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Scientific name: Xiphophorus maculatus
A popular, hardy species, the Platy grows to two inches and is available in a wide variety of colors. As with all live-bearers, they will breed freely in a community tank, but the young are almost always eaten by tankmates.
These fish do best at a water temperature between 70 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit and a pH of 7.0 to 8.2, in water that is moderately hard. All flake and freeze-dried foods are eaten, but flake foods high in vegetable content must also be provided. Small amounts of algae in the tank will also be eaten.
To learn more about freshwater aquariums, see: | <urn:uuid:92d07120-1fa2-4033-9ec8-2fd7803a781e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://animals.howstuffworks.com/pets/platy.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947936 | 146 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Language is a uniquely human ability. The average person's vocabulary consists of about thirty thousand words, although there are individual differences in the ability to learn a new language. It has long been believed that language acquisition depends on the integration of the information between motor and auditory representation of words in the brain, but the neural mechanisms that lie behind learning new words remained unclear.
Now, a study made by researchers from the group of Cognition and Brain Plasticity at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the University of Barcelona, with the collaboration of researchers from the King's College of London, provides information on neural pathways involved in word learning among humans. The key is in the arcuate fasciculus, a bundle of nerve fibers that connects auditory regions at the temporal lobe with the motor area located at the frontal lobe, in the left hemisphere of the brain. Individual differences in the development of connections in this bundle condition the ability to learn new words. The results of the study are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The study involved 27 healthy volunteers. Researchers made them listen nine artificial trisyllabic words with no meaning associated and with structures similar to the words of the Spanish language. Between each word there was a 25 millisecond pause, imperceptible but enough to help the learning of words in fluent speech. The nine words were randomly repeated 42 times.
In order to acquire additional information on the brain structure and function two noninvasive MRI techniques were used.
Before carrying out the task of word learning, researchers registered structural brain images using a technique called diffusion tensor imaging. This technique, very innovative, allows to reconstruct a posteriori the white matter fibers that connect the different brain regions. In addition, while participants listened to the words, the researchers recorded their brain activity using functional MRI, which can detect very accurately, in real-time, the brain activity and, therefore, the regions that are most active when the individual performs a given task.
After this phase of language learning, participants heard a series of words and asked to identify those who had heard during the learning phase.
The researchers found a strong relationship between the ability to remember words and the structure of arcuate fasciculus, which connects two brain areas: the territory of Wernicke, related to auditory language decoding, and Broca's area, which coordinates the movements associated with speech and the language processing.
The participants who were able to learn words better, had the arcuate fasciculus more myelinated, according to a correlation analysis with an indirect index of the content of myelin in nerve fibers. Furthermore, the synchronization between the activity of the regions connected by this fasciculus was higher in these participants.
Different connection models
The first author of the article, Diana López-Barroso stresses that the research sheds new light on the unique ability of humans to learn a language, since there are different connection models between these brain regions in other species.
In addition, Lopez-Barroso, explains that the study may be useful in the rehabilitation of people with injuries at the arcuate fasciculus. "In this case, we can find another way to get to the same place", says the researcher. This other way could be the ventral pathway, another bundle of nerve fibers that also connects Broca's and Wernicke's territories but that passes through lower brain areas. "The ventral pathway, which is more related to the processing of the meaning of words, would give a semantic support to word learning in people with injuries", says the first author of the article.
Explore further: Gestures improve language learning
PNAS . July 22, 2013. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1301696110 | <urn:uuid:8764cc58-8394-408f-883a-2a9e3e232d75> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-07-language-good-regions-left-hemisphere.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00146-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943922 | 775 | 4.0625 | 4 |
This editorial was originally planned for next month but events in the past few days have warranted moving it forward to now.
4th is International Firefighters’ Day, set aside to take the time to
remember those who gave their lives while battling fires and rescuing
civilians who were caught in the line of disaster. But it is also a day
to remember the firefighters who are still alive, performing their duty
while facing injury or death on a daily basis so the rest of us can be
The importance of remembering firefighters was brought home dramatically by two different events this week.
Wednesday in Houston, a $50 million luxury apartment complex that was
still under construction caught fire. The blaze spread so fast and was
so large, nine departments were called out to bring it under control.
When the firefighters arrived, they found one construction worker had
been trapped on the upper floor when the fire broke out and was now
crouched on a balcony, trying to shield himself from the flames. The
firefighters immediately began deploying from a ladder truck but the
heat became so intense the construction worker dropped from the fifth
floor ledge to one on the fourth floor as the glass behind him melted
from the heat. A firefighter scrambled up the ladder and helped the man
onto the ladder. They swung away just in time to avoid having a burning
wall collapse on top of them. (For video of the rescue, go to this
that event ended with everyone safe and only minor injuries, another
fire on Wednesday did not end so happily. Multiple fire departments in
Boston were also called out to battle a blaze in a four-story apartment
building. The fire spread so quickly that some of the residents needed
to be rescued from the upper floors when they could not make it down to
the street. While trying to control the fire and rescue the residents,
two firefighters died and 13 more were injured.
Across the country
more than 30,000 fire departments are manned by almost 1.2 million
firefighters. Of that figure, approximately 750,000 are volunteers.
Every day when they go into the firehouse or every time they answer an
emergency call, they go into action knowing that doing their jobs will
put their own lives into jeopardy. They do it willingly, even though
they know that in 2012 22 firefighters died in the U.S. while on duty
and as recently as 2009 a total of 90 paid the ultimate price. That does
not even mention the 343 firefighters and EMS personnel who lost their
lives in the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11, running toward the
danger as others ran toward safety.
And while it is easy to focus
on the danger involved when the skyline is lit up by fires, firefighters
also perform tremendous service to their communities when they are
teaching fire safety courses to students or passing out fire alarms for
homes. They are also called upon to help in events such as the ongoing
search for survivors in the mudslides in Washington.
The Van Wert
area is served by brave men and women who are both career and volunteer
members of fire departments. We encourage everyone to take the time to
thank them for their service.
(Statistics from FEMA/U.S. Fire Administration and the International Association of Fire Chiefs.) | <urn:uuid:241e53d4-ed74-4bb5-835f-c1aec35321bb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.timesbulletin.com/Content/News/Opinion/Article/COLUMN--Saying-Thanks/2/1169/186513 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00042-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969058 | 683 | 2.546875 | 3 |
13. Since writing the above, I have seen Colonel Sykes’s notes on the formations of Southern India in the Indian Review. The facts there described seem all to support my conclusion, and his map would answer just as well for Central as for Southern India; for the banks of the Nerbudda and Chambal, Son, and Mahanadi, as well as for those of the Bam and the Bima. Colonel Sykes does not, I believe, attempt to account for the stratification of the basalt; he merely describes it. [W. H. S.]
The author’s theory of the subaqueous origin of the greater part of the basalt of Central and Southern India, otherwise known as the ‘Deccan Trap Series’, had been supported by numerous excellent geologists, but W. T. Blanford proved the theory to be untenable, there being ’clear and unmistakable evidence that the traps were in great part of sub-aerial formation’, The intercalation of sedimentary beds with fresh-water fossils is conclusive proof that the lava-flows associated with such beds cannot be submarine. The hypothesis that the lower beds of traps were poured out in a vast, but shallow, freshwater lake extending throughout the area over which the inter-trappean limestone formation extends appears to be extremely improbable. The lava seems to have been poured, during a long succession of ages, over a land surface, uneven and broken in parts, ’with intervals of rest sufficient for lakes, stocked with fresh-water mollusca, to form on the cold surfaces of several of the lava-flows’ (Holland, in I.G. (1907), i. 88). A great tract of the volcanic region appears to have remained almost undisturbed to the present day, affected by sub-aerial erosion alone. The geological horizon of the Deccan trap cannot be precisely defined, but is now vaguely stated as ‘the close of the cretaceous period’. The ‘steps’, or conspicuous terraces, traceable on the hill-sides for great distances, are explained as being ’due to the outcrop of the harder basaltic strata, or of those beds which resist best the disintegrating influences of exposure’.
The general horizontality of the Deccan trap over an area of not less than 200,000 square miles, and the absence of volcanic hills of the usual conical form, are difficulties which have caused much discussion. Some of the ‘old volcanic vents’ appear to have existed near Poona and Mahableshwar. The entire area has been subjected to sub-aerial denudation on a gigantic scale, which explains the occurrence of the basalt as the caps of isolated hills. Much further investigation is required to clear up details (Manual of the Geology of India, ed. 1, Part I, chap. 13)
14. The author took charge of the Jubbulpore District in March 1828.
15. The fossiliferous beds near Jubbulpore, described in the text, seem to belong to the group now classed as the Lameta beds. The bones of a large dinosaurian reptile (Titanosaurus indicus) have been identified (I.G., 1907, vol. i, p. 88). | <urn:uuid:f95fdcf8-e45c-42c7-bbe7-4c9cd4df526c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/15483/102.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00036-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956401 | 703 | 3.015625 | 3 |
The little known west African state of Guinea Bissau, sandwiched between Senegal and Guinea, includes the Bijagos Archipelagos. The islands are home to a huge range of wildlife and are an internationally recognised wildlife reserve and important local fisheries. Sounds like a fabulous place to dump toxic ships, doesn't it?
Ship breaking yard in India. The problem of ships containing toxic waste is exported to poor countries.
The archipelago has been protected as a UNESCO biosphere reserve
since 1993. It is known for a diverse range of wildlife, including
sea cows, hippopotamus, otters, six species of sea turtles and two
species of salt-water crocodiles. There are 700,000 migratory birds
and numerous local bird species living in and around the
archipelago. Fishing is the major source of income for locals in
Guinea Bissau. Despite this ecological heritage Spanish shipping
companies want to develop the island of Bolama as a scrap yard for
The company DDY De Comercio Exterior SA has a preliminary
agreement with the Guinea-Bissau government to build the scrap yard
alongside the two national parks on the island.
Our toxic campaigner, Marietta Harjono has seen first hand what
happens at scrap yards in Asia: "A shipbreaking yard will bring
some of the most dangerous substances known to science to Guinea
Bissau, and put the lives and environment of local people at
serious risk. We know from experience in India, Pakistan and other
developing countries that scrap ships contain hazardous materials
and oil residues. The shipping industry must not be allowed to send
hazardous waste to developing countries, and especially to a site
of such environmental importance."
While the companies involved claim the development will be
'sustainable', local groups say the companies chose Guinea Bissau
because it has not signed an international treaty to control the
export of hazardous waste to developing countries. Hardly bodes
well for the companies promises when they chose somewhere where
rules can be evaded.
If these companies are serious about a sustainable solution for
scrapping ships then they should be supporting regulations under
discussion at the International Maritime Organisation to ensure
ship owners clean and decontaminate ships before scrapping. That's
a lot more sustainable than looking to exploit developing countries
and pollute the environment.
UNESCO now to tell it to protect the islands against the threat
of the scrap yard.
Are you connected to the shipping industry, a shipspotter, a
harbourmaster, a crew member or in any other way able to know the
positions of ships? We need
Find out about the problems
of shipbreaking and the solutions. Also in Francias, | <urn:uuid:fe6146c0-dbee-4366-9e1b-0e33539184f3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/nature-reserve-or-scrap-yard/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00087-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910158 | 576 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Astronomers have confirmed that strong magnetic fields are frozen in place deep inside aging stars.
Stars create magnetic fields through convection, the swirling, Ferris-wheel-like motion of hot, ionized gas (or boiling water, for that matter). Where convection happens in a star depends on how massive the star is: low-mass stars, including the Sun, have convective outer envelopes around a non-convective core, but stars a little bulkier — up to a couple Suns’ worth — do have convective cores.
Recently, Jim Fuller (Caltech) and colleagues found that strong core magnetic fields could explain the oddly weak, on-and-off brightening behavior of a sample of red giant stars. These stars are low- to middle-mass and have stopped fusing hydrogen in their centers, so they don’t have convective hearts. They also often have a mismatched, variable glow, with one hemisphere brightening as the other fades. What was strange about the sample the team looked at was that this group didn’t vary as much in brightness as it should have.
Now, Dennis Stello (University of Sydney and Aarhus University, Denmark), Fuller, and their team has expanded this work to 3,600 red giants, observed with the Kepler spacecraft. The astronomers found that here, too, some red giants had “muffled” variations, but just how much they were suppressed depended on how massive the star was. For stars just above the Sun’s mass and lighter, the stars looked normal. But for the heftiest of the sample — 1.6 to 2 solar masses — about half are “depressed,” the team reported January 6th at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Kissimmee, Florida, and in the January 21st Nature.
This mass boundary between “normal” and “depressed” red giants is also the transition point from non-convective to convective cores. So this result is a nice confirmation that astronomers can track the strength of a star’s internal magnetic field using these brightness patterns. That prospect excites researchers, because magnetic fields play a big role in stars’ evolution and death, but astronomers don’t understand the details.
However, as I noted before, red giants don’t have convective cores. But they used to, before their central hydrogen-fusion furnaces shut off. So the fields muffling the variations are fossils. Magnetic fields are like strings, Fuller says, and they get twisted and tangled by the churning, convective plasma. Once this boiling motion disappears, the field essentially freezes in place. So long as there are no big, bulk motions to disrupt the field, it should just stay put.
What the team doesn’t know is whether these fossil fields will survive once the stars kick start core helium fusion, which is the next stage in their aging process. If the fields do survive, they might be the source of the strong magnetism detected in some white dwarfs, which are the final state these red giants are approaching. The fields might also explain the “extra internal mixing” that seems to go on in some red giants and their older siblings.
Stello, Dennis et al. “A prevalence of dynamo-generated magnetic fields in the cores of intermediate-mass stars.” Nature. January 21, 2016.
Watch the AAS press conference: pick “Life in Clusters, Red-Giant Cores, Eta Carinae Twins, Star-Forming Galaxies” from the Meeting #227 list. | <urn:uuid:77afe9f2-dfd8-493b-ae5c-452917406720> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/old-stars-fossil-fields-2101201623/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00039-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945185 | 757 | 3.90625 | 4 |
1 formal Speak at length: he perorated against his colleague
More example sentences
- He may or may not have perorated against alchemy and witchcraft… we kind of zoned out at the quotation mark.
- He flew there, perorated on regional television and at work collectives, and forced the authorities to back down.
Early 17th century: from Latin perorat- 'spoken at length', from the verb perorare, from per- 'through' + orare 'speak'.
For editors and proofreaders
Line breaks: per¦or|ate
Definition of perorate in:
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed. | <urn:uuid:04beeb39-3c0d-429c-afef-024b8b1a14c6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/perorate | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00068-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929135 | 160 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Much of the grandeurized vision of Prussia and the ties that connected the state to the roots of humanity and its culture is encapsulated in Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s painting Blick in Griechenlands Blüthe (1825). Even though working with an all-too and self-evident antique imagery the painting stands in for the envisioned development at the time staging a cultural Kosmos of Prussia. It as much depicts an image of Prussia as a cultivated state as it depicts Prussia as a stately body of autonomous burghers creating a better and much brighter future. If anything at all the painting assembles exemplifyingly the many viable and publically discussed ideas of the time, that is of generation, cultivation, formation and construction, becoming and developing.
While the process of sketching and painting is basically mute this workshop tries to give voice to the many motifs within Schinkel’s Bildungs- and/or Kulturbild - which essentially is composed of numerous paintings making up the multiform glance into the prime of Prussian culture that was almost logically to form.
The idea of the workshop is to take the painting and its numerous polymorphic motifs as a starting point to discuss the agitation, function and agility within the visualisation of the flourishing culture of Antiquity and/or Prussia. In bringing together scholars working in the history of science, architecture, arts, technology and sociology it foremost intends - with a broadly conceived cultural perspective - to emphasize the various spheres of knowledge united and melt together in Schinkel’s multiform glance that also actively shaped many of the Prussian institutional settings. The workshop aims as much at an understanding of the narratives of the Prussian state and the modern components it was to be made of - far from mere virtue and proficiency - as it purposes the connotative and prominent terminology and verbal symbolism of Schinkel’s beautiful things brought together.
This incorporates domains such as the natural sciences, arts, history, philosophy, architecture, technology, landscape painting, geography, landscape design and garden art which all contributed - as a general expression of the life of the state and a continuation of nature in its constructive activity - to the national self-defining process of Prussia following the Napoleonic wars. Moreover the workshop aspires to consider and take into account the general topics, objects, narratives and the network of timely protagonists that are continguously, interwovenly and synaesthetically visualized in Schinkel’s painting.
In doing so the workshop proposes a twofold approach: on one hand it tries to bring together and amalgamate the almost antagonictically staged spheres in the painting. Antipodes such as the useful/ functional vs. the beautiful, culture vs. nature, technology vs. aesthetics, history vs. modernity and free evolvement vs. designed construction are only a few examples of timely ‘ideas’ incorporated in Schinkel’s glance into the prime of Greece’s culture. On the other hand it aims to find and locate the terminologies and symbolisms of the time, such as Bildung, Tätigkeit and Selbsttätigkeit, Freiheit, Blick and maybe Blüte and the notion of a society or institution as a Pflanzschule - which were all, almost elementally interlaced within the many coeval discourses and the above mentioned domains of contemporary knowledge.
In consolidating the topical constellations, ideas and configurations within the arts, sciences and technology the workshop wants to methodologically assess Schinkel’s painting as a visualization of the cultural narratives of Prussia around 1820.
contact: Björn Brüsch - firstname.lastname@example.org
|Freitag, 12. Mai|
|14.15 Andreas Haus (Berlin, UdK): Einführung in Schinkels Gemälde Blick in Griechenlands Blüthe|
|14.45 Andreas Haus (Berlin, Udk): Schinkels ‘Blick in Griechenlands Blüthe’ - eine gemalte Staatsidee|
|16.00 Gert Gröning (Berlin, UdK): Die Baustelle im Grünen - ein ‘landschaftlicher’ Kommentar zu Karl Friedrich Schinkels Gemälde ‘Blick in Griechenlands Blüthe’|
|16.45 Björn Brüsch (Berlin, MPIWG): Preußische Blüthen. Zur Metaphorik des Blühens um 1820|
|Samstag, 13. Mai|
|09.30 Adolf Max Vogt (Zürich): Schinkel - ein Anschauungsdenker von Rang|
|10.15 Sven Dierig (Berlin): Handwerk, Technik, Wissenschaften: Die Tempelbaustelle als Metapher des Labors|
|11.30 Michael Niedermeier (Berlin, BBAW): Handwerk, Volk und die Beschwörung der vergehenden Kunstperiode|
|12.15 Iain Boyd Whyte (University of Edinburgh): Karl Friedrich Schinkel in Scotland, between Ossian and the Gasworks|
|14.00 Adrian von Buttlar (Berlin, TU): Freiheit im Werden - Schinkels Bild der griechischen Polis als Postulat und Glücksversprechen|
|15.00 Heinz Schönemann (Potsdam): 'Die Blüte Griechenlands' im Pavillon der Römischen Bäder bei Schloß Charlottenhof in Potsdam| | <urn:uuid:ce0659b0-04d8-48d4-b955-908ec52330b3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/workshops/en/schinkel.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00132-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.770797 | 1,242 | 2.609375 | 3 |
NASA is hard work looking for ways to send research craft to Mars. The most recent exploration missions have focused on sending larger vehicles to the planet’s surface, first in the form of the highly successful Opportunity and Spirit rovers, and currently with the much larger Curiosity vehicle that was launched last November. However, NASA is looking to reverse the trend of “bigger is better” as it has awarded a grant to the Naval Research Lab (NRL) to begin to research exploration vehicles that are powered by microbes and weigh no more than a kilogram.
When sending an exploration rover to Mars, the number one barrier to longevity is the issue of power supply. To keep the car-sized Curiosity rover operating and sending data back to Earth, scientists have installed a radioisotope power system. It generates electricity by harvesting the heat from the radioactive breakdown of a slug of plutonium. In essence, we have sent a small nuclear reactor to Mars. Microbial fuel cell (MFC) research is seeking to do away with the bulk and danger associated with such power systems.
MFC’s generate power by taking advantage of the electron production that happens as a result of microbial metabolic processes happening within the bacteria that is stored within the cells. The electrons are harvested and converted into electricity, providing power to whatever they are connected to. NRL scientists are researching these metabolic processes to see if there is energy to be had when the bacteria reproduces, since this is an occurrence that happens often. These fuel cells are much smaller than traditional power sources, which would allow NASA to design a swarm of small micro-rovers to explore Mars more efficiently than one large rover could.
While this sounds like an excellent plan, there are some serious questions to the veracity of MFC’s. The idea of sending a large amount of Earth born microbes to a place that may not have them occurring naturally presents some significant dangers. What happens if one of the MFC’s ruptures during landing, spewing forth the alien bacteria? For that matter, how will scientists design the MFC’s to shield the bacteria during the journey to Mars? Cosmic rays and cold climates being just two of the hazards in that category.
In addition, current MFC research has had success in harnessing the energy generated when the microbe colony eats, not during multiplication. Eating produces waste, which then has to be disposed of to protect the colony. An interesting problem, and one that the researchers will have to solve. Obviously, we are years away from seeing this technology being put to practical use in space because of these hurdles. Hopefully solutions will be found.
Read more at the NRL Website | <urn:uuid:8a13e803-8021-4108-bce1-ac0d5fed39db> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.geek.com/news/naval-research-lab-works-to-create-fuel-cells-for-nasa-that-are-powered-by-microbes-1455021/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402516.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00016-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961718 | 543 | 4.125 | 4 |
While some are touting the use of nano-rays to fight disease, others are concerned about their connection to the cancer known as mesothelioma.
This past week, Nanobiotix, a fledgling nanomedicine company, released findings in regards to results obtained during pre-clinical trials that tested the company’s patented nanoXray™ therapeutics platform to fight cancerous tumors.
The pre-clinical investigation, which was performed at Institute Gustav Roussy in Villejuif, France, showed that an intratumoral injection of NBTXR3 nanoparticles and activated via standard radiation therapy led to complete tumor regression in mice at 60 days, compared to zero tumor regression in mice treated with x-ray only or NBTXR3 only.
Researchers at Nanobiotix tout the usefulness of nano-rays as part of a new innovation in cancer therapy, namely a technology that kills cancer cells only and not the healthy tissue that surrounds them. “We are extremely excited by these preclinical results, which demonstrate the novel therapeutic effect of nanoparticles on human tumor models," said Laurent Lévy, Ph.D., President and CEO of Nanobiotix and Co-President of the French Technology Platform on Nanotechnology (FTPN).
However, nanotechnology has also been in the negative limelight as studies suggest that some carbon nanotubes can be as harmful as asbestos when inhaled in sufficient quantities. Researchers who took part in a 2008 study conducted in the United Kingdom concluded that carbon nanotubes and mesothelioma, historically known as an asbestos-caused cancer, may indeed have a connection.
The study, led by Professor Kenneth Donaldson at the University of Edinburgh, demonstrated that long, thin, multi-walled carbon nanotubes that look like asbestos fibers also behave like asbestos fibers, calling into question the safety of nanotechnology. Carbon nanotubes are atom-thick sheets of graphite formed into cylinders. They come in many forms and shapes and, like asbestos, the sharp, thin type seem to be the most hazardous.
"More research is still needed if we are to understand how to use these materials as safely as possible," argues Professor Donaldson.
Physicians like Dr. David Sugarbaker, founder of the International Pleural Mesothelioma Program, a research and clinical project that is centered on providing mesothelioma information and finding new and better treatment options for patients with pleural mesothelioma, say the jury is still out on the safety of carbon nanotubes and that they will continue to monitor the current research before dubbing nanotechnology the newest miracle in cancer treatment. | <urn:uuid:e8cb852a-ac77-4d14-851c-812c616fb71b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=90379&cat=12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00180-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951412 | 551 | 3.078125 | 3 |
by Dirk Ehnts, Econoblog101
This book by Robert Heilbroner, subtitled The Lives, Times and Ideas of Great Economic Thinkers, was published originally in 1953 and then in 1961 as a revised edition. It is a history of economics before the world as we know it, by which I mean the post-WWII world. The book is written as a narrative and weaves biographical sketches with world events and the interpretations of the time. By now, history of economics as a sub-field of economics does not exist anymore in most faculties of economics. The book shows why. In today’s world, we are all rich because of a) markets and b) innovative entrepreneurs. Lowering taxes and curbing redistribution will help incentives to be better aligned with the economic self-interest. Heilbroner’s book offers a wide variety of competing explanations of why we are rich and is utterly incompatible with the modern narrative.
Heilbroner follows Smith and Ricardo, Marx and Veblen, Keynes and Schumpeter and many others that wrote about the economic problem of their day. Heilbroner is very good at presenting the economists and their ideas in the context of their time and never seems to impose his will on any of his subjects. He discusses the economic theories and, in the last chapter, also compares them one to another and discusses them with respect to now (1953, or 1961). Some of the thoughts would be considered heretical in today’s faculties of economics. For instance, he presents John Stuart Mill (p. 129/130):
But – and this is perhaps the biggest but in economics – the laws of economics have nothing to do with distribution. Once we have produced wealth as best we can, we can do with it as we like. Mill says,
“The things are there; mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they please. They can place them at the disposal of whomsoever they please, and at whatever terms.”
If you have followed discussions on minimum wages, tax rates for incomes and profits, the Green New Deal, health care reform, and government spending (a.k.a. as austerity management) you will notice that if Mill stands for enlightened thought than the majority of today’s economists stand for reactionary thought. Most economists are in favor of the status quo or of redistribution towards the rich (indirectly) on almost all of these issues.
The books chapters on the Utopian Socialists, Marx, Veblen and Keynes present ideas that are not part of the mainstream curriculum of economics. This is quite sad, since these are enlightened questions that address the ultimate goals of society, rents and distribution, the nature of consumption and the cures of unemployment. It is in these issues that we face a crisis today and it would be very helpful to reintroduce the history of economics back into the curriculum. As it stands, the issue of scarcity has been relegated to a back seat. Spain and Greece do not face scarcity of anything which has stopped their economies dead. They have millions of people unemployed which should be seen as a luxury. In order to understand the economy more is needed than a single fixation on how markets distribute scarce resources. | <urn:uuid:a78ffd23-d269-4a9a-95fa-31b1b233f779> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog2.php/2013/07/05/book-review-the-worldly-philosophers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00058-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971145 | 671 | 2.609375 | 3 |
In which Scrabble dictionary does MUTUALIZATIONS exist?
Definitions of MUTUALIZATIONS in dictionaries:
There are 14 letters in MUTUALIZATIONS:
A A I I L M N O S T T U U Z
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SCRABBLE is the registered trademark of Hasbro and J.W. Spear & Sons Limited. Our scrabble word finder and scrabble cheat word builder is not associated with the Scrabble brand - we merely provide help for players of the official Scrabble game. All intellectual property rights to the game are owned by respective owners in the U.S.A and Canada and the rest of the world. Anagrammer.com is not affiliated with Scrabble. This site is an educational tool and resource for Scrabble & Words With Friends players. | <urn:uuid:4ad079dc-ae11-4d77-8ad8-bc32d1f503d6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.anagrammer.com/scrabble/mutualizations | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00119-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.868501 | 281 | 2.703125 | 3 |
The Office of National Drug Control Policy points out that heroin is highly addictive. It is one of the fastest acting of all the drugs available, and this is one of the reasons that it can create such a strong desire in users. Heroin is a highly addictive opiate - and one that continues to see a steady level of use. In the last month, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 338,000 people have used heroin.
Some of the effects that heroin can have the body include the following:
Overdose (that can result in death).
Addiction (that can lead to emotional and physical health problems).
Dramatically lower blood pressure.
Feeling of being flushed.
Infections (including HIV/AIDS and hepatitis) from dirty needles.
Pregnancy problems (including low birth weight, birth defects and spontaneous abortion.
Call 800-481-9412 To Get Help Today!
Despite these dangers, however, it is very difficult to overcome heroin substance abuse. One of the reasons is that there are severe withdrawal symptoms to be faced when someone quits using the drug.
Withdrawal from heroin substance abuse
When someone uses a drug like heroin a lot, the body builds up a tolerance. This means that the body becomes used to the effects that the drug has on it. As the body becomes used to the drug, it takes higher and higher doses of heroin to get the same effects as before. In some cases, despite the terrible price exacted by the drug in the long run, heroin becomes necessary for the body to function.
After a tolerance to heroin develops through repeated substance abuse, it is more difficult to break the cycle of addiction. This is because withdrawal symptoms manifest when the drug is no longer used. Withdrawal symptoms are signs of the body's reaction to the fact that the drug is gone. It is the body's way of letting the user know that it wants the drug. In such cases, the body has been programmed to become dependent on the heroin. In such cases, withdrawal symptoms make it especially difficult to end a heroin substance abuse problem.
Withdrawal symptoms from heroin substance abuse can start as early as just a few hours after the last dose. First, the body experience intense cravings for the drug. These cravings are one of the reasons that it is so difficult for heroin addicts to stop without help from pharmacological and/or psychological treatment programs. Other symptoms of heroin withdrawal include:
- Pain in the bones and in the muscles.
- Restlessness and anxiety.
- Cold flashes.
- Muscle spasms (especially kicking motions).
For most heroin users, the withdrawal symptoms reach their worst between two and three days after finishing the last dose. However, withdrawal symptoms can last a little more than a week. It is important to note that on a certain level, craving for the heroin never goes completely away. A craving can be triggered months after someone feels they have control of the heroin substance abuse problem.
While heroin withdrawal is seldom fatal, it can cause death if heavy users who are in poor health suddenly stop taking the drug. It is worth noting that alcohol withdrawal is often considered more dangerous.
Call 800-481-9412 To Get Help Today!
Treating heroin withdrawal symptoms
In most cases, heroin withdrawal is treated by slowing blocking the body's reaction to the lack of the drug. Most of the time this is done with the help of specially devised opiates. Methadone and buprenorphone are some of the most popular drugs used to help battle heroin withdrawal symptoms during detox.
One of the most popular methods of helping someone overcome heroin substance abuse addiction is through residential treatment facilities. These detox centers are designed to provide round the clock care to those who are suffering from heroin addiction. This care is designed to help someone stop using heroin by treating withdrawal symptoms.
Additionally, residential treatment facilities also help heroin addicts by providing support to help them remain "clean," as well as teaching psychological techniques that can help overcome heroin substance abuse problems. The idea is to help the body rid itself of the dangerous drug and then create fortifications so that the addict does not begin using heroin (or other drugs) again.
Heroin withdrawal symptoms can be very discouraging. Their severity can make it difficult to stop taking the drug. They defeat many heroin addicts time and time again. But with proper treatment and help, it is possible to control a heroin substance abuse problem. | <urn:uuid:6e247ef7-21b6-4bdc-9897-719aed3295ea> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.heroinabuse.us/withdrawal.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00096-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954067 | 910 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Enjoy the view of the Bob Marshall Wilderness in northwestern Montana from our Monture camera. It's been out of commission for a while, but is back up now!
The Federal Land Managers Air Quality Related Values Work Group (FLAG) recently released their Phase I Report - Revised (2010), a revision of the FLAG 2000 report. This report focuses on those areas of FLAG 2000 that have received the most attention and concern from permit applicants and permitting authorities.
Vision and Mission Statement
The Air Program envisions a healthy environment for current and future generations where natural processes can occur. We believe that:
The health of humans and ecosystems are inseparable;
Clean air is essential; and
Science is a foundation for taking action.
The Mission of the Air Program is to provide sound counsel on air quality issues to Forest Service decision makers.
Air is an Integrating Resource
Air is inseparable from all other resources. It is the key component linking virtually all living and non-living components of the earth. The Forest Service works to protect air quality by working with industry and regulators, monitoring air and the resources affected by air pollution, and by providing the public with information about air quality. Poor air quality decreases visibility, acidifies or disrupts the nutrient balance in lakes and streams, injures plant and animal communities, and harms human health.
Progress has been made toward improving air quality across the United States since the enactment of the Clean Air Act in 1977. But air quality on Forest lands and even wilderness areas is far from pristine. As the human population with its resulting urbanization and industrialization continues to grow, the Forest Service Air Program must understand how air quality affects resources in order to work cooperatively with industry, state and federal groups to prevent and reduce air pollution and its effects to natural resources and human health.
The Forest Service monitors the effects of pollution that may impair visibility, harm human health, injure trees and other plants, acidify or cause unnatural fertilization of streams and lakes, leach nutrients from soils, and degrade cultural resources, like archeological sites and historical buildings. Forest activities that can affect air quality such as prescribed burning, ski areas, and oil and gass development are also monitored to ensure compliance with air regulations for human health and to monitor possible impacts to natural resources. | <urn:uuid:faaaf6ed-460e-4190-8c80-11a4fa377d4a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsinternet/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3gjAwhwtDDw9_AI8zPwhQoY6BdkOyoCAPkATlA!/?ss=11&navtype=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&cid=null&navid=130140000000000&pnavid=130000000000000&ttype=main&pname=Forest%20Service%20-%20Air | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928594 | 466 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Grafting is placing one plant onto another so the inserted plant grows off of the other. This is commonly used with fruit trees and cacti (especially the colored ones, the colored part usually can't survive on its own). Here I show how to graft one cactus onto another.
Note: This may not always work. Not all cacti may be compatible and sometimes by attempting grafting you may harm one or more of your cacti. You are solely responsible for damage and injury caused by this instructable.
Step 1: Materials
Here is a list of necessary materials (the cacti may vary. It should work with different species):
-A sharp knife (be careful with this)
-2 (or more) cacti | <urn:uuid:0e870f93-8280-43d8-80e1-fc022be504db> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.instructables.com/id/Grafting-Cacti/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00089-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937284 | 157 | 2.890625 | 3 |
How to Calculate the Real Value of Money Using the CPI Formula
Original post by Ryan Menezes of Demand Media
Money decreases in value over time. As the economy and the money supply expands, prices rise, which reduces money's purchasing power. Central bank action, unemployment and the expectation of higher prices all contribute to inflation. As a result, an item's price, measured in today's dollars, may not represent its value. The real value of money describes a sum's value in terms of an earlier reference year's dollars. Economists calculate this change in the value of money using the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which grants extra weight to the changing prices of the economy's more significant items.
Note the prices and quantities in multiple periods for all goods whose data you have. For this example, suppose that you are calculating the real value of 2010 money in terms of 2000 prices. Assume, for example, that people in 2010 bought 100 bananas at $15 each and 80 knives at $20 each. Then assume that people in 2000 bought 90 bananas at $12 each and 65 knives at $18 each.
Multiply together each item's price and quantity for the year. Continuing with the example from the previous step using 2010 prices and quantities: $15 --- 100 = $1,500; $20 --- 80 = $1,600.
Add these results: $1,500 + $1,600 = $3,100.
Repeat the previous two steps for the year from which prices you're using as a reference for the money's real value. With this example, using 2000 prices and quantities: (90 --- $12) + (65 --- $18) = $2,250.
Divide the dollar amount from Step 4 by the amount from Step 3: $2,250 ÷ $3,100 = 0.7258.
Multiply the amount whose real value you want to calculate by this ratio. For example, if you want to find the real value in terms of 2000 dollars of $10,000 in 2010 dollars: $10,000 --- 0.7258 = $7,258.
- United States Naval Academy: Calculating a Laspeyres Price Index
- "Consumer Price Index Manual: Theory and Practice"; Ralph Turvey, International Labour Office; 2004
About the Author
Ryan Menezes is a professional writer and blogger. He has a Bachelor of Science in journalism from Boston University and has written for the American Civil Liberties Union, the marketing firm InSegment and the project management service Assembla. He is also a member of Mensa and the American Parliamentary Debate Association.
- Jupiterimages/BananaStock/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:e931b8f7-9744-4174-8c61-1556f6511620> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://wiki.fool.com/How_to_Calculate_the_Real_Value_of_Money_Using_the_CPI_Formula | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403823.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899098 | 554 | 3.859375 | 4 |
Even people who drink limited amounts of alcohol have a higher risk of many types of cancer than those who never drink.
The guidelines, based on findings of research worldwide, aim to decrease the risk of mortality from cancers and other diseases.
When the original guidelines were published in 1995, the links between alcohol and cancer were not fully understood.
Now, however, new evidence shows that the risks start from any level of regular drinking, and the more one drinks, the higher the risk.
According to the UK's Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), alcohol contributes to over 60 medical conditions, including heart disease, stroke and some cancers. Approximately 1 in 20 of all new cancers in the UK stem from alcohol consumption.
Contributing to the guidelines, the UK's Committee on Carcinogenicity (CoC) says that drinking even a small amount of alcohol increases the risk of some cancers, compared with people who do not drink at all.
The risk of developing some alcohol-related cancers reduces over time when people stop drinking, but it can take many years to return to the levels found in people who have never drunk alcohol.
Lower limits for men's consumption
The current review has also found that the benefits of alcohol for heart health only apply for women aged 55 and over, and these women should limit their intake to around 5 units a week - or the equivalent of around two standard glasses of wine.
Drinking alcohol can increase women's risk of mouth, throat and breast cancer. The recommended upper limit of consumption for women remains at 14 units per week.
However, where men were previously advised not to exceed 21 units a week, that limit has now dropped to 14 units, or around 6 pints of average-strength beer. In the UK, men account for 65% of alcohol-related deaths.
People are also being advised not to "save up" the 14 units for 1-2 days, but to spread them over 3 or more days. Having several alcohol-free days a week is suggested as a way to reduce intake.
Having one to two heavy drinking sessions each week increases the risk of death from long-term illnesses, as well as accidents and injuries.
Pregnant women should avoid all alcohol
Pregnant women are now being told to avoid all alcohol; no level of alcohol is safe to drink in pregnancy.
The previous advice to limit intake to 1-2 units of alcohol once or twice per week has been removed to provide greater clarity as a precaution.
Fast facts about alcohol
- In the US, a standard drink contains 0.6 ounces of alcohol
- This is equivalent to 12 ounces of beer at 5% alcohol content, 5 ounces of wine at 12% or 1.5 ounces of liquor at 40%
- "Heaving drinking" is defined as eight drinks or more a week for women and fifteen or more for men.
Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England wants pregnant women to understand that they should avoid alcohol as a precaution.
While small amounts of alcohol consumed before becoming aware of the pregnancy present a low risk to the baby, Dame Sally insists that there is no "safe" level of alcohol for pregnant women to drink.
