difficult than they had expected and the time drew out and the land was very quiet. The fire-sticks became bored and began to play 'chase'. They were very clever at this game, running from place to place, and everywhere they touched the dry grass it caught alight. Gradually all the little fires grew together into one big fire and the smoke could be seen from a long way off. As soon as the sky brothers saw the smoke they left the hunting party and hurried back to put out the fires. The Aboriginal people who lived in the area had also seen the smoke and had come to see what was going on. They had never seen fire before and at first they were very afraid. It did not take them long, however, to realise that this strange phenomonon could be extremely useful to them, providing them with light and warmth. They also noticed that some possums the sky brothers had caught had been cooked by the fire and smelled wonderful and savoury. They realised that they too could make their food more tender and tasty with fire. Before Kanbi and Jitabidi could finish putting out the fires, several of the Aboriginal men lit fire-sitcks for themselves and hurriedly carried them back to their camps. "We must watch over these fire-sticks and carefully keep them burning forever," they old one another. Kanbi and Jitabidi quckily gathered up their playful fire-sticks and returned to their campsite in the sky. They were trerribly afraid the earth people would inflict some punishment on them for having caused such a disturbance. But the earth people were in awe of their sky visitors and rather than being angry about the burnt grass were excited and grateful for the wonderful gift of fire. Back To Top 'From The Dreamtime' by Jean A Ellis BBC News Online Dr. Ragbir Bhathal of the University of Western Sydney Macarthur. More Dreamtime Stories How The Sun Was Made The Southern Cross Fish Moon The Space Portal Traveller's Tales Email Virgo
The term “super food” has recently become buzz worthy in the culinary world. Some may wonder, what exactly are super foods, and how do I incorporate these ingredients into my everyday diet. The Macmillan dictionary defines them as foods that are considered to be beneficial to your health and that may even help with some medical conditions. Beware, many processed food products will boast about containing such ingredients. Don’t be fooled by the hype! When foods are processed, they tend to lose a lot of their nutritional value or become denatured, ultimately resulting in an inferior product. Your best bet? Cooking from scratch! with whole organic foods. Here is my top 5 list of the best super foods. These five foods offer a wide range of essential nutrients, and are extremely versatile making them easy to incorporate into your everyday diet. #1 Kale Kale is an inexpensive cruciferous vegetable that can help ease lung congestion, and is beneficial to your stomach, liver, and immune system. It’s an excellent source of multiple vitamins and other nutrients, including; Vitamin A, B and C. Calcium, and Iron. As well as, Lutein, which helps protect against macular degeneration and Indole 3 carbinol which may protect against colon cancer. #2 Avocados Avocados are an excellent source of healthy raw fat, the kind that help you burn belly fat. They also provide close to 20 essential health-boosting nutrients, including; fiber, potassium, folic acid, and Vitamin B and E. In addition, avocados enable your body to more efficiently absorb fat-soluble nutrients, such as alpha- and beta-carotene and lutein. #3 Organic Coconut Oil Coconut oil is the ideal choice for all types of cooking. In fact, it’s the only oil stable enough to resist mild heat-induced damage. So, whenever you need an oil to cook or bake with, use coconut oil instead of butter, olive oil, vegetable oil, margarine, or any other type of oil called for in recipes. Coconut Oil contains lauric acid—a fat rarely found in nature—that could easily qualify as a “miracle” ingredient because of its unique health promoting properties. Your body converts lauric acid into monolaurin, which has anti-viral, anti-bacterial, and anti-protozoa properties. Additionally, the naturally occurring saturated fat found in coconut oil has some amazing health benefits, such as a healthy heart and metabolism. Coconut oil, also promotes thyroid health, as well as weight loss. #4 Wild Alaskan Salmon Wild Alaskan Salmon is an excellent source of protein. It is bursting at the seams with omega 3 fats, EPA, and DHA. Wild Salmon is also full of antioxidants, specifically Astaxanthin, known for its benefits in treating cardiovascular, immune, anti-inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. #5 Organic Pasteurized Eggs Pasteurized, or Free range eggs are an inexpensive and amazing source of high-quality nutrients that many people are deficient in, especially high-quality protein and fat. Did you know, that a single egg contains: Nine essential amino acids, Lutein and zeaxanthin (for your eyes), Choline for your brain, nervous- and cardiovascular systems, and Naturally-occurring Vitamin B12 which is an egg-cellent source of natural energy. Not only that, but eggs are one of the highest quality proteins you can find. Proteins are nutrients that are essential to the building, maintenance, and repair of your body tissues such as your skin, internal organs, and muscles. They are also the major components of your immune system and hormone production. I have given you my top 5 choice super food ingredients that I consume the most of daily. Let’s hear from you! What super foods do you enjoy cooking? Remember, food is fun so play with the ingredients and make it your own! Hit me up on twitter @EliseTDC with your culinary comments, and questions… and as always, I’ve included a recipe, to kick start your journey to optimal health! For more recipes visit my website at 1 2Next page » Also On New Pittsburgh Courier: comments – Add Yours
To Combat Rising Seas, Why Not Raise Up The Town? When the Great Storm of 1900 battered Galveston, Texas, the town simply lifted itself up--in some places as much as 17 feet. Could a similar approach save cities today? Randy Behm of the US Army Corps of Engineers and Dwayne Jones of the Galveston Historical Foundation talk about the costs and feasibility of raising a town, albeit with better technology than Galveston's hand-cranked jacks and mules.
