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Building networks in Visual Basic or C# is easy.
To represent a node, make a node class that includes a list or collection of links. This class should also include a label, X and Y coordinates, colors, and anything else you need to draw the node appropriately.
The following code shows a simple PathNode class. It includes Label, X, and Y drawing properties. It uses a generic list of PathLink objects (described next) to store links that leave this node.
Public Class PathNode
Public Label As String
Public X As Single
Public Y As Single
Public Links As New List(Of PathLink)
Public IsInCl As Boolean
Public BestDist As Single
Public BestLink As PathLink
You can see three other variables in the preceding code that store additional information needed by the shortest-path algorithms described in this article:
- IsInCl: Whether a node is in a candidate list
- BestDist: The best distance from a starting node to this node
- BestLink: The link you would follow to traverse the shortest path
You'll see how these are used shortly.
To represent links, make a link class. At a minimum, this class must have two properties that refer to the link's end nodes. If the network is directed, those properties must let you determine the link's start and end node.
The link class should also define a cost. To draw the link, you may need additional variables for colors, thickness, and other drawing properties.
The following code shows a simple link class for a directed network. The IsInPathTree
variable is used by the program to draw the results.
Public Class PathLink
Public Cost As Single
Public FromNode As PathNode
Public ToNode As PathNode
Public IsInPathTree As Boolean = False
You can also give the node and link classes methods for drawing, locating points (for example, determining whether the node is at a point clicked by the user), and so forth. This article's example programs include several methods for initialization, drawing, and performing other incidental chores—but they're not central for the shortest-path algorithms so they're not described here. Download the examples
and take a look for yourself.
Over the years, people have devised many shortest-path algorithms with different levels of speed and complexity. You can divide these algorithms into two broad categories: label-
setting and label-
The following section describes a popular label-setting algorithm. The section after that explains a label-correcting algorithm that is less well-known, but often faster.
Before you can dig into the meat of these algorithms, however, you need to understand shortest-path trees.
Shortest Path Trees
Finding the shortest path from one node to another in a network actually involves more than finding a single path. When you look at a street map, you may be able to intuitively guess a near-optimal path without looking at all the dead ends, cul-de-sacs, side streets, and other clutter that obviously won't play a part in the final path.
For example, if you look at a highway map of the United States and try to find a route from San Diego to New York, you probably won't bother to look at roads in Florida or Alaska.
Unfortunately, shortest-path algorithms cannot make similar leaps of intuition. There are a couple of good reasons for this. First, in some networks it may be very hard to tell which links are obviously not useful. For example, in a street network, the time to traverse a link is related to its length, but in other networks a link may have practically any cost. Suppose there were a very fast link from Tampa, Florida to New York City (some sort of transporter, perhaps). In that case, the shortest path from San Diego to New York might require you to visit Tampa. In a real street network, that won't work, but it's not so easy to discard unintuitive solutions in networks in general.
Second—and perhaps more important: These algorithms just aren't that smart. You could add code to try to identify parts of the network that obviously won't be part of the final solution but that would complicate the algorithm and might actually slow overall performance. These algorithms contain very tight loops that are executed many, many, MANY times very quickly. Adding special tests to help find the shortest paths makes the algorithm more intelligent, but usually slows the loops down and gives you a net loss. I'll talk about a couple of changes that sometimes pay dividends later, but in general don't clutter the loops unnecessarily.
|Figure 2. Plentiful Paths: Shortest-path algorithms find the shortest paths from one node to every other node.|
Because these algorithms cannot use intuition to eliminate obviously wrong paths, it's actually easier for them to calculate the shortest path from one node to every other node in the network rather than just finding the shortest path between two nodes.
For example, Figure 2
shows the same directed network shown in Figure 1
. Here the program has found all the shortest paths from node A to every other node in the network and has drawn those paths in red. For example, the shortest path from node A to node G is A-C-E-F-G.
Because the links used in these shortest paths form a tree, this is called the shortest-path tree rooted at node A
After you find a shortest-path tree, finding the shortest path to a particular node is easy. You just start at the destination node and move back up through the tree following each node's parent until you reach the root node.
|Figure 3. Great Grid: Depending on the network, there may be many shortest paths between two nodes.|
For example, to find the path from node A to node D, you start at node D and move to its parent node E. From there you move to node E's parent, which is node C. You then move to node C's parent, which is node A. That's the root of the shortest-path tree so you're done. Reversing the order of the nodes you visited, the full path is A-C-E-D.
Before moving on to label-setting algorithms, note that the shortest-path tree is not unique. For a given network, there may be many paths from one node to another that all have the same length.
For example, consider the network shown in Figure 3
. If every link has the same cost, then every path (that doesn't obviously backtrack) from node A to node T has cost 7. (It's actually kind of interesting to figure out how many minimal paths there are between two nodes in this network, but that's a topic for another article.)
At any rate, remember that a shortest-path algorithm finds a shortest-path tree but not necessarily the only possible one.
With this background, it's time to look at label-setting algorithms. | <urn:uuid:d6d06a7f-501e-444e-b350-40a7365159cf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/38666/0/page/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00070-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935331 | 1,438 | 3.65625 | 4 |
A Little about Diminutives in Spanish
When you want to make a diminutive in Spanish, a little change can make a big difference. To indicate that something is small or little in Spanish, you add a few letters, called a suffix, to the end of the noun. With that suffix, you create a diminutive, and people know that you’re talking about something or someone small.
The suffixes you add to the words are ito (ee-toh) for a masculine noun and ita (ee-tah) for a feminine noun.
A boy niño (nee-nyoh) (boy/child) turns little when you add the ito suffix to form niñito (neenyee-toh) (little boy/child). The same holds true for girls: a niña (nee-nyah) (girl/child) becomes a niñita (neenyee-tah) (little girl/child). | <urn:uuid:0a56d755-d426-4db6-a2c6-24dfd866e72f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/a-little-about-diminutives-in-spanish.navId-323280.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.846812 | 203 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Sandra Brooke, Ph.D.
University of Oregon
Deep-water topographic features are abundant at various locations off the southeastern United States, the SW Florida slope and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Deep-sea corals are major components of these features, acting as framework-builders and providing habitat for other organisms within their structures. Deep-sea coral structures and their associated fauna are often referred to as bioherms or lithoherms. Bioherms are defined as ancient organic reefs of mound-like form built by a variety of marine invertebrates. Some consist of caps of living coral covering unconsolidated mud and coral debris. Lithoherms however, are high relief, lithified carbonate limestone, which provide hard substrate for a variety of bottom-dwelling fauna, including corals. These topographic features occur extensively throughout the world’s oceans and have great potential resource value. However, their benthic (bottom-dwelling) invertebrate and fish populations have only been described for a small percentage of these deep-sea coral ecosystems (DSCE).
Expeditions in 2002 and 2003 funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Ocean Exploration (OE) initially explored additional deep-water reef sites in the western Atlantic and northern Gulf of Mexico. These were the first submersible and ROV dives ever to document the habitat and benthic biodiversity of some of these deep-water reefs.
With the continuing global depletion of coastal fisheries, commercial fishing vessels are moving into deeper water and exploiting fish and crustacean species that are frequently associated with complex coral structures. Deep-sea coral ecosystems exist at numerous locations around the coast of Florida. These coral communities are composed of different types of corals, including stony corals, primarily Lophelia pertusa (Figure 3); soft corals (Figure 2); and hydrocorals (Figure 4). These corals all provide habitat for relatively unknown but highly diverse assemblages of fish and invertebrates, many of which are undoubtedly undescribed species. There is therefore an urgent need to identify these coral habitats, map their distribution and abundance, and document any potentially valuable fishery species associated with them. NOAA and the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council have requested information on the DSCE’s in the South Atlantic region in order to designate potential new areas for protected status. Data compiled during the Florida Coast Deep Corals expedition will therefore provide useful information for management as well as science.
Our primary objectives are to explore the distribution and characterization of communities found in association with lithoherms and other high relief, live-bottom, geological features in the regions of interest. Our secondary objectives will address aspects of coral biology, diversity of associated fauna, and microbial ecology. Education and public outreach efforts are also a significant aspect of what we intend to accomplish.
Since deepwater reefs are not visible to the general public, dissemination of information through the media and the education system is vital in order to create empathy for their protection. The overarching objective of this mission is to increase current understanding of deep-sea coral ecosystems along Florida’s coasts. Previous explorations have determined that these habitats are widespread, but we still know very little about the extent or distribution of the corals, their ecology or their role as essential fish habitat. Primary objectives explore the distribution and characterization of communities found in association with lithoherms and other high relief, live-bottom, geological features in the regions of interest: the base of the Florida-Hatteras Slope and the Miami and Pourtalès Terraces. Secondary objectives address aspects of coral biology, diversity and genetics of associated fauna, and the microbial ecology.Sampling Methods
Much of the data we will be collecting consists of still images and video transects that are taken with the Johnson-Sea-Link submersible digital camera or video system. This information will be analyzed to provide an overview of the distribution of corals and other major groups of animals within each region we visit. The large animals will be collected using the submersible’s claw, suction hose, or scoop. Each organism has a different shape and fragility, so methods that work well for some animals may not work for others. The submersible pilots decide the most appropriate sampling device for each objective, but the advantage of available collection methods is that they can take very small pieces of corals without destroying the whole colony. Water will be collected from very precise locations within a coral colony, using a tube that penetrates the submersible skin and allows uncontaminated samples be collected inside the sub. These samples will be used by the microbiologists to compare microbial communities in the water close to a coral with those found within the coral mucus. A passive acoustic monitoring system (PAMS) will be deployed on one of the coral ecosystems to listen for fish sounds. Fish make specific sounds during different behaviors such as aggression and spawning. Dr. Gilmore will interpret the sounds to determine both fish species present and behavior type. The submersible is not the best tool to study fish since some species hide in the reef or leave the area when confronted with the lights and noise of the submersible. The PAMS allows us to monitor fish behavior without being intrusive.
This expedition will consist of 2 separate legs with a science personnel switch on November 13th. Two submersible dives per day are planned.
Leg 1 (November 7-13) Florida Hatteras Slope, Strait of Florida, Jacksonville to Jupiter; Lophelia mounds: 2400-2800 feet deep. The first few days will be spent in the region of northeastern and central Florida from Jacksonville to Jupiter, working down to Fort Lauderdale in time for an exchange of 4-6 personnel on November 13th in Dania Beach.
Leg 2 (November 13-21) Strait of Florida and Miami Terrace Escarpment (900-2400 feet deep); Pourtales Terrace and Agassiz/Tortugas Valleys (600-3000 feet deep). The first few days will be spent in the region of Miami Terrace, working south to Florida Keys, then working our way back north with final dives in time for arrival back at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution on Nov. 21.
For more information
Lophelia.org is an information resource on the cold-water coral ecosystems of the deep ocean.
South Atlantic Fishery Management Council
The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, headquartered in Charleston, S.C., is responsible for the conservation and management of fish stocks within the federal 200-mile limit of the Atlantic off the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and east Florida to Key West. | <urn:uuid:171e6257-9e6b-4387-8d72-fd9d433db88a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/05deepcorals/background/mission_plan/plan.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00159-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920252 | 1,380 | 3.921875 | 4 |
European Crane Fly
Table of Contents
The European crane fly, Tipula paludosa Meigen, is a native of Eurasia. It has traditionally been a pest of turf in areas with a maritime climate in North America.
The first reported appearance of this insect in Canada was in 1955 on Cape Breton Island. The first reports from western Canada were from Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1965.
North American distribution of the European crane fly was limited to the eastern maritime and western provinces of Canada (Nova Scotia and British Columbia) and the western coast of the U.S. (Washington State and Oregon), but in 1996 and 1997, there were several reports of the larvae (leatherjackets) causing damage in turf in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas.
The first report of their presence in Ontario came in 1998, when they were identified as European crane fly (Tipula paludosa Meigen). They are now found throughout southwestern, central and parts of eastern Ontario, as well as in areas of New York State bordering Ontario, since 2004, and areas of Michigan bordering Ontario, since 2005.
Leatherjackets cause damage in turf and pasture grasses and some damage in fruit, vegetables and field crops.
European crane fly adults resemble large mosquitoes (Figure 1). They range in length from 1.52.5 cm and have a greyish-brown body. Adult crane flies have two narrow wings and very long, slender brown legs. Unlike mosquitoes, they do not bite and are relatively weak flyers.
Eggs are laid near the soil surface to a depth of 1 cm and are black, shiny and oval in shape, roughly 1 mm long.
The larvae of the European crane fly are known as leatherjackets. They are light grey to greenish-brown with irregular black specks. Leatherjackets are cylindrical but taper slightly at both ends and are legless. Larvae mature through four developmental instars. They range in size from 0.5 cm in length in the first instar to 34 cm at maturity (Figure 2).
The pupa is formed inside the last instar cuticle, which is called a puparium. They are brown and spiny and 3-4 cm in length (Figure 3). The adult emerges, leaving the puparium behind, visible on closely mown turf.
European crane flies complete one generation per year in Ontario (Figure 5). Adults emerge throughout September, depending on the location within Ontario. Adult females will mate and lay their eggs within 24 hours of emerging. Eggs can be present in the soil from the beginning of September until the middle of October, laid on the surface and down to 1 cm deep in the soil. One female can lay 200-300 eggs. Eggs are very susceptible to drying out and require moisture to hatch. Egg hatch occurs in 10-14 days.
Larvae are present from the beginning of October until the end of August the following year. They pass through 3-4 instar moults in the fall and generally overwinter as third or fourth instars. In the fall and early spring, larvae feed in the top of the thatch and on the leaf blades. Later in the spring, the larger instars reside in the soil (1-3 cm deep) during the day and feed on the grass blades at night.
Feeding by the fourth instar larvae causes the majority of the damage in the spring. Heavy spring rains often force the larvae to the surface of the turf and onto hard surfaces such as driveways and sidewalks (Figure 4).
By mid-June, the larvae cease feeding, move down in the soil (3-5 cm) and remain in a non-feeding stage until pupation. Pupation occurs from late August through early-to-mid-September, when the pupae wriggle to the top of the soil in the late night to early morning and the adults emerge. The empty pupal cases look like small twigs protruding from closely mowed turf (Figure 6).
Leatherjackets feed primarily on turf on home lawns, golf courses, sod farms and pasture grasses. They feed during the day at or below the surface of the turf on root hairs, roots and crowns. On damp warm nights, they come up to the surface of the turf and eat stems and grass blades. Damage to turf shows as yellow spots, thinning to bare patches. Peak damage in Ontario occurs in May (Figure 7). Secondary pests such as skunks and starlings can also damage the turf: skunks dig up small patches of turf in search of leatherjackets, and birds peck them out of turf during May and June (Figure 8).
Adults congregate on the sides of buildings, sliding doors, screens and fences, where they can be counted. Larval infestations are likely to occur where there are adult populations. Pupae
Empty pupal cases seen on closely mown turf in the morning are evidence of the presence of pupae. Note where crows are foraging to help pinpoint areas with high pupae populations.
If signs of bird predation or turf injury suggest leatherjacket presence, the best method for detecting leatherjackets is to take a cup changer-sized plug of turf and tear it apart, looking through the leaf blades, thatch and soil for leatherjackets. Larval thresholds have not been determined for Ontario.
There are several cultural methods that help minimize leatherjacket damage.
The first is to maintain a healthy turf stand, through proper mowing and fertility.
Secondly, adult crane flies prefer to lay their eggs in moist soils. Improving drainage will help dry out soils and deter females from laying eggs. Newly hatched larvae also have poor survival in dry soils.
Many leatherjackets die in the spring when heavy rains force them from the turf onto hard surfaces, where they will dry out and perish.
Leatherjackets also suffer high mortality from bird predation in the spring.
Control products are available for excepted uses on golf courses and sod farms; direct these toward the leatherjacket stage. Make preventive applications in the fall after peak egglaying. Make early curative insecticide applications for leatherjackets in October before the soil freezes up, when the larvae are feeding close to the surface, are small and have not yet caused significant damage. Make curative applications in the spring based on scouting or direct observations of damage.
If preventative applications are applied in the fall, applications in the spring may not be necessary. However, applications can be made in the spring when damage from feeding first starts to appear. Insecticide applications against adults are typically ineffective, as the adults do not feed.
See OMAF and MRA Publication 384, Turfgrass Management Recommendations, for information on control products and rates. For home lawns and other non-excepted uses, applying the entomopathogenic nematode species Steinernema carpocapsae in the spring or a 50/50 mixture of Steinerenema feltieae and Heterorhabditis bacteriophora in the fall can reduce leatherjacket populations in Ontario.
For more information:
Toll Free: 1-877-424-1300 | <urn:uuid:efc937aa-762c-4719-88e5-ac576cfd9cbb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/13-023.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00178-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949588 | 1,486 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Neurontin addiction and abuse
Addiction to anything is composed of the main disorders including failure to control a behavior, increased tension prior to a behavior and pleasure while experiencing the behavior. There are specific symptoms for every addiction. These symptoms are experienced repeatedly. It is diagnosable if they are experienced over an extended period with respect to an addiction disorder. Addiction can be caused by anything, such as sex and even internet browsing. The most common addiction we see is related to use of drugs. Among the drugs, addiction to Neurontin in particular, has been the subject of debate these days, specifically with reference to off-label marketing of Neurontin.
Neurontin, which is a prescription drug, has been studied from 1983 in the United States. In 1994 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Neurontin to treat seizures caused by epilepsy. This treatment involved complementary therapies. Further, Neurontin was also approved by the FDA to treat nerve pain associated with shingles and herpes. The manufacturer of Neurontin originally was Parke-Davis, but subsequently in 2000 they sold these rights to Pfizer. Neurontin has been one of the best selling drugs in the world. The annual revenues out of this sale only were found to be about 3 billion dollars. However, as Neurontin is a prescription medicine and as it is administered for only approved uses, it has not achieved these sales numbers. It is found that 70 to 90 per cent of the Neurontin prescriptions are sold for off-label exploitation. However, it is not legal for the manufacturer of a drug to promote it for uses that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
In reality, this drug is marketed for treatment of a number of ailments, which goes against the conditions stipulated by the FDA. Ironically, off-label use becomes possible without violating the laws, as doctors are not subjected to the conditions laid down by the FDA, and they prescribe this medicine for off-label use. Therefore, the manufacturer only had suffered penalties for having marketed Neurontin for off-label uses. Neurontin is prescribed for unapproved uses such as bipolar disorder, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD), migraines, pain syndromes, and Attention Deficit Disorder. It is therefore very clear that Neurontin is available easily. Now, we have to see how it causes addiction.
If Neurontin is stopped abruptly, it can cause withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety or seizures. Many users tend to continue using Neurontin just to escape from the withdrawal symptoms caused by Neurontin. This develops dependency of the medicine. Therefore, when the users of this type miss their dose of Neurontin, it causes certain symptoms in them. This slowly paves the way to getting addicted to Neurontin. Even doctors decide to put the patients back on Neurontin when severe withdrawal symptoms occur. The doctors may then gradually decrease the dose of this medicine, depending on the individual's conditions, to minimize the effects of withdrawal of Neurontin.
Neurontin, or gabapentin as it is known by its chemical name, should be used only for the approved purposes. This medicine should not be started without consulting your doctor. Otherwise, it may cause serious side effects. Particularly, withdrawal of Neurontin causes worse conditions. Therefore, before stopping or tapering Neurontin you should consult your doctor, giving your complete medical background. Off-label use of Neurontin encourages addiction to this drug. Do not abuse Neurontin as it can lead to addiction. If you are already an addict to Neurontin, your healthcare provider is the best person to treat you for this and help you to get off Neurontin in a gradual manner. Have yourself educated thoroughly on the effects of Neurontin. Do not alter the dose prescribed for you or increase the frequency of taking Neurontin before talking to your doctor. | <urn:uuid:6d7fb152-28cc-4430-883b-2a3125dc9c3d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.neurontin-gabapentin.com/neurontinaddiction.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00096-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953215 | 834 | 2.53125 | 3 |
WP Minify version 0.7.0 is here!
What’s new this release?
This version of WP Minify has the following enhancements.
- Added the following advanced options:
- Minification on external files
- Extra arguments for Minify engine
- Removed wp_path option (Thanks Jan Seidl!)
- Fixed Output Buffer conflicts with other plugins that use output buffering such as All-in-One SEO and Anarchy Media Player.
- obligate intracellular parasite – require a host to cause damage
- filterable – small enough to be filtrated
- contains an outer protein coat and inner genome
- has only 1 kind of nucleic acid (RNA or DNA, but never both)
- lacks metabolic abilities
Viruses can be found either inside a cell (intracellular) or outside of a cell (extracellular). If it is found extracellular, the virus is called a virion. A virion contains a protein coating called a capsid, which surrounds the core of the virus containing the nucleic acid (either DNA or RNA). Together with the capsid and the DNA or RNA core is called a nucleocapsid. Some virions also contain an envelope which is made up of a phospholipid membrane. Both the capsid and the envelope are important in protection and providing shape to the virus.
Recombinant DNA technology entails modifying the genomes of organisms.
mutagen – anything physical or chemical that causes mutations in an organism
reverse transcriptase – these enzymes were discovered from retrovirses and its effects on DNA. Using reverse transcriptase, scientists are able to make DNA out of RNA. These DNA are called complementary DNA or cDNA. After making cDNA from eukaryotic mRNA, scientists are able to input cDNA into the genome of the prokaryotic DNA. One main reason why this is useful is that prokaryotes are not able to excise or remove the introns (junk DNA or noncoding sequences) of DNA in eukaryotes. Since eukaryotes mRNA are already processed and had removed the introns, the newly made cDNA would also be free from introns!
Quick DNA Overview
Deoxyribosenucleic acid, as you know in humans and in other eukaryotic organisms codes our chromosomes and makes us the way we are!
Similarly, in prokaryotes, like bacteria, DNA makes up their genetic code or in other words what they are. This includes their function and their appearance.
Universally, DNA contains purines (adenosine, guanine) and pyrimidines (cysteine, thymine, uracil (found in RNA)). These guys are the bases, in which three of it together will code for a codon, that signifies an amino acid. A sequence of these codons assist with making up a peptide chain. As you know, peptides together, after having been rearranged into a 3D structure is a protein.
As you can see in the picture, DNA’s backbone is connected by phosphodiester bonds (I can get into this later and why its called what its called). These bonds help create the phosphate backbone of DNA. Since phosphate groups (PO4–) are negatively charged, a chunk of PO4– used as the backbone of the DNA will make the DNA a highly negative molecule.
As you already know, DNA is a double helix. The two strands are antiparallel. Basically, DNA strands are replicated from what is called the 5′ (five prime) end to the 3′ end (I’ll break it down in another post).
The bases (T, A, G, C) are connected to each other by weak hydrogen bonds.
What’s new this release?
This version of Buy Sell Ads WordPress plugin has the following enhancements.
- Upgraded to asynchronous Buy Sell Ads code.
- Changed integration method, now you only need to specify yout site key!
- Added ability to auto insert into posts/pages.
- Changed widget integration.
- Disabled Anti-AdBlock for now as this interferes with BSA statistics.
Similar to Gram stain, acid fast stain, and flagellar stain, capsule and spore stain are used to differentiate between microbes.
Purpose: Our immune system contains neutrophils and macrophages that fight against foreign bodies or antigens. Capsules, which contains mucoid polysaccharides or polypeptides, protects bacterial cells against our immune system (macrophage and neutrophils). Capsules are also resistant to stains, hence capsule stain techniques are staining around the cell and not the cell wall or membrane directly (different from Gram and Acid fast stains).
Acidic or Negative Stain – used to stain the background
- Congo Red
- India Ink
In this first step, there is NO heat fixing because it will cause the cells to shrink, which will give a false reading of a white halo around the cells. This may cause a misrepresentation of a capsule.
Cytoplasm, basic stain
- Carbol fuschin
The unstained, halo, seen between the stain in cells are the capsule.
Eukaryotic microbes consists of: protists, animals, fungi and plants.
In this post, we will be looking at fungi (mostly molds and yeast), protozoan, and helminths.
Fungi are organized into two categories:
Ascomycotina (sac-like fungi such as penicillium, aspergillus, yeast) and zygomycotina (molds such as rhizopus stolonifer) Read on…
There are various ways in assessing DNA and its components. One widely used is electrophoresis, which utilizes electricity to measure the length of DNA fragments. This mechanism can be used for identification either for unknown diseases or human DNA, determining an inherited disease or finding cures for such diseases (National Health Museum).
What is Electrophoresis?
How is DNA assessed? Read on… | <urn:uuid:f9dd2dab-9271-45fd-8c3c-898276a2123d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://omninoggin.com/page/4/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00175-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914934 | 1,277 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Could the Ukraine Crisis Spark a World War?
The rapid slide from lawlessness to violence that has claimed the lives of more than sixty people in the Ukrainian cities of Donetsk, Slovyansk, and Odessa in the past week sounds alarms that should be heard more clearly in Western capitals. The strategy Washington and the Europeans have chosen that focuses on the villainization of Putin (much as he deserves it), calls on him to withdraw support for the separatists, and threatens further sanctions if he does not is bound to fail. It will not stop the killing. It will not prevent the de facto dismemberment of Ukraine. It will not deter Putin from continuing whatever role he and Russia are playing in this process. And it fails to address the risk that what happens in Ukraine does not end in Ukraine.
Mark Twain observed that while history never repeats itself, it does sometimes rhyme. In the combination of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the collapse of authority that is destabilizing Ukraine, can we hear echoes from a century earlier when the murder of an Austrian Archduke sparked a great European war?
The thought that what we are now witnessing in Ukraine could trigger a cascade of actions and reactions that end in war will strike most readers as fanciful. Fortunately, it is. But we should not forget that in May 1914, the possibility that the assassination of an Archduke could produce a world war seemed almost inconceivable. History teaches that unlikely, even unimaginable events do happen.
If those making fateful choices in Washington, Berlin, and Moscow today were to pause to reflect on what was done—and not done—in 1914, they would recognize that the current crisis poses much greater danger than they now imagine. This would stir them to think well beyond their current conceptions of events and to stretch to much bolder, preventative initiatives than we have seen thus far.
The storyline of events 100 years ago is well known. Then, the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian imperial throne by Serbian terrorists led European elites (many of whom were cousins) to grieve. But for several weeks essentially nothing happened. Then, on July 23, Austria delivered an ultimatum to Serbia with ten demands. Serbia capitulated, agreeing to nine of the ten. But having secured a “blank check” of support from their German patron in the meantime, Austria rejected the Serbian reply, mobilized its forces, and declared war on Serbia. In response, the Russian Czar mobilized his forces. Kaiser Wilhelm then mobilized Germany’s military. Within a week, the major states of Europe had declared war against each other.
Could this sequence of events have been prevented? In the century since, historians have identified a number of opportunities. Most have focused on failures to recognize trend lines that were heightening risks that a spark would ignite a larger fire. But even after the assassination, it was still possible that statesmen could have acted to prevent what happened. One major opportunity occurred in the last week before war, as Luigi Albertini, one of the most insightful historians of these events, has explained. On July 28, when the Kaiser saw the Serbian response to Austria, he recognized that his Austrian client was out of control and sought to reign him in. He wrote to his foreign minister that this is “capitulation of the most humiliating kind, and as a result, every cause for war has gone.” The German Chancellor, however, failed to communicate this message clearly enough to stop the Austrians in their tracks. Two days later, when the Chancellor finally realized that events were driving to a war Germany did not want, he sought an off-ramp. But by then Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff, had concluded that the risks of Germany’s not mobilizing were too great to bear. When he discovered that the Chancellor was chairing a meeting on July 30 to authorize a proposal to defuse the crisis, he crashed the meeting and stunned the Chancellor with the news that he had already obtained the Kaiser’s approval for German mobilization to begin.
The framework for an agreement short of war that the Kaiser outlined on July 28, and the Chancellor embraced on July 30, was basically the same concept the British Foreign Minister Grey had been discussing several days earlier in London. Serbia would be required to destroy the Black Hand terrorist group that had assassinated the Archduke. To assure that it complied with this demand, Austrian troops would be allowed to occupy Belgrade until that was accomplished.
Had this plan been implemented, Austria’s reasonable demand that Serbia be seriously punished for killing its heir apparently could have been satisfied. Russian concerns that its Orthodox brethren in the Balkans could remain independent would have been addressed. Germany would have had no need, or pretext, to respond to mobilizations in Russia and France, since they would not have occurred. Britain could have continued to play the role it had managed to play so skillfully for a century as the offshore balancer preventing the emergence of any dominant power on the continent. In the history books, this would be discussed as the third in a succession of Balkan crises that posed risks statesmen resolved.
At this point in the Ukrainian tragedy, the danger of a violent outcome that will dismember Ukraine is rising rapidly. In last Thursday's phone call with Chancellor Merkel, Putin demanded that to defuse the crisis, the Ukrainian government withdraw its troops from southeastern regions. Defying that demand, Kiev sent its military to try to retake the rebel-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk.
The week ahead will see two decisive days of reckoning: May 9, when Russians commemorate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, and May 11, when pro-Russian separatists occupying government buildings in a dozen cities in eastern Ukraine will hold a referendum on independence. As Ukraine’s interim prime minister said pointedly last week, the government of Ukraine faces a dilemma in which it is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. In his words, “On the one hand, the majority of Ukrainians are pressing the acting president to bring these terrorists to justice. On the other hand, if you start this kind of very tough operation, you will definitely have civilian casualties. And this is the perfect excuse for Putin to say look, these ultranationalists kill Russian speaking people”, giving him a pretext to send troops.
While a Russian emissary succeeded in freeing seven OSCE hostages last week as President Obama and Chancellor Merkel threatened further sanctions, both actions were more symbolic than of substance. Deeper factors driving events are in the saddle and riding toward a violent splintering of Ukraine. Unless U.S. and European leaders act in the week ahead, before Ukrainians vote for a new President on May 25, they will, de facto, have been partitioned. And even if the United States and Europe respond by imposing biting sanctions on sectors of the Russian economy—a big “if”, given the interpenetration of the Russian and German economies—facts on the ground will be no more reversible than Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Some hard-headed realists have argued that even if Ukraine shrinks with the loss of several autonomous republics (as Georgia did in 2008 when Abkhazia and South Ossetia seceded), the impact on American interests would be limited. They also argue that since it is now clear that no one (other than Russia) is prepared to fight for Ukraine, what is happening is unfortunate but not that important. What this complacency overlooks are potential secondary effects. Two deserve attention.
First, on the current track, the combination of Putin’s actions and Western reactions will poison relations between Putin and Obama for the remainder of his two-and-a-half years in office. This is the critical period for what has been a promising prospect of a negotiated agreement that stops Iran verifiably (and interruptibly) short of a nuclear bomb. If an isolated Russian spoiler undermines the sanctions regime that has motivated Iranian interest in a negotiated solution, and Iran resumes or accelerates the nuclear program it was pursuing before the current pause, the United States and Israel will rapidly come to a crossroad. They will be forced to choose between seeing Iran acquire a nuclear bomb or bombing it to prevent that happening, igniting what is likely to become a wider war in the Middle East.
Second, think about the Baltics. Imagine a scenario in which we see a replay of Crimea or Donetsk in Latvia where one quarter of the population are ethnic Russians or Russian speakers. With or without Putin’s encouragement, several hundred of them occupy government buildings in Riga; Latvian police and security services evict them in an operation that turns violent and leaves as many corpses as last week’s fire in Odessa; the occupiers call on Putin to honor his pledge to “defend the rights of compatriots.” If the principles and precedent established by the Putin Doctrine lead to Russia’s little green men without insignia entering Latvia in what threatens to become another creeping annexation, who will fight for Latvia?
The brute fact that Latvia is a member of the NATO alliance is hard to ignore. The United States and other members have solemnly pledged themselves to regard “an attack upon one as an attack upon all.” But will German troops come to Latvia’s rescue? And if they did, would a majority of Germans support that action? Would the French, or British? Would Americans?
If we do, we will cross a bright redline Republican and Democratic presidents assiduously avoided over four decades of Cold War: American and Russian troops would be killing each other. Any such conflict would raise risks of escalation in which each nuclear superpower remains capable of erasing the other from the map. But if we don't, we will see a precipitous collapse of the credibility of U.S. security guarantees that have been the central pillar of the international security architecture the United States has constructed since World War II. Not only European allies, but Japan, South Korea, and others who have staked their survival on a U.S. security umbrella will look to their own defense.
In highlighting downside dangers in the current drift of events in Ukraine, my argument is not that these are the most likely outcomes. If Putin thinks first about Russian national interests, he will have sufficient reason to cooperate in preventing Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb. From the perspective of Russian national interests, acquiring additional territory in Eastern or Southern Ukraine and seeing the emergence of autonomous republics dependent on substantial financial support from Moscow is hardly a beneficial outcome for Russia. The overwhelming majority of Russians in the Baltics know that their lives are better as members of independent European states than they would be as provinces of Russia.
Nonetheless, especially in managing relations between great powers, and most especially, nuclear superpowers, American Cold War statesmen were vigilant in analyzing worst-case scenarios. Recognizing extreme risks (extremely unlikely, but extremely consequential), they observed what JFK, in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, called “primitive rules of prudence.” These accepted constraints and compromises in a competition in which the ultimate objective for each was to bury the other. Thus, Eisenhower refused to come to the rescue of Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956; LBJ to support the Prague uprising in 1968; and Reagan to deny overt support for Polish Solidarity and others as they loosened the Soviet grip on the Warsaw Pact.
If the likely outcome on the current path is unacceptable, or poses unacceptable risks, are there alternatives that, however ugly, are nonetheless preferable to what is otherwise likely to happen? I believe the answer is yes. Imagine an agreement in which all of the territory of Ukraine (minus Crimea) remains a sovereign, independent nonbloc state. In military and economic relations, Ukraine would agree with all the parties that it would remain neutral for the next quarter-century. It would thus not become a member of NATO or the European Union, nor of equivalent Russian-led institutions. Internally, it would make a commitment to meet the highest EU standards for guaranteeing minority rights, including those of Russian speakers. And as an integral part of this package, all parties would also commit themselves to provide specific support for the new government of Ukraine as it attempts to build a viable state. For historical analogies, think Belgium in the nineteenth century, or Austria after World War II, or Finland.
Obviously, such an agreement could not be imposed on Ukraine. Its government will have to be a willing party to any resolution and convinced that it is preferable to its feasible alternatives. Realistic Ukrainians know, however, that Ukraine’s survival as an independent political entity will prove impossible without Russian forbearance. Indeed, for the foreseeable future, Ukraine’s economic viability will depend on Russian financial assistance (through below-market gas prices and delayed collection of outstanding debt for earlier deliveries), continuing exports of essential raw materials, and imports of Ukrainian products—all of which Russia can withhold at its own discretion.
Obviously, such an agreement would not be fair. But as JFK often observed, “life is unfair.” Ukraine is free to choose between claiming all the rights and privileges of a normal modern state and ending up with half its current territory, or meeting enough of a Russian bully’s demands to have a chance to survive with its current borders and, if it succeeds, to put Putin to shame.
An agreement requiring so much compromise by all parties will strike most readers as implausible—and is surely unlikely. Politically, the smart move for all the Western leaders is to focus their fire on Putin, unquestionably a most deserving target. But for those of us who still believe that Ukraine can have a future, this week’s decision by the IMF to release the first $3 billion of a $17 billion emergency rescue package to prevent the country from default and forestall economic collapse keeps hope alive. Despite the neo–Cold War divide with Russia on every other issue concerning Ukraine, the IMF was able to pull the package together quickly and win approval for it only because of cooperation from all the parties—including Putin’s Russia.
Image: U.S. Air Force Flickr. | <urn:uuid:15d3cbd9-6faf-4852-96e7-3f4923b6a4c6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nationalinterest.org/feature/could-the-ukraine-crisis-spark-world-war-10387?page=show | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00106-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967595 | 2,909 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Ornate Horned Frog
Ornate Horned Frogs are large frogs, up to 10 inches in length. They are strong and pugnacious, with a huge mouth, large teeth, and a wide body. They are covered with bumpy warts on their upper sides. They are intricately colored, with geometric patterns of yellow, red, and green on a dark background (somewhat resembling a gourd!). The underside ranges from pink to yellow, and the throat is mottled in gray. The colors seem conspicuous when the frog is out of its natural habitat, (helping to serve as a warning to predators), but the color scheme blends very well into its home setting. The powerful limbs are short, the digits blunt, and an enlarged metatarsal tubercle or spade is present on each hind leg. Its eyelids are drawn up into small 'horns.' These are really just flaps of skin and not hard or sharp at all. The eyes are set as much as three times higher from the lower jaw than in most frogs, enabling this frog to completely burrow into a loose substrate with just the eyes exposed. Females are slightly longer than males. | <urn:uuid:5b18694d-4d0d-4758-bbae-a87b8c1e8215> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://resourcelibrary.clemetzoo.com/animals/92 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00007-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964271 | 244 | 3.09375 | 3 |
World Climates & Vegetation
Terrestrial Ecosystems (from Soils & Veg)
- The tropical rainforest is earth's most complex biome in terms of both structure and species diversity.
- Tropical forests, covering 7% of the earth's surface area, contain perhaps 50% of the world's species.
- It occurs under optimal growing conditions: abundant precipitation and year round warmth.
- There is no annual rhythm to the forest; rather each species has evolved its own flowering and fruiting seasons.
- Sunlight is a major limiting factor. A variety of strategies have been successful in the struggle to reach light or to adapt to the low intensity of light beneath the canopy.
- Very poor soil forming processes. Not much organic matter.
- Accumulation of CaCO3 at the surface.
- Alluvial Fan soil formation (1) | <urn:uuid:09bdfeea-c070-4f1c-9537-61acd38d2c9d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.geography.hunter.cuny.edu/tbw/wc.notes/15.climates.veg/notes_chap15.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00038-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.891096 | 178 | 3.625 | 4 |
UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND, VA.- The University of Richmond Museums
presents "Surface Tension: Pattern, Texture, and Rhythm in Art from the Collection", on view from March 20 to May 14, 2010, in the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art. The exhibition features art in which pattern, texture, and rhythm are the primary elements that generate energy and visual movement as well as emotional and aesthetic content. These selected paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and textiles are from the permanent collection of the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art and Print Study Center.
Also on view in both the Harnett Museum and UR Downtown is a companion presentation of student art by University of Richmond students and by children attending three local Richmond public schools, who were inspired by the Surface Tension exhibition.
To create the art featured in Surface Tension, the artists used line, color, shapes, and sometimes surface manipulation (such as thickly applied paint or charcoal) to create complex compositions, which may be abstract or representational. Highlights from the exhibition include a lithograph by Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein who was inspired by the graphic design of comic strips as well as other forms of inexpensive and popular printing methods. Photographs by Life magazine photographer Andreas Feininger emphasize the complex patterns found in natural forms, such as rock formations and flower petals. Two oil paintings by Richmond artist Theresa Pollak demonstrate her mastery of color and form in creating dense compositions that reference the landscape.
Surface Tension also includes an activity and resource room where visitors can learn more about basic elements of art and design. Here visitors can create their own artworks with the knowledge they gained from the exhibition. Projects for visitors range from collages and graphic design to learning more about movement and rhythm. The exhibition is designed to foster active learning and engage students in careful observation skills. The exhibition and the resource room will address multiple disciplines within the Virginia Standards of Learning, including visual arts, English, history, mathematics, and science for K-12 students.
The University of Richmond Museums, along with the University's Bonner Center for Civic Engagement and UR Downtown, partnered with art teachers at the following public schools to provide an extensive educational component to the exhibition: G.W. Carver Elementary School, William H. Fox Elementary School, and Overby-Sheppard Elementary School. Using the work in Surface Tension as inspiration, students created a variety of types of art including portraits made with continuous line, collages of two- and three-dimensional objects, drawings of abstract patterns based on Islamic textiles and ceramics, still-life paintings, and Pop art-inspired compositions. These works are displayed in the resource room in the Harnett Museum and The Wilton Companies Gallery at UR Downtown.
The University of Richmond students created their work while enrolled in beginning and advanced design courses during the 2009-2010 academic year. These students created digital prints and paintings and drawings on paper focusing on the same formal elements of pattern, texture, and rhythm. | <urn:uuid:0ec631bb-7a12-4913-bcb5-5a2a36be1a5c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36841&int_modo=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00200-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95505 | 625 | 2.6875 | 3 |
... continued from the previous page.
What is art?
The segment about a series of illustrations for the book "The Divine Comedy", to me is one of the most fascinating passages in the movie. As they scroll through various proofs and prints for the book, Milton remembers using the monoprint technique for the illustrations. Monoprinting is traditionally an art form reserved only for framable prints simply because by their nature, each one is unique.
We learn quite often, Milton would select what is considered a fine arts media or technique to express the message in a certain way. From painting to crayon sketches to scratchboard the medium would suggest its use as the appropriate way to achieve a certain look and feel.
Works that are too preconceived tend to go dead -- they become inert and less lively. Work that responds to the peculiarities of the moment tend to be more energized.
Pondering the meaning of art, and the role it has played in society over the centuries, Milton reflects on this aspect, once again drawing from his vast knowledge of history...
There's a wonderful book I've quoted most of my life, by Lewis Hyde called 'The Gift.' Basically, it says this gift giving which occurs in primitive cultures, one tribe to another, is a device for pacifying others and establishing relationships -- is what artists do. They basically create the commonalities, the symbolism, so that people feel as though they have some relationship to one another. When people don't feel they have that relationship, they kill each other. So, that role of providing common ground is absolutely essential to civilization.
To Inform & Delight
The truth is, I've been looking for a definition of what art is, all my life -- without fully understanding exactly what it encompasses. But in the course of doing a speech I found several references -- on by Horace, who was a critic and poet back in Roman times, 1st century. He had this great line: 'The purpose of art is to inform and delight.' Wow. You can't get much better than that.
Get the film because you'll want to watch it more than once. If you have a studio, or an agency, get the film because you'll want to share it with those you work with. If you are in education or training, get the film because you will want to make it an integral part of the student's experience. At the very least, watch it -- enjoy it and learn from it.
You'll be glad you did -- I guarantee it!
Purchase the movie DVD at New Video : To Inform & Delight
Purchase the movie DVD at Amazon.com
Watch it now at Amazon Pay Per View
Watch a trailer at: www.metacafe.com
See a slideshow of some of Milton Glaser's most notable works
Dig into a feast of visual works by Milton Glaser on Google
And, thanks for reading
Don't forget ... we encourage you to share your discoveries about favorite or famous graphic designers and illustrators with other readers. Just comment below, join the forums for discussion, or give me a tweet at Twitter/DTG_Magazine
Arthouse Films is an independent film production and distribution label based in NY and LA and acquires, produces, co-produces and distributes 20+ titles per year. Upcoming and current titles include: HERB & DOROTHY by Megumi Sasaki, MILTON GLASER: TO INFORM & DELIGHT by Wendy Keys, BEAUTIFUL LOSERS by Aaron Rose, REM KOOLHAAS: A KIND OF ARCHITECT by Markus Heidingsfelder and Min Tesch, THE UNIVERSE OF KEITH HARING by Christina Clausen, OBSCENE by Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O'Connor, PAINTERS PAINTING by Emile de Antonio, and the HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON DVD Boxed Set. Arthouse is currently in production on a feature-length documentary on Jean-Michel Basquiat by Tamra Davis.
New Video is an entertainment company bringing top television, cutting edge documentaries, independent film, professional sports, and children’s programming to DVD and to the digital marketplace. Home to some of the most prestigious names in entertainment, including A&E®, HISTORY™, Major League Baseball®, Major League Soccer® and Scholastic Storybook Treasures™, as well as Docurama Films and NEWVIDEO NYC, New Video showcases well over 5,000 titles in its DVD catalog. As the world’s largest independent digital video distributor, New Video Digital provides over 10,000 hours of film and television from more than 100 trusted brands to download and streaming platforms, including iTunes, Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, Xbox, and Amazon. | <urn:uuid:33972e08-9fc4-438d-881f-f2b8e673f2b5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.graphic-design.com/design/milton-glaser-inform-and-delight?page=0,2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00131-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945388 | 985 | 2.984375 | 3 |
The control module is the control center of the fuel injection system. It constantly looks at the information from various sensors (inputs) and controls the systems (outputs) that affect vehicle performance. The control module also performs the diagnostics of the system. It can recognize operational problems, alert the driver through the Malfunction Indicator Lamp (MIL
) "Service Engine Soon" light on the instrument panel and store a Diagnostic Trouble Code(s) (DTC
) in the control module memory. The DTC identifies the problem areas to aid the technician in performing repairs. OPERATION
The control module is an electronic computer designed to process the various input information, and send the necessary electrical response to control fuel delivery, spark control, and other emission control systems. The control module can control these devices through the use of Quad Driver Modules (QDM). When the control module is commanding a device or a component "ON," the voltage potential of the output is "LOW" or near zero volts. When the control module is commanding a device or component "OFF," the voltage potential of the circuit will be "HIGH," or near 12 volts. The primary function of the QDM is to supply the ground for the component being controlled.
The input information has an interrelation between sensor output. If one of the input devices failed, such as the oxygen sensor, this could affect more than one of the systems controlled by the computer.
The control module has two parts for service:
- Controller which is the control module without the PROM (MEM-CAL).
- PROM (Programmable Read Only Memory) which is a separate memory calibrator unit
The control module has a "learning" ability which allows it to make corrections for minor variations in the fuel system to improve driveability. If the battery is disconnected, to clear diagnostic trouble codes or for other repairs. the "learning" process resets and begins again. A change may be noted in the vehicle's performance. To "teach" the vehicle, ensure the engine is at operating temperature. The vehicle should be driven at part throttle, with moderate acceleration and idle conditions until normal performance returns. NOTE
The control module must be maintained at a temperature below 85°C (185°F) at all times. This is most essential if the vehicle is put through a baking process. The control module will become inoperative if it's temperature exceeds 85°C (185°F). It is recommended that temporary insulation be placed around the control module during the time the vehicle is in a paint oven or other high temperature processes.
This is talking about the part you uploaded to me. Knock Sensor System
All gas engines are equipped with a knock sensor system. A knock sensor is mounted on the engine block. On vehicles with a manual transmission, the sensor is connected by a blue wire to the knock sensor module, which is bracket mounted on the top of the engine. The sensor, in response to engine knock, sends a signal to the module and from there to the ECM
, located in the passenger compartment. The ECM sends a signal to the distributor to retard timing.
If the vehicle is equipped with an automatic transmission (4L80E or 4L60E), a PCM
(powertrain control module) is used instead of an PCM
. The PCM performs all ECM functions and also provides electronic control for the transmission. It is located in the same place as the ECM. NO knock sensor module is used on a vehicle equipped with a PCM.
Instead, the blue wire from the knock sensor is wired directly to the PCM.
You do not have one of the modules you showed me, where did you get the picture? why do you think that is the problem? | <urn:uuid:6ed1f8af-8f26-4420-9fcd-cf3e8e1001fb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.justanswer.com/chevy/3jgtu-physical-location-ecm-1993-chevy-suburban.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396959.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00054-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928815 | 772 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Easter Island : A Case Study in the Response to Resource Depletion
This is a guest post from Ralph Faggotter (also known as fingolfin).
This is a case study in which you are invited to answer the question, “What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?”
For a several years, I have been intrigued by this question which Jared Diamond asks us to consider in his book ‘Collapse’.
In fact, the question can be asked more broadly: “What were the thought processes and discussions amongst the inhabitants of Easter Island leading up to the removal of the last remnants of forest?” This could be seen, perhaps, as a hypothetical exploration, rooted in a real historical event, of “the psychology of resource depletion denial.”
I can’t help feeling that this is highly relevant to us today where the world seems shrunk to the size of a small island in the vast ocean of space. How could the islanders so knowingly have destroyed the life-blood of their island and their own future? How do you imagine the Easter Islanders behaved in those last few years before the last tree was felled?
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hotumatua/
For some of the rationalisations, we probably don’t need to look any further than our local talkback radio, the proceedings of the Copenhagen convention or the comments section on any mainstream media opinion piece about Peak Oil or Climate Change, but there would certainly have been powerful idiosyncratic religious beliefs at play too.
Setting the Scene:
Easter Island is a small triangular island of 66 sq miles in the sub-tropical South East Pacific Ocean over 1000 miles from anywhere and consisting of 3 linked extinct volcanoes.
It was first settled by Polynesians who migrated there from the nearest Pacific Islands to the west, sometime between 400 AD and 900 AD.
When they arrived bringing their traditional Polynesian vegetables the island was covered in a variety of large and smaller species of trees and in particular a very large species of palm tree with edible nuts and a wide girth, seals and many species of sea birds which nested there free from predators (incidentally rats which played an important role in the deforestation by eating seeds and nuts).
There were no permanent creeks and the soil and climate were relatively unfavourable compared with many other Pacific Islands for a number of reasons, but at first it must have seemed wonderfully bountiful.
The population grew and 12 tribes became established, with the island divided up like a pizza in the traditional Polynesian way. Most significantly, there was no one supreme chief--instead each tribe vied for status with one other. For the most part, this was probably fairly harmonious with considerable cooperation between the tribes probably mediated by a counsel of the chiefs of the 12 tribes such as we see elsewhere but with intermittent power and territorial struggles (this absence of a single controlling chief may have played a big part in the disasters which followed).
The settlers brought with them their traditional Polynesian religious beliefs regarding deification of ancestors transmogrified into gods of fertility and bounty personified in the shape of stone statues--carved, transported and placed on impressive stone platforms near the beach around the coast in each tribe’s territory. Elsewhere in Polynesia though, the statues tend to be small. Presumably, as the statues represented the power of the chiefs and their link to the supernatural and hence the future prosperity of the tribe, there developed intense competition between the tribes to see who could have the most statues and the largest statues and hence the most prestige and glory. The key village of each tribe was located near to the beach and the statues were arranged in a row between the village and the sea. I had always imagined that they faced outwards towards the sea but recently learned that they actually faced inwards towards the village.
Nearly all of the statues came from one quarry of ideal stone near the middle of the island. The statues had to be carved out of the rock using harder stone tools then transported down to the coast and then somehow erected on the platforms. (The large reddish cylindrical hats which can be seen on some statues came from another quarry.)
This transportation was an extraordinary feat and could only be performed using vast numbers of wooden rollers, sledges and levers, not to mention the incredible number of man hours per statue. The capacity of the island to provide a relatively easy living (what we would call the EROEI) so as to free up so many workers for seemingly non-productive activity must have been considerable.
But over the centuries, this non-productive use of the forests, combined with increased need for timber due to population growth, would have gradually resulted in progressive deforestation, loss of habitat for a variety of edible plants, birds and animals, loss of protection from sun and wind, loss of fire wood and erosion of soil.
Natural reseeding would have been inhibited by a plentiful supply of seed-eating rats which had few natural enemies on the island (probably only humans and birds of prey).
The phenomenon of ‘creeping normalcy’ may have prevented anyone from noticing this decline for a few centuries - especially as the early statues were comparatively small and would have consumed the forests at a relatively modest rate.
But as the forests shrunk in area and the annual percentage rate of depletion steadily increased, at some point, someone must have realised that the situation was not sustainable and said as much. The island is not that big and what was happening at one end would have been common knowledge at the other end.
By around the year 1600, the last tree was chopped down and there were no more until they were reintroduced by Europeans many years later.
Some time before the last tree was cut down- perhaps this was done in a moment of spite, desperation, anger or vengeance - the society collapsed into mass starvation, war and cannibalism.
What might have happened in the lead up?
One can imagine between 1400 and 1500, some of the people muttering about the loss of forest and predicting that “..at the current rate it will all be gone in a generation or two.”
How did the chiefs react to this prediction ? Did they have a ‘Forest Change’ summit? Was it on the agenda of one of their regular meetings and at what percentage of depletion from the original virgin forest did this occur? 50%? 70%? 90%?
Where the first whistleblowers listened to or ridiculed or punished? Perhaps at first they were ridiculed as eccentrics then if they persisted. Perhaps they were seen as a genuine threat to the establishment and eaten as human sacrifice (with the priests getting first pick of the good bits) as was the order of the day. This would have kept the doomsters quiet for a while though many may have continued to secretly harbour fears for the long-term sustainability of the forest.
There would have been powerful forces opposed to the expression of such heretical ideas. The power of the chiefs, the priestly caste and the gods/ancestors was integrated both practically and theologically (as we see in most societies).
There is a kind of unassailable philosophy which says that the hereditary rights and powers of the chiefs are the manifestation on Earth of the Will of the Gods. The ancestors of the chiefs (i.e. dead chiefs) take on god-like powers. The role of the gods is to ensure the ongoing health, fertility and prosperity of the people and the ongoing bountifulness of the land and sea. The priests interpret ‘The Will of the Gods’ which somehow always favours the centralisation of power with the chiefs and the priests.
The statue of the chief becomes one of the key physical manifestations of this power.
