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To use the text to answer questions,
In this lesson, we will learn key strategies for answering retrieval and inference questions and apply these to answer questions about the poem.
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Lesson summary: To use the text to answer questions,
Time to move!
For 5 mins...
Move around:
Climb stairs
On the spot:
Chair yoga
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Unit Converter
Conversion formula
1 mo = 2629746 s
To convert 13.1 months into seconds we have to multiply 13.1 by the conversion factor in order to get the time amount from months to seconds. We can also form a simple proportion to calculate the result:
1 mo → 2629746 s
13.1 mo → T(s)
Solve the above proportion to obtain the time T in seconds:
T(s) = 13.1 mo × 2629746 s
T(s) = 34449672.6 s
The final result is:
13.1 mo → 34449672.6 s
We conclude that 13.1 months is equivalent to 34449672.6 seconds:
13.1 months = 34449672.6 seconds
Alternative conversion
We can also convert by utilizing the inverse value of the conversion factor. In this case 1 second is equal to 2.9027852067308E-8 × 13.1 months.
Another way is saying that 13.1 months is equal to 1 ÷ 2.9027852067308E-8 seconds.
Approximate result
For practical purposes we can round our final result to an approximate numerical value. We can say that thirteen point one months is approximately thirty-four million four hundred forty-nine thousand six hundred seventy-two point six seconds:
13.1 mo ≅ 34449672.6 s
An alternative is also that one second is approximately zero times thirteen point one months.
Conversion table
months to seconds chart
months (mo) seconds (s)
14.1 months 37079418.6 seconds
15.1 months 39709164.6 seconds
16.1 months 42338910.6 seconds
17.1 months 44968656.6 seconds
18.1 months 47598402.6 seconds
19.1 months 50228148.6 seconds
20.1 months 52857894.6 seconds
21.1 months 55487640.6 seconds
22.1 months 58117386.6 seconds
23.1 months 60747132.6 seconds
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Approved Links Overview
Approved Links are a compliant way to remotely complete various Veeva CRM transactions with accounts using any communication channel. Each Approved Links transaction is a unique link that can be shared with an account through any messaging service or application, for example, Email, Text, or Microsoft Teams Chat. Accounts receive the link, open it, and complete the transaction through their device’s web browser. Transaction results are automatically written into Veeva CRM.
Approved Links can be used in the following places in CRM:
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Wholesale - All orders over $100 get 30% oFF!
5 Series - LeRue Necklace
Feature Embellished Pearl Double Strand Necklace
Type Fashion
Material High-Quality Zinc Alloy, Simulated Pearl
Colors Gold
Style Special Occasion, Event, Statement, Casual
Quality Grade 5, Long Lasting Polish
Statment Unique, Classy but Sexy, Celestial
FYI: Number 5 has been used as a symbol of love and marriage since ancient times. Loyalty is another name for angel number 5 as well. So, if number 5 appears somewhere in your life, it means that your guardian angel is sending you a message that has something to do with your love life.
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How does rotten meat smell
Navigation and service
Questions and answers about spoiled meat
FAQ from November 29, 2005
Raw meat can spoil very easily. Correct storage is all the more important: it should always be refrigerated, temperatures below +7 ° C are best (it is best to keep a refrigerator temperature of 2-4 ° C). Then pathogenic germs that are on the surface of the meat can only multiply slowly. You can recognize spoiled meat by the fact that it changes its appearance, texture, smell and taste. It shouldn't be eaten anymore. Its consumption can cause severe food infections such as diarrhea. Rotten meat is a hygiene issue. The BfR has compiled and answered the most frequently asked questions below.
open all
Colloquially, spoilage means bacterial spoilage or putrefaction. However, bacteria are just one of several possible causes of spoiled food, albeit the most common. Corruption processes are generally considered to be a hygiene problem in the broader sense.
We speak of microbial spoilage when microorganisms such as bacteria or molds, through their reproduction and metabolic activity, change the composition of a food to such an extent that it is no longer suitable for consumption. How much and how quickly food spoils depends on whether various circumstances, such as the storage temperature, favor or limit the multiplication of the bacteria present.
In addition to bacterial spoilage, there are also biological and chemical-physical causes. The biological causes of meat spoilage are, for example, "boar odor" (strong smell) or the occurrence of parasites and pests. Biochemical causes of meat spoilage can manifest themselves, for example, in the form of a stifling maturation of the meat, if it takes on a brown-red color and smells sour to putrid and musty if the game or poultry is insufficiently cooled. Even if it dries out (freezer burn) or is contaminated with dust or even excrement particles, one speaks of spoiled.
The composition of the meat is of decisive importance as to whether microbial germs multiply in and on the meat: Basically, meat is easily perishable as the meat surface is only imperfectly protected against the ingress of bacteria and meat is a good breeding ground for bacterial growth. If, in addition, the protective covering of the muscle, such as. B. in minced meat or goulash, is destroyed, microorganisms can multiply without restriction. If the food is stored in a cool place (+2 - +7 ° C), it will spoil after two days at the latest. When not minced, the same meat can be kept much longer if stored in a cool place, up to two weeks.
Bacteria on meat, the so-called meat flora, multiply best in the range between +18 and +30 ° C. For this reason, meat should be chilled as quickly as possible after slaughtering to + 7 ° C and the by-products (such as liver or kidneys) from slaughtering to + 3 ° C.
If meat is not refrigerated at all or if the refrigeration has only been temporarily interrupted, there is an increased risk that pathogenic germs will multiply quickly in and on the meat.
The meat is attacked by germs during the slaughtering process. When slaughtering, the surfaces can become heavily soiled, which is primarily caused by fecal particles, for example from animal skin. It is therefore mainly intestinal bacteria that are the first to colonize the surface of fresh meat: enterobacteria, micrococci, fecal streptococci, pseudomonads, lactobacilli and aerobic spore formers.
Under perfectly hygienic conditions there are about 1,000 germs per cm on the surface of beef and about 10,000 germs per cm of pork2. The enterobacteria, among which there may also be individual pathogenic germs such as E. coli or salmonella, usually only make up a very small proportion, namely no more than 10 to 100 per cm2, out.
The fresh meat can be contaminated with a large number of different types of bacteria through external and internal influences. One of the most important factors for these bacteria to continue to multiply on meat is temperature. Constant cooling leads to a special bacterial flora. One speaks of the so-called "cold store flora", which can multiply even under cool conditions. Heat-loving types of germs recede more and more within a few days. A bacterial flora moves into the foreground, which makes up only a fraction of the total germ content on the meat surface immediately after slaughter. One observes bacteria that z. B. in connection with high moisture content such. B. splashed on the meat during slaughter, which can lead to deviations in smell and color of the meat.
Experience shows that the germ content of frozen meat decreases during storage. Bacterial spores, on the other hand, usually survive freezing temperatures without damage and can multiply again after the meat has been thawed.
Proper freezer storage is the gentlest method of preserving meat and meat products over the long term. The shelf life of frozen meat depends on the storage temperature and the type of meat. If the storage conditions are good (prevent drying out!) And a temperature of approx. B. for pork from a shelf life of 6-9 months and for beef of 9-18 months. The shelf life of frozen meat is limited in particular by the deterioration of fat (becoming rancid).
A high water content (also called water activity), a high storage temperature and a high pH value promote the spoilage of meat. After the meat has matured (this is the period in which the meat is tender at temperatures from -1 ° C to +2 ° C, including through enzymatic processes), pork usually has pH values in the range of 5.6 to 6 , 2. From a pH value of 5.8 and below, the growth rate is delayed e.g. B. of enterobacteria and cold-loving bacteria noticeably.
Watery meat, which is also known by the technical term pale, soft and exudated (PSE) meat, is less durable due to its higher water content. Meat with so-called dark, firm and dry (DFD) properties also spoils more easily than "normal" meat, as it has pH values that are closer to the optimum growth of germs that are responsible for meat spoilage. Hereditary factors in the animals and stress on the animals before slaughter are responsible for the PSE and DFD properties of the meat.
The oxygen tension (in the technical term redox potential) during storage, which, for example, develops differently in the absence of air and vacuum packaging than in open and cool storage, has an influence on the spectrum of bacteria and their growth properties.
The physico-chemical, biochemical or microbiological changes in a spoiled food usually lead to significant changes in appearance, consistency, smell and taste. The consumer can tell from these changes that meat has gone bad. Consumers should stop eating this meat. However, they do not always recognize spoiled meat.
Almost all foods on which pathogenic microorganisms can multiply are easily perishable. In addition to the development of spoilage flora, there may also be a multiplication of pathogenic bacteria that do not themselves cause any sensory signs of spoilage such as a changed appearance, changed consistency, changed smell or taste. The most important pathogens in this context are salmonella, staphylococci, EHEC (enterohaemorrhagic E. coli) To count bacilli and clostridia. They cause the classic symptoms of food poisoning, such as nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting. If meat spoils at cold store temperatures, enterobacteria can multiply on the surface of the meat. B. for salmonella. Clostridia can multiply in the depths of the muscles, and their toxins also lead to diarrhea and vomiting.
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Murray, Derek Conrad
Format: Paperback
Publisher: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd (I.B.Tauris)
Published: October 30, 2015
ISBN: 9781784532871
256 pages, 50 bw integrated
What impact do sexual politics and queer identities have on the understanding of ‘blackness’ as a set of visual, cultural and intellectual concerns? In Queering Post-Black Art, Derek Conrad Murray argues that the rise of female, gay and lesbian artists as legitimate African-American creative voices is essential to the development of black art. He considers iconic works by artists including Glenn Ligon, Kehinde Wiley, Mickalene Thomas and Kalup Linzy, which question whether it is possible for blackness to evade its ideologically over-determined cultural legibility. In their own unique, often satirical way, a new generation of contemporary African American artists represent the ever-evolving sexual and gender politics that have come to define the highly controversial notion of ‘post-black’ art.
First coined in 2001, the term ‘post-black’ resonated because it articulated the frustrations of young African-American artists around notions of identity and belonging that they perceived to be stifling, reductive and exclusionary. Since then, these artists have begun to conceive an idea of blackness that is beyond marginalization and sexual discrimination.
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At what age can a child draw a triangle?
Fine motor development milestones at about age 5 should include: Spreading with a knife. Drawing a triangle.
When can a child draw a triangle?
By 6 or 7 years, a child has her own style of drawing, which can usually be recognized by adults. By the time she is 7 she will be able to form good circles, squares, rectangles, triangles and diamonds in her drawings.
What shapes should a 4 year old be able to draw?
Four years old is when they can start to really draw an accurate square. Now, at three and three and a half, they might imitate a square, but a lot of times, it will have curved corners and not distinct corners for a square. Oblique lines, or diagonal lines, come into play at about four and a half years old.
Can a 3 year old draw?
A 3 year old should be able to draw some representation of a person but that might just be a few interlocking circles. It’s normally towards the end of the 3rd year that we see a simple drawing of a man coming together spontaneously. That might be a picture with around 4 body parts and proportions being off.
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What can a 2 year old draw?
Around 2 years of age, your toddler’s drawing skills will improve and they will start to experiment by drawing lines. After being shown how to do it, they should also be able to copy a circle and some vertical lines.
Can a 2 year old draw a face?
While typical children begin to draw recognizable shapes representing objects in the world at around the age of 3 or 4 (Golomb, 1992; Kellogg, 1969; Matthews, 1984), some children produce their first representational drawings at the age of 2.
Can a 4 year old draw a triangle?
Between the ages of 4-5 years, your child will:
Start to cut along a curved line, like a circle. Draw a cross by herself (+) Copy a square. Begin to draw diagonal lines, like in a triangle.
What should a 4 year old know educationally?
Correctly name at least four colors and three shapes. Recognize some letters and possibly write their name. Better understand the concept of time and the order of daily activities, like breakfast in the morning, lunch in the afternoon, and dinner at night. Use future tense, such as, “We will go to the park soon.”
How high should a 5 year old count?
Should a 4 year old be able to write numbers?
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Should a 3 year old be able to write their name?
3- to 4-Year-Old Development: Language Milestones
What does a 3 year old drawing look like?
Three year olds begin drawing extremely simple pictures of people. When you think of a stick figure, take away at least half the detail and you’ve got a three year old’s drawing. Usually they consist of a circle head, because they can draw circles. Then, they might have legs and possibly arms.
How do I teach my 3 year old to draw?
Ten Ways to Encourage a Child Who Doesn’t Like Drawing.
1. Offer interesting things to draw with. …
2. Offer interesting things to draw on. …
3. Give them lots of opportunities to draw without pressure or direction. …
4. Make it relate to something that interests them. …
5. Find meaningful reasons to draw and write. …
6. Appeal to their senses. …
7. Get their whole body involved.
What are signs of intelligence in toddlers?
12 signs of a gifted child
• Big vocabulary. …
• Lots of curiosity. …
• Eagerness to learn. …
• Early reading. …
• Talent for puzzles or patterns. …
• Exceptional creativity. …
• Advanced reasoning skills.
Should a 2 year old know colors?
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At what age should a child know their ABCS?
Mom Share
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Log in
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The Serenity Prayer's Optimism
Rob Whitley PhD
"The serenity prayer is optimistic about the human condition, encouraging individuals to think deeply and act with resolution in the here and now, rather than wallowing in a fatalistic worldview."
Diana Raab
"The Serenity Prayer can help provide solace and optimism during these times..."
"The first step in nurturing a sense of optimism is to surrender to the numerous possibilities that abound. In our quest to do so, the Serenity Prayer is an ideal daily mantra"
Karen Bables
"The second part of this prayer is not as well-known, but it, too, leads us to hope through realistic optimism:
Call Us
+61 417 217 241 (Australia)
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Victoria 3206
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| 0.882252 |
Displaying all articles tagged:
Gina Neely
1. News
Celebrity Chefs Gina and Pat Neely Are Divorcing“Our focus will be on our individual brands,” they write.
2. Closings
3. Slideshows
First Look at Neely’s Barbecue Parlor, Opening WednesdayA trio of food-TV personalities is behind this one.
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What Is a Teacher Observation Report?
A teacher observation report is a written evaluation of a teacher’s performance in the classroom. It can be conducted in various ways by means of administrative assessment, peer evaluation, and even student evaluation.
According to an online article by the Education Encyclopedia, classroom observation is a valid method of measuring competence. However, it is not always 100% airtight. Some of the major limitations of classroom observation include theoretical and epistemological criticisms, methodological concerns and pragmatic concerns.
Traits to Look for in a Good Teacher
When people credit their successes to their teachers, it is often not an exaggeration. The quality of a child’s education depends on how good a teacher is. A good teacher can sometimes be hard to find. And by good, this means a host of other positive characteristics that is not only limited to the teacher’s knowledge and expertise on a particular subject matter.
Open-minded: The classroom is a place for sharing ideas and thoughts. In order to maximize learning in the classroom, there needs to be an atmosphere that promotes a lively and healthy exchange of ideas. The teacher is in a unique position to help foster an environment that is conducive to learning. And on the part of the teacher, this requires a level of open-mindedness. If the teacher or instructor remains closed or unwilling to learn from his or her students, the flow of knowledge remains one-sided and therefore, limited. A good teacher knows that a classroom is fertile soil- where young minds are molded and a place that can help build their young potential. Thus, a good teacher is keenly aware that it is their responsibility to help bring out that potential in every student. Respectful: Two of the most basic and fundamental traits in every good teacher are respectfulness and compassion. It is no secret that there are some teachers who abuse their authority. And by account of their seniority, some teachers believe they are immune from any fault or error. A truly admirable teacher knows how to respect not just themselves, but their students and the student’s ideas. A good teacher does not put down a student just because they are in the position of authority and power. They are able to strike a healthy balance between compassion and discipline. Knowledgeable: A good teacher knows his or her subject matter by heart. They have the necessary knowledge and skills to impart to students and young people. In a lot of ways, a teacher can be seen as a mentor; and a mentor passes down all that he knows to a young apprentice or prodigy. Most students go to school expecting to learn something valuable. And if a teacher is unable to exhibit expertise in a certain subject, the student can easily sense that. A student needs to see that his or her teacher is confident in the subject matter so he himself can be assured of the lesson. Yet being an expert does not stop a good teacher from remaining open to new knowledge and different opinions. After all, true knowledge is not just about what is superficial and surface-level but more importantly, it is the depth of knowledge. Hands-on: A good teacher keeps his or her students engaged during every class session; and this can be achieved in a number of ways. A more dynamic and interactive learning environment can help keep students interested and eager to learn. This sometimes requires creativity on the part of the teacher. If a professor or instructor sticks to just traditional lecturing and does not make the effort to switch it up from time to time, sooner or later his students will grow tired and uninspired. A hands-on teacher will go the extra mile and try to foster an interactive and participatory learning environment.
Ways to Assess a Teacher’s Performance
There is no perfect way to assess a teacher’s overall performance in the classroom. The most fair thing to do is to combine various methods of evaluation in order to get the most accurate picture possible. Attending one class is not enough to determine whether a teacher is effective or not. It often involves more than one occasion to fully establish a decision. The following ways are just some common methods of assessment when it comes to rating teachers:
Classroom Observation: This is an obvious one, but an easy and simple way to measure performance. School administrators or even principals may sit in during a class just to observe the teacher in action. How a teacher interacts with his or her students is but one aspect of classroom observation. A teacher’s knowledge on the subject and instructing style are points for evaluation as well. However, one session may not be enough. Multiple sit-in classes or observations may be needed to actually get a holistic and fair assessment of a teacher’s effectiveness. On a side note, class demonstration or simulation classes are even part of the requirements for would-be teachers and applicants. Student Feedback: Sometimes, students are made to grade their own teachers. It is, after all, their education that is on the line. At the end of a term or semester, students may be asked to rate their professors or teachers according to a prepared rubric. This is part of a comprehensive approach of assessing a teacher’s effectiveness and impact in the classroom. Student feedback is critical because they are the ones at the receiving end of the teacher’s instruction. If there are any unsatisfactory areas, students should be free to convey comments and suggestions if it will help improve the quality of their education. Peer Evaluation: Another way of measuring impact is through peer evaluation. This means other teachers or faculty members can observe and grade the teacher. In a lot of schools, subject areas are headed by a department head or a subject area coordinator. For instance, English or Math are separate departments and have a person-in-charge that oversees all the teachers under that subject. These area coordinators may be tasked to rate teachers by way of classroom observation and peer evaluation. This can be an important method of assessment because it allows teachers to share best practices, exchange feedback and constructive criticism with other colleagues who may have similar concerns and problems. Doing so may also encourage teachers to constantly be on their game and foster a sense of continuous improvement.
Tips for Writing a Teacher Observation Report
Whether you are a fellow faculty member or a regular student, if you are tasked to rate a teacher or instructor, it might be helpful to keep these tips in mind:
Be Objective: A teacher observation report is not an excuse to extract revenge for a poor grade or a failing mark. There are cases where students use teacher evaluations as a weapon to place the teacher in a bad light because of personal or emotional reasons, and past grudges. This should be avoided at all costs. Writing a teacher observation report demands responsibility as well as objectivity. It should never be an emotionally-driven or vindictive way to get even. Practice objectivity by truly reflecting on the given criteria. Make sure to read the instructions carefully and rate each item as it applies in the most realistic and truthful way possible. Be Impartial: Being objective is not enough, it goes hand-in-hand with impartiality. You also need the resolve to do away with any biases and preconceived notions. This takes a lot of self-awareness and reflection. Being impartial means that you can set aside your prejudices and preconceptions in order to arrive at the most objective conclusion possible. For example, one criteria for the teacher evaluation report is classroom management. A partial and biased rating would be born out of a dislike (or even extreme regard) for the teacher. The best way to rate a teacher is by setting aside those emotional inclinations and looking at it through a neutral lens. Be Fair: Lastly, any report should be fair and just. Fairness is inevitably tied with objectivity and impartiality. To be fair is to take an objective account of a situation or person. If you are tasked to write a teacher observation report, you must be willing to let go of any biases you hold. Biases may be conscious or unconscious. A lot of times, people are not even aware of their own biases and unwittingly apply it to their daily lives and decisions. But by cultivating one’s self-awareness, you can temper your blind spots and make better, fairer judgments. A good teacher observation report applies the notion of fairness in every item or criteria.
How to Create a Teacher Observation Report
To create a good teacher observation report, you need to ensure it is comprehensive and detailed enough. The more detailed or specific the criteria is, the easier it is for the person to answer. If you want to save time and effort, use an existing template above and simply modify it to your liking. Do not forget to follow these essential guidelines when creating your observation report:
Step 1: General Information
To begin, key in all the basic information such as rater’s name, the name of the teacher to be evaluated, grade level, section or class, class size, subject, and date. Some reports do allow the rater to remain anonymous. In the case of classroom observation, you can also include the timeframe or length of observation. Aside from general information, you may enumerate a short list of the report’s objectives and other key instructions. Make sure these are stated clearly and coherently. It is best to keep both of these brief so as not to unnecessarily prolong your introduction.
Step 2: Rubric and System of Grading
A key element in a teacher observation report is the rubric or rating scale. This should be clearly and easily identifiable on the front page of the report. This serves as the basis of grading the teacher. Some rubrics are numerical while others are not. Rating scales may also vary according to the school. There are schools that use numbers as measurement, where 1 is the lowest and 5 is the highest score. While other schools prefer descriptive methods by using ratings like excellent, satisfactory, unsatisfactory, or needs improvement. Whatever the rubric, it is imperative that it is clearly explained and done so in a direct manner.
Step 3: Questions and Criteria for Judgment
Once you have your preferred rubric in place, you need an organized set of items for the rubric to apply. These items serve as criteria for judgement. The items could be simple questions or generic descriptive statements. To make it more organized, divide your criteria into different sections. Group your questions or statements accordingly. Some examples of general sections include classroom management or climate; quality of instruction, content or mastery or subject; student relationship and progress; work ethic; competency and professionalism, etc.
Step 4: Comments and Suggestions
In case the criteria falls short or does not cover a particular aspect, it is imperative that you leave adequate space in the report for other comments and suggestions. It is important for your teacher observation report to contain a section dedicated to recommendations. The feedback given could be vital for the teacher and could help address any areas that need improvement. A simple comment box can suffice for as long as there is enough space to write down suggestions and other remarks.
How do you write an observation report for a teacher?
To write an observation report for a teacher, you need to create a standard criteria or rubric and come up with a set of questions or statements that will allow you to apply the rubric. To illustrate this, you can use any sample template from above and it will serve as a convenient guide and reference.
What is a teacher’s observation?
It is an assessment or evaluation of a teacher’s classroom performance by way of observing how the teacher conducts himself or herself in front of a class. It is meant to measure the competence, qualifications, and teaching style of a teacher or instructor.
What is a teacher observation checklist?
A teacher’s observation checklist is a guide that serves as a reminder on what to look for when conducting a classroom observation. Items on the checklist can vary from case to case. But common items include the teacher’s professionalism, mastery of the subject, classroom management, and application of lessons to real world scenarios.
Regardless of education level whether it is preschool, kindergarten, high school, or college, teachers need to be graded in order to ensure quality education. It’s important to note that parents, school administrators, and even students themselves are not only doing it solely for themselves but for the benefit and professional growth of the teacher as well. Make your own teacher observation report today by downloading any of the sample templates above!
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Word of the Month for March 2016: Intuition
The Virtue is Intuition and the Saboteur is Conclusion
Intuition is our inner compass.
The Phoenicians were an ancient mariner society that lived as long ago as 6,000 years. Their navigation genius changed the face of the world. Some say these people may have navigated themselves across the entire globe. They exchanged ideas as well as goods. They brought us the alphabet, invented purple dye and supplied Egypt with wood for their magnificent temples. All these things and more came about because these people pondered on the nature of the night sky.
They intuited that we humans were travelers in space and time and that the stars and planets were also time travelers. The night sky viewed from the Earth used to be like a piece of black velvet dappled with brilliant diamonds spilling across its surface. The Phoenicians pondered the graceful movements of the stars across the sky, how they synchronized with the seasons and even synchronized with events in their lives.
Read more
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| 0.813515 |
Oblique House
Architecture (new construction)
Family residence
5,500 sf
Credit List:
Höweler + Yoon Architecture, Eric Höweler, J. Meejin Yoon, Neil Legband, Max Jarosz, Sungwoo Jang
Gregg Bleam Landscape Architect
Jeff Wolfram
Nestled into Virginia’s deciduous forest, Oblique House engages its residents with their surroundings. The site’s gradual slope invites a continuous circulation through the entrance way, through the yard, and into the forest behind- a gentle slope leading to Langley Fork Park. The approach to the house includes a framed glimpse of the central view, revealed completely upon entering the house.
Two stacked L-shaped volumes overlap obliquely to create a doubleheight space, which orients a visitor to the house’s organization. The house’s lower bar, which contains living and dining space, and upper bar, housing the bedroom suites, revolve around the grand living space. This tall glazed room pushes the lower bar forward in pursuit of light and presents cascading views which visually connect the house’s public and private functions.
Floor-to-ceiling windows run along the length of the dining and kitchen areas to create a porous southeastern facade that pulls the forest inward. With its glazed southeastern face and knife-edge shading visor, Oblique House is designed to maximize solar exposure on short winter days and, with its corridor along the northwestern face, keep the house from overheating in the summer. Deep visors cast shade over the glazed living area and bedrooms to protect against harsh light in the summer months.
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| 0.934139 |
5 qualities every trainer must have
Being a trainer is not only a job, but also a responsibility. It means helping others get and understand information, so it may actually represent a starting point or the height of somebody’s career.
This is why a trainer must check several points on the “Must have” qualities list in order to make a difference and to make it a positive one.
First of all, a trainer must have an impressive luggage of experience. This is not necessarily measured in the number of years he spent working in a certain field, but in how certain he can be that the knowledge he shares is correct. He must have the kind of experience than allows him to present different kinds of examples during the course, to talk about typical and also atypical situations and to perfectly understand different points of view characterizing one single idea.
In the same time, the way a trainer talks, explains and presents his classes must be easily understood by everybody. The information should be clear, exact and put in the simplest ways. Even though one approach might be more in handy to him and it could be better than others, the most important purpose should be making everybody understand the information. And this means using different approaches to which every single person could relate to.
Understanding the “mirror thinking” concept is one of the most important qualities in a trainer. This means that, no matter how advanced his level of experience and knowledge is, he can also understand how different people think and he can adjust his presentation to everybody’s level. Some trainees might be at the beginning of their career, while others might just want to refresh their knowledge. A part of the audience might understand better the numbers in a presentation, while the other part might relate better to the story behind them. And they might not always speak their mind. It’s the trainer’s duty to structure his presentation is such a way that it would be adjusted for every person in the room.
No matter what the subject of the training is, humor is always an important component. And the trainer should know how to juggle with it and how to naturally sprinkle it in the presentations. He must master the art of knowing when humor would relax and also when it could confuse the trainees, when it would make the information stick and when it might have a negative effect.
Even though some of the trainees might not even notice it, the organization and the organizational skills of a trainer are extremely important. In the first place, this refers to the structure of the class per se, but it must also include the logistics and how the training is organized as an event. So great organizational skills would reflect themselves into how well the trainer divides the content of the presentation, how well he combines information with questions, dialogue and tests, but also into the PR skills behind the organization of the classes.
It’s clear that every trainee has his own idea of how a professional trainer should be, how he should talk and how he should teach his courses. But despite all the differences in opinion, certain qualities are vital for a successful, admired and professional trainer.
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| 0.968329 |
Change Management
💎 Reliability Best Practices - Change Management
Being aware of how change affects a system allows you to plan proactively, and monitoring allows you to quickly identify trends that could lead to capacity issues or SLA breaches. In traditional environments, change-control processes are often manual and must be carefully coordinated with auditing to effectively control who makes changes and when they are made.
Using AWS, you can monitor the behavior of a system and automate the response to KPIs, for example, by adding additional servers as a system gains more users. You can control who has permission to make system changes and audit the history of thesechanges.
💎 Reliability Change Management Questions
REL 3: How does your system adapt to changes in demand?
A scalable system provides elasticity to add and remove resources automatically so that they closely match the current demand at any given point in time.
REL 4: How do you monitor your resources?
Logs and metrics are a powerful tool to gain insight into the health of your workloads. You can configure your workload to monitor logs and metrics and send notifications when thresholds are crossed or significant events occur. Ideally, when low-performance thresholdsare crossed or failures occur, the workload has been architected to automatically self-heal orscale in response.
REL 5: How do you implement change?
Uncontrolled changes to your environment make it difficult to predict the effect of a change. Controlled changes to provisioned resources and workloads are necessary to ensure that the workloads and the operating environment are running known software and can be patched or replaced in a predictable manner.
When you architect a system to automatically add and remove resources in responseto changes in demand, this not only increases reliability but also ensures that business success doesn’t become a burden. With monitoring in place, your team will be automatically alerted when KPIs deviate from expected norms. Automatic logging of changes to your environment allows you to audit and quickly identify actions thatmight have impacted reliability. Controls on change management ensure that you can enforce the rules that deliver the reliability you need.
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Journalism Day goes virtual
Journalism Day turned into an online conference for middle school and high school students.
Jackson Taggart, Staff Reporter
Journalism day, also known as “J-Day”, is a one-day workshop for middle school and high school students, and their advisers, to better themselves in journalism. This convention taught students certain journalism skills that every writer needs to know. Journalism Day taught kids how to have a voice and express themselves. Abigail Vondy, editor-in-chief of the Eaton Red Ink, said, “[Journalism day] teaches kids that they can have a voice in their community and that they can do it in a way that gets other people interested.”
The schedule for J-Day is broken down into sessions and has an opening ceremony at 8:30 in the morning. Session one began at 9 a.m. and went over multiple lessons like podcasting and interviewing as well as how to cover sporting events and make a story stand out. The morning session started with the basics in journalism as it briefly covered the main events that high school students write about. With the basics covered, the students and advisers were ready to go to the advanced skills in the next session.
Session two began at 10 a.m. and covered more of the do’s and don’ts of all the skills. Session two went over what not to do in interviews and yearbook design and one session covered women’s views on sports media. Coming to the end of the day, students learned about designing and making stories eye-catching through multiple conferences and speakers who shared their ideas with the listeners.
In the end, every student felt like their writing skills were better improved and that they were able to give more to journalism. The students and advisers found it very helpful and can’t wait until next year.
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Aug 6th, 2014
Reasoned PHP
Using logic to run your programs backwards!
This is a transcript of a talk I gave at the Berlin PHP usergroup in August 2014.
This presentation is going to be about using logic to run your programs backwards. Let’s begin with talking about logic.
One of the first logicians was Aristotle, a few years before Christ. He came up with syllogisms — logical statements — that would look something like this:
I am a human.
Every human is mortal.
Therefore, I am mortal.
And by combining these statements, one could reach logical conclusions. Which would allow truths to be derived.
Then christianity happened, and there wasn’t really any progress in science and philosophy for… well, a while.
But then, in the 1600s, Leibnitz not only independently invented calculus (next to Newton), but also discovered many of the concepts that would play an important role in the formalisation of logic.
His calculus ratiocinator is an attempt at creating a universal language to describe human thought. He is famous for suggesting that truths should be calculated.
In the 1800s, a lot of progress was made on the logic front. Boole created boolean algebra. De Morgan published De Morgan’s laws. Both of these systems would allow translations to be made between logical statements, and they laid the groundwork for electronics.
Frege wrote the Begriffsschrift, introducing for the first time a formal logic that included a notion of functions and variables. This new method would form the basis for most of early 20th century mathematical work.
boole, frege, de morgan
In 1935, Gentzen created not one, but two new formulations of logic1: Natural deduction and the sequent calculus. It can be described in terms of a few simple rules.
At the same time, Church was trying to prove something about logic and accidentally invented the simply typed lambda calculus: The first functional programming language and it even has a type system!
This turned out to be a formalization of computation and thus remains one of the most commonly used ways of describing computers on the most fundamental level.
What is amazing however is that when the descriptions of natural deduction and the simply typed lambda calculus are compared, they appear to be identical! And that’s because they are identical! Logical proofs directly correspond to the types in programs!
This is what is known as the curry-howard isomorphism, and it shows us that there is a very strong link between logic and computation.
So let’s talk about programs. The way I tend to think about programs is as black boxes. You put things in on one end, stuff comes out on the other end. For the same things you put in, you will always get the same things out. It is deterministic in that sense.
In pure functional programming this is true for every function. But even if you don’t care about functional programming, this is still true at the macro scale. Your program as a whole is deterministic.
So let’s take a function append for example. You give it two lists as inputs, it produces a list as an output. The output list is the concatenation of the two input lists.
But would it be possible to reverse this process? Could we flip the inputs and the outputs, and ask “give me the inputs that when concatenated produce this output list”?
The laws of physics do not prevent the rules to be reversed, apart from the law of entropy. So let’s fight entropy.
The actual problem here is that there is more than one possible answer to the question. There are multiple ways in which two lists could create the provided output list.
And as a matter of fact, we can enumerate all of the possibilities. And from looking at them, we can tell that there is some sort of relationship between the two inputs. As one of them grows, the other one shrinks.
And usually in any slightly more complicated program, we don’t just have a list of possibilities. It is a tree. A tree that branches out, that can be traversed and searched.
The type of programming that I am describing is constraint logic programming. More specifically, constraint logic programming over the domain of trees.
The execution of the program corresponds to a search over the tree. You are searching for an answer that will satisfy the given constraints. And this search corresponds to a search for a constructive logical proof.
In order to construct this tree, the program needs to be written in a particular kind of way. The way it is done is by redefining equality, or rather, assignment.
In most programming languages, assignment is a uni-directional construct. A value is assigned to a variable. It only goes one way.
However, if you extend this notion to a bi-directional relationship in which the order of statements does not matter, you gain reversibility.
At this point you no longer have inputs and outputs. You just have pieces of information that are related to each other. This is why this form of programming is also known as relational programming2.
Another important piece of the puzzle is the tree search and the matching of trees against each other. This happens through an algorithm called unification.
You can think of unification as a way of taking two trees — or lists of lists — and matching them against each other. The trees can contain “holes” which are unbound variables. When matching the trees against each other, they can fill each other’s holes. If there is no contradiction, then the trees unify.
Another way to think about it is a bi-directional pattern match.
Reasoned PHP
This brings us to a system that I have been working on. It is called Reasoned PHP.
Reasoned PHP is a logic programming system written in PHP. It is a port of miniKanren into PHP. An embedded language for relational programming.
function appendᵒ($l, $s, $out) {
return condᵉ([
[($l, []), ($s, $out)],
[fresh_all(($a, $d, $res) ==> [
consᵒ($a, $d, $l),
consᵒ($a, $res, $out),
appendᵒ($d, $s, $res),
This is what the code looks like. Your first thought might be “omg that’s so ugly”, to which I will answer: What did you expect? It’s PHP.
Your second thought might be “omg unicode function names”. Yep. Amazing, isn’t it?
If you wanted to actually call this appendᵒ relation, here is how you would do it:
run٭($q ==>
appendᵒ([1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], $q));
So let’s suppose we have a relation called memberᵒ that tells you if a variable $x is a member of the list $list:
memberᵒ($x, $list)
We can now ask this relation questions, such as “is 2 a member of the list [1, 2, 3]?”, to which it will respond with _.0 which is a strange way of saying yes.
memberᵒ(2, [1, 2, 3])
// => _.0
That is not very interesting yet. Instead we could ask: is the unbound variable $x a member of the list [1, 2, 3]? In this case, it will answer “yes, and by the way, these are the possible values it could take!”
memberᵒ($x, [1, 2, 3])
// => 1, 2, 3
Now, you can also combine these statements. Is $x a member of [1, 2, 3] and of [3, 4, 5]?
memberᵒ($x, [3, 4, 5])
// => 3
And sure enough, it actually figured out that there is only one value that is a member of both lists: 3. So without explicitly defining an intersection operation, the intersection emerges from the tree search.