Right now, millions of mice, rats, rabbits, primates, cats, dogs, and other animals are locked inside cold, barren cages in laboratories across the country. They languish in pain, ache with loneliness, and long to roam free and use their minds. Instead, all they can do is sit and wait in fear of the next terrifying and painful procedure that will be performed on them. The stress, sterility and boredom causes some animals to develop neurotic behaviors such incessantly spinning in circles, rocking back and forth and even pulling out their own hair and biting their own skin. They shake and cower in fear whenever someone walks past their cages and their blood pressure spikes drastically. After enduring lives of pain, loneliness and terror, almost all of them will be killed. This is supposed to introduce the topic without taking sides, but this is sadly what animal testing has become. A lot of medical steps for wards has happened through the years thanks to animal testing, and the outcome has both helped humans and animals. But besides that we have made a lot of medical wonders,animal testing is still used for example cosmetics which isn't very important (even if some people think so). During the experiments is the animals often suffering in tiny cages with old water and disgusting food. There is also very many ways to experiment without animals, so there is no need for using it any more. Guess what? I'm really sick with a bad fever and a throat hurting as hell. Yesterday, my throat was starting to hurt and I "finally" got a fever during the night. Its awful! I feel dizzy and everything is giving me a headache. Just watching tv or watching any type of screen is really hard. Writing this is really tough, hopefully, I will be able to write what I want said in this post. I had a really hard time falling asleep, only to later on wake up at 3 a.m. I almost couldn't stand up, and walking down to my parents was almost impossible. In general, it was an awful night. This has also made my depression even worse and my thoughts about death is just getting worse. What I´m I supposed to do? I would write more but my headache is just getting worse, but I will try to write later. I'm going to bed now. Just so you know. No nightmares pls Hello my fellow humans As said, I used to own two pet rats named Link and Ludde. They were my everything and I loved them very much. Sadly, they passed away this summer. I will probably write a lot about them on this blog, so you will have time to get to know them. But for now, here is some pictures ;) Death - “the act of dying; the end of life; the total and permanent cessation ofall the vital functions of an organism.” Death is probably what scares me the most in this world. To slowly grow old, to later on "disappear". While the world goes on, and turn into something that I will never get to see. Remember those who died in such 1800s, they never got to see how far we have gotten and all wonderful we have made. That I one day disappear, cease to exist and stop thinking, are among the worst ideas I have in a day. I can not escape them. In over a week, it has haunted me and I can not take it anymore, it's terrible. One question I always ask myself is whether there is life after death. Im is not a believer, but I don't say that there isn't something out there. I even hope for it, even though I don't know why. These thoughts scare me every day and gives me "uncomfortable" feelings in my whole body, even though my life hasn't begun yet. What should I do?
Sign up FAST! Login The 2 Types of Growth: Which One of These Growth Curves Are You Following? Stashed in: Awesome, Accelerating Returns, @james_clear Everyone wants exponential growth but sometimes you gotta go with the growth you got. Morgan on the Walking Dead says that "Everything has a return." The basic idea is that for each unit of effort you put into a given task, you get some unit of return. For example, if you make $25 per hour and you work for two hours, then you’ll make $50. If you work for 4 hours, you’ll make $100. Put more in. Get more out. There is just one problem. Most of life doesn’t actually follow this linear pattern. Don’t get me wrong, hard work is essential. However, if you expect your life to follow a linear trajectory, then you may find yourself feeling frustrated and confused. Logarithmic growth increases quickly in the beginning, but the gains decrease and become more difficult as time goes on. Examples: • Fitness and Strength Training: The “beginner gains” come quickly at first, but then it becomes more difficult to get stronger each week. • Literacy: Children and young students make massive leaps as they learn how to read. Meanwhile, college students and well-educated adults have to put in a focused effort to expand their vocabulary beyond commonly used words. • Language proficiency: Learning how to speak even a rudimentary level of a new language opens up a whole new world. However, there are only meager gains left for fluent speakers to discover. • Weight Loss: It may be relatively easy to shed five pounds within a week or two, but then the progress slows. Each successive pound of fat loss is more stubborn than the last. Exponential growth increases slowly in the beginning, but the gains increase rapidly and become easier as time goes on. Examples: • Investments and wealth: Thanks to the power of compound interest, your retirement savings start out as a small treasure in the early years, but balloon in size during the final decade or two of savings. • Email subscribers and website traffic: New websites receive just a trickle of traffic here and there, but as the weeks and months roll on those trickles can build into a raging river of visitors and subscribers. • Entrepreneurship and business growth: The assets that you build for your business stack on top of one another and revenue compounds throughout the life of a successful business. • Social media followers: When you only have 100 followers, getting another 100 followers may take six months. Once you have 1,000 followers, however, getting the next 100 may only take one month. Once you have 100,000 followers, getting another 100 probably takes one day. Your growth rate snowballs. When dealing with logarithmic growth, the challenge is to avoid feeling discouraged as your improvements decrease. Improvement will come easily in the beginning and you will become accustomed to enjoying small wins each day. Soon, however, those small wins will become smaller. Logarithmic growth requires you to have the mental toughness to play a game that will, by definition, become more challenging to win as time goes on. You will feel like you have plateaued. You will question yourself and your abilities. If you want to succeed with logarithmic growth, you have to learn how to fall in love with the boredom of doing the work if you want to maintain consistency as your improvements dwindle. When dealing with exponential growth, the challenge is to continue working through the early period when you have little or nothing to show for your effort. Exponential growth requires you to be remarkably patient and diligent (often for years or decades) before enjoying a significant payoff. There may be 10 years of silence before you hear the sound of success. Equally important, you need to give your best effort even when you’re getting average results. Exponential gains only result from sustained effort in the early years. Accelerating progress: 1. Break the task down into smaller tasks that can be mastered more quickly. Dave Brailsford’s aggregation of marginal gains is a great example of this. By improving every small task related to cycling by just 1 percent, Brailsford was able to guide his British cyclists to massive success. Mastering these small tasks led to incredibly fast growth. 2. Play a different version of the game. More specifically, play the version of the game that has the highest growth curve. This strategy works especially well for tasks that experience exponential growth. Take entrepreneurship, for example. You could build a candle shop. All of the statements about exponential growth hold true for a candle shop. Given enough time and a good product, you could eventually produce candles at scale, develop new product lines, and otherwise build assets that lead to exponential growth years later. However, if you played a different version of the entrepreneurship game and started a software company, then you may reach the exponential growth threshold much faster. There are a variety of reasons for this: reduced overhead and manufacturing costs, faster industry growth overall, higher margins, and so on. The end result is that both companies have exponential growth curves, but one has a much steeper slope. You May Also Like:
More on Quantum Foundations Quantum foundations investigates the conceptual and mathematical structure of quantum theory with a view to better understanding and better formulating the theory. The question of what quantum theory is really saying about the fabric of reality has challenged some of the greatest thinkers in physics and philosophy since the theory was developed in the 1920s. This profound inquiry into the foundations of quantum theory continues unabated to this day. Wherever quantum theory is applied, lack of clarity concerning its conceptual foundations and its innovations relative to classical physics can be a significant impediment to progress. As such, achieving a deeper understanding of quantum theory has the potential to have knock-on effects in every field of modern physics. A recurring theme in quantum foundations is the interplay between a theory’s operational aspects (having to do with what one can observe in an experiment) and its ontological aspects (having to do with what is real). Most work in the field falls under one of three areas of research: • Looking for novel effects in quantum theory; • Investigating conceptual issues in, and interpretations of, quantum theory; and • Developing a deeper understanding of the structure of the theory (both mathematical and conceptual) for its own sake, for the purposes of finding a way to reconstruct the theory from more basic axioms, and for the purpose of going beyond quantum theory. The field of quantum information has roots in the field of quantum foundations and, conversely, has led to exciting new approaches to foundational problems. The two fields remain deeply intertwined to this day. The conceptual and mathematical techniques for quantum foundations are also ripe to be applied to other areas of physics. For instance, because the very early universe should be describable as a quantum system, questions in quantum foundations become important for quantum cosmology. In addition, a better understanding of the foundations might help us with one of quantum theory’s great unsolved problems: how to incorporate gravity into its framework to arrive at a theory of quantum gravity. • Schrödingers Cat (Slice of PI): This excerpt from the movie The Quantum Tamers presents a unique look at the most famous thought experiment in quantum physics, in which an unfortunate (and purely hypothetical) cat sacrifices its life, yet also doesn’t, for the sake of science The question of what quantum theory is saying about the "fabric of reality" has challenged some of the greatest thinkers in physics.
