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The most commonly used tool of the technical analyst is the bar chart. This familiar representation of price action generally consists of a vertical line showing the day’s range with a short horizontal dash depicting the close. For example, a bar chart of a typical trading day in General Electric might be displayed as:
|Note: bar charts sometimes also show the opening level with the convention to show the opening price as a dash to the right of the vertical price-range line with the opening level shown as a dash to the left.|
Candlestick charts can be viewed as slightly more sophisticated visual representation of the bar chart. The opening price is included in the chart and the above day’s activity would be represented as follows:
|Note: an up day is signified by a white (or empty) box. A down day is represented by a black or shaded box. The "box" shows the open to close range. The "wick" displays the full day’s range.|
Candlestick charts are generally plotted over a one-day period. Technical analysts also use weekly and monthly candlestick charts to provide a valuable picture of the longer-term price action.
So what’s the advantage? Candlestick charting is one of the oldest methods of technical analysis, reputedly invented by the Japanese over 100 years ago and continues to be widely used today. The key to its appeal lies in the discipline’s ability to give a clear visual representation of the price action during the period, leading to easy-to-recognise pattern recognition.
Reading Candlestick Charts: Dynamics
Even to the casual user, a candlestick chart gives a clear indication of the intra-day price action. Consistent up days with the instrument’s price closing higher than the open are shown as a string of white candles. Down days are also quickly visible as black candles.
|Daily candlestick chart of the AUD against the USD. "Down" days shown as black candles. "Up" days as white or empty candles. |
Pattern Recognition: Price action meets Eastern Mysticism.
Certain types of intraday price action are indicative of investor sentiment. For example, after a sharp fall, the last day of the downtrend may exhibit a large day’s range to the downside, but recover mid-session to finally close unchanged, slightly lower or even up on the day. This is known as a "long tail down".
|S&P500 index: Monthly candlestick chart in 1st quarter 2009 shows a "long tail down", indicating seller capitulation and a strong rally from the lows.|
Many of these intraday patterns will be self-explanatory to students of behavioural technical analysis. The Japanese, however, have added a touch of Eastern mysticism to the process by naming specific patterns in their own inimitable style. Here are a few of the key ones to watch out for:
|Doji Lines: from the Japanese meaning simultaneous, or at the same time. The pattern occurs when the opening and closing price are the same. No candle is displayed, merely a horizontal line. Not particularly significant in itself (perhaps a sign of indecision or lack of trend), but sometimes a component in multi-day patterns.|
|Umbrellas: A short body on a larger intra-day range. Also known as "hammers" when they occur in a downtrend. Considered to be bullish in a downtrend, bearish in an uptrend.|
|Stars: A concept similar to the "Island Reversal", pattern known to bar chart users. |
A reversal indicator. Tops are rather charmingly known as "Evening Stars", bases as "Morning Stars". The example on the left shows the latter.
|The Bear Engulfing pattern (see example on left). |
It sounds bad, and it is. Basically similar to an "outside day" in bar chart jargon. Another reversal pattern.
The bullish counterpart is known as a "bull engulfing" pattern.
|Harami patterns: meaning pregnant in Japanese, the Harami pattern is shows a small day’s range occurring entirely within (hence the pregnancy) the previous day’s larger range. These patterns should be viewed as an "early warning" signal for any potential change of trend. |
The example on the left shows a bear Harami.
A word of warning
Pattern recognition is historically a key component in technical analysis, but don’t get carried away. The detractors of TA often refer to "reading the runes" or "reading the tea-leaves". This attitude is a not unreasonable reaction to the over-reliance of some technical analysts on pattern recognition. Candlestick charts offer us a valuable tool for the study of intra-day (or intra-week/month) action, but as ever the basics of trend identification remain the most important weapon in the technical analysts armoury.
What next? To learn more about Candlestick charts, try reading JJ Murphy’s well known "Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets", published by the New York Institute of Finance and available at good financial bookstores or at Amazon.com. The book contains an excellent library of candlestick patterns including the exotically named "Three Rivers Bottom" and "Upside Gap Two Crows". For more on this subject, Steve Nison is the acknowleded sensie of Candlestocks
Sayonara, and good charting! | <urn:uuid:87b19c41-44e8-4aed-a878-f52790c223f9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.investorsintelligence.com/x/charting_candlestick_charts.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92062 | 1,145 | 2.609375 | 3 |
An Overview on Dens Fracture
There are different names for the different bones in the body to identify them easily. These bones are also at risk to experience fractures. Once a bone is broken, the break is considered as a bone fracture. Despite how thick and stable the bones are, especially if they are rich in calcium phosphate, there is still a possibility that they would succumb to the force of a strong external impact. This is why injuries like comminuted fracture do happen, wherein the strong force even crush the affected bone into more than three pieces. When the feet can no longer manage the repeated impact from the weight and movement of a person, a dancers fracture could happen. Too much force applied on the feet as well can result to foot stress fracture. Brawling and hitting a hard spot would cause your knuckles to have a boxer fracture. The dens fracture is another type of injury that also deserves to be discussed.
Anatomy of Dens or Odontoid Process or Peg
The odontoid process is another name for dens. This is a part of C2 (axis) which is joined with C1 (atlas). These two parts are connected by three different joints, namely: (1) bilateral joint, (2) central atlantoaxial joint; and (3) lateral atlantoaxial joint. In terms of support for dens, there are ligaments, the dentate and the transverse, that enable the dens to have translational and rotational stability. In fact, the dens can grow closer to C1 when it is being held by the transverse ligament. Basically, dens are made up of the remnants of the body that are usually left out and have now gathered together.
You can identify a bone that is affected by dens fractures. It can be distinguished from the other parts oft the body due to the oval shape of the joint near it. This joint connects the dens to the anterior arch of the atlas. This particular bone called dens has a shape with a neck-like structure or constriction. There is also a transverse atlantal ligament which is found at the back of the neck. This holds the dens near.
Dens Fracture Classification
This is also called as the odontoid fracture, based on the other names of dens which are odontoid process and odontoid peg. There are certain common things that are observed among most of the cases of dens or C2 fracture that serve as the classification of the fracture. It should be noted that dens is still a part of the axis called C2 hence the name of the fracture in the said area. Most cervical dens fracture cases happen to those people who have fallen with severe impact and those who had vehicular accidents. It is during these cases that the body would be exposed to a strong impact that would crush the bones resulting to fractured dens. Among the risks that victims of accidents experience would be cervical spine fractures. Any fracture spinal would be dangerous because this is close to the nervous system. When not handled with great care, this dens bone fracture might get you paralyzed.
In some rare cases, dens fracture in children should be watched by parents carefully. These kids do not know much about the danger that lies ahead of them. Among all the C-spine injuries that are observed, a third of these injuries occur on the C2. Injuries on the C6 and C7 only cover half of the cases where the C2 is the part that is hurt. Thus a C2 bone breakage is one of the common dens fracture types. These broken dens bones usually happen due to rotation, extension, and flexion. Upon the damage of the C1 and C2 due to fracture injury, the case might grow worse because the cervical spine fracture is one of the most fatal types of dens fracture. In fact, first aid might no longer be really that effective in the worst cases of the spinal fracture. The idea to treat dens fracture through surgery would really be necessary when the fracture has an open wound. The fracture healing time for complex fractures would take sometime as well, especially with a surgery coming up.
Types of Dens Fractures
There are several types of odontoid fractures that are usually observed among the victims of this injury. These are type I, II, and III fractures.
Type I Dens Fracture
This is not really a common type of odontoid fracture. It is characterized by the dens being lodged at the tip of the odontoid process, just near the alar ligament. The fracture can be found in the joint near the occiput. This is a fracture that does not really need urgent medical attention because it is a stable dens injury. However, the patient runs the risk of possibly having atlanto-occipital dislocation. This kind of injury should not be attended to only when it has become worse. In some studies, only 5% of the cases of dens injury are attributed to this type of odontoid fracture. Pain would be easier to bear if medicines are taken. Type 1 dens fracture is brought about by the instability of the traction in which the fracture is being placed. Medical findings would identify this as an avulsion injury. Thus, the patient has nothing much to worry about.
Type II Dens Fracture
This is the most common type of odontoid fracture. The fractured dens is found at the base of the odontoid process right where it is connected to the body which is at the C2. Type 2 dens fracture makes up more than 60% of the cases of odontoid fractures. In some cases, the fragments of the fractured bone are displaced. They are situated in places where they should not be in. To correct this, angulation or the proper monitoring of the dens fracture type 2 injury has to be done. There is a bi-fold mechanism in this injury, being that the hyperextension is connected to the concomitant axial loading while flexion is to the concomitant axial compression. Thus, the patient of this type of dens fractures would likely have bilateral pedicle injury. Moreover, the PLL and C2 or C3 disk would also be affected. Unlike the type 1 fracture of the odontoid process, this one is considered unstable. Wedge compression is also usually associated with this type of fracture.
Type III Dens Fracture
This is around nine percent of most of the cases of odontoid fractures. A more serious type of fracture with an extreme case of displacement and angulation cases can typically be the definition of the type 3 dens fracture. This injury also has the mechanism that involves the flexion connected to the concomitant axial compression. The result of dens fracture type 3 would also be bilaterial pedicle fractures. Like in type 2, the C2 and C3 are also affected. At some point, these parts of the body would even be dislocated. The bones are no match to a really strong external impact. There is also high mortality and morbidity with this type of fracture dens.
Most cases of this odontoid fracture would have the patient feel the pain. It is also not easy to move the affected part, particularly the quadriplegia. The patient would feel unstable when supported by the spine.
Like in many other types of fractures, x-ray is necessary to see the actual break on the bone. This will allow the doctor to know what kind of dens fracture treatment is really necessary. The recovery time will also be predicted as well. The CT scan proves to be more capable of detecting fractures. An MRI scan is necessary for the evaluation of the ligaments, spinal cord, disk, and a possibility of some soft tissue injuries. All these examinations will also warn the patient about possible fracture complications and risks that need to be handled. Fracture of odontoid process is quite lethal and risky, especially the types II and III of the said the fracture.
The type I fracture’s treatment would last for six to eight weeks, using hard collar methods. This is a shorter dens fracture healing time when compared to other types of fractures. The type II fracture’s methods of treatment would be operative fixation or screws, halo immobilization for 12 to 16 weeks, and arthrodesis of the C1 and C2 bones. The type III fracture can have fracture surgery or halo immobilization. | <urn:uuid:a8059656-3c91-45fa-8a2a-121276c90f68> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://bonesfracture.com/dens-fracture-treatment-dens-bone-fracture-surgery-healing-time-recovery-causes-and-symptoms/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00193-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949146 | 1,718 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Consumers' hunger for more functions in a single handheld device has led to the inevitable: one antenna design that can command almost all the wireless signals that anyone can throw at it (see the story below on Antenova). For a handheld or mobile device, of course, size is everything, so such an antenna saves on the use (and volume) of multiple antennas, as well as the cost of fabricating a handset with multiple antennas.
Antenova is not alone in the race to cover more bandwidth with innovative antenna design approaches. Antenna designers are exploring new multiple-array approaches and novel structures and printed-circuit designs not just for commercial applications, but in surveillance, signal intelligence (SIGINT), and electronic-warfare (EW) applications in military systems. And the growth of a once seemingly dead wireless technology, WiMAX, is further pressing demands for small antennas that can cover a host of frequency bands. More to come in the pages of Microwaves & RF in 2010! | <urn:uuid:eff4faee-1c63-4794-a47e-38f048a61286> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mwrf.com/content/where-are-all-antennas | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927414 | 203 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.09.37
Mary Douglas, Thinking in Circles. An Essay on Ring Composition. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007. Pp. xv, 169. ISBN 0-300-11762-0. $28.00.
Reviewed by Päivi Mehtonen, University of Tampere (firstname.lastname@example.org)
Word count: 1399 words
Table of Contents
The timely and almost archetypal interest in the pattern of ring composition is the topic of Thinking in Circles, the last book by the anthropologist Mary Douglas (1921-May 2007). She finds interdisciplinary grounds for her dialogue between anthropology and literary analysis in pattern perception and the structuralist theory of language, in particular in Roman Jakobson's theory of parallelism as a faculty inherent in the relation between language, grammar, and the human brain. The ring structure is seen by Douglas as a system of diverse parallelisms, yet despite the "naturalness" of such parallels she claims that for some reason the Western reader is slow to recognise ring structures. Douglas calls this paradox "Jakobson's conundrum." The eleven main chapters of the book proceed from the general definition of ring composition to a closer analysis of texts as different in age and genre as the Book of Numbers in the Bible, the Iliad, and Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne.
Instead of the origin of the ring composition in oral culture, ancient memory techniques or cognitive aspects of human mind, Douglas is keener to show what she calls the exegetical function of the form: "It controls meaning, it restricts what is said, and in doing so it expands meanings along channels it has dug" (13). Apart from Jakobson, Douglas leans especially on W. A. A. van Otterlo's studies on ring composition in Homer, as well as on biblical scholarship (e.g. Nils Lund, Roland Meynet) regarding the chiastic and circular rhetoric in the Bible. In Chapter Three Douglas delineates the rules for the identification of what she considers a ring, and the gradual formulation of these rules is a rewarding journey for the reader interested in the poetics and rhetoric of composition. As Douglas shows, it is not enough to remember that in a ring composition the meaning is located in the middle and the end corresponds to the beginning. One also needs more precise tools in order to "identify the units of text that have to be paired with each other in two series, the one descending from, the other ascending back to the beginning" (86). The seven rules suggested by Douglas are then, in subsequent chapters, applied to alternation of law and narrative in the Book of Numbers (Chapters Four and Five), the turns of the plot in Sterne's Tristram Shandy (Chapter Seven), and the multiple circular layers -- and the alternation of days and nights -- in the Iliad (Chapters Eight and Nine). Finally, the rules of ring composition are also discussed by Douglas from the creative writer's point of view, in other words, as prescriptive rules guiding the author (Chapter Ten).
The numerous diagrams and tables illustrate Douglas's approach and make it easy to follow. Nevertheless, it is not always clear exactly what are the narrative or textual units on which the analysis is based. What is the "meaning" which is located in the middle of the ring structure? Or what does the word "item" mean in the following rule: "To assert a parallel with confidence there need to be at least two distinctive items found in both members of the pair, but nowhere else" (89)? The answers to these questions may be inferred from each case study; Douglas is mainly looking for patterned themes, or plot-based features in the narrated textual worlds rather than other levels of language or representation. While such other levels, too, are hinted at here and there -- for example, non-plot-based aspects such as the phonetic elements of biblical language, the prosodic features or the so-called prosimetrum form in epic (116), or the visual geometrical models of figure poems (131-134) -- it would have been useful to find a more detailed discussion of such possible "items," too. Otherwise it could be counter-argued that a chiasmus or parallel in poetic language often obeys rules quite different from those observable in the plot. The units may be acoustic, rhetorical, or dictated by the needs of the performance.1 Regarding the performative aspects, the debate of the oral versus the literary nature of ring composition is omitted by Mary Douglas despite its visibility in recent studies on Homeric, biblical, or medieval poetry.2
Douglas's essay is an enthusiastic text which has a lot to give to a general reader. However, a classicist or a student of medieval narrative patterns in literature might find superfluous the author's repeated claim (x, 1, 11, 31, 125, et passim) of famous texts having been misunderstood due to modern (Western) readers' inability to identify ring composition and misjudge it as chaotic or muddled in its structure. Among the many major theses of Thinking in Circles I find this alleged "trouble recognizing rings" (139) the weakest and one that hampers the reading of the otherwise rich essay which is not only a good introduction to ring composition but also to the thinking of the anthropologist, who always found fascinating ways to connect detailed textual patterns with broad cultural aspects. Although Douglas briefly mentions "a new interest in ring composition" (1), she nevertheless seems to ignore much of research in the field during the past two or three decades.3 Discussions concerning the ring composition of the Iliad belong to the commentary tradition not only of epic but also of other classical genres and rhetorical speeches. (See for instance Mark W. Edwards's Iliad: A Commentary, vol. V, 1991, as reviewed in this venue by Robert Schmiel, BMCR 1992.03.05.) Likewise, this literary scholar would have enjoyed seeing Douglas's anthropological contribution to and discussion with earlier research on the circular schemes of time and narration in Laurence Sterne's abundantly studied masterpiece. Tristram Shandy is a good example of narrative structures based on both what is actually affirmed in the text but also that which is left unsaid or denarrated: vicious circles of possible or impossible, conjectural, hypothetical, or other modal courses of events and the consciousnesses of the characters. Would such levels and layers of narration qualify for "items" in the identification of a ring structure, as understood by Douglas? These questions do not emerge as she detects the circular patterns mainly in the (actualised) events of the plot and leaves aside the characteristic temporal and cognitive structures of Sterne's work.
At the very end of the essay (Chapter Eleven) Mary Douglas reverts once more to the negligence thesis, now in the context of postmodernism. She sees it as a culture which is "heavily against boundaries, rules, and closures as such" and therefore "the ring shape would seem too formal, artificial, mechanical" (146). Yet one could also claim just the opposite: that postmodern literature is obsessed by the idea of circularity, given that one recognises its distinct features in cultivating the art of narrative constraints in the new old ways. Douglas's method could prove fruitful with authors such as John Barth (e.g., experimentation with the Moebius strip structure), Walter Abish, or the Oulipo writers with their postmodern poetics of creativity which flourishes in chiastic, circular and other restrictions. These are basic questions which also motivate Douglas's book as she reviews the possibilities opened up by the strict formality of ring composition for the "mental discipline" (115) of creative work.
Mary Douglas's occasional exclamatory style and other speech acts reveal the essay's origin in the Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation lectures. Generally speaking, the essayistic mode works well, as it employs devices observed by Douglas also in the texts under scrutiny: marked orality and repeated patterns of form and content. The title and the structure of Thinking in Circles are thus self-consciously patterned to resist linear argumentative structure, forming a performance of the very techniques the essay talks about. However, in order to avoid unwanted repetition (e. g., the same quote from Jakobson on page 5 and note 1, p. 154), the readers of Yale University Press could have given the manuscript yet another look. These are the boring rules of academic essays where recognition of textual parallelism is not only the reader's associative joy as in reading Tristram Shandy, but also the editorial cross-referencer's job.
Despite my criticisms regarding some parts of the author's argumentation and textual detail in the book, the scope of Mary Douglas's syntheticising thought is admirable. Her relaxed observations across the centuries and cultural boundaries are stimulating reading for anyone interested in the patterns of narrative, a field which is often characterised by narrow tunnel vision rather than intercultural and interdisciplinary desire.
1. Brian Richardson, "Beyond the Poetics of Plot: Alternative Forms of Narrative Progression and the Multiple Trajectories of Ulysses," in A Companion to Narrative Theory, eds. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Malden, Oxford: Blackwell 2005.
2. Stephen Nimis, "Ring-Composition and Linearity in Homer," in Signs of Orality: The Oral Tradition and its Influence in the Greek and Roman World, ed. E. Anne Mackay, Leiden: Brill 1999, 65-78.
3. Cf. for instance John D. Niles's article (and ample documentation of the earlier research tradition) nearly 30 years ago: "Ring Composition and the Structure of Beowulf," PMLA 94:5 (1979), 924. | <urn:uuid:7d014207-a8f6-4639-b0a2-c386e3ab87dc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2007/2007-09-37.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397873.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00029-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937009 | 2,055 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Isro’s beginnings were humble. Begun on India’s independence day in 1969 by Dr Vikram A Sarabhai, the father of India’s space programme some of its operations were planned from inside a cow shed. Its first achievement was the launch of the Aryabhatta satellite using a Russian rocket.
Isro was also responsible for the first large scale launch of remote sensing satellites for television broadcasts. India now has the largest fleet of remote sensing satellites in the world.
This is a timeline of its achievements:
1962 – Indian National Committee for Space Research set up by the Department of Atomic Energy. Work starts on Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) in Kerala.
1963 – First sounding rocket launched from TERLS Nov 21.
1965 – Space Science and Technology Centre set up in Thumba.
1968 – Experimental Satellite Communication Earth Station set up in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
1969 – Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) formed Aug 15 under the Department of Atomic Energy.
1971 – Satish Dhawan Space Centre (formerly SHAR Centre) formed in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.
1972 – Department of Space (DoS) established and ISRO brought under it. ISRO Satellite Centre set up in Bangalore and Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad.
1975 – Satellite Instructional Television Experiment using an US satellite. First Indian satellite, Aryabhata, launched into space April 19.
1977 – Satellite Telecommuncation Experiments Project (1977-79) using Franco-German Symphonie Satellite.
1979 – Bhaskara-1, an earth observation experimental satellite, launched. First experimental launch of Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-3) carrying the Rohini satellite. The satellite not placed in the orbit.
1980 – Second experimental launch of SLV-3 with Rohini. Mission successful.
1981 – First developmental launch of SLV-3. Rohini placed into orbit. Launch of APPLE, an experimental geo-stationary communication satellite. Launch of Bhaskara-2 by an USSR rocket.
1982 – Launch of Insat-1A communication satellite by an US rocket.
1983 – Second developmental flight of SLV-3 placed Rohini into orbit. Insat system commissioned with launch to Insat-1B satellite.
1984 – First Indian cosmonaut, Rakesh Sharma, spends eight days in Russian space station Salyut 7. He flew in Russian rocket Soyuz T-11.
1987 – First development launch of Augmented SLV (ASLV) with satellite SROSS-1. Mission failed.
1988 – Launch of Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite – IRA-1A through a Russian rocket. Second developmental flight of ASLV with SROSS satellite. Mission failed.
1991 – Launch of second operational remote sensing satellite IRS-1B.
1992 – First successful launch of ASLV placing SROSS-C satellite. Launch of Insat-2A, the first satellite of the indigenously-built second generation Insat series, followed by the 3 and 4 series.
1993 – First development flight of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) with IRS-1E. Mission failed.
1994 – Fourth developmental flight of ASLV with SROSS-C2. Mission successful. Successful launch of PSLV placing IRS-P2 in orbit.
1996 – Third developmental flight of PSLV with IRS-P3.
1997 – First operational launch of PSLV carrying IRS-1D.
1999 – PSLV started carrying foreign payloads (Korean and German satellites) along with ISRO’s satellite Oceansat.
2001 – Successful launch of heavy rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) with GSAT-1 satellite. Launch of PSLV with India’s Technology Experimental Satellite and satellites from Belgium and Germany.
2002 – Launch of Kalpana-1 satellite on-board a PSLV rocket.
2003 – Launch of GSat-2 on board GSLV and Resourcesat-1 by PSLV.
2004 – Launch of Edusat by GSLV’s first operational flight.
2005 – Commissioning of second launch pad at Sriharikota. Launch of Cartosat-1 and Hamsat by PSLV.
2006 – Second operational flight of GSLV with Insat-4C. For the first time, an Indian rocket carried a communication satellite. The mission failed.
2007 – Launch of Cartosat-2 with Space Capsule Recovery Experiment and two foreign satellites and successful recovery of the space capsule. Launch of Italian satellite AGILE by PSLV and Insat-4CR by GSLV.
2008 – Launch of Israeli satellite Tecsar by PSLV. Launch of two Indian and eight foreign satellites by a single PSLV. India’s first moon mission Chandrayaan-1 by PSLV.
2009 – Launch of Radar Imaging Satellite (Risat-2) and Anusat from Anna University (first satellite from an Indian university) by PSLV. Launch of seven satellites by PSLV, including India’s Oceansat.
2010 – Failure of two GSLV missions. Launch of Cartosat-2B, STUDSAT and three small foreign satellites by PSLV.
2011 – Launch of Resourcest-2 and two small satellites by PSLV. Launch of GSAT-12 by PSLV. Launch of Megha Tropiques and three small satellites by PSLV.
2012 – Launch of Risat-1 by PSLV. Launch of French satellite SPOT 6 and Japanese satellite Proiteres.Buy Test Series @ | <urn:uuid:bee29dca-c100-4e38-8cb0-3c2c4ab6cee0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://examupdates.com/2012/11/01/isro-space-missions-india/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00014-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.881276 | 1,172 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Guest Post: Does Humanity Want Computers Making Moral Decisions?
Department of Psychology
CITY UNIVERSITY LONDON
A runaway trolley is approaching a fork in the tracks. If the trolley is allowed to run on its current track, a work crew of five will be killed. If the driver steers the train down the other branch, a lone worker will be killed. If you were driving this trolley what would you do? What would a computer or robot driving this trolley do? Autonomous systems are coming whether people like it or not. Will they be ethical? Will they be good? And what do we mean by “good”?
Many agree that artificial moral agents are necessary and inevitable. Others say that the idea of artificial moral agents intensifies their distress with cutting edge technology. There is something paradoxical in the idea that one could relieve the anxiety created by sophisticated technology with even more sophisticated technology. A tension exists between the fascination with technology and the anxiety it provokes. This anxiety could be explained by (1) all the usual futurist fears about technology on a trajectory beyond human control and (2) worries about what this technology might reveal about human beings themselves. The question is not what will technology be like in the future, but rather, what will we be like, what are we becoming as we forge increasingly intimate relationships with our machines. What will be the human consequences of attempting to mechanize moral decision-making?
Nowadays, when computer systems select from among different courses of action, they engage in a kind of decision-making process. The ethical dimensions of this decision-making are largely determined by the values engineers incorporate into the systems, either implicitly or explicitly. Until recently, designers did not consider the ways values were implicitly embedded in the technologies they produced (and we should make them more aware of the ethical dimensions of their work!) but the goal of artificial morality moves engineering activism beyond emphasizing the role of designers’ values in shaping the operational morality of systems to providing the systems themselves with the capacity for explicit moral reasoning and decision-making.
A key distinction regarding moral judgments concerns deontological versus consequentialist decisions. Recent dual-process accounts of moral judgment contrast deontological judgments which are generally driven by automatic/unreflective/intuitive responses, prompted by the emotional content of a given dilemma, with consequentialist responses which are the result of unemotional/rational/controlled reflection, driven by conscious evaluation of the potential outcomes. Are these ethical principles, patterns, theories, and frameworks useful in guiding the design of computational systems capable of acting with some degree of autonomy?
The task of enhancing the moral capabilities of autonomous software agents will force all sorts of scientists and engineers to break down moral decision making into its component parts. Would making a moral robot only be a matter of finding the right set of constraints and the right algorithms for resolving conflicts? For example, a top-down approach takes an ethical theory, say, utilitarianism, analyzes the informational and procedural requirements necessary to implement this theory in a computer system, and applies that analysis to the design of subsystems and the way they relate to each other in order to implement the theory. On the other hand, in bottom-up approaches to machine morality, the emphasis is placed on creating an environment where an agent explores courses of action and learns and is rewarded for behavior that is morally praiseworthy. Unlike top-down ethical theories, which define what is and is not moral, in bottom-up approaches any ethical principles must be discovered or constructed.
Some claim that utilitarianism is not a particularly useful or practical theory arguing that calculations should be halted at precisely the point where continuing to calculate rather than act has a negative effect on aggregate utility. But how do you know whether a computation is worth doing without actually doing the computation itself? How do we, humans, do it? We generally practice what Herbert Simon, a founder of AI and a Nobel laureate in economics in 1982, called “bounded rationality”, which is the idea that when individuals make decisions, their rationality is limited by the available information, the tractability of the decision problem, the cognitive limitations of their minds and the time available to make the decision. Decision-makers in this view act as satisficers, seeking a satisfactory solution rather than an optimal one. Simon used the analogy/metaphor of a pair of scissors, where one blade represents “cognitive limitations” of actual humans and the other the “structures of the environment”, illustrating how minds compensate for limited resources by exploiting known structural regularity in the environment. The question is whether a more restricted computational system, weighing the same information as a human, would be an adequate moral agent. But just as utilitarians do not agree on how to measure utility, deontologists do not agree on which list of duties apply and contemporary virtue ethicists do not agree on a standard list of virtues that any moral agent should exemplify.
Human-computer interactions are likely to evolve in a dynamic way, and the computerized agents will need to accommodate these changes. The demands of multiapproach systems thus illustrate the relationship between increasing autonomy and the need for more sensitivity to the morally relevant features of different environments. The present challenges reveal a need for the further systematic study of the factors and mediators affecting moral choice that condition the way we perceive and interact with our fast-changing environment and reality. We should focus on the incremental steps arising from present technologies that suggest a need for ethical decision-making capabilities and how the research on human-machine interaction feeds back into humans’ understanding of themselves as moral agents, and of the nature of ethical theory itself.
The particular characteristics of human decision-making are a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human.
Barque-Duran et al. (2015). Patterns and Evolution of Moral Behavior: Moral Dynamics in Everyday Life. Thinking and Reasoning.
Barque-Duran et al. (2016). Contemporary Morality: Moral Judgments in Digital Contexts. (Submitted)
Bonnefon, J., F., et al. (2015). Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars? arXiv:1510.03346
Gigerenzer, G. (1991). From tools to theories: A heuristic of discovery in cognitive psychology. Psychological Review.
Greene et al. (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science.
Singer, P. (1991). A companion to ethics. Oxford, England: Blackwell Reference.
Wallach, W., and Allen, C. (2009). Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. | <urn:uuid:eb49c38e-ecee-453e-b200-ba8befba35f4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2016/02/guest-post-does-humanity-want-computers-making-moral-decisions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00161-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906698 | 1,378 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Math::NumSeq::Multiples -- multiples of a given number
use Math::NumSeq::Multiples; my $seq = Math::NumSeq::Multiples->new (multiples => 123); my ($i, $value) = $seq->next;
A simple sequence of multiples of a given number, for example multiples of 5 gives 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, etc.
See "FUNCTIONS" in Math::NumSeq for behaviour common to all sequence classes.
$seq = Math::NumSeq::Multiples->new (multiples => $num)
Create and return a new sequence object.
$value = $seq->ith($i)
$multiples * $i.
$bool = $seq->pred($value)
Return true if
$value is an integer multiple of the given
$i = $seq->value_to_i_floor($value)
$i = $seq->value_to_i_estimate($value)
Return an estimate of the i corresponding to
Copyright 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 Kevin Ryde
Math-NumSeq is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option) any later version.
Math-NumSeq is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Math-NumSeq. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. | <urn:uuid:056886aa-3186-4432-97d2-f1b45a70483c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://search.cpan.org/dist/Math-NumSeq/lib/Math/NumSeq/Multiples.pm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00115-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.662035 | 387 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Lebensraum: Living Space for the German Race
The main reason for the Nazi expansion into its neighboring western countries was built upon the principle of lebensraum. Even though it translates literally to mean only “living space,” lebensraum carried with it the desire for the Nazis to expand into other countries to provide living space for the growing German race.
During this time, the “inferior” races, such as the Jews and Gypsies, who occupied the new Nazi territories, were stripped of their possessions, jobs, and “resettled” in ghettos or concentration camps. This helped break the people’s will, asserted the strong power of the Nazis, and gave direct benefits to the Nazi regime.
When the Nazi Army successfully overtook and conquered the surrounding lands of France, Alsace, and Lorraine, the Reich immediately began its policy of racial restructuring. The German bureaucracy began by issuing orders for Jews in a particular town or city to submit an announcement of their possessions. This property was then gathered and confiscated, and the money was used directly by the bureaucracy.
The Nazis basic intent was to make survival for the Jews more difficult and to create a loss of identity for the Jews. For the most part, the Nazis were successful in accomplishing their two goals as well as devastating the lives of the for letters stating that their jobs no longer existed or that their possessions were to be handed over to the German Reich. The Nazis occupying the towns asserted that the consequence of dissension was severe punishment or death.
As the Jews were stripped of their belongings, they also were stripped of their purpose and their identity. By taking their positions at work, their personal possessions, and their money, the Nazis ensured a supreme hold on the Jewish population that allowed them to expand and exploit the Nazi’s power.
After the possessions of the Jews were taken and sold, the Nazis continued their plans of “resettlement.” During World War II, 70,000 individuals were deported in France and the Alsace-Lorraine region with the help of the French government in power, 3,300 of which were Jews.
Most of the deportees were shipped to concentration camps throughout Europe for slave labor or to be put to death. The Nazis maintained their clear purpose of cleansing Europe of the Jews, Gypsies, criminals, and foreign nationalists, and they carried these goals into the occupied territories for implementation. Through the goals of lebeusraum and “resettlement,” the Nazis tried to restructure the racial content of Europe and deeply scarred the lives of many Jews living in the occupied regions. The Nazis stripped away their lives and their identities in an effort to expand their own race at the expense and exploitation of the Jewish race.
TABLE of CONTENTS
- Introduction and Program Goals
- Holocaust Background Information Holocaust Chronology
- Adolf Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
- The Swastika: A Sign of Good Luck Becomes a Symbol of Evil
- Lebensraum: Living Space for the German Race
- Translation of a Property Confiscation Order
- Auschwitz: The Camp of Death
- “Oh, No, It Can’t Be”
- In The Liberated Camps
- Pursuing the Killers
- Europe’s Displaced Millions
- Vocabulary List
- Questions on Hitler
- Swastika Questions
- Auschwitz Questions
- Oh, No, It Can’t Be – Questions
- Thinking it Over
- Holocaust Videography
- Holocaust Bibliography | <urn:uuid:a8d18d0d-8051-4b15-b793-6a7c5d7962e1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.holocaust-trc.org/the-holocaust-education-program-resource-guide/lebensraum/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00199-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959777 | 747 | 4.25 | 4 |
Here are the first 5 experiments that we did at the Mad Scientist Party, in more detail:
1. Jelly marbles with food coloring in a test tube: Courtesy of Steve Spangler, we started out with this fun and easy experiment. We added some tiny jelly marble pellets, a food coloring tablet, and water to the test tubes. As the party progressed we checked the status of the jelly marbles. They took on the color of the food coloring and kept growing by absorbing the water until they were size of marbles and filled the test tube. I thought this was one of the coolest experiments.
2. Rainbow cupcakes made with sprite: Inspired by the recipe in the link, we made rainbow colored cupcakes. Before I started this experiment I asked the kids if they thought we could make cupcakes using just a cake mix and a bottle of sprite. No one thought it was possible, but it worked. I let each team mix their share of batter with the sprite and color it with food coloring. Then they lined up and made their own cupcakes. Unfortunately, we overfilled the cupcake liners so our cupcakes were really messy. But they still tasted great.
3. Blow up a balloon using baking soda and vinegar: The night before the party I filled up regular sized balloons with 1 Tablespoon of baking soda each using a funnel to get the baking soda into the balloon. At the party I had the kids fill up a plastic test tube with vinegar (about 2 ounces of vinegar). They carefully attached the balloon to the top of the test tube, letting the balloon hang over to the side so that no baking soda would spill into the test tube. Then when I gave the word, they all tilted their balloons up and let the baking soda fall into the vinegar, causing a chemical reaction that inflated the balloons. Simple, easy and with common household items.
4. Experimenting with dry ice, water and coins: Every mad scientist party needs dry ice. Dry ice is actually inexpensive and available year round. I let the kids touch the dry ice with coins (never just their hands) which made a screeching noise. Then I let them add warm water to see what else dry ice can do. This made the characteristic dry ice fog. They could also cup the fog and smell it (but don’t let them inhale too much of it). I think we could have just kept refilling their dry ice and they would have been entertained for hours.
5. Make your own chocolates from a kit: This is a kit from Glee. Making chocolate is actually a bit of a scientific experiment since chocolate has to be tempered. Unfortunately we didn’t get any pictures of this. I brought an individual electrical burner and a pan and showed the kids how chocolate was made from the ingredients in the kit. I let them add nuts or marshmallows to their candy paper and then we filled it with the melted chocolate.
Stayed tuned for Part 2 of the experiments. Click on the Mad Scientist tag for more posts about this party. | <urn:uuid:a6c50a32-f190-4816-9c1b-85e88b3ae78c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://onecharmingparty.com/2010/05/05/mad-scientist-party-first-5-experiments/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00137-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963944 | 624 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Sulpicius Severus was an aristocrat of Aquitaine intended for an administrative career and educated in the classical manner who, after the early death of his wife, renounced his career and entered the monastic life.
Sulpicius' correspondence with his friend Paulinus of Nola tells us something of Sulpicius' own life and opinions and more of his actions in founding a monastery and decorating its buildings. Both men, members of the late Roman senatorial aristocracy, turned to ecclesiastical careers.
Sulpicius wrote a world chronicle, (Chronicorum Libri duo or Historia sacra), which extends from the creation of the world to A. D. 400, omitting the historical events recorded in the New Testament writings. It is an important source of information for the Arian controversy, especially with regard to Gaul.
Sulpicius's life of Saint Martin of Tours was begun during the lifetime of St. Martin (who died only in 397) and remained the most popular biography of that very popular saint. | <urn:uuid:3d564a54-c912-4c49-98b1-836fc31485a7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.fact-index.com/s/su/sulpicius_severus.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393442.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00044-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969611 | 216 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Toggle: English / Spanish
Heterochromia is different colored eyes in the same person.
Differently colored eyes; Eyes - different colors
Heterochromia is uncommon in humans, but quite common in dogs (such as Dalmatians and Australian sheep dogs), cats, and horses.
Most cases of heterochromia are hereditary, caused by a disease or syndrome, or due to an injury. Sometimes one eye may change color following certain diseases or injuries.
Specific causes of eye color changes include:
When to Contact a Medical Professional
Consult your health care provider if you notice new changes in the color of one eye, or two differently colored eyes in your infant. A thorough eye examination is needed to be sure this isn't a symptom of a medical problem.
Some conditions and syndromes associated with heterochromia, such as pigmentary glaucoma, can only be detected by a thorough eye exam.
What to Expect at Your Office Visit
Your health care provider may ask the following questions to help evaluate the cause:
- Did you notice the two different eye colors when the child was born, shortly after the birth, or recently?
- Are any other symptoms present?
An infant with heterochromia should be examined by both a pediatrician and an ophthalmologist for other possible problems.
A complete eye examination can rule out most causes of heterochromia. If there doesn't seem to be an underlying disorder, no further testing may be necessary. If another disorder is suspected, diagnostic tests, such as blood tests or chromosome studies, may be done to confirm the diagnosis.
Olitsky SE, Hug D, Plummer LS, Stass-Isern M. Abnormalities of pupil and iris. In: Kliegman RM, Behrman RE, Jenson HB, Stanton BF, eds. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 19th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2011:chap 614.
- Last reviewed on 12/4/2013
- Neil K. Kaneshiro, MD, MHA, Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Isla Ogilvie, PhD, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.
The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Call 911 for all medical emergencies. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. © 1997- 2013 A.D.A.M., Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited. | <urn:uuid:ee76dc44-01b0-4ad4-a8ac-02af60493fb0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://umm.edu/health/medical/ency/articles/heterochromia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398075.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00100-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.891519 | 581 | 3.5 | 4 |
1626 - August 29, 1661
born in Chaumes, France, composed during the Baroque period
The Couperin family resembles, in many ways, the Bach family, though on a smaller scale: several generations of Couperins were important figures in the history of French music. Louis Couperin was the uncle to perhaps the best-known member of the Couperin family, François, also known as François le Grand. Louis was the son of Charles Couperin, organist of Chaume, and brother to Charles, also a successful organist and father to François.
Very little is known about the early years of Louis' life, other than that he must have received excellent musical training (probably from Chambonnières), for he became an overnight success when he finally arrived in Paris around 1651. Once in Paris, he secured a job as an organist at St. Gervais and also played treble viol in the royal chapel. He was a well-known and well-respected musician in Paris, and was closely connected to many of the most important musicians in the city.
Aproximately 215 of Couperin's works survive today, although it is very likely that he composed many more. Most of his compositions are works for keyboard, and indeed Couperin is considered one of the greatest French keyboard composers of the seventeenth century. His oeuvre includes a great deal of music for organ, including a number of fugues, as well as music for the harpsichord. Couperin's harpsichord music has generated the most interest over the centuries: comprised largely of short dance pieces -- allemandes, courantes, gigues, sarabandes, etc. -- the harpsichord music is remarkable for its intensity and sudden harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic gestures.
Some scholars have suggested that Couperin was one of the first French harpsichord composers to adopt the new basso continuo style; others have noted that his style changed from medium to medium, so that the violin music, the organ music, and the harpsichord music each reveal a different facet of the same fertile musical imagination. ~ Alexander Carpenter, Rovi | <urn:uuid:37925b93-9ee0-4b6f-94ef-8d302f9dd932> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://pandora.com/louis-couperin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00182-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978495 | 461 | 2.75 | 3 |
There's a new black in the world, and it's called Vantablack.
Did you know there are scientists who work toward making colours deeper and richer? Surrey Nanosystems in the UK, for instance, has announced it recently developed a "super black" material. But it's not just a little darker than typical black colours; it's thought to be the blackest black known to man.
Vantablack was created with electro-optical imaging and target-acquisition systems in mind. The colour material can be used in telescopes to reduce stray light and help astronomers see faint stars, because it's capable of being applied to temperature-sensitive structures such as aluminium and can coat components like optical sensors and apertures.
"Vantablack is a major breakthrough by UK industry in the application of nanotechnology to optical instrumentation. Its ultra-low reflectance improves the sensitivity of terrestrial, space and air-borne instrumentation," said Ben Jensen, the chief technology officer at Surrey NanoSystems, in a press release.
Surrey NanoSystems' scientists used a low-temperature carbon nanotube growth process to develop Vantablack. In fact, it took two years of testing in order to form a material that could be applied to aluminium structures and pyroelectric sensors. The final result was a colour that can absorb 99.96 per cent of incident radiation, the highest-ever recorded.
Jensen said Surrey NanoSystems is now scaling up production for its first customers in the defence and space sectors, and it has even delivered the first orders of Vantablack. | <urn:uuid:1733cfe5-0561-4e80-b294-f49476a1b868> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/129876-this-is-vantablack-the-darkest-material-ever-made | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00025-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954128 | 332 | 3.671875 | 4 |
Simple Definition of administer
: to manage the operation of (something, such as a company or government) or the use of (something, such as property)
: to provide or apply (something, such as justice) : to put (something) into effect
: to give or present (something) officially or as part of a ceremony
Full Definition of administer
1 : to manage or supervise the execution, use, or conduct of <administer a trust fund>
2 a : to mete out : dispense <administer punishment> b : to give ritually <administer the last rites> c : to give remedially <administer a dose of medicine>
1 : to perform the office of administrator
2 : to furnish a benefit : minister <administer to an ailing friend>
3 : to manage affairs
administrableplay \-strə-bəl\ adjective
administrantplay \-strənt\ noun
Examples of administer in a sentence
As a cost-saving measure, voters have elected to have the two towns administered jointly.
The UN personnel are there to help administer the territory.
She's been hired to administer the fund.
The assistant will administer the test.
a priest to administer the sacraments
Origin and Etymology of administer
Middle English administren, from Anglo-French administrer, from Latin administrare, from ad- + ministrare to serve, from minister servant — more at minister
First Known Use: 14th century
ADMINISTER Defined for Kids
Definition of administer for Students
1 : to be in charge of : manage <She administers an athletic program.>
2 : to give out as deserved <administer justice>
3 : to give officially <administer an oath> <The teacher administered the test.>
4 : to give or supply as treatment <administer medicine>
Legal Definition of administer
1 : to manage the affairs of (as a government or agency)
2a : to direct or supervise the execution, use, or conduct of <administer a trust fund> b : to settle (an estate) under a court appointment as administrator or executor
3a : to give ritually <administer an oath> b : to give (as a narcotic) for the purpose of ingesting
1 : to perform the office of an administrator or executor
2 : to manage or conduct affairs
administrable\əd-ˈmi-nə-strə-bəl\ play adjective
Seen and Heard
What made you want to look up administer? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible). | <urn:uuid:2f3e73e0-62bf-4c4b-9bf3-864f63982d64> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/administered | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00052-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.836108 | 571 | 3.390625 | 3 |
The UK government has shelved schemes to build a tidal barrage across the Severn estuary, West of London, that could have supplied 5% of the UK's power needs. What reports are missing is the endurance of more nimble tidal turbines and other marine power generators -- distributed energy devices that the UK is helping to nurture.
Barrages are essentially hydro dams that capture each high tide and generate electricity from their outflow.The first large barrage and largest currently operating crosses the estuary of the Rance River on France's Atlantic coast, generating a peak of 240 megawatts -- the scale of a large wind farm. Five competing proposals for a Severn barrage were to generate up to 40 times that much from the region's 14-meter tides.
But the government's Severn Tidal Power study published today found that the up-to-£34-billion cost would scare off investors. The most cost-effective scheme, it found, would cost nearly twice as much as offshore wind power per megawatt-hour of energy produced. “There is no strategic case at this time for public funding of a scheme to generate energy in the Severn estuary. Other low carbon options represent a better deal for taxpayers and consumers," says Chris Huhne, the UK's secretary of state for energy.
Barrages also -- for all their potential to generate carbon-free power -- stomp a large environmental footprint onto marine ecosystems. A barrage to yield power from the immense tides in Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy, for example, would alter the tides as far south as Boston. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds' Martin Harper, quoted in BusinessWeek, said today that the Severn project threatened to "destroy huge areas of estuary marsh and mudflats used by 69,000 birds each winter."
What BusinessWeek buried and others ignored (as in the BBC's story, Is this the end for UK tidal power?) is the investment that the UK is already making in more environmentally-benign tidal and wave power devices that generate electricity in open water. Site leases for several big wave and tidal power projects around Scotland's Orkney Islands were awarded this spring, concluding a two-year bidding process that elicited strong interest from major utilities and energy entrepreneurs.
As I reported in March for MIT's Technology Review magazine, those projects could collectively generate up to 1.2 gigawatts of renewable power. Yes, that's smaller than Severn proposals. But if realized it will represent an immense scaleup for an industry that so far has installed only a handful of small devices, starting it down the same cost-reduction curve that made wind power the fastest-growing power source. | <urn:uuid:77cc04b6-3c43-4ddb-8629-51b87d9c1d9b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/uk-rejects-tidal-barrage-but-smaller-tech-may-endure | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00147-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952037 | 547 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Let’s repeat what we did to come up with Gauss law, but this time on the magnetic field.
As a first step, though, I want to finally get a good definition of “current density”: it’s a vector field that consists of a charge density and a velocity vector , each of which is a function of space. In our example of an infinite line current, this density was concentrated along the -axis, where the velocity was vertical. But it could exist along a surface, or throughout space; a single particle of charge moving with velocity is a current density concentrated at a single point.
Anyway, so the Biot-Savart law says that the differential contribution to the magnetic field at a point from the current density at point is
So, as for the electric field, we want to integrate over :
Last time we spent a while noting that the fraction here is secretly a closed -form in disguise, so its divergence is zero. This time, I say it’s actually a conservative vector field:
Indeed, this is pretty straightforward to check by rote calculation of derivatives, and I’d rather not get into it. The upshot is we can write:
where the extra term on the second line is automatically zero because the curl is in terms of and the current density depends only on . I write it in this form because now it looks like the other end of a product rule:
Indeed, this is clearer if we write it in terms of differential forms; since the exterior derivative is a derivation we can write
for a function and a -form . If we flip over to a vector field this looks like
Okay, so now we see that is the curl of some vector field, and so the divergence of a curl is automatically zero:
Coupling this with the divergence theorem like last time, we conclude that there is no magnetic equivalent of “charge”, or else the outward flow of through a closed surface would be the integral on the inside of such a charge. But instead we find | <urn:uuid:15e68a76-6d8c-45fd-9296-7250128f934d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://unapologetic.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00187-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948874 | 425 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Published on May 6th, 2010 | by Tina Casey12
Carbon Green Pushes into the Crowded Tire Recycling Field
Carbon Green, Inc., a tire recycling company with administrative offices in Canada, is pushing into the tire recycling market with a rather intriguing entry: a tire recycling method based on pyrolysis. The company has been gearing up to process about 800,000 tires in the first year of operation for its new recycling plant in Cyprus. The ambitious plans include opening a string of facilities in North America and Europe by 2015, and eventually moving its headquarters from its current location in Slovakia to North America.
The use of pyrolysis by Carbon Green comes as something of a surprise because pyrolysis has not been considered to be a commercially viable tire recycling method, at least not until now. However, Carbon Green claims that its newly patented process is unique, and it has a couple of advantages that would help it achieve bottom-line success.
Pyrolysis and Tire Recycling
Pyrolysis is a thermal process that takes place in the absence of oxygen. It decomposes organic materials into oils, gases, and char (the solid material left over when gases and oils are driven out). When applied to scrap tires, pyrolysis yields steel, oil, and carbon black, which is used to reinforce rubber and is also used in inks, toner, and paint. The U.S. EPA has been pushing the development of carbon black recovery from recycled tires because it is a high value product that could potentially make pyrolysis more economical, but there have been other obstacles such as high operating costs and the limited value of recovered materials compared to virgin materials.
Carbon Green and Carbon Black
Carbon Green is pursuing the carbon black angle, by processing char into a nanoparticle material that meets EU standards for a carbon black substitute. The company also claims that its recovered steel is commercial grade. In addition, Carbon Green claims that its process recovers oil that is the equivalent of #2 diesel oil, which can be used to generate electricity, along with a clean-burning syngas that can power the recycling facilities or be sold for carbon credits. With an estimated 10 billion scrap tires stockpiled globally and another billion coming into the waste stream every year, Carbon Green certainly will not lack for feedstock.
The Brave New World of Tire Recycling
Carbon Green may have a lock on commercially viable pyrolysis, at least for now, but the future of tire recycling also looks bright for a number of other companies that have come up with their own alternative tire recycling methods, including a deep freeze tire recycling process that yields a high quality powder. That’s to say nothing of tires made from corncobs, switchgrass and other rubber alternatives that could be recycled or reclaimed through less complex and expensive processes.
