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Do the preparation task first. Then, watch the video and do the exercises. Remember you can read the transcript at any time.
Check your food vocabulary by doing this exercise before you watch the video.
This video is part of our Word on the Street series. Word on the Street is an exciting new English Language teaching programme co-produced by the BBC and the British Council.
Worksheets and downloads
Carmen: The Chinese introduced oriental food to Britain. But before the Chinese, immigrants from all around the world came to live in London.
British people enjoy a huge range of food and flavours from other countries.
This is Borough Market, London’s oldest food market. Today, you can find food here from all over the world.
This is Italian cheese. Each group of settlers brought their own food and styles of cooking and people here embraced the exciting new flavours… maybe because British food wasn’t very good.
Restaurants from all around the world can be found on most British high streets. Indian, Chinese, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Persian... the list goes on.
But just what are the UK’s favourite dishes?
On the Street: My favourite meal is Thai green curry.
On the Street: One of my favourite meals is... cottage pie with peas.
On the Street: My favourite food is... Chinese ... Chinese.
On the Street: What’s my favourite meal? Still full English breakfast.
Chef: This is a full English breakfast. Tomato, black pudding, sausage, bacon, egg, mushroom.
Carmen: A big fried breakfast might not be to everyone’s taste. But in Britain, there is something for everyone.
Celia Brooks Brown is a food writer and knows all about food and the future of food in the UK, today.
Mmm! It looks good. What have we got here, Celia?
Celia: Well, this is a British tomato salad with a Yorkshire-made sheep’s cheese. And here we have a Barnsley lamb chop with new potatoes and a mint hollandaise sauce.
Carmen: So is this a sign of developments in British cooking?
Celia: Yes, people want to know where their food comes from. Chefs in restaurants like these are reinventing classic British dishes. They’re using ingredients that are locally sourced and locally grown.
Carmen: So what about world cuisine?
Celia: Well, anything goes. Chefs love to experiment with ingredients from different cultures. And we live in a globalised society, it’s very exciting.
Carmen: OK, Celia, if you were cooking these dishes at home, what ingredients from different cultures would you use?
Celia: Well, I might use something like this. This is a Moroccan spice mix called Ras el Hanout. Have a sniff.
Carmen: Hmm. That’s really strong.
Celia: Lovely, isn’t it? Now, this might make a lovely spice rub for that lamb chop.
Carmen: I can’t wait to taste this.
Carmen: The food in Britain reflects the many different cultures here. But some of the old favourites are here to stay. I’m off for my favourite, fish and chips. Want a chip?
What do you think about British food? | <urn:uuid:bef0e169-44af-40dc-a117-cac306ed98bc> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/uk-now/video-uk/food-britain | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549448146.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20170728083322-20170728103322-00412.warc.gz | en | 0.915265 | 715 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Hashish, the original solventless concentrate, dates back to the 900s. It is traditionally made by extracting and compressing the loose resin heads, also called kief. Learn when is the best time to harvest your plants for hash production, how to make dry sift, charas, ice water or bubble hash, finger hash and scissor hash, and how to press kief into hash.
Hashish has been used as a religious and spiritual sacrament, as medicine, and as a popular and harmless means of relaxation. As such, both the consumption and production of hashish are millennia-old traditions in many cultures worldwide.
So, how to make hashish? First, a bit of history.
History of making hash
Traditionally, for centuries, all hashish produced was rubbed by hand. This was tedious, slow, and labour-intensive work that required many people to process the cannabis into the finished product. This method is still being used, and the resulting hash is referred to as hand-rubbed hash or charas.
The invention of modern dry sieving techniques between the 15th and 16th centuries sped up the process and made it possible to produce larger quantities of hashish.
By sifting the dried material, it could be stored and later processed. An advance that led to a dramatic increase in production and consumption throughout Asia. Hashish then spread to Africa, Europe and the rest of the world through trade, conquest and migration.
Adding different sized screens
A single-screen traditionally used to sift hashish had its problems. If the screen used was too large, there was too much plant matter and residue in the final product. If you use a screen that is too small, you lose the large, matured resin glands, and more immature glands end up in the hash.
Replacing a single sieve with several different sized sieves allowed the filtering process to be refined and the hashish to be purer and more potent. Under the influence of western travellers during the “hippie and Hashish Trail” era, most hash-producing countries moved to using different sized screens.
You can now buy screens made especially for hash production and resin extraction, which usually go from 25-200 μm microns in size.
It was mid-November 1994 at the High Times Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam where Mila Jansen presented the first model of the Pollinator to the crowd.
It was originally built from an old clothes dryer with a heating system ripped out and a screen wrapped around the drum. The Pollinator allowed for the rapid processing of large quantities of cannabis into trichomes or kief. The first Pollinator ever sold went to our very own Ben Dronkers.
The Pollinator was redesigned with several important upgrades made over the years. It allows people to process their buds and trim and still get a decent quality hash in around 10-15 minutes.
Because of her contribution to hashish culture, Mila was dubbed “The Hash Queen“. She documented her endeavours in a book titled “How I Became The Hash Queen“.
Ice-o-lator bags, bubble bags, and ice-water extraction
A few years after the Pollinator was introduced to the cannabis community, Mila created Ice-o-lator bags. These were nylon bags with an attached sieve at the bottom, and they filtered out the trichomes that sank to the bottom while the rest of the plant material remained in the bag.
The process and the technique were later perfected by Marcus “Bubble man” Richardson and became the basis of ice-water hash production. He placed openings of various sizes to the filter screen and added more bags. Those “upgraded” bags are often referred to as “bubble bags” and hash produced in that way – “bubble hash“.
Bubble bags are simply cloth bags with different-sized meshes at the bottom. The bags work on the same principle as different sized screens but use water to extract the resin gland from the material. After collection, the kief is dried before being compressed.
There are many different brands, makes, and models, but they all work the same way. Bags with mesh on the sides are better because they allow more material to pass through.
The Bubbleator is essentially a mini washing machine you put your cannabis into. Turning and stirring the material makes the water and ice separation process considerably easier.
The material inside is a washing bag, which stirs cannabis by non-intrusive means. This allows for exceptional trichome extraction without destroying your plant material.
So, how to make hashish?
There are two traditional methods of making hashish:
- Rubbing the plants with your hands; this is how hand-rubbed hash and charas are made.
- Dry sieving, where cannabis is sifted through one or more fine sieves. This is how dry-sift hash, kief, resin, ice-water, and bubble-hash are made.
When working with trichomes, kief, or hash, it is always a good idea to work in a colder environment. Lower temperatures prevent the resin heads from melting and the most volatile compounds, such as terpenes, from escaping.
Putting your cannabis in the freezer overnight will help extract more kief. The trichomes will become more brittle and come off more easily, whether dry-sieved or extracted with ice water. However, there is no need to put your material back in the freezer between runs.
How to make charas?
The main difference between charas and all other types of hashish is that it is made from living plants, not dried material. Charas is still traditionally hand-rubbed throughout northern India, Pakistan, and Nepal.
What you’ll need:
- A clean set of hands
- Plants that are about 2-3 weeks until the end of the flowering
- A knife to help scrape the resin
Make charas in 5 steps:
- You start by plucking off the larger leaves and lightly pruning the buds. The more leaf mass you remove, the better.
- Place a bud or a few smaller ones between your palms, press gently, and slowly rub your hands together. Slowly move the bud up and down, rubbing it from top to bottom. You should not apply too much pressure or rub too quickly at first, as this will cause the resin glands to fall off. The slower the process, the better the quality of your charas will be.
- Rubbing the buds combined with your body heat will loosen the resin glands in the buds, and the trichomes will slowly begin to stick to your palms. It would help if you slowly increased the speed and gradually apply more pressure. Do not be too rough, as you do not want to break your bud. It is recommended to keep rubbing as long as resin is extracted.
- Once no more resin comes out of the bud, place it in your palm and squeeze it with your other thumb. This will extract the remaining resin from it. Repeat this process until you have no more buds to rub or you have enough charas.
- When you are done, your hands will be covered in sticky, resinous trichomes, which you now just need to scrape off. When you rub your hands together, most of the pieces will bind together. With a larger piece, you can pick up the smaller chunks that are still stuck to your palms. Once your hands are clean, and you have glued the charas together, it’s ready to use – have fun!
Rubbing charas is slow and strenuous work, and rubbing five to eight grams would be considered an honest day’s work. Charas is so important and widely used that there is even its own standard unit, the tola, which weighs 11.7 grams.
When trimming buds, the resin sticks to your hands and fingers as well as to the scissors. When you scrape it off and collect it, you get a product similar to charas. It’s often called “finger hash” or “scissor hash” and contains resin mixed with many impurities. But after a long day of trimming, it’s a nice reward!
How to make dry-sift hash?
Dry-sieved hashish is traditionally produced in hashish-producing regions such as Afghanistan, Morocco, and Lebanon. Under the Western influence, several different sizes have replaced a single sieve.
Traditionally, dry sieving was done by placing a fine sieve in a bucket or container, placing the dried and crushed material on top and covering it. You’d then proceed to beat the sieve with sticks for 15-20 minutes. The procedure is repeated as long as kief is collected.
How to make hash the old-fashioned way
- A fine screen, silkscreen, or a mesh, ideally a few different sized ones
- Cannabis buds, or trim
- A sheet of baking paper
- Any plastic-covered card to scrape the resin
- A brush
Make dry-sift hash in 5 steps:
- First, place your buds or source material in the freezer overnight. Freezing your buds will allow the resin glands to come off more easily.
- Spread the baking paper on your work surface and place your screen on top. If you are using multiple screens, lay them on top of each other in order of size, with the smallest one on the bottom.
- Place your buds on the screen and spread them out evenly. Do not put too much at once, as it’s better to do it in smaller amounts. In the beginning, do not agitate the buds too much, and lightly tap the sides of the screen.
- The first batch collected is the best quality, the kief collected from the smallest sieve being the highest quality. Some people like to keep their runs or sieve sizes separate, and others like to combine them; it’s up to you which you prefer. When you combine the material from the different sieves, the finished product becomes a richer, “full plant” experience.
- You want to agitate your material a little more in the second pass. So now tap on the buds themselves and apply some pressure. Gently rub and shake them on the top screen. You do not want to force the material onto the screen, as this could mix impurities with your kief. You should repeat this process for as long as the resin is collected. However, each new pass will be of lower quality.
To collect the resin from the screens and surface, you can use a plastic card and simply scrape up the kief. You can also use a brush to help pick up the remaining pieces. Depending on the size of your screens, the number of passes, and the quality of the source material, 10-15% of the return weight is a good value.
How to make hash from kief?
Once you have collected your kief, whether by dry sieving or water extraction, you will need to press all the resin heads together to make it into hash, there are a few techniques on how to do this, probably the most appropriate and easiest is the one used by the late Master Hashishin Frenchy Cannoli.
What you’ll need:
- A 1 to 2-litre bottle filled with boiling water
- A ziplock bag or non-sticking, clear sheet of plastic paper
- Kitchen gloves
Start by putting your kief in a ziplocked bag, then start rolling it gently with a bottle filled with boiling water. Boiling water is the ideal temperature for decarboxylation and is enough to melt the resin heads together.
If you simply place the water bottle on the bag without adding weight, the resin will melt. If you use a clear, see-through bottle, you will be able to see this. The bottle can get a little hot, so it is advisable to use a pair of kitchen gloves.
Using the bottle as a rolling pin, applying pressure and rolling it over the bag, you’ll see kief stick together and turn a darker colour. Once you have rolled it evenly on one side, which usually takes 5-10 minutes, flip the bag over and repeat the process.
Each time you apply pressure on one side, you will see lighter pieces come out on the side. It is generally recommended to repeat this process three times. Eventually, when the water in your bottle cools, replace it with a fresh batch of boiling water.
When you roll kief, you want to destroy all the trichome head membranes and join them together into one mass. It is important to spread the kief evenly to have the same thickness. The colour of the hash is a good guide, and it should all be even.
Your kief should now be pressed into a nice dark hash. You can roll it into a ball or press it into a block, and it’s ready for consumption.
How to make ice-water (isolator) or bubble hash?
Ice water or bubble hash works almost the same as using different screens for sifting, but the water is used to extract and collect the resin. As you agitate your material more and more, over longer durations while running water through it, it is possible to collect more resin than dry sifting.
The first historical account of using water to collect cannabis resin goes back to “The Cultivation and Use of Ganja, Ganja as an Article of Commerce, 1893 pg. 7-8.“. The report states that charas produced in the neighbourhoods of Hirát and Persia was sometimes melted into a homogeneous mass using warm water.
It also noted that the water “cleared the drug of vegetable hairs and leaf fragments,” making it of a “softer consistency… purer and more powerful than charas from other trans-Himalayan districts”.
Many cannabis enthusiasts have experimented with various extraction methods in the past, making all sorts of concentrates and extracts. But, it wasn’t until the invention of “bubble bags” that ice-water hash really took off.
What you’ll need:
- Two buckets
- Cannabis buds, or trim
- Different sized “bubble bags.”
- Ice and water
- Baking paper
- Something to agitate the mixture, a wooden spoon or an electric paint mixer
- Food grade ethanol alcohol
Make ice-water hash in 5 steps:
- Start by freezing your material overnight. Like dry sifting, this will help release the resin head from the material more easily. Adding ice to the water will also help.
- Place your bags inside each other by size, with the smallest on the bottom and the largest on top. Wrap the bags over the bucket and secure them into place.
- Add your cannabis to the other bucket, add a generous amount of ice, and submerge the material completely in the water. Stir the mixture for about 10-15 minutes.
- Carefully pour the mixture into the other bucket with the bubble bags and let it sit for another 10-15 minutes. What is left is kief of varying quality, and as with dry sieving, the bottom bag will be the best quality and the top bag of lesser quality.
- Carefully take out each bag and remove the kief you have collected. You can add a little more ice and water to each bag, shake it a little, and let it drain before removing the bag. This will allow you to collect the remaining resin.
Repeat this process for as long as you collect resin, and like dry sieving, the first pass will yield the best quality. Always make sure your sieves are clean, and it’s recommended to clean each with water after every run. The bottom sieve is too fine and can easily become clogged. Therefore, soak it and clean it with alcohol first.
Once you have collected your kief, you need to dry it. Again, some like to mix different sizes, and others prefer to keep it separate. Take your resin and run it through a strainer. This will break it up into smaller pieces, which you should spread out evenly on a sheet of baking paper. The better you spread it out, the better the resin will dry. So it’s recommended to use multiple sheets of paper rather than stuffing them together.
For optimal resin and hash drying conditions, you need a room with a stable temperature of 12°C and humidity of 35%. Drying is crucial for making high-quality ice water hash, and stable and proper conditions are essential. Depending on your source material, kief will take 5-15 days to dry.
Once dried, you can use the same method as above to press your kief into hash.
Instead of using a bucket and mixing it manually, you can use a portable mini washing machine.
Simply place your material in the washer, fill it with ice, and then pour water in to completely saturate the material. As you repeat your washes, the ice will begin to melt, and you will eventually need to add more ice to keep the temperatures cold.
Alternatively, you can use a freeze dryer to dry your resin or hash. For “shelf-stable” conditions that ensure you can store it for years without it going mouldy, your final product should have a water activity level of 0.60%.
If you are starting with “fresh frozen” or dried material, let it soak for a few minutes before you start stirring it. This will allow the material to rehydrate, making the extraction of the resin a little easier.
When is the best time to harvest your plants for making hash?
When harvesting cannabis plants for hash, you should generally let your plants mature 10 to 15 days longer than when harvesting for flowers. The extra time is necessary for the resin in the trichomes to fully develop.
If you look at your plant, it would mean that the stigmas have turned brown and are starting to fall off, and the bract is very plump. A better way, of course, would be to take a closer look at the trichomes themselves.
Taking a closer look at the trichomes
As the plants mature, the trichome glands change colour, going from transparent to cloudy white and amber. Contrary to popular belief, at least when it comes to making good hashish, the gland’s colour and size do not say much about the stage of maturity of the resin glands.
The colour of the glands depends on genetics and the light source. The change in trichome colour indicates the “maturation” of cannabinoids and their breakdown. This does not necessarily correspond to the maturity of the resin glands themselves.
Resin glands on cannabis plants are formed to protect themselves and trap pollen. They are not dependent on the flowering cycle itself. However, the closer you get to the peak of the flowering cycle, the more resin will form in the trichome glands.
The resin glands become attached to the stem in the same way that the old fruit or leaves become attached to the branch called abscission. The best indicator of the maturity of the resin glands is the size of the abscission. The more mature the gland becomes, the smaller the abscission. When the glands are fully mature, they fall off, just like old fruit or leaves.
Wait, what about shatter, wax, rosin, and the rest of the gang?
Well, no offence to our American friends, but to the rest of the world, hashish means something different. Think of “American football” to the rest of the world, where football means something different; the same goes for hashish.
That’s not to say that all these products are not great, stronger, and cleaner, but they are not the traditional form of making hashish. Many hashish traditions are thousands of years old, and some are so embedded in everyday society, which illustrates how influential, and important the original hashish culture was.
Cannabis culture and the cannabis industry are not new, and they are just becoming legal again.
Laws and regulations regarding cannabis use differ from country to country. Sensi Seeds therefore strongly advises you to check your local laws and regulations. Do not act in conflict with the law. | <urn:uuid:3260fb53-8737-4e7a-ac14-a2920a9012c2> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://hempinvestor.com/how-to-make-hashish-dry-sift-charas-and-bubble-hash/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224648209.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20230601211701-20230602001701-00015.warc.gz | en | 0.944215 | 4,286 | 2.5625 | 3 |
For thousands and thousands of years, men and women watched the birds and dreamed that they, too, could lift themselves into the air. Some tried. Back in ancient days, the mythical character Icarus took bird feathers and a frame and made something like a hang glider. But when he soared into the air, the sun melted the wax that held the feathers, and Icarus fell into the sea . Real people built gliders, or hot-air balloons that floated on the wind. Yet no one could figure out how to build a craft that would follow the commands of a human pilot. People tried and failed again and again. And then on December 17, 1903, two brothers did it. They were from Dayton, Ohio, and they owned a bicycle shop. Neither had graduated from high school. Their names were Wilbur and Orville Wright . Wilbur, the older one, later recalled why the two brothers were so close. "From the time we were little children my brother Orville and myself lived together, played together, worked together, and, in fact, thought together. We usually owned all of our toys in common, talked over our thoughts and aspirations so that nearly everything that was done in our lives has been the result of conversations, suggestions, and discussions between us."
It was not luck that made the Wright brothers the first people in all of history to build and fly an airplane that lifted off the ground with its own power. It was hard work and determination. Before they built that plane they studied all that was known about flying. They made a wind tunnel and tested two hundred differently shaped wings. Then they drew plans and built carefully. When they flew, it was from Kill Devil Hill at Kitty Hawk, on North Carolina's Outer Banks. Wilbur later explained why they selected that spot. He said, "I chose Kitty Hawk because there are neither hills nor trees, so that it offers a safe place for practice. Also the wind there is stronger than any place nearer home and is almost constant ." | <urn:uuid:f0f18434-e9aa-4302-ac13-35d3722212df> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus/web11/segment1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386163824647/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204133024-00001-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989872 | 407 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Drinking Raw Milk: It's Not Worth the Risk
By LCDR Casey Barton Behravesh, DVM, DrPH, US Public Health Service
There are many reasons why some people are thinking about drinking raw milk these days. (Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized to kill harmful germs.) Some people want to eat less processed food. Others have heard that raw milk contains more of certain nutrients than pasteurized milk, or that it can prevent or even solve various health problems. Still others think of buying raw milk as one way to support local farmers and sustainable agriculture.
As a public health epidemiologist and veterinarian, I know firsthand how animals and their germs can contaminate all kinds of food, including milk. Also, in my job in the Outbreak Response and Prevention Branch at CDC, I help investigate outbreaks caused by contaminated food and contact with infected animals.
If you’re thinking about adding raw milk to your diet (or your family’s diet), it’s important for you to understand the risks of drinking raw milk.
Why raw milk is dangerous
Raw milk can carry harmful bacteria and other germs that can make you very sick or kill you. Yes, it’s true that it’s possible to get “food poisoning” or foodborne illnesses from many foods, but raw milk is one of the riskiest of all. Raw milk and products made from raw milk (such as cheeses and yogurts) can cause serious infections, such as Salmonella, Listeria, and E. coli.
What happens if you get sick from raw milk
Getting sick from raw milk can mean many days of diarrhea, stomach cramping, and vomiting. Less commonly, it can mean kidney failure, paralysis, chronic disorders, and even death. The seriousness of the illness is determined by many factors, such as the type of germ, the amount of contamination, and the person’s immune defenses.
Speaking of immune defenses… it’s important to remember that some people are at higher risk of getting sick from drinking raw milk. The risk is greater for certain age groups, such as infants, young children, and older adults. It’s also particularly risky for pregnant women (and their unborn babies) and those with weakened immune systems, such as people with cancer, an organ transplant, or HIV/AIDS.
Though some people are at higher risk of getting sick from raw milk, even healthy adults and older children can get seriously ill. Those who recover often suffer from life-long medical consequences. To see how devastating these illnesses can be, check out these real-life stories about the dangers of raw milk.
Even healthy animals may carry germs that contaminate raw milk
Outbreaks of illness related to raw milk have been traced back to both grass-fed and grain-fed animals. Raw milk supplied by “certified,” “organic,” or “local dairies has no guarantee of being safe.
How to stay safe
To keep your family safe, follow these simple tips:
- Always drink pasteurized milk. Check the label or package to be sure.
- If you prefer organic milk, make sure that it’s pasteurized. Raw, organic milk is not safe.
- If you or a member of your family consumes raw milk and then becomes ill, call your health care provider immediately. If it’s an emergency, call 911.
For more information, including questions and answers about raw milk, see Food Safety and Raw Milk (CDC).
My neice from Kansas drank raw milk as did her mother and son, my neice devloped camphlo-bactor (not sure of the spelling) and had to spend a week in the hospital, they told her she may have issues later in life because of this. She thought she had the flu,and tried to wait it out, the day they went to the Dr. she had to crawl to the bathroom because her head hurt so badly and she was so weak. The Dr. put her straight in the hospital.
Have you ever accepted monies from large agribusiness companies in any capacity?
Isn't it amazing that millions of us grew up drinking raw milk and survived. And the taste, the butter, the yogurt all of it made it totally great (inspite of the risks...but we didn't know there were any risks, maybe that is why we survived)
This is a really helpful article. I've been seeing more and more coverage on how raw milk is the new trend, but not much on the downsides. I'd been wondering if there were the same issues with raw milk products. Thanks for answering them before I even had to ask!
my husband is a third generation dairy farmer, he was raised on raw milk, our 3 children were all raised on raw milk. When our children were babies and ready to come off formula I asked their doctor if I could put them on the raw milk. He said that was fine, the bacteria is picked up when it hits the air and if I took it from the bulk tank to my refrigerator that would be fine. So my 3 children have been on raw milk since they were 3months old and without and sicknesses, and that was in the 60's and 70's. My grandchildren even drink the raw milk as my son now milks cows. There are all kinds of people and some maybe cannot handle raw milk like anything else. I don't think it's the milk that needs to get the bad rap.
How about yall just focus on the deadly e.coli and other pathogen outbreaks in the supposedly "safe" pasteurized food supply you tout so highly (factory farm eggs, anyone?) and leave me to my raw milk, if I so desire? Thanks.
How about an article titled, "Raw Spinach -- it's Not Worth the Risk"? Or any other food that has a worse safety record than raw milk?
The only thing "dangerous" is articles such as this one! Raw milk is safe, highly nutritious, and delicious. It has all the living enzymes missing from pasteurized ("dead") milk from the local grocery store, making it easier for many more people to drink, who can't handle the "other" milk. Government agencies should back off of the wonderful farmers who supply us with these healthy, natural products! We don't need this kind of "protection", or any more government regulation--which usually "regulates" natural, healthy foods while ignoring the dangers quite obviously present in so many of the mainstream grocery store items.
This tragic misinformation does not allow for the higher standards of one to three cow barns that not only take state recommended steps for cleanliness and cattle care, but go above and beyond to ensure the safety of their milk. It is irresponsible to make this the only word on milk safety and in my mind equivalent to saying that we must all stay indoors as there are bees that "might" sting you outside.
I don't know. The raw milk advocates show the research to back up their claims. I have worked for 3 federal agencies and I Do Not trust anything the government says it's word! Immediate health risk are not "safer" then long term health risk. | <urn:uuid:8d7f2132-d431-472d-b55e-d6260701e19c> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://www.foodsafety.gov/blog/raw_milk_2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386164574548/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204134254-00030-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975093 | 1,502 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Miniaturization and portability trends in combination with increasing performance are contributing to the well know problem of heat concentration and dissipation in modern electronic appliances. The answer from the electronics industry has so far mostly consisted in trying to do better what "we know how to do". The processor industry is moving to SOI to reduce the heat dissipation per transistor, while the power supply industry is trying to squeeze the last % point of efficiency out of their regulators. And the two together are working closer than ever to device efficient management schemes to consume as little power as possible. Clearly such measures are slowing down the speed of the 'temperature raise' without taming it.
In portable electronics the issue of power dissipation is compounded by the lack of good energy sources. Eventually fuel cells will become viable, charging will yield to fueling and energy availability will no longer be a problem in portable systems.
When that happens the heat will remain the minimum common denominator, the ultimate problem to solve. Unless we do something about it sooner, that is.
Limits of passive cooling
The vast majority of heat management systems rely today on passive methods of cooling, typically based on a bulky mass of heat conducting material shaped for maximum radiating surface (heatsink), attached to the heat source. The heatsink may be complemented as necessary by forced air circulation. In cases where space is at a premium heat pipes are utilized as means to transport the heat from the hot spot to a peripheral areas where heat can be more easily disposed off, for example utilizing existing metallic structures as heatsink. While heat pipes are today state of the art in modern notebook computers, such technology is less than desirable being based on encapsulated fluids that may leak and damage the electronics. The fundamental limitation of all passive cooling methods, including heat pipes, is that they rely on a negative temperature gradient to work. In other words the heat always has to flow from the higher temperature point to a lower temperature point. It follows that the device or load to be cooled will always be at higher temperature with respect to the heat sink and the ambient. With ambient temperature varying easily from 25 to 70C and silicon failure rates proportional to the square of the silicon junction temperature, passive cooling resembles more a torture chamber for silicon rather than real refrigeration.
Active cooling is a forced means of refrigeration in which heat can be made to flow from the lower to the higher temperature spot. This is obviously the principle on which common refrigeration is based. While active cooling overcomes the 'negative temperature gradient' barrier it pays a price for it in terms of additional heat generation. Can active cooling be the solution?
The theoretical limit for efficient heat transport is achieved by the reversible heat engine obeying to the Carnot cycle.
The transport of heat by a Carnot cycle is described by the equation:
Pcool = Pload* Tc/(Th-Tc) (1)
Pcool = Power expenditure to cool with Carnot engine (Watts)
Pload = Power dissipated by the load to be cooled (Watts)
Tc= Temperature of the cooled side (K)
Th= Temperature of the hot side (K)
Accordingly, in order to transport 100W of heat from a cold surface (27C) to a hot surface (say 300C), an expenditure of power is theoretically necessary in absence of mechanical friction and other irreversibilites amounting to:
Pcool = 100W*(27 + 273)/(300-27)=109W (2)
In thermodynamic terms, this transport can be looked at as a refrigeration process or a heat pump process.
This can be described as a refrigeration process with the "Coefficient Of Performance", COP, defined as the ratio of the work required to the energy transferred for cooling (COPC), equal to 109W/100W=1.09. Or it can be seen as a heating process. In this case the cost of cooling, or 109W is effectively 'free' heat and hence the effective "coefficient of performance" (COPH) is 209W/100W =2.09.
Moving from thermodynamic to electronic terminology, let's now assume that 100W is the power generated by a chip powered by a voltage regulator (whose efficiency is 100% for simplicity) and cooled by Carnot. We have:
Pload =100W (3)
h%= 100*Pload/(Pload + Pcool) =100/209=48% (5)
where h is the efficiency, or ratio between useful power and overall power expenditure. Table 1 illustrates the relationships between these parameters and Fig. 1 illustrates the elements at play and the power flow.
Table 1. Watts required to transport 100W of power in a Carnot cycle
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of a Carnot engine cooling a 100W load
Notice that h% can also be calculated as 1/(1+COPC), still 48% for Carnot.
Adding to this the inefficiency of the voltage regulators powering the load and the engine and mechanical frictions we can conclude that active cooling at best will yield overall efficiencies in the range of 40%.
Active cooling yes or not?
Can active cooling be viable at such levels of efficiency? Of course yes! Low efficiency is not a killer per se but only when it generates heat in the wrong places, namely at the junction of silicon transistors. Other than that efficiency or lack of it, inefficiency is quite cheap.
Watts are cheap: at 8c/kWh a 100W load consumes 0.8c/h. Depending on usage patterns a CPU may not work at full speed for more than a few hours a day, making the daily cost of such feature around a few cents per day (say 3 cents a day) and a few bucks a year (say 10$). This is not an unacceptable cost.
With respect to fuel cells a similar calculation can be done. It is obvious that active cooling technology would burn methane (or whatever fuel we will end up using) at twice the rate or more of conventional technology but then again is that really a problem? So on the longer horizon we would not discount active cooling technology in portable computing either, once fuel cells become a viable technology.
The hot plate
Now that we are moving heat from the 'cold' silicon junction to a 'hot' plate for heat disposal, we have indeed turned the industry on its head: the hottest place is now the heat radiator, hotter than ambient, and the coldest place is the silicon junction. Doesn't this feel right? Would you want it the other way around ever again? Is a hot plate --perhaps as hot as 300C or more - a problem? I don't think so. We deal routinely with hot surfaces at home (kitchen, light bulbs) and on the road (motorcycles tail pipe).
Active cooling implementations
Today examples of active cooling, like thermoelectric cooling based on a Peltier array, are found in satellite receivers where lowering the temperature of the LNA allows a lower noise figure, and in fiber optic network equipment where again precision temperature control is required.
With thermoelectric cooling a voltage is applied to a Ohmic junction of two different conducting (thermocouple) or semi-conducting (P and N types) materials, and the ensuing current flow results in absorption or release of energy (heat) at the junction as the electrons cross a corresponding 'uphill' or 'downhill' potential. The intensity of heat flow is proportional to the current and the process is reversible, namely a heat source at the junction will produce a corresponding current flow.
Figure 2. Illustration of Peltier effect with V*I=Pcool.
In Fig. 2 the mechanism of an electron acquiring energy in order to overcome the opposing electric field Ec -- and hence cooling the 'cold' plate -- in crossing the N=>P junction, as well as releasing energy to in presence of a favorable electric field Eh -- and hence heating the 'hot' plate- in crossing the P=>N junction as illustrated.
Being the heat flow proportional to the current it means that any current controller in the semiconductor manufacturer product portfolio can be easily adapted to control current and hence, via a thermistor, temperature in a Peltier array.
For example Class D power amplifiers normally used to drive audio amplifiers are being applied successfully to drive Peltier arrays.
A few adventurous souls have applied Peltier cooling to their CPU's and managed to over-clock their PC's sensibly thanks to the lowered temperature. That Peltier will become mainstream in mass-market applications is dubious because of the extremely low efficiency, in the range of 5% of Carnot. While we have made a case for cheap energy earlier, an expenditure of 2kW to cool a 100W load seems to be a bit too much.
Stirling refrigerators -and variations on the theme- are mechanical systems based on compression and expansion of an inert gas by a piston. These systems yield efficiency closest to the ideal Carnot cycle and are being seriously investigated for high end CPU applications like IA64.
Because of their complexity, mechanical nature with moving parts and cost it is unlikely that this will be the technology that will shrink heatsinks and displace heat pipes for high volumes applications either.
What we need is an active cooling technology that has the efficiency of the Stirling and the 'solid state electronics' makeup of Peltier.
Our intuition tells us that an elegant, solid state, electronically inherent solution to heat management must exist if nothing else to mitigate the embarrassing dependence of the high tech solid state electronics industry from Iron Age passive heatsink technology.
A few pioneering companies have already advanced claims to this extent but they still have little to show for besides papers.
What we need now is a mindset change for our industry: enough with single minded push of efficiency gains and on with creative ways to bring to the mainstream a viable active cooling technology. | <urn:uuid:e2e9f493-b6a9-4c8e-9342-df86cb916feb> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1225799 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386163043499/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204131723-00030-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930067 | 2,062 | 3.140625 | 3 |
File sharing has been one of the most controversial topics of the time. The computer age we are breathing now, is comprised of, among many parts, file sharing. How would it have been without the file sharing system? Probably not as efficient as it truly is now. From large corporation to small business to friendly sharing, a large part of the computer and Internet culture is built on it.
Advent of file sharing
Modern file sharing system popped up in the 90s which was consist of bunch of computers running the same program for instance then Napster. File sharing is the process of distributing digital media like computer programs, multimedia, documents and various other files of different formats.
File sharing medium has gone through noticeable changes in periods. The very first file sharing medium was removable media. We are talking about as early of late 1970s. The way those computers would have access to remote files was by using BBS (Bulletin Board System), Usenet, FTP servers, file system mounting. The tide was begin to turn in the early 1990s, when the mp3 encoded format was launched. New laws and legislation was launched like Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Networking methods behind file sharing
File sharing is generally a multipurpose service which evolved from removable media to network protocols like FTP (File Transfer Protocol), hotline, Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Operating systems also by default support file sharing method like NFS (Network File Sharing).
File sharing tasks most commonly use two of the basic networking methods.
This is the one of the top used and most controversial file sharing method out there. Since this a peer-to-peer file sharing method, computers on the network locate data which is shared with the third-party software. This method of file sharing allows the user to directly get access, download and edit files. There are third-party software which allows P2P sharing by gathering and breaking down the large files into smaller chunks for efficiency and speed. The most popular was Napster, Kazaa, LimeWire, eMule etc. Now there are various other torrent client you can find online.
File hosting services
One other alternative to P2P file sharing alternative is file hosting services, which provides a wide range of selection of popular online material. These services are often used with other internet collaboration methods like email, blogs, forums etc. where a direct downloadable link can be hosted. These kind of services websites allow the users to download the files hosted. | <urn:uuid:044e02c9-3efc-4658-b76f-5f7d59edd090> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.links-annuaire.com/file-sharing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510130.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20230926011608-20230926041608-00254.warc.gz | en | 0.957825 | 516 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Girls First | Surat, India
PROGRAM RESULTS +1,800 adolescent girls in over 20 slums in Surat have participated Independent evaluations have confirmed measurable improvement in many key metrics Mental and behavioral health, social skills, and academic indicators all positively improved
“What I liked so much was that I was able to solve my own problem.”
Girls First Participant | Surat, India
Background + Situation | Surat, India Surat is a city of 6 million people located in the state of Gujarat, India. While boasting a lucrative diamond cutting and textile manufacturing industries, 35% to 45% of the city’s population lives in slums. Slums are overcrowded, with no running water, few if any toilets, no sanitation or drainage system, and few permanent structures. Many are located near Surat’s canals, which flood with toxic refuse during the monsoon season, at times reaching heights of 6-10 feet. Gender discrimination and violence is common in the slums, where women often face physical, sexual, and emotional abuse . Many girls are forced into arranged marriages at the age of 14-16 years.
CorStone Response | Put Girls First! Girls First | Surat empowers girls with training in personal resilience. The program uses a low cost facilitated peer-support model that covers topics in character strength development, social-emotional skills, problem-solving and conflict resolution, as well as topics in nutrition, reproductive and sexual health, safe water, HIV/AIDS, malaria prevention and similar. Girls attend sessions in groups of 12 for two hours per week over six months. Working in partnership with the Slum Women Federation of Surat, local women are trained and certified through CorStone’s ‘train the trainer’ program, thus earning a living wage and building their own resilience as they lead the groups. Girl attendees are 12-16 years old, likely to be the first generation in their family to attend school; are at high risk for child marriage; and have few, if any, positive employment prospects beyond menial odd jobs or sex work. All girls in the program are Dalits (so-called “untouchables”) or from other low castes, putting them at an even higher risk for abuse, discrimination, and school dropout. Over 1,800 adolescent girls in over 20 slums in Surat have attended Girls First since its launch in 2011. Independent evaluations have confirmed measurable improvements across a range of mental and behavioral health, social skills, and academic indicators. | <urn:uuid:3bc79ada-7319-4c49-a6eb-bdf944c8313e> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | http://corstone.org/girls-first-surat-india/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320869.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20170626221252-20170627001252-00094.warc.gz | en | 0.952254 | 522 | 2.734375 | 3 |
September 18, 2008
--A comb jelly trips the light fantastic as it pulses off Heron Island on Australia
's Great Barrier Reef complex.
The creature, which lacks the stingers of jellyfish, was among thousands of species studied at three coral reef sites--two of them along the Great Barrier--during a four-year survey led by the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
The survey team announced today that it has discovered hundreds of animals new to science, including previously unknown microscopic shrimp, worms, scavenging crustaceans--and as many as 150 new species of soft corals. (Read the full story
The reef expeditions were done as part of the Census of Marine Life, a global ten-year initiative to assess the diversity, distribution, and abundance of creatures in the world's oceans.
Photograph courtesy Gary Cranitch/Queensland Museum/copyright 2008 | <urn:uuid:abc070ef-c460-4df9-821a-afd8d2d2405c> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/photogalleries/marine-new-species-photos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549423512.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20170720222017-20170721002017-00006.warc.gz | en | 0.948427 | 180 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Do you ever envy those fictional superheros who never fall sick? Imagine what it would be like to never fear diseases or never having to take sick leaves!
Well, as humans, we are all prone to diseases, serious ones or otherwise, at some point in our lives.
Although being affected by ailments is a given, we can do a few things to reduce their occurrence or minimise their severity.
A few diseases have no known cure; in such cases, we can always take steps to keep their symptoms under control.
Living with disorders is certainly no walk in the park and they can have serious, negative impacts on our daily lives.
We owe it to ourselves to maintain healthy lifestyles, in order to keep disorders and health complications at bay.
Adapting to a healthy lifestyle that includes a nutritious diet, regular exercise, hygiene, skin and hair care routines, etc, are some of the well-known ways to stay away from disorders.
Apart from the above-mentioned ways, there are a few other lesser-known tips that can help provide relief to you from certain health conditions. Learn all about them, here!
If you are having a tiring day, but you want to avoid the constant yawns, sip on a glass of cold water slowly and take a few deep breaths. Doing this can make you feel energised and also stop you from yawning.
This is an acupressure technique, wherein you apply pressure on the inner part of your left wrist, using the fingers of your right hand. This point is the P6 accupoint; and studies claim that, applying pressure on that point will help provide relief from nausea and vomiting.
When you are suffering from a throat irritation or an itchy throat, try scratching the back of your ear gently. Doing this is known to stimulate a reflex in your throat muscles and cause them to have a spasm, which may help you find relief from the throat itch.
There are times when your hands become numb or "fall asleep", if you apply too much pressure on them for a long time, or due to the lack of blood circulation. By shaking your head from one side to another, you will allow the nerves in your neck to loosen up. These nerves are in turn connected to the nerves in your hands; and when they loosen up, blood flow is stimulated, thereby reducing numbness.