Cool stuff
I want to emphasise that this is a general programming technique and you can model almost any computation in this way. And by doing so, you will be able to run any program that is written in a relational manner backwards!
Nevertheless, there are certain problems where this approach fits particularly well. I would like to show you some of them.
The first one is mathematical formulae. A formula is just a tree of terms and most of calculus does not actually involve calculation at all. It is just symbolic manipulation of symbols. And that’s precisely what prolog and other logic programming systems excel at.
Here is an example of symbolic differentiation3.
In electronics you have logic gates that react to electrical signals in certain ways. A logic gate can be depicted with a symbol as often used in circuit schematics. But it can also be described in terms of a truth table.
The truth table describes the logical relation between the input bits and the output bit. It is a function. As such, it can be implemented as a bi-directional relation.
It is possible to combine these two gates to form a so-called half-adder. The half-adder also has a truth table. And thus also can be a relation.
By combining two half-adders, you can create a full-adder. It allows you to add two binary digits. Chaining n full adders allows you to add two n-bit binary numbers. n corresponds to the amount of binary digits. And that’s really what the ALU inside of your computer does.
This circuit is reversible.
Normally if you think of arithmetic, it is a function. Two numbers go into the addition operator, the sum comes out on the other end.
If you implement arithmetic as a relation, you can ask questions such as “give me all the numbers that add up to 5”. The system will enumerate them4!
Moving up from hardware to software, we have compilers. A compiler is a program that reads the source code of another program and compiles it down to machine code.
If you implement a compiler in a relational way, you get not only a compiler, but also a decompiler. That means that if you’re lucky, you will be able to take an arbitrary chunk of machine code and translate it back into some sort of source code!
This becomes even more fun when you write a relational interpreter. An interpreter is a program that reads the source code of another program and executes it. Then sometimes produces an output.
With a relational interpreter you can not just feed it some input and see the output. You can ask it questions such as “give me all of the programs that evaluate to 42”. The system will enumerate them!
This is extremely powerful. It is almost like doing TDD, but without writing the code. The tests constrain what the program must do. The proof search will try to find a program that satisfies those constraints. It has actually been possible to synthesise small programs using this technique.
One very cool aspect of unbound variables is that you can use them multiple times. This allows you to formulate a question such as “give me a program that when executed outputs its own source code”. This is what is known as a quine, and a relational interpreter will happily generate quines for you5!
eval_expᵒ($q, [], $q)
// => ((lambda (_.0) (list _.0 (list 'quote _.0)))
// '(lambda (_.0) (list _.0 (list 'quote _.0)))
But you can do something even better than that. You can ask the interpreter to produce a program $x that evaluates to the source code of a program $y. And the program $y should then evaluate to the source code of $x again. This is what is known as a twine, and a relational interpreter will happily generate twines for you!
eval_expᵒ($x, [], $y)
eval_expᵒ($y, [], $x)
// => ((lambda (_.0)
// (list 'quote (list _.0 (list 'quote _.0))))
// '(lambda (_.0) (list 'quote (list _.0 (list 'quote _.0)))))
How much code does it take to implement the basic mechanisms of a logic programming system? One of the smallest ones, that Reasoned PHP is in fact based upon, is called µKanren.
It consists of ~50 lines of code.
It’s amazing how little code is needed to build a logic programming system.
Go check out Reasoned PHP
1. From Propositions as Types by Philip Wadler
2. A term popularised by William Byrd and miniKanren
3. From Clause and Effect by William Clocksin
4. This number system is described in The Reasoned Schemer and is lovingly referred to as “Oleg Numbers”
5. From Quine Generation via Relational Interpreters by Byrd et al.
Brought to you by @igorwhiletrue.
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Snow: your questions answered
Snow: your questions answered
Updated 16 February 2018
Powdery, soft and magical – and found in such limited areas – there's something special about snow in Australia. Our continent is the lowest, flattest and (apart from Antarctica) driest on earth. Our overseas friends might ask whether it snows here at all. But for many, snow is eagerly awaited, much welcomed and the source of lots of questions. Here are some answers!
What is snow?
Snow is a type of solid precipitation made up of ice crystals, most of which are branched or star shaped. It forms when atmospheric temperatures are low and there is moisture available in the form of tiny ice crystals.
How do snowflakes form?
Snowflakes form when ice crystals grow around pollen or dust particles. The structure and chemical properties of water mean that ice crystals tend to form hexagonal shapes. The crystals grow faster from the corners of the hexagon than from its flat sides, forming six matching arms. The shape of the arms depends on the temperature and humidity of the environment, giving each snowflake a unique shape.
The development of a snowflake
Image: The development of a snowflake
What's the difference between snow, snow showers, sleet and hail?
For snow showers, this is similar to the difference between rain and showers. Snow showers (like rain showers) occur for a short period, usually starting and ending suddenly. They typically fall from convective clouds.
Snow (like rain) falls more continuously and for a longer period, meaning there's a greater accumulation on the ground. Snow typically falls from stratiform clouds.
Sleet is a mixture of rain and snow, or falling snow that is melting into rain.
Hail and snow have obvious similarities—they're both cold and fall from clouds, and widespread small hail can look a bit like snow—but hail forms very differently. It only forms in thunderstorm (cumulonimbus) clouds, in rising air known as updraughts. So if it's snowing, it's cold. If it's hailing, there's a thunderstorm cloud around and it could be cold or hot.
Snow falling in Allens Rivulet, Tasmania
Image: Snow falling in Allens Rivulet, Tasmania
What makes a good or bad snow season?
Australia's snow season is notoriously fickle, with some years bringing deep cover and others amounts that barely cover the grass. Climate drivers play an important role, tilting the chances towards a better or worse season. For example:
Single weather events can also make all the difference, such as the so-called Snowmageddon in 2014, which dropped around a metre of snow in less than a week.
Does the radar show snow?
Sometimes. Use the radar with caution because it can also show clear weather when it's actually snowing. Snow clouds may not show up on the radar because they are low to the ground and not detected by the radar beam overhead. Mountains may also block the radar beam so it can't detect what's happening on the other side. What you see may also be rain, or a mix of rain and snow, not just snow!
Do rain gauges measure snow?
Some of them do. The standard instrument for measuring precipitation is a rain gauge. When the precipitation is in the form of snow, the snow in the rain gauge melts and the equivalent amount of water is recorded.
However, when it snows and the temperature falls below freezing, snow in the gauge’s collecting funnel can create an icy cap and stop any melt from running into the cylinder.
We use specialised equipment in areas where snow regularly falls. Some gauges have a heating element (such as a light bulb) which helps melt the snow. A conical wind shield called a nipher shield may also be used to reduce vertical wind eddies and better capture snow falling over the gauge.
Rain gauge with nipher shield
Image: Rain gauge with a nipher shield
Does the Bureau measure snow depth?
No. Snow depth is very difficult to measure because snow density varies greatly from place to place. Density will depend on the structure of the ice crystals and how they have accumulated, what shape they take and how they stack when reaching the ground.
Snowy Hydro has measured weekly snow depths at Spencer's Creek in New South Wales since 1954. Many resorts also record snow depth within their ski areas.
Image: Snow at Mt Hotham, Victoria, August 2017
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Data Science Pandas Python
A Simple Walk-through with Pandas for Data Science – Part 1
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In this post, we will talk about the essential concepts in the library Pandas. You will see It’s one of the most important libraries used for data processing, efficient storage, and manipulation of densely typed arrays in Python. We will also see that it is a continuation of the NumPy tutorial. Without further ado, let’s start!.
This tutorial is part one in our three-part series on the fundamentals of Pandas:
1. Part #1: A simple walk-through with Pandas for Data Science, Part 1 (today’s post)
2. Part #2: A simple walk-through with Pandas for Data Science, Part 2 (next weeks tutorial)
3. Part #3: How to import existing files with Pandas (blog post two weeks from now)
Before starting with this tutorial, I strongly recommend you get familiar with Python programming terminology and NumPy. To understand this tutorial, you need to get your foundations appropriately built.
What is Pandas?
If you have carefully followed the tutorial on Numpy, you will have learned that NumPy lies at the core of a rich ecosystem of data science libraries. What this means is that most of the data science libraries utilize the power of NumPy. Let’s have a careful look at the image below:
The nature of numpy
After a well-detailed study of the photo, you will spot that the Pandas package is built on top of NumPy.
There is something you should keep in mind about Numpy. It will provide you with the basic features when you have well-organized data. However, there are several drawbacks are when more functionality is required. Such as:
• Linking the rows and columns of labels to data (values)
• Working with heterogeneous types of data
• Missing data, and
• When performing powerful operations such as grouping data to analyze less structured data in different forms.
Let’s see how we can install this package, then explore some of the basic functionalities which are the basics of Pandas.
How to Install and Use Pandas?
If you have Anaconda installed on your computer already. In that case, you may skip this process since Pandas comes along with Anaconda, which includes Data Science packages suitable for Linux, Windows, and macOS.
If you don’t have the library already installed or you’re not using Anaconda, I strongly recommend installing it to avoid missing dependencies. Or you may choose to ignore me by entering these commands on your command line:
Once you have followed the tutorial or went ahead to install the Anaconda Stack, you should have Pandas installed. Once installed, you can import the library and check the current version with the following commands:
Note the pd added is a standard convention to renaming libraries which we will do each time we import Pandas.
Before starting this tutorial, it’s good to know about using the tab-completion feature; this way, you can quickly explore all the contents of a package. For example, we can show all the contents of the pandas namespace by typing:
This auto-completion feature also applies to other libraries, including NumPy.
Creating Pandas Objects
There are two (2) common types of data structures in Pandas:
• Series – one-dimensional arrays
• DataFrame – a two-dimensional array
And one more called the Index.
Let’s understand the underlying concept of how we may work with these two libraries. We may begin by opening a script or pandas_tutorial.ipynb (A Jupyter notebook).
Start with importing both libraries (NumPy and Pandas) into our working script.
pandas.Series can be thought of as a one-dimensional array with indexes. If you want to create one, there are multiple ways you can do so by using either:
1. Python Lists
2. Python Dictionaries
3. NumPy arrays
4. Scalar value or Constant
Python Lists
First, I will show you how you can do this with Python lists.
As you can see, inside the parentheses of the Series object created, it contains both a segment of values and indexes. Luckily Pandas provides the capability which lets us access the values and index attributes.
You can think of the Index as an array-like object of type pd.Index, which I will further explain below. For now, knowing that they exist is enough.
The values are similar to what we learned about NumPy.
Using NumPy arrays, data can be accessed by the corresponding Index via square-bracket notation:
So far, we have seen how data can be accessed by a Numpy implicitly defined integer index. However, this can be done by an explicitly defined Index associated with the values created above. For example, we can use the strings as an index:
The second way to create a Pandas Series is by using a dictionary.
Let’s start by creating a Python dictionary. If you don’t know what they are, visit this tutorial here :
In order to create a Series object out of a Python dictionary, we can do it this way:
NumPy Array
We can also create one where specifying the Index is optional as follows:
Scalar Value or Constant
Then, if you have a scenario where the data needs to be a scalar or a constant, we can fill up to an index specified.
Let’s say we want to represent different top tech companies. Assuming you are familiar with Python dictionaries we will have keys and values.
To represent a company like Google, we have the key as ‘name’ and value as ‘Google’ and another key ‘year’ with the value as 1998. This way we have represented data for a single tech company. However, the downside of writing it this way is representing data for more tech companies like Facebook and thousands more becomes complicated. Writing it this way isn’t efficient enough.
The way I will suggest you think about this is to represent all the values as a list. Let’s see how this will look like below:
We can also access the index labels from the pandas.DataFrame Object created like the Series object as well as the column attribute, which is an Index object holding the column labels:
To access the values of a single column, we can write as follow:
You can also think about pandas.DataFrames as two-dimensional NumPy arrays, where both the rows and columns have a generalized index for accessing the data.
You might have noticed up until now that both the pandas.DataFrame and pandas.Series contain an explicit index that quickly allows us to get values or modify values within the existing data. According to the documentation provided, these indexes are nothing more than an Immutable n-dimensional array which stores the axis labels for all Pandas objects.
Let’s run an experiment and construct an Index from a list of Integers:
This Index object also supports many operations like NumPy arrays.
Take Python Indexing notation as an example to retrieve values or slices:
These Immutable objects also have many attributes such as:
They are called immutable objects for one reason, and that’s because you can’t modify them.
This operation will certainly raise a TypeError: “Index does not support mutable operations.”
Data Indexing and Selection
If you have read the previous tutorial related to NumPy arrays, you will have learned how you can access, set, and modify values within NumPy arrays created. If you’ve learned that, there’s no need to stress out. There is only a few features you need to know.
When you perform either data indexing or selection on a Pandas Object (Series or DataFrame), it’s very similar to the pattern used in NumPy arrays.
Let’s learn about performing such an operation on a Pandas Series object, then move on to working with a pandas.DataFrame object.
Data Indexing and selection in Series
Let’s create a pandas.Series and perform some basic selection and indexing techniques as we would with NumPy arrays:
We can even decide to modify this pandas.Series object by adding a unique key and assigning a new index value to the new key.
One difference when performing slicing, which we talked about in the tutorial related to NumPy, is that there are two different ways slicing behaves.
• The Explicit index style ( continent [ ‘Nigeria’ , ‘China’ ] ): The last Index is included in the slice.
• The Implicit index style ( continent [ 0 : 2 ] ): The last Index isn’t included in the slice.
You may confirm from the output below. Remember, we start counting from 0 instead of 1.
Indexer: loc and iloc
Since these indexing types often cause confusion, special indexer attributes were created to resolve this issue.
The first one is the .loc attribute, which refers to the explicit Index with which we may get rows or columns with particular labels from the Index:
The second one is the .iloc attribute, which refers to the implicit Index with which we can get rows or columns at a particular position in the Index (Note: it only takes integers):
Data Indexing and selection in DataFrames
Moving on to more complex structured arrays (DataFrames), you can think of it as a two-dimensional structured array.
Let’s create a pandas.DataFrame with multiple pandas.Series objects such as continents, language, and population, and specify the Index as a country located within that region.
To get all the values within a row, we can pass a single index to an array:
and giving an available index to the pandas.DataFrame, we can get all the languages within the column.
As mentioned earlier, we can use these pandas indexers: loc and iloc. The only underlying difference is we need to specify the index and column labels to access a value, sample, or multiple rows within our DataFrame:
Similarly, direct masking operations are also interpreted row-wise rather than column-wise: we can perform direct masking operations by selecting only the rows with a population greater than ten million.
To break down how this works, first, we can use boolean arrays as masks to select a particular subset of the data, which returns either true or false based on the condition. Now to choose the values from the array, we can index based on the boolean array. That’s why we get the result above.
Using these indexers, we can combine both masking (just explained) and fancy indexing to return only a specific column of interest.
Then we can choose to either modify or set values into our DataFrame, the same way you have seen with NumPy.
In this post, you discovered the fundamentals behind the Pandas Library. You learned how to create Pandas Objects, and perform data indexing and selection on both Pandas Objects (Series and DataFrame).
In the next tutorial we will learn how to perform different operations with Pandas, how to handle missing data, combining different datasets, and finally about groupby functions along with computing functions like aggregate, apply, filter and transform.
To get all access to the source code used in all tutorials, leave your email address in any page’s subscription forms.
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Why do fish swim in schools
School of fish
Photo: editorial staff
Not only during adolescence, when you have to protect yourself from predators, fish form so-called schools, but also when they are fully grown fish are grouped in schools. Norwegian researchers at the Institute for Marine Research (IMR) are studying how decisions are made in schools of fish.
Basically, the question arises why swarms are formed. One of the main reasons is protection from predators. It is interesting that the predators in turn form fish schools at a young age. If barracudas and hammerhead sharks are considered loners in old age, these fish species can be observed in schools at a young age. Other reasons for the formation of schools are overwintering and the breeding behavior of the fish.
If a school of fish is attacked, the fish begin to swim in circles. The Norwegian researchers want to find out how decisions are made in a swarm. Are the predators the triggers that force the fish to swim in circles, or is this behavior generated by the school? Killer whales have developed a unique hunting strategy in which they round up the swarm and force it to rise to the surface of the water.
A school of fish is seen as a leaderless, self-organizing system. The movements and decisions of the individual fish are mainly made by imitating the reactions of the neighboring fish. The millions of individual decisions are made from the inner motivation and the need to survive of every single fish. Seen from the outside, this behavior appears to be a collective decision.
It is not a democratic process that underlies collective behavior. Rather, the behavior can be compared with physical laws. The swarm moves in the direction of least resistance. That means he moves away from the attacker. The formation of a circle or a sphere also gives the swarm the smallest surface area for an attack. The Norwegian researchers compare this behavior with the historical, collective decision of people to speak the same language.
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n. the intake of calories that is usually recommended on a daily basis. It is largely determined by a person's consumption of food as divided into nutritional servings and measured in calories. It varies from person to person, depending on age, weight, activity, and other lifestyle factors.
CALORIC INTAKE: "Typically, the daily caloric intake for men and women is estimated at 2,550 and 1,940 calories, respectively."
Cite this page: N., Pam M.S., "CALORIC INTAKE," in, April 7, 2013, (accessed September 27, 2021).
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Is the Indian Act still in effect today?
Indian Act, 1876. The most important single act affecting First Nations is the Indian Act, passed by the federal government of the new Dominion of Canada in 1876 and still in existence today.
Is the Indian Act still active today?
While the Indian Act has undergone numerous amendments since it was first passed in 1876, today it largely retains its original form. The Indian Act is administered by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), formerly the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND).
Does the Indian Act still exist 2021?
Since it was first passed in 1876, the Indian Act has undergone numerous amendments but it still stands as law, governing matters pertaining to Indian status, bands and reserves, among other things.
Is the Indian Act good or bad?
Why is the Indian Act bad?
IMPORTANT: Best answer: How many presidencies are there in India?
How much land do natives own in Canada?
Our Indian reserves are only 0.2 per cent of Canada’s land mass yet Indigenous Peoples are expected to survive on that land base.
Who benefits from the Indian Act?
What is included in the Indian Act?
Dreams of India
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Schnelle Antwort: What Was The Primary Political And Military System In Europe During The Middle Ages?
What social and political system dominated Europe during the Middle Ages?
The most dominant system in the early and high Middle-Ages in Europe (800CE-1300CE) was feudalism. The feudal system dominated the political, economic, and social structures of many European kingdoms.
What was the major government system of the Middle Ages?
The prevailing system of government in the Middle Ages was feudalism. Though the actual term “feudalism” was not used during the Middle Ages, what we now recognize as a feudalist system of government was in control in Medieval Europe.
What became the basis of military and political organization in the Middle Ages?
You might be interested: Frage: Who Was Ruling The Middle Ages?
What were the politics of medieval Europe?
Medieval Europe was dominated by the Roman conception of the Empire as a universal political dominion, and by the Christian conception of the Church as a universal theocratic dominion; both involving the Idea of the fundamental unity of Christendom in opposition to the common enemy, whether regarded as the barbarian
What replaced feudalism during the Middle Ages?
End of the Middle Ages As feudalism faded, it was gradually replaced by the early capitalist structures of the Renaissance. Land owners now turned to privatized farming for profit. Thus, the slow growth of urbanization began, and with it came the cosmopolitan worldview that was the hallmark of the Renaissance.
What are the 4 levels of feudalism?
How did political structures change during the Middle Ages?
There was a big change the political structures during the Middle Ages. There were stronger monarchies, weaker nobility, and the loyalty of the common people to the king. Towns also grew and flourished. The was a document that limited the power of monarchies and gave nobles more rights.
What was the economic system of the Middle Ages?
You might be interested: Oft gefragt: Why Were Saints Important To Christians In The Middle Ages?
Which effect did the bubonic plague have on European life during the Middle Ages?
Could a peasant become a lord?
What institution held the most power during the Middle Ages?
The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages Instead, the Catholic Church became the most powerful institution of the medieval period. Kings, queens and other leaders derived much of their power from their alliances with and protection of the Church.
What technology was used in the Middle Ages?
What type of political system was most common in medieval Europe?
You might be interested: FAQ: How Maids Would Clean The Floor In Middle Ages Castles?
What were the political values of the Middle Ages?
Feudalism was the dominant political form in Europe during most of the Middle Ages. The main value that underpinned feudalism was loyalty. Loyalty in the feudal system was supposed to work both upward and downward. Vassals were supposed to be loyal to their lords.
Who is the political thinker of the Middle Ages?
Thomas Aquinas He was greatly influenced by Aristotle, and was convinced that Christian thinkers should be able to debate on theological issues with people from all faiths. He was also a strong support of Scholasticism, a medieval school of philosophy, that aimed to expand and defend the truths of faith.
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What contact information should you put on a resume?
What contact information should you put on a resume?
What contact information should you put on a resume?
What to include: Include your full name, street address, city, state, and zip code. Also, include your phone number and email address. If you have a. Name: If you go by a name other than your given name, you can use this in your resume.
How do I put military skills on my resume?
Once it is time to put together your resume, write a cover letter or interview, remember:Avoid military jargon. Put your military job title, skills and experiences into terms employers understand. Provide a complete picture of your military experience. Describe your:
How do you say 3pm in military time?
4:00 pm
What time is 16 00 in military?
Convert Military Time To Standard And Vice Verse | OnTheClockwww.ontheclock.com › convert-military-24-hour-timewww.ontheclock.com › convert-military-24-hour-time
How do you say 0015 in military time?
How do you say 0100 in military time?
How do you say military time out loud?
Speaking military time. When you say the numbers, always use “hundred” instead of “thousand.” So 0600 would be spoken “zero six hundred” or “zero six hundred hours” (more on this below). And 1000 would be spoken as “ten hundred” not “one thousand.” To say a time with minutes, you simply pronounce each number.
How do you say 0009 in military time?
Military Time 0009 is: 12:09 AM using 12-hour clock notation, 00:09 using 24-hour clock notation. See, what time is in the other military time zones at 0009Z (Zulu Time Zone) .
What time is 11 in military time?
Military Time / 24 Hour Time Conversion ChartRegular TimeMilitary Time10:00 a.m.10 hours11:00 a.m.11 hoursNoon12 hours1:00 p.m.13 hours20
What time is 10 30 in military?
Military Time Conversion ChartStandard TimeMilitary Time EquivalentMilitary Time Equivalent10:30 a.m.45 a.m.00 a.m.15 a.m.
What time is 2030 in military time?
military time conversion table – how to tell military timeStandard TimeMilitary TimePronunciation7:00 PM1900Nineteen Hundred Hours7:30 PM1930Nineteen Thirty Hours8:00 PM2000Twenty Hundred Hours8:30 PM2030Twenty Thirty Hours44
What time is 12 in military time?
Easy to Read Military Time Chart12-hour am-pm clock24-hour military time10:00 amampmpm13:0021
What time is 3 30 pm in military time?
How do you write military time?
Military time typically does not use a colon (:) to separate the hours and minutes; they are just written together. The first two numbers in military time tell you the hour while the last two numbers tell you the minutes. So, if you want to use 10:35 A.M., you would write 1035 and say ten thirty five.
What is another name for military time?
How do you say 2000 in military time?
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Duration 1h 35m
Distance 68 miles
Average price $50
Nearby airports 5 found
Closest airports to Narragansett
The nearest airport to Narragansett is Newport (NPT). However, there are better options for getting to Narragansett. RIPTA operates a bus from Ccri to Boston Neck After Starr 5 times a day. Tickets cost $2 and the journey takes 53 min.
Recommended airport
Boston (BOS)
1. Boston
2. Kennedy Plaza
3. Narragansett
3h 37m
$2 - $124
Other nearby airports
Providence (PVD)
1. Ccri
2. Narragansett
2h 1m
Martha's Vineyard (MVY)
1. Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard, MA
2. Narragansett
3h 28m
$117 - $128
Hyannis (HYA)
1. Transportation Center, Hyannis, MA
2. Kennedy Plaza
3. Narragansett
4h 21m
$21 - $28
Newport (NPT)
1. Roger Williams After Belver
2. Gate At Kohls
3. Narragansett
1h 35m
Important airports for Narragansett
Frequently asked questions
Want to know about travelling to Narragansett, RI, USA? We have put together a list of the most frequently asked questions from our users such as: What is the cheapest mode of transport?, What is the quickest option?, How much do tickets usually cost? and many more.
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The nearest airport to Narragansett is Newport (NPT) Airport which is 10.6 miles away. Other nearby airports include Providence (PVD) (19.2 miles), Martha's Vineyard (MVY) (43.9 miles), Hyannis (HYA) (62.3 miles) and Boston (BOS) (67.5 miles).
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It takes 3h 37m to get from Narragansett to Boston (BOS) Airport.
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We recommend flying to Boston (BOS) Airport, which is 67.5 miles away from Narragansett. The train and bus from Boston (BOS) to Narragansett takes 3h 37m.
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The Big 12 is not giving up just yet.
Big 12 officials have discussed a structure in which Texas and Oklahoma would receive additional revenue shares as a way of enticing the two schools to remain in the conference rather than pursue a future in the SEC, conference sources have told CBS Sports.
Dennis Dodd laid out the structure this way: The Longhorns and Sooners would receive an additional half-share annually (1.5 shares each), bumping their payouts to approximately $56 million per year. The other eight schools would decrease their payouts accordingly. Big 12 schools currently average $37 million in annual TV rights earnings, including revenue from bowl games and the NCAA Tournament.
Still, all indications are that Texas and Oklahoma are expected to inform the Big 12 on Monday of their intent to not renew their grant of rights agreements with the league, effectively indicating their departure from the conference. That agreement lasts through the 2024-25 athletic season.
While the exit timeline remains an unknown, the money those blue bloods would pay is staggering, an estimated $80 million presuming they actually leave the Big 12 before the current TV rights deal expires.
The money move to the SEC is reportedly around $60 million per school with Texas and Oklahoma in the SEC, compared to the average $44 million currently in the SEC.
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The City of Sunnyvale is incorporating urban ecology into the new Moffett Park Specific Plan, as part of creating an ecological innovation district. We applied the Urban Biodiversity Framework to identify opportunities, develop strategies, and offer ecological guidance for making a biodiversity-friendly district. The Moffett Park Specific Plan Urban Ecology Technical Study shows how we can incorporate a network of high-performance nature to improve health outcomes, build resilience, support biodiversity, enhance human experience, and establish a unique sense of place. The opportunities and strategies outlined do not constitute formal city policies; rather, they present an overarching approach to guide Moffett Park towards a greener future using the most up-to-date science. In this project, SFEI is part of a team producing the new Specific Plan, led by Raimi and Associates.
Dowload the report
Programs and Focus Areas:
Resilient Landscapes Program
Urban Nature Lab
Location Information
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Jump directly to the content
Ancient skeleton with ‘extremely rare form of dwarfism’ dating back 5,000 years unearthed in China
AN EXTREMELY rare ancient skeleton has been found in China.
The remains are of a human who would have suffered from a very uncommon form of dwarfism around 5,000 years ago.
This ancient skeleton has a rare form of dwarfism
This ancient skeleton has a rare form of dwarfismCredit: www.sciencedirect.com
The skeleton was unearthed at a burial site near the Yellow River in east-central China.
It was found alongside the remains of other people who lived between 3300 and 2900 BC.
All of the skeletons were found with their hands on top of their bodies apart from the skeleton with dwarfism.
Instead, the hands were tucked behind its back.
The skeletons teeth showed that it had died as a young adult
The skeletons teeth showed that it had died as a young adultCredit: www.sciencedirect.com
Archaeologists first noticed that the remains appeared shorter and weaker than the rest.
After further investigation they were able to diagnose the young adult with skeletal dysplasia.
This medical term covers a range of conditions that affect bone development but most people know it as dwarfism.
The condition is rare in modern humans but shows up even less in the archaeological record.
In fact, less than 40 ancient cases have been discovered.
Co-author of the research Siân Halcrow, an archaeologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand, told Forbes: "I think it is important for us to recognise that disability and difference can be found in the past, but these did not necessarily have negative connotations socially or culturally.
"The ancient historical texts show that they may, in fact, have been revered in some situations."
The skeleton's teeth enabled the archaeologists to determine that it was the remains of a young adult.
They also discovered that the skeleton had short limbs and a small head and trunk.
In more common forms of dwarfism the limbs grow disproportionately smaller than the head and torso.
This led the authors to diagnose the Neolithic skeleton with a condition called "proportionate dwarfism".
Proportionate dwarfism is rare in both the archaeological record and amongst living humans.
Experts think the skeleton's short stature could have been due to an underactive thyroid or pituitary gland in their early life.
This would have affected the ancient human's hormone levels and stunted bone growth, organ function and potentially cognitive development.
The archaeologists aren't sure how the individual would have been treated when they were alive.
It's likely they needed the support of others to survive but the difference in the way the remains were laid out alongside other skeletons indicate there's a chance they were treated like an outsider.
This research has been published in the International Journal of Paleopathology.
The world's most gruesome ancient burials
Here's some of the most haunting archaeological discoveries ever made...
• Shackled skeletons: A mass grave in an ancient Greek cemetery was found to contain 80 skeletons all with their wrists clamped in iron shackles; archaeologists think they were victims of a mass execution but why this happened remains a mystery
• Mass child sacrifice: The remains of nearly 270 children sacrificed to the gods 500 years ago were recently found in a gruesome ancient mass grave in Peru
• Family massacre: Archaeologists recently discovered that a 5,000 year old mass grave site was the result of a tragic family massacre; the burial site in Poland contains the bodies of men, women and children who all had their skulls smashed to pieces
• Bog bodies: In 1950, experts found a bog body with a "face so fresh they could only suppose they had stumbled on a recent murder." The corpse, referred to as the Tollund man, is probably the most well-preserved body from pre-historic times in the whole world
Five hundred human skeletons lay littered over an eerie Himalayan lake Uttarakhand state
In other archaeology news, a dog walker found a 65million-year-old ‘ichthyosaur’ skeleton on the beach thanks to his sharp-nosed dogs.
A lost Ancient Greek civilisation invented ‘single-use cups’ because ‘no one wanted to do the washing up’ 3,500 years ago.
And, from vagina impalement to ‘death by elephant’ – history’s most gruesome execution methods revealed.
What do you think of the rare skeleton discovery? Let us know in the comments...
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International Principles for Safeguarding Essential Economic Functions in the COVID-19 Pandemic
Monday, April 6, 2020 - 10:45pm
Governments should acknowledge the inevitable tension between social distancing (i.e., “shelter in place,” “stay at home,” and other quarantine orders) and the need to allow for essential economic activity. Taking the following principles into account will help in addressing this formidable challenge:
1) Governments should clearly and comprehensively define essential infrastructure, services, and workers, and they should provide local law enforcement officials the tools they need to identify workers and services that are exempt from quarantine orders. One good reference is the Guidance on the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which identifies critical infrastructure and related workforce categories that should remain exempt from quarantine orders. The U.S. State Department has shared this guidance internationally.
2) Governments should emphasize open, transparent, and ongoing industry consultation as an indispensable part of the preparation of lists such as the one above.
3) Governments should ensure sub-central governments follow the same rules though the course of the pandemic may require quarantine orders to vary over time and from place to place. A patchwork approach in which state, provincial, and local governments adopt divergent or unclear guidance of their own may inadvertently complicate pandemic response. Similarly, countries in a customs union or other close economic partnership will face the same imperative for close coordination.
4) Governments should provide frequent updates to this guidance based on ongoing input as new aspects of the pandemic’s impact on different economic sectors informs authorities’ understanding of infrastructure, services, and workers that should be deemed essential.
5) Governments should coordinate with international partners to align access and movement policies and consider the international implications of rules in this area for business operations that depend on global supply chains.
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Urban Heat Island (or UHI)
Concrete roadways and buildings reduce evapotranspiration and absorb more solar radiation than surrounding
The figure below shows the magnitude of the urban heat island as a temperature difference between a city and its surroundings, for clear sky and light wind conditions, plotted as a function of city population. The different slopes of the relationship differ for cities in different parts of the world. This difference results from differences in the urban characteristics, the characteristics of the rural surroundings, and the prevailing climate. More typically, heat island intensities are in the range of 1° C to 3° C (2° F to 5° F) degrees, even for large cities, indicating the importance of wind and cloud effects. Seasonally, heat islands in temperate climates are a maximum during summer and fall when weather conditions are more favorable.
The slope of the relationships
The intensity of the heating varies across a city, with the highest temperatures found near the city core. For instance, under clear skies and light winds, temperatures in central London (see figure below) during the spring reached a minimum of 11° C (52° F), whereas in the suburbs they dropped to 5° C (41° F), a difference of 6° C (11° F).
The minimum air temperature
We can reduce the magnitude of the urban heat island through various mitigation strategies. Examples include planting trees and vegetation to shade the surface and provide evaporation cooling and increasing the reflectivity of surfaces such as roofs to reduce the amount of solar radiation absorbed.
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Capturing the distribution sensitivity among the poor in a multidimensional framework. A new proposal
Working Paper 2011-193
This paper aims to explore properties that guarantee that multidimensional poverty indices are sensitive to the distribution among the poor, one of the basic features of a poverty index. We introduce a generalization of the monotonicity sensitivity axiom which demands that, in the multidimensional framework too, a poverty measure should be more sensitive to a reduction in the income of a poor person, the poorer that person is. It is shown that this axiom ensures that poverty diminishes under a transfer from a poor individual to a poorer one, and therefore it can also be considered a straightforward generalization of the minimal transfer axiom. An axiom based on the notion of ALEP substitutability is also introduced. This axiom captures aversion to both dispersion of the distribution, and attribute correlation, and encompasses the multidimensional monotonicity sensitivity axiom we propose. Finally, we review the existing multidimensional poverty families and identify which of them fulfil the new principles.
Authors: .
Keywords: Multidimensional poverty, distributional dispersion, transfer principle, attribute dependence.
JEL: D30, D63.
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Molecular Anatomic Pathology: Principles, Techniques, and Application to Immunohistologic Diagnosis
General Principles of Molecular Biology
Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is a common technique used for the detection of protein expression in various tissue samples. In modern pathology practice, this methodology is expanded and complemented by molecular techniques that test for changes in nucleic acids—in effect, DNA and RNA—to assist the immunohistologic diagnosis.
Many of the chapters in this book refer to theranostic and genomic principles that can be investigated with immunohistology and used directly for patient care. The underpinning of these immunohistologic tests requires an understanding of the molecular abnormalities of these disease states and how molecular methods apply to their study. In addition, the molecular methods discussed here may be valuable in diagnosis when immunohistologic results are nonspecific.
Deoxyribonucleic Acid
Genetic information in human cells is encoded in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which is primarily located in the nucleus of each cell. DNA is a double-stranded molecule that consists of two complementary strands of linearly arranged nucleotides, each composed of a phosphorylated sugar and one of four nitrogen-containing bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), thymine (T), or cytosine (C). The order of these four bases encodes genetic information. Two strands of DNA run in opposite directions and are held together through pairing between specific bases—in effect, between adenine and thymine (A:T pairing) and guanine and cytosine (G:C pairing)—that forms a double-stranded helix. As a result, the nucleotide sequence of one DNA strand is complementary to the nucleotide sequence of the other DNA strand.