This all works very well with the people and the king’s security service remaining loyal and willing to provide tithes of goods and services to the king and his retinue in return for their ongoing guaranteed prosperity.
But this kind of system can easily initiate a competitive positive feedback loop in which each chief attempts to outdo his rival chiefs in creating the biggest and the best statue in his own honour (the gods have confirmed in each case that this is their wish).
Unfortunately the gods can be fickle too and sometimes, in spite of all the standard observances, prayers, ritual, human sacrifices and statue building, the tribes will go through a bad patch in which the fish disappear, the sea birds don’t nest, the rain doesn’t arrive, pests or diseases damage the root crops or other mysterious and inexplicable bad things (like cyclones or tsunami) happen.
When this happens the loyalty of the people and their faith in the system can be sorely tested so that the chief will need to respond to the crisis in some way. One way is to accuse some already unpopular people of witchcraft, blasphemy, giving out bad vibes/negative energy etc to deliberately cause the bad weather events - in other words a scapegoat. These offenders might also coincidentally be the very persons who had been advocating the building of smaller statures in order to avoid cutting down so many trees.
Another response apart from ruthlessly suppressing all dissent is to logically argue that the gods must be displeased because the statues aren’t big enough and a nervous chief, worried about his shrinking powerbase will commission the production of an even bigger statue just to confirm his piety and majesty.
In spite of all this the Establishment themselves must at some point have started to notice the bleeding obvious, namely that the forest was nearly gone and that they would have to discuss how best to avoid losing the remaining bits of forest.
So what happened next? Why didn’t a workable plan emerge and get implemented? If it did what went wrong? Can we blame it all on tribalism and ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’? We know the final outcome, but what was the path to that outcome and are we treading that same path again?
It would have been wonderful to have had a written historical record of the details but in its absence, it what do you imagine happened?
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vtveen
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This is a community site and the discussion is moderated. The rules in brief: no personal abuse and no climate denial. Complete Guidelines. | <urn:uuid:1468a5ad-abb8-454a-9ff1-6d73a4588837> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.resilience.org/stories/2010-04-08/easter-island-case-study-response-resource-depletion | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402516.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00087-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973457 | 2,171 | 2.5625 | 3 |
CERF gives $7 million to help people affected by conflict in Mali
24 July 2012: The United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has given US$6,896,415 to humanitarian partners in Mali to aid conflict-affected people.
Some 146,000 Malians have been internally displaced, and over 191,000 have sought refuge in neighbouring countries following the onset of fighting in January between Government forces and the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad.
This complex emergency strikes areas that are highly food-insecure following the 2011 drought. In addition, most basic services no longer function in the three northern regions and in parts of the country not under Government control. The crisis has adversely affected the education system, and most secondary-school students have moved to southern regions of Mali to resume schooling.
CERF provides $6 million in response to drought, malnutrition and food security in Mali
14 March 2012: The 2011-2012 growing season in Mali has been devastated by a lack of rain, leading to a drop in agricultural productivity and reduced grazing sources for livestock, threatening the livelihoods of millions of small farmers and agro-pastoralists.
The national early warning system indicates that roughly 3.5 million people have become vulnerable. The current food and nutrition crisis affects one out of five Malians, with a possible peak expected during the dry season between April and September 2012.
Global acute malnutrition rates among children aged 6-59 months have reached critical levels in numerous regions of the country, hovering between 12 and 15 per cent. Some 40,000 children are affected by severe acute malnutrition while some 150,000 children are affected by moderate malnutrition in the country.
CERF allocates $1 million for coordination and support in Mali
7 March 2012: The Central Emergency Response Fund allocated US$1 million to the World Food Programme (WFP) in Mali to help WFP and partners access populations requiring humanitarian assistance through provision of humanitarian air services.
At present, humanitarian partners must travel several days on poor roads to reach affected populations in north-eastern Mali. Humanitarian air services have been requested by more than 20 humanitarian organizations and the donor community in the country. In addition to ensuring air services are available to humanitarian partners, medical and security evacuations from remote areas will be facilitated. The air services is expected to help reduce delays in the delivery and coordination of humanitarian assistance in remote areas of the country. | <urn:uuid:7afcd4ea-19ab-43fd-94bd-af26cf82196f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.unocha.org/cerf/cerf-worldwide/where-we-work/mli-2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00008-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94941 | 495 | 2.640625 | 3 |
The Olympic torch was lit, then re-lit, in the Games' spiritual home of ancient Olympia as the flame began its long journey from Greece to London for the London 2012 Olympic Games.
In a typically grandiose ceremony, the flame was lit by Ino Menegaki - "an actress who has studied classical song, music and movement".
She played the part of the high priestess who lights the flame from the rays of the sun. Ancient rituals say the Olympic flame can only be lit by the sun's own rays.
The traditional ceremony took place under baking sun and tight security in front of the ruins of the Temple of Hera in Greece, birthplace of the Ancient Games.
With the ceremonial occasion underway, the Olympic Anthem was played and the Olympic Flag was hoisted. God Save The Queen was also played as the Union Flag was raised and an extract of the poem "The Light Of Olympia" was recited.
Spyros Zannias, chairman of the Olympic Torch Relay Commission, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, Hellenic Olympic Committee president Spyros Capralos, and London 2012 chairman Lord Coe said a few words before the lighting began.
There was a brief moment of concern when the flame blew out soon after it was lit, but it was quickly re-lit and the ceremony continued.
The first athlete to officially carry the torch was world champion swimmer Spyros Gianniotis, who started the torch's long relay route, with the first leg taking place in Greece during the next week before its trip to England on May 18th, where it will embark on a 70-day relay around the UK, with a host of lucky Mirror readers taking part .
A 15-strong delegation from London 2012, led by Lord Coe, was invited to witness the lighting first-hand at the Temple of Hera, as the remaining guests stayed seated in the ancient stadium.
During the ceremony, Lord Coe presented a framed London 2012 poster - titled "For The Unknown Runner" by artist Chris Ofili - to the Hellenic Olympic Committee.
Crowds gathered in the ancient stadium could only see clouds but the Olympic flame burst alight almost automatically as the high priestess lowered it into the mirrored bowl in front of the Temple of Hera.
A sole flutist played as the small group of VIPs returned to their seats in the stadium to see the priestesses, dressed in floor-length white robes, do a ritual dance.
In front of the ancient ruins of the Temple of Hera, the high priestess lit the flame by the rays of the sun in a parabolic mirror.
It was placed in an urn before the high priestess and priestesses carried the flame to the stadium.
The first torchbearer is Spyros Gianniotis, Greece's England-born world champion 10km swimming champion.
Gianniotis, who has already booked his place at London 2012, which will be his fourth consecutive Olympics, proudly set off via Pierre de Coubertin's Grove.
He passed it on to 19-year-old Alex Loukos, who was one of the 30 East End schoolchildren who travelled to Singapore in 2005 as part of the closing presentations for London's bid.
Loukos, whose family are from Greece, has been training for his role as the second torchbearer by running around the streets near his East Ham home.
The keen boxer could usually be spotted wearing a T-shirt promoting the Fight For Peace Academy, an international sporting charity for youngsters.
The flame will visit Crete, Piraeus, Thessalonica, Xanthi and Larissa, among other places, in a relay around the Greek mainland and islands.
The torchbearers are taking it from Ancient Olympia to the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, where the first modern Olympics were held in 1896. This is where the official handover to London 2012 takes place on May 17.
The whole lighting ceremony, from its costumes to its choreography, is based on antiquity.
It has all been precision-timed and prepared by choreographer Artemis Ignatiou.
The graduate from the National School of Dance of Greece also choreographed lighting and handover ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
On its eighth and final day, the Greek leg of the 2012 relay will carry the flame to the Acropolis, the Acropolis Museum, the centre of Athens, Zappeio and to the handover ceremony at the Panathenaic Stadium.
The Hellenic Olympic Committee has proudly announced that a "historical innovation" has been introduced to bring the flame to the handover ceremony to London.
It said: "The last torchbearers will be this time two in number and their presence will be symbolically linking the past Olympic Games in Beijing, with Greece, the birthplace of the institution and the upcoming Games in London."
Chinese gymnast Li Ning, who lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Games, and Greek weightlifter Pyrros Dimas will be the last torchbearers in Greece.
Li Ning is the 14-time world champion who won six medals at the 1984 Olympics including three golds, while Pyrros Dimas is something of a modern-day Greek sporting hero.
He won Greece's first Olympic weightlifting gold since 1904, when he was a 20-year-old competing in the 82.5kg weight class at the Barcelona 1992 Games.
He was on his way to winning three Olympic gold medals during his career which he ended with a bronze in front of his home crowd at the 2004 Athens Games.
The image of him symbolically leaving his shoes on the platform to a standing ovation is one of the most memorable of the Games.
After the May 17 handover ceremony, the flame is then flown to the UK, landing at RNAS Culdrose, near Helston, Cornwall, on May 18.
London 2012 is remaining tight-lipped about who will be the first torchbearer for its 70-day relay around Britain.
Starting at Land's End, this national relay will see 8,000 torchbearers carrying it from May 19 to the lighting of the cauldron at the opening ceremony at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, east London.
The London 2012 Olympics begin on July 27.
Mr Robertson said: "Greece has a very, very proud history and I think the last thing they would want with a moment like this is not to be seen to be honouring that history.
"They are absolutely central to the birth of the Olympic movement and everything that has happened subsequently.
"For them, this is a really important moment - it is a really important moment in a different way to us - and so far they have done it very well."
Standing at the site of the ancient stadium, which dates back to 5th Century BC, just ahead of the ceremony to light the flame, Lord Coe said: "It is a pretty serious day, to be honest.
"I do not think that it was a day when we set off in 1992 (when the bid was being considered) that we were sure we were going to be here and it is nice to be here." | <urn:uuid:2b293bd6-608b-4715-8bd5-ba2563eb52b1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other-sports/london-2012-olympic-torch-is-lit-826844 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00109-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970806 | 1,488 | 2.53125 | 3 |
South Carolina became the second state to drop the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) last week after Gov. Nikki Haley signed a bill calling for the state to develop its own educational standards. But many schools in the state had already begun implementing Common Core standards — and they were getting positive results.
The bill allows schools to continue with the Common Core standards for one year but requires the state’s Department of Education and independent, non-partisan Education Oversight Committee to work on a new set of standards for the 2015-2016 school year. It comes two months after Indiana dropped the Common Core, citing lack of control over the standards though drafts of the Indiana standards copied the standards word for word.
South Carolina began implementation of the Common Core in 2010, and since then, schools ranked at the “at risk” level, meaning low performance results, have been declining. In a survey of school districts by the Education Oversight Committee, responses were positive from the just under half of school districts that had already begun implementation. Those districts enroll around 70 percent of public school students in the state.
Dr. Shawn Clark, the director of curriculum and instruction at Saluda County Schools, told ThinkProgress that she noticed a huge change in students once her district began implementing the Common Core standards. “I saw our children were thinking more critically,” Clark said, who taught for six years before becoming an administrator at Saluda Middle School for over a decade.
Last year, 90 percent of 8th graders in the Saluda district passed the writing test, with around half of them receiving an “exemplary” rating. Clark said this was almost unheard of, especially in a relatively poor area that didn’t spend much on hiring outside consultants to train teachers on the Common Core.
The South Carolina bill asserts that assessments formed with the new standards should be able to compare “performance of students in South Carolina to other students’ performance on comparable standards in other states.” But that’s arguably what Common Core would do best, and what it was designed to do–set common, consistent guidelines across every state. It was this inter-state collaboration that Clark liked best. She was able to share curriculum ideas with educators in New York through the Common Core, and she said different standards no longer made sense in the globalized world.
South Carolina’s new standards may not end up being very different from the Common Core’s anyway, according to Clark. (The old standards weren’t all that different from Common Core either.) She said South Carolina’s standards will likely just be “renamed,” with a few additions like adding cursive and multiplication table memorization to the standards. She hopes legislators won’t completely change the standards, which she said would be a “colossal waste of finance and time.”
Clark said she wasn’t surprised about the passage of the anti-Common Core bill, which she attributes to pure politics. “This was more about state’s rights than students’ best interests,” she said. “Here in South Carolina, some people are turned off of anything that has a federal label on it.”
Meanwhile, eliminating the Common Core could cost the state. It has already invested a fair amount of money into teacher training programs to align with the standards, and any changes could present added costs. In Louisiana, replacing the Common Core would cost $25.2 million over the next five years, according to the Louisiana Department of Education. In Indiana, estimates of the costs of implementing the state’s alternative to Common Core ranged from $32.5 million to $125 million.
Abigail Bessler is an intern at ThinkProgress. | <urn:uuid:5a3a9d2a-8c0b-40df-bb0b-ca0d13566c3c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/06/05/3445341/common-core-south-carolina/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00022-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968587 | 773 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Experts agree that long-term alcohol abuse is detrimental to memory function and can cause neuro-degenerative disease. However, according to a study published in Age and Ageing by Oxford University Press today, there is evidence that light-to-moderate alcohol consumption may decrease the risk of cognitive decline or dementia.
Estimates from various studies have suggested the prevalence of alcohol-related dementia to be about 10% of all cases of dementia. Now researchers have found after analyzing 23 longitudinal studies of subjects aged 65 years and older that the impact of small amounts of alcohol was associated with lower incidence rates of overall dementia and Alzheimer dementia, but not of vascular dementia and cognitive decline. It is still an open question whether different alcoholic beverages, such as beer, wine, and spirits, all have a similar effect. Some studies have shown a positive effect of wine only, which may be due either to the level of ethanol, the complex mixture that comprises wine, or to the healthier life-style ascribed to wine drinkers.
A total of 3,327 patients were interviewed in their homes by trained investigators (physicians, psychologists, gerontologists) and reassessed one and a half years and three years later. Information on the cognitive status of those who had died in the interim was collected from family members, caregivers or primary care physicians.
Among the 3,327 patients interviewed at baseline, 84.8% (n=2,820) could be personally interviewed one and a half years later and 73.9% (n=2,460) three years later. For the vast majority of subjects who could not be personally interviewed, systematic assessments (follow-up 1: 482; follow-up 2: 336) focusing particularly on dementia could be obtained from GPs, relatives or caregivers. Within three years, follow-up assessments were unavailable for only 49 subjects (1.5%). Proxy information could be obtained for 98.0% (n=295) of the 301 patients who had died in the interim. Since dementia is associated with a higher mortality rate, proxy information is particularly important in order to avoid underestimation of incident dementia cases.
At baseline there were 3,202 persons without dementia. Alcohol consumption information was available for 3,180 subjects:
Alcohol consumption was significantly associated with male gender, younger age, higher level of education, not living alone, and not being depressed.
The calculation of incident cases of dementia is based on 3,202 subjects who had no dementia at baseline. Within the follow-up period of three years:
Univariate and multivariate analyses revealed that alcohol consumption was significantly associated with a lower incidence of overall dementia and Alzheimer dementia. In line with a large-scale study also based on GP attenders aged 75 years and older, the study found that light-to-moderate alcohol consumption was associated with relatively good physical and mental health. This three-year follow-up study included, at baseline, only those subjects 75 years of age and older, the mean age was 80.2 years, much higher than that in most other studies.
|Contact: Christian Purdy|
Oxford University Press | <urn:uuid:7627d592-e789-476b-ab20-6408fde01781> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Research-suggests-alcohol-consumption-helps-stave-off-dementia-79724-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00049-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960976 | 634 | 3.34375 | 3 |
In their analysis of data from the 1995, 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2005 administrations of the SCS, Robers et al. (2010) found a decrease in the percentage of students ages 12 through 18 reportingcriminal victimization at school in the 6 months prior to the survey. While 9.5 percent of students reported being victims of any crime at school in 1995, about 4.3 percent reported being victims of any crime at school in 2005. In 1995, about 7.1 percent of students reported being victims of theft, compared to 3.1 percent in 2005. Three percent of students reported being victims of violent crime in 1995, compared to 1.2 percent in 2005. In both 1995 and 2005, less than 1 percent of students reported a serious violent victimization. However, between 2005 and 2007, there were no measurable changes in the percentage of students reporting any type of criminal victimization. This report supplements the findings of Robers et al. (2010) by providing the most recent data from the 2009 SCS and detailing the relationship between reports of school crime and characteristics of students and schools.
In school year 2008–09, about 3.9 percent of students were victims of any crime at school, 2.8 percent were victims of theft, 1.4 percent were victims of a violent crime, and 0.3 percent were victims of a serious violent crime (table 1).5,6 Furthermore, 1.1 percent of students reported being victims of a simple assault at school (classified as a violent crime, but not a serious violent crime). Subsequent sections of this report elaborate on the relationships among characteristics of student victims and nonvictims of violent crime and theft at school as well as student victim status and student reports of school conditions, security measures at school, and fear and avoidance behaviors.
5 Student reports of "theft" and "violent" victimization may not sum
to "any" victimization because respondents can report more than one victimization.
6 Estimates for serious violent victimization are only provided in detail in table 1. Because the percentage of students who experienced this type of victimization was not large enough to present meaningful cross-tabulations, tables 2 through 7 include estimates for serious violent victimization in the estimates for violent victimization. | <urn:uuid:aa7d3961-f5c5-40cc-85b7-2a2ee431f08e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012314/section1.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964814 | 462 | 2.84375 | 3 |
The numbers are nuts: More than 25 million people in the United States have diabetes - and that's almost 10 percent of the population.
Here's what's even crazier: Making just one key lifestyle change can cut your chances of developing type 2 diabetes by roughly one-third, suggests a new government study that collected data on more than 200,000 adults. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) looked at how five specific lifestyle factors affected diabetes risk. They found that individually, each factor could lower your odds by about 30 percent; the combination of all five may reduce risk by about 80 percent - even if you have a family history of diabetes. Here are the five changes to make:
Drop extra pounds
The more fatty tissue you have, the tougher it is for your body to make and use insulin properly, which can cause too much glucose to build up in your blood. Obesity is a major risk factor for diabetes; in fact, the NIH study suggests that just being at a healthy weight reduces your risk by up to 70 percent. Every pound you lose improves your health.
The list of benefits speaks for itself: Exercise helps you lose weight, lower your blood sugar and boost insulin sensitivity. Shoot for at least 20 minutes a day; brisk walking is an excellent option, and so is going for a bike ride. A recent study from the University of California-Los Angeles found that increasing muscle mass may help lower your risk as well, so include both aerobic exercise and resistance training.
Eat more fiber and whole grains
Both help improve blood sugar levels and reduce your risk. Foods high in fiber include fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds; to increase your intake of whole grains, switch to brown rice and whole-wheat pasta. More healthy eating tips: Choose lean meats and non-fat dairy products, have fish a few times a week, cook with liquid oils instead of solid fats, and cut back on the snacks and sweets.
Heavy smokers - those who smoke more than 20 cigarettes a day - almost double their risk of developing diabetes, when compared with non-smokers.
Stick to one or two drinks max
That's one for women, two for men: A little alcohol is fine, but drinking too much, too often can cause chronic inflammation of the pancreas, which can impair its ability to secrete insulin and ultimately lead to diabetes.
• The Doctors is an Emmy-winning daytime TV show with pediatrician Jim Sears, OB-GYN Lisa Masterson, ER physician Travis Stork, plastic surgeon Andrew Ordon, health and wellness expert Jillian Michaels and psychologist Wendy Walsh. Check www.thedoctorstv.com for local listings. | <urn:uuid:924d5eb5-af59-484e-a84e-8123a1920fe7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20120115/NEWS/120119895 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00200-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942695 | 550 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Motivating students to be (enthusiastically) receptive is one of the most important aspects of mathematics instruction and a critical aspect of the Common Core State Standards. Effective teachers should focus attention on the less interested students as well as the motivated ones. Presented in this blog post are nine techniques, based on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, which can be used to motivate secondary school students in mathematics.
Extrinsic motivation involves rewards that occur outside the learner's control. These may include token economic rewards for good performance, peer acceptance of good performance, avoidance of "punishment" by performing well, praise for good work and so on.
However, many students demonstrate intrinsic goals in their desire to understand a topic or concept (task-related), to outperform others (ego-related), or to impress others (social-related). The last goal straddles the fence between intrinsic and extrinsic.
With these basic concepts in mind, there are specific techniques which might be expanded, embellished and adapted to the teacher's personality and, above all, made appropriate for the learner's level of ability and environment. The strategies are the important parts to remember -- examples are provided merely to help understand the techniques.
Strategies for Increasing Student Motivation in Math
1. Call Attention to a Void in Students' Knowledge
This motivational technique involves making students aware of a void in their knowledge and capitalizes on their desire to learn more. For instance, you may present a few simple exercises involving familiar situations, followed by exercises involving unfamiliar situations on the same topic. The more dramatically you do this, the more effective the motivation.
2. Show a Sequential Achievement
Closely related to the preceding technique is that of having students appreciate a logical sequence of concepts. This differs from the previous method in that it depends on students' desire to increase, but not complete, their knowledge. One example of a sequential process is how special quadrilaterals lead from one to another, from the point of view of their properties.
3. Discovering a Pattern
Setting up a contrived situation that leads students to "discovering" a pattern can often be quite motivating, as they take pleasure in finding and then "owning" an idea. An example could be adding the numbers from 1 to 100. Rather than adding in sequence, students add the first and last (1 + 100 = 101), and then the second and next-to-last (2 + 99 = 101), and so on. Then all one has to do to get the required sum is multiplying 50 X 101 = 5,050. The exercise will give students an enlightening experience.
4. Present a Challenge
When students are challenged intellectually, they react with enthusiasm. Great care must be taken in selecting the challenge. The problem (if that is the type of challenge) must definitely lead into the lesson and be within reach of the students' abilities.
5. Entice the Class with a “Gee-Whiz” Mathematical Result
To motivate basic belief in probability, a very effect motivation is a class discussion of the famous "Birthday Problem," which gives the unexpectedly high probability of birthday matches in relatively small groups. Its amazing -- even unbelievable -- result will leave the class in awe.
6. Indicate the Usefulness of a Topic
Introduce a practical application of genuine interest to the class at the beginning of a lesson. For example, in the high school geometry course, a student could be asked to find the diameter of a plate where all the information he or she has is a section smaller that a semicircle. The applications chosen should be brief and uncomplicated to motivate the lesson rather than detract from it.
7. Use Recreational Mathematics
Recreational motivation consists of puzzles, games, paradoxes or facilities. In addition to being selected for their specific motivational gain, these devices must be brief and simple. An effective execution of this technique will allow students to complete the "recreation" without much effort.
8. Tell a Pertinent Story
A story of a historical event (for example, math involved in building the Brooklyn Bridge) or contrived situation can motivate students. Teachers should not rush while telling the story. A hurried presentation minimizes the potential motivation of the strategy.
9. Get Students Actively Involved in Justifying Mathematical Curiosities
One of the more effective techniques for motivating students is asking them to justify one of many pertinent mathematical curiosities. The students should be familiar and comfortable with the mathematical curiosity before you "challenge" them to defend it.
Teachers of mathematics must understand the basic motives already present in their learners. The teacher can then play on these motivations to maximize engagement and enhance the effectiveness of the teaching process. Exploiting student motivations and affinities can lead to the development of artificial mathematical problems and situations. But if such methods generate genuine interest in a topic, the techniques are eminently fair and desirable. | <urn:uuid:0332aa41-1ea5-4ed2-9220-e401052a2ef8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.edutopia.org/blog/9-strategies-motivating-students-mathematics-alfred-posamentier?page=19 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00011-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938304 | 1,022 | 4.1875 | 4 |
Antibiotic resistance: World on cusp of 'post-antibiotic era'
- 19 November 2015
- From the section Health
The world is on the cusp of a "post-antibiotic era", scientists have warned after finding bacteria resistant to drugs used when all other treatments have failed.
They identified bacteria able to shrug off the drug of last resort - colistin - in patients and livestock in China.
They said that resistance would spread around the world and raised the spectre of untreatable infections.
It is likely resistance emerged after colistin was overused in farm animals.
Bacteria becoming completely resistant to treatment - also known as the antibiotic apocalypse - could plunge medicine back into the dark ages.
Common infections would kill once again, while surgery and cancer therapies, which are reliant on antibiotics, would be under threat.
Chinese scientists identified a new mutation, dubbed the MCR-1 gene, that prevented colistin from killing bacteria.
The report in the Lancet Infectious Diseases showed resistance in a fifth of animals tested, 15% of raw meat samples and in 16 patients.
And the resistance had spread between a range of bacterial strains and species, including E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
There is also evidence that it has spread to Laos and Malaysia.
Prof Timothy Walsh, who collaborated on the study, from the University of Cardiff, told the BBC News website: "All the key players are now in place to make the post-antibiotic world a reality.
"If MCR-1 becomes global, which is a case of when not if, and the gene aligns itself with other antibiotic resistance genes, which is inevitable, then we will have very likely reached the start of the post-antibiotic era.
"At that point if a patient is seriously ill, say with E. coli, then there is virtually nothing you can do."
Resistance to colistin has emerged before.
However, the crucial difference this time is the mutation has arisen in a way that is very easily shared between bacteria.
"The transfer rate of this resistance gene is ridiculously high, that doesn't look good," said Prof Mark Wilcox, from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
His hospital is now dealing with multiple cases "where we're struggling to find an antibiotic" every month - an event he describes as being as "rare as hens' teeth" five years ago.
He said there was no single event that would mark the start of the antibiotic apocalypse, but it was clear "we're losing the battle".
The concern is that the new resistance gene will hook up with others plaguing hospitals, leading to bacteria resistant to all treatment - what is known as pan-resistance.
Prof Wilcox told the BBC News website: "Do I fear we'll get to an untreatable organism situation? Ultimately yes.
"Whether that happens this year, or next year, or the year after, it's very hard to say."
Early indications suggest the Chinese government is moving swiftly to address the problem.
Prof Walsh is meeting both the agricultural and health ministries this weekend to discuss whether colistin should be banned for agricultural use.
Prof Laura Piddock, from the campaign group Antibiotic Action, said the same antibiotics "should not be used in veterinary and human medicine".
She told the BBC News website: "Hopefully the post-antibiotic era is not upon us yet. However, this is a wake-up call to the world."
She argued the dawning of the post-antibiotic era "really depends on the infection, the patient and whether there are alternative treatment options available" as combinations of antibiotics may still be effective.
New drugs are in development, such as teixobactin, which might delay the apocalypse, but are not yet ready for medical use.
A commentary in the Lancet concluded the "implications [of this study] are enormous" and unless something significant changes, doctors would "face increasing numbers of patients for whom we will need to say, 'Sorry, there is nothing I can do to cure your infection.'"
Follow James on Twitter. | <urn:uuid:f7970e1f-6386-429d-9205-061f9c5f3fb5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34857015 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00021-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955292 | 871 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Easter Sunday is a religious holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It falls on a different Sunday every year between March 22 and April 25 as it follows a lunar calendar (usually the first Sunday after the first full moon after March 20th).
Easter Sunday marks the end of Lent Season, a period of 40 days of fasting in preparation for Easter. Traditions associated with Easter have different origins, including Judeo-Christian as well as Pagan. Both religious and commercial Easter celebrations vary throughout the world; from baking and decorating cakes to coloring eggs to giving presents of chocolate eggs and bunnies.
The rabbit and eggs are two most significant symbols of the festival and represent fertility, new life and spring. | <urn:uuid:06b85cc7-4cf4-4e3d-9787-136a93938ac4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://birthdayalarm.com/cat-11/holidays/easter | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00182-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956531 | 146 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Rodney Whitaker and Kenneth Prouty:
Jazz—diversity of a nation
Jan. 22, 2014
Rodney Whitaker is a University Distinguished Professor of jazz bass and director of jazz studies in the College of Music. Kenneth Prouty is an associate professor of musicology and jazz studies.
In jazz, the possibilities for musical performance are nearly endless, as it represents both the particularities of the African American experience and the nation in all its diversity. The same is true for jazz’s ability to foster dialogue and to reach across communities.
With its roots in African American folk traditions, infused with elements of European and Latin American forms, jazz has long been a sonic metaphor for the diverse, dynamic and eclectic nature of America, and since its earliest days, it has pointed to the promise of reconciliation and shared experience.
The appearance of artists such as Louis Armstrong demonstrated to the nation and the world that African American entertainers need not be relegated to the stereotypes of the 19th century blackface minstrel show. As the music grew in popularity, so too did the willingness of audiences of all backgrounds to see and hear beyond race. The music itself served as a powerful integrating force, from the Chicago speakeasies to Harlem's Savoy ballroom and beyond.
Many of the great jazz artists let their music make the strongest case for full equality. Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington, neither of whom were particularly outspoken with respect to race relations and civil rights, were nonetheless crucial in establishing African Americans as serious artists. Other artists, however, used jazz to protest racial injustice more directly. Billie Holiday’s 1939 recording of Abel Meeropol's "Strange Fruit" remains one of the most pointed critiques of Jim Crow racism ever recorded, with its dark, metaphorical allusions to lynching. By the end of the 1950s, many other jazz artists were beginning to compose, perform and record songs that responded to the increasingly urgent calls for an end to segregation.
Still others found in jazz a possibility for all humanity; it is a fortunate historical coincidence in 1964, the same year that the struggle for legal equality came to a climax with the passage of the Civil Right Act, that John Coltrane would produce his seminal album “A Love Supreme,” which sought to transcend barriers of race, faith and class, in favor of a broadly spiritual perspective.
That same year, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the following in a foreword to the program of the Berlin Jazz Festival: "And now, jazz is exported to the world. For in a particular struggle of the Negro in America, there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all these."
Though it has been nearly a half-century since King wrote these words, they are no less resonant today.
Each year, the College of Music presents the “Jazz: Spirituals, Prayer and Protest” concert during Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative celebrations. This year’s concert, held on Jan. 19, featured the MSU Jazz Orchestra I, II, III and the MSU Children's Choir. The concert highlighted the music and life of pioneering African American women in jazz and gospel: Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Mahalia Jackson, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald and Abbey Lincoln. Veteran jazz vocalists Ramona Collins, Mardra Thomas and Kimmie Horne performed along with several up-and-coming jazz vocalists, Jasmine Hamilton-Wray, Twyla Birdsong and Rockelle Fortin. | <urn:uuid:c087e886-0ce7-4836-b3b5-d05ff17b9e9d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://msutoday.msu.edu/360/2014/rodney-whitaker-and-kenneth-prouty-jazz-diversity-of-a-nation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00165-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944968 | 774 | 2.71875 | 3 |
1 actions, bearing, carriage, comportment, conduct, demeanour, deportment, manner, manners, ways
2 action, functioning, operation, performance
Dictionnaire anglais Collins English synonyme-Thesaurus
behaviour ( behaviours plural )
in AM, use behavior
1 n-var People's or animals' behaviour is the way that they behave. You can refer to a typical and repeated way of behaving as a behaviour.
Make sure that good behaviour is rewarded., ...human sexual behaviour..., These eating patterns are a learned behavior.
2 n-uncount In science, the behaviour of something is the way that it behaves.
also N in pl, with poss
It will be many years before anyone can predict a hurricane's behavior with much accuracy.
3 If someone is on their best behaviour, they are trying very hard to behave well.
on o's best behaviour phrase v-link PHR
Traduction Dictionnaire Collins Anglais pour Apprenants
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"Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners 4th edition published in 2003 © HarperCollins Publishers 1987, 1995, 2001, 2003 and Collins A-Z Thesaurus 1st edition first published in 1995 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995" | <urn:uuid:03714142-382e-4e35-889a-5825672eee7d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://dictionnaire.reverso.net/anglais-synonymes/behaviour | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00061-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.69335 | 350 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Funding Gaps in the QBE Formula
The QBE Formula is intended to represent the cost of a providing a Quality Basic Education in accordance with minimum State standards, but there are substantial differences between the estimated and actual costs in various parts of the formula.
The rationale behind the formula is sound. It is based on a series of "building blocks" for the various components in the total cost for each of 19 general programs specified in the QBE Act. These components include the salary and benefits for the classroom teacher, the cost of textbooks and instructional materials, the cost of utilities and maintenance, and allocations for specialists, instructional support, and administrative expenses at the school and system levels.
Each of the components is expressed in terms of a dollar amount per student. Salaries are based on the State's minimum salary schedule, with adjustments for the training and experience of the system's certificated employees in each field, and the amount per student is calculated according to the staffing ratios for various positions in each of the programs (i.e., the number of students per teacher or other position). Some of the allocations depend on the size of a hypothetical school or school system.
The cost per student is then multiplied by the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) students in each program, which takes into account the portion of the school day that each student spends in each program. A further allocation is made for the funding of principals on the basis of one per school. The resulting total equals the "QBE Formula Earnings" for the system.
Categorical Grants are added for those activities, such as pupil transportation, which are estimated on a system-wide basis. There are specific criteria for these grants.
Equalization Grants are also provided to the systems with the least property tax-wealth per student so that they can supplement or "enrich" the basic program to the same extent as other systems. These grants are intended to enable every system to derive at least as much revenue per student from each mill of property tax above the first five mills as does the system at the 75th percentile when ranking all systems according to their equalized property-tax digest per weighted student. The tax digest is "equalized" to ensure that property is valued on the same basis in every system, and the number of students is adjusted by "weighting" each of these students by the relative cost of the programs in which they are enrolled.
Every system is required to contribute a local share based on the revenue which would be generated by five mills of property taxes when levied on the equalized tax digest for the system. In effect, the Five Mill Local Share, as it is called, is a statewide tax, since this amount is deducted from the funds "earned" by each system through the formula. By law, the total of the required local share for every system cannot exceed 20% of the total amount of QBE Formula Earnings for the entire state, but the percentage for each system varies widely depending on the relative property-tax wealth of the system.
Despite its logical framework, the QBE Formula cannot be a realistic estimate of the cost of providing a Quality Basic Education as defined in the Act if the inputs on which it is based are not realistic. The relationships within the formula also depend on the validity of the individual components. Nevertheless, some of these components bear little resemblance to the costs which they are supposed to represent, and the differences have widened over time. The formula has become increasingly distorted as a result.
Some components have been increased regularly, while other components have not kept pace with actual costs. Some of the per-student amounts, such as the allocations for textbooks, instructional supplies, media materials, facility maintenance, and supply teachers, are essentially arbitrary. They are far less than what these items or services actually cost. Other amounts, such as the allocations for school and general administration and the grants for pupil transportation, are based on schedules that are extremely unrealistic.
Dr. Jeffrey D. Williams of the Consortium for Educational Research in Georgia has prepared a table to show the "gaps" for the entire state between the amount of funds "earned" by local systems through the QBE Formula (and the grants for pupil transportation) and the actual expenditures for each of seven selected cost components in FY02. The formula is conspicuously "under-funded" in these categories. Some portion of the gaps may reflect costs that are not absolutely necessary, but the differences are so great that they cannot be reasonably explained on this basis alone. | <urn:uuid:e51a103c-0758-4e76-aefc-aa129e5d2457> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.casfg.org/reports/gaps_in_the_qbe_formula.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00139-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960061 | 916 | 2.953125 | 3 |
If Excel data is on different sheets, you can create a pivot table using multiple consolidation ranges. It's better if the data is all on one sheet, but if you don't have that option, multiple consolidation ranges will pull all the data into one pivot table.
In Excel 2003 you can open the PivotTable and PivotChart wizard by choosing Data | PivotTable and PivotChart Report. There's no equivalent command on the Ribbon in Excel 2007, but you can press Alt+D, then type P to open the wizard.
The pivot table from multiple sheets isn't as flexible as a regular pivot table -- all the data fields use the same summary function, and there's only one row field. However, while you're setting up the pivot table you can create one or more page fields, and create labels for the data ranges.
Read the Instructions
There are written instructions, and details on the pivot table limitations, on the Contextures website: Excel Pivot Table Tutorial -- Multiple Consolidation Ranges
Watch the Video
This video shows you the steps in Excel 2007, to create the pivot table from multiple sheets, and set up a page field. | <urn:uuid:5861a1c7-cd30-4b82-bb75-6ab2e8f5a4c8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.contextures.com/archives/2010/04/16/how-to-create-an-excel-pivot-table-from-multiple-sheets/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399522.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00133-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.804728 | 238 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Up to 1903
Ever since the beginnings of recorded history, humans have pursued the dream of flight. Mankind’s ancient dream to fly was finally realized with the first balloon flights in the late 18th century. During the 19th century, deliberate scientific experimentation with kites, gliders, airships and powered aircraft, ultimately led to the successful development of the airplane in the early years of the 20th century. Thus over the course of decades, experimenters, some of them Long Islanders, solved the basic problems of an aircraft’s shape, source of propulsion and means of control. | <urn:uuid:662c339f-93e1-434c-8a18-3298d56529f8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cradleofaviation.org/history/permanent_exhibits/the_dream_of_wings/dream_of_wings.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00167-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964378 | 120 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Digital Squamous Cell Carcinoma in Cats
Cats can be afflicted with several types of skin tumors, even on their feet and toes. One type of tumor that can affect the toes is a squamous cell carcinoma. A squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) can be described as a malignant and particularly invasive tumor that takes hold in the scale like cells of the epithelium – the tissue that covers the body or lines the cavities of the body. These scale like tissue cells are called the squamous.
Carcinoma is, by definition, an especially malignant and persistent form of cancer, often returning after is has been excised from the body and metastasizing to other organs and locations on the body. This particular type of carcinoma is a slow moving one, and is typically caught before it has had a chance to spread.
However, there is usually a squamous cell carcinoma somewhere else on the skin that spreads to the toes in this case, and more than one toe is usually affected. It may appear as a small nodule, a reddish colored skin plaque, or as a papule – small and blister like in appearance, but differentiated by its lack of fluid. The SCC does not retain its appearance as a solid mass. Over time it will grow, the tissue within the mass will die (necrotize), and the tumor will ulcerate. While this form of cancer can affect any breed of cat, it remains a rare type of foot cancer in cats.
Symptoms and Types
- Swollen toes or feet
- Limping or not wanting to move around
- Ulcers (sores) on several toes
- Bleeding ulcers on the toes
- Solid, raised mass of skin on the toe (i.e., nodule, papule)
- Sores or tumors on other parts of the body
- May be without other symptoms
Squamous cell carcinomas on the toe typically occur as the result of metastasis of other tumors that have spread from another location on the cat's body.
You will need to provide a thorough history of your cat's health leading up to the onset of symptoms. Be sure to describe any sores that have been apparent on other parts of the body, even if you suspect they were caused by injuries resulting from outdoor activity, or from scratching at the skin. During the examination, your veterinarian will look carefully for other sores or tumors on your cat's body. The lymph nodes will be carefully felt to determine if they are enlarged, an indication that the body is reacting to an infection or invasion. A sample of lymph fluid may be taken to test for cancerous cells. Your veterinarian will order complete blood count and biochemistry profile to make sure your cat's other organs are working normally and to determine whether the white blood cell count is higher than normal; again, an indication that the body is fighting an invasive disease or infection.
X-rays images of your cat's chest will allow your veterinarian to visually inspect the lungs for signs of any abnormalities, especially tumors. X-rays of your cat's foot will also be ordered to determine how deep the tumor is in the tissue and whether the tumor on the toe has spread to the bones in the foot. A biopsy will be taken of the tumors so that your doctor can diagnose the specific type of growth it is, whether carcinoma or a benign mass of tissue. If your cat has sores or tumors in other areas, your veterinarian will also order biopsies of these for analysis.
A small lump or mass of tissue
A lesion of the skin less than half a centimeter in diameter
Something that becomes worse or life threatening as it spreads
Small structures that filter out the lymph and store lymphocytes
The process of removing tissue to examine it, usually for medical reasons.
A covering of cells that turns into the outermost layer of skin and covers the body
Not being able to cause harm; the opposite of malignant. | <urn:uuid:28fdd41e-a449-476f-a25c-6d4ca52054a0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.petmd.com/cat/conditions/cancer/c_ct_squamous_cell_carcinoma_digit | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00052-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943505 | 817 | 3 | 3 |
There are a lot of ways you can be out by a factor of 2 or 4, but it is very hard to be out by a factor of three. Furthermore, I understand the basic concept of counting modes. I know how to do it in two dimensions for electromagnetics, and know how to do it in three dimensions for a gas. I thought I knew how to do it in three dimensions for solids, but now I'm not so sure. At first I thought it was the same as a gas, but now I realize that a solid, unlike a gas, can support shear waves as well as compressional waves.
The electromagnetic case in two dimensions is not so bad because you can start by taking waves in the xy plane and letting the polarization be all in the z direction. That lets you separate out the vector portion and leaves you with nothing but scalar waves to add up in the plane. It doesn't take much more than high-school trig identities to show that four sets of plane waves criss-crossing each other can be added up to equal a checkerboard pattern of standing waves.
That's how the hyperphysics explanation starts out, except it's in three dimensions. Here is what they say:
I really don't see that this can be correct. They call for the electric field to go to zero at the cavity walls, which is of course the correct condition for acoustic vibration amplitude in a gas. But electromagnetics? It's certainly not the condition for a waveguide. We need the electric field to have no tangential component, and we need the magnetic field to have no perpendicular component at the walls. Those are very different conditions than what they've described here. But never mind, let's go on.
We now have the rectangular cavity divided up into unit cells, and we want to count the modes up to a given wavelength. They do the thing of working in k-vector space and counting the lattice points within a spherical volume. I haven't explained it in detail but it's the same thing I do and they end up with the following formula:
It's essentially the number of unit cells, with an extra factor of two for what they say is polarization. I think that's also wrong; I would say the factor of two is necessary for the time displacement of one-quarter cycle; but that's a technical point. In any case I said I wouldn't be arguing about factors of two. It's the factor of three that's getting me.
What exactly does the electromagnetic field look like?? I first thought that it could be polarized in either the x, y, or z directions, giving me an extra factor of three. But then I realized that didn't make sense. In two dimensions you can add up all kinds of waves in the xy plane, keeping the polarization in the z plane. But there's no way you can take plane waves in three dimensions and add them up with all the same polarization. The polarizations is going to vary in different places... in other words, the field lines are going to curve.
How can you picture field lines curving through space and still meeting the required boundary conditions? Not the simplistic, incorrect boundary conditions described in the hyperphysics, link, but the correct e-m cavity conditions: perfectly conducting walls with the electric field perpendicular and the magnetic field tangential? After some hours staring at a box of Rice Krispies (as my typical rectangular cell) and drawing ellipses on different faces, this is what I came up with:
The green lines are the electric fields and the red ellipses are the magnetic fields. I am a bit troubled by a certain assymetry .... the unit cell has two "ellipsoids" of magnetic lines and one of electrical lines. (I've drawn the green electrical lines as though they form a torus, but that's bad artwork: the ellipses should be parallel.) Still, I think this is the correct configuration. It seems to work: as the magnetic loops collapse, the generate electric loops in generally the right places.
It's the count that bothers me. Of the six cell walls, four have magnetic loops on them and two are empty... in this case the side walls (the walls where they list the ingredients on the Rice Krispies box.) But I could have just as easily taken the front/back or the top/bottom faces to be the null faces. So there are three field configurations that fit this geometry. I can't think of any physical reason that shouldn't work.
So my mode count disagrees with Rayleigh-Jeans by a factor of three. And yet the Rayleigh-Jeans formula gives the correct energy for the field (at low frequencies), assuming each mode gets its alloted energy. It's a problem and I can't get around it.
For now I think I'm going to make use of the Rayleigh-Jeans formula and go ahead with my equilibrium calculations.
JAN 24 2013: It's taken me almost two years, but I found the flaw in my counting method. You can see what I did wrong if you click here. | <urn:uuid:6c083e1a-762c-4c63-8678-8b8c74a2378c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://marty-green.blogspot.ca/2011/02/counting-modes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959765 | 1,060 | 2.75 | 3 |
Animals Matter in a Disaster
Animals Matter in a Disaster
Don’t Put You Or Them at Risk. Make a Plan Now.
Following the severe 6.2 quake in the lower North Island on Monday (20/01/14); the expected aftershocks; and as the third year anniversary of Christchurch’s deadliest earthquake sadly approaches next month (22/02/11) - the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) - is urging New Zealand pet owners to plan for their pets in a disaster now; with a free online public resource: http://disaster.wspa.org.nz.
“As recent events have shown, unfortunately disasters are very real in New Zealand and as it is the owner’s responsibility to keep their pets safe in a disaster, under current New Zealand law, how many severe warning signs do we literally need to make ourselves prepare for the worst?” says Bridget Vercoe, Country Director at WSPA NZ.
With 50 years’ experience in Disaster Relief work around the globe, WSPA has witnessed first-hand how ‘preparedness’, around animals in adverse events, can save both human and animal lives whilst a lack of it can severely jeopardise them.
Hurricane Katrina, which occurred in the United States in 2005, is a real live case of rescue efforts being severely disrupted due to flood victims having no plan for their family pets. Ms Vercoe explains: “Because of no food/water/emergency supplies or a pre-arranged ‘safe house’ for their pets, flood-trapped victims refused to leave their pets behind, risking both human and animal life, on a large scale.
“In stark contrast to this westernised example, is Cyclone Phailin which recently struck the heavily populated, low-lying eastern coast of India in November 2013. Human and animals deaths were kept very low due to the co-ordination of a pre-planned mass evacuation by the Indian government; making this disaster a living, breathing example of why WSPA promotes ‘preparedness’”, continues Ms Vercoe.
As a result, WSPA wants Kiwis to make a disaster plan for their family and pets now, so that their pet may actually end up saving their lives; as they and their pet will be well prepared to evacuate fast together, or if safer stay put with sufficient supplies
when a disaster strikes. “Right here in New Zealand, and on our very own doorstep we have seen how in a disaster things can happen quickly and without warning - a plan made now, for you and your animals, will definitely help stop delays or panicked wrong decisions that could end up putting your life and the lives of others at risk,” Vercoe
The free online resource, developed by WSPA in conjunction with the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management, Ministry for Primary Industries, Royal New Zealand SPCA, New Zealand Vet Association and other agencies in the National Animal Welfare Emergency Management Advisory Group*, gives pet owners all the vital information they need to plan for their animals in a disaster.
On this website there are free downloadable Disaster Packs providing practical advice for dogs, cats, small animals (rats, mice and guinea pigs), rabbits, fish, horses and Assistance/Guide Dogs. The simple advice contains practical pointers, such as having a water proof cage for your animal, a muzzle for your dog and ensuring your animal is Microchipping your animal is the single most effective way to ensure their return to you in an emergency. In the Canterbury Earthquake 80% of microchipped animals taken to the Christchurch SPCA were reunited with their owners compared to the 20% un-microchipped. The microchip is your pets’ easiest ticket home, provided that all your database details are up-to-date.
With this practical, easy to follow content, WSPA intends to encourage households, particularly those with children; to make a plan and practice their plan, in order to make a preparedness plan not only fun but as robust as it can be.
Animals Matter in Disasters - find out how you can save precious time and those lives you consider precious at: http://disaster.wspa.org.nz (also accessible via the WSPA NZ website: www.wspa.org.nz). | <urn:uuid:8dd66b75-3773-4e49-8eac-ffea7ce4a6ea> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1401/S00085/animals-matter-in-a-disaster.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944971 | 901 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Five Greatest American Military Victories
A few days ago, we wrote about the greatest American defeats in the history of the military. Now it is time for the greatest victories. Everyone loves a winner and here in America, we love to remember the times we’ve won the battle. These battles go through many wars and I’ve chosen the ones I thought were historic and significant battles. Would you have picked these five?
The Battle of San Juan Hill (Spanish-American War)
This fight was also known as the Battle of San Juan Heights and it occurred on July 1, 1898. The name that we know it by is the name it was given by the Americans. It was a decisive battle in the Spanish-American War and made a national hero out of Theodore Roosevelt who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions there with his command, the Rough Riders. In actuality, the American forces outnumbered the Spanish by nearly 25:1 (19,000 Americans vs. 800 Spaniards) and lost over 1000 men, but they were attacking a hilltop fortress. Most of the heavy fighting, completely overlooked by the press, were a company of African-Americans, known as the “Buffalo Soldiers”. One of their young officers was a Lieutenant named John “Black Jack” Pershing, who would later be commander of the American forces in World War One. Some of the myths behind this battle were that the Rough Riders were actually riding something. Only Teddy Roosevelt was on a horse – the rest ran and it wasn’t San Juan Hill. It was nearby Kettle Hill. In any case, the hard fought battle eventually led to the capture of Santiago, kicking the Spanish out of Cuba. The Rough Riders gained notoriety in the United States, which helped Roosevelt get into politics and eventually help his cousin, Franklin D. win the Presidency years later.
Yorktown (Revolutionary War)
This American victory in 1781 was the last major land battle of the Revolutionary War and led to the surrender of British General Lord Cornwallis to George Washington and prompted the British to enter into peace negotiations. The Americans were joined by the French, under the command of General Comte de Rochambeau. Nearly 20,000 American and French forces fought nearly 9000 British forces. The original plan was to assault New York City, but the French convinced Washington that attacking the smaller British force in Virginia would be easier. In the meantime, the French navy was able to contain the British in Chesapeake Bay, blocking all chances of Cornwallis escaping by sea. There actually wasn’t much of a fight – the Americans and French basically bombarded Cornwallis’ men with cannons and mortars until they gave up. The results were pretty good: 88 Americans and French died, while the British had over three hundred killed and nearly 8200 wounded or captured. Cornwallis didn’t show up for the surrender. He sent one of his officers claiming that he wasn’t feeling well. This fight helped to cause the defeat of the British over the American colonies and helped the United States become a nation.
Iwo Jima (World War Two)
Iwo Jima was a month long battle in the Pacific campaign of World War Two fought in 1945, five months before the Japanese surrender. What makes this battle important is that it was the first attack on Japanese soil and gave the Americans access to two airfields which allowed for easier attacks on the main island and capital of Tokyo. What makes this battle so terrible is the Japanese unwillingness to surrender or leave the island. Of the 18,000 Japanese troops that defended the heavily fortified island, only 216 were willing to be taken captive. The rest died on the island. It wasn’t without a fight, though. Once again, the American forces attacked with a much larger force of 70,000 men and took the island with 6822 losses and about 20,000 wounded. There were no Japanese wounded. Accomplishments of taking the island included the two airfields and the capturing of Mount Suribachi, which overlooked the Southeast end of the island, where the famous raising of the flag took place early on in the battle. The significance of this battle is that there were radar emplacements on the island that let the Japanese know of incoming American planes – like the ones that dropped the atomic bombs just a few months later. It was also a possible set off point for these bombs, however, Tinian Island was used instead. Sadly, it also taught the Americans that the need to use heavier bombardment on an island is essential and they corrected that mistake during the battle of Okinawa, just a few weeks later.
Midway (World War Two)
Another World War Two battle this fight is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. The battle started just six months after Pearl Harbor in 1942 and was a revenge on the Japanese Navy. Because of this battle, the Imperial Japanese Navy learned that they could be beaten. The original plan was to finish off the American navy, once and for all, and kick the U.S. out of the Pacific war. Had they succeeded, the entire West Coast of the United States would have been open to Japanese attack. Luckily for America – this didn’t happen. The Japanese goal was to lure the United States’ few remaining aircraft carriers into a trap and occupy Midway Island – which appropriately stands in the middle of the Pacific between Hawaii and Japan – and put a stop to any more instances like the famous Doolittle Raid that bombed Tokyo in April of 1942. This time, the American troops were outnumbered, but succeeded in giving the Japanese a clock ringing. While American troops killed were just over 300, the Japanese lost a whopping 2000+ men and all four of the aircraft carriers they used in the attack. Because of this defeat, it is sometimes referred to as the “turning point in the War of the Pacific”. How did the Americans escape the trap set up by the Japanese and give them a sound thumping? They cracked the Japanese code and knew they were coming. The Battle of Midway permanently damaged the Japanese Navy’s striking power and, in essence, helped to allow the Americans to win this part of World War Two.
The Battle of New Orleans (War of 1812)
The funny thing about this battle is that it actually occurred during peace time. America and Britain had signed The Peace Treaty of Ghent on Christmas Eve in December of 1814. The Battle of New Orleans took place in December-January 1814-1815. Oops…News was slow in those days and no one heard they should stop fighting until a month later. The Battle of New Orleans was important because it made General Andrew Jackson a hero (and later President, much to the American Indians dismay) and it helped make the Americans think they repelled a force of 25,000 troops. What it really did was to stop the British from access to the Mississippi River and turn Jackson into a household name. The Battle was really a siege that Jackson beautifully mastered. He was vastly outnumbered and was sent into New Orleans to build an army of militia. There weren’t enough and the redcoats were coming. So Jackson did what any good leader who thinks outside the box would do: He hired pirates. Jean Lafitte, to be exact. The pirates, who were used to fighting on the high seas, were feeling the heat from the British in most ports of call at this time. Plus that, they had cannons. So, Jackson offered them amnesty if they made their stand against the British empire. They did and the rest is history. The battle wasn’t huge, by any means, but it was definitely a psychological thriller. Eleven thousand Brits stood against 4000 Americans (and pirates) and when the smoke cleared, 2500 British lay dead or wounded, while the Americans had only 55 people killed. It became such a big deal that tall stories were written about it and Johnny Horton had a hit song in the 1960s based on this battle. | <urn:uuid:be8b72c6-b600-43fc-9411-c54652e71d64> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://myfivebest.com/five-greatest-american-military-victories/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403825.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00016-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982222 | 1,648 | 2.546875 | 3 |
This is the sixth article in the Medical Management "Signature Series" by Managed Care Resources, Inc. -- articles on topics in managed care written by experts in the field.