Image: Tire fire by Carly & Art on flickr.com. | <urn:uuid:53aef5dc-c093-4ac2-ade0-621307c84f9d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://gas2.org/2010/05/06/carbon-green-pushes-into-the-crowded-tire-recycling-field/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00098-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958591 | 601 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Having a pet dog can be very fun and fulfilling for some dog owners. This is because dogs are loyal companions and can be good enough to manifest their intelligence in the most unexpected ways. Likewise, dogs can perform heroic deeds seldom equaled by other animals. In fact, there were recorded instances, for example, wherein dogs gave up their lives in order to save their masters’ life. Moreover, dogs are more reactive to people’s actions than other animals; and for this reason, they are more responsive to the training and insinuations of their masters.
Most pet lovers prefer miniature dog breeds like Shih Tzu, Lhasa apso, and Pomeranian as pets because of their looks and coats; while other miniature dogs’ lovers might opt for the less elegant, yet equally adorable Chihuahuas, Pugs, and Mini Pinscher, as their toy dogs or companion pets. However, others may prefer larger dogs like the German Shepherds, Doberman pinscher, or Labrador Retrievers as pets because these breeds can perform highly specific tasks like being guide dogs, hunting dogs, guard dogs. Yet dogs, whatever their breeds may be, are still animals that need to pee or poop, and without proper training, they can ruin the house and lawn of their owners. Hence, pet owners have to train their dogs on where to pee and poop as early as possible.
However, training dogs on toilet manners is not a guarantee that they will not poop or pee anywhere in the house. Pets act instinctively rather than rationally; hence, as a precautionary measure, pet owners prefer to have a readily available supply of paper towels to wipe off dog’s pee and poop’s stains; and they have in handy dog poop bags for handling and disposing of poops.
Waste Handling Supplies
At the turn of the century, there had been a worldwide clamor against the use of ordinary plastics due to its negative ecological impact on lands and oceans. Plastic bags, according to studies, do not readily dissolve or decay. Likewise, theoretically, some ecology experts say that plastic bags will only dissolve after 1,000 years. However, there is a strong likelihood that plastic bags may not even decay or dissolve even for such a very long time. Documentations show that pieces of plastic bags inside the digestive systems of dead birds and fishes are unaffected by the creatures’ stomach acid. Hence, animals may die when they ingest these materials. Likewise, plastic bags that are improperly disposed can readily clog waterways worldwide. For these reasons, governments all over the world are imposing stricter guidelines and measures on the use of plastic bags. However, the world will really find it hard to do away with the use of plastic due to its unique property of handling wet objects. Hence, there is a need to develop biodegradable plastic bags.
One product that particularly benefited from the introduction of biodegradable plastic is that of the poop bags. Eco-friendly poop bags are essential dog care products used to handle and recover dog poop.
In recent years, dog owners have increasingly favored the use of ecologically safe biodegradable materials for their pets, and with the growing and improving consciousness of humanity, the use of plastic surely will slowly diminish. | <urn:uuid:48fbae5b-5756-4dda-860f-b20aa59121c0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dogpackrescue.us/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00029-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963562 | 667 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Table of Contents
The following short essays on various topics seek to examine contemporary issues in the light of the political principles of Thomas Jefferson. Many of the essays are the result of questions sent in to the editor by readers. All comments and questions are welcome, and will be incorporated into future essays when appropriate. New essays are added periodically. Register below to receive an email notice when a new topic is added to this page.
The Supreme Court has declared that flag burning is protected
Front Page, with Links to Other Sites
Is A Jeffersonian Perspective Possible?
Affirmative Action vs. Equal Rights Animal Rights Anti-Trust, Microsoft and Corporate Equal Rights Bureaucracies & Their Derelictions Cloning Humans in a Free Society Crime & Punishment Cultural Diversity Democracies and Their Discontents Democracies, Republics & the People Democracy in the Third World Education and Discipline Educational Elitism Elections & Campaigning Elections & Campaign Reform
Federalist No. 10 & Thomas Jefferson
Flag Burning: Is it Protected Speech? ---New Topic! The Flat Tax Foreign Relations & Jeffersonian Principles (I) Foreign Relations & International Involvement (II) Foreign Relations & The New World Order (III) The Founders' Vision & Today's Issues Freedom, Liberty, Rights and Their Limitations A Government for the Congo Government Serves the People Gun Control Guns & the 2nd Amendment High Crimes and Misdemeanors The Income tax vs. the Consumption Tax Individual Rights & Popular Sovereignty Libertarianism and "The People" Liberty & Equal Rights Limited Government, Part 1 Majority Rule & Consent of the Governed Morality and Government Morality, Jesus & Mr. Jefferson Movies, TV & Violence Natural Rights Newspapers & Political Endorsements Objectivism and Thomas Jefferson: Seven Essays The O.J. Simpson Verdict The Parliamentary vs. the American System Parliaments and the Danger of Despotism The People & the Intellectual Elite Presidential Leadership Race, Politics & Redistricting Religion, God, Church & State Religious Fundamentalism vs. Democracy
Socialism vs. Liberty [ En Español]
School Shootings and Social Disintegration Spurious Jefferson Quotes Teaching History: Keepers of the Flame Term Limits & Citizen Legislators That government is best.... Third Parties & Ideology Third Party Strategy Welfare & Government Assistance BRIEF NOTES ON JEFFERSONIAN TOPICS
Booklists Prepared by Jefferson Influence, Jefferson's The Jefferson Memorial: Writings on Wall Judiciary: Political Opposition Legacies as President, Jefferson's The 9th and 10th Amendments Novels Set in Jefferson's Time An Oral Presentation on Jefferson Quotations by Jefferson -- Non-Political The Revolution of 1800 School Prayer Slavery, Jefferson and Taxes Used to Promote Disagreeable Ideas Youth and Inexperience, Jefferson on
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The Jefferson-Hemings Circumstantial Evidence
A review of the book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, by Annette Gordon-Reed, with an analysis of what the new DNA test results mean for the circumstantial evidence.
Rayner's Life of Thomas Jefferson
B. L. Rayner's biography, published originally in 1834, emphasizes the role of republican principles in Jefferson's life and thought and his enormous contributions to American democracy.
Other Sites for Information on Thomas Jefferson
An extensive list of online sources for Jefferson's writings as well as sites that provide background information and materials related to the times and writings of Jefferson.
Capitalism in a Free Society
A critical dialogue on Milton Friedman's book, Capitalism and Freedom, that starts with the Jeffersonian point of view and compares and contrasts it with modern liberal views. This is an on-going discussion between the Editor and John Teeple.
Archive of Questions and Answers related to Jefferson
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Archive of Work in Progress
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The Jeffersonian Perspective: Top of This Page |
Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government: Table of Contents | <urn:uuid:ac1b9629-359e-46f0-a4a6-2295a7abd44f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://eyler.freeservers.com/JeffPers/jefpcont.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00104-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.856013 | 883 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Trying to understand our human origins has always been a fundamental part of who we are. Today, with the help of dramatic archaeological discoveries and groundbreaking advancements in technology and scientific understanding, we are closer than we've ever been to learning the true story. In recent decades, it has been the science of paleoanthropology that has led the investigation, helping us make sense of this controversial subject and providing us with a richer understanding of our origins. It's also sparked continued debate about key issues in human evolution.
Now you can complete your own understanding of these issues in a fascinating 24-lecture series from an expert paleoanthropologist, who surveys both the questions that continue to rile the world's greatest minds in anthropology and the cutting-edge science responsible for them. The result is this expert guide to the wide-ranging debates over the most profound questions we can ask. Each lecture focuses on a single one of these questions and the sometimes surprising, sometimes fierce, and always illuminating debates surrounding them, including whether it was Africa or Asia that was more central to human origins, what prehistoric cultural groups were really like, and when humans actually reached the New World.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2011 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2011 The Great Courses
Writer is an expert in paleo-anthropology and biology through genomics. This course is current through denosovia and Florencia. A detailed exploration of who we are and from whence we came. Highly recommended..
Graduate student in philosophy and classics (i.e. Greek & Latin)
Absolutely loved this. Accessible, engaging, up-to-date. Highly recommended. it was especially nice to have an episode on Homo floresiensis.
Definitely! It is a fascinating topic. The lectures are also arranged in such a way that they build on each other and connect to each other in a way that is easy to understand.
This is one of the most fascinating and wonderful things I've listened to on Audible. Still being fairly new to the field of paleoanthropology myself, this course really put the major discoveries and the active debates of the field into a big-picture perspective that was easy to understand and really exciting (having a biology and geology background myself). It also came out quite recently, so the science is pretty much up to date at this point in time.
I liked his ability to infuse his enthusiasm for the field of paleoanthropology into his discussions.
There were many profound takeaways. My favorite was the idea that culture and medical technology--human choice--is potentially the biggest evolutionary force on human populations today. In my view, that is a very powerful statement.
I loved this course. This is a great listen for someone to wet their pallet and see if this is something they would like to focus on in their college studies and life career. It lays out a broad scope of work being done in this field, and it has made me thirsty for more!
I like history, religion, philosophy, and language
Nice speaker, always gives two sides of each issue as they arise but then shows the resolution of many of the older one. Those who liked this but want a little more technical stuff should give Svante Paabos the Neandethal Code a listen
I really enjoyed the series of lectures. The concert was extremely religious to today's study that's apology. Dr. hugs delivery of the lectures were highly enjoyable and delivered the information in in format that was easy to follow. I highly recommend the series of lectures.
"More up to date"
more up to date than Biological Anthropology. Again recommend reading with Hrdy's Mothernature and Mothers and Others
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Skip to comments.Engraved Stone Dating Back 30,000 Years Found in China
Posted on 12/01/2012 6:42:09 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Prof Xing Gao of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, co-author of the paper, said: Shuidonggou site includes 12 localities, ranging in date from Early Late to Late Paleolithic. The engraved stone artifact was found at Locality 1, which is about 30,000 years old.
Dr Peng added: we used a digital microscope to observe all the incisions, obtaining many 3D images. After excluding the possibility of natural cracking, trampling and animal-induced damage, and unintentional human by-products, we believe that the incisions were made by intentional behavior. Although we cannot be sure of the function of these incisions, the straight shape of each line shows that it was incised once over a short time interval without repeated cutting, implying the possibility of counting or recording at that time.
Furthermore, creation of such an engraved object may indicate the possible existence of complex communicative systems such as language, he said.
In addition to the engraved stone artifact, one ostrich egg bead was unearthed from Locality 1. The lithic assemblage of this locality includes blade production and elongated tool blanks. The blade technology was probably introduced from the Altai region of Russian Siberia, according to comparison between lithic assemblages. The flake technology is typical of the Late Paleolithic in north China.
(Excerpt) Read more at sci-news.com ...
Chinese archaeologists have discovered a stunning 30,000-year-old engraved stone artifact in a collection of stone tools unearthed at the Paleolithic site of Shuidonggou in 1980.
|GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach|
Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution.
That’s about 23,000 years before the creation of Earth!
It’s an early example of vote counting. The Democrat won, and the results are set in stone and can’t be changed.
Dating rocks can be a little tricky.
does it say “Unicorn Ranch”??
It really sez, “if the cave is a-rockin’, don’t come knockin’”.
For one thing, what kind of movies do they like?
Looks like the Roman Empire stretched further east and farther back in time than we knew.
Stunning. Simply stunning. That’s as fine an example of rock writing as I’ve ever seen. Marvelous. Scientists everywhere can hold their heads a little higher today. The scratches are, I think, some of the best displays of bimodal attenuation ever found. Normally, you don’t find this kind of work from a young artist. The artist usually has to suffer for several years. Did they find a cut off piece of ear by it? Well, one can hope.
P.S. sunkenciv; never think that I’m making fun of you. I do appreciate what you put on Free Republic.
“Dating rocks can be a little tricky.”
I’ll say......How on Earth can they determine the age of the carvings without a reference point?
Sharpening a blade, more like. Two strokes connect like the blade came down on the right side, then the left.
Heretic! It’s 24,000!
How similar are these markings to known Runic markings?
Is it a calendar that says the Mayans were wrong with their calendar?
You did it now! The crazies can sense what you wrote, and will be here post-haste.
This would have been done during the last glaciation, towards the end. The individuals that would have done this must have been very resourceful.
|ᚢ||u||/u(ː)/||?*ūruz||"aurochs" (or *ûram "water/slag"?)|
|ᚦ||þ||/θ/, /ð/||?*þurisaz||"the god Thor, giant"|
|ᚨ||a||/a(ː)/||*ansuz||"one of the Æsir (gods)"|
|ᚲ||k||/k/||?*kaunan||"ulcer"? (or *kenaz "torch"?)|
|ᚺ ᚻ||h||/h/||*hagalaz||"hail" (the precipitation)|
|ᛃ||j||/j/||*jēra-||"year, good year, harvest"|
|ᛇ||ï (or æ)||/æː/(?)||*ī(h)waz/*ei(h)waz||"yew-tree"|
|ᛈ||p||/p/||?*perþ-||meaning unclear, perhaps "pear-tree".|
|ᛉ||z||/z/||?*algiz||unclear, possibly "elk".|
|ᛏ||t||/t/||*tīwaz/*teiwaz||"the god Tiwaz"|
|ᛚ||l||/l/||*laguz||"water, lake" (or possibly *laukaz "leek")|
|ᛜ ᛝ||ŋ||/ŋ/||*ingwaz||"the god Ingwaz"|
|ᛟ||o||/o(ː)/||*ōþila-/*ōþala-||"heritage, estate, possession"|
God, right this moment, can create a rock that proves, by our testing, to be sixty million years old!
How about that!
Rune alphabets are relatively recent ~ this rock carving is many times older than the oldest rune.
Did the pre-Viking Arctic Red Earth People use the Runic Language?
Thanks for the quick turn around on providing an excellent reference sheet on Runes!
The markings should not be understood as part of an alphabet ~ rather, they are just markings ~ and that's the important part ~ they aren't accidental as far as anyone can tell.
Yeah, I used to date one and I took my lumps. Seriously, what's to say the carved stone relates to other artifacts at the site? Unless there were associations that can definitely place it at 30K it's entirely possible it was left there much later than postulated. Sites that yielded knappable quartz minerals were popular with tool and point-makers during the entire stone age and drew many different visitors over long time periods.
Isn’t Cuneiform around 5000 years old?
More like ogham markings, but the excavator looks like he’s onto something with the idea that someone was keeping track of something (days, rains, something). OTOH, Ciexyz may be onto something, despite the lack of metal at that time.
No, not really, hold the lighter bfore you step to the stake. I used to know the age of the earth to the year (something around 6,245, with an October birthday), but I forgot and am unable to locate the scientific sources, so if you have them, please show us the links.
Im still trying to figure out how they dated the rock...
Don’t they have age rings?
” - - - this artifact is made of siliceous limestone - - - “
This lithology will be softer than a marker that is pure chert (flint), or a marker that is pure quartz. All of these potential markers are commonly found associated with silicious limestone.
The relatively uniform width of the markings is consistent with a marking tool that does not wear significantly from start to finish of a marking, or marking to marking. Thus, the marking tool has a hardness greater than a limestone with up to 99.999 % Silica.
The small size of the marked stone could have been easily carried in the hand of the individual.
Uses, without more information on the wear patterns of the rock, are best treated as speculations.
BTW, why did it take 32 years for the Chinese to get around to publishing this paper?
BTW, BTW, what is the stratigraphic, weathered rind, or “other” evidence that the 30KYBP dating is based upon?
Looks like something was dragged across the rock. I think you have to know the total surroundings to even make a wild guess.
This rock only 2.7 inches long....suitable for holding in the hand...but purpose?? I see none...still think drag marks
like i said, it was a long time ago
In the future we’ll be implanting cheeps into rocks, like we currently implant into dogs and cats, to hold and collect (not necessarily in that order) data for use by future generations of scientists.
The date usually attributed to Bishop Ussher is 4004 BC, iow 6016 years ago, plus a month or so. Off with your head!
Not sure, but likely was done by the tool types in the same context.
High quality Carbon dating might go back for 30KY. I read somewhere that the limit was 45KYBP, but don’t quote me.
The Carbon in the Ostrich shell and possible wood fragments in the strata with the marked stone might provide enough Carbon to measure the Carbon ratios with statistical confidence.
This is a significant find, if it really is valid, as the dawn of literature will have been pushed back by at least 5 X.
At this time Central Europe was a Polar desert.
It will be interesting to find out the elevation of this site.
The practical limit for RC dating of a field sample is about 50K before present, a perfect theoretical sample (whatever that is) the limit is about 60K (the equipment’s more sensitive now).
Thanks! I was in the ballpark, which shores up my confidence in my memory just a tad.
Now I can quote you!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works. | <urn:uuid:f54b10dc-a93c-4dd3-a394-9699eebbf574> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2964809/posts?page=22 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00146-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92681 | 2,251 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Is the following use of have and behavior correct?
All programs have the expected behavior.
Yes. That is reasonable, idiomatic English.
One might instead say that the programs 'show' or 'exhibit' the expected behaviour, and you might or might not put the 'u' in behaviour, but the original sentence is very reasonable. It's probably an unrealistic claim — programs don't often all have the expected behaviour — but that's a different discussion. | <urn:uuid:ef53eb94-1f9e-4aa8-a8d5-59aabfebd39d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/13956/to-have-behavior | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00002-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952319 | 95 | 2.75 | 3 |
Searching for an architectural parable on the obliteration of the American Dream? Look no further than the story of McMansions, those massive suburban homes that have become ubiquitous in wealthy suburban America. At Salon, culture columnist Thomas Frank has a scathing history of the McMansion and how it has shaped—and been shaped by—extreme inequality.
In the 1980s, Frank writes, "Hourly wages were dropping, the stock market was rising, taxes for the rich were falling, public housing was not a priority anymore, and in-your-face tract mansions were sprouting everywhere." This inequality, he argues, is the entire point of the McMansion:
The McMansion exists to separate and then celebrate the people who are wealthier than everybody else; this is the transcendent theme on which its crazy, discordant architectural features come harmonically together. This form of development wants nothing to do with the superficial community-mindedness of the postwar suburb, and the reason the giant house looks the way it does is to inform you of this. Have the security guard slam the gates, please, and the rest of the world be damned.
The soul of the McMansion is as ugly as its faux-classical facade. The proliferation of these towering, occasionally turreted homes is directly related to tax policies that have channeled wealth toward the rich and given top-tier earners incentives for investing in housing:
What put them into mass-production in the mid-’80s? The most obvious answer is that decade’s transfer of wealth to professionals and managers, a shift made possible by the top-bracket tax cuts of 1981. Where corporate earnings had previously been spent on skyscrapers and company planes, it now poured into the personal bank accounts of executives. Tax policy then steered those executives’ spending toward residential real estate.
The result? Sprawling suburbs made to accommodate larger and larger homes that tend to be a ugly mishmash of architectural sensibilities. McMansions present a unique design challenge that, sadly, is rarely overcome with dignity:
The obvious problem for McMansion designers, both then and now, was what to do with the structure’s vast exterior walls. In the early days, the facades were often flat and simple and covered with brick veneer, but as the houses grew they evolved the complicated folds and bulges and gables-on-gables-on-gables that are so familiar today, techniques that express a pathetic longing for the urbanism of olden times. Other notable features were introduced as the years passed: the turrets, the theater rooms, the gift-wrapping rooms, the attached gazebos, those enormous and complicated circus-tent roofs.
The new American Dream of obtaining a gift-wrapping room, while hilarious, has a nefarious impact that stretches far beyond the neat edges of a suburban lawn. Though McMansions are rumored to have fallen out of fashion, there's plenty of evidence to show they're coming back: After a brief downturn between 2009 and 2011, average sizes of new homes began to rise again, and in 2012, they surpassed the peak square footage set in 2007. That isn't just bad news for neighbors. There's a domino effect that has profoundly affected the way all of America lives to accommodate the desires of those wealthy enough to afford such gargantuan and opulent residences:
This is civilization’s very center, the only thing that really makes sense in 'clusterfuck nation,' the tawdry telos at which all our economic policies aim. Everything we do seems designed to make this thing possible. Cities must sprawl to accommodate its bulk, eight-lane roads must be constructed, gasoline must be kept cheap, coal must be hauled in from Wyoming on mile-long trains. Middle-class taxes must be higher to make up for the deductions given to McMansion owners, lending standards must be diluted so more suckers can purchase them, banks must be propped up, bonuses must go out, stock prices must ascend. Every one of us must work ever longer hours so that this millionaire’s folly can remain viable, can be sold successfully to the next one on the list. This stupendous, staring banality is the final outcome for which we have sacrificed everything else.
Long live our McMansion overlords.
Read the full thing at Salon. | <urn:uuid:a8ff0e84-a851-47d7-9bbe-76553cef0438> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.fastcodesign.com/3029102/mcmansions-an-architectural-parable-on-the-death-of-the-american-dream | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00056-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961851 | 897 | 2.515625 | 3 |
by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Jan 23, 2014
A strange rock that looks like a jelly doughnut has appeared on Mars, and scientists are closer to figuring out how it got there, a top NASA expert said Thursday.
The small, round object suddenly popped up in pictures taken 12 days apart by the US space agency's decade-old Opportunity rover.
On December 26, 2013, it was not there. On January 8, it was. But what is it?
"It looks like a jelly doughnut, white around the outside, red in the middle," said Steve Squyres, the principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rovers.
He described the tint as a "weird deep red color, not a Martian kind of red," which is more of a rusty hue.
One thing is for sure. This is not a fried, sugary pastry.
"We have looked at it with our microscope. It is clearly a rock," he told reporters in a briefing to mark 10 years since NASA's solar-powered Opportunity landed on the Red Planet.
But it is a kind of rock no Earthling has seen before.
Squyres said scientists believe the rock, named "Pinnacle Island," got there when the aging rover did a pirouette turn in the dusty Martian soil and knocked loose a chunk of bedrock that rolled a short distance downhill.
"We think that in the process of that wheel moving across the ground, we kind of flicked it, kind of tiddly winked it out of the ground and it moved to the location where we see it," Squyres said.
Still, scientists have not found the divet the rock would have left behind. They think it is hidden beneath one of the rover's solar arrays.
The Opportunity team plans to manuever the robotic vehicle around a bit more to see if they can find the spot from which the rock emerged.
As to why it is such an unusual color, Squyres said it may be that humans are witnessing a surface that has not been exposed in a very, very long time.
"It appears that it may have flipped itself upside down," he said.
"If that is the case, what we are seeing is we are seeing the surface, the underside of a rock, that hasn't seen the Martian atmosphere for perhaps billions of years."
Already, an analysis of the rock with the Opportunity's spectrometer has shown a "strange composition, different from anything we have seen before," he told reporters.
The rock has a lot of sulphur, along with very high concentrations of manganese and magnesium.
"We are still working this out. We are making measurements right now. This is an ongoing story of discovery," he said.
Opportunity is one of two Mars Exploration Rovers. Its companion, Spirit, stopped communicating with Earth in 2010.
Both have lived long beyond their planned 90-day missions and have made important discoveries about water on Mars and environments that might have supported microbial life in the distant past.
John Callas, Mars Exploration Rovers project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said Opportunity is "still in very good health."
The rover has an arthritic arm, a hobbled front wheel and two broken science instruments, but has stayed relatively stable over the past two years, he said.
The Martian wind periodically clears dust off its solar arrays, allowing it to keep pressing on.
It is now exploring the rim of a 14-mile (22-kilometer) wide crater called Endeavour.
It younger and more robust cousin, a NASA rover called Curiosity, landed on the Red Planet in 2012.
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more
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It was claimed, in an anonymous 1830 instruction book,
The German Æolian Tutor,2
that "this elegant little instrument was first brought to England
from Germany, early in the year 1827, by the Right Hon. Earl
The instrument was
demonstrated at a Royal Institution lecture of Charles Wheatstone's on 9th May
and an article,
featuring an engraving of a Wheatstone triple æolina, appeared in The Harmonicon
for February 1829.5
These simple mouthorgans consist of a metal plate to which are
riveted a number of free reeds, usually tuned to play a chord, though chromatic versions were also made.
They were the first commercially successful European free reed instruments and led directly to the
invention of the accordion, the English concertina (via the symphonion), the German concertina and
(of course) the modern mouthorgan/harmonica family.
German double æolina stamped "Evers" and also with a device consisting of an oval with an “S” at
each quarter (see photograph), circa 1828. Circular German
reedplate with two chords, tonic
(Eb major) and dominant (Bb7), stamped, in German notation, G B Es G B Es and B D F As B D,
mounted in an ivory horn with a circular ivory mouthpiece. Probably a “Hunting Æolian, two Chords
of six notes each, mounted in Ivory”, as described in a “List of German Æolians Manufactured and
Imported by Willis & Co.” contained in The German Æolian
Single æolina stamped "C. Wheatstone", London, circa 1828. German silver reedplate and (ten)
reeds. Wheatstone' s æolinas, such as this one and Exhibit 3, have ridges between the reeds to
"answer the double purpose of protecting them from injury, and guiding the lips of the
to facilitate the playing of single notes.
Triple æolina stamped "C. Wheatstone, 20, Conduit St.", London, c. 1829, consisting of
three single æolinas mounted in an ivory frame. The chords are "tuned so as to form the perfect
major chords on the tonic, dominant and subdominant of the key... By this arrangement a complete
diatonic scale, extending through three octaves, is obtained; any unmodulating melody may,
therefore, be performed upon it, and be accompanied by the three simple harmonies of the
2. Keyed mouth organs
An assortment of mouth organs with keys soon appeared in Germany, France and England, no doubt
in an attempt to facilitate the playing of individual notes.
Psallmelodikon, invented by J. Weinrich & H. König of Heiligenstadt in 1828, a similar example
(with a more fanciful windpipe) is shown in a portrait of Weinrich dating from
1835.10 Flamed maple
body, 6 fingerholes plus 2 thumbholes bushed with ivory, 25 German silver saltspoon keys in saddles,
German silver reeds, ivory mouthpiece. In external appearance resembling a double-flageolet with some
bassoon-like features, the body must have been built by a maker of woodwind instruments.
Symphonion with 15 keys, engraved "BY HIS MAJESTY'S LETTERS PATENT, C. WHEATSTONE, INVENTOR, 20,
Conduit St. Regent Stt. LONDON.” circa 1829, an early example numbered 18. German silver body with
decorative engraving, silver reeds, ivory buttons and embouchure. When first made this instrument had
only 13 diatonic buttons in two rows, producing the two F# semitones by means of levers shortening the
F natural reeds,11
the two external saddle-mounted keys for F# and their
respective reeds being a contemporary modification.
Symphonion with 32 keys engraved "BY HIS MAJESTY'S LETTERS PATENT, C. WHEATSTONE, INVENTOR, 20
Conduit St. Regent St., LONDON.” 1831 or 1832. The only known sterling silver symphonion, hallmarked
London 1831-2, gold reeds, ivory buttons and embouchure. A more developed model than the last, with
four chromatic rows of buttons. The very logical fingering system of the symphonion was the main subject
of Charles Wheatstone's 1829 Patent12;
it was later to be used for his English concertina, which was
therefore covered by the Patent though not a subject of it.
Invented by Cyrill Demian (1772-1847) of Vienna and patented by him on 6th May
1829,13 the accordion
rapidly spread throughout Europe. lt had certainly reached London as early as 1830 because it is recorded
that a 5-key example was seen at one of Wheatstone's lectures to the Royal Institution on 5th June that
there was also a tutor published in London for it the same
These very first models of accordion were made to be played left-handed (to our way of
and played only chords, as contemporary tutor books explain and surviving instruments demonstrate
(hence the name, deriving from the German word for chord = "accord", plus the suffix "-ion").
This has been the cause of some considerable confusion and misinformation in books and articles on
the subject by writers who have not taken the trouble to research the source material, or had their own agenda.
In essence the first model consisted of a series of æolinas arranged inside a wooden box provided with a
bellows and keys. On pressing a key one chord would sound on compressing the bellows and another chord on
expanding them, thus allowing the playing of tunes only with the respective chordal harmony for every melody note.
Over the next few years the accordion developed and became more melodic. An early modification was to
incorporate a “mutation”, consisting of a plunger projecting from the keyboard end of the instrument,
which, when pushed against the body of the performer, caused dampers to be pressed against the
unwanted reeds of the chords, silencing them, so that only the root note sounded. Such instruments
are described and illustrated in Adolf Müller’s
and an example from the
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg, was demonstrated at the Symposium by
playing a piece from its associated instruction
On other models the number of reeds sounded
by each key was reduced in number so that they played only a two-note harmony or just single notes
and a pair of sliding "mutation" keys to provide the option of a simple fixed bass or chord accompaniment,
if opened, were added one at each end of the treble keyboard. Accordions with right-handed keyboards
then started to be made and by the middle of the 1830's, instruments with "spoon-bass" keys mounted
on the opposite end-board had begun to appear.20
By 1840, Viennese accordions with an enclosed treble action and a pair of bass keys mounted
on the side of the opposite end were being produced, in essence the "Vienna accordion" as we define the term
In the early 1830's a number of Parisian makers began building copies of Demian's single note
accordions, but with the press/draw system of notes reversed, similar to the earliest models, and a right-handed keyboard.
Unlabelled accordion with 8 keys in the manner of Cyrill Demian, Vienna, first model c. 1829.
Mahogany veneered body, ebonised edging, keyboard and levers, mother of pearl pallets and keys, 3-fold pink
leather bellows, German silver reeds arranged in 5-note chords per brass plate, those on the press numbered
I to VIII and on the draw 1 to 8, keys numbered (left to right) 1 to 8 for left-handed playing. The scale
of this instrument differs from later models, starting on key 2 and playing DRAW/PRESS, 3-DRAW/PRESS,
4-DRAW/PRESS, 5-DRAW/PRESS. Mother of pearl fingerplate engraved with the name "Emily"
(presumably the original owner?). The wind key on these early Viennese instruments consists of a
simple sprung “trapdoor” arrangement, mounted internally and hinged at one end, it is operated by
inserting a finger of the hand moving the bellows through one of the mother of pearl bushings in
the end board (the air also passing through these bushings).
The accordion shown in the Patent has only 5 keys but Demian was making models with 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
or 10 keys as early as July 1829.22
Viennese accordion, circa 1835, with 8 keys numbered (right to left) 1 to 8 for
right-handed playing, plus two "mutation" keys at ends of fingerboard. Mahogany veneered body,
4-fold pale green leather bellows, German silver levers, mother of pearl pallets and keys,
single German silver reeds. Internally numbered (Model?) "N* 1.0." The scale of this instrument
starts on key 1 and plays PRESS/DRAW; 2-PRESS/DRAW, 3-PRESS/DRAW, 4-DRAW/PRESS in what has become
the usual manner (blow/suck, blow/suck, blow/suck, suck/blow, just like a harmonica). The
wind key of the same style as Exhibit 7.
French accordion, Paris, circa 1835, with 10 keys plus two brass "mutation" keys at ends
of fingerboard. Rosewood veneered body, 4-fold leather bellows, brass wire levers, mother of pearl
pallets and keys, single brass reeds. Internally numbered "41a". The scale of this instrument starts
on key 2 and plays DRAW/PRESS, 3-DRAW/PRESS, 4-DRAW/PRESS, 5-PRESS/DRAW. Brass spoon shaped wind key
enclosed within a protective moulding.
4. English concertina
Charles Wheatstone's Patent of 182923
shows a version of his symphonion with a bellows, but
it is still far removed from an English concertina. He would seem to have combined elements of
Demian's accordion with elements of his own symphonion (including the fingering) to produce his
prototype concertina (see Exhibit 10 below). The instrument was first known simply as “the concertina”
until German concertinas started to appear in Britain in the late 1840’s and the qualification “English”
Open pallet model, prototype English concertina, engraved, on the circular German silver
keyboard plate, "BY HIS MAJESTY'S LETTERS PATENT, C. WHEATSTONE, INVENTOR, 20, Conduit St.
Regent St., LONDON.” circa 1833. 24 ivory buttons, hexagonal mahogany veneered ends with
ebony trim, 4-fold leather bellows (with "bookbinder
corners"),24 buckled leather thumbstraps,
exposed action, saddle mounted German silver levers, individual blued steel reeds on rectangular
brass plates, mother of pearl pallets.
This venerable instrument was preserved by the firm of Wheatstone & Co. in their own Collection.
It is illustrated (dated by them to 1829) in the various editions of their "blue book" catalogues
from the 1950's. The same photograph is also used as an illustration in Pierre Monichon's
Petite Histoire de
and his L'Accordéon.26
I have dated it to 1833 on the evidence of an anonymous early concertina tutor book which gives
an otherwise accurate account of Wheatstone's early work with free reeds and states
that "it was not till the end of the year 1833 that the instrument named the Concertina was
There is no contemporary evidence to suggest it existed before that time.
32-key English concertina, engraved oval German silver label "BY HIS MAJESTY'S LETTERS PATENT,
112, C. WHEATSTONE, INVENTOR, 20,Conduit St. Regent St., LONDON." Concertina no. 112, sold to Mr Woolwright
on 5th November 1836. An early example of a concertina with fretwork to protect its intricate, handmade,
brass mechanism. Ivory buttons, the naturals stamped with the note names, the accidentals with black inserts,
rosewood fretcut ends, 4-fold green leather ("bookbinder") bellows, German silver reeds, original green leather
(chamois lined) thumbstraps with German silver topscrews.
48-key English concertina by C. Wheatstone, London, no. 649, sold to Giulio Regondi on
18th April 1843. Coloured ivory buttons, the naturals stamped with the note names, the C's stained red,
the accidentals black, amboynawood (a deluxe finish) veneered fretcut ends, 4-fold green leather bellows
with rounded corners, German silver reeds, oval paper label (“BY HIS MAJESTY' S LETTERS PATENT...").
This instrument contains a much simpler (to manufacture) action than the last example, but it is
still largely hand made. Its 48-button range was becoming more or less standard from this time onwards
(it still is) giving the English concertina the same range as a violin.
Giulio Regondi (1822–1872) was a Swiss-born child prodigy on the guitar, before taking up the newly
invented concertina (by 1834) and becoming its first and greatest virtuoso. He did much to popularise the instrument.
48-key English concertina by C. Wheatstone, no. 1563, circa 1848. Coloured ivory buttons
(as Exhibit 12), rosewood veneered ends with spindlecut "frets", green leather bellows, brass reeds,
oval paper label: "BY HER MAJESTY'S LETTERS PATENT..." refers to Wheatstone's later Patent of
The earliest known example of a "mass produced" Wheatstone, following the mechanisation and production
techniques developed for Wheatstone's by the (also Swiss-born) engineer Louis Lachenal
An extremely fine 48-key English concertina by Louis Lachenal, London, no. 15347, circa 1870.
Silver capped German silver buttons, ebony veneered ends with spindle-cut "frets" inlaid with intricate
engraved German silver floral swags, the end bolts, engraved finger plates and engine-turned top screws
all gold plated, steel reeds, 5-fold green leather bellows with gold tooling and fancy printed decorative
papers. The ebony veneered case with floral marquetry, mother of pearl and composition inlay, bordered in kingwood.
Both the instrument and its case are most opulently decorated and it is very tempting to speculate
that they may have been made for exhibition purposes. Louis Lachenal set up his own business in 1858,
following the expiration of Wheatstone's 1844 Patent, having produced nearly all of that firm's concertinas
in the preceding ten years.
5. German system concertinas
The invention of the German concertina is attributed to Carl Friedrich Uhlig (1789-1874) of Chemnitz,
who first advertised a “new kind of Accordion” in the Chemnitzer Anzeiger of 19th July
“Each side had 5 buttons, each button two tones”.31
(Hence it was called a “20 töniges Accordion”.)
However, I am not aware of any more detailed record of its earliest form and it is intriguing to
speculate that the astonishing instrument by the German-born Jew’s harp virtuoso Charles Eulenstein
(see Exhibit 15 below) may represent a contemporary English-made imitation of it. There had
certainly been documented links between Wheatstone and Eulenstein since
and it seems
reasonable to suppose that this instrument was probably built for him by some of Wheatstone's
craftsmen after his trip home (to Heilbronn and Lüneburg in order to marry) in July/August 1834
and based on a German original. However, the possibilities are intriguing: Was it instead made by
Uhlig? Or even, could Eulenstein have been the true inventor? Certainly he seems to have been in
Germany at an opportune time.
A unique 10-key Anglo-German concertina by Charles Eulenstein, Bath, 1835. Engraved "C. Eulenstein,
INVENTOR, No.4", rectangular flamed maple body with open pallet action, brass levers, 4 ivory buttons plus
one brass "butterfly" key on each end, (later?) bass soundbox, (moth-eaten) 5-fold leather bellows,
individual steel reeds. The escutcheon on the case is engraved with the owner's initials and the year "1835",
making it the earliest dateable German model concertina.
Curiously Eulenstein made no mention of any concertina invention in his
autobiography,33 though he
did refer to an (unsuccessful) eight-string guitar called an "octina" which he invented (only selling
six of them) and a very successful German grammar which he wrote, both around this time. Perhaps
he sold even less concertinas than guitars?
German 20-key concertina, circa 1855, the maker's name, "Pirner", is pencilled inside
the right-hand end, numbered 240. Rectangular fruitwood body pierced with a drilled design,
rectangular bone capped wooden keys, 4-fold leather bellows, 10 German silver reeds mounted on
each of four reedplates. "Carl Friedrich Pirner, Harmonicafabrik, Mühlenstrasse 33" appears in
the Chemnitz Adressbuch for 1855, 1857 and
An almost identical concertina is depicted in Sir John Everett Millais’ painting The Blind Girl (painted 1854–1856,
now item No. 1892P3 in the collection of the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery).
It is known to have been borrowed for the picture in 1855, at which time it was not new.
Anglo-German 20-key concertina by the Nickolds family, London, early 1850's. Bone buttons
numbered 1–10 each side, "Artistic fingering", hinged wooden wind-key, hexagonal rosewood ends with
simple fretwork (left hand end replaced in stained mahogany), individual brass reeds, 8-fold maroon leather bellows.
The Nickolds family claimed to be "inventors of the Anglo-German" concertina on their business
and they probably were the first to manufacture the basic 20 key model, combining English construction
and hexagonal shape with German fingering. They established their own business in 1848 (having previously
worked for Wheatstone’s) and probably developed the Anglo-German concertina around the time of the
Great Exhibition of 1851 (which seems to have helped to popularise the German concertina in Britain).
German made concertina, 1850’s. Externally an imitation of the above instrument, with hexagonal
rosewood veneered ends of the same fret pattern, bone capped wooden buttons numbered 1–10 each side,
hinged wooden wind-key, 5-fold green leather bellows. The internal construction is German in style,
with buttons glued to wooden levers and 10 brass reeds per reedplate. Such instruments would have
been built for export, but probably the hexagonal shape became adopted for German-model concertinas
as a result of this. (The hexagonal shape is necessary for the radial construction of an English
concertina, but not for German construction)
26-key Anglo-chromatic concertina by George Jones, London, no. 246, circa 1858. Bone buttons
numbered 1–10 for naturals, semitones indicated with note names on buttons, hinged wooden wind-key,
hexagonal rosewood ends with simple fretwork, individual brass reeds, 5-fold green leather bellows.
Oval paper label "G. JONES, PATENT CONCERTINA Manufacturer, LONDON."
George Jones claimed to have added the first semitones to the German system, making a
22-key instrument, for his own use in 1851 and his "chromatic Anglo-German" with 26 keys three
However, it was not until after the death of his employer Jabez Austin, in July 1857,
that he started to manufacture concertinas bearing his own name. The date 30/12/61 is written inside
this Instrument but it most probably relates to an early repair.
My thanks to Maria Dunkel and Dieter Krickeberg, both of whom I first met at the Symposium,
for their interest and kind help.
Especial thanks to Peer Ehmke at the Schloßbergmuseum Chemnitz, with whom I have exchanged a lot of ideas,
information and photocopies as a result of our mutual involvement in the Exhibition
“Sehnsucht aus dem Blasebalg,”
(and see particularly its "Galerie"
with photographs of instruments)
held at the Museum, 1st July—28th October 2001.
My knowledge has been greatly enriched by my contact with them and I could not
otherwise have rewritten my catalogue with so much additional information.
Also thanks to Stuart Eydmann, who inspired me to spend years looking for elusive source material
when he gave me a photocopy of the article about The Æolina from The Harmonicon
(when I already owned the triple æolina but didn’t know what it was). | <urn:uuid:011faad5-e5ff-4d91-aed7-5caf22adbced> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.concertina.com/chambers/michaelstein/index.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399117.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00198-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93047 | 4,820 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Question: If I have bipolar disorder, how likely is it that my children will develop bipolar disorder as well? Should I have them evaluated?
Answer: That's a good question. We do have studies looking at children who have parents with bipolar disorder.
And most of those studies, at least from the U.S., suggest that about 15-20 percent of those children already have some form of bipolar disorder. Now that's cross-sectionally. In the future, there may be more children who develop this type of disorder over time.
There are also children who have parents with bipolar disorder who have depression and many children who have ADHD. In fact, about half the children in these studies have some sort of psychiatric difficulty already.
So we think that those could be early precursors for full bipolar disorder. That being ADHD plus mood disregulation as well as full depression. Those children if they have a parent or a first degree relative with bipolar disorder could be at very high risk for going on to develop the full disorder.
Having said that, it's not just genetics. We really believe that it's a combination of the environment plus a genetic predisposition that leads to bipolar disorder.
So there are some things that you can do within the environment to decrease chances that your child is gong to develop this disorder.
And we're studying some of those things here right now but we think some of those things could be decreasing the level of stress in the environment and improving the coping skills of the child.
There are other things that you could do too. For example, regulating the sleep-wake cycle, making sure your child gets enough sleep and has a regular activity pattern, could be very important in promoting good mood health and preventing progression to full bipolar disorder.
Now as far as getting your child evaluated if you are a parent with bipolar disorder, that's a very good idea, especially if he or she is having some of these early symptoms I mentioned.
Things like ADHD or mood problems like depression or big anger attacks. Those could be the first signs. They don't necessarily mean for sure that your child is going to develop it but it makes sense to go get a good evaluation from a place that specializes in looking at children who may be developing bipolar disorder.
Previous: Do I Have An Increased Risk Of Bipolar Disorder If A Parent, Grandparent Or Sibling Has Bipolar Disorder? | <urn:uuid:dba16fed-c762-4341-b026-ab77dee651ad> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.listeditor@abcnews.go.com/Health/BipolarRiskFactors/story?id=4360356 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00003-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969712 | 488 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Right to Carbon or Right to Life: Human Rights Approaches to Climate Change
University of Oregon
November, 20 2008
The limitations of compliance mechanisms under international environmental law suggest that we should look to the usefulness of claims of human rights violations. At least three forums might be used for litigation regarding climate change: international courts or compliance bodies, international human rights bodies, and national courts either applying international law or adjudicating human rights claims under domestic law.
If we come to see human-caused global climate change as violating fundamental substantive or procedural human rights, perhaps we can make a breakthrough in the policy debates to move our politics and jurisprudence toward a solution based on rights claims.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 36
Keywords: climate change, human rights, global warming
Date posted: November 21, 2008
© 2016 Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This page was processed by apollobot1 in 0.172 seconds | <urn:uuid:51c60e4d-9e5f-455c-a09b-670398930fed> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1304844&rec=1&srcabs=986864&alg=1&pos=8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00118-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.854762 | 198 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Boys and men must be included in the conversation on equality
An article by Andrea Cornwall, arguing that men and boys are part of the development equation and can help tackle gender inequality. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/mar/21...
Girls are cool. Girls can save the world. Girls can – according to the colourful stickers produced by the Nike Foundation – pull off miracles: "lifting" economies, ending the spread of HIV, leading the revolution. Investing in girls, the UK's Department for International Development tells us, is a surefire way to "stop poverty before it starts".
Few of today's international development agencies would give boys the time of day. They're not seen as part of the solution to development's ills. When boys make an appearance in today's development narratives, they're cast as hazardous menace or hopeless loser. Not for them the lifting, ending and leading that's become the script for girls. Boys are, after all, men-in-the-making, assumed to have access to – and be able to utilise – all the patriarchal privilege that's going.
Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of really inspiring work going on with girls, and there's good reason to focus on their empowerment. But I'm disturbed about the promotion of Girl Power as the development panacea. There's something dangerously retributive about an approach that simply flips an inequity around and approaches power as a zero-sum game.
Yes, girls can be extracted from their everyday lives and "empowered" as individuals. But the reality is that these lives are lived as part of families, communities and societies. Cutting boys and men out of the picture isn't going to make them go away. And the current narrative misses not only the fact that transforming the ways boys become men can be a key strategy in achieving gender justice, but also the contribution boys and men can make to that struggle.
It's not as if boys are having a particularly easy time. Male privilege can become a burden when boys and men are unable to live up to the expectations associated with it. The stubbornness of dominant ideals of masculinity offers them little let-up in what they're supposed to do and be. Shifting labour markets leave boys and men shut out of employment opportunities. Boys are failing at school. They're falling through the cracks. And boys and men whose gender expression or sexual orientation departs from dominant sexual or social norms are all too often subjected to violent abuse and exclusion.
Educating girls is hugely important for development – but so is schooling for boys that can create and sustain new, more egalitarian, norms. Frank Karioris observes: "If it is true that men who are more educated are more likely to challenge norms and participate in domestic roles and caregiving, but men's overall achievement rate in education is declining; then it would seem logical to assume that there will be a decrease in men's involvement in challenging norms, and increased resistance to men sharing in the domestic or care giving roles. This … is a movement away from gender equality."
So what can be done? One thing is clear: women and girls can't be expected to take responsibility for this as well. Women's rights activists are tired of being told to "engage", "involve" or "bring men in", as if it's their job to persuade men to care about issues that ought to be their concern. As Alan Greig has so eloquently put it, it's not about bringing men in by talking to them nicely and making sure they're not put off: it's about naming male privilege, and getting men engaged in holding other men to account.
Around the world, we're seeing work that's inspired by an agenda for change that doesn't leave boys and men out of the equation – mobilising men to stop violence against women, and challenging and changing men's attitudes to intimate relationships and fatherhood. By tackling deadly ideals of masculinity and opening up alternative ways of being a man, these initiatives are transforming boys' and men's intimate and interpersonal relationships and creating the basis for greater equality.
The new book Men and Development: Politicising Masculinities draws together lessons from this work and argues that progress depends on going beyond the personal – getting political about matters long regarded as "women's issues", such as unequal pay, unequal domestic labour burdens and unequal representation in politics. These are issues on which we hear little talk and see little action by men, yet they remain the basis on which any meaningful structural transformation of gender injustice depends.
One inspiring lesson from the Occupy movement is that people can be motivated to engage politically when they connect their own personal frustrations with a bigger picture of structural inequity. Rather than put "girls and women" in one corner – as deserving subjects who can be put to work for development – and leave "boys and men" to be picked up only when they turn bad, we need a fresh approach. Specifically, we need new ways of connecting the trouble that the inequitable distribution of power and privilege creates for us as individuals with a broader struggle for social justice.
Girls themselves are making these connections. In a couple of weeks' time, the women's fund Mama Cash is sponsoring an exchange between high school girl students from Chile and Nicaragua. What's on their agenda? Not Girl Power, but tackling gender stereotypes in the curriculum and advocating for better sexuality education for young people. Mama Cash programme officer Alejandra Sarda reflected: "They don't have this separation between genders. You just don't see it. They have problems that need to be addressed. But they also see that boys have to be part of the conversation. We can learn a lot from how they're organising." | <urn:uuid:caf92070-cae8-46b2-b473-7b75e86ba423> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.engagingmen.net/news/boys-and-men-must-be-included-conversation-equality-0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397748.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00021-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968787 | 1,179 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Chemotherapy typically refers to drugs used for cancer treatment. Two other medical terms used to describe chemotherapy are antineoplastic (meaning anti-cancer) therapy and cytotoxic (cell-killing) therapy.
Chemotherapy is often the therapy of choice for treating many cancers. It differs from surgery or radiation in that it is almost always used as a systemic treatment, with the drugs traveling throughout the body to reach cancer cells wherever they may have spread. Treatments like radiation and surgery act in a specific area such as the breast, lung, or colon, and are considered local treatments.
More than 100 drugs are currently used for chemotherapy - either alone or in combination with other drugs or treatments.
Wake Forest Baptist participates in many cancer-related clinical trials evaluating various combinations of drugs as well as therapies targeting cancer cells while sparing non-cancerous cells.
Patients who participate in clinical trials make an important contribution to medical care because the study results will also help future patients. At the same time, they may be among the first to benefit from these new treatments. As research continues, more drugs are expected to become available. These drugs vary widely in their chemical composition, how they are taken, their usefulness in treating specific forms of cancer, and their side effects. New drugs are first developed through laboratory research and in animals and then tested in clinical trials in humans to determine their safety and effectiveness. | <urn:uuid:0a27c8a9-87e7-4d95-9a44-bf0a814f226a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wakehealth.edu/Comprehensive-Cancer-Center/Chemotherapy.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00117-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963195 | 282 | 3.5625 | 4 |
The earth neither grows old or wears out if it is dunged. – Columella, circa 45 A.D
If you want to improve your soil and make it more suitable for your vegetable garden, you first have to figure out what you’re dealing with. Is your soil sandy or clay-based? Is it too acidic or too alkaline? The way to answer these questions is to have your soil tested. There are do-it-yourself tests you can purchase or you can hire a private soil testing laboratory or your local cooperative extension office to test it. Not only will the professional soil tester tell you the composition of your soil, but the lab will usually be able to make recommendations on how to improve it.
In addition to measuring the pH level of your soil — how acidic or alkaline it is — tests also look at how much calcium, organic matter, magnesium, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sodium , sulfur and trace minerals it contains.
When it comes to the pH scale, neutral refers to soil with a pH of 7.0. Anything above a 7.0 is considered alkaline and anything below a 7.0 is considered acidic. Most plants prefer slightly acidic to neutral soil (from 6.0 to 7.0).