The human genome contains approximately 3 billion base pairs (bp) of DNA. The DNA is folded to fit within the nucleus. It is divided among chromosomes and is efficiently packed into chromatin by histones and other accessory proteins. Each normal somatic cell contains two copies of 22 different somatic chromosomes and two sex chromosomes, either XX or XY. Less than 5% of DNA actually encodes protein and other functional products, such as transfer RNA (tRNA), ribosomal RNA (rRNA), micro-RNA (miRNA), and other small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs). Most human DNA (>95%) consists of noncoding sequences, typically repetitive sequences such as minisatellites, microsatellites, short interspersed elements, and long interspersed elements. Microsatellites are short tandem repeats (STRs), and each repeat is from 1 to 13 bp long. Minisatellites are tandemly repeated DNA sequences with a repeat unit of 14 to 500 bp. Microsatellite and minisatellite repeats are also known as STRs. Highly repetitive sequences that contain thousands of repeated units are also found at the telomeric ends of the chromosomes and near the centromere; they play a role in establishing and maintaining chromosome structure and stability.
For the genetic information to be decoded, the DNA is copied, or transcribed, into messenger RNA (mRNA), which is then translocated into the cytoplasm, where it governs translation into protein ( Fig. 2.1 ). Genes are segments of genomic DNA that encode proteins and other functional products. Each gene is typically present in a cell in two copies, one on a maternal and another on a paternal chromosome. Current estimations suggest that about 25,000 distinct genes are present in the human genome. Each gene typically consists of exons, which are protein-coding sequences, and introns, which are noncoding sequences located between the coding regions (see Fig. 2.1 ). Transcription initiation and termination codons flank the portion of a gene that codes for a protein. Gene transcription and silencing are facilitated by promoters and enhancers, which are DNA regions typically located nearby and “upstream” from the gene they regulate, although they may also be located at a great distance.
Gene structure on the DNA level and the process of transcription and translation. Genes are segments of DNA that contain protein-coding regions (exons), noncoding regions (introns), and regulatory regions that include promoter and enhancer sequences. In the mature RNA (mRNA), only protein-coding parts—that is, exons—are preserved, and they contain the genetic information needed for the protein. UTR , Untranslated region.
Ribonucleic Acid
Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a single-stranded molecule that consists of a chain of nucleotides on a sugar-phosphate backbone. However, the sugar in RNA is ribose, rather than deoxyribose, and thymine is replaced by uracil. RNA is more susceptible to chemical and enzymatic hydrolysis and is less stable than DNA.
Several types of RNA exist, and each is different in its structure, function, and location. The most abundant types of RNA are rRNA and tRNA, which comprise up to 90% of the total cellular RNA. They are predominantly located in the cytoplasm and have important functions in protein synthesis: rRNA, in a complex with specific proteins, forms ribosomes on which proteins are synthesized, and tRNA is responsible for the carrying and adding of the amino acid to the growing polypeptide chain during protein synthesis. mRNA comprises 1% to 5% of total RNA, and each mRNA molecule is a copy of a specific gene and functions to transfer genetic information from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, where it serves as a “blueprint” for protein synthesis. The gene sequence is first transcribed into the primary RNA transcript by RNA polymerase. This transcript is an exact complementary copy of the gene and includes all exons and introns. Next, intron portions are spliced out from the primary RNA transcript while it is processed into mature mRNA (see Fig. 2.1 ). Other types of RNA include heterogeneous RNA (hnRNA) and snRNA. Several classes of short RNAs have also been discovered, one of which is miRNAs, which are short (19 to 22 nt) single-stranded molecules that function as negative regulators of the coding gene expression.
The abundance of a protein within each cell depends on the expression levels of the gene (i.e., how many mRNA copies are transcribed from DNA) and the stability of the protein. Proteins are synthesized on ribosomes in the cell cytoplasm, and mRNA carries genetic information to the ribosomes, which then direct the assembly of polypeptide chains by reading a three-letter genetic code on the mRNA and pairing it with a complementary tRNA linked to an amino acid. The three-bases code, called the codon, defines which specific amino acid is added by the tRNA to the growing polypeptide chain. After synthesis, the protein undergoes posttranslational modification, such as chain cleavage, chain joining, addition of nonprotein groups, and folding into a complex, tridimensional structure.
Genetic Polymorphism and Mutations
Variations in DNA sequence are common among individuals. Genetic polymorphism is an alteration in DNA sequence found in the general population at a frequency greater than 1%. Polymorphism may be associated with a single nucleotide change, known as a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), or with variation in a number of repetitive DNA sequences, such as minisatellites or microsatellites, called length polymorphism. Usually, genetic polymorphism does not directly cause a disease, but, rather, it may serve as a predisposing factor.
Mutation is a permanent alteration of the DNA sequence of a gene that is found in less than 1% of the population and most likely causes disease. Mutations can be either germline, present in all cells of the body, or somatic, found in tumor cells only. Somatic mutations may provide a selective advantage for cell growth and may initiate cancer development, but they are not transmitted to offspring. In contrast, germline mutations are passed on to the next generation.
Mutations located in a coding sequence, in the regulatory elements, or at the intron-exon boundaries of a gene may affect transcription and/or translation and may result in alteration of the protein structure and function. The sequencing of cancer genomes has revealed that most mutations occur in genes in which the products affect signaling pathways that control important cell functions. It is estimated that most mutations (90%) result in activation of a gene, typically forming an oncogene such as RAS or BRAF ; smaller proportions of mutations (10%) lead to loss of function of a tumor suppressor gene, such as TP53 .
A current list of somatic mutations in cancer can be viewed at the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (COSMIC) database, which documents somatic cancer mutations reported in the literature and identified during the Cancer Genome Project ( ). Not all somatic mutations have a clear biological effect. Mutations that increase cell growth and survival and are positively selected for tumor development are called driver mutations. Conversely, genetic alterations that do not confer a selective growth advantage to the cell and do not have functional consequences are known as passenger mutations. They may be coincidently present in a cell that acquires a driver mutation and are carried along during clonal expansion, or they occur during clonal expansion of a tumor. It is generally believed that only a small fraction of mutations in a given tumor are represented by driver mutations; thus, it has been estimated that a typical human tumor carries approximately 80 mutations that change the amino acid sequences of proteins, of which less than 15 are driver mutations.
Mutations can be classified according to size and structure into small-scale mutations (sequence mutations) and large-scale mutations (chromosomal alterations). Small-scale mutations include point mutations, which are single-nucleotide substitutions, and small deletions and insertions. Point mutations can be further classified as missense mutations, which lead to amino acid change and result in production of abnormal protein; silent mutations that do not lead to a change in amino acids; and nonsense mutations, when substitution of a single nucleotide results in formation of a stop codon and a truncated protein. Deletion and insertion mutations can result in either deletion or insertion of a number of nucleotides divisible by 3, leading to a change in the number of amino acids and a shorter or longer protein, or it leads to insertion or deletion of a number of nucleotides not divisible by 3, which causes a shift in the open reading frame of the gene; this affects multiple amino acids and typically produces a stop codon and protein truncation. Large-scale mutations can be due to (1) numerical chromosomal change, that is, loss or duplication of the entire chromosome; (2) chromosomal rearrangement, translocations or inversions that result in an exchange of chromosomal segments between two nonhomologous chromosomes, or within the same chromosome, and typically lead to activation of specific genes located at the fusion point; (3) amplification, when a particular chromosomal region is repeated multiple times on the same chromosome or different chromosomes, resulting in the increased copy number of the gene located within this region; and (4) chromosomal deletion or loss of heterozygosity (LOH), when deletion of a discrete chromosomal region leads to loss of a tumor suppressor gene residing in this area. Functional consequences of each mutation type vary. In general, mutations result in either activation of the gene—typically forming an oncogene, such as KRAS or RET— or loss of function of a tumor suppressor gene ( TP53, PTEN, CDKN1A ).
Specimen Requirements for Molecular Testing
Molecular testing in surgical pathology can be performed on a variety of clinical samples, including fresh- or snap-frozen tissue, formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue, cytology specimens (fresh and fixed fine needle aspiration [FNA] samples), blood, bone marrow, and buccal swabs. Specimen requirement depends on the type of disease and on molecular techniques used for the analysis. Peripheral blood lymphocytes or cells from buccal swabs are typically used for detection of germline mutations responsible for a given inherited disease, such as RET mutations in familiar medullary thyroid carcinoma. Blood and bone marrow biopsy materials are frequently used for detection of chromosomal rearrangements in hematologic malignancies ( BCR/ABL1 in acute lymphocytic leukemia). Tumor tissue samples are required to detect somatic mutations such as KRAS point mutation in colorectal cancer, SS18/SSX1 rearrangement in synovial sarcomas, or EGFR mutation in lung adenocarcinomas.
Fresh- or snap-frozen tissue is the best sample for testing because freezing minimizes the degradation and provides excellent quality of DNA, RNA, and protein. Such specimens can be successfully used for any type of molecular analysis, including detection of somatic mutations, chromosomal rearrangements, gene-expression arrays, and miRNA profiling. FFPE tissue samples or fixed cytology specimens do not provide such highly preserved nucleic acids; however, these specimens can be successfully used for molecular testing in many situations, particularly for tests that require DNA. Usually, 10% neutral-buffered formalin (NBF) is most commonly used for tissue fixation. However, it leads to fragmentation of DNA; therefore molecular assays need to be optimized when FFPE tissue samples are used by amplification of shorter DNA fragments (250 to 300 bp in length). Prolonged (>24 to 48 hours) fixation in 10% NBF adversely affects the quality of nucleic acids; therefore specimens should preferably not be fixed for prolonged times. Tissue specimens that were processed with bone decalcifying solution cannot be used for molecular analysis because of extensive DNA fragmentation. Similarly, it is not recommended to perform molecular testing on specimens exposed to fixatives that contain heavy metals (e.g., Zenker, B5, acetic acid-zinc-formalin) because of inhibition of DNA polymerases and other enzymes that are essential for molecular assays.
RNA molecules are less stable than DNA and are easily degraded by a variety of ribonuclease enzymes present in abundance in the cell and environment. Therefore only freshly collected or frozen samples are universally acceptable for RNA-based testing. RNA isolated from FFPE tissue is of poor quality and can be used for some but not all applications, particularly in a setting of clinical diagnostic testing.
The amount of tissue required for molecular testing depends on the sensitivity of a technique and on the purity of the tumor sample. When selecting a sample for molecular testing, a pathologist must review a representative hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) slide of the tissue to identify a target and determine the purity of the tumor; that is, the proportion of tumor cells and benign stromal and inflammatory cells in the area selected for testing must be evaluated. Manual or laser-capture microdissection can be performed with unstained tissue sections under the guidance of an H&E slide to enrich the tumor cell population. The minimum percentage of tumor cells required for molecular testing depends on the methodology being used for analysis. In general, a minimum tumor cellularity of 50% and at least 300 to 500 tumor cells are required for Sanger sequencing.
For molecular testing of hematologic specimens, blood and bone marrow should be collected in the presence of the anticoagulants ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) or acid-citrate-dextrose (ACD), but not heparin, because even a small residual concentration of heparin inhibits polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification.
Conventional cytogenetic analysis requires fresh tissue. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) can be performed on a variety of specimens including frozen tissue sections, touch preparations, paraffin-embedded tissue sections, and cytology slides.
Common Techniques for Molecular Analysis
Polymerase Chain Reaction
PCR is an amplification technique most frequently used in molecular laboratories. The introduction of PCR has dramatically increased the speed and accuracy of DNA and RNA analysis, and the technique is based on exponential and bidirectional amplification of DNA sequences with a set of oligonucleotide primers.
Every PCR run must include the DNA template, two primers complementary to the target sequence, four deoxynucleotide triphosphates—dATP, dCTP, dGTP, and dTTP—DNA polymerase, and magnesium chloride (MgCl 2 ) mixed in the reaction buffer. Three steps occur in the PCR cycle ( Fig. 2.2 ). First, the reaction mixture is heated to a high temperature (95°C), which leads to DNA denaturing, or separation of the double-stranded DNA into two single strands. The second step involves annealing of primers, in which the reaction is cooled to 55°C to 65°C to allow primers to attach to their complementary sequences. The third step is DNA extension, in which the reaction is heated to 72°C to allow the enzyme DNA polymerase to build a new DNA strand by adding specific nucleotides to the attached primers. These three steps are repeated 35 to 40 times, and during each cycle, the newly synthesized DNA strands serve as a template for further DNA synthesis. This approach results in the exponential increase in the amount of a targeted DNA sequence and production of 10 7 to 10 11 copies from a single DNA molecule.
Schematic representation of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). A three-step cycle—denaturation, annealing, and extension—is repeated 35 to 40 times to generate more than 10 7 copies of the targeted DNA fragment.
The efficiency of PCR amplification depends on many factors, which include the quality of the isolated DNA template, size of the PCR product, optimal primer design, and optimal conditions of the reaction. Quality DNA allows amplification of long products (as high as 3 to 5 kb). However, when dealing with DNA of suboptimal quality—that is, when DNA is isolated from fixed tissue or cytology preparation—the reliable amplification can be achieved on only relatively short DNA sequences (400 to 500 bp or shorter).
Once the PCR procedure is complete, the products of amplification should be visualized for analysis and interpretation. A simple way to achieve this is to use agarose gel electrophoresis and ethidium bromide staining. However, this method cannot separate amplification products that differ in size by only few nucleotides, and finer separation can be achieved with polyacrylamide gel or capillary gel electrophoresis ( Fig. 2.3 ). PCR amplification followed by gel electrophoresis is frequently used for detection of small deletions or insertions, microsatellite instability (MSI), and LOH. For detection of point mutations, the PCR products should be interrogated by other molecular techniques.
Postpolymerase chain reaction (PCR) detection of amplification products. (A) Agarose gel electrophoresis shows two PCR products obtained with DNA from two tumor samples, T1 and T2, which are of similar size. (B) Capillary gel electrophoresis shows two PCR products of different sizes. L , DNA ladder (size marker); NC , negative control.
Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction
Reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) is a modification of the standard PCR technique that can be used to amplify mRNA. As a first step, isolated mRNA is converted to a complementary DNA (cDNA) molecule with an RNA-dependent DNA polymerase, also known as reverse transcriptase, during a process called reverse transcription. The cDNA can be used as any other DNA molecule for PCR amplification. The primers used for cDNA synthesis can be non–sequence specific, a mixture of random hexamers or oligo-dT primers, or sequence specific ( Fig. 2.4 ). Random hexamers are a mixture of all possible combinations of six nucleotide sequences that can attach randomly to mRNA and initiate reverse transcription of the entire RNA pool. The oligo-dT primers are complementary to the poly-A tails of the mRNA molecules and allow synthesis of cDNA only from mRNA molecules. Sequence-specific primers are the most restricted because they are designed to bind selectively to the mRNA molecules of interest, making the entire process of reverse transcription target specific.
Principles of reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (PCR). During reverse transcription, messenger RNA (mRNA) is used to build a complementary DNA molecule (cDNA) with gene-specific, oligo (d T ), or random hexamer (N 6 ) priming. The cDNA then can be used as a template for PCR amplification.
Reverse transcription and PCR amplification can be performed as a two-step process in a single tube or as two separate reactions. RT-PCR performed on fresh-frozen tissue provides quality amplification and reliable results. However, when FFPE tissue is used for RT-PCR analysis, the results vary and depend on the level of RNA degradation and length of PCR amplicon. For more stable RT-PCR amplification to be achieved from FFPE tissues, the target is typically chosen to be less than 150 to 200 nt long.
RT-PCR analysis is used in molecular laboratories for the detection of gene rearrangements and gene expression. RT-PCR may also be used to amplify several exonic sequences in one reaction because it can take advantage of the fact that all introns are spliced out in mRNA, leaving the coding sequences intact and significantly shortening the potential product of amplification. However, it is important to recognize that RNA is easily degradable and has to be handled with great care during the entire process of reverse transcription to avoid degradation. Amplification of a housekeeping gene has to accompany each RT-PCR reaction as an internal control to monitor the quality and quantity of RNA in a given sample.
Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction
Real-time PCR uses the main principles of conventional PCR but detects and quantifies the PCR product in real time as the reaction progresses. In addition to all components of conventional PCR, real-time PCR uses fluorescently labeled molecules for the visualization of PCR amplicons. It can be performed in two main formats, with incorporation of DNA dyes such as SYBR Green 1, SYTO9, EvaGreen, or LC Green into the PCR product or taking advantage of fluorescently labeled probes (e.g., fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) hybridization probes, and TaqMan probes) annealing to the PCR product. During PCR, the increasing amounts of fluorescence that result from exponential increase in the amount of amplified DNA sequence are detected by a PCR instrument. The instrument software allows construction of an amplification plot of fluorescence intensity versus cycle number. During the early cycles, the amount of PCR product is low, and fluorescence is not sufficient to exceed the baseline. As the PCR product accumulates, the fluorescence signal crosses the baseline and increases exponentially ( Fig. 2.5 ). At the end of the reaction, the fluorescence reaches a plateau because most of the reagents have been consumed.
Real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). (A) Amplification plot shows a low amount of fluorescence during the initial cycles of amplification (baseline), followed by an exponential increase in fluorescence during the exponential phase, and finally by a plateau at the end of the PCR reaction. (B) Post-PCR melting curve analysis demonstrates a single melting peak in the normal DNA sample (wild-type peak) and two melting peaks in the tumor sample, one at the same melting temperature ( T m ) as the wild-type peak and another lower T m peak as the result of a one-nucleotide mismatch with the probe (mutant peak).
The real-time detection of amplification allows the detection of PCR product in real time and removes the need for subsequent gel electrophoresis. Another advantage is that it can use post-PCR melting curve analysis to detect sequence variations at the specific locus. For example, in the LightCycler probe format, binding of hybridization probes to the PCR product in a head-to-tail fashion initiates the FRET from one probe to another, and detected fluorescence is proportional to the amount of amplified product. During post-PCR melting curve analysis, the PCR product is gradually heated, and fluorescence is measured at each temperature point. During this process, even a single mismatch between the labeled probe and the amplified sequence significantly reduces the melting temperature ( T m ), defined as the temperature at which 50% of the double-stranded DNA becomes single stranded. Therefore the presence of a point mutation or SNP in the region covered by a fluorescent probe is detected as an additional T m peak on melting curve analysis (see Fig. 2.5 ).
Quantitative PCR (qPCR) is a variation of real-time PCR that can be used for evaluation of gene expression levels or gene copy numbers. The quantitative assessment of the initial template used for PCR amplification can be done by comparison of the amount of PCR product of the target sequence with the PCR products generated by amplification of the known quantities of DNA or cDNA.
Real-time PCR is frequently used in molecular laboratories because it is a rapid, less laborious technique compared with other techniques, and it does not require processing of samples after PCR amplification; this minimizes the time of the procedure and risk of contamination by previous PCR products.
Polymerase Chain Reaction–Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis
Restriction enzymes, or restriction endonucleases, are enzymes that cut DNA at specific nucleotide sequences known as restriction sites. The restriction sites are usually 4 to 8 nt long and are frequently palindromic (the DNA has the same sequences in both directions). The restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis exploits the ability of restriction enzymes to cut DNA at these specific sites. If a given DNA sequence variation, such as a point mutation, alters the restriction site for a specific enzyme, either creating or destroying it, this changes the size of the PCR product, which can be detected by gel electrophoresis.
This method is frequently used for detection of known point mutations or SNPs. In addition, it can be used for separation between two amplified sequences that have high similarity in their nucleotide composition. Fig. 2.6 illustrates the use of PCR-RFLP to differentiate between SS18/SSX1 and SS18/SSX2 rearrangements, which are common in synovial sarcomas.
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-restriction fragment length polymorphism detection of SYT/SSX1 and SYT/SSX2 rearrangements in synovial sarcoma. (A) Taq I restriction enzyme cuts the SYT/SSX1 fusion DNA into two fragments 55 and 33 bp long, whereas the SYT/SSX2 fragment remains uncut at 98 bp in length. (B) Five synovial sarcoma DNA samples (c1 through c5) are PCR amplified with primers complementary to both SYT/SSX1 and SYT/SSX2 rearrangement types and reveal a 98-bp amplification band in the agarose gel. (C) After digestion with Taq I , the PCR products from tumors c1 and c3 and from the SYT/SSX1 positive control (+) are cut into two fragments, indicating the presence of SYT/SSX1 rearrangement, whereas the rest of the tumor samples remain uncut, consistent with SYT/SSX2.
Dec 24, 2019 | Posted by in BIOCHEMISTRY | Comments Off on Molecular Anatomic Pathology: Principles, Techniques, and Application to Immunohistologic Diagnosis
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SWBAT combine two or more integers by writing numerical expressions and plotting them on a number line
Big Idea
Do Now
10 minutes
Students enter the class and find a “Do Now – Pop Quiz” on their desk that will include 5 integer combination questions. The questions will assess student knowledge of combining integers with opposite signs and integers with the same sign(i.e. 16 + (-5) and -6 + (-8)). The pop quiz will help me generate a list of students still struggling with integer addition. Students who have not mastered this concept will be encouraged to work in groups so that I can work with them more closely. There are two forms of the quiz, A and B. The letters are indicated at the top right hand corner of each quiz. I will have answers ready to check as students finish.
Class Notes + Intro to Lesson
10 minutes
Students are instructed to take out their homework from the previous night. They are also instructed to fill out their heading in their notes and to copy the aim off the power point.
We begin by reviewing the answers to the homework assignment from the previous night. That assignment included 6 word problems. Students were responsible for writing and evaluating addition expressions to represent each word problem (i.e. a “plane descends 1200 feet and then ascends 500 feet”; Glencoe Workbook online, pg 18). I review the answers to the homework by asking students to read each word problem. After a student reads a portion that could be represented using an integer I ask them to stop and I show everyone which integer represents that part of the problem. Some students may ask about the relationship between adding the inverse and subtracting. I simply state that their number sentence gives the same result, but they must write an addition sentence because of the directions. We discuss the answers to each expression by thinking about the use of counters we explored the previous day. I stop when we get to the golf problem to explain the rules of golf. Many students do not understand the idea of “par”, so I make sure to make time to explain golf, how it is played, and the meaning of “par”. To check for understanding, I ask a volunteer to explain what “0 par” would mean, as well as “1 over par” and “1 under par”. I also point out that in golf you want to get a negative score or zero, not a positive score. Students are asked to explain why one would want a negative or zero score.
After the homework has been reviewed, we fill out the Cornell Notes. I review the position of negative and positive integers in relation to zero for both horizontal and vertical lines. Then, we complete two sample problems together: one that asks students to draw the “arrow annotation” given an expression and another that gives the arrow notation and asks students to write an expression. If there is time, I also show students how to draw arrow notation for combining two negatives. Student questions are answered if there are many, or if there are only a few, they are encouraged to ask their questions during the game.
15 minutes
I explain the structure of the game to students: it is called “Around the World” because they will be moving around the room to complete the problems at different stations. The first station includes 4 problems like the examples in the Cornell notes: two will ask them to draw the arrow notation on a number line and two will ask them to write expressions given number line arrow notations. The second station includes two word problems like the examples in the homework. Students will be writing expressions to illustrate the word problem. The third station includes one problem about combining integers along the number line, but one of the numbers is a variable. The last station is a puzzle station. Two puzzles are given, students are to choose one. If they answer correctly, they will receive a free homework pass. Additionally, students will receive achievement points for clearing stations. One achievement point will be awarded for completing each station if a student chooses to work independently. If a student chooses to work with a partner, they will each receive two achievement points after completing each station. MP1 and MP2 are being used to explore integer addition in these three different formats (skill level problems, world problems, algebra, and puzzles).
5 minutes
When 5 minutes are left for class, students come back to their seats. They are instructed to use a sticky note to write one question they still have about combining integers and stick it on a piece of chart paper before exiting the room.
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Feminism! The word is dreaded! A lot has been said before and there is more to be said even today.
In layman’s language, feminism is defined as addressing women’s rights on equal grounds. A person who is a firm believer in feminism is known as a feminist.
But over time, amidst the political and woke culture, the definition has surely altered. Feminists have outgrown to become humans who enjoy bashing other sexes just to prove that they are superior.
Unwinding The Past
For years, women were suppressed. Female infanticide was a common practice in the 18th century, but things were not always the same. Going back to the Aryan period, when the whole world was just referred to as “Aryavart” was actually the time when we were several centuries ahead in terms of pensive mentality.
Women were regarded with utmost respect. They had the freedom to choose a suitable husband through another common practice of Swayamvar.
Talking about equal rights, Vedic culture encouraged women to read, write, participate in wars, political issues, and at the same time look after their families.
Draupadi, the fire born, is an exemplary of a feminist. Nevertheless, she was respected by her father, brothers, and husbands, and she exercised substantial power over personal and public matters. The lotus-eyed never failed to voice her opinion, believed in herself when nobody did, and never waited for a superhero to save her. She had equal say in political matters, and no decision was taken without her knowledge about the same.
Source: Pinterest
The Modern Era
In this modern world, we do want similar rights- just that kingdoms have now transformed into corporate life and Swayamvar changed to love marriages. Krishna, the other name for Draupadi which literally translates to the one with “dark complexion” was the most beautiful woman of the Aryan period. And now, even a slightly dusky complexion is looked down upon.
But in this long race of freedom and equal rights, we forget to introspect ourselves. I might receive hate for this, but let me put this out: We have lost the essence of being a woman. We are the ones who made ourselves an object to please the senses.
Life commences and ends with a woman. Since time immemorial, women were never equal to men, nor they ever will be, for they are far superior!
In Picture: Sarah Cervantes
Protesting naked on streets, displaying your body hair and period blood is no sort of feminism, in fact, a lunatic approach to “freedom”. Voice your opinions but be ready to hear other’s perspectives too.
Going by the saying, “Men and women are two wheels of the chariot, one can’t work things without the other.”
Feminism in true essence is bringing back your divine feminine power into action. What is your take? Let me know in the comments section.
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When abortions are illegal, certain medical instruments can be a giveaway. For this reason, specific tools have never been developed or sold for this procedure.
Instead, doctors, back-street abortionists and pregnant women themselves used whatever was available, items that were more or less suitable for their purposes: knitting needles, wire clothes hangers, urinary catheters and a wide variety of other objects, providing they were long enough to reach into the uterus.
In places where abortions were illegal, pregnant women tend to ignore their condition for as long as possible, thereby wasting valuable time until they find help. For this reason, abortions are often performed at an extremely late date, at some point in the second trimester on the average.
Whatever instrument is being used is then inserted through the cervix to open the amniotic sac. This induces labour, resulting in expulsion of the embryo.
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Printable version | Disclaimers | Privacy policy
Osteoporosis is a syndrome that affects the density of bones, thereby making them brittle and prone to breakage. Osteoporosis can be caused by a number of different diseases and bodily changes. The most common reason for this syndrome is menopause, which explain why osteoporosis is far more common among elderly women than any other population group. Severe cases of osteoporosis are often caused by genetic defects.
In some extreme cases osteoporosis is life threatening, and limits those that suffer by it to a life in wheelchair. When the condition is this bad, spinal disorders are common, as the bone of the spine is no longer able to withstand the weight of the torso and head.
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linear point
A change in value in a track or lane in Play mode that acts as a point on a curve, setting a value for its position only and allowing for a smooth change in value from that position until the next point in the track or lane. See also constant point, value line.
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Cybercrime refers to any form of illegal activity that’s carried out using technology.
These criminal activities can occur at any scale, from targeting random individuals to international corporations.
The ever-evolving nature of cybercrimes, both in the ways they’re committed and their objectives, can make it hard for the average person to know how to protect themselves or react to such threats.
Typically, cybercrime can be categorised into one of two different – but often connected – types.
1. Cyber-dependent crimes
Cyber-dependent crimes are illegal activities that can only be committed due to some form of technology. Without said technology, they would not exist. Some examples of cyber-dependent crimes include:
Distributed DoS attacks
Distributed denial-of-service (or DDoS) attacks are used to make a network or system inaccessible to its users. DDoS attacks accomplish this by spamming a network with requests at a far larger amount and frequency than it can handle. “Denial of service” occurs because the network is then unable to take on requests from its legitimate visitors.
Cybercriminals carrying out such an attack might demand money to return said network to normal. However, DDoS attacks can also serve as a distraction from another cybercrime occurring elsewhere.
Malware attacks
Malware is a term most people are familiar with – potentially as it’s likely to be a threat to individuals as well as organisations. The term refers to any software intentionally designed to cause damage to or steal data from a device or network.
There are multiple subcategories of malware. For example, spyware is used to gain access to sensitive information from a target, whereas ransomware aims to extort money from a victim by holding their device or data to ransom. There are also viruses, which disrupt a system’s ability to operate, and adware, which spies on your device usage to serve you with targeted advertisements.
Our cybercrime glossary explains key terms for professionals in the field:
Find out more >
2. Cyber-enabled crimes
This second type of cybercrime refers to traditional crimes that have adapted in a way that now sees them being carried out via technology. They may now be possible at a far greater scale, or serve as an alternative approach to the illegal activity.
Some examples of cyber-enabled crimes include:
Cyber-fraud is the most prevalent type of cybercrime experienced by the public. It typically involves spam emails or other forms of online communication being sent to large groups of people with the objective of tricking them into completing an action that compromises the security of themselves or an organisation they’re associated with.
These communications can contain malware-infected attachments or hyperlinks to similarly dangerous websites. Since they’re often made to look like they come from a legitimate source, a cyber-fraud campaign might even ask targets to respond with confidential information that can be used against them.
Cyber-harassment typically encompasses all kinds of online harassment, including verbal and sexual harassment. It can also include actions such as impersonation and doxxing – the latter of which involves sharing a person’s private information, such as their phone number or home address, without their consent.
It’s extremely common for both children and adults to be the victims of such attacks. In addition to the severe mental trauma they can inflict on a victim, cyber-harassment that exposes someone’s personal information online can put victims in actual physical danger too.
Crimes such as extortion are an example of how cyber-enabled and cyber-dependant cybercrimes can be related to each other.
For example, criminals can utilise spyware or ransomware to gain unauthorised access to a person’s data or devices. They can then demand payment from the victim – or else threaten to release private information, maintain control of their devices, or even target others close to them.
Drug dealing, trafficking, and exploitation
As touched upon before, the internet is also used to facilitate traditional crimes that still occur – at least partially – in physical locations as well.
Through the dark web and other online communication methods, criminals are able to plan and conduct activities in ways that were not possible a few decades ago. Due to the increased anonymity that the internet provides, these crimes can often be more comprehensive and wide-reaching, which increases their threat to potential victims and their families.
Ultimately, it’s certainly true that there’s no harm in being overly cautious on the internet. Withholding as much of your personal information as possible – including your online activity – and being wary of any unusual communications, applications, or websites are just small things that can go a long way in safeguarding yourself online.
It’s equally important to remember that all of these different types of cybercrimes still have a very real impact on people, and can be persecuted just like traditional crimes. By recognising these breaches of security and safety as legitimate – however minor they may seem – more people can be empowered to take action to protect themselves and those they care about.
If you’re passionate about understanding and combating cybercrime, you may want to consider our online Cybercrime MSc. Part-time and flexible to your schedule, you’ll be given the support needed to become an expert cybercrime researcher or investigator, in a field that’s striving to make the internet a safer place for everyone:
Explore the course >
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Behaviour 2019
It's only novel if you haven't seen it before: Comparing neophobia in urban and rural American crows
Dave J. Colucci, Amoyien K. Thompson, Anne B. Clark. Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, United States
Animals often avoid unfamiliar stimuli, affecting how they cope with changing environments. This neophobia is often hypothesized to decrease in urban populations, but support is mixed, perhaps due to interspecific differences in the tradeoff between avoiding novel dangers and exploiting novel resources. Most studies compare urban vs rural neophobia with artificial objects whose properties are more common in urban areas, even if the objects themselves are unfamiliar. In our study of American crows, notoriously wary, but successfully urbanized corvids, we instead used four objects ranging from familiar to completely novel, as judged by how common each object and its properties are in each environment. Tests of 10 rural and 10 urban crow family groups show that crows from both areas respond to relative novelty and avoid the most novel objects, as measured by the percent of crows that feed in their presence. However, some urban individuals feed more quickly than any rural ones. We discuss additional analyses evaluating the effect of novelty on two crow-specific “wariness” behaviors and how these behaviors compare with species-agnostic measures of neophobia, such as the latency to feed.
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Best Answer
Considering that the United States did not exist as a country at the time of the Renaissance Age, crowns of that time are not convertable to dollars of that time. So the only way you can figure the answer to this is to determine the rate of inflation for crowns from the Renaissance times to the current times (good luck with that). Then you can then use the current conversion tables to convert crowns to dollars.
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2006-03-09 19:57:18
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Q: What is the current United States dollar value of 20000 crowns from the Renaissance era?
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Related questions
How much is fifty crowns?
Fifty Czechoslovakian Crowns are equal to $2.39 in Unites States Dollars. One crown is equal to 4.7 United States cents.
What country has the greatest number of miss universe title?
United States with seven crowns, Venezuela with six and Puerto Rico with five!
What are all the band members names of Casting Crowns now?
There is still 7 current members in Casting Crowns. The only member that left Crowns, whom they replaced was Andy Williams (the drummer). The current drummer is Brian Scoggin.So, the current members of Casting Crowns are as follows:Mark HallMelodee DeVevoJuan DeVevo (Melodee and Juan are the married couple in the group.)Chris HuffmanHector CervantesMegan GarrettBrian Scoggin
Where are the members of casting crowns from?
All the current and past members of Casting Crowns are all from and currently reside in Georgia. Although, they didn't grew up there, however some might have.
According to the legend how was Egypt unified?
When the two kingdoms were united the two different types of crowns were united into one crown.
How According to legend how was Egypt unified?
Why did Menes wear double crowns?
Because it symbolized that Upper and Lower Egypt were united.
What pharaoh united upper and lower egypt?
The menes united cause 1 of them combined the crowns to unite upper and lower egypt
How can you find more information about You're My Angel?
You're My Angel is a video made by the Christian group Casting Crowns where they sing the popular song, Angel. Casting Crowns is a rock band which was started in 1999 in Daytona Beach, Florida by Mark Hall.The group has recorded many albums and currently tours in the United States.
Why do some countries have two names instead of one?
Frequently is relates to something in their history - e.g. the United States (US) was formed by forming a federally organized country. - e.g. the United Kingdom (UK) was formed when the crowns of Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England came together.
Who united upper and lower Egypt into one nation?
King Menes, and he combined both crowns into one.
Who was the first king of Egypt who united upper and lower Egypt?
King Menes. By combining the Two crowns.
Who was the first queen of The United Kingdom?
Queen Anne, reigned 1702 - 1707. Under her reign the Crowns of England and Scotland were formally united, creating The United Kingdom of Great Britain.
What are heavenly crowns?
One day we will wear heavenly crowns, but Jesus has not left us without crowns in the present. These crownsare not literal, but figurative.
How do you use the word crowns in a sentence?
Why do you need to wear two crowns?The crowns fitted perfectly.
How much do crowns cost on wizard101?
Crowns do cost actual money. The packages as of March 2011 are as follows: 2500 crowns $5.00 5000 crowns $10.00 13750 crowns $25.00 30000 crowns $50.00 60000 crowns $80.00 The actual price per crown varies depending on the size package you are purchasing.
Which country has the most Miss Universe crowns?
Miss United States of America. She has held the crown in the years of 1954, 1956, 1960, 1967, 1980, 1995, 1997. She has also held this honor for twenty-three years consecutively.
Is there a code for crowns?
YES there are 2 crowns you can get with codes
How do you trade gold for crowns on wizard101?
You can't trade gold for crowns in wizard101, however you can trade crowns for gold.
What currency did they use in England 1830?
In the 1830s, England and the rest of the United Kingdom used the Pound Sterling, which could also be divided and multiplied into:farthingsshillingscrownshalf crownstennerssixpencepencehalf-pence
How do you get unlimited crowns on wizard 101 without paying?
well... if you buy 200000 crowns then later you have 100000 crowns then i guess you would have unlimited crowns Mary ann daloo
What was the different types of crowns pharaohs wore?