The authors of this article are Ira H. Rosenberg
and Mary Sajdak.
The term "case management" is frequently used when describing an approach for managing complex medical care. In 1992, the CIRSC defined case management as "... a collaborative process which assesses, plans, implements, coordinates, monitors and evaluates the options and services to meet an individual's health care needs using community resources available to provide quality and cost-effective outcomes." This definition describes a complex, multidisciplinary process that requires the input and support from many players in the health care delivery system, including patients, their support system such as the family and friends, all care providers, and vendors and/or other suppliers to the health care system. All work in a coordinated way to achieve agreed upon goals for the patient.
Organizational Use of Case Management
Many different types of organizations use the case management approach:
- Hospitals employ a case management process to manage the use of inpatient resources. Clinical pathways, which describe the services and activities appropriate for a diagnosis, are used to guide treatment during inpatient stays. The guidelines' design is consistent with "best practice". Practitioners use them to help manage the length of stay and service usage.
- Managed care organizations (MCOs) use case management to coordinate complex medical care. Historically, MCOs focused on small patient populations with catastrophic conditions that consumed disproportionate health services dollars. This type of case management is known as large case management.
- Worker's compensation carriers may use case management to organize the physical and vocational rehabilitation of a worker injured on the job. Efficient arrangement of medically necessary services promotes optimal patient outcomes. This approach can reduce the period of disability, and assure a high quality of care at an appropriate cost.
- Community-based organizations use case management to establish client linkages to reimbursement programs, to increase access to medical, social, or vocational agencies in order to resolve issues of medical care, housing and employment. Case managers in these programs are usually more skilled at meeting the social needs of patients than their clinical needs. Providing transportation and assuring clients keep their appointments at the various agencies are important components of their activities. This type of case management is probably the most established of all. It has provided the foundation for other care providers to adopt their techniques.
Despite the different approaches of the various types of organizations to case management they similar in a number of ways:
- All influence patient utilization vis-a-vis the type of services and systems of care.
- All focus on the organization and sequence of services, plus the resources needed to respond to individual concerns.
- All use the expertise of multiple professionals
- All reflect the needs of the target populations
Managed Care Use of Case Management
Case management is attractive to managed care organizations because of its ability to respond uniquely to each individual, to arrange services with quality providers that are consistent with the benefit plan, and to contain costs. Properly done, case management can align the interests of the patient, the physician and the payor alike.
Today most MCOs focus their case management programs on the 3-5% of the population that consume an inordinate amount of resources. Originally, case management focused largely on patients with catastrophic illnesses or injuries. However, the emergence of the National Commission for Quality AssuranceA accreditation standards (NCQA), and the enrollment of Medicaid and Medicare populations in managed care plans, have encouraged MCOs to rethink their case management strategies. The use of case management for catastrophic illness or injury still occurs, but programs have begun to focus more intensely on conditions that are more prevalent in the population.
NCQA guidelines encourage MCOs to demonstrate their awareness of the health care needs of the population they serve, and to implement measures to improve health status. One way MCOs have done this is through the implementation of disease management programs for prevalent conditions. At the core of disease management is a plan that describes what health care professionals should do. For example, an asthma disease management guideline would include: visit frequency, medications, patient education content, methods to monitor treatment response, and frequency of contact by the case manager. In between visits to the health care provider, the case manager assesses patient compliance with the treatment plan, measures patient response, and assists with problem resolution.
The enrollment of Medicare and Medicaid populations has encouraged MCOs to develop the infrastructure and community linkages that are critical to serving these populations. Case management programs for these individuals focus on the impact of social and economic factors that interfere with a patient's ability to comply with the treatment plan, e.g., patients who may not be able to afford the transportation for doctor visits may wait until their condition has deteriorated to a point where an ER visit is required.
Medicare members may require special interventions, with activities focusing on services and approaches to avoid premature institutionalization. Linkages to community-based agencies to provide assistance with the activities of daily living and home-based medical care may be implemented to maintain the independence of the "frail" elderly.
Case Management Program Characteristics
A well-run case management program, is organized and staffed appropriately, has well developed policies and procedures, has an internal evaluation mechanism, and links appropriately to other departments such as provider relations, claims and member services.
In many MCOs the case management function is part of utilization management. If an MCO has dedicated case management staff, they may interact with staff performing precertification or concurrent review. Cases identified as potential case management are routed to the case manager for further assessment and possible case management implementation.
As the target population needing case management techniques increases, there may be opportunities for case managers to work with members of the quality staff or to interact with disease management work groups.
Registered nurses (RNs) frequently act as case managers, and traditionally have been preferred because of their clinical knowledge, their ability to think holistically, and their use of a scientific problem solving approach. Of course, the financial and organizational skills required of case managers must be obtained through other means, such as prior experience or special training. Social workers are also valuable as case managers, especially with patients who have socially or economically complex situations. Case managers with this type of background can also manage the medically complex with appropriate training.
The number of case managers required depends upon the composition of the MCO's membership. Medicare and Medicaid populations tend to require a lower ratio of case managers to members, a suggested ratio of 1 to 5,000 or 7,500. For commercial members the ratio is more likely to be 1 to 10,000.
While specializing in a particular area of case management is always possible, MCOs may be better served to encourage case managers to function as generalists, which will assist with case assignment and facilitate timely implementation.
Policies and Procedures
A well developed set of policies and procedures are necessary to guide the case manager in pre-determined courses of action. Examples include the following:
- Case management identification process, e.g. multiple medications, functional deficit, multiple admissions
- Case management assessment process
- Guidelines for implementing case management to include type of case management intervention based upon assessment
- Treatment plan design
- Benefit plan extension process (e.g. extra-contractual benefits)
- Attending physician, family and patient communication
- Documentation requirements
- Patient outcomes evaluation
- Case management closure process
- Patient and provider satisfaction
- Interface and communication with other MCO departments
Internal Evaluation Mechanism
Evaluation of the case management program includes the ability to meet specific program goals, to prevent or delay additional morbidity in the target population and to keep service utilization within pre-determined parameters.
Active case management programs enable patients to maintain the highest level of wellness for the longest period. This means a slowdown in the progression of the disease, engaging the patient as an active participant in the disease management process and monitoring the disease trends in the patient population served.
For the case management population, it is expected that utilization experience will be better than that of similar populations. For example, the admissions or days per thousand experience of an MCO with a case management program for seniors should be lower than the national average.
In addition to the quantitative aspects of program performance, the satisfaction of the patients and the providers should be accounted for. If the program assists with keeping bed days within the appropriate target but alienates physicians and patients, then the program can hardly be successful over the long term.
Links to other departments
The success of the case management program depends on the ability of various MCO departments to communicate and support each other. For example, the provider relations department is key to communicating the benefits and advantages of the case management program to people in a position to assist the process. Without reinforcement from provider relations, it is unlikely that physician office staff will be able to identify patients who could benefit from more intensive intervention. Provider relations staff may also be able to discuss with network physicians how the use of case management may have improved patient outcomes and financial performance.
Another area of collaboration is in the claims area. If a member has been provided with extra-contractual benefits, the claims staff must be alerted so the claim is paid. Special prices or discounts that the case management staff has obtained should also be communicated to the claims staff to assure the appropriate payment of claims.
Finally, as customer services interfaces most frequently with MCO members, they need to be trained to recognize circumstances where case management might be appropriate. Especially in the elderly, a question or inquiry may be a disguised request for assistance.
The case management process provides an opportunity for the managed care organization, the physician and the case management staff to combine their expertise and resources to provide the most efficient, high quality care required to meet the members needs. The collaboration between these parties can produce quality patient outcomes.
Case management's potential is only beginning to be explored as MCOs continue to search for ways to contain cost while retaining quality. The expansion of case management through disease management is an example of the ability of MCOs to respond to the changing needs of the population served.
more information on Managed Care and Case Management please contact
us at (630) 325-6543 or by email at email@example.com
We hope that you will join us as we explore all of the elements of medical management in the coming months. In addition, we are offering a "Signature Series" on "Managed Care Contracting". We hope that the two series combined will lessen the mystery of managed care and help level the playing field between providers and payers.
Ira H. Rosenberg
President, Managed Care Resources, Inc.
Related World Wide Web Sites:
A. National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA)
The Managed Care Resources, Inc. team has over 150 years of combined experience in the development and implementation of managed care services. Please visit our home page to learn more about how we can assist you with your managed care needs. We also invite you to contact us with questions or comments.
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Prepare Your Child for Kindergarten
Leaving home to attend kindergarten for the first time can be thrilling in that scary exciting way. As a parent you want to find ways to ease the transition and prepare your child for the upcoming changes that the world of kindergarten represents. Preparing for kindergarten means getting ready for the big day-the first day---of school. It also means preparing for all the days that come after that first day. You want to be sure that you are sending you child off prepared to cope with the social, emotional, and academic pressures of being a student and going to school. How can you do that? By paying attention to your child's mental and emotional state and responding to it as it develops.
In the Long Term
- Your child will need to come to kindergarten with a couple of different skill sets. The first is the ability to socialize appropriately with other children of his or her age.
- If your child has not had much contact with other children, consider preschool or other types of group social settings. Practice important skills like joining in at games and sharing at home so that your child is ready to meet new people.
- You will want your child to know some important information. Practice memorizing with your child and teach him or her their family name, phone number, and address in case they need to know it.
- Your child will need to demonstrate fine motor skills in order to use a pencil and learn to write as well as to perform other classroom tasks. You can practice around the house by asking your child perform small tasks and encouraging coloring and paint.
- You will want to introduce your child to basic concepts like language, numbers, and colors. Incorporate this sort of learning into your day-to-day routine by asking your child to answer counting questions or find the purple object. Foster your child's vocabulary by reading to him or her and playing verbal games.
Though kindergarten is not an academically rigorous experience, the more that you work with your child on the concepts they will encounter there, the more confidence he or she will have about it.
In the Short Term
When kindergarten is getting close, consider working to familiarize your child with the new environment and routine that he or she is facing. Take your child to the bus stop to catch the bus or watch other children catching the bus. Visit the school and the classrooms where your child will spend their time and take time to familiarize him or her with the environment.
If you can, attend an open house and introduce your child to their teacher. All of these activities will help to allay any fears your child may be feeling about the big day. Finally, the day before your child starts kindergarten, help them pack their own little backpack and your child will be ready to start school.
You might also find the following helpful: | <urn:uuid:e4c75ce2-6988-40bd-b74b-d127a4417f0e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.momswhothink.com/education/prepare-for-kindergarten.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00034-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967459 | 579 | 3.640625 | 4 |
Life-saving role of heart attack centers confirmed in new studyNovember 13, 2012 in Medicine & Health / Cardiology
Recent studies questioning the role of specialist heart attack centres produced misleading results because doctors tend to send the sickest patients to have the best care, according to new research.
Many heart attack patients in the UK are sent to a specialist centre for primary angioplasty - a surgical procedure to reopen the blocked artery. Randomised trials have found that angioplasty is much more successful than drug treatment alone, but research based on "real-world" data suggest that patients given an angioplasty don't tend to do better.
Now researchers at Imperial College London have shown that the apparent lack of benefit in the clinical records is due to high-risk patients being more likely to be sent to a heart attack centre, which skews the data. After taking this bias is into account, they find that primary angioplasty reduces the death rate from heart attacks by 22 per cent.
They say the findings confirm that heart attack centres play a vital role, and should be made available more widely. The latest figures show that 82 per cent of heart attack patients in England and 30 per cent in Wales receive a primary angioplasty, with wide discrepancies in access between regions.
"There has been some debate in the cardiology community about whether it is worthwhile to run specialist heart attack centres, despite evidence from clinical trials that they save lives," said Dr Iqbal Malik, one of the study's authors, from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial . "This study resolves an important question. We must strive to make sure everyone in the UK has access to the best emergency treatment in the event of a heart attack."
The findings are published today in Circulation Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. The authors warn that in real life, doctors faced with a very sick patient tend to give them the most effective possible treatment. This phenomenon - termed allocation bias - is good medical practice but can make "comparative effectiveness" research unreliable. Adjusting for this bias is difficult because doctors may base their decisions on many features that are difficult to document. The Imperial team developed a method to help other researchers detect when a disease is vulnerable to this form of bias in evaluation of its treatments.
Co-author Dr Sayan Sen said: "Comparing treatments based on clinical records will always be hindered by the good wisdom of the first-line doctors, who choose the most effective therapy for the most sick patients. We demonstrate that decisions regarding the therapy of heart attack patients should be tested in the most reliable way, namely a randomised trial, and should not rely on registries."
Ellen Mason, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the British Heart Foundation, which co-funded the research, said:
"It is essential to reopen a blocked coronary artery during a heart attack, to prevent part of the heart muscle from dying. A blocked artery can be re-opened during a heart attack by using clot-dissolving drugs or primary angioplasty, where the artery is reopened using a tube. Both these emergency treatments have saved many lives and reduced the amount of long lasting damage to the heart.
"At the moment, throughout the world there is a trend towards using primary angioplasty in more patients - the UK continues to follow this trend because of continued research showing better outcomes for patients and quicker discharge times. Heart attack centres are essential for providing 24 hour angioplasty, and it's vital that the UK continues to keep up with the latest in heart attack research and treatments."
S Sen et al. 'Why Does Primary Angioplasty Not Work in Registries? Quantifying the Susceptibility of Real-World Comparative Effectiveness Data to Allocation Bias' Circulation Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, 13 November 2012. DOI: 10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.112.966853
Provided by Imperial College London
"Life-saving role of heart attack centers confirmed in new study" November 13, 2012 http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-life-saving-role-heart-centers.html | <urn:uuid:595f95ec-583a-40bc-addb-fe98000f8c5a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://medicalxpress.com/print272043853.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397696.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00195-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938654 | 857 | 2.515625 | 3 |
..Why do fish have nostrils if they can't sniff?
This is perplexing my mind.:lol:
Posted via Mobile Device
Yes indeed. Fish have 6 senses, one more than we do. With us they share vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch, and in addition fish can detect low frequency vibrations and since they make use of this when swimming, it is a true sense.
The sense of smell in fish is termed the olfactory sense. The fish's "nose" does not communicate with the respiratory system as it does in us, but is solely used to dete4ct odours in the water. In many fish it is actually of higher use in finding food that their vision.
I'm not a biologist so I won't try to go into the details as to how this works. But it is fundamentally identical to us. In both cases, the odour has to dissolve into a liquid--in us, mucus in the nasal passages, but for the fish it is already dissolved in the water passing in through the nostril.
Taste is a bit different from us; some might say it is more advanced in fish. They have taste buds not only in the mouth as we do, but also in the skin covering the head, fins, body, barbels, lips and in anabantids (gourami, etc) at the tips of those filamentous ventral fins. Manhy catfish have taste buds on their flanks. All this means fish can "taste" food before it even enters their mouth. A combo of this plus the "smell" may be what Mikaila's rainbowfish detect.:-)
I got the above from the book Advanced Aquarist Guide written by Feroze Ghadially that I've had for years; it is wonderfully "simple" at explaining such things.
I see what you did there.
LOL. You found me, Ocal. Couldn't really join here with my Frih username, being fish and all. :D I was bored, so I wanted to see the various responses on the two boards. Clearly, Frih has the best replies. xD
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Learn what to expect in the new updates
Let’s start with a simple example.
text() function in the pyplot module (or
text method of the Axes class) takes bbox keyword argument, and when
given, a box around the text is drawn.
bbox_props = dict(boxstyle="rarrow,pad=0.3", fc="cyan", ec="b", lw=2) t = ax.text(0, 0, "Direction", ha="center", va="center", rotation=45, size=15, bbox=bbox_props)
The patch object associated with the text can be accessed by:
bb = t.get_bbox_patch()
The return value is an instance of FancyBboxPatch and the patch properties like facecolor, edgewidth, etc. can be accessed and modified as usual. To change the shape of the box, use set_boxstyle method.
The arguments are the name of the box style with its attributes as keyword arguments. Currently, following box styles are implemented.
Class Name Attrs Circle
Note that the attributes arguments can be specified within the style name with separating comma (this form can be used as “boxstyle” value of bbox argument when initializing the text instance)
annotate() function in the pyplot module
(or annotate method of the Axes class) is used to draw an arrow
connecting two points on the plot.
ax.annotate("Annotation", xy=(x1, y1), xycoords='data', xytext=(x2, y2), textcoords='offset points', )
This annotates a point at
xy in the given coordinate (
with the text at
xytext given in
textcoords. Often, the
annotated point is specified in the data coordinate and the annotating
text in offset points.
annotate() for available coordinate systems.
An arrow connecting two point (xy & xytext) can be optionally drawn by
arrowprops argument. To draw only an arrow, use
empty string as the first argument.
ax.annotate("", xy=(0.2, 0.2), xycoords='data', xytext=(0.8, 0.8), textcoords='data', arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle="->", connectionstyle="arc3"), )
The arrow drawing takes a few steps.
The creation of the connecting path between two points is controlled by
connectionstyle key and following styles are available.
Note that “3” in
arc3 is meant to indicate that the
resulting path is a quadratic spline segment (three control
points). As will be discussed below, some arrow style option only can
be used when the connecting path is a quadratic spline.
The behavior of each connection style is (limitedly) demonstrated in the
example below. (Warning : The behavior of the
bar style is currently not
well defined, it may be changed in the future).
The connecting path (after clipping and shrinking) is then mutated to
an arrow patch, according to the given
Some arrowstyles only work with connection style that generates a
quadratic-spline segment. They are
For these arrow styles, you must use “angle3” or “arc3” connection
If the annotation string is given, the patchA is set to the bbox patch of the text by default.
As in the text command, a box around the text can be drawn using
By default, the starting point is set to the center of the text
extent. This can be adjusted with
relpos key value. The values
are normalized to the extent of the text. For example, (0,0) means
lower-left corner and (1,1) means top-right.
There are class of artist that can be placed at the anchored location
of the Axes. A common example is the legend. This type of artists can
be created by using the OffsetBox class. A few predefined classes are
from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid.anchored_artists import AnchoredText at = AnchoredText("Figure 1a", prop=dict(size=8), frameon=True, loc=2, ) at.patch.set_boxstyle("round,pad=0.,rounding_size=0.2") ax.add_artist(at)
The loc keyword has same meaning as in the legend command.
A simple application is when the size of the artist (or collection of
artists) is known in pixel size during the time of creation. For
example, If you want to draw a circle with fixed size of 20 pixel x 20
pixel (radius = 10 pixel), you can utilize
AnchoredDrawingArea. The instance is created with a size of the
drawing area (in pixel). And user can add arbitrary artist to the
drawing area. Note that the extents of the artists that are added to
the drawing area has nothing to do with the placement of the drawing
area itself. The initial size only matters.
from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid.anchored_artists import AnchoredDrawingArea ada = AnchoredDrawingArea(20, 20, 0, 0, loc=1, pad=0., frameon=False) p1 = Circle((10, 10), 10) ada.drawing_area.add_artist(p1) p2 = Circle((30, 10), 5, fc="r") ada.drawing_area.add_artist(p2)
The artists that are added to the drawing area should not have transform set (they will be overridden) and the dimension of those artists are interpreted as a pixel coordinate, i.e., the radius of the circles in above example are 10 pixel and 5 pixel, respectively.
Sometimes, you want to your artists scale with data coordinate (or
other coordinate than canvas pixel). You can use
AnchoredAuxTransformBox class. This is similar to
AnchoredDrawingArea except that the extent of the artist is
determined during the drawing time respecting the specified transform.
from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid.anchored_artists import AnchoredAuxTransformBox box = AnchoredAuxTransformBox(ax.transData, loc=2) el = Ellipse((0,0), width=0.1, height=0.4, angle=30) # in data coordinates! box.drawing_area.add_artist(el)
The ellipse in the above example will have width and height corresponds to 0.1 and 0.4 in data coordinate and will be automatically scaled when the view limits of the axes change.
As in the legend, the bbox_to_anchor argument can be set. Using the HPacker and VPacker, you can have an arrangement(?) of artist as in the legend (as a matter of fact, this is how the legend is created).
Note that unlike the legend, the
bbox_transform is set
to IdentityTransform by default.
The Annotation in matplotlib support several types of coordinate as described in Annotating text. For an advanced user who wants more control, it supports a few other options.
Transforminstance. For example,ax.annotate("Test", xy=(0.5, 0.5), xycoords=ax.transAxes)
is identical toax.annotate("Test", xy=(0.5, 0.5), xycoords="axes fraction")
With this, you can annotate a point in other axes.ax1, ax2 = subplot(121), subplot(122) ax2.annotate("Test", xy=(0.5, 0.5), xycoords=ax1.transData, xytext=(0.5, 0.5), textcoords=ax2.transData, arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle="->"))
Artistinstance. The xy value (or xytext) is interpreted as a fractional coordinate of the bbox (return value of get_window_extent) of the artist.an1 = ax.annotate("Test 1", xy=(0.5, 0.5), xycoords="data", va="center", ha="center", bbox=dict(boxstyle="round", fc="w")) an2 = ax.annotate("Test 2", xy=(1, 0.5), xycoords=an1, # (1,0.5) of the an1's bbox xytext=(30,0), textcoords="offset points", va="center", ha="left", bbox=dict(boxstyle="round", fc="w"), arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle="->"))
Note that it is your responsibility that the extent of the coordinate artist (an1 in above example) is determined before an2 gets drawn. In most cases, it means that an2 needs to be drawn later than an1.
A callable object that returns an instance of either
Transform. If a transform is returned, it is same as 1 and if bbox is returned, it is same as 2. The callable object should take a single argument of renderer instance. For example, following two commands give identical resultsan2 = ax.annotate("Test 2", xy=(1, 0.5), xycoords=an1, xytext=(30,0), textcoords="offset points") an2 = ax.annotate("Test 2", xy=(1, 0.5), xycoords=an1.get_window_extent, xytext=(30,0), textcoords="offset points")
A tuple of two coordinate specification. The first item is for x-coordinate and the second is for y-coordinate. For example,annotate("Test", xy=(0.5, 1), xycoords=("data", "axes fraction"))
0.5 is in data coordinate, and 1 is in normalized axes coordinate. You may use an artist or transform as with a tuple. For example,import matplotlib.pyplot as plt plt.figure(figsize=(3,2)) ax=plt.axes([0.1, 0.1, 0.8, 0.7]) an1 = ax.annotate("Test 1", xy=(0.5, 0.5), xycoords="data", va="center", ha="center", bbox=dict(boxstyle="round", fc="w")) an2 = ax.annotate("Test 2", xy=(0.5, 1.), xycoords=an1, xytext=(0.5,1.1), textcoords=(an1, "axes fraction"), va="bottom", ha="center", bbox=dict(boxstyle="round", fc="w"), arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle="->")) plt.show()
Sometimes, you want your annotation with some “offset points”, but not from the annotated point but from other point.
OffsetFromis a helper class for such case.import matplotlib.pyplot as plt plt.figure(figsize=(3,2)) ax=plt.axes([0.1, 0.1, 0.8, 0.7]) an1 = ax.annotate("Test 1", xy=(0.5, 0.5), xycoords="data", va="center", ha="center", bbox=dict(boxstyle="round", fc="w")) from matplotlib.text import OffsetFrom offset_from = OffsetFrom(an1, (0.5, 0)) an2 = ax.annotate("Test 2", xy=(0.1, 0.1), xycoords="data", xytext=(0, -10), textcoords=offset_from, # xytext is offset points from "xy=(0.5, 0), xycoords=an1" va="top", ha="center", bbox=dict(boxstyle="round", fc="w"), arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle="->")) plt.show()
You may take a look at this example pylab_examples example code: annotation_demo3.py.
The ConnectorPatch is like an annotation without a text. While the annotate function is recommended in most of situation, the ConnectorPatch is useful when you want to connect points in different axes.
from matplotlib.patches import ConnectionPatch xy = (0.2, 0.2) con = ConnectionPatch(xyA=xy, xyB=xy, coordsA="data", coordsB="data", axesA=ax1, axesB=ax2) ax2.add_artist(con)
The above code connects point xy in data coordinate of
point xy int data coordinate of
ax2. Here is a simple example.
While the ConnectorPatch instance can be added to any axes, but you may want it to be added to the axes in the latter (?) of the axes drawing order to prevent overlap (?) by other axes.
mpl_toolkits.axes_grid.inset_locator defines some patch classes useful for interconnect two axes. Understanding the code requires some knowledge of how mpl’s transform works. But, utilizing it will be straight forward.
You can use a custom box style. The value for the
boxstyle can be a
callable object in following forms.:
def __call__(self, x0, y0, width, height, mutation_size, aspect_ratio=1.): """ Given the location and size of the box, return the path of the box around it. - *x0*, *y0*, *width*, *height* : location and size of the box - *mutation_size* : a reference scale for the mutation. - *aspect_ratio* : aspect-ration for the mutation. """ path = ... return path
Here is a complete example.
However, it is recommended that you derive from the matplotlib.patches.BoxStyle._Base as demonstrated below.
from matplotlib.path import Path from matplotlib.patches import BoxStyle import matplotlib.pyplot as plt # we may derive from matplotlib.patches.BoxStyle._Base class. # You need to overide transmute method in this case. class MyStyle(BoxStyle._Base): """ A simple box. """ def __init__(self, pad=0.3): """ The arguments need to be floating numbers and need to have default values. *pad* amount of padding """ self.pad = pad super(MyStyle, self).__init__() def transmute(self, x0, y0, width, height, mutation_size): """ Given the location and size of the box, return the path of the box around it. - *x0*, *y0*, *width*, *height* : location and size of the box - *mutation_size* : a reference scale for the mutation. Often, the *mutation_size* is the font size of the text. You don't need to worry about the rotation as it is automatically taken care of. """ # padding pad = mutation_size * self.pad # width and height with padding added. width, height = width + 2.*pad, \ height + 2.*pad, # boundary of the padded box x0, y0 = x0-pad, y0-pad, x1, y1 = x0+width, y0 + height cp = [(x0, y0), (x1, y0), (x1, y1), (x0, y1), (x0-pad, (y0+y1)/2.), (x0, y0), (x0, y0)] com = [Path.MOVETO, Path.LINETO, Path.LINETO, Path.LINETO, Path.LINETO, Path.LINETO, Path.CLOSEPOLY] path = Path(cp, com) return path # register the custom style BoxStyle._style_list["angled"] = MyStyle plt.figure(1, figsize=(3,3)) ax = plt.subplot(111) ax.text(0.5, 0.5, "Test", size=30, va="center", ha="center", rotation=30, bbox=dict(boxstyle="angled,pad=0.5", alpha=0.2)) del BoxStyle._style_list["angled"] plt.show()
Similarly, you can define custom ConnectionStyle and custom ArrowStyle.
See the source code of
lib/matplotlib/patches.py and check
how each style class is defined. | <urn:uuid:02403c6f-6b83-4a6e-8fe6-c74249ca71cf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://matplotlib.org/users/annotations_guide.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00017-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.701834 | 3,698 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Minor in Interdisciplinary Studies: Ethnic Studies
Do you already have a degree or want to expand your current
one? A minor in ethnic studies will give
you an awareness of race, ethnicity, culture, and diversity that complements
your major course of study.
To expand your expertise and learn about other cultures and
ethnicities you may encounter in your career, you can use this minor with many
majors, including, but not limited to:
work or medicine emphasis
In this program, you will:
- be introduced to
theories and analyses of race, ethnicity, racism, and class division
- explore the
history of race and ethnicity, and the cultures of major racial and ethnic groups in the United States
- be encouraged to
become involved in the community by interning with local organizations
- be prepared for
a changing and global work place
The ethnic studies minor has required and specialized courses, including "Introduction to Ethnic Studies", "Race, Identity, and Film", "Introduction to African American Studies", and "Introduction to Chican@/Latin@ Studies." Other courses which have interdisciplinary focus can be found in:
- forestry—how do
different ethnicities and cultures manage the land?
- applied indigenous studies—how do different indigenous cultures supply healthcare,
build relationships, express themselves, and treat the environment?
kind of history do natives and people of the Southwest have?
- criminal justice—what are the laws governing indigenous peoples and how are they
treated in the justice department?
are the different religions surrounding cultures?
- political science—how does race affect power relationships in society?
- sociology—how do race and ethnic relations affect society?
- English—what does multicultural literature tell us about diverse identities in society?
See the academic catalog for more information or contact the Director. | <urn:uuid:513a3819-df5e-4006-badf-3cd9c51caa29> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nau.edu/SBS/Ethnic-Studies/Degrees-Programs/Minor/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00107-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911834 | 380 | 2.765625 | 3 |
So the transition is conservation, drill in ANWR and elsewhere, more oil from the oilsands and shale, temporarily ramp up biofuels and alternatives, ramp up nuclear and wind and solar, convert to more efficient cars, trucks, rail, planes, ships and industry and shift from liquids to electrification. Shift more freight from trucks to barges and rail.
Conservation measures can be initiated and strengthened when necessary.
55mph speed limit saved (380000 gallons per day back in the 1970s in the USA)
Increased fuel use for transporation (around double the 1970s usage) Fuel saving of 750,000 gallons per day from 55 mph speed limit in the USA
Delaware has emergency fuel shortage measures
Carpooling, transit, odd-even and other measures can reduce fuel usage by 8-15% right away and several can be sustained without harming the economy. A mid-term transition would be to require and setup satellite offices and wifi buses and trains (so that people could be productive while travelling on transit)
Florida has general energy saving tips
If peak oil hit, ANWR would be drilled. Which is basically an emergency fuel reserve of perhaps 10.3 billion barrels *(mean estimate). It would take a few years to being online and would supply about 1.4 million barrels per day.
More Nuclear power plants are being licensed now in the USA and around the world. The past peak was 12 reactors completed in one year in the USA. The US economy is over twice as large now. Full (non-emergency production of nuclear plants in the USA would be twenty-four 1.5 GW reactors completed per year and could be at that level by 2020. Business as usual production could be far higher if a climate change bill is passed which would make coal more expensive. There has already been the legislation in place to ensure that about 32 new nuclear reactors will be built by 2024
EIA projection based on climate change bill passage
Diesel and truck engine efficiency work is well under way. Which could double diesel and truck efficiency over the 2010-2020 rollout period.
Electrification of vehicles
There are 60 million electric scooters and bicycles in China already. By 2015 there could be 500 million in China. This would be the faster and easier route for the rest of the world as well. The vehicles can go at 55 mph (72 volt versions). There can be GPS enforcement of 55mph limits. Folding electric bikes are compatible with transit. Major transition conversion possible if needed by 2015.
Alternative fuels will help as well
In the US biodiesel : Total biodiesel production shot up from 25 million gallons in 2004 to 250 million gallons last year. Worldwide biofuel is at 51 billion liters (about 13 billion gallons) in 2007. USA production projection of 2.5 to 3.5 billion gallons by 2010. 7.5 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2012
Thermoelectronics will start to be significantly rolled out by 2010
Superconducting motors in 2010 for industrial efficiency
Superconducting power grids would save up to 5% of the electricity in the USA. There is about 8% lost to power transmission.
If it was required a draconian conservation scheme could be instituted for 5 years to reduce fuel usage by 50% or more (WW2 style conservation, rationing) and then a mobilized effort to convert to electrification. After which the economy would be completely sustainable and able to grow again. | <urn:uuid:e962a015-dc95-4dc1-bad3-344757e168d9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/11/transitioning-from-oil.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397865.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00070-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935017 | 706 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Many movies hitting the big screen over the last few years base their storylines on a common premise. They question reality, or the "real world" we think we know, pointing out that artificially-created dream worlds, and environments produced by computer simulations, can be convincingly realistic. These "fictional" stories raise speculations —until now proposed at scientific gatherings only— of how such superb illusions might affect our lives and people are made to think deeply about such matters... In The Matrix, for example, the following expressions appear: “What is real? How do you define real?... What you feel, taste, smell, or see—all are electrical signals interpreted by your brain." This book contains accounts that bear a very great similarity to certain parts of this film that had such an influence on people and that encouraged them to reflect on certain facts, with descriptions in previous books and passages from the films in question. It will thus once again be demonstrated that the explanations in this book describe a scientific reality that is accepted by the whole world, and whether people agree with this or object to it will not alter the true facts concerning matter. | <urn:uuid:d9473fae-072f-4049-8199-05c505fa719a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://bookglobal.net/index.php?route=product/product&path=1_9&product_id=716 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00058-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953651 | 229 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Plant and Animal Care
Plant and Animal Care: Bulbs
Background. Bulbs are most often found in the subterranean world along with roots, but are not roots themselves. A bulb is a short piece of stem with a bud at one end and roots at the other. Around the bud is a compact capsule of modified leaves. The leaves are thick with water, sugars, and starch. The aerial parts of the plant can die back completely at the end of a growing season, leaving the bulb underground to nourish and protect the bud that will produce next year's plant. Some bulbs, like onions, garlic, and shallots, start growing whenever moisture is provided. Others start growing only a fter they have been cold for awhile and then warm up. Such a triggering mechanism is essential to the survival of plants that live in areas that experience hard freezes during the winter. Bulbs that normally bloom in the spring can be induced to start their growth early, providing bright, fragrant flowers in the dead of winter. Fooling bulbs into growing early by putting them in the refrigerator for a few weeks in the fall is called forcing and is a common practice with hyacinths, tulips, and daffodils and their relatives.
Obtaining bulbs. Garlic and boiling onion can be easily purchased at a grocery store. Buy organic ones, if possible, as they will sprout more readily. Onion bulbs or sets can be purchased from a nursery for most of the year (September-February.) Yellow, white or red onions are fine.
What to do when the investigations are completed. Students can take home the sprouted bulbs to plant in a pot or garden. Any unwanted plants can be placed in the compost. | <urn:uuid:eb37158d-3745-435c-9df6-a54c4e5bfef5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.fossweb.com/plants-and-animals?organismID=D2669839 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00049-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957115 | 351 | 3.640625 | 4 |
At the heart of any photovoltaic (PV) system is the inverter, also referred to as the power conversion unit (PCU) or power conversion system (PCS). Its primary function is to convert the direct current (DC) output of the PV array to alternating current (AC) that can be used to power conventional building loads.
This means that the inverter must take the DC power provided by the PV array—which varies with sky conditions, time of day, season, temperature—and provide sufficient AC power of the right voltage and frequency to drive the load.
In addition, unless the building loads served by the PV system are isolated from the rest of the building distribution system or the building is off the grid and powered solely by PV and other alternative energy sources, the inverter must be capable of interfacing with the utility system.
Further, if the PV system is a standalone system with batteries or a hybrid system with both a utility connection and batteries, the inverter must be able to charge the batteries when there is excess PV power being produced. Today’s PV inverters are very sophisticated and electrical contractors who install PV need to understand their features and operation.
Determining the inverter output parameters is usually the starting point for selecting an inverter for a particular application. The inverter continuous power output rating is typically the first output parameter to be determined.
The inverter’s continuous output power is determined by either the potential output of the PV array given the available PV area, planned installation and geographical location or the load that the system will serve if less than the site’s PV potential. Given the planned PV system AC output power and the characteristics of the building service and distribution system, the output voltage and number of phases can be determined.
Article 690 of the 2006 National Electrical Code (NEC) addresses the installation of PV systems. NEC 690.13 requires that a disconnecting means be provided to disconnect the inverter from the building distribution system and NEC 690.17 provides the requirements for this disconnecting means.
The need for this disconnect can either be satisfied by a stand-alone disconnecting device at the inverter output or a disconnecting means such as a circuit breaker that is integral to the inverter. Selecting an inverter with an integral disconnecting means eliminates the need to supply and install a separate disconnecting means.
The inverter DC input parameters will determine the size and circuiting of the PV array given a particular PV module. The maximum inverter DC input voltage adjusted for ambient temperature per NEC Table 690.7 determines the maximum number of PV modules that can be connected in a series string based on the PV module’s rated open-circuit voltage.
Similarly, the maximum inverter DC input current adjusted per NEC 690.8 determines the maximum number of PV module strings that can be installed in parallel based on the PV module’s rated short circuit current.
DC ground-fault protection (GFP) is required for all residential roof-mounted PV arrays per NEC 690.5. However, DC GFP can be installed on any PV system to provide additional protection from fire hazard. If DC GFP is provided, the PV system equipment-grounding conductor size can be reduced in accordance with NEC 690.45.
Like the PV system disconnect, DC GFP is usually either an integral part of an inverter or offered as an option by the manufacturer. Having the DC GFP as an integral part of the PV inverter precludes the need to procure and install a separate DC GFP device. Inverters that are connected to the utility grid through the building’s service entrance are required to shut down automatically upon loss of utility-supplied power per NEC 690.61.
This inverter feature is referred to as “anti-islanding” and its purpose is to protect unsuspecting electricians, linemen and others from voltage that is back fed into the building and utility-distribution system during an outage when troubleshooting or repairing the distributions system. Any PV inverter that is designed to be utility interactive and UL 1741 listed will meet the requirements of NEC 690.61.
Underwriters Laboratories (UL) publishes UL 1741 entitled, “Inverters, Converters, Controllers and Interconnection System Equipment for Use with Distributed Energy Resources,” which provides manufacturing and testing requirements for PV inverters.
In addition to anti-islanding, UL 1741 addresses the construction, performance and other safety features of PV inverters. Any PV inverter installed should be tested and listed in accordance with the latest edition of UL 1741. EC
GLAVINICH is an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at The University of Kansas and is a frequent instructor for NECA’s Management Education Institute. He can be reached at 785.864.3435 or email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:cfc6884b-b01d-46e0-84b1-9ae4bb508dd9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ecmag.com/print/section/your-business/pv-inverter-technology | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00067-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.896953 | 1,025 | 3.296875 | 3 |
The boreal muse of The Group of Seven
Creating a national identity from a palette of boreal colours
Story by Mitchell Gray
In Tom Thomson’s painting, The Jack Pine, a ragged tree hovers beside a desolate, yet somehow inviting lake,
as timid yellow light looms over dark, snow-pocked hills in the distance. Whether that tree
still grows is uncertain, but the painting has grown over time into a Canadian icon, powerfully
evoking the heart of Canada: the boreal forest. The woods, lakes and wetlands of the boreal
ecosystem cover more than half of Canada, giving us one of the largest contiguous tracts of
wilderness remaining in the world. The forest is a commanding force in our physical landscape,
and artists the Group of Seven have ensured its legacy as part of our cultural terrain, showcasing
it through their art as a powerful symbol of Canadian national identity.
Tom Thompson’s story began in 1907, when he started work in Toronto as a commercial
artist at a photo-engraving house, Grip Ltd., with future Group of Seven members James Edward
Hervey MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, Frederick Horsman Varley, Franklin Carmichael and Frank
Johnston. In 1912, Thomson first visited Ontario’s Algonquin Park, and found inspiration
in the boreal forest there. He came to know the area well, working as a guide and fire fighter
in the park, and he shared his inspiration with his colleagues. The artists at Grip Ltd.
met frequently at a social club where they formed bonds with the wealthy Torontonians who
would become their patrons. Thomson died in 1917, three years before his five Grip Ltd. colleagues
and two friends — Lawren Harris and Alexander Young Jackson — formed the Group of Seven,
but his role in its history is undeniable. Alfred Joseph Casson, Edwin Holgate and Lionel
LeMoine FitzGerald later joined the group.
The Group of Seven painters shared an artistic outlook that was disdainful of predominant
Canadian styles of the time. They believed the Canadian elite’s generous support for
art resembling that of certain French and Dutch movements led to the unfortunate dominance
of Canadian landscape art that was too tame, detailed and domesticated. Members of the elite
wanted artistic representations of Canada to look settled and modified by human habitation,
says Charlie Hill, curator of Canadian art at the National Gallery of Canada. But the real
Canada didn’t look like an English garden. Most of the country was rugged and sparsely
settled. There were cities, of course, but the Group of Seven were not inspired by anything
uniquely Canadian about them.
Instead, this pioneering collection of artists believed Canada’s uniqueness was found
in northern landscapes like that of their favorite Ontario painting locales, and the land of
the boreal forest became central to their artistic mission. Most of the paintings, like Harris’ blunt,
green and yellow trees reflected in a tranquil lake (“Algonquin Sketch”), or Jackson’s
luminous, fire-colored hillsides (“Algoma”), were rugged and wild, and rarely delicate.
Many captured a vast expanse, as though the viewer were peering from the flap of a tent in
the wilderness, or the window of an airplane skimming a valley floor.
|Protecting the boreal
Concerned organizations are working to raise awareness that the Canadian boreal forest
is not a pristine, untouched area, but rather an ecological treasure increasingly vulnerable
to human interference. Industrial activity, especially forestry, mining and energy
concerns, is increasing in boreal areas. “It’s important to ensure that these
operations are carried out so that they minimize ecological harm,” says Cathy Wilkinson,
director of the Canadian Boreal Initiative. About 80 percent of Canada’s boreal
forest is still ecologically healthy, she says, and a large-scale plan for conservation
and sustainable forest management is necessary to keep it that way. The Canadian Boreal
Initiative has just released such a framework, endorsed by environmental organizations,
resource companies and First Nations groups.
“Their initial aim was to validate the northern landscape in the Canadian imagination
and explore its role in the formation of Canadian identity,” says Hill. They succeeded,
and maybe too well. “For some, that became the only Canadian landscape.” Through
the works of the Group of Seven, the boreal forest became entrenched in Canadian culture.
The construction of culture and identity over time is an intricate process, and certain
viewpoints dominate at the expense of others. Given the perspective gained over seven decades
since the Group of Seven’s final show in 1931, it becomes clear that what they left
out of their paintings, or what was painted but not widely celebrated by the public, was
just as important as the canvases that came to define the artists. “They provided a
representation of Canada that very large numbers of people responded to, but they gave us
a very particular picture of the Canadian landscape,” says John O’Brian, professor
of art history at the University of British Columbia. “It was just one representation
of a very complex nation, and there were things it did not include.”
Many logging operations, for example, were already active in the boreal forest at the time.
In fact, the Group of Seven likely took logging roads to reach many of the areas they painted,
O’Brian says. The boreal terrain portrayed as empty and untamed was also home to numerous
aboriginal settlements. Such things are captured in certain Group of Seven paintings, but
these were not the canvases that typically drew attention and became associated with the
group. “They weren’t the paintings people wanted to buy, or museums wanted to
display,” says O’Brian.
The Group of Seven painted the boreal forest into the collective Canadian imagination.
Three generations later, their art retains its power, but the vision of the boreal forest
the painters presented may need updating. The forest is not an untamed, empty wilderness,
but rather home and a source of income for many Canadians. This human influence presents
conservation challenges that must be addressed to maintain the boreal ecosystem’s unique
balance, and allow this iconic landscape to continue its tradition as a muse to Canadian | <urn:uuid:d09333e8-004c-4a97-bba1-80d56fe0edb9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/jf04/indepth/history.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00174-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959691 | 1,362 | 2.8125 | 3 |
void as a type. Why on earth is "void" a type? It has no instances, it has no values, you can't use it as a generic type argument, formal parameter type, local type, field type or property type. It has no meaning as a type; rather, it is a fact about what effect a method call has on the stack of the virtual machine. But the virtual machine is just that: a virtual machine. The real machine will put the returned value in a register (typically EAX on x86) and not affect the stack at all! Void as a type is just a bad idea all around.
Worse: when used in a pointer type as in
void* it means something completely different than what it means when used as a return type. Now it means "a pointer to a storage location of unknown type", which has nothing whatsoever to do with its meaning as "a method that doesn't return any value."
We can replace
void* as a pointer type with
IntPtr* and so on.) We can replace void as a return type with "Unit", a type that has a single value, namely, null. An implementation of the CLR could then decide that a unit-typed function call could optimize its usage of registers or stacks appropriately, knowing that the null that is being "returned" can be safely ignored.
In such a world you no longer need separate
Func<A, R> and
Action<T> is just | <urn:uuid:d3d58dd8-c22b-4395-b731-4af68a72aa95> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40219/c-or-net-features-to-cut-off-assuming-no-backward-compatibility-needed/116610 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00159-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936524 | 306 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Something could be lurking at the edge of the solar system. Something big—two to four times larger than Earth—and dark. It might be a planet, slowly orbiting, and pitched away from the rest of the solar system. The only evidence comes from a half dozen dwarf planets circling the sun in strange, skewed, far-away orbits.
The evidence might be sparse, but it is also compelling. According to new analysis in the Astronomical Journal, few things besides gravitational nudging from a large, ninth planet would explain the several dozen rogue Kuiper Belt objects with highly elliptical orbits. The hypothesis, published by a pair of Caltech researchers, says the planet is probably a gas giant that was punted out of the ecliptic plane, in which all the other planets orbit, eons ago.
But phantom planets are nothing new. “There are dozens, if not hundreds of examples where researchers have said there must be another planet to explain some orbital anomaly,” says Mike Brown, Caltech astronomer and co-author of the new planet paper. Occasionally, the phantoms are real. In the mid-1800s, European astronomers noticed something funky in Uranus’ orbit, and posited that there might be another planet tugging on it. In a Newtonian coup, one French mathematician perfectly predicted Neptune’s position. The day after receiving the prediction in a letter, his German astronomer colleague found the planet right where it was supposed to be.
But Neptune didn’t resolve everybody’s questions about Uranus. In fact, the newest planet’s orbit also had a slight lag—raising the possibility of another planet beyond Uranus. The tug was so compelling that amateur astronomer and professional millionaire Percival Lowell built an observatory atop a mountain in a distant, western desert now called Arizona. Lowell died looking for his so-called Planet X.
The old man had been gone nearly 15 years before someone found it. William Tombaugh spotted a pinprick-sized discrepancy between parallel pictures of stars in the Gemini galaxy, taken five days apart. His discovery jolted the field of astronomy, and for a short time vindicated Lowell’s theories about Planet X. Eventually science caught up with the hype, and this tiny world—named Pluto—was deemed too small to be responsible for Neptune’s, let alone Uranus’ wobble. “The only reason Lowell thought Planet X was out there was because of bad data that showed Neptune and Uranus were perturbed,” says Brown. Over time, better observations showed that the two outermost gas giants were orbiting exactly as they ought to.
Pluto was the original Planet Nine, which means humans have been looking for this mysterious world for over 100 years. Here’s another plot twist: “New” Planet Nine advocate Mike Brown was one of the main agitators behind the dwarf planet’s ignominious demotion. Conspiracy? Perhaps a ploy to open up the highly coveted position of ninth planet for a larger, gassier, more suitable representative? “Yeah, you know Planet 10 just sounds so much worse, so it had to happen,” he jokes. In other words, no. Though any humor in this ironic coincidence is probably lost on Alan Stern, and other Pluto-philes.
Some pretty sweet astronomy burns. And Stern has a point. This new planet is still just a theory. But if it does exist, it’s got a kickass origin story. Hypothetically, the planet is up to four times the size of Earth, and at closest approach, 76 times as far from the Sun—a single orbit would take between 10,000 and 20,000 years. “There wouldn’t have been enough material that far out to form something that big,” says Scott Sheppard, astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC. Instead, it probably formed in the same neighborhood as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Back then, things weren’t so nicely organized, orbits not so circular. The new planet could have been on a near collision course with one of those larger giants, but instead of smashing into it, it merely passed close enough for a gravity assist. “It was a runt, and interacted with something like Jupiter, and Jupiter pushed it out to the outer solar system,” says Sheppard.
If it’s there, this new planet’s orbit is really funky. This graphic above shows just how far off kilter the new planet is from the ecliptic plane.
Theoretically, that is. Right now, the only reason astronomers think any of this stuff is true is because in 2014 Sheppard and a co-author discovered six objects outside the Kuiper Belt with weird orbits. Most of these icy worlds beyond Pluto orbit within a certain range, and follow roughly circular tracks. “The graphic shows the distant, eccentric orbits, all pointing off in the same direction,” says Brown. His theory is the new planet has been gravitationally nudging these tiny worlds. “It gently shepherds them over time,” says Brown.
Figuring that out took a year’s worth of supercomputer simulations, in which he and co-author Konstantin Batygin ran the orbits through models to see what could possibly explain those wide orbits. They knew about the new planet hypothesis—Sheppard originally proposed it in his 2014 work—but initially sought to disprove it. “We found what works,” says Brown.
Still, six is a pretty low number. “It’s not a slam dunk,” says Sheppard. “We’re dealing with low number statistics, a handful of objects.” He has found a few more objects in the same general neighborhood, but they were too new to include in Brown’s study. “It take s a year or two to get their orbits down and say exactly what they are doing, so we’re still following up.” In the end, the only evidence that really matters will be whether someone actually captures this phantom planet in their telescope lens. “The sky is a big place, but based on this now we know where to look,” says Brown. This time, though, the prediction probably won’t come by letter.Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article. | <urn:uuid:f65a23d7-479f-440a-8aa2-f200f43b0ed9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wired.com/2016/01/this-isnt-the-first-time-astronomers-have-found-a-planet-nine/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959294 | 1,345 | 3.703125 | 4 |
Observing System Products
Ocean Data Synthesis
The key objective of the ocean observing system for climate is to characterize the state of the ocean in adequate detail to monitor and understand climate variability and change in the ocean as well as its interaction with the atmosphere. To this end the observing system produces a rich collection of datasets, which, when combined with space-based observations, yield extensive coverage of the ocean surface. Yet despite the large number of subsurface measurements made by profiling floats, XBTs, repeat hydrography, and other platforms, the vast interior of the ocean, which cannot be seen directly from space, remains largely unsampled. It is also difficult to cross-calibrate thousands of in situ measurements with adequate accuracy to ensure the consistency among them desired for robust conclusions about the state of the complete ocean.
In contrast, computer models are capable of describing all of the ocean in consistent fashion, though their imperfections lead them to do so with limited accuracy.
To address the limitations of both models and measurements, scientists have developed methods for continuously correcting model errors with measured data. Such data assimilation methodologies not only keep the model from drifiting away from the truth, but also utilizes the model to interpolate between measured data points, thus effectively increasing the spatial and temporal resolution of the measurements. Doing so also corrects any inconsistencies among measured data points by allowing the model to derive a representation of the state of the ocean that improves upon estimates based solely on either sparse observations or numerical simulations alone. In this manner, the data assimilation model serves as an integrator of disparate observational datasets, knitting them together in a self-consistent manner for subsequent analysis of ocean climate phenomena that may be difficult to infer from observations alone. For example, the model can be queried for ocean heat transport in particular regions, or the model can be used to evaluate the observing system itself by withholding individual observations from the data assimilation scheme and noting its impact on calculated quantities.
To these ends the Ocean Climate Observation Program sponsors the operational Global Ocean Data Assimilation System (GODAS), developed and operated by the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center, which creates and disseminates a suite of ocean products derived from synthesis of many of the datasets collected by the observing system.
Improvements in data assimilation methodologies are a focus of numerous research groups worldwide, many of whose activities have been coordinated under the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE). | <urn:uuid:4657c220-3fad-4e56-96d6-10bfa404d9a1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.oco.noaa.gov/oceanDataSynthesisProduct.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00005-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934386 | 499 | 2.984375 | 3 |
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|man pages section 3: Curses Library Functions Oracle Solaris 11 Express 11/10|
- get a character and its attributes from a curses window
cc [ flag ... ] file ... -lcurses [ library ... ] #include <curses.h> chtype inch(void);
chtype winch(WINDOW *win);
chtype mvinch(int y, int x);
chtype mvwinch(WINDOW *win, int y, int x);
With these routines, the character, of type chtype, at the current position in the named window is returned. If any attributes are set for that position, their values are OR-ed into the value returned. Constants defined in <curses.h> can be used with the logical AND (&) operator to extract the character or attributes alone.
The following bit-masks can be AND-ed with characters returned by winch().
Bit-mask to extract character
Bit-mask to extract attributes
Bit-mask to extract color-pair field information
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
The header <curses.h> automatically includes the headers <stdio.h> and <unctrl.h>.
Note that all of these routines may be macros. | <urn:uuid:9a45cc18-467b-43b1-9d76-cabc98787392> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19963-01/html/821-1471/mvwinch-3curses.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396455.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00126-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.783477 | 281 | 2.671875 | 3 |
More to Solar Cycle Than Sunspots
Sun also bombards Earth with high-speed streams of wind
Challenging conventional wisdom, new research finds that the number of sunspots provides an incomplete measure of changes in the sun's impact on Earth over the course of the 11-year solar cycle. The study, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Michigan, finds that Earth was bombarded last year with high levels of solar energy at a time when the sun was in an unusually quiet phase and sunspots had virtually disappeared.