If your soil is too acidic, you need to add alkaline material, such as ground limestone. For soil that is too alkaline, you need to add something that is acidic. Most gardeners use elemental sulfur (see How To Change Your Soil’s pH).
Once you’ve corrected the pH of your soil, you’ll also probably want to add organic matter. According to the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension, “an ideal soil would have equal parts of sand (0.02 to 2.0 millimeters), silt (0.002 to 0.02 millimeters) and clay (0 to 0.002 millimeters) and contain about 5 percent organic matter.”
Also aerate your soil. Dig down 10 to 12 inches and turn the soil over. You can do this with a spade or a garden fork. The University of Georgia recommends digging a trench 1-foot-deep on one side of your garden. Push the soil from that trench to the outer boundary. Then dig another ditch right next to it and fill in the first ditch with the dirt from the second ditch. Proceed across the garden. You can also use a tractor-mounted plow or a Rototiller set to the deepest depth. While you’re turning over the soil, add organic matter so it gets down to the root level of the plants, so your vegetables can have access to the nutrients that you are adding.
How much organic matter you will have to add depends on your soil’s composition, the size of your garden and your climate. For example, sandy soils in warmer climates may need as much as 2,300 to 4,600 pounds per 1,000 square feet, according to the University of Georgia. Heavier soils in cooler climates with less rainfall may need as little as 200 pounds per 1,000 square feet.
You’ll want to fertilize your garden plot twice if you can: once before planting and then again in the middle of your growing season. For mid-season fertilizing, it’s easiest to do what’s known as “side dressing,” which means adding dry fertilizers, compost or other organic soil amendments to the side of your plants. To side dress, you dig a narrow furrow one to three inches deep at the plant’s drip line or six inches from the plant base, whichever is greater. You then sprinkle the amendment into the furrow and cover it up with soil.
Compost is a great way to add organic material to your garden and, if you make your own, reduce organic waste from your home and kitchen. Compost also attracts earthworms and other beneficial organisms. It provides nutrients to your vegetables and it will improve your soil.
You’ll want to begin the composting process using a mixture of “green” (wet, high-nitrogen) materials combined with “brown” (dry, high carbon) materials. Green items include: coffee grounds, chopped leaves or grass clippings, eggs or eggshells, fruit wastes and grains, manure, seaweed, vegetable scraps, weeds. Brown items consist of: corncobs and cornstalks, hay, nutshells, paper, pine needles, sawdust, straw.
DO NOT COMPOST:
• Meat scraps and trash containing a lot of fat
• Colored paper
• Diseased plants
• Pet droppings
• Plants sprayed with synthetic chemicals (pesticides, herbicides)
You’ll know that the decomposition process is “done” when you can’t distinguish any of the raw materials. It should smell and feel like rich soil.
To build your compost pile, which should be an annual event, accumulate organic material. Your pile can be on open ground or in a bin constructed from cinder blocks, rough boards or wire. The sides of the bin should be permeable and shouldn’t be air tight or water proof. Autumn can be a great time to start composting since fallen leaves are plentiful.
Green manure is a crop that is grown and then mixed in with the soil to increase the soil’s organic matter content. Green manure crops include buckwheat, clover, soybeans or winter rye. The advantages of green manure include: increasing organic matter in the soil and increasing nutrients for plants. Green manure can also fight back against certain diseases and pests such as nematodes. (Nematodes are microscopic worms that feed on certain plant roots and can weaken plants.) | <urn:uuid:bd775eb7-c893-431d-9d77-9c601de70f98> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.planetnatural.com/vegetable-gardening-guru/soil-quality/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00147-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923329 | 1,197 | 3.25 | 3 |
Researchers at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Ghent in Belgium studied the use of tannins to control Salmonella Typhimurium infections in pigs (Van Parys A. et al, 2009). The aim of this study was to determine whether a hydrolysable tannin extract** of sweet chestnut wood has an inhibitory effect on Salmonella Typhimurium survival both in vitro and in vivo in pigs. In a first experiment, the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of the tannin extract on 57 Salmonella Typhimurium isolates was determined. For all isolates, an MIC of 160-320 mug/ml was found. The second in vitro study revealed that Salmonella growth was strongly reduced using tannin extract concentrations of 25-50 mug/ml and nearly completely inhibited at a concentration of 100 mug/ml tannin extract. In an in vivo trial, two groups of six piglets, each group receiving feed with or without the addition of tannin extract (3 g/kg), were orally inoculated with 107 colony forming units of a Salmonella Typhimurium strain. The tannin extract had no effect on faecal excretion of Salmonella, and no differences in colonization of the intestines and internal organs were demonstrated in pigs euthanized at 4 days post-inoculation. The researchers concluded that the hydrolysable tannin extract used in this study showed strong action against Salmonella Typhimurium in vitro but not in vivo.
Effect on E. coli in steers
As shown in pigs and poultry, the use of tannins can have a significant effect on reducing bacteria. The Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in the US (2007) looked at the effect of tannins on the in vitro growth of Escherichia coli O157:H7 and in vivo growth of generic Escherichia coli excreted from steers. In the first experiment, the effect of commercially available chestnut and mimosa tannins in vitro was studied. Experiment 2
Tanin Sevnica: Tannin experts in Slovenia
Tanin Sevnica has been cooperating with nature since 1923. The company – based in Slovenia - produces extracts from chestnut and oak wood. With a staff of 130 people, the company produces extracts as tanning agents for vegetable leather tanning. From the extracted wood also other products are produced such as Furfural and Sodium Acetate. Since the beginningog the 90s, the company started with the production of natural extracts from a sweet chestnut and oak woods for the human and animal nutrition. Around 5% of tannins for animal nutrition that Tanin Sevnica produces are sold in Slovenia, the rest goes to other EU member, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
was an in vivo study and looked at the recovery of Escherichia coli O157:H7 or generic fecal E. coli. In experiment 1, the mean growth rate of E. coli O157:H7, determined via the measurement of optical density at 600 nm during anaerobic culture in tryptic soy broth at 37oC, was reduced (P < 0.05) with as little as 400 microg of either tannin extract per ml of culture fluid. The addition of 200, 400, 600, 800, and 1,200 microg of tannins per ml significantly reduced the specific bacterial growth rate when compared with the non-tannin control. The specific growth rate decreased with increasing dose levels up to 800 microg of tannins per ml. Bacterial growth inhibition effects in chestnut tannins were less pronounced than in mimosa tannins. Chestnut tannin extract addition ranged from 0 to 1,200 microg/ml, and a linear effect was observed in cultures incubated for 6 h against the recovery of viable cells, determined via the plating of each strain onto MacConkey agar, of E. coli O157:H7 strains 933 and 86-24, but not against strain 6058. Similar tests with mimosa tannin extract showed a linear effect against the recovery of E. coli O157:H7 strain 933 only. The bactericidal effect observed in cultures incubated for 24 h with the tannin preparations was similar, although it was less than that observed from cultures incubated for 6 h. When chestnut tannins (15 g of tannins per day) were infused intraruminally to steers fed a Bermuda grass hay diet in experiment 2, fecal E. coli shedding was lower on days 3, 12, and 15 when compared with animals that were fed a similar diet without tannin supplementation. In this study, dietary levels and sources of tannins potentially reduced the shedding of E. coli from the gastrointestinal tract.
Rabbit meat quality
An Italian study (2009) showed some interesting results regarding the supplementation of tannins and its effect on meat quality, fatty acid profile and lipid stability in broiler rabbits. A total of 72 commercial hybrid rabbits (mean body weight 740 g, 32-days-old) were fed for 49 days with three diets containing 0%, 0.5% and 1.0% of a commercial chestnut wood extract***, respectively. Eight rabbits per group were slaughtered at 12 weeks of age and at 24 h post-mortem pH and colour were measured on the carcass. Moreover, both sides of m. longissimus thoracis (LT) were dissected. Left side was used for cooking losses whereas the other side was used for the determination of fatty acid profile and lipid oxidation. The researchers found no differences in pH, colour and cooking losses, as well as the fatty acid profile of LT muscle and its relative health indexes. Concerning the antioxidant effect, the tannin extract showed a positive and significant effect at the inclusion level of 0.5%. In conclusion, the tannin extract has no undesirable side effects on the meat quality of rabbits, although further studies will be necessary to find the optimal diet inclusion level of the tannin extract to elicit a stronger antioxidant effect in the rabbit meat.
Tannins can have beneficial effects on the digestion and hence animal performance when they are incorporated in animal diets. However, the great diversity of the results presented in different papers, related to the chemical composition and source of tannins, specific reaction of different animal species to tannins in feeds or supplements and to the dose-response of animals indicate the necessity of further investigations to have more data on the mode of action and potency of these compounds applied in animal diets.
* SCT, Sweet Chestnut Tannin. ** Globatan®, *** Silva Feed ENC® | <urn:uuid:05d0bcb6-b4c4-4528-ad6a-69e3e4d84a0a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.allaboutfeed.net/Home/General/2010/7/Sweet-chestnut-tannins-in-animal-diets-AAF011612W/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00149-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934043 | 1,393 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Business Lessons from Thomas Edison’s Light Bulb
Thomas Alva Edison, also called the “Wizard of Menlo Park” by a newspaper reporter, is one of the most often cited personalities in history when it comes to dealing with failure and focusing on goals. It is unclear how many times Thomas Edison failed in his tests before he invented the first practical, long lasting light bulb but it is widely accepted that he tried thousands of times before he discovered the best filament to use.
There are other inventors at the time who were also developing light bulbs but it was Thomas Edison who got it to the finish line. His name is forever etched in history not because he was the first but simply because he was the most persistent, the most flexible, and possibly the most cunning as well. As with many successful inventors, he too knows how to handle failure successfully. Qualities like these define a true winner.
He too was a visionary, a trait displayed when Edison made the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park. It was during this time that he said: “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.” – these words I often remember when I see expensive candle light dinners in first class restaurants. LOL.
Finally, I think it’s worth saying that he did not invent the light bulb. What Thomas Edison did was simply innovate, improving what others before him have already achieved. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia that best shows Edison’s innovativeness:
In addressing the question “Who invented the incandescent lamp?” historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel list 22 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Joseph Wilson Swan and Thomas Edison. They conclude that Edison’s version was able to outstrip the others because of a combination of three factors: an effective incandescent material, a higher vacuum than others were able to achieve (by use of the Sprengel pump) and a high resistance lamp that made power distribution from a centralized source economically viable.
In summary, Thomas Alva Edison is a man with focus, persistence and determination. He too knows how to handle failure, a visionary and an innovator. Lastly, I think it is rightful to say that there’s a Thomas Edison in all of us. We all have our light bulbs to create and we all have the obligation of lighting up the world one way or another. | <urn:uuid:513fc314-dec4-4845-b70a-b6f87dc1df8b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mikelopez.com/thomas-edisons-light-bulb.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00170-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970231 | 513 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Aerial view of NAS Squantum during 1943. The aircraft from which this photo was taken was flying over Dorchester Bay. The Neponset River is to the right and Quincy Bay is visible on the opposite side of the base.
NAS Squantum served as the home of the naval air reserve in New England from 1923 to 1953.
The base was located on the Squantum peninsula in the city of Quincy, Massachusetts
surrounded by the waters of Dorchester Bay, Quincy Bay, and the Neponset River.
Squantum's association with aviation goes back to 1910 when the Harvard Aeronautical Society leased land on the peninsula from the New Haven Railroad and built an airfield called the Harvard Aviation Field there. The Harvard Aviation Field was used to hold competitive air shows (the Harvard-Boston Aero Meets) that were jointly sponsored by the Harvard Aeronautical Society and the Aero Club of New England during the summers of 1910 and 1911. In 1912 a private venture held a similar air show called the Boston Air Meet at the Harvard Aviation Field. The 1912 event was marked by tragedy when aviatrix Harriet Quimby and her passenger William A. Willard fell 1,000 feet to their deaths in the Neponset River from Quimby's Bleriot Monoplane in front of thousands of spectators.
In addition to the Aero
Meets/Air Meet, Squantum was the location of the first Intercollegiate Glider
Meet in May 1911. This event, the first of its kind in America, featured
gliders that were built and flown by students from a number of colleges around
the country such as Harvard, MIT, Tufts, etc. To work around the fact that
Squantum has no elevations, the sponsors of the Intercollegiate Glider Meet
erected a swiveling wooden ramp on the Harvard Aviation Field to allow the
participants to launch their craft into the wind regardless of its direction.
In 1916 the Sturtevant Aeroplane Company of Boston's Hyde Park neighborhood used the former Harvard Aviation Field to flight-test Sturtevant aircraft. During the spring of 1917, after the country entered the First World War, the Massachusetts Naval Militia built a wooden seaplane hangar along the Dorchester Bay shoreline and used the site as a primary flight training facility for student pilots bound for advanced flight training with the Navy at Pensacola, FL. That summer, the Navy took over the Massachusetts Naval Militia property and Squantum became a naval air station providing primary flight training for student naval aviators as well as training for aircraft mechanics. However, in the fall of 1917 NAS Squantum was closed due to the Navy's decision to consolidate all flight training activity in warmer areas of the country where flying could be conducted year-round.
In 1923 the long-closed First World War naval air station at Squantum was re-opened as a naval reserve air station providing refresher training to veterans as well as primary flight instruction to new members of the naval reserve. Although initially a Navy Reserve facility, Squantum soon became used by the Marine Corps Reserve as well. At first NRAS Squantum had no airfield and was only capable of operating seaplanes. However, a small 30-acre airfield was built at the base in 1929, permitting operations with landplanes. Improvements to the airfield and the physical plant at the base during the years immediately leading up to the country's involvement in the Second World War resulting in Squantum being designated a fully-fledged regular Navy naval air station in 1941. During the war, NAS Squantum provided elimination and primary flight training for Navy and Marine Corps student pilots, advanced training for British Royal Navy torpedo and dive bomber squadrons and for US Navy carrier air groups, and also served as an operational patrol base helping to protect the waters around Boston Harbor from the German submarine menace.
After the Second World War ended NAS Squantum was handed back over to the Navy and Marine Corps reserve. The proximity of the base to the Commonwealth Airport (modern Logan International Airport) as well as its short runways caused the Navy to move all the reserve units drilling on the base to nearby NAS South Weymouth. NAS Squantum was closed in December 1953. Today the site of NAS Squantum is an upscale waterfront condominium development called Marina Bay. | <urn:uuid:3e71c276-05f2-4a01-aff8-0478cf3f4cea> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.anapatriotsquadron.com/squantum.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399117.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00053-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972103 | 895 | 3.234375 | 3 |
CONCEPT: General Nutrition
Read a story about Charlie Tooth and how he gets a cavity. Learn about how to have healthy teeth.
After completing this activity, children will be able to:
- state that sugary foods can lead to cavities
- identify foods that are high in sugar
- Read A Toothful Story and show the characters as they appear in the story.
- Discuss the story with the children, with questions such as:
- Who did Mr. Sweets send over to play with Charlie?
- What happened when Charlie Tooth played with Susie Sucker, Patty Pop, and Gregory Gum?
- What did Dr. Brushy and Dr. Pastey do to make Charlie feel better?
- Which new friends did Charlie meet so he could stay a happy tooth?
- What foods do you need to eat to stay happy like Charlie Tooth?
- Discuss the "Tips for Healthy Teeth" with the children. Send them home with the handout.
- Distribute the worksheets. Help the children complete it, as needed. Discuss their answers. Reinforce the foods that can cause cavities and some of the important aspects of good dental hygiene.
- Discuss with your children the foods that may contribute cavities.
- Encourage your children to have good dental hygiene, and set a good example.
*This activity is adapted from NET Nutrition Education, Choose Well, Be Well: A Curriculum Guide for the Primary Grades, California State Department of Education, 1982. | <urn:uuid:a8e4239d-9e16-426f-a2f3-ffe7cbb62a18> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://depts.washington.edu/pku/management/curriculum/preschool/toothful.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00183-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931906 | 313 | 4.25 | 4 |
Have you ever pulled weeds in a flower or vegetable garden? If so, I’m sure you’re familiar with the aching feeling that develops in the small of your back and hands after a few hours labor. Now, picture a garden two miles square with weeds as big as a St. Bernard. Just such a land lies on Joshua Tree National Park’s eastern border. After an hour and a half drive from our camp site to the edge of the Colorado Desert, we rendezvoused with members of the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management on the shoulder of state road 177.
Looking out over what, to the casual viewer, appears to be a desolate wasteland, we were tasked to remove an invasive plant known as Sahara Mustard from the desert. Introduced accidentally when Mediterranean date trees were transplanted to California, the plant interferes with native plant and animal life by consuming scarce resources and disrupting the region’s food-chain. After a quick lesson on plant identification, we set to work ridding this section of the desert of this interloper.
Working in 2-3 person teams, we walked in a line 40 abreast in a westerly direction removing the plant as we went. Ranging in size from a few inches to over three feet in diameter, we uprooted all the plants we crossed and shoved them in plastic garbage bags. Once the bags were filled, we hiked them back to the road for disposal by the National Park Service.
Plodding our way across the desert, we enjoyed convivial conversation among ourselves and with employees of the Park Service/Bureau of Land Management. Physical work under the hot western sun apparently attracts students with colorful personalities and stories to match. Besides conversation, we also enjoyed seeing some of the native fauna in a natural setting. Several of us commented on the presence of small lizards and geckos throughout the work site. Filling an average of 25 bags an hour, we managed to fill a Park Service trailer with about 115 bags of the invasive plant after about 5 hours work.
After parting with our Federal supervisors, we split into two groups and headed back toward camp. One group headed for a stop to shower in town, and the other went to Joshua Tree’s Visitor Center. Those who went to the visitor center learned about the climate, landscapes, and people that have defined experiences throughout this Park’s history. Those who showered became more popular back at camp.
Tonight, we are looking forward to a lesson on knot tying and around a camp fire. Tomorrow we will participate in a Park Service study on Joshua Tree’s desert tortoise and avian populations. In the meantime, we’re excited to spend another day in the shadow of Joshua Trees and rocky crags. | <urn:uuid:caeefde6-876e-4ed9-8819-aa6eec2b4036> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thesca.org/connect/blog/day-4-mustard-enemy-or-weeding-desert | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00048-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947292 | 578 | 2.71875 | 3 |
How To Set Up A Linux Network
Before we get into setting up Linux networking on a Debian system, we'll cover the basics of how to set up a network with both Windows and Linux systems and how to make it a "private" network. Here the term "private" may not mean what you think it does. It has to do with the IP addresses you use on your home or business network. You'll then understand the value of having a proxy/NAT server or a firewall system which also performs the proxy/NAT function on your network.
Once we cover the "whys" and "whats" we'll get into the "hows". You'll see how easy it is to set up a home or small-business network including what hardware is needed. We'll briefly mention what you need to look at on Windows PCs and present more in-depth information on which files are used on a Debian system to set up networking. The Network Configuration Files section shows what files are involved in setting up your Debian system to work on a local network and how they need to be configured to enable the various functions involved in networking including being able to connect to the Internet.Note: Even if you're not familier with TCP/IP networks, try giving the material on this page a shot. It's presented in an introductory manner. Don't be concerned if you don't understand all of the material on OSI layers, subnetting, etc. presented on this page. Understanding this material is not necessary when setting up a network or using the subsequent guide pages on this site. It is merely presented for those who wish more in-depth information.What's particularly appealing about Linux for small businesses and non-profit organizations is that you can set up both internal (file, print, database) servers, external Internet (Web, e-mail, ftp) servers, firewalls, and routers (yes, you can set up a Linux system to be a router too) for very little cost. The operating system and server applications are free and, given that Debian will run on older hardware, the hardware costs can be minimal. These attributes also make it a great toy for those wishing to learn more about networking. Pick up one CD set and you can set up all the Linux servers, firewalls, and routers you want and experiment your brains out.
Even if you don't have a network you can still play around with the material present on this page and on the Proxy/NAT and Firewall pages. See the No-Network Network section below on how to do this.
Theoretically, every system on a network needs a unique identifier (a unique address). As such, every system that accesses the Internet would need a unique IP address because TCP/IP is the protocol of the Internet. However, when the Internet exploded in the mid-90s it became clear that there simply were not enough addresses available in the TCP/IP address space for every computer in every office of every Internet-connected organization. That doesn't even take into account those who wanted to access the Internet from home.
The solution was to create "private" address ranges to be used in conjunction with "address translation". Lets look at the first piece first.
Three blocks of IP addresses were set aside as private, meaning that all of the routers on the Internet would be configured to not route them. That's why private addresses are also referred to as "non-routable" addresses. The benefit? If packets from systems with private addresses weren't routed between Internet-connected networks, then a whole bunch of networks could use the same private addresses because they'd never "see" each others addresses. In other words, these same addresses could be used by any number of computers around the world because if they weren't routed, it would never be "discovered" that they weren't unique.
So if they're not routed, how do you get on the Internet if your computer has a private address assigned to it? That's where the second piece, address translation, comes in. Normally, in order for all the computers in a company to have Internet access they would all have to be assigned routable ("public") IP addresses that could pass through the Internet. Since there aren't enough addresses for this, companies instead assign all of the hundreds of computers in their organization private addresses and they all share a single "public" address to access resources on the Internet. This sharing is accomplished by configuring privately-addressed systems to use a special server, called a proxy server, to access the Internet.
A proxy server has two NICs (Network Interface Cards) because it's connected to two different networks. One NIC is connected to the Internet and is assigned a single "public" (routable) IP address. (This NIC is referred to as the "external interface".) The other NIC is connected to the company's internal network. It is assigned a private IP address so that it can communicate with all of the other privately-addressed computers in the company. (This NIC is referred to as the "internal interface".) The proxy server acts as a "gateway" onto the Internet. (Because of the gateway behavior, a proxy server should also have firewalling capabilities to protect the internal network.) However, in addition to acting as a gateway, it acts as an address translator.When a computer on the internal network with a private address wants to request information from a Web site, it actually sends the request to the internal interface of the proxy server. The proxy server, with it's public routable address on the external NIC, is the one that actually sends the request to the Internet Web server. The Web server sends the response back to the proxy server's external NIC, and the proxy server then forwards the response on to the computer on the internal network that made the initial request. The proxy server keeps track of which internal computers make which requests.The private IP addresses assigned to the systems on your internal nework are chosen by you from one of the three private address ranges listed below.
Public IP addresses are only available from an ISP. In most cases, such as with a dial-up, DSL, or cable modem, your ISP automatically assigns a single public address to your modem using PPP, bootp, or DHCP. This assigned address can change from time to time ("dynamic"). It requires no configuration on your part. Business customers typically obtain multiple public addresses from their ISP. These addresses do not change ("static"). Static addresses are needed for Internet servers that are referenced by DNS records such as Web servers, mail servers, etc. that are contacted using a domain name.
The advantage? Hundreds of computers in a company can access the Internet and only take up a single public Internet address (that of the proxy server's external NIC). Another advantage is security. If your computer's address can't be routed over the Internet, it would be hard for someone to get at your computer from the Internet. (There are ways though.)
The translating of a private address to a public address (outbound request) and back again (inbound response) is most commonly known as NAT (Network Address Translation). In the Linux community it's also often referred to as "masquerading" because the proxy server hides the true identity of the internal computer that made the initial Internet request.
The internationally-established private IP address ranges that can be assigned to internal network computers are as follows:
- 10.0.0.1 through 10.255.255.254
- 16,777,214 addresses
- 16,777,214 computers on 1 network
- Uses a subnet mask of 255.0.0.0
- First octet must be the same on all computers
- A Class A address range
- 172.16.0.1 through 172.31.255.254
- 1,048,574 addresses
- 65,534 computers on each of 16 possible networks
(172.16.x.x to 172.31.x.x)
- Uses a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0
- First two octets must be the same on all computers
- A Class B address range
- 192.168.0.1 through 192.168.255.254
- 65,534 addresses
- 254 computers on each of 256 possible networks
(192.168.0 to 255.x)
- Uses a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0
- First three octets must be the same on all computers
- A Class C address range
Clearly, with 254 possible addresses on each of the 192.168.x.x private address ranges, using one of these ranges is plenty for most small businesses and those who want to play around with a network at home. (This is why, you may recall, the default IP address in the "Network Setup" part of the Debian installation was 192.168.1.1.) The 10.x.x.x address space is often used by very large organizations with many dispersed locations. They will "subnet" this large private address space so that one location will have an address range of 10.3.x.x, another will have 10.4.x.x, and so on, with each location having the ability to have up to 65,534 computers. Each location may even further subnet their address space for different departments or facilities. For example, in the location that has the 10.3.x.x address space, the engineering department will have the 10.3.2.x space, the accounting will have the 10.3.3.x address space, etc. with each department being able to have up to 254 computers. (You'll see where these numbers come from later.)
Each of the numbers separated by periods in an IP address is referred to as "octet" because the value of the number (0 to 255) is derived from eight binary bits. An IP address actually consists of two parts. The first part of an IP address identifies the Network that a computer is on, and the other part identifies the individual Computer on that network.
There's an often-used analogy comparing an IP address to a telephone number. The network part of the IP address is analogous to the area code, and the computer part of the IP address is like the individual's phone number. All the people on phone company network (in one area code) have the same area code number, and no two of them have the same phone number. Conversly, two people can have the same phone number in different parts of the country because they're not in the same area code (not on the same network). It's when you put the area code and an individual's phone number together that the number becomes one that is unique to the entire country (internetwork). In this context, we call the area code the prefix. With IP addresses, the network part of an IP address is the prefix.Note: If you get into routers you'll learn about another instance where this telphone number anology holds true. The long distance carriers don't care what the individual's phone number is. All they look at is the area code and route the call to the baby bell's appropriate switching center. Likewise, most network routers don't care about the computer part of an IP address. They only look at the network part of the address because routers route packets between networks, not PCs. The only router that cares about the computer part of the address is the "final hop" router (the router which is connected to the network segment that destination computer is connected to).With national phone numbers the prefix is always three digits. Unlike national phone numbers, the prefix of an IP address can vary in length. That's where a subnet mask comes in. It determines how much of the IP address is the prefix (the network part). If you have a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 it means that the first two numbers (octets) in an IP address are the network part (prefix) of the address and the last two numbers (octets) are used to identify the individual computers on that network.
Note that a '1' in a subnet mask indicates a Network bit and a '0' indicates a Computer bit. Because of the way an IP address is split into two parts (network part followed by the computer part), a subnet mask will always be a series of consecutive 1s followed by a series of consecutive 0s. In other words, you'll never see a subnet mask where 1s and 0s are interspersed (ex: 11100110).
Here's a few points you need to be aware of when you assign IP addresses to systems on a network:
That second point is important. With a Class C network the subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 indicates the first three octets are the "network" part of the IP address. That means that the first three numbers (octets) of the IP address must be the same on all of the computers on this internal network. That leaves only the last octet available to identify individual computers on the network (8 bits equals about 254 computers that can be uniquely identified, a value between 1 and 254 for the last octet).
- All systems on an internal network must have the same subnet mask
- The network part of the IP address must be the same for all computers on the internal network
- The computer portion of the IP address must be different for every computer on the internal networkNote: People are often confused by the 192.168.x.x private address range because of it has two 'x's. The first 'x' means you can pick one and only one number from the range of available values (0 through 255) for your network. Because this is a Class C address which uses a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, the number you choose for the first 'x' must be the same on all systems on your network.The range of values for the last octet (to assign to computers) on a Class C network is 1 to 254. So you can only have 254 computers on a network that has a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 (a Class C network). A '0' in the last octet is reserved as the "wire" address for the network and 255 in the last octet is the broadcast address for the network. No system can be assigned either of these numbers. The following addresses can't be assigned to computers when using the private IP address ranges:
You can set up a network with 192.168.1.x addresses and another network with 192.168.2.x addresses but because these are Class C address ranges they are two totally separate networks. You would need to set up a router to inter-connect the two networks in order for the machines on both networks to talk to each other. If you think that, given the number of servers, workstations, network printers, switches, etc. you may have in the forseeable future may grow to more than 254, you may want to consider using the Class B private address space on your network."Wire" or "Network" Addresses:10.0.0.0Broadcast Addresses:
Because you can't use these two (wire and broadcast) addresses to assign to computers, the number of addresses that you can assign to computers can be calculated using the equation:
2c - 2 = number of available computer addresses
where c is the number of computer bits in your subnet mask. Now you can see how we came up with the number of computers you could have on each network when we gave the three private address ranges earlier. With a class B address you have 16 computer bits in the subnet mask:
so using our equation we end up with
216 = 65,536 - 2 = 65,534 available computer addresses
On a class C network we have 8 computer bits in the subnet mask so:
28 = 256 - 2 = 254 available computer addresses
Earlier we said that private address ranges and NAT help conserve IP addresses but the use of subnet masks can also. For a more thorough explanation on IP address classes and the use of subnet masks check out the Subnetting section later in this page.
You may run into networks in businesses and schools where the computers don't have private addresses. Our local community college is one such case. That's because they jumped on the Internet bandwagon early when public addresses were being handed out for the asking and got themselves a Class B public address (which allows them to have 65,534 publically addressed computers). Every PC at all the campuses has a publically routable address. The upside is they don't need to use a proxy/NAT server in order for the students to be able to access the Internet. The downside is that their internal network is basically a part of the Internet. This is a huge security risk if no firewall is in place because every system is accessible from anywhere in the world (which is why they have a mega-bucks Cisco PIX firewall appliance).If you're using a networked Windows system at the office and you want to see what your system's TCP/IP settings are, open up a DOS window and enter the command:
To view the TCP/IP settings configured for a NIC on a Linux system type in the following command at the shell prompt:
and look for the "eth0:" entry.
What Network Hardware Does
Now that we've covered the "logical" part of networking, lets take a look at the hardware. When you talk networking hardware you're talking NICs, hubs, switches, routers, cables, etc. However, hubs are quickly disappearing, being replaced by switches. When switches were first introduced, they were significantly more expensive than hubs on a "per port" cost basis, but their prices have dropped to the point where the cost difference isn't an issue.
Why are switches better than hubs? When two PCs want to talk to each other, switches set up a virtual direct connection between two. This means the bandwidth isn't shared with other systems. The two PCs get it all (100 Mbps). They accomplish this by using the MAC addresses of systems on the network.
Each system on a network actually has two addresses. A "logical" IP address that can be assigned and changed by you at will, and a "physical" hardware address that is permanently burned into a NIC. This permanent hardware address is often referred to as a MAC address or "BIA" - Burned-In Address. (Physical, hardware, MAC, and BIA all refer the same address.) Each "packet" sent over a network must include both the logical and physical addresses to identify the destination computer.
Technically, using the term "packet" when referring to what's sent across the wire isn't proper. A packet has a very specific meaning in the TCP/IP world. The term "frame" would be more appropriate but it's become rather common to mis-use the term "packet" in this way, such as in "packet sniffers", etc. And actually, nothing is "sent" across a network cable. The voltage on the network cables just flucuates rapidly and, like the telegraph operators in the old west who knew Morse Code, every device attached to the same LAN cable segment senses and monitors this series of flucuations to see if they pertain to them (as indicated by the destination MAC address). If you're familier with the OSI model, these voltage fluctuations are what's referred to by "Layer 1". It's the NIC's job to convert a frame into a series of voltage fluctuations when sending and to use these voltage flucuations to rebuild a frame when receiving.
The encapsulation scheme was devised because it offers flexibility. One layer's packet is the next lower layer's payload. Packets that travel over a LAN are encapsulated in an ethernet frame. If you're connecting to another network using a modem, your computer encapsulates the packets in a PPP frame. The Layer 2 framing is dependent on the connection technology you're using. When Cisco routers are used to connect remote sites they can use any number of different technologies with their related framing protocols including PPP, frame relay, HDLC, etc. Likewise, the Layer 3 protocol could be IPX on a Novell network rather than IP. In such a case the Layer 3 header would contain source and destination IPX addresses (and Novell's SPX protocol would take the place of TCP).
The sending computer takes your data (your e-mail message or Web site request) and does the series of encapsulations based on the type of network you're on. The receiving computer simply reverses the process and de-encapsulates the received frame to extract the data you sent.
One other point to note in the above diagram is that the destination IP address is not the only TCP/IP-related information specified about the destination computer. The TCP port number for the requested service is also specified. HTTP (Web) uses port 80. FTP (file transfer) uses port 21. You may have seen the term "socket" used in TCP/IP literature. A socket is simply referencing the IP address and port number together. For example, traffic destined for a Web server with an IP address of 172.16.5.20 would have a destination socket of 172.16.5.20:80. It's the use of different port numbers (and sockets) that allows you to still surf the Web while you're using FTP to download a file.
So how does the sending system find out what a destination computer's MAC address is so that it can put it in a frame? It uses ARP. ARP is an address resolution protocol kind of like DNS. Whereas a computer will send out a DNS query packet to a DNS server to resolve a domain name or system name to an IP address, it will also send out an ARP query packet to resolve an IP address to a MAC address. An ARP request is basically just a broadcast that says "Whoever has IP address x.x.x.x, send me your MAC address". We mention this because when comparing hubs to switches to routers you can see where these two different destination addresses come into play. (You'll see how all this ties together in the
How It All Workssection later in this page.)
Hubs Hubs don't look at anything. They serve as a central electrical tie point for all the systems on a network and are basically just repeaters. Any packets received on one port are flooded out all other ports. All systems on the network see all traffic and all share the available bandwidth. As a result, only one computer on the network segment can transmit packets at a time (shared bandwidth). 1
Switches Switches also serve as a central electrical tie point. They don't care about IP addresses. They look at the MAC addresses in packets and build a lookup table that shows which MAC address is plugged into which switch port. This allows them to forward packets MAC-addressed for a specific system to that system only (the virtual direct connection). None of the other systems on the network segment see them. (If it doesn't have the destination MAC address in it's ARP table it floods the packet, either waiting for the destination system to respond so it can add an entry into its ARP table for it, or it lets the default gateway router deal with it.) As a result, multiple computers on the same network segment can transmit at the same time (bandwidth is not shared).
Another advantage of switches is that the virtual direct connection they set up between two systems allows for full-duplex communications between the two systems. Full-duplex operation has the effect of doubling the bandwidth under certain circumstances because the both systems can send and receive packets to each other simultaneously (provided both NICs support full-duplex operation).
There is a disadvantage to switches though. You can't hook a system running a "packet sniffer" to a switch to try and analyze your network's level of bandwidth utilization or capture traffic to/from a specific system because the sniffer system can't see all the traffic. It will only see traffic sent to it and any "broadcast" traffic (such as ARP requests) which is flooded out all switch ports. (Knowing the level of broadcast traffic on your network is helpful however.) You can only sniff traffic to/from other systems when they (and the sniffer system) are connected to hubs. However, Cisco switches have a feature called SPAN that lets you configure a port as a SPAN port to hook a sniffer to. You then specify one or more other ports on the switch which will have their traffic duplicated to the SPAN port. You would specify two ports to monitor the traffic between two systems or all other ports to simulate having your sniffer hooked to a hub. This could slow down a heavily utilized switch though as you would in essence be doubling the amount of traffic across the switch fabric because all unicast traffic is going to two ports instead of one.
Routers Routers do switching too, building a lookup table of the MAC addresses of systems on the network segment that connects to each interface, but they also look at IP addresses. If the destination IP address of a packet isn't on the same network segment as the system that sent the packet, the router looks at a different table (routing table) to see which other interface it needs to send the packet out of to reach the destination network. That's why default gateway devices are routers.
Often times a router will connect to two different types of networks. One interface will connect to an ethernet LAN while another connects to a frame relay WAN link. If the router receives a packet on the LAN interface that needs to be forwarded onto the frame relay link, it will strip off the ethernet frame and re-encapsulate the packet in a frame relay frame before sending it on its way.
Switches and routers aren't the only things that build ARP tables. Computers build them too, but the table entries are temporary (called the "ARP cache"), usually being removed after a couple minutes. On a Windows system, open up a DOS window. Linux systems just do the following at the shell prompt. Ping another system on your network. When the ping is finished (on Linux systems press Ctrl-C to stop the pinging), type in the following command to view the ARP table entry created as a result of the ping:
Given that most broadband Internet connections are only in the 1 Megabit-per-second (Mbps) range, you probably wouldn't notice much of a performance difference between using a hub and a switch on a home network. In this case you could save some money by buying a used 8-port 10 or 100 Mbps hub on places like eBay rather than a new switch. However, on larger business LANs the performance difference could be significant.
Notice one very important point. An ARP is a broadcast packet. As such, only systems on the same LAN segment will see the broadcast and respond. In other words, ARP will only resolve the MAC addresses of destination systems on the same Layer 2 segment (which is comprised of systems interconected by hubs or switches).
How does your system know when to try and get the destination system's MAC address? Easy. It looks at the destination IP address. If the destination IP address isn't on the same subnet (doesn't have the same network portion of the IP address), then it knows sending an ARP request with the destination's IP address won't do any good. So instead, it sends out an ARP request with the IP address of the default gateway. Your system knows that to access any system on a different network (or subnet), it has to send the packet out the default gateway router so it ARPs to get the MAC address of that router's interface. (That's why you enter an IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway address in your system's TCP/IP configuration.)
Let's take a look at a somewhat realistic frame. You're on your PC at work which is connected to an Ethernet LAN and you send your mom an e-mail. Remember, when sending information the encapsulation process starts at the top OSI layer (Application layer) and works it's way down through the transport, network, and link layers. (Received frames go up the OSI layers and get de-encapsulated at each layer.)
- Since e-mail messages are sent using the SMTP protocol, your e-mail message will get wrapped in a TCP segment with port 25 as the destination port.
- Then, since your mom's e-mail address contained the domain name of her ISP, your system has to send out a DNS request to get the IP address of the mail server for that domain name. Once it has that it will use it as the destination IP address as it wraps the TCP segment up in an IP packet.
- Because the source and destination IP addresses are for different networks, your system will send out an ARP request to get the MAC address for the default gateway router's interface. With that it can wrap the IP packet inside an ethernet frame, calculate the checksum value for the FCS (Frame Check Sequence), and pass it down to the hardware layer to be put on the wire.
Note that your system had to do two address resolution queries (DNS and ARP) to get the two destination addresses (IP and MAC). Only after it has both of them can it build the frame.
At some point the packet will likely encounter your proxy server and it will change the source IP address of the packet to the public address of the external interface of the proxy server. The proxy server will use the randomly generated source port number (58631) to keep track of your PC's SMTP "conversation" with the mail server.
As your e-mail packet travels over the Internet the frame type will change to whatever medium (frame relay, ATM, etc.) is encountered along the way (the intermediate hop routers de-encapsulate and re-encapsulate with the proper frame type as necessary because routers can connect to different network mediums). But once the proxy server has changed the private IP address to a public one and sent the frame on its way, the IP addresses in the packet (and any information in the layers above it) never change as it winds its way through the Internet. Only the Layer 2 framing changes.Going back to the OSI model for those studying networking, you can see how the pieces of the above frame relate to the lower layers of the model. It also shows how all the different technologies relate to each other.Note: With point-to-point serial links like a dial-up connection between two modems (PPP Layer 2 protocol) or a leased line between two routers (HDLC Layer 2 protocol) there is no need for Layer 2 addressing. As an analogy, take the old George Carlin line "When there's only two people on an elevator and one of them farts everybody knows who did it". If there's only two devices connected to a link and one of them is sending they both know who needs to be receiving. The packet is still encapsulated in a frame appropriate for the medium, but there is no addressing information in the frame header.
Note that a NIC is both a Layer 1 device (because it has a 10/100-Base-T connector) and a Layer 2 device (because it looks at the MAC addresses of the frames it sees). Same for switches because they have 10/100-Base-T connectors and they look at the MAC address to build their MAC address-to-port lookup table). Routers can have multiple interfaces of varying types (serial, 10/100-Base-T, Token Ring) so it is a Layer 1 device (different connector types), has to appropriately re-frame a packet for each of those network types and apply the appropriate Layer 2 address (so it is also a Layer 2 device) and it looks at the IP addess to see which interface the packet needs to go out of (so it's also a Layer 3 device).
Also note that the Layer 3 Network technologies (IP, IPX, etc.) are totally independent of the Layer 2 Link technologies which is why you can have a TCP/IP network span different network types or run Novell IPX/SPX on an Ethernet or Token Ring network.
There's one important point about Layer 4. Note that it's the server applications that open ports. A common security practice is to run a "port scanner" program on a workstation and point it at a server to see what ports are open on that server (to see which ports the server is listening on). If ports are open that shouldn't be, it's because some application or memory-resident service opened the port and is listening for service requests on it. To close ports you need to find out which application or service has them open and shut them down as well as keep them from starting when the server is booted. As you will see in the Internet Servers page, applications are often started at bootup through inetd.
The above was a simplified coverage of frames and packets. There's more than just addresses in frame (Layer 2), packet (Layer 3), and segment (Layer 4) headers. There are flags, status indicators, sequence numbers, etc. And we didn't show the information in the layers between the Transport layer (TCP ports) and the Application layer (the data). For example, NetBIOS and client/server technologies like SQL would use the "Session" layer above the Transport layer.
Time spent learning the OSI model is an investment that will likely pay off in big time savings when troubleshooting network problems. The layers allow you to narrow down and isolate the possible sources of problems. As a simple example, take a Web server that isn't responding to requests from browsers. If you can ping the server, which uses Layer 3 ICMP packets, you know the network configuration is OK but for some reason the Apache Web server software isn't listening on port 80 (Layer 4). Likewise if two Windows systems running NetBIOS over TCP/IP can't "see" each other in Network Neighborhood but they can ping each other you know the TCP/IP properties are OK and it's likely a Session layer problem. Session layer problems could be something with the Windows Networking configuration (ex: File and Print Sharing isn't enabled or the Server service isn't running - neither of which is needed for TCP/IP at layers 3 and 4 to operate properly).
The Two Parts of Ping
Be careful about your assumptions when using the ping command. It has two parts The ECHO (what you send) and the
ECHO REPLY(what the remote system sends back).
It is easy to assume that if you don't get a response to a ping there is no connectivity between the two systems. This is not necessarily true. The ping ECHOs may very well be reaching the remote system. However, if the remote system isn't configured correctly, you may not receive the
The most common reason for this is that the remote system doesn't have a route in it's routing table to the network your system (the ECHO sending system) is on. As a result, the remote system is trying to reply but either it doesn't know where to send the replies, or it is sending them but out of the wrong interface (which can happen if the replying system has multiple NICs, but remember that your system sees a connected modem as the ppp0 interface, essentially another NIC).
Causes for this are incorrect values for the default gateway, subnet mask, or IP address on the remote system (i.e. an incorrect Layer 3 configuration). Also consider the fact that the incorrect values could be on the ECHO sending system. In this case, while there may be connectivity between the two systems, the ECHOs are never being sent or are being sent out of the wrong interface. Although Layer 3 may be configured incorrectly, there is still may be traffic coming from the system. Look at the port indicators on your hub or switch (for ethernet interfaces) when you ping to check for the existence of Layer 1 signals indicating ping traffic. Likewise, the indicators on an external modem can be used to see if ping attempts are being sent or received at the lower layers with dial-up connections.
If you're trying to ping a system on a remote network it's also possible that a router or firewall somewhere between the two networks is blocking one or both of the ping components or the router/firewall itself has an incomplete routing table.
Don't get hung up on the word "protocol" that you see mentioned a lot in networking. It's just a technical term for "a set of rules or commands". The PPP protocol dictates that if you're going to put a PPP frame on the wire the frame has to be comprised of these fields in this order with these lengths and each field has to contain this information. The SMTP protocol dictates that if you're going use the SMTP service on a mail server to send a mail message you have to use these commands with these parameters in this order to set up the connection, specify the sender, specify the recipient, etc. Defining a protocol is just a means of establishing a standard. If everyone builds their hardware or writes their software to follow the same rules then all the pieces work with each other.
Debian comes with two great "sniffer" packages that allow you to look at individual packets. tcpdump is a console program that will display packet traffic in a real-time manner, with the packets scrolling up the screen as they are received and displayed. Ethereal is a sophisticated GUI protocol analyzer that breaks the frames down into their individual OSI layers and displays the data contained in each of the frame, packet, and segment fields. I use a dual-boot notebook at work with Fluke's expensive (read 'thousands of dollars') "Protocol Expert" sniffer installed on the Windows 2000 partition and Ethereal installed on the Debian partition and the differences in the information provided by both is very small indeed.
Where to learn more - The best of our bookshelves:
If you're interested in really learning how networks work and the TCP/IP protocol, Cisco's First Year Companion Guide is THE book for you. It's one of my all-time favorite networking books. It really makes the light bulbs come on. It's actually the first-year text book for the Cisco Networking Academy program but the first half of the book (first semester of the program which is Chapters 1 through 15 - in the book) deals entirely with the "basics" of networking. It has one of the most thorough presentations of the OSI model I have ever seen in any book, and understanding the functions of the various layers in the OSI model is understanding how networks work. TCP/IP, address classes, encapsulation, the functions of switches and routers, and how to subnet a network are all covered. They even get into security, network management, and home networking later in the book (along with some basics on router programming so you can see how that's accomplished). A strong foundation in the OSI model is essential if you're going to be good at network troubleshooting and this book will get you there. The book gets some bad reviews on Amazon due to some typos and misplaced diagrams. But the fact that you can easily identify a typo or misplaced diagram indicates you understand the material. (Be sure to get the newer 2nd Edition which fixes many of these mistakes.)
And as long as we're on the subject of cool Debian packages and verifying connectivity, one package that's probably already on your system as part of the default installation is the mtr utility. It's like the traceroute command, only better. If your Debian system has Internet connectivity and you have the correct DNS server settings in the resolv.conf file, type in the following at the shell prompt:
It's a great tool for real-time monitoring the effects of any changes you make to server, proxy, firewall, router, etc. configurations. Press Ctrl-C to quit the program.
Sometimes you'll make a change and then you don't get the results you expected. It may be because systems cache certain "reachability" information. We said earlier that arp maps IP addresses to MAC addresses (layer 2). Systems also maintain routing tables which relate an interface to the path needed to get to a given IP address (layer 3). Often times you will need to clear these caches to get the results you expect.
arp arp -a Clear
arp -d View
route route print Clear
route -f View
Note that there are no Linux versions of the DNS commands. Windows caches a lot more things to try and improve its performance so if you're using a Windows system to test DNS changes be sure to clear that cache also. Also note that you can't flush all entries from the arp cache or routing table with Linux. It has to be done one entry at a time.
What A Subnet Mask Really Does
So now that you know about ARP and MAC addresses lets go back to subnet masks for a minute. We know that a subnet mask identifies the network portion of an IP address, and that you have to enter a subnet mask on every system on an internal network and it has to be the same on all those systems. But how does a system make use of it? It has something to do with the default gateway address you also enter on most systems.
When a system wants to send a packet to another system, it takes the IP address of the destination system and compares it to the subnet mask. If the network portion of the address is the same it knows the destination system is on the same network (segment) it is. So it sends out an ARP request which in effect says "System with IP address x.x.x.x send me your MAC address." When it gets the reply it puts the destination system's MAC address in the frame header and puts it on the wire.
If the system compares the destination IP address to the subnet mask and finds that the destination system is on a different network it still sends out an ARP request, but this time the ARP request contains the IP address you entered for a default gateway (typically a router). When the router responds to the sending system, the sending system puts the routers MAC address in the frame header (Layer 2) and sends the packet to it and it lets the router worry about the Layer 3 stuff. As a result, you can see that the only Layer 3 function performed by end systems is to find out if a destination system is on the same network (subnet) or not using the subnet mask (and getting the end system's IP address in the first place). If it's not, it sends it to the default gateway and lets it worry about getting the packet to the different network. (But how does the sending system get the destination system's IP address in the first place? That's why you also have to enter DNS server addresses on every system. You'll see how they use these addresses on the DNS Services page.)
Given all of the above you can figure out what problems you'll have if you have an incorrect subnet mask on a system. Lets use the Class B network 172.18.0.0 as an example. Recall that the correct subnet mask for a Class B network is 255.255.0.0 so all systems on the same network segment have addresses that start with '172.18'.
If a system on this network has an IP address of 172.18.5.10 and an incorrect subnet mask of 255.0.0.0 it'll think that any system where the first octet is 172 is on the same segment it is. So while a packet destined for the system 172.16.2.12 is on a different segment, the system with the incorrect mask will think it's on the same segment and will never try to use the default gateway. It'll just sit there and ARP its brains out trying to get a response from 172.16.2.12 with its MAC address. Eventually it'll error out and say that the system is unreachable.
Going the other way, if the Class B system (172.18.5.10) has a Class C mask of 255.255.255.0, it'll think that only systems with addresses that start with '172.18.5' are on its local segment. So if it has a packet destined for 172.18.3.33 (which is on the same segment) it'll think it's on a different segment and send an ARP request with the IP address of the default gateway router and send the packet to it, even though it should have just sent an ARP request using the IP address of the destination system itself. In this instance, the router may be smart enough to just send the packet back onto the same segment to the destination system or it may just drop it. It depends on how the router configured. And if the router is smart enough you may not notice there's a problem. But having a "narrower" subnet mask than you should would place an undue load on your gateway router and unnecessary traffic on your network.
At The Office
The wide range of addresses available with the 172.x.x.x space allows you to simplify things in larger networks. You pick one and only one value for the first 'x' (the second octet) from the available range of 16 through 31, but you can use different values for the third octet to try and keep track of things.
For example, lets say you decide to use 172.18.x.x for your network. You could manually assign all of your servers addresses in the 172.18.1.x range. All of your printers could be manually assigned addresses in the 172.18.2.x range, and you could set up a DHCP server on your internal network to automatically assign addresses in the 172.18.3.x and 172.18.4.x ranges to your workstation computers. (In DHCP lingo, the address spaces you set up for the DHCP server to hand out individual addresses from are called "scopes" and the addresses are "leased" to workstations.)