From Pin Eight Jump to: navigation, search Prosumption is a portmanteau term for production using the same tools that are used for consumption. It occurs when an enthusiast takes a more active role in production of goods or culture than a pure consumer. Such a prosumer both produces and consumes. Some products are marketed to prosumers, acting as a stepping stone taking the step between consuming and creating. Other products are intentionally designed to discourage prosumption, creating a barrier between those who make things and those who use them. Some computing devices, for example are technically capable of being used for creating works of authorship, yet they're cryptographically locked down for use as "media consumption devices". Such devices can act as a roadblock for people who want to climb from consumption to creation. Some people will end up owning only "media consumption devices"; if they want to create, they'll have to either pony up for something else or just do without creating. And if the market for devices capable of creation shrinks, prices for such devices will likely rise due to loss of economies of scale. This has over time served to cement the advantage of established publishers over independent authors. Prosumer as midrange Some kinds of creation tools are divided into three tiers of price and features: "consumer" for casual users, "prosumer" for serious hobbyists and beginning professionals, and "professional" for people established in an industry. For example, prosumer cameras occupy a market niche between entry-level point-and-shoot cameras and cameras used by professional journalists.[1] Prosumer friendly A product or service marketed to the public is prosumer friendly if it can also be used for production. A prosumer friendly device allows its owner some headroom for upward mobility when the user's needs grow, should the owner decide to make the transition from viewing works created by others to creating works himself. Some argue on the other hand that most people's needs won't grow, and culture conspires to preserve the status quo of passive consumption: "Don't create, or produce, or discover -- just buy."[2] For example, video game consoles are by and large not prosumer friendly. Sony and Nintendo do not allow individuals to develop on their video game consoles, apart from extremely limited environments such as LittleBigPlanet on PLAYSTATION 3 and WarioWare D.I.Y. on Nintendo DS. Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Apple's iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad allow individuals to make and run homemade applications or run applications that do not meet the criteria for the official curated app store, but this requires a substantial annual fee. Thus, a PC or an Android-powered device is more prosumer friendly than a video game console or an iDevice. One common rationale for a manufacturer to intentionally damage a product's prosumer capabilities, such as not allowing the end user to use self-made, self-signed works with a product or charging the end user a substantial extra fee for the privilege of doing so, is as an entry barrier against competitors who would make complements for the product, locking end users into products where the manufacturer gets a cut of the sale price. On the other hand, designing a product for prosumers can have benefits for both sides. People entering the work force from academia or a hobby tend to be most comfortable in the same environments that they had used before. For example, fans making mods for a video game using the Source or Unreal engine will already be comfortable should they get hired by a video game studio that uses those engines, and they may even feel like starting a micro-studio themselves and buying a commercial license. The death of the PC Some analysts at IBM[3] and ZDNet[4] (who? look for Google such as death of the pc) have predicted the death of the personal computer in favor of appliances such as tablets, smartphones, and video game consoles. They conjecture that as appliances become more versatile, they will take market share away from PCs. Some claim that this has already begun to happen, making graphs showing that the PC is close to its peak.[5] And by late 2015, about 25 percent of mobile web users in the United States were mobile-only, lacking regular access to a PC.[6] In the end, the PC will survive only as a specialty tool, abandoned by everyone except developers of computer programs, people animating or applying effects to high-definition video, mechanical engineers, those running large spreadsheets, and the like. A lot of casual computer users don't need a computer more substantial than one that can do homework, browse Facebook,[7] and the like. These people view works far more than they create. But if the homework-and-Facebook set ends up abandoning PCs, the economies of scale might vanish, and PCs will become more expensive as a niche or luxury item. In the worst case, PCs will become unaffordable to authors and engineers in smaller businesses, especially those started in a home on a shoestring budget. Even computer science students may not have ready access to a personal computer on which to learn to program,[8][9] though a Raspberry Pi or second-hand computer will probably suffice,[10][11] and a parent in a sufficiently rich country might reasonably be expected to buy at least a beater laptop for a student who has a legitimate need for one[12] or at least allow the child to sell his iPad and buy a suitable laptop.[13] Even in developing countries with low exchange rates due to recent underparticipation in export markets, a second-hand dumpster-dived computer with a free operating system and free applications may work.[14] So may a sandboxed compiler running on Someone Else's Computer,[15] so long as the place where the student prepares homework has Internet access.[16][17][18][19] Steve Jobs explained it like this:[20] Some people need to own a truck. More people can get away with owning only a car and occasionally using a truck, such as a couple times a year to take the lawn mower in to get it serviced. Like the Internet, iOS is not a truck. This leaves a problem of how to find a truck when you need one and how to afford the upgrade when one's needs grow from a car (a "securely" locked-down device) to a truck (a general-purpose device). For example, video gaming has arguably headed down that path starting in 1985, when the NES was the first major console with a cryptographic lockout chip and strict criteria on who could become a developer with keys, unlike the Commodore 64 for which anyone with skills could develop software. That marked a significant point after which one couldn't become a "prosumer", or someone who creates a work using the same tools with which one passively views a work. In fact, some people have fallen under the defeatist impression that people who disagree with the closed nature of video game consoles should abandon the medium of video games altogether in favor of books and outdoor recreation. Cory Doctorow has even described the market's shift toward locked-down appliances as a "war on general computation".[21] And in fact, some companies have been cutting their PC lines in favor of tablets. Dell, for example, stopped making 10" laptops in 2011,[22] and by the end of 2012, ASUS and Acer had pulled out of the 10" segment,[23] leaving people to make do with used computers from pawn shops and eBay,[24][25] until late April 2013 when ASUS reintroduced a mini-notebook reengineered to cope with Windows 8.