text
stringlengths 263
344k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| dump
stringclasses 23
values | url
stringlengths 16
862
| file_path
stringlengths 125
155
| language
stringclasses 1
value | language_score
float64 0.65
1
| token_count
int64 57
81.9k
| score
float64 2.52
4.78
| int_score
int64 3
5
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
English Language Arts Grade 6
Writing Standard 2Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.
a.Introduce a topic; organize ideas, concepts, and information, using strategies such as definition, classification, comparison/contrast, and cause/effect; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., charts, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
http://www.uen.org - in partnership with Utah State Board of Education (USBE) and Utah System of Higher Education (USHE). Send questions or comments to USBE Specialist - Naomi Watkins and see the Language Arts - Secondary website. For general questions about Utah's Core Standards contact the Director - Jennifer Throndsen. These materials have been produced by and for the teachers of the State of Utah. Copies of these materials may be freely reproduced for teacher and classroom use. When distributing these materials, credit should be given to Utah State Board of Education. These materials may not be published, in whole or part, or in any other format, without the written permission of the Utah State Board of Education, 250 East 500 South, PO Box 144200, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114-4200.
|
<urn:uuid:ad9ed8a0-85cc-4d1e-9183-6b03cfca5ea6>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-14
|
https://www.uen.org/core/displayLessonPlans.do?courseNumber=4260&standardId=70687&objectiveId=70688
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296945333.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20230325130029-20230325160029-00382.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.857696 | 269 | 3.9375 | 4 |
Approximately fifteen percent of dogs are naturally able to predict seizures before they occur. On average, these predictions or alerts are made 10-20 minutes before the seizure, giving the person with the seizure disorder an opportunity to move to a safe place, take medication, call for help, or notify friends or family of the impending seizure so they can be checked later.
Other dogs, called seizure response dogs, are trained to perform tasks during or following a seizure to assist the owner. These tasks may include rolling the person to create an open airway, clearing vomitus from the mouth, getting help, operating a call button or k9 phone, blocking the person with postictal disorientation from stairs and intersections, helping the person to rise, helping with postictal balance issues, guiding the disoriented person to a preset location or person, et cetera. Because these response tasks are so useful, most seizure alert dogs are also trained in response work. These dual seizure dogs are called "seizure alert/response dogs" or simply "seizure dogs."
No one knows for certain how these dogs are able to detect when a seizure is about to occur. Two popular theories are (1) that the dog is able to smell minute changes in the person's biochemistry, possibly in their blood chemistry or (2) that they are able to detect fine motor changes imperceptible to human eyes. Regardless of how precisely they do it, this behavior is a natural one that occurs in some dogs and not others. It is not possible to train a dog to predict seizures without being able to accurately predict or create the seizures for training. While some attempt to "train" alerts by exposing the dog to sweat from a person who had a seizure or by focusing the dog's attention on a person during or after a seizure, these are not actually training. The event that you want the dog to respond to has already happened 10-20 minutes previously and we know that for conditioning reinforcement to be effective, it must be delivered within seconds of the desired behavior. While some report success with these methods, what is probably happening is that they are simply identifying dogs who already had it in themselves to alert.
It may take a dog with this innate ability up to six months living with a person with a seizure disorder to begin displaying the ability. Programs that place seizure response dogs have reported that about half of the response dogs they place go on to alert as well within six months of placement.
|
<urn:uuid:583ea560-fcc5-4814-8289-82ee9ef9974e>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-23
|
http://servicedogcentral.org/content/node/491
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510272256.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011752-00469-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.959924 | 501 | 3.765625 | 4 |
Almost 5 Million Lives Saved Through AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Treatment
Download MP3 (Right-click or option-click the link.)
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was created in two thousand two. It is an alliance of business, government and civilian partnerships. A new report from the Global Fund says almost five million lives have been saved through the six hundred programs it supports.
The programs operate in one hundred forty-four countries, many in sub-Saharan Africa. The Global Fund has approved proposals for more than nineteen billion dollars to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
The report says two and one-half million people infected with HIV now are being treated with antiretroviral medicines. It says there has been a major decrease in AIDS deaths in many countries as a result.
The report also says about six million people with active tuberculosis are being treated for the disease. The number of deaths from TB is dropping around the world.
The Global Fund has given out more than one hundred million bed nets in its battle against malaria. The bed nets are treated with a poison to kill mosquitoes. The report says ten of the countries in Africa with the highest cases of malaria have reported decreases in new cases. An increasing number of countries are reporting a drop of more than fifty percent in malaria deaths, the report says.
Rifat Atun is director of strategy, performance and evaluation at the Global Fund. He says the programs the fund supports saved at least three thousand six hundred lives every day last year. And he says more lives can be saved in the future if the programs continue to receive the money they need.
RIFAT ATUN: "We can, for example, given the rate of investment, eliminate malaria as a public health problem, we can prevent millions of more HIV infections and also in tuberculosis. But most importantly, we can look to a world that is free of HIV infection in children. We can virtually eliminate transmission of HIV from mother to child."
The Global Fund was established as a financial tool. It has several guiding ideas. It works to support programs that come from national plans and goals. It tries to find balance in dealing with places, diseases and interventions. And the Global Fund is open in its work to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption.
Most of the money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria comes from the worlds leading industrial nations.
And thats the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver with reporting by Lisa Schlein. For more health news, go to voaspecialenglish.com. Im Steve Ember.
|
<urn:uuid:db215d06-2fa5-4d43-a779-85645513b501>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-41
|
http://www.manythings.org/voa/0/12922.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1410657128304.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20140914011208-00174-ip-10-196-40-205.us-west-1.compute.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.956013 | 554 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Every dog owner would love to have a dog that seems to be smiling every time. You might be wondering if it is even possible to teach a dog to smile?
Well, the answer is yes! Smiling is a technique that you can teach your dog just like any other behavior.
You need to have the patience and skill required to teach your dog how to smile.
Remember that dogs are really intelligent animals, there are so many tricks that you can teach your dog if you want him to stand out from the crowd, smiling is one of them.
All that is required is adequate training and some positive reinforcement and your dog will learn how to smile on cue.
1. Prepare, prepare, prepare
Preparation and good planning is the key to successfully teaching your dog how to smile.
You need to know that smiling for a dog does not come naturally like it does for us humans.
However, there is really nothing that is impossible when it comes to training a dog to do certain dog tricks, including smiling.
Smiling for a dog simply means to lifting his lip and showing his teeth.
In order to train and teach your dog how to smile, you can prepare adequately by investing in a clicker which you shall use to click anytime he smiles.
You will also need a few of his favorite treats, just to reward your furry friend once he shows you his teeth with a nice smile.
When preparing your dog for training, you can touch his lips on regular basis so that he gets used to it and will barely resist when you actually want to train him.
2. Be the Alpha
Dogs come from the wolf family and they always obey the commands of their pack leader.
Just like in any other training session, before you can teach your dog how to smile, you need to establish yourself as his alpha.
Being an alpha and a dog leader is more about your actions than anything else. You need to do things the way a leader does them, for instance, always lead your dog by the leash and not the other way round.
You will find some dog owners walking behind as their dog is in front, that is certainly not how an alpha behaves.
Once you establish your authority as the leader, your furry friend will most likely obey when you tell him to say cheese to the camera.
3. Teach him how to lift the lips
As I highlighted before, smiling does not come naturally to dogs. You need to put in some effort and know how to get your dog to smile.
You can do this by teaching your dog how to lift his lips. Touch your dog’s lips and slowly progress to lifting one side of his lips then to both the sides of his lips.
Make sure to use a clicker once your dog can do this on his own. It is a huge milestone in teaching your dog how to smile. You can also stroke his pleasure points and get to associate the stroking with smiling.
Only make sure not to overdo the stroking so that your little puppy doesn’t get carried away and forgets to smile.
4. Teach him the “smile” command
Teach your dog to understand the smile command just the same way you would any other basic commands.
As you teach your dog to smile by showing him how to lift his lips, you can then proceed and also teach him the word. This is meant to help your dog associate the word with the action.
Anytime he will hear you say the word smile, he will lift his lips and show his teeth.
Dogs are very fast learners and will quickly grasp new tricks that you teach them. You can either teach him to smile when you say “cheese!” or “smile!” but make sure not to use the two together.
Using the two words together or interchangeably will confuse your dog. Only use one term and stick to it all through.
5. Use positive reinforcement
Dogs just like kids like to be praised and given treats when they do something right. Always use positive reinforcement when you want to teach your dog how to smile.
You can get your dog’s favorite treat and use it to reward your dog anytime he smiles at you. When you get your dog to show his teeth, good words of praise like “Good boy” or “Good job!” will go a great way to motivate him.
Take precaution not to show your dog the treat before he actually gets to smile because he will get distracted.
Only give him the treat when he lifts his lips an shows you his teeth. Once he has learnt to lift his lips, you can delay his treat for a few seconds until he shows you his teeth.
According to experts, positive reinforcement works more effectively than scolding or shouting at your dog. Dogs get to pick up our facial expressions very fast.
You can always show him your smile as well anytime you require him to show your guests this new trick before rewarding him.
6. Avoid bribing your dog
There is a huge difference between rewarding and bribing your dog. You need to avoid bribing your dog just to get him to show you his teeth.
As much as I would recommend that you use positive reinforcement, too much rewarding will begin to make it seem as though you are bribing your dog to do your bidding.
There will have to be times when you will have to delay rewarding your dog with the yummy treats just to make sure that he understands that you are not bribing him to smile for you guests.
Avoid bribing your furry friend with excessive treats because he will get used to obeying your command only when there is a treat in the offing.
The best thing to do is to hide the treat until he smiles and only show him after he shows you his teeth when smiling. If he shows you his teeth in an aggressive manner, do not reward such behavior.
7. Be firm and patient
Dogs are very smart animals and can learn new tricks and commands very fast. However, you need to be aware of the fact that dogs also have different levels of intellectual capacity just like humans.
There are dogs that learn really fast and others might take some time before grasping the trick fully. Exercise some patience with your dog when you want to teach him how to smile.
After all, you are not joining some smiling competition. Let your dog learn at his own pace. Make the training sessions fun and enjoyable for both you and your dog.
Take reasonable breaks from training and take him for a potty break or a run in the yard. At the end of the day it is just a trick you are trying to teach him and not like he will sit for an exam.
8. Pay attention to your dog’s needs
A good dog owner who is also experienced in training dogs will know that it is not always that a dog will be in the mood for training.
You ought to pay attention to your dog’s needs, whether emotional or physical needs. Make sure that your dog is well fed and has helped himself at his potty before you begin training.
Always pick the right time to teach your dog how to smile. You will not have good results when your dog is tired for instance or is hungry and all moody.
If your dog is also hyper, make sure to let him play and drain most of the energy he has.
All you need to do is learn and be very keen on the attitude of your dog. This will greatly help you in picking the right time to train and teach him how to smile.
9. Explore other ways to get your dog to show you his teeth
There might be other instances where your dog will willingly show you his teeth.
For example, if you do practice good dental hygiene and brush his teeth regularly, then your dog is likely to show you his teeth at the sight of his toothbrush. Take this as an opportunity to reinforce this behavior in your puppy.
Use treats to reward and motivate your dog to smile by showing you his teeth.
Perhaps your dog is most likely to show you his teeth once he sees his bowl of favorite dog food. This is undoubtedly one of the surest ways of getting any dog to smile at his owner.
Be creative and get to know what makes your dog tick. That way you will easily be able to teach him how to smile.
10. Timing is everything
If you are wondering how to teach your dog to smile, then you need to be very good at timing.
It is much easier to teach your dog how to smile when he is still a puppy or rather as soon as you bring him home.
When you want to successfully teach your dog how to smile, you have to be very strategic when it comes to timing. Immediately give your dog a click and a treat when he shows you his teeth.
Reward him instantly when he obeys your command, this will make him understand and connect the action of smiling to the reward he gets.
In a nutshell, it is very possible to teach your dog how to smile. There is simply no trick that is impossible for any dog to learn.
Preparation is key if you want to achieve success in teaching your dog how to smile.
Invest in a clicker or have a cue that you can use to reinforce the behavior and also remember to use positive reinforcement.
Reward your puppy with his favorite treat once he shows progress by lifting his lips and showing you his teeth.
Teach your dog the basic commands and let him know what he ought to do once he hears you say “smile!” or “cheese”.
Practice patience and be consistent in your training sessions. That way your dog will know how to smile for the camera in no time!
Checkout Our Favorite Dog Products
1. BEST PUPPY TOY
We Like: Snuggle Behavior Toy with Heart Beat & Heat Pack – Ideal toy for new puppies.
2. BEST DOG TRAINING PROGRAM
We Like: Doggy Dan The Online Dog Trainer – Stop any dog problem and raise the perfect puppy with The Online Dog Trainer.
3. BEST DOG PUZZLE TOY
We Like: Outward Hound Interactive Puzzle Toy – Every dog loves chasing squirrels at the park. The Outward Hound Hide-a-Squirrel Puzzle Toy gives your dog the same feeling as though he was outdoors chasing live squirrels.
4. BEST DOG DNA TEST
We Like: Embark Dog DNA Test – Embark screens for over 250 dog breeds + tests for 170+ genetic diseases including MDR1 drug sensitivity, glaucoma, degenerative myelopathy, and dilated cardiomyopathy, some of the most common adult-onset diseases in dogs.
5. Best Multivitamin for Dogs
We Like: PetHonesty 10-For-1 Multivitamin – 10 Benefits in 1 Daily Treat – These Multivitamin Snacks combine a well-rounded blend of the most essential vitamins and supplements including glucosamine, probiotics, vitamins and omegas, for dogs’ overall daily health.
|
<urn:uuid:ff72eddb-7182-46a9-bf95-6c3dff4d015a>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-23
|
https://howtotrainthedog.com/how-to-teach-a-dog-to-smile/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224650620.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20230605021141-20230605051141-00371.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.974281 | 2,303 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Setting up a Blood Bank for Gene Therapy in HIV-Infected Infants
The purpose of this study is to set up a blood bank for infants who have HIV-positive mothers. This blood may be used in the future to treat the child if he/she turns out to be HIV-positive.
Blood from the umbilical cord contains a certain kind of cell called a stem cell. Stem cells eventually turn into one of the many types of blood cells. If HIV infection can be prevented in these stem cells, then, when these stem cells are injected back into the infant, the new cells that develop will also be protected from HIV. This study will provide the blood needed to test whether this type of gene therapy is safe and effective.
|Official Title:||Establishment of a Cord Blood Bank for Gene Therapy in HIV-Infected Infants|
|Study Start Date:||September 1997|
Gene therapy may provide a new therapeutic approach to pediatric AIDS. Putting an HIV-resistant gene into umbilical cord blood stem cells and transplanting the cells back into the patient could lead to the production of cells that resist HIV infection. If a patient's cells could be engineered to be resistant to supporting the growth of HIV-1, the cells may have improved survival in the presence of HIV-1. To date, an umbilical cord blood bank for HIV-positive deliveries has not been established in the United States. This protocol establishes a repository of banked umbilical cord blood as a first step toward the potential application of gene therapy for the treatment of HIV-infected infants.
HIV-infected mothers have about 20 ml of blood drawn to test for infectious diseases (e.g., hepatitis). At time of delivery maternal HIV viral load is measured. After delivery, about 60 ml of blood is collected from the umbilical cord; this blood is labeled and transferred to the umbilical cord blood bank for possible use in future gene therapy studies on the infant. At birth, infant HIV status and general health are assessed. If the infant is found to be HIV-infected, the mother may be approached about the infant's participation in a future gene therapy study. If the infant is not HIV-infected, the cord blood is stored for up to four years and is then released to the mother, or, with her consent, to the research community.
|United States, California|
|UCSD Med Ctr / Pediatrics / Clinical Sciences|
|La Jolla, California, United States, 920930672|
|Long Beach Memorial (Pediatric)|
|Long Beach, California, United States, 90801|
|UCLA Med Ctr / Pediatric|
|Los Angeles, California, United States, 900951752|
|Harbor - UCLA Med Ctr / UCLA School of Medicine|
|Los Angeles, California, United States, 905022004|
|Los Angeles County - USC Med Ctr|
|Los Angeles, California, United States, 90033|
|Cedars Sinai / UCLA Med Ctr|
|Los Angeles, California, United States, 900481804|
|UCSF / Moffitt Hosp - Pediatric|
|San Francisco, California, United States, 941430105|
|San Francisco Gen Hosp|
|San Francisco, California, United States, 94110|
|Study Chair:||Savita Pahwa|
|Study Chair:||Howard Rosenblatt|
|
<urn:uuid:933a0d68-63ed-4060-b825-946b98e70dba>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-48
|
http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00000917?order=361
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386164580231/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204134300-00018-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.859922 | 726 | 3.203125 | 3 |
“A best effort verification of the system — and making smart bets and tradeoffs given our needs”
Testing is an integral part of the software development process that is arguably its least understood. It’s essential for the betterment of software but is also incredibly difficult and time consuming, a point that most find to be rather unfortunate.
What is testing anyway; software testing to be precise?
Software testing means to a great many people something along the lines of: evaluating and verifying that a software product or application does “what it’s supposed to do” before being shipped to production. It means any activity aimed at evaluating an attribute or capability of a program or system and determining that it meets its “required results”.
Although crucial to software quality and widely deployed by programmers and testers, software testing still remains an elusive art perhaps due to limited understanding of the ever evolving principles of software.
There’s a pretty good explanation for it; requiring a trip down memory lane, that we shall get to in a short while.
“… Bigger companies can afford this level of sophistication, but for the rest of us treating testing as what it really is — a best effort verification of the system — and making smart bets and tradeoffs given our needs appears to be the best way forward.” ~ Cindy Sridharan
That post by Cindy Sridharan is a master piece that has been acclaimed and critiqued in equal measure and that I highly recommend. Sure it’s quite lengthy and you may not see eye to eye with her on everything, but there’s plenty to love and to nod in agreement with. It’s packed with loads of thought provoking observations, interesting points of view and nuggets of distilled wisdom.
Right. Time for that trip to the Smithsonian museum.
Golden Age of Software Testing
The 1990s were the golden age of software testing.
As an industry, there was still quite a lot to figure out. Global or local data? File and variable naming conventions. Time constraints versus memory utilization. Library, procedure or inline code? Use or reuse? But the biggest of them all: fixing bugs that occur in the field when the only way to get bug reports is by post, phone or email and the only way to update software is by mailing a new set of floppies.
You see, we were once upon a time not very experienced in writing code. And after shipping that code, fixing it was a really, really painful proposition. No wonder so much time and effort was put into testing. There was no choice but to double check developers’ work and try to ensure that as few bugs as possible made it into the released product.
The 1990s was also an era of monoliths being the default architectural style. Well, applications composed of other applications began to surface (although the first experimentations were during the 1980s) but monoliths were all the rage.
While things have moved along considerably — with microservices and what not — , we might still be hung up on the 90s; at least in the testing end of things as Cindy points out:
“As an industry, we’re beholden to test methodologies invented in an era vastly different to the current one we’re in.
People still seem to be enamored with ideas such as full test coverage (so much so that at certain companies a merge is blocked if a patch or a new feature branch ends up fractionally decreasing the test coverage of the codebase), test-driven development and complete end-to-end testing at the system level.”
In the words of Prince, we test like it’s 1999.
The Distributed Monolith
João Vazao Vasques makes a bold assertion that he calls “an important truth, our north star, that will guide us on this journey” in his 2018 blog post Your Distributed Monoliths are secretly plotting against you:
“Most implementations of microservices are nothing more than distributed monoliths.”
It’s very easy to create a distributed monolith when designing a system using the microservice architectural style; most have certainly done it. It’s also quite easy to allow the monolith to quietly sneak in elsewhere.
Matthew Skelton in his presentation at the London DevOps Enterprise Summit of June 2017 spoke about the types of “software monoliths” that can creep into a project:
- Application monolith: single block of code deployed as a unit
- Joined at the DB: difficulty to change separately
- Monolithic build: rebuild everything; one gigantic CI build
- Monolithic releases: coupled release; smaller components bundled together into a “release”
- Monolithic thinking: standardization; “one-size-fits-all” for teams
The “testing monolith”, similar to the monolithic build and releases types that Matthew describes, is a sixth type of monolith that has been suggested. Continuous Delivery consultant Steve Smith has already suggested that he believes end-to-end testing is considered harmful.
Steve’s point of view is that (monolithically) spinning everything up in order to verify the presence — or lack thereof — of issues in a system is fundamentally incompatible with Continuous Delivery. Besides, it’s a proposition that greatly suffers from the fallacy of decomposition and the cheap investment fallacy; the idea that testing a whole system will be cheaper than testing its constituent parts.
“Any advantage you gain by talking to the real system is overwhelmed by the need to stamp out non-determinism” ~ Martin Fowler
Challenges in testing microservice-based applications can be even more insidious than this — because, granted, testing microservices is particularly difficult. It is inherently more difficult than testing monoliths due to the distributed nature of the code under test.
Testing is more than just debugging.
The difficulty in software testing stems from the complexity of software: we can not completely test a program with moderate complexity. Testing is more than just debugging. The purpose of testing can be quality assurance, verification and validation, or reliability estimation. Testing can be used as a generic metric as well. Correctness testing and reliability testing are two major areas of testing. Software testing is a trade-off between budget, time and quality.
A further complication has to do with the dynamic nature of programs. If a failure occurs during preliminary testing and the code is changed, the software may now work for a test case that it didn’t work for previously. But its behavior on pre-error test cases that it passed before can no longer be guaranteed. To account for this possibility, testing should be restarted; an expense at which it’s often prohibitive.
An interesting analogy that parallels the difficulty in software testing with a pesticide is The Pesticide Paradox defined by Boris Beizer:
“Every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffectual.”
Full Stack in a Box
The full stack in-a-box testing strategy entails replicating a cloud environment locally and testing everything all in one local instance.
As you must be imagining — cringing even — it’s no mean feat given how elaborate and fragile a setup it is, often requiring a team in its own right to build, maintain, troubleshoot and evolve the infrastructure.
“If anyone so much as sneezes, my service becomes untestable.” ~ Tyler Treat
That’s without any attempt to bring into perspective the scale (read number of dependencies)most microservice architectures bear; case in point, Amazon’s graph of microservice dependencies from back in 2008.
With a two services setup, Cindy Sridharan recounts the trials and tribulations of her first hand experience with this “fallacy”. She explains that at one of her previous companies, they tried to spin up the entire stack in a Vagrant box — the Vagrant repo itself called something along the lines of “full-stack in a box” — with the idea being that a simple
vagrant up would enable any engineer to spin up the stack in its entirety on their laptops.
“… asking to boot a cloud on a dev machine is equivalent to becoming multi-substrate, supporting more than one cloud provider, but one of them is the worst you’ve ever seen (a single laptop)” ~ Fred Hébert
On top of being difficult to pull off, this localized testing strategy doesn’t scale. With a local deployment, you have to run most of the services (and dependencies) to get a fully running system. That’s stretching even the high end 16GB RAM machines quite hard.
“Software complexity (and therefore that of bugs) grows to the limits of our ability to manage that complexity.” ~ Boris Beizer
Moreover, even with modern DevOps best practices like infrastructure-as-code and immutable infrastructure, trying to replicate a cloud environment locally doesn’t offer benefits commensurate with the effort required to get it off the ground and subsequently maintain it; a relationship governed by the law of diminishing returns.
The Spectrum of Testing
Historically, testing has been something that refers to an activity in the purview of a pre-production or pre-release phase, often with siloed testing/QA teams.
Driven by the “build it / run it / own it” ethos popularized by Amazon — at whose core is the rationale that being woken up at 2 am severally by your service’s pager is quite a powerful incentive to find and fix root causes and focus on quality while writing code — this model is slowly being phased out. Development teams are now responsible for testing as well as operating the services they author.
“Good testing involves balancing the need to mitigate risk against the risk of trying to gather too much information” ~ Jerry Weinberg
According to Cindy Sridharan, this new evolving model is something that is incredibly powerful as it truly allows development teams to think about the scope, goal, tradeoffs and payoffs of the entire spectrum of testing in a manner that’s realistic as well as sustainable. “In order to be able to craft a holistic strategy for understanding how our services function, and gain confidence in their correctness, it becomes salient to be able to pick and choose the right subset of testing techniques given the availability, reliability and correctness requirements of the service” she adds.
You can’t test in quality, but you can code it in.
Quality is no less important, of course, but achieving it requires a different focus than in the past. Testing ought to be at the heart of the development and DevOps culture, providing new opportunities for testers.
The spectrum of testing illustrated above, adapted from Cindy Sridharan, broadly partitions software testing into pre-production testing and testing in production. This, she says, can be used to encompass a variety of activities, including many practices that traditionally used to fall under the umbrella of “release engineering” or Operations or QA.
“…but it encompasses some of the most common forms of testing seen in the wild all the same.”
She however counsels that while the illustration presents the testing taxonomy as a binary, the reality isn’t quite as neatly delineable as depicted. “For instance, profiling falls under the “testing in production” column, but it can very well be done during development time in which case it becomes a form of pre-production testing.” she explains.
Pre-production testing is predominantly, as Cindy states:
“A best effort verification of the correctness of a system as well as a best effort simulation of the known failure modes”
As such, in the crucible of pre-production testing, the goal of its suite of test methods is not necessarily to prove there aren’t any bugs (except perhaps in parsers and any application that deals with money or safety or where human lives are at stake), but to assure that the known-knowns are well covered and the known-unknowns have instrumentation in place for.
Software bugs will almost always exist in any software module with moderate size: not because programmers are careless or irresponsible, but because the complexity of software is generally intractable — and humans have only limited ability to manage complexity. It’s also true that for any complex systems, design defects can never be completely ruled out.
Well, if that’s the case, what is to be said about the scope of pre-production testing?
“The scope of pre-production testing is only as good as our ability to conceive good heuristics that might prove to be a precursor of production bugs.”
The scope of pre-production testing is rather dependent on the ability to intuit the boundaries of a system, the happy code paths (success cases) and perhaps more importantly the sad paths (error and exception handling), and continuously refine these heuristics over time.
Any scope is heavily curtailed by the implicit assumptions the system is built upon and by a plethora of biases held by software engineers on a development team because invariably, the person (team) writing the code also writes the test; with code reviews nonetheless.
The infographic below highlights the essence of some of the pre-production test methods:
The Unit of Test
A microservice architecture is the natural consequence of applying the Single Responsibility principle at the architectural level. Microservices are thus built on the notion of splitting up units of business logic into standalone services, where every individual service is responsible for a standalone piece of business or infrastructural functionality.
Cindy states that in her experience, an individual microservice (with the exception of perhaps network proxies) is almost always a software frontend (with a dollop of business logic) to some sort of stateful backend like a database or a cache. In such systems, most, if not all, rudimentary units of functionality often involve some form of (hopefully non-blocking) I/O — be it reading bytes off the wire or reading some data from disk.
“Not all I/O is equal”
Given the bounded context of a microservice, different forms of I/O have different stakes. For instance protocol parsing libraries, RPC clients, database drivers, AMQP clients and so forth all perform I/O, yet these are different forms of I/O with varying significance in a microservice’s tangible boundaries of applicability.
Consider the example of testing a microservice that is responsible for managing inventory. It’s certainly more prudent to verify items being created successfully in the database than it is to ascertain that HTTP parsing works as expected. Granted, a bug in the HTTP parsing library can act as a single point of failure for such a service; and is hence an important aspect to verify, but it’s also verily subservient to the primary responsibility of the service.
“What is of the essence here is that the most important unit of functionality a microservice provides happens to be an abstraction of the underlying I/O involved to its persistent backend, and as such should become the hermetic unit of base functionality under test.”
Domain logic often manifests as complex calculations and a collection of state transitions. Since these types of logic are highly state-based there is little value in trying to isolate the units. This means that as far as possible, real domain objects should be used for all collaborators of the unit under test; a unit of test.
Testing (QA) In Production
“I’m more and more convinced that staging environments are like mocks — at best a pale imitation of the genuine article and the worst form of confirmation bias.” ~ Cindy Sridharan
Testing in production has gotten a bad rap and is frowned upon — despite the fact that we all do it, all the time; consciously or otherwise.
In reality, every deploy is a test; in production (because every deploy is a unique, never-to-be-replicated combination of an artifact, environment, infrastructure, and time of day). Every user performing an action on your system is a test; in production. Increasing scale and changing traffic patterns are tests; in production.
Oh! There’s more.
Distributed systems exist in a perpetual state of partial degradation. Failure is the only constant. Failure is happening on your systems right now, in a hundred ways you aren’t aware of and may never learn about. So obsessing over individual errors will drive you straight to the madhouse.
“This is an industry that’s largely in denial about failure, and the denial is only just beginning to lift.” ~ Charity Majors
I must insist here that the proposition of testing in production does not in any way imply throwing caution to the wind, or such an attitude thereof, or even taking away the “sanctity” of production.
On the contrary. There’s a lot of daylight between throwing your code over the wall past any form of pre-production or pre-release safeguards waiting to get paged and shipping with alert eyes on it as it goes out, watching your instrumentation, and actively flexing the new code. The job of modern software engineers is not done until they have watched users use their code in production.
Pre-production testing is great for finding defects you expect to happen, but many production defects are surprises.
Tests can only help you with scenarios you already know about; the known-knowns. They are a good way of making sure that a system behaves as intended, but they cannot tell you whether the intended behaviour is correct. Tests simply cannot cover every scenario.
Developers need to get comfortable with the idea of testing and evolving their systems based on the sort of accurate feedback they can only derive by observing the way these systems behave in production. Sole reliance on pre-production testing won’t stand them in good stead, not just for the future but also for the increasingly distributed present of even the most nominally non-trivial architecture.
The difference between Observability and Monitoring boils down to the known-unknowns and the unknown-unknowns.
Good production monitoring can provide valuable feedback about scenarios you hadn’t foreseen and help you adjust your system’s behaviour accordingly. Quality is as much about learning the correct behaviour of a system as it is about safeguarding that behaviour — an aspect that is often overlooked.
Because a microservice architecture relies more on over-the-wire (remote) dependencies and less on in-process components, your testing strategy and test environments need to adapt to these changes.
Given how broad a spectrum testing is, there’s really no one true way of doing it right. Any approach is going to involve making compromises and tradeoffs.
Your application is being tested in production every single day by the people who use it. You just need to find a way to use all the data users are already generating.
Finding the right balance of pre-production and production quality practices can help you gain a more realistic and holistic understanding of the quality of your system.
|
<urn:uuid:8d11c263-9faa-430f-b978-61711b2f7c98>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-10
|
https://medium.com/@k.wahome/microservice-testing-a-new-dawn-aa614d31d7e9
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875145316.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20200220224059-20200221014059-00177.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.941825 | 4,014 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Communicating risk guidance
A toolkit to help you plan communication strategies and and develop good risk management.
Managing risk is increasingly central to the business of government. An essential part of this is risk communication - communication in terms of openness and transparency, understanding and engaging stakeholders, as well as providing balanced information to allow the public make decisions on how to deal with risk.
Good communication is key. Communication, in terms of engaging with those with an interest in your policy, and having communication plans ready to deal with difficulties. That is one reason why we have put out this guidance - a simple toolkit - to help you plan communication strategies, develop your understanding of risk, improve your knowledge of its likely effects, and give you the confidence to deal with a crisis when things go wrong.
A second reason is that good communication is an essential part of good policy making in its broadest sense - including implementation and operational planning. Openness and inclusiveness, the principles that underpin good communication, are important principles in modern democratic societies. Many of the techniques described here are recognised as relevant to good risk management as well.The guidelines are not intended to give definitive information on every aspect of risk communication. What they do attempt to do is to bring together in one place a wealth of experience from recent incidents and best practice from a range of eminent and authoritative sources. For those who need more in-depth information, there are links to those sources.
The aim of the guidelines, quite simply, is to give you tools to secure some certainty in a complex and uncertain world.
|
<urn:uuid:dabb11bb-fb18-4545-9495-773a00e85fc3>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-14
|
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/communicating-risk-guidance
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296944606.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20230323003026-20230323033026-00349.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.951979 | 321 | 3.046875 | 3 |
- Adolf Layer
- , revised by Johannes Hoyer
Benedictine monastery in Bavaria, Germany, founded in 764. There is evidence of music making in the monastery from the 12th century. In the first half of the 16th century Ottobeuren was receptive to humanist ideas; it had its own printing press and in 1543 founded its own Benedictine university, although this lasted only a few years. Abbot Caspar Kindelmann (1547–86) encouraged polyphony and instigated the construction of a large organ by Georg Ebert von Ravensburg in the new abbey chapel; he also appears to have been a composer. Kindelmann employed the organist Vitalis Brelle and the choirmaster Christian Frantz, whose manuscript of mainly four-part sacred music (1577) survives. In the 17th century the Catholic revival aroused new interest in choral music, and in the following century the monastery's music reached a peak of splendour, primarily in the field of sacred music, although musical dramas were presented in the abbey school. In ...
|
<urn:uuid:c0bfef30-c8c0-4ce2-b7b7-9d8701c86007>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-24
|
https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/abstract/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000020590?rskey=rNXYO9
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-24/segments/1590347409171.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20200530102741-20200530132741-00367.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.961481 | 224 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Two groundbreaking discoveries by USC researchers could lead to medications and a vaccine to treat or prevent a hemorrhagic fever transmitted by a new tick species before it spreads across the United States.
In the Jan. 7 Nature Microbiology, researchers describe the molecular mechanisms used by the virus to infect and sicken humans, a puzzle that has stumped scientists since the disease emerged in rural China in 2009.
In a related discovery published in Nature Microbiology last month, researchers at USC and in Korea found that aged ferrets with the virus exhibit symptoms similar to those seen in older humans, while young ferrets show no clinical symptoms. An animal model in which to study the virus, a crucial tool in vaccine or drug discovery, has been elusive, until now.
“The ticks are already in the United States. If they start spreading the virus, it will be a major problem,” said Jae Jung, the study’s senior author and chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “I started studying this virus five years ago because once it appeared in China, I knew it would eventually appear in the United States.”
The findings come at a time when health officials are increasingly concerned about the growing danger of tick-borne illnesses. In the United States, Lyme disease accounts for most cases, but other illnesses are on the rise. The total number of reported cases has more than doubled in the past 13 years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The new threat comes in the form of a bug new to North America—the Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis. It’s a tiny, parasitic arachnid that’s a major livestock pest in East and Central Asia, where it thrives under temperate conditions. After a blood meal, females drop off their host to produce 2,000 eggs at a time, with or without the help of a male.
It can transmit severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS), an illness that causes nausea, diarrhea and muscle pain. The illness is often lethal, killing up to 30 percent of hospitalized patients. The virus depletes blood platelets as it replicates, which prevents clotting and leads to hemorrhage similar to Ebola virus infection.
The disease has spread to Japan and Korea since it appeared in China. The SFTS virus has not been detected in the United States yet, but the Asian longhorned tick was found in nine states during the past two years, including Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The CDC considers the presence of the Asian longhorned tick in the United States an “emerging disease threat” and is recommending ongoing surveillance efforts and testing for pathogens. A virus genetically similar to SFTS virus, Heartland virus, and causing similar human illness was also recently discovered in the United States. Globally, the SFTS disease has caused infection of thousands of people a year in China.
Jung and his colleagues found that the virus targets a gene called TPL2, which is involved in the body’s inflammatory response. In a healthy person, the body’s natural inflammatory response helps fight off an infection. With SFTS infection, the virus directs the TPL2 gene to switch off that protective inflammatory response at the site of the tick bite—creating a protected spot in which the virus can amass copies of itself and spread throughout the body.
In animals, the researchers disabled TPL2 with an inhibitor; as a result, the body’s healthy immune function kept viral replication in check, resulting in a milder infection—and suggesting that the TPL2 gene’s signaling pathway presents a potential target for a therapy.
“We’re very optimistic that these findings will help us get a vaccine up and running within several years,” said Younho Choi, a post-doctoral researcher in the Jung lab and the study’s first author. “We’re already developing various vaccine candidates in mouse and ferret animal models. The idea behind the vaccine is to outsmart the virus by putting a roadblock, allowing the body’s immune system to keep doing its job.”
Original Article: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-science-tick-borne-virus.html#jCp
|
<urn:uuid:29f81de6-f938-46d4-a20c-ba009b99ae10>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-34
|
https://jasperandsardine.wordpress.com/2019/01/08/scientists-race-to-find-cure-for-tick-born-hemorrhagic-fever/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439735867.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20200804131928-20200804161928-00176.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.941925 | 929 | 3.734375 | 4 |
If you want to understand adversity, take two identical acorns from the
same oak tree and plant them in two different locations. Plant the first
in the middle of a dense forest, and the other on a hill by itself.
Here's what will happen. The oak standing on a hillside is exposed to
every storm and gale. As a result its roots plunge deep into the earth and
spread in every direction, even wrapping themselves around giant boulders.
At times it may seem the tree isn't growing fast enough - but the growth
is happening under ground. It's as if the roots know they must protect the
tree from the threatening elements.
What about the acorn planted in the forest? It becomes a weak, frail
sapling having to compete with giant oaks for nutrients and space. And
since it is protected by its neighbors, the little oak doesn't sense the
need to spread its roots for support.
Don't be afraid of adversity welcome it! That's your sure-fire route to
|
<urn:uuid:f75301e6-eff4-45d2-881d-1166568d3b32>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-43
|
http://inspirationalstories.com/7/704.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187828134.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20171024033919-20171024053919-00287.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.959979 | 213 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Día is not only a celebration of children and books, but a commitment to work daily towards connecting families and children to diverse books, cultures and languages. It may seem like quite the challenge at times to integrate diversity into your library everyday, but there are plenty of uncomplicated routes to daily diversity! If you take a moment to contemplate the many holidays and traditions celebrated throughout the world you will begin to see a wealth of opportunity. Everybody loves a party, so why not highlight various cultures through their respective festivities? It is a fun way to embrace the Día initiative and encourage an awareness of various cultures in your community. The Year of the Horse could be a great first step towards a year of multicultural observance in 2014!
On the Western calendar, the start of the new year falls on January 31st, 2014 and is The Year of the Horse. Unlike a Western New Year that merely lasts one day, The Chinese New Year is a fifteen day long event that begins with the New Moon on the first day of the new year and ends on the full moon. It is a time for new beginnings and giving thanks with family and friends. Each day of the holiday is marked by a different activity.
Chinese New Year is an excellent holiday to showcase at your library. You could plan a special program for families to create Chinese New Year crafts together and sample special foods or hold a Year of the Horse storytime sharing not only Chinese New Year stories but horse stories. Don’t have the time or resources to plan a full-blown program? No problem! You can easily passively engage families with interesting displays of materials on Chinese New Year, China and even Asian-American written stories and memoirs. Put out a word search or activity sheet for families to take home with them, introducing them to Chinese New Year customs and foods.
For the toddlers and preschoolers, I recommend the adorable and vibrantly illustrated My First Chinese New Year by Karen Katz (Henry Holt, 2004). For a more in-depth look at the celebration, check out Moonbeams, Dumplings & Dragon Boats: A Treasury of Chinese Holiday Tales, Activities and Recipes by Nina Simonds, Leslie Swartz and The Children’s Museum of Boston (HMH Books for Young Readers, 2002). This book for grade-school aged children features not only Chinese New Year but four other important Chinese holidays complete with many recipes and great crafts for parent and child to create together. A long-time favorite of mine, the Caldecott-award winning Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China by Ed Young (Philomel, 1989), would be another delightful book choice.
What other celebrations do you think would be perfect for inviting cultural diversity into your library this year?
Nicole Lee Martin is a Children’s Librarian at the Grafton-Midview Public Library in Grafton, OH and is writing this post for the Public Awareness Committee. You can reach her at [email protected].
|
<urn:uuid:6cf2721c-e5f6-4ece-bdc4-5b899d2cabc5>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-35
|
http://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2014/01/the-year-of-the-horse/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500830903.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021350-00129-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.920677 | 616 | 2.625 | 3 |
The post-World War II era was one of enormous innovation and economic growth. As millions of servicemen returned home, the housing market exploded, with 2.5 million homes built from 1946 to 1948. By the 1950s, nearly two-thirds of all industrial construction was taking place outside of cities as suburban America was forming. In fact, residential construction in the suburbs accounted for 75% of total construction at the time.
Meanwhile, some of the world’s most pioneering inventors in the heavy machinery industry saw the current challenges, had a vision for the future, and manufactured the first backhoe loaders to meet the demands in construction, infrastructure and farming.
In the United States, a backhoe prototype was assembled by Massachusetts engineers J. Holopainen and Roy E. Handy Jr., who mounted a hydraulic swing-frame digger to a Ford Model 8N tractor. Their 1948 patent featured a swing frame breakthrough that allowed the hydraulic digging arm to swing to the side to dump the bucket and included an outrigger bar and high flow control. In 1954, however, the inventors failed to defend their swing-frame patent, and other manufacturing companies began to produce backhoes.
In Great Britain during the same time frame, Joseph Bamford, founder of Joseph Cyril Bamford Excavators Ltd. (JCB), was on a business trip in Norway when he saw a lightweight excavator on a trailer hitched to the back of a tractor. Building on the idea, he attached a prototype excavator with hydraulic arms to the back of a front loader.
Naming it the Mk 1, Bamford pioneered the first backhoe loader, creating a single machine with a hydraulic rear excavator and front-mounted shovel, bringing hydraulic power to construction. Bamford quickly realized that operator comfort and safety resulted in increased productivity, and the launch of the JCB Hydra-Digga Loadalls in the late 1950s featured a comfortable cab that included a heater.
By the 1960s a new range of backhoes were on the market, featuring the innovation of dual hydraulics, a three-in-one backhoe bucket and a two-lever backhoe control system. It was clear this machine was revolutionizing the building industry, increasing productivity and reducing the reliance on manpower.
By the 1970s, backhoe loaders offered a larger cab and a powertrain with exceptional strength. In the early 1980s the launch of the JCB 3CX Sitemaster introduced the modern backhoe loader to the world. It featured a six-in-one clam shovel front bucket with fold-over forks and telescopic dipper arm with lifting hook, adding to the machine’s versatility. In 1988, JCB unveiled its most unusual backhoe loader—the JCB GT—powered by a Chevrolet V8 engine and capable of reaching 100 miles per hour (mph).
As construction sites became more condensed in the 1990s, innovation again met the demand with the availability of construction grade compact backhoes. These machines are 35% smaller than the standard backhoe, with the ability to turn around in a single carriageway.
Compact backhoes can work within the single lane of a roadway with minimal disruption and are the ideal solution for niche applications, such as utility operations and commercial landscaping. The JCB 1CX is the world’s smallest backhoe, combining the two most popular machines in North America, the compact excavator and skid steer loader. By 1997, the models offered twin-ram slewing and further updates to the cab.
As the 2000s ushered in a new millennium, technological advancements transformed almost every industry, which included revolutionizing heavy machinery. Backhoe loaders now offered six-speed transmissions and even more cab comfort with designs reminiscent of automobiles.
Additionally, the high mobility engineer excavator (HMEE) was manufactured to meet the specific needs of the U.S. Army, reaching speeds up to 60 mph. Backhoe loaders offered unmatched fuel-efficiency and exceptional power, with some models on the market requiring no exhaust aftertreatment.
Most recently, automation is the most predominant innovation that has transformed the functionality of the backhoe. Automated features mechanize previously manual tasks, ultimately making the backhoe more productive. For example, an automated idle feature helps reduce fuel consumption, and an automated drive function allows the operator to drive at a constant engine rev that determines the speed when traveling the machine.
Hydraulic system components have improved as well, many of which are monitored by onboard computers and sensors positioned around the machine. This provides enhanced settings control for further cost and time savings.
Technological advancements have also ushered in telematic features, which allow for planned maintenance schedules and instant notifications when a service is due, including critical alerts if there are any serious mechanical or electrical problems with the machine. This timesaving innovation means issues are quickly resolved and machines are fully operational and back on-site with little downtime. Not only do telematics keep loaders working, but they also keep them safe.
Machine location tracking acts as a deterrent against theft and allows stolen machines to be recovered. Real-time geofencing notifies construction managers when their machine moves outside of permitted zones, while curfew alerts inform them of unauthorized usage.
With technology improving and the “internet of things” connecting more devices than ever, we will likely see telematics being used for even further advancements, such as flashing software, diagnosing machines, changing machine settings or even to operate the loader remotely. It will be interesting to see where the zero emissions movement will take the backhoe, as this is a challenge that remains to be solved.
While we cannot know for certain exactly what the future holds as far as advancements for the backhoe loader, this versatile machine will certainly remain the multitasking workhorse on a wide variety of construction jobsites, as it has been for nearly 75 years.
|
<urn:uuid:02357a94-5b5a-435b-bcfb-25c6477f3d52>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-23
|
https://www.constructionbusinessowner.com/equipment/look-back-75-years-backhoe-loader
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224654097.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20230608035801-20230608065801-00245.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948718 | 1,213 | 3.0625 | 3 |
After the storms and the shootings, we’re ready for architecture that confers a sense of calm and protection. Two sides of the same coin — defensive architecture, on the one hand, and restorative architecture on the other — are equally in demand today. Will architects rise to the challenge?
The zombie meme that pervades American popular culture has certainly helped with the first criterion. We understand why we need fortresses, for enemies real or imagined. The latter notion — buildings that heal — represents an ancient art of making shelter that needs more attention. It’s not the first thought that comes to mind when the imagined stalking hordes are breaching the moat.
Studies show that well-designed buildings can relieve anxiety, lower our blood pressure and sharpen thinking. Children in poorly designed buildings tend to display more distracted, hyperactive and tense behaviors.
Daylight, fresh air, and views of the outdoors are old ideas with fresh new data proving their ameliorative effects. More recent ideas for improving our mental states range from biophilia, championed by sustainable design experts like Stephen R. Kellert, as well as incorporating figurative art into buildings, according to such practitioners as Connecticut-based architect Barry Svigals.
1. Creating buildings that heal
New building design concepts can even heal themselves, in an almost literal sense. Some can recuperate sooner from disasters, as Andy Darrell write recently in Cogeneration magazine, listing their use of batteries, solar power and combined heat & power to overcome power outages.
“Amid the darkness and devastation, there were dozens of homes, businesses, even whole communities that kept their lights on and the water because they were designed to isolate breakdowns, heal quicker, and work with natural systems rather than against them,” Darrell reported.
New city plans will do the same. Lisa Rochon writes eloquently in The Globe & Mail about her city’s Don River Park, which is essentially a combination of land art and flood protection. Designed by Michael van Valkenburgh Associates, the sculptural green space has an outdoor fireplace and recreation — but its prescient flood plain will protect against threats like Hurricane Hazel, the 1954 trauma to the city.
On the downside, our fascination with zombies is just another way to propagate ideas of us versus them — the dangerous, unknown and senseless other. Yet by testing design ideas against the zombie rubric, architects can theorize about built solutions that address real threats.
Safer rooms are just a start. A recent project, “The Safe House” near Warsaw designed by architects KWK Promes, took the idea to the limit. Its thick walls, roll-down metal shutters and steel grey reinforced walls are clean, modern and repugnant to many.
Enthusiasts took issue with the ostentatious nature of The Safe House. In Guns & Ammo magazine, Patrick Sweeney cautioned that “excessively aggressive security measures” may help repel zombies but they could attract others. “Look too prosperous, and some will ask to join you, and perhaps not entirely politely,” he wrote. Conceal your weapon, presumably, is the takeaway?
