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Fundamentally, a graphite fly rod starts out as a sheet of carbon fiber that is impregnated with various types of glues or resins, depending on the manufacturer and the rod model. These “prepreg” sheets come in huge, glistening rolls, like an extra-jumbo tube of gift wrap. In order to make raw carbon fiber sheets into the tube shape of a fly rod, you need something to form it around—a mandrel. Mandrels are where the design process of a fly rod really gets started.
Cutting carbon fiber into the "flag" which will be rolled into a blank. Courtesy Scott Fly Rods.
Obviously, if you want to create a rod “taper” (the ultimate shape of the rod tube), you have to start with the internal form. “Mandrels are made of stainless steel, and they require very precise machining, with tolerances often tighter than a tenth of a millimeter,” says Scott Fly Rods’ Ian Crabtree. Mandrels are designed on computers, and are typically made by machining companies to a rod manufacturer’s very detailed specs. Since the mandrel must go inside of a graphite rod tube, and since the tubes get very, very small (especially in the tip sections of 1- and 2-weights), there’s no room for error. In their smallest sizes, mandrels essentially resemble long steel needles (and of course they must be handled with extreme care). Gary Loomis (now consulting for Temple Fork Outfitters) confirms that most multi-piece fly rods get a different mandrel for each section, meaning “a four-piece rod will have four different forms.” (Contrary to a popular misconception, almost no multi-piece rod is cut from a single long blank, due to the difficulty of keeping a lengthy blank from twisting when it is pulled from the mandrel.)
Once a manufacturer has a mandrel (typically after a lot of prototyping), it’s time to roll out the blank. A sheet of carbon fiber is pulled from the roll and hand-cut with a sophisticated knife “that kind of resembles a box-cutter,” according to Scott’s Crabtree. Once cut, these sheets are called “flags” or “patterns.” For U.S. manufacturers, they always take the form of a trapezoid of some kind, since the tip will always be somewhat narrower than the butt (this goes for every section of the rod). According to rod designer and casting guru Jason Borger, these trapezoids may still wind up being quite complex, with multiple compound angles to create different actions. (In contrast, some very budget-conscious overseas manufacturers simply cut a rectangular pattern and allow all corners to overlap in a twist when rolled. These rods are typically sold in bubble packs in big-box stores).
“If you bend it, first it will ovalize, then it will crack out at the edges.”
But wait! Here the manufacturers have to deal with a serious design problem. If you make a graphite rod out of nothing more than impregnated carbon fiber, which is almost always aligned to run lengthwise down the blank, then it will snap the first time you bend it. “Think of it like a drinking straw,” says Paul Johnson, formerly of Sage. “If you bend it, first it will ovalize, then it will crack out at the edges.” TFO’s Gary Loomis analogizes an unreinforced rod to an egg: “It’s very strong if you’re pushing from outside, but much weaker when the stress comes from inside. That’s how come a little chick can break out of its egg so easily.” To prevent this, rod makers use something called “scrim.” Scrim is a reinforcing material that is aligned perpendicularly to the carbon fiber of the rod. Once rolled, it gives the rod hoop strength that helps it resist ovalization. “In the old days,” says Johnson, “scrim was always fiberglass, but in recent years we’ve been able to use carbon fiber.” Some manufacturers use a chopped mat of “paper carbon” scrim, like particle board, while others use a unidirectional product that allows all the scrim fibers to be aligned into hoops. And, of course, many rods are still made with fiberglass scrim, to maximize strength and minimize cost.
Depending on how strong the manufacturer needs the rod section to be, the scrim flag might be cut wide, to cover all of the main carbon fiber flag, or narrower, giving less reinforcement. Once rolled, the scrim is sandwiched in between layers of carbon, meaning if you cut a cross-section you’d see scrim, then carbon, then more scrim, etc.
What's on the horizon?
I asked many manufacturers what kind of technology anglers may look forward to in future rods. Several mentioned the development of carbon nanotubes as an exciting up-and-coming development. Steve Rajeff explains: “Carbon nanotube fiber has great promise. Nanotube graphite fibers are all hollow. Currently, they can be ‘grown’ in short lengths, a couple millimeters long.” Because carbon nanotubes are even lighter than their solid brethren, they may have a very bright future in fly rods. “Right now,” Rajeff says, “nano fibers added to golf shafts and some rods have shown modest improvements, but they’re still too short to be optimal. If a continuous-length carbon nanotube can be developed, we stand to see some significant performance jumps.” —Z.M.
Once the main carbon flag and the accompanying scrim are cut, they are laid on a work surface together, scrim on top. Then the rod maker—at this point a skilled worker with years of experience building various parts of the rod—very carefully lays the mandrel on one edge of the overlapping trapezoidal flags, and makes one complete turn or roll. “We spray a release agent on the mandrel to help it come out once the blank is baked and cured,” explains Johnson, “and that agent also is somewhat sticky when it’s wet.” The sticky release agent helps, but this is a tense point in the rod’s construction.
“It is very important that the first turn be perfect,” says Scott’s Crabtree, “so we do them by hand. If you have a void or gap at this early stage, the blank will twist and will have to be discarded.” Once the first turn is made, the rod is ready to be rolled into that “blank,” or tube. If you’ve ever made pasta, you can imagine roughly what the next step looks like. Manufacturers use expensive industrial rolling machinery resembling two giant pneumatic drums, with a small slot in between. With a worker carefully tending the machinery, the flag and mandrel are fed through the drums and tightly rolled into the familiar shape of a flyrod blank. Depending on the weight of the rod, the position on the blank and the materials used, the blank section may require dozens of turns, or as few as 10. The number of turns determines the thickness of the blank wall (which can affect a rod’s action significantly).
Once a blank is rolled, it must be tightly bound in a heat-resistant polypropylene tape, to hold it in its rolled form. This tape is wrapped around and around the rod in a spiral pattern, and ultimately gives “natural finish” rods their ridged shape, which I’ve heard compared to a snake belly. Once taped, the blank sections hang vertically in a giant walk-in oven to cure. All the resins are heated and harden, in a process akin to firing pottery. Interestingly, the tape wraps must stay in place during this process, both to hold the form and also “to keep all the resin from liquefying and dripping off the blank onto the floor,” according to Crabtree.
Final marking of the almost-finished rod. Courtesy Scott Fly Rods.
In recent years the resin a manufacturer chooses has become one of the most important elements in rod design. G. Loomis’ Steve Rajeff explains that fundamentally “resin is the glue that holds all of the fibers in a rod together.” Most of these resins are “trade secrets,” according to Orvis’ Tom Rosenbauer (including Orvis’ thermoplastic resin used in its top rods). Basically, though, “the stronger the glue, the stronger the rod,” says Loomis’s Rajeff. “Epoxy has been the preferred resin for over 25 years. Over time, it’s gotten a lot stronger, which allows us to reduce blank wall thickness and thus weight. We can also use higher-modulus graphite. All things being equal, lighter-weight, higher-modulus rods take less effort to cast and perform better.
When the resin in all the blank sections is done curing, the blanks are ready to be turned into castable fly rods. First, the mandrels have to come out of the blank. “We use a pneumatic pull press and a specially-sized die that exactly fits the butt of each different blank section,” explains Johnson. Next, the tape is removed from the outside. For natural-finish rods, like Scott’s current G2 series or Orvis’ older Clearwater, the ridged blanks go straight through to production. Most rods, however, are sanded at this point. Orvis’ Rosenbauer explains that there’s no performance difference one way or another, but most customers now prefer “shiny rods,” so the manufacturers usually oblige. However, sanding is a delicate process that requires a lot of skill (take too much off and you’ll weaken the blank). Throughout, the blanks are also carefully inspected: Those with cosmetic blemishes are typically discarded, even if the blemish would not affect the performance of the rod, “because it isn’t worth the expense of the hardware componentry to build out an imperfect rod,” says Crabtree.
Many manufacturers paint the blanks after sanding, though different rod makers use a different order from this point on. Most use automotive-style paints, which require breathing apparatus and clean rooms. Other manufacturers use a UV-curing paint based on pine resin, which can be “set” by being bathed in powerful UV light, like some new knot glues (“Those lights will burn you,” says Crabtree). In addition to being painted, the rods get ferrules now. For the most common sleeve-over ferrules, this process involves installation of glue caps or moisture plugs in the male ends of the blank; if designers do their jobs, the fit should be tight right out of the oven. The few remaining companies using internal ferrules have a multi-step process requiring fitting, insertion and gluing of the male ferrule section, which must then be carefully sanded to fit the female side.
With ferrules in place and the blank sections painted, the rods are ready to be dipped in a permanent protective coating of epoxy. This uses a variable orifice die that Crabtree says is “kind of like a round squeegee” to push a smooth bead of epoxy all the way from one end of the blank to the other. The rods are then left to cure for several hours in a clean room, so no dust or blemish mars the finish.
Where does carbon fiber come from?
Carbon fiber production is its own incredibly complex story. Generally speaking, carbon fiber can be spun from carbon dust, like cotton candy, or created in a lab by charring a precursor fiber similar to rayon. According to Orvis’ Tom Rosenbauer, only the charred type (called PAN carbon fiber) would be appropriate for most flyrod applications. Brad Loomis, owner of X-Stream Composites (and son of Gary), who makes all kinds of products out of carbon fiber, explains that it is manufactured by lots of different chemical and industrial companies, but also by some textile companies, some of which also make the fabrics in your waders and fleeces. This fiber, which initially comes in thread form, can then be mixed with resins to make the prepreg rolls that eventually become rods. Interestingly, many terms you would be familiar with from fly rods (such as IM6 graphite) are actually trade names used by the carbon fiber companies (in the case of IM6, a supplier called Hexcel). —Z.M.
Once dry, the blanks are ready to be wrapped up and have hardware affixed (this is the point at which custom rod builders would be able to buy a “completed” blank). The first thing to go on is most of the reel seat, using two-part epoxy. Next comes the cork grip, which must be carefully fitted with tape bumpers so that no voids under the grip cause creaking or breakage. Some manufacturers used to affix the cork rings directly to the blank and then form the handle on a lathe with the blank in place. Unfortunately, with declining quality of cork stock worldwide, this has become risky: The danger that a lathe technician may uncover an unacceptable void or cosmetic blemish hidden in the cork is very high. Consequently, just about all rod makers are now pre-turning their cork grips to confirm that the quality is adequate before they install the grip.
With the grips in place, the rods are ready for guides. After carefully aligning the blank, the builder tapes the guides in place, then wraps thread to hold them on permanently. As the builder completes each wrap, they remove the tape holding the guide feet, until ultimately the guides are ready to be epoxied (the final, shiny coating).
But first come decals. Some companies use stickers, while others continue to hire trained calligraphers (who must all have close to the same handwriting) to write on blanks. Any alignment dots (witness marks), decorative wraps, inlays or other “jewelry” would also be placed at this time.
All epoxy must be very carefully applied while the rods rotate to prevent unsightly bubbles and sags. If anything goes wrong here, the rod must be stripped and re-wrapped, or even discarded. When the epoxy has cured, the butt-end of the reel seat is affixed—the last piece of the hardware to go on—and the rod is ready for inspection.
Final inspection for many manufacturers is simply the last step in a long process of ongoing quality control. Throughout a rod’s construction, workers are trained to check for blank twist, unsightly blemishes, paint runs or misaligned guides. R.L. Winston’s Leslie Clark confirms that each worker who touches a rod “is empowered to discard any blemished rod they see.” With this many moving parts and this much hand labor, it’s easy to see how fly rods have come to cost as much as they do. Today’s rods are lighter, more responsive and less likely to break than ever before, all while being made with the same hand craftsmanship that is the hallmark of a quality fishing tool.
This article originally ran in the Spring 2011 issue of Fly Rod & Reel magazine. | <urn:uuid:a80b1e74-1136-4ca1-8fb2-3248e9628aa7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.itinerantangler.com/podcasts/2011/06/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404405.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00089-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940471 | 3,306 | 2.703125 | 3 |
How Nelson Mandela Survived His Years in Isolated South African Jail
View photos of Nelson Mandela’s prison years and release.
Former South African president and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela turns 95 on Thursday. He spent many of his years in jail while still fighting for a democratic and free society.
In all, Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years, 18 of those on Robben Island, a rock quarry off the coast of Cape Town. He and eight other African National Congress leaders were convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government, and were sentenced to life in jail in 1964.
Mandela and the other prisoners were completely isolated, got little to eat and had to undertake the grueling work of pounding rocks into gravel.
What kept him and the others sane was the community they formed for themselves, according to Gay McDougall. During apartheid, McDougall was director of the Southern African Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, assisting in the defense of thousands of political prisoners in South Africa.
“One of the things that was extraordinary about [Mandela] is his sense that being in a group — a collective — of people committed to the same principles, along with making collective decisions about the way forward, is an essential element in movement-building and survival in circumstances that are harsh and oppressive,” she said.
Mandela’s cell on Robben Island. Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images.
“People refer to ‘Robben Island University’ because they began to study” everything from politics to their individual areas of expertise, said McDougall.
Mandela also knew he was serving a larger purpose in jail and didn’t hold it against the guards, she said. “That lack of personal animosity toward those in charge of his confinement was important to his survival.”
Times were tough, though. It was in prison that he learned about the death of one of his children from his first wife Evelyn Mase.
His health also took a toll. In 1982, he was moved to the maximum security Pollsmoor Prison on the main land, where he was believed to have contracted tuberculosis. He has fought respiratory ailments ever since.
An international movement helped secure Mandela’s release in 1990 at age 71. When he emerged from jail, no one knew what he would look like — that’s how closely the apartheid government had shielded him from the world, said McDougall.
“I thought he looked remarkably fit and handsome, upright and dignified,” she said. And the speech he gave in Cape Town upon his release was remarkable in that he “didn’t give an inch” from his original demands going into jail, she added.
“The need to unite the people of our country is as important a task now as it always has been. No individual leader is able to take on this enormous task on his own. It is our task as leaders to place our views before our organization and to allow the democratic structures to decide,” Mandela said on Feb. 11, 1990.
(Read his full speech on the ANC website.)
Mandela helped negotiate the end of apartheid under then-President F.W. de Klerk. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and his ANC party won multi-racial democratic elections a year later. Mandela became president of South Africa, serving one term.
On the June 28 PBS NewsHour, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, special correspondent for NBC News, discussed Mandela’s legacy and how democracy helped shape South Africa:
View more of our World coverage. | <urn:uuid:d46c1c22-bf66-4263-b664-e4a9474332b4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/nelson-mandela-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00007-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984913 | 756 | 2.953125 | 3 |
As globe warms, can states force the EPA to act?
The agency argues that climate change requires a global solution, not federal regulations. The Supreme Court weighs in this week.
WASHINGTON — Arctic sea ice is melting. Glaciers are in retreat. Sea levels are rising. So what is the Environmental Protection Agency doing about it?
That's what a group of state officials and environmentalists want to know.
Seven years ago, they asked the EPA to get involved – to take an initial step in response to scientific evidence that suggests greenhouse gases are causing global warming.
The agency refused, saying there were too many unresolved questions about the causes and effects of global warming. The state officials took their case to court, charging that the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to take immediate action.
On Wednesday, the dispute arrives at the US Supreme Court, where the justices must decide whether the EPA is required to take action or whether the agency retains the discretion to decide for itself how best to respond to world-wide environmental threats.
The case will test the authority of special interest groups and state governments to sue federal agencies and force them to adopt certain regulatory policies that they favor. The case could also establish important legal precedents that might help or hinder state efforts to regulate greenhouses gases on their own in the absence of federal action.
On a broader level, the case raises questions about the role of the judiciary in resolving litigation over regulatory policy arguments. Should judges defer to controversial decisions made by administrative agencies on whether or when to pass regu-lations? Or should judges aggressively enforce what they see as the underlying purpose of statutes that govern agencies?
At issue in Massachusetts v. US Environmental Protection Agency is whether EPA officials acted properly when they declined to issue national regulations limiting the release of four greenhouse gases from new automobile models. The gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons.
EPA officials say the agency lacks the power to regulate greenhouse gases. The Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to take action to reduce and control agents that cause "air pollution." But agency officials have concluded that greenhouse gases are not agents of air pollution. They say the Clean Air Act does not address global climate change.
As a fallback position, EPA officials say that even if they do have authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act they also have discretion under the act to decide when to initiate such measures. The officials have said there was scientific uncertainty about global warming and that they wanted to wait for more research and additional action by Congress before crafting an appropriate response.
Massachusetts along with 11 other states, three cities, a US territory, and numerous environmental groups are urging the Supreme Court to order the EPA to faithfully enforce the law as passed by Congress.
"A straightforward reading of the language of the Clean Air Act shows that carbon dioxide and other air pollutants associated with climate change are 'air pollutants' potentially subject to regulation [under the Clean Air Act]," writes Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General James Milkey, in his brief. "When Congress has spoken as plainly as it has here, an administrative agency is bound to obey that legislative command."
In his brief, US Solicitor General Paul Clement defends the EPA's earlier legal positions. He also argues that Massachusetts lacks the legal standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place. Mr. Clement says Massachusetts officials are unable to draw a direct link between harm to the state and the EPA's decision not to pass the requested regulations.
Massachusetts and other petitioners in the case complain of "profound harms" caused by climate change including the inundation of coastal property, damage to seaside facilities, and additional emergency response costs from more frequent and intense storms. Clement argues that the state's generalized concerns are not enough to demonstrate that such cataclysmic harms are a direct result of the EPA's decision not to regulate.
The specific request was for the EPA to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from new cars. Such emissions make up only a fraction of greenhouse gases released worldwide.
Clement says that 80 percent of all greenhouse gases are from countries other than the US and that, of US emissions, 70 percent are from nontransportation sources. The solicitor general adds that of the remaining 30 percent, the requested regulation would only affect new vehicles models – leaving the vast majority of emissions in the US and throughout the world not covered by the new regulations.
In effect, Clement says, the threat of global warming is an international threat that requires an international solution. Since the EPA acting alone cannot solve the problem, lawyers from Massachusetts don't have legal standing to try to hold the EPA responsible for a problem it can't solve without international cooperation.
Mr. Milkey says the primary concern of Congress in the Clean Air Act was for the agency to determine whether certain pollutants can reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. Where they pose such a threat, Milkey says, the agency must act to protect the public. | <urn:uuid:61ae11da-b21a-4a10-9185-fb027892e6c1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1128/p01s01-usju.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397696.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949308 | 1,006 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Perhaps my interest in genealogy is related to my fascination with historical linguistics. Both fields seem to offer some interesting hints about ancient human migration. Even a layman without training can catch a glimpse of some of the fascinating ideas in language science. Although I have no expertise and may even qualify as a full-fledged ``crackpot,'' I share my musings here.
Reading the ancient genealogies I am struck by how much mobility there was. We think of William `the Conqueror' as a Frenchman but in legend his ancestor Rollo had come from Norway less than two centuries earlier. Although that specific ancestry may be bogus, the Conqueror probably was descended of Vikings. The Anglo-Saxon rulers displaced by William had themselves migrated from Northern Europe and have legends that trace back to Central Asia. Of course there is a `survival bias' in these examples: when a people become militarily superior, like the Vikings, it is natural that their young nobles will set out to conquer foreign lands.
The ancient Celtic rulers of Ireland have a tradition that they came from the Black Sea area (near the steppes of present-day Ukraine). Their culture surely did arise from East European roots, as evidenced by their war chariots, use of iron, and their language, but how did their legendary tradition arise? Is it really possible that they retained an illiterate memory of their ancient travels? While the Celtic language is assumed to have arrived in Western Europe overland from Central Europe, the legends of the early Celtic Kings depict their dynasty as traveling via ship. Perhaps it isn't farfetched at all that at least the leadership traveled by sea: Ocean-going Phoenicians were exporting tin from Britain even before the Celts arrived, and obviously at least the last stage of the Celtic conquest of Ireland was by sea.
(On the subject of a Celtic origin in Eastern Europe, it is interesting to compare them with the ancient Tocharian culture of Western China, which shared a number of cultural motifs with the Celtics. It is supposed that the Tocharians also originated near the Ukrainian steppes.)
Just as a military elite propagated faster in space than lower classes, so innovations, like farming or the use of iron, out-raced any migration of people. Often the original population will adopt the new language when advanced newcomers arrive. Thus a small group of people in Eastern Europe who learned to ride horses about 4000 BC left their linguistic mark all over the world. More speculatively, a somewhat earlier group in Southeast Asia learned to smelt bronze and may even have contributed their language to the distant Sumerians, though this linguistic tradition disappeared from West Asia with the arrival of Iron-Age people.
Thus people may get their genes and their technology or language from different sources. Even within genetics we can see a relative of this same dichotomy.
Man (genus Homo) has existed all over Asia for over a million years, but modern man (H. sapiens sapiens) emerged from Africa during the very late Pleistocene epoch. Did modern man completely replace earlier man or did early man's genes survive and evolve under the impetus of advanced African culture? (This may be related to much more recent issues, like Indians having South Asian genes but speaking a European language.)
This is a controversial question with ambiguous evidence. Mitochondrial-Dna studies suggest extinction of early man, with the famous ``Eve of Africa'' theory. On the other hand, some scientists compare the bone structure of million-year old humans in Africa with those in East Asia and find geographical differences that mimic the same geographical differences observed today.
Actually, the ``Eve of Africa'' theory is not inconsistent with the idea that H. erectus genes have survived. Thousands of women alive at the time of ``Eve'' left descendants; they just didn't happen to be uterine descendants. As an analogy, consider the genes of Charlemagne. His Y chromosome (agnatic lineage) disappeared in the 14th century after the untimely death of William de Burgh, 4th Earl of Ulster, but many millions of people today are descended from Charlemagne and may have inherited genes from his other chromosomes.
There is an interesting analogy between the triumph of Eve's mitochondrion and linguistic and cultural propagation. Although we may think mothers always teach their babies their grandmothers' language, in fact, people are often persuaded to adopt the language of an elite. Latin quickly overwhelmed Western Europe even though there was only limited colonization by Roman civilians. It replaced mainly Celtic which was, at the time, itself a recent arrival. Most of the human genome in England and Western Europe predates even the Celtic invasion, yet Basque is the only pre-Celtic language to survive there.
It is difficult to reconstruct man's prehistory, and this discussion implies that even DNA study will not provide complete answers. Historical linguistics provides powerful clues, but it can't ``look back'' too far. How do the languages of 15 millennia ago (the late Pleistocene) line up with today's languages? Europe, Africa and South Asia are hidden in time, but logically we can identify the old Australian language as a prototype of today's Australian, and when the Amerinds arrived in America they must have spoken proto-Amerind. That much is relatively obvious; what is more surprising -- and more controversial -- is that there are enough clues to deduce what present-day languages are related to the language of the stone-age Magdalenian culture in North Asia.
(The claim that proto-Amerind was a single language is controversial but Greenberg and Ruhlen demonstrate a common set of pronouns and familial words across all Amerind language families.)
See a big-scale family tree of the world's languages, where Dene-Caucasian is shown as ``C -- Cauco-sinitic.''
By 15 - 18,000 BC, languages related to Dene-Caucasian dominated Northern Asia. One concrete, if circumstantial, supporting fact is the chronology of late paleolithic technology in North America and North Asia. Although early Amerinds developed the advanced Clovis technology, true microlithic technology did not arrive until the migration wave that brought the Na-Dene languages. A very similar toolkit was present in the Dyuktai valley of Northeast Asia as early as 16,000 BC (just after a long cold period when the valley was uninhabited). This doesn't prove that the ancient Dyuktai people are related to the Na-Dene migrants, but Occam's razor suggests it. If the Dyuktai technology preceded the Dene-Caucasian language it would probably have been transmitted to America in a pre-Dene migration wave.
The proto-Amerinds may have occupied parts of North Asia at the same time as the proto-Dene people, but they were, in some way, a weaker people and only the few who made a perilous journey across Beringea survived.
The Na-Dene migration wave occurred after Eurasiatic speakers arrived in Northeast Asia, bringing mesolithic technologies. The paleolithic Dene-Caucasian speakers were now outnumbered and it was their turn to ``flee for their lives.'' Those who made the perilous Alaska journey became the Na-Dene people (Athapaskans) while the major residue of Dene-Caucasian survivors moved South or East probably conquering China shortly after its Neolithic revolution.
A gray area, where reasoned conjecture is possible, lies between the wild guesswork in reconstructing Paleolithic prehistory and the relative confidence archaeologists have about post-Neolithic times, e.g. the Indo-European reconstruction I show in my final diagram.
Since this intermediate period (13,000 BC - 3000 BC) is too ancient for historic certainty, but not so remote as to require wild guesswork from me, I've provided John Croft's well-reasoned conjectural account of the evolution of Indo-European during this period. He suggests that domestication of the wolf may have been a key advantage the Eurasiatic speakers had over the paleolithic Dene-Caucasian speakers of Europe and North Asia.
There are many pages on the Web discussing the I-E Homeland. One of many interesting ones is http://perso.wanadoo.fr/atil/atil/zzz.htm.
The Eurasiatic phylum, dominant in Europe and North Asia, may be one of the newer phyla, perhaps splitting off from Afro-asiatic less than 15 millennia ago. One of its major constituent subphyla is Indo-European (I-E), which has been identified as the early language of the first horse riders, the `Kurgans' from Eastern Europe. While early farming societies were egalitarian settlements; the Kurgans were aggressive semi-nomads who eventually imposed caste systems in Greece, India and elsewhere. I-E languages dominated Europe even before Roman ascendancy and in the post-Columbian era rapidly overwhelmed the `New World' as well.
The Indo-European language family split into its component parts about 5 millennia ago. That is already a long time as linguistic change goes, so many cognates in the family are hard to recognize. For example, French cinq and English five both derive from the same Indo-European word for the number five! --
penkwe [PIE] --> penpe [pre-Germanic] --> fi:mf [proto-Germanic] --> fi:f [old English] -->five
penkwe [PIE] --> kwinkwe [Latin] --> cinq
At first it's hard to believe cinq and five could be cognates. The key linguistic change which makes this possible is assimilation. The two consonants in the early word for five are similar in that both are labial -- said with the lips. Numbers are said frequently and quickly so there is a tendency to use a repeated consonant in a two-syllable word. The early Celtic and Germanic speakers chose to duplicate the bilabial p while the Italic speakers duplicated the labialized velar kw. (The latter later lost its labialization -- became just k -- further disguising the cognates.)
In addition to horse-riding and chariots, innovations of the Kurgans may have included domestication of sheep, cattle and barley (and eventually the associated by-products of wool, cheese, and beer, respectively), use of hemp and leather cords, and battle-axes. But the mobility provided by oxen-driven wagons and/or horseback riding was surely the key to their rapid ``conquest'' of Europe.
The Kurgans probably didn't overwhelm Europe or India with their numbers; they came as small bands of adventurers rather than vast armies. Instead of succumbing to Kurgan military power, prior inhabitants may have happily adopted the Kurgan culture and language as a means to share their technical innovations. (It is said that the ancient Ertebolle people of Denmark had resisted the Neolithic revolution for many centuries, but began planting barley when they learned the Kurgan recipe for beer!) There is an interesting cultural argument that explains why the indigenous farmers adopted the Kurgan language, rather than vice versa. The free-wheeling Kurgans would have welcomed newcomers able to communicate, while the earlier farmers in Southern Europe and India formed conservative homogeneous societies (pre-conscious in Jaynes' terminology) which were unprepared to accept, or learn from, outsiders.
Here's a map showing the origins and splitting of the early Indo-European languages. All dates are 1000's of years BC, and very approximate. Geographic locations are also very approximate. The place where Hittite split off from the rest of I-E (about 4500 BC ?) is unknown and just placed arbitrarily here.
There are various ways to guess these dates. Greek, Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian are so close linguistically that separation couldn't have occurred much before 3000 BC, but there is no historical evidence as would be expected if separation occurred more recently than the arrival of Greek-speaking Achaeans in Greece about 2200 BC. Separation of Tocharian and Western European from Indo-Slavo-Greek must have occurred earlier (association with Afanasievo and Corded Ware cultures respectively, each ca 3000 BC, is widely accepted) but probably after chariots and wagons were introduced in the Ukraine ca 3500 BC. (Cognates of `wheel' (*kwe-kwlo) are shared across most non-Hittite I-E branches, including Germanic and Tocharian.)
Five extinct I-E subphyla and 8 of the nine surviving subphyla are shown. The ninth, Albanian, may be linked to one of three otherwise extinct Balkan subphyla: Illyrian (Ill.), Thracian (Thr.) or Phrygian (Phr.).
In addition to the horse-rider shown in Ukraine 4000 BC, some important non-linguistic dates are shown in a distinct color: Farming arrived in Southern Europe about 7000 BC and spread to Central Europe (with a signature ``LBK'' pottery) about 5500 BC, developing into the Funnel-Beaker Culture (TRB) of Central European farmers about 4000 BC.
The `Kurgan' horse riders from Ukraine are widely accepted as the source of early Indo-Iranians, Greeks, Armenians and Balto-Slavics, but the source of Italo-Celtic and Germanic are controversial, as are the languages of the LBK and TRB cultures. Like the Kurgans, the TRB people used wheeled carts, and there was surely some communication between these two cultures. A popular theory identifies the first intrusions of Indo-Europeans into Central Europe as the Corded-Ware (Germanic?, ca 3000 BC), Battle-Axe (Balto-Slavic?), and Bell-Beaker (Italo-Celtic? ca 2500 BC) cultures, but it is disputed whether these evolved from TRB, or resulted from a Kurgan invasion.
It seems likely that a major linguistic impulse (call it ``Old European'') from SW Asia overwhelmed Europe a few millennia before the Kurgan culture, providing such languages as Etruscan, Pelasgian and, presumably, the language of the LBK culture, but none of these languages survive. (Basque probably has a Central Asian or North African origin more ancient than Old European.)
Some theorists believe that Old European was a sibling or parent of I-E itself, and that the Kurgans arrived in Ukraine from the West rather than the East. This view is supported by linguistic analysis of I-E's ``substrate'' (borrowings). In North Central Asia, I-E would have borrowed from Uralic and Caucasian and, only in the Western branches, ``Old European.'' In Asia Minor, I-E would have borrowed from Semitic and Kartevelian. In fact, the I-E substrate is Semitic and Kartevelian: for example the I-E words `taurus' (bull), `goat/kid', `star', `wine' and `seven' are all Semitic.
The most elaborate version of this theory leads to a Homeland in the Balkans and a chronology slightly earlier than that shown on the map above, perhaps with the groups moving SE becoming Hittite, a group moving North to merge with the Ertebolle-Ellerbek culture to form TRB, which spoke Germanic, groups moving East to become the Tocharians and Kurgans, and the Celtic and Italic peoples emerging at some point in Central Europe. In this theory, the Kurgans were still I-E progenitors, but the Western branches (Germanic, Celtic, Italic) were already evolving in Central Europe before any `Kurgan invasion.''
This theory leads to a chronology which seemed satisfactory to me once, but I've since switched to the opposite side, and now believe that the Gimbutas/Mallory explanation of I-E origins is obviously correct. I'll show my old remarks, and then explain why I was idiotic.
If I-E were born in NW Asia instead, one would be left with two big enigma: (1) Why has the language of the advanced TRB culture disappeared completely? ...
So What? Similarly, the Continental Celtic languages, which dominated much of Europe 2000 years ago, are extinct. (My other complaints were even more idiotic.)
The summary overview of the controversy has much to do with ``what looks like a homeland?'' which has much to do with geographical linguistics. The Austronesian may be assumed to have arisen in Formosa, based on a fulcrum of fanout. Trying this with Indo-European, the fulcrum is Black Sea, or more accurately, a little to its Northwest.
Most of the I-E branches seem to have originated near the Balkans, does this mean the Proto-IE people were Balkans or Balkano-Danubians?
I don't think so; indeed the Balkano-Danubist theory almost defeats itself with its very name, since the Danubian/Kurgan or Western/Balkan/Kurgan linguistic split their theory requires, doesn't really present itself. The IE tree is drawn as either ca. 10 branches breaking off simultaneously, or single branches splittling from a core every 2 centuries or so, rather than the 2-4 major branches that would be implied in any Balkan/Kurgan or Danubian/Kurgan system.
Amplifying on this last point,
any Danubist theory will imply a distinctive breakdown into
(Hitt ((Celt Ital) (Toch ((Balt Slav) Germ ((Hell Arme) (In-Ir))))))
Old-Balkan Danubian Tripolye Sredny Stog Yamnaya
(There are other ways to map I-E to cultures in a Danubist or Balkan theory, but the above is favored by Danubists and may be one of the least implausible.)
The traditional view of I-E is that there is at most
this much substructure:
(Hitt (Celt Ital Toch (Balt Slav) Germ Hell Arme (In-Ir)))
<--- "Secondary Prods. Revolution" or horse riding ---->
For their theory to be plausible, I-E Balkan/Danubists must posit that the lack of clear structure among I-E branches is anomalous, and that a correct tree structure explaining their Balkan/Danubian I-E expansion might come into view under the proper linguistic microscope.
Fortunately, colleagues of Prof. Ringe of Univ. Penn. have developed
such a "microscope" and Ringe's I-E family tree is now well respected.
(The mapping to cultures is mine, not Ringe's.)
(Hitt (Celt Ital Toch (Hell (Arme (Germ* ((Balt Slav) (In-Ir)))))))
Kwave-1 Kwave-2 Kwave-3 B.Axe/Corded_Ware Andronovo
(Germ* denotes the dominant superstratum in a Kwave-2/Kwave-3 hybrid language, as implied by Ringe's work. Kwave denotes a numbered Kurgan invasion in Gimbutas' theory.)
It seems impossible to map this structure to a Balkan or Danubian origin theory; yet it clearly shows a Kurgan I-E Homeland spinning off a new subphylum every few centuries.
Lack of affinity between Tocharian and Kurgan/Andronovo is always hard on a Balkan/Danubist theory, but note also that there's no way to arrange (Latin Greek Armenian Sanskrit) into a tree structure which fits both Ringe's work and a non-Kurgan I-E.
I think the illusion that the Balkans are the fulcrum of I-E procreation is explained very simply. The actual fulcrum, near the Ukraine, is very close to the Balkans and has a tendency to thrust (militarily) towards the Balkans. Kurgans were settling in Central Romania, just to the north of the Balkans, during the fifth millenium BC. As Kurgans (I-E speakers) left the I-E homeland (East European, or Pontic-Caspian, steppes) travelling southwest towards the agricultural riches and advanced metallurgy of the Balkans, the dialect of the emigrants would begin deviating from the core, possibly as they crossed the Danube River or thereabouts. Thus six or more of the branches of I-E would appear to derive from a Balkan fulcrum, but actually each be a particular wave of Kurgan-speaking immigrants to South Central Europe. The proto-Hittites probably split off this way ca 4000 BC, the proto-Celts ca 3600 BC, the proto-Greeks ca 3400 BC, the proto-Armenians ca 3200 BC and so on. (Note that this pinpoints the Satem shift as 3300 BC !) The microstructure that this would apply for the I-E family tree agrees with that determined by Professor Ringe of Pennsylvania.
An interesting way of looking at the I-E Homeland problem is to note that the major candidates, Ukraine, Balkans, poss. Anatolia, would be adjacent and almost equivalent if the Black Sea weren't interposed as a barrier.
But note that the ``barrier'' is an illusion. A coast or sea operates more as a conduit than barrier, especially if it's fresh water. A ``Great Flood'' is now supposed to have occurred in a shallow fresh-water Black Sea basin ca 5600 BC. This date corresponds with the rise of advanced farming and stockbreeding cultures to the North and Northwest of the Black Sea.
Scientists can't predict next week's weather, so it's no surprise they have trouble reconstructing linguistic change five or ten millennia ago. Yet the clues are tantalizing.
Today, all European languages come from the Eurasiatic phylum, with the sole exception of Basque. Doubtless there were other language phyla in Europe many millennia ago, but they have disappeared. India, on the other hand, still has languages from five of the twelve present-day phyla, as well as the unclassifiable Nahali language. With so many residual ancient languages in India, can their prehistory be guessed? Perhaps not; there may have been even greater linguistic diversity in ancient times and many of the important phyla may now be extinct.
Although there are 250 different Tibeto-Burman languages, their diversity is much less than a family like North Caucasian. With a mountainous habitat promoting diversity, one concludes that Tibeto-Burman is a recent arrival, appearing on the subcontinent long after the Neolithic revolution. Indo-Iranian (I-E) also has about 250 distinct languages, but is an even more recent arrival than Tibeto-Burman.
When people acquire a new language, they often retain vocabulary and other linguistic features of their older language. By careful analysis of Indo-Iranian and Tibeto-Burman, linguists can isolate such ancient linguistic traditions and even arrange them chronologically. When this is done, they find that Mundic must have been an important and widespread language family in prehistoric India. They also find an even more ancient ``Gangetic Language X'' which cannot be linked genetically to any present-day language.
Dravidian also shows up as a ``substrate language'' in Northern India and is widely believed to be the Harrapan language, but the matter is very controversial. (So-called Indocentrists make I-E the Harrapan tongue, but this theory is scoffed at outsied of India.) Rather more than to I-E, Dravidian seems to have lent its vocabulary to West Asian languages in the Uralic family. Theorists conclude therefore that Dravidian is a post-Neolithic arrival from West Asia. (Some theorists trace Dravidian back further to West Africa. The details of Dravidian prehistory are a mystery, but if it did traverse Egypt it may have left a clue: the ancient Dravidians and Egyptians both worshipped snakes.)
Mundic, Burushaski, Nahali (or rather their ancient precursors) and the hypothesized Language X are the candidates for ancient Indian languages predating the Harrappans. (Not to mention Indo-Pacific, which has left little trace.) Another ancient language with no known relationship to any other language is Kusunda -- recently extinct -- which was spoken in the Himalayan region before the arrival of Tibeto-Burman. Yet another ancient Himalayan language is called pre-Tharu; it is also extinct but makes its presence known in the substrate of Napal's Tharu languages.
Conventional histories emphasize the flood plains of the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates and China's Yellow River as the cradles of civilization with the Indus River as an ``also-ran'' but the early Indus civilization was in many ways the greatest of all. Villages appeared there about 6500 BC, a thousand years before the villages on the lower Nile. But while the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates civilizations have changed hands many times over the millennia, the Indus civilization didn't change hands -- it just disappeared without a trace.
Between about 2500 BC and 1750 BC a bronze-age culture flourished in present-day Pakistan and NW India. (It may have evolved from the Kot-Diji civilization ca 3000 BC.) In its day it was both the largest and the most advanced civilization in the world. Homes were made of fire-hardened brick; cities were well-organized and even had sewer systems. There is little evidence of any religion, nor of military activity. Like most early agrarians the Harappans seem to have had an egalitarian society. Their crafts were very advanced, as were their sea-faring skills. They engaged in trade with the Sumerian civilization to their West. Fragments survive of a beautiful pictographic script which has never been deciphered. No one knows what modern language the Harappan language most resembled.
The names of rivers are among the most conservative of words, often surviving even when a population is replaced. Just the sound of the word ``Mississippi'' tells us that the first Americans didn't speak English. But this doesn't seem to help much towards solving the Harappan mystery; they probably inherited a placename vocabulary from an earlier period and might themselves have wondered what the earlier inhabitants spoke.
Although only 24 distinct Mundic languages are recognized today, many scholars believe that an ancient Mundic language (or related Austric language) was prevalent in prehistoric West India. Perhaps the Harappans and even the Sumerians spoke an ancient Mundic language. One scholar finds strong similarities between Harappan script and a rare Mundic script (though spoken languages and scripts often have unrelated origins). Another scholar finds similarities between Harappan script and Easter Island script! (The Easter Island language, Polynesian, is classed in the same Austric superphylum as Mundic.) This gives rise to a provocative (if far-fetched) theory since the Polynesians and the Harappans were the two greatest seafaring people before the rise of the Phoenicians, and the rise of Harappan seapower is roughly contemporaneous with the arrival of Polynesians in the Indian Ocean. (The Polynesians certainly investigated the Indian coast, although most of their permanent settlements were on islands.)
Other experts prefer Burushaski as their guess for Harappan language, and a small fringe group (the ``Indocentrists'') claims that the Harappans spoke an Indo-European language. Dravidian was once the default choice for the ancient Harappan language, but that theory seems to have many skeptics today.
The Harappans suffered from the erratic behavior of their two rivers, the Indus and Saraswati, and many of their cities had to be completely rebuilt several times. Finally, about when the Saraswati River disappeared for good, the Harappan civilization disappeared, and none of today's ethnic Indian groups claim it as their heritage.
The dominant cultural tradition in today's India is that of the Vedic Aryans. They appear in history a few centuries after the downfall of the Harappans but prepared written legends that go further back. Both India's famous caste system and its dominant religion, Hinduism, trace their roots to the Vedic Aryans. There is no controversy about the Vedic language. It was Indo-European, and eventually evolved into the dominant written language of Sanskrit.
Where did the Vedic Aryans come from? Their own histories imply they came from Eastern India but there is very little historical or archaeological evidence. It is the nature of a caste system that a second-tier of people is elevated to support the small first-tier population, and there would be several good reasons why histories like the Rgveda would document the second-tier people rather than the first-tier, especially if the latter were illiterate foreign invaders. The Aryan invaders provided India with a new religion and a new language, but the ancient Indian folklore was modified, not replaced. Much confusion in the Indian mystery dissolves when this is recognized.
The Rgveda therefore can't be trusted and archaeological evidence is ambiguous, but one science clarifies where the first-tier Aryans must have come from: linguistics. The Aryan languages are so similar to Slavic and Greek that the Aryan precursors could not have left the common ``I-E Homeland'' before 3000 BC and probably left even later. Either the language now dominant throughout northern India arrived from West Asia during or after the Harappan era, or India itself must have been the I-E Homeland. The latter case completely conflicts with linguistic evidence, but in the former case, one imagines small troops of warriors from Northwest Asia crossing the Khyber Pass and, with superior military technology (horses, armor), eventually dominating an entire subcontinent. This process occurred only a few centuries before the Celtic conquest of Western Europe, but while the Celts have proud legends of their origin far to the East, the Aryans of India were so outnumbered they may have felt a need to disguise their foreign origin, perhaps even inventing a religion for a similar purpose.
The earliest Aryan invaders may have cohabited with the Harappans, with the main invasion arriving at or after the Harappan collapse. That such a magnificent civilization disappeared completely suggests that the Aryan invaders were a destructive influence, but there is no evidence that the Aryan invasion precipitated the Harappan collapse. In fact there's only circumstantial evidence that there was an Aryan invasion at all. A `DNA signature' is visible with most major prehistoric migrations but there is no such signature for the presumed `Aryan invasion.' The Hindu Kush Mountains were a formidable obstacle, so the `invasion' may have been pulled off by a small number of male warriors who didn't bring their womenfolk -- yet it led to almost complete replacement of the linguistic base of Northern India.
No history book records the `Aryan invasion' (though if it truly led to the invention of Hinduism and the imposition of the caste system it was a profound event) and most archaeological evidence is ambiguous or controversial. The bronze-age civilization of Bactria (Afghanistan) contemporaneous with the Harappans may be the `smoking gun' which demonstrates Indo-European arrival with signature I-E elements like sacrificial altars and pictures of trumpets (denoting I-E cavalry). However the strongest evidence that an `Aryan invasion' must have occurred uses tantalizing cultural and, especially, linguistic clues.
When the vocabularies of Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian are compared, it is found that they share common words for temperate animals and crops, but have developed independent words for tropical things. This is a strong suggestion that the Aryans came from temperate Northwest Asia: the Balto-Slavs certainly didn't come from tropical India.
Linguistic diversity is always greatest in the place where language has been entrenched the longest. Linguists are confident that Formosa was the original homeland of the Polynesian people even though there's no archaeological evidence of it: there is more diversity among the aboriginal languages of Formosa than among all other Austronesian languages put together. The lack of diversity among the Indic branches of I-E yields a strong argument that India cannot be the I-E homeland: even Persian is classed in the same subphylum as Indic, and it must have split off before Hindu literacy (Sanskrit) acted as a brake on Indic diversity.
The theory that the Harappans were related to the Aryans is also suspect. The Rgveda tales describe a rural culture with primitive dwellings of stone and bamboo: where is the advanced civilization of the Harappans? The Harappans ate fish and mollusks; the Aryans abhorred all seafood. Harappan society was egalitarian, perhaps matriarchal; the Aryans had a male-dominant society with ritual sacrifices. Harappan art emphasized bull, tiger and elephant; Aryan art emphasized horse and cow (eventually leading to Hindu cow worship). In two areas traditional Aryan technology exceeded Harappan: they had iron and spoked wheels. Each of these was a Central Asian or Eastern European invention.
I hope no one takes offense at my suggestion that 35 centuries of Indian culture are based on a geographic fraud committed by a few Aryan invaders. I have no ethnic agenda but just find such reconstruction fascinating.
Ancient human cultural innovations diffused throughout the world rapidly. Although trying to relate these innovations to specific linguistic impulses (e.g., Cauco-Sinitic = Magdalenian tools; Austro-Asiatic = bronze smelting; Eurasiatic = domestication of wolf; Indo-European = domestication of horse) may be unreliable and oversimplified, the linguistic associations do provide tantalizing clues about some of the details.
(Muhammed Ali beat George Foreman, and George Foreman beat Joe Frasier. But Joe Frasier beat Muhammed Ali! A simpler version of the same ``tri-modal equilibrium'' is the Rock-Scissors-Paper game played by children.)
Languages change in predictable ways. It is tempting to compare with physics where excess potential energy is expelled: Water flows downhill; Linguistic forms become more relaxed. In such schemes, we don't expect flowing water to return to its origin (except in an Escher drawing). The Ali-Foreman-Frasier paradigm is more complex than a simple minimization scenario, and Ali did return to be champion!
Language relaxes. It may come as no surprise that our words ``chimney'' and ``nite'' come from Middle English ``chimenee'' and ``night'' but it would be unexpected for the third syllable or extraneous fricative to reappear in the future. Similarly if our schoolteachers indoctrinated their students to articulate ``I have to go'' we'd be saying ``I hafta go'' again after a few decades. (These examples of linguistic ``relaxation'' involve physical relaxation of lips and other vocal apparatus, but I mean the term in a more general way to include relaxation of grammatical rules, and so on.)
Spanish padre and English father are cognates, but a linguist could state with some confidence that the former word is probably closer to the ancient form. The phonetic transformations p --> f and d --> th are much more common than their inverses: human speech evolves towards the more relaxed form.
Similarly, grammatical forms relax. The German definite articles der, das, die, dem, den, etc. have evolved into the more relaxed single-word formula of English, where only the exists. (Since the German articles all mean almost the same thing, it's simpler -- more ``relaxed'' -- to render them the same.) The way German mutates the sounds within a word to distinguish cases is called inflectional grammar. English replaces this with an isolational grammar in which fewer, fixed words are used, with the semantic role of case inflections taken over by word order, or added word particles (e.g. prepositions). German and English are relatively close; a comparison of Latin with English would show even more examples of the inflection --> isolation transformation. Better yet, compare any Indo-European language with the reconstructed ``Proto-Indo-European'' language: PIE has more grammatical cases than any of its daughter languages.
But now the paradox. If inflectional grammar has a tendency to relax to an isolational form, doesn't this imply that, after so many millennia, human speech would have ``relaxed'' to isolational grammar long ago? PIE developed from much older languages; where did its inflections come from?
The solution to this paradox arises from the fact that isolational grammar is not stable but has its own preferred evolutionary path. When inflected forms are collapsed into single isolated words, meaning is lost, but the resultant vocabulary of fixed words provides its own solution. In the sentence ``you all will have read this'', ``all'' is combined with ``you'' since English has lost the inflection which distinguishes second-person plural from singular, and ``will have'' are inserted since English has lost most of its inflected tenses. The two pronunciations of ``read'' survive as evidence that English still retains some inflectional grammar. Combining words, when done in a regular way, is called agglutinative grammar. Over time, such regularization means that an isolational grammar will tend to evolve into an agglutinative grammar.