New advice on single episodes of drinking includes limiting the total amount of alcohol consumed on any one occasion and drinking slowly. People are also advised to consume food while drinking and to drink water alternately with alcohol.
Since the short-term risks for individuals vary widely, guidance about a set number of units for a single occasion or day are not currently included in the guidelines.
Those who should be particularly careful include young adults, older people, those with low body weight or other health problems, and those using medicines or other drugs.
The aim of the guidelines, she says, is to provide the latest and most up-to-date scientific information so that people can make informed decisions about their own drinking and the level of risk they are prepared to take.
Dame Sally says:
"Drinking any level of alcohol regularly carries a health risk for anyone, but if men and women limit their intake to no more than 14 units a week, it keeps the risk of illness like cancer and liver disease low."
Medical News Today recently reported that binge drinking damages the liver more than previously thought. | <urn:uuid:ca43ebe5-f446-4c5f-8971-47acffd53971> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/304865.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00185-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968071 | 876 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Ketamine is a painkiller used in operations on people and animals
There has been a rise in the number of young people taking the Class C drug ketamine, a charity warns.
DrugScope found users experimenting with stronger doses, including injecting the drug which increases infection risk from shared needles.
Increased use was found in nine out of 20 studied areas: London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Ipswich, Bristol, Blackpool, Portsmouth, Nottingham and Sheffield.
The Home Office said use of the drug would continue to be monitored.
Ketamine was made illegal three years ago after a surge in the number of people using it as a recreational drug.
It is legal in low doses for medicinal use as an anaesthetic and a horse tranquiliser.
The investigation by DrugScope's magazine Druglink uncovered evidence that people were experimenting with larger amounts of ketamine as the price of the drug fell.
A gram had dropped in price by a third during the past three years and now cost £20 - half the price of a gram of cocaine.
Also known as K, Special K and Vitamin K, the drug has a strong following on the dance scene.
Usually it is snorted or swallowed but the charity discovered more people were injecting it in an attempt to experience stronger hallucinations, which increases the risk of infection from dirty needles.
At low doses the user may feel euphoric, experience waves of energy, and possibly synaesthesia - sensations such as seeing sounds or hearing colours.
At higher doses the user might become paralysed, experience hallucinations and alternate realities, and a feeling of disassociation giving an out-of-body experience known as the "K-hole".
The researchers found that ketamine use was on the rise in nine out of 20 areas surveyed, although it remained low when compared to cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy.
Ketamine was linked to the deaths of 23 people between 1993 and 2006. Most had accidents after taking the drug.
DrugScope chief executive Martin Barnes said young people underestimated the dangers they took when using the drug.
He said: "Ketamine's harms increase considerably at high doses and injecting users risk exposure to blood-borne viruses such as Hepatitis C or HIV."
A Home Office spokesman said: "While findings from the British Crime Survey show that less than half of 1% of all respondents reported the use of ketamine in 2007/08, and that there was no statistically significant change in this figure compared to the previous year, it is a dangerous drug that can cause serious harm to those who do use it." | <urn:uuid:fe42de8a-e1ed-41de-80a9-f909ff27d683> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7829918.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398075.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963131 | 525 | 2.578125 | 3 |
The Bruce Murray Space Image Library
Voyager 2 approach image of Triton
Filed under pretty pictures, amateur image processing, Voyager 1 and 2, Triton, Neptune's moons, global views
Taken on August 21, 1989, four days before Voyager 2's closest approach to Neptune, this was one of the first images to show surface features on Neptune's largest moon, Triton.
NASA / JPL / color composite by Ted Stryk
Original image data dated on or about August 21, 1989.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For uses not allowed by that license, contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder: Ted Stryk
Other Related Images
Pretty pictures and | <urn:uuid:93336ddc-d583-47f8-83f9-7121ca521753> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/neptune/triton_approach_color_19890821_stryk.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.804568 | 165 | 2.875 | 3 |
Class – Aves
Family – phasianidae
Genus – gallus
The domestic chicken probably originated from one of several jungle fowl, still found wild throughoutSoutheast Asia. Although the exact date of domestication is unclear, archaeological evidence places the chicken in human settlements at around 3250 B.C. The bird quickly dispersed throughout the world, both for its uses in agriculture and as a combatant in cockfights. Some scholars believe that interest in this “sport” was what led to the domestication of the chicken. Although it is of little importance to the commercial poultry industry, chicken breeds have been to some extent, standardized. Many strains are crossed to achieve the ultimate type for layers or broilers and the exact breeding is a closely guarded trade secret.
An intact adult male is called a “rooster”, (under a year of age the term “cockerel” may be used); a castrated male is a “capon”; an adult female is called a “hen,” under a year of age the term “pullet” may be used; a newly hatched bird I s “chick”’ and a juvenile of either sex is called a “poult.”
The heart rate of an adult chicken is about 350 beats per minute. The digestive system is somewhat different from mammals. The mouth lacks teeth and lips. Instead, the horny beak serves to bite off food. Barbs on the tongue help food to be moved backwards, so it can be easily swallowed down into the gizzard were the food will be ground and crushed with the help of small amounts of gravel or grit.
Only the hen will lay eggs. A rooster is needed to fertilize the egg. Eggs are incubated about 21 days before hatching | <urn:uuid:920d20dc-c71c-43ef-92ca-ff7135d3c79b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.forestparkzoo.org/exhibits/domestic-rooster/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00155-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956852 | 381 | 3.5 | 4 |
Today’s maps are computer generated and much more sophisticated. There are many different types of maps. For example, The Weather Channel® offers current weather, Doppler radar, forecasts, satellite, regional, and international maps. Radar and combination radar/satellite maps are generally color-coded with green indicating rain (intensity of rain increases as color changes to yellow, orange, red, and sometimes purple), white for snow, and pink for ice.
Standard symbols have been developed for use on weather maps that show current weather and forecasts. Curved lines on the map connect points with the same barometric pressure. If these lines, called isobars, are close together, the areas they cover are likely to have strong winds. Isobars also indicate the “sphere of influence” of a low-pressure area. Lows are associated with clouds, rain, and storms. For individuals with pressure-affected illnesses such as arthritis, a low may also be associated with worsening of the symptoms.
A low pressure center is symbolized on the map by a large letter L, sometimes red in color. Its counterpart, the high pressure center, is shown by a large letter H, which may be blue. High pressure areas, unlike low pressure, are not associated with surface fronts. However, most low pressure centers will have one or more fronts attached to them. A front may be cold, warm, stationary, or occluded, and there are separate symbols for each, as illustrated in the chart below.
Synoptic weather maps, which may be obtained from the National Weather Service and other professional outlets, present data gathered from weather stations around the country. Each station is represented by a set of symbols and numbers:
This station model provides a systematic method of representing the current weather conditions at any given location. Meteorologists use the raw data on synoptic maps to assess weather patterns and identify isobars, frontal boundaries, and other atmospheric structures.
For more information on synoptic maps, please visit the links below. | <urn:uuid:a246e8b3-5505-4af1-8d86-ea67f886ad49> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bellaonline.com/ArticlesP/art32542.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942306 | 416 | 3.859375 | 4 |
The Honeycomb platform
Honeycomb is a microcontroller platform that can easily be networked into hexagonal lattices of hundreds of nodes to create novel materials that tightly integrate sensing, actuation, computation and communication. Recent examples of HoneyComb driven artifacts are
The tool-chain consists of the platforms, a viral boot-loader to virally disseminate programs into the network, a software library that facilitates sensing, control, and communication, and software tools that allow interacting with the network from a host computer.
Each Honeycomb board consists of an Atmel Xmega 128A3, LEDs, and various digital and analog input/outputs that can interface sensors and actuators such as servo motors. Boards can connect to up to six neighbors using standard ethernet cables, which are available in various lengths at low cost.
Instructions on how to program it:
1. Create a folder with the name of your project. In this fold, create two other folders: one is called “xboot”, another one is named anything you want, let’s say “honeycomb”.
2. Put the source code of xboot in the “xboot” folder. You can find the source code here.
3. Put all your own code in “honeycomb”.Here is a screenshot of the folders.
4. Create a makefile for your project, and put it in “honeycomb”. Here is a template you can use: makefile template.
5. If you work on Windows, Click Start > Run > type CMD > click run. In command prompt, go to “Honeycomb” folder and type “make” to compile your project. If everything goes well, you get a .hex file.
6. Connect a usb serial wire to your board, power it on and then type “make program” to download the “.hex” file into the board.
- N. Correll, N. Farrow, S. Ma (2013): Honey Comb: A platform for computational robotic materials (Studio).Seventh International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI), Barcelona, Spain, 2013 | <urn:uuid:09ed3df8-8c53-4198-b51b-e5a1d66b7cc7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://correll.cs.colorado.edu/?page_id=2486 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00129-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.88376 | 468 | 3.40625 | 3 |
If you want to have a video that will play right in your web page, you can embed the video. Embed is a HTML tag that we have not discussed in previous sections that is used to place the video directly on the page. There are a few steps involved in embedding a video and may take some trial and error, but below we have the basic steps.
First, you will need to download a video player file that will play the video on your website. You can also embed a .wmv file and not have a video player file on your website, however in order for a .wmv file to play your website visitor must have Windows Media Player on their computer. If your visitors have a Mac, they may not have Windows Media Player which is why in this example we are using a flash player. There are many different files available that will assist you in playing an embedded video, however in this example we will be using a flash media player called mediaplayer.swf.
Once you have the file to play the video, you can create your HTML code. This is a very basic player code that we use on our own website, there are others available on the Internet that may have more options. We will go over the details in a moment, but here is the code:
<embed src="/help/mediaplayer.swf?file=video.wmv" width"854" height="480" allowfullscreen="true" />
Now we will break down the different parts to explain the code:
- embed src= - This is the base embed code and the attribute, which simply means Embed Source
- "mediaplayer.swf? - This is the name of the video player that you are using. In our example, the media player is named mediaplayer.swf
- file=video.wmv - This tells the media player which file to play. We have video.wmv uploaded directly into the public_html folder, if you have your video in a folder called Video (for example) then it would look something like file=Video/video.smv
- width="854" height="480" - Here is where you will specify how big the player would be. To make sure the entire video is visible, it is best to set the width and height to be the same width and height of the video itself
- allowfullscreen="true" - This gives your visitor the option to make the video full screen, or keep it in the video the size that you have specified
As long as you have the correct path in file= and have uploaded the media player, on your website you should now have an embedded video. Remember that there are lots of embed codes available on the Internet and you are not required to use this one, it is just an example of one way to embed your video on your website.
When embedding audio, it is essentially the same process as it is with video. The following is an example of the code you would use:
<embed height="50" width="100" src="/myaudiofiles/example.mp3">
Within this, you can also adjust the size of the audio player to best fit your individual site. | <urn:uuid:55405ace-6029-4be8-b2b5-4131d3720639> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.webhostinghub.com/help/learn/website-design/inserting-videos/embed-video | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00059-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951247 | 663 | 2.625 | 3 |
THE EASTERN CATHOLIC CHURCHES
THE EASTERN CATHOLIC CHURCHES
The Eastern Catholic Churches refer to those Christian Churches that developed in the eastern half of the Roman Empire, including those communities that derived from them, and stayed in communion with Rome. They are characterized by a rich heritage with Apostolic origin, and are treasured by the universal Church, for the East was the home of Jesus Christ our Redeemer!
Heeding the message of Jesus of Nazareth to "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19-20), the Apostles traveled to all parts of the known world to spread Christianity. Followers of Christ were first called Christians in Antioch (Acts 11:26) and were also named Nazarenes (Acts 24:5).
The Middle East and the Mediterranean world served as the cradle of Christianity. The Way flourished primarily in five centers: Jerusalem, its birthplace, Antioch, Alexandria, Byzantium, and Rome. The five centers became Patriarchates when Constantine recognized Christianity in the Edict of Milan in 313. The Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches originate from the Eastern centers of Antioch, Alexandria, and Byzantium, while the Western Latin rite originates from Rome.
On 11 May 330 Constantine renamed the Greek city of Byzantium in his honor, and, while Church authority rested with Rome, Constantinople became the seat of the Holy Roman Emperor, and gradually became the dominant Patriarchy for the Eastern Churches.
The Christian Churches held seven Councils to coordinate theological beliefs on the Trinity and Jesus Christ, all of which were accepted by Rome and Constantinople. The Council of Nicaea in 325 declared that the Son was of the same substance (ὁμοούσιος - homoousios) as the Father, and formed the initial Nicene Creed. Athanasius of Alexandria reasoned from the theology of Christian redemption, that Christ had to be divine for our own salvation and redemption. St. Cyril of Jerusalem and the Cappodochian Fathers (Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa) believed in homoousios for the Holy Spirit as well, so the Nicene Creed was expanded to quote John 15:26, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father at the Council of Constantinople in 381. The Council of Ephesus in 431 defined Mary as the Mother of God, which was intrinsic to the human nature of Christ. This was rejected by Nestorius and led to a Persian group that became the Assyrian Church of the East. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 declared that Jesus was one Person with two natures, Divine and human in perfect harmony, according to the Tome of St. Leo the Great; this established the theology for Western and Byzantine Christianity. However, Christian Armenians, Syrians, Coptics, Ethiopians, and Indians who still held the belief that Christ was one incarnate nature of the Word of God objected to Chalcedon and formed the Oriental Orthodox Churches. The fifth ecumenical council at Constantinople II in 553 was called by the Emperor Justinian and reaffirmed that there is one person in hypostatic union in our Lord Jesus Christ. In response to the Monothelite heresy, that Christ had only one will, the sixth ecumenical council affirmed the efforts of St. Maximus the Confessor at Constantinople III in 681 and confessed that Christ had two wills and two natural operations (John 6:38), divine and human in harmony. The seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea II in 787 resolved the iconoclast controversy thanks to the writings of St. John of Damascus: since Jesus had a true humanity and his body was finite, it was only proper to venerate holy images of the human face of Jesus.
The gradual evolution of the Latin West and the Greek East culminated in the tragic Schism of the Church in 1054. Many of the remaining Eastern Churches, except the Maronites and the Italo-Albanians, joined the Byzantine Orthodox Church of Constantinople. The Eastern Orthodox Churches are a family of self-governing Christian Churches, the largest of which are in Russia, Romania, and Greece.
Eventually portions of nearly all of the separated Churches of the East returned into union with Rome, and became included in the group that form the Eastern Catholic Churches. They originated in Eurasia, primarily the Middle East and Eastern Europe, from Ukraine north of the Black Sea south to Ethiopia in East Africa, west from Sicily in the Mediterranean east to India! These individual Catholic Churches, both Eastern and Western, while they form the universal Church of Jesus Christ, each have a distinctive rite or tradition, namely in liturgy, in ecclesiastical discipline, and in spiritual tradition.
Eastern Christian Churches are also included in the following discussion. For example, Eastern Catholics and Orthodox generally refer to the Eucharistic Celebration as the Divine Liturgy, whereas the Lamb's Supper is called the Mass in the Latin rite of Rome.
There are now 23 rites in the universal Catholic Church, the 22 rites comprising the Eastern Catholic Churches, and the Latin Western rite. They are outlined in the following chart. A brief study of each one proves to be a fascinating study in Church History!
THE INDIVIDUAL EASTERN CATHOLIC CHURCHES
The Maronite Eastern Catholic Church
Lebanon is the home of the Phoenician alphabet, one that was widely received and readily adapted throughout the Mediterranean world and the West. Lebanon is a country with a rich Biblical heritage. The Cedars of Lebanon were the source of wood for the Temple of Solomon (I Kings 5:5-7). Lebanon figured in the origins of Christianity, for Jesus Christ visited Tyre with his mother Mary and performed a miracle for the Syro-Phoenician woman's daughter, as noted in Matthew 15:21-28 and Mark 7:24-30. Our Lady of Lebanon is the Patron Saint of Lebanon.
Lebanon is the home of the Maronite Eastern Catholic Church, one of the Patriarchates of the Eastern Catholic Churches.
Maron, a contemporary and friend of St. John Chrysostom, was a monk in the fourth century who left Antioch for the Orontes River to lead an ascetic life. As he was blessed with the gift of healing, his life of solitude was short-lived, and soon he had many followers that adopted his monastic way. Following the death of St. Maron in 410, his disciples built a monastery in his memory that formed the nucleus of the Maronite Church.
The Maronites held fast to the beliefs of the Council of Chalcedon in 451. When 350 monks were slain by the Monophysites of Antioch, the Maronites sought refuge in the mountains of Lebanon. Correspondence concerning the event brought papal recognition of the Maronites by Pope Hormisdas on February 10, 518.
The martyrdom of the Patriarch of Antioch in 602 left the Maronites without a leader, and led them to elect their first Maronite Patriarch, St. John Maron, in 685.
Little was heard from the Maronites for 400 years, as they quietly escaped the Muslim invasions in the mountains of Lebanon. They were not noticed again until the time of the Crusades, when Raymond of Toulouse discovered the Maronites in the mountains near Tripoli, Lebanon on his way to conquer Jerusalem. The Maronites again confirmed their loyalty to the Pope in 1181. The Maronite Patriarch Jeremiah attended the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, and Pope Gregory XIII inaugurated the Maronite College in Rome in 1584. The Maronites have always remained true to Rome. The Maronites, because of their monastic origin, were able to withstand intense pressure and even persecution to preserve their Church. Lebanon is the only country in Asia that maintains a Christian culture, primarily because of the Maronites.
The celebration of the Divine Liturgy is spoken in the native tongue, Arabic in Lebanon, while the Consecration of the Eucharist is still celebrated in Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
The Maronites in Lebanon to this day allow clerical marriage. They accept the gift of human sexuality given by God, who said, "It is not good for man to be alone" (Genesis 2:18). Hebrew Scripture noted the Levites, priests of Israel, were permitted to marry (Leviticus 21:7, 13; Ezekiel 44:22). St. Peter, our first Pope, was married, as we learn of the healing of his mother-in-law in the Gospels (Matthew 8:14-15, Mark 1:29-31, Luke 4:38-39). St. Paul reaffirms the tradition: "Do we not have the right to take along a Christian wife, as do the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Kephas?" (I Corinthians 9:5). Priestly celibacy is held in great honor in the Eastern Churches and many priests have chosen it for the sake of the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19:12). Celibacy is practiced by Bishops and those priests who are single at ordination or become widowers. The last Pope to be married during office was Adrian II (also known as Hadrian II), who served as Pope from 867 to 872 AD.
The Maronites have especially thrived since the Second Vatican Council, and are now the third largest Eastern Catholic Church, numbering about 3,300,000 faithful in Lebanon, the Middle East, and throughout the world. Maronite dioceses are also located in Damascus, Jerusalem, Haifa, Amman, and Cairo, as well as parishes in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Mexico, and the United States. We are blessed to have Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Seminary in Washington, D. C., established in 1961.
The Syrian Christian Churches
It was in Antioch that the followers of Jesus Christ converted by Paul and Barnabas were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). St. Peter served as the first Bishop of Antioch and Syria. The Apostolic Father St. Ignatius of Antioch was the third Bishop of the See of Antioch and established the Church order of bishop, priest, and deacon. He was the first to use the term "Catholic Church" in his writings. The Syrian Patriarch always takes the name of Ignatius in honor of St. Ignatius of Antioch.
The Syrian Churches are noted for three Fathers and Doctors of the Catholic Church. The theologian St. Ephrem (306-373) of Syria was born in Nisibis and later settled in Edessa. He is noted for his poems, hymns, and his writings on Scripture, particularly his Syriac Commentary on the Gospels. The great orator and writer St. John Chrysostom (347-407) was born in Antioch and eventually became the Bishop of Constantinople, where he developed the Byzantine Liturgy. The role of St. John of Damascus (675-750), a Doctor and the last Father of the Church, has been described above.
The Syrian Churches were divided by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 into two branches - the Church of Antioch which accepted the teachings of Chalcedon, and the Syriac Oriental Orthodox Church which believed that Christ was one incarnate nature of the Word of God. The Church of Antioch became Byzantine Orthodox following the Schism of 1054 and became known as the Byzantine Orthodox Church of Antioch. A schism in the Byzantine Orthodox Church of Antioch occurred in 1724 which gave rise to the Melkite Eastern Catholic Church (see below). A group from the Syriac Oriental Orthodox Church reunited with Rome as the Syrian Catholic Church in 1782. All Syrian Christians suffered persecution at the hands of the Turks in World War I, which diminished their numbers.
The liturgical language of Syrian Christians remains the West Syriac dialect of Aramaic along with Arabic, the native tongue. Although Syriac is still spoken in isolated villages, the majority of Syrian Catholics living in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq speak Arabic. In fact, the earliest inscription found of the Arabic alphabet is dated 512 AD, a trilingual one in Arabic, Syriac, and Greek at the Church of the Christian martyr St. Sergius in Zebed, near Aleppo, Syria; the Arabic writing included the name of God - Allah.
As in the time of Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 2:23) and the early Christian Church (Acts 24:5), a Christian in the Middle East today is still called a Nazarene or in Arabic Nasrani or plural Nasara. The present turmoil in Syria has resulted in over 700,000 Christian refugees fleeing to Jordan, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern countries. The diocese of Our Lady of Deliverance in Newark, New Jersey was opened for Syrian Catholics in the United States and Canada in 1995.
The Chaldean Christian Churches
The Assyrian Church of the East was the Church of ancient Mesopotamia. Their theology was influenced by St. Ephrem of Syria and the Persian sage Aphrahat of Nineveh. Nestorius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, was driven from the Roman Empire for opposing the Council of Ephesus in 431. However, the Assyrian Church of the East adopted Nestorian beliefs.
Multiple attempts at reunion with the West failed until July 5, 1830, when Pope Pius VIII confirmed Metropolitan Jean Hormizdas as head of the Chaldean Catholics. Dialogue between the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East has improved since Pope John Paul II signed a Christological agreement with the Assyrian Patriarch in Rome in 1994.
The Divine Liturgy is of the East Syriac dialect of Aramaic or the Chaldean rite. Since the Second Vatican Council, the Divine Liturgy may be said in the national language as well, primarily Arabic. The Bible of the early Christian Churches in the Levant was the Peshitta, which was actually written in the Syriac script of Aramaic.
All Christians have suffered severe persecution since the Iraq War. At least 58 Christians were massacred at Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Salvation Syrian Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad on October 31, 2010. In July of 2014 the terrorist Islamic State marked remaining Christian homes in Mosul with the Arabic letter Nuun - for Nazarene, Nasrani, or Nasara - and advised residents that they have 24 hours to leave, convert to Islam, or die. Sixty thousand Christians in Mosul have been displaced from their homes, and over one million Christians have fled Iraq since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003. The mass exodus of Chaldean Catholics from Iraq has added to the two dioceses in the United States, the first in Southfield, Michigan serving Detroit and Chicago, and the second in San Diego, California.
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The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church of India
A Syro-Malabar faithful is called a Mar Thoma Nasrani or St. Thomas Christian, as they trace their origin to the Apostle St. Thomas, who arrived in Kerala state on the Malabar coast of southwestern India. They were in communion with the Assyrian Church of Persia, and followed the East Syriac or Chaldean liturgy. St. Thomas Christians were united during the early years of the Christian Church.
Aggressive latinization of St. Thomas Christians by the Portuguese and their Bishops in the sixteenth century led to rebellion through the Coonan Cross Oath in January 1653. Relations were improved by Pope Alexander VII in 1662 through Carmelite Friars. Pope Pius XI established the Syro-Malabar Catholic hierarchy in 1923. The restoration of the Oriental rite has made considerable progress since Vatican II. Pope John Paul II elevated the Church to Major Archepiscopal status on December 16, 1992, and in 1998 gave the Syro-Malabar Bishops full authority in liturgical matters in an effort to promote union.
The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church has rapidly expanded until it is now the second largest Eastern Catholic Church with 4.1 million faithful in communities throughout India, the United States and Canada.
The Syro-Malankara Christian Churches of India
The Syro-Malankara Christian Churches of Kerala, India also trace their origin to the Apostle St. Thomas, who arrived near Maliankara in Kerala in 52 AD. They are primarily Oriental Orthodox Churches and are distinguished from the Syro-Malabar Church by the use of the West Syriac or Antiochene liturgy.
Latinization by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century produced widespread division, and by the Coonan Cross Oath of 1653, the community joined with the Syriac Oriental Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch. Following an appeal by Mar Ivanios, one of the Malankara Bishops, Pope Pius XI established the Malankara Catholic Hierarchy in 1930. Pope John Paul II assisted greatly in the ecumenical movement with a Papal visit on February 8, 1986 at St. Mary's Cathedral, Pattom, Trivandrum in Kerala, India.
Today there are about 4,000,000 members of the Syro-Malankara Oriental Orthodox Churches and their affiliates, and 400,000 members of the Syro-Malankara Eastern Catholic Church.
The Coptic Christian Churches of Egypt
The Coptic Christian Churches of Egypt trace their origin to St. Mark the Evangelist, who brought the faith to Alexandria. The Copts (derived from the Greek word for Egyptian) consider themselves part of the Holy Land, as the Holy Family sought refuge in Egypt during the time of Herod (Matthew 2:13-18). Monasticism began in Egypt with St. Anthony of the Desert and St. Pachomius. Alexandria was one of the original five Patriarchates and served as a major theological center, home to St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and St. Athanasius, who was the first to list the final Canon of the New Testament in 367 AD, and St. Cyril of Alexandria.
The vast majority of Christians in Egypt belong to the Coptic Oriental Orthodox Church with 9 million members, as they accepted the teaching of St. Cyril of Alexandria that Jesus Christ was one incarnate nature of the Word of God, in contrast to the belief of the Council of Chalcedon in 451. It was not until November 26, 1895 that the Catholic Patriarchate was re-established by Pope Leo XIII. The Coptic Catholic Church represents less than 2% of the Christian population of Egypt.
The traditional liturgy and Scripture of Coptic Christians was in the Coptic language, but now they usually celebrate their liturgy in Arabic, and have an Arabic Bible. The Arabic Bible of the Coptic Oriental Orthodox Church includes all 27 Books of the New Testament. All Christians in Egypt have recently suffered persecution at the hands of Muslim fundamentalists.
The Coptic Orthodox Church has recently established a significant presence throughout the USA and North America.
The Christian Churches of Ethiopia and Eritrea
Ethiopia has a rich Biblical history, as it was identified with the ancient land of Cush (Genesis 2:13), with the Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon (I Kings 10), and is noted in Psalm 68:32. The original Bible of the Ethiopian Church is of great interest, as it includes the Books of Enoch and Jubilees in its Old Testament, both of which have recently been discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ethiopia is the only country which remained independent during the years of Colonial Africa.
Philip met a minister of Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians, on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza in Acts 8:27. Christianity fluorished in Ethiopia following the efforts of St. Frumentius in the fourth century and the faith took on uniquely African characteristics. The Ethiopian Church also separated from Rome following the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and formed the Ethiopian Oriental Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which remains both the largest Oriental Orthodox Church and the largest Christian Church in Ethiopia and Eritrea with a total of over 36 million members. The Church liturgy was once based on the Coptic rite, and the Church was under the jurisdiction of the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria. Their liturgical language is Gheez, the native Ethiopian tongue and one of the Semitic languages, although parts of the liturgy are said in Amharic, the modern language based on the Gheez script. Ethiopia remains predominantly a Christian nation and is one of the earliest nations to embrace Christianity in Africa.
Attempts at reunion with Rome failed until World War II during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, when Catholic missionary activity resumed. Stability slowly developed, until Rome established a Metropolitan see in Addis Ababa in 1961. Catholics in Ethiopia and Eritrea comprise less than 1% of the Christian population.
Eritrea achieved independence from Ethiopia in 1993, and established their capital at Asmara by the Red Sea. On January 19, 2015, Pope Francis declared the Eritrean Catholic Church a separate Metropolitan church of its own. The Archbishop of the Eritrean Eastern Catholic Church resides in Asmara.
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The Eastern Christian Churches of Armenia
Armenian Christians trace their heritage to the Apostles Bartholomew and Jude Thaddeus. Through the influence of St. Gregory the Illuminator, ancient Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion under King Tiridates III in 301. A cathedral was built at Etchmiadzin, near Yerevan, which remains the center of the Armenian Church. In 506 the Church of Armenia rejected the Council of Chalcedon and became the Armenian Oriental Orthodox Apostolic Church. The Armenian Oriental Orthodox Churches today have six million members and celebrate their liturgy in Armenian. The Armenian Apostolic Church is noted for the historic Cathedral of St. James in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem.
Christian Armenia suffered persecution by the Seljuk Turks in the eleventh century, as well as a horrific genocide by a Turkish decimation in World War I, which claimed the lives of 1.5 million Armenians. The Armenian community also suffered persecution under the Communists in their homeland.
Pope Pius XIV recognized a growing Armenian Catholic Community by appointing a Patriarch for the Armenian Catholic Church in 1742. The residence of the Patriarch is now in Beirut, Lebanon. Armenian Catholics are recovering their numbers in Gyumri, Armenia with 600,000 members. They are also located throughout the Middle East but primarily in Beirut, Jerusalem, and Aleppo, Syria. Of the Armenian, Byzantine, and other Catholic communities that have settled in neighboring Georgia, only the Armenian Catholic community, formerly without a hierarchy, survived communist rule to resume a normal ecclesial life after Georgian independence in 1991. In June 2011 Pope Benedict XVI accepted the nomination of Archbishop Raphael Minassian as Patriarch of the Armenian Catholic Church of Armenia, Georgia, and Eastern Europe.
The Italo-Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church
The Great Schism of 1054 left the Roman Catholic West divided from the Byzantine or Greek Orthodox East. There are several Eastern Catholic communities that trace their heritage to the Patriarchate of Constantinople and preserve the Byzantine tradition in their liturgy - the Italo-Albanian Eastern Catholic Church, and twelve Greek Orthodox communities that have had part of their faithful reunite with Rome to form the Byzantine Eastern Catholics.
The Byzantine or Greek liturgy is based on the tradition of St. Basil (Lent) and the subsequent reform of St. John Chrysostom (Sundays and weekdays). In addition, the Liturgy of St. James is celebrated twice a year, and that of St. Mark once a year. Leavened bread is used for the Divine Liturgy. Of interest, the doxology following the Our Father, "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory," was found in the New Testament Codex used by St. John Chrysostom. The Byzantine Rite also has its own cycle of liturgical feasts and saints, ethnic traditions, and Church law. For example, the Byzantines make the Sign of the Cross from right to left. Byzantine Catholic Churches allow clerical marriage (I Timothy 3:2-5).
Southern Italy, Sicily, and Illyricum early on had a large Greek-speaking population. In the fifteenth century, Byzantine Catholics from Southern Albania migrated to southern Italy to escape Turkish persecution. Known both as the Italo-Greek Church as well as the Italo-Albanian Byzantine Church, the Byzantine Catholics of Italy have preserved the Byzantine rite to the present day, even though the area was within the Latin Patriarchate. The Italo-Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church and the Maronite Church have always remained faithful to Rome and have no Orthodox counterpart.
The Byzantine Catholic Church in Italy maintains an eparchy at Lungro in southern Italy, an eparchy at Piana of the Albanians in Sicily, and the monastery of Santa Maria di Grottaferrata in Rome.
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The Bulgarian Byzantine Christian Churches
The Bulgarian Church adopted the Byzantine rite in the ninth century, thanks to the efforts of the Byzantine Saints Cyril and Methodius, who formed the Cyrillic alphabet and are known as the Apostles to the Slavs. Greater than 99% of Bulgarian Christians belong to the Byzantine Orthodox Church of Bulgaria, with over six million members.
The Bulgarian Eastern Catholic Church was recognized by Pope Pius IX in 1861, but suffered terribly during the Balkan Wars. The Apostolic Delegate Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, the beloved Pope John XXIII, who served in Bulgaria from 1925-1934, arranged a new Apostolic Exarchate in Sofia in 1926.
The Byzantine Christian Churches of Greece and Jerusalem
The Orthodox Church of Greece and Jerusalem have remained under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople since the Schism of 1054 with Rome. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem resides and remains the primary custodian of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of the Crucifixion, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, as well as the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
Missionary work among the Greek Orthodox actually began in Constantinople in 1856 by Father John Marangos. Pope Pius X on June 11, 1911 created an Ordinariate for the Greek Catholics. The entire Byzantine Catholic community was moved to Greece in a general exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s, and an Apostolic Exarchate was established in 1923 in Athens.
The dominant Greek Orthodox consider the Greek Catholic Church a creation of Rome in their own territory. Most Greek Catholic immigrants to America converted to Greek Orthodoxy, because their married priests faced such hostility from American Catholic Bishops. Whereas the Orthodox Church of Greece has 10 million members, the Greek Catholic Church is the smallest Eastern Catholic Church with only 6000 members.
The Hungarian Byzantine Catholic Church
Byzantine Catholicism has been present in Hungary ever since the Middle Ages, and has grown over time through conversion of both Orthodox and Protestants. Pope Leo XIII approved a petition from Hungarian Byzantine Catholics to have their own Diocese on June 18, 1912. The Hungarian Church has grown, as both Byzantine and Ruthenian Catholics in Hungary began to celebrate the liturgy in Hungarian. Pope Francis on March 20, 2015 reorganized the Hungarian Byzantine Catholic Church and elevated its status to a Metropolitan Church.
Krizevci and the Greek Catholic Churches of Former Yugoslavia
The Greek Catholic Church in Croatia was organized by Christians who had fled their homes from Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Slovenia during the Turkish invasions. Pope Pius VI gave the Balkan Christians their own diocesan bishop on June 17, 1777, with the seat in Krizevci, Croatia. The Church was reorganized with the 1991 dissolution of Yugoslavia into independent republics. In 2001 an Apostolic Exarchate was established for Macedonia, and in 2003 an Apostolic Exarchate was established for Serbia and Montenegro. The diocese of Krizevci now serves Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Hercegovina.
The Melkite Greek Catholic Church
Melkites are descended from the ancient followers of Christ in the Holy Land who adhered to the Council of Chalcedon, and follow the Byzantine rite of worship. The word "Melkite" derives from the same Phoenician and Hebrew root which means "king" or "kingly." The Melkites trace their origin to Antioch, but adopted the Byzantine liturgy following the Crusades. The Melkite Patriarch resides in Damascus, Syria.
The Melkites separated from the Byzantine Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and re-entered into communion with Rome as the Melkite Byzantine Eastern Catholic Church, on an "equal-with-equal" basis in 1724. They are the most tenacious in preserving their Byzantine identity within the Catholic Church. The Melkite Patriarch Maximos IV played a major role at the Second Vatican Council.
The Melkites have a strong presence throughout the Levant with Churches in Damascus, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Haifa, Acre, Lebanon, and Petra, Jordan. As most Middle Eastern Churches, they generally celebrate their liturgy in Arabic and have an Arabic Bible. They have about 1.6 million members throughout the Middle East and the world, including Eparchies in Jerusalem, Akka, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and Newton, Massachusetts.
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The Romanian Christian Churches
Romania has a Latin culture, and Romanian is one of the romance languages. Modern Romania basically arose from the principalities of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania, once part of Hungary. Romania is predominantly an Orthodox country, as the Romanian Byzantine Orthodox Church has over 20,000,000 members. The Romanian Byzantine Catholic Church has undergone intense persecution since Communist rule. Aware of Protestant inroads, the Orthodox Metropolitan of Transylvania sought and achieved union with Rome on September 4, 1700, establishing the Romanian Greek Catholic Church. The Romanian Church went underground during Communist rule, and was re-established by Pope John Paul II on March 14, 1990. The Romanian Greek Catholic Church has since flourished.
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The Ruthenian or Rusyn Byzantine Catholic Church
The Ruthenians, or Rusyns, have a noble history and an indomitable spirit, having suffered persecution in their homeland of Carpatho-Rus and elsewhere. They trace their origin to Saints Cyril and Methodius, sent from Constantinople to the land of Carpatho-Rus, or Moravia. The two were successful in bringing conversion to the people, for they created an alphabet primarily of Greek letters to complement the native tongue of this Slavic nation. The liturgy of St. John Chrysostom was translated into the Cyrillic alphabet and Byzantine Catholicism prevailed. The Union of Uzhorod in 1646 reunited them to Rome after the Schism of 1054 between Catholic and Orthodox.
Some Ruthenian Catholics migrated to the United States in the nineteenth century and were often accompanied by their own married priests. The presence of their married priests was met with disapproval by some Roman Catholic bishops. In response to an appeal by the US Roman Catholic hierarchy, the Vatican issued a decree, Cum Data Fuerit, in 1929. It stated that newly ordained Eastern Catholic priests serving in North America were required to be celibate, totally in conflict with the original terms of union with Rome that had guaranteed Ruthenians the right to retain married clergy. Dismay led many Ruthenian Catholics to petition Constantinople, who received this group to form the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of the USA. Today they are headquartered in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
For those Ruthenians who remained with the Rusyn Byzantine Catholic Church, Pope Francis recently lifted the ban on the ordination of married men to the priesthood in Eastern Catholic churches outside their traditional territories, including the United States, Canada and Australia! Leonardo Cardinal Sandro of the Congregation of the Eastern Churches signed the Decree June 14, 2014.
Today there are three distinct Ruthenian Catholic jurisdictions: the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Metropolitanate in the United States centered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, declared a Metropolitan Church sui juris in 1969; an eparchy in Ukraine; and an Apostolic Exarchate in the Czech Republic. The Ruthenians have recently flourished, preserved the Byzantine liturgy, and have allowed married priests.
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The Greek Catholic Church of Slovakia
The nation of Czechoslovakia dissolved into Slovakia and the Czech Republic on January 1, 1993. The modern country of Slovakia is bordered by Poland to the North, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, and the Czech Republic and Austria to the west. It is divided from the Czech Republic by the Carpathian mountains. The Byzantine Catholic Church traces their heritage to the missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who arrived in the ninth century AD. Cyril developed the first Slavic alphabet and translated the Gospel into the Slavonic language. The religious history of the Byzantine Catholics in Slovakia is closely related to the Rusyns, as both were reunited to Rome following the Great Schism by the Union of Uzhorod in 1646, and both Slovak and Rusyn Byzantine Catholics were included in the territory of Czechoslovakia after World War I. Many have returned to their Greek Catholic roots following Communist suppression, and Pope John Paul II has supported the Church by creating an Apostolic Exarchate of Slovakia in 1997. Pope Benedict XVI recently has elevated the Church to a Metropolitan Eastern Catholic Church.
The Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church
Ukraine was known as Kievan Rus from the 9th to the 16th century, and adopted Byzantine Christianity in 988. Following the Great Schism, the Ukraine and Belarus rejoined Rome in the Union of Brest in 1595. In spite of overwhelming persecution by Communist rule, the Ukrainian Catholic Church has recovered and is now the largest Eastern Catholic Church with over 4.4 million faithful! The liturgy is traditionally in the Slavonic language, although parts of the Divine Liturgy are in Ukrainian.
The Lviv Theological Academy evolved into Ukrainian Catholic University, the first Catholic University in the former Soviet Union and the first university opened by an Eastern Catholic Church! The Ukrainian Catholic Church now has a presence in the USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, England and Australia. The Ukrainian people have a special devotion to the Blessed Mother, and her reported appearances at Hrushiv and Seredne encouraged the faith of these devout people.
5, 12, 19
Communities Without Hierarchy
This group includes the Albanian, Belarusan, and Russian Byzantine Catholic Communities.
There is an Albanian Byzantine Catholic Community with a surviving presence in Southern Albania. The Church, along with its Orthodox counterpart, has been almost completely absorbed by the Latin rite. The Albanian Byzantine Catholic Community is administered from Southern Albania. Both Catholic and Orthodox have faced persecution under the Albanian communist government, and are few in number: for example, the Albanian Byzantine Catholic Community numbered only 3845 members in 2010.
Byelorussia, east of Poland, became Belarus with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Belarusan Greek Catholics originated from the Union of Brest in 1595. They have suffered persecution throughout history. While they do not have an official hierarchy approved by Rome, their communities, which celebrate the Byzantine liturgy, are beginning to thrive with the end of Communist oppression.
The Russian Orthodox Church enjoys 110 million members since the fall of Communism, headed by the Patriarch of Moscow. The Russian Government has supported the Russian Orthodox Church and has restricted inroads from other groups such as the Catholic Church. Three tiny communities of Russian Byzantine Catholics exist in Harbin, China, the United States, and Canada without hierarchy.
5, 6, 12
THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE EASTERN CATHOLIC CHURCHES
The surprise announcement of Pope John XXIII for a Second Vatican Council on January 25, 1959 was welcomed with open arms by the Christian Churches of the East, for the Pope called not only for "an intense spiritual cultivation" of the modern world, but also for a "renewed invitation to the faithful of separated communities." His opening speech convening the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962 signaled a turning point for improved relations between East and West, as he called for Christian Unity.
Eastern Catholic issues brought before the Commission on Oriental Churches and the Vatican Council included emphasis on the collegiality of the bishops, respect and receptivity of the West to Eastern Christian traditions, and a call for Christian unity between East and West.
Perhaps the primary issue between Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox centers on the hierarchy of the Church. Eastern Christians find Scriptural support in the election of Matthias to fill the place of Judas Iscariot in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:15-26). Peter "stood up among the brethren" and presided over the group of about 120. The Apostles and disciples "put forward" two, Joseph and Matthias. "And for them they cast lots, and the lots fell on Matthias" (Acts 1:26).
Rome sees the Pope as having supreme authority over all of Christianity, citing Matthew 16:18-19, when Jesus gave Peter the keys to the Kingdom, and John 21:15-17, the three calls to Peter to "feed my lambs." Thus the Pope appoints each new Roman Catholic bishop throughout the world. The Eastern Orthodox see the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and representative of Peter, as "presiding with love, as a first among equals." Thus the final choice of a bishop for each autocephalous ("self-headed") Orthodox Church is chosen by its synod of bishops. Eastern Catholics maintain an intermediate position, as described by Melkite Patriarch Maximos IV, who pointed out the appointment of bishops in the East is done by synods of bishops and then simply confirmed by the Pope.4, 6, 12-14, 25-26
It is the hope that Eastern Catholics serve as a bridge between Catholic and Orthodox!
Orientalium Ecclesiarum - The Decree on Eastern Catholic Churches
The Decree on Eastern Catholic Churches passed on November 21, 1964 with a vote of 2110 to 39, and was promulgated by Pope Paul VI the same day. The Decree was a step in the right direction, for it insisted on the equality of rites, avoidance of latinization, and the restoration of the heritage of each Eastern Church.
Important concessions were the recognition of each group of Eastern Catholics as Churches with a particular rite or tradition (OE 2 - Orientalium Ecclesiarum, Article 2), and that these Churches are of equal rank (OE 3). Eastern hierarchies should be established where needed (OE 4), and the Churches of the East like those of the West have the right and duty to govern themselves according to their own discipline...and tradition (OE 5).
Articles 7-11 address the rights of Patriarchs, "that their rights and privileges be restored in accordance with the ancient traditions of each church and the decrees of the ecumenical councils" (OE 9).
Articles 12-18 address the particular issues of sacramental discipline, especially those involving mixed marriages and the reception of sacraments. Articles 19-23 concern Divine Worship, for example, the faithful should follow the liturgical dates - including Easter - of their own particular tradition. Article 23 confirms the authority of the Patriarch or authority of each church to regulate the use of languages in the sacred liturgical functions and of approving translations of texts into the vernacular or native language.
Articles 24-30 define the special role of Eastern Catholics in promoting the unity of all Christians, especially with the Eastern Orthodox, "first by prayer, then by the example of their own lives, by their fidelity to the ancient traditions of the East, and by working together and a brotherly attitude" (OE 24), so that all Christians may be one (OE 30).
1, 3, 24-26
The Second Vatican Council and Orientalium Ecclesiarum have had a dramatic impact on the viability of the Eastern Catholic Churches. This is evidenced by their international growth, particularly the Maronites, Melkites, Ukrainian Byzantine Catholics, and the Syro-Malabar Eastern Churches.
Father Giles Dimock of the Dominican Institute in Washington D. C. has pointed out that one should adopt the faith of his heritage (personal communication). Article 6 of the Decree confirms that members should "strive to return to their ancestral traditions." The statistics on Eastern Catholics are clearly underestimated, for there are Eastern Catholics worldwide that do not have their Eastern Church available in their region.
The gift of the Holy Spirit to the Catholic Church through the Second Vatican Council is apparent in the renewed commitment to Christian unity, in the unity of Catholics among themselves, and especially in the spiritual renewal of Eastern Catholics.
POPE JOHN PAUL II AND THE EASTERN CATHOLIC CHURCHES
Pope John Paul II made a tremendous commitment for the protection and survival of the Eastern Churches throughout the world. His lifelong dedication to the Second Vatican Council was particularly evident in his efforts on behalf of the Eastern Catholic Churches.
In addition to his international visits to the Eastern Churches, Pope John Paul II promulgated The Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, published on October 18, 1990, and which came into effect on October 1, 1991. The Code governs and protects the ecclesial life of the Eastern Catholic Churches. These churches are divided into four categories depending on historical duration and stability: Patriarchates, Major Archepiscopal Churches, Metropolitan Churches, and Other Churches sui juris or autonomous. The Patriarchates have the highest degree of independence, and elect their own Patriarch, who in turn request ecclesiastical communion with Rome. The Major Archepiscopal Churches require the elected Major Archbishop to be confirmed by the Pope. The Metropolitan Churches submit three names, one of which is chosen by the Pope. The Pope names the head of the Church in the fourth group. The following image categorizes the Eastern Catholic Churches:
3, 5, 11
In summary, the Second Vatican Council and the efforts of Pope John Paul II have produced worldwide expansion of the Eastern Catholic Churches. In the United States, for example, Eparchies (Dioceses) exist for the Maronites (Brooklyn and Los Angeles); the Ukrainian Catholics (Philadelphia); the Melkites (Newton, Massachusetts); the Syro-Malabars (St. Thomas in Chicago); the Ruthenian Byzantines (Pittsburgh); the Romanians (Canton, Ohio); the Chaldeans (Southfield, Michigan and San Diego, California); the Syrians (Newark, New Jersey), and the Armenian Catholics in New York.
5, 8, 12, 15
1 Orientalium Ecclesiarum - Decree on Catholic Eastern Churches, 21 November, 1964. The Second Vatican Council. Austin Flannery (ed), Dominican Publications, Dublin, Ireland, 441-451, 1998.
2 Bokenkotter T. Concise History of the Catholic Church. Image Books Doubleday, New York, 84-93, 134-141, 2004.
3 Pope John Paul II. Orientale Lumen. Apostolic Letter, May 2, 1995, paragraphs 1, 5, 21, 24, 26, Vatican, www.vatican.va
4 The Navarre Revised Standard Version of The Holy Bible. Four Courts Press, Dublin, Ireland, 1999-2005.
5 Roberson R. The Eastern Christian Churches, Seventh Edition. Editione Orientalia Christiana, Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome, Italy, 1-59, 111, 133-184, 2008.
6 Bishop Timothy K Ware. The Orthodox Church, Second Edition. Penguin, London, England, 1-72, 314-316, 1997.
7 Eastern Churches. New Catholic Encyclopedia, Second Edition. Catholic University of America, Thomson and Gale, Washington, D. C., volume 5, 17, 2003.
8 Father AJ Salim. Captivated by Your Teachings - A Resource for Maronite Catholics. ET Nedder Publishing, Tucson, Arizona, 81-108, 2002.
9 Chorbishop Seely Beggiani. The Maronite Church. New Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 9, 192-200, 2003.
10 Catechism of the Catholic Church. Second Edition, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, paragraphs 461-478, 1580, 2000.
11 Pope John Paul II. CCEO: Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches: Title VII, 177-310, note Canon 285, 758, 1991, www.vatican.va.
12 CNEWA - The Catholic Near East Welfare Association. 2015 Eastern Catholic Church Statistics, Annuario Pontificio, CNEWA internet site, www.cnewa.org
13 Bonchonsky JP. The Other Catholics, Obedient and Faithful. American Byzantine Catholic Research Center, Mt. Shasta, California, 39, 188, 1993.
14 Pope Benedict XVI. Church Fathers I and II. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City, 2008 and 2010.
15 Father LG Gosselin. Though They are Strangers. Melkite Eparchy of Newton, Massachusetts, 3-59, 1992.
16 Syrian Christianity. New Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13, 704-720, 2003.
17 Christiantoday.com, August 6, 2015.
18 Newsweek, March 26, 2015.
19 Byzantine Liturgy. New Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 2, 811-818, 2003.
20 Italy's Byzantine Catholics. byzcath.org/ourladyofgrace/article.htm, accessed February 28, 2016.
21 Church of Romania. New Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12, 337-340, 2003.
22 "Pontifical Ruling on Married Eastern Clergy," Acta Apostolicae Sedis Vol CVI, No 6, 496-499, June 6, 2014, www.vatican.va; Translation byzcath.org.
23 Pope John XXIII. Announcement of Second Vatican Council, January 25, 1959; and Opening Speech of Second Vatican Council, October 11, 1962. Vatican II Council Daybook, Volume 1, Session 1, October 11- December 8, 1962. National Catholic Welfare Conference, Washington, D. C., 1-2, 25-29, 1965.
24 Vatican II Council Daybook, Volume 1, Session 1, 1962: 31, 43, 54, 1965.
25 Vatican II Council Daybook, Volume 1, Session 2, September 29-December 4, 1963: 168, 1965.
26 Vatican II Council Daybook, Volume 2, Session 3, September 14-November 21, 1964: 142, 1965. | <urn:uuid:92d4116a-0647-4136-9897-cc894dcfae34> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.maryourmother.net/Eastern.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00193-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953262 | 9,734 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Theme of Lies and Deceit in The Walling of Asgard and the Birth of Sleipnir
OK, let’s count all the different deceptions that occur in this story.
- The stone-mason pretends that he isn't a giant.
- The gods’ agreement with him is undertaken in bad faith, since they don’t really believe he can possibly build a wall around Asgard in one summer. They’re just trying to get a free wall out of this guy.
- Then, rather than accept their end of the bargain when it turns out that the stone-mason’s will finish the wall by the deadline, the gods send in Loki to prevent the stone-mason from completing the wall.
- Loki disguises himself as a beautiful mare – yet another deceit.
- Finally, when they realize he’s a giant, the gods break the oath they’ve sworn not to harm the "stone-mason."
We're counting five pretty serious deceptions in this story. Each deception stems from the one before it. If the giant hadn’t disguised himself as a stone-mason, the gods never would have agreed to the deal, etc. But does that excuse the gods for breaking their oaths and killing the stone mason? The narrator of the story in the Prose Edda doesn’t seem to think so. He reminds us of these oaths three times. He even ends the story with a poem about how "broken were oaths then / bonds and swearing, / Pledges all sacred / which passed between them" (Prose Edda, Gylfaginning, Chapter 42, pp. 56). In Viking culture, promises were very important, and even a god, it seems, is supposed to keep his promises.
Questions About Lies and Deceit
- Name the deceptions that occur in this story. How many are there? How is each deception caused by the one before it?
- Why do you think the stone-mason hides his true identity? Do you think his reasons excuse his deception?
- Which deception does the narrator of the story in the Prose Edda seem to take the most seriously? Why do you think this deception is the one that bothers him the most?
- Which deception do you think is the worst? Why? | <urn:uuid:696779d2-299f-49ea-ba18-3630e3c4f292> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.shmoop.com/walling-of-asgard/lies-deceit-theme.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393442.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00017-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969192 | 491 | 2.734375 | 3 |
(CNN) -- Civil rights attorney Percy Sutton, who represented Malcolm X and became an influential New York politician and broadcaster, has died at age 89, associates said Sunday.
As a businessman, Sutton was credited with leading the revitalization of Harlem, including the restoration of the famous Apollo Theater. In a statement issued after Sutton's death Saturday night, New York Gov. David Paterson called the former Manhattan borough president "a friend and mentor."
"Percy was fiercely loyal, compassionate and a truly kind soul," Paterson said. "He will be missed, but his legacy lives on through the next generations of African-Americans he inspired to pursue and fulfill their own dreams and ambitions."
And in a statement issued by the White House, President Obama called Sutton a "true hero to African-Americans in New York City and around the country."
"His life-long dedication to the fight for civil rights and his career as an entrepreneur and public servant made the rise of countless young African-Americans possible," Obama said.
A native of Texas, Sutton served as an intelligence officer for the famed Tuskegee Airmen during World War II before becoming an attorney. He represented Malcolm X until the onetime Nation of Islam leader's 1965 assassination, and continued to represent his widow, Betty Shabazz, until her death in a 1997 fire. He then defended Shabazz's 12-year-old grandson, who admitted to starting the fatal blaze.
In the 1970s, Sutton was a member of the Harlem circle dubbed the "Gang of Four," which included U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel; Paterson's father Basil, who became New York's secretary of state; and future New York Mayor David Dinkins. He served as Manhattan borough president from 1966 to 1977, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered flags at city offices to fly at half-staff on Monday.
"It's hard to capture in just a few words how important Percy's contributions were -- and just how unique an individual he was. He helped move African-Americans and all of New York forward," Bloomberg said in his declaration.
After public office, Sutton became an African-American broadcasting pioneer by purchasing radio stations WLIB and WBLS, launching the first radio chain aimed at black listeners, civil rights leader Al Sharpton said Sunday.
"He was at the forefront of everything you can think of in black America," Sharpton told CNN. "He was the quintessential black American. He pioneered black business, black media and black politics. He opened those doors and he kept them open."
Sutton also reopened the Apollo, the Harlem landmark credited with launching the careers of performers from Ella Fitzgerald to Michael Jackson, "when it was boarded up -- when the only ones here were the rats and the roaches," Sharpton told reporters Sunday.
"He was suave and eloquent and debonair," Sharpton said. "He had a coolness about him that I think that we will never see the likes of. There was a grace about Percy Sutton that was hard to describe."
And Rangel said Sutton "never stopped fighting for our rights and building community, especially in his beloved Harlem."
"Percy Sutton wrote his own story, and in doing so, he leaves behind a remarkable legacy of achievement and social justice that will serve as an example and inspiration for generations of leaders, now and forever," the veteran congressman said in a written statement. | <urn:uuid:c0ebfabf-7dcb-4ada-b4c6-a9c0ec28f0f8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/27/obit.sutton/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00039-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983948 | 704 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Battlefield commanders rely heavily on Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) to reduce uncertainties concerning the enemy, weather, and terrain for all types of operations (FM 34-130, 1994). This process is initiated any time the commander faces a new enemy or receives a new mission. IPB analyses are most commonly used by the commander's operations and intelligence staff to support both defensive and offensive operations.
An integral part of the IPB process is terrain analysis. Terrain analysis consists of interpreting natural and manmade features of a geographic area, together with the influences of weather and climate, to determine their effects on military operations. This analysis must support IPB requirements at both the strategic and tactical levels of operation. Data at the 1:250,000 and smaller scales are used primarily to support strategic operations. This is considered to be high-level planning where commanders can obtain a broad overview of the battlefield. Tactical analysis is done at the 1:50,000 and larger scales. It provides the commander with a much more detailed view of specific areas-of-interest on the battlefield.
Army terrain teams, staffed by topographic analysts, are required to create terrain analysis products to support both strategic and tactical combat operations. Before they can analyze the military aspect of terrain, topographic analysts must know the mission of the unit, type of operation, level of command, composition of the forces involved, and weapons and equipment involved (FM 5-33, 1990). Based on these needs, the analyst creates various tactical decision aids (TDAs) by integrating terrain data together with weather and other dynamic battlefield information. Examples of battlefield TDAs include: 1) observation and fields of fire, 2) cover and concealment, 3) obstacles, 4) key terrain, and 5) avenues of approach. These TDAs are collectively referred to as OCOKA products.
Topographic analysts receive training in TDA generation, as well as interpretation of topographic maps, aerial photographs, and remotely sensed imagery. In an effort to improve the warfighters' decision-making process, the Digital Topographic Support System (DTSS) was created to facilitate terrain analysis and TDA generation. By integrating geographic information systems (GIS), image processing, and data base management software together with scanning and communication technologies, the topographic analyst can "pull" existing data from appropriate sources, perform terrain analyses to create TDAs, enhance and/or create data as required, and "push" products and/or data across the battlefield to other DoD systems.
Although the DTSS is designed to exploit 1:50,000 scale vector feature data (point, line, polygon), the system can generate TDAs from any digital terrain data including national and commercial sources. The DTSS provides the user with an easy-to-use interface to the Army standard mobility model, as well as tools to create custom TDAs based on the area-of-operation, mission requirements, and available data. Image maps, 3D perspective views, and fly/drive-throughs can also be created using the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software provided by the DTSS. TDAs generated on the DTSS can be output as map overlays for use on other systems that use the Command and Control Personal Computer (C2PC), Army Battle Command Systems (ABCS), and Commercial Joint Mapping Toolkit (C/JMTK) viewers.
|Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list| | <urn:uuid:d4b08b2f-d62c-4d76-abb0-80bbc2bfe6e9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/ctis-terrainanalysis.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00065-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915451 | 711 | 3.25 | 3 |
February 2012 Weather and
Its Impacts on Missouri
Commercial Agriculture/University of Missouri Extension
Unseasonably warm temperatures persisted for much of February on what ended up being one of the mildest winters in decades for the Show Me state. Preliminary numbers indicate an average statewide temperature of 39°F for February, nearly 5 degrees above normal. Regionally, temperatures averaged between 34-37°F over northern sections, 38-41°F across central Missouri and 40-43°F in the southern third of the state. The Missouri Bootheel experienced the mildest weather, averaging between 44-46°F. Most days averaged above normal during the month with only 5-7 days recording below normal temperatures. Seasonally, about 70% of the days, from December through February, averaged above normal, and will rank the winter of 2011-12 in the "Top 5" mildest winters for Missouri, and the warmest since the winter of 1991-92.
Precipitation was variable across the state in February and ranged from above normal in northwestern and west central Missouri to near to below normal elsewhere. Generally, 2-3 inches were common for most locations, but there were drier areas, especially in northeastern sections, where 1-1.5 inches were common. Other dry pockets were found in far southwestern Missouri and some southeastern counties where 1-2 inches were reported. Some of the highest precipitation totals came from observers in Nodaway, Platte and Clay counties where 3.57, 3.51, and 3.46 inches were reported, respectively. Lowest precipitation totals were reported in Barry, Ralls, Knox, and New Madrid counties where 1.07, 1.10, 1.12, and 1.28 inches were observed, respectively. Preliminary numbers indicated a statewide average of 2.3 inches, slightly above the statewide norm.
The mild temperature regime provided few opportunities for any snow or ice events to impact the state. The most significant winter event occurred on February 13-14 when a storm system dropped 1-4 inches of snow across a large part of the state.
A highly unusual multi-state tornado outbreak occurred at the end of the month, when a strong storm system swept through the Midwest, and dropped tornadoes from Nebraska to Tennessee. Preliminary surveys indicate 36 tornadoes touched down and resulted in 13 fatalities - 6 in Illinois, 3 in Missouri, 3 in Tennessee and 1 in Kansas.
Twelve tornadoes ravaged portions of southern Missouri just before midnight on the 28th and continued into the early morning hours of Leap Day. Barry, Dallas, and Stoddard counties in Missouri each reported one tornado related fatality. All three fatalities occurred in mobile homes and were associated with EF-2 tornadoes (120 mph) impacting Barry county and Dallas county, and one EF-3 tornado (140 mph) in Stoddard county.
Additionally, the community of Branson was struck by an EF-2 tornado, just after midnight on Leap Day. It tore through the heart of the tourist district, more widely known as the Branson Strip. Six of the more than 50 theaters sustained significant damage and 22 hotels experienced various levels of damage. The impacts could have been much worse if the tornado struck two weeks later, when tourists arrive in full force with the start of spring break.
The mild February weather allowed for spring growth and development in floral gardens and natural vegetation and has created concern for injury that may result due to the likelihood of sub-freezing temperatures during March. The average date for the last moderate freeze (24-28°F) ranges from March 16 in southeastern Missouri to April 10 in the northern border counties. | <urn:uuid:c2623192-669e-491b-99a3-380e3911b035> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.climate.missouri.edu/news/arc/feb2012.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396959.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00140-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958028 | 745 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Dec 1, 2003
is there really such a thing as hep d, and does it really slow progression of hiv?
Response from Dr. Dieterich
Actually you are close. Delta hepatitis or hepatitis D is a provirus that only infects those that are already infected with hepatitis B Hepatitis G or more accurately GB virus C actually does seem to slow the advance of HIV. It is a relative of hepatitis C and so far it does seem to to help HIV, however I would not recommend going out to try to get it! You might get something else! Stay safe!DTD
HBV lab confustion
When can u be Sure PCR is False Positive
This forum is designed for educational purposes only, and experts are not rendering medical, mental health, legal or other professional advice or services. If you have or suspect you may have a medical, mental health, legal or other problem that requires advice, consult your own caregiver, attorney or other qualified professional.
Experts appearing on this page are independent and are solely responsible for editing and fact-checking their material. Neither TheBody.com nor any advertiser is the publisher or speaker of posted visitors' questions or the experts' material. | <urn:uuid:ff9403ad-84b5-4c5e-937a-42998113aef7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thebody.com/Forums/AIDS/Hepatitis/Q152583.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939369 | 247 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Pushing Objects with Laser Light
When light lands on a surface, it generally exerts a force that is imperceptible to humans. But that hasn’t stopped scientists from tapping this weak force. Specialists in the modern field of optomechanics, which studies the effects of electromagnetic radiation on mechanical motion, are learning to use laser light to control the motion of certain solid objects.
Dr. Jack Sankey, Canada Research Chair in Experimental Optomechanics, is combining state-of-the-art optical systems with high-quality mechanical systems. This allows an incredibly weak source of light — even one that is a million times dimmer than a keychain LED — to profoundly influence the motion of an object large enough to see with our eyes and hold in our fingers.
Perhaps surprisingly, light can control the motion of objects ranging from kilogram-scale mirrors that hang in gravitational wave detectors to nanoscopic-scale mechanical systems that are manufactured on microchips. The intensity and frequency of light can be used to tune the mechanical characteristics of such devices.
Sankey’s research could lead to the development of new optically-controlled mechanical devices in which the solid, flexible support structures are replaced entirely by photons. Because the behavior of photons is fundamentally different from that of atoms in a solid, such devices should achieve unprecedented levels of performance in a variety of applications. | <urn:uuid:a99bdbd6-8778-465b-bc09-724af4faa9ab> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/chairholders-titulaires/profile-eng.aspx?profileId=2990 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00037-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925483 | 281 | 3.96875 | 4 |
Welcome to the Biome-BGC project page
Get the latest code from GitHub
Or Download Biome-BGC 4.2 from the NTSG FTP
This project page serves as a central place for model information and source code. Biome-BGC is an ecosystem process model that estimates storage and flux of carbon, nitrogen and water. Biome-BGC is a computer program that estimates fluxes and storage of energy, water, carbon, and nitrogen for the vegetation and soil components of terrestrial ecosystems.
- New leaf growth and old leaf litterfall
- Sunlight interception by leaves, and penetration to the ground
- Precipitation routing to leaves and soil
- Snow accumulation and melting
- Drainage and runoff of soil water
- Evaporation of water from soil and wet leaves
- Transpiration of soil water through leaf stomata
- Photosynthetic fixation of carbon from CO2 in the air
- Uptake of nitrogen from the soil
- Distribution of carbon and nitrogen to growing plant parts
- Decomposition of fresh plant litter and old soil organic matter
- Plant mortality
Biome-BGC: Required meteorological inputs
- Daily maximum temperature (°C)
- Daily minimum temperature (°C)
- Daylight average temperature (°C)
- Daily total precipitation (cm)
- Daylight average partial pressure of water vapor (Pa)
- Daylight average shortwave radiant flux density (W/m2)
- Daylength (s)
Biome-BGC version 4.2 Final Release
We have been hard at work compiling a list of bug fixes and model enhancments into a new version of Biome-BGC. We are offereing this new beta model version under the downloads section of this site. We have been hard at working compiling a list of bug fixes and model enhancments into a new version of Biome-BGC. We are offereing this new beta model version under the downloads section of this site.
This new version has a number of minor bug fixes and some increased functionality.
The following is a list of relavant changes to this version.
Development Notes for Biome BGC.
This file is a list of code/internal changes.
- Fixed Spin & Go so that the '-g' flag actually works.
- IMPORTANT Corrected use of the co2 file. It now correctly looks up the value for the model year. Previously it simply used co2 entries starting at the top of the co2 file.
- Added External Nitrogen Deposition File see USAGE.TXT for more information.
- Identical to last 4.2pre
- Added command line option support using getopts() to add functionality without breaking backwards compatibility. See USAGE.TXT for options.
- Centralized header files bgc.h for libbgc pointbgc.h for pointbgc C source files now only need to include one header, all others get included automatically in the correct order.
- Added bgc_io.c for non-data I/O. Replaced all printf()s to stdout with the new wrapper function bgc_printf().
- ### DO NOT Use printf/sprintf/fprintf for output/error messages ### Use bgc_printf() instead
- bgc_printf() is for outputing information to standard out and errror it behaves similar to printf but with an extra first argument:
- BV_ERROR: For fatal error messages
- BV_WARN: For non-fatal warnings
- BV_PROGRESS: For basic progress information
- BV_DETAIL: For detailed progress information
- BV_DIAG: For internal diagnostic/debug messages
- int bgc_printf(VERBOSITY, "Message\n", ...);
- VERBOSITY is one of several defined keywords. You use the keyword appropriate to when your message should be printed. bgc_printf also supports logging functionality see USAGE.TXT for usage.
- Replaced all DEBUG printf's with proper bgc_printf calls
- Merged Spinup code into main code to reduce code duplication merged spinup_bgc.c into bgc.c
- Added pan arctic summary output. Traditional behavior is set by signed char summary_sanity = INSANE ; in bgc()
- SANE behavior (pan-artic style) calculates these correclty: Maximum Monthly LAI End of month Snow Water End of month Sail Water content
- Also added new output_map variables
- output_map = &summary->daily_et;
- output_map = &summary->daily_outflow;
- output_map = &summary->daily_evap;
- output_map = &summary->daily_trans
- output_map = &summary->daily_soilw;
- output_map = &summary->daily_snoww;
- Rewrote make files to not use version specific directories
- Added 'make test' to build then run a spinup and model test
- Moved all photosynthesis science code out of bgc.c and into photosynthesis.c
- Corrected some sprintf formating to be more ANSI C standards complient in prephenology.c
- Added tests/corrections for negative variables in radtrans.c and metarr_init.c: (swavgfd,par,swabs_plaishade,parabs_plaishadei,dal)
- Added code to improve portability and standards compliance.
- Added 'make tools' to master makefile. This builds the restart diff/view tool.
- Replaced floating point equality tests with tolerance tests. Global tolerance define: FLT_COND_TOL = 1e-10 epc_init.c, sitec_init.c
- Various memory leak and pointer assignment fixes in pointbgc.c
- Fix to prevent SEGFAULT on empty restart file in pointbgc.c
- Split output_init.c into output_ctrl.c and output_init.c output_ctrl.c reads the output controls from the ini file output_init.c initializes the output files
- Added 'spin-n-go' functionality. This mode '-g' flag will run both the model and the spinup without generating the restart file. | <urn:uuid:bb138b3c-a104-447d-9236-3c2f679a1b50> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ntsg.umt.edu/project/biome-bgc/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00029-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.755361 | 1,355 | 2.515625 | 3 |
of Interior Angles
of a Polygon
180(n - 2)
(where n = number of
Let's investigate why this formula is true.
Start with vertex
connect it to all other vertices (it is already connected to B
by the sides of the figure). Three triangles are formed. The sum of the
angles in each triangle contains 180°.
The total number of degrees in all three triangles will be 3 times
180. Consequently, the sum of the interior angles of a
180 = 540
Notice that a pentagon
sides, and that
triangles were formed by connecting the vertices. The number of
triangles formed will be
less than the number of sides.
This pattern is constant for all polygons. Representing the number of sides of a polygon as
the number of triangles formed is
(n - 2).
Since each triangle contains
the sum of the interior angles of a polygon is
There are two
types of problems that arise when using this formula:
Questions that ask you to
find the number of degrees in the sum
of the interior angles
of a polygon.
Questions that ask you to find the number of
of a polygon.
working with the angle formulas for polygons, be sure to read each
question carefully for clues as to which formula you will need to
use to solve the problem. Look for the words that describe
each kind of formula, such as the words sum,
exterior and degrees.
the number of degrees in the sum of the
interior angles of an
octagon has 8
sides. So n
= 8. Using the
formula from above,
= 180(8 - 2)
= 180(6) =
many sides does a polygon have if the sum of its
number of degrees is given, set the formula
above equal to 720°, and solve for
n - 2 = 4
n = 6
the formula = 720°
Divide both sides by 180
Add 2 to both sides | <urn:uuid:ebeb4955-f620-48d6-9b3a-94a72858a636> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.regentsprep.org/regents/math/geometry/GG3/LPoly1.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396222.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00179-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.85041 | 432 | 4.125 | 4 |
Dingoes are one of Australia’s most iconic animals. They’re also a threatened species in Victoria.
Dingo country, a dramatic rocky high country exhibit, offers you the chance to observe dingoes up close, and learn about their complex history.
Our ‘Dingo Lingo’ keeper talks are delivered every day at 3.30pm.
You can visit the rustic alpine hut and listen to stories from the old bushman, or hear the famous dingo howl. If you want to get in the mood before (or after) your visit, you can download our howling dingo ringtone for your phone.
And if you’re lucky, you might encounter one of our adult dingoes on their daily walks around the Healesville Sanctuary grounds (with their keepers, of course!)
This iconic predator just might be the answer to ecological balance in the Australian landscape. Visit us to find out how.
How wild are our Dingoes?
Researchers from RMIT University studied just how similar the captive Dingoes at Healesville Sanctuary are to their wild relatives. Although our dingoes enjoyed contact with familiar people, they still had a prey drive, were tuned into their environment and remained highly independent like wild dingoes.
Adopt a Dingo
You can adopt a Dingo for as little as $15 a month. Help us to save this threatened species. | <urn:uuid:655284d6-ef08-4b11-9081-f9a452be465a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.zoo.org.au/healesville/highlights/dingo-country?desktop=please | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00158-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954212 | 292 | 2.5625 | 3 |
In the United States, we love stuff. Unfortunately, stuff makes trash. Lots and lots of trash.
How much trash? In 2010 about 250 million tons.
Our heads should drop in shame.
How should we deal with said trash? Dump it over the back fence into the neighbors yard, right?
Not so much.
How much do you really know about recycling?
What is recycling? According to the Oxford American Dictionary the definition of recycling is 1: convert waste into reusable material. 2. Use something again.
How many people recycle in the US? Not enough, it turns out only about 32.5%
of the US actively recycle.
What Types of Waste are There?
- Solid Waste
- Regulated Medical Waste (RMW)
- RCRA Hazardous Waste
- Pharmaceutical Waste
- Universal Waste
- Construction & Demolition Debris (C&D)
That is a lot of waste.
What can we recycle?
- Paper and cardboard
- Electrical and Electronic Equipment
- Garden & Kitchen Waste
- Hazardous Waste
What are the best cities in the US for Recycling? Here are some of the best curbside recycling cities:
- Fresno, Calif.
- San Francisco, Calif.
- Austin, Texas
- Portland, Ore.
Why trash is everyone’s problem:
- No where to put it. The planet is only so big, and the population is increasing at an alarming rate. There are already gigantic floating islands of trash drifting around the ocean!
- Methane. Whether or not you choose to believe it, Our atmosphere is heating up, and yes we are causing it. Methane is a huge problem and excess garbage is a huge contributor.
So what does all of this mean to you? There are a few things that you can do to lessen your impact on the planet.
- Recycle! Reduce & Reuse.
- Buy Recycled Products.
- Conserve what there is.
A few Quick Tips:
- Use your imagination, there are a ton of art supplies right in your trash can.
- e-cards! I know its nice to get something in the mail but what do they do with the card once they get it? In our minds they keep it forever, but in reality, its in the trash.
- Try to use reusable tupperware instead of ziplocks.
- Watch what you buy, and try to buy products that have less packaging.
- Instead of all those wasted batteries, try to use rechargeable batteries.
Do you recycle? If so, How often and what?
If you live in Los Angeles and need more information on recycling locally here is a great source: Recycling Procedure or Information: CAL Recycle: http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/BevContainer/Recyclers/Directory/Default.aspx?lang=en-US
- Environmental Protection Agency. "Municipal Solid Waste." EPA. Accessed August 10 2014.
- Environmental Protection Agency. "10 FAST FACTS ON RECYCLING." EPA. http://www.epa.gov/reg3wcmd/solidwasterecyclingfacts.htm (accessed August 10 2014).
- SustainAbility. "Recycling Facts." Sustainability-Recycling. Accessed August 10 2014.
- Earth911, Inc.. "Facts About Aluminum Recycling." Earth911.com. August 10 2014.
- EPA: www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/infographic/index.htm
- Waste Categories & ypes: https://practicegreenhealth.org/topics/waste/waste-categories-types
- Where you live: http://www.epa.gov/epahome/whereyoulive.htm
- United States Recycling Statistics: http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/United_States_Recycling_Statistics
- Recycle City, USA: America’s best recycling cities: | <urn:uuid:bf3276b0-f174-40cf-982d-01c7f06579c2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.examiner.com/article/how-much-do-you-know-about-recycling-recycling-101?cid=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00113-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.868941 | 860 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Anonymous (before 1665)|
These following are to be understood in two ways.
I Saw a Peacock, with a fiery tail,
I saw a Blazing Comet, drop down hail,
I saw a Cloud, with Ivy circled round,
I saw a sturdy Oak, creep on the ground,
I saw a Pismire, swallow up a Whale,
I saw a raging Sea, brim full of Ale,
I saw a Venice Glass, Sixteen foot deep,
I saw a well, full of mens tears that weep,
I saw their eyes, all in a flame of fire,
I saw a House, as big as the Moon and higher,
I saw the Sun, even in the midst of night,
I saw the man, that saw this wondrous sight.
pismire is an archaic term for an ant
In First Loves, Margaret Atwood describes this "trick" poem as "the first
poem I can remember that opened up the possibility of poetry for me."
The trick is the two ways it can be understood; read a line at a time, or read from
the middle of one line to the middle of the next.
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes
notes that it appears in a commonplace book dated to around 1665; it seems
to have been first published in the Westminster-Drollery in 1671.
It can be found, for example, in:
A Person of Quality, ed. Westminster-Drollery. Or a Choice
Collection of the Newest Songs & Poems Both at Court & Theaters.
London: Printed for H. Brome, Licensed by Roger L'Estrange, 1671.
Opie, Iona and Peter Opie, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of
Nursery Rhymes. London: Oxford University Press, 1952.
Ciuraru, Carmela, ed. First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential
Poems that Captivated and Inspired Them. New York: Scribner, 2000. | <urn:uuid:fe64228f-3d09-4f67-8965-d7ac9a6e0a0b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.potw.org/archive/potw193.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00108-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913463 | 432 | 3.046875 | 3 |
National Adoption Month began in 1976, when Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis announced an adoption week to promote awareness of the need for adoptive families for children in foster care. Almost 20 years later, former President Clinton expanded the awareness week to the entire month of November. Now, every November, a presidential proclamation launches activities and celebrations to help build awareness of adoption throughout the nation. Thousands of community organizations arrange and host programs, events and activities to share positive adoption stories, challenge the myths and draw attention to the thousands of children in foster care, who are waiting for permanent families.
This year's National Adoption Month initiative emphasizes the partnerships necessary to create permanent connections for the 100,000 children and youth in foster care waiting for adoptive families.