There were 3 different crowns. Upper Egyptian pharaohs wore a crown which was white and resembled a bowling pin. Lower Egyptian pharaohs wore a red crown that resembled a chair. After Menes united Upper and Lower Egypt, the pharaohs wore a double crown which was both of the crowns combined.
On the Swedish kronor coin why are there crowns?
kronor means crowns
1 dollar is how many Swedish crowns?
7.95 crowns
Why did the pharaohs were snakes on their crowns?
Why did Pharaohs wear snakes on their crowns
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What is a megabyte?
Megabyte – an explanation of the unit of digital information
What’s larger – a MB or a KB? And what is 1 GB in MB? You may have asked yourself these questions before. MB is the abbreviation for megabyte, a common IT storage unit. It tells you the size of a file or how much space it takes up on a data carrier. But what makes up a megabyte and how does it relate to other units of measurement?
What is a kilobyte?
Kilobyte – the unit of information explained
What is bigger: a KB or a MB? And how large is a kilobyte really? That’s a question most digital media users will have asked at some point. Sending files as email attachments, for example, requires an understanding of the kilobyte. But how is this information unit structured and how do you convert it to other units?
IONOS Website Guide: website advice for all
A website isn’t just a website – these days, there are countless ways to create an online presence in a way that matches your expectations. The ‘Websites’ section of the IONOS Digital Guide offers detailed information about creating, managing, and optimising websites as well as facts and general background information on the World Wide Web. For a closer look, you can also explore one of several subcategories about different topics. Here, we present website advice for everyone, from mere enthusiasts to qualified professionals.
What’s in the IONOS Website Guide?
The ‘Websites’ section is one of six main categories in the IONOS Digital Guide. ‘Websites’ is then broken down into four further subcategories: ‘Website creation, ‘Web design’, ‘Web development’, and ‘Digital law’. While ‘Website creation’ focuses primarily on the technical aspects of internet sites, ‘Web design’ articles look at the optical makeup of content, in particular the use of text, images, and responsive displays through HTML or CSS. ‘Web development’ covers the use of scripting languages, like PHP or JavaScript, as well as specific tools for the development of internet services. But basic information about the standards and trends of website development can also be found here. The subcategory ‘Digital law’ presents online laws and practices, like image usage rights and privacy policies.
Website advice for beginners, advanced users, and professionals
The Website Guide serves as an information portal for small and medium-sized companies, along with developers, web designers, technology lovers, and general internet enthusiasts. Many articles on the IONOS Digital Guide require little background knowledge, though some are also aimed at more experienced users. Beginners can enjoy posts on topics like ‘What exactly is a website?’, ‘The basics for modern web development’, or ‘How are websites accessed?’, while more advanced readers can broaden their knowledge of specific topics with comprehensive articles and tutorials. So whether you are a novice, an advanced user, or a professional: our handy Website Guide has plenty of useful tips and tricks to help you become an expert on the World Wide Web.
Own your online success
IONOS takes care of your online challenges
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Readers ask: What Type Of People Use Other Things Or Objects As A Form Of Control Or Manipulation?
What does manipulating objects mean?
Object manipulation is a form of dexterity play or performance in which one or more people physically interact with one or more objects. Many object manipulation skills are recognised circus skills. Other object manipulation skills are linked to sport, magic, and everyday objects or practices.
What is object manipulation examples?
Why is manipulation important? Many daily activities require object manipulation in one hand. Examples include positioning a pencil when writing and drawing; using scissors, holding a knife and a fork; and positioning buttons, zippers, snaps and laces for dressing.
What is it called when you manipulate someone?
The person manipulating — called the manipulator — seeks to create an imbalance of power, and take advantage of a victim to get power, control, benefits, and/or privileges at the expense of the victim. Manipulation can happen in close or casual relationships, but they are more common in closely formed relationships.
Is manipulation a form of control?
You might be interested: Readers ask: What Age Is Embryonic Manipulation Off Limts?
What are examples of manipulative skills?
How can you tell if someone is manipulative?
How to Recognize Manipulative Behavior
2. They Make You Question Your Reality.
3. They Always Deflect Blame.
4. They Justify Their Behavior.
Is manipulation good or bad?
“ Manipulation is an emotionally unhealthy psychological strategy used by people who are incapable of asking for what they want and need in a direct way,” says Sharie Stines, a California-based therapist who specializes in abuse and toxic relationships.
What is manipulative play?
Manipulative play refers to activities where children move, order, turn or screw items to make them fit.
What are manipulative skills?
What are examples of manipulation?
Examples of Manipulative Behavior
• Passive-aggressive behavior.
• Implicit threats.
• Dishonesty.
• Withholding information.
• Isolating a person from loved ones.
• Gaslighting.
• Verbal abuse.
• Use of sex to achieve goals.
Are manipulators intelligent?
You might be interested: Quick Answer: When Is Manipulation Abuse?
Are all manipulators narcissists?
Manipulative behavior is intrinsic to narcissists, who use manipulation to obtain power and narcissistic supply. Those with antisocial personalities will manipulate for material items, power, revenge, and a wide variety of other reasons.
Is manipulation a crime?
How are narcissist manipulative?
How do I stop being manipulated?
1. Be aware and notice how you are feeling.
2. Listen.
3. Maintain frame control.
4. Reflect and validate.
5. State your position.
6. Facebook image: GaudiLab/Shutterstock.
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Cooking a Malaysian noodle dish.
In Geography we have been comparing South Oxhey to different places in the world. We wanted to create a Malaysian inspired noodle dish. In preparation we discussed the importance of hygiene and the safety needed to successfully use knives. We had to adapt our noodles to ensure they were edible for all children including those with allergies. Unfortunately, the free from pasta disintegrated! We will go back to the drawing board to try again.
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Your retinas are nourished by a system of fine blood vessels. Diabetes can damage these blood vessels, causing them to leak or rupture. If the damage is severe, vision can be lost. Serious changes caused by diabetes often cause no symptoms until it is too late.
Keeping the eyes healthy boils down to two main factors: blood glucose and blood pressure. Tight management lowers the risk of developing retinopathy by 76% over the long term: <140/90 mmHg in adults and <90th percentile for age, sex, and height in children.
Go see your eye doctor right away if you have symptoms of retinal detachment, such as seeing a new floater or flashes of light, having what seems like a veil over your vision, or any other changes in vision.
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How many words does the word rain have in English?
Rain is a 4 letter short Word starting with R and ending with N. Below are Total 14 words made out of this word.
How many 3 letter words can be formed using the word rain?
Rearrange rain to make words that are 3 letters long or less. Choose your length or search in the search bar like “4 letter words from rain“. There are 3 anagrams (words you can make) from the letters ainr.
How many letters are formed using rain?
Other Info & Useful Resources for the Word ‘rain’
Info Details
Points in Scrabble for rain 4
Points in Words with Friends for rain 5
Number of Letters in rain 4
More info About rain rain
Which language has most words for rain?
Japanese language has an unusually large number of words to describe rain. It rains a great deal in Japan and the Japanese love to talk about the weather. There are at least 50 Japanese nouns for rain.
What words can you spell with drain?
Words that can be made with drain
• dinar.
• drain.
• nadir.
• ranid.
Is Rainey a Scrabble word?
RAINEY is not a valid scrabble word.
What is a metaphor for rain?
Examples of rain metaphors include “pouring rain,” “rain washed light,” “rain dancing across the meadow” and “rain soaked skin.” A metaphor is a figure of speech using words in ways that are not literal. For example, rain doesn’t literally pour from the sky, wash light, dance or soak through skin.
IT IS IMPORTANT: What were the 5 original Winter Olympic sports?
What do you call a light rain?
What is rain called in different languages?
How to Say Rain in 88 Different Languages
Different Languages Word Rain
Finnish sade
French pluie
Galician choiva
German Regen
Weather in the house
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On June 16, 11 Summer Academy participants gathered at the main LDI campus and began their journey towards becoming Emerging Leaders. After an orientation, they headed to Northern Arizona University (NAU), in Flagstaff, Arizona unpacked their bags into their dorms and began to establish friendships.
The rest of the week had them taking a tour of the Northern Arizona University campus to orientate themselves with the campus environment, and began instruction and skill-building session with students through the National Center for Student Leadership Group
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William Birchley
Short Name: William Birchley
Full Name: Birchley, William, 1613-1669
Birth Year: 1613
Death Year: 1669
Pseudonym used by John Austin
Austin, John. (Walpole, Norfolk, England, 1613--1669, London). Roman Catholic. He studied at Cambridge University, but withdrew when he became a Catholic. His writings under the pseudonym William Birchley sought to explain the beliefs of Roman Catholicism and to plead for religious freedom for them. He compiled a harmony of the Gospels and, in 1668, a devotional manual containing hymns, some of which he may have written himself. An adaptation of this manual for use in the Church of England was published in 1686.
--Anastasia Van Burkalow, DNAH Archives
Texts by William Birchley (44)sort descendingAsAuthority LanguagesInstances
And do we then believeWilliam Birchley (Author)1
And now, my soul, canst thou forgetWilliam Birchley (Author)1
Awake, my soul, awake and seeWilliam Birchley (Author)1
Awake my soul, chase from thine eyesWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Behold we come, dear Lord, to theeJohn Austin, d. 1669 (Author)10
Blessed, O Lord, be thy wise graceWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Blest be thy love, dear LordJ. Austin (Author)46
Come, Holy Ghost, send down those beamsWilliam Birchley (Author)5
Come, Holy spirit, come and breathe freshJohn Austin (Author)2
Come, Holy Spirit, come and breathe Thy spicy odors on the faceWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Come, Holy Spirit, send down those beamsWilliam Birchley (Author)3
Come let's adore the gracious handWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Come let's adore the king of loveWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Come, mild and holy DoveWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Come, my thoughts, that fondly flyWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Do I resolve any ease lifeWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Fain would my thoughts fly up to theeJohn Austin (Author)3
Hail, glorious angels, heirs of lightWilliam Birchley (Author)1
Hail, glorious spirits, heirs of lightJohn Austin (Author)4
Hark, my soul, how every thingJohn Austin (Author)21
Jesu, behold the wise from farWilliam Birchley (Author)3
Jesus, who from thy Father's throneWilliam Birchley (Author)English1
Let others take their courseJohn Austin (Author)2
Lord Jesu, when, when shall it beWilliam Birchley (Author)English3
Lord, now the time returnsWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Lord, we again lift up our eyesJohn Austin (Author)2
Lord, what a pleasant life were thisWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Lord, who shall dwell above with theeWilliam Birchley (Author)2
My God, had I my breath from theeWilliam Birchley (Author)2
My God, to thee ourselves we oweJohn Austin (Author)2
My soul, what's all this world to theeWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Night forbear; alas, our praiseWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Now, my soul, the day is goneWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Open thine eyes, my soul, and seeJohn Austin (Author)2
Sweet Jesu, dwelling in my heartWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Sweet Jesu, why, why dost thou loveWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Sweet Jesus is the nameWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Tell me you bright stars that shineJohn Austin (Author)2
Tune now yourselves, my heart strings highWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Wake all my hopes, lift up your eyesWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Wake my soul, rise from this bedWilliam Birchley (Author)2
Wake, now, my soul, and humbly hearJohn Austin (Author)3
Why do we seek felicityJohn Austin (Author)2
With all the powers my poor heart hathJohn Austin (Adapter)English2
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Communication in Disaster
Make favourite
Effective communication during and immediately after a disaster connects first responders, support systems, and family members with the communities and individuals affected by the disaster.
For inclusive communication in case of a disaster:
• Inform persons with disabilities, older persons and chronically ill persons who cannot leave their homes through door-to-door home visits, using trained volunteers .
• Communicate through local representative organisations, like Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPD), Older Persons Associations (OPA) or Women's Organisations.
• If using a megaphone or loudspeaker, be aware that not everyone will hear or understand the message. Use short and clear messages, for example: "EVACUATION! Meet outside of your house. NOW.".
• Disseminate a list of organisations which specialize in providing services for women, persons with disabilities, older people or persons from other at-risk groups.
• An "Age and Disability Focal Point" (ADFP), which serves as an information, meeting and referral point, could be set-up in temporary settlements, camps or collective centres, with designated staff or volunteers. The focal point can make links between people and the specific services they require, such as assistive technology, rehabilitation or mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS).
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Snickers Almond 45gm + Fruit and Nut 45gm (5 units each)
Rs. 500.00
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Want the Perfect Gory Sound? This Is How You Create It
'Mortal Kombat'Credit: Warner Bros.
Fatalities have never sounded this cool.
Mortal Kombat is known for its outrageous finishing moves that leave the victim heartless or headless. The 2021 reboot that was released back in April did not shy away from the gore and glory of these epic fight scenes. Part of what made these fights so enjoyable for fans of the Mortal Kombat franchise was the incredible sound design team.
The foley and sound design team went above and beyond to create realistic sounds of blood squirting and flesh-tearing for the over-the-top fights. Each sound had to match the gruesome scene perfectly while living up to the fans' expectations.
Insider sat down with Mortal Kombat’s sound team and discovered the best gore sounds can be found in your backyard or local farmer’s market. Check out the full video here:
How to find sound
To make the audio sound as realistic as possible, the sound team and foley artist Adrian Medhurst focused on capturing sound from real objects. This kept the audio from sounding overprocessed. Although the team did have a large digital library, a vast majority of the sound landscape was done by using everyday objects such as citrus fruits, melons, wet gravel, and newspaper.
Creating new sounds was crucial for the Mortal Kombat characters. Many of them have their special skills or fatality moves that had specific sounds that couldn’t be replicated through a digital library.
For Mileena (Sisi Stringer), her notorious large and exposed teeth required her flesh to rip apart to expose her extended mouth in the film. It was up to Adrian Medhurst to create the perfect sound. He created the crunching sound of the flesh splitting by cracking a stock of celery and then crushing a bell pepper to create a hollow sound. For the oozing sound of blood and some saliva dripping from Mileena’s jaw, Medhurst ground wet gravel in his hand for the needed texture.
With a little adjustment here and there, Medhurst found that cupping his hand a specific way created a hollow sound that matched the audio of the bell pepper perfectly. When all three sounds were layered over each other, the result was enough to make an audience squirm with excitement and disgust.
Sisi Stringer as Mileena in 'Mortal Kombat'Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Kung Lao’s (Max Huang) signature razor-brimmed hat requires a metal plate and metal strips to create its sharp sound design. Sound designer Robert McKenzie added the finished sounds to Kung Lao’s hat by scraping a knife against a cymbal, then applied a Doppler effect to distort the sound ever so slightly and make it sound as if the hat is passing right by the audience.
The sound of fatality
These distinctive weapons mean very specific kills. Since most of the kills in Mortal Kombat involve many body parts and weapons, the sound of the kill involves many layers of audio design.
When Kung Lao splits Nitara (Mel Jarnson) in half with his weapon, the sounds of flesh, metal, and bone being split have to be created. For the flesh, Medhurst started with a pile of wet noodles before adding wet newspaper to the mix. Slowly, he builds his concoction to create the sound of a person being split in two. For the blood, Medhurst used grapefruits and tomatoes and hard-stemmed veggies like celery to mimic bones cracking.
The sound of punches even had to be reimagined for when Jax (Mehcad Brooks) repeatedly punches Reiko (Nathan Jones) in the face with his metal arms. Punching a grapefruit was a fruitless attempt because the weight did not sound right for Jax’s arms. Instead, a hammer hitting a melon was used to create a sharp break.
'Mortal Kombat'Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
There are different types of gore in the film, and each one is accompanied by a unique sound that is specific to a character’s action. The sound design team looked very closely at the layers of blood and the velocity of blood or body parts before setting up to replicate the sound as closely as they can. The props are used almost as instruments to create the harmony of gore that makes the fatalities in Mortal Kombat all that more memorable to the fans.
Finding the perfect harmony of blood and guts can be a bit of a journey, but it’s a fun one that requires you to get your hands a little dirty.
Sound design is all about experimentation. If you need a little more of a slithering sound to add a little bit more slime to an oozing heart, add an octopus movement sound from the digital library. It’s all about playing around with what you have available to you to create a scene that is equally gross and fascinating to an audience who is infatuated with the observed violence of Mortal Kombat.
Do you know a film that has a killer sound design? Tell us why you love it in the comments below!
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Your Comment
Great article! It was a pleasure reading it :)
July 27, 2021 at 7:52AM
William Aston
Marketing manager
Great read! Nice video.
July 28, 2021 at 12:59PM
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Smallpox decimated humanity for thousands of years before being eradicated by vaccination, a success facilitated by the fact that humans are the only host of variola virus. In contrast, other orthopoxviruses such as cowpox virus can infect a variety of mammalian species, although its dominant reservoir appears to be rodents. This difference in host specificity suggests that cowpox may have developed promiscuous immune evasion strategies to facilitate zoonosis. Recent experiments have established that cowpox can disrupt MHCI antigen presentation during viral infection of both human and murine cells, a process enabled by two unique proteins, CPXV012 and CPXV203. While CPXV012 inhibits antigenic peptide transport from the cytosol to the ER, CPXV203 blocks MHCI trafficking to the cell surface by exploiting the KDEL-receptor recycling pathway. Our recent investigations of CPXV203 reveal that it binds a diverse array of classical and non-classical MHCI proteins with dramatically increased affinities at the lower pH of the Golgi relative to the ER, thereby providing mechanistic insight into how it works synergistically with KDEL receptors to block MHCI surface expression. The strategy used by cowpox to both limit peptide supply and disrupt trafficking of fully assembled MHCI acts as a dual-edged sword that effectively disables adaptive immune surveillance of infected cells.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)156-158
Number of pages3
JournalMolecular Immunology
Issue number2
StatePublished - Sep 2013
• Antigen presentation
• Major histocompatibility complex
• Orthopoxvirus
• Viral immune evasion
Dive into the research topics of 'Cowpox virus employs a two-pronged strategy to outflank MHCI antigen presentation'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
Cite this
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Quick Answer: Which Is The Biggest Thing In The Universe?
The biggest supercluster known in the universe is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall.
It was first reported in 2013 and has been studied several times.
It’s so big that light takes about 10 billion years to move across the structure.
What is the bigger than the universe?
The universe was already far too big to understand. But scientists just found that it’s actually much bigger than we’d previously thought. The observable universe is made up of at least two trillion galaxies, according to a new study. That’s 20 times more than had previously been thought.
What is the name of the biggest black hole in the universe?
Astronomers have discovered what may be the most massive black hole ever known in a small galaxy about 250 million light-years from Earth, scientists say. The supermassive black hole has a mass equivalent to 17 billion suns and is located inside the galaxy NGC 1277 in the constellation Perseus.
What is bigger than a supercluster?
Superclusters form massive structures of galaxies, called “filaments”, “supercluster complexes”, “walls” or “sheets”, that may span between several hundred million light-years to 10 billion light-years, covering more than 5% of the observable universe. These are the largest known structures to date.
Is VY Canis Majoris or Uy scuti bigger?
On a stellar scale, it’s really quite average — about half of the known stars are larger; half are smaller. The largest known star in the universe is UY Scuti, a hypergiant with a radius around 1,700 times larger than the sun.
See also Which is the most dangerous gun in world?
What is beyond the end of the universe?
By definition, the universe contains everything, so there is no “outside.” Physicist Stephen Hawking has often said that the whole question makes no sense, because if the universe came from nothing and brought everything into existence, then asking what lies beyond the universe is like asking what is north of the North
Which one is bigger galaxy or universe?
You are one of the billions of people on our Earth. Our Earth orbits the Sun in our Solar System. Our Sun is one star among the billions in the Milky Way Galaxy. Our Milky Way Galaxy is one among the billions of galaxies in our Universe.
What is a white hole NASA?
What will happen to our galaxy in 4 billion years?
Four billion years from now, our galaxy, the Milky Way, will collide with our large spiraled neighbor, Andromeda. The galaxies as we know them will not survive. In fact, our solar system is going to outlive our galaxy. But even at that speed, they won’t meet for another four billion years.
Do black holes die?
Answer by Frank Heile, P.h.D. Physics, Stanford University, on Quora: Black holes have a finite lifetime due to the emission of Hawking radiation. However, for most known astrophysical black holes, the time it would take to completely evaporate and disappear is far longer than the current age of the universe.
What is the great attractor in space?
The Great Attractor is an apparent gravitational anomaly in intergalactic space at the center of the local Laniakea Supercluster, in which the Milky Way is located, in the so-called Zone of Avoidance that is very difficult to observe in visible wavelengths due to the obscuring effects of our own galactic plane.
Is the sun bigger than Jupiter?
Jupiter is much larger than Earth and considerably less dense: its volume is that of about 1,321 Earths, but it is only 318 times as massive. Jupiter’s radius is about 1/10 the radius of the Sun, and its mass is 0.001 times the mass of the Sun, so the densities of the two bodies are similar.
What is a group of universes called?
See also Question: What Is The Biggest Animal In The Ocean Ever?
How did VY Canis Majoris get its name?
The first known recorded observation of VY Canis Majoris is in the star catalogue of the French astronomer Jérôme Lalande, on 7 March 1801, which lists it as a 7th magnitude star. It was given the variable star designation VY Canis Majoris in 1939, the 43rd variable star of the constellation Canis Major.
Is the sun the biggest star in the universe?
The extreme red hypergiant star VY Canis Majoris compared to the Sun and Earth’s orbit.
What is UY scuti made of?
Coordinates: 18h 27m 36.53s, −12° 27′ 58.9″ UY Scuti (BD-12 5055) is a red supergiant, and a pulsating variable star in the constellation Scutum.
Will the universe end?
The geometry of the universe is, at least on a very large scale, elliptic. In a closed universe, gravity eventually stops the expansion of the universe, after which it starts to contract until all matter in the universe collapses to a point, a final singularity termed the “Big Crunch”, the opposite of the Big Bang.
Is there an edge of the universe?
The comoving distance from Earth to the edge of the observable universe is about 14.26 gigaparsecs (46.5 billion light-years or 4.40×1026 meters) in any direction. The observable universe is thus a sphere with a diameter of about 28.5 gigaparsecs (93 billion light-years or 8.8×1026 meters).
Is the universe expanding faster than the speed of light?
Although light and objects within spacetime cannot travel faster than the speed of light, this limitation does not restrict the metric itself. To an observer it appears that space is expanding and all but the nearest galaxies are receding into the distance.
Is a galaxy smaller than a universe?
What is past the universe?
The Universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy.
Is Earth’s sun the only sun?
The Sun does not have enough mass to explode as a supernova. Instead it will exit the main sequence in approximately 5 billion years and start to turn into a red giant. As a red giant, the Sun will grow so large that it will engulf Mercury, Venus, and probably Earth.
Will we ever visit other galaxies?
According to the current understanding of physics, an object within space-time cannot exceed the speed of light, which means an attempt to travel to any other galaxy would be a journey of millions of earth years via conventional flight.
Has the Milky Way ever collided with another galaxy?
The Andromeda–Milky Way collision is a galactic collision predicted to occur in about 4.5 billion years between two galaxies in the Local Group—the Milky Way (which contains the Solar System and Earth) and the Andromeda Galaxy. Some stars will be ejected from the resulting galaxy, nicknamed Milkomeda or Milkdromeda.
See also Quick Answer: What Is The Biggest Asteroid In Space?
Is there life on Andromeda galaxy?
The number of stars contained in the Andromeda Galaxy is estimated at one trillion (1×1012), or roughly twice the number estimated for the Milky Way. The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are expected to collide in ~4.5 billion years, merging to form a giant elliptical galaxy or a large lenticular galaxy.
Would a black hole kill you?
In the previous case objects would actually be destroyed and people killed by the heat, not the tidal forces – but near a black hole (assuming that there is no nearby matter), objects would actually be destroyed and people killed by the tidal forces, because there is no radiation.
What is at the end of a black hole?
Is information lost in a black hole?
Hawking remained convinced that the equations of black-hole thermodynamics, together with the no-hair theorem, led to the conclusion that quantum information may be destroyed. This annoyed many physicists, notably John Preskill, who bet Hawking and Kip Thorne in 1997 that information was not lost in black holes.
How many Earths are there?
On November 4, 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way galaxy. 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting Sun-like stars.
What are the oldest known objects in the Milky Way?
What are multiple galaxies called?
Groups and clusters may contain ten to thousands of individual galaxies. The clusters themselves are often associated with larger, non-gravitationally bound, groups called superclusters.
Photo in the article by “Wikipedia” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_astronomical_objects
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Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) scaling potential in consideration of planetary boundaries
Project Description
Emission 2050 (NZE2050) scenario derived demand of dedicated short rotation woody crops or as substitution Miscanthus and Switchgrass for negative emissions, bioenergy, and biofuel in consideration of planetary boundaries until 2030 and 2050. The starting point will be planned CCUS projects and their specifications of bioenergy crops as feedstock. The analysis considering the planetary boundaries and leading to defined cultivation areas will be orientated on the selected CCUS projects and extrapolated to the demand levels of negative emissions, bioenergy and biofuels of the EU referring to the NZE2050. The VSRP student will review literature and underling assumptions of models and simulations, provide a data and model architecture overview and might also adjust existing scenarios for own simulation.
Program - Chemical Engineering
Division - Physical Sciences and Engineering
Faculty Lab Link -
Center Affiliation - Clean Combustion Research Center
Field of Study - Earth Science - Integrated Geography, Environmental Geography
About the
Mani Sarathy
Associate Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering<br/>Associate Director, Clean Combustion Research Center
Mani Sarathy
Professor Sarathy's research interest is in developing sustainable energy technologies with decreased net environmental impact. A major thrust of research is simulating the combustion chemistry of transportation fuels. He develops fundamental chemical kinetic models that can be used to simulate fuel combustion and pollutant formation in energy systems. Engine designers then use these chemical kinetic models to achieve various performance targets using computational simulations. In addition, these models can be used to determine how the chemical structure of a fuel affects pollutant formation.
Professor Sarathy's research in combustion chemistry modeling includes quantum chemistry based kinetic rate calculations, comprehensive mechanism development, combustion cyberinfrastructure development, computer generated detailed and reduced mechanisms, and simulation of multi-dimensional reacting flows.
In addition, he obtains data from fundamental combustion experiments to elucidate reaction pathways of combustion, and to generate experimental data needed to validate detailed chemical kinetic models. These experimental techniques include perfectly stirred reactors, plug flow reactors, and diffusion flames. The chemistry in these reactors is probed using advanced analytical chemistry techniques such as molecular beam time-of-flight mass spectrometry, laser absorption spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and a variety of gas and liquid chromatography methods.
The goal of Professor Sarathy's research is study conventional and alternative fuels (e.g., biofuels, synthetic fuels, etc.), so the environmental impact of combustion systems can be reduced. He also applies chemical kinetics expertise to study a wide range of chemical engineering systems including biomass energy, catalysis, and drinking water treatment.
Desired Project Deliverables
Do models and simulations, underlying NZE2050, match with observations in the real world? Are planetary boundaries taken into account sufficiently? Can planetary boundaries be attributed to the supply chain of CCUS projects and results be transferred into a model? Can resulting cultivation areas be scaled regarding the EUs’ NZE2050 scenario demand?
Earth Science
Earth Science
Planetary Science
Planetary Science
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How Did The African Americans Contribute To The Haitian Revolution
509 Words3 Pages
In the 18th century, Saint Dominigue, now known and Haiti, was France’s most profitable oversees colony. This was due to its large production of sugar, coffee, and cotton that was generated by the enslaved labor work force. When the French Revolution (1789) broke out, there are five different interest groups in the colony. They included white planters, petit blancs, and three groups of African descents. The white planters owned plantations and slaves. The petit blancs were artisans, shop keepers and teachers. The African groups comprised of free blacks, slaves, and escaped slaves. There were many whites that lived in Saint Dominigue that supported independence from France once France began to impose steep tariffs on many items that were imported…show more content…
On 21 Aug 1791, the enslaved acted first and began rebelling against the planters. By 1792, they had control over one third of the island. Before all of the fighting ended, 100,000 of the 500,000 blacks and 24,000 of the 40,000 whites had been killed. Even with all of the deaths, the former slaves still managed to hold off both the French and British forces that had arrived to try and conquer the colony. They all withdrew their forces in 1798 after they received many defeats from L’Ouverture and his forces. After a while, the Haitian Revolution lasted longer than the French Revolution. “Napoleon Bonaparte, the new ruler of France, sent his brother-in-law, General Charles Leclerc and 43,000 troops to capture L’Ouverture and restore French rule and slavery” (). With much help from the white colonists and mulatto forces, the French outmatched, outmaneuvered, and eventually wore down the black army. L’Ouverture eventually saw that he no longer had an advantage over the French and surrendered to Leclerc on 5 May 1802. It was said that the French had told L’Ouverture that he would be allowed to retire quietly. One month later, the French captured him and transported him to France where he ended up dying of “neglect from being left in a dungeon of Fort de Joux in the Jura Mountains on 7 Apr 1803”
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Tafel Extrapolation
What Does Tafel Extrapolation Mean?
Tafel extrapolation is a mathematical technique used to estimate either the corrosion current (Icorr) or the corrosion potential (Ecorr) in an electrochemical cell, and by extension, the corrosion rate. Extrapolation involves extending a known sequence of linear values within a Tafel plot to determine these parameters. Tafel extrapolations can be performed either manually or by specialized computer software.
Corrosionpedia Explains Tafel Extrapolation
Graphical extrapolation is one of the essential techniques in classic Tafel analysis. A Tafel plot, which is a graphical relationship between the current generated in an electrochemical cell and the electrode potential, usually consists of two diverging logarithmic plot lines representing the anodic and cathodic currents.
Extrapolation is performed by extending the linear portions of the anodic and cathodic plots back to their intersection. These two lines eventually meet at a point where the corrosion current, Icorr, is obtained. The value of Icorr can then be input into specific mathematical equations to calculate parameters such as corrosion rate.
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Front. Psychol., 20 July 2021 |
Measuring Collaboration Load With Pupillary Responses - Implications for the Design of Instructions in Task-Oriented HRI
• Division of Speech, Music and Hearing, Department of Intelligent Systems, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
In face-to-face interaction, speakers establish common ground incrementally, the mutual belief of understanding. Instead of constructing “one-shot” complete utterances, speakers tend to package pieces of information in smaller fragments (what Clark calls “installments”). The aim of this paper was to investigate how speakers' fragmented construction of utterances affect the cognitive load of the conversational partners during utterance production and comprehension. In a collaborative furniture assembly, participants instructed each other how to build an IKEA stool. Pupil diameter was measured as an outcome of effort and cognitive processing in the collaborative task. Pupillometry data and eye-gaze behaviour indicated that more cognitive resources were required by speakers to construct fragmented rather than non-fragmented utterances. Such construction of utterances by audience design was associated with higher cognitive load for speakers. We also found that listeners' cognitive resources were decreased in each new speaker utterance, suggesting that speakers' efforts in the fragmented construction of utterances were successful to resolve ambiguities. The results indicated that speaking in fragments is beneficial for minimising collaboration load, however, adapting to listeners is a demanding task. We discuss implications for future empirical research on the design of task-oriented human-robot interactions, and how assistive social robots may benefit from the production of fragmented instructions.
1. Introduction
Interactive system designers need to better understand social conventions that people use in constructing utterances when structuring their speech in face-to-face interactions. It is particularly important to discriminate the fundamental discourse units that coordinate the incremental process of grounding. In that direction, researchers have examined grounding behaviour by considering utterance units given boundary signals such as prosodic boundaries and pauses (Traum and Heeman, 1996). Human utterances tend to be informal, contain disfluencies and often they are presented in fragments (Chai et al., 2014). In particular, Goodwin (1981) suggested that speakers tend to use coordination strategies such as fragmented production of utterances (errors-in-production), to coordinate turns with their listeners and facilitate the process of “co-production” of utterances. To achieve human-likeness, conversational interfaces may need to embrace such human properties of communication and should succeed in maintaining and coordinating these behaviours with human users.
By constructing “imperfect” human-like speech, conversational interfaces should consider how to produce utterances with cooperative and collaborative exchange of information (Uchida et al., 2019). Rational speakers will attempt to be cooperative and will plan to be as informative as it is required (Grice, 1989). In the Gricean view (Grice, 1957), speakers instruct listeners on their intentions by constructing indirect or incomplete requests in their references (Cohen, 1984). It seems that speakers construct utterances that are not straightforward, but potentially harder to comprehend and leaving the extra work of understanding up to the listeners (Davies, 2007). In compliance with the maxims of quantity, speakers withhold information from their listeners using the minimal effort required, and provide instructions using the least-collaborative-effort (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986; Clark and Brennan, 1991; Brennan and Clark, 1996). As constructing minimal and simultaneously non-ambiguous utterances is “computationally expensive” (Davies, 2007), speakers may rely on listener cooperation to establish and maintain the process of grounding.
How people develop common understanding, based on the notion of “common ground”, has been studied by Clark and colleagues (Clark and Brennan, 1991), who have proposed the concept of least-collaborative-effort. In this principle, speakers maintain a fine-grained balance between effort and communication, and adapt their messages to their listeners' level of understanding1. As such, messages not appropriately adapted require more effort by both conversational partners and result in the exchange of more conversational turns to repair incomplete or confusing messages (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986). Therefore, utterances are iteratively and collaboratively refined until common ground is established (Blaylock et al., 2003).
In this iterative process, speakers do not always construct “one-shot” utterances, but tend to package pieces of information into fragments, or what Clark calls “installments” (Clark, 1996). These fragmentary discourse units are contributions to common ground and typically they are intonationally complete, suggesting the speaker is expanding turns until a satisfactory level of understanding has been reached. In this way, difficult or long utterances are presented in fragments, while the speaker continuously monitors the listener for understanding (Clark and Brennan, 1991). This is further illustrated in Figure 1 and Dialogue 1, a sample extracted from the assembly task corpus presented in this paper.
Instructor: [Utt-1] So the first one you should take. (Figure 1A)
Builder: mhm (Figure 1B)
Instructor: [Utt-1] .is the frame. (Figure 1B)
Builder: (looks at table, moves hands) (Figure 1C)
Instructor: [Utt-2] But the one with the stripes. (Figure 1D)
Builder: okay (Figure 1D)
Instructor: [Utt-3] The black one. (Figure 1D)
Builder: (looks toward the centre of the table) (Figure 1E)
Builder: (looks at object) (Figure 1E)
Instructor: [Utt-4] With the stripes. (Figure 1F)
Builder: (reaches for object) (Figure 1F)
Figure 1. An illustration of the recurrent listener signals (A–F) to fragmented utterances (see dialogue sample 1).
Dialogue 1. A segment of fragmented task-oriented dialogue [interaction 20, piece 1]
Instructor: [Utt-1] So we start with the largest piece with lines on it
Builder: (looks at table, reaches for object)
Dialogue 2. A segment of non-fragmented task-oriented dialogue [interaction 32, piece 1]
As shown in transcript 1, the instructor gradually adds more turns and elaborates on the instructions incrementally. The listener verbally acknowledges receiving the information, nevertheless we cannot assume it is also understood. Producing the instruction in fragments allows the speaker to adapt and to repair or reformulate utterances in synchronisation to the listener's signals of understanding, therefore design their instructions as a “series of corrections” (Lindwall and Ekström, 2012). These instructional sequences are specifically addressed to the listener present, further demonstrating adaptive behaviour, a very challenging task for conversational interfaces (Rossi et al., 2017). However, how to identify these sequences and segment them into fragments is not straightforward.
According to Heeman (1999), speakers seem to segment their turns into “intonational phrases”, with variations in prosody and silent pauses. Researchers have modelled user responses to prosodic variations in grounding fragments spoken by a dialogue system (Skantze et al., 2006), indicating speakers' intonation in fragments also affects listener behaviour. These variations in intonation can signal a release of the speaker's turn (Traum and Hinkelman, 1992; Traum and Heeman, 1996), even if the speaker decides to expand the turn into more fragments, and where turn transitions are “relevant” (Sacks et al., 1978).