Eventually, in agglutinative grammar, long phrases are repeated so often that it becomes natural to say them quickly, distorting syllables or even blurring them together. For example the French seven-word phrase ``Qu'est-ce qu'il y a'' is pronounced with just three syllables ``Kes kil ya'' (and has a meaning similar to the single English question syllable What's). This final relaxation mode changes agglutinative grammar into inflectional grammar. We've come full circle! The transformations are not automatic, and a language family may exist for many millennia without ever going through an inflectional phase, but this does explain how inflectional grammars can arise.
What does this have to do with Ali-Foreman-Frasier? Just that at least three modalities are required to develop this dynamic behavior. With only two heavyweight contenders, Ali would always beat Foreman and the crown wouldn't change hands. But since Frasier could beat Ali, but lost in turn to Foreman, there was no single-champion equilibrium.
In the same way, the three grammar relaxation modes | <urn:uuid:4b0a83e8-2861-45ca-94de-647c60fc487a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://james.fabpedigree.com/lmold.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953842 | 8,188 | 2.765625 | 3 |
2012 has been a year of blistering heat, wildfires, and drought throughout much of the United States. With the specter of climate change looming, experts believe such extreme weather events will only become more common. As temperatures increase and population grows, demands on the already strained power supply will lead to increased occurrences of brownouts and rolling blackouts.
With fossil fuels having fallen out of favor, nuclear increasingly viewed as risky, and renewable energy nowhere near the point at which it can take the place of coal, one has to wonder how the growing need for power will be met. In the minds of many, energy efficiency is a vital strategy to mitigate energy-related demand and curb the impact the rising cost of electricity has on bottom lines everywhere.
In buildings, which represent 40 percent of our total energy requirements, automation and control technologies play a key role in efforts to reduce energy consumption. Energy-harvesting, wireless systems, which require no maintenance and provide a high degree of flexibility in system planning and implementation, are becoming increasingly popular in building monitoring and control.
Cooling the Economic Engine of Growth
Nearly all of the world's booming cities are located in the tropics. These hot and humid areas will be home to nearly 1 billion new power-consuming individuals by 2025. As population grows and temperatures rise, demand for air conditioning will grow substantially.
Scientific studies show that health improves and productivity increases significantly with cooling of indoor spaces in hot weather.
“It is true that air conditioning made the economy happen for Singapore and is doing so for other emerging economies,” Pawel Wargocki, an expert on indoor-air quality for the International Center for Indoor Environment and Energy at the Technical University of Denmark, said.
In India, air conditioning has become a cultural priority, sending scientists scrambling to invent more-efficient equipment and better coolant gases to minimize energy use and planet-warming emissions. This demonstrates the beneficial relationship air conditioning can have with economic development.
The Cost to Cool
Research shows an alarming trend with respect to air-conditioning use. In 2007, for instance, only 11 percent of households in Brazil and 2 percent in India had air conditioning, compared with 87 percent in the United States. These data reflect considerable latent demand, with current energy consumption not yet reflecting what will happen when less-developed countries have more money and more people who can afford luxuries such as air conditioning.
Optimizing Cooling With Energy-Harvesting, Wireless Automation
Used in the control of HVAC and lighting, energy-harvesting, wireless technologies can be expected to save 20 to 50 percent on energy. For example, if a sensor detects that a room no longer is occupied, lights can be switched off and the HVAC systems controlled automatically, saving an average of 30 percent compared with a non-automated system. Alternatively, if enough natural sunlight is entering a room, lights can be programmed to dim or switch off automatically.
To appreciate the broad utility of wireless sensors, consider that up to 50 percent of the energy used to heat or cool a space is wasted through open windows with the HVAC running at full power. In a typical building, hotels in particular, a sensor can be used to detect an open window or balcony door. The HVAC unit then can be signaled to reduce heating or cooling or shut off until the window or door is closed. Individual room or area temperature monitoring and control (Figure 1) can reduce HVAC energy consumption by up to 30 percent alone.
A Standard for Green Buildigs
Devices that are self-powered, meaning do not require wires or batteries, collect energy from their surroundings, including from motion, indoor light, and temperature differentials. This not only eliminates complicated and costly cabling, it ensures virtually maintenance-free operation.
The EnOcean protocol, which recently became an international standard, supports self-powered devices. It is the only standard designed to support very-low-power devices and energy-harvesting applications. EnOcean-based products use little power by delivering very short data packets and utilizing frequency bands with excellent signal propagation and minimal interference.
The EnOcean standard utilizes the less-crowded 868-MHz and 315-MHz frequency bands, making it suitable for use worldwide. This provides a safeguard against other wireless transmitters, while offering fast system response and eliminating data collisions. The range of EnOcean wireless sensors is about 900 ft in open spaces, such as warehouses, and up to 90 ft inside of buildings. Signals can be extended using repeaters.
With EnOcean technology, an intelligent system can be realized by interconnecting automated thermostats, window contacts, humidity sensors, occupancy sensors, carbon-dioxide (CO2) sensors, and more. For example, a room controller receives information related to temperature, humidity, window position, or CO2 from sensors and controls the opening and closing of valve actuators for radiators. At the same time, the room controller sends information to an energy controller. Demand is calculated as a function of outdoor temperature and flow temperature to control energy generation (Figure 2).
The more complex a cooling installation, the greater the amount of information needed to control it. The utilization of single-room controllers with energy-harvesting, wireless technology and self-powered, wireless sensors can reduce significantly, if not optimize, the energy needs of a modern cooling plant.
High Energy Savings and Fast ROI
Occupancy-based HVAC and lighting control and monitoring systems can help reduce building energy consumption by up to 30 percent, often with a return on investment (ROI) of three years or less. In more variable cases, such as hotel and student dormitory rooms, which typically are occupied around 10 hr a day and vacant more than 100 days a year, energy reduction can be more than 50 percent, with a ROI of less than 18 months.
Companies supporting the EnOcean standard see increasing interest, particularly within the hospitality industry, in places such as Hawaii and Texas, where warm temperatures mean an almost year-round need for air conditioning. One, a U.S.-based manufacturer of wireless, batteryless energy-management technology specializing in Internet-protocol-based building automation, is leveraging the desire for energy efficiency in Hawaii. Its key-card-based system is saving a hotel in Oahu an average of 50 percent on HVAC-related costs and 45 percent on lighting costs. Another manufacturer recently began implementing a key-card-based system for a large hotel chain in Houston. The project includes five points of in-room control and an in-depth measurement and verification plan. Even though the cost of electricity in Texas is relatively low, the hotel expects to achieve a ROI in three years, possibly two.
The Role of Building Codes
The move toward energy-wise code modification began in California with the adoption of Title 24, a set of standards with energy-saving requirements for walls, roofs, windows, insulation, lighting, and HVAC systems. The introduction of Title 24 has saved Californians billions of dollars in electrical and natural-gas expenses. Although per-capita electricity use in the United States has increased by nearly 50 percent since the mid-1970s, California essentially has maintained its per-capita electricity use.
Other states have taken aggressive approaches to developing building codes. Hawaii, for instance, recently passed legislation requiring a method of adjusting thermostat setpoints and turning off permanently installed light fixtures and outlets powering portable light fixtures and entertainment devices when a “sleeping unit” in a new hotel or resort is unoccupied. To meet this requirement, hotel owners can utilize a key-card switch or an occupancy sensor.
Let's say you want to retrofit your building with energy-efficient HVAC or lighting, but funding is elusive. Fortunately, there are strategies to pay for energy-efficiency projects by significantly lowering your tax burden. Some companies help property and facility owners leverage tax incentives to implement energy systems.
One tax benefit that can be applied to energy-efficient construction and improvements is found in Section 179D of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Also known as the Commercial Buildings Tax Deduction, 179D includes full and partial tax deductions for investments in commercial buildings intended to increase the efficiency of energy-consuming functions. The deduction available is up to 60 cents per square foot each for lighting, HVAC, and building envelope. These deductions are applicable to buildings built or retrofitted after Dec. 31, 2005. To qualify for the deduction, a taxpayer must receive third-party energy-efficiency certification.
The Future of Wireless Is Now
Wireless, batteryless devices provide improved flexibility, enhanced occupant comfort, and reduced energy consumption and are virtually maintenance-free.
Companies utilizing EnOcean technology are driving innovative solutions in HVAC and lighting control. One, for instance, combines wired, wireless, and Web technologies to provide flexible options for interfacing EnOcean and BACnet, as well as the ability to control lighting and HVAC with one controller. Another introduced the first solar-powered, energy-harvesting-based diffuser. Collectively, the EnOcean ecosystem continues to push the limits of wireless technology, proving that energy-management devices can operate efficiently and effectively, even without batteries.
Did you find this article useful? Send comments and suggestions to Executive Editor Scott Arnold at email@example.com.
Cory Vanderpool is business-development director for North America for EnOcean Alliance Inc. (www.enocean-alliance.org), a consortium of 300 companies worldwide dedicated to advancing self-powered, wireless monitoring and control systems for sustainable buildings. Previously, she founded and served as executive director of GreenLink Alliance, a non-profit organization promoting energy conservation in buildings and tax incentives for building owners. She has a doctorate in environmental science and policy from George Mason University. | <urn:uuid:ad427e72-32d3-49e7-b183-d7a46a8ea9ab> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hpac.com/print/archive/energy-harvesting-wireless-automation?quicktabs_11=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00074-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930415 | 2,030 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Gilfillan, Stuart M V and Wilkinson, Mark and Haszeldine, R. Stuart and Shipton, Zoe K. and Nelson, Steven T and Poreda, Robert J. (2011) He and Ne as tracers of natural CO2 migration up a fault from a deep reservoir. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 5 (6). 1507–1516. ISSN 1750-5836Full text not available in this repository. (Request a copy from the Strathclyde author)
Capture and geological storage of CO2 is emerging as an attractive means of economically abating anthropogenic CO2 emissions from point sources. However, for the technology to be widely deployed it is essential that a reliable means to assess a site for both storage performance and regulation compliance exists. Hence, the ability to identify the origin of any CO2 seepage measured at the near-surface and ground surface and determine if it originates from a deep storage site or a different source is critical. As an analogue for post-emplacement seepage, here we examine natural CO2 rich springs and groundwater wells in the vicinity of the St. Johns Dome CO2 reservoir located on the border of Mid-Arizona/New Mexico, USA. Extensive travertine deposits in the region document a long history of migration of CO2 rich fluids to the surface. The presence of CO2 rich fluids today are indicated by high levels of HCO3− in surface spring and groundwater well waters. We document measurements of dissolved noble gases and carbon isotopes from these springs and wells. We show that a component of the He fingerprint measured in gaseous CO2 sampled in the deep reservoir, can be traced along a fault plane to occur in waters from both groundwater wells and the majority of springs emerging at the surface above the reservoir. Our results show for the first time that CO2 can be fingerprinted from source to surface using noble gases and illustrates that this technique could be used to identify dissolved CO2 migration from engineered storage sites.
|Keywords:||carbon capture and storage, geochemical tracing of CO2, noble gases, carbon isotopes, geological storage of CO2, natural analogues, Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General), Energy(all), Pollution, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law|
|Subjects:||Technology > Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)|
|Department:||Faculty of Engineering > Civil and Environmental Engineering|
|Depositing user:||Pure Administrator|
|Date Deposited:||13 Oct 2011 13:33|
|Last modified:||17 Jun 2016 02:48| | <urn:uuid:360ad849-c805-4542-bdbe-9c861dc19754> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/34323/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00154-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.865612 | 548 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Let's Stop HIV Together
The Let's Stop HIV Together campaign raises awareness about HIV and its impact on the lives of all Americans, and fights stigma by showing that persons with HIV are real people—mothers, fathers, friends, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, partners, wives, husbands, and co-workers.
More than a million people are living with HIV in the U.S., and the images and stories in this campaign are reminders that HIV does not discriminate across race, gender, or age.
We must re-double our efforts to assure that all people know about HIV, how to prevent transmission, their HIV status, and that people with HIV are linked to care, and treatment and prevention services. We can stop HIV Together—by Getting the Facts. Getting Tested. and Getting involved.
Every voice and every story is important. Individuals featured in Let's Stop HIV Together have shared their stories to raise awareness, fight stigma about HIV, encourage HIV prevention and testing, and champion the power of relationships in the personal and public fight to stop HIV.
- Page last reviewed: March 15, 2016
- Page last updated: March 15, 2016
- Content source: | <urn:uuid:f3dd5a0b-2961-40ae-a067-9e1899c14a97> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cdc.gov/actagainstaids/campaigns/lsht/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00164-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956558 | 243 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Digital Light Processing (DLP)
Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology is a video technology owned, promoted and trademarked by Texas Instruments for video playback. DLP technology is used in rear-projection HDTVs, as well as front projector units. There are designs that use multiple DLP chips to add additional resolution to the video image on the high end of front projectors.
How DLP Works
DLP technology uses micro-mirrors the way an LCD use pixels to reflect color and light onto a screen. The resolution of the DLP HDTV is directly related to the number of mirrors that can have light reflected from them. Through movement of the mirrors, the DLP device and create colors and shades of gray that make up a video image. Many video enthusiasts and video calibrators say DLP technology makes the best, deepest blacks for HDTV use.
There are two main "flavors" of DLP:
1-chip (one chip) DLP projectors are the entry level of front projection technology using Texas Instrument's Digital Light Projection system. One-chip DLP projectors use a color wheel to create color. 1-chip DLP projectors are generally not as bright as 3-chip designs.
3-chip (three-chip) DLP projectors are at the highest level of Texas Instrument's video front projector video technology. Each chip is dedicated to the three primary colors (red, green and blue), providing much more projector power than in a one-chip unit.
While prices of digital projectors have become amazingly affordable in recent years, the additional cost for three-chip DLP projectors is generally justified by their ability to create a bright image on much larger screen sizes than 1-chip DLPs. | <urn:uuid:6f5af979-87d8-4822-8b59-c5beeffbaf72> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hometheaterreview.com/digital-light-processing-dlp/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403508.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00096-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921559 | 362 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Vietnam is low land, facing the Pacific oceans which will compress and force water under great pressure to move toward the Indian Ocean. Thus, there is a doubling effect of the water that will assault the coasts, in that was sloshing inland into Vietnam during the flood tides that occurs during the shift and the hours following will not be a passive flow, but a scouring flow. As with Thailand, none remaining in Vietnam are expected to live. Boats and hapless humans dragged along with a scouring tide will find themselves dragged under, unable to resist the flow, until long past the drowning point. After the shift, Vietnam will quickly go under water in any case, being low land, as the existing poles melt and the oceans rise some 675 feet above the current sea level. Like the Philippines, Vietnam will not be a country after the shift.
Note Indonesia Elevation Loss commentary.
Note Southeast Asia commentary. | <urn:uuid:16c02dfc-8fcf-41c1-91ea-c3b51aebfb85> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.zetatalk4.com/info/tinfx254.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00054-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939651 | 188 | 2.625 | 3 |
From Charles Poliquin
You are probably aware that the recent red meat—heart health study missed the boat. Media reports misrepresented the study, while the research group that did the study fell prey to imprecise interpretations of their own results. A closer look shows that it was the type of bacteria in the gut that led to an increased risk of heart disease when eating an omnivorous diet, not the red meat itself.
A short version of the study reveals the following:
In the red meat study, researchers found that depending on the type of bacteria in the gut, eating red meat can lead the gut macrobiota to produce TMAO, which is the compound that increases atherosclerosis risk by about 11 percent.
Gut bacteria will live off of what you eat. If you eat a low fiber diet with greater protein content, your gut bacteria will be more inflammatory (bad) than if you eat a high fiber diet from whole food sources. Now, the diet of the subjects in the study was not reported—all we know is that there were omnivores and vegetarians.
However, it’s a reasonable guess that the omnivores ate a typical Western diet that included meat and had a relatively low fiber intake. Vegetarians tend to consume more fiber than meat eaters, so let’s assume that the vegetarians in the study ate more fiber than the omnivores. It’s highly likely that it was the difference in fiber intake, and the different proportion of good or bad gut bacteria that contributed to the higher production of TMAO in the omnivores.
Of course, all fiber sources are not created equally. A recent review looked at the effect of “ancestral” carbs that are eaten on a Paleo-style diet compared to “Western” carbs on gut bacteria. Researchers noted that there are groups such as the Kitavan Islanders of Melanesia in Oceania who eat their “ancestral” diet with a high intake of carbohydrates (60 to 70 percent of the diet) from root vegetables and fruit, with some consumption of meat and fish. They eat no Western foods, virtually no grains, flour, sugar, or oil. They are lean and virtually free of heart disease, obesity, and diabetes.
The root tubers, leafy vegetables, fruit, and nuts of the Kitavan diet provide carbs that are not very energy dense and have cells that remain largely intact with cooking. In contrast, when energy dense grains are processed, cellular walls are broken down. When they enter the gut they stimulate the production of an inflammatory kind of bacteria, whereas the whole plant-based carbs stimulate bacteria that have the opposite effect.
Researchers suggest that gut bacteria dictate an individual’s body composition, cholesterol profile, and long-term heart health.
Therefore, it is absolutely critical that you solve your gut health if you are eating a high protein diet. Here is how to apply this:
• Shoot for nine servings of fiber-rich veggies a day. If you’re not getting that much, you may want to supplement with fiber.
• Eliminate ALL processed foods—that’s processed grains, fat, and sugar. Stick with whole foods.
• Opt for pasture-raised, organic meat and animal products whenever possible.
• Take a probiotic to support a healthy gut.
Spreadbury, I., et al. Comparison with Ancestral Diets Suggests Dense Acellular Carbohydrates Promote Inflammatory Microbiota, and May Be The Primary Dietary Cause of Leptin Resistance and Obesity. Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, and Obesity: Targets and Therapy. 2012.5, 175-189. | <urn:uuid:513622fc-a97d-4dfe-8cc0-ffa97ce551c8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://anabolicminds.com/forum/content/making-red-meat-3516/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00095-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938731 | 764 | 2.9375 | 3 |
#5 Hands-on Learning!This is the obvious one... students can apply what they learn about the human body and see it first hand on the frog!
#4 The Smell!I know... I know this one doesn't seem like a reason to convince you! However... if you did any dissection in high school or in the middle school years you remember how horrible the smell was. However, now you can order frogs that are not kept in formaldehyde... so the smell isn't so bad. The activity is worth the minor smell for a few days!
#3 The Curiosity that Comes Alive!My rule for dissection is that students don't have to be the ones to cut, but they do have to observe. I tell them that if they don't want to cut they need to find a willing buddy to do the dissecting part. It's amazing because by the end of class every students is involved and curious about the dissection. This year I used a paper frog first, which generated a ton of curiosity with students. The one I used is from Getting Nerdy with Mel and Gerdy, it was easy and the kids LOVED it! The picture below shows the kids dissecting with their science notebooks open to the paper frog they had made before hand.
#2 This can be done as a large group or in small groupsThere are few lessons where you get to choose large group or small groups and still have every students focus and engaged. In my classroom we are able to get enough frogs so that students can choose to be in groups of two to four. Most of my students picked to be in groups of twos or threes. However, this activity could lend itself to do it as a large group. You could purchase one frog and dissect it under a document camera. I would still allow students that wanted to do the dissecting, that way it still gives them some hands on experience with the frog. Another bonus to whole group means it can still be done even if you don't have funding for every two to three kids to have their own frog.
#1 It aligns so well with the Human Body!And here is where my freebie comes in... Dissection Organization at it's best! I did two days of dissection and the first day I didn't use this sheet... For the second day I found this idea on Pinterest, there was no link just a picture, so I created a sheet my kiddos could use. Check it out in my TpT Store. It gave the space for the kids to find all of the organs and allowed me to do a quick assessment that they were able to see it all. At the end of the day were were able to do a gallery walk and see everyones dissections and how the organs differed in different sexes, as well as different specimens.
I am hoping this helps you and that you'll be willing to try dissection in your classroom.
Let me know in the comments if you have any great tips when you're dissecting. | <urn:uuid:658a2b66-cd07-434b-90cc-aabd1bd2e1bc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://colorfulteaching.blogspot.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00138-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980669 | 620 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Did you know?
The Gariep Dam, completed in 1971, is the largest dam in South Africa. 'Gariep' is an ancient San word for 'great water'.
Perhaps the most beautiful dam in South Africa, the Gariep Dam lies between the Free State and Eastern Cape provinces.
This massive piece of water covers more than 370 sq km when full, and can store nearly 6 000-million cubic litres, giving life and flow to the Great Fish River, the Sundays River and, the mother of all South African rivers, the Orange.
It was officially opened in 1971 and overflowed for the first time the next year. In 1975 an 82km tunnel was opened, sending water from the Gariep into both the Fish River Valley and the Sundays River Valley.
Overlooking the great expanse of water is the town of Gariep Dam, established in 1960 for the resident labour force. As the youngest town in South Africa, Gariep Dam has become a popular holiday resort, and is home to about 600 people. On a ridge overlooking the dam is the De Stijl Gariep Hotel, a surprisingly cosmopolitan establishment you would probably expect to see in a large city more often than a tiny Free State village. It is popular with locals, contractors working the area and visitors to the dam.
At the waterside is a Forever Resorts holiday camp, complete with chalets and boating facilities. Nearby is the Gariep Nature Reserve, which runs around part of the dam.
Two more lakeside reserves (the Oviston Nature Reserve and the Tussen-die-Riviere Reserve near Bethulie) will one day combine with the Gariep Nature Reserve to form nearly 100 000ha of ‘wilderness at the water’.
The other great attraction of Gariep Dam is in the air: there’s an airfield with a double-tarred runway, and the kind of aerial conditions that make the district ideal for flying gliders.
International gliding championships are held there every December, and a number of world gliding records have been set in this area.
Travel tips & Planning info
Who to contact
How to get here
The dam is situated along the N1, about 150 km south of Bloemfontein, and 50 km north-east of Colesberg.
Best time to visit
Summertime (October to March), when the waterside fun and the gliding are at their best.
Around the area
Have lunch at the Glasgow Pont Hotel in Norval’s Pont; sunsets from the deck of the De Stijl Gariep Hotel are spectacular.
Tours to do
Gariep Dam is at the centre of the Gariep Route, an interesting overland tour that can take up to a week to complete. It includes Philippolis, Colesberg, Bethulie and a number of other small towns in the region.
A visit to the Gariep Dam should be part of your self-drive experience around the Free State, Karoo or cross-country.
What will it cost
For both De Stijl Gariep Hotel and the Forever Gariep Resort, a double room is R800 to R1000, depending on the season. Contact both for special rates. For other accommodation options, visit the Gariep Route website.
Length of stay
Two days are recommended, so you can explore the Gariep Route.
What to pack
For summer, pack light. Remember, you will be spending time at the waterside, so pack something a little warmer for the evenings.
Where to stay
Either in a comfortable chalet at the Forever Resort at the waterfront, or at the classy De Stijl Gariep Hotel on the hill overlooking the dam.
What to eat
De Stijl Gariep Hotel offers good quality dishes of all varieties; or you might want to stay in a self-catering chalet and have a braai (barbecue).
Check the Gariep Route website for happenings in the area.
A miniature windpump from one of the crafters on the outskirts of Colesberg is a portable memento. | <urn:uuid:fb913f61-c5fc-469d-9e6e-96d40382e805> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-gariep-dam | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00137-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927156 | 880 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The talk is oriented to newbies to linux. The talk will cover a short overview on the old and good static /dev, devfs and a not so short overview on udev (dynamic /dev).
The goals of the udev project are:
To provide these features, udev is developed in three separate projects: namedev, libsysfs and, of course, udev. Thus, the talk will also give an overview on sysfs and namedev. Also, how udev works to assign persistent names. Writing rules and some examples. What is hotplug, hal, and dbus.
And last, how hotplug, hal&dbus, sysfs and udev fit together. The talk will be based on kernel 2.6.12 or newer.
Lecture slides in gzipped PDF.
Back to the Club's homepage | <urn:uuid:4c7ef3ce-f185-4b0c-a22a-bb7d5dcbcc10> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.haifux.org/hebrew/lectures/143/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00163-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.858597 | 180 | 2.640625 | 3 |
( Alias BLACKLOW, BLACLOE, ALBIUS, ANGLUS).
Born in Essex, 1593; died in London, 6 July, 1676. Through his mother, Mary Plowden who married Richard White of Hutton, Essex, he was grandson of the lawyer, Edmund Plowden. Educated at St. Omer , Valladolid, and Douai, he was ordained priest on 25 March, 1617; he studied at the Sorbonne, became bachelor of divinity, and returned to Douai to teach theology, which he did, with intervals, till 1630, when he became president of the English College, Lisbon. In 1633 he resigned and returned to England, where he devoted himself to the writing of about forty works, which caused a bitter theological controversy. Not only was he accused of employing new expressions and manners of speech not usual in Scholastic theology, but his views on purgatory, hell, and the infallibility of the pope, were unsound. Exception was also taken to his politico-religious views, especially his teaching in favour of passive obedience to any established government. Several of White's opinions were censured by the Inquisition in decrees dated 14 May, 1655, and 7 Sept., 1657, and many of his friends and former students publicity disclaimed his principles. Finally, he withdrew the censured opinions and submitted himself and his writings to the Holy See. He was chiefly opposed by George Leyburn, the president of Douai, and Robert Pugh, the latter of whom wrote a life of him, not known now to exist, also a work called "Blacklo's Cabal", in which he accuses him of opposition to the regulars and to episcopal authority, and disloyalty to the pope. White, however, counted amongst his friends some of the leading secular clergy , who defended the solidity of his fundamental doctrine and maintained his loyalty to the Church, while disclaiming the doctrines to which exception was taken and which he had retracted.
The Catholic Encyclopedia is the most comprehensive resource on Catholic teaching, history, and information ever gathered in all of human history. This easy-to-search online version was originally printed between 1907 and 1912 in fifteen hard copy volumes.
Designed to present its readers with the full body of Catholic teaching, the Encyclopedia contains not only precise statements of what the Church has defined, but also an impartial record of different views of acknowledged authority on all disputed questions, national, political or factional. In the determination of the truth the most recent and acknowledged scientific methods are employed, and the results of the latest research in theology, philosophy, history, apologetics, archaeology, and other sciences are given careful consideration.
No one who is interested in human history, past and present, can ignore the Catholic Church, either as an institution which has been the central figure in the civilized world for nearly two thousand years, decisively affecting its destinies, religious, literary, scientific, social and political, or as an existing power whose influence and activity extend to every part of the globe. In the past century the Church has grown both extensively and intensively among English-speaking peoples. Their living interests demand that they should have the means of informing themselves about this vast institution, which, whether they are Catholics or not, affects their fortunes and their destiny.
Copyright © Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company New York, NY. Volume 1: 1907; Volume 2: 1907; Volume 3: 1908; Volume 4: 1908; Volume 5: 1909; Volume 6: 1909; Volume 7: 1910; Volume 8: 1910; Volume 9: 1910; Volume 10: 1911; Volume 11: - 1911; Volume 12: - 1911; Volume 13: - 1912; Volume 14: 1912; Volume 15: 1912
Catholic Online Catholic Encyclopedia Digital version Compiled and Copyright © Catholic Online | <urn:uuid:00f5b73f-5ae2-4035-9a57-312832ff0d82> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=12300 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399522.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00179-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973678 | 792 | 2.6875 | 3 |
New study finds that hybrid learning and traditional instruction adds value to a student’s education.
A new report published in the Higher Education Academy reveals what many in the ed-tech community have long suspected: incorporating technology in the classroom along with traditional teaching practices improves student learning.
Technology, for example, can enhance the way students perform in certain subjects by using applications such as adaptive tests which determines question difficulty based on previous answers, and innovations in education including multimedia and digital projects can help reduce cheating.
The real challenge for higher ed leaders is keeping up with the rapidly changing innovations in technology and education, while finding innovative ways to incorporate new learning methods in curricula.
eCampus News has extensive coverage of how the latest technologies can help colleges and universities deliver instruction more effectively and enrich the student experience.
- Ball State University Professor Jennifer George-Palilonis explains what steps some schools are taking with their curriculum to meet demands for successful careers in Media and Journalism. Read the full article here.
- Derek Bruff, director for teaching at Vanderbilt University, shares his views on what impact a $750,000 grant for the creation of two massive open online courses (MOOCs) on evidence-based teaching practices for future STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) faculty. Read the full article here.
- eCampus News Assistant Editor Jake New reports on the disparity between public and private universities in the adoption and implementation of online learning and new technologies. Read the full article here.
What types of technologies do you include along with traditional classroom instruction? Share your views and opinions with us by leaving a comment in the section below and by following the conversation on Twitter @ecampusnews. You can contact managing editor Denny Carter @eCN_Denny and assistant editor Jake New @eCN_Jake. | <urn:uuid:c3a92236-69e4-4d32-a7b6-9f49cf4c7fd1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/hybrid-learning-highered-444/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00031-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934384 | 372 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Alaska Science Center
Knowing something about the bathymetry of Glacier Bay allows us to more easily understand how marine habitat parameters (temperature, salinity, nutrients, phytoplankton, zooplankton, etc.) influence the distribution of seabird and marine mammal species in the bay. As the name suggests, the bathymetry of Glacier Bay was largely shaped by retreating glaciers at the end of the last ice age. Physical evidence of this glacial retreat can be seen in several areas. Most notable is the terminal moraine at the mouth of Glacier Bay. This moraine creates a shallow area in Glacier Bay (indicated on the map by the pale blue color). Shallow marine areas tend to concentrate zooplankton, fish, other prey species closer to the surface of the water, making them more available to foraging seabirds and marine mammals. (To view a slide show of seabird, forage fish, and marine mammal distributions in Glacier Bay, click here and choose the HTML version or PDF version.) The quickly changing topography of the seafloor, along with tidal fluctuations, create currents and eddies that concentrate prey for marine birds and mammals. Click on a Glacier Bay slide show link (HTML version or PDF version.) to see how seabirds and marine mammals concentrate along the coast in these fjords.
Bathymetry of Glacier Bay National Park | <urn:uuid:85a91f11-cf6c-4f30-9e11-eb054feda964> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/seabirds_foragefish/marinehabitat/what_we_learned/bathymetry_learned.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00100-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.881942 | 288 | 4.1875 | 4 |
No doubt about it, vitamin D is enjoying its time in the sun.
In doctors' offices, testing for vitamin D levels, once a rarity, has become commonplace. And between 2002 and 2011, U.S. sales of vitamin D supplements jumped more than tenfold — from $42 million to $605 million — according to the Nutrition Business Journal. The issue of widespread vitamin D deficiency, says Michael F. Holick, M.D., author of The Vitamin D Solution, "has gotten the press's attention, the public's attention and — finally — the physicians' attention."
Sign up for the AARP Health Newsletter.
Yet figures released this year by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) paint a different picture of the problem's scope: Just 8 percent of Americans are at risk of a significant vitamin D deficiency, although among African Americans and Mexican Americans that fraction is higher. Further, it's likely that some of the people taking supplements are getting too much of a good thing. An overload of vitamin D — though it would have to be an awful lot, says Holick — can cause kidney problems and tissue damage.
Strong bones, plus
How much D we need is a crucial question because the vitamin is important to so many aspects of health. In the past several years, studies have confirmed what we were all told as children — that it promotes strong bones. But studies have also shown that it may play a role in preventing cancers, dementia, diabetes and certain autoimmune diseases. There's also good evidence that vitamin D helps protect against the falls that can lead to fractures in older people who are unsteady on their feet.
The main source of vitamin D — throughout most of human history — has been the body's own manufacture of the vitamin when skin is exposed to sunlight. More recently, milk and other fortified foods have provided significant amounts of the nutrient.
But today several trends have led some experts to warn of a virtual pandemic of vitamin D deficiency. First, people are getting less sun because they're spending more time indoors and using more sunscreen when they're outdoors. They're also drinking less D-fortified milk.
Plus, the population is growing older (older people don't synthesize D as efficiently), as well as fatter. Scientists aren't sure why obese individuals are at increased risk for a D deficiency, but the fact that D is sequestered in fat tissue may play a role.
Still, even as health experts track these trends, they haven't yet reached a consensus about optimal levels. Indeed, whether your D level is adequate depends on whom you ask. According to the IOM's 2010 guidelines, most adults — even those who get little sun — can achieve the correct level of vitamin D by consuming about 600 to 800 international units (IUs) per day.
Meanwhile, other researchers and doctors have argued that those seeking to reduce bone-fracture risk and reap possible benefits for disease prevention should take supplements of 1,000 to 2,000 IUs daily.
And the Vitamin D Council, partly sponsored by supplement makers, recommends healthy adults with little sun exposure take 5,000 IUs of D daily — 1,000 IUs more than what the Institute of Medicine (IOM) deemed the safe upper limit of 4,000 IUs.
The IOM cautionary message that more vitamin D is not necessarily better has largely fallen on deaf ears, says JoAnn Manson, M.D., a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who helped draft the guidelines. "Very few people have been affected by that because there's so much marketing and promotion of vitamin D," she says.
She doesn't expect the promotional din to die down before the 2016 completion of a National Institutes of Health study of the vitamin. Led by Manson, it follows 20,000 people to test whether taking 2,000 units of D daily lowers the risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. Until the results are in, she says, the public can be misled. "I think the enthusiasm for vitamin D supplements has outpaced the evidence."
Should you supplement?
So in the meantime, should you or your family members take a supplement? Be sure to speak with your doctor before buying any supplements. But one key factor to consider is skin color. Most African Americans should at least consider a supplement, says Susan Harris, a vitamin D expert at Tufts University. According to the CDC report, a majority of African Americans had insufficient blood levels of vitamin D, and nearly one-third had a frank deficiency, compared with 12 percent of Mexican Americans and 3 percent of whites. (The information the CDC collected for this report included only Mexican Americans, not American Hispanics in general.) Dark skin pigmentation serves as a natural sunscreen, she explains, blocking the ultraviolet rays that trigger vitamin D synthesis.
Some older people also should consider supplementing. In May the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force endorsed vitamin D supplements of 800 IUs a day for people who are at risk of falls.
You also can assume you're low on vitamin D if you live in the northern part of the country or spend most of your time indoors. Says Harris, "In Boston, I tell pretty much everyone that they should be taking a supplement during the winter."
Also of interest: Supplements can interact with prescription meds.
Discounts & Benefits
Next ArticleRead This | <urn:uuid:a5bdf0f6-6dc1-4aec-af97-08da178c4515> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.aarp.org/health/drugs-supplements/info-07-2012/how-much-vitamin-d-is-enough.comments.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00185-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95684 | 1,100 | 2.96875 | 3 |
In the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, we pretend that the royal castle has lots of rooms-one for each letter of the alphabet. Everything in the room starts with that letter. In this game, if you click on a door it will open all the way. Can you think of other things that could be behind that door?
In order to learn to read, children need to know that alphabet letters are symbols for sounds. Here's a playful way to help children identify letters and the sounds that go with them-and enjoy some other surprises too. | <urn:uuid:75391cc6-4a81-4e34-bd3f-1584677d7d22> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://pbskids.org/rogers/make_believe/abc_template.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00065-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953412 | 112 | 3.109375 | 3 |
School dropout, the new silent emergency – a priority for UNICEF Romania
by Luminiţa Costache & Raluca Zaharia, Education Officers – UNICEF Romania
The rarely debated issue of school dropout in the Romanian education system requires immediate action. It is a phenomenon so widespread and serious that it should be a priority for all those involved in education: decision-makers, community stakeholders, families, teachers and students.
According to the National Report on the State of the Education System in Romania (2008) – MoERY, in 2006/2007 the cohort dropout rate for primary education was 9.8% and for lower secondary education 12.4%. Moreover, there are huge disparities in the dropout rates when comparing urban and rural communities. The Roma Inclusion Barometer (OSF, 2007) indicates that 23% of Roma respondents have no education whatsoever, 27% attended primary school and 33% graduated from secondary school without going further – as opposed to 2%, 11% and 24% respectively among other ethnic groups taken as a whole. Furthermore, 95% of Roma have no high school education, compared to 60% among the other respondents.
According to Eurostat, in Romania in 2007 19.2% of people aged 18-24 had successfully completed only eight grades. This means that roughly one out of five young people has no qualification. Several recent studies have flagged up some errors in the registration of out-of-school children and by some estimates 300,000-400,000 children of school age are not in the education system.
UNICEF and its NGO partners have investigated the causes of school dropout and identified influencing factors at three levels: family, community and school.
In school, dropout may be caused by the frequent repeating of grades, insufficient pupil integration or poor relationships with teachers and classmates.
Realising the gravity of the situation UNICEF launched the School Attendance campaign in 2010. The goal of the campaign is to prevent and reduce school dropout and to increase school attendance, with a focus on the most disadvantaged children.
The campaign addresses the school dropout phenomenon by focusing primarily on the communities with the worst dropout problems. Interventions will be made by the family, school and community level.
Families will be involved in school affairs and will be made aware of the importance of education. They will also be trained to develop their parenting skills and to know how to promote their child’s best interests.
At school level the aim is to make school a more welcoming place for children. Special attention will be paid to working closely with teachers to ensure that:
The project will also improve the school resources of the poorest schools through appropriate supplies and equipment.
At community level, the project will try to create or revive (where it already exists) a community stakeholders network for bringing children to school (Local Council, School Inspectorates, General Directorate for Child Protection, Private sector). School mediators will play a very important role, as a link between families, school and the community. Their role is mainly to monitor children of preschool and school age who are not enrolled and help families to get them into school or kindergarten.
For the implementation of the School Attendance campaign, UNICEF has partnered with the Ministry of Education, the Institute of Educational Sciences, and Center Education 2000+ for interventions at school level and with the Roma Civic Alliance for interventions at community and family level.
The campaign will cover 70 communities in 30 counties over two years. The communities have been selected based on their high dropout rate. In the first year (school year 2010-2011), the campaign will target the 15 counties with the highest rates of school abandonment: Arad, Bacău, Braşov, Botoşani, Caraş-Severin, Călăraşi, Constanţa, Covasna, Dolj, Giurgiu, Mehedinţi, Sibiu, Tulcea, Vâlcea, and Vrancea.
In these counties, the Institute of Educational Sciences and Center Education 2000+ will replicate the Education Priority Areas approach; the Ministry of Education will train Roma school mediators and school principals and the Roma Civic Alliance will run a mobilisation campaign at family and community level. After the first year, the school attendance rate in the targeted locations is expected to have improved considerably and the communities, families and schools will be mobilised to find solutions to address school dropout locally and to prevent it in the longer term. | <urn:uuid:c40544dd-5cc5-4a35-8268-0416ed5a7b24> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.unicef.org/romania/media_15620.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00057-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957198 | 932 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The terms "cold" and "cole" sound the same but have different meanings. "Cold" of course refers to temperature. "Cole" refers to any of various plants belonging to the Cruciferae or mustard family. Even though you might not be familiar with the impressive scientific name or enjoy eating mustard you are certainly familiar with other members of this family which furnish Texas gardeners with many gourmet delights during the winter months.
The mustard family includes cool season crops such as Brussels sprout, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, kale, kohlrabi, mustard, broccoli, turnips and watercress. All of these familiar garden crops can trace their history to a common ancestry of wild cabbage originating in the Mediterranean and Asia Minor area. The close kinship of these crops enable diversified usage of plant parts. For instance, Brussels sprout plants are grown by most gardeners for a miniature heads (sprouts) which develop in the axils of the leaves. However, the leaves of Brussels sprouts are considered by some to be milder and sweeter than those of the collard which is especially grown for leaf production. Most gardeners are familiar with the fact turnips can be grown for the greens (leaves) or for the turnip roots. In other words, when growing a member of the Cruciferae family the saying "what you see is what you get (to eat)" truly applies!
This group of cole crops enjoy cool seasons and are somewhat cold tolerant. Cabbage for instance can withstand frost down to 20 degrees or even 15 degrees F. Cauliflower and chard are more sensitive to cold than broccoli, collards, kale, kohlrabi, or mustard. The conditioning of the plants as influenced by weather conditions prior to exposure to cold temperatures determine plant survival. Maturity of the plant also has much to do with the amount of cold which cole crops can survive. When broccoli plants have produced buds, even a light frost may cause considerable damage since clusters freeze, turn brown and ultimately rot.
The cole crops grow best at a monthly mean temperature of 60 to 70 degrees F. This occurs when temperatures are 80 degrees F. or less during the day and 60 degrees F. or less during the night. In most parts of Texas these ranges occur in October- November. In order to produce the best quality of the slower maturing cole crops, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli should be planted in gardens in August or early September. These crops can be directly seeded or transplanted into the garden area. Faster maturing cole crops such as collards, kale, kohlrabi, mustard, and turnips can be directly seeded into the garden as late as September. Of course, when you plant depends on where you live.
When you plant cole crops in the garden you are investing in a healthful life. Gardeners are in the business of producing health foods even though they may not know it. Vegetables contain essential elements for health and the enjoyment of eating fresh garden vegetables makes health fun. Exactly how necessary are vegetables to the healthy body? Some animals can synthesize vitamin C, but man, apes, birds, and a few other animal species lack this ability. Vitamin C cannot be stored in the body, making a daily supply essential to good health.
Cabbage is high in vitamin C, and Germans are known as "krauts" because they have traditionally consumed large quantities of this vegetable. Broccoli, collards, and other vegetables of the cabbage family are rich in vitamin C, as are leafy vegetables such as kale and turnip greens supply carotene, which the human digestive system converts to Vitamin A.
Proteins are nitrogenous compounds which are composed of amino acids. All vegetables provide some protein. The percentage protein in vegetable legumes is as high or higher than that of meat. Even non-legume vegetables such as sweet corn, Brussels sprouts, collards, and kale contain more protein than does milk. | <urn:uuid:4c8e412d-5065-4558-8d81-8ef8b9f3387d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/vegetables/colecrop.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00073-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953763 | 825 | 3.25 | 3 |
Neutron stars are dead relics that have collapsed into very small, dense spheres with tough crusts. Forces welling from within can crack the crusts during events called star quakes, similar to earthquakes.
The awesome power of those quakes can blast gamma rays into space, leading scientists to suspect that the stars' crusts must be very hard to break.
A new study suggests how strong they are: The crust of neutron stars could be 10 billion times stronger than steel, based on an innovative model of elements compressed as tightly as they would be on the surface of a neutron star.
In 2004, astronomers spotted a spectacular gamma-ray explosion bursting off a neutron star in the Sagittarius constellation, 50,000 light years from Earth. The star, SGR 1806-20, is a magnetar, a type of neutron star that has a powerful magnetic field.? NASA and European satellites and astronomers around the world detected the flare, which for a tenth of a second was brighter than anything ever seen beyond our solar system. It was the biggest such flare ever spotted and one of only four that have been seen so far.
"We think that these giant flares are coming from really, really big star quakes," said Indiana University physicist Charles Horowitz. Only a super-strong crust could have exploded so forcefully, he explained.
To find out how strong the crusts of neutron stars really are, Horowitz and a colleague created a computer simulation of a star's surface. Though the interior of the star is a kind of fluid mass of mostly neutrons, the crust is composed of broken-up atoms, the nuclei of unknown elements. To simulate this, Horowitz used the computer program to squeeze together virtual selenium atoms, pressing them into tiny cubes. He determined that the crust is billions of times stronger than even the hardiest metal alloys here on Earth.
"You can't produce anything like these conditions on Earth, which is why we did not know the strength before," he said. His results were published May 8 in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Not just any old relics, neutron stars are the leftover cores of huge stars that exploded in supernovae. In a massive star's death throes, it can blast most of its outer material into space. When the fireworks are over, the core collapses in on itself under the weight of its own gravity. Like an ice skater pulling in her arms, the star spins faster as it shrinks, Horowitz explained.
The stars are usually tiny, about 15 miles in diameter. But within that small ball, there is the mass of about one and a half suns. A black hole is the only thing denser.
Neutron stars are so dense that if you could dip a teaspoon into one of them and scoop out some of its neutrons the spoon would weigh 100 million tons. If you were to hold that empty teaspoon just one yard above the star's surface and drop it, it would strike the surface at 4.3 million mph.
Though their surfaces are generally smooth, mountains made of super-dense star stuff rise from the crust. The mountains? height depends on how strong the crust is. Horowitz takes creative license in calling them mountains, he said, because they are only a few inches high. When they are too high they sag under the stars? gravity and sink back into the ground. The highest mountain a crust could support would only be about 4 inches in altitude, Horowitz estimated. Even so, the gravity of neutron stars is immense. It radiates into space in weird ways around the star, warping space-time and slowing the star's spin. | <urn:uuid:993a4e4a-eecf-4d1d-a88e-2fa6ed5696be> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.space.com/6682-neutron-star-crust-stronger-steel.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397873.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00043-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956969 | 742 | 4.3125 | 4 |
Also found in: Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Financial, Acronyms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
1. A flat structure, typically made of planks, logs, or barrels, that floats on water and is used for transport or as a platform for swimmers.
2. A flatbottom inflatable craft for floating or drifting on water: shooting the rapids in a rubber raft.
v. raft·ed, raft·ing, rafts
1. To convey on a raft.
2. To make into a raft.
To travel by raft.
[Middle English, from Old Norse raptr, beam, rafter.]
A great number, amount, or collection: "As the prairie dog goes, conservation biologists say, so may go a raft of other creatures" (William K. Stevens).
[Alteration of dialectal raff, rubbish; see raffish.]
1. (Nautical Terms) a buoyant platform of logs, planks, etc, used as a vessel or moored platform
2. (Building) a thick slab of reinforced concrete laid over soft ground to provide a foundation for a building
(Nautical Terms) to convey on or travel by raft, or make a raft from
[C15: from Old Norse raptr rafter]
informal a large collection or amount: a raft of old notebooks discovered in a cupboard.
[C19: from raff]
1. a more or less rigid floating platform made of buoyant materials: an inflatable rubber raft.
2. a collection of logs, planks, casks, etc., fastened together for floating on water.
3. life raft.
4. a slab of reinforced concrete providing a footing on yielding soil, usu. for a whole building.v.t.
5. to transport on a raft.
6. to form (logs or the like) into a raft.
7. to travel or cross by raft.
8. (of an ice floe) to transport (embedded organic or rock debris) from the shore out to sea.v.i.
9. to use a raft; go or travel on a raft.
[1250–1300; Middle English rafte, perhaps < Old Norse raptr rafter1]
a great quantity; a lot.
[1825–35; variant of raff in sense “large number” (Middle English: abundance)]
Rafta large collection of people or things taken indiscriminately; a dense flock of swimming birds; a collection of logs; fallen trees.
Examples: raft of auks (at sea); of swimming birds; of books; of crocodiles, 1774; of fellows, 1833; of folk; of logs; of masts, 1497; of people; of reporters; of tamarisk, 1822; of timber, 1745; of trees, 1806; of fallen trees; of verdure, 1876.