"The sun continues to surprise us," says lead author Sarah Gibson of NCAR's High Altitude Observatory. "The solar wind can hit Earth like a fire hose even when there are virtually no sunspots."
The study, also written by scientists at NOAA and NASA, is being published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research. It was funded by NASA and by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's sponsor.
"It is vitally important to realize that the 'quiet' sun really isn't all that quiet," says Rich Behnke, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric Sciences. "These high-speed streams of wind can affect many of our communications and navigation systems. And they can come at any time, during any part of the solar cycle."
Scientists for centuries have used sunspots, which are areas of concentrated magnetic fields that appear as dark patches on the solar surface, to determine the approximately 11-year solar cycle. At solar maximum, the number of sunspots peaks. During this time, intense solar flares occur daily and geomagnetic storms frequently buffet Earth, knocking out satellites and disrupting communications networks.
Gibson and her colleagues focused instead on another process by which the sun discharges energy. The team analyzed high-speed streams within the solar wind that carry turbulent magnetic fields out into the solar system.
When those streams blow by Earth, they intensify the energy of the planet's outer radiation belt. This can create serious hazards for Earth-orbiting satellites and affect global communications systems, while also threatening astronauts in the International Space Station. Auroral storms light up the night sky repeatedly at high latitudes as the streams move past, driving mega-ampere electrical currents a few hundred miles above Earth's surface. All that energy heats and expands the upper atmosphere. This expansion pushes denser air higher, slowing down satellites and causing them to drop to lower altitudes.
Scientists previously thought that the streams largely disappeared as the solar cycle reached minimum. But when the study team compared measurements within the current solar minimum interval, taken in 2008, with measurements of the last solar minimum in 1996, they found that the Earth in 2008 was continuing to resonate with the effects of the streams. Although the current solar minimum has fewer sunspots than any minimum in 75 years, the sun's effect on Earth's outer radiation belt, as measured by electron fluxes, was more than three times greater last year than in 1996.
Gibson said that observations this year show that the winds have finally slowed, almost two years after sunspots reached the levels of last cycle's minimum.
The authors note that more research is needed to understand the impacts of these high-speed streams on the planet. The study raises questions about how the streams might have affected Earth in the past when the sun went through extended periods of low sunspot activity, such as a period known as the Maunder minimum that lasted from about 1645 to 1715.
"The fact that Earth can continue to ring with solar energy has implications for satellites and sensitive technological systems," Gibson says. "This will keep scientists busy bringing all the pieces together."
Buffeting Earth with streams of energy
For the new study, the scientists analyzed information gathered from an array of space- and ground-based instruments during two international scientific projects: the Whole sun Month in the late summer of 1996 and the Whole Heliosphere Interval in the early spring of 2008. The solar cycle was at a minimal stage during both the study periods, with few sunspots in 1996 and even fewer in 2008.
The team found that strong, long, and recurring high-speed streams of charged particles buffeted Earth in 2008. In contrast, Earth encountered weaker and more sporadic streams in 1996. As a result, the planet was more affected by the sun in 2008 than in 1996, as measured by such variables as the strength of electron fluxes in the outer radiation belt, the velocity of the solar wind in the vicinity of Earth, and the periodic behavior of auroras (the Northern and Southern lights) as they responded to repeated high-speed streams.
The prevalence of high-speed streams during this solar minimum appears to be related to the current structure of the sun. As sunspots became less common over the last few years, large coronal holes lingered in the surface of the sun near its equator. The high-speed streams that blow out of those holes engulfed Earth during 55 percent of the study period in 2008, compared to 31 percent of the study period in 1996. A single stream of charged particles can last for as long as seven to 10 days. At their peak, the accumulated impact of the streams during one year can inject as much energy into Earth's environment as massive eruptions from the sun's surface can during a year at the peak of a solar cycle, says co-author Janet Kozyra of the University of Michigan.
The streams strike Earth periodically, spraying out in full force like water from a fire hose as the sun revolves. When the magnetic fields in the solar winds point in a direction opposite to the magnetic lines in Earth's magnetosphere, they have their strongest effect. The strength and speed of the magnetic fields in the high-speed streams can also affect Earth's response.
The authors speculate that the high number of low-latitude coronal holes during this solar minimum may be related to a weakness in the sun's overall magnetic field. The sun in 2008 had smaller polar coronal holes than in 1996, but high-speed streams that escape from the sun's poles do not travel in the direction of Earth.
"The sun-Earth interaction is complex, and we haven't yet discovered all the consequences for the Earth's environment of the unusual solar winds this cycle," Kozyra says. "The intensity of magnetic activity at Earth in this extremely quiet solar minimum surprised us all. The new observations from last year are changing our understanding of how solar quiet intervals affect the Earth and how and why this might change from cycle to cycle."
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2016, its budget is $7.5 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 48,000 competitive proposals for funding and makes about 12,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $626 million in professional and service contracts yearly.
Useful NSF Web Sites: | <urn:uuid:fbe04bfa-3059-435b-801e-f534bc3bb753> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=115595 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00096-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954327 | 1,459 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Was it a Mistake?
In the most important and best-documented slave insurrection in Southern history, Nat Turner, son of an African-born slave mother in Southampton County, Virginia, led an uprising of sixty or seventy slaves. As his remarkable confession indicates, he was a precocious youth and became a preacher motivated by mystical voices to fulfill a dream to liberate his people. He admitted that his own master, Joseph Travis, was a kindly person; yet he and his family were the first to be slaughtered. At least 51 - Gray says 55 - were murdered the night of the uprising, August 21, 1831, The details are given in the Confessions below.
This event took on special significance to Southerners because the Southern press had reported insurrections in at least a half dozen places in the Caribbean or West Indies and one in North Carolina. (There is no proof of concerted conspiracy between Turner and the principals of the Carolina episode, however.) Following the massacre, the community tracked down suspects and killed an undetermined number, and the Court ordered sixteen executed and many more jailed or tnansported. Nat Turner went to the gallows, saying that he had nothing to add to his Confession.
The Nat Turner insurrection shocked the South and led most slave-state legislatures to pass stringent codes for policing. The flourishing emancipation movement in the South began to falter. Southerners came to believe that the revolt was connected with the rise of abolitionism, specifically with the publication of Garrison's Liberator in that same year of 1831, but this has never been proved. More tangible is the fact that Southerners never quite recovered from the fear of incipient slave insurrections despite the wordy reassurances of Thomas R. Dew and the proslavery propagandists that there was nothing to fear.
This edition of The Confessions of Nat Turner is complete. Only the appendices and prefatory material have been omitted. Punctuation and spelling have occasionally been silently corrected. | <urn:uuid:5d33af5f-583f-463a-b5f3-e8e507450627> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1826-1850/the-confessions-of-nat-turner/was-it-a-mistake.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00070-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970247 | 406 | 3.21875 | 3 |
How to improve your musical ear through ear-training
All musicians of any kind can benefit from developing his or her ear. Some people are born with a better ear than others, of course, but those of us who don’t have a great natural ear can still improve a lot through the use of ear-training drills.
One drill that is useful is to have a friend or relative play various intervals on the keyboard — start with 2nds, then 3rds, then 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, 7ths, etc. — and see if you can identify them. By doing this just a few minutes a day most people can improve their musical ear signaficantly.
Another drill is to have someone play chords of various sorts on the keyboard, and see if you can identify them . Start with the easy ones like major and minor, and gradually work up to augmented and diminished chords, then 6ths and minor 6th chords, and so on. If you don’t have a teacher or someone to help you, you can take online courses in ear-training such as the ones at http://www.playpianocatalog.com/eartrco.html
Tags: ear training | <urn:uuid:c5da4762-4302-4f82-9e4b-0e4121771012> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.playpiano.com/wordpress/ear-training/how-to-improve-your-musical-ear-through-ear-training | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00082-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975394 | 253 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Introduction to Java Application Architecture: Modularity Patterns with Examples Using OSGi
In 1995, design patterns were all the rage. Today, I find the exact opposite. Patterns have become commonplace, and most developers use patterns on a daily basis without giving it much thought. New patterns rarely emerge today that have the same impact of the Gang of Four (GOF) patterns.1 In fact, the industry has largely moved past the patterns movement. Patterns are no longer fashionable. They are simply part of a developer’s arsenal of tools that help them design software systems.
But, the role design patterns have played over the past decade should not be diminished. They were a catalyst that propelled object-oriented development into the mainstream. They helped legions of developers understand the real value of inheritance and how to use it effectively. Patterns provided insight into how to construct flexible and resilient software systems. With nuggets of wisdom, such as “Favor object composition over class inheritance” and “Program to an interface, not an implementation” (Gamma 1995), patterns helped a generation of software developers adopt a new programming paradigm.
Patterns are still widely used today, but for many developers, they are instinctive. No longer do developers debate the merits of using the Strategy pattern. Nor must they constantly reference the GOF book to identify which pattern might best fit their current need. Instead, good developers now instinctively design object-oriented software systems.
Many patterns are also timeless. That is, they are not tied to a specific platform, programming language, nor era of programming. With some slight modification and attention to detail, a pattern is molded to a form appropriate given the context. Many things dictate context, including platform, language, and the intricacies of the problem you’re trying to solve. As we learn more about patterns, we offer samples that show how to use patterns in a specific language. We call these idioms.
I’d like to think the modularity patterns in this book are also timeless. They are not tied to a specific platform or language. Whether you’re using Java or .NET, OSGi,2 or Jigsaw3 or you want to build more modular software, the patterns in this book help you do that. I’d also like to think that over time, we’ll see idioms emerge that illustrate how to apply these patterns on platforms that support modularity and that tools will emerge that help us refactor our software systems using these patterns. I’m hopeful that when these tools emerge, they will continue to evolve and aid the development of modular software. But most important, I hope that with your help, these patterns will evolve and morph into a pattern language that will help us design better software—software that realizes the advantages of modularity. Time will tell.
Over the past several years, a number of object-oriented design principles have emerged. Many of these design principles are embodied within design patterns. The SOLID design principles espoused by Uncle Bob are prime examples. Further analysis of the GOF patterns reveals that many of them adhere to these principles.
For all the knowledge shared, and advancements made, that help guide object-oriented development, creating very large software systems is still inherently difficult. These large systems are still difficult to maintain, extend, and manage. The current principles and patterns of object-oriented development fail in helping manage the complexity of large software systems because they address a different problem. They help address problems related to logical design but do not help address the challenges of physical design. | <urn:uuid:e02e3dc7-a1d2-4a17-a435-3b5d1ec6b20e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1850815 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00068-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939661 | 725 | 2.84375 | 3 |
From The Great Pumpkin to pumpkin pie to pumpkin spice lattes, the pumpkin is an American icon. Nothing signals the start of autumn like the arrival of pumpkins. Originating in Central America over 7,500 years ago, archaeologists discovered the oldest domesticated pumpkin seeds in the Oaxaca Highlands of Mexico. These seeds grew much different pumpkins than the orange variety we are accustomed to today. In its original form the pumpkin was a small, hard ball with a bitter taste. Pre-Columbian Native Americans domesticated pumpkins for their flesh rather than their nutritional, readily available seeds. The pumpkin was one of the first wild plants cultivated for human consumption in America, making it an extremely important part of our culinary history. The possibility of having access to something that could be planted, controlled and eaten meant less need for foraging and more likelihood of settling down in one place. Because of their thick and solid flesh, pumpkins could easily be stored throughout the winter and times of scarcity.
We tend think of pumpkins as a vegetable, but it is biologically considered a fruit. Like other forms of squash, pumpkins are easy to grow. They were a favorite with English colonists, who became acquainted with them prior to arriving in the New World. During the 3-day meeting between English colonists and the Wampanoag tribe known as the First Thanksgiving, pumpkins may have been included in the feast. If they were served, they were more likely cooked as a savory dish, not a dessert. Over time pumpkins were valued for their versatility. They were cooked into pies, stews, tarts, soups, and puddings. The flesh could be boiled, roasted, fried or mashed and the seeds were dried and salted as a nutritious snack food.
In 1672, John Josselyn included a pumpkin recipe in his book New-England Rarities Discovered. This was one of the first recipes to come out of the United States. The side dish called for dicing ripe pumpkin and cooking it in a pot over the course of a day. Once finished, butter and spices were added. This early recipe sounds a bit like our modern preparation of mashed sweet potatoes. Finding ways to make pumpkin into a unique, tasty dish instead of something that was just easy and inexpensive became a project for the women of the 17th century. Unable to vote and having little voice in public matters, creating recipes became a way for them to reach an audience and create their own identity.
In the early 1800’s, decorative pumpkins called jack-o’-lanterns were carved to celebrate the autumn harvest season. Pumpkins proved to be much easier to work with than the potatoes and turnips of the past. In 1819, Washington Irving featured a mysterious jack-o’-lantern in his short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which may have led to the carved pumpkin’s popular association with the Halloween holiday.
In the 1800’s it became stylish to serve pumpkin pies for the Thanksgiving holiday (read more about the history on Thanksgiving here), a trend that continues to this day with over 50 million baked yearly. The earliest versions of sweetened pumpkin dishes were actually pumpkin shells that had been cleaned out and filled with ginger-spiced milk, then roasted by the fire.
Circleville, Ohio was once home to E. Sears Canning, a large pumpkin canning company. In fall farmers would line up with their wagons, packed to the brim with pumpkins waiting to processed and canned. Because of the significance of pumpkins in Circleville, the mayor, George Haswell, began exhibiting pumpkins. The exhibition came to be known as the Pumpkin Show and continued to grow each year. Though the effects of the Great Depression and World War II forced the canning company to shut down, the Circleville Pumpkin Festival is still held each year. It is the largest festival of its kind. Activities include a contest for largest pumpkin, largest pumpkin pie and a competition for Miss Pumpkin Show Queen.
Speaking of largest pumpkin, Tim and Susan Mathison of California broke the world record this year. Their massive pumpkin, which took 105 days to grow, weighed in at a whopping 2,032 pounds (yup, you heard that right… over a ton!!). That’s a lot of pumpkin lattes.
As you can see, pumpkins are a versatile and important food worth celebrating. If you’re interested in taking a deeper look into the rich history of pumpkins, you will enjoy Cindy Ott’s Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon. The book served as one of the sources for this piece and provided me with a lot of new pumpkin facts I’d never learned. It’s definitely worth a read. Next time you bake a homemade pumpkin pie, you can serve it with a slice of history as well.
What’s your favorite way to eat pumpkin? Pie? Soup? Lattes?
More Pumpkin Treats and History
Manetti, Michelle. “World’s Largest Pumpkin 2013 Reportedly Weighs 2032 Pounds.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 16 Oct. 2013. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.
Ott, Cindy (2012). Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon. University of Washington Press, US.
Smith, Andrew F. (2007). The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Oxford University Press, New York, New York. | <urn:uuid:eeebc489-5196-4e2f-9182-d828406ec4d9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://toriavey.com/history-kitchen/2013/11/pumpkin-history/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00106-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967157 | 1,133 | 3.609375 | 4 |
Credit: Pam Ruiter
For the last three years, Environmental Defense Fund Europe has been working in partnership with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Spain through a nation-wide project focusing on the sustainability of small-scale coastal fisheries. Small-scale fishing is the lifeblood of many coastal Spanish communities. In order to preserve this way of life it is critical to understand how these fisheries are doing biologically. As in small-scale fisheries worldwide, many Spanish coastal fisheries have limited information available to work with, and a stronger link between science and management could be made. Read More
Photo: Alexis Rife
Cozumel, Mexico might be better known for its diving and tourism, but it’s also home to some of the most successful fishing cooperatives and TURFs in the world. In a recent trip with our partners Rare and the Sustainable Fisheries Group at UCSB, we met with fishing cooperatives from Mexico to learn from these fishers and communities about successful TURF-Reserve models and conditions that have contributed to their success. It was an amazing opportunity to share learnings and experiences cross-country (and truly, around the globe).
First, some background on cooperatives. A cooperative is a group of fishers who communicate about and coordinate their fishing activity to meet their goals. Cooperatives can perform a range of activities, from coordinating fishing activities to participating in co-management, and even marketing their products. Successful cooperatives also sustainably manage their fishery so that the species are healthy and simultaneously provide for sustainable livelihoods for fishers.
Fishing cooperatives can be especially critical to sustainable fisheries management, especially in areas where governance is weak. Many cooperatives also invest a portion of their profits in community projects, which increases awareness of the importance of fishing resources as an important source of income and prosperity for the community as a whole. Read More
By: Erica Cunningham
Brazil represents one of South America’s most important countries in terms of small-scale fisheries. The country boasts one of the longest coastlines on the continent and more than 60 percent of landings come from artisanal fishing. In addition, 98 percent of registered fishers in Brazil are small-scale. However, the country remains a net importer of seafood and 80 percent of all fishing activities are considered to be unsustainable in terms of management. Beyond the science, there is real urgency to addressing this issue. Billions of people in Brazil and around the world, often the poorest and most marginalized, depend on fish for protein. The combination of these factors make Brazil a perfect country for the Fish Forever partnership. Read More
Belizean fisherman diving for conch and lobster. Photo credit: Jason Houston
More than 90% of the world’s 36 million fishers operate in small-scale fisheries—many of which are in developing countries. From sea to plate, these small-scale fisheries support more than 100 million jobs across the supply chain and produce half of the world’s seafood for local and global markets.
But as the world’s population increases and the demand for seafood rises, the supply for wild caught fish is plummeting. As a result, many small-scale fishing communities face job and food security threats and unfortunately lack access to the tools they need to sustainably manage their fisheries.
Developed by Environmental Defense Fund, a Framework for Integrated Stock and Habitat Evaluation (FISHE) equips fishermen and marine scientists with a swift, low-cost and highly effective method with which to assess and manage fisheries that lack sufficient fishing data. Read More
Blue Swimming Crab. Photo: Alexis Rife
Indonesia is a nation of over 17,000 islands where fishing contributes significantly to local livelihoods, food security and culture:
- Two million fishers + millions more people rely on the coast for their food and livelihoods
- At least 50% of Indonesians’ animal protein comes from seafood
Indonesia is the second largest producer of wild capture seafood in the world, feeding Indonesians, but also exporting much to other countries. During a recent site visit to Indonesia, I was excited to learn about a local, small-scale fishery that plays a part in a big international seafood market: blue swimming crab. Read More
Photo credit: Jason Houston
Small-scale fisheries provide a host of social and economic benefits to local communities. They contribute about half of the global catch; supplying food for local, national and global markets. They are responsible for about ninety percent of fishing employment. They provide income, contribute to food security and nutrition, alleviate poverty, and often support a way of life strongly anchored in local culture and community.
But small-scale and artisanal fisheries face many challenges today including depleted fish stocks; pollution; encroachment from development; climate change, and sea level rise. Many small-scale fishing communities are marginalized, with low levels of access to political power, education and other resources.
To combat these challenges, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) collaborated with governments, Civil Society Organizations and other stakeholders to develop a set of ‘Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication’ (SSF). Today at the biennial meeting of the FAO’s Committee on Fisheries in Rome, delegates adopted the SSF Guidelines by consensus. Read More | <urn:uuid:365f956f-2df6-4309-8182-29c7f38c468b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.edf.org/edfish/tag/small-scale-fisheries-3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00053-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940866 | 1,098 | 3 | 3 |
Microsoft PowerPoint Guide
by John Monyjok Maluth
Microsoft Office PowerPoint is a presentation software. We use this software to create presentations and share them with students or other viewers. You can make presentations for your lessons or sermons depending on what you want to present. In this course, we will look at the main features of Microsoft Office PowerPoint. You will also learn about tabs and their tab groups. | <urn:uuid:9032f18c-5512-4c07-bbde-93936c9beda8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.smashwords.com/books/tags/microsoft_2013 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00076-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.867082 | 82 | 2.671875 | 3 |
In 1786 and 1787, farmers in western Massachusetts rebelled against the state government in a series of uprisings known as Shays’ Rebellion. Led by Daniel Shays, the movement took place before the Philadelphia Convention had convened. Since the U.S. Constitution was a product of the Convention, Shays’ Rebellion did not protest the Constitution, but instead protested against tax enforcement during an economic crisis.
In the wake of the American Revolution, the United States faced enormous economic uncertainty. While the country had achieved political independence, its financial stability was precarious. Revolutionary War veterans returned home from the war unpaid by the Continental Congress, which was routinely low on money. States like Massachusetts, which had financed the Revolution through debt, were forced to raise taxes to pay off their debts. In 1786, these high taxes led to poor financial circumstances for western Massachusetts farmers. Lacking payment for years of service, the farmers were forced to take out debt or sell their homes. Most chose debt, and a debt bubble soon emerged in the region. Massachusetts, unlike many other "pro-debtor" states, did not issue new paper money or forgive debts; therefore, many farmers in the agricultural western half of the state fell into economic misfortune.
In response to the financial distress of western Massachusetts, numerous citizens in the area began to organize in protest of their government's tax policies. From this uprising rose a man named Daniel Shays who had served in Lexington and elsewhere during the Revolution. With debtors courts imprisoning indebted farmers, Daniel Shays became a leader of over 9,000 rebellious farmers. In the fall of 1786, these rebels raided and closed courts throughout western New England. The region was in a full-fledged rebellion against the young American government.
While the Shaysites -- as they called themselves -- succeeded in closing courts and bringing chaos to western Massachusetts, their rebellion ended quickly. Massachusetts Governor James Bowdoin, supported by Eastern merchants who opposed the rebels, organized an armed force to send to the Western region. The Bowdoin force quickly ended the Shaysites, but Shays’ Rebellion had a lasting impact. For one, Governor Bowdoin lost his bid for reelection and was replaced by a pro-debtor governor. This new government instituted policies that were more favorable to the indebted farmers.
Impact on Constitutional Convention
Shays’ Rebellion took place just months before the Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia. Since the Convention’s purpose was producing a governing document, lawmakers were concerned about the events in western Massachusetts. The Articles of Confederation had created a notoriously weak central government. The delegates in Philadelphia intended to write a document that would strengthen the central government, and many scholars believe that Shays’ Rebellion only encouraged this intention. Many thought the new United States would devolve into perpetual revolution and that the new government needed to be able to effectively end further rebellions.
- Jupiterimages/liquidlibrary/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:d780e615-1fef-4fed-9437-0e4e843035c2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://classroom.synonym.com/did-farmers-shays-rebellion-protest-constitution-18056.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00127-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972589 | 600 | 4.375 | 4 |
It isn’t uncommon to hear a homeschool mom who is having a less-than-studious day say something like, “We are learning life skills today!” We laugh understandingly, but in the back of our minds we wonder,
“Can you do that?”
As a matter of fact, YOU CAN!
If you are actively and purposefully teaching your children, it is school. Life skills count as school if they are being actively taught.
What do I mean by “actively taught?”
If you use the life skill to teach formal school subjects, then you can count those hours as school hours. You must be engaging your children in conversation and education and they must be engaging in the act of learning. You cannot simply DO a life skill and then call it school, but you certainly can teach along with the life skill and call that school.
Here are some examples of life skills and the school subjects they might encompass:
- Math – price comparison, weights, units
- Nutrition – calories, ingredients, additives, preservatives
- Science – digestive tract, food production
- Geography – origin of foods
- Science – anatomy, medicine
- Math – weights, measurements, volume
- Home economics
- Science – properties of common cleaners
- History – points of interest, historical figures and events of area
- Math – mileage
- Geography – map reading, topography
Hunting & Shooting sports
- Science – animal science
- History – history of hunting and weapons
- Math – trajectory, distances, windage and elevation, reloading and ammunition
- Geography – landscape
- Math – measurements, angles
- Science – textiles, gears and machines
- Math – weights, money
- Math – money
- Nutrition – food groups, menus, content
- Foreign language – based on restaurant
- Cultural studies – decor, music, food
The possibilities truly are endless, but remember, you have to be actively and purposefully teaching while engaged in these life skills and activities in order to call it school.
So, fear not homeschool mama, you CAN be creative with your school hours!
What are some ways you have taught school using life skills? | <urn:uuid:4184edf7-aab9-45d6-a52b-dcff07bbe84e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.raisingarrows.net/2011/10/does-that-count-as-school/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403823.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00026-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929177 | 463 | 3.046875 | 3 |
How Pets Can Help Kids with ADHD
From The Pet Wiki
Children who have been diagnosed with ADHD can benefit from caring for and playing with a pet. If you are on the fence about bringing an animal into your family and you have a child with ADHD, consider these points:
- A pet can teach a child with ADHD to schedule and plan ahead. Pets require a schedule for feeding, walking, bathing etc. Once your child becomes accustomed to following the pet's schedule, it will be easier for him to follow a schedule for homework, chores or extra-curricular activities.
- If your child has lots of excess energy, playing with a pet can help with that. Your child can burn off energy walking a dog or running around with a kitten, making her more relaxed later in the day.
- Fish can also be a calming influence. Watching fish swim around is very relaxing.
- Kids with ADHD are used to their parents trying to calm them down or reprimanding them. A pet offers unconditional love and will not criticize a child for having too much energy. Animals are great listeners and can build up a child's self-confidence.
- Child psychiatrists may use pets in therapy with ADHD children. For instance, dogs can be used to teach behavioral modification techniques to the children and their parents.
- Trying to live up to other people's expectations despite the difficulty can put stress on your child. Petting an animal or even just sitting near one can reduce stress.
- Children with ADHD may have difficulties with social interaction. When your child plays outside with a pet, other kids will automatically want to join in. When you invite a child to your home for a playdate, the pet is a great icebreaker.
- Outdoor exercise can be extremely beneficial to kids with ADHD. Fresh air and good circulation from aerobic exercise increases oxygen-filled blood flow to a child’s brain. If your child walks her dog in the morning before school she will have an easier time concentrating in the classroom. | <urn:uuid:378ae544-07ea-49eb-8df0-8ff64bca5777> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://thepetwiki.com/wiki/How_Pets_Can_Help_Kids_with_ADHD | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00053-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952058 | 407 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Alan MacDiarmid, Conductive Polymers, and Plastic Batteries
Until 1987, the billions of batteries that had been marketed in myriad sizes and shapes all had one thing in common. To make electricity, they depended exclusively upon chemical reactions involving metal components of the battery. But today a revolutionary new type of battery is available commercially. It stores electricity in plastic.
Plastic batteries are the most radical innovation in commercial batteries since the dry cell was introduced in 1890. Plastic batteries offer higher capacity, higher voltage, and longer shelf-life than many competitive designs. Companies are testing new shapes and configurations, including flat batteries, that can be bent like cardboard. Researchers expect that the new technology will free electronic designers from many of the constraints imposed by metal batteries such as limited recharging cycles, high weight, and high cost.
The development of plastic batteries began with an accident. In the early 1970s, a graduate student in Japan was trying to repeat the synthesis of polyacetylene, a dark powder made by linking together the molecules of ordinary acetylene welding gas. After the chemical reaction took place, instead of a black powder, the student found a film coating the inside of his glass reaction vessel that looked much like aluminum foil. He later realized that he had inadvertently added much more than the recommended amount of catalyst to cause the acetylene molecules to link together.
News about the foil-like film reached Alan MacDiarmid of the University of Pennsylvania. He was interested in non-metallic electrical conductors. Since polyacetylene in its new guise looked so much like a metal, MacDiarmid speculated that it might be able to conduct electricity like a metal as well. MacDiarmid invited the student's instructor to join his team in the United States, and this collaboration soon led to further findings. The University of Pennsylvania investigators confirmed that polyacetylene exhibited surprisingly high electrical conductivity.
Scientists recognize that various materials can conduct electricity in different ways. In metals, electricity is simply the manifestation of the movement of free electrons that are not tightly bound to any single atom. In semiconductors, like those that make up transistors and other electronic devices, electricity is the drift of excess electrons to form a negative current or, alternatively, the drift of missing electrons or positive "holes" in the opposite direction to form a positive current. Typically, the excess electrons or the holes are donated by impurity or dopant atoms.
MacDiarmid's team reasoned that the ability of polyacetylene to conduct electricity was probably promoted by trace impurities contributed by the catalysts involved in the Japanese student's process. In their laboratory, MacDiarmid's team confirmed that it was possible to chemically dope polyacetylene to create either mobile excess electrons or holes. That these electrons and holes could move explained how polyacetylene was able to conduct electricity.
When polyacetylene was exposed to traces of iodine or bromine vapor, the thin polymer film exhibited still higher electrical conductivity. The researchers discovered that by purposefully adding selected impurities to polyacetylene, its electrical conductivity could be made to range widely-behaving as an insulator, like glass, to a conductor, like metal. The discovery that plastics can behave like metallic conductors and semiconductors was a chemistry first.
The key breakthrough leading to practical application as batteries occurred in 1979 when one of Professor MacDiarmid's graduate students was investigating alternative ways for doping polyacetylene. He placed two strips of polyacetylene in a solution containing the doping ions and passed an electric current from strip to strip. As expected, the positive ions migrated to one strip and the negative ions to the other. But when the current source was removed, the charge remained stored in the polyacetylene polymer. This stored charge could then be discharged if an electrical load was connected between the two strips, just as in a conventional battery.
Chemically, the plastic battery is different from conventional metal-based rechargeable batteries in which material from one plate migrates to another plate and back in a reversible chemical reaction. In a conducting plastic battery, only the stored ions of the solution move-the plates are not consumed and reconstituted. Since conventional battery life is limited by the number of times the plates can be reconstituted, this difference portends a longer recharge-cycle lifetime for the plastic batteries.
One potential application for polymer batteries is in battery-powered automobiles. Two key measures of a battery's suitability for automotive application are the power density, which determines acceleration and hill-climbing ability, and the energy density, which determines the number of miles that can be driven between charges. Polyacetylene's power density is 12 times that of ordinary lead acid batteries. Its energy density is also higher-about 50 watts-hours per kilogram versus 35 for lead acid batteries. Although plastic batteries are competing against other advanced development batteries with similar capability for this application, they have the unique potential to be made of low-cost, environmentally-benign materials. Supporters feel that a polymer battery can be part of the battery-powered car of the future.
Polyacetylene, however, is not an ideal battery material. It degrades in air, is chemically stable only in liquid solutions, and is brittle and not amenable to injection molding methods used for forming plastic parts in production. The University of Pennsylvania team, along with industrial associates licensed to use their technology, searched for conducting polymers of greater structural strength, thermoplasticity, flexibility, and lower costs. Allied Corporation synthesized a new material, polyparaphenylene, a black powder capable of being formed into plates by hot pressing, that could be doped to conduct electricity. Several other potentially suitable plastics were discovered thereafter.
One such material was polyaniline. In 1984 and 1985, the University of Pennsylvania group received patents on the use of this material for rechargeable batteries. It is inexpensive, and, unlike polyacetylene, it is stable in both air and water. Polyaniline is the material used in the plastic batteries that first became commercially available in 1987.
In just 8 years, plastic batteries went from laboratory discovery to commercial availability, a remarkably fast evolution. With advances continuing at a rapid pace, there are great opportunities for increasingly important applications of this new technology.
Alan MacDiarmid shares the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Alan J. Heeger of the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Hideki Shirakawa, University of Tsukuba, Japan," for the discovery and development of conductive polymers."
Resources with Additional Information
Additional information on Alan G. MacDiarmid, conductive polymers, and plastic batteries is available in electronic documents and on the Web.
The Workshop on Conductive Polymers: Final Report., DOE Technical Report, 1985, with group report by Alan MacDiarmid
Structural Determination of the Symmetry-Breaking Parameter in trans-(CH)x, Physical Review Letters Vol. 48, Issue 2: 100-104; January 11, 1982
One-Dimensional Phonons and "Phase-Ordering" Phase Transition in Hg3-deltaAsF6, Physical Review Letters Vol. 39, Issue 23: 1484-1487; December 5, 1977
Electrical Conductivity in Doped Polyacetylene, Physical Review Letters Vol. 39, Issue 17:1098-1101; October 24, 1977
Additional Web Pages:
Nobel Lecture by Alan G. MacDiarmid, nobelprize.org (video)
Interview with Alan Heeger, Alan G. MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa, nobelprize.org (video)
Conductive Polymers, Vega.org (video)
the plastics collection - Alan G. MacDiarmid (1927 - 2007)
Alan MacDiarmid, 79, Who Won Nobel for Work with Plastic, Dies; New York Times, February 8, 2007
Deaths - Dr. MacDiarmid, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry; University of Pennsylvania Almanac; February 13, 2007, Volume 53, No. 22
Additional Information about how plastic can become conductive | <urn:uuid:310fb1fd-4f77-4c7c-a551-4e39edd9dadc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments/macdiarmid.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00171-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941628 | 1,680 | 3.734375 | 4 |
The National Zoo's Antarctica Expedition is sponsored by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs.
All photographs depicting Weddell seals were taken under NMFS Permit No. 763-1485-00 issued under the authority of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Capital Expenditure, Lactation Energetics, and the Importance of Foraging to Weddell Seals and their Pups
Lactation is the process by which energy and nutrients are transferred, in the form of milk, from a female mammal to offspring. Lactation is a costly physiological process for the milk provider, who must convert energy and nutrients she has ingested, in the form of food, into milk. Lactation is quite variable among species in terms of its duration, the nutrient and energy content of milk produced over the entire course of lactation and at its different stages, and the efficiency with which lactating individuals convert the food they ingest into milk.
As dependent young grow, they require ever-increasing amounts of energy and nutrients (more milk), placing even greater demands on the provider, which must produce not only greater quantities of milk but, in many cases, milk with higher energy and nutrient content. Many female mammals forage during lactation and thereby take in energy and nutrients that replace at least some of what is lost from milk production. But even lactating females who forage convert some of their own body stores during lactation and typically lose at least some of their own body mass in the process.
At one end of the lactation weight-loss continuum are mammals where mothers lose very little of their own body mass during infant rearing. Dominant female meerkats are an excellent example of this. After dominant female meerkats give birth, they leave pups in the care of foster-mothers who nurse the young almost exclusively. Some of these foster mothers are females that have lost their own young, but some are non-reproducing females who begin to lactate spontaneously. As a consequence, the actual mother has to invest very little, if anything at all, in lactation and uses her acquired and stored energy to produce more babies. This is an unusual lactation strategy found only in cooperatively breeding species.
At the other extreme are mammals in which mothers forage very little, if at all, during lactation. These species use energy and nutrients they have stored in their own body tissues (in the form of fat or protein) to make all the milk their young will need over the course of lactation. Such species are referred to as "capital breeders" because they rely almost exclusively on stored reserves—as in body "capital"—to support reproduction. We say "almost exclusively" because it is possible that some capital breeders actually do forage during lactation and we simply have not been able to detect or verify it. Phocid seals, which include the Weddell seal, are the best studied capital breeders.
Species that forage during lactation are referred to as "income breeders." In contrast to capital breeders, which rely on what they have stored up ("capital"), income breeders depend to one extent or another on what they take in ("income") during reproduction. There is a continuum between income and extreme capital breeders: at one end are otariid seals, such as the California sea lion, which remain ashore in a fasting state for about a week after giving birth and, after losing about four percent of their body protein and 12 percent of body energy to their pups, resume foraging trips to sea. These species employ the capital strategy at the beginning of lactation and then switch to the income strategy. At the other end of the continuum are large phocid seals, such as the elephant seal, which appear to fast throughout the entire duration of lactation—these are the extreme capital breeders. Large body size and limited availability of food during lactation may be important factors favoring the evolution of extreme capital breeding whereas the opposite appears to be true for income breeders.
Somewhere in between are species, like the Weddell seal, where there are larger individuals, which may fast for most or all of lactation, and smaller females that do not have many stored reserves and may actually forage at some point during lactation to obtain the energy and nutrients needed to sustain themselves and their young. Diving studies and the patterns of maternal weight loss during lactation seem to verify that this is indeed the case. Thus, Weddell seals may be unusual in that there may be a continuum from income to extreme capital breeding within a single population.
At this stage, we really don't know whether some, all, or no lactating Weddell seals must forage for successful reproduction. If it turns out that some or all have to forage, it would mean that breeding colonies would be limited to places where there is adequate prey and suitable access to that prey. These would-be limitations are very sensitive to environmental conditions that affect critical factors such as prey population size, sea ice cover and water currents, among others. If, on the other hand, Weddell seals need not forage during lactation, populations would be much less affected by changing environmental conditions that affect food resources and their physical environment. These are two very different scenarios and we want to know which one (or perhaps it's both) apply to Weddell seals.
To get to the bottom of all this, we will study a number of things in a sample of Weddell seals in the McMurdo population. These are: | <urn:uuid:73a648ee-1c63-4f7d-8ad4-290a56305557> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nationalzoo.si.edu/SCBI/AquaticEcosystems/Antarctica/Science/details.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397748.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00014-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963741 | 1,139 | 3.3125 | 3 |
The Mediation Process
WANT MORE INFORMATION? EMAIL ME YOUR QUESTION!
Family mediation is a co-operative problem solving process in which a neutral third party, the mediator, assists separating and divorcing spouses to work out their own, mutually acceptable, terms of separation. By definition, mediation is a process whereby a neutral third person (a mediator) acts to encourage and facilitate the resolution of a dispute between two more more parties. The process is informal and non-adversarial, with the objective of helping the disputing parties reach a mutually acceptable and voluntary agreement. The decision-making authority rests with the parties, not the court.
Even though the conflict between the parties may be very emotional, it is expected that the parties will come to mediation with an honest desire to reach a settlement that is fair to both and workable in practice. The participants in mediation must be prepared to be flexible in moving away from their initial positions to seek solutions, which meet as many of their mutual interests as possible.
Mediation is voluntary, and either party is free to withdraw from mediation at any time during the process. In certain circumstances, the mediator may terminate the process, when he or she believes that mediation is not appropriate or useful for the parties.
Issues for Mediation
Separating spouses, whether married or unmarried, can resolve a wide variety of issues through the mediation process. These include: the ongoing arrangements for the care, control and parenting of their children; obligations for the support of dependent spouses and children; possession of the matrimonial home; division of their property. Even spouses, who already have a separation agreement or Court Order, may consider mediating when they wish to vary certain provisions established in previous agreements.
Other issues suitable for family mediation include conflicts between adolescent children and their parents; intergenerational conflicts; disputes between family members who are beneficiaries of an estate; situations in which one family member is suing another in Civil Court for monetary damages; and negotiating the terms of Marriage Contracts and Cohabitation Agreements.
Situations which are not appropriate for mediation are those in which there are severe power imbalances which impair the ability of the parties to negotiate fairly with each other, and where there has been a history of domestic violence.
The Mediation Procedure
Generally, the mediator will first meet with both parties individually for 1 1/2 hours, followed by joint session(s) lasting approximately 2 hours each. The parties’ lawyers are rarely present for the mediation sessions, but will be involved in the background, advising the parties throughout the mediation process. They are invited to contact the mediator at any point. If the parties reach an impasse in mediation, the lawyers may be invited to attend a final session together with their clients. Occasionally, the mediator may wish to meet individually with each of the parties. Either party may also request an individual meeting with the mediator. Sometimes, in order to resolve the dispute, it may be necessary to have the input of third parties, such as new spouses, grandparents, or even the children themselves. The involvement of such persons will be discussed with the parties and agreed in advance.
When the parties reach a tentative agreement, the mediator will summarize the terms of their proposed agreement in the form of a written memorandum of understanding or Mediator’s Report. The parties are not bound to any proposed agreement arising out of the mediation process until such agreement has been reviewed by their independent attorneys and signed by them.
The Role of the Mediator
The Mediator is an impartial third party neutral who is not biased in favour of either party and who has no personal interest in the final outcome of the dispute. The mediator is a facilitator who assists the parties to negotiate their own terms of settlement. The Mediator does not act as an advocate or legal counsel for either party to the dispute. At most, the mediator may provide neutral legal information to the parties and may flag issues for them to discuss with their independent lawyers. Finally, the mediator is not a Judge. He or she will not decide for the parties how the issues brought to mediation should be resolved. Nor will the mediator tell the parties what is fair. The mediator will assist the parties to reach their own decisions based on their own individual ideas of fairness.
The Role of Independent Lawyers
Each of the parties is expected to seek independent legal advice with respect to their legal entitlements under the applicable laws. This is so the parties can make informed choices in mediation. In certain cases they may choose to depart from their strict legal entitlements, based upon the unique facts and circumstances of their own case. It is important that this be done in full knowledge of their legal rights.
The role of independent counsel is to advise the client of his or her legal rights and obligations, to act as “coach” for that party during mediation process; to advise on various issues as they arise in the course of mediation, to review the memorandum of understanding or report prepared by the mediator, and to implement the terms of any such agreement such as real estate or share transfers, roll-overs of Registered Retirement Savings Plan, changes in beneficiary designations processing the divorce etc.
The role of counsel is to advise the parties. The role of the parties is to make their own informed decisions, using input from their independent legal counsel as one of many factors in the decision making process.
Confidentiality of Mediation
In mediation, the parties seek to reach a settlement based on full and frank disclosure of all relevant information between them. Therefore, it is important that all discussions take place in mediation on an “off the record” or “without prejudice” basis.
The mediator, unless otherwise agreed in writing by the parties, will not voluntarily disclose the substance of any of the discussions which take place in mediation, nor the content of any documents prepared or exchanged during the mediation process. Since mediation is intended to be a confidential process, each of the parties is expected to sign a waiver agreeing not to call the mediator to testify in any subsequent legal proceeding between them.
Although the mediation process is intended by all parties to be confidential, the mediator cannot absolutely guarantee such confidentiality. The mediator may, under certain circumstances, be required by law to disclose information, such as suspected child abuse or potential danger or harm to one of the participants or testify on public policy grounds.
Benefits of Mediation
- A mediator facilitates negotiations.
- Mediation is confidential.
- Mediation agreements are enforceable.
- Mediation gives the parties flexibility.
- Mediation is not an adversarial process.
- Settlement decisions are made by the parties.
- Mediation may result in less time, cost and stress than litigation.
- In mediation, the parties are in control of the outcome.
- Mediation is an opportunity for understanding. | <urn:uuid:2db9c1bd-d82a-4720-91d4-7e63a5eed7b7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://dianedanois.com/mediation/family-mediation-process/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00047-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961313 | 1,411 | 3.015625 | 3 |
China and southern Africa have received growing international attention in recent years, but for very different reasons. As a rising, rapidly modernizing power, China -- already a permanent member of the UN Security Council -- is now on the verge of coveted G8 membership and a powerful role in the World Trade Organization.
By contrast, southern Africa is beset with problems. Its position in the world economy is marginal -- tenuously plugged into global investment flows and dependent on northern markets for its commodity exports, tariff preferences and financial aid. South Africa is a notable exception, offering the best prospect for driving regional economic integration, but it, too, has chronic social problems and, compared to East Asia, anemic economic growth.
What implications does China's emergence onto the global stage hold for southern Africa? Can China help lift the world's poorest region out of its deep economic and political malaise?
In theory, at least, China's rapid growth, if it continues, offers southern Africa a highly promising economic opportunity, not least by underpinning commodity prices and thus boosting southern Africa's terms of trade. This, in turn, would support fragile balance-of-payments positions throughout the region, potentially assisting with pervasive debt-repayment problems.
Although in South Africa, for example, imports of cheap Chinese manufactures have produced a large and widening bilateral trade deficit over the last decade, southern Africa as a whole stands to gain from the "minerals nexus." China's manufacturing boom is fuelled by imported minerals, such as iron ore and chromium, which southern Africa possesses in abundance. This implies increasing minerals exports to China, together with growing Chinese investment in the region to secure sources of supply.
China's agricultural imports should also continue to rise, as land is taken out of agricultural production and its urban population expands. Southern Africa has the potential to export such goods to China. Although much depends on greater regional investment in increasing export capacity, further Chinese investment in the region would most likely follow.
Finally, South Africa, with its world-class banking sector and internationally competitive construction companies, can supply services to the Chinese market. Moreover, these services are set to benefit from the broader trade expansion with China, potentially establishing a virtuous circle of investment and exports.
But China's rise also holds risks for southern Africa. Imports of cheap Chinese goods threaten to displace regional production, particularly in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors that are finding it difficult to compete.
In a region of pervasive unemployment, the key question will be how to ensure future employment growth.
This raises troubling questions about the region's industrial trajectory. Indeed, fears are growing that southern Africa will be condemned to the role of exporter of raw materials.
The composition of South Africa's exports to China supports these concerns. In 1993, advanced manufactured goods accounted for 50 percent of total exports to China, while raw materials and intermediate goods comprised the remainder. By last year, advanced manufactures accounted for a mere 8 percent of the total, with resource and intermediate products accounting for the rest. | <urn:uuid:3fdb4b5b-b83b-40af-847c-fc14890ebfae> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2004/12/28/2003217063 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00049-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942346 | 613 | 2.671875 | 3 |
from what i have gathered, this is part of a research programme held in collaboration with the national institute of education (nie). when the reptile was captured, they would first syringe some blood from it. the lizard would be put to sleep with a lethal injection. in the laboratory, they would dissect the big lizard to study the content in its gut.
on the topic of catching monitor lizards, my friend nah once told me that the foreign workers, especially the thais, used a simple loop to trap the monitor lizards that lived on the banks of the kallang river. they would set up the trap overnight and collect their booty the next morning. the thai workers did not catch the monitor lizards to keep as pets. i have been told that the meat of the lizard tastes better than chicken's meat.
another friend of mine, who served as a camp instructor on pulau tekong some 30 years ago, claimed that the taste was akin to that of chicken meat. one of the islanders would trap the lizard and cook it himself. he added some herbs were used to get rid of the fishy taste. | <urn:uuid:fa325b79-ca13-4a20-b65a-cee9b00c58a8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ivyidaong4.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977488 | 234 | 2.6875 | 3 |
We don't think of the internet as something with an actual, physical size, but if we gathered all the information online in one place, how big would the storage have to be? XKCD has answered that question.
Randall Munroe, creator of the XKCD webcomic, has recently been delving into answering science and technology related questions from his fans on a weekly basis. The questions have ranged from whether Yoda (yes, the Star Wars character) could be used as a power source, to what would happen if all the rain from a storm fell in one massive drop. This week, he's answering a series of short questions and one of them deals with the internet.
A map of the internet, courtesy of the Opte project
Max L wrote to XKCD, asking how much physical space the internet takes up. Munroe gave this very informative response, revealing that the internet is smaller than you may think:
"There are a lot of ways to estimate the amount of information stored on the internet, but we can put an interesting upper bound on the number just by looking at how much storage space we (as a species) have purchased.
The storage industry produces in the neighborhood of 650 million hard drives per year. If most of them are 3.5” drives, then that’s eight liters (two gallons) of hard drive per second.
This means the last few years of hard drive production—which, thanks to increasing size, represent a large chunk of global storage capacity—would just about fill an oil tanker. So, by that measure, the internet is smaller than an oil tanker."
The internet: Smaller than this.
The new question answering section of XKCD is called "What if" and is updated regularly. If you're interest in these kind of things, head on over and read the rest of them! | <urn:uuid:1ceba0b9-b2dc-445f-9edc-f7aa2f50035d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://vr-zone.com/articles/how-much-physical-space-does-the-internet-take-up-/18217.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00021-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965984 | 387 | 3.25 | 3 |
Medical Definition of acid–base balance
: the state of equilibrium between proton donors and proton acceptors in the buffering system of the blood that is maintained at approximately pH 7.35 to 7.45 under normal conditions in arterial blood
Variants of acid–base balance
Seen and Heard
What made you want to look up acid–base balance? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible). | <urn:uuid:708053bd-755e-47c9-8832-9de86e0e6b6f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/acid-base%20balance | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00034-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901211 | 93 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Table of Contents
- What Is Information Security?
- Common Body of Knowledge (CBK) Definitions
- A Functional Definition of Security
- Security Web Site Favorites
- The Complexity of Hacking
- The Ten Commandments of Information Security
- Evangelizing IT Security: Why is There a Need?
- Three Reasons Why Users Won't Buy Into Security
- What Should Security Look Like?
- Eight Controversial Myths of Personal Computer Security
- Web Application Security
- Operating System Security
- Network Security
- Hardening Your System
- Wireless Security
- Mobile Security
- Data Forensics
- Legal and Ethical Issues of Security
- Home User Security
- Job Security for the IT Security Industry
- A Biased Book Review: Chained Exploits: Advanced Hacking Attacks from Start to Finish
- Security of Mechanical Locks
- Information Security in Academics
- Holiday Security: Hackers Don’t Take Holidays
- Gary McGraw on Building Secure Software
- Gary McGraw on Exploiting Online Games
- A Student-Hacker Showdown at the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition
- The Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition Year 3: Revenge of the Red Cell
- Questions from RSA 2007
- How to Steal 80,000 Identities in One Day
A Functional Definition of Security
Last updated May 23, 2003.
In addition to the domain structure discussed previously, information security can be analyzed by function. Using five distinct stages or steps, security can be broken down into manageable parts that an organization can use to assign responsibility and resources:
- Risk avoidance
The following sections describe each stage and how it relates to computer security.
When designing an information system, it's necessary to consider what components are actually required, and what components are optional. The necessity of this analysis seems fairly straightforward, but a proper and comprehensive study involving management and end users alike is often ignored. Instead, systems are designed on the fly, which can leave major holes for attackers who happen upon a newly installed system.
The proper method of designing a secure information system is to plan for and reason out what parts or technologies are needed, and what can be left out. The plan should be centered around a concept known as risk assessment, which can be defined as the objective study of what value and risk a component has to the system. In terms of security, this can be illustrated by the use of the "guest account." While many computers include a guest account, the risk associated with leaving this account available is rather high. As a result, most businesses disable the account globally, thereby reducing the chance that an attack will occur via the guest account.
To avoid risk, businesses must determine what they actually need with regard to information systems. Hardware is one part, but services, processes, and applications must also be considered. For example, should a company use an in-house web server, or rent space online? Is Microsoft Office required, or can the business use OpenOffice.org? (Thus avoiding the infamous VBScript problems.) Such tough questions and answers must be dealt with before any purchase is made.
Once the risk avoidance strategy is laid out, the components of the information systems should be documented, reviewed, and accepted by all authorizing parties. At this point, risk avoidance can step into the background and maintain a presence for all future decisions. For companies serious about maintaining a documented and complete picture of their information systems, risk avoidance should continue to be used through the life of the business.
Deterrence is the method of manipulating a person's actions by negative motivational influences. While this may seem like a mouthful, it's one of the most common methods of control used by governments, businesses, and individuals.
In short, deterrence is a method of scaring a person into thinking twice before performing an action. For example, one method of deterrence many of us have experienced is the empty police car by the side of the road. Even if we aren't speeding, just the presence of that icon of authority causes many people to hit the brakes. The same mental game is used frequently in the computing world.
For example, if a company has an FTP file server online, they may include a banner like this: "Your IP address has been logged. Unauthorized access will be reported to the authorities." While this won't phase a hardcore and dedicated hacker, it will keep an honest person honest, so to speak.
Another method used to deter malicious activity within an information system is through the use of explicit internal policies and memos. A strongly worded statement discussing the consequences of Internet abuse carries more weight than a simple global warning by the manager.
It should be noted, however, that you cannot deter a worm, virus, or other automated attacker; for something to be deterred, it has to recognize a threat. In other words, regardless of what you do, there will always be a threat from attackers that are either robotic or immune to threats.
No matter how invisible an information system may seem, it's vulnerable. This is the first rule that any infosec professional assumes. While the risk may be very low, there's no product or practice that can completely eliminate the chance of a security-related incident. In fact, an estimated 33% of all "attacks" come from within the network, many of which are the result of simple mistakes or curious employees.
Source: Sam Costello, "FBI: Cybercrime on the rise, but few victims report it" (Network World Fusion, April 8, 2002).
Whether the source is internal or external, the potential for disaster remains the same. This is why one of the key parts to securing computer systems is prevention. As the old military cliché states, the best offense is often a good defense.
Prevention software, hardware, and practices are typically thought of as the core of infosec. While this is far from the truth, the typical IT security budget supports this myth, with the single largest purchase being a firewall. (See Gunter Ollmann's article "Consultant's View - Firewalls" in SC Magazine's February 2003 issue.) In addition to that one key ingredient, there are many other aspects to a comprehensive prevention systemvirus prevention, malicious code filtering, and security assessments, to name just a few.
While prevention is undeniably important, an information system is still apt to fall prey to a hacker attack. When this occurs, it's of utmost importance that the presence and activities of the hacker be detected and recorded. As a result, many prevention packages also incorporate some measure of detection technology, which comes in the form of intrusion-detection systems (IDS), auditing practices, and file-monitoring programs such as Tripwire.
Detection is important because it represents the last stage in an attack before a system is completely "owned" (that is, completely compromised by an attacker). With proper detection technologies in place, an information system can react automatically to the existence of a malicious presence. For example, if an IDS is set up in parallel with the firewall, and it detects malicious traffic on both sides of the firewall, it can record the data, signal an administrator, and work with the firewall to block the attack by disabling the port on the firewall or restricting access to the attacker's IP address.