In this article, we look at fragmented utterances as a series of contributions to common ground. Particularly, we focus on how these utterances are constructed when humans produce instructions in task-oriented dialogues. We separate utterances to either: (a) fragmented, where the instruction is produced as a series of fragments (Dialogue 1), and (b) non-fragmented, where the whole instruction is produced in one utterance (Dialogue 2). To understand how fragmented instructions are produced, we examine how speakers' cognitive resources are allocated during utterance production by analysing the cognitive load of both conversational partners when either fragmented or non-fragmented utterances are constructed.
Cognitive load refers to the effort required in understanding and performing tasks (Sweller, 1988), and can be task-based, person-based, or based on coordination, typically referred to as collaboration load (Dillenbourg and Betrancourt, 2006). In collaboration load, speakers consider the mental effort of others and their actions, in order to predict their behaviour and take actions (Kolfschoten et al., 2012). Cognitive load has been measured in psycholinguistics utilising speech features such as pauses, articulation rate and disfluencies (Müller et al., 2001; Jameson et al., 2010; Womack et al., 2012). It has also been demonstrated that the more time a speaker takes to produce an utterance, the more cognitive resources are required (Schilperoord, 2002). The amount of silent pauses in particular seems to indicate “thinking” or increased cognitive load when constructing utterances (Chen et al., 2013).
Pupil dilation has also been found to correlate with cognitive load, hence in this study, we measure the conversational partners' pupil diameter as an indicator of cognitive load. Changes in pupil size reflect a diverse set of cognitive and affective states (Ahern and Beatty, 1979; Harrison et al., 2006; Kret and De Dreu, 2017) including arousal, interest, and effort. Pupil dilation is a highly sensitive measure of changes in cognitive resources and resource allocation. Several disciplines have used pupillometry as a response system to stimuli, and it has been an established method in psychophysiology2. Pupil dilations are involuntary reactions to stimuli, and research suggests that task-evoked pupillary responses provide an estimate of mental activity and task engagement (Gilzenrat et al., 2010; Laeng et al., 2012).
Task-evoked pupillary responses have also become popular in psycholinguistic research to measure language production and comprehension (van Rij et al., 2019). Researchers have studied mismatches between visual context, prosody and syntax (Engelhardt et al., 2010), speech rate (Koch and Janse, 2016), prosody in discourse processing (Zellin et al., 2011), and speech planning (Papesh and Goldinger, 2012). Chapman and Hallowell (2015) have observed larger pupillary responses during the comprehension of difficult words, compared to easier words. Grammatical complexity (Schluroff, 1982) and ambiguity in syntax (Ben-Nun, 1986; Schluroff et al., 1986) also seem to evoke larger pupil dilations. Also, larger pupillary responses have been observed in pragmatic manipulations, such as indirect requests when showing a figure of a closed window with the sentence “it is very hot here” (Tromp et al., 2016).
In sum, a large body of psycholinguistic research has examined speakers' cognitive resources in relation to language processing, yet many questions remain open on how cognitive load is allocated during grounding acts in face-to-face conversation. To our knowledge, this is the first investigation of how cognitive effort is mobilised within the principle of least-collaborative-effort. Whether speakers construct fragmented instructions due to the least-collaborative-effort, should likely be indicated in their measured cognitive load. There is evidence that pupil diameter is sensitive to sentence complexity and ambiguity, and in this article, our goal is to combine this prior knowledge and established methods from psychophysiology to examine the incremental production of instructions.
Speaker effects. Our first assumption is that (1) speakers spend less cognitive resources in producing “one-shot” non-fragmented instructions, rather than fragmented instructions that are adapted to listeners. One may expect that the extensive use of pauses and audience design contribute to higher cognitive load (Dillenbourg and Betrancourt, 2006), therefore more grounding effort for the conversational partners overall.
Listener effects. We also predict that (2) speakers continuously attempt to reduce and minimise their listeners' cognitive load. They do so by producing instructions in fragments, and therefore let the listener extract information incrementally.
2. Materials and Methods
Based on uncontrolled task-oriented and face-to-face dialogue, we examined how fragmented utterances affect speakers' pupillary responses and other interactional phenomena such as gaze behaviour, joint attention and mutual gaze.
2.1. Corpus
Instructions play an important role in people's everyday tasks, from domestic to industrial domains. We have previously collected a corpus (Kontogiorgos et al., 2020) of task-oriented dialogue in which human speakers instruct each other how to assemble an IKEA stool (Figure 2). Using the concept of “Chinese Whispers,” an old children's game, subjects instructed the task to each other in a chain sequence. Participants first learned how to assemble the stool by an instructor, and in the next session they were told to take the role of the instructor and teach a new participant. That means, each participant did the task twice, first as a builder and then as an instructor. As such, instructors were not influenced by the experimenters on how to instruct, but only by previous instructors.
Figure 2. In the corpus analysed in this article human speakers instructed each other how to assemble an IKEA stool. Behavioural data was collected during the interactions.
Each instructor had to follow the same sequence of instructions, therefore at each step of the interaction we are aware of the speakers' intentions, however without controlling for how they will instruct. Instructors were given visual but not verbal instructions, as shown in Figure 3. As participants were instructing for the first time, they naturally engaged in collaborative and fragmented instructions, and uncontrolled situations of uncertainty.
Figure 3. Subjects were given visual instructions in steps without verbal descriptors. The task is taken from the assembly procedure for the Bekväm stool sold by IKEA, circa 2018. In the steps visualised, the stool is assembled incrementally and secured with wooden bolts to make the assembly faster. Images taken and adjusted from the IKEA instruction book (with permission).
Participants were seated across each other with a table between them that had a pile of all furniture pieces necessary for the assembly, including additional pieces for distraction. The furniture pieces used for stimuli had a variability in shape, sizes and colours, with black and white tape added to make them uniquely identifiable. The pieces were also placed in varying positions between the instructor and builder. Inevitably, it was up to each instructor how ambiguous their references would be and how many utterance reformulations would be necessary. The builders had not seen the assembled stool and did not know what it should look like. Using a chain effect of assembly, we had little control over how each task would be described. Participants had no time constraints as long as they would succeed in completing the task.
2.2. Participants
The corpus consists of 34 interactions, each one with an instructor and a builder sitting across each other. The mean age of the participants was 25.5 (SD 3.5). 11 reported female and 23 male, and the majority were students or researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. All subjects were fluent in English, with a mean of 6.5 on a scale of 1–7 of self-reported English literacy. They reported little to no-interference of sensory equipment in the task (eye-tracking glasses, microphone, motion-capture gloves), with 2.2 (on a scale of 1–7) in an equipment interference questionnaire item. Participants also reported to be relatively experienced in assembling IKEA furniture (mean 4.6 on a scale of 1–7).
2.3. Procedure
First, participants filled an entry questionnaire with demographics, and signed a consent form for participation. Participants then entered the experiment room, they were introduced to their instructor and were guided to wear eye-tracking glasses, a microphone and motion-capture gloves, to capture their gaze, speech, and movements. The window blinds were closed and black curtains were surrounding the room. The room was illuminated with artificial light, always in the same conditions for all participants, and ensuring there is no interference in pupil measurements from external factors regardless the time of the day. Participants were instructed where to sit and how to wear the sensory equipment, however instructions given to participants regarding the task were minimal. In every interaction, the instructor was asked to instruct how to build the stool they had just built, while the builder was told to follow the instructor's guidance. The instructor (builder from previous interaction), was signalled to start the interaction and instruct (but without building) the assembly in steps. In each step, the instructor needed to instruct a new item that the builder was expected to assemble. After building (or instructing) the assembly task both subjects were asked to fill questionnaires in separate rooms, with items in engagement, task difficulty and measures of collaboration. Participants were rewarded with a cinema ticket (approximately 15 euro) at the end of the study, and each assembly task took 3.8 min on average. At the end of each interaction, the experimenters disassembled the stool and prepared the pieces for the next assembly.
2.4. Apparatus
A multi-sensory setup was used to capture multimodal signals from the conversation. An OptiTrack motion capture system was used to collect the positions of the furniture pieces, the participants' head position and orientation, as well as their hand gestures. Tobii mobile eye-trackers were used in combination with the motion capture system (Kontogiorgos et al., 2018) to extract participants' eye position in 3D space, as well as their pupil diameter. Motion-capture and eye-gaze data were extracted in 50 frames per second, and sensory calibration was required individually for each session. Additionally, close-talking microphones were used to collect channel-separated audio data. A clapperboard was used to indicate start and end times in all sensors, however sensory signals were also synced using a time server that provided timestamps for all events (Jonell et al., 2018). Finally, two video cameras from different angles were placed to record the interaction, used for qualitative analyses and annotations.
2.5. Analysis
As instructors in this corpus were engaged in a referential communication task, the conversations focused on objects and their identities. The purpose of the interaction was therefore to establish referential identity, “the mutual belief that the speakers have correctly identified a referent” (Clark and Brennan, 1991). This constrained nature of the task, allowed us to systematically examine linguistic choices from different speakers on the same objects. There are many alternatives a speaker may select to utter referring expressions, and multiple utterances may be co-produced in coordination with listeners (Goodwin, 1981; Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986).
2.5.1. Annotations
The first part of the linguistic analysis was to tokenise each of the “pick-that-piece” instructions into utterance units that were annotated as being either non-fragmented or fragmented instructions. The instructor always initiated an instruction and the builder needed to understand the instructor's intent and assemble the objects as told. In some cases, instructions were grounded with a single utterance, but often instructions were fragmented into several utterance units and therefore grounding was delayed and satisfied incrementally (Schlangen et al., 2009). Using ELAN (Wittenburg et al., 2006) all instruction boundaries were then hand-segmented as being: (1) intonationally complete, or (2) having a significant period of silence. All fragments3 in the instructions were time-segmented (indicating the beginning and end of each fragment). The end of each fragment can be regarded as a transition relevance place (TRPs), i.e., moments in the conversation where the listener could have taken the turn, regardless if the turn actually switched (Sacks et al., 1978). Even though the instructions are segmented into fragmented utterances for the sake of the analysis, they comprise a single instruction unit (on one referent object), defined by the visual guide given to the instructors (Figure 3). The utterances were then coded by sequence4 [Utt-1, Utt-2,…, Utt-n] as shown in the dialogue sample above5, and they typically repair previous content of the instruction unit or expand the speaker's turn with additional information.
2.5.2. Data
Using the time-tagged annotations of the instructor utterances in ELAN, gaze and motion data from both the instructor and the builder could be coupled to each segment in the spoken instructions. Due to sensor errors, six interactions were excluded from the analysis. From the remaining 28 interactions, a total of 263 instruction units were extracted6, in which 118 were non-fragmented instructions (with a single utterance) and 145 were fragmented instructions (with several utterances). In these 145 fragmented instructions, there were a total of 359 utterances. The fragmented utterances were then split by sequence, leading to 140 instructions with at least 1 fragment (Utt-1), 137 with at least 2 fragments (Utt-2), 54 with at least 3 fragments (Utt-3), and 23 with 4 fragments (Utt-4)7. These fragmented utterances typically labelled taxonomically the objects in the shared space between the instructor and the builder using object properties such as shape, size, position and colour.
2.6. Behavioural Measures
Using the aforementioned segmentations of the utterances, temporal multimodal data was extracted. All measures extracted in this study are based on automatic annotation of behavioural data. Due to the spontaneous nature of conversation in this corpus, each instructor utterance is treated as a stimulus, to which behavioural responses occur—either by the one producing it, or the one trying to comprehend it. Several instructions and utterances are extracted from each interaction. In a subsequent analysis, the instructions that are produced in fragments are investigated in isolation in order to examine the progression of the measures as grounding is incrementally established.
2.6.1. Eye-Gaze
The sensory data, with a frequency of 50 fps, from motion-capture and the eye-tracking glasses were combined using a single coordinate system to calculate metrics that estimate the conversational partners' visual attention in the interactions—measures that were also used in work from Kontogiorgos et al. (2019). The most prominent visual target during each instructor utterance was estimated using the visual angle toward each object and toward the conversational partner by using majority voting (i.e., the target with the maximal proportional gaze). The collected eye-gaze data can produce missing sample segments due to the jerky movement of the eyes or eye blinks occluding the infrared cameras of the eye-trackers. This resulted in a 77% rate of valid gaze data points for the instructor and 78% rate of valid gaze data points for the builder in this dataset.
Typically gaze signals are aligned with verbal utterances, which are important to disambiguate confusing or incomplete referring language (Meyer et al., 1998). The timings for utterances were derived by the ELAN utterance segmentations. Each instruction segment was concerned with a specific object target to which both instructor and builder should be attending to with their gaze (by task design). The following eye-gaze metrics were calculated for both the Instructor and Builder. The measures reflect the proportional amounts of gaze toward the instructor's referent target object, and a measure of how much time it takes for the conversational partners to gaze at the target referent object.
For each instructor utterance segment the First Gaze to Target Referent is computed. This measure represents the time (in seconds) it took the Builder and the Instructor to identify and gaze at the referent object (counting from the beginning of the instructor's utterance).
Gaze to Target Referent: the proportion of gaze directed to the referent object during each utterance was computed. Less gaze toward the referent object can reflect more gaze toward the distractor objects (scanning of the visual scene) or toward the conversational partner.
Gaze to Other Objects: this measure reflects the proportional gaze to other distractor objects and not the referent object.
Gaze to Person: the proportion of gaze toward the conversational partner during each segment of the instruction. This measure represents gaze that is directed toward the conversational partner and not toward the referent or the distractor objects, as it is important to establish understanding in these grounding sequences of instructions.
Joint Attention: the proportion of time in the utterance where both individuals are following each other's gaze (toward the same referent object the instructor has uttered, and at the same time).
Mutual Gaze: the proportion of time in the segment where the conversational partners are looking at each other (both partners' Gaze To Person measure has to be directed at each other, and at the same time).
2.6.2. Pupillary Responses
The Tobii eye tracker provided a continuous pupil signal with a frequency of 50 Hz, i.e., the same as the eye movements measures described above. Using each instructor utterance as the stimulus, pupil diameter size data could be extracted during each verbal instruction segment that had been annotated in ELAN. Pupillary data requires some pre-processing before analysing each of the segments individually (Kret and Sjak-Shie, 2019). First the absolute mean pupil diameter size variable was computed. Left and right eye pupil diameters are highly correlated, and if pupil data from both the left and the right eye was available, their mean value was calculated, otherwise the data from the eye with available data was used. Since the sensory pupil data includes a lot of noise and jittering, a filter to smooth the signal and interpolate missing values was generated. In Figure 4, a sample of the raw and filtered pupil diameter signals is presented. Using the SciPy library (Virtanen et al., 2020), a 5th order low-pass Butterworth filter8 with a 4 Hz cut-off frequency was applied to smooth the pupil diameter data. Using the filter, artefacts causing sudden changes in the pupil such as eye blinks, saccades or sensor noise were removed and interpolated.
Figure 4. The mean pupil diameter in a segment of Instructor 3. The window represents changes in pupil diameter size in about 5 s between two utterances. The blue line depicts the raw sensory data, and the orange line shows the filtered signal using a low-pass filter. Potential eye-blinks/saccades are shown in red circles and how the filter adjusts the resulted pupil signal. X-axis indicates the pupil diameter size in mm and y-axis indicates time in frames (50 Hz). This figure is best viewed in colour.
After noisy samples have been filtered, outliers may still remain in the data, especially in small utterance segments. To control for all remaining outliers, the z-score for all pupil data was computed and samples were excluded for which the pupil diameter was estimated to be more than two standard deviations away of the average pupil diameter size, for example potential samples outside the feasible range [1.5–9 mm] (Kret et al., 2014). Participant variability in the samples was further taken into account in the statistical analysis, by including the participant ID as a random intercept in the statistical model as explained in the next section.
In the beginning of each interaction, the baseline of the pupil diameter was extracted for a few seconds for both subjects before the instruction stimuli. Changes in the pupil diameter thereafter were computed in comparison to the baselines, in order to ensure that dilations in the pupil are due to participants engaging in the instructions and task stimuli rather than other factors. The following metrics were calculated for both subjects during the instruction utterances.
Mean Pupil Dilation: the mean value of the pupil dilation (difference compared to baseline) during the utterance segment. This measure reflects dilation on positive values and contraction on negative values.
Peak Pupil Dilation: in this measure the maximum dilation (difference compared to baseline) during the instruction segment was computed.
Pupil Diameter Slope: a linear regression was applied on the pupil diameter size in each utterance segment to compute the steepness in the increase in pupil dilation.
2.6.3. Time
Finally, using the aforementioned utterance segmentations from ELAN, each utterance duration in seconds was calculated. While utterance duration differs among instructions, as they are produced by subjects, behavioural measures extracted are proportional, therefore normalised across utterances.
3. Results
Using the behavioural metrics described and the separation of instruction units into fragmented and non-fragmented, we present a systematic analysis on: (1) how the two types of instructions differ in eye-gaze behaviour and pupillary responses, and (2) how the utterance sequence of the fragments progress to incremental grounding. For the analysis of (1), we compare the utterance measures per subject and conduct pairwise comparisons on fragmented and non-fragmented utterances. For (2) we analyse the fragmented utterances in isolation (Utt1-Utt4) and examine how each new fragment affects the behavioural measures. In both cases, multiple utterances per instructor were compared.
Analyses were conducted in R (R Core Team, 2020) and Linear Mixed-Effects Models (LMM) were used with the lme4 package (Bates et al., 2015), controlling for the variance of each interaction and each instructed object as random intercepts. For (1) the utterance type (with two factors) was used as fixed factor, and for (2) the sequence of the fragment (with four factors) was used as fixed factor. In both (1) and (2) the role of the participant in the interaction (Builder or Instructor) was also added as a fixed factor. For both analyses we present the chi-square and p-values derived from maximum likelihood estimation tests, comparing the given model to intercept-only models. The interaction of the predictors (Fragment*Role) was also tested. Finally, a correlation analysis was conducted to determine if there is a linear association of the number of fragments spoken by instructors with any of the behavioural measures.
3.1. How Do Fragmented and Non-fragmented Instructions Differ?
3.1.1. Eye-Gaze
First Gaze to Target: Linear Mixed-Effects Model analyses (Figure 5 and Table 1) showed significant effects in the factors of Fragment and Role, as well as on their interaction. Builders were faster at identifying referents in fragmented utterances than in non-fragmented utterances.
Gaze to Target: LMM analyses (Figure 6 and Table 1) showed no significant differences in builders' or instructors' gaze to target referent among fragmented and non-fragmented instructions.
Gaze to Other: Significant differences were found in the proportional amount of gaze to other (distractor) objects in the Role factor. As expected, Builders gazed more at distractor objects than Instructors. A significant interaction was also found between the Fragment and Role factors. No significant effect was found on the factor of Fragment in isolation.
Gaze to Person: Similarly, no significant differences were found in gaze to person among fragmented and non-fragmented instructions. Significant effects were found however in the factor of Role and in the interaction among the two factors.
Joint Attention: LMMs showed no significant main effect in joint attention among fragmented and non-fragmented instructions in joint attention among the conversational partners (Table 2).
Mutual Gaze: Similarly, no significant differences were found in mutual gaze in the conversational partners among fragmented and non-fragmented instructions.
Figure 5. Differences in variance of FirstGazeToTarget measure among fragmented and non-fragmented instructions.
Table 1. LMM on gaze features of the Builder [B] and the Instructor [I], in Fragment (NoF-F) and Role (B-I) fixed factors.
Figure 6. Differences in eye-gaze measures among fragmented and non-fragmented instructions: (A) Proportional gaze to target object, (B) Proportional gaze to other objects, and (C) Proportional gaze to person. Error bars indicate the standard errors of the means.
Table 2. LMM on group attention features in Fragment (NoF-F) fixed factor.
3.1.2. Pupillary Responses
Mean Pupil Dilation: LMM (Figure 7 and Table 3) showed no significant differences on the factors of Fragment and Role. A significant difference however was found in the interaction of the two factors, Instructors' pupil dilation was higher in fragmented instructions.
Peak Pupil Dilation: Similarly, no significant effect was found on the Role factor, however a significant effect was found on the Fragment factor and on the interactions of the Fragment and Role factors.
Pupil Diameter Slope: LMM showed no significant main effect on the factor of Fragment, however significant effects were found on the factor of Role and on the interaction between the two factors. Instructors' mean pupil diameter increased more in fragmented utterances.
Figure 7. Changes in pupil diameter during the Instructor's utterances separated by Non-Fragmented/Fragmented Instruction class. Instructors' cognitive load appears to be higher in constructing fragmented instructions overall, while the opposite effect is found for builders. Error bars indicate standard error of the means.
Table 3. LMM on pupil diameter features of the Builder [B] and the Instructor [I], in Fragment (NoF-F) and Role (B-I) fixed factors.
3.1.3. Time
Duration: LMM analyses (Figure 8 and Table 4) showed a significant main effect in utterance duration among fragmented and non-fragmented instructions. Non-fragmented utterances were longer in time than fragmented utterances.
Figure 8. Differences in utterance duration (in seconds) among non-fragmented and fragmented instructions.
Table 4. LMM on utterance duration in Fragment (NoF-F) fixed factor.
3.2. Effects of Utterance Sequence in Fragmented Instructions
We further analysed how behavioural measures in fragmented utterances progress incrementally within the same instruction unit and how the sequence of the fragment affects eye-gaze and pupillary responses among the conversational partners. In order to investigate the progression of the measures for each fragmented instruction, fragmented utterances were examined in isolation and the sequence of utterances were compared as fixed factors in the statistical analysis (Utt1-Utt2-Utt3-Utt4). Here all the fragmented instruction utterances are used, and the non-fragmented instructions are discarded. Interaction ID and instruction steps are also used in this analysis as random intercepts.
3.2.1. Eye-Gaze
First Gaze to Target: LMMs showed that the first gaze to the target object as a predictor caused a significant main effect on the Fragment factor, however no significant differences were found in the Role factor. A statistically significant interaction effect was also observed (Figure 9 and Table 5). The duration of the builders' and instructors' first gaze to the target decreased in time.
Gaze to Target: fitting LMMs on the fixed factors of fragment-sequence and participant-role showed that gaze to the target object caused a significant main effect on the fragment factor however no significant differences were found on the role factor (Figure 10 and Table 5). A statistically significant interaction was observed among the fragment-sequence and participant-role factors.
Gaze to Other: Regarding the gaze to other objects predictor, LMMs showed no significant differences among the Fragmented factor, however a significant effect was found on the Role factor, as well as an interaction effect was observed.
Gaze to Person: LMMs on the fixed factors of fragment-sequence and participant-role showed no significant effects. A statistically significant interaction effect was found however between the two factors.
Joint Attention: LMMs showed that the conversational partners' joint attention caused a significant main effect on the Fragment factor. Joint attention increased in time (Figure 11 and Table 6).
Mutual Gaze: LMMs showed that mutual gaze caused no significant differences on the Fragment factor among the conversational partners.
Figure 9. First gaze to target object per utterance sequence. Error bars indicate standard error of the means.
Table 5. LMM on gaze features of the Builder [B] and the Instructor [I], in Fragment (Utt1-Utt4) and Role (B-I) fixed factors.
Figure 10. Eye-gaze features per utterance sequence. (A) GazeToTarget referent, (B) GazeToOther referents, and (C) GazeToPerson. Error bars indicate standard error of the means.
Figure 11. Joint attention among the conversational partners per utterance sequence. Error bars indicate standard error of the means.
Table 6. LMM on group attention features in Fragment (Utt1-Utt4) fixed factor.
3.2.2. Pupillary Responses
Mean Pupil Dilation: fitting LMMs on the fixed factors of fragment-sequence and participant-role showed a significant main effect on the fragment-sequence factor, however no significant differences were found on the participant-role factor. A statistically significant effect was also observed in the interaction between the two factors (Figure 12 and Table 7).
Peak Pupil Dilation: LMM analyses showed significant main effects on the fragment-sequence factor, on the role factor, as well as on their interaction.
Pupil Diameter Slope: LMMs indicated no significant main effects on the fragment-sequence factor, however a statistically significant effect was observed on the participant-role factor.
Figure 12. Pupil dilation (in mm) per utterance sequence. Mean Pupil Dilation on the left and Peak Pupil Dilation on the right. An interaction effect can be observed in both measures. Error bars indicate standard error of the means.
3.2.3. Time
Duration: comparing the duration in seconds of each utterance, LMMs indicated that utterance duration caused a significant main effect. Duration of the utterances incrementally decreased (Figure 13 and Table 8).
Figure 13. Duration per utterance sequence. Error bars indicate standard error of the means.
Table 8. LMM on utterance duration in Fragment (Utt1-Utt4) fixed factor.
3.2.4. Correlation Analysis
Using the behavioural measures described above, an exploratory correlation analysis was conducted that evaluated how the metrics correlate with the number of fragments used in each instruction. Spearman's correlation coefficients were calculated between gaze, pupil, and time measures with the number of fragments per instruction, as some speakers tend to instruct using more fragments than others. A Bonferroni correction was applied to adjust for multiple comparisons, and only correlation coefficients larger than 0.15 are reported.
A number of gaze behaviour characteristics were associated with fragmented utterance production. The more fragmented utterances in instructions spoken the faster were Builders (FirstGazeToTarget: r = –0.47, p < 0.001) and Instructors (FirstGazeToTarget: r = –0.36, p < 0.001) at identifying the target referent object as more information is incrementally available by Instructors prior to every new fragment. More fragments were also negatively associated with Builders' gaze to the Instructor (GazeToPerson: r = –0.24, p < 0.001), potentially indicating more gaze toward the assembly task. Additionally, more fragments were negatively associated with their duration (Duration: r = –0.61, p < 0.001), as indicated in prior analysis in section 3.2.3 and suggesting each new fragment may have less information as instructors spoke shorter utterances. Finally, the number of fragments correlated with the Mean Pupil Dilation of the Instructor (MeanPupilDilation: r = 0.26, p < 0.001), indicating an increase in cognitive load for Instructors the more fragments they spoke. On the contrary, more fragments were negatively associated with Builders' Peak Pupil Dilation (PeakPupilDilation: r = –0.21, p < 0.001), indicating a decrease in cognitive load for builders as more fragments are spoken by instructors. There were no other statistically significant correlations observed on the behavioural cues explored.
4. Discussion
In this article we examined fragmented utterances as grounding acts in relation to speakers' cognitive effort, and what strategies speakers use to construct instructions in fragments. We utilised pupillary responses to instructions along with eye-gaze behaviour. We found that new speaker contributions to common ground caused an increase in speakers' cognitive load in order to reduce listener uncertainty and maintain mutual understanding.
The “Chinese Whispers” paradigm we utilised encouraged collaborative and fragmented production of instructions, while maintaining constraints on how the task would progress. This means, the corpus used in this analysis was of task-oriented nature, therefore the discourse progressed by establishing referential identities and task actions. While both builder and instructor attempted to achieve a common goal, it was the instructor's responsibility to resolve uncertainty and misunderstanding by having complete knowledge of the task. The multisensory infrastructure we used to capture speaker behaviour provided a multimodal understanding of the interactions, including information speakers do not have access to in conversation (i.e., variations in pupil diameter). These results give a first indication on how speakers mobilise cognitive resources in grounding behaviours and within the principles of least-collaborative-effort.
Our main goal was to identify whether behavioural and pupillary responses differ among non-fragmented and fragmented utterance sequences. The behavioural data indicated that listeners' cognitive load is decreased when speakers provide more information on the task, while speakers' cognitive resources seem to increase. Our assumption is that speakers continuously reformulate their utterances to reduce listener uncertainty and maintain mutual understanding, however adapting to the listener is a demanding task. This episodic production of instructions contributes to minimising the collaborative effort, rather than minimising the speakers' own effort (Chai et al., 2014; Fang et al., 2014). In light of these results, we discuss how speaker and listener behaviour affect the construction of fragmented instructions and how can research in conversational interfaces design instructions adapted to users.
4.1. Effects of Speaker Behaviour
During the task, both the instructor and the builder contributed to establish mutual understanding. However, it was the instructor that had complete knowledge of the task. Every instructor message can be viewed as an “information unit” (Halliday, 2015), where the instructor needs to construct and convey information and the builder needs to comprehend it. The instructor could theoretically use an infinite number of words to ensure no ambiguous messages are sent. However, to avoid overwhelming listeners with information, instructors choose a fine-grained balance of words by presenting the right amount of information and adapted to their recipients. In this study, when little or no uncertainty emerged, instructors uttered non-fragmented instructions that were longer in duration than fragmented instructions, potentially leading to the conclusion that non-fragmented utterances could also have more efficient information compiled in a single utterance.
We predicted that (1) speakers spend less cognitive resources in producing “one-shot” non-fragmented instructions, rather than fragmented instructions adapted to listeners, assuming audience design costs more effort as the speaker needs to pause and adjust to the listener's signals of understanding. We indeed found in the data that instructors' cognitive load was higher in fragmented rather than non-fragmented instruction utterances, meaning that the role of the listener may have been a significant factor on speaker resources, and as such silent pauses and fragmented utterances appeared. Fragmented instructions seem to cause more effort for speakers, yet it is still unclear if that is due to the initial construction of non-efficient utterances or due to the listeners' misunderstanding9. This effect appeared to be more clear when looking at fragmented instructions in isolation. In every new fragment, the speaker required more resources to reduce uncertainty in attempts to reformulate previous fragments. We also found that overall fragmented utterances seemed to be shorter in duration in comparison to non-fragmented utterances indicating different levels of efficiency and precision to describe common objects.
It is also likely that these sequential turn expansions in fragments exist in order to convey messages in a less threatening manner. Presenting information in parts may reflect indirectness in conversation, in order to make a positive impression or maintain “face” (Goffman, 1955). It is therefore likely these adaptation strategies facilitate social coordination, even by presenting less efficient messages10. This indirectness may help to reduce the force of a message by not explicitly conveying the speaker's intent at once, and by helping into maintaining positive affect between the conversational partners11.
4.2. Effects of Listener Behaviour
In spontaneous human conversation, when a new utterance occurs, it remains ungrounded until the listener has showed positive evidence of understanding (Clark and Brennan, 1991). Continuous listener uncertainty however may cause the instructor to speak more turns in fragments until a satisfactory level of understanding has been reached. These states of uncertainty in conversation can be defined as binary classification tasks where according to listener uncertainty each new fragment is either grounded or ungrounded (Kontogiorgos et al., 2019), in what DeVault (2008) refers to as contribution tracking. Listener uncertainty may be expressed verbally, but the state of uncertainty in ungrounded fragments is most often expressed non-verbally (Kontogiorgos et al., 2019). Each speaker utterance is therefore planned as a collaborative action, where the speaker closely monitors the listener for understanding, and continuously reformulates utterances to resolve ambiguities. Following each other's eye-gaze through joint (shared) attention12 was the conversational partners contributions to mutual understanding, since conversation was concerned around objects.
Joint attention in this context was not different between non-fragmented and fragmented utterances. However, each new fragment appeared to cause convergence in joint attention, showing that speaker efforts were successfully met by the builders. Similarly, builders were faster at detecting13 referent objects in fragmented utterances, which also appeared to be decreasing in every new fragment spoken. Interestingly, we can see the instructors' concerns over being understood in each new fragment, gaze-to-builder appears to gradually increase, indicating instructors' continuous expectations for positive evidence of understanding. However, mutual gaze did not appear to differ in either non-fragmented or fragmented utterances.
We also predicted that (2) speakers continuously attempt to reduce and minimise their listeners' cognitive load, by producing instructions in fragments, and let the listener extract information incrementally. Pupillary responses demonstrated that this assumption was partially correct. We also found that builders' cognitive load was lower in fragmented instructions, perhaps indicating a preference in receiving information incrementally. Additionally, looking at fragmented utterances in isolation, we found that builders' pupil size decreased and that therefore instructor fragment and adaptation strategies were successful. The data indicated that each new fragment also caused an increase in instructors' cognitive load, showing that resolving ambiguities is a demanding task. This interplay of contributions to the task and mutual understanding, could mean that not both conversational partners show the same preferences in minimal and non-ambiguous instructions.
5. Implications for the Design of Conversational Interfaces
We found differences in preference for minimal and non-ambiguous instructions by instructor and builder participants, as shown in their behavioural metrics and indications of uncertainty. Fragmented instructions seemed to be associated with the listeners' signals of understanding and with the notions of adaptation. Conversational interfaces that instruct humans encounter various situations of listener uncertainty and when attentional expectations are not met, they should afford the flexibility of linguistic devices such as the construction of instructions in fragments. In this discussion, we aim to raise challenges that remain open, and yet to be empirically investigated, on how these results can be best applied to the design of artificial instructors.
5.1. Adaptation Strategies
Construction of minimal and non-ambiguous instructions may not be as important as adaptation strategies and adaptive design of instructions. Users may express signals of misunderstanding and uncertainty even in perfectly executed instructions, and may expect conversational interfaces to expand their instructions in fragments, such as human instructors do. Under the assumption that instructions are just conveying information, why should we invest time designing systems that utter “imperfect” or impartial instructions? There is the view that overall, conversation is not only about conveying information but also to perform a variety of social functions. Socially intelligent speakers in fact, construct imperfect speech with discourse markers, incomplete utterances, and disfluencies (Heeman and Allen, 1999). Eventually, social robots and conversational interfaces may not always need to attempt to transmit information as efficiently as possible, but instead replicate such human-like imperfections when they interact with humans. Rather than producing the absolute best and most efficient utterances, robots could focus on producing satisfying utterances for the design requirement and if understanding problems occur, attempt to clarify.
Listener adaptation may be an important robot skill, as robots move toward becoming efficient instructors. As Kiesler (2005) writes, the more robots become adaptive to their users, the less users may need to adapt to the robots. Research so far indicates that robots and conversational interfaces using flexible linguistic techniques increase user satisfaction over systems that employ “generic listener” methods (Pelikan and Broth, 2016; Foster, 2019).
5.2. Message Construction
In order to replicate the human flexibility in face-to-face communication, we need to computationally explain strategies of linguistic adaptation in message construction. While it may be more challenging for robots to always produce non-ambiguous instructions, constructing messages in fragments and letting the user participate in utterance production could convey human-like behaviour. Prior research has investigated message production strategies for instructional robots and has found that adapting messages to users' expertise largely affects user experience (Torrey et al., 2006). Grouping or summarising various instructional elements as adaptive strategies has also shown to affect the outcome of interactions with robot instructors (Sauppé and Mutlu, 2014). Research has also explored robots that incrementally ground uncertainty with human users (Hough and Schlangen, 2017), or dialogue systems that tend to be preferred when showing abilities such as rephrasing problematic parts of their utterances (Buschmeier et al., 2012).
In dialogue systems research, Zarrieß and Schlangen (2016) have found that referential success improves when providing information in installments. Other studies have also found that episodic generation of instructions from systems resembles human speakers when planning-based methods of sentence generation are used (Garoufi and Koller, 2014). Regarding adaptation strategies in message construction, some studies have investigated methods that track the listener's gaze to infer when to provide additional information on system instructions in installments (Koller et al., 2012; Staudte et al., 2012), showing that such adaptation strategies tend to be preferred by users. Similar research has investigated instruction generation strategies in systems that direct the user's attention to the referent when uncertainty is detected, also examining different types of feedback mechanisms, and have been perceived as being more cooperative (Mitev et al., 2018). Overall, dynamic and episodic construction of instructions seems to be perceived as a human-like behaviour, rather than non-ambiguous descriptions (Wallbridge et al., 2019), as this is not how humans naturally communicate instructions (Striegnitz et al., 2012). On the contrary, some prior research has also investigated systems that attempt to design the dialogue in a manner that users will not need to ask any questions, in order to avoid at any cost clarification and utterance reformulation (Bernsen et al., 1996). Such strategies in message construction also exist in modern dialogue systems, where conversations with smart-speakers are typically in the form of single-turn information retrieval tasks, with limited possibilities of flexible and adaptive behaviour.