Past participle: rafted
Switch to new thesaurus
|Noun||1.||raft - a flat float (usually made of logs or planks) that can be used for transport or as a platform for swimmers|
float - something that floats on the surface of water
|2.||raft - (often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent; "a batch of letters"; "a deal of trouble"; "a lot of money"; "he made a mint on the stock market"; "see the rest of the winners in our huge passel of photos"; "it must have cost plenty"; "a slew of journalists"; "a wad of money"|
good deal, great deal, hatful, lot, muckle, passel, peck, mickle, mint, quite a little, slew, spate, tidy sum, wad, stack, mountain, pile, plenty, mass, batch, heap, deal, flock, pot, mess, sight
large indefinite amount, large indefinite quantity - an indefinite quantity that is above the average in size or magnitude
deluge, flood, inundation, torrent - an overwhelming number or amount; "a flood of requests"; "a torrent of abuse"
haymow - a mass of hay piled up in a barn for preservation
|Verb||1.||raft - transport on a raft; "raft wood down a river"|
raft - travel by raft in water; "Raft the Colorado River"
transport - move something or somebody around; usually over long distances
|2.||raft - travel by raft in water; "Raft the Colorado River"|
go, locomote, move, travel - change location; move, travel, or proceed, also metaphorically; "How fast does your new car go?"; "We travelled from Rome to Naples by bus"; "The policemen went from door to door looking for the suspect"; "The soldiers moved towards the city in an attempt to take it before night fell"; "news travelled fast"
raft - transport on a raft; "raft wood down a river"
|3.||raft - make into a raft; "raft these logs"|
n → Floß nt
raft[rɑːft] n → zattera
a number of logs, planks etc fastened together and used as a boat. vlot رَمْث، طَوْف сал jangada vor das Floß tømmerflåde σχεδίαbalsa parv کلک؛ قایق الواری lautta radeauרפסודה लठ्ठों का बेड़ा splav tutaj rakit (timbur)fleki zattera いかだ 뗏목 plaustas plosts rakit vlotflåtetratwa دړى چمبې، تمبى، هغه دړى چه يو له بله سره ولګول شى اوداو بوپه سرلامبو ووهله شى jangada plută плот plť splav splav flotte แพ sal 木筏 пліт لکڑیوں کا گٹھا جو کشتی کا کام دیتا ہے bè gỗ 木筏 | <urn:uuid:849742e4-4e55-4a6d-b658-cb37ec23e40a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thefreedictionary.com/raft | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00110-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.726497 | 1,485 | 3.421875 | 3 |
The following is a quick overview of information that
you need to know if you have just been diagnosed with
osteopenia or osteoporosis:
In the beginning it is not
unusual to feel overwhelmed by the disease but with time
and patience we adapt to the changes that the disease
makes in our lives. There are steps
that can be taken at any age to prevent and treat
osteoporosis." A healthy diet, weight-bearing
exercise, not smoking or drinking excessively, and bone
mineral density testing and medications for osteoporosis
can prevent or slow osteoporosis, and help bones to stay
Osteopenia is not a disease, but a term
that describes low bone density. While osteopenia is
not considered a disease, being diagnosed with it
requires further monitoring. Preventive measures should
be taken since osteoporosis may develop if bone density
Osteoporosis is a
disease that breaks down the tissue in our bones, making
them fragile and more likely to break. Both osteopenia
and osteoporosis can lead to fractures. Every day we
learn more about both of these conditions and how to
Five steps to
improve your bone health. It's important to follow
all of the tips. Eliminating any one of them can
significantly affect your success.
1. Get adequate calcium and vitamin D
If you are over 50 years of age
and female, studies suggest you should have 1200 mg of
calcium and 400 - 600 IU of vitamin D through diet
and/or supplements. Your body can best handle
about 500 mg of calcium at any one time, whether from
food or supplements. Therefore, consume your
calcium-rich foods and/or supplements in smaller doses
throughout the day, preferably with a meal.
Dietary reference intake of
calcium for women and men
If this is your age,
then you need this much calcium
each day (mg).
|0 to 6 months
|6 to 12 months
|1 to 3 years
|4 to 8 years
|9 to 18 years
|18 to 50 years
|Over 50 years
requirements for women and men
Birth to 50 years: 200 IU a day
51-70 years: 400 IU a day
71 or older: 600 IU a day
2. Take your
osteoporosis medication as directed when appropriate.
Medicine can be a key factor in protecting bone
health in women with postmenopausal osteoporosis.
Prescription medication is available that can build and
maintain bone density and reduce the risk of fracture.
But no medicine can work if you don't take it.
You and your physician need to review the drug treatment
options, assessing the risks and benefits each offers
and choosing the best treatment for you, based on
current scientific evidence. You may also need to
explore several treatment options, because each person
is different. Some people respond better to one drug
than another. Some people have side effects on one and
not another. Treatment decisions are highly
individual. What's right for your best friend or someone
else is not necessarily right for you. It's important to
make medication decisions in consultation with a
knowledgeable doctor who will consider not only your
present condition but your entire medical history.
3. Exercise to build strength, flexibility, and balance.
Lack of exercise, especially as you
get older, can contribute to lower bone mass or density.
Two types of exercise are important for women with
1.) weight-bearing exercise, like
walking, stair climbing and dancing, and
2.) resistance exercise, like use of
free weights or weight machines. These exercises
can help maintain bone health and prevent further bone
Exercise can also reduce your risk of
falling by improving balance, flexibility and strength.
Talk to your doctor about a safe, effective exercise
program to best meet your needs.
4. Visit your doctor regularly.
Work with your doctor to monitor your
osteopenia/osteoporosis and bone mineral density, as
well as your overall health. It's important to
evaluate the steps being taken to maintain the health of
your bones and to decide what treatment is right for
5. Avoid smoking and excessive alcohol
Smoking interferes with the way your
body uses calcium to help bones. Excessive alcohol
can reduce bone mass and increase the risk of fracture.
Limit your alcohol intake to one drink or less a day for
women. This equals 12 ounces of regular beer, or 5
ounces of wine, or 1 1/2 ounces of 80 proof liquor | <urn:uuid:4c00437d-2be6-483d-8b06-b8c898f15b2b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://lesann.tripod.com/newly%20diagnosed.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00065-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906714 | 988 | 2.9375 | 3 |
The constitutional history of the American colonists and the Iroquois Confederacy sheds new light on the dynamics of group decision-making. It shows that the scope of government tends to grow as the requirements for consensus weaken, and that changes in rule-making procedures provoke people to adopt new strategies for pursuing their goals.
|Other Independent Review articles by Randall G. Holcombe|
|Winter 2014||Consenting to Collective Action: The Classical Liberal Constitutional Calculus of James M. Buchanan|
|Fall 2013||The Public Debt Problem: A Comprehensive Guide|
|Spring 2013||Crony Capitalism: By-Product of Big Government|
|[View All (13)]| | <urn:uuid:89895e48-fb96-4a93-89d0-10a9be5f7ea3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=352 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00016-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.836905 | 137 | 2.625 | 3 |
http://members.tripod.com/~lklivingston/essay/links.html A list of various sites that you may consider useful to consult while writing your essay.Category: Writing - Essay, Thesis, and Report
http://www.aresearchguide.com/ A research guide for students: necessary tools for students to conduct research and to present their findings.Category: Writing - Essay, Thesis, and Report
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/resdoc5e/ BCS.Bedfordstmartins.com : A site teaching you how to cite a webpage, an email, or a discussion board posting. Provides easy-to-follow and up-to-date information on Internet source citations in Modern Language Association (MLA), American Psychological Association (APA), Chicago, and other styles. Includes the section Tips for Evaluating Sources and a glossary of research terms.Category: Writing - Essay, Thesis, and Report
http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill26... Cornell University Library: Critically Analyzing Information Sources. Present basic rules for source analysis of physical information as well as web-based sources.Category: Writing - Essay, Thesis, and Report
http://www.englishonline.net/writing/tips/index.html EnglishOnline.net: Offers free writing tips, and explanations for ESL / EFL students and teachers.
Information on essay, business, and technical writing.
Category: Writing - Essay, Thesis, and Report
http://help.library.ubc.ca/researching/evaluating-internet-s... help.library.ubc.ca : Evaluating Internet Resources. This site aims to develop your skills to evaluate the credibility of Internet sources before using them in a research paper. A checklist presents questions to ask to help determine whether a Web page is a suitable resource. Each category of questions has a So What button to explain the importance of asking questions. There are links to biased information, parody sites and external links to help you to discriminate reliable and accurate resources.Category: Writing - Essay, Thesis, and Report
http://www.ipl.org/div/aplus/ ipl2: Information You Can Trust for Teens. Features a searchable, subject-categorized directory of authoritative websites; links to online texts, newspapers, and magazines; and the Ask an ipl2 Librarian online reference service. If you are new to essay writing, this site will show you how to: get organized, choose and develop a topic, gather information, form a thesis statement, write the paper and finally revise your writing.Category: Writing - Essay, Thesis, and Report
http://www.vaniercollege.qc.ca/tlc/tipsheets.html Learning Centre at Vanier College: Promote students' development and success in academics and society. Offers tips and strategies for writing, analysing literature, and note-taking in English.Category: Writing - Essay, Thesis, and Report
http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/skill26.htm Olinuris.library.cornell.edu : Critically Analyzing Information Sources. A site to help you determine whether print and online sources are appropriate for essays and research papers. A link at the bottom of the page, Seven Steps to Effective Library Research leads to a page with another link, How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography.Category: Writing - Essay, Thesis, and Report | <urn:uuid:ce57c6c2-1470-4176-a56a-f1f436b4f8a8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.eslall.com/learn_english_333.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00187-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.818457 | 755 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Martha Dobson, Iditarod Educational Journalist
Harness the Common Core Standards, Marzano’s research based instructional practices, and the Iditarod for a team to forge ahead in your classroom. The practice of identifying similarities and differences has the greatest effect size of 1.61 which translates to about 45 percentile points. Connections to the Common Core Standards for reading, writing, and math fall at the end of this article. Continue reading for information to incorporate the Iditarod as one of your team members on this educational gangline.
Marzano’s “Top 9” List
Scholar Robert Marzano analyzed 395 experimental studies and calculated effect sizes for nine instructional practices shown to contribute to higher levels of student achievement:
1. Identifying similarities and differences (1.61)
2. Summarizing and note taking (1.0)
3. Reinforcing effort and providing recognition (.80)
4. Homework and practice (.77)
5. Nonlinguistic representations such as mental images, graphs, acting out content (.75)
6. Cooperative learning (.73)
7. Setting objectives and providing feedback (.61)
8. Generating and testing hypotheses (.61)
9. Activating prior knowledge via questions, cues, advance organizers (.59)
Source: Marzano, 2003
Using 2013 Iditarod Teacher on the Trail Linda Fenton’s lesson http://itcteacheronthetrail.com/2012/08/27/compare-alaskas-symbols/ to compare state symbols as your springboard, launch your students’ growth using activities requiring them to compare (find similarities), contrast (find differences), and to classify information.
In Linda’s lesson, students research their state’s symbols and Alaska’s corresponding state symbols for the state tree, flower, and bird. Add more information to research and compare and have students classify the information according to plant and animal, evergreen or deciduous, color, size, etc. Students can use this site for research. http://www.netstate.com/states/symb/ak_symb.htm
To increase the scope and depth of student thinking, have them organize the comparisons and contrasts using diagrams such as a Venn diagram or a double bubble map, using this link to locate a template for it– http://www.lifestreamcenter.net/DrB/Lessons/thinking_maps.htm. Then, they can use their diagrams as the basis for outlining a comparison/contrast paragraph or essay.
Older students can research other facets of their states and Alaska to find more similarities and differences. More similarities are there than you think! Here are some ideas to compare and contrast. Using this link, http://www.citytowninfo.com/places/alaska andthis one, http://www.togetherweteach.com/TWTIC/uscityinfo/02ak/akpopr/02akpr.htm, search for data to compare and contrast between your students’ town and Alaskan towns or villages. Organize the data by creating bar graphs, line plot graphs, writing comparison/contrast paragraphs, or calculating percentages regarding school populations or city populations. Plot race finish times or musher’s times between two checkpoints. At the end of this article, there are more math ideas tied to the Common Core Standards for grades 1-7.
And, here is another link to information, on the students’ levels, about the different Alaskan regions. http://library.thinkquest.org/3878/ Compare and contrast them with the regions in your state. Students create Power Points or use Prezi http://prezi.com/ to make presentations which analyze the information.
This link contains ideas of activities to implement the various Marzano instructional strategies. http://classroom.leanderisd.org/webs/marzano/home.htm
Common Core Standards connections: Writing Anchor Standards grades 6-12,
–Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
–Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.
–Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.
–Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
Math Content grades 1-7
— Represent and interpret data using different types of graphs. Grades 1-5 (Bar graphs, line plot graphs)
–Statistics and Probability-Understand that a set of data collected to answer a statistical
question has a distribution which can be described by its center, spread, and
overall shape. Grade 6.SP (Plot race finish times or musher’s times between 2 checkpoints,
using the race updates or in Race Archives.)
— Find probabilities of compound events using organized lists, tables,
tree diagrams, and simulation. Grade 7.SP (How many mushers who were in first place at any
checkpoint won the Iditarod? Use race records on www.iditarod.com for research. Click on
2013 Race, then click on Race Archives and Search Archives.) | <urn:uuid:8e1c6802-4cb0-481c-81ca-1c532a468885> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://iditarod.com/harness-up-iditarod-common-core-and-marzano/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00132-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.867524 | 1,129 | 3.625 | 4 |
Horsin' Around
Winter is the best time to view one of Colorado's wild mustang herds.
Five hundred years ago, the Spanish conquered the Southwest on horseback. They saddled their stallions in Veracruz and rode north from Mexico, mapping, declaring their lands, and setting up horse ranches. Today, many vestiges of this time have been lost, but the remnants of a sturdy horse culture remain. In fact, wild descendents of vaquero steeds live on in Colorado. And you can see them if you know where to look.
Four separate herds of wild horses are managed in western Colorado, and one of these is easy to spot during the winter and spring, just east of I-70 in the Little Book Cliffs Wild Horse Range. Located about 15 miles northeast of Grand Junction, Little Book Cliffs' 30,113 acres of dry canyons and sagebrush flats make up one of only three Bureau of Land Management areas in the United States established specifically for the protection of wild horses.
During the summer, most of Little Book Cliffs' mustangs seek good grazing in the high country, but they move down into the narrow canyons in the winter, making this the best time to view them. On a sunny winter day, I found the trailhead for Main and Coal canyons and hiked up an old road along the dry wash in Main Canyon. Although not as spectacular as nearby Colorado National Monument, the canyon's rugged ocher walls and fragile standing hoodoos were plenty appealing.
About a mile up the trail, just past a junction with the Spring Creek Trail, I spotted an enormous pile of fresh manure. I'm no expert, but even I could tell that horses must have been around. In fact, I later learned, such "stud piles" are territorial markers left by males. The Little Book Cliffs herd numbers around 120 horses, but it's divided into much smaller bands, usually consisting of a single stallion and a harem of mares and their foals. Males that have been driven away by the dominant stallion will form small bachelor herds. In all, there are 800 to 900 wild horses in Colorado, a small fraction of the estimated 29,500 mustangs in the West, more than half of which roam Nevada.
Though some of these animals trace their bloodlines all the way back to the 1500s, when the Spanish began reintroducing horses to North America and Indian tribes spread them throughout the West, most are more prosaically descended from ranch, cavalry, or mining stock. The horses breed almost every year, and from April to June you might catch sight of foals along Dry Fork Road before the herd moves to higher country.
At a bend in the trail, as I rounded a steep, red-dirt hillside, a band of half a dozen horses came into view. The cover of a large juniper allowed me to watch without spooking them. Although the horses obviously sensed my presence, cocking their ears and flicking their tails, they didn't move. Most were bays and sorrels, and only females seemed to be in plain sight, though I figured the stallion could see me even if I couldn't find him. Watching in silence, I studied the horses. They are beautiful animals: medium-high and powerfully built, their coats smooth and unmarked. The herd was a wistful reminder that not all that long ago Colorado was truly the Wild West. I let myself briefly imagine that I was a cowboy who had camped nearby, hoping to lasso one of these wild creatures and make it my own. But the horses seemed to read my mind—the band soon slipped away and disappeared behind a red butte.
Although the Main Canyon Trail continues for several miles and joins other routes climbing into the Little Book Cliffs, I'd seen what I came for. I turned back down the trail toward the only horses I'll ever tame—the ones under the hood of my car.
If You Go During the winter months, exit I-70 at Cameo (Exit 46), drive across the Colorado River and past the power plant, and continue about 1.5 miles on a gravel road to the Coal Canyon trailhead. Park and hike up old roads (closed to traffic in winter) into Main or Coal canyons. Mustangs often are spotted within one to two miles of the trailhead. Access the horses' summer range with a 4WD vehicle by following the Winter Flats or Dry Fork roads about 20 miles west from the town of De Beque (Exit 62). Visit the BLM website for directions. The horses are easiest to find in the early morning and evening hours.
Rimrock Adventures offers half-day horseback tours of Main and Coal canyons from May to October. Rimrock's guides lead guests to low-elevation waterholes where some horses linger throughout the summer. | <urn:uuid:18ae772a-9c0c-4df7-aa3a-f9ec050bfd55> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.5280.com/print/18825 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00171-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964842 | 1,011 | 2.546875 | 3 |
"Sealing a scroll was a common and important practice in Biblical times. The wills of both Emperor Vespasian and Caesar Augustus were secured with seven seals.
"For such a document, a scribe would procure a long roll of parchment and begin writing. After a period of writing he would stop, roll the parchment enough to cover his words and seal the scroll at that point with wax. Then he would resume writing, stop again, roll the scroll, and add another seal. By the time he was finished, he would have sealed the scroll seven times. The scrolls would be read a section at a time, after each seal was opened.
"Why was this process used? Evidently it was to prevent unauthorized persons from tampering with the scroll or reading and revealing its contents. Only a "worthy" person -- that is, someone with proper authority -- could have legal access to the scroll's message.
"When a Jewish family was required to forfeit its land and possessions through some distress, the property could not be permanently taken from them. Their losses were listed in a scroll and sealed seven times, then the conditions necessary to purchase back the land and possessions were written on the outside of the scroll. When a qualified redeemer could be found to meet the requirements of reclamation, the one to whom the property had been forfeited was obligated to return the possessions to the original owner."
(There's A New World Coming, Hal Lindsey)
The Lamb, more specifically the Passover Lamb, is the symbol of Christ as the Sin-bearer of the world (John 1:29). Only the Lamb is worthy to loosen the seals of the book.
Just as a side note: In contrast to the Lamb is Satan's typical perverted imitation of Christ in the role of the false prophet who is "another beast" [i.e. in addition to the anti-Christ] who has "two horns like a lamb," but speaks "as a dragon" (Rev 13:11).
Note the description of what John saw. He clearly described a book with seven seals. An often overlooked point is remembering that John saw seven seals. Since he saw them, they must have been on the outside of the scroll, not on the inside of the document as some suggest.
Some believe that the first seal has to be broken which opens the scroll until the second seal is reached and then it too is opened, etc. This is not the case with this particular scroll in my opinion. The seals are not hidden from view. With the seals being on the outside then, all seven must be opened before the contents of the book are revealed.
Robert van Kampen owns one of the world's most extensive private collections of biblical manuscripts, with many dating back to the second century. He writes in his book, "The Sign," that of the many scrolls in his possession not one has a seal on the inside. When sealed, the scrolls are all done so from the outside. When one seal is present, it was usually placed there by the author of the scroll. When more than one seal is present it indicates a series or set of conditions that must be met before the scroll can actually be opened. He also cites that the Shrine of the Book located on the grounds of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem has many scrolls that have multiple seals placed on them, yet not one scroll has a seal on the inside.
(It has also been noted that Roman wills and legal contracts were documents that often had seven seals on them like the one John describes in Revelation.
What is the scroll or book that John saw? The closest thing we have to comparison is found in Ezekiel:
As in Revelation, the scroll here has writing on both sides. Apparently, scrolls of this nature were extremely rare in New Testament times as typically the writing was done on one side only. The writing side, called the "recto," was the side in which the fibers of the document ran horizontally thus making writing easier. The reverse side, the "verso" was usually for the title or address of the document, and was only used when there was inadequate space on the recto. In other words, a document with writing on both sides indicates that the author had much to say. Documents with writing on both sides are so rare in fact that there is even a technical name for it, an opisthograph.
As we see in Ezekiel, the scroll contained "lamentations, and mourning, and woe." This is easily comparable to the scroll of Revelation, in my opinion. The obvious difference between the two scrolls, however, is that the one in Revelation is sealed. We know that only the proper persons or officials can open a sealed document, and in the case of multiple seals, certain conditions must be met first. It may be significant to remember that Roman wills were sealed in this fashion and thus the document could not be opened until the death of the person whose will it was could be attested. Interesting in view of the fact that John describes the Lamb as having been slain (Rev 5:6,9).
So we see by Christ's sacrificial death that He is worthy to loose the seals. In addition, He also has the authority to open the book as we see in the dual imagery of Christ as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David. Here we have Christ's Kingship displayed. His role of Judge is undisputed. | <urn:uuid:42fccdb5-0dbd-4ee6-8c86-f9f49fcebac3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://philologos.org/bpr/files/s006.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00155-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982455 | 1,107 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Thanks to NASA’s Curiosity rover, scientists have been able to track wind and radiation patterns on Mars in an attempt to discover whether conditions there were ever favorable to life.
Initial readings found that levels of radiation are about the same as those astronauts typically experience in the low-Earth orbit. “Absolutely, astronauts can live in this environment,” Don Hassler of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., said during a news conference Thursday.
Hassler explained that Mars’ natural environment acts as a shield for the radiation on the surface. This supports the notion that astronauts can set foot and even function on the Red Planet for a short stretches of time.
Curiosity’s fancy instrument, the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), monitors high-energy radiation in the environment; this could also be a factor in determining whether Mars has the potential to host lifeforms.
Researchers believe that Mars lost its global magnetic field long ago due to solar wind bombardment. RAD reported that as the remaining Martian atmosphere thickens and thins daily, radiation levels rise and fall by 3 percent to 5 percent.
As was first reported in a NASA blog post, researchers stationed in a car-sized mobile lab are specifically tracking events with a least one characteristic of a whirlwind. They are also linking the rhythmic changes in radiation to daily atmospheric changes, which will lead to a better understanding the native environment.
The overarching goal of the mission is to use assess whether areas inside Gale Crater, an area of Mars where Curiosity landed, once offered a habitable environment for microbes.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | <urn:uuid:b9347c78-f674-4ac3-9543-94fe9b023cf1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://venturebeat.com/2012/11/16/mars-curiosity-scientists-say-radiation-levels-are-safe-for-astronauts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00059-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937331 | 331 | 4.21875 | 4 |
|Publication number||US5361333 A|
|Application number||US 07/893,840|
|Publication date||Nov 1, 1994|
|Filing date||Jun 4, 1992|
|Priority date||Jun 4, 1992|
|Publication number||07893840, 893840, US 5361333 A, US 5361333A, US-A-5361333, US5361333 A, US5361333A|
|Inventors||John B. Ahlquist, Jr., R. Von Ehr II James, Samantha Seals-Mason|
|Original Assignee||Altsys Corporation|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (3), Non-Patent Citations (3), Referenced by (20), Classifications (4), Legal Events (7)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
This invention relates to graphic presentations and more particularly to a system and method for generating self-overlapping calligraphic images.
Calligraphy is an ancient drawing form and derives its name from beautiful or elegant penmanship. On paper a calligraphic stroke is created by a type of pen called a calligraphic pen which has a long narrow nib which allows ink to flow onto the writing surface. There is a basic "grammar" of movements of the calligraphic pen, called strokes, which in proper combinations produces recognizable letter forms or flourishes. The stroke needed to create a calligraphic letter is called its "ductus," from Latin "to draw." A single stroke is created by using one or all of the following traditional techniques: (1) changing the angle of the chiseled nib; (2) changing the pressure of the nib, thus allowing more ink to flow or widening the nib to allow more ink to cover more surface of the paper; and (3) changing the direction of the nib from right to left and up and down. It is the calligrapher's skill in working the interaction of the physical characteristics of the pen with its stroking techniques that ultimately produces calligraphy.
In modern computer systems, a problem results when a user wishes to generate on a computer screen (or on a printer) a curve representative of a calligraphic stroke. One could simulate static calligraphic paths by any manner of methods on the screen. However, to model the direct stroking is quite another task.
Soon after the advent of high-resolution screens and graphical user interfaces, one could find bitmap based "painting" programs containing "brushes" for calligraphy. These "brushes" allowed only a static or unchanging angle. However, one could choose from a pallet of "brush" angles, but the system did not allow for the measuring of pressure for changing the width of the nib. A problem would arise when a mistake was made or one wanted to alter a path. To make corrections meant removing and/or adding pixels to the bitmap image, not a quick process or an easy one. The "brush" movements were accomplished by using a new device called a mouse, producing not very smooth or true freestyle strokes. One could use a graphics "tablet" to aid in producing freestyle strokes; however, nothing else was available for this task.
Thereafter, vector-based "drawing" programs arrived. With these programs a calligraphic path could be hand-built by carefully adding enough points to a path to make it look smooth. This was a tedious and slow process for something which should be simple and direct. Unless one understood the mathematics behind a calligraphic path, one could not accurately model the path's change in angle, pressure or direction. These programs had no pallet "brushes" either. The one key benefit was that a user could make corrections easily and rapidly. Using a graphics tablet provided only speed improvements and more accurate point placement, particularly for tracing.
Finally, the vector-based "drawing" programs moved to using Bezier curves. This new method of creating paths provided speed, ease of use and more accurate modeling of calligraphic strokes. A user could simulate change in angle, pressure and direction. However, one still did not have direct stroking of the path as a whole, only its "control" points used to define the path. Again, using a graphics tablet provided only speed improvements and more accurate point placement. Ideally, a user would want the ease of stroking that a bitmap program provides with the ease of editing a vector-program offers.
One characteristic of a calligraphic pen stroke is that the nib is carried at a specific angle, thus the beginning of a line stroke and the end of that line stroke should have the same angle with respect to the paper or screen.
In the prior art this is not the case. In such prior art systems the angle of the stroke at the end of the stroke does not match the angle of the stroke at the start point. While the precise reasons for these mismatches are known only to the system programmer, they certainly leave a very fundamentally inaccurate and unsatisfying image on the screen or on an electronically printed reproduction.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a system and method of creating calligraphic strokes from an off-screen input source, when the source provides data points pertaining to length, direction, angle of attack and line width.
A problem results when a calligraphic stroke crosses over a previous stroke, such as when the user makes an "x", or when the stroke crosses back over itself, such as when the user makes an "e." These are special cases, each of which requires special solutions, particularly if the user is going to edit the stroke and add modifications thereto.
Further problems result when editing is desired to change the width or stroke of the character. The fact that strokes have crossed over themselves creates a difficult task for editing.
Another very serious problem is that often it is desired to perform geometric operations on the calligraphic images, and when they cross over themselves or intersect it is very difficult to perform any of these geometric operations.
A further problem that must be resolved is the removal of self overlap in a figure. Bezier curves present a special problem because Bezier curves can intersect in many different places. This problem has been solved in other systems for straight lines which can intersect at one point or circular arc segments which can intersect in at most two points. Apple Computer has solved it for quadratic lines which again can intersect at most at two points. However, finding the intersection of Bezier curves is a much harder problem. For example, a software system known commercially as Fontographer could not remove the overlap from self-intersecting figures and could not construct all Bezier curves.
These and other problems have been solved by a system and method which allows for the creation of the outline of a self-overlapping calligraphic movement and which also provides for a same start and stop angle with respect to the image. The system takes as an input a Bezier curve and calculates the calligraphic outline of the curve based on the input curve and accounts for the changing of the width of the pen based on the angle by calculating where the angle of the curve matches the angle of the pen and at those locations it handles problems that would be caused by the curve overlapping itself.
In operation, as the calligraphic stroke is being generated by the user, the image is initially created as an approximation of the line so that the user may see the image being formed in real time. However, in actuality the system creates the center line, or spine, of the resultant image. The system is designed to look ahead to see where the curve is moving to determine where the outline should be. When the user is finished creating the curved shape, the system operates to construct the outline of the calligraphic image from the created center line. The system then displays on a screen the outline of the calligraphic image having points along the outline periphery which then can be manipulated by the user for the purpose of editing and performing geometric functions with respect to the created line.
In the situation where two calligraphic images overlap, the area of the overlapping strokes has to be removed. In many cases, the two curves can be combined into a single curve that covers the same area, which simplifies the figure. En other cases it can be decomposed into two or more figures that do not cross each other. This is accomplished with an algorithm that examines all the curves in the one or more figures that overlap and identifies the curves that cross. At the points where the curves cross, the curve is subdivided and an insertion point is added at the location that the curves cross. Once this is done, a starting point is chosen and the curves are "walked" around from point to point. When an intersection point between two curves is located, there are two curves that cross and the algorithm must choose between one of the curves. The curve that is to the outside of the two figures is chosen. Both figures are walked around their outsides until returning to the original point, thus generating a path that walks around the edge in periphery of the figures.
One technical advantage of our system is that a user can move a stylus across a pad and along with various other input sources can create calligraphy with overlapping strokes for complex letter forms or other drawings.
Another technical advantage of our system is the creation of a graphics system which, depending upon line width and angle information, creates an outline of the desired overlapping calligraphic image on a screen, such that the image contains points editable for controlling subsequent outlines of images.
A still further technical advantage is that our system allows a user to create calligraphic strokes from an off-screen input source, when the source provides data points pertaining to length, direction, angle of attack and line width.
A still further technical advantage of our system is to construct the outline of an overlapping calligraphic image from a created center line. The system then displays on a screen the outline of the calligraphic image having points along the outline periphery which then can be manipulated by the user for the purpose of editing and performing geometric functions with respect to the created line.
A still further technical advantage of the present invention is the font generating capabilities consisting of calligraphic curve characteristics.
The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technical advantages of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the invention that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the invention will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention. It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the conception and the specific embodiment disclosed may be readily utilized as a basis for modifying or designing other structures for carrying out the same purposes of the present invention. It should also be realized by those skilled in the art that such equivalent constructions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims.
For a more complete understanding of the present invention, and the advantages thereof, reference is now made to the following descriptions taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:
FIG. 1 shows an overall system utilizing our system and method for generating self-overlapping calligraphic curves;
FIG. 2 shows a calligraphic path that crosses itself;
FIG. 3 shows an adjustment of a corner point;
FIG. 4 shows FIG. 2 as a filled image;
FIG. 5 shows the editing of a corner at a cross-over point on an overlapping image without utilizing the method of the present invention;
FIG. 6 shows two paths that produce the same filled image as FIG. 2 but do not cross;
FIG. 7 shows FIG. 6 as a filled image;
FIG. 8 shows FIG. 6 with corner 618 moved to the same location 401 was moved to in FIG. 5;
FIG. 9 shows FIG. 2 with additional points inserted at each point that the two curves cross;
FIG. 10 shows the path from FIG. 9 after the first path has been walked;
FIG. 11 shows the remaining points after FIG. 10 is walked;
FIG. 12 shows a flowchart of the path walk algorithm; and
FIG. 13 shows a flowchart for generating self-overlapping calligraphic curves.
Turning now to FIG. 1, there is shown a representative system 10 for implementing the principles of the present invention which has in it, in one example, a computer graphics display 11 and keypad 12. Also connected to computer graphics display 11 is mouse 14 with its associated pad 13 and also connected to the computer graphics display 11 is pressure sensitive tablet 15 and its associated pen 16 and also connected to the computer graphics display 11 is a reservoir 18 containing a fluid 19 with its associated stylus 17. Displayed on the screen is a calligraphic image 20 created in any number of different ways, either from the keypad 12 or from a mouse 14 or from a stylus 16 moving across a tablet 15. In addition, there are many other methods in which such an image can be created using the principles of our invention.
Before beginning, the reader is referred to copending U.S. patent application, Ser. No. 07/833,977, entitled "A System and Method for Generating Real Time Calligraphic Curves," hereby incorporated by reference herein, to understand how calligraphic images are constructed.
For an understanding of the creation of variable width lines, the reader is referred to copending patent application, Ser. No. 07/833,957, entitled "A System and Method of Generating Variable Width Lines," hereby incorporated by reference herein.
For an understanding of the creation of complex calligraphic images, the reader is referred to concurrently filed copending patent application, Ser. No. 07/894272, entitled "A System and Method for Generating Complex Calligraphic Curves," hereby incorporated by reference herein.
To produce the calligraphic outlines described in the present invention, the reader may purchase the "FONTOGRAPHER" software package available from Altsys Corporation, 269 W. Rennet Road, Richardson, Tex. 75080, hereby incorporated by reference herein. The calligraphic outlines may be utilized in creating fonts for printing.
Additional information required for the calligraphic expansion is the angle of the calligraphic pen which could be specified in a dialog box on the screen. Once established in the system, this angle may remain constant as the user moves the pen across the pressure sensitive tablet or as the user inputs information from the keypad and mouse. As will be seen the user can specify a constant width for the line or can specify that the line will be dependent upon the amount of pressure applied to the pen or upon keys inputted from the keyboard.
Before proceeding further, several definitions of terms to be used in this description are required.
"Curve" in this discussion is a Bezier curve specified by two end points that the curve passes through, and two control points that the curve does not pass through. In the figures, the points shown are the end points. The control points are not shown, but their location can be derived from the shape of the curve. A Bezier curve can be a straight line between the end points, so in this discussion the term curve includes lines.
A calligraphic stroke has 2 "sides" and 2 "ends." The ends are lines that are the width and angle of the pen. The sides consist of one or more curves.
Referring now to FIG. 2, there is shown a path that overlaps itself. This path was created by calligraphic expansion; however the source of the path is not significant. The figure has a number of corners.
FIG. 3 shows how points at a corner, such as 207, can be adjusted by moving the corner point. Note that the corner has been changed in FIG. 3 by moving point 207. Moving the corner is simple, and does not affect the location of the corners at 206 and 208.
FIG. 4 shows FIG. 2 as a filled image, which is how the path would often be used. Note that because the path overlaps, there are corners at 401, 402, 403 and 404 that do not have a corresponding point in the path. This makes editing the corner very difficult, as there is no point at that location to move. In order to edit the corner at 401, the curves at [205, 206], and [201, 202] of FIG. 2 must be adjusted.
FIG. 5 shows the corner at 401 moved up and to the right. Note that the corners at 404 and 402 have moved as well. Since the corners are at the intersections of curves, changing the curve to change one corner changes the other corners as well. In addition, the change in location of the other corners is not the same change as the change in location intentionally applied to corner 401. This is generally not desirable, and makes certain kinds of edits impossible, such as changing corner 401 without changing corners 404 and 402.
FIG. 6 shows two paths that produce the same filled image as FIG. 2, but do not overlap. As a result, all corners in the image have a corresponding corner point in the paths. In this figure, the corner that was located at 401 in FIG. 4 is located at point 614 in this figure.
Next, FIG. 7 shows FIG. 6 as a filled image. Note that it is the same filled image as FIG. 4.
FIG. 8 shows FIG. 6 with corner 618 moved to the same location corner 401 was moved to in FIG. 5. Note that this does not change the position of corner 602 (which corresponds to corner 404), or corner 609 (which corresponds to corner 402). This is a much more desirable editing result, as each corner can be edited individually without affecting the position of the other corners.
Referring next to FIGS. 9-11, there is illustrated the process of converting FIG. 2, a path that overlaps, to FIG. 6, two paths that do not overlap, but producing the same filled image as FIG. 2.
FIG. 9 shows FIG. 2 with additional points inserted at each point that two curves overlap. The first curve originally went from 901 (which corresponds to 201) to 904 (which corresponds to 202). Since it crosses two curves, two points were inserted and the curve goes 901, 902, 903, 904. After all points are inserted, they are examined for points that have the same location. In this figure, points 902 and 913 have the same location, 903 and 908 have the same location, 909 and 920 have the same location and 921 and 912 have the same location. Each point that has the same location as another point will be marked as an INTERSECTION point. These points will be handled in a special fashion as described later. Note also that the image is clockwise. This means that as curves are examined, the inside of the image is on the clockwise side of the curve, or right side. The outside of the image is on the counterclockwise side of the curve, or left side. If the points are followed backwards, from 922 to 901, then the image is counterclockwise and the inside is on the counterclockwise side, or left side. To process a counterclockwise image, reverse the order of the points, and process as a clockwise image. When finished, reverse the points of the resulting paths.
A user of the system of the present invention will utilize one of the input devices such as the pen and pressure sensitive pad to draw calligraphic images such as the ones depicted in FIG. 2 through 9. When a user draws such an image, the system will store the image as a Bezier curve as previously described. The Bezier curves define the boundaries of the calligraphic image. However, as previously described, editing of the image is not easily accomplished since moving a point where the curves intersect distorts the calligraphic image into an undesirable shape. The present invention solves this problem using an algorithm described in the flowcharts of FIGS. 12 and 13 to create another image as depicted in FIG. 6 exactly the same as the one shown in FIG. 2 but without the curves actually overlapping each other.
Referring to FIGS. 12 and 13 and the calligraphic image of FIG. 9 with the additional intersection points, the system creates the non-overlapping replica of the overlapping calligraphic image using a path walk algorithm wherein the curves defining the boundary of the calligraphic image are "path walked" whereby each point "walked" is specially "marked" or placed in another memory location for creating the non-overlapping calligraphic image as depicted in FIG. 6. Beginning at step 1301 of FIG. 13, the algorithm is started. At step 1302, the system inquires whether the first point along the image is a starting point. A starting point is an intersection point whose curve goes outside of the curve it intersects. In FIG. 9, points 903 and 908 are intersection points. Since the curve 903 to 904 is outside, or counterclockwise, from the curve 907, 908, 909, point 903 is a starting point. The curve 908 to 909 is inside, or clockwise, from the curve 902, 903, 904. Therefore, point 908 is not a starting point. In FIG. 9, points 903, 909, 913 and 921 are starting points.
Returning to the algorithm of FIG. 13, at step 1302 the system asks whether a point is a starting point. In FIG. 9, 901 is not a starting point. Therefore, the system proceeds to step 1304 and asks whether there are any points left to check for starting. Since points 902 through 922 are left, the system moves to the next point at step 1310 to evaluate whether or not it is a starting point at step 1302. Again, 902 has not been determined to be a starting point, so the system again returns to step 1304 to ask whether any points are left for starting. Since there are, at step 1310 the system moves to the next point in FIG. 9, which is 903. At step 1302, the next point is determined to be a starting point. Therefore, the system proceeds to step 1303 to mark this starting point to utilize within the path walk algorithm of FIG. 12. This process continues through every point of the calligraphic image (points 901 through 922 in FIG. 9), until all the starting points are marked. When there are no more starting points left to check, at step 1304 the system proceeds to step 1305 to begin utilizing the path walk algorithm of FIG. 12. At step 1305, the system asks whether there are any starting points to utilize in the path walk algorithm. Since in this case there are four starting points, the system proceeds to step 1306 to utilize the path walk algorithm of FIG. 12.
Referring now to FIG. 12, the system starts at the first point at step 1201, which is 903 of FIG. 9. At step 1202, the system determines whether this point, 903, is at an intersection. Since it is, the system proceeds to step 1205 to examine this point at this intersection point and to examine this point's next point. The first point to be examined will be point 903 in FIG. 9, and its next point 904. At step 1206, the system asks whether this next point, 904, is the most clockwise point examined at this intersection point looking clockwise from curve 903 to 904. Since 904 is the most clockwise point, at step 1207, point 904 is saved as the Best point. At step 1208, the system asks whether 903 is the last point at the intersection. Since it is not, at step 1209 the system advances to the next point at the intersection, this point being 908. Next, at step 1205, the system examines 908, and its next point, 909. At step 1206, point 909 is determined whether or not it is the most clockwise point examined at this intersection point from the curve 903, 904 being examined. Beginning along the curve 903, 904 and examining clockwise from that curve, it can be determined that 909 is not the most clockwise point examined at this intersection point since 904 remains as the most clockwise point. Therefore, at step 1207, 904 remains as the Best point.
At step 1208, the system again asks whether this is the last point at the intersection. Since all of the points have been examined, the systems moves to step 1210 where the algorithm then advances along the curve to the Best point, 904.
It should be remembered that as each point is walked, it is "marked" or transferred to another memory location as previously discussed.
After step 1210, the system returns to step 1202 to determine whether this next Best point is at an intersection. Since it is not, the system selects the next point at step 1203, the next point being 905. At step 1204, the system determines whether this next point is the original point, point 903. Since it is not, the system moves to step 1202 to determine whether point 905 is at an intersection point. Since it is not, the system then moves to point 906 at step 1203. At step 1204, the system again asks whether point 906 is the original point. Since it is not, the system returns to step 1202 to ask whether point 906 is at an intersection. Since it is not, at step 1203 the system selects point 907 as the next point. Again at step 1204 it is asked whether 907 is the original point. Since it is not, the system again cycles through steps 1202 through 1204 until point 908 has been reached. Since 908 is at point 903, which is the original point, step 1211 ends the path walk algorithm.
Returning to FIG. 13, the system returns to step 1306 and moves on to step 1307 to ask whether the path walk ended back at the original starting point 903. If it had not, the system would have returned to step 1305 to ask whether there were any other starting points left. However, since the path walk algorithm did end at the original starting point, the system moves to step 1308 to output all of the points walked, or to simply "mark" them within the memory, and to delete these points from the original memory location, which now contains only the points shown in FIG. 10.
The system then returns to step 1305 to determine whether any starting points are left. Since there are, the system moves to to the next starting point, point 909, and begins the path walk algorithm of FIG. 12 again at step 1306.
Returning again to FIG. 12, and beginning at step 1201, the system next moves to step 1202 to ask whether point 909 is at an intersection. Since it is, at step 1205 point 909 and its next point, 910, are examined. At step 1206, the system asks whether the next point, 910, is the most clockwise point examined at this intersection point. Since all of the points have not been examined at this intersection point, the system moves to step 1208 to ask whether there are any other intersection points left or whether point 909 is the last point at the intersection. Since it is not, the system moves to step 1209 to advance to the next point at the intersection, point 920. At 1205, point 920 is examined along with its next point, point 921. At step 1206, the next points, points 921 and 910 are examined to determine which is the most clockwise point looking from curve 909, 910. Since point 910 is the most clockwise point, at step 1207, point 910 is saved as the Best point. Since all of the points have been examined at this intersection point, the system moves from step 1208 to step 1210 where the algorithm then advances to the Best point, point 910.
Returning to step 1202, the system asks whether point 910 is at an intersection. Since it is not, the system at step 1203 then selects the next point, point 911. At step 1204, the system asks whether this is the original point where this path walk process had begun. The original point for this path walk process is point 909. Therefore, the system returns to step 1202 to ask whether point 911 is at an intersection. Since it is not, 912 is then selected as the next point at step 1203. Since 912 is not the original point, point 909, the system returns to step 1202 from step 1204. Since 912 is at an intersection, the system moves to step 1205 to examine point 912 and its next point, point 913. In step 1206 the system asks whether this next point, point 913, is the most clockwise point examined at this intersection point. Since it is not, the system moves to step 1208 to ask whether point 912 is the last point of the intersection. Since it is not, the system at step 1209 advances to the next point at the intersection, point 921. At step 1205, point 921 and its next point, point 922 are examined. At step 1206, point 922 is examined to determine whether or not it is the most clockwise point examined at this intersection point. Since it is, at step 1207, point 922 is saved as the Best point. Next, at step 1208, it is determined that all of the points at the intersection have been examined. Therefore, the system moves to step 1210, where the algorithm advances to the Best point, point 922. Next at step 1202, the system asks whether point 922 is at an intersection. Since it is not, at step 1203, the next point, 901, is selected. At step 1204, it is asked whether or not point 901 is the original point. Since the original point is point 909, point 901 is not the original point, and the system returns to step 1202. Since point 901 is not at an intersection the system moves to step 1203 to select the next point along the curve, point 902. Since point 902 is not the original point, the system then returns to step 1202. Since point 902 is at an intersection, the system moves to step 1205 to examine point 902 and its next point. However, point 902's next point, point 903 has been deleted as a result of the previous path walk. Thus, at step 1206, the next point cannot be examined. Therefore, the system moves to step 1208 to determine whether point 902 is the last point at this intersection. Since it is not, the system advances to the next point at the intersection, point 913. Next, at step 1205, point 913 and its next point, point 914 are examined. At step 1206, point 914 is examined to determine whether or not it is the most clockwise point examined at this intersection point. Since it is, at step 1207, point 914 is saved as the Best point. Since all of the points at the intersection have been examined, the system moves from step 1208 to step 1210 where it advances to the Best point, point 914.
Next, at step 1202, the system asks whether point 914 is at an intersection. Since it is not, it then selects the next point, 915. The system will then cycle through steps 1202-1204 as it path walks around through points 915, 916, 917, 918 and 919 since none of these points lie at an intersection nor or none of these points the original point, point 909. When point 920 is then reached, the system at step 1204 asks whether point 920 is the original point. Since point 920 is the same point as point 909, this is true. Therefore, the algorithm of FIG. 12 ends at step 1211 and the system returns to step 1306 in FIG. 13.
Next, at step 1307, the system asks whether the path walk of FIG. 12 ended at the last starting point. Since this is true, the system moves to step 1308 where all the points that were path walked, points 909, 910, 911, 921, 922, 901, 913, 914, 915, 916, 917, 918 and 919, are marked, or outputted from the original memory location and transferred to another memory location. These points are also deleted from the original memory location if two separate memory locations are utilized. The system then moves to step 1305 to ask whether there are any starting points left. Since the original starting points were points 903, 909, 913 and 921, there are no starting points left. Therefore, the system ends at step 1309. The points that remain "unmarked", or remain in the original memory location, are points 902, 908, 920 and 912 as depicted in FIG. 11.
The points that have been "marked" or transferred to the second memory location are then utilized to construct a non-overlapping calligraphic image as shown in FIG. 6. This image can be filled in as shown in FIG. 7, or edited by moving any one the points along the curve as shown in FIG. 8, including the path walked points from the original intersection points where the calligraphic image overlapped itself. The image can now be modified at these points without adversely distorting the entire calligraphic image as shown in FIG. 8.
Although the present invention and its advantages have been described in detail, it should be understood that various changes, substitutions and alterations can be made herein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
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|Jun 4, 1992||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: ALTSYS CORPORATION A TX CORP., TEXAS
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST.;ASSIGNORS:AHLQUIST, JOHN B., JR.;VON EHR, JAMES R., II;SEALS-MASON, SAMANTHA;REEL/FRAME:006145/0805
Effective date: 19920603
|Feb 24, 1995||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: MACROMEDIA, INC., CALIFORNIA
Free format text: MERGER;ASSIGNOR:ALTSYS CORPORATION;REEL/FRAME:007364/0396
Effective date: 19950119
|Mar 30, 1998||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 4
|May 1, 2002||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 8
|May 21, 2002||REMI||Maintenance fee reminder mailed|
|Jan 19, 2006||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED, CALIFORNIA
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:MACROMEDIA, INC.;REEL/FRAME:017034/0263
Effective date: 20051207
Owner name: ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED,CALIFORNIA
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:MACROMEDIA, INC.;REEL/FRAME:017034/0263
Effective date: 20051207
|Apr 7, 2006||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 12 | <urn:uuid:57f6fc0f-43c3-4396-8bd4-1db6cffda15e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.google.com/patents/US5361333?dq=7,346,539 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00011-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926252 | 8,501 | 2.703125 | 3 |
March 18, 2004
Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride Conversion
For over 30 years, the Department of Energy (Department) operated geous diffusion plans in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Portsmouth, Ohio; and Paducah, Kentucky, to meet its enriched uranium needs. As a byproduct of the enrichment process, about 704,000 metric tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride were generated and stored in approximately 58,00 cylinders at the enrichment plants. While the cylinders are currently stored with little risk to workers, the public, and the environment, they are gradually deteriorating. Prolonged storage has the potential to increase the Department's safety and health risks from handling operations, natural disasters, or malicious acts. | <urn:uuid:fa14f532-20c6-488d-9508-5cb0dab36866> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://energy.gov/ig/downloads/audit-report-ig-0642 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00169-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949659 | 147 | 2.8125 | 3 |
- HPV is the most common sexually-transmitted infection in the U.S.