3. Designing against aggression.
Yet there is proof that architecture can incite or mollify — for the better. Swedish academic Roger S. Ulrich finally gave evidence-based design its bully pulpit in The New York Times this week. He aired out recent studies that prove the clinical benefits of good architecture for reducing violence.
Nature, gardens and art, as Ulrich has shown in his past work, can help hospital patients feel less pain and stress. It even cuts the cost of healthcare. The news, however, is that building design can reduce acts of aggression in psychiatric facilities. The hospitals with “stress-reducing features” required fewer patient sedations and less use of restraints.
4. Boosting our own resilience.
We also need better building products to resist zombie attacks. A number of recent introductions have focused attention on how simple upgrades to architectural materials and systems can help reduce losses from natural disasters and violent attack.
A large number of products now on display at the vast expo halls of Bau 2013 in Munich, Germany, are focused on resisting environmental and security risks. Schott’s Pyranova secure glass, for example, combines fire protection properties as well as anti-ballistic and strength properties — “extremely high security requirements that apply to personal and property protection,” says the company.
Like the glass, new defense systems tend to be well hidden from sight. The company Eco Building Products, for example, has introduced new assemblies that better resist fire, mold, wood-rot, termites and high winds, “providing protection up to nine feet above grade.” This includes lumber and coatings with special properties that address the limitations of traditional felt paper and fabric and flimsy vapor barriers – a solution to “rising tides and high winds, let alone fire storms” says the company.
5. Becoming more self-sufficient
Resiliency is the new sustainability, as I wrote the other day in SmartPlanet’s The Take.
When the zombies come knocking, we must have not only power and protection but also plenty of supplies to keep us nourished through the attack. Rainwater capture and storage can ensure there is fresh water; simple new systems include the new design by Chad Person for “networked rain barrels” that connect to a home’s gutters. Air Drop, a new invention by Edward Linacre, uses solar-powered condensation to harvest water from ambient air.
But water and food are only part of the sustenance we need. Today’s zombie-proof architecture must help us keep our sanity, too.
A new architectural mindset is emerging that considers our emotional needs in the face of “everyday traumas,” as the architect Svigals says, as well as the singular traumatic event. Today’s leading architects will help bring new solutions that not only defend us, but that restore us as well.
Designing for the apocalypse has been a helpful experiment. Now it’s time to use just as much creativity to address the shared challenges of our daily life.
|
<urn:uuid:ca7f708f-2c74-4ec0-8d1f-cc053ac7ab45>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/take/the-zombie-dividend-has-apocalypse-helped-architecture/356
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702019913/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110019-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.952429 | 1,297 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Moon Light World Map
The map below shows where the Moon is visible from the Earth, depending on weather conditions and moon phases.
The white dot symbolizes the position of the Moon, and the yellow sun symbolizes the position of the sun.
View Day and Night Map
- The bright part of the map shows where the moon is over the horizon on Monday, October 8, 2012 at 21:20:00 UTC.
- The Sun's position is marked with this symbol: . At this location, the Sun will be at its zenith (directly overhead) in relation to an observer.
- The Moon's position is marked with this symbol: . At this location, the Moon will be at its zenith in relation to an observer. Note that the symbol is not showing the current phase of the Moon.
Fraction of moon illuminated: 44%
Position of the Moon
On Monday, October 8, 2012 at 21:20:00 UTC the Moon is at its zenith at these coordinates:
|Latitude: ||17° 20' ||North|
|Longitude: ||135° 20' ||East|
The ground speed of the movement is currently 428.62 meters/second, 1543.0 km/hour, 958.8 miles/hour or 833.2 knots.The table below shows the Moon position compared to the time and date above:
|Time||Longitude difference||Latitude difference||Total|
|1 minute||0° 14' 30.9"||15.98 mi||west||0° 00' 06.3"||0.12 mi||south||15.98 mi|
|1 hour||14° 30' 57.4"||958.60 mi||west||0° 06' 29.1"||7.43 mi||south||958.91 mi|
|24 hours||11° 35' 30.0"||765.55 mi||east||2° 59' 11.5"||205.37 mi||south||798.26 mi|
Locations with the moon near zenith
The following table shows 10 locations with moon near zenith position in the sky.
|Melekeok||Tue 6:20 AM||1091 km||678 miles||589 nm|| S|
|Guam (Hagåtña)||Tue 7:20 AM||1097 km||682 miles||593 nm|| ESE|
|Davao||Tue 5:20 AM||1550 km||963 miles||837 nm|| SW|
|Quezon||Tue 5:20 AM||1555 km||966 miles||839 nm|| W|
|Manila||Tue 5:20 AM||1563 km||971 miles||844 nm|| W|
|Taipei||Tue 5:20 AM||1668 km||1037 miles||901 nm|| WNW|
|Kumamoto||Tue 6:20 AM||1775 km||1103 miles||959 nm|| NNW|
|Fukuoka||Tue 6:20 AM||1875 km||1165 miles||1012 nm|| NNW|
|Kitakyushu||Tue 6:20 AM||1886 km||1172 miles||1018 nm|| NNW|
|Osaka||Tue 6:20 AM||1920 km||1193 miles||1037 nm|| N|
Related time zone tools
|
<urn:uuid:4b7bbc1d-f32f-4a61-b2c6-f363c25dbdba>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-48
|
http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/moon/light.html?iso=20121008T2120
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386164908494/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204134828-00070-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.691505 | 729 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Radial Diagram and Radial Chart
Charts and Graphs
Radial Diagram Example
Below is an example of radial diagram below showing five small cycles around one big cycle. You can use the radial diagram to illustrate a relationship where five items are linked to a centre item.
Radial Chart Template
The following radial chart template shows items in relation to a core element. This diagram can be thought of as a very simple organization chart that starts from the center rather than the top. A radial diagram flows from the outside in or the inside out.
How to Draw a Radial Diagram
With Edraw max software, it's very easy to draw a radial diagram. You only need to drag these predefined smart radial diagram shapes into the canvas. Then click the action button to modify it.
The Radial Diagram template is located at Circular Diagram category.
As the above image shows, you can click the 'Add a circle' item to add a circle around the centre circle. You can also change the arrow orientation or size.
Click here to free download Radial Diagram Software. Then you can use the built-in radial diagram examples to create and show your radial rapidly.
|
<urn:uuid:edddb5b7-7cea-4c26-b0c8-c24f66b07870>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-10
|
https://www.edrawsoft.com/radial-diagram.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875145534.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20200221172509-20200221202509-00452.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.864338 | 247 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Mysterious Alignament - Egypt, Pacific Ocean, Peru.
Another puzzle is mysterious alignment of world’s ancient sites. Easter Island is exactly aligned along a straight line around the center of the Earth, with the Nazca lines, Ollantaytambo and the Great Pyramid of Egypt.
Other world wonders that are within one tenth of one degree of this alignment include: Perseopolis, the capital city of ancient Persia; Mohenjo Daro, the ancient capital city of the Indus Valley; the Oracle of Zeus-Amon at Siwa; and the lost city of Petra. The Ancient Sumarian city of Ur and Angkor temples in Cambodia and Thailand are within one degree of latitude of this alignment.
The alignment of these sites is easily observable on a globe of the Earth with a horizon ring. If you line up any two of these sites on the horizon ring, all of the sites will be right on the horizon ring. 3-D world atlas software programs can also draw this line around the Earth.
Start on the Equator, at the mouth of the Amazon River, at 48° 36′ West Longitude; go to 30° 22′ North Latitude, 41° 24′ East Longitude, in the Middle East, which is the maximum latitude the line touches; then go to the Equator at 131° 24′ East Longitude, near the Northwest tip of New Guinea; then to 30° 22′ South Latitude, 138° 36′ West Longitude, in the South Pacific; and then back to 48° 36′ West Longitude, at the Equator.
Www.AncientAliens.wordpress.com (more info)
-Ancient Aliens Theory community-
Jean-Renaud Durbin & Raymond G.C.
"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change" Stephen Hawking — with Leon
|
<urn:uuid:5ba1272b-84c9-4b89-96c6-72a43900c0a6>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-16
|
https://www.moaipowerhouse.com/moai-tahitian-spirit-makemake-planet
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371861991.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20200409154025-20200409184525-00151.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.828544 | 385 | 2.90625 | 3 |
EU countries seek to weaken livestock emission limits
BRUSSELS, March 16 (Reuters) - European Union countries agreed on Thursday to try to reduce the number of farms covered by proposed rules to cut pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from livestock, despite criticism from some member states.
Livestock emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in the EU have barely fallen for more than a decade.
To address the problem, member countries and the European Parliament are preparing to negotiate tighter EU limits for farms and factories on waste disposal and other polluting gases such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
The European Commission, which drafts EU laws, last year proposed that all cattle, pig and poultry farms with over 150 livestock units face the limits - around 184,000 of Europe's largest farms.
That would be the first time cattle, which are the biggest source of methane in the EU agricultural sector, were included and would increase the number of poultry and pig farms covered from the current 20,000.
The European Parliament will confirm its negotiating position in the coming months.
But environment ministers from EU member states on Thursday said cattle and pig farms should only be covered if they have at least 350 livestock units - more than doubling the Commission's threshold - and 280 livestock units for poultry farms.
Countries including Bulgaria, Germany, Italy and Poland pushed for fewer farms to be included, saying the Commission proposal was not realistic and burdensome for farmers.
Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands accepted the position but complained about the weakening.
EU countries have "reduced the environmental ambition and the potential pollutant emission reductions considerably," Finland's State Secretary for Environment Terhi Lehtonen said.
The Commission's proposal, if adopted, would ensure the new limits cover farms responsible for around 60% of EU ammonia emissions livestock and 43% of methane.
Policies to curb the climate impact of farming have become a political flashpoint in EU countries including the Netherlands, where a farmers' party emerged as the big winner in provincial elections on Wednesday, riding a wave of protests against the government's environmental policies.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
|
<urn:uuid:df0072ab-0b70-4549-b1e5-0328583f5197>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-14
|
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/eu-countries-seek-weaken-livestock-emission-limits-2023-03-16/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296950383.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20230402043600-20230402073600-00587.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.946873 | 440 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Different Types Of Mold Found In Homes And Buildings
Mold is a toxic substance that should never be present in your home or building. Not only is mold unsightly it is dangerous for humans. Don’t be in the same room with household mold because it has real potential hazards for your health. There are different types of mold and their effects on human health vary. Mold in house is quite common and they thrive in environments between 60 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
Approximately how many species of molds exist that are fairly common? There are 12 common types of mold in home and mold types. The types of molds vary from benign to the most toxic. The common mold includes Aspergillus which is one of the types of mold in homes and is dangerous only to people with weakened immune systems.
How many species of mold exist that are toxic? There are about fifteen toxic mold types that can cause real harm to your health. Be wary of these dangerous mold types like Stachybotrys one of the more severe types of toxic mold that can cause fatal disease which affects the liver and kidney. Stachybotrys is seen by the naked eye as a greenish black slimy mold that grows on paper or wood that has been wet for a long period of time.
If you ever see the tell-tale signs of mold growing in your home or building you should get rid of it immediately either by applying some chemicals and doing some manual work cleaning and scrubbing it away. You should also hire mold experts if the mold growth is already extensive and you need professional grade equipment to restore hygienic air quality in your place.
Acremonium is a type of mold that is toxic. This type of mold evolves in its appearance over time and first starts out as a small moist mold that becomes fine powdery in substance. Can mold be orange? Acremonium is sometimes known as orange mold because it can be orange in color however it can also appear as pink, grey or white in color. Acremonium typically grows in moist areas on the home such as humidifiers, cooling coils, drain pans, and window sealants. Exposure to acremonium is highly dangerous. This mold can lead to diseases in the bone marrow, immune system, and other organs. Acremonium is toxic and is considered a carcinogen that can also impair brain function. Acremonium can grow alongside other types of mold including Stachybotrys which combined, makes for a dangerous and unpleasant mold problem in your home.
Alternaria is the most common allergenic mold found in the world. It has a distinctive velvet texture with dark green and brown hairs. Like other molds, it loves moist and damp places. In homes, you will find this mold growing in the shower, bathtubs and below leaking sinks. Alternaria is the most common mold species that grows as a result of water damage to a home or building. Alternaria is known to cause allergies and asthma-like symptoms. Inhaling this mold can cause irritation in the upper respiratory tract, nose, and mouth. Since it spreads quickly it is important to get rid of this mold before a house or building is overrun by it.
Aureobasidium is another allergenic mold. You can find this mold growing behind wallpaper or wooden surfaces. This mold develops into pink, brown, or black colors. Aureobasidium, turn a darker brown color as it ages. Some health risks of being exposed to Aureobasidium are infections of the eye, skin, and nails. Never touch this mold directly with bare skin because it can cause dermatitis or skin rash.
Fusarium is a mold that can grow on colder temperatures. It has both allergenic and toxigenic properties and grows in homes with water damage. Fusarium will grow on carpeting, wallpaper, and other fabrics and materials. This mold is often pink, white or reddish in color and is thus called red mold.
Exposure to fusarium can cause a lot of problems such as allergic reaction symptoms and dermatitis. Sore throat, running nose, sneezing, and itchy eyes are just some allergic reactions to this mold. Prolonged exposure to fusarium may cause life-threatening conditions such as bone infection, brain abscess, nervous system damage, and internal hemorrhage. Fusarium can quickly spread so you have to be thorough in examining your home so you can mitigate the effects of this mold.
Stachybotrys is black mold and is one of the most notorious types of black mold. What type of mold is black mold? Stachybotrys is part of the Aspergillus family and is considered to be very toxic. It can cause allergic reactions and cause life-threatening disease that affects the kidneys and liver. What does black mold look like? Stachybotrys appears as a dark or greenish black color and has a slimy texture. Examining the color is the best way on how to identify black mold. Black mold images will show that it can thrive on surfaces with cellulose material such as wood, cardboard, paper, hay, and wicker.
Ulocladium is a type of mold that thrives in moisture. Homes and buildings with water damage will typically have Ulocladium growing on wet areas. This type of mold can be found in kitchens, bathrooms, basements, and windows with high condensation. Ulocladium can grow with other types of molds and cause asthma-like symptoms.
Mucor is a type of mold that grows in thick patches and is often white or grayish in color. It often grows near air conditioners or HVAC systems. Mucor is an allergen and can cause asthma symptoms.
Mold health issues
The mold representative species identified so far are the most common molds that can be found growing inside homes and building but the exact number of mold species is still unknown. The mold names that have been discussed are the types of bad mold that can grow on your home after water damage or prolonged exposure to moisture. The colors of mold vary and can be helpful in identifying their type. White mold in houses may not appear as a specific type of mold so you should get a mold expert to identify the exact type and species. Molds cause a lot of health problems from the benign coughs and colds to the more extreme which include carcinogenic effects on kidneys and liver and internal bleeding.
If you have an extensive mold problem it is best to do mold remediation or get mold experts or a professional mold remediation team. They can help you in identifying mold types and mold identification so you will know if you have something serious in your hands. Some mold species are more dangerous than others and if you’ve been exposed to the more toxic variety you will know that you may need to be examined or treated by a health professional. If you see brown mold with hairy like appearance growing on your home you may have less to worry about. Stemonitis or brown mold is less harmful. Experts have a clearer idea on what does mold look like in a house and they can identify immediately whether something is mold thus isolating the problem quickly.
Having mold or fungus in house can be an irritating and distracting problem and you should remedy it at once. Once you have identified the mold you should get rid of moldy material immediately if you think it cannot be saved or salvaged. Professionals will often seal off the room or affected area because mold can easily become airborne. The next step is to dry the room with air movers and get rid of moisture and condensation by using air dryers and air scrubbers. If there are materials that can be saved from the mold it should be sprayed with a fungicide. The final repairs in-mold treatment include replacing materials that have been water damaged and cleaning the area.
|
<urn:uuid:d790954f-f16c-453b-a205-e72f915351f4>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-14
|
https://lasko.com/blogs/b-air/different-types-of-mold-found-in-homes-and-buildings
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296945279.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20230324082226-20230324112226-00240.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.952541 | 1,645 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Take a look around you. How many objects around you have plastic parts? Plastic is now omnipresent in our lives, from our cutlery to our accessories, our toys to our most advanced technology. It’s in our lunchboxes, bathrooms, kitchens and closets, gardens, toolsheds, and even our bedrooms. It’s given us so much in the 80 years it’s been available, and allowed us to learn the true meaning of convenience-having everything cheap, readily available, and good to take anywhere. You’d think we should be grateful for all plastic has done for us, but plastic has a downside too. Plastic products were created to help us-but unlike other materials, plastics don’t degrade and disappear after we’re done using them.
Here are some facts and history about plastic products, so that you have a good understanding of why they are an important topic in ocean literacy. Tomorrow, we will be providing you with activities and materials you can use at home or in the classroom about plastics and the marine environment.
Are there ways to stop using plastic? It is difficult, but the answer is yes. On Thursday, we will provide you with some resources you can use to begin living a less plastic filled life. We will also be talking about how you as a consumer can help influence producers to reduce their use of plastic, so that you can get more of what you want, without plastic guilt!
FACTS ABOUT PLASTICS:
What is Plastic?
From Dictionary.com: Plastic is defined as: "any of a group of synthetic or natural organic materials that may be shaped when soft and then hardened, including many types of resins, resinoids, polymers, cellulose derivatives,
casein materials, and proteins. [Plastics are] used in place of other materials, [like] glass, wood, and metals, in construction and decoration, for making many articles, as coatings, and drawn into filaments, for weaving. They are often known by trademark names, as Bakelite, Vinylite, or Lucite."
How is plastic created?
Plastic is an inorganic, man made compound that is most often produced as a byproduct of oil or petrochemicals. Each plastic type is different, but all plastics are essentially chains (polymers) of carbon-based units known as monomers. The monomers, or repeating molecular units, of plastic often contain carbon along with hydrogen, sulfur or oxygen or nitrogen. The combinations of these elements into linking chains determines the type of plastic produced, and it's associated properties.
How many types of plastic are there?
The amazing thing about plastics is that they can be used for so many things. Plastics can be made to suit almost any purpose, which means that there are hundreds of different types and subtypes of plastic in the world.
There are two main categories of plastics: Thermoplastics (plastics that can be melted and remelted to return to their original state) and Thermosets (plastics that are set using heat into one particular shape and cannot change form. Read more about these categories on the How Stuff Works blog.
Because there are so many types of plastics, The Society for Plastics Industry developed a categorization system to help broadly identify the type of plastic used in products you might purchase or have in your home.
You probably recognize the symbol they chose to help define the category- it looks an awful lot like the recycling symbol, right?
Despite all plastics in the home bearing this symbol, it's presence on the products doesn't necessarily denote that a container is recyclable. Learn about what these symbols really mean on The Daily Green blog.
How is plastic recycled?
How is plastic recycled?
Check out the Wisegeek blog for more details on this process.Thermoplastics that are used for household products can be broken down, cleaned,melted, and recycled into preproduction pellets, known as "nurdles". These nurdles can then be remixed and used to create new products, like fleece, carpeting, and constuction materials. Plastics can now even be used to make useful things like jeans, chairs and even bridges.
What is the future of plastics?
Plastic is now a cultural addiction, and it's starting to show. Plastic can now be found even in the most remote environments on earth, and has become a serious problem.
Solutions are starting to emerge though.
Akinori Ito, founder of Blest Corp. in Japan, has developed a portable machine that takes plastic and converts it back into oil, so that it can be used again.
Thermoset plastic refuse can also be used to recreate petroleum products. Companies like Algylix are able to take used plastics from garbage dumps and landfills, and create useable crude oil from them. This may revolutionize the way we recycle in the future!
We'll have more on plastics and what they are doing in our environment tomorrow, along with ways you can teach your community about them. Stay tuned!
By Asta Mail, Author and Educator, Literasea.ca
In the last year, I have been sponging up information about the growing problem of plastic pollution in our oceans. Through my work in the Great Lakes with Pangaea Explorations, I got to meet and learn from members of the 5 Gyres Institute, a leading research group studying oceanic plastic pollution, and find out how serious the plastic pollution problem really is. What I learned from them shocked and saddened me.
Did you know that our consumption of plastic products is literally turning parts of the ocean into garbage soup?
It's true. Everyday plastic products are intentionally and unintentionally discarded into our lakes, sewers, and coastal waters. As water flows downstream plastic debris is often carried out into our beautiful oceans. Many of the plastics found in the ocean float; plastics like Polypropylene and Polystyrene for example. Others, like Polycarbonate and PETE, sink under the surface. Plastic is not an organic material, and therefore will not biodegrade in ocean water- wave action and sunlight will simply break plastic products into smaller and smaller pieces over time. Some of these pieces are so small that they are known as "microplastic particles" invisible to the human eye, but tasty looking to tiny fish and other marine creatures.
These floating pieces of plastic are subject to the natural forces of the ocean: winds, currents, and tidal movement. Many of these little pieces end up congregating in areas of the ocean known as Gyres or Patches.
What is an ocean gyre?
According to National Geographic, "An ocean gyre is a circular ocean current formed by the Earth’s wind patterns and the forces created by the rotation of the planet."
In these areas of the ocean, used and discarded plastic materials end up hanging out together in these natural whirlpools, creating plastic soup- a mix of seawater, plastic, microscopic species and algae.
Check this video from One World, One Ocean in which the crew from the 5 Gyres Institute discuss the issue.
What can we do about it?
We are all responsible for this problem, as I learned earlier this year through a particularly embarrassing experience on Sea Dragon.
Follow the link to my blog article for Pangaea Explorations
"Plastic Plunders: A Wake up Call at the Miami Strictly Sail"
So, its up to all of it to figure out a solution.
Follow this link to another one of my blogs where I discuss some ideas:
"How do you envision the future?"
There are two main ways that we can begin;
1) Reduce or stop our use of plastic products by creating biodegradable or functional alternatives.
2) Find a way to remove the plastic material from the ocean water without harming the natural environment.
Do those seem like challenging tasks?
Well, they are. But in my opinion, the most challenging tasks are usually the most important!
What gives me hope about accomplishing these tasks is that the world is already stepping up to the challenge. Check out the articles and resources below to learn about how we are meeting these challenges head on!!
Challenge 1: Creating Biodegradable or Functional Alternatives to Plastic:
Challenge 2: Find a way to remove the plastic material from ocean water without harming the natural environment.
This challenge is quite a bit harder, I think- how do you remove billions of tiny particles of plastic from a fluid, moving environment? How can you do so while also protecting the many different microscopic and delicate species found in ocean water and soil?
The solution hasn't been found yet, but there are people who are tackling this challenge head on. Boyan Slat of the Ocean Clean Up project is one of them. Check out his TedX talk to learn more about his ocean clean up concept:
Boyan recently spent some time on board Pangaea Exploration's sailing vessel Sea Dragon to try out his new multi-level trawl prototype!
Check out his work on Pangaea's Blog.
We're still a long way from solving our plastic soup problem, but that doesn't mean solving it is impossible! If we put our energy, time and efforts towards cleaning up our oceans, I truly feel that we can reverse the plastic soup. My hope is that you do as well.
Article by Asta Mail
|
<urn:uuid:a10b5cad-310e-49e3-9844-732b8dbaf19b>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-24
|
http://www.literasea.ca/plastic-facts
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-24/segments/1590347391309.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20200526191453-20200526221453-00069.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948629 | 1,960 | 2.921875 | 3 |
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY
by Christopher Roden
Although the world has chosen to remember Sir Arthur Conan Doyle chiefly for his creation of the fictional master detective, Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle's life, like the literary canvas he painted, was varied and highly interesting.
Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh on 22 May 1859. His mother, Mary, was of Irish extraction and traced her ancestry back to the famous Percy family of Northumberland and from there to the Plantagenet line. It is little wonder that the young Conan Doyle was told tales steeped in history which were to stand him in good stead when, in later years, he was to write his famous historical novels, The White Company, Sir Nigel, and Micah Clarke.
The Doyle family was a large one—Arthur was one of ten children, seven of whom survived to maturity—and life was difficult for his mother, who struggled to bring up the children on the income of some £240 a year provided by her husband Charles, who pursued an unambitious life as a civil servant. Charles Altamont Doyle was the youngest son of John Doyle, the caricaturist 'H.B.'. His brothers had all made something of a name for themselves: James wrote The Chronicles of England; Henry became manager of the National Gallery in Dublin; and Richard became famous as an artist, most well-known, perhaps, for his cover design for Punch.
Whilst Charles Doyle also had artistic talents, he exercised his skills only intermittently, and lack of drive led to the loss of his post in the Office of Works in Edinburgh. After this he lapsed steadily into alcoholism, and his epilepsy grew increasingly worse, so that he was institutionalized for the final years of his life, finally dying in 1893. [continue reading]
External Links of Interest
Official Website of Doyle's Literary Estate
Sir Conan Doyle.com
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Wikipedia
Discovering Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on Archive.org
The Sherlock Holmes Museum
The Sherlock Holmes Society of London
Sherlock Holmes on Wikipedia
The Singular Society of the Baker Street Dozen
|
<urn:uuid:cc7a077e-3bf4-453a-b6fd-c6888574385f>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-35
|
http://community.artofmanliness.com/group/sherlockholmes
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1409535925433.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20140901014525-00379-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.97687 | 451 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Coffee County farmers planting peanuts, ca. 1939. With the decimation of the cotton crop by the boll weevil in the early twentieth
century, Coffee County farmers were forced to diversify. Peanuts became an important cash crop, thanks in large part to the
efforts of Tuskegee agricultural researcher George Washington Carver.
|
<urn:uuid:a2ecc1c7-1635-467c-8636-edd273f12cf1>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-35
|
http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Multimedia.jsp?id=m-3417
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500829916.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021349-00235-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.923351 | 70 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Historically, tropical ecology has been a science often content with descriptive and demographic approaches, which is understandable given the difficulty of studying these ecosystems and the need for basic demographic information. Nonetheless, over the last several years, tropical ecologists have begun to test more sophisticated ecological theory and are now beginning to address a broad array of questions that are of particular importance to tropical systems, and ecology in general. Why are there are so many species in tropical forests and what mechanisms are responsible for the maintenance of that vast species diversity? What factors control species coexistence? Are there common patterns of species abundance and distribution across broad geographic scales? What is the role of trophic interactions in these complex ecosystems? How can these fragile ecosystems be conserved?
Containing contributions from some of the world’s leading tropical ecologists, Tropical Forest Community Ecologyprovides a summary of the key issues in the discipline of tropical ecology:
- Includes contributions from some of the world’s leading tropical ecologists
- Covers patterns of species distribution, the maintenance of species diversity, the community ecology of tropical animals, forest regeneration and conservation of tropical ecosystems
Keywords: tropical; often; ecology; approaches; content; demographic; descriptive; science; understandable; difficulty; ecosystems; information; basic; several years; last; sophisticated; broad; ecologists; array; theory; begun; ecological, Geography Special Topics, Geography Special Topics
|
<urn:uuid:b9a39b47-81d1-42d5-a140-3b529267db65>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-16
|
https://www.ellibs.com/book/9781405118972/tropical-forest-community-ecology
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371675859.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20200407054138-20200407084638-00340.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.919673 | 287 | 3.53125 | 4 |
The South Shore Estuary Reserve comprises the string of shallow bays, and their watersheds, found along Long Island’s South Shore, from Hempstead Bay on the west to Shinnecock Bay on the east. Within the Reserve, the Western Bays subregion includes Hempstead Bay, South Oyster Bay and the lands that drain into them. These bays have unique environmental features not found in waters to the east and they have witnessed more extensive shorefront development and disturbance than other regions of the Reserve. For years, concern has been building about high nutrient levels in the waters of the Western Bays and the relationship of excess nutrients to a blight of Ulva, or sea lettuce, a submerged macroalga that carpets large areas of the bay floor in the region. With support from the NYS Department of State’s Division of Coastal Resources, a team of SoMAS scientists has initiated a two-year study to examine these issues and to make recommendations that will contribute to the formulation of TotalMaximum Daily Load (TMDL) limits for discharges into the Western Bays.
Unlike bays to the east, which are primarily open water, the Western Bays contain large areas of both open shallows and salt marsh islands in a complex interconnected by channels and tidal creeks. Almost all of the mainland shoreline was bulkheaded in the 1950s and 60s as thousands of acres of tidal wetlands were filled to create new home sites. Virtually all mainland tidal wetlands were eliminated by this filling. As a result of disease and water quality problems, significant losses of submerged aquatic vegetation (eelgrass) beds have also occurred in the Western Bays. Habitat loss and water quality problems have had a negative impact on most of the estuarine species in the region. Recreational finfish species have declined, as have shellfish populations, which are also impaired by low rates of recruitment. Elevated levels of coliform bacteria are responsible for the permanent closure of more than 15,000 acres of shellfish beds in the Western Bays, along with periodic closures of bathing beaches.
The SSER Comprehensive Management Plan identifies stormwater runoff from the highly developed watershed as the most significant source of pollution to the Western Bays. Human waste discharges from vessels, excrement from waterfowl and discharges from municipal wastewater treatment plants are also contributing sources. Nutrients from these sources promote the growth of extensive mats of Ulva that are, in part, responsible for the loss of natural seagrass beds in the area. The Western Bays are on the list of impaired water bodies in New York State for both nutrients and pathogens.
The SoMAS team will document the location and extent of water quality and environmental impairments in the Western Bays, wherever possible tying impaired areas to specific pollution sources. Components of the project include:
- review and assess historic water quality data from the region
- employ state-of-the-art SONAR technology to improve understanding of water movement in the Western Bays, as well as the distribution of bottom sediment type and benthic habitats
- conduct water column surveys to document spatial and temporal patterns of physio-chemical properties and the variability of Ulva populations
- determine the distribution of sewage-derived contaminants, oxygen-demanding organic matter and pathogen indicators in the sediments of the Western Bays
- estimate the rate of marsh subsidence in the region as a consequence of potable water withdrawals from underlying groundwater
- assess the likely impact of contaminants and water quality impairments on the fish community in the Western Bays, based on the health of the winter flounder population
The SoMAS team is headed by Associate Dean for Marine Sciences, Dr. Larry Swanson. Other team members include Dr. Anne McElroy, Dr. Bruce Brownawell, Dr. Robert Wilson, Dr. Roger Flood, Dr. J. Kirk Cochran, Dr. Henry Bokuniewicz and Dr. Christopher Gobler, Dr. Charles Flagg and Dr. Michael Frisk.
The plight of the SSER Western Bays has aroused considerable public and management interest, and this interest has been building for several years. The Western Bays Collaborative Working Group, made up of state and local officials and environmental groups, has pushed hard for state funding for the present study, as well as other work being done in the Western Bays by the U.S. Geological Survey and Battelle. Says Maureen Dolan Murphy of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, “This is the first comprehensive science-based research in the Western Bays…and is the beginning step in developing a much-needed and much-awaited restoration plan for these bays. We are thrilled that SoMAS can now get started on this important work”. Commented Charles DeQuillfeldt, Unit Leader for Marine Monitoring and Assessment at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, “The work being done by SoMAS…will help us determine the causes and extent of water quality and ecosystem impacts to the western shore bays. We expect that the results will lead to improved nutrient and pollution management measures and will provide information that will enable us to better protect natural resources.”
The Western Bays have been altered mightily and that cannot be undone. However, their ecological function and value remain important to all Long Islanders but are under new assaults. Decisive, well-informed remedial and management actions can preserve this system into the future. The SoMAS research is intended to lay the groundwork for such an effort.
|
<urn:uuid:274cbaa8-0dd6-41a7-84b5-9d6a44cb1ef6>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-16
|
https://www.somas.stonybrook.edu/2010/09/24/somas-begins-investigation-of-water-quality-issues-in-the-western-bays-of-the-south-shore-estuary-reserve/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585370493684.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20200329015008-20200329045008-00093.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.940463 | 1,133 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Andrew Atz, MD
Interim Chair, Department of Pediatrics
Antibody mediated rejection (AMR) is potentially devastating to a transplanted kidney, and can be challenging to diagnose without reliable pathology and immunology and even more challenging to treat. The optimal therapy for AMR is not well defined in children or adults, but even with treatment, patients can lose the graft. Our ultimate goal is preventing AMR, by understanding how the antibodies damage the kidney. Our work has been published and presented nationally. We are dedicated to improving the outcomes of AMR treatment and improving the lives of our patients.
Vitamin D deficiency is known to be common in children at all stages of chronic kidney disease and remains common following renal transplantation, and can be as high at 70%. The overall impact of Vitamin D deficiency on outcomes in renal transplant patients has gained renewed interest as the impact of Vitamin D has been shown to extend well beyond that of bone. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with multiple systemic effects that potentially impact renal transplant patients and graft survival including metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease , anemia , impaired immune regulation and hypertension. Vitamin represents an attractive therapeutic target as it represents a relatively benign intervention. There remains a significant gap in the knowledge about the associations between vitamin D deficiency or the impact of supplementation on blood pressure in pediatric kidney transplant patients. Defining this association remains a critical step before any interventional trial can be conducted.
The U.S. News & World Report rankings place the MUSC Children’s Hospital heart program among the top 20 in the country. Six MUSC Children’s Hospital divisions are honored in the rankings:
|
<urn:uuid:e413b26b-d5b7-4246-b335-400b6a98a78d>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-47
|
http://academicdepartments.musc.edu/pediatrics/divisions/nephrology-research-amr.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934805242.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20171119004302-20171119024302-00595.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.933897 | 330 | 2.703125 | 3 |
At a time of global economic crisis, in all of the talk of a subset of that crisis, the housing boom and bust, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the cause of that bust is so very simple. “Behind all the esoteric securities and sophisticated financial dealings are simple, monthly mortgage payments from millions of home buyers across the country.” When the housing payments slowed or stopped, sometimes by necessity and sometimes by choice, the boom turned to a bust. Real estate markets that had seen an unparalleled explosion of growth suddenly saw a catastrophic fall. Behind all the talk of stimulus and bailouts and increasing billions and trillions of dollars is normal people unable to make their $1000 or $2000 monthly mortgage payments.
In The Housing Boom and Bust, conservative economist Thomas Sowell looks to the housing bust and asks the simple, bedrock question: Why did so many monthly mortgage payments stop coming? His answer is as simple as it is lucid. The mortgage payments stopped coming in because during the housing boom, a time where interest rates were at historic lows, mortgages had been given to people whose prospects of repaying them were, at best, very poor. While the banks deserve some of the blame, they were in fact forced to hand out risky loans by government policies that imposed arbitrary quotas set by people whose concern was far more political than economic. These people, in the name of affordable housing and under the banner of political correctness, demanded that loans be provided to people who, under normal circumstances, could not afford them. This pressure caused financial institutions to hand increasingly “creative” (read: risky) mortgages to increasingly risky (read: poor) clients. When normal times resumed and interest rates rose, so too did payments. When payments rose, they became unaffordable and millions of people simply walked away, unable or unwilling to cover the new costs. “Why pay a $500,000 mortgage on a $300,000 home?”, they reasoned. Faced with a glut of foreclosures, banks began to offer homes at fire-sale prices, driving down costs across the market. The bubble burst, the banks began to fail and the government began printing vast quantities of money to stimulate the economy and to bail out the banks. The story continues.
In just 148 pages, Sowell explains where this crisis came from and the events that caused it all to come to a head. Along the way he powerfully exposes the cause of rising housing costs and the folly of affordable housing. As he has done repeatedly elsewhere, he exposes the fallacy of racism in lending institutions, showing that much of the blame must be laid at the feet of politicians. “Politicians in Washington set out to solve a national problem that did not exist–a nationwide shortage of ‘affordable housing’–and have now left us with a problem whose existence is as undeniable as it is painful.” Of course Sowell also proposes a way out of the mess and those who know him will not be surprised to learn that he lobbies for laissez-faire, allowing the economy to sort itself out without massive government intervention.
As he looks to the government’s reaction to the crisis, Sowell’s predominant concern is that the government, led by President Obama, will follow the words of chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. … it’s an opportunity to do things you could not do before.” The government has an almost unparalleled opportunity to use this crisis to “fundamentally and enduringly change the institutions of American society.” Yet the reality is that, for all their flaws, these institutions have had an incredibly successful track record over the past two centuries, this crisis notwithstanding. “What is now being proposed is to jettison all that for the sake of untried theories, because of an economic situation that has arisen in a relatively few years as a result of government interventions with a terrible track record that have led to a crisis that now provides an opportunity for more of the same–in the name of ‘change’.” As the government increases its control over the American economy it essentially buys up the freedom of its people with their own tax dollars.
In The Housing Boom and Bust Sowell provides a plain-English explanation of the economic disaster and one that anyone can read, understand and enjoy. Though the book must have been written in a hurry, it shows none of the usual marks; instead, it is well-written and well-edited. Published just a couple of months ago but dealing with today’s issues, it reads almost like a newspaper or magazine article. If you, like me, have tried and failed to understand the cause of the crisis, this is the place to begin. Sowell is a steady and trustworthy guide.
The Night We Waved Good-Bye to America (Peter Hitchens) – Brother of Christopher Hitchens can see further than hand in front of face.
Intellectuals (Thomas Sowell) – Def. of humanist intellectual: person often wrong who has been educated beyond sanity.
Obama Consults with Homosexual Bishop - Billy Graham out, Gene Robinson in.
Obama Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, Tied to Freddie Mac - Just remember, the mortgage meltdown was all the Republicans fault.
Mischief in Minnesota: Al Franken’s Recount Isn’t Funny (WSJ) – Ends always justify means for humanists.
Why Believe in god – Humanist ad campaign on buses in DC. Humanism: our official state religion.
Churches Vandalized Over Prop 8 Decision – Where’s the “tolerance” for opposing views?
|
<urn:uuid:1919c3b9-22e7-456f-9d2f-d3ac6cc09409>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-10
|
http://thechristianworldview.com/tcwblog/archives/tag/thomas-sowell
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1394011335666/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305092215-00087-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.965443 | 1,179 | 2.515625 | 3 |
- Category: Engineering Trivia
The Coffee Break Quiz - A challenging selection of General Engineering questions and answers
- Sometimes you just don't know what you don't know, but you're sure that you did know or that you should know and when you see the answers you know that once upon a time you probably did know !
Challenge your colleagues - can they answer more than you ?
- Anti-personnel artillery munitions called Shrapnel Shells are named from the latin for " Indiscriminate" - True or False
- Is Shiraz a red or a white wine
- In 1908, which city became the first in the United States to institute chlorination of its water - a) Jersey City b) San Francisco c) Huston d) Boston
- Phosphorus is a nonmetallic chemical element with symbol K - True or False
- The lumen is the SI derived unit of alternating sound waves and a measure of the total "amount" of white noise emitted by a source - True or False
- Mechanical advantage is a measure of the force amplification achieved by using a tool, mechanical device or machine system - True or False
- The Panama Canal connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean True or False
- In process engineering, SCADA stand for Superior Capture And Dissemination of Assets - True or False
- In Electrical Engineering a UPS will typically provide a battery back up or Uninterrupted Power Supply backup - in the event of a mains power loss - True or False
- The Type 51, introduced in 1914,was the first Cadillac with a V8 engine - True or False
SEE NEXT PAGE FOR ANSWERS
1) False - Shrapnel is named after Major-General Henry Shrapnel, an English artillery officer 2) True 3) Red wine 4) a) Jersey City 5) False - Phosphorus is a nonmetallic chemical element with symbol P 6) False - The lumen is the SI derived unit of luminous flux and is a measure of the total "amount" of visible light emitted by a source 7) True 8) False - SCADA stands for "Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition" 9) True 10) True
|
<urn:uuid:1c8d0b5b-64c8-4da1-9dce-c8733b8e72ea>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-35
|
http://www.engcom.net/engineering/blogcategory/46/82/8/32/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500831098.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021351-00313-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.900187 | 449 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Do the Rich Pay Their Fair Share in Taxes?
The central theme of President Obama’s tax policy has been that “the rich” do not pay their fair share of federal taxes, and the middle class pays more as a result. But a report issued by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in July 2012 shows this to be false.
What the Rich Pay in Taxes. According to the CBO, the top 1 percent of income earners paid 39 percent of federal individual income taxes in 2009, while earning 13 percent of the income. That is down from 2007, before President Obama was elected. In 2007, after 25 years of Reagan Republican tax policies, the top 1 percent paid 40 percent of federal individual income taxes — more than double the 17.6 percent share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent when President Reagan entered office in 1981.
The CBO also reports that:
- In 2009, the bottom 40 percent of income earners were paid cash equal to 10 percent of federal individual income taxes by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), net of any federal income taxes they paid.
- In that same year, the middle 20 percent of income earners — the true middle class — paid a net 2.7 percent of total federal individual income taxes, while earning 15 percent of before-tax income.
- And the top 20 percent of income earners — those earning more than $74,000 — paid 94 percent of federal individual income taxes, 85 percent more than the share of national income they earned.
Altogether the bottom 60 percent of income earners, which includes the middle class, paid zero percent of total federal individual income taxes as a group. Instead, as a group, they received net cash payments from the IRS.
Federal Income Taxes and the Poor. Abolishing federal income taxes for low-income individuals began with the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC grew out of then Governor Ronald Reagan’s famous testimony before the Senate Finance Committee in 1972, where he proposed exempting the working poor from all Social Security and income taxes as an alternative to welfare, with the credit serving as a way to offset payroll taxes for the poor and low-income workers. As president, Reagan cut federal income tax rates across the board for all taxpayers by 25 percent. He also indexed the tax brackets for all taxpayers to prevent inflation from pushing working people into higher tax brackets.
In the Tax Reform Act of 1986, President Reagan reduced the federal income tax rate for middle and lower income families all the way down to 15 percent. That act also doubled the personal exemption, shielding a higher proportion of income from taxation for lower income workers than for higher income workers.
Other efforts also reduced taxes for lower income individuals during this period. Consider:
- Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America included a child tax credit of $500 per child that reduced the tax liabilities of lower income people by a higher percentage than for higher income people.
- President George W. Bush doubled that credit to $1,000 per child, and made it refundable so that low-income people who do not even pay $1,000 in federal income taxes could still get the full credit.
- Bush also adopted a new lower tax bracket for the lowest income workers of 10 percent, reducing their federal income tax rate by 33 percent.
What about Payroll Taxes? Some on the Left argue that CBO statistics only account for income taxes and not the payroll taxes that working people still do pay. But the CBO’s accounting is proper, because President Obama argues that the rich do not pay their fair share of federal income taxes — not payroll taxes — and it is federal income taxes that he is proposing to increase, not payroll taxes. Indeed, it has been argued by many on the Right that payroll taxes should be phased out entirely and replaced by personal savings, investment and insurance accounts, relieving middle and lower income workers of those taxes entirely.
In addition, payroll taxes are paid in return for specific entitlement benefits or services, and so all should pay an equivalent amount proportionate to those benefits. The payroll tax consequently is not supposed to be progressive, and should not be.
Nevertheless, even counting payroll taxes in addition to other federal taxes, the story is the same. The “rich” and upper income workers still pay almost all federal taxes, with the middle class and lower income workers paying far lower proportions and rates.
Indeed, in 2009, according to the CBO [see Figure I]:
- The middle 20 percent of income earners paid just 9 percent of federal taxes, less than two-thirds their share of income.
- By contrast, the top 1 percent alone paid over 22 percent of all federal taxes, while earning 13 percent of the income.
- And the top 20 percent of earners paid nearly 70 percent of all federal taxes, while earning 50 percent of the income.
There was also a wide disparity in the tax rates paid by low-, middle- and high-income taxpayers in 2009 [see Figure II]:
- The bottom 20 percent paid an average federal tax rate of 1 percent.
- The middle 20 percent paid an average federal tax rate of 11.1 percent.
- However, the top 1 percent paid an average federal tax rate of 29 percent.
Conclusion. The federal government should abolish the remaining minor share of federal income taxes paid by the middle class. That would enable a rational flat tax to be adopted for the top 40 percent of income earners, who earn 72 percent of all income anyway.
In the last two decades, the two successful Democrat nominees for president campaigned on a tax cut for the middle class, then never delivered a permanent cut after they were elected. But with income taxes for the middle class eliminated, that game would be over.
Peter Ferrara is a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis. A version of this article appeared on Forbes.com.
|
<urn:uuid:bd8f8bf8-c3a5-4e8c-8a70-bd8f172c101e>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba770
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703035278/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111715-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.958808 | 1,206 | 3.3125 | 3 |
New York (PRWEB) November 12, 2006
Borderline Personality Disorder is one of the most serious and fast-growing psychiatric disorders. More patients are now diagnosed with BPD than with Alzheimer's disease, manic depression or schizophrenia. The costs of Borderline Personality Disorder to the patients who suffer from it, their families and to society at large are enormous. About 10 percent of patients with BPD succeed in committing suicide, while 80 percent mutilate themselves and make repeated suicide attempts. BPD patients now account for more than one in every five inpatient psychiatric admissions. Until recently, many mental health professionals considered BPD to be almost untreatable.
Federal agencies, private organizations and scientists have begun to recognize the seriousness of this disorder and have intensified efforts to develop effective treatments. This has led to a significant increase in research studies on BPD in respected journals, large increases in research funding and a declaration of war on the disorder by Dr. John Oldham, former director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and an expert on personality disorders.
Schema Therapy, a new treatment for BPD developed by Dr. Jeffrey Young at Columbia University in the Department of Psychiatry, has led to a major breakthrough in the battle to find an effective treatment. According to a recent study in a leading psychiatric journal, a treatment for BPD has, for the first time, led to full recovery across the full range of symptoms in a high percentage of patients.
In addition to major reductions in self-harming and suicidal behaviors, BPD patients receiving Schema Therapy are now being freed from depression, hopelessness, angry outbursts, and fears of abandonment and rejection. Patients are also developing stable relationships, and making basic and far-reaching changes in personality.
The large-scale outcome study appeared in a recent issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, published by the American Medical Association. According to the study, Schema Therapy was more than twice as effective in bringing about full recovery as a widely-practiced psychodynamic therapy. Schema Therapy was also found to have a much lower dropout rate.
Borderline patients are typically impulsive, unstable, exquisitely sensitive to rejection, have regular outbursts of anger and live daily with extreme emotional pain. Identity problems, low stress tolerance, volatile relationships and fears of abandonment make the disorder difficult for patients and for those who live with them. Many either cannot work or do not function at levels that would be expected in light of their intellectual capacities.
Over their lifetimes, 97 percent of BPD patients will seek psychotherapy from an average of six different therapists, and the rates of treatment failure are very high. Until now, psychotherapy has offered help for only some of the symptoms of BPD. The best available alternatives, such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, succeed in relieving many of the self-harming behavioral symptoms of the disorder, but do not reduce many of the other core symptoms, especially those related to deeper personality change.
For further information about Schema Therapy, contact Jeffrey Young, Ph.D., at the Cognitive Therapy Center of New York: 212-221-0700 or e-mail; or George Lockwood, Ph.D., at the Schema Therapy Institute Midwest: 269-345-8100, or e-mail.
|
<urn:uuid:622c2b35-1ad6-49ab-a58b-774d8f59f584>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/11/prweb477173.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699684236/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102124-00093-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.947224 | 673 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Mobile App Development
Mobile App Development @ RIT is our week-long summer day camp that lets students design and develop a mobile app for Android OS. This camp is enriched with mini-tasks and week-long goals that promote programming skills and creativity. Along with the mini-tasks, instructors teach the students some of the fundamental aspects of Mobile App Development.
We are currently offering Beginner camp level for Mobile App Development. Below are quick details and the outline of the Beginner camp.