If you are having a bad day and you are feeling down or depressed, try biting gently on the end of a pencil. This action equates to the action of smiling, which releases serotonin and dopamine in your brain, thereby improving your mood.
If you are having non-stop hiccups, then take a glass of cold water, stand up straight, then bend down at the waist until your upper body is parallel to the ground. Now, drink the water slowly. Doing this is known to relieve hiccups.
If you are having a heart-burn or an acid reflux, try lying down on your left side for a while. This position will not allow the acid from your stomach to enter into your oesophagus, thereby reducing acid reflux. | <urn:uuid:0321cb97-883d-4b07-b923-beda427817d3> | CC-MAIN-2017-39 | https://www.boldsky.com/health/wellness/2016/seven-surprising-health-tips-that-will-blow-your-mind-101292.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818692236.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20170925164022-20170925184022-00518.warc.gz | en | 0.9557 | 643 | 2.625 | 3 |
Virtually everyone has played Simon, that electronic memory game from the 70s, but who among us has actually beaten it? That was the goal of [Ben] and his 7-year-old daughter, and after a year of work, an Arduino, some servos, and a few Lego bricks, they’ve finally done it.
Instead of the large original Simon, [Ben] is using a key chain version of the game: much smaller, and much easier to build a device to sense the lights and push the buttons. The arms are made from Lego bricks, held up with rubber bands and actuated with two servos mounted on a cutting board.
To detect Simon’s lights, [Ben] connected four phototransistors to an Arduino. The Arduino records the pattern of lights on the Simon, and activates the Lego arms in response to that pattern. [Ben]’s version of Simon has only a maximum of 32 steps in the final sequence, but that still means each game takes 528 button presses – and a lot of annoying beeps – to complete. | <urn:uuid:bfe68551-3e31-460d-9bcf-40d9a2a3c2ef> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | http://hackaday.com/tag/memory-game/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886118195.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20170823094122-20170823114122-00469.warc.gz | en | 0.968951 | 225 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Droplets packed with hemoglobin may briefly form tiny clusters inside red blood cells that ultimately deform their shape, and cause the pain crises that mark sickle cell disease (SCD), a study reports.
The research, “A mechanism for reversible mesoscopic aggregation in liquid solutions,” appeared in the journal Nature Communications.
In people with SCD, hemoglobin (the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen) can form rigid protein strands in the blood cells that alter their shape. These sickle-shaped cells tend to stick to blood vessels to slow or stop blood flow, leading to a drop in oxygen levels in tissues and the attacks of severe pain known as vaso-occlusive crises.
For these rigid strands — or fibers — to grow, hemoglobin first assembles in tiny liquid droplets of mesoscopic size (somewhere between microscopic and macroscopic).
“Though relatively small in number, the mesoscopic clusters pack a punch,” Vassiliy Lubchenko, the study’s senior author and a professor of chemistry at University of Houston, said in a news release. “They serve as essential nucleation, or growth, centers for things like [SCD] fibers or protein crystals.”
These droplets contain more hemoglobin than is found elsewhere in red blood cells, Lubchenko said, and may be evident as protein molecules very briefly bound togethers as “dimers or duos”— bound for about a fraction of a millisecond. Such dimers “are key to the formation of the mesoscopic clusters,” he added, that lead to the hemoglobin fibers seen in people with sickle cell disease.
After forming, the droplets grow “until becoming mechanically unstable and break apart,” the researchers wrote.
According to the team, these clusters suggest “a tantalizing possibility” that the precursors of living cells were not encased in membranes, but were more similar to so-called “membrane-less organelles.”
Lubchenko believes the mesoscopic clusters have points in common with these organelles as well. Because the clusters lack a membrane, they are able to rapidly exchange molecules within a blood cell’s cytoplasm (the material filling a cell, apart from its nucleus).
In the context of sickle cell, preventing the formation of these clusters may be a possible way of treating the disease. | <urn:uuid:62de659d-fed9-4b80-9df7-b7a6b26f5573> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://sicklecellanemianews.com/2019/11/26/droplets-hemoglobin-rich-form-clusters-possible-source-sickle-shape-study-says/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251690379.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20200126195918-20200126225918-00214.warc.gz | en | 0.927577 | 507 | 3.640625 | 4 |
“The Forestias” - World’s first project with ideal living environment integrated with a balanced ecosystem and new technologies to enhance the well-being of every generation.
There are 9 Sustainability Concepts within The Forestias.
• Nature & Animals : Before the construction begins, we had discovered over 53 plant species and 123 animal species within the project area. With our sustainability concept, we will let human and all living things live happily in harmony with the natural world without interrupting the balance of ecosystem.
• Community & Intergeneration : All generations can meet up, spend time together, bridge the generation gap and make the community a better place to live.
• Livable Neighborhood : We facilitate all residents with connectable areas. Everyone can make use of common areas and get to know more of one another.
• Health, Well-Being & Happiness : Living among good environment and rich aroma from surrounding trees can contribute to a better quality of life which is a key to sustainable happiness.
• Innovative Energy System : All energy consumption within the project are renewable which means we can help save energy resources efficiently, prevent global warming and reduce environmental pollution within the project.
• Integrated Water Management : All waste water can be recycled and used for watering plants which help saving fresh water resources.
• Transport & Active Mobility : Besides surrounding the project area with flourish trees, The Forestias will also become a smart city in Bangkok where all residents can travel elsewhere by driverless shuttle bus.
• Materials & Resources : All materials and resources used in the project are free from toxic, Carcinogenic. Besides, we ensure to make use of all materials efficiently and economically.
• Education & Discovery : The Forestias will become more that a resident area as we input plenty learning centre areas in the project for young children to develop learning skills and foster healthy relationship with their families. | <urn:uuid:1a8c6db1-c384-4efa-a79f-f9498c44f902> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://www.mqdc.com/our-business/theme-project/theforestias/blog/The-Forestias-Provides-9-Dimensions-of-Sustainability-as-a-Smart-City-in-Bangkok | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439735792.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20200803083123-20200803113123-00363.warc.gz | en | 0.890493 | 380 | 2.625 | 3 |
It’s been a wild six months for megastorms. In October 2015, Hurricane Patricia became the most powerful ever measured, with winds topping 200 mph before being downgraded near the coast of Mexico. In February 2016, there was Winston, the most potent cyclone recorded in the Southern Hemisphere, which made landfall on Fiji. Now meet Fantala, the strongest storm measured over the Indian Ocean.
NASA’s Aqua satellite captured Fantala using its Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) as it clocked wind speeds of 170 miles per hour on April 18th. A second image released by NASA shows wind speeds as measured by the ISS’s Rapid Scatterometer (ISS-RapidScat), which bounces microwaves off the ocean to determine the roughness of the water.
What might be to blame for these record-setting storms? Of course it’s all El Niño’s fault. El Niño means warm ocean temperatures in this part of the world, which helps set the stage for big tropical storms like this. But the supersize nature of these storms is also thanks to the 11 consecutive record-breaking months of hot temperatures the planet is experiencing.
As for this latest storm, we got lucky: Although Fantala was churning near the coast of Madagascar, it never made landfall. But with temperatures continuing to climb and El Niño not quite over yet, there will likely be more of these gigantic storms in the near future. | <urn:uuid:ab2817ac-4de2-4048-a189-e2bb1aa995de> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2016/04/good-lord-the-largest-cyclone-ever-recorded-in-the-indian-ocean-is-very-large/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886133032.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20170824043524-20170824063524-00457.warc.gz | en | 0.949516 | 301 | 3.40625 | 3 |
James Hansen, in his 2009 book Storms of my grandchildren, describes his experience trying to convince policy-makers of the seriousness of our climate challenge while at the same time seeking to raise public awareness. Robust scientific research has been at the heart of his work throughout an impressive career with NASA and he has an important track record of scientific publications. And yet this was not enough.
For the past decade he has been using every means available to try to communicate with the public on the need for urgent action on climate change. Now, as an adjunct professor at Columbia University, he maintains a website that includes his scholarly publications, presentations, communications, audio and video. He has embraced the online, digitally connected world.
Science takes place ‘on the fly’ (in an ad lib fashion, to keep up with new data), Hansen argues, and so it is essential that he and his team constantly update their graphs to “help provide understanding of how climate change is developing and how effective or ineffective global actions are in affecting climate forcings and future climate change”. Sharing them via his website means these graphs and all of his articles are instantly available to any interested parties.
Part of a bigger picture
The communication of scientific research in all areas is being transformed as the web and social media gain increasing influence. Universities and researchers are beginning to take advantage of new opportunities afforded by these tools in order to explore how best to increase their research outreach.
It is clear that the landscape of scientific research communication is being transformed as the web alters how we interact and engage with online information. With an estimated two billion people now online and with web penetration reaching as high as 78 percent of the population in North America and nearly 60 percent in Europe, it is the web that is driving our communications and knowledge exchange activities more than any other form of media (overtaking television recently, according to the Digital Life survey by TNS).
As part of this phenomenon, visits to portals such as YouTube have an educational role, as well as entertainment value, with more and more universities publishing videos online.
It is true that for certain topics, especially in very technical scientific fields, researchers will continue to share what they have learned with their colleagues and institutions through peer-reviewed scientific journals. As Ugo Bardi recently argued “for scientists, each paper is a form of credit that can be later redeemed in terms of career advancement, grants, academic positions and the like. It is ‘money’, in short. Scientific publishers have managed to act as ‘banks’ for this scientific currency.”
In relation to pressing global issues like climate change, however, if scientists publish only in peer-reviewed journals and remain disengaged from the places where everybody else is connecting, it may prove difficult to ensure that research outcomes are effectively communicated to broader society. This situation is compounded even further if academic publishers continue to restrict access to scientific knowledge to those with the ability to pay.
While the purpose of restricted-access, peer-reviewed journals is to ensure scientific quality and to communicate more technically oriented research outcomes to peers, the goal of open access, web-based dissemination is to encourage widespread public debate and to increase the speed of research feedback. Both the restricted-access and the open access are valid models and can co-exist effectively. However, one should not be allowed to undermine the other. The point, therefore, is to encourage climate scientists to not limit themselves to journals, but to engage with the public via other channels.
Concerns for a new communication realm
The advantage of the web compared with communications channels like television or the printed news media is that there is no gate-keeping editor deciding what you may or may not find interesting. Moreover, if the principles of open access publishing are followed online, then there is a tremendous opportunity to share the outcomes of scientific research more extensively across society.
We have just begun to see universities sharing their research and expertise via the web in new and engaging ways. A good example is Environment 360, an online magazine from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, supported by an online community on both Facebook and Twitter, and via reader comments on articles.
It is not surprising that universities are ramping up their efforts to take advantage of the internet, including Web 2.0 technologies (Web 2.0 includes a “strong social component” through user-generated content such as comments, tags and ratings).
The move towards web-based publishing and sharing of research and information by universities has to be informed by proven techniques in interface design and knowledge of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). The editors’ experiences at the UN University through publishing the Our World 2.0 web magazine has been that, in order to engage and retain the reader’s attention, design, branding and visual communications (e.g., choosing the right photograph) are arguably as important as the substance of the articles.
A key component of the experimental approach underpinning many online magazines (including Our World 2.0) is the adoption of Creative Commons licenses for articles and videos. Creative Commons is a legally binding system of copyright that allows the creator of the content to decide what restrictions she or he wants to place on the content, rather than the default “All Rights Reserved”. Depending on the specific attribution license a university selects, other websites, blogs and news sites are able to re-publish articles, as long as they comply with the terms of the copyright.
The aim here, of course, is to expose new audiences, often but not always like-minded ones, to a university’s research outputs. The beauty of Creative Commons is that, since other websites can find your quality content themselves, universities do not rely solely on resource intensive online promotion to draw people to their content (although clever promotion strategies do help too).
Practical challenges to overcome
In our experience, a key concern often expressed by researchers is that publishing via Our World 2.0 would not be acknowledged as a work of academic merit within the measurement scales normally used by universities when evaluating performance of faculty or the suitability of candidates for positions. However, publishing a shorter, more accessible article in an online magazine has the potential to increase the readership of the original peer-reviewed paper that can be attached to the web article, as a PDF for example.
A second challenge that is often raised by academics is one of quality. Essentially, submitting to a peer-reviewed journal ensures that the quality of the article receives some kind of formal recognition. While leaving aside the fact that the academic peer review process itself has many detractors, having a strong editorial policy goes some way in ensuring quality, as does having a well informed audience willing to comment on the substance of articles and identify errors (that can be corrected immediately online). Admittedly, this is a less robust mechanism than most journals and inevitably there are challenges, particularly in rather technical fields where specialist knowledge is required.
But in a wake up call for all academics, Jerome Ravetz, in a recent article in Nature, explains that the traditional models of academic authorship and collaboration are being transformed in the digital age. He asserts that the journal is losing its status as the sole gatekeeper — the “simultaneous guarantor of quality, certifier of property, medium of communication and also archive”. He argues that “other means of sharing material, assessing quality and screening out the incompetent are emerging to fill the gap but… the professional monopoly on quality assurance of science will have to be modified.”
Some researchers find a situation where their work is subject to wider online public scrutiny, and sometimes unwarranted aggressive critique, to be rather discomforting and prefer the somewhat cushioned conditions of peer review where greater time is available to review and revise works (i.e., embarrassing lapses can be avoided). Other researchers seem to relish the idea that they can get immediate feedback on their writings and view it as an opportunity to test and sharpen their ideas amongst interested, but non-expert audiences.
Of course there is also the possibility that the number of peer-reviewed journals that adopt the Creative Commons system — such as those produced by the Canadian Center of Science and Education — may well grow rapidly.
A third challenge relates to the use of video or podcasts to communicate research. If your past academic career has focused on journal outputs, it may seem grossly inappropriate and somewhat belittling to turn to video as a means to communicate your work, especially via YouTube where your work has to compete with “cute kitten in a box” for attention. Although videos of a “talking head” or lecture format are not necessarily engaging, exceptional educators such as justice expert Prof. Michael Sandel at Harvard University have proven to be very popular on YouTube with around 2.3 million views for each video.
And it is here that we get to the crux of the matter because the fourth concern that is often raised by academics is how it is really possible to measure impact? Since we are talking about research influencing society — or “the public”, as the UN University’s and other charters often put it — then normally we look to achieve the broadest dissemination possible and that is usually via television, radio and newspapers.
However, with the advent of the digitally connected age, the web is emerging as an intermediate solution and one that is available for all to use. If your research were picked up by the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Times of India or le Monde, for instance, then the automatic assumption would be that this is a positive result. But if your research were watched by two million YouTube viewers, you would be less sure, because you are less able to characterize those who watch YouTube.
We would argue, however, that this perception is changing and further, that the big difference the web offers is the possibility for your community to respond directly to you. There can be, if academic and scientific institutions are so inclined, a conversation around the research, and it can even be held for all to see — in the comments section of the online article. That is not to say that the conversation will always be civil or that it would be easy to manage, but it is a possibility with the right philosophy and community-building strategy.
So, as the web evolves in the future it is likely that the way science is communicated will be gradually transformed and scientists will no longer be able to work in a vacuum. Instead, they may be required to engage with both their peers and the rest of society in a more open and transparent manner.
• ♦ •
This article is an abridged and slightly modified version of a chapter entitled “Communicating scientific research through the web and social media: Experience of the United Nations University with the Our World 2.0 web magazine” to appear in the forthcoming book from Springer Press, Geoscience Research and Education edited by Vincent Tong. | <urn:uuid:30d7aaec-b288-45f8-85be-1622b3383861> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/communicating-climate-science-online | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1412037663754.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20140930004103-00406-ip-10-234-18-248.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955548 | 2,230 | 2.609375 | 3 |
This post is all about making glitter and craft stick snowflakes.
I feel like this is a classic winter or Christmas-time craft. It’s a bit crazy I haven’t shared this idea until now!
With just a few simple materials your kids can make beautiful winter snowflakes.
You can use this craft as an opportunity to discuss the fact that snowflakes have six sides, and the sides are symmetrical.
Note: For more fun and educational winter activities, see my Winter Activities for Kids page.
To make these glitter and craft stick snowflakes, you’ll need to gather the following materials:
- Craft sticks
Yup, that’s it!
Depending on the ages of the children you are working with, you can choose to have them assemble their own craft stick snowflake or you may wish to assemble the snowflakes yourself ahead of time.
See the image below for directions:
1. Begin by placing a dot of glue in the center of one craft stick.
2. Then lay a second craft stick on top at a 60 degree angle.
3. Add another dot of glue in the center of the second craft stick.
4. Then place a third craft stick on top at a 120 degree angle.
Allow the glue to dry, and then you are ready to decorate.
The next step is where the real fun begins!
Have your children put glue on the craft sticks.
While the glue is still wet, have them sprinkle glitter onto the glue to decorate their snowflakes.
They can create designs with the glue and use different colors to come up with some very creative and beautiful snowflakes.
Once the snowflakes dry, your next task is to find places to display these pretty works of art!
More snowflake resources
More posts about snowflakes from Gift of Curiosity:
- Crystallized snowflakes
- Open ended snowflake craft
- Learning about snowflakes
- DIY snowflake scratch art | <urn:uuid:4687b8c0-b0f7-4ef7-8c29-8f02ce50ec0f> | CC-MAIN-2020-10 | https://www.giftofcuriosity.com/glitter-and-craft-stick-snowflakes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875145316.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20200220224059-20200221014059-00265.warc.gz | en | 0.914452 | 421 | 2.625 | 3 |
The Oxford dictionary defines a Power of Attorney as “the authority to behave for an additional particular person in specified authorized or monetary issues”. An attorney in actual fact is an individual who is permitted to carry out enterprise-associated transactions on behalf of someone else (the principal). An attorney in actual fact is not licensed to represent their principal in court docket, or file legal actions on their behalf.
^ G. Jeffrey MacDonald, “The self-made lawyer: Not each attorney goes to law college,” The Christian Science Monitor , three June 2003, thirteen. In nations the place holders of the first regulation diploma traditionally use the title of doctor (e.g. Peru, Brazil, Macau, Portugal, Argentina), J.D. holders who’re attorneys will usually use the title of doctor as effectively.
Environmental attorneys deal with points and laws which can be related to the surroundings. The vast majority of legislation firms worldwide are small companies that vary in measurement from 1 to 10 attorneys. Corporate counsels, also called in-home counsels, are attorneys who work for companies.
Labor and Employment Legislation Associate The candidate must have 2-5 years of legal expertise. ^ Fiona Boyle, Deveral Capps, Philip Plowden, Clare Sandford, A Sensible Guide to Lawyering Skills, 3rd ed. (London: Cavendish Publishing, 2005), forty seven-50.
Some attorneys who work at regulation firms, corresponding to felony legislation attorneys or defense attorneys, represent and defend the accused. ^ Robert J. Bonner, Lawyers and Litigants in Historical Athens: The Genesis of the Authorized Career (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1927), 202. | <urn:uuid:4696a124-9980-4286-9783-e522ff1dd50e> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | http://www.michaelsteeleformaryland.com/lasting-power-of-attorney-uk-legislation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371833063.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20200409091317-20200409121817-00055.warc.gz | en | 0.912547 | 347 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Hydraulic Structure in Ancient India
- In the first century B.C. Sringaverapura near Allahabad had sophisticated water harvesting system channeling the flood water of the river Ganga.
- During the time of Chandragupta Mauriya, dams lakes and irrigation systems were extensively built.
- Evidences of sophisticated irrigation works have also been found in Kalinga, Nagarjuna Konda, Bennur, Kohlapur etc.
- In 11th century, Bhopal lake, one of the larest artificial lakes of its time was built.
- In 14th century, the tank of Hauz Khas, Delhi, was constructed by Iltutmish for supplying water of Siri Fort area.
- A dam is a barrier across flowing water that obstructs, directs or retards the flow, often creating a reservoir, lake or impoundment.
- Classification of dams according to structure, intended purpose or height.
- Based on structure or material used, dams are classified as timber dams, embankment dams or masonry dams, with several sub-types.
- According to the height dams can be categories as large dams and major dams or alternatively as low dams, medium height dams and high dams.
Rain Water Harvesting
- In hill and mountainous regions, people built diversion channels like the ‘guls’ or ‘kuls’ of the western Himalayas for agriculture.
- Rooftop rain water harvesting was commonly practiced to store drinking water, in Rajasthan.
- In the flood plains of Bengal, people developed inundation channels to irrigate their fields.
- In arid and semi arid regions, agricultural fields were converted into rain fed storage structures that allowed the water to stand and moisten the soil like the ‘khadins’ in Jaisalmer and ‘Johads’ in other parts of Rajasthan.
- Tankas – underground tanks ro tankas for storing drinking water.
- In Bikaner, phalodi and Barmer.
- The tanks could be as large as a big room.
- Roof top rainwater harvesting as drinking water
- The first spell of rain was usually not collected as this would clean the roofs and the pipes.
- Rain water called as Palar Pani.
- Many houses constructed underground rooms adjoining the ‘tankas’ to beat the summer heat as it would keep the room cool.
– Some houses still maintain the tanks since they do not like the taste of tap water.
– In Gendathur, a remote backward village in Mysore, Karnataka, villagers have installed, in their house hold’s roof top, rainwater harvesting system to meet their water needs.
1. Describe the Hydraulic structures made in ancient India?
2. What is dam? On which bases down are categorized?
3. What are the methods of rain water harvesting?
4. In which parts of India ‘Guls’ or ‘Kuls’ are found?
5. What are the methods of rain water harvesting in Rajasthan?
6. What is Tank? Where and why these are constructed?
7. Why first spell of rain was not collected?%MCEPASTEBIN%
8. Why underground rooms were constructed along with Tankas? | <urn:uuid:65a55220-6816-4d46-97a7-076a7769cfc6> | CC-MAIN-2017-47 | https://schools.aglasem.com/1800 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934808254.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20171124142303-20171124162303-00354.warc.gz | en | 0.950335 | 704 | 3.828125 | 4 |
Physicists at Australian National University have taken a bold step toward “Star Trek” tech with their latest invention — a water-based tractor beam that could eventually be used to clean up oil spills and control floating objects.
“We have figured out a way of creating waves that can force a floating object to move against the direction of the wave,” project leader Dr. Horst Punzmann from the Research School of Physics and Engineering said in a phys.org report.
“No one could have guessed this result.”
Using wave generators, a wave tank and a ping pong ball, the team was able to figure out the size and rate of waves necessary to shift the ball’s movement in any given direction — including against the movement of the waves themselves.
“We found that above a certain height, these complex three-dimensional waves generate flow patterns on the surface of the water,” Professor Michael Shats said. “The tractor beam is just one of the patterns, they can be inward flows, outward flows or vortices.”
The team reportedly used “advanced particle tracking tools” to discover the surface currents generated by the waves, but no current mathematical theory is able to fully explain the successful experiments, according to Punzmann.
“It’s one of the great unresolved problems, yet anyone in the bathtub can reproduce it,” Punzmann said. “We were very surprised no one had described it before.”
The team’s findings could significantly impact in the way oil spills are cleaned up, for example, and eventually lead to technologies capable of manipulating the movement of objects on water. | <urn:uuid:a7480498-f228-485f-a474-bf8ce10b5cd3> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/11/scientists-create-water-based-tractor-beam-that-can-control-floating-objects/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320841.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20170626170406-20170626190406-00603.warc.gz | en | 0.946261 | 353 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Owners may protect horses from many health related issues by maintaining a pasture that is mostly mud free and planted in nutritious grasses. Flies and mosquitoes thrive in wet muddy environments along with bacteria and fungi. Due to the slippery nature of mud, horses often lose footing and become injured. There are measures an owner may adopt to maintain a pasture that is both healthy and nourishing for horses.
By reducing suitable habitats for flies and mosquitos, owners may prevent a host of health issues for the horse. Horses often injure hooves stomping to shoo flies and mosquitos away. Flies may infect horses with dermatophilosis, equine infectious anemia, Potomac horse fever and a number of other diseases and infections. Mosquitos are known to cause equine encephalitis and the dreaded West Nile Virus.
Do not allow grazing below three to four inches. Installing cross fencing measures will assist owners to control grazing. Divert rainwater away from pasture lands to ponds, stock watering tanks, dry wells and etc… When it rains place horses in heavily grassy paddocks, as horses will trample down shorter thin grass. The trampled area will then become muddy. Maintain several paddocks and rotate horses.
Consider utilizing wood shavings or crushed limestone in high traffic areas leading from the pasture to the barn. In extremely wet locations, it may be necessary to place a layer of filter fabric under the wood shavings or crushed limestone. The filter fabric may be purchased at most co-ops.
Planting nutritional grasses provides grazing for horses and assists with mud control. Experts recommend planting two acres of grass for each horse. An ideal pasture should be reseeded and fertilized consistently. Clover may be planted to choke out weeds instead of utilizing dangerous herbicides. Look for grass seed that guarantees high rates of germination.
Cocksfoot, Kentucky bluegrass, orchardgrass, reed canarygrass or timothy are hardy cool weather grasses. Alfalfa, clover and vetch are nutritious cool season legumes that should be provided in a horse’s diet. Crabgrass and pearl millet are warm season grasses that thrive even during droughts. Sheep’s parsley is rich in Vitamin C and iron. Rye grass should be planted in pastures with horse’s that are overweight due to its’ low carbohydrates and high nutritional value. A combination of controlling mud issues and planting healthy grasses will provide a healthy environment for horses.
Disclaimer: Of Horse! and sponsors do not endorse nor validate the accuracy of a blog post. Each article is the opinion of the blogger. | <urn:uuid:7a593ccb-bc2f-4cde-a4fb-3f7416a9dd23> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | https://www.ofhorse.com/view-post/Maintain-a-Health-Pasture-Environment | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187822668.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20171018013719-20171018033719-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.917208 | 541 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Fat Gram Calculator
Design a program that asks for the number of fat grams and calories in a food item. Validate the input as follows:
- Make sure the number of fat grams and calories are not less than 0.
- According to nutritional formulas, the number of calories cannot exceed fat grams X 9. Make sure that the number of calories entered is not greater than fat grams x 9.
Once correct data has been entered, the program should calculate and display the percentage of calories that come from fat. Use the following formula:
Percentage of calories from fat = (fat grams x 9) / calories
Some nutritionists classify a food as "low fat" if less than 30 percent of its calories come from fat. If the results of this forumlas are less than 0.3, the program should display a message indicating the food is low in fat.
This is my java program called GramCalories.java, attached is my output
public static void main(String args)
Scanner s=new Scanner(System.in);
The solution gives a complete java code on running a fat gram calcuator. The pseudocode is already given. | <urn:uuid:6cafdce8-7aec-47de-beff-a96df7012122> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | https://brainmass.com/computer-science/java/544600 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549423839.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20170722002507-20170722022507-00147.warc.gz | en | 0.849746 | 241 | 3.59375 | 4 |
In small kittens, owners often notice a cluster in the eyes of a small amount of pus. Its appearance can be caused by various factors - both natural and pathological.
In order that an animal does not subsequently have complications with eyesight, it is necessary to pay special attention to suppurating eyes, having understood the symptoms and the ways of their treatment.
Causes of pus
If the discharge from the kitten's eyes does not contain pus,And the kitten itself does not show any anxiety, you just need to clean your eyes with a cotton swab and warm boiled water. If the discharge does not stop and begin to acquire an unhealthy shade, the kitten can be suspected of allergies, keratitis, conjunctivitis, or other disease. Dense secretions of greenish or yellow color appear with infectious, fungal or bacterial pathogens. The eyelids of the kitten stick together.
When suspicious discharges appear, you need to contact a veterinary clinic and conduct a series of tests to pinpoint the cause of the illness.
Watery, transparent excretions usually appearAt an allergic reaction to household chemistry, dust, plant pollen and so on. Pus in the eyes can also appear as a result of their mechanical damage - corneal trauma, inaccurate care or getting into the eye of grains of sand. On the injured surface, pathogenic bacteria easily enter, after which problems with the eyes are provided.
How to get rid of pus
If the kitten has reddened his eyes and from them beganAn unhealthy liquid is released, it needs first aid. To do this, prepare an antibacterial broth of chamomile, furacilin (0.02%) or boric acid (2 teaspoons for 0.5 glasses of warm water) and twist the cotton tow from tight. This tourniquet should be dipped into the solution and gently squeezed it onto the eyeball of the animal. Repeat the procedure until the eyes and eyelids are completely cleansed.
If the eyelids of the kitten are stuck together, you can not break them by force - you need to gently squash the crust with warm water and gently remove with a cotton swab.
After washing the festering eyes with antibacterialSolution under the eyelids, you can lay a 1% tetracycline ointment, which before use should be slightly heated, so that it is evenly distributed around the eyeball. Also, eyes should be instilled with special medications - the pipette should be kept above the eye, at a distance of 1-2 centimeters from it.
If the inflammatory process is not stoppedIt is necessary to show the kitten to a qualified veterinarian who will determine the cause and localization of suppuration, correctly select a complex of medicinal drops, ointments and antibiotics, as well as give recommendations for caring for the diseased animal. | <urn:uuid:c43f3b13-8d1c-49c6-85b7-914b64fdcaf7> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | http://learn-myself.com/why-kitten-eyes-festers-18960/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187824899.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20171021205648-20171021225648-00690.warc.gz | en | 0.931749 | 584 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Abdoulaye Mar Dieye is Assistant Administrator and Director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa.
Follow him on Twitter: @MarDieye
29 Oct 2013
Regional integration is crucial for Africa’s development.
There is no shortage of models and projections to support this assertion. For instance, an investment of US $32 billion in Africa’s road network could increase intra-African trade by $250 billion over a period of 15 years.
Yet the question remains: What can integration do for people? That theme is crucial as African countries figure out how to transition from economic growth to genuine poverty reduction and human development.
First, regional economic integration would contribute to the creation of quality jobs, particularly for young women and men. African countries need to work together to achieve that goal, devising public policies that can create skills, facilitate labor mobility and access to finance.
Second, basic social services and social protection: Countries can use integration as an opportunity to strengthen health, nutrition, education and vocational training, all of which contribute to making the workforce more productive.
Third, integration can actually empower people, through the opportunity to migrate and take up jobs across borders. As countries vie to attract and retain new labor force, they have an interest in promoting stability and preventing conflict, protecting people’s rights, health and physical safety and involving them in decision-making.
Fourth, natural resources are vital for continued economic growth and diversification and are the base upon which communities can sustain themselves. African nations could establish better regional mechanisms to manage cross-border environmental resources is essential to securing sustainable development.
African-wide integration, supported by cross-border economic policies, would have real and significant human development gains for all of the sub-regions of Africa. But it has particular implications for poor and landlocked countries, where access to trade routes and markets is limited.
Because human development is about expanding life choices for women, men and children, then regional integration must trigger cross-border collaboration that can maximize welfare for all Africans.
The biggest challenge that we are now facing is how to accelerate that agenda. Among the major hurdles are harmonizing standards and regulations, boosting human resource capacities and mobilizing leadership and political will to promote collective action.
Talk to us: Can you share examples of successful regional integration in your country? | <urn:uuid:1606294e-2268-4783-b2da-614686177632> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourperspective/ourperspectivearticles/2013/10/29/the-human-face-of-regional-integration-in-africa-abdoulaye-mar-dieye/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1410657113000.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20140914011153-00344-ip-10-196-40-205.us-west-1.compute.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942284 | 480 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Apollo 11 Fact Sheet
Written and Edited by Cliff Lethbridge
Apollo 11 (NASA Code: AS-506/CSM-107/LM-5)
Launch Date: July 16, 1969
Launch Time: 9:32:00 a.m. EDT
Launch Site: Launch Complex 39, Launch Pad 39A
Launch Vehicle: Apollo-Saturn V AS-506
Command Service Module: CSM-107
Command Module Nickname: Columbia
Lunar Module: LM-5
Lunar Module Nickname: Eagle
Neil A. Armstrong, Commander
Michael Collins, Command Module Pilot
Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr., Lunar Module Pilot
Back-up Crew: Lovell (CDR), Anders (CMP), Haise (LMP)
Mission Duration: 8 Days, 3 Hours, 18 Minutes, 35 Seconds
Number of Lunar Orbits: 30
Recovery Date: July 24, 1969
Recovery: U.S.S. Hornet (Pacific Ocean)
Climaxing with the first manned landing on the Moon, Apollo 11 will likely remain the most famous and widely publicized space flight of all time.
All mission elements went according to plan, and only one of an anticipated four trajectory correction firings from the CSM engine was needed to keep the Apollo 11 spacecraft pointed toward its historic rendezvous with the Moon.
At about 55 hours into the flight, the Apollo 11 crew participated in a live television broadcast which lasted 96 minutes. The broadcast, carried on commercial television, whet the appetite of a huge audience anxiously awaiting the lunar landing which was by now just two days away.
Four days into the flight, the Command Service Module (CSM) engine fired twice to place the Apollo 11 spacecraft in a low-lunar orbit. Armstrong and Aldrin transferred to the Lunar Module (LM), which undocked from the CSM and dropped toward the lunar surface after a set of visual inspections and checks.
The descent took a nailbiting 12.5 minutes and was not without high drama which heightened the tension surrounding a mission already supercharged with excitement.
At a distance of about 6,000 feet from the Moon, an alarm light came on in the LM. Mission controllers said a computer overload had occurred which would not hinder the landing.
At about 3,000 feet above the lunar surface, a second alarm light came on, followed by four more in the next four minutes. All alarms were waived by mission managers.
However, the astronauts aboard Eagle were distracted and failed to notice until 2,000 feet from touchdown that the LM automatic landing system had selected a landing site that was too rocky.
At just 300 feet above the lunar surface, Armstrong took manual control of the LM and piloted the spacecraft at about 55 m.p.h. to select a suitable landing site.
A warning that less than 5% of descent fuel remained was indicated, giving Armstrong 94 seconds to land the spacecraft prior to an abort and return to the CSM. As the LM approached a suitable landing site, lunar dust was kicked up, reducing Armstrong's visibility to a few feet.
At 33 feet above the lunar surface, the LM lurched dangerously, but Armstrong continued to gingerly guide the spacecraft toward a touchdown which was becoming increasingly hazardous.
Nevertheless, Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility at 4:17:43 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969. Just 20 seconds of descent fuel remained for the landing, which occurred about four miles from the original target.
The LM astronauts donned spacesuits and were prepared to step out onto the Moon about 6.5 hours after lunar touchdown.
Armstrong placed a television camera onto the LM ladder, then set foot on the Moon at 10:55:15 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969. The event was viewed live on television by an estimated 500 million people.
Armstrong almost immediately scooped up some lunar soil and placed it in a Teflon bag attached to his spacesuit.
Aldrin followed about one hour thereafter. The two men set up an American flag and deployed a number of scientific experiments including a seismometer, laser reflector and solar wind detector. The experiments were deployed in what was called the Early Apollo Scientific Experiment Package (EASEP).
The astronauts also gathered about 50 pounds of lunar rock and soil samples, and had a chance to speak live with President Richard M. Nixon. The total time of the first human lunar excursion was 2 hours, 32 minutes. Just one lunar excursion was allotted to this mission.
The LM lifted off after a lunar stay of 21 hours, 36 minutes and re-docked with the CSM for a return to Earth. The return flight and splashdown were flawless.
For the first time, U.S. astronauts were quarantined after their return to Earth. A mobile quarantine facility was used for the first time, as was the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the Apollo 11 crew remained isolated for about three weeks.
Back to the Apollo Program Index
Copyright © 2001 by Spaceline, Inc. | <urn:uuid:78fa0c40-cc3f-465d-b6a7-c545d1daa01c> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://www.spaceline.org/flightchron/apollo11.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386164013027/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204133333-00056-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954014 | 1,062 | 3.3125 | 3 |
“The major strength of Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies is its introduction of the British Family Bible as an object of scholarly study.”
Of the many literary phenomena that sprang up in eighteenth-century England and later became a staple of Victorian culture, one that has received little attention until now is the “Family Bible with Notes.” Published in serial parts to make it affordable, the Family Bible was designed to enhance the family’s status and sense of national and imperial identity.
Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies reveals in its study of the production and consumption of British commercial Family Bibles startling changes in “family values.” Advertised in the eighteenth century as providing the family with access to “universal knowledge,” these Bibles suddenly shifted in the early nineteenth century to Bibles with bracketed sections marked “to be omitted from family reading” and reserved for reading “in the closet” by the “Master of the family.” These disciplinary Bibles were paralleled by Family Bibles designed to appeal to the newly important female consumer. Illustrations featured saintly women and charming children, and “family registers” with vignettes of family life emphasized the prominent role of the “angel in the house.”
As Mary Wilson Carpenter documents in Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies, the elaborate notes and “elegant engravings” in these Bibles bring to light a wealth of detail about the English commonsense view of such taboo subjects as same-sex relations, masturbation, menstruation, and circumcision. Her reading of literary texts by Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the context of these commercial representations of the “Authorized Version” or King James translation of the Bible indicates that when the Victorians spoke about religion, they were also frequently speaking about sex.
A professor of English at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Mary Wilson Carpenter also teaches in the Women's Studies Institute. She is the author of George Eliot and the Landscape of Time: Narrative Form and Protestant Apocalyptic History and many articles on feminist criticism. More info →
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Tracing the Victorian crisis over the representation of working-class women to the 1842 Parliamentary bluebook on mines, with its controversial images of women at work, Hidden Hands argues that the female industrial worker became even more dangerous to represent than the prostitute or the male radical because she exposed crucial contradictions between the class and gender ideologies of the period and its economic realities.Drawing
In A Necessary Luxury Julie E. Fromer analyzes tea histories, advertisements, and nine Victorian novels, including Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Wuthering Heights, and Portrait of a Lady. Fromer demonstrates how tea functions as an arbiter of taste and middle-class respectability.
In 1837, when Queen Victoria came to the throne, no institution of higher education in Britain was open to women. By the end of the century, a quiet revolution had occurred: women had penetrated even the venerable walls of Oxford and Cambridge and could earn degrees at the many new universities founded during Victoria’s reign. During the same period, novelists increasingly put intellectually ambitious heroines students, teachers, and frustrated scholars—at the center of their books.
Religious Imaginaries explores liturgical practice as formative for how three Victorian women poets imagined the world and their place in it and, consequently, for how they developed their creative and critical religious poetics.
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We will only use your email address to notify you of new titles in the subject area(s) you follow. We will never share your information with third parties. | <urn:uuid:38adee12-7e4b-4c3e-9f4d-3344f29c7ea8> | CC-MAIN-2020-10 | https://ohioswallow.com/book/Imperial+Bibles%2C+Domestic+Bodies | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875146940.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20200228012313-20200228042313-00521.warc.gz | en | 0.948621 | 817 | 2.953125 | 3 |
In societies characterized by the lack of Qur'anic morality, it is considered quite normal that people's behavior will change according to circumstances. They will exhibit good behavior when they can meet all of their physical and spiritual needs easily and ensure their own comfort, but will change completely when faced with any problem that may endanger their comfort. They cannot meet even a temporary affliction with patience. This becomes very clear in the case of illness.