Adopt US Kids
National Adoption Month is celebrated and promoted by many organizations and charities throughout the United States. One such organization has made facilitating military adoptions an integral part of their mission. Adopt US Kids is a collaboration of the Children's Bureau, the Adoption Exchange Association and their partners. Their mission is to recruit and connect foster and adoptive families with waiting children throughout the United States. Adopt US Kids published a guide created to simplify the process of adopting children. This guide breaks down the adoption process into simple language, checklists and charts providing an abundance of information divided into five parts:
- Understanding the issues specific to military families adopting or fostering a child
- Detailing the steps in the foster and adoption process
- Providing information regarding inter-jurisdictional placements and collaborations with other organizations
- Providing military family-specific tools and handouts for practitioners to use
- Providing references, websites and agencies helpful to military families trying to adopt or foster a child
While a guide is extremely helpful in educating prospective parents about the ins and outs of the adoption process, speaking to someone knowledgeable about military adoptions may also be beneficial. Military OneSource adoption specialty consultants can offer assistance with beginning the adoption process, locating military-related financial assistance, including DoD's Adoption Reimbursement Program, and identifying agencies that can help with specific adoption needs. Consultants can also provide callers with adoption agency information, support groups and general literature on adoption.
For more information visit the Child Welfare Information Gateway. Or, if you prefer one-on-one advice, consider a Military OneSource specialty consultation. Adoption consultations are available year-round, as are translation services for multilingual families. Go online or call a Military OneSource consultant today at 800-342-9647 to discover the adoption resources available to you. | <urn:uuid:bc5ad71a-68e3-419b-8c15-3ca90f5132df> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.militaryonesource.mil/parenting/adoption?content_id=273585 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403823.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00005-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918266 | 525 | 2.65625 | 3 |
HealthDay News - Study Hints of Links Between HPV and Lung Cancer
WEDNESDAY, April 10 (HealthDay News) -- Human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus that can cause cervical and head and neck cancers, may also trigger some cases of lung cancer, according to a small new study.
Researchers examined 36 tumor tissue samples from patients with non-small-cell lung cancer who had never smoked. Smoking is a major cause of lung cancer, but the causes of lung cancer in nonsmokers can be difficult to pinpoint.
The investigators found that about 6 percent of the tissue samples showed signs of infection from two strains of HPV known to cause cancer. The strains are called HPV 16 and HPV 18.
Further examination of the tissue samples infected with HPV 16 revealed that the virus had integrated into the tumor's DNA, which the researchers said provides stronger evidence that HPV infection caused the tumor.
The study was scheduled to be presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, in Washington, D.C. Study data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
If it is confirmed that HPV plays a role in some cases of lung cancer, the next step is to learn more about those tumors so they can be treated more effectively, said the researchers from the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. This study, however, did not prove a cause-and-effect link between the virus and lung cancer.
Lung cancer kills more than 1 million people a year. About 10 percent of lung cancer cases occur in nonsmokers.
"Given how many patients develop lung cancer, if even a small percentage of those tumors stem from HPV, that ends up being a large number of patients," study author Dr. Ranee Mehra, an attending physician in medical oncology at Fox Chase, said in a center news release.
The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about lung cancer. | <urn:uuid:75c8bd71-8b19-4ba4-8bd7-f1f71c8fe31d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://healthlibrary.epnet.com/GetContent.aspx?token=08bd2ac8-fad2-4a08-b4df-003140de2f15&chunkiid=852595 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00151-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959982 | 402 | 2.65625 | 3 |
As temperatures dropped with the arrival of a strong continental cold air mass yesterday, the Taipei Zoo invited visitors to observe how animals keep warm during cold weather.
Beginning yesterday and concluding at the end of February, the zoo is inviting visitors to the Taiwan indigenous species area to fill out a form based on their personal observations and information learned from billboards in the zoo about how animals survive in the winter.
After completing the form, participants will be able to claim a small prize.
The zoo said that although temperatures in Taiwan do not change drastically throughout the seasons, indigenous animals that live in mountainous areas still face low temperatures and reduced resources in the winter, and they must develop ways to find food or warm shelter to survive.
The Formosan black bear usually moves powerfully and nimbly and can swim as well as climb trees.
However, when the temperature drops below 10°C, it loses its appetite and needs to sleep for longer, the zoo said, adding that bears in the wild may move to lower altitudes and hide in holes or caves, but they do not go into hibernation.
The zoo said Formosan wild boars build nests on the ground and zoo managers have observed a boar and her two piglets picking up fan palm leaves with their mouths and stacking them by a wall to form a nest.
The Formosan macaque performs a “group fight” against the cold temperatures in winter, by snuggling together to keep warm, the zoo said, adding that the zoo only has to add supplementary feed and toast for the monkeys to increase their calorie intake. | <urn:uuid:c7a3dd47-96f1-401c-b1bf-7f9132b5abbd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/print/2012/12/24/2003550886 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00013-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948395 | 325 | 2.828125 | 3 |
What is MRSA?
Staphylococcus aureus (“staph”) is a common type of bacteria (germ) that is often found on the skin and in the nose of healthy people. It can also grow in wounds or other sites in the body, sometimes causing an infection.
Antibiotics are drugs used to treat infections caused by germs. Sometimes germs can change so that particular drugs will no longer kill the germs - these germs are called antibiotic resistant. Over time staph bacteria have become difficult to treat with antibiotics related to penicillin (e.g., methicillin, amoxicillin). These resistant forms of staph are called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. But the illnesses that MRSA causes are similar to those caused by other staph.
Who is at risk for getting these organisms?
Just like normal staph bacteria, MRSA normally does not cause disease unless
it enters an opening in the skin. However, some people are at higher risk for
carrying MRSA or becoming infected with this type of staph. MRSA more
often occurs in people in hospitals and healthcare facilities. It can also occur
outside the hospital in people who receive multiple antibiotics, as well as
in people who have close contact with a person carrying the germ or by touching
objects contaminated with MRSA (e.g., towels, athletic equipment, saunas benches,
How are MRSA and other staph spread?
Staph bacteria (including MRSA) are most often spread by direct person-to-person
contact, usually on hands. Staph can survive in the environment for long
periods of time, but environmental surfaces probably do not have a major role
in transmission. Staph very rarely spreads through the air.
What are the symptoms of infection?
Many people carry staph bacteria on their skin without any symptoms. Symptoms of a MRSA or other staph infection depend on where the infection is located. Infections of the skin are the most common, and can cause redness, warmth, pus, and a wound that does not heal. Your doctor may refer to these infections as cellulitis, boils, furuncles, pustules, folliculitis, impetigo, or abscesses. Infections can also develop in the blood, bone, bladder, lungs, and other sites. Symptoms there will depend on the site of infection, but include fever and pain at the site of infection.
What should I do if I think I have a MRSA or other staph infection?
See your healthcare provider.
Are MRSA and other staph infections treatable?
Yes. Many staph skin infections can be treated simply by draining the sore and keeping the wound clean. For more serious infections, antibiotics (that are not related to penicillin) can be used. If antibiotics are prescribed by your healthcare provider, it is very important to finish taking all the pills and to call your doctor if the infection does not get better.
What can I do to prevent MRSA and other staph infections? | <urn:uuid:30a91858-55ee-49be-bc46-37c1f32a6e14> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/Epidemiology/factsheets/Methicillin.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00068-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948124 | 651 | 3.71875 | 4 |
Industry looks to “lightweighting” to meet new fuel economy and emissions standards
Like the drivers behind their steering wheels, vehicles have been adding extra pounds—a 20 percent weight gain overall in the past 20 years. And it’s not just big luxury cars, SUVs and pickups.
For example, the lovable little 1990 Honda Civic has become a somewhat porky 2010 Civic with its slightly more than 16 percent weight increase—a 2,262 pound curb weight versus 2,630 lbs. Even the automotive darling of nearly every greenie on the planet, the Toyota Prius, isn’t immune to adding a little flab; the newest edition is 152 lbs. heftier than the model it replaced.
While overweight drivers can choose to shed weight or not, automakers don’t have a choice for their cars and trucks. Recent government regulations to increase fuel economy and reduce emissions is forcing the industry to use weight-saving materials as part of the solution to meet the mandates.
Advances in combustion engine technology, the increase in hybrid offerings and the advent of electric powertrains certainly go a long way in the quest to comply with the new fuel and emissions standards but they can only go so far.
Enter “lightweighting,” the auto industry term for reducing weight. As automakers chase every mile per gallon in order to meet the new fuel economy requirements, reducing vehicle weight is beginning to take on importance. Ford has said that lightweighting will be a major part of its efforts to improve fuel efficiency, accounting for as much as 50 percent of the automaker’s fuel mileage gains.
Engineers use a general principal for improving vehicle mileage: reduce vehicle weight by 10 percent and fuel economy improves six percent. A major target for the industry is a vehicle’s largest structure, the “body-in-white.” BIW is the body sheet metal including the hood, rear deck and doors, but without the drivetrain, chassis, window glass, interior, etc.
Steel and Aluminum
Steel, because of its strength, has been the mainstay for BIW dating back to Henry Ford’s time. Today, advanced high-strength steels are so strong—even though they are a thinner material—they provide the same strength as regular steel in a vehicle, reducing vehicle weight by up to 30 percent. That strength is important when it comes to meeting government safety regulations such as the roof crush standard, which calls for the ability to handle 1.5 times the curb weight of the vehicle, and a forthcoming standard that will require handling three times curb weight.
United States Fuel Efficiency Standards
- Current: 25.5 mpg (cars & trucks)
- By 2016: 34.1 mpg
- By 2025: Between 47 and 62 mpg
Europe CO2 Emission Standards
- Current: 160 grams per kilometer (Equivalent to about 38 mpg)
- By 2012: 120 grams per kilometer(Equivalent to about 50 mpg)
- By 2025: 70 grams per kilometer (Equivalent to about 80 mpg)
While the use of advanced high-strength steels result in vehicles that are safer than ever in severe crashes, those same ultra-strong steels are making it difficult to extract survivors from badly crushed vehicles. Traditional cutting tools like the “Jaws of Life” cannot shear through the new steels. Rescue workers either have to use new tools that cost about $5,000 each or learn new techniques.
Use of aluminum to reduce vehicle weight goes back decades. Between 1975 and 1995, as the U.S. auto industry sought to raise the fuel efficiency of gasoline cars by 50 percent to meet government fuel economy regulations, one technique was to replace heavy cast iron engines with lightweight aluminum engines. The metal has come a long way since then and carmakers are utilizing it in a variety of body applications: Acura estimates that the aluminum hood on the 2010 ZDX saved 15 lbs. compared with steel, while BMW says the aluminum doors on the 5 Series sedan results in a weight save of approximately 50 lbs. compared with steel doors.
Nearly 50 years after development, carbon fiber-reinforced plastics remain a niche material in the auto industry. But recent developments point the way to expanded use: In a joint venture with Seattle-based SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers LLC, BMW is constructing a factory in Moses Lake, Washington to produce the composite, and Italy’s supercar manufacturer, Lamborghini, recently opened a laboratory at the University of Washington to study the use of the super-strong, ultra-light material in future vehicles.
Yet, at around $10.00 per pound compared to less than a $1.00 per pound for high-strength steels, it would seem that the use of carbon fiber would be limited to concept cars and exotics in the $500,000 range. However, European carbon dioxide emission standards that could limit fleets to a minuscule 70 grams per kilometer (equivalent to about 80 mpg) might be impossible to reach without carbon fiber.
Of course there are other areas in a vehicle to that are going through weight loss programs, although their reductions are measured in ounces rather than pounds. Plastic is becoming more prevalent under the hood as metal engine components are being replaced by lighter weight thermoplastic. And inside, heavy sound insulating materials—from 55 lbs. for a small vehicle, to as high as 135 lbs. on a luxury sedan—are being swapped for lighter sound absorbing products.
The Department of Energy’s national labs are working with the auto industry to develop materials and manufacturing technologies that, if implemented in high volume, could reduce the average weight of vehicle structure and subsystems by 50 percent. If the Obama administration’s notice of intent, filed earlier this month, that could push fuel mileage standards to as high as 62 mpg by 2025, that 50 percent weight reduction will become an absolute necessity. | <urn:uuid:fd609268-3a5d-46c3-9422-81209fe175b7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.hybridcars.com/automakers-seek-ways-shed-weight-28814/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394605.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938015 | 1,230 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Re: Geriatric medicine: a brief history
It seems to be interesting and enlightening to review ancient physicians' views on geriatric topics written about more than one thousand years ago. Special considerations of elderly health were important from the past, and it can be seen in the study of ancient medical texts. Perhaps the earliest attention to this issue was found in Greek and Byzantine medicine(1), but Avicenna’s “Canon of Medicine” seems to be the first book that described geriatric medicine in detail. In this book, the terms such as aging, elderly, geriatrics, etc has been used over 200 times.
Avicenna (980 AD, Afshana near Bukhara—1037 AD, Hamedan) was one of the most outstanding and influential Persian physicians and philosophers(2). He wrote more than 450 treatises on medicine, philosophy, religion and logic. Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine is the most famous work among Avicenna’s medical books. He categorized diseases in the Canon of Medicine based on organ-based arrangement(3).
In this paper, we tried a short overview on aging and aging-related topics in "canon of medicine" to get more familiar with the perspective of this great scientist about geriatrics. We present these geriatric related comments according to their subjects in four topics.
Definitions on ageing
According to the “Canon of Medicine", human life is divided into four main stages:
1- Growth and development period: from birth up to 30 years old
2- Youth: from 30 years old and continues to 35-40 years old
3- Aged: from 40 years old and continues to 60 years old.
4- Senescence: that is from 60 years old up to the end of life and is associated with the onset of disability(4). (volume1, page36)
According to Avicenna there are three state for human beings: health, disease and intermediate state of health. In the intermediate state, the body is neither in perfect health nor an absolute illness. In this state, body is susceptible to various diseases. (volume1, page260) Elderly people fall in this category. Wound healing in old age is an example of this intermediate state of health. As noted in "Canon" in the expression of wound healing in the elderly, their ulcers unlike youngsters’ will hardly heal and are susceptible to dehiscence. (volume4, page6656) Recent scientific evidences are compatible with this statement(5,6,7).
In review of the elderly vital signs, Avicenna has spoken in detail about geriatric pulse and respiration. In his opinion, older people are more prone to bradycardia (volume1, page 487). Recent scientific findings on more prevalent sinus bradycardia due to sinus node dysfunction in the elderly also support Avicenna’s idea(8). He also believed that their pulses are weaker. This is also compatible with decreasing in cardiac ejection fraction with age advancement.
Avicenna says that elderly Breath has less volume and speed than young persons. (volume3, page 3203) Modern medical data also shows that respiration in the elderly is associated with less Tidal Volume (T.V) and Forced Expiratory Volume (FEV1)(9,10.
He believes that the urine of elderly is more dilute and tends to white. That's why the formation of kidney stones is more likely in youngsters than the elderly (volume4, page 6037).
According to Avicenna, prevention is more important than cure. He noted some tips to keep elderlies healthy, including adequate food, exercise, sleep and even the style of bathing in detail as below:
• Seniors should be fed more frequently and in less volume than the youth because their gastrointestinal function is weaker than youths (volume1, page291). As we know today, gastrointestinal function and motility disorders (i.e., dysphasia, dyspepsia, anorexia, and constipation) seems to become more prevalent with ageing(11).
• Increasing fruits and vegetables intake can help improve their bowel movement and prevent constipation. Among different healthy fruits and vegetables, he noted figs, plums, celery and leek for this purpose.
• Avicenna believed that elderly people need more sleep than youngsters (volume1, page 648).
• He also believed that bathing in cold water is unsuitable for elderly, and can make them susceptible to different diseases such as upper respiratory tract infections. (volume1, page 615).
Avicenna has discussed special geriatric considerations under each disease topic in third and fourth volume of “canon of medicine” which is on therapeutics. For example in the first chapter -neurological diseases- he discussed about geriatric depression, convulsion, insomnia etc.
He has stated about fever in elderly that high grade fever is less common in this age, but is so serious if be present. (volume4, page 5776; volume4, page 5882). AS Dean C. et al. stated that Fever is the cardinal sign of infection, but this most important diagnostic clue may be blunted or absent in up to one third of infected geriatric patients conversely, the presence of fever has special significance for the older population. A large study of febrile adults presenting to walk-in clinics or emergency departments determined that the presence of fever in the elderly was much more likely to be associated with a serious bacterial or viral infection compared with younger febrile patients(12). Avicenna has also noted that the elderly cannot resist on burning fever because of general body weakness.
Avicenna was well aware about the "heart failure" as one of the important geriatric diseases. He has described two important signs of Heart failure; orthopnea and dyspnea and used traditional diuretic herbs in the treatment of this condition (volume3, page 3208).
He also noted that CVA (Cerebro-Vascular Attack) is more common in the elderly than other ages. He also considered permanent and frequent dizziness as red flags for stroke in elderly patients (volume3, page 2676). These statements are compatible with new scientific findings.
Historical reviews of medical topics such as geriatrics can enlighten formation route of our current knowledge on these topics and may help us have better perspective on future course of science. On the other hand such investigations do not only provide a historical view of medical sciences but will inform us about current complementary practice based on humeral system in Middle East countries and India.
1- Lascaratos J, Poulacou-Rebelacou E. The roots of geriatric medicine: Care of the aged in Byzantine times (324-1453 AD). Gerontology. 2000;46(1):2-6.
2- Gorji A., Khaleghi Ghadiri M. History of epilepsy in Medieval Iranian medicine. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2001 Jul;25(5):455-61.
3- Zargaran A., Mehdizadeh A., Zarshenas MM., Mohagheghzadeh A. Avicenna (980–1037 AD). J Neurol. 2012 Feb;259(2):389-90.
4- Avicenna. The Canon. Tehran: Soroush Press; 2008. (Translated by Sharafkandi A., in Persian)
5- Weiskopf D WB, Grubeck-Loebenstein B. The aging of the immune system. Transpl Int. 2009;22:1041.
6- DelaRosa O, Tarazona R, Casado JG, Alonso C, Ostos B, Pena J, et al. V alpha 24(+) NKT cells are decreased in elderly humans. Exp Gerontol. 2002;37(2-3):213-7.
7- Jing Y, Shaheen E, Drake RR, Chen NY, Gravenstein S, Deng YP. Aging is associated with a numerical and functional decline in plasmacytoid dendritic cells, whereas myeloid dendritic cells are relatively unaltered in human peripheral blood. Hum Immunol. 2009;70(10):777-84.
8- Frangakis N KG. Arrhythmias in the Elderly: Modern Management. Hellenic J Cardiol. 2006;47:84-92.
9- Enright P LS. Spirometry in old age: feasibility and interpretation. Eur Respir Mon. 2009;43:25–34.
10- Pistelli R AM, Baldari F, Sammarro S. Respiratory function standards in the elderly. Eur Respir Mon.43:18–24.
11- Salles N. Basic mechanisms of the aging gastrointestinal tract. Digest Dis. 2007;25(2):112-7.
12- Dean C NM, Megan Bernadette Wong BSb, Thomas T YM. Fever of unknown origin in older persons. Infectious disease clinics of North America. 2007;21(4):937-45.
Competing interests: No competing interests | <urn:uuid:86a73976-52f8-4fb3-a1dd-98212159c30d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bmj.com/content/315/7115/1075/rr/621145 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00138-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910334 | 1,929 | 2.734375 | 3 |
A Christian communal movement founded in 1922 by Eberhard Arnold, a German scholar and theologian, the Bruderhof Communities have spread to England, the United States, and Australia. The Bruderhof Communities are rooted in Anabaptist and early Christian traditions, committed to nonviolence, justice, and fellowship, based on Christ's 'Sermon on the Mount'.
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On November 8, 2004, a 16-rack, 16,384-node Blue Genet/L supercomputer was crowned as the fastest supercomputer in the world on the 24th TOP500 list (http://www.top500.org). IBM was regarded as the most innovative computer manufacturer. The sustained LINPACK benchmark number for this Blue Gene/L was 70.72 teraflops (a trillion floating-point operations per second), or 77% of its peak performance of 91.75 teraflops.
Note: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Incorporated is distributing this Article with permission of the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) who is the exclusive owner. The recipient of this Article may not assign, sublicense, lease, rent or otherwise transfer, reproduce, prepare derivative works, publicly display or perform, or distribute the Article. | <urn:uuid:188f4f22-081e-48ff-a84b-36003ca5b11a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=5388804&sortType%3Dasc_p_Sequence%26filter%3DAND(p_IS_Number%3A5388783) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403825.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00201-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.89721 | 182 | 2.921875 | 3 |
We know it’s out there, debris from 50 years of space exploration—aluminum, steel, nylon, even liquid sodium from Russian satellites—orbiting around the Earth and posing a danger to manned and unmanned spacecraft.
According to NASA, there are more than 21,000 pieces of ‘space junk’ roughly the size of a baseball (larger than 10 centimeters) in orbit, and about 500,000 pieces that are golf ball-sized (between one to 10 centimeters).
Sure, space is big, but when a piece of space junk strikes a spacecraft, the collision occurs at a velocity of 5 to 15 kilometers per second—roughly ten times faster than a speeding bullet!
“If a spacecraft is hit by orbital debris it may damage the thermal protection system,” said Eric Fahrenthold, professor of mechanical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, who studies impact dynamics both experimentally and through numerical simulations.
“Even if the impact is not on the main heat shield, it may still adversely affect the spacecraft. The thermal researchers take the results of impact research and assess the effect of a certain impact crater depth and volume on the survivability of a spacecraft during reentry,” Fahrenthold said.
Read more at: Phys.org | <urn:uuid:eccee26a-5f01-4593-b0c1-d685d349501a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.technology.org/2013/06/28/shields-to-maximum-mr-scott-researchers-use-supercomputers-to-simulate-orbital-debris-impacts-on-spacecrafts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00009-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895074 | 266 | 3.890625 | 4 |
The water above receives energy as it falls down the short waterfall. This energy was stored as potential energy in the gravitational field of the Earth and came out of storage as the water dropped. This energy which came out of the gravitational field ended up being expressed as the kinetic energy of the water. That is, the water gains kinetic energy as it drops. An ounce of water is going faster when it hits the bottom of the waterfall than it was when it went over the top of the waterfall.
Energy that is stored in the gravitational field is called gravitational potential energy, or potential energy due to gravity.
Formula For Work
Let's see how energy gets stored in the gravitational field.
First of all, remember that work equals force times distance as stated in this formula:
The above formula for work shows a dot product for the multiplication of the force vector times the displacement vector. If the force and displacement vectors are in the same direction, then this boils down to a simple multiplication of the size of the force times the size of the displacement. This will be the case for our discussion here.
Force Doing The Lifting
Now, let's consider what happens when an object is being lifted. We will consider lifting an object at constant velocity. That is, during the lift the object will not be accelerating. For the moment we will not discuss the very start of the lift, when the object must begin to move upward from a stationary position. Nor will we, for the moment at least, discuss the very end of the lift, when the object must slow to a stop after the upward motion is finished. Here, we are talking about the motion during the lift, and we will consider this motion to be directly upward and at constant speed.
If the object is being lifted at constant velocity, then it is not accelerating, and the net force on it is zero. We know that from Newton's first law of motion.
We must pull up on an object when we lift it. So, the agent doing the lifting must provide an upward force on the object. This would be the yellow applied force in the animation at left.
Gravity, of course, will be pulling down. This pull down of gravity is called the weight of the object. It is the blue downward force in the animation at left.
If during the lift the net force on the object is zero, then the upward pull must be canceled by the downward pull. That is, the upward lifting force must be equal in size to the downward pull of gravity.
In summary, when you are lifting something at constant velocity, the upward pull that you provide is equal to the weight of the object.
When lifting something at a constant velocity....
The force that you lift with (applied force)
The weight of the object (gravitational force)
Distance For The Lift
Over what distance does this force act? Well, that would be the distance over which you lift the object. That distance we will call the height of the lift.
Work Done Lifting
Now, work is force times displacement. The force that you apply is equal to the weight of the object. The weight of the object is its mass times the acceleration due to gravity. And the displacement over which this work is done is the height of the lift.
So, the work done lifting an object is equal to its mass times the acceleration due to gravity times the height of the lift. This is summarized below:
|W= Fd||Work equals the applied force times displacement.|
|W= Fgd||The applied force equals the weight of the object. (F = Fg)|
|W= mgd||The weight of the object equals its mass times the acceleration due to gravity. (Fg = mg)|
|W= mgh||The displacement over which the work is done equals the height of the lift. (d = h)|
Work Becomes Stored Energy
This work which is done on the object as it is lifted does not end up as energy of motion, or kinetic energy, since, after the lift, the object is not moving; it is stationary. It is higher up, though. We say that the energy has been stored in the gravitational field. This stored energy is called potential energy. Since it is energy in a gravitational field, it is called gravitational potential energy or potential energy due to gravity.
The symbol for potential energy, in general, is U, and the symbol for gravitational potential energy is Ug.
|Ug||Symbol for gravitational potential energy|
Since the work done on the object when it is lifted becomes the gravitational potential energy, the formula for gravitational potential energy equals the massif the object times the acceleration due to gravity times the height that the object is lifted, as in:
What is the gravitational potential energy for a 4 kg object that is lifted 5 m?
|Ug = mgh||Formula for gravitational potential energy.|
|Ug = (4 kg)(9.8 m/s/s)(5 m)||Plug in values for mass, acceleration due to gravity, and height.|
|Ug = 196 J||Gravitational potential energy equals 196 Joules.|
Here are some questions to work with using the above formula.
Release Of Potential Energy
Once the work has been done lifting the object, and the energy has been stored in the gravitational field, how is this potential energy released? Very simply, the object can be dropped. As it falls its height above ground gets less and less, so, the potential energy stored in gravity gets less and less, also. The object, though, is speeding up as it falls. Energy is leaving the gravitational field and entering the falling object as kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is the energy of motion.
As the object falls it travels faster and faster, and thus, picks up more and more kinetic energy. This increase in kinetic energy during the fall is due to the drop in gravitational potential energy during the fall. The gravitational potential energy becomes the kinetic energy of the falling object.
Energy Of Position
Potential energy is often described as stored energy, and this is a fine description. However, a more sophisticated definition would be that potential energy is the energy of position, or energy related to, or as a function of, position.
Consider the two flower pots below. The one on the left is on the floor at ground level. The one on the right is several centimeters above ground level.
Now, the one on the right is at a higher gravitational potential energy than the one on the left. Of course, it is at a higher position. So, the potential energy that each pot has is a function of its vertical position. In fact, for any one mass on any one planet, the vertical position determines the amount of gravitational potential energy. Other forms of potential energy are dependent upon position also. That is why potential energy is often called the energy of position. | <urn:uuid:b64c960c-e9c8-4877-91b3-1de5402cd4d2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://zonalandeducation.com/mstm/physics/mechanics/energy/gravitationalPotentialEnergy/gravitationalPotentialEnergy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00129-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940426 | 1,426 | 4.09375 | 4 |
Barry B. Benson from the Bee Movie, might have been right after all – bees have a good reason to sue humans, and probably more than one. Honey bee populations face a dire reality in the United States. Since the major honey bee die-offs have started 3 years ago, some areas have seen deaths of 30-90% of bee colonies each winter. This die-off phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or honey bee colony simply disappear is called “colony collapse disorder” (CCD). CCD is used to describe cases where beekeepers discover hives empty after a winter with none or very few alive adult bees and with no accumulation of dead bees to indicate an abrupt disaster.
While natural deaths of bee colonies always occur, that occurance is at a relatively small rate during any given winter. However, beekeeping operations impacted by CCD suffer drastically higher percentage of losses. For example a survey after the winter of 2006 found that CCD-affected operations lost 45% of bee colonies on average as opposed to only 25% losses suffered by non-CCD affected operations. The CCD symptoms include complete absence of adults in colonies after hibernation, no dead bees around the colonies, abandoned brood which is atypical for abandoned bee hives, and plentiful food stores abandoned and not been raided by other bees (such raids happen routinely with other dead colonies). Vacated colonies are also not taken over by moths or other invaders that typically move in quickly.
The dramatic rise in honey bee colony deaths first appeared in 2006 in North America, but it has also been observed all over Central and Western Europe, as well as in some parts of Asia, and, possibly, Brazil. While bee die-offs resembling CCD have been observed in the past, the bee deaths of the last few years attracted wide media attention given the global nature of the crisis and a vital role that honey bees play as pollinators of our crops, from major industrial crops, such as corn, canola, cotton, and soybeans, to specialty crops, such as almonds, cranberries, and many more. Crops pollinated by honey bees value at $15 billion annually. The potential impact of this problem can not be understated.
For example, almost 100% of almonds grown in California depend on bee pollination and because of CCD devestation bee colonies had to be moved across the country in ever greater numbers to allow almond growth to continue.
Despite research on the issue, the causes of CCD are still not well understood. For starters, bees must overcome ever increasing amounts of pesticides to survive. Then there are diseases. Scientists now point to honey bee’s susceptibility to viruses, carried and transmitted by varroa mites, as well as fungus, and nosema ceranae, that bring devastating disease among bees already stressed by overuse of pesticides, recent dry weather, migratory beekeeping, and pollution. One cause that has also been in the eye of some researchers is the aggressive use of transgenic crops in the United States, Canada, and parts of Europe that has exploded over the past 13 years.
There are conflicting studies on the possible contribution of GMOs to CCD. Certainly, the overuse of pesticides and miticides has long been suspected as a major contributor and possible cause to this conundrum. A study done in University of Pennsylvania has shown that at least one pesticide was present in 100 flower and grass samples examined by researchers and in some cases the number of different pesticides reached six. Traditional pesticides are typically sprayed during periods of lowest bee activity and they have topical residual strength limited to under 2 hours, sometimes up to 4 hours. Pest-resistant GM plants, however, produce Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) bio-toxin from all parts of the plant around the clock. While several studies have demonstrated that amounts of Bt proteins produced by the GM plants are not directly hazardous to bees, researchers have also shown that “a chance infestation by parasites (microsporidia) resulted in more significant damage to the Bt-fed colonies.” In other words, even sub-lethal exposure to pollen from Bt plants affect bee immunity by decreasing their ability to fight off diseases and parasites. One must wonder how years of on-going exposure may have impacted bees especially since the majority of the main four industrial crops grown in the U.S. (i.e., corn, cotton, soy and canola) are now genetically-engineered for pest-resistance.
It is clear that CCD has the potential to wipe out honey bee colonies, thereby dramatically altering the way food is grown. It is also clear that additional research of the causes of CCD may require us to change our growing and cultivating methods. I would encourage everyone to learn more about CCD, GMOs, and global food security issues and challenges they pose to our way of life.
Further reading on CCD:
- Collapsing Colonies: Are GM Crops Killing Bees? Spiegel Online http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,473166,00.html (last visited on September 17, 2009)
- Colony Collapse Disorder – Wikipedia
- Bees and GM Plants. GMO Safety http://www.gmo-safety.eu/en/oilseed_rape/honey_bees/339.docu.html (last visited on September 19, 2009)
By Boris Gitlin, contributing author. | <urn:uuid:2446681e-01e9-4682-8e7f-e6e5bdbd8085> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://gmo-journal.com/2009/09/24/is-bee-colony-collapse-disorder-linked-to-gmos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00062-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953604 | 1,121 | 3.109375 | 3 |
The Eastern Cardo
colonnaded street that traverses the city from north to south is depicted
in the center of the Madaba Map.
This is none other than the street identified as the main thoroughfare,
the Cardo Maximus, of the
city. There is also another street on the same map, located to the east
of the Cardo Maximus, and for most of its length it runs parallel to
the cardo. Several sections of this road were exposed in recent generation
by various excavators.
Quite a few excavators have exposed sections of the
eastern cardo. The following is meant to describe in some detail and
analyze some of the data that was exposed in the southern part of the
The remains were exposed in four sections; all the
sections are located along a single north south axis and are described
below from south to north:
Located to the south, next to the outside of the Old
City walls (near the Dung
Gate). This section was exposed in its entirety by Meir Ben Dov.
In this section
almost the entire width of the paved street is visible. Here too, most
of the road’s elements were revealed:
Column bases: the three column bases are made of identical,
relatively hard limestone.
Column: the diameter matches that of the column bases
Pavement: the street is covered with hard limestone
slabs that were replaceable as was customary with paved roads. Pavers
that were filed smooth were exposed everywhere.
The row of rooms located along the street: rectangular
rooms that were used as shops were hewn in the bedrock cliff parallel
to and west of the sidewalk.
Located north and inside the wall of the Old City
(west of Dung Gate). The drainage channel and possibly also a section
of pavement were first revealed by the British archaeologist, S. N.
Jones who excavated here on behalf of the Mandatory Department of Antiquities
when a main sewage line was installed here by the city of Jerusalem.
He discerned several rooms that were hewn in the bedrock cliff west
of the road. Jones was also the first to note a building that would
eventually be referred to as Umayyad Building No. III. Meir Ben-Dov only managed to expose a very small section
of the street’s pavement in one spot, as well as the building
with a row of pillars constructed to its east. Subsequently, all of
the area was uncovered in excavations conducted on behalf of the Antiquities
Authority, beginning with those directed by Ronny Reich and Ya’akov
Billig in 1994-1996 and the excavations by Yuval Baruch and Ronny Reich
in 1997-1999 in which the exposure of the street was completed.
In this section a long segment of pavement was exposed,
which ascends along a uniform incline from south to north. A deep channel
is hewn in the bedrock in the center of the street. Here one it is clearly
apparent that prior to setting the paving stones in place extensive
rock cutting activity was conducted on the slope, descending toward
the Tyropoeon Valley from the west, in order to create the street.
seems that Charles Warren was the first to reach this pavement in Shaft
I of the seven shafts he excavated across the Tyropoeon, opposite the
southwestern corner of the Temple
Mount (Warren 1884: 184, Pl. XXVI). It was in this area and in connection
with the spot where the modern staircase descends from the Jewish
Quarter to the plaza of the Wailing
Wall that a salvage excavation was conducted by Yuval Baruch and
Danny Weiss in 1998. A rectangular room that is entirely hewn in the
bedrock was exposed here; it seems this room is one of the shops that
were installed along the western side of the cardo.
In the autumn of 1996 a long narrow excavation was
conducted by means of a backhoe, for drainage purposes along a north
south axis, in the area opposite the Western Wall (the prayer plaza)
and about 90 m away from it. A section of a street paved with stone
slabs was exposed; a tall limestone pedestal was found in the soil fill.
Finally it should be noted that other sections of streets
have been ascribed to the secondary cardo, which is the eastern street,
but in our opinion these attributions are mistaken. In our opinion there
is no connection between the street in the western part of the hill
of the City of David and the eastern cardo.
When we attempt to determine the date of the construction
of the eastern street we should compare its details with similar details
amongst the remains of the western street and evaluate the results of
this comparison. Unfortunately, the only remains we have of the northern
part of the western street are sections of in situ pavement and at this
point we are still missing information regarding the kind of columns
that were used there. This particular data would greatly assist us because
a comparison of the column bases that were exposed by Meir Ben-Dov,
in the section south of the Old City wall, with those found in the Jewish
Quarter has reveal substantial dissimilarities. The differences are
manifested in the size (diameter), shape of the base (profile) and quality
of the stone dressing. These differences are so pronounced that one
can state unequivocally that the two types of bases have their origins
in different periods.
Yet another difference can be found in how the runoff
was drained from the street. The pavement of the eastern cardo is far
more similar to that of the northern section of the western street than
it is to the southern section of the western street.
Based on these features, there exists a greater similarity
between the details of the eastern street and the northern part of the
western cardo than between the eastern street and the southern part
of the western cardo.
It is obvious that the conclusion which should be
drawn here is that the eastern street and the northern segment of the
western street are contemporary, or at least very close to each other
time wise, and they were clearly built in the Late
Roman period; while the southern section of the western street was
added in the Byzantine period.
Sources: Israel Antiquities Authority | <urn:uuid:865ce1a4-6f25-40b5-98d9-2f8893070ce3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/eastern_cardo.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403823.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00199-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973457 | 1,339 | 2.734375 | 3 |
At this point, it’s safe to say, most people in the United States have not been on the receiving end of midnight vaccination raids, with doctors breaking into their homes and jabbing their families with needles. It’s been a long time since we saw entire cities flattened by disease. So long, in fact, that lessons from those days seem to have been lost on a few generations.
We’re in the midst of a confused national debate over vaccines, with some fearing immunization side effects more than the diseases they fight, and others pushing for more vaccines, at younger ages, and being baffled when parents object. Newspapers report that vaccines may or may not cause autism, autoimmune diseases, and allergies; at the same time, they warn of viral pandemics that can (and do) kill millions, and call for new vaccines to save us (from, say, AIDS, or avian flu). But when those new vaccines arrive and officials say we must give them to our children, we balk. This is nothing new: the vaccine debate has been raging for hundreds of years, because immunizations have a long and complicated history of both saving our lives and hurting us. We needed a book that laid out the history and made sense of it.
There have been at least twenty books on smallpox and polio alone. But until Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver, by the science journalist Arthur Allen, no book had so carefully and clearly catalogued the history of immunization. And, as Allen writes, “the best way to gain an understanding of why our children [are] vaccinated against particular diseases—and why some people [are] challenging these choices—[is] to delve into the history.”
We’ve seen viruses threaten to wipe out millions (and succeed). Parents have refused immunization, then found themselves with sick and dying children, while those doing the immunizing had to pay large sums for damages caused by vaccines that were not properly made or tested. And here’s something ironic: when vaccines do their job best, people doubt them most. They start thinking, Who gets whooping cough anymore? Why should I expose my children to even the slightest risk of vaccine side effects to protect them from a disease no one gets? Anyone who’s ever asked that question should read this book. So should anyone who thinks vaccine doubters are crazy. Because Allen shows that those fears come from real stories of vaccines causing everything from brain damage to tetanus to polio. But more than that, he shows why we have vaccines in the first place, and why it’s a bad idea to shun them.
Allen’s book starts in the 1700s, with smallpox and the first immunizations, and ends with the nearly 10,000 lawsuits filed in 2006 claiming vaccine damages. Along the way, he raises important ethical issues (like the role vaccines played in eugenics), and highlights the many ways children bore the burden of that history: their bodies were used to develop and test vaccines (not always ethically); they suffered the injection side effects, and got the diseases when parents refused to immunize them. Allen traces the legal history of vaccine production, from the first lawsuit for damaging side effects to a litigation free-for-all, with companies paying large sums for problems their shots didn’t cause. (Covering their losses by raising vaccination costs was easier than fighting in court.)