Quick Details About the Camp
- Monday – Friday
- Morning Session: 9:45 am – 12:00 pm
- Afternoon Session: 1:00pm – 3:30 pm
- Beginner level offered
- All needed materials are provided to the campers during the camp.
- The campers will use the tablet during camp. The tablet will be gifted to the camper after the camps.Therefore, they can continue developing their own mobile apps.
- The instructions will be given using a web based Mobile App Development environment called App Inventor, developed by MIT.
- The Age Requirement below for the camp is not restrictive. Anyone from 6th-10th grade can register. It shows the teaching level of the camp and what age groups it was designed for.
- Age Requirement (Rising 6th-10th grades)
- Some programming experience is recommended but not required.
- Learn basic knowledge about variables, control statements, loops
- Learn basic property of widgets (Button, Label, Image, etc.)
- Learn how to design a user interface
- Learn how to compile and install app on a tablet
- Final Competition (Best Mobile App)
|
<urn:uuid:972f662a-6732-4d29-9e34-266b750fdfb2>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-34
|
https://robocamp.rit.edu/mobile-app-development/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439737206.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20200807172851-20200807202851-00534.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.905464 | 349 | 2.515625 | 3 |
What is Urticaria?
Urticaria, or hives, is a condition in which red, itchy, and swollen areas appear on the skin – usually as an allergic reaction from eating certain foods or taking certain medicines.
Foods commonly cause hives:
Medicines commonly cause hives:
- anticonvulsant drugs
- dermatographism – hives caused by scratching the skin, continual stroking of the skin, or wearing tight-fitting clothes that rub the skin.
- cold-induced – hives caused by exposure to cold air or water.
- solar hives – hives caused by exposure to sunlight or light-bulb light.
- chronic urticaria – recurrent hives with no known cause
- Emotional stress
- Excessive perspiration
- Illness (including lupus, other autoimmune diseases, and leukemia
- Infections such as mononucleosis
- Swelling of the surface of the skin into red- or skin-colored welts (called wheals) with clearly defined edges
The hives may get bigger, spread, and join together to form larger areas of flat, raised skin.
They can also change shape, disappear, and reappear within minutes or hours. A true hive comes and goes. When you press the center of one, it turns white. This is called blanching.
|
<urn:uuid:2474b942-dd32-4972-9a46-d87d897aa4eb>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-14
|
https://ashwinihomoeopathy.com/urticaria/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296943845.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20230322145537-20230322175537-00227.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.896988 | 330 | 3.796875 | 4 |
CLIENT: City of Herrenhut
PROJECT DURATION: 01.01.2011 - 31.12.2015
OVERALL PROJECT VALUE: 1,919,151.24 €
Early childhood development includes education measures for children between 0 and 6 years of age (level 0 ISCED classification). Early childhood education of IB institutions includes different institutional measures: amongst others cradles (children between 0 and 3 years of age), kindergarten (children between 3 and 6 years of age), playing and learning facilities, adventure playgrounds, pre-school classes as well as day care nanny support. The IB educational services provided for children are based upon the Child and Youth Services Act (German Code of Social Law -chapter VIII) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. IB early childhood institutions focus an inclusive model of pre-school education taking care of children with and without disabilities.
The IB early childhood programme is embedded in the regional conditions and is based on education and organization to the specific needs of children and their families. Children acquire the proper development taking responsibility, especially social skills and the ability and willingness to democratic participation. The bodies of the early childhood education of the IB working on the basis of different pedagogical approaches, including Montessori and Reggio pedagogy, as well as environmental education and situational approach. To particular forms of organization of learning and development processes include amongst others
Type of Services Provided
|
<urn:uuid:bf71a8ae-c1c2-45f0-a1e4-9c156a453b3a>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-14
|
https://ib.international/mainnavigation/early-childhood-development-kita-storchennest-herrenhut
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296950030.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20230401125552-20230401155552-00691.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.949453 | 307 | 2.609375 | 3 |
In Central Florida today, environmental sustainability is the responsibility of every developer and builder, and all levels of government. Inherent in this philosophy is the compelling need to respect, and even augment, the Wekiva Basin’s natural resources.
Among the most challenging issues of environmental protection is wetland mitigation. Although costly, time consuming and risk filled, mitigation is vital to the preservation, enhancement and creation of functioning wetlands and habitat alike.
|Description||The mitigation area, the site of a former sand mine operation, was mined below the
water table in most areas. As a consequence of mining, the hydrology of the site was
altered and overburden was deposited on the adjacent wetlands and uplands.
|Type of Credits available||Freshwater forested wetland credits, freshwater herbaceous wetland credits|
|Federal Credit Availability||Click here.|
|State Credit Availability||Call our POC for the most updated information.|
|Point of Contact||Sheri Lewin 352-394-1125
About Blackwater Creek Mitigation Bank
Among the most challenging issues of environmental protection is wetland mitigation. Although costly, time consuming and risk-filled, mitigation is vital to the preservation, enhancement and creation of functioning wetlands and habitat alike.
Today, the Blackwater Creek Mitigation Bank (BCMB) is a viable and effective mitigation solution that is within the Wekiva River Nested Drainage Basin. The 466 acre bank is approved by the St. Johns River Water Management District and the United States Army Corps of Engineers to provide both state and federal:
- Freshwater forested wetland credits
- Freshwater herbaceous wetland credits
These credits are available for impacts to the St. Johns River and Wekiva River Nested Basin. Please see the BCMB Service Area on reverse.
The mitigation area, the site of a former sand mine operation, was mined below the water table in most areas. As a consequence of mining, the hydrology of the site was altered and overburden was deposited on the adjacent wetlands and uplands.
The St. Johns River Water Management District has determined the Wekiva Basin to be of critical concern and designated it as a Nested Basin. The BCMB is located within the Wekiva River Nested Basin and adjacent to environmentally sensitive tracts of land that are contiguous with the Ocala National Forest.
The Wetlandsbank Company (TWC), a nationally recognized team, is responsible for the BCMB’s design and implementation which will fully restore the Blackwater Creek area. As one of the leading mitigation bankers in the country, the TWC team significantly increases the probability of a fast, hassle-free mitigation transfer procedure with less cost and “red tape.” Permit applicants with projects that have wetland impacts have the opportunity to embrace the advantages of purchasing credits from our bank. By transferring their project’s mitigation obligations to BCMB clients benefit by:
- Being provided one fixed predetermined fee with no cost overruns.
- The prevention of assets being tied up.
- Optimizing the full potential of the proposed site.
- Reducing permitting time.
- Providing regulatory certainty with no hidden surprises.
- Streamlining the development process.
- Enhancing project value.
- Working with a team who understands your concerns.
- Contributing to an environmentally significant restoration.
|
<urn:uuid:57d4ecd8-2708-4547-ad66-e802679cc7a0>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-29
|
http://wetlandsbank.com/blackwater-creek-mitigation-bank/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593657154789.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20200715003838-20200715033838-00086.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.909748 | 699 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Albania (Albanian Shqipëria, “Country of the Eagle”), republic in southeastern Europe, officially known as the Republic of Albania. It lies along the northwestern edge of the Balkan Peninsula.
Separated from Italy by only 76 km (47 mi) of the Adriatic Sea, Albania, throughout its history, has been occupied by Italian powers expanding eastward into the Balkans or by Balkan powers expanding westward. In the 1500s Albania came under the rule of the Ottoman Empire (centered in what is now Turkey), and did not gain its independence until 1912. From 1944 to 1990 Albania was a staunchly Communist state, and in 1991 Albania began its transition to a democratic state and market economy. The capital and largest city is Tirana.
|II||LAND AND RESOURCES|
With a total area of 28,748 sq km (11,100 sq mi), Albania is roughly the size of the state of Massachusetts. The greatest distance from north to south is about 345 km (about 215 mi) and from east to west about 150 km (about 95 mi). Albania is bordered by the Adriatic Sea to the west, Greece to the south, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) to the east, Serbia to the northeast, and Montenegro to the northwest.
Albania is a mountainous country in which about 70 percent of the land lies above 300 m (1,000 ft). Its mountains, which form a broad backbone from northwest to southeast, rise abruptly from the coastal lowlands to elevations of more than 2,400 m (8,000 ft). In the north are the most rugged mountains, where a massive limestone extension of the Dinaric Alps reaches inland for 40 km (25 mi) from nearby Montenegro. In the central uplands lies Mount Korab, the country’s highest peak, at 2,764 m (9,068 ft). Strong erosive forces have created bare rock surfaces, deeply incised valleys, and a scarcity of meadowlands in this region. South of the Alps, the uplands are lower and more rounded, extending southeastward in a series of plateaus and ranges that merge with the Pindus Mountains in northern Greece.
The western coastal region consists of low hills and lower reaches of valleys that open onto the coastal plain. This is Albania’s most densely populated area and comprises most of the land used for farming. Even here a series of flat areas are interrupted by hill country. Most of the soils are difficult to farm because of drainage and water-supply problems. Only the younger, lighter soils near the many rivers are easily cultivated, but are often flooded as well. Albania is subject to occasional earthquakes.
|B||Rivers and Lakes|
Albania’s longest river is the Drin, total length 282 km (175 mi), which originates at two headwaters in Serbia and the FYROM and flows through northern Albania. Other major rivers include the Seman, the Shkumbin, and the Aóös (Vjöse). Because most of Albania’s rivers flow at high elevations, they are usually mountain torrents by the time they reach the coastal plain. In the mountains, rivers have cut deep gorges with near-vertical walls as high as 90 m (300 ft) above the water. The gorges make irrigation difficult, but are well suited for the huge dams that give Albania and nearby countries cheap hydroelectric power. Along the lower course of the rivers, irrigation is also difficult because sediment-laden streams often break out of their beds and shift channels. Irrigation is feasible only in valley bottoms. Albania also shares three large lakes with neighboring states. Lake Scutari in the north lies partly in Montenegro, Lake Ohrid in the east lies partly in the FYROM, while Lake Prespa in the southeast lies in Albania, the FYROM, and Greece.
|C||Plant and Animal Life|
Some 28 percent of Albania is forested with mixed stands of willow, poplar, elm, pine, oak, and white beech trees. Many of the forests near transportation routes have been heavily logged and some have given way to sheep pastures. In these areas, the soil is either washed or blown away during the summer drought, and even in humid months the grass grows sparsely in clumps. Because of heavy grazing by livestock in the summer and the summer drought, much of Albania is unfavorable for wildlife. Wolves, deer, and boars have been pushed back into the most remote forests. Wild fowl, however, are abundant in lowland forests.
Albania is rich in natural resources. The southwestern part of the country is well endowed with natural gas and petroleum. The northeastern region has large reserves of mineral deposits including chromium, copper, iron, and nickel. Large deposits of lignite (a soft, brown coal) are found near Tirana, and natural asphalt is mined near Selenicë. For centuries the forests have provided fuel in wood and charcoal.
Albania’s climate varies with topography. The coastal lowlands have a Mediterranean climate with arid, almost cloudless summers featuring high temperatures both day and night. Winters are rainy but mild, and in the southern lowlands freezing temperatures are rare. In the mountains rain falls much more often in summer, and the northern regions experience more humidity than the south. Temperatures may soar in the daytime, but nights are much cooler. In winter the mountains, like the lowlands, are subject to heavy and frequent thunderstorms, but in the mountains storms are accompanied by heavy snow.
The average temperatures in August, the hottest month, range from 17° to 31°C (63° to 88°F). In January, the coldest month, they range from 2° to 12°C (36° to 54°F). December, the wettest month, has an average rainfall of 211 mm (8.3 in) while the driest months, July and August, receive only 32 mm (1.3 in) of rain. On the coast annual rainfall averages 1,000 mm (40 in), but it may be as great as 2,500 mm (100 in) in the mountains.
Both the former Communist government and new administrations have harvested timber in vast quantities. As a result, many forests are degraded, wildlife is threatened, and farms have taken over land once forested. The effects of past deforestation, livestock grazing, and flooding have contributed to a rate of soil erosion that exceeds the natural process of new soil production. The extraction of oil and minerals has also created environmental problems, contaminating air, soil, and groundwater, particularly in central Albania. Public education about conservation, pollution controls, and recycling is limited, and the government has focused most of its resources on economic growth rather than environmental concerns. However, in the early 1990s several environmental interest groups were established, and the government created a committee to educate the public and offer solutions to environmental problems.
Joining the international community in its concern over the degradation of the environment, Albania is party to international agreements concerning biodiversity, climate change, and wetlands.
|III||THE PEOPLE OF ALBANIA|
In 2008 Albania’s population estimate was 3,619,778, resulting in an average density of 132 persons per sq km (342 per sq mi). More and more people have left rural areas for urban ones, particularly in the northern districts, such that in 2005 some 45 percent of the population lived in urban areas, compared to one-fifth in 1950. Albania has had one of the highest birth rates in Europe since the end of World War II (1939-1945) while the death rate has been one of the continent’s lowest. A high rate of population growth was state policy under the Communist regime, which viewed it as essential to Albania’s strength and prosperity.
Tirana, in the central region, is the capital and largest city. Albania’s second largest city, Durrës, lies on the Adriatic coast to the west and is by far the country’s largest seaport. Other large cities include Elbasan in central eastern Albania, Shkodër in the northwest, and the port of Vlorë in the south central region.
Albanians are among the most ancient ethnic groups in southeastern Europe. Their ancestors, the Illyrians, were an Indo-European people who settled in the Balkans long before the Greeks. Modern-day Albania consists almost exclusively of ethnic Albanians, who call themselves Shqipetars (Sons of the Eagle). Only 5 percent of Albania’s residents are of non-Albanian heritage, most of whom are Greek.
Albanians are divided by the Shkumbin River into two major dialect groups: the Ghegs in the north and the Tosks in the south. The Ghegs, who make up two-thirds of Albanians, are less intermarried with non-Albanians than the Tosks, who throughout history were more often subjected to foreign rule and other foreign influences. In the past, the Ghegs were organized in clans and the Tosks in a semifeudal society, but the Communists largely erased both types of organization. Before World War II the Ghegs dominated Albanian politics, but after the war many Tosks came to power because the new Communist government drew most of its support from Tosks.
The official language of Albania is Albanian. Because Albanian evolved from the extinct Illyrian language, it is the only modern representative of a distinct branch of the Indo-European language family. Tosks and Ghegs speak different dialects of Albanian, but both groups can understand each other. Tosk became the official standard dialect under the Communists and remains so today. See Albanian Language.
With 70 percent of its population Muslim, Albania is Europe’s only predominantly Islamic state. Orthodox Christians, living mostly in southern Albania, make up 20 percent of the population, and Roman Catholics, mainly in the north, make up another 10 percent. Religious divisions in Albania are not significant, and religious tolerance is such that members of the same family sometimes belong to different religions. Most Muslim Albanians are traditional Sunnis (see Sunni Islam), but about one-fourth belong to the Bektashi sect, a tolerant, unorthodox order.
The Communist government outlawed all religions in 1967, making Albania the world’s first officially atheist country. Places of worship were closed, church property was confiscated, religious services were banned, and religious practitioners were persecuted. The ban on religion was lifted in 1990. Many churches and mosques have been rebuilt or reopened, and a growing number of people express religious beliefs.
Illiteracy in Albania, which had long been widespread, was dramatically lowered by the Communists; in 2000 the literacy rate had climbed to 85 percent of the adult population. Education is compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 13. In 2002–2003 nearly all school-age children attended primary school, but only 81 percent attended secondary school. Several universities, including the University of Tirana (founded in 1957), operate in Albania. The Communists encouraged education for women, and today enrollment rates for girls are roughly equal to those for boys in all levels of schooling.
Under Communist rule, education was also used to indoctrinate students with Communist beliefs. Before entering college, students were required to work for one year; after finishing their studies, another year of work and military training was required. After Communism collapsed, reforms removed politics and ideology from schools, although schools continue to receive large subsidies from the state. Work and military requirements were also dropped.
|F||Way of Life|
Traditional clothing consists of colorfully embroidered shirts and dresses and in some regions loose-fitting pants for women. Traditional clothing was discouraged under the Communists in favor of inexpensive, modern clothing made by the state. Since the democratic changes in government, people have more choice in clothing, particularly in urban areas. Traditional costumes are still worn in many rural and upland areas, especially among women.
The Communists greatly expanded housing in rural and urban areas. Urban homes were owned by the state, consisting chiefly of apartment blocks with attached cultural and recreational facilities and state-owned stores. In the countryside dwellings were usually one- or two-story family houses, mostly for peasants living on collective farms, and small apartment blocks for workers on state farms. As a result of post-Communist reforms, tenants in small apartments were allowed to own their homes free of charge. People who lived in larger dwellings could buy them from the state for small fees. Over the next few years, many state properties became private and a market for private homes developed. Still, housing construction in the mid-1990s did not keep pace with the country’s high rates of birth and migration to cities. As a result, some cities were overcrowded and the number of shanty dwellings grew.
The Communists ended much of the traditional, male-dominated clan system and guaranteed equal rights to women. Aspects of the clan system survived, especially in the highlands, but men there have considerably less authority today. The legal age for marriage was 18 years old for both sexes and access to divorce was equalized between spouses. However, virtually no birth control was available to women because the state wanted them to bear children. Since the democratic reforms, women have become more organized and established their own associations. Nonetheless, women’s participation in the country’s political life remains limited.
For recreation, many Albanians watch television, play sports such as soccer and volleyball, and walk in the city centers. Under Communism, state-subsidized holiday centers were provided for families, many of whom traveled to the coast or visited the mountains during the summer. However, when the subsidies were removed in 1993, vacations became too expensive for all but a few Albanians. Even fewer can afford to visit foreign countries.
The standard of living has improved in Albania since the collapse of the Communist system, but the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. The newly rich are mostly entrepreneurs who have taken advantage of growth opportunities, while the newly poor are those who depended on the state welfare system and, in the absence of that system, suffer. Homelessness and hunger are higher now than under the Communists. Democratic reforms in the early 1990s also brought a growth in crime, in part because controls once exercised by the state and police were lifted. The police were quickly restructured and have succeeded in stopping the worst excesses, but organized crime continues.
Albania’s distinctive culture also borrows from the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Turks, Slavs, and Italians, who conquered the Balkans. Despite the foreign influences, Albanian culture retains a remarkable degree of homogeneity (sameness in composition).
Under Ottoman rule (16th century to 20th century), Turkish and Greek Orthodox stories and myths played an important part in Albanian folklore. Tales were passed down through the generations in the form of heroic songs, legends, and epics. This oral tradition helped the native language and national identity survive until written texts emerged. The oldest known document in the Albanian language dates to 1462. In the late 19th century, under Ottoman rule, the brothers Naim and Sami Frasheri developed an underground Albanian literature by combining linguistic purity and patriotism. This nationalist movement inspired many writers in later decades, including lyric poet Gjergj Fishta. Another prominent nationalist writer was Fan Noli, a Western-educated Orthodox bishop and leader of the country during the 1920s. In addition to writing books, Noli translated western European books and poems into Albanian. Under the Communists, censorship was strict, topics permissible for discussion were few, and as a result, the country’s literature was deadened. After the collapse of one-party rule, literature was freed of most censorship, and many books are now published and distributed in the country. Perhaps the best-known living Albanian writer is Ismail Kadare, author of the novel The General of the Dead Army (1963).
|B||Art and Architecture|
Painting in Albania was strongly influenced by Byzantine art in the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), although by the end of the early Renaissance (15th century to 17th century) Italian influence was strong. The painting of icons (religious symbols) grew as a form of both public, or displayed, art and folk art. The style of icon painting, created in the mid-18th century, remained virtually unchanged through the early 20th century. Notable Albanian artists of the 20th century included Vangjush Mijo and Androniqi Zenge, both of whom are credited with introducing Western-style impressionism to Albania in the mid-1930s. Odhise Paskal, another 20th-century artist, sculpted Albanian heroes. Folk arts today include clothing decorated with delicate silver ornaments, wood-crafted items for the home, and woolen rugs.
The oldest architectural monuments in Albania date from the 1st millennium bc and were constructed by the Illyrians. From the middle of the 1st millennium bc through the middle of the 1st millennium ad, the Greeks and Romans who occupied Albania built structures still visible in urban and rural landscapes. In the Middle Ages, Christian religious architecture emerged in Albania’s Christian north while Islamic and Turkish-style architecture emerged in the south. Until the mid-20th century, most Albanian cities were dominated by two-story stone residences with tiled roofs. In wooded regions, houses were made of boards rather than stone; in coastal regions, they were clay, adobe or reed, with coatings of clay. Today, mass-produced Soviet-style housing predominates in urban and suburban settings while traditional architecture predominates in rural and mountainous regions.
|C||Music and Dance|
Like the literature native to Albania, Albanian folk music often contains themes of honor, loyalty, and courage. Styles range from the heroic songs of the mountains to the more musically complex lieder (a type of ballad), which is accompanied by instruments and common in the south. The most common traditional instrument is the lahute (lute), which is similar to the Slavic gusle. Also in the south, saze (small orchestras) composed of four or five instruments play music for folk dancing on special occasions. Notable folk musicians of the late 20th century included Tefta Tashko, Maria Paluca, and Gjorgjija Filce. Two of the most distinguished composers of Albanian music are Kristi Kono and writer, bishop, and political leader Fan Noli. Traditional dance is still widely practiced, especially in more remote villages. Because of Islamic influences, especially in the south, women and men often do not dance together in public.
|D||Theater and Film|
Theater was neither popular nor widespread in Albania before World War I (1914-1918). The first Albanian play, Emma, was written in 1887 by an Italo-Albanian, Anton Santori, and dealt with themes of the Albanian diaspora (migration to other countries). Instead of accurately portraying daily life, prewar drama depicted the romantic patriotism of the past. Under the Communists, theater became a weapon of propaganda, and new theaters and plays with Communist themes were encouraged. The plays, however, were subjected to more rigorous censorship than written literature, thereby crushing much creativity and stunting the growth of a native theater. Foreign theater companies were also banned. Nevertheless, a few talented playwrights, including Loni Papa, emerged in this period. In the mid-1990s theater continued to lag behind Albanian literature in its development.
Cinema is also undeveloped. During the Communist period, films, like plays, focused on heroics. Popular themes included the anti-Turk struggles of folk hero Skenderbeg, Albanian resistance to assimilation by foreigners, and the clash between tradition and change. Although there are fewer political restrictions on film today than in the Communist era, a lack of money and technical resources continues to hamper the growth of Albanian film.
|E||Libraries and Museums|
Albania is home to many museums of archaeology; local, military, and natural history; ethnography (the study of cultures); and religious and secular (nonreligious) art. Notable museums in Tirana include the National Museum of Archaeology (founded in 1948). Throughout the 20th century the holdings of Albania’s libraries grew dramatically. The country’s largest library, the National Library (1922) in Tirana, acquired many of its one million books through Communist confiscation of private libraries. The library system at the University of Tirana (1957) also features a large collection.
Albania emerged from the Communist era as the poorest country in Europe. Under the Communists, the state controlled all economic activities; private ownership and private enterprise were forbidden. Because the state tended to invest in heavy industry, the popular demand for consumer goods was neglected. Furthermore, the constitution did not allow other countries to invest in or aid Albania. On the other hand, there was little unemployment since the state guaranteed almost everyone a job.
In the early 1990s Albania’s new, democratically elected leaders started a far-reaching program to reform Albania’s economy. Many state businesses were privatized, key decisions about production and demand were taken away from the state, and restrictions on trade and foreign investment were lifted. At first, between 1989 and 1992, the disruption brought by the end of the Communist era and the start of market reforms led to a steep economic decline with soaring unemployment and widespread poverty. However, in 1993 Albania’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 11 percent; in 1994 by 7 percent; and in 1995 by 6 percent—the highest growth in Europe. From 1992 to 1995 inflation dropped from a yearly average of 226 percent to 7 percent, and by 1995 the state controlled only 40 percent of the total economy. The rapid growth was due mainly to a recovery in farming spurred by rapid privatization and land reforms. In 2006 the GDP was $9.10 billion, or about $2,868 a person.
Foreign aid, initially critical during the economic transformation, has become less important since the recovery in farming. However, the country still relies on tens of thousands of Albanians working in Greece, Italy, and Germany who send hard currency home to support their families. While living conditions for most Albanians have improved and consumer goods and services are more available now than they were under Communism, poverty is still extensive. Other problems included a failing infrastructure, obsolete machinery, lack of raw materials, a shortage of skilled workers and managers, and poor labor discipline.
In 2006 the labor force numbered 1.4 million people. Some 42 percent of these workers were women. The largest share of the labor force, 58 percent, worked in agriculture; 14 percent worked in manufacturing, mining, and construction; and the remaining 28 percent worked in transportation, communications, trade, public administration, and various other services. The unemployment rate, which peaked at 40 percent in 1992, fell to 15 percent by 1995. However, as more people migrated from the country to cities, cities experienced a job shortage. As a result, many of the new city dwellers depend on state benefits for survival.
Under the Communist regime, free labor unions were outlawed and the ruling party tightly controlled the workplace. During 1991 the democratic government allowed independent unions to form, the most important of which is the Union of Independent Trade Unions of Albania. The former government-controlled union is now the free Confederation of Albanian Trade Unions, to which most state workers belong.
Under the Communists, agriculture was collectivized (worked by the people collectively) and prices were strictly controlled by the government, which oversaw 120 state farms and 420 agricultural collectives. In the early decades of Communist rule, large resources were spent on projects to reclaim, irrigate, and fertilize farms. About half the labor force worked in agriculture, and the country met nearly all food needs from its own farms, as it still does today. By the mid-1970s Albania was self-sufficient in grain production. Despite the successes, agricultural production was hindered by lack of machinery, poor management, lack of incentives for farmers, and the persistence of traditional farming methods.
A series of land reforms beginning in 1991 transformed Albanian agriculture. State farms and cooperatives were taken apart, almost all cultivated land (21 percent of the country’s total land area) was privatized, and peasants were allowed to raise crops and livestock for profit. In addition, a free market for farm produce was established, and steps were taken to modernize the farm sector. While Albania was almost totally dependent on foreign aid for food during the transition years from 1991 to 1993, by 1994 the reforms began to pay off. Production on farms grew by 15 percent that year, and farming grew from about one-third of the GDP in the 1980s to 23 percent of the GDP in 2005.
Important crops are wheat, corn, sugar beets, sunflower seeds, tobacco, fruit, and potatoes. Albanian farmers have shifted away from industrial crops like cotton, partly because the country’s textile industry is declining. Numbers of livestock, especially cattle, have grown, as has the dairy industry. Meat, more affordable than it was under the Communist regime, is becoming a more regular part of Albanians’ diets. In the mid-1990s about half of Albania’s exports were unprocessed goods, with food and cattle occupying a high percentage. However, in many villages mules and donkeys were still used for transportation and cattle still pulled farm tools.
|C||Forestry and Fishing|
Forests cover 28 percent of Albania, mostly with willow, alder, tamarisk, poplar, oak, maple, hornbeam, lime, elm, beech, and conifer. The country’s forests provide wood and fuel, as they have for centuries. Since the end of Communist rule, much of Albania’s timber harvesting and processing has been performed either by privatized businesses once owned by the state or by new businesses. The management of forests, however, remains in state hands, and in the mid-1990s forests could be cut only for domestic use. Despite Albania’s location on the Adriatic Sea, fishing is not a significant industry, and domestic markets for freshwater and saltwater food products are limited.
Albania is rich in mineral resources, including large reserves of chromium, copper, and iron-nickel. The country also has smaller deposits of gold, silver, bauxite, magnesite, and zinc. In 1994 chrome, found at Pogradec in eastern Albania and in the Drin River valley, accounted for 18 percent of all Albanian exports and was the country’s biggest earner of foreign currency. Albania is the world’s third largest producer of chromium and the only country in Europe with significant reserves, estimated at more than 33 million metric tons of recoverable ore (5 percent of known world deposits).
In 1991 and 1992 mining production collapsed and the mining workforce was halved to around 10,000 workers. Labor is now concentrated in chrome and copper, where it is believed reserves can support production until about 2025. Like the rest of the country’s industry, mining suffers from outdated equipment and technology, disruption of production and supply lines, and lack of managerial expertise. Moreover, most reserves lie in deep deposits in remote and mountainous areas of Albania’s north and east, making them more expensive to reach. The government has begun to modernize the mining sector, mostly by attracting foreign investment, but investors have not been easy to find.
Between the early 1960s and the late 1980s Albania developed a diversified industrial base, but when the Communist period ended, almost all manufacturing stopped. Employment in manufacturing dropped from 325,000 in 1989 to 126,000 in 1993, and industrial output fell by 74 percent between 1990 and 1994. In 2005 industry (including manufacturing, mining, and construction) made up 22 percent of Albania’s GDP. Revival of manufacturing is vital for the country’s recovery. The country’s chief manufactured products include machinery and equipment, cement, soap, furniture, bricks, footwear, textiles, cigarettes, and electronic equipment. A growing percentage of the manufacturing sector is owned privately, and the government continues to encourage privatization. Because manufacturers still rely on obsolete equipment and technology, modernization has become a high priority for newly privatized firms.
Because of torrential rivers well suited for hydroelectric plants, Albania is largely self-sufficient in energy. However, businesses and households use more energy than in the past, and outdated and worn-out equipment is hard-pressed to meet the demand. Hydroelectric plants, mostly on the Drin, Mat, and Bistricë rivers, yield 95 percent of the country’s generating capacity. Albania has moderate oil reserves located near the central Albanian town of Berat. Of the estimated 490 million metric tons of reserves, about 10 percent has been extracted. The oil is pumped by pipeline to a large refinery near Elbasan and to the seaport of Vlorë. Natural gas is also extracted and some deposits of lignite are mined in the central and southern mountain regions.
As a result of the government’s isolationist policies, Albania had no tourist industry until recently. However, the country’s Mediterranean coastline and mostly unspoiled mountainous interior offer great tourist potential. An estimated 60,000 tourists visited Albania in 2006. The major tourist destinations include Tirana, the southern coastal areas, the northern mountains, and several archaeological sites. Most tourists are Albanian emigrants from the West as well as Greeks, Italians, Germans, and other western Europeans. The country’s one international airport in Rinas, near Tirana, was renovated in the mid-1990s. If tourism continues to grow, other facilities, services, and infrastructure will also need improvements.
In the two decades after World War II, Albania traded almost exclusively with other Communist states, mostly in Eastern Europe. Following a rift with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1961, Albania shifted most of its trade to China until 1978, when a rift ended relations with China. In the late 1960s Albania renewed some economic ties with Western Europe, and after the fall of Communism, Albania conducted most of its trade with the European Union (EU). Italy is Albania’s most important trading partner, accounting for half of exports and 40 percent of imports. Other leading purchasers of exports are the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary; sources for imports are FYROM, Germany, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Greece.
In the economic decline following the end of Communist rule both imports and exports suffered, although by the mid-1990s both were again growing, with imports dominant. Exports totaled $596 million in 2004, while imports cost $2.27 billion, leaving Albania with a large trade deficit (the difference between exports and imports). Usually, when a country like Albania has a large trade deficit, it is cause for economic concern, but following Albania’s recession, growing imports were seen as a sign of economic recovery. Imports consist mostly of food and automobiles as well as machinery, industrial equipment, fertilizers, and consumer goods. Exports are mostly raw materials and fuels, including, in order of importance, chrome and chrome products, copper, nickel, furs, tobacco, bitumen, electricity, and petroleum. About 70 percent of all exports now come from the private sector.
|I||Currency and Banking|
Albania’s main monetary unit is the lek (98.1 leks equal U.S.$1; 2006 average). The central bank and bank of issue is the Bank of Albania, located in Tirana. Albania is one of the world’s few market economies with no domestic private banks, although there are plans to privatize two of the three commercial banks.
Albania’s archaic transportation system is one of the biggest hurdles to economic growth. The country has 18,000 km (11,185 mi) of roads, which connect most towns and villages; however, the roads are in desperate need of repair and expansion. Private cars were banned in Albania until 1991 when there were only 50,000 registered vehicles (about 15 for every 1,000 people). Most belonged to the Communist Party elite. By 2002 the country had 70 motor vehicles per 1,000 inhabitants, and automobiles had become the largest single import. Bicycles are still common and a bus system operates in most of the country. In the more remote highlands, mules and donkeys are used for transportation. Albania has 447 km (278 mi) of railroad track, much of it built in the 1940s. The rail system connects mostly industrial and mining centers, is slow and inefficient, and needs a thorough overhaul.
Albania has two main ports, Durrës and Vlorë. Durrës, 35 km (22 mi) from Tirana, handles 90 percent of Albania’s shipping. In 1996 and 1997 Rinas, the country’s only international airport, received a $30 million renovation. The growth of tourism has led to proposals for a second international airport in southern Albania.
During the Communist era, all publications as well as television and radio broadcasting were controlled by the state. The state appointed editors and journalists, censored information tightly, and used press outlets as tools of propaganda. Because of the extreme repression, no opposition publications appeared until the closing years of Communist rule. After 1991 most restrictions were lifted and an independent press began to function, although publications are often tied to specific political parties. Television and radio remain under state control, but the censorship is less severe than during the Communist period. The most important newspapers include the dailies Rilindja Demokratike, published by the Democratic Party; Zeri I Popullit, once the major newspaper of the state, now published by the Socialists; and Republika, published by the Republican Party. Other major periodicals include the weekly Drita, the monthly Nentori, and the independent, nonpartisan newspaper Koha Jonë.
Albania’s telecommunications system is inefficient and thinly spread across the country. In the mid-1990s state-owned Albanian Telecom began a major program to upgrade and expand the network. Most households have radios, and many have televisions. Only a few thousand people, mostly the newly emerging business class, have access to computers.
From 1944 to 1991 Albania’s government was controlled completely by the Communist Party, known from 1948 as the Albanian Party of Labor (APL). The party’s preeminence was assured by the 1976 constitution, which defined the APL as the “sole leading political force of state and society” and named Marxism-Leninism as the country’s official ideology. Power was effectively consolidated in one man, Enver Hoxha. He was first secretary, or head, of the party’s Politburo (the policy-making body) from 1944 until his death in 1985. Hoxha ruled Albania with an iron fist and stifled any dissension. The party’s control over society and public institutions, which was near-absolute, was reinforced by the Sigurimi, the secret police.
After Hoxha’s death in 1985, Albania began to emerge from its isolation. Anti-Communist upheavals swept across Eastern Europe in 1989, and in 1990 Albania legalized opposition parties. In March 1991, after an interim constitution was approved, Albania held its first multiparty elections in nearly 50 years.
In November 1998 voters approved Albania’s first post-Communist constitution, which declared the country a parliamentary republic. The new constitution provides for multiparty elections and guarantees freedoms of speech, religion, press, assembly, and organization.
A president serves as Albania’s head of state and shares control of the armed forces with the prime minister. The president is elected by the parliament, known as the People’s Assembly, to a five-year term, and is limited to two terms. The president appoints the prime minister nominated by the party or coalition of parties that has a majority of seats in the Assembly. The Assembly must then approve the appointee. If the Assembly fails to approve the president’s appointee three times, the president dissolves parliament. The president can return a proposed law to parliament for review once, but the law will take effect if a parliamentary majority then approves its passage. The prime minister is the head of government and chair of the Council of Ministers, or cabinet. The prime minister and Council of Ministers are in charge of the country’s economic, social, and cultural affairs. The president and prime minister are jointly responsible for foreign relations and security affairs.
The People’s Assembly consists of a single house with 140 deputies, 15 less than were provided under the interim constitution. Of the total number of deputies, 100 are directly elected from districts and the other 40 are chosen from party lists according to the proportion of votes each party or coalition receives. All citizens age 18 and older are eligible to vote. The deputies serve four-year terms and the assembly meets in regular session two times per year. In addition to passing legislation, the Assembly approves the president’s appointment of the prime minister and the prime minister’s choices for the Council of Ministers.
In 1992 Albania extensively reorganized its judiciary. The new court system is headed by the Supreme Court, whose members are appointed by the president to nine-year terms with the consent of the Assembly. Below the Supreme Court are the appeals courts (one for every district court) and below the appeals courts, the district courts. Judges in appeals and district courts are appointed by the president upon the recommendations of the Higher Judicial Council, which is headed by the president and includes the chair of the Supreme Court and the minister of justice. A separate constitutional court rules on constitutional matters and consists of nine members appointed by the president with the Assembly’s consent.
The 1991 constitution formally created a multiparty system. The Socialist Party, which grew out of the Albanian Party of Labor (APL), officially rejected Marxism-Leninism as its guiding ideology and now supports gradual market reforms. It is influential in rural areas and among older people. The Albanian Democratic Party, which draws strong support in urban areas and from young people, advocates a market economy and the encouragement of foreign assistance and investment. Other parties include the Social Democrats; the Unity for Human Rights Party, which represents the ethnic Greek minority; and the National Front.
Albania is divided into regions (rrethe), which are subdivided into communes and municipalities. Popularly elected local peoples’ councils administer most of the economic, social, and cultural affairs of communes and municipalities. The regions are governed by regional councils. Each regional council includes the chairperson of each local council within the region, delegates from the local districts in proportion to the percentage of the region’s population each district represents, and a prefect appointed by the Council of Ministers. In 1998 there were 36 regions, subdivided into 310 communes and 43 municipalities.
Under the Communists, rudimentary health care was free for the entire population; however, the health-care system suffered from outdated equipment, inadequate hospitals, and a severe shortage of drugs. Under the new government, all medical services are still offered free of charge, although facilities remain below standard.
Under the Communists, mortality rates dropped sharply and a number of diseases, including tuberculosis and malaria, were brought under control. Roundworm, a parasite, was still widespread in the early 1990s, particularly among rural children, and pneumonia and diarrhea remained the major causes of infant mortality. Incidence of viral hepatitis was also on the rise. Between 1990 and 1993, deaths in childbirth were cut in half, in large part because abortion was legalized and pregnant women were prohibited from working in heavy manual jobs.
Albania’s state social insurance system covers all workers free of charge. Women are entitled to 360 days of maternity leave and receive 80 percent of their salary while on leave. When workers are on sick leave, they are paid between 70 and 100 percent of their salary. Men retire between the ages of 55 and 65 years, women between 50 and 60. Pensions generally equal to 70 percent of the average monthly salary are provided for the retired and the disabled.
In 2004 the armed forces of Albania included 21,500 people. In 2004 the air force had 3,500 members, and the navy had 2,000; the number of army personnel could not be determined due to civil unrest that disrupted national command of troops early in the year. Military service is required at the age of 19 and lasts for 12 months.
Since 1991 Albania has become a member of several international organizations including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE); all the bodies of the United Nations (UN) such as the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). Albania also gained membership to the North Atlantic Cooperation Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and has participated in NATO’s Partnership for Peace program.
Present-day Albanians probably descended from Illyrian people who lived in the southern Balkans long before Greeks, Romans, and Slavs migrated to the region. During the 7th and 6th centuries bc, the Greeks established several colonies along the Albanian coast, including Epidamnus (present-day Durrës) and Apollonia (near present-day Vlorë). By the 3rd century bc the colonies began to decline and eventually disappeared. As the Greeks left, the small Illyrian groups that predated them evolved into more complex political units, including federations and kingdoms. The most important of these kingdoms flourished between the 5th and 2nd centuries bc.
At the same time, Rome was developing on the Italian peninsula, across the Adriatic Sea from Illyria. The Romans saw Illyria as a bridgehead for eastern conquests, and in 229 bc, Rome crossed the Adriatic and attacked. By 168 bc Romans had established effective control over Illyria and renamed it the province of Illyricum. Rome ruled the region for the next six centuries, but the Illyrians resisted assimilation and their distinctive culture and language survived. Nonetheless, Illyrians gained significant influence in the Roman armed forces, and several Illyrians became Roman emperors, including Aurelian (ad 270-275), Diocletian (284-305), and Constantine the Great (306-337). Christianity was felt increasingly in Illyricum by the middle of the 1st century ad, and in 58, Saint Paul placed an apostle in charge of Epidamnus. Seats for bishops were later created in Apollonia and Scodra (present-day Shkodër).
In 395 the Roman Empire was split into a western and eastern empire, and the lands of modern Albania became part of the eastern, or Byzantine, Empire. Several Illyrians became Byzantine emperors, including Justinian I (527-565). By the 5th century Christianity had become the established religion, and Albanian Christians remained under the religious jurisdiction of the Roman pope, despite being subjects of the Byzantine Empire. In the 5th century invading Visigoths, Huns, and Ostrogoths devastated the region, and between the 6th and 8th centuries Slavic peoples settled in Illyrian territories. The Slavs assimilated many of the Illyrians in what is today Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. However, the southern Illyrian peoples, including those in modern Albania, resisted assimilation. In 732 Byzantine emperor Leo III detached the Albanian Church from Rome and placed it under the patriarch of Constantinople (now İstanbul).
From the 8th through the 11th century, Illyria gradually became known as Albania, from the Albanos group that inhabited central Albania. Scholars have been unable to determine the origins of the name Shqiperia (Country of the Eagle), by which present-day Albanians refer to their country. Scholars generally agree, however, that the name Shqiperia replaced Albania in the 16th century. In the 9th century the Byzantine Empire’s power began to weaken as Bulgarian Slavs, followed by Norman Crusaders, Italian Angevins, Serbs, and Venetians, invaded the region. After the 10th century a feudal system developed in which peasant soldiers who had served military lords became serfs on landed estates. At this time some of the region’s provinces became virtually independent of Constantinople.
When the Christian church formally split in 1054 into Eastern and Western churches, southern Albania retained its ties to the Eastern, or Orthodox, Church in Constantinople while northern Albania reverted to the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome. During the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century) Albanian cities expanded and commerce flourished, particularly in the Adriatic region. With urban prosperity came the growth of art, culture, and education. The Albanian language survived, but was not used in churches, government, or schools; instead, Greek and Latin remained the official languages of literature and culture.
The Serb occupation after 1347 under Stefan Dušan prompted a mass migration of Albanians to Greece. Byzantine rule disappeared by the middle of the 14th century, and in 1388 the Ottomans (centered in what is now Turkey) invaded Albania. By 1430 the Ottomans had conquered Albania, but during the 1440s Gjergj Kastrioti organized the country’s feudal lords to fight the Ottomans. Kastrioti, popularly known as Skenderbeg, successfully resisted Ottoman control for 25 years with military help from Rome, Naples, and Venice. Albanian resistance collapsed after Skenderbeg’s death, and the Ottomans reoccupied the country by 1506. About one-fourth of the country’s population fled to Italy, Sicily, and the Dalmatian coast on the Adriatic. Skenderbeg’s name has been invoked throughout Albanian history to inspire national unity and independence. Today he is revered as Albania’s greatest hero.
During four centuries of extensive rule, the Ottomans failed to control all of Albania. In the highland regions, Ottoman power was weak, and the Albanians refused to pay taxes or perform military service. The Albanians staged several rebellions, partly in defense of their Christian faith. At the end of the 16th century, the Ottomans began a policy of Islamicization (conversion to Islam) as a way of preventing future unrest. By the end of the 17th century, about two-thirds of the population had converted to Islam, many to avoid the heavy tax levied against Christians. The Ottomans also extended their control through a feudal-military system, under which military leaders who were loyal to the empire received landed estates.
As Ottoman power declined in the 18th century, the power of some military lords increased. The Bushati family dominated most of northern Albania between 1750 and 1831, while Ali Pasa Tepelene ruled southern Albania and northern Greece from 1788 to 1822. These local rulers created separate states until they were overthrown by Ottoman sultan Mahmud II. A number of Albanians also rose to high positions in the Ottoman government in the 18th and 19th centuries, with more than two dozen becoming grand viziers (prime ministers).
During the 19th century, many of the conquered peoples in the Balkans increasingly wanted their own nations. In 1878 Albanian leaders met in the town of Prizren, in Kosovo, where they founded the League of Prizren (Albanian League) to promote a free, unified Albania in all Albanian-populated territories. The league also sought to develop Albanian language, education, and culture, and in 1908 Albanian leaders adopted a national alphabet based on the Latin script. Between 1910 and 1912 Albanian nationalists waged an armed struggle against the Ottomans, who had refused to give Albania autonomy (self-rule). The Ottomans were simultaneously attacked and, in 1912, defeated by Serb, Greek, and Bulgarian armies in what was later called the First Balkan War (see Balkan Wars). Albania immediately proclaimed its independence from the Ottoman Empire. At a conference following the war, Britain, Germany, Russia, Austria, France, and Italy (collectively known as the Great Powers) agreed to accept Albanian independence, but because of strong pressures from Albania’s neighbors, the Great Powers gave the Albanian-inhabited region of Kosovo to Serbia and much of the Çamëria region to Greece. Roughly half the Albanian population was left outside the country’s borders. The Great Powers also appointed a German prince, Wilhelm zu Wied, as Albania’s ruler, but he was in power only six months before the outbreak of World War I. During the war, Austrian, French, Italian, Greek, Montenegrin, and Serb armies occupied Albania, and the country lacked any political leadership. At the Paris Peace Conference after the war, United States President Woodrow Wilson vetoed a plan by Britain, France, and Italy to partition Albania among its neighbors. In 1920 Albania was admitted to the newly formed League of Nations, thereby gaining international recognition as an independent state.
During the 1920s Albania was deeply divided between two political forces. A conservative class of landowners and tribal leaders led by Ahmed Bey Zogu wished to maintain the status quo while liberal intellectuals, politicians, and merchants wanted to modernize Albania. The liberals were led by Fan S. Noli, a U.S.-educated bishop of the Orthodox church. In 1924 a popular revolt against the conservatives forced Zogu to flee to Yugoslavia. Noli became prime minister of the new government and set out to build a Western-style democracy. Six months later, suffering from internal opposition and lacking international support, Noli was overthrown by Zogu, with help from Yugoslavia. Zogu reigned for 14 years, first as president (1925-1928) and then as King Zog I (1928-1939). Zog’s dictatorial rule was marked by economic stagnation, although he helped create a modern school system and made the country somewhat more stable. Zog failed, however, to resolve the problem of land reform, and the peasantry remained impoverished.
During Zog’s reign, Italy exercised so much influence over Albania’s affairs that Albania was virtually an Italian protectorate. In April 1939, shortly before the start of World War II, Italy invaded and occupied Albania, sending Zog fleeing to Greece. After Nazi Germany defeated Yugoslavia and Greece in 1941, Kosovo and Çamëria were taken from those countries and joined to Albania, which remained under Italian control until 1943 when German forces took it after the Italian surrender. The wartime state disintegrated in November 1944 when the Germans withdrew. Kosovo was then returned to Serbia (by then part of Yugoslavia) and Çamëria to Greece.
During the war, nationalists, monarchists, and Communists in Albania actively resisted Italian, German, and Albanian fascism. The Communists eventually prevailed, seizing Albania in November 1944 with help from Communists in Yugoslavia. The secretary general (later first secretary) of the Communist Party, Enver Hoxha, was installed as the country’s new leader. Supported by impoverished peasants and some intellectuals, the party launched a radical reform program that destroyed the power of landlords and nationalized industry, banks, and commercial properties. In doing so, the Communists consolidated their rule and created a state-controlled socialist society. Agriculture was collectivized, following the model established in the USSR by Joseph Stalin, and by 1967 almost all peasants worked on collective farms. The Hoxha regime also gained firm control over the northern highlands and largely eliminated the traditional patriarchal clans and tribal leadership. Women gained a more prominent place in the new order as they achieved legal equality with men.