In addition to the software/hardware side of detection, the IT staff must take a proactive role in finding anomalies and suspicious activities that were not detected by any automated detection system. This is typically performed by log reviews, internal audits, and due diligence. Without this internal review, the attack and any loss of confidentiality or integrity could go undetected.
When all else fails, a solid recovery system is of paramount importance. We recommend incorporating your recovery planincluding both the backup procedures and the recovery proceduresinto the initial risk-avoidance planning. This should form the foundation on which everything else is built, and brings things full circle. After all, a company could become the victim of a network-based attack as easily as a burglary or natural disaster.
This function includes the key essentials to a solid backup and recovery system. Like the other defining functions, recovery is not just hardware and software. The plan should include procedures for secure offsite storage, a complete checklist for full recovery from various types of disasters, contact lists, and more. In short, a solid recovery plan is a very complex subject, and often requires the support of third parties.
Books and e-Books
UNIX System Security Tools (McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 1999), by Seth T. Ross, provides an alternative view of security. This UNIX guideline, though a bit old, looks at security from a time when it was a growing field, back when the dotcoms were making still making money. | <urn:uuid:73d62956-12b0-4942-8e88-866ba42a72e3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.informit.com/guides/content.aspx?g=security&seqNum=6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928547 | 1,804 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Conservatives got their name because they wanted to conserve important aspects of their own tradition.
What conservatives wanted especially to defend were particular forms of human identity and connectedness. For conservatives, the need for these forms of identity and “relatedness” is an unchanging part of our human nature.
These forms of connectedness include:
- the connection existing between members of an ethnic group based on a shared ancestry, culture, religion, history and language
- our masculine identity as men or feminine identity as women
- our role as fathers and mothers or husbands and wives within a family and our place within a family tradition
- marital love and paternal & maternal love
- our sense of connectedness to nature and our attachment to a particular locality
- a positive sense of our moral nature and of the existence of an objective moral order
Historically, individuals did not create these things for themselves. Instead these forms of connectedness grew in a distinctive way within a particular tradition. This is one reason why conservatives have tended to be strongly traditionalist.
However, from the time of the Renaissance in the 1400s there arose a strong challenge to conservatism, which is best known today as liberalism. Liberalism was based on the idea that the individual should be radically autonomous, so that he could choose to do what he wanted according to his own will and reason, and be able to create himself in any direction without impediments.
Most liberals did not want to radically destroy their own traditions. Unfortunately, the logic of their own first principles (known as liberal individualism) meant that the traditional forms of human identity and connectedness were undermined.
This is because liberals can only accept those things that the individual has chosen for himself. Most forms of human relatedness though are not chosen by the individual. For example:
- We don’t choose our own traditional forms of national or ethnic identity. Instead, we are simply born into them. Therefore liberals have tended to either reject nationalism altogether in favour of internationalism or else they support forms of nationalism, based solely on citizenship, which the individual can choose, or else they support fluid and pluralistic forms of nationalism based on multiculturalism.
- We don’t choose whether we are male or female. Therefore, liberals insist that masculine and feminine behaviour is simply an oppressive and artificial social construct which can be overcome through social engineering. Liberals prefer gender sameness or “androgyny.”
- The actual form of traditional family life, involving a husband, wife and children, was also unchosen. Liberals want to claim that there are many models of family life, and they want very easy divorce laws so that the individual can choose at any time who they will live with. Similarly, liberals don’t want gender based family roles, such as distinctive roles for fathers and mothers, since gender itself is unchosen.
- The existence of a moral order, as expressed through a traditional moral code, also restricts choice for the individual. Therefore, liberals have advanced the idea of a "personal" morality that is chosen by the individual alone and applies only to the individual.
There are some typical differences between the way that conservatives and liberals think about things. For instance:
Human nature. Conservatives believe that there exists an essential human nature. This human nature is flawed, having both higher and lower qualities. Our human nature gives a definite direction to our lives. It is a part of the aim of any society, and of every individual, to draw out what is best in our nature, and to repress the worst, a difficult process that might occur over a long period of time.
Liberals, in contrast, want the individual to be created through his own will and reason. They therefore prefer to view the individual as a “blank slate” without any inherent qualities to influence his behaviour or to encourage particular loyalties or forms of association.
A further consequence of this belief in the individual as a “blank slate” is that individuals can theoretically be perfected under the right social conditions. Therefore, liberals have often put great faith in the idea of a human progress to perfection, and in the idea of reforming social conditions as a solution to any social problem.
Progress. Liberals have often believed in the idea of linear progress, which means a constant advance of humanity toward a perfect individual and a perfect society. It is because of this belief that liberals have sometimes been called progressives.
This belief is rarely held so naively these days. However, it is still evident in the fear of liberals in “going back” (to the 1950s etc) and in their enthusiasm for social change, even when the effect of such change is poorly thought through.
Conservatives tend to view societies as rising and falling according to their inner strengths and weaknesses rather than inevitably advancing. Furthermore, conservatives have a more protective attitude to their own tradition, and want to keep it alive for future generations. Therefore, conservatives tend to be more cautious about social change, as they want to know the long term effects that such changes will have on the social fabric.
Equality. Liberals often raise the slogan of equality. By equality, they seem to mean treating people the same, or not discriminating against people.
Conservatives don’t believe in treating people the same for the simple reason that people are different, in their inner natures, in the quality of their beliefs and actions, in their capacities and in the relation in which they stand to each other (for instance, we will usually discriminate in favour of people to whom we are closely related, such as family members).
There is a levelling tendency within liberalism, which denies the distinctions between people and refuses to judge the worth of their actions.
Rationalism. Liberals want people to decide things according to their own individual reason. This has led many liberals to support the idea of rationalism: that we come to our beliefs and knowledge of the world through abstract reason, ie through the analytical intellect, alone.
This belief in rationalism makes it hard for liberals to accept inherited forms of knowledge, and even more importantly, it undermines the position of whatever in life is intangible, in other words, whatever is hard to measure intellectually. How, for instance, can you validate through abstract reason such qualities as love and beauty, or nobility and honour, or whimsy and fancy?
Liberty. Liberals believe that by removing impediments to individual behaviour they are creating ever greater levels of human freedom.
The conservative view is that humans are fundamentally social creatures. Therefore, if we pursue a purely individual freedom to choose anything, we will fail to maintain the social conditions in which we can choose those things that are most important to us.
Varieties of Liberalism
There are two different varieties of liberalism. Left liberals place their focus on social individualism. They resent restrictions on the social behaviour of the individual, and so have sought to deconstruct traditional family life, gender roles, moral codes and so on. They are strongly statist, believing in a high level of government intervention in both society and the economy.
The focus of right liberals is on economic individualism. They tend to see individuals as economic units, and oppose restrictions on the economic activity of the individual or on the operation of capital (such as the movement of labour, or restrictions on investment etc.) Right liberals have often preferred a more limited role for government.
There is also a distinction between radical and gradualist (or mainstream) forms of liberalism. Radicals want to rapidly push liberal individualism to its logical conclusions, and are sometimes willing to use violent means to achieve their aims, whereas gradualists tend to work peacefully within the system and only want to take liberals principles one step at a time.
How do these distinctions work out in practice? Left liberalism is strongest amongst government employees like public servants and teachers. It is also well represented in the mainstream media, in the churches, and at universities. Left liberals have considerable influence politically through parties like the Australian Labor Party, the British Labor Party and the American Democrats.
Radical left liberalism is represented by movements like the anarchists, the communists, and the radical wings of the feminist and animal rights movements. It draws much of its support from the intelligentsia.
Right liberalism is supported by big business and the commercial classes. It is much more poorly represented intellectually than left liberalism, but has considerable political influence through its ownership of the mass media and through political parties like the Australian Liberal Party, the British Conservative Party and the American Republicans.
There is a more radical form of right liberalism called libertarianism. This movement is stronger in the US than Australia. Libertarians are often uncompromising in opposing the role of government in society and in their admiration for individual economic enterprise.
The realities of electoral politics have somewhat blurred the distinctions between mainstream left and right political parties. To achieve the necessary support to win office, the Australian Labor Party has been willing to adopt some right liberal policies, such as economic deregulation, whereas the Liberal Party has been willing to accept higher levels of taxation to maintain government social programmes.
Conservatism in Modern Society
Conservatism is sometimes wrongly seen to be an establishment philosophy. In fact, the establishment in all Western societies has for a long time been dominated by liberalism.
It is true that right liberal parties, like the Australian Liberal Party, are sometimes described as being conservative. However, there is at best a conservative tinge to a particular section of these parties.
The right liberal parties are “conservative” only in the sense that they sometimes object to new liberal measures introduced by the left liberal parties. Once implemented, though, they are usually content to carry forward the new programmes. Similarly, they might be “conservative” in being more concerned to carefully manage the process of social change. They rarely object though to the fundamental direction of the change.
In short, there is little principled or substantive conservatism within the right liberal parties, and certainly nothing that can withstand the primary emphasis in these parties on economic liberalism.
If genuine conservatism has had any influence in recent times it is because conservative values are still held to some degree by the general public. Populist conservatism, though, will not succeed by itself. It’s important also to have people who can present conservatism in a clear and consistent way as an alternative to the current liberal orthodoxy.
(First published 2002) | <urn:uuid:ff3956ad-658c-4b11-b59a-3350f9e2695d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ozconservative.blogspot.com/2007/04/what-is-conservatism.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00197-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963357 | 2,114 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Under certain conditions, you can ground all metal parts of enclosures used for wiring the elements of a separately derived system (SDS) by the grounded neutral conductor on the secondary side of the transformer. This includes the transformer's secondary conductors.
You use this neutral conductor in the same manner as we describe in Part 1 of this series; to ground the metal parts of noncurrent-carrying enclosures located on the supply side of the service equipment. You can use such a grounded conductor as a current-carrying neutral or as an equipment-grounding conductor, to serve as a low-impedance path for returning fault-currents caused by a ground-fault condition on the secondary side of the transformer of an SDS. To consider this conductor reliable , you must size it for both conditions and route it with the circuit conductors in a particular manner.
Using grounded neutral conductors on the secondary side of an SDS: Sec. 250-142(a)(3).In some situations, you can install low- and high-voltage feeder circuits from floor-to-floor in a high-rise building with transformers located on each floor. The transformers reduce the voltage to 120/240V or 120/208V for general use lighting and receptacle loads. You can install grounding either at the transformer or at the load served.
Let's look at the four parts of designing and installing the secondary bonding and grounding scheme of a transformer system:
1) Grounded conductor;
2) Bonding jumpers;
3) Grounding electrode conductor; and
4) Grounding electrode.
Let's discuss how to size, select, and use these elements to safely ground and bond an SDS and use the grounded neutral conductor as an equipment-grounding conductor during a ground-fault.
Grounded conductor brought to the SDS: Secs. 250-20(d), 250-24(b)(1), and (b)(2). You must install and run a grounded neutral conductor with the ungrounded phase conductors from the secondary side of the transformer to the panelboard. Grounded neutral conductors provide an effective path for fault currents if a phase-to-ground fault occurs in the electrical system. If a phase conductor faults to ground, fault current will flow from the point of fault through the grounded neutral conductor to the supply transformer. The fault current then returns through the phase conductor, and the overcurrent protection device for that faulted phase trips. The overcurrent protection device usually handles a fault current of 6 times to 10 times its rating. To satisfy this rule, you must size the grounded neutral conductor as large as the grounding electrode conductor, per Sec. 250-24(b)(1) and Table 250-66. For service entrance conductors larger than 1,100 kcmil copper or 1,750 kcmil aluminum, you must size the grounded conductor at least 121/2% of the area of the largest ungrounded phase conductor.
Bonding jumpers: Secs. 250-30(a)(1), 250-28(d), and 250-102(c). You must design and install the bonding jumpers based on the size and type of phase conductors supplying the panel, switch, or other electrical equipment connected to the secondary side of the transformer. You must size the jumpers as per Secs. 250-28(d) and 250-102(c).
If the ungrounded phase conductors are smaller than 1,100 kcmil for copper or 1,750 kcmil for aluminum, size the bonding jumper (either main or equipment) per Sec. 250-24(b)(1) and Table 250-66. The bonding jumpers must be at least 121/2% of the area of the largest conductor.
If the ungrounded phase conductors are larger than 1,100 kcmil for copper or 1,750 kcmil for aluminum, the bonding jumpers should normally be larger than the grounding-electrode conductor. Install and connect the bonding jumpers at any point on the SDS from the source to the first system disconnecting means or over-current protection device.
Grounding electrode conductor: Secs. 250-30(a)(2), 250-66(a) through (c), and Table 250-66. You must design and install the grounding electrode conductor based on the derived phase conductors supplying the panel, switch, or other electrical equipment connected from the secondary of the transformer. You must size the grounding electrode conductor per Secs. 250-66(a) through (c) or Table 250-66. Install and connect the grounding electrode conductor at any point on the SDS from the source to the first system disconnecting means or overcurrent protection device. If the kcmil rating is greater than 1,100 for copper or 1,750 for aluminum, the grounding electrode conductor will usually be smaller than the main and equipment-bonding jumper.
Grounding electrode: Secs. 250-30(a)(3), 250-50(a) through (d), and 250-52(c)(1) through (c)(3) and (d). Locate the grounding electrode conductor as near as possible, and preferably in the same area, to the grounding electrode conductor connection of the SDS. From the following three choices, select and install one of the following in the order in which they are listed (i.e. 1 through 3).
1) Nearest building steel
2) Nearest metal water pipe system
3) Other electrodes as specified in Secs. 250-50 and 250-52
4) Metal water pipe located in the area must be bonded to the grounded conductor per Sec. 250-104(a)(4).
In next month's issue, we'll discuss grounding separate buildings supplied from the service equipment of a main building. | <urn:uuid:deff6fdc-411d-46e9-8a6a-191fb396b154> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ecmweb.com/code-basics/grounded-neutral-conductor-part-2-3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00101-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902784 | 1,214 | 3.15625 | 3 |
June 25, 2012 - The human gut is home to a teeming ecosystem of microbes that is intimately involved in both human health and disease. But while the gut microbiota is interacting with our body, they are also under constant attack from viruses. In a study published online in Genome Research, researchers have analyzed a bacterial immune system, revealing a common set of viruses associated with gut microbiota in global populations.
Viruses that prey on bacteria, called phages, pose a constant threat to the health of bacterial communities. In many ecological systems, viruses outnumber bacterial cells ten to one. Given the richness of bacteria in the human gut, it was not surprising that scientists have found that phages are also highly prevalent. But how can viruses targeting gut microbiota be identified? How do viral communities differ between people and global populations, and what could this tell us about human health and disease?
In this report, a team of scientists from Israel has taken advantage of information coded in a bacterial immune system to shed new light on these questions. Bacteria can "steal" small pieces of DNA from phages that attack them, and use these stolen pieces to recognize and respond to the attacker, in a manner similar to usage of antibodies by the human immune system. The stolen DNA pieces are stored in specific places in the bacterial genome called CRISPR loci (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats).
"In our study we searched for such stolen phage DNA pieces carried by bacteria living in the human gut," said Rotem Sorek of the Weizmann Institute of Science and senior author of the study. "We then used these pieces to identify DNA of phages that co-exist with the bacteria in the gut."
Sorek's team used this strategy to identify and analyze phages present in the gut microbiota of a cohort of European individuals. They found that nearly 80% of the phages are shared between two or more individuals. The team compared their data to samples previously derived from American and Japanese individuals, finding phages from their European data set also present in these geographically distant populations, a surprising result given the diversity of phages seen in other ecological niches.
Sorek explained that their findings mean that there are hundreds of types of viruses that repeatedly infect our gut microbiota. "These viruses can kill some of our gut bacteria," said Sorek. "It is therefore likely that these viruses can influence human health."
The authors note that as evidence for the beneficial roles played by bacteria in the healthy human gut continues to mount, it is critical that we understand the pressures placed upon the "good" bacteria that are vital to human health. "Our discovery of a large set of phages attacking these good bacteria in our gut opens a window for understanding how they affect human health," Sorek added. Researchers can now begin to ask how phage dynamics in the gut changes over time, and what it might tell us about diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease, and how to more effectively treat them.
Scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science (Rehovot, Israel) and Tel Aviv University (Tel Aviv, Israel) contributed to this study.
This work was supported by the ERC-StG Program, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the AXA Research Fund, the Edmond J. Safra Bioinformatics Program at Tel Aviv University, and the Clore Center at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Media contacts: The authors are available for more information by contacting Yivsam Azgad, Institute Spokesman and Head of Publications & Media Relations at the Weizmann Institute of Science (firstname.lastname@example.org, + 972 8 934 3856).
Interested reporters may obtain copies of the manuscript via email from Peggy Calicchia, Administrative Assistant, Genome Research (email@example.com, +1-516-422-4012).
About the article: The manuscript will be published online ahead of print on June 25, 2012. Its full citation is as follows: Stern A, Mick E, Tirosh I, Sagy O, Sorek R. CRISPR targeting reveals a reservoir of common phages associated with the human gut microbiome. Genome Res doi: 10.1101/gr.138297.112.
About Genome Research:
Launched in 1995, Genome Research is an international, continuously published, peer-reviewed journal that focuses on research that provides novel insights into the genome biology of all organisms, including advances in genomic medicine. Among the topics considered by the journal are genome structure and function, comparative genomics, molecular evolution, genome-scale quantitative and population genetics, proteomics, epigenomics, and systems biology. The journal also features exciting gene discoveries and reports of cutting-edge computational biology and high-throughput methodologies.
About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is a private, nonprofit institution in New York that conducts research in cancer and other life sciences and has a variety of educational programs. Its Press, originating in 1933, is the largest of the Laboratory's five education divisions and is a publisher of books, journals, and electronic media for scientists, students, and the general public.
Genome Research issues press releases to highlight significant research studies that are published in the journal. | <urn:uuid:07fed5fd-3311-40d9-a75d-b021fdc8570f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/cshl-gmb062012.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929823 | 1,125 | 3.828125 | 4 |
Ring-necked Pheasant: Large chicken-like pheasant; metallic-brown body, iridescent green head, white neck ring, red eye patch and wattles; tail long and pointed. Sub-species identified by male plumage; white wing coverts in mongolicus group, with coppery upperparts, and in chrysomelas/principalis group, with orange or yellow on upperparts. Brown or buff wing coverts in the other groups; colchicus group has red-brown rump; tarimensis group has yellow cast on green rump; torquatus group has gray or blue on green rump. Female pale brown with dark markings; shorter tail; lacks wattle.
Range and Habitat
Ring-necked Pheasant: Native to Asia; found from southern British Columbia, Alberta, Minnesota, Ontario, and Maritime Provinces south to central California, the Midwest states, northern Texas, and the mid-Atlantic states. Preferred habitats include farmlands, pastures, and grassy woodland edges. Declining in parts of its eastern range.
Breeding and Nesting
Ring-necked Pheasant: Ten to twelve dark green buff or brown olive eggs are laid in a grass-lined ground depression concealed in dense grass or weeds. Incubation ranges from 23 to 25 days and is carried out by the female.
Foraging and Feeding
Ring-necked Pheasant: Their diet includes grasses, leaves, roots, wild fruits and nuts, insects, waste grain, seeds and plant parts. In spring and summer, insects and other arthropods are important foods, especially for chicks. They forage mostly on the ground by scratching and grazing. They take food primarily on the ground, by scratching or digging with their bill.
Berries, Cracked Corn, Millet
Ring-necked Pheasant: Makes a loud, crowing "caw-cawk" followed by a resonant beating of the wings. When alarmed, flies off with a loud cackle.
Ring-necked Pheasant: Male is unmistakable. Female Sharp-tailed Grouse is shorter-necked, has a slight crest, white outer tail feathers, shorter tail, and feathered legs. Female Sage Grouse has dark belly patch and feathered legs. | <urn:uuid:d08a5a87-809f-4b7e-912c-d3e7b9b93f3f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/261/behavior/Ring-necked_Pheasant.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00131-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924471 | 486 | 3.046875 | 3 |
The Blood Bank is critically low in five different blood types, O negative, O positive, A positive, B negative, and AB negative.
According to Jessica Golden, of the Blood Bank of Alaska, type-O (oh) blood is incredibly important in the state:
“In outlying areas they have to have “O” blood. So we go through a lot more “O” blood than other states; and the reason for that is that many outlying clinics, or facilities, do not have typing facilities available to them when the emergency arises. So they have to have “O” blood, which is the universal donor, on hand at all times.”
Golden says that a number of recent traumas, a nation-wide shortage and even the time of year have attributed to the situation:
“When people leave Anchorage and Fairbanks to go out fishing, and hunting, or camping, all of those things, it becomes more difficult to get people to walk in the door, go to that blood bank and donate.”
The blood bank needs to see at least 200 donors come through their doors each day in order to maintain a safe level of blood.
Golden says that blood levels are typically at their lowest both during the summer as well as around Christmas time, which is also when the most blood tends to be used:
“It’s sort of an irony that the two go hand-in-hand; that the times you use the most blood are also the times when people are the least likely to walk in your door.”
If you’re interested in donating, visit alaskapublic [dot] org for links to the complete schedule of upcoming blood drives.
- Blood Bank of Alaska: http://www.bloodbankofalaska.org/
- Blood Drive Calendar: http://www.bloodbankofalaska.org/drives/index.html | <urn:uuid:0510ff22-a63f-48f5-aa5d-9877ae721770> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.alaskapublic.org/2011/07/21/nationwide-blood-shortage-hits-alaska/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404405.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00043-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947262 | 403 | 2.859375 | 3 |
GORMFLAITH - A NAAS WOMAN?
BRIAN BORU’S WIFE A NAAS WOMAN
With the political unification of England under the Norse King Eadred in the 10th century, the old game was up for the Dublin Vikings. There would be less and less raiding as the Norse built up Dublin to be an economic environment. Apart from an unsuccessful siege by the king of Tara Domhnall Uí Néill for a whole generation Dublin was left alone and enjoyed an unprecedented degree of political stability. When the High King Domhnall died in 980, the Uí Néill nominated Malachy the Great of Meath as king. But he was facing the challenge of Brian Ború, an ambitious Munsterman who was already subduing small uprisings in Leinster and preventing the spread of Norse influence. Olaf Cúarán had been the Viking ruler of Dublin for over forty years, but as an old man he married Gormflaith, the daughter of Murchadha MacFinn, Lord of Naas, a member of the Uí Fháeláin, a powerful dynasty based at Naas. Gormflaith was born in Naas around 940, and according to Njals Saga was “endowed with great beauty”. The union bore a son, Sitric. Gormflaith followed her union with Olaf with marriages to Malachy of Tara and Brian Ború, all three of which marriages are remarked upon in a witty stanza preserved in the genealogies:
Three leaps were made by Gormflaith
Which no other woman will make until Doomsday;
A leap into Dublin, a leap into Tara,
A leap into Cashel, a plain of mounds which surpasses all.
In 980 Olaf was defeated by Malachy II at Tara and the old Viking went to Iona on pilgrimage, where he died. Malachy occupied Dublin but allowed Sitric to remain as its ruler in return for paying considerable tribute. In a strategic move, Malachy married Gormflaith. When Murchadha was killed his son, Mael Mordha, succeeded him as Lord of Naas. With his sister Gormflaith as virtual queen of Dublin Mael Mordha had his eyes on the kingship of Leinster. In 999 Sitric attacked Kildare town and ravaged it. At the same time Mael Mordha became king of Leinster and offered his kingdom and resources to Sitric. Brian Ború and Malachy put aside their differences and united to fight the common foe. Their combined forces took on the Leinster army at Gleann Máma in the Kill-Rathcoole area where Malachy and Brian were victorious. There were heavy casualties on both sides, Brian’s opponents losing 4,000 men.
At the conclusion of this battle Brian’s son Murchadha discovered Mael Mordha high up in a yew tree, hiding from his enemies. Brian spared him, although he was held prisoner until Ború received the required number of hostages from the Leinstermen. When he was released Mael Mordha submitted to Ború and paid the required annual tribute. Brian followed up his victory by plundering Dublin. To negotiate peace, Brian married one of his daughters to Sitric, who submitted to him and he took Gormflaith as his wife. She was estranged from Malachy at the time and under the liberal Brehon Laws Brian was able to marry her. Gormflaith bore him a son, Donnchad, but she “was utterly wicked” and was later divorced by Brian. She began engineering opposition to the High King. Brian Ború did not feel he could be high king of Ireland until he took Dublin and defeated Malachy of Tara. Dublin and North Leinster had remained a stumbling block in Boru’s attempts to unite the whole of Ireland under one king, a High King. Ború’s main rival in Leinster was Malachy who as a member of the southern Ui Néill, always the strongest kings of Ireland, also claimed the kingship. Ború became High King in 1002 but it was high king in name only until both Malachy and Viking Dublin were entirely subdued.
In 1012 and 1013 the Vikings again attacked and pillaged Kildare. Malachy, who had grudgingly accepted Brian’s high kingship rose in revolt. He sought allies in Ulster and Connaught but only found one regional ruler in Ulster who had only recently submitted to Brian. Together they attacked Meath, and Brian led a force from Munster and from southern Connaught into Leinster in defence. A detachment under his son, Murchadh, ravaged the southern half of Leinster for three months. The forces under Murchadh and Brian were reunited on 9 September 1013 outside the walls of Dublin. The city was blockaded, but it was Ború’s army that ran out of supplies first. He was forced to abandon the siege and returned to Munster around Christmas. Malachy needed allies quickly for Borúwas sure to return again with a bigger army. He instructed his cousin Sitric to travel overseas and gain more aid and with Gormflaith’s prompting Sitric began gathering support from Vikings outside Ireland, most notably Earl Sigurd of Orkney and Brodir of the Isle of Man. The conflict Gormflaith engineered now came to a climax at the Battle of Clontarf.
The two armies met at Clontarf on Good Friday, 23 April 1014. Old rivalry resurfaced again when the North Leinster forces sided with Sitric against Ború. The power of the Vikings was finally broken at the Battle of Clontarf. Although victorious Brian was killed by Brodir of Man, who was fleeing the battle. Brodir gathered a few warriors and burst through the thinned pen of shields guarding the seventy-two year old High King and decapitated him. He was instantly captured and subsequently suffered a very long, cruel, and grisly death. The battle saw the Norse and Irish army annihilated. Every one of their leaders, Sigurd, Brodir, Mael Mordha, and Dubhgall, was slain and from an army of 6,600 only 600 survived. The Irish paid dearly for their victory though with the death of Brian Ború, his son Murrough, grandson Turlough, brother Cuduiligh, and nephew Coniang. In addition ten Munster kings and 1,600 other nobles also perished along with 2,400 common warriors so that from an army of 7,000 less than 3,000 survived. However, neither Gormflaith nor Sitric were killed, as they were safe behind the walls of Dublin. She died in 1030, Sitric died in 1036.
James Durney reveals that Gormflaith, wife of Brian Boru was in fact a Naas woman. Our thanks to James | <urn:uuid:2b7ab423-d7b4-4c79-ba4a-318ae3a7da41> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.kildare.ie/library/ehistory/2008/02/gormflaith_a_naas_woman.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00003-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981777 | 1,459 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Conventional Anaerobic Digesters <ul><li>Work well if the feedstock is macerated and/or screened </li></ul><ul><li>However both the capital and running costs may be high </li></ul><ul><li>Problems occur when the waste is unsorted or contains high levels of fibre and grit. </li></ul><ul><li>To overcome silting and blockages the Bioplex digester was developed. </li></ul>
Bioplex Process The Bioplex process uses as its first stage a modular anaerobic fermenter, which treats organic waste material in less than three days . It uses the process of thermophilic fermentation (the first stage of anaerobic digestion -acid phase hydrolysis) to pasteurise feedstock and naturally separate it into liquid and solid fractions. The liquid can be used as a liquid fertiliser and/or for second stage anaerobic digestion. The anaerobic digester produces methane rich biogas, which can be used in a boiler or a combined heat and power (CHP) generator to generate electricity and heat. The solid fraction is relatively odourless and can be safely spread onto farmland or composted. The composted material is an excellent natural fertiliser and growing medium.
Bioplex Process <ul><li>The original invention was to eliminate or control the problems of blockages and silting up in conventional anaerobic digesters. </li></ul><ul><li>Other benefits were discovered: </li></ul><ul><li>Parallel processing preventing cross-contamination. </li></ul><ul><li>Ease of transport and reduction of materials handling. </li></ul><ul><li>Smaller systems are viable, treat at source. </li></ul><ul><li>Environmental advantages, nitrogen and carbon cycles </li></ul><ul><li>Affordable AD </li></ul>
The Alchemy Project - Devon <ul><li>The Alchemy Project provides a food waste collection and composting service for 500 people living in Honiton, Dunkeswell and Combe Raleigh. </li></ul><ul><li>Energy is exchanged with a biomass boiler heating system, a biogas fired CHP generator can charge the collection vehicle </li></ul><ul><li>The project shows how organic waste can be dealt with safely, locally and in an environmentally friendly way; it will also result in more local jobs, reduced traffic movements and lower waste bills! </li></ul>The digester site under construction. July 2006 Kitchen waste - to be digested After 3 days anaerobic digestion and 21 days composting - it’s magic!
HMP Guys Marsh <ul><li>To treat catering waste, and use the end product - biofertiliser, within the secure area. </li></ul><ul><li>Process energy is exchanged from wood fired boiler and heating system </li></ul><ul><li>The plant operation and gardening using the biofertiliser leads to new jobs and acquired skills. </li></ul><ul><li>Estimated seven year payback period. </li></ul><ul><li>Helps the site and the service to reduce its carbon footprint. </li></ul>
Fruit and vegetable waste treatment 2. Treatment by thermophilic digestion in a Portagester The wastes are chopped to less than 20mm. The packaging enhances the final composting process and the end product. The treatment of food wastes can meet EU and UK standards for ABPR. The temperature controls pathogens, weed seeds and parasites. 3. The end product after composting and screening This digested material is a natural slow release fertiliser rich compost. The added fibre helps farmland to resist erosion and flooding. 1. Fruit and vegetable waste as received
Village - Farm scale Digester Community Renewable Energy CHP Plant Modular system within polytunnel for solar gain Designed to use all locally available biofuels
AD using Locally Grown Biofuels <ul><li>Maize Silage - Feedstock </li></ul><ul><li>1 MW Anaerobic Digester - CHP Generator. Maize and cattle slurry. </li></ul>
Longstock - Hampshire 450 people 750 cattle 65 horses 3000 acres 17000 trees
Materials and Energy Flow Longstock Energy Gas boiler and/or Combined Heat and Power (CHP) generation Biogas Anaerobic Digester Digestate Homes, farms and commerce Compost, fertiliser Farm animal and horse stable manure Catering and food processing wastes Energy crops Organic fraction of household and trade refuse
The Bonus <ul><li>Restoring the nitrogen and carbon cycles. </li></ul>Bioplex The use of Anaerobic Digestion and Composting is at least Carbon Neutral. Carbon absorption by extra plant growth and replacing fossil fuels and petrochemicals. Nitrogen cycle restored. Waste from one source becomes useful for others. Farmland uses recovered fertiliser and fibre. Farms are good collectors of solar energy. This renewable energy source stored and transported using traditional farm machinery. Energy recovered and used on site. Rejuvenates the local economy. | <urn:uuid:ed4a5cb6-7491-4e33-ac91-e34d2f8aef2c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.slideshare.net/nationalrural/bioplex-technologies-nov-2007all | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00008-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.839846 | 1,082 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Fish and Fisheries
NEFSC has been studying Northeastern U.S. seafood species since 1871
Federal fishery scientists have been studying marine life on the Northeast U.S. continental shelf for over 140 years, focusing on those species that are:
- the most valued by commercial or recreational fisheries,
- endangered or protected, or
- important contributors to the food web.
On this page you can find the most current information for the species we study the most intensively. | <urn:uuid:ffd79982-5979-4abd-b098-cc62e0eb4392> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/rcb/fish/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00008-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919882 | 100 | 2.78125 | 3 |
February 7, 2002
New studies seek better treatment, prevention for genital herpes
|HS News & Community Relations|
Researchers at the UW are testing to see if a mainstay of human health — the body’s immune system — can better battle one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases than conventional therapies.
Genital herpes is one of the most prevalent STDs in the world. In the United States, 22 percent — more than one-fifth — of the population over the age of 12 has infection with herpes virus type 2 (HSV-2), the virus that most commonly causes genital herpes.
While many people with HSV-2 suffer from recurring genital sores, others are asymptomatic. Even those who do not have any symptoms can still spread the disease to their sexual partners. Most people acquire genital herpes at a time when their partner does not have symptoms of an outbreak, but the virus is still present on the skin.
The most serious adverse consequence of genital herpes is infection of the newborn that results in a high proportion of babies dying or having brain damage. Genital herpes can also make it easier to transmit or acquire HIV, because the sores allows the AIDS virus access to the body.
The UW has been one of the leading centers of herpes research for the last 20 years. Its Virology Research Clinic is beginning two new studies of novel approaches to the treatment and prevention of HSV-2 infection.
“In the last decade, we have made large strides in our understanding of how the immune system works — how the body defends itself against herpes. Now, it’s time to put that knowledge to use and to try novel therapies that rely on this better understanding of the immune system,” says Dr. Anna Wald, director of the Virology Research Clinic. She is an assistant professor of allergy and infectious diseases in the UW School of Medicine and of epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine.
Treatment: Resiquimod, an investigational medication produced by 3M in collaboration with Eli Lilly and Company, represents a new class of drugs that are immune-effect modifiers. Another compound in the family of immune response modifiers has already been approved for treatment of genital warts — an infection that operates similarly to genital herpes.
Currently, antiviral therapies for genital herpes work by interfering with the viruses’ ability to reproduce itself. While these therapies are effective, they work only when patients are taking the daily medication. When the medication is stopped, the herpes infection returns. The hope is that Resiquimod will produce a local boost in immunity and help the body fight the infection. Preliminary studies have suggested that Resiquimod lengthens the time between outbreaks. The current study will evaluate whether the medication can also control the frequency of viral shedding, an important determinant of how often herpes is spread.
Vaccine: Researchers are also conducting a trial with a new experimental compound from the Antigenics company. This is a first trial in humans of a compound designed to stimulate immune responses towards HSV. Both people without HSV infection as well as those with genital herpes who are receiving suppressive therapy with antiviral drugs will be eligible to enroll in this study.
The compound contains two components. One of them is a portion of the outer coat of the herpes virus, to which people with certain genetic makeup are able to mount a strong immune response. The other is a novel vaccine adjuvant, a specific class of proteins known as heat-shock proteins, which direct and stimulate the immune response. Eventually, this compound may lead to development of a therapeutic as well as a preventive vaccine for HSV, according to researchers.
Both of the studies are being conducted at the UW Virology Research Clinic located at 1001 Broadway, suite 320, in Seattle. Study participants will receive compensation for time and travel. Confidentiality is strictly maintained at all times. For more information please call 206-720-4340 or see http://depts.washington.edu/herpes. | <urn:uuid:86119360-35a9-4843-9102-b211975ce0f5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.washington.edu/news/2002/02/07/new-studies-seek-better-treatment-prevention-for-genital-herpes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00135-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947146 | 824 | 3 | 3 |
June 19, 2012
Salty Diet Can Lead To High Blood Pressure
Eating a high-salt diet for several years may damage blood vessels – increasing your risk of developing high blood pressure, according to research reported in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. People with this type of blood vessel damage who eat a high-salt diet are more likely to develop hypertension, or high blood pressure.
This research hints at the presence of a "sodium amplification loop" in which eating too much salt for a long time damages blood vessels, leading to a greater chance of developing high blood pressure if the high-salt diet is continued.Researchers didn't assess the cause-and-effect relationship between salt intake and high blood pressure. But the study's results "add to the considerable evidence that a diet heavy on salt is closely linked to high blood pressure," said John Forman, M.D., lead author of the study and a nephrologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass.
"In addition, this study reinforces guidelines backed by the American Heart Association and other professional organizations that recommend reducing salt consumption to minimize the risk of developing high blood pressure," Forman said.
One gram of sodium is equal to 2.5 grams of table salt (sodium chloride).
Researchers conducted an observational study (PREVEND) in which they tracked the sodium intake of 5,556 men and women from the general population of Groningen, Netherlands. Sodium intake was assessed by collecting multiple 24-hour urine samples, which is considered the optimal method to measure sodium intake.
Researchers analyzed the association between sodium consumption and blood levels of uric acid and albumin in the urine – both markers of blood vessel damage – in participants not taking high blood pressure medicine.
During a median follow-up of 6.4 years, 878 new hypertension diagnoses were made.
Higher sodium intake was associated with increasing levels of uric acid and albumin over time. The higher the levels of these markers, the greater the risk of developing hypertension if dietary salt intake was high, researchers found. Compared with participants eating the least amount of sodium (about 2,200 milligrams a day), those eating the most (about 6,200 mg/d) were 21 percent more likely to develop high blood pressure. However, those who had high uric acid levels and ate the most salt were 32 percent more likely to develop high blood pressure while those with high urine albumin levels and highest salt intake were 86 percent more likely to develop high blood pressure
A high-salt diet is believed to be responsible for 20 percent to 40 percent of all cases of high blood pressure in the United States. Because the study involved only European Caucasians, the results should be replicated in Hispanics, African-Americans and others in the United States; however, other researchers have found a link between a high-salt diet and high blood pressure in these other populations, Forman said.
On the Net: | <urn:uuid:fe79c6ea-01d6-47fa-b6b4-5f3f8815a951> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1112641314/salty-diet-can-lead-to-high-blood-pressure/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00046-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950284 | 610 | 3.171875 | 3 |
I've come across Spanish sentences where the article is followed by a possessive adjective or demonstrative adjective, followed by a noun. Normally, it is either the article or the adjective + noun, ...
I usually use the possessives mi and mío interchangeably. For example: Esta es la casa mía. Esta es mi casa. However, do the two have different connotations? (e.g. is one more formal ...
In Spanish there are some adverbs followed by de: Delante de, atrás de, en frente de, etc... When these adverbs are followed in a sentence by a declined pronoun, they are often "contracted" ... | <urn:uuid:d0b325c7-ac14-42bf-b5d6-a9b2ad27bb60> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://spanish.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/posesivos | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00168-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902333 | 145 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Persons using assistive technology might not be able to fully access information in this file. For assistance, please send e-mail to: email@example.com. Type 508 Accommodation and the title of the report in the subject line of e-mail.
Recommended Community Strategies and Measurements to Prevent Obesity in the United States
Approximately two thirds of U.S. adults and one fifth of U.S. children are obese or overweight. During 1980--2004, obesity prevalence among U.S. adults doubled, and recent data indicate an estimated 33% of U.S. adults are overweight (body mass index [BMI] 25.0--29.9), 34% are obese (BMI ≥30.0), including nearly 6% who are extremely obese (BMI ≥40.0). The prevalence of being overweight among children and adolescents increased substantially during 1999--2004, and approximately 17% of U.S. children and adolescents are overweight (defined as at or above the 95% percentile of the sex-specific BMI for age growth charts). Being either obese or overweight increases the risk for many chronic diseases (e.g., heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, and stroke). Reversing the U.S. obesity epidemic requires a comprehensive and coordinated approach that uses policy and environmental change to transform communities into places that support and promote healthy lifestyle choices for all U.S. residents. Environmental factors (including lack of access to full-service grocery stores, increasing costs of healthy foods and the lower cost of unhealthy foods, and lack of access to safe places to play and exercise) all contribute to the increase in obesity rates by inhibiting or preventing healthy eating and active living behaviors. Recommended strategies and appropriate measurements are needed to assess the effectiveness of community initiatives to create environments that promote good nutrition and physical activity. To help communities in this effort, CDC initiated the Common Community Measures for Obesity Prevention Project (the Measures Project). The objective of the Measures Project was to identify and recommend a set of strategies and associated measurements that communities and local governments can use to plan and monitor environmental and policy-level changes for obesity prevention. This report describes the expert panel process that was used to identify 24 recommended strategies for obesity prevention and a suggested measurement for each strategy that communities can use to assess performance and track progress over time. The 24 strategies are divided into six categories: 1) strategies to promote the availability of affordable healthy food and beverages), 2) strategies to support healthy food and beverage choices, 3) a strategy to encourage breastfeeding, 4) strategies to encourage physical activity or limit sedentary activity among children and youth, 5) strategies to create safe communities that support physical activity, and 6) a strategy to encourage communities to organize for change.
Obesity rates in the U.S. have increased dramatically over the last 30 years, and obesity is now epidemic in the United States. Data for 2003--2004 and 2005--2006 indicated that approximately two thirds of U.S. adults and one fifth of U.S. children were either obese (defined for adults as having a body mass index [BMI] ≥30.0) or overweight (defined for adults as BMI of 25.0--29.9 and for children as at or above the 95% percentile of the sex-specific BMI for age-growth charts) (1,2). Among adults, obesity prevalence doubled during 1980--2004, and recent data indicate that an estimated 33% of U.S. adults are overweight and 34% are obese, including nearly 6% are extremely obese (defined as BMI ≥40.0) (3,4). Being either obese or overweight increases the risk for many chronic diseases (e.g., heart disease, type 2 diabetes, some cancers, and stroke). Although diet and exercise are key determinants of weight, environmental factors beyond the control of individuals (including lack of access to full-service grocery stores, high costs of healthy foods, and lack of access to safe places to play and exercise) contribute to increased obesity rates by reducing the likelihood of healthy eating and active living behaviors (5--7).
States and communities are responding to the obesity epidemic in the United States by working to create environments that support healthy eating and active living (8,9) and by giving public health practitioners and policy makers an opportunity to learn from community-based efforts to prevent obesity. However, the absence of measurements to assess policy and environmental changes at the community level has impeded efforts to assess the implementation of these types of population-level initiatives for preventing obesity. To address this issue, CDC initiated the Common Community Measures for Obesity Prevention Project (the Measures Project). The goal of the Measures Project was to identify and recommend a set of obesity prevention strategies and corresponding suggested measurements that local governments and communities can use to plan, implement, and monitor initiatives to prevent obesity. For the purposes of the Measures Project, a measurement is defined as a single data element that can be collected through an objective assessment of policies or the physical environment and that can be used to quantify the performance of an obesity prevention strategy.. Community was defined as a social entity that can be classified spatially on the basis of where persons live, work, learn, worship, and play (e.g., homes, schools, parks, roads, and neighborhoods).
The Measures Project process was guided by expert opinion and included a systematic review of the published scientific literature, resulting in the adoption of 24 recommended environmental and policy level strategies to prevent obesity. This report presents the first set of comprehensive recommendations published by CDC to promote healthy eating and active living and reduce the prevalence of obesity in the United States. This report describes each of the recommended strategies, summarizes available evidence regarding their effectiveness, and presents a suggested measurement for each strategy that communities can use to assess implementation and track progress over time.
The recommended strategies presented in this document were developed as a result of a systematic process grounded in available evidence for each strategy, expert opinion, and detailed documentation of the project process and decision-making rationale. A few exploratory strategies for which no evidence was available were included in the recommendations on the basis of expert opinion and to determine the effectiveness of the strategy for preventing obesity.
The Common Community Measures for Obesity Prevention Project Team (the Measures Project Team) comprised CDC staff, who maintained primary decision-making authority of the project; the CDC Foundation, which provided administrative and fiscal oversight for the Project; ICF Macro, a public health consulting firm that served as the coordinating center for the project; Research Triangle Institute, a public health consulting firm that acted as the coordinating center during the preliminary phase of the project; and the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), which provided local government expertise. Multiple subgroups* provided input and guidance to the Measures Project Team on specific aspects of the project:
- the Funders Steering Committee provided guidance on project funding and resources
- a Select Expert Panel of nationally recognized content-area experts in areas of urban planning, built environment, obesity prevention, nutrition, and physical activity assisted in the selection of the recommended strategies and measurements;
- a CDC Workgroup comprising representatives from multiple divisions of CDC provided input on the identification, nomination, and selection of the recommended strategies;
- a Measurement Expert group reviewed the selected measurements for technical precision on their structure, phrasing, and content;
- local government experts provided knowledge of city management, resources, and perspective on the utility, feasibility, and practicality of the strategies and measurements for local government capacity and needs; and
- CDC Technical Advisors provided guidance on the project design and protocol.
Step 1: Strategy Identification
To identify potential environmental and policy-level strategies for obesity prevention, the Measures Project Team searched PubMed for reviews and meta-analyses published during January 1, 2005--July 3, 2007 using the following search terms:
- ("nutrition" or "food") AND ("community"or "environment" or "policy") AND ("obesity" or "overweight" or "chronic disease") and
- ("physical activity" or "exercise") AND ("community" or "environment" or "policy") AND ("obesity" or "overweight" or "chronic disease").
The Measures Project Team conducted a literature search over a relatively short publication period (2 years) because reviews and meta-analyses were assumed to contain and summarize research that was published before 2005. The PubMed search yielded 270 articles. On the basis of a preliminary review, 176 articles were deemed inappropriate because they did not focus on environmental or policy-level change, resulting in a total of 94 articles. Seven additional reports and studies recognized as "seminal documents" also were recommended for inclusion (8,10--15). The Measures Project Team completed a full review of the 94 articles and seven seminal documents, resulting in the identification of 791 potential obesity prevention strategies. Similar and overlapping strategies were collapsed, resulting in a final total of 179 environmental or policy-level strategies for obesity prevention.
Step 2: Strategy Prioritization and Selection
To assist in prioritizing the 179 strategies identified in the literature search, the Measures Project Team developed a set of strategy rating criteria based on the efforts of similar projects (16--21). Through an online survey, members of the Select Expert Panel rated each obesity prevention strategy on the following criteria: reach, mutability, transferability, potential effect size, and sustainability of the health impact (Box 1).
The Select Expert Panel met to discuss and rank order the strategies on the basis of the results of the online survey. The Panel identified 47 strategies as most promising, including 26 nutrition strategies, 17 physical activity strategies, and four other obesity-related strategies. Next, the CDC Workgroup met to review the strategies from a public health perspective, which resulted in the selection of 46 strategies. The Measures Project Team then identified 22 policy- and environmental-level strategies that were given the highest priority for preventing obesity at the community level. In addition, three strategies were added to be consistent with CDC's state-based Nutrition and Physical Activity Program to Prevent Obesity. One additional strategy was added on the basis of expert opinion supporting the need for exploratory policy and environmental strategies that consider local food systems and the production, procurement, and distribution of healthier foods for community consumption. A total of 26 environmental and policy strategies for obesity prevention were selected to move forward to the measurement nomination and selection phase of the project process.
Step 3: Summarization
After the 26 strategies were selected, the Measures Project Team created a summary for each strategy that included an overview of the strategy, a summary of available evidence in support of the strategy, and potential measurements that were used to assess the strategy as described in the literature. When available, the summaries also included examples of how the strategy has been used by local communities.
Step 4: Measurement Nomination and Selection
Content area experts specializing in nutrition, physical activity, and other obesity-related behaviors assisted the Measures Project Team in selecting potential measurements that communities can use to assess the recommended obesity prevention strategies. Three persons were assigned to each strategy according to their area of expertise. Each three-person group included at least one member of the CDC Workgroup and one external member of the Select Panel; for many strategies, a local government expert recruited by ICMA also participated. Experts reviewed the strategy summary and nominated up to three potential measurements per strategy. Experts also rated each measurement as high, medium, or low for three criteria: utility, construct validity, and feasibility (Box 2).
After potential measurements were nominated, the experts were convened via teleconference to select a first- and second-choice measurement for that strategy. Each nominated measurement was discussed briefly, and experts had the opportunity to refine the measurement or create a new measurement before voting on the first- and second-choice measurements. After the teleconferences, the Measures Project Team reviewed the proposed first and second choice measurements to ensure they were feasible for local governments to collect and that the use of definitions and wording were consistent.
Next, a panel of six measurement experts (two from CDC, two from the Select Expert Panel, and two from ICMA) specializing in measurement development and evaluation reviewed the measurements for utility, construct validity, and feasibility and provided suggestions for improvement. The Measures Project Team reviewed the measurement experts' suggestions and made minor modifications to the measurements on the basis of their feedback. None of the concerns raised by the Measurement Experts warranted exclusion of any of the first-choice measurements. Two additional changes were made after a further review by the Measures Project Team and a technical review by CDC's Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity: 1) the first-choice measurement for the personal safety strategy was replaced with the second-choice measurement which focused more appropriately on assessing environmental and policy-level change; and 2) two similar pricing strategies for healthier foods and beverages and for fruits and vegetables were merged. This resulted in a total of 25 recommended strategies and a corresponding suggested measurement for each strategy.
Step 5: Pilot Test and Final Revisions
Twenty local government representatives, including city managers, urban planners, and budget analysts, who participate in ICMA's Center for Performance Measurement (CPM), volunteered to pilot test the selected measurements. To limit the burden of the pilot test for individual local government participants the communities were divided into three groups, each of which included a mix of small, medium, and large communities. Each group was assigned eight or nine measurements pertaining to both nutrition and physical activity. In addition, the local government participants also were asked to provide general feedback on their ability to report on each measurement, the level of effort required to gather the necessary data, and the perceived utility of each measurement. Demographic information also was obtained to compare the responses and feedback among communities of similar size and population. The communities were given 6 weeks to complete the pilot test. Responses and feedback from the pilot test were summarized by ICMA and served as the basis of discussions at an end-user meeting that was held in January 2009.
The end-user meeting was facilitated by the Measures Project Team and was attended by the local government representatives who had pilot tested the measurements, members of the Select Expert Panel, and CDC content and measurement experts. The results of the pilot test were presented at the meeting; the overall response was positive. A number of challenges associated with responding to the measurements and suggestions for improvement were identified, as a result of which, minor word changes and clarifications were made to 13 measurements. Three measurements were modified to include additional venues for data collection, such as schools or local government facilities. In addition, four substantive changes were made to the measurements: 1) the measurement related to school siting was changed to be more focused on assessing environmental and policy-level change; 2) the focus of the measurement related to enhancing personal safety in areas where persons are physically active was changed from street lighting to vacant buildings, which experts believed to be a more meaningful indicator of personal safety; 3) the measurement related to increasing the availability of supermarkets, including full-service grocery stores, was modified to focus on the number of stores located in underserved census tracts rather than the percentage of supermarkets within easy walking distance of a transit stop; and 4) the measurement related to increasing affordability of healthier foods and beverages was combined and replaced by the measurement related to pricing strategies. These modifications resulted in a total of 24 recommended environmental and policy level obesity prevention strategies and their corresponding suggested measurement (Table).
The recommended strategies and corresponding suggested measurements are grouped in six categories; for each strategy, a summary is provided that includes an overview of the strategy, followed by a summary of evidence that supports the strategy and the corresponding suggested measurement for the strategy. Key terms used throughout this report have been defined separately (see Appendix for a complete listing of these terms). Communities wishing to adopt these CDC recommendations and report on these suggested measurements should refer to the detailed implementation and measurement guide, which includes measurement data protocols, community-level examples, and useful resources for strategy implementation; this guide is available at: .
Recommended Strategies and Measurements to Prevent Obesity
Strategies to Promote the Availability of Affordable Healthy Food and Beverages
For persons to make healthy food choices, healthy food options must be available and accessible. Families living in low-income and minority neighborhoods often have less access to healthier food and beverage choices than those in higher-income areas. Each of the following six strategies aims to increase the availability of healthy food and beverage choices, particularly in underserved areas.
1. Communities Should Increase Availability of Healthier Food and Beverage Choices in Public Service Venues
Limited availability of healthier food and beverage options can be a barrier to healthy eating and drinking. Healthier food and beverage choices include, but are not limited to, low energy dense foods and beverages with low sugar, fat, and sodium content (11). Schools are a key venue for increasing the availability of healthier foods and beverages for children. Other public service venues positioned to influence the availability of healthier foods include after-school programs, child care centers, community recreational facilities (e.g., parks, playgrounds, and swimming pools), city and county buildings, prisons, and juvenile detention centers. Improving the availability of healthier food and beverage choices (e.g., fruits, vegetables, and water) might increase the consumption of healthier foods.
CDC's Community Guide reports insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of multicomponent school-based nutrition initiatives designed to increase fruit and vegetable intake and decrease fat and saturated fat intake among school-aged children (22,23). However, systematic research reviews have reported an association between the availability of fruits and vegetables and increased consumption (24,25). Farm-to-school salad bar programs, which deliver produce from local farms to schools, have been shown to increase fruit and vegetable consumption among students (12). A 2-year randomized control trial of a school-based environmental intervention that increased the availability of lower-fat foods in cafeteria à la carte areas indicated that sales of lower-fat foods increased among adolescents attending schools exposed to the intervention (26).
A policy exists to apply nutrition standards that are consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (27) to all food sold (e.g., meal menus and vending machines) within local government facilities in a local jurisdiction or on public school campuses during the school day within the largest school district in a local jurisdiction.