- Most HPV infections cause no symptoms and more than half of all sexually active persons become infected at some point in their lives.
- There are more than 100 HPV types and 30-40 can be sexually transmitted, with 15 HPV types associated with cervical cancer.
- The majority of women clear the HPV virus from their bodies naturally but women with risk factors, such as HIV infection, smoking, long-time use of oral contraceptives, and co-infection with herpes simplex virus or chlamydia, are at higher risk for chronic HPV infection.
- Chronic HPV infection is associated with precancerous changes in the cervix which can progress to cervical cancer if left undiagnosed and untreated.
- Between 1955 and 1992, cervical cancer deaths in American women dropped by 74 percent due to routine pap smears.
- Chronic HPV infections are also associated with other genital cancers, such as anal cancer.
- There are about 9,800 new cases of cervical cancer annually diagnosed in the U.S., which represents .71 percent out of the approximately 1,372,000 new cancer cases of all types diagnosed.
- In the U.S., cervical cancer is the 14th most common type of cancer in women but in South America, Africa and Asia, cervical cancer is the most common cancer in women because of poor health care and no pap screening.
- There are about 3,700 deaths in mostly older American women annually attributed to HPV-related cervical cancer, which is about .65 percent of the approximately 570,000 cancer deaths that occur in the U.S.
- Most cervical pre-cancers develop slowly, so nearly all cervical cancers can be prevented with regular pap smear screening and prompt treatment.
- Survival for women with pre-invasive cervical cancer lesions is nearly 100% with early diagnosis and appropriate treatment.
1. Food and Drug Administration. Product Approval Information - Licensing Action: GARDASIL Questions and Answers.
2. American Cancer Society. Cancer Facts and Figures. Atlanta: American Cancer Society; 2005.
3. Saslow D, Runowicz CD et al. American Cancer Society Guideline for the Early Detection of Cervical Neoplasia and Cancer. CA Cancer J Clin 2002; 52:342-362 | <urn:uuid:8718e38a-481a-4ba4-bfaf-a9c66e135976> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nvic.org/vaccines-and-diseases/HPV/infectionfacts.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00195-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93461 | 479 | 2.859375 | 3 |
2. A part considered by itself, though not actually cut off or separated from the whole. "These are parts of his ways; but how little a portion is heard of him!" (Job xxvi. 14) "Portions and parcels of the dreadful past." (Tennyson)
4. The part of an estate given to a child or heir, or descending to him by law, and distributed to him in the settlement of the estate; an inheritance. "Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me." (Luke xv. 12)
5. A wife's fortune; a dowry.
Portion, Part. Part is generic, having a simple reference to some whole. Portion has the additional idea of such a division as bears reference to an individual, or is allotted to some object; as, a portion of one's time; a portion of Scripture.
Origin: F, from L. Portio, akin to pars, partis, a part. See Part.
Origin: Portioned; Portioning.
(01 Mar 1998)
|Bookmark with:||word visualiser||Go and visit our forums| | <urn:uuid:0eceb4e1-4b49-40c6-8b53-2645726bcba7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mondofacto.com/facts/dictionary?portions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00149-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925021 | 240 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Glyphosate is an acid molecule and the active ingredient in the world’s most utilized herbicide that was intentionally created to kill weeds that compete with commercial crops such as corn and soy. Back in 1970, one of Monsanto’s chemists, John E. Franz, manufactured this highly controversial, probable carcinogenic and marketed it under the trade name Roundup. Glyphosate-resistant crops have the chemical compound inside them, and the intention was for farmers to be able to spray the crops with more weed-killer without killing the edible plants, but this trait is failing miserably across the globe, causing health detriment, soil nutrient depletion and environmental disturbances that go unreported by the mainstream media. Nearly 200 million pounds are dumped on American soil each year, including the agricultural sector, home gardens and yards. Over the past couple decades, weed resistance has become a major problem as “Superweeds” have become immune to Roundup and are destroying the yield once thought to be improving by this biotechnology, though Monsanto advocates would have the public, farmers and health organizations believe otherwise to protect their investments, sales and profits. (1)
No regulations on Glyphosate in order to protect humans
Hundreds of tests and independent, reliable studies have been conducted that expose Glyphosate as a major threat to human health, but since the FDA and EPA rely solely on safety tests done by the manufacturer, no regulations are put in place to protect humans, animals or the environment from this known cancer-causing weed killer. The chemical is absorbed throughout foliage and even seeps into roots. Glyphosate is also used as a drying agent that is sprayed on crops heavily, such as wheat and sugarcane, just before harvesting for storage in silos. The term “Roundup Ready” means the crop’s seeds are genetically engineered to contain the toxic and deadly herbicide. Scientific correlations have also been made between Glyphosate and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). The increased risk of farmers contacting NHL has been identified in farm workers using Roundup as recently as 2014. In March of 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a subsidiary branch of the World Health Organization (WHO), published a summary of studies on the dangers of Glyphosate. The World Health Organization has revealed in-depth research exposing Glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic in humans” based on epidemiological studies, animal studies and in vitro studies. Laboratory studies dating as far back as 1991 and 1992 reveal that Glyphosate can harm beneficial insects and earthworms. It can also harm the bacterial ecology of soil and cause micronutrient deficiencies in plants, which explains much of the immuno-deficiencies in Americans who consume GM corn and soy regularly. (2)
U.S. regulatory agencies FDA and USDA do NOT regulate use or dangers of Glyphosate
Prior to 1970, Glyphosate was synthesized in a laboratory by a Swiss chemist that patented the chemical chelator “agent” that was known then to bind and remove the minerals calcium, magnesium, copper, zinc and manganese. Glyphosate also kills plants and bacteria by interfering with the synthesis of the amino acids tyrosine, tryptophan and phenylalanine by inhibiting certain enzymes. Glyphosate residues are NOT always immobile and do have the potential to contaminate surface waters through soil erosion as it adsorbs (remains as thin film on surface) to soil particles suspended in runoff. Glyphosate is NOT tested by the FDA’s Pesticide Residue Monitoring Program nor the USDA’s Pesticide Data Program, and field tests show that carrots, lettuce and barley contain residues up to ONE YEAR after the soil is treated with just three pounds of Glyphosate per acre. Contamination of rain, groundwater and surface water is attributed to urban and agricultural use. People spray Roundup on sidewalks, to clear railroad tracks, and to try to eradicate weeds from their yards. It’s also used in aerial spraying. Laboratory toxicology studies reveal that other ingredients in combination with Glyphosate may have greater toxicity than Glyphosate and might also propel the toxicity and carcinogenic (cancer-causing) actions of Glyphosate itself.
Since Monsanto’s patent on Glyphosate expired in the year 2000, most of the agrochemical (chemical industrial) companies and corporations manufacture and produce Glyphosate now, including Bayer CropScience, BASF, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Syngenta and a host of Chinese manufacturers. Glyphosate is now combined with over 400 chemical and commercial adjuvants (agents that enhances the effect of Glyphosate) from more than thirty companies worldwide for agricultural use. Roundup products, including genetically modified seeds, represent half of Monsanto’s gross profits. (3)
Glyphosate, one of deadly ingredients of Agent Orange used in Vietnam, will now be used to “carpet bomb” American agriculture
Dow AgroSciences, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, just got EPA permission to spray Glyphosate (part of chemical compound found in 2,4-D) on agricultural fields near U.S. schools, according to reports from the Environmental Working Group (EWG). The latest weed killer compound mixture is called “Enlist DuoTM” and more than 5,000 schools will be affected that are within 200 feet of those crop fields. Dow’s applications are pending with the EPA and will be sprayed on corn and soy that is genetically engineered (meaning the vegetables already contain the pesticide genes) to be tolerant or “resistant” to the toxic herbicide. Just like with Roundup, the Enlist product will prompt MORE use (up to ten times as much) of toxic herbicide to combat weeds that quickly evolve to overcome the herbicide, commonly referred to as Superweeds. The compound 2,4-D is extra-dangerous to humans because it can transform into a gas after being sprayed and carry the Glyphosate for long distances. American exposure to this cancer-causing compound would of course soar. During the war in Vietnam, thousands of soldiers trudged through the jungles and brush that were sprayed with Agent Orange, comprised of Glyphosate, and came back home after the war with cancer. Not only did Agent Orange “burn” down foliage but it poisoned the food supply of Vietnam, and that was the goal of its usage. In fact, 2,4-D makes up half of Agent Orange, and cancer is just the tip of the iceberg regarding health detriment. Add to the list reproductive disorders and deformations, suppressed immune function, Parkinson’s disease and hypothyroidism. To make matters worse, Enlist and Enlist-resistant crops do not even solve the problem they are created and promoted to handle. All over the world, Roundup-resistant weeds are a growing problem for all countries that grow GM crops and it’s no coincidence. Farmers that spread the deadly herbicide are also committing suicide in record numbers after battling fits of depression from the toxin and from bankrupting crop yields. (4)
Recently, nearly $50 million in disability benefits were awarded by the US federal government to the military veterans who suffer disease and disorder from Monsanto’s Agent Orange herbicide used in Vietnam, including the active-duty Air Force reservists and forces that sprayed the defoliant Glyphosate products. The US used chemical warfare for twenty years, even after everyone knew that the Nazis used similar chemicals to gas hundreds of thousands of Jews to death during the holocaust. Not surprisingly, the U.S. government was functioning in complete denial of the ill health effects of Glyphosate on US soldiers for decades, insisting that Agent Orange residue had nothing to do with their health problems up until this recent humongous settlement for nearly fifty million dollars. All the while, soldiers and reservists were suffering from prostate cancer, diabetes, leukemia and several other crippling medical conditions, thanks to Glyphosate and Agent Orange’s 2,4-D. (5)
Glyphosate and Enlist Duo 2,4-D: Weapons of Mass Health Destruction
Though soldiers and reservists who served in Vietnam will be compensated for the deadly diseases and disorders they contracted from Agent Orange, not a single American civilian will be compensated for consuming GMO foods like corn and soy and contracting the same diseases and disorders. In fact, consumers in USA are kept in the dark as to which foods are GMO and which foods are sprayed with deadly Glyphosate and other ingredients of Agent Orange. It is said that two-thirds or more of all food found in US grocery stores and supermarkets contain genetically modified organisms and chemical pesticides that are associated with deadly immune system cancers, leading health researchers to believe that is why one in every three Americans develop cancer in their lifetime and only half survive it.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a lawsuit against the EPA for failing to respond to a petition to ban 2,4-D, which was rushed to the market by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) with no consideration for how it might affect the environment and the population. Over the past four decades, more than twenty studies have shown the connection between 2,4-D and soft-tissue and blood cancer (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Most Americans do NOT understand what GMO really means
Jeffrey Smith, author of “Seeds of Deception” and the world’s leading outspoken advocate about the dangers of GMO (or GE), explains that GMO is a laboratory process where genes from the DNA of one species are extracted and artificially forced into the genes of an unrelated plant. This refers directly to the use of recombinant DNA techniques and can involve inserting genes of pesticides into food seeds, as done with Glyphosate for corn, soy, and other popular staple foods that are the main ingredients and bulking agents for thousands of products across the globe. The alterations in genetic makeup is highly mutagenic and leads to unpredictable changes in the DNA and proteins produced, leading to toxic and often allergic reactions in humans that consume them.
Most Americans have been conned into believing that genetic modification is the same thing as traditional, selective breeding, but the two “processes” are nothing alike. Traditional hybridization occurs naturally and never circumvents natural laws. Also, using selective breeding does not involve inserting the genes of foreign substances into seeds of crops in order to kill insects or weeds. The argument that GMO and traditional breeding are one in the same is a typical con argument used by GM proponents to trick consumers into thinking GMO are safe and beneficial, when they are not. Genetic engineering strategies are imprecise and unpredictable, and GM can destroy food’s nutritional values, create toxicity and fuel allergic reactions, not to mention lowering crop yields – the exact opposite of the mantra used to sell farmers on using them and consumers on eating them. On average, chronically ill people have higher Glyphosate levels in their blood than healthy people, as revealed by recent studies and as attributed to America’s deteriorating health. Roundup has been shown to be an endocrine disruptor in human cells at surprising LOW amounts, despite findings purported by the manufacturers and their industry-funded conclusions. Roundup has been found in municipal drinking water and at levels high enough to cause harm. All industry-funded research is based on short-term findings in order to ignore and omit the true health detriment caused and revealed in long-term research, such as that done by the French research scientist Seralini and his professional team. (6)
Rats feed GM soy and GM corn had short and long-term detrimental health effects, including DNA damage, abnormal sperm, blood changes, damage to the liver, the kidneys and the testes. GMOs have been in the American food supply for about twenty years, so Americans who do not filter GM from their food and beverage choices are inclined to be suffering chronic health problems as a result. Leading researchers say that if genetically modified foods that contain Glyphosate and other known carcinogens were the only foods we ate, our overall health as a nation would be far worse than it already is now.
More than 800 scientists drafted a letter to the world warning about the dangers of growing and consuming GM agriculture. The letter explained how GM crops are neither necessary, sustainable nor beneficial to the world. Here are some of the highlights of that letter:
- Genetically modified crops have produced inferior yields when compared to their unmodified counterparts.
- GM crops have been shown to have poor disease resistance.
- GM crops engineered to contain BT toxins kill beneficial insects such as bees, lacewings, swallowtails, and monarch butterflies.
- Glufosinate causes birth defects in mammals.
- Glyphosate has been linked to cancer.
- Poor financial returns for farmers.
- GMOs violate farmers rights (Monsanto takes farmers’ farms away by lawsuits monthly).
- GMOs violate human rights and basic human dignity. (The right to know and control what we put into our bodies is a basic and fundamental human right). (7)
There are no revisions for this post. | <urn:uuid:33f937d9-f3fa-4b7f-b7aa-787a578565ab> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.truthwiki.org/glyphosate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00057-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951805 | 2,723 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Lakes are sometimes thought of as discrete ecological bodies, detached from surrounding landscapes and contained within basins bound by shorelines. However, lakes are dynamic systems with many abiotic and biotic variables affecting varied spatio-temporal scales. Video games have the potential to teach players how these systems operate.
Econauts immerses players in a rich environment, making difficult-to-observe ecological phenomena visible in a living landscape that players explore and examine to explain the relationships between choices that humans make and their ecological consequences.
By leveraging the Assessment Data Aggregator for Gaming Environments (ADAGE) system, Econauts can remotely log game data. Information regarding player choices and experiences are uploaded and stored so that players, educators, and researchers can examine real-time gameplay in an attempt to evaluate performance and refine techniques. | <urn:uuid:1af9b33b-70b5-42aa-a186-d34311a6ccd5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gameslearningsociety.org/econauts_microsite/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00031-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956655 | 170 | 3.140625 | 3 |
For half a year now, rainbows have been conspicuously absent from San Diego skies. This will surely change within a few weeks as we encounter the first of several winter storms spinning out of the Pacific Ocean. Rainbows thrive on two necessary ingredients: rain and sunshine. Therefore, you can expect to see -- or even seek out, if you're willing to travel around a bit -- a rainbow wherever sunlight is shining on raindrops.
Rainbows seem magical, yet their true nature has been recognized since the 17th Century. In a treatise published in the year 1637, René Descartes elucidated the optical mechanism by which sunlight can refract and internally reflect through a spherical water droplet so as to emerge in different directions. One internal reflection results in light that exits, for the most part, at about 42 degrees from the antisolar point (the direction opposite the sun). Two internal reflections result in light that concentrates at an angle of about 51 degrees from the antisolar point, creating a fainter, secondary bow outside the curve of the 42-degree primary bow.
Dispersion -- a separation of colors -- always occurs when white light is refracted. Sunlight passing through a rain droplet separates into narrow bands of color -- violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Within each color band, we're seeing light rays of a particular color following symmetrical paths through many rain droplets. Asymmetric light rays through rain droplets result in a diffuse, white glow that makes the area of the sky inside the curve of the primary bow appear brighter than the area just outside it.
Each rainbow is unique to you, the observer, because you see a unique set of raindrops sending particular colors of sunlight your way. With a little forethought and the ability to move around, it is possible to purposefully "create" your own rainbow in the sky. To chase and catch a rainbow, place yourself between the sun, in one part of the sky, and clouds shedding rain in the opposite part of the sky.
If the sun lies very near the horizon, look for the "red rainbow." The scattering of sunlight through the atmosphere removes nearly all colors but red in the sunlight and from the rainbow that that same light produces. Here's yet another rainbow oddity: when the bright full moon shines on rain clouds, there's the slim chance of seeing a "moonbow." This pale arc appears colorless in the sky -- but only because human night vision, which operates in low-light situations, is insensitive to color.
A full moon occurs this Saturday night, November 8 -- but let's hope that rain clouds do not gather on that evening. For the second time this calendar year, a total lunar eclipse graces the sky at dusk. As darkness falls (around 5:15 p.m.), it should be possible to spot the pale, reddish gray moon -- fully within Earth's shadow at that time -- slowly rising in the east. The reddish color on the moon's face is the result of sunlight passing through Earth's murky atmosphere and refracting into Earth's shadow. At 5:31 p.m. the moon will start to exit from the shadow. A series of partial-eclipse stages will ensue, resulting in the return of the round "full" moon by 7:04 p.m.
Early November usually brings clear early-evening skies to San Diego, except possibly for areas very near the coast. Inland, toward the mountains and desert, there's an excellent chance of cloud-free viewing. Seize the moment, and enjoy one of nature's predictable spectacles this Saturday night! | <urn:uuid:04d689e9-ebe4-478a-97d9-800cec070721> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2003/nov/06/chase-rainbow-coming-rainy-season----and-dont-forg/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397842.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919773 | 747 | 3.46875 | 3 |
IT is not necessary to travel back to the end of the Second World War to see mass rape being used by conquering soldiers to brutalise the women of their enemies. As was apparent in Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s, mass rape is also a weapon of modern warfare.
In ancient times, rape meant to seize or carry off (from the Latin rapere) as in the rape of the Sabine women. Warring tribes abducted women who then became the spoils of the war.
Martial rape as a violation of women was used by marauding conquerors such as the Vikings as an an insult and challenge to the men who "owned" the women. Rape as a form of terrorism and dominance has also accompanied wars of religion, such as the Crusades, and revolutions. There were recorded mass rapes in Vietnam and in the Bangladeshi war of the early 1970s. Hundreds of thousands of women were raped by Japanese troops during their occupation of north east China and especially during the capture of Nanking in 1937.
It was estimated that 20,000 women were raped in the city during the first month of occupation.
However, it does not automatically follow that this points to a latent depravity in all men. The feminist Susan Brownmiller in her 1975 book Against Our Will documented how rape had been used as a weapon to destroy morale in all known wars. Her study suggested that gang rape is a normal aspect of war and men who rape in war are not psychopaths but ordinary men thrown into extraordinary, all-male circumstances.
The war in Bosnia highlighted the extent of rape as a weapon of war and also of "genetic imperialism". Reports of forcible impregnation of thousands of women, mostly Muslims by Serbian soldiers, caused outrage.
A UN report on the Balkan conflict said: "Rape was . . . used as an instrument of ethnic cleansing . . . designed to terrorise the population and force ethnic groups to flee." | <urn:uuid:d360536d-39e1-4c3b-b8c8-8622a6c6d00b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1382563/A-brutal-weapon-of-ancient-and-modern-warfare.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397865.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00095-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980413 | 398 | 2.90625 | 3 |
On Tuesday, President Obama gave his final State of the Union address to Congress. Part of his speech focused on the exciting advancements being made in our energy sector, from the great strides that renewable technologies are taking towards deeper market penetration, to the drastic improvements in our nation’s energy independence, to the many jobs created to support these growing industries. At one point, he got into brass tacks about some pretty impressive numbers:
"And meanwhile, we’ve cut our imports of foreign oil by nearly 60 percent, and cut carbon pollution more than any other country on Earth."
Let’s dive into those CO2 numbers to understand more.
President Obama was not kidding when he said that we’ve reduced carbon pollution more than any other country on earth. It's not even close. The U.S., highlighted in green above, has reduced by four times as much carbon as its nearest neighbor.
If you were like me, you were surprised to see how drastically the U.S. has reduced its CO2 emissions compared to other countries. What’s going on there? A skeptic may point out that the U.S. has more than 300 million people, and therefore can be expected to have a much higher total amount of additions or reductions. If a tiny country made cuts -- even really big ones -- to their carbon emissions, it couldn’t match raw numbers with a big country like the U.S.
So let’s take a look at global carbon dioxide reductions per person. This will give us a normalized metric to work with for all countries. Clicking over to “Per Capita CO2 Emissions,” we still see some good news. Though the U.S. isn’t the leader anymore, it still has reduced its carbon pollution per person more than 90 percent of other countries. We’ve reduced our CO2 per person at almost twice the rate of our friends across the pond, the United Kingdom, and three times the rate of our neighbors to the north, Canada. These are all good signs for the U.S.
If you want to learn more about the importance of reducing our carbon pollution, read our recent report about how climate change threatens our energy infrastructure. Curious about the total amount of carbon we emit into the atmosphere? Check out this recent graphic that shows how we stacks up to other countries. | <urn:uuid:e242ee04-edf3-4a71-b88d-1686307aa7f4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://energy.gov/articles/watch-our-co2-drop | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00033-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966754 | 489 | 2.671875 | 3 |
An experiment from the University of Texas at Galveston compared robotic surgical skills of three groups: high school students who played two hours a day of video games, college students who played four hours a day, and, finally, actual surgical residents. The results indicate that moderate video gaming is predictive of superior robotic surgical skills.
Specifically, the UTMB study measured participants' competency on more than 20 different skill parameters and 32 different teaching steps on the robotic surgery simulator – a training tool that resembles a video game booth complete with dual-hand-operated controllers a video monitor that displays real-time surgical movements. As a whole, the nine tenth graders participating in the study performed the best, followed by nine students from Texas A&M University and lastly the 11 UTMB residents; the mean age of each group was 16, 21 and 31 respectively.It's a small study but several interesting issues are raised.
- Given the concerns about surgical resident training in the era of work hour reform, one must wonder why OR time deficits and case log deficiencies are not being offset to some extent with mandatory surgical simulation blocks. "Get thee to the simulator" ought to be the motto of modern resident programs.
- The technique of surgery, as ever, is an eminently teachable skill. For most residents, that is. Of course you will always have hacks who are unredeemable. But for the most part we aren't trying to teach thousands of young people every year how to play the entire oeuvre of Chopin on piano or how to be Olympic level gymnasts. Talent is nice but most surgical training programs would agree that they could teach a monkey how to remove an appendix safely, if not always elegantly.
- That there are college students playing Xbox four hours a day goes a long way in explaining why we are a third world country in math and science educational rankings. | <urn:uuid:b356c7ea-08f4-4d33-a299-75fbbf2bf9fc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ohiosurgery.blogspot.com/2012/11/video-gamers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00082-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942317 | 382 | 2.96875 | 3 |
The idea that Mars used to be a “water world” and sort of like a smaller version of Earth in many ways is now pretty much accepted among planetary scientists; the debate continues however as to just how wet it was and for how long. The answer would have direct implications for the possibility of life ever having started there.
Two more pieces of the puzzle now suggest, or reinforce the notion, that Mars was indeed a much wetter place than the cold, dry desert we see today.
First, new findings regarding a discovery made by the Spirit rover a few years ago indicate that water was much more abundant and the atmosphere was probably at least twenty times thicker than it is now, which would have allowed surface water to exist.
The evidence comes from a rock fragment found embedded in volcanic sediment, known on Earth as a bomb sag since the sediment visibly “sags” below the rock as a result of the rock penetrating the sediment from the impact (after being ejected during a volcanic eruption).
Josef Dufek, an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech University, has been studying the Martian bomb sag to see what it can tell us about conditions on Mars millions or billions of years ago. His findings were just published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
He re-created the bomb sag’s characteristics in the laboratory, to determine the conditions present when it originally formed. Using dry, damp and saturated sand beds to replicate the sediments, he found that only the saturated sand beds produced similar results to what is seen on Mars, indicating that the Martian soil was likely very wet when the bomb sag formed.
“Our study is consistent with growing research that early Mars was at least a transiently watery world with a much denser atmosphere than we see today,” said Dufek. “We were only able to study one bomb sag at one location on the Red Planet. We hope to do future tests on other samples based on observations by the next rover, Curiosity.”
Elsewhere on Mars, the Mars Express orbiter has taken new images of ancient water-carved channels in the Acidalia Planitia region, a huge basin in the northern lowlands. Like others on the planet, they show “dendritic” drainage patterns, typically formed by runoff of water from rain or melting snow.
While there is still no consensus on how long the watery period lasted on Mars, to what extent or whether it was a warm or colder environment, it seems certain that water did play a large role in shaping the terrain of the Red Planet early in its history. But then Mars somehow lost most of its water, while Earth continued to maintain its rivers, lakes and oceans. How that change occurred can teach us more about how Mars evolved as well as our own planet’s geological and biological history.
This article was first published on Examiner.com. | <urn:uuid:99d4e611-893c-4a42-ae33-3ae385ced274> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://planetaria.ca/2012/05/more-evidence-for-a-very-wet-early-mars/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00157-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973003 | 591 | 4.25 | 4 |
20th October 1891 James Chadwick was born in Bollington
near Macclesfield, Cheshire. When his father left to
open a laundry business in Manchester, Chadwick remained
with his grandmother, was educated locally and later
entered Manchester Municipal Secondary School. Chadwick
specialised in applied mathematics and at the age of
16 succeeded in gaining two scholarships to attend Manchester
was immature and very shy. He applied to Manchester
to read mathematics, but was accidentally interviewed
as a potential physics student. He was too shy to mention
the mistake, but was so impressed by the interviewer
that he decided to do physics.
found the first year classes large and noisy, but in
his second year he met the Professor, Ernest
Rutherford. When Rutherford set Chadwick his third
year research project he left a deliberate mistake in
the method to see if Chadwick was alert. Chadwick noticed
the mistake but didn't dare correct the Professor, so
Rutherford thought he had missed it!
got his First Class Honours degree in 1911 and began
research for a Masters degree. He stayed in Manchester
and was interested in Geiger and Marsden's scattering
of alpha particles, research that led to Rutherford's
discovery of the nucleus. In 1913 Chadwick received
his Masters, and Rutherford recommended him for an 1851
and the War
scholarship required that Chadwick move from Manchester.
He wanted to speacialise in radioactivity, so went with
Geiger to the Reichsanstalt in Berlin where he quickly
learnt German. Geiger supervised Chadwick and introduced
him to other leading German scientists, including Albert
First World War brought a sudden end to this way of
life. Geiger was called away as a reserve officer, but
Chadwick stayed in Germany. When war was declared it
was too late for Chadwick to leave, and soon afterwards
he was imprisoned at a racecourse at Ruhleben. He lived
with five others in a stable built to hold two horses,
and suffered from inadequate food and bitter cold.
1918 the War ended. After four years of imprisonment,
poor and in bad health, Chadwick was free to return
to England and Manchester, where Rutherford offered
him a job. A year later Rutherford became the Cavendish
Professor, and invited Chadwick to join him in Cambridge.
From the start Chadwick played a very important part
in the running of the Cavendish Laboratory, which Rutherford
had decided would concentrate on the experimental study
of the atomic nucleus.
was offered a Wollaston Studentship of £120 a
year by Gonville and Caius College. In 1921 he was elected
as a research fellow by the college, increasing his
income to £350 a year. The following year Chadwick
was funded by the Department of Scientific and Industrial
Research to become the Assistant Director of Research
in the Cavendish.
now concentrated solely on research, and no longer had
to teach or lecture. He and Rutherford would allocate
research problems, and each morning at 11 o'clock Chadwick
reported any progress to the Professor. Their close
friendship lasted for sixteen years.
was married in 1925 and arranged to have a house built
by October 1926. The building actually took longer,
and the Chadwicks spent some time living in a cold and
draughty house. At the time Chadwick was revising Rutherford's
book on radioactivity, and is said to have worked each
night until midnight, wrapped up in an overcoat and
1932 Chadwick discovered the neutron. He and Rutherford
had discussed the possibility of the particle for more
than ten years, and had tried many 'silly' experiments
to find it. The successful discovery changed the world,
and won Chadwick a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935. Soon
after the discovery Cockcroft and Walton's accelerator
split nuclei of lithium and Chadwick was keen to build
a more powerful accelerator in the Cavendish.
Rutherford was reluctant to ask for money and refused
Chadwick's request. Chadwick had to look elsewhere for
his accelerator, so in 1935 was delighted to accept
the Lyon Jones Chair of Physics at Liverpool University.
Chadwick moved to Liverpool its physics department was
run down and lacking equipment, but by the time he left
he had built up a high level of teaching and research.
In 1936 he began by starting the construction of a '37-inch
cyclotron', a circular particle accelerator nearly a
metre across, using £2000 from the Warren Fund
of the Royal Society.
had asked Cockcroft to design the magnet for his cyclotron.
This annoyed Rutherford, who was still opposed to building
expensive accelerators. When Chadwick visited Cambridge
in June 1936, Rutherford attacked him about the cyclotron
and for encouraging his new director of research, Mark
Oliphant, to leave for a chair at Birmingham. Chadwick
was surprised and shocked, and returned to Liverpool
on bad terms with Rutherford.
didn't bear any lasting grudge, and even allowed Cockcroft
to build his accelerator, but in October 1937 Rutherford
died of a strangulated hernia. Although he had resumed
writing to Chadwick on good terms the two men had not
met since their argument. Chadwick always regretted
this sad ending to their long friendship. Chadwick was
not elected as a successor to the Cavendish Chair.
the cyclotron was being built, Chadwick took a keen
interest in teaching and medical physics. During the
first few months of 1939 he spent half his time organising
classes and reorganising cancer therapy. He was an able
Department Head and brilliant researcher.
Second World War
came close to repeating itself as Chadwick almost found
himself behind enemy lines at the start of the Second
World War. In September 1939 he was on a fishing holiday
in Sweden, and when he got back to Stockholm found no
immediate way home. Fortunately he obtained a flight
to Amsterdam, and after a few days was able to return
Liverpool cyclotron became operational at the start
of the Second World War. Uranium fission had been discovered
by Hahn and Strassmann at the start of 1939, and a few
months later the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction
had been demonstrated.
Appleton, the Secretary of the Department of Scientific
and Industrial Research, asked Chadwick if a nuclear
bomb was a possibility. It appeared that such a bomb
would need more than a ton of uranium to explode, but
Chadwick wasn't sure, and decided to use the Liverpool
cyclotron for a feasibility study.
the end of 1940 Chadwick and others found that the first
American experiments had underestimated the sizes needed
to maintain a chain reaction, and found that only a
few kilograms of uranium would be needed to create a
nuclear weapon. Chadwick and many of Britain's other
leading physicists joined to form 'the Maud Committee',
and produced a report saying that a nuclear bomb could
be ready by 1943. Only P.M.S. Blackett doubted this
timescale. The power plant needed to produce the nuclear
material was built in Canada.
entered the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour
in December 1941. It became clear that the Amercian
nuclear weapons project could quickly overshadow the
British efforts, and Chadwick expressed that every effort
should be made to allow complete cooperation between
the two allied nations. On 19 August 1943 the Quebec
Agreement on Anglo-American collaboration was signed
by Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt,
and British scientists were transferred to the United
quickly established a friendly relationship with Major
General Groves, the executive officer in charge of America's
nuclear bomb projects, collectively called the Manhattan
Project. Groves and Chadwick respected each other, were
wholly straightforward and honest. Chadwick was determined
to keep Anglo-American relations as strong as possible.
He helped draft agreements to provide uranium for the
Project, maintained the morale of British scientists
during their time in America, and was responsible for
British observers being present at the bombing of Nagasaki.
the War Chadwick encouraged cooperation with the United
States on nuclear energy matters, and considered the
construction of reactors capable of producing plutonium
to be the first priority. This cooperation weakened,
and by 1955 was extremely limited.
1946 Chadwick returned to Britain and Liverpool, physically,
mentally and spiritually tired. He became involved with
Britain's nuclear energy programme, continued his work
on fundamental research in universities, and advised
the British delegation to the United Nations in 1947.
At Liverpool he made plans to produce a new synchrocyclotron,
so that by the time he left in 1948 Liverpool had the
most powerful accelerator outside America.
a European research centre into nuclear physics was
proposed, Chadwick was keen that Britain should be involved,
seeing it as the only way British scientists could stay
competitive with the large accelerators in the United
States. He recommended that European scientists be allowed
to gain experience on the Liverpool accelerator, and
in 1952 recommended that Britain join the Council of
Representatives for the European project. Meeting at
Cambridge with eleven other physicists, it was decided
that Britain should contribute £250,000 a year
for eight years. At the end of 1952 Britain agreed to
set up C.E.R.N., contributing nearly a quarter of the
1948 Chadwick returned to Cambridge to become the Master
of Gonville and Caius College, a move which surprised
many of his friends in Liverpool. He missed his laboratory,
but was pleased to have more contact with undergraduates.
The College Bursar was absent through illness on Chadwick's
arrival, so he handled the finances, managing to make
a good return by investing in equities rather than securities.
Chadwick was also responsible for building a new court,
and relaxing the rules about arriving back late at night!
accepted the post of Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge, but
was overcome with exhaustion before he could take up
1958 Chadwick became unhappy with the emotional and
personal criticism levelled at him as Master, so he
resigned from Gonville and Caius and retired to a cottage
in North Wales.
was happy to be back near Liverpool again, and stayed
in Liverpool for eleven years. The Chadwicks returned
to Cambridge in 1969 to be near their two daughters,
and James Chadwick died on 24th July, 1974. More than
four hundred attended his funeral at Great Saint Mary's
on the 26th October.
to Biographies index | <urn:uuid:718bda9f-3d2e-485c-81e2-c6341174ea90> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www-outreach.phy.cam.ac.uk/camphy/physicists/physicists_chadwick.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00023-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956237 | 2,254 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Making a zip line is easy, but safety requirements take time to think about.
1Select a distance between two solid objects, Preferably the objects should be trees or other solid structures. The distance should be anywhere from 50 feet (15.2 m) to 500 feet (152.4 m).
2Lay the cable out between the two points. You will need enough cable so there is suitable slack when it's stretched out between the two points. This slack should form a belly in the cable between the points. You never want to stretch the cable too tight. This creates a dangerous situation of speed and crashing at the other end, and your last words will be, "Hey, watch this!" before you're taken to the hospital.
3Attach cable to one point. If you are attaching to a tree, wrap the cable around the tree a few times and then clamp the free end to the leading end. Use high quality clamps that are sized for the cable diameter. These clamps will require you to tighten with a socket set. Two clamps six inches apart are good. Three or four clamps add the necessary safety. The other end of the cable is where you will tighten it up and raise it off the ground.
4Attach a temporary cable clamp about 20 feet (6.1 m) from the end of the cable. Attach the winch to this clamp and to a point on the tree. Winch the cable up. Once it's winched up, the free end of the cable can be wrapped around the tree and then clamped on its leading end to hold it in place. Try to have the clamps about 8-feet from the tree. At this point the winch can be taken off the first clamp and then reinstalled on the furthest out permanent cable clamp. This allows for adjustments to be made on the cable. As the cable stretches, it will need to be tightened with the winch.
5Determine who goes first. This is a nerve-wracking decision. Testing the zip line is important.
Things You'll Need
- 1/4 or 3/8-inch steel-cable
- Come-along manual winch
- Properly sized cable clamps
- zip roller | <urn:uuid:7e1b3181-1c06-4f9d-a690-5967efe46b29> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wikihow.com/Construct-a-Zip-Line | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393442.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00060-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91205 | 463 | 2.625 | 3 |
Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC
This true-color image of Madagascar was captured by MODIS on September 27, 2001. The country's topsoil erosion problem, due to heavy deforestation and overfarming of the land, is evident in the high-resolution image. There you can see, particularly in the west, rivers choked with red sediment as they flow towards the Mozambique Channel that separates Madagascar from mainland Africa. Also visible is the large discharge of that sediment as the rivers fade into the channel. The tropical forests that can be seen running along the eastern coast once stretched much further into the country's interior.
Note: Often times, due to the size, browsers have a difficult time opening and displaying images. If you experiece an error when clicking on an image link, please try directly downloading the image (using a right click, save as method) to view it locally. | <urn:uuid:ce295b98-3060-46f5-ba8f-1f840c9abbf4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=56867 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397842.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00119-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928202 | 192 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Lawsonomy Volume One
The balancing of a formation with the substance that surrounds it is the most important feature of its existence.
The center of Suction, or vacuum, is necessarily of lesser density than the substance in which the formation is immersed.
But the vacuum would soon expend itself if there were no substance of greater density to feed upon than the substance in which the formation is immersed.
The life of a vacuum is protected by walling it in and even then its life is short unless it develops power to reproduce its sustaining elements.
A vacuum must not only be able to draw into the formation substances for growth and internal power but there must be drawn from these substances, substances of lesser density than the substance in which the formation is immersed, otherwise a balance could not be effected.
The difference in weight between the greater density of the structure of a formation and the lesser density of the substance surrounding it must be offset by a still lesser density within it.
The lesether within the Earth, for instance, is of lesser density than the ether that surrounds the Earth, and for this reason the heavier structure made up of stone and metal is enabled to balance and float along within a current of ether.
The nucleus of any formation whether it be an electron, atom, molecule, planet, Sun, or larger formation, must be of lesser density than the walls that surround it or the substance in which it is immersed.
There are four separate forces that must equalize in order that a formation can balance and live.
1. Internal Suction that draws in from without.
2. Internal Pressure that pushes out from within.
3. External Suction that draws out from within.
4. External Pressure that pushes in from without.
Internal Suction draws substances of greater density toward and into a formation.
Internal pressure expands and gives shape and strength to the formation.
External Suction draws out gases from the formation.
External Pressure pushes onto the formation and keeps it from bursting.
To balance a formation, internal Suction must equalize external Suction, and internal Pressure must equalize external Pressure.
In a growing formation internal Suction and Pressure are greater than external Suction and Pressure.
In a formation in a state of decline, internal Suction and Pressure are lesser than external Suction and Pressure.
Greater internal Suction causes greater internal Pressure and expansion. Lesser internal Suction causes lesser internal Pressure and contraction.
When a formation has reached a stage of maturity and internal Suction equals external Suction, and internal Pressure equals external Pressure it is then in a state of EQUAEVERPOISE and as long as it can remain in such condition it can live.
EQUAEVERPOISE is a common level sought by substances of varying density that causes perpetual movement of matter.
When a formation is in a state of EQUAEVERPOISE equal disposition of composition and decomposition is established.
All substances move toward space of lesser density. This movement continues until either a common level is reached or a combination is effected at some Suction point, and a formation of greater density is established capable of withstanding external Suction and Pressure.
Greater and lesser density throughout space causes an eternal penetration of substances in which Suction draws together matter and composes formations and Pressure pushes away matter and decomposes formations.
Suction is the attractive force that pulls together, composes and expands. Pressure is the repellent force that pushes away, decomposes and contracts.
All formations of every nature are subject to these forces and when the power of internal Suction and Pressure is less than the power of external Suction and Pressure decomposition takes place.
Suction causes a swirling movement of substances of greater density toward the center or space with lesser density and these substances continue to swirl together until Pressure disintegrates them.
The Solar System, the Earth or an electron are examples of swirling formations created and held together by Suction. The circulation of the blood demonstrates the swirling principle in man.
The center of Suction and Pressure in the Solar System is the Sun. The center of Suction and Pressure in man is the heart.
If the Sun should lose its internal power of Suction and Pressure, external Suction and Pressure would disintegrate the Solar System. If the heart should lose its internal power of Suction and Pressure, external Suction and Pressure would disintegrate man.
Mankind will eventually know that the Earth is composed of many substances of varying density with a center of Suction and Pressure that keeps in circulation currents that carry nourishment to every part of the structure and currents that carry away the waste matter.
If the Earth could constantly maintain internal Suction and Pressure to equalize external Suction and Pressure it could live forever. But the proof that it cannot is shown in the gradual shrinkage of its crust as evidenced by occasional earthquakes.
If the Earth could remain in a state of EQUAEVERPOISE it would never wear out because as fast as the particles of which it is composed were used they would be replaced by new ones. In such a state the particles of the Earth would be constantly changing but the structure would remain intact.
There is nothing material that is perpetual except differing density. Although there is no limit to the separability of matter still it is indestructible.
Penetrability extends everywhere and into everything and its movement is interdependent.
No matter how large a force may be it is dependent upon smaller forces. No matter how small the force may be, it is dependent upon large forces.
There is no formation or current that cannot be penetrated. There is no formation or current that cannot penetrate. Every substance is both penetrative and penetrable.
No matter how small a formation may be its movement has an effect upon the entire universe. No one thing can move without everything moving.
Each movement is part of the whole movement everywhere throughout Space. Each movement is the effect of preceding movements and each movement is the cause of subsequent movements.
Because greater density falls toward space with lesser density and because the space from which it falls is then left with lesser density which in turn draws greater density toward it, continuous movement is established.
Because this continuous movement extends everywhere and its resultant forces, Suction and Pressure, are equally balanced, Equaeverpoise is established which results in perpetual movement.
Downward in Space is toward the point that has the greatest power of Suction. Upward is the opposite direction.
Space with lesser density within the Earth that draws greater density toward it, makes the center of the Earth downward for man and the opposite direction, upward.
If another formation would draw man to its surface he would look to the center of that formation as downward and look toward the Earth as upward.
Man is balanced with the Earth because the Earth has sufficient internal Suction to draw him to it. But if a man were placed midway between the Earth and another formation of equal size, density and internal Suction, he would remain stationary in substance of lesser density than his body, unable to fall in either direction and balanced between two formations of equal Suction power. In such a position there would be no up or down because whichever formation he looked toward would be both upward and downward.
In speaking of formations, and particularly of electrons, atoms and molecules, scientists say that particles radiate, or fly away from the nuclei, and they appear to be mystified by the proceeding.
There is nothing mysterious about such action. These particles merely move toward points with greater power of Suction for them than the formation they move away from.
A living formation draws toward and into it substances of greater density and passes out of it substances of lesser density.
For instance, a human body cannot draw heat into it unless it is mixed with substances of greater density, or unless the body is colder than the substance that surrounds it.
As soon as heat is released by Pressure within man it passes out of him and if he did not continue to generate heat from other substances within him he could not live, no matter how much heat there might be around him.
The reason for that is that cold is a substance of lesser density than heat and therefore draws heat toward it. All the heat that man can generate within his body is drawn from him by the external Suction of cold.
My explanation of these things is different than text-book theories, but with an understanding of Penetrability one must realize the necessity of revising the text-books. Coming generations will not be slaves to our present mysticism.
As an example of the nonsense being taught to credulous students I quote a public statement made by a famous scientist. It is as follows: "Electrons are absolute units of electricity possessing, it appears, enormous energy."
When asked to explain, "What is energy, if an electron can possess so much of it, and, where does this enormous energy come from that is within an electron?" he could of course give no sensible answer.
Another scientist made public a statement as follows: "If all the energy within an atom could be released at once it would produce enough force to demolish a mountain."
How can scientific men make such extravagant statements? The effervescence of vibration must over-power some of their reasoning faculties to cause them to say such things.
An atom is a living formation that draws into itself by the power of internal Suction such substances as it needs to sustain itself, and then at the same time it passes out of itself such substances as are superfluous to it. It is, therefore, continually drawing in fresh substances for building and power purposes and continually discharging waste matter.
It is the waste matter that passes out of the electron, atom and molecule that scientists call energy, and this waste matter cannot come out of these formations unless the food for them is first drawn in by internal Suction. Unless new substances are constantly drawn into electrons, atoms and molecules they shrink up and die and the so-called energy is void.
If all the force within a single electron, atom or molecule should be released at once there would not be enough of it to move a hair on a flea's back.
However, if quadrillions of atoms were squeezed together by excessive pressure they could cause a spark that would set fire to the combustible organic matter within the air or upon the crust of the earth that could do considerable damage. But, it would be the larger organic particles that would create the greater explosive forces.
While a formation must be balanced with the current or substance in which it is immersed, the current must also be balanced with the substance it penetrates.
A current gets its balance from Pressure and Suction terminals.
Without Pressure and Suction terminals there could be no currents.
For instance, water could not pass through a hose without Pressure and Suction. Pressure forces water through the hose, and the air at the end of the hose, which is of lesser density than water, is the Suction terminal that draws the water to it. If there were no opening into the air there would be no Suction terminal and no matter how much Pressure there might be exerted there could be no current.
When water is forced upward through a hose the Suction point is the air at the end of the hose, but as soon as the water passes out of the hose the Suction point then becomes the center of the Earth toward which it falls, because the lesether within the Earth is of lesser density than the air or ether surrounding the Earth.
Suction draws against Suction and Pressure pushes against Pressure.
A man standing upon his head can drink water that will be drawn upward through his throat and esophagus to the stomach by the internal Suction of his body although his body is drawn downward toward the center of the Earth.
That proves that the internal Suction of a body contains more force in so far as it relates to its internal machinery than does the formation to which it is drawn.
Man is drawn to the Earth by the Earth's Suction but still the blood in man's feet is drawn upward by the Suction of his heart.
Concentrated Suction within a formation therefore must be greater for its internal workings than the greater Suction of the formation to which it is attached.
If this were not the rule there could be no formations and therefore there could be no movement or balance of matter.
The concentrated pull of a small portion of lesether within the Earth is powerful enough to draw meteors and cosmic debris to it for food and hold the Earth together in face of the greater pull of the Solar System to which it is attached or the pull of the ether which surrounds it.
Why is it, I might be asked, that the substance, cold, that surrounds the Earth, which is of lesser density than heat, draws heat away from the Earth.
The reason for that is because the internal Suction of the Earth draws nearest to its crust substances of the greatest density. Next to the solid crust comes water and after water comes air; heat being of lesser density cannot withstand the Pressure of either water or air and must make way for them.
If the lid were taken off of a heat-tight basin set in the crust of the Earth, air, being of greater density than heat, would immediately be drawn into the basin by the Earth's Suction and displace the heat in the basin. The heat would have to pass upward to make room for the air.
Then if a cloudburst took place directly above the basin, water, being of greater density than air would be drawn into the basin and displace the air which would have to move upward to make room for the water.
Then if iron, which is of greater density than water, was put into the basin it would be drawn to the bottom and would displace the water which would have to move upward to make room for it.
So, as the internal Suction of the Earth draws substance toward and into it, heat is displaced by the greater density air; air is displaced by the greater density, water; water is displaced by the greater density, iron.
To change this rule about, air can displace water by walling it in, as in the hull of a steamship, or its air-tight compartments. Or heat can displace air if it is walled in like a balloon. In either case the lesser density must be walled in by substance of greater density than the substance in which it is immersed.
The reason a crust was developed for the Earth was to wall in its lesether so that it could displace the surrounding ether.
Heat from the Earth is but waste matter and is drawn out of it by external Suction as iron and other substances of greater density is drawn into the Earth by internal Suction.
Iron and other substances of greater density drawn to the Earth for sustenance contain heat, light, electricity, sound and other substances of lesser density.
When iron and other substances of greater density reach the Earth they are first gasified through contact with the atmosphere and then drawn into the mouth of the Earth which is located at the North End.
The mouth of the Earth is not a hole through which man could fall. It is a fine sieve through which iron and other substances of greater density can be drawn after they have been made gaseous by passing through the atmosphere.
These substances are food for the Earth and are distributed throughout the Earth by various currents that are moved by different machinery within the Earth, all of which is connected with the Earth's center of Suction and Pressure.
These substances are used to build and repair the Earth and furnish the power to move machinery.