Much of the material devoted to smallpox and polio has been explored elsewhere. Allen’s truly original contributions come with more recent issues that haven’t been widely covered. Whooping cough, for example, lingers in the United States in part because many parents refuse to vaccinate against it. The story that feels largely missing is the new vaccine for strains of the HPV virus, which can cause cervical cancer. HPV is rapidly headed toward as much controversy as any vaccine before it. More, perhaps, since this one—like the vaccine for hepatitis B, which faced similar problems—is a sexually transmitted disease. But Allen makes up for that omission with his detailed coverage of the autism controversy.
He is one of the first authors to really delve into the science behind the do-immunizations-cause-autism debate. “No one could deny,” he writes, “that autism diagnoses had gone up during a period in which vaccine use was going up.” What caused that increase is still unknown. In 1997, a study found that the hepatitis B vaccine contained as much mercury as a can of tuna. That alone may not be toxic, but because of multiple vaccinations, by the age of six months, kids were getting “doses up to 87 times higher than FDA guidelines for the maximum consumption of mercury from fish.” Mercury is known to cause brain damage, so no one was wrong to ask what it was (and still is) doing in vaccines. Allen doesn’t deny that. But by documenting the science behind the debate, he makes a convincing case against the vaccine-autism theory.
The way Allen sees it, one reason the autism debate still exists, despite evidence against it, is “pseudo-investigative, sensationalist news reporting.” He says a “chunk of the news media” continues to hype the story, and he criticizes them sharply for this. (He might well criticize cjr. See “Drug Test,” November/December 2005.) The vaccine-autism theory was, Allen says, “the Pamela Anderson of news stories—dumb, maybe, but oh, so sexy.” Not that the media must always agree with science, but it’s irresponsible to ignore scientific evidence in favor of a sexy headline, something Allen clearly has not done.
When it comes to modern medicine, there are few topics more dramatic than vaccination. It’s a story full of politics, big-business, desperate parents, sick and dying children, conflicts of interest, national security—it even has abortion controversy, since many vaccines are created using cells from aborted fetuses. The subject should be a narrative goldmine.
But unfortunately, for the most part, that drama doesn’t come through in Vaccine. Its reporting is impressive; there are countless wonderful and often surprising facts that drive the book forward (like companies trying to cover up toxicity problems by spreading out distribution of vaccines, to avoid noticeable clusters of side effects). It’s all interesting; it’s just hard to wade through.
Vaccine is traditional historic nonfiction writing that lays out the facts. But as I read it, I couldn’t help asking myself, Why write a nonfiction science book like this? Why wouldn’t you incorporate narrative into any story that’s so potentially rich with it? Narrative is one of the best tools science writers have for conveying complicated and important information to the general public.
It would be great if all readers loved science for science’s sake, but they don’t. There’s a limited audience for a string of facts about vaccines. But there’s no limit to the number of people who want to read a good story. As long as there are characters to latch onto, as long as there are scenes with action and dialogue, readers will do the work required to understand the science.
How many readers come to John McPhee’s writing interested in geology and ecology? Not a lot. But they read, say, his essay “Travels in Georgia” because he follows two wonderful and complex characters who talk funny and collect road kill and sleep next to poisonous snakes and want nothing more than to save Georgia’s wilderness from bulldozers. People might pick up Oliver Sacks’s An Anthropologist on Mars to learn about neurology, but what gets them through the book is an autistic scientist who communicates with animals, and a top neurosurgeon with Tourette’s who screams obscenities while ticking his way through delicate brain surgeries without a single slip of the scalpel. Such stories aren’t just about keeping readers entertained: they’re about showing instead of telling—they illustrate science at work.
People already interested in vaccination will get a lot out of Allen’s book. It will educate parents seeking answers. Scientists will enjoy it. But the general public—who may be the audience that needs Allen’s book the most—may have a hard time getting beyond the early chapters, which tend toward a blur of information, like this: “A survey of 9,000 American families conducted from 1928 to 1931 found that 26 percent of five-year-olds had been vaccinated. The number jumped to 59 percent by age 7 … in cities, where vaccination was a more heavily enforced annoyance, the percentages were 37 and 75 percent, respectively. The last major epidemic, in 1921, brought 102,787 cases and 563 deaths.” The outbreaks and deaths blur because they don’t happen to characters. They’re just numbers.
Which didn’t have to be the case. Allen himself proves this late in the book, when he takes a sharp narrative turn and appears as a character. Suddenly, his voice becomes absorbing and personal as he tells the story of driving through the hills of Colorado, visiting towns filled with antivaccinators, trying to understand why they resist even though they’re some of the only Americans who actually get whooping cough. This is, by far, the book’s strongest section.
We meet people like Dawn Winkler, a full-fledged character who believes only inoculated kids throw temper tantrums. We hear her explain her neighbor’s child by saying, “she must be vaccinated because every time I see her she has a huge amount of snot on her face.” We see her convince many parents not to vaccinate their children though they live in an area with high whooping cough rates (which are largely blamed on not vaccinating). We hear a mother describing her children’s infection as “a loud cough that goes down to their toes … they cough and cough until they throw up, then they sleep for an hour or two, then they wake up and start all over.” But she’s glad she didn’t vaccinate them, she tells Allen, because she believes shots weaken the immune system.
These stories speak volumes about the vaccination debate. Allen doesn’t step in and tell readers, This is crazy. He doesn’t have to. Readers can decide what they think, because they’ve seen it for themselves. (In the epilogue, Allen comes across firmly pro-vaccine, but with this caveat: “The history of vaccines has shown that unexpected results are the rule rather than the exception.”) The Colorado episode is no less scientific or accurate than earlier parts of the book—and it’s clearer because the stories illustrate the science. If Allen had written the whole book with that same voice, and with the same narrative touch guiding us through the thickest of science lessons, it would have helped make his important work accessible to a wider audience.Rebecca Skloot is a freelance writer. Her first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is forthcoming from Crown. | <urn:uuid:68118ccf-4f8e-427a-8e4e-cc6bb314f87f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cjr.org/review/under_the_skin_a_history_of_th.php?page=all | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00023-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96573 | 2,354 | 2.515625 | 3 |
July 13, 2010 > Record heat has local families making 'summer survival kits' for seniors
Record heat has local families making 'summer survival kits' for seniors
Submitted By Jon Weiner
For most of us, record summer heat means higher cooling bills and more time at the pool - but for local seniors living on their own, the consequences are far more serious. The National Climactic Data Center reports the Northeast had its warmest March, April and May in history. A stagnant June heat wave brought records for both high temperatures and total days above 90 degrees for a third of the country, stretching from Missouri to New York to the Southeast. The summer heat is already taking its toll, and this is just the start of the season.
That's why the local senior care experts from Senior Helpers, the nation's fastest growing in-home senior care provider, are advising families to protect aging relatives by putting together a simple Senior Summer Survival Kit. These kits are an easy, inexpensive way to make sure elderly loved ones have what they need to stay safe and comfortable during hot summer days - especially when family members may be off on vacation.
"Whether seniors are traveling themselves or staying on their own while the rest of the family is out of town, it's absolutely vital that aging family members have the resources to be safe, happy and healthy," says Peter Ross, CEO and co-founder of Senior Helpers. "Seniors are far more susceptible to health problems related to summer heat than any other demographic. Taking the time to prepare one of these kits to make sure loved ones have the essentials they need can make all the difference in preventing a serious situation."
Quick Facts - Why is Heat Dangerous for Seniors?
* The amount of water retained by the body decreases substantially with age.
* As a result, seniors are at far greater risk of heat-related health problems such as heat stroke, heat exhaustion, severe sunburn and dehydration.
* Over 8,000 Americans have died as a result of heat-related afflictions during the past two decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
What's in the 'Senior Summer Survival Kit?'
* Reusable water bottle to maintain hydration
* Copies of all prescriptions and health insurance cards
* Phone numbers of health care providers and information concerning chronic health problems
* Sunscreen, at least SPF 30, to prevent serious burns
* Multivitamins to keep the immune systems strong
* Battery operated/hand-held fan in case of power outages and extreme heat
The Senior Summer Survival Kit can be easily purchased and assembled for under $25 in less than 15 minutes.
"Most heat-related issues for seniors can be avoided through simple planning and precaution," Ross says. "When it's unbearably hot outside for you and your kids, it's downright dangerous for seniors. Take a few minutes and make sure that mom, dad and any other senior family members have everything they need to be safe this summer. A few minutes of planning and a quick trip to the drug store can make all the difference."
For more information, please visit www.seniorhelpers.com. | <urn:uuid:15fad768-fbb0-437c-9a76-e6b4212f5445> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://tricityvoice.com/articlefiledisplay.php?issue=2010-07-13&file=Summer+survival+kits.txt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399117.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00097-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95535 | 650 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Higher dimensions are Dimensions beyond the familiar three spatial dimensions of which we are aware in every day life. Intense speculation, both scientific and fictional, has naturally been directed toward the possibility of a fourth dimension. One way to think of points in four-dimensional space is as ordered sets of four numbers (see quaternion). Clearly, this algebraic representation can be extended to arbitrary many dimensions: n-dimensional space is defined as the set of the set of points (a1, a2, ... , an) where a1 to an can take any real number value.
There has been much conjecture that the universe in which we live contains many more than three spatial dimensions. This speculation began with the Kaluza-Klein theory but is now firmly embedded in modern string theory.
Related categories• GEOMETRY
• SPACE AND TIME
Home • About • Copyright © The Worlds of David Darling • Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy • Contact | <urn:uuid:3cfe90bd-fe45-427c-8d68-09566ef14def> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/H/higher_dimensions.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396945.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00096-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923568 | 191 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Unfortunately there are no scientifically proven causes of rosacea. While the exact cause is unknown, some specialists believe that rosacea is caused by a blood vessel disorder or a possible malfunction of the connective tissue under the skin. Even though we don’t know the scientific cause, we do know that there are certain conditions or factors that can trigger rosacea flare ups.
Some of these triggers include eating hot or spicy food, drinking certain types of alcohol, taking hot baths, heavy exercise, dramatic changes in weather or extended exposure to wind or sunlight*. Some common rosacea myths include the misconception that rosacea is caused by poor hygiene and that it is contagious. Both of these are false.
While rosacea can affect anyone, it is most common in fair skinned individuals and most symptoms begin to develop after the age of 30. There are also some specialists who believe that individuals of northern or eastern European ancestry are more susceptible however there has never been any scientific proof linking rosacea to a certain race or hereditary factor.
If you think you might have rosacea, please find a doctor or dermatologist near you for specific treatment and further explanation of this chronic skin disorder.
*This is not a complete list. Each individual is different and it’s important to visit a doctor to discuss individual triggers.
Labels: Rosacea Tips | <urn:uuid:98ab736a-9cc6-43bc-81e2-1f614b2c015f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.gloprofessional.com/2014/04/what-causes-rosacea.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00106-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932805 | 279 | 2.765625 | 3 |
In situ observations of Stygiomedusa gigantea
This dataset was provided by Dhugal Lindsay (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)). The data is extracted from a paper by Mark C. Benfield (Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University) and William M. Graham (Dauphin Island Sea Lab and University of South Alabama). Four individuals of the large scyphozoan jellyfish Stygiomedusa gigantea were observed in the northern Gulf of Mexico over 2005 – 2009 by industrial remotely operated vehicles as part of the SERPENT Project. One of these observations included the symbiotic Bythitid fish Thalassobathia pelagica. Prior to these observations, neither S. gigantea nor T. pelagica had been observed in, or collected from the Gulf of Mexico. In order to summarize the available information on S. gigantea, we located 110 observations obtained over 110 years (1899 – 2009) representing 118 individual specimens of this species from around the world. The resulting dataset confirms that this species is cosmopolitan occurring with records from all Oceans except the Arctic. While the depth range of the four Gulf of Mexico specimens was bathypelagic, there appears to be a pattern of S. gigantea occurring in mesopelagic and epipelagic depth zones at high latitudes, particularly in the Southern Ocean and mesopelagic and bathypelagic depths at mid- and low-latitudes. This pattern may be related to the meridional vertical distribution of temperature or perhaps avoidance of light levels that could degrade porphyrin pigments. There was no evidence that this species migrates vertically. Two of the individuals in the Gulf of Mexico appeared to be actively clinging to subsea structures and we speculate that this is a consequence of its normal mode of feeding which may entail using its large oral lobes to hold on to, and trap prey.
Language of Metadata
Aug 6, 2010 | <urn:uuid:2cd17be3-a41c-417e-9db9-6f60c4edfec7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gbif.org/dataset/7b6c8226-f762-11e1-a439-00145eb45e9a | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00201-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923675 | 412 | 2.875 | 3 |
How a Civil War Treasure Trove Was Discovered in Carnegie
The 9th Pennsylvania Reserves recreate the battle of Gettysburg this month, but they shepherd their own history year-round.
Photos by Renee Rosensteel
This month, tens of thousands will make a pilgrimage to Gettysburg, Pa. Some will holster iPhones and bring the kids, hoping to experience living history. Others, including Pittsburgh-based re-enactors with the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves, Co. A, will wear painstakingly assembled regalia and carry reproduction rifles, preparing to recreate the battle on its 150th anniversary.
“[The group] was established by four or five guys who were Civil War re-enacting before it was cool — before Glory, before Ken Burns’ Civil War,” says Rea Andrew Redd, board president for the 9th Pa. Reserves.
While they’ll play their part in the massive reconstruction of the Battle of Gettysburg — scheduled from July 4-7 — the “Pittsburg rifles,” as they’re informally known, mingle with history every time they meet.
Home base for this group is the Captain Thomas Espy Grand Army of the Republic Post No. 153, a single room in the Andrew Carnegie Free Library in Carnegie. The Grand Army of the Republic was a veterans organization for honorably discharged Union Civil War soldiers, with branches established throughout the former Union states — plus the south, Canada, Mexico and Peru; Pennsylvania alone boasted 640 posts.
As Civil War veterans died, most stations closed or were sold. The soldiers of Post 153 had been meeting since 1879. They cut a deal after moving into the “Carnegie Carnegie” in 1906: After the last surviving member died, the post would become property of the library, to be preserved as a memorial, in exchange for free rent. That included uniforms, equipment, maps, literature, photos and more — an invaluable record of local Civil War history. The room finally closed in 1934.
Apparently, the library staff of the 1930s didn’t know what to do with the collection. The room was sometimes sealed and sometimes left unlocked. Rare artifacts and records sat undisturbed for nearly 50 years.
In 1981, the room was discovered by Michael G. Kraus, Civil War enthusiast and current Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum curator, while he was following a lead on artifacts hidden in the library. The Allegheny County Bomb Squad was the first group notified — to defuse live ordnance in the collection. Then the Pittsburg rifles came calling when they realized the room was a momentous find — a completely preserved GAR post. Only a handful of posts nationwide remained in such immaculate condition.
Today, the 9th Pa. Reserves re-enact battles in various eastern states. They work to clean up battlefields and take a yearly preservation trip to Gettysburg; they’ve also put time and money into the restoration of Civil War-era headstones in Chartiers Cemetery, including the graves of GAR members who met in the same room the Reserves occupy today. And, of course, they’re the custodians of Post 153, offering regular tours.
While Redd, who joined the group in 1993, says he’s approaching the Gettysburg memorial re-enactment the same way he’d approach any other, he acknowledges that an occasion like this month’s provides the opportunity for an uncanny experience.
“You look around and think, ‘There’s nothing here but 1860,’” he says. “The cavalry is racing by, the sabres are jangling, the dust is up. Off in the distance, you hear the volleys. And you think, ‘OK, keep your eyes open. This is the way it was.’”
>> 9th Pa. Reserves: 9thpareserves.org
>> Andrew Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall: 300 Beechwood Ave., Carnegie; 412/276-3456, carnegiecarnegie.org | <urn:uuid:fdb2a4f3-0b7a-4d1e-a3b3-26c575591a3d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/Pittsburgh-Magazine/July-2013/How-a-Civil-War-Treasure-Trove-Was-Discovered-in-Carnegie/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396222.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00035-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950147 | 849 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Sadly, there are not many Jews who fought in the Second World War who are still able to march. But those who can will be polishing their medals to parade down Whitehall on Sunday, in honour of their comrades who fell in the 1939-45 conflict and those before and since.
If last year's attendance at the annual Association of Jewish ex-Servicemen and Women (Ajex) parade is a guide, there could be around 800 veterans at the ceremony, the numbers bolstered by those who have served since 1945. However, if all those Jews who fought for their country in two world wars were still able to attend, there would be enough people to fill Wembley stadium - with another 15,000 spilling out on to the pitch.
Those who have researched the subject of Jewish involvement in the armed forces all agree that the contribution has been disproportionate to the numbers in the community. It is a long history of courage under fire that dates back to a time before Jews could even officially serve the Crown in the military. Captain Alexander Schomberg, who had to convert to Anglicanism to join up, captured the Heights of Abraham from the French in the battle for Quebec while skippering the frigate Diana, in 1759. There is also an account of Jewish men who served on the HMS Victory with Nelson and there were Jews at Waterloo, the Crimea and more than 3,000 fighting in the Boer War.
But it was in the First World War that British Jews served their country en masse. In excess of 55,000 volunteered or were conscripted, and, in this most savage of conflicts, a large number lost their lives. Five also won Victoria Crosses, the first of whom was Frank Alexander de Pass, who was killed in 1914 while attempting to take an enemy trench for the second time.
Roz Currie, curator of the Jewish Military Museum in Hendon, feels that this war marked a watershed for the British Jewish community. "One of the narratives from the First World War was that large numbers were serving as British soldiers for the first time, sometimes only a few years after arriving as immigrants."
There may have been horrendous casualties, but there was also a sense of self-esteem and of belonging - even more so when the Jewish Legion was founded in 1917. The first Jewish fighting force seen for some centuries was lobbied for and served in by those twin pillars of Zionism, Vladimir Jabotinsky and David Ben Gurion, under the banner of the Royal Fusiliers. Following the Balfour Declaration, in which the British government stated that it "viewed with interest" the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Jews signed up to the British army in order to force the Ottomans out of Jerusalem. The legion did not quite rout the Turkish army but did see active service in the Dardanelles.
On November 18 1921, with the memories of the trenches still fresh in their minds, a group of Jewish ex-servicemen laid a wreath for their fallen colleagues. They have returned pretty much every year since.
Even more Jews - some 60,000 - served in the armed forces in the Second World War. These included many refugees from Austria and Germany who were initially interned as enemy aliens, but who eventually played a crucial part in the war effort, particularly in military intelligence.
Historian Martin Sugarman, the author of Fighting Back, about the British-Jewish contribution to the armed forces and a new book about Jews who were Japanese prisoners of war, says these soldiers and their commanding officers realised that Jewish servicemen were particularly vulnerable if taken prisoner. "A lot of Jews registered as Church of England rather than Jewish. German-born Jews, for example, knew that if they were captured, they and their families would suffer, although they did not realise the full horror of what was going on in Europe. Jews would often would be encouraged to change their names - Cohen or Goldstein would become Gordon, Johnson or Smith because their commanding officers knew that they were taking a double risk."
A few were also in jeopardy from men in their own units. Currie says that antisemitism was by no means universal and was certainly not experienced by all military personnel, but there were some appalling instances during the Second World War.
"Some veterans say there was no antisemitism. Others say there was quite a lot. I've heard horrific stories about people being beaten up by their own side and even stories of soldiers who were attacked so savagely that they had to be invalided home. But then there are others who would say that their Jewishness was just part of the banter that went on. I think it varied."
What is not in dispute is the contribution by the men and women who fought for Britain. In the two world wars, Jews were decorated in large numbers and eight won the ultimate award for bravery - the Victoria Cross.
But, for decades after the war, if you were curious to discover more about their bravery, you would have had a tough job. This troubled Henry Morris, who served four years in the Fleet Air Arm as an electrician during the war, although he jokes that he practically never saw a ship. Morris, now 91, says that he was standing at the Ajex parade during the 1980s when it occurred to him that there was no record of the contribution made by Jews in the armed services. "Every military organisation of any description has its own museum. We had contributed to the Crown for over 300 years and there was nothing to show for it. A sixth of the Jewish population served in the war. There wasn't any branch of the services that we did not join and excel in."
He wrote a record of every Jew who died in the conflict and founded the Jewish Military Museum.
However, it can still be tough to get the word out about the Jewish war effort.
Sugarman says: "Whenever there are exhibitions featuring the contribution of minorities, we tend to get left out, perhaps because Jews are not seen as distinguishable enough from the mainstream population."
It is estimated that there are between 300 and 600 Jews currently serving in the armed forces and last year, for the first time, they were eligible to receive a kosher meal pack - 250 years late perhaps but a formal recognition that the needs of Jewish servicemen and women are important.
Another development has also been welcomed by Ajex. As the number of living ex-service personnel diminishes, so their families have become determined to keep their memory alive.
On Sunday, hundreds will march wearing the medals of their loved ones. There may be few left who recall the terrible sacrifices which were made, but those who fell will continue to be remembered. | <urn:uuid:7c286ed7-a199-42ba-b7fa-cb18e07008ee> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thejc.com/print/90777 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00002-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988072 | 1,363 | 3.21875 | 3 |
How do millions of people worldwide feel having to eat meals with only a dollar a day? Two high-school teachers decided to do it for a month and see if they could survive. They ate on the $4.13-per-day allotment for food stamp recipients, exploring whether or not you can have a healthy diet following the USDA’s “Thrifty Food Plan.” Their experiments started as a mere way to save money but led them to discover a lot about the American food industry, the issue of hunger, and why 36 million Americans have limited food options, even during a national obesity epidemic. Patt talks to Kerri Leonard and Christopher Greenslate about their book and what they learned about food and money.
Christopher Greenslate, co-author of "On a Dollar a Day"
Michael Flood, executive director of the LA Regional Food Bank | <urn:uuid:22b6ebc8-2546-4b07-b05e-62bde7d24013> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scpr.org/programs/patt-morrison/2010/03/30/11925/on-a-dollar-a-day-one-couples-unlikely-adventures-/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960383 | 177 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Overall Problem: Project Euler 12 - What is the value of the first triangle number to have over five hundred divisors?
Focus of problem: The divisor function
Description: The function I used is brute and the time it take for the program to find a number with more divisors than x increases almost exponentially with each 10 or 20 numbers highers. I need to get to 500 or more divisors. I've identified that the divisor function is what is hogging down the program. The research I did lead me to divisor functions and specifically the divisor function which is supposed to be a function that will count all the divisors of any integer. Every page I've looked at seems to be directed toward mathematics majors and I only have high-school maths. Although I did come across some page that mentioned allot about primes and the Sieve of Atkins but I could not make the connection between primes and finding all the divisors of any integer nor find anything on the net about it.
Main Question: Could someone explain how to code the divisor function or even provide a sample? Maths concepts make more sense to me when I look at them with code. So much appreciated.
brute force divisor function:
def countdiv(a): count = 0 for i in range(1,(a/2)+1): if a % i == 0: count += 1 return count + 1 # +1 to account for number itself as a divisor | <urn:uuid:839a344b-d585-4439-ac9a-719fdec1809b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9076336/how-do-you-implement-the-divisor-function-in-code | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935892 | 314 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Computed tomography (CT) is an imaging procedure that uses special x-ray equipment to create detailed pictures, or scans, of areas inside the body. It is also called computerized tomography and computerized axial tomography (CAT).
Computed tomography (CT) is performed using a specialized scanner, an x-ray system, a patient table, and a computer workstation. The CT scanner is shaped like a large square with a hole in the center or round like a doughnut. X rays are produced in the form of a beam that rotates around the patient. During a CT scan, the patient table is moved through the center hole as x-ray beams pass through the patient's body. The x rays are converted into a series of black-and-white images, each of which represents a "slice" of the anatomy.
Related Journals of Computed tomography
Journal of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography, Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography. | <urn:uuid:3f23197f-f037-4efa-ab24-ed54867d2924> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.omicsonline.org/scholarly/computed-tomography-journals-articles-ppts-list.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396222.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00031-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940777 | 201 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Even if women and men were graduating in equal numbers from technology and engineering degree programs, the technology industry would still favor men.
According to a new report from the Level Playing Field Institute, IT workplaces, including tech startups, can create hostile or unpleasant environments for women and people of color, leading to those employees seeking out other companies or even other industries for work.
The report states that biases inherent in the average tech workplace make it a less-than-inviting environment for women and minorities, who deal with negative workplace experiences, such as exclusionary cliques and bullying at much higher rates than do their male and white counterparts.
“The IT sector is one of the fastest growing in our country, yet women and people of color continue to be vastly underrepresented,” said LPFI Executive Director Robert Schwartz, Ed.D.
“Previously we’ve pointed to problems in the STEM education pipeline as the reason for low rates of women and people of color in IT positions. But the findings in this report clearly show that there are also significant concerns with company culture and workplace experiences of underrepresented professionals.”
The Level Playing Field Institute, or LPFI, is an organization dedicated to exploring and eliminating the gender and ethnicity imbalances and biases in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) communities.
The report is called Playing Field: An Examination of Hidden Bias in Information Technology Workplaces. It shows that subtle and implicit favoritism in both large IT enterprises and startups ”can produce unequal opportunities and outcomes for employees depending on their race and gender.” The study uses data collected from a sample of IT engineers and managers in large companies and small startups around the United States.
In addition to encountering more bullying and being negatively effected by cliques, women and underrepresented people of color saw a higher likelihood of experiencing negative workplace incidents. And the more negative work experiences each person reported, the less likely she was to be satisfied with her job and remain working for the company.
In other words, subtle sexism in tech workplaces is making women and minorities want to move on.
Nevertheless, the study also showed that for most hiring managers, maintaining a diverse workplace was not a high priority. In spite of the fact that most of the companies polled showed diversity stats representative of the rest of the tech industry (i.e., few women and underrepresented people of color), 68% of the managers and engineers polled said they were satisfied with their company’s diversity efforts.
Not surprisingly, women and minorities were much more likely to favor more diversity in the workplace. In fact, underrepresented people of color were almost twice as likely as white employees to want a company-wide policy to increase diversity (80 percent compared to 46 percent).
As a result of these subtle (and sometimes overt) biases and lack of diversity in the workplace, woman and minorities in the report were less likely to feel they had a career path at their current company or that they were adequately developing their skills and abilities. Likewise, the same groups were more likely to be looking for a new job or planning to leave their current job within the year.
It’s not surprising that negative workplace experiences were linked to job dissatisfaction. What is disturbing is that these factors were so closely tied to gender and ethnicity.
In the report’s conclusion, LPFI recommends more research on these biases. The authors of the paper also challenge everyone working in the tech industry to confront their own biases and to support productive conversations about these biases within their companies and communities. | <urn:uuid:51aba606-75b3-43b7-950e-83bac9d05d0f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/01/women-in-it/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00192-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97405 | 723 | 2.875 | 3 |
The “Parque cultural del Maestrazgo”, covers an area of 270,000 ha and lies between Zaragoza and Teruel in the catchment of the Rio de Guadalope. The area belongs to the Cordillera, a dry mountain land characterised by hot summers and cold winters and with deeply incised yellow-brown valleys. The area lies in the former kingdom of Acagon and in the Middle Ages it was named “Maestrazgo”by the “maestres”, a military order which administered this region. There are six centres within the Park: the Geological Park in Aliaga, the History Museum in Mas de als Matas, the Cultural Park of Molinos, the Centre for Science of Environment in Villarluen-go, the Palaeontological Park in Galve and finally the Sculpture Park in Hino-josa de Jarque.
The little village of Aliaga, 50km northeast of the town of Teruel, is interesting because it lies at the nodal point of two geological folds that followed one another. In the Mesozoic, 220 – 65 million years ago, an embayment of a warm sea periodically covered this area. During these times the bottom of the sea was colonized by corals and other invertebrate animals. At other times, the sea retreated and rivers deposited sediment here. 65 million years ago during the formation and folding of the Pyrenees a geological saddle, or anticline, orientated approximately north-south, was formed. Subsequently a geological depression, or syncline, running nearly towards east-west was created. After that the Guadalope River and its tributaries cut deep into these structures. Harder rocks like limestone, dolomite educational path with eleven special points, where ceramic boards with drawings and text explain the facts to interested amateurs, pupils, students or scientists. In the Palaeontological Park of Galve, fossils and printings of dinosaurs, as well as life-sized replicas, can be examined at in awe. As a result of these projects the Geological and Paleontological Park are now known all over the world including specialists and scientists who regularly visit that region.
Location: North-east Spain, Iberian Mountains, Between Zaragoza and Teruel
Leaflets on Molinos Park Cultural
Book: Guia del Parque Geologico de
Aliaga (J.L.SIMON, 1998)
Postcards – Set Palaeontological
and conglomerates were resistant to erosion and are now preserved as mountain ridges and cliffs. Those parts of the landscape underlain by clay, marl and sandstones were more easily eroded and now account for the more gentle slopes of the area. The geological and natural heritage of the region will be developed in the Geological Park of Aliaga by using an ed-
Parque Cultural del Maestrazgo
Celle Pueyo 33,
E-44556 Molinos (Teruel),
Email: Jorge Abril firstname.lastname@example.org
Angel Hernandez email@example.com
Website: http://www.maestrazgo.org | http://www.turismomaestrazgo.com | <urn:uuid:321e70f4-ffc9-41be-b0de-3b022ff7fb95> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.europeangeoparks.org/?page_id=424 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00035-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908272 | 680 | 3.21875 | 3 |
A Web server can be either a computer program or a computer running a program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, serving back HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as HTML documents and linked objects on it. An application server is the kind of software engine that will deliver various applications to another device. It is the kind of computer found in an office or university network that allows everyone in the network to run software off of the same machine.
A web server and an application server may differ on the following points:
|Application Server||Web Server|
|What is it?||A server that exposes business logic to client applications through various protocols including HTTP.||A server that handles HTTP protocol.|
|Job||Application server is used to serve web based applications and enterprise based applications(i.e servlets, jsps and ejbs...). Application servers may contain a web server internally.||Web server is used to serve web based applications.(i.e servlets and jsps)|
|Functions||To deliver various applications to another device, it allows everyone in the network to run software off of the same machine.||Keeping HTML, PHP, ASP, etc files available for the web browsers to view when a user accesses the site on the web, handles HTTP requests from clients.|
|Supports||distributed transaction and EJB's||Servlets and JSP|
The main function of a web server is keeping files active for web site browsing, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Any time lost is known as down time which means that at that point, the website and its pages will not be viewable. Any good web hosting company tries to keep their downtime to less than a fraction of a second to be successful. An Application server facilitates this process and tries to make for easy data access of an application.
The Web Server does not support the concept of multi-threading. In Application Server we have features like connection pooling, isolation pooling, multi-threading, and majorly the Transaction feature which is not there in Web Server.
Web servers (programs) are supposed to serve requests quickly from more than one TCP/IP connection at a time.Consider that Internet Explorer or Firefox Web Browser is a local program on the user's hard drive, whereas the web pages themselves are not. The web pages are actually stored on the hard drives of other computers, and these are known as web servers. Application server products typically bundle middleware to enable applications to intercommunicate with dependent applications, like Web servers, database management systems, and chart programs.
A web server (program) has defined load limits, because it can handle only a limited number of concurrent client connections (usually between 2 and 60,000, by default between 500 and 1,000) per IP address (and IP port) and it can serve only a certain maximum number of requests per second. On the other hand, an application server has a much higher capacity.
Webserver delegation model is fairly simple, when the request comes into the webserver, it simply passes the request to the program best able to handle it (Server side program). It may not support transactions and database connection pooling. Web servers support to deploy .war files only while Application servers support to deploy .war and .ear files.
Application server is more capable of dynamic behaviour than webserver. An application server can be configured to work as a webserver.
The first web server owes its origin to Tim Berners-Lee when as part of a new project to his employer CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). In 1989 he wrote two programs which led to the implementation of the first web server. The Application server first came up in the 1990's.
It can be said that a Web server is a subset of an application server. Application servers and web servers are beginning to blur into each other with the expansion of the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies. In most instances currently, software is hosted on web servers, and then downloaded to the local hard drive, where it is installed on the local computer. In the new model that fuses the web server and application server, the software would be hosted online and the user could access it and use it as needed, generally, at a lower rate than if he or she were to purchase the software new. | <urn:uuid:b9653727-73bf-464d-9c41-7e29437d6277> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.diffen.com/difference/Application_Server_vs_Web_Server | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00031-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916031 | 898 | 3.59375 | 4 |
THE BIG PICTURE
Since 1981, the United States has spent billions of dollars on the "War
On Drugs." To whose benefit? Our prisons are bursting with non-violent
prisoners. Many are young people who are addicted to drugs and who need
compassion and treatment. Not incarceration! While more prisons are being
built, our country has earned the title of "World's Leading Jailer." In 1980,
there were 500 thousand incarcerated prisoners; in 1990 over 1 million and
in 2000 an astonishing 2 million prisoners.
Our cities are being destroyed by crime and violence spurred on by
prohibition. By not allowing needle exchange programs the spread of AIDS
and other infectious diseases has become a public health nightmare. Little of
the drug war budget is being spent on treatment even though it has proven,
to be, seven times more effective than incarceration. It makes no sense!
After 30 years of fighting a war that cannot be won, we have become
fragmented, segregated and distrustful of one another. We must join
together, now, to build a safer country rather than a less free America.
Research shows that some kids are told that pot is as bad as heroin are
more likely to experiment with heroin particularly if they tried marijuana
and had few consequences. Many kids feel if they were lied to about
marijuana, then they were probably lied to about heroin and other drugs as
well. The result is, many teens are rebelling against the very programs that
are intended to help them. Government surveys show half of high school
students try an illegal drug, 80 percent if you include alcohol, before
Kids who experiment with drugs and those with substance abuse
problems are often suspended or expelled from school. These are the kids
most in need of help. "Just say no!" has failed to reduce drug use or addiction. The focus should be on the talents and capabilities, not the inabilities, of our children.
We need to understand that drug experimentation is different from drug
abuse, and find ways to help those who have a problem with substance
abuse. Shouldn't the first step toward recovery be the recognition that we
have a problem?
LOKKING AT THE FACTS
The federal government spent $1.65 billion in 1982 on the "drug war",
and in 1999 it increased to $17.7 billion. More than half of the students in
the United States in 1999 tried an illegal drug before they graduated from
high school. The number of offenders under age 18, incarcerated for a drug violation, increased from 70 to 840 between 1985 and 1997. Drug offenders in 1997
made up 11 percent of prison admissions among persons under 18 compared
to 2 percent in 1985.
In 1999, there were approximately 4 million chronic drug users in the
Untied States. An estimated number of those in need of substance abuse
treatment are between 13 and 16 million people. More than 10 million
people a year are NOT receiving it.
Addiction is a disease, a public health issue, not a criminal one. We
need to change attitudes and begin healing our addicted children. Those in
treatment are looked upon as "weak" and often deprived of their human
rights and their families are often shunned and turned away when they most
need support and understanding.
Grieving parents admit they would have done ANYTHING to keep their children
alive. Knowing what we know now, some would even buy illicit drugs for
them, if necessary, to keep them alive until they could seek effective
treatment. Tough love, often, doesn't work, and we have been through the
worst nightmare any parent can experience. Our eyes have been opened and
we have seen the tragedies, the deaths and the grieving parents that drug
related deaths have spewed across the world. It's time to re-think the "War
On Drugs." It isn't working, it never did. We need to change our course and
begin to better understand addiction and it's power over our children. | <urn:uuid:e7f362d4-718d-4c34-b68c-a594044040e7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bellaonline.com/ArticlesP/art31639.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00170-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972772 | 832 | 2.578125 | 3 |
August 1, 2010
H is for Highway
From cow paths to freeways, we seldom appreciate what went into America’s highway system.
‘hī-wā (noun) – There ys a dyfference bytwypte an hyghe waye and a bypathe, for the hyghe waye ys large and commune to all… (The Myroure of Oure Ladye, 1530, p. 140)
By Bill Langer
In The Cow Path (1895), New Hampshire poet Sam Walter Foss describes how long ago a calf made a path through the woods. The path became an established animal trail, followed by human travelers, then horses, then wagons, until:
“The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And thus, before we were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare.
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.”
As we travel along ancient cow paths, whether from our home to work or across the country, we seldom appreciate what went into creating America’s highway system.
During 1806, money was appropriated to construct the National Road (a.k.a. the Cumberland Road) extending from Cumberland, Md., to the nation’s interior. The panic of 1837-1840 essentially curtailed appropriations for the road which, at that time, extended through Ohio and Indiana into Illinois.
It was not until the beginning of the 20th century and the advent of the automobile that the true value of roads became appreciated. The Post Office Appropriation Act of 1912 and the Rural Road Act of 1916 made federal funding available for rebuilding the National Road. The Federal Highway Act of 1925 provided federal aid for the construction of the numbered federal highway system, and the National Road was realigned and incorporated as U.S. Route 40, part of one of the first new interstate highways.
Following World War II, deterioration of highways and the realization that highways are critical for national defense resulted in the passage of the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act that created the Interstate Highway System, and pushed new highway construction and design standards. On Aug. 2, 1956, Missouri became the first state to award a contract for work on the new Interstate system (specifically Interstate 70, then U.S. 40), the Mark Twain Expressway located in St. Charles County. East of the Rocky Mountains, much of Interstate 70 follows U.S. Route 40, the previous route of the National Highway.
By 1991, the Interstate System was 99 percent finished with a length of 36,147 rural miles and 6,397 urban miles of highway. Interstate 70 through Glenwood Canyon, Colo., which opened for traffic on Oct. 14, 1992, was one of the final pieces of the interstate system to be completed.
The Interstate Highway System launched an unprecedented demand for aggregate. USGS Bulletin 1594 (Langer, 1988) gives approximate values for tons of aggregate used in the construction of various types of highways and secondary roads. Applying those values to the Interstate Highway System and assuming that all the Interstate was of four-lane construction (an obvious underestimation), construction would have required about 2.9 billion tons of aggregate.
During the period 1956-1991, about 776,000 miles of non-interstate highways and 460,000 miles of secondary paved roads were also constructed, collectively consuming about 18 billion tons of aggregate. The bottom line is that between 1956 and 1991, about 32 percent of U.S. aggregate production was used for highway construction.
All by itself, Interstate 70 probably used about 150 million tons of aggregate. Not too bad for an old cow path.