Even though the systems in your network would have a value for the third octet ranging from 1 to 4 in this example, because you'd only be using a Class B subnet mask (255.255.0.0), they would all still be on the same network. You're still using two octets to identify individual computers instead of just one octet as with a Class C address. It's just that you're using the third octet as a means of logically grouping or identifying devices.Note: Using different numbers in the "computer" portion of address as in the previous example is not the same as the "subnetting" we referred to when discussing the 10.x.x.x network address space earlier. While a subnetted Class B network would likely have different values for the third octet on each subnet, simply assigning certain a certain group of computers the same value for the third octet in a Class B address range does not create a subnet. Subnetting is done with routers to reduce the size of broadcast domains which has the effect of increasing available LAN bandwidth. (Subnetting is covered in more detail in the Subnetting section on this page.)If you want to allow your internal private network to access the Internet you can set up a broadband connection to the Internet. This isn't much different than getting cable or DSL access at home. You would then set up a proxy/NAT server to allow everyone on the internal network (with their non-routable IP addresses) to share this broadband Internet connection. Most ISPs require businesses to get a "business account". However, most business accounts have special features that make them preferable.
For one, check to see if the business-account broadband connection is symmetrical (i.e. the speed of the connection is the same in both directions). Home accounts have an asymmetrical connection where the download speed is much faster than the upload speed. The other important feature is that most business accounts include several static public IP addresses that you are assigned. These two features are necessary if you want to set up your own Web and/or e-mail servers (as you will see on the
Internet Serverspage). The cable or DSL interfaces for most home accounts are dynamically assigned temporary public IP address. (A comparison of DSL and cable services is given later on this page.)
Keep in mind though, that security becomes a major issue when you start connecting business networks to the Internet. Ideally you'd want to put any Web and/or e-mail servers in a "DMZ" with one firewall between them and the Internet. You'd then put a second firewall between the DMZ and your internal network to further restrict traffic. A DMZ is also referred to as "screened subnet". It's also a good idea to put an IDS (Intrusion Detection System) in your DMZ.
We get more into how to set up a DMZ using Linux systems for the outside and inside firewalls on the Firewall page. We also show you how to set up and test a Snort IDS system on the Security page.
Check out our new Network Monitoring page !
Setting up a network at home is easy. Hardware-wise you just need to install some 100 mega-bit PCI NICs (Network Interface Cards) in the PCs, buy an 8-port 100 mega-bit switch, and the RJ-45 Cat 5 UTP cables to connect the PC NICs to the switch. (Get an 8-port instead of a 4-port switch. They don't cost that much more and it's always better to have too many network connections than not enough.) For home networks a hub would work just as well as a switch, but not too many companies make hubs anymore because switches have dropped in price so much. Some computers come with NICs integrated into the motherboard. Check the back of your computer for an RJ-45 jack. It looks like a telephone jack but has 8 contacts instead of the 4 contacts with telephone jacks.
If some of your systems are scattered or you don't want to run cables to them you could always add a wireless NAP (Network Access Point - which is like a wireless hub that would plug into a port on your switch) to your network but this would also require getting wireless NICs for those PCs. They also make PCMCIA versions of NICs so you can connect your notebook into your home network. Once you've got the hardware in place, you just configure the network settings in the PC software. We'll cover the Debian network configuration below. On Windows PCs, go to
Start/Settings/Control Panels/Networkingand get into the TCP/IP properties for the NIC where you can enter an IP address for the PC, a subnet mask, and possibly a default gateway (if you have a broadband Internet connection). When you enter an IP address into the TCP/IP properties like this it's called a "static" IP address because it won't change unless you change it.
The family in the diagram below chose a Class C private address range of 192.168.5.x
When you set the TCP/IP properties you are assigning the private addresses to the NICs inside the computers. You can have a NIC with a private address assigned to it on your home network and still use a dial-up modem connected to the same system to get on the Internet. Your modem gets a different (public routable) IP address from your ISP every time you dial in and retains it as long as you're connected.
The names above are not just identifying family members. They are the names given to the systems (hostnames). Since a home network is too small for a DNS server, you can set up name resolution using a simple hosts file. A hosts file is just a simple text file you can edit using any text editor (like NotePad on Windows systems). Note that this file does not have an extension. On most Linux and UNIX systems the path to open the file is:
On Windows systems the paths are typically:
95 / 98: C:\Windows\hosts NT / 2000: C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Once you open the file in a text editor, add the address/hostname pairs for the systems on your network. For the above home network the hosts file would look like this:
(That's a Tab character between the address and hostname.) Each system that would want to do name resolution would need to have this hosts file but once you create one you can just copy it to other systems. Then instead of entering the command:
you could just enter:
If Grandpa had a Debian system running the Apache Web server software, Junior could open up a Web browser on his system and enter the following URL to see Grandpa's Web pages:
The downside of hosts files is that you have to have one on every system on your network and if a change needs to be made it needs to be made to all of the files manually by editing them with a text editor. As an alternative to setting up a hosts file on all the computers you could set up a DNS server for your LAN. This DNS server would also have the ability to resolve Internet host/domain names if you have a broadband connection to the Internet. Actually, you don't need a separate server. You can just run the DNS service on your existing Debian system. We show you how it all works, and how easy it is to set up, on the DNS page.
If you have cable or DSL service at home, you can share this broadband connection with all of the computers on your home network. Cable or DSL providers typically give you the option of having an external cable or DSL modem, which then connects to your computer's NIC via a Cat 5 LAN type cable or connects to your computer's USB port, or an internal model that gets installed in one of your computer's slots. Stay away from anything USB and get the external model that plugs into a NIC. That way, instead of plugging the cable into your computer's NIC you can plug it into a device known as a cable/DSL router. This cable/DSL router would then plug into the hub or switch that you use to connect all of your computers together. (Some cable/DSL routers have a built in 4-port hub.) A cable/DSL router is basically just a "proxy-server-in-a-box".In the above diagram, the public IP address dynamically assigned by your ISP is on the router's "external interface" (connection), and you assign a static private IP address to the "internal interface". Note that the "default gateway" setting on all of your home network PCs is this same static private address you assigned to the internal interface of the router.The "modem" you get from your cable or DSL provider is actually just a device called a "bridge". It bridges traffic from one type of network (cable or telephone) to another (ethernet-based LAN) without doing any packet inspection, filtering, or manipulation. It is essentially a media converter.Note that a cable/DSL router is not the same as the cable or DSL "modem" or "interface" that you get from your cable company or ISP. The router allows you to take the incoming Internet connection, which normally goes to a single computer, and plug it into a hub or switch so that the Inernet connection can be shared by your entire internal network. Some can even be set up to act as DHCP servers to hand out private IP addresses to your home PCs each time you turn them on. If you don't want to assign static addresses to the PCs on your home network you just set them up to use a DHCP server and then enable the DHCP function on the cable/DSL router.Your cable or DSL service provider assigns you a single public (routable) IP address. If you don't have a cable/DSL router, and because of the bridging action of the modem they give you, it is your PC which receives this public, routable IP address. As a result, only one PC can access the Internet. A cable/DSL router performs the NAT function explained earlier which allows this single public address (which is assigned to the router rather than a single PC) to be shared by multiple systems on your LAN.
Note in the above diagram that if you use a commercial cable/DSL router you may need one of two things (it depends on the model you buy). The cable that connects the router to your hub or switch may have to be a Cat 5 "crossover" cable, or you may have to use a regular Cat 5 LAN cable and plug it into the "uplink" port found on most hubs/switches. If you try using a regular cable but the "link" indicator on your hub/switch don't light up for that connection, you'll likely have to do either of the above. (If your hub or switch doesn't have an uplink port, you'll have no choice but to get an uplink cable.) None of this applies if you are using a Linux system as a proxy server.
IMPORTANT: Because Windows enables file and print sharing by default, having a publically routable IP address assigned to your Windows PC is a security risk. The file and print sharing functions open ports on your system and the public address makes your system accessible from anywhere on the Internet. So even if you don't need to share your broadband Internet connection with other PCs (i.e. the cable or DSL modem now plugs directly into your PC), you should either disable file and print sharing or have some kind of NAT or firewall system (cable/DSL router or Linux system) between your PC and the modem to protect your PC. (You could disable these sharing functions but this would negate the point of having a home network in the first place - to share files, printers, etc.)
The default gateway setting on a PC is kind of a "last resort" setting. (Cisco routers actually refer to the default gateway setting as the "gateway of last resort".) It basically tells the computer that if it wants to contact another computer, and it can't find that other computer on the local network (which Internet servers won't be), it should send the traffic for this other computer to the address of the default gateway. The default gateway device is typcially a router, so it will know what to do with any traffic that's destined for a distant network (which is why they call it a "gateway"). So in addition to doing address translation, a commerical "proxy-server-in-a-box" or Linux proxy server is also a router which acts as a gateway.
Cable/DSL routers are available from manufacturers such as Linksys and DLink for under $100. Here's an example list using mostly Linksys equipment of what you'd need to set up a home network where you can share a broadband Internet connection. (You may want to spend a little more and get 3Com 3C905 NICs because they have wide driver support.):
- An 8-port 10/100-mb Switch * - approx $40
- A Cable/DSL Router for Internet access sharing * - approx $50
- One 100-mb NIC for each computer - (get used 3Com 3C905C NICs on eBay)
- One PCMCIA NIC for each notebook - approx $40 ea
- One Cat 5 LAN cable for each computer/notebook (variable lengths) - approx $15 ea
* You could replace the switch and router with an
integrated model but that limits your options for
cable runs, experimenting, and troubleshooting.
For adding wireless nodes:
So to network (wired) four desktop PCs at home without a broadband Internet connection you're looking at approximately $175 (switch, NICs, and cables). Around $250 (additional cable and router) if you do have a broadband connection to share. This can always be added on as a separate piece later if you don't have a broadband connection now.
Alternative: Instead of buying a commerical cable/DSL router product you could just use a Linux box to act like one. Since a cable/DSL router is nothing but a proxy-server-in-a-box, you could set up a Linux system to be a proxy server and it's easy to do. (You'll see how easy on the Proxy/NAT page.) The advantage of using a Linux system as your cable/DSL router is that you can customize the firewalling capabilities of the router using something called IPTABLES. This not only includes customizing what traffic you allow into your network, but also allows you to restrict which systems on your network can access certain services or sites on the Internet. (You'll see how to do this on the Firewall page.)
Another advantage of using a Linux server over a commercial cable/DSL router is that you could also use it as your own home Web and e-mail server using the dyndns.org dynamic DNS service. We cover this on the
DNS Servicespage. And since you've got a Web server running, you can easily add a Web cam to it so you can keep an eye on your home from anywhere that has a Web browser. We show you how to add that on the Web Cam Serverpage.
The concept of sharing an Internet connection is the same no matter what type of Internet connection you have. With a Linux system acting as a proxy server or firewall, you can just as easily share a modem connection.
This is essentially the same type of configuration you have if you use the "Internet Connection Sharing" option found on Windows systems. See the Modems page for information on getting a modem to work on your Debian system. Then see the Proxy/NAT page for a script that you can use to get your Debian system to act as a proxy server.
One important point to keep in mind when setting up a gateway type of system (which includes proxy servers and firewall systems) is that the "internal" interface should NOT have a Default Gateway entry. Leave it blank. The Default Gateway entry for the "external" interface will either be automatically assigned when you connect to your ISP or should otherwise be available from them.
So the proxy server that sits between your private network and the Interent actually has (or should have) three functions. A gateway (router), an address translator, and a firewall. The firewalling capabilities of the commercial cable/DSL routers are limited at best and typically not upgradable if a new sort of attack is developed. We'll show you how to set your Debian system up to protect your network on the Firewall page.Note: When we use IP addresses in our examples on these guide pages, they will be in the private IP address ranges even if it's an example where a public address would normally be needed (such as with an Internet-connected interface). We use addresses like this so we're not using IP addresses that have been legally licensed to companies or ISPs.If you also want your Debian system to act as a DHCP server handing out addresses to the PCs on your home network when they boot up, you can easily accomplish this. However, we won't cover it here. Based on the information we've given so far on searching for and installing packages, this would be a good one for you to try on your own. If you do set it up, be sure to set the PCs on your network to use a DHCP server. In Windows, this is modifying the TCP/IP properties for the LAN interface to "Obtain an IP address automatically".
If you are going to connect to your ISP's cable or DSL modem to the "external" interface (NIC) on your Debian system, you'll likely need to run some sort of DHCP client software on the system so that it can pull the ISP-assigned address and apply it to the external NIC. This is because it's not the cable or DSL modem that gets assigned an IP address. A cable or DSL modem merely acts as a bridge. Whatever device is connected to the customer side of the modem (PC, router, etc.) is what actually gets assigned an IP address. We likewise won't cover installing a bootp or DHCP client here. See the Web HOWTO documents for cable or DSL modems. (The reason that no DHCP client software is necessary if you're using a dial-up modem connection is because the dynamic addressing is handled by the PPP protocol.) See the Web HOWTO documents for cable or DSL modems.
A No-Network Network
On the Proxy/NAT and Firewall pages we'll show you how to configure your Debian system so you can share your broadband connection with all of the computers on a network, including a home network. However, you don't need a formal network or even a broadband connection if you want to try setting up the proxy and firewall functions demonstrated on these pages.
For those that don't have a home network or access to a business network you can still try the examples we present on these pages by setting up a two-system network (your Debian system and a Windows PC for example). All it requires you to do is to have a NIC installed and configured in each computer, and to purchase a special cable called a "
Cat 5 cross-over" cable. (As mentioned above, your computers may have network cards inegrated into the motherboard already. Check the back of the systems for an RJ-45 jack.) If one of the computers you use is a notebook, and it doesn't have an integrated NIC, you'll need to get a 100 mbPCMCIA card. You can get those used for about $20 on eBay or similar sites.
A cross-over cable flips the transmit and receive pairs of the cable so they are on different pins on the connectors on each end. This allows you to connect the two systems in a back-to-back fashion so that you don't need an ethernet hub or switch. Note that you would have to have had the NIC installed in the system and installed the appropriate NIC driver module during the Debian installation to be able to use the NIC.
The back-to-back connection between the two systems represents the internal LAN where each system would need a unique IP address. You would then hook you modem up to the Debian system to set up the Internet connection (as outlined on the Modems page). And just as shown in the above diagram, the IP address of the NIC on the Debian system would be the default gateway entry on the Windows system. This is because the Debian system will be acting as the gateway for this two-system network.
This configuration will also work if you want to play around with the servers we set up on the
How It All Works
So you've got IP addresses and MAC addresses and subnet masks and default gateways and DNS and ARP and hardware and software. How do all these pieces fit together? Consider the network below.
The user of the Windows PC in the Sales department fires up their Web browser so that they can access the company's internal intranet Web servers. There's a corporate intranet Web server with company-wide information and one right in the user's department on the same network segment with information for Sales staff.
Remember that each system has two addresses (logical and physical) and in order for one system to communicate with another, it needs to include both of these addresses when it puts a packet together to send to the destination system.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
When people see that we use and recommend the name GNU/Linux for a system that many others call just “Linux”, they ask many questions. Here are common questions, and our answers.
- Why do you call it GNU/Linux and not Linux?
- Most operating system distributions based on Linux as kernel are basically modified versions of the GNU operating system. We began developing GNU in 1984, years before Linus Torvalds started to write his kernel. Our goal was to develop a complete free operating system. Of course, we did not develop all the parts ourselves—but we led the way. We developed most of the central components, forming the largest single contribution to the whole system. The basic vision was ours too.
In fairness, we ought to get at least equal mention.
- Why is the name important?
- Although the developers of Linux, the kernel, are contributing to the free software community, many of them do not care about freedom. People who think the whole system is Linux tend to get confused and assign to those developers a role in the history of our community which they did not actually play. Then they give inordinate weight to those developers' views.
Calling the system GNU/Linux recognizes the role that our idealism played in building our community, and helps the public recognize the practical importance of these ideals.
- How did it come about that most people call the system “Linux”?
- Calling the system “Linux” is a confusion that has spread faster than the corrective information.
The people who combined Linux with the GNU system were not aware that that's what their activity amounted to. They focused their attention on the piece that was Linux and did not realize that more of the combination was GNU. They started calling it “Linux” even though that name did not fit what they had. It took a few years for us to realize what a problem this was and ask people to correct the practice. By that time, the confusion had a big head start.
Most of the people who call the system “Linux” have never heard why that's not the right thing. They saw others using that name and assume it must be right. The name “Linux” also spreads a false picture of the system's origin, because people tend to suppose that the system's history was such as to fit that name. For instance, they often believe its development was started by Linus Torvalds in 1991. This false picture tends to reinforce the idea that the system should be called “Linux”.
Many of the questions in this file represent people's attempts to justify the name they are accustomed to using.
- Should we always say “GNU/Linux” instead of “Linux”?
- Not always—only when you're talking about the whole system. When you're referring specifically to the kernel, you should call it “Linux”, the name its developer chose.
When people call the whole system “Linux”, as a consequence they call the whole system by the same name as the kernel. This causes many kinds of confusion, because only experts can tell whether a statement is about the kernel or the whole system. By calling the whole system “GNU/Linux”, and calling the kernel “Linux”, you avoid the ambiguity.
- Would Linux have achieved the same success if there had been no GNU?
- In that alternative world, there would be nothing today like the GNU/Linux system, and probably no free operating system at all. No one attempted to develop a free operating system in the 1980s except the GNU Project and (later) Berkeley CSRG, which had been specifically asked by the GNU Project to start freeing its code.
Linus Torvalds was partly influenced by a speech about GNU in Finland in 1990. It's possible that even without this influence he might have written a Unix-like kernel, but it probably would not have been free software. Linux became free in 1992 when Linus rereleased it under the GNU GPL. (See the release notes for version 0.12.)
Even if Torvalds had released Linux under some other free software license, a free kernel alone would not have made much difference to the world. The significance of Linux came from fitting into a larger framework, a complete free operating system: GNU/Linux.
- Wouldn't it be better for the community if you did not divide people with this request?
- When we ask people to say “GNU/Linux”, we are not dividing people. We are asking them to give the GNU Project credit for the GNU operating system. This does not criticize anyone or push anyone away.
However, there are people who do not like our saying this. Sometimes those people push us away in response. On occasion they are so rude that one wonders if they are intentionally trying to intimidate us into silence. It doesn't silence us, but it does tend to divide the community, so we hope you can convince them to stop.
However, this is only a secondary cause of division in our community. The largest division in the community is between people who appreciate free software as a social and ethical issue and consider proprietary software a social problem (supporters of the free software movement), and those who cite only practical benefits and present free software only as an efficient development model (the open source movement).
This disagreement is not just a matter of names—it is a matter of differing basic values. It is essential for the community to see and think about this disagreement. The names “free software” and “open source” are the banners of the two positions. See Why Free Software Is Better Than Open Source.
The disagreement over values partially aligns with the amount of attention people pay to the GNU Project's role in our community. People who value freedom are more likely to call the system “GNU/Linux”, and people who learn that the system is “GNU/Linux” are more likely to pay attention to our philosophical arguments for freedom and community (which is why the choice of name for the system makes a real difference for society). However, the disagreement would probably exist even if everyone knew the system's real origin and its proper name, because the issue is a real one. It can only go away if we who value freedom either persuade everyone (which won't be easy) or are defeated entirely (let's hope not).
- Doesn't the GNU project support an individual's free speech rights to call the system by any name that individual chooses?
- Yes, indeed, we believe you have a free speech right to call the operating system by any name you wish. We ask that people call it GNU/Linux as a matter of doing justice to the GNU project, to promote the values of freedom that GNU stands for, and to inform others that those values of freedom brought the system into existence.
- Since everyone knows GNU's role in developing the system, doesn't the “GNU/” in the name go without saying?
- Experience shows that the system's users, and the computer-using public in general, often know nothing about the GNU system. Most articles about the system do not mention the name “GNU”, or the ideals that GNU stands for. GNU Users Who Have Never Heard of GNU explains further.
The people who say this are probably geeks thinking of the geeks they know. Geeks often do know about GNU, but many have a completely wrong idea of what GNU is. For instance, many think it is a collection of “tools”, or a project to develop tools.
The wording of this question, which is typical, illustrates another common misconception. To speak of “GNU's role” in developing something assumes that GNU is a group of people. GNU is an operating system. It would make sense to talk about the GNU Project's role in this or some other activity, but not that of GNU.
- Isn't shortening “GNU/Linux” to “Linux” just like shortening “Microsoft Windows” to “Windows”?
- It's useful to shorten a frequently-used name, but not if the abbreviation is misleading.
Most everyone in developed countries really does know that the “Windows” system is made by Microsoft, so shortening “Microsoft Windows” to “Windows” does not mislead anyone as to that system's nature and origin. Shortening “GNU/Linux” to “Linux” does give the wrong idea of where the system comes from.
The question is itself misleading because GNU and Microsoft are not the same kind of thing. Microsoft is a company; GNU is an operating system.
- Isn't GNU a collection of programming tools that were included in Linux?
- People who think that Linux is an entire operating system, if they hear about GNU at all, often get a wrong idea of what GNU is. They may think that GNU is the name of a collection of programs—often they say “programming tools”, since some of our programming tools became popular on their own. The idea that “GNU” is the name of an operating system is hard to fit into a conceptual framework in which that operating system is labeled “Linux”.
The GNU Project was named after the GNU operating system—it's the project to develop the GNU system. (See the 1983 initial announcement.)
We developed programs such as GCC, GNU Emacs, GAS, GLIBC, BASH, etc., because we needed them for the GNU operating system. GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection is the compiler that we wrote for the GNU operating system. We, the many people working on the GNU Project, developed Ghostscript, GNUCash, GNU Chess and GNOME for the GNU system too.
- What is the difference between an operating system and a kernel?
- An operating system, as we use the term, means a collection of programs that are sufficient to use the computer to do a wide variety of jobs. A general purpose operating system, to be complete, ought to handle all the jobs that many users may want to do.
The kernel is one of the programs in an operating system—the program that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that are running. The kernel also takes care of starting and stopping other programs.
To confuse matters, some people use the term “operating system” to mean “kernel”. Both uses of the term go back many years. The use of “operating system” to mean “kernel” is found in a number of textbooks on system design, going back to the 80s. At the same time, in the 80s, the “Unix operating system” was understood to include all the system programs, and Berkeley's version of Unix included even games. Since we intended GNU to be a Unix-like operating system, we use the term “operating system” in the same way.
Most of the time when people speak of the “Linux operating system” they are using “operating system” in the same sense we use: they mean the whole collection of programs. If that's what you are referring to, please call it “GNU/Linux”. If you mean just the kernel, then “Linux” is the right name for it, but please say “kernel” also to avoid ambiguity about which body of software you mean.
If you prefer to use some other term such as “system distribution” for the entire collection of programs, instead of “operating system”, that's fine. Then you would talk about GNU/Linux system distributions.
- We're calling the whole system after the kernel, Linux. Isn't it normal to name an operating system after a kernel?
- That practice seems to be very rare—we can't find any examples other than the misuse of the name “Linux”. Normally an operating system is developed as a single unified project, and the developers choose a name for the system as a whole. The kernel usually does not have a name of its own—instead, people say “the kernel of such-and-such” or “the such-and-such kernel”.
Because those two constructions are used synonymously, the expression “the Linux kernel” can easily be misunderstood as meaning “the kernel of Linux” and implying that Linux must be more than a kernel. You can avoid the possibility of this misunderstanding by saying or writing “the kernel, Linux” or “Linux, the kernel.”
- The problem with “GNU/Linux” is that it is too long. How about recommending a shorter name?
- For a while we tried the name “LiGNUx”, which combines the words “GNU” and “Linux”. The reaction was very bad. People accept “GNU/Linux” much better.
The shortest legitimate name for this system is “GNU”, but we call it “GNU/Linux” for the reasons given below.
- Since Linux is a secondary contribution, would it be false to the facts to call the system simply “GNU”?
- It would not be false to the facts, but it is not the best thing to do. Here are the reasons we call that system version “GNU/Linux” rather than just “GNU”:
- It's not exactly GNU—it has a different kernel (that is, Linux). Distinguishing GNU/Linux from GNU is useful.
- It would be ungentlemanly to ask people to stop giving any credit to Linus Torvalds. He did write an important component of the system. We want to get credit for launching and sustaining the system's development, but this doesn't mean we should treat Linus the same way those who call the system “Linux” treat us. We strongly disagree with his political views, but we deal with that disagreement honorably and openly, rather than by trying to cut him out of the credit for his contribution to the system.
- Since many people know of the system as “Linux”, if we say “GNU” they may simply not recognize we're talking about the same system. If we say “GNU/Linux”, they can make a connection to what they have heard about.
- I would have to pay a fee if I use “Linux” in the name of a product, and that would also apply if I say “GNU/Linux”. Is it wrong if I use “GNU” without “Linux”, to save the fee?
- There's nothing wrong in calling the system “GNU”; basically, that's what it is. It is nice to give Linus Torvalds a share of the credit as well, but you have no obligation to pay for the privilege of doing so.
So if you want to refer to the system simply as “GNU”, to avoid paying the fee for calling it “Linux”, we won't criticize you.
- Many other projects contributed to the system as it is today; it includes TeX, X11, Apache, Perl, and many more programs. Don't your arguments imply we have to give them credit too? (But that would lead to a name so long it is absurd.)
- What we say is that you ought to give the system's principal developer a share of the credit. The principal developer is the GNU Project, and the system is basically GNU.
If you feel even more strongly about giving credit where it is due, you might feel that some secondary contributors also deserve credit in the system's name. If so, far be it from us to argue against it. If you feel that X11 deserves credit in the system's name, and you want to call the system GNU/X11/Linux, please do. If you feel that Perl simply cries out for mention, and you want to write GNU/Linux/Perl, go ahead.
Since a long name such as GNU/X11/Apache/Linux/TeX/Perl/Python/FreeCiv becomes absurd, at some point you will have to set a threshold and omit the names of the many other secondary contributions. There is no one obvious right place to set the threshold, so wherever you set it, we won't argue against it.
Different threshold levels would lead to different choices of name for the system. But one name that cannot result from concerns of fairness and giving credit, not for any possible threshold level, is “Linux”. It can't be fair to give all the credit to one secondary contribution (Linux) while omitting the principal contribution (GNU).
- Many other projects contributed to the system as it is today, but they don't insist on calling it XYZ/Linux. Why should we treat GNU specially?
- Thousands of projects have developed programs commonly included in today's GNU/Linux systems. They all deserve credit for their contributions, but they aren't the principal developers of the system as a whole, so they don't ask to be credited as such.
GNU is different because it is more than just a contributed program, more than just a collection of contributed programs. GNU is the framework on which the system was made.
- Many companies contributed to the system as it is today; doesn't that mean we ought to call it GNU/Redhat/Novell/Linux?
GNU is not comparable to Red Hat or Novell; it is not a company, or an organization, or even an activity. GNU is an operating system. (When we speak of the GNU Project, that refers to the project to develop the GNU system.) The GNU/Linux system is based on GNU, and that's why GNU ought to appear in its name.
Much of those companies' contribution to the GNU/Linux system lies in the code they have contributed to various GNU packages including GCC and GNOME. Saying GNU/Linux gives credit to those companies along with all the rest of the GNU developers.
- Why do you write “GNU/Linux” instead of “GNU Linux”?
- Following the rules of English, in the construction “GNU Linux” the word “GNU” modifies “Linux”. This can mean either “GNU's version of Linux” or “Linux, which is a GNU package.” Neither of those meanings fits the situation at hand.
Linux is not a GNU package; that is, it wasn't developed under the GNU Project's aegis or contributed specifically to the GNU Project. Linus Torvalds wrote Linux independently, as his own project. So the “Linux, which is a GNU package” meaning is not right.
We're not talking about a distinct GNU version of Linux, the kernel. The GNU Project does not have a separate version of Linux. GNU/Linux systems don't use a different version of Linux; the main use of Linux is in these systems, and the standard version of Linux is developed for them. So “GNU's version of Linux” is not right either.
We're talking about a version of GNU, the operating system, distinguished by having Linux as the kernel. A slash fits the situation because it means “combination.” (Think of “Input/Output”.) This system is the combination of GNU and Linux; hence, “GNU/Linux”.
There are other ways to express “combination”. If you think that a plus-sign is clearer, please use that. In French, a dash is clear: “GNU-Linux”. In Spanish, we sometimes say “GNU con Linux”.
- Why “GNU/Linux” rather than “Linux/GNU”?
- It is right and proper to mention the principal contribution first. The GNU contribution to the system is not only bigger than Linux and prior to Linux, we actually started the whole activity.
However, if you prefer to call the system “Linux/GNU”, that is a lot better than what people usually do, which is to omit GNU entirely and make it seem that the whole system is Linux.
- My distro is called “Foobar Linux”; doesn't that show it's really Linux?
It means that the people who make the “Foobar Linux” distro are repeating the common mistake.
- My distro's official name is “Foobar Linux”; isn't it wrong to call the distro anything but “Linux”?
If it's allowed for them to change “GNU” to “Foobar Linux”, it's allowed for you to change it back and call the distro “Foobar GNU/Linux”. It can't be more wrong to correct the mistake than it was to make the mistake.
- Wouldn't it be more effective to ask companies such as Mandrake, Red Hat and IBM to call their distributions “GNU/Linux” rather than asking individuals?
- It isn't a choice of one or the other—we ask companies and organizations and individuals to help spread the word. In fact, we have asked all three of those companies. Mandrake uses the term “GNU/Linux” some of the time, but IBM and Red Hat were unwilling to help. One executive said, “This is a pure commercial decision; we expect to make more money calling it `Linux'.” In other words, that company did not care what was right.
We can't make them change, but we're not the sort to give up just because the road isn't easy. You may not have as much influence at your disposal as IBM or Red Hat, but you can still help. Together we can change the situation to the point where companies will make more profit calling it “GNU/Linux”.
- Wouldn't it be better to reserve the name “GNU/Linux” for distributions that are purely free software? After all, that is the ideal of GNU.
- The widespread practice of adding non-free software to the GNU/Linux system is a major problem for our community. It teaches the users that non-free software is ok, and that using it is part of the spirit of “Linux”. Many “Linux” User Groups make it part of their mission to help users use non-free add-ons, and may even invite salesmen to come and make sales pitches for them. They adopt goals such as “helping the users” of GNU/Linux (including helping them use non-free applications and drivers), or making the system more popular even at the cost of freedom.
The question is how to try to change this.
Given that most of the community which uses GNU with Linux already does not realize that's what it is, for us to disown these adulterated versions, saying they are not really GNU, would not teach the users to value freedom more. They would not get the intended message. They would only respond they never thought these systems were GNU in the first place.
The way to lead these users to see a connection with freedom is exactly the opposite: to inform them that all these system versions are versions of GNU, that they all are based on a system that exists specifically for the sake of the users' freedom. With this understanding, they can start to recognize the distributions that include non-free software as perverted, adulterated versions of GNU, instead of thinking they are proper and appropriate “versions of Linux”.
It is very useful to start GNU/Linux User Groups, which call the system GNU/Linux and adopt the ideals of the GNU Project as a basis for their activities. If the Linux User Group in your area has the problems describe above, we suggest you either campaign within the group to change its orientation (and name) or start a new group. The people who focus on the more superficial goals have a right to their views, but don't let them drag you along!
- Why not make a GNU distribution of Linux (sic) and call that GNU/Linux?
- All the “Linux” distributions are actually versions of the GNU system with Linux as the kernel. The purpose of the term “GNU/Linux” is to communicate this point. To develop one new distribution and call that alone “GNU/Linux” would obscure the point we want to make.
As for developing a distribution of GNU/Linux, we already did this once, when we funded the early development of Debian GNU/Linux. To do it again now does not seem useful; it would be a lot of work, and unless the new distribution had substantial practical advantages over other distributions, it would serve no purpose.
Instead we help the developers of 100% free GNU/Linux distributions, such as gNewSense and Ututo.
- Why not just say “Linux is the GNU kernel” and release some existing version of GNU/Linux under the name “GNU”?
- It might have been a good idea to adopt Linux as the GNU kernel back in 1992. If we had realized, then, how long it would take to get the GNU Hurd to work, we might have done that. (Alas, that is hindsight.)
If we were to take an existing version of GNU/Linux and relabel it as “GNU”, that would be somewhat like making a version of the GNU system and labeling it “Linux”. That wasn't right, and we don't want to act like that.
- Did the GNU Project condemn and oppose use of Linux in the early days?
- We did not adopt Linux as our kernel, but we didn't condemn or oppose it. In 1993 we started discussing the arrangements to sponsor the development of Debian GNU/Linux. We also sought to cooperate with the people who were changing some GNU packages for use with Linux. We wanted to include their changes in the standard releases so that these GNU packages would work out-of-the-box in combination with Linux. But the changes were often ad-hoc and nonportable; they needed to be cleaned up for installation.
The people who had made the changes showed little interest in cooperating with us. One of them actually told us that he didn't care about working with the GNU Project because he was a “Linux user”. That came as a shock, because the people who ported GNU packages to other systems had generally wanted to work with us to get their changes installed. Yet these people, developing a system that was primarily based on GNU, were the first (and still practically the only) group that was unwilling to work with us.
It was this experience that first showed us that people were calling a version of the GNU system “Linux”, and that this confusion was obstructing our work. Asking you to call the system “GNU/Linux” is our response to that problem, and to the other problems caused by the “Linux” misnomer.
- Why did you wait so long before asking people to use the name GNU/Linux?
Actually we didn't. We began talking privately with developers and distributors about this in 1994, and made a more public campaign in 1996. We will continue for as long as it's necessary.
- Should the GNU/[name] convention be applied to all programs that are GPL'ed?
- We never refer to individual programs as “GNU/[name]”. When a program is a GNU package, we may call it “GNU [name]”.
GNU, the operating system, is made up of many different programs. Some of the programs in GNU were written as part of the GNU Project or specifically contributed to it; these are the GNU packages, and we often use “GNU” in their names.
It's up to the developers of a program to decide if they want to contribute it and make it a GNU package. If you have developed a program and you would like it to be a GNU package, please write to
, so we can evaluate it and decide whether we want it.
It wouldn't be fair to put the name GNU on every individual program that is released under the GPL. If you write a program and release it under the GPL, that doesn't mean the GNU Project wrote it or that you wrote it for us. For instance, the kernel, Linux, is released under the GNU GPL, but Linus did not write it as part of the GNU Project—he did the work independently. If something is not a GNU package, the GNU Project can't take credit for it, and putting “GNU” in its name would be improper.
In contrast, we do deserve the overall credit for the GNU operating system as a whole, even though not for each and every program in it. The system exists as a system because of our determination and persistence, starting in 1984, many years before Linux was begun.
The operating system in which Linux became popular was basically the same as the GNU operating system. It was not entirely the same, because it had a different kernel, but it was mostly the same system. It was a variant of GNU. It was the GNU/Linux system.
Linux continues to be used primarily in derivatives of that system—in today's versions of the GNU/Linux system. What gives these systems their identity is GNU and Linux at the center of them, not particularly Linux alone.
- Since much of GNU comes from Unix, shouldn't GNU give credit to Unix by using “Unix” in its name?
- Actually, none of GNU comes from Unix. Unix was proprietary software (and still is), so using any of its code in GNU would have been illegal. This is not a coincidence; this is why we developed GNU: since you could not have freedom in using Unix, or any of the other operating systems of the day, we needed a free system to replace it. We could not copy programs, or even parts of them, from Unix; everything had to be written afresh.
No code in GNU comes from Unix, but GNU is a Unix-compatible system; therefore, many of the ideas and specifications of GNU do come from Unix. The name “GNU” is a humorous way of paying tribute to Unix, following a hacker tradition of recursive acronyms that started in the 70s.
The first such recursive acronym was TINT, “TINT Is Not TECO”. The author of TINT wrote another implementation of TECO (there were already many of them, for various systems), but instead of calling it by a dull name like “somethingorother TECO”, he thought of a clever amusing name. (That's what hacking means: playful cleverness.)
Other hackers enjoyed that name so much that we imitated the approach. It became a tradition that, when you were writing from scratch a program that was similar to some existing program (let's imagine its name was “Klever”), you could give it a recursive acronym name, such as “MINK” for “MINK Is Not Klever.” In this same spirit we called our replacement for Unix “GNU's Not Unix”.
Historically, AT&T which developed Unix did not want anyone to give it credit by using “Unix” in the name of a similar system, not even in a system 99% copied from Unix. AT&T actually threatened to sue anyone giving AT&T credit in that way. This is why each of the various modified versions of Unix (each of them just as proprietary as Unix) had a completely different name that didn't include “Unix”.
- Should we say “GNU/BSD” too?
- We don't call the BSD systems (FreeBSD, etc.) “GNU/BSD” systems, because that term does not fit the history of the BSD systems.
The BSD system was developed by UC Berkeley as non-free software in the 80s, and became free in the early 90s. A free operating system that exists today is almost certainly either a variant of the GNU system, or a kind of BSD system.
People sometimes ask whether BSD too is a variant of GNU, as GNU/Linux is. It is not. The BSD developers were inspired to make their code free software by the example of the GNU Project, and explicit appeals from GNU activists helped convince them to start, but the code had little overlap with GNU.
BSD systems today use some GNU packages, just as the GNU system and its variants use some BSD programs; however, taken as wholes, they are two different systems that evolved separately. The BSD developers did not write a kernel and add it to the GNU system, so a name like GNU/BSD would not fit the situation.
The connection between GNU/Linux and GNU is much closer, and that's why the name “GNU/Linux” is appropriate for it.
There is a version of GNU which uses the kernel from NetBSD. Its developers call it “Debian GNU/NetBSD”, but “GNU/kernelofNetBSD” would be more accurate, since NetBSD is an entire system, not just the kernel. This is not a BSD system, since most of the system is the same as the GNU/Linux system.
- If I install the GNU tools on Windows, does that mean I am running a GNU/Windows system?
- Not in the same sense that we mean by “GNU/Linux”. The tools of GNU are just a part of the GNU software, which is just a part of the GNU system, and underneath them you would still have another complete operating system which has no code in common with GNU. All in all, that's a very different situation from GNU/Linux.
- Can't there be Linux systems without GNU?
- It is possible to make a system that uses Linux as the kernel but is not based on GNU. I'm told there are small systems, used for embedded development, that include Linux but not the GNU system. IBM was once rumored to be planning to put Linux as the kernel into AIX; whether or not they actually tried to do this, it is theoretically possible. What conclusions can we draw from this about the naming of various systems?
People who think of the kernel as more important than all the rest of the system say, “They all contain Linux, so let's call them all Linux systems.” But any two of these systems are mostly different, and calling them by the same name is misleading. (It leads people to think that the kernel is more important than all the rest of the system, for instance.)
In the small embedded systems, Linux may be most of the system; perhaps “Linux systems” is the right name for them. They are very different from GNU/Linux systems, which are more GNU than Linux. The hypothetical IBM system would be different from either of those. The right name for it would be AIX/Linux: basically AIX, but with Linux as the kernel. These different names would show users how these systems are different.
- Why not call the system “Linux” anyway, and strengthen Linus Torvalds' role as posterboy for our community?
- Linus Torvalds is the “posterboy” (other people's choice of word, not ours) for his goals, not ours. His goal is to make the system more popular, and he believes its value to society lies merely in the practical advantages it offers: its power, reliability and easy availability. He has never advocated freedom to cooperate as an ethical principle, which is why the public does not connect the name “Linux” with that principle.
Linus publicly states his disagreement with the free software movement's ideals. He developed non-free software in his job for many years (and said so to a large audience at a “Linux”World show), and publicly invited fellow developers of Linux, the kernel, to use non-free software to work on it with him. He goes even further, and rebukes people who suggest that engineers and scientists should consider social consequences of our technical work—rejecting the lessons society learned from the development of the atom bomb.
There is nothing wrong with writing a free program for the motivations of learning and having fun; the kernel Linus wrote for those reasons was an important contribution to our community. But those motivations are not the reason why the complete free system, GNU/Linux, exists, and they won't secure our freedom in the future. The public needs to know this. Linus has the right to promote his views; however, people should be aware that the operating system in question stems from ideals of freedom, not from his views.
- Does Linus Torvalds agree that Linux is just the kernel?
He recognized this at the beginning. The earliest Linux release notes said, “Most of the tools used with linux are GNU software and are under the GNU copyleft. These tools aren't in the distribution - ask me (or GNU) for more info”.
- The battle is already lost—society has made its decision and we can't change it, so why even think about it?
- This isn't a battle, it is a campaign of education. What to call the system is not a single decision, to be made at one moment by “society”: each person, each organization, can decide what name to use. You can't make others say “GNU/Linux”, but you can decide to call the system “GNU/Linux” yourself—and by doing so, you will make a difference.
- Society has made its decision and we can't change it, so what good does it do if I say “GNU/Linux”?
- This is not an all-or-nothing situation: correct and incorrect pictures are being spread more or less by various people. If you call the system “GNU/Linux”, you will help others learn the system's true history, origin, and reason for being. You can't correct the misnomer everywhere on your own, any more than we can, but you can help. If only a few hundred people see you use the term “GNU/Linux”, you will have educated a substantial number of people with very little work. And some of them will spread the correction to others.
- Wouldn't it be better to call the system “Linux” and teach people its real origin with a ten-minute explanation?
- If you help us by explaining to others in that way, we appreciate your effort, but that is not the best method. It is not as effective as calling the system “GNU/Linux”, and uses your time inefficiently.
It is ineffective because it may not sink in, and surely will not propagate. Some of the people who hear your explanation will pay attention, and they may learn a correct picture of the system's origin. But they are unlikely to repeat the explanation to others whenever they talk about the system. They will probably just call it “Linux”. Without particularly intending to, they will help spread the incorrect picture.
It is inefficient because it takes a lot more time. Saying and writing “GNU/Linux” will take you only a few seconds a day, not minutes, so you can afford to reach far more people that way. Distinguishing between Linux and GNU/Linux when you write and speak is by far the easiest way to help the GNU Project effectively.
- Some people laugh at you when you ask them to call the system GNU/Linux. Why do you subject yourself to this treatment?
- Calling the system “Linux” tends to give people a mistaken picture of the system's history and reason for existence. People who laugh at our request probably have picked up that mistaken picture—they think our work was done by Linus, so they laugh when we ask for credit for it. If they knew the truth, they probably wouldn't laugh.
Why do we take the risk of making a request that sometimes leads people to ridicule us? Because often it has useful results that help the GNU Project. We will run the risk of undeserved abuse to achieve our goals.
If you see such an ironically unfair situation occurring, please don't sit idly by. Please teach the laughing people the real history. When they see why the request is justified, those who have any sense will stop laughing.
- Some people condemn you when you ask them to call the system GNU/Linux. Don't you lose by alienating them?
- Not much. People who don't appreciate our role in developing the system are unlikely to make substantial efforts to help us. If they do work that advances our goals, such as releasing free software, it is probably for other unrelated reasons, not because we asked them. Meanwhile, by teaching others to attribute our work to someone else, they are undermining our ability to recruit the help of others.
It makes no sense to worry about alienating people who are already mostly uncooperative, and it is self-defeating to be deterred from correcting a major problem lest we anger the people who perpetuate it. Therefore, we will continue trying to correct the misnomer.
- Whatever you contributed, is it legitimate to rename the operating system?
- We are not renaming anything; we have been calling this system “GNU” ever since we announced it in 1983. The people who tried to rename it to “Linux” should not have done so.
- Isn't it wrong to force people to call the system “GNU/Linux”?
- It would be wrong to force them, and we don't try. We call the system “GNU/Linux”, and we ask you to do it too.
- Why not sue people who call the whole system “Linux”?
- There are no legal grounds to sue them, but since we believe in freedom of speech, we wouldn't want to do that anyway. We ask people to call the system “GNU/Linux” because that is the right thing to do.
- Shouldn't you put something in the GNU GPL to require people to call the system “GNU”?
- The purpose of the GNU GPL is to protect the users' freedom from those who would make proprietary versions of free software. While it is true that those who call the system “Linux” often do things that limit the users' freedom, such as bundling non-free software with the GNU/Linux system or even developing non-free software for such use, the mere act of calling the system “Linux” does not, in itself, deny users their freedom. It seems improper to make the GPL restrict what name people can use for the system.
- Since you objected to the original BSD license's advertising requirement to give credit to the University of California, isn't it hypocritical to demand credit for the GNU project?
- It would be hypocritical to make the name GNU/Linux a license requirement, and we don't. We only ask you to give us the credit we deserve.
- Since you failed to put something in the GNU GPL to require people to call the system “GNU”, you deserve what happened; why are you complaining now?
- The question presupposes a rather controversial general ethical premise: that if people do not force you to treat them fairly, you are entitled to take advantage of them as much as you like. In other words, it assumes that might makes right.
We hope you disagree with that premise just as we do.
- Wouldn't you be better off not contradicting what so many people believe?
- We don't think we should go along with large numbers of people because they have been misled. We hope you too will decide that truth is important.
We could never have developed a free operating system without first denying the belief, held by most people, that proprietary software was legitimate and acceptable.
- Since many people call it “Linux”, doesn't that make it right?
- We don't think that the popularity of an error makes it the truth.
- Many people care about what's convenient or who's winning, not about arguments of right or wrong. Couldn't you get more of their support by a different road?
- To care only about what's convenient or who's winning is an amoral approach to life. Non-free software is an example of that amoral approach and thrives on it. So in the long run it is self-defeating for us to bow to that approach. We will continue talking in terms of right and wrong.
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Most analysts and citizens of Western society suppose that we live in a democracy.
But is it really democracy - a system where the people rule and its representatives execute the popular will? Or, do we live in an oligarchy disguised as democracy? Oligarchy: in others words, a system where a small, inner circle, takes the decisions they feel necessary.
Capitalism turned a corner in 1980. Since then, inequality has not ceased to rise in all Western countries, after several decades during which income distribution remained relatively stable. At the same time, there has been a second phenomenon at the core of rising inequality: the very rich have expanded their share of revenue faster than the “merely” rich. So, at the summit of society, a very coherent group has emerged that pursues a rationale of its own, in terms of power as well as lifestyle.
The collapse of the financial system that began in 2007 revealed the new strength of the oligarchic class. Logic would seem to dictate that those responsible for the debacle should be sanctioned and the financial system reformed. Instead, they hang on to their power and communicate their decisions to the politicians concerned, who, in turn, implement these decisions without flinching because they are just the visible front of a systematic intermingling of public policy with private enterprise.
In a democracy, there is a fundamental cleavage between the public sector, concerned with the general interest, and the private sector and its concern for private interests, which remain rightful as long as these private interests do not jeopardize the common good. But in an oligarchy, the cleavage is horizontal, between those at the top of the pyramid, who provide direction in their different specific fields, and the body politic, conditioned to consider this cleavage legitimate or inevitable.
In an oligarchy, success notably means the orderly control of the State. The word “orderly” is important here: There is no question of ruining the State, as in an African dictatorship where too violent extraction of resources keeps the people down and impoverished; rather, it means “orderly” extraction of resources, without annihilating the body politic and without unleashing a rebellion that could threaten the durability of the process of extraction. An adequate level of deduction and the form that it takes attest to the savoir-faire of the oligarchy, which varies according to the country, its national culture and its history.
Actual deduction is first revealed by two movements that have oriented capitalism over the last 30 years: the weight of large financial companies, which has become huge, relative to the States, and the ideology of privatization, which facilitates the transfer of public funds into the coffers of the oligarchy.
Economic globalization has become a movement of continuous concentration. Numerous industrial sectors thus have become the private preserves of the oligopoly. Nevertheless, the global power of companies should not be exaggerated: in 2002, the 50 largest industrial and service companies represented only 4.5% of the GDP of the 50 largest countries.
But a new factor has profoundly modified the economic scene: banks, pension funds and asset management companies have seen their overall size increase and largely overtake that of large enterprises. In 2002, the top 100 companies in the world together represented $5.6 billion; midgets compared with the top 100 banks, which together managed $29.6 billion in assets. The power of the financial sector has become colossal. In 2010, the ten largest global banks each reported assets of more than 2 trillion Euros when the GDP of a medium-sized country like Greece is on the order of 200 billion Euros.
The interests of the financial community have taken over economic policy, notably by the regular transition of bankers to positions of political policy-making, with the most spectacular but certainly not isolated example being the numerous Goldman Sachs associates who have moved to public office. The second aspect of oligarchic control of the public sector is the general movement toward privatization that began in the 1980s. After having turned industrial enterprises over to private interests, oligarchic governments went after services (transportation, electricity, telecommunications, gaming), then health, education and the military.
Oligarchic regimes carefully preserve the principle of elected legislative assemblies. But to keep these assemblies from orienting their remaining prerogatives in the wrong direction, there is “lobbying,” or discreet influence on elected officials and policy-makers by trade groups or industries united by a specific common interest.
Every sector — finance, oil, computers, electricity, chemicals, transport, agri-business — makes impressive efforts to influence lawmakers in Washington, Brussels and elsewhere. The success that they obtain is remarkable. For example, the proliferation of genetically modified organisms in the United States would not have been as spectacular as it has been without the close ties between industry and successive governments. European projects to regulate the financial sector are entrusted to groups of experts essentially composed of representatives ...of the financial sector.
The political system of the United States stands out for another reason: electoral victories cost millions. Candidates cannot win elections unless they can spend more than their opponents on television ads and other publicity. Of the Representatives and Senators elected to Congress in November 2008, 93% had spent the most money during their respective campaigns. In the House and the Senate, those elected will defend the interests of their donors rather than their constituents. The wealthiest win: elections and oligarchy hand in hand.
Why don’t we rebel?
The ease with which the oligarchic regime absorbed the financial crisis that began in 2007 is disconcerting. Rescue of the financial system has revealed more clearly than ever the vital importance of public intervention, thereby clearly demonstrating the inanity of free-market dogma, along with the cynicism and incompetence of “financial champions” and other “experts” who were incapable of predicting catastrophe. People in the West nevertheless have continued to accept, without much outcry, rising unemployment, proliferating poverty and stratospheric inequality, not to mention the implacable destruction of ecology.