[26] This leaves a tablet with keyboard dock as the expected 10" device, and the typical window management policy on tablets is all maximized all the time because of short-sighted choices made when tablet operating systems were still just for phones, such as assuming window size won't change after install time. There are in fact a few affordable tablets with an included keyboard, such as the ASUS Transformer Book and Acer Aspire Switch, but they don't work so well with a free operating system. FlyHelicopters recommends a Dell Inspiron 11.6 inch convertible laptop as a replacement for netbooks, and Lenovo allegedly still makes netbooks that can run GNU/Linux. All applications that end users run on an iPad tablet come from the App Store and must conform to the iOS "App Store Review Guidelines". These guidelines forbid realistic violence in video games, roulette (whether chat or Russian), satire of an identifiable organization, card counting apps, apps that let the user log locations of seen Wi-Fi hotspots, apps that "download code in any way or form" such as a game maker, web browsers that implement HTML features that Apple has left out of Safari, launcher replacements, and more. Some people claim to happily work around restrictions such as these by connecting to a remote computer through SSH or VNC. But this works only in a Wi-Fi coverage area unless one pays more than the price of an iPad per year for cellular data service. And I've found that Wi-Fi coverage is still not complete: several city bus systems and shopping centers still do not offer guest Wi-Fi. But if you carry a real computer that you control, your computer still works even when it's offline, even if a lot of people forget this.[27] (Forum references about dropping netbook PCs in favor of tablet appliances: [1]) On the other hand, as with Mark Twain, the rumors of the PC's untimely death may have been exaggerated.[28][29][30][31] "With a real computer you can make your OWN games." -- Bram Stolk's father 1. Anders Jacobsen. What is a 'prosumer' camera?. 2004-12-08. Accessed 2011-09-26. 2. Matt Walsh. "If You Shop on Thanksgiving, You Are Part of the Problem". The Huffington Post, 2013-11-20. Accessed 2014-02-06. 3. John Brodkin. "After 30 years, IBM says PC going way of vacuum tube and typewriter". Network World. August 10, 2011. Accessed August 11, 2011. 4. Lawrence Dignan, Zack Whittaker, and Jason Perlow. "The Great Debate: No post-PC era vs Pro post-PC era". ZDNet. 2011-09-12. Accessed 2011-09-16. 5. Horace Dediu. The rise and fall of personal computing. 2012-01-17. Accessed 2012-02-10. 6. "Mobile First Design: Why It’s Great and Why It Sucks". Code My Views, ca. 2015-10. Accessed 2016-02-28. 7. "Frivolous Customers". Not Always Right, 2012-11. Accessed 2012-12-10. 8. betterunixthanunix's comment 9. Anonymous Coward's comment 10. geekoid's comment 11. Anonymous Coward's comment 12. neminem's comment 13. exomondo's comment 14. [ Anonymous Coward's comment 15. Tweet by @FSFE 16. exomondo's comment 17. Anonymous Coward's comment 18. Comments by perpenso and Plumpaquatsch 19. Plumpaquatsch's comment 20. Chris Dixon. "PCs are going to be like trucks". 2013-02-26. Accessed 2013-04-12. 21. Cory Doctorow. "The Coming War on General Computation". Accessed 2012-01-01. 22. Dell pulls back from netbook market. 2011-12-17. Accessed 2011-12-18. 23. Charles Arthur. "Sayonara, netbooks: Asus (and the rest) won't make any more in 2013". The Guardian, 2012-12-31. Accessed 2012-12-31. 24. damnbunni's comment 25. RockDoctor's comment 26. Jared Spurbeck. "Asus Launches New 10.1 Inch Netbook, but Calls it a 'Notebook' Instead". Yahoo! News, 2013-04-23. Accessed 2013-05-02. 27. "Share This If You're Guilty". Not Always Working, 2012-05. Accessed 2012-11-28. 28. Ixokai's comment 29. Nicole Kobie. "Dell: death of the PC is 'complete nonsense'". 2011-09-19. Accessed 2011-09-21. 30. gstrickler's comment 31. Anonymous comment citing Toshiba NB505-N508BL 10.1-Inch Netbook on External links This article is a stub, or a placeholder for a more detailed article. You can help by expanding it.
Bebel Without a Clause Bebel Without a Clause Sunday, February 6, 2011 Sudut Ilmiah: Bagaimana nak buktikan kepada boss yang anda betul? Sedikit ilmiah untuk kita nimati bersama. Hadis Nabi S.A.W " Perbezaan pendapat antara umatku adalah satu rahmat". By bSURE Solutions Sdn Bhd We make decisions everyday in our lives: we decide what to wear, what food to eat, what words to say or which road to take home. The decision-making process begins when we need to do something but do not know what, which leads us to review several possible courses of action and select one. The choice we pick, or the decision we make, can be an action or opinion and our decision-making processes can be based on explicit assumptions or tacit assumptions. The process can also be rational or irrational – everyone can remember some point in their lives where they meticulously analysed every possible choice and they can also recall making gutsy, spur of the moment decisions. The decisions a business has to make can be mind-boggling. For example, let’s say you want to decide the location of your restaurant. You will have to take into account factors such as convenience, access to public roads, crime rates and locations costs, not to mention neighbouring shops and competitors. One will have to consider many points. For instance: how many people will walk or drive past the shop? Is there enough parking? Will the building have to be re-modelled or repainted to fit your needs? All these considerations just for deciding the location of the restaurant, and we have not even gone into deciding what type of promotional materials to use. Analytic Hierarchy Process, or AHP, is a technique researched and devised by Professor Thomas Saaty, Pittsburgh University, USA in the late 70’s. It is a structured technique based on mathematics and psychology that helps users to determine a “correct” decision instead of prescribing one. Designed to reflect how people think, AHP is a flexible decision-making tool that helps the decision-making process by allowing priorities to be set and reducing complex decisions to a series of one-on-one comparisons. In AHP, a problem is represented by a hierarchical representation. The goal or objective is placed at the top of a multi-criteria tree hierarchy while the decision alternatives are placed at the bottom. In between, are the criteria or aspects of the problem systematically evaluated by comparing each criterion to all other criteria in pair. The criteria can be evaluated based on facts or subjective judgments from the decision maker. These evaluations are then converted to numerical values that are compared throughout the entire hierarchy, allowing for diverse and seemingly incomparable elements to be compared against one another in a rational way. It has seen usage in numerous fields from risk management, candidate evaluation, architecture and many other areas where prioritisation is important. It allows a person to make an accurate analysis of possible choices, and even includes subjective factors, such as visibility and convenience. For example, returning to the previous example of deciding on the location of a restaurant, there are many criteria to consider, such as adequate parking, crime rates and so forth. By using AHP, the user can evaluate trade-offs and generate consistent weights based on which criterion is more important. Each criterion is then rated, and each possible location of the restaurant is compared with respect to the various criteria and finally, the location with the best score is selected. What sets AHP apart is its ability to help users handle elements that are rational, irrational or intuitive and deal with any uncertainties that are present in the decision-making process. In the case of evaluating the training needs of an employee, having determined the various competencies of a position or role, we will find that not all competencies are of equal importance to their organisational responsibilities and objectives. With many criteria to evaluate, determining the priorities of the training needs can be a headache for many supervisors. AHP is structured, systematic and mathematically proven technique that has received worldwide attention. Many Fortune 500s have used it in many complex and mission critical business decisions. Decision making can be trained. So, the next time you have a problem-solving assignment and you need to rationalise to your boss of your recommendation, do not rely on your guts feeling. AHP-It! Why gamble when you can be sure? References: 1. No comments: Post a Comment Blog Archive