We should nevertheless consider that there is a risk that humans will interact with robots that utter fragmented instructions differently than how they do with human instructors. There is evidence that users tend to vary their behaviour when they interact with computers, in comparison to how they interact with humans (Wu et al., 2020). It is therefore likely users would adapt to systems that provide too little or too much information, even when clearly violating the maxims of quantity (Grice, 1975), and when such behaviour from humans could appear to be odd. This prior work including our own findings, present opportunities for empirical investigations and user studies with robots instructing humans in installments. With a high control of isolating instructions into fragments, robots should monitor their listeners' cognitive load and attention, in order to expand their turns when listener behaviour indicates uncertainty. In an attempt to continuously minimise listener effort, experiments with human users should be designed to investigate what robot strategies are beneficial and what listener signals are informative to construct messages and instructions in fragments.
5.3. Design Issues
Using our findings on construction of fragmented instructions in human interactions, we discuss their applicability for designing instructions in human-robot collaboration. Many questions remain open on what interactive system designers should consider also when designing user studies and implementing instructional dialogue strategies14.
How much information should a robot transmit in fragmented instructions? We saw a variation in information transmission from human speakers, and overall, less time-efficient instructions were produced without fragments. However, empirical investigations of how much information should be transmitted are necessary, and nevertheless task-dependent. As long as robots can resolve uncertainty and are always ready to provide additional information, they can initiate instructions that are incomplete or even ambiguous in an attempt to not overwhelm users with information15. This means that robots may need to consider withholding parts of the instruction from users, by presenting the most important elements of the instructions first (Zarrieß and Schlangen, 2016), and expand their turns with fragments, if necessary16. Real-time incremental detection of user states of uncertainty will be necessary to decide when the robot should elaborate or reformulate instructions.
When and how should a robot elaborate or reformulate previous utterances? Withholding information in first attempts of instructions may display that the robot has trust on the user's understanding, and sequentially providing more information in fragments should convey collaborative behaviour. However, timing instructions is crucial. Variables such as pauses and fillers between fragments should be further investigated to determine appropriate timing between fragments. Too long pauses may indicate that the robot has finished its turn and passes the floor to the user, whereas short pauses may cause overlaps with the users' acknowledgments or actions. Enough space should therefore be considered for user feedback. In task-oriented dialogues user actions also represent turns (Galati, 2011). Robots should therefore attend to user actions before taking a decision to reformulate their instructions. In robot requests such as “can you pass me the salt,” a contingent compliance from the user should be expected and monitored before uttering “it is on your right,” “next to the pepper,” and so on. Each action is “conditionally relevant” and contributes to mutual understanding. Additionally, what information in presented first may matter to users. Some information may be more important to start instructions with (Zarrieß and Schlangen, 2016), while other elaborations may only need to be revealed when uncertainties arise17. What information attributes should fragments consist of is also task dependent and needs to be further investigated.
What social cues should the robot attend to, in order to take decisions on new fragments? The state of uncertainty is a complicated intrinsic state that may not always be expressed in users. There are display rules of expressions of emotions that regulate how people react in conversation (Ekman and Keltner, 1997), affective states such as uncertainty may not always be clearly expressed. Users may in some cases signal uncertainty with facial expressions or eye-gaze. In face-to-face task-oriented interactions eye-gaze in particular is a powerful predictor of confirmation or uncertainty. Closely monitoring users' attention should indicate if the robot needs to utter more fragments in instructions. Verbal clarifications are also common means of signalling feedback in interactions, however they require more effort from users and more turns need to be exchanged. A proactive attention-oriented fragmented utterance behaviour may be preferred (i.e., “to your left,” “top left”) (Mitev et al., 2018). Overall, the choice of robot embodiment, robot behaviour and sensory input may also affect how users behave and therefore what user information the robot will collect, influencing how the robot will convey additional fragmentary utterances to resolve ambiguities. Grounding in humans occurs with a number of verbal and non-verbal channels available, therefore what channels are available to robots will significantly affect their fragmented utterance production strategies.
6. Conclusions
6.1. Limitations
In this work we conducted a first investigation of cognitive resources allocation during the production of fragmented instructions in task-oriented dialogues. The constrained nature of the task provides an advantage in the systematic and controlled analysis of the interactions, however it also affects the ecological validity over other forms of conversation, i.e., open-world dialogues (Bohus and Horvitz, 2009), that are not concerned about objects, and where shared attention behaviours do not always apply. The states of uncertainty, ambiguity, and how speakers construct utterances in installments may differ in nature, in settings other than referential communication or where dialogue is non-collaborative. Our findings should therefore be interpreted cautiously when designing interaction paradigms under a variety of settings.
We made an attempt to avoid experimenter biases by using the Chinese Whispers experimental paradigm, yet subjects' lexical choices may have been restricted by the presented stimuli. There was little variability of non task-relevant objects in the visual scene which should also encourage discussion toward the generalisation of the findings to daily task-oriented settings, along with the distribution of rigid participant roles in the interaction. Moreover, in this experiment, we had little control of the conversational stimuli (fragmented utterances), which further indicates the importance of controlled experiments that measure responses to fragmented instructions in non-spontaneous dialogue.
Additionally, even though participants attribute little to no interference of sensory equipment in the task (eye-tracking glasses, motion-capture sensors, and microphones), there may have been an effect on their non-verbal behaviour that further places the interactions in a restrictive setting. While it is hard to predict what input future non-intrusive sensory equipment will have, we are also restricted by required data on pupillary responses. Eye-tracking devices are useful tools for analysis and experimentation, but are non-ubiquitous sensors that cannot currently be placed in state-of-the-art conversational interfaces. Access to users' pupil diameter in real-world settings is therefore challenging and also sensitive to external factors such as light conditions. In this setting, we ensured there is no interference by external factors to the pupil, by controlling for constant illumination in the experiment room, and by filtering the pupil signal to sudden changes (i.e., blinks or saccades).
Finally, all signals in this study were extracted automatically using sensory equipment, therefore some interactions had to be excluded due to missing sensory data, and we are bound to sensor quality available at the time the data was collected in spring 2018. While automatic annotation has benefits in efforts collecting the data, it should be noted that utterance coding had to be performed manually. Additionally, a lot of multimodal information is still underrepresented, either due to limitations in sensory equipment, or data not captured in this experiment such as facial expressions.
6.2. Concluding Remarks
The current study demonstrated that pupillary responses can be useful to examine the production of speech in fragments, by analysing group coordination but also each speaker in isolation. We also verified through the use of pupillary data what previous studies have indicated, that cognitive load increases through the increased use of pauses. Although these findings should be interpreted with caution, they do suggest that the fragmented production of instructions has both an effect on how information is exchanged within the principles of audience design and least-collaborative-effort, but may also be used as a tool for resolving ambiguities in dialogue. We predicted that speakers attempt to minimise listeners' cognitive load with the use of fragmented instructions. While this was partially true, the data indicated that fragmented instructions also cost more cognitive effort for speakers. A fine-grained balance of efficiently constructed instructions and adaptive behaviour by elaborating and reformulating instructions may therefore be necessary.
To conclude, while efficiently formulated instructions may minimise ambiguities, social robots and conversational interfaces that instruct humans may always need to be prepared for resolving ambiguities with the use of fragmented utterances. Repairing mismatches in common ground, robots following fragmented instruction strategies present an opportunity for adaptive behaviour and positive affect between the conversational partners. It should be noted that while we have raised open challenges to how these findings can be applied to human-robot interactions, such settings still need to be empirically examined. Finally, we discussed in this section conversational strategies for instructional robots, however we have not focused on conversational interfaces that respond to user fragmented utterances such as the work of Bell et al. (2001). Future interfaces should be able to handle the production of fragmented utterances in both the role of the speaker or the listener.
Data Availability Statement
Publicly available datasets were analysed in this study. This data can be found at: and
Ethics Statement
Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s) for the publication of any potentially identifiable images included in this article.
Author Contributions
The work reported here is part of DK's Ph.D. research under the supervision of JG. DK and JG designed the research and posed the research questions. DK collected and analysed the data. DK and JG wrote and edited the manuscript. Both authors have made direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.
This work was supported by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research project FACT (GMT14-0082).
Conflict of Interest
We would like to thank Elena Sibirtseva for helping in the data collection of the experiment. We also thank Hannah Pelikan, Andre Pereira, Jana Götze and David Schlangen for helpful comments and discussion, and the reviewers for their useful comments in earlier versions of this manuscript.
1. ^Also known as audience (or recipient) design.
2. ^For reviews in pupillometry see: Kahneman and Beatty (1966), Beatty (1982), Beatty et al. (2000), Laeng et al. (2012), and Sirois and Brisson (2014).
3. ^The notion of fragments has also been used in different contexts by Schlangen (2003) to refer to non-sentential utterances. Here we use a different definition of fragment, closer to the definition of Clark's installments.
4. ^Fragments are coded similarly to Bell et al. (2001). We follow the notion of utterance from Meteer et al. (1995), sentences that can be coded into smaller units (“slash units”), parts of the instruction narrative interpreted as complete.
5. ^Dialogue 1 for a sample of a fragmented instruction, Dialogue 2 for a sample of a non-fragmented instruction.
6. ^4 instruction units with duration more than 20 s were excluded from the analysis.
7. ^4 instructions had also a 5th fragment which we exclude due to the small number of occurrences.
8. ^The forward-backward method from Gustafsson (1996) was used in the filter.
9. ^Since listeners are present during utterance construction, speakers may interrupt themselves mid-utterance and reformulate their messages according to what the listeners do (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986). Listener actions also count as turns, even when they are performed without speaking (Galati, 2011).
10. ^For an extended discussion on how people tune messages to their conversational partners refer to Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) (Gallois and Giles, 2015).
11. ^We would like to point to the reader that the notion of indirectness presented here is not meant to be associated with indirect speech acts (Searle, 1975).
12. ^Shared attention is one of the fundamental interactional phenomena in face-to-face conversation, where speakers coordinate actions and intentions by following each other's gaze (Tomasello et al., 2005).
13. ^A reference resolution system developed in Kontogiorgos et al. (2018), found that instructors' speech and attention were the most prominent signals to intent recognition in collaborative assembly tasks.
14. ^An overview of the questions in this article has first been presented in Kontogiorgos and Pelikan (2020).
15. ^A risk exists that robots always starting with ambiguous instructions may lead users to lose trust to the system's capabilities.
16. ^It is possible by the time the robot has decided to issue more information with a fragment, ambiguities have already been resolved by the user, and the additional robot turn serves the purpose of confirmation (just like backchannels) rather than disambiguation. We noticed similar behaviour between humans in this corpus (see dialogue sample 1, Utt-4).
17. ^For elaboration theory refer to Reigeluth et al. (1980).
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Keywords: social signal processing, pupillometry, dialogue and discourse, collaboration, common ground, least-collaborative-effort, situated interaction, referential communication
Citation: Kontogiorgos D and Gustafson J (2021) Measuring Collaboration Load With Pupillary Responses - Implications for the Design of Instructions in Task-Oriented HRI. Front. Psychol. 12:623657. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.623657
Received: 30 October 2020; Accepted: 24 May 2021;
Published: 20 July 2021.
Edited by:
Snehlata Jaswal, Chaudhary Charan Singh University, India
Reviewed by:
Thierry Chaminade, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France
Thies Pfeiffer, University of Applied Sciences Emden Leer, Germany
*Correspondence: Dimosthenis Kontogiorgos,
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5 Darkest Cases Of Witchcraft & Witch Trials
5 Darkest Cases Of Witchcraft & Witch Trials
by | Sep 10, 2018
Being the 21st century, we understand that difference between fact and fiction, and that magic and witches are firmly in the realm of make-believe. But there once was a time when people genuinely believed in witchcraft, and for a terrible time in our history, an estimated 200,000 or more “witches” were tortured, burnt or hanged in the Western world. Unexplained Mysteries takes a look at the Darkest cases in documented history. 5 Darkest Cases Of Witchcraft & Witch Trials.
“Witchcraft is a broad term for the belief and practice of magic. It can be found in various cultures across history and means something slightly different to every group. Most supposed witches were usually old women, and invariably poor. Any who were unfortunate enough to be crone-like, snaggle-toothed and sunken cheeked were assumed to possess the Evil Eye. If they also had a cat this was taken as proof. Many unfortunate women were condemned on this sort of evidence and hanged after undergoing appalling torture.”
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| 0.929547 |
Terra X: A case for Lesch and Steffens
The weather makers
Household names in Germany, Harald Lesch has been explaining the universe and important and trivial aspects of life to us for years, while intrepid explorer Dirk Steffens travels the world for Terra X, always in search of new challenges.
This time, we experience Lesch and Steffens in a whole new way. Appearing together for the first time, they embark on a sometimes tongue-in-cheek adventure and reveal previously unknown sides to the characters. Will they succeed in changing the weather? And if they do, how?
WRITER: Tamar Baumgarten-Noort, Tobias Schultes DIRECTOR: Stefan Schneider CAMERAMEN: Christopher Rowe, Martin Christ, Thomas Bianga, Adnane Korchyou EDITOR: Fabian Wienke, Maria Zimmermann, Christoph Sagert COMMISSIONING EDITOR: Christiane Götz-Söbel (ZDF)
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An Agreement Between Enemies Or Opponents To Stop Fighting For An Agreed Period Of Time
Apple and Facebook have declared a temporary ceasefire in one of the many battles between the two tech giants. The ceasefire can also be used occasionally to refer to an agreement between two or more people, to end, argue or involve in a less serious form of conflict, such as a pillow fight (not that pillow fights cannot become intense enough). For example, I realized that the evil blood between Taylor and me was really petty, so we both decided to declare a ceasefire. something someone does to show that they want to stop arguing. The olive branch is often used as a peace sign A ceasefire is a cessation of fighting between two or more people or parties in a conflict, mostly temporary. The ceasefire is also used outside the context of wars and the military to refer to an informal agreement between two people in order to interrupt an argument or quarrel, especially one that has lasted for a long time. Such a ceasefire is often offered in the form of a question simply by saying, “Peace?” If the other person agrees, they can simply say, “Peace.” The ceasefire is often used in the context of wars and other military conflicts. But it is also often used in a much more casual way to refer to an agreement to end a petty argument. stop competing or arguing and accepting that one cannot win the activity of improving relationships between individuals or groups to formally try to resolve a disagreement by taking into account all the facts and opinions of a process to end a dispute between two groups of people to conclude an agreement or to end an argument with someone to try to do something , or stop facing someone because you no longer have the energy or determination to end a disagreement or quarrel with someone by beating them trewes Middle-English, in the plural of the Trewe Agreement, the trow fidelity of the old English; a bit like the old faithful trowe – more to the real entry 1 to end an argument with someone and stop being angry with them to try to end a disagreement between two people or groups, to try to win a war, a competition or an argument, because you realize that you can not win it to become friends with someone again after a disagreement to help two people , groups or countries that do not agree to have a friendlier relationship than you give to someone or you allow to reach an agreement. When used in the context of military conflicts, a ceasefire is often temporary and fixed for a specified period of time. Truce is often used as a generic term to refer to any suspension of conflict, especially between the warring armies. So what is the difference between a ceasefire, a ceasefire and a ceasefire? In general, these three terms mean much the same thing.
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Your bi-monthly source of the latest products.
AbsoluteMatte can be used for benchtops and joinery.
Ultra-matt antimicrobial interior surfaces
Laminex® AbsoluteMatte® has been at the forefront of the movement towards matt interior surfaces. The intriguingly tactile, ultra-matt surface can be used for benchtops and joinery, creating a sleek, contemporary look.
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How does ocean temperature affect marine life?
How does ocean temperature affect marine life?
The ocean absorbs most of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions, leading to rising ocean temperatures. Increasing ocean temperatures affect marine species and ecosystems. Rising temperatures cause coral bleaching and the loss of breeding grounds for marine fishes and mammals.
How does climate change affect ocean life?
As greenhouse gases trap more energy from the sun, the oceans are absorbing more heat, resulting in an increase in sea surface temperatures and rising sea level. Changes in ocean temperatures and currents brought about by climate change will lead to alterations in climate patterns around the world.
What will happen to the oceans in the future?
By 2030, half of the world’s oceans will already be suffering from climate change, which will have catastrophic consequences for marine life. Hotter water temperatures mean that there’ll be less oxygen in the water, so many animals won’t be able to live in their current habitats and be forced to migrate.
Why is the ocean important?
The air we breathe: The ocean produces over half of the world’s oxygen and absorbs 50 times more carbon dioxide than our atmosphere. Climate regulation: Covering 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the ocean transports heat from the equator to the poles, regulating our climate and weather patterns.
Why is the ocean in danger?
Pollution, over-fishing and over-hunting, mining, the destruction of the oceans’ richest areas, the massive occupation of the coasts and the alteration of their chemical composition and temperature are leaving a mark that is difficult to erase. …
What is the main cause of ocean acidification?
What are the negative effects of ocean acidification?
Ocean acidification reduces the amount of carbonate, a key building block in seawater. This makes it more difficult for marine organisms, such as coral and some plankton, to form their shells and skeletons, and existing shells may begin to dissolve.
What is the cause and effect of ocean acidification?
Ocean acidification is mainly caused by carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere dissolving into the ocean. This leads to a lowering of the water’s pH, making the ocean more acidic. Many factors contribute to rising carbon dioxide levels.
Is ocean acidification serious?
And while ocean acidification won’t make seawater dangerous for swimming, it will upset the balance among the multitudes of microscopic life found in every drop of seawater. Such changes can affect seafood supplies and the ocean’s ability to store pollutants, including future carbon emissions.
Why is the high heat capacity of water important to marine organisms?
it is bonds of small groups of molecules constantly moves and can break apart and form again. How does water’s high heat capacity benefit/affect marine organisms? Because water has a high heat capacity marine organisms don’t go through drastic changes in temperature in their environment.
How big is the ocean acidification problem?
A recent study predicts that by roughly 2080 ocean conditions will be so acidic that even otherwise healthy coral reefs will be eroding more quickly than they can rebuild. Acidification may also impact corals before they even begin constructing their homes.
How does ocean acidification affect climate change?
What does ocean acidification do to coral reefs?
Does ocean acidification kill coral?
Global. The greatest threats to reefs are rising water temperatures and ocean acidification linked to rising carbon dioxide levels. High water temperatures cause corals to lose the microscopic algae that produce the food corals need—a condition known as coral bleaching.
Do How do coral reefs benefit people?
About 500 million people around the globe rely on coral reefs for food, income, and coastal defense. They also protect coastlines from the damaging effects of waves and tropical storms. Yet for some reason, people still tend to take these marine ecosystems for granted.
What is the difference between coral bleaching and ocean acidification?
Severe heat stress causes bleaching (the expulsion of corals’ food-producing algae). Ocean acidification (the drop in seawater pH as the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide) reduces the availability of calcium minerals for skeleton building and repair.
What will the pH of the ocean be in 20 years?
Under this scenario, the world’s energy portfolio places a balanced emphasis on all energy sources, both fossil fuels and renewable sources. By the end of this century, average ocean surface pH would fall to about 8.01—about 1.5 times more acidic than the waters were before industrialization.
Why are corals at risk from acidification?
The underlying structures of the reefs – which are home to a multitude of aquatic life – could fracture as a result of increasing ocean acidity caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide. …
How does coral bleaching affect humans?
Bleached corals are likely to have reduced growth rates, decreased reproductive capacity, increased susceptibility to diseases and elevated mortality rates.
What will happen if coral bleaching continues?
Climate change and bleached coral will make coral-based tourism unappealing or non-existent, which will lead to job losses. Developing countries and small island countries like Tuvalu will be most affected by such drastic shifts. Coral reefs provide protection against flooding and the erosion of coastlines.
How does coral bleaching affect the economy?
to both coastal communities and national economies. Degradation of these reefs costs dearly through loss of fishing livelihoods, protein defi- ciencies and the increased potential for malnutrition, loss of tourism revenue, increased coastal erosion, and the need for investment to stabilize the shoreline.
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How is the formation of volcanoes at divergent plate boundaries different than the formation of volcanoes at convergent plate boundaries?
Melting is common at convergent plate boundaries. Convergent plate boundaries line the Pacific Ocean basin so that volcanic arcs line the region. Melting at divergent plate boundaries is due to pressure release. At mid-ocean ridges seafloor is pulled apart and new seafloor is created.
What is the relationship of the formation of volcanoes to the location of plate boundaries?
About 80% of the active volcanoes and their related volcanic activities occur at the intersection of two plates, and one of them subducts below the other, the plate subducting, on the one hand, increase local pressure due to compression, on the other hand, melt into magma themselves; at this point, the upper plates …
Why do more volcanoes form along the boundaries of the Pacific plate?
Why are 75% of the world’s volcanoes found around the Pacific basin? Of course, these volcanoes are caused by the abundance of convergent plate boundaries around the Pacific. Figure 1. The Cascade Range is formed by volcanoes created from subduction of oceanic crust beneath the North American continent.
Are there volcanoes at transform boundaries?
Recall that there are three types of plate boundaries: convergent, divergent, and transform. Volcanism occurs at convergent boundaries (subduction zones) and at divergent boundaries (mid-ocean ridges, continental rifts), but not commonly at transform boundaries.
Can Transform boundaries create volcanoes?
As the sinking plate moves deeper into the mantle, fluids are released from the rock causing the overlying mantle to partially melt. The new magma (molten rock) rises and may erupt violently to form volcanoes, often building arcs of islands along the convergent boundary. This is known as a transform plate boundary.
What geologic event is most likely to happen in a transform fault boundary?
In transform fault boundary the geological event happens is Earthquake. Earthquake occurs as two plates slides creating friction between each other.
What are the signs that a tsunami is coming?
One of the signs of a potential tsunami is the occurrence of a very large earthquake that lasts for more than 20 seconds. If an area has been shaken by a very large earthquake, one should be on alert that shorelines located within the radius of the earthquake’s epicentre, may be hit by a tsunami.
How big does an earthquake have to be to cause a tsunami?
“Earthquakes below 7.5 or 7.0 usually do not trigger tsunamis,” said geophysicist Don Blakeman of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center. “However, sometimes 6.0 earthquakes can trigger local tsunamis, which are smaller and less destructive.”
How much warning is there before a tsunami?
Experts believe that a receding ocean may give people as much as five minutes’ warning to evacuate the area. Remember that a tsunami is a series of waves and that the first wave may not be the most dangerous. The danger from a tsunami can last for several hours after the arrival of the first wave.
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Helena Roy
Department of Economics
Inference Under Selection: An Application to Social Media and Partisan Polarization
Joint with Matt Brown (Department of Economics), I am researching how social media might contribute to partisan polarization in the U.S. Most people in the U.S. believe that their political opponents are more extreme than they really are. These misperceptions may have negative consequences for civic discourse and polarization. Where do partisan misperceptions come from? We study the role of selection neglect. If only the most extreme people talk about politics, people may mistakenly infer that the average partisan is similar to the average partisan whom they hear speaking (people forget that they are observing a selected sample). Our online experiment quantifies the importance of selection neglect. The findings will provide insights on the effects of social media on polarization and the optimal design of interventions to reduce partisan misperceptions.
Visit her website here.
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21-22 School Year’s Plans and Teaching
Getting ready for the first week.
1. Create an Online Syllabus Assignment to collect signed syllabus online
2. Create an online form for restroom breaks and record in one place
3. Use Label to Write an Announcement about Equity Grading
4. Download Question Folder and Create an Online Quiz
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Protected areas are essential for safeguarding biodiversity. They also offer a multitude of economic, social, and cultural benefits to people.
Protected areas are the cornerstone of national and international conservation strategies, and indeed, most are currently established to safeguard biodiversity.
But protected areas also provide a number of direct and indirect benefits to people that are becoming more widely appreciated and valued.
• Contributing to human well-being and sustainable development
Key amongst these is their role in ensuring the continued supply of a huge range of environmental goods and services that are vital for human well-being – such as the provision of food, freshwater, and medicine; climate regulation; and protection from natural disasters, to name a few.
These goods and services are particularly important for the world’s poorest people, who rely heavily on natural resources for their livelihoods, diet, and health. Degradation of environmental services is a driver of poverty and social conflict, and a significant barrier to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for eradicating poverty and hunger, improving health, and achieving environmental sustainability.
Conversely, by maintaining environmental goods and services and providing new livelihood opportunities, protected areas can help contribute towards poverty reduction and sustainable development.
In addition, threats to biodiversity – such as habitat loss, unsustainable use of natural resources, inequity, and governance problems - also often contribute to increasing poverty. Conservation efforts addressing these problems can also enhance the livelihoods of the rural poor.
• Providing cultural and spiritual benefits
Protected areas also provide recreational opportunities, as well as cultural and spiritual benefits for people around the world.
For example, biodiversity is increasingly recognized as an important part of a nation’s unique character or value, comparable with valuable cultural sites. Protected areas like Yellowstone National Park in the US or the Masai Mara in Kenya, for example, have the same resonance in a nation’s consciousness as, say, the Taj Mahal or Notre Dame cathedral.
The protection of sacred and other spiritual sites is also important for many traditional and vulnerable societies, including many indigenous peoples.
• Future benefits?
By helping to ensure the continued existence of the wondrous array of life forms on our planet, protected areas may bring future benefits that, while impossible to foresee at the moment, could have profound implications for people around the world.
Genetic diversity, for example, is already recognized as a valuable source of as yet undiscovered medical compounds that may be useful to fight diseases such as HIV/AIDS.
And biomimicry – where scientists look to nature’s designs and processes to solve human problems – is emerging as a new source of innovative ideas and solutions.
Coral reef, Fiji.
Coral reefs are not only home to 25% of all marine life, but also provide environmental goods and services to people worth an estimated US$30 billion each year.
These include: nurseries for commericial fish species; income from fisheries and tourism; coastal protection; and medicinal compounds.
Coral reefs and their inhabitants are also intricately woven into the cultural traditions of many coastal societies around the world.
Reports describing the links between protected areas and:
Conservation and sustainable development
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) - the world’s most significant effort to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity - recognizes the links between biodiversity and sustainable development. Its Programme of Work on Protected Areas (PoWPA) aims in part to contribute to poverty reduction and the pursuit of sustainable development, and to support the objectives of the MDGs.
Protected Areas Benefits Assessment Tool
The Protected Areas Benefits Assessment Tool
© The Protected Areas Benefits Assessment Tool © WWF
A methodology for collating and building information about the overall benefits from individual protected areas.
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Ask A Question
Family Guide to It Takes Two (PEGI 12)
There are many different ways to play video games together in the family. Co-operative experiences are relatively common. Less common are those where each player has a different role to play.
It Takes Two is a running, jumping and exploring game that tells a story of a young girl, Rose, who's parents are divorcing. The girl creates two dolls to represent her parents, which unexpectedly trap the clashing-couple in them. You and a friend co-operate as the dolls, each with unique abilities, to solve puzzles and help them work together, rather than pull in opposite directions.
The style of play changes as you progress. But throughout, it is set in a larger than life world from the perspective of the two dolls. Whether it is puzzle solving, action focused or platforming, the game leverages these interactions as metaphors for the reluctant couple saving their fractured relationship.
The game is available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PC. It costs about £34.99 and doesn't include an in-game purchases. To play together on the game you each need a controller.
You can play online with a friend even if the other person doesn't own the game. The Friend's Pass feature enables them to join for free.
Age Rating
It Takes Two is rated PEGI 12 for moderate violence and use of bad language. Violence is non-realistic, and no blood or injuries are shown. While some enemies can be blown up, they merely disappear in the explosion without any gory details. When the players’ characters are hit, they fall over, and stars appear before they get up again. If they are defeated, they simply break apart into particles before reforming at the last save point.
Sometimes the players’ characters can be pinned down by their enemies. In one scene, they are briefly held captive and are repeatedly jabbed by wasps armed with spears. They wave their arms and shout, while breaking apart and repeatedly reforming until their captors call off the attack.
In one scene, the player characters are required to harm and kill another toy character. They do so in order to further their mission of attempting to escape from the fantasy world in which they’re trapped. While the violence has a purpose in the game’s narrative, and the violence is unrealistic in nature, featuring as it does toy characters, younger children may find the toy character’s frightened reaction (and powerfully-voiced response) to the violence upsetting.
Other Games
If you enjoy collaborating to complete It Takes Two, this list of co-operative games is a good place to find your next challenge. There are also lots of games where novice and expert players can work together.
Other games with a similar narrative focus and co-operative play include:
Avatar for Andrew Robertson
Andrew Robertson
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Under what conditions are some developing countries able to create stable democracies while others have slid into instability and authoritarianism? To address this classic question at the center of policy and academic debates, The Promise of Power investigates a striking puzzle: why, upon the 1947 Partition of British India, was India able to establish a stable democracy while Pakistan created an unstable autocracy? Drawing on interviews, colonial correspondence, and early government records to document the genesis of two of the twentieth century's most celebrated independence movements, Maya Tudor refutes the prevailing notion that a country's democratization prospects can be directly attributed to its levels of economic development or inequality. Instead, she demonstrates that the differential strengths of India's and Pakistan's independence movements directly account for their divergent democratization trajectories. She also establishes that these movements were initially constructed to pursue historically conditioned class interests. By illuminating the source of this enduring contrast, The Promise of Power offers a broad theory of democracy's origins that will interest scholars and students of comparative politics, democratization, state-building, and South Asian political history.
Les mer
Under what conditions are some developing countries able to create stable democracies while others are perpetually prone to instability and authoritarianism? In The Promise of Power, Maya Tudor proposes a new understanding of the regime divergence between India and Pakistan following their twin independences in 1947.
Les mer
1. How India institutionalised democracy and Pakistan promoted autocracy; 2. The social origins of pro- and anti- democratic movements (1885-1919); 3. Imagining and institutionalizing new nations (1919-47); 4. Organizing alliances (1919-47); 5. Freedom at midnight and divergent democracies (1947-58); 6. The institutionalization of alliances in India, Pakistan, and beyond.
Les mer
'Acknowledging the importance of political parties to regime stability, Tudor moves further back the causal line of explanation by examining the conditions under which particular political parties first came into being and institutionalized the support of key elites. This monograph sheds new light on the origins of some of the systemic institutional, ideological and identity issues of India's and Pakistan's respective political regimes.' Rosheen Kabraji, International Affairs'This is a carefully researched and clearly written study that not only makes a compelling argument but also offers perceptive insights into the history of the Indian and Pakistani political movements. While the broader political and social contexts that accompany the narratives in the chapters are not necessarily new to readers familiar with the political history of India and Pakistan, the author must be commended for the convincing manner in which the historical conditions and circumstances in the lead up to 1947 and beyond are marshaled to support her overarching argument ... this illuminating book is an enjoyable read ... [It] is a valuable study that has much to offer to those wishing to comprehend the political dynamics of India and Pakistan. It is, at the same time, an important contribution to the literature on the challenges of democratization in postcolonial developing countries.' Tan Tai Yong, Pacific Affairs
Les mer
An examination of how, despite similar historical contexts, India became a stable democracy post-independence, whilst Pakistan became an unstable autocracy.
Cambridge University Press
360 gr
230 mm
154 mm
15 mm
06, P
Product language
Product format
Antall sider
Om bidragsyterne
Maya Tudor is a Fellow in Politics at St John's College, Oxford. Her dissertation, upon which this book is based, won the American Political Science Association's Gabriel Almond Award for the Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics.
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The dusty heart of an active galaxy
Dense Disk and Torus Funnel at the Centre of the Circinus Galaxy
March 13, 2014
An international research team led by Konrad Tristram from the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, obtained the most detailed view so far of the warm dust in the environment of a supermassive black hole in an active galaxy. The observations of the Circinus galaxy show, for the first time, that the dust directly illuminated by the central engine of the active galaxy is located in two distinct components: an inner warped disk and a surrounding larger distribution of dust. Most likely, the larger component is responsible for most of the obscuration of the inner regions close to the supermassive black hole. Such a configuration is significantly more complex than the simple dusty doughnut, which has been favoured for the last few decades.
The results are published in the current issue of "Astronomy & Astrophysics".
Nuclear region of the Circinus galaxy. The right image shows the inner 1000 light years of the Circinus galaxy. Blinding light and gaseous material are ejected by the active nucleus (located at the black box). They escape only along a conical region towards the northwest (upper right part of the image), leading to the white V-shaped structure in this image. Along other directions, the nuclear region is hidden by dense gas and dust. This obscuring dust has now been investigated with unprecedented detail with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer. The false-colour model image on the left shows the dust emission and corresponds to the region marked by the black box in the right image. The emission comes from a relatively thin, disk-like structure (white) as well as dust elongated perpendicular to it. The disk is also seen by water emission (red-green-blue line). The dust emission is more absorbed towards the southeast (bottom left) than the northwest (top right), illustrated by the change from violet to green colours.
In active galactic nuclei, enormous amounts of energy are released due to the feeding of the supermassive black hole in the centre of the galaxy. Such black holes have masses of a million or billion times the mass of the sun. The matter spiralling in onto the black hole becomes so hot and luminous that it outshines its entire galaxy with billions of stars. The huge amounts of energy released also affect the surrounding galaxy. Active galactic nuclei are therefore thought to play an important role in the formation and evolution of galaxies and hence in the formation of the universe as presently seen.
Using the MIDI instrument at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in the Atacama Desert of Chile, the research team obtained an unprecedented clear view of the warm dust in the nucleus of the Circinus galaxy. At a distance of only 13 million light years, the Circinus galaxy contains one of the closest and brightest active galactic nuclei.
"We obtained at least twice the amount of interferometric data than for any other galaxy", proudly reports Konrad Tristram from the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the lead author of the paper. "Our observations make the Circinus Galaxy by far the best observed extragalactic source in optical and infrared interferometry." By combining the light of two telescopes, the interferometric observations increase the resolution to that of a telescope of 92 meters in diameter.
In the case of the Circinus Galaxy, the scientists could, for the first time, show that the emission of the nuclear dust comes from two distinct components, an inner disk-like component and an extended component significantly elongated in polar direction. The dust disk in the Circinus Galaxy has a size of about 3 light years and agrees well with a warped molecular disk revealed by water emission.
This inner disk is surrounded by a much bigger dust distribution with a size of at least 6 light years. We only see the inner edge of this dust distribution, which is directly illuminated by the radiation coming from the central region. This inner funnel appears elongated in polar direction. Its southeastern side is significantly more obscured by dust than the northwestern side. This leads to the observed strong asymmetry and colour change in the observed emission.
"From this, we deduce that it is the larger dust component, which is responsible for hiding the central engine and for collimating the visible ionisation cone", explains Leonard Burtscher from the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching. "We can only see the inner, directly illuminated edges of that component. This is certainly in contrast to some earlier speculations."
There appear to be two types of active galactic nuclei: one where we have a direct view to the inner part of the nucleus with the accretion disk where the energy is released (the "central engine") and one where the inner part appears to be hidden. This dichotomy has been explained by a doughnut-shaped distribution of dense gas and dust surrounding the central part of the active nucleus, the so-called 'torus'. If observed face-on, we can directly see the central engine through the hole in the torus, while if observed edge-on, the material of the torus obscures the view to the centre. The torus is also thought to play an important role in feeding the supermassive black hole, providing the material that will ultimately be swallowed. Trying to understand how the torus works is therefore important for understanding active galactic nuclei and their impact in general.