In the general process heat is released from the substances of greater density by Pressure, and although essential for the life of the Earth, it is quickly drawn out of the Earth by external Suction, and if not continuously supplied through fresh nourishment the Earth would soon perish.
Without heat and other waste materials passing outward from within there could be no vegetation grown upon the crust of the Earth and consequently man would have nothing to live upon. It is the waste matter of the Earth from which man grows.
Throughout Space small formations draw their sustenance from large formations and large formations draw their sustenance from small formations. That is the secret of Equaeverpoise and perpetual movement.
That is the reason that endless life and action prevails. That is the reason that matter, although constantly changing in form loses nothing through the process. That is the reason there is no waste matter in space. That is the reason nature is a perfect economist.
No matter how large a formation may be it both feeds and feeds upon smaller formations.
No matter how small a formation may be it both feeds and feeds upon larger formations.
The action of the Solar System depends upon the action of minute particles. The action of those minute particles depend upon the action of the Solar System.
Each particle drawn into the Solar System becomes a part of it. The Solar System must depend upon the particle and the particle must depend upon the Solar System for sustenance.
The living particle draws into itself sustenance from substances within and a part of the Solar System, and the Solar System draws from the living particles the same substances changed into different forms for its own sustenance.
The living particle draws into itself its sustaining substances by internal Suction and the Solar System draws out of it the changed substances by external Suction.
The mixture of substances drawn into the particle create internal Pressure and expansion that give size and shape to the particle. Through external Pressure of surrounding substances the Solar System keeps the particle normal in size, shape and balance. Combining particles create internal Pressure that keeps the Solar System normal in size and shape and balance.
The particle needs the Solar System for its sustenance, size, shape and balance, and the Solar System needs the particle or collection of them, for its sustenance, size, shape and balance.
The particle of a Solar System is a Solar System to lesser particles, and a Solar System is but a particle in Space.
As there is no limit to the largeness or smallness of Space and as there is no limit to the variability of matter, therefore, everlasting sustaining substances will be available for the lesser formations that live upon greater formations, and for the greater formations that live upon the lesser formations.
Man may deceive his contemporaries but God
takes his measurement for exactly what he is worth.
Return to Contents.
Return to Home Page.
Please mail to: Webmaster@Lawsonomy.org should you have questions or concerns about this site. | <urn:uuid:fe1632c5-5a02-43ee-b49c-f40ba62c1406> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.lawsonomy.org/Lawsonomy114.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00046-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957735 | 3,817 | 3.734375 | 4 |
A powerful expressive form that allows generic code to be written that applies to a range of types. An example is collection classes like Vector which are independent of the types of their constituent members. Parametric polymorphism allows classes and methods to accept types as parameters, in addition to their conventional parameters, meaning that classes can be abstracted with respect to types.
is usually contrasted with AdHocPolymorphism
. Quoting ChristopherStrachey
- "Parametric polymorphism is obtained when a function works uniformly on a range of types; these types normally exhibit some common structure. Ad-hoc polymorphism is obtained when a function works, or appears to work, on several different types (which may not exhibit a common structure) and may behave in unrelated ways for each type."
Also see OnUnderstandingTypes
It should probably be pointed out that ParametricPolymorphism
as such is completely unrelated to ObjectOrientedProgramming
(unlike the suggestion created by the link above). ParametricPolymorphism
is a typical feature of all statically-typed FunctionalProgrammingLanguage
s, such as HaskellLanguage
. C++'s templates provide similar functionality, but unfortunately lack nice syntax, separate compilation and full type-safety at definition time. -- StephanHouben
in any language with first class types, but for reasons I don't understand, almost no languages have such. -- ThomasColthurst
A lot of people in the LanguagePissingMatch
have pointed out that Java doesn't have ParametricPolymorphism
. They're actually working on this as we speak. Go to the java language specification at http://java.sun.com/
(it's in there somewhere) and there should be something about planned updates. It includes assertions and ParametricPolymorphism
The JavaCommunityProcess list of all specification requests does not list ParametricPolymorphism. The closest it comes is support for generic types. Can you provide a direct URL? I suspect that ParametricPolymorphism won't make it into any JVM since it requires changes to the JLS, perhaps to bytecodes, and may not be backwards compatible.
Surely the "Generics" feature of Java 1.5 provides ParametricPolymorphism
, while CeePlusPlus
's "Templates" provides AdHocPolymorphism
? Or have I misunderstood the definitions of ParametricPolymorphism
provided on this page? -- ChrisHandley
- No, C++ templates are parameteric polymorphism; actually they can provide both. Language features in support of AdHocPolymorphism include:
- Overloading (in particular, selection of a method based on the static type of a reference; as opposed to true MultipleDispatch).
- Template specialization (though this has many useful uses in C++ besides AdHocPolymorphism)
- Type coercion.
All of which C++ can do. But templates themselves are a technique for ParametricPolymorphism
. Read the paper OnUnderstandingTypes
; it explains all of the above quite well.
See also: IncludeFileParametricPolymorphism | <urn:uuid:71c82780-11c5-4452-bb10-d0e620bbe5ee> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ParametricPolymorphism | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396222.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00064-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.876525 | 644 | 2.765625 | 3 |
NORTHERN GOSHAWK } Accipiter gentilis atricapillus
A separate goshawk subspecies, the Apache goshawk (A.g. apache) may occur in Arizona, New Mexico, and northern Mexico south of the Gila River.
DESCRIPTION: The goshawk has short, powerful wings, a long, rudder-like tail, and protective eye tufts that give the secretive bird an acrobatic ability to spin around trees and quickly dive under shrubs and brush to seize prey. Both sexes have a short, dark, hooked beak, red eyes, a blackish head and face, and a gray body.
HABITAT: The species needs mature and old-growth conifer forests, though some occupy aspen or willow stands in more open areas. Each pair of nesting goshawks requires roughly 6,000 acres of forest to feed and rear its young.
RANGE: One subspecies (Queen Charlotte) has evolved to live within the dark coastal rainforests of insular Alaska and British Columbia, and possibly the Olympic Peninsula. Otherwise, northern goshawks inhabit most mature forests types west of the Continental Divide from Canada and Alaska through every western state into southern Mexico. They occur at lower densities in southeastern Canada and the northeastern United States.
MIGRATION: Northern goshawks — primarily juvenile birds — migrate south from late August until late November.
BREEDING: In the spring breeding season, the goshawk has a gull-like mating call and puts on a spectacular rollercoaster display. Females have been known to breed in immature plumage. They lay one to five eggs, and young leave the nest after about 35 days but may remain in their parents’ territory for up to a year.
LIFE CYCLE: Young begin to wander at 50 days of age and reach full independence at 70 days; most fledge around the 45-day mark. The species’ lifespan may be up to six years.
FEEDING: A voracious predator of squirrels, jays, flickers, rabbits, snowshoe hares, and songbirds, the goshawk relies on surprise as it flies from a perch or hedge-hops to catch its prey unaware. While its prey is often smaller than the hunting hawk, this bird will also kill larger animals, up to the size of marmots.
THREATS: Adults defend their territories fiercely from everything, including passing humans; but what the northern goshawk is unable to defend are the mature and old-growth forests it calls home, most of which have been severely depleted by a century of logging. While most regions of the Forest Service have enacted guidelines that prohibit cutting around goshawk nest sites and limit cutting within goshawk home ranges, national forests in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming have failed to sufficiently protect the bird. In the northern Rockies, projects that affect the bird or its habitat include timber sales, road construction, prescribed burns, recreation development, and general construction.
POPULATION TREND: Goshawk numbers are closely tied to the extent of mature and old-growth forests. The historic and current population size is not known, but has certainly been reduced by logging. The bird is now very rare in coastal forests from southern California to Washington. Its numbers appear to be slowly increasing in the eastern United States as mature forest cover increases. The highest densities of goshawk are found on Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau, which supports the best remaining stands of mature ponderosa pine forest in North America. | <urn:uuid:0d4d09c8-11de-4a8b-80ce-084ae977aca6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/birds/northern_goshawk/natural_history.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00097-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944622 | 743 | 4.09375 | 4 |
Definition and background:
Leaning note; grace note; note of embellishment usually one step above (sometimes, though seldom, it is one step below) the main note. Before an even or unaltered note, the appoggiatura generally receives its face value, that is one-half the value of the note that follows; before a dotted note it receives more than its face value, that is to say that it should be given two-thirds of the value of the following note. If the note is of the same pitch as the principal note of the appoggiatura, the grace note receives the entire value of its principal note, but is carried to the next note with strong portamento.See also non-harmonic note. a musical ornament written just before or after the main note, which takes attention away from the main note and halves its time. it may be written using an auxiliary note in small type, or it may be unwritten and inserted by the performer according to the conventions of the the period. chiefly an 18th-century practice The first half of the principal note's duration has the pitch of the grace note (the first two-thirds if the principal note is a dotted note).
Select from a letter above to find a music term in the Artopium index, or enter a music term below to search the entire index using Google Search.
This is a collection of over 7,000 music terms and definitions used for music theory, composition, instruments and more; a dictionary compiled by Artopium.com as a resource for all musicians everywhere, but especially for Artopium.com member artists. Artopium is a consignment website dedicated to promoting and selling the works of independent artists, musicians, filmmakers, fashion designers and authors from around the world. After looking up your music term and definition, if you have't already, please peruse the thousands of titles listed on Artopium by selecting from one of the categories above (Art, Music, Fashion, Video and Books). Or if you're an artist, sign up today for free and start selling your work immediately!
Wikipedia - Glossary of Musical Terminology
Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary
ORB -- Medieval Music Glossary | <urn:uuid:743b7618-0a7e-41d5-8edc-74c158d6e95a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://musicterms.artopium.com/a/Appoggiatura.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00031-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925799 | 457 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Erica Hupp/Dwayne Brown
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
April 13, 2006
Mars Orbiting Cameras Debut As NASA Craft Adjusts Orbit
Researchers today released the first Mars images from two of the three science cameras on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Images taken by the orbiter's Context Camera and Mars Color Imager during the first tests of those instruments at Mars confirm the performance capability of the cameras even though the test images were taken from nearly 10 times as far from the planet as the spacecraft will be once it finishes reshaping its orbit. Test images from the third camera of the science payload were released previously.
"The test images show that both cameras will meet or exceed their performance requirements once they're in the low-altitude science orbit. We're looking forward to that time with great anticipation," said Dr. Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. Malin is team leader for the Context Camera and principal investigator for the Mars Color Imager.
The cameras took the test images two weeks after the orbiter's March 10 arrival at Mars and before the start of "aerobraking," a process of reshaping the orbit by using controlled contact with Mars' atmosphere. This week, the spacecraft is dipping into Mars' upper atmosphere as it approaches the altitude range that it will use for shrinking its orbit gradually over the next six months.
The orbiter is currently flying in very elongated loops around Mars. Each circuit lasts about 35 hours and takes the spacecraft about 27,000 miles (43,000 kilometers) away from the planet before swinging back in close.
On Wednesday, a short burn of intermediate sized thrusters while the orbiter was at the most distant point nudged the spacecraft to pass from approximately 70 miles (112 kilometers) to within 66 miles (107 kilometers) of Mars' surface.
"This brings us well into Mars' upper atmosphere for the drag pass and will enable the mission to start reducing the orbit to its final science altitude," said Dan Johnston of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., deputy mission manager.
After hundreds of passes through the upper atmosphere, the drag will gradually reduce the far point of the orbit until the spacecraft is in a nearly circular orbit every two hours.
After the spacecraft gets into the proper orbit for its primary science phase, the six science instruments on board will begin their systematic examination of Mars. The Mars Color Imager will view the planet's entire atmosphere and surface every day to monitor changes in clouds, wind-blown dust, polar caps and other changeable features.
Images from the Context Camera will have a resolution of 20 feet (6 meters) per pixel, allowing surface features as small as a basketball court to be discerned. The images will cover swaths 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) wide.
The Context Camera will show how smaller areas examined by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera -- which will have the best resolution ever achieved from Mars orbit -- and by the mineral-identifying Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer fit into the broader landscape. It will also allow scientists to watch for small-scale changes, such as newly cut gullies, in the broader coverage area.
The new test images and latest updates on the mission are available at: www.nasa.gov/mro
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor.
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|What are the chances that you will get galvanic corrosion with your
copper tube, aluminum fin collector?
The Copper/Aluminum Collector uses copper riser tubes and aluminum fins. Since copper and aluminum are fairly widely separated in the galvanic series, there is the possibility of galvanic corrosion of the aluminum.
To get galvanic corrosion, you need 1) dissimilar metals, 2) electrical contact between the metals, and 3) a fluid path for the metal ions to travel along. If any of these three factors are not present, galvanic corrosion will not occur. The steps below are intended to keep the last two items from happening.
I recommend that the following steps be taken to reduce any chance of galvanic corrosion:
On the other hand, if you just take bare aluminum and form it around bare copper with nothing in the interface to separate the two or to prevent water (condensation) entry, then I'd guess its pretty likely you will get corrosion.
There is a bit of "track record" data out there on similar collectors indicating that with some precautions corrosion has not been a problem:
If a small amount of corrosion should occur, the aluminum is the sacrificial metal in this pair, so it would be the one that would be "eaten", which would not cause leaks in the collector.
So, I think that with reasonable precautions galvanic corrosion is not likely to be a problem -- but, no guarantees :)
Gary July 12, 2009 | <urn:uuid:4f966f3f-33bb-4d05-b90c-4503c7620f62> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.builditsolar.com/Experimental/CopperAlumCollector/GalvanicCorrosion.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00009-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921476 | 302 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Full-color, 22”x 30” posters
Choose from a selection of 39 posters featuring documents and images from the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Each is beautifully printed on semi-gloss ecru stock and includes a caption placing the image in historical context. Posters include: Civil War Recruiting Poster, African American History 1619–1897, 20th-Century Immigration,Suffragist Movement, and Patriotism in World War II, among others.
Sale price: $6 each
All 2012 Calendars
Our calendars feature daily historical facts and full-color portraits of leading figures in American history. The 2012 calendars are American Revolution and the Civil War.
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History in a Box: The Civil War The Civil War (People, Places, Politics: History in a Box) provides multimedia resources for history classrooms, including documents and artwork by and about military and political leaders, soldiers and civilians, African Americans and women to help teachers and students examine the reasons for the Civil War and how Americans across the country experienced that terrible conflict and its legacy. Materials include a book and CD of chronologically organized documents and transcripts introduced by historian Robert Bonner; posters and placards of important people and events with questions for discussion; a booklet of the works of soldier-artists; a DVD with historian discussion and other publications.
Dec. 7, 2011 is the 70th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor Read a letter by WILLIAM CZAKO, a young ensign from Fremont, Ohio, to his sister Helen on the morning of December 7, 1941, aboard the U.S.S. New Orleans. As he wrote, hundreds of Japanese Zeroes were bombarding the unsuspecting U.S. Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor. Czako provided his sister with a dramatic, moment-by-moment description of what he and his fellow sailors were experiencing on that fateful morning. The following is an exclusive excerpt from the Simon & Schuster audiobook BEHIND THE LINES by Andrew Carroll, read by Frederick Weller. Get the transcript on Battle Lines. | <urn:uuid:e71b8151-9424-40e4-a7de-777b716f031c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://fairbyray.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00131-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935129 | 440 | 2.6875 | 3 |
This is also called by some people "massively parallel biology". It's the combination of a new generation of biological microchips which have blood dropped directly onto them and which might do the work of entire laboratories, sophisticated computer programming and the knowledge of the location and structure of human genes, thanks to the Human Genome Project which is mapping our genetic code.
Well one of the key technologies which is enabling this great leap forward, and which could well leave us far behind with fond memories of what might have been for Australia, is being called by some people, 'massively parallel biology'. Another name is bioinformatics.
It's the combination of a new generation of biological microchips which have blood dropped directly on to them, and which might do the work of entire laboratories, sophisticated computer programming and the knowledge of the location and structure of human genes, thanks to the Human Genome Project which is mapping our genetic code.
A world leading institution in this field is at the University of Pennsylvania, where they have a Centre for Bioinformatics. Its director is Dr Chris Overton.
Chris Overton: A new model of doing biology has arisen, and that's a model in which experiments are done not one at a time, one gene at a time, but are done tens of thousands of genes at a time. In fact in some cases it's now possible to examine all the genes of an organism in parallel by doing one experiment on all the genes, rather than a series of complex experiments on just one gene.
Norman Swan: For even people who have never been in a lab or never done science, you still can imagine somebody thinking, 'Well, does salt have this effect on this germ?' or what have you, so there's a simple question that you're asking and you've devised an experiment to test whether salt has an effect on this particular germ. This is mind-boggling what you're talking about. You're saying 'So this is not one on one any more, this is one experiment testing thousands of situations at one time.' Can you give me an example I can grab onto that I can understand?
Chris Overton: Actually what you were talking about in terms of salt, the effect of salt might be an example where you might want to ask 'If I expose an organism, say yeast, brewers' yeast, bakers' yeast, actually the whole gene on it has been sequenced almost two years ago, and so all the genes are available to study there. So one of the questions you might ask is 'What is the effect of salt or pH on how genes are turned on and off in yeast?' And so you can imagine doing it in parallel, looking at how all the genes are switched on and off, how all the proteins are changed in their expression levels.
Norman Swan: Now let's go the next step. So you've decided you want to know the effect of salt on brewers' yeast, and you say you're going to study all the genes in the yeast organism. Do you still have to go to a bench, a laboratory bench, and do an experiment?
Chris Overton: Yes, at the moment certainly you have to do that. But what's changed is that we now have different styles of management. We have much larger teams working on projects: people using laboratory automation techniques, robotics and more and more they're using miniaturisation of biological experiments. So instead of one person carrying out an experiment, a robot may carry out a whole series of experiments in parallel.
Norman Swan: And miniaturisation?
Chris Overton: Miniaturisation in exactly the same sense that chips have been miniaturised for computers over the years. So they're literally silicon chips, and on these chips, these chips have been micro-fabricated using technologies that have come from very large scale integrated circuits, it's now possible to do whole experiments on a single chip, smaller than a postage stamp. It used to take up a whole bench to do the same experiment.
Norman Swan: What's going on to that chip? Are you actually designing - is the gene sequence being programmed into that chip? What's in that chip?
Chris Overton: There are various kinds of chips. In fact there's every experiment that's been done manually now, there are plans to put those whole experimental protocols on a chip. So that might mean for example that you isolate some blood, you put it on a sample preparation chip in which you just put 3 microlitres on a sample preparation chip, it's run through the chip; all the red blood cells are filtered out, and you're left with, say, 1000 white blood cells.
Norman Swan: And the chip will do it itself?
Chris Overton: It's all done on board one chip. Basically what you have is a series of channels where you can pipe - they're like little pipes, you know, and incredibly small amounts of fluids move through these pipes, so it's called micro-fluiditics. And then it might pass through a series of filters of different sizes and that's how you would separate white blood cells from red blood cells, because they have different sizes. Or it might pass over a series of beads that have a specific antibody on it and it captures a certain kind of cell. Then you might go into a different chamber, so you're moving things through in fluids into different chambers; and then in another chamber it might be the cells might be popped open liced and particular biochemical reactions carried out. And then the result of that would then be passed off to a detection chip where you may ask 'What is the pattern of gene expression for those cells?' So you could do all of this on board, hands off, it just goes from one sample preparation chip, a filtration chip to isolate the cells you're interested in, and then in other words, all the experimental protocols are done on a chip.
Norman Swan: So if I were to walk in to a molecular biology lab and you'd see these large rooms with shelving and taps and sinks and lots of glassware, are you saying this is the equivalent to 1968 when IBM shows me three huge rooms of computers which wouldn't even match the power of my desktop. Are you saying that you're now converting all those labs onto a chip, is that what you're saying? That sort of equipment, what they're doing there?
Chris Overton: I have to be a little careful here.
Norman Swan: You're the booster here, I know.
Chris Overton: I think that there is certainly room for both kinds of styles of biology to go on. But when we're talking about genomics, the style of genomics is massively parallel biology, and that I think you'll see more and more penetrate all the research labs as it becomes more and more cost effective. Just like we're able to do so much more on individual - you know, the laptop computer I have now is equivalent to a mainframe 20 years ago, and I think that kind of power is going to be delivered to the biologists' desktop in the next 20 years.
Norman Swan: The implication for biology and medicine is that all this will create the equivalent of Moore's law in computing, which says that every 18 months or so, chip memory doubles.
With the advent of vastly cheaper experiments able to be done in enormous numbers, our knowledge of the human body and disease is on the runway to a huge and sudden jump forward.
For Australia, with our miserly public and private research budgets, in many cases we're not even on the running track. We're still putting on our shoes in the dressing room, and unless the Commonwealth government and industry wake up, we'll be waving from far behind as other nations' businesses and entrepreneurs make money from the new developments.
Associate Professor Sue Davidson is a computer specialist who works with Chris Overton. In fact she's the Deputy Director of the Centre for Bioinformatics at the University of Pennsylvania.
The task for her is to manage the vast amount of information that is being, and will be generated.
Sue Davidson: The challenges will become more and more that of volume, but right now the challenges appear to be more of management and complexity. The data is being generated by people all over the world in their own laboratories. And if I'm sitting here at Penn, I may need to have data that's coming in from Singapore and Germany, and perhaps locally. And I need to be able to ask questions that would span all of that data. So one of the big challenges that we've been facing here in the Centre for Bioinformatics has been creating local repositories for researchers that represent the questions and the data that they would be interested in. The big challenge for us is to be able to pull in this data from all over the world. The data is stored in very complex formats; it's deeply massed in very --
Norman Swan: People have invented their own databases to suit their own purposes.
Sue Davidson: Right. So there's a number of different data formats that are being used, and these have been invented by people because they tend to capture the data in a natural way. And the languages that you use to access them are quite limited to a computer scientist.
Norman Swan: So it's almost the equivalent of a physics lab say 40 years ago, or even Rutherford's lab where he split the atom, they would make their own equipment because nobody was making the stuff that would suit them for their experiments. So in a sense you've got a biologist working say, in Australia or a biologist working in Britain, and they know what they need for their own experiments, so they've designed their own computer system to suit them.
Sue Davidson: Right. They've designed their own formats, they've designed their own languages, and very often these languages are tied in with visual techniques for looking at the data. And certainly no commercial relational database is going to give you easy ways of visualising scientific data.
Norman Swan: Sue Davidson, who with her colleagues, has developed a system which will bring together all these various sources of biological information and be able to ask the intelligent questions of it. They've even invented a new computer language to do so.
The Centre for Bioinformatics is now involved in projects to provide more detail about the map of human chromosomes and what's called functional genomics: finding out what all these genes they're discovering actually do.
- Dr. Chris Overton
University of Pennsylvania Medical School,
Center for Bioinformatics
- Associate Professor Sue Davidson
- Deputy Director
Center for Bioinformatics
University of Pennsylvania
- Dr Norman Swan
- Brigitte Seega | <urn:uuid:40a9676d-ba46-4a9b-8eb6-0497e286c82d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/healthreport/bioinformatics/3554016 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00125-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964133 | 2,213 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Immigrants in early 1900s also ‘pioneers’
Normally when we think about the hardy pioneers who settled in Kansas, we have a vision of an ox-drawn, covered wagon rumbling slowly through the wilderness. Certainly, these pioneers were a hardy breed who settled the state and faced tremendous dangers and challenges. They deserve our respect and appreciation.
Yet there was another hardy, heroic breed of pioneers who faced tremendous challenges and contributed to our state. The immigrants who came to the United States and to Kansas at the turn of the 20th century were equally hardy and also faced unbelievable hardship. Despite the odds they survived and flourished adding a great deal to the Kansas heritage.
I got interested in the plight of the early immigrants when Jean began tracing her family history. Like so many immigrants, they left everything to come to the United States and work to grasp the American dream. It was a tough challenge and not a trip for the faint of heart.
At the dawn of the 20th century, Europe was in turmoil and tumbling toward the horror of World War I. There was a clamor for freedom and greater opportunity, but that certainly wasn’t available in the Old World. The only hope for many was America, if they could survive the journey.
From what I discovered, the movie “Titanic” accurately portrayed the plight of the steerage passenger correctly. The steerage class or low fare passengers were herded to the lower area of the ship where ventilation was terrible and sanitation was non-existent. It was musty, cramped and damp.
Of course the fare was cheap enough. I read that the steerage passengers paid $25 for the trip to America. On the other hand, first class passengers might pay $2,500 but they received royal treatment with plush surroundings and excellent food and service. The second class passenger didn’t have it quite as good, but still received good service. It was interesting to me to find that the steam ship lines made more profit from transporting steerage passengers.
The steerage passengers had to be hardy individuals just to make the crossing. Over the years laws were passed to try to improve conditions but they seemed to have had relatively little effect. For example, ships had infirmaries but they did not regard seasickness as a bona fide illness. Those in steerage had to live with vomit and filth.
They brought most of their worldly goods with them, but there was no storage available to steerage passengers. They had to figure out a way to keep their possessions in the space allotted to them which was a bunk two-feet-wide and six-feet-long. There was a space only 30 inches between bunks. Male, female and family quarters were segregated. When they boarded the ship they were issued a tin plate and a crude wooded utensil. After they ate, they had to line up at the single warm water spigot to wash their dishes.
Arrival in the United States wasn’t that pleasant. They were herded onto Ellis Island and if they had no diseases and could survive the nearly cruel treatment, they were allowed to enter the strange new world. Sometimes a supposed disease or physical defect would cause families to be separated.
It was often a hostile world where they didn’t understand the language or customs. They faced a society that didn’t want them here and signs such as “no Irish, Germans, etc. need apply.” But they survived and became good citizens and enriched the American culture. For some, it meant traveling another half continent to Kansas to become farm workers or settling in ethnic communities and accepting the lowest paying jobs with terrible working conditions.
Yet, they overcame hardship and prejudice to become loyal and patriotic citizens. They, like all pioneers, are true heroes. | <urn:uuid:173aae53-e00a-4364-b48b-95cbe64065a1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.basehorinfo.com/news/2014/feb/10/immigrants-early-1900s-also-pioneers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403825.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00136-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987225 | 787 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Education is regarded as one of the most essential components of any society. It is generally accepted that schools are one of the most vital parts of an education that act as vessels, facilitating learning environments to help cultivate knowledge and other various experiences. However, it is important to understand that 'education' and 'learning' are broad terms that can define all forms of attaining, understanding and expressing knowledge, irrespective of sociocultural context and place. It should be noted that within the broader definition of 'learning' exists a schism that bifurcates the word into two separate understandings: the ideological (school) and the theoretical (education).
As the ideological, it is widely accepted that schools are the single most important component and facilitator of education within the United States. These facilities are built and established to promote and make available knowledge and information for those who partake in its educational system. Schools, as institutions, are typically thought of as a standard way of attaining a 'proper' education; however, 'schools' are not synonymous with learning as is made evidenced on the most basic of levels: its definition.
A school is defined by Merriam-Webster as:
an organization that provides instruction: as
- an institution for the teaching of children
- college , university
- (1) : a group of scholars and teachers pursuing knowledge together that with similar groups constituted a medieval university (2) : one of the four faculties of a medieval university (3) : an institution for specialized higher education often associated with a university <the school of engineering>
- an establishment offering specialized instruction .
The keywords/phrases here are "organization," "institution,' 'college, university," "a group of scholars and teachers," and "an establishment offering specialized instruction." All of these definitions seem to reject the fact that learning can be, and is, in fact, fluid and administered/administrable outside the walls of an organized (physical) institution. As a matter of fact, education, as the theoretical, is quite frankly, the exact opposite. Its definition paints a picture very different than what is typically thought of as learning, since, generally, in the United States, education is synonymous with school. It goes unquestioned; however, one can see that this is a fallacy, as Merriam Webster defines education as:
- the action or process of educating or of being educated ; also : a stage of such a process
- the knowledge and development resulting fromeducational process <a person of littleeducation >
2: the field of study that deals mainly with methods of teaching and learning in schools
With the understanding of 'school' and 'education' as two separate entities and philosophies, it becomes easier to analyze the machinations and operations of each. Schools are clearly defined as a (sometimes specific) system (of many possible types of systems) employed to facilitate learning and cultivate knowledge. However, schools are not particularly necessary for either of these phenomena to take place. When a definition is applied with such rigidity to the act of learning, one must begin to question why and how. In questioning the role and purpose of 'school,' as defined by Merriam Webster, it should be understood that the idea of 'school' is within a certain sociocultural context, even if it permeates different societies and cultures. That is to say, a particular philosophy of 'teaching' might have been constructed by one group of people/culture and then, for any number of reasons (trade, imperialism, racial segregation, etc), have been applied to (actively/forcibly) or assimilated (passively) to the new society/culture. And while most people would argue that schools, as a physical and philosophical representation of education and learning, are in and of themselves beneficial to societies and the individuals for whom they are established and maintained, it could also be argued to the contrary. Take, for instance, diagram 1:1, which shows the separation of school and education.
Education is the theoretical manifestation of learning. On the other hand, school is the ideological manifestation. Within the theoretical are the subcategories of 'aesthetic' and symbolic order that represent the actual and/or potential process of learning irrespective of sociocultural context. Under the ideological are the subcategories: institutional, policy, education and 'separate but equal.' These subcategories represent the machinations of 'learning' or the ways in which schools can be detrimental to the educating of its constituents.
Given the fact that schools and education do not operate in the same fashion, it is safe to assume that schools can operate in the exact opposite manor as education/learning. As a matter of fact, schools can, in certain instances, stifle one's own attainment of knowledge and education. One such instance is the racist educational system of 1960s/70s United States. Let's, for a minute, consider some of the most horrific and insidious acts done in the name of education: Desegregation busing, segregated schools, etc. As W.E.B. DuBois once cogently stated, "For the business of the public schools, always recognized from the beginning, has been to break down social lines, to do away with silly distinctions not based on individual work, to be the melting pot out of which comes the great and dreamed of democracy. Of course the South opposes it because it opposes democracy." In this statement, DuBois recognized the separation of school and education, and believed that schools could be used a means to break down social lines. He is referring to education, as opposed to the generally accepted idea of the school.
Given these historical examples, it is clear to see that schools have had, and continue to have, a particular predilection for the explicit and deliberate omission of race, gender, class and sexual orientation in regards to the learning experience. As can be seen in diagram 1:2provided below, 'schools,' as an order/appearance, allege to/are promoted as all-inclusive, non-discriminatory institutions where the path to one's success can only be found within their walls and ideology. Unfortunately, that is hardly the case. If one looks beyond the polemic - that is, the order/appearance - one can and will, indeed, find the measurement (education), which more thoroughly defines schools and their true purpose, irrespective of social/racial/economic/etc context. Ideally, or theoretically, the main intent is to educate equally - regardless of one's socioeconomic status. Schools, as demonstrated by segregation and desegregation busing, to name a few, have not always been - and arguably, still, are not - all-inclusive.
Doctoral Candidate, Paul T. Miller, discusses DuBois' ideas in his essay entitled, 'W.E.B. Du Bois: Education, Race and Economics from 1903-1961," in which he states:
Education as the chief means of ameliorating problems of race and class held sway with Du Bois his entire life. As a sort of response to "The Negro Question", Du Bois advocated planned education that would cultivate the intellect as well as direct the actions of students for the purpose of improving the life chances of African Americans in specific and the condition of all people in general. In chapter six of The Souls of Black Folk, he writes… to stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires; to flout their striving idly is to welcome a harvest of brutish crime and shameless lethargy in our very laps. The guiding of thought and the deft coordination of deed is at once the path of honor and humanity (1969:123). Du Bois (1969) notes that effective education will develop training that will best use the labor of all men without enslaving or brutalizing, and that such training will, ...encourage the prejudices that bulwark society, and stamp out those that in sheer barbarity deafen us to the wail of prisoned souls within the Veil (123-4).
What is being suggested here is the conscious effort to develop learning that addresses education in a formal and programmatic way. This should also be done through policy as well, which can have a direct impact on its constituents.
Architecture operates in a similar fashion to schools in which there is a divide between architecture and "architecture." Architecture as discipline and object, has a particular predilection for omission; particularly the expurgation of race, gender, class and sexual orientation from the aesthetic. As architect Diana Agrest once pointed out, "this system is defined not only by what it includes, but also by what it excludes, inclusion and exclusion being parts of the same construct. Yet that which is excluded, left out, is not really excluded but rather repressed; repression neither excludes nor repels an exterior force for it contains within itself an interior of representation, a space of repression." To clarify, architecture demands aesthetics be absolved of any scrutiny, and worse yet, actively refuses to acknowledge its, sometimes negative, influences on - or repressions of - one or more of the aforementioned social groups. Architecture's refusal of acknowledgement is a machination of repression that is fueled by a culture and ideology of independence/exclusion from other disciplines; however, it should be made clear that this ideology is problematic at best and insidious at worst. With that being said, explorations will be made in regards to 'modern' architecture as a Western born discipline that operates within a system of repression and omission.
To begin, it is of utmost importance to understand the discipline of architecture as a binary discipline/system. On the one hand, there exists the theoretical side of architecture, which encompasses the symbolic order and the aesthetic. And on the other hand, there exists the ideological, which encompasses the institution, profession and education within architecture (Diagram 1:3).
Diana Agrest often talks about the machinations of the theoretical, namely the symbolic order, in regards to women and the identity of women within architecture. And while Agrest talks about gender in her analysis of architecture, race can easily be inputted in lieu of gender to explain the same phenomena. In Agrest's essay, "Architecture from Without: Body, Logic and Sex," she explains, "the system of architecture from within is characterized by an idealistic logic that can assume neither contradiction nor negation and, therefore, is based upon the suppression of either one of two opposite terms. This is best represented by the consistent repression and exclusion of woman. Woman does not fit the symbolic order. She is offside, in the cracks of symbolic systems, an outsider." To clarify, Agrest's argument infers that, within the theoretical side of architecture, one can begin to recognize, understand and critique the omission of certain elements which is made manifest by the ever-so-apparent 'idealistic logic that can assume neither contradiction nor negation.' Because of this, one can also assume that the same applies to other disenfranchised persons, not only women.
Agrest continues with the iconoclastic deconstruction of the theoretical versus the ideological in her other essay entitled, " Semiotics and Architecture: Ideological Consumption or Theoretical Work," in which she cogently and accurately argues that, "the function of these 'theories,' now as always, has been to adapt architecture to the needs of Western social formations, serving as the connection between the overall structure of a society and its architecture." It is within this statement that we find ourselves at a crossroad. If architecture is a discipline that alleges to be all-inclusive, why is it that one often finds race and gender, as made apparent by Agrest, absent from the discipline? As stated before, architecture has a particular predilection with omitting and repressing. If the absence of something represents the repression of another then one must question why and try to recognize, understand, critique, and eventually make a change.
The ideological side of architecture is the 'opaque' side of architecture - the side that presents itself as all-inclusive and the theoretical allows the analysis of its opposite: the repression of those who are disenfranchised and women in particular, at least, in regards to Agrest's essay ( Diagram 1:4).
The most obvious problem with this (opaque) demand/claim is that it eschews engaging in a dialogue about the potential problems within the discipline; namely the previously mentioned 'refusal of acknowledgement.' Another problem, directly related to the first, is that architecture becomes unable to address real problems because of its lack of acknowledgement of its role in the problems. The third and most damaging problem is the negative impact that architecture, as discipline and object, may have on those groups of people for whom it ignores and expurgates. The purpose of the built environment is to, in some way, shape or form, influence and/or change society, or, at the very least, the group of people that will occupy and experience the aforementioned environment. And because Architecture has this ability it can be used, if it is will to address itself and engage in a dialogue between the world and itself, for the socioeconomic benefit of disenfranchised persons. But first architecture needs to be willing to engage with that with which it pretends to have no association.
Architecture has had a negative impact on the black American community through this repression and omission. The socioeconomic/opportunistic implication of architecture on disenfranchised persons is vast. However, architecture is a discipline that often addresses the aesthetic without addressing anything else. Things other than the aesthetic are also a significant part of architecture and its relationship to class and race. The 19th century Germany architectural theorist, Heinrich Hübsch, pointed out this very fact; the fact that architecture is not aesthetic alone and the assumption that it is has ultimately been damaging to persons for which it is supposed to, or, at the very least, can, help. Hübsch states:
'Whoever looks at architecture primarily from its decorative aspect and perhaps asks himself why he likes one form of leafwork on a capital better than another will easily despair on the possibility of establishing reliable principles. Yet, however starts his investigation form the point of view of practical necessary will find a secure base… It is obvious that two criteria of functionality - namely, fitness for purpose (commodity) part of every building. These formative factors derives from function, are surely as objective and as clear as they possible could be.
A clear distinction should be made between the style, or aesthetic, and the programmatic or its commodity. Often times, it can be argued, architecture and architects - those in practice and theorists - forget this basic and imperative fact.
Considering architecture often plays a significant role within society and on its inhabitants and black Americans who might partake in the discipline on an academic or professional level, it is peculiar that that connection is so rarely talked about. Its impact is implicit and explicit; voluntary and involuntary. Its negation and preclusion of the involvement of black Americans by way of an architectural strategy/language is, quite frankly, terrifying. In order to address and engage, and, hopefully, advance, the nature and dynamic(s) of these, often ignored, relationships, one must consider several theories to come to a sound conclusion. To begin, it should be noted, while self evident, that architecture does not exist within a vacuum. It is not perceived and felt by the designer alone but its occupants and users as well. Architecture is directly (and indirectly) related to the politics of the society within which it is erected, how can it be separated from other things.
It should also be made clear that architecture and public policy go hand in hand - as architecture's survival and development is completely dependent on and limited by government policy. Because of this, architecture also has a legal/political contract and obligation as well as social obligation to benefit those for whom it is designed and erected.
To answer this it might help to take a look at WEB DuBois' theories on education, race and economics to further develop the ideas and connections between the aforementioned topics and an architectural strategy to develop and promote said ideas.
In conclusion, schools and architecture operate in much the same fashion. They both exist as a binary between the opaque (order/appearance) and the transparent (measurement). It is through the understanding of the operations of the opaque that one can move beyond and into the transparent to understand thoroughly the machinations and operations of the theoretical of schools and architecture.
DuBois, W.E.B. Mixed Schools. Resources on the life and legacy of W.E.B. DuBois. UMass Amherst, 13 Feb. 2013. Web. 28 April 2013. ‹http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/digital/dubois/EdMixedSchools.pdf›
Miller, Paul T. W.E.B. Du Bois: Education, Race and Economics from 1903-1961. Department of African American StudiesTemple University, 02 June. 2010. Web. 16 March 2013, pp. 123-124. ‹http://www.jpanafrican.com/docs/WEBDuBoisEducationRaceEconomics.pdf›
Agrest, Diana, and Mario Gandelsonas. "Semiotics and Architecture: Ideological Consumption or Theoretical Work."
Agrest, Diana, and Mario Gandelsonas, p. 28.
Agrest, Diana. Simiotics, p. 21.
DuBois, W.E.B. The Crisis. Trans. S. H. Butcher. Resources on the life and legacy of W.E.B. DuBois. UMass Amherst, 13 Feb. 2013. Web. 28 April 2013. ‹http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/digital/dubois/EdEducation.pdf›
"school." Merriam-Webster.com. 2011. http://www.merriam-webster.com (05 April 2013).
"education." Merriam-Webster.com. 2011. http://www.merriam-webster.com (05 April 2013). | <urn:uuid:32f27156-4ff7-41a0-a04c-424f72c83424> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/17848-education-and-architecture-in-black-two-sides-of-the-same-coin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403508.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00135-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957926 | 3,764 | 3.40625 | 3 |
Definition of cross–link
: a crosswise connecting part (as an atom or group) that connects parallel chains in a complex chemical molecule (as a polymer)
First Known Use of cross–link
Rhymes with cross–link
Seen and Heard
What made you want to look up cross–link? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible). | <urn:uuid:7d9b4e92-b781-4b9d-ba1f-ee0798d5a36b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cross-link | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00018-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907773 | 82 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Tatiana Sampson was thrilled to learn earlier this year that a new federal law would give her child a shot at a decent education. The law — the No Child Left Behind Act — allows parents of students at failing schools to transfer to better ones.
But when Sampson got back a list of schools she could choose from, she was first shocked then amused by what she read. Of the eight schools available to her child, the one near her home in Harlem's district 5 was no better than the current school, another was an hour's subway ride away, and the remaining six were in other boroughs, including Staten Island.
Sampson decided to stick with her child's current school. In doing this, she was responding like thousands of other parents whose children were supposed to be able to move out of failing schools. School choice, while nice in theory, has not become a reality for most families.
But while the New York City Council and much of the press have focused on school transfers, No Child Left Behind seeks to do far more than shuffle students from one school to another. The measure, signed into law by President George W. Bush in January, 2002, promises to hold states and schools accountable to improve instruction for all students.
This is not very different from what Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his schools Chancellor Joel Klein have vowed to do in their sweeping school reform program. But local educators and advocates worry the federal law may not provide the means or the money to deliver on its lofty promises. These shortcomings are almost guaranteed to become particularly evident in New York City, the nation's largest and most diverse public school system and one suffering from a lack of resources and hundreds of poor schools.
BEHIND THE LAW
Education is very much a state and local responsibility in the United States. Unlike many other countries, the United States does not have uniform standards for graduating high school or a national curriculum. Federal money accounts for a small percentage of school funding — only 11 percent in New York City.
But the federal government has claimed some role in educating America's children. The most recent effort, No Child Left Behind, is the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which Congress passed in 1965 to aid the nation's neediest students. Title I of the act gave money to schools with high percentages of low-income students, at first targeting that money to pay for extra services for youngsters falling behind, but gradually allowing that money to be used for the schools' overall curriculum.
After a campaign in which he vowed to be the "education president," Bush and his advisers proposed No Child Left Behind. The money for poorer schools stayed, but as the law is phased in, schools will be required to perform adequately on standardized tests. The act also tacked on a couple of life lines for parents stuck in the worst schools to keep children from languishing as educators struggled to improve instruction.
In brief, the law passed by Congress states that:
- All students in failing schools, dubbed "schools in need of improvement," are entitled to transfer to better performing schools.
- Low-income students in schools that "need improvement" for the second year in a row are entitled to free tutoring, termed "supplemental educational services."
- All new teachers in schools serving lower income neighborhoods must be "highly qualified."
- Parents have a right to know the qualifications of their child's teacher.
- Victims of violent crimes have a right to transfer to a safe school.
In the coming years, the act sets out additional requirements, until by the 2013-2014 school year, 100 percent of students will have to be "proficient" in reading and math.
MAKING SCHOOLS ACCOUNTABLE
For many educators, the heart and substance of the law is that it holds schools accountable for improving education. Visitors to the federal Department of Education web site are greeted with a graph with two lines. One shows huge increases in the number of federal dollars that went toward education from 1975 to 1999, the other shows reading scores hardly budging. Accountability is about making that picture change — so more federal money translates into more kids reading on grade level.
The law takes aim at accountability from many angles, giving states a number of hoops to jump through. These include making sure that all teachers by 2006 are "highly qualified," meaning they must have at least a bachelors degree and have demonstrated — by passing a test or earning an academic degree — that they are qualified to teach reading, writing and math for elementary school and the specific subject for middle and high school. The law also requires that schools use teaching methods that research has demonstrated really help youngsters learn.
But the centerpiece of the accountability package is test scores. Based on how schools test, they can be placed on a series of lists from "schools in need of improvement" to "corrective action schools." Penalties for being a school in need of improvement include giving students the right to transfer out of the school. The state could take control of corrective action schools.
Although the law presented a monumental change for some states that did not conduct standardized tests or track school progress, New York State had been requiring standardized testing for years and putting schools in its own version of corrective action, which it called "registration review". Perhaps because of this, New York's accountability plan was among the first to win Washington's approval.
The huge shift for New York is in how scores will be reported. Starting this year, test scores have to be broken down by group, and schools will be judged not only on how well they do overall, but how their African American, Latino, low-income, English-language learners and disabled students perform. If schools cannot show they are making progress with each group, they can land on the list of needs improvement schools.
In that case, school officials must develop a plan to turn the school around and allow students to transfer out. And if a school does not make progress after five years it must be restructured — shut down, perhaps, or turned into a charter school.
Despite New York's familiarity with testing and accountability, the first list of schools in need of improvement, issued in September 2002, brought sobering news. Some 331 New York City schools — about one third the total — were on the list. The city accounted for two thirds of all the schools in the state cited as needing improvement.
Theoretically, students in all of these schools could transfer to other schools. The business of sorting out transfers was left to the community school district offices. Although some 220,000 city students were eligible to transfer under the law, only 6,000 students requested moves and, in the end, only about 1,500 students changed schools in response to the law.
A lawsuit filed by parents accused the school system of denying transfer requests, failing to notify parents of their right to transfer their children, and of not having a coherent policy for dealing with requests and transferring students.
Even Mayor Michael Bloomberg agreed the first efforts to fulfill this requirement were a disaster. And schools Chancellor Joel Klein told the New York Times that the department "did not meet that challenge" of providing transfers.
Klein vowed to do a better job of following the federal law. The city Department of Education would run the show, and this time they would get it right. And indeed the department mounted an awesome effort to contact every parent whose child was entitled to a transfer. The schools mailed letters to 220,000 parents, stuffed kids' backpacks with notices and matched student needs to schools with available seats.
In the end, each of the 20,000 parents who requested transfers received a list of eight schools that they could ask their child to attend. Of those parents, 10,000 opted to take a transfer although it will not be clear until September how many will actually go through with it.
Even critics agree the city did a "much better" job — but not good enough, according to City Councilmember Eva Moskowitz, chair of the council Education Committee, who says that not enough parents knew about their right to get a transfer because the city failed to get the word out and to make the parents' options clear.
An investigation by the Daily News in February found that school officials frequently gave parents incorrect information — saying, for example, that a school was not on the "needs improvement" list when, in fact, it was. Some were unable to provide information in Spanish; others would try to talk parents out of requesting a transfer.
Moskowitz has drawn up a list of things the department should do to improve the transfer process. And she scheduled hearings and "a speak-out" on the issue on June 17 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at City Hall.
Parents who do not accept the transfer option can request what is called Supplemental Educational Services tutoring. According to the Department of Education, as of the end of 2002, some 28,000 students had received this additional help.
TESTS AND MONEY
Even if transfers and tutoring go smoothly, it will not end the controversy over No Child Left Behind. Many see the law as fine in theory but flawed in practice, lacking what it takes to make real change in New York or elsewhere.
The law's supporters such as Laurie Hall Armstrong of Councilmember Moskowitz's staff believes that the crux of the law — publicizing testing information – will spur parents to demand better schools. "There's no way to fix [the problem] if you don't know what is going on," she says.
Some critics fault the entire notion of giving such weight to standardized tests, saying they are too limited. Skeptics such as Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, say teachers can raise student scores by teaching to the test but may not be fundamentally improving student learning. Of the federal law, Neill has said, "I like to call it the 'No Child Left Untested But Many Children Left Behind Act.'"
Whatever the merits of the test themselves, the federal law assumes that its carrots and sticks, such as the transfer provisions, will give educators an incentive to encourage their students to perform well, an idea based on the competitive model of the private sector. Doubters such as Noreen Connell of Education Priorities Panel, a local advocacy group, wonder whether "shame" will keep principals in line and whether even the most talented principal can turn around a school where there is huge need and not a lot of funds.
Eventually, says Joe Colletti of the United Federation of Teachers (the city's teacher union), some otherwise successful schools will be put on the "needs improvement" list because they fail to make progress for their English language learners or special needs students. That, he says, could punish those schools instead of helping them meet the needs of all their students.