Details of this Paper MBA-565 unit 1 quiz Question;Question 1.1.Core competencies tend to refer to areas of special technical and production expertise, whereas ________ tend to describe excellence in broader business processes. (Points: 5) process benchmarksdistinctive capabilitiescore business valuesvalue statementsmission statementsQuestion 2.2.________ for a product is the total volume that would be bought by a defined customer group in a defined geographical area in a defined time period in a defined marketing environment under a defined marketing program. (Points: 5) Market shareMarket supplyMarket demandMarket potentialMarket penetrationQuestion 3.3.The firm's success depends both on how well each department performs its work, and on how well the various departmental activities are coordinated to conduct ________. (Points: 5) core strategiessatellite businessescore valuescore business processescore technologiesQuestion 4.4.When a business gets to know market segments intimately and pursues either cost leadership or differentiation within the target segment, it is employing a ________. (Points: 5) defined strategyfocused strategyvalue-added strategycompetitive advantage strategycustomer-focused strategyQuestion 5.5.With respect to the shortage of raw materials, air and water are classified as ________ resources. However, as we know, problems are beginning to plague both our air and water quality. (Points: 5) infinitenear finitefinite renewablefinite nonrenewableabsoluteQuestion 6.6.A low market-penetration index indicates ________. (Points: 5) substantial growth potential for all firmssubstantial growth opportunities for few firmsit will be very expensive to attract more prospectsprice competition is increasingprofit margins are fallingQuestion 7.7.________ are groups of individuals who are born during the same time period and travel through life together. (Points: 5) CohortsPopulationsDemographicsSocietiesMarketsQuestion 8.8.All of the following are rules of thumb for questionnaire design EXCEPT ________. (Points: 5) making questions as simple as possiblemaking the questions specificensuring that fixed responses overlapavoiding hypothetical questionsavoiding questions with a negative in themQuestion 9.9.Consumer expenditures are affected by ________. (Points: 5) savingsdebtcredit availabilityall of the abovenone of the aboveQuestion 10.10.The first step in the business unit strategic-planning process deals with which of the following? (Points: 5) goal formulationbusiness missionstrategy formulationprogram formulationSWOT analysisQuestion 11.11.The identification and profiling of distinct groups of buyers who might prefer or require varying product and service mixes is known as ________. (Points: 5) segmentationintegrationdisintermediationtargetingpartner relationship managementQuestion 12.12.The firm should estimate its competitors' costs and performances as ________ against which to compare its own costs and performance. (Points: 5) competitionstandardschallengesbenchmarksmoveable standardsQuestion 13.13.A company with a ________ may be held back by low brand awareness, low brand availability, benefit deficiencies, and high price. (Points: 5) high market-penetration indexhigh share-penetration indexlow market-penetration indexlow share-penetration indexnone of the aboveQuestion 14.14.________ consists of people, equipment, and procedures to gather, sort, analyze, evaluate, and distribute needed, timely, and accurate information to marketing decision makers. (Points: 5) A marketing information systemA marketing research systemA marketing intelligence systemA promotional campaignA marketing databaseQuestion 15.15.Today, corporations need to make sure that they are good corporate citizens and that their consumer messages are honest in order to positively align themselves with consumers' ________. (Points: 5) views of othersviews of organizationsviews of themselvesviews of the universeviews of societyQuestion 16.16.A ________ is someone seeking a response (attention, a purchase, a vote, a donation) from another party, called the ________. (Points: 5) salesperson, customerfund-raiser, contributorpolitician, votermarketer, prospectcelebrity, audienceQuestion 17.17.One traditional depiction of marketing activities is in terms of the marketing mix or four Ps. The four Ps are characterized as being ________. (Points: 5) product, positioning, place, and priceproduct, production, price, and placepromotion, place, positioning, and priceplace, promotion, production, and positioningproduct, price, promotion, and placeQuestion 18.18.________ reflects a customer's judgment of a product's performance in relation to his or her expectations. (Points: 5) LoyaltySatisfactionValueExpectationsComparison shoppingQuestion 19.19.If a marketing researcher asks subjects what kind of person they think of when the brand is mentioned in order to understand how consumers feel about a particular brand, the marketing researcher is using the ________ approach. (Points: 5) word associationprojectivevisualizationbrand personificationladderingQuestion 20.20.The last step in the value creation and delivery sequence is ________ the value where the sales force, sales promotion, advertising, and other communication tools announce and promote the product. (Points: 5) developingdistributingcommunicatingreversingresearchingQuestion 21.21.The sales force is composed of three categories. (Points: 5) TrueFalseQuestion 22.22.Product duration in PharmaSim may be: (Points: 5) four hours.twelve hours.instant.all of the above.Question 23.23.What are the objectives of Allround?s brand management team? (Points: 5) Maintain long-term profitabilityMaintain market shareIncrease revenueA and B onlyA, B, and CQuestion 24.24.Merchandisers are an example of sales force personnel that focus on providing special support to retailers for their in-store activities such as shelf location, pricing, and compliance with special promotions. (Points: 5) TrueFalseQuestion 25.25.Any team member can purchase research. (Points: 5) TrueFalseQuestion 26.26.Which company has the highest sales level? (Points: 5) AllstarB&BCurallDriscolEthikQuestion 27.27.Allround has the highest awareness and brand trials of any brand. (Points: 5) TrueFalseQuestion 28.28.Allround is categorized (labeled) as which of the following? (Points: 5) Cold medicineCough medicineAllergy medicineNasal sprayAll of the above Paper#47318 \| Written in 18-Jul-2015 Price : $29
Single page Print PCI Express arrives I wasn't kidding when I said ye olde PCI bus is slow. In its most common implementation in desktop PCs, at 32 bits and 33MHz, the PCI bus has a theoretical peak bandwidth of 133MB/s, which is shared between all devices. To give you some perspective, a single Serial ATA hard drive interface runs at 150MB/s, and Gigabit Ethernet runs at roughly 125MB/s. Asking a PCI-based bus to host an SATA RAID array and a Gigabit Ethernet controller is like asking Alec Baldwin to read through F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom—you could practically watch its lips move. Not only does PCI lack bandwidth, but its shared bus architecture requires arbitration between devices that want to transfer data and involves contention between upstream and downstream communications. PCI's limitations have forced chipset makers to integrate ever more functionality into their chipsets, as Intel did when it hung a Gigabit Ethernet interface off the north bridge in its previous-generation 875P chipset. At 33MHz and 32 bits, ye olde PCI is decidedly slow and wide. PCI Express, meanwhile, is the epitome of the new thinking in internal PC communications links, the "fast and narrow" approach, a more serialized way of transmitting data with lower pin counts and higher signaling rates. Despite the dorky name, PCI