This measurement captures whether local governments and/or public schools are applying nutrition standards that are consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans to foods sold in local government facilities and/or public schools (27). Communities that do not use the Dietary Guidelines for Americans can still meet the measurement criteria if they follow other standards that are similar to or stronger than the national standards.
2. Communities Should Improve Availability of Affordable Healthier Food and Beverage Choices in Public Service Venues
Healthier foods generally are more expensive than less-healthy foods (28), which can pose a significant barrier to purchasing and consuming healthier foods, particularly for low-income consumers. Healthier foods and beverages include, but are not limited to, foods and beverages with low energy density and low calorie, sugar, fat, and sodium content (11). Healthier food and beverage choices need to be both available and affordable for persons to consume them.
Strategies to improve the affordability of healthier foods and beverages include lowering prices of healthier foods and beverages and providing discount coupons, vouchers redeemable for healthier foods, and bonuses tied to the purchase of healthier foods. Pricing strategies create incentives for purchasing and consuming healthier foods and beverages by lowering the prices of such items relative to less healthy foods. Pricing strategies that can be applied in public service venues (e.g., schools and recreation centers) include, but are not limited to, decreasing the prices of healthier foods sold in vending machines and in cafeterias and increasing the price of less healthy foods and beverages at concession stands.
Research has demonstrated that reducing the cost of healthier foods increases the purchase of healthier foods (29,30). For example, one study indicated that sales of fruits and carrots in high-school cafeterias increased after prices were reduced (31). In addition, interventions that reduced the price of healthier, low-fat snacks in vending machines in school and work settings have been demonstrated to increase purchasing of healthier snacks (32,33). A recent study estimated that a subsidized 10% price reduction on fruits and vegetables would encourage low-income persons to increase their daily consumption of fruits from 0.96 cup to 0.98--1.01 cups and increase their daily consumption of vegetables from 1.43 cups to 1.46--1.50 cups, compared with the recommended 1.80 cups of fruits and 2.60 cups of vegetables (34).
Furthermore, interventions that provide coupons redeemable for healthier foods and bonuses tied to the purchase of healthier foods increase purchase and consumption of healthier foods in diverse populations, including university students, recipients of services from the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and low-income seniors (35--37). For example, one community-based intervention indicated that WIC recipients who received weekly $10 vouchers for fresh produce increased their consumption of fruits and vegetables compared with a control group and sustained the increase 6 months after the intervention (38).
A policy exists to affect the cost of healthier foods and beverages (as defined by IOM ) relative to the cost of less healthy foods and beverages sold within local government facilities in a local jurisdiction or on public school campuses during the school day within the largest school district in a local jurisdiction.
This measurement captures pricing policies that promote the purchase of healthier foods and beverages sold in local government facilities and public schools. Efforts to affect the relative cost of healthier food relative to the cost of less healthy foods can include increasing the cost of less healthy foods and beverages, setting a lower profit margin on healthier foods and beverages, or taking other actions that result in healthier foods and beverages being less expensive than (or at least no more expensive than) less healthy foods and beverages. The goal of such a policy would be to eliminate cost disincentives or provide cost incentives for the purchase of healthier foods and beverages.
3. Communities Should Improve Geographic Availability of Supermarkets in Underserved Areas
Supermarkets and full-service grocery stores have a larger selection of healthy food (e.g., fruits and vegetables) at lower prices compared with smaller grocery stores and convenience stores. However, research suggests that low-income, minority, and rural communities have fewer supermarkets as compared with more affluent areas (39,40). Increasing the number of supermarkets in areas where they are unavailable or where availability is limited is might increase access to healthy foods, particularly for economically disadvantaged populations.
Greater access to nearby supermarkets is associated with healthier eating behaviors (39). For example, a cross-sectional study of approximately 10,000 participants indicated that blacks living in neighborhoods with at least one supermarket were more likely to consume the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables than blacks living in neighborhoods without supermarkets. Further, blacks consumed 32% more fruits and vegetables for each additional supermarket located in their census tract (41). Another study indicated that increasing the number of supermarkets in underserved neighbors increased real estate values, increased economic activity and employment, and resulted in lower food prices (42).
One cross-sectional study linked height and weight data from approximately 70,000 adolescents to data on food store availability (43). The results indicated that, after controlling for socioeconomic status, greater availability of supermarkets was associated with lower adolescent BMI scores and that a higher prevalence of convenience stores was related to higher BMI among students. The association between supermarket availability and weight was stronger for black students and for students whose mothers worked full-time (43).
The number of full-service grocery stores and supermarkets per 10,000 residents located within the three largest underserved census tracts within a local jurisdiction.
This measurement examines the availability of full-service grocery stores and supermarkets in underserved areas. Given that research has shown that low-income, minority communities tend to have fewer grocery stores than other areas, underserved areas are defined geographically for the purpose of this measurement as census tracts with higher percentages of low-income and/or high minority populations. Because some jurisdictions have numerous census tracts that meet the underserved criteria, the measurement limits the assessment to the three largest (i.e., those with the largest population) underserved census tracts within a local jurisdiction for the purpose of community cross-comparisons. The measurement is expected to illuminate areas that lack a sufficient number of full-service grocery stores and supermarkets to serve the population in those areas. Although no standard benchmark exists for this measurement, data collected local governments reporting on this measurement can lead to establishment of a standard.
4. Communities Should Provide Incentives to Food Retailers to Locate in and/or Offer Healthier Food and Beverage Choices in Underserved Areas
Healthier foods and beverages include but are not limited to foods and beverages with low energy density and low calorie, sugar, fat, and sodium content as defined by IOM (11). Disparities in the availability of healthier foods and beverages between communities with different income levels, ethnic composition, and other characteristics are well documented, and limited availability of healthier food and beverage choices in underserved communities constitutes a substantial barrier to improving nutrition and preventing obesity (41).
To address this issue, communities can provide incentives to food retailers (e.g., supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience and corner stores, and street vendors) to offer a greater variety of healthier food and beverage choices in underserved areas. Such incentives, both financial and nonfinancial, can be offered to encourage opening new retail outlets in areas with limited shopping options, and existing corner and convenience stores (which typically depend on sales of alcohol, tobacco, and sugar-sweetened beverages) into neighborhood groceries selling healthier foods (44). Financial incentives include but are not limited to tax benefits and discounts, loans, loan guarantees, and grants to cover start-up and investment costs (e.g., improving refrigeration and warehouse capacity). Nonfinancial incentives include supportive zoning, and increasing the capacity of small businesses through technical assistance in starting up and maintaining sales of healthier foods and beverages.
The presence of retail venues that provide healthier foods and beverages is associated with better nutrition. Cross-sectional studies indicate that the presence of retail venues offering healthier food and beverage choices is associated with increased consumption of fruits and vegetables and lower BMI (45). One study indicated that every additional supermarket within a given census tract was associated with a 32% increase in the amount of fruits and vegetables consumed by persons living in that census tract (40). Another study indicated that greater availability of supermarkets was associated with lower adolescent BMI scores and a higher prevalence of convenience stores was related to higher BMI among students (43). The association between supermarket availability and weight was stronger for black students compared with white and Hispanic students, and stronger for students whose mothers work full-time compared with those whose mothers work part-time or do not work (43).
Local government offers at least one incentive to new and/or existing food retailers to offer healthier food and beverage choices as defined by IOM (11) in underserved areas.
This measurement assesses a wide range of incentives, both financial and nonfinancial, that local jurisdictions offer to food retailers to encourage the availability of healthier food and beverage choices in underserved areas. For the purpose of this measurement underserved areas are those identified by communities as having limited food retail outlets, and the available outlets (e.g., convenience stores and liquor stores) tend not to offer many healthy foods and beverages. The measurement is designed to capture incentives designed to entice new healthy food retailers to locate in underserved areas and to encourage existing food retailers to expand their selection of healthier food and beverage choices. The measurement does not prescribe the incentives that a local government should offer but rather assesses whether a local government is making an effort to improve the availability of healthier food and beverage choices in underserved areas.
5. Communities Should Improve Availability of Mechanisms for Purchasing Foods from Farms
Mechanisms for purchasing food directly from farms include farmers' markets, farm stands, community-supported agriculture, "pick your own," and farm-to-school initiatives. Experts suggest that these mechanisms have the potential to increase opportunities to consume healthier foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, by possibly reducing costs of fresh foods through direct sales; making fresh foods available in areas without supermarkets; and harvesting fruits and vegetables at ripeness rather than at a time conducive to shipping, which might improve their nutritional value and taste (M. Hamm, PhD, Michigan State University, personal communication, 2008).
Evidence supporting a direct link between purchasing foods from farms and improved diet is limited. Two studies of initiatives to encourage participation in the Seniors Farmers' Market Nutrition Program (46) and the WIC Farmers' Market Nutrition Program (47) report either increased intention to eat more fruits and vegetables or increased utilization of the program; however, neither study reported direct evidence that the programs resulted in increased consumption of fruits and vegetables. The Farmers' Market Salad Bar Program in the Santa Monica--Malibu Unified School District aims to increase students' consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables and to support local farmers by purchasing produce directly from local farmers' markets and serving them in the district's school lunch program. An evaluation of the program over a 2-year period demonstrated that 30%--50% of students chose the salad bar on any given day (48). Access to farm foods varies between agricultural and metropolitan areas.
The total annual number of farmer-days at farmers' markets per 10,000 residents within a local jurisdiction.
This measurement assesses opportunities to sell and purchase food from local farms based on the number of days per year that farmers' markets are open and the number of farm vendors that sell food at those outlets. Although farmers' markets are only one mechanism for purchasing food from farms, they are considered by experts to be strong proxies of other, less common ways to purchase food from local farms, such as community-supported agriculture and "pick your own" programs. Information on farmer-days is collected on an ongoing basis by the managers of farmers' markets. The process of gathering information for this measurement might encourage more interaction between local governments and farmers' markets and individual farmers, which could spur more local initiatives to support local food production and purchasing food from local farms. Although no estimated standard exists for this measurement, data collected from local governments reporting on this measurement can lead to establishment of a standard.
6. Communities Should Provide Incentives for the Production, Distribution, and Procurement of Foods from Local Farms
Currently the United States is not producing enough fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and dairy products for all U.S. citizens to eat the quantities of these foods recommended by the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans (27,49). Providing incentives to encourage the production, distribution, and procurement of food from local farms aims might increase the availability and consumption of locally produced foods by community residents, enhance the ability of the food system to provide sufficient quantities of healthier foods, and increase the viability of local farms and food security for communities (M. Hamm, PhD, Michigan State University, personal communication, 2008). Definitions of "local" vary by place and context but may include the area of the foodshed (i.e. a geographic area that supplies a population center with food), food grown within a day's driving distance of the place of sale, or a smaller area such as a city and its surroundings. Incentives to encourage local food production can include forming grower cooperatives, instituting revolving loan funds, and building markets for local farm products through economic development and through collaborations with the Cooperative Extension Service (50). Additional incentives include but are not limited to farmland preservation, marketing of local crops, zoning variances, subsidies, streamlined license and permit processes, and the provision of technical assistance.
Evidence suggests that dispersing agricultural production in local areas around the country (e.g., through local farms and urban agriculture) would increase the amount of produce that could be grown and made available to local consumers, improve economic development at the local level (51,52), and contribute to environmental sustainability (53). Although no evidence has been published to link local food production and health outcomes, a study has been funded to explore the potential nutritional and health benefits of eating locally grown foods (A. Ammerman, DrPH, University of North Carolina Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, personal communication, 2009).
Local government has a policy that encourages the production, distribution, or procurement of food from local farms in the local jurisdiction.
This measurement captures local policies, as well as state- and federal-level policies that apply to a local jurisdiction and aim to encourage the production, distribution, and procurement of food from local farms. The measurement does not specify the content of relevant policies so that all policies designed to increase the production, distribution, and consumption of food from local farms may be included in the measure.
Strategies to Support Healthy Food and Beverage Choices
Even when healthy food options are available, children and families often remain inundated with unhealthy food and beverage choices promoted by television advertisements and print media. In addition, unhealthy foods typically cost less than healthy foods, providing further economic incentives for their purchase and consumption. Each of the following four strategies aims to encourage consumers to make healthier choices by limiting exposure and access to less healthy food and beverage options.
7. Communities Should Restrict Availability of Less Healthy Foods and Beverages in Public Service Venues
Less healthy foods and beverages include foods and beverages with a high calorie, fat, sugar, and sodium content, and a low nutrient content. Less healthy foods are more available than healthier foods in U.S. schools (54). The availability of less healthy foods in schools is inversely associated with fruit and vegetable consumption and is positively associated with fat intake among students (55). Therefore, restricting access to unhealthy food options is one component of a comprehensive plan for better nutrition.
Schools can restrict the availability of less healthy foods by setting standards for the types of foods sold, restricting access to vending machines, banning snack foods and food as rewards in classrooms, prohibiting food sales at certain times of the school day, or changing the locations where unhealthy competitive foods are sold. Other public service venues that could also restrict the availability of less healthy foods include after-school programs, regulated child care centers, community recreational facilities (e.g., parks, recreation centers, playgrounds, and swimming pools), city and county buildings, and prisons and juvenile detention centers.
No peer-reviewed studies were identified that examined the impact of interventions designed to restrict the availability of less healthy foods in public service venues. Federal nutritional guidelines prohibit the sale of foods of "minimal nutritional value" in school cafeterias while meals are being served. However, the guidelines currently do not prevent or restrict the sale of these foods in vending machines near the cafeteria or in other school locations (11). Certain states and school districts have developed more restrictive policies regarding competitive foods; 21 states have policies that restrict the sale of competitive foods beyond USDA regulations (56). However, no studies were identified that examined the impact of the policies in those states on student eating behavior.
A policy exists that prohibits the sale of less healthy foods and beverages (as defined by IOM ) within local government facilities in a local jurisdiction or on public school campuses during the school day within the largest school district in a local jurisdiction.
This measurement captures all policies designed to restrict the availability of less healthy foods and beverages sold in local government facilities and in public schools.
8. Communities Should Institute Smaller Portion Size Options in Public Service Venues
Portion size can be defined as the amount (e.g. weight, calorie content, or volume) of a single food item served in a single eating occasion (e.g. a meal or a snack), such as the amount offered to a person in a restaurant, in the packaging of prepared foods, or the amount a person chooses to put on his or her plate (23). Controlling portion size is important because research has demonstrated that persons often either 1) do not notice differences in portion sizes and unknowingly eat larger amounts when presented with a larger portion or 2) when eating larger portions, do not consume fewer calories at subsequent meals or during the rest of the day (57).
Evidence is lacking to demonstrate the effectiveness of population-based interventions aimed at reducing portion sizes in public service venues. However, evidence from clinical studies conducted in laboratory settings demonstrates that decreasing portion size decreases energy intake (58--60). This finding holds across a wide variety of foods and different types of portions (e.g., portions served on a plate, sandwiches, or prepackaged foods such as potato chips). Clinical studies conducted in nonlaboratory settings demonstrate that increased portion size leads to increased energy intake (61,62). The majority of studies that evaluated the impact of portion size on nutritional outcomes were short term, producing little evidence regarding the long-term impact of portion size on eating patterns, nutrition, and obesity (23). Intervention studies are underway that evaluate the impact of limiting portion size, combined with other strategies to prevent obesity in workplaces (63).
Local government has a policy to limit the portion size of any entree (including sandwiches and entrée salads) by either reducing the standard portion size of entrees or offering smaller portion sizes in addition to standard portion sizes within local government facilities within a local jurisdiction.
This measurement captures local government policies that aim to limit or reduce the portion size of entrées served in local government facilities. This measurement is limited to local government facilities, which represent only a small portion of the total landscape of food service venues but are within the influence of local jurisdictions. This measurement might prompt communities to consider policies that limit the portion size of entrees served in facilities that are owned and operated within a local jurisdiction.
9. Communities Should Limit Advertisements of Less Healthy Foods and Beverages
Research has demonstrated that more than half of television advertisements viewed by children and adolescents are food-related; the majority of them promote fast foods, snack foods, sweets, sugar-sweetened beverage products, and other less healthy foods that are easily purchased by youths (11). In 2006, major food and beverage marketers spent $1.6 billion to promote food and beverage products among children and adolescents in the United States (64). Television advertising has been determined to influence children to prefer and request high-calorie and low-nutrient foods and beverages and influences short-term consumption among children aged 2--11 years (65). Therefore, limiting advertisements of less healthy foods might decrease the purchase and consumption of such products. Legislation to limit advertising of less healthy foods and beverages usually is introduced at the federal or state level. However, local governing bodies, such as district level school boards, might have the authority to limit advertisements of less healthy foods and beverages in areas within their jurisdiction (9).
Little evidence is available regarding the impact of restricting advertising on purchasing and consumption of less healthy foods (11,22,66,67). However, cross-sectional time-series studies of tobacco-control efforts suggest that an association exists between advertising bans and decreased tobacco consumption (22,68). One study estimated that a ban on fast-food advertising on children's television programs could reduce the number of overweight children aged 3--11 years by 18% and the number of overweight adolescents aged 12--18 years by 14% (69). Limited bans of advertising, which include some media but not others (e.g., television but not newspapers), might have little or no effect as the food and beverage industry might redirect its advertising efforts to media not included in the ban, thus limiting researchers' ability to detect causal effects (68).
A policy exists that limits advertising and promotion of less healthy foods and beverages, as defined by IOM (11), within local government facilities in a local jurisdiction or on public school campuses during the school day within the largest school district in a local jurisdiction.
This measurement captures policies that prohibit advertising and promotion of less healthy foods and beverages within local government facilities and in schools. Although local government facilities and schools represent only a limited portion of the total advertising landscape, the chosen venue is within the influence of local jurisdictions. This measurement might prompt communities to consider policies that prohibit advertising and promotion of less healthy foods and beverages.
10. Communities Should Discourage Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages
Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (e.g., carbonated soft drinks, sports drinks, flavored sweetened milk, and fruit drinks) among children and adolescents has increased dramatically since the 1970s and is associated with higher daily caloric intake and greater risk of obesity (70). Although consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages occurs most often in the home, schools and child care centers also contribute to the problem either by serving sugar-sweetened beverages or by allowing children to purchase sugar-sweetened beverages from vending machines (70). Policies that restrict the availability of sugar-sweetened beverages and 100% fruit juice in schools and child care centers might discourage the consumption of high-caloric beverages among children and adolescents.
One longitudinal study of a school-based environmental intervention conducted among Native American high school students that combined education to decrease the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and increase knowledge of diabetes risk factors with the development of a youth-oriented fitness center demonstrated a substantial reduction in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages for a 3-year period (71). A randomized control study of a home-based environmental intervention that eliminated sugar-sweetened beverages from the homes of a diverse group of adolescents demonstrated that, among heavier adolescents, the intervention resulted in significantly (p = 0.03) greater reduction in BMI scores compared with the control group (72).
Licensed child care facilities within the local jurisdiction are required to ban sugar-sweetened beverages (including flavored/sweetened milk) and limit the portion size of 100% juice.
This measurement captures local and state level policies that aim to limit the availability of sugar-sweetened beverages for young children attending licensed child care facilities. Policies (at either the local or state level) should address both parts of the measurement. Restricting the availability of sugar-sweetened beverages in school settings has been discussed previously (see Communities Should Restrict Availability of Less Healthy Foods and Beverages in Public Service Venues).
Strategy to Encourage Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding has been linked to decreased risk of pediatric overweight in multiple epidemiologic studies. Despite this evidence, many mothers never initiate breastfeeding and others discontinue breastfeeding earlier than needed. The following strategy aims to increase overall support for breastfeeding so that mothers are able to initiate and continue optimal breastfeeding practices.
11. Communities Should Increase Support for Breastfeeding
Exclusive breastfeeding is recommended for the first 4--6 months of life, and breastfeeding together with the age-appropriate introduction of complementary foods is encouraged for the first year of life. Epidemiologic data suggest that breastfeeding provides a limited degree of protection against childhood obesity, although the reasons for this association are not clear (11). Breastfeeding is thought to promote an infant's ability to self regulate energy intake, thereby allowing him or her to eat in response to internal hunger and satiety cues (73). Some research suggests that the metabolic/hormonal cues provided by breastmilk contribute to the protective association between breastfeeding and childhood obesity (74). Despite the many advantages of breastfeeding, many women choose to bottle-feed their babies for a variety of reasons, including social and structural barriers to breastfeeding, such as attitudes and policies regarding breastfeeding in health-care settings and public and work places (75).
Breastfeeding support programs aim to increase the initiation and exclusivity rate of breastfeeding and to extend the duration of breastfeeding. Such programs include a variety of interventions in hospitals and workplaces (e.g., setting up breastfeeding facilities, creating a flexible work environment that allows breastfed infants to be brought to work, providing onsite child care services, and providing paid maternity leaves), and maternity care (e.g., polices and staff training programs that promote early breastfeeding initiation, restricting the availability of supplements or pacifiers, and providing facilities that accommodate mothers and babies). The CDC Guide to Breastfeeding Interventions identifies the following general areas of interventions and programs as effective in supporting breastfeeding: 1) maternity care practices, 2) support for breastfeeding in the workplace, 3) peer support, 4) educating mothers, 5) professional support, and 6) media and community-wide campaigns (76).
Evidence directly linking environmental interventions that support breastfeeding with obesity-related outcomes is lacking. However, systematic reviews of epidemiologic studies indicate that breastfeeding helps prevent pediatric obesity: breastfed infants were 13%--22% less likely to be obese than formula-fed infants (77,78), and each additional month of breastfeeding was associated with a 4% decrease in the risk of obesity (79). Furthermore, one study demonstrated that infants fed with low (<20% of feedings from breastmilk) and medium (20%--80% of feedings from breastmilk) breastfeeding intensity were at least twice as likely to have excess weight from 6 to 12 months of infancy compared with infants who were breastfed at high intensity (>80% of feedings from breastmilk) (80).
Systematic reviews indicate that support programs in health-care settings are effective in increasing rates of breastfeeding initiation and in preventing early cessation of breastfeeding. Training medical personnel and lay volunteers to promote breastfeeding decreases the risk for early cessation of breastfeeding by 10% (81) and that education programs increase the likelihood of the initiation of breastfeeding among low-income women in the United States by approximately twofold (75).
One systematic review did not identify any randomized control trials that have tested the effectiveness of workplace-wide interventions promoting breastfeeding among women returning to paid employment (82). However, one study demonstrated that women who directly breastfed their infant at work and/or pumped breast milk at work breastfed at a higher intensity than women who did not breastfeed or pump breast milk at work (83). Furthermore, evaluations of individual interventions aimed at supporting breastfeeding in the workplace demonstrate increased initiation rates and duration of breastfeeding compared with national averages (76).
Local government has a policy requiring local government facilities to provide breastfeeding accommodations for employees that include both time and private space for breastfeeding during working hours.
This measurement captures local policies that support breastfeeding among women who work for local government. Although in most cases infants are not present in the women's place of employment, the policy would require employers to designate time and private space for women to express and store breast milk for later use.
Strategies to Encourage Physical Activity or Limit Sedentary Activity Among Children and Youth
Children spend much of their day in school or child care facilities; therefore, it is important that a portion of their recommended daily physical activity be achieved in these settings. The first three strategies in this section aim for schools to require daily PE classes, engage children in moderate to vigorous physical activity for at least half of the time spent in these classes, and ensure that children are given opportunities for extracurricular physical activity. The final strategy (strategy 15) aims to reduce the amount of time children spend watching televisions and using computers in licensed child care facilities.
12. Communities Should Require Physical Education in Schools
This strategy supports the Healthy People 2010 objective (objective no. 22.8) to increase the proportion of the nation's public and private schools that require daily PE for all students (15). The National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) and the American Heart Association (AHA) recommend that all elementary school students should participate in >150 minutes per week of PE and that all middle and high school students should participate in >225 minutes of PE per week for the entire school year (84). School-based PE increases students' level of physical activity and improves physical fitness (23).
Many states mandate some level of PE in schools: 36 states mandate PE for elementary-school students, 33 states mandate PE for middle-school students, and 42 states mandate PE for high-school students (84). However, to what extent these requirements are enforced is unclear, and only two states (Louisiana and New Jersey) mandate the recommended >150 minutes per week of PE classes. Potential barriers to implementing PE classes in schools include concerns among school administrators that PE classes compete with traditional academic curricula or might detract from students' academic performance. However, a Community Guide review identified no evidence that time spent in PE classes harms academic performance (23).
In a systematic review of 14 studies, the Community Guide demonstrated that school-based PE was effective in increasing levels of physical activity and improving physical fitness (23). The review included studies of interventions that increased the amount of time spent in PE classes, the amount of time students are active during PE classes, or the amount of moderate or vigorous physical activity (MVPA) students engage in during PE classes.
Most studies that correlated school-based PE classes and the physical activity and fitness of students focused on the quality and duration of PE classes (e.g., the amount of physical activity during class, the amount of MVPA) rather than simply whether PE was required. However, requiring that PE classes be taught in schools is a necessary minimum condition for measuring the effectiveness of efforts to improve school-based PE class curricula.
The largest school district located within the local jurisdiction has a policy that requires a minimum of 150 minutes per week of PE in public elementary schools and a minimum of 225 minutes per week of PE in public middle schools and high schools throughout the school year as recommended by the National Association of Sports and Physical Education in 2006 (86).
This measurement captures whether PE is required in schools, as well as the minimum amount of time required in PE per week by grade level. The measurement specifies distinct standards for elementary and middle/high school levels that are based on NASPE recommendations.
13. Communities Should Increase the Amount of Physical Activity in PE Programs in Schools
Time spent in PE classes does not necessarily mean that students are physically active during that time. Increasing the amount of physical activity in school-based PE classes has been demonstrated to be effective in increasing fitness among children. Specifically, increasing the amount of time children are physically active in class, increasing the number of children moving as part of a game or activity (e.g., by modifying game rules so that more students are moving at any given time, or by changing activities to those where all participants stay active), and increasing the amount of moderate to vigorous activity during class time are effective strategies for increasing physical activity.
In a review of 14 studies, the Community Guide demonstrated strong evidence of effectiveness for enhancing PE classes taught in school by increasing the amount of time students spend in PE class, the amount of time they are active during PE classes, or the amount of MVPA they engage in during PE classes (23). The median effect of modifying school PE curricula as recommended was an 8% increase in aerobic fitness among school-aged children. Modifying school PE curricula was effective in increasing physical activity across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic populations, among males and females, in elementary and high schools, and in urban and rural settings.
A quasi-experimental study of the Sports, Play, and Active Recreation for Kids (SPARK) school PE program, which is designed to maximize participation in physical activity during PE classes, demonstrated that the program increased physical activity during PE classes but the effect did not carry over outside of school (85). The study identified no significant effects on fitness levels among boys (p = 29--55), but girls in the classes led by a PE specialist were superior in abdominal and cardio respiratory endurance to girls in the control condition (p = 0.03). The Child and Adolescent Trial for Cardiovascular Health (CATCH) is another intervention which aims to increase MVPA in children during PE classes. A randomized, controlled field trail of CATCH that was conducted with more than 5,000 third-grade students from 96 public schools over a 3-year period indicated that the intensity of physical activity in PE classes (class time devoted to MVPA) during the intervention increased significantly in the intervention schools compared with the control schools (p<0.02) (86).
The background and training of teachers who deliver PE curricula might mediate the effect of interventions on physical activity. For example, one study indicated that SPARK classes led by PE specialists spent more time per week in physical activity (40 minutes) than classes led by regular teachers who had received training in the curriculum (33 minutes) (85).
The largest school district located within the local jurisdiction has a policy that requires K--12 students to be physically active for at least 50% of time spent in PE classes in public schools.
This measurement assesses whether a school district has a policy that requires at least of 50% of PE classes be devoted to physical activity. The policy needs to apply to all grade levels to meet the measurement criteria.
14. Communities Should Increase Opportunities for Extracurricular Physical Activity
Opportunities for extracurricular physical activity outside of school hours to complement formal PE increasingly are an important strategy to prevent obesity in children and youth (11). This strategy focuses on noncompetitive physical activity opportunities such as games and dance classes available through community and after-school programs, and excludes participation in varsity team sports or sport clubs, which require tryouts and are not open to all students. Research has demonstrated that after-school programs that provide opportunities for extracurricular physical activity increase children's level of physical activity and improve other obesity-related outcomes.
Intervention studies have demonstrated that participation in after-school programs that provided opportunities for extracurricular physical activity held both at schools and other community settings increased participants' level of physical activity (87,88) and improved obesity-related outcomes, such as improved cardiovascular fitness and reduced body fat content (89). Two pilot studies demonstrated that providing opportunities for extracurricular physical activity increased levels of physical activity (90) and decreased sedentary behavior (91) among participants.
The Promoting Life Activity in Youth (PLAY) program is designed to teach active lifestyle habits to children and help them to accumulate 30--60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day. One study indicated that participation in PLAY and PE had a significant impact on physical activity among girls (p<0.001) but not for boys (90). Lack of access is a barrier that might limit the impact of increased availability of opportunities for extracurricular physical activity. In East Palo Alto, California, where the city provided buses from schools to the community center, 70% of the eligible girls attended dance classes at least 2 days a week. In Oakland, where the city did not provide buses, only 33% of eligible girls attended the class two or more times a week (91).
The percentage of public schools within the largest school district in a local jurisdiction that allow the use of their athletic facilities by the public during non-school hours on a regular basis.
This measurement captures the percentage of public schools within a community that make their athletic facilities available to the general public during non-school hours. This measurement might prompt communities to open more school athletic facilities to the public.
15. Communities Should Reduce Screen Time in Public Service Venues
Mechanisms linking extended screen viewing time and obesity include displacement of physical activity; a reduction in metabolic rate and excess energy intake; and increased consumption of food advertised on television as a result of exposure to marketing of high energy dense foods and beverages (92,93). The American Academy of Pediatrics (94) recommends that parents limit children's television time to no more than to 2 hours per day. Although only a relatively small portion of television viewing and computer and video game use occurs in public service venues such as schools, day care centers, and after-school programs, local policymakers can intervene to limit screen viewing time among children and youth in these venues.
Long-term cohort studies have demonstrated a positive significant (p = 0.02) association between television viewing in childhood and body mass index levels in adulthood (92,93). In addition, a cross-sectional study indicated that the amount of time spent watching TV/video was significantly related to overweight among low-income preschool children (p<0.004) (95). A randomized controlled school-based trial indicated that children who reduced their television, videotape, and video game use had significant decreases in BMI (p = 0.002), tricep skin fold thickness (p = 0.002), and waist circumference (p<0.001) compared with children in control groups (96). The evidence surrounding children's television viewing and its relationship to physical activity has been somewhat inconsistent. A review evaluating correlates of childhood physical activity determined that some studies find time spent engaged in sedentary activities, specifically TV viewing and video use, has a negative association to physical activity, while other studies find no relationship (97). Multicomponent school-based intervention studies have demonstrated that spending less time watching television is associated with increased physical activity (98) and decreased risk of childhood obesity among girls but not boys (99).
Licensed child care facilities within the local jurisdiction are required to limit screen time to no more than 2 hours per day for children aged ≥2 years.
This measurement captures the presence of either local- or state-level policies aimed at reducing screen viewing time in child care settings. The screen viewing time limits specified by the measurement are based on the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics. For the purpose of this measurement screen viewing time excludes video games that involve physical activity. Otherwise, determination of what constitutes screen viewing time is left to individual jurisdictions.
Strategies to Create Safe Communities That Support Physical Activity
Certain characteristics of the built environment have been demonstrated to support physical activity. Each of the following eight strategies aims to increase physical activity through changes in the built environment by improving access to places for physical activity such as recreation areas and parks, improving infrastructure to support bicycling and walking, locating schools closer to residential areas to encourage non-motorized travel to and from school, zoning to allow mixed-use areas that combine residential with commercial and institutional uses, improving access to public transportation, and improving personal and traffic safety in areas where persons are or could be physically active.
16. Communities Should Improve Access to Outdoor Recreational Facilities
Recreation facilities provide space for community members to engage in physical activity and include places such as parks and green space, outdoor sports fields and facilities, walking and biking trails, public pools, and community playgrounds. Accessibility of recreation facilities depends on a number of factors such as proximity to homes or schools, cost, hours of operation, and ease of access. Improving access to recreation facilities and places might increase physical activity among children and adolescents.
In a review based on 10 studies, the Community Guide concluded that efforts to increase access to places for physical activity, when combined with informational outreach, can be effective in increasing physical activity (100). The studies reviewed by the Community Guide included interventions such as creating walking trails, building exercise facilities, and providing access to existing facilities. However, it was not possible to separate the benefits of improved access to places for physical activity from health education and services that were provided concurrently (100).
A comprehensive review of 108 studies indicated that access to facilities and programs for recreation near their homes, and time spent outdoors, correlated positively with increased physical activity among children and adolescents (97). A study that analyzed data from a longitudinal survey of 17,766 adolescents indicated that those who used community recreation centers were significantly more likely to engage in moderate to vigorous physical activity (p≤0.00001) (101).
A multivariate analysis indicated that self-reported access to a park, and the perception that footpaths are safe for walking were significantly associated with adult respondents being classified as physically active at a level sufficient for health benefits (102). Another study that used self-report and GIS data concluded that longer distances and the presence of barriers (e.g., busy streets and steep hills) between individuals and bike paths were associated with non-use of bike paths (103).
The percentage of residential parcels within a local jurisdiction located within a half-mile network distance of at least one outdoor public recreational facility.
This measurement captures the percentage of homes within a local jurisdiction that are within walking distance of an outdoor public recreational facility. Recreational facilities are defined as facilities listed in the jurisdiction's inventory with at least one amenity promoting physical activity (e.g., walking/hiking trail, bicycling trail, open play field/play area). For consistency across jurisdictions, the measurement focuses on the entrance points to outdoor recreational facilities, although many recreational facilities have multiple points of entry.
17. Communities Should Enhance Infrastructure Supporting Bicycling
Enhancing infrastructure supporting bicycling includes creating bike lanes, shared-use paths, and routes on existing and new roads; and providing bike racks in the vicinity of commercial and other public spaces. Improving bicycling infrastructure can be effective in increasing frequency of cycling for utilitarian purposes (e.g., commuting to work and school, bicycling for errands). Research demonstrates a strong association between bicycling infrastructure and frequency of bicycling.
Longitudinal intervention studies have demonstrated that improving bicycling infrastructure is associated with increased frequency of bicycling (104,105). Cross-sectional studies indicated a significant association between bicycling infrastructure and frequency of biking (p<0.001) (103,106,107).
Total miles of designated shared-use paths and bike lanes relative to the total street miles (excluding limited access highways) that are maintained by a local jurisdiction.
This measurement captures the availability of shared-use paths and bike lanes, as defined by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, relative to the total number of street network miles in a community. The numerator of this measurement includes both shared-use paths and bike lanes. The denominator of this measurement is limited to paved streets that are maintained by city/local government, and excludes limited access highways. Although no estimated standard exists for this measurement, data collected from local governments reporting on this measurement can lead to establishment of a standard.
18. Communities Should Enhance Infrastructure Supporting Walking
Infrastructure that supports walking includes but is not limited to sidewalks, footpaths, walking trails, and pedestrian crossings. Walking is a regular, moderate-intensity physical activity in which relatively large numbers of persons can engage. Well-developed infrastructure supporting walking is an important element of the built environment and has been demonstrated to be associated with physical activity in adults and children. Interventions aimed at supporting infrastructure for walking are included in street-scale urban design and land use interventions that support physical activity in small geographic areas. These interventions can include improved street lighting, infrastructure projects to increase the safety of street crossings, use of traffic calming approaches (e.g., speed humps and traffic circles), and enhancing street landscaping (108).
The Community Guide reports sufficient evidence that street-scale urban design and land use policies that support walking are effective in increasing levels of physical activity (108). Reviews of cross-sectional studies of environmental correlates of physical activity and walking generally find a positive association between infrastructure supportive of walking and physical activity (109,110). However, some systematic reviews indicated no evidence of an association between the presence of sidewalks and physical activity (111). Other reviews indicated associations, but only for certain subgroups of subjects (e.g., men and users of longer walking trails) (108,109). Intervention studies demonstrate effectiveness of enhanced walking infrastructure when combined with other strategies. For example, evaluation of the Marin County Safe Routes to School program indicated that identifying and creating safe routes to school, together with educational components, increased the number of students walking to school (105). When considering the evidence for this strategy, planners should note that physically active individuals might be more likely to locate in communities that have an existing infrastructure for walking, which might produce spurious correlations in cross-sectional studies (109).
Total miles of paved sidewalks relative to the total street miles (excluding limited access highways) that are maintained by a local jurisdiction.
This measurement captures the availability of sidewalks in a local jurisdiction relative to the total miles of streets. The measurement does not take into account the continuity of sidewalks between locations. In this measurement total nonhighway street miles are limited to paved streets maintained by and paid for by local government and excludes limited access highways. Although no estimated standard exists for this measurement, data collected from local governments reporting on this measurement can lead to establishment of a standard.
19. Communities Should Support Locating Schools within Easy Walking Distance of Residential Areas
Walking to and from school has been demonstrated to increase physical activity among children during the commute, leading to increased energy expenditure and potentially to reduced obesity. However, the percentage of students walking to school has dropped dramatically over the past 40 years, partially due to the increased distance between children's homes and schools. Current land use trends and policies pose barriers to building smaller schools located near residential areas. Therefore, requisite activities that support locating schools within easy walking distance of residential areas include efforts to change land use and school system policies.
The Community Guide indicated that community-scale urban design and land use policies and practices, including locating schools, stores, workplaces, and recreation areas close to residential areas, are effective in facilitating an increase in levels of physical activity (23,108). A simulation modeling study conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Florida indicated that school location as well as the quality of the built environment between home and school has an effect on walking and biking to school. Specifically, this combination of school location and built environment quality would produce a 13% increase in nonmotorized travel to school (112). A cross-sectional study in the Philippines indicated that adolescents who walked to school expended significantly more energy than those who used motorized modes of transport. This association was not explainable by in-school or after-school sports or exercise. Assuming no change takes place in energy intake, the difference in energy expenditure between transport modes would lead to an expected 2--3-pound annual weight gain by youth who commute to school by motorized transport (113).
As a result of current land use trends and policies regarding school siting, very little work has been done to locate schools within neighborhoods. A study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency suggests that the trend of building larger schools with larger catchment areas should be reversed to locate schools within neighborhoods (112). The distance between homes and schools is not the only factor that affects whether children walk to and from school. Among students living within 1 mile of school, the percentage of walkers fell from 90% to 31% between 1969 and 2001 (112). The decrease in walking to and from school has been attributed to a poor walking environment, defined as a built environment that has low population densities, little mixing of land uses, long blocks, and incomplete sidewalks (112). The majority of efforts to encourage walking to and from school involve improving the routes (e.g., Marin County's Safe Routes to School program) rather than improving the location of schools. Previous studies have recommended that local governments and school districts should ensure that children and youth have safe walking and bicycling routes between their homes and schools and encouraged their use (11).
The largest school district in the local jurisdiction has a policy that supports locating new schools, and/or repairing or expanding existing schools, within easy walking or biking distance of residential areas.
This measurement captures school district policies that encourage the location of new schools within close proximity of residential neighborhoods and/or to maintain schools that are already located in residential areas. This measurement includes policies that either provide incentives to build or keep schools in residential areas or prevent schools from being built in areas that can only be accessed by motorized vehicles. This measurement might prompt school districts to consider proximity to residential areas when siting schools.
20. Communities Should Improve Access to Public Transportation
Public transportation includes mass transit systems such as buses, light rail, street cars, commuter trains, and subways, and the infrastructure supporting these systems (e.g., transit stops and dedicated bus lanes). Improving access to public transportation encourages the use of public transit, which might, in turn, increase the level of physical activity when transit users walk or ride bicycles to and from transit access points.
The Community Guide identified insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of transportation and travel policies and practices in increasing the level of physical activity or improving fitness because only one study of adequate quality was available (108). In a study that analyzed data from the 2001 National Household Travel Survey, researchers indicated that 29% of individuals who walk to and from public transit achieve at least 30 minutes of daily physical activity (114). Another study indicated that access to public transit was associated with decreases in the odds of using automobiles as a preferred mode of transportation and increases in the odds of walking and/or bicycling (115). In a cross-sectional study carried out in four San Francisco neighborhoods, researchers indicated that individuals with easy access to the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART) made, on average, 0.66 more nonmotorized trips than those who did not have access to BART (116).
Physically active individuals might be more likely to locate into communities with an infrastructure that supports physical activity, including neighborhoods with infrastructure supporting public transportation (110). Most neighborhood-level cross-sectional studies do not control for individual-level characteristics (e.g., ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status). Environmental factors, including infrastructure for public transit, also might affect different subpopulations differently (110,116).
The percentage of residential and commercial parcels in a local jurisdiction that are located either within a quarter-mile network distance of at least one bus stop or within a half-mile network distance of at least one train stop (including commuter and passenger trains, light rail, subways, and street cars).
This measurement captures access to the local public transit system based on the distance persons have to walk to and from bus stops and train stops, either from their homes or from commercial destinations. The measurement should be relatively easy to collect by local jurisdictions that have basic GIS capacity and information about the location of all bus and train stops in their jurisdiction. Using a network distance better represents the actual distances persons must travel on foot or bicycle to reach transit stops.
21. Communities Should Zone for Mixed-Use Development
Zoning for mixed-use development is one type of community-scale land use policy and practice that allows residential, commercial, institutional, and other public land uses to be located in close proximity to one another. Mixed-use development decreases the distance between destinations (e.g., home and shopping), which has been demonstrated to decrease the number of trips persons make by automobile and increase the number of trips persons make on foot or by bicycle. Zoning regulations that accommodate mixed land use could increase physical activity by encouraging walking and bicycling trips for nonrecreational purposes. Zoning laws restricting the mixing of residential and nonresidential uses and encouraging single-use development can be a barrier to physical activity.
The Community Guide lists mixed-use development and diversity of residential and commercial developments as examples of community-scale urban design and land use policies and practices (23). The Community Guide rated the evidence for community-scale urban design and land use policies and practices as sufficient to justify a recommendation that these characteristics increase physical activity (23,108). The recommendation was based on a review of 12 studies in which the median improvement in some aspect of physical activity was 161% (23,108).
Studies using correlation analyses and regression models indicated that mixed land use was associated with increased walking and cycling (110,117--119). A review of quasi-experimental studies indicated residents from high walkability neighborhoods (defined by higher density, greater connectivity, and more land use mix) reported twice as many walking trips per week than residents from low walkability neighborhoods (defined by low density, poor connectivity, and single land uses) (110). A cross-sectional study conducted in Atlanta, GA indicated that odds of obesity declined as mixed land use increased (118).
Some increased level of physical activity among residents of mixed-use neighborhoods might be attributable to selection of these types of neighborhoods by persons more likely to engage in physical activity (119). Mixed-use development is often combined with multiple design elements from urban planning and policy, including density, connectivity, roadway design, and walkability.
Percentage of zoned land area (in acres) within a local jurisdiction that is zoned for mixed use that specifically combines residential land use with one or more commercial, institutional, or other public land uses.
This measurement assesses the proportion of land within a local jurisdiction that is zoned for mixed use including residential land use. Although mixed use does not always require a residential component, for the purpose of this measurement mixed-use development is defined as zoning that combines residential land use with one or more of the following types of land use: commercial, institutional, or other public use.
22. Communities Should Enhance Personal Safety in Areas Where Persons Are or Could Be Physically Active
Personal safety is affected by crime rates and other nontraffic-related hazards that exist in communities. Limited but supportive evidence indicates that improving community safety might be effective at increasing levels of physical activity in adults and children. In addition, safety considerations affect parents' decisions to allow their children to play and walk outside (11). Interventions to improve safety, such as increasing police presence, decreasing the number of abandoned buildings and homes, and improving street lighting, can be undertaken by individual communities.
Cross-sectional studies have demonstrated a negative relationship between crime rates and/or perceived safety and physical activity in neighborhoods, particularly among adolescents (101,120,121). A systematic review indicated that observational measurements of safety (e.g., crime incidence) were negatively associated with physical activity, but subjective measurements (self-reported safety) were not correlated with physical activity (120).
Few intervention studies have evaluated the impact of policies and practices to improve personal safety on physical activity. However, one study indicated that improved street lighting in London led to reduced crime rates, less fear of crime, and more pedestrian street use (122). Some studies suggest that the relationship between safety and physical activity might vary by gender and/or other individual-level characteristics. For example, one study indicated that incidence rates of violent crimes were associated with lower physical activity in adolescent girls, but not in boys (121).
Persons of lower socioeconomic status depend more on walking as a means of transportation as compared with those of higher socioeconomic status, and they also are more likely to live in neighborhoods that are unsafe (11). This could explain why some studies do not find a positive association between perceived safety and physical activity. Reducing crime levels might require complex, multisectoral, and long-term efforts, which might go beyond the authority and capacity of local communities.
The number of vacant or abandoned buildings (residential and commercial) relative to the total number of buildings located within a local jurisdiction.
This measurement captures the percentage of buildings that are vacant or abandoned within a local jurisdiction, which is one of many environmental factors believed to be associated with perceived safety in neighborhoods. When residential or commercial buildings are vacant, places conducive to crime are more readily available, which might deter persons from engaging in physical activity. Vacant or abandoned lots are not intended to be counted for this measure.
23. Communities Should Enhance Traffic Safety in Areas Where Persons Are or Could Be Physically Active
Traffic safety is the security of pedestrians and bicyclists from motorized traffic. Traffic safety can be enhanced by engineering streets for lower speeds or by retrofitting existing streets with traffic calming measurements (e.g., speed tables and traffic circles). Traffic safety can also be enhanced by developing infrastructure to improve the safety of street crossings (e.g., raised crosswalks and textured pavement) for nonmotorized traffic and for pedestrians.
The lack of safe places to walk, run, and bicycle as a result of real or perceived traffic hazards can deter children and adults from being physically active. Enhancing traffic safety has been demonstrated to be effective in increasing levels of physical activity in adults and children. Research suggests that persons living in neighborhoods with higher traffic safety are more physically active.
The Community Guide reviewed both community-scale and street-scale urban design and land use policies and practices, including interventions aimed at improving traffic safety. The review indicated that both community-scale and street-scale policies and practices were effective in increasing physical activity (108). On the basis of sufficient evidence of effectiveness, the Community Guide recommends implementing community-scale and street-scale urban design and land use policies to promote physical activity, including design components to improve street lighting, infrastructure projects to increase safety of pedestrian street crossings, and use of traffic calming approaches such as speed humps and traffic circles (23).
A review of 19 studies examined the effects of environmental factors on physical activity, five of which considered traffic safety (123). One study demonstrated significant effects of traffic safety on increased physical activity (102).
Local government has a policy for designing and operating streets with safe access for all users which includes at least one element suggested by the National Complete Streets Coalition ().
This measurement assesses whether a community has a policy for all-user street design, such as the Complete Streets program. Specific elements of the measurement are based on Complete Streets policy. To meet criteria for this measurement, local governments must incorporate at least one of the following elements in a local policy to enhance traffic safety for pedestrians:
- specifies that "all users" includes pedestrians, bicyclists, transit vehicles and users, and motorists of all ages and abilities;
- aims to create a comprehensive, integrated, connected network;
- recognizes the need for flexibility: that all streets are different and user needs will be balanced;
- is adoptable by all agencies to cover all roads;
- applies to both new and retrofit projects, including design, planning, maintenance, and operations, for the entire right of way;
- makes any exceptions specific and sets a clear procedure that requires high-level approval of exceptions;
- directs the use of the latest and best design standards;
- directs that Complete Streets solutions fit within the context of the community; and
- establishes performance standards with measurable outcomes.
Strategy to Encourage Communities to Organize for Change
Community coalitions and partnerships are a way for government agencies, private sector institutions, community groups, and individual citizens to come together for the common purpose of preventing obesity by improving nutrition and physical activity. The following strategy calls for local governments to participate in community coalitions or partnerships to address obesity.
24. Communities Should Participate in Community Coalitions or Partnerships to Address Obesity
Community coalitions consist of public- and private-sector organizations that, together with individual citizens, work to achieve a shared goal through the coordinated use of resources, leadership, and action (11). Potential stakeholders in community coalitions aimed at obesity prevention include but are not limited to community organizations and leaders, health-care professionals, local and state public health agencies, industries (e.g., building and construction, restaurant, food and beverage, and entertainment), the media, educational institutions, government (including transportation and parks and recreation departments), youth-related and faith-based organizations, nonprofit organizations and foundations, and employers.
The effectiveness of community coalitions stems from the multiple perspectives, talents, and expertise that are brought together to work toward a common goal. In addition, coalitions build a sense of community, enhance residents' engagement in community life, and provide a vehicle for community empowerment. Research in tobacco control demonstrates that the presence of antismoking community coalitions is associated with lower rates of cigarette use. Based on this research, it is plausible that community coalitions might be effective in preventing obesity and in improving physical activity and nutrition.
Little evidence is available to determine the impact of community coalitions on obesity prevention (11). However, tobacco-control literature demonstrates that the presence of antismoking community coalitions is associated with lower rates of tobacco consumption. One study indicated that states with a greater number of anti-tobacco coalitions had lower per capita cigarette consumption than states with a lower number of coalitions (124).
Local government is an active member of at least one coalition or partnership that aims for environmental and policy change to promote active living and/or healthy eating (excluding personal health programs such as health fairs).
This measurement captures whether local governments participant in an active coalition that addresses active living and/or healthy eating within a local jurisdiction. Local government's participation can be based on a written agreement but can also include informal involvement in a community coalition. Coalitions should aim to address environmental and/or policy-level change for obesity prevention to meet the measurement criteria. Coalitions that only focus on awareness and/or individual level services are not included in this measure.
The recommended strategies and corresponding suggested measurements provided in this report are subject to at least seven limitations.
First, the 24 recommended community strategies are based on available evidence, expert opinion and transparent documentation; however, the suggested measurements have not been validated in practice. These measurements represent a first step that communities can use to assess local-level policies and environments that support healthy eating and active living. In addition, for a few of the recommended strategies, no evidence of an obesity-related health outcome exists. These recommendations were included on the basis of expert opinion that supported their inclusion to determine the effectiveness of the strategy for preventing obesity.
Second, to allow local governments to collect data, the suggested measurements typically assess only one aspect or dimension of a more complex environmental or policy strategy for preventing obesity. Although single indicators usually are inadequate for achieving in-depth community-wide assessment of complex strategies, they can be appropriate tools to assess local government's attention and focus on efforts to create an environment in which healthy eating and active living are supported.
Third, by design, the proposed measurements are confined to public settings that are under the authority of local governments and public schools. Although private settings are critical to the overall aim of preventing obesity, they are not addressed by this project because they are not under the authority of local jurisdictions. However, these obesity prevention strategies and their corresponding suggested measurements could be adapted to other settings throughout the community, outside the purview of local governments. In addition, all of the measurements pertaining to schools are limited to the largest school district within a local jurisdiction to ease the burden for data collection for jurisdictions that contain many school districts.
Fourth, many of the recommended strategies and suggested measurements might have more relevance to urban and suburban communities than to rural communities that typically have limited transit systems, sidewalk networks, and/or local government facilities. Many of the measurements require GIS capability; this technology might not yet be available in certain rural communities. However, this limitation will likely be temporary because of the rapid acquisition and implementation of GIS capability by local governments.
Fifth, certain of the suggested measurements require specific quantitation (e.g., the number of full-service grocery stores per 10,000 residents). Currently, no established standards exist by which communities can assess and compare their performance on a particular measure; data collected from local governments reporting on these measurements can lead to the emergence of a recommended standard.
Sixth, many of the proposed policy-level measurements have their own limitations. For example, although the measurements have been developed in consideration of local governments, a number of policies might be established at the state level, which would limit local variability within states. To assist in expanding our understanding of each policy, the measurement collection protocol recommends recording the key components of each policy, the date of enactment, and whether it is an institutional-, local-, or state-level policy. The measurements are designed to capture state and county policies that impact nutrition and physical activity environments at the local level.
Finally, certain policy measurements might not be highly sensitive to change from one year to the next. For example, after a community has a desired policy in place, several years might elapse before any verifiable change can be detected, quantified, and reported. Knowing that a policy exists does not reveal the extent to which that policy actually is implemented or enforced, if at all. Although implementation of and adherence to policies are critical to their impact, measuring the implementation of policies requires a level of assessment that might not be generally feasible for most local governments. Despite these limitations, drawing the attention of elected officials and government staffs to the existence of a policy serves as a catalyst for discussion and consideration with community members.