Initially, Albania depended on Yugoslavia for economic and military aid, but it feared Yugoslav political domination. In 1948, when Stalin expelled Yugoslavia from the Communist bloc for ideological reasons, Albania backed the Soviet leader. Hoxha also purged Albania’s pro-Yugoslav faction, which was headed by Koci Xoxe, Hoxha’s chief rival. However, when the USSR and China argued over control of the world Communist movement in the early 1960s, Albania supported China, which Hoxha viewed as more pure in its Communism. Hohxa was also disillusioned with other Communist allies, whom he accused of abandoning the socialist revolution and seeking accommodation with the capitalist West. In 1961 diplomatic ties were broken between Albania and the USSR. Soviet aid, credits, and technical assistance, which had allowed Albania to create a modern industrial and agricultural base and enjoy a better standard of living, were cut off. China took the USSR’s place as Albania’s main trading partner and supplier of economic aid.
Until the late 1960s Albania remained virtually isolated from the rest of the world. Following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Albania sought to protect itself by renewing ties with neighboring European states and formally withdrawing from the USSR-led Warsaw Pact. During the 1970s Albania’s relations with China became strained by China’s détente (reconciliation) with the United States. In 1978 China canceled its trade agreements with, and aid to, Albania. Albania then pursued closer economic contacts with Europe, but in terms of political and social ties, Albania remained one of the most isolated countries in the world until the early 1990s.
Under Hoxha’s rule, political oppression was severe. In order to eliminate dissent, all political parties except the Communist Party (formally, the Albanian Party of Labor, or APL) were banned, and the regime periodically purged potential opponents from the ruling party. Thousands were dismissed from their jobs, imprisoned in labor camps, or killed. The state tightly controlled and censored all public institutions and organizations, including trade unions, the press, cultural associations, women’s and youth organizations, and all economic enterprises. The Sigurimi, the state security network, monitored the entire population and eliminated any signs of dissent. Few foreigners were allowed into Albania, and only the party elite could travel abroad. In 1967 all religious bodies were banned, Christian and Muslim church property was confiscated, and the country was declared the world’s first atheist state.
The only signs of opposition appeared within the ruling party itself. In 1981 Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu died under mysterious circumstances; he was suspected of leading a plot to unseat Hoxha. In 1983 the Sigurimi executed a number of former party officials. When Hoxha died in April 1985, he was replaced as first secretary of the party by Ramiz Alia, who tried to preserve the Communist system while introducing tentative reforms to revive the declining economy.
|F||Beginnings of Democracy|
As Communist rule in Eastern Europe collapsed in 1989, some Albanians demanded more far-reaching reforms. The protesters included intellectuals, members of the working class, and frustrated young people. In response to growing unrest and public protests, Alia restored religious freedom, cut back the power of the Sigurimi, and adopted some market reforms and economic decentralization. In December 1990 the government endorsed the creation of independent political parties, thereby ending the Communist monopoly on power. The judicial system was reformed with the reestablishment of the ministry of justice and the reduction of capital offenses. Albanians were also granted the right to foreign travel. Throughout 1990 thousands of Albanian citizens tried to flee the country through Western embassies. A multinational relief operation arranged for the safe evacuation of more than 5,000 Albanians, and 20,000 more sailed illegally to Italy in vessels seized at civilian ports.
Meanwhile, protests in Albania continued, leading to the removal of several hard-line Communists from the government and the party Politburo. At public demonstrations in early 1991 several protesters were reportedly killed by the police. In March a general amnesty for all political prisoners was declared, and multiparty elections to the People’s Assembly took place the same month. The Communist Party and its allies won 169 of the 250 seats, while the newly formed Democratic Party won 75. The Communist victory provoked new public protests in which police killed four people in the city of Shkodër.
In April 1991 an interim constitution was passed, and the country’s name was changed from the People’s Republic of Albania to the Republic of Albania. A Communist majority in parliament elected Alia to the new post of Albanian president and economist Fatos Nano became prime minister. Following a general strike by thousands of workers, the government resigned and a coalition government was created in June. It included Communists, Democrats, Republicans, and Social Democrats. Demonstrations continued through the summer as protesters demanded the arrest of former Communist leaders and full freedom for the media. In December 1991 the coalition government collapsed and an interim administration was appointed.
New elections were held in March 1992, giving the Democrats 92 of the 140 seats in the reorganized People’s Assembly. The Socialists (the renamed Communists) won 38 seats, the Social Democrats 7, and the Greek minority Unity Party for Human Rights 2. The Assembly elected the leader of the Democratic Party, Sali Berisha, president, and Berisha appointed Aleksander Meksi prime minister. Under Berisha, several former Communist officials, including Alia and Nano, were arrested, tried for corruption and abuse of power, and sentenced to long terms. Many observers believed the trials were unfair and that Berisha had used them to conveniently get rid of rivals. Both Alia and Nano were released within a few years of their convictions. In November 1994 the Democrats proposed a new constitution to the voters, who rejected it in a national referendum. Opponents said the proposal would leave too much power in the hands of the already powerful president. The president was also accused of authoritarianism for restricting press freedoms, persecuting former Communist officials, and controlling the courts. Government supporters charged that Socialists were trying to discredit the new democracy.
Relations with the countries of the former Yugoslavia were also tense, particularly over repression of the Albanian majority in the Serbian province of Kosovo. In 1989 Serbia ended Kosovo’s autonomy, and in 1991 the ethnic Albanian leadership in Kosovo declared the province independent from Yugoslavia. Although the international community never recognized Kosovo’s independence, Albania campaigned on Kosovo’s behalf and asked the United Nations (UN) to send monitors to the region. The UN refused. In the mid-1990s Albania feared that major unrest and a military crackdown in Kosovo could lead to a massive outflow of refugees, destabilizing the entire Balkan region. Albania also disagreed with the new FYROM over its treatment of the large ethnic Albanian minority there. Albania’s leaders wanted ethnic Albanians in the FYROM to have more representation in the government, and wanted the Albanian language to have equal status with Macedonian. Nevertheless, the two governments established diplomatic relations.
General elections were held again in mid-1996, but the victory by President Sali Berisha’s Democratic Party was tainted by accusations of fraud. Opposition parties eventually boycotted the parliament, which in early 1997 elected Berisha to another five-year term. Also in early 1997, several fraudulent investment schemes failed, costing thousands of Albanians their savings. Although the government promised to partially reimburse many investors, the combination of economic disruption and political scandal prompted Albanians in several cities first to protest, then to riot. By March a sporadic rebellion had broken out and several parts of the country lacked effective government. The southern part of the country, including the cities of Vlorë and Sarandë, was controlled by local militias or armed citizens defending themselves against looters.
In order to prevent the outbreak of an all-out civil war, President Berisha appointed a Socialist, Bashkim Fano, to lead an interim government of national reconciliation. He also agreed to hold early general elections in June and pledged to resign if his party lost. The new government appealed for an international force to help restore law and order in the country. However, the multinational contingent led by an Italian commander that arrived in April was only mandated to protect the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the most destitute areas of Albania.
The Socialists swept to power in the June 1997 elections, garnering 65 percent of the vote against the 19 percent drawn by the Democrats. Fatos Nano, who had regained control of the Socialist Party after his release from prison, was chosen again as prime minister. Berisha resigned in July, and the parliament elected another Socialist leader, Rexhep Mejdani, as president. The Democrats began a boycott of parliament that lasted until March 1998. In August 1997 the government announced that the army and police had restored order to Vlorë, and the multinational force left that same month. In September 1998 Prime Minister Nano resigned when his coalition could not agree on changes in his cabinet. Nano’s resignation followed riots over the assassination of a prominent Democrat. Pandeli Majko, another Socialist, replaced Nano that month.
Relations with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) worsened in early 1998, when conflict erupted in Kosovo over the killing of several Serbian police officers by ethnic Albanian separatists. Serbian police and Yugoslav army units attacked Kosovo civilians and battled members of the secessionist Kosovo Liberation Army throughout most of 1998 and early 1999. In March 1999, after the FRY refused to sign a peace accord for Kosovo, NATO began launching air strikes against Yugoslav military targets. Serbian-led military forces only intensified their attacks on villages in Kosovo, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee. Albania, which had been forced to absorb refugees from Kosovo throughout 1998, was flooded with them in the weeks after the air strikes began. This imposed an enormous burden on the country's fragile economy. By early June, when the Yugoslav government finally agreed to an international peace plan for Kosovo, the UN estimated that about 444,000 Kosovars had fled to Albania. Under the terms of the plan, an international peacekeeping force was posted in Kosovo to help ensure the refugees’ safe return.
Majko resigned as prime minister in October 1999, after losing a Socialist Party leadership vote. He was succeeded by Ilir Meta, a young, reform-minded leader. Meta vowed to continue the policies of the Majko government, which included promoting economic growth and pressing for Albania's membership in the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Socialists retained their parliamentary majority after the June 2001 elections.
Meta abruptly resigned as prime minister in January 2002 following a bitter clash with Socialist Party leader Fatos Nano that split the party. Nano had accused Meta’s government of corruption and demanded sweeping changes to the cabinet. Meta’s resignation coincided with a decision of the Democratic Party to return to the parliament; the Democrats had refused to take their parliamentary seats for seven months, claiming that the June 2001 elections were rigged.
In February 2002 Socialist Party leaders selected Majko to succeed Meta as prime minister, and in June the parliament elected Alfred Moisiu to replace outgoing president Rexhep Mejdani. Moisiu, a retired general and former defense minister, assumed the presidency in July. Also in July Nano replaced Majko as prime minister. The installation of a new cabinet was intended to end months of division within the ruling Socialist Party.
|
<urn:uuid:c4153ea6-87cc-40a1-944c-0c828b75c9b2>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-47
|
http://overhistory.blogspot.com/2014/01/albania.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934805894.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20171120013853-20171120033853-00438.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.968446 | 13,243 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Uninformed: Why People Know So Little About Politics and What We Can Do About It. Arthur Lupia. Oxford University Press. 2016.
Since the seminal contributions of Philip E. Converse (1964) andStephen E. Bennett (1988), political ignorance has drawn the attention of political scientists. In Arthur Lupia’s words, ‘when it comes to political information, there are two groups of people: one group understands that they are almost completely ignorant [… and] the other group is delusional about how much they know’ (3). This casts shadows on democratic quality: how can democracies function if voters are uninformed – if not misinformed? How to hold political leaders accountable, if they can exploit ignorance?
Uninformed: Why People Know So Little About Politics and What We Can Do About It, by Lupia, builds upon decades of research in different fields, not only describing what we know about political (un)information, but also suggesting strategies to overcome the problem. Lupia indeed argues that the root of enduring political ignorance partially lies in the misunderstanding of ‘civic educators’, who believe that merely exposing the public to facts will increase competence. The book, however, does not simply criticise this approach: its aim is to draw up strategies for civic educators, so that they can ‘provide more information of more value to more people’ (21). Hence, Part I of the book discusses what political knowledge is, and how to achieve effective communication; Part II instead focuses on the measurement and interpretation of survey data.
The first – and most important – message discussed in Part I is that there are trade-offs in what the public can learn. Consequently, anyone willing to convey information must select what is necessary and sufficient to achieve the desired level of public competence. Individuals have varying levels of background knowledge, contrasting interests and different value-systems. The search for a ‘silver bullet’ that informs all audiences is thus an impossible mission. This is why the two central topics of this section are: (1). how to attract the attention of the public; and (2). how to manage the diversity of value-systems.
Image Credit: Empty Billboard (Ryan Dickey, CC 2.0)
Given that the public ignores most of the information to which it is exposed, an ‘informer’ must achieve perceived credibility. However, as Lupia underlines, this is only a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for effective communication. What an ‘educator’ needs is to attract attention. To do so, the author suggests speaking to the audience’s fears and aspirations. These are the two stimuli – as research in cognitive psychology has found – that are most likely to stimulate focus and activate memory. What is, however, missing from this chapter is a distinction between the two. Since positive and negative emotions can lead to different cognitive results (see, for example, Fredrickson, 2001), this is an important discussion that ‘civic educators’ should be aware of – particularly in an age of increasing populism.
As in the case of credibility, attention is only a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to stimulate learning. Values shape and affect the acquisition of information. Lupia underlines that ‘if prospective learners see the information as sufficiently related to their values, then prospective learners will have greater motivation to use the information in the way that the educator desires’ (106). Since values are diverse and often contrasting, Chapter Ten focuses on diversity management. Lupia thus addresses one of the most compelling tasks for political communicators, and challenges the simplistic approach of averaging positions into a mean one. Such a strategy would be ineffective, since the average value-system might correspond to none of the actual individual positions within the public. Instead, he argues, an ‘educator’ should acknowledge the variance in values, and find the ‘sweet-pots’ that grant the highest level of acceptance. For instance, in an audience formed by two groups, the ‘educator’ should either find the common ground or highlight the reasons that can make the ‘loser’ tolerate a trade-off, in light of an accepted value.
If Part I concentrates on why political ignorance exists and on how to overcome it, Part II discusses the measurement and interpretation of ‘recall data’. Indeed, ‘better measurement and more accurate inferences from data can help educators more effectively diagnose whether individuals have the knowledge they need to achieve desired competences’ (191). There are two central arguments. Firstly, ‘competence […] does not require the ability to recall all the facts’ (194). Secondly, it is necessary to understand what recall questions uncover about sophistication. Using examples from surveys of the US public, Lupia shows how – asother scholars have also found – political ignorance is often overestimated: ‘the irony here is that many scholars and pundits feel free to castigate the public for its ignorance […] without checking their own facts first’ (212). The main takeaway is that any ‘educator’ should know what the data is really telling, and whether other factors influence the frequency of ‘don’t know’ or ‘incorrect’ answers. Part II hence proposes how to build better surveys and to assess the results of research, arguing for an analysis of individual results over aggregate measures or scales.
Uninformed thus expands on a mere revision of what we know about political ignorance, offering practical strategies to inform the public and read sophistication data. Albeit not addressing distinctions between positive and negative emotions, the book constitutes one of the best reviews on political ignorance. It addresses the most compelling challenges that any educator will encounter in the endeavour of political education. This book should thus be in the collection of anyone interested in public opinion: while policy-makers and practitioners will benefit from the topics covered in Part I, students, scholars and public opinion analysts will find vital information on data measurement and interpretation in Part II. Moreover, given the sensitivity to ideological diversity that political communication entails, the application of the proposed strategies can be adapted to a wide range of fields. In other words, the potential readership of the book is not limited to political ‘instructors’, but to anyone interested in education and effective communication.
Michele Fenzl is a MPhil/PhD student in the Department of Government of the University of Essex. He holds degrees from the University of Bologna and University of Essex; and has previously held visiting positions at the University of Sussex and King’s College, London. His PhD thesis studies the comparative political economy of income inequality and redistribution, and adopts quantitative methods to analyse the intersections between economic and political inequality.
Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics.
|
<urn:uuid:48c5989e-713e-49db-93a9-7767c9010740>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-23
|
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/book-review-uninformed-why-people-know-so-little-about-politics-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-by-arthur-lupia/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224647810.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20230601110845-20230601140845-00097.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.926951 | 1,422 | 2.78125 | 3 |
A unique medical case study gives credence to the saying on “blood, sweat and tears.”
A 21-year old woman in Italy checked herself into a medical institution complaining of a rather terrifying symptom that she had been suffering from for three years: blood had been seeping persistently from her face and palms, with no visible cause. She had no broken skin, and the bleeding would happen without warning, sometimes becoming more intense when she was stressed. As a result, the woman became socially isolated, TIME reports.
The doctors she saw treated her for symptoms of major depressive disorder and panic disorder, and all of her physical tests came back normal. However, the bleeding continued, and her doctors reached a rare diagnosis: hematohidrosis, or “blood sweating.” The woman was treated with propranolol, a beta-blocker that is commonly used to regulate heart rate and blood pressure. While the bleeding did not stop completely, the treatment did see a “marked reduction” in her symptoms, the study said.
Hematohidrosis is an extremely rare condition wherein blood seeps out of unbroken skin, like how sweat does. According to the National Institutes of Health Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center, it occurs most commonly on the face, ears, eyes and nose, and is often linked to emotional stress and fear.
Some who have the condition may even cry bloody tears.
The Bible mentions Jesus sweating blood, and observed cases go all the way back to the third century B.C., says Jacalyn Duffin, who wrote an accompanying article for the study.
The condition is controversial, mostly because doctors don’t know a lot about it. The uncertainty surrounding hematohidrosis has led some doctors to dismiss it as a valid diagnosis. Even the study says that “there is no single explanation of the source of bleeding.” The current hypothesis that blood goes through the woman’s sweat glands because of “abnormal constrictions and expansions” of blood vessels has not been proven.
Duffin says this is a real condition that is misunderstood. “Ironically, for an increasingly secular world, the long-standing association of hematohidrosis with religious mystery may make its existence harder to accept. It seems that humans do sweat blood, albeit far less often literally than metaphorically.”
The study was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
|
<urn:uuid:632834b2-2db9-469d-8e33-0249da070c24>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-47
|
https://www.immortal.org/35348/really-possible-sweat-blood/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934806388.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20171121132158-20171121152158-00161.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.964399 | 504 | 2.96875 | 3 |
3 Ways in which psychology is trying to make progress
What was the problem again? Briefly put, the problem is that much doubt has arisen about the reliability of much research that has been done in the field of psychology. The most important reason for this doubt is that many replication studies have been done in which the effects of the original studies have either not been found of were much weaker. Several lines of research, for instance on priming, ego depletion, and powerposes have, at least to some extent, fallen into disrepute. Some of the problems which underlie the limited robustness of these findings are publication bias, p-hacking, and mixing science with commerce.
As I said, some scientists responded defensively to the replication studies but the majority of the scientific community seems to agree that the problems are real and is working to solve them. I want to mention three ways in which psychology tries to make progress.
1. Replication research continuesResearchers continue to do new replication studies. One example is in replication studies into the so-called facial feedback hypothesis. This hypothesis which is based on the work by one of psychology's founders, Williams James, says that facial expressions are not only effects of felt emotions. Instead, according to James, emotions felt and facial expressions are like a two way street. Facial expression also affect the emotions we feel. A famous experiment by Strack et al. (1988) confirmed this hypothesis. They had participants take a pen in their mouth which cause their facial muscles into what looked like a smile. They then found that these participants started to feel happier. This influential study has now been replicated in 17 laboratories from all over the world and its findings were not confirmed. In 9 experiments the findings were in the same direction as in the original study but the effect which was found was much weaker. The other experiments, however, found an opposite effect. Together, these findings give rise to serious doubt as to whether the facial feedback hypothesis is correct (read more). Which other findings will fall into disrepute?
2. Individual scientists draw their lessonsIn response to the current situation several researchers are trying to draw their lessons and change their practices. Michael Inzlicht (photo), a researcher which has worked on ego depletion for years, at first was shocked but soon decided to draw lessons from the current crisis and carried out a critical self-examination. To find out to which extent he had contributed to the crisis he analyzed all of his papers on three metrics: the p-curve, the R-Index, and the TIVA (read here how and why he did that). To find out whether the scientific quality of this work had improved over the years, he compared his first 10 papers with his latest 10 papers. Inzlicht writes that he was more than a little afraid of what he would discover and his overall judgment is cricital. But he also concludes that the quality of his research is improving (read the details here).
As you know, good examples tend to be followed. Michael Kraus, in response to Inzlicht, did an even more detailed self-analysis.
Will other scientists follow these examples?Auditing my research practices was horrifying, but also necessary for moving forward. New blog. https://t.co/gj4ghf67Lx— Michael W. Kraus (@mwkraus) August 23, 2016
|
<urn:uuid:42304945-ae08-4d58-917c-3281fb23386b>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-40
|
https://www.progressfocused.com/2016/09/3-ways-in-which-psychology-is-trying-to.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510300.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20230927135227-20230927165227-00439.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.981719 | 689 | 2.9375 | 3 |
We know that this is a Norman peasant woman from her tall cap. There are many styles of caps peculiar to different parts of France, but those worn in Normandy are remarkable for their height. When some of the people of this province emigrated to the western continent and settled in Acadia, the land of Evangeline, the women brought their caps with them and continued to wear them many years, as we read in Longfellow’s “Evangeline.”
Our previous studies of the other pictures of this collection help us to see at once the good points of composition in the Woman Churning. The main lines of the group in the foreground form a tall pyramid. The shape of the churn gives us the line at the right side, and the figure of the cat carries the line of the woman’s skirt into a corresponding slant on the left. The lines of the tiled floor add to the pyramidal effect by converging in perspective. Even the broom leaning against the shelf near the door takes the same diagonal direction as the tiles of the right side.
We have here also a new illustration of the art of treating inclosed spaces. An outlet is given to the room through the door opening into the farmyard. Across the yard stands a low cow-shed, in which a woman is seated milking a cow. This building, however, does not altogether block up the view from the dairy door. Above the roof is a strip of sky, and through a square window at the back is seen a bit of the meadow.
[Footnote 1: From Ronsard’s “Hymn to St. Blaise,” translated by Henry Naegely in J.F. Millet and Rustic Art.]
[Footnote 2: See chapters ii. and vi.]
THE MAN WITH THE HOE
To the peasant farmer every month of the year brings its own labors. From seed time to harvest there is a constant succession of different tasks, and hardly is the harvest gathered in before it is time to prepare again for planting. Before ploughing can be begun the fields must first be cleared of stubble and weeds. Now in Millet’s village of Barbizon, this clearing of the fields was done, in his day, by means of an implement called in French a houe. Although we translate the word as hoe, the tool is quite unlike the American article of that name. It looks a little like a carpenter’s adze, though much larger and heavier, the blade being as broad as that of a shovel. The handle is short and the implement is very clumsy and fatiguing to use. Even the stoutest peasant finds the work wearisome.
The man in our picture has paused for a moment’s rest in this toilsome labor, and leans panting on his hoe. In the heat of his toil he has thrown off his hat and blouse, which now lie together on the ground behind him. His damp hair is matted together on his forehead, his brawny chest is exposed by the open shirt, his horny hands are clasped over the hoe handle. Some distant object catches his eye. It may be a farm wagon moving across the plain, or perhaps a bird flying through the clear air. To follow the course of such an object a moment is a welcome change from the monotonous rise and fall of the hoe.
|
<urn:uuid:a99e96ca-93b5-4d72-bea6-8c19d8034ea6>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-35
|
http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/13119/33.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500823598.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021343-00065-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.968677 | 716 | 2.828125 | 3 |
As many as 190 genes - and more than 350 genetic mutations - may trigger breast cancer, research suggests.
After reviewing data collected by over 450 institutions worldwide, a team of scientists claim it provides the most detailed picture yet of how a woman’s DNA puts her at risk of the disease.
The experts compared the genes of 110,000 breast-cancer patients with those of 90,000 healthy individuals.
This revealed 352 “risk variants” and 191 genes the scientists can say with “reasonable confidence” cause breast cancer.
Less than one in five of these genes had previously been identified.
One in eight women in the UK and US will develop breast cancer at some point in their lives, statistics show.
“We know from previous studies variants across our DNA contribute towards breast cancer risk, but only rarely have scientists have been able to identify exactly which genes are involved,” study author Dr Laura Fachal, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said.
“We need this information as it gives us a better clue to what is driving the disease and hence how we might treat or even prevent it.”
Each human is made up of between 20,000 and 25,000 genes, many of which code for proteins.
Variants can arise within genes, altering the protein. Most variants, however, are outside genes. These regulate protein function, turning its “volume” up, down or even off.
Finding the gene targeted by these variants is not straightforward, particularly with breast cancer. The complex disease has no single DNA variant or gene behind it.
Instead, a combination of genes are thought to act together to increase the risk an individual will develop the disease.
“This incredible haul of newly-discovered breast cancer genes provides us with many more genes to work on, most of which have not been studied before,” study author Dr Alison Dunning, from the University of Cambridge, said.
“It will help us build up a much more detailed picture of how breast cancer arises and develops.
“But the sheer number of genes now known to play a role emphasises how complex the disease is.”
Of the newly-discovered genetic variants, one third were found to predispose women to hormone-responsive breast cancer.
This occurs when oestrogen and progesterone promote the growth of malignant tumours in the breast.
Responsible for four out of five breast-cancer cases, it typically responds well to hormonal treatments, like tamoxifen.
Results, published in the journal Nature Genetics, also show 15% of the genetic variants discovered predispose women to the rarer oestrogen-receptor-negative breast cancer.
This occurs when breast tumours lack receptors for oestrogen.
The remaining genetic variants were found to play a role in both types of breast cancer.
In most cases, the genetic change seemed to effect DNA expression, i.e. how active a particular gene was and how much of a protein it created.
For instance, nine different variants were found to regulate the same section of DNA - the Estrogen Receptor (ESR1) gene.
Many other variants affect genetic areas where the Estrogen Receptor protein binds and, in turn, regulates other genes.
This highlights the importance of the ESR1 gene and its protein product - the Estrogen Receptor - in breast cancer development, the scientists claim.
While each genetic variant only increased the risk of breast cancer by a very small amount, the scientists claim when the findings are combined, it will allow them to “fine tune” genetic testing and give women a clearer picture of their risk.
This will then enable doctors to give advice on the best strategy for a woman to prevent the onset of the disease.
|
<urn:uuid:71794e03-9940-45ea-8bbc-94685f181939>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-10
|
https://news.yahoo.com/as-many-as-190-genes-may-be-behind-breast-cancer-160032542.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875143079.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20200217175826-20200217205826-00477.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.935536 | 786 | 3.421875 | 3 |
The United States, which wants to keep the option of sending soldiers into combat at 17, found itself with few allies in negotiations this week on an international agreement to set a new minimum age for recruitment and active military service.
American officials insisted that any global pact allow volunteers younger than 18 to fight for their country. Currently, 17-year-olds can volunteer, with parental consent, for active service in the United States. Britain recruits volunteers at 16 and sends them into active duty.
This practice has been denounced by human rights campaigners who are seeking to raise the current minimum, from 15, as spelled out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to 18, as the surest way to reduce the number of child soldiers in the world.
Experts estimate that 300,000 child combatants are involved in 30 conflicts, including fighting in Mexico, elsewhere in Latin America, Africa and Chechnya. Human rights groups say most are recruited or pressed into hostilities by, or on behalf of, governments. Some 35 countries spoke out in support of a ban on soldiers under 18. The United States position was backed by Britain, Egypt, Kuwait and Singapore.
Dozens of countries recruit people younger than 18, although many do not send soldiers into combat until they reach 18.
This is the second time recently that the American position on youths under 18 has encountered international opposition. At American insistence, the text of an International Labor Organization treaty negotiated last year that is intended to end exploiting children does not prohibit those under 18 from voluntarily enlisting in the military. A number of other countries, along with unions, supported a minimum of 18.
United States officials, in a suggested compromise on the rights-of-the-child treaty, proposed a flat ban on soldiers younger than 18 for rebel armies. That would allow governments to continue to recruit and deploy minors.
''It's not a question of whether the age is 15 or 18,'' Michael Southwick, the State Department official who led the United States delegation here, said in an interview. ''The real problem is the 9- and 10-year-olds in places like Northern Uganda,'' where a rebel movement is fighting the government. ''There should be no forced recruitment under age 18. The problem here is that there are differences between the ages for recruitment and deployment. We believe there is nothing wrong with volunteering at age 17, and deployment is part of that volunteering.''
Jo Becker of the Human Rights Watch and head of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers opposes exceptions to a blanket ban on child soldiers. ''What possible justification can there be to make an exception for sending children into combat?'' Ms. Becker asked.
Mr. Southwick said 40,000 of the 200,000 American soldiers recruited annually were 17-year-olds. In six months of training, many turn 18, leaving 2,000 such soldiers on active duty, he said.
He argued that the tradition of 17-year-old volunteers ''was preferable to forced recruitment at 18.''
''We reject the assertion that support for 18 should be a litmus test for whether a country cares about the fate of its children,'' Mr. Southwick told delegates from some 50 countries assembled for the negotiations, which have been proceeding for five years.
The advocates of the higher age limit hope to finalize the accord next week.
|
<urn:uuid:5407abf9-90c9-407d-b0c7-057f566a3eb2>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-10
|
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/15/world/us-fights-tide-on-a-move-to-raise-the-military-service-age.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1393999666921/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305060746-00051-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.953532 | 679 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Meaningful access to health care in the United States begins with health insurance. It’s no secret, despite our often willful attempts at ignorance: the uninsured in America simply do not receive the same level of care as their insured counterparts.
Uninsured children with asthma receive fewer office visits, prescriptions, and preventive checkups than insured children, and have worse control of their asthma. Patients with lung cancer without insurance are more likely to die than insured patients. Without access to regular preventative health care, their disease is diagnosed at a more advanced stage that is less amenable to treatment. Uninsured working-age Americans admitted with heart attacks were 52 percent more likely to die in the hospital than the privately insured; those who had suffered a stroke were 49 percent more likely to die in the hospital. These are not subtle differences.
In 2009, a record 50.7 million Americans (16.7 percent) were uninsured, up from 46.3 million (15.4 percent) in 2008. In the first quarter of 2010, an estimated 59.1 million people had no health insurance for at least part of the preceding year. Americans without health insurance are seven times more likely to forgo needed medical care because of cost, and are actually charged significantly higher fees than those with insurance for the same care because of insurance plan discounts negotiated with health-care providers. Unpaid medical bills remain the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States, and half of the uninsured owe money to hospitals. A full third are being pursued by collection agencies. How much stronger of a disincentive to pursue health care could we construct for those without insurance?
There are many who argue that this disincentive is an effective method of controlling costs. The larger the share an individual has to contribute towards the cost of their health care, the argument goes, the more efficient the use of these services. Higher costs should lead to more measured use of health care--you won’t go to the doctor unless you really need to. This should be particularly true for the uninsured patient, then, who is responsible for all of his health care costs. And after all, the uninsured American does spend well below half per capita (in absolute terms) what his insured neighbor will annually on health care.
But the assumptions inherent in this argument are dangerous. It’s both intuitive and proven that the more people have to spend for their health care, the less they will use. What’s crucial to consider, however, is that people cut down equally on both necessary and unnecessary care. And that’s the point. The average non-physician does not know what constitutes the difference. Maybe the mammogram my uninsured patient forgoes because of cost would have been completely negative, and she thus saved the health care system $275. But maybe it would’ve detected an early, localized cancer that could be quickly resected, thereby saving the system the tens of thousands of dollars for chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery required for metastatic disease detected much later (to say nothing of the emotional toll for the patient and her family). There’s no way for most people to be able to make the judgement for themselves.
Unfortunately, even for the insured, annual premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance continue to rise. Since 2000, the average premium for family coverage has increased 114 percent as employers shift the cost burden to employees in an effort to contain the spiraling costs of health care. Household spending on health care as a percentage of personal income continues to rise, and disproportionately affects the poor. While these measures may succeed in temporarily curtailing short-term health care spending, the imprecision of this short-sighted approach is certain to have even costlier long-term consequences.
As a primary care physician, I witness daily the disastrous consequences of delayed medical care: uncontrolled diabetes leading to renal failure and dialysis, untreated hypertension leading to strokes and heart attack, unfilled asthma prescriptions leading to emergency room visits and hospitalizations. Lack of health insurance leads to poorer health for the individual at a higher cost to the health care system, perpetuating a painfully vicious cycle. Poorer health outcomes mean the uninsured are sicker as a population. And because they are sicker, they cannot get better jobs. Without better jobs, they cannot afford health insurance--which makes them sicker.
From my perspective, it seems clear: true efficiency in the health care system starts with regular access to primary care and preventative health services. Without health insurance, however, such access is severely limited. Measures that expand coverage in our population, like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which the CBO estimates will decrease the ranks of the uninsured in our country by about 32 million by 2019, are of enormous importance to improving access to health care, reducing costs, and improving quality. The obsessive, misguided attempts to repeal such desperately needed reform, especially with no proposed alternative, are irresponsible and frankly baffling to me. The trajectory we have been on--one opponents of the PPACA would have us return to--is not only unsustainable, it is unconscionable.
|
<urn:uuid:108b153e-7ef1-40f2-adee-50d40d2bbbb0>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-29
|
http://www.drsforamerica.org/blog/the-cost-of-willful-ignorance
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593657155816.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20200715035109-20200715065109-00520.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.966711 | 1,044 | 3.03125 | 3 |
The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence defines domestic violence as “the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or other abusive behavior as part of a systematic pattern of power and control perpetrated by one intimate partner against another.”
Gaining power is at the heart of domestic violence. The abuser wants to maintain power and control. Domestic violence is not limited to physical violence. It takes many forms. It may involve verbal or emotional abuse. Domestic violence may include sexual or economic abuse. In some cases, the perpetrator will intentionally destroy the intended victim’s property or harm their pets. In some cases, the abuser will isolate the victim from family and friends.
Domestic violence does not discriminate. It touches people across race, age, gender and religious lines. It can occur regardless of someone’s level of education or socioeconomic status. Domestic violence occurs in both same-sex relationships and opposite-sex relationships.
When domestic violence occurs, it harms more than just the victim. It has a significant effect on friends, family members, coworkers and neighbors. Children who witness violence in the home are at particular risk. Children who are exposed to violence at home are more likely to experience problems, both physical and social. Children who are exposed to violence learn that violence is normal. They grow up with an increased likelihood of becoming not just abusers, but victims of domestic violence.
At WINGS, our goal is to provide a pathway that leads away from a life of chaos, abuse and fear and towards a future of safety and independence.
|
<urn:uuid:72c33e19-ed42-4a1b-9ee7-b2b956749952>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-34
|
https://wingsprogram.com/understanding-domestic-violence/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439738699.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20200810205824-20200810235824-00054.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.945982 | 315 | 3.390625 | 3 |
June 27, 2009
Posted by Johanna under 2001-2005
, Historical Fiction
| Tags: Bible
, Biblical characters
, Holy Scripture
, Old Testament
| Comments
Rachel & Leah” follows “Rebekah” in Card’s “Women of Genesis” series, where the story segues into Jacob’s flight from Esau’s wrath over the usurpation of the birthright. Jacob seeks refuge in his Uncle Laban’s camp where he meets Leah, Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah. And thus this story unfolds to center on these four important women in the Genesis whose lives would intertwine each other and around one man, Jacob.
Author : Orson Scott Card
First Publication Date : 2004
First Publisher : Shadow Mountain
This Edition’s Publication Date : November 29, 2005 (Mass Market Paperback)
This Edition’s Publisher : Forge Books
No. of pages : 368
The Story :
Leah is the myopic eldest daughter of Rebekah’s brother, Laban. Her acute nearsighted condition limits her participation in the normal, everyday life of a pastoral camp. Leah’s greatest desire is to know her purpose and worth. She believes that God’s purpose for her is in the Scriptures, God’s Words. She reveals to Jacob her desire to study the Holy Writings. Jacob readily teaches her to read and write in preparation for understanding the Holy Scriptures. However her perceptual infirmity forces her to rely increasingly on her handmaid, Bilhah, who undertakes the same tasks of reading and copying the Scriptures for posterity. In the daily reading and writing exercises, Leah becomes secretly enamored of Jacob.
Rachel, the youngest daughter of Laban, is known as the beauty of the family. It is she whom Jacob falls in love with when he spies her at the well. He contracts with Laban for the hand of Rachel in return for his service as a bondsman for seven years.
Bilhah, Leah’s handmaid, is orphaned before she comes into Laban’s household. She is not a slave but a free woman. Although free in name, she still serves the family to earn her place. Thus, Bilhah’s confused stature earns her a chip on her shoulder. She makes a very impatient handmaid to Leah so later she is given over to Rachel instead. She becomes adept in reading and writing, so Jacob gives her the task (enviable to Leah) of copying the Holy Scriptures.
Zilpah is born in Laban’s camp as a bondservant. A flirt and an opportunist, Zilpah has the ambition of bettering her life and status. She assesses correctly that her future will hold nothing should she stay forever in Laban’s camp. Thus, she plans to attach herself to those who can take her away from it. An opportunity arises when she makes herself indispensable to Leah and thus, becomes her handmaid. Also, she tells Jacob of Laban’s sons’ plot to kill him, raising her trustworthiness in Jacob’s eyes.
All four women are drawn inexorably to Jacob. As per the Biblical story, Jacob completes his seven-year servitude to Laban and prepares to wed Rachel. Rachel, in her seven-year “engagement” to Jacob, had not thought much about marriage and what it truly entails. Her ignorance sends her in a serious panic and suddenly she cannot bear to marry Jacob nor any man for that matter. In Hebrew culture where honor and pride is paramount, Laban must think of a way to honor his commitment to Jacob and at the same time, address his daughter’s emotional stress and her well-being. What follows is exactly what happens in the Bible, but with the author’s own, very creative twist of how these historical events happen to be so.
The Review :
In this novel, Card has to flesh out the characters of four women. And he does this best with Leah who slowly grows in character as the book progresses. The other three aren’t as developed but it is interesting to notice the dynamics between the four of them, with Jacob somehow drawing them together as the story progresses.
As in “Rebekah“, the author also takes an interest in his male characters and pays the central ones very good attention. Jacob is a born leader, quiet and gentle but with a natural charisma that endears him to many. Laban is a loving father who treasures his daughters and would do anything possible to make them happy.
For a male author, it must have been a challenge to have to draw four different female personalities and get into their psyches. However, Card does quite a good job of it, as mirrored in this excerpt from his Rachel character who reacts with these thoughts to Jacob’s statement, “…compared to women, everything is easy..” :
“…Whatever it was that men imagined about women, they did not change their minds just because a woman disagreed. Father was that way, and every other man Rachel had talked to in the camp. It’s as if they thought that women were conducting a vast conspiracy to deceive men and make their lives difficult, so that anything a woman might say to simplify things had to be an attempt at deception.
If only men would listen to us, they’d find out that each one of us is different, and we’re eager to teach you how to understand us. But I can’t tell you how to understand Leah–I don’t understand her either. And if you did understand her, poor foolish man, you would think that you then understood all the rest of us, and you’d be hopelessly wrong. No wonder you despair of understanding women. The best you could ever hope for would be to understand one woman. And that’s the goal none of you ever seems to try for.” — pp. 198-199
Orson Scott Card likes to put his own philosophies within his characters’ dialogues and ruminations; some make interesting food for thought.
To Read Or Not To Read :
For those who think this is a religious book, it is not. It is simply a fictional adaptation of a Biblical story, the framework of which is used as the plot but the richness of detail and characterization are from the author’s deep well of imagination. What makes it equally worthy of attention is the fact that the story evolves from the perspective of women mentioned but otherwise not conferred with much importance in the Bible as the men were. Given the limited power Hebrew women had at the time of Jacob, it is quite engaging to note how these women employ ways to circumvent male dominance to get their way.
At the end of the novel, the author notes that this book is only the first of a series on these four women and Jacob. Card states: “…the story has four very strong female characters who needed separate development..” Thus, this story will perhaps be broken down into a series of books, the number of which has not been specified. Currently, he is working on “The Wives of Israel“, the sequel without an established release date yet as of the moment.
It has been five years since “Rachel & Leah” ‘s publication date. If you’re willing to wait, pick up this book and be treated to a good imaginative version of half the Biblical story. While only half the story, the conclusion is still pretty well tied off despite its broad hint of a sequel.
In A Nutshell :
Although not as great as Card’s earlier “Women of Genesis” books, namely “Sarah” and “Rebekah“, “Rachel and Leah” isn’t very far off the good writing mark either (considering it is only half or maybe even one-fourth of the whole story). With its solid characters and Card’s sharp insight into the female mind, the novel takes a good second place to his earlier ones in the Genesis series.
My Mark : Very, Very Good
June 17, 2009
Posted by Johanna under 2001-2005
, Historical Fiction
| Tags: Abraham
, Biblical history
, Holy Scripture
, Old Testament
, Orson Scott Card
| Comments
With his “Women of Genesis” series, Orson Scott Card tackles the challenge of bringing ancient Biblical women to believable life. The author directs attention to those extraordinary women of their time, giving them prominence where the Old Testament had minimized them and bestowing on them a relevancy to readers of today.
The Author : Orson Scott Card
Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (November 28, 2002)
No. of pages : 416
The Story :
Motherless at a young age, a Hebrew maiden, Rebekah, matures early to become a beautiful, practical, intelligent, and headstrong girl with an unwavering faith in God.
As per the Biblical story, a group of travelers spy Rebekah coming to the well. The master among them asks for a drink, to which she readily obliges. It is Eliezer, a servant from the great house of Abraham who had tasked him to seek a wife for his son, Isaac, heir to the Holy Scriptures, the birthright. Eliezer had prayed to the Lord to help point out Isaac’s would-be bride by sending him a woman who would do what was considered improper : talking to a stranger at the well; drawing water for his drink; and pouring water for his animals as well. For Eliezer, God answers his prayers with this beautiful Hebrew maiden who does all what he had determined as signs of His choice.
Immediately, Eliezer negotiates with Bethuel, Rebekah’s father, for her hand in marriage to Isaac. Rebekah regards the honor of being the chosen bride for the heir of the birthright and therefore Abraham’s future daughter-in-law, as God’s will for her. Thus, she leaves her father, Bethuel, to take a coveted place in Abraham’s promised destiny of becoming the Father of Nations.
However, her awe of Abraham’s status in the eyes of the Lord quickly falls to disappointment when her headstrong and practical personality clashes with his. She also comes to struggle with Isaac’s low self-esteem and his tension-filled relationship with his father. In a cultural milieu where women are subject to the will their fathers, brothers, or husband, Rebekah learns to adapt and make her way so her opinions and beliefs could be acknowledged by the men in her life.
Several years into the marriage, Rebekah’s prayers for children are answered when she conceives and gives birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. God speaks to her through a prophecy foretelling that her second-born son, Jacob, would inherit the birthright from Isaac. In ancient Hebrew society in which inheritances are strictly handed to firstborn sons, this was a gravely disturbing revelation. As her children grow, Esau exhibits athleticism and rashness and quickly becomes Isaac’s and Abraham’s favorite. Thoughtful, introspective and responsible Jacob becomes his mother’s.
All through her life, Rebekah’s character is marked by her intense faith and love of God. Thus, her reverance for the Scriptures encompasses a strong protective regard for them. It is her belief that the heir of the Holy Scripture or birthright should be the son who is most likely to ensure its sanctity and preservation through the generations. Esau , being a more physically oriented man, is wholly uninterested in the scrolls, while Jacob reads and studies them. With her strong conviction of the worthiness of Jacob and her realization that the prophecy should come to pass, Rebekah contrives to fool Isaac, by now, old and blind, into conferring the blessing on Jacob. She succeeds and so we have a story that segues into a story of Jacob, which is dealt with in a separate book.
The Review :
This is a lovely story of faith and fortitude against cultural odds. The lot of women in the Old Testament is often a subservient one in a very patriarchal culture. Women in the Bible, therefore, have mostly served as supporting roles to the Biblical male stars. With very few exceptions like Eve, they are often overlooked and their importance denigrated in Biblical history. (But although Eve has a prominent role in the Genesis, it is a dark one, that of being credited to have caused man’s downfall and his original sin.)
Orson Scott Card has successfully taken this biblical one-dimensionally drawn female character, Rebekah, and given her a very plausible personality that explains her actions and her daring decisions, that of leaving her family and traveling miles to marry a man she has never met, deceiving her husband and betraying her firstborn son of the birthright which by religious and cultural laws was Esau’s to inherit. Card’s Rebekah seems like a woman out of our century; but then, it may be because a strong woman’s nature may not be all that inherently different despite time and change.
What is astonishing, though, is Card’s depiction of two very important Genesis characters : Abraham and Isaac. He delves into what must have been a traumatizing experience for the sacrificial Isaac and imagines what his psyche might have been after almost being served up to God. He creatively comes up with a realistic probability that Isaac, who had to face near death by the hand of his own father, must have been emotionally scarred for life. So, he takes this premise and depicts Isaac as suffering from low self-esteem with constant craving for approval from Abraham. His poor self image carries on to affect how he relates with his sons, Jacob and Esau, his father, Abraham and his wife, Rebekah.
In Card’s story, Abraham, despite being God’s chosen one, is still subject to human frailties. As an ordinary man, he has high regard for manliness (meaning physical prowess, brashness, fearlessness—traits of a “true man”) and thus cannot help but be disappointed in his mild-mannered, introverted, quiet heir and proud of his other son, Ishmael, who exhibits all these enviable qualities.
With all these human flaws and strengths imbued in his characters, Card relates the dynamics of relationships within this ancient Biblical family, producing a very interesting humanistic story that brings the Bible’s account into contemporary understanding and empathy.
To Read Or Not To Read :
I must commend the author for his vivid imaginations of the story behind the bland skeletal account written in the Bible. Indeed, his purpose must be to influence the reader to see beyond the Biblical story and actually appreciate the trials and tribulations those Biblical people must have gone through in their love and absolute faith in the Lord, meriting their lives’ immortalization for thousands of years in the Holy Scripture. The reader is persuaded to see Rebekah, Isaac, Abraham, Jacob, Esau, et. al. as “real people” whose actions and choices were driven by the same factors that drive many of us today.
The intense faith in God by the characters whose lives were dedicated to serving His will is palpable in the novel and is quite humbling if one compares it to today’s degree of faith.
This novel may lead you to a much better appreciation of the Old Testament stories. As an engaging read, this should be in your list of fruitful things to pass your time with.
My Mark : Outstanding
June 4, 2009
Posted by Johanna under 2006 - 2010
| Tags: accessories
, Anna Wintour
, fashion editor
, Kate Moss
, last season
, Louis vuitton
| Comments
Since I’ve been putting in serious hours in the gym, working to regain my long lost endurance, I haven’t been curling up much in my reading chair. Sadly, I’ve neglected my TBR pile and this blog after dragging my exhausted self directly to bed night after night.
This book I’ve picked up, however, was perfect for my frame of mind last week. I didn’t want to wade through serious text; so, this little gossip of a novel was just the perfect shallow read for my brain to happily coast along with.
Author : Imogen Edward-Jones
First Publication Date : 2006
First Publisher : Bantam Books
This Edition’s Publication Date : 2007
This Edition’s Publisher : Corgi Books
No of pages : 379
A frank and often hilarious look up at fashion industry’s underpants, “Fashion Babylon” is an intriguing non-fictional account in a six-month period that marks a designer’s life in between creating collections. Imogen Edwards-Jones and Anonymous ( the insider who spills the juicy tidbits about our revered designers and celebs), recounts the world of glamour through a fictitious designer.
What makes the novel so intriguing is that the gossipy anecdotes are all true! This is a work of non-fiction and only a few names are changed to protect the identities. But, there are a lot of real names in there, names we do know as fashion icons— Anna Wintour, Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, to name a few. Oh, and the book gives us a pretty good idea of how things really work in the world of high fashion and the mind-boggling lifestyle endemic to it. It is a wonder how many survive the almost daily booze and drugs needed to keep up with all the stresses of deadlines, backstabbing, career and financial precariousness over a single mediocre collection, etc.
Anything and everything — clothes, accessories, pets, food, hobbies, people– fall into two categories: “cool” or very last season. “Coolness” is a very unpredictable status which can turn into “last season” in a blink of an eye if the wrong sort of people get their hands on the trend:
“…Stella McCartney’s over-the-knee non-leather boots are a case in point. They were worn by Madonna on Monday, Posh on Wednesday, and a footballer’s wife on the Friday. In fashion terms they were dead and buried within a week.