Bill Langer is a geologist with the Mineral Resources Team of the U.S. Geological Survey and can be reached at 303-236-1249 or via e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:d74b19fb-3d86-4b10-b29a-8c7a93ba6524> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.aggman.com/carved-in-stone-6/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00074-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946807 | 837 | 2.890625 | 3 |
“Tennis elbow injections do ‘more harm than good’”, reports BBC News. The article was referring to steroid injections that are commonly used to treat the pain and inflammation associated with lateral epicondylitis (‘tennis elbow’).
The story is based on a recently published, well-conducted systematic review that searched the medical literature for studies assessing whether injections into the tissue surrounding a damaged tendon (including Achilles, elbow, shoulder and knee) improved pain and function. Many of these studies assessed the use of corticosteroids to treat problems associated with tennis elbow. Overall, the review found that, compared to no intervention, corticosteroids reduced pain associated with tennis elbow in the short term, but that the benefits did not last. There is no particular evidence that these injections ‘do more harm than good’. In fact, only one small study with imprecise results found a small increase in the risk of loss of skin pigmentation compared with no treatment. The BBC headline is therefore an inaccurate extrapolation of the results.
There is not enough evidence yet to determine the best injectable treatment for tennis elbow and other tendinopathies. The short-term relief provided by corticosteroids may still be appropriate for some sufferers.
The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Queensland, Griffiths University and the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in Australia. The work received no external funding and was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet.
BBC News has covered this review fairly well, though the headline is an unsupported extrapolation of the results and may mislead readers into thinking that the study has found harms associated with using corticosteroids to treat tennis elbow. This study has not found significant harms associated with these injections compared to placebo for this condition.
This systematic review investigated whether injections are beneficial for tendinopathies (disorders of the tendons). A systematic review is a robust way of bringing together all the good research on a topic and combine the results to obtain a measure of effectiveness. The researchers noted that “the large number of studies about…other injection types underpins the need for a synthesis of the evidence for injection therapies”.
Tendinopathies are disorders of the tendons relating to overuse, and are common in active young and middle-aged people. A range of injection types are offered as treatment, including steroids, platelet-rich plasma, botox and other drugs. In this research, a systematic review of studies was carried out to determine which types of injections are beneficial for different types of tendinopathies (including corticosteroids). Given that there is usually no inflammation associated with these conditions, researchers are questioning whether corticosteroid injections, one of the commonly used treatments, are actually effective. They did not include studies that assessed injections into the muscles or injections directly into the joints.
The researchers were also interested in whether there were differences in the short, medium and long-term effects of the different treatments. Databases of medical literature were searched for randomised controlled trials published before March 2010. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to have assessed whether injections into the tissue surrounding a tendon were effective for treating tendinopathies, and compared these injections with placebo or with other non-surgical interventions. The researchers also only included studies that they assessed to be of high quality.
The researchers then combined the results of the relevant trials using meta-analyses, grouping them by the type of tendinopathies, the type of injectable treatment and the term of effect (short, medium and long).
The literature searches found 41 studies, including 12 that assessed the effectiveness of steroids for tennis elbow. The other studies assessed steroids for rotator-cuff tendinopathy (tendon problems in the shoulder), for tendinopathies in other sites and other treatments for these disorders.
As described above, the research was grouped in different ways, but the results consistently showed that, compared with other interventions, corticosteroids reduced pain only in the short term. Multiple injections did not improve outcomes more than single injections.
The other treatments for tennis elbow showed that there were significant reductions in pain in the short, medium and long term following injections of sodium hyaluronate. Pain was also significantly reduced with botox in the short-term and with prolotherapy (hypertonic glucose and anaesthetic) in the medium-term.
The researchers say that despite the effectiveness of corticosteroid injections in the short-term, non-corticosteroid injections ‘might be of benefit for the long-term treatment of’ tennis elbow.
However, they say that the response to injection should not be generalised across different sites (e.g. tendon problems in elbow, knee, shoulder, etc.) because their review shows differences depending on which joint the tendinopathy affects.
This is a well-conducted systematic review but it has some limitations, largely relating to the quality of the underlying evidence. The researchers detail some of these:
The research demonstrates a short-term benefit of corticosteroids compared with doing nothing for pain related to tennis elbow, but that this particular treatment has no effect in the longer term. There is no conclusive evidence that the steroid injections ‘do more harm than good’ as suggested by the BBC News headline. Some of the studies favoured the treatments that the corticosteroids were being compared against. However, this was often in single-study results (not pooled results) and was not the case for all comparators.
An editorial that accompanies this article suggests, “today’s review might discourage clinicians from using corticosteroids in patients who are seeking medium-term and long-term cures”. It says the clinical implication here is that one corticosteroid injection is not helpful for elbow pain at 6 to 12 months, and that multiple injections do not improve outcomes. However, given the shortage of studies for some of these analyses, especially of alternatives to corticosteroid injections for tennis elbow, the short-term benefits may still be better than nothing for many patients. The editorial says that “there is no compelling evidence that any injection for tendinopathy is a magic bullet”. | <urn:uuid:a7e97ed1-5752-443f-b37a-b1163eeea09d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.longridgenews.co.uk/news/health/steroids-for-tennis-elbow-not-bad-1-2412249 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00036-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957184 | 1,290 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Teaching English as a second language can often be an exciting career for many.
Whether you are choosing to do it on a gap year, or as a full time career, you are likely to come across a wide range of different people. Sometimes we may be required to teach children
, even though we do not have experience in the area. Some language schools will give a mix of students. There will be those there who are looking to improve their English for general use. There will be those who are looking specifically for business English
whilst others simply want to progress. It is important to garner, in the first class, what the actual intentions of the student are before going ahead with the plan. This way, you will find it easier to tailor a class to the specific needs of that student. Before going ahead, however, you need to remember that adults, children and indeed teenagers are all different. Children learn in different ways to their older counterparts. As a result, you need to be able to make sure what to include in certain classes and what to leave out.
The Differences Between Adults & Children You Should Know
Children and Learning
One of the first things you should remember about kids is that their brains have more elasticity than those of adults. You could say that their brains are not “formed” yet, so to speak. As a result, it is easier for children to learn a new language. Try to remember your own personal experience, if you know a foreign language. If you learned it at the age of 7-10, learning new words most likely came easier to you, and you probably found yourself understanding simple phrases quite easily. However, as we become older, taking on a new language becomes a lot more difficult.
Games, Story-Telling and More
It is also important to include age appropriate materials in your classes. For example, children are not going to be interested in reading articles about the state of the economy, or even the fashion industry. In fact, most kids generally won’t like reading articles at all! Other techniques need to be employed.
Games: Both adults and children love games. Therefore it is important to include these as much as possible in the class. In doing this, the teacher will be able to let words sink in easier. Often they can include games such as Hang Man, Pictionary, Simon Says and much more.
Story Telling: This is another effective technique. All children love story time. Find a simple fairy tale to tell the children, or make one up yourself! Afterwards, ask questions by putting the characters in different situations (“Sally’s grandmother is ill, what should Sally do?”). This way, kids can come up with their own answers. Effectively, you will be able to get the children to write their own stories. This can be incredibly beneficial in terms of their production skills.
Attention Spans: Children also tend to have short attention spans, so it is important for you to realize this. Long, drawn-out exercises which involve a lot of silence will not work. The kids will become agitated, start fidgeting and lose interest. Keep them engaged at all times. Posing questions, getting everyone involved in the exercise, and generally keeping them on their toes is always a good idea and can prove very effective.
Adults and Learning
For older people, learning a language can be a challenge. There are some who do this professionally for translator jobs, and will generally have a gift for this. But for many adult learners, this is going to be new territory. Specifically when it comes to learning English, many might have had previous instruction in school as children. This is particularly true of those who live in Western European countries.
Topics of Interest, Humour and Activities
Keeping adults engaged is just as important as doing so with children! You might find that there are some students who are intent on learning, and will do their best to concentrate. This may not always be the case, therefore it is important to keep the class as interesting as possible.
Activities: Games are possible option for adults as well. A lot of the time, they might have be tailored to suit adults. More “grown up” type games and activities will be useful in this regard. Debates are often a great way to get adults talking. Often, the students will end up speaking more and arguments can break out. As long as it does not get out of hand, this can be incredibly positive. The less you have to do, the more of a success the class is!
Humour: It is also a good idea to have a sense of humour. Just be aware how humour translates in different cultures. In Germany, for example, the people are notorious for being humourless. This isn’t necessarily the case, as it can differ from one region to the next.
Topics of Interest: If you are teaching business people, then topics related to what they are doing (for example, someone who works with pressured air) will probably spark up the students’ interests a bit more. The Internet is a wonderful resource in this sense, and you can find information on almost anything with the click of a mouse. Remember, most adults will also like to take a logical approach, but overall with both children and older students, using the language in a practical way is the most beneficial method.
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15 Secrets to Teaching Adults | <urn:uuid:6f941cbf-32f6-45b7-a32a-d4d2596d9563> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://busyteacher.org/7935-adults-children-differences-every-teacher-should.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00026-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962646 | 1,312 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Key: "S:" = Show Synset (semantic) relations, "W:" = Show Word (lexical) relations
Display options for sense: (gloss) "an example sentence"
- S: (n) purpose, intent, intention, aim, design (an anticipated outcome that is intended or that guides your planned actions) "his intent was to provide a new translation"; "good intentions are not enough"; "it was created with the conscious aim of answering immediate needs"; "he made no secret of his designs"
- S: (n) function, purpose, role, use (what something is used for) "the function of an auger is to bore holes"; "ballet is beautiful but what use is it?"
- S: (n) determination, purpose (the quality of being determined to do or achieve something; firmness of purpose) "his determination showed in his every movement"; "he is a man of purpose" | <urn:uuid:a944d853-9a22-41d6-ab82-5ccdc7acc0fb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?o2=&o0=1&o8=1&o1=1&o7=&o5=&o9=&o6=&o3=&o4=&s=purpose | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400572.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00135-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951464 | 198 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Given a rectangle with the area of 30in2 and its length is 6in. Find its width.
The picture below shows the rectangle with the length of 6in and the width of w.
Since the value of the area is given as 30in2, we can substitute A with 30. Similarly, since the length is given as 6in, we can substitute l with 6. This is shown below:
Now, we have 6w = 30. Notice that, to find w, we need to remove 6. We can do so by dividing both sides of the equation with 6.
Now, the calculated number 5, has no meaning until we include the unit for it. Since the area is in inch2, w will be in inch. Hence:
Therefore, the answer is D.
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No Thanks. My Kids Don't Need To Learn Math | <urn:uuid:76c92e7a-ef6a-4f47-b4e2-be60e4b37c4e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mathexpression.com/rectangle-practice-2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393442.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00199-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950509 | 204 | 3.5625 | 4 |
Small "nanoflares" erupting from the sun might be the key to unlocking a cosmic mystery, according to a new study.
Scientists have found that the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, can reach temperatures 1,000 times higher than those at the surface of the star, but solar physicists previously had no explanation for why this temperature discrepancy is so great. Now, researchers think the relatively tiny flares may be the "smoking gun" that explains this mysterious cosmic occurrence.
The new study provides the first direct proof that nanoflares keep the sun's corona at a temperature of millions of degrees, far hotter than the sun's visible surface, which is about 6,000 degrees Kelvin (10,000 degrees Fahrenheit). [The Biggest Solar Flares of 2014: Photos]
"The nanoflare model has been around for a while," said Jeffrey Brosius, a solar physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland "With better instrumentation, we were hoping to find the evidence that was predicted by the model."
Nanoflares happen because of huge magnetic fields located throughout the sun's corona. These loops are anchored in the photosphere, the sun's visible surface, but move around due to turbulence in the photosphere. Sometimes the field lines cross, and they become twisted and tangled.
When this happens in the presence of plasma, current sheets form, and the "stress" builds until the magnetic field "breaks," releasing lots of energy very quickly. This kind of crossing of magnetic fields can happen thousands of times a second over the whole solar surface, and this transfers energy to the plasma in the corona. That energy transfer could explain the corona's extra heat.
Earlier evidence for this, though, was indirect. While other models didn't fit observations, the model based on nanoflares was still missing a piece of the puzzle. That missing evidence came from the Extreme Ultraviolet Normal Incidence Spectrograph mission, which picked up light emitted by a special kind of ionized iron, called Fe XIX. (The Roman numeral describes how highly ionized the iron is, and thus the temperature of the plasma, which was about 8.9 million degrees Kelvin, or about 16 million degrees Fahrenheit.)
The EUNIS instruments also spotted another form of ionized iron, Fe XII, which occurs at a temperature of 1.6 million degrees Kelvin, or about 2.9 million degrees Fahrenheit.
The ratio of the two ions showed that the corona is heated by short bursts, rather than a continuous input of energy, because that ratio -- the brightness of Fe XIX relative to its cousin Fe XII -- would only occur under certain physical conditions. "One of the predictions of the nanoflare model is there should be fairly widespread but faint emission of plasma at about 10 million Kelvin [18 million degrees Fahrenheit]," Brosius told Space.com.
One reason for this doubt is that the emission from the ionized ironwas so hard to see because it was faint. Another is that the corona is "optically thin," meaning that at some wavelengths, it's basically translucent, like stained glass. So the nanoflares, many occurring simultaneously and overlapping, tend to "wash out."
The study appears in the August issue of the Astrophysical Journal. | <urn:uuid:f7ed72d2-866d-4771-9871-f7dfaf8d0647> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.space.com/26806-nanoflares-solar-flares-sun-mystery.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00014-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954878 | 683 | 3.828125 | 4 |
Delete a Letter 9Language brain teasers are those that involve the English language. You need to think about and manipulate words and letters.
Each pair of definitions is for two words, where the second word is the first word with a letter deleted (example: brand & band). The length of the first word in each pair is provided, along with the position of the deleted letter to obtain the second word.
1) a place to sit (5 letters) & (delete 4th letter) to scorch or singe
2) unintelligible writing or speech (6 letters) & (delete 1st letter) a gaseous element
3) a military person (7 letters) & (delete 5th letter) an alloy used to join metal
4) a geographic direction (4 letters) & (delete 3rd letter) moist
Answer1) chair & char
2) jargon & argon
3) soldier & solder
4) west & wet
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Back to Top | <urn:uuid:d9c147ba-bc77-4a6c-8a69-c2e9164f6dd7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.braingle.com/brainteasers/teaser.php?id=49801&comm=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00004-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905226 | 257 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Even though astronomers have discovered more than 100 planets around stars other than the Sun in recent years, the "holy grail" of the search -- an Earth-sized planet capable of supporting life -- remains elusive. The main problem is that an Earthlike planet would be much smaller than any of the gas giants detected so far (see illustration at right).
Planets orbiting other stars are too dim to be observed directly, but scientists infer their presence by the tiny gravitational "wobble" they induce in their parent stars. Observed from tens of light years away (one light-year is 5.88 trillion miles), this movement becomes very tiny indeed. The smaller the planet, the less the star parent wobbles.
To detect the stellar wobble caused by a planet as small as Earth, scientists need an instrument of almost unbelievable sensitivity. Let's say there's an astronaut standing on the moon, wiggling her pinky. You'd need an instrument sensitive enough to measure that movement from Earth, a quarter million miles away.
In order to do that, the instrument needs to be a "ruler" accurate to within just one-tenth the width of a hydrogen atom. That's about 1 millionth of the width of the thickest human hair.
Is such precision possible? After a six-year struggle, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently proved that the answer is yes.
The testbed experiments are conducted inside an enormous vacuum chamber that simulates the conditions of space.
Such sub-atomic measurements were conducted for the first time ever within a vacuum-sealed chamber called the Microarcsecond Metrology Testbed.
By doing this, the engineers proved they can measure the movements of stars with an astonishing degree of accuracy never before achieved in human history.
The testbed, which resembles a shiny silver submarine, is jammed with mirrors, lasers, lenses and other optical components. Because even small air movements can interfere with the measurements, all air is pumped out of the chamber before each experiment is run. Laser beams, moving mirrors and a camera are used to help detect movements of an artificial star, which simulates the light that would be emitted by a real star.
Project manager Renaud Goullioud stands in front of the Microarcsecond Metrology Testbed
The instrument that engineers have demonstrated in the laboratory will become the heart of a revolutionary new space telescope known as the Space Interferometry Mission.
"Six-and-a-half years ago, this technology was unproven and unsubstantiated," said Brett Watterson, the mission's deputy project manager. "It was just a remote possibility that we could do it. It was through ingenuity, insight, leadership and sheer perseverance that the team was able to overcome these difficult technological challenges."
NASA recently gave the go-ahead for the second stage of development for the mission, which will not only be able to search for Earth-like planets around other stars, but will also measure cosmic distances several hundred times more accurately than currently possible. Scheduled to launch in 2009, it will scan the heavens for five years and provide astronomers with the first truly accurate road map of our Milky Way galaxy.
"This is a historical time that we're intimately involved with," Watterson said. "Unlike any other culture in history, we have the technological means, the budget, and the will to determine the occurrence of Earthlike planets orbiting other stars. Everyone on the team is aware of their role in this pivotal stage in the search for life elsewhere in the universe."
The Space Interferometry Mission is managed by JPL as part of NASA's Origins program.
July 22, 2003 | <urn:uuid:0cfa2ad0-f89b-44b0-a183-23a486aa4b2a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/stars_galaxies/features/mam-testbed.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00058-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95423 | 745 | 4.15625 | 4 |
Definition of Kerion
1. Noun. Ringworm infection of the hair follicles of the scalp and beard that usually results in a swelling that is covered with pustules and oozes fluid.
Definition of Kerion
1. Noun. (medicine) A response condition to a fungal ringworm infection of the hair follicles of the scalp and beard accompanied by secondary bacterial infection, usually presenting itself as raised, spongy lesions. ¹
¹ Source: wiktionary.com
Medical Definition of Kerion
1. A granulomatous secondarily infected lesion complicating fungal infection of the hair; typically, a raised boggy lesion. Origin: G. Kerion, honeycomb; a skin disease, fr. Keros, beeswax (05 Mar 2000)
Click the following link to bring up a new window with an automated collection of images related to the term: Kerion Images
Lexicographical Neighbors of Kerion
kerion (current term)
Literary usage of Kerion
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. A Practical treatise on the diseases of the hair and scalp by George Thomas Jackson (1887)
"kerion derives its name from a Greek word meaning a honeycomb. The Italian name signifies a ... TILBURY Fox (502), in 1866, first identified kerion as a ..."
2. On diseases of the skin: A System of Cutaneous Medicine by Erasmus Wilson (1868)
"Reviewing the pathognomonic characters of kerion, we shall find them to be, ... kerion is a disease of childhood and youth ; we have seen but one case in ..."
3. A Practical Treatise on Diseases of the Skin by Louis Adolphus Duhring (1881)
"Where the disease is confined to a small area and proves rebellious, the artificial production of tinea kerion by means of the cautions application of ..."
4. Epitome of Skin Diseases: With Formulae, for Students and Practitioners by Tilbury Fox (1879)
"kerion, see Tinea kerion. Lepra is an old term for psoriasis, and especially that form which consists of circular rings of disease. ..."
5. A Descriptive Catalogue of the New Sydenham Society's Atlas of Portraits of by New Sydenham Society, Jonathan Hutchinson (1869)
"A condition closely analogous to kerion of the scalp is observed in the ... The state of the parts in kerion of the scalp in children with ringworm and ..." | <urn:uuid:ad823f1c-178e-4961-9df6-78c9cbe1791a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/kerion | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403508.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00016-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.846061 | 559 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Urge incontinence is a sudden and strong need to urinate. You may also hear it referred to as an unstable or overactive bladder, or detrusor instability.
In a properly functioning bladder, the bladder muscle (detrusor) remains relaxed as the bladder gradually fills up. As the bladder gradually stretches, we get a feeling of wanting to pass urine when the bladder is about half full. Most people can hold on after this initial feeling until a convenient time to go to the toilet arises. However, if you are experiencing an overactive bladder and urge incontinence, the bladder may feel fuller than it actually is. This means that the bladder contracts too early when it is not very full, and not when you want it to. This can make you suddenly need the toilet and perhaps leak some urine before you get there.
Often, if you experience urge incontinence you will also have the need to frequently pass urine and may wake several times a night to do so (nocturia).
The cause of urge incontinence is not fully understood however it seems to become more common as we age. Symptoms may get worse at times of stress and may also be made worse by caffeine in tea, coffee and fizzy drinks or by alcohol.
Urge incontinence can be linked to stroke, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and other health conditions which interfere with the brain's ability to send messages to the bladder via the spinal cord. These conditions can affect a person's ability to hold and store urine.
Urge incontinence may also occur as a result of constipation (not being able to empty the bowel or having difficulty doing so), an enlarged prostate gland or simply the result of a long history of poor bladder habits. In some cases the cause of an over-active bladder is unknown. | <urn:uuid:d36e04f9-bfa6-49f5-bbc5-aa5c1ddef7fd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.continence.org.au/pages/urge-incontinence.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00046-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954649 | 370 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Contributor: C. Peter Chen
ww2dbaseThe last of the major conferences during WW2 was held at Potsdam, code named Terminal. Immediately west of Berlin, President Truman was given a chance to tour the ravaged German capital while he waited for Stalin's arrival (the Russian leader was a day late). The meeting was held at the undamaged Cecilienhof Palace. Stalin's late arrival gave Truman's scientists one extra day to work on the Manhattan Project, and that one extra day seemed to be just enough for Oppenheimer's team to give Truman the resulted he wanted: On the same day that the leaders met at Potsdam, a successful atomic detonation was achieved at New Mexico's desert of Alamogordo under the code name Operation Trinity. By this point, the Americans had learned that Japan wished to end the war, partly by Japan's unrealistic pleas for Moscow to mediate a peace settlement between Japan and the Allied powers. However, the Americans also understood that, if war could not be stopped, many in Japan were prepared to fight to the bitter end, and the losses on both side would be tremendous should landings on the home islands become necessary. Understanding this about Japan, at Potsdam Truman made sure that Stalin would hold true to his promise that Russia would declare war on Japan three months after the surrender of Germany despite the news of the successful test atomic explosion; Truman was keeping his options open.
ww2dbaseOn 26 July, agreements were reached:
- Reversion of all German annexations in Europe after 1937 and separation of Austria from Germany.
- Statement of aims of the occupation of Germany by the Allies: demilitarization, denazification, democratization and decartelization.
- The Potsdam Agreement, which called for the division of Germany and Austria into four occupation zones (agreed on earlier at the Yalta Conference), and the similar division of Berlin and Vienna into four zones.
- Agreement on prosecution of Nazi war criminals.
- The establishment of the Oder-Neisse line as the provisional border between Germany and Poland.
- The expulsion of the German populations remaining outside the borders of Germany.
- Agreement on war reparations. The Allies estimated their losses and damages at 200 billion dollars. On insistence of the West, Germany was obliged to pay off only 20 billion in German property, current industry products, and work force (However, the Cold War prevented the full payment).
ww2dbaseThe Potsdam Declaration was also written (by Truman and Churchill, with input from Chiang Kaishek) and was broadcasted to the Japanese people by radio and dropped in pamphlets, both in the Japanese language. It promised "prompt and utter destruction" unless Japan forever renounced militarism, gave up the war criminals, return all conquered territories since 1895, and surrendered unconditionally.
ww2dbasePrime Minister Admiral Suzuki, upon hearing the declaration, was purposefully ambigious in his response while the cabinet debated Suzuki was buying time for himself before writing up his official response to Truman, Churchill, and Chiang. However, on the American side, this delay was completely misinterpreted as Japan's arrogance in continuing the war by ignoring the declaration. Historian Dan van der Vat commented: "Seldom can a misconstrued adverbial nuance have had such devastating consequences".
ww2dbaseSource: the Pacific Campaign.
Potsdam Conference Interactive Map
Potsdam Conference Timeline
|17 Jul 1945||At the Potsdam Conference in Germany, top Allied leadership set up a Control Council to administer occupied Germany.|
|18 Jul 1945||In Germany, the second plenary session of the Potsdam Conference was conducted.|
|20 Jul 1945||At Potsdam, Germany, Harry Truman declared that the Allies would demand no territory upon victory.|
|26 Jul 1945||The Potsdam Ultimatum was issued, threatening Japan with "utter destruction" if it did not surrender unconditionally.|
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James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, 23 Feb 1945 | <urn:uuid:aebac1b5-91c2-4921-bb42-31a94515c768> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=81 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399522.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00024-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938791 | 1,046 | 4 | 4 |
EAT POTATOES (MAINCROP)
Nutritious, delicious and endlessly versatile, the potato is by far the most important vegetable in Europe and has been particularly warmly embraced by cooks in the UK and Ireland. How impoverished would our national cuisine be without golden roast potatoes, thick-cut chips, or creamy mash?
After selecting the right potato for the job, a little attention to detail during preparation can transform the humble spud into a gastronomic experience that is hard to beat. Just try reading the small selection of recipes we've picked out without wanting to make one immediately.
Potatoes were cultivated five thousand years ago in what is now Peru. They were introduced to Europe via Spain in the 1550s and arrived in the UK sometime in the 1590s. Somewhat surprisingly, potatoes weren't grown in North America until they were taken by Irish emigrants in 1719. They travelled to Australasia with Captain Cook in 1770.
When first introduced to Britain, potatoes were an exotic and expensive food with a reputation as an aphrodisiac. It was more than a century later before they became a firmly established staple food.
In the 1840s the potato crop in much of Europe was wiped out by potato blight - an infection of the fungus Phytophthora infestans. Ireland was particularly badly hit as the crop was dominated by a single, highly susceptible, variety. In just over a decade the population of Ireland dropped by over a fifth: it is estimated that a million people died of malnutrition and a million more emigrated. This tragic episode serves as a reminder of the importance of maintaining genetic diversity in agriculture.
Solanum tuberosum is a plant in the nightshade family that is now grown in some 130 countries in all corners of the world. Potato plants reproduce vegetatively by growing tubers from which the new plant develops, hence potatoes are clones (the offspring are genetically identical to the parent plant).
Pick potatoes that are firm, with smooth undamaged skin. Avoid any that are bruised, tinged with green or sprouting.
For culinary purposes, potatoes are loosely grouped into waxy or starchy (in reality many potatoes fall somewhere between the two). Waxy potatoes hold their shape when cooked and so are good in casseroles and gratins or for serving as boiled potatoes. Starchy ones are better for mashing, baking, roasting and frying. Some of the more commonly available varieties are listed below.
Desiree. Probably the best all-rounder; can be used in almost any potato dish and has a greater depth of flavour than most.
King Edward. Recommended for baking and roasting. They are Delia's potato of choice for making gnocchi.
Maris Piper. General purpose potato, good for chips.
Kerr's Pink. Less common but makes great mash.
Marfona. Somewhere between waxy and starchy. Lends itself to boiling and baking.
Pink Fir Apple. A tasty spud with many of the characteristics of new potatoes; use in salads.
Cara. Try in gratins.
In a cool, dark, dry place (not the fridge) away from onions or any strongly flavoured foods.
Everyone has their own preferred techniques for preparing simple potato dishes; here are the ones that work for us.
Scrub the skin, dry, prick with a fork and put straight on the oven shelf at 220°C. Cook for an hour or so, depending on size, but allow 1½ hours for a nice crisp skin.
For lighter, fluffier mash use baked potatoes rather than boiled. Scoop out the flesh, add a generous knob of butter, a splash of milk and a sprinkling of salt. Some swear that the best results are obtained by passing the potato through a ricer or mouli; we find that a good working with hand-held masher followed by a brief but vigorous beating with a wooden spoon does the job admirably.
Peel as thinly as possible (most of a potato's flavour and nutritional content is close to the skin). Parboil for eight minutes, drain, then dry in the hot pan and shake to fluff up the edges. Roast in preheated fat (use goose fat, available in tins, to reach roast potato nirvana) at around 200°C for 40 to 50 minutes, turning occasionally.
Peel and slice potatoes to the required thickness. Soak in cold water for at least 10 minutes before draining and drying thoroughly. Deep fry at 150°C for 5 minutes, drain and raise the oil temperature to 180°C before frying again until golden. Drain, dry on paper towels, salt and serve.
If you don't have a deep fat fryer, and don't fancy deep frying in a pan, acceptable results can be obtained in the oven. Pour sunflower oil into a large roasting tray to a depth of a couple of millimetres and heat to 220°C. Add the chips (previously soaked and dried), toss gently to coat with oil and spread them out (they must be well spaced or they will not crisp). Cook until just crisp (around 20 minutes) turning a couple of times during cooking before draining in a sieve and drying on paper towels.
A spud is a small, narrow spade that was once used for digging potatoes. | <urn:uuid:9c193dc4-f6d4-475e-87d4-9ec7b5413f78> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://eattheseasons.co.uk/Articles/potatoes_maincrop.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00148-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955815 | 1,109 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Few trees make a more lasting impression on someone than a sycamore. It has immense size, colorful bark, big leaves and recognizable fruit. The American sycamore grows in pure stands in the southern United States and by itself in much of the northern part of its distribution. It is an excellent landscaping species that can give you shade as well as be a visually appealing tree.
Sycamore trees have distinctly mottled bark on the lower parts of the tree with a combination of various colors giving the bark a dappled appearance. The leaves are large, with those of American sycamore as wide as 8 inches and the leaves of the California sycamore a little less than a foot in diameter. The tree has both male and female flowers, with the female flowers turning into round brown seed balls that hang from the branches of a sycamore until they fall apart and the winds disperse the seeds, which happens late in the winter. A sycamore may easily be 100 feet tall, with some even bigger. The species has the reputation for possessing gigantic trunks, with some over 10 feet in diameter.
The sycamore grows best in moist soils, as evidenced by the fact that it is a common tree along rivers and streams throughout its native range. The optimal growing conditions for a sycamore would be in loam or sandy loam, with an adequate ground water supply close by. It can grow in drier soils but will be significantly shorter in such a scenario. Sycamores, unlike the London Planetree, a close relative, do not do well in an environment where air pollution can affect it.
A sycamore can withstand extremes of heat and cold. It is a native tree in every single state from the Great Plains eastward with the exception of Minnesota, according to the National Forest Service. It occurs in southern sections of northern New England as far to the south as northwestern parts of Florida. The western border of its geographic range is in the eastern parts of states like Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma. Two other sycamores, the California sycamore and Arizona sycamore, are smaller and grow regionally in parts of the West.
Anthracnose is the main disease that afflicts a sycamore tree, killing leaves and sometimes the twigs they grow on. The older leaves can change to brown when this fungal ailment attacks a sycamore and the tree may lose its leaves. Sycamores that experience multiple bouts with anthracnose typically develop hollow trunks, which then makes it possible for heavy winds and storms to bring down large parts of the tree. You can spray fungicides on smaller trees to try to control this disease. Raking up any branches, leaves and other litter from a sycamore helps keep the fungi from returning, as they overwinter in them beneath the tree.
Two insect pests of the sycamore are the leopard moth and the leaf cutter bee. The latter does little damage to the overall health of a sycamore, snipping away small sections of the leaf as its name implies. They actually aid in the pollination of the sycamore's flowers. The larvae of the leopard moth will burrow their way into the young shoots and branches of trees such as a sycamore, injuring the tree by destroying its insides. You can identify one by its yellow body covered with tiny black bumps and its all-black head. | <urn:uuid:68eee773-6ce9-4e6f-ad89-f945af725f29> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gardenguides.com/90785-sycamore-tree-information.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00190-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960187 | 700 | 3.578125 | 4 |
Details about Elementary Algebra for College Students:
This dynamic new edition of this proven series adds cutting edge print and media resources. An emphasis on the practical applications of algebra motivates learners and encourages them to see algebra as an important part of their daily lives. The reader-friendly writing style uses short, clear sentences and easy-to-understand language, and the outstanding pedagogical program makes the material easy to follow and comprehend.KEY TOPICSChapter topics cover real numbers, solving linear equations and inequalities, formulas and applications of algebra, exponents and polynomials, factoring, rational expressions and equations, graphing linear equations, systems of linear equations, roots and radicals, and quadratic equations.For the study of Algebra.
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Rent Elementary Algebra for College Students 7th edition today, or search our site for other textbooks by Richard Semmler. Every textbook comes with a 21-day "Any Reason" guarantee. Published by Pearson.
Need help ASAP? We have you covered with 24/7 instant online tutoring. Connect with one of our Algebra tutors now. | <urn:uuid:b5919e8b-fcb1-438c-b3dd-8aeaed297f41> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.chegg.com/textbooks/elementary-algebra-for-college-students-7th-edition-9780131994577-0131994573?ii=19&trackid=8a47d37d&omre_ir=0&omre_sp= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402516.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00010-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.893988 | 230 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Eight earthquakes occurred between the hours of 5:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. Tuesday morning.
The strongest of which occurred within five miles of the dam itself.
The quakes were very weak, generally too weak for people to feel, and ranged in strength from 1.9 to a 2.3 on the Richter Scale.
Officials say that the dam is designed to withstand a 6.0 quake and has seen much stronger earthquakes before.
They also say that Shasta Dam is a gravity type dam, which means the sheer mass of the dam itself holds back the water.
Dam officials say that type of dam is also more resistant to earthquake damage than earthen or arch dams.
In 1998 a 5.4 magnitude earthquake struck only five miles from Shasta Dam and in 2006 a 3.0 quake struck within a mile of the dam.
Neither earthquake caused any damage. | <urn:uuid:13df6aa8-ea53-4be5-ae3a-3cf72b20339c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://m.krcrtv.com/early-morning-earthquakes-shake-shasta-dam/22478528 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403508.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00167-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973741 | 188 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Justice Grows: student Kathryn Hamilton advocates for gardens in juvenile detention centers
Stetson University College of Law student Kathryn Hamilton said that the idea for Justice Grows germinated in professor Marleen O’Connor’s Food Law & Policy seminar and professor James Fox’s class on poverty law. What started as a research assignment in the classroom in Gulfport, Fla., has blossomed into collaborating with the Florida Farm to School program on a new project that will bring edible gardens to local juvenile residential centers.
Hamilton, a student in Stetson’s Social Justice Advocacy Concentration program, said she is finalizing plans for the first garden at a site St. Petersburg, Fla. Ultimately, she said that her goal is to help already established garden programs unite as part of the Florida Farm to School program.
“In 2011, Florida Governor Rick Scott asked juvenile justice centers to improve vocational and educational programs for our youth, and gardens and greenhouses were recommended as low-cost solutions,” Hamilton said. “Youth working on edible garden projects in juvenile residential centers can learn gardening skills and have opportunities to do a service to the community. They also have access to healthy food.”
Hamilton found that many people live in food deserts, areas of town in Florida where it is nearly impossible to access fresh fruits and vegetables unless you own a car. Hamilton’s research shows that about 20% of Florida residents are food insecure, meaning that at some point during one month every year, families aren’t sure how they can pay for their next meal.
“I want the youth in the system to see that they can be responsible for bringing that number down,” said Hamilton. “Edible gardens provide youth with a source of income, one that requires no expertise and hardly any start-up money.”
Hamilton is calling the project Justice Grows because it helps instill leadership and responsibility in young people while addressing issues like hunger, poor health, and lack of access to healthy foods.
“Hunger, poverty and crime are related to our eroding food system,” said Hamilton. “My research revealed that the same families that are not able to find or afford healthy food are often the same families with children entering the juvenile justice system.”
Edible gardens in juvenile residential centers can also provide opportunities for victim restitution and community service, Hamilton explained. The food grown can be donated to food banks and young people can plant gardens in their own neighborhoods. There are already successful edible garden programs in place across the state, said Hamilton.
Hamilton is seeking volunteers willing to work with the project to help build the first site garden in St. Petersburg, and is asking for donations of greenhouse resources and seedlings to the Cypress Creek Juvenile Offender Correctional Center garden in the Lecanto area. She has drafted a proposal for the Department of Juvenile Justice, in charge of the juvenile residential centers. She has also done interview spots with WMNF Tampa and WSRQ Sarasota about her project.
Post date: May 14, 2014
Media contact: Brandi Palmer | email@example.com
727-562-7381 office | 727-430-1580 cell | <urn:uuid:c75a4cb4-cc97-4663-9117-5b8692163859> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.stetson.edu/law/news/index.php/2014/05/14/justice-grows-student-kate-hamilton-advocates-for-gardens-in-juvenile-detention-centers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00176-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95677 | 671 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Hundreds of thousands of New York City schoolchildren will enjoy free visits to the Museum for years to come thanks in large part to a $10 million gift from the Richard S. and Karen LeFrak Charitable Foundation.
A new book released today introduces natural science and art lovers alike to a selection of seldom seen and beautifully illustrated scientific works from the Museum’s Rare Book Collection.
Dr. Novacek, who is also the Museum's Provost of Science, will discuss why and how we should create a comprehensive inventory of species, understand the evolutionary relationships of the major branches of life, and probe the connections between the genome and the more external traits of organisms that their genomes influence.
The landscape of human language is complex, and tracing the origins of the 7,000 known modern languages has been a significant challenge for scientists. An analysis by a researcher at the University of Auckland in New Zealand points to a familiar place: Africa, the birthplace of our species.
This fall, examine the biology of language in a five-part adult course, the Sackler Brain Bench program "Is Your Brain Wired For Language?" | <urn:uuid:0777f69a-e4a5-4893-8939-d3938a29d05f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/news-posts/(offset)/340 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00157-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90956 | 227 | 2.921875 | 3 |
15-312 Foundations of Programming Languages
Lecture 20: Dynamic Typing
In this lecture we consider relaxing our principle to detect all
type errors as early as possible. Instead, we do not apply any
type-checking at all, but just run the program. Surprisingly,
we can still state and prove a progress and preservation theorem
if we check for type errors at run-time and enter an appropriate
To implemented dynamic typing in the form above we need to
introduce tags so we can tell apart, for example, integers
and pointers. Then it is a small step towards introducing
tags directly in the source language, and we see that a dynamically
typed language can be implemented quite easily in a statically
typed language with tags.