The next step for this project is to disseminate the recommended community strategies and suggested measurements for use by local governments and communities throughout the United States. To help accomplish this, an implementation and measurement guide will be published and made available through the CDC website (available at). In addition, the measurements will be integrated into a new survey module that will be available to all members of ICMA's Center for Performance Measurement. Dissemination of these recommended obesity prevention strategies and proposed measurements is intended to inspire communities to consider implementing new policy and environmental change initiatives aimed at reversing the obesity epidemic. The recommended strategies and suggested measurements outlined in this report are being pilot tested in the Minnesota and Massachusetts state surveillance systems (Laura Hutton, MA, Minnesota Department of Health, personal communication, 2009; Maya Mohan, MPH, Massachusetts Department of Health, personal communication, 2009).
The membership lists of the multiple subgroups that participated in the Measurements Project are listed on the inside back cover of this report. In addition, the following persons and organizations also contributed to this report: the International City/County Management Association; John Moore, PhD, CDC Foundation; Diane Dunet, PhD; Deborah Galuska, PhD, Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity, CDC. Support to the CDC Foundation was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Kaiser Permanente.
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Recently in Technology Category
The revolution in mobile healthcare continues to accelerate: More than 40 million smartphone owners now actively use at least one wellness or fitness app and by an overwhelming margin, they report that their health is improving because of it.
So why is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) undercutting advances vital to this industry's progress? And how quickly will Congress fix the problem?
Those two questions came to mind as I was reading a interesting new analysis of the FCC's recent vote to place the Internet under Title II utility regulations. With almost surgical precision, Internet analyst Larry Downes dissects the Commission's action, showing how the rules could violate multiple areas of federal law.
To give one example, the FCC redefined the entire Internet to make it part of the old, antiquated 1930s era telephone system and therefore subject the modern, dynamic Internet to these 1934 regulations.
As a result, Downes notes, every component on the Internet has been transformed into a telephone service and is therefore subject to utility regulation. The FCC, he warns, "can't rewrite the law by giving a key term an absurd new 'definition' [that contradicts] a consistent string of the agency's own precedents, and even basic rules of grammar."
The FCC's vote for Title II regulations will harm the Internet and, by extension, our access to new healthcare apps and services.
My hope is that Congress will work together to resolve these issues quickly so that needed improvements for both the Internet and telehealth technologies aren't delayed by the resultant legal uncertainties or by what is certain to be federal intrusion as, for the first time, layers of federal bureaucracy are added that impair innovators and their new ideas.
A Congressional action - narrowly focused to ensure Internet openness but without the overreach of Title II - would keep innovation moving.
Over the years, mobile and Internet-based healthcare services have emerged as an effective and affordable healthcare solution. As Commissioner Mignon Clyburn stated last fall, "Broadband-enabled solutions, can help communities better manage chronic disease, address language barriers, improve health literacy... and help improve overall population health and wellness."
While Commissioner Clyburn is right about the benefits of Internet healthcare, the FCC's decision to regulate the Internet under Title II authority will simply negate the progress made with these innovative services. That is why Congress must find a legislative solution that will combat the FCC's harmful policy and help mHealth programs become more effective.
The FCC's decision to regulate the Internet is a recipe for stale and uninspired innvovation. With the wireless Internet in particular, America is among the world's leaders and this has enabled our success in creating services to help seniors, people with chronic & debilitating diseases, and millions more who lack easy access to a doctor.
Congress has to both confirm and maintain America's leadership with online healthcare by working together to create and pass a law before the end of this year that extricates the Internet from Title II's overregulation but that permanently ensures an open Internet.
Congress must accept their responsibility to discourage and avoid the unnecessary years of legal wrangling with lawsuits after lawsuits that can be avoided. In the long run it is the consumers that will be the real winnner as innovators can return to what they do best - creating state of the art opportunities for consumers.
A dazzling future was on display in Washington, DC last week at a Congressional hearing on the "Internet of Things" (IoT). The IoT is a network in which objects - vehicles, healthcare services, consumer goods, to name a few - are connected to the Internet in order to provide more valuable and efficient services. These emerging technologies combine with traditional manufacturing to produce a surge in economic opportunity, benefits in healthcare, infrastructure and the environment.
There's just one thing that possibly stands in the way of expanding this innovative technology to virtually all Americans: the new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Internet regulation that could quite possibly inhibit innovation and investment in state-of-the-art Internet-based technologies both now and in the future.
The Committee heard testimony about developments taking place that would have seemed like science fiction 20 years ago: an automaker that wirelessly updates its cars' software to enable "self-driving," or a technology company that recently saw a $9 million return on a pilot program using connected machines to troubleshoot maintenance before problems arose.
As technology analyst Dan Castro testified that day, the IoT is a key to helping the U.S. upgrade its infrastructure. Investing in communications networks solves productivity and safety issues - in other words, helping to create jobs and improve our quality of life. Technology is clearly moving in a direction that plays to America's traditional economic strength: break-the-mold invention and innovation.
But there's a potential major problem confronting this progress: last month's FCC decision to place the innovative, fast-paced high-speed Internet - including the mobile web - under 80-year-old Title II utility style regulation. By its own admission, the FCC could not document a single violation since 2010 to justify regulating the Internet like a public utility. After decades of a bipartisan light touch that enabled the Internet to flourish to the Internet we enjoy today, this new federal micromanagement is unprecedented in Internet history.
That's why many are calling on Congress to intervene to both protect the Internet as we know it as well as to correct the FCC's overreach. Only an act of Congress would carry both the legal heft and certainty to protect the Internet and enable it's continue growth. One of the driving catalysts of this call for legislative action is that the future build-out of America's high-speed Internet service will require tens of billions of private sector investment. Without this investment, consumers will not be able to experience the full benefits of the Internet of Things.
Facing the cold hard reality of many years of litigation as a result of the FCC's recent action, businesses will not have the certainty they need in order to invest this type of capital.
This new IoT revolution has the potential to touch and improve every part of the U.S. economy. At this critical time in our nation's technological advancement, our federal regulations should not be looking back just as the technology sector is working to move us forward. If we are to see the full benefits these technological advances potentially promise, it's up to Congress to find a way to come together to move quickly and create a 21st century law for our 21st century Internet.
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND YOURS!!!
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND YOURS!!!
Should federal regulations designed for rotary telephones be expanded to cover our high-speed Internet use? Incredibly, this question has become a serious issue in Washington, as supporters of Title II regulations promote the idea even in the face of new evidence that Americans do far more online than people in almost every other major country.
Congress drafted these rules during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. They were meant for the nation's emerging telephone service, which often involved placing calls through live operators and calling during the evening to save money on long-distance tolls. Yet while these problems are thankfully long-gone, some want to apply these antiquated regulations to today's modern, competitive and diverse communication systems through the Internet.
The technological arguments against expanding Title II rules are obvious: High-speed Internet technologies are emerging everywhere, which is why Americans do so much more online than the Japanese, British, Canadians, West Europeans and many others. With all our choices for video streams, downloads, gaming, and cloud storage, Americans on average use more than double the data of the average Japanese or West European. Indeed, the average American Internet user generates more online data than users in all other major nations except South Korea.
The American Internet model is spurring remarkable social improvements. Nowhere is this more obvious than with advancements in home health care. Patients suffering from diabetes, heart and kidney disease, which are leading causes of death in the African American community, are gaining direct benefits from real-time, Internet-based healthcare monitoring.
Regulations and bureaucratic red tape will inevitably slow this progress for no good reason. Indeed, even those pushing for expanded online regulation acknowledge that there's no current problem.
Worse, like a bad Christmas gift, this one comes with a hefty price tag - about $15 billion. That's the total amount of new state and local taxes and fees that consumers will have to pay from this reclassification. Among the states hardest hit by these new taxes and fees are California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.
For anyone with a smartphone or home Internet connection, the stakes are significant. Expanded regulation would mean new taxes and fees - and people on fixed income would also be hit hard by the new costs, which will average $72 per year for each wireless connection and $67 for wired service.
The most puzzling aspect of this issue, aside from the fact that there isn't a practice that anyone in the debate is pointing to as evidence for this change, is that it detracts from a much more important issue. Our focus should be trained on promoting better and faster Internet service for all, particularly for unserved and underserved communities. As Internet networks become more accessible, it will spur ongoing advances in affordable health care that can unlock huge benefits, particularly for those who cannot easily visit a doctor's office.
This much is clear: Americans deserve an open Internet. They deserve to access whatever legal content they choose without anyone interfering. But applying a set of rules from the 1930s to achieve this is guaranteed to produce more expensive Internet access. There has to be a better way!
Thankfully for us, we have that better way. In rendering an opinion on FCC net neutrality rules in January, the Court laid out a pathway under Section 706 of the Communications Act that would protect the Internet, and ensure that the broadband networks we need built out nationwide would have the best chance to happen. Section 706 provides the best, and least intrusive, means of protecting the wonderful Internet world we all enjoy, and continuing to bring us the benefits we enjoy today. | <urn:uuid:ed7f648b-3247-415c-be84-63c12f318c83> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.technicaljones.com/technology/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398075.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00179-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946295 | 2,063 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Course: Psychology 459, Spring 2007, Generation 26
Instructor: Dr. Leon James
Introduction to Theistic Psychology at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch1.htm
My Home Page: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/459s2007/lastname/lastname-home.htm
Class Home Page: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy26/classhome-g26.htm
Instructions for this Report: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy26/459-g26-weekly.htm
By: Krista Pritchard
Report 2 For Section 220.127.116.11 to 1.0.7
I am answering Questions 5.2, 5.4, 5.5, 5.7, 6.1, 6.3, 6.6, 6.7
I am answering question 5.2
(a) Describe the infrastructure of physical things from the perspective of substantive dualism.
What is infrastructure?
The infrastructure of the physical things lies in the premise that something cannot be the reason that it exists. For example the reason that a coat exists in the physical world, “to keep someone warm,” is not equal to the actual coat itself. And further the physical object is nothing without the reason for it existing. Now in the framework of substantive dualism we see that there are correspondential meanings in the mental world to every physical thing in the physical or natural world.
An example of dualism.
A good example to illustrate this point is the ideology of thoughts, feelings, and emotions in the mental world and their correspondence of neuron synapses in the brain in the physical world. Now many people have deemed this a dualism phenomenon, but the specificity of Theistic psychology gives these intangible thoughts and feelings substance in the mental world by explaining their correspondence.
(b) Show that the inmost of any object is the mental world of humanity.
This can be shown further by explaining that the essence of any physical object is represented in the mental world. When we think about anything physical that thought and its representation in our mind is very tangible and substantive in the world of eternity even though we may not be aware of that correspondence.
(c) How does this change the way you look at objects around you?
God is in control
This changes how I look at things especially when I connect this reality to the reality that God is in complete control of all of the physical things that I see, touch, and think about. This connection really hit me because I thought that I needed to pay close attention to the small things that I may not notice otherwise. I may be unaware that God is bringing certain things to my attention in my natural mind to stimulate my higher mind in the mental world. I was never aware or attentive to this reality. Now that I know this I am more aware of my surroundings and I am more able to appreciate the small things in life that I did not before, like seeing a butterfly.
Connection to life
Another thing I connected it to was when I broke my computer. Initially I just thought I broke my computer later I tried to think about what that meant or what God was trying to show me. Through breaking my computer I had to have a friend upload my writing. During this exchange I was able to speak to him about God and this class. I believe that possibly God was using that to expose him to this information.
(d) Are you able to explain this to a friend and be heard?
While I was trying to explain this concept to my friend that I always share thoughts with about this class she was interested but could not completely grasp the concept of substantive dualism. She tried to connect it to natural world concepts and could not really get anywhere beyond that point.
I am answering question 5.4.
(a) Describe how Divine Speech operates our mental life.
Divine Speech is spiritual substance which comes from God. This speech is not audible or even comprehensible to the nature mind in the physical world, hence it is represented by the Sacred Scripture. This divine speech flows into our cognitive and affective organ by way of spiritual substance that flows from the spiritual sun. This substance permeates our mind and enters these organs in the form or good and truth or heat and light. Each organ receives one type of substance respectively. Our mental life is operated by Divine Speech because it is nourished or powered by this spiritual substance.
(b) Why does God not operate the minds of psychologists towards the positive bias in science?
The topic of free will
God wants us to find and choose the positive bias. I believe that in the mental world of course he wants our minds to be flooded with the positive bias but on the conscious level he wants us to choose it for ourselves. I believe the question of God being in control yet enabling us to have free will is a hard one and a simple one. He is able to do it because he is God. Obviously that is not a logical and rational answer, but that does not change the truth of it. To further explain this point I look at the notion that none of God’s ways are like ours. In the bible God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways.”
An example of this ideology
I read C.S. Lewis’s explanation of this once and he uses the analogy of a child drawing a circle. Our understanding of anything is not like that of God’s. He says that although the circle is not a perfect one it is still in some form the child’s understanding of what a circle is supposed to be. God is the only one who can draw a perfect circle. That does not mean that our thoughts are compared to his as opposites such as black and white, it only means that we will not fully understand no matter how logical and how rational we may be. This does not at all give us the excuse to keep trying to draw and more perfect circle or use rational or logic, it only encourages us to keep going because God is the only one who can draw a perfect circle.
(c) How does this change your view of God and His relationship to people?
My relationship with God
This does not really change my view of God and His relationship with me or anyone for that matter. I know that I have a relationship with God. I know that he is working on my hellish traits everyday and revealing temptations to me and things in my life that I need to work on. I also know that he is so gracious and loving and merciful. God has been such a huge part of my life and I attribute everything to him, even before I knew the technical names for much of how I have lived my life. I knew the meaning of it in my heart.
I am answering question 5.5.
(a) Where is heaven and hell?
Heaven and Hell
Heaven and hell are places in your mind. When you are living in your heavenly traits and you are denying temptations and overcoming them you are living in your heaven. Hell is the level of your mind when you are living in your hellish traits and not able to deny them. When you are living in your heavenly traits and you are denying your hellish traits you are living in your heaven which is where you are able to be in the presence of God. To do this you much be aware not only of living heavenly, but also of not sinning or doing wrong towards others.
(b) Describe its anatomy.
Levels of the mind
The anatomy of this is in the levels of your mind. Your ability to be conscious of God is in your heavenly level which can only be reached by controlling not only your actions but also your thoughts so that they only reflect heavenly traits and they deny hellish traits. When you are in this level or your mind you are completely rational. When you are in your hell you are irrational and you are operating outside your own consciousness of God. God cannot be present in that area of your mind.
(c) Why do they both exist in everybody's mind?
The split brain human
Both of these places exist in everyone’s mind because everyone has hellish traits and heavenly traits. Even if you are practicing more heavenly traits than hellish traits you are succumb to having the ability to have hellish traits because of the fall of man, and because of God giving us free will to do so, and because of generational sin that is passed down no matter what you do. Each person has to have the ability to have a heaven and a hell that is what makes us human.
(d) If you came to accept this, how would it affect your lifestyle or character?
Heavenly or Hellish
I think that I accept most of this except the issue of putting so much emphasis on not doing bad. I think God would want us to put the emphasis on doing his work, instead of not doing our own. Of course they run hand in hand it just seems that stating what we should do would make more sense. For instance God greatest commandment is love the lord your God will all your heart and mind, and his second was love your neighbor as yourself. I find this very interesting that that would be interpreted as don’t do bad to your neighbor instead of pray for your neighbor, love them, and treat them with the grace, mercy and kindness that Jesus would have.
Application to life
So the fact that I do believe in all of this solidifies that fact that I do try to live in my heavenly traits and deny my hellish ones. My focus has always been on trying to improve and increase my heavenly traits instead of trying to decrease my hellish ones, and my logic being that if I am doing heavenly ones I must not be doing hellish ones. Further it is such a better focus to enjoy and look forward to praising God and loving him with the things that I do do instead of trying not to disappoint him by not doing certain things.
I am answering question 5.7.
(a) Explain why this is a perfect world despite the appearances of imperfection. Define what is perfection in the created world. Include the idea that the world was created for human beings to help them evolve to their eternal heavens.
God is Perfect
The most logical and basic reasoning that I can think of to prove that the world is perfect is that God is perfect. The definition of perfection would elicit the immediate response that all of his creation is also perfect. There are also other logical reasons that follow other characteristics of God. If He is all-knowing and omnipotent, than He would know how to create something exactly how it was intended to be created. He would not make any mistakes. A world where the created had not made any mistakes would be a perfect world.
From those basic understandings of God, we also understand that the way we perceive many things are not the same way he perceives them. Earlier in this paper I referenced the Bible where it says that, “His ways are not our ways.” This leads us to the understanding that the way we understand or define perfect is not the same as He may have intended it to be understood. One Sunday my pastor was teaching on the a verse that used the word perfect, in a verse stating, “His good and perfect will.” During the breakdown of this verse our Pastor talked about the translation. He told us that in this case the Hebrew word that “perfect” came from really meant fulfilled its purpose. This was an interesting realization for me while I processed what I originally believed perfect to mean, and what I was accommodating it to mean on this Sunday.
If we apply this same meaning of perfect to our perception of the world being perfect, than we find that it makes sense. The text states that our life in the natural world prepares us for eternity in the mental world. In this sense we understand that God created a perfect “practice” or “preparation” if you will for our life in eternity.
(b) How do you answer some of the arguments people make when they insist that this is far from being a perfect world today. How do you counter their facts?
The biggest argument I hear all the time that has to do with this subject is, Why do good things happen to bad people or the other way around is why do bad things happen to good people. I hear people asking why bad things happen if God is in complete control and could stop them from happening. God created this world to perfectly complete its purpose in our lives to prepare teach and prepare us for our eternity when we are resuscitated and able to consciously enter the mental world. The best argument to show that although we see imperfection in the small details of the world, if we could see the big picture and the purpose and destiny of all of those details amalgamated, we would be able to understand why this world is perfect.
I am answering question 6.1.
(a) Explain the Swedenborg reports in relation to the positive bias in science.
While studying the Swedenborg reports in Theistic Psychology we are asked to analyze and study the information in the positive bias in science. This means that we are to come into the class with the open mindedness that the information could be ultimate truth. To break all of this down we have to look at the definitions of a few of the words that comprise this ideology. We must decided what bias and neutral means, what that means in the context of science, and if it is even possible to really study information with out a bias. Positive bias leaves the option that the information could be true. The specificity of that within science means that the information would be deemed scientific fact instead of just some religious belief.
Logic and Rational
Next we must be able to think about the initial information that we learn and as we understand more of Swedenborgs findings we must neither just take them as truth, nor deny them a possibility for logic and rational analysis. Instead we must use the methodology and analysis that we use in other areas of academia to evaluate all the levels of information of Swedenborgs reports and other forms of sacred scripture.
(b) Describe what happened to him? What did he discover?
Swedenborg was the only human being that was able to be a conscious dual
citizen in both the physical and the mental world at the same time. Now we are all currently dual citizens
capable of someday being resuscitated and then conscious in the mental world of
eternity, but Swedenborg was able to travel freely and consciously between both
of these worlds. Through these travels Swedenborg
was able to find out about the mental world, the anatomy of our mind, and
substantative dualism. He used these
findings to create numerous Sacred Scripture and the correspondences for his
and other sacred. He discovered many
things in the mental world, like conjugial marriage, the different levels of
heaven and hell in the mind, mental anatomy, spiritual substance of heat and
light from the sun, and the way that all of that information works together
logically and rationally to explain human life and eternity.
(c) Describe how you manage to take on the positive bias in science regarding the Swedenborg reports. Are you succeeding? What conflicts are you having to contend with in your mind?
I think that I am able to take the positive bias in science because I am
able to look at the information and analyze if it makes sense with in
itself. It does not have to make sense
in the context of what I belief, only if it makes sense in the context of those
who believe in its truths. It took me a while
to come to the realization that I was not trying to fit these truths into my
belief system I was only trying to make sense of a belief system that was
already established and to then look at that system rationally. From that point my job was to decided if the
information made sense, fit together, and was coherent within its own
standards. My biggest conflict initially
was being able to look at something with methodology and analysis when I did
not yet believe that it was truth. I had
done that before in other classes but I had just wrote it off as something I
had to do in school. This information
seemed to cut into my belief system so it was much harder for me to separate
(d) Compare your adaptation efforts at the positive bias in science with those of your friends with whom you discussed it so far.
I think the difference is exactly what I stated above. My friends like me have grown up in the educational system that not only teaches us to think in the negative bias but also teaches us that religion and academia can never be in the same sentence, this is an oxymoron for us. I was able to come to the realization that analyzing any information scientifically is science whether you know the information to be true or not. In math there are times that we do proofs and work with equations that we know are not possible just to understand the methodology and the why. I think that this idea of logic and critically thinking about all my education is something and possible one of the greatest things I have taken from this class.
I am answering question 6.3.
(a) Explain the two senses we can find in Sacred Scripture.
In all sacred scripture there are two different ways in which you can read the scripture in the literal sense and in the correspondential sense. The literal sense is exactly what it is. You take each scripture literally. This sense is true and is our way of reading sacred scripture or divine speech, in the natural world in our natural mind.
The next sense is called the correspondential sense. This is the way in which we are able to read the Sacred Scripture in it spiritual form. It is the true meaning behind the literal meaning. There are different ways to understand the correspondential meaning. One of those ways is the way in which you consciously extract the correspondential meaning is by using the correspondences. Swedenborg wrote the correspondences so that readers would be able to find the spiritual correspondential meaning behind the literal meaning.
(b) Give several illustrations from this Section.
I am answering question 6.6.
(a) Explain why substantive dualism is called substantive.
Dualism verse Monism
To answer this answer this question we must first be able to define dualism. Monism is when the mind and body are one. Everything that is real is physical time, space and matter. Dualism is based on Swedenborgs reports about his ability to be a conscious dual citizen in the natural and spiritual world. In this ideology the mind is made up of different substance than the physical body and exists in the spiritual world. The mind and body in their respective worlds interact through correspondences. For example our physical representation of feelings and thoughts are neuron synapses in the brain. Although that is what we see in the natural world we know that in the mental world these are much more than just synapse.
(b) How does substance differ from matter?
I looked up the definition of matter in the dictionary and there are actually two different meanings of matter so I will start with defining that. If we initially look at the word matter things that come to mind are physical, material, and something that has occupies space and in time. The modern definition is actually very similar to that notion. Matter is physical material from which something is made or which has discrete existence. Matter is of that which has particular or definite chemistry and or constitution. The traditional definition is slightly different that actually ties is more correspondetially to the world dualist word of substance. The traditional definition comprises essential nature, or the ultimate reality that underlies all outward change.
This leads us into our definition of substance which is equivalent to
natural world matter. The reason that
the traditional definition of matter is more interconnected with the spiritual
word substance is because is connects all physical things with their spiritual
world meaning giving them reality and logic.
The reading states that something can not be its underlying
reality. This very statement relates
these words where before they were not even separated. The reading also gives an example of a
shoe. The physical representation of a
shoe is in no way the same as the purpose for that shoe. They are in fact very different, and the
reality that both of these separate representations have matter and substance
is a new notion for me.
(c) Search google for "dualism" and explain how what you found is different from substantive dualism in theistic psychology.
When I looked up dualism on the internet I found that there are many different ideas regarding this term. I found that many different places have definition having to do with things even other than the basic mind and body definition. For example the catholic dictionary uses the word dualism to explain good verses evil. Other than that there was the Stanford dictionary which encompassed the philosophy of the mind verses the body. The last definition that I looked at was in the wikipedia dictionary online. This definition actually had a sub term which was substantative dualism and directly sited Swedenborg’s coining of this term.
I am answering question 6.7.
(a) What is the most exciting piece of news or fact you have heard so far in theistic psychology?
The most exciting thing that I heard so far in this class is the idea that
it is challenging the very idea that I have always been taught to think about,
the positive verse the negative bias. I
have not always known the specific terms that go along with these ideas but
there have always been times when my faith was challenged by information that I
studied in different classes throughout my entire academic career. The reason that this is the most exciting is
because it is never addressed. For
example the law that bands religion from being taught in the academic arena
really only bands certain beliefs. If
schools are supposed to be neutral than they should be forced to offer creation
and evolution at the same level with room to analyze and think through. Too many times in an effort to not teach God,
we teach anti-God and that issue is never address.
(b) Share this exciting fact with your friends and family. What do you conclude from their reaction?
This was most exciting for my parents because they have always taught us that the educational system may push information down my throat that may not be truth. My parents had mixed emotions about this idea though. They really liked the idea that God was being put into a science, but because they did not fully understand the positive bias and the information being presented, they did not like the idea that he was being reduced to science. We also believe in having a relationship with Jesus Christ, and often times if you put God into a scientific box, with rules, regulations, and boundaries, you loose sight of the most important part of Jesus.
I think that my parents reacted the way that they did because one they do not totally understand Swedenborg, and two they do not completely understand what it means to be in the positive bias. When I first heard about the positive bias I do not think I really understood what it meant either, but now that I do understand it I think you have to try to really comprehend new information within the positive bias in science in order to understand what it means to think that way. The second thing is that they have not studied and read everything that I have about Swedenborg. The general consensus and widely known conception about Swedenborg is mostly what they know, and my perception of his writings is purely educational right now. I believe if they were able to also think in the positive bias and study Swedenborg they might think differently about my exciting fact. | <urn:uuid:1e21d154-7804-40ee-bd44-a5ae0d3c2360> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/459s2007/pritchard/pritchard-report%202.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00131-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969809 | 4,947 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Out of an estimated total of 14,500 - 17,500 individuals trafficked in 2004, 5,200 - 7,800 were Asians and Pacific Islanders, comprising the largest group of people trafficked into the U.S.
U.S. Department of Justice. Assessment of U.S. Government Activities to Combat Trafficking in Persons. Washington, D.C.: Author; 2004.
Trafficking is defined as the recruitment, harboring, provision, receipt, transportation and/or obtaining of individuals by using force or threats, coercion, fraud and/or using systems of indebtedness or debt bondage for purposes of economic exploitation that can include forced labor for domestic, industrial, agricultural or sex work; prostitution, pornography and sex tourism; removal and sale of organs; servitude, including servile marriages; and slavery.
Trafficking is fueled by demands for cheap, exploitable labor which have increased with globalization – which permits the free flow of capital but not labor. Some countries view trafficking as the only form of migration available to labor because all other sources are restricted or closed. They advocate safe migration as the way to halt trafficking. Complex ‘push-pull’ factors influence those who are trafficked including economic factors such as paying off family debts, escaping poverty, remitting earnings or escaping gender violence in the hopes of greater safety.
Sex trafficking predominantly victimizes women, and significant numbers of male and female children. It relies on the exploitation of female poverty (including the poverty of mothers who ‘sell’ their children) and the impunity of male demands for commodified sex. Political positions about sex trafficking are cause for heated controversy because they are connected to positions that argue for abolishing, decriminalizing or legalizing prostitution. We recommend that advocates become informed about these positions when working with anti-trafficking programs.
According to the U.S. Department of State, 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked globally each year.1 Of the 45,000 to 50,000 that are brought to the U.S., 30,000 come from Asia, 10,000 from Latin America and 5,000 from other regions, such as the former Soviet Union. The primary Asian source countries to the U.S. are China, Thailand, and Vietnam. 2 Each year, two million children are forced into prostitution, half of whom live in and are trafficked within Asia. 3 For example, 15,000 children are trafficked in Cambodia4 and 200,000 Nepali girls, many under the age of 14, are prostituted in India. 5 The Thai government reports that 60,000 Thai children have been sold into prostitution, but non-governmental organization (NGO) experts estimate that the number is closer to 800,000 children. 6 Although trafficking into the U.S. and Europe has gained a lot of attention in recent years, anti-trafficking advocates in Asia have been addressing this problem on the continent for decades.
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Resources from the API Institute
Family Controlled Trafficking
Trafficking: Considerations & Recommendations for Battered Women’s Advocates
A technical assistance brief for domestic violence programs to navigate the implications of serving trafficked women and adapt their policies and procedures accordingly, offering information and recommendations about:
- Custody and Release
- Legal Representation and the Investigation Process
- Endangerment and Confidentiality
- Shelter Services
- Medical Records and Care
- Complex Trauma and Oppressions
Health Issues Affecting Trafficked Individuals
Depression, malnutrition, physical and sexual violence, sexually transmitted infections, sleep deprivation, starvation, trauma, tuberculosis, urinary tract infections, untreated workplace injuries. Health problems affecting trafficked individuals can be contracted from the conditions prevalent in highly oppressive work environments, from unsafe immigration routes, and from the disease loads in sending countries. Socio-economic determinants like substandard housing, illiteracy, racism, etc., affect health and access to healthcare. How individuals and their health problems are treated will depend on where arrested trafficked individuals are located, what their status is, and what kind of evidence is required for legal proceedings.
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The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPA) of 2003 steps up U.S. efforts against human trafficking and provides assistance to victims.
- DHS: Department of Homeland Security
- DHHS | Administration for Children & Families: Department of Health and Human Services: Campaign to Rescue and Restore Victims of Human Trafficking serves as a clearinghouse to help victims of human trafficking.
- DOJ: Department of Justice: Trafficking in Persons and Worker Exploitation Taskforce Complaint Line. New laws provide options for trafficking victims regardless of immigration status. Operators have access to interpreters and can talk with callers in their own language. The service is offered on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST. After hours, information is available on tape in English, Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin.
- EEOC: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission provides assistance to victims of trafficking who are sexually harassed in the workplace. EEOC investigates complaints of sexual harassment and can file a lawsuit against the employer to obtain money for the victim including back-pay, compensatory damages (pain and suffering) and punitive damages, and to obtain injunctive relief. Federal law prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, religion, age and disability, and prohibits retaliation against persons who protest discrimination. www.eeoc.gov or 800-669-4000
- OVC: Office for Victims of Crime
- Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) | Anti-Trafficking in Persons Division (ATIP)
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
Directories, critical analysis, reports and other information can be obtained from:
- California Immigrant Policy Center Benefits for Immigrant Victims of Trafficking, Domestic Violence & Other Serious Crimes in California
- Futures Without Violence
- Freedom Network
- Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network
- Protection Project, Johns Hopkins University
- Representing Survivors of Human Trafficking: A Promising Practices Handbook, Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC)
- A Guide for Non-Governmental Organizations (Trafficking in Persons)
- VAWnet, National Resource Center on Domestic Violence snow.vawnet.org/global/human-trafficking.php
- American Bar Association
- Shared Hope International
Interpreters for Trafficked Victims
- NAJIT: National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators
- National Association of the Deaf
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The vegetation in the area is made up of mangroves and patches of desert scrub and salt flats. The dominant species of mangroves are Button mangrove (Conocarpus erecta), Red Mangrove (Rhyzopha mangle), White Mangrove (Avicenia germinans), and Black Mangrove (Laguncularia racemosa). Other important species include Turtleweed (Batis maritime), Southern Cattail (Typha dominguensis) and desert scrub such as cholla (Opuntia puberula), Nopal de Tortuga (Opuntia sp.) Tasajo ( Ratbunia alamosensis), Palo Colorado (Caesalpinia platyloba), Guayacán (Guayacum palmeri), and some species of graminias. The area itself has an area of tidal influence in the mouth located north of the Bay.
Ecology and Conservation
Aquaculture development is planned in the salt flats which would negatively affect the breeding colony of Snowy Plovers (Charadrius alexandrinus). In addition, the site in question is used for grazing livestock, which is negatively impacting vegetation of the area and indirectly the breeding birds. In the North Bay, there are a number of fish farms that use chemicals in their production processes, which sometimes are discharged directly to the Bay.
Major Causes of disturbance:
In the proposed area agricultural activities use chemicals that could increase the process of eutrophication in the area. There is no control on fishing and a hunting club repels birds with the use of airboats. There are several aquaculture concessions that are operating in Bay tributaries, which have adversely affected the flora and fauna of the region and the ecosystem in general. Livestock development is seen in some areas and these disturb roosting sites, foraging and nesting birds. The illegal burning of agricultural plastics and bulrush areas adversely affect the area. | <urn:uuid:b6e695f4-5792-4b65-a1c2-530a4de704a3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.whsrn.org/site-profile/playa-ceuta | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397567.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00121-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903361 | 408 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Demographic and social trends will have a significant impact on the workforce in the coming years. Thus, in today's struggling global economy, it is more important than ever that organizations leverage the knowledge, skills and abilities of all workers--from all generations. By capitalizing on the strengths and values of different generations, HR leaders can create a competitive advantage.
For the first time in history, four generations work side-by-side in many organizations. The working generations span more than 60 years, including so-called Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials/Generation Y. All bring different experiences, perspectives, expectations, work styles and strengths to the workplace. Despite the perceived "generation gap" from differing views and potential conflict, organizations--and especially HR--have the opportunity to capitalize on the assets of each generation for competitive advantage.
Predictions in Workforce 2020 (published in 1997) focused on demographic change as a major global force shaping the world economy. (2) More than a decade later, SHRM's 2008 Workplace Forecast upholds these predictions with key demographic trends: 1) the aging population, 2) retirement of large numbers of Baby Boomers, 3) generational issues and 4) a greater demand for work/life balance. At the same time, the loss of talent due to the retirement of older workers will likely drive an increased focus on skills, labor shortages and retention strategies for the current and future workforce. (3)
Thus, in their respective industry sectors, HR leaders have the opportunity to create competitive success by strategically managing generational differences in terms of differing experiences, values and expectations. While not inclusive of all generational workplace issues, this article provides perspectives for HR and organizational leaders on selected key aspects of the multigenerational workforce and offers recommendations, primarily for U.S. organizations.
Today's Four Generations
Generally, the concept of a "generation" is attributed to social scientist Karl Mannheim from his work in the late 1920s. (4) Grounded in shared life experiences and defining historical and cultural events during individuals' formative years, each generation has different collective memories, expectations and values. As such, a generation is defined as an identifiable group that shares birth years and significant life events at critical developmental stages. (5) At the same time, it is very important to avoid stereotyping people from different generations. For example, research shows that people born at the beginning or end of a generation (referred to as "tweeners") can exhibit values and attitudes from two different generations. (6)
Generalities about generations can provide insight on values and expectations in the workplace. The oldest generation, Traditionalists (also known as Veterans, Matures, Depression Babies) grew up following the worldwide economic depression, with World War II as the major event in their childhood. They view work as a privilege and have a strong work ethic grounded in discipline, stability and experience. (7) The Baby Boom generation, born after World War II, is the largest generation in the United States and has had a significant impact on societies worldwide. Defining events of this generation include the space race, rock and roll, and women's liberation. Baby Boomers tend to be idealistic, driven and optimistic. (8)
Different experiences have shaped Generations X and Y. A much smaller generation than the Baby Boomers, Gen Xers were known as "latch-key children" with both parents working. They grew up during the time of high divorce rates and massive job layoffs of the 1980s. They are independent, creative, skeptical and distrustful of authority. In contrast, the younger generation (known as Millennials, Generation Y, Nexters) experienced terrorist attacks in their formative years, including September 11th, and technology has always been a part of their lives. They are confident, team-oriented, patriotic and social minded. Since their parents typically planned their activities, they are accustomed to having structured lives. (9)
An extensive study on generational differences found that leadership style preferences are reflected in selected admired leaders of each generation. Baby Boomers, for example, prefer leaders who are caring, competent and honest, as reflected in their choices of social leaders: Martin Luther King and Gandhi. Generations X and Y want leaders to challenge the system and create change: Ronald Reagan, Tiger Woods, Bill Gates. Each generation ranked honesty, competence and loyalty among the top leadership qualities, with honesty being the most important. For HR and organizational leaders, this means that firms need to recognize and understand the differences and similarities among generations regarding leadership qualities when it comes to the creation of leadership development programs for current and future leaders, for example (see Figure 1). (10)
Figure 1 | Four Generations in Today's Workplace Generation Percentage Assets in the Leadership Style of Workplace Preferences Workforce Traditionalists 8% Hard working, Fair, consistent, Born 1922-1945 stable, loyal, clear, direct, Ages 63-86 thorough, respectful. detail- oriented, focused, emotional maturity. Baby Boomers 44% Team Treat as equals, warm Born 1946-1964 perspective, and caring, mission- Ages 44-62 dedicated, defined, democratic experienced, approach. knowledgeable, service- oriented. Generation X 34% Independent, Direct, competent. Born 1965-1980 adaptable, genuine, informal, Ages 28-43 creative, tech flexible, results- no-literate, oriented, supportive willing to of learning challenge the opportunities. status quo. Millennials Born 14% and Optimistic, able Motivational, 1981-2000 Ages increasing to multitask, collaborative, 8-27 rapidly tenacious, positive, educational, technologically organized, savvy, driven to achievement-oriented, learn and grow, able to coach. team-oriented, socially responsible. Source: Author compilation from several sources. (11)
As highlighted by AARP in Leading a Multigenerational Workforce, intergenerational dynamics offer organizations a highly competitive advantage. That is, management can use different perspectives, strengths and unique values to positively influence the bottom line in key areas: corporate culture, recruitment, employee engagement, retention and customer service. (12)
Yet, while it is commonly held that each generation has highly different values, there are similarities. For example, in a groundbreaking research study, the Center for Creative Leadership surveyed more than 3,000 organizational leaders over a seven-year period to learn how organizations can effectively use similarities and differences among generations. A key finding of this research was that the top three values of all generations were family, love and integrity, although they demonstrated these values in various ways. From a managerial viewpoint, this information is very helpful in better understanding the root cause of differences, misunderstandings and conflict in the workplace. (13) In fact, studies in organizational and human behavior find that people seek similar factors in the workplace, and these commonalities can be leveraged to bond employees in support of a company's mission, vision and goals. (14)
Further, with skills shortages commonplace today, domestic and global organizations must focus on workforce optimization for bottom-line results. Predicted demographic changes highlight the importance of managing talent of all generations (see Figure 2). In the United States, for example, projections indicate there will be 10 million more jobs than workers by the year 2010. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), working-age populations will decline by 65 million in the industrialized nations of OECD members, such as the European Union. At the same time, worker migration worldwide will likely create a highly competitive global labor market at least until the year 2016, when all Millennials will have entered the workforce, alleviating worker shortage in the developed world. (15)
According to the Pew Research Center, by 2050 in the United States, working-age adults will make up 58% of the population, down from 63% in 2005. Also, depending on economic factors, a greater share of workers ages 50 and older may stay in the workplace longer than in the past. (16) Thus, a renewed focus on training older workers will no doubt become a greater part of talent management. Projections such as these indicate that demographic changes will be substantial, requiring that HR and organizational leaders thoughtfully examine strategic optimization of their human capital.
Figure 2|Demographic Workforce Predictions
Workforce 2000 Workforce 2020 * The population and workforce will * As retirement ages become grow more slowly than at any time increasingly less predictable, since the 1930s. workforce planning will become more uncertain. * The proportion of women and * By 2020, according to the minorities in the workforce will U.S. Census Bureau, the rise dramatically. proportion of women in the workforce will have gradually increased to about 50%. * The average age of the population * The continued presence of and workforce will rise, and the top-level older employees may pool of young workers entering the cause dissension among their labor market will shrink. middle-aged subordinates eager for promotion. * The workforce is aging and thus * Older workers will need becoming less willing to relocate, different benefits, such as retrain or change occupations, yet elder care programs. the economy is demanding more flexibility. * Need to recognize the importance * To increase workforce of a flexible workforce through participation, firms and company and national policies governments will need to (e.g., flexible workforce programs, accommodate unconventional revised pension systems, promotion working arrangements to of retraining and lifelong encourage people to return or learning). remain in the workforce (e.g., parents, older workers). * Immigrants will represent the * The U.S. population and largest share of the increase in workforce will gradually the population and the workforce become more ethnically since World War I. diverse. Sources: Author compilation from several sources. (17)
In recent years, the concept of generational differences as a legitimate workplace diversity issue has gained increasing recognition. SHRM's director of diversity and inclusion initiatives, Shirley A. Davis, Ph.D., points out that in the United States, discussions of workplace diversity tend to focus on topics of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and disability. "However, in all parts of the world, there is another category of diversity that cannot be overlooked: multigenerational diversity. Today, there are greater numbers of workers from each age group that bring both new opportunities and challenges. If organizations want to thrive in this competitive environment of global talent management, they need employees and managers who are aware of and skilled in dealing with the four generations that make up the workforce."
The existence of four generations is a major factor in talent management. In its "Competitive Workforce" category, SHRM's Human Capital Leadership Awards Program recognizes organizations with workforce readiness efforts aimed at anticipating and meeting current and future business needs in a changing economic climate. In 2008, Sodexo, Inc. was a finalist in that category for its innovative strategies in multigenerational talent acquisition and engagement. Since recruitment and retention of a multigenerational employee pool are key to Sodexo's
, HR leaders at the company's U.S. headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland, launched a multifaceted recruitment initiative. For example, Sodexo established a presence on social networking sites such as YouTube and LinkedIn to attract younger workers and created a new recruitment initiative aimed at veterans that translates military experience and skills into civilian jobs at the company. As a result, in 2007, there was a 24% increase in the number of job applicants, including a 38% rise in minority candidates and a 32% increase in gender diversity. (18)
"At Sodexo, understanding what drives each generation, and what their underlying experiences are, is the key to creating a cohesive work environment where our people feel valued and empowered to work together effectively," said Dr. Rohini Anand, Sodexo senior vice president and global chief diversity officer. "This appreciation of generational diversity, and initiatives customized to meet the needs of each generation, allows each group to fully contribute and be a part of the growth and success of the organization." Clearly, organizations that proactively use the strengths of different generations in the workforce are best positioned for success.
Ethics and Generational Differences
A recent SHRM white paper, Ethics and Generational Differences: Interplay Between Values and Ethical Business Decisions, examined how different generations approach questions of integrity and purpose. The authors point out that "with value systems and motivation at the heart of ethics--and divergent value systems seemingly inherent within the four generational groups--the existence of varied ethical perspectives among co-workers is not a surprise." They emphasize that understanding differing viewpoints on ethics in the workplace will help organizations make sound ethical business decisions. (19)
A common complaint among generations focuses on work ethic. Much of this conflict stems from how the term work ethic is defined and interpreted. Traditionalists and Baby Boomers may criticize the two younger generations about their lack of work ethic, with the oldest generation considering a strong work ethic as demonstrated by being part of the organization (and physically present in the office, in terms of actual hours) for long periods of time. Baby Boomers consider a combination of factors, such as collaboration, teamwork and meetings, as evidence of work ethic. In contrast, Generation X and Millennials see work ethic as working hard--often autonomously--and having a positive impact on the company, while also living a full life outside of their job. Views on the issue of respect also differ. Having "paid their dues," the two older generations expect respect from Generation X and Millennials--yet, the two younger generations consider that respect is earned by making a strong contribution, not by the passage of time. (20)
Despite these differences, research shows that no matter one's age, people value achievement, balance and responsibility and want credible, trustworthy leadership. (21) Such commonalities are important for HR to emphasize in the workplace. As highlighted in Figure 3, there are various actions that HR can take to help build stronger alliances in the workplace that both nurture and clarify ethical issues for workers of all generations.
Figure 3 | Ten Key Points for Ethical Business Management
1. Develop an internal campaign, with ethics as the #1 value for the organization and employees.
2. Avoid stereotyping employees according to their generation.
3. Clearly identify the priorities of the company and then link them to the priorities and values of employees to support business decisions.
4. When possible, learn the values and motivation of employees and then connect them to individual and organizational goals.
results, not on methodology (as long as it is ethical). All groups want to contribute and achieve but may do so differently.
6. To make ethical guidelines relevant to everyone, establish ongoing training and support sessions.
7. Look for commonality among employees of different generations.
8. Embrace diversity of opinion and methodology.
9. Err on the side of more communication, such as using more types of media: face-to-face meetings, e-mail blasts, etc.
10. Remember to respect the dimensions of differing generations (age, technological savvy, alternative work experiences, innovation, etc.)
Adapted from: Guss, E., & Miller, M. C. (2008, October). Ethics and generational differences: Interplay between values and ethical business decision [SHRM White Paper], Retrieved from www.shrm.org.
Engaging the Millennial Generation
The Millennial generation challenges organizations, HR and managers on many levels. The literature points out that this generation can be "high maintenance," and yet, when companies provide the resources and flexibility to be creative, Millennials also can be highly productive. To attract, engage and retain Millennials, organizations must understand what types of work environment and learning experiences they want.
If organizations do not adapt their corporate culture to fit the needs of this large generation, this may have detrimental results in terms of hiring, productivity and retention.
These "digital natives" quickly learn and multitask, prefer to work collaboratively with others and thrive on immediate feedback. Although Millennials do not want to be micromanaged, they want clear directions and managerial support and also demand freedom and flexibility to do work at their own pace and in their own way. They want increasing responsibility but need coaching on time management. They are committed to the company "long term"--meaning about a year or two. Such apparent contradictions can boggle the minds of managers from older generations. The key is to build solid relationships by getting to know them, listening and spending time with them. For this "education is cool" generation, managers will want to provide coaching and resources to meet employees' learning goals. From an HR policy and program viewpoint, it is best to avoid the "one-size-fits-all" philosophy. To attract and retain Millennials, organizations need to be willing to customize schedules, work assignments and career paths. Millennials will look to their managers to help them balance work and other commitments. Managers must focus on performance and consistently provide constructive feedback, praise, recognition and rewards. (22) Companies that are successful in attracting Millennials are creative in their culture, HR policies, programs and work environment. A survey by Human Resource Executive, in partnership with the Great Places to Work Institute, identified "18 Great Companies for Millennials." Facets of corporate cultures sought include:
* Management's actions match its words.
* Employees are appreciated for good work and extra effort.
* Employees are involved in decisions that affect their jobs or work environment.
* Employees are treated as full members of the company, no matter the position.
* Promotions go to those who best deserve them, and the company culture is a team or family environment.
Marriott International Inc., for example, offers workplace flexibility--a benefit highly sought by young employees. In its "Teamwork Innovations" program, employees are encouraged to identify and eliminate redundant work. At one Marriott hotel, teams were able to cut 40% off the time that it took to turn over a shift and, with this time savings, were allowed to leave early. At the same time, Millennials like to work for "cool companies." In Portland, Oregon, the Umpqua Bank has internet cafes, coffee bars and couches where customers can relax and watch TV. Some branches even offer yoga and movie nights and have a water dish outside for dogs. The "cool factor" attracts both customers and young employees from high school and college. (24) As portrayed in these examples, organizations that strategically energize their company culture and effectively use the talents and drive of the Millennial generation will have a competitive edge.
HR Policies, Benefits and Programs
Over time, the multigcnerational workforce will influence the organizational work ethic, perceptions of organizational hierarchy, work relationships and ways of managing change. The literature suggests that as a result of differing experiences and perspectives, strongly held attitudes and diverse motivators, there will be an impact on two specific areas of human resource policy and employee development: retention and motivation. (25) To successfully retain and leverage talent of all generations, the following studies represent the growing foundation of evidence to make changes in company culture, HR policies, benefits and programs.
No matter which generation, the work environment tends to either attract or repel individuals. An exploratory study examined dimensions of employee fit with work environments and the impact of employee job satisfaction and turnover intention among different generations. The findings suggest that employees in the Baby Boom generation value work relationships as a contributor to employee satisfaction, whereas for Generations X and Y, the work environment fit (potential for career growth, decision-making opportunities, autonomy and job challenge) is a primary retention factor. (26)
Work/life balance is a key commonality among the four generations. A recent study that explored generational effects on work-family conflict in the United States suggests that changes reflect family and career stage differences. For example, "family interfering with work" has changed over time for Generation X and Baby Boomers but stayed at the same level for Matures, perhaps due to having fewer family demands (empty-nest family stage). Generation X and Baby Boomers value work/life balance, growth opportunities and positive work relationships. The implication is that managers and HR professionals will want to consider generational differences in work/life program design and monitor patterns of program use by different generational groups. (27)
In a study by the Boston College Center for Work & Family, thought leaders identified top trends that will affect the future of work/life: generational diversity, followed by global challenges, older workers, increasing stress levels and technology blurring. The increasing number of older workers is now a high-profile issue, with the aging workforce a challenge in the United States as well as in Western Europe and certain Asian countries, such as Japan. Companies must find ways to address the needs of various age cohorts based on their different life stages--for example, by keeping in mind different values and life experiences of the workforce when designing strategies that enable all employees to work together productively. (28)
Talent retention can be improved through different approaches to communicating and rewarding employees, using high-tech tools and employing a more high-touch approach where the manager-employee relationship is focused on more personalized rewards. By developing more unified and compassionate workplace cultures, organizations will be more attractive to people of all generations. (29) Such studies provide valuable insight and information to HR professionals to assess HR policies and programs for the multigeneration workplace (see Figure 4).
Figure 4 | HR Policies and Programs for the Multigenerational Workforce HR Policies and Examples Programs
Work/Life Benefits Flexible hours, telecommuting, family leave, work/life balance policies, allowance for religious holidays, etc. Rewards and Compensation, rewards programs Recognition Health Care Long-term care, dependent care, elder care, EAPs, wellness programs Training and Professional development, mentorships, temporary Development work assignments, job sharing Succession Planning Formal leadership development programs, temporary work assignments Sources: Author compilation from two sources. (30)
Global Generational Trends
Research reveals that comparable generations in countries outside of the United States have both similar and distinct generational workforce issues. As a result of technology, the world is smaller, with greater access to information, products and services, contributing to broadening world views. At a Boston College Global Workforce Roundtable, it was noted that there appears to be a global convergence of attitudes among people under the age of 30. These young people, who do not yet have an agreed-upon identifying label (such as Millennials in the United States), have a global perspective, with a focus on quality of life, engagement in consumerism and a strong drive for personal and professional development. (31) Yet, this may not accurately portray attitudes of young people raised in rural and poor areas with limited exposure to global influences from television and the Internet. (32)
In contrast, the perspectives of older generations are strongly distinguished by local context. That is, these generations are highly influenced by culture, economics and events from their respective experiences, and they bring these view-points and values to the workforce. In China, for example, education was limited from 1966 to 1978 as a result of the Cultural Revolution. But for that event, many Chinese workers would likely be in senior leadership roles in organizations today; now, in contrast to their global peers, this group lacks education and experience. Cultural viewpoints also influence the workplace. In India, the concept of hierarchy has traditionally strongly influenced business decisions, such as strategy, promotions and communications. Yet, in today's Indian workplace, older workers view hierarchy as more important than do people of the younger generation. (33)
Additionally, it should be noted that the concept of the Baby Boom generation exists only in the developed world, with other nations not having the concerns resulting from this large generation. For example, many countries (e.g., Latino Christian, Arab and African nations) did not have a significant reduction in fertility rates, nor did they embrace factors such as access to contraception, the changing role of women in society and more recent focus on work/life balance. (34)
Finally, for the multigenerational workforce in Europe, the literature is rather limited. However, a new study from the Journal of Managerial Psychology explored workplace learning, organizational commitment and talent retention among European managers across generations. The results show that younger generations have stronger learning orientation and lower organizational commitment than older workers. Important practical HR insights include focus on offering leadership development, fostering learning goals and organizational commitment, and managerial emphasis on learning--all key retention factors for the younger generations. (35)
Three Key Management Strategies
1. Organizational communication: This key strategy is important to retain talent and avoid potential conflict. A SHRM survey revealed a number of ways to successfully work with a multigenerational workforce, with communicating information in multiple ways, such as oral and written, as the most successful. Different generations have varying levels of comfort with technology, such as e-mail, while others prefer face-to-face communication. Other approaches found to be successful include 1) collaborative discussion, decision-making or problem solving--providing an opportunity to express respect and inclusion of all employees; 2) training managers on dealing with generational differences; 3) team-building activities; and 4) creating mentoring programs to encourage workers of different generations to work together and share experiences. (36)
2. Succession planning: HR and organizational leaders must be aware of the internal talent pool, encompassing all generations, from which possible successors can be selected and developed. Regarding age-based demographics, HR needs to have a basic understanding of the different values and work attitudes of each generation--important information for cultivating and sustaining a preferred corporate culture. (37)
3. Mentoring: The goal of this strategy is to help ensure the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next. As older workers look toward retirement, mentoring can be an effective vehicle to capture organizational knowledge. Structured mentoring programs are well suited for knowledge transfer. An important step is to survey the younger workers, learn their goals and developmental needs, and then pair them with more experienced employees. Also, using a variety of mentoring models is helpful. Examples include one-on-one mentoring sessions, senior leadership discussion panels, group mentoring programs and even "speed mentoring," where employees sit with organization experts and ask questions. Another model increasingly used is senior staff and leaders coaching younger employees in the onboarding process. This process begins in the hiring period and can last for up to a year, giving younger workers direct attention and professional development early in their career. (38) The following mini-case study presents a successful mentoring program.
Mini-Case Study: Mentoring Between Generations Launched in 2001, the AARP award program "Best Employers for Workers Over 50" recognizes organizations with best practices and policies that address issues affecting the aging workforce and creating workplace opportunities for all. In 2008, the YMCA of Greater Rochester was ranked 4th out of 50 companies for this award. (39) In the last six years, the YMCA of Greater Rochester has had a formal mentoring program-Mentoring Across Generations-as part of its professional development curriculum. Vice president of human resources, Fernan R. Cepero, PHR, credits its success to the company culture, stating, "Throughout its 155 year history, the organization has focused on leaving a legacy and creating a legacy between generations."