Half of the reason why companies like Balenciaga are always churning out new versions of the same bag is because they are constantly being killed off by the wrong sort of celebrity. You can imagine how much Roland must have wanted to slash his wrists when he saw Countdown’s Carol Vorderman wearing his dress. It went from Scarlet Johansson via Cameron Diaz and Rachel Weisz to Carol in three months. As a result, Scarlett is now running miles from the Galaxy dress. In the end, I suppose that is the price of having a hit collection.” —- pp. 202 -203
In fashion, image is everything. That is why…
“…Thousands of pounds of expensive, beautiful clothes are destroyed every year by their own designers rather than being sold somewhere that might tarnish the brand. Fashion may be about beauty and aesthetic and aspiration, but it is also about the brand. Brand is everything. Tarnish the brand and what are you left with? Why pay a thousand pounds for a dress that you know costs less than a hundred pounds to make? Why buy a Chanel bag when there is one at Accessorize that is just as charming? So, rather than helping out those less fortunate than ourselves, we guard our image and burn the lot.” … p.105
“…You might be starving, drunk and high , with dried-up kidneys and the liver of a fifty-five-year-old alcoholic, but just as long as you can make it down the catwalk looking fabulous, who cares?”…p. 81
And the pervasive exhaustion of it all is partly because…
“Drugs are endemic in this insudstry because it is all about make-believe…You can’t really talk seriously about fashion–there is nothing to talk about. You can’t just say I have done this great skirt this season. It’s all about dressing this bitch because she’s cool and she’s going to help my brand. If she goes out in this dress she is going to give me some kudos, so I have to get up her arse, and then I have to be nice and suck cok with some journalist, and then I have to be nice to this buyer to help my brand. It is all so soul-destroying….You don’t make friends in this industry. There is no camaraderie. There is no one trying to make real connections. People are parasites. They do the fashion rubbish talk. That’s why people are high all the time, to help them escape it all. They’d rather not confront the reality. We all live on fresh air, so it has to be high-octane and fun otherwise we would all sit here and say, “I’m not making any money. What the fuck am I doing?”….p. 181
If you want the insider tidbits on fashion’s characters, this book is chock-full of it. If you’re a hard-core fashionista, perhaps a lot would be old hat to you by now. But to the less glamorous of us, some will be just downright funny and shocking at the same time. Did you know that…
“Thiery Mugler has an atelier where there is a glass shower by the gym so anyone who is in the gym can work out while watching someone hosing themselves down.”
“…Sienna Miller gets seeded by nearly everyone. In fact, the girl gets something like twenty-six handbags a month, and they are worth between £2,000 and £30,000 each. An estate car comes to her house every week loaded down with dresses, bags, coats, hats, make-up, body products and, more weirdly, candles.” — p. 134
“Gwyneth Paltrow can’t cope with all the stuff she gets sent out. She often has parties at her house where she invites all her mates over to go through the piles of freebies on the instruction that they can take what they want.” — p. 134
There’s never a dull moment with this book in hand. Lightly written with lots of contemporary droll English wit, Fashion Babylon will delight every gossipy heart that loves fashion and celebrities. Plus the astonishing revelations behind the backroom of couture is guaranteed to keep you marvelously glued in between covers.
My Mark : Fabulous!
|
<urn:uuid:ce08d279-4ca6-4bd2-a916-d69f3db4c062>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://josbookshelf.wordpress.com/2009/06/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.968437 | 4,841 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Scarcity is the most fundamental economic problem that societies face. In a world of unlimited wants and scarce resources, all individuals and societies are forced to choose among competing alternatives. Fortunately, technological advances have made our lives better by reducing the opportunity cost of some of these choices. Consider the time-saving inventions of the microwave oven, the automobile, the washing machine, etc. Will technology ever completely eliminate scarcity? For instance, the popular science fiction TV series Star Trek had a machine called a "replicator" that essentially produced things (such as food and clothing) out of thin air. Does this mean that Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock never have to face the tough choices imposed on us 21st century humans?
|
<urn:uuid:bc910ea6-20be-45ea-b14a-7c3830bfc613>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-48
|
http://mariettaecon.blogspot.com/2006/02/on-scarcity-replicators-and-captain.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386163051139/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204131731-00048-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.958352 | 142 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Tradition might reign supreme in some cases, but when it comes to equine pain control researchers are seeking different—and sometimes safer—drugs to use in a variety of circumstances.
Veterinarians often prescribe traditionally used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)—such as phenylbutazone (PBZ, Bute), flunixin meglumine (FM, Banamine), and ketoprofen (Ketofen)—for analgesia. But such drugs carry potentially dangerous side effects, including toxicity, ulcer development, decreased plasma protein levels, and renal (kidney) disease.
University of Illinois veterinarians recently tested an alternative to traditional NSAIDs—meperidine, marketed as Demerol—for its ability to treat foot pain in horses. During a presentation at the 2013 American Association of Equine Practitioners' Convention, held Dec. 7011 in Nashville, Tenn., Jonathan H. Foreman, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVIM, said that while the opioid drug appears effective at treating foot pain, it might have some drawbacks, as well.
To test the drug's efficacy, Foreman and colleagues induced reversible lameness in eight healthy Thoroughbreds by using an adjustable heart bar shoe that could be tightened with a screw to elicit lameness ranging from mild to severe. Then, they randomly assigned each horse to receive either 1 mg/kg of body weight intramuscular (IM) meperidine or saline (to serve as controls) one hour after lameness induction. They monitored the horses' heart rates and lameness scores every 20 minutes for five hours, then hourly for eight hours. The team also collected blood samples from the horses before treatments, five minutes after treatment, and one, two, four, six, eight, 10, and 12 hours after treatment.
The researchers found that:
- Meperidine lowered the horses' heart rates significantly, but only for a brief time period (two to four hours); the treated horses' heart rates eventually rose higher than the controls in the experiment's later hours, Foreman said.
- The drug also reduced treated horses' lameness scores, but, again, only for the same brief period.
- Meperidine's plasma concentration peaked—meaning the drug's highest plasma concentration was identified—at one hour post-administration. "It turns out meperidine peaks very quickly after intramuscular injection," Foreman said.
- Three of the eight horses' meperidine concentrations were below the lower limit of detection (or the lowest quantity of a substance that can be distinguished from an absence of that substance) when measured at 12 hours post-treatment.
In previous research using a similar study design, Foreman has shown that PBZ and FM provide foot pain analgesia for eight to 12 hours. To that end, he concluded that while meperidine provided foot pain relief, "compared to the duration of effect with PBZ and FM, it's significantly shorter."
Because it doesn't put the horse at risk for the negative side effects associated with NSAIDs, "meperidine may provide a suitable non-steroidal alternative, but it would need to be administered more frequently," he said.
Disclaimer: Seek the advice of a qualified veterinarian before proceeding with any diagnosis, treatment, or therapy.
|
<urn:uuid:82b85604-cd88-4763-ae29-88cf2662f0f7>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-10
|
http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/83356/meperidine-effective-but-short-lasting-for-foot-pain-control
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1393999651905/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305060731-00056-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.936772 | 689 | 2.65625 | 3 |
n Plato’s allegory of the cave, what does the sun actually symbolize? (I am am expecting deep, critically-thought-out arguments taken from both Plato and your own experience thus to support you answer!)
Socrates – GLAUCON
And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: –Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.
You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?
True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?
Yes, he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?
And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?
No question, he replied.
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
That is certain.
And now look again, and see what will naturally follow it’ the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, -will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?
And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?
True, he now
And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he ‘s forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.
Not all in a moment, he said.
He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?
Last of he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is.
He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold?
Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.
And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?
Certainly, he would.
And if they were in the habit of conferring honours among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honours and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,
Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner?
Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner.
Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness?
To be sure, he said.
And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
No question, he said.
This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.
I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you.
Moreover, I said, you must not wonder that those who attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; for their souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell; which desire of theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted.
Yes, very natural.
And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice, and is endeavouring to meet the conceptions of those who have never yet seen absolute justice?
Anything but surprising, he replied.
Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.
That, he said, is a very just distinction.
But then, if I am right, certain professors of education must be wrong when they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blind eyes.
They undoubtedly say this, he replied.
Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.
And must there not be some art which will effect conversion in the easiest and quickest manner; not implanting the faculty of sight, for that exists already, but has been turned in the wrong direction, and is looking away from the truth?
Yes, he said, such an art may be presumed.
And whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul seem to be akin to bodily qualities, for even when they are not originally innate they can be implanted later by habit and exercise, the of wisdom more than anything else contains a divine element which always remains, and by this conversion is rendered useful and profitable; or, on the other hand, hurtful and useless. Did you never observe the narrow intelligence flashing from the keen eye of a clever rogue –how eager he is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to his end; he is the reverse of blind, but his keen eyesight is forced into the service of evil, and he is mischievous in proportion to his cleverness.
Very true, he said.
But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days of their youth; and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures, such as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached to them at their birth, and which drag them down and turn the vision of their souls upon the things that are below –if, I say, they had been released from these impediments and turned in the opposite direction, the very same faculty in them would have seen the truth as keenly as they see what their eyes are turned to now.
Yes, I said; and there is another thing which is likely. or rather a necessary inference from what has preceded, that neither the uneducated and uninformed of the truth, nor yet those who never make an end of their education, will be able ministers of State; not the former, because they have no single aim of duty which is the rule of all their actions, private as well as public; nor the latter, because they will not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are already dwelling apart in the islands of the blest.
Very true, he replied.
Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all-they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now.
What do you mean?
I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labours and honours, whether they are worth having or not.
But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them a worse life, when they might have a better?
You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State.
True, he said, I had forgotten.
Observe, Glaucon, that there will be no injustice in compelling our philosophers to have a care and providence of others; we shall explain to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them. Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a culture which they have never received. But we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they have been educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the den, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth. And thus our State which is also yours will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.
Quite true, he replied.
And will our pupils, when they hear this, refuse to take their turn at the toils of State, when they are allowed to spend the greater part of their time with one another in the heavenly light?
Impossible, he answered; for they are just men, and the commands which we impose upon them are just; there can be no doubt that every one of them will take office as a stern necessity, and not after the fashion of our present rulers of State.
Yes, my friend, I said; and there lies the point. You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life. Whereas if they go to the administration of public affairs, poor and hungering after the’ own private advantage, thinking that hence they are to snatch the chief good, order there can never be; for they will be fighting about office, and the civil and domestic broils which thus arise will be the ruin of the rulers themselves and of the whole State.
Most true, he replied.
And the only life which looks down upon the life of political ambition is that of true philosophy. Do you know of any other?
Indeed, I do not, he said.
And those who govern ought not to be lovers of the task? For, if they are, there will be rival lovers, and they will fight.
Who then are those whom we shall compel to be guardians? Surely they will be the men who are wisest about affairs of State, and by whom the State is best administered, and who at the same time have other honours and another and a better life than that of politics?
They are the men, and I will choose them, he replied.
And now shall we consider in what way such guardians will be produced, and how they are to be brought from darkness to light, –as some are said to have ascended from the world below to the gods?
By all means, he replied.
The process, I said, is not the turning over of an oyster-shell, but the turning round of a soul passing from a day which is little better than night to the true day of being, that is, the ascent from below, which we affirm to be true philosophy?
And should we not enquire what sort of knowledge has the power of effecting such a change?
What sort of knowledge is there which would draw the soul from becoming to being? And another consideration has just occurred to me: You will remember that our young men are to be warrior athletes
Yes, that was said.
Then this new kind of knowledge must have an additional quality?
Usefulness in war.
Yes, if possible.
There were two parts in our former scheme of education, were there not?
There was gymnastic which presided over the growth and decay of the body, and may therefore be regarded as having to do with generation and corruption?
Then that is not the knowledge which we are seeking to discover? No.
But what do you say of music, which also entered to a certain extent into our former scheme?
Music, he said, as you will remember, was the counterpart of gymnastic, and trained the guardians by the influences of habit, by harmony making them harmonious, by rhythm rhythmical, but not giving them science; and the words, whether fabulous or possibly true, had kindred elements of rhythm and harmony in them. But in music there was nothing which tended to that good which you are now seeking.
You are most accurate, I said, in your recollection; in music there certainly was nothing of the kind. But what branch of knowledge is there, my dear Glaucon, which is of the desired nature; since all the useful arts were reckoned mean by us?
Undoubtedly; and yet if music and gymnastic are excluded, and the arts are also excluded, what remains?
Well, I said, there may be nothing left of our special subjects; and then we shall have to take something which is not special, but of universal application.
What may that be?
A something which all arts and sciences and intelligences use in common, and which every one first has to learn among the elements of education.
What is that?
The little matter of distinguishing one, two, and three –in a word, number and calculation: –do not all arts and sciences necessarily partake of them?
Then the art of war partakes of them?
To the sure.
Then Palamedes, whenever he appears in tragedy, proves Agamemnon ridiculously unfit to be a general. Did you never remark how he declares that he had invented number, and had numbered the ships and set in array the ranks of the army at Troy; which implies that they had never been numbered before, and Agamemnon must be supposed literally to have been incapable of counting his own feet –how could he if he was ignorant of number? And if that is true, what sort of general must he have been?
I should say a very strange one, if this was as you say.
Can we deny that a warrior should have a knowledge of arithmetic?
Certainly he should, if he is to have the smallest understanding of military tactics, or indeed, I should rather say, if he is to be a man at all.
I should like to know whether you have the same notion which I have of this study?
What is your notion?
It appears to me to be a study of the kind which we are seeking, and which leads naturally to reflection, but never to have been rightly used; for the true use of it is simply to draw the soul towards being.
Will you explain your meaning? he said.
I will try, I said; and I wish you would share the enquiry with me, and say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when I attempt to distinguish in my own mind what branches of knowledge have this attracting power, in order that we may have clearer proof that arithmetic is, as I suspect, one of them.
Explain, he said.
I mean to say that objects of sense are of two kinds; some of them do not invite thought because the sense is an adequate judge of them; while in the case of other objects sense is so untrustworthy that further enquiry is imperatively demanded.
You are clearly referring, he said, to the manner in which the senses are imposed upon by distance, and by painting in light and shade.
No, I said, that is not at all my meaning.
Then what is your meaning?
When speaking of uninviting objects, I mean those which do not pass from one sensation to the opposite; inviting objects are those which do; in this latter case the sense coming upon the object, whether at a distance or near, gives no more vivid idea of anything in particular than of its opposite. An illustration will make my meaning clearer: –here are three fingers –a little finger, a second finger, and a middle finger.
You may suppose that they are seen quite close: And here comes the point.
What is it?
Each of them equally appears a finger, whether seen in the middle or at the extremity, whether white or black, or thick or thin –it makes no difference; a finger is a finger all the same. In these cases a man is not compelled to ask of thought the question, what is a finger? for the sight never intimates to the mind that a finger is other than a finger.
And therefore, I said, as we might expect, there is nothing here which invites or excites intelligence.
There is not, he said.
But is this equally true of the greatness and smallness of the fingers? Can sight adequately perceive them? and is no difference made by the circumstance that one of the fingers is in the middle and another at the extremity? And in like manner does the touch adequately perceive the qualities of thickness or thinness, or softness or hardness? And so of the other senses; do they give perfect intimations of such matters? Is not their mode of operation on this wise –the sense which is concerned with the quality of hardness is necessarily concerned also with the quality of softness, and only intimates to the soul that the same thing is felt to be both hard and soft?
You are quite right, he said.
And must not the soul be perplexed at this intimation which the sense gives of a hard which is also soft? What, again, is the meaning of light and heavy, if that which is light is also heavy, and that which is heavy, light?
Yes, he said, these intimations which the soul receives are very curious and require to be explained.
Yes, I said, and in these perplexities the soul naturally summons to her aid calculation and intelligence, that she may see whether the several objects announced to her are one or two.
And if they turn out to be two, is not each of them one and different?
And if each is one, and both are two, she will conceive the two as in a state of division, for if there were undivided they could only be conceived of as one?
The eye certainly did see both small and great, but only in a confused manner; they were not distinguished.
Whereas the thinking mind, intending to light up the chaos, was compelled to reverse the process, and look at small and great as separate and not confused.
Was not this the beginning of the enquiry ‘What is great?’ and ‘What is small?’
And thus arose the distinction of the visible and the intelligible.
This was what I meant when I spoke of impressions which invited the intellect, or the reverse –those which are simultaneous with opposite impressions, invite thought; those which are not simultaneous do not.
I understand, he said, and agree with you.
And to which class do unity and number belong?
I do not know, he replied.
Think a little and you will see that what has preceded will supply the answer; for if simple unity could be adequately perceived by the sight or by any other sense, then, as we were saying in the case of the finger, there would be nothing to attract towards being; but when there is some contradiction always present, and one is the reverse of one and involves the conception of plurality, then thought begins to be aroused within us, and the soul perplexed and wanting to arrive at a decision asks ‘What is absolute unity?’ This is the way in which the study of the one has a power of drawing and converting the mind to the contemplation of true being.
And surely, he said, this occurs notably in the case of one; for we see the same thing to be both one and infinite in multitude?
Yes, I said; and this being true of one must be equally true of all number?
And all arithmetic and calculation have to do with number?
And they appear to lead the mind towards truth?
Yes, in a very remarkable manner.
Then this is knowledge of the kind for which we are seeking, having a double use, military and philosophical; for the man of war must learn the art of number or he will not know how to array his troops, and the philosopher also, because he has to rise out of the sea of change and lay hold of true being, and therefore he must be an arithmetician.
That is true.
And our guardian is both warrior and philosopher?
Then this is a kind of knowledge which legislation may fitly prescribe; and we must endeavour to persuade those who are prescribe to be the principal men of our State to go and learn arithmetic, not as amateurs, but they must carry on the study until they see the nature of numbers with the mind only; nor again, like merchants or retail-traders, with a view to buying or selling, but for the sake of their military use, and of the soul herself; and because this will be the easiest way for her to pass from becoming to truth and being.
That is excellent, he said.
Yes, I said, and now having spoken of it, I must add how charming the science is! and in how many ways it conduces to our desired end, if pursued in the spirit of a philosopher, and not of a shopkeeper!
How do you mean?
I mean, as I was saying, that arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tangible objects into the argument. You know how steadily the masters of the art repel and ridicule any one who attempts to divide absolute unity when he is calculating, and if you divide, they multiply, taking care that one shall continue one and not become lost in fractions.
That is very true.
Now, suppose a person were to say to them: O my friends, what are these wonderful numbers about which you are reasoning, in which, as you say, there is a unity such as you demand, and each unit is equal, invariable, indivisible, –what would they answer?
They would answer, as I should conceive, that they were speaking of those numbers which can only be realised in thought.
Then you see that this knowledge may be truly called necessary, necessitating as it clearly does the use of the pure intelligence in the attainment of pure truth?
Yes; that is a marked characteristic of it.
And have you further observed, that those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would otherwise have been.
Very true, he said.
And indeed, you will not easily find a more difficult study, and not many as difficult.
You will not.
And, for all these reasons, arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up.
Let this then be made one of our subjects of education. And next, shall we enquire whether the kindred science also concerns us?
You mean geometry?
Clearly, he said, we are concerned with that part of geometry which relates to war; for in pitching a camp, or taking up a position, or closing or extending the lines of an army, or any other military manoeuvre, whether in actual battle or on a march, it will make all the difference whether a general is or is not a geometrician.
Yes, I said, but for that purpose a very little of either geometry or calculation will be enough; the question relates rather to the greater and more advanced part of geometry –whether that tends in any degree to make more easy the vision of the idea of good; and thither, as I was saying, all things tend which compel the soul to turn her gaze towards that place, where is the full perfection of being, which she ought, by all means, to behold.
True, he said.
Then if geometry compels us to view being, it concerns us; if becoming only, it does not concern us?
Yes, that is what we assert.
Yet anybody who has the least acquaintance with geometry will not deny that such a conception of the science is in flat contradiction to the ordinary language of geo
Need your ASSIGNMENT done? Use our paper writing service to score good grades and meet your deadlines.
Order a Similar Paper Order a Different Paper
|
<urn:uuid:08d50228-0f63-4433-a6c6-2e57013e5677>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-23
|
https://brainessay.com/n-platos-allegory-of-the-cave-what-does-the-sun-actually-symbolize-i-am-am-expecting-deep-critically-thought-out-arguments-taken-from-both-plato-and-your-own-experience-thus-to-support-you-answer/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224652235.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20230606045924-20230606075924-00255.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.979595 | 6,541 | 2.875 | 3 |
VCE Instrumental Workshops (Chemistry)
Held every year, these workshops are aimed at meeting the outcomes for VCE Chemistry Unit 3: Chemical Pathways.
In 2016 IA workshops for Yr 11 students were introduced and held mid-year. Participating students used three techniques - Flame-AAS, HPLC and UV-Vis.
VCE DNA Workshops (Biology)
These hands-on workshops are designed to provide practical experience relevant to Outcome 1 of Unit 4: Biological Continuity and Change take place every year.
Hartung Youth Lecture for Years 9-12
We also host The Royal Australian Chemical Institute's annual Hartung Youth Lecture commemorates Ernst Johannes Hartung (1893-1979) and aims to inspire students in years 9-12. A Chemistry Lecturer, Hartung also chaired the Advisory Committee on Optical Munitions during World War II. His research interest was in the production of optical glass.
VCE Biology DNA Techniques Workshop
This workshop has been specifically designed to provide practical experience relevant to Outcome 1 of Unit 4: Biological Continuity and Change. Participating students gain experience in genetic engineering, transformation of competent cells with plasmid DNA and DNA fingerprinting.
National Science Week
We join in the Australia-wide celebrations each year, running new and exciting activities each year for middle year students from local primary schools.
The ConocoPhillips Science Experience
Three full on days of hands-on science specially designed for Year 9 and 10 students to experience science in a university setting. They also discover its interesting applications during a full day field trip whilst spending time with like minded students from across Victoria.
|
<urn:uuid:854e03f5-4052-4d54-adc8-ffd0c646543c>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-16
|
https://federation.edu.au/connect/engagement/gippsland-access-and-participation-gap-project/past-events-2014
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371700247.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20200407085717-20200407120217-00414.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.924895 | 340 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Concentrations of gastrin in the renal artery, renal vein, and urine of dogs were determined by radioimmunoassay. Renal blood flow was determined by flowmeters. These measurements allowed calculation of the mass of gastrin lost from blood flowing through the kidney. No loss of gastrin was detected during the basal state or during suppression of endogenous gastrin release by antral acidification. When circulating levels of gastrin were elevated by irrigating the antrum with acetylcholine, a significant mass of gastrin was removed on transit of the kidney. Excretion of gastrin in the urine was minuscule in comparison with the total mass lost. The kidney therefore possesses the power to inactivate stimulated levels of endogenous gastrin. Failure of inactivation of basal levels may be due to a threshold concentration or to a difference in the molecular form of gastrin released on stimulation.
|
<urn:uuid:fb87bb38-04d4-4736-836c-567a05e0c16c>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-14
|
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/577070
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296945242.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20230324020038-20230324050038-00539.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.959832 | 181 | 2.75 | 3 |
From his Autobiography. In 1915, six years after leaving the White House, Roosevelt spoke to a mostly Irish audience of the Knights of Columbus at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism,” he said. An originator of this nativist phrase, he expanded on the idea: “There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.”
When a boy, I read a passage in one of Frederick Marryat’s books which always impressed me.
The captain of some small British man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of fearlessness. He says that at the outset almost every man is frightened when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he was not frightened. After this is kept up long enough, it changes from pretense to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel it. This was the theory upon which I went. There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to “mean” horses and gunfighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid, I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the same experience if they choose. They will first learn to bear themselves well in trials which they anticipate and which they school themselves in advance to meet. After a while the habit will grow on them, and they will behave well in sudden and unexpected emergencies which come upon them unawares.
It is of course much pleasanter if one is naturally fearless, and I envy and respect those who are. But it is a good thing to remember that the man who does not enjoy this advantage can nevertheless stand beside the man who does, and can do his duty with the like efficiency, if he chooses to. Let him dream about being a fearless man, and the more he dreams the better he will be, always provided he does his best to realize the dream in practice. He can do his part honorably and well, provided only he sets fearlessness before himself as an ideal, schools himself to think of danger merely as something to be faced and overcome, and regards life itself as he should regard it, not as something to be thrown away but as a pawn to be promptly hazarded whenever the hazard is warranted by the larger interests of the great game in which we are all engaged.
|
<urn:uuid:85d4e2cd-25f8-4b6c-8bb8-6a3019913b7f>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-24
|
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/fear/class-act
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-24/segments/1590347426956.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20200602224517-20200603014517-00497.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.985001 | 551 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Pinus attenuata Lemmon
Knobcone pine, Knob-cone pine
Pinaceae (Pine Family)
USDA Symbol: piat
A small pine tree, knob-cone pine normally stays 15-30 ft. tall in cultivation. In the wild it can grow to 50 ft. With age it forms a straggling crown. Its needles are a bright, lime-green. Scales on the tightly closed cones enlarge into prominent knobs. These cones remain on the tree for years, releasing seed only after a fire.
The whorls of many knobby, closed cones help identify this species. Since the cones may become imbedded within the wood of the expanding trunk, this species has been called the tree that swallows its cones. When fires kill the trees, cones as much as 30 years old are opened by the heat and shed their seeds. The abundant seedlings then begin a new forest.
From the Image Gallery
No images of this plant
Plant CharacteristicsDuration: Perennial
Leaf Retention: Evergreen
Leaf Arrangement: Fascicled
Leaf Complexity: Simple
Leaf Shape: Linear
Breeding System: Flowers Unisexual , Monoecious
Fruit Type: Cone
Size Class: 36-72 ft.
Bloom InformationBloom Color: Not Applicable
DistributionUSA: CA , OR
Native Distribution: CA & s.w. OR
Native Habitat: Dry barren, chalky or rocky pine or oak groves below 4000 ft.
Growing ConditionsLight Requirement: Part Shade
Soil Moisture: Dry
Soil Description: Various dry soils.
Conditions Comments: Konbcone pine has a fast growth rate and is tolerant of wind and heat. P. x attenuradiata is the name given to a commercially available hybrid between this species and P. radiata. This hybrid occurs naturally near Swanton in Santa Cruz Co., CA.
PropagationDescription: Easily propagated by seed.
Seed Collection: Cones can be induced to open be keeping them in a warm place for a few weeks.
Commercially Avail: yes
From the National Organizations DirectoryAccording to the species list provided by Affiliate Organizations, this plant is on display at the following locations:
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden - Santa Barbara, CA
Additional resourcesUSDA: Find Pinus attenuata in USDA Plants
FNA: Find Pinus attenuata in the Flora of North America (if available)
Google: Search Google for Pinus attenuata
MetadataRecord Modified: 2011-07-10
Research By: TWC Staff
|
<urn:uuid:085b7622-9f72-493d-903a-1ea01795a539>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-23
|
http://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=piat
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1405997894931.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20140722025814-00181-ip-10-33-131-23.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.83784 | 556 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Friday, Nov 21, 2008
NASA scientists have discovered enormous underground reservoirs of frozen water on Mars, away from its polar caps, in the latest sign that life might be sustainable on the Red planet.
Ground-penetrating radar used by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals numerous huge glaciers up to one half-mile thick buried beneath layers of rock and debris. Researchers said one glacier is three time the size of Los Angeles in area.
“All together, these glaciers almost certainly represent the largest reservoir of water ice on Mars that’s not in the polar caps,” said John Holt, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin and lead author of a report about the discovery, which appears in the November 21 issue of the journal Science.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
“In addition to their scientific value, they could be a source of water to support future exploration of Mars,” said Holt.
Scientists on the 12-member research team surmise that the frozen water deposits are remnants of a Martian ice age millions of years ago.
Because water is one of the primary requirements for life, scientists said the frozen reservoirs are an encouraging sign of extra-terrestrial life.
The buried glaciers reported by Holt and his 11 co-authors lie in the Hellas Basin region of Mars’ southern hemisphere, and scientist said even larger frozen water reservoirs may exist in Mars’ northern hemisphere.
This article was posted: Friday, November 21, 2008 at 5:04 am
|
<urn:uuid:9acf038e-1d87-4375-928f-0f2585d3dc2e>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-48
|
http://www.prisonplanet.com/massive-frozen-water-reservoirs-discovered-on-mars.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386163986869/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204133306-00003-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.930265 | 312 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Researchers have created what they call a “living tattoo” using ink made from bacteria cells.
The hi-tech body art contains microbe cells that have been genetically modified, allowing it to act as a sensor by glowing green when it detects a change in the environment.
The researchers say these living tattoos could be used as a wearable device to sense pollutants in the air or track changes in the temperature.
Developed by MIT engineers, the tattoo was “printed” layer-by-layer on a patch before being adhered to the skin.
The researchers designed the tattoo to make it more tree-like, with each section of the tree’s branches containing bacteria sensitive to certain types of chemicals.
To demonstrate the bioink’s abilities, the team used those chemicals on a person’s skin and placed the “living tattoo” on top.
When the branches came in contact with the chemicals, the bacteria in them were triggered to glow a fluorescent green.
The team say their technique can be used to create “active materials” for wearable sensors – to perform functions such as sense environmental chemicals and pollutants as well as changes in pH and temperature.
The concept of 3D printing cells isn’t new. In recent years, scientists have tried to print genetically engineered cells of mammals without much success.
Study author Hyunwoo Yuk said: “It turns out those cells were dying during the printing process, because mammalian cells are basically lipid bi-layer balloons.
“They are too weak, and they easily rupture.”
The MIT team decided to revisit the concept using bacterial cells instead because they are hardier and able to survive relatively harsh conditions.
Yuk says their technology could be developed further to, one day, build “living computers” made up of different types of bacteria cells that communicate with each other by passing signals back and forth – “much like transistors on a microchip”.
He said: “This is very future work, but we expect to be able to print living computational platforms that could be wearable.”
He also believes that technology could have other uses as well, like, for example, produce drugs.
Yuk added: “We can use bacterial cells like workers in a 3D factory. They can be engineered to produce drugs within a 3D scaffold, and applications should not be confined to epidermal devices.
“As long as the fabrication method and approach are viable, applications such as implants and ingestibles should be possible.”
The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials.
|
<urn:uuid:24d22f11-4194-41fb-873b-b9f53d3764f9>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-34
|
https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/news/engineers-create-living-tattoo-that-responds-to-the-environment/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439735810.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20200803111838-20200803141838-00563.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.956283 | 543 | 3.640625 | 4 |
Everyone loves animals and that is exactly why I wanted to share them with you while giving them some really interesting facts at the same time. In this article, beautiful color photographs of several large animals are combined with little factoids to help you better understand these large beasts they share the Earth with.
23. Hercules Beetle
The Largest Beetle
One of the largest beetles in the world, they are also the strongest beetle of all. They can lift over 800 times their own weight -that would be almost the same as a human being able to lift a full sized house! Simply amazing!
Male Hercules Beetles are well known for their long horns too which they use in battle with other beetles. They can get up to almost 7 inches in length – which may not sound like a lot, but for a beetle this is huge! Remember, a dollar bill is just 6 inches long and this insect is longer than it! These beetles can be found in the rain forests of Central and South America.
22. Giant Huntsman Spider
Based on leg length alone, these are the largest spiders in the world. They were first found in a cave, which is where they live, in the country of Laos in 2001.
Their legs alone can be up to 12 inches long each – as long as a regular ruler! And remember, they have 8 of them! Wouldn’t you love to meet up with one of these?
21. Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing
The Largest Butterfly
They can only be found in the forests of Papua New Guinea and nowhere else on Earth. In fact, they are considered to be an endangered species due to habitat loss.
Typically, the females in this particular species are the largest – their wings can span over 12 inches in length – that is bigger than your average dinner plate!
20. Goliath Frog
The Largest Frog Species
These are the largest frog species in the world and live on the continent of Africa near Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea. Believe it or not, these frogs are vegetarians too – they prefer to eat only one type of aquatic plant which can only be found near waterfalls or other rapidly moving water.
The body alone of these frogs can be over 13 inches long (not counting the legs)- that is longer than your average ruler. Plus, they can live to be 14 to 20 years old – this is as old as many small dog breeds live to be.
19. Ocean Sunfish
The Largest Bony Fish
These are the heaviest bony fish in the world that you have probably never even heard of. They have a large flat body and swim in tropical and temperate waters all over the world. Adult Ocean Sunfish weigh on average about 2200 pounds (1000 kg) – that is about how much a small car weighs, like a MINI Cooper for example. Despite their large size they are very docile creatures.
They eat jellyfish primarily but wall also eat squid, crustaceans and other small fish – but they have to eat a lot of them to maintain their large size. In captivity they can live up to 10 years but no one knows for sure how long they can live in the wild. In places like Japan and Taiwan they are eaten for food too and are even considered a delicacy. Can you imagine catching one of these on your fishing line?
The Largest Rodents
These are the largest rodents in the world. They are related to guinea pigs and often live in groups of 10 to 20! They are native to South America and always live near water because they like to swim and eat aquatic plants.
Capybaras are about 3 ft. tall at the shoulder (taller than a large Mastiff dog) and can weigh up to 230 pounds (as much as a pro football quarterback). They are also the favorite food of pumas, anacondas and jaguars.
17. Flemish Giant
The Largest Rabbit (or Hare)
These docile animals are the largest rabbits in the world and can easily weigh over 22 pounds (10 kilos) or more – the weight of an average car tire and about the size of a Sheltie dog (maybe even bigger).
Because of their large size and grooming requirements these rabbits need much larger living quarters so they are not the best choice of pet for most homes. Their nicknames include “Gentle Giant” and “universal rabbit”. They eat the same thing as other rabbits, only in much larger quantities due to their large size.
16. English Mastiff
The Heaviest Dog Breed
Often just called the Mastiff for short, these massive dogs are the heaviest dog breed in the world. They can easily weigh up to 250 pounds for a male and 200 pounds for a female – that is more than what a lot of adult humans’ weigh! The biggest Mastiff on record weighed over 340 pounds and was about the size of a small donkey.
Despite their stern expression and massive size, these are really quite docile dogs and very gentle overall. They also have a very historic and ancient heritage, possibly dating back to the time of the Romans. Either way, modern Mastiffs are well known for their massive bulk, dark mask and sweet temperament.
The Tallest Dog Breed
Though Great Danes are very close in size, these giant dogs are often considered to be the tallest dog breed in the world. These easy going dogs were originally bred to hunt wolves in their native land of Ireland and this is a very, very old dog breed when compared to most others dog breeds with them being mentioned at least as early as 273 BC.
The minimum (not maximum, keep in mind) weight for these rough coated dogs is usually over 100 pounds for females and over 120 pounds for males and they are usually around 30 to 32 inches tall at their shoulder. That is as least as big as an average teenager, weight wise, and nearly as tall as a yardstick at their back.
The Tallest Land Animal
These are the tallest living land animal in the world – no one else even comes close. These incredible animals stand 16 to 20 feet tall and has an average weight of 3,500 pounds for males and 1,8oo lb for females – that is about the same weight as 1 to 2 Clydesdale horses.
They are best known for their super long necks which can be about 7 feet long all by themselves. That is almost as tall as the basketball player Shaquille O’Neal! Did you know that their tongues are almost 2 feet long too? Amazing! And how about this – newborn Giraffe babies are almost 6 feet tall immediately after being born!
12 & 13. Polar Bear & Kodiak Bear
The Largest Bears
These 2 contestants are tied as being the largest bears in the world and also as the largest land carnivores. Males can easily weigh up to 1500 pounds – that is about the same amount a mature Holstein cow weighs. Polar bears have adapted to live in arctic conditions while the Kodiak Bear lives primarily in southern Alaska.
The Kodiak Bear is a subspecies of brown bear while the Polar Bear is also related to the Brown Bear. The Kodiak will eat berries, insects, fish, garbage and just about anything they can get their paws on. Polar Bears are specialists and eat mainly seals though they will also eat other things too if given the opportunity.
11. Red Kangaroo
The Largest Marsupial, The Largest Pouched Animal, and the Largest Kangaroo in the World
These are the largest marsupial, pouched mammals, in the world and also the largest of all the kangaroo species. They eat grasses primarily, live in small groups and the newborn babies develop in their mothers pouch until they are ready to get out on their own.
Did you know that male red kangaroos can easily leap over 30 feet in one jump – that is nearly as long as a full sized school bus is long! The larger males can easily weigh up to 300 pounds or more. Not including their tails, males are usually about 5 feet tall – the same height as some adult women.
10. West Indian Manatee
The Largest Sea Cows
These are the largest members of the Sirenian, Sea Cow, order. These large animals are completely aquatic, living off of sea grasses and other aquatic plant life. Generally speaking, females are larger than the males and they are usually 8 to 15 feet long and can weigh anywhere from 1300 to 3600 pounds. That is almost the same as 1 to 3 cows might weigh.
Today, they are considered to be a Vulnerable species due to many things like a loss of habitat, fishing accidents, poaching, and increased boating accidents as well. Despite their large size they are very agile and can perform many athletic events such as swimming upside down， barrel rolls and even somersaults.
09. Dalmatian Pelican
The Largest Member of the Pelican Family
These birds are the heaviest flying bird in the world and also the largest member of the pelican family.
They are also one of the largest bird species with one of the largest wingspans of all living birds – almost as large as those of the great albatross. They feed almost entirely on fish and can weigh over 30 pounds in weight – that is about as much as the average 2 year old child weighs.
08. Japanese Spider Crab
The Largest Arthropod
The Japanese Spider Crab, also called the tall footed crab, are the largest of the arthropods (invertebrate animals that have an exoskeleton – like scorpions, spiders, horseshoe crabs and many, many others) in the world. This species of marine crab lives in the waters around Japan where they are sometimes used for food.
From claw to claw, their leg span can be up to 12 feet long and they can weigh over 40 pounds – that is more than a large bag of dog food weighs! They are so alien in how they appear that they almost look like they could be in a science fiction movie.
The Largest Bird
These are the largest birds in the world -plus they lay the largest eggs of any living bird species. The Ostrich are also flightless. Because they must run from place to place, this also makes them the fastest bird on land and the fastest two-legged animal in the world!
Their heads are about 9 feet tall above the ground and they can weigh from 150 to 300 pounds when completely mature – that is as much as a larger NFL lineman might weigh and taller than even the tallest NBA basketball stars.
06. Saltwater Crocodile
The Largest Living Reptile
These are the largest living reptile species in the world! These predators can reach up to 23 feet in length and over 2200 pounds – that’s about how much a small sports car weighs. Typically males are larger than females and Salties, as they are also called, have the strongest bite of any animal living today.
These large, territorial, apex predators begin their life, however, in a nest mound made of leaves, mud and other vegetation, fiercely guarded by their mother. These clutches of eggs can have from 40 to 60 eggs or so in them and take around 80 to 100 days to hatch.
Big tip: did you know that temperature can help decide the sex of the baby crocodiles? It’s true, if the temperature of the nest is high it will produce mostly males – if the temperature of the nest is lower it will produce mostly females.
05. Southern Elephant Seal
The Largest Antarctic Seal
These are the largest of the Antarctic seals and get their name in part because of their large size, but also because of the large proboscis (nose) of the mature males. Males are typically five to six times heavier than the females and can weigh up to 8800 pounds! That is about as much as a 4WD diesel F250 truck weighs! Females can weigh up to about 2200 pounds, the weight of many compact cars!
They do stay on land for longer periods of time than most species of seal. The Southern Elephant Seal is a fantastic swimmer and can dive for more than 20 minutes at a time. They love to eat lots of squid and fish.
04. Green Anaconda
The Heaviest Snake
The Green Anaconda is one of the world’s longest snakes and almost certainly the heaviest snake in the world. They can get up to 22 feet long and weigh over 200 pounds! They are even the main subject in several movies.
Typically, the Green Anaconda are excellent swimmers but they are sometimes also called the water boa. They kill their prey by constriction and typically eat anything they can over power which may include fish, reptiles and even small mammals.
03. The Whale Shark
The Largest Fish
The whale shark is the largest living fish in the world. This gentle giant is a filter feeding shark, meaning that it feeds on microscopic plants and animals, and they can gulp in Volkswagen Beetle sized gulps of water as they feed.
They live primarily in warm waters and can live for about 70 years or so. They can grow to be over 40 feet in length – this is as long as a school bus – and can weigh up to 47,000 pounds – this is about how much a Sherman Tank can weigh! Truly incredible when you think about it.
02. African Elephant
The Largest Living Land Animal
These are the largest living land animal today! The male African Elephant can stand as tall as 13 feet at the shoulder and weigh as much as 13,000 pounds – about the weight of a typical killer whale. Elephants are also herbivores, which means they are plant eaters, and can live up to around 70 years in the wild.
They have a large body, large ears, stumpy legs and a long trunk formed by both its nose and upper lip. This trunk acts almost like a 5th limb – it has about 150,000 muscles in it.
An Elephant’s trunk is strong enough to use in battle and can lift about 700 pounds but it can also be used for delicate maneuvers like picking up a leaf or cracking a nut shell. Elephants can also use the trunk for breathing, picking up things, sucking up water (often over 2 gallons), making sounds to communicate with others and for smelling too.
01. Blue Whale
The Largest Creature
This is the largest known creature ever to have existed. Compared to most whale species, the blue whale is long and thin reaching up to almost 100 feet in length – that is about as long as an NBA basketball court, or 2 and a half full sized school buses!
They have never been weighed as a whole but are estimated to weigh as much as 200 tons which is about how much the largest stones in the Sphinx in Egypt weigh. To give you a few more facts about its size, its tongue is about the size of an Asian Elephant and its heart, the largest in any animal, is about the size of a MINI Cooper car.
|
<urn:uuid:51046ef6-de53-4821-9447-a08fd414fc86>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-29
|
https://www.foxsumo.com/largest-animals/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593657140746.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20200713002400-20200713032400-00409.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.971116 | 3,142 | 3 | 3 |
Better Students Ask More Questions.
How would I write a letter of complaint about The Truman Show?
1 Answer | add yours
Middle School Teacher
A letter of complaint is a letter in which you describe a specific problem you have with something a company does. If you pretend The Truman Show is real, you might join the “Free Truman” campaign. You could write a letter describing how you think it is wrong to keep a human being in an artificial world, where his parents and friends are actors. This could be described as cruel, and could lead to severe psychological trauma.
You will want to include your specific complaints about the show, your specific suggestions, and contact information. I have attached a form provided by the government.
Posted by litteacher8 on May 14, 2013 at 4:09 PM (Answer #1)
Related QuestionsSee all »
Join to answer this question
Join a community of thousands of dedicated teachers and students.
|
<urn:uuid:375512cd-54cf-4c28-9fa5-0ebe5764a7de>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-48
|
http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/write-letter-complain-letter-aplication-about-434729
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386163890759/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204133130-00085-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.960856 | 196 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Health Education Helps African American Light Smokers Kick The Habit
Education to quit smoking
The first clinical trial to focus on light smokers shows that African Americans are motivated to quit more by completing health education than by using nicotine gum.
Jasjit S. Ahluwalia, M.D., M.P.H., professor and researcher with the University of Minnesota Medical School and Cancer Center, and executive director of the University's Office of Clinical Research, led the research team on this study. The findings are published in the June issue of the journal Addiction.
"Our results highlight the positive impact that directed health education and advice-oriented counseling has on helping African American light smokers quit," Ahluwalia said. "We hope our study provides impetus for more studies that assess other intervention methods that may be successfully used to improve quit rates among African American light smokers."
Researchers defined light smokers as people who smoke 10 or less cigarettes a day.
Ahluwalia noted that while the prevalence of cigarette smoking has decreased in the United States over the past few decades, the number of people who maintain a low level of cigarette use, or light smokers, is increasing. He said this is particularly evident among teens, college students, women, and ethnic minority groups.
"The phenomenon of light smoking is not entirely understood," Ahluwalia said. "For some, light smoking is a transitional state leading to heavier smoking or cessation. For others, light smoking is a pattern of low cigarette use that is maintained for years."
Approximately 50 percent of African American smokers are light smokers. By contrast, Ahluwalia notes that African Americans experience a disproportionate share of tobacco-related illnesses, including higher rate of death. African Americans tend to smoke mentholated, higher tar and nicotine cigarettes. They also have a slower rate of nicotine metabolism; higher levels, per cigarette smoked, of cotinine, a compound present in those exposed to tobacco; and, greater difficulty quitting smoking compared to other ethnic groups, which may be contributing factors to the higher smoking-related illness and death rate.
The 26-week study focused on the effects of nicotine gum and counseling among African American light smokers, defined as people who smoke 10 or less cigarettes a day. The study included 755 African American light smokers. The average age of study participants was 45; 66 percent were women. The study found that quit rates for participants prescribed nicotine gum were no better than for participants given a placebo gum. But participants who received specific health education had double the quit rate over participants who received motivational counseling.
Ahluwalia and his colleagues randomly assigned the participants to one of four study groups: 2 mg nicotine gum plus advice-oriented health education, 2 mg nicotine gum plus motivational counseling, placebo gum plus health education, and placebo plus motivational counseling. When enrolled into the study, participants who smoked an average of seven cigarettes a day had cotinine levels approaching white smokers who smoke 20 cigarettes a day.
Participants prescribed gum received an eight-week supply of either nicotine or placebo gum and six counseling sessions during the 26 weeks of the study. A booklet specifically developed for African American light smokers was given to all participants, but used extensively for groups receiving health education. During the course of the study, biochemical measures were randomly taken to check for tobacco-related compounds serum cotinine and carbon monoxide, which, if present, indicated an individual was using tobacco products.
Quit rates for participants using nicotine gum were 14.2 percent compared to 11.1 percent for the placebo group. Participants receiving health education had a quit rate of 16.7 percent compared to 8.5 percent for other participants.
|
<urn:uuid:bc11cf77-5831-4a75-b282-43149c902a23>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-05
|
https://www.emaxhealth.com/58/6074.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579250592261.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20200118052321-20200118080321-00192.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.955958 | 744 | 3.140625 | 3 |
We usually blame the ancient Mesopotamians for the invention of time-tracking devices. But as a recent discovery in Scotland has revealed, hunter-gatherers may have started using a rudimentary calendar over 10,000 years ago.
Agriculture, tool use, and cooking are often touted as the most significant innovations in the development of human societies. But few give credit to time-tracking and the capacity to conceptualize and measure time.
Indeed, without a formal approach to time itself, our ancestors could not anticipate future events with any kind of accuracy. Few activities could be scheduled, and by consequence, nothing significant could be co-ordinated on a mass scale. The development of a functional calendar, therefore, would seem to be of paramount importance.
Archaeologists credit Bronze Age Mesopotamians with inventing the first calendar (the “Mesolithic calendar”), an innovation that appeared about 5,000 years ago.
More Than Just Pits
But as Vince Gaffney of the University of Birmingham now theorizes, hunter-gatherers who used to live in what is now northern Scotland may have developed a primitive — but effective — calendar that allowed them to accurately measure the passage of time.
Gaffney, an expert in landscape archaeology, says that a row of 12 pits found in a field near Crathes Castle in an Aberdeenshire field is in fact a calendar. Each pit, some of which are 2 meters across, tracks the lunar months. Essentially, the hunter-gatherers used it as a tally system.
Now, that might not sound like a big deal. But what makes this such a fascinating piece of time-tracking technology is that it aligns on the winter solstice to provide the hunter-gatherers with an annual "astronomic correction.”
The reason for this is that the lunar month isn’t in sync with the solar year. So, stone age people needed to come up with an annual correction to make up for the “drift” — and they were able to do so by taking an observation every year on another celestial event, the midwinter solstice, in order to set the clock back to zero. This could have very well been their “New Year.”
Each pit may have also been used to track the lunar month by mirroring the phases of the moon.
The row of pits is about 50 meters long and is arranged as an arc facing a v-shaped dip in the horizon (from where the sun rose on mid-winter’s day). There are 12.37 lunar months in one solar year, so each pit likely represented a specific month, while the entire arc represented the entire year.