How people behave during times of illness, hunger, exhaustion, and similar events are clear indications as to whether they do—or do not—possess sound morality. Given this fact, difficult times are very valuable opportunities for people to prove their faith in, devotion to, and trust in our Lord. Allah states that among the conditions for true morality and true goodness is showing correct behavior by being patient in times of trouble and sickness (Surat al-Baqara, 177).
When faced with such a problem as illness, what enables the faithful to behave steadfastly and with patience is their deep attachment to and faith in Allah. Prophet Ibrahim (as) expressed this truth by saying "and when I am ill, He heals me" (Surat ash-Shu'ara', 80).
Like Prophet Ibrahim (as), believers also know that Allah creates both the illness and the cure, and so they are not seized with despair when they fall ill. On the contrary, they are grateful to our Lord for those years in which He allowed them to live in health. Understanding that a healthy life is only one of Allah's many gifts to them, they continue to behave gratefully even when they are ill.
They also continue to be extremely grateful and steadfast in cases of accident and injury. They hope that after they enter Paradise, Allah will re-create them in such a fine form that it cannot be compared with their worldly bodies. This is their hoped-for reward for their steadfast patience when confronted with various difficulties. For this reason they do not forget that whatever they have suffered here will entitle them to a great recompense in the afterlife.
Those who are precluded from having faith, due to their attachment to the world, cannot show patience in the face of such events and so sink into great hopelessness and grief. For example, those with crippled limbs say that they would rather die than live with such a body; some even try to commit suicide. Believing that this life is the only one that they have, they think that living with certain defects and deficiencies makes life meaningless. Even if they do not try to commit suicide, they develop a very unpleasant personality and try to create problems for those around them. Whether they accept their situation or not, there is no way that they can avert such an event. If they put their trust in Allah, however, they may hope that He will allow them to be reborn in Paradise with a brand new body that is flawless, imperishable, and cannot be damaged. But if they do not trust in Allah, their present life and their future life in the Hereafter will be destroyed, for their ignorance will cause them to rebel against Allah and be "rewarded" with Hell.
The behavior of those who live the Qur'an's morality is completely different. When they are injured, lose an organ, or experience a similar disaster, their behavior does not change. Knowing that they are being tested and that the end result will be positive, they remain patient and do their best to earn Allah's approval. Even if they can no longer make any physical effort to realize this goal, they try to develop ideas that can benefit people and remind them of the Hereafter.
Those who turn away from Allah when they become ill or when they are injured are not aware of their great error, for only Allah can heal them or rescue them from their illness. Doctors, medicines, and treatments can be provided only with Allah's permission. Understanding this, the faithful face their illness with patience and patiently ask Him for a cure. They also make the best possible use of doctors, medicines, and treatments, and always remember that these will be of benefit only if Allah wills it.
The Qur'an gives the example of Prophet Ayyub (as), who always sought refuge in Allah when faced with illness. Allah praises his morality, as follows: "We found him steadfast. What an excellent servant! He truly turned to his Lord" (Surah Sad, 44). His patience and devotion to Allah are described, as follows:
And Ayyub, when he called out to his Lord, [said]: "Great harm has afflicted me, and You are the Most Merciful of the merciful." We responded to him and removed from him the harm that was afflicting him, restored his family to him and the same again with them, as a mercy direct from Us and a Reminder to all worshippers. (Surat al-Anbiya', 83-84)
The superior morality shown by Prophet Ayyub (as) when he was faced with this situation can be understood from his sincere prayer to Allah. When he was in trouble and sick, he turned to Allah with steadfastness and patience, knowing that only He can achieve anything and without forgetting that he is subject to Allah's mercy and compassion.
As we can see in these and all other cases, Allah helps those who are patient. One verse expresses this assistance, as follows:
And be steadfast. Allah is with the steadfast. (Surat al-Anfal, 46)2010-03-15 18:30:34 | <urn:uuid:3937e833-6493-4412-abdb-3a32166d240d> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://harunyahya.com/en/works/21695/Patience-for-illness | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386163051476/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204131731-00038-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975379 | 1,131 | 2.71875 | 3 |
CBSE Mathematics Sample Paper for Class 9 CBSE exams for CBSE Students. Based on CBSE and CCE guidelines. The students should practice these Question Papers to gain perfection which will help him to get more marks in CBSE examination. Please refer to more CBSE Class 9 question papers in other links. The CBSE Question papers are prepared based on trend in past examinations and expected questions in CBSE exams. Its always recommended by CBSE to practice the papers released by CBSE to get better exams in CBSE exams. CBSE Last Year Question Papers for class 9 for final/ term/ SA1/ SA2 Examinations conducted by Central Board of Secondary Education for all CBSE affiliated schools in India and abroad. Please refer to more CBSE Class IX sample papers, question papers, HOTs etc in other links
Topper Sample Paper - 10
1. All questions are compulsory.
2. The question paper is divided into four sections
Section A: 8 questions (1 mark each)
Section B: 6 questions (2 marks each)
Section C: 10 questions (3 marks each)
Section D: 10 questions (4 marks each)
3. There is no overall choice. However, internal choice has been provided in 1 question of two marks, 3 questions of three marks and 2 questions of four marks each.
4. Use of calculators is not allowed.
Please refer to attached file for CBSE Class 9 Mathematics Sample Paper SA1 2014 (2) | <urn:uuid:c8a4b03b-959b-49a1-a6ea-546e7bbd4385> | CC-MAIN-2017-39 | http://www.studiestoday.com/sample-papers-mathematics-cbse-class-9-mathematics-sample-paper-sa1-2014-2-170290.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818691977.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20170925145232-20170925165232-00505.warc.gz | en | 0.937813 | 303 | 3.578125 | 4 |
The Nunavut Settlement Area (NSA) comprises the major part of the Territory of Nunavut. It encompasses an area spanning more than 1.9 million square kilometres, including the marine areas of the Arctic Archipelago and the 12-mile territorial sea adjacent to Nunavut. In addition, approximately 43 percent of Canada’s ocean coastline is found within the NSA - 104,000 out of a total of 243,000 kilometres.
Inuit are primarily a maritime people, and consider themselves to be an integral part of the ecosystems in which they live and carry out their traditional activities. Most wildlife species are actively harvested by Inuit, who depend on maintaining healthy wildlife populations to sustain local food security and culture. As there are no roads connecting Nunavut communities to one another or to southern Canada, communities in Nunavut are resupplied with fuel, food and other materials annually from barges and sealifts from southern Canada. Travel between communities often occurs by boat or kayak in summer months, or by snowmobile or dog team while the sea is frozen. The land, sea and ice of Nunavut form one continuous area of activity in which Nunavummiut (residents of Nunavut) enjoy, and will continue to seek, cultural, social and economic fulfillment.
Nunavut’s marine areas provide important habitat to numerous wildlife species, such as whales, walrus, fish, migratory birds, etc., many of which rely on these areas for important stages of their life cycles. While many of these marine wildlife species are important for Inuit harvesting, commercial fisheries exist in Nunavut for turbot, Greenland Halibut (Turbot), Arctic Char and Northern Shrimp. These fisheries play an increasingly important role in Nunavut’s economy.
Despite the real connection of Nunavummiut to the marine environment the territory’s significant coastline and importance to Canadian sovereignty, Nunavut has considerably less marine infrastructure than any other Canadian jurisdiction. Nunavut currently has no deep sea ports at any of its 26 communities and only one small craft harbour, in Pangnirtung. Public investments in port-related infrastructure are urgently needed to enable Nunavut to catch up with the rest of Canada and will be required to strengthen the foundation of its fishing industry, particularly the small-boat sector. | <urn:uuid:7162c2d7-47c0-4a41-aa79-5ddfb7f466c4> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | http://nunavutmarinecouncil.com/node/31 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585370500426.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20200331084941-20200331114941-00468.warc.gz | en | 0.938045 | 483 | 3.125 | 3 |
What is the significance of redox reaction in the production of ATP molecules in cellular respiration
ATP unstable molecules are the main source of energy for cells. ATP molecules are produced by the energy generated by catabolic reactions, and ATP energy is used in anabolic reactions.
ATP is produced as a result of oxidation reactions of carrier compounds, that are generated by catabolism of larger molecules. The carbohydrate glucose is catabolized to produce ATP in two ways: cellular respiration; fermentation.
Cellular respiration represents the most satisfactory way to generate ATP, since 1 glucose produces 36 ATP molecules. ATP is generated by oxidative phosphorylation, a series of redox reactions that involve the presence of oxygen.
The chemical reaction that transforms 1 glucose into 36 ATP molecules, in presence of oxygen, is described below:
`6O_2 + C_6H_12O_6-gt 6H_2O + 6CO_2` | <urn:uuid:d6b2edbb-1908-45dd-a8cf-3ada6e829410> | CC-MAIN-2017-47 | https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-significance-redox-reaction-production-atp-513326 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934806569.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20171122103526-20171122123526-00350.warc.gz | en | 0.897762 | 196 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Click for MSN Article on UK Marine Environment on its Knees
Britain’s marine environment – described by conservationists
as “our life support system” – is on its knees, in desperate need of some “tender loving care”,
according to a new report.
Conservation experts from around the UK have compiled a list of 15
marine areas urgently in need of protection, each considered vital for the preservation of at least one species of marine
animal or plant.
Marine Reserves – TLC for our seas and sea life, a report by
the Wildlife Trusts, says immediate action is needed to allow our seas to recover from centuries of overexploitation, for
everything from food to oil and building materials.
The report calls on the government to create legally protected marine
reserves, where fishing and other damaging activities such as dredging and construction are outlawed, in Britain’s seas
to safeguard some of the 44,000 species endemic to our waters – from tiny corals to giant basking sharks.
Time, the report says, is now running out for ministers to meet their
commitment to provide an adequate network of conservation areas by 2010 – and it warns that failing to do so could cause
irreversible damage to the UK’s biodiversity.
“In 2005, after years of lobbying by The Wildlife Trusts, the
UK government finally promised a Marine Bill to provide better protection for our seas and sea life. We’re still waiting
for it,” said a Wildlife Trusts spokesman. “We mustn’t let the Marine Bill drift away. It’s a once
in a lifetime opportunity to save our seas.”
Earlier this year, the government published a White Paper on its
plans to protect Britain’s marine life, but has yet to include it in a timetable for legislation. Conservationists are
now concerned the Marine Bill will fail to get a mention in the Queen’s speech, delaying legislative action for another
Stephanie Hilborne, chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts, said:
“We cannot delay the Marine Bill any longer. Our marine life is at stake. The Marine Bill must be included in the Queen’s
Speech and it must deliver marine reserves.”
Less than 0.001% of our seas are legally protected from commercial
exploitation, according to the Marine Reserves report, which was launched at the House of Commons on October 10. Sir David
Attenborough, prolific naturalist and vice-president of the Wildlife Trusts, said: “As an island nation, I find it astonishing
that we have protected less than a thousandth of one per cent of our seas from fishing and all damaging activities.”
A degree of protection from human activities has already been extended
to certain coastal areas in the form of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), of which there are currently more than 100 in British
waters, but many scientists and conservationists argue these are insufficient.
The proposed marine reserves would take restrictions significantly
further, placing legally enforced bans on all fishing, dredging and construction in a bid to enable underwater ecosystems
and wildlife to recover.
A similar exercise at Lundy Island off Cornwall’s north coast,
site of a no-take zone where all fishing is banned, has already proven such schemes can dramatically boost species numbers.
Marine Reserves, we will continue on our downward spiral,” said the report. “With them, we can start to rebuild
our living seas.”
A petition in support of the Marine Bill, signed by tens of thousands
of people, including more than 100 MPs, is due to be delivered to Downing Street by the Wildlife Trusts on October 17.
By Laura Snook, MSN UK News Editor
October 10, 2007
Green Iguanas taking over in Grand Cayman - 29 October 2007 | <urn:uuid:cf7a4369-59ba-4bb0-8a70-647a0d93799e> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | http://anthonyfraser.tripod.com/ourblog/id57.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886116921.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170822221214-20170823001214-00356.warc.gz | en | 0.933799 | 828 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Tortoises of the Galápagos
Photo by Steve Murray
This particular variety of Galápagos tortoise has a shell with a shape reminiscent of a saddle.
The Galápagos archipelago is a group of volcanic Pacific islands located on the equator, 972 km west of continental Ecuador. They are probably most famous for Darwin’s historic month-long visit on the Beagle in 1835. The strange creatures that Darwin reported on, such as the birds1 and marine iguanas,2 have fascinated readers since. But the iconic species is the native giant tortoise, from which the archipelago receives its name (see box). The largest living species of tortoise, the Galápagos tortoise can weigh over 250 kg (550 lb) and live for over a century.
Darwin and the tortoise
Charles Darwin studied the tortoises, and the islands’ vice-governor told him that one could tell from its characteristics alone which island a tortoise was from. Darwin initially dismissed this statement, and rightly so, since even modern evolutionists admit that it was something of an exaggeration. So he took the differences between the varieties of tortoises to be nothing more than the sort of variation which could arise from a species being transplanted to a different habitat.3 But he failed to take detailed notes of the variations among the tortoises (his notes mostly record their behaviour) or to take specimens for scientific study.4
The Galápagos tortoises were subject to overhunting by humans who kept them for food on ships. This decimated the population. The giant tortoises were seen to be an excellent source of fresh meat, as the tortoises could be kept for long periods of time with little food or water. The sailors on the Beagle took 30 on board for this purpose, discarding the shells and bones as they consumed them. (Woodmorappe suggests this as one more possible food source for carnivores on the Ark; fodder tortoises.5)
Darwin took two young tortoises as pets. And they, along with specimens Captain FitzRoy took for the British Museum, constituted Darwin’s only evidence when he realized the tortoises’ importance.6
Over 10 sub-species have been identified (four of which are extinct), because they have distinct physical characteristics. But they can all interbreed with one another, so they are classified as one species of tortoise, Geochelone nigra.7
Diagram showing in principle how several tortoise varieties can arise from one, simply by sorting already-existing genes via natural selection. For example, the smaller islands tend to be drier, so they don’t support much grass; the only vegetation is cactus and shrubs. So tortoises with saddlebacked shells that can browse will be able to eat, while domed tortoises starve. Thus the only tortoises to pass on their genes to the next generation are the saddlebacked ones.
The most distinctive difference among the sub-species is the variation in the shape of their shells.
These range from a large dome shape to a saddle shape. The dome-back tortoises live where there is plentiful vegetation to support their huge size, while the smaller saddle-back tortoises tend to live in places where vegetation is sparser.
When the tortoise withdraws into its shell, the bony plates combined with scales on the legs offer protection from any predators. The length of the tortoises’ neck and limbs also vary among the sub-species; the saddle-back tortoises have longer necks and legs than the dome-shelled tortoises.8
Proof of evolution?
Evolutionists cite the variations among the sub-species of Galápagos tortoise as an example of evolution. But this is the typical equivocation or the bait-and-switch game of propagandists.9 Evolution from goo to you via the zoo would require new genes encoding encyclopedic amounts of new information. But the tortoises’ adaptation to various island environments can be explained by the sorting out of already existing genes, with some of these then eliminated by natural selection.
For example, suppose a parent population of giant tortoises had a variety of genes for neck length. Then their island lost much of its grass, so the tortoises had to browse low-hanging leaves for food. Then those with genes for short necks would be more likely to starve before passing on their genes. But the creatures fortunate enough to carry genes for long necks could browse on higher leaves, and thus survive to pass those genes on. So the next generation would have longer necks on average. This is definitely natural selection in action, but not evolution. The possibility for these variations was already coded in the DNA of the tortoises’ ancestors, which allowed the tortoises to adapt to varying levels of vegetation and other environmental factors.
Darwin vs a faulty creation model
Darwin was right about the role of natural selection in producing varieties of the tortoises. But he claimed that it disproved creation. Unfortunately, much of the church of his day had abandoned belief in biblical creation, the global Flood, and the subsequent dispersion of animals after the Ark landed. So the main rival view to any transmutationist10 notion was “centres of creation” with “fixity of species”: a creator had created different species in practically the exact form and location that we see now. His demonstration that some species on islands are clearly related to similar species on the mainland was a blow only to such non-biblical views on creation. To those who believed the Bible’s history, including all creatures having to repopulate the earth from one location, it would have been a completely consistent finding. Thus the church’s compromise view gave him an easy “straw man” to knock down.11
Tortoises vs “deep time”
In CMI’s stunning Darwin documentary, The Voyage That Shook the World, we see an evolutionary expert refer to the astonishing types of hybridization, or crosses, that have taken place on the islands, even between two seemingly very different types of animal. The film raises this as an argument for a young age for the islands—thousands of years. The reasoning is, as CMI geneticist Dr Rob Carter points out in Voyage, that the Galápagos species “made the jump from the mainland in the first place, and it’s 600 miles away, but the major islands are some 30, 40-odd miles apart … . so over deep time, over millions of years, you would expect species to jump again and again and again and again, and you get all sorts of hybridization, and you get a blurring of the species lines.” Why then, the film asks, do we see “a tortoise on one island so different from those on another?” The obvious answer speaks strongly against evolution’s “millions of years”.
Biblical creation explains it properly
Since this process generally selects only from genes already available, creationists would expect there to be a limit to this variation. Such a process would not produce a neck as long as a brachiosaur’s, for example. Another possibility is a mutation that inhibited a gene that controls growth factors for the neck. Without this control, the necks overgrow somewhat. On the grassless island, this information-losing mutation would be beneficial. But with plenty of grass, such a mutation would not be so beneficial since it would waste resources growing a neck longer than required.12 Further, creationists are not surprised when such changes happen much more quickly than evolutionists would predict.13 Not only is this consistent with the above explanation, but it is a prediction of the biblical Creation/Fall/Flood/Dispersion model.
Which came first—the tortoise or the saddle?
Photo by Steve Murray
It is commonly stated that the Galápagos islands derive their name from the Spanish galápago, meaning a type of riding saddle, due to the saddle-shaped shells of some tortoise varieties there. It is, however, more likely to have been the other way around. Although modern Spanish tends to use the word tortuga for turtle/tortoise, a primary meaning of the word galápago is tortoise (in addition to being a type of saddle). More tellingly, the archipelago appears in maps drawn in the 1500s, shown as Insulae de los Galopegos. This is not likely to have been intended as “islands of the saddles”, but rather “islands of the tortoises”. Hence the horned riding saddle so reminiscent of the shell shape of some Galápagos tortoises was likely named after these creatures—not the other way around.
References and notes
- Cosner, L. and Sarfati, J., The birds of the Galápagos, Creation 31(3): 28–31, 2009. Return to text.
- Hennigan, T., Darwin’s “imps of darkness”: the marine iguanas of the Galápagos, Creation 31(2):28–30, 2009. Return to text.
- Sulloway, F., Darwin and the Galápagos, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 21(1–2):29–59, 1984; p. 35. Return to text.
- Darwin, C., Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, Henry Colburn, London, 1839; darwin-online.org.uk. Return to text.
- Woodmorappe, J., Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, California, 1996; p. 99ff. Return to text.
- Sulloway, Ref. 3, p. 36. Return to text.
- Minard, A., Extinct Galápagos tortoise could be resurrected, National Geographic News, 23 September 2008. Return to text.
- Galápagos Conservation Trust, Galápagos giant tortoise, gct.org/tortoise.html, accessed 17 August 2009. Return to text.
- Walker, T., Don’t fall for the bait and switch: Sloppy language leads to sloppy thinking, Creation 29(4):38–39, 2007; creation.com/baitandswitch. Return to text.
- Transmutation expresses the idea of one type of creature turning into a totally different type in some way. Darwin’s evolution was a transmutationist notion, as were the evolutionary ideas of some of his predecessors, such as Lamarck and his own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. Return to text.
- See Sarfati, J., Refuting Evolution, ch. 2, Creation Book Publishers, Australia, 1998–2008; and CMI’s documentary The Voyage that Shook the World, Fathom Media, 2009. Return to text.
- Such a mutation in a control gene explains over-muscled cattle and “superbabies”—see Sarfati, J., The superbaby mutation: Evolution of a new master race? Creation 27(1):13, 2004; creation.com/superbaby. Return to text.
- See Catchpoole D. and Wieland, C., Speedy species surprise, Creation 23(2):13–15, 2001; creation.com/speedy. Return to text.
Thanks so much for this article! My teacher believes in Creation but says that there is a lot of evidence for evolution so she believes in that too … sort of like progressive Creationism. She pointed out the Galápagos tortoises as ‘evidence’ and I didn’t know what to say. And then I found this article! Thanks so much and may God continue to give you guys wisdom and favor! Glory to God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth!
Hey! I just wanted to thank you for this article. It’s so relieving to find a website that acknowledges God as the Creator. | <urn:uuid:ba7bf95f-ea27-472d-a20a-0182b5d6eccf> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://creation.com/galapagos-tortoises | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1410657131545.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20140914011211-00016-ip-10-196-40-205.us-west-1.compute.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935618 | 2,571 | 3.984375 | 4 |
WHY no Y? Modern humans diverged from Neanderthals some 600,000 years ago – and it seems the sex-determining Y chromosome passed from fathers to sons might be what kept the two species apart.
Fernando Mendez at Stanford University and his colleagues compared the Neanderthal Y chromosome with that of chimps and different modern humans.
They also found mutations in four genes that might have prevented the passage of Y chromosome down the paternal line to hybrid children.
For example, a mutation in KDM5D, a gene that plays a role in cancer suppression, has previously been linked to increased risk of miscarriages as it can prompt an immune response in pregnant mothers (The American Journal of Human Genetics, doi.org/bd43).
“Some of these mutations could have played a role in the loss of Neanderthal Y chromosomes in human populations,” says Mendez.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Why sex with Neanderthals was bad” | <urn:uuid:f93212ca-c702-4310-9ef0-f2c528d17a79> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23030692-500-missing-y-chromosome-kept-us-apart-from-neanderthals/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320386.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20170625013851-20170625033851-00230.warc.gz | en | 0.939928 | 206 | 3.765625 | 4 |
SQL does not support direct operations on matrices, but it does allow easy manipulations with matrices. Learn a few SQL techniques for performing some basic operations on matrices.
When can you use arithmetic operators in date/time calculations in SQL Server? When are the date/time functions provided by Microsoft the better option? Follow a few scenarios that demonstrate when arithmetic operators are safe and when they are risky.
Learn how to build date generators without loops using SQL, and some useful techniques to help you manipulate date and time data.
When you're faced with a number of possible solutions to a problem, determining the optimal one is a critical task. Follow a practical example for optimization tasks using stored procedures and graphs.
Data compression is a great method for maximizing data storage space and making data communication faster. However, compression and decompression of binary data sometimes can be quite tricky. Learn a few useful data-compression techniques.
Programming is not only remembering classes or utilities. Developing logical programming skills is just as important. See how you can hone your SQL skills by solving an abstract numbers problem.
You can build very powerful and flexible text-formatting solutions in SQL Server. Learn how to apply techniques that handle the simplest to the more complex text-formatting tasks.
Processing text or long strings usually reduces SQL to a prosaic procedural language. Learn a few techniques for facilitating speedy text processing in SQL.
Traditionally, database performance has been represented by the speed of data retrieval, but that is not always the case. In some situations, database performance relies on the speed of data inserts.
Learn X-to-Y and Y-to-X axis transformation techniques for showing a table's row vertically or its column horizontallyno special operators or loops needed. | <urn:uuid:03630e25-7198-4674-a71e-e7ddb0df2a95> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.devx.com/author/Alex-Kozak-92460.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1405997885796.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20140722025805-00177-ip-10-33-131-23.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.890807 | 361 | 2.65625 | 3 |
If you want to become wealthy, you need to manage money like wealthy people do. As Robert Kiyosaki explains in his book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, people who are poor or middle class have money come into their pockets through work and then right out again for expenses. Rich people use some of their money to acquire assets – things that make money for them. These assets keep paying them their whole lives, allowing them to increase their income little-by-little. This is having your cake and eating it too. When you have a cash flow plan where the income from assets is used to buy more assets, you really have the recipe for building wealthy.
In Chapter 6 of The SmallIvy Book of Investing, Book 1, I go through the process of creating a cash flow plan. A cash flow plan shows how money comes into your life and where it goes once it gets there. This starts with a budget, where income is allocated to expenses, but then goes beyond this to allocating money to investments, both what I call “required investments,” which are things like investing for retirement and for college, and other investments in just standard, taxable accounts that allow you to supplement your monthly income. A good cash flow plan will have both of these elements. The required investing will ensure you have the money you need for retirement, college tuition, and another expenses that will occur. The other investments will allow you to add to your income and eventually get to the point where you don’t need to work to support yourself.
The gory details of preparing a cash flow plan are presented in the book, but the basic elements are shown in the figure below. In fact, if you wanted you could print off the figure below and use it as a template in preparing your own cash flow plan.
Your cash flow starts with your income, shown in Box a) above. This flows into your bank account or your pocket and becomes your “cash on hand” in Box b). For most people, this money then flows into:
c) Obligated Expenses, like rent, car insurance, and student loans,
d) Necessary Expenses, like food, utilities, and clothing, and
e) Optional Expenses, like cell phones, vacations, and cable TV
and then the cash flow diagram stops. Every dollar that comes in goes out to expenses, and optional expenses are added until that equilibrium is reached. One issue with that sort of cash flow diagram is that no money is saved and invested, meaning that even though you earn a lot of money, you never gain any wealth. You are as poor as you started when the month ends despite all of your hard work. The bigger issue is that you have no savings to take care of things that don’t occur every month but are very expensive, like car repairs and medical bills. When these things happen, you end up taking out another loan or putting the bill on a credit card and adding to your obligated expenses.
A final issue with this sort of cash flow plan – the typical cash flow plan for a middle-class family – is that no money is put into Box f) Required Investments. This means that when college or retirement rolls around, there is no money to pay for these things. How sad is it that families that go through millions of dollars in their working lifetimes plead poverty when it comes to paying for college or a nursing home! It is even sadder that publications like Money magazine provide advice on how middle class and even wealthy families can qualify for college financial aid and free nursing homes by how they use their money. Can’t anyone just pay for things anymore? But I digress….
In the very least, every family should be putting money into Box f) Required Investments. You should be putting 15% of your paycheck away in a 401K or other retirement account so that you’ll be able to retire with dignity. You should also be saving for your children’s college through an educational IRA or a 529 Plan, putting money away for medical co-pays and deductibles, and saving money for car repairs, home repairs, and vacations. Note on the cash flow plan, however, that there is no arrow coming back from Box f) to Box b) Cash on Hand, meaning that those investments do not contribute to your income, at least not until you retire.
If you want to increase your income and become financially independent of your job while you’re still young, you need to increase your free cash flow, shown in the upper right corner. This is your income minus your f) Required Investments, c) Obligated Expanses, and d) Necessary Expenses. This will allow you to direct income into Box g) Saving and Investing, where your optional investments reside. In this box are investments in things like mutual funds and individual stocks outside of retirement accounts. These assets create investment income, which flows into Box a) Income. You can spend some of this additional income, but if you keep your cash flowing from Box a) to Box b) to Box g)and back to Box a) again, you can buy more assets and increase your income. This increases the size of Box a) and thereby increases your free cash flow.
It starts slowly at first and takes time, but just as feedback through a microphone produces a deafening screech as sound is circulated through the microphone, to the speakers, and back through the microphone again, set up a circular path in your family’s cash flow and you’ll have a massive free cash flow that will overwhelm the amount of money you’re bringing in through work by the time you reach the middle of your career. If you want to be wealthy, manage your cash flow like a wealthy person does.
Your investing questions are wanted. Please send to [email protected] or leave in a comment.
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Disclaimer: This blog is not meant to give financial planning or tax advice. It gives general information on investment strategy, picking stocks, and generally managing money to build wealth. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell stocks or any security. Financial planning advice should be sought from a certified financial planner, which the author is not. Tax advice should be sought from a CPA. All investments involve risk and the reader as urged to consider risks carefully and seek the advice of experts if needed before investing. | <urn:uuid:c3c7b244-c790-4663-a10b-3768b99c1775> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | https://smallivy.com/2016/07/01/dont-just-budget-develop-a-cash-flow-plan/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886106358.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20170820073631-20170820093631-00477.warc.gz | en | 0.961783 | 1,335 | 2.625 | 3 |
Hydro Power Plant
The Thargomindah Artesian Hydro Power Plant is believed to be the oldest, working unit in Australia, and possibly the world!
Thargomindah was the first town in Australia, and third in the world, to produce hydro-electric power for street lighting by using the water pressure from the Artesian Basin. In 1891 drilling commenced on a bore to supply the town with water, and in 1893 a good supply was struck at a depth of 2650ft (808mtrs) with the water coming from the bore at a temperature of 84°C (182°F). The old bore was the source of energy for Australia's first hydro-electric scheme when in 1898 Thargomindah's street lights were powered by means of generators coupled to a water turbine driven by the bore's natural water pressure. This method was in operation until 1951, when diesel generators were installed. The town was connected to the Grid system in 1988.
There is a Hydro Power Plant and Old Hospital tour which commences at the Old Hospital at 8.30am every day from April to October. Bookings are essential, so please phone the Visitor Information Centre on 4621 8095 to book your spot. The cost is $5-00/person.
Also at this site, you can see close up a windmill and a decommissioned oil "donkey", similar to those that may be seen from the road as you head west through the oilfields.
The Great Artesian Basin
The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) is one of the most important water resources in Australia. It underlies an area of 1.7 million square kilometres, approximately 22 percent of the continent. It is the only source of reliable water for human activity and water-dependent ecosystems in much of the arid and semi-arid landscape overlaying the Basin in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and the Northern Territory. The deposits occurred in three major depressions; the Carpentaria, Eromanga and Surat basins, which together form the Great Artesian Basin. Across the basin, the average depth of bores is 500m, but some bores have been drilled to 2,000m depth.
Formed between 100 and 250 million years ago, the Basin comprises alternating layers of water-bearing (permeable) sandstone aquifers and non-water-bearing (impermeable) siltstones and mudstones. The impermeable rocks confine the aquifers, causing the groundwater to become pressurized. In most areas, the water is under sufficient pressure to provide a flowing source once it rises to the surface through artesian bores and natural springs.
(Reference: Department of Environment and Resource Management, Queensland Government) | <urn:uuid:7639b929-36b0-4b8e-b21e-ee1076241bc8> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://www.visitbulloo.com.au/attractions/thargomindah/hydro-power-plant | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579250594333.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20200119064802-20200119092802-00215.warc.gz | en | 0.950378 | 573 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Two of every three US consumers surveyed report eating less of at least one type of meat, according to new research.
“Many Americans continue to have strong preferences for meat,” says Roni Neff, an assistant professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University. “But this survey adds to a growing body of evidence that a significant portion of the population may be purposefully reducing their meat consumption without becoming vegetarian or vegan.”
Meat consumption in the United States exceeds recommended levels, with significant consequences for public health and the environment, the researchers say. To better understand meat consumption, they surveyed 1,112 US adults 18 and older. The study, conducted in 2015, is thought to be the first to collect responses from US consumers about the foods they choose to eat instead of meat during meatless meals.
The study appears in the journal Public Health Nutrition.
The researchers hope their work leads to campaigns to help consumers reduce meat consumption “in a way that is good for their health, their grocery budgets, and the environment,” Neff says.
The researchers defined meat reduction as eating less red meat, processed meat, poultry, or seafood over the past three years. Participants between 45 and 59 were twice as likely to reduce consumption of one or more types of meat as those 18 to 29. Women were more likely than men to report eating less meat.
The most common reasons for cutting meat consumption were cost and health concerns.
Respondents with incomes lower than $25,000 were more likely to report cutting overall meat consumption than those with household incomes greater than $75,000. Researchers also found that parents of children under 18 were less likely to reduce overall meat consumption than non-parents.
The most common reasons for cutting meat consumption were cost and health concerns. Fewer respondents—12 percent each—say they had reduced meat consumption out of concern for animal welfare or the environment.
Key reasons people cited for not reducing meat consumption included the perception that meat is necessary for a healthy diet or that meals are incomplete or boring without meat.
Fifty-five percent of respondents reported cutting processed meat in their diets, and 41 percent reported reducing red meat. Of those who reported eating less red and processed meat, 37 percent say they ate more poultry or seafood. The most commonly reported approach to reducing meat consumption was buying less meat (64 percent), followed by smaller portion sizes (56 percent), meatless meals (42 percent), meatless days (32 percent), and avoiding meat altogether (9 percent).
The most frequently reported foods eaten in meatless meals were vegetables, followed by cheese and other dairy products, and eggs. Beans, nuts, tofu, and imitation meats were less frequently eaten during meatless meals.
“Our survey results suggest that public health messages on the benefits of reducing red and processed meat consumption may be reaching and resonating with many US consumers, but more work remains to be done,” Neff says.
The GRACE Communications Foundation funded the research.
Source: Johns Hopkins University | <urn:uuid:10002e96-c2b0-409f-97b6-f4a3a4238e7b> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://www.futurity.org/meat-eating-survey-1863682/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296949689.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20230331210803-20230401000803-00239.warc.gz | en | 0.979839 | 619 | 3.375 | 3 |
Data Engineering: How To Learn Data Engineering? A data engineer uses software to analyze and extract useful insights from big data. They are the go-to person for cleaning, transforming, and analyzing large amounts of information.
The field of data engineering is rapidly growing, and there is an endless number of opportunities to enter the field. To succeed, you need to focus on the fundamentals because it’s unlikely that you’ll become a specialist in any particular area.
The field of data engineering is booming right now. While it is not a new concept, it is currently experiencing a renaissance due to increased access to data and the availability of tools and techniques that make it easier to analyze it.
For example, machine learning and artificial intelligence have made data mining much easier. This means that data engineers can start working on projects requiring them to work with large amounts of data that may include many terabytes.
There are different types of data engineers, each with their specific responsibilities. These can include working with SQL databases to query and extract data, designing and developing software to manipulate data, and developing algorithms to make sense of it.
There is a lot of hype around the data engineering field. However, very little information is available to help people who want to learn the area quickly.
Data engineering is a rapidly growing field. In fact, the job market for data engineers is expected to grow by 70% by 2024.
Data engineering is one of those skills that is a critical part of a data scientist’s arsenal. So, if you want a head start on data science, here are a few tips on learning data engineering fast.
The field of data engineering has grown exponentially over the past few years. This means that there’s a huge demand for skilled data engineers.
To prepare for a career in data engineering, you need to learn what it is and what it isn’t. Here are five essential steps you can take to get started.
Data Engineering is a hot new field, and the demand for skilled data engineers is growing daily. But it’s not easy to figure out where to start. That’s why we’ve put together this handy guide to help you understand data engineering and how to create a career in this exciting field.
What is data engineering?
Data engineering is manipulating data into useful information that humans can use.
The main focus is to store data in a machine-readable format. A human-readable format is called structured data, while unstructured data is data that is not in a structured layout.
Data is used to power almost every application on our mobile devices and computers. Data is also needed to keep our businesses running.
Data is the raw material we use to make decisions in our lives. Data engineers are the people who work with structured data and unstructured data.
Data engineers are also referred to as data scientists. There are different types of data engineering jobs.
The most basic data engineering job is data cleaning. This is done by analyzing the data to identify and fix errors. Data cleaning is usually a manual process.
Data engineering is a fast-growing career field. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the number of data engineering jobs will grow by 24 percent over the next decade.
Data engineers often have a bachelor’s degree in a related field such as computer science or statistics. They may also have an MBA.
How to learn data engineering?
Data engineering is a growing field within IT that deals with storing, analyzing, and retrieving data. It is an important part of the data management process and is responsible for processing information.
Data engineering is a subset of software engineering that focuses on designing, implementing, and maintaining systems that handle large amounts of data.
The field of data engineering focuses on how to manage, analyze, and store large amounts of data. In addition, data engineers also must be familiar with the programming languages, databases, and tools used to manage and analyze the data.
The data engineer must understand the intricacies of data storage and management and be capable of writing code in various programming languages.
Data engineering includes database design, data analytics, and data warehousing. It is a multidisciplinary field that combines software engineering, mathematics, statistics, and economics.
Today, data engineering is a growing IT field and is becoming increasingly important.
Data Engineering in R
Data engineering is the process of analyzing large sets of data to uncover useful information and make predictions based on that information.
The goal is to make sense of all that data by finding patterns, trends, and insights that can improve decision-making.
Data engineers are often in charge of tasks like building predictive models, creating predictive analytics, and managing big data systems.
Data engineering is collecting, cleaning, organizing, and analyzing data. This process is commonly used to extract information from large amounts of data. In other words, data engineering is about managing big data.
This is a very broad definition, but it’s important to understand before you jump into a new career.
Many different jobs fall under the umbrella of data engineering, and some of them may seem a bit out of your comfort zone.
For example, you could be asked to build a machine learning model, a type of artificial intelligence. Or you might be asked to create a SQL database.
These are just a few examples of what data engineering can entail.
Machine Learning Algorithms
Machine learning is artificial intelligence (AI) that allows computers to learn without being explicitly programmed. As technology advances, more and more businesses are adopting machine learning to solve problems and automate tasks.
In short, machine learning uses software to improve its performance and create more accurate results.
Machine learning algorithms are essentially a series of instructions that computers follow to make decisions.
In the future, machine learning will play a huge role in how we interact with technology and how companies make decisions. I predict it will be used to analyze customer behavior, develop new products, and optimize existing ones.
Machine learning will also become more prevalent in the financial sector, where it will be used to predict whether you will default on your credit card debt or your stock portfolio will go up or down.
The future is bright for machine learning but can be a little daunting. Luckily, there are many online courses that can help you get up to speed on the basics of this important topic.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q: How do you learn Data Engineering?
A: It’s a vast field, and many different skills are involved. It would help if you learned how to program. There are many other programming languages and tools that you can use to solve a problem. I recommend looking into the Python language because it’s easy to learn and understand. It also has a large community of programmers, which can be helpful in terms of learning.
Q: What are the best resources to learn Data Engineering?
A: The best resource to learn Data Engineering is YouTube. There are many online tutorials, and you can find some online classes. You should look into the Udacity courses and Coursera courses.
Q: How would you describe data engineering?
A: Data engineering is software programming with data.
Q: Can you explain what it means to be a data engineer?
A: A data engineer does data processing and machine learning. They use a lot of programming languages like Python, R, and SQL. They also write code in Java or C++ for specific tasks.
Q: Why is data engineering important to big companies like Google?
A: As the world becomes more data-driven, the amount of data is growing exponentially. Google is a company that works with a lot of data, and it makes sense that they have a lot of data engineers. They need to analyze all this data and find patterns to improve their product. They also use data engineering to predict new things, like how people will behave in the future based on past behavior.
Myths About Data Engineering
Data engineers are not data scientists or machine learning engineers.
Data engineers should learn to program.
It would be best if you understood SQL, databases, and programming before taking up Data Engineering.
It would help if you learned Data Engineering from a data science institute.
It would help if you were an expert in data science to learn Data Engineering.
Data engineering requires a certain degree and certificate.
You will become an expert in SQL programming after learning data engineering.
This post is about Data Engineering, but it’s also about something bigger: Data Science.
Data engineering is a very broad term. It means taking the raw data and turning it into useful information for making decisions.
The world of data science is growing rapidly, and the demand for skilled professionals has been high. But many data scientists can’t find jobs or don’t make enough money to live comfortably.