Finally, we consider name-based subtyping systems as used
in object-oriented languages, and the form of dynamic typing
that arises in these languages. | <urn:uuid:618662e8-7b2c-484a-aa57-38b1b2810115> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fp/courses/15312-f02/lectures/20-dynamic.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00091-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.843902 | 191 | 3.1875 | 3 |
If only 'Independence Day: Resurgence' had gone quietly into the night. If only it had given up without a fight. bit.ly/28YNKw5
You might think it'd be hard not to notice 68 million tons of rock and debris suddenly crashing down the side of a mountain. But when one of the biggest landslides of the last four years occurred in a remote region of Alaska, researchers knew almost everything about it except its exact location. Tracking it down took a coordinated effort between seismologists, geomorphologists, and ordinary citizens, in a process that has become the new norm for finding large landslides around the world. | <urn:uuid:684f35e4-3421-4dc1-9acd-c1e4b51601d4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wired.com/tag/crowdsourcing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00192-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968909 | 133 | 3.140625 | 3 |
The word “meteor” itself derives from the Greek term “meteoros” which, surprisingly, describes the condition of “floating in air,“ rather than describing the notion of something like a rock falling from the sky. This small distinction between two very different behaviors ignited our curiosity and made us investigate these beautiful and rare visitors from space.
Meteor Watching or Meteoring is the observation and study of celestial bodies, NEOs (Near Earth Objects) and the like with the naked eye or through a visual enhancement device like binoculars. Many meteors are more readily detected and identified by sight than by hearing (“shooting stars”), but once they enter the Earth’s stratosphere, meteor intrusions often involve a significant auditory component.
Impact Booklet - text for download in russian and english:
Alisa Prudnikova, curator of the project >>>> here
Agnes Meyer-Brandis, arist >>>>>>> here | <urn:uuid:5ed6649f-9813-4c43-83a7-f4335d432607> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.blubblubb.net/impact/impact_happening.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00069-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.89848 | 205 | 3.5625 | 4 |
By Priya Khanna -
The United Nations estimates that 650 million people (10% of the world’s population) live with a disability. The number of people living with disabilities is increasing as more people live through disease, premature birth, and conflict. In many parts of the world, people with disabilities and their families experience social stigma, and endure tremendous challenges in accessing health care, education, and community life.
Since third grade, Dr. Rebecca Scharf knew that she wanted to work in global health. As she began to travel around the world, she realized that it was children with disabilities who were often without healthcare. While working at an orphanage for children with hearing impairment in Jamaica, she saw the importance of access to sign language education. While working in Zimbabwe, she found that children with physical disabilities who didn’t have access to wheelchairs weren’t able to participate in family or community events outside the home. And time spent in Ecuador showed Dr. Scharf the challenges of caring for a child with unique needs when there weren’t enough physical therapists or nutritionists to provide guidance. Dr. Scharf decided to pursue training in Pediatrics so she could work with children around the world. After residency and fellowship training in Developmental Pediatrics, both in New York City, she gladly accepted an opportunity at UVa to combine her passions for medicine and global development. Working with Dr. Richard Guerrant at the Center for Global Health, Dr. Scharf studies early childhood diarrheal illnesses and malnutrition, and examines their effects on cognitive development in later years in Brazil and several other research sites around the world.
One of Dr. Scharf’s current opportunities is working with the Special Hope Network in Lusaka, Zambia. This organization, founded by Eric and Holly Nelson in 2010, cares for children with disabilities by equipping families and caregivers to provide these children with a loving home, holistic health care, and exceptional education and therapies.
Data shows that in some parts of the world, 80% of children with disabilities die by their 5th birthday due to stigma and lack of health care and resources. Children may be hidden from society and unable to participate in their communities. The Special Hope Network is trying to change attitudes about disabilities and embrace children of all abilities. Dr. Scharf is thankful to learn from them, and to work alongside her colleagues Dr. Paul Matherne of Pediatric Cardiology and Dr. Paige Pullen of the Curry School of Education.
The Special Hope Network has established two community centers to provide education, nutrition and therapy for children with disabilities. Families come to the community centers three times a week, for two hours a day. Through group discussions, preschool activities, and therapies, children and their caregivers receive services and support.
This summer, eight UVa undergraduate students will work with the Special Hope Network in Zambia with support from the Jefferson Public Citizens Award and the Center for Global Health University Scholar Award. Four students will focus on teaching teachers how to adapt their lesson plans to each child’s specific learning needs. The other four students will focus on identifying adaptive equipment needs for the children, and finding creative ways to provide these items using local resources.
The impact of this program, Dr. Scharf says, is evident in the smiles of mothers. Parents of children with disabilities are often excluded from society or blamed for their child’s special needs. This organization creates an accepting community where mothers can safely bring their children and find support and encouragement.
Dr. Scharf’s advice for students pursuing work in global health is to do what you love, and to work with a team of talented and like-minded colleagues. Working in global health can be challenging. A vibrant and passionate team creates better solutions, and makes good work even more enjoyable and rewarding. Dr. Scharf is very thankful for everyone in the Center for Global Health at UVa!
For more information on the Special Hope Network, visit their website: http://specialhopenetwork.com. | <urn:uuid:0eaa3e25-e090-4c21-9542-b4d1bf60594e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://globalhealth.virginia.edu/passion-global-health-and-development | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00115-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959174 | 819 | 2.625 | 3 |
Great Smoky Mountains National Parks
Park Reminds Visitors how to Safely View Wildlife
Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials remind park visitors to exercise caution as they view and photograph wildlife to best protect both the animals and themselves. Park Rangers have recently received numerous reports of increased interactions between visitors and wildlife such as bears, white-tailed deer, and elk.
Park Rangers encourage visitors to use binoculars, spotting scopes, or cameras with telephoto lenses to best enjoy wildlife. Feeding, touching, disturbing, and willfully approaching wildlife within 50 yards (150 feet), or any distance that disturbs or displaces wildlife, are illegal in the park. If approached by wildlife, visitors should slowly back away to put distance between the animal and themselves creating space for the animal to pass. Often animals simply need adequate space to cross a trail, road, or public area as they travel through the park in search of forage and cover.
"Wild animals typically avoid visitor interaction unless they become food conditioned," said Park Wildlife Biologist Bill Stiver. "If an animal starts approaching and threatening human safety, we have several proactive steps we take to effectively manage the situation that bests protects the animal and the public. However, if the negative behavior escalates, our options in dealing with the animal quickly become limited."
Biologists recently removed the antlers of a large bull elk that routinely spends time in high use, public areas in fields adjacent to the Oconluftee Visitor Center, Mountain Farm Museum, and the Oconaluftee River Trail. Dominant bull elk typically defend their territory during the fall breeding season, known as the rut, by charging and sparring with competitors. Unfortunately, this 800-pound elk charged several visitors posing significant to public safety. Now that the rut is essentially over, the elk's aggressive behavior should lessen and by removing the elk's antlers which are annually shed, biologists further reduced the risk for harm to visitors.
Park officials have taken numerous steps over the past several years to prevent nuisance wildlife behavior by improving the design of bear-proof garbage cans and sanitation schedules, and promoting public awareness in our visitor centers and through our website and social media. The Park also created several volunteer programs including the Elk Bugle Corp and Oconaluftee Field Rovers, who provide on-site, timely information to park visitors so they may safely view wildlife. As a result of these efforts, wildlife biologists have relocated far fewer bears than in the 1980s and managed fewer nuisance animals.
For more information on how to safely view wildlife, please visit the park's website at http://www.nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/wildlifeviewing.htm.
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park & Blue Ridge Parkway
It took millions of years to create and shape North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains. And, thanks to our unique mountain climate, no place on Earth has such incredible biological diversity.
In 1934, the government preserved 800 square miles of this enchanted land and called it the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Today, visitors from across the globe come to enjoy the Park's 700 miles of rivers and streams, 800 miles of hiking trails, 200,000 acres of virgin forests and a protected environment for plants and animals once in danger of extinction.
The Great Smokies is the most visited national park and is recognized as the most biologically diverse place on the planet, an international biosphere reserve, a world heritage site and a national heritage area.
Out of the Great Depression came a great vision to connect the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. That vision became the Blue Ridge Parkway. A part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the Blue Ridge Parkway paved a new future for the South, which was disproportionately affected by the Depression.
Today, 75 years later, the Parkway remains a unique American treasure we can all enjoy - 469 slowly flowing miles of ridge tops, parks, tunnels, overlooks and views that are simply over-the-top.
The Great Smoky Mountains National park, the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway, our unique mountain heritage and our efforts to preserve our precious national resources is why the U.S. Congress designated the Western North Carolina mountains among the select group of national heritage areas.
Known as the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, both the public and private sector join in the mission of conserving our mountain heritage, cultural assets and national resources.
America's most scenic highway and the nation's most visited national park - national treasures preserved for your children and your children's children to enjoy.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is open 365 days a year and entrance to the park is free of charge. This beautiful park has over 800 miles of hiking trails, plus camping, fishing, picnicking, wildlife viewing, and auto touring are also popular activities.
When traveling in the Smoky Mountains, do NOT trust your GPS or navigation system. Please see below for park maps and directions.
For more information about Great Smoky Mountains National Park visit www.nps.gov/grsm or select a link below: | <urn:uuid:1bbe0002-f1b3-4a29-b4e5-bef7ffcb575a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.visitsmokies.org/smoky-mountain-resources/great-smoky-mountain-national-park.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00011-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931138 | 1,067 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Published: Jan 1979
| ||Format||Pages||Price|| |
|PDF (420K)||18||$25|| ADD TO CART|
|Complete Source PDF (13M)||637||$60|| ADD TO CART|
The behavior of spherical and angular particles on oblique impact with a metal surface is illustrated by experiments using macroscopic projectiles. Three classes of behavior are identified: plowing and two types of cutting. Results of energy loss and crater volume determinations are given which agree with theoretical predictions. The strain rates occurring in erosion are estimated and shown to be extremely high (105–107 s-1). This may explain the failure of quasi-static strength measurements to predict erosion resistance. The possibility of erosion being caused by melting is discussed and it is concluded that the process is primarily mechanical, with thermal effects playing only a subsidiary part.
erosion, impact, impingement, metals
University demonstrator and Fellow of St. John's College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, | <urn:uuid:b0f61b8c-445d-4df8-ba9e-dfb6c7cba6fd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.astm.org/DIGITAL_LIBRARY/STP/PAGES/STP35795S.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00044-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.870323 | 213 | 2.875 | 3 |
Know what you are buying. All RFID tags are not the same.
RFID systems for libraries are a great benefit. When they work well they can contribute to a libraries’ efficiency and enhance customer service. However, RFID systems don’t always work the way they should. Some libraries may have recognized the problem, but may not take the necessary action to do something about it. This may be because of the difficulties to diagnose the original problem, or maybe because of the disturbing thought that a strongly recommended system has defects.
The reason for these problems has been that RFID tags performance weakens over time. The read range shortens and in the end the tags do not work at all so the whole system fails.
But why is this so? The tags have been bought from a reliable supplier and they are compliant with the requirements of an ISO standard. The result is that all the tags are not the same, not even when they are compliant with an ISO standard. This shows that an ISO standard does not define quality and reliability. There are also tags with purposes that do not require several years of durability, for example tickets for ski resorts or tagging on clothes in retail stores.
Tag reliability is based on the tags design, materials and construction methods. The choice of the materials in these components can have a large impact on long-term reliability. Over time, for example some adhesives can introduce or accelerate corrosion in the bond between the chip and antenna. Therefore it is important that the tag manufacturer pay close attention to the choice of tag components.
A Non-Working Tag
RFID tags fail in several ways. High electrical resistance between the chip and antenna, cracks on integrated circuits, the attachment between the chip and the antenna can fail and metal fatigue can cause tag failure in which mechanical stress is usually the main reason for tag failure. Library items with the tags attached to them are often bent, twisted and subjected to pressure.
What happens when the tag does not work? Usually tag failure can be discovered when the tag read-range weakens or drops off. The detection system or hand reader cannot read the tag. Errors can also occur during the reading of multiple items showing not reliable performance.
How do you know which tag can be used for years? The most reliable test is to see how it performs over time, but who will wait for 15 years to see if a tag has a needed reliability. An alternative is the accelerated aging tests which are routinely used in the electronics industry.
What has been done in such a test? Tags are subjected to various configurations of heat and humidity over 15 weeks, after which they are tested and inspected. These experiments are closely monitored and can be reproduced with some precision, so that the performance of one sample can be compared to another.
At 3M, tests for tag durability have been done for years. 3M has field data from 8 years of installed tags which provide us with a high level of confidence that our tags will last significantly longer than 8 years. At the same time we have done comparative tests for tags from different RFID suppliers.
Next time you are acquiring RFID tags for your library, ask from your supplier, are the tags they are selling tested for long-time reliability, which test methods have been used and have the tests lasted longer than one week?
Please read also RFID white paper 401 with detailed information about the quality and reliability of RFID tags. | <urn:uuid:e9adb675-8089-40e6-b429-105e5500d3a8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_EU/Library_Systems/Library_System/Resources/eNewsletters/?PC_Z7_RJH9U52300TN80IKJTBTEC30S6000000_assetId=1258559441306 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404405.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00087-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950809 | 697 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Vallo di Nera
Magnificent castle that dominates the Valnerina. Among its narrow is enveloped in the magic of the Middle Ages.
Superb cycles of frescoes of its churches. It rises 467 m s.l.m. has a population of approximately 400 units. The urban layout is compact, with the typical structure of the castle hill, a nucleus from which extend circular flat ring roads and steep hills to the heart or the central square of San Giovanni Battista, where the parish church occupies the point top of the hill, dominating the entire country. The village is flanked by the fifteenth of S. Mary, then falls in the second city wall, built to include the monastic settlements, and the next century village of Casali, built along the various roads of the country during the period of maximum population growth. Archaeological finds prove that the remote settlements of attributable to the aboriginal people of this valley already in the eighth century BC
Of Roman origin, the ancient name of the village was Castrum Valli, ie fortified place. In 1177 the fortress of the coolle Flezano became a fief of the Duke of Spoleto Germanic Hursligen In 1216 Conrad of the old and the old castle was destroyed by the city of Spoleto.
On September 8, 1217 the mayor of Spoleto, James Vallo Capocci grants to men of the right to erect a castle under his rule, in exchange for protection and defense. Vallo di Spoleto thus enters orbit and undertakes to pay taxes and make war or peace, according to its directives.
In 1223 Omodeo, chaplain and vicar for the Mountain to the Pope resets for a short period, the domain of the church.
Federico II and Cardinal tied Capocci, in 1247, confirmed the possession of the castle to the town of Spoleto.
In 1522 has headed, with Petrone valleys, the revolt against the castles of Valnerina Spoleto. Petrone kills the papal governor failed to quell the revolt. Vallo Castle - writes one historian - "is taken, whether full of ruins and blood and stripped of everything." Petrone is burnt alive in 1527 and go to plunder Lanzichenecchi also mean that you can fever.
The town was reborn later, as evidenced by many sixteenth lintels and the fresco by Jacopo Siculo of 1536 in the church of S. John, in whose valley is shown with its walls intact and the tower-houses.
The reference to the Black River was added after the unification of Italy. The current coat of arms depicts three castles and must be a result of the union with the nineteenth-century castles and Meggiano Paterno.
Among the numerous medieval ruins are noteworthy many parts of the walls, the main tower and other towers along the walls, the two gates of the castle, churches and most of the buildings recently restored, is one of the best examples of restoration and Preserve the original city. The modern road, built in the last century has significantly altered the structure and reaches the original road near the back door, therefore become the main, on the covered porch which, once used for the market, is the old town hall , now used for services and for the archive.
S. John Baptist dominates the village on the highest part of the hill. Originally Romanesque (XIII), was enlarged and partly rebuilt around 1575 (the date is engraved on the left corner of the facade). To this period belong the facade with its bell tower, portal and rose window. Inside, the fresco in the apse is a splendid work of Jacopo Siculo of 1536, dedicated to the Death of the Virgin. On the bow the master painted a delicate Annunciation and the figures of S. Sebastian and S. Rocco-size.
The Franciscan Church of St. Maria was started in 1273 and shows a beautiful Gothic portal and a turreted tower. The interior is surprising for the amount of frescoes which still adorn it, the work of artists from Giotto school. Among them, the stand out of the White Procession, painted by Pietro Cola in 1401 (the painting is one of the most complete sources of the movement of prison Bianchi through Italy in 1399) and the Martyrdom of Saint Lucia, a painter Camerino of the fifteenth century. There are still the bell to ring hand bells, placed in the mighty square tower, on scales of agreements unchanged over time.
The third church is dedicated to intra moenia S. Catherine, built in 1354, which today is housed in a small auditorium.
Critiques | Translate
Kamilutka (8105) 2013-01-14 9:27
amazing light which creates incredible contrast. I like the POv and perspective in your photo as well as the color management. Very informative note, too - as always :-)
eldancer1 (36343) 2013-01-14 9:37
I like the colors of those archway against the blue sky. Good lighting and dof with nice details. Very well done, tfs.
Didi (60588) 2013-01-14 10:01
Interesting balance between golden lights and the blue hour
Very good lights control.
Antipodean (1658) 2013-01-14 10:40
Kia ora Silvio,
Excellent exposure making great use of the two contrasting light sources. The lights of the distance village & the fading blue light contrasts perfectly with the brick & stone work details of the castle. Cheers, Neil
Sonata11 (33795) 2013-01-14 10:46
This picture is beautifully composed and presented to us. Architecture is very beautiful and very atracttive for photographers which you proved by this magnificent composition of those beautiful arches. Light, impressive colors, sharpness, clarity and POV are fantastic. Perfectly well done and pleasure to look at. Awesome work. Thank you.
dip (23888) 2013-01-14 11:08
wonderful blue hour shot,very good light management!
kasianowak (8885) 2013-01-14 11:38
Beautiful blue hour shot with lovely contrasting colours and great light management.
Perfect Christmas Eve photography venue! :)
macjake (67534) 2013-01-14 12:42
its always attractive when you can group together blue hour light and an orange or yellow light - looks very sharp.
and the arches give a sense of form and style which is much appreciated.
ourania (45002) 2013-01-14 13:32
hai sfruttato al meglio le opportunita' presentate dall' architettura e la luce ed hai composto una foto eccezionale. La prospettiva e le forme architetturali sono superbe, il contrasto fra il calore della luce dorata e l' ambiente esteriore blu' e' reso meravisgliosamete. Ottima la cattura delle tessiture e accattivante la vista dell' illuminata cittadina distante come punto di riferimento esteriore. Complimenti e grazie!
Tanti saluti e buona notte,
lousat (90702) 2013-01-14 14:55
Ciao Silvio,eccellente risultato in orario molto particolare e ricco di atmosfera,il mago dei vicoli e dei portici non poteva sbagliare il colpo..ehehe...ottimo lavoro! Buona giornata,Luciano
carlo62 (47433) 2013-01-14 15:12
ti sei superato alla grande, una luce doratamente calda illumina il portico, ma l'eccellente esposizione ci mostra anche il bel panorama dato dal blu del cielo e dalle luci del paesino.
thebest (4276) 2013-01-14 16:11
A blue hour image it is beautiful the lighting is excellent creating a fabulous contrast between the rich golden colours of the arches & the blue sky.
I like the tiny hamlet - village lit up below also the motorbike.
Congratulations on your extensive & informative notes.
jjcordier (79297) 2013-01-14 23:11
Beau contraste de couleurs entre l'éclairage artificiel de l'intérieur du château et l'heure bleue à l'extérieur. Le détail du village éclairé est un plus intéressant.
bayno (18344) 2013-01-14 23:40
gran bella inquadratura e bellissimo contrasto tra toni freddi e caldi...bella bella
chrisvek (7001) 2013-01-14 23:49
Very good composition with splendid contrast of warm and cold colors.Nice lightning usage and unique POV.I like the framing you chose too.
All the best
elenimavrandoni (0) 2013-01-15 0:42
Ciao Silvio, magnifica chiesa storica, molto impressionante ora blu, lo stato dell'arte l'opera d'arte piastrelle sul pavimento e gli archi!
Un quadro molto straordinario con grande vista panoramica e sorprendente luce morbida!
krzychu30 (15512) 2013-01-15 0:57
what a beautiful juxtaposition.Blue sky and so beautifully,warm illuminated cloister.Colors you were able to bring out here are magnificent and the contrast between them is also superb.Excellent quality of th eimage.Eye-catching composition!
Have a nice day
papagolf21 (100944) 2013-01-15 0:59
Bonjour, cher ami Silvio,
Bel effet général dans cette composition. Réussite totale quant à l'intérêt général et à la maîtrise technique.
Le résultat est superbe.
tyro (24654) 2013-01-15 3:01
Ciao caro Silvio,
A very interesting and comprehensive note as usual and an excellent photograph to illustrate it!
You have very expertly used your very wide angle 14mm lens to produce the most amazingly strong perspectives here as well as being able to include such a large field of view.
The contrast between the lovely yellowish stonework (presumably lit by artificial light) and the distant dark blue vista is delightful and you have produced a photograph with very little, if any, evidence of "noise" despite the use of ISO 6400.
Your composition is excellent and very pleasing with good "lead in" lines and with all elements perfectly placed in the frame.
Gorgeous colours, lovely light, perfect exposure and excellent details and sharpness.
saxo042 (37874) 2013-01-15 4:44
The warm and golden light over arches are beautifully contrasting the blue sky above the dark view outside. A well balanced composition and an excellent picture.
photographer_sg (4414) 2013-01-15 7:53
your photo is - in one word - glorious. everything is in place here: colour, texture, perspective. I specially liked the window framing the distant cluster of lights.
danos (97471) 2013-01-15 8:34
nice the view of the well lighted place when teh outside sky is in blue hour,making the scene more attractive as gives contrast in it.I like the excellent presentation as the light and the colour management of the shot.
HAve a good afternoon,Danos
cornejo (41761) 2013-01-15 11:33
Ciao Silvio, mi piace questo scatto grande della composizione bella e interessante con il soggiorno piacevole e la vista catturato dalla stessa che offriamo qui. Un'immagine affascinante e interessante, catturati con la tecnica molto buona e di qualità. Lavoro molto buono e bello perfettamente fatto, complimenti amico mio. Grazie per la condivisione di questo bel lavoro.
Buona notte e settimana felice.
I migliori auguri dalla Spagna meridionale.
delpeoples (57636) 2013-01-16 0:40
Un soggetto spettacolare come la foto. L'Ora Blu é ben esposta e mi piacciono molto i toni dorati del castello. Una foto da favola. Complimenti e ti auguro una bella giornata del sole (e neve?)
willperrett (10609) 2013-01-16 2:01
Two pictures for the price of one! You've made the most of two separate light sources with different colour temperatures. I love the juxtapostion of the cool tones of the view down the valley with its small cluster of lights in the middle distance, and the warm oranges of the cloister in the foreground. The lovely old stonework glows in the arficial light. Good work.
dkmurphys (58010) 2013-01-16 5:15
Very fine composition. I like the warm foreground and the cold night background. Clever shot!
mesutilgim (95050) 2013-01-16 11:38
Hello dear Silvio,
Wonderfull capture with very good light and layout.
Many interesting notes makes it a good TE entry.
TFS and best regards
Graal (102752) 2013-01-16 23:42
place and view here are beautiful. Amazing old arcades and landscape in BG. Well presentation, note is interesting.
Have a nice day.
jlbrthnn (76037) 2013-01-17 4:55
Si tratta di una cornice creativa, la composizione è molto interessante. I colori sono notevole chiarezza e profondità troppo. Bravo. | <urn:uuid:2770716f-62b6-4aac-8a1f-0dc4cc61561c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/Italy/Umbria/Perugia/Vallo_di_Nera/photo1401401.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00007-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.787871 | 3,135 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Scorched Earth Is Big Climate Concern in Alaska Wildfires
Alaska and its neighbor to the east, Canada, have kicked off wildfire season in a major way. Blazes have raged across the northern stretches of North America, sending smoke streaming down into the Lower 48 and leaving the landscape charred.
The multitudes of fires is a glimpse of things to come as the climate warms, but blackened trees are only the most visible concern. The ground beneath them is what has some truly worried, with vast carbon reserves that could contribute to even more warming of the planet if they’re sent up in smoke.
A Blackhawk helicopters pours water on the Stetson Creek Fire near Cooper Landing, Alaska on June 17, 2015.
Credit: National Guard/flickr
This summer, a number of factors have lined up to make Alaska a tinderbox. A dry winter left little snow on the ground and record heat in May, with the state’s average temperature running 7.1°F above average, melted what little snow there was. Similarly warm conditions stretched across a large portion of western Canada in late May and set the stage for extreme wildfire conditions. Over the period of June 18-24, the Bureau of Land Management lightning network recorded more than 71,000 lightning strikes in Alaska, igniting a large swath of fires.
As the sun comes up on July, 356 wildfires are burning in western Canada and another 297 are active in Alaska. For the year-to-date, wildfires have burned 3.2 million acres in western Canada and 1.8 million acres in Alaska. Both numbers are well above the long-term average and in the case of Alaska, are in record territory for the amount of acreage burned for this time of year. Similar stories have played out in Siberia in 2013 and Canada’s Northwest Territories in 2014.
Fires in NW Territories in Line with ‘Unprecedented’ Burn
Alaska Entering New Era for Wildfires
California’s Forests Have Become Climate Polluters
“The 2015 season here in Alaska is day by day progressing to be a truly outstanding fire year relative to our rather brief historical record of annual area burned (1950 is as far back as I feel provides rather accurate numbers),” Scott Rupp, a fire ecologist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, said in an email.
A recent Climate Central analysis shows that over that period, large wildfires in Alaska have essentially doubled, including a large increase since 1990. Wildfire season is 40 percent longer than it was in the 1950s, now stretching 35 days longer. Much of that can be tied to rapid warming in the northern reaches of the globe, which has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet. In the past 60 years, Alaska has warmed about 3°F with similar warming rates in northern Canada.
Studies have shown that the current rate of burn in the northern forests of the world is unprecedented in at least the last 5,000 years. That makes this start to wildfire season in the boreal forest a punctuation mark on the longer term trend of ever increasing northern wildfires, one that’s expected to continue.
“The primary driver is temperature. The warmer we get, the more fires we seem to get,” Mike Flannigan, a wildland fire expert at the University of Alberta, said. “We need a 15 percent increase in precipitation to account for the warming. Very few climate models suggest there will be an increase in precipitation to compensate for the increase in temperature. The fuels will be drier in the future and it will be easy to start the spread of fire.”
Smoke from fires in western Canada is steered south into the U.S. by the jet stream in a satellite image acquired June 29, 2015.
Click image to enlarge. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
For all the drama of trees lighting up like matchsticks, it’s what lurks below the forest that could be a major wildcard for future warming. Large reserves of peat make up a large portion of the soil, swamps and bogs in the northern reaches of the globe. Flannigan refers to it as “legacy carbon,” an accumulation of centuries of plant matter that sequesters vast amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.
Despite covering slightly less area than tropical forests, boreal forest soil stores three times as much carbon as its tropical counterpart. They currently operate as carbon sinks, taking up more carbon than they emit each year. Wildfires could flip the script, though, turning boreal forests into sources of carbon emissions as fires burn through the vast reserves of carbon locked in the trees and soil (something already happening in California). If that happens, it could rapidly warm the climate.
“Up until about 10 years ago, the prevailing dogma was peatlands just didn’t burn,” Merritt Turetsky, an ecologist at the University of Guelph, said. “They were way too wet and fire played little to no role in these ecosystems. Over time, we’ve seen that just isn’t true.”
As warming dries out forests and precipitation patterns change, the water table is dropping in once swampy areas. That makes peat susceptible to burning and when it does catch fire, centuries’ worth of carbon can burn up in the span of a few hours if fires are intense enough.
Peat fires are also notoriously resilient, smoldering for days, weeks or even popping up again after a winter of smoldering beneath the surface. Turetsky said it’s akin to throwing a wet log in a fireplace and that she plans to use satellite data to see if fires that scorched the Northwest Territories last summer managed to smolder through the winter and re-emerge this summer.
All that is to say the early drama of this year’s fire season won’t end when the last tree burns. And what lies ahead for this season depends on the rains.
“The big mystery is what will happen with the weather for the rest of the summer. . . if late summer rains don't come this year, we have the potential to far exceed the 2004 fire season,” Rupp said.
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Water Use Declining as Natural Gas Grows | <urn:uuid:d80cea1b-2635-4da9-8e31-f3287ad6bde6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-change-alaska-wildfires-19181 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00166-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945735 | 1,353 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Philosophy, before it was separated from physical science, was traditionally considered as science. The greatest philosophers in history were considered as modern day scientists, with celebrity status. Although some were never appreciated during their lifetime, meaning that they died poor, their works have been studied by modern scholars. As a result, they’ve received countless accolades and awards which have in turn placed unimaginable monetary value on their work.
The top philosophers, therefore, are the ones who have placed the greatest influence and impact on humans worldwide. These intellectual geniuses basically embraced rational thinking when studying the world around us, even beyond, into space. The following is the list of the ten greatest philosophers:
10. John Locke
Locke is one of the most important figures in modern politics. His thinking influenced Thomas Jefferson, who implemented his principles of freedom and humanism during the Declaration of Independence. He was not for the idea of the rich getting richer while the poor getting poorer. This is why he was against Europe’s idea of land acquisition through lineage at that time. He is one of the fathers to be thanked for the birth of democracy.
8. Zeno of Citium
Zeno founded the idea of Stoicism which generally states that we suffer because of erroneous judgments. For this reason, he taught people how to be completely in control of their emotions and avoid suffering negative consequences. For instance, one needs not get enraged over an issue. The negative emotion will normally lead to bad actions. Therefore, complete control of emotions brings about mental peace, according to his teachings.
Avicenna was born in Persia in 980 AD and died in 1037. He was not only a philosopher but one of the most sought after physicians during his time. “The Canon of Medicine” and “The Book of Healing” were some of his books through which he shared his vast knowledge. He was the first philosopher to describe the 5 common senses of humans mainly smell, hearing, sight, touch, and taste.
6. Thomas Aquinas
In a time where Christianity teachings were constantly challenged by other philosophers, Thomas took a different stand. He surprisingly came up with a theory that proved God exists. His argument was based on the creation theory. Stating that the creator of the universe is God, he was able to successfully teach ethics, with help from the Bible. However, Christians have consistently claimed that he doesn’t have authority over the teachings because they were derived from the Bible.
Probably the greatest philosopher from the Eastern region, Confucius was able to clearly put across the ideas of democracy. He taught that power lies in the people but they must still respect the Emperor as the official ruler. This was around 400 BC. For a long time, this idea was believed to be invented by the Greeks. He also expounded the ‘Golden Rule’, by giving it a positive perspective, in a similar manner to what Jesus Christ did.
4. Rene Descartes
Rene invented Analytical Geometry, in the 1600’s, which is a branch of Mathematics that is still relevant to this day. Apart from Math, his contributions to modern Physics are also notable. He was the first scholar to discover the laws that govern reflection and refraction. His teachings advocated that human beings are capable of achieving more by tapping into the power of the mind. ‘As a man thinks so he becomes’, is a statement that can be traced back to him.
3. Paul of Tarsus
Paul was a pivotal figure in the establishment of Christianity after the death of Jesus. He was able to accomplish this through the many letters he wrote to the other churches across Europe. In addition, Paul adjusted the requirements of Christianity to only one belief in Jesus Christ. Peter initially disagreed with this stating that some of the traditional Jewish cultures, like circumcision and observing certain foods, should be included too. Without Paul, Christianity would merely be Judaism today.
As a student of Socrates, who was a key player in writing down his teachings, Plato also founded the Academy of Athens. This was the first institution of higher learning in the region. Plato is famous for teaching that peace will only be achievable, and evil consequently banished, when the world is ruled by philosophers, people with wisdom. He argued on the existence of a higher being that created the universe and cautioned against materialism.
Aristotle was the first philosopher in history to document science, literature, politics, and ethics. His theory categorized existence into 4 causes: Material, Form, Effective, and Purpose. He also observed that life had hierarchy, composed of plants, animals and human beings at the top. He always had an answer to all subjects which is why almost all modern philosophy teachings stem from Aristotle’s thoughts. | <urn:uuid:342b1a56-a236-444a-8ef1-e6b2f3211fad> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/most-influential/the-top-ten-greatest-philosophers-in-history/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00121-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984058 | 975 | 3.4375 | 3 |
Could you please explain this hadith: Narrated by Abdullah ibn Umar (RA): Once the Prophet led us in the 'Isha' prayer during the last days of his life and after finishing it (the prayer) (with Taslim) he said: "Do you realize (the importance of) this night?" Nobody present on the surface of the earth tonight will be living after the completion of one hundred years from this night." -- Sahih Bukhari (1.116)
Praise be to Allaah.
The meaning of the hadeeth is clear and apparent, and was borne out by real events. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) was stating that none of the people who were alive at that time would live for more than a hundred years, and this is what in fact happened. The last of the Sahaabah to die passed away in 110 AH, i.e., he died one hundred years after the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) died. His name was Abu’l-Tufayl ibn Waathilah.
Shaykh Sa’d al-Humayd
This hadeeth was narrated by Imaam al-Bukhaari (may Allaah have mercy on him) in his Saheeh, from ‘Abd-Allaah ibn ‘Umar, who said: “The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) led us in praying ‘Ishaa towards the end of his life. When he had said the salaam, he stood up and said: ‘Do you see this night of yours? One hundred years from now, there will not be anyone left of those who are on the face of the earth.’”
There follow some comments made by Ibn Hajar (may Allaah have mercy on him) on this hadeeth:
“Led us in prayer” means as an imaam.
“Towards the end of his life”. A corroborating report narrated by Jaabir states that this was one month before he (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) died.
“Do you see” means, “Think about (this night).”
“One hundred years from now” means, when one hundred years have passed.
“There will not be anyone left of those who are on the face of the earth” means, anyone who was alive at that time.
Ibn Battaal said: What the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) meant was that during this time-span their generation would pass away. He was pointing out to them how short their lives were and that their lives were not like those of the nations who came before them, so that they would strive hard in worship.
Al-Nawawi said: What is meant is that everyone who was on the face of the earth on that night would not live for more than one hundred years after that night, whether he was young on that occasion or not. It does not mean that anyone who was born after that night would not live for a hundred years. And Allaah knows best.
This hadeeth is one of the signs of the Prophethood of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him). He was speaking of future events which came to pass as he described them. The trustworthy scholars use this as evidence in refuting some of the Sufis who say that al-Khidr is still alive until now. | <urn:uuid:2890b9a8-054f-4255-97a8-ebce498ae171> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://islamqa.info/en/10358 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00021-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98538 | 738 | 2.5625 | 3 |
For Release September 4, 2006
New research supported in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institutes of Health, shows that prevention programs conducted in middle school can reduce methamphetamine abuse among rural adolescents years later. Because methamphetamine addiction leads to problems with social interactions and a wide range of medical conditions, research into early interventions such as this is critical to protecting the Nation's youth. The paper is published in the September issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
"We now have evidence that prevention programs can be important tools to protect adolescents from the devastating effects of methamphetamine use, and we will continue to explore the effectiveness of other drug abuse prevention programs," says Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health. "These findings are part of our ongoing effort to support scientific research that can have practical applications in community settings."
"Previous preventive interventions have shown effects in reducing adolescents' abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, but this is the first study to examine the effects of a preventive intervention on methamphetamine abuse among youth," says NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow. "The results of this research indicate the effectiveness of prevention programs on lifetime or annual methamphetamine abuse."
The research assessed the effects of two randomized, controlled, prevention trials on methamphetamine abuse among middle and high school students. In the first study, 667 families of rural Iowa 6th-graders were randomly assigned to participate in one of two family-focused interventions, the Iowa Strengthening Families Project (ISFP) or the Preparing for the Drug Free Years (PDFY) program, or act as controls. A total of 457 families participated in the 12th-grade follow-up.
In the second study, 679 families of rural Iowa 7th-graders were randomly recruited for the Life Skills Training (LST) program (a school-based intervention) combined with the Strengthening Family Program for Parents and Youth (SFP 10-14, modified from the ISFP), the LST program only, or a minimal-contact control group. A total of 588 families participated in the 11th-grade follow-up and 597 families participated in the 12th-grade follow-up.
In the first study, none of the ISFP 12th-graders had abused methamphetamine in the past year compared to 3.6 percent of the PDFY 12th-graders and 3.2 percent of the controls. In the second study, the combined SFP 10-14 + LST intervention showed significant effects on both lifetime and past year methamphetamine abuse. Only 0.5 percent of this group had abused methamphetamine during the past year, compared with 2.5 percent for LST-alone and 4.2 percent of the controls. At the 12th-grade follow-up, lifetime abuse of the drug was significantly lower in both the SFP 10-14 + LST and the LST-alone groups (2.4-2.6 percent) versus the control group (7.6 percent).
"Adolescents who participated in both programs showed a relative reduction in lifetime methamphetamine abuse of 65 percent compared with the controls," says Dr. Richard Spoth, of Iowa State University and lead author of the study. "This means that for every 100 adolescents in the general population who reported methamphetamine abuse, there would be only 35 in the intervention population reporting abuse during the same period."
The Iowa Strengthening Families Project and Strengthening Family Program for Parents and Youth target the enhancement of family protective factors and the reduction of family risk processes. The Preparing for the Drug Free Years program is designed to enhance parent–child interactions and to reduce children's risk for early substance abuse. The Life Skills Training program is a school-based intervention designed to foster general life skills as well as teach students tactics for resisting pressure to use drugs.
"While some of these results are very promising, further research needs to be done to investigate the applicability of these particular programs to nonrural populations, rural populations in other parts of the country, and populations with different ethnic compositions," says Dr. Spoth.
"It is important to note that methamphetamine abuse is also linked to risky sexual behaviors, which increase the risk for transmission of infectious diseases, including HIV," Dr. Volkow adds. "It is increasingly important that young people "learn the link" between drug abuse and HIV/AIDS." Learn the Link is the focus of NIDA's current public service campaign, designed especially for young people. Hispanic versions of the public service announcement will be available in October.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIDA supports most of the world's research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction. The Institute carries out a large variety of programs to ensure the rapid dissemination of research information and its implementation in policy and practice. Fact sheets on the health effects of drugs of abuse and further information on NIDA research can be found on the NIDA web site at http://www.drugabuse.gov.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) - The Nation's Medical Research Agency - includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov | <urn:uuid:fad931e6-4deb-4059-9d9e-e2f89d9aa9eb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://archives.drugabuse.gov/newsroom/06/NR9-04.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397842.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00176-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9501 | 1,137 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Yesterday, Mayor Gavin Newsom signed one of the first legislations of its kind in the country: a mandatory law requiring residential and commercial building owners to recycle and compost. While several other cities require recycling service and participation, San Francisco is the first city to require the collection of food scraps and other compostables.