Gaffney suspects that the calendar was in use for about 4,000 years — from around 8,000 BC (the early Mesolithic period) to around 4,000 BC (the early Neolithic).
What this tells anthropologists is that hunter-gatherer societies were more sophisticated than previously thought. Armed with a functional calendar, hunter-gatherers could schedule activities. They could anticipate the run of fish, for example, or the migration of certain animals. Shamans could have used it to give the impression that they were in “control” of the seasons.
And in all likelihood, the downstream effects of these new predictive powers could have led to considerable social changes. It may have even allowed for larger communities and new social dynamics.
"The evidence suggests that hunter-gatherer societies in Scotland had both the need and sophistication to track time across the years, to correct for seasonal drift of the lunar year and that this occurred nearly 5,000 years before the first formal calendars known in the Near East,” noted Gaffney in a statement. "In doing so, this illustrates one important step towards the formal construction of time and therefore history itself."
Read the entire study at the journal Internet Archaeology: "Time and a Place: A luni-solar 'time-reckoner' from 8th millennium BC Scotland."
|
<urn:uuid:b0334ee4-3828-40c9-a5a2-872f761468cc>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-34
|
http://io9.gizmodo.com/archaeologists-have-discovered-the-world-s-oldest-calen-789701592
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886104204.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20170818005345-20170818025345-00397.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.961866 | 840 | 4.28125 | 4 |
The Cordon Tree and Harrod Step Over Support
The cordon tree is something like the gardener’s victory over the tree. Here, the domesticated tree no longer pushes itself self-determined toward the light, but the gardener dictates where it grows with this step over support.
It is not surprising that these very formal, as not to say "dictatorial" type of fruit tree training was practiced for the first time on a large scale by Andre Le Notre, the gardener of the absolutist Louis XIV, in Potager by Versailles. This can be of course also regarded as a violation of nature, but actually it is a cultural achievement and unfortunately an almost forgotten horticultural design element. The cordon tree shows - when used properly - the direction of the garden, it directs and guides. It is a plant and a do-not-step-over sign at the same time. One gladly accepts that it also blooms and bears fruit!
In Ippenburg, garden architects Nicole Fischer and Daniel Auderset used the cordon tree in the beds upstream the paradise gardens: these beds played the fruit and apple theme before the actual paradise garden. In the cordon tree hedge, all of our 'Paradis' and' Redlove' varieties are planted,and they direct visitors unobtrusively but determined to the intended entrances that lead to the Garden of Eden. Who steps through trees that are flowering and bear fruits? The example shows how elegantly the cordon tree can combine functionality (differentiation, guidance) and aesthetics.
Alone and used in large numbers, the cordon tree almost has an effect that is a little too strict, too naked, too determined. It is a strong resemblance to the handrail of a railing. In our example in Ippenburg, the cordon trees are underplanted with Fruit Friends, the low-growing fruit accompanying perennials that horizontally surround the cordon. This is perhaps the greatest difference to the 19th century, the second wedding of the shaped fruit trees after the 17th century: at that time, strict form was valid; the geometric measurement of nature itself as an aesthetic cultural achievement. Today, we prefer a balance or even counter-play between formality and freedom, between culture and nature.
The correct young plant and the support
As a starting material for the cordon tree, it only needs a one-year-old tree which can be slightly bent. We offer so-called Easy Trees as annual trees, which are outstandingly suitable for this purpose. A support frame with posts and a horizontal steel cable or even a fixed bar at about 40-50 cm high (even higher is possible) can be built in different ways. From the quality English manufacturer Harrod Horticultural we offer stepover support (at www.lubera.com). But of course all variations in do-it-yourself construction are possible. ;-)
The distance between the individual support poles is best chosen according to the desired tree spacing and thus according to the desired length of the cordons, the horizontal cordon branches. The Harrod stepover support has a distance of 150 cm, which seems ideal to me. Gaucher would, however, not have had the same opinion concerning this point. He tends to 2-3 m, which would prevent an overly strong growth that causes the cordon to become too short in his opinion. As a compromise to my great predecessors, I offer the following: anyone who does not want to underplant the cordon tree should consider training a long, 2-3 m cordon. When the cordon tree is underplanted, a shorter distance of 150 cm can be chosen. Maybe we are just more impatient than our predecessors almost 150 years ago: 150 cm are already filled after one year; after 2 years at the latest, the cordon is ready. Greater distances take longer...
Possible types of fruit: apple and pear (and vines)
We can again confidently quote the words of Gaucher: "In the end, however, all fruit genera can be used as cordons, but we recognise only three of which are suitable with success, namely apples, pears and vines." Yes, that is how it still is. And of course apple trees should be grafted on a weak-growing M9 rootstock and pears on a quince rootstock. And here we go again with agreeing with Gaucher: "In most cases (for apples), Paradise grafted trees should be chosen since they show less driving force, come earlier in yield and provide more beautiful and larger fruit than on the other varieties. With Paradise, the Lubera apple cultivars are not meant, but instead the apple rootstock Paradis Jaune de Metz, which is identical to today’s standard M9 rootstock. This had been widely used in the 19th century, also purchased by my grandfather in large wicker baskets from the tree nursery area of the Orléans Loire Valley, more than 30 years before being rediscovered and standardised as M9 in East Malling.
Planting and cordon training
The Lubera Easytree® should be planted to the post and at the height of the wire, the steel cable or the crossbar bent at right angles and also fixed in this position with elastic binding material. However, I recommend, not to tie down the cordon horizontally in the first year, but to leave it at a 30° angle. This way the tree has more tension; more power and juice go towards the desired length and less towards the formation of side shoots that are too strong. After 1 or 2 years, when the desired final length is reached, then the cordon tree can be tied down to the horizontal position.
Training is of course needed for pinching. All of the side shoots on the cordon tree that have grown more than 15 - 20 cm should be cut back to this length, in which the tips of the leaves that have not yet completely opened, including the inner tip, the meristem, are pinched with the index finger and thumb. When the side branches sprout again in July/August, the fresh shoots should be pinched back again to the old point of cutting.
Of course, these training tips are especially suitable for smaller and also shorter cordon trees. The effect is startling: the fruit development on the short side starts faster and already in the 2nd year there is a good fruit set, which then in turn weakens the vegetative growth.
Alternative: The double cut on fruiting wood
Those who are not able to continuously monitor the cordon tree, are better off with the double cut on fruiting wood, which is simple to do: in mid to late June, cut back all the side shoots to 15-20 cm. In March of the following year, consistently cut back all the side shoots again to 15-20 cm. Note: as a rule, do not completely remove a side branch. That would lead to bare spots on the cordon, which is a fruit structural sin that can no longer be undone.
Is that it?
Yes, exactly. That's really all there is to it. Except maybe one more thing: all of these simple measures, but especially cuts on fruiting wood must be done absolutely consistently. This is rather primitive, and this is just how it is to be done. Thinking too much, neglect or fear of cutting only disfigure the cordon tree too fast towards shapelessness.
Blog Article Curtesy of our retailer Lubera in Germany
|
<urn:uuid:4b47c306-d967-4d38-9d97-78a3a430f71c>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-40
|
https://www.harrodhorticultural.com/the-cordon-tree-and-harrod-step-over-support-pgid2012.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510994.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20231002100910-20231002130910-00319.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948955 | 1,567 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Phase 1 Preliminary Risk Assessment
The Phase 1 Desk Study is an initial risk assessment based on BS10175:2011 and CLR 11. The report may be referred to as a desk study, preliminary investigation, preliminary risk assessment or contaminated land – risk assessment. They’re all essentially the same thing and form Phase 1 of the ‘Phased Approach to Land Contamination.’ We call it a Phase 1 Preliminary Risk Assessment.
The main purpose of a Phase 1 Preliminary Risk Assessment is to collect information to enable the development of an initial conceptual site model. The conceptual model is based on the source-pathway-receptor model; where, for example, the source of contamination may be arsenic, the pathway could be ingestion of homegrown produce, and the receptor could be the inhabitant of the new dwelling. The conceptual model compares the likelihood of the source reaching the receptor, against the consequence. From this, a risk rating can be assigned which is used to determine the need for further investigation.
Information collected includes historical maps (dating back to the late nineteenth century), the geology, geochemistry, hydrogeology and hydrology of the site, current usage of the site and surrounding area, and previous site investigations pertaining to the site.
A walkover survey or ‘site reconnaissance’ also forms part of the Phase 1 Preliminary Risk Assessment and involves a visual inspection of the site to record any obvious signs of contamination (i.e. leaking oil tanks, asbestos etc). Photographs will be taken and included within the Phase 1 Preliminary Risk Assessment.
The report will make recommendations for any further investigations that may be deemed necessary as a result of the findings, and will be suitable for submission to local authority planning officers as part of the planning application for the site.
|
<urn:uuid:dd520e2a-24d0-4c0b-8863-308f8780a2d1>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-10
|
https://wheal-jane-consultancy.co.uk/phase-1-preliminary-risk-assessment/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875143815.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20200218210853-20200219000853-00491.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.907291 | 364 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Stereotyping is a natural human tendency. Brands are stereotypes. When you think of Disney, what comes to mind? Nike? BMW?
Brand stereotypes create reality. For example, Coors - cold activated cans, Rocky Mountains in the background, frosted bottles. You've seen all the commercials. They create the idea in your mind that Coors' beer is actually colder and more refreshing than other brands. They are tapping into your unconscious and making you believe it.
Stereotypes resist change, but CAN change. In research studies, most people won't change their minds, even after contact itself. Those ideas are so deeply embedded in their minds, that actual proof which negates it, doesn't affect them. However, a few of those who came in contact, actually did change. In order to change your brand's stereotype, you must first make small, significant changes to tap into your consumer's unconscious.
The interactions must feel cooperative. If consumers feel you have the same ideals/goals they do, you will see positive change. For example - Guiness. Not a beer you normally associate with sports. If you saw a commercial of a bunch of guys sitting around watching sports, eating chips and drinking Guiness, nobody would believe it. In this commercial, they associate themselves with loyalty, friendship and having the same values you do, which sets the context for their desired change.
You must drive change with the right type of contact - it must feel authentic. Stereotypes are part of who we are. Find out how people see themselves and how they see your brand. You will then be able to align the two and position your brand the way YOU want people to see it.
Bottom line for market research professionals. Think of your brand as a stereotype and strive to understand the full stereotype. Then you will be able to affect change.
|
<urn:uuid:7f550c54-c8b1-46d4-aeff-2160a3a75106>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-26
|
https://www.aprilbellresearch.com/blog/live-from-tmre13-keynote-the-pragmatic-brain
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320206.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20170623235306-20170624015306-00212.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.960473 | 378 | 2.703125 | 3 |
What is Preparation of Methane
Preparation of Methane (MARSH GAS)
Industrial Method of Preparation: Methane gas is obtained on a large scale from natural gas by liquefaction. It can also be obtained by the application of following methods,
(a) From carbon monoxide: A mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen is passed over a catalyst containing nickel and carbon at when methane is formed.
Bi + C
CO + 3 H2 ————→ CH4 + H2O
(b) Bacterial decomposition of cellulose material present in sewage water: This method is being used in England for production of methane.
( C6 H10 O5 )n + nH2O ————→ 3nCH4 + 3nCO2
(c) Synthesis: By striking an electric arc between carbon electrodes in an atmosphere of hydrogen at 1200oC, methane is formed.
C + 2 H2 ————→ CH4
By passing a mixture of hydrogen sulphide and carbon disulphide vapor through red hot copper, methane is formed.
CS2 + 2H2S + 8Cu ————→ CH4 + 4Cu2S
Email Based Homework Assignment Help in Preparation of Methane
Transtutors is the best place to get answers to all your doubts regarding the preparation of methane through industrial methods, from carbon monoxide, bacterial decomposition and by means of an electric arc. You can submit your school, college or university level homework or assignment to us and we will make sure that you get the answers you need which are timely and also cost effective. Our tutors are available round the clock to help you out in any way with chemistry.
Live Online Tutor Help for Preparation of Methane
Transtutors has a vast panel of experienced chemistry tutors who specialize in the preparation of methane and can explain the different concepts to you effectively. You can also interact directly with our chemistry tutors for a one to one session and get answers to all your problems in your school, college or university level organic chemistry. Our tutors will make sure that you achieve the highest grades for your chemistry assignments. We will make sure that you get the best help possible for exams such as the AP, AS, A level, GCSE, IGCSE, IB, Round Square etc.
|
<urn:uuid:806c3ac9-6bdd-4300-b036-5e186c41c824>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-34
|
http://www.transtutors.com/chemistry-homework-help/hydrocarbons/preparation-of-methane.aspx
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886107720.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20170821060924-20170821080924-00684.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.912117 | 493 | 3.203125 | 3 |
There are four types of inspection a meat processor can operate under, or some combination thereof:
Federal Inspection (USDA)
The United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA FSIS) is responsible for this type of inspection. Federally inspected products can be shipped over state lines (interstate commerce) and internationally to many countries. Federal inspection requires a HACCP plan, SSOPs, daily inspection of processing facilities, and, if the plant slaughters livestock, antemortem and postmortem inspection of every animal. As of 2013, all inspected plants must also have a recall plan in place.
Federal Inspection Steps:
State inspection is required by law to be “at least equal to” federal inspection in terms of regulatory rigor. However, state inspected meat and poultry products cannot be sold across state lines (restricted to intrastate commerce) unless the state and the plant both participate in the new Cooperative Interstate Shipment program (see below).
Twenty-seven states offer state meat inspection programs in the U.S. USDA FSIS maintains a listing of these programs. Only 25 of these states offer state poultry inspection in addition to red meat inspection.
A NMPAN webinar, presented in collaboration with USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.
Date: February 4, 2014
Duration: 1 hour
The Cooperative Interstate Shipment Program, authorized by the 2008 Farm Bill and launched by USDA-FSIS in 2012, allows state-inspected meats from qualifying plants to be shipped across state lines. The goal of the program is to expand market opportunities for small meat and poultry processors.
Ohio, Wisconsin, and North Dakota were the first three states to qualify, and Indiana is working on it. On this webinar, we heard from state inspection program directors, processors, and others about their experiences with the program so far and what it took to qualify. An official from FSIS provided background on the CIS program.
A Food Safety and Inspection Service Webinar.
Date: Sept.18, 2014
Duration: 1 hour
On this webinar FSIS discusses the current status of the Cooperative Interstate Shipment program in Ohio. Speakers and representatives from the Ohio Department of Agriculture, FSIS, and USDA Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food (KYF2) initiative provide an overview of CIS and information on USDA assistance and available resources for small and mid-scale meat and poultry processors.
Retail exemption allows a meat processor to sell meat at its own retail storefront (or direct to consumer via other methods such as farmers market sales or a restaurant) without developing a HACCP plan or being inspected daily by USDA FSIS. However, the processor is still subject to periodic, risk-based inspection by USDA FSIS and/or state and county authorities (e.g. county health departments). In addition, the meat used to produce retail products (fresh cuts or processed meats) must come from livestock inspected by USDA FSIS or the state inspection agency in the processor’s own state. See the full CFR 303.1 regulations here.
If the retail exempt product is derived from state inspected product, the retail exempt product can only be sold within the state where the meat / poultry was inspected. So if, for example, the state of Iowa inspected meat / poultry was used for in the production of a retail exempt product, the retail exempt product could only be sold within the state of Iowa.
If the retail exempt product is derived from a USDA FSIS inspected product, the retail exempt product can be sold in other states. So if, for example, a retail exempt operation in Iowa uses USDA FSIS inspected product for its retail exempt production, the retail exempt product could be sold anywhere in the 50 states.
Retail exempt processing include operations of types traditionally and usually conducted at retail stores and restaurants, such as:
(a) Cutting up, slicing, and trimming carcasses, halves, quarters, or wholesale cuts into retail cuts such as steaks, chops, and roasts, and freezing such cuts;
(b) Grinding and freezing products made from meat;
(c) Curing, cooking, smoking, rendering or refining of livestock fat, or other preparation of products, except slaughtering or the retort processing of canned products;
(d) Breaking bulk shipments of products;
(e) Wrapping or rewrapping products.
Only (a), (b), (d), and (e) are allowed for wholesaled products (meaning that the processes listed under (c) above are NOT allowed for wholesaled product). Retail-exempt wholesaling is limited to only 25% of the dollar value of the processor’s total sales or $75,700 for red meat and meat products and $56,600 for poultry products per calendar year, whichever is LESS (Federal Register 8/15/18). The dollar value limit is reevaluated annually by FSIS.
- Further Reading: A Guide to Retail Meat Sales in Tennessee. While this document was written for TN specifically, we think it is valuable for all looking to market local meats. Basic Regulatory Considerations for Retail and Non-retail Meat Sales in Tennessee discusses retail meat sale regulations, non-retail meat sales and custom-exempt processing. While regulations from state to state are often quite similar, they can vary: if you are outside of TN, double check with your state regulators before moving forward with any information found in the guide.
A custom-exempt plant can only slaughter and process livestock for the exclusive use of the owner(s). Like a retail exempt plant, the facilities will still be subject to periodic, risk-based inspection by USDA FSIS and/or state authorities. Custom exempt plants still have to comply with the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) and Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA), along with Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA). This directive 5930.1 explains more how USDA FSIS reviews custom plants. Custom exempt plants may also operate a retail exempt butcher counter in which they sell meat they processed from USDA (or state) inspected carcasses that were not slaughtered at their custom exempt plant. Custom-exempt slaughter may happen on a farm using a licensed mobile slaughter trailer or at a brick and mortar facility. Custom exempt meat is marked “not for sale”.
A red meat plant can simultaneously do work that is custom-exempt, retail-exempt and state or federally inspected; a poultry plant cannot. Depending on the state, a plant may or may not be both state and federally inspected. There are several federal poultry processing exemptions, all of which are complex and only exempt facilities processing less than 20,000 birds per calendar year.
|
<urn:uuid:24804e11-0652-407c-8034-c1d644bfba2f>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-16
|
https://www.nichemeatprocessing.org/meat-inspection/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371896913.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20200410110538-20200410141038-00550.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.933368 | 1,376 | 2.59375 | 3 |
The United States and China have announced they are joining forces to share more information on efforts to combat climate change.
In a joint statement announced as US secretary of state John Kerry wrapped up a two-day visit to Beijing, both countries said they would work together "to collaborate through enhanced policy dialogue, including the sharing of information regarding their respective post-2020 plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions".
Both sides said that they recognise the need for action "in light of the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change and its worsening impacts, and the related issue of air pollution from burning fossil fuels".
Mr Kerry has arrived in Indonesia where he will again be talking climate change on the final stop of his five-day tour of Asia.
During his time in Indonesia Mr Kerry will meet the president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and deliver a major speech on climate change.
The agreement between the US and China includes the sharing of information regarding their plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions post-2020, the statement said
The two sides have also reached an agreement on implementing five initiatives launched under a joint climate change working group, the statement said.
Those initiatives include emission reductions from heavy duty and other vehicles, smart grids, carbon capture utilisation and storage, collecting and managing greenhouse gas emissions data, and energy efficiency in buildings and industry.
'Unique cooperative effort'
After touring a factory which is a joint US-Sino venture making clean diesel engines for heavy vehicles, Mr Kerry said the two countries were to try to pool their efforts.
"The leaders of China have agreed to join us," he told workers at the new Cummins-Foton factory, which is set to go into production in April.
"China and the United States will put an extra effort into exchanging information and discussing policies that will help both of us to be able to develop and lead on the standards that need to be announced next year for the global climate change agreement..
Mr Kerry said the factory is a "unique cooperative effort" between the two countries and he hoped it would set "the standard for global seriousness" to fight climate change.
US-based Cummins joined with China's Foton to build the $US350 million dollar plant on the edge of Beijing, which will initially produce some 60,000 of the new clean engines a year.
When the second phase comes online next year, it is expected to double production of the engines, which will meet new emissions standards set to be adopted soon by Beijing.
The US and China are the world's two largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
China's cities are often hit by heavy pollution, due to coal-burning by power stations and industry, as well as vehicle use, and it has become a major source of discontent with the ruling Communist Party.
Authorities have become more open about pollution levels, in part as a response to public pressure, but officials have implied that it will take years before the situation improves.
The pollution has been linked to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, and has tarnished the image of Chinese cities including Beijing, which saw a 10 per cent drop in tourist visits during the first 11 months of 2013.
|
<urn:uuid:d73f9655-7331-493a-8f2e-9882d52e077f>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-39
|
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-15/an-us2c-china-to-share-policy-ideas-to-fight-global-warming/5262582?pfm=sm§ion=sport
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818686465.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20170920052220-20170920072220-00063.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.96685 | 643 | 2.75 | 3 |
How to use Nehru in a sentence
With each generation, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has grown less impressive, and more pedestrian.Modi Crushes Gandhi in India’s Election Landslide|Tunku Varadarajan|May 16, 2014|DAILY BEAST
Nehru and Jinnah even stayed at the Imperial for extended periods of time in private suites.An Indian Icon Reborn: The Imperial Hotel Reclaims Its Glory Days|Esha Chhabra|May 13, 2014|DAILY BEAST
We get not just expected discussions of Stalin and Roosevelt, but also good cameos of figures like Nehru.China’s Forgotten Traumas in World War Two|Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom|September 18, 2013|DAILY BEAST
And after all, Rahul Gandhi's great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, had those qualities in spades.
Today, in a time of great national distress, Nehru's descendant cannot find the fiber to meet his people.
Nehru in his autobiography expresses strong differences of opinion with Gandhi at many points.
A slightly different version is reprinted in Nehru, Towards Freedom, 81.
Again the great coin glittered high in the air while none other than Nehru himself called out, tensely: "Heads!"
Nehru's face was pale with anger; he was famous for his temper.
He suggested Nehru himself do it, and the Prime Minister agreed.
|
<urn:uuid:e8cae0f4-c84a-4ba0-981a-5499004184e9>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-14
|
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/jawaharlal-nehru
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296945372.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20230325191930-20230325221930-00428.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.933888 | 317 | 2.734375 | 3 |
In October, scientists at the University of California, Riverside received nearly $7 million in funding by way of two grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to continue their work on developing better yielding varieties of cowpea through new genomic resources and marker-assisted breeding.
Cowpea research by UC Riverside has already directly impacted cowpea production in several countries in Africa. The grants support USAID’s agricultural research and production capacity under Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative.
DNA marker-assisted breeding will be used to expedite conventional breeding to improve cowpea. Specific traits of interest for cowpea improvement include resistance to the drought-associated fungal pathogen Macrophomina phaseolina, tolerance against drought-induced early senescence, and resistance to insects, nematodes and other diseases, along with high yield and maintenance of traits of especial interest to Africa such as seed size, seed coat color and patterns.
“UCR cowpea research goes back more than 30 years,” said Timothy Close, a professor of genetics in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences and the principal investigator of the larger $5 million grant. “The USAID funding through Feed the Future is recognition of the tremendous value that UCR brings to cowpea research and the positive impact it is having on cowpea breeding for African farmers.”
Cowpea originated in Africa. It is known also as southern pea, blackeye pea, crowder pea, lubia, niebe, coupe or frijole. In the United States, cowpea is popular in the south, where it is known as blackeyed peas and other names. California primarily grows the blackeyed dry-grain cowpea type.
Cowpea is a protein-rich legume crop that plays a key role in sustaining food security for people and their livestock. Immensely important in many parts of the world, particularly drought-prone regions, it plays a central role in the diet and economy of hundreds of millions of people in Africa and Asia.
Philip Roberts, a professor of nematology is the principal investigator on the $2 million USAID grant, explained that the marker-assisted breeding technology for cowpea, developed at UCR, is based on finding genetic variability in cowpea that already exists in nature and that can then be brought into breeding programs.
Roberts said, “The marker-assisted selection allows for the crossing of varieties with complementary sets of favorable traits so that these traits can be stacked up and passed down to progeny. It’s not about making transgenes and inserting them into plants. It’s about bringing favorable traits from donors into highly bred cultivars via accelerated cross-breeding.”
Stefano Lonardi, a professor of computer science and engineering and a co-principal investigator on the team, will help process large amounts of data that the research projects will generate.
“We will use a computational method that greatly reduces the possibility of making mistakes and also reduces the cost,” Lonardi said. “This method makes it possible to mark where in the genome the genes are located that influence, say, drought-tolerance. And the method also identifies those progeny that carry the alleles, which are forms of genes, for this and other desirable traits.”
UCR has already had much success in releasing new cowpea varieties in California and West Africa, and has a long-term blackeye breeding program funded by the California Dry Bean Advisory Board. The researchers note that the university’s Coachella Valley Agricultural Research Station closely resembles environmental conditions in West Africa.
|
<urn:uuid:fed8152c-2020-42e8-af5a-874d070d1ec0>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-34
|
http://www.agprofessional.com/news/Cowpea-blackeye-pea-trait-improvement-in-progress-230102831.html?view=all
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886108709.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20170821133645-20170821153645-00142.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.930166 | 787 | 2.703125 | 3 |
In the MOOSE plan five scientific questions have been described
in term of 5 Work Packages:
WP1- Mesoscale circulation
WP2- biogeochemical cycles and acidification
WP3- Biological communities and biodiversity
WP4- Rivers inputs
WP5- Atmospheric depositions
The challenges for MOOSE are to properly track and monitor the 1) Northern Current, flowing along the continental slope and recirculating north of the Balearic Islands, 2) the coastal/offshore exchanges, including cascading and 3) the formation of deep/intermediate waters offshore. This is required to evaluate modifications of the deep water formation processes, which ventilate the basin.
This WP aims to observe and understand the nutrients (mainly nitrate, phosphate) and gases (O2 and CO2) dynamics in the NW Mediterranean Sea in relation to physical processes (convection, mixing, stratification) and anthropogenic/natural inputs (atmospheric and continental). The relation with biological production, the carbon export and the physical forcing is also addressed.
The aim is to set up a systematic end-to-end monitoring, including prokaryotic communities, phytoplankton, micro- and meso-zooplankton, in relation to environmental parameters in order to provide an overview of the evolution of biodiversity.
The challenge is to propose monitoring strategies to qualify and quantify rivers inputs to the Mediterranean Sea over the long term, from a reduced number of representative sites.
The challenge for MOOSE is to complete a network to improve the quantification of:
- the anthropogenic deposition.
- the terrigeneous natural inflows from North Africa (Sahara contributions)
- the impact of atmospheric inputs on biogenic and metal traces budget
|
<urn:uuid:5dc27bac-e934-4fb4-a000-d84c1ddbb75a>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-50
|
https://www.moose-network.fr/workpackages/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679101195.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20231210025335-20231210055335-00751.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.858574 | 364 | 2.78125 | 3 |
A wee-bit about the so called ‘skeleton mosaic’ recently discovered in Antakya, south of Turkey. The ‘scholars’ missed the point and gave very surface explanations.The articles are below for you to look and compare. Here are some other picture and text sources to suggest that there is probably more to their claim. We live in an epoch were so much knowledge is lost in many ways. We have a duty to remember and keep alive the wisdom transmitted by our ancestors ! Blessings, Nalan and Nico.
[Türkçe çeviri için yorum bölümüne bkz.]
‘The first picture is from a mural fresco in Pompei, and now in display at the Naples museum; We see the Apprentice, the arm forming a set-square and the right arm placed over the head; the centaur, wearing the Master’s sash; the Pythia putting two fingers of her right arm upon her lips.
The second picture represent an archaic ivory Apollo who also puts his right arm, not on his heart, but on his head. This is for us to remember the priority of Reason over the emotions, because Wisdom (Athena), mother of every righteous thought, was born from the very brain of Zeus, her eternal father.’ (From Jean Mallinger’s ‘Des Initiations antiques aux initiation modernes’. Planquart, 1980.)
The third picture is showing the birth of Athena, as in Maier’s ‘Atalanta Fugiens’, emblem XXIII.
The fourth represent PAN in his Samothracian cabiric role also doing the sign. From a Sicilian vase in Ouvaroff’s ‘Essay on the Eleusinian Mysteries’. London, 1817.
The other pictures are from the Antakya recent find. For us this looks probably like a ‘drawing board’ of a kind of Pythagorean or similar ‘ancient mysteries’ loge. Every detail points towards this: The outside ropes forming ‘love lakes’ (infinity sign); the rectangle frame of the mosaic, also called ‘long square’; and finally the sentences are more like ‘theorems’ for the initiates contemplation, working on virtues and archetypal ideas in the platonistic sense, to ‘elaborate a deeper meaning from the crust of things’.
ΕΥΦΡΟΣΥΝΟΣ (Euphrosunos), meaning joy, gladness, rejoicing.
ΤΡΕΧΕΔΕΙΠΝΟΣ (TRECHEDEIPNOS) meaning ‘The one who runs to a banquet even though he has work to do’. Reminds us of a Louis Cattiaux quote in the ‘Message Rediscovered’:
‘It is not the host that shall be deprived, but in fact the guests that voluntary abstain.
– As regards he who is charged with announcing the feast of the holy union, he shall benefit with his friends from the absentees’ part.
Their lot shall be formidable and as though absurd, for outside there will be then hunger, suffering, desperation and death, and no one shall be able to close the gates of hell, and no one shall be able to open the gate of heaven.’ ‘Message Rediscovered’, chapter XV, paragraph 45 and 46, 45′ and 46′.
Chrysovalantis Renos Tampakakis
for the translation
from the Greek.
|
<urn:uuid:4e0bcc01-97c4-4a98-9908-68963602d98e>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-47
|
https://greenmanscreations.com/2016/07/22/how-modern-scholars-are-missing-the-point-about-ancient-symbolism-modern-akademisyenlerin-kadim-sembolizmi-nasil-iskaladigi-hakkinda/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934806939.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20171123195711-20171123215711-00108.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.926582 | 788 | 2.65625 | 3 |
High protein diets are often utilized by those who want to lose weight or gain muscle mass. These diets can deliver weight loss, higher energy and lean muscle, but because they exclude or limit carbohydrates, you might miss out on key nutrients.
How Much Protein
Your body uses protein to make new cells, produce hormones and enzymes and as an energy source. Over the course of your life, your diet should include different amounts of protein for growth and to maintain health. A high protein diet includes at least as much protein as is recommended for your age and limits the carbohydrates you eat.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides recommended daily allowances of protein by age and gender. For example, girls ages 14 to 18 need 45 g of protein daily, while boys in the same age bracket need 52 g. Men ages 19 and up need 56 g, while women need only 46 g.
Protein comes from animal and plant-based foods, meaning that meat-eaters and vegetarians can follow a high protein diet. Animal proteins such as those found in meat, poultry, fish, dairy products and eggs provide the nine essential amino acids humans need from food sources. Each plant-sourced protein contains some of the essential amino acids, but not all. The Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service recommends that vegetarians and vegans eat a balance of legumes, whole grains, seeds and nuts on a daily basis to ensure they receive all nine essential amino acids.
The journal “Current Opinion in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Obesity” notes that high protein diets result in more weight loss than their lower protein counterparts because your energy levels are higher and their fat content makes you feel fuller. High protein based diets also help you retain lean muscle mass. The journal states that nutrient-rich diets with moderate increases in lean protein and restrictions in carbohydrates can lead to weight loss and improved body composition. But it warns that more research is needed on the long-term safety of diets containing high protein levels.
The American Heart Association warns that because high protein diets restrict certain nutrient-rich foods such as whole grains and legumes, they might not be diverse enough to meet your nutritional needs. If your diet includes protein derived primarily from animal sources, you could consume too much saturated fat and cholesterol, leading to an elevated risk of diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. To combat this risk, choose low-fat meats and dairy products. Eating a high protein diet over long periods of time can also damage your liver and kidneys and might lead to osteoporosis.
High protein diets exclude or limit the amount of carbohydrates consumed, but not all carbohydrates are created equal. Refined carbohydrates, such as those found in sodas, candy and white bread and rice provide little nutritional value and are easily stored as fat in your body. But the Harvard School of Public Health states that the complex carbohydrates found in whole grains, legumes, vegetables and fruit are beneficial because they are rich in vitamins and contribute fiber and protein to your diet. Consult your doctor before beginning a high protein based diet to fully understand the value of eating a diverse diet.
|
<urn:uuid:82630286-6449-4cd9-b06b-825720b17b62>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-43
|
https://www.livestrong.com/article/273947-high-protein-based-diet/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187823630.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20171020025810-20171020045810-00604.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.93936 | 625 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Discover Pinterest’s 10 best ideas and inspiration for Vowel Digraphs. Get inspired and try out new things.
Every great reader has their beginnings in sounding out words!
Rimpy Sharma saved to Phonics chart
Vowel digraphs for teaching your child phonics, which will help improve their reading and spelling techniques. Includes the sounds ee, ea, oo, ow, oa,
Maria Tyropolis saved to phonetic AWARENESS
1-2-3 Come Do Some Vowel Activities With Me “When two vowels go walking the first one does the talking.” Is a simple & very popular rhyme that helps children read a variety of words with a vowel digraph. (Such as CVVC) However, so that children are not frustrated, it is extremely important to add “…sometimes but not always.” after they recite the rhyme, as there are lots of exceptions to the rule. I've included this sentence in my poster set. To build vocabulary, improve fluency, as well as…
Tahany Atoom saved to Learn english
Here's a fun bingo game to help your student learn about vowels.
Meghan Simcox saved to School
The 6 Types Of Syllables plus free syllables posters! Learn what a syllable is, how to count syllables, and the 6 different types of syllables.
Great game to get students using their decoding skills! Busy Mama & Her Boys: Vowel Digraphs/Talkers Activities Packet
انعام زغبور saved to English for kids
This worksheet helps students fine tune their understanding of letter-sound relationships and spelling patterns.
Sonja Spray saved to Reading
Working on vowel teams with your learners? These FREE long vowel picture cards can help! *This post contains affiliate links. Learning about vowel teams is a fantastic way to help kids understand phonics and spelling patterns. Instead of teaching unreliable rules such as, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking,” I ... Read More about Vowel Teams – Long Vowel Picture Cards
Shakeria Taylor saved to Vowels
How to teach the vowel team syllable according to the science of reading. Explicit and multisensory ways to teach vowel teams, vowel digraphs, and vowel diphthongs.
Asma Younis saved to Quick Saves
|
<urn:uuid:d5242c21-7da2-45fd-8b12-ef7a8de8a593>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-14
|
https://www.pinterest.nz/ideas/vowel-digraphs/927941396844/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296949331.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20230330132508-20230330162508-00141.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.904219 | 523 | 3.3125 | 3 |
In the days before the Battle of Gettysburg one soldier reportedly asked another the name of the regiment marching past. He was told “that’s not a regiment, that’s the Irish Brigade.” 1
By July 2, 1863, the five regiments of the Irish Brigade combined could muster fewer men than many single regiments. Fifteen months of heavy fighting had taken a toll, but so had government policies that starved the old brigade of recruits.2
The Irish Brigade had suffered grievous losses, among the worst in the army, in battles from the Peninsula Campaign, to Antietam and Fredericksburg. The army, instead of sending new recruits to replace the losses, created new regiments. As the Irish Brigade bled down, it faced the risk of being disbanded. The reward for a unit that had fought with conspicuous bravery was to see its regiments go out of existence and its soldiers parceled out to other brigades. 3
The man who created the Irish Brigade, General Thomas Francis Meagher, asked to be allowed to return to the Irish archipelago of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia to use his prestige to sign-up new soldiers. His repeated requests were turned down. After Chancellorsville, a disillusioned Meagher, believing perhaps that ethnic discrimination was a factor in the Brigade’s decline, resigned as its commander. In a remarkable address to his men Meagher acknowledged that the “Irish Brigade” had ceased to exist as anything other than a name. The discrimination seemed to be confirmed when the new brigade commander, Colonel Patrick Kelly, served bravely until his battle death the following year without ever being promoted to brigadier general as would be proper for a brigade commander.4
Problems were not only coming from Washington. The men of the Brigade were hearing worrying sounds from their home communities in New York City as well. The announcement that a draft was soon to take place and that, contrary to an earlier promise by the Lincoln administration that non-citizens would be exempt, immigrants would be compelled to join the army, increased opposition to the war in Irish New York. Men in the ranks were hearing from family members that support for the war effort was in decline because of the defeats of the last year, the change of war aims to focus on emancipation, and the suppression of civil liberties as well. 5
The soldiers had to put aside these discordant thoughts as they forced-marched through Maryland and Pennsylvania in pursuit of Robert E. Lee’s invading army. On July 2, 1862, when they took the field south of Gettysburg the veterans of the Brigade, and they were almost all veterans by now, had to prepare themselves emotionally to fight and kill, and perhaps to die.6
As the Irish Brigade paused near Cemetery Hill before they went into battle, the soldiers saw the flags of immigrant regiments that had once had nearly a thousand men each that could now muster fewer than two hundred. The absence of so many comrades, now lying in graveyards in Virginia and Maryland or suffering in hospitals, foretold what lay ahead for more than a third of the Irishmen that day. 7
On the edge of combat, chaplain Father William Corby stood on a rock and called the Brigade to prayer. Col. Mulholland of the Brigade’s 116th Pennsylvania Regiment recalled later that “The handful of men, before going into that fierce battle, knelt down; the excellent chaplain…piously raised his hands, and gave his benediction. They then jumped to their feet, closed up their lines, and charged.” 8
Statue of William Corby granting general absolution at Gettysburg
Col. Mulholland wrote that after Corby’s absolution the men prayed. “I do not think there was a man who did not offer up a heartfelt prayer. For some, it was their last; they knelt in their grave clothes.” Corby noticed that even General Winfield Scott Hancock, the profane commander of the II Corps, took off his hat to receive the priest’s blessing.9
The chaplain’s devotion to his men helped in another battle as well. He recalled that after Gettysburg, a Protestant minister who had seen the chaplain’s performance on the battlefield approached him to learn more about Catholicism. Corby wrote that this and other interactions between nativist Protestants and immigrant Catholics began a dialogue that helped in “the removing of a great amount of prejudice.”10
Painting of Corby granting absolution, housed at Notre Dame
The five hundred men of the Irish Brigade soon moved onto a piece of land that would forever after be known as the Wheatfield. They would be part of an attack to blunt the Confederate juggernaut that was rolling up the left wing of the Union army. The Irishmen initially threw the Confederates back and reached a stony ridge. They fought hand to hand, in which close range firing, and the stabbing of bayonets and clubbing with musket butts led one of the Brigade’s Confederate opponents to call it “the hottest and sternest struggle of the war.” Ultimately the Irish Brigade would be pushed back after heavy losses, but their sacrifice had slowed the Confederates enough to help preserve the shaky Union line while reinforcements continued to deploy. 12
The Monument to the New York regiments of the Irish Brigade combines a St. Patrick’s or “Celtic” cross with the image of a mourning Irish wolfhound.
This photo shows the Irish wolfhound at the base of the monument. The Brigade’s history tells this story about one of their dogs, named Fan, at Chancellorsville: “She was very much attached to a man of the company, who during the firing fell mortally wounded. When Fan came up to him, she threw herself on him and cried, she wept and licked him, while the poor fellow would throw out his hand to pat her as he feebly exclaimed, ‘Poor Fan!’” [Conyngham p. 405]
Video: The blessing of the Irish Brigade from the movie “Gettysburg”
Here is a collection of videos by Gettysburg LBG John Fitzpatrick explaining the actions of the Irish Brigade at Gettysburg.
[NOTE: Sources will be inserted on August 15, 2013]
The Immigrants’ Civil War is a series that examines the role of immigrants in our bloodiest war. Articles will appear twice monthly between 2011 and 2017. Here are the articles we have published so far:
1. Immigrant America on the Eve of the Civil War – Take a swing around the United States and see where immigrants were coming from and where they were living in 1861.
2. 1848: The Year that Created Immigrant America – Revolutions in Europe, famine and oppression in Ireland, and the end of the Mexican War made 1848 a key year in American immigration history.
3. Carl Schurz: From German Radical to American Abolitionist– A teenaged revolutionary of 1848, Carl Schurz brought his passion for equality with him to America.
5. …And the War Came to Immigrant America -The impact of the firing on Fort Sumter on America’s immigrants
10. Immigrant Day Laborers Help Build the First Fort to Protect Washington-The Fighting 69th use their construction skills.
12. Immigrants Rush to Join the Union Army-Why?– The reasons immigrants gave for enlisting early in the war.
17. Immigrant Regiments on Opposite Banks of Bull Run -The Fighting 69th and the Louisiana Tigers
39. A German Regiment Fights for “Freedom and Justice” at Shiloh-The 32nd Indiana under Col. August Willich.
40. The Know Nothing Colonel and the Irish Soldier Confronting slavery and bigotry.
43. Union Leader Ben Butler Seeks Support in New Orleans-When General Ben Butler took command in New Orleans in 1862, it was a Union outpost surrounded by Confederates. Butler drew on his experience as a pro-immigrant politician to win over the city’s Irish and Germans.
49. The Irish Brigade Moves Towards Richmond-The Irish brigade in the Peninsula Campaign from March 17 to June 2, 1862.
50. Peninsula Emancipation: Irish Soldiers Take Steps on the Road to Freedom-The Irish Brigade and Irish soldiers from Boston free slaves along the march to Richmond.
54. Making Immigrant Soldiers into Citizens-Congress changed the immigration laws to meet the needs of a nation at war.
60. Emancipation 150: “All men are created equal, black and white”– A German immigrant reacts to the Emancipation Proclamation
Immigration Vacation -Civil War Sites
|
<urn:uuid:9a9921e2-dab6-4ab7-880f-4d02dd14c4f0>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-10
|
https://longislandwins.com/columns/immigrants-civil-war/a-prayer-before-death-for-the-irish-brigade-gettysburg-july-2-1863/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875146907.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20200227221724-20200228011724-00025.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.97404 | 1,827 | 3.875 | 4 |
It’s worth noting that diesel fuel expands as the temperature rises. At 15.5°C (59.9°F or 288.65K) and standard atmospheric pressure, diesel weighs 0.8508 gram per cubic centimeter or 850.8 kilogram per cubic meter, i.e. diesel density is 850.8 kg/m3.
What does 1 litre of fuel weigh?
When one litre of petrol is burned, it creates approximately 2.31 kg of carbon dioxide. A litre of fuel, which weighs roughly 840g, emits considerably more carbon dioxide 2.68kg. CO2 is a strong greenhouse gas that is produced during the combustion process in your engine.
Your fuel economy is linked to the quantity of CO2 you emit when driving. The more fuel you consume per km, the more carbon dioxide you produce per kilometre, and car manufacturers frequently provide this statistic. For example, a Ford Ranger with a combined fuel economy of 8.3-8.8 litres per 100km produces between 218 and 230g/km.
We must look at the chemistry to understand why the total carbon dioxide created is heavier than the starting litre of fuel: Although diesel and gasoline are high in carbon, carbon is rather light. When the fuel is burned, the carbon joins with two oxygen molecules (both heavier than the carbon) to form carbon dioxide. Each oxygen molecule is approximately 25% heavier than a carbon molecule, and there are two of them!
To put it in numerical terms, one molecule of carbon weighs 12 grams, but two molecules of oxygen weigh 32 grams!
But what percentage of diesel and gasoline is carbon? About 720g of the 840g that one litre of fuel weighs is carbon. Around 640g of the 740g that one litre of petrol weighs is carbon.
What is the weight of diesel?
Fuel is the lubricant that keeps trucks on the road. If you want to haul profitable goods and keep your trucking firm afloat, you’ll need diesel fuel to get from point A to point B.
Although it’s a simple calculation, have you ever considered the intricacies of diesel fuel? Have you considered how much diesel fuel weighs? What’s the weight of a full tank of diesel fuel? Is there a difference in the weight of diesel based on the outside temperature? How does the weight of diesel fuel affect the weight of your truck, especially when it’s time to weigh it?
What is the weight of diesel fuel?
A gallon of diesel is approximately 7 pounds in weight. In the United States, diesel weighs somewhat less than 7 pounds per gallon (and slightly more than 7 pounds per gallon in Canada), but we’ll use 7 pounds per gallon to keep things simple.
What is the fuel weight of a full tank?
Semi-truck fuel tanks are available in a variety of sizes, but they typically store 125 to 300 gallons of petroleum. Each side of the tractor has a gasoline tank, with fuel apportioned between the two tanks to balance the truck’s total weight. Because diesel fuel weighs around 7 pounds per gallon, a full tank of diesel might weigh anywhere between 875 and 2,100 pounds.
Does the weight of diesel fuel change when it’s colder vs. warmer?
Yes, but it’s a teeny-tiny fraction of a percent. Take a look at this handy calculator. Let’s say the temperature is 16 degrees Fahrenheit and a gallon of diesel weighs 7.1 pounds. When the temperature is 106 degrees Fahrenheit, a gallon of diesel fuel weighs 6.8 pounds. Now set the temperature to 69 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a very pleasant temperature. The weight of a gallon of diesel fuel is 6.9 pounds. See? All of the differences are minor. Consider the following scenario: Depending on the size of the fuel tank, the temperature weight differential of diesel fuel will never be more than 10-50 pounds.
How is diesel weight calculated?
Water has a density/specific gravity of 1.0 (SG=1.0) because it weighs about 1kg per litre (1000L = 1000Kg).
Remember that 1 litre of water weighs 1 kilogram, so 1920 litres of water weigh 1920 kilograms; however, if the tank is filled with a different fluid, you must consider the following factor, which affects the weight of the tank when full.
Diesel fuel, for example, has a specific gravity (SG) of 0.82, making it lighter than water (SG =1.0). To calculate the weight of diesel in the same sized storage tank, multiply the volume (litres) by the specific gravity (SG).
To summarize, a 45kg diesel tank with a volume of 1920 litres weighs:
How many kg of co2 are in a litre of diesel?
Calculator for CO2 Emissions from Vehicles A litre of diesel emits around 2.62 kgs of carbon dioxide, whereas a litre of gasoline emits approximately 2.39 kgs.
How do you calculate fuel weight?
Let’s pretend we have 15 gallons of fuel on board. Subtract the total amount of gasoline you have on hand at takeoff from the total amount you’ll burn during the flight. What is your fuel weight for takeoff? Multiply your takeoff gallons by the weight of fuel to get your takeoff fuel weight.
National and Regional
Highest At 146.8 pence per litre, the South East has the highest unleaded pricing.
Northern Ireland has the lowest unleaded price, at 142.7 pence per litre.
The South East has the highest diesel price, at 150.3 pence per litre.
The average price of unleaded in supermarkets is now 143.0 pence per litre. The price difference between supermarket pricing and the UK average for unleaded gasoline has widened to 2.7 pence per litre.
|
<urn:uuid:b73e0a87-e121-4933-b01b-21b78a3b5b2e>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-50
|
https://www.utilitysmarts.com/automobile/diesel/how-much-does-diesel-weight-per-litre/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679103810.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20231211080606-20231211110606-00808.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.91361 | 1,237 | 3.25 | 3 |
Researchers recently reported that men who took at least three aspirin tablets a week reduced their risk of developing or dying from advanced prostate cancer. However, aspirin did not affect whether the men developed cancer to begin with.
Another group of researchers found early evidence that a government panel’s recommendation against routine prostate-cancer screening may increase detection of tumors at more advanced states, when they are harder to treat.
The findings from these two studies were released on Monday, prior to their presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in San Francisco later this week.
According to the American Cancer Society, last year, about 220,000 cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed in the United States. This statistic makes prostate cancer the second-most common cancer among men, after skin cancer. About 27,500 men succumbed to prostate cancer in 2015.