How to explain this popular apathy? One of the causes is mental and political conditioning by the media, specifically, television. The young are the first victims: ingesting one hundred thousand advertising messages since birth does not lead to the development of a global political consciousness. Predicting the inevitable prolongation of media conditioning is fatalistic fatalism. The “there is no alternative” of Margaret Thatcher is durably embedded in the collective mind: there is no alternative to capitalism, since communism has been overcome; growth is indispensable, otherwise employment will rise even more; the hyper-rich cannot be taxed or they will flee elsewhere; whatever we do for the environment will be wiped out by the weight of China, etc.
Such fatalism is even more intense in that it turns a deaf ear to a culture that has become massively individualistic. Since 1980, to a degree never before seen, capitalism has generalized withdrawal from the group, denial of the collective, scorn for cooperation, ostentatious competition.
But oligarchic societies are not dictatorships, looming over fearful shadows. If people do not rebel, it is also because they do want to.
Cornelius Castoriadis once observed that there is “one elementary truth that will seem very disagreeable to some: the system prevails because it has succeeded in creating popular adhesion to what exists”. Capitalist culture has placed “economic ‘needs’ at the centre of everything”, and “capitalism satisfies these needs that it has created as-well-as-it-can-most-of-the time.” In the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse too underlined the disappearance of opposition between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as soon as “a relatively satisfied middle class replaces the poor working class”. While it has clearly and increasingly weakened the middle class in the West, the shock of 2007 and after has not yet inspired feelings of revolt or solidarity with the neediest. Life is still pretty comfortable. Fear is what dominates: loss of status threatens, while the value system of society, directed by the rivalry of ostentation, stigmatizes anything that looks like failure. Individual strategies of protection therefore dominate the behavior of the middle class.
Finally, members of this class absorb the discovery that, in spite of their difficulties, they are some of the richest on the planet. Evidence of planet-wide inequality finally strikes everybody, and members of Western society, even those duped by the oligarchy, realize that they are privileged, which creates paradoxical solidarity with the ruling class and cynically contributes to generalized vulnerability.
What does globalization really mean?
As a whole, society today is organized to attribute the largest part of production possible to the product of the collective activity of a small number of people who run the society. These people declare that economic prosperity is the key to everything, and that growth, combined with technology, will resolve problems, which is hard to deny.
This would be of secondary historic importance if it did not come up against the dominant phenomenon of our time: an ecological crisis that corresponds to a decisive moment in the history of humanity, a time when the limits of the biosphere are reached. In 30 years, the rhythm of destruction has accelerated, and that which seemed to be the opinion of unorthodox doomsayers has come to form the basis of a pessimistic collective conscience. This movement of ideas represents a radical upheaval of historical perspective: while the emancipation of the Age of Enlightenment was energized by the promise of a better future, the dawn of the third millennium only sheds an uncertain light on a world where the main objective has become to avoid its destruction.
And yet, the last 30 years have seen a number of countries in the South grow very rapidly. A group of emerging countries is acquiring enough weight to dominate the global economy. This development, has, in 20 years, reduced by one quarter the number of people living on less than a dollar a day. But a billion and a half humans are still destitute, while the average income of the countries in the Southern portion of the planet remains far below that of rich countries. And yet, aggravated by intensified growth in these countries, the ecological crisis becomes an obstacle for them to overcome. It is highly improbable that they ever will reach the level of prosperity of the inhabitants of the North. This inequality does not seem to be justifiable or lasting. What is really at stake is the end of the Western exception. The industrial revolution that began in Europe, and then spread to the United States and Japan, opened a parenthesis during which Western countries significantly separated, in terms of wealth and power, from the rest of the world. This separation reached its peak at the beginning of the 21st century, and now, we are beginning to see it shrink.
The gap cannot be closed simply by coming up from the bottom. Because of ecological limitations, not all inhabitants of the planet can live like people in the United States, Europe or Japan. Reduction of the wealth gap must come, therefore, from a significant lowering from the top. Against all prevailing current debate, biospheric policy shows the way: Westerners must reduce their material consumption and their consumption of energy, in order to leave room for their companions on this planet to consume more. The material impoverishment of Westerners is the new horizon of global policy.
This means that we must reclaim democracy in a mental context that is radically different from the one in which it has developed. In the 19th and 20th centuries, democracy grew and won converts because it promised improvement of the lot of the greatest number, and it has lived up to the promise, in association with capitalism. Today, capitalism has deserted democracy, and we must reinvigorate democracy by espousing a well-being, a “well-living”, that is fundamentally different from that which today makes advertising shine… which, first of all, would prevent the decline of society into chaos… which, then, would no longer be based on the attraction of objects, but , rather, on moderation leavened by renewed ties to society. We must invent a democracy with no growth.
The question does not only concern Western societies. What is the dividing line in the world of today? That which opposes the “North” and the “South” or rather the gap that separates the global oligarchy from the people that it subjugates? Countries in the South are much less homogeneous than the image of them provided by media mesmerized by economic performance: they are living through major conflicts having to do with the distribution of the riches of production, mostly to the benefit of an avid oligarchy, and on a development model that skirts the agricultural question and concern for the environment. There often is opposition between a governing class — which relies on urban classes that enjoy a rising standard of living — and farmers, the proletariat and slumdwellers. What’s more, oligarchies in all the world’s countries close ranks: they form a cross-border class with a shared ideology and common interests. Countries of the South should not be considered as a bloc. In so-called emerging countries, part of the middle class and the rich enjoy a standard of living with an ecological impact that is as significant as that of lifestyle in the West. Global inequality of course remains a phenomenon that must be taken into consideration when it comes to the rebalancing required between the parts of the world where ecological constraint is needed.
But it masks major inequality at the core of all societies. To be crystal clear: no little employee in Europe will accept a lower standard of living if Chinese millionaires are the ones who benefit. To meet the ecological challenge and avoid the nationalistic retreat that would result from a country-by-country or bloc-by-bloc approach to the problem, it is vital to generate international solidarity among people, in order, to impose, everywhere, the reduction of inequality. This means that the democratic stakes are planet-wide: human rights, freedom of expression, shared decision-making are not Western values but the means by which people free themselves from their oppressors. | <urn:uuid:731adbac-67ea-4090-a30d-0825080d84b9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.occupy.com/article/oligarchy-and-its-discontents | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393093.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00134-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958811 | 2,889 | 2.578125 | 3 |
A team of researchers, led by Gianluigi Condorelli, at the University of California San Diego, La Jolla, has generated data in mice that suggest that drugs that inhibit the protein MTOR, which are used to treat several forms of cancer, might have adverse effects on heart function in patients with ongoing heart dysfunction.
In the study, it was found that adult mice lacking MTOR in their heart muscle cells developed a fatal heart condition. Disease was associated with accumulation of the protein 4E-BP1, which is an inhibitor of protein generation that is normally held in check by a protein complex containing MTOR. Further analysis indicated that in a model of high blood pressure the mice lacking MTOR in their heart muscle cells developed heart failure more quickly than did normal mice. Importantly, deletion of 4E-BP1 under these conditions improved heart function and survival. Thus, decreased MTOR activity impairs the protective heart response to stress, by enhancing 4E-BP1 activity, providing a potential new therapeutic strategy for improving heart function in patients with heart failure and a warning to clinicians using MTOR inhibitors.
TITLE: MTORC1 regulates cardiac function and myocyte survival through 4E-BP1 inhibition in mice
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A rare opportunity to study the whole genomes of identical twin sisters has revealed a promising new target for developing better treatments against a deadly malignancy.
The study involved twin 3-year-old girls, one of whom was healthy while the other developed mixed-lineage leukemia (MLL), a particularly aggressive form of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). By comparing the girls’ blood cells, scientists in China and the United States identified a cascade of cancer-fueling gene mutations and DNA misalignments that traced back to mutations in the gene SETD2 from both parents.
The research team reported their findings online Feb. 9 in Nature Genetics.
“These mutations contribute to the initiation and progression of leukemia by promoting the self-renewal potential of leukemia stem cells,” says Gang Huang, PhD, a cancer researcher at Cincinnati Children’s and a co-corresponding author of the study.
In the sick twin sister, the disease process began with activation of the MLL-NRIP3 fusion leukemia gene. This, in turn, started a molecular cascade leading to mutations in the gene SETD2 from both parents. This gene normally suppresses tumor growth by regulating a protein called H3K36me3. During normal cell replication, the protein helps guide accurate gene transcription along the DNA. But the SETD2 mutations disrupt this process and fuel the development of MLL.
The SETD2 mutations also activated two other signaling pathways (mTOR and JAK-STAT) that are known to contribute to cancer and leukemia.
After confirming this progression of events in tests using cell cultures of pre-leukemic cells and mouse models, researchers analyzed blood samples from 241 people with various forms of leukemia. SETD2 mutations were found in 6.2 percent of the samples, and patients with SETD2 mutations had leukemia associated with major chromosomal translocations and disruption of the H3K36me3 mark.
The scientists went on to test two mTOR-inhibiting medications on the pre-leukemic cells generated by the SETD2 gene mutations. The treatments resulted in a marked decrease in cell growth.
Huang says these tests demonstrate that there are multiple opportunities to improve MLL treatment. The researchers plan to continue their work by looking for drugs that can target the MLL fusion-SETD2-H3K36me3 pathway. They also continue to look for additional pathways activated by SETD2 mutations.
The twin sisters’ genomes were compared at the laboratory of co-corresponding author Qian-fei Wang, PhD, Beijing Institute of Genomics. Several other institutions in China and a research center in Chicago also collaborated on the study.
Gang Huang, PhD
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|About Chapiteau and Chapbooks
Chapiteau is a French word for the tents used by traveling circuses and theater troupes. Chapiteau Press was founded by Ann Aspell and Jim Schley in 1999 to present sequences of poems in typographically beautiful settings; and in collaboration with performers, composers, and visual artists, to give audiences dynamic new experiences of poetry.
The more concentrated form of a chapbook allows both writer and reader a chance to enjoy the distinct music of the work and to appreciate the ways in which the parts amplify the whole. Our aim is to introduce new poets to a wide readership, as well as to offer a venue for better-known authors to be heard between books.
The term chapbook was first used in the nineteenth century to describe the small pamphlets, popular literature, and ballads sold by itinerant peddlers known as “chapmen.” The word derives from the Old English word for barter.
“Chapmen, able to spread more pamphlets… | <urn:uuid:d83ebdd0-ebd2-4dfb-a468-53d7ded3b43a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.chapiteau.org/html/about.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00193-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94931 | 215 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Chapter 4 looks at three measures of student persistence in school. Indicator 15 examines student absences. Among 8th-graders in 2005, Asians/Pacific Islanders had the highest percentage of students who had no absences in the past month, while American Indians/Alaska Natives had the highest percentage who had missed 3 or more days in the same time period. Students who had not missed school were more likely to score at or above Basic on the NAEP mathematics assessment.
Indicator 16 examines rates of retention, suspension, and expulsion. In 2003, a higher percentage of Black elementary and secondary students had been suspended from school at some point than was the case for students of any other race/ethnicity. Additionally, a higher percentage of Black than White, Hispanic, or Asian/Pacific Islander students had been retained a grade or expelled. Rates of retention, suspension, and expulsion were also higher for males than females.
Indicator 17 examines high school status dropout rates. Between 1989 and 2005, the percentage of 16- to 24-year-olds who were high school status dropouts decreased from 13 percent to 9 percent. In 2005, Hispanics were more likely to have dropped out than were Blacks, Whites, and Asians/Pacific Islanders, and Blacks and American Indians/Alaska Natives had higher dropout rates than those for Whites and Asians/Pacific Islanders. | <urn:uuid:308099f8-e275-4b15-a202-fb8c03c652ce> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/minoritytrends/chapter4.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00181-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985307 | 278 | 3.65625 | 4 |
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Abel's place in his familiar, mouse world has always been secure; he had an allowance from his mother, a comfortable home, and a lovely wife, Amanda. But one stormy August day, furious flood water carry him off and dump him on an uninhabited island. Despite his determination and stubborn resourcefulness--he tried crossing the river with boats and ropes and even on stepping-stones--Abel can't find a way to get back home.<P><P> Days, then weeks and months, pass. Slowly, his soft habits disappear as he forages for food, fashions a warm nest in a hollow log, models clay statues of his family for company, and continues to brood on the problem of how to get across the river--and home.<P> Abel's time on the island brings him a new understanding of the world he's separated from. Faced with the daily adventure of survival in his solitary, somewhat hostile domain, he is moved to reexamine the easy way of life he had always accepted and discovers skills and talents in himself that hold promise of a more meaningful life, if and when he should finally return to Mossville and his dear Amanda again.<P> Abel's Island is a 1976 New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of the Year and Outstanding Book of the Year, and a 1977 Newbery Honor Book.
On her way home from school, Pearl, a pig, finds a talking bone that saves her from would-be robbers and from a hungry wolf. A charming story. This file should make an excellent embossed braille file.
Amos the mouse and Boris the whale: a devoted pair of friends with nothing at all in common, except good hearts and a willingness to help their fellow mammal. They meet after Amos sets out to sail the sea and finds himself in extreme need of rescue. And there will come a day, long after Boris has gone back to a life at sea and Amos has gone back to life on dry land, when the tiny mouse must find a way to rescue the great whale. [This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts for grades 2-3 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
Brave Irene is Irene Bobbin, the dressmaker's daughter. Her mother, Mrs. Bobbin, isn't feeling so well and can't possibly deliver the beautiful ball gown she's made for the duchess to wear that very evening. So plucky Irene volunteers to get the gown to the palace on time, in spite of the fierce snowstorm that's brewing-- quite an errand for a little girl. But where there's a will, there's a way, as Irene proves in the danger-fraught adventure that follows. She must defy the wiles of the wicked wind, her most formidable opponent, and overcome many obstacles before she completes her mission. Surely, this winning heroine will inspire every child to cheer her on. Brave Irene is a 1986 New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year.
To figure out William Steig's word puzzles you need merely read the letters, numbers, and symbols aloud. If at first the messages aren't clear, there are clever pictures accompanying each one to give you hints. Some are easy, some are hard, but all are a hilarious treat when the phrases are decoded. Originally published in 1984 with black-and-white drawings, C D C ? is given fresh life in this full-color edition painted by Mr. Steig. Also included is an answer key at the end.
Beloved children's book author Jeanne Steig gives some spice, pizzazz, and a little bit of cheek to well-known classic tales from the Old Testament and Greek mythology, filled with saucy illustrations by Caldecott winner and creator of Shrek!, William Steig.Who but Jeanne and William Steig would tackle retelling the Old Testament and the Greek myths? The cheekiest of the classic Steig books--The Old Testament Made Easy and A Gift from Zeus--turn the stories you know upside down and are bound together in this divine, deluxe edition for the first time.
Since he's a mouse, Doctor De Soto refuses to treat "dangerous" animals--that is, animals who have a taste for mice. But one day a fox shows up and begs for relief from the tooth that's killing him. How can the kindhearted De Sotos turn him away? But how can they make sure that the fox doesn't give in to his baser instincts once his tooth is fixed? Those clever De Sotos will find a way.<P> Doctor De Soto is a 1982 New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of the Year and Outstanding Book of the Year, a 1983 Boston Globe - Horn Book Awards Honor Book for Picture Books, and a 1983 Newbery Honor Book. Images and image descriptions available.
From the beloved children's book duo, Jeanne and William Steig, comes six classic fairy tales retold with a refreshing twist that will keep you laughing from beginning to end!"Is it Crumple or Blister, or Guggle or Nank? Williwaw, Flimflam, or Hiccup or Clank?" Says the Queen to Rumplestiltskin, of course! In this delightfully odd and sublime collection of six classic fairy tales, Jeanne and William Steig put a quirky twist on "Rumplestiltskin," "Beauty and the Beast," "Hansel and Gretel," "Little Red Riding Hood," "The Frog Prince," and "Jack and the Beanstalk." Retold in illustrated verse, A Handful of Beans is a wry and highly amusing take on the tales you thought you knew.
Shrek, a horrid little ogre, goes out into the world to find adventure and along the way encounters a witch, a knight in armor, a dragon, and, finally, a hideous princess, who's even uglier than he is!
A playful story of poor, misunderstood Spinky, lying in his hammock with a dreadful case of the sulks.
One rainy day, Sylvester finds a magic pebble that can make wishes come true. But when a lion frightens him on his way home, Sylvester makes a wish that brings unexpected results. How Sylvester is eventually reunited with his loving family and restored to his own donkey self makes a story that is beautifully tender and perfectly joyful. Illustrated with William Steig's glowing pictures, this winner of the 1970 Caldecott Medal is a modern classic beloved by children everywhere. It also features his moving Caldecott Medal acceptance speech.
From the book: This is the story of when I was a boy, almost 100 years ago, when fire engines were pulled by horses, boys did not play with girls, kids went to libraries for books, there was no TV, you could see a movie for a nickel, and everybody wore a hat. | <urn:uuid:aecee318-8b65-45b2-a047-3376ef0458ed> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.bookshare.org/browse/author?key=Steig%2C%20William | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00201-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957532 | 1,445 | 2.515625 | 3 |
More Rule of Vs
At the red arrow, where the dipping beds meet a gully, note that the beds "V" in the direction of dip. But look at the blue arrow--there, the beds "V" in the direction opposite dip. Why?
--the "V" points in the direction of dip where the bed is incised. The blue arrow doesn't point to a gully, it points to a ridge.
The map below shows east-dipping Paleozoic rocks unconformably overlying Precambrian basement, near Loveland, Colorado.
The Pennsylvanian-Permian Fountain Fm. (PPf--pink) dips gently east-northeast at A, as is shown by its prominent V. The overlying rocks also display prominent Vs. Note that at B, however, the Permian Lyons (Ply--light gray) hardly shows a V at all--that's because its contact with the alluvium (yellow) lies on the valley floor, beyond the reach of the valley. Also notice the "Vs" that point in the opposite direction where the contacts go over ridges.
At point C, notice that the Precambrian rocks (red and brown) dip vertically--we can see that because the contacts do not conform to the topography. Notice also that those contacts are truncated by the Fountain Fm. which unconformably overlies the basement. Like the contacts to the east, the unconformity dips east-northeastward.
Back to Structure Syllabus
Back to Outcrop Patterns | <urn:uuid:28f0d942-08df-4c6e-a3e7-347b11760848> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~millerm/SrV.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00097-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922701 | 328 | 3.484375 | 3 |
View of Nicholson Regio on Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, showing heavily fractured dark terrain and a lane of smooth bright terrain. North is to the top of the picture. A smooth, linear plank-like strip of bright terrain cuts across the southeast (lower right) corner of the image. Just west (left) of this is a very heavily fractured lane of dark terrain, curving towards the south. This fractured lane looks bright in lower resolution Voyager images and may be transitional between the older, heavily fractured dark terrain, and younger, less densely cratered bright terrain. The many other fractures visible within the dark terrain probably result from extension in the area. Some of these fractures were focused around weaknesses created by older craters (such as the one just east of the image center).
The sun illuminates the surface from the right. The image, centered at 14 degrees south latitude and 352 degrees longitude, covers an area approximately 144 by 144 kilometers. The resolution is 180 meters per picture element. The image was taken on April 5, 1997 at 6 hours, 31 minutes, 35 seconds Universal Time at a range of 17,842 kilometers by the Solid State Imaging (SSI) system on NASA's Galileo spacecraft.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo. | <urn:uuid:a0815b63-4dde-401b-9550-efbb1981c6e0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01613 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397748.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00119-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.896808 | 321 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Many factors cause insomnia. And among these, improper diet and nutrition is an important factor which causes insomnia in many people. Diet and nutrition is especially important for treating sleep disorders.
While some foods trigger sleep in us, some tend to suppress it.
What to Include in Insomnia Diet?
When we say an insomnia diet, what does it exactly mean? It means what foods to include in the diet that would promote a good sleep and what foods to avoid that would lead to sleeplessness. Making diet related modifications is necessary in order to cut down on the intake of pills and medications for treating insomnia, as sleeping pills come with unwanted side-effects, are addictive and can make a person dependent.
It is necessary for insomnia patients to make diet related modifications. This is because, a daily diet which includes foods that induce sleep effect can help with the sleeplessness. Food consumed plays an important role on the amount of sleep that one gains.
Foods which promote a healthy sleep
- Foods rich in chlorophyll, especially green or leafy vegetables either boiled or steamed help in promoting sleep.
- Fruits, such as lemons and mulberries, have a calming effect on the mind.
- Carbohydrates rich foods boost serotonin, which promotes better sleep.
- Add enough vitamin B6 oriented food for a good sleep.
- Oyster shell.
- Whole wheat, oats and brown rice have a soothing effect on the nervous system and the mind.
- All types of mushrooms.
- Jujube seeds calm down your spirit and induces healthy sleep.
- Chia seeds are also known to act as sedatives.
- One of the oldest but the best remedies for insomnia is to drink warm milk mixed with honey.
- Lettuce has a long-standing reputation for promoting healthy sleep. People suffering from sleep disorders should make sure to include lettuce in their evening diet.
- Your night meal should include peanuts, legumes, fish, nutritional yeast and poultry. All these foods contain Niacin, commonly known as vitamin B3. Niacin helps with the synthesis of serotin that aids in triggering sleep.
- Lettuce juice mixed with a little lemon juice for flavor is an effective sleep-inducing drink.
- Evening times, eat figs, bananas, yogurt, dates, tuna, milk and nut butter. These foods are high in tryptophan, which promotes sleep.
- Snacks like cookies, crackers, toast and fruit toast help in releasing serotonin.
- Have a cup of chamomile tea before going to bed, which calms down your digestive system, and relieves muscle tension by inducing a sleep.
- Have a cup catnip tea before sleep which induces a sound and restful sleep.
- Foods rich in protein, viz. pulses (soy beans), chicken, eggs and dairy products (milk, yogurt, butter, cheese; all of them contain serotonin that is useful for triggering sleep) are good at inducing sleep.
- Cherries contain melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland in our body that promotes sleep. People who suffer from insomnia and those who can’t remain asleep for long during nights can benefit by adding cherries to their diet.
- Bananas, despite being high-energy foods contain the important serotonin and potassium that are necessary for gaining a good sleep. Even scientific evidences exist which say that bananas help induce sleep.
- Foods rich in carbohydrates are also high in serotonin.
Foods Which Cause Insomnia
- Coffee and tea
- Spicy foods
- Refined carbohydrates, as they are known to drain the B vitamins from the body
- Non-organic foods containing pesticides
- Canned foods
- Sugar and foods high in sugar and refined carbohydrates should be avoided in dinner; these foods raise blood-sugar levels and disturb sleep
- Spicy foods, fatty foods, foods flavored with garlic, cucumber, beans and peanuts
- Foods such as meat that are high in protein can inhibit sleep by blocking the synthesis of serotonin, making us feel more alert
- Do avoid Chinese food in your dinner; most Chinese food items contain monosodium glutamate which is a stimulant that keeps one from sleeping
- Don’t take a large heavy meal just before going to bed
- Avoid high-protein foods in the hour or two before bed time
- Having a heavy meal before going to bed must be strictly avoided
Improper Diet Can lead to Insomnia in Children Too!
Does your little kid struggle hard to fall asleep at night? Does he wake up too sleepy and dull to go to school? Has he become unusually moody and highly irritable? Does he find it difficult to concentrate on something for a long time? Is he becoming forgetful and inattentive? If yes, then your little kid might be suffering from insomnia.
Insomnia is a sleep disorder and children and adults are equally susceptible to it. Stress could be the primary underlying cause of insomnia both in adults and children. In case of children an unhealthy diet is also a potential reason for them to suffer from insomnia.
You should strictly monitor what your child eats. If he is also heavily dependent on the fast-food and other processed foods for his daily nutrition then its time to bring about a change. Make sure he avoids all junk food and all sorts of aerated drinks. Also make it a routine to give him a glass of milk before he goes to bed.
Insomnia is not a disease but a symptom which is because of mental and physical stress. Your diet plays an important role is reducing or increasing this stress. Therefore follow a healthy diet and feel the difference in your insomnia symptoms.
‘5’ Diet Guidelines
- Water is a very important part of following a healthy diet. Drink 6-8 glasses of distilled water per day. Water cleanses and hydrates your body.
- Drink 3 to 4 cups of herbal tea every day. Medicinal ingredients in herbal tea will improve your blood circulation and makes your body system better.
- A light bed time snack will help you relax. Warm milk, a slice of turkey, a slice of toast with peanut butter, cottage cheese, yogurt, chicken, tuna, ice cream, cashews, soy beans, or a small bowl of cereals will help your body functioning. They are helpful because an amino acid called tryptophan (as mentioned earlier), found in them helps the brain produce serotonin, a chemical that helps you relax by making you sleepy.
- Maintain the iron levels in your body. Iron element is very essential for your overall health and improves your ability to sleep.
- Avoid stimulants at least 3-4 hours before your bedtime. Stimulants like coffee, colas and alcohol can depress your central nervous system making it difficult for you to sleep.
Keep a healthy diet to establish a sleep pattern that will help you overcome insomnia. | <urn:uuid:f1d49473-718c-4f52-bbe8-a3b36dacedba> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://insomnia.ygoy.com/diet-and-nutrition-for-insomnia/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00162-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940109 | 1,432 | 2.890625 | 3 |
When you take a picture of an object, a funny thing happens: The three dimensions of the actual scene are reduced to two, and you lose perspective. Distance is flattened, so for example two things at very different distances can look right on top of each other.
It also makes spheres look like flat circles, which can be confusing. If you want to figure out what’s going on, you need to look at clues in the picture itself.
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, and has a thick nitrogen atmosphere. At Titan’s south pole there is what’s called a vortex, an oval-shaped stream of air that circulates above the moon’s thick, hazy upper atmosphere. The Cassini spacecraft has observed it many times, even allowing the creation of a way-cool animation of it swirling.
But how do we know it sits above the haze, and not right on it? Because of pictures like this:
Cassini was flying over the south pole of Titan when it took this shot on July 14, 2013. You can see the vortex as a crescent, lit from the side, and it’s located well into Titan’s night side. That means it must be up higher than the surrounding material — it’s still illuminated by the Sun, while the lower material isn’t. It’s like seeing the top of a mountain in the west lit by the rising Sun while the base of the mountain is still shrouded in darkness.
This picture was taken using an infrared filter, by the way, and IR light can pierce the thick haze. Visible light gets blocked, but IR light from the surface of Titan can get out, allowing us to see features on the ground. We even have global maps of the moon made using infrared light!
I love pictures like this, which reveal information for free just by thinking about them a little. And besides, who knew Titan had a belly button? | <urn:uuid:1cee9e45-ff8a-450f-bd24-f13ef4475996> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/12/11/titan_by_cassini_south_pole_vortex_lit_by_the_sun.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00155-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95162 | 406 | 3.8125 | 4 |
In Plato's Cave
1. What was the name of the story to which the name of this chapter refers?
(a) Plato's Republic.
(b) Plato's Cave.
(c) The Loyalty of Plato.
(d) The Republic of Plato.
2. The cave allegory speaks of __________ chained to a wall within the story itself.
3. What is the only thing the people in the cave who are chained to the wall can see?
4. What are the shadows in the cave shadows of, according to the book?
(d) Real objects.
5. The prisoners in the cave see only shadows, and thus believe those shadows are the totality of ____________.
(b) Their days.
(c) Their food.
(d) Their families.
6. Photography has made the world unable to perceive the _________ beyond the photograph, according to Sontag.
(d) Real world.
7. In what year was photography invented, according to Sontag's research as outlined in this book?
This section contains 3,525 words
(approx. 12 pages at 300 words per page) | <urn:uuid:9decab79-c209-42c9-8f84-8d880cc5a3e3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bookrags.com/lessonplan/on-photography/multiple.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403825.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00155-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.857562 | 248 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Type 2 diabetes has become the most common metabolic disorder. Its prevalence is growing most rapidly among people in the developing world, primarily due to the rapid demographic and epidemiological changes in these regions. According to IDF, India currently leads the world with an estimated 41 million people with diabetes; this figure is predicted to increase to 66 million by 2025. The diabetes epidemic is more pronounced in urban areas in India, where rates of diabetes are roughly double those in rural areas. The authors report on an initiative to redesign urban environments in India, promoting physical activity and effectively reducing rates of obesity-related conditions, including diabetes.
metabolic disorder, pleasant surroundings, pshysical activity, multi-sectorial collaboration, local solutions | <urn:uuid:6c296b7b-0e39-4921-bcb5-12b1cc7e56b4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.idf.org/diabetesvoice/articles/redesigning-the-urban-environment-to-promote-physical-activity-in-southern-india?language=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00101-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935757 | 142 | 2.703125 | 3 |
In writing the Constitution for the United States of America, James Madison said that states in order to enhance their power, often resorted to “the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government.” The idea is to foster an emergency, and then step in to “save the people” by drastically increasing state power. This is precisely the scenario since 9-11-2001 in the United States , but includes as well the response to droughts, floods, depressions, illicit drugs, acts of war, and so forth. There is virtually no natural or man-made disaster which cannot be used to garner greater power into the hands of an increasingly greedy-for-power government.
The United States Bankruptcy of 1861 placed the country under Emergency War Powers (12 Stat 319), a situation which has never been repealed and continues to exist in Title 50 USC Sections 212, 213, 215, Appendix 16, 26 CFR Chapter 1 paragraph 303.1-6(a), and 31 CFR Chapter 5, paragraph 500.701 Penalties.
To add insult to injury, the United States on October 6, 1917 , passed the Trading with the Enemy Act (H.R. 4960, Public Law 91) -- ostensibly in connection with World War I. This extraordinary act gave the President immense, unconstitutional authority (particularly over any private ownership of gold and silver), but included within the term, “enemy”, individuals “other than citizens of the United States .” The Emergency War Powers had been greatly extended, but thus far had not been directed against the people of the United States . This was not to be the end of the matter, however.
Just when the citizens thought it was safe to go into the water again, The Amendatory Act of March 9, 1933 was passed, and which included the people of the United States under the definition of “enemy”. Essentially, “any person within the United States of any place subject to the jurisdiction thereof...”
This reprehensible act was passed just after Franklin Roosevelt’s inauguration as President of the United States , and significantly at a time when the United States was not in a shooting war with any foreign foe. Emergency war powers in time of peace may seem to be a contradiction in terms, but not in government (where such paradoxes are legion).
The Amendatory Act also made the President a monarch and/or king in everything but name (which might have been okay with Roosevelt ). It gave the Secretary of the Treasury commensurate powers (with that office -- no longer being a “United States Treasury” -- but reporting directly to the creditors of the bankruptcy). Finally, the Amendatory Act placed the American people under commercial law (which has been formalized as the Uniform Commercial Code). The latter action effectively made all citizens “merchants”, entities whose records and affairs were totally subject to inspection and harsh penalties imposed for any violations of Mercantile Law. Thus the citizens were not only designated as the “enemy” (as in Pogo Possum’s statement: “We have met the Enemy, and they is us.”), they were also merchants and subject to invasive inspection of all their activities.
The “Bank Holiday” of March 6, 1933 was part and parcel of the Emergency War Powers Act and the actions which followed, and was primarily intended to prevent the continuing and increasing withdrawal of currency and gold from the banks. This, in effect, was the true national emergency of 1933 (but more an emergency for the bankers than the nation).
Meanwhile, every President of the United States since Franklin Roosevelt has reaffirmed the “national emergency” and issued Executive Orders under 12 USC 95(a), continuing the US Bankruptcy and “reorganization”. [Will there be no end to the reorganization?] Today, things are continuing, with enemies being created everywhere -- from Osama Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein, from Enemy Combatants to you or your neighbor next door. It is not a comforting thought. But it’s also true.
The key to alleviating this condition is -- again -- a return to Common Law and the Gold (and/or Silver or Precious Metal) Standard (so that Money again has actual value!), an initiation of Restorative Justice, the better side of Anarchy, and a peaceful Revolution, and/or Creating Reality which encompasses all of the above -- even if we don’t tell any of the bankers or their minions what we’re doing! They would not be happy with such a turn of events, and thus why should we darken their day?
The American Bankruptcy Justice, Order, and Law
The Decree Jubile
e Year Executive Orders | <urn:uuid:177181e8-10ac-4ca5-b1e0-52608e9d0f93> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.halexandria.org/dward284.htm | 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 | 0.9639 | 984 | 3.265625 | 3 |
SYMPTOMSVarious kinds of eye problems can develop, such as blurred vision, bulging, blood spots, dark circles, dryness, double vision, itching, lumps on the eyelids, redness, twitching, or watering.
Certain eye problems need specialized attention. But there are also general solutions to a wide variety of eye problems. The eyes and the brain use a lot of oxygen; be sure and get enough.
Poor nutrition clogs tiny arteries, such as are found in the eyes. A gradual clogging of the veins in the eyes can lead to blindness.
Eliminate all fried foods. The free radicals in these greasy foods damages the organs.
Drink carrot, celery, beet, and parsley juice. You may need to go on a short vegetable juice fast.
The mineral, zinc, is important. Be sure it is included in your diet.
Avoid drinking fluids before bed. Avoid salt. Do not smoke, and avoid second-hand smoke.
Eyebright, golden seal, and red raspberry teas all help the eyes. Eyebright is especially noted for what it can do for the eyes; people have used it for centuries.
Dandelion helps the liver detoxify, and seaweed (Norway kelp or Nova Scotia dulse) provides essential minerals.
Vitamins A, B complex, C, E, selenium, and zinc are also important. Be sure and eat greens every day.
Nicotine, sugar, and caffeine all weaken the eyes.
Tinted sunglasses often cause eyestrain. Only use polarized sunglasses, if you use them at all.
Margarine and vegetable shortening are not good for the eyes.
To strengthen the eyes, especially in weakness resulting from diabetes, use chaparral tea internally. Vitamin A is also important.
Place a washcloth, dipped in ice water, over your eyes for 15 minutes, once or twice a day. Or cold cucumber slices can be put on your eyes.
A number of medicinal drugs are not good for the eyes. This would include aspirin, ACTH, anticoagulants, corticosteroids, diuretics, streptomycin, sulfa drugs, tetracycline, allopurinol, antihistamines, digitalis, haloperidol, anti-infection drugs, quinine, marijuana, and some others.
Anti-infection drugs, including diazepam (Valium), haloperidol (Haldol), some antidepressants, quinine, and sulfa drugs can cause ocular abnormalities.
Contact lenses: Be very cautious about wearing contact lenses! They keep air from the eyeball surfaces which they cover. Infections can result. Leaving them in place more than 24 hours can produce ulcerative keratitis. The cells of the cornea are rubbed away by the contact lens, resulting in infection and scarring, and possible eventual blindness. Research shows that this danger applies equally to ordinary daily wear contact lenses or extended-wear lenses.
ENCOURAGEMENTMake God your entire dependence. When you find yourself starting to do otherwise, immediately call a haltand run back to Him! Do not tarry; do not wait.
EXTERNAL INFLAMMATlONSLight weight Fomentations for 15 minutes, every 2 hours; frequently renewed cooling compress during intervals between.
INFLAMMATIONS OF EYEBALLA Fomentation covering the eye (while the eye is closed) and extending to the forehead, for 15-20 minutes or until the skin is well-reddened. Repeat as often as necessary, to relieve pain. Employ the frequently renewed (5-15 minutes at 600 F.) Heating Compress during the intervals between hot applications.
SYMPTOMSThe eyes seem to be straining to see what they are trying to look at. After some time of doing this, you acquire a general feeling of eyestrain.
CAUSES AND TREATMENT
Is the area in which you do much of your eyework properly lit?
Flickering tubes can bother the eyes. Try not to use computers too long at a time; do not watch television too long. Both are hard on your eyes. Keep the screen somewhat darkened. Shade your screen by placing a hood over the front.
Every so often, shut and rest your eyes. Try "palming." To do this, place the palms across your open eyes, without touching them. This cuts out all light and enables you to momentarily rest them from all light.
Make sure you blink often enough. Each blink cleanses and refreshes them.
Refuse to strain your eyes. Keep them relaxed at all time.
Sunglasses cause eyestrain for some people; they help others. Only use Polaroid glasses.
The evening hours are the worst time to read and use your eyes intensively for anything. The natural daylight is gone.
Go outside for the last 30 minutes before bedtime, walk around, relax, breathe deep, and do not read anymore before you retire.
Get enough rest at night.
You may need reading glasses. If your only eye problem is nearsightedness, you can purchase eye glasses at your local pharmacy for $10 or $20. Always select the weakest, least powerful ones.
ENCOURAGEMENTBy beholding Christ, we become changed. And this is what you want, is it not? Come, take the greatest prize of all; let Christ come into your heart. He can give overcoming strength to resist sin and obey the Ten Commandments.
SYMPTOMSA person only clearly sees those things which are close up.
CAUSES AND TREATMENTThere is both an occupational and nutritional cause for this.
Constantly using the eyes, to see that which is fairly close, causes them to adjust better to near vision. Every so often, rest your eyes by looking at something at a distance.
A lack of vitamin D and calcium is also involved. Increase the amount of vitamin D taken, and take sunbaths.
Do not strain the eyes, thinking that will help you improve your eyesight! Doing so only weakens the delicate muscles, and will result in still more vision problems.
Also read "Eyestrain."
ENCOURAGEMENTCry to God for help. Find in Him your all in all. He can deliver; He can help. He can satisfy your deepest soul desire.
SYMPTOMSA person's distance vision is good, but his near vision is blurry.
CAUSESThe six muscles pulling on the eye do not function properly or the eyeball is abnormally short. As a result, light rays focus behind the back wall of the eyeball, which is the retina.
Maintain a nourishing diet which includes a vitamin/mineral supplement. Be sure you are daily obtaining the entire B complex, especially B6. Calcium is also important.
Do not try to strain the eyes. If they seem tired or unable to focus properly, rest them from time to time. Straining the eyes to see better only aggravates the problem.
Also read "Eyestrain."
ENCOURAGEMENTHeaven is not closed against the fervent prayers of God's little ones. The only reason for our lack of power with God is to be found in ourselves. Too many only offer a little hurried prayer, and then rush off. Take time with God! You urgently need it.
SYMPTOMSThis condition exists when the eyes do not seem to focus clearly on anything, near or far. It can be serious enough to constitute a type of blindness.
CAUSESCertain nutritional and environmental problems tend to be the causes.
Lack of vitamins B1 and B12 appears to be a primary cause. Smoke from cigarettes and cigars is another significant cause. These problems need to be solved.
B12 intermuscularly at a rate of 1,000 mcg/day for a total of 20,000 mcg generally solves the problem, along with an adequate supply of vitamin D and calcium. But get the tobacco out of the house and office.
Also read "Eyestrain."
ENCOURAGEMENTThank God that He is so near to help in time of need. Prayer and faith can do that which no earthly power can accomplish. Trust Him and obey His Written Word, and you will have the guidance you need.
SYMPTOMSThe whites of the eyes (sclera) have a yellow cast.
CAUSESThe bile duct system develops a blockage, which produces gallstones, possibly tumors, and hepatitis. Red blood cells may also be destroyed in the process.
Those taking large amounts of carrot juice will develop a yellowish cast to their skin (which is in no way dangerous). But their sclera will not turn yellow, which is the sign of jaundice.
Treatment of jaundice includes ultraviolet light exposure in order to increase elimination and liver flush. For 3 days, drink apple juice, followed by a cup of olive oil and a cup of lemon juice. Also obtain vitamins C, A, and E.
Also see Jaundice
ENCOURAGEMENTKeep your mind on Jesus, and pride and the love of the world will vanish. Beside the loveliness of Christ, all earthly attractions will seem of little worth.
SYMPTOMSThe cornea is the domed clear bulge on the front of the eye. It becomes hazy and dry, and then ulcerated. The eyes feel extremely dry. Blinking increases, but does not seem to properly moisten them. Conjunctivitis and night blindness occurs.
Fat-like spots (Bitot's spots) appear on the sclera (white of the eye). These are white, foamy, elevated, and sharply outlined patches on the whites of the eyes.
CAUSESThis is a nutritional problem. If it is not solved, permanent blindness can result.
Take vitamin A (25,000 units for children, and at least 50,000 units for adults) per day as beta carotene. Increase the amount of zinc and protein consumption, and improve the general nutrition. Take a vitamin/mineral supplement twice daily.
Bitot's spots are caused by a vitamin A deficiency. Vitamin D and adequate protein are also needed.
Avoid eyestrain and smoke-filled rooms.
ENCOURAGEMENTWe must be much in prayer if we would make progress in the spiritual life. Take time with God, and you will be blessed for it. He can give you strength to live a better life, a clean life, a new life in Christ.
SYMPTOMSRed lines in the whites of the eyes.
CAUSESThis can be caused by dust, pollen allergies, bright sunshine, cigarette smoke, other irritants, overwork, and staying up late at night.
People over 40 commonly experience this problem to some extent. But if it is excessive, or if you are younger, you may wish to give it closer attention.
Get more rest at night. Pause and rest a little more during the day.
Do not use "drops" from the pharmacy. They have an agent in them that constricts the blood vessels. This may make your whites look whiter for awhile, but no problems have been solved. Do not tinker with your precious eyes! When the drops wear off in a couple hours, the redness generally appears redder than before.
Lay a cool, wet washcloth over your closed eye. The cold constricts the blood vessels naturally, and the moisture helps your eyes.
Be sure and drink enough water, so you will have an adequate amount of fluid in your tear ducts.
If the eyes are red when you wake up, the problem may be your eyelids. This is a low-grade infection of the eyelids. Treat it by washing your eyes with warm water at night before retiring.
Any problem in the eyes should be taken seriously. Infection can be treated with a small amount of boric acid mixed with sterile water.
Helpful herbs include eyebright, fennel, and cornflower. Eyebright is remarkably helpful for a number of eye conditions.
ENCOURAGEMENTThere must be a constant, earnest struggling of the soul against the evil imaginings of the mind. There must be a steadfast resistance of temptation to sin in thought or act. But, in the strength of Christ, this can be done. In Him we can live clean, pure lives.
SYMPTOMSIt is difficult to distinguish one color from another.
CAUSE AND TREATMENT
Take 50,000 units of vitamin A daily.
ENCOURAGEMENTThere are perils all about us. We must draw nearer to God. Cultivate the habit of talking with the Saviour. Let your heart be continually uplifted to Him, in silent petition for help, for strength to obey, and for guidance. Let every breath be a prayer.
SYMPTOMSYou do not see as clearly in the dark as do others. When you go out into the dark, your eyes seem to adapt slowly to it.
CAUSESThis does not mean you are going blind. The primary problem is a lack of vitamin A, which the body uses to make visual purple and to help you see in the dark.
The lack of vitamin A in the system can be caused by an inferior diet. But it may also be traced to one of the following: The body has a fat malabsorption syndrome, and does not absorb oil-soluble vitamins properly. A zinc deficiency will cause the liver to poorly convert carotene to vitamin A. Cystic fibrosis, celiac disease, and various food allergies can produce intestinal changes which would affect fat-soluble vitamin absorption.
Get enough vitamin A (50,000 units daily) and 15-50 mg of zinc.
Some people wear a stronger prescription of glasses when they must drive at night. Keep the headlights and windshield clean. Do not wear sunglasses at dusk. Drive slower at night. Better yet, only drive during the day.
ENCOURAGEMENTBy keeping our minds on God and Bible themes, our faith and love will grow stronger. We will have a little heaven on earth. And those around us need our help so much.
SYMPTOMSThe eyes seem tired and itchy.
CAUSESEnervation, poor diet, lack of rest.
Do not overwork or overeat. Eat a nutritious diet. Get enough rest at night.
The diet should include the entire B complex, with an emphasis on B6. Be sure your diet includes adequate calcium.
Do not strain the eyes.
Eyebright is a good herb for the eyes, which may help this.
ENCOURAGEMENTThe very first step in the path to life is to keep the mind stayed on God, to have His fear continually before the eyes. If you cannot take Jesus with you, do not go there. Do not watch it. Do not listen to it.
SYMPTOMSThe eyes seem dry all the time.
CAUSESThere is a small tear duct which keeps each eye moist, yet it does not seem to be working properly.
Be sure and obtain adequate amounts of vitamin A (50,000 units daily). A lack of it causes small openings to close down. Also include enough essential fatty acids in your diet, along with more calcium.
Do not eat junk or processed foods.
Also see "Sjogren's Disease"; you may have it.
ENCOURAGEMENTThose who love God are changed from being rebels against the law of God into obedient servants and subjects of His kingdom. They live to help and bless others.
SYMPTOMSThe area around the eye turns black, following a blow to it.
CAUSESBlood tends to pool around the delicate eyeball, in order to hasten healing.
Boxing trainers deal with black eyes all the time. They apply an extremely cold piece of iron (something like a small tire iron) to the area. This reduces the swelling. An alternative is to hold a clean, cold soda can against the cheek (but not against the eye itself) for several minutes. Do not place any pressure on the eye itself.
Do not take aspirin. Because it is an anticoagulant, the blood will not clot as well. Instead, the bleeding will continue longer.
Do not blow your nose! If you received a severe strike, blowing your nose could cause blood vessels to burst beneath the skin in a much wider area! Sometimes the injury fractures the eye socket bone, and blowing your nose could force air out of your sinus adjacent to the socket. The air is injected under the skinmaking the eyelids swell even more. This can increase the likelihood of infection.
ENCOURAGEMENTPrayer takes hold upon Omnipotence, and gains us the victory. And this is what we need! We must have God or perish. We must submit to Him and obey Him. By the grace of Christ, this can be done.
SYMPTOMSThe eye has become inflamed, resulting in an ulcer on the eyeball.
The problem could then extend to the eyelid.
CAUSESThis happened because the normal covering of the eye was damaged in some way. The infection is generally caused by a virus.
Obtain adequate rest, improve the diet, and take large doses of vitamin C (2,000 mg, 3 times a day).
Apply warm yellow dock tea, in a poultice, to the eyelid. You can also drink it.
ENCOURAGEMENTEvery day learn something new from the Scriptures. Search them as for hid treasures, for they contain the words of eternal life.
SYMPTOMSThe eye seems be filled with mucous.
CAUSESThe cause may be a combination of an inadequate diet, poor working conditions, and an airborne infection.
Improve the diet, and take a vitamin/mineral supplement twice a day. Obtain adequate rest. Work in a clear environment that is not overly dusty.
Wash each eye with goldenseal root tea. But do not use goldenseal in large amounts if pregnant.
ENCOURAGEMENTHe who receives Christ by living faith has a living connection with God. He carries with him the atmosphere of heaven, which is the grace of God and a treasure that the world cannot buy.
SYMPTOMSThe lens of the eye becomes clouded, so that the eye is unable to properly focus on objects. In advanced cases, the lens is becoming opaque, so that blindness is setting in. Only part of the eye is generally cloudy or opaque, but this can gradually extend to the entire eye.
CAUSESThe most common cause is senility.
Congenital cataracts occur if the mother had rubella during the first three months of pregnancy, or if the infant has galactosemia (inherited inability to digest galactose [a type of milk sugar, resulting from lactose] properly). These cataracts generally do not get worse. Not using milk products at all can help prevent this in adults.
Traumatic cataracts result from blows which rupture the anterior lens capsule, harmful chemicals, intense infrared radiation, or X rays. Radiation causes free radical damage in the eyes. This causes the lens to absorb aqueous humor. The lens becomes cloudy and must be removed, to restore eyesight. People living closer to the South Pole (which has part of its ozone layer stripped away) are more likely to develop cataracts.
Other causes include hypoparathyroidism, Down's syndrome, and atopic dermatitis. The longer one has diabetes, the greater the risk of cataracts.
Hair dye has been shown to cause cataracts. Only 23% of those not dying their hair get cataracts; whereas 89% of those who dye their hair develop them.
Complications of tumors, detached retina, iritis, glaucoma, and severe myopia can also bring it on.
Other studies reveal that people with stress, allergies, or who eat seafood (thus ingesting methylmercury) are more likely to develop cataracts.
It is now known that a reduction in vitamin C or B2 in the diet can help produce cataracts. High blood sugar levels and low calcium levels can also bring it on.
Cataracts are the most common form of blindness in older people, and should not be ignored when beginning to develop.
Obtain adequate rest at night. Do not sit up watching television till late at night! You are tiring your eyes and irradiating them with X rays at the same time.
Maintain a good nutritious diet! Do not drink milk or eat cheese, ice cream, seafood, or grease. Get enough vitamins E, C, B complex (B2 is very important!), selenium, zinc, bioflavonoids, 1-glutamine, 1-arginine, 1-cysteine, and glutathione. If diabetes is involved, add chromium supplementation. Avoid excess cholesterol, sorbitol (artificial sweetener), unsaturated fatty acids, and mercury tooth fillings (amalgam).
Higher blood sugar levels in diabetics and hypoglycemics causes the cells in the lense to absorb large amounts of glucose. This is converted into sorbitol, an insoluble form of sugar. This gradually crystallizes in the eyeforming a cataract.
Take chaparral tea internally. Place a drop of honey in the corner of the eye at night. This will help absorb the crystals.
ENCOURAGEMENTDo not say that you cannot overcome your moral defects. In the strength of Christ, you can. He will empower you to do all that His Father asks of you. The impossibility is all in your will. If you will not, then you cannot. If you are willing, God will strengthen you to resist temptation.
SYMPTOMSWhat appears to be a small pimple develops on the eyelid.
CAUSESThe oil gland has become infected, inflaming the tissues of the eyelid.
Do not delay solving this problem. If it does not quickly heal, it may need to be drained by a professional. Do not squeeze the lump; this may result in spreading the infection more widely. Sties can be dangerous, so do not be casual about them.
Take adequate vitamin A; more so, if you have sties frequently. Go on a 5-day fruit fast, plus carrot and celery juice. Keep the bowels clean with an enema every morning.