Based on a study by the California Integrated Waste Management Board, food discards comprise 10% of the total municipal waste stream, and the majority of that comes from the commercial sector. In the same study, the Waste Management Board found that over 40% of the waste produced by both the retail food store and restaurant sectors is compostable food and paper refuse.
If all of the recyclable and compostable materials currently going to landfills were captured by the city’s programs, according to the San Francisco Department of the Environment, San Francisco’s recycling rate would soar to 90%.
“San Francisco has the best recycling and composting programs in the nation, and we’ve already attained an impressive, and first in the nation, 72% recycling rate because of them,” said Mayor Newsom.
No fines are specified in the ordinance, but there is a cap of $100 established for residences and businesses that generate less than one cubic yard of refuse per week, which is the equivalent of six 32-gallon carts. Fines higher than $100 may still apply to businesses and to landlords of large apartment buildings who refuse to offer recycling and composting opportunities to tenants when feasible.
The Mayor said that cities with mandatory recycling and fines, such as Seattle, rarely assess such fines. He stressed that fines serve primarily to heighten public awareness and encourage compliance.
Newsom wrote in a GreenBiz blog yesterday, “I believe that composting will become second nature for Americans, just like sorting bottles and paper. It will take time, but I believe mandatory composting will spread across the country — improving the air we breathe and reducing our need for landfills.” | <urn:uuid:9ca1428e-2939-413a-9d14-c73480ef9f30> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.triplepundit.com/2009/06/san-franciscos-mayor-newsom-signs-mandatory-recycling-law/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00138-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947455 | 412 | 2.75 | 3 |
OKLAHOMA CITY - The number and amount of damage caused by earthquakes in our state has skyrocketed.
Since 2010, Oklahoma has jumped to number two in the nation for the state with the most earthquakes, second only to California.
Scientists say there's a possibility that earthquake damage could become widespread.
Austin Holland, a researcher for the Oklahoma Geological Survey, says, “Usually, we get these swarm of earthquakes in the last few years and then they’ll start to die off and ours have not died off.”
When seismic activity dramatically increases, Holland and the Oklahoma Geological Survey work to find a cause behind the spike.
Now, some say the oil and gas industry might be to blame.
According to an article published by EnergyWire, scientists are trying to link earthquakes to drilling wastewater disposal wells and Oklahoma is at the center of the study.
While there's a natural earthquake hazards map, which charts quakes along fault lines, scientists want to create another to help predict what they call man-made earthquakes.
It would plot seismic activity around oil and gas production.
Holland thinks this map will unfairly assume the oil and gas industry is totally at fault.
He said, “I think it’s important to keep the distinction and the finger-pointing out of the seismic hazard arena.'”
Chad Warmington, president of the Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association, says, “They don’t have the data to definitively tie it to a specific industry.”
With more than 10 quakes in the metro just in the past seven days, the state Oil and Gas Association wants scientists to be sure before they blame all of these quakes on oil and gas production.
“It’s a little premature to think that,” says Warmington. “We’ve been having oil and gas activity occur in this state for as long as these people have been alive and it has never been a problem before.” | <urn:uuid:68f9ae72-e8da-4789-9efa-ed98d2e5502e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://kfor.com/2013/12/30/new-earthquake-map-blames-spike-in-earthquakes-on-oil-and-gas-industry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397696.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00161-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960333 | 413 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Biolab on a chip
September 26, 2012
If you throw a ball underwater, you’ll find that the smaller it is, the faster it moves: A larger cross-section greatly increases the water’s resistance. The researchers plan to use this basic principle, on a microscopic scale, to carry out biomedical tests that could eventually lead to fast, compact and versatile medical-testing devices.
The balls used here are microscopic magnetic beads that can be “decorated” with biomolecules such as antibodies that cause them to bind to specific proteins or cells; such beads are widely used in biomedical research. The key to this new work was finding a way to capture individual beads and set them oscillating by applying a variable magnetic field. The rate of their oscillation can then be measured to assess the size of the beads.
When these beads are placed in a biological sample, biomolecules attach to their surfaces, making the beads larger — a change that can then be detected through the biomolecules effect on the beads’ oscillation. This would provide a way to detect exactly how much of a target biomolecule is present in a sample, and provide a way to give a virtually instantaneous electronic readout of that information.
Instant blood tests
This new technique, for the first time, allows these beads — each about one micrometer, or millionth of a meter, in diameter — to be used for precise measurements of tiny quantities of materials. This could, for example, lead to tests for disease agents that would need just a tiny droplet of blood and could deliver results instantly, instead of requiring laboratory analysis.
The researchers developed a technique for creating magnetic tracks on a microchip surface, and rapidly transporting beads along those tracks. (The technology required is similar to that used to read and write magnetic data on a computer’s hard disk.) An operational device using this new approach would consist of a small reservoir above the tracks, where the liquid containing the magnetic beads and the biological sample would be placed.
Magnetic fields replace microfluidics
instead of Rather than pumping the fluid and the particles through channels, as in today’s microfluidic devices, the particles would be controlled entirely through changes in applied magnetic fields. By controlling the directions of magnetic fields in closely spaced adjacent regions, the researchers create tiny areas with extremely strong magnetic fields, called magnetic domain walls, whose position can be shifted along the track. “We can use the magnetic domain walls to capture and transport the beads along the tracks,” Beach says.
In the researchers’ most recent paper, graduate student Elizabeth Rapoport explains, they have now shown that once a bead is captured, a magnetic field can be used to shake it back and forth. Then, the researchers measure how fast the bead moves as they change the frequency of the oscillation. “The resonant frequency is a function of the bead size,” she says — and could be used to reveal whether the bead has grown in size through attachment to a target biomolecule.
Besides being potentially quicker and requiring a far smaller biological sample to produce a result, such a device would be more flexible than existing chip-based biomedical tests, the researchers say. While most such devices are specifically designed to detect one particular kind of protein or disease agent, this new device could be used for a wide variety of different tests, simply by inserting a fresh batch of fluid containing beads coated with the appropriate reactant. After the test, the material could be flushed out, and the same chip used for a completely different test by inserting a different type of magnetic beads. “You’d just use it, wash it off, and use it again,” Rapoport says. | <urn:uuid:ad57205f-5f8f-4966-a631-f9c492f78783> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.kurzweilai.net/biolab-on-a-chip | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00159-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933477 | 771 | 3.953125 | 4 |
Empiricism is a term in philosophy for a set of philosophical positions that emphasize the role of experience. The category of experience may include all contents of consciousness or it may be restricted to the data of the senses only .
Empiricism contrasts with rationalist philosophical positions that emphasize the role of innate ideas, or a priori knowledge. Kant and others sought to integrate empiricism with rationalism, conceiving that knowledge is constituted by the collation of preexisting concepts within the mind and information gained through the senses.
In the philosophy of science, empiricism refers to an emphasis on those aspects of scientific knowledge that are closely related to experience, especially as formed through deliberate experimental arrangements. It is generally taken as a fundamental requirement of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world, rather than relying on intuition or revelation. Hence, science is considered to be methodologically empirical in nature.
The term empiricism has a dual etymology. It comes from the Ancient Greek word εμπειρισμός, the Latin translation of which is experientia, from which we derive the word experience. It also derives from a more specific classical Greek and Roman usage of empiric, referring to a physician whose skill derives from practical experience as opposed to instruction in theory .
Originally, "empirical" was used by the skeptic Sextus Empiricus to refer to those ancient Greek practitioners of medicine who rejected adherence to the dogmatic doctrines of the day, preferring instead to rely on the observation of phenomena as perceived in experience . The doctrine of empiricism was first explicitly formulated by British philosopher John Locke in the 17th century. Locke argued that the mind is a tabula rasa ("clean slate" or "blank tablet") on which experiences leave their marks. Such empiricism denies that humans have innate ideas or that anything is knowable without reference to experience.
It is worth remembering that empiricism does not hold that we have empirical knowledge automatically. Rather, according to the empiricist view, for any knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced, it is to be gained ultimately from one's sense-based experience. As a historical matter, philosophical empiricism is commonly contrasted with the philosophical school of thought known as "continental rationalism" which, in very broad terms, asserts that much knowledge is attributable to reason independently of the senses. However, this contrast is today considered to be an oversimplification of the issues involved, because the main continental rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz) were also advocates of the empirical "scientific method" of their day. Furthermore, Locke, for his part, held that some knowledge (e.g. knowledge of God's existence) could be arrived at through intuition and reasoning alone.
Some important philosophers commonly associated with empiricism include Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill. More recently, the positivists such as Mach, the members of the Vienna Circle and the Logical Positivists, and most adherents of analytic philosophy have been empiricists.
A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence that is observable by the senses or extensions of the senses. It is differentiated from the philosophic usage of empiricism by the use of the adjective "empirical" or the adverb "empirically." Empirical is used in conjunction with both the natural and social sciences, and refers to the use of working hypotheses that are testable using observation or experiment. In this sense of the word, scientific statements are subject to and derived from our experiences or observations.
In a second sense "empirical" in science may be synonymous with "experimental." In this sense, an empirical result is an experimental observation. The term semi-empirical is sometimes used to describe theoretical methods which make use of basic axioms, established scientific laws, and previous experimental results in order to engage in reasoned model building and theoretical inquiry.
Francis Bacon, though not the first to advocate inductive reasoning based upon evidence observable by the senses, is considered to be one of the founders of (modern) science. In practice, the English scientists of the seventeenth century used mathematics and their imagination in their research. Using the imagination meant keeping all possibilities open, including that the occult or magic (paranormal) could be possible. For Bacon and other early scientists such as Isaac Newton it was important to carefully study nature and the occult. Both Bacon and Newton were also practitioners of alchemy, an early part-scientific part-occult form of modern chemistry.
Probably the first empiricists in Western philosophy were the Sophists (c. fifth century B.C.E.), who rejected the rationalistic speculations about the nature of the world common among other pre-Socratics such as Parmenides, Heraclitus and Pythagoras, in favor of focusing "on such relatively concrete entities as man and society" . The Sophists invoked skeptical semantic arguments, using examples that could be readily seen and observed by others, to undermine the claims of pure reason.
About a century later, reacting against the deeply rationalistic and highly speculative approach of Plato (427–347 B.C.E.), Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) in his later years placed an increasingly strong emphasis on what is received by the senses, that is, on a posteriori observations. Aristotle applied the term natural philosophy to the task of making sense of the natural world, using what would much later become known as inductive reasoning to arrive at categories and principles based upon sense data. This was in sharp opposition to Plato's theory of forms, which was very heavily dependent on a-priori assumptions. In his "middle" and "late" periods, Aristotle became increasingly dissatisfied with Plato's views, and developed an increasingly strict expectation for more explicit empirical confirmations for all inductions (Posterior Analytics) Aristotle also stated the core empiricist tenet that human knowledge of reality is grounded in sense experience.
A generation after Aristotle, both the Stoics and the Epicureans formulated more explicitly empiricist explanations of the formation of ideas and concepts. The Stoics, anticipating Locke by some thousands of years, claimed that the human mind is a clean slate which came to be filled up with ideas by way of the perceptions of the senses. However they also maintained that there were certain "common notions" which are present in the minds of all persons a-priori. The Epicureans held an even more strongly empirical a posteriori view. For them, mental concepts are memory images or copies of previous sense experience, and sensations are invariably good evidence of their causes. They worked out a complex account of how objects produce sense impressions and explained error by positing the disruption of causal "effluences" in transit.
Among the medieval Scholastics, Thomas Aquinas derived from Aristotle (De Anima, 3.8) the famous peripatetic axiom: "Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses." Aquinas argued that the existence of God could be proved by reasoning from sense data (De Anima, 3.8). He used a variation on the Aristotelian notion of the "active intellect" which he interpreted as the ability to abstract universal meanings from particular empirical data.
Earlier concepts of the existence of "innate ideas" were the subject of debate between the Continental rationalists and the British empiricists in the seventeenth century through the late eighteenth century. John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume were the primary exponents of empiricism.
Responding to the "continental rationalism" most prominently defended by René Descartes, John Locke (1632-1704), writing in the late 17th century in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), proposed a new and ultimately very influential view wherein the only knowledge humans can have is a posteriori, i.e., based upon experience. Locke is famously attributed with saying that the human mind is a tabula rasa, a "blank tablet," in Locke's words "white paper," on which is written the experiences derived from sense impressions as a person's life proceeds. There are two sources of our ideas: sensation and reflection. In both cases, a distinction is made between simple and complex ideas. The former are unanalysable, and are broken down into primary and secondary qualities. Complex ideas are those which combine simple ones and are divided into substances, modes and relations. According to Locke, our knowledge of things is a perception of ideas that are in accordance or discordance with each other, which is very different from the quest for certainty of Descartes.
A generation later, the Irish Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753) determined that Locke's view immediately opened a door that would lead to eventual atheism. In response to Locke, he put forth in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) a different, very extreme form of empiricism in which things only exist either as a result of their being perceived, or by virtue of the fact that they are an entity doing the perceiving. (For Berkeley, God fills in for humans by doing the perceiving whenever humans are not around to do it). In his text Alciphron, Berkeley maintained that any order humans may see in nature is the language or handwriting of God. Berkeley's approach to empiricism would later come to be called subjective idealism.
The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) added to the empiricist viewpoint an extreme skepticism that he brought to bear against the accumulated arguments and counterarguments of Descartes, Locke and Berkeley, among others. Hume argued in keeping with the empiricist view that all knowledge derives from sense experience. In particular, he divided all of human knowledge into two categories: relations of ideas and matters of fact. Mathematical and logical propositions (e.g., "that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides") are examples of the first, while propositions involving some contingent observation of the world (e.g., "the sun will rise tomorrow") are examples of the second. All of man's "ideas," in turn, are derived from his "impressions." For Hume, an "impression" corresponds roughly with what we call a sensation. To remember or to imagine such impressions is to have an "idea." Ideas are therefore the faint copies of sensations.
Via his skeptical arguments (which became famous for the tenacity of their logic) he maintained that all knowledge, even the most basic beliefs about the natural world, cannot be conclusively established by reason. Rather, he maintained, our beliefs are more a result of accumulated habits, developed in response to accumulated sense experiences. Among his many arguments Hume also added another important slant to the debate about scientific method — that of the problem of induction. Hume argued that it requires inductive reasoning to arrive at the premises for the principle of inductive reasoning, and therefore the justification for inductive reasoning is a circular argument. Among Hume's conclusions regarding the problem of induction is that there is no certainty that the future will resemble the past. Thus, as a simple instance posed by Hume, we cannot know with certainty by inductive reasoning that the sun will continue to rise in the East, but instead come to expect it to do so because it has repeatedly done so in the past.
Hume concluded that such things as belief in an external world and belief in the existence of the self were not rationally justifiable. According to Hume these beliefs were to be accepted nonetheless because of their profound basis in instinct and custom. Hume's lasting legacy, however, was the doubt that his skeptical arguments cast on the legitimacy of inductive reasoning, allowing many skeptics who followed to cast similar doubt.
Most of Hume's followers have disagreed with his conclusion that belief in an external world is rationally unjustifiable, contending that Hume's own principles implicitly contained the rational justification for such a belief, that is, beyond being content to let the issue rest on human instinct, custom and habit. According to an extreme empiricist theory known as Phenomenalism, anticipated by the arguments of both Hume and George Berkeley, a physical object is a kind of construction out of our experiences. Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects, properties, events (whatever is physical) are reducible to mental objects, properties, events. Ultimately, only mental objects, properties, events, exist — hence the closely related term subjective idealism. By the phenomenalistic line of thinking, to have a visual experience of a real physical thing is to have an experience which belongs to a certain kind of group of experiences. This type of set of experiences possesses a constancy and coherence that is lacking in the set of experiences of which hallucinations, for example, are a part. As John Stuart Mill put it in the mid-nineteenth century, matter is the "permanent possibility of sensation."
Mill's empiricism went a significant step beyond Hume in still another respect: in maintaining that induction is necessary for all meaningful knowledge including mathematics. As summarized by D.W. Hamlin:
[Mill] claimed that mathematical truths were merely very highly confirmed generalizations from experience; mathematical inference, generally conceived as deductive [and a priori] in nature, Mill set down as founded on induction. Thus, in Mill's philosophy there was no real place for knowledge based on relations of ideas. In his view logical and mathematical necessity is psychological; we are merely unable to conceive any other possibilities than those which logical and mathematical propositions assert. This is perhaps the most extreme version of empiricism known, but it has not found many defenders. (Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy Vol. 2 (1969), 503).
Mill's empiricism thus held that knowledge of any kind is not from direct experience but an inductive inference from direct experience. The problems other philosophers have had with Mill's position center around the following issues: Firstly, Mill's formulation encounters difficulty when it describes what direct experience is by differentiating only between actual and possible sensations. This misses some key discussion concerning conditions under which such "groups of permanent possibilities of sensation" might exist in the first place. Berkeley put God in that gap; the phenomenalists, including Mill, essentially left the question unanswered. In the end, lacking an acknowledgement of an aspect of "reality" that goes beyond mere "possibilities of sensation," such a position leads to a version of subjective idealism. Questions such as how floor beams continue to support a floor while unobserved, how trees continue to grow while unobserved and untouched by human hands, etc, remain unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable in these terms. Secondly, Mill's formulation leaves open the unsettling possibility that the "gap-filling entities are purely possibilities and not actualities at all" (Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 6, (1969), 131). Thirdly, Mill's position, by calling mathematics merely another species of inductive inference, misapprehends mathematics. It fails to fully consider the structure and method of mathematical science, the products of which are arrived at through an internally consistent deductive reasoning|deductive set of procedures which do not, either today or at the time Mill wrote, fall under the agreed meaning of induction.
The phenomenalist phase of post-Humean empiricism ended by the 1940s, for by that time it had become obvious that statements about physical things could not be translated into statements about actual and possible sense data. If a physical object statement is to be translatable into a sense-data statement, the former must be at least deducible from the latter. But it came to be realized that there is no finite set of statements about actual and possible sense-data from which we can deduce even a single physical-object statement. Remember that the translating or paraphrasing statement must be couched in terms of normal observers in normal conditions of observation. There is, however, no finite set of statements that are couched in purely sensory terms and which can express the satisfaction of the condition of the presence of a normal observer. According to phenomenalism, to say that a normal observer is present is to make the hypothetical statement that were a doctor to inspect the observer, the observer would appear to the doctor to be normal. But, of course, the doctor himself must be a normal observer. If we are to specify this doctor's normality in sensory terms, we must make reference to a second doctor who, when inspecting the sense organs of the first doctor, would himself have to have the sense data a normal observer has when inspecting the sense organs of a subject who is a normal observer. And if we are to specify in sensory terms that the second doctor is a normal observer, we must refer to a third doctor, and so on.
Logical empiricism (aka logical positivism or neopositivism) was an early twentieth century attempt to synthesize the essential ideas of British empiricism (e.g., a strong emphasis on sensory experience as the basis for knowledge) with certain insights from mathematical logic that had been developed by Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Some of the key figures in this movement were Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick and the rest of the Vienna Circle, along with A.J. Ayer, Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach.
The neopositivists subscribed to a notion of philosophy as the conceptual clarification of the methods, insights and discoveries of the sciences. They saw in the logical symbolism elaborated by Frege (d. 1925) and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) a powerful instrument that could be used to rationally reconstruct all scientific discourse into an ideal, logically perfect, language that would be free of the ambiguities and deformations of natural language, which gave rise to what they saw as metaphysical pseudoproblems and other conceptual confusions. By combining Frege's thesis that all mathematical truths are logical with the early Wittgenstein's idea that all logical truths are mere linguistic tautologies, they arrived at a two-fold classification of all propositions: the analytic (a priori) and the synthetic (a posteriori). On this basis, they formulated a strong principle of demarcation between sentences which have sense and those which do not: the so-called verification principle. Any sentence which is not purely logical or for which there is no method of verification was to be considered devoid of meaning. As a result, most metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic and other traditional philosophical problems came to be considered pseudoproblems.
The extreme empiricism of the neopositivists was expressed, at least before the 1930s, in the idea that any genuinely synthetic assertion must be reducible to an ultimate assertion (or set of ultimate assertions) which expresses direct observations or perceptions. In later years, Carnap and Neurath abandoned this sort of phenomenalism in favor of a rational reconstruction of knowledge into the language of an objective spatio-temporal physics. That is, instead of translating sentences about physical objects into sense-data, such sentences were to be translated into so-called protocol sentences, for example, "X at location Y and at time T observes such and such." The central theses of logical positivism (verificationism, the analytic-synthetic distinction, reductionism, etc.) came under sharp attack after World War II by philosophers such as Nelson Goodman, W.V. Quine, Hilary Putnam, Karl Popper, and Richard Rorty. By the late 1960s, it had become evident to most philosophers that the movement had pretty much run its course, though its influence is still significant among contemporary analytic philosophers such as Michael Dummett and other anti-realists.
In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century several forms of pragmatism arose. The ideas of pragmatism in its various forms developed mainly from discussions that took place while Charles Sanders Peirce and William James were both at Harvard in the 1870s. James popularized the term "pragmatism," giving Peirce full credit for its patrimony, but Peirce later demurred from the tangents that the movement was taking, and redubbed what he regarded as the original idea with the name of "pragmaticism." Along with its pragmatic theory of truth, this perspective integrates the basic insights of empirical (experience-based) and rational (concept-based) thinking.
Charles Peirce (1839–1914) was highly influential in laying the groundwork for today's empirical scientific method. Although Peirce severely criticized many elements of Descartes' peculiar brand of rationalism, he did not reject rationalism outright. Indeed, he concurred with the main ideas of rationalism, most importantly the idea that rational concepts can be meaningful and the idea that rational concepts necessarily go beyond the data given by empirical observation. In later years he even emphasized the concept-driven side of the then ongoing debate between strict empiricism and strict rationalism, in part to counterbalance the excesses to which some of his cohorts had taken pragmatism under the "data-driven" strict-empiricist view. Among Peirce's major contributions was to place inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning in a complementary rather than competitive mode, the latter of which had been the primary trend among the educated since David Hume wrote a century before. To this, Peirce added the concept of abductive reasoning. The combined three forms of reasoning serve as a primary conceptual foundation for the empirically based scientific method today. Peirce's approach "presupposes that (1) the objects of knowledge are real things, (2) the characters (properties) of real things do not depend on our perceptions of them, and (3) everyone who has sufficient experience of real things will agree on the truth about them. According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth."
In his Harvard "Lectures on Pragmatism" (1903), Peirce enumerated what he called the "three cotary propositions of pragmatism" (Latin: cos, cotis whetstone), saying that they "put the edge on the maxim of pragmatism." First among these he listed the peripatetic-thomist observation mentioned above, but he further observed that this link between sensory perception and intellectual conception is a two-way street. That is, it can be taken to say that whatever we find in the intellect is also incipiently in the senses. Hence, if theories are theory-laden then so are the senses, and perception itself can be seen as a species of abductive reasoning, its difference being that it is beyond control and hence beyond critique—in a word, incorrigible. This in no way conflicts with the fallibility and revisability of scientific concepts, since it is only the immediate percept in its unique individuality or "thisness"—what the Scholastics called its haecceity—that stands beyond control and correction. Scientific concepts, on the other hand, are general in nature, and transient sensations do in another sense find correction within them. This notion of perception as abduction has received periodic revivals in artificial intelligence and cognitive science research, most recently for instance with the work of Irvin Rock (1983, 1997) on indirect perception.
William James (1842-1910), around the beginning of the twentieth century, coined the term "radical empiricism" to describe an offshoot of his form of pragmatism, which he argued could be dealt with separately from his pragmatism, though in fact the two concepts are intertwined in James's published lectures. James maintained that the empirically observed "directly apprehended universe, requires no extraneous trans-empirical connective support," by which he meant to rule out the perception that there can be any value added by seeking supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. James's "radical empiricism" is thus not radical in the context of the term "empiricism," but is instead fairly consistent with the modern use of the term "empirical." (His method of argument in arriving at this view, however, still readily encounters debate within philosophy even today.)
John Dewey (1859-1952) modified James' pragmatism to form a theory known as instrumentalism. The role of sense experience in Dewey's theory is crucial, in that he saw experience as unified totality of things through which everything else is interrelated. Dewey's basic thought, in accordance with empiricism was that reality is determined by past experience. Therefore, humans adapt their past experiences of things to perform experiments upon and test the pragmatic values of such experience. The value of such experience is measured by scientific instruments, and the results of such measurements generate ideas which serve as instruments for future experimentation. Thus, ideas in Dewey's system retain their empiricist flavor in that they are only known a posteriori.
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Bridgwater Castle was built between 1200 and 1210. Its walls were 12 to 15 feet thick and it was surrounded by a 30 foot moat. On the north side this was known as the Common Ditch, the other two sides being the Castle Ditch. The castle’s boundaries are marked today by the river on the east side, Fore Street from the bridge to the Cornhill on the south, by Chandos Street to the north and Castle Moat on the west. The two entrances were the Watergate onto the river and the market gate opening to the Cornhill.
If you walk up today’s fine Georgian Castle Street, as you walk uphill from the river, you will be walking across what was the lower bailey. Reaching King Square at the top, the site of Bridgwater’s war memorial, this level ground marks the site of the upper bailey.
Visit the Bridgwater Castle Trail
In total an area of 10 acres, it was sufficient to hold up to 2000 troops, 3000 in times of strife.
King John used it on occasions when he came for the hunting in North Petherton Forest. Built of red Wembdon sandstone with fawn Ham stone for the ‘trim’, it had round towers on its corners and sat on a base of impervious blue lias.
Inside its walls were the church of St. Mark, a bell tower, dovecote and great hall. Mortemere’s Hall.
The castle survived until 1646 when, in the year after the Civil War reached Bridgwater, it was destroyed. Elements of it survive today, the most noteworthy being the Watergate entrance which can be found at the Watergate restaurant.
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Hari Raya Puasa comes before Hari Raya Aidilfitri festival; both are celebrated by the Malay community or namely the Muslims. Hari Raya Puasa festival is celebrated in the nine month according to the Islamic calendar, also called the Ramadan month. The Muslims will start celebrating Hari Raya Aidilfitri by following the sign of the new moon(Rukyah), which falls on the first day of Syawal. Syawal is the tenth month in the Islamic calendar.
Hari Raya Puasa is the day when all the Muslims has to fast for a month. Malays name the fasting period as Ramadan. The meaning for the Muslims to celebrate this festival by fasting is to show sympathy for the victim which is suffering from hungry and also they want to let the new generation appreciate the food and donít waste it and also to make the new generation to be more patience and discipline. Moreover it is also to reminder the Muslims of self-control and submitting to the holy Allah. Furthermore it is also as paying of zakat (alms tax for the poor).
Normally the Muslims will serve their dish before the sun rise. After
this they wonít eat or drink until the sunset. The Muslims also forbidden to
smoke or to have sexual relation. Only for the children, sick people and also
pregnant women can excuse to fast but they must replace.
Celebration for Hari Raya Puasa begins during the fasting period of Ramadan too. Women start to sew beautiful curtains and buy new clothes for the family. Some families also do renovation for the house so that the house would look better when the guests visit it during the festival.
After fulfilling their one-month of fasting, the Muslims would be joyful to celebrate
Hari Raya Aidilfitri.In
Malaysia, the period of fasting ends when the new moon is sighted on the evening
of the last day of Ramadhan. The actual sighting is conducted by state appointed
religious officials at various vantage points (usually at hilltops) throughout
the country. If the crescent is sighted, the following day is then declared the
first day of Aidilfitri, which is also the beginning of the 10th month of the
Muslim calendar Syawal.
On the morning of the festival, the Muslims would wear their new clothes and go to the mosque to pray. They offer their thanks to God and after that they would ask for forgiveness from their elders. This is an important custom followed by the Muslims.
They feel that the young ones asking forgiveness from their elders is very
essential. On the day, they also visit their relatives and friends to celebrate
the happy occasion. If you visit Muslims' homes on Hari Raya Puasa you can
expect to taste a wide variety of delicious spicy dishes. Some favorite dishes
that can be found in Muslims homes on this special occasion are ketupat,
lontong, nasi padang and beef rendang. The Muslims also have the habit of giving
packets of money to kids when they go visiting. The packets are usually be in
green color and children often look forward to getting these money tokens on
Hari Raya Aidilfitri. Overall, Hari Raya Aidilfitri is a delightful festival for the
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FRIDAY, Sept. 18 (HealthDay News) -- Children who grow up in a home without a biological father have sex at a younger age than children raised with their Dad in the picture, and a study now offers a new explanation for why this is true.
While previous research focused on environmental factors, researchers in this study, published in the September/October issue of Child Development, focused on genetic influences instead.
"Our study found that the association between fathers' absence and children's sexuality is best explained by genetic influences, rather than by environmental theories alone," study author Jane Mendle, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, said in a news release from the Society for Research in Child Development.
Mendle and her colleagues looked at more than 1,000 cousins aged 14 and older who took part in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
The more genes the children shared, the more similar their ages at first intercourse -- regardless of whether or not the children had an absent father, the study authors found.
This finding, the researchers explained, suggests that environmental factors, such as childhood stress caused by having a single parent or watching their mom date, are not the only ones that carry an influence. Instead, genetic influence also can help explain the tie between absent fathers and early sex.
"While there's clearly no such thing as a 'father absence gene,' there are genetic contributions to traits in both moms and dads that increase the likelihood of earlier sexual behavior in their children. These include impulsivity, substance use and abuse, argumentativeness and sensation-seeking," Mendle said in the news release.
"The same genetic factors that influence when children first have intercourse also affect the likelihood of their growing up in a home without a dad," Mendle added.
The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more information on divorce.
SOURCE: Society for Research in Child Development, news release, Sept. 15, 2009
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Green roofing is relatively new to the U.S. although the concept is older than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and hadn’t been perfected until Advanced Green Architecture (AGA) rose from the graduate research of Erik Cronk and Jeremiah Johnson.
While attending an American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) conference in San Francisco in 2007, a seed was planted in Cronk and Johnson’s brains during a green roofing seminar. While their contemporaries at Michigan State University’s Landscape Architecture program concentrated on finding jobs, Cronk and Johnson decided to forego the workforce for advanced degrees.
“Right after we graduated with our undergraduate degrees we had an idea that green roofs would be a product we’d like to develop. We were undergrad colleagues that became friends and we were the only two kids in our class that wanted to pursue [an advanced] degree at that time,” states Johnson.
As the only graduate students in MSU’s Landscape Architecture program, the pair focused their research on sloped roofs and storm water management, cognizant both factors were absent from existing studies; most were based upon German practices stemming from the 1960s.
“We looked into sloped science, temperature and moisture correlations… temperatures can vary dramatically in summer due to solar insolence. This leads to problems with south-facing slopes that wouldn’t thrive due to dramatic temperature and moisture variations. Our research demonstrated that if you want a sloped green roof system to thrive, you need irrigation, and you will want subsurface irrigation,” says Cronk.
The Advanced Green Roof (AGR) is a modular system of plastic trays made from 100 percent recycled high-density polyethylene with built-in irrigation channels. Biodegradable walls made from 100 percent recycled pulp sit upon a drainage layer with built-in irrigation channels. Filled with soil and re-grown with the proper mixture of plants, the modular widgets are inlaid with a capillary mat, which acts as a sponge, soaking the roots. Waterproof membranes and a protective mat lay beneath the widgets. The modularity allows for easy access beneath the roof. Although the initial cost may seem expensive, the AGR may theoretically last for the life of the structure.
“With a mix of science, function and design, we developed a product that functions properly and grants designers the ability to integrate both form and function into their green roof designs,” Johnson says. “We saw a need and looked at the best way to meet that need. Designers should have came out with this prior to us.”
Yet, the AGR lacked a solid entry into the marketplace. Enter Jim Bush of Weather Shield Roofing Systems, a repeated member of the “Top 100 Contractors in the USA” according to Roofing, Siding, and Insulation Magazine. Bush met Johnson through a mutual friend, quickly acting as an advisor. A 32-year veteran of the roofing industry, his insight was just what AGA needed. Bush became a partner in early 2012.
“A green roof is first and foremost, a roof,” Bush explains. “It has to keep the water out, it has to do its job of protecting the building. What I realized is that the people in this [business] are either growers selling plants or manufacturers that sell plastic trays. In both cases, they know virtually nothing about roof design or landscaping… each [of us] has a unique area of expertise that wasn’t readily available in the marketplace. There are a lot of people that can grow plants -- that isn’t where the magic is. It’s how these come together to make a reliable, waterproof roof that is also aesthetically pleasing.”
Benefits include another layer of insulation lessening heat loss in winter and gain in summer, storm water runoff reduction, and less carbon dioxide output. Economic benefits include thermal insulation reducing heating and cooling costs. Cities also increase these benefits; Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Toronto are leaders in this area. Other cities, like Ann Arbor, tax impervious surfaces or storm water runoff, which the AGR helps reduce.
“When we completely protect a roof so UV doesn’t touch it, thaw is minimized, there is no roof traffic -- people aren’t dropping tools on it, hail never hits it, ice and snow aren’t abrading it. You eliminate all of that, you’ve buried it. I personally believe 100 years is an easy estimate as to how long the underlying roof waterproofing should last,” claims Bush.
A local representation is the idyllic Christian Reformed Church of North America at 2850 Kalamazoo Ave. SE. Others can be found in Grand Rapids, Caledonia and Traverse City; California, Alabama and Chicago, Ill. with distribution as distant as South Africa.
For more in-depth information on Advanced Green Architecture’s patent-pending creations, including an extended listing of benefits, visit agrgreen.com
Matt Simpson Siegel is a Michigan-based writer whose most recent work includes the soon to be released Michael Maltese-inspired sock puppet short film, “Close Encounters of the Fanged Kind.” He would also like you to invite him to your rooftop golf course once it’s completed.
Photography by Adam Bird | <urn:uuid:b231b728-8624-43c0-b1f1-fa5b645ba008> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.rapidgrowthmedia.com/features/09272012adv.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00005-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95739 | 1,122 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Woolcock, Stephen. (2002) The Precautionary Principle in the EU & Its Impact on International Trade Relations. CEPS Working Document No. 186, October 2002. [Working Paper]
[From the Abstract]. Although elements of precaution were used in the environmental regulation of various countries in the 1970s, including the United States, it has been the European Union that has emerged as the main proponent of the precautionary principle, both in European regulatory policy and in international agreements. The precautionary principle must be considered as an important and enduring feature of European and increasingly international policies aimed at dealing with the risk to the environment as well as human, plant and animal health in instances where the level of risk is not insignificant and where there is scientific uncertainty. Developed and applied originally in the field of environmental regulation, the precautionary principle has subsequently found application in other related policy fields such as human health, and is becoming an acceptable feature of – if not customary – international law. Rightly or wrongly, the precautionary principle is also wrapped up in the current critique of "globalisation", because it promises wider, more democratic participation in decision-making concerning issues of central importance to the sustainability and risks associated with economic and technological development. Precaution provides those sceptical of established policy-making procedures with a case for opening the policy process to wider participation and greater transparency and democratic accountability. The central issue with regard to the EU’s application of the precautionary principle is whether it will form the basis for balanced policy that promotes sustainability and facilitates the growth of trade and investment. Or will it be used in an arbitrary fashion and simply wheeled out to justify controls on trade or investment that are dictated by commercial or political expediency?
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Actions (login required) | <urn:uuid:d6c9da6d-1eb2-4a4f-8688-4d584499b28f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://aei.pitt.edu/1822/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00130-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943884 | 365 | 2.875 | 3 |
Raoult's law states:
The vapor pressure of an ideal solution is dependent on the vapor pressure of each chemical component and the mole fraction of the component present in the solution.
- pi is the partial pressure of the component i in mixture
- p*i is the vapor pressure of the pure component i
- xi is the mole fraction of the component i in solution (in mixture)
Derivation:We define an ideal solution as a solution for which the chemical potential of component i is:
If the system is at equilibrium, then the chemical potential of the component i must be the same in the liquid solution and in the vapor above it. That is,
The corresponding equation for pure i in equilibrium with its (pure) vapor is:
Subtracting both equations gives us
Ideal mixingAn ideal solution can be said to follow Raoult's Law but it must be kept in mind that in the strict sense ideal solutions do not exist. The fact that the vapor is taken to be ideal is the least of our worries. Interactions between gas molecules are typically quite small especially if the vapor pressures are low. The interactions in a liquid however are very strong. For a solution to be ideal we must assume that it does not matter whether a molecule A has another A as neighbor or a B molecule. This is only approximately true if the two species are almost identical chemically. We can see that from considering the Gibbs free energy change of mixing:
It can be shown using the Gibbs–Duhem equation that if Raoult's law holds over the entire concentration range x = 0–1 in a binary solution then, for the second component, the same must also hold.
If the deviations from ideality are not too strong, Raoult's law will still be valid in a narrow concentration range when approaching x = 1 for the majority phase (the solvent). The solute will also show a linear limiting law but with a different coefficient. This law is known as Henry's law.
The presence of these limited linear regimes has been experimentally verified in a great number of cases.
In a perfectly ideal system, where ideal liquid and ideal vapor are assumed, a very useful equation emerges if Raoult's law is combined with Dalton's Law.
Non-ideal mixingRaoult's Law may be adapted to non-ideal solutions by incorporating two factors that will account for the interactions between molecules of different substances. The first factor is a correction for gas non-ideality, or deviations from the ideal-gas law. It is called the fugacity coefficient (φ). The second, the activity coefficient (γ), is a correction for interactions in the liquid phase between the different molecules.
This modified or extended Raoult's law is then written:
Many pairs of liquids are present in which there is no uniformity of attractive forces i.e. the adhesive & cohesive forces of attraction are not uniform between the two liquids, so that they show deviation from the Raoult's law which is applied only to ideal solutions. | <urn:uuid:f0093d51-0330-4de1-881d-e5c9bb18eaf2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://engineeringoperations.blogspot.com/2010/08/raoults-law-statement-derivation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00075-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937145 | 618 | 3.765625 | 4 |
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