The mentoring program enhances the professional development and personal growth of both the mentor and the mentee. It helps employees understand cultural nuances, gain expertise in a specific discipline and provide ideas and inspiration about career paths. It also exposes employees to different paths of the business and various management levels. As exemplified in the short example from the YMCA of Greater Rochester, mentoring-a critical component of succession planning--builds leadership capacity by increasing the professional strength of the organization's employees.
Dan Friday, a member of Generation Y and buildings and grounds director at the Monroe Family Branch, was new to his position. Tom Ward, buildings and grounds director at the West-side Family Branch and a Baby Boomer, volunteered to mentor Dan, remembering what it was like early in his own career. Over several months, their mentoring relationship developed. As Dan attests, "Tom has coached me on all sorts of issues-from mechanics to staffing. He introduced me to the Association of Facility Engineers, where I've met some very interesting building mechanics and learned about construction projects that I am now considering for improvement to my facility." In fact, Tom has become much more than a mentor. He has helped Dan strip and wax floors, troubleshoot treadmill problems, and even filled in as pool operator when Dan was out for a week. At the same time, Tom has benefited from this relationship. As a subject matter expert, Tom has gained immense personal and professional satisfaction from seeing Dan grow and succeed in his leadership role.
As Mr. Cepero emphasizes, "Mentoring builds strong intergenerational working relationships, strategic use of intellectual capital and increased retention, and, at its core, ensures a continuous flow of knowledge management across generations."
As HR professionals work to optimize talent in their respective organizations, research shows that it is critical to leverage the strengths of each generation. Whether in a domestic or global organization, HR has the unique opportunity to create a competitive advantage by guiding policy and program development and management strategies to increase attraction and retention of the four generations in today's workplace.
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(36) Burke, M. E. (2004, August). Generational differences survey report. Alexandria, VA: Society for Human Resource Management.
(37) Crumpacker, M., & Crumpacker, J. M. (2007, Winter). Succession planning and generational stereotypes: Should HR consider age-based values and attitudes a relevant factor or a passing fad? Public Personnel Management, 36(4), 349-370.
(38) Jenkins, J. (2008, Winter). Strategies for managing talent in a multigenerational workforce. Employment Relations Today, 34(4), 19-26.
(39) AARP. (2008, August). AARP best employers for workers over 50 program. Retrieved November 17, 2008, from www.aarp.org.
People of all generations and at all levels want their leaders to be credible, trustworthy, dependable, farsighted, encouraging and good listeners. (1) | <urn:uuid:a1a14314-85b8-4b92-a6fc-75522ed1af7c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://textosdeinteresse.blogspot.com/2009/10/multigenerational-workforce-opportunity.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00125-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923884 | 7,693 | 2.578125 | 3 |
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The Second AmendmentBy Nelson Lund and Adam Winkler
Modern debates about the Second Amendment have focused on whether it protects a private right of individuals to keep and bear arms, or a right that can be exercised only through militia organizations like the National Guard. This question, however, was not even raised until long after the Bill of Rights was adopted.
Many in the Founding generation believed that governments are prone to use soldiers to oppress the people. English history suggested that this risk could be controlled by permitting the government to raise armies (consisting of full-time paid troops) only when needed to fight foreign adversaries. For other purposes, such as responding to sudden invasions or other emergencies, the government could rely on a militia that consisted of ordinary civilians who supplied their own weapons and received some part-time, unpaid military training.
The onset of war does not always allow time to raise and train an army, and the Revolutionary War showed that militia forces could not be relied on for national defense. The Constitutional Convention therefore decided that the federal government should have almost unfettered authority to establish peacetime standing armies and to regulate the militia.
This massive shift of power from the states to the federal government generated one of the chief objections to the proposed Constitution. Anti-Federalists argued that the proposed Constitution would take from the states their principal means of defense against federal usurpation. The Federalists responded that fears of federal oppression were overblown, in part because the American people were armed and would be almost impossible to subdue through military force.
Implicit in the debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists were two shared assumptions. First, that the proposed new Constitution gave the federal government almost total legal authority over the army and militia. Second, that the federal government should not have any authority at all to disarm the citizenry. They disagreed only about whether an armed populace could adequately deter federal oppression.
The Second Amendment conceded nothing to the Anti-Federalists’ desire to sharply curtail the military power of the federal government, which would have required substantial changes in the original Constitution. Yet the Amendment was easily accepted because of widespread agreement that the federal government should not have the power to infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms, any more than it should have the power to abridge the freedom of speech or prohibit the free exercise of religion.
Much has changed since 1791. The traditional militia fell into desuetude, and state-based militia organizations were eventually incorporated into the federal military structure. The nation’s military establishment has become enormously more powerful than eighteenth century armies. We still hear political rhetoric about federal tyranny, but most Americans do not fear the nation’s armed forces and virtually no one thinks that an armed populace could defeat those forces in battle. Furthermore, eighteenth century civilians routinely kept at home the very same weapons they would need if called to serve in the militia, while modern soldiers are equipped with weapons that differ significantly from those generally thought appropriate for civilian uses. Civilians no longer expect to use their household weapons for militia duty, although they still keep and bear arms to defend against common criminals (as well as for hunting and other forms of recreation).
The law has also changed. While states in the Founding era regulated guns—blacks were often prohibited from possessing firearms and militia weapons were frequently registered on government rolls—gun laws today are more extensive and controversial. Another important legal development was the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Second Amendment originally applied only to the federal government, leaving the states to regulate weapons as they saw fit. Although there is substantial evidence that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to protect the right of individuals to keep and bear arms from infringement by the states, the Supreme Court rejected this interpretation in United States v. Cruikshank (1876).
Until recently, the judiciary treated the Second Amendment almost as a dead letter. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), however, the Supreme Court invalidated a federal law that forbade nearly all civilians from possessing handguns in the nation’s capital. A 5–4 majority ruled that the language and history of the Second Amendment showed that it protects a private right of individuals to have arms for their own defense, not a right of the states to maintain a militia.
The dissenters disagreed. They concluded that the Second Amendment protects a nominally individual right, though one that protects only “the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia.” They also argued that even if the Second Amendment did protect an individual right to have arms for self-defense, it should be interpreted to allow the government to ban handguns in high-crime urban areas.
Two years later, in McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), the Court struck down a similar handgun ban at the state level, again by a 5–4 vote. Four Justices relied on judicial precedents under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Justice Thomas rejected those precedents in favor of reliance on the Privileges or Immunities Clause, but all five members of the majority concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment protects against state infringement the same individual right that is protected from federal infringement by the Second Amendment.
Notwithstanding the lengthy opinions in Heller and McDonald, they technically ruled only that government may not ban the possession of handguns by civilians in their homes. Heller tentatively suggested a list of “presumptively lawful” regulations, including bans on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, bans on carrying firearms in “sensitive places” such as schools and government buildings, laws restricting the commercial sale of arms, bans on the concealed carry of firearms, and bans on weapons “not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Many issues remain open, and the lower courts have disagreed with one another about some of them, including important questions involving restrictions on carrying weapons in public.
Matters of Debate
Nelson Lund University Professor, George Mason University School of Law
Not a Second Class Right: The Second Amendment Today by Nelson Lund
The right to keep and bear arms is a lot like the right to freedom of speech. In each case, the Constitution expressly protects a liberty that needs to be insulated from the ordinary political process.Full Text
Adam Winkler Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
The Reasonable Right to Bear Arms by Adam Winkler
Gun control is as much a part of the Second Amendment as the right to keep and bear arms. The text of the amendment, which refers to a “well regulated Militia,” suggests as much.Full Text | <urn:uuid:5919bbb2-18ed-48e2-9856-8b61682160b8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-ii | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00068-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966906 | 1,393 | 3.90625 | 4 |
Definition of Drug resistance
Drug resistance: The ability of bacteria and other microorganisms to withstand a drug that once stalled them or killed them.Source: MedTerms™ Medical Dictionary
Last Editorial Review: 5/13/2016
Drug Medical Dictionary of Terms by Letter
Medical Dictionary Term:
Find out what women really need. | <urn:uuid:26cca96d-2301-4a33-afcf-08acd7187dcc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.rxlist.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=3120 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.820054 | 67 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Traditional building crafts
The preservation,conservation,restoration and repair of historic buildings, structures or heritage sites demands that craftspeople are practiced in the use of traditional building materials and methods. Such typical traditional building crafts include:
- bricklaying and craft masonry
- carpentry and joinery
- electrical and plumbing
- dry stone walling
- earth building
- fibrous plastering
- flint working
- lime mortaring and limeplastering
- painting and decorating
- roofing, oof slating and tiling
- stone conservation
In addition there are further specialisms within each craft.
The modern-day challenge is one of keeping the skills alive so that we can continue to conserve and maintain our vast range of historic properties by using the relevant traditional craft skills and working sympathetically with the original materials.
A sample of Items held in the Traditional building crafts category
- Easy Guide 037: Rural crafts - thatching
- Using compost in green roof growing media
- 1326: Crafts and rural development
There are currently no subcategories in the Traditional building crafts section.
Where Am I?
The OpenFields Library is a free online library contains items of interest to practitioners and researchers in the agricultural and landbased industries. | <urn:uuid:b6fe377d-b93b-498d-aacd-8c30b4d5f9c0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.openfields.org.uk/topics/land-based-crafts/traditional-building-crafts/default.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00096-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903709 | 267 | 3.296875 | 3 |
[gdal-dev] OGRGeometry Distance
yilmaz.arslanoglu at gmail.com
Mon Sep 21 11:06:39 EDT 2009
I wanted to compute the distance between two points,
and for this reason I tried the "OGRGeometry::Distance" member function.
However, I saw that this function only returns the linear
distance between the objects, regardless of their geospatial reference.
(as it is also stated somewhere on the net that GEOS library
implements it this way)
So I would like to compute the actual distance between the points,
23 degrees north, 30 degrees east
25 degrees west, -5 degrees east.
My question is, do we need to implement this functionality by using
projection transformations etc., or is there an easy way to do this
using the OGR library?
Also, as another related question, I query the DEPCNT layer in one of
my ENC files, and it has a geospatial reference.
However, the points on the line string features themselves return NULL
when they are queried with getSpatialReference().
Aren't they expected to return exactly the same instance for the layer
that they reside on?
More information about the gdal-dev | <urn:uuid:b44dc55a-b7ed-4e55-a8ed-c55f3187174d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/gdal-dev/2009-September/022080.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00068-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914061 | 269 | 2.59375 | 3 |
We already know that energy efficiency offers a “vast, low-cost energy resource” … so why has a new report, Energy Efficiency in the South, triggered a strong reaction from Grist, the New York Times, and many people online?
Maybe the reaction was generated by the prestige of the research team that collaborated on this report, but I’d like to think it is the crystal-clear message that energy efficiency can help build a better Southern economy while it helps solve global warming.
The report demonstrates that aggressive energy efficiency in the South would mean:
- Virtually ending growth in energy use for 20 years (without efficiency, continued energy waste would drive 16% growth in energy use)
- Retiring many (10 GW) old power plants, and avoiding many (49 GW) more (by my calculation, avoiding over $90 billion in power plant construction costs)
- Saving customers $41 billion per year by 2020, or $26 per month for each household
- Creating 380,000 new jobs and $1.2 billion in additional economic growth
- Saving 8.6 billion gallons of freshwater (without efficiency, power plants steam away)
- Reducing global warming pollution by up to 200 million tons per year
The benefits of the energy efficiency programs and policies in this study far outweigh the costs: annual energy bill savings of $40.9 billion by 2020, compared to annual costs of just $15.8 billion.
Make no doubt about it, the South needs more energy efficiency. According to data from the Consortium for Energy Efficiency, the South lags the country in energy efficiency investment.
We’ve also mapped energy savings by state (it isn’t just about spending). And don’t take our word for it – consider that ACEEE ranked all 17 Southern states (including DC) in the bottom 30 in its most recent scorecard.
Energy efficiency can work in the South.
- Gainesville Regional Utilities is one of the nation’s rising stars in delivering energy efficiency.
- North Carolina utilities are investing in energy efficiency thanks to state leadership and particularly strong commitments by Duke Energy.
- Florida has sustained a significant, if modest, energy efficiency program.
- The Tennessee Valley Authority is stepping up its energy efficiency efforts.
- Building codes are improving in the Carolinas, Tennessee and Florida.
The effort to bring energy efficiency to the South has met with some fierce resistance from utilities, whose financial interests are often summed up best by “sell more power.” Persistent myths such as “the lowest electricity prices in the country … prohibit or inhibit our ability to be more energy efficient” and “low-income households are truly unable to participate in any energy efficiency and conservation efforts” are wrong, and block constructive consideration of aggressive energy efficiency programs.
Myths and … misdirection. Hey, let’s talk about how “smart” it would be to make our grid more efficient! (p.s. – Smart won’t save much energy.)
The nation knows how to invest in energy efficiency. We know how to do it quickly (read about “quick start” programs or the “rapid deployment toolkit“). Overcoming entrenched opposition in our region, however, will not be easy.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time. | <urn:uuid:afaa8b2c-c00f-4aaa-8d42-9800ed839517> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.cleanenergy.org/2010/04/14/energy-efficiency-south-duke-georgia-tech/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00193-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937349 | 695 | 2.921875 | 3 |
If you are a principal looking to globalize education in your school and better prepare your students for the global innovation age, there are several ways for you to engage with our work:
- Global Competence
- School Design
- International Studies Schools Network
- Curriculum Support
- Language Learning
- Expanded Learning
- Professional Development for Educators
- Research on Best Practices
- Funding Guide
The book Educating for Global Competence: Preparing our Youth to Engage the World provides more information about the definition of global competence and how to operationalize it.
The first step in promoting global competence in your school is to work with the entire school community to create a vision and culture in which global learning is prioritized and integrated throughout all aspects of learning.
In order to truly strive for students in your school to graduate both globally competent and college ready, school leadership must work with the educators and the community to develop a common vision for the school, predicated on these dual goals.
Creating this shared vision requires that school leadership fully understand global competence and what it means to be a globally-focused school. To develop this vision, consider intended outcomes – for the students, the educators, and the entire community.
Ideas on How to Get Started
- Read and discuss Educating for Global Competence: Preparing our Youth to Engage the World with your school community.
- Write an open letter to your community, outlining your global vision for the school.
- Create a system of collaborative leadership that engages your staff in the task of refining and implementing the school vision.
In order to promote global competence and college readiness, school leaders must cultivate a school culture that supports and prioritizes global learning.
To establish such a culture, school leaders must evaluate existing school culture and understand the key role that they will play in designing and implementing a globally-focused school culture. This new culture must view teachers as leaders and give them time to think, plan, and work collaboratively and provide students the freedom to pursue and shape their own learning and development.
Ideas on How to Get Started
- Map your assets.
- Strive to build a diverse school community.
- Set goals and plans as a school and regularly reflect on your progress towards achieving them.
- Empower students to customize their own learning experience.
- Encourage teachers to share the leadership responsibility. This collaborative leadership model will help to drive and support the cultivation of your new school culture.
ISSN School Design Matrix
The International Studies Schools Network (ISSN) School Design Matrix is a tool that guides school leaders and educators through the process of developing a globally-focused school. This matrix can be accessed online and can serve as a foundational document and starting point for schools just beginning to emphasize global learning, providing an assessment of the school and a blueprint for where it needs to go.
The matrix provides guidance across six domains that are necessary to support global learning:
- Vision, Mission, and School Culture
- Student Learning Outcomes
- Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
- School Organization and Governance
- Professional Learning Communities
The school leaders and educators within the ISSN utilize this matrix to ensure that they are creating and sustaining a school culture and environment that supports and inspires learning with and about the world. Asia Society supports ISSN schools in transforming their school culture into one that truly fosters and encourage global learning.Learn More
International Studies Schools Network
Consider joining the Asia Society’s International Studies Schools Network. It’s a network of global schools in which we have piloted and refined the Graduation Performance System (GPS). The GPS is a performance-based system of curriculum, instruction, and assessment and serves as mechanism to drive educators to develop and continuously refine high-quality, global curriculum and instruction. GPS curriculum, performance outcomes, and rubrics are aligned to the Common Core State Standards. This system is one of many supports that we provide our ISSN schools as we help them prepare their schools for career and college in an increasingly global world.
Many of the ISSNs are located within the same district. So, our work with them involves a broader partnership at the district level, as well as relationships with individual schools. These relationships involve:
- An initial assessment of school culture and global focus
- Site visits
- On-site coaching work
- Professional development workshops and events
- Attendance at our annual Partnership for Global Learning Conference
- Access to and support utilizing our digital GPS platform, curriculum modules, performance outcomes and rubrics, and “I can” statements.
As part of the Asia Society developed learning methodology—the Graduation Performance System (GPS)—we have developed a series of high-quality, global curriculum modules. These modules are relevant, rigorous, and globally significant. They provide students with authentic learning experiences and assessments and ensure that students are learning the skills they will need to succeed in college and career. These curriculum modules are intentionally linked to both the GPS Performance Outcomes and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). A study led by The Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) found that students who master Asia Society’s GPS performance outcomes in ELA and Math would be expected to significantly increase mastery of the CCSS.
These curriculum modules are quick, easy ways for you, as the principal, to help educators in your school globalize their teaching while meeting the CCSS. They offer a simple entry point for you to begin learning about our work and taking small steps towards integrating global learning into your school culture and classrooms.
We currently offer 5 curriculum modules as e-books that can be downloaded to your computer or tablet device. These curriculum e-books allow educators to access the high-quality curriculum modules that Asia Society created as part of our Graduation Performance System (GPS).
The curriculum modules that are currently available include:
- World Hunger (Pre-calculus)
- Euro Crisis (Social Studies)
- Learning about the Beauties and Patterns of Language (World Languages)
- Wayfinding (Arts)
- The Social Entrepreneur in You (English Language Arts)
- [add science unit]
We plan to release more curriculum module e-books in the coming months.
For principals looking to establish a foreign language program, Asia Society offers a variety of articles and initiatives that can help you make the case for the importance of today’s students learning to speak another language.Learn More
Asia Society provides Chinese language learning resources that can be utilized by teachers in your school. These resources include ideas and tools to foster language learning in your school and an online learning platform titled China and Globalization. This learning website offers online lessons that teach students about both Chinese language and culture.Learn More
If you are a principal just looking to start a Chinese language program at your school, we also have several guidebooks to help you get started:
- Creating a Chinese Language Program in Your School: An Introductory Guide
- Chinese Language Learning in the Early Grades: A Handbook of Resources and Best Practices for Mandarin Immersion
Success in college and career now requires that students master 21st century skills, such as critical thinking, analysis, and problem solving, within and across all disciplines. Parents and policymakers are demanding that schools ensure that US students are developing these vital skills. With this increasing demand and accountability, educators are looking for ways to expand learning opportunities beyond the boundaries of the traditional academic day or year. They find that by increasing their time and diversifying their learning partners and experiences, they are improving their ability to teach for global competence and providing greater opportunities to their students.
Our Global Competence in Expanded Learning Time guide is directed at school leadership teams and provides practical advice on how to use expanded learning and afterschool programs to better prepare your students for their global future.Learn More
We offer a variety of professional development opportunities specifically for school leaders looking to help educators in their schools to better teach their students about the world.
Global Learning for Educators is a free, year-long webinar series. The 2012-2013 line-up featured a variety of presentations.
Last year’s topics included several that were specifically directed towards school leadership:
- School Leadership in a Changing World
- Educating for Global Competence: The Future of Education, Today
- Schools: Go Global and Prepare Students for Success
- What We Can Learn about Education from International Data
Recordings and slides from past webinars are available on our website. We hope you’ll use them a basis for school and community conversations about what you must do to provide your students with a 21st century global education.
The next webinar series will begin in the Fall of 2014.Learn More
Currently, much of our professional development is offered to schools that are members of the International Studies Schools Network or are participating in Project Mastery. However, in the fall of 2013, we are going to begin offering online professional development courses that are open to all educators and school leaders. Our hope is that these online courses will allow global learning to reach an even larger audience of educators and eventually students.
Text from Honor’s descriptions.Learn More
Customized Professional Development
Asia Society also offers more customized professional development for both school leaders and educators that are part of the International Studies Schools Network (ISSN). This professional development helps educators to integrate global learning into their classrooms and helps them to create authentic, project-based learning experiences for their students.
Members of the ISSN receive professional development through site visits, workshops, on-site coaching, networking opportunities, and an annual ISSN Summer Institute. This support and the Asia Society learning methodology have allowed ISSN schools to achieve graduation rates and student achievement that surpass other urban schools.Learn More
Research on International Best Practices
Through our work both within the United States and around the world, we are able to learn from and with some of best educators and education systems in the world. We strive to share best practices from around the world with educators and school leaders, so that they can begin to implement them in their schools and classrooms.
International Summit on the Teaching Profession
Each spring, education ministers, master teachers, national union leaders, and education organization leaders convene from countries with high performing and rapidly improving educational systems. The purpose of the gatherings is to identify best practices worldwide that strengthen the teaching profession and raise student achievement. Summit organizers, in collaboration with Asia Society, produce a publication each year on key lessons.
The first two summits in 2011 and 2012, held in the United States and hosted by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, developed a consensus that achieving a high-quality teaching profession is critical to education systems as they face the increasingly ambitious demands of the 21st century. Moreover, the highest performing countries are successful because they take a comprehensive approach to recruiting, preparing, supporting, and retaining talented teachers and school leaders. The Summits spurred action on these issues in many of the participating countries over the past two years.
The 2013 Summit, which was hosted by the Dutch Ministry of Education, the OECD, and Education International (the global federation of teachers’ unions), took on the complicated issue of teacher evaluation.
- 2013 Summit Report – “Teachers for the 21st Century. Using Evaluation to Improve Teaching.”
- 2012 Summit Report – “Teaching and Leadership in the 21st Century.”
- 2011 Summit Report – “Improving Teacher Quality Around the World.”
These reports provide policymakers around the world with concrete policy ideas and actions that are successfully improving teaching and learning around the world. We encourage policymakers interested in promoting global education and higher levels of student achievement to utilize these valuable reports.Learn More
The Global Cities Education Network
From our Global Cities Education Network (GCEN) we are currently learning from high-performing cities in North America and in Asia what it takes to achieve equity in access to a high- quality education system. This initiative has demonstrated to us, yet again, the vital role of teachers in ensuring that all students are achieving at high levels. From the research completed as part of this initiative we have been able to document policies that allow cities to create and sustain a quality teaching force and to ensure that all students are learning. While much of this research is directed towards the district level, there are clear school-level lessons and policy changes that can improve teaching and learning at your school.Learn More
Asia Society, in partnership with The Finance Project, created a guide titled Funding Global Learning that is focused on how to create financing strategies as well as how to identify and secure funding. The guide covers how to frame the argument for global competence; how to manage diverse funding strategies; the types of federal and state funding sources; and how to match funding streams to your goals. The guide also introduces other resources to turn to for help.
Few funding sources directly target global learning, and issues such as time-limited grants, the downturn in state and local budgets,and competition for limited resources creates a challenging backdrop against which out-of-school leaders seek to implement or expand programs. This guide is designed to help overcome these challenges so programs can focus on do what they do best: preparing students for the world.
To get started, download the Funding Global Learning guide. See also a companion guide for funding afterschool programs. | <urn:uuid:7425acf7-a5ce-4e4d-9935-ffb43919e525> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://sites.asiasociety.org/pglonline/engage/for-principals/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396945.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00123-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947501 | 2,735 | 3.0625 | 3 |
What Is Adaptive Cruise Control?
Cruise control, as applied to automobiles, is a system that will maintain a preselected rate of travel. The driver simply decides how fast they want the car to go, locks in that speed, and the vehicle will continue to travel as such until the system is either disengaged, or the car runs into a tree. Usually, the act of stepping on the brake pedal will disengage the cruise control system. The best ones permit the driver to either slow the car down or speed the car up using secondary controls.
Either a stalk on the steering column, or buttons on the steering wheel typically control the cruise control system. Most designs have buttons for "set", "resume", "accelerate", and "coast" functions. The advantages of cruise control are many; most notably they reduce variations in the speed of the car, enabling the achievement of better fuel economy. They also reduce driver fatigue.
The first known cruise control system applied to a series production car was fitted to the 1958 Imperial. Called “Auto-Pilot”, the system calculated the car’s speed by counting driveshaft rotations. It used a solenoid to vary the throttle position as needed to maintain the driver’s set speed.
In recent years, auto manufacturers have developed technologies enabling the car to determine its own rate of travel, based on traffic conditions. These systems are known as adaptive cruise control.
Imagine driving down the highway with no throttle or braking input whatsoever. This is what adaptive cruise control systems give you the ability to do. Perfectly suited to heavy traffic conditions, cars with adaptive cruise control systems match the speed of a vehicle traveling in front of them. The better systems will even stop the car if the traffic in front of it stops.
Also known as “active”, “dynamic”, and “smart” cruise control systems, with these in place, driving in traffic is considerably less stressful. Further, on long drives, adaptive cruise control systems permit you to concentrate on steering only while the system keeps your car moving with the flow of traffic.
Currently there are two different configurations for adaptive cruise control systems. They can be either radar-based, or laser-based. Both look ahead of the car for traffic or other obstructions and match the speed of the car to moving objects in front of it. If the system detects an immobile object, some will disengage and return throttle control to the driver, while others bring the car to a complete stop under a certain speed.
The first automaker to offer an active cruise control system was Mitsubishi, on the 1995 Diamante for the Japanese market. Two years later, Toyota offered what they called radar cruise control on the Celsior (the car which eventually came to be known as the Lexus LS in other parts of the world). The first car to bring adaptive cruise control to the U.S. market was the model year 2000 Lexus LS 430. For 2006, Mercedes-Benz refined its version of the adaptive cruise control (Distronic in Mercedes-speak) system to completely halt the car if necessary.
The hardware for active cruise control systems is now also being leveraged to provide collision avoidance capabilities. For example, the Volvo S 60s system can detect the presence of pedestrians ahead of the car, and if it looks as though a collision with one of them is imminent it will bring the car to a complete stop. These systems, when used in conjunction with advanced Lane keeping systems now under development will eventually bring us the fully autonomous car. | <urn:uuid:68fb7e75-58a5-4c54-b81a-6032f41f12a9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.autobytel.com/car-ownership/what-is-adaptive-cruise-control-113845/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00002-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947743 | 736 | 3.40625 | 3 |
Perplexing labels, unique classifications and unfamiliar regions, all in an arduous language. Confused? Let’s look at Germany and Austria’s wonderful wines, demystify the label and decipher the varying levels of quality. This is a puzzle you will definitely enjoy completing.
There is more to Germany than beer and lederhosen. Many of us have heard of the winding German Mosel River, and perhaps the slate stone that imparts a great mineral element to the wines. Germany is the northernmost wine-growing country in the world, with some of its vineyards well above the 50th parallel. Vines are planted on south-facing slopes and along river valleys to enable the sun’s warmth and the moderating influence of large bodies of water to mitigate the cool climate.
Germany has a marginal climate--a challenging environment for grape-growing--in which grapes often do not fully ripen. For this reason, the German quality pyramid is determined by the degree of ripeness (sugar) that the grapes have achieved at harvest.
Let’s talk about quality classifications for German wine: Tafelwein is the lowest level; this and Landwein equal 5 percent total German production. Landwein is the next level and usually will be a half-percent higher in alcohol levels. Qualitätswein bestimmte Anbaugebiete (QbA), a quality of wine from a specific German region, and Qualitätswein mit Prädikat (QmP), a superior quality of wine, and the highest level of classification, make up 95 percent of all German wines.
In ascending order (from the lowest to the highest degree of ripeness), the Prädikat wines are:
- Kabinett (commonly found in St. Louis market)
- Spätlese (commonly found in the St. Louis market)
- Auslese (available, but not easy to find)
- Beerenauslese (dessert style - hard to find)
- Eiswein (dessert style - hard to find)
- Trockenbeerenauslese (dessert style - hard to find)
There are about two dozen grape varieties grown commercially in Germany. Because of the cold continental climate, red grapes are particularly difficult to ripen. Consequently, most of the grapes grown are white. Riesling commands most of the acreage under vine, but Müller-Thurgau, a riesling cross, is a close second.
The most prominent red grape variety is pinot noir. It is known as Spätburgunder in Germany and is often made into a delightful rosé called Weissherbst. Portugieser, Dornfelder and Trollinger, all reds, are planted commercially and are found predominately in the southern regions.
How to read a German wine label:
Oberhauser is the town: It’s from Oberhaus (‘er’ means ‘from,' like New Yorker).
Brucke is the vineyard.
Riesling is the grape varietal.
Auslese is the quality/sweetness level.
Austria is known as the land of music, and its grapes can be a symphony to your palate.
Although Austria has a long wine-making history, it evaporated with the 'antifreeze scandal' in 1985 in which millions of gallons of Austrian wine were suspected to have been laced with diethylene glycol. This forced the country to implement some of the strictest wine laws in the world. The 'banderole,' the red and white stripe found on the top of Austrian wine bottles, indicates it has undergone rigorous inspection.
Austria grows mostly cool-climate white grapes such as riesling, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay, but the true star here is Gruner Veltliner. Also known playfully as 'Gru-Vee' among some wine drinkers, the grape is one of the only varietals that actually works with greens like asparagus, artichoke and other foods that are difficult to pair with wines.
Austria’s quality levels are very similar to Germany’s; however, in Austria, the Pradikatswein level starts with Spätlese (not Kabinett), Auslese, Beerenauslese, Ausbruch and Trockenbeerenauslese.
Still confused? When in doubt, open your mind and palate and experiment a little. Familiarize yourself with the taste of the wines from Germany and Austria, and soon you will be singing their praises with or without the lederhosen.
Tasting Tip: When tasting riesling...yes, it hits you up front with a lot of fruit/sweetness, but pay attention to how the wine finishes--it is almost completely dry for a Kabinett style. Wines from this northern part of Europe have very high acidity. So don’t confuse fruit with sweetness.
Wine Recommendation: From Austria, try Gruner Veltliner and also Blaufrankish. From Germany, try a Spatburgunder and taste the world of riesling. Riesling is a great food wine and is highly regarded by some of the world’s finest sommeliers because it is so diverse in style and use. | <urn:uuid:20c962b2-bcb5-44fa-bc3a-37b7c8289598> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.laduenews.com/diversions/food-dining/the-wine-life/article_b3c44ebf-3fc0-5dd0-b6e1-f01d37eb887d.html?mode=image&photo=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00047-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93225 | 1,154 | 2.71875 | 3 |
The Pitfalls of Mind-Brain Dualism
But hold the phone. Who or what controls thought? Where does thought come from? Mind-brain research of course shows that thought comes from the brain. Without the brain, there are no thoughts, as far as neuroscience can tell. So what Begley describes in the article (I haven’t yet read the book) as a causal path from thinking to brain-sculpting is really the brain sculpting itself, with thought simply being the subjective experience of what the brain is doing.
Begley – a very smart, perceptive reporter on cutting-edge science – here seems somewhat in thrall to the last vestiges of mind-brain dualism, and it isn’t hard to see why. Supposing that we can just think our way to a better brain offers a kind of control we otherwise wouldn’t have. Since I can think whatever I want, I can bootstrap myself into better brain-based mental health, and who wouldn’t want that kind of power?
In the article, Begley states the dualistic metaphysics behind this scenario that none other than the Dalai Lama suggested might be the case:
[I]n addition to the brain giving rise to thoughts and hopes and beliefs and emotions that add up to this thing we call the mind, maybe the mind also acts back on the brain to cause physical changes in the very matter that created it. If so, then pure thought would change the brain's activity, its circuits or even its structure. (emphasis added)And the payoff is described by scientist Michael Merzenich at the University of California, San Francisco:
We choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work, we choose who we will be the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form on our material selves. (emphasis added)So: the pure thoughts that we as immaterial selves choose to think sculpt our brain, to make it function better. But again this just raises the question about the source of the immaterial self and its thoughts. As Begley herself recognizes in the first passage quoted above, it’s “the brain giving rise to thoughts and hopes and beliefs and emotions that add up to this thing we call mind.” If this is true, then our mental selves arise from grey matter, so we can’t in any sense stand apart from our brains and manipulate them. The brain, embedded in a body embedded in an environment, is an entirely physical cybernetic control system that changes in response to the demands put on it as the organism makes its way in the world. Conscious thought, along with sensations and emotions, is what it feels like to be such a system; thought isn’t a magic lever over the system itself. There isn’t an immaterial soul in charge of the brain.
To see this is crucial, since otherwise the failure to just choose our way out of our difficulties is unexplainable except as the fault of the soul, in which case we’re susceptible to massive self-blame, guilt and shame. And the myth of pure mental power might lead us to ignore the fact that our psychological states stem a great deal from the physical and social circumstances we’re in; we actually lose control by supposing we can (and should) just rise above our circumstances, instead of seeking to change them.
Dualism, therefore, has little going for it, either as an accurate picture of the mind-brain connection or as a practical approach to mental health. A science-based, fully naturalistic understanding of ourselves suggests that the conscious mind – sensations, thoughts, emotions, etc. – is what it feels like to be a brain-body system acting in the world. Knowing this, we’ll be less susceptible to soul-guilt and better situated to sculpt our physically-instantiated selves to our liking. | <urn:uuid:fe4ffa63-4c6d-4b5c-869a-0b381ce0d9be> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://centerfornaturalism.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00048-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942877 | 811 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Letters And Sounds Phase One
Posted 15 January 2012 - 06:38 PM
I am working in pre-school and really want to get more done on letters and sounds. i brought our letters and sounds pack home this weekend and have scanned it and i like some of the activities. I just want to check if i am understanding this correctly.
we work through each aspect ? - how do we know when children are ready to move on? - is it just in knowing your children? - how long would you spend on each aspect (a week?, do you do it each day?)
Aspect 7 - would you expect to achive this in pre-school?
do you do your letters and sounds activities in small groups, i know it suggest this.
do they progress through each aspect in order, or will they master some quicker than others (i guess if this is the case then you would just revisit areas that needed building on.
does anyone track where their children are up to in phase one?, if so what format do you use?
any help on letters and sounds phase one would be really appreciated, i am anxious to do it, but don't want to do it wrong.
Posted 15 January 2012 - 07:53 PM
I start of with the first aspect because it's necessary that they learn about listening and differentiating sounds round them. The intention is to work through to aspect 7, but in practice we sometimes find ourselves jumping about as things naturally occur - for instance we're doing quite a lot of phonic stuff at the moment which has cropped up quite spontaneously.
I do keep track of where children 'are', just to see who has 'got it' and who needs some more practice, time or support with something.
If you've read your book, I don't think that there's much chance you'll do it 'wrong', Phase one is almost all what you would be doing anyway in Preschool, it just makes it more obvious and easy to track progress.
Edit to add - Shout if you cant find stuff - a search for 'letters and sounds' will turn up a lot of stuff as there have been many discussions on it
Edited by Cait, 15 January 2012 - 07:54 PM.
Posted 15 January 2012 - 08:28 PM
We used to plan one aspect per week, making sure we covered the 3 strands, (tuning into sounds; listening and remembering sounds; talking about sounds). It isn't hierarchical, except that I would leave aspect 7 to later on, but the other aspects we mixed up a bit to add variety.
Posted 16 January 2012 - 06:30 PM
- Joanne123 likes this
Posted 25 January 2012 - 05:54 PM
I also think revist too they as you say are fun activities,
also on my L&S planning i have singing nursery ryhmes and we have 2 big group sing song sessions a week instead of story
and L&S happen all the time in yr setting ...you know crunching on the leaves ouside splashing in the water and weeee down the slide (not literally)
Dont you wished you worked with someone like him!!
Posted 25 January 2012 - 09:45 PM
Posted 26 January 2012 - 06:17 PM
I wanted to pick up on aspect 6 and 7 which are crucial if children are to get off to a good paced start in reception to succeed in phase 2 and 3 by the end of the year, so yes I would expect children to be reasonably confident with those skills by the end of nursery.
ESPECIALLY WHEN THERE'S A CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT
Posted 26 January 2012 - 06:43 PM
Posted 29 January 2012 - 08:41 PM
Posted 29 January 2012 - 08:55 PM
Cait I like that idea..I am going to borrow it if that ok with you.
Haha - go ahead
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While walking my dogs on the edge of the Norfolk Broads the sleek outline of a kestrel glided over the stubble fields and made a beeline for an old oak.
A few crows and a magpie rose from the greenery and chased it off, presumably to protect a nest or young. But then another kestrel joined the action, swooping round the tree, distracting some of the crows and letting the other falcon slip past the guards only for another crow to rise to the challenge.
And so the dogfight continued before the kestrels finally gave up and went their separate ways.
Crows mobbing birds of prey is nothing new but I’d never seen kestrels working together. They normally hunt alone, hovering head into the wind over a field as they watch for mice.
Paul Stancliffe of the British Trust for Ornithology says sometimes a parent kestrel will teach a young bird to hunt. And he once saw a pair of kestrels gang up on a barn owl and rob it of its prey.
Other birds to form workers’ co-operatives include pelicans which will surround a shoal of fish and drive them into their neighbours’ bills.
Golden eagles can work in pairs, one flushing the prey while the other grabs it, and African grey parrots in a French laboratory co-operated by pulling strings at the same time to drag a food-filled tray towards them.
But the ultimate bird team players are American Harris hawks which operate like an airborne wolf pack
Long-tailed tits, dainty pink, white and black woodland birds make rearing their young a family affair. The male and female build the nest, a tidy moss ball lined with up to 1,500 feathers.
And, says the RSPB, the nest-owners’ brothers and sisters often help rear the clutch of up to 15 chicks. Even when the breeding season is over the long-tailed tits like to flit from tree to tree in family groups, alerting humans to their presence by their buzzing call.
In Africa sociable weavers maintain their giant communal nests together, working for the common good.
But the ultimate bird team players are American Harris hawks which operate like an airborne wolf pack. One will flush the prey for up to five others to catch, which increases the size of prey they can take, right up to jack rabbits.
So the little cameo I stumbled on in rural Norfolk may have links to hawks from the Arizona desert. And it just shows that birdbrains are smarter than we think.
When it comes to national birds, countries seem to think the rarer the better. Chile and Colombia flaunt their Andean condors (near?threatened), the Caribbean island of Montserrat its yellow and black oriole (critically endangered) and Mauritius its dodo (extinct).
But a new book suggests Honduras has the right idea: its national bird is one of the most colourful, the scarlet macaw.
Ours is the doughty, territorial robin while little Luxembourg has, quite rightly, Europe’s smallest bird – the goldcrest.
National Birds by Ron Toft, Bloomsbury £25.
Twice this week I’ve sat in hour?long, polluting, infuriating traffic jams to get across the M25’s Dartford Bridge. Both times the cause of the tailback was the need to stop and pay the toll. Yet this crossing was paid for in 2003. When tailbacks are that long the barriers should be lifted. Motorists should come before greed.
A real-life dragon is in the top 10 of reptiles and amphibians which Britain’s zoos are helping to save. The Komodo dragon – which I saw on its native island near Bali – is mean, moody and in trouble with just 1,000 left in the wild. They lumber about like medieval monsters. But don’t mess with them – one once ate a Swiss tourist. All that was left were his glasses.
The Florida panther has survived hunting, gender-bending pollution and loss of habitat. But it may have met its match in the curse of the hedgehog. Two panther cubs were killed by cars last weekend taking the total run over this year to 16 – or up to 16 per cent of the population.
The world’s oldest fossils are 3.4 billion-year-old bacteria found in Aussie rocks, says a new book. The most visible must be the White Cliffs of Dover, made up of zillions of algae skeletons deposited on the seabed over 35 million years. It would take one million algae to cover just one coin, so imagine how many it took to make Beachy Head.
A History Of Life In 100 Fossils (Natural History Museum, £20) | <urn:uuid:143cf408-3e72-44be-81eb-02143e90710f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/john-ingham/504418/John-Ingham-on-bird-teamwork-national-birds-and-the-Florida-panther | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00031-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942841 | 1,014 | 2.515625 | 3 |
While Christopher Columbus is credited with discovering America for the European world, some see the Newport Tower in Rhode Island as evidence of an earlier contact.
Widely accepted to be the remains of a windmill built in the 1700s, the squat round tower shows archeological signs that it was shaped by much older trans-oceanic influences. To the layman's eye the structure appears to simply be a stone platform supported on a cylinder of tall arches, clearly the remains of some type of milling operation. While the tower was a relic in the 1800s, carbon dating of the mortar from the stones has placed the construction of the site sometime in the 1600s. Despite the continued scientific evidence, there are those who hold onto the belief that the tower is evidence of some unknown, pre-Columbian design.
To the believers (or the deluded depending on your stance) the Newport Tower strongly resembles Scottish buildings from the 1100s, suggesting to them that a Templar crossed the ocean and settled the land. Others have claimed to have found a celestial alignment to the upper windows, implying that the stand was some sort of ancient observatory. This too has been widely refuted. Norse, Chinese, and Portuguese explorers and sailors have also been credited as creating the ancient stone tower, but none of these subsequent hypotheses have been proven correct (and are widely perceived to be discredited outright). The precise origin of this tower remains unknown. | <urn:uuid:4e04bd79-1ad7-4a72-aef8-dae5696d1d7c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/newport-tower | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00062-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972133 | 286 | 3.5625 | 4 |
Tibetan MacaquePrevious | Home | Next
Tibetan macaques have long, dense, grayish brown fur. The whiskers and beard are lighter than the top of the head. Infants are blackish with silver, which changes to yellow at age 2
Head and body length
Subtropical evergreen forest to mixed deciduous temperate forest at 800-2000m (2625-6562ft) elevation.
Leaves, shoots, fruits, roots, mushrooms, and animal prey, including eggs, birds, snakes, and invertebrates. These macaques are fed by humans near temples.
Diurnal, and primarily terrestrtial. Tibetan macaques are reported to have a "favorate" infant that they hold and groom. Subordinate males recognize this care and carry the favorite infant to the dominant males in order to interact affiliatively with them. | <urn:uuid:ca4f8fe5-6f3b-4a50-82b1-9a66efc51408> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwvir/VirusInfo/pages/tibetan1_jpg.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00009-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.860442 | 185 | 3.1875 | 3 |
CORVALLIS, Ore. The potential of forest biotechnology to help address significant social and environmental issues is being "strangled at birth" by the rigid opposition of some groups and regulations that effectively preclude even the testing of genetically modified trees, scientists argue in a new report.
Steps must be taken to create a regulatory environment that considers genetically modified trees on a scientific, case-by-case basis, and is focused on the end product rather than the process, say researchers from Oregon State University, Carnegie Mellon University and other institutions in an article in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
Lacking that, the potential will be lost to use this powerful tool to create trees that grow faster, better resist drought or disease, restore threatened species, reduce costs, contribute to renewable energy, sequester carbon, improve environmental cleanup, and produce badly needed products for global consumers, the scientists said.
"This is a noose that's been slowly tightening for many years," said Steven Strauss, a distinguished professor of forest biotechnology at OSU, and one of the world's leaders in the application of genetic science to forestry.
"Everyone wants safe and responsible regulations that protect the environment," Strauss said. "But some extreme opponents who see anything that is genetically modified as a mortal sin are successfully putting in place details that will make it virtually impossible to move ahead with genetic modification in forestry or woody energy crops.
"They don't even want to see field research," Strauss said, "which is required for analysis of ecological effects as well as benefits, and they have been making strides toward shutting the industry down."
Some major successes with biotechnology have taken place in crop agriculture, Strauss said, and because of the enormous benefits, that industry has learned to wade through the regulatory maze and bureaucratic hurdles in a number of countries, including the United States. By contrast, genetic modification studies in forest trees take longer, require work with more diverse species, and have larger environmental restrictions on research and application.
"Opponents are taking advantage of the well-intentioned but vague language in the Convention on Biological Diversity and the associated Cartagena Protocol to stimulate the imposition of regulations that make progress almost impossible," Strauss said. "They treat a small-scale research plot the same as use of a genetically-modified tree over an entire region."
And while earlier kinds of genetically modified trees almost exclusively contained genes from other species, many current advances are being made with native genes and natural growth processes, which are increasing as genomic science advances. No distinction is being allowed for that type of science, the researchers said.
The researchers said they believe that the convention has become a "platform for imposing broad restrictions on research and development of all types of transgenic trees regardless of their ecological and economic benefits."
This convention is one of the largest international treaties, first developed in 1992, and was initially designed to protect biodiversity, not preclude use of genetically modified organisms.
"The activism against genetically modified trees through the Convention on Biological Diversity has been against all forms of genetic modification, regardless of the goals or environmental benefits sought," the researchers wrote in their report. "This activism has also been in direct opposition to widespread scientific and professional opinion from around the world, including from ecologists, that the trait, not the recombinant method, should be the focus of assessments."
Another key part of the problem, the researchers said, is finding enough scientists to participate in contentious and time-consuming debates where "the quality of scientific discussions tend to be extremely low and highly combative."
The researchers believe that major changes in the structure and interpretation of the treaty are required to prevent its continued misuse in ways that they argue "is clearly against its original spirit and intent."
|Contact: Steven Strauss|
Oregon State University | <urn:uuid:bd71e35e-ac09-45c8-ad7c-b86b79d7f488> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-1/Anti-biotech-groups-obstruct-forest-biotechnology-9075-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00017-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952999 | 765 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Autism clusters in California
U.S. researchers have identified 10 locations in California that have double the rates of autism found in surrounding areas, and these clusters were located in neighborhoods with high concentrations of white, highly educated parents.
Researchers at the University of California Davis had hoped to uncover pockets of autism that might reveal clues about triggers in the environment that could explain rising rates of autism, which affects as many as one in 110 U.S. children.
But the findings likely say more about the U.S. healthcare system than the causes of autism, said researcher Irva Hertz-Picciotto of UC Davis' MIND Institute, whose study will be released online on Wednesday in the journal Autism Research.
Advocacy groups have been clamoring for treatment options and for better research to show what might be causing an apparent increase in autism cases.
Hertz-Picciotto and colleagues used a research technique that has been effective at identifying cancer clusters.
"This kind of analysis sometimes turns up clues about environmental factors," she said in a telephone interview.
Article continues: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6045CX20100106 | <urn:uuid:6a2ea6d6-5187-4f80-ae29-685d62a0cd72> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/40902/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00050-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958443 | 243 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Link to this Article: http://www.llewellyn.com/journal/article/1418
Yuletide Trivia and Fun Facts
This article was written by Dorothy Morrison
posted under Pagan
So you think you know all there is to know about Yule? The history and origins and how certain delights came to be? Test your knowledge by reading some of the fun facts below—you may be surprised?
- Modern-day astronomers say that the famous Star of Bethlehem wasn’t a star at all. More than likely, it was either a comet or an astronomical phenomenon caused by the conjunction of several planets at once.
- According to historical records, the first American Christmas festivities took place in Jamestown in 1607. The celebration was a device to cheer up the forty settlers who had survived living in the New World. (The original number was one hundred.)
- Because the British Parliament felt Christmas was a heathen holiday, they officially abolished all related festivities in 1643.
- The historical records of 1836 show Alabama as the first state in the Union to give Christmas the status of legal holiday. Oklahoma was the last state to conform; they didn’t declare it a legal holiday until 1907.
- The first commemorative Christmas stamp was issued in Austria in 1937.
- Donder (not Donner), was the original name of the reindeer who helped pull Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve. He was paired with Blitzen, whose name means lightning.
- The story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was written specifically as a sales gimmick for the Montgomery Ward Company in 1939 by one of their employees, Robert L. May. The little book was given freely to every customer who shopped there during the holiday season.
- The candy cane first gained popularity in churches, where it was given as a treat to children who behaved themselves during services.
- Eggnog wasn’t always the creamy, rich drink we know today. It’s a derivative of a seventeenth-century ale called “nog.” The Irish celebrated each Christmas Eve by drinking a pint or so, for in their country all pubs were closed on Christmas Day.
- Gingerbread houses became popular holiday gifts during the nineteenth century after the Brothers Grimm released the story of Hansel and Gretel.
- St. Francis of Assisi introduced the singing of carols to holiday church services.
- The first American carol—a song entitled “Jesus is Born"—was written by Reverend John de Brebeur in 1649.
- At midnight on the Christmas Eve of 1914, German gunfire suddenly halted and was replaced by the singing of carols. At daybreak, the German soldiers began to call out “Merry Christmas” to their foes. Before long, both sides had declared a truce, shook hands with each other, and exchanged gifts of food, cigarettes, and liquor. The merriment and goodwill lasted for three days.
- Along the shores of the Mississippi river—especially along the Louisiana coastline—bonfires are lit on Christmas Eve. Their purpose is to guide the way for Father Christmas.
- The image of Santa as we know it today was popularized by none other than the Coca-Cola Company.
- St. Nick doesn’t get a vacation after the winter holidays. Since he’s also the patron saint responsible for Greece, Russia, sailors, merchants, pawnbrokers, bakers, prisoners, children, and wolves, he’s a very busy spirit year ‘round.
From Yule, by Dorothy Morrison
Please note that the use of Llewellyn Journal articles
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This chapter reports pilot work investigating the potential of Evidence-based Dialogue Mapping to scaffold young teenagers’ scientific argumentation. Our research objective is to better understand pupils’ usage of dialogue maps created in Compendium to write scientific ex-planations. The participants were 20 pupils, 12-13 years old, in a summer science course for “gifted and talented” children in the UK. Through qualitative analysis of three case studies, we investigate the value of dialogue mapping as a mediating tool in the scientific reasoning process during a set of learning activities. These activities were published in an online learning envi-ronment to foster collaborative learning. Pupils mapped their discussions in pairs, shared maps via the online forum and in plenary discussions, and wrote essays based on their dialogue maps. This study draws on these multiple data sources: pupils’ maps in Compendium, writings in science and reflective comments about the uses of mapping for writing. Our analysis highlights the diversity of ways, both successful and unsuccessful, in which dialogue mapping was used by these young teenagers.
|Item Type:||Book Chapter|
|Academic Unit/Department:||Knowledge Media Institute|
|Depositing User:||Alexandra Okada|
|Date Deposited:||03 Oct 2008 08:45|
|Last Modified:||23 Mar 2016 10:44|
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education, on Monday, released a new report that compares high school graduation rates by state using what it says is a more accurate and common measure.
In Connecticut, according to the report, 83 percent of all students in the class of 2011 graduated. For black students, that number was 71 percent, and for Hispanics, just 64 percent. Meanwhile, 89 percent of white students and 92 percent of Asian students graduated. Eleven states had higher graduation rates than Connecticut and five others were tied at 83 percent overall.
The rates, for the 2010-11 school year, replaces a system that allowed states to use varying methods of defining whether a student graduated. Now the yardstick is consistant but is hard to compare to the old method.
So instead of telling whether the number of students graduating is going up or down, this year, instead, is considered a more accurate “snapshot.”
“By using this new measure, states will be more honest in holding schools accountable and ensuring that students succeed,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a statement that accompanied the report. “Ultimately, these data will help states target support to ensure more students graduate on time, college and career ready.”
In 2011, states began individually reporting 2010-11 high school graduation rates, but this is the first time the Department has compiled these rates in one public document. These 2010-11 graduation rates are preliminary, state-reported data, and the Department plans to release final rates in the coming months. Beginning with data for the 2011-12 school year, graduation rates calculated using this new method will become a key element of state accountability systems, including for states that have been approved for No Child Left Behind flexibility, according to the feds. | <urn:uuid:5b0e29d5-f81e-4e29-b937-105a335322f3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.ctnews.com/education/2012/11/26/how-ct-graduation-rate-stacks-up/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402699.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00137-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963277 | 368 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Apple has been called “groundbreaking” for its innovative phones and user-friendly computers, but the word took on a much more literal meaning this week when a construction crew in Madrid broke ground for a new Apple Store and discovered the remnants of a 15th century hospital.
The hospital was used to treat victims of the plague that swept through Europe in the 1400s. It was demolished in 1854 and sealed beneath the paving stones of a public square.
The discovery did not come as a complete surprise, according to Fox News Latino. Four years ago, construction workers at a neighboring site unearthed the ruins of a church that used to adjoin the hospital. Construction halted for 10 months as local officials negotiated a way to preserve the ruin without canceling the planned light-rail station for the site. Their solution was to open a window onto the ruin so commuters could see the medieval church as they rushed through the station.
El Pais reports that Apple would not have to incorporate the ruins into its sleek, glass-box store design, but officials at the local heritage department did ask for the store’s footprint to “symbolically” trace the walls of the ruin. That may suit Apple just fine, as it would have been a jolt to Apple store customers, if they stumbled onto a window into a plague-ridden past while browsing through the latest models of i-gadgets. | <urn:uuid:b4d64ea1-e1c6-4298-9f84-cf8f702867dc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/07/14/apples-latest-groundbreaking-discovery-a-15th-century-ruin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00173-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960925 | 286 | 2.90625 | 3 |
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