Do not eat refined, fried, and processed foods; meats; unsaturated oils; salt; alcohol; tobacco; dairy products; or white flour.
Chopped and diced carrots or mashed potatoes (raw or cooked) can be made into a poultice and applied over the area. They can be left on for an hour and repeated 3 times a day.
Hot compresses on the area are sometimes recommended; but keep in mind that it was a very hot compress which blinded young Fanny Crosby.
Partially hot compress, alternated with cold, will help draw the pus to a head and then break it open.
Drink 3 cups of goldenseal tea or eyebright to help clean the liver. Fennel or myrrh may be substituted.
In tenacious cases, antibiotics may be necessary.
ENCOURAGEMENTThe Bible reveals the plan of salvation, and shows how sinful man may be reconciled to God and enabled to live a clean, godly life.
SYMPTOMSThe person seems to see "spots" or a spot in front of the eyes.
CAUSESAn unnatural blind spot exists on the retina.
Increase the amount of vitamin A in the diet; and, of course, decidedly improve the general diet. Throw out all junk and processed food. Obtain adequate rest at night.
ENCOURAGEMENTYou cannot control your impulses, your emotions, as you may desire; but, in the strength of Christ, you can control the will, and you can make an entire change in your life.
SYMPTOMSLight hurts the eyes.
CAUSESThis may occur occasionally or gradually increase. The cause is a lack of vitamin A in the diet.
Take 50,000 units of vitamin A daily for a short time.
ENCOURAGEMENTAll who have a sense of their deep soul poverty, who feel that they have nothing good in themselves, may find peace and strength by looking to Jesus. Thank God, that He not only accepts us, but He changes us.
SYMPTOMSThis appears to be a sty on the eyelid, but it is not. After several days, the swelling and pain disappears, but a slow growing pea-sized nodule on the lid remains.
CAUSESA chalazion is the result of plugged meibomian glands in the eyelid, and results from nutritional deficiency.
Take vitamin A (at least 50,000 units per day, as beta carotene, for a number of days. Also take zinc (50 mg, 3 times a day).
Apply warm poultices of 3% boric acid on the closed lid. A boric acid ophthalmic ointment may be obtained without prescription from the pharmacy.
ENCOURAGEMENTWhen God gave His Son to our world, He endowed human beings with imperishable richeswith which nothing else can compare. Christ offers you all the love of God. Come, accept it just now.
SYMPTOMSThe membrane lining of the inner part of the eyelid becomes inflamed. The eyes may appear swollen and bloodshot, and are often irritated and itchy. If there is pus, eyelids often stick together after being closed for a period of time.
CAUSESThere may be a discharge from the eye. The origin may be viral if the discharge is thin and watery. If it is white and stringy, the cause may be allergenic. If there is pus, it may be bacterial in origin.
When caused by a virus, conjunctivitis is highly contagious. The cause is generally viral or bacterial infection or physical or chemical injury.
Causes include injury to the eye, bacterial infection, allergens, dust, contact lens solutions, fumes, smoke, chemicals, makeup, or other foreign substances in the eye. Be careful about swimming pool water; it can cause eye and ear infections.
When caused by allergens, the infection may reoccur at a certain time each year. In young children "viral conjunctivitis" can occur from spring till fall.
Viral conjunctivitis is often found among groups of school children. Conjunctivitis is the most common form of eye infection in Western civilization.
Apply warm poultices of 3% boric acid on the closed lid. A boric acid ophthalmic ointment may be obtained without prescription from the pharmacy.
Apply charcoal poultices overnight. Mix enough water in, to make a thick paste and spread it over a piece of cloth that is larger than the inflamed area. Hold it in place with an ace bandage and leave on overnight. Use only enough pressure to hold it in placebut not so tight that pressure is placed on the eyeball. To avoid spreading the infection, carefully dispose of the cloth in the morning; do not save and use it again.
During the day, slurry charcoal water can be applied: Add ¼ tsp. salt and 1 tsp. powdered charcoal to a cup of water, boil, let cool, and strain through several layers of cloth.
With a dropper, put 4-5 drops of the clear fluid on the affected eye every 2 hours.
Wash hands carefully after each treatment.
Do not place a patch on the eye, for it can cause bacterial infection and weaken the eyelid (so it will later droop).
Ice-cold compresses can be laid on the eye during the acute stage. For half an hour, apply a wrung-out washcloth to the eye; change it every 2-3 minutes. Stop for 30-60 minutes, and then repeat for another 30 minutes.
Hot and cold applications can be applied every 4 hours. But the water should never be too hot (that is what blinded young Fanny Crosby). Apply a cloth wrung out of slightly hot water for 2 minutes, then a cold cloth for 30 seconds. Do this for 15 minutes.
Saline irrigations are also good. Add 2 level tsp. of salt to 1 quart water, to rinse discharges out of the eyes.
Avoid the problems noted under "Causes," above.
When something gets in your eye; get it out. Grasping the eyelash and pulling the upper lid over the lower lid, induces tears and helps wash out foreign bodies.
ENCOURAGEMENTThe heart of him who receives the grace of God overflows with love for God and for those whom Christ died. He becomes kind and thoughtful, humble, yet full of hope and encouragement to those around him.
SYMPTOMSEarly symptoms include eye pain or discomfort mainly in the morning, blurred vision, halos around light, inability to adjust to darker conditions, and peripheral (side) vision loss (resulting in tunnel vision).
Higher than normal pressure within the eyeball (called intraocular pressure), it is more common in blacks than whites, tends to run in families, is more common in women than men, and especially affects people over 40.
CAUSESFluid is continually produced in the eyeball; and, just as continuously, it is draining out. The balance is called intraocular pressure. Normal pressure is 15-20 millimeters of mercury, but glaucoma levels may reach 40 or more. The increased pressure, unless it is relieved, will damage the optic nerve and produce blindness. Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness. There are several types of glaucoma.
There appears to be no evidence that restoration of vision, lost through glaucoma-caused nerve degeneration, can be restored. But there are things which can be done to slow or stop the advance of this problem.
Dietetic problems are among the most common causes of glaucoma. This includes overeating, eating the wrong foods, and not eating the right ones. Emphasize a raw, vitamin C rich, diet.
Food "allergies," eating foods which do not agree with the system, can be a frequent cause of the disease. Do a pulse test and find out which foods may be causing you problems. In addition, a tonometer can be purchased, which you can use to test your eyeball pressure.
The diet should include betaine HCl, vitamin C, a good vitamin/mineral supplement, vitamin A, vitamin B2, and nourishing, natural foodbut not too much of it.
Moderate, daily out-of-door, exercise helps reduce pressure.
Warm fennel herb, alternated with chamomile and eyebright, is helpful. Apply as eyewash in an eyecup or three drops to each eye, 3 times a day.
If anxiety seems to be a cause, increase the B complex intake. Avoid stress, worry, fear, and anger. Cultivate a tranquil, restful lifestyle. Great temperature changes (as found in the north) are a source of stress.
Higher blood sugar levels increase pressure.
Avoid heavy lifting, pulling, etc. Avoid constipation, for straining at the stool increases eye pressure (as does diarrhea). Maintain a slight, mild laxative effect. Avoid sitting or standing still for long periods. Lying face down significantly increases pressure. Standing on the hands astoundingly increases pressure.
Increased blood pressure brings increased pressure within the eyeball. Keep your blood pressure down!
Do not use the eyes intensively for long periods of time (TV viewing or excessive reading).
Avoid coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol, and all junk and processed foods. Smoking damages eyes which have glaucoma. Tobacco in the system increases intraocular pressure. Avoid spicy foods.
Avoid excessive fluid intake (juice, water, milk, etc.) at any one time. Drink only small amounts, and only an hour apart.
Motion sickness medication patches increase eyeball pressure.
Those with glaucoma do well to remain under the care of a professional. Every time the pressure increases, a little more eyesight is permanently lost.
ENCOURAGEMENTNo difficulty can hinder you, if you are determined to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Looking to Jesus, you will be willing to brave contempt and derision for His sake. | <urn:uuid:67de81d6-e782-4204-938d-1a9618daa9cf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pathlights.com/nr_encyclopedia/04head03.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00192-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924697 | 6,856 | 2.75 | 3 |
Could A Pill Give People Perfect Pitch?
New drug could restore brain elasticity and facilitate faster skill acquisition.
Perfect pitch is the ability to accurately name any musical note you hear, and is considered by many as the holy grail of music. While there is a genetic element involved, it is also an ability that must be perfected before the age of seven – or at least, that used to be the case. Takao Hensch, professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, may have another way.
A drug by the name of valproate has been proven to assist adult mice in learning habits that are usually impossible to develop after youth. This same drug was given to a group of grown men with no musical training, who were then asked to carry out a series of online ear-training exercises for two weeks. Those who took the drug showed significant pitch improvement compared with those who took a placebo – proof that valproate can restore brain plasticity normally lost after childhood.
In an interview with NPR, Dr. Hensch points out other potential applications:
There are a number of examples of critical-period type development, language being one of the most obvious ones. So the idea here was, could we come up with a way that would reopen plasticity, [and] paired with the appropriate training, allow adult brains to become young again.
The use of such a drug also carries with it some inherent risks:
If we’ve shaped our identities through development, through a critical period, and have matched our brain to the environment in which we were raised —acquiring language, culture, identity — then if we were to erase that by reopening the critical period, we run quite a risk as well.
So while it might be possible to acquire new skills much more quickly with the use of valproate, it could also be possible to completely reprogram our personality. While this might appeal to some, there are probably far more potential downfalls than there are benefits with such an attempt. | <urn:uuid:0e9c59be-1ffe-4182-b215-62beb8c5def3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.psfk.com/2014/01/perfect-pitch-pill.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00167-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97794 | 411 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Ethelred the Unready
Æthelred the Unready, or Æthelred II (circa 968 – 23 April 1016), was king of England (978–1013 and 1014–1016). He was son of King Edgar and Queen Ælfthryth. Æthelred was only about 10 (no more than 13) when his half-brother Edward was murdered. Æthelred was not personally suspected of participation, but as the murder was committed at Corfe Castle by the attendants of Ælfthryth, it made it more difficult for the new king to rally the nation against the military raids by Danes, especially as the legend of St Edward the Martyr grew.
From 991 onwards, Æthelred paid tribute, or Danegeld, to the Danish King. In 1002, Æthelred ordered a massacre of Danish settlers. In 1003, King Sweyn invaded England and in 1013, Æthelred fled to Normandy and was replaced by Sweyn, who was also king of Denmark. However, Æthelred returned as king after Sweyn died in 1014.
- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
- Higham, Nick, The Death of Anglo-Saxon England
- Keynes, Simon, “A Tale of Two Kings: Alfred the Great and Æthelred the Unready“
- Keynes, Simon, “Æthelred II (c.966×8–1016)“, in C. Matthew, B. Harrison, & L. Goldman (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- Williams, Ann, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King
- William of Walmesbury, “Chronicle of the kings of England“
- Wood, Michael, “In Search of Ethelred the Unready” (video) | <urn:uuid:b58dc2cc-f76a-4c0b-9324-5c24f229e41a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://steventill.com/2013/01/30/ethelred-the-unready/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00199-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934664 | 401 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Good hearing is an important part of learning. It is essential to assess a child's hearing if there are signs of hearing impairment.
Some signs of hearing impairment may include:
- Not reacting to loud or unusual noises
- A child not turn his head when spoken to or his
name is called
- Requiring constant repetition to follow directions
- Frequent ear aches, colds and/or upper
If there are concerns about your child’s hearing contact your family doctor, pediatrician, teacher or speech language pathologist.
A licensed audiologist is available to perform complete hearing evaluations on site at Bornhava, according to the child's Individualized Education Plans (IEP) for children 3 -5 years of age or Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) for children birth to three. | <urn:uuid:59d774aa-b5ab-4f27-b0a5-b27a5977e304> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bornhava.org/audio.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394605.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924734 | 167 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Historical Evidence for the Resurrection
The historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ is very good. Scholars such as William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland, Gary Habermas, and others have done an especially good job of detailing that evidence.1 It is the aim of this article to offer a sort of synthesis of some of their key points and show the strength of the historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ.
A method commonly used today to determine the historicity of an event is "inference to the best explanation." William Lane Craig describes this as an approach where we "begin with the evidence available to us and then infer what would, if true, provide the best explanation of that evidence." In other words, we ought to accept an event as historical if it gives the best explanation for the evidence surrounding it.
When we look at the evidence, the truth of the resurrection emerges very clearly as the best explanation. There is no other theory that even come close to accounting for the evidence. Therefore, there is solid historical grounds for the truth that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
It is worth pointing out that in establishing the historicity of the resurrection, we do not need to assume that the New Testament is inspired by God or even trustworthy. While I do believe these things, we are going to focus here on three truths that even critical scholars admit. In other words, these three truths are so strong that they are accepted by serious historians of all stripes. Therefore, any theory must be able to adequately account for these data.
The three truths are:
- The tomb in which Jesus was buried was discovered empty by a group of women on the Sunday following the crucifixion.
- Jesus' disciples had real experiences with one whom they believed was the risen Christ.
- As a result of the preaching of these disciples, which had the resurrection at its center, the Christian church was established and grew.
Virtually all scholars who deal with the resurrection, whatever their school of thought, assent to these three truths. We will see that the resurrection of Christ is the best explanation for each of them individually. But then we will see, even more significantly, that when these facts are taken together we have an even more powerful case for the resurrection--because the skeptic will not have to explain away just one historical fact, but three. These three truths create a strongly woven, three chord rope that cannot be broken.
The Empty Tomb
To begin, what is the evidence that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was discovered empty by a group of women on the Sunday following the crucifixion?
First, the resurrection was preached in the same city where Jesus had been buried shortly before. Jesus' disciples did not go to some obscure place where no one had heard of Jesus to begin preaching about the resurrection, but instead began preaching in Jerusalem, the very city where Jesus had died and been buried. They could not have done this if Jesus was still in his tomb--no one would have believed them. No one would be foolish enough to believe a man had raised from the dead when his body lay dead in the tomb for all to see. As Paul Althaus writes, the resurrection proclamation "could not have been maintained in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact for all concerned."
Second, the earliest Jewish arguments against Christianity admit the empty tomb. In Matthew 28:11-15, there is a reference made to the Jew's attempt to refute Christianity be saying that the disciples stole the body. This is significant because it shows that the Jews did not deny the empty tomb. Instead, their "stolen body" theory admitted the significant truth that the tomb was in fact empty. The Toledoth Jesu, a compilation of early Jewish writings, is another source acknowledging this. It acknowledges that the tomb was empty, and attempts to explain it away. Further, we have a record of a second century debate between a Christian and a Jew, in which a reference is made to the fact that the Jews claim the body was stolen. So it is pretty well established that the early Jews admitted the empty tomb.
Why is this important? Remember that the Jewish leaders were opposed to Christianity. They were hostile witnesses. In acknowledging the empty tomb, they were admitting the reality of a fact that was certainly not in their favor. So why would they admit that the tomb was empty unless the evidence was too strong to be denied? Dr. Paul Maier calls this "positive evidence from a hostile source. In essence, if a source admits a fact that is decidedly not in its favor, the fact is genuine."
Third, the empty tomb account in the gospel of Mark is based upon a source that originated within seven years of the event it narrates. This places the evidence for the empty tomb too early to be legendary, and makes it much more likely that it is accurate. What is the evidence for this? I will list two pieces. A German commentator on Mark, Rudolf Pesch, points out that this pre-Markan source never mentions the high priest by name. "This implies that Caiaphas, who we know was high priest at that time, was still high priest when the story began circulating." For "if it had been written after Caiaphas' term of office, his name would have had to have been used to distinguish him from the next high priest. But since Caiaphas was high priest from A.D. 18 to 37, this story began circulating no later than A.D. 37, within the first seven years after the events," as Michael Horton has summarized it. Furthermore, Pesch argues "that since Paul's traditions concerning the Last Supper [written in 56] (1 Cor 11) presuppose the Markan account, that implies that the Markan source goes right back to the early years" of Christianity (Craig). So the early source Mark used puts the testimony of the empty tomb too early to be legendary.
Fourth, the empty tomb is supported by the historical reliability of the burial story. NT scholars agree that he burial story is one of the best established facts about Jesus. One reason for this is because of the inclusion of Joseph of Arimethea as the one who buried Christ. Joseph was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrein, a sort of Jewish supreme court. People on this ruling class were simply too well known for fictitious stories about them to be pulled off in this way. This would have exposed the Christians as frauds. So they couldn't have circulated a story about him burying Jesus unless it was true. Also, if the burial account was legendary, one would expect to find conflicting traditions--which we don't have.
But how does the reliability of Jesus' burial argue that the tomb was empty? Because the burial account and empty tomb account have grammatical and linguistic ties, indicating that they are one continuous account. Therefore, if the burial account is accurate the empty tomb is likely to be accurate as well. Further, if the burial account is accurate then everyone knew where Jesus was buried. This would have been decisive evidence to refute the early Christians who were preaching the resurrection--for if the tomb had not been empty, it would have been evident to all and the disciples would have been exposed as frauds at worst, or insane at best.
Fifth, Jesus' tomb was never venerated as a shrine. This is striking because it was the 1st century custom to set up a shrine at the site of a holy man's bones. There were at least 50 such cites in Jesus' day. Since there was no such shrine for Jesus, it suggests that his bones weren't there.
Sixth, Mark's account of the empty tomb is simple and shows no signs of legendary development. This is very apparent when we compare it with the gospel of Peter, a forgery from about 125. This legend has all of the Jewish leaders, Roman guards, and many people from the countryside gathered to watch the resurrection. Then three men come out of the tomb, with their heads reaching up to the clouds. Then a talking cross comes out of the tomb! This is what legend looks like, and we see none of that in Mark's account of the empty tomb--or anywhere else in the gospels for that matter!
Seventh, the tomb was discovered empty by women. Why is this important? Because the testimony of women in 1st century Jewish culture was considered worthless. As Craig says, "if the empty tomb story were a legend, then it is most likely that the male disciples would have been made the first to discover the empty tomb. The fact that despised women, whose testimony was deemed worthless, were the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb can only be plausibly explained if, like it or not, they actually were the discoverers of the empty tomb."
Because of the strong evidence for the empty tomb, most recent scholars do not deny it. D.H. Van Daalen has said, "It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions." Jacob Kremer, who has specialized in the study of the resurrection and is a NT critic, has said "By far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb" and he lists twenty-eight scholars to back up his fantastic claim.
I'm sure you've heard of the various theories used to explain away the empty tomb, such as that the body was stolen. But those theories are laughed at today by all serious scholars. In fact, they have been considered dead and refuted for almost a hundred years. For example, the Jews or Romans had no motive to steal the body--they wanted to suppress Christianity, not encourage it by providing it with an empty tomb. The disciples would have had no motive, either. Because of their preaching on the resurrection, they were beaten, killed, and persecuted. Why would they go through all of this for a deliberate lie? No serious scholars hold to any of these theories today. What explanation, then, do the critics offer, you may ask? Craig tells us that "they are self-confessedly without any explanation to offer. There is simply no plausible natural explanation today to account for Jesus' tomb being empty. If we deny the resurrection of Jesus, we are left with an inexplicable mystery." The resurrection of Jesus is not just the best explanation for the empty tomb, it is the only explanation in town!
The Resurrection Appearances
Next, there is the evidence that Jesus' disciples had real experiences with one whom they believed was the risen Christ. This is not commonly disputed today because we have the testimony of the original disciples themselves that they saw Jesus alive again. And you don't need to believe in the reliability of the gospels to believe this. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, Paul records an ancient creed concerning Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection appearances that is much earlier than the letter in which Paul is recording it:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time...
It is generally agreed by critical scholars that Paul receive this creed from Peter and James between 3-5 years after the crucifixion. Now, Peter and James are listed in this creed as having seen the risen Christ. Since they are the ones who gave this creed to Paul, this is therefore a statement of their own testimony. As the Jewish Scholar Pinchahs Lapide has said, this creed "may be considered the statement of eyewitnesses."
Now, I recognize that just because the disciples think they saw Jesus doesn't automatically mean that they really did. There are three possible alternatives:
- They were lying
- They hallucinated
- They really saw the risen Christ
Which of these is most likely? Were they lying? On this view, the disciples knew that Jesus had not really risen, but they made up this story about the resurrection. But then why did 10 of the disciples willingly die as martyrs for their belief in the resurrection? People will often die for a lie that they believe is the truth. But if Jesus did not rise, the disciples knew it. Thus, they wouldn't have just been dying for a lie that they mistakenly believed was true. They would have been dying for a lie that they knew was a lie. Ten people would not all give their lives for something they know to be a lie. Furthermore, after witnessing events such as Watergate, can we reasonably believe that the disciples could have covered up such a lie?
Because of the absurdity of the theory that the disciples were lying, we can see why almost all scholars today admit that, if nothing else, the disciples at least believed that Jesus appeared to them. But we know that just believing something to be true doesn't make it true. Perhaps the disciples were wrong and had been deceived by a hallucination?
The hallucination theory is untenable because it cannot explain the physical nature of the appearances. The disciples record eating and drinking with Jesus, as well as touching him. This cannot be done with hallucinations. Second, it is highly unlikely that they would all have had the same hallucination. Hallucinations are highly individual, and not group projections. Imagine if I came in here and said to you, "wasn't that a great dream I had last night?" Hallucinations, like dreams, generally don't transfer like that. Further, the hallucination theory cannot explain the conversion of Paul, three years later. Was Paul, the persecutor of Christians, so hoping to see the resurrected Jesus that his mind invented an appearance as well? And perhaps most significantly, the hallucination theory cannot even deal with the evidence for the empty tomb.
Since the disciples could not have been lying or hallucinating, we have only one possible explanation left: the disciples believed that they had seen the risen Jesus because they really had seen the risen Jesus. So, the resurrection appearances alone demonstrate the resurrection. Thus, if we reject the resurrection, we are left with a second inexplicable mystery--first the empty tomb and now the appearances.
The Origin of the Christian Faith
Finally, the existence of the Christian church is strong proof for the resurrection. Why is this? Because even the most skeptical NT scholars admit that the disciples at least believed that Jesus was raised from the grave. But how can we explain the origin of that belief? William Lane Craig points out that there are three possible causes: Christian influences, pagan influences, or Jewish influences.
Could it have been Christian influences? Craig writes, "Since the belief in the resurrection was itself the foundation for Christianity, it cannot be explained as the later product of Christianity." Further, as we saw, if the disciples made it up, then they were frauds and liars--alternatives we have shown to be false. We have also shown the unlikeliness that they hallucinated this belief.
But what about pagan influences? Isn't it often pointed out that there were many myths of dying and rising savior gods at the time of Christianity? Couldn't the disciples have been deluded by those myths and copied them into their own teaching on the resurrection of Christ? In reality, serious scholars have almost universally rejected this theory since WWII, for several reasons. First, it has been shown that these mystery religious had no major influence in Palestine in the 1st century. Second, most of the sources which contain parallels originated after Christianity was established. Third, most of the similarities are often apparent and not real--a result of sloppy terminology on the part of those who explain them. For example, one critic tried to argue that a ceremony of killing a bull and letting the blood drip all over the participants was parallel to holy communion. Fourth, the early disciples were Jews, and it would have been unthinkable for a Jew to borrow from another religion. For they were zealous in their belief that the pagan religions were abhorrent to God.
Jewish influences cannot explain the belief in the resurrection, either. 1st century Judaism had no conception of a single individual rising from the dead in the middle of history. Their concept was always that everybody would be raised together at the end of time. So the idea of one individual rising in the middle of history was foreign to them. Thus, Judaism of that day could have never produced the resurrection hypothesis. This is also another good argument against the theory that the disciples were hallucinating. Psychologists will tell you that hallucinations cannot contain anything new--that is, they cannot contain any idea that isn't already somehow in your mind. Since the early disciples were Jews, they had no conception of the messiah rising from the dead in the middle of history. Thus, they would have never hallucinated about a resurrection of Christ. At best, they would have hallucinated that he had been transported directly to heaven, as Elijah had been in the OT, but they would have never hallucinated a resurrection.
So we see that if the resurrection did not happen, there is no plausible way to account for the origin of the Christian faith. We would be left with a third inexplicable mystery.
Three Independent Facts
These are three independently established facts that we have established. If we deny the resurrection, we are left with at least three inexplicable mysteries. But there is a much, much better explanation than a wimpy appeal to mystery or a far-fetched appeal to a stolen body, hallucination, and mystery religion. The best explanation is that Christ in fact rose from the dead! Even if we take each fact by itself, we have good enough evidence. But taken together, we see that the evidence becomes even stronger. For example, even if two of these facts were to be explained away, there would still be the third truth to establishes the fact of the resurrection.
These three independently established facts also make alternative explanations less plausible. It is generally agreed that the explanation with the best explanatory scope should be accepted. That is, the theory that explains the most of the evidence is more likely to be true. The resurrection is the only hypothesis that explains all of the evidence. If we deny the resurrection, we must come up with three independent natural explanations, not just one. For example, you would have to propose that the Jews stole the body, then the disciples hallucinated, and then somehow the pagan mystery religions influenced their beliefs to make them think of a resurrection. But we have already seen the implausibility of such theories. And trying to combine them will only make matters worse. As Gary Habermas has said, "Combining three improbable theories will not produce a probable explanation. It will actually increase the degree of improbability. Its like putting leaking buckets inside each other, hoping each one will help stop up the leaks in the others. All you will get is a watery mess."
Before examining, briefly, the implications of the resurrection, I wish to take a quick look at perhaps the most popular theory today against the resurrection--that it was a legend that developed over time. The facts we have established so far are enough to put to rest any idea of a legend.
First, we have seen that the testimony of the resurrection goes back to the original experiences. Remember the eyewitness creed of 1 Corinthians 15:3-5? That is the first-hand testimony of Peter and James. So it is not the case that the resurrection belief evolved over time. Instead, we have testimony from the very people who claimed to have experienced it. Second, how can the myth theory explain the evidence for the empty tomb? Third, the myth theory cannot explain the origin of the Christian faith--for we have already seen that the real resurrection of Christ is the only adequate cause for the resurrection belief. Fourth, the myth theory cannot explain the conversion of Paul. Would he be convinced by a myth? His conversion was in fact too early for any myth to have developed by then. How then can we explain his conversion? Do we dare accuse him of lying when he said he saw the risen Christ?
Fifth, we have seen the evidence that the empty tomb story in Mark was very early--within seven years of the events. That is not long enough for legends. Sixth, we have seen that the empty tomb narrative lacks the classic traits of legendary development. Seventh, critical scholars agree that the resurrection message was the foundation of the preaching of the early church. Thus, it could not have been the product of the later church. Ninth, there is very good evidence that the gospels and Acts were written very early. For example, the book of Acts never records the death of Paul, which occurred in about 64, or the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred in 70.
Since both Jerusalem and Paul are key players in the book of Acts, it seems strange that their demises would be omitted. The best explanation seems to be that Paul's death and Jerusalem's destruction are omitted because the book of Acts had been completed before they happened. This means that Acts was written before 64, when Paul died. Since Acts is volume 2 of Luke's writings, the book of Luke being the first, then the Gospel of Luke was even earlier, perhaps 62. And since most scholars agree that Mark was the first gospel written, that gospel would have been composed even earlier, perhaps in the late 50s. This brings us within twenty years of the events, which is not enough time for legends to develop. So the legend theory is not very plausible.
On the basis of the evidence we have seen, it appears to me that the resurrection is the best explanation. It explains the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the existence of the Christian church. No other competing theory can explain all three of these facts. In fact, none of these competing theories can even give a satisfying explanation for even one of these facts. So it seems like the rational person will accept that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
The Importance of the Resurrection
But, in conclusion, don't we have to ask ourselves what implications this has? Why does it matter? Or is this some dry, dusty old piece of history that has no relevance to our lives? I believe that the resurrection is the most important truth in the world. It has far reaching implications on our lives.
First, the resurrection proves that the claims Jesus made about himself are true. What did Jesus claim? He claimed to be God. One might say, "I don't believe that He claimed to be God, because I don't believe the Bible." But the fact is that even if we take only the passages which skeptical scholars admit as authentic, it can still be shown that Jesus claimed to be God. I have written a paper elsewhere to demonstrate this. So it is impossible to get around the fact that Jesus claimed to be God. Now, if Jesus had stayed dead in the tomb, it would be foolish to believe this claim. But since He rose from the dead, it would be foolish not to believe it. The resurrection proves that what Jesus said about Himself is true--He is fully God and fully man.
Second, have you ever wondered what reasons there are to believe in the Bible? Is there good reason to believe that it was inspired by God, or is it simply a bunch of interesting myths and legends? The resurrection of Jesus answers the question. If Jesus rose from the dead, then we have seen this validates His claim to be God. If He is God, He speaks with absolute certainty and final authority. Therefore, what Jesus said about the Bible must be true. Surely you are going to accept the testimony of one who rose from the dead over the testimony of a skeptical scholar who will one day die himself--without being able to raise himself on the third day. What did Jesus say about the Bible? He said that it was inspired by God and that it cannot error. I will accept the testimony of Jesus over what I would like to be true and over the opinions of other men and women. Therefore I believe that the Bible is inspired by God, without error. Don't get misled by the numerous skeptical and unbelieving theories about the Bible. Trust Jesus--He rose from the dead.
Third, many people are confused by the many different religions in the world. Are they all from God? But on a closer examination we see that they cannot all be from God, because they all contradict each other. They cannot all be true any more than 2+2 can equal both 4 and 5 at the same time. For example, Christianity is the only religion that believes Jesus Christ is both God and man. All other religions say that he was a good man only-and not God. Clearly, both claims cannot be right! Somebody is wrong. How are we to know which religion is correct? By a simple test: which religion gives the best evidence for its truth? In light of Christ's resurrection, I think that Christianity has the best reasons behind it.
Jesus is the only religious leader who has risen from the dead. All other religious leaders are still in their tombs. Who would you believe? I think the answer is clear: Jesus' resurrection demonstrates that what He said was true. Therefore, we must accept his statement to be the only way to God: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, except through me" (John 14:6).
Fourth, the resurrection of Christ proves that God will judge the world one day. The apostle Paul said, "God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead." The resurrection of Christ proves something very personal and significant to each of us--we will have to give an account of ourselves to a holy God. And if we are honest with ourselves, we will have to admit that we do not measure up to his standard. We are sinful, and therefore deserve to be condemned at His judgment.
Which leads to our fifth point. The resurrection of Christ provides genuine hope for eternal life. Why? Because Jesus says that by trusting in Him, we will be forgiven of our sins and thereby escape being condemned at the judgment. The NT doesn't just tell us that Christ rose from the dead and leave us wondering why He did this. It answers that He did this because we are sinners. And because we have sinned, we are deserving of God's judgment. Since God is just, He cannot simply let our sins go. The penalty for our sins must be paid.
The good news is that God, out of His love, became man in Jesus Christ in order to pay the penalty for sinners. On the cross, Jesus died in the place of those who would come to believe in Him. He took upon Himself the very death that we deserve. The apostle Paul says "He was delivered up because of our sins." But the apostle Paul goes on to say "He was raised to life because of our justification." Paul is saying that Christ's resurrection proves that His mission to conquer sin was successful. His resurrection proves that He is a Savior who is not only willing, but also able, to deliver us from the wrath of God that is coming on the day of judgment. The forgiveness that Jesus died and rose to provide is given to those who trust in Him for salvation and a happy future.
Let me close with the sixth reason the resurrection is significant. The Bible says that Christ's resurrection is the pattern that those who believe in Him will follow. In other words, those who believe in Christ will one day be resurrected by God just as He was. The resurrection proves that those who trust in Christ will not be subject in eternity to a half-human existence in just their souls. It proves that our bodies will be resurrected one day. Because of the resurrection of Christ, believers will one day experience, forever, the freedom of having a glorified soul and body.
1 See William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith and The Son Rises, J.P. Moreland's Scaling the Secular City, and Gary Habermas' The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus and Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?, a debate with then-atheist Anthony Flew. | <urn:uuid:fef4a667-b33e-4a9a-b345-385fc7704456> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/historical-evidence-for-the-resurrection | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00018-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978996 | 5,836 | 2.90625 | 3 |
6 Surprising Facts About Dark Spots
In the dark about the causes, treatment and prevention of dark spots? Here are six things you didn't know about the biggest skin care problem for Latinas
According to Dr. Elson Lai, M.D., a board-certified dermatologist, the causes of what we call age spots are hormonal changes and sun exposure. "When [women] are pregnant, that's when they get a lot of 'age spots' or 'liver spots," he explains. (This condition is more precisely referred to as melasma, and can also occur as a side effect of taking birth control pills.)
If hormones aren't to blame, dark spots on the face are typically the result of sun damage. Dr. Paul Jarrod Frank, M.D., a board-certified cosmetic dermatologist based in New York, explains, "Radiation from the sun causes pigmentation on the skin, which is the body's defense mechanism to protect the skin from further damage." Older people have accumulated more sun damage than younger folk, which is why these patchy discolorations are associated with aging.
Another important thing to remember, says Lai: Dark spots, brown spots, liver spots, age spots and melasma are essentially the same thing, which is hyperpigmentation, or the presence of excess melanin in the skin.
SEE NEXT PAGE: Don't treat a spot on your face like a spot on your sofa | <urn:uuid:2a91ac2b-272b-44d0-9b1a-1e402efd7706> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.totalbeauty.com/content/slideshows/dark-spot-facts-140219/page2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00045-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952493 | 300 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina is a small town in the outer banks that has gained world-wide recognition as the birthplace of flight. Interestingly enough, although the first flight took place on the beach shore in this small town, Kitty Hawk was not the original home of the minds behind flight, or even the place where such ideas were formulated. Orville and Wilbur Wright grew up and discovered many of their future altering ideas, in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio. It was only by chance that the Wright Brothers picked the small town of Kitty Hawk to do their experiments. When Orville and Wilbur chose Kitty Hawk as the location they wished to test their aircrafts they forever changed the landscape of the city.
The men that would forever alter Kitty Hawk grew up in a Dayton home with their three siblings, children by the names of Katherine, Lorin and Reuchlin. They were raised with Christian values, their father being a Bishop, and were instilled with the idea that they could achieve anything that they put their mind to. Their parent’s faith gave thier children the confidence and values that ended up giving flight to one of the greatest inventions in human history (Crouch).
Growing up both boys were incredibly smart and not surprisingly, did extremely well in both math and science. Ironically however neither received high school diplomas. Despite the fact neither brother graduated they both received honorary degrees from prestigious institutions such as Harvard and Yale after their invention of the airplane (Crouch).
Before the fame that resulted from the invention of the airplane Orville and Wilbur Wright ran a bike shop in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio. Neither boy married (both lived in the family home until their deaths) so they spent most of their time together, drawing up sketches and coming up with ideas for their airplane. The business, which they founded in 1892, funded their project and allowed them plenty of time to learn about flight. They read books, played with kites, and watched birds fly to try to figure out the complexities of this act that they were so curious about (Crouch).
Not only did they need to do research in to how to create this flying vessel but they needed the perfect place to test its powers. They found their ideal location and “…it was the Outer Banks that met their criteria for privacy, steady winds and wide-open, non-vegetated spaces” (Wright Brothers National Memorial). Unlike today, they could not do an online search to find an area to find an area to meet their criteria and moving within the US was still a fairly difficult thing to do at that time so they had to rely on information from the United States Weather Bureau to a location that would fit their needs. They came across Kitty Hawk and after wrote to the commissioner of the city. The reply they received from Capt. William Tate read as follows: “You could, for instance get a stretch of sandy land one mile by five with a bare hill in the center eighty feet high not a tree or bush anywhere to break the evenness of the wind current… I assure you, you will find a hospitable person when you come among us” (Wright). And so they found the place that would forever change the course of their life and the place that they, in turn, would forever change the landscape of.
The brothers first traveled to Kitty Hawk in 1900 to experiment with the seventeen foot craft that they had constructed after tireless researching and building. The result was less than they had hoped for but they felt like they gained lateral and longitudinal control of the craft. In May of that same year Wilbur Wright wrote to Octave Chanute, who was considered to be an expert on flight saying “For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life. I have been trying to arrange my affairs in such a way that I can devote my entire time for a few months to experiment in this field” (Crouch, 183). This disease he talks about is his on going obsession with flying. Little did he know that he would soon achieve his goal and in turn give back to the place that would end up giving him the perfect recipe for success: Kitty Hawk.
This goal would not be realized for a few more years. In 1901 they returned to Kitty Hawk with a twenty two foot long craft and a new camber. A camber refers to the curve of the planes wing. This particular camber caused more problems than it did good so by the end of the trip the brothers had returned to the previous camber. This failure prompted Orville and Wilbur to build their own wind chamber so they could produce further data about flight and how to produce a craft that could fly and be easily navigated (Crouch).
This research paid off and in 1902 they returned to Kitty Hawk with what they, by the end of the trip, believed to be the first working airplane. This airplane, the first of its kind, had thirty two foot wings and vertical tales. The brothers flew this craft upwards of 1000 times in 1902 and had them ready for success upon their return to Kitty Hawk in 1903 (Crouch).
On December 17, 1903 the brothers changed travel forever. It was then, on the hills of Kitty Hawk that Orville, with his brother running alongside him, took off in to the sky to achieve the first ever documented human flight (Wright Brothers National Memorial). The flight was a mere twelve seconds “But for the first time, a manned, heavier-than air machine left the ground by its own power, moved forward under control without losing speed, and landed on a point as high as that from which it started” (The Road to the First Flight). Orville and Wilbur not only changed transportation forever they changed Kitty Hawk, forever it would be known as the home of one of the greatest inventions of man.
Since that fateful day in December of 1903 the identity of this small town in the Outer Banks has revolved around the great invention that took flight on their shores. The town logo is “First in Flight” and features an emblem of the brothers flying their first aircraft. Not only is there a logo, but Kitty Hawk is home to a massive monument forever commemorating the brothers and what they did December of 1903. It was funded by government dollars, proposed by the Committee on Appropriations, and erected in 1932 (US House). This, along with a visitor center serves as the main tourist attraction in the city which is visited by a half million people every year. This town, which has largely been centered around tourism and the benefits of it can credit its development to the Wright Brothers and their decision for location. Not only does the town make money from tourism it is a city that is known by almost all boys and girls through out America. Growing up you learn about the historic first flight at Kitty Hawk, a town which by any other means is the same as any other quiet beach town.
Wilbur and Orville have defined Kitty Hawk and forever etched it into history books completely changing it’s future. They did this by choosing it over all other towns as the location for their experiments. If it was not for their decision, North Carolina, more specifically Kitty Hawk, would have been forced to take on a whole other identity. What would the license plate be? What would it be like to grow up in Kitty Hawk if the monument did not sit on that hill? The Wright brothers not only changed the future of transportation but they shaped the future of a city, and in some ways, even a state.
United States. Cong. House. Committe on Appropriations. Monument on Kevin Devil Hill. H. Bill. Washington, 1930. Print.
About the Author
Tia Gaffen is a sophmore at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She plans to major in Journalism with an emphasis in Public Relations. | <urn:uuid:9db0423f-b085-4a2a-a7be-7b95124ab56c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nchistory.web.unc.edu/kitty-hawk-nc/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00083-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981787 | 1,631 | 3.25 | 3 |
U.S. Health Officials Require Food Makers to List Bad Kind of Fat / New Support for an Unusual Treatment for Heart Attack Victims / Happy Ending to a Car Crash 20 Years Ago
I'm Bob Doughty with Phoebe Zimmermann, and this is the VOA Special English program SCIENCE IN THE NEWS.
This week -- new American rules for food makers to tell if products contain a bad kind of fat ... New support for an unusual kind of treatment for heart attack victims ... And, the story of a man who finally spoke, almost twenty years after a car accident.
The United States Food and Drug Administration will require food companies to list the amount of what are known as trans fats in their products. The new requirement will not go into effect until two-thousand-six. But it is expected to push food makers to reduce the levels of trans fatty acids in their products before that.
Health experts say trans fats increase the chances of developing heart disease and other serious health problems. Studies have shown that trans fats increase the amount of bad cholesterol in the blood. At the same time, they decrease the amount of good cholesterol.
Products that contain trans fats include many kinds of margarine, peanut butter, cookies, cereals, puddings, doughnuts and fried foods. Food producers use trans fats because they say food tastes better and stays fresh longer in stores.
Trans fats are most commonly found in what are called partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. These are liquid oils that have been made into solids. Food products generally say if they contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. But public health officials say food makers have in a sense hidden the trans fats by not listing them separately.
Saturated fats from animals also increase the amount of bad cholesterol. So finding saturated fats and trans fats together in foods can be especially dangerous.
Some businesses in the United States are already trying to reduce the amount of trans fat they use. Last year, McDonald's made news when it promised to use a new oil that would reduce the amount in its French fries, its fried potatoes. McDonald's has not yet made the change. Reports say tests continue.
Experts say healthier fats cost more than trans fats. But several food companies in the United States have already begun to use them. The statement "no trans fat" now appears on some products.
The Food and Drug Administration says knowing more about what is in foods will help people improve their health, and will also save millions of dollars in medical costs.
The American Heart Association has given its support to an unusual treatment for people who have just had a heart attack. The treatment involves cooling the person's body after the heart has been restarted. The heart association says a lowered body temperature can help prevent brain damage in at least some patients.
A heart attack causes the heart to stop pumping blood to the brain. Often, people who survive heart attacks that last longer than a few minutes suffer brain damage.
The cooling treatment aims to lower a patient's body temperature to about thirty-three degrees Celsius. The American Heart Association says the cooling should begin as soon as possible after the heart has been returned to normal pumping.
Cooling heart patients is not new. For some time, doctors have lowered the temperatures of heart patients before operations. But, scientists say new studies show that cooling can also help patients AFTER their hearts have stopped.
Doctor Jerry Nolan of the Royal United Hospital in Bath, England, was the lead researcher of the advisory statement. Doctor Nolan is also a chairman of the Advanced Life Support Task Force of the International Committee on Resuscitation. That group and the American Heart Association jointly released the advisory. It appeared first in Circulation, published by the American Heart Association, a private group.
Doctor Nolan says the normal return of blood flow and oxygen to the brain causes a series of chemical reactions. This process can continue for as long as twenty-four hours, and cause swelling in the brain. Doctor Nolan says cooling the body slows the chemical reactions and limits the swelling.
Doctor Nolan and his team supported their statement with two studies published last year. One took place in nine medical centers in Europe. Researchers in Australia carried out the other study at four hospitals in Melbourne.
In Europe, medical workers placed patients on a special bed with a cover that blew cold air. Sometime they also used ice on the patients. The goal was to get a patient's temperature to between thirty-two and thirty-four degrees Celsius within four hours of the return of a normal heart beat. Doctors kept the patient at that temperature for a full day.
The study in Europe involved more than one-hundred-seventy patients. Half were cooled, half were not. Fifty-five percent of those who were cooled had good brain activity six months after treatment. Only thirty-nine percent of the other half had similar results.
In Australia, emergency workers started the cooling before even they brought the heart attack victim to the hospital. The workers placed ice packs on the head and upper body. The use of ice continued in the hospital for twelve more hours. The ice lowered the patient's temperature to thirty-three degrees Celsius.
The Australian study found that twenty-one of forty-three patients who were cooled had good brain activity by the time of their release from the hospital. This was true for only nine of the thirty-four patients without the treatment.
The advisory notes that the two studies involved only some kinds of patients. All had good blood pressure. There was detailed information about the time and length of their heart attacks. And, all had evidence of having gone into a coma after their attack.
The American Health Association says it is not known if cooling may help other groups of heart attack patients. It also says more study is needed to learn the best ways to cool patients and how long they should remain that way. And, the advisory warns of a small increase in the risk of bleeding, infection and abnormal heart rhythm.
Finally, Doctor Nolan warned people to resist what might be the natural urge to keep someone warm right after a heart attack. He says warming the person could do more harm than good.
A man in the American South has begun to talk again after nearly twenty years in a coma-like condition.
Terry Wallis of Arkansas is thirty-nine years old. He was severely injured in a car accident in nineteen-eighty-four. The crash injured his brain and left him unable to move below the neck. Last month, he began talking.
Doctors say Terry Wallis was in a coma at first. He was unconscious, unable to react to anything around him. Later, they described his condition as a persistent vegetative state. This is a situation in which a person is not aware of the environment, but his body continues to operate. The body may move and the eyes may open, but the person does not speak or obey commands. The patient may cry or laugh at times.
The National Institutes of Health says a coma rarely continues for more than two to four weeks. Vegetative states may continue for years -- but almost twenty years is extremely unusual.
Terry Wallis's eyes have been open for years. He could eat. Sometimes, he communicated through sounds. For the past two years, doctors have been treating him with an antidepressant drug. They say it seems to have worked.
Now, his family is slowly letting him know him that many things have changed since nineteen-eighty-four. Two of his grandparents have died. His baby daughter is now nineteen. Family members say he is trying to learn about modern technology. He has seen a cell phone and a laptop computer. They say he has started to read. And, Terry Wallis says he also wants to learn how to walk again -- for his daughter.
SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Nancy Steinbach and Caty Weaver. Our producer was Cynthia Kirk, with audio assistance from Dwayne Collins. This is Bob Doughty. And this is Phoebe Zimmermann. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America. | <urn:uuid:e68beec4-aa6d-4faa-a88c-51d3f241c917> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.manythings.org/voa/0/11031.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97014 | 1,647 | 3.0625 | 3 |
The breastfeeding mother is different from anyone else who might sleep with her baby in any location and under any conditions. -- Diane Wiessinger, Diana West, and Linda Smith
Schaumburg, Illinois (PRWEB) May 22, 2013
Few new mothers get enough sleep and most mothers worry about their babies sleeping safely. Research has shown that a majority of breastfeeding mothers bedshare at some point because they need more sleep and it makes breastfeeding easier at night. Many families also discover that bedsharing is enjoyable and brings them closer. Yet they often worry about the safety of bedsharing, especially when they hear strong messages in the media warning them against it.
One such warning was recently in the press after publication of a meta-analysis on bedsharing by Carpenter et al (2013) (http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/5/e002299.full). However, infant sleep researchers who focus on the normal behaviors of breastfeeding mothers and babies report numerous flaws in the Carpenter study, which combines and re-analyzes five older studies rather than examining any of the new research.
The low-risk breastfeeding, non-smoking mother who hears such anti-bedsharing messages is likely to move from her relatively safe bed to a truly unsafe sofa or recliner to breastfeed at night, putting her baby at significantly higher risk. Breastfeeding is also likely to end sooner when mothers have to get up at night to nurse, and babies who aren’t breastfed have a higher risk of SIDS.
The risks of bedsharing are lower for breastfeeding mothers because they are more attuned to their babies’ movements and needs and tend to sleep in a protective “cuddle curl” around their babies. In turn, their babies seek their mother’s breast rather than moving into surrounding pillows and bedding.
While bedsharing is not appropriate for all families, a significant body of recent, careful research indicates that bedsharing does not result in any increased risk of SIDS when the following “Safe Sleep Seven” conditions are met:
1. Non-smoking household (including maternal smoking during pregnancy)
2. Sober and unimpaired caregivers
3. Breastfeeding mother
4. Healthy baby
5. Baby on his back
6. Baby not overheated
7. Mother and baby sharing a surface that is free of objects, indentations, or gaps that could compromise the infant’s breathing.
When all of these seven conditions are in place, a baby in bed with his mother is at no greater risk of SIDS than if he’s alone in a crib.
Adult beds sometimes include suffocation, choking, or entrapment risks that can be removed in advance, which is why bedsharing should be planned rather than accidental. A prepared adult bed is safer than a sofa, soft chair, or recliner, all three of which have inherent suffocation risks.
Because bedsharing is likely to happen when mothers are exhausted, LLLI encourages all mothers, even those who don’t meet all “Safe Sleep Seven” criteria, to plan for bedsharing by making their beds free of suffocation risks.
For more information on safe bedsharing for the breastfeeding family, see LLLI’s tear-off sheet, “Safe Sleep for Breastfeeding Babies,” available at http://www.llli.org/public/profile/504. There is also a FAQ on LLLI’s webpage at http://www.llli.org/faq/cosleep.html.
For a detailed analysis of the 2013 Carpenter study, see the White Paper, “SIDS: Risks and Realities: A Response to Recent Findings on Bedsharing and SIDS Risk,” developed by Sarah Ockwell-Smith, Wendy Middlemiss, Tracy Cassels, Helen Stevens, and Darcia Narvaez, available at http://www.praeclaruspress.com/carpenter_white_paper.pdf.
About La Leche League International
La Leche League began as a small support group near Chicago in 1956. It has become the world’s leading breastfeeding advocacy organization. La Leche League International’s mission is to help mothers worldwide to breastfeed through mother-to-mother support, encouragement, information, and education, and to promote a better understanding of breastfeeding as an important element in the healthy development of the baby and mother. | <urn:uuid:d6e2adaf-5255-4515-ab20-80f31b37cc7c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10762126.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00128-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938285 | 930 | 2.609375 | 3 |
What would happen if you had no fat?
What exactly do lipids do for you? Lipids store energy and act as structural components of cell membranes. They are used in cosmetics, the food industry, and nanotechnology. Major lipid groups include fats, phospholipids, steroids, and waxes. Fats, also known as triglycerides, are a subgroup of lipids. They are composed of three fatty acids and glycerol and are essential in many of our bodies' daily functions.
- Consider the texture of fat. How is it beneficial to your organs?
- Lipids are generally insoluble in polar substances such as water. How is this property beneficial to humans and other animals?
- How do lipids affect our metabolism?
- What would happen if we didn’t consume enough fat? | <urn:uuid:9f6e88db-ef40-4c70-accd-87ac78a91296> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ck12.org/biology/Lipids/rwa/user:13IntF/What-would-happen-if-you-had-no-fat/r8/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00021-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969717 | 170 | 3.890625 | 4 |
MIDLANDA new survey of environmental data sponsored by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy shows that in the past three decades, America in general, and Michigan in particular, have seen substantial improvements in environmental qualityimprovements that will almost certainly continue in the future.