Express doesn't actually share all that much with PCI, save some memory addressing and device initialization similarities so drivers and operating systems don't need major plumbing changes to work with the new standard. In fact, PCI Express is downright network-like on several levels. On the lowest, physical layer, PCI Express uses pairs of dedicated, unidirectional links to transfer data between devices. A pair of links in a PCI-E connection is known as a "lane," and each lane offers 250MB/s of bandwidth in each direction, upstream and downstream. Because PCI Express lanes are point-to-point affairs, there are no worries about shared bandwidth, and because the lanes are bidirectional, there's no contention between sending and receiving data. The slowest possible PCI Express configuration is a PCI Express X1 slot, where a device gets 250MB/s of bandwidth in each direction, or 500MB/s in full duplex. However, like NIC teaming in an Ethernet network, PCI Express lanes can be teamed up to deliver more bandwidth between devices. For graphics, sixteen PCI Express lanes will connect a graphics card to the rest of the system for a total bandwidth of 8GB/s, full duplex. That's a whopping amount more than the current, PCI-derived standard for graphics, AGP 8X, which tops out at 2.1GB/s. The similarities between PCI-E and a network don't stop at the physical layer, either. PCI Express also employs a packet-based protocol for data transmission, and it uses packet header information to reserve bandwidth for delay-sensitive data streams with eight different traffic classes. These facilities should make PCI-E ideal for more than just dedicated connections between devices. PCI Express should become a standard for internal PC communications, just as AMD's HyperTransport is now. The PCI Express X16 (top) and X1 (bottom) slots sandwich a pair of legacy PCI slots on Intel's D915GUX motherboard The PCI-E physical layer spec allows for X1, X2, X4, X8, X12, X16, and X32 lane widths, but the initial connector specs call for only for X1, X4, X8 and X16 slots. X4 and X8 slots may make appearances in servers soon, but for desktop systems, expect to see X1 slots for expansion and X16 slots for graphics. Obviously, PCI Express will bring more bandwidth to the PC platform, but more importantly, it establishes a new foundation for PC expansion standards. PCI on desktop PCs hasn't changed radically since its inception, but PCI Express has the engineering headroom and a practical set of options for expansion, when needed.
Thursday, September 22, 2011 Are we historically blind? History (from Greek ἱστορία - historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation") is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Amongst scholars, the fifth century BC Greek historian Herodotus is considered to be the "father of history", and, along with his contemporary Thucydides, forms the foundations for the modern study of history. (source: Wikipedia) History & Geography When I was in primary school, History and Geography was a favorite subjects, just because I have two great teachers, who did not follow strictly the textbooks. The two teachers I admired and benefited much were a good teachers who instill the desire of students to explore more on the respective fields. From the primary school textbooks, I moved to the books shops in the Carnarvon Street, standing and reading on all books I can found on History and Geography. I read world history, I read world Geography. Malaya history and geography was too small for me, I acquired the global perspective of the subjects. Even after my primary schools, Geography and History was my strong subjects in lower secondary; but I have to leave history in my upper secondary since I was a pure science student. I scored a A1 in Geography, considered a difficult subject for science student. I have teachers who do not use school textbooks, who will draw a world map, and tell us the location of the country, and then start to tell the story of the country(history and geography), his experience during his visit to the country...this created interest among the students towards the history of the country. When I read Geography, it was habit of reading with history of the country, to know the country better, lesson from my teachers. This habit later helped me in my adult life where I am more global and not narrow minded, it also helped me during my back packing days to other countries. Developing countries normally have less emphasis on liberal art subjects. In my secondary school days, the educationalists deprived me on my favorite history subject. Today, history is compulsory, but they deprived the students from Geography subjects. History and Geography need to come together. School History Textbook Looking at my daughter’s history book, I really feel sad. The history book was very biased towards specific history for secondary students. The school textbooks focused largely on specific national history, and specific religion history. There are many factual errors and historical errors, some deliberately concealed for some hidden agenda. Study history for the current students is just remembering one book, as their teacher told them to do so. Study history is just to pass examination. Many of them knew the history recorded in their history textbook are totally with biased views, and considered it unimportant. They are able to gain more history knowledge from the internet. This created a disrespect attitude toward history subject, just like Moral Education, useless and time wastage for the students. Overzealous textbook authors toward nationalism, had killed the enthusiastic of the students on the history subject. I asked the students, and they do not know Dr Sun Yat-sen, Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler, Xiang Yu or Liu Bang(Han Dynasty), Martin Luther King, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Winston Churchil....and many historical figures. Making thing worst, Dr Sun Yat-sen and Jawaharlal Nehru had been to Malaya, and yet we did not make use of the story to teach world history.Some politician was so narrow minded that they said this is history of foreigners, why should we know them?. Sooner, our students forgot Malaysian history figures, Yap Ah Loy, Parameswara,Sir Henry Gurney, Lt-Gen Sir Gerald Templer, Dato Onn bin Jaafar, Tun Tan Cheng Lock..... who to blame?... We produced students who dislike history subject. This history- phobia students matured into adults with historically blind mindset. They are misled by phobia and pseudo history. If they are politician , they will become narrow minded politician who will lead us to more extremism. In School, we no longer learn actual history; we learn the official history as told by the political party who governed the nation. History was written by the teachers or historian who are not independent, but employed with the government, writing history to please the ruling party. Their views on issues are always biased, either tainted with personal, racial or religion bias. They do not see the alternative views or alternative history. You cannot ignore the past history of the colonization, Japanese occupation, CPM, Socialist Front, DAP, PAS, other opposition and reformation movement, and their contribution to our nation. You cannot only reported the good historical events, and forget the war, revolution, riots, strikes, demonstration, disasters(the ugly historical events). These are all historical events. The students only see the history wrote by the rulers, they did not see the actual history happen in the grassroots and community. They see the history of the upper class, and reject the history of lower poor’s. They see the history of the winners, did not see the history of the losers. They see the form of the history, not substance behind the history. They see the surface and not the historical cause of the event. They do not see the diversity but focus only on their biased personal views. This will make the