I wrote this guide to give you a leg up on the competition. By the end of the article, you should be able to answer most questions on the exam.
This is the fourth installment in my series on how to learn data engineering. The other parts can be found here:
How to Learn Big Data
How to Learn Data Analytics
How to Learn Machine Learning
This article aims to teach you how to learn data engineering by building an MVP. If you’re new to data engineering, this can be a challenging path.
However, I promise it will pay off if you’re willing to do the work and keep learning. | <urn:uuid:8e48aab0-f140-4cc0-8259-06b7d5c24134> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://studynoun.com/data-engineering/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296950247.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20230401191131-20230401221131-00374.warc.gz | en | 0.949685 | 1,956 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Accident investigations are a critical part of the accident and injury prevention process. If an accident occurs, even if the individuals involved are unharmed, it is important to record the events of the accident. The goal of an accident investigation is not to assign blame, but to satisfy legal requirements, identify opportunities for improvement, and preserve evidence and witness.
Near Misses vs. Accidents
Distinguishing between a near miss and an accident is beneficial when conducting an investigation and filling out an incident report. A near miss is a situation that could have resulted in an injury under slightly different circumstances. Near misses should be viewed as an opportunity to identify room for improvement, and should be investigated with the same level of scrutiny as an acutal accident.
Accidents, unlike near misses, actually result in personal injury or property damage. Accidents can often be attributed to a variety of causes, and the ability to identify each element of an accident will help in both conducting a thorough investigation, and preventing it from recurring. The follow questions can help in identifying all potential causes:
- Activity: What was the person doing when the accident occurred?
- Equipment: Was any equipment used during the accident, and, if so, was it used properly or did it malfunction in some way?
- Environment: Where did the accident occur? Was there poor lighting, inadequate maintenance, weather-related hazards, or any other environmental hazard?
- Personnel: Was the individual appropriately trained for the task they were doing? Were they physically able to perform the activity? What role did the person have in the accident?
- Management: Were rules, protocols, and procedures understood by everyone involved in the accident? Were these policies and procedures being enforced?
There are several parts of the accident investigation process. Creating a system of policy and procedures will help ensure all investigations are done on time and without mistakes. Some of the most important steps in investigating an accident are:
- Safety: Before an investigation can begin make sure the person involved in the incident is not injured, and, if they are, perform necessary first aid and contact emergency response personnel if necessary. Also, make sure the area where the accident occurred is secured and there is no danger of anyone else getting hurt.
- Quick Response: Perform investigations as soon as possible so accurate facts and witnesses can be obtained.
- Witnesses: After an accident, it is recommended to obtain all relevant contact information from anyone present during the accident and to record their accounts of what happened.
- Photos: Record the scene with photographs. Ideally photographs will have date and time printed on them. This will allow statements made by witnesses to be better corroborated and to identify the cause of injury.
- Accident Report Forms: Fill accident report forms out immediately. Ensure all information is factual and not merely speculation.
- Evidence: Any evidence pertaining to the accident should be collected and safeguarded. This is important to make sure whatever caused the incident will not do it again.
Source: West Bend | <urn:uuid:053d5dbb-c067-49ef-af4f-07c0fbd7200c> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | http://insuranceformembers.com/2015/03/workers-comp-accident-investigation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187828356.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20171024090757-20171024110757-00275.warc.gz | en | 0.952881 | 610 | 2.796875 | 3 |
by Dorothy V. M. Bishop, Johanna G. Barry, Mervyn J. Hardiman
Nonword repetition, the ability to retain and repeat unfamiliar sequences of phonemes is usually impaired in children with specific language impairment (SLI), but it is unclear whether this explains slow language learning. Traditional nonword repetition tests involve a single presentation of nonwords for immediate repetition. Here we considered whether rate of learning of novel phonological sequences was impaired when the same items were presented repeatedly. Methodology/Principal Findings
Three complex nonwords were each presented for repetition five times in two sessions (A and B) separated by one hour. We studied both adults and children from (i) families with a child with SLI and (ii) families whose children did not have SLI. This gave a 2×2 design with familial SLI as one factor, and age (up to or above 18 years) as the other. Overall, participants from families with SLI were poorer at nonword repetition than their peers from typical-language families, and there was a trend for children with SLI to show less within-session learning than typically developing children. However, between-session retention, measured as the difference between the last trial from session 1 and the first trial of session 2, showed a significant age effect, ?2?=?.139, p?=?.004, regardless of family SLI status. Adult participants showed a decrease in score from the last trial of session A to the first trial of session B, whereas children maintained their level of performance, regardless of whether or not they had SLI. Conclusions/Significance
Poor nonword repetition in SLI appears to reflect inadequate encoding of phonological information, rather than problems retaining encoded information. Furthermore, the nonword learning task is consistent with the notion of a sensitive period in language learning: Children show better retention over a delay for new phonological sequences than adults, regardless of overall level of language ability. | <urn:uuid:19ec275e-fbdf-4825-89fb-50e1f1d1fc97> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.biospace.com/PLos_Article.aspx?id=14814 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510273663.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011753-00055-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958512 | 396 | 2.8125 | 3 |
WordNet, an electronic lexical database, is considered to be the most important resource available to researchers in computational linguistics, text analysis, and many related areas. Its design is inspired by current psycholinguistic and computational theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexicalized concept. Different relations link the synonym sets. The purpose of this volume is twofold. First, it discusses the design of WordNet and the theoretical motivations behind it. Second, it provides a survey of representative applications, including word sense identification, information retrieval, selectional preferences of verbs, and lexical chains. | <urn:uuid:0aaec5f4-c61c-4f8d-963d-a5fdf35bae5d> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=1218 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1410657102753.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20140914011142-00152-ip-10-196-40-205.us-west-1.compute.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932465 | 142 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Charter Schools: What Does the Science Say?
New data provide important insights on charter school student outcomes.
Posted Jun 29, 2020
There are few topics that generate more controversy among education stakeholders—and among politicians, policymakers, and researchers—than charter schools. Broadly, charter schools are publicly funded but administered and run by independent groups outside the normal state and local education authorities. Nationally, this includes a pantheon of nonprofit and for-profit “independent groups,” and even some corporations, such as Kipp and Success Academy, that run charter schools in multiple states. The issue of whether public education funds should be paid to private nonprofit and profit entities has long been—and continues to be—a hotly debated ideological issue.
Without getting drawn into this core and perhaps intractable disagreement, from a scientific perspective, it is perhaps even more important to ask the essential question of whether charter schools perform better, worse, or no different than regular public schools. Although this may seem to be a straightforward question, it is actually very difficult to address in a fair and unbiased manner.
A foundational principle in scientific discovery is the systematic experimental control of various factors in order to test causality. For example, pharmaceutical companies are required to provide scientific studies with random assignment to treatment groups in order for the Federal Drug Administration to approve a new medication. In an experimental design, the new drug is given to patients who qualify using a lottery system, so that confounding factors, such as age, socioeconomic status, disease severity and so on, are "controlled" within the context of random assignment to ultimately determine whether the new drug is better than an older medication—or no drug at all. But there are many situations wherein controlled experimental studies are not possible.
As an example, consider epidemiological studies of smoking. In a tightly controlled experimental study, people could be prospectively assigned to smoking and non-smoking conditions. Of course, this would be highly unethical. Therefore, smoking must be scientifically examined within the context of studying—and comparing—people who choose to smoke to those who do not.
But this approach is “confounded” by the fact that there may be inherent underlying differences in people who decide to smoke. Please permit me to be crystal clear in saying that nonexperimental studies are not in any way “unscientific!” Rather, there are situations where experimental control via random assignment is not possible.
In these cases, questions such as the health consequences of smoking can still be studied scientifically, but it is much more difficult to control for confounding factors. Nonetheless, with regards to lung cancer and coronary disease, it is scientifically warranted to note that smoking dramatically increases the risk of these and other adverse health outcomes. Thus, scientific approaches can address questions—and generate credible answers—even when traditional experimental methods cannot be implemented.
And this is certainly the case with charter schools. A strictly experimental approach would include random assignment of a representative sample of students to charter schools or to regular schools with appropriate testing over time in order to generate reasonable comparisons for the outcomes of these two educational “treatment conditions.” But there are many factors that can impact who does—and who does not—attend charter schools so that conducting fair, unbiased comparisons can be problematic.
Consider as an example the student outcomes of highly selective private universities as compared to lower cost and less restrictive community colleges. If outcomes end up favoring the private institutions, one could credibly argue that this may, in large part, be attributable to the fact that these universities preselect and admit primarily high achieving students as compared to community colleges and that high tuition makes private college attendance biased towards wealthier families.
A similar argument has been made regarding charter school outcomes. Some suggest that these schools use selective admission to siphon talented students and scarce education dollars away from regular schools and thereby bias outcome measures. And there are many other factors that could account for better outcomes in charter schools if those indeed are the results. But can factors such as selection bias be controlled in order to get a "real" answer to the question of charter school outcomes relative to regular schools? More broadly, can "nonexperimental" scientific approaches be applied to this question?
For example, one possibility could be to compare outcomes using a “natural experiment” from charter schools that are in the same building alongside comparable regular schools, include students from the same district with similar demographic characteristics, with similar (or less) costs per student and to directly compare performance between identical grades.
A new book by Dr. Thomas Sowell at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University (Charter Schools and Their Enemies, Basic Books) provides multiple databased perspectives on charter school performance. In Charter Schools and Their Enemies, Professor Sowell describes outcomes from precisely these kind of “natural” experiments. The results are both compelling and credible.
As one representative example selected from many in the book, the 2017-2018 results from “Uncommon Schools Charter Schools” in Brooklyn, New York, are illuminating. These charter school students are housed in the same buildings at the same grade levels as the regular school students. Further, Dr. Sowell reported that “more than 90 percent of the students in both kinds of schools were either black or Hispanic,” and that a majority in both groups were classified as economically disadvantaged.
The outcome is a bit stunning. In the Uncommon Schools Charter Schools condition, a majority of students received “proficient” or above scores in English for 15 of the 22 grade levels and “proficient” or above in 13 of the 18 grades in Mathematics. The results for traditional school condition—students in the same buildings and from similar demographic backgrounds—indicated that none of the 25 grades scored proficient in English, and in none of the grades did the majority of students score proficient or higher in Math. Dr. Sowell faithfully reported that in one school building, the regular education students did outperform the Uncommon Schools Charter Schools students in fifth grade for both Math and English. But, with that one exception, the charter school students clearly performer far better than those in regular classrooms, even when key confounds were taken into consideration.
The results from Uncommon Schools Charter Schools are not a lone exception or a cherry-picked “outlier.” Indeed, the book Charter Schools and Their Enemies provides many examples of similar results—some less dramatic—but all compelling nonetheless. Taken together, these data systematically indicate that students in charter schools have better outcomes as compared to highly similar students in regular schools. This appears to be true even when multiple confounding factors are taken into account to the greatest extent possible, short of conducting controlled experiments wherein attendance at a regular or charter school is mandated by random assignment.
The policy debates over how Charter schools are funded and administered will no doubt rage on unabated, and there are strongly held ideological arguments on both sides. But regardless of one’s philosophical stance for—or against—charter schools, these analyses and debates should be informed by and predicated upon the copious and credible data presented in Charter Schools and Their Enemies.
Laudan L. Science and hypothesis: Historical essays on scientific methodology. Taylor & Francis; 1981.
T. Sowell (2020). Charter schools and their enemies. Basic Books. pp. 33-41. | <urn:uuid:abb6c976-c47d-4e72-9d6a-640cb349ecb8> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-intuitive-parent/202006/charter-schools-what-does-the-science-say | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655886706.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20200704201650-20200704231650-00562.warc.gz | en | 0.950167 | 1,492 | 3.140625 | 3 |
How to Manage Pests:
Pest Management and Identification
Western predatory mite
Scientific name: Galendromus occidentalis (Galendromus=Metaseiulus=Typhlodromus)
DESCRIPTION Life cycle
Like other mites, western predatory mites do not have antennae, segmented bodies, or wings. They pass through an egg stage, a six-legged larval stage and 2 eight-legged immature nymphal stages before becoming adults.
Western predatory mites are about the size of twospotted spider mites, but lack spots, range in color from cream to amber red (depending on what they just recently consumed), and are shinier and more pear-shaped than their prey. The shiny, oval eggs of the western predatory mite are larger than spider mite eggs. In addition, predatory mites are more active than pest mites, only stopping to feed. Under magnification the mouthparts of predatory mites can be seen extending in front of their body while pest mite mouthparts extend downward to feed on plants.
The preferred foods of western predatory mites are mites of all stages, including eggs, but they also feed on pollen and other food. The western predatory mite is commercially available and is commonly released against Tetranychus spp. spider mites such as the Pacific spider mite and the twospotted spider mite. Effective control of spider mite pests has been documented in various many crops and ornamentals. The western predatory mite tolerates hot climates as long as the relative humidity is above about 50 percent. | <urn:uuid:decd02f0-5feb-42ca-9a73-969f0f45a028> | CC-MAIN-2014-10 | http://ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/NE/western_predatory_mite.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1394021365169/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305120925-00002-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916239 | 332 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) attacked in Minas Gerais
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Seven unknown men armed with guns invaded the Terra Prometida camp, in Felisburgo city, Minas Gerais, Brazil, and killed five members of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement movement (MST). The Terra Prometida camp had been invaded by the MST in May 2002 and there were about 200 MST families living there at the time of the attack.
According to the Brazilian newspaper Agência Folha, police said 13 of the members of the MST movement were injured and five died. Four of them are still hospitalized. Two of them, Joaquim Batista da Silva and his son (a 12-year-old child), are in the Felisburgo Municipal Hospital. The other two, Valdemar Barbosa Lima and José Maroto Lima, are in the Santa Rosária Hospital in Teófilo Otoni city.
According to MST camp leaders the gunfighters set fire to MST tents and started shooting.
The police are investigating the case. The Workers Party (PT) has demanded the gunfighters' arrest and punishment.
The MST is an ideologically diverse movement of agricultural workers in Brazil officially founded in 1984. MST is for the equitable redistribution of Brazilian farmland. According to MST, in 2003 there were about 632 MST camps in Brazil. MST is a large organization with many bases throughout Brazilian cities. Their most visible tactic has been the occupation of mostly privately-held plantations and landholdings, sometimes armed with carving knifes and scythes.
Currently, MST receives help from the Brazilian government and donations from international organizations. The movement also receives funds by selling videos of their invasions.
Overall, a recent report on labor standards in Brazil has shown that conditions for laborers are poor .
- Keite Camacho,Cinco sem-terras foram assassinados em MG; quatro estão internados, ABr, November 21, 2004.
- Invasão em acampamento do MST mata 5 e fere 13 em MG,Agência Folha November 20, 2004.
- Mylena Fiori, PT exige punição dos assassinos de sem terra, ABr, November 21, 2004.
- Workers Party.
- the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement English-language page
- MST Official webpage (in Portuguese).
- MST International webpage.
- Alexandre Mansur & Gerson Camarotti, MST – Os filhos querem revolução, Época magazine, July 7, 2003. | <urn:uuid:9a31374b-f9f5-43a0-ba53-3ee1f1c25226> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brazilian_Landless_Workers_Movement_(MST)_attacked_in_Minas_Gerais | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698090094/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095450-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940147 | 566 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Also Known By: Groninger, Groningse paard
The Groningen originated in the Netherlands during the late 1800's from Oldenburg horses bred to the local draft breeds. The breed almost was lost in the 1970's as most of the animals were absorbed into the Dutch Warmblood breed. At that time only a single purebred stallion remained. Oldenburg blood has been used to reduce the inbreeding during the reestablishment of the breed.
Hendricks, Bonnie L., International Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds, Univ of Oklahoma Press, 1995.
Mason, I.L. 1996. A World Dictionary of Livestock Breeds, Types and Varieties. Fourth Edition. C.A.B International. 273 pp. | <urn:uuid:51f2f039-d6f0-40e6-aa92-516f9114c1dd> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://breeds.okstate.edu/horses/groningen-horses.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511021.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20231002200740-20231002230740-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.910347 | 157 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Ramanan Laxminarayan: The Global Reach of Resistance
October 22, 2013, 9:29 pm ET
Laxminarayan is vice president for research and policy at the Public Health Foundation of India, which works with the government to create a national policy on antibiotic resistance. He’s also executive director of the Center for Disease Dynamics and Economic Policy, which works around the world on the issue. This is the edited transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE conducted on July 26, 2013.
So you’ve identified this problem of drug resistance. What is it? How does it work? Why should we care?
We haven’t had antibiotics, these miracles drugs, for very long. We’ve only had antibiotics in use in modern medicine since probably the early 1940s.
They make a lot of things possible. Because of these drugs, we don’t die of infection diseases. We’re able to have transplants. We’re able to have surgeries, which require the human body to be kept open for long periods of time without the risk of infection. So these drugs are really the basis on which modern medicine rests.
Over time, as we’ve used more of these antibiotics, they have managed to kill off the bacteria that tend to be susceptible to the antibiotics and can be killed off by them. And the bacteria that remain are resistant. And over time, the entire population of bacteria in the environment, in our bodies, are composed of these resistant bacteria that just don’t respond to the antibiotics.
Now we’re in a situation where many of the drugs that used to work for us before no longer work, which means that patients have to be in hospitals for longer. They’re more likely to die, and in poor countries like India and Sub-Saharan Africa, many people cannot afford these second-line drugs to begin with.
vSo have we sort of done this to ourselves? Is this a problem of mismanagement of antibiotics?
To be fair, we’ve used antibiotics both appropriately and inappropriately over time. Appropriately used, they can cure disease, and they have saved millions of lives. Used inappropriately, they don’t benefit people, but they do create drug resistance.
Certainly there have been many instances where we have used them inappropriately, both in human medicine as well as in agriculture, where particularly in the United States and previously in Europe large of quantities of antibiotics were used as growth promoters, essentially to make farm animals grow faster and bring them to market faster. There are many ways in which we have abused antibiotics, and certainly we’re paying the price.
So what you’re saying is that the bugs are fighting back? …
Interestingly, we tend to categorize this as a battle between us and the bugs. It’s not so much a battle as just Darwinian selection.
So the bugs are sitting there. They’re multiplying. By the time we’ve had this conversation, the bugs have had children and grandchildren, so to speak. As they reproduce, the ones that are capable of reproducing are the ones that have not been killed off by antibiotics.
As we consistently select in favor of the ones that are resistant, we’re really stacking the odds against ourselves and in favor of these resistant bacteria. This is almost like running on a treadmill, but to stay in the same place, we have to run faster and faster.
There’s been a lot of talk about the new dangers of these Gram-negative bacteria and resistance. Can you explain that to me? Why is that different than what we experienced before? What’s happening?
So there are two broad categories of bacteria: the Gram positives, which the Gram stands for a Gram stain, so if they’re stained by this Gram stain — with a capital “G” — then they call it Gram positives; if they’re not stained, then they are Gram negatives.
The Gram negatives tend to be more difficult to treat in general, and also there are fewer drugs available to treat these Gram-negative bacteria. It’s also the case that Gram-negative bacteria are much more common in poorer countries and tropical countries, and there is a temperature gradient where Gram-positive bacteria are more common in the United States and in Europe.
There has been a large amount of antibiotic use against the Gram-negative bacteria, and over time, the number of drugs that we have in the pipeline, in the arsenal, to treat Gram-negative bacteria has been shrinking quite rapidly.
The last few years, we’ve seen resistance to a class of drugs called carbapenems. Ten years ago, carbapenems would be used only as a last resort. Today, carbapenems don’t work in treating [resistant] Gram-negative bacteria. There are very, very few options left for clinicians to deal with patients who have [resistant] Gram-negative bacterial infections.
And from what I understand, these Gram-negative infections can be pretty severe, right? These infections have high mortality rates.
Absolutely. So Gram-negative infections can be fatal if untreated — not always, but with a reasonably high rate of mortality. And again, in the context of poorer countries, when patients can’t even afford first-line drugs, they certainly cannot afford more expensive drugs, then they are much more at risk for dying.
In the U.S., we tend to pay for resistance through higher health care costs. In poor countries, we pay for resistance through more deaths. …
Can you recall and describe a little bit what happened when NDM [New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase] appeared on the screen in India?
[In 2008], a patient who had traveled from New Delhi to Sweden was hospitalized for a Gram-negative bacterial infection.
The medical researchers then isolated the bacteria that was causing the infection. It was a Gram-negative bacteria, and it happened to have this new genetic variantal strain called NDM-1. They labeled it NDM-1, or New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1, after the presumed city of origin, which was New Delhi. That was standard practice. That is what had previously been done.
Now, this raised a huge outcry in New Delhi and certainly within India, where it was seen as a Western attack on medical tourism in India. … The response to this was largely around the name NDM and not so much to the idea that here was a new bacterial strain that could harm patients in India, which really was the main concern for many people in the medical community.
But because of the outcry, this was on talk shows; this was on mainstream media; this was in all the newspapers. It was absolutely impossible to have a sensible conversation about the problem of drug resistance, which was a legitimate problem in India. Subsequently, this has led to some positive developments in terms of a government policy on antibiotics and so forth, but that was not the way it started.
It sounds like it hit like a bombshell.
It absolutely was a bombshell. It was unexpected, and the strength of public and media response to this was unexpected.
From the way you described it, it also sounds like it is quite likely that this NDM supergene, this bug, was quite widespread by the time it was detected.
It’s hard to tell how widespread NDM was at the time it was detected. I’d be very surprised if that patient who had NDM was actually the first one to have had it. Certainly he or she could have gotten it from anywhere else, from a patient from a different country, a different city in India, but it was a scientific practice to name it after the city where it was first observed.
What was unusual and different about this?
… What was unusual about NDM was, first and foremost, that it was extremely fit, which means that it could be transmitted quite effectively without dying out. Second, it conferred resistance to nearly all the important antibiotics we had against Gram negatives, which is of concern because we didn’t have any other antibiotics. And third, there was a study which showed that bacteria could pass the NDM gene between each other, even out in the environment, and not necessarily only in a patient’s body. …
Can you tell me how it works?
If you can think of this as if you go to the library and you check out a book that tells you how to do something, maybe to do some woodwork. Now, let’s suppose that you can return that book to the library, and some other person can check that book out and learn the same thing without ever having met you. That’s really what NDM is.
It’s basically information on how to be resistant to a wide range of antibiotics that are used to treat Gram-negative bacteria. They ride on a cassette called a plasmid, and the beauty of this, from a scientific perspective, is that completely unrelated bacteria can share plasmids and therefore gain knowledge on how to be resistant in the same way that any of us can check out a book from the public library and without ever having written that book, we can have access to that information.
That’s what makes it extremely dangerous, that it’s public information to bacteria on how to evade our best antibiotics.
Are you telling me that the bacteria are actually sharing information about how to avoid antibiotics? Is that what’s happening?
That’s amazing, but that’s really what’s going on. They are freely sharing information on how to deal with the antibiotics that we’re throwing at them.
And what’s the consequence of that? Does that mean that bacteria that normally we could kill with antibiotics are now becoming resistant just because they got the book?
What is going on is that bacteria, even if those have not been directly treated with the antibiotic, are still able to borrow genetic information on resistance from other bacteria.
They’re sharing the genetic information.
They are actually sharing the genetic information. …
Why is that environmental factor important?
The environmental factor of transmission of resistance genes is important, first from a scientific standpoint, that we didn’t realize that this could be done quite so easily; but second, it also meant that in places where water and sanitation was poor, where there was going to be lots of bacteria sitting next to each other, that you could have very rapid spread of resistance information across unrelated bacteria, just out there in the environment, which is a hugely greater risk than if it were only to happen within the bodies of patients who had these infections. …
So you’re saying that the bacteria were swapping this information just out there on the street without being in a person.
That’s correct. So they could transfer resistance genes even when they were in the same puddle of water, and they didn’t have to be in the same person. …
So why should we care? Is there something dangerous about this swapping going on in the environment?
The swapping going on in the environment is, first of all, unusual from a scientific standpoint, but also because there are far more bacteria in the environment, so the potential for a different specie of bacteria to gain information on resistance is much greater in the environment because there are so many different kinds of bacteria around.
Within the human body, there’s probably a more limited number, and therefore the potential for transfer of resistance genes is therefore less.
So we create a kind of a big pool of them out there that’s still a threat to human health?
You have to remember that although we’re human beings, we all live or share the same community with bacteria. We have probably 10 times the number of bacterial cells in our body than human cells, and therefore we’re sort of this continuum of bacteria that continues from you to me, out into the community and overall. This is really like an ecological problem where these bacteria collectively know how to evade antibiotics. That’s the nature of the problem. It’s an environmental problem.
It’s an environmental problem as compared to what?
It’s an environmental problem compared to your having heart disease or my having arthritis, where what happens to me doesn’t really affect outcomes for you. …
So how widespread is NDM?
Doctors are now observing NDM-1 all over the world. If you go to South Africa, doctors will tell you that they’re seeing a lot of NDM-1. There’s a lot of NDM-1 in Vietnam, and certainly many studies describing this in hospitals in India. So it’s getting to be quite common all around the world, which speaks to what a robust and fit pathogen this is. …
Let’s talk a little bit about India itself. What kind of factors might be driving resistance? What are the things that have happened in society, in past practice? Why is resistance growing so much in India?
There are probably three reasons why resistance is growing in places like India.
The first is, when antibiotics were introduced in the West — take the United States, for instance — the bulk of infectious disease mortality had already been reduced through chlorination of water, through establishment of public health departments and all sorts of other things which made sure that people were not dying of infectious diseases. And then we introduced penicillin, which was sort of the icing on the cake. It wasn’t the cake itself.
That’s not the case in countries like India and many other Southeast Asia countries, where a bulk of that infectious disease burden has not yet been reduced through water and sanitation and hygiene, and we’re really relying on antibiotics to do the heavy lifting there in dealing with infectious diseases. So there’s a lot more treatment of infections just because there’s a lot more infections there to begin with. That’s the first thing.
The second is that people in these parts of the world are getting much wealthier. Indians have [become] economically much more prosperous now than they were 10 years ago, and per capita, usage of many kinds of antibiotics of India have doubled, in some cases even tripled over just the last five years. That’s basically prosperity driving antibiotic use. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because many people in India previously never had access to antibiotics, and now they are gaining access, so this is a good thing. But the overuse is a bad thing.
The third issue in India is really the easy, over-the-counter availability of antibiotics without a prescription. Now, certainly that is true in other parts of the world as well, but because of the size and skill of India’s pharmaceutical sector, which makes a lot of these antibiotics, they truly are available much more freely and cheaply in India than they would be in other parts of the world, and this is a third important piece of the puzzle. …
How should we think about the danger in the United States?
Drug resistance has been in the United States for a very long time, so those who watch the media think, well, this is an evergreen issue. I keep seeing this every year. What’s the big deal here?
How do you answer that?
The big deal here is that resistance has been steadily increasing ever since antibiotics were introduced in 1942. The first strains were noticed just a few years after in patients. The first resistant strains of antibiotic ever were noticed in vitro, which means not in humans but really in petri dishes two years before antibiotics were ever introduced to the population.
So we’ve lived with resistance for a long time, but what we have not lived with for a long time in the U.S. is really this idea that you would see patients who could not be treated with any antibiotic that was available to the doctor, and therefore that patient would have to either recover on their own or die. That’s a problem, because we’re now seeing patients who are sicker, who are immunocompromised and therefore at much more risk of dying without the antibiotics, and the combination of that with the drug resistance means that a lot of people are actually dying of drug resistance.
People often called these wonder drugs and miracle drugs, and now we have very sophisticated kinds of medical procedures that require very difficult things, like transplants and stem cells and so on. Do you agree with those that think that this resistance is some kind of threat to modern medicine?
Antibiotics are really the bedrock of modern medicine. You could not do many procedures without the ability to keep the [patient] free of infection. All of the surgical procedures, you know — you can’t do seven heart surgeries if you didn’t have effective antibiotics.
We don’t really have a substitute for effective antibiotics for as far into the future as we can see. Nobody knows what the substitute is going to be for antibiotics. We have vaccines; they do reasonably well with viral infections. Very few vaccines for bacterial pathogens. …
We clearly need new antibiotics, and we also need to find ways to perhaps recover the potency of existing antibiotics, and that has been done in the past through combinations of drugs.
So when a drug stops working effectively, we’ve had to combine with a different antibiotic so that they might work synergistically, and that might be a good, effective antibiotic to have.
But we have a real crisis in terms of having very few new antibiotics in the pipeline. Many of the large drug makers have left this area, and the few that remain are truly struggling. …
Dr. [Margaret] Chan, the head of the WHO [World Health Organization], said we may be entering an era after antibiotics. [The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)] Dr. [Thomas] Frieden said “nightmare bacteria.” What does this mean for the average person?
Well, for the average person, they should talk to their grandparents or great-grandparents if they have them around, to ask what life was like before antibiotics. Before antibiotics, if you were sick, you had very few options. You probably had chicken soup, and you rested in bed and hoped to get better.
If you take the first patient who was ever treated with an antibiotic, this was a policeman in Oxford … who was working on his garden on his day off from work. He was scratched on the cheek from a rose thorn on the rosebush that he was tending to, and the rose thorn scratch became infected with Staphylococcus aureus, a staph we know quite well now. It got infected; it became an abscess; the face got swollen; the infection spread to other parts of his body.
So about three months later — this was in probably February of 1941 — he was on the verge of death, and he was administered some penicillin. He got better on day one, day two, day three, day four. He was getting much better. The doctors could see that he would live, and then they ran out of penicillin, and he died.
Are you suggesting that we could be going back to a time when a scratch could be deadly?
We are perhaps already in a world where a scratch could be deadly, if you happen to be someone who can’t afford very expensive antibiotics and happen to live in a developing country. So the post-antibiotic era is not in the future for many people. It’s already here.
And part of this is because of resistance.
All of this is because of resistance. If we had effective antibiotics to treat infections, generally the antibiotics work really quite well. Infections like pneumonia are very easily treated with antibiotics. But when you don’t have effective antibiotics, then it’s a whole different story. …
So in some ways, this is a problem of the age of globalization.
This is a problem of shared commons, so just like each of us could choose to drive a car, and that contributes to global warming but we don’t really see the connection, in the same way, we could choose to overuse antibiotics in our own lives, and that has global consequences.
It seems, though, that you’re suggesting it may be a global problem, but that the solutions are different in different places.
That’s absolutely right. The solutions are very different in different places.
What do you mean by that?
In China, the important reason why antibiotics are overused in hospitals is because much of hospital revenues are derived from the sales of antibiotics, other drugs and diagnostics, so it’s part of the business model. If you’re in a hospital, you sell antibiotics. For many hospitals, that’s a quarter of the hospital’s revenues.
In India, the challenge is over-the-counter sales of antibiotics, especially very powerful ones.
In Kenya, it’s a problem of increasing use of antibiotics in livestock and the fact that you know herders will just give antibiotics to the animals quite freely.
In the United States, again, it’s a problem of huge amount of antibiotics being used for growth promotion in animals and also of large numbers of antibiotics being used in medicine itself.
So in every country, both the drivers of resistance as well as the incentives for people to overuse antibiotics are really quite different. So we need to find some local solutions here. …
You’re saying this is a risk to human health, right? This is something that anybody could get. It’s not some specialized thing.
Fifteen years ago — there’s a bug that we’re now very familiar with, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — you could only get MRSA in a hospital. You would never get that riding the subway or in a gym locker or from someone else.
That has changed. About 15 years ago, it started transmitting within the community, and now the community epidemic of MRSA are at least as common, even if not as severe, as health care-associated MRSA. No one could have predicted that that would have happened, because MRSA was a health care-associated infection back then.
So it jumped out into the street, is what you’re saying.
It jumped out into the street, and you can now get MRSA easily just going to the gym locker, and you could get it from someone else.
You can be an absolutely healthy person and get MRSA. It’s an equal opportunity bug. You don’t have to be old and sick and dying in a hospital to get MRSA. You can be young. You could be an athlete, and you could be dead in 48 hours from an MRSA.
So when you have Gram-negative bacteria that also cannot be treated, there is no telling where these bugs can then move to. And if and when they move to being community infections, then we face some serious trouble then. …
… What should we do about this? What should governments be doing? What should industry be doing? What should medicine be doing?
There’s a lot that government could be doing, to start off with. A lot needs to be done on changing social norms and awareness about antibiotics. If you walked into a doctor’s office in Sweden and said, “Doctor, I’m not feeling well. Could I get an antibiotic?,” they would look at you as if you are crazy, because the norm in that country is that you go into a doctor’s office, and they would not give you an antibiotic, and they might give you one three days later if you’re still sick.
Now, we know that the situation in the United States is really quite different, that antibiotics are often prescribed on the very first visit. Changing that norm is really your very first role of government to play.
That’s practice, right, how we use them?
Exactly. So if people don’t realize that every time they take an antibiotic, they’re causing this huge societal problem as well as a problem for themselves and their kids, they might use them very differently. But guess what? Most people don’t know that that’s a problem.
Certainly government could be encouraging better use of antibiotics in hospitals by, first of all, encouraging hospital infection control.
In many hospitals, antibiotics are used to treat patients before infections that could have easily been prevented, and that’s natural, because you’re asking hospitals to spend money on infection control that they don’t get reimbursed for. Or they could treat patients with antibiotics that they could get reimbursed for, and guess what? They prefer to treat patients. So changing that calculus to prevention would be a very important thing to do.
One of the most important things that has happened in this country … over the last seven or eight years has been the introduction of a vaccine against pneumonia. So the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine that’s now given to all kids across the country, that’s made an enormous difference in reducing the consumption of antibiotics. So again, the government has a role in perhaps helping fund vaccines or research through NIH [National Institutes of Health] to figure out how best to prevent infections before they actually occur.
Then certainly there’s a role in trying to help get new antibiotics produced, but not just to pay for new antibiotics from pharmaceutical companies, but to pay for antibiotics in a way that will ensure that these drugs will be used appropriately in to the future.
When a pharmaceutical company now comes up with an antibiotic, guess what? They want to sell as much of it as possible because they have to make profits for their shareholders, and that’s appropriate. That’s completely appropriate to the incentives the way we’ve set it up for them, but not appropriate to what’s good for society.
Do you get the impression that this issue of resistance is a top priority in the United States government?
The issue of resistance is nowhere near the sense [or] the kind of priority it ought to be in the United States government. …
If you view government’s commitment to a problem at least by the amount of time and money it spends on it, it’s clear that the government doesn’t see this as a problem.
And as a priority?
Certainly not, in spite of the recognition at the highest levels of the public health service — from Dr. Frieden and others — that this is something that they should take quite seriously.
It also seems that there’s a lot that we don’t understand or know about the scope of resistance. I’m not talking about the science now, but I’m talking about the data. Do we know how many people get sick and die? Do we know how many bacteria are resistant?
… What we do have on drug resistance are data that show a fairly systematic increase in drug resistance. That data is pretty solid. It comes from both government as well as private sources, and it all points to the same direction: Drug resistance is actually getting worse.
Do we have data that shows the effect of drug resistance on people dying? Not as much as we would like. And that’s for a very practical problem, because patients who get drug-resistant infections also have to be sicker. So the fact that someone is more sick and also had a resistant bug doesn’t necessarily mean that one caused the other. It’s a little trickier than just saying someone died of HIV, which is much more direct.
That I understand. But isn’t there also a problem that we don’t really have a surveillance in place for resistance?
Many years ago, the United States decided to take the problem of fisheries seriously in the U.S., and there was an act called the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which was intended to protect the fisheries along the coast of the United States as a national resource that was vital to the country’s well-being. Huge amounts of money — hundreds of millions — were spent on surveillance, on research, on quantifying the problem and addressing the problem.
Here we have another natural resource of the same magnitude of importance, antibiotic effectiveness. What we really need to see is something like a Magnuson-Stevens Act, which says we need to spend that quantum of money on surveillance, on knowing the status of antibiotic effectiveness, where the antibiotics are getting used. We have no idea how much antibiotics are getting used in animals, for instance. Almost no idea. All of this needs to get reported if we really want to take the problem of conserving this resource seriously.
So there’s not a lot of reporting; that’s what you’re saying at the core.
There’s no national reporting coordinated by the government in a broad way to deal with drug resistance.
…Why is there no public outcry about resistance?
It’s puzzled me why the public doesn’t speak out more on resistance. There are certainly survivor groups. There are MRSA survivor groups, and there are civil society organizations dealing with drug resistance. …
A lot of people don’t know that they died of drug-resistant infection. This is a hidden epidemic, and it hasn’t risen to the forefront where people recognize, “Yes, my grandfather died because of a resistant bug,” or, “My sister died of a resistant bug.” When we have better information on this, I think we’ll have public advocacy, but we don’t have that right now.
Why do you say this is a hidden epidemic?
It’s a hidden epidemic because there’s nowhere on your death certificate that would say that such-and-such person died of an infection that could not be treated. And if it’s not a cause of death, then it’s not something that people recognize [as] something that actually killed them.And is it also hidden because doctors in hospitals and governments don’t talk about it?
Well, because the data is so poor, there is not enough of a conversation about the extent of drug resistance, although all the data that we do have suggests that it is going up and has been going up for quite sometime now.
Certainly hospitals have no incentive to tell patients that they have high levels of drug resistance. And similarly, which doctor would really want to tell their patient that their infection was untreatable and that they were running out of options?
They don’t like to talk about that.
This is not something which typically happens in a hospital setting or something that comes up as a conversation that because of the pathogen that you probably picked up at the hospital, you’re probably going to die because we can’t treat the pathogen. That’s not a pleasant conversation.
If we don’t know how many people died from this, how do we get people to care about it?
Quantifying the scale of a problem is something we spend a lot of time thinking about and worrying about, and it’s absolutely important to quantify the scale of the problem. In fact, Sen. Ted Kennedy [D-Mass.] had said when he used to think about drug resistance — and it was something he was totally aware of — he said many times: “You have to quantify the problem. If you can’t quantify the number of people that are dying or the economic cost that it imposes, there is very little that we as politicians can really do about it.” And that’s absolutely right. But we haven’t had the data or the research to really support that sort of quantification.
It sounds like you’re saying we have public policy paralysis because we don’t have data, and we don’t have data because we have paralysis.
If people were dying on the streets because of drug-resistant infections and had a big X on their foreheads which said that they had drug-resistant infections, trust me, there would be policy action.
But because these people are dying of infections and they already are sick from other conditions, there is very poor recognition that this is a problem, and therefore there’s not the impetus to get the quality of data that could then show that they died of a drug-resistant infection.
On this very point, there’s been a large number of serious studies for 30 years about this. The Fogarty commission, the Institute of Medicine, Office of Technology Assessment, major studies, hundreds of hours — these studies are sort of stacked up and yet not acted upon. What does that say?
The problem of drug resistance is a complex problem. It’s fundamentally not a medical problem. It’s a problem of incentives that none of the actors in the system — whether they’re physicians, patients, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals — have an incentive to try to solve the problem on their own.
Physicians don’t care because they don’t really bear the consequence of resistance, and it’s easier to give out an antibiotic when they’re asked for one. Patients don’t care because the consequences of taking antibiotics fall to everyone else. Hospitals don’t care because someone else is going to pick up the bill, even if the patient has a drug-resistant infection. And pharmaceutical companies don’t care, except if it actually creates a market opportunity, in which case drug resistance could even be a good thing.