The law's most ironic pitfall is that the more it focuses on test scores, the more it may make test scores meaningless. So far New York appears to have resisted the effort to dumb things down. But in other states — Connecticut for one — educators are relaxing their definition of what it means to be proficient. One can only expect the pressure to do this to mount as the countdown continues to the 2013-2014 requirement of universal proficiency.
Of the potential wrenches in the works, however, the biggest may be money. According to Education Week, the National Conference of State Legislatures has estimated that it will cost states a total of $1 billion each year to comply with the testing requirements. Money for the promised tutoring services and teacher training could also be tight.
New York City will receive $376 million less for the federal law this year than it was promised when the act passed, according to Representative Anthony Weiner. Although the city still gets $141 million more than it did last year for a total of $756 million, the shortfall in expected funds means that schools are asked to be doing more while their pockets are being pinched. In New York City — and many other financially strapped communities across the country — the city and state do not have the money to pour into meeting a new set of requirements.
The good news in New York is that No Child Left Behind's call for accountability comes at the same time that Mayor Bloomberg has gained control of the city's schools, making the public education buck stop at the mayor's office. The federal law can provide a framework for improvement, but it will be up to the mayor and governor to make it work for the city's schools.
As Ross Weiner of the Educational Trust, which works to promote high educational achievement, says, the next few years will present a challenge for public schools, a chance to "step up to the plate and show what public education can do." If the public officials and educators fail to rise to the challenge, at best our schools will stay status quo. At worst, the belief that public education cannot work will become more widespread, setting the stage for more radical reform.
No Child Left Behind Primer
(From Education Week)
Julia Kamin is a reporter with Inside Schools, a web site published by Advocates for Children. | <urn:uuid:bc39adf0-af0e-43da-9aed-4dfee07f1082> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gothamgazette.com/index.php/topics/education/1863-no-child-left-behind | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9721 | 2,694 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Relating cubic length and volume
The units of volume in the metric system are actually defined based on length. So a mL is defined as the volume of a box that measures 1 cm on each side. In other words, imagine making a little, perfectly square box, where each side is one centimeter long. If you filled that box with water, it would hold exactly one milliliter.
What that means mathematically is
As a result of this connection between volume and cubic length, we can convert between cubed length units and non-cubed volume units.
If you start with a cubed unit, you will first convert to cm3, and then use the first fraction above to change into volume units.
If you start with a volume unit you will first convert it to mL, and then use the second fraction above to change into cubed units.
Sample Problem 1
How many L of water will fit in a plastic container that has a volume of 3.92 m3?
Sample Problem 2
Convert 49.3 cL to mm3
Solve the following problems. The answers are here.
- Convert 16 m3 to kL.
- How many cL will fit in a box with a volume of 38.2 Mm3?
- How many liters will fit into a box that measures 2.3 m x 1.8 m x 4.0 m? | <urn:uuid:d6beb297-3742-48e4-bf24-af374f1c5b04> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://abetterchemtext.com/Things2Know/FL_cm3_mL.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00126-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.89818 | 292 | 3.9375 | 4 |
CHAPTER 1 - DISCOVER
Your radar has just found a new solar system, with 16 planets.
Click on a pair of planets and you will see the creatures living there.
If the 2 planets are populated by the same creatures, they live in peace...
...otherwise it's war!
A red ball of fire starts from one of the 2 planets and goes to the other one.
If the ball of fire passes near or over a creature already discovered on a planet in peace, it is involved in war and brakes its peace with its twin planet too!
HOW MUCH TIME AND HOW MANY ATTEMPTS DO YOU NEED TO DISCOVER ALL TWINS CREATURES?!?
CHAPTER 2 - LANDING
Have you already discovered all creatures and planets?
Now you decide to land on a planet!
Move the mouse and your Spaceship will follow you.
If your Spaceship is over the planet, it approaches the surface.
When the altitude is zero, you have landed...
...but keep away from enemy spaceships, or you will be rejected!
HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU NEED TO LAND ON THE PLANET?!?
CHAPTER 3 - BROKEN VEHICLE!
Ok, we landed, now we can explore the planet.
But where are we?!? It is dark all around!!!
Switch on a light, my Captain!
And why our vehicle is broken? We must repair it.
Move the mouse to illuminate a part of the vehicle.
Click on a part to select it, then click on a second part next to it to swap them.
HOW MUCH TIME AND HOW MANY ATTEMPTS DO YOU NEED TO COMPOSE THE VEHICLE?!?
CHAPTER 4 - THE DOOR
With our vehicle we can now explore the planet.
My Captain, there is a Door here!
We have to open the door, but how?!
Try to click with left or right button of the mouse on these 9 boxes and see what happens...
HOW MUCH TIME AND HOW MANY ATTEMPTS DO YOU NEED TO OPEN THE DOOR?!?
CHAPTER 5 - BLACK HOLE
The door was open, but...
...My Captain, a force is pushing us to the center of the planet!
Our only escape is that black hole at the center of the planet!
Look at those 6 particles orbiting around the black hole: when a particle is hidden behind the black hole...
...Ok, we must align all particles behind the black hole... but how?
Clicking with right button of the mouse on one of the six balls at the bottom of the screen, (when they are visible...) we can slow down the speed of the corresponding particle orbiting around the black hole.
Clicking with left button of the mouse we can accelerate the corresponding particle orbiting around the black hole.
HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU NEED TO ESCAPE THROUGH THE BLACK HOLE?!?
Stay tuned for next Chapters...
Built with Processing using Spore API | <urn:uuid:fe3ab8d5-f2e9-45b0-aac9-de9a83867174> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.rifo.it/processing/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397842.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00083-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.85224 | 620 | 2.78125 | 3 |
The First Congregational Church of Berlin recently installed a labyrinth in their backyard. The classical, seven-course labyrinth was designed and installed by church members. The pavers were unloaded and moved by athletes from U-32. The labyrinth is open to the public during daylight hours.
The story of the church’s labyrinth began months ago when both the fall and adult bible studies became curious about labyrinths after hearing how God had used a labyrinth in the desert to speak to Rev. Dereen while she was on sabbatical in Arizona. After a field trip to Bethany United Church of Christ in Montpelier to learn about and walk the labyrinth painted on the floor of their chapel, the idea was put forth to build a labyrinth at the First Congregational Church of Berlin.
After much planning during the summer months, and a generous donation of building materials, the labyrinth came together during the last week of September.
Labyrinth walking in an ancient practice used by many different faiths for spiritual centering, contemplation and prayer. Entering the path of a labyrinth, the walker walks slowly while quieting their mind and focusing on a spiritual question or prayer. A labyrinth is not a maze. It has only one path to the center and back out. It has no blind alleys or dead ends. The path twists and turns back on itself many times before reaching the center. Once at the center, there is only one way back out. In this way, it symbolizes a journey to a predetermined destination (such as a pilgrimage to a holy site), or the journey through life from birth to spiritual awakening. The labyrinth at First Congregational Church of Berlin is a simple one with pavers marking the edges of the grass path to the center stone and back out.
Members of the public are welcome to walk the labyrinth at any time. However, there is no outdoor lighting, so walking at night is not encouraged. | <urn:uuid:26a0f116-7a50-4dd5-bbb9-1a8ed22eb48b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.vt-world.com/labyrinth-at-berlin-church-now-open-to-the-public.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00166-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963447 | 391 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Sanskrit alphabets sounds produce a spiritual effect. Hence mantras said in sanskrit are more beneficial.The very word 'MANTRA' invokes sacred,divine and pious feelings in us.MAN=Mind, TRAI=To protect. LoveLight n' Infinte Blessings!!
Mantra Chanting [JAPA]
Continous repitition of a meaningful word/s are called as mantra Japa.When this chanting is done with a discipline and purpose, positive results are a forgone conclusion. There are many ways and methods of chanting. But one should adopt a method which is soothing and easy.
Fast chanting exhuasts the mind,heart and breath, and relaxation comes after the chanting is over. Slow chanting relaxes the mind,heart and breath while the chanting is going on, but it is good only when the chanting is done individually.
Apart from the slow and fast chanting of Mantras, it can be chanted in the following four ways:
Chanting slowly induce a state of trance. Sound creates space-akaha, which creates sympathetic and positive sounds, and these sounds influence the total nervous system. More akasha is produced when sound echoes. The echoing quality of sound increases with the increase of akasha.
The Constant hammering of sound kneads the flesh, nerves and cells of the body. It affects the petals in the chakra in human body. Mantras are of two types: longer chants and short seed syllables. The shorter root Mantras have a more universal meaning. We can use them according to their energy even if we do not understand the language. The longer chants depend more upon our sense of their meaning and our intentions.
The serious aspirant can combine the practices of chanting, with Namasmarana, prayer, meditations, bhajan singing and seeking out the company of good people (satsang), in order to develop Saadhana and attain perfection.
IMPORTANCE OF SANSKRIT
Sanskrit is the mother of all languages. It is the Language of the vedas and the great sages. It is a divine language. It is the oldest form and the root of the greatest number of languages, including the main languages of Europe and North India, and also many of those of Iran and the Middle East. It is the only language devised where the sounds are made in the mouth. Sanskrit has more words for the Divine and more precise terms for defining consiousness and meditative experience than any other language. It is the language of the higher mind and thereby gives us access to its laws and vibratory structures. It is the language of the Gods, the higher planes of the mind, and grants us access to the powers of these domains.
Sanskrit alphabet sounds produce a spiritual effect. It is an energy-based language unlike other languages which are sound based. It is immortal, pure and potent. Hence mantras said in Sanskrit are more beneficial. Each one of these Sanskrit words contains important and significant inner meaning, and both the meaning and the sound have potency.
TYPES OF MANTRA
SACRED TEXTS & MANTRAS
Does any one know the translation or possible meaning for these words, or sounds? I'm not sure how they would be spelled in Sanskrit to have the same vowel sound as the way I heard it, or if they are even words. Would you use this?rE Ba TrarE= long…Continue | <urn:uuid:809d4b92-708c-4bf0-a83f-cdbdccabc602> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.esotericonline.net/group/mantras | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00147-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925966 | 720 | 2.984375 | 3 |
The Government of Japan has mistakenly trusted that the owners / managers of the Fukushima site,TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company), would resolve the nuclear energy crisis caused by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tidal wave. Unfortunately, it appears that TEPCO has been more concerned with conserving their nuclear energy business investments, than it has been in definitively resolving what is rapidly becoming a national technological crisis that could cause immeasurable damage to the entire globe. TEPCO appears to have been adhering to a piecemeal plan that has, in effect, only been delaying a complete meltdown, and in doing so it is making the crisis far worse. (see reference links below)
Recent reports have revealed that not only has TEPCO failed in it’s attempt to cool the radioactive fuel rods that were compromised by the earthquake/tidal surge damage, but it has also failed to contain the seepage of radioactive waste water that was contaminated in the process of trying to cool the rods down to prevent them from burning through their housings and into the earth under them. This waste water is now seeping down towards Japan’s underground aquifer water sources, and also directly into the Pacific Ocean. As this happens, ocean currents will spread the radioactive contamination globally, at levels which are entirely unpredictable due to TEPCO’s inability to stop it, or even come forward with reliable date explaining the details of how far the crisis has escalated.
TEPCO appears to have no foreseeable means to safely contain (without leeks), or dispose of, the huge amount of radioactive waste water that has already accumulated. And they also do not have enough room to continally expand the storage areawhich is increasing every day — which is raising the risk of a full-blown nuclear power plant melt-down in the vicinity of three adjoining nuclear power plants. Should a meltdown occur, not only would it render the air and land toxic for hundreds of miles, it could potentially create the same scenario in the other three adjacent nuclear facilities. This reality defies both imagination, and dispels any belief in any plan for resolution that TEPCO has offered up.
Given the immediacy of these problems, and the fact that TEPCO has so far been unable to exhibit any ability to resolve ANY of them, many nuclear scientists have already grimly concluded that Northern Japan may soon be a radioactive wasteland, and so will much, if not all of the world’s oceans — which will inevitably lead to the deaths of millions or even billions of people. In other words, an unthinkable global tragedy is staring us in the face even as you read this blunt evaluation of what is actually happening in Japan right now.
This crisis originally stems from TEPCO's cost saving decisions to build four nuclear plants, together, without adequate protection from potential earthquake or tidal destruction — in a country that is routinely plagued with both. This scenario could therefore be repeated in many other nuclear energy plants around Japan, and it serves to highlight a fundamental, unavoidable problem with all nuclear power plants: they all produce nuclear waste that cannot indefinitely be safely disposed of anywhere on earth. Wherever it is disposed, that land will become a tenuous hazardous waste site forever.
The scale of this disaster requires Japan to immediately seek out the collaborative intelligence and finances of the entire world’s scientific community to help them. Some scientists have suggested that Russia would be a good place to start because they have already learned from the Chernobyl disaster. The fact that Japan hasn't already explored this option reveals the deplorable state of Japan’s leadership, or of leadership in any part of the world for that matter, since no other country has publicly come forth to offer Japan either ongoing guidance, or financial backing to help them deal with this life-threatening, national and international state of emergency.
It seems that the time has come in our energy dependent world that we need to look atgovernment for what it really is: a nationalized hierarchal business structure that feeds its own existence by controlling its internal resources, and if needed, the external resources of others — either through negotiation, or by force if powerful enough to attempt to do so. In this sense, it is obvious that today’s Heads of State are not moral or humanitarian leaders in any way. They are essentially national CEOs, typically with a “Mafia-like” vision of power that is centered on maintaining government profit margins at all costs, and on their need to sustain themselves through control of others. People everywhere are fed up with this state of affairs, as can be seen in Syria, Egypt, England, and also the United States where the reach of government has exceeded its own Constitutional legal limits regarding public privacy. Limits that the oppressed people of the world had formerly admired, and aspired to create in their own world.
This crisis demands a new kind of leader. Someone who understands his or her responsibility to protect the quality of life in his or her nation’s population and their environment, and also to respect and protect the needs of the world as a whole. Unfortunately, Japan lacks that kind of leader, just as the rest of the world does. But ironically, in Japan’s case, it is the one country that has already suffered horrifically at the hands of nuclear destruction, and yet it is now on the precipice of both destroying itself, and the rest of the world with it, because Japan’s government foolishly decided to buy into the toxicity of allegedly “cheap” nuclear energy, while ignoring the inherent dangers.
If Japan ever needed a Shogun, it needs one now, or it will become a toxic wasteland that no one will go near, much less import automobiles from. And as far as automobiles and energy go, this crisis has also made it lucidly clear that the only intelligent path forward in the field of energy is non-nuclear — it is Solar. And it is my opinion that emission-free and sustainable Solar energy should not come from dependence on self-serving government managed utility companies. Utility plants should only serve large local and national infrastructure needs, while private businesses, homes, and cars (emission free electric) should all be powered by home based Solar units, maintained by private citizens. This is a concept that Japan can easily create since they are the transportation leaders of the world, and therefore they necessarily carry the responsibility of setting a standard that will insure both their own clean energy and survival needs, along with the survival of everyone else.
That is, if it is not already too late.
In recent days, TEPCO has finally reached out for help from the international scientific community, and Russian scientists are now working with them. But as I have dug deeper into reading internal reports from Japan, it has become clear that the Japanese Government has held back funds in hope that TEPCO would do this cheaply, on their own. This is a gross error in judgement and it warrants public condemnation.
Japan fails to grasp the magnitude of lawsuits that will come from their outright destruction of the world’s oceans. They could potentially wipe out Japan’s finances as a country forever. In other words, there will be no money to govern the country, and their status in the world will be forever destroyed, because radiation of this magnitude lasts for decades upon decades.
"Fukushima Daiichi Site: Cesium-137 is 85 times greater than at Chernobyl Accident" — by Akio Matsumura, April / 2012: http://akiomatsumura.com/2012/04/682.html
"At Fukushima, Radioactive Groundwater Nears Sea" — by Mari Yamaguchi, August / 2013: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/23/fukushima-radioactive-groundwater_n_3803448.html
"Mission Impossible? Fukushima scientists brace for riskiest nuclear fuel clean-up yet" — by RT News , August 15, 2013: http://rt.com/news/fukushima-fuel-cleanup-operation-522/
"West Coast of North America to Be Hit Hard by Fukushima Radiation" — By Washington's Blog; Global Research, August / 2013: http://www.globalresearch.ca/west-coast-of-north-america-to-be-hit-hard-by-fukushima-radiation/5346470
"Russia Offers Fukushima Cleanup Help as Tepco Reaches Out" — By Yuriy Humber and Jacob Adelman August / 2013: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-08-25/russia-offers-to-help-clean-up-fukushima-as-tepco-calls-for-help
"Why Fukushima is worse than you think" — by Mycle Schneider, Special to CNN, August 30th, 2013: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/30/why-fukushima-is-worse-than-you-think/?iid=article_sidebar | <urn:uuid:e9e61482-5fa3-4b2f-98fe-423f33ec9378> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://fukushima-crisis.neocities.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393533.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00126-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955211 | 1,873 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Atlantis left Avalon and traveled to a galaxy untouched by the Alterra in the hopes of keeping this new seed species they were going to create away from the plague that had been randomly popping up in their inhabited 22 galaxies. In an effort to maintain viral security, sections of the city were sealed off and sanitized before the Lantean project began. The Alterran physiology was retarded back to what is approximately present day Human level and the first of this new seed species was grown in maturation labs...thus the first Lanteans were born.
Despite the fears of unrealized contamination, the Lanteans never contracted the plague. As the remaining Alterrans in Atlantis either died out or ascended, more and more of the city was sanitized and turned over to the growing Lantean population. Before the last of the Alterrans died they left the Lanteans with one mission priority:
Use Atlantis and the technology within to rebuild their civilization...or at least preserve it for the coming of the more inferior seed species in the other galaxies.
The Lanteans were given other instructions, such as establishing a stargate network on a special frequency that wouldn't connect outside the Pegasus galaxy. The Alterra insisted on a strict quarantine...any travel outside of Pegasus might contract the plague. The Lanteans were to remain and develop isolated in Pegasus.
Due to seeing their progenitors ascend during those first few years in Atlantis, Lantean culture held achieving ascension as its primary objective. So much so, in fact, that they developed a pacifistic attitude that greatly hindered their later war against the Wraith.
10,000 years after the Lantean defeat and retreat, the 2nd generation of Lanteans was established. see Lanteans2 | <urn:uuid:b187b526-2941-4a59-93e1-17ec6a941f06> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://stargatereturnoftheancients.wikia.com/wiki/Lanteans | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00027-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974823 | 357 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Mark Wilson June 3rd, 2012
The summer field season has started for Wooster geologists. Greg Wiles is now in southern Alaska with his students doing dendrochronology and geomorphology. Meagen Pollock and Shelley Judge are running an integrated project in west-central Utah with their students doing structural geology, geochemistry, vulcanism and petrology. Watch these pages for their reports!
As for me, I’m on a short vacation. A geologically-rich vacation, of course! My wife Gloria and I are visiting the Shenandoah region of Virginia. We started today in Shenandoah National Park, driving south down Skyline Drive along the Blue Ridge. The weather is spectacular as you can tell from the above image. This is a view near Mile 61 looking west across the Valley and Ridge Province.
The Blue Ridge Province has a bedrock made of igneous and metamorphic Grenville basement rocks up to a billion years old. The Blue Ridge itself, which runs north-south from Pennsylvania to Georgia, is mostly an eroded anticline overturned westward. Directly west is the Valley and Ridge Province. In the image above, the “A” is at the spot where the top photograph was taken. You can easily pick out the physiographic and geological provinces.
Most of the rocks exposed along Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park are metabasalts of the Catoctin Formation (Ediacaran, about 570 million years old). A metabasalt is a basalt that has been metamorphosed (unsurprisingly). The original basalts of the Catoctin were erupted during the rifting open of the Iapetus Ocean, a precursor of the Atlantic. Many of these eruptions were on this early seafloor, forming pillows and thick flows. The total basalts in this formation piled up in layers to almost 800 meters thick.
The metabasalt of the Catoctin has a greenish color in many places, giving it the common name “greenstone”. Veins of green minerals, primarily epidote and chlorite, run through the rock, especially in the northern part of the Blue Ridge. This greenstone is occasionally mined to produced chemical-resistant lab surfaces and facing stones.
The dramatic geology was accompanied by beautiful wildflowers. The rocks, flowers, views and weather combined to make an extraordinary day of natural history. Tomorrow we’ll explore how this geology affected human history in very direct ways. | <urn:uuid:75a748d3-e3e5-44c0-bcd2-ef2bd466ee83> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://woostergeologists.scotblogs.wooster.edu/2012/06/03/wooster-geologist-on-the-blue-ridge-of-virginia/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395166.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953715 | 516 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud-based platform-as-a-service offering. Following are the elements Windows Azure currently offers:
There are three types of computing you can use: VM, Web, Worker.
Virtual Machine (VM)
This is just what it sounds like - a virtual dedicated instance (it's Windows Server 2008 R2). It's comparable to Amazon's EC2. (Source)
This is deploying a web app to a stateless load-balanced set of front-end servers (running IIS7). (Any session state will have to be persisted outside of memory.)
Think of a worker as a chunk of code that does something. Probably a task that needs to be parallelizable, else you wouldn't be trying to deploy it to the cloud. Note however, that your worker can be interrupted or killed at any point, so you have to handle all the state management yourself. (And arguably state management and synchronization is the more difficult aspect of scalability than just spawning new threads or processes).
There are three types of storage that come with Windows Azure: Table, Blob, and Queue. Note that you can also use Sql Server for traditional relational storage, via SQL Azure.
This is a horizontally partitioned table, much like you would find in a relational database. You can specify columns of the following datatypes: binary (up to 64K), bool, datetime, double, guid, int32, int64, UTF-16 string (up to 64K). You choose one column to be your Partition Key and another to be your Row Key. Together those columns are your unique identifier (primary key) for any particular record. Rows with different Partition Key values may be stored on different nodes, which obviously degrades query performance, so choose the partition key values with care. You can access this data using ADO.NET and LINQ. (Source)
Blob is a general term and simple acronym meaning "Binary Large OBject". In this implementation, you can create named containers (think of this as a folder) and create named blobs within each container. Permissions are set at the container level (private or public read). Maximum 50GB per blob. Metadata (string key/value pairs) may be stored with each container and with each blob (8K max total size for each). The API supports sub-blob pieces (blocks), which enables parallel upload/download, as well as resuming an interrupted upload/download. The API lets you put/get/delete a blob or put/get a list of blocks, and you can check the ETag to see if a blob has changed since you last retrieved it. (Source)
The queue structure is a normal FIFO (first-in, first-out) queue. There is no maximum number of messages in the queue. The maximum time a message may remain in the queue is 1 week (messages older than a week will automatically be deleted). Metadata may be stored for each queue (8K max string key/value pairs). Each message in the queue is a maximum of 8K and may be stored in any format, but it is always returned as base64-encoded XML. Unfortunately, there are some significant limitations. Message order is NOT guaranteed. Also, the same message may be returned more than once. As usual, you need to code retry logic because you may get a timeout if you have extremely high load. And finally, the GET command can optionally mark a message invisible so a different worker won't grab that message, but again, this behavior is not guaranteed to work. These limitations are so significant that it's difficult to imagine a scenario where this structure would be preferred over one with a more robust locking mechanism that guarantees one message per worker. (Source)
The "App Fabric" is Microsoft's overall name for their Service Bus, Access Control, and Caching features. (Source)
Microsoft's service bus is (like most service bus offerings) a messaging platform. It allows you to send a message from one computer to another. It gives you a pull and a pseudo-push from behind NAT/firewall, and may attempt to open a direct peer-to-peer connection instead of relaying through the central server, for performance reasons. In this way, it's pretty much the same architecture as Skype or BitTorrent, but generalized for you to use. It's mostly for tying together apps or services running on your corporate LAN with apps or services you deployed to the cloud. (Source)
Access control is marketed as including both identity (authentication) and access (authorization). The identity part is pretty clear. They support OpenID, and of course an integration with Active Directory, so you can get an authentication token (such as an SWT - "Simple Web Token") using those technologies. For authorization (securing resources), the picture is fuzzier. As of April 2011, OAuth2 is supported, meaning that if another site has data your Windows Azure app needs to access, and if that site already supports OAuth2 as a mechanism for granting permission to access that data, you can do it. But what about setting up roles or targeting resources within an application? The sorts of fields that are built-in to the standard user data structure, such as name or email or zip code, are not terribly useful in and of themselves for authorization. ("Yup, we only allow people from this area of San Francisco in our application screens." Right.) For now, you'll want to roll your own application authorization, tying in to the authentication store via some sort of unique string (like email address or username).
Caching is pretty straightforward. You keep data handy (usually in memory) if it's going to need to be used again soon, at the possible price of being out-of-date. The two pre-built caching providers are web-oriented. One is for session state (which is less for performance than for consistency across multiple web servers). The other is for web output (like the output caching available with IIS 7). If you use the caching API directly for your own purposes, aside from issues like authenticating securely to the cache service, the API is what you'd expect - a Set and a Get for a named object. There is a size limit of 8MB per serialized object. (Source)
Note: this data was gleaned from a variety of pages, mostly noted above, in May 2011. This is meant as a practitioner's introduction, not the last word. Let us know if any aspects are out of date or incorrect. | <urn:uuid:5e7ad8a7-096f-4e8a-a5b8-40fc2a8483de> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sembit.com/articles/windows_azure | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00151-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917989 | 1,357 | 2.671875 | 3 |
"Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War," by Tony Horwitz
, Star Tribune
, Library Of Congress
By: Tony Horwitz.
Publisher: Henry Holt, 365 pages, $29.
Review: This impressively researched, engagingly told history shines a new light on John Brown and his failed rebellion.
NONFICTION REVIEW: "Midnight Rising"
- Article by: CHUCK LEDDY
- Special to the Star Tribune
- October 29, 2011 - 1:16 PM
Bestselling historian Tony Horwitz has carved out a niche connecting the past and present. In "Confederates in the Attic," he not only explored the Civil War but also entertainingly described the lives of latter-day Civil War re-enactors. In "A Voyage Long and Strange," Horwitz detailed Spain's exploration of the Americas before 1620, retracing what was left behind, from museums to old buildings to historical theme parks.
In "Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War," Horwitz takes a different tack, into straight historical narrative, painting a revealing profile of Brown as an extremist fueled by Old Testament fervor. Brown led a failed 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, Va., which he had hoped would spark a Southern slave revolt. Brown was ultimately captured by federal troops, led by Robert E. Lee, and was executed for treason.
As Horwitz's impressively researched account shows, Brown was a Bible-pounding Calvinist firebrand. When he decided to attack slavery in the 1850s, first in Kansas and then at Harpers Ferry, he consciously viewed himself as a biblical Gideon leading a small vanguard to assault evil. In his letters and speeches, his language is uncompromising about the sin of slavery and the need to purge it with blood. Abraham Lincoln would later embrace this same biblical language, Horwitz writes.
While most abolitionists were pacifists, Brown was a "shoot-to-kill" abolitionist. In 1850s Kansas, where a civil war broke out between pro- and anti-slavery settlers, Brown used tactics of terror (he might have called it Old Testament-style justice) to intimidate pro-slavery militants. In one infamous example, which Horwitz describes in gruesome detail, Brown and his sons raided three houses in a single night, took out the adult male occupants and massacred them with swords and axes. Brown's dream was to spark an armed slave rebellion, as slave Nat Turner had tried to do (and failed) in 1831.
Horwitz meticulously re-creates Brown's plans for raiding Harpers Ferry, site of a federal arsenal. In the end, the raid failed because of Brown's tactical mistakes after he'd seized the arsenal. As Horwitz explains it, "Brown proceeded to linger for no discernible reason, until he was surrounded and massively outgunned." Horwitz convincingly suggests that Brown probably wanted a suicide mission.
After his execution, Brown would live on as a symbol. While Southerners and many Northerners viewed Brown as a crazed fanatic, many Northern intellectuals, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, would commemorate him as a Jesus-like savior willing to die for justice. Brown's raid hardened the national divide months before the Civil War. Horwitz has done an outstanding job re-creating the historical drama of the midnight raid at Harpers Ferry and, more important, taking readers inside the monomaniacal, Ahab-like mind of John Brown, a man so committed to his cause that even death couldn't halt him.
- Chuck Leddy is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He lives in Boston.
© 2016 Star Tribune | <urn:uuid:05962975-95a7-4d33-b5ad-35da6843f11d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.startribune.com/printarticle/?id=132729213 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00058-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961676 | 782 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Lesotho Its people, issues and history
Lesotho (pronounced li-soo-too), is officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, a landlocked country entirely surrounded by the Republic of South Africa which covers an area of 30 000 square km – roughly the size of Belgium or the US state of Maryland. Formerly Basutoland, the name Lesotho translates roughly into "the land of the people who speak Sotho". Lesotho is also known as the Kingdom in the Sky as the entire country lies 1000m above sea level and includes Thabana-Ntlenyana, which at 3482m is the highest peak in Africa south of Kilimanjaro. The twin spines of the Drakensberg and Maluti mountain highlands dominate Lesotho’s formidable terrain and occupy three-quarters of the country’s area giving sanctuary to a unique developing nation. The country offers an opportunity to experience Africa's natural beauty and the simplicity and warmth of the friendly Basotho people who have developed a rich culture within their towns and isolated villages.
The Kingdom of Lesotho is a poor country rich in culture but with a small economy. This linked video highlights some of the issues confronting Lesotho today including how the Basotho people may be able to harness their culture to supplement their meager incomes by providing tourists with a unique African experience. We recommend viewing and hope you will become one of their tourist 'diamonds' in the near future.
The Basotho people (the local inhabitants of Lesotho) are renowned for their crafts, and their traditional products have a reputation for quality, individuality and variety. For many years ponies were their only means of transport through the mountainous terrain, resulting in a strong tradition of horse-riding and breeding.
The traditional Basotho Hat, or mokorotlo, is the best known of a fine range of grass-works made in Lesotho. It's conical shape is seen everywhere in the kingdom, and is the recognized symbol of the country. The hat’s shape is believed to have been inspired by the Qiloane mountain near the mountain fortress of Moshoeshoe I - Thaba-Bosiu.
The flag of Lesotho features a prominent black 'mokorotlo' or Basotho hat at its centre. The upper blue band signifies sky and rain, the middle white band peace and the lower green band the land of Lesotho.
The Basotho houses
The traditional Lesotho house is called a mokhoro and being built in the rondavel style is usually round and made with local materials. The walls will often be constructed from stones held together with a mortar of sand and soil mixed with dung. The floor is finished with a tamped dung mixture to make it smooth. The roof is thatched, a process that can take as little as one weekend or up to a year when made by a skilled artisan who will sewn in one section at a time, starting from the bottom working towards the top. As each section is sewn, it may be weathered and aged in so as to form a complete weatherproof seal.
The rise of the Basotho
The Basotho people have lived in southern Africa since around the fifteenth century whereas the modern Basotho nation of Lesotho emerged during the early 1800s under the leadership of King Moshoeshoe I who gathered together different clans of Sotho-Tswana people that were dispersed across southern Africa. King Moshoeshoe I is considered the father of Lesotho’s history. He began his rise to prominence as a local chief of a small village. Around 1820 he led his villagers to Butha-Buthe, a mountain stronghold, where they survived the first battles of the Mfecane (Difaqane, or Lifaqane in the Sesotho language) an African expression meaning "the crushing" or "scattering" and exemplifies a period of widespread chaos and disturbance in southern Africa during the period between 1815 and about 1840 when Zulu chieftain Shaka created a militaristic and expansive Zulu kingdom. In 1824 Moshoeshoe moved his people to Thaba-Bosiu, a mountaintop that was even easier to defend. King Moshoeshoe I rose in diplomatic status with his acts of friendship towards his beaten enemies. He provided land and protection to various Sotho peoples and this strengthened the growing Basotho nation. His influence and followers grew from an inflow of refugees and victims of the continuing Mfecane
The nation of Lesotho
By the later part of the 1800s, King Moshoeshoe established the nation of the Basotho or Basutoland. Around the 1830s Europeans (mainly Afrikaners) started to migrate as settlers into the centre of South Africa and continued the on-going conflict between Europeans and Africans. In an attempt to be prepared for any such conflict in Basutoland, Moshoeshoe asked missionaries to come and live among his people. He believed that in this way he could buffer his country against the encroaching Europeans and other African groups.
Alliance with the Cape Colony
For strategic reasons and mainly for protection against the Voortrekkers (today’s Afrikaners), in 1843 the Basotho became allies with the British Cape Colony. During the period that followed many wars and conflicts took place between the Basotho, the Afrikaners and British. This happened at the backdrop of increased colonisation in Africa by Britain and shifts in possession of the Free State region between the Afrikaners and the British.
Annexation and independence
Eventually the British annexed Basutoland in 1868 and finally Basutoland gained its independence and became the Kingdom of Lesotho in 1966.
Today, although the Lesotho Government is a constitutional monarchy, it is the Prime Minister who is head of government and has executive authority. The king now serves a largely ceremonial function and is prohibited from actively participating in political initiatives. Letsie III is the current king of Lesotho. He succeeded his father, Moshoeshoe II in 1996..
Why is Lesotho surrounded by South Africa?
Lesotho’s sovereignty came about almost fortuitously as Basutoland was, at the time of South African unification, a British Protectorate and was not included into the Union of South Africa.
Symbols of Lesotho
The Coat of Arms of Lesotho
The coat of arms of Lesotho was adopted on 4 October 1966 following independence. Pictured is a crocodile on a Basotho shield. This is the symbol of the dynasty of Lesotho's largest ethnicity, the Sotho. Behind the shield there are two crossed weapons from the 19th century. To the left and right of the shield are supporters of the shield, two Basotho horses. In the foreground there is a golden ribbon with the national motto of Lesotho: Khotso, Pula, Nala (Peace, Rain, Prosperity). The national anthem of Lesotho is "Lesotho Fatše La Bo-ntata Rona", which literally translates into "Lesotho, Land Of Our Fathers".
Languages: Lesotho's Basotho are a Bantu-speaking people.
Religion: Roman Catholics, the largest religious group, make up more than two-fifths of the population; smaller groups include the Lesotho Evangelical Church, Anglican and other Christian and tribal religions.
Education and literacy: An estimated 85 percent of the population 15 and over are literate. As such, Lesotho boasts one of the highest literacy rates in Africa. Although education is not compulsory, the Government of Lesotho is incrementally implementing a programme for free primary education.
Economy: Lesotho's economy is principally based on exports of water from the Orange River system to South Africa's Free State and greater Johannesburg areas. Lesotho also exports diamonds, wool, mohair, clothing, and footwear. Manufacturing, agriculture, livestock, and the earnings of labourers employed in South Africa are important sources of income. Almost 50% of the population earn some income through crop cultivation or animal husbandry.
The information on this page comes from a range of sources but is principally a summation of the Wikipedia sections dealing with Lesotho. | <urn:uuid:62aca945-d7a6-47b2-9c53-ba5b61165ce9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://africa.co.ls/aboutLesotho.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00115-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954554 | 1,759 | 2.984375 | 3 |
On Thursday, October 17, 2013 4:15:41 PM UTC-4, Bart Goddard wrote: > Dan Christensen <Dan_Christensen@sympatico.ca> wrote in > > news:email@example.com: > > > > >> 3^2 = (0^0)^2 = 0^(2*0) = 0^0 = 3 > > >> > > > > > > Good point! That's why I stipulate that a non-zero base for the Power > > > of a Power Rule (Theorem 5) which you use in your 2nd step. > > > > Which is why you have nothing but contradictions here. You're > > asserting that 0^0 can be defined to be anything, and the > > exponent rules still work.
You can avoid the contradictions by stipulating non-zero bases in each of the Laws of Exponents, as I have done here (see Theorems 4,5 and 7). It's no big deal. While there are still some hold-outs for 0^0=1, mathematicians have been leaving 0^0 undefined in this way for nearly two centuries (starting with Cauchy in the early 19th century). | <urn:uuid:387855ca-1645-431a-bd55-63c383f29f1d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=9309512 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00159-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916465 | 280 | 2.65625 | 3 |
I HAVE seen a coloured king simply smirking with pride, in what he considered modern full dress--a short shirt and an old tall hat.
And I suppose, as far as actual clothing went, it was an advance on the old-time costume of paint and feathers. A black woman's needle was a little bone from the leg of an emu, pointed. Her thread was sinews of opossums, kangaroos, and emus; that was all that was necessary for her plain sewing, which was plain indeed.
Her fancy work consisted of netting dillee, goolays, or miniature hammocks to sling her baby across her back, or, failing a baby, her mixed possessions, from food to feathers; her larder and wardrobe in one.
Her costume being simple in the extreme did not require much room. It consisted of a goomillah, which was a string wound round the waist, made of opossum sinews, and in front, hanging down for about a foot, were twisted strands of opossum hair. A bone, or on state occasions a green twig, stuck through the cartilage of her nose, a string net over her hair, or perhaps only a fillet, or a kangaroo's tooth fastened to her front lock, gum balls dried on side-locks, an opossum's hair armlet, and perhaps a reed bead necklet and a polished black skin, toilette complete, unless for certain ceremonies a further decoration of flowers or down feathers was required.
The principal article of the man's dress was called waywah. It was a belt, about six inches wide, made of twisted sinews and hair, with four tufts about eighteen inches long hanging back and front and at each side from it, made of narrow strips of kangaroo or paddy melon skins.
For warmth in winter they would wrap themselves in their opossum-skin rugs. Sometimes both sexes adorned themselves with strings of kangaroo teeth fixed into gum, in which a little hole was made, round their heads and necks--yumbean they called them; or forehead bands with hanging kangaroo teeth, which were called gnooloogail.
Pine gum they rolled into small egg-shaped balls, warmed them and stuck them in dozens all over their heads, where they would be left until they wore off, hairdressings being only an occasional duty. The gum they used for sticking the kangaroo's teeth was that of the Mubboo, or beefwood tree.
Sometimes wongins were worn; they consisted of cords round the neck and under the arms, crossing the chest with a shell pendant at the centre of the cross. A shell is still a most prized ornament.
The corroboree dress is one of paint; the feature of it being its design, a man can gain quite a tribal reputation for being an originator of decorative designs.
Their original paint colourings were white, red, and yellow; occasionally they said they got some sort of blue by barter, but very occasionally, as it came from very far. White was from Gidya ash, or gypsum; red and yellow, ochre clay; but they also got both red and yellow from burning at a certain stage certain trees, gooroolay for red; the charcoal, instead of being black, having red and yellow tinges. But since the white people came the blue bag has put yellow out of fashion, and raddle is used for the red.
Their opossum rugs used to have designs scratched on the skin sides and also painted patterns, some say tribal marks, others just to look pretty and distinguish each their own.
Feathers tied into little bunches and fastened on to small wooden skewers were stuck upright in the hair at corroborees, also swansdown fluffed in puff balls over the heads.
The Gooumoorh, or corroboree, is a sort of black fellow's opera; as to the musical part, rather, as some one found an oratorio, a thing of high notes and vain repetition.
The stage effects of corroborees are sometimes huge sheets of bark fastened on to poles; these sheets of bark are painted in different designs and colours, something like Moorish embroideries. Sometimes there is a huge imitation of an alligator made of logs plastered over with earth and painted in stripes of different colours, a piece of wood cut open stuck in at one end as a gaping mouth. This alligator corroboree is generally indicative of a Boorah, or initiation ceremony, being near at hand. Sometimes the stage effects are high painted poles merely.
At the back of the goomboo, or stage, are large fires; in the front, in a semicircle, sit the women as orchestra, and the audience; a fire at each end of the semicircle, as a sort of footlights. The music of the orchestra is made by some beating time on rolled-up opossum rugs, and some clicking two boomerangs together. The time is faultless. The tunes are monotonous, but rhythmical and musical, curiously well suited to the stage and layers. These last have a very weird look as they steal Pout of the thick scrub, out of the darkness, quickly one after another, dancing round the goomboo in time to the music, their grotesquely painted figures and feather-decorated heads lit up by the flickering lights of the fires around.
As the dancing gets faster the singing gets louder, every muscle of the dancers seems strained, and the wonder is the voices do not crack. just as you think they must, the dancing slows again; the voices die away, to swell out once more with renewed vigour when the fires are built up again and again; the same dance is gone through, time after time-one night one dance, or, for that matter, many nights one dance.
The dancers sometimes make dumb-show of hunts, fights, slaughters, the women sometimes translating the actions in the songs; sometimes the words seem to have nothing to do with them, and the dances only a series of steps illustrating nothing.
Corroborees seem to fit in with the indescribable mystery of the bush. That the spirit of the bush is mystery makes it so difficult to describe beyond bald realism, otherwise it seems an effort to seize the intangible. Poor Barcroft Boake got something of the mystery into words.
If an Australian Wagner could be born we might hope for a musical adaptation of corroborees. Wagner was essentially the exponent of folk-lore music, wherein must be expressed the fundamentals of human passion unrefined.
The most celebrated weapon is probably the boomerang the most celebrated kind to whites, though not most useful to blacks, is the Bubberab, or returning boomerang. These are made chiefly of Gidya and Myall. Here these 'Come backs' are never carved, are more curved than the ordinary boomerang, and were greased, rubbed with charred grass, and warmed before being used, so that the slightest warp would be straightened. It is marvellous the accuracy with which an adept can throw one of these weapons, locating it on the exact place to which he wishes it to return.
Gidya is the favourite wood for boomerangs. They are first roughly shaped, then thrown into water and soaked for two or three days; taken out and made into the proper shape, rubbed with charred grass, greased well, and carved in various designs with an opossum's tooth.
Boomerangs have many uses--in peace two clicked together as a musical instrument, as a war weapon, and as a weapon in the chase. Its last and rapidly approaching use will be as a curio for collectors.
Billah, or spears, are made of Belah (swamp oak) or Gidya. These too are cut roughly first and thrown into water, then cut a little more, thrown into water again, and so day after day until finished. Sometimes they are carved with a running featherstitch-like pattern from end to end, sometimes have bingles, or barbs, cut down one or both sides; some barbarous things with barbs pointing both ways, so that they could be neither pushed out nor drawn through a wound; some are plain, painted at each end or darkened with poison tips.
Billah are war weapons; a larger kind called Moornin are used for spearing emu.
Woggarahs, the hatchet-shaped weapons, were made of Myall, Gidya, and other woods, carved as were boomerangs, each carver usually having a favourite design by which his weapons were recognised.
Booreens, or shields, were of three kinds: a narrow kind made of hardwood, a broad flat kind of Kurrajong, and a medium-sized one of Birah, or whitewood, all painted in coloured designs. It is wonderful the way a man can defend himself single-handed against a number of men, he having only a narrow shield, the only defence he is allowed when he has to stand his trial for a breach of the laws.
Their tomahawks, or Cumbees, were of dark-green stone, of which there is none in this district, so it must have been obtained by barter, as in the first instance were the flat, light Booreens from the Queensland side, and the grass-tree gum from the Narrabri mountains side, for which Gidya boomerangs were given in exchange.
The stone tomahawks have a handle put over one end of the stone, gummed on with beefwood gum, then drawn together under the stone, crossed, and the two ends tied together as a handle, with sinews of emus, opossums, or kangaroos.
Muggils, or stone knives, are just sharpened pieces of stone.
Moorooleh are plain waddies used in war and for killing game; a smaller kind called Boodthul are thrown for amusement.
Boondees are heavy-headed clubs used in war.
The black fellow won't allow his womenkind a heaven of rest, for the spirit women are supposed to make weapons which the wirreenuns journey towards the sunset clouds to get--the women's heaven is in the west--giving in exchange animal food and opossum rugs, no animals being there.
For carrying water they used to make bags of opossum skins. To prepare the skins they would pluck the hair off, and, after cleansing them well, sew up the skins with sinews, leaving only the neck open. They would fill this vessel with air and hang it out to dry.
As, a water vessel, to mix their drinks and medicines in, they used Binguies or Coolamons, a deep, canoe-shaped vessel cut out of solid wood, carved sometimes and painted, a string handle to it. They used little bark vessels to drink out of, like shallow basins, cut from excrescences on eucalyptus trees; these were called wirree. A larger bark vessel they used for holding water, honey, or anything liquid.
While on the subject of personal decoration I forgot the Moobir, or cuts on the bodies, some of which are tribal marks, some marks of mourning, some merely of ornamentation. Both men and women are seen with these marks in the Narran district; some huge wales on the skin from the shoulders half-way down the back, some on the chest and the forepart of the arms. They are cut with a stone knife, licked along by the medicine man, filled in with charcoal, and the skin let grow over.
Various reasons are given for these marks: some say they are to give strength, others as a tribal sign, others just to took pretty. Some give the final reason for everything, 'Because Byamee say so.'
In summer the blacks are great bathers, and play all sorts of games in the water. Their soap is clay; they rub themselves with that, the women plastering it under their arms again and again; the little children rub themselves all over with it, then tumble into the water to wash it off.
In winter they forgo bathing, and rub themselves with liberal applications of grease.
The old blacks used to have very good teeth; they never ate without afterwards rinsing out their mouths, and sometimes munched up charcoal to purify them. But the younger generation have discarded the mouth-rinsing habit, and not yet attained to a tooth-brush: result, gradual deterioration in teeth, a deterioration probably helped by the drinking of hot liquids. Blacks of the old time drank nothing hot. Perhaps, too, their tough meats gave muscular strength to their jaws.
To blacks, kissing is a 'white foolishness,' also handshaking; in olden times even to smell a stranger was considered a risk. | <urn:uuid:db6ce212-d53b-4a2a-99ad-675a60cd8f3d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sacred-texts.com/aus/tet/tet16.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397865.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00156-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972255 | 2,735 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Query: classification: "42.74"
|Title||De hooiwagen astrobunus laevipes nieuw voor Nederland (Opiliones: Phalangiidae)|
|Journal||Nederlandse Faunistische Mededelingen|
|Keywords||Nederland; Verspreiding; Biotopen; Herkenning; Ecologie|
|Abstract||The harvestman Astrobunus laevipes new for the Netherlands (Opiliones: Phalangiidae) |
On 19 September 2003 three males and three females of Astrobunus laevipes were collected in Ooij, east of Nijmegen, province of Gelderland. On 25 and 30 September 2003 five more specimens were recorded from the same locality, a grassland with some shrubs and trees, close to the river Waal. Data on morphology, ecology and distribution are given. Original illustrations are presented. It is suggested A. laevipes may well become, or already is, an indigenous species in the Dutch riverine area.
|Download paper|| http://www.repository.naturalis.nl/document/46381 | | <urn:uuid:8c174c67-192b-4918-8a2a-c4656ac1bfef> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.repository.naturalis.nl/cgi/b/bib/bib-idx?c=naturalis;type=simple;rgn1=classification;q1=42.74;lang=en;sort=title;cc=naturalis;view=reslist;fmt=long;page=reslist;size=1;start=462 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00004-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.696224 | 250 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The inhabitants of the commune are known as Albertivillariens or Albertivillariennes.
The commune has been awarded two flowers by the National Council of Towns and Villages in Bloom in the Competition of cities and villages in Bloom.
As with many communes in the outer suburbs the town had long been a rural area. Formerly known as Notre-Dame-des-Vertus, the village was on is a plain which produced the best vegetables around Paris.
Aubervilliers appears in the archives in was first mentioned in 1059 as Albertivillare, meaning "estate of Adalbert" and in the following year when Henry I donated it to the Priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs. In 1111 the serfs were freed in Aubervilliers. In 1182 the priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, located in Paris, granted Paris butchers the right to freely graze their cattle in the fields after the harvest was over. In 1221, Guillaume Bateste, lord of Franconville, became the first Lord of Vivier les Aubervilliers. The church, which at the beginning of the 13th century depended on one of the parishes of Saint Denis, soon became famous for the miraculous appearance of an image of the Virgin.