Although there is now a much clearer picture of a torus than before, there are some puzzles remaining: For example, both the dust disk and the polar dust have a temperature of about 300K (~30°C, i.e. about room temperature). Surprisingly, there is no evidence for hotter dust towards the centre as would be expected for a centrally heated dust distribution.
"The presence of both a bright disk-like component and a more extended polar dust component at a similar temperature were not predicted by the present models of active galactic nuclei", concludes Gerd Weigelt, director at the MPIfR and head of the research group for infrared astronomy. "We need new models and new VLTI observations with the upcoming MATISSE instrument to improve our understanding of the three-dimensional dust distribution in the nuclei of active galaxies."
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Posted on
Thermionic Emission
Cathode Rays
The Production of Cathode Rays
Explain the production of cathode rays
The Properties of Cathode Rays
State the properties of cathode rays
Properties of Cathode Rays Include:
6. Cathode rays can penetrate through thin metallic sheets.
7. Cathode rays ionize the gases through which they travel.
The Application of Cathode Ray Tube
State the application of cathode ray tube
Application of cathode ray tube includes:
Before LCD or Plasma television, the CRT was used to create a moving image.It used the same principle as a CRT, and for Black and White televisions, that worked fine. B&W TVs were essentially the same thing as a CRT, as all that’s needed is the control of the brightness of the beam.
A CRT TV works by having the electron beam “scan” the screen at an rate faster than our eyes can perceive.This means that it shoots across the screen like a machine gun, and the images we see are actually made from many fluorescent dots.
The fluorescence caused by the beam striking the screen lasts a bit longer so that the next scan can be made without the previous image disappearing.It scans twice each time, first filling in the odd “holes” then the even ones.Each scan is about 1/50 of a second.
Thus it isn’t actually a single coloured pixel, but rather 3 very small pixels that join together to form a larger dot.
Cathode Ray Oscilloscopes
A Cathode Ray Oscilloscope (CRO) is a diagnostic device that allows one to “see” voltage.It is essential a Cathode Ray Tube with two perpendicular sets of deflecting electric plates.The vertical set is where an input voltage is plugged in for the oscilloscope to display.
However, the horizontal set is connected to a “sweep generator”.This is what provides a constant, but adjustable, timebase for the sweeping.It essentially creates a “sawtooth voltage.”This is what causes the image to be animated, and measured with a linear scale.
The Structure and Mode of Action of the X-ray Tube
Describe the structure and mode of action of the x-ray tube
X-radiation (composed of X-rays) is a form of electromagnetic radiation. Electromagnetic radiation (EM radiation or EMR) is a form of radiant energy released by certain electromagnetic processes. Visible light is one type of electromagnetic radiation, other familiar forms are invisible electromagnetic radiations such as X-rays and radio waves.
Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 pentahertz to 30 exahertz (3×1016 Hz to 3×1019 Hz) and energies in the range 100 eV to 100 keV.X-ray wavelengths are shorter than those of UV rays and typically longer than those of gamma rays.
In many languages, X-radiation is referred to with terms meaning Röntgen radiation, after Wilhelm Röntgen, who is usually credited as its discoverer, and who had named it X-radiation to signify an unknown type of radiation.
X-ray tube
The x-ray tube consists of an emitter (either a filament or a cathode),which emits electrons into a vacuum and an anode to accelerate the electrons. This establishes a flow of electrons through the tube.
These electrons are reffered to as a beam. The cathode is in the form of a filament which emits electrons when heated. The anode is made of copper and also carries the target.
A high p.d between the anode and the cathode is maintained by an external high-voltage source. A battery that supplies high current is used to heat the cathode filament, which in many cases is made of tungsten. The cathode is in the form of a coil to provide high resistance to the passing current.
Production of X-rays
The electrons from the filament experiences the p. d and accelerated towards the anode. When they hit the anode, they are stopped and thereby transfer their energy to the electrons of the anode material. This gives rise to x-rays.
It is only a very small percentage of their energy that is converted to x-rays, with the rest of it being transformed to heat.
Defference between Soft and hard X-rays and their Production
Distinguish between soft and hard x-rays and their production
X-rays may be classified as hard or soft depending on their wavelengths, which give rise to different properties.
Differences between hard and soft x-rays
Hard x-rays Soft x-rays
They have shorter wavelength(high frequency) They have longer wavelength
They have higher energy Have less energy
Thigher penetrating power Lower penetrating power
Are produced by higher accelerating potential Produced by lower accelerating potential
Have higher velocity Have lower velocity
The Properties of X-rays
State the properties of x-rays
Properties of x-rays include:
1. They travel in straight lines.
2. They readily penetrate matter.
3. They are not affected by electric or magnetic fields(they have no charge).
4. They cause fluorescence in certain substances.
5. They can be detected by photographic emulsion.
6. They ionise gases causing the gases to conduct electricity.
The Application of X-Rays in Daily Life
Identify the applications of x-rays in daily life
The following are some uses of x-rays:
1. In the medical field
2. Crystallography
3. Astronomy
4. X-ray microscopic analysis
5. X-ray fluorescence
6. Security installations
7. Industries
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Serranidae, Swainson, 1839
Van Hinsbergh, Victor W. M. & Helwerda, Renate A., 2019, Fish Otoliths from the Cabarruyan Piacenzian-Gelasian fauna found in the Philippines, Zootaxa 4563 (3), pp. 401-443: 436
publication ID
publication LSID
persistent identifier
treatment provided by
scientific name
Serranidae indeterminate
(Figures 115–118)
Material: 6 specimens in total. Anda3 (1) RGM 962321View Materials ; Tiep2 (5) RGM 962268View Materials, RGM 962322View Materials, RGM 962323View Materials, RGM 962324View Materials, RGM 962325View Materials .
Six juvenile Percoidea specimens probably represent one species. They have an oval to spindle shaped outline characterized by a strong pointed rostrum and in most specimens an extension of their posterior dorsal part. The lobed ventral rim is regularly curved, but with a feeble midventral angle in several specimens. Dorsal and ventral rims are ornamented with small somewhat blunted lobes, separated by furrows. The ventral part of the inner surface is slightly convex, the dorsal part rather flat including a small dorsal depression. The short ostium is wedgeshaped and widens towards the anterior rim. The cauda is more than two times longer than the ostium; it bends toward and almost reaches the posterior-ventral rim. The outer surface is flat in anteroposterior direction with knobs and furrows perpendicular to the rims. The specimens probably represent juvenile Serranidae . However given their small size (OL= 1.16–1.24 mm; OL:OH=1.81–1.85), we consider them as not sufficiently diagnostic for further determination.
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Is Mass Effect a space opera?
“Mass Effect” follows Commander Shepard — a hero players can customize for looks and gender — across three games as they wage war against a galactic threat known as the Reapers. … Key choices carry through all three games, whether it’s who survives, or who you ally yourself with.
What defines a space opera?
: a futuristic melodramatic fantasy involving space travelers and extraterrestrial beings.
Which film is an example of space opera?
Fun Fact. The highest-grossing film in U.S. box office history is a space opera movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). It grossed over $936 million in U.S. theaters.
Is Warhammer a space opera?
Warhammer 40000 is a Space Opera setting, although it’s about as cynical, grim and dark as you can get.
Why do they call it space opera?
The term “space opera” was coined in 1941 by fan writer and author Wilson Tucker as a pejorative term in an article in Le Zombie (a science fiction fanzine). At the time, serial radio dramas in the United States had become popularly known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap manufacturers.
What makes a good space opera?
Most Space Operas follow the basic set-up of a Heroic Fantasy, and transmute the tropes into space. You could structure your story as a typical Heist Movie, but instead of a Train Job it’s an FTL spaceship. You could base your story on classic Pirate movies, but with the void of space replacing the ocean.
IT IS INTERESTING: Can you play Mass Effect DLC on Steam?
Is red rising a space opera?
Red Rising, however, is a different type of sci-fi. While we still get the element of space travel, there’s also an element of fantasy to this book. … The world we are thrown into with Darrow is different than your standard space opera adventure.
Is Cowboy Bebop a space opera?
Cowboy Bebop isn’t the only space opera to capture audiences, but there’s no denying the clout it holds over the anime world. … The captivating cast of characters, the expansive world, and the animation that stands the test of time—they’re all part of the formula for an engaging space opera.
Playing into space
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Deleting Unused GL Accounts
This guide explains how to deactivate and remove GL accounts that are not needed. It is intended for advanced users.
aACE will not delete General Ledger accounts that:
Step 1: Deactivate Unused GL Account Records
1. Navigate from Main Menu > Accounting > GL Accounts.
2. Display all GL account records by clicking Show All.
3. Click the Account column header to sort the list by descending account number.
Note: Make sure the list is sorted in descending order (i.e. you may need to click the column header more than once). Descending order is helpful because aACE Header accounts cannot be deactivated if they have active detail accounts. Since detail accounts typically have higher account numbers than the parent header account, sorting in descending order allows aACE to deactivate the detail accounts before deactivating the respective header account.
4. In the menu bar, click Actions > Deactivate GL Accounts in List.
Allow the process to run completely. When it is finished, deactivated accounts appear with a white status indicator:
Step 2: Delete the Deactivated GL Account Records
1. Use the Quick Search bar to find all inactive accounts.
2. In the menu bar, click Actions > Delete GL Accounts in List.
3. At the verification dialog, type "delete", then click Delete.
4. At the confirmation dialog, click OK.
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Colorado’s Alpine Environment
Biome found at high altitudes
Hikers traversing the Franconia Ridge in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, much of which is in the alpine zone.
Alpine tundra in the Venezuelan Andes
Alpine tundra is a type of natural region or biome that does not contain trees because it is at high elevation. As the latitude of a location approaches the poles, the threshold elevation for alpine tundra gets lower until it reaches sea level, and alpine tundra merges with polar tundra.
The high elevation causes an adverse climate, which is too cold and windy to support tree growth. Alpine tundra transitions to sub-alpine forests below the tree line; stunted forests occurring at the forest-tundra ecotone are known as Krummholz. With increasing elevation it ends at the snow line where snow and ice persist through summer.
Alpine tundra occurs in mountains worldwide. The flora of the alpine tundra is characterized by dwarf shrubs close to the ground. The cold climate of the alpine tundra is caused by adiabatic cooling of air, and is similar to polar climate.
Alpine tundra occurs at high enough altitude at any latitude. Portions of montane grasslands and shrublands ecoregions worldwide include alpine tundra. Large regions of alpine tundra occur in the North American Cordillera and parts of the northern Appalachian Mountains in North America, the Alps and Pyrenees of Europe, the Himalaya and Karakoram of Asia, the Andes of South America, the Eastern Rift mountains of Africa, and the South Island of New Zealand.[1][2][3]
Alpine tundra occupies high-mountain summits, slopes, and ridges above timberline. Aspect plays a role as well; the treeline often occurs at higher elevations on warmer equator-facing slopes. Because the alpine zone is present only on mountains, much of the landscape is rugged and broken, with rocky, snowcapped peaks, cliffs, and talus slopes, but also contains areas of gently rolling to almost flat topography.[4]
Averaging over many locations and local microclimates, the treeline rises 75 meters (245 ft) when moving 1 degree south from 70 to 50°N, and 130 meters (430 ft) per degree from 50 to 30°N. Between 30°N and 20°S, the treeline is roughly constant, between 3,500 and 4,000 meters (11,500 and 13,100 ft).[5]
Summer in Northern Sweden's Tarfala Valley with its alpine climate
Alpine climate is the average weather (climate) for the alpine tundra. The climate becomes colder at high elevations—this characteristic is described by the lapse rate of air: air tends to get colder as it rises, since it expands. The dry adiabatic lapse rate is 10 °C per km (5.5 °F per 1000 ft) of elevation or altitude. Therefore, moving up 100 meters (330 ft) on a mountain is roughly equivalent to moving 80 kilometers (45 miles or 0.75° of latitude) towards the pole.[6] This relationship is only approximate, however, since local factors such as proximity to oceans can drastically modify the climate.
Typical high-elevation growing seasons range from 45 to 90 days, with average summer temperatures near 10 °C (50 °F). Growing season temperatures frequently fall below freezing, and frost occurs throughout the growing season in many areas. Precipitation occurs mainly as winter snow, but soil water availability is highly variable with season, location, and topography. For example, snowfields commonly accumulate on the lee sides of ridges while ridgelines may remain nearly snow free due to redistribution by wind. Some alpine habitats may be up to 70% snow free in winter. High winds are common in alpine ecosystems, and can cause significant soil erosion and be physically and physiologically detrimental to plants. Also, wind coupled with high solar radiation can promote extremely high rates of evaporation and transpiration.[4]
Quantifying the climate
Alpine tundra above the tree line below Musala Peak in Rila Mountain, Bulgaria
There have been several attempts at quantifying what constitutes an alpine climate.
Climatologist Wladimir Köppen demonstrated a relationship between the Arctic and Antarctic tree lines and the 10 °C summer isotherm; i.e., places where the average temperature in the warmest calendar month of the year is below 10 °C cannot support forests. See Köppen climate classification for more information.
Otto Nordenskjöld theorized that winter conditions also play a role: His formula is W = 9 − 0.1 C, where W is the average temperature in the warmest month and C the average of the coldest month, both in degrees Celsius (this would mean, for example, that if a particular location had an average temperature of −20 °C (−4 °F) in its coldest month, the warmest month would need to average 11 °C (52 °F) or higher for trees to be able to survive there).
In 1947, Holdridge improved on these schemes, by defining biotemperature: the mean annual temperature, where all temperatures below 0 °C are treated as 0 °C (because it makes no difference to plant life, being dormant). If the mean biotemperature is between 1.5 and 3 °C (34.7 and 37.4 °F),[7] Holdridge quantifies the climate as alpine.
Silky phacelia (Phacelia sericea, blooming) and spreading phlox (Phlox diffusa) are species of alpine regions of western North America.
Alpine flora at 11,500 feet (3500 m) on the Flat Tops plateau in the Colorado Rocky Mountains U.S.A
Since the habitat of alpine vegetation is subject to intense radiation, wind, cold, snow, and ice, it grows close to the ground and consists mainly of perennial grasses, sedges, and forbs. Perennial herbs (including grasses, sedges, and low woody or semi-woody shrubs) dominate the alpine landscape; they have much more root and rhizome biomass than that of shoots, leaves, and flowers. The roots and rhizomes not only function in water and nutrient absorption but also play a very important role in over-winter carbohydrate storage. Annual plants are rare in this ecosystem and usually are only a few inches tall, with weak root systems.[4] Other common plant life-forms include prostrate shrubs, graminoids forming tussocks, cushion plants, and cryptogams, such as bryophytes and lichens.[8]
Relative to lower elevation areas in the same region, alpine regions have a high rate of endemism and a high diversity of plant species. This taxonomic diversity can be attributed to geographical isolation, climate changes, glaciation, microhabitat differentiation, and different histories of migration or evolution or both.[8] These phenomena contribute to plant diversity by introducing new flora and favoring adaptations, both of new species and the dispersal of pre-existing species.[8]
Alpine areas are unique because of the severity and complexity of their environmental conditions. Very small changes in topography – as small as 1 foot (0.3 m) or less – may mean the difference between a windswept area or an area of snow accumulation, changing the potential productivity and plant community drastically. Between these extremes of drought versus saturation, several intermediate environments may exist all within a few yards of each other, depending on topography, substrate, and climate. Alpine vegetation generally occurs in a mosaic of small patches with widely differing environmental conditions. Vegetation types vary from cushion and rosette plants on the ridges and in the rock crannies; to herbaceous and grassy vegetation along the slopes; dwarf shrubs with grasses and forbs below the melting snowdrifts; and sedges, grasses, low shrubs, and mosses in the bogs and along the brooks.[4]
An alpine mire in the Swiss Alps
Alpine meadows form where sediments from the weathering of rocks has produced soils well-developed enough to support grasses and sedges. Non-flowering lichens cling to rocks and soil. Their enclosed algal cells can photosynthesize at any temperature above 0 °C (32 °F), and the outer fungal layers can absorb more than their own weight in water. The adaptations for survival of drying winds and cold may make tundra vegetation seem very hardy, but in some respects the tundra is very fragile. Repeated footsteps often destroy tundra plants, allowing exposed soil to blow away; recovery may take hundreds of years.[9]
Because alpine tundra is located in various widely separated regions of the Earth, there is no animal species common to all areas of alpine tundra. Some animals of alpine tundra environments include the kea, marmot, mountain goat, Bighorn sheep, chinchilla, Himalayan tahr, yak, snow leopard, and pika.
2. ^ Regenold, Stephen (2007-10-12). "A Pocket of Alpine Tundra Nestled Atop New England". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-05-31.
3. ^ "South Island montane grasslands". Terrestrial Ecoregions. World Wildlife Fund.
4. ^ a b c d Public Domain This article incorporates public domain material from the Bureau of Land Management document: "Grassland Habitat Group" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-07-24.
5. ^ Körner, Ch (1998). "A re-assessment of high elevation treeline positions and their explanation" (PDF). Oecologia. 115 (4): 445–459. Bibcode:1998Oecol.115..445K. CiteSeerX doi:10.1007/s004420050540. PMID 28308263.
6. ^ Blyth, S; Groombridge, B.; Lysenko, I; Miles, L.; Newton, A (2002). Mountain Watch: environmental change & sustainable development in mountains (PDF). UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre. ISBN 978-1-899628-20-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-10-14.
7. ^ "Biodiversity lectures and practicals of Allan Jones". Archived from the original on 2007-09-29.
8. ^ a b c Körner, Christian (2003). Alpine Plant Life: Functional Plant Ecology of High Mountain Ecosystems. Berlin: Springer. pp. 9–18. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-18970-8. ISBN 978-3-540-00347-2.
9. ^ a b Public Domain This article incorporates public domain material from the National Park Service document: "Rocky Mountain National Park: Alpine Tundra Ecosystem".
External links
Colorado's Alpine Environment
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The Sol Programming Language!
9 lines
222 B
assert_eq([0], [,,,,0], "initial comma in list")
d = {,,a=7}
assert_eq(d.a, 7, "initial comma in map")
ident = lambda(,x) x end
assert_eq("hi", ident(,"hi"), "initial comma in funcdecl/call")
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donderdag 22 oktober 2020
Keith Haring figures on tissue paper
made by students of grade 3
You need:
1. colored tissuepaper
2. white drawing sheet
3. jar with water
4. brush
5. scissors
6. templates of Haring figures
7. pencil
8. black marker
Choose 2 or more colors of tissuepaper. Fold them in 16 squares. Cut out.
Take a sheet of drawing paper, make it wet with a brush and water. Lay the pieces of tissue paper on this wet sheet and see how they bleed. Fill the whole sheet and be sure to use enough water.
Let dry and remove the tissue papers.
Cut two or more Haring templates and outline them with a pencil. Trace those lines with black marker and trace them again to make nice bold lines.
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Een reactie posten
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What foods can rapidly replenish muscle glycogen stores?
tips to rapidly replenish muscle glycogen stores
For fast glycogen replenishment, athletes should have 5 meals with at least 84g of carbs every 2 hours. The first meal should be immediately after exercise. Eating foods rich in carbs, such as bread, potatoes, pasta, vegetables, fruits, and even candy can significantly increase the synthesis of muscle glycogen. Also, protein intake is crucial to for faster replenishment of glycogen stores.
Why are high glycogen levels important for athletes?
Muscle glycogen plays a key in sport performance, fatigue, and recovery after exercise. Full muscle glycogen stores significantly increase aerobic endurance. Especially, for strenuous exercise lasting more than 90 minutes. Athletes will feel fatigue once muscle glycogen stores are depleted.
Glycogen is actually glucose stored in the liver and muscles. It’s an instant source of fuel for muscle. The glycogen comes for carbs. When we consume more carbs than those we need, we store them as glycogen in the liver and muscles.
But, glycogen isn’t the only source of energy in the body. In fact, glycogen is only a small portion of the body’s stored energy. Body fat is the main source of energy. But, fat is burned slowly. Explosive exercise or training at a high VO2max demands higher amounts of glycogen. Glycogen produces energy faster than fat.
What reduced glycogen stores mean for sport performance?
If glycogen stores go really low, you’ll burn more fat, and protein as well. This means reduction of performance, fatigue, muscle soreness, muscle breakdown, and delayed muscle recovery!
How can athletes restore muscle glycogen?
The body stores approximately 450-550g of glycogen within the muscle and liver for use during exercise.[1] This amount of glycogen is enough for 90 to 120 minutes of intense exercise.
Glycogen burns rapidly, but empty glycogen stores can take more than a day to be restored. They’re replenished at a rate of 2-5% per hour after exercise.
Having carbs right after exercise can significantly increase the replenishment rate of glycogen. The first 2 hours after exercise are crucial for fast glycogen replenishment.
In general, the human body can resynthesize 2% of glycogen per hour. But, according to studies, this rate can rise up to 5% with the consumption of 50g of carbs every 2 hours after exercise. Additionally, even many small doses of carbs of 28g every 15 minutes seem to further increase the repletion rate of glycogen.
In most cases, muscle glycogen stores need at least 20 hours to be fully replenished. Even with optimal diet.
Therefore, as glycogen levels need many hours to be completely replenished, what you ate yesterday is more important for your energy levels than the food you’ll eat today!
What is the fastest way to fill glycogen stores?
Athletes who need the fastest glycogen replenishment and muscle recovery should have 5 meals every 2 hours containing a total of at least 400g of carbs and 100g of protein. Your first meal should be as soon as possible after exercise!
Eat carbs immediately after exercise!
Glycogen synthesis is a slow process. Maximizing the rate of muscle glycogen synthesis is vital for fast muscle recovery and increased energy levels.
Above all, to maximize the rate of muscle glycogen synthesis, it’s vital to consume carbs immediately after exercise, or as soon as possible!
After exercise, muscle insulin sensitivity is significantly increased. Muscle can absorb much more glucose! Right after exercise the rate of glycogen synthesis is 50% higher, as compared to several hours after a workout.[2]
How many carbs do athletes need for optimal glycogen restore?
According to many studies, the amounts of carbs, the frequency and the timing of meals all play a key role in glycogen replenishment.
Athletes should consume a high-carb meal immediately after exercise, followed by many other frequent high-carb meals to rapidly increase muscle glycogen levels.
One study reported that a total carbohydrate dose up to 550-625g per day can restore muscle glycogen stores to pre-exercise levels within only 22 hours. Another study found that 3100 kcal of carbs (or 775g) can completely restore glycogen stores within 24 hours.[1]
In order, to maximize muscle glycogen storage, athletes should continually have high-carb snacks. In fact, athletes can significantly improve the rate of glycogen synthesis having a high-carb meal every 2 hours! Furthermore, athletes should consume about 0.6-0.7g of carbs per kg of body weight per hour.
For instance, a 70 kg (155 lb) athlete should have 5 meals every 2 hours after exercise with 84g of carbs per meal. So, this athlete should consume about 420g of carbs the first 8 hours after exercise to maximize muscle glycogen storage.
Moreover, athletes could further increase the rate of glycogen synthesis having high-carb snacks every 15-30 minutes. It’s approximately 30% higher than having meals every 2 hours! Also, adding some protein can further increase the rate of muscle glycogen synthesis!
Foods rich in carbs which help athletes restore muscle glycogen fast
Athletes should eat a variety of carbohydrate foods. You better prefer high-quality, nutrient-rich carbohydrates, such as potatoes, whole cereal, corn flakes, pasta, bread, beans, vegetables, and fruits.
A combination of simple (mono- and disaccharides, maltodextrins) and complex (starches and fibers) carbohydrates along with a variety of micronutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants is ideal for fast muscle recovery.[3]
On the contrary, endurance athletes should avoid eating fiber before a long race.
These sources of carbs can be quickly digested, absorbed by muscles for fast restoration of glycogen stores. Furthermore, right after exercise we can have high-glycemic carbs, such as white bread or sugar. These foods can further maximize the rate of glycogen synthesis.
Keep in mind that for athletes who have more than 24 hours before the next workout, the total amount of consumed carbs is more crucial than the frequency of the meals for glycogen restoration.
Add protein to your post workout meal for faster muscle recovery!
Moreover, athletes should get protein in their post workout meal. Strenuous exercise causes muscle tissue damage, due to physical stress on the muscle, and hormonal changes. Without protein intake, exercise may lead to breakdown of muscle protein to provide fuel for the muscle contraction.
Most noteworthy, muscle damage doesn’t happen only during exercise. It continues after exercise for many hours. Furthermore, muscle damage can inhibit the replenishment of muscle glycogen.
Therefore, athletes should consume protein along with carbs in their post workout meals. Getting carbs with protein accelerates muscle recovery.
For optimal glycogen synthesis, athletes should consume protein to a 4:1 ratio. 1g of protein per 4g of carbs!
The addition of protein to a high-carb post workout meal increases the rate of glycogen synthesis by approximately 38% over the first 4-hours of recovery!
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Joint operations new thinking in Turkey’s Iran strategy
MNA – Professor of political science says Turkey’s tendency for joint military action with Iran signals a new thinking in Ankara’s strategic outlook towards Tehran, but difficult under the current political situation.
There were some reports that Turkey and Iran have discussed possible joint military action against Kurdish militant groups, after talks in Ankara last week between the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces and Turkish leaders.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has denied the claim by some Turkish officials that the two countries were planning to conduct joint military operations against Kurdish rebel groups beyond the country’s borders.
On August 22, IRGC in a statement announced, “We have not planned any operations across the borders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But as always we will strongly confront any group, team, or person who wants to penetrate into Iran’s territory for anti-security or terrorist operations.”
To shed further light on the feasibility of such a joint action, Payman Yazdani had an interview with Professor and Chair of Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, University of South Alabama, Nader Entessar..
Here is the full text of this interview:.
How feasible is joint military action by Iran and Turkey against threatening groups?
Iran and Turkey are two major countries in the Middle East, and each has its own unique capability. If there is political will, the two countries can certainly coordinate their military activities and use their combined military capabilities against their adversaries. However, we should also remember that priorities of Tehran and Ankara are not the same in many cases. This may make sustained joint military action difficult under the current political situation.
Can these agreements be considered as a shift in Turkeys strategies toward Iran?
The agreements are certainly among the most significant ones in the past 40 years between the two countries. They may also signal a new thinking in Turkey’s strategic outlook towards Iran. Only time will tell if the agreements are truly strategic or simply tactical moves necessitated by changing conditions in the region.
How can Turkey make a balance between its cooperation with Iran and NATO and the West?
Turkey’s NATO membership will continue to present one of the most formidable obstacles on a close Iran-Turkey military alliance. There are treaty obligations that Turkey is bound to honor as a crucial pillar of NATO’s southern flank, and Ankara cannot afford to deviate significantly from NATO’s policies when it comes to military cooperation with Iran.
Will this visit lead to two sides’ cooperation in Syria?
IN the past few months, Turkey has been gradually changing its hard-line Syria outlook and has been participating with Russia and Iran in different fora (e.g. Astana meetings) to tackle the crisis in Syria. General Bagheri’s recent visit to Turkey and his high-level talks in that country were about different issues, but the Syrian crisis played an important role in these talks. I am certain the two sides discussed methods by which they can enhance their cooperation in dealing with the Syrian crisis.
Interview by: Payman Yazdani
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I thank the Deputy-Secretary-General Ms. Mohammed, Mr. Mardini and Mrs. Grosjean for their insightful briefings. My appreciations go to the French Presidency for bringing this crucial topic to the Council's attention.
Mr. President,
Every day, millions of civilians are bearing the brunt of ongoing armed conflicts. They face the dire situation of compromised access to essential services and means for their survival, such as water, food, shelter, sanitation and health care. The COVID-19 pandemic, sanctions and counter-terrorism measures have put further stress on humanitarian activities. It is estimated that in 2021, 235 million civilians rely on life-saving humanitarian assistance and protection. Without the support of humanitarian workers, their sufferings are bound to get worse.
While aid workers and United Nations personnel are risking their lives assisting those in need, they are exposed to widespread and increasing security threat. From the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Mali to Somalia, aid workers have lost their lives or faced increased risk of abduction, armed robbery and physical violence.
We condemn in the strongest terms such cowardly and outrageous attacks and violence. We take this opportunity to express our gratitude to humanitarian workers for their courage and dedication to alleviate the suffering of people affected by armed conflicts. We express our deepest condolences to the families of those who have lost their loved ones in the course of providing humanitarian assistance to those in need.
We believe that there are things we should do to ensure the safety and security of humanitarian workers.
Full compliance with obligations under international humanitarian law is a robust preventive measure to protect humanitarian workers. This is incumbent upon all parties to armed conflict including States and non-state armed groups. These obligations include, in particular, the principle of distinction and the obligation to refrain from attacking, destroying or rendering useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population. Infrastructure critical to the delivery of humanitarian assistance and food systems must be protected. We welcome measures to integrate international humanitarian law obligations in domestic framework and raise the awareness of armed forces and non-state actors regarding obligations applicable in their conduct of hostilities.
Attacks on humanitarian workers and UN personnel might constitute war crimes. It is disturbing that the vast majority of victims are national humanitarian staff as they work to save their own people. Such violations must be addressed appropriately and perpetrators must be brought to justice in accordance with the UN Charter, international and national laws.
Humanitarian action is based on the paramount principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence. Upholding these principles is key to build trust and acceptance by the host community and parties to armed conflict, which is critical to guaranteeing the safety and security and full, immediate, safe and unhindered humanitarian access. The UN Charter, including the principles of sovereignty and non-interference, and the law of the host State must be fully respected. Engagement and dialogue between humanitarian organizations and the host State can help better understand social and cultural contexts and manage risk to humanitarian activities.
Much important as it is, in the long run, humanitarian assistance cannot replace a comprehensive approach to build national capacity. The primary responsibility to protect civilians rests with the State. We should make every effort to enhance local resilience, reduce humanitarian needs and address the underlying root causes of armed conflicts. In resolution 2575, the Council recognizes the need to build back better and provide more resilient essential services to the civilian population in post-conflict situation. All parties should join efforts to implement concrete and meaningful steps to peace and recovery.
Mr. President,
Protecting the civilians is one of the core issues on the Council's agenda. It should mobilize every tool at its disposal to respond to civilians' sufferings, including through preventing attacks against humanitarian workers and ensuring humanitarian access. We continue to stress the paramount importance of conflict prevention and peace building. We believe there is ample room for regional organisations to play a leading role in promoting preventive diplomacy and confidence-building measures.
I thank you./.
Other News
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logo ELT Concourse teacher training
Concourse 2
Functional grammar: experiential meanings
One central function of language is to picture reality to others.
Things, events and circumstances are encoded into language through three types of constituents of clauses:
Who or what?
These are called the participants in a clause
Did what?
This is the pivot of the clause: the verbal process
When, where, to what extent, as what? etc.
These are the circumstances.
These three constituents of a clause are, naturally, intimately connected but the core remains the Process: what happened, who did what, who felt what? and so on.
One way to picture the relationship is:
At the core lie the Processes without which nothing else can be said.
There are four main ways that these constituents can co-occur:
1. We can have the simple Participant-Process clause such as
The dog barked
The house will be redecorated
I drank
etc. in which the only participant is what would be called the subject in other analyses.
2. We can combine that with a second Participant so we get, e.g.:
The dog bit me
The house pleased her
I drank the beer
in which there are two participants, the subject and the direct object.
3. We can add a Circumstance to the first pattern and get, e.g.:
The dog barked all night
The house will be redecorated by George
I drank in the garden
4. We can combine the Process with two Participants and a Circumstance
The dog bit me in the arm
The house pleased her immensely
I drank the beer in the garden
It is possible for some verbs to take three processes in all so we might have:
I gave the man the money on Thursday
It is also possible to for some clauses to project another clause so we may encounter:
She told me that she loved the house
Mary said the dog was hungry
Three Process types
There is a much fuller guide to verbal processes linked at the end of this page. For now, it will be enough to exemplify the three major types and the two sub-categories in each:
1. Doing processes
1. Material:
The house caught fire
2. Behavioural:
Mary coughed
2. Projecting processes
1. Mental:
She enjoyed the concert
2. Verbal:
She told me that she enjoyed the concert
3. Being processes
1. Existential:
There's a man at the door
2. Relational:
The house belongs to Mary
With each Process type come specific participant roles and we now turn to these.
With most Material processes we have Actors, Goals and Beneficiaries. Here are some examples of how they take on the roles of Participants with Material processes:
With Behavioural Processes we have, unsurprisingly, a Behaver and something which is generally called the Range which is separate from the Behaver. Behavers are either conscious entities or a personification of something unconscious that is perceived as conscious metaphorically. For example:
With Mental Processes we also have an aptly named main Participant, the Senser. The other Participants of Mental processes are either Phenomena or Projected clauses. For example:
With Verbal Processes we have Sayers, Receivers, Projected clauses and Verbiage (what is said). For example:
With Existential Processes, there is only one Participant: the Existent. For example:
There is a shop on the corner
in which a shop is the Existent and on the corner is a Circumstance.
Relational Processes are more complicated but usually, the main Participant is the Carrier and the Attribute. There is also a distinction between the Identifier and the Identified. For example:
Dancing alone on stage for hours
There is, linked below, a separate guide to the area of Circumstances. Here, therefore, we'll just summarise the area briefly.
The usual way in which Circumstances are encoded in the language is via a prepositional phrase or another kind of adverbial (including simple adverbs).
Circumstances set the process in a context. For example:
How long, far, many times?
for a year
to the end of the road
in two kilometres
Where and when?
in the bathroom
before dinner
at 6 o'clock
If what?
if it rained
without good luck
in case she called
to get better
since that was how it was
so it would be easier
With whom?
with his sister
without a friend
What about?
about the war
on the meaning of life
concerning the letter
As what?
as the captain
in the role of a colleague
being a friend
by bus
by post
What with?
with a hammer
using a chair
with my help
What like?
like a maniac
as if he were angry
as quick as a flash
According to whom?
for John
according to her
to me
Implications for learners and learning
One of the problems with using a traditional grammar in classrooms is that the learners have no way of knowing what sorts of verbs go with which sorts of participants. You may explain to learners, for example, that a verb such as arrive is intransitive and one like tell is transitive but that does not help people to form acceptable sentences in terms of the communication of ideas.
Analysing experiential meanings in terms of the type of verbal process allows a bit more precision because we can then see what sorts of participants are involved.
For example:
1. Material processes can have a simple Actor and neither Goal nor Range (i.e., they are functioning intransitively) and form an easily learned and duplicated set of simple sentences which even beginner learners can handle with confidence.
They can have Goals and Goals can be raised to the Subject position with the Actor dispensed with. In other words, a Passive can be formed with a Goal but with a Range as a participant, the passive is far less likely and even wrong. Compare, for example:
The window was broken by the stone
in which we have the Goal raised to Subject position
with the very doubtful:
?The wall was climbed by Mary
A traditional grammar which sees The wall as the object of the verb and does not distinguish between Range and Goal is unable to distinguish between these events.
2. Behavioural processes usually have animate Actors. If they are used with inanimate Actors, the meaning is frequently metaphorical so we may have, e.g.:
The engine coughed and spluttered
Seeing the verb as behavioural allows the learner to unpack the meaning of this kind of sentence.
3. Projecting processes, whether Mental or Verbal also usually take animate, sentient Actors in Sayers and Sensers and these are almost invariably human. Knowing this simple fact allows learners to avoid simple errors and also allows them to unpack the meaning of
The sign told us to keep out
which might otherwise be obscure.
4. The distinction between Existential and Relational processes also helps learners to distinguish between the identified and the identifier and that enhances comprehension.
The choice of Participants is determined by Register in many cases so, for example, learners who need to operate with technical or scientific texts can be trained to use the appropriate actors in material processes, avoiding the human and selecting ideas, phenomena and concepts to form appropriate language.