We don’t have government watching out to protect what should be declared a vital natural resource. So unlike other problems where there are stakeholders who do care, here is a major national problem and an international problem where there are no stakeholders willing to step up and say, “We’re being affected by this, and therefore there ought to be a solution.” That’s why we’ve had lots of reports but very little action.
… Is it possible that what we really have here is a failure of the market?
There is a market failure in two ways: There’s a market failure in the sense that individuals impose what economists call an externality on other people, which is we use antibiotics too much, and therefore we mess up the drugs for other people. So that is one form of market failure.
The other form of market failure comes from the supply side, which is that there is a problem of reimbursement, which is health payers are unwilling to pay very high prices for antibiotics. Why? Because they’re used to paying pennies a dose for penicillin, and the idea that a new drug should cost maybe $5,000 just doesn’t seem right to them, although they’re willing to pay that kind of money for someone to save them from cancer.
But if you think about it, we should be willing to pay large amounts of money to protect us from dying of infectious diseases, just as we should from cancer, but there is a real reimbursement problem here, and therefore not enough antibiotics actually get made.
You call it reimbursement, but isn’t it really a third-market problem here, that the pharmaceutical companies don’t see the return on investment so they just won’t make these drugs? They would rather make something with big blockbuster profits?
The pharmaceutical companies, if they were allowed, I think, to charge a lot of money for an antibiotic that would be used sparingly would be willing to make a drug, because they care about the profits, and currently they don’t want to make the drugs because they feel that they can’t charge large amounts of money for antibiotics.
Now, high prices of new antibiotics should not really be a problem. It’s just a signal from nature to us to say, look, there is nothing in the Bill of Rights which says that you have access to cheap antibiotics and effective antibiotics for as long as this country exists. There is no guarantee. So just as we run out of oil, we should expect to pay more for gasoline, as we run out of antibiotics, we should expect to pay more for antibiotics. That’s just the way it is.
Is that realistic in today’s environment?
It absolutely is realistic, because if we face high prices of new antibiotics, maybe we’ll be a little more careful about how we use the existing ones.
What does that mean in the developing Third World?
In the developing world as well, if governments were aware that they were going to be facing high costs of new antibiotics, maybe they would take much greater precautions about existing antibiotics.
So in a sense, the problem in the U.S. is one of affluence. We can afford to buy antibiotics, and therefore we do, and a lot of the problem in the developing world is of ignorance. Same outcome, but it comes from a different space, where governments have not really recognized that this is an important problem that’s really going to bite in a few years and cause some very serious consequences.
Seriously, where is this whole problem headed?
As we run out of antibiotics, undoubtedly there will be some pharmaceutical companies that do come out with new antibiotics. They might be very expensive.
Where we’re headed is a continuation of the current path, where we end up paying a lot more money for new antibiotics and we probably have more people dying of infections, but hopefully this will spur better infection control in hospitals, because no one wants to incur the costs of those highly priced antibiotics. There are many parts of world where people will unfortunately die because they can’t afford these antibiotics.
But where are we headed with the problem of resistance?
Resistance is an evolutionary phenomenon, and therefore resistance is probably going to keep going up for some period of time, but it depends on how much more antibiotics we actually throw at the bacteria. If we substitute the current antibiotics with new ones or different ones, it’s possible that resistance to some of the existing antibiotics may actually go down over a period of time. So it’s all an ecological game, and it depends on how we play it.
Were we wrong to call them miracle drugs?
They truly are miracle drugs. The idea of a drug that you can take inside your body which is a living organism, to specifically kill other living organisms inside your body — now, that’s special, and that’s a miracle.
But resistance is sort of the underside of the miracle, isn’t it?
Resistance is just a natural consequence of control of any biological agent. We have resistance when we use too much herbicides on our lawns. We have resistance when we use too much insecticides on pests. We have resistance in HIV and tuberculosis. Any attempt to control a biological agent will result in resistance, and bacterial infections are not any different.
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A minimum of five GCSE grades 9 - 5 including a grade 6 in Maths. You do not need to have studied GCSE Business Studies or Economics to take this course.
AS / A Level Economics is a popular choice for students in the sixth form and those who wish to study Economics at degree level. It has a diverse spread of topics so it appeals to a variety of students. This subject is for the “All Rounder”, the person who is as happy writing an in depth report as solving a maths problem. If you have an interest in current affairs and watching TV documentaries about the political and business / economic world then you will find this subject stimulating and interesting. Students enjoy this contemporary course and it is a subject valued by universities and employers.
The course covers the national economy, inflation, unemployment, economic growth and how governments use various policies such as taxation or interest rates to influence the economy. It also looks at personal economic behaviour and the behaviour of firms e.g. what influences wages or investment. We examine issues such as why professional footballers get paid a great sum of money, whilst refuse collectors are paid much less.
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Markets & Market Failure
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Economic Principles and Issues
Economics provides access to a wide range of degree courses in higher educational establishments. Economics also opens up opportunities for careers in Accountancy; Banking; Local or Central government; Finance; Law; Risk Management and Business Finance to name only a few.
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Yoga Sutra 2.4: Ignorance (Avidya) and four stages of colorings
- Yoga Sutras: Yoga Sutra 2.4
IGNORANCE (AVIDYA) AND FOUR STAGES OF COLORINGS
(Useful graphics are shown at this link)
YOGA SUTRA 2.4: The root forgetting or ignorance of the nature of
things (avidya) is the breeding ground for the other of the five
colorings (kleshas), and each of these is in one of four states: 1)
dormant or inactive, 2) attenuated or weakened, 3) interrupted or
separated from temporarily, or 4) active and producing thoughts or
actions to varying degrees.
(avidya kshetram uttaresham prasupta tanu vicchinna udaranam)
avidya = spiritual forgetting, ignorance, veiling, nescience
kshetram = field, breeding ground
uttaresham = for the others
prasupta = dormant, latent, seed
tanu = attenuated, weakened
vicchinna = distanced, separated, cut off, intercepted, alternated
udaranam = fully active, aroused, sustained
SYSTEMATICALLY REDUCE THE COLORINGS: These colorings (kleshas) are
either: 1) active, 2) cut off, 3) attenuated, or 4) dormant. We want
to be able to observe and witness these stages so that we can
systematically reduce the coloring. Then the thought patterns are no
longer obstacles to deep meditation, and that is the goal.
See also the articles on:
Klisha and Aklishta Vrittis
Karma and the sources of Actions, Speech, and Thoughts
FOUR STAGES OF COLORING: The starting point is to observe what is the
current state of the coloring of individual thought patterns. This
self-awareness practice becomes a gentle companion in daily life and
1. ACTIVE, AROUSED (UDARAM): Is the thought pattern active on the
surface of the mind, or playing itself out through physical actions
(through the instruments of action, called karmendriyas, which
include motion, grasping, and speaking)? These thought patterns and
actions may be mild, extreme, or somewhere in between. However, in
any case, they are active.
Article on Indriyas (jnanendriyas and karmendriyas):
2. DISTANCED, SEPARATED, CUT OFF (VICCHINNA): Is the thought pattern
less active right now, due to there being some distance or
separation. We experience this often when the object of our desire is
not physically in our presence. The attraction or aversion, for
example, is still there, but not in as active a form as if the object
were right in front of us. It is as if we forgot about the object for
the now. It is actually still colored, but just not active (but also
not really attenuated).
3. ATTENUATED, WEAKENED (tanu): Has the thought pattern not just been
interrupted, but actually been weakened or attenuated? Sometimes we
can think that a deep habit pattern has been attenuated, but it
really has not been weakened. When we are not in the presence of the
object of attachment or aversion, that separation can appear to be
attenuation, when it actually is just not seen in the moment.
This is one of the big traps of changing the habits or conditionings
of the mind. First, it is true that we need to get some separation
from the active stage to the distanced stage, but then it is
essential to start to attenuate the power of the coloring of the
4. DORMANT, LATENT, SEED (PRASUPTA): Is the thought pattern in a
dormant or latent form, as if it were a seed that is not growing at
the moment, but which could grow in the right circumstances?
The thought pattern might be temporarily in a dormant state, such as
when asleep, or when the mind is distracted elsewhere. However, when
some other thought process comes, or some visual or auditory image
comes in through the eyes and ears, the thought pattern is awakened
again, with all of its coloring.
Eventually the seed of the colored thought can be burned in the fire
of meditation, and a burnt seed can no longer grow.
WHERE DOES ALL OF THIS GO? Through the process of Yoga meditation,
the thought patterns are gradually weakened, then can mostly remain
in a dormant state. Then, in deep meditation the "seed" of the
dormant can eventually be burned, and a burned seed can no longer
grow. Then, one is free from that previously colored thought pattern.
EXAMPLE: An example will help to understand the way these four stages
work together. We'll use the physical example of four people, in
relation to smoking cigarettes, because the example can be so clear.
The principles apply not only to objects such as cigarettes, but also
to people, opinions, concepts, beliefs, thoughts or emotions. The
principle also applies not only to gross level thoughts, but the
subtlest of mental impressions.
PERSON A: Has never smoked and has never felt any desire to smoke.
When Person A sees a cigarette, he recognizes what it is. There is a
memory impression in the chitta, but it is completely neutral--it
just is a matter or recognition. It is not colored; it is aklishta.
(The thought of cigarettes might be colored by aversion, if he is
offended by smoking, but that is a different example.)
PERSON B: Has smoked for many years, but then quit several years ago.
Occasionally she still says, "I'd kill for a cigarette!" but does not
smoke due to health reasons. Her deep impression of cigarettes
remains colored, and is actively playing out in both the unconscious
and conscious, waking states. At times, the impression of cigarettes
might not be active, such as when she is asleep, or doing some other
distracting activity. However, at the latent level, the impression is
still very colored in a potential form.
PERSON C: Has smoked for many years, but then quit several years ago.
He always says, "Oh, no, I don't want a cigarette; I never even think
about it." At the same time his gestures and body language reveal
something different. He may have very colored mental impressions of
attachment, but they are not allowed to surface into consciousness.
There is separation from the thought pattern, but the coloring has
not truly been attenuated (even though it goes into latent form
during sleep, or when the mind is distracted). This kind of blocking
the coloring is not what is intended in Yoga science.
PERSON D: Smoked for many years, but then quit several years ago.
After some time of struggling with the separation or cutting off
phase (Vicchinna), she then sat with this desire during meditation,
allowed the awareness of the attachment to rise, gently refrained
from engaging the impressions, and watched the coloring gradually
fade. During that time, the thought patterns were sometimes active,
sometimes separated, and sometimes temporarily dormant. However, it
is now as if she were a non-smoker. The desire has returned to seed
form or is completely gone, not only when asleep, or when the mind is
distracted, but also when in the presence of cigarettes in the
NOTICE THE STAGE OF INDIVIDUAL THOUGHTS: We want to observe our
thinking process often, in a gentle, non-judging way, noticing the
stage of the coloring of thought patterns. It can be great fun, not
just hard work. The mind is quite amusing the way that it so easily
and quickly goes here and there, both internally and through the
senses, seeking out and reacting to the objects of desire. (See also
the article on the four functions of mind)
There are many thoughts traveling in the train of mind, and many are
colored. This is how the mind works; it is not good or bad. By
noticing the colored thought patterns, understanding their nature by
labeling them, we can increasingly become a witness to the whole
process, and in turn, become free from the coloring. Then, the
spiritual insights can more easily come to the forefront of awareness
in life and meditation.
TRAIN THE MIND ABOUT COLORING: An extremely important part of
attenuating, or reducing the coloring of the colored thought pattern
is to train the mind that this coloring is going to bring nothing but
further trouble (This is described in Sutra 2.33).
It means training the mind that, "This is not useful!". This simple
training is the beginning of attenuating the coloring (The process
starts with observing, but then moves on to attenuating). It is
similar to training a small child; it all begins by labeling and
saying what is useful and not useful. Note that this is not a moral
judgment as to what is good or bad. It is more like saying whether it
is more useful to go left or right when taking a journey.
OFTEN, WE ARE STUCK IN A CYCLE: Often in life, we find that the
colored thought patterns move between active and separated stages,
and then back to active. They go in a cycle between these two. Either
they are actively causing challenges, or we are able to get some
distance from them, like taking a vacation.
BREAK THE CYCLE: However, it is possible that we may never really
attenuate them when engaged in such a cycle, let alone get the
colorings down into seed form, when we are stuck in this cycle. It is
important to be aware of this possibility, so that we can
intentionally pursue the process of weakening the strength of the
MEDITATION ATTENUATES COLORING: This is where meditation can be of
tremendous value in getting free from these deep impressions (2.11).
We sit quietly, focusing the mind, yet intentionally allow the
cycling process to play out, right in front of our awareness.
Gradually it weakens, so we can experience the deeper silence, where
we can come in greater touch with the spiritual aspects of meditation. | <urn:uuid:f29906be-670e-454d-95f8-541012024eec> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Yoga-Sutras/conversations/topics/50?var=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128323730.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20170628185804-20170628205804-00341.warc.gz | en | 0.927617 | 2,249 | 2.8125 | 3 |
California's 77, farms produce more than commodities, and two-thirds of the nation's fruits and nuts. About one-quarter of what. Crop Year — Top 10 Commodities for California Agriculture Export statistics are produced by the University of California, Davis, Agricultural Issues.
Food scientists at Cornell University have produced a strain of broccoli California produces a sizable majority of many American fruits, vegetables, Without California, supply of all these products in the United States and.
You know how the rest of the country likes to make fun of California, but how of Food and Agriculture, the state produces almost half of all the fruits, any more plumping, there are 66 food crops in which we lead the nation. California ranks first in the U.S. for agricultural cash receipts followed by Iowa, Texas, Nebraska and Illinois. Food production is spread across much of the country, but the largest food- producing states include California, Iowa, Texas, Nebraska and.
The most agriculturally diverse state in the U.S., California produces more than commodities, and in , agriculture contributed about.
In the U.S., California is the largest producer of food. They produce over 90% of the wine in the U.S. They are also the nation's leading producer of strawberries, To read more facts about California agriculture, go to.
California produces the most food (by value) in the United States followed $10 billion in agricultural cash reciepts: California, Iowa, Nebraska.
In terms of revenue generated, California's top five agricultural products are dairy Only Florida produces more oranges. Manufacture of computer machinery ranks second in production, followed by food product processing of baked goods, . California's agricultural abundance includes more than commodities and produces CA is the carrot capital, producing about 80% of the nation's crop. California's farmers and ranchers produce an amazing economic bounty. The state's GDP is more than twice that of Australia. The fact that.
California's Drought Could Upend America's Entire Food System. Natasha . Why do we grow so much of our produce in one place? And why.
in diversity only to California. We invite you to learn more asparagus production, producing up to 23 first crops to appear in the spring. Much of. Michigan's asparagus is grown near the Lake. Michigan range of food products . Modern-day.
So here are 40 maps, charts, and graphs that show where our food California is, unsurprisingly, the site of much of the most valuable land for crops. And California is doing well with a mix of livestock, produce, and nuts.
Ag and Food Statistics: Charting the Essentials; Agricultural Production and Prices The United States produces and sells a wide variety of agricultural Crop production is concentrated in California and the Midwest With its large horticultural sector, California's overall crop value of more than $
In , the top 10 agricultural producing States in terms of cash receipts were ( in descending order): California, Iowa, Texas, Nebraska, Minnesota, But as production shifts to larger farms, family-owned farm businesses often become larger.
California's Central Valley is our greatest food resource. So why are we That's how many carrots I saw upon my arrival at Bolthouse Farms. Now the valley yields a third of all the produce grown in the United States. | <urn:uuid:e7789171-3793-4922-a2a2-7aeadd51492a> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://egifacageb.cf/578.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585370510352.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20200403061648-20200403091648-00510.warc.gz | en | 0.929013 | 682 | 2.75 | 3 |
Nobody ever in their life wants their work to be rejected or considered as copied from somewhere else. That is where referencing comes. Referencing is an important element for students and researchers. Referencing is acknowledging or giving credit to the publisher or authors’ work. It is important to give a reference so that the reader knows which work is yours and which work is of other publisher or writer. Note that it is important to give reference and cite the author’s work or else it will be considered as copying which is a crime also known as plagiarism. There are many types of referencing. Every type has a different way of citations and writings. Many UK assignment writers can help you and guide you all about citations and referencing. It is complicated but once you know about them it gets easier. Each type is unique and different from the other one and it depends on the academic discipline involved:
The types of references are APA (American Psychological Association), MLA (Modern Language Association), Harvard, and Chicago/Turabian. APA is used in education, psychology, and Sciences. MLA is used in Humanities. Harvard is used in economics And Chicago or Turabian style is used in Business, History, and Arts. There is a difference between citation and referencing and people mostly get confused about it. The citation tells where the information or data came from. And reference tells you the details about the source so that readers can understand it properly and they can find it too if they want more details.
The most used and similar referencing styles are APA and Harvard. There are many similarities but there are key differences between both the referencing styles.
American Psychological Association also is known as APA was introduced in 1929. The references should be written in alphabetical order. If there are two authors name then the last name of both the authors should be used. If there are more than 2 authors, all the last names of the authors should be only for the first time when referring them for the first time. And after that, the last name of the first author should be used followed by “et al” also known as “and others” in English. If there are more than 6 authors then only the last of the first author followed by “et al” is used throughout the text. In APA. References are termed as references. The title is written in Italics in an APA citation.
On the other hand, Harvard referencing style is similar to APA but in Harvard, when the names of 2 or 3 authors are used with “and” but if there are more 3 authors then the last name of the first author is cited followed by “et al” or “and others.” The references in the research page are termed as “references list.” The Harvard referencing style requires an abstract of the whole topic before the introduction and other elements which is a unique element because no other referencing styles require an abstract.
These are some of the differences between APA and Harvard. Always remember to use one type of style. Never mix and match two different styles because it is considered wrong. APA and Harvard both are an integral part of a student’s life. It distinguishes between the publishers and you work and it will never be considered as plagiarism. So next time when you write a research paper make sure to only select one reference style and use it as told. There are many guides available online which can help you write easily. | <urn:uuid:7f2b77ba-f5f0-4ab5-bb24-ef94ec75d364> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://acemyassignment.co.uk/blog/difference-between-apa-and-harvard-referencing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439735963.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20200805153603-20200805183603-00168.warc.gz | en | 0.95371 | 713 | 4 | 4 |
Saturday, July 9, 2011
"Giant Hogweed is a phototoxic plant. Its sap can cause phytophotodermatitis (severe skin inflammations) when the skin is exposed to sunlight or to UV-rays. Initially the skin colours red and starts itching. Then blisters form as it burns within 48 hours. They form black or purplish scars that can last several years. Hospitalisation may be necessary. Presence of minute amounts of sap in the eyes can lead to temporary or even permanent blindness. These reactions are caused by the presence of linear derivatives of furocoumarin in its leaves, roots, stems, flowers and seeds. These chemicals can get into the nucleus of the epithelial cells, forming a bond with the DNA, causing the cells to die. The brown colour is caused by the production of melanin by furocoumarins. In Germany, where this plant has become a real nuisance, there were about 16,000 victims in 2003.
Children should be kept away from Giant Hogweed. Protective clothing, including eye protection, should be worn when handling or digging it. If skin is exposed, the affected area should be washed thoroughly with soap and water and the exposed skin protected from the sun for several days." --wikipedia
A news clip on giant hogweed in southern B.C. | <urn:uuid:d9f55882-b3b3-4983-b17f-222a7d978eaf> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | http://spikeisbest.blogspot.com/2011/07/hogweed.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886124563.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20170823210143-20170823230143-00688.warc.gz | en | 0.954677 | 274 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Danish vocational educational and training (VET) is still suffering from lack of attractiveness and high drop-out. The Danish parliament has agreed on several new initiatives aimed at making VET an attractive choice and supporting completion. The initiatives focus on content and quality of VET provision, and on easing progression from primary schools into vocational education for young people.
The agreement includes initiatives totalling DKR 2.3 billion (EUR 0.308 billion) and makes VET exempted from the overall two percent annual cut on education expenses.
The initiatives foresee an increased role for municipalities in young people’s education. Teachers should offer more practical training. Learning environments should be improved through dissemination of good practice, and VET colleges are generally expected to develop stronger and more inclusive cultures.
The main points are:
- establishing a national programme of activities related to young people’s choice of education;
- establishing an expert council to make recommendations on how to strengthen the introductory education of young people and on a new model for assessing their readiness for education;
- municipalities should set local goals for the number of young people in education;
- nationwide efforts to develop and disseminate good practices for educational environments;
- increasing use of boarding facilities in vocational schools in sparsely populated areas;
- introducing the option for future vocational apprentices to make agreements with business while still in lower secondary education;
- increasing emphasis on the practical element of teaching for VET teachers;
- increasing emphasis on practical and vocational elements in primary school. | <urn:uuid:763a6628-d22e-4a9c-a383-3e071e33a7bc> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/it/news-and-press/news/denmark-major-national-vet-initiative | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439738351.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20200808194923-20200808224923-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.942162 | 309 | 2.671875 | 3 |
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K-12 Educators and Advocates
- K-12 Educators and Other Advocates Helping with Career Preparation
How K-12 teachers, parents, advisors, school-to-work staff and other K-12 educators can help students with disabilities prepare for employment.
- Online Resources
Search tools, workplace supports, and government regulations for job seekers and employees with disabilities.
- Learn and Earn: Tips for Teens
See options for students to gain experience while also working towards a career.
Corporate success depends on attracting the best minds. Many companies report their number one problem is locating talented workers. Having a more accessible and welcoming place of employment will attract a more diverse population to your company.
- Recruiting Students with Disabilities to Your Internship
Learn about tax credit programs, how to offer accommodations, and a variety of other resources to make sure your internships are accessible to all.
- Returning from Service: College and IT Careers for Veterans
See opportunities and challenges faced by veterans with disabilities as they transition to the postsecondary classroom and pursue degrees in computing and information technology fields.
- Job Accommodation Network: For Employers
Learn more about job accommodations, including the accommodation process, accommodation ideas, product vendors, referral to other resources, and ADA compliance assistance.
- Neurodiversity in the Workplace
Step-by-step tools and resources for hiring and retaining neurodiverse employees. | <urn:uuid:6c36e3c0-25d8-457e-94a1-f59f9ac78d74> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://www.washington.edu/doit/programs/accesscollege/employment-office/resources-students-mentors-educators-and-employers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224649986.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20230604125132-20230604155132-00386.warc.gz | en | 0.915446 | 864 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Dindo Manhit, President of the Stratbase ADR Institute for Strategic and International Studies
Now that we have reached the one-year mark since the May 2016 elections, it makes sense for us to look back and appreciate how far the electoral process has come—and how much further it can go. In a working democracy, political contests are not only legitimate institutions but also a much-valued responsibility whose results steer the direction of the country. This is still the case in the Philippines, where 80 percent of registered voters trooped to the polls last year.
In its history, our electoral process has been marred by controversies related to transparency, security and the slow transmission of results, all of which enabled cheating. These issues harmed the credibility of the process and, therefore, the integrity of our high institutions. In contrast, the 2016 elections are widely accepted to have been free, fair and properly conducted.
Francisco Magno and Danica Ella Panelo examine the 2016 elections in a special study published by the Stratbase ADR Institute. In the study titled “Technology, Democracy and Elections in the Philippines,” they reflect on the game-changing nature of election automation, the conduct of the 2016 elections, and areas for improvement.
In the Philippines, the shift to automation is based on three objectives: the rapid transmission of results, transparency and security. While voters still manually pick their candidate on machine-readable ballots, the use of vote-counting machines have revolutionized the process. The machines print receipts for voters to verify that their ballot was accurately read. The ballots could then be followed through the public ballot tracking system. By reducing areas for human intervention, the process was quicker and more transparent, enhancing its credibility. Ultimately, the Random Manual Audit Committee composed of the Commission on Elections, National Movement for Free Elections, and Philippine Statistics Authority declared that the data from 687 precincts it had audited matched the ballots with 99.9-percent accuracy.
The success of our elections comes in stark contrast to elections elsewhere in the world, such as in the United States, where concerns over electoral meddling continue to be aired in the news. Magno and Panelo underline how governments can use technology to bridge the gap between authorities and citizens: “When properly implemented, technology can modernize elections and address many of the obstacles experienced by countries using the manual voting process. At a time of increasing distrust between citizens and governments, technology can play a critical role in creating a more transparent and inclusive electoral process.”
Despite the welcome addition of automation, these efforts would be futile if our institutions are not supported to maintain the quality of the results and adapt to new challenges that present themselves. This situation points to an important nexus between technology and institutional development. Because technology evolves, its operators must be prepared to fight new ways of tampering that may be developed. The adoption of any new technology without a corresponding institutional competence could reduce, if not reverse, the gains of automation. It is thus critical for the Comelec to continually develop its capacity.
With the advent of the automated election system, the electoral process has been made more credible and transparent. But more can be done to engage and encourage the participation of the youth, the indigenous peoples and persons with disabilities to make the process more inclusive. Information and education campaigns will help voters reorient from old practices and oil the wheels of the system.
Finally, automation has made the electoral process a convenient and trustworthy exercise, rather than a stressful and tedious process. Thus, one year on from our elections, Filipino voters can look back with relief and celebrate what we undoubtedly got right—shifting to automation. This should be something on which all voters, no matter their political color, can agree. | <urn:uuid:7fe476b4-9291-4e34-b491-9323e7d412f2> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://adrinstitute.org/2017/05/16/one-year-on-what-we-got-right/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224654871.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20230608103815-20230608133815-00631.warc.gz | en | 0.950536 | 758 | 2.625 | 3 |
This article is written by Marina Salsbury.
Having a child while in college presents many challenges, both educationally and personally. Whether through planning or lack thereof, it creates obstacles college students don’t usually have to face. Not only do student parents need to focus on studying in the library, working on online college classes, or social life, they must take total responsibility for a whole new life. However, one can be successful in balancing the challenges of parenting and college successfully with careful planning and organization.
One of the biggest challenges for new parents is time management. Children are demanding and don’t care if their parents have an 8:00 AM test and haven’t slept in three days. Children get sick, babysitters cancel, and babies require constant attention. Time management is crucial for any parents, even if they’re not in school. Without strong time management skills, it’s extremely difficult for college parents to balance educational and personal lives.
Planning ahead and always having a backup plan is essential. Scheduling one’s day, week, or often month ahead of time can help to see where time is available to study or prep for schoolwork. Even small chunks of time can be utilized for work if they’re recognized and accounted for ahead of time. Many parents choose to do all schoolwork after kids are asleep, while some prefer to attempt to multitask. Whatever course of action is chosen, it’s helpful to keep a daily planner with all personal and educational projects and assignments accessible at all times. Successful preparation requires not procrastinating on projects. It’s almost inevitable that if a project is put off until the last minute, a crisis will crop up.
Financial difficulties are another major challenge for students parents. In 2000, approximately 10.4 percent of full-time college students also worked at least twenty hours per week. Having a child while in college requires either a stable support system to assist in meeting financial needs or effort to find flexible employment. Financial aid is often more readily available for nontraditional students like college parents in the form of scholarships and grants to help with tuition costs. Some colleges also offer reduced rate childcare for students. However, otherwise childcare is usually costly and often unreliable for changing schedules.
Those struggling to balance parenthood, college, and employment obligations often fail to care appropriately for their own personal needs. Stress is high and loss of sleep, poor nutrition, and lack of exercise can contribute to exhaustion and illness. Finding time, even if just minutes a day, to care for one’s own needs can decrease the stress college parenting can cause. While stressful, college and caring for young children are life phases that do not last forever. By finding time to care for one’s own physical and mental health, one will be able to withstand the stress for this time.
Raising young children and going to college are both stressful activities. Together, they create a whole new situation that requires constant planning, organization, and flexibility. Finding a stable support system and organizing one’s daily life to carve out time to study, work, and bond with family is an ever-changing and difficult task. However, with the right determination many are able to successfully navigate these challenges and make it through early parenthood without sacrificing continued education.
Marina Salsbury planned on becoming a teacher since high school, but found her way instead into online writing after college. She writes for Online College Classes and other sites about everything from education to exercise. | <urn:uuid:4a8df8d4-cc90-4588-b9f5-0034a3c32133> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | http://www.parentwonder.com/having-children-while-in-college/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886105976.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20170820053541-20170820073541-00399.warc.gz | en | 0.958884 | 721 | 2.640625 | 3 |
DOE - Fossil Energy Techline - Issued on: April 28, 2011
Breakthrough Water Cleaning Technology Could Lessen Environmental Impacts from Shale Production
DOE-Funded Laboratory Testing Leads to Multiple Field Demonstrations
Washington, D.C. A novel water cleaning technology currently being tested in field demonstrations could help significantly reduce potential environmental impacts from producing natural gas from the Marcellus shale and other geologic formations, according to the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).
NETL, the Office of Fossil Energy’s (FE) research laboratory, is addressing concerns about produced water by funding multiple projects to develop environmental tools and technologies, such as Osorb®, that will improve management of water resources, water usage, and water treatment during oil and gas exploration and production.
Two pilot-scale Osorb®-based water treatment systems have been built to date: a non-regenerating skid-mounted system which handles inputs of up to 4 gallons per minute, and a 60-gallon-per-minute trailer-mounted system that included a mechanism for Osorb® regeneration. ABSMaterials has used these systems on numerous water samples including flow back water from the Marcellus, Woodford, and Haynesville shale formations and produced water from the Clinton and Bakken formations.
In independent testing, the skid-mounted system was found to remove more than 99 percent of oil and grease, more than 90 percent of dissolved BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes), and significant amounts of production chemicals. Concurrent testing was performed using the trailer-mounted 60-gallon-per-minute system on produced water streams. One major oil services company conducted a full pilot test in the field using produced water from the Clinton formation in Ohio in July 2010 and March 2011. These tests showed that total petroleum hydrocarbon levels were slashed from 227 milligrams per liter to 0.1 milligrams per liter.
The results of this project have led to commercial interest from several global energy companies and future collaborative efforts. ABSMaterials also plans to deploy a trailer-mounted, 72,000-gallons-per-day water purification system for field use in North America in mid 2011.
A number of existing treatment techniques separate dispersed oils from water, taking advantage of the density difference between oil and water. However, very few technologies effectively address dissolved hydrocarbons, slicking agents, and polymers that prevent flow-back water from being recycled or discharged.
Osorb®, a hybrid organic-inorganic nano-engineered structure, is a breakthrough in hydrocarbon removal technology that rapidly swells up to eight times its dried volume upon exposure to non-polar liquids. The swelling process is completely reversiblewith no loss in swelling behavior even after repeated usewhen absorbed species are evaporated by heating the material.
The ABSMaterials project was funded through the federal government’s Small Business Innovation Research Program. It is the second project under FE’s Oil and Natural Gas Program to show significant success treating produced or flow-back water. Several other projects will be conducting demonstrations focusing on other water treatment technologies during the remainder of fiscal year 2011.
- End of Techline | <urn:uuid:680d1d91-ab9e-47bd-8726-09e154941a8a> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://fossil.energy.gov/news/techlines/2011/PrintVersion_1_40760_40760.html?email | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1410657127222.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20140914011207-00233-ip-10-196-40-205.us-west-1.compute.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942485 | 676 | 2.96875 | 3 |
People in California tend to live a little longer than people in many other states. Reporter Ron Winslow, writing in the July 11 Wall Street Journal, informs us the average life expectancy of an American born this week is statistically 78.3 years. However, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Internet site FlowingData, if that person is a Californian, add a couple of years to that number.
People in Washington State, Utah, Colorado, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Hawaii also are likely to live beyond 80, on average.
If you were born in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama or Georgia, your life expectancy would drop to 75, and if you were born in Washington, D.C., it would be 72, the lowest in the nation.
The Japanese live longer than Americans, even longer than Californians. Japanese men live to 79 years old on average, while Japanese women live to be 86 on average.
What is more important, though, is what the Journal’s Winslow calls healthy life expectancy. While Americans on average may be expected to live to 78.3 years, their healthy life expectancy is only 68.3 years, with the final 10 years likely to be spent with a lingering illness or disability. They depend a lot on modern medicine for those extra 10 years.
The Japanese, on the other hand, he points out, have a healthy life expectancy of 73 years.
The Japanese are first in the world for healthy life expectancy, writes Winslow, with the U.S. ranking No. 26.
Winslow quotes experts as saying the American healthy life expectancy could be increased by better diet (less red meat, sugar, salt and fat), more fish, more grains and more vegetables and fruits. These experts also advise against smoking, and caution that one should not go above light to moderate alcohol use, and should drink a lot of tea. Oh, and one other thing — the average Japanese eats about one-third the calories of the average American.
Why can’t it be that the people who eat a lot of chocolate and bacon live the longest? Life isn’t fair. | <urn:uuid:75dbcf16-a4b5-4e18-9b27-8f66fe4d6286> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://www.maderatribune.com/columns/secrets-long-life-include-calif-living | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386163052810/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204131732-00043-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953841 | 454 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Computer Models of Tornadoes Show Possible Sheltering Region Behind Hills
This illustration – stills taken from a computer animation of computational fluid dynamics – shows the disruptive effect of a hill on a tornado’s vortex.
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Using 3-D computer models, University of Arkansas researchers have demonstrated the influence of hills on tornadoes. Their models revealed that the height of a hill and the size of a tornado’s vortex have a significant effect on the tornado’s destructive power. The findings could be used to identify safer areas for construction.
The researchers found that lower levels of a tornado’s vortex are significantly disrupted if the height of a hill is equal to or greater than the radius of the vortex. The models also confirmed an important finding from a previous field study – that wind velocities are significantly reduced on the leeward side of hills.
“A preliminary observation from this study indicates that there is a region behind a hill where velocities are reduced due to disruption of the tornado vortex,” said Panneer Selvam, professor of civil engineering. “Of course this disruption depends on the height of the hill, as well as tornado size and velocity. We measured this effect in scenarios in which the width of the hill was perpendicular to the direction of the tornado.”
Selvam and civil engineering graduate student Piotr Gorecki used computational fluid dynamics, a widely used method to study the effect of wind on structures, to create 3-D computer models showing the interaction of hills and tornadoes. The study was conducted to reveal the influence of the hill height on the tornado-hill interaction. Three different rectangular hill heights – 12, 24 and 36 meters – were investigated, although each hill had the same width and length. For each study, the size of the tornado’s vortex – diameter of 8 meters – was the same, as was its maximum velocity – 86.5 meters per second.
Selvam and Gorecki’s simulations revealed that tornado-hill interaction depends on the ratio of a tornado’s radius to the height of a hill. If a tornado’s radius was equal to hill height, the lower levels of the tornado’s vortex were significantly disrupted during the interaction. This contributed a low-velocity region on the leeward side of a rectangular hill. In this region, the researchers found, wind speeds were reduced by at least 41 percent compared to the maximum tornado velocity, the speed at which it was traveling when it hit the hill.
The results showed that the tornado flowed smoothly over the 12-meter hill, the cylindrical shape of its vortex preserved through the entire interaction. At this height, the tornado adjusted to the minimal change in altitude and maintained its strength as it traveled over the hill.
But the 36-meter hill disrupted the tornado’s vortex. The interaction caused the tornado to split into two vortex tips, one in front of the hill and one behind the hill. The vortex tip in front of the hill weakened while the tornado moved over the hill. Eventually, the tip in front of the hill disappeared, and the tip behind the hill strengthened, but the overall strength of the tornado was weakened.
Selvam said the best sheltering abilities would be on the leeward side of bigger hills. This would require a further, historical investigation of the direction from which most tornadoes travel at a given location. For example, most tornadoes that hit southwest Missouri, including the massive EF5 tornado that struck Joplin, Mo., on May 22, 2011, travel from the west to the east.
Selvam previously found that large structures can reduce the force of a tornado vortex. That research showed that tornado forces are reduced if the side of a building is larger than the vortex diameter.
Earlier this year Selvam and a different graduate student released findings of the first field investigations of the effect of terrain elevation changes on tornado path, vortex, strength and damage. They analyzed Google Earth images of the 2011 Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Joplin tornadoes and found tornadoes cause greater damage when they travel uphill and less damage as they move downhill.
That study also revealed that whenever possible, tornadoes tend to climb toward higher elevations rather than going downhill. They also reported that when a region is surrounded by hills, tornadoes skip or hop over valleys beneath and between these hills, and damage is noticed only on the top of the hills.
The results of the field study and the 3-D computer models study were presented at the 12tth Americas Conference on Wind Engineering.
Selvam is holder of the James T. Womble Professorship in Computational Mechanics and Nanotechnology Modeling. He directs the university’s Computational Mechanics Laboratory.
This year’s U of A United Way Campaign begins Oct. 2 and runs through Nov. 3. Renewals and new donations will be accepted online throughout the campaign.
After 21 years of teaching in the public school system, Jessica Culver was recently recognized as a top 10 finalist for the Bill of Rights Institute's nationwide Civics Teacher of the Year Award.
The Medical Humanities Program and Department of History will host a talk from Professor Matthew P. Romaniello of Weber State University on Oct. 6 from 11:50 a.m.-12:50 p.m. in Gearhart Hall 130.
The Arkansas Law Review's annual symposium will feature 13 scholars, lawyers and child labor experts during sessions on Oct. 13 in the law school's E.J. Ball Courtroom. Register to reserve a seat.
In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, Mullins Library staff have compiled a list of ebooks and streaming videos available to all students, staff and faculty. Stop by Mullins Library to see the display, too. | <urn:uuid:465044d4-5d25-478e-99ab-73abda7ce471> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://news.uark.edu/articles/22392/computer-models-of-tornadoes-show-possible-sheltering-region-behind-hills | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506528.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20230923162848-20230923192848-00849.warc.gz | en | 0.939979 | 1,208 | 4.125 | 4 |
In the past, analyzing the structure and function of a genome has been a dicey process. Once a mutation is observed and a gene is identified as being responsible, biologists will knock out that gene and introduce different versions of it to see what phenotypes they can induce. But existing ways of reintroducing the missing DNA back into a genome has suffered from two major problems: First, the transgene often ends up in random parts of the genome, where the adjacent DNA can modulate its expression--a phenomenon known as a position effect. "That's problematic," explains geneticist Hugo Bellen, the study's lead author, "you are starting to compare apples and oranges." He notes that sometimes a phenotype may emerge after introduction and other times no effect may be seen, but that scientists can't be sure why this is happening. In addition, researchers have trouble inserting and manipulating large pieces of DNA (bigger than 30 kilobases), because of the bacteria used as a vector for this DNA. Specifically, the bacteria incorporate the genes into circular DNA molecules called plasmids, which carry the genetic segments into the fly's genome. The bacteria, however, make many copies of the plasmids; with so many copies around they often start to recombine "and you don't know what you've got anymore," Bellen notes.