In a majority of cases cancer doesn’t spread beyond the prostate gland is of little clinical consequence. In these cases, 99% of men are alive after five years and 98% after a decade. However, once the tumor spread to the bone or other parts of the body, the five year survival falls to 28%.
Researchers reviewed data from 22,071 men from the study. 27 years later, during a follow-up, 3,193 were diagnosed with prostate cancer. Among those diagnosed with prostate cancer, 403 had lethal disease. Lethal disease is defined as cancer that had metastasized or spread beyond the prostate or that resulted in death.
The research found that regular aspirin resulted in a 24% lower risk of developing lethal cancer after being diagnosed with an early stage of the disease. Additionally, regular aspirin was also found to reduce the risk of dying from prostate cancer by 39%.
However, aspirin had little effect when researchers looked at overall incidence of prostate cancer among the participants. The lead author of the study asserts that it was after diagnosis of prostate cancer that there appeared to be a benefit.
Researchers caution that although these findings are compelling, the study was observational and doesn’t prove aspirin’s protective role in the disease. Furthermore, it is uncertain what dose of aspirin was associated with the outcome.
Post a Comment to "Aspirin May Lower Risk Prostate Cancer | Ny Med Mal Lawyer"To reply to this message, enter your reply in the box labeled "Message", hit "Post Message."
|
<urn:uuid:efe31776-9078-4efe-809a-f19a3dc293cc>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-39
|
https://www.oginski-law.com/blog/aspirin-may-lower-risk-of-advanced-prostate-cancer.cfm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818688966.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170922130934-20170922150934-00330.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.972189 | 488 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Irritable bowel syndrome is a disorder characterized most commonly by cramping, abdominal pain, bloating, constipation, and diarrhea. IBS causes a great deal of discomfort and distress, but it does not permanently harm the intestines and does not lead to a serious disease, such as cancer. Most people can control their symptoms with diet, stress management, and prescribed medications. For some people, however, IBS can be disabling. They may be unable to work, attend social events, or even travel short distances.
As many as 20 percent of the adult population, or one in five Americans, have symptoms of IBS, making it one of the most common disorders diagnosed by doctors. It occurs more often in women than in men, and it begins before the age of 35 in about 50 percent of people.
What are the symptoms of IBS?
Abdominal pain, bloating, and discomfort are the main symptoms of IBS. However, symptoms can vary from person to person. Some people have constipation, which means hard, difficult-to-pass, or infrequent
bowel movements. Often these people report straining and cramping when trying to have a bowel movement but cannot eliminate any stool, or they are able to eliminate only a small amount. If they are able to have a bowel movement, there may be mucus in it, which is a fluid that moistens and protect passages in the digestive system. Some people with IBS experience diarrhea, which is frequent, loose, watery, stools. People with diarrhea frequently feel an urgent and uncontrollable need to have a bowel movement. Other people with IBS alternate between constipation and diarrhea. Sometimes people find that their symptoms subside for a few months and then return, while others report a constant worsening of symptoms over time.
What causes IBS?
Researchers have yet to discover any specific cause for IBS. One theory is that people who suffer from IBS have a colon or large intestine, that is particularly sensitive and reactive to certain foods and stress. The immune system, which fights infection, may also be involved.
- Normal motility, or movement, may not be present in the colon of a person who has IBS. It can be spasmodic or can even stop working temporarily. Spasms are sudden strong muscle contractions that come and go.
- The lining of the colon called the epithelium, which is affected by the immune and nervous systems, regulates the flow of fluids in and out of the colon. In IBS, the epithelium appears to work properly. However, when the contents inside the colon move too quickly, the colon loses its ability to absorb fluids. The result is too much fluid in the stool. In other people, the movement inside the
colon is too slow, which causes extra fluid to be absorbed. As a result, a person develops constipation.
- A person’s colon may respond strongly to stimuli such as certain foods or stress that would not bother most people.
- Recent research has reported that serotonin is linked with normal gastrointestinal (GI) functioning. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, or chemical, that delivers messages from one part of your body to another. Ninety-five percent of the serotonin in your body is located in the GI tract, and the other 5 percent is found in the brain. Cells that line the inside of the bowel work as transporters and carry the serotonin out of the GI tract. People with IBS, however, have diminished receptor activity, causing abnormal levels of serotonin to exist in the GI tract. As a result, they experience problems with bowel movement, motility, and sensation—having more sensitive pain receptors in their GI tract.
- Researchers have reported that IBS may be caused by a bacterial infection in the gastrointestinal tract. Studies show that people who have had gastroenteritis sometimes develop IBS,
otherwise called post-infectious IBS.
- Researchers have also found very mild celiac disease in some people with symptoms similar to IBS. People with celiac disease cannot digest gluten, a substance found in wheat, rye, and barley. People with celiac disease cannot eat these foods without becoming very sick because their immune system
responds by damaging the small intestine. A blood test can determine whether celiac disease may be present. (For information about celiac disease, see the NIDDK’s Celiac Disease fact sheet.)
How is IBS diagnosed?
If you think you have IBS, seeing your doctor is the first step. IBS is generally diagnosed on the basis of a complete medical history that includes a careful description of symptoms and a physical
There is no specific test for IBS, although diagnostic tests may be performed to rule out other problems. These tests may include stool sample testing, blood tests, and x rays. Typically, a doctor will perform a sigmoidoscopy, or colonoscopy, which allows the doctor to look inside the colon. This is done by inserting a small, flexible tube with a camera on the end of it through the anus. The camera then transfers the images of your colon onto a large screen for the doctor to see better.
If your test results are negative, the doctor may diagnose IBS based on your symptoms, including how often you have had abdominal pain or discomfort during the past year, when the pain starts and stops in relation to bowel function, and how your bowel frequency and stool consistency have changed. Many doctors refer to a list of specific symptoms that must be present to make a diagnosis of IBS.
- Abdominal pain or discomfort for at least 12 weeks out of the previous 12 months. These 12 weeks do not have to be consecutive.
- The abdominal pain or discomfort has two of the following three features:
- It is relieved by having a bowel movement.
- When it starts, there is a change in how often you have a bowel movement.
- When it starts, there is a change in the form of the stool or the way it looks.
- Certain symptoms must also be present, such as
- a change in the frequency of bowel movements
- a change in the appearance of bowel movements
- feelings of uncontrollable urgency to have a bowel movement
- difficulty or inability to pass stool
- mucus in the stool
- Bleeding, fever, weight loss, and persistent severe pain are not symptoms of IBS and may indicate other problems such as inflammation, or rarely, cancer.
The following have been associated with a worsening of IBS symptoms
- large meals
- bloating from gas in the colon
- wheat, rye, barley, chocolate, milk products, or alcohol
- drinks with caffeine, such as coffee, tea, or colas
- stress, conflict, or emotional upsets
Researchers have found that women with IBS may have more symptoms during their menstrual periods, suggesting that reproductive hormones can worsen IBS problems.
In addition, people with IBS frequently suffer from depression and anxiety, which can worsen symptoms. Similarly, the symptoms associated with IBS can cause a person to feel depressed and anxious.
What is the treatment for IBS?
Unfortunately, many people suffer from IBS for a long time before seeking medical treatment. Up to 70 percent of people suffering from IBS are not receiving medical care for their symptoms. No cure has been found for IBS, but many options are available to treat the symptoms. Your doctor will give you the best treatments for your particular symptoms and encourage you to manage stress and make changes to your diet.
Medications are an important part of relieving symptoms. Your doctor may suggest fiber supplements or laxatives for constipation or medicines to decrease diarrhea, such as Lomotil or loperamide (Imodium). An antispasmodic is commonly prescribed, which helps to control colon muscle spasms and reduce abdominal
pain. Antidepressants may relieve some symptoms. However, both antispasmodics and antidepressants can worsen constipation, so some doctors will also prescribe medications that relax muscles in the
bladder and intestines, such as Donnapine and Librax. These medications contain a mild sedative, which can be habit-forming, so they need to be used under the guidance of a physician.
A medication available specifically to treat IBS is alosetron hydrochloride (Lotronex). Lotronex has been reapproved with significant restrictions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for women
with severe IBS who have not responded to conventional therapy and whose primary symptom is diarrhea. However, even in these patients, Lotronex should be used with great caution because it can have serious
side effects such as severe constipation or decreased blood flow to the colon.
With any medication, even over-the-counter medications such as laxatives and fiber supplements, it is important to follow your doctor’s instructions. Some people report a worsening in abdominal bloating and gas from increased fiber intake, and laxatives can be habit forming if they are used too frequently.
Medications affect people differently, and no one medication or combination of medications will work for everyone with IBS. You will need to work with your doctor to find the best combination of medicine, diet, counseling, and support to control your symptoms.
|
<urn:uuid:cd6f9d6c-3f4c-4100-a674-63b2eefddd80>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-29
|
https://gihealthtampabay.com/what-is-irritable-bowel-syndrome-ibs/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655886865.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20200705023910-20200705053910-00231.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.958002 | 1,916 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Blue Communities believe water belongs to everyone and thus everyone has responsibility to care for it through: “reasonable use, equal distribution and responsible treatment in order to preserve water for nature and future generations.”
What is the water commons framework?
It starts with a commitment to three actions.
1. Recognizing water as a human right.
2. Promoting publicly financed, owned and operated water and waste water services.
3. Banning the sale of bottled water in public facilities and at municipal events.
How can you participate in bluing our community?
When we started Water for Riley we hadn’t heard of the blue community initiative. The more we learn, the more we find we’re part of a growing awareness about water and movement to create beautiful public drinking fountains.
Be part of it. Join the movement, help Riley Park go blue. Click the button to donate through the Parks Foundation and specify you support Water for Riley; tax receipts issued, to make this wonderful, artistic drinking fountain become reality.
We invite everyone to participat as a volunteerorganizer, fundraiser, donor, sponsor, or any other role. Call 403 862 1923 and leave your contact information.
It appears there’s a movement to bring back public drinking fountains. That the City of Calgary is our supporter puts it ahead of NYC. So great. And, we upped the stakes with the student art challenge to design the drinking fountain for Riley Park. Even greater.
Here’s some quotes from that website.
“There are small movements happening to restore the public drinking fountain to its former glory. For example, a design group in New York called Pilot Projects is hoping to install 100 new drinking fountains in the city. They’re still trying to convince the city to partner with them on the project.”
The podcast and article on the website 99 Percent Invisible, includes the history of public drinking fountains, and new community initiatives.
“On April 21st, 1859, an incredible thing happened in London and thousands of people came out to celebrate it. Women wore their finest clothing. Men were in suits and top hats, and children clamored to get a glimpse…of the very first public drinking fountain. The fountain was used by thousands of people a day.”
Design a drinking fountain and history will remember you. Here’s two more examples:
Be part of it. Join the movement; help Riley Park attain a public drinking fountain, for future generations. Donate through the Parks Foundation to make this wonderful, artistic drinking fountain become reality. Click the donate button and specify your donation is in support of Water for Riley project.
We invite everyone to participate as a volunteer organizer, fundraiser, donor, sponsor, or any other role. Call 403 862 1923 or email your questions, and your contact information.
Late spring or early summer, 2019, we hope to have a beautiful, artistic drinking fountain installed in Riley Park.
Its location is near the heavily used playground, picnic tables and new band stand. It isn’t so near the bandstand as to interfere with concerts. There is enough space around it for other activities.
What do you think?
Be part of Calgary’s public art legacy; for Riley Park, for you, and for the future.
Donate to make this vision become reality. At the instructions to seller page, specify that your support is for The Water for Riley Project. The Parks Foundation issues tax receipts for donations greater than $10.00.
We invite everyone to participate as a volunteer, fundraiser, donor, sponsor, or any other role. Call 403 862 1923 and leave your contact information.
We’ve made significant progress towards a drinking fountain for Riley Park. One task is to constitute a jury to select the “winning” design from approximately two dozen submissions.
How exciting are the designs so far?
Five volunteers attended Alberta College of Art + Design (ACAD) to hear 19 students present their original, creative fountain designs. Our expectations were reasonable. After all, these were students, not professionals or experts. However, the spectacular quality and amazing creative variety blew us away.
Who do we need as a jury member?
We seek a community resident who understands the needs and sensibility of our community and who uses our wonderful Riley Park.
What’s involved in volunteering as a jury member?
It’s a three day commitment between 31 March and 31 May, 2016. You will spend one day reviewing and making notes on all the design submissions in preparation for the jury’s meeting in round one.
How will the process work?
Round one considers the rankings and selects the top three (minimum) to five (maximum) for professional technical feedback from, for example, an engineer and landscape architect at IBI Group. After that review from a technical stand point, IBI Group experts will return the designs with feedback and suggestions.
During round two, the jury will meet to consider that expert technical feedback and use the suggestions to select which design will be built for Riley Park. All submissions will be ranked using a matrix that grades how well the design meets community, historical, environmental needs and other criteria.
How to put your name forward as a potential jury member.
Please send an email to [email protected] with one paragraph (250 words) explaining the reasons you want to be on the jury and what personal qualities and credentials you would contribute to the decision-making process. The deadline to submit your name, or someone else’s (with their permission please), is Dec. 31, 2015.
How else can you be involved?
We invite everyone to participate as a volunteer organizer, fundraiser, donor, sponsor, or any other role. Contact us waterforriley.org.
Donations, tax receipts issued, can be made through the Parks FoundationCalgary. Click the button and please specify you support Water for Riley.
Our much-loved Riley Park has lots to offer visitors. It also lacks basic facilities like drinking water and toilets in its most heavily used areas near the playground, picnic tables, and new bandstand.
Once this close-knit community saw a need and opportunity we mobilized around a vision of a unique, functional, public art fountain. A group of committed volunteer residents started an exciting multi-institution collaboration with collective beneficial impacts.
We instituted a SAIT and ACAD student challenge to design a drinking fountain that reflects the heritage values of one of Calgary’s oldest districts, and aesthetic values of Riley Park’s gorgeous flowerbeds, and athletic values of the cricket pitch, playground and pool. Participating students have taken ‘ownership’ of their park and their fountain.
We already see the benefits even before the fountain’s design is selected. All the learning institutions are now engaging with each other and the community for the first time. The designs will be publicly displayed, giving student talent a showcase. IBI Group, formerly a local business until it recently relocated its office, has agreed to donate part of its services to provide engineering oversight. The Calgary Foundation provided the first money in and we’re fundraising for the balance.
How can you be involved?
We invite everyone to participate as a volunteer, fundraiser, donor, sponsor, or any other role. Contact us waterforriley.org. To donate through the Parks Foundation Calgary, click on the button. Please specify the project you support is Water for Riley.
Our belief that Riley Park, a jewel in Calgary’s urban green inventory, deserves a beautiful drinking fountain as a funded priority is based on five crucial principles:
Health: Active users of Riley Park currently must leave if they’re thirsty, or bring bottled water, or sweet or caffeinated drinks.
Environment: We find disposable cups and bottles discarded in the trash or bushes, and littering the fence line. It’s an unsustainable waste of resources.
Communitybuilding: The message the project sends is the community cares, with a drinking fountain that’s both community-based and accessible to all. This project is entirely community driven and managed.
Economic well being of Kensington BRZ and local businesses: Attractions attract. The BRZ works hard to make our community a visitors’ destination. An artistic drinking fountain supports that goal.
Other collective benefits of this project to our community and the city include:
connect people to place, encourage eyes on the street,
increase energy for volunteerism,
make everyone stewards of their park,
facilitate the enjoyment of nature in a dense urban space, increase awareness of our urban environment,
knowledge that Riley Park is a designated historic resource,
improved access to outdoor activities thereby improving quality of life and health,
reduction in waste and litter as water bottles can be refilled,
expand community ownership to students who had not ventured down the hill into Riley Park until this project,
crime reduction with families in the park,
the energy of community engagement inspiring students to be problem solvers, and
the thrill of design replacing a concrete block mentality.
Be part of the excitement. Please volunteer, donate or email us with questions. To donate through the Parks Foundation Calgary, please click the button. Specify the project is Water for Riley.
Students astonished and delighted Water for Riley with the variety and creativity of drinking fountain designs.
Monday, Nov. 16, 2015, five members of Water for Riley watched 19 ACAD students present their designs. And we aren’t done yet. More student designs are expected.
Any one of the designs we saw would enhance beloved and heavily used Riley Park. We don’t envy the jury of professionals who will have to choose the winning design.
Water for Riley is nurturing compounding, positive spin offs
The students will experience additional constructive feedback on their work, will have exposure for their talent they would not otherwise have, and three neighbouring learning institutions are now collaborating with the community in new ways. The project will end when the fountain is turned on, and the relationships will continue.
Students met with City Parks staff in Riley Park on a September research trip, which informed and inspired their designs.
To help make Water for Riley and the students’ dream become reality, please support the drinking fountain in Riley Park. Donations can be made through the Parks Foundation Calgary. Specify the donation is for Water for Riley.
Email us or phone 403 862 1923 with questions or to volunteer.
It’s confirmed. Over two dozen student designs from ACAD, SAIT and Hillhurst Elementary School students will submit designs. A jury will select a shortlist to forward to IBI Group. The experts at IBI Group will review those to ensure the designs meet engineering standards. The final design selection will result in a drinking fountain near the children’s playground, hopefully before the end of 2016.
We are soliciting donations for the drinking fountain
Water for Riley is based on five core principles:
Health: Riley Park attracts people and pets from all Calgary to enjoy cricket, paths, playground and pool, picnics, benches, wedding and nature photography, and open space, and soon, a bandstand. Park users must leave when they’re thirsty, or bring bottled water, or sweet or caffeinated drinks. After the fountain is installed, children can stay hydrated to play.
Environment: We find disposable cups and bottles discarded in the trash or bushes, and littering the fence line. It’s an unsustainable waste of resources.
Communitybuilding: The message the drinking fountain sends is that the community cares. The project connects sports, youth, students from three neighbouring institutions, seniors, homeless, arts, businesses and families around a fountain that’s both community-based and accessible to all Calgarians.
Kensington BRZ and local businesses: Attractions attract. A concrete block fountain with a plain silver bowl, made in the USA and available in bulk, would not attract visitors to Riley Park. The BRZ works hard to make our community a visitors’ destination. Water for Riley supports that goal.
History: Riley Park is a unique historic and cultural resource.
Art is subjective, and not everyone agrees on it. We have many stakeholders with opinions. All the designs will be displayed, and the jury, with IBI Group’s expert guidance and City of Calgary’s Parks and Heritage Department input, will decide which design is built. Our task is to raise the funds. Details of the design display will be announced in the coming months.
For all these reasons, we’re making the effort to improve the facilities of our beloved and well-used Riley Park. We invite you to participate as a volunteer organizer, fundraiser, donor, sponsor, or any other role. To learn more, send us an email and give your contact information.
Riley Park attracts people from every quadrant of Calgary, participating in a wide range of activities. Activities encourage a lot of thirsty people to linger in welcoming Riley Park.
Yet, there’s no drinking water near the playground and planned permanent band stand. A small group of volunteers wants to change that.
We are very pleased to announce that we have received a significant kickstart donation from The Calgary Foundation, for which we are very grateful. The money is for the first phase of designing a beautiful drinking fountain accessible to all of every activity and demographic.
This generous grant from The Calgary Foundation takes Water for Riley from a vision to implementation,
It’s so exciting that, with seed funding, ACAD and SAIT students will design the drinking fountain, enhance their learning, connect to the community, become stewards of Riley Park, and have a real-world client experience.
Stay tuned for details of the student design challenge.
We invite you to participate as a volunteer organizer, fundraiser, donor, sponsor, or any other role. To donate, click this button that links to the Parks Foundation Calgary, and specify the project is Water for Riley. Thank you.
To learn more, send us an email with your questions and contact information.
Riley Park is a heavily used, intergenerational, regional jewel in Calgary’s green inventory. It attracts people from every quadrant of the city.
The many activities in Riley Park include cricket, walking, dog training, children in the playground and pool, Frisbee and music playing, kite-flying, tight-rope balancers and hoola hoops, picnics with dozens of family members, flower admirers, wedding and nature photography, sun-bathers, cross-country skiers, and short cutters to school and the Sunnyside LRT Station.
Yet, for all Riley Park’s users the only drinking water source has been from a silver bowl in the pool area, accessible through one small gate, only during the pool’s limited open times, in a ‘no dogs allowed’ area.
Now, imagine a beautiful drinking fountain accessible to all of every activity and demographic. A drinking fountain near the new bandstand would send a message the community cares about health, the environment, and nature. Water ensures adequate hydration that isn’t a sweet drink. Available water reduces the cups and bottles tossed along the fence or wasted in landfill. Bottled water is not sustainable. Also, a beautiful solution is its own attraction, like a sculpture garden is an attraction.
Approximately 1700 residents have moved into our community in the past four years. Additional condo developments will further increase density. That’s a lot of thirsty people in welcoming Riley Park; there’s more need than ever for public amenities.
Water for Riley connects sports, youth, students, seniors, homeless, arts, and families to build a fountain that’s local from start to finish. A contest to design and build the fountain will include the students of SAIT and/or ACAD rather than the City’s usual procurement or bidding processes.
We invite you to participate as a volunteer organizer, fund raiser, donors, sponsor, or any other role. To donate, click this button that links to the Parks Foundation Calgary, and specify the project is Water for Riley. Thank you.
To learn more, send us an email with your contact information.
|
<urn:uuid:e93a27f5-d9da-4bb6-b4ea-426951d1e45c>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-29
|
http://www.waterforriley.org/2015/11/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593657149205.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20200714051924-20200714081924-00204.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.932423 | 3,389 | 2.734375 | 3 |
The Teen Reporter Handbook
“Instead of the usual, dull interviews with celebrities, the work of interviewing ordinary people – those who live in your neighborhood, older members of your family – is terribly exciting and rewarding. With a tape recorder and microphone, young interviewers are able to capture the unofficial, unrecorded history of our daily lives. This Teen Reporter Handbook is a wonderful guide to doing that work.”
New and revised handbook coming in 2013!
Anyone can make a radio diary. Our citizen journalism guide, the Teen Reporter Handbook, isn’t just for young people – it’s for anyone who wants to try their hand at making radio. Whether you’re interviewing a neighbor, or a grandparent, or someone you’ve never met, a microphone is a passport into their lives. If you or someone in your community has a story to tell, get a microphone, a recorder, a pair of headphones, and get started.
The Teen Reporter Handbook has been used in schools across the United States, as well as in Russia, Israel, South Africa, and even in a journalism training program in Southern Afghanistan.
Download a PDF of the Teen Reporter Handbook.
If you have questions or ideas, drop us an email at [email protected]
|
<urn:uuid:72a8e88a-c245-4344-ac84-552946a655fe>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-35
|
http://www.radiodiaries.org/diy-radio/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500813241.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021333-00356-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.920961 | 264 | 2.53125 | 3 |
We use our laptops and mobile phones every day to communicate with our friends, family, and coworkers. But how do programs communicate with each other?
APIs, or “Application Programming Interfaces,” are the hidden backbone of our modern world which allows software programs to communicate with one another. Although most of us don’t know it, behind the scenes of every app and website we use is a mesh of computers “talking” to each other through a series of APIs. Today, the “API economy” is quickly changing how the world interacts.
Everything from photo sharing, to online shopping, to hailing a cab is happening through APIs. Because of APIs, technical innovation is happening at a faster pace than ever. If you already write software, you are probably familiar with APIs. But the rest of you may be wondering: what exactly are APIs and why are they so important? And how do they apply to B2B?
APIs: The Backbone of Software
At the most basic level, an API is a set of rules that dictate how one application communicates with another. APIs aren’t that new either; whenever you use a PC, APIs are what makes it possible to move data between different applications, for instance by copying a link from an email into a Microsoft Word document. Low-level APIs are what make it possible for applications, like Excel or Dropbox, to run an operating system, like Windows or Macintosh OS X, in the first place.
On the web, you can think of APIs like a telephone system: when one application wants to get information from another, it gets that data by “calling” the second application’s API. For example, if you wanted to build an app that showed users the nearest restaurants that their friends liked, you could use the Yelp API (to get restaurant data) and the Facebook API (to get data about what the user’s friends’ like). When a user opened your app, the application’s code would “call” the Yelp and Facebook APIs to get the data that it needed. Figure 1 shows how this works: a user accesses a website, and the website then calls Facebook’s API to get the data it wants.
In the Web API world, big services like Facebook, Google Maps, Foursquare, and others allow smaller apps to “piggyback” on their data. For example, many applications let users “sign in with Facebook”, which all happens through Facebook’s API. Many websites show locations on Google Maps, which Google allows through their Google Maps API.
APIs do all of this by exposing a piece of the software’s internal data and functionality to the outside world in a controlled way. That allows for one application to share data and perform actions on one another’s behalf without requiring software developers to share all of their code. Sharing code at that scale would be massively inefficient in addition to posing major security threats. APIs allow for this type of integration without sharing the actual code that makes the software run. APIs are useful even for open-source software (where the code is freely and publicly available): most developers don’t have the time or patience to look through thousands of lines of code just to use one piece of functionality. Instead, that functionality can be offered through an API.
Without APIs, applications would be incredibly disconnected and therefore confusing. APIs allow applications to talk to each other, and therefore for more innovative and consistent applications to be built. Imagine, for example, if Google Maps didn’t offer an API: every mobile application and website on the internet would have to figure out how to implement their own mapping system from scratch, an incredibly difficult task.
APIs can also be useful internally for a company in addition to sharing resources across companies. For example, a software developer at Wikipedia could create one API to support all of the Wikipedia applications used by end-users: the website, iOS, Android, and Blackberry apps. Instead of having to duplicate code for each of other apps, they can share data via one API. APIs simplify much of the complexity of software development by limiting outside access to a specific subset of functionality — usually data exchange. Because of this, new software can often be built in weeks instead of months or years.
Why APIs are Important
In the modern world, APIs are incredibly important because they explain how software developers can engineer new apps that plug into big services: social networks like Twitter and Facebook, or utilities like Dropbox or AccuWeather . The maker of a mobile game, FlappyBird for instance, could use Dropbox to let players store their games and preferences in Dropbox’s cloud instead of building out a cloud storage system from scratch. Or a developer making a mapping application could add the option to hail a cab through the app via the Uber API.
APIs can therefore be huge timesavers for both software developers and users. Without the Facebook API for instance, users would have to create a separate username and password for every application instead of having the ability to “log in through Facebook” (which uses the Facebook API)
APIs are what allow for modern Web experiences to work so well. Developers can pick and choose APIs and “mash” them up to create entirely new experiences. From Google, to Twitter, to Facebook, developers have the pick of literally thousands of APIs to work with. For example, when you use your iPhone to search for nearby bars on Yelp, the app plots their locations on an Apple Map instead of trying to create their own map from scratch. This all works through an API. The Yelp iOS app passes the locations it wants plotted to the Apple Maps API which then returns a Map with the bars pinned on it in the correct places. Yelp can then display this to the app’s users. Mobile devices like iOS and Android phones and tablets have many APIs like this built-in. For example, Apple recently announced a new API called “HealthKit” as part of iOS 8 that allows developers to access a user’s health data from a central place.
Another common application of APIs is the “sharing” icons you see on articles, blog posts, and videos across the web (as seen in Figure 2). By clicking on the Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Reddit share links next to an article, an API is called that allows users to Tweet or post about an article without leaving the site they’re on. Another common API is for the commenting system that is below many articles and videos known as Disqus. It allows users to post and view comments without the website owner having to do anything extra. As you may have noticed, APIs are extremely pervasive and have allowed the pace of innovation to increase rapidly, where each new software developer can create functionality without having to reinvent the wheel.
API Business Models
As you may have already been able to deduce, APIs are often used by companies to make money. Figure 3 shows 4 common API business models that allow companies to further business objectives via their APIs. The term “Developer” in the figure refers to the software developer that would be utilizing the API.
In a free API, a company or organization gives away access to an API at no cost, either because having software developers using the API spreads the reach of the company and may allow the company to reach more users (for example when Google or Facebook allows access to its APIs) or because the API is simply free and open source. In a “developer pays” model, the API, or the data provided through it, is so valuable, that a software developer is willing to pay for access. Examples of this include PayPal, which charges for access to its payments API because it makes accepting payments online much simpler. PayPal then charges a transaction fee for each payment made through its API. In a “developer gets paid” model, a company may pay a developer for using its API. This often comes as part of an affiliate program or revenue-share program whereby a developer using the API (e.g. Amazon’s) can get paid for every “lead” she sends to Amazon.com through the API.
“Indirect” models cover all of the other possible ways for companies to benefit from APIs. Salesforce (which provides businesses with software to manage their sales cycles), for example, can provide an API as a way to up-sell its business customers on a more expensive contract that provides access to the API (which can be used for custom integrations and needs).
An API is a Promise
A major issue with APIs is that they aren’t necessarily permanent. Just because a company is making an API available now doesn’t necessarily mean it will be available tomorrow. Twitter infamously limited third-party access to its API at the end of 2012. This had the effect of killing all alternative Twitter clients and forcing users to use Twitter’s official apps and website, where Twitter can show users ads as it pleases. This was done under the guise of providing a more cohesive user experience, but for many developers who relied on the Twitter API, it meant shutting down their business because of Twitter’s decision.
Other examples of this API abandonment are common. Startups that provide an API often shut down or get acquired, and Google is notorious for closing down services that people rely on like Google Reader (that allowed people to aggregate all the news services they read into one place). Since web APIs are still in their infancy, there is still a lot to learn. One of the things API providers should understand is that an API is a promise: once other people are relying on it, it is crucial maintain it and keep it active.
APIs and Innovation
The good news is that for the most part, APIs encourage innovation and don’t stifle it. Without APIs, communication between apps would be stifled, software developers would continuously be re-writing software that performed the same functionality, and generally innovation would slow. APIs have allowed for more trivial things like sharing photos with friends, but also for the potential to reimagine government. The White House recently released Data.gov, which is a set of thousands of APIs that allow the public to access information about government resources ranging from healthcare to finances to agriculture. This has allowed developers to create apps to support their neighborhoods and fellow citizens: from apps to help find polling places to ones that give information on food safety, and none of this would have been possible without APIs. As the world moves further and further into the technical revolution, APIs will have an even bigger role powering the apps and websites we use every day.
Latest posts by Michael Bock (see all)
- Everything you need to know about APIs - January 22, 2015
|
<urn:uuid:f5f2432a-8110-4507-90a7-8c57cd626d9c>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-23
|
https://www.b2bnn.com/2015/01/everything-need-know-apis/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224646457.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20230531090221-20230531120221-00195.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.942408 | 2,230 | 4 | 4 |
Math Readiness Center Activity Set
This convenient center reinforces seven math readiness skills, targeting shapes, colors, numbers, counting, sequencing, patterning and money values while establishing early math vocabulary. Easy-grip tiles are placed in the work tray for independent, self-checking learning activities.
- Includes 100 tiles, 50 activity cards, teacher's guide and work tray
- Paper / plastic
- Recommended for ages 4 years and up
- CHOKING HAZARD - Small parts. Not for children under 3 years
WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD – Small parts.
Not for children under 3 years.
Similar Items On Sale Now
|
<urn:uuid:b6ffc93b-b5b0-471e-b766-f6af6be99009>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-10
|
http://www.zulily.com/p/math-readiness-center-activity-set-50574-1848815.html?pos=41&e=1
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1393999651529/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305060731-00087-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.795252 | 133 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Undoubtedly, everyone understands the importance of projectors and PowerPoint presentation in the classrooms, but this time, all these stuffs seem little obsolete. As the modern technology advances, the format of classrooms are also changing. A survey conducted by Australian-based online course company “Open Colleges” has reported the top three reasons why teachers are relying on mobile technology; first, due to diverse learning style, second, boost students motivation and thirdly, enhanced material being taught.
In the U.S., 91% of teachers have computer in the classrooms and astoundingly, 1 in 5 teachers accepted that the classroom have right level of technology. In addition to these, 81% of teachers showed off their interest in enrich Tablet classroom learning, while 86% of students (during survey) said that learning on Tablet is quite effective.
1 in 5 students are using mobile apps to organize their course book, while 59% of students are more likely to use their own mobile devices to enhance learning. Almost one-third of all colleges in the U.S. are offering at least one online course; online enrollment saw 21% year-over-year growth, while on other hand, overall higher education growth in the country is just 2%.
Moreover, integration of social networking sites also plays crucial role in education. 4 out of 10 students believe that ‘integration of social networks in the classrooms’ would benefit their education.
See the infographic for further information:
|
<urn:uuid:3903e056-979f-4f8f-b9b9-989caec729b6>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-39
|
https://dazeinfo.com/2012/08/03/use-of-smartphones-and-tablets-in-the-classroom-infographic/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818690203.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20170924190521-20170924210521-00141.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.967705 | 296 | 2.78125 | 3 |
What Conditions Can Physiotherapy Treat?
Physiotherapy is multi-dimensional and can treat a vast variety of conditions. It focuses primarily on the restoration and rehabilitation of the circulatory and musculo-skeletal systems but can also be used to treat a diversity of conditions from sports injuries, arthritis and respiratory problems.
Muscular aches: Physiotherapy can ease stiffness, reduce pain and encourage blood flow to the muscles. Massage therapy can also be used to reduce tension around aching muscles.
Sports injuries: Aches and pains are common following a frantic and physically demanding period of exertion. Often sports players have physiotherapy to ease aches as well as increase flexibility and ease stiffness. If an injury has occurred physiotherapy can facilitate the healing and rehabilitation process.
Arthritis: as people get older they are more likely to develop arthritis which affects the joints and can reduce mobility. Physiotherapy helps to ease stiffness in the joints and to increase blood flow to the muscles and enhance the range of physical movement. Physiotherapy can also help to build strength. The exercises are often gentler for older people who are usually more fragile.
Respiratory problems: cystic fibrosis, which is a condition that primarily affects the lungs and digestive system can be helped by physiotherapy. Often physiotherapists can perform exercises which help to clear the chest and ease breathing. Physiotherapy can also ease and control pain and improve posture which will usually make it easier to breathe. Patients suffering from other conditions including pneumonia, asthma and lung cancer may also benefit from physiotherapy.
Motor Vehicle Accidents: In cases where an individual has experienced a serious accident such as a car crash it may be necessary to learn how to walk, sit up and turn over again which will require a long period of intensive physiotherapy; this rehabilitation may include all aspects of treatment in order to facilitate the healing process and control pain.
|
<urn:uuid:00bf992b-e765-49e7-a4e2-d66231ba53bc>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-34
|
http://backsinaction.ca/physiotherapy/conditions-treated/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886106984.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20170820185216-20170820205216-00500.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.953641 | 389 | 3 | 3 |
|An Inform Developer's Guide: Introduction
et me begin with some clarification. As the name states, this is not "THE Inform Developer's Guide." There are already several works on the net that qualify as developer guides for the Inform language. Hands down, the most widely viewed of these in the one written by the author of Inform himself, Graham Nelson. If any work deserves to be called "THE Inform Developer's Guide" it is that one. Instead, the name of this manual is "AN Inform Developer's Guide." Again, that's "an", as in "one of several."
For those who do not know the history, Graham Nelson contributed greatly to the IF community. This highly esteemed Oxford professor wrote the Inform compiler, the standard Inform Library, and several acclaimed games. He wrote a number of articles on the topic of adventure game design. Additionally, he wrote "The Inform Designer's Manual." Without a doubt, Mr. Nelson made a tremendous mark upon the IF community.
But Graham Nelson is only one man.
Different people learn in different ways. Some learn visually, while others learn audibly. Some need to see a concept applied to understand its use. Others need only the theory. Consider all the different ways to present a topic. Different methods work best for different people. No single man can cover the entire spectrum of presentation.
That's where this guide comes in. You see, I'M not writing it, YOU are. When a developer learns Inform, he/she usually does so because of an idea for a game. Every game is unique and each game applies aspects of IF that others do not. By the time the game developer has finished writing it, he/she has also acquired a bit of personal experience in design. It is this personal experience that you will find in this guide, for the articles here are written by developers like you. One developer may have a fair amount of experience developing NPCs. Another might have written a game with extensive language modifications. It is by submitting articles to this guide that other developers can share their experience with you.
It is by submitting articles to this guide that you can share your experience with other developers.
|
<urn:uuid:0f3d822a-7fa7-414a-90d1-58cb627cb9ca>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-29
|
http://inform.onyxring.com/InformGuide.aspx?article=10
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655886178.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20200704135515-20200704165515-00046.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.960846 | 441 | 2.515625 | 3 |
The etiology of chronic catarrhal conjunctivitis is not clearly defined. With no single causative factor in evidence, a variety of agents and conditions have been regarded as inciting or contributing causes. Among the more important of these are the following: (1) bacteria, principally Haemophilus lacunatus (the diplobacillus of Morax and Axenfeld) ; (2) viruses, such as those causing molluscum contagiosum and the common wart; (3) acne rosacea; (4) allergy; (5) streptotrichal concretions of the canaliculi; (6) trichiasis; (7) minute foreign bodies; (8) irritants, such as smoke; (9) refractive errors; (10) excessive secretion of the meibomian glands; (11) vitamin deficiency; (12) deficient lacrimal secretion, and (13) chronic nasal sinusitis.
It is proposed in this series of studies to consider the bacterial factors in chronic catarrhal conjunctivitis and to endeavor to determine the relationship of each bacterium to the disease. The term chronic catarrhal conjunctivitis will be used to include all forms
THYGESON P. BACTERIAL FACTORS IN CHRONIC CATARRHAL CONJUNCTIVITIS: I. RÔLE OF TOXIN-FORMING STAPHYLOCOCCI. Arch Ophthalmol. 1937;18(3):373–387. doi:10.1001/archopht.1937.00850090041006
Artificial Intelligence Resource Center
Customize your JAMA Network experience by selecting one or more topics from the list below.
|
<urn:uuid:5f016c8b-4cf2-44ad-851e-bebd266fe620>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-50
|
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/article-abstract/613114
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100551.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20231205105136-20231205135136-00535.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.801963 | 365 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Calculations for nursing students include mass for mass and intravenous drop rate calculations, according to DosageHelp.com. These calculations are necessary for nursing students who are preparing for examinations.Continue Reading
The mass for mass calculation determines the number of tablets to prescribe given the amount of mass each tablet holds, explains DosageHelp.com. The formula uses the mass of the medicine ordered and the mass of each tablet. Computation involves dividing the mass of the medicine ordered by the mass per tablet, which gives the number of tablets required. For example, if the mass ordered is 40 micrograms and the tablet is available in 10 micrograms, the number of tablets would be equal to 40 micrograms divided by 10 micrograms. This results in four tablets.
The first step in calculating the IV drop rate is to identify the drop factor on the tubing, which can be 10, 15 or 20 drops for every 1 milliliter of fluid, explains Infusion Nurse. To calculate the number of drops per minute, a nurse divides the number of milliliters by the number of minutes, and then multiplies the result by the drop factor. For instance, the IV drop rate for 1000 milliliters of IV fluid for eight hours with a drop factor of 10 would be 1000 divided by eight hours to give 125 milliliters per hour. This result divided by 60 minutes gives 2.08 milliliters per minute. This result multiplied by 10 gives a drop rate of 20.8 drops per minute.Learn more about Medications & Vitamins
|
<urn:uuid:f75806a4-3e98-4405-8f26-ad022dbb5091>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-43
|
https://www.reference.com/health/dosage-calculations-nursing-students-82d027b01cb2719d
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187823630.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20171020025810-20171020045810-00742.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.882319 | 316 | 3.03125 | 3 |
1st August 1937. A parade of red flags marches through Paris. It is the funeral procession for Gerda Taro, the first female photographer to be killed on a battlefield. Robert Capa, who leads the procession, is devastated. They have been happy together: he taught her how to use the Leica before they left together to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
Other figures from Gerda’s past are in the crowd: Ruth Cerf, her friend from Leipzig, who shared the hardships of their first years in Paris after feeling from Germany; Willy Chardack, who resigned himself to the role of loyal companion after Gerda snubbed him for Georg Kuritzkes, a fighter in the International Brigades. For all of them, Gerda will remain a stronger and more vivid presence than her image of anti-fascist heroine. It is her who binds together a narrative spanning distant times and places, bringing back to life the snapshots of these young people and the challenges they faced in the 1930s, from economic depression to the rise of nazism, to the hostility towards refugees in France. But for those who loved her, those young years would remain a time when, as long as Gerda was alive, everything seemed possible.
Born in Munich in a Polish Jewish family, Helena Janeczek has lived in Italy for over thirty years. With The Girl with the Leica she has won the Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award, the Bagutta Prize, and was a finalist for the Campiello Prize.
|
<urn:uuid:3f3728e0-90cc-4f12-b05c-a869d732dd40>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-10
|
https://www.europaeditions.co.uk/book/9781787701960/the-girl-with-the-leica
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875145767.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20200223093317-20200223123317-00272.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.964925 | 321 | 2.703125 | 3 |
WHO IS AMERICAN?
What is the Ideal Standard of Humanity?
Until recently, human beings did not realize they are an intrinsic part of the natural world. They are subject to the laws of nature. They are gifted with free will and can act destructively toward other inhabitants of the planet, whether these others are animate or inanimate. Yet just as the Founding Fathers of America wrote a Constitution to guide its inhabitants for peaceful governance, so too the Great Creator of the Universe, often referred to as God, has its own requirements or laws for the ongoing health of the planet. Human beings have been struggling for centuries to create laws similar to the American Constitution that will guarantee their (human beings’) ability to grow and prosper as freely as the other inhabitants of the planet. Trees begin as seeds and grow to their full height if unimpeded. All of the animals on the earth with the exception of human beings, are able to live and die naturally without an outside influence impeding, stultifying or destroying their natural progression through life.
Human beings, however, because of their great gifts are able to destroy not only themselves, but also other inhabitants of the natural world. As mentioned earlier, in the past they have done this without the understanding that the laws of the universe, like the Constitution for American humans are not to be violated without consequence.
The greatest thing humans have learned over the centuries is the need for reverence for life, something that’s intrinsic in the laws of nature which is always living even through catastrophic changes. Nature LIVES and has lived for a very long time with humans being the most gifted, the closest to the great Creator in terms of unimagined and as yet misunderstood capability and the intrinsic responsibility for that care and preservation which ensures natural growth, almost as partners with the great Creator and at the very least, as CUSTODIANS OF THE ONE AND ONLY PLANET EARTH.
Usually animals kill others for sustenance. Human beings need a reason to kill each other and also to mutilate the planet. Up until a couple of centuries ago humans, for the most part, killed each other in wars over so-called “possession of the land” or in defense of belief systems. They did not have the ability to inflict great harm to the rest of nature. After the Industrial Revolution, however, and the appearance of Capitalism, that changed. Tools were invented and refined with extraordinary speed and power. Humans were able to mine the resources of the Earth and the Sea and the Sky with total abandon except for the lure of money.
Money, an inorganic instrument, was created by humans as a tool to facilitate exchanges , in the beginning, to upgrade the barter system. Then came developing desires of humans awakened by the potential of anarchic or unregulated inorganic excesses that are sponsored by the as yet, misunderstood function of organic Capitalism. Organic Capitalism or that Capitalism that is proportionately attached to humans, has been overtaken by a mesmerizing drive by some humans to pursue money for its own sake, thus giving it their first allegiance over the God or the Creator of the Universe.
This so-called God of Money has now become the most dangerous threat to the survival of humankind and the planet. Why? Because it is causing the mutilation of the Earth, the Sea and the Sky and even the most sacred of all human priorities reverence for life. Whenever a life can be exchanged or sacrificed for money or a contract for Money, humanity itself is failing in its role of CUSTODIAN OF THE PLANET.
The American Constitution guarantees Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. When any of those guarantees are violated, the citizenry itself will need to take collective action to right the violation of NATURAL LAW before the Creator takes its own action.
Rev. Mary A. Mann, Ph.D., was born in Australia and is descended from early Queensland pioneers. Her father was an original ANZAC, a member of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps who fought on the Gallipoli Peninsular in 1915. Mary is a graduate of the University of Sydney, the University of California in Berkeley and the University of Southern California where she secured her Ph.D. in Communications and Theatre.
Her working career was in accounting where she became a Qualified Accountant in Australia and was the first Controller of the Pacifica Foundation in the 1970s.
Her academic career centered around her passion for finding out ‘why war’. Her first book on this topic, Anzac to Understanding included her father’s war letters and a social commentary on the global situation from the beginning of the First World War through the 20th century and it included the epic play ANZAC. The philosophy culminated in the book There Are No Enemies, a practical philosophy of life, which includes The Right of the Womb. Her theatre studies culminated in The Construction of Tragedy, Aristotle today in the theatre and she edited two editions of The Los Angeles Theatre Book, 1978 and 1984.
Mary has been a member of Unity- and- Diversity since 1989 where she is now the Board Chair and co-edited the book Science and Spirituality with the founder of that organization. Rev. Leland Stewart.
She joined the Synthaxis Theatre Company in 1979. Her creative work includes Poems of Woman, editor of Mentoring Poems, four centuries of selected poetry, Tortoise Shell, taken from a journal of her great-grandfather documenting life in the early days of the State of Queensland, Australia, and under the aegis of Synthaxis, plays for youth and family audiences, Maria and the Comet and The Round Table, published as TWO FAMILY PLAYSand ThuGun and Natasha, a drama with rap, moving beyond guns and violence .
In North Hollywood, she is the co-host of Unbuckled No-Ho Poetry, a monthly poetry reading series since 2010, which you can view here:youtube.com/unbucklednohopoetry
Mary has been presented with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Who’s Who
|
<urn:uuid:ae229260-4347-4a01-8d13-5c57dc6faffb>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-10
|
https://udcworld.org/who-is-american/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875143455.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20200217235417-20200218025417-00326.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.963628 | 1,250 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Software engineers have found ways to collaborate and work in parallel since the dawn of the industry. Engineers with similar backgrounds can improve their collaboration by using established practices, such as version control, waterfall or agile, and dedicated frameworks.
With the proliferation of big data and the need to build sophisticated data products, a new need for collaboration has emerged in the past few years. One between the more classic software engineer and a new type of scientist: a domain expert with a strong background in mathematics who has picked up programming.
Introducing the data scientist.
Building data products involves the process of data exploration without clear specifications, which is an significant difference from building web apps or desktop software. In addition, software engineers and data scientists differ in ways that make communication more difficult, as summarized in this table:
If both parties are facilitated to play to their strengths and complement each other’s weaknesses, magic starts to happen. People can build things greater than the sum of each individual's abilities. With my experience working in many data-focused companies and projects, I have found three main patterns to reach this goal.
While sharing the production data with the data scientists, one of the following two inconvenient situations can emerge:
- Data scientists having too little access and needing to explicitly request and wait for data exports or have small exports sent to them via email with fields they might have needed for their exploration 'cleaned out',
- Data scientists having too much access and running queries that affect the production database.
The way to solve this is to define a way to share all the raw data with the data scientists in an environment separate from production. This pattern is known as the data lake. The key idea behind it is that, because we don't know what data might be needed in the future, we store everything in a flat way in a location easily accessible by the data scientists. Hence the metaphor of a clear lake with vast depths of storage.
Then, it's up to the data scientists to build a more hierarchical way of storing the data on top of that at a later time if it is needed. This new way of storing will be optimized for the queries they wish to run in order to explore new ideas if and when these ideas come. This means that the same data may end up being stored in the data lake multiple times, in various stages of being transformed.
Assuming the data comes from a main application that the software engineers are working on, it is important for data scientists to work together with them to define a way for all this data to flow into the lake in its raw form.