"While polls consistently find majorities who believe environmental quality in the United States is declining, that perception does not match reality," says the report's main author, Mackinac Center Adjunct Scholar Steven Hayward, director of the California-based Pacific Research Institute's Center for Environmental and Regulatory Reform.
Air quality, for example, has improved dramatically over the past generation. "Michigan cities monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are below the health-based thresholds set by the Clean Air Act for all six `criteria' pollutantslead, carbon monoxide, ozone, particulates, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide," the study's authors point out. Most Michigan cities not only meet the national standard, but are below the national average. "The one exception is Detroit, which is slightly above the national average for particulates and sulfur dioxide," the authors say. "On the other hand, the Foundation for Clean Air Progress in Washington, D.C. lists Detroit as one of the 10 best U.S. cities in terms of ozone reductions over the last decade."
Water quality shows similar improvement trends. Due to wastewater treatment facilities, the authors point out, all sewage generated in the United States had been treated before discharge by 1992. This treatment means that since 1970, discharge of toxic organics has declined 99 percent and toxic metals by 98 percent.
Michigan has a superior record in monitoring water quality, and has impressive results to report. While all 50 states taken together only assessed 17 percent of their rivers, streams and lakes in the 1996 National Water Quality Inventory, Michigan assessed 40 percent. Of those, 93 percent were deemed "fully supporting," which means they are safe for both swimming and fishing. There have been large improvements in water quality and wildlife health in and around the Great Lakes over the past 30 years. "Today it is once again possible to fish in the Great Lakes, and even to drink their water in most locations," the authors point out. In fact, "the environmental challenge facing the Lakes today no longer comes mainly from industrial pollution or toxics," the authors say, "but from biological threats: Nearly 145 non-native or `exotic' species now found in the Great Lakes are crowding out the habitat of other indigenous species in the Lakes."
Natural resources, including forests and wetlands, are making a comeback as well. There is about three times as much forestland in North America today than in 1920. In Michigan, 44 percent of the state is covered in forest, while only 10 percent of land area is considered "developed." U.S. wetlands destruction has slowed dramatically. Since 1980, the United States has experienced no net loss of wetlands. As for pollution of our land by toxic waste, nationwide, the EPA shows a 42-percent decline in "toxics releases" since 1988, a reduction of nearly 1.5 billion pounds. The chemical industry, not surprisingly, has shown the largest decrease, with a 50.8 percent reduction since 1988.
What accounts for these environmental gains? The seemingly obvious conclusion is to give all credit to such regulations as the 1970 Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. While government regulations undoubtedly play a role, the authors say their research suggests that the "wealth effect" of a growing economy appears to be key to an improved environment.
"As the Michigan and U.S. economies grow, so does their ability to control pollution and protect resources," the authors point out. "Economic growth also means improved technology and, therefore, more efficient uses of raw materials and natural resources. Data suggest that it is this growth, combined with an increasing public demand for a clean environment, that has driven many environmental improvements over the past 30 years." For this reason, the authors say, "environmentalists should not regard economic concerns as a hindrance to effective policy, but should embrace economic growth as the key to further environmental improvements." | <urn:uuid:2e328fe7-88e2-4f63-95ed-3b417566fe5d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=2845 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958713 | 841 | 3.421875 | 3 |
September 23, 2011
North America Safe From Impact Of Satellite
NASA said on Friday that its Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) will most likely miss North America.Scientists have still not pinpointed exactly where the 13,000-pound satellite is going to end up.
The space agency said the odds of a piece of debris striking a person are about 1-in-3,200. Scientists predict 26 pieces of debris will survive Earth's atmosphere, weighing a total of 1,100 pounds.
UARS will re-enter Earth's atmosphere sometime Friday afternoon, but NASA was certain North America would not get to see the show.
"The satellite will not be passing over North America during that time period. It is still too early to predict the time and location of re-entry with any more certainty, but predictions will become more refined in the next 24 to 36 hours."
UARS was launched in 1991 to help measure the ozone layer, wind and temperature. The satellite was officially decommissioned in 2005 after it suffered from being struck by a small piece of debris.
The satellite has been orbiting 140-miles above the Earth´s surface from 57 degrees north latitude to 57 degrees south latitude.
Image Caption: This conceptual image shows the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, launched on Sept. 15, 1991, by the space shuttle Discovery. Originally designed for a three-year mission, UARS measured chemical compounds found in the ozone layer, wind and temperature in the stratosphere, as well as the energy input from the sun. Together, these measurements helped define the role of Earth's upper atmosphere in climate and climate variability. The 35-foot-long, 15-foot-diameter UARS was decommissioned on Dec. 14, 2005. Credit: NASA
On the Net: | <urn:uuid:b76e53e1-f977-4c36-a729-f5971bc77b47> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112388327/north-america-safe-from-impact-of-satellite/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00198-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940577 | 367 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Thomas Gainsborough (christened 14 May 1727 – 2 August 1788) was one of the most famous portrait and landscape painters of 18th century Britain. Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, England. His father was a weaver involved with the wool trade. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his pencilling skills so that he let him go to London to study art in 1740. In London he first trained under engraver Hubert Gravelot but eventually became associated with William Hogarth and his school. One of his mentors was Francis Hayman. In those years he contributed to the decoration of what is now the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children and the supper boxes at Vauxhall Gardens. In the 1740s, Gainsborough married Margaret Burr, an illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Beaufort, who settled a £200 annuity on the couple. The artist's work, then mainly composed of landscape paintings, was not selling very well. He returned to Sudbury in 1748–1749 and concentrated on the painting of portraits. In 1752, he and his family, now including two daughters, moved to Ipswich. Commissions for personal portraits increased, but his clientele included mainly local merchants and squires. He had to borrow against his wife's annuity. In 1759, Gainsborough and his family moved to Bath. There, he studied portraits by van Dyck and was eventually able to attract a better-paying high society clientele.
In 1761, he began to send work to the Society of Arts exhibition in London (now the Royal Society of Arts, of which he was one of the earliest members); and from 1769 on, he submitted works to the Royal Academy's annual exhibitions. He selected portraits of well-known or notorious clients in order to attract attention. These exhibitions helped him acquire a national reputation, and he was invited to become one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1769. His relationship with the academy, however, was not an easy one and he stopped exhibiting his paintings there in 1773. In 1774, Gainsborough and his family moved to London to live in Schomberg House, Pall Mall. In 1777, he again began to exhibit his paintings at the Royal Academy, including portraits of contemporary celebrities, such as the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland. Exhibitions of his work continued for the next six years. In 1780, he painted the portraits of King George III and his queen and afterwards received many royal commissions. This gave him some influence with the Academy and allowed him to dictate the manner in which he wished his work to be exhibited. However, in 1783, he removed his paintings from the forthcoming exhibition and transferred them to Schomberg House. In 1784, royal painter Allan Ramsay died and the King was obliged to give the job to Gainsborough's rival and Academy president, Joshua Reynolds, however Gainsborough remained the Royal Family's favorite painter. At his own express wish, he was buried at St. Anne's Church, Kew, where the Family regularly worshipped. In his later years, Gainsborough often painted relatively simple, ordinary landscapes. With Richard Wilson, he was one of the originators of the eighteenth-century British landscape school; though simultaneously, in conjunction with Joshua Reynolds, he was the dominant British portraitist of the second half of the 18th century. Gainsborough painted more from his observations of nature (and human nature) than from any application of formal academic rules. Gainsborough's only known assistant was his nephew, Gainsborough Dupont. He died of cancer on 2 August 1788 in his 62nd year. | <urn:uuid:2787f1c0-60a9-40b3-9bb0-ab8396d1f465> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.allpaintings.org/v/rococo/Thomas+Gainsborough/?g2_page=9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00022-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990994 | 757 | 3.25 | 3 |
Explore More is a multimedia project designed to engage
students in problems they can relate to, provide compelling content
for investigation, and give students opportunities to form their
own points of view. The project features engaging topics, an issue-driven
approach, and a variety of technology resources.
section to find about more about the topics, resources, and purpose
of this project.
Four compelling topics were chosen by Iowa teachers for their ability to match student interests and to connect to critical thinking skills, curricular content, and problem-based learning.
The Explore More project connects compelling content, effective teaching and learning strategies, and innovative uses of technology to provide meaningful opportunities for students.
This project uses a variety of technologies that are readily available in the classroom. A collection of supporting activities, partnerships, and outreach events enhance and extend the use of these materials in the classroom.
IPTV's Explore More project has been recognized by educators and the educational media industry for outstanding instructional quality and production excellence. Find out more. | <urn:uuid:5ac27d83-da15-4cfc-ae11-8548c9244894> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.iptv.org/exploremore/land/Teacher_Resources/information.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00158-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913583 | 208 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Asthma is a condition described as excessive hyperactivity of the
bronchia and subsequent narrowing that later produces wheezing.
During asthma the muscles around the bronchial tubes contract or
get tight, and this makes the bronchial tubes smaller thus reducing
the space the air has to move in and out of the lungs. Also with
bronchial constriction there is edema or swelling of the tissue
inside the bronchial walls and excessive mucus production. This
mucus is thick and plugs up the airway causing difficulty in breathing.
Knowing early signs of asthma can help control or treat asthma effectively
and reduce the risk of severe attack. These are:
Frequent upper respiratory infection with wheezing.
- Cough, usually dry, tight, and non-productive.
- Shortness of breath or difficulty in breathing.
- Feeling of tightness or pressure in the chest and wheezing.
Diagnosis is based on several factors:
A pattern of recurrent wheezing, shortness of breath, congested
cough or cough that often subsides when activity is stopped.
- History of frequent upper respiratory infections with wheezing.
- Wheezing may not always be present; the lungs may be so tight
that not enough air is moving through the bronchial passages.
In asthma, broncho-constriction usually occurs following exposure
to triggers. Common triggers are different for each person and include
allergens (things that people are allergic to) such as pollens,
dust, animal dander/hair. Triggers are also infections, i.e., sinus
infections, weather changes, medications, food, food additives and
preservatives, exercise induced asthma and stress or emotional factors.
you can do
Asthma usually responds well to medications such as bronchodilators
that reduce the constriction of the bronchial tubes. These bronchodilators
come in inhaled form, which is frequently used now because of the
quicker response. If you have asthma medications use them as soon
as the symptoms start.
Rest to relieve weakness and muscular aches, avoid becoming fatigued,
take time from school or work to rest.
- Drink lots of fluids to help the mucus from getting too thick.
- Don't smoke. Smoking acts as an irritant to the lungs and this
can worsen symptoms.
health care personnel:
If symptoms don't improve with over-the-counter or prescribed
- If symptoms get worse or new ones appear.
- If fever over 101 degrees F, shortness of breath, persistent
cough or asthmatic wheezing is present.
- If your peak flow is below normal for you. Ask your doctor more
to Common Ailments page
[an error occurred while processing this directive] | <urn:uuid:0ec4c9bb-1e90-4a93-959c-907f0dcb13c8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.virginia.edu/studenthealth/ailments/asthma.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00091-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915194 | 600 | 4.0625 | 4 |
Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson (1767-1845) postcard
This is the last life portrait of Andrew Jackson, 1845, by George Peter Alexander Healy. Old Hickory was the 7th U.S. President.
He looks like a hateful old fart doesn’t he?
He loved to race horses for high stakes and his opponents often became his enemies. If you said something about his wife being married to someone else he would probably challenge you to a duel… and for other reasons he might challenge you to a duel.
He was also instrumental in having the Cherokee and Creek Indians removed from their homelands in the east and march on “The Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma – which defied the Supreme Court’s ruling.
I’m sure he had some good qualities as well. | <urn:uuid:6781eaa1-5e5b-45dd-85bb-18b14b73eb8a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ethunter1.blogspot.com/2008/05/andrew-old-hickory-jackson-1767-1845.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00141-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986484 | 175 | 2.65625 | 3 |
What happens to the brain when we drink alcohol? In recent years, scientists have discovered that booze works by binding to and potentiating a specific GABA receptor subtype. (GABA is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mammalian brain, which means it helps to regulate and quiet cellular activity.) While it remains unclear how, exactly, these chemical tweaks produce the psychological changes triggered by a beer or bourbon, a new study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh (along with Jonathan Schooler, at UCSB) have found one intriguing new side-effect of alcohol: it makes the mind more likely to wander, and makes us less likely to notice that our mind is wandering. The article is wittily titled “Lost in the Sauce”.
Obviously, this research helps explain those warnings on liquor bottles about drinking and operating heavy machinery. It’s not a good idea to let your mind wander uncontrollably when you’re driving a car, especially since alcohol also seems to reduce activity in the motor and cerebellar regions required for the execution of complex movements.
But there’s a larger idea here, and it involves the constant tension in the mind between paying attention to the outside world versus our own internal thoughts. Alcohol seems to shift the balance, so that our babbling stream of consciousness suddenly seems much more entertaining. Unfortunately, that means we’re paying much less attention to external reality. In other words, alcohol makes us more interesting and everything else less interesting.
This phenomenon also helps explain, I think, the pleasurable side-effects of booze. (People have been drinking beer for nearly 8000 years.) Schooler and others have argued that the wandering mind is actually an essential mental tool, since it allows us to uncouple our thoughts from the here and now. Here’s how I described the research in a recent article:
In recent years, scientists have demonstrated that daydreaming is a fundamental feature of the human mind – so fundamental, in fact, that it’s often referred to as our “default” mode of thought. Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections. Instead of focusing on our immediate surroundings, the daydreaming mind is free to engage in abstract thought and imaginative ramblings.
“If your mind didn’t wander, then you’d be largely shackled to whatever you are doing right now,” says Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “But instead you can engage in mental time travel and other kinds of simulation. During a daydream, your thoughts are really unbounded.”
The ability to think abstractly that flourishes during daydreams also has important social benefits. Mostly, what we daydream about is each other, as the mind retrieves memories, contemplates “what if” scenarios, and thinks about how it should behave in the future. In this sense, the content of daydreams often resembles a soap opera, with people reflecting on social interactions both real and make-believe. We can leave behind the world as it is and start imagining the world as it might be, if only we hadn’t lost our temper, or had superpowers, or were sipping a daiquiri on a Caribbean beach. It is this ability to tune out the present moment and contemplate the make-believe that separates the human mind from every other.
But this doesn’t mean you should go out and start drinking during your workday. While mind wandering can be an important mental strategy, it’s most helpful when we’re still able to notice that our mind is wandering, which is precisely what alcohol interferes with. In his experiments, Schooler distinguishes between two types of daydreaming. The first type occurs when people notice they are daydreaming only when prodded by the researcher. Although they’ve been told to press a button as soon as they realize their mind has started to wander, these people fail to press the button. The second type of daydreaming occurs when people catch themselves during the experiment – they notice their mind is daydreaming without needing to be questioned. Schooler hypothesizes that people who are unaware of their mind wandering experience fewer cognitive benefits, since they also fail to notice when their stream of consciousness produces a useful or creative insight. In other words, we need to occasionally decouple our attention from the outside world – the mind is a fount of useful associations – but we can’t let ourselves disappear down the rabbit hole of consciousness. “The point is that it’s not enough to just daydream,” Schooler says. “Letting your mind drift off is the easy part. The hard part is maintaining enough awareness so that even when you start to daydream you can interrupt yourself and notice a creative thought.”
Extra-credit question: Is there a drug or “cognitive enhancer” that might increase mind wandering but not simultaneously reduce meta-awareness? You’d probably have to ramp up activity in the default circuitry but without inhibiting the prefrontal cortex. My best proposal is a positive mood (which isn’t a drug, I know), since there’s suggestive evidence that being happy makes us more creative. | <urn:uuid:d01603fd-ea97-48c8-9954-ffd34f2dea2b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/06/09/daydreaming-and-booze/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00093-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950272 | 1,109 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Library Home || Full Table of Contents || Suggest a Link || Library Help
|The Public Learning Media Laboratory|
|Visualize the process of searching the web by interacting with the abstract logic concept behind queries -- as jigsaw puzzle pieces of keywords and Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT). Boolify offers a video and several lesson plans in a web search curricula.|
|Levels:||Elementary, Middle School (6-8)|
|Resource Types:||Search Engines|
© 1994- The Math Forum at NCTM. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:c439b88d-44b7-420b-b540-18a1b50cc57c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mathforum.org/library/view/75551.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00067-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.743223 | 118 | 3 | 3 |
New evidence suggests that our ancestors have been cooking and processing food as far back as 1.9 million years ago. This could explain why humans have small teeth, as we don't need to spend our time chewing as much as animals.
The scientists found that chimpanzees spend 10 times more time chewing compared to humans.
Bovines spend almost all their waking hours eating grasses.
Cooking softens and processes food to make eating much easier and reduce chewing time. Had our ancestors not cooked, we'd be eating nearly half of the day instead of just 5 percent that we spend today.
The theory goes, cooking freed our ancestors up for more creative activities than chewing. Like talking without your mouth full. It makes sense in principle, but here's the hitch:
"There isn't a lot of good evidence for fire. That's kind of controversial," Organ said. "That's one of the holes in this cooking hypothesis. If those species right then were cooking you should find evidence for hearths and fire pits."
To put their theory on the table, so to speak, they need to definitely establish that people used fire in those days.
Note: Technologically primitive peoples have also made use of hot springs and naturally occurring fire. If a natural fire has started and is burning out, it is easy to grasp the principle of keeping a bit of it going, even if one doesn't know how to start a fire. Also some methods of preparing food can make it easier to digest without cooking – chopping vegetable matter into small bits, for example, as well as pounding grains. We shall see.
See also: Stone tools found from two million years ago – and Michael Cremo is still wrong? | <urn:uuid:38240b11-78d7-46e4-993a-4998c0f67665> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://salvomag.com/blog/2011/08/were-people-cooking-two-million-years-ago/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00002-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975635 | 348 | 3.296875 | 3 |
SEASON: Fall through spring
CHOOSING: Look for bunches that are dark green and free of yellow or brown blemishes.
STORING: Place cut kale in a plastic produce bag in your refrigerator for up to a week.
GROWING: In warm areas, kale is best grown in the cool months of spring and fall. It’s also remarkably coldhardy and will survive all but the most severe winters, remaining usable even after nights dipping to 10 degrees. Kale is even better after one or two frosts—the leaves will develop a touch of sweetness that is worth the wait.
There are a number of delicious options for planting: the frilly Winterbor and Dwarf Blue Curled; the hardy, purple-veined Red Russian; and the blue-green Lacinato, also known as dinosaur or Tuscan kale.
Set out transplants about a month before the last frost in spring. Plant again in late summer, about two months before the first anticipated frost. In warm regions, planting can continue all winter into spring.
Kale is a leafy green requiring sun, moisture, and rich soil. Amend your soil with organic materials such as bagged garden soil, mushroom compost, or your own compost. Add timed-release fertilizer granules to the soil before planting to ensure nonstop nutrition and the best growth.
Space transplants about a foot apart. To get the most from limited garden space, plant wide rows: three rows of kale in a bed 4 square feet wide, which allows you to reach the center of the bed from each side while giving you the maximum room for planting. Water well, and mulch the bed with pine needles, wheat straw, or bark nuggets to keep the soil moist. Water at least an inch weekly.
Harvest kale sustainably by picking the outer leaves, leaving the top ones to nourish the plant. | <urn:uuid:5c54c702-bc88-4ab2-aa64-8d9ef34a560c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cookinglight.com/food/in-season/guide-to-kale | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00127-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908273 | 391 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Bytes, not bits. Oh, and it’s fast, too.
Nanochip, a Silicon Valley-based fabless semiconductor firm, just received $14 million in funding to complete work on a 100 GB storage chip. Intel Capital, who should know something about chips, is an investor. The goal: “. . . allow Nanochip to complete development of its first prototypes later this year . . . .”
The Nanochip design is a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System, or MEMS, device. A descendent of IBM’s Millipede device, it uses polarization instead of Millepede’s heat to store data. An array of tiny probes - looking like phonograph needles, if any of you have ever seen one - less than 25 um in diameter, changes the state of the recording medium. The probes are movable - similar to the mirrors on DLP chips - so they can write more than one location. Since there are many thousands of probes, they have a lot of bandwidth.
This is persistent storage, i.e. it retains data with the power off. The Millipede design proposed using a heat-sensitive polymer to create little CD-like pits to record data. They couldn’t get that to work so now they are using an electrical method.
Here’s a scanning electron microscope picture of a probe:
The chip is actually 2 chips bonded together. One chip has the array of probes and the other has the media. They are bonded, diced and then mounted in traditional plastic packaging. The really cool thing is that they can use 10 year old, fully depreciated, fab equipment to build these chips. They don’t need deep UV technology or any of the other costly tricks chip makers use today to scrunch chip sizes. A 1 micron fab is fine. That should translate into much lower costs.
The design is scalable to 1 TB chips, according to Nanochip. - zd | <urn:uuid:dca35dc7-68c9-4ba4-991c-b0ad28331a8d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://xeno-lovegood.blogspot.com/2008/04/100-gb-memory-chip-coming-in-2009.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920375 | 416 | 3.171875 | 3 |
It is good to know ... that there are resources such as the Language Creation Society to help when a writer decides that a new language is just what their novel needs. - Elaine Frei, SFF Chronicle Network
We welcome members of the press and are willing to actively assist you in researching a story about conlangs or conlangers.
We maintain a list of diverse language creators within the conlanging community who are willing to serve as press contacts and whom you can contact for interviews. Just send an email describing your project, background, and contact information to ; we will be happy to forward it on to our contacts for their consideration.
You are also welcome to attend the Language Creation Conference (LCC) (also see below for more details on past LCC's). Registration is the same as for any other attendee, but we ask that you identify yourself as a journalist.
To ask any other questions with which we might be able to help, please email us at . For urgent inquiries, call +1 (918) 9-CONLANG (926-6526).
Language creation (or "conlanging" — "conlang" is short for "constructed language") is the process of inventing a new language. Though the extent to which a language is created varies, creators might include sound systems, grammars, and writing systems for their languages. Some creators are also interested in cosmogenesis: the creation of cultures and worlds in which their languages are used.
People create constructed languages for a number of reasons. Artistic languages (artlangs) are often included in fictional works: for example, J.R.R. Tolkien's Quenya and Sindarin ("Elvish") in The Lord of the Rings, Klingon in Star Trek, or Na'vi in Avatar. International auxiliary languages (auxlangs) are intended for communication between people of different native languages, usually to prevent one being elevated over others or to make learning easier; some famous examples are Esperanto, Volapük, Ido, and Interlingua. Logical and philosophical languages (loglangs) are used to test linguistic (and other) theories; Loglan and Lojban are well-known examples of the former, and Suzette Haden Elgin's Láadan is an example of the latter — which she incorporated into the Native Tongue series of novels.
For more information and web links on conlangs and conlanging, check out the Wikipedia article on constructed languages.
Past Media Coverage of Conlanging
- Newspapers (2004-2009)
- Magazines (1976-2010)
- Journals (2000-2009)
- Radio/Podcasts (2001-2009)
- Press coverage and interviews: Arika Okrent, In the Land of Invented Lanugages (2009) (official website)
- Press coverage and interviews: Paul Frommer, creator of Na'vi (the conlang featured in James Cameron's Avatar)
- Press coverage, Internet communications, and interviews: David J. Peterson, creator of Dothraki (the conlang to be featured in HBO's Game of Thrones). Additional coverage here.
- Conlang, an independent short film by Marta Masferrer and Baldvin Kári (Screenings)
- Esperanto, the most widely spoken international auxiliary language created by L.L. Zamenhof (and the topic of some debate)
- Ithkuil, a highly complex engineered language created by John Quijada
- Kēlen, an artistic language with no verbs created by Sylvia Sotomayor
- Klingon, from Star Trek - developed into a complete language by Marc Okrand
- Láadan, a language specifically designed to express the perceptions of human women, from the Native Tongue series by Suzette Haden Elgin.
- Lojban, a very well-known logical language maintained by The Logical Language Group
- Quenya and Sindarin, from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Solresol, a philosophical language created by François Sudre that can be sung, signed, written, and more
- Teonaht, a highly developed artistic language created by Sally Caves
- Toki Pona, a minimalist philosophical language, inspired by Taoist philosophy, created by Sonja Elen Kisa
Selected Online Community Links
- CONLANG mailing list - The oldest (founded Sept. 1991) and most active online mailing list dedicated to conlanging.
- Zompist Bulletin Board (ZBB) - An online forum dedicated to the discussion of conlangs, conworlds, linguistics, and Mark Rosenfelder's invented world of Almea.
- LiveJournal Conlangs Community
Perspectives on Conlanging
- Apologia pro imaginatione (Boudewijn Rempt)
- Conlang Manifesto (David J. Peterson)
- Artlanger's Rant (Jesse Bangs)
- Audience, Uglossia, and CONLANG: Inventing Languages on the Internet (Dr. Sarah Higley)
General Resources on Conlanging
- Essays on Language Design (Rick Morneau)
- Model Languages Newsletter (Jeffrey Henning)
- The Conlanger's Library (Don Boozer)
- Conlang Flag, designed by Christian Thalmann, Jan van Steenbergen, Leland Paul, and David Peterson, represents the Tower of Babel (translating Genesis 11:1-9 has been a tradition for conlangers) against a rising sun
Language Creation Society
The Language Creation Society (LCS) is a tax-exempt 501(c)3 California-based non-profit corporation with 13 international board members. Its goal is to promote conlangs and conlanging through offering platforms for conlangers to publish high-quality work of interest to the community, raising awareness about conlanging amongst the general public, organizing work for professional conlangers and people in the entertainment industry interested in adding more depth to their alternative worlds, and providing a central place for reliable contacts and information to those seeking to learn more.
LCS Board of Directors
The LCS Board of Directors is divided into an Executive Committee and an Advisory Committee.
- LCS Officers
- David J. Peterson - President - photos (1), creator of the Dothraki language, articles, SLIPA, Kamakawi, Zhyler, and another 10 languages
- Henrik Theiling, Ph.D. - Vice President, LCS IT Committee Chair - CONLANG-L list owner
- Sylvia Sotomayor - Treasurer (photos 1)
- Don Boozer - Secretary/Librarian - creator of the CPL Conlangs Exhibit
- LCS Board of Directors
- Doug Ball, Ph.D. - Truman State University (Linguistics).
- Don Boozer
- John E. Clifford, Ph.D. - Associate Professor Emeritus of the Department of Philosophy, University of Missouri -- St. Louis; former Logical Language Group board member
- George Corley - Host of Conlangery Podcast
- David G. Durand, Ph.D. - former adjunct professor of Computer Science, Brown University; CONLANG editor; long-time member of CONLANG; Tizra.com CEO (photos 1, 2, 3)
- Alex Fink, Ph.D. - North Carolina State University (Mathematics)
- Amanda Furrow
- Sarah L. Higley, Ph.D., aka Sally Caves - Associate Professor of English literature, University of Rochester; author of Hildegard of Bingen's Unknown Language: An Edition, Translation, and Discussion in addition to numerous other books & articles including Audience, Uglossia, and CONLANG: Inventing Languages on the Internet, and creator of the conlang Teonaht (photos 1)
- David J. Peterson
- John Quijada - Creator of the Ithkuil language.
- Sai - photos (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), resume, non-linear writing systems, gripping language (video), pkt, design of an ideal language, DE-Cal class
- Sylvia Sotomayor
- Henrik Theiling, Ph.D. (Vice President, LCS IT Committee Chair) - CONLANG-L list owner
General LCS Resources
- LCS Podcast: interviews with notable personalities in the conlanging community as well as video from the LCS's Language Creation Conferences
- LCS Board members and vital documents, seal (HQ image)
- Informational flyer: color or grayscale
Language Creation Conference
- The Language Creation Conferences (LCC), sponsored by the LCS, are comprised of talks, panel discussions, and workshops about issues related to language creation from different perspectives. It includes both fairly technical linguistic discussions and presentations as well as more general, sociological, or philosophical ones as well as examples of the art and craft of conlanging in action. Voices from many parts of the conlanging community and people from all over the world have attended, and the conference is open to the public.
- LCC1: UC Berkeley, April 23, 2006 - program (pdf), slides, talks, photos, interviews, video (HQ video available)
- LCC2: UC Berkeley, July 7-8, 2007 - program (pdf), slides, talks, photos, relay, video (HQ video available), more video
- LCC3: Brown U., March 21-22, 2009 - program (pdf), talks, photos, chatlog, conlang relay* results, presentations, posters, and further reading
- *Note: A conlang relay is a translation game involisconlangs similar to games like Telephone or Chinese Whispers but instead of whispers a text is passed from translator to translator. (See FrathWiki entry for more details)
- LCC4: Groningen, the Netherlands, May 14-15, 2011 - talks, photos, conlang relay results | <urn:uuid:f7d9bcb8-083b-4460-a3de-b88970f8f48f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://conlang.org/press.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00011-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.89006 | 2,112 | 2.53125 | 3 |
If you could step back in time and spend a few weeks with some literary hotshots, you might choose the rainy summer of 1816, when Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and a doctor named John Polidori holed up in a villa in the Swiss mountains and tried to outdo each other writing original ghost stories.
The famous book that came out of that summer is “Frankenstein,” by Mary Shelley, which was published in England a few years later. And according to a story in the Huffington Post, a young man in England has discovered a copy of the book that belonged to Lord Byron and includes an inscription by Mary Shelley herself.
The story says:
The copy of the best known fiction of the Romantic era had lain untouched for more than 50 years in the library of Lord Jay, the economist and Labour politician. His grandson Sammy, was sorting through his political papers for the archives of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, when he made the discovery.
“I saw the book lying at an angle in the corner of the top shelf. On opening it, I saw the title page, recognised what it was at once and leafed hungrily through the text – it was only when I flicked idly back to the first blank that I saw the inscription in cursive black ink, “To Lord Byron, from the author”,” explained the 23-year-old.
The story says that the book is expected to sell for £400,000 at auction. | <urn:uuid:9c4a1eb3-6749-4d82-bf09-72517284f694> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.chron.com/bookish/2012/09/found-lord-byrons-copy-of-frankenstein/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00053-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971498 | 316 | 2.546875 | 3 |
- slide 1 of 4
Obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD is an anxiety disorder characterized by unreasonable and intrusive thoughts and fears called obsessions followed by repetitive behaviors or compulsions carried out in an attempt to relieve the anxiety. There are various types of OCD and these include hoarding, washing and cleaning, obsessing, repeating, thinking ritualizers, ordering, and checking. Here we take a brief look at the symptoms and behaviors of OCD checkers and find out what are some of the treatment options available for these checking compulsions.
- slide 2 of 4
Symptoms and Behaviors of OCD Checkers
If someone you know is constantly checking on things to prevent a catastrophe, he or she has checkers OCD. These people may be checking again and again to see if the stove or the iron has been turned off fearing that it may start a fire. In some cases, the person may actually return after leaving home because he or she is not sure whether these household appliances are actually turned off.
Individuals with this type of OCD carry out these checking compulsions to repress the anxiety that arises from obsessive thoughts about something dreadful happening to them. They may check the door lock again or check the windows again and again before leaving home to make sure that everything is secure and safe.
Some checkers can even go around checking to make sure that no one has been harmed or hurt. The fear of suffering a life-threatening disease can make them obsessed with their body and they may keep checking to make sure that they do not develop any such illness.
Sufferers of this type of OCD may also be overly concerned about the content of a letter or email and may check over and over again to make sure that they there is no mistake or nothing offensive is written in the document. They may also check and recheck a checkbook to make sure that it is correctly balanced.
- slide 3 of 4
Treatment for OCD Checking
A very important characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorders is that the obsessions and compulsions interfere in the life of the individual. If these obsessions and checking compulsions are causing interference in your work or relationships, it is time to consult a mental health practitioner who will suggest the right kind of treatment for you.
The first thing that the mental health practitioner will do is to make sure that your symptoms and behaviors satisfy all the criteria of OCD as specified by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders, the standard criteria for diagnosing all mental disorders.
There are two main treatment approaches to OCD checking and these include psychotherapy and medications. A combination of both these treatment approaches is what usually works for most patients.
Psychotherapy is usually in the form of cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT which involves changing thought patterns so that compulsive behaviors do not occur. CBT can be combined with antidepressants such as clomipramine and fluoxetine to help increase levels of the neurotransmitter, serotonin, in the brain, which seems to be lacking in people who have OCD.
Obsessive fears about catastrophes and checking compulsions can really dominate the lives of OCD checkers. If your life is controlled by your fears and checking compulsions, it is time to seek medical help and get back to leading a normal life.
- slide 4 of 4
AllPsych Journal: Symptom Clusters of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Mayoclinic.com: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Brain Physics.com: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
American Academy of Family Physicians: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: What It Is and How to Treat It | <urn:uuid:39cbfdad-4339-4ce7-868b-e3b3034f5c85> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.healthguideinfo.com/types-of-ocd/p90435/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00181-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921048 | 746 | 3 | 3 |
These hands-on activities feature low-cost materials (many of which can be found around the home) and maximum fun. Keep kids busy all summer long!
Here’s a great item for staying cool—and active—on a hot day: summer’s alternative to the snowball!
Try these pretty decorations that involve a bit of science, and experiment with items you find outdoors.
Sidewalk Chalk Paint
Kids can express their creativity with this easy-to-clean-up substance. Ramp up learning by using it to make letters and numbers!
Celebrate the many colors of nature by having kids whip up these “homeopathic” concoctions!
Vacation Memory Jar
These are like scrapbooks, but in 3-D. Kids gather mementoes and display them creatively.
Paper Plate Porthole
Kids create their own worlds under the sea.
This at-the-beach craft is sure to please! Shells and other found treasures enhance the look.
Kids will love this—a craft and outdoor activity in one. Built from re-used materials for eco-friendliness!
Copyright © 2013, 2015 Education World | <urn:uuid:b5a38902-091a-4c1f-85d7-750cadfab213> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/irresistible-easy-low-cost-summer-crafts.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899062 | 244 | 2.75 | 3 |
By Himanshu Joshi, Dezan Shira & Associates
Jun. 12 – For any foreign executive operating in India it is beneficial to have a basic understanding of audit procedures in India. We have previously introduced audit in India for non-auditors. In this article, we will provide an overview of the different types of audit and audit reporting in India.
Audits are generally classified into two types:
- Statutory Audits
- Internal Audits
Statutory audits are conducted in order to report the state of a company’s finances and accounts to the Indian government. Such audits are performed by qualified auditors who are working as external and independent parties. The audit report of a statutory audit is made in the form prescribed by the government agency.
Internal audits are conducted at the bequest of internal management in order to check the health of a company’s finances, and analyze operational efficiency of the organization. Internal audits may be performed by an independent party or by the company’s own internal staff.
In India, every company whose shares are registered on the stock exchange must have an internal auditing system in place. For a company whose shares are not listed on the stock exchange, but whose average turnover during the previous three years exceeds INR5 crore, or whose share capital and reserves at the beginning of the financial year exceeds INR50 lakh, must have an internal auditing system in place. The statutory auditor of the company must report on the internal auditing system of the company in the audit report.
Statutory Audits in India
In India, statutory audits are conducted for each fiscal year (April 1 to March 31) and not the calendar year. The two most common types of statutory audits in India are:
- Tax Audits
- Company Audits
Tax audits are required under Section 44AB of India’s Income Tax Act 1961. This section mandates that every person whose business turnover exceeds INR1 crore and every person working in a profession with gross receipts exceeding INR25 lakh must have their accounts audited by an independent chartered accountant.
It should be noted that the provision of tax audits are applicable to everyone, be it an individual, a partnership firm, a company or any other entity. The tax audit report is to be obtained by September 30 after the end of the previous fiscal year. Non-compliance with the tax audit provisions may attract a penalty of 0.5 percent of turnover or INR1 lakh, whichever is lower.
There are no specific rules regarding the appointment or removal of a tax auditor.
The provisions for a company audit are contained in the Companies Act 1956. Every company, irrespective of its nature of business or turnover, must have its annual accounts audited each financial year. For this purpose, the company and its directors have to first appoint an auditor at the outset. Thereafter, at each annual general meeting (AGM), an auditor is appointed by the shareholders of the company who will hold the position from one AGM to the conclusion of the next AGM.
The new Companies Bill 2012 provides that an auditor shall be appointed for a term of five consecutive AGMs. Individuals and partnership firms, auditors cannot be appointed for more than one or two terms, respectively. After the completion of the term, the auditor must be changed.
Only an independent chartered accountant or a partnership firm of chartered accountants can be appointed as the auditor of a company. The following persons are specifically disqualified from becoming an auditor per the Companies Act:
- A body corporate;
- An officer or employee of the company;
- A person who is partner with an employee of the company or employee of an employee of the company;
- Any person who is indebted to a company for a sum exceeding INR1,000 or who have guaranteed to the company on behalf of another person a sum exceeding INR1,000; or
- A person who has held any securities in the company after one year from the date of commencement of the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2000.
The auditor is required to prepare the audit report in accordance with the Company Auditor’s Report Order (CARO) 2003. CARO requires an auditor to report on various aspects of the company, such as fixed assets, inventories, internal audit standards, internal controls, statutory dues, among others.
The audit report must be obtained before holding the AGM, which itself should be held within six months from the end of the financial year.
Audits are conducted to express a true and fair view of a company’s financial statements. Therefore, the auditor’s opinion expressed in the ultimate report is based on the information reviewed and analyzed during the verification of financial statements. Upon completing the report, the auditor may express one of the following four opinions:
- Unqualified Opinion
- Qualified Opinion
- Disclaimer of Opinion
- Adverse Opinion
An unqualified opinion is expressed when the auditor concludes that the financial statements give a true and fair view in accordance with the financial reporting framework used for the preparation and presentation of the financial statements. It indicates that:
- Generally accepted accounting principles are consistently applied in the preparation of financial statements;
- Financial statements comply with the relevant statutory requirements and regulations; and
- There is adequate disclosure of all material matters relevant to the proper presentation of financial information (subject to statutory requirements).
A qualified opinion is expressed when the auditor concludes that an unqualified opinion cannot be expressed, but that the effect of any disagreement with management is not so material and pervasive as to require an adverse opinion, or the limitation of scope is not so material and pervasive as to require a disclaimer of opinion. A qualified opinion should be expressed as being “subject to’” or “except for” the effects of the matter to which the qualification relates.
Disclaimer of Opinion
A disclaimer of opinion is expressed when the possible effect of a limitation on scope is so material and pervasive that the auditor has not been able to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence and is, therefore, unable to express an opinion on the financial statements.
An adverse opinion is expressed when the effect of a disagreement is so material and pervasive to the financial statements that the auditor concludes that a qualification of the report is not adequate to disclose the misleading or incomplete nature of the financial statements.
This article was originally published in the India Briefing Magazine, titled “An Introduction to Audit in India.” In this issue, we examine how India’s accounting standards differ from the globally accepted IFRS and IAS protocols, and outline the standard steps and procedures an Indian auditor will go through during the audit process and explain pre-audit preparations that can be carried out to make the process easier to follow and understand for foreign executives.
Dezan Shira & Associates is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in emerging Asia. Since its establishment in 1992, the firm has grown into one of Asia’s most versatile full-service consultancies with operational offices across China, Hong Kong, India, Singapore and Vietnam as well as liaison offices in Italy and the United States.
You can stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends across India by subscribing to Asia Briefing’s complimentary update service featuring news, commentary, guides, and multimedia resources.
An Introduction to Doing Business in India
In this guide, we introduce the basics of setting up and running a company in the country and some of the key issues investors should pay attention to. This issue is currently available as a complimentary download on the Asia Briefing Bookstore. | <urn:uuid:7e900ab7-3b21-435b-91c5-759ffd57c6e4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.india-briefing.com/news/types-audit-audit-reporting-india-6454.html/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400572.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941416 | 1,576 | 2.609375 | 3 |
- Development & Aid
- Economy & Trade
- Human Rights
- Global Governance
- Civil Society
Sunday, June 26, 2016
- Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry has declined drastically in the last ten years despite the high profitability of the so-called “research-based” industry, and the availability of better and more powerful science and technological tools. Not only has productivity in terms of research fallen, but the vast majority of new molecules introduced to the market do not provide new therapeutic solutions since other treatments already exist, normally at a lower cost.
Funding for research is focused on areas with the greatest potential for profit. Those areas that would actually have the biggest impact on public health remain largely ignored. A clear indicator is the lack of investment in fighting diseases that are prevalent in developing countries, such as Chagas’ disease, tuberculosis and malaria.
The problem is that although millions would benefit from this type of investment, the majority of them are poor people who do not create an attractive market for big companies. Neither can they benefit from treatments for non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular insufficiencies and cancer: even where treatments are available, the high prices of patented medications make them inaccessible.
As a result, in the 21st century, communicable diseases cause more than 10 million deaths per year -according to Health Action International (HAI)- of which 90 percent take place in developing countries; a third of the global population does not have regular access to the medicines that they need. The situation is worse in least developed countries (LDCs) in which up to half of the population does not have access to medicinal treatment.
From both a moral point of view as well as a human rights perspective the right to health is recognised in international conventions and in numerous national constitutions this situation calls for greater responsibility by governments and a new research paradigm centered on public health interests, especially to meet the needs of developing countries.
On May 26, 2012, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution that could mark the first step toward a change in the current pharmaceutical research model. The members of the World Health Organization (WHO) decided to undertake an in-depth examination, at the governmental level, of a report produced in April 2012 by an international group of experts that recommended the adoption of a binding convention on research and development (R&D). If approved and implemented, such research could generate the medicines needed, particularly in developing countries, to address communicable and non-communicable diseases.
Some of the conclusions and recommendations of the report were the following:
– the present incentive systems, in particular intellectual property rights, fail to generate enough R&D in either the public or private sector in order to meet the health needs of developing countries;
– recent trends in the pharmaceutical industry show a decline in innovation, as reflected by the small number of approval of new molecular entities (NMEs), the majority of which do not represent a therapeutic novelty;
– to promote better financing and coordination of research, an open approach should be promoted, with the results of R&D being treated as “public goods” not subject to the exclusive rights conferred by patents;
– new forms of shared financing, direct subventions, prizes and patent pools (to increase access to health products) should also be promoted, and mechanisms to coordinate research should be established at the global level.
The report recommended that all countries should dedicate at least 0.01 percent of their gross domestic product to R&D relevant to meet the health needs of developing countries. As regards coordination, it advised the establishment of a global observatory on R&D, advisory services and a network of research institutions.
The main purpose of the report was, however, more ambitious: to start discussions regarding a possible binding international convention to promote R&D centered on diseases prevalent in developing countries, including non-communicable diseases.
This recommendation caused the biggest controversy between developed and developing countries at the World Health Assembly. A possible explanation is that developed countries perceive the suggestion of a new research model as a threat towards the present system based on the appropriation of profits from innovation through the patent system.
But the convention, if adopted, would generate more resources and greater efficiency in terms of research by means of better coordination and a fixation of priorities. Although the main beneficiaries would be developing countries, developed countries could also utilise the results of the research. Some of these countries face a severe crisis in their public health systems owing to the increase in the cost of treatment and a reduction in budgets.
The magnitude of the problem that must be confronted in order to generate enough R&D for pharmaceutical products needed by developing countries is such that this objective cannot be reached without effective commitment from all countries. Voluntary contributions from foundations or governments do not offer a sustainable, structural solution. In fact, many of the most promising initiatives for developing new pharmaceutical products to address the diseases that affect the poor are extremely vulnerable, as they depend on the continuity of charitable financing.
In order to promote development of new products and their access to populations, especially in developing countries, it is necessary to change the current research model. The cost of research should be delinked from the prices of the products generated. The challenge is not only about increasing investment in research or improving the rate of innovation. This will not suffice if the new products are not accessible to those who need them. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)
Carlos M. Correa is special advisor on trade and intellectual property of the South Centre, and a member of the Consultative Expert Working Group of the World Health Organization. For further analysis see South Bulletin 67 Article ( http://www.southcentre.org). | <urn:uuid:e6f746fe-a078-46f6-9f69-3b952f7dc6d4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/11/will-there-finally-be-a-cure-for-diseases-that-affect-the-poor/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00107-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946016 | 1,161 | 2.75 | 3 |
Ganesh Chaturthi - Birthday of Lord Ganesh is one of the most popular Hindu Festival. It is celebrated on the 4th day (chaturthi) of the bright fortnight month of Bhadrapada (August-September) in Hindu Calendar. The celebration continues till Anantha Chaturdasi which is for 10 full days.
There are interesting stories associated with Ganesh Chaturthi and its significance. One of the most popular legend found in Skanda Purana says, once Ganesha was invited for a feast in Chandralok. The joyous Ganesh feasts himself to his heart's content. But he grows very restless and feels that his stomach would burst out. In order to prevent the stomach from bursting out, he ties a snake around it. But he was not able to balance himself after the huge meal and stumbles and falls. The moon watches the scene from the sky and laughs at Ganesh.
Angered, Lord Ganesh curses the moon to vanish from the universe. However because of the moon's absence, the whole world began to wane. So the gods asked Shiva to persuade Ganesha to relent. The moon also apologized for his misbehavior. On Shiva's intervention, Ganesha modified his curse. He announced that the moon would be invisible on only one day of a month, and would be partially seen for the Ganesha Utsav most part.
On the occasion of the Ganapati festival a large number of images are made of all possible sizes, and people buy them to keep in their houses as a divine guest for one and a half, five, seven, or ten days. On the day of the Chaturthi, shrines are erected, firecrackers let off, huge images of Ganeshji are carried in grand procession for 'Ganesh Visarjan' accompanied by the sound of devotional songs and drums. The idol should not be kept after this day, as it is considered inauspicious. | <urn:uuid:3f4285fe-ebd1-4f97-b8ac-41cbd355a378> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.informationcorner.com/ganeshchaturthi.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00110-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970326 | 412 | 2.6875 | 3 |
|The Prime Minister hob nobbing with re-enactors in Niagara Falls.|
The Federal Government has pigeon holed somewhere between 10 and 13 million dollars which will be spent on various activities celebrating the war. James Munroe, the federal heritage minister has been quoted as saying that he expects:
“ all Canadians to understand the war’s importance. Canadian identity was largely shaped by the War of 1812,” says Moore. “It was a fight for Canada and the beginning of our independence.”
“This war leads directly to Confederation in 1867,” Moore explains, ascribing the most basic characteristics of Canada—a constitutional monarchy, the preservation of a French-speaking Quebec, an accommodating native policy and our healthy economic and political relationship with the Americans—to the successful defence of Canada’s borders. “We were invaded and we repulsed that invasion. Because of the War of 1812 we grew up to be uniquely Canadian.”
Well that is stretching it a bit in my estimation. There needs to be a lot of convincing before I accept the notion that the War of 1812 had anything to do with the development of Canada. The exception in my mind was that the end of the war saw everything - with the exception of the Indian lands- remaining as it was before the war.
I expect that we will be seeing a lot of military re-enactors marching around in red coats carrying reproduction Brown Bess’s. | <urn:uuid:64bf065f-533a-4c6b-8d43-06e2c7b945a2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://swveterans.blogspot.com/2011/10/200th-anniversary-of-war-of-1812.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00106-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968046 | 308 | 2.71875 | 3 |
India’s dream of green oil fields
Written by Magnus Flacké and Ida Søgnen Tveit
The debate in recent years over biofuel in Europe has taken on a new dimension. Will the western quest for clean environment compromise clean development? The discovery of the plant jatropha as biofuel has sent Europeans into a frenzy. Jatropha is a drought-resistant plant that grows on wasteland, and therefore, for its proponents, the question of food versus fuel is irrelevant. This attitude has also been adopted by the Indian government. The Indian vision is to grow 7.5 million tonnes of jatropha-based biofuel a year, which will generate employment for 5 million people. Who will benefit? Is there really such a thing as wasteland?
Food-insecurity chronically affects 350 million people in India. Today, the population is growing at a faster rate than that of agricultural production. 52 percent of India’s population relies solely on agriculture, and many of these farmers do not have any land to spare. In India, a country which is trying to regain its self-sufficiency on food, all land is valuable.
Jatropha trees are a common sight in the dry north-western state of Rajasthan, often used as fences to keep grazing cattle away and to make household products. Four jatropha trees are scattered around the house of Gutham Lal Meena and his wife Thavri Bai Meena in the village of Devgarh. Their family of eight keeps two cows and four oxen and grows food crops on a patch of arid land. Devgarh receives less than 100 hours of rain a year, and to an outsider cultivation seems like an impossible task three months prior to the monsoon. The Meena family lives on the plateau where the water table is deep, so water access is even harder here than down in the valley. Mr. Meena uses his four jatropha trees to make household products.
- I use it to make soap. The tree is not edible, not even the cows will touch it, and it is no good for fire fuel either, says Mr. Meena. Each jatropha tree give him and his family enough seeds to produce five kilos of soap, but full grown trees can give seeds enough to produce up to 10 kilos. Most of the soap is for personal use, but they earn about Rs 8-10 per kilo when they sell the surplus on the market. This is a little more than one Norwegian krone.
A picture of green jatropha plants.
Mr. Meena is aware that jatropha can also be used as biofuel. Most households in the area engage in subsistence farming and animal husbandry. When Mr. Meena meets his neighbours in the village they often discuss biofuel.
–It is a buzz going on, but we don’t really know much about it. There are no factories in the area to process the oil into biofuel, so we would have to transport it a long way. When asked whether he would consider growing jatropha for biofuel if the infrastructure was in place, he is reluctant.
- Yes, maybe, but my land is small, and I would not make much profit. If it was possible for small scale farmers to join together and form cooperatives, maybe I would start to grow jatropha for biofuel. But it’s a lot of uncertainties and many farmers are waiting for the state government’s final offer.