In 1336 Father Jacques Du Breul, Prior of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, reported the Miracle of the rain: A young girl busy preparing flowers to adorn the statue of the Virgin in the church saw her face streaming with tears when the rain began to fall on the parched crops. In 1338 King Philip VI of France and his queen went to Aubervilliers to visit the image. From 1340 to 1792 people went there in droves each year from Paris and its surroundings. In 1402 Michel de Laillier, Lord of Ermenonville, became Lord of Vivier les Aubervilliers. In 1429 the town was occupied by the English but was retaken by Michel de Laillier in 1436. Louis XI went there in November 1474 to the house of Pierre L’Orfèvre, the new Lord of Vivier from then until August 1478. The image of the Virgin in lead that the king wore on his hat was a representation of the one at Aubervilliers.
In 1531 the Lordship of Vivier les Aubervilliers was sold to the Montholon family which held it until 1779. The facade and tower of the church were built in the reign of Henry II. Civil wars which the Armagnacs stirred up in France led to the destruction of the village but the abundant alms of the many pilgrims who came from all sides allowed a prompt reconstruction. On 10 November 1567 the Battle of Saint-Denis took place in the Plaine Saint-Denis between the Catholic army of Anne de Montmorency and the Protestant troops of the Prince of Condé.
From the Renaissance to the 18th century
The visit by Louis XIII in 1613, then again in 1614 and 1628, allowed the development of pilgrimage to Notre-Dame des Virtues. Jacques Gallemant, pastor of Aubervilliers, allowed a community of Oratorians to settle in Aubervilliers in 1618. They took charge of the Church of Notre-Dame-des-Vertus and developed an important pilgrimage around the statue of the Virgin of Aubervilliers. The installation from 1622 of a "House of Notre-Dame des Vertus" by the Oratorians of John de Bérulle then its progressive extension throughout the 17th century made Aubervilliers an important centre of French Catholic spirituality. Thinkers, "pious and famous faithful" such as Francis de Sales, Vincent de Paul, John Eudes (he stayed for two years), Jean-Jacques Ollier, Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, the philosopher Nicolas Malebranche, and the son of the great Jean Racine - the poet Louis Racine participated in a pilgrimage there and returned. At the end of the 17th century and in the first half of the 18th century, the House of Oratorians of Aubervilliers became a "stronghold" of the Jansenist dissent.
In 1649, during the Fronde, Aubervilliers fell into misery. Crops were destroyed, death reigned and population declined. There were 125 deaths in 1652 in a population of about 1,500 inhabitants. Nevertheless the small town was reborn although until the 19th century it was populated by farmers. Proximity to the Paris markets promoted Market gardening, especially on the Plain of Vertus which was famous for its onions and a wide range of vegetables. The existence of the Mazier farm at 70 Rue Heurtault is attested by a document in 1699.
French Revolution and Empire
On 12 August 1787 the first meeting of the Municipal Assembly of Aubervilliers took place. In 1789 there was alist of grievances, complaints and remonstrances written by Mesme Monard, the parish priest, and one of the leaders against the Oratorians. On 24 January 1790 the election of the first mayor of Aubervilliers took place: Nicolas Lemoine was elected. In 1792 the boundary of the commune of Aubervilliers was delineated.
The Plain of Aubervilliers was, in 1814 and 1815, the scene of a bloody battle between French troops and the Prussians who took and re-took it several times. The French soldiers were overpowered by numbers and were eventually forced to abandon it.
From the Restoration to the Paris Commune
On 13 May 1821 the Canal Saint-Denis opened. In 1832, an outbreak of cholera decimated the population. In 1840 a factory was set up to manufacture soap from resin. The Fort d'Aubervilliers was built in 1843 - it was part of the Thiers wall, a structure authorised in 1840 by Adolphe Thiers to protect Paris and, where appropriate, to subdue its rebellions forming an elongated belt around Paris. It was used for the repression of the Paris Commune. The grounds of the fort and its surroundings are part of Aubervilliers commune. In 1861 the Central Market was created.
On 1 January 1860, the city of Paris was enlarged by annexing neighbouring communes. On that occasion, a small part of the commune of Aubervilliers was annexed to the city of Paris. At the same time, the commune of La Chapelle-Saint-Denis was disbanded and divided between the city of Paris, Aubervilliers, Saint-Denis, and Saint-Ouen. Aubervilliers received a small part of the territory of La Chapelle-Saint-Denis.
The Industrial Revolution and the expansion of Paris radically changed the situation in Aubervilliers. Industries were established next to the canal. On 6 October 1862 Baron Hainguerlot began the operation of General Stores in Saint-Denis. In 1866 he moved to Aubervilliers. In 1866 Saint-Gobain purchased a factory manufacturing sulphuric acid from John Frédéric Boyd which was located on Rue du Landy. On 12 September 1867 Lady Lequin began operating a Match factory at a place called La Motte, Rue du Vivier.
During the Siege of Paris in 1870 the municipal government took refuge in Paris at 20 Boulevard de Strasbourg. At the beginning of 1877 a tramway arrived in the city centre. In 1879, the boyauderie (Tripe factory) owned by Mr. Jacquart was established. It was later purchased by Witt SA, a boyaudier from La Courneuve. The whole complex was bought in 1921 by the Wanner establishment who manufactured insulating materials: ceramic, plaster, and cork tiles. On 18 June 1897 a grease manufacturing factory (industrial oils and greases) was established on Chemin Haut de St Denis at Aubervilliers and remained in operation until the Second World War. In 1898 a tram depot was built at the corner of the Avenue de la République No. 30 and Rue du Midi.
The Belle Époque to the Second World War
At the end of the 19th century the life of the small town was already closely linked to nascent industrialization. People from Belgium, Lorraine, Alsace, Brittany, Spain, and Italy arrived in successive waves. This capacity to absorb and mix populations is characteristic of the history of the commune. Workers come to live in the suburbs which were cheaper than in Paris. Ever since Aubervilliers has been a multicultural city where more than 70 nationalities live.
For decades major industries shaped the identity of the city.
The district of Quatre-Chemins, which straddles the boundary of Aubervilliers and Pantin, was pejoratively nicknamed La Petite Prusse (Little Prussia) due to many immigrants coming to work in the Saint-Gobain glassworks - established in 1866 next to the canal. The identity of the district led them to ask in vain for the status of full-function commune at the end of the 19th century.
The construction of the Stade de France (Stadium of France) just north of the commune in 1998 was a stimulating element in the Saint-Denis Plain. With its 750 hectares on the outskirts of Paris, The Saint-Denis Plain covers one third of Aubervilliers and extends over Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen. Since the early 2000s this area, which was one of the largest industrial areas in Europe, has been changing and should receive the Campus Condorcet in the late 2010s. | <urn:uuid:58e8d425-3d5d-40fb-afec-7ac0364efcb6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Place:Aubervilliers%2C_Seine-Saint-Denis%2C_France | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00020-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960144 | 2,050 | 2.859375 | 3 |
WELL; Patterns: BPA Levels Tied to Obesity in Youths
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: September 25, 2012
Bisphenol A, or BPA, is a chemical widely used to prevent metal corrosion in food packaging, and more than 90 percent of Americans have detectable BPA in their urine. Now a new study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association has found that high levels of urinary BPA are associated with an increased risk of childhood obesity.
Scientists randomly selected 2,838 children ages 6 to 19 from participants enrolled in a larger health study, and measured their urinary BPA levels. About 34 percent were overweight; nearly 18 percent were obese.
The rate of obesity in children in the highest quartile of BPA concentrations was about twice that among children in the other 75 percent, the researchers found, even after controlling for age, income, parental education, TV watching and diet.
But the correlation did not hold when black or Hispanic children were considered separately. The reason for the racial difference is unclear, said the study's lead author, Dr. Leonardo Trasande, an associate professor of pediatrics at the N.Y.U. School of Medicine.
Dr. Trasande said that while diet and physical activity are the leading causes of obesity, other factors should be considered. Moreover, he added, "our study suggests the need to reconsider the decision not to ban BPA in food packaging."
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print. | <urn:uuid:1441bf6f-4f0a-4f45-90cf-4b158c589c9b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904E5DF1239F936A1575AC0A9649D8B63&ref=americanmedicalassociation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398075.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00166-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962293 | 318 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Lincoln Youth Soccer absolutely expects that all parents will accept the BAYS Zero Tolerance Policy. This means that we will not tolerate any disputing referee calls...during or after the game, no remarks to the referee to watch certain players or attend to rough play. NO YELLING at the referee EVER and no sarcasm, intimidation or feedback of any kind during or after the game. If parents disagree with a call they should ask the coach to explain it.
- Support the referee's decision. Refereeing soccer like playing soccer looks easier from the sidelines then it is on the field. The field is large, there are a number of players moving both with and away from the ball and the referee cannot see everything from all angles.
- Understand the laws of the game. FIFA rules give soccer referees a great deal of discretion. They are not required to call every breach of soccer's laws ie handball if a ball hits a players hand the referee will decide in a second whether the player meant to do it or whether it just happened...so the referee may not call a foul.
- Under FIFA rules only the referee's opinion counts:if the referee did not call it - it is not a foul.
- That referee is your neighbor's child. Quite often the referee for your child's game is a teenager. Treat them,whether or not you agree with their calls, as you would want other adults to treat your child in a similar situation. Every referee is performing a difficult job in a fluid,fast paced game.
- Look at the big picture. Soccer is a GAME. Most of our youth players will stop playing before high school. Keep the games in perspective. If you cannot watch the game without losing control...stay home. Remember, we are all role models for our kids. | <urn:uuid:ae431f27-1bf1-45b0-95b0-40a890d621ee> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.lincolnsoccer.com/content/game-conduct | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00145-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954094 | 367 | 2.53125 | 3 |
All the seven resource persons invited to give inputs in yesterday’s public hearing agree on the need to ban corporal punishment on children.
Dr. Naomi Poca, a child specialist of the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, said there is no study here or abroad that would prove the benefits of corporal punishment on children.
Corporal punishment do not teach any values to children except fear for his or her parents or whoever does the punishment.
Prohibited acts include pulling of a child’s hair, beating with or without the use of instruments, pinching or pulling and shaving a child’s hair or ears.
The draft ordinance also prohibits solitary confinement, exposure to harmful substance, neglect, verbal threats and humiliation.
Raddy Diola said the proponents of the draft ordinance also has to qualify when solitary confinement or verbal threats becomes a form of child abuse.
Tessie Fernandez, executive director of Lihok Filipina, said that the best form of discipline is for parents to be good examples for their children to follow.
Studies, according to Fernandez, found that children who experienced corporal punishment tend to lack in reasoning skills, low in IQ and would tend to engage in spousal abuse later in their lives.
Parents who commit violations, Poca said, should undergo counselling.
The proposed ordinance, authored by Councilors Leah Japson, Margot Osmeña, Alvin Dizon and John Philip Po II, metes punishment on parents, guardians and even teachers found to physically, emotionally and psychologically harm a child. | <urn:uuid:7f460957-b7b9-4afb-a26e-1ac9fa6d741c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/161847/%E2%80%98spanking-bad-for-children%E2%80%99 | 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 | 0.943934 | 319 | 2.546875 | 3 |
WHAT WE DO
The Weidemann Foundation emphasizes microlending as a potent means to eradicate global poverty. Microlending, the disbursement of small loans to poor clientele, often women, is a very effective development technology. Microlending became a household word when Mohammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Microlending programs serve over 113 million people worldwide, the majority of whom are women. Two thirds of these loan clients live on less than $1/day. Repayment rates are over 90%. Many programs offer adjunct training in business skills, literacy, health and other crucial areas as well.
The Foundation also supports community development projects, including health, education and training and always looks for those with the greatest potential to become self-sustaining when donor support is withdrawn.
Weidemann Foundation targets women beneficiaries, knowing that investing in women builds families, communities and nations. Nearly half the world’s population lives on less than $2/day and women comprise a disproportionate share of those in poverty. Women produce the majority of the food supply in developing countries. Numerous studies have shown that women spend their additional income on their children and households — such as tuition or uniform costs for school, vaccinations or other forms of healthcare, food for their children, and improving the structure and comfort of their homes. Investing in women is a direct route to eradicating global poverty. The Foundation also assists youth and families and has provided grants for cultural and spiritual preservation of threatened minority groups, particularly Tibetan refugees. | <urn:uuid:1d572292-d624-401e-bea1-85a24199bf50> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://createglobalchange.org/what.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00062-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96621 | 319 | 2.640625 | 3 |
RSP builds solid metal parts through a spray process in which the metal hardens rapidly.
The process has been proven on this test machine. The next step is to scale up the system to larger parts and apply it in production.
An additional benefit of RSP: The process makes it easy to add identifying marks to mold tooling as raised characters rather than engravings. This means the characters appear in the molded parts not as raised features, but as negative impressions.
[Editor's note: RSP Tooling, the company mentioned in the article below, no longer has a license agreement related to the Rapid Solidification Process (RSP). Premier Technology (www.ptius.com) now has a license agreement with Idaho National Laboratory related to RSP. A representative of Premier Technology told me the company's aim is to develop and sell machinery for producing large tooling and dies with this technology, but the timeframe for achieving this is unknown. Therefore, the article below is presented as information on an additive manufacturing approach that is likely to be available in the future. —PZ]
Because additive manufacturing processes are not affected by geometric detail, they ought to be ideal for making molds and dies. The complex features of these parts that slow down machining do not have to affect the speed of a process that builds parts layer by layer. However, size is a problem. Equipment for building additive metal parts is typically much more expensive than comparably sized CNC machine tools. Cost, among other factors, prevents additive equipment from scaling up to the size of a large mold or die.
An exception is an additive tooling process developed within a laboratory near Cleveland. Belcan Corporation’s Solon, Ohio-based Specialty Equipment Engineering Division designed and built a machine for proving out an additive metal manufacturing method called RSP, or Rapid Solidification Process. This process, which has the potential to be easily scalable, uses a molten metal spray to create solid, complex, precision metal components. A company partly owned by Belcan and operating within the Solon facility, RSP Tooling, has worked to refine and industrialize this technology.
The process was licensed from the U.S. government’s Idaho National Laboratory, which initially saw it as a way to make steel billet. RSP Tooling was founded on the idea of using it to make molds and dies instead. James Knirsch, RSP Tooling’s president, says an end user with an RSP system will be able to make a large core or cavity in less than a day, and at less cost than conventional mold machining. In addition, the mold tooling produced this way would have longer life than what a machined mold can provide.
The process is now proven, and the RSP machine in Belcan’s facility has made working dies. Scaling up the process to larger dies is the main development work that still needs to occur, because the cost advantage of this process becomes pronounced only as the molds and dies get bigger.
The core of RSP technology is a method for spraying metal so the material solidifies rapidly (hence the name). Spray that lands as liquid in a 10-micron layer solidifies so fast that the 10-micron layer landing atop it can solidify just as quickly, and so on. The equipment used today can build a metal part at a rate of about 360 pounds per hour.
Most metals can be applied this way. When tool steel is sprayed, Mr. Knirsch says the resulting hardness is better than that of a machined part after heat treating. He notes that heat treating’s properties improve according to how quickly the part cools. RSP provides the equivalent of heat treating with instantaneous cooling.
The RSP moldmaking method begins with a model of the tool. Typically this is plastic, created through machining or 3D printing. A model for a large mold might be created in sections. This model is then used to create a ceramic “positive” of the molded form (“positive” because the mold is negative). The ceramic positive becomes the platform on which the metal tool is built.
The geometry of the part produced in this way conforms precisely to the ceramic piece. Because the spray is atomized, the surface finish matches that of the underlying form. One time, to achieve a mold with a realistic leather texture, RSP Tooling put an actual leather cover atop the master. The mold replicated the leather in fine detail. On another occasion, RSP was applied over a polished piece of quartz glass. The resulting sprayed metal surface had a mirror finish with no need for polishing. This faithfulness to the finish and details of the master means that a mold created through RSP requires machining only for pin and cooling holes, and for features that cannot be produced on the master because they involve undercuts.
Build time is one advantage of making a mold this way. All the RSP steps combined, for the model, master and spraying, take less time than making the same tool through machining. Mr. Kirsch says another advantage is cost—but only if the mold is big enough. Because of the high initial cost, an RSP system will not be cost-effective for small tooling. As the mold size increases, though, little about the process changes. The cost of an RSP machine increases little with bigger travels. The spray cycle time does not increase much, either. In machining, equipment cost and process cost are both directly proportional to the size of the part, but not in RSP. As a result, the true strength and value of RSP will ultimately be determined by the size of the mold or die that an RSP system can be engineered to create.
Comments are reviewed by moderators before they appear to ensure they meet Modern Machine Shop’s submission guidelines. | <urn:uuid:b8834715-a50c-4dd1-8d81-6259f8928494> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mmsonline.com/articles/molten-spray-moldmaking | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00061-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948631 | 1,201 | 2.75 | 3 |
The coming of age of Jem, Jeremy Finch, is shown in many ways
through out the book To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. He changes
socially. He changes mentally. His feelings change emotionally. He also
changes to become more of an adult figure. Another way he changes is that
he changes physically.
Jem changes through out the book socially by the way he starts having
better feelings toward other people. There are many times when Jem start
feeling bad for other people in the story, like when him and scout get in a
fight but even though their mad at each other he still is grow up enough to
know that he should say 'Night, Scout.' There are also many other
incidents, like when he goes out and teaches Dill how to swim. Jem also goes
through some bad social change when he turns 'twelve. He is difficult to live
with, inconsistent, and moody.'(115).
These are only a few of the things that
Jem does to show that he is growing up in his social ways.
Mental change is another type of change that Jem goes through. Jem
start to think like an adult as he gets older in the book. He shows it at the
trial of Tim Robinson when the jury is in the jury room and he starts to talk to
Reverend Sykes. He starts saying thing about the trial and Reverend Sykes
ask him not to talk like that in front of Scout. Which shows that he knows
what he is talking about.(see page 208-209). There is also the time when he
had to go and read to Mrs. Dubose which he later finds out about her drug
addiction which he fully understands. So those are ways he changes mentally.
Jem changes physically in... | <urn:uuid:6b3046f8-14b8-4a0a-81ce-e4a552dc9a12> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.writework.com/essay/coming-age-shown-throughout-book-kill-mocking-bird-harper | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00168-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974272 | 376 | 3.109375 | 3 |
HEADING: Includes the address and the date. In some cases, it is OK to just write
the date. GREETING: The greeting usually starts with 'Dear' and is followed the ...
... in a friendly letter. A friendly letter is made up of five parts: a heading, a
greeting, a body, a closing, and a signature. writing ... Steps to writing a Friendly
ABCya! Computer Lab: Language Arts - Type a Friendly Letter | This interactive
activity helps students to learn the five parts of a friendly letter. By following the ...
as its place in the friendly letter. This lesson includes a video clip, guided practice
, and an independent writing activity. At the end of the lesson, you will find a list ...
How to Write a Friendly Letter. Texting and instant messaging are common ways
of communicating with friends these days, but writing a letter is a traditional, ...
Here you can learn the parts of a letter and how to write your own letter. Enter
your name ... friendly letter, but it can be just as much fun to write. You can. write
Jul 12, 2007 ... Business Letter Sample ... writing. This paragraph should probably include three
or four ... As shown in this Friendly Letter Sample, no.
www.ask.com/youtube?q=How to Write a Friendly Letter&v=_8I2Y-i7Qq4
Mar 2, 2015 ... How to write a Friendly Letter. Jessica Dunton .... so im in grade 4 and im teachin
my self and writing u a letter about it. Read more. Show less.
We write friendly letters to people we know well. We might write a friendly letter to
our parents, grandparents, or our friends. 311 East Duke Street. Stanley, N.C. ...
www.ask.com/youtube?q=How to Write a Friendly Letter&v=DqJs5am0m7c
Apr 27, 2010 ... How to write a friendly letter! .wmv. Ein .... I love your writing lol ... alright just
finished my letter now wheat do i do with the envelope O.O . | <urn:uuid:b296c730-4b24-4059-91ca-21c30872c967> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ask.com/web?qsrc=3053&o=102140&oo=102140&l=dir&gc=1&qo=popularsearches&ad=dirN&q=How+to+Write+a+Friendly+Letter | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00086-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.830445 | 451 | 3.640625 | 4 |
Cantor Jeremiah Greenberg has produced an excellent little volume which will provide you with the history of the Rosh Chodesh, as well as how to celebrate it today. I have borrowed somewhat from this little book in preparing this article. You can order it yourself by going online to MessianicLiturgy.com, by calling him at 813-792-7252, or by writing to:
Messianic Liturgical Resources
PO Box 342083, Tampa FL 33694
The Rosh Chodesh (“New Moon”) is celebrated from the time of the physical sighting of the new crescent moon, or by the calculation of the New Moon. Most Rosh Chodesh celebrations today are based on the calculations of Hillel II. He developed the fixed Jewish calendar in about 359 CE still used to this day. This calculated Jewish calendar was at the order of the Roman Emperor, so that the Roman authorities would not be surprised when Jews would celebrate one of the Jewish holidays.
In Genesis 1:14, we read, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.’ ” The word translated “seasons” is mo’edim. More properly, it should be translated, “appointed times.” The appearance of the moon or its various phases has nothing to do with seasons, but it has everything to do with the appointed times of Lev. 23:4-44.
The New Moon determines when the other Holy Days are to be observed. For instance, Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) is observed on the 10th day of the 7th month (“Tishrei”). You have to know when the 7th month begins in order to know when Yom Kippur is to be observed. We can’t properly observe the Appointed Times without an annual calendar of months, each beginning at its own appointed time (which is the Rosh Chodesh).
It is also important to know which month begins the sacred year. For that, we have the instruction given to us in Exodus 12:2: “This month (Aviv or Nissan) shall be to you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.” According to the Rabbis, Adam was created on the first day of Tishrei, which remained the first month of the year as the anniversary of Creation. However, for the sacred calendar, Exodus 12:2 changed the first month to Aviv (or Nissan), in early spring.
“Also in the day of your
gladness, and in your mo’edim (appointed
times), and in the beginnings of your months, you shall blow
with the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your
peace offerings; that they may be to you for a memorial before your God:
I am YHWH your God.” (Numbers
Just as with the Feasts of Leviticus 23, there were sacrifices to be offered in the Beit HaMikdash (Temple) for the Rosh Chodesh. We also have the following instruction, given to us by the Psalmist Asaph, in Psalm 81:
1 Sing aloud to God our strength: make a joyful noise to the God of Jacob.
2 Take a psalm, and strike the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery.
3 Blow the shofar at the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day.
4 For this is a statute for Israel, and a
law of the God of Jacob.
Psalm 81 tells us that we can celebrate the Rosh Chodesh with singing, “joyful noise,” reading of Psalms, playing musical instruments, and sounding the shofar. Sounds good!
Numbers 28:11-15 describes all the sacrifices of animals, as well as the grain offerings and libations (offerings of wine) that are to be done for the Rosh Chodesh. Today the Beit HaMikdash (Temple) or sacrificial altar in Jerusalem are not in existence, and therefore there are no sacrifices. However, the mention of these sacrifices shows us that God considered the Rosh Chodesh to be an important part of the Sacred Calendar.
Rosh Chodesh Prayers
It is often difficult to get a minyan of ten warm bodies together to observe the Rosh Chodesh at the actual time of the Rosh Chodesh. Therefore, it is often observed on the Shabbat that occurs closest to the actual Rosh Chodesh. This is usually done with a couple simple prayers. One of the prayers from Jeremiah’s Rosh Chodesh siddur is:
u “Our God and God of our fathers, renew this month unto us for good and for blessing, for joy and gladness, for salvation and consolation, for sustenance and providence, for life and for peace, for letting go of sin and for forgiveness of iniquity. For You have chosen the righteous of Israel and all the Nations, and have established for them statutes for the new months. Blessed are You, O Lord, who sanctifies Israel, the Believers in Yeshua, and the New Moons.”
To this, Dr. John Fischer adds:
u “He who performed miracles for our fathers, and liberated them from slavery to freedom, may He quickly liberate us, and gather our exiles from the four corners of the earth, even all of Israel; and let us say, Amen.
The New Moon of (name of month) will be on (name of the day). May it be good for all Israel. May the Holy One, blessed be He, grant it to us and to all his people, the house of Israel, for life and peace, for gladness and joy, for deliverance and consolation; and let us say, Amen.”
Both Greenberg and Fischer include the Hebrew for the above blessings. In addition, Greenberg includes the transliterated Hebrew.
One of the ancient ways of celebrating the Rosh Chodesh was with a banquet, as in 1 Samuel 20:5,18: “5And David said to Jonathan, ‘Behold, tomorrow is the New Moon, and I should not fail to sit to eat with the king. But let me go, that I may hide myself in the field until the third day at evening… Then Jonathan said to David, ‘Tomorrow is the New Moon, and you shall be missed, because your seat will be empty.” This shows that calculated New Moons were also used in Biblical times. I mention this because some will only accept the actual sighting of the new moon crescent before they will acknowledge the Rosh Chodesh. If we did it that way in Rochester, we might be a few days late, because cloudy days!
However, it wasn’t always calculated New Moons. Talmud describes how two or more witnesses would go to the authorities in Jerusalem to report the sighting of the first visible sliver of the crescent of the New Moon. Then bonfires were lit from hill to hill, or runners were sent to announce the New Moon until the whole nation was aware. However, as the Jewish people spread to many other nations, such a system of spreading the news of the Rosh Chodesh was not practical.
Apparently the New Moons were also a time to visit prophets (for teaching, or to be blessed). We read in 2 Kings 4:23: “And he said, ‘Wherefore will you go to (Elisha) today? It is neither the New Moon, nor Sabbath.”
After the return of the Jewish people from the Babylonian Captivity, the New Moon was restored as a time of freewill offerings and sacrifices, as we see in Ezra 3:5 and Nehemiah 10:32-33. However, unlike the Holy Days of Leviticus 23, I don’t see any place in Scripture in which normal work is prohibited on the Rosh Chodesh. Buying and selling on the New Moon is also permitted.
The New Moon will also be restored as a universal observance (Isaiah 66:23): “And it will be from one New Moon to another, and from one Shabbat to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Me, says YHWH.” We see this same restoration in Ezekiel 45:17; 46:1,3,6. The passages in Ezekiel also tell us that there will be animal sacrifices. This might not jive with your theology, or even my theology. In such cases, we must get our theology to agree with God’s “theology.” (I have a hunch that God doesn’t spend a lot of time studying theology.)
When we observe the Rosh Chodesh, as well as all the other Holy Days of the Bible), we are observing the same days and times that Yeshua observed. When the religious leaders (Scribes and Pharisees) did something wrong, Yeshua was quick to condemn them. Apparently they must have goten it right with the Rosh Chodesh. We never read where Yeshua criticized them for any wrongful observance or customs regarding the New Moons.
“Common Era,” equivalent to “A.D.”
The very first of the mo’edim is Shabbat (Lev. 23:3), the seventh day of the week. Only the sun is needed to determine this day, as it is celebrated every seven days.
Messianic Services for the Festivals & Holy Days. Menorah Ministries; PO Box 669; Palm Harbor FL 34682. p. 241. | <urn:uuid:1cfd128b-c158-4eb2-a055-e08e47238999> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.petahtikvah.com/Articles/RoshChodeshNewMoon.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00045-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954211 | 2,091 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Given a hyperspectral data set and Reflectance Spectral Signature Library determine a pixel's component percentages.
A Ground Square is imaged by hundreds of pixels, each at a different wavelength. The signal on pixel 1(500nm to 505nm) is a sum of the components (Concrete/Tree/Grass...) by percentage of area covered times the material reflectance. Pixel 2 (510-515nm) is different by the Reflectance deltas between Concrete and a Tree.
Let S(i,j) be the response of Material i for band j
g( j )= %(Concrete)*S(1,j)+%(Tree)*S(2,j)+...%(Grass)*S(end,j);
A 300-Band 9-Material Spectral file is loaded. Comparison between foliage and rocks is quite significant. The materials are Bush, Calcite, Concrete, Conifer, Grass (not that type), Fir tree, Gypsum, Maple, Sage
g=S*f where f is the percentage of the imaged pixel covered by the material.
Input: g spectral sum [301,1]; S spectral material response [301,9] Nine materials
Output: Solve for f ....( eg f=[0 .5 0 .25 .25 0 0 0 0]' )
( f should sum to 1, max(f) is 1 and min(f) is 0 )
The test Suite will round to 2 decimal places. Cases of "other materials" which will induce negative values are not tested.
This is introductory and ignores atmospheric absorption.
There is a matrix operation hint in the test suite for a method to solve for f.
AVARIS Free Data These data files are large with 224 bands x 750 channels x 2000 samples
To expand these files may require a tar converter NASA readme ...and... NASA Tools bottom Left There are some possible issues with the NASA tar tool. Two non-standard files can be found at libiconv-2.dll and libintl-2.dll
See the Test Suite for details on opening the AVIRIS Moffett Field file. | <urn:uuid:4babfb3e-e710-4675-91b2-81690e5b186a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/cody/problems/843-hyperspectral-processing-determine-material-components-given-a-hyperspectral-vector | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00114-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.823453 | 449 | 2.625 | 3 |
Showing your kids healthy eating habits and how to be physically active are two of the most valuable lessons you can teach.
These habits help them stay healthy and lay the foundation for a lifetime of good health.
Healthful Eating Basics
Healthy eating helps kids grow and develop properly, and even to do well in school. Whether your kids are tots, teens or in between, healthy eating comes down to these basics:
- Healthy eating includes watching portion sizes so kids don’t take in more calories than they need. This is especially important for less nutritious foods, beverages that contain added sugars, and solid fats, such as saturated fats and trans fats.
- Watching portion sizes so kids don’t get more calories than they need. This is especially important for less nutritious foods and beverages that contain added sugars and solid fats, such as saturated fats and trans fats. Many kids eat too much saturated fat and trans fats.
- Balance the amount of food kids eat with regular physical activity to promote a healthy weight.
Make half your grains whole. The grain group includes whole grain foods such as whole-wheat bread, pasta, crackers, oatmeal, ready-to-eat cereals, brown rice, and popcorn and enriched grains such as white bread, rice and pasta. Whole grains contain fiber, which helps kids stay regular and may help them maintain a healthy weight. Enriched grains provide B-vitamins and iron.
- Tip: Check the Nutrition Facts label to see if a whole grain food contains at least 3g of fiber per serving, such as whole grain crackers or low fat popcorn.
Vary your veggies. Encourage your kids to eat a healthy variety of vibrantly colored veggies from the vegetables group, especially dark green options such as broccoli and spinach, and orange ones such as carrots and sweet potatoes. Veggies supply kids with fiber, potassium, folate, and vitamins A, C and E.
Fruit facts. Nature’s sweet treats in the fruit group give kids fiber, potassium, vitamin C, and folate. Just as with veggies, it’s important for kids to eat lots of differently colored fruits. Most of the time, choose whole fruits over juices or fruit snacks. When choosing juice, look for 100% fruit juice.
- Tip: For quick snacks, fill the fruit bowl with your kids’ favorites, such as oranges, bananas, and washed apples. Keep it within easy reach on the countertop. Learn more about snack ideas for kids.
Get your calcium-rich foods. These milk group foods include milk, yogurt and cheese, which provide the calcium kids need to build strong bones and teeth, plus protein and potassium.
- Tip: Add extra calcium to a lunchtime favorite: Serve grilled cheese made with KRAFT 2% Milk Reduced Fat Singles. Pair it with tomato soup made with fat free milk instead of water.
Go lean with protein. The meat & beans group includes meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, peas, eggs, nuts, soy and seeds. In addition to protein, this group gives kids iron, zinc, magnesium, vitamin E, and an assortment of B vitamins.
Oils aren’t a food group, but kids need some for good health. They supply vitamin E and are found in fish, nuts and seeds, avocados, and vegetable oils. | <urn:uuid:04c8cddc-175e-4053-b905-d1da3bda862a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.kraftrecipes.com/yourkids/kids-nutrition/healthy-eating-for-kids.aspx?cm_mmc=srch-_-google-_-crm_bigforklittleforkphrase-_-healthykidsrecipes_healthycookingforkidsrecipes_phrase&pf=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00050-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935326 | 693 | 3.859375 | 4 |
I just wanted to throw in my two cents about acids and browning. What Chau observed is correct, the introduction of acids into dough, or any other food product, does inhibit browning. While I don't want to get too biochemical, the lower the pH the more protonated amino acids become, slowing the rate of Maillard forming products. What this means for pizza or bread making is for a given tempuratue, acidic doughs will need to bake much longer in the oven to achieve the same brownness as less acidic doughs. However, one can try to compensate for the acidity by reducing the recipes hydration, upping the protien or sugar content in the dough, and increase the baking temperature. | <urn:uuid:4f73c170-d84b-4631-b82b-32afe677c88a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,23413.msg238940.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00016-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955599 | 148 | 2.5625 | 3 |
WASHINGTON, DC.- In 1727, 12 Catholic sisters arrived in New Orleans eager to begin their work in the New World. Throughout the nearly 300 years that have followed, Catholic sisters have established hospitals, schools, universities, homeless shelters and orphanages, while providing countless other social services to millions of people in the United States.
Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America will be on view in the International Gallery of the S. Dillon Ripley Center from January 15 through April 25.
Through rare artifacts, compelling photographs and videos, and vivid first-person narratives, the exhibition explores the contributions Catholic sisters madeand continue to makein shaping the nations social and cultural landscape.
Artifacts and stories featured in the exhibition include:
· A letter from President Thomas Jefferson to Marie Thérèse Farjon of St. Xavier, written in 1804, assuring her that her community would still be able to govern itself following the Louisiana Purchase.
· A nurses bag used by Sister Anthony OConnell, Sisters of Charity, who pressured Army doctors to allow sisters to tend to soldiers on the front lines during the Civil War. Her lobbying succeeded, earning her the title Angel of the Battlefield.
· A gavel and sound block belonging to Carolyn Farrell, a Sister of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who became the mayor of Dubuque, Iowa, in 1980the first woman religious to be elected mayor of an American city.
· The story of Mother Alfred Moes who, after witnessing the destruction of Rochester, Minn., from a violent tornado in 1883, proposed to William Mayo and his sons that she would build and staff a hospital if they would agree to provide the medical care. This collaboration was a significant milestone in the development of what is now known as Mayo Clinic. | <urn:uuid:236149ae-aef3-4185-a242-da66b2eda381> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=35473&int_modo=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00086-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950515 | 360 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Europe's halting path to resolve Nazi era
The first checks could go out next week from a $4.5 billion fund for slave laborers.
Belatedly, painfully, and often grudgingly, European governments and businesses are making amends to victims of the Nazis more than half a century after the end of World War II.
As early as next week, compensation checks will be sent to the first of an estimated 1.5 million survivors of Nazi slave-labor camps. The German parliament voted last week to unblock a $4.5 billion fund - the latest in a series of international steps over the past five years that have raised nearly $10 billion for Holocaust survivors and heirs of those who perished. The new fund marked an end to what German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder called "the last great open chapter of our historical responsibility."
But if Europeans feel a material obligation to close the chapter - in a way that Japan, for example, still feels unable to do - they also feel a moral obligation to keep memory alive.
"We have tried to put a financial full stop to the darkest chapter in our history," said Otto Lambsdorff, Schroder's negotiator for the fund. "There cannot and must not be a moral full stop. Only if we recognize that can there be a way out of the dark past into a bright future."
Nor is material restitution over: A group representing Roma (Gypsies) is preparing a lawsuit against IBM, claiming its machines helped Adolf Hitler identify and send to their deaths 600,000 Roma.
The case is the newest in a wave of claims that began in 1997, when Swiss banks came under pressure from international Jewish groups to release funds held in accounts that had lain dormant since 1945, and which were thought to belong to Holocaust victims. Hauled before a US court, the banks agreed to establish a $1.25 billion fund.
The pressure has since spread to companies that employed forced or slave labor during the Nazi era - including Ford and Volkswagen - to insurance companies that have not paid out claims to heirs, and to art galleries holding looted paintings.
Though Germany and other countries had paid out tens of billions of dollars in individual claims over the years, it was only in the mid-1990s that attention focused on mass compensation. "The monstrosity of the Shoah was so great that survivors on both sides were not really able to face it," suggests Anton Pelinka, a professor of politics at Innsbruck University in Austria. "Only a generation with nothing to do with [the Holocaust] could face it; you need a certain distance."
"It takes 30, 40, 50 years for these issues to be confronted," agrees Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress in New York. "And not just for moral reasons. If we had had the documents we have now 50 years ago, the people we would have approached (for compensation) would have been the criminals. Now there is no personal guilt; you can get redress."
Those documents - from national archives in former East Germany, the United States, and elsewhere - emerged only after the fall of the Berlin Wall, says Shimon Samuels, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris. The end of the cold war "produced a domino transparency effect."
Also, "people tended to focus on the murder cases in the Holocaust," says Lothar Evers at the German Association for Information and Support to Nazi Victims in Cologne. "It took some time to look at the robbery aspect."
Not that the murder cases are finished. German prosecutors are working on four outstanding cases against concentration-camp guards; a Munich court sentenced a former Nazi SS guard to life in prison last week, and an Australian court ordered the extradition to Latvia of a man accused of war crimes at a concentration camp there.
Educating the public about what happened is a key goal for French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld. "Twenty-five years ago there was no mention of [the French collaborationist regime in] Vichy in schoolbooks," he recalls. "To change that attitude we needed a lever, and the trials served that purpose."
Later investigations had a similar effect: Most Germans were unaware of how critical the 10 million forced laborers were to the Nazi war effort until a claim for compensation was lodged.
In some countries, the shift in attitudes has led governments to acknowledge their roles. In France, President Jacques Chirac admitted for the first time in 1995 that the state was responsible for the deportation of French Jews to concentration camps.
Elsewhere, the process is slow. In Austria "the problem has been ignored since 1945, and the next generation will have to ... come to terms with Austria's past," says Professor Pelinka. The Swiss banks long hid behind bank-secrecy laws; German companies took a long time to come up with their share of the slave-labor fund; in France, "there is a huge discrepancy between declaratory policy and actual implementation," of compensation, complains Dr. Samuels. Of 7,000 claims lodged with a French commission, only 250 have been satisfied, he says. "People are dying. There is no way they will satisfy all the claims at this rate."
Most claims will never be satisfied. The victims are dead, or their records are lost. And clarifying events isn't a priority. Italy, for example, has refused to ask for the extradition of a German hiding in Argentina who is believed to have killed 80 Italian resistance fighters in 1945, because the resistance fighters were committing atrocities and the government "does not want to open a Pandora's box," says Samuels.
In Britain, the wartime government confiscated all assets belonging to "enemy aliens" - residents of countries occupied by the Nazis. Jews who had put their savings in British banks and then died, lost their money. The post-war government used it to compensate British firms whose property in Eastern Europe had fallen into Communist hands.
Tens of thousands of paintings looted by the Nazis have never been returned. About 2,000 have been returned since European governments agreed in 1998 on the principle of restitution, but most have come from public galleries.
"The hardest issue to tackle is the private galleries, the dealers and auctioneers" trading in looted art, says Mr. Steinberg.
But the atmosphere has changed. Where once willful ignorance prevailed, says Norbert Frei, a historian at Bochum University in Germany, "now it is desirable to make good what can be made good, though obviously that concerns only material claims."
On the moral front, compensation keeps the memory of the era alive and funds institutes and museums in Paris, Belgrade, Berlin, and Warsaw, among other places, and "they spread the message," says Mr. Klarsfeld.
(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor | <urn:uuid:ddd02ab7-7e63-42f2-89a7-be73b22bd8bd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://m.csmonitor.com/2001/0604/p1s2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00124-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968075 | 1,407 | 2.640625 | 3 |
The DYLAN research project explored the role of multilingualism in communication, with particular attention to its functions in knowledge creation and within the workplace. The project has produced guidance for European policy makers, businesses, educational institutions and the general public on how to make the best use of multilingualism.
Multilingualism has the potential to bring major advantages, in terms of creativity and effectiveness, for businesses, education and European institutions, as well as for individuals. However, these advantages are dependent on factors such as measures to accommodate people’s multilingual repertoires in a flexible way.
Major changes can be seen in workplaces throughout Europe as companies acquire international partners, with an increasing number of staff from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. DYLAN aimed to find out how a European knowledge-based society, designed to ensure economic competitiveness and social cohesion, can be created in a European Union with twenty-three official languages.
The project studied language policy in three terrains or areas - European institutions (such as the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council); higher education (a sample of universities in Belgium, Finland, other Nordic countries, Italy, Romania, Spain and Switzerland), and international or cross-border businesses. It also analysed actual practice using surveys, and audio and video recording.
Although in all three areas the importance of the English language was emphasised by many respondents, in reality day-to-day communication was found to be very multilingual. Audio and video recordings in various settings disproved the common assumption that everyone speaks English in order to communicate. Instead, participants were found to adopt a wide range of strategies including:
OLON - one language only.
OLAT – one language at a time.
ALAST – many or potentially all languages at the same time.
ALAAT – all languages at all times.
In addition, in different meetings and settings, participants' strategies varied according to whether they displayed greatly asymmetrical repertoires of languages (exolingual situation) or shared similar ones at a high level of proficiency (endolingual situation).
One solution chosen is a ‘lingua franca’ - a kind of hybrid, or ‘rough-and-ready’ version of a language. This could be based on English, or on Spanish - used by Portuguese and Italian speakers - or even North Sami in Polar regions. Another solution is the ‘lingua receptiva’ mode – in which everyone speaks his/her own language and is expected to understand those used by other speakers.
Other findings include:
- The choice of language(s) and whether a mono- or multilingual approach is adopted in meetings depends to a large extent on speakers’ levels of competence, and on the extent to which participants are encouraged to take part or feel excluded from the activity.
- Savings generated by attempts to use one language only may be cancelled out by the resultant cost of language learning by participants and poor communication.
- Multilingual repertoires are a valuable resource for the construction, transmission and use of knowledge, providing access to, and helping participants retain and classify new information. Managers interviewed argued that teams that are mixed linguistically have greater resources, knowledge and experience, making them more efficient, dynamic, innovative and creative.
- Universities see multilingualism as a tool for integration, cohesion and mutual understanding, which may improve students’ employability and make for more resourceful researchers.
- Areas of conflict may exist for universities where they wish to internationalise by using the English language as a medium, but also have a mission to use local languages. It is in areas of fragility and contradiction like this that positive action should be taken.
To take advantage of the potential for increased efficiency and creativity depends however on:
- Making optimum use of the ‘intermediate space’ that linguistic diversity creates between different languages and cultures.
- Effectively managing communication between people of asymmetric competence (exolingual communication).
The researchers suggest that measures are needed to assess and improve diversity of staff language skills and make representations more flexible. Policies are needed to create, and give preferential treatment to multilingual teams within companies and institutions, and to help individuals and organisations develop their ability to operate bilingually, or to use several languages.
One of DYLAN’s outcomes is the development of a methodology for the design of a new set of linguistic indicators. Whereas the few existing indicator systems are essentially descriptive, the DYLAN project offers analytical indicators with which more or less multilingual modes of operation can be compared in terms of their relative degree of efficiency and fairness. They enable businesses, institutions and universities to compare different communication policies or strategies, and select the ones which are the most efficient and fair.
By combining theoretical perspectives on language policy analysis and detailed observations in the three terrains, DYLAN has designed a list of over 200 indicators, on which users can draw to design a system matching their specific needs. Unlike other indicator systems, this system takes account of the richly patterned complexity of actors’ actual language practices as observed in various settings, and goes beyond other endeavours at the EU level that focus on actors’ foreign language abilities.
The proposed indicators also meet the standard requirements of indicator systems, namely validity, reliability, sensitivity, stability, feasibility, representativeness, intelligibility, timeliness, comparability and power. These indicators take into account two contradictory forces at play in language dynamics - on the one hand, progressivity and efficiency, related to immediacy and simplicity, and on the other hand, inter-subjectivity and fairness, related to participation, collaboration and decoding of complexity. Both are necessary components of successful communication.
DYLAN concludes that multilingualism can be successfully managed by exploiting synergies between different and mutually complementary strategies. This perspective opens the way to a renewed management of linguistic diversity, fostering unity in diversity.
DYLAN - Language Dynamics and Management of Diversity (duration: 1/10/2006 – 30/9/2011) was an Integrated Project funded under the 6th Framework Programme for Research of the European Union, Thematic Priority 7 – Citizens and governance in a knowledge-based society.
Contact: Anne-Claude Berthoud, firstname.lastname@example.org; Kirsten Leufgen, email@example.com | <urn:uuid:5c198243-be9b-4998-b06a-7f789f6d82fa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scoopproject.org.uk/multilingualism-can-increase-creativity-in-the-eu-knowledge-economy-.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00013-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926155 | 1,314 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Antonio Baretto; the
Prince of Uva.
Home >> Karava
Antonio Baretto, the legend, his military exploits and bravery is mentioned in many historical books of early Ceylon. Baldaeus' 'Description of Ceylon', Rev. Father Fernando Queyroz's 'The Conquest of Ceylon', Paul E. Peiris' 'Portuguese Era', Father S. G. Perera's 'Ceylon History' and Alagiyawanna Mohottala's 'Constantinu Hatana' are some of the books that describe the heroic acts and the fear with which the Portuguese held him.
Antonio was born in the village of Kadupiti, in Madampe, in close proximity to Chilaw. At times he has been addressed as Karava Baretto and at times as Paravar Baretto.
'Avisvasamalai' or a set of ola leaf books written by Nagasingath found in the British Meuseum P8098/OR6606(156) and 'Constantinu Hatana' written by Alagiyawanna Mohottala are both works (written in prose) that chronicles the great deeds of this man. Both have been written with a Portuguese perspective. The former document has been used to instigate friction between King Senerath and Antonio Baretto at a time of great intrigue.
Constantinu Hatana : The story of Antonio Baretto
Antonio Baretto was an exceptional soldier attached to the Singhalese forces of the Portuguese army, and worked under the great Don Fernando Samarakoon Rala, Mudaliyar. After a dispute, which resulted in the death of Smarakoon Mudaliyar's brother (described as his Brother-In-Law Don Manuel Mudaliyar, elsewhere in the book). Antonio deserted the army and in later years emerged as a powerful leader in the Kuruwita region, and later on in Avissawella (Sitawaka), Matara and Sabaragamuwa districts. Antonio who by this time was known as 'Kuruwita Rala', later on became the ruler in these areas. Baretto who had smaller beginnings under the Portuguese started harassing them, antagonizing the Portuguese. The Portuguese how ever held back any offensive expeditions against Baretto, as they were depleted in strength and needed their resources elsewhere. Antonio who knew the impending threat from the Portuguese, won the confidence of King Senerath of Kandy, and later on took over the reign of Uva as a sub ordinate King (Yuwa Raja).
King Senerat who sought an arrangement with the Portuguese, became unpopular as ultimately he had to pay taxes to the them. This led to a rebellion led by Baretto which led to the overthrowing of King Senerat, and helped Mayadunne who was exiled in India, to come into power.
This magnificent man's life came to an end in 1620. Captured after 18 years of struggle, he was put to a public execution by the Dissava of Matara.
Dona Catherina (from 'History of Ceylon', Phillalethese p101-104.)
The Prince Mahestana son of Don John Wimala Dharmasuriya and Dona Catherina for whom the crown was professedly held, died on the 22nd of August 1612 not without suspicions of having been poisoned by his step father Senevirat, in order to secure the crown to a son of his own.
The Empress Dona Catherina who was so much effected by the loss of her son, that she had taken hardly any nourishment since his death, perceiving her end was near sent in July 1613 for Prince of Maggone and Prince of Uva (Antonio Baretto), and after extracting from them and oath of fidelity made them guardians over her children brought into her presence, and kissed them one after the other, she earnestly adjured the two chiefs above mentioned to protect them with constancy and affection.