The following things need to be defined:
- Whether streaming data or daily/weekly dumps are needed for each of the data sources,
- The data format (for example, JSON), the schema, and whether compression will be used,
- Where each team's responsibility ends, how to monitor data flow, and who is responsible for that.
It's better if the engineers have minimum involvement in how the data ends up being stored on disk and if the schema for the data is flexible as they are not the experts in querying the data. The data scientists are.
One concrete way I have used to connect streaming data from a web app to the data lake is to have the web app push data into a kinesis stream, which is an Amazon Web Services component. This is also where the involvement of a software engineer ends. The data science team would then be responsible for parsing the data from the stream (which have some required and optional fields), and storing it whatever way they see fit, after augmenting or cleaning the data. Data scientists also have dashboards to monitor if there are any anomalies in the data flow.
Data scientists tend to work with one-off scripts that contain SQL queries or pandas code, for example. For their next assignment, they might copy paste bits from a previous script into another. Copy and pasting raw code to modify it slightly or re-writing things that one has written before clutters the brain for no good reason and can prevent new ideas from emerging. Higher level abstractions are needed. For example, storing procedures in SQL instead of raw SQL code, or a toolbox library of common transformations instead of inline code that only lives in Jupyter notebooks.
A way to build this kind of library is to allocate time each week to work on it, as data scientists will gradually understand what kind of transformations they need to do often.
What some data companies do is have a software engineer embedded in the data science team. The software engineer can review the new code being written, and locate opportunities for adding new functionality into the data science toolbox. Basically using their talent in writing modular software to support the team. A 'wrong' approach to do this is trying to define all the requirements for the toolbox upfront. It’s important that this is done over time. The data science team will have a better understanding of what tools they need as they explore the data, and and the more understanding of what kind of analytics bring the most business value, which brings me to the third pattern.
The output of a data science team is algorithms that yield information out of the raw data. The process is not complete when we've reached the information stage, however. We want to go all the way from raw data to information to value. We want to see if today’s algorithm is better than the one we had yesterday and is according to a metric that makes sense for the business. This is hard to do if there’s no process as the following situations can occur:
- Data scientists produce a report on the business metrics, but upon inspection, it is hard to find out which input/commit combination produced it,
- A lot of time is spent on finding out why results that were generated “the
same way” are different,
- Data scientists spend most of their time producing reports for different
combinations of inputs/commits manually.
There is an underlying need for a process to continuously evaluate data science algorithms. This process needs to built into the fundamentals of the product, and not just added as an afterthought. All successful companies that rely on data have built that process in their product in some way. It may be done offline with historical data or online by showing different algorithms to different users. It can also be done as a combination of the two, where all algorithms are ran on historical data and the most promising ones are selected for the more expensive online experiments.
Another idea that is gaining traction is using Jupyter notebooks to evaluate algorithms offline. These notebooks, originally created by data scientists as one-off scripts, can be used as parameterizable 'jobs' to be ran on historical data. Or as report templates, if you will. The analytics platform Databricks also supports the the ability to run Python and Scala notebooks as regular jobs.
The goal is to embed the work of the data scientist in a larger data pipeline tool that combines datasets and different versions of algorithms to generate results. The plumbing and infrastructure work needed to set this up creates a good opportunity for collaboration. Specifically, the opportunity to build a system of continuous evaluation by combining the software engineers skill set of building large systems in concert with the skills that data scientists have in asking the right data questions.
The patterns presented here can be implemented in different ways and optionally, with the support of frameworks and platform-as-a-service providers. It is important to remember the underlying spirit of this practice, which is to enable people to work on what they are best at, to have an environment reasonably free of restrictions where creativity can emerge, and to build trust over time as new knowledge is acquired and invested back into the product.
Building software is not only about the new feature requirements, it is also, about the diverse requirements of the people working on it. Next time there's a requirements meeting, it's worth sitting down to discuss what each person needs in order to work in a sustainable way and to hear each other's pain points. And then, to be open-minded about what the solutions can be.
Something like that.
This article is built on a talk I gave at PyData Berlin last year.
|
<urn:uuid:4eee4f75-81fe-49e5-bebc-4b70e4f367c5>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-05
|
https://www.tefter.io/bookmarks/53006/readable
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251773463.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20200128030221-20200128060221-00455.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.951794 | 1,675 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Environment and Policies
Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program (CSPAP)
A Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program (CSPAP) is a multi-component approach by which school districts and schools use all opportunities for students to be physically active, meet the nationally-recommended 60 minutes of physical activity a day, and develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence to be physically active for a lifettime. There are five components of this program:
- High-quality physical education
- Physical activtiy during the school day
- Physical activity before and after school
- Staff involvement
- Family and community engagement
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in collaboration with American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) developed guidance for school districts and schools to develop, implement, and evaluate CSPAP.
Coordinated School Health
Coordinated School Health (CSH) is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a strategy for improving students' health and learning in our nation’s schools.
Coordinating the many parts of school health into a systematic approach can enable schools to:
- Eliminate gaps and reduce redundancies across multiple initiatives and funding streams
- Build partnerships and teamwork among school health and education professionals
- Focus efforts on helping students engage in protective, health-enhancing behaviors and avoid risk behaviors
Watch a successful application of Coordinated School Health in McComb School District, SW Mississippi narrated by Dr. Pat Cooper. (Download video)
School Health Index
The School Health Index (SHI): Self-Assessment & Planning Guide is a self-assessment and planning tool that schools can use to improve their health, safety policies and programs. It's easy to use and is completely confidential.
The SHI was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in partnership with school administrators and staff, school health experts, parents, and national nongovernmental health and education agencies to identify strengths and weaknesses, improve student health, and promote health-enhancing behaviors and better health.
Action for Healthy Kids
Utah Action for Healthy Kids consists of individuals and partnering organizations working together to increase physical activity and healthier nutrition within the school system. Utah Action for Healthy Kids team is currently working on providing a webinar series through the Utah PTA to promote good nutrition and wellness in the school system by increasing fruit and vegetable intake, boost physical activity, and improve school wellness policies.
American Cancer Society – School Health Councils
A school health council (SHC), sometimes called a school health advisory council, is a group of individuals who represent both the school and the community. The group acts collectively to provide advice to the school system on aspects of the school health program. The American Cancer Society participated in the development of a helpful guide on the importance of SHC’s. Promoting Healthy Youth, Schools and Communities: A Guide to Community-School Health Councils.
School gardens offer opportunities for fun and physical activity while also serving as an important educational tool to help students understand how healthy food in produced and where their food comes from. Some research suggests that, when used as part of a nutrition education strategy, school gardens can increase knowledge of fruits and vegetables and influence behavior change among children.
There are a number of resources available for starting a school garden, from USU Extension, Slow Food USA, California School Garden Network, and Center For Ecoliteracy
To see an example of a success story, check out The Edible Schoolyard Project.
|
<urn:uuid:c6336790-0dc3-40fa-b0ef-ae6746aefbc8>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-15
|
http://choosehealth.utah.gov/preK-12/schools/environment-and-policies.php
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1398223207985.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20140423032007-00514-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.942375 | 722 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Font creation utilities take user designs and turn them into True Type Fonts that can be installed onto a computer. One such utility, FontStruct, is sponsored by digital type retailer FontShop and is available for free.Continue Reading
FontStruct offers a simple account sign up. Once the account is created and activated, sign in on the website.
On the main page, click Start Now. This opens the user account page. Click Create New FontStruction. Enter a name for the font, then click Start FontStructing.
The font construction interface opens in the browser. Select a brick type from the left hand column and click on the grid to form the letter. Use various brick types to create the desired look for the font. Create each character, which includes capital and lowercase forms of all letters, numbers and various symbols. Click on a filled square to cycle among all the brick types that have been used so far. Use the eraser to clear squares. Select squares with the selection tool and press C on the keyboard to copy them, then press V to paste them. This can be useful when trying to make similar-looking letters, such as turning E into F.
In the font construction interface, click Save. After the font is saved, click Download. Save the file to the computer. FontStruct sends the file in a compressed archive, in ZIP format.
Open the ZIP file and locate the TTF file within. This is a True Type Font file, used to install the font in the computer's operating system. Open the TTF file and choose to install it to access the font in all programs that use system fonts.
|
<urn:uuid:22a921ee-517d-49bd-8acb-fc3b6e31ee5c>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-39
|
https://www.reference.com/hobbies-games/make-own-font-15809bc6e419b925
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818695113.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170926070351-20170926090351-00020.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.882013 | 334 | 3.484375 | 3 |
The larger sense of the word refers to a huge movement in art, literature, music, poetry, photography, and other areas (even overlapping into religion), which (arguably) culminated in the 19th century.
Catholic cultural historian Christopher Dawson, notes that the religious roots of Romanticism are actually quite deep:
"[T]he religious element in Romanticism, whether Catholic or non-Catholic, goes much deeper than the superficial aesthetic appeal. It has its roots in the fundamental principles of the movement, which differed not merely aesthetically but also metaphysically and psychologically from those of both seventeenth-century Classicism and eighteenth-century Rationalism."
( Religion and the Romantic Movement, The Tablet, 1937)
G. K. Chesterton noted how romanticism was promulgated through fairy-tales:
"Fairy-tales are as normal as milk or bread. Civilisation changes; but fairy-tales never change . . . its spirit is the spirit of folk-lore; and folk-lore is, in strict translation, the German for common-sense. Fiction and modern fantasy . . . can be described in one phrase. Their philosophy means ordinary things as seen by extraordinary people. The fairy-tale means extraordinary things seen by ordinary people. The fairy-tale is full of mental health . . . Fairy-tales are the oldest and gravest and most universal kind of human literature . . . the fairy-tales are much more of a picture of the permanent life of the great mass of mankind than most realistic fiction."
(From "Education by Fairy Tales," The Illustrated London News, 2 December 1905)
J.R.R. Tolkien hits the nail on the head, in his seminal essay, On Fairy Stories:
"The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous 'turn' (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive'. In its fairy-tale -- or otherworld -- setting, it is a sudden or miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
"It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the 'turn' comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality . . .
"In such stories when the sudden 'turn' comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart's desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through . . . in the 'eucatastrophe' we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater -- it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue . . ."
(From C.S. Lewis, editor, Essays Presented to Charles Williams, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1966; originally Oxford University Press, 1947)
C. S. Lewis, in writing about myths in general and his "master", George MacDonald, stated:
"It begins to look as if there were an art, or a gift, which criticism has largely ignored. It may even be one of the greatest arts; for it produces works which give us (at the first meeting) as much delight and (on prolonged acquaintance) as much wisdom and strength as the works of the greatest poets. It is in some ways more akin to music than to poetry -- or at least to most poetry. It goes beyond the expression of things we have already felt. It arouses in us sensations we have never had before, never anticipated having, as though we had broken out of our normal mode of consciousness and 'possessed joys not promised to our birth'. It gets under our skin, hits us at a level deeper than our thoughts or even our passions, troubles oldest certainties till all questions are re-opened, and in general shocks us more fully awake than we are for most of our lives. It
was in this mythopoeic art that Macdonald excelled . . .
". . . I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself. Hence his Christ-like union of tenderness and severity. Nowhere else outside the New Testament have I found terror and comfort so intertwined . . ."
(From George Macdonald: An Anthology, edited by C.S. Lewis, New York: Macmillan, 1947,
Preface, 14, 16-22)
For much more reflection along these lines, see my compilation-paper: The Relationship of Romanticism to Christianity and Catholicism in Particular.
Lewis, in fact, first became a theist when he was talking with his good friend J.R.R. Tolkien, who explained to him that Christianity was a myth, but that it was a true myth. This realization came as a thunderbolt to Lewis, who was already deeply immersed in mythology, Romanticism, and the music of Richard Wagner (particularly the Ring).
Lewis had become enchanted with Romanticism in large part due to Wagner and Norse mythology. He recounts in his autobiography:
"Wagnerian records (principally from the Ring, but also from Lohengrin and Parsifal) became the chief drain on my pocket money . . . "Music" was one thing, "Wagnerian music" quite another, and there was no common measure between them; it was not a new pleasure but a new kind of pleasure, if indeed "pleasure" is the right word, rather than trouble, ecstasy, astonishment, "a conflict of sensations without name."
". . . You will misunderstand everything unless you realize that, at the time, Asgard and the Valkyries seemed to me incomparably more important than anything else in my experience . . . More shockingly, they seemed much more important than my steadily growing doubts about Christianity . . . If the Northernness seemed then a bigger thing than my religion, that may partly have been because my attitude toward it contained elements which my religion ought to have contained and did not. It was not itself a new religion, for it contained no trace of belief and imposed no duties. Yet . . . there was in it something very like adoration, some kind of quite disinterested self-abandonment to an object which securely claimed this by
simply being the object it was . . . Sometimes I can almost think that I was sent back to the false gods there to acquire some capacity for worship against the day when the true God should recall me to Himself . . .
"Secondly, this imaginative Renaissance almost at once produced a new appreciation of external nature . . . I was always involuntarily looking for scenes that might belong to the Wagnerian world . . . But soon . . . nature ceased to be a mere reminder of the books, became herself the medium of the real joy. I do not say she ceased to be a reminder. All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still "about to be."
(Surprised by Joy, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955, 72-73, 75-78)
Lewis's experience was very similar to my own. He loved mythology; he loved Wagner and nature (he was an avowed "Autumn fanatic" as I am, too); he had an extended atheistic period in his life (I toyed with the occult in my religiously-nominal childhood and teen years -- though I was never an atheist). Lewis -- my favorite writer, if that is not evident by now -- combined love of mythology and fantasy and imagination with rigorous logical thought (as I seek very much to do in my own apologetics). I was a nature mystic searching for something more. I have written about this period of my life:
"In my own vague, ethereal, only half-conscious Romanticism -- before I was educated enough to be able to understand, let alone articulate, Christian doctrines and dogmas -- I subconsciously sought out religious experiences or intimations which transported me into "religious," "mystical," "supernatural," "fantastic" realms. Romantic orchestral music (above all, Wagner) served this "secondary" function for me. Nature was another such medium. I found everything there symbolic and parabolic. The forest wilderness, for example, represented the "other," the unattainable, the transcendent, the fairy-tale environment.
". . . I didn't know how many other people possessed these feelings. Nor was I likely to inquire. I was happy to find out that my wife Judy felt much the same way (she loves Wagner, too), as did C.S. Lewis . . . Alas, at that time I had no inkling of the fact that what has been called the "mythopoeic imagination" is deeply, profoundly Christian and substantially identical with the "medieval worldview." Malcolm Muggeridge wrote about this symbolism in an article entitled "Nature is a Parable" (after a phrase from Newman):
'Everything that happens to us or in connection with us, all the happenings in the world, great and small, the whole exterior phenomenon of nature and of life - all that amounts to God speaking to us, sending out messages in code, and faith is the key whereby we may decipher them. It sounds very simple, but it's somehow difficult to convey exactly . . . Nature is speaking to us. It is a parable of life itself, a revelation of fearful symmetry . . .'
(National Review, December 24, 1982, 1608)
I wrote further:
"I was experiencing God and Christianity on an unconscious level, by means of nature, fantasy, myth, and music. Christianity is the fulfillment of all this longing. C.S. Lewis often makes the argument throughout his works that such intense, painfully powerful yearnings within us are grounded in the fact that we were made for heaven. The fleeting pangs of nostalgia, melancholy, vivid dreams, idealism, the Quest, paradise, (deja vu?), etc. which so infect us are thus explained as having an origin in ontological, spiritual, divinely-ordained reality.
". . . Perhaps also we retain a consciousness of the Garden of Eden and the pristine, luminescent, perfect, unfallen paradisal earth, which reappears in frustratingly short-lived instances of the painful Nostalgia or sehnsucht which Lewis describes so marvelously."
For much more along these lines (and my "pre-conversion to evangelical Christianity" story), see: Romanticism, Wagner, C.S. Lewis, Christianity, and Me.
C.S. Lewis developed a "theology of longing for heaven" which provides, I think, a fruitful avenue for further thought and reflection. Peter Kreeft has written much on this, and I would very much like to explore it further. Lewis writes:
"It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what? . . . Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that had ever happened to me was insignificant in comparison. The second glimpse came through Squirrel Nutkin; through it only, though I loved all the Beatrix Potter books . . . it administered the shock, it was a trouble. It troubled me with what I can only describe as the Idea of Autumn. It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamored of a season, but that is something like what happened; and as before, the experience was one of intense desire. And one went back to the book, not to gratify the desire (that was impossible - how can one possess Autumn?) but to reawake it. And in this experience also there was the same surprise and the same sense of incalculable importance. It was something quite different from ordinary life and even from ordinary pleasure; something, as they would now say, 'in another dimension' . . . [it was] an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy . . . anyone who has experienced it will want it again . . . I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world."
(Surprised by Joy, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955, 16-18)
For more on this aspect of sehnsucht, see:
C. S. Lewis and the Romantic Poets on Longing, Sehnsucht, and Joy.
I explore these areas of theology and Romantic speculation in the above-three papers, and on my web page: Romantic and Imaginative Theology (which includes a section on J.R.R. Tolkien).
See also my very popular C.S. Lewis Web Page, which is regularly recommended by the evangelical magazine Christianity Today to its readers who want to pursue studies of Lewis, and is perhaps the 2nd or 3rd most-extensive Lewis links page on the Internet.
|
<urn:uuid:9cdb90c4-cd4b-4da1-8d93-2bc5a772361f>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.socrates58.blogspot.com/2004/02/romanticism-lord-of-rings-richard.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707439012/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123039-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.965375 | 2,930 | 3.03125 | 3 |
organize basic research on biodiversity, maintaining a live collection of
tropical plant and animal species, taking measures for the conservation of gene
pool, rehabilitation and development of endangered species of plant and animals
ex-situ conservation methods by importing from outside plant species, and
captive breeding of high economic and scientific value animals species.
To apply the results
of the researches on biological resources for increasing the living standards
of local people.
diversity of plant and animals species in the area.
live collection of plant and animals.
scientific basis of, and measures for rehabilitation of regressive ecosystems.
Botanical Garden (USA) on diversity, conservation and phytochemistry of Vietnam
|
<urn:uuid:8c9ec0e0-505a-4aa2-afd1-b73d2994d4a6>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-30
|
http://iebr.ac.vn/pages/ePhTML.asp
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549424876.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20170724122255-20170724142255-00285.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.806293 | 142 | 2.640625 | 3 |
What Is AATA?
Transition Assessment Tools (information adapted from National Secondary Transition Technical Assistance Center Age-Appropriate Transition Assessment Tool Kit)
Transition assessments can be either formal or informal.
- Standard process or procedure
- Generally results in a score that is interpreted by a professional in relation to a specific student
- Results should include an explanation of potential implications for the student's future plans
- Less structured
- Often descriptive in nature
- Best if used over time to compare and identify change or progress
- Can be collected from a variety of individuals, including parents, paraprofessionals, and others who know the student well
Examples of Formal Assessment Tools
Adaptive Behavior/Daily Living Skills Assessments
Purpose: To help determine the type and amount of personal assistance a person may need related to home-based support services, special education and vocational training, supported work, special living arrangements, or personal care.
General and Specific Aptitude Tests
Purpose: To measure a specific skill or ability and relate the resulting information to career and work. Can measure general knowledge and a wide range of skills or test a very specific area such as musical or clerical ability.
Purpose: To provide information about an individual’s preferences for certain careers, occupational activities, or types of work.
Purpose: To assess general cognitive abilities.
Purpose: To measure learning of general or specific academic skills.
Purpose: To identify students’ disposition towards various types of careers and work to assist in designing a program of career development.
Career Maturity or Employability Tests
Purpose: To assess developmental stages or skills on a continuum.
Purpose: To help identify student readiness to make decisions about adult life by determining strengths and needs related to decision-making and choice-making and accepting responsibilities.
Transition Planning Inventories
Purpose: To help identify students’ goals, awareness, strengths and needs related to various aspects of adult living (employment, postsecondary schooling and training, independent living, interpersonal relationships, and community living). This information is used to create an accurate list of transition goals and steps necessary to attain a satisfying quality of life.
Examples of Informal Transition Assessment Methods
Interviews and Questionnaires
Purpose: To gather information to be used to determine a student’s strengths, needs, preferences, and interests relative to anticipated post-school outcomes.
Direct Observation (Also known as community-based or situational assessment)
Purpose: To gather information within the natural environment (e.g., school, employment, postsecondary, or community setting) about what student can do, what interests/motivates the student, how he/she performs, what supports are needed, etc.
Purpose: To gather information about a student’s performance in a specific curriculum and to develop instructional plans accordingly. Includes the use of task analyses, work sample analyses, portfolio assessments, and/or criterion-referenced tests.
Environmental Analysis (Also known as ecological assessment and/or job analysis)
Purpose: To carefully examine environments where the student is typically involved in activities as a way to identify types of accommodations that could help the student perform the necessary functions of a particular job.
For more information and examples of tools, visit the National Secondary Transition Technical Assistance (NSTTAC) Age-Appropriate Transition Assessment Toolkit
|
<urn:uuid:7c90f4c4-89b4-4530-a38d-7edfd0dc65ff>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-10
|
https://www.ocali.org/project/tg_aata/page/what_is_aata
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875145316.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20200220224059-20200221014059-00005.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.882753 | 703 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Starting as early as 1663, slaves were organizing revolts to regain their freedom. Hundreds of minor uprisings occurred on American plantations during the two and a half centuries of slavery. Most of the uprisings were small in scope and were put down easily. Some were larger in ambition and sent a chill down the spines of countless Southern planters. Two of the most famous revolts were in the early nineteenth century. One was led by Denmark Vesey and the other was led by Nat Turner.
Most likely enslaved from birth, Denmark Vesey香蕉成人视频app won a lottery and purchased his freedom. He worked as a carpenter in South Carolina as a respected artisan for years and was quite satisfied with his life. He was an educated man, fluent in several languages, which he learned while he was enslaved to a widely traveled slave trader. But a profound repulsion to slavery, plus encouragement from the successful slave revolt in Haiti led him to plan to murder every white in the South, with the help of thousands of slaves and supporters. The date was set for Sunday, July 24, 1822. Before the uprising began, his plan was revealed and he was captured, tried, and hanged. Forty-seven African-Americans were condemned to death for alleged involvement in the plot. An estimated 9,000 individuals were involved.
Nat Turner was somewhat of a mystic. He frequently was said to have religious visions, and he claimed at times to have spoken with God. In 1831, Turner claimed to be responding to one of these visions and organized about 70 slaves who went from plantation to plantation and murdered about 75 men, women and children. As they continued on their rampage they gathered additional supporters but when their ammunition was exhausted, they were captured. Turner and about 18 of his supporters were hanged. This was even more shocking than any previous uprising. Turner had done what others had not. He actually succeeded in killing a large number of white Southerners. The South responded by increasing slave patrols and tightening their ever more repressive slave codes.
Rebellion would often find voice in less dramatic ways and more personal ways. The slave codes bear witness to the growing fear of slave insurrection and revolt. Slaves ran away in droves, following the Underground Railroad to freedom in Canada and the Northern states. They fled to the Indians and joined them in their wars against the white settlers. Some accounts tell of slaves poisoning their masters and mistresses. Some slaves banded together and stopped working, while others deliberately slowed down their pace. The history of slave resistance and revolts is the story of the desperate and sometimes successful attempt of people to gain their liberty in the face of systematic repression and bondage.
|
<urn:uuid:347576c0-b30d-4db2-9b48-1e20c8748abd>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-29
|
http://datonggroup.net/27e.asp
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655897844.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20200709002952-20200709032952-00189.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.990922 | 557 | 4.0625 | 4 |
London’s new bikes-for-hire program is about more than bikes.
Launched this summer, the program had to solve a mismatch between supply and demand. In certain places there were too few bikes for the number of people who wanted them. In other spots, the number of racks for dropping them off was inadequate. Checking the stats, one blogger cited the impact of weather and holidays on bike usage.
Also, the environmental impact was tough to assess. Seeing the trailers being used to transfer empty bikes to busier docks, concern developed that many were not attached to electricity-powered vehicles. Cutting emissions would be difficult because most people left mass transport to use bikes. The goal was to get them to stop using their cars.
Finally, one transport economist said that the bikes were solving the wrong problem. People had enough bikes. Citing the lack of safe bike lanes, he said, “It’s just that people are afraid to use them.”
A last thought–is London’s health insurance program involved if no helmets are provided?
The Economic Lesson
Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot could tell us how bikes-for-hire take us to the British coastline.
Dr. Mandelbrot was the father of fractal geometry and the idea that the closer you look, the more you see. From a distance, the British coastline will appear straight. However, looking closer and closer increasingly reveals indents and zigzags. Consequently, Dr. Mandelbrot believed that it was actually much longer and even infinite. The significance? Something we might think is simple is really complex.
Perhaps many government programs, including bikes-for-hire, take us to the British coastline.
|
<urn:uuid:29a926fb-6550-4bd9-9c79-71bf9fb81475>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-48
|
http://www.econlife.com/bikes-for-hire-and-the-british-coastline/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386163844441/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204133044-00096-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.98057 | 357 | 3 | 3 |
March is Play the Recorder Month!
The little known woodwind takes first chair in March, as lovers of the instrument come together to celebrate through events, contest, and meet-ups with Recorder players across North America.
Linda Richard of eHow has one of the best description of the 14th century insturment, "The recorder is an ancient wind instrument known for its airy one. The English flute is another name for the recorder, which is played like a clarinet without keys." What makes the recorder so loveable is that it is an inexpensive instrument that is great for budding musicians in preschools and elementary schools, encouraging youngsters to get engaged in music at an early age.
March is a great month to explore a type of instrument that is so often taken for granted. If nothing else, the third Saturday (3/16 this year) will always observe Recorder Day, where all Recorder musicians are encouraged to play Will Ayton's “Porque Llorax”. Look closely at the Pied Piper is he playing a flute or something else?
How to Play a Recorder Wind Instrument | eHow.com
Crys W is the Chief Ambassador of Occasions for H_Daily Social Media Calendar. She is a a dog loving Detroiter who strongly dislikes haters and bah-humbugs. Celebrate everyday with H_is for Holidays....
|
<urn:uuid:59f9161d-c4a7-4a3c-af9c-4501e26eb0a2>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-43
|
http://iamcurlylocks.blogspot.com/2013/03/guest-post-march-is-play-recorder-month.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187823214.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20171019012514-20171019032514-00866.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.942163 | 292 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Bobbin a cylinder around which thread or yarn is wound so that it can be easily unwound for weaving or other forms of textile production.
Boxing in surrounding machinery with protective fencing or boxing to prevent accidents.
Carding cotton or wool that has been combed; the action of combing cotton or wool.
Collier a coal miner.
Decussate having the shape of an “x.”
Doffing, doffer the action of stripping cotton or wool from a carding machine's spools or bobbins. A doffer was a worker, usually a child, who stripped bits of cotton or wool or removed full bobbins from carding machines. Drawing various operations of pulling threads through other threads or through spindles in the manufacture of textiles.
Effluvia particulate matter in the air, thought to be the primary cause of infectious disease in the mid-nineteenth century.
Fencing in see “boxing in” above.
Fettling the action of lining a furnace.
Flying shuttle shuttle operated by pulling a cord that sent the shuttle from side to side, freeing up one hand of the weaver to press the weft.
Fustian coarse cloth made of cotton and linen combined.
Mule spinner in 1779, Samuel Crompton combined the features of the spinning jenny with those of the water frame to produce a finer quality of yarn than had previously been possible.
Piecer or piecener one who twists (by hand) broken strands of yarn back together.
This job was usually done by children in the nineteenth-century mill. Rove cotton or wool when it has been drawn out and slightly twisted. “Roving” is the process.
Scrofula in nineteenth-century medicine, a disease characterized by swelling and degeneration of lymph glands. Also called struma.
Scribbler a carding machine.
|
<urn:uuid:0eb00809-3804-49bc-a492-2395e0a95f42>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-23
|
http://www.questia.com/read/119487375/factory-production-in-nineteenth-century-britain
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1405997901589.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20140722025821-00007-ip-10-33-131-23.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.928075 | 397 | 3.4375 | 3 |
This section is devoted to Scanning Probe Microscopy applications for determination of various material properties.
Scanning Tunneling and Scanning Force Microscopies with many enhancements form the basis of the SPM generation. 3-dimensional measurments of surface topography and/or imaging of structural features being on the samples at nanoscale are mature applications of these methods. In addition to topography and often simultaneously with it, Scanning Probe Microscopy allows revealing a number of mechanical, magnetic, electrical and other material properties. Great many of these can not be monitored and measured by other methods on the micrometer scale, not to mention the nanometer scale.
Reviews on characterization of Mechanical and Electrical properties are available in the Library section. Among representatives of the SPM family, attention is paid to the methods and techniques in which conventional silicon or similar probes are used. Thus, the powerful method of Scanning Near-field Optical Microscopy (SNOM) and others are left beyond the scope of this survey.
Reviews on biological applications of SPM can be found in the Biology section.
|
<urn:uuid:5e4feac1-6408-46fa-8125-b784500ce4d0>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-16
|
https://www.spmtips.com/library-materials-research.lib
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371611051.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20200405213008-20200406003508-00016.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.923625 | 226 | 2.796875 | 3 |
In William Shakespeare's As You Like It, how does Celia reply when Duke Frederick banishes Rosalind?
Refer to act 1 scene 3
2 Answers | Add Yours
In Act I, Scene 3 of Shakespeare's As You Like It, Duke Frederick orders his niece, Rosalind, to leave his court. He wrongly accuses her of treason. Significantly, his own daughter, Celia, protests the banishment of Rosalind. She says that when Rosalind’s father was originally banished, Frederick himself decided to allow the young girl to stay behind:
- Celia. I did not then entreat to have her stay;
It was your pleasure, and your own remorse;
I was too young that time to value her, 475
But now I know her. If she be a traitor,
Why so am I: we still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together;
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable. 480
This response is revealing about Cecilia’s character for a number of reasons, including the following:
- She shows her skill in arguing. Rather than defending Rosalind immediately and personally, she reminds her father that he was initially responsible for Rosalind staying at court. She therefore puts him in a position in which he must now contradict his own earlier decision.
- She implies that she is now more mature than she was as a child, whereas it is obvious to us that Frederick himself is the character presently behaving immaturely.
- She shows her confidence in her own judgment.
- She shows her willingness to defy even her father in order to stand up for virtue and right conduct.
- She shows the value she places on friendship, an important ideal in the Renaissance.
- She shows the lengths to which she is willing to go to defend her friend; she is even willing to accuse herself of treason in order to prove that her friend is innocent of the charge.
- She shows why she trusts her own judgment so much. She makes it very clear that she knows Rosalind far more intimately than Frederick does.
In her allusion to “Juno’s swans,” she implies that she is learned, so that her reaction here is not simply one of passion
In Shakespeare's As You Like It, when Duke Frederick unexpectedly banishes Rosaline in Act One, scene three, Rosalind has no choice but to obey: he threatens her with death if she does not go. However, Celia, Frederick's daughter, does not take this announcement quietly. In fact, she defies her father, who is a very powerful, but evil man. When he banishes Rosalind, Celia first reasons with him—Rosalind is like a sister to Celia. When he refuses to budge, Celia says:
Pronounce that sentence, then, on me, my liege:
I cannot live out of her company.
It is at this point, when Duke Frederick will not change his mind, Celia tells Rosalind that if she is to be banished, they will search for Celia's uncle, Rosalind's father:
Why, whither shall we go?
To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden.
Celia secretly devises a plan to disguise Rosalind and herself, and go to find Duke Senior (Rosalind's father—Frederick's brother, who Frederick usurped and banished as well) in the Forest of Arden. Dressing as poor people (and Rosalind as a boy), Celia says they will be safe traveling without an escort—though they will take Touchstone, a jester her Frederick's court, who will help them.
I'll put myself in poor and mean attire,
And with a kind of umber smirch my face;
The like do you; so shall we pass along,
And never stir assailants.
Join to answer this question
Join a community of thousands of dedicated teachers and students.Join eNotes
|
<urn:uuid:fff63b08-fe8c-4c70-8527-4018c80d50b3>
|
CC-MAIN-2014-15
|
http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-reply-does-celia-give-reasons-given-by-duke-266608
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1397609538423.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20140416005218-00206-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.973306 | 860 | 2.796875 | 3 |
The atomic radius of an atom is determined by the total number of electrons, electron shells and protons in an atom. Protons are located in the nucleus of an atom and create an effective nuclear charge. Electrons within a shell are attracted to the nuclear charge and vary accordingly.Continue Reading
The two major trends in atomic radii size seen across the periodic table are a decrease when traveling from left to right and an increase when traveling top to bottom. Each is explained by the specific interactions of electrons and protons. Traveling from left to right across a period of elements on the periodic table increases the number of protons and electrons simultaneously by one. The negatively charged electrons are added to the outermost electron shells first and become strongly attracted to the positively charged protons in the nucleus. As the number of electrons and protons increase, so does the total attractive forces within in the atom, causing a decrease in atomic radius.
When traveling from top to bottom of a family of elements on the periodic table, the total number of valence electrons remain the same, but the number of filled electron shells and total electrons increase. The further away from the nucleus an electron is located, the less it experiences the forces of attraction exhibited by the protons. Because the pull of attraction is weaker, the atom is not as compressed and the atomic radius increases.Learn more about Atoms & Molecules
|
<urn:uuid:0bcc2be8-838d-467c-97d2-4686cd81a546>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-43
|
https://www.reference.com/science/atomic-radius-change-dfa85446e61033fa
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187824543.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20171021024136-20171021044136-00882.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.903094 | 279 | 4.46875 | 4 |
The first thought many have when considering the payback of a GCHP system is: "how much extra the system will cost compared to a conventional HVAC system" divided by "how much the system will save in energy costs". But there are often other things that should be considered when thinking about the payback of a system.
Tenants in commercial and apartment buildings are willing to pay a little more for a "green building" to demonstrate their concern about the environment. Building owners and developers have and are marketing the energy efficiency of the buildings they own and rent.
More and more companies are demonstrating their concern about the environment by reducing energy consumption. IKEA has built over 30 stores worldwide using GCHP technology. Walmart (http://cdn.corporate.walmart.com/eb/80/4c32210b44ccbae634ddedd18a27/walmarts-approach-to-renewable-energy.pdf) and Walgreens (http://www.metroplanning.org/news/blog-post/6754) have both built stores employing GCHP technology.
Investment firms are financing the installation of GCHP systems. Earth Point Solutions (http://www.earthpointsolutions.com/). The Town of Gibsons, BC is developing a geothermal utility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create a revenue source for the community.
People (and animals) are more productive when they are comfortable. Reports by the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Toronto School Board and an article in the Financial Post all point to reduced absenteeism, greater occupant satisfaction and higher performance in the work they do when they work in a building with a better environment. It's been proven that dairy cattle produce more milk when they are provided with better living conditions and warm water to drink. Waste heat is easily recovered using a GCHP system to cool milk and produce warm water.
Water usage is a significant concern in some areas. Evaporative fluid coolers and cooling towers use large amounts of water to dissipate heat fro air conditioning and refrigeration to the atmosphere. Rejecting heat to a GHX eliminates or greatly reduces the use of water for cooling. Additional benefits include a large reduction in maintenance and chemical treatment of water used in cooling towers and the elimination of a breeding ground for Legionella bacteria.
In my blog I'll be expressing my opinions about what I've the learned about ground coupled heat pump (GCHP) systems over the last 30 years. I've been very fortunate to work with many interesting people who are passionate about this technology...engineers, geologists, mechanical contractors, drillers, excavation contractors...in different parts of the world. I've learned a lot from them and will be using this forum to pass on some of the things I've learned and feel are important. Please feel free to use this information if you feel it's worthwhile...hopefully you can avoid some of the same mistakes I've learned from.
|
<urn:uuid:32f396d3-9dac-4c8c-8e22-0ee27fe92209>
|
CC-MAIN-2020-16
|
https://www.geoptimize.ca/blog/other-considerations-that-increase-the-feasibility-of-a-gchp-system-part-6-of-7
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371807538.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20200408010207-20200408040707-00313.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.939288 | 613 | 2.6875 | 3 |
A new paper published by the Geophysical Research Letters suggests that Antarctica has been getting gradually warmer for the past 150 years, despite indications that the continent cooled considerably during the 1990s. Geophysical Research Letters is the peer-reviewed publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The AGU is an international organisation despite the name and boasts a membership of 41,000 geophysicists in 130 countries.
The new study sheds light on recent cooling in Antarctica and on the complexities of the icy continent's climate. Scientists collected ice cores from five different areas of the continent. They studied oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in the cores to develop the first reconstruction of Antarctic temperature records for the last 150 years. They show the average Antarctic temperatures have risen about 0.2 degrees Celsius in 150 years. This is despite the 1 full degree cooling that occurred in 1990s. The 1990s cooling is at odds with other evidence emerging from the polar region. In 2005 scientists reported that 90 percent of the glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsula are in retreat and melting into the sea. Two separate studies from climate researchers and the space agency NASA showed the glaciers are flowing into Antarctica's Weddell Sea, freed by the 2002 breakup of the Larsen B ice shelf. In March this year, another study confirmed that the Antarctic ice sheet has lost significant mass in the past three years. The sheet contains 90 percent of the planet's ice and is losing 150 cubic kms of ice annually.
Antarctica snapped off from the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana some 40 to 25 million years ago. Cast off, it drifted southwards towards the pole and its flora succumbed to the cold. The continent became icy in the last 15 million years and lost all its remaining trees. It is now the coldest place on the planet. It is much colder than its cousin in the Arctic due to Antarctica’s height (3km above sea level) and its land surface (the North Pole is in the middle of an ocean). Near the South Pole itself, temperatures reach a minimum of -90 °C in the winter. It is a positively balmy 30 degrees warmer in the summer months.
Politically the continent is governed by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. The Treaty was signed by 12 countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the USSR, the UK and US. The terms of the treaty are that military and nuclear activities are prohibited, scientific co-operation is encouraged and no territorial claims are recognised. Many nations have overlapping claims which are on hold while the Treaty stays in place. The US Marshals Service made history in 1989 by being the first law enforcement agency on the continent. U.S. Marshals now greet all visitors to McMurdo Station with a lecture and a warning that serious crimes committed on the continent by Americans can be prosecuted in the United States.
The biggest immediate threat to Antarctica is not climate change or crime but tourism. The number of people visiting the continent has increased six-fold in the last 15 years. According to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), just under 5,000 tourists visited Antarctica in the 1990-91 summer. In 2003-4 the figure rose to 24,000 and is expected to rise to 30,000 this year under the influence of the popular documentary film “March of the Penguins”. And next Summer tourism moves on to a new level. A new US-based cruise ship, The Golden Princess, is 10 times bigger than cruise ships plying Antarctica's waters, and can carry 3,800 passengers and crew. Scientists, worried about the potential for invasive species, are asking the US to carry out an environmental impact assessment before it sails. However, this is unlikely. The ship is registered in Bermuda which is not party to the Antarctic Treaty system. Humanity is starting to exercise its control over the last inhospitable land on the planet.
|
<urn:uuid:87260c9c-94ef-4080-a38d-06fa3147c249>
|
CC-MAIN-2017-26
|
http://nebuchadnezzarwoollyd.blogspot.com/2006/09/antarctica-feels-heat.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320386.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20170625013851-20170625033851-00310.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.949272 | 797 | 3.9375 | 4 |
Dioscorea alata, also known as purple yam, ube, or greater yam, among many other names, is a species of yam (a tuber). The tubers are usually a vivid violet-purple to bright lavender in color (hence the common name), but some range in color from cream to plain white. It is sometimes confused with taro and the Okinawa sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas cv. Ayamurasaki), although D. alata is also grown in Okinawa where it is known as beniimo. With its origins in the Asian tropics, D. alata has been known to humans since ancient times.
Because it has become naturalized throughout tropical South America, Africa, Australia, the southeastern U.S., D. alata is referred to by many different names in these regions. In English alone, aside from purple yam, other common names include Guyana arrowroot, ten-months yam, water yam, white yam, winged yam, violet yam, or simply yam.
Dioscorea alata is one of the most important staple crops in Austronesian cultures. It is one of various species of yams that were domesticated and cultivated independently within Island Southeast Asia and New Guinea for their starchy tubers, including the round yam (Dioscorea bulbifera), ubi gadong (Dioscorea hispida), lesser yam (Dioscorea esculenta), Pacific yam (Dioscorea nummularia), fiveleaf yam (Dioscorea pentaphylla), and pencil yam (Dioscorea transversa). Among these, D. alata and D. esculenta were the only ones regularly cultivated and eaten, while the rest were usually considered as famine food due to their higher levels of the toxin dioscorine which requires that they be prepared correctly before consumption. D. alata is also cultivated more than D. esculenta, largely because of its much larger tubers.
D. alata and D. esculenta were the most suitable for long transport in Austronesian ships and were carried through all or most of the range of the Austronesian expansion. D. alata in particular, were introduced into the Pacific Islands and New Zealand. They were also carried by Austronesian voyagers into Madagascar and the Comoros.
Aerial tuber of a white variety of D. alata from Maui, Hawaii
The center of origin of purple yam is unknown, but archaeological evidence suggests that it was exploited in Island Southeast Asia and New Guinea before the Austronesian expansion. Purple yam is believed to be a true cultigen, only known from its cultivated forms. The vast majority of cultivars are sterile, which restricts its introduction into islands purely by human agency, making them a good indicator of human movement. Some authors have proposed, without evidence, an origin in Mainland Southeast Asia, but it shows the greatest phenotypic variability in the Philippines and New Guinea.
Based on archaeological evidence of early farming plots and plant remains in the Kuk Swamp site, authors have suggested that it was first domesticated in the highlands of New Guinea from around 10,000 BP and spread into Island Southeast Asia via the Lapita culture at around c. 4,000 BP, along with D. nummularia and D. bulbifera. In turn, D. esculenta is believed to have been introduced by the Lapita culture into New Guinea. There is also evidence of an agricultural revolution during this period brought by innovations from contact with Austronesians, including the development of wet cultivation. However, much older remains identified as being probably D. alata have also been recovered from the Niah Caves of Borneo (Late Pleistocene, <40,000 BP) and the Ille Cave of Palawan (c. 11,000 BP), along with remains of the toxic ubi gadong (D. hispida) which requires processing before it can be edible. Although it doesn’t prove cultivation, it does show that humans already had the knowledge to exploit starchy plants and that D. alata were native to Island Southeast Asia. Furthermore, it opens the question on whether D. alata is a true species or cultivated much older than believed.
Purple yam remains an important crop in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines where the vividly purple variety is widely used in various traditional and modern desserts. It also remains important in Melanesia, where it is also grown for ceremonial purposes tied to the size of the tubers at harvest time. Its importance in eastern Polynesia and New Zealand, however, has waned after the introduction of other crops, most notably the sweet potato.
|
<urn:uuid:b142a2ae-6cd0-4d3b-99ba-f4bd7e985c97>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-40
|
https://www.ouriquesfarm.com/store/seeds/vegetables/purple-yam-ube-greater-yam/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510575.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20230930014147-20230930044147-00609.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.963968 | 997 | 2.796875 | 3 |
I argued earlier this week that, as a matter of historical fact, Western economies have not been state-free zones. My question here is more theoretical and general: Is it even possible to have a state-free economy?
Yes, at a small scale, in, say, a tribal economy. But then in a tribal economy, there is barely a “state” to intervene or refrain from intervention. Certainly, there is nothing like the modern bureaucratic state. For modern economies, the state has an indispensable role.
At a minimum, the state is the guarantor of contracts, and functional economies depend on reliable contracts. Virtually every time two individuals or two companies enter into a contractual agreement, they invoke the legal power of the state. (Exceptions occur when a contract includes clauses that require private arbitration in the case of a contract dispute.) In modern economies the most significant economic activity is contractually protected, and the state is potentially involved in all of those. Without the “backup” of state enforcement of contracts, economic actors would not have enough confidence to enter into productive and lucrative agreements with partners (who are sometimes virtual strangers). They wouldn’t be sure what to expect. State-enforced contracts reduce risks and encourage entrepreneurship.
Also at a minimum, the state is the guarantor of property rights. The difference between what Hernando de Soto calls the “undercapitalized sector” that is the world of the poor and the capitalized economies of wealthy is, de Soto argues, largely a measure of property rights. The poor have assets, lots of them. But they do not have legal ownership of those assets, and so the assets cannot be used as capital. They resolve this by informal quasi-contractual relations. De Soto says that “their only alternative is to live and work outside the official law, using their own informally binding arrangements to protect and mobilize their assets. These arrangements result from a combination of rules selectively borrowed from the official legal system, ad hoc improvisations, and customs brought from their places of origin or locally devised” (The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, 23). If the undercapitalized poor could become legal, they could use their assets to build businesses and rise from poverty.
In short: For a modern economy to be functional at all, the state has to have some economically-relevant role. All this is well understood by even the freest of the free market economists. Thomas Sowell writes (Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy, 237): “A modern market economy cannot exist in a vacuum. Market transactions take place within a framework of rules and require someone with the authority to enforce those rules. Government not only enforces its own rules but also enforces contracts and other agreements among the numerous parties in the economy.”
Free market rhetoric, however, often ignores and obscures these realities. Opposition to state “intervention,” for instance, obscures more than it illuminates. ”Intervention” implies that the state is “outside” reaching “in.” For at least some of the state’s involvement in economic life, that is not what happens. Rather, the state is “inside” economic arrangements from the outset (as the enforcer of contracts and property rights, for instance).
|
<urn:uuid:ae7ca5db-4793-4593-97f3-efc28740fc59>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-48
|
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2012/11/16/state-free-economy/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386163065409/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204131745-00038-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.94399 | 702 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Words – key: Enterprising school and Cognitiva School Area: Strategical in Organizations SUMMARY: The first specific schools are boarded in the chapters, considering specific aspects in the formularization of the strategical one, that is, as this effectively is made. In the school of Entrepreneur it is strengthened Formation of Strategy as a Visionary Process whereas School of Cognitiva is emphasized the formularization of the strategy as a mental process. The schools are strengthened in both a boarding where the strategy process is presented with deliberate plans and contents of ample vision. In these schools the main executive is fortified by the concept of visionary leader for solution of organizacionais problems, as well as this vision comes from the formation versus formularization of strategical ideas INTRODUCTION: The enterprising school focused the process of formation of strategy exclusively in leader only emphasized most innate of states processes as intuition, judgment, wisdom, experience and criterion. This promotes a vision of the strategy as perspective, associate with image and sense of direction, that is, vision. ' ' The enterprising strategist is that one who if she dedicates to the generation of wealth, either in the transformation of knowledge in products and services, the generation of the proper knowledge or in the innovation in areas as marketing, production, organizao' ' (DEGEN) The defenders of this school saw the leadership personalized established in the strategical vision, as the key for the organizacional success. They had noticed this in the companies, but also in other sectors, and not only at the beginning and formation of new organizations, but also in the reformularization of organizations with problems. Although ' ' spirit empreendedor' ' originally it was associated with the creators of its proper businesses, the word gradually was extended to describe some forms of and determined personalized, pro-active leadership in organizations. In the cognitiva school, it is approached perspective of that the strategists are, to a large extent, self-taughts person: they develop its structures of knowledge and its processes of thought through direct experience.
|
<urn:uuid:bfb47635-b5fd-417e-b739-5334641ad93e>
|
CC-MAIN-2023-23
|
http://www.thestartupstrategist.com/cognitiva-school-area
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224649343.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20230603201228-20230603231228-00747.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.963297 | 429 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.