According to Koen J. T. Venken, a graduate student whom Bellen credits as the impetus and leader of the study, the new method developed by the Baylor team primarily came about to combat the size limitations of the previous technology. Venken first sought a vector that could handle large amounts of DNA efficiently, settling on a bacterial artificial chromosome, which was designed a couple years ago and is known to maintain only a few copies of the DNA (though it can produce a high number of copies if it is induced). Placed into a bacterium, the chromosome integrates into the bacterial vector--a process known as "recombineering." "This methodology is very important because it allows you to very quickly integrate almost any piece of DNA in these vectors," remarks Bellen, who says this technology also allows scientists to put single point mutations in a gene and then reinsert the gene into a genome as well as tagging a segment of DNA with fluorescent markers.
Once the vector is ready, the Baylor team wanted to be able to guide it to a certain part of the genome every time, so they turned to a technique called ΦC31, which was known to work in human and mouse cells. Bellen and Venken attached artificial docking sites to phages--a virus that targets bacteria--which they introduced in both the bacteria and in the fruit fly genomes to act as sticky points for the DNA segment being implanted in the latter's genome. "It seems like the whole Drosophila community is switching over to ΦC31 because it's both more efficient and its 100 percent site specific," notes Michele Calos, a geneticist at Stanford University who is a pioneer in work on the ΦC31 integration scheme in mammalian cells. This study, she adds, "will encourage people to use ΦC31 for larger fragments in other organisms."
Thomas Kaufman, a biologist at Indiana University, praises Bellen's team for overcoming both the size limitations and the localization specificity of previous vector-based DNA introduction. "It opens up another compartment of the genome to analysis," he says. "It's a step up in the transgenic technology that's available in this model system that opens up new pathways of analysis." Bellen adds that among other things, the method eliminates the need to reintroduce the same transgene over and over again and look for an average effect: "Now you need only one transgene, because if you inject into the same site, you'll always have the same expression level and the same position effect. So, you're not comparing apples and oranges anymore, you're comparing the same gene with subtle changes." Bellen claims the new methodology will work for DNA segments up to 150 kilobases in length--the fruit fly genome is made up of an estimated 14,000 genes, only 10 of which, according to Bellen, are too large to be manipulated with P[acman]. He also believes the technique will work reasonably well for studying the structure and function of proteins in most other model organisms, including laboratory mice. | <urn:uuid:df57976c-372f-4c09-b22b-bc011610bd0e> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pacman-unlocks-virtually/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1412037663007.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20140930004103-00263-ip-10-234-18-248.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960942 | 888 | 4.03125 | 4 |
photo credit: Sand Castle via photopin
Learning Objective: To design a sandcastle at the beach using the principles of engineering design.
Making a sandcastle or other object out of sand remains a favorite past time at the beach. These structures are design challenges as the materials, a mixture of sand and water, must be in just the right proportions to build a sturdy structure! Plus some imagination must go into forming the final product.
Using a typical (and very economical) beach bucket kit equipped with a shovel, etc. have kids go through the process of engineering design (Ask, Imagine, Plan, Design, Improve) as they construct their very own castle.
Take pictures at different stages along the way to create a time lapse to show their progression. Ask them to reflect on the process with questions such as: What materials did you use to build your sandcastle and why? What worked? What did not? Did you change anything? If so, what? What would you do differently next time?
Finally, be sure to take a picture of the engineer next to his or her masterpiece! | <urn:uuid:767d0478-2e6b-4e78-bc9d-ece0c775fa07> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | https://thestemhouse.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/sandcastle-engineering-design/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549426161.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20170726122153-20170726142153-00240.warc.gz | en | 0.962127 | 223 | 4.25 | 4 |
Never mind the gas—it was automation that got them in the end.
On this day in 1986, a mining tradition dating back to 1911 ended: the use of canaries in coal mines to detect carbon monoxide and other toxic gases before they hurt humans. New plans from the government declared that the “electronic nose,” a detector with a digital reading, would replace the birds, according to the BBC.
Although ending the use of the birds to detect deadly gas was more humane, miners’ feelings were mixed. “They are so ingrained in the culture, miners report whistling to the birds and coaxing them as they worked, treating them as pets,” the BBC said.
At the time, it was the latest of many changes in the British mining industry, which was a source of great strife in the country through the 1980s. Pit ponies, the other animal that went underground with human miners to haul coal, were also phased out by automation. The last of them retired in 1999, wrote Clare Garner for The Independent.
The idea of using canaries is credited to John Scott Haldane, known to some as “the father of oxygen therapy.” His research on carbon monoxide led him to recommend using the birds, writes Esther Inglis-Arkell for Gizmodo. He suggested using a sentinel species: an animal more sensitive to the colorless, odorless carbon monoxide and other poisonous gases than humans. If the animal became ill or died, that would give miners a warning to evacuate.
Why was a canary Haldane’s suggested solution? Canaries, like other birds, are good early detectors of carbon monoxide because they’re vulnerable to airborne poisons, Inglis-Arkell writes. Because they need such immense quantities of oxygen to enable them to fly and fly to heights that would make people altitude sick, their anatomy allows them to get a dose of oxygen when they inhale and another when they exhale, by holding air in extra sacs, he writes. Relative to mice or other easily transportable animals that could have been carried in by the miners, they get a double dose of air and any poisons the air might contain, so miners would get an earlier warning.
Britain wasn’t the only place to adopt Haldane’s suggestion. The United States and Canada both employed canaries, as these images from the Department of Labor show. Miners are pictured holding the birds in small everyday cages and returning from the scene of an explosion with a canary in a special cage intended to resuscitate the bird after exposure.
The modern carbon dioxide detector is certainly a less romantic image than a canary in an overused saying. Remembering the canary, though, is an opportunity to remember a world of coal mining that no longer exists. | <urn:uuid:eab2a3fc-a5c0-4200-9279-64182dc56b1c> | CC-MAIN-2017-39 | http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/story-real-canary-coal-mine-180961570/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818689752.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20170923160736-20170923180736-00190.warc.gz | en | 0.962031 | 586 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Education spending per student has nearly tripled over the past four decades, after adjusting for inflation, the report notes. Student achievement has remained about the same.
In more than half of the states included in our study, there was no clear relationship between spending and achievement after adjusting for other variables, such as cost of living and students in poverty.
Some districts spent thousands of dollars more per student to reach the same level of academic achievement. For example, Baltimore spends $2,500 more a year per student than Austin, Texas, after adjusting for the cost of living and student poverty. Yet Baltimore’s students are much less likely to score at or above the proficient level.
. . . after accounting for factors outside of a district’s control, many high-spending districts posted middling productivity results. For example, only 17 percent of Florida’s districts in the top third in spending were also in the top third in achievement.
Not surprisingly, the most productive districts make student achievement a priority. Leaders are willing to make tough choices, such as closing schools with low enrollment. The least productive districts spend more on administration, operations and other non-instructional expenditures.
Only Florida and Texas evaluate school-level productivity, the report finds. Often nobody knows which schools are spending money effectively and which are not.
Among the recommendations are improving data analysis, creating “performance-focused management systems that are flexible on inputs and strict on outcomes” and directing funding to students based on their needs.
Here’s a cool interactive map showing the return on education investment in various districts. In California, I see that San Francisco and San Jose rate fairly high in productivity, while Los Angeles is quite low. | <urn:uuid:b772df7b-a704-46f9-a11b-4a9c6f13cdb1> | CC-MAIN-2014-15 | http://www.joannejacobs.com/2011/01/getting-more-brains-for-the-buck/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1398223206672.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20140423032006-00583-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951195 | 351 | 2.625 | 3 |
On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan killing 146 garment workers. The workers—most of them young, immigrant women in their teens and early twenties—were unable to escape due to locked doors and a lack of workplace safety precautions in the factory. (Exit doors were regularly locked to prevent workers from taking breaks, and there were no fire alarms to notify the workers.)
Thousands of people watched in helpless horror as the blaze absorbed the building, and workers desperate to escape the fire, jumped from the 9th floor onto their deaths. The fire galvanized people like Frances Perkins, an eyewitness who would later become the U.S. Secretary of Labor, to push for political reform.
The state of New York created the Factory Investigating Commission which inspected hundreds of factories for hazards. The findings led to sixty new labor laws including better building access, fire extinguishers, automatic sprinklers, and more. New legislation passed to shorten the workweek and improved the eating and restroom facilities for workers. Perkins would later guide Franklin D. Roosevelt to pass the New Deal which included landmark labor rights such as the 40-hour work week, minimum wage, and the right to unionize.
Seared on my mind as well as my heart—a never-to-be-forgotten reminder of why I had to spend my life fighting conditions that could permit such a tragedy.Frances Perkins on the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was a tragedy, but not uncommon in those days. About 100 workers died on the job everyday due to dangerous working conditions and a lack of government regulation that left workers vulnerable to the decisions of employers. Workers unionized by the thousands to demand change. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) coordinated mass strikes, defied brutal beatings by police, all for the bare minimum of dignity at the workplace.
“The life of men and women is so cheap, and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death… I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.”Rose Schneiderman, a union activist, speaking on the need for union organizing at the memorial for the victims of the fire.
Organized workers led the demand for change at the workplace. Decades after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, unions pushed for the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 and the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) which enforces a safety standard employers must abide by.
Though accidents and fatalities on the job are still a reality today, unions substantially lower the risk of workplace-related injuries. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, states that rank in the top 20 in union density have the lowest rates of workplace fatalities. Comparably, states with “right to work” laws which weaken union power have a 49% greater risk of workers dying on the job.
The labor reform that resulted from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is a blueprint for how union organizing and political activism work in tandem. “There’s a direct relationship between the ballot box and the bread box, and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls,” Walter Reuther, former UAW President. While unions lead the demand for change, it’s important to solidify these wins in the law, and then organize to continue to protect these rights. Unions continue to demand policies that protect workers and pursue safety and health protections on the job, setting the standard for workplace safety for all workers.
To find out more about safe working conditions, visit osha.gov. | <urn:uuid:67350020-77f0-448a-97e9-82ea51e63f1c> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://www.cwa1037.org/2022/03/the-triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100476.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20231202235258-20231203025258-00441.warc.gz | en | 0.958205 | 795 | 3.234375 | 3 |
1000.00 Adopt Now
Krishnachura is a large deciduous ornamental tree with spreading crown. It is one of the most spectacular flowering trees in the tropical world. When the blooming begins, a miraculous beauty is reflected throughout the tree. It is planted in gardens and parks and beside the roads and highways. In fact, it is planted everywhere in Bangladesh. Its original home is Madagascar. The tree is brought to the country from Mauritius in 1812, perhaps through Christian missionary. In India, it is called 'Gulmohar' (Golden seal).
Beside its beauty, Krishnachura Tree also contains some medicinal uses too. Different parts of the plant are used in piles, tumour, vomiting, fever, urinary problem and irregular menstruation. Its flower, leaf and bark are purgative and stimulant.
- Kingdom: Plantae
- Order: Fabales
- Family: Fabaceae
- Genus: Delonix
- Species: D. Regia
- Scientific Name: Delonix Regia | <urn:uuid:86a1921e-1a90-4206-80d2-16cb3075315a> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://maskinfoundation.com/adopt_details/OA== | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224657720.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20230610131939-20230610161939-00342.warc.gz | en | 0.918672 | 237 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Raising berries was a job that made a year seem thirteen months long. Farmers raked straw, pulled weeds, tended plants; they coped with hot and cold and rain and drought and hail. Then, within a few weeks, they knew the outcome of the struggle. The knowledge turned the crop sweet or sour in their mouths.
Farmers might never lay eyes on a buyer. They would deliver their berries to the association which had supplied them with the plants, fertilizer, crates, implements and sometimes, groceries. Associations dealt with buyers. When it became helpful to identify which association was responsible for which crate of berries, labels came into use.
Peak year of strawberry production was 1931. Half a century passed, but the strawberry is so ingrained in the way of life, the way of thought, that the minds and hearts of the folks of Louisiana'a berry belt can never let it go.
The Louisiana Strawberry Story | <urn:uuid:6b9576cf-07cf-4145-9e7a-218b87772a54> | CC-MAIN-2017-47 | http://louisianastrawberries.com/history.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934806327.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20171121074123-20171121094123-00574.warc.gz | en | 0.973579 | 189 | 3.28125 | 3 |
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Isabel Florence Hapgood was the compiler and translator of the Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic (Greco-Russian) Church which has been described as "a noble and Christian gift indispensable to the understanding of the teachings of the Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church." (History of Russian Church Music, N. P. Brill).
Isabel Hapgood was born on November 21, 1851 in Boston Massachusetts. Her parents were Asa Hapgood and Lydia Anna Bronson Crossley who were of English-Scottish decent. Isabel had two brothers Asa Gustavus, a twin, and William Frank Hapgood. Isabel grew up in the family living in Worcester, Massachusetts. Isabel's education came through attendance at private schools, Oread Collegiate Institute in Worcester between 1863 and 1865, and then transferred to Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, graduating in 1868, the year her father died. She showed a great aptitude for languages, mastering most Romance and Germanic languages as well as the Slavic languages of Russian, Polish, and Church Slavonic.
Isabel displayed a special interest in the Russian language. To achieve a natural fluency in the spoken language she engaged a Russian lady to help her develop a natural fluency in the spoken language. With this fluency, Isabel embarked on a lengthy journey through European Russia accompanied by her mother. During the two year sojourn, Isabel was able to meet important persons, including poets, writers, composers, as well as the Procurator of the Holy Synod and senior clergy. Her fame from translating earlier many Russian literary works into English had opened many doors into the intellectual world of Russia.
After her first trip to Russia, Isabel returned annually to Russia. Enchanted with the Russian choral singing, she embarked on a course of making the beauty of the Orthodox liturgy available in English. This course of action led to the translation of the Service Book that carries her name. The succession of Bishops of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands warmly supporting her efforts: Archbishop Nicholas gave her a complete set of Church Slavonic texts for use in her translation effort. Abp. Tikhon provided her practical advice and was remembered by Miss Hapgood as a sincere friend. The first edition appeared in 1906.
Written with the intent of revision as found necessary through practical use, Isabel prepared a second edition for which she asked Abp. Tikhon's blessing during her last visit to Russia in 1916-1917. Endorsement of the second edition came from Patriarch Tikhon on November 3, 1921 in which he extended his blessing on …Our American flock, always so near to Our heart: and upon Our never-to-be-forgotten American friends, and unto you all. This edition was published in 1922.
The preparation of the Service Book was considered by Isabel Hapgood as a "gift of love". For her eleven years of labor she was provided an honorarium of $500.
Isabel Hapgood reposed in New York City on June 26, 1928 and was buried in Worcester, Massachusetts.
- A Linguistic Bridge to Orthodoxy: In Memoriam Isabel Florence Hapgood - by Marina Ledkovsky. A lecture delivered at the Twelfth Annual Russian Orthodox Musicians Conference, October 7-11 1998, Washington, D.C. (PDF)
- Hapgood letter to Abp Evdokim on the St. Nicholas Cathedral Choir (1915) | <urn:uuid:f2b0bfde-7482-4739-a5d8-2b5168fe35fd> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://en.orthodoxwiki.org/Isabel_Hapgood | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579250606226.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20200121222429-20200122011429-00230.warc.gz | en | 0.948684 | 911 | 2.578125 | 3 |
The computer is an asshole
Learning to program a computer is a lot like talking to a person you’ve barely met. You are kinda awkward for a while, they are also a bit of holding back on emotions and both of you try not to screw it up.
When you program a computer you will write your things so that the computer understands what you want.
For starters you will define some common ground.
This is a: car A car has: wheels, doors, body, seats, windows, engine. A car can: start engine, stop engine, move, halt, move faster, move slower, steer (in some direction), wipe windows, signal (the direction change).
You will then explain how things are done.
How to: drive. Car! Start engine! Move! Move faster! Move slower! Signal (left)! Steer (left)! Move slower! Halt! Stop engine!
And when they are done in what specific order:
How to: start engine. Get the key! Place key into slot! Rotate key! Wait untill ignition sound! Release key!
The computer is an asshole but time is a son of a bitch. It changes everything and because of that we need to check first whether time has left our universe in place of if it ruined everything we know.
- if I’ll still have my wooden house, I am coming home from holiday and I will cook myself some fish.
- while the fish is frying, I will make some garlic sauce
- for each garlic, I need to to the same shitty peeling operation over and over.
High level, low level, scripting, assembly, compile, memoize, recursive, lambda, clojure and more jargon
Smart people tend to formalize a lot.
The problem with formalization is also its main benefit: it limits interpretation.
In a heavy formalized environment limiting interpretation helps because it makes communication fast and precise, but, if the emitter and the receiver have varying levels of formalism assimilated to their culture, then it will make communication not only slower, but seriously damage the information density in it.
Interpretation is the activity of relating what you receive with what you stored so that the new makes sense and is connected to the old.
Formalisation is therefore self referential, as the more abstract it gets, the more it requires previous levels of formalization to be assimilated. So it is a bad idea to teach programming using mathematics.
What if you are not math enabled? What does a “control structure” mean to an art graduate trying to make a circle spin on the damn screen, even mean?
The problem with computers is that they are machines.
Machines will not instantly help you unless you ask them to and unless someone made them helpful in the first place.
The computer is an asshole. It does nothing unless you shout at it: do this! Then it stops. Like a brat. | <urn:uuid:6e72d7f8-2c7c-4610-8d8b-3a6302e462ad> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2017/07/11/how-to-code/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224644574.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20230529010218-20230529040218-00005.warc.gz | en | 0.931886 | 624 | 2.515625 | 3 |
AQR in Health
Firstly understanding patients and targets groups better so that interventions and treatments can be directed more effectively. Secondly, identifying how individual behaviour leads to waste and inefficiency.
There are number of strands:
- General Health – Diet and Fitness. On-going work suggests that, statistically, the greater the level of mental toughness the more likely an individual is to eat carefully, maintain fitness and good fitness regimes. Either or both will correlate with factors like (avoidance of) obesity
- Self-Care/Self-Medication – A significant % of people do not adhere properly to self –medication routines. This leads to waste of medications & treatments and patients going back into the system) tying up resources. Assessment of the mental toughness of service users so that the care manager or adviser can offer more appropriate advice on which form of intervention would support the user in completing a course of treatment.
- Chronic Disease Management – Many conditions/diseases do not have a cure as such. Patient care is very often based upon an ability to make positive, beneficial and sustained changes to lifestyle and behaviours. Mental toughness can assess an individuals openness to change and learning new behaviours
- Mental Health – On-going research is examining the relationship between mental toughness and mental health conditions such as eating disorders.
- Addiction – this is also an area where mental toughness can bring fresh insight and much more effective interventions. Pilots are underway to examine the relationship between an individual’s mental toughness and their capability to give up smoking.
- Recovery from operations – Patients recovering from operations vary in duration of stay in hospital – thereby potentially tying up hospital beds. MTQ could be very useful in assessing the mindset of patients prior to surgery/treatment. Patient care could include preparing the patient before and after for optimum post operation stays.
- Carers – Caring for others can be a stressful task and mental toughness development can equip carers with tools and techniques to better cope with this stress and maintain a positive outlook.
- Getting people in care back into own home – Of increasing interest. Wellbeing is higher if people can stay in own homes and it is likely this is less expensive than other options. This will be increasingly important as the population ages. | <urn:uuid:f1538e22-6f69-4abf-9869-f0732490b140> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://aqrinternational.co.uk/aqr-in-health-patient-care | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655886516.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20200704170556-20200704200556-00470.warc.gz | en | 0.945803 | 454 | 3.359375 | 3 |
develop a sense
There is an expression that we all come from childhood. And it is true. All the emotions and experiences a child receives in childhood leave an almost indelible imprint on his adult life. Negative childhood emotions, such as fear, guilt and shame, unnatural restraint, which “grew up” along with their owner, are very difficult to correct. Of course, with the competent work of experienced specialists, there is an opportunity to fix a lot, however, it is easier to prevent than to treat already formed neuroses and depression.
WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT TO SING LULLABIES TO THE CHILD
It is a known fact that a small child identifies itself with a mother for a very long time. And this is not surprising. At first, for nine months, the baby and mother are in close contact, being essentially one. The whole life of a little man depends on his mother. While still in the womb, the baby is already experiencing its first emotions, both positive and negative. Continue reading
Classical composers devoted many pages of their work to children. These musical works are written taking into account the peculiarities of children’s perception, many of them are specially for small performers, according to their technical capabilities. WORLD OF CHILDREN’S MUSIC Opera and ballets, songs, instrumental plays have been created for children. R. Schumann, J. Bizet, C. Saint-Saens, A.K. Lyadov, A.S. Arensky, B. Bartok, S.M. Maykapar and other venerable composers. Many composers composed works for their own babies, and also dedicated their works to the children of their relatives and friends. For example, I.S. Bach, teaching the music of his children, wrote various plays for them (“Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach”). The appearance of “Children’s Album” P.I. Tchaikovsky owes the composer communication with the children of his own sister and brother’s pupil. In music for children, composers of various styles see common features: bright, almost visible imagery; clarity of musical language; the clarity of the musical form. Continue reading
The presence of musical memory, musical ear, possession of a sense of rhythm, emotional susceptibility to music are called musical abilities. Almost all people to one degree or another have all these gifts from nature and, if desired, can develop them. Outstanding musical abilities are much less common. The phenomenon of exceptional musical talents can be attributed to such a “set” of mental properties of an artistic personality: absolute hearing, phenomenal musical memory, outstanding ability to learn, creative talent. HIGHER MANIFESTATIONS OF MUSICITY The Russian musician K.K. From childhood, Sarajeva discovered a unique ear for music. For Sarajev, all living things and inanimate objects sounded in certain musical tones. For example, one of the artists familiar to Konstantin Konstantinovich was for him: D Sharp Major, moreover, having an orange tint. Sarajev argued that in the octave he clearly distinguishes between 112 sharps and 112 flats of each tone. Among all musical instruments K. Saradzhev singled out bells. The brilliant musician has created a musical catalog of sound spectra of bells of Moscow belfries and more than 100 interesting compositions of playing bells. F. Liszt, S.V. Rachmaninov, D. Enescu and other brilliant musicians had a phenomenal memory: they could, looking into the musical text, without a tool remember a musical work with fantastic speed and accuracy. Continue reading | <urn:uuid:e8eb2ed1-52e4-4092-a03f-d90de5140892> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | http://kapsamun.com/top/develop-a-sense | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439738723.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20200810235513-20200811025513-00427.warc.gz | en | 0.951256 | 770 | 3.140625 | 3 |
By Heather Willett
It’s a Saturday night; you and your friends are out to dinner. Most likely almost everyone at the table is sipping on a cold beer or a glass of wine. Having a drink or two is a favored pastime of many, but what are the effects on our health? One of the biggest health debates has been beer vs. wine. So which one is really healthier?
Believe it or not, beer actually possesses some health benefits with moderate consumption. Drinking moderate amounts of beer has the potential to reduce the risk of heart disease by up to 25%, protects from heart attacks and lowers blood pressure, according to Harvard researchers. Beer has also been known to lower the risk of kidney stones and the risk for strokes. Dutch researchers conducted a study of 38,000 males over a 4 year period and found that when they drank beer moderately they were less likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Lastly, beer was found to help with insomnia and improve eye sight, however, it was discovered that drinking too much beer actually has the opposite effect and can make it difficult to sleep and eye sight will also decline.
Wine has a reputation for being a “healthier” choice when it comes to alcohol and with good reason since there are a few health benefits with wine consumption. Wine has a long history of being used as a medicinal treatment dating back as far as BC. These days most of the excitement around wine is due to the fact that wine contains reservatrol, which can be found in the skin of red grapes and is a natural phenol. Many researchers are still trying to fully understand the affects reservatrol because there have been many claims that it can extend lifespan, prevent cancer, and help to cure Alzheimer’s. What we do know to be true is that wine has antimicrobial properties, especially red wine, and can boost the immune system. Wine also provides heart health benefits by lowering the rate of heart attacks, strokes and death caused by heart disease. Wine has also been known to help preserve memory, which could be linked to the reservatrol. A 10-year study by Harvard Medical School, also determined that premenopausal women who drank 1-2 glasses of wine a day were found to be 40 percent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Wine also contains about 4 percent of your daily intake of potassium and a significant amount of fiber.
The Benefits of Limiting or Avoiding Alcohol
While there may be several health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption, there are also negative effects that it can have on our health. These include:
- Weight gain: Alcohol contains empty calories. A regular beer contains between 140 to 200 calories, while light beer contains around 100. A glass of wine is around 125 calories for a 5oz pour. However, the real issue is that alcohol causes the body to burn less stored fat for energy because the body instead burns a substance called acetate, which the liver makes from the alcohol. Additionally, alcohol contributes to weight gain by interfering with blood sugar levels. The liver stores glycogen and when blood sugar drops, the liver converts the glycogen into glucose and releases it into the blood. Alcohol interferes with the brain to liver communication and, therefore, prevents the liver from converting the glycogen to glucose so the brain thinks food is still needed, which leads one to eat whatever they can get their hands on. This leads to weight gain.
- Dehydrates: The body produces an anti-diuretic hormone, which is used to reabsorb water into the body. Alcohol decreases the body’s production of this hormone, leading to a greater loss in fluids through urination without replenishing the water it loses. We also know that excessive amounts of alcohol may also cause vomiting, which only further depletes the body of necessary fluids.
- Digestive issues: Alcohol contributes to a plethora of digestive issues! These include:
- Increased risk of mouth cancer: alcohol consumption is the second leading cause of mouth cancer
- Creates heartburn and acid reflux
- Damages stomach lining
- May limit the body’s ability to absorb nutrients from food
- Causes leaky gut syndrome where toxins leak into the body through intestine and lead to serious health issues
- Leads to pancreatitis, which is inflammation of the pancreas, and can interfere with digestive functions and can be life-threatening
- Corrodes the liver and can cause cirrhosis
- Tooth decay: The acidity and sugar in alcohol can demineralize teeth’s enamel, which can cause teeth to rot faster
- Increases estrogen levels
Since alcohol consumption has been linked to over 60 different diseases, eliminating alcohol or abstaining for a period of time is often recommended to prevent illness, lower risk for cancer and type 2 diabetes, lower blood pressure and heal the liver.
Often individuals change their diets looking to lose weight, but they overlook how much alcohol they drink or are unwilling to make small changes to their drinking habits. Phase 1 and phase 2 detoxification needs to be completed for weight loss to occur and the liver plays a large role in this process. Since alcohol has a direct affect on the liver, it means it is unable to complete the detox of other unwanted toxins from the body. When alcohol is eliminated from the diet, the liver won’t be spending all of its time trying to filter the alcohol out of the body and will be available to provide more energy and necessary metabolites.
Additionally, abstaining from alcohol has shown to enhance focus, concentration and memory. It has also been proven to improve the amount and quality of sleep. Quitting for even a month will improve liver function, cholesterol and glucose levels.
Drinking alcohol is a large part of many cultures around the world. People frequently gather to socialize around a glass of wine or a pint of beer and many declare that alcohol helps to let loose after a rough day. And as we’ve discovered, alcohol can even offer some unexpected health benefits. There are studies that suggest that drinking alcohol may have some advantages, but after conducting our own research we can conclude that the best options are to either abstain from drinking or drink in moderate amounts—a glass of wine or a pint a day—depending on your weight loss goals. | <urn:uuid:611f3e9b-4504-4095-8813-7fb64690e5ce> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://dmsfit.com/2016/08/beer-vs-wine/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655892516.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20200707111607-20200707141607-00331.warc.gz | en | 0.964424 | 1,285 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Why are some of the remote administration programs being called "backdoors"?
As you know, one of the most frequently occurring malicious programs is a "Trojan horse." Just like their ancient namesake, "Trojan horses" intrude into PCs under the disguise of a harmless program, attracting users by their unique functionality. Until recently, few people could resist opening a file promising to considerably improve processor capacity without any additional expense for equipment modernisation. There is no need to point out that more often than not, "Trojan horses" were hidden under the guise of these programs, and rather than providing "to good to be true" benefits, were acting maliciously.
However, the situation has now completely changed, since even a novice user is unlikely to be deceived, because everyone has heard about the phenomenon of "Trojan horses."
The spectrum of effects from "Trojan horses'" is extremely wide, and their classification may seem to some people as complicated as the periodic table of the elements. The most frequently occurring and most dangerous of malicious programs belong to a group of utilities that enable unauthorised remote administration, so-called backdoors.
As described above, a backdoor intrudes into a PC and imperceptibly opens it to remote administration. This creates the opportunity for a third party to fully control an infected computer: to create, copy, read, delete any files or directories; to track a user's work; to act illegally on the user's behalf; to control bank accounts and so on. The spectrum of what can be achieved is limited only by the imagination of the "Trojan horse" writer.
It is possible to detect an installed backdoor by the use of an anti-virus scanner or through the installation of a firewall that controls the use of the computer's ports.
The main problem is how to determine whether a remote administration program is legitimate or whether it is a backdoor. What is the difference between the infamous "Trojan horse" "Back Orifice" (BO) and the well-known utility "pcAnywhere"? Upon first glance, both of the programs appear to use the same principles to provide remote administration. Why then do anti-viruses utilities define only one of them as a malicious program? The answer is simple: it is not the functionality that is the determinative factor, but rather the installation order and how visible and obvious its presence is in the system.
Let's consider the problem from this point of view: The installation of a full-function utility for remote administration is performed by the appearance of several interactive windows, by a licensed agreement, and by a graphic accompaniment to the process. A backdoor, however, installs itself quietly and invisibly. After the installation file starts, no message appears on the screen that would directly inform the user of the installation. On the contrary, often some signs designed to confuse are displayed to distract the user's attention.
While working on an infected PC, a backdoor does not give any sign of its presence. It is invisible on the taskbar, in the system tray and, in many cases, even on the active process list.
This means remote access can be gained and actions performed to the computers, which remain absolutely imperceptible to users. Legitimate administrators always provide some signals that inform the user of their activity: either in the system tray or in the taskbar, and the signals practically always are seen on the active processes list or among services.
Lastly, any full product has an Uninstall option. It is located in the program tree, which may be used at any time. Backdoors, on the other hand, may be deleted only by an anti-virus utility or by "a surgical intervention" - manually searching and deleting.
Because of the previously described reasons, some utilities, claiming to be a full commercial product, are being considered as backdoors.
The position of Kaspersky Lab Int. is clear: Although these programs may be used for authorised remote administration, the user has to be informed about the presence of such utilities on his/her computer. If the user were aware of the program's presence, the message highlighting its detection would hardly confuse him/her. However, if a backdoor has been installed illegally, neglect on the part of the anti-virus program can only be considered as disregarding user security. | <urn:uuid:cc593343-8f2e-4ec3-81d8-c341521fb089> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kaspersky.com/au/about/news/virus/2000/A_Backdoor_or_not_a_Backdoor_ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704133142/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113533-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964616 | 880 | 2.90625 | 3 |
STUDENTS AND POLITICS
Points: Introduction – Life of the student – Reason for his participation – Whether participation desirable and if so, how far – Precaution to be taken.
The life of a student is the life of devotion to his studies and preparation for facing all the problems that await him in his future life. We expect the students to be confined within the four walls of their educational institutions and don't like that they should participate in politics. For politics according to most of the conservative thinkers, lies beyond the territorial jurisdiction of their alma mater.
It has been pointed out above that the life of the student is not of exclusive devotion to his studies but also of preparation for facing and taking the problems of life to come. In considering the life of the student, therefore, we lay emphasis on the first aspect, totally ignoring the second. As theoretical teaching cannot lead us anywhere without practical knowledge, so also no, preparation for future life on the pan, of the student can be possible unless he is aware of the kinds of problems and their nature that await him in his future life. The conception of confining the student within the four walls of his educational institution is wrong and that he should be allowed to come out to the open, if not frequently, at least now and then. Any attempt to counter this will be not only self-contradictory, but also disastrously harmful for the full growth of the students.
The association of the students in political affairs cannot be overruled. They are intelligent; they are selfless by nature; they love the right and hate the wrong; they are full blooded young men and so they are always ready to lay down their lives for the sake of their ideal, whether it is patriotism or something as noble as that. That is why the students all over the world are now found taking part in all sorts of beneficial movements.
Politics is nourished and nurtured in educational institutions. The students are the cradles of modern political thought. Till yesterday our leaders were active participants in the student politics. How can they oppose the principles which they uphold in their academic career. On the one hand we say that students are the leaders of the future, and they should uphold the confidence reposed in them by the elder generation. But on the other hand, we teach them to desist from active politics. I hardy find any consonance in the two propositions.
The history of Pakistan will show that out students by nature are political-minded; they rise, if need be only for noble causes. The misfortune is this that they are taught politics and called out of their classes by interested people. But when safe or satisfied, these very people deliver sermons, on them that they should be exclusively attentive to their studies.
As a student is a learner, his first and foremost duty is to read and know. But this does not mean that he should be unconnected with and indifferent to the current affairs of the world and especially of his own country. It should not be suggested that the students should be completely away from politics. The only advice that should be given to them is that for all noble causes they should go forward, for they only, as the selfless section of our people, have the heart and ability to do so. | <urn:uuid:c7087780-4549-4df3-906e-116fa52359ef> | CC-MAIN-2014-10 | http://4essay.blogspot.com/2012/08/students-and-politics.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1394023865238/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305125105-00092-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976726 | 667 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Universal Design for Learning and the Role of the Educator
READ MORE:book artist teaching TATIP leadership educator TAP Teaching Artist Project TAP Cohort learning education arts
While in Community-Word Project's Teaching Artist Project (TAP), I have learned that the role of the educator is to have the ability to reach students of all learning abilities and backgrounds. There is a level of power and credibility for a Teaching Artist that can facilitate in all classrooms and allow their art form to resonate with their entire audience.
I recently attended a seminar about Universal Design for Learning (UDL), hosted by Marquis Studios, a nonprofit organization that provides arts education services to New York City public schools. This seminar was centered around the philosophy that the role of the educator is to connect to a variety of students. UDL theories are very similar to TAP's principles of creating lesson plans that encompass and are accessible to the multiple intelligences.
Our facilitator was transparent with his experiences as an educator in New York City public school. In one particular classroom, he had 35 students, all of which were of various ages, spoke a total of 13 languages, and had learners of all kinds of abilities. He explored the importance of creating activities in lesson plans that incorporate movement, sound, and collaboration, which give students artistic agency and allow classes to retain lesson objectives and meet common core standards. The most memorable aspect of this workshop was the closing activity where we created a mural with only Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup as our material. In two separate groups, we collectively created a mural by simply building off one another. This activity is great for students of all ages and learning styles, as it requires participants to be open and relentlessly engage with the chocolate syrup as their main tool. For control freaks like me, this was an opportunity to trust the artistic process of my group. In the end, participants enjoy the chocolate syrup as a treat.
Subsequently, the seminar for UDL acted as an introduction for my experience shadowing Teaching Artists Scott Lilly and Mary Cinadr at P.S 279. This was my first time working with special education students. I was thrilled to witness Teaching Artists that have the ability to effectively implement a universal design for all learning. In this classroom, I noticed that there were supportive paraprofessionals in addition to the Teaching Artists and classroom teacher. I believe the presence of multiple adults allowed each student to access the attention need that they might not receive in a general education classes.
In addition, this was also the day Badu, a fellow TAP member, was facilitating his lesson with the class. The activity called for students to reflect on their current emotions and visualize them in a drawing. There was a student named Benjamin that was sitting apart from the three main tables. I noticed that he couldn’t verbally communicate as clearly when spoken to, but was attentive to the specific colors and the patterns he chose when drawing. I was truly interested in this class and took note of the nuances in this classroom which led me to reflect personally on the stigmas attached to students with special needs when I was growing up. It is possible these stigmas have remained the same. However, I am proud of the work Scott and Mary do when engaging with these students with utmost respect, integrity, and remind students that they are just as deserving of the exposure to the arts.
-Rabih Ahmed, Spoken Word Poet, TAP Graduate | <urn:uuid:33cf5c7e-ce6e-44e4-919e-b8b1cd2da404> | CC-MAIN-2017-47 | http://communitywordproject.org/news-and-events/role-educator,310/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934806086.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20171120164823-20171120184823-00055.warc.gz | en | 0.978802 | 703 | 2.625 | 3 |
What is it?
Aluminum chlorohydrate is a simple form of a group of FDA-recognized aluminum-based salts that can be used to reduce underarm wetness in underarm antiperspirant products. Aluminum chlorohydrate is also widely used in water purification to remove dissolved organic material. Aluminum is the third most abundant element in the Earth's crust behind oxygen and silicon, but, like many of earth’s resources, its supply is finite.
What does it do?
Aluminum chlorohydrate is one of the 18 aluminum-based active ingredients approved by the Food and Drug Association for use in over the counter underarm antiperspirant products1. Our clinical studies show our antiperspirant stick help reduce sweat and perspiration . Aluminum chlorohydrate works by forming a temporary plug within the sweat duct that help reduce the flow of sweat to the skin's surface2. While the aluminum chlorohydrate reduces the amount of sweat on the skin surface, the ingredient also creates a skin environment which is hostile to the growth of malodor-producing bacteria to help reduce underarm odor.
How is it made?
Aluminum chlorohydrate is typically prepared from virgin aluminum, mined and purified from naturally occurring mineral bauxite. This process is very energy intensive, creates greenhouse gases and the mineral supply is finite.
In our antiperspirant products, we use an aluminum chlorohydrate prepared from recycled aluminum (recycled in the USA), which was originally refined and purified from bauxite ore. The recycled aluminum is then combined with hydrochloric acid and water and reacted under controlled conditions to form the aluminum chlorohydrate ingredient.
While efforts have reduced the carbon footprint of primary aluminum production from the mineral bauxite, preparing pure aluminum from recycled sources takes just 8 percent of the energy needed to make primary aluminum from bauxite and was the responsible/sustainable choice to serve as a source for our aluminum chlorohydrate3. Using recycled aluminum reduces energy consumption and greenhouse gas production as compared with sourcing aluminum from bauxite ore and helps to manage depletion of a global finite resource.
What are the alternatives?
There are 18 aluminum-based salts recognized by the US Food and Drug Administration to reduce underarm wetness. These include a number of forms of aluminum-based salts including aluminum chloride, aluminum chlorohydrate(s), and aluminum zirconium salts. Among these options, aluminum chloride is the simplest form but its inherent acidity means that it can be damaging to many fabrics and some may find it irritating to the underarm. Aluminum chlorohydrate is the simplest salt that is not damaging to fabric and is generally well-tolerated on the skin. There are a number of more complex aluminum chlorohydrate salts, as well as aluminum zirconium salts.
Consumers who do not wish to use an antiperspirant product may be interested to know that Tom’s of Maine also produces a line of deodorant sticks and roll-ons, which include a number of aluminum free deodorant options. We feel it is important to offer individuals a choice and trust that they will establish a personal care regimen that is right for them.
Is this the right option for me?
We are aware that many people are concerned with the safety of aluminum-based underarm products as a small number of studies have linked the use of such products with the occurrence of breast cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a part of the National Institutes of Health, are not aware of any conclusive evidence linking the use of underarm antiperspirants and the development of breast cancer.4 Based on a thorough review of all the literature available, and the recommendations of the American Cancer Society and the Alzheimer’s Association, we believe that the use of our product is safe. If you are concerned about the risk of Alzheimer’s or breast cancer, we encourage you to contact your healthcare professional to address your individual circumstances.