After this, casting her eyes upon her husband Senevirat, who was present she charged him with having the cause of her death, though it does not appear that there was any ground for the accusation; but he is said to have taken it so much to heart, that it impaired his health and threaten his life.
The Empress breathed her last on the 20th of July, in the year 1613. Before her death she expressed great contrition for her sins, and particularly that of having conformed to the sights of pagan worship.
The day after decease, her funeral obsequies were performed with great magnificence, in the same place where those of her son had recently received the same tribute of ceremonious regard.
After the death of the Empress, the sickness of the Emperor assumed such a dangerous aspect that he assembled his principle nobles and requested them to choose two of their order to govern the Kingdom during the minority of his son. They selected the Prince of Maggone and the Prince of Uva for this important trust. They were accordingly appointed by the solemn act to exercise the supreme administration during the minority of the prince.
The Emperor at the same time earnestly admonished all his children to obey these guardians of the realm as long as they were subjected to their control.
The scene naturally leads us to expect that Senevirat would soon breath his last; but he appears to have survived for several years this delegation of the sovereignty to two of the chiefs, | <urn:uuid:451e216c-733e-46d0-b40f-9fc899d5a6c3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.defonseka.com/k20.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394937.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00172-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984324 | 1,147 | 2.859375 | 3 |
François Quesnay (June 4, 1694 â December 16, 1774) was a French economist of the Physiocratic school. He is known for publishing the "Tableau économique" (Economic Table) in 1758 , which provided the foundations of the ideas of the Physiocrats. This was perhaps the first work to attempt to describe the workings of the economy in an analytical way, and as such can be viewed as one of the first important contributions to economic thought. They wanted the government of Louis XV to deregulate and reduce taxes on French agriculture so that poor France could emulate wealthier Britain, which had a relatively laissez-faire policy. Indeed, it is said it was Quesnay who coined the term "laissez-faire, laissez-passer". His great pupil was Turgot.
- Henderson, David R., ed (2007). "François Quesnay (1694-1774)". The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund. ISBN 978-0-86597-665-8. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Quesnay.html.
- Quesnay, Francois (2005). Åuvres économiques complètes et autres textes. Paris: Ãditions de lâInstitut national dâétudes démographiques. ISBN 2-7332-1031-9.
- François Quesnay in Wikipedia | <urn:uuid:882ee82b-6bfc-436a-ad63-463577a35a64> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Francois_Quesnay | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00034-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.875454 | 340 | 2.75 | 3 |
Welcome to the LuaTeX wiki
Some articles
- Documentation and help points to other online resources (manuals, mailing list, etc.) related to LuaTeX.
- Writing Lua in TeX explains how to write Lua code in a TeX document (and back).
- Attributes introduces LuaTeX's thrilling new concept.
- Pages on callbacks:
- Callbacks introduces callbacks and how to use them.
- There is a page on the post_linebreak_filter callback, explaining and illustrating it with a couple of examples. The Show the hyphenation points article is another example of use.
- The page on the process_input_buffer callback illustrates how to read documents with non-UTF-8 encoding, and how to write TeX with lightweight markup instead of the usual commands.
- Another callback is show_error_hook, which lets you enliven your error messages!
- You can fake XeTeX's interchar tokens with the token_filter.
- TeX without TeX is about using TeX's functionality (typesetting, pdf writing) only using Lua code (no \TeX macros).
- Create a fontsampler using plain LuaTeX and luaotfload.
- Annotate math expressions in PDF with a bounding box using LuaLaTeX.
Packages on LuaTeX
- lua-visual-debug Visual debugging with LuaLaTeX.
- luabibentry Repeat BibTeX entries in a LuaLaTeX document body.
- luacode Helper for executing lua code from within TeX.
- LuaTeX-ja LuaTeX-ja is a macro package to typeset Japanese(also Chinese) texts using Lua(La)TeX.
- luaindex Create index using lualatex.
- luainputenc Replacing inputenc for use in LuaTeX.
- lualatex-math Fixes for mathematics-related LuaLaTeX issues.
- lualibs Additional Lua functions for LuaTeX macro programmers.
- luamplib Use LuaTeX's built-in MetaPost interpreter.
- luaotfload OpenType layout system for Plain TeX and LaTeX.
- luasseq Drawing spectral sequences in LuaLaTeX.
- luatexbase Basic resource management for LuaTeX code.
Useful modules
- viznodelist LuaTeX nodelist visualization
From the old bluwiki.com
(Mostly by and thanks to Yannis Haralambous)
- An example of code traversing TeX nodes before an horizontal list goes through the line breaking engine;
- An example of code traversing tokens just before execution or expansion;
- you want to explore the table obtained from a TrueType font, loaded by font.read_ttf;
- you want to explore the internal font table of a pre-loaded font or of a font you have loaded by \font and then used for at least one glyph;
- how to use a TrueType font without going through a TFM or a OFM file;
- how to do kinsoku (Japanese and more generally CJK typesetting);
- you want a newline in your log file or on the terminal? add \string\n to your string;
- you want to sort a token list;
- you want to split a comma-separated list;
- you want to encrypt your document using ROT13;
- you want to typeset non-TeX files by converting them using Lua code;
- example code to mirror characters with Bidi_Mirrored property;
- using mplib to write metapost with LuaTeX | <urn:uuid:870c2d55-19f8-4350-b9d9-70f00f6aeb2b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://wiki.luatex.org/index.php/Main_Page | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396455.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00005-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.667239 | 771 | 2.625 | 3 |
How did young people experience the Nazi period?
Essays used Political Violence and the Nazi Seizure of Power - Richard Bessel Village Life in Nazi Germany - Gerhard Wilke Youth in the Third Reich - Detlev Peukert Social Outcasts in the Third Reich - Jeremy Noakes The Third Reich brought about a variety of experiences for different people . Some suffered while others flourished . Furthermore , people who lived in the said period had mixed opinions about Nazi rule . Some raised arms and opposed Nazi rule while others appreciated the strong arm of the law and the benefits that came with it . Everything changed with
Political Violence and the Nazi Seizure of Power - Richard Bessel
Village Life in Nazi Germany - Gerhard Wilke
Youth in the Third Reich - Detlev Peukert
Social Outcasts in the Third Reich - Jeremy Noakes
The Third Reich brought about a variety of experiences for different people . Some suffered while others flourished . Furthermore , people who lived in the said period had mixed opinions about Nazi rule . Some raised arms and opposed Nazi rule while others appreciated the strong arm of the law and the benefits that came with it . Everything changed with
the onset of the Third Reich . In the book , Life in the Third Reich edited by Richard Bessel , one sees the extent of the Nazi influence in the life of people . The essays provide an insight as to how the Nazi rule changed the lives of those subjected to it . The historical perspective invites analysis of the said period . It allows for an understanding of the way of life that different people had during the reign of the Hitler and the Nazis . The various contributing concentrated on the social relevance of the Third Reich and how people lives through it . This essay aims to examine how the youth of the Third Reich were affected and influenced by the Nazi rule . By using the essays in Bessel 's book , this essay will analyze the different experiences of the youth under the Nazi rule
Just like other groups , the youth had distinct experiences during the Third Reich . Those who entered adolescence during the Nazi rule had varied experiences (Peukert , 25 ) Peukert (25 ) wrote that there were three separate age groups that entered adolescence in the twelve years of Nazi power . The mindset of each of these groups was formed uniquely from the others . According to Peukert , the youth who entered adolescence as Nazi rule took over already went through formative experiences prior to the onset of the Third Reich . They were able to experience the economic crisis of the early 30s and thus were more receptive to the Nazi rule and the benefits of the rearmament programme (Peukert , 25 More importantly , the members of this group were among the first to be included in the Hitler Youth . They were able to compare the life prior to Nazi rule with the life during the reign of the Nazis . They saw the difference and thus were able to see how beneficial Nazi power could be for the nation and for the people of Germany . Another group of youth that entered adolescence during the reign of the Nazis were those who were between the ages of 14 to 18 during the 1936-1939 period . Their experience was distinct from the youth that came before them . This was because they entered the formative years with the Nazis already in power . They had gone through schools that bore the stamp of National Socialism (Puekert , 25 ) Thus , this group was not able to appreciate the benefits of the Third Reich for they were not able to compare...
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- Nazi Seizure introduction | <urn:uuid:afc4397c-522b-43fc-83dc-cdd9f3d5ff86> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mightystudents.com/essay/young.people.experience.59881 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00058-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96097 | 907 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Tribute to Sir William Hamilton
Hello and welcome! This page is dedicated to the life and work of Sir William Rowan Hamilton.
William Rowan Hamilton was Ireland's greatest scientist. He
was an mathematician, physicist, and astronomer and made important works in optics, dynamics, and algebra.
His contribution in dynamics plays a important role in the later developed quantum mechanics. His name
was perpetuated in one of the fundamental concepts in quantum mechanics, called "Hamiltonian".
The Discovery of Quaternions is probably is his most familiar invention today.
2005 was the Hamilton Year, celebrating his 200th birthday. The year was dedicated to celebrate Irish Science.
2005 was called the Einstein year also, reminding of three great papers of the year 1905.
So UNESCO designated 2005 to the World Year of Physics
Thanks for visiting this site! Please enjoy your stay while browsing through the pages. | <urn:uuid:63f37b59-16c6-4bcf-b1d9-ecdfc4836b0a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.hamilton2005.ie/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00039-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956483 | 182 | 2.890625 | 3 |
The NASA and DOE Dark Energy Mission
Dark energy was discovered in 1998 by Department of Energy- and NASA-funded scientists working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and other institutions. It was named by Science magazine that year as the scientific breakthrough of the year. Dark energy is the name given to the cause of the accelerating expansion of our Universe and comprises more than 70% of the total mass and energy of the Universe. Yet, what it is and how it behaves is a complete scientific mystery.
The goal of the Joint Dark Energy Mission is to explore the properties of dark energy and measure how cosmic expansion has changed over time. The JDEM observatory is comprised of a large-aperture optical/near-infrared wide-field telescope operating in space, allowing scientists to study the cosmic acceleration using multiple techniques. Dark energy was first discovered by observing explosions called Type 1a supernovae. By observing Type Ia supernovae both near and far, scientists can map out their distances and the cosmic expansion. Other methods, such as gravitational weak lensing and baryon acoustic oscillations, measure the shapes and clustering pattern of distant galaxies and search for the imprint of the cosmic acceleration in their distribution and evolution.
JDEM is a partnership between NASA and the DOE. The two agencies will work together to develop the science and the instrumentation to carry out the space-based dark energy investigation. Both NASA and DOE will participate in data analysis and science operations. LBNL has lead responsibility for the DOE work. The Mission will be managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Because understanding dark energy is a high scientific priority for both agencies, JDEM has been formulated as a joint strategic mission. The project is now in the conceptual design phase and has a target launch date of 2016. | <urn:uuid:12571f89-07ce-4f65-b2eb-e56687fbbc45> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://jdem.lbl.gov/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00124-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941149 | 368 | 3.703125 | 4 |
Formerly a goddess of the Britons, Sabrina turned her protection to Amherst College when Governor Joel Hayden of Massachusetts donated a sum of money to the College to erect a bronze statue of Sabrina, a copy of the original statue in England. The nymph was described by John Genung, a 19th-century professor of rhetoric at the College, as "a divinity, fair and gracious, a gentle protectress who herself deigns to be protected; her throne a rallying-point for class loyalty and fellowship and enthusiasm."
At a height of 4.5 feet and a weight of 350 pounds, the statue was placed in the center of a flower bed between the Octagon and North Dormitory. It remained there in peace for only a few years, then quickly became an object of pranks and rivalry for over a century.
The Sabrina Wars
The games began around 1860 when one student organized a "panty raid" of a nearby girls' school. The loot was used to dress the previously unclad Sabrina. The student was punished, which outraged his fellow conspirators into whitewashing the statue. One especially upset student even went as far as to take an axe to her cheek like a mallet to a gong, denting the metal. This was the beginning of the Sabrina wars.
In the years following this attack, the statue took on every shade of the rainbow. Some students painted clothes on her. One student was even expelled on account of these games. When tar walks were being laid in town, she was taken from her pedestal and thrown into the soft tar. One year, the class of 1877 courted Sabrina, stealing her for almost a week.
One morning in 1878, she appeared on top of the Octagon holding a rag labeled "'81" after being placed there by the class of 1880. And thus, the class adventures of Sabrina began. She was taken by the class of 1882 as the guest of honor at their Class Supper. The class of 1883 threw her into the College well after a significant baseball victory against Williams and abandoned her there for days.
Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy Charles Garman was asked to take care of things in general and to make sure that the students did not do anything too destructive to Sabrina. Eventually, however, President Emeritus Julius Seelye told Garman to smash the statue. Instead, Garman hid Sabrina in his barn, where she remained in safety for two years.
On June 19, 1887, a group of men from the class of 1890 set out on a mission to find Sabrina. Once they found her, the men wheeled her back to campus in a wheelbarrow for a big celebration. The 1890 class pennant was nailed to the flag pole on Chapel Tower and the stairway was effectually barricaded. The class of 1889, however, had caught wind of the plan, and the celebration turned into a free-for-all fight for Sabrina. The top stairway was destroyed, and one student even broke his leg when he jumped out of a window after learning that the faculty were on their way. Sabrina was removed from campus and was once again hidden until the class of 1890 retrieved her and dubbed her their own.
In 1889, the class of 1891 stole Sabrina back. Within months, a committee was formed by the class of 1894 to rescue the maiden. With a fake telegram, a big lie and a lot of luck, Ben Hyde, class of 1894, was able to secure Sabrina with the help of fellow members of the class of 1894. As a result of his tricks, the American Express Company issued a warrant for his arrest and he was forced to escape to Europe for three months.
Goddess of the Evens
Thus, Sabrina became "The Goddess of the Even Classes." The even-year classes stealthily moved her from place to place, hiding her from the odd-years. She was passed along, from one even class to the next at their class banquets where she received a kiss and fond caress from each class member who pledged their eternal allegiance. For 15 years, Sabrina traveled around New England without returning home to Amherst.
It was not until 1908, when she was turned over to her new guardian, Max Shoop '10, that a plan for Sabrina's homecoming to the College was contrived. Shoop decided that the best way to stir up excitement would be by showing Sabrina to the public during the Amherst-Williams 1910 Junior Prom baseball game in May 1909.
The men planned for every possible contingency. They developed a plan for six men to drive Sabrina across the field in a Royal Tourist automobile while two students followed in motorcycles. Two others disabled odd-classmen's motorcycles so that they could not pursue the statue and everyone else was told to tackle the students who might attempt to follow the car. Preparations for a road block on Northampton Road were prepared, and new locks and chains were purchased to fasten the gates to Pratt Field as soon as the Tourist escaped with Sabrina.
At exactly 4:05 p.m., with Amherst in the field in the middle of the fifth inning, the men sped down the second base line, Sabrina still covered, in front of an astonished crowd. As soon as the car hit first base, the goddess was revealed as the men quickly lifted the statue high above their heads. For a few seconds, the motor of the Royal Tourist was all that could be heard. Before long, however, a wild cheer broke out as some of the odd classmen tried to follow in their disabled motorcycles. The gates were soon shut and locked, and Sabrina remained safe with the class of 1910.
Over the years, Sabrina spent nights, weeks, even whole summers under lock and key in some of the most diverse places: the Connecticut River, a sausage factory in Boston, a Vermont granary and an apartment on 5th Avenue in New York City. The odd classes tried to recapture Sabrina, but it was all to no avail. Students hired private detectives and guards, broke into freight trains and private homes and rented cars, trucks and freight train carriages. Fights broke out, and people were shot at, bound and held captive. Sabrina's protectors would do anything for her, and her admirers would do anything to obtain her. One class who possessed Sabrina even taunted the Sabrina-less classes by locking them in the chapel and disabling all the cars outside so that no one could pursue her possessors.
In 1920, the even classes decided to reveal their goddess to all at a banquet at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. The odds, who had learned of the supposedly secret plan, hired henchmen, some of whom were disguised as police officers, to wait outside the hotel. Once the statue was revealed, the evens tried to carry her outside to return her to her hiding place, but their car was run into a snowdrift. Celebration broke out as bonfires were lit and a banner reading "Sabrina Day-No Classes" was hung as Sabrina changed hands from the evens to the odds for the first time in 29 years.
The triumphant return
The class of 1935 finally returned the statue to the College in 1934, and the administration resolved to stop the violence that ensued as a result of Sabrina, fearful that future student injury-or worse-was inevitable. Sabrina was secured in the Memorabilia Room of Morgan Hall, fastened to a platform. Rumors spread that her hollow body had been filled with concrete so that no one could lift her. There she rested in peace and solitude until John McGrath, class of 1951, and his classmates came up with what McGrath referred to as, "a last gesture before we graduated." They wanted to free Sabrina.
The men borrowed the Morgan librarian's keys and copied them. Knowing they had to cut through a metal pedestal, they rented acetylene torches from a company in Springfield, Mass. who even gave them a few welding lessons. Back at Amherst, they spent several nights learning the night watchman's routes. Then, before the sun rose the morning of Commencement, the group moved in for the kill. First, they drilled a hole through the statue, only to find it was not filled with concrete but with packing peanuts. Once they realized that they could lift it, the graduates then went to work on the base. After spending considerable time trying to break the straps holding Sabrina to her base, McGrath panicked and decided that if they could not get all of it, they might as well get half. When he proceeded to drill through Sabrina's stomach, the straps were finally broken and Sabrina was once again free, and still in one piece. A year later, Sabrina made Life magazine headlines when McGrath and his crew chartered an airplane and flew the goddess over the Amherst-Holy Cross baseball game, hanging her out of the door.
In 1955, McGrath returned the statue to Amherst. However, Sabrina's whereabouts were unknown to most until she was discovered in the attic of Keefe Health Center in 1976, heavily corroded, wrapped in chains and still bearing a large hole in her stomach.
In December of 1976, the class of 1952's 25th Reunion Gift Fund Committee proposed that they would "ransom" the statue for a record-breaking $200,000 in alumni donations, provided that the class of 1952 was declared "the Sabrina class." After being cleaned and repaired, Sabrina once again became the goddess of the even classes of Amherst College in 1977, when the class of 1952 raised $300,508 from about 260 class members. Instead of being the motive behind class pranks, violence and campus disruptions, Sabrina became an incentive of betterment for the College. As of 1994, the Sabrina class was the class of 1942, who raised over three million dollars to earn this distinction.
The missing Sabrina
Since her return to Amherst in 1955, one last generation of Sabrina pranksters entered the stage. Bruce Becker '80, Brad Campbell '83 and Rosanne Haggerty '82 played a five-year long game with Amherst Security. Finally, in 1984, the group received a tip and Becker and Haggerty went in search of the treasure. For 11 years, Haggerty stashed the goddess at home in the laundry room, leaving her mother with strict instructions of what to do if anyone showed up in the future.
In 1990, Sabrina performed her final stunt to date. Becker and Haggerty tied a tope to her, and dangled her from a helicopter cargo net flying over the Amherst-Williams Homecoming game.
Since then, Sabrina has not been seen on campus and her whereabouts remain undisclosed. She has not been forgotten, however, as the memory of her unique customs, the deeper meaning behind the College pranks, subtly lingers around Amherst's grounds. "Sabrina is a live deity," wrote Shoop, "with the alumni long after they have left these classic halls of old Amherst … [she] has a live influence among those who have left the undergraduate days and gone out into the world."
Hundreds of the College's finest have passed beyond Amherst, each taking with them a piece of Sabrina as a part of Amherst College's rich history. And as they do so, their hearts sing heartily to their goddess, "Sabrina, fair, Sabrina, dear, We raise to thee our hearty cheer, Come fellows, all, and give a toast, To her we love, and love the most!"
Data used in this article was provided by Amherst College Archives & Special Collections. | <urn:uuid:2f0d234c-8cde-41fe-b262-05c4bb4c6b44> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://amherststudent-archive.amherst.edu/current/arts/view.php?year=2003-2004&issue=22§ion=arts&article=09 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00093-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980373 | 2,446 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Irish Literary Anniversaries
Yeats Day and Bloomsday: Irish literary anniversaries, 2014
Mid-June is a great time of year for Irish literary anniversaries. Bloomsday (16th of June), when enthusiasts the world over come together to celebrate James Joyce's Ulysses, has been with us since the 1950s when the novelist's admirers began gathering at the Martello Tower in Sandycove on the shores of Dublin Bay, which is the setting for the opening episode of that great modern novel. The events depicted in Ulysses all take place over a single day in Dublin, 16 June 1904.
Yeats Day (12th of June) is a more recent initiative. It marks the anniversary of the birth of the Nobel Prize winning poet and dramatist, William Butler (W.B.) Yeats (1865-1939). Yeats Day is marked with special enthusiasm in County Sligo, where Yeats spent much of his childhood and which he considered a kind of spiritual home. 2015 will be a special year for Yeats enthusiasts, with events marking the 150th anniversary of the poet's birth.
W.B. Yeats and James Joyce are two iconic pillars of Ireland's proud literary heritage. In both cases, their relationship with the country of their birth was a complex one. Born in Dublin, Yeats spent much of his life moving back and forth between Ireland and England. A romantic nationalist, he way a key figure in the Irish literary revival of the 1890s and in 1904 was instrumental in setting up the Abbey Theatre, which became our national theatre.
A man with strong aesthetic principles, Yeats became disenchanted as a consequence of his involvement in a number of public controversies during the first decade of the 20th century and in his poem, September 1913, written at the time of the Dublin Lock-out of 1913, declared that Romantic Ireland was 'dead and gone.' His enthusiasm for Ireland was reinvigorated following the Easter Rising, whose leaders he lionised in his great poem, Easter 1916.
In 1922, Yeats became a member of the Senate of the Irish Free State and lived much of the rest of his life in Dublin. During the 1920s, he again became frustrated with developments in Ireland, but continued to write wonderful poems with Irish themes. In one of his final poems, he wrote that 'ancient Ireland knew it all'. He died in France in 1939 and his body was transferred back to Ireland after the Second World War and now lies in Drumcliffe Churchyard, County Sligo, under his famous epitaph,
'Cast a cold eye,
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by.'
James Joyce had a very different life story. He left Ireland in 1904 and, with the exception of two return visits, spent the rest of his life in Trieste, Rome, Paris and Zurich where he died in 1941. Yet, despite these long years in exile from Ireland, all of his great works are set in Ireland.
Joyce's first major publication, Dubliners, is a collection of short stories written in the early years of the 20th century but not published until June 1914. This means that we are now marking an important Irish literary centenary. There will be further Joycean centenaries in the coming years, marking the publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses (1922), which appeared just one month after the establishment of the Irish Free State.
Ulysses provides an unparalleled portrait of Dublin in the period before Joyce's departure for Trieste in 1904. I doubt if any other city in the world has ever been subjected to such forensic literary scrutiny.
There are those who contrast today's Irish celebration of Joyce's achievements with the indifference shown towards him during his lifetime and there were some objections to the Government's recent decision to name a new naval vessel after him. I have an idea that Joyce might derive wry satisfaction from this development, recalling the lines he wrote in Ulysses about 'when the first Irish battleship is seen breasting the waves with our own flag to the fore.'
For me, our desire to honour Joyce and Yeats says something about today's Ireland which, with the passage of time, has become a very different place from the one our two greatest Irish writers experienced and wrote about during their lifetimes.
Our respect for Joyce and Yeats stems from their accomplishments as writers and from the fact that they produced compelling images of the Ireland of their time. Far from rejecting Ireland, Joyce continued for the rest of his life to draw his inspiration from the country he left in 1904. We know that he continued to be fascinated by the land of his birth and to quiz visitors from Ireland about developments there.
For his part, Yeats wrote some magnificent poems inspired by developments in Ireland: September 1913, Easter 1916, Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, Meditations in Time of Civil War and Under Ben Bulben to name but a few. He became a sort of poetic chronicler of Ireland's emergence as an independent country.
I am glad that we have such major literary figures as Yeats and Joyce whose works bring the Ireland of a century ago to life in such a marvellous way. I am proud to celebrate their achievements. That's the reason why I like mid-June - Yeatsday, Bloomsday.
Daniel Mulhall, Ambassador | <urn:uuid:db9e0d08-a090-4484-ba81-78fd09eb63b1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.dfa.ie/irish-embassy/great-britain/about-us/ambassador-dan-mulhall/ambassadors-blog-2014/june2014/irish-literary-anniversaries/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00137-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979595 | 1,113 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Unless greenhouse gas emissions from food consumption are reduced substantially, EU climate targets will not be met, according to a new study from Chalmers University of Technology and SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden. Currently accounting for about 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, emissions from food and agriculture need to be cut by about three-quarters by 2050 to meet the targets. Researchers at Chalmers and SP studied a range of measures for cutting these emissions. Besides reductions in beef and dairy consumption, they found that technology improvements will be crucial. Under favorable conditions, better technology could cut food-related emissions by as much as 50 percent.
According to David Bryngelsson, lead author of the study, “Emissions from manure storage can all but be eliminated if the facilities are covered and waste gases are flared. And emissions from fertilizer production can largely be avoided by using the latest technology. However, far more ambitious climate policies for agriculture are needed to make these technology improvements happen.”
The technological prospects for cattle are less promising, according to the researchers. This is a critical finding, since cattle account for a very large share of the emissions. The study therefore concludes that reductions in beef consumption are necessary for meeting the climate targets.
“But we don’t have to give up meat entirely”, says Stefan Wirsenius, co-author of the study. “Poultry and pork cause rather low emissions, in a range equivalent to 10 to 30 kilos of carbon dioxide per kilo of protein, while beef cause 200 kilos per kilo protein. So we can continue to eat large quantities of poultry and pork – provided that we cut back on beef.”
Cheese and other dairy products are also serious climate problems, according to the study:
“EU and US consumption of cheese and other dairy products is among the highest in the world and causes a climate impact equal to that of their pork and chicken consumption” says Stefan Wirsenius. “If we were to replace some of the dairy products with vegetable products, such as oat milk, we would have a better chance of meeting our climate targets.”
The scientists have also looked at the effect of reducing food waste. The results may be surprising:
“Although wasting less food is good for the climate, the impact of reducing waste is small compared to what’s required to meet the targets,” says David Bryngelsson. “Reducing the amount of food that goes to waste can only cut emissions from food and agriculture by five to ten percent. Reducing beef and dairy consumption is much more important.” | <urn:uuid:6f1c433d-615c-4e5b-9bed-ace52798a592> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/ee/news/Pages/Better-technology-could-take-agriculture-halfway-towards-climate-targets.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00192-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957488 | 538 | 3.421875 | 3 |
At 7mm (0.27 inches) long, Paedophryne amauensis may be the world’s smallest vertebrate – the group that includes mammals, fish, birds and amphibians.
They are well camouflaged among leaves on the forest floor, and have evolved calls resembling those of insects, making them hard to spot.
“The New Guinea forests are incredibly loud at night; and we were trying to record frog calls in the forest, and we were curious as to what these other sounds were,” said research leader Chris Austin from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, US.
“So we triangulated to where these calls were coming from, and looked through the leaf litter.
Paedophryne Amauensis Frog
“It was night, these things are incredibly small; so what we did after several frustrating attempts was to grab a whole handful of leaf litter and throw it inside a clear plastic bag.
“When we did so, we saw these incredibly tiny frogs hopping around,” he told BBC News. | <urn:uuid:9cc9ebad-7f0d-42ce-8d9f-004887255465> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://socialmediaseo.net/2012/01/11/worlds-smallest-frog-discovered/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00136-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980144 | 221 | 3.296875 | 3 |
The circulation fan in an air conditioner can be a valuable energy saver in certain climates at certain times of day. Those are important caveats, because an air conditioning fan can also increase energy costs if not used properly.
The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy recommends buying a central air conditioner with a fan-only switch, but only recommends using the fan-only setting when the temperature drops at night.
Use a circulation fan to circulate outside cool air into a home instead of running the compressor, particularly in dry, mild climates. Experts at the Energy Extension Service at Kansas State University estimate that the compressor uses 10 times as much energy as the fan in a central air conditioner. Therefore, the fan can keep the house cool, pull in more fresh air and save money on energy bills.
This only works when the temperature drops substantially at night. Of course, every person has a different idea of comfort, but circulation fans may be a good bet when the outside temperature is below 85.
On the other hand, during the day and on evenings during heat waves that don’t bring nighttime relief, a fan may increase energy usage. This is because the fan will make the compressor work harder to dehumidify the air. The air conditioner draws out moisture, which collects on the coils. When the fan is run without the compressor, this moisture may evaporate again, forcing the compressor to work harder when it cycles on again.
Set the fan to the “auto” position whenever the compressor is running, and the outside air is too hot.
For air circulation, it’s better to rely on ceiling fans in individual rooms while they are occupied. Ceiling fans offer comfort, but do not actually reduce the temperature, so even though they are energy misers, there is no sense in running them in an empty room.
Another option is a whole-house fan, which is something of a hybrid between an attic fan and a ceiling fan. Whole-house fans typically go into the ceiling in a central part of the house. They are designed to draw in cool air and exhaust hot air. They use about one quarter of the electricity of a central air conditioning system, but they are also only effective during relatively cool periods. Experts suggest whole-house fans are most effective when the exterior temperatures are below 82 degrees.
Steve Graham is a Hometalk - http://www.hometalk.com - writer. Read more articles like this one - http://www.networx.com/article/using-a-recirculation-fan-to-save-energy - or get help with your home projects on Hometalk.com. | <urn:uuid:ef9c0da7-027d-495d-9bbe-1e55ec4943e8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.networx.com/article/using-a-recirculation-fan-to-save-energy | 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 | 0.917596 | 555 | 2.703125 | 3 |
|CNIDARIA : ACTINIARIA : Halcampidae||SEA ANEMONES AND HYDROIDS|
Description: This burrowing sea anemone has a very elongated, worm-like column with a rounded base which may be inflated and bulbous. The lower part of the column has microscopic adhesive papillae to which numerous sand grains usually adhere. The tentacles are short, 12 in number. Length of the column is up to 70mm, diameter to 5mm. The column is white, buff, or pink, longitudinally striped with alternate opaque and translucent lines. The disc is typically patterned with cream, reddish, and brown, but may be yellow, white, or buff, with or without a pattern.
Habitat: Burrows in gravel, sand or mud. Occasional on shore in sheltered localities, especially in or near beds of eel-grass (Zostera marina), or offshore to about 50m depth.
Distribution: Recorded from all coasts of Britain but rare in the North Sea; rather local. Also from northwest France. Possibly more widespread but status of related species is uncertain.
Similar Species: Peachia cylindrica and Halcampoides elongatus are larger with longer lentacles, Peachia has a conchula.
Key Identification Features:
Distribution Map from NBN: Grid map (fast) : Interactive map (slower, requires login to view records) : National Biodiversity Network mapping facility, data for UK.
|Picton, B.E. & Morrow, C.C. (2016). Halcampa chrysanthellum (Peach, in Johnston, 1847). [In] Encyclopedia of Marine Life of Britain and Ireland. |
http://www.habitas.org.uk/marinelife/species.asp?item=D13250 Accessed on 2016-07-01
|Copyright © National Museums of Northern Ireland, 2002-2015| | <urn:uuid:036da037-9504-4ec1-b483-972fa71cdcdd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.habitas.org.uk/marinelife/species.asp?item=D13250 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400572.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00076-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.839384 | 410 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Elephant Ears are all Arums, that is, they are all in the plant family Araceae. Plants of the genus Colocasia, Alocasia, and Xanthosoma are all considered Elephant Ears and it my not at first be easy to pick out their differences. There are subtle differences in the way the leaves are shaped and how they are held on their petioles. Most of these plants grow 4 to 6 feet tall, but of course there are varieties that are outside of this range.
Arums are flowering plants so you may occasionally see your Elephant Ear in bloom. Plants in this family have a spadix and spathe type flower, like a Calla Lily.
Elephant Ears can be found in all sorts of eye-catching colors, from a lime green to almost black. The petioles can match the leaves, or they can be violet, red, or even spotted. There are several very pretty varieties of Colocasia esculenta: some being variegated, some with rich iridescent foliage, and some that even have concave leaves.
Shade is necessary for these plants, as they will scorch, but that is a great thing for those of us who wish to grow them as houseplants. Bright to nearly full shade will work for these plants, but different cultivars may have their own preferences. Pay attention to how your plant acclimates to the place you select for it. If it looks dull, try a brighter area; just keep it out of direct sunlight during the hottest sun of the day, usually 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Be sure to keep your Elephant Ears evenly moist, not allowing them to dry out fully between waterings. This is important because Elephant Ears are native to moist, swampy areas and will die quickly without ample water.
Fertilizer is also important because Elephant Ears are very heavy feeders. If your plant starts to droop a lot and the petioles snap, or if the leaves start to go yellow in between the veins, it is a sign that the plant isn�t getting enough nutrients. These plants grow very rapidly, and need a lot of Nitrogen to fuel them on! I use a standard all purpose fertilizer at every watering for these plants to keep them strong.
Elephant Ears are very simple to propagate. Propagation is done by division of the corms or separation of the pups from the mother plant. Pups are small side-shoots and are easily dug up and separated. These are one of those plants that are easy to share by giving away plant-lets.
To sum it up, Elephant Ears are large, leafy plants that are easy to care for. Give them a protected area that still receives some sunlight and make sure they stay watered. Use a slow release fertilizer if you don�t like to mix water soluble fertilizer often, because these plants love to eat. Follow these guidelines, and you will have a touch of the tropics gracing your living area for a long time to come! | <urn:uuid:160f5293-0b93-4e1f-956f-a02f330f7d81> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bellaonline.com/ArticlesP/art11771.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00125-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962919 | 637 | 3.09375 | 3 |
In 1958 the Boulevard Room at the swanky Conrad Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago offered delicious steaks, a lavish stage show, and a curious peek at the future.
At the front of the grand hall was what was billed as the “largest hotel ice rink in the country”, on which troops of tutu-wearing girls danced for the crowds of diners. It was here, in the summer heat of August that black-tie wearing customers were given the first teaser of a legend that survives to this day: Hilton Hotels was going to the Moon.
On stage, the final scene for the dancers was called “out of this world”. Although details of the performance are scarce, a Chicago-area newspaper called the Suburbanite Economist wrote that it was set in a “plush” hotel called the Lunar Hilton. The lavish show caught the writers’ imagination and he took it to its logical conclusion. As the 27 August 1958 edition put it: “this could mean that the Hilton chain is dickering with the idea of opening the first hotel on the Moon.”
Fast forward to 2009 and an episode of the popular TV series Mad Men features the louche Don Draper and his team creating a fictional ad campaign for a Hilton Hotel on the Moon. “I want a Hilton on the Moon; that’s where we are headed,” says “Connie” Hilton at one point. Although the series is fiction, it got me wondering: had Hilton hotels ever really planned to go into space?
When the writers of Mad Men were researching the programme, their go-to man was Dr Mark Young, who oversees the hotel founder’s archive at the University of Houston. He seemed like an obvious person to shed light on the story.
According to Dr Young, there’s no evidence that Conrad Hilton was behind the vision of a hotel on the Moon. “[The writers of Mad Men] contacted me to learn about Conrad Hilton so I talked with them, but when I watched it this Moon thing came out of nowhere and I thought, ‘wait a minute, that’s not Conrad Hilton at all’.”
In fact, he says, it was one of Conrad Hilton’s sons, Barron Hilton, who appears to have been the true evangelist for a Hilton on the Moon. “He, like everyone else was very captivated by the space age,” says Dr Young.
Barron was elected as vice-president of Hilton Hotels in 1954, serving behind his father. Just four years later the Suburbanite Economist article appeared – the earliest reference to the idea I can find. I expect it will be difficult to find anything much earlier. That was the beginning of space fever in the United States, as the Russians had launched Sputnik in October of 1957, kicking off the Space Age - a period of tremendous fear and wide-eyed hope for what was to come.
Throughout later years, the idea appears again and again in popular culture. In the 28 October 1962 episode of The Jetsons, The Good Little Scouts, George brings Elroy’s scout troop to the Moon and in a quick, fleeting shot we see the Moonhattan Tilton, a clear reference to the Manhattan Hilton hotel. And in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey” there is an office marked “Hilton Space Station 5” on the glass exterior, where people could presumably make reservations for the Hilton hotel on the film’s orbiting space station.
Though it wasn’t Conrad’s idea he certainly didn’t discourage the idea of a hotel on the Moon. The March 1963 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine ran a long and glowing profile on Conrad Hilton as the hard-nosed businessman who understood what people wanted and would stop at nothing to give it to them. Though not a quote from “Connie” himself, the article nonetheless ends with a space age promise from the writer: “it won’t be very long before our astronauts land on the Moon and immediately behind them will be Connie Hilton with his plans for his Lunar Hilton Hotel.”
Those plans began to take off in 1967. Barron, who was then president of Hilton, told the Wall Street Journal that he was planning to cut the ribbon at an opening ceremony for a Lunar Hilton hotel within his lifetime. He described the Lunar Hilton as a 100-room hotel that would be built below the surface. Guests would gather around a piano bar in an observation dome that allowed them to gaze back at earth.
Barron’s desire to build a Hilton on the Moon - whether it was merely clever PR or something more sincere - struck a chord with people all over the world. The hotel group even printed promotional “reservations cards” for customers to reserve a hotel room on the Moon. “In the [Hilton] archive we’ve got hundreds, if not thousands, of letters of people writing in to him,” says Dr Young. “They’d seen the picture of the reservation form and they wanted to get their name on there.
“You read the letters, from all around the world - I always remember the one from Pakistan for some reason it stands out in my mind -- but people really wanted to know that sometime in [their] lifetime we’ll have hotels on the Moon.”
The archive that Dr. Young oversees in Texas also contains promotional Lunar Hilton hotel keys which were distributed as promotional item in hotels. “The idea that we’d have a plastic key card like we do today was - I guess - just way too far out for ‘67, ‘68. And so [the Lunar Hilton key] looks like an old fashioned hotel room key, except it’s sleek,” Dr. Young said.
Just days before the first Moon landings in 1969, the Hilton lunar vision reappeared. Never one to miss an opportunity to sell the idea (or at least the hotel chain), Barron addressed the American Astronomical Society where he once again pressed that Hilton would soon be on the Moon. “I firmly believe that we are going to have hotels in outer space, perhaps even soon enough for me to officiate at the formal opening of the first,” he told the assembled crowd.
With the world gripped by Moon fever, it was an obvious story for newspapers recorded every twist and turn of the space race. For example, an article in the 15 July Lowell Sun in Lowell, Massachusetts picked up on the speech and painted a picture of the hotel of the future. Their story relies heavily on images of food and alcohol pills, an idea we examined here a few months back.
“Imagine yourself in the Galaxy Lounge of the Lunar Hilton - the first hotel on the Moon. In place of a ceiling, a transparent dome allows you to view the heavens as you never could see them from beneath the thick atmosphere covering Earth, Mars looks bigger and redder, the star do not twinkle, and you are just in time to watch an Earth-set,” it reads. “You order a martini. The bartender pushes a button and out comes a pre-measured, pre-cooled mixture of pure ethyl alcohol and distilled water -- 80 proof. Into the mixture he droops a gin and vermouth tablet. As you sip the result, the huge bright-blue Earth slips below the stark, brown horizon and you begin to think about a freeze-dried steak for dinner.”
Clearly, Barron’s vision has yet come to pass, but the idea has never fully gone away. In the late 1990s, the firm backed plans for a private orbiting space station whilst in a separate plan, British architect Peter Inston was commissioned to draw up a plan for a 5,000-room domed structure on the Moon for the hotel chain. As the plans were shown off, the then president of the firm – Peter George – reportedly repeated the hotel’s maxim: “One day soon, there will be hotels on the Moon. The Hilton wants to be the first.”
It’s difficult to know whether successive Hilton bosses actually believe this message or whether, as is perhaps more likely, they have simply hit on perhaps one of the longest and most imaginative marketing campaigns in history. Certainly, Conrad Hilton’s grandson, Steve Hilton, has suggested that it was an idea that was never meant to be taken seriously. Instead, he said in a 2009 interview following the Mad Men episode, that he thought it was meant to be “symbolic”.
Certainly the idea seems to have disappeared in recent years. But the recent surge of commercial activity in space means that perhaps it could soon return. If, and when it does, Hilton may have to compete with another hotelier in the race to the Moon.
In 2006, Robert Bigelow, the former owner of the Budget Suites of America chain, launched an inflatable habitat capsule into space. In 2007 another followed, and his company – Bigelow aerospace – has begun working on a full scale capsule which could, he has said, form the basis of a Moon habitat.
Whether the plan is anything more than an idea worthy of Don Draper, only time will tell.
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. | <urn:uuid:ae7236e4-1636-4d97-abce-9cfa2a2e5fd7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120712-where-is-hiltons-lunar-hotel?selectorSection=science-environment | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00135-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968555 | 1,967 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Fibroids, also known as leiomyomas and myomas, are solid benign (non-cancerous) smooth-muscle tumors that appear, often in groups, on the outside, inside, or within the wall of the uterus, possibly changing the size and shape of it. Many fibroids cause no problems at all, and many women do not even know that they are present. Most women with fibroids can conceive and carry a pregnancy to term without any special treatment.
Some fibroids, depending on size and location, can cause heavy vaginal bleeding, abdominal or back pain, urinary problems, and constipation. Sometimes they may make a woman’s belly look bigger. Fibroids that bulge into the uterine cavity (submucous fibroids) may make it difficult to conceive or to sustain a full-term pregnancy.
There are several way to remove fibroids—which one is best depends on the size and location of the fibroids, as well as the skills of your surgeon. In at least 10 to 50 percent of cases in which fibroids are removed, new fibroids grow. However, only about 20 percent of women will require more treatment.
About 30 percent of all women get fibroids by age 35 and almost 80 percent of women will have fibroids by age 50. Black women are more likely to have them, and to get them at a younger age. The cause of fibroids is unknown. About 40 percent of fibroids will grow during pregnancy, usually within the first three months. Some researchers used to think that using oral contraceptives made fibroids grow, but this is not as clear with low-dose pills. Very rarely, taking estrogen after menopause might affect fibroids.
Fibroids may be discovered during a routine pelvic exam. Because fibroids can grow, they should be monitored. If they haven’t grown any more by the time you have your next monitoring exam several months later, a yearly checkup will be enough. Ultrasound can give more definite information about the number and size of fibroids, but this is not always necessary.
If you have fibroids and abnormal bleeding, be sure to get carefully checked for other possible causes of the bleeding (see Abnormal Uterine Bleeding).
Medical Treatments for Fibroids
In many cases, no treatment is necessary for fibroids; this is called watchful waiting. If you are nearing menopause, the natural decline in estrogen levels at that time usually shrinks fibroids. Although many physicians recommend a hysterectomy—removal of the uterus— as a treatment for fibroids, this is usually not necessary.
Myomectomy. If you have excessive bleeding, pain, urinary difficulties, or problems with pregnancy, you may want to have an operation called a myomectomy to remove the fibroids. Done by a skilled practitioner, myomectomy avoids some of the problems associated with hysterectomy and poses no greater risks. Even large, multiple fibroids can be removed with a myomectomy. There are several approaches, depending on the size and location of the fibroids.
Embolization of the uterine arteries. This procedure, performed by an interventional radiologist, cuts off blood supply to the fibroids, making them shrink. It reduces bleeding and tumor or uterus size in most women who have it done. The recovery time is typically shorter than for surgical removal of fibroids, if the procedure goes smoothly. Complications may include severe pain and fever that might require an emergency hysterectomy, damage to the uterus or other organs, and loss of ovarian function due to a constricted blood supply (this leads to premature menopause). For these reasons, this may be a risky approach for a woman who still wants to get pregnant.
Focused ultrasound surgery. Also called focused ultrasound ablation, this is another less-invasive option, but it can be used only for smaller fibroids and is not widely available.
Other treatments. Sometimes the drug leuprolide acetate (Lupron) is recommended to help shrink fibroids in women approaching menopause or planning to have surgery. However, Lupron has many negative effects, some of which may last many months beyond use of the drug. These include hot flashes, vaginal dryness, trouble with memory and concentration, and bone thinning. Also, after the Lupron is stopped, the fibroids can grow back.
The newest treatment, a medicated intrauterine device (IUD) called Mirena put into the uterus, can reduce bleeding and possibly enable you to avoid surgery.
Some women try to prevent or reduce fibroids by avoiding processed foods and the hormones usually found in commercial meat, dairy, and egg products, but there is no evidence that this will work. Yoga exercises may ease the feelings of heaviness and pressure; some women find visualization techniques helpful, too. | <urn:uuid:636e39ae-1d7e-40dd-a2e6-494a16af2e4b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/health-info/fibroids/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00010-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95599 | 1,044 | 2.625 | 3 |
Holocene climate modes are identified by the statistical analysis of reconstructed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) from the tropical and North Atlantic regions. The leading mode of Holocene SST variability in the tropical region indicates a rapid warming from the early to the mid Holocene followed by a relatively weak warming during the late Holocene. The dominant mode of the North Atlantic region SST captures the transition from relatively warm (cold) conditions in the eastern North Atlantic and the western Mediterranean Sea (the northern Red Sea) to relatively cold (warm) conditions in these regions from the early to late Holocene. This pattern of Holocene SST variability resembles the signature of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/NAO). The second mode of both tropical and North Atlantic regions captures the warming towards the mid Holocene and subsequent neoglaciation. The dominant modes of Holocene SST variability emphasize enhanced variability around 2300 and 1000 years. The leading mode of the coupled tropical-North Atlantic Holocene SST variability shows that an increase of tropical SST is accompanied by a decrease of SST in the eastern North Atlantic. An analogy with the instrumental period as well as the analysis of a long-term integration of a coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation model suggest that the AO/NAO is one dominant mode of climate variability at millennial time scales.
Helmholtz Research Programs > MARCOPOLI (2004-2008) > MAR2-Palaeo Climate Mechanisms and Variability | <urn:uuid:b4a87d8e-84b6-4f57-b1e4-e1ffc960ef9d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://epic.awi.de/11125/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00162-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.888902 | 309 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Concerns About Effectiveness Of Building Seawalls
By Phil Gregory, WBGO News
January 22, 2013
Some New Jersey towns are considering building seawalls to provide protection from future storms. There are some concerns about how effective that might be.
New Jersey Sierra Club director Jeff Tittel says seawalls don’t work.
“When there are major storms instead of the water dispersing its energy over the dunes it ends up actually rising higher and then going either around the seawall or if the storm is high enough it will just go over it. It actually doesn’t make things safer. It’s a false sense of security.”
Environmentalists say the waves that crash against seawalls can lead to faster beach erosion.
Belmar Mayor Matt Doherty says a structure to help protect the town might still be worthwhile.
“When a storm surge comes it does scour away the sand, but we’d prefer to lose sand than losing a boardwalk and the houses that were taken in Sandy. It’s one thing to replenish sand. It’s much more difficult to rebuild a boardwalk and to rebuild homes.”
Jon Miller is a professor of coastal engineering as Stevens Institute of Technology. He says seawalls can be effective unless they’re too close to the water or the beach gets too narrow.
“There’s been a long history to people not wanting to put any structures on the oceanfront because it exacerbates erosion. The reality is that’s only true if the beach is narrow enough where the waves actually hit the structure on a regular basis.”
Stewart Farrell is director of the Coastal Research Center at Richard Stockton College. He does not believe constructing seawalls are worth the expense.
“If you’re going to deal with ocean waves you need a double sheeted wall with closely spaced pilings and several levels of whalers to tie it all together you’re looking at substantial money. Then you throw in concrete or rocks as a tow protection, you’re suddenly up in the ten thousand dollar a foot range.”
© 2013 WBGO News
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