Recognising that words have functions and class is a first step in recognising that how we teach grammar must take into account meaning as well as the formal characteristics of items in the language.
This does not mean abandoning tradition concepts but it does mean refining them in terms of meaning.
The ability to identify, describe and categorise requires the competent use of relational process verbs and the ability to handle them can be taught providing the analysis of a model text focuses on the ways the processes are realised.
When it comes to genres such as Narrative and Recount, learners need to be able to handle:
All genres will have their particular characteristics in terms of the appropriate circumstances to select. Recounts need to set events in place and time, procedures need to include the means of doing something, discussions and expositions often need circumstances relating to cause and effect and conditionality and so on. For a little more, see the guide to Circumstances.
The overall take-away point of this kind of functional analysis is that it enables teachers to help learners build a vocabulary and set of structural tools which are relevant to their needs and their learning aims.
Related guides
an introduction to functional grammar a short overview to set things in some context
verbal processes for more detail
circumstances for a guide to this important area of experiential meaning
genre for some consideration of how particular forms of circumstances will appear in text types
Butt, D, Fahey, R, Feez, S, Spinks, S and Yallop, C, 2001, Using Functional Grammar: an explorer's guide. Sydney: NCELTR
Halliday, M, 1994, An introduction to functional grammar: 2nd edition. London: Edward Arnold
Lock, G, 1996, Functional English Grammar: An introduction for second language teachers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
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Navigation Through Sound
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sightResearchers at the University of Bristol have designed a helmet that guides visually impaired walkers through the use of sound. Using technology developed at the University of Laguna in Spain, imagery captured of objects such as trees, people, and furniture are converted to sound. The result is an acoustic map that allows blind people to navigate around objects both stationary and moving. The resulting sounds get louder as the person nears the object and quieter as the person moves away. The location of objects is conveyed by hearing the sound on the side of the head where the object is. Imminent collisions are forewarned through an urgent tone.
The first design (M1) uses a laser sensor developed by Siemens and originally intended to detect passengers in cars. It can calculate the distance to objects within 0 to 5m in a 60º field of view. The system is mounted inside glasses and cannot be seen by others because it uses infrared light. The M1 has been extensively tested by blind users who are able to recognise items, such as chairs and trees, from the sound picture they receive.
A second version (M2) adds two digital video cameras to either side of a helmet. It can detect moving objects and predict their path.
Future prototypes involved integrating GPS to help provide directions to the walker.
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Clevered launches India's first AI internship program with Oxford professor
Clevered is an EdTech startup that goes beyond regular coding classes for kids
By HT Brand Studio
UPDATED ON AUG 05, 2021 07:56 PM IST
While most international curricula focus on bridging the gap between theoretical learning and hands-on practical experience, India is yet to open the doors to experiential learning methodologies. Since future jobs and the future era demands students to be proficient with 21st-century skills, the National Education Policy 2020 recommended introducing Artificial Intelligence as a subject in school. However, such subjects need hands-on experience more than learning facts and concepts in classrooms.
There are several companies that claim to make children future-ready by teaching them how to code. What they overlook is that children need to learn to apply the codes in order to prepare themselves for the digital future. One such EdTech startup that goes beyond regular coding classes for kids is Clevered.
Bridging the gap between classroom theory lessons and hands-on practical learning
Clevered has taken the initiative to bridge the gap between theoretical learning and hands-on experience offering a unique Artificial Intelligence Internship Program (AIIP) in association with a senior researcher from the University of Oxford. This program is the first of its kind in India providing hands on experience to students to observe and create AI in Action.
Clevered has launched AIIP for school students to enable them a real-life experience of how AI skills can be applied to innovate and solve social problems at large. In this program, a senior researcher from the University of Oxford offers expert mentorship and guidance to propel students towards using artificial intelligence.
During the course of the internship, students meet peers from across the globe and other industry professionals who share their knowledge and insights that strengthens the students’ creative muscles.
Clevered AIIP at a Glance
Clevered AIIP is a 3-month internship program where students attend interactive and informative sessions every week and learn real-life applications of artificial intelligence.
The program is guided by Clevered’s senior mentors, industry experts from top companies, and senior researchers from the University of Oxford. Students get the opportunity to interact with such professionals and understand the way artificial intelligence is shaping the future world that they would be living in. These interactive sessions and mentorship go a long way in shaping the future of the students in making informed decisions about higher education and careers.
In order to keep the students engaged and keep their interest growing, Clevered organizes special sessions for internship students where industry experts from top companies like Microsoft, PwC, Siemens share their personal experiences, strategies, and useful insights that help the students understand how artificial intelligence is used in real-world. During these sessions, young aspirants also get information about future careers that they want to pursue.
Clevered keeps students connected through an exclusive community where students can interact with each other, share their doubts, innovative ideas and even their experience in the AIIP.
Clevered AIIP got featured in national and international media
Before Clevered launched the AIIP, it got widespread acknowledgment in national print media for taking students on a learning journey that is not confined to classroom learning. The new initiative of the unique AIIP has been appreciated by two of the most senior researchers of the University of Oxford.
Clevered’s AIIP also received its due appreciation in the Middle East when one of Clevered’s students successfully completed the artificial intelligence internship program and was declared the youngest student ever to complete such a program. 7-year old Saanvi Chouraria from Abu Dhabi had created a ‘Wikipedia for the Blind’ for her internship project which proves that students develop problem-solving skills in this unique program. While many coding for kids companies boast of the games their students make, Clevered AIIP places skill development at its core enabling students to think like problem-solving innovators.
Why Enroll Your Child in Clevered AIIP?
Unlike any other program, Clevered AIIP has been designed to enable young students to experience the real world of artificial intelligence under the guidance of experts who help them grow an innovative mindset. At the end of the internship program, students receive Certificates of Completion and Letter of Recommendation that strengthen their student profile improving their chances of admission to top universities. However, it is the hands-on project-making, the interaction with industry experts, the practical learning experience, and the priceless mentorship from University of Oxford researchers that make this program a cut above the rest.
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7 years ago
Dental Health: Are You A Victim Of Tooth Abscess?
Sobiya N Moghul
Sobiya N MoghulUpdated on Jun 09, 2014, 10:00 IST
Dental Health: Are You A Victim Of Tooth Abscess?
Do you have tooth Abscess? Wondering what a tooth Abscess means? Tooth abscess is an accumulation of fluid called Pus that forms inside the soft pulp or roots of the teeth or in between the gums which typically originates from a bacterial infection. Bacteria in the mouth combine with the tiny food particles and saliva which forms plague that builds up on the teeth. “This causes opening in the teeth enamel and the infection may also spread from the root of the teeth to the teeth bones which can be very severe issue”, informs Dr. Karishma Jaradi, Aesthetic Dentist. She adds that eating foods rich in carbohydrates can cause the bacteria in plague to become more active leading to spread of tooth abscess. Various sugary and fizzy drinks contain bacteria which produce acids in the mouth. The combination of bacteria and excess acid production in the mouth can lead to the formation of a dental abscess.
Types of dental abscess
There are two types of abscesses – Periapical Abscess is a tooth-related Abscess which occurs inside the tooth. Abscess usually leads to development of plague bacteria which affects your dental health by formation of tiny holes which are often caused by tooth decay. The bacteria continue to infect the center of the tooth until it reaches the bone that surrounds and supports your tooth.
"Periodontal Abscess is a gum-related abscess which is usually caused when the food gets confined between the tooth and the gum causing the formation of bacterial infection", informs Dr Jaradi
Symptoms of dental abscess
If one experiences the below mentioned symptoms, it is advised to see a dentist for examination to avoid severe problems.
· Sharp Pain (Toothache) in the area affected while chewing
· Swollen face - red or inflamed skin over dental abscess area
· Inflammation of gums and discomfort while touching the affected area
· Foul smell and bitter taste in the mouth
· General sickness and Fever
· Restlessness
· Sensitive to Hot and Cold temperatures
· Contraction of the jaw muscles – difficulty in opening the mouth
· Swollen neck glands - difficulty in swallowing
· Loosening of the teeth
Treatment for dental abscess
For the treatment of Tooth Abscess dentist may prescribe antibiotics when the infection becomes severe and starts spreading such as swelling of the face and neck.
The Aesthetic Dentis further explains, "The initial stage in treating a tooth abscess is to cut out the abscess and drain away the fluid containing the infectious bacteria in the form of pus, as it is a very effective way to cure the infection. This is done by giving local anesthesia which means that the patient remains awake during the procedure, but the affected area becomes numb so that there is little to no pain."
In case of periapical abscess, root canal treatment is typically suggested by the dentist. The procedure includes drilling the affected tooth to release the pus and removing any damaged tissue from the centre. After which the filling is then inserted into the space to prevent further infection. If however the infection reoccurs, one may need to go through an oral surgery to take out any further unhealthy tissue.
If one is suffering from periodontal abscess, the dentist will drain the pus and sanitise the pocket in the gum area. The surfaces of the root of the tooth are smoothened by filing below the gum line to heal the tooth and avoid further infection. In case of reoccurrence, the gum tissue needs to be reshaped to permanently remove the periodontal pocket.
In certain cases, a dental abscess infection may reoccur even after dental and surgical techniques. In such cases or if the tooth is severely damaged or broken, it might need to be extracted.
Preventional measures
Abscesses can be prevented if appropriate measures are taken at the right time. As per the dentist recommendations one should keep in mind a few basic rules to avoid severity at the time of abscess.
· Avoid hot and cold food and drinks
· Avoid fruits as they contain high amounts of sugar until the infection is healed
· Avoid chocolates, honey and sweets during tooth abscess as it could worsen the situation.
· Eat rich foods that contain proteins and healthy fats (like ghee, butter, coconut oil)
· Chew the foods from the unaffected area
· Flossing should be avoided till it is completely treated
· Choose the toothbrush correctly; it must not be very hard.
Abscesses should be given proper heed as it spreads to other parts of the body and can be life threatening if not dealt with immediately. One must not wait for the abscess to become damaging to the health and hence must visit the dentist regularly to ensure damage free strong oral health.
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Start a conversation, not a fire. Post with kindness.
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All Stories
The Evolution of Flight
In a previous blog, I discussed the phenomenon of convergent evolution, which basically means that organisms can end up sharing similar physiological traits, as a result of living similar lifestyles. Perhaps one of the most astonishing cases of convergent evolution is the origin of flight.
Evolution does not act with intelligence. It simply favours the survival of individuals that have certain traits. An animal that has gained the ability to fly may be better able to escape from predators. Scientists believe this may have been a major driving factor in the evolution of bird and insect flight. This animal may also be in a better position to catch flying or fast-moving prey—as may have been the case with the pterosaurs and bats. The ability to move around an environment better could open up new food sources, or an unoccupied niche—as was most likely the case with bats, exploiting the food source of nocturnal, flying insects.
The examination of fossils from some now-extinct fliers revealed that, over time, flying animals gained new physiological adaptations, to allow for better and more efficient flight. Archaeopteryx (pictured below) was a flying creature that lived 150 million years ago and had some bird features, such as feathers, but also had many dinosaur traits as well (e.g. a long, bony tail, clawed finger tips and teeth). However, evidence indicates that this creature didn’t have the large pectoral muscles associated with modern flying birds, so it may not have been a strong flyer.
When we look at the wings of different flying animals, we can see very different structural arrangements, since each group evolved different structural solutions in their wing creation. Bats still retain the five distinct digits of their mammalian ancestors, whereas birds have lost the separate digits that their reptilian ancestors once had—their bones have fused and changed to make up the structure of their wings.
The design of a bat’s wing means that it can manipulate its wings separately, unlike birds, whose wings are more like mirror images of each other. This allows bats to be extremely agile. They can change direction up to ten times faster than a bird. Bats’ ability to fly may have contributed to their success as a group—at 1,000 species, bats make up 20% of known mammals.
So, what will the future bring to the realm of flight? We have seen it evolve in four known animal groups, in the fossil record. Will it arise again in a new group? Gliders are not true fliers, but maybe over time, the descendants of modern gliders will gain the ability to truly fly. What lies ahead for life on Earth is an exciting mystery!
Many animals have developed similar traits, as a way of addressing similar needs. Read on to find out how the sugar glider and the flying squirrel can be so similar, and yet so different.
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Prêt-à-Manger | Advertising Photography
High-lighting Pret’s sustainability journey trialling hessian as the main substrate for their instore point of sale counter menus.
Moving away from traditional materials this was quite a novel idea and took some unique creation processes compared to standard printed POS.
Fair play to Pret, fast food companies are hugely impactful on the planets ecology, ultimately the project is aimed to reduce impact on the environment by using eco friendly materials through out the printing and manufacturing process. Helping make caring for the planet that little bit easier for Pret a Manger customers and teams.
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The analytical center is an integral part of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU). Its activity aims at accumulating the university’s scientific and expert potential and applying it practically. The Analytical Center works as an umbrella structure for UCU’s competence centers. Together, we develop new meanings and offer value-based ideas to make changes requested by Ukrainian society.
We work together with the following UCU competence centers:
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Kind vs. aggressive in the workplace: myths about performance
One of the myths that still persist in the modern workplace is that aggressiveness is a predictor of success. The legacy of the Alpha leader, depicted as a symbol of power and affluence, still has a grip on today’s beliefs about work. Kindness, on the other hand, has a bad reputation. It is often associated with weakness and lack of strength. But could kindness help us achieve some
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The National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) system is used by the IRS and NCCS to classify nonprofit organizations. It is also used by the Foundation Center to classify both grants and grant recipients (typically nonprofits or governments). It is also used to indicate the type of population served and "auspice" codes to indicate religious or governmental affiliation.
View a full list of codes here.
You can use the following websites to check your NTEE code:
The NTEE Code does not populate anywhere in Bloomerang, like your organization's contact information. The NTEE Code will be used to provide benchmark fundraising statistics at a later date so that each organization can compare their fundraising to similar organizations.
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Florida Expedition Suwannee River
Grades 8-12
Suwannee River, FL
The celebrated Suwannee River (ancient Indian for Echo) originates deep in the heart of the Okefenokee Swamp in Southern Georgia and flows southeast across the border to Florida for 200 miles, eventually emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. Its name, synonymous with Dixie and the Old South, stirs fanciful visions of stately moss draped Cypress, sultry Southern days, and a way of life long past. If the lifestyle has disappeared into history and imagination, the Suwanee remains substantially unchanged.
The Upper Suwannee is characterized by low banks, frequent swampy areas, stately Cypress, and gnarled Tupelos often growing in the river as well as along the banks. Sometimes trees are so large that you can paddle a canoe through the roots! Gradually the river’s character changes with white sandbars around each bend, rocky shoals (small rapids) and small waterfalls created by the entry of tiny streams. Further down, the river flows through spectacular limestone walls and many springs empty into its tannin colored waters.
Day 1
We will begin our journey on the border of the National Wildlife Refuge, where the river flows out of the swamp. After canoeing instruction and packing; we will paddle our way downstream to the first camp.
Day 2-8
Each day we will paddle between seven and fifteen miles camping in the forest or on the riverbank. Students will learn to navigate with map and compass, paddle stern and bow on moving water, recognize obstacles, learn how to safely navigate the river and work together as a paddling team. Group members will assume all key responsibilities for life on the trail: cooking and cleaning, gathering firewood, keeping fire, camp set up and take down, leading and sweeping.
As we move through the beautiful country there will be time for swimming and observing the wildlife, including turtles, alligators and multitude of birds. At night we will set tents or sleep under the stars. We will cook delicious meals and bake bread over an open fire. There will be time for group dialog, stories, guitar playing, singing and fishing.
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Mammoth Memory
Phenotype = outcome letter
The phenotype is the physical appearance, trait or characteristic the offspring ends up with. E.g. blue eyes, short fingers or a long nose.
The best way to think of phenotype is the outcome letter or the letter that wins to give an outcome.
Phenotype = Outcome letter
Mnemonic showing phenotype is the trait or characteristic the allele letter represents
Feed no typewriter (phenotype) otherwise outcomes a letter.
It is important to remember that the phenotype is not the letter but the physical characteristic or trait that the letter represents, such as eye colour.
The physical outcome will be the result shown in the punnet square.
Annotated punnet squares showing the phenotype of the dominant allele
More Info
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NASA changes data that recorded a cold snap to a warming in Ireland and Greece
(ORDO NEWS) — Data manipulation to advance the global warming agenda is not science, it is politics. Today we take a look at NASA’s temperature data for Ireland and compare the unadjusted GHCN version with the GHCN version 4 charts, adjusted and based on the “global warming” theory.
The graphs of two stations follow: V4 uncorrected and V4 corrected for “warming”
The two graphs of GHCN V4 data without correcting the mean annual temperature of the respective stations clearly show the cooling trend.
But then NASA changed the data for two Greek stations and named the two new datasets “adjusted-homogenized V4”.
Again, the adjustments led to warming. Each time, changes lead to warming.
Falsification of the “man-made climate crisis”
Why is this done? Imposing the theory of “mankind’s anthropogenic impact on climate” on the whole world? Actual coercion of all countries of the world to abandon the use of coal, oil, gas, etc.
It seems that the whole point is to create a state of emergency to bypass the rules of the law that protect the rights of citizens.
A state of emergency allows any government to bypass the law. We all saw it perfectly, felt it and continue to feel it on the example of the “Pandemic”, when all the fundamental laws protecting and protecting the rights of citizens were simply ignored.
The climate “pandemic” is simply the next stage in depriving people of their legal rights.
If you want to get around the law, then just create a state of emergency. In the case of a climate emergency, this is easy to do by simply rewriting the data.
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Monday, February 27, 2012
I Guess Making Something Out of Papier Mâché Would Be Out of the Question?
Here, in its entirety, is an e-mail from my kid's art teacher:
The Grade 8 students are currently completing their footwear sculpture made from recycled materials. Upon completion, students will write an artist statement to explore what elements and principles of design were applied to their sculpture.
To gain further awareness of one’s personal daily influences which impact our carbon footprint, students viewed the two videos: What’s the deal with carbon? and How to reduce a carbon footprint
This led to conclusions and questions regarding one’s carbon footprint. For example:
Our daily actions impact the enviorment. These actions influence our carbon footprint.
How warm is your home when you wake up? Could the thermostat be lower?
Did you leave the water running while you were brushing your teeth this morning?
Are your clothes made from recycled materials?
Was your breakfast made from local ingredients? How far did the fruit on your cereal travel to get to your table?
If you stopped for a beverage at a the local coffee shop, did you use their paper cup or did you bring your own?
How did you get to school? Did you walk, drive alone, use public transit or carpool? Could you have carpooled ?
What did you bring for lunch and how is it packaged?
What are you doing to reduce, reuse and recycle to lessen your carbon footprint?
How can we help reduce our carbon footprint in terms of our daily choices?
Upon reading this missive I've decided to look into ways of increasing my carbon footprint. By a lot. I'm also planning to take my son to see the Picasso exhibit when it comes to the AGO. Not only because he's fascinated by that artist's Guernica, but because it could well be the only art history he learns all year in an "art" class where art takes a backseat to eco-gobbledygook.
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Facts on the Himalayas for Kids
The Himalayas.
••• DanielPrudek/iStock/Getty Images
No matter how much research you have compiled on the Rooftop of the World, much remains to learn about this youngest mountain range on Earth. The Himalayas, meaning Abode of Snow, gained their name from the ancient Indian language Sanskrit. This spectacle is home to renowned Mt. Everest, called Chomolungma by Tibetans, meaning Goddess Mother of the World. An efficient report on the Himalayas for kids requires gaining knowledge on a variety of topics.
Himalayas for Kids: Starting with Location
The Himalayas are on the continent of Asia.
••• Thinkstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
The Himalayas are on the continent of Asia, south of the Tibetan plateau and extending from west to east through the countries of Pakistan, China, India, Nepal and Bhutan.
This mountain range formed when two tectonic plates pushed together.
••• Ivan Kmit/iStock/Getty Images
Himalayas for kids: start with the rich history of the region. The Himalayas developed in the collision of two tectonic plates called the Eurasian and Indo-Australian plates. The interaction of the two plates about 20 million years ago pushed India and Tibet together, forming the Himalayas when they collided.
There are many Buddist monastaries in the Himalayas.
••• nyiragongo/iStock/Getty Images
The people who live in the Himalayas are well-adapted to the mountainous territory. There's even some evidence that they have genetic adaptations that allow them to breathe easier at high altitudes.
Religions of the Himalayas include Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. The Himalayas are well-known for being home to Buddhist monasteries and Hindu pilgrimages.
Size and Elevation
Mt. Everest is th highest peak in the Himalayas.
••• Daniel Prudek/iStock/Getty Images
The Himalayas cover 380,292 square miles. The mountain range varies in width from 62 to 248 miles wide. The highest elevation is Mt. Everest at 29,029 feet. The oldest range referred to as the Great Himalayas extends about 19,678 feet and the youngest range called the sub-Himalayas range between 3,000 and 4,000 feet.
Himalayas Weather Facts
The Himalayas experience both summers and winters.
••• Anatoliy Samara/iStock/Getty Images
Despite most pictures of the Himalayas showing the snow covered mountains, the first of the Himalayas weather facts is that the areas experiences both summers and winters. The climate, precipitation and temperature of the Himalayan mountain range and region depend on the altitude.
The foothills vary from 64 degrees F in the winter to 86 degrees F during summer. The mid-range fluctuates below 0 degrees F during winter and around 60 degrees F throughout the summer. Himalaya Alpine regions, at altitudes above 16,000 feet, are below freezing and covered with snow year-round. Monsoon season brings rainfall in the Himalayas from June through September.
A major river system runs through these mountains.
••• Lakhesis/iStock/Getty Images
The Himalayas are composed of varying topography that promotes diverse ecological systems. It's this varying elevation and altitude that results in the vastly differing weather patterns and Himalayas weather facts.
Grasslands, scrublands and coniferous forests exist at higher elevations in the alpine and sub-alpine regions (highest elevations). Temperate and sub-tropical broadleaf forests are scattered between middle elevations. Tropical and sub-tropical rainforests are found at lower elevations near the foothills. The Himalayas is home to 15,000 glaciers and a major river system that sources a number or rivers in Asia including the Ganges, Indus and Yarlung.
Plants and Animals
Snow leopards make their homes here.
••• Dennis Donohue/iStock/Getty Images
The majority of plants and animals exist at lower altitudes because the environment is more conducive to survival. Grasslands and scrublands are home to rhododendron plants, snow leopards, musk deer and yaks. Coniferous forests offer a habitat for pine, spruce, hemlock and fir trees, red pandas, musk deer and antelope. Temperate forests grow oak and maple trees and plants such as orchids and ferns. This region is inhabited by an array of wildlife from birds to monkeys.
The tropical and wetland regions are dominated by deciduous and tropical hardwood trees including evergreens and teak. Elephants, tigers, crocodiles and birds roam this region.
Himalayan Mountain Range: Notable Peaks
••• PatrickPoendl/iStock/Getty Images
The Himalayas are home to the famous Himalayan mountain range. The most famous mountain peaks that are the first, second and third highest peaks on the planet and climbing destinations. These peaks include Mt. Everest, Karakoram (K2) and Kanchenjunga, respectively.
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Oakland’s Blackwülf meld fear and fantasy
Blackwülf. (photo: Raymond Ahner) ...just in time for Halloween. Words by Juan Alvarado Valdivia Blackwülf is an Oakland-based heavy metal quartet who are true rock ‘n’ roll throwbacks. With crunchy riffs, pounding drums, thumping grooves, and undistorted singing that is a fuck-you to modern vocals saturated in auto-tune, they carry the eternal flame of rock ‘n’ roll at its purest. Their first LP, Mind Traveler, showcased their penchant for stoner-metal grooves coupled with fantasy-inspired lyrics that brings Zeppelin and Ronnie James Dio to mind. Their concise, driving, riff-based arrangements on songs such as “Beastmasters” and “The Prophet” spotlights the band [...]
By |October 25, 2016|Tags: |
Mixtape: The Heavy Sounds of San Francisco Metal Download: Mixtape: The Heavy Sounds of San Francisco Metal (Podcast #346) We don't cover San Francisco heavy metal very much at, but it's not for a lack of music worth talking about. For several decades now, the San Francisco Bay Area has played a significant role in the evolution and growth of heavy metal. Metallica might be the most obvious significant Bay Area metal name to the uninitiated, but, over the years, groups like Neurosis, Hammers of Misfortune, Slough Feg, Ludicra, and Sleep (to name just a few) have pushed heavy music forward in a variety of directions. [...]
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Medical Services
What Is A Traumatic Brain Injury?
A traumatic brain injury is one that causes a severe disruption to the normal functioning of the brain and is usually caused by a blow, jolt or bump to the head such as when the head comes suddenly and violently into contact with an object or where something pierces the skull and goes into brain tissue. While symptoms can range from mild to severe, major traumatic incidents can lead to unconsciousness, coma and even death.
Clinical signs that someone has suffered a traumatic injury to the brain that has resulted in a significant alteration in normal brain function includes:
• Losing of, or experiencing reduced, consciousness
• Episodes of amnesia where a person cannot recall events just before or after the injury
• Evidence of neurological deficits such as displaying muscle weakness, loss of vision or a slurring of speech
• Major alteration in mental state such as experiencing disorientation, inability to think clearly or having difficulty focusing or concentrating
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Saturday, July 18, 2020
Verbs Quiz
1. A verb _____ a sentence by itself.
A) can be
B) cannot be
2. A verb is a part of speech that tells you what the subject of a sentence _______.
A) is doing
B) is being
C) both
3. Which of these words is a verb?
A) difference
B) differentiate
C) differently
4. Linking verbs _____ followed by objects.
A) are
B) are not +
5. It is _____ to use a transitive verb without a direct object. +
A) correct
B) incorrect
6. Linking verbs are also known as which of the following?
A) Copular verbs
B) Dynamic verbs
C) Stylistic verbs
7. True or False? Many verbs can be both transitive and intransitive.
A) True
B) False
8. The most common auxiliary verbs are as follow: +
A) have, do and make
B) be, do and want
C) have, be, and do
9. Auxiliary verbs are also known as which of the following?
A) Helping verbs
B) Supporting verbs
C) Holding verbs
10. How many auxiliary verbs are there in this sentence?
Do you know where she has gone?
A) 1
B) 2
C) 3
In the question ‘Do you know where he has gone?’, ‘do’ and ‘has’ are auxiliaries.
11. He became angry. The verb became is ________.
A) an action verb
B) a linking verb
12. He slept for ten hours.
Decide whether the verb slept is transitive or intransitive.
A) transitive
B) intransitive
For the Google Forms format click here:
Grammar Quiz
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Podcast Review: THE APOLOGY LINE
If you could call a number and say you’re sorry, and no one would know…what would you apologize for? For fifteen years, you could call a number in Manhattan and do just that. This is the story of the line, and the man at the other end who became consumed by his own creation. He was known as “Mr. Apology.
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Golden Gourd 金葫芦.jpg
The Golden Gourd is a legendary treasure from the classic novel, Investiture of the Gods (封神演义 fēng shén yǎn yì), and belongs to Nü Wa (女娲 nǚ wā). It has the power to create a myriad of magical items.
In the novel, Nü Wa used the Golden Gourd to create the Demon Pennant (招妖旛 zhāo yāo fān) - literally "Attract Demon Flag" - in order to lure demons to her palace. Shortly after it came into existence, thousands of demons arrived. She instructed her apprentice to send them all back to where they came from, bar three; a 1000-Year Fox Demon (千年狐狸精 qiān nián hú lí jīng)1; a Nine-Headed Pheasant Demon (九头雉鸡精 jiǔ tóu zhì jī jīng); and a Jade Pipa Demon (玉石琵琶精 yù shí pí pá jīng).
1 A "1000-Year" Fox Demon implies the demon was once a normal fox that one day decided to cultivate itself, for a thousand years, to become a Jing 精 - often translated to "demon" in English.
Nü Wa instructed the three demons to put a stop to a clan leader, named Cheng Tang (成汤 chéng tāng), that was reeking havoc across the land. Upon receiving their orders they kowtowed and vanished from sight.
In the end, the 1000-Year Fox Demon used it's black magic to put to a stop to Cheng Tang, setting him back 600 years2.
2 According to Chinese Buddhism, cultivation to a higher state of being takes thousands of years. In this example, Cheng Tang's journey to cultivation was set back 600 years.
Golden Gourd 金葫芦 (jīn hú lu)
Status: Legendary Artefact
Gender: NA
Pronunciation: (audio file coming soon)
Best known for: Able to create magical items
Home > Collection > Jin Hu Lu
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Nucleic Acid Facts
Nucleic Acid Facts
••• Drawing by Jerome Walker
Nucleic acids hold the basic building blocks for life. Deoxyribonucleic acid are found in all cells. DNA is organized into x-shaped chromosomes. In humans it is found in the nucleus of the cell.
Friedrich Miescher first isolated DNA in 1869 and called it "nuclein." James Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins determined the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953.
Nucleic acids contain long chains of molecules called nucleotides that are paired. Each nucleotide contains a phosphate base, a pentose sugar and a nitrogenous base.
DNA and RNA are the two primary types of nucleic acids. DNA and RNA differ in their sugar component, the types of nucleotides they contain and the number of strands of nucleotides they have.
The nucleotides that form nucleic acids are divided into two groups: pyrimidines and purines. DNA contains the purines adenine and guanine and the pyrimidines thymine and cytosine. In RNA, thymine is replaced with uracil.
DNA gives the blueprint for how an organism is made. The order of the nucleotides within the DNA encodes what a cell should do. RNA facilitates the translation of DNA information into protein synthesis.
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Which Cell Organelle Stores DNA and Synthesizes RNA?
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What Are the Processes by Which Macromolecules Are...
Characteristics of Aquatic Plants
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Posts tagged with
Lingam massage
Penis massage instructions
A penis massage is often called a lingam massage, or tantric massage. A lingam is a term originating from Sanskrit, meaning “distinguishing symbol”. It is often used instead of penis because in Hinduism, a lingam is revered as an object of generative power. A penis massage usually involv[...]
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Behaviour 2019
Effects of early-life experience on innovation and problem-solving in captive coyotes
Andrew C. Garcia1, Mitchell A. Parsons1,2, Julie K. Young1,2. 1USDA National Wildlife Research Center, Predator Research Facility, Millville, UT, United States; 2Department of Wildland Resources, Utah State University, Logan, UT, United States
Increasing urbanization has led to more wildlife living in novel landscapes such as cities. Mesocarnivores in urban habitats have opportunities to pursue non-traditional food resources, which often require innovative and exploratory behaviors. To understand if early-life experiences impact later-life behavior, we examined how a ubiquitous urban carnivore, the coyote (Canis latrans), responds to a multi-access puzzle box at two life stages: pup (~5 weeks) and dispersal (~10 months). We first exposed pups (n=12), still living with their parents, to a baited puzzle box for 2-hour trials across ten days. Other pups not tested (n=6) served as controls for dispersal-age trials. Coyotes received the same puzzle box, both individually and with their mate, at dispersal. We recorded tests and coded behavior for solving capability, latency to approach, and interaction time. Most pups solved two of the three access points. At dispersal, coyotes approached the puzzle box, yet none solved any of the access points. This study provides insight into how early-life experiences shape adult mesocarnivore behavior.
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B1 Topic 1 - Variation Flashcards Preview
Biology > B1 Topic 1 - Variation > Flashcards
Flashcards in B1 Topic 1 - Variation Deck (33)
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What are the five kingdoms that all living things are divided into?
Animals, plants, fungi, protoctists and prokaryotes
What are the main characteristics of plants?
Contain chlorophyll
Are autotrophs (produce their own food by photosynthesis)
Are multicellular
Cells have cells walls which support cells
What are the main characteristics of animals?
Heterotrophs (can't make their own food)
Don't have cell walls or chlorophyll
What are the main characteristics of fungi?
Saprophytes (eat dead organisms and decaying material)
Have cell walls but no chlorophyll
What are the main characteristics of protoctists?
Have nuclei
What are the main characteristics of prokaryotes?
No nucleus
Briefly explain the binomial system.
Gives all living organisms a two part name
First refers to the genus and the second refers to the species
Name some advantages of the binomial system.
Identifying species
Studying species
Conserving species
Targeting conservation efforts
What are the two causes of variation?
Genes and the environment
Define continuous variation.
Give some examples.
When the variable being recorded has no distinct categories and is more like a range.
Height, weight, hand span
Define discontinuous variation.
Give some examples.
When there are two or more distinct categories and no intermediates.
Blood type, hair colour, eye colour
How are polar bears adapted to live in the Arctic?
Compact bodies so less heat loss
Thick layer of blubber for insulation
Thick coat traps layers of air
Greasy fur repels water to prevent cooling by evaporation
Big feet to spread weight on snow which stops them from sinking
White fur to match surroundings - snow...
Define evolution.
A slow and continuous change of organisms from one generation to the next.
Briefly explain natural selection.
1. Individuals not all the same due to mutations.
2. Populations have to compete for limited resources e.g. Food or water.
3. Individuals with better characteristics are more likely to survive long enough to reproduce and pass on these characteristics.
4. Offspring of this individual are better adapted and can pass it on to their offspring as well.
5. Some individuals are less well adapted and are therefore less likely to pass on their genes.
6. Over time, there are more better adapted individuals compared with the lesser adapted ones.
Define speciation.
Speciation is when a population of the same species become so different that they can no longer produce fertile offspring.
Explain how speciation occurs?
One part of a population becomes isolated from the rest, maybe by a physical barrier. If the conditions on each side happen to be different, each group will evolve to suit its own area. After millions of years, the two populations will have adapted so much that they will no longer be able to have fertile offspring.
What is hybrid?
When two different species interbreed.
What is a species?
A species is a group of organisms with similar characteristics that can breed to make fertile offspring.
List the different classifications for organisms, starting with 'Kingdom'.
(King Philip Came Over For Good Soup)
What is a hybrid?
A hybrid is the offspring of two organisms that come from different species. The hybrid is usually infertile.
Why aren't viruses classified in the binomial system?
Viruses don't have all the characteristics of a living organism and so scientists are still debating as to whether they are alive or not.
Describe the main characteristics of the phylum a Chordata.
All the species in this phylum are vertebrates, meaning that they have a spine to support their body structure.
State some methods that organisms:
-Absorb oxygen
Inhaling through lungs, absorption through gills, diffusion through skin
External fertilisation (fish), internal fertilisation (mammals), oviparous (lay eggs), viviparous (live young)
Homeothermic (warm-blooded, generate own heat), poikilothermic (cold-blooded, use sun or other sources to warm up the blood)
Explain evolution with respect to variation, over-reproduction, struggle for existence, survival, organisms inheriting characteristics from their parents and changes in the proportion of individuals which are better adapted to their environment.
Even organisms from the same species have slight variations due to small mutations in their DNA. Occasionally, these mutations may give an organism a better chance of surviving until it reaches reproductive maturity.
This organism will then have a greater chance of mating to have many offspring. By having many offspring, more of the babies will also carry the beneficial adaptation and a higher number of those better adapted will survive long enough to pass the genes down to the next generation.
As well as the better adapted organisms increasing in numbers, the weaker organisms in that species will have their chances of survival lowered due to changes in environment that the better adapted organisms are better adapted to.
Eventually, after millions of years and generations, the proportion of organisms that are better adapted will greatly outnumber the original species until the old species becomes 'extinct'.
What is genetic variation?
Genetic variation is the difference in the alleles between individuals in a population or species.
Define gene.
A section of DNA that codes for a characteristic.
Define chromosome.
Chromosomes are long strand of genes, which are made up of DNA.
Define dominant.
The dominant allele is the gene which actually controls the characteristic.
Define recessive.
The allele which does not have any impact on the organism but that can still be passed on to its offspring.
Define homozygous.
When the genotype a of an organism are the same.
E.g. hh or HH
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