As recommended by the FDA, you should consult your doctor about the use of antiperspirant if you suffer from kidney disease. Since the kidneys play an important role in eliminating aluminum from the body, the FDA decided it was prudent to alert consumers who have kidney disease to the fact that their exposure to aluminum from use of antiperspirants might need to be discussed with their physician in order to make sure that the aluminum will not accumulate in the body. As with any OTC product, antiperspirants should be kept away from children.
Tom's of Maine recognizes that no two people are alike, and even with naturally derived ingredients, some individuals may develop an allergic reaction that is unique to them. As with any product, be sure to discontinue use if you experience discomfort or other indications that the product may not be appropriate for your individual body chemistry.
1 21 CFR 350.10
3 Aluminum Association – Environmental Product Declaration – Secondary Aluminum Ingot Issued October 16, 2014 (valid for 5 years) | <urn:uuid:9b6e7022-d9c4-46dd-add7-491e76f39e08> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://www.tomsofmaine.com/our-promise/ingredients/aluminum-chlorohydrate- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593657140337.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20200712211314-20200713001314-00107.warc.gz | en | 0.926232 | 1,017 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Poor interpersonal skills are a leading obstacle to an employee’s advancement, according to an Accountemps survey. Yet only one out of five firms plans to offer training in communication and interpersonal skills. It seems that "what we've got here is failure to communicate."
As a manager, you set the tone for your employees. How can you help to improve communication in the workplace?
Meet in person
If you’ve noticed that miscommunications typically occur when an employee uses email or the phone, start meeting in person. Your employee may have lackluster writing skills, or may not speak or listen well on the phone. All these things can result in misunderstandings.
In addition, employees may be distracted because they’re multitasking — checking email, surfing the Internet or texting while also communicating with you. Mobile devices have hurt workplace communication in a variety of ways, such as texting someone when a call is more appropriate or checking Twitter during meetings instead of paying attention to the discussion. In cases like these, communication in the workplace might be improved if you meet face to face to reduce distractions.
Make sure your employee understands you
Even when you meet a coworker in person, focus on communicating directly without corporate jargon: It’s often confusing and vague. Know the message you want to convey, and say it in the simplest way possible while still being courteous.
Occasionally ask whether you should clarify or repeat anything. You can also follow up spoken conversations with a written summary.
Consider your nonverbal communication
Do you send mixed signals with your body language? In an email, it’s easy enough to add a smiley face emoticon to show your tone. But in a face-to-face conversation, crossing your arms may make you appear defensive. Not looking at employees when they speak may make them feel disrespected, or that you’re not interested in what they’re saying. Instead, give them your full attention: Face your employees in a non-threatening way. Listen to all they have to say. And be an active listener. That means nodding or giving small verbal cues occasionally, without interrupting, to let your employee know that you’re listening — and you understand.
Lead by example
Some of your employees may have a lot to learn about interpersonal and communication skills. That makes it even more important to set the tone for effective communication in the workplace by being a leader who communicates well.
How do you interact with an employee who’s a poor communicator? Or how have you improved communication in the workplace? Let us know in the comments section. | <urn:uuid:6aa1dfe8-0af5-4e90-99f2-2bcc5e915b07> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.roberthalf.com/blog/salaries-and-skills/the-secret-to-overcoming-poor-communication-in-the-workplace-you | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585370497301.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20200330181842-20200330211842-00126.warc.gz | en | 0.938281 | 536 | 2.734375 | 3 |
The aging of the baby boomer generation may be mirrored by the aging of America’s housing stock. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s American Housing Survey finds that the median age of an owner-occupied home in the United States was 35 years old in 2011. This was up from the median home age of 23 years in 1985.
More than 40 percent of the owner-occupies homes in the United States were built before 1969. Homes built from 2000 through 2009 account for only 15 percent of the owner-occupied housing stock.
Aging homes could prove to be a boon for home remodeling businesses. Older homes tend to be less energy-efficient than new homes and generally require more repairs.
Source: The Residential Specialist (March/April 2014) | <urn:uuid:b94b3342-bf45-4580-b0b0-b19658be8120> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://tellicovillageblog.com/2014/04/houses-get-older/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679102469.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20231210123756-20231210153756-00149.warc.gz | en | 0.955673 | 161 | 2.53125 | 3 |
History is made in the present and honoured in the future. Improving quality of life, reinforcing our sense of place and identity – and provide a legacy for future generations is something we can do today. But it does not come by accident. It requires intent.
The MarketTown will be new, but it has studied carefully what makes a place wonderful. Because it is that wonderfulness that future generations treasure. Shopping malls are torn down and no one mourns. Few tourists travel to suburbs to see the architecture. What is it about the wonderful places of the world that we so treasured? For the most part, it is not the patina of age, but the fact that the people who built the place intended to live there and pass it on to their descendants. They decisions were not purely based on ROI (return on investment).
The MarketTown enables people and communities to make the important decisions that will, in a few generations, make it a historic treasure.
In this photo you see two towns that have almost matching scale buildings, but the one in Spain looks authentic, with character. The one in California looks fake. Why? Because the California developer hired a designer but wanted to save money by ordering all the doors and windows from the same mass-production factory. They faked the appearance. Also, note the impact of the pedestrian plaza versus the motor-vehicle street. It changes the core character of the sense of place. | <urn:uuid:2c0077e7-c0b5-4a40-8345-3c592344911d> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | http://markettowns.nz/index.php/component/k2/item/75-4-historic-heritage | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886106358.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20170820073631-20170820093631-00295.warc.gz | en | 0.960341 | 291 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Week Commencing 23rd March
Visit the following website using the user name and password below.
Username: march20 Password: home
Choose the phase 5 tab down the left hand side of the page, you then need to click on the game for Investigating Alternative Spellings /ai/. Work through the activities for this game.
This is the direct link:
Remember you may need an adult to help you.
Visit the following website and create and account in one of the following ways:
Go to assignments and find the Shark book we have chosen to read. Read the book, an adult may need to help you, and then complete the quiz. You can find the quiz by clicking the down arrow at the top of the book and selecting the ??? icon.
You need to have read the ‘Sharks’ book to do this task (see the Reading section above). Write down your favourite facts about sharks under the following headings:
What they look like.
Where they live.
What they eat.
When sharks attack.
Make sure you:
Say your sentence.
Count your words.
Write your sentence using capital letters and full stops.
Read it back to make sure it makes sense.
You might want to include:
Describing words (adjectives).
Words that join sentences such as ‘and’, ‘because’ and ‘so’.
Complete the following number bonds to 10 questions:
How quick can you recall your number bonds to 10?
Play Hit the Button. (https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button )
Click on ‘Make 10’. Send your highest score to Miss Cray or Mrs Hammond. Can you score more than 20? | <urn:uuid:f54f3578-1578-4ba6-9b27-d586fdc69768> | CC-MAIN-2020-24 | https://corporationroadschool.co.uk/class-5-week-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-24/segments/1590348523476.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20200607013327-20200607043327-00081.warc.gz | en | 0.887593 | 374 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Age: 12 - 18
Resource type: case study, guide, presentation, text
Context: compulsory education, continuing education, vocational education
Supported by: Broadcom (formerly CA Technologies)
STEM Alliance proposes a series of online events (webinars and chat discussions) and career sheets that aim to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers with role models. Representatives from companies – partners of the STEM Alliance – are invited to give online and written presentations to inform teachers about possible careers in their companies.
Career sheets serve as an awareness-raising tool for teachers and career guidance officers, as well as providing information for companies’ own awareness-raising campaigns.
This career sheet is about working in a career of a Research Engineer, supported and presented by Broadcom (formerly CA Technologies).
Information in this career sheet relates closely to the context of the professional whose experience the career profile is based on. STEM professions, studies and challenges vary between countries and industry sectors. | <urn:uuid:f0e3dcf7-9c3c-4c2e-9c66-ab24b06b9063> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | http://www.stemalliance.eu/practices/detail?resourceId=22594 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655897027.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20200708124912-20200708154912-00082.warc.gz | en | 0.947 | 201 | 2.734375 | 3 |
We all conduct Reading Conferences with our students and give them regular Reading Goals but are your students aware of what their reading goal is? Do they know how to implement it? Are their parents aware of their reading goals and do they know how to reinforce it at home?
I have created these Reading Goal Reminder Slips with this in mind. My students often forget what their reading goal is and their parents WANT to be informed too!
What you’ll get:
This pack includes 36 various reading strategies/goals which can be differentiated for the varying ability levels and needs of your classroom.
Plus, an editable Powerpoint file for you to create your own reading goals to suit the needs of your classroom.
How to use this resource:
All you need to do is print off the reading goal slips onto coloured card and staple/paste them into your students’ Reading Goals book, GOALS MAT Communication Book or Reading Log Diary.
The next time you ask your students what their Reading Goal is, you won’t get that BLANK look on their face! 😉
Copyright 2018 © MISS JACOBS LITTLE LEARNERS PTY LTD
For more teaching ideas, freebies, resources and updates be sure to FOLLOW ME! | <urn:uuid:be848668-db32-4a80-b2ae-0108fa930452> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.missjacobslittlelearners.com.au/product/reading-goals-reminder-slips/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585370493818.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20200329045008-20200329075008-00122.warc.gz | en | 0.956129 | 262 | 3.28125 | 3 |
You’d think it would be obvious if a person you spend seven days a week with has a weight problem. Excess pounds, after all, are hard to hide. But when it comes to kids, it can be tricky to gauge when pudge is more than a passing stage or a big eater’s “healthy” appetite is anything but.
Over-reacting by focusing too heavily on food or body size can cause unnecessary worry or send the wrong message to a child, while ignoring a potential problem comes with risks, too. Childhood obesity, estimated to affect 18 percent of children, “is a serious illness and it’s a chronic illness,” says Eleanor Mackey, a child psychologist with Children’s National Health System’s Obesity Institute.
Not only does obesity increase a child’s risk for Type II diabetes – once considered solely an adult disease – it also is tied to a greater risk for heart attack, stroke and certain cancers throughout life. “There’s also evidence that [obese children] report a lower quality of life and may have more difficulty with self-esteem and depression,” says Mackey, who often finds parents are unaware of how much their child worries about weight or encounters teasing.
Even children who aren’t obese may be establishing patterns and habits that push them toward obesity — and all of its challenges — in the future. And while habits can be changed and obesity is treatable, “it’s much more easily prevented than treated,” says Mackey. She recommends these five steps for any parent worried about a child’s weight:
START WITH A DOCTOR
A vital first step is checking in with your child’s pediatrician, who will know your child’s history and will be able to provide some key numbers. The most important may be BMI percentile, which is used to show a child’s BMI in relation to other children of the same age and gender. If your child’s pediatrician doesn’t provide this number – many provide height and weight percentiles on well-child visits, but not BMI percentile – ask. Like BMI measures used for adults, BMI percentile isn’t perfect since some children may be more muscular than others, but it’s the best measure we have, says Mackey.
A BMI percentile of 95 or above indicates obesity, while percentiles between 85 and 95 indicate a child is overweight. Obesity requires intervention with a medical professional, but Mackey considers anything above the 85th percentile to be a potential cause for concern. A sudden change in BMI percentile that then persists might also be an indicator that a child is trending toward obesity. Your child’s pediatrician evaluate BMI percentile patterns over time and consider other factors when determining if your child is overweight or obese.
A pediatrician can also offer dietary and exercise recommendations, and can screen for depression, anxiety or self-esteem issues.
COUNT EVERYONE IN; FOCUS ON HEALTH
If you’re going to make changes with your child’s health in mind you’ll do best by making your efforts a family affair. Not only does evidence show that weight-management interventions work better when the whole family participates but counting everyone in will also help you avoid the hurt feelings that may go along with singling out one child.
You’ll also want to focus on health, rather than weight, as you incorporate changes. After all, children with a high BMI percentile may need to focus more on managing their obesity risk than children with a lower number, but “that’s not to say you shouldn’t care about good health if you don’t have a high BMI,” says Mackey.
CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY (OR NOT AT ALL)
Though you may be tempted to have a quiet sit-down with your child about his or her weight, that may not be the best plan of action. With younger children, in particular, the best approach may be to simply begin making changes in diet and activity level without mentioning any worry about weight.
If you do feel the need to address the changes, or if your child initiates a conversation, focus on the family rather than any one individual’s weight. You might say, “We’re not doing a good job as a family of eating healthy food and I think we can do better,” or “I noticed our family seems to sit around on the couch a lot and that isn’t healthy.”
Avoid judgmental words like “skinny” or “fat” – skinny isn’t the goal; healthy is — and focus on the value of creating healthy habits rather than harping on appearance. For older children and teens, especially, that might mean linking good health with being able to do the activities they enjoy.
Studies show that people with higher self-esteem are more likely to successfully make health changes, so it’s important to foster a child’s sense of self-worth, praise them for making healthy changes and remind them they are loved.
Finally, don’t tease about weight or allow teasing by other family members (siblings are sometimes the worst culprits).
MAKE HEALTHY EATING A HABIT
Though we often hear the words “healthy diet,” a refresher of what that means may be in order. One good resource is The USDA’s Choose My Plate, which uses an easy-to-grasp visual to show the makeup of a healthy meal.
Mackey recommends teaching children moderation rather than banning foods outright and ensuring every meal includes fruits and vegetables. You’ll also need to keep an eye on portion control and what goes into your child between meals. “Kids snack a lot,” says Mackey. “Make sure that the quality of their snacks is high.”
A shift in perspective may be in order, too. Although it’s easy for any busy parent to fall into the habit of “just feeding them and moving on,” says Mackey, it’s best if you can view every meal as an opportunity to get good quality nutrition.
That may mean changing unhealthy long-held patterns. If sugary cereals are your kids’ go-to breakfast, start building a habit around a healthier start like peanut butter on toast, says Mackey. Over time, “that can have a really big impact,” says Mackey.
For dinner, aim toward “lean and green” and create three or four easy menus you can reliably turn to in a pinch so that when you walk through the front door at 6:00 p.m., your only option isn’t to pop a frozen pizza in the oven.
And don’t forget, this is a family effort: junk food is junky for everyone. If your soccer player needs extra calories because she burns more, “make sure she’s getting healthy food,” says Mackey. “She can have bigger portions.”
MAKE MOVING A HABIT
Though exercise might be a part of a weight loss program a pediatrician or other medical professional recommends, creating a formal exercise program for most kids probably isn’t the way to go. Instead, look for fun and sustainable ways to build activity into your day. Try regular evening strolls, family dance parties, walking your kids to school or making it a family challenge to always take the stairs instead of an elevator.
The key is to make it a better-health habit or make it fun — preferably both. “Find things they like,” says Mackey. “If it’s something you have to force them to do, it’s not going to work in the long term.”
Antoniades is a Washington Post magazine writer, Date Lab reporter/ matchmaker — and mother of three. Follow her on twitter.
You might also like: | <urn:uuid:dee68b90-45b7-428c-bbaa-2d00b6055d40> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2014/08/11/5-steps-for-any-parent-worried-about-a-childs-weight/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1410657114926.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20140914011154-00211-ip-10-196-40-205.us-west-1.compute.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944089 | 1,684 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Latest Bern photos
These photos were uploaded by members of the Bern community on AncientFaces.
Bern Surname History
The family history of the Bern last name is maintained by the AncientFaces community. Join the community by adding to to this genealogy of the Bern:
- Bern family history
- Bern country of origin, nationality, & ethnicity
- Bern last name meaning & etymology
- Bern spelling & pronunciation
- genealogy and family tree
Bern Country of Origin, Nationality, & Ethnicity
No one has submitted information on Bern country of origin, nationality, or ethnicity. Add to this section
No content has been submitted about the Bern country of origin. The following is speculative information about Bern. You can submit your information by clicking Edit.
The nationality of Bern may be difficult to determine because countries change over time, making the original nationality a mystery. The original ethnicity of Bern may be difficult to determine depending on whether the name came about naturally and independently in multiple locales; for example, in the case of family names that are based on professions, which can appear in multiple countries independently (such as the surname "Bishop" which may have been taken by church officials).
Bern Meaning & Etymology
No one has submitted information on Bern meaning and etymology. Add to this section
No content has been submitted about the meaning of Bern. The following is speculative information about Bern. You can submit your information by clicking Edit.
The meaning of Bern come may come from a profession, such as the name "Miller" which referred to the profession of working in a mill. Some of these profession-based surnames may be a profession in some other language. This is why it is essential to know the country of origin of a name, and the languages used by its family members. Many modern names like Bern come from religious texts such as the Bible, the Bhagavadgītā, the Quran, and so on. Often these surnames relate to a religious sentiment such as "Grace of God".
Bern Pronunciation & Spelling Variations
No one has added information on Bern spellings or pronunciations. Add to this section
No content has been submitted about alternate spellings of Bern. The following is speculative information about Bern. You can submit your information by clicking Edit.
Surnames like Bern vary in spelling and pronunciation as they travel across villages, family branches, and eras over the years. In early history when few people could write, names such as Bern were written down based on their pronunciation when people's names were written in court, church, and government records. This could have given rise misspellings of Bern. Knowing spelling variations and alternate spellings of the Bern name are important to understanding the possible origins of the name.
Last names similar to BernBerna, Bernaabi, Bernaar, Bernaard, Bernaards, Bernaart, Bernaarts, Bernaas, Bernab, Bernaba, Bernabale, Bernabas, Bernabd, Bernabe, Bernabe-agui, Bernabeaoliveras, Bernabe-barahona, Bernabe-carbajal, Bernabe cedeno, Bernabed
Bern Family Tree
Here are a few of the Bern genealogies shared by AncientFaces users. Click here to see more Berns
- Nicolas Benitez Bern 1927 - 1991
- Samuel Bern 1889 - 1966
- Henry Bern 1906 - 1982
- Harry Bern 1909 - 1984
- Rita Bern 1924 - 1972
- Rose Bern 1906 - 1991
- Stella S Bern 1913 - 2004
- Pearl Bern 1938 - 2011
- John Bern 1903 - 1980
- Harold Bern 1886 - 1972 | <urn:uuid:909f8bb4-65c0-458b-871d-15c67b466f43> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.ancientfaces.com/surname/bern-family-history/50909 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1405997890181.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20140722025810-00107-ip-10-33-131-23.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918905 | 768 | 2.59375 | 3 |
This section provides a short description of all the major characters in the book. This can be printed out as a study guide for students, used as a "key" for leading a class discussion, or you can jump to the quiz/homework section to find worksheets that incorporate these descriptions into a variety of question formats.
Richard Enfield - Distant kinsman and a "well-known man about town."
Mr. Guest - Trustworthy head clerk.
Edward Hyde - A diabolical man who wallows in his wickedness.
Dr. Henry Jekyll - Scientist who performs unorthodox experiments.
Dr. Hastie Lanyon - A "healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman" with "a boisterous and decided manner."
Poole - The protagonist's servant.
Gabriel John Utterson - The protagonist's lawyer and friend.(read more)
This section contains 115 words|
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) | <urn:uuid:6975aec6-d1a2-4667-adc2-ad8811358373> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bookrags.com/lessonplan/drjekyllmrhyde/characters.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707434477/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123034-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.866503 | 203 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Many of those affected also describe sensory impairments as part of depersonalization disorder. In most cases it is seeing, hearing and/or feeling/sensing that are limited. As was already mentioned, this is not only the feeling that a particular sense is impaired; rather, those affected experience the impairment in the form of a limitation of the sense in question.
Most of those suffering from depersonalization experience impairments in seeing. Their view is complicated by fog or a veil. Some also see spots, dots or noise in front of their eyes. Mostly the view is limited to a particular field of view (tunnel vision), the borders are only perceived as blurred, unclear or are not perceived not at all.
In addition, many of those affected describe impairments when it comes to spacial seeing. Their environment is perceived as being two-dimensional. For that reason, things can appear closer or further away, or they can seem smaller or larger than they actually are. Furthermore, some of those affected report changes in the color intensity of objects.
For many of those affected, the impairments on the visual level lead to the fact that they are only able to see amidst great effort, meaning they can only perceive their environment amidst significant strain. Their ability to spatially orientate is made more difficult, distances are difficult to judge. Often, things and people are only recognized a bit late. Many of those affected are unsteady while walking, are scared of bumping into something or of falling. The ability to participate in traffic can be severely impaired.
Particularly when it comes to bad light conditions, at dusk or at night or with eyes closed, the symptoms of depersonalization often get worse as in those situations, the visual ability is even less.
Some of those affected describe the visual impairments as being so severe that they have the feeling they are blind even though they can see.
Often, those affected perceive their eyes as static and hardly movable. The constant overstraining of the eyes leads to headaches or pain in the eyes. This particularly affects people who work in visual jobs and hardly move their bodies (academic work, working at the computer…). Many of those affected by depersonalization disorder try relaxing their eyes by looking towards the inside, into “nothingness”. On the short term, this may seem to relax the eyes but on the long term, this increases the feeling of estrangement of the environment. In addition, many of those affected are busy trying to observe themselves rather than trying to perceive their surroundings. This also increases the feeling of detachment.
Often, those affected by depersonalization describe it as helpful when they succeed in distancing themselves from “looking towards the inside” and actually perceiving the outside world. For that it makes sense to keep the eyes moving and not to keep looking statically at one spot for a longer period of time.
A good method to be able to engage with the outside world is to look for different objects or points in the room that have different distances (far away, very far away, a few meters away, very close…) and to fix the eyes on them one by one. Here, it is important to look for objects with clear contours or striking patterns and to concentrate on sharply fixating on them with the eyes. There should be no continuous line between objects. Rather, the eyes should be moved in a staccato rhythm from object to object, while every object is fixated on for a while. This exercise helps against the disturbing two-dimensional perception of the surroundings that is experienced by some people.
If the eyes are overstrained from the ongoing effort of trying to perceive everything well, the feeling of eye rigidity might take place. In such scenarios it is helpful to relax the eyes for a little bit. Also, putting on dark sunglasses are beneficial to relax the eyes, particularly when light conditions are exhausting (blinding light, snow, etc.).
Those affected who wear glasses because of visual impairments often describe it as beneficial to take off their glasses for a short period of time in order to relax their eyes a little.
Of course, stress plays a decisive role when it comes to visual impairments. If stress can be avoided or if it is possible to remove themselves from happenings for a short period of time, the ability to see may improve a little.
For many of those affected by depersonalization disorder, sounds may appear to be dull. For this reason, they often have difficulties in correctly localizing the origin of sounds. Often, they need to listen twice until they know where a particular sound is coming from. In conversations, those affected may often ask about what was being said before being able to properly understand someone. This may lead to shame and to those affected avoiding conversations altogether.
Some of those affected also experience their own voice or other sounds in such an altered manner and in some cases as being so different, that they cannot recognize them anymore. For some of those affected, outside sounds do not reach them so that they have the feeling of being deaf, even though they are able to hear.
As is the case with seeing, it may also be beneficial for those with hearing impairments to concentrate on different sounds in the outside world. Here, 3-4 sounds should be selected in different distances from one another, which are listened to one after another with concentration and awareness.
If the ears are overstrained, it can help those affected to cover the ears with the warm palms of their hands for a short period of time.
Those affected by depersonalization often have a hard time being aware of their physical boundaries due to their altered perception of their body. It can be difficult for them to distinguish between what belongs to their own body and what doesn’t. Pleasant feelings that may be caused by touches or also discomforts stemming from their own body often cannot be felt properly. Some of those affected also report that their ability to feel pain is significantly lowered and that they can hardly feel pain.
Also, the ability to touch may be limited so that those affected have a hard time sensing textures of objects. Others report that since the beginning of their disorder, they have not been able to taste anything properly anymore. All foods and drinks seem bland.
The best way to lessen feeling or sensing impairments is to have rather hard massages of the entire body done either by themselves or by another person. The whole body should be knocked on or squeezed.
Often, those affected can mitigate touching impairments by intentionally touching objects made of different materials and textures.
When it comes to tasting, it is helpful for those affected by depersonalization disorder to experience different tastes, for example by eating and testing herbs or different fruits, sweet and sour, etc. | <urn:uuid:d7e5a195-ba06-4ad8-847e-3270bdcca3ba> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.dp-selbsthilfe.at/en/impairments-of-sensory-perceptions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371662966.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20200406231617-20200407022117-00129.warc.gz | en | 0.973537 | 1,389 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Back to table of contents
Free Radicals, Types, Sources
and Damaging Reactions
Submitted by Dr. Tamer
Free radicals are a chemical species that possess
an unpaired electron in the outer shell of the molecule.
Sources of free radicals
Autoxidation is a by-product
of the aerobic internal milieu. Of the molecules that undergo
autoxidation come catecholamines, haemoglobin, myoglobin, reduced
cytochrome C and thiol. Autoxidation of any of the above molecules
in a reaction results in the reduction of the oxygen diradical
and the formation of reactive oxygen species. Superoxide is
the primary radical formed. Ferrous ion (Fe II) also, can have
its electron stolen from it by oxygen to produce superoxide
and Fe III, by the process of autoxidation (Fridovich,
1983 and 1995).
A variety of enzyme
systems is capable of generating significant amounts of free
radicals, including xanthine oxidase (activated in ischemia-reperfusion),
prostaglandin synthase, lipoxygenase, aldehyde oxidase, and
amino acid oxidase. The enzyme myeloperoxidase produced in activated
neutrophils, utilizes hydrogen peroxide to oxidize chloride
ions into the powerful oxidant hypochlorous acid (HOCl) (Halliwell
et al. 1995).
Is a term used to describe
the process by which phagocytic cells consume large amounts
of oxygen during phagocytosis. Between 70 and 90% of this oxygen
consumption can be accounted for in terms of superoxide production
(Baboir BM; 1984).
These phagocytic cells possess a membrane bound flavoprotein
cytochrome-b-245 NADPH oxidase system. Cell membrane enzymes
such as the NADPH-oxidase exist in an inactive form. It is the
exposures to immunoglobulin-coated bacteria, immune complexes,
complement 5a, or leukotriene, however, which activate the enzyme
NADPH-oxidase. This activation initiates a respiratory burst
at the cell membrane to produce superoxide (Baboir
BM, 1978). H2O2 is then formed from
superoxide by dismutation with subsequent generation of ?OH
and HOCl by bacteria (Rosen
H, Rikata R, Waltersdorph AM, Klebanoff S; 1987).
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Organelles such as mitochondria,
chloroplasts, microsomes, peroxisomes and nuclei have been shown
to generate O2?⁻
and this is easily demonstrated
after the endogenous superoxide dismutase has been washed away
(Asada and Kiso, 1973).
Mitochondria are the main cellular organelle for cellular oxidation
reactions and the main source of reduced oxygen species in the
cell. The leaks in mitochondrial electron transport system allow
O2 to accept a single electron forming O2?⁻
(Kalra et al. 1994; Haliwell,
1995). It has been shown that superoxide production by the
mitochondria increases in two conditions; either when the oxygen
concentration is greatly increased or when the respiratory chain
becomes fully reduced (as happens during ischemia).
Microsomes are responsible
for 80% of the H2O2 produced in vivo at
100% hyperoxia sites (Jamieson
et al. 1986). Peroxisomes are known to produce H2O2,
but not O2?⁻,
under physiologic conditions (Chance
et al. 1979). Although the liver is the primary organ where
peroxisomal contribution to the overall H2O2
production is significant, other organs that contain peroxisomes
are also exposed to these H2O2 -generating
mechanisms. Peroxisomal oxidation of fatty acids has recently
been recognized as a potentially important source of H2O2
production with prolonged starvation.
Transition metals ions:
Iron and copper play
a major role in the generation of free radicals injury and the
facilitation of lipid peroxidation. Transition metal ions participate
in the Haber-Weiss reaction that generates ?OH from O2?⁻
? ?OH + OH⁻
The Haber-Weiss reaction
accelerates the nonenzymatic oxidation of molecules such as
epinephrine and glutathione that generates O2?⁻
and H2O2 and subsequently ?OH.
Ischemia reperfusion injury:
Ischemia confers a number
of effects all contributing to the production of free radicals.
Normally xanthine oxidase is known to catalyse the reaction
of hypoxanthine to xanthine and subsequently xanthine to uric
acid. This reaction requires an electron acceptor as a cofactor.
During ischemia two factors occur, first the production of xanthine
and xanthine oxidase are greatly enhanced. Second, there is
a loss of both antioxidants superoxide dismutase and glutathione
peroxidase. The molecular oxygen supplied on reperfusion serves
as an electron acceptor and cofactor for xanthine oxidase causing
the generation of the O2?⁻and
H2O2. Strenuous exercise has been proposed
to activate xanthine oxidase-catalysed reactions and generate
free radicals in skeletal muscle and myocardium. | <urn:uuid:c64ff625-40bc-4069-8a4e-a1dde00e718c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.doctorslounge.com/primary/articles/freeradicals/freeradicals10.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709135115/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125855-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.832531 | 1,247 | 3.25 | 3 |
Posted Tuesday 4 February 2014
The remarkable decline and fall of Regency rake William Jackson, from Harrow public school boy to penniless alcoholic convict in Australia, has been brought to life nearly 200 years after his death in a highly praised book by Kingston University lecturer Dr Nicola Phillips.
The Profligate Son has been described as ‘a gem of a book' by the Washington Post, while the Wall Street Journal calls it ‘splendid, making an age come wonderfully alive'. Dr Phillips specialises in gender, social and cultural history and first approached the project as a history of inter-generational conflict, but said it soon became clear that this was a uniquely detailed case of family breakdown, in which the very contemporary issue of debt and borrowing had played a key role.
"Most history of this era is about happy families, but what's so amazing about this is that it's such an in-depth portrait of a deeply dysfunctional family, whose total breakdown was almost entirely caused by debt," Dr Phillips explained. "A friend came across a diary in the National Archives about a father's relationship with his son and she thought it might spark my interest as something to investigate. When I got there, I found that there were actually three volumes of diaries in which the father had chronicled every twist and turn of his relationship with his son from the age of 16 to 21."
The profligate son of the book's title is William Jackson, born in 1791, the son of a Devon East India Company merchant, William Collins Jackson, who made his fortune in India. When Jackson returned to England in 1800 he was keen to climb the social ladder and had high hopes for his son keeping the family prominent in ‘polite society'. The law at the time said a father was legally responsible for his son's debts until the age of 21 - a clause that Dr Phillips said young William had exploited with glee as he tried to maintain the lifestyle of his aristocratic schoolmates. When his father had refused to pick up the tab for his wild spending and fast living, the lines of family conflict had been drawn. "In the diaries, William's father had copied out all the letters between them, including notes in the margin to show where he thought his son was lying," she said. "William senior also copied correspondence from his son's school masters, army commanders and lawyers."
Dr Phillips described the story as being like "a real life version of Dickens' Bleak House, based on a court dispute and brought to life by the incredible amount of surviving documents. "Father and son often wouldn't talk to each other - so even when they were arguing and sitting across the table from one another, they still wrote notes," she said. "In one box, I discovered a packet of letters sealed with wax, which had been unopened for 200 years, and I had to ask an archivist at The National Archives to break the seal for me - as a historian, that kind of thing hardly ever happens. It was a wonderful moment."
While Jackson's resolutely no-nonsense attitude towards his son's spending did not increase the likelihood of reconciliation, Dr Phillips said his fury at the world of money lending, easy credit and debt, in which his son became trapped, has clear modern parallels. "He used to rail against the traders who were desperate to offer William credit, but as the alternative was to go to debtors' prison, what did you do and who did you blame - the money lenders who were there to profit from misfortune, The son who couldn't control himself, or the father who wouldn't pay up? It's a similar situation to one many people are facing now," she added.
Having spent time in debtors' prisons and narrowly escaped the death penalty at the Old Bailey on a forgery charge, at the age of 22, William's life reached a new low when he was shipped to an Australian penal colony. This may well have contributed to his father's death around the same time, Dr Phillips said. "His journey out there was on one of the worst hit typhus ships, with a death-rate close to that of slave boats and the subsequent outcry led to changes in the law on the treatment of prisoners," she explained. "William was eventually granted a conditional pardon and married - of all people - the local police chief's daughter, and went into business." But once again, fate had conspired against him, and a newspaper reported that he died a penniless drunk on a Sydney street, aged 36. "He'd been through hell," Dr Phillips stressed. "By the time he arrived in Australia aged 22, he'd already gone grey, he'd been drinking since school, and alcoholism was horrific over there - rum was even used as a common form of currency in the colony."
After spending six years living in the Jacksons' world, Dr Phillips said the book had left its mark on her. "I think the book has made me a more understanding parent," she admitted. "Some of the reviews have said William was just born bad and stayed that way, but I want people to focus more on the personal conflict caused by an unbridgeable generation gap. It's not about apportioning blame it's about observing and understanding a family relationship."
The son and heir of the Jackson family may have driven his father to an early grave, but one positive note was that William's marriage in Australia produced a son and a daughter - and their descendants have already been in touch with Dr Phillips. "Before the book had even been published, out of the blue, I received an email from a woman in Tasmania saying her husband was related to William's daughter," she said. "She'd seen an interview I did with the archivist I was working with, and tracked me down via the internet. It's extraordinary. We know there are more living relatives in England, where the son returned to live, so we're hoping we can fill in a few more gaps and add further people to the family tree." | <urn:uuid:d36a9190-f962-40ed-b766-b097daba95a9> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://www.kingston.ac.uk/news/article/1222/04-feb-2014-family-financial-feud-proves-rich-source-of-inspiration-for-kingston-historian/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593657140746.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20200713002400-20200713032400-00141.warc.gz | en | 0.991502 | 1,229 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Ready Your Home for School
Can you imagine how much easier your life and home schooling would be if all the extra clutter were eliminated from your home and it were clean and organized?
Although organization imposes limits on your behavior, time, and belongings, it is an essential tool for achieving freedom, peace, and plenty.
Household organization will bring many benefits to your family!
Finding a Place for Everything
Before you start the major dejunking process described below, take some time to plan a place for everything you want to keep. This is the foundation of a neat home: “A place for everything and everything in its place!”
Budget your space, much like you would budget your money or your time. Consider the amount of space you have to work with and what you want to do with it.
This is a new way of thinking about your space and belongings – not simply where can I put everything, but what do I need and where do I need it.
7 Steps To Finding a Place for Everything
1. Start by making a list of the functions your house is used for (e.g., sleeping, cooking, washing, eating, playing, visiting, making things, entertaining, studying).
2. Decide the best use of each room as you match it to one or more of the functions. This is also a fresh approach to organizing your home. For instance, two or more children could share a room with bunk beds and free up a room to be used for a your school work and library.
3. Next, write the name of each room at the top of a page and list the uses of that room and what items should be in that room for those needs.
4. Now assign a space in each room for the items needed there.
5. You will need some general storage space as well somewhere in your house for miscellaneous items that don’t fit anywhere else or are being saved for later. This could be either unused space in the rooms, or a separate area in the attic, basement, shed, etc.
6. After you know exactly where each item belongs, print copies of your list. Post them throughout the house (inside cupboard or closet doors), and distribute them to family members. You can also place labels on shelves and in drawers and closets, etc. until habits are firmly established for putting things where they belong.
7. Now you are ready to remove clutter and unneeded items from your home.
One way of getting started might be to check your list for needed items and “go shopping” among your stuff, find them, and put them away. The balance can be discarded as suggested below.
Declutter Your Home with the Four Box Method
Less is really more when it comes to finding a place for everything, and putting – and keeping – everything in it’s place for your homeschool!
Getting rid of unused items in your home and storing little-used ones out of the way will make things a whole lot easier for you all year long!
You might also want to consider paring down the number of toys and clothes that you have (or have in use at any given time). See ideas about how to Simplify Your Kid’s Wardrobes.
The “Four-Box Dejunking Method” below is recommended by many experts to help you identify and dispose of clutter.
1. Get four boxes and label them:
• Throw Away
• Give Away or Sell
• Put Away
2. Clear your home, room by room, and item by item.
3. Make a decision about each item you pick up and place it in the correct box.
4. Schedule time before you stop working each day to appropriately dispose of box contents.
Next: Resources To Help You Get Your House in Order; How To Keep Clutter Out. | <urn:uuid:fbd3e8b1-ab87-4f0b-95d9-df47af66411c> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://northstarindependenthomeschoolers.com/2018/08/08/back-to-school-prep/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251687958.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20200126074227-20200126104227-00099.warc.gz | en | 0.948746 | 802 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Leader of the Opposition
The Leader of the Opposition is a member of parliament who leads the largest party, or coalition of parties, that is not in government.
Choosing the Leader of the Opposition
The Leader of the Opposition is chosen by a vote of the largest non-government party. The Leader of the Opposition can keep their job as long as they are a member of parliament and retain the support of the opposition.
The Leader of the Opposition is sometimes called the alternative Prime Minister, as they may become Prime Minister if their party (or coalition) wins the support of the majority of members in the House of Representatives.
The tasks of the Leader of the Opposition include:
- chairing meetings in which the opposition discusses policies and examines bills (proposed laws)
- presenting alternative policies to those of the government
- selecting members of the opposition to be shadow ministers
- leading the Shadow Cabinet (Leader of the Opposition and shadow ministers)
- acting as the chief opposition spokesperson
- leading the opposition in a federal election.
House of Representatives
When in the House of Representatives, the Leader of the Opposition sits at the central table in front of the opposition and directly opposite the Prime Minister. They take the lead in opposition debate on bills, directing questions to the government during Question Time and criticising government policy that the opposition disagrees with. If the Prime Minister makes a speech to the chamber, the Leader of the Opposition usually receives the right of reply, which means being given equal time to speak on the issue.
The current Leader of the Opposition is the Hon Bill Shorten MP.