The main reason why jatropha has created such a buzz is that it can be grown on poor soils, and will therefore not be competing with food production. EU has the objective that 20 percent of fuel consumption in Europe will be biofuel by the year 2020. In order for EU to achieve this goal, land area the size of Belgium is needed. However, Belgium is not available, so all eyes are turned elsewhere, to countries such as India. Jatropha already fulfils the EU norm for biofuel quality. Jatropha can also compete with other types of biofuels in terms of price. According to official Indian estimates 40 million hectares of the total land area is categorized as wasteland. The idea of turning unproductive wasteland into green oil fields sounds dazzling. However, what the Indian government today considers to be wasteland is in reality used as pasture land, and in some cases even cultivated for agriculture.
The European craving for green energy might turn this wasteland into a green oil field. Jatropha plants in the horizon.
A little less than a hectare of Mr. Meena’s land is considered wasteland. The state of Rajasthan has approached him and asked if he will use his wasteland to grow jatropha for biofuel. – But if I use that land to grow for biofuel, then what will my family eat? Mr. Meena definitely does not consider his wasteland as wasted land. - It is not great land, but we get some food out of it.
The Indian government is well aware of the economic potential of their wasteland. In Rajasthan there are still a lot of uncertainties regarding biofuel production. Other states have more established structures in place in regards to the biofuel production industry. The state of Chattisgarh is in the forefront when it comes to promoting jatropha biofuel, and many incentives are dangled in front of larger companies to encourage participation. One such sweetener is allowing private companies to lease government wasteland, for a trivial amount of money. The state government also provides the infrastructure required to keep the value adding process within state borders.
The Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) is a non-profit organisation working to restore degraded lands in ecologically fragile areas in seven Indian states, including Rajasthan. They are not opposed to cultivating wasteland for jatropha plantations. - The main concern is that marginalized communities change their land use to cash crop production alone. This may harm small scale farmers and could lead to food insecurity, says B.K Sharma, the team leader of FES in the city of Pratapgarh, Rajasthan. Families that were once self-sufficient in food supply will have to buy their food on the market.
Jatropha may be for India what oil is for Norway. However, the solution is not as clear-cut as many advocates argue. To ensure that the nation’s wealth does not compromise the livelihood of small scale farmers, it is vital that policy makers take the concerns of farmers, such as the Meena family’s, into consideration. | <urn:uuid:afced731-239c-4994-81c5-df0f2b15997f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cseindia.org/oslo2008/articles/india_dreams.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00076-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969749 | 1,351 | 2.84375 | 3 |
“Increasing the minimum wage would have two principal effects on low-wage workers. Most of them would receive higher pay that would increase their family’s income, and some of those families would see their income rise above the federal poverty threshold. But some jobs for low-wage workers would probably be eliminated, the income of most workers who became jobless would fall substantially, and the share of low-wage workers who were employed would probably fall slightly. What Options for Increasing the Minimum Wage Did CBO Examine?
For this report, CBO examined the effects on employment and family income of two options for increasing the federal minimum wage:
- A “$10.10 option” would increase the federal minimum wage from its current rate of $7.25 per hour to $10.10 per hour in three steps—in 2014, 2015, and 2016. After reaching $10.10 in 2016, the minimum wage would be adjusted annually for inflation as measured by the consumer price index.
- A “$9.00 option” would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $9.00 per hour in two steps—in 2015 and 2016. After reaching $9.00 in 2016, the minimum wage would not be subsequently adjusted for inflation.” | <urn:uuid:3152d8ef-e844-486d-b71c-32c49f3d2c15> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bespacific.com/the-effects-of-a-minimum-wage-increase-on-employment-and-family-income/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00055-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978928 | 266 | 2.84375 | 3 |
[Karl] loved his mbed – a tiny little ARM-powered microcontroller platform – but he wanted an interactive programming environment. BASIC just wasn’t cutting it, so he decided to bring eLua to his mbed.
When choosing an interactive development environment for microcontrollers, you generally have two choices: old or huge. Sure, there is a middle ground with Python on an ARM, but why not use something explicitly designed for microcontrollers?
To get eLua running on his mbed, [Karl] downloaded the latest version and plopped it on his mbed. The current version, 0.9, doesn’t have support for an SD card, severely limiting its usefulness. [Karl] got around this by wiring up an SD card to the mbed, giving him gigabytes of space for all his development work.
While the AVRs and PICs of the world are stuck with languages like C or worse, the new ARM boards available are more than capable of running a complete eLua development environment, with everything accessible through a terminal. [Karl] even wrote his own editor for the mbed and he’ll shortly be working on a few dozen embedded projects he has in mind.
Fans of the AMC show Breaking Bad will remember the Original Gangsta [Hector Salamanca]. When first introduced to the story he communicates by ringing a bell. But after being moved to a nursing home he communicates by spelling out messages with the assistance of a nurse who holds up a card with columns and rows of letters. This hack automates that task, trading the human assistant for a blink-based input system.
[Bob Stone] calls the project BlinkTalk. The user wears a Neurosky Mindwave Mobile headset. This measures brainwaves using EEG. He connects the headset to an mBed microcontroller using a BlueSMiRF Bluetooth board. The microcontroller processes the EEG data to establish when the user blinks their eyes.
The LCD screen first scrolls down each row of the displayed letters and numbers. When the appropriate row is highlighted a blink will start scrolling through the columns until a second blink selects the appropriate character. Once the message has been spelled out the “SAY!” menu item causes the Emic2 module to turn the text into speech.
If you think you could build something like this to help the disabled, you should check out thecontrollerproject.com where builders are connected with people in need.
Continue reading “Building a blink based input device”
[Navin] has been hard at work producing a GUI which works with different micocontrollers. The idea is to make it even easier to develop projects by simplifying the feedback and control you can get from the prototyping hardware. The best part about it is that he designed the software to interface with any hardware which can be programmed in C++.
The screenshot above shows the program communicating with an mbed board which has an ARM microcontroller. But the Arduino board (which uses an ATmega chip) is supported as well. Support for additional architectures can be added by writing your own configuration file for the chip. The Python program then asks for the com port it should be using for this session.
The source package, including the code which runs on the microcontrollers, can be found at the project repository. The functions used in the sketches are quite simple and should be a snap to drop into your own code projects.
Wow, that’s a really simple hardware setup to supply your device with a 3G Internet connection. Better yet, the software side is just as simple thanks to the Vodafone USB Modem library for mbed. It will work for any of the cell data plans offered by Vodafone. The only problem you may have is not living in one of the 30 countries serviced by the telco.
The dongle seen at the right is sold by Vodafone and is meant to be used for Internet data, so you won’t be doing anything that might get your SIM banned. Connecting to the network is a one-liner thanks to the previously mentioned library. From there, gets and posts can be done with your favorite package. The Hello World example uses HTTPClient. And since the mbed is simply an ARM platform it shouldn’t be hard to use the library with the ARM chip of your choice.
If you think this thing looks good you should see it move. [Martin Smith] hit a home run on the project, which was his Master’s Thesis. Fifteen servo motors provide a way for the bot to move around. Having been modeled after a small canine the gait is very realistic. The tail is even functional, acting as a counterweight when moving the legs.
The project was meticulously built in a 3D environment before undertaking any physical assembly. The mechanical parts are all either milled from aluminum or 3D printed. Two mBed boards mounted on its back allow it to interact with its environment. One of them handles image processing, the other drives the array of motors. And of course it doesn’t hurt that he built some Larson Scanners in as eyes.
Don’t miss the video after the break which shows off the entire project from planning to demonstration. We can’t help but be reminded of the rat-thing from Snow Crash.
Continue reading “Professional looking dog robot was actually [Martin’s] Master’s Thesis”
[Jordan] writes in to show us a project he has been working on called MbedConsole. Living up its name [Jordan] has managed to run a 640×480 VGA output, PS/2 port and console all from the mbed itself. We really mean from an mbed only; no extra hardware is required aside from a few resistors and connectors, a VGA monitor and PS/2 keyboard. The code is open source and links are included in the blog. There are even instructions for including your own graphics.
There are a few things to tackle still, like SD card support. Currently the PS/2 keyboard lights for caps-lock are not functional. [Jordan] would love to know what else we’d see going on something like this, with 400k of flash and 20k RAM left there certainly is a bit of room for some interesting stuff. One of his main goals is to get rid of the C interface and port an interactive shell over that could do something like BASIC or Forth (to give it that retro environment feel). We have seen the mbed in a handful of projects, what do you think?
[Shane] is building a new house and wants some, “subtle home automation” as he calls it. His first project is hooking up a small heater to the Internet, and judging from his demo video everything is going swimmingly.
[Shane]’s project is built around an mbed microcontroller that connects to the Internet via an Ethernet connection. The mbed has a temperature controller and a solid state relay to turn the heater on an off; simple enough, but we really like how easily [Shane] connected his project to Google Calendar.
After looking over the Google API, [Shane] was understandably overwhelmed. He figured out that by syncing the mbed’s clock to network time and sending a GET request for one minute in the future, the mbed would always know what was scheduled with a minimal delay.
Now, all [Shane] does to turn on his heater is schedule a time and temperature in Google Calendar. He can do this from across the globe or country and makes for a really slick part of a home automation system.
Continue reading “Automating household devices with Google Calendar” | <urn:uuid:dce235bf-ad57-444d-aff8-4e5d4695e8d9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hackaday.com/tag/mbed/page/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00158-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954446 | 1,607 | 2.6875 | 3 |
With respect to Natural Gas projects, FERC safeguards the environment by:
- Disclosing, analyzing and minimizing impacts where it is feasible and reasonable to do so;
- Encourage applicants to communicate with relevant federal and state natural resources agencies, Indian tribes, and state water quality agencies, prior to submitting an application;
- Ensuring that all applicants perform the necessary studies to make an informed decision on the project;
- Issuing environmental assessments (EA) or draft and final environmental impact statement (EIS) for comment on most projects;
- Including requirements with any certificate issued to reduce environmental impacts; and
- Visiting proposed project areas to determine the range
of environmental issues requiring analysis and holding scoping
meetings as appropriate.
FERC makes electronic copies of the draft and final EISs available to the public. A limited number of paper copies are also available from the Public Reference Room (call toll-free 1-866-208-3676).
FERC staff will conduct training seminars entitled "Environmental Review and Compliance for Natural Gas Facilities," that will be held at various locations throughout the United States, check here for times and locations.
Various environmental guidelines and procedures prepared by FERC staff.
This program involves the use of independent contractors to assist Commission staff in its environmental review and preparation of environmental documents.
Miscellaneous Guidelines and Reports:
of Wetland Construction and Mitigation Activities for Certified
Section 7(c) Pipeline Projects Report March 2004
- Processes for the Environmental
and Historic Preservation Review of Proposed Interstate Natural
- Interagency Agreement
on Early Coordination of Environmental Review of Natural Gas | <urn:uuid:c829b292-04f8-4e90-b2e3-1e4d9dc143de> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ferc.gov/industries/gas/enviro.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00060-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.891159 | 334 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Paul Robeson's father had tremendous influence on the formation of his character. William D. Robeson was a pastor at the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton until 1901.
Paul Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey on April 9, 1898. He was the fifth and youngest child of Rev. William D. Robeson, a former escaped slave, and the former Maria Lousia Bustill. He lived in Princeton until 1907 when his father moved to Westfield, New Jersey to become pastor of St. Luke's A.M.E. Zion Church. In 1910 the Robeson family moved to Somerville, New Jersey when the Rev. Robeson became pastor of St. Thomas A.M.E. Zion Church. Paul attended school in Somerville and graduated from Somerville High School in 1915. He attended Rutgers for the next four years. See the section of the site "Scholar Athlete" for information on his college years.
Read the following passages by Paul Robeson in his book Here I Stand (Paul Robeson, Here I Stand. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971.). Think about the following questions as you read the excerpts:
- What influence does his father have upon his life?
- As you read other sections of this site, can you relate any actions Paul Robeson took in later years to the influence of his father?
- "The glory of my boyhood years was my father. I loved him like no one in all the world." p. 6
- "He who comes hat-in-hand is expected to bow and bend, and so I marvel that there is no hint of servility in my father's makeup. Just as in youth he had refused to remain a slave, so in all his years of manhood, he disdained to be an Uncle Tom. From him we learned, and never doubted it, that the Negro was in every way the equal of a white man." p. 11
- "That a so-called lowly station in life was no bar to a man's assertion of his full human dignity was heroically demonstrated by my father in the face of a grievous blow that came to him when I was still a baby. After more than two decades of honored leadership in his church, a factional dispute among the members removed him as pastor" p.11
- "How proudly, as a boy, I walked at his side, my hand in his, as he moved among the people! There was a wide gap in years between us-he was fifty-three when I was born, nearly sixty when my mother died-but during many of his years as a widower I was the only child at home and his devoted care and attention bound us closely together. pg. 9
- "A gentle scholar and teacher all his adult life, my father, then past middle age, with an invalid wife and dependent children at home, was forced to begin life anew. He got a horse and a wagon, and began to earn his living hauling ashes for the townsfolk. This was his work at the time I first remember him... . My father also went into the hack business, and as a coachman drove the gay young students around town and on trips to the seashore." p. 12
- "Ash-man, coachman, he was still the dignified Reverend Robeson to the community, and no man carried himself with greater pride. Not once did I hear him complain of the poverty and misfortune of those years. Not one word of bitterness ever came from him. Serene, undaunted, he struggled to earn a livelihood and see to our education." p. 12
- (Regarding a speech he gave at a family reunion) "I cannot recall anything I said in the speech on that occasion, though I did jot down in my scrapbook its title- 'Loyalty to Convictions.' That I chose this topic was not accidental, for that was the text of my father's life- loyalty to one's convictions Unbending. Despite anything. From my youngest days I was imbued with that concept." p. 8
Questions for Discussion
- Think about an adult role model in your life who has made a strong impression on you as Paul's father had on him.
- Who was this person?
- What qualities does this person have?
- Are they similar to or different from Paul's father?
- Write three excerpts similar to what Paul had written about his father to describe this person and his or her influence on you. | <urn:uuid:4868d51e-8f7d-4062-8a2e-58f4d2c82277> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://njdigitalhighway.org/enj/lessons/paul_robeson/?part=father | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396455.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00140-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991362 | 931 | 2.65625 | 3 |
by Carles Cavazos Brito
April 3 is National "Find a Rainbow Day" in the US. Perhaps you'll be lucky enough to spot one! Your chances will probably increase as the April showers come our way.
Rainbows can be elusive, but here are a couple of handy tips. If the sun's behind you on a rainy day, you might catch a glimpse of that beautiful and colorful arch. On a sunny day, you can use prisms or sun catchers to see a rainbow projected on a wall.
Warmer weather brings out the sprinklers. While your children are enjoying a watery romp, the droplets of the sprinkler dazzle them as they separate into the various colors of light.
Mindy, a pregnancy.org member shares a story about her little girl. "My toddler squealed with delight as she ran under the sprinkler's falling water. 'Rainbow! Rainnnbow!' accompanied bunches of giggles. She twirled, pausing with rapt attention as it briefly disappeared with her movements. She stepped again; it reappeared. She seemed completely fascinated that she was dancing with the rainbow. At that moment, I was captivated at the innocent discovery of my child."
Grownups know all about light and rainbows. What's going on in children's brains when they discover a rainbow for the first time. Let's take a look at the research about how kids think.
For toddlers, their brain growth depends on more than just a stimulating situation or good nutrition. Here's how you can provide an environment for healthy brain growth.
Toddler Brain Basics
According to Dr. John Medina, author of "Brain Rules for Baby," your toddler's brain is more interested in surviving than learning. Mindy's rainbow chaser felt safe. Her mom was involved and connected with her daughter.
Since birth, your child has been sorting and sifting information in his or her head that equates to, "Am I being fed?" "Am I being touched?" "Who is safe?" If your baby's needs are being met, the brain develops one way. If they're not, genetic instructions tell the brain to develop another way. A child who feels safe, can devote brain energy to the task of learning. A child who feels threatened focuses on survival.
Intelligence is More Than Just IQ
Besides the ability to store information and adapt that information to other situations, intelligence involves other skills.
Exploration skills: Parents have figured out that toddlers are natural explorers. Young children learn about the world by looking, deciding what will happen and then testing it out. Babies around the world drop toys to see if they fall. Nobody teaches them.
Hal Gregersen, head author of a study called, "Innovator's DNA" says that if you watch 4-year-olds, they're constantly asking questions. By the time they're 6 1/2-years-old, they've stopped asking because they discovered that teachers value right answers more than provocative questions. Your job as a parent is to encourage your child's natural desire to explore, just like Mindy did. She chose to allow her tot to dance with the rainbow, even though she probably turned into a soggy mess.
Self-control skills: In the "cookie challenge," a researcher placed two cookies on a table. He told the child that he had to go away for five minutes, but if both cookies were there when he got back, and the child hadn't eaten anything, they'd get both of them. If they ate one while he was gone, the deal was off. You'll find videos of some of the children online. Their coping techniques are unique and often adorable.
This type of challenge allows researches to look at impulse control. It turns out that impulse control is a better predictor of academic control than IQ. A child's brain can be trained to enhance self-control and other aspects of executive function.
Recent studies show that kids whose parents connect with and who empathize while their children take on frustrating tasks, do better in school and have higher IQs.
Creativity skills involve the ability to conjure up new ideas from old things. It involves a healthy dose of risk-taking called functional impulsivity. Fostering creativity can mean challenging your child to experiment with new uses for things and it can mean encouraging them to take healthy risks.
Communication skills: Babies and children learn language the best through social interaction. A real live person has to come into the room and talk directly with the child. Add in a warm, loving hug and you've set up the perfect environment for verbal communication.
The brain contains a switch between gestures and speech circuits. Studies of babies show that they don't gain a sophisticated vocabulary until fine-motor finger control improves.
Researchers wondered if the opposite was true. Could learning physical gestures improve other thinking skills? One study indicates it could. Kids with normal hearing took a sign language class for nine months. Their focus, spatial abilities, memory and visual discrimination scores improved as much as 50 percent compared with controls who had not taken the class.
Encourage these skills and you can practically see your child's brain grow!
"Find a Rainbow Day" Activities
National "Find a Rainbow Day" can go beyond hunting rainbows. You and your child can create or eat one! These activities will help you celebrate this magical day.
- Look for a rainbow
- Experiment with colors
- Paint a rainbow
- Make a rainbow veggie tray
- Read a rainbow of a story
- Play with a sun catcher
- String a rainbow of beads
- Send a rainbow card
- Dress up like a rainbow
Did you and your child enjoy the wonder of a rainbow? How do you encourage and engage your tot's inquisitive side? | <urn:uuid:30d4f71b-e648-4be8-901e-d20cd4889d57> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pregnancy.org/article/find-a-rainbow-day-encourages-early-learning?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402516.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00060-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958486 | 1,196 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Hurricane Sandy Threatens – Are You Prepared?
Forecasts from the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service are predicting Hurricane Sandy will bring increasingly strong winds and heavy rains to the National Capital Region, beginning overnight Sunday. This slow moving storm could cause impacts for the region through Tuesday.
FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate recently provided some important reminders about this storm.
"As Hurricane Sandy proceeds closer toward southeast Florida, residents should listen to local officials for updates and follow their instructions. As the storm moves northward, it serves as a reminder that we all need to be prepared for severe weather. Now is the time to update your family communication plans, check your supplies, and stay informed. A hurricane isn't a point on a map - it's a big storm and its impact will be felt far from the center. FEMA is in contact with states and tribal governments and stands ready to support their preparedness efforts."
High, sustained winds for more than 48 hours are a main concern in areas along Hurricane Sandy’s projected path. Power outages may occur as a result of these winds, possibly leaving residents without electricity for extended periods of time as workers will need to wait for winds to die down below 35-mph to safely address downed lines and trees.
If you have not done so already, it is important to ensure you:
- Check your family’s emergency supply kit – make certain you have food, water, medications, and other necessities to sustain you, your family and family pets for at least 72 hours.
- Follow the direction of local officials – evacuation orders may be issued by officials, so follow their guidance. When it comes to swimming, follow local warnings as well. Even the best swimmers can fall victim to the strong waves and rip currents caused by storms.
- Keep up to date with local conditions – follow TV and radio reports from your area, or visit http://www.weather.gov/ (http://mobile.weather.gov/ on your phone) for the latest forecast.
- Remember food safety – power outages and flooding may happen as a result of a tropical storm or hurricane, so have a plan for keeping food safe. Have a cooler on hand to keep food cold, and group food together in the freezer so it stays cold longer.
- Have an adequate communication plan - be sure friends and family know how to contact you. Teach family members how to use text messaging as text messages can often get around network disruptions when a phone call can’t get through.
Keep in mind, hurricanes bring heavy rains, storm surges, and possible flooding events. Avoid walking or driving through any flooded areas – it takes only six inches of fast-moving flood water to knock over an adult and two feet to move a vehicle. Remember: Turn Around, Don’t Drown!
For those who may be in the path of Sandy, you can get hurricane safety tips right on your phone by downloading these useful apps:
Prepare for Hazards in Your Area
Although you may not be in Sandy’s path, now is a good time to review the potential hazards where you live. Knowing likely risks for your area, whether wildfires, earthquakes, or tornadoes, and knowing what to do when a disaster strikes is a critical part of being prepared and may make all the difference when seconds matter. Local Emergency management offices can help you identify hazards in your community and can outline the local plans and recommendations for each. And be sure to share this information with family, neighbors, colleagues and friends – talking about preparedness helps everyone be ready “just in case.” Use the links below to make your family, business and community safer, more resilient and better prepared for any disaster event.
What to do before, during, and after a hurricane or tropical storm
Latest Sandy forecast from the National Hurricane Center
- On your computer: http://www.hurricanes.gov/
- On your phone: http://hurricanes.gov/mobile
- On Twitter: www.twitter.com/NHC_Atlantic
- On Facebook: www.facebook.com/US.NOAA.NationalHurricaneCenter.gov
Community preparedness tools and resources
- Community Preparedness Toolkit: www.citizencorps.gov/getstarted/toolkit/kitindex.shtm
- Citizen Corps Program: http://www.citizencorps.gov/index.shtm
- Youth Preparedness: www.citizencorps.gov/getstarted/youth/youthindex.shtm
- Business Preparedness: www.citizencorps.gov/getstarted/business.shtm
- Neighbors Helping Neighbors: www.citizencorps.gov/getstarted/neighborshelpingneighbors.shtm
About the National Capital Region
The National Capital Region (NCR) encompasses the District of Columbia and parts of Maryland and Virginia, including the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, Manassas and Manassas Park and the counties of Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William in Virginia and Montgomery and Prince George’s in Maryland, which include the municipalities of Bowie, College Park, Gaithersburg, Greenbelt, Rockville and Takoma Park. | <urn:uuid:2d65ccff-54a1-4b49-97a4-a7aa09de3230> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.capitalregionupdates.gov/go/doc/4063/1589627/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00002-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910904 | 1,087 | 2.65625 | 3 |
We use adverbs of certainty to say how sure we are of something. Examples are: certainly, definitely, clearly, obviously and probably.
Adverbs of certainty usually go in mid-position.
Study the following patterns.
Auxiliary verb + adverb
- She will probably come.
- The train has obviously been delayed.
Am / are / is / was / were + adverb
- She is certainly right.
- There is clearly something wrong.
Adverb + other verb
He probably thinks that he is the smartest. (NOT He thinks probably that …)
- I certainly feel better today.
Maybe and perhaps usually come at the beginning of a clause.
- Maybe you are right.
- Perhaps he will come.
Adverbs of place
Adverbs of place say where something happens. Examples are: upstairs, around, here, in London, out of the window
Adverbs of place usually go at the end of a clause.
- The children are playing in the garden.
- Don’t throw things out of the window.
- The old man sat in the corner.
- There was a very tall tree at the end of the garden.
Initial position is also possible. This usually happens in a literary style.
- At the end of the garden there was a very tall tree. | <urn:uuid:a4260317-da8e-43c2-9411-45bc66610853> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.englishgrammar.org/position-adverbs-certainty-place/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00060-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979791 | 280 | 3 | 3 |
GDG- NPs & Slavery
pennmardel at mchsi.com
Tue Jan 3 17:18:44 CST 2012
Once you start telling that little boy the "back story" he would fall asleep
within 10 minutes. Let's be realistic here.
As mentioned previously, there is little need to tell visitors to Gettysburg
that the CW was fought because slavery was such a contentious issue in
America. Most certainly have at least a general idea along these lines.
However, a battle was fought at Gettysburg because the Confederates invaded
Pennsylvania. By telling the little boy that was the reason, he is likely
to understand better and perhaps listen and learn more as the family took a
tour of the battlefield.
The question of slavery in the context of Gettysburg has become much too
Regards, Tom Ryan
Once I was in the old VC, looking at all the guns and cannon tubes,
and artifacts, and I heard a young boy ask his father, "Daddy, why did
they fight a battle here?" The complete answer to that
question---which I think we would all agree involves more than stories
about shoes and troop concentrations---is an appropriate subject for
the park to present. And that is why the full "back-story" needs to
More information about the Gettysburg | <urn:uuid:d35d1cb7-83ad-425a-aa0a-b723dcd6903a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://arthes.com/pipermail/gettysburg_arthes.com/2012-January/023147.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00101-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969217 | 279 | 2.6875 | 3 |
advantage of using thread
One of the usage of threads in network programming.
Say we have an application for a company that has 70 persons that want to chat each other on LAN network.
The chat program has code for send messages. if this program does'nt use thread,then the other persons must wait until the person that sends the message.It means if one person uses the program . Then other 69 persons must wait until that person finish sending.and there is not other way ,unless create 70 function for sending. Right?
Is it good example for usage thread in network programming?May you suggest another examples? | <urn:uuid:7be52ed3-0b1b-4226-a407-f0d32a3ad55a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.java-forums.org/threads-synchronization/25054-advantage-using-thread-print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393093.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00148-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912001 | 127 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Mobile devices provide us opportunities to better educate our students. Not only can teachers utilize technology to enhance their practice, but students can use these tools to further engage with learning, individually and collaboratively. There are numerous benefits to using this technology, from convenience and flexibility to providing social learning platforms and perhaps even increased engagement with important content.
A few weeks ago, we released our Mobile Studying Infographic which depicts some of the habits of students who use StudyBlue. We noticed that our mobile application users spent approximately 40 more minutes per week studying than those who only used our website. We also saw that students on smartphones were three times more likely to track their progress, less likely to pull an “all-nighter,” and more likely to study between 6AM and 8AM.
Perhaps there is a perception that smartphones are an impediment to learning; our data clearly illustrates the contrary – it enhances opportunities for studying. Further, making use of mobile tools may have an additional benefit – helping students engage in the “new world” of personal information management. One review of our infographic connected our data to a recent publication in Science, noting that there will be an expectation that we can organize information well and reference it quickly. Students use of StudyBlue is helping them prepare for this reality.
There is a lot of research to do on the efficacy of student mobile studying, and we hope to continue contributing to the conversation. In the meantime, however, we’re moving full-speed ahead on development of the best studying apps on the market. And yes, an iPad app is coming soon. 😉
Zach is StudyBlue’s Education Community Manager. He can be reached at email@example.com | <urn:uuid:86d52090-fbc6-4261-9396-19218c2cff77> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.studyblue.com/about/2011/12/mobile-studying-in-the-google-era/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00118-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956843 | 352 | 3.046875 | 3 |
1979– Texas Instrument Solar
Texas Instruments was a pioneer in the development of integrated circuit technology. The firm began manufacturing battery powered digital wristwatches in the USA in the 1970's. Now that major problems of integrated circuit production for wristwatches had been worked out, Texas Instruments became a leader in the drive to reduce the price of digital wristwatches. In 1976 it was the first firm to sell an electronic digital watch (LED) for $20. The pace of Asian competition to dominate the market for low cost digital watches was accelerating at such a pace that by 1977, Texas Interments was selling a digital watch for as low as $9.95. By 1980, Texas Instruments pulled out of the field of wristwatch manufacturing. It was the last large manufacturer of digital watches in the USA, leaving the Synchronar as the only digital watch made in the country.
The Texas Instruments watch shown here has world time, alarm, and date functions. The back has a blurry model number - perhaps it is TI3H. It is labeled as "Assembled in Korea." The four buttons on the side of the case control the multiple features. The face has a surprisingly large amount of text in extremely small font sizes. The date of the watch is estimated by the design that is similar to Japanese watches of that period and the fact that Texas Instruments exited the wristwatch market in 1980. | <urn:uuid:060d052e-99be-47a9-b1cd-102e81879919> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.soluhr.com/texasinst.htm | 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 | 0.971001 | 281 | 2.65625 | 3 |
The first attempts to extract shale gas were made in the 19th century. However, because there was no technology ensuring the inflow of gas to the borehole, this source of energy could not be used. Gas from shales gained industrial significance only in recent years. Due to two modern techniques: horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. After discovering the great Barnett field in Texas, USA, production developed on a great scale of 50 billion m3 (8% of production in the United States in 2008).
Even in the 1980s, drilling rigs were located at the distance of even 1–2 kilometers in huge areas of American production fields. Along with the development of technology, the scale of drilling impact was improved and reduced. Today, instead of a dozen or so drilling rigs, there is only one installed on the deposit. Using the most modern gas production technology makes it possible to reduce the costs of exploitation, but the profitability of shale gas production may be evaluated only after conducting exploration boreholes, the analysis of samples and tests of the deposit's effectiveness. The difficulty consists in the fact that it may be different even within one deposit.
In Poland, all shale gas deposits belong to the State Treasury. In order to conduct the production of raw materials, the oil company has to first operate according to the received exploration license and then obtain the production license from the Ministry of Environment. This license will be issued only when all formal conditions, including those concerning ecological production, have been fulfilled. According to the EU directive on hydrocarbons, defining the principles of granting licenses for the exploration and production of hydrocarbons in EU in Member States, production licenses have to be granted on the basis of tender procedures. The Ministry of Environment issued 111 licenses for the exploration non-conventional gas in Poland, among others, to the following companies: PGNiG, Lotos, Orlen Upstream, Chevron, Marathon and Talisman Energy (as of 01 September 2012).
The licenses for exploration and identification of shale gas deposits granted in Poland do not entitle to extract the gas. In the case of discovering and documenting non-conventional gas deposits from shales, the entrepreneur may submit another application to the Minister of Environment – for granting an a license to extract this raw material from the deposit. The licensing authority then conducts a new, separate administrative proceeding in the course of which it will define proper conditions and future liabilities of the licensee.
If production commences, the outlet of the borehole on the surface is protected by means of an exploitation head which provides complete tightness and thus safety for people and the environment. The next stage is the construction of a system for cleaning and drying the gas and a pipeline connecting the opening with the transmission grid which is conducted under the ground. Pure natural gas, via a system of transmission and distribution gas pipelines, reaches end recipients – households, companies and industrial plants.
If production does not commence, the borehole area is subject to complete reclamation, including the recovery of its primary shape and regulating water relations. Humus, accumulated in the form of embankments surrounding the drilling rig area, is leveled and then agrotechnical reclamation is performed. This consists in collecting and removing slabs and debris, fertilizing, ploughing, harrowing and sowing plants. When production commences, the area around the separated and secured area undergoes reclamation to the same extent. Previous experience suggests that an active gas collection center does not constitute a significant interference in the landscape because its area, depending on the completed transmission infrastructure, may amount to approx. 500 m2 or even be restricted to the area of a small home garden. The gas mine is almost invisible, inoffensive and constitutes the same landscape element as a store or a small gas station.
Currently, the largest shale gas production takes place in the USA. The beginning of shale gas production in Poland is scheduled for the years 2014-2015 and will give an opportunity to create new workplaces, will ensure the development of infrastructure and may positively affect the Polish GDP.
More information on American shale gas production and "the shale revolution" may be found in the section: Gas from shales in the world in the tab: Knowledge Zone. We also encourage you to become familiar with the Kościuszko Institute Report included in the section Reports.
|Facts and Myths|
|Did you know...|
|Glossary of terms|
|News from Poland|
|News from World|
|Types of gas and its use|
|Gas from shales|
|Gas from shales in the world|
|If not gas from shales, then what - alternatives|
|Shales in Poland|
|Current view of Lubocino barehole|
|For the commune and its inhabitants|
|Safety for inhabitants during works| | <urn:uuid:85674a46-5373-413a-872f-ef143babf53d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://polishshalegas.pl/en/knowledge-zone/gas-from-shales/production-and-exploitation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927268 | 984 | 2.671875 | 3 |
In Vietnam, history is daily life. So says economist Le Dang Doanh. So history might be a good indicator of which foreign languages the Vietnamese would be more inclined to learn. French? Russian? Mandarin? English?
The Vietnamese have gone to war many times in the past few decades. With France, the United States, Cambodia, China. And themselves.
China is considered by many Vietnamese to be a permanent threat. Very few kids learn Mandarin at school.
Vietnam’s war with the United States was longer and bloodier than its short war with China in 1979. And even in the years after the Vietnam War, the government in Hanoi view the U.S. as its enemy.
But no more. Now wherever you turn in Vietnam, people are learning English. At least that’s what Jennifer Pak discovered in her reporting there for the BBC.
For Do Nhat Nam, it was “love at first sight.” Do, who is all of 10 years old, is locally famous for his mastery of English. He translated a book at the age of seven.
Nam fell in love with the language after seeing a video of Steve Jobs talking about computers on YouTube.
Other Vietnamese are drawn to English for the freedom it offers. Bloggers and song lyricists can get certain words and ideas past the official censors more easily in English.
For all of that, economist Le Dang Doanh thinks the Vietnamese are missing a trick in not learning Chinese as well as English. China is right next door, after all. And even if you’re not learning Chinese to increase trade, why not learn the language of your enemy, so you know what he’s thinking?
Most young Vietnamese, though, are wowed by the culture of the English-speaking world. So much so that some older Vietnamese worry about how it’s effecting society. Vietnamese culture frowns on confessional language. People don’t talk about their feelings. But watch “Oprah” or read “The Catcher in the Rye,” and people talking about their feelings is all you get. Steeped in English language culture,. Vietnamese youth are far more prone to this and taboo subjects.
Well-known Vietnamese singer My Linh, herself a fluent English speaker, is raising her children to speak good English. Her kids communicate on Facebook mainly in English. But she has a family rule: at home, everyone must speak Vietnamese. “We need to protect our language,” she says. “If we lose our language, we lose our culture.”
Vietnam’s love affair with English is all the more surprising because in other parts of Asia, English appears on the wane. Jennifer Pak produced a companion documentary, featured in last week’s pod, out of Malaysia and Singapore. In Malaysia, nationalist politicians are promoting the Malay language. In Singapore, business-minded politicians are promoting Mandarin.
But in Vietnam English is king.
- The World in Words Podcast on iTunes
- The World in Words Podcast via RSS
- The World in Words on Facebook | <urn:uuid:ca9baaf6-d7af-4d38-83cd-261ee816cdd7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://patrickcox.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399522.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00115-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956334 | 654 | 2.53125 | 3 |
is a list of strings that give the names of languages to use for messages.
- All language names are conventionally given in English and are capitalized, as in .
- When a message with a name is requested either internally or through the Message function, the Wolfram Language searches for messages with names corresponding to the entries in the list $Language. Only if it fails to find any of these messages will it use the message with the actual name .
Introduced in 1991 | <urn:uuid:137d465c-a6cf-4465-995b-066fd8974919> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/$Language.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00076-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.799665 | 96 | 2.625 | 3 |
Am Fam Physician. 2001 Jun 15;63(12):2441.
The increased prevalence of asthma in children has been accompanied by a rise in morbidity and mortality. Treatment for children presenting to emergency departments with moderate or severe exacerbation of asthma includes aggressive use of beta2 agonists and systemic corticosteroids. Some children require hospitalization even with aggressive therapy. Magnesium sulfate has been used for more than 50 years to treat status asthmaticus and severe acute asthma without specific guidelines. Scarfone and associates studied the early administration of magnesium to moderately to severely ill children with asthma in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial.
The major outcome was the change in clinical asthma score over time; secondary outcome measures included hospitalization rates and time required to meet discharge criteria. The study enrolled patients between two and 18 years of age with a past history of at least one prior episode of wheezing who presented to the emergency department with a moderate to severe asthma exacerbation. Patients who had used corticosteroids within 72 hours and who had any of a number of pulmonary, heart, liver or renal diseases were excluded. Pregnant patients also were excluded. Severity of asthma was scored using the pulmonary index (PI). All children were initially treated with inhaled nebulized albuterol followed by a second albuterol treatment and intravenous methylprednisolone.
Study participants were randomly given either 75 mg per kg (maximum: 2.5 g) of intravenous magnesium sulfate or intravenous placebo (normal saline). All patients received three more albuterol treatments over the next two hours. Clinical assessment was performed at specific intervals to record PI score, oxygen saturation, pulse and blood pressure, and adverse effects were noted. Discharge criteria included sustained good aeration, absent or minimal wheezing, minimal work of breathing and an oxygen saturation greater than 95 percent in room air. All patients went home and continued using inhaled albuterol and oral prednisone for five days.
Of the 54 study subjects, 24 received magnesium sulfate and 30 received placebo. Children in both groups experienced a significant improvement in mean PI scores from baseline to 120 minutes. The authors found no evidence of a magnesium benefit nor did they find a difference in hospitalization rates between the two groups. Side effects of magnesium infusion were mild and included transient facial warmth, dry mouth and malaise.
The authors conclude that among a cohort of moderately to severely ill asthmatic children treated with aggressive beta2-agonist therapy and intravenous corticosteroids, high-dose magnesium offered no additional benefit when administered early in the course of treatment.
Scarfone RJ, et al. A randomized trial of magnesium in the emergency department treatment of children with asthma. Ann Emerg Med. December 2000;36:572–8.
Copyright © 2001 by the American Academy of Family Physicians.
This content is owned by the AAFP. A person viewing it online may make one printout of the material and may use that printout only for his or her personal, non-commercial reference. This material may not otherwise be downloaded, copied, printed, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any medium, whether now known or later invented, except as authorized in writing by the AAFP. Contact firstname.lastname@example.org for copyright questions and/or permission requests.
Want to use this article elsewhere? Get Permissions | <urn:uuid:279cb62e-ab8c-45c7-8405-235d90556843> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.aafp.org/afp/2001/0615/p2441.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397865.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00070-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951459 | 706 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Facts about Aromatherapy
The use of plant oils can be traced back over 6000 years. The Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all recognised the therapeutic properties of essential oils and plant extracts.
Aromatherapy can be defined as the art and science of utilizing naturally extracted aromatic essences from plants to balance, harmonize and promote the health of body, mind and spirit. It is an art and science that seeks to explore the physiological, psychological and spiritual realm of the individual's response to aromatic extracts as well as to observe and enhance the individual's innate healing process. Source: National Association of Holistic Aromatherapy www.naha.org. | <urn:uuid:85f14cf4-1462-43b0-a696-fd0ce5e1448e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.egyptianskincare.com/aromatherapy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00139-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91214 | 136 | 2.890625 | 3 |
The chimney effect is the natural phenomena that occurs when the density difference between a hot and a cold air column creates a natural flow through a chimney. Learn more about why this works.
You can see the tall flue gas stacks in all the power plants. The function of the stack is to disperse at a great height the hot gases, emissions and particulates that leave the boiler. At these heights the pollutants disperse in a very large area so that ground level concentrations are within permissible levels not harmful for humans or vegetation.
Chimneys were in use from the times of the Roman Empire. Chimneys and fireplaces are a common household item in countries with a cold climate. It serves the dual function of removing the hot gases out of the house at the same time bringing in fresh air to the fireplace for combustion.
Flue gas stacks higher than 250 meters are common nowadays for larger power plants. The tallest stack currently is 420 meters in Kazakhstan. Many factors like terrain, dispersion pattern, plume heights, adjacent tall structures, and population density determine the height of the stack.
There is a natural phenomena associated with the chimney or the flue gas stack. This is the natural flow of air up the chimney. This is called the ‘chimney or the stack effect’. This effect is found not only in chimneys but also in tall buildings.
What is the Chimney (or Stock) Effect?
The gas temperature inside the flue gas stack is around 140° C. The outside ambient air temperature is around say 30° C. Consider this as two air columns connect at the bottom. The high density and heavier cold air will be always pushing the low density and lighter hot gases up. This causes the natural flow of gases up the flue gas stack. This pressure difference that pushes the hot gas up the flue gas stack or the chimney is the 'chimney or stack effect'.
You can feel the effect if you stand near the doors or openings at the bottom of a stack or at open door of an elevator shaft. Depending on the height it can be gentle draught or heavy suction. This is the chimney or stack effect.
In numerical terms this can be represented as
Chimney effect = 353 x Chimney Height x [1/ Stack gas temperature – 1/ Ambient Temperature]
Chimney effect is in mm of water column.
Chimney height is in mteres.
Temperatures are in ° Kelvin.
For a thermal power plant with a stack height of 250 meters the effect could be around 77 mm of water column. In thermal power plants the stack effect aids the Induced draft fans in removing the hot flue gases from the furnace and dispersing them at the top of the stack.
In tall buildings this effect could create problems for the airconditioning system. In deserts where the outside temperatures are higher than the cool interior of the buildings the effect will be in the reverse. | <urn:uuid:54ef4b72-c5b3-4251-a8b7-d2ec71b0d220> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.brighthubengineering.com/hvac/29769-the-chimney-or-stack-effect-explained/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00035-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.890029 | 610 | 4.1875 | 4 |
Dedicated to all those who lost their lives through Man's inhumanity to Man, which knows no bounds of race, creed, or time. Any war must be categorized as an "atrocity" but the war that Hitler started brought a scale of atrocity never previously known. Within this period the world has enjoyed real peace for only 268 years.
The events described here occurred more than sixty years ago and yet they are discussed to this day and have made indelible impressions on present-day society. The compilation here and the facts presented are as complete as possible consistent with what has already been researched and published. My sincere thanks go to all those ex-servicemen and history buffs who have contacted me with corrections and updates.
This 4 page series reports on some occurrences within:
THE VINKT MASSACRE (May 26/28, 1940)
One of the first war crimes committed by the German Wehrmacht (Not the SS or Waffen SS) in World War II took place at and near the Vinkt bridge over the Schipdonk Canal in Belgium. As the German 225th Divison approached the bridge they found it blocked by refugees fleeing south. Soldiers of the 225th then took a number of refugees and used then as human shields. Others were herded into the Meigem church where a grenade was thrown in amongst them killing 27. For no known reason the 225th started to execute their hostages. Next day (May 28) the Belgium army capitulated in the early morning and another nine hostages were shot. Altogether the number of hostage shot amounted to 86. Others killed in the cross-fire on the bridge brought the total to around 140. After the war, two German officers, a Major Kuhner and Lieutenant Lohmann were arrested, tried and convicted of the crime. They were both sentenced to 20 years imprisonment but released after only five years.
BANDE (Christmas Eve, 1944)
On September 5, 1944, a unit of Belgian marquis attacked a German unit, killing three soldiers. Two days later the American troops arrived in the area and the Germans retreated. Three months later, during the Ardennes Offensive, the village of Bande was retaken. On Christmas Eve, a unit of the German SD (Sicherheitsdienst) set about arresting all men in the village. They were questioned about the events of September 5, then lined up in front of the local cafe. One by one, they were led to an open door and as they entered a shot rang out. An SD man, positioned just inside the door, fired point blank into the victims neck and with a kick sent the body hurtling into the open cellar. After twenty had been killed this way, it was the turn of 21 year old Leon Praile who decided to make a run for it. With bullets flying around him, he escaped into the woods. Meantime the executions continued until all 34 men had been killed. On January 10, 1945, the village of Bande was liberated by British troops and the massacre was discovered. A Belgian War Crimes Court was set up in December 1944. One man, a German speaking Swiss national by the name of Ernst Haldiman, was identified as being a member of the execution squad. He had joined the SS in France on November 15, 1942 and in 1944 his unit was integrated with other SD units, into No. 8 SS Commando for Special Duties. Haldiman was picked up in Switzerland after the war and brought to trial before a Swiss Army Court. On April 28, 1948, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. He was released on parole on June 27, 1960, the only member of the SS Commando unit that has been brought to trial.
THE MALMÉDY MASSACRE (December 17, 1944)
During the Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge) the Combat Group of the 1st SS Panzer Division, led by SS Major Joachim Peiper, was approaching the crossroads at Baugnes near the town of Malmédy. There they encountered a company of US troops (Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion) from the US 7th Armoured Division. Realizing that the odds were hopeless, the company's commander, Lieutenant Virgil Lary, decided to surrender. After being searched by the SS, the prisoners were marched into a field adjacent to the Cafe Bodarwé. The SS troops moved on except for two Mark IV tanks Nos. 731 and 732, left behind to guard the GIs. A couple of GIs tried to flee to the nearest woods and an order was given to fire. SS Private Georg Fleps of tank 731 drew his pistol and fired at Lary's driver who fell dead in the snow. The machine guns of both tanks then opened fire on the prisoners. Many of the GIs took to their heels and headed for the woods. Incredibly, 43 GIs survived, but 84 of their comrades lay dead in the field, being slowly covered with a blanket of snow. No attempt was made to recover the bodies until the area was retaken by the 30th Infantry Division on January 14, 1945, when men from the 291st Engineers used metal detectors to locate the bodies buried in the snow. (The US troops in the area were issued with an order that for the next week no SS prisoners were to be taken) At the end of the war, Peiper, and 73 other suspects (arrested for other atrocities committed during the offensive) were brought to trial. When the trial ended on July 16, 1946, forty three of the defendants were sentenced to death, twenty two to life imprisonment, two to twenty years, one for fifteen years and five to ten years.
Peiper and Fleps were among those sentenced to death, but after a series of reviews the sentences were reduced to terms in prison. On December 22, 1956, SS Sturmbannführer Peiper was released. He settled in the small village of Traves (population 63) in northern France in 1972 and earned a living by translating military books from English into German. Four years later, on the eve of Bastille Day, July 14, 1976, he was murdered and his wooden house burned down by a French communist group known as the 'Avengers'. His charred body was recovered from the ruins and transferred to the family grave in Schondorf, near Landsberg in Bavaria. Most of the remains of the murdered GIs were eventually shipped back to the US for private burial but twenty-one still lie buried in the American Military Cemetery at Henri-Chappelle, about forty kilometres north of Malmédy.
ATROCITY AT STAVELOT
On December 18, the day after the massacre at Malmédy, the same SS unit of Kampfgruppe Peiper, systematically executed 130 Belgian civilians in the village of Stavelot. Charged with sheltering American soldiers, 67 men, 47 women and 23 children were brutally executed.
CHENOGNE (January 1, 1945)
In the village of Chenogne, a unit of the US 11th Armoured Division had captured around sixty German soldiers. Marched to behind a small hill, out of sight of enemy troops still holding the woods beyond the village, the prisoners were subjected to a volley of machine-gun fire. On this cold and frosty first day of 1945, the GIs were showing no mercy for their unfortunate prisoners as they crumpled to the ground, dead. With memories of the Malmédy massacre still fresh in their minds, killing had become impersonal, revenge was now uppermost in their minds.
THE WERETH KILLINGS (December 17, 1944)
Shortly after the Battle of the Bulge commenced, eleven black American soldiers surrendered to the Nazi SS troops who had overrun the small hamlet of Wereth in Belgium. Some were wounded but this didn't stop the SS from marching them to a field during a severe blizzard and shooting them in cold blood. All were members of Battery-C of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion and were from Alabama. The bodies were found covered in snow two months later when the villagers directed members of the US 99th Infantry Division to the site. Seven of the murdered soldiers were buried in the American Cemetery at Henri-Chapelle in Belgium, and four were returned to their families in the USA. In 1994, three local residents of Wereth built a monument to the eleven slain black soldiers at the corner of the field where they were shot and on May 23, 2004, a rejuvenated memorial was dedicated to the victims. This memorial is believed to be the only memorial to African-American soldiers in Europe. In the USA another memorial was built especially to memorialize the eleven victims and also to pay tribute to the 260,000 African-Americans who fought on European soil during WWII. The memorial is in the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Winchendon, Massachusetts.
THE ABBEVILLE SHOOTINGS (May, 1940)
In Abbeville, France, twenty-two Belgian right wing political leaders were arrested by the French Police. Just before the German invasion the twenty-two men were taken to a public park in the town and shot. This must constitute Western Europe's first 'War Crime' of World War II and the first to be documented. After the shootings hundreds of the victims followers rushed to join the volunteer regiments of Germany's Waffen SS.
THE NORMANDY MASSACRES (June, 1944)
A sensation was caused in Allied Headquarters when reports came through that a considerable number of Canadian soldiers were shot after being taken prisoner by the 12th. SS Panzer Division ‘Hitler Jugend’. On the morning of June 8, thirty seven Canadians were taken prisoner by the 2nd Battalion of the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment. The prisoners were marched across country to the H/Q of the 2nd Battalion. In the village of Le Mesnil-Patty they were then ordered to sit down in a field with their wounded in the center. In a short while a half track arrived with eight or nine SS soldiers brandishing their machine pistols. Advancing in line towards the prisoners they opened fire killing thirty five men. Two of the Canadians ran for their lives and escaped the slaughter but were rounded up by a different German unit to spend the rest of the war in a P.O.W. camp. First to make contact with the Canadians was a combat group led by Obersturmbannfuhrer Karl-Heinz Milius and supported by the Prinz Battalion. Near the villages of Authie and Buron, a number of Canadians of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, were taken prisoner. Numbering around forty, they were individually killed on the march back to the rear. Eight were ordered to remove their helmets and then shot with automatic rifles. Their bodies were dragged out on to the road and left to be run over by trucks and tanks. French civilians pulled the bodies back on to the pavement but were ordered to stop and to drag the bodies back onto the road again.
On June 7 and 8, in the grounds of the Abbaye Ardenne, the headquarters of SS Brigadefuhrer Kurt Meyer’s 25th Panzer Grenadiers, twenty Canadians