students limited their knowledge of history restricted to memory for examination. There will not be any critical thinking of the students on the cause of the past historical events and their consequences to the current and the future. They will be satisfied knowing only their own history and not knowing the history of other countries, other civilization, other religion, and other individuals. A mass generation of narrow minded and historically blinded people will be cultivated by our education system, listening to the history concept of their teachers, the history of the ruling political party. Their history will be limited to their examinations, knowing only history that their teachers want to hear, the education system want to hear.... After 54 years of independence, do the nation has the confidence that our people are able to stand at par with any others in global platform; having an open mind to determine their destination, and to be a responsible global citizen? The teaching of history in schools will tell us the future of this generation..... Historically blind Basically, is the nation historically blind? Looking at the many politician's views on national history, and their request to amend the history again, revealed some weaknesses in our history despite 54 years after independence. The nation is still not open, still closed to diversity, alternatives, and differences.... We do not need to be historian to know history; but need to aware of the traps of the history; 2.History censorship - In many countries history textbooks have been censored to put the national story in a more favorable light. For example, in Japan, mention of the Nanking Massacre has been removed from textbooks and the entire World War II is given cursory treatment. Other countries have complained. It was standard policy in communist countries to present only a rigid Marxist historiography. In the United States the history of the American Civil War was phrased to avoid giving offense to white Southerners and blacks. 3.Politicization - Politicization of history is very common in communist countries and one party ruled country. The ruling power write history or conceal history according to their political motives and agenda. Academic historians have often fought against the politicization of the textbooks, sometimes with success. 4.Historical revisionism - is either the legitimate scholastic re-examination of existing knowledge about a historical event, or the illegitimate distortion of the historical record such that certain events appear in a more or less favorable light. For the former, i.e. the academic pursuit, see historical revisionism. This article deals solely with the latter, the distortion of history, which—if it constitutes the denial of historical crimes—is also sometimes (but not commonly) called negationism. The post-war minimization of the war crimes of Japanese imperialism is an example of illegitimate historical revisionism. 5. Suppression of different views - either by using legal law to restrict or prohibit the alternative history views, some may face imprisonment or death for holding the alternative historical views, especially against the militarism or the one party ruled government. This is against the freedom of expression advocated by the United Nation Human Right. 6. Biased History - History written based on biased prejudice , either personal biased, political biased, religion biased, racial biased, etc, which distorted the actual history or concealed the actual history. As a commoner, we need to be wise to know the difference between actual and pseudo history. Let the official history telling their glorious days, we know how the national history was formed not by a single person, by a single political party, by single event, it was the interaction of multiple forces, from individuals to communities, from societies to nations, from nations to global. No person can make history alone.....not even his own history. Unless he is blind towards history.... National History is by the people, for the people.... History is the story of the past, we can created history for the future, but we cannot created history for the past, the actual events had happened, the history of the past needed historian to explore and rediscover the truth, good or ugly, it was our history, you like it or dislike, it is still the truth, our history. “ I do not believe that history repeats itself in exactly the same form, but it is not a fact that the old questions are always coming up again in a new form? As the years passed on after the war, the bitter lesson of war are forgotten, and such thing as peace and freedom , the authority of learning or the truth , are opt to be lost.In universities and among scholars there is tendency to lose the strength and the spirit to remain loyal to the truth, and not to fawn upon or yield to the power of the world, which I believed should be avoid at all cost… Dr Yanaihara Tadao (source: The Way I have walked(Watakushi no Ayundekita Michi) , 1958) No comments: Post a Comment
France has long been one of the world’s most popular destinations for travelers. Visitors come to walk down broad Parisian boulevards, sample gloriously diverse local wines, admire the dreamy chateaus of long-dead kings, feel the Provençal sunlight that has inspired so many artists and see first hand the cultural sites of a nation that has given so much to world culture and history. Well-served by air connections from many U.S. destinations, France is easily affordable with a bit of preparation. Paris has two airports: Charles de Gaulle and Orly. From the capital, it is possible to get connecting flights to other destinations. France boasts an extensive network of high-speed rail trains. You can go from the capital to the coast in roughly six hours. Trains run frequently. Large cities have many public buses and local trains. A car is not necessary to get around and may indeed be an expensive hindrance where parking is scarce. In other areas such as Provence or the Loire Valley, it may be advisable to rent a car to experience some of the more out-of-the-way destinations such as small villages. Many major world sites of interest await visitors to France. The attractions of Paris include the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre art museum, the Arc de Triomphe and lavish halls of Versailles. In the neighboring Loire Valley, you can find elaborate castles and lush scenery. Normandy and Brittany offer visitors quaint villages, pretty beaches and soaring cathedrals. The Champagne and Burgundy areas are noted for vineyards that have long thrilled oenophiles all over the world. Provence and the French Riviera delight with warm days, sunny skies, Roman ruins and cuisine that has made French food the envy of the world. Other regions of interest include the picturesque Dordogne and historic Atlantic coastal region. Expenses for a trip to France usually involve transportation, lodging, food and fees for attractions. You can save money on a flight to France by booking via online search engines such as A Rail Europe pass good for several days of travel can be purchased for less than a cost of a single day’s car rental. Passes can be purchased in advance. Advance purchase is recommended in order to secure seating on popular routes. Lodging ranges from nights in a castle or ultramodern hotel to a stay at a hostel. Visitors can save money by booking well in advance and staying in hotels with fewer amenities or away from the city center. Restaurants are noted for the quality of their cuisine. Treat yourself at least once to a memorable meal. To save money on food, buy ingredients for simple salads and sandwiches from the many excellent markets located in nearly every city and village. About the Author I have been published in over thirty-six magazines including Big Apple Parent. Suggest an Article Correction