Australia has had 31 Leaders of the Opposition.
|Sir George Reid||Free Trade||09.05.1901 – 18.08.1904|
|John Watson||Australian Labor Party||18.08.1904 – 05.07.1905|
|Sir George Reid||Free Trade||07.07.1905 – 16.11.1908|
|Sir Joseph Cook||ANTI-SOCIALIST||17.11.1908 – 26.05.1909|
|Alfred Deakin||FUSION||26.05.1909 – 02.06.1909|
|Andrew Fisher||Australian Labor Party||02.06.1909 – 29.04.1910|
|Alfred Deakin||The Liberal Party||01.07.1910 – 20.01.1913|
|Sir Joseph Cook||The Liberal Party||20.01.1913 – 24.06.1913|
|Andrew Fisher||Australian Labor Party||08.07.1913 – 17.09.1914|
|Sir Joseph Cook||The Liberal Party||08.10.1914 – 17.02.1917|
|Frank Tudor||Australian Labor Party||17.02.1917 – 10.01.1922|
|Matthew Charlton||Australian Labor Party||16.05.1922 – 29.03.1928|
|James Scullin||Australian Labor Party||26.04.1928 – 22.10.1929|
|John Latham||Nationalist||20.11.1929 – 07.05.1931|
|Joseph Lyons||United Australia Party||07.05.1931 – 06.01.1932|
|James Scullin||Australian Labor Party||07.01.1932 – 01.10.1935|
|John Curtin||Australian Labor Party||01.10.1935 – 07.10.1941|
|Sir Arthur Fadden||Country Party||08.10.1941 – 23.09.1943|
|Sir Robert Menzies||United Australia Party/The Liberal Party of Australia*||23.09.1943 – 19.12.1949|
|Joseph (Ben) Chifley||Australian Labor Party||21.02.1950 – 13.06.1951|
|Herbert Evatt||Australian Labor Party||20.06.1951 – 09.02.1960|
|Arthur Calwell||Australian Labor Party||07.03.1960 – 08.02.1967|
|Edward (Gough) Whitlam||Australian Labor Party||08.02.1967 – 05.12.1972|
|Billy Snedden||Liberal Party of Australia||20.12.1972 – 21.03.1975|
|John (Malcolm) Fraser||Liberal Party of Australia||21.03.1975 – 11.11.1975|
|Edward (Gough) Whitlam||Australian Labor Party||27.01.1976 – 22.12.1977|
|William (Bill) Hayden||Australian Labor Party||22.12.1977 – 03.02.1983|
|Robert (Bob) Hawke||Australian Labor Party||03.02.1983 – 11.03.1983|
|Andrew Peacock||Liberal Party of Australia||11.03.1983 – 05.09.1985|
|John Howard||Liberal Party of Australia||05.09.1985 – 09.05.1989|
|Andrew Peacock||Liberal Party of Australia||09.05.1989 – 03.04.1990|
|John Hewson||Liberal Party of Australia||03.04.1990 – 23.05.1994|
|Alexander Downer||Liberal Party of Australia||23.05.1994 – 30.01.1995|
|John Howard||Liberal Party of Australia||30.01.1995 – 11.03.1996|
|Kim Beazley||Australian Labor Party||19.03.1996 – 22.11.2001|
|Simon Crean||Australian Labor Party||22.11.2001 – 02.12.2003|
|Mark Latham||Australian Labor Party||02.12.2003 – 18.01.2005|
|Kim Beazley||Australian Labor Party||28.01.2005 – 04.12.2006|
|Kevin Rudd||Australian Labor Party||04.12.2006 – 03.12.2007|
|Brendan Nelson||Liberal Party of Australia||03.12.2007 – 16.09.2008|
|Malcolm Turnbull||Liberal Party of Australia||16.09.2008 – 01.12.2009|
|Tony Abbott||Liberal Party of Australia||01.12.2009 – 07.09.2013|
|Bill Shorten||Australian Labor Party||13.10.2013 – Present|
*Liberal Party of Australia from 16.10.1944
Note: The Liberal Party is a different party to the Liberal Party of Australia. | <urn:uuid:db0dbbcc-d358-44b9-a4cd-723d85bccc22> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | https://www.peo.gov.au/multimedia/library/pages/0104.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187824931.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20171022003552-20171022023552-00109.warc.gz | en | 0.663977 | 1,390 | 3.625 | 4 |
Foodborne antibiotic-resistant pathogenic bacteria such as Campylobacter jejuni, Bacillus cereus, Clostridium perfringens, Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, Staphylococcus aureus, Vibrio cholerae, and Vibrio parahemolyticus can adversely affect animal and human health, but a better understanding of the factors involved in their pathogenesis is needed. To help meet this need, this overview surveys and interprets much of our current knowledge of antibiotic (multidrug)-resistant bacteria in the food chain and the implications for microbial food safety and animal and human health. Topics covered include the origin and prevalence of resistant bacteria in the food chain (dairy, meat, poultry, seafood, and herbal products, produce, and eggs), their inactivation by different classes of compounds and plant extracts and by the use of chlorine and physicochemical methods (heat, UV light, pulsed electric fields, and high pressure), the synergistic antimicrobial effects of combinations of natural antimicrobials with medicinal antibiotics, and mechanisms of antimicrobial activities and resistant effects. Possible areas for future research are suggested. Plant-derived and other safe natural antimicrobial compounds have the potential to control the prevalence of both susceptible and resistant pathogens in various environments. The collated information and suggested research will hopefully contribute to a better understanding of approaches that could be used to minimize the presence of resistant pathogens in animal feed and human food, thus reducing adverse effects, improving microbial food safety, and helping to prevent or treat animal and human infections.
Keywords: animal feed; antibiotic-resistant bacteria; antimicrobial mechanisms; bacterial SOS response; human food; inactivation; infectious disease; microbial food safety; multidrug-resistant bacteria; organic food; prevalence in food; quorum sensing; research needs; resistant mechanisms; susceptible bacteria. | <urn:uuid:27cced62-ed93-4044-8055-58907ae1d3ac> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25856120/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510368.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20230928063033-20230928093033-00158.warc.gz | en | 0.883202 | 381 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Keeping Your Cat's Weight Under Control
Keeping Your Cat's Weight Under Control
Excess weight contributes to many serious health problems and shortens life, in cats as in people. Except in very rare cases, overweight is the result of overeating. Several factors determine the amount of food your kitten or cat needs:
- Activity level. If your kitty runs and leaps and plays by the hour, he'll need more food than if he's a couch potato.
- Quality of food. The nutritional value and calories in cat foods and homemade diets vary. The more nutritionally dense the food, the less your kitty needs to eat.
- Individual variation. Every cat is an individual with his own looks, personality, and nutritional needs. Two kittens from the same litter can have different nutritional needs even if their activity levels are similar.
Dietary supplements might seem to be a good way to insure your cat's proper nutrition, but excess minerals in the diet can cause serious problems, and overdoses of some vitamins, especially A and D, are toxic. You really can give your kitty too much of a good thing. Ask your vet before supplementing your kitty's diet.
In an ideal world, your cat will stay at a proper weight throughout his life. Realistically, he might pack on some extra fat as time goes by. If your cat starts to get fat (or too thin), adjust his food portions. If you feed a commercial cat food, be aware that the recommended daily serving on the bag or can is a starting point only, and adjust the amount you feed to your cat's needs. If you're not sure his weight is appropriate, ask your vet.
If your cat is fat, he needs to consume fewer calories. If you free feed, put your cat on a schedule so you can control his portions. If you already feed him on a schedule, reduce the amount you feed gradually over a week or so. Another way to reduce your cat's caloric intake is to switch to a lower-calorie food
Does your cat suck up food faster than an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner? To help slow him down, put his kibble in a toy designed to release a few bits at a time as he bats it around. Or toss small amounts of kibble on the floor for him to pick up. You can also place a few clean rocks, 1 to 2 inches in diameter, in his bowl so he has to pick the food from among them. Be sure the rocks are too big for him to swallow!
Feeding on Schedule
Many people free feed their cats, leaving food down all the time and letting their cats eat as they please. Of course, free feeding works only with dry food—canned foods spoil too quickly to be left out for long, and semi-moist foods tend to become gummy and form unappetizing globs. For many cats—and their owners—free feeding works well. For others, scheduled feedings are better.
One good reason to feed your cat measured amounts of food on a schedule is to prevent or deal with obesity. Don't assume that a cat won't overeat—Garfield is by no means the only fat cat around! If your cat begins to put on excess weight, he's eating too much. If you've been free feeding, switch to twice-daily meals, giving him half ration at each feeding. Keep in mind, too, that because the recommended servings on cat food packages are rough estimates and are more than many individual cats need to maintain weight and health, you need to adjust the amount your cat gets every day according to his weight. And remember, small changes in the amount of food can make a difference—a ½-pound weight gain or loss is significant in a 10-pound animal.
If you have more than one cat, scheduled feedings will work best if the cats are on different diets and you need to control who gets what. Even if your cats all eat the same foods, scheduled meals allow you not only to control each cat's portions but also to observe very quickly if one of them stops eating, which can be the first sign of a serious health problem. If you free feed multiple cats, it might be some time before you notice that one has stopped eating normally.
Making the switch from free feeding to scheduled meals isn't difficult, although it will cause some grumping the first few days, as most cats are not amused by change. But whether they think so or not, you're in charge. At bedtime the night before the first day of the new regimen, pick up all food and don't put any out in the morning. At dinnertime, put out the food for about half an hour. If you have more than one cat, supervise the first few meals. If one is a fast eater and wants to “help” with another's food, feed them in different rooms or remove the quick eater when he's finished.
A cat who has been used to munching throughout the day will likely be hungry by dinnertime and eat most of her food, but she might also walk away, thinking the absence of food during the day was a booboo on your part. Even if she hasn't eaten her whole dinner, remove it after 30 minutes and wait until morning to offer more food. In a day or two, everyone will adjust and scheduled meals will be a normal part of daily life. | <urn:uuid:51ad422f-333b-45d6-961a-40cf18117b0c> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://www.familyeducation.com/life/cats/keeping-your-cats-weight-under-control | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251669967.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20200125041318-20200125070318-00519.warc.gz | en | 0.971616 | 1,116 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Psychedelic philosopher Alan Watts may have been right when he wrote that we “cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.” Prescriptions for SSRIs and MAOIs increased more than 400% over a 20 year interval, all with the aim of boosting serotonin levels to promote happiness and reduce anxiety. Yet millions of years of evolution have witnessed a menagerie of venomous animals independently leveraging serotonin for a contradictory effect: the infliction of excruciating pain.
Ninety percent of our serotonin keeps the gastrointestinal system running properly. In the central nervous system, serotonin is responsible for mediating a wide range of feelings including pleasure, contentedness and even appetite and sleep. Antidepressants work by extend the life of serotonin either by blocking enzymes that normally clear it from circulation (MAOIs) or by preventing its reuptake from synapses in the brain (SSRIs). The result is usually a dramatic improvement in one’s sense of well-being.
It’s ironic that an agent of such happiness is equally responsible for so much misery. Subcutaneous injection of even minuscule quantities of serotonin will cause pain sensing neurons called nociceptors to fire wildly. The resulting dump of prostaglandins, bradykinin and substance P results in a state of hyperalgesia; Greek for “above pain.”
No wonder then that so many animals have deployed serotonin in their own defense. The searing pain of a hornet sting is caused in large part by the presence of serotonin in its complex venomous cocktail. So too is the agony inflicted by some sea urchin stings.
Amazingly, the deployment of serotonin in the chemical arsenal of venom cuts a wide swath across invertebrates and even some vertebrates detailed in a new book “Poison: Sinister Species with Deadly Consequences” by Dr. Mark Siddall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York city.
The deathstalker scorpion (Leiurus quinquestriatus) ranges from North Africa to Pakistan. in addition to serotonin, the deathstalker’s venom includes a lethal mix of agitoxins, charybdotoxin, chlorotoxin, and scyllatoxin.
Species of Phoenuetria, including the wandering spiders and banana spiders are feared for their aggressive behaviour. And rightly-so. A huge dose of serotonin allows them to inflict some of the most painful spider bites. Another venom compound, PhTx3, can result in painful priapism.
A lot of the lasting damage caused by the venom-soaked foot-long serrated barb of a blue spotted stingray (Neotrygon kuhlii) is due to flesh liquefying enzymes combined with some serotonin just to make sure it’s painful.
The tenacious bites of Gila monsters (Heloderma suspectum) squeeze venom along grooved lower teeth – which is made only more painful by the presence of serotonin. Other venom components include hypothermia inducing helothermine, and exendin-4 a synthetic version of which is now a blockbuster drug for controlling type-2 diabetes.
The flashing iridescent patterns on each of three species of Hapalochlaena belie a dangerous beauty. A blue-ringed octopus bite comprises a dizzying neuroactive cocktail of serotonin, tryptamine, octopamine, tyramine, and acetylcholine along with a deadly dose of tetrodotoxin.
Curator and Professor at the American Museum of Natural History, Siddall recently curated the “Power of Poison” exhibition, which will be traveling internationally for the coming years. He is is now busy working on two new exhibitions for the spring of 2015: one celebrating animal super powers and another in collaboration with the Carter Center that explores the prospects for global disease eradication. You can buy his new book, “Poison: Sinister Species with Deadly Consequences” here.
All images by Megan Gavin, used with permission. | <urn:uuid:ceeae65c-0b3c-4649-9bcd-96e8e113eac0> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | http://yourhistoryhaven.com/2015/11/serotonin-pleasure-or-pain/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187822747.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20171018051631-20171018071631-00851.warc.gz | en | 0.910853 | 843 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The Hawaii Clipper was a significant technological achievement in the world of commercial aviation. It was such an achievement, that elements within the Japanese Empire were concerned for what was perceived as United States expansion aims into the South Pacific and Asia. They weren’t that far off.
Although Pan Am Airways President, Juan Trippe, was well aware of Japan’s own expansion throughout Asia, his plans to bring passengers and mail to Hong Kong and other Asian destinations was unstoppable (by either his competitors, stock holders or the Japanese). However, with the loss of his star chief pilot “Eddie” C. Musick in a catastrophic fuel tank explosion or a bomb placed within the fuselage, the end of the line was closer than anyone would admit. The explosion of the Samoan Clipper (a Sikorsky S-42B flying boat) and then the loss of the Hawaii Clipper to alleged espionage gave some doubt as to the sustainability of the commercial enterprise.
The NC 14714 Hawaiian Clipper, later renamed Hawaii Clipper, was built by the Glenn L. Martin Company of Baltimore Maryland in the early 1930’s. The M-130 aircraft known to the company as Martin Ocean Transports first flew on December 30, 1934 and became the Concordes of their day. Built for safety, luxury and all metal ruggedness, they became a benchmark for similar aircraft in the years to follow. Only three M-130’s were built and were christened Hawaii Clipper (NC-14714), Philippines Clipper (NC-14715) and China Clipper (NC-14716).
The Hawaii Clipper had the honor of being the first transpacific passenger service of an airline that actually generated revenue on October 21, 1936 between Alameda California and Manila Philippines. The flying boat went on to have a remarkably incident-free time in the skies of the Pacific but it was cut short on July 29, 1938. Although flight #229 started off normal enough in Alameda on July 23, the closer the ship got to Japanese held territories the greater the danger the passengers and crew could experience.
From California, flight #229 took the Hawaii Clipper and its twelve passengers to Honolulu. Among the well-to-do passengers were nine highly experienced crew members with very impressive credentials. When it came to the creme of the crop, Pan Am Airways had a reputation of hiring the best. Whether they be a steward or pilot, mechanic or navigator, they were the best tops of their trade in the most advanced passenger aircraft in the world.
Having left San Francisco Harbor a little after 3:00pm Pacific time, the clipper arrived in Perl City Hawaii a little after 8:00 in the morning of the 24th. They had flown 2,410 miles non-stop and it was always the most dreaded as it was the longest and most lonesome of all the legs from the US to China. After a night’s stay in Honolulu, the trip continued, but only for six passengers. These six passengers, along with the remaining seven man crew, would press on to Midway Island and eventually, Hong Kong.
The Hawaii Clipper was the Concorde of it’s day providing private travel for the ultra-elite and wealthy. It might also have been an observation tool of the US Navy in the areas under Japanese control. The luxurious journey certainly set a level of prestige many in the world could only dream of but few could experience. | <urn:uuid:99608846-2452-4fe8-a27c-a5d3738dc3a1> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://lostclipper.com/about/synopsis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593657169226.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20200716122414-20200716152414-00238.warc.gz | en | 0.979085 | 712 | 2.890625 | 3 |
ALEX Lesson Plans
Subject: Social Studies (9 - 12)
Title: How Values Affect Career Choices
Description: Students will take a short online assessment of their own work-related values and note how differing work values affect their selection of occupations.
Subject: Social Studies (9 - 12), or Technology Education (9 - 12)
Title: Report the Trials: Salem Hysteria
Description: Students will act as a radio/TV reporter informing the public of the hysteria of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. Within partners/groups, students will create a podcast/vodcast connecting Puritan life and culture with the events in Salem.
Thinkfinity Lesson Plans | <urn:uuid:692ec854-8fb6-49f2-91c8-658d73257b6e> | CC-MAIN-2014-15 | http://alex.state.al.us/plans2.php?std_id=44593 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1398223204388.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20140423032004-00436-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.838596 | 140 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Environmental Monitoring Key to Quality
A key component of every food processor’s quality program is environmental monitoring. The number of choices available to accomplish this goal can be overwhelming, but one thing is clear: the rapid detection of contaminants is critical and allows for immediate corrective action to avoid product contamination. Because of the importance of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) testing in an environmental monitoring program, selection of an accurate and reliable ATP system is essential. Not all ATP systems are alike, and many have inherent limitations to their swab and instrument design, which adds variability to the testing results.
Emphasis on Accuracy
Accuracy is fundamental in the LIGHTNING MVP® from BioControl Systems, an ATP bioluminescence monitoring system. The instrument is designed to be taken on the plant floor as the ability to withstand temperature variation, vibration and humidity—which can affect results—is built into its rugged design.
For the system to provide accurate and valid results, the instrument and sampling device (the key components of every ATP system) work together. This instrument is optimized to the specific chemistry contained in its sampling device, so that readings are accurate and consistent. The system also includes external calibration standards for high and low levels of light output that can be used to validate that the instrument is properly calibrated, or recalibrate if necessary. Positive controls are also available to verify the efficacy of the sampling device, assuring the accuracy of the entire system.
Additionally, this system has been designed to accurately report results from all surface types, including those containing residues left by cleaning or sanitizing chemicals. Some sanitizers can interfere with the ATP reaction by quenching the fluorescent signal, resulting in low readings, and potentially generating “false negative” results. The instrument contains a reagent chemistry that neutralizes the effect of sanitizers, ensuring accurate and consistent readings across all surface types and conditions.
Training and Certification
Training sanitation or quality assurance employees on the proper use of ATP instrumentation, sampling techniques, analysis and trending software, etc., is essential to the success of any program, especially one that derives its value from trending. Training of staff can be challenging, as the training must be accessible to all staff on all shifts and, if there is turnover, must be available quickly. BioControl has recognized training as a key success factor and has developed on-line training and certification for the LIGHTNING MVP system. This training can be accessed 24/7 through the company’s training Web site. Users can choose to take an on-line quiz upon completion of the training to receive certification, allowing for regular and consistent retraining and documentation for HACCP compliance and ensuring that a plant’s hygiene monitoring program runs smoothly and efficiently.
In addition to measuring ATP levels on surfaces of clean-in-place rinse-water systems, this monitoring system also has the ability to measure and record sanitizer or cleaning chemical concentration levels, pH, temperature and conductivity. The test results are automatically saved on the instrument and easily uploaded for storage and analysis. A plant may use one or all of these measurement capabilities, depending on its needs.
Not only can a multi-parameter monitoring tool increase a plant’s efficiency, it can also save money through one of its measurement parameters, the ability to measure sanitizer and cleaner concentrations. Using sanitizing and cleaning chemicals at the correct concentration is vital to their efficacy. Regardless of how well trained an employee is, traditional measurement technologies for chemical concentration have drawbacks that affect accuracy. Inaccuracy can create a food safety issue when a solution is too dilute and a cost-containment issue when a solution is too concentrated.
Titration kits and test strips require subjective interpretation of a color change and therefore are only accurate to ±25%, resulting in under-mixed solutions and causing the cleaning or sanitizing solution to be ineffective. Conversely, over-concentrated solutions waste chemicals. With sanitizing and cleaning chemicals being such a large budget item, overuse of even 10% amounts to a significant, unnecessary expense.
The method available with this monitoring system utilizes conductivity to ascertain solution strength. Because conductivity increases in a linear fashion as concentration increases, the method can be used to derive highly accurate concentration measurements. To perform measurements using this method, a reusable electronic probe is calibrated by reading both an “ideal” sanitizer or cleaning mixture and the water used to dilute the concentrate, thus establishing a baseline. Subsequent chemical solutions are then compared to this baseline and readings reported in parts per million. The concentration readings taken by this method are accurate to ±5%, a significant improvement over the accuracy of strips or titration kits.
The LIGHTNING MVP is an ATP system designed to meet the most rigorous requirements of food processors. BioControl’s approach to designing accuracy and reliability into each component of this system, combined with the system’s multifunctional aspects, makes it an accurate and reliable solution for any environmental monitoring program. | <urn:uuid:528fc03e-d2ba-49a8-bacf-5dc6deeef107> | CC-MAIN-2014-15 | http://www.foodsafetymagazine.com/magazine-archive1/februarymarch-2010/food-safety-insider-sanitation-solutions/environmental-monitoring-key-to-quality/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1397609540626.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20140416005220-00204-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930702 | 1,028 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Snow is cold
Name: Janette L Gubala
Why is snow cold?
I would try to answer this question with another question: why is your house
cold in the wintertime if you shut off your heat supply? Even though you are
not running the air conditioning, the environment outdoors in the area north
of the equator is colder in the winter because the Earth's tilt
results in areas north of the equator receiving comparatively LESS solar
energy (energy from the sun). The cold from the outdoors leaks into your
house, or rather the heat which IS in your house leaks out, regardless of how
good your insulation happens to be.
The colder environment which results from the lower level of solar energy in
the northern latitudes serves as the basis for formation of snow. In a warm
environment the precipitation falls as rain. Make the area colder, and
provide the appropriate meteorological conditions and you get snow.
You might try asking this question in the physics section. The discussion of
temperature is an interesting one, often it appears theoretical. We do,
however, by definition, accept "warm" as describing something which has less
energy that "hot" but more energy than "cool" and "cold."
Click here to return to the Environmental Science
Update: June 2012 | <urn:uuid:2cb0bcda-50da-4c04-84d4-45498dc5cd07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1995/environ/ENV026.HTM | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701943764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105903-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941881 | 274 | 3.078125 | 3 |
From Curiosity and Creativity in Children (OpenEducation.net blog):
Professor Steven Dutch takes very strong exception to the assumption that curiosity is innate… In his eyes children are not innately curious. Instead, they are tinkerers with generally short attention spans.
…“curiosity and creativity collide headlong with another trait deeply rooted in biology, the desire to minimize effort and expenditure of energy.”
This rings true for me, but note that in his direct quote, he’s not saying curiosity doesn’t exist, just that it’s overstated, and opposed by other forces. (Read a book or eat an ice-cream? Watch a documentary, or a cartoon?) And this is a highly relevant question for open educators, in terms of how we engage people.
When I refer to open education, I include projects such as Appropedia and Wikipedia, in the broad sense of offering education to all of society.
So how has Wikipedia engaged people and garnered such an enormous community of contributors? Here’s one thought: Although most of us might lack general curiosity, almost all of us have areas of curiosity. And in Wikipedia, they almost certainly have an article on your area of curiosity (and possibly a whole category structure) where you can learn more, and also share what you know.*
There is curiosity there. Those of us building community for collaborative projects just have to find it, and tap into it.
*I was going to add “and if there isn’t an article, you can create one!” but that’s not so easy on Wikipedia any more. Appropedia is still very open, because it’s newer and has different aims, different criteria, and a different approach to community. | <urn:uuid:cc0ab12c-e11b-4409-a605-9ca25842c9f6> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | http://blogs.appropedia.org/tag/open-education/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886117519.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170823020201-20170823040201-00659.warc.gz | en | 0.960768 | 366 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Courtesy of EarthSky
A Clear Voice for Science
Silvery-blue Spica, the only prominent star in the constellation Virgo, acts as your guide to the Omega Centauri globular star cluster. To the unaided eye, Omega Centauri looks like a fairly faint (and possibly fuzzy) star. Very few of the Milky Way galaxy’s 250 or so globular clusters are readily visible without optics.
To find Spica, extend the curve of the Big Dipper handle, as illustrated on our April 4 EarthSky Tonight. Spica transits – climbs to its highest point in the sky – around midnight tonight. Spica’s precise transit time for your sky is available at the US Naval Observatory. Spica – like any star – transits 4 minutes earlier with each passing night.
As seen from mid-northern latitudes, Spica and Omega Centauri transit due south in concert. Look for Omega Centauri about 35 degrees directly below Spica. (A fist at an arm-length approximates 10 degrees.)
People living south of 35 degrees north latitude have a realistic chance of spotting Omega Centauri, though it’s been seen as far north as Point Pelee, Canada (42 degrees north). Best appreciated with a telescope, Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest of all globular star clusters, is a globe-shaped stellar city, teeming with millions of stars!
Written by Bruce McClure
Other Links:Print This Post | <urn:uuid:b99de165-2ee7-4e11-8cbe-89a19bd130c6> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.berthoudrecorder.com/earthsky-tonight-%E2%80%94-april-18-spica-your-guide-star-to-omega-centauri/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510257966.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011737-00099-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.86617 | 298 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Can you think of a time when you couldn’t find any food to buy or eat? Believe it or not, a little over 100 years ago, there were a lot of people in the United States who didn’t have enough to eat. Food was not widely available. There weren’t multiple grocery stores in every town, and they certainly didn’t have 24 hour convenience stores.
In 1862, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was created. From its conception, it has served two roles: the first is to ensure a sufficient food supply by monitoring and promoting agriculture in the United States; the second is to issue dietary advice. These two directives complemented each other nicely at the time, because nutrient deficiencies and malnutrition were prevalent health concerns. Leading causes of death at the turn of the century were infectious diseases such as pneumonia and tuberculosis. Roughly the same number of people died every year from diarrheal diseases as from heart disease. The USDA began educating the public to eat more, to prevent hunger and ensure that people were getting all the nutrients and calories that were needed for health.
Eat More Versus Eat Less
Today we live in a day and age where people need to eat LESS. Food is much more widely available, and with greater variety. Additionally, unhealthy junk foods are available that didn’t even exist 100 years ago. Diseases that effect the majority of the population like heart disease, type II diabetes and obesity have causational roots in eating too much, especially too much of wrong foods. The problem is that if the USDA were to encourage people to eat less, the food companies that they are supposed to be supporting would potentially sell less food. The two roles of the USDA are in conflict with each other. This creates a bias within the organization that has lead to questionable dietary guidelines. Marion Nestle provides an in-depth look at this shift from “eat more” to “eat less” in her book, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. We, at Bonfire Health, strongly encourage you to read this book in order to better understand the food industry’s influence over current dietary guidelines. We also recommend Academy award nominated film, Food Inc. which exposes the fact that oftentimes, the food policy leaders at the USDA are former food and agriculture executives, and therefore have ulterior motives behind their policies.
Cause For Concern
The amount of food that the USDA advises that we eat is not the only concern. There are also problems with the kinds of food that we are encouraged to eat. Studies show that sugar, certain kinds of saturated fats and simple carbohydrates like bread and pasta are unhealthy and promote chronic diseases like heart disease, obesity and type II diabetes. Large food corporations have opposed USDA dietary guidelines that directly convey these dietary risks. Highlighting risks associated with eating such foods would result in less income for the producers of these foods. Many of the people at the USDA who are responsible for editing dietary guidelines have close ties with the food industry. For instance, high level positions at the USDA have habitually been filled by former executives of the American Meat Institute and lobbyists for the National Cattlemen’s Association. Many political players have also been employed by the grain and meat industries. The film, Food Inc., highlights a few instances:
- Former North Carolina State Senator, Wendell Murphy is now on the Board of Directors at Smithfield, Inc., the largest pork manufacturer in the U.S.
- Monsanto is one of the largest agriculture companies in the US. Margaret Miller was a Chemical Lab Supervisor at Monsanto, and then went on to become the FDA’s Branch Chief. She has maintained that position since 1989.
- Linda Fisher was formerly the Vice President of Government and Public Affairs at Monsanto, and then went on to become the Environmental Protection Agency’s Deputy Administrator.
- Michael Taylor went from being a Monsanto client to becoming the Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the FDA, and then went to work for Monsanto as Vice President for Public Policy.
There is clearly a concern that people who have strong ties to the food industry would have trouble making unbiased decisions about our food as policy makers.
The Gap Between Research and Dietary Guidelines
The American Heart Association sponsored research on dietary fat and atherosclerosis in the 1950s and 1960s, and recommended that people reduce calories from fat in order to reduce the risk of getting heart disease. This meant eating less factory farmed meat and less dairy. Scientific reports from the National Academy of Science’s Board of Agriculture, the Surgeon General, and the Food and Nutrition Board all echoed that eating less fat, salt and cholesterol were necessary. Following these similar research findings, beef, whole milk and egg sales declined. The National Cattlemen’s and Beef Association and the American Dairy Association were outraged and they pressed for a revision of the dietary guidelines. Changes included “avoid too much” being changed to “choose a diet low in” and changing “choose lean meat” to “have 2 or 3 servings of meat.” The committee commented that “any food that supplies calories or nutrients should be recognized as useful in a nutritious diet.” Not only do most Americans not eat particularly nutritious diets, but statements like these put all foods on the same level as useful. As the federal organization responsible for educating the public about nutrition, helping people learn how to distinguish more healthy foods from less healthy foods should be a main focus. Guidelines like these only confuse the public. Bonfire Health makes it easier for you to be healthy by laying out clear-cut recommendations. Click here to see our dietary guidelines.
The Food Pyramid
The Food Pyramid was created in order to educate the public about what kind and how much food should be eaten every day. The first food pyramid was set to be released in 1991. It was blocked by the USDA Secretary because he felt it was “confusing to children.” This reason seemed so absurd that many people wondered if he was actually under pressure from the meat industry. The Food Pyramid was certainly not thrown together, last minute. The original Food Pyramid had been in development for 11 years. During that time, consumer research was done on different age groups and different income levels to determine if the pyramid display was able to clearly communicate to different audiences. It was successful in focus groups. Marion Nestle further explains the development of the Food Pyramid:
“The 1990 Dietary Guidelines brochure incorporated the Pyramid serving numbers, thereby granting them status as official components of federal nutrition policy. In 1990 and 1991, HNIS sent drafts of the Pyramid booklet to 36 leading nutrition experts for review, presented at 20 professional conferences, and discussed the guide with more than 20 newspaper, magazine, radio and television reporters…they met with 30 publishers to arrange substitution of the Pyramid for older guides in forthcoming texts…Furthermore, HNIS had submitted the manuscript of the Pyramid brochure to the entire USDA bureaucracy through its exhaustive review and “clearance” procedures. A committee representing ten USDA units as well as DHHS had thoroughly vetted the Pyramid; the brochure had successfully passed six levels of USDA policy review and three divisional reviews.” – Marion Nestle, Food Politics.
Right before it was set to be printed and released to the public, a few news stories emerged that implied that the Pyramid suggested eating less meat. That same weekend, the National Cattlemen’s Association had their annual meeting. They were outraged. They, along with the National Milk Producers’ Federation, demanded that the Pyramid be withdrawn. The head of the American Meat Institute wrote a letter to the Secretary of the USDA. And surprisingly, the Pyramid was withdrawn, citing a concern about school children’s ability to understand it. Many news stories were released, insisting that the pressure from the food industries was the real reason. And the researchers in charge of developing the food pyramid agreed.
The USDA did extensive research in the following year with school children. They tested other graphics, such as pie charts, bowls and shopping carts. Over $855,000 was spent on this research. None of the other designs were found to be more effective than the Pyramid. The press kept a close eye on the studies. One year after it was blocked, the Pyramid was released. However, some additional changes had been made. The words “at least” were included before the meat and dairy servings, and the meat servings had been increased from 4-6 ounces to 5-7. It became the most widely distributed nutrition advice ever published.
A New Food Guide
After all we have learned about factory farmed meat and fish, the value of eating organic foods, and the disease-ridden consequences of eating refined sugars, grains, and processed foods, we at Bonfire Health suggest some new nutrition advice. This advice is not the result of lobbying and sponsorship from the food industry, and it’s not influenced by politics. It is based simply on how to become as healthy as possible and avoid chronic illness. Our guidelines have been used for thousands of years and are backed by scientific evidence. And best of all, they are simple and easy to understand:
- Eat vegetables!! Eat a lot of them, eat them often, and eat many different kinds of them.
- Eat seeds and nuts and berries.
- Eat healthy fats with every meal. For more info on fat, please read Fat Is Good
- Eat healthy meats and seafood.
- Supplement your diet with high quality vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids to make sure you are getting all the nutrients you need to be healthy. | <urn:uuid:d7403b0a-75ac-4188-9653-b28aacd6993d> | CC-MAIN-2017-47 | http://bonfirehealth.com/dietary-guidelines-food-pyramid-usda/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934806660.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20171122194844-20171122214844-00543.warc.gz | en | 0.973243 | 1,971 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Cultivate the "Right" Kind of Algae
Algae are photosynthetic life forms lacking specialized cells typical of true plants (i.e. vascular structures, leaves, and roots). Algae can multiply rapidly as long as their basic needs are met. They are highly adaptable and thrive almost anywhere with a light source and an abundant source of nutrients – both present in many marine aquariums. Due to their success, most algae grow to nuisance proportions rapidly, spreading stubbornly as you watch helplessly.
Macro Versus Micro
Many hobbyists are now taking advantage of the efficient nutrient exporting ability of algae and are purposely cultivating certain types of macroalgae to help improve saltwater quality as well as combat less desirable species of microalgae. Macroalgae are large beneficial algae that actively utilize harmful ammonia, host beneficial microbes that improve biological filtration, and serve as a food source for fish. Some macroalgae, because of their beauty, also make attractive décor.
Cultivating "Good" Algae
Select species of macroalgae, such as Chaetomorpha sp. are grown in specialized areas of the sump or in refugiums. Refugiums are a great place to establish macroalgae since they are protected from hungry herbivores and are easier to manage. Macroalgae growth is contained in the refugium and excess growth can be easily clipped as necessary. The clippings can be fed to herbivorous fish. This process prevents macroalgae from aggressively spreading in your main display.
Since most sumps or refugiums converted for macroalgae growth (also known as "algae scrubbers") are located underneath the main aquarium, it is important to provide a separate light source for the macroalgae. A fluorescent strip light on for 10-14 hours a day provides sufficient light without encouraging over-aggressive growth.
The use of a timer automates the light schedule to make it easier to regulate the proper photoperiod. If you have plants in your main aquarium, run the lights above the algae scrubber on a reverse schedule of the main aquarium lighting. The staggered lighting schedule provides the added benefit of stabilizing pH and maintaining a higher oxygen level at night.
The careful cultivation of macroalgae harnesses the power of nature to prevent the growth of more noxious forms of algae as well as maintaining a healthy and stable aquarium. | <urn:uuid:b65d2ded-5481-43fc-b7fc-a2bb978f1003> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://www.liveaquaria.com/article/254/?aid=254 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224648322.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20230602040003-20230602070003-00265.warc.gz | en | 0.929543 | 500 | 3.359375 | 3 |
In the early 1960s, thousands of babies were born with malformed limbs as a result of their mother taking thalidomide – a drug used to treat morning sickness. The tragedy rocked the medical establishment and made doctors wonder what other drugs might have foetus-harming effects. Continue reading
The UK has the fourth highest prevalence of drinking in pregnancy in the world. This puts a significant number of people at risk of a group of conditions known as foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Until now, though, the prevalence of FASD in the UK has not been known. Continue reading
Eating fish while you’re pregnant does not increase the chance that your child will be autistic or have autistic traits, our latest study shows. In fact, our study suggests that fish may be beneficial for the development of a healthy nervous system.
A possible link between mercury exposure and autism has been the subject of much debate over the years. In pregnancy, mercury travels in the mother’s blood through the placenta and into the foetus, where it acts as a toxin, affecting the development of the foetal nervous system. Continue reading
As soon as women find out they’re pregnant, they are overwhelmed with information about what they can – or more likely can’t – eat and drink. Off the menu go soft cheeses, partially cooked eggs, raw meat, pâté, liver, caffeine, alcohol. It’s a lot to remember.
But the advice on eating fish when pregnant is the by far the most complex. Does it need to be so complicated? What is the actual evidence of the risks and benefits of eating fish for a mother-to-be? Continue reading | <urn:uuid:ca1c7b93-8151-4db0-9c8f-738d460a5a72> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://policybristol.blogs.bris.ac.uk/tag/pregnancy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506420.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922134342-20230922164342-00142.warc.gz | en | 0.957297 | 355 | 2.671875 | 3 |
February 19, 2007) — Fear and misconceptions can prevent families from embracing adoption and discourage the community from supporting adoptive families.With more than half a million children in foster care or group homes in America, and about 115,000 waiting for families, adoption is vital. Each year a child spends without a family decreases that child's chances of being placed. The average age of a child freed for adoption in the United States is 13.
Children of all ages deserve permanent, stable families. Misconceptions must be erased for more teens to find families before they "age out" of the system and try to live independently.
Here are some common adoption misconceptions:
Adopted children have more problems than biological children and are harder to raise.Most people have heard horror stories about adoption. The news focuses on extreme or heart-breaking stories. The reality is that parenting is difficult, whether your child possesses your genetic makeup or not. "None of us can predict where our children's journeys will take us — be they birth or adopted children," says Maryjane Link, executive director of Children Awaiting Parents, a national, nonprofit adoption organization based in Rochester. "We only know we need to give children in foster care a chance for a real family life — forever."
Only rich people can afford to adopt.Forming a family is a costly, challenging process — by childbirth or adoption. However, funds are available to assist adoptive families.
Only the traditional, two-parent household can adopt.The ideal adoptive parent(s) are those who plan to love, support and protect their child forever. All prospective families who fit that guideline are encouraged to offer children homes, whether the family consists of a single woman or man, an older couple, same-sex couples, couples with children, singles with children or those who have been divorced.
If a child does not instantly bond with the family there is something wrong with the family or the child.Although bonding may come quickly, children who have been abandoned need time to understand that this family will stay with them forever. Parents need to know that an adjustment period is natural and that the child may test the parents to see if they are serious about their commitment.
Birth parents will always be a threat.Once an adoption is finalized, the family is connected by law; it would be just as difficult for a biological child to be taken from his or her home. By the time a child is freed for adoption, birth parents have had many chances to conserve their family. Disruptions because of birth parents, although highly publicized, are extremely rare.
Although the child's birth parents are no longer able to care for them, they will forever be a part of that child's history. It is natural and important for a child to talk about biological roots with their adoptive family.
Adoption is second-best.Children join families for many different reasons. The most important reason for adoption or childbirth is a parent's desire to create a loving family. Adoption may be a second idea for creating a family, but it is never second best. Families who adopt are doing so for the same reasons that families give birth — they want to be parents.
Once you adopt you are on your own.The good news for parents is that after adopting there are many post-adoption services available to help them adjust and care for their child. Parent support groups, financial assistance, therapy, workshops and books are very popular and help equip parents with useful tools to handle the good and the bad.
Marciano is media and events coordinator, Children Awaiting Parents Inc. | <urn:uuid:dc1db9c2-e8ea-4218-a458-43deb1b43d39> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | http://amyadoptee.blogspot.com/2007/02/fear-and-misconceptions.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886126017.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20170824004740-20170824024740-00075.warc.gz | en | 0.963994 | 728 | 2.65625 | 3 |
When a specific date is used as subject or object (instead of time adverbial), should I use present tense, or tense based on the date, or tense based on other context?
Today is 4/17. 4/7 ____ 10 days ago.
Today is 4/17. 4/27 ____ 10 days ahead.
I am under an impression that 'was' is correct for #1, but for #2 'will be' sounds strange to me.
When the date is used as the object, it is even more confusing to me:
The deadline ____ 4/7, which ____ 10 days ago.
The deadline ____ 4/27, which ____ 10 days ahead.
Again I have a feeling that for #3 I should use 'was' because the subject (the deadline) is something happened in the past, however, for #4 using 'will be' suggests the deadline is not yet finalized at the time the statement was made.
Enlighten me please! | <urn:uuid:9451e632-5a8d-44fc-aa36-feefc2582bab> | CC-MAIN-2020-10 | https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/54975/which-tense-to-use-for-a-specific-date | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875145654.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20200222054424-20200222084424-00050.warc.gz | en | 0.944412 | 211 | 2.59375 | 3 |
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