Girls given equal rights to British throne under law changes Princesses to get fair share of throne Princesses to get fair share of throne Princesses to get fair share of throne Princesses to get fair share of throne 01:25 Story highlights • Expert: Plans for William and Catherine to start a family make reforms urgent • The law changes would apply to any children of Prince William and Catherine • Under the changes, a first-born girl would take the throne ahead of a younger brother • The law changes must still be approved by individual Commonwealth governments Sons and daughters of British monarchs will have an equal right to the throne under changes to the United Kingdom's succession laws agreed to Friday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said. The leaders of the 16 Commonwealth countries that have the queen as head of state approved the changes unanimously at a Commonwealth of Nations summit in Australia, he said. The individual governments of those 16 countries still must agree to the changes for them to take effect. The constitutional changes would mean a first-born girl has precedence over a younger brother. They also mean that a future British monarch would be allowed to marry a Catholic. The laws would apply to any future children of Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, who married this year. Speaking alongside his Australian counterpart Julia Gillard in Perth, Cameron described Friday's agreement by the heads of government of the 16 nations as "something of a historic moment." Attitudes have changed fundamentally over the centuries, he said in a televised address, and outdated rules should evolve with them. "The idea that a younger son should become monarch instead of an elder daughter simply because he is a man, or that a future monarch can marry someone of any faith except a Catholic -- this way of thinking is at odds with the modern countries that we have become," he said. Cameron also referred to plans to scrap the Act of Settlement, a law passed in 1701 which bans the UK monarch from marrying a Catholic. It was intended to ensure that Protestants held the throne and remained head of the Church of England. "Let me be clear: the monarch must be in communion with the Church of England, because he or she is the head of that church, but it is simply wrong that they should be denied the chance to marry a Catholic if they wish to do so," Cameron said. "After all, they're already quite free to marry someone of any other faith." Cardinal Keith O'Brien, leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, said he welcomed the planned reform. "I am pleased to note that the process of change, which I hope will lead to repeal of the Act has started and I look forward to studying the detail of the proposed reforms and their implications in due course," he said in a statement. Richard Fitzwilliams, royal commentator and a former editor of International Who's Who, told CNN that the changes were vital if the monarchy was to adapt with changing times. He said that "for decades, since the 1950s, there's been talk of doing this and nothing's actually happened," he said -- probably in part because it did not affect Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince Harry. "Now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have said they want to start a family, this makes it urgent," he said. While the constitutional change has to be made by parliament in the United Kingdom and the other 15 countries that have the queen as head of state, it is supported by Buckingham Palace, he said. The situation where a younger brother would take precedence over a first-born sister is discriminatory under European law, he points out. The legal changes relating to the marriage of the monarch to a Catholic will have to be handled sensitively, he added, because of the monarch's role as head of the Church of England, and involve several acts of parliament going back to the 17th and 18th centuries. Britain is not the first European nation with a hereditary monarchy to take steps towards gender equality in its laws of succession. Denmark changed its rules to make them gender neutral in 1953, enabling the current monarch, Queen Margrethe, to succeed to the throne. Sweden followed suit in 1980, three years after the birth of Crown Princess Victoria, the current successor to the throne. Norway also accords equal rights of succession to royals born after 1990. The issue of ending male primogeniture, or male heirs taking precedence over female ones, in the Spanish royal family was raised a few years ago, but has not yet resulted in constitutional change. Buckingham Palace said it had no comment on the change to the law announced Friday, as it was a matter for the U.K. and Commonwealth governments. Queen Elizabeth is in Australia for the three-day Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The Commonwealth is an association of 54 nations with ties to the United Kingdom. Only 16 share the queen as head of state.
Beaked Whale Identification Guide Diagnostic features of the skull and mandible On the vertex of the dorsal skull the nasal bone extends forward of the premaxillary and frontal bones. Separates from Indopacetus, Hyperoodon, Mesoplodon, and Tasmacetus. When the posterior aspect of the skull is viewed from a point aligned with the long axis of the rostrum, the profile of the vertex projects above the supraoccipital as a slightly asymmetrical block with sheer sides. Separates from Ziphius. Available literature documenting diagnostic cranial differences between B. bairdii and B. arnuxii are not yet available. The geographic separation between B. bairdii in the Northern Hemisphere and B. arnuxii in the Southern Hemisphere can be used differentiate the two species. Berardius arnuxii - Left lateral skull Maturity unknown, sex unknown - USNM STR10548
Contact Us Small Ring Finger Size May Mean Men Have a Better Chance of Beating Prostate Cancer man playing with his wedding ring Vstock LLC, Getty Images There is absolutely no doubt that a doctor with shorter fingers can make a prostate exam a little bit easier on a guy, but now a new study actually suggests that men with short ring fingers might have a better chance at surviving prostate cancer. Researchers say their data indicates that men suffering from prostate cancer often responded better to an anti-tumor medication if their ring finger was shorter than their index finger. Researchers are saying that their findings support previous research that shows men with short ring fingers have lower testosterone levels, which has been known to cause the development of prostate tumors. The study, which was comprised of 142 participants aged 40 and under, found that men with short ring fingers had a better reaction to dutasteride, a cancer combatant that works by blocking the effects of testosterone on the prostate. Interestingly, some of the same previous research has also connected finger length to other health conditions like heart disease, osteoarthritis, depression and Motor Neuron Disease. To help legitimize the finger-prostate theory, researchers say that the difference in length between two fingers is determined by the level of testosterone a baby is exposed to while in the womb, and because of this, they believe that varying finger lengths can effect ones health as the get older. Researchers also add that while men typically have longer ring fingers, women tend to have ring and index fingers similar in length. So, if at this point in the article, you are staring at your long ring finger wondering if you are doomed, the answer is, maybe. Results from the study did find there was a significant larger reduction in men with short ring fingers after the six-month treatment compared to men with long ring fingers. However, regardless of your finger size, if you are a man over the age of 40, it is important to start receiving yearly prostate exams. [Medical Daily] Best of News Talk 940 Recommended For You Best of the Web Forgot your password? (Forgot your password?) Not a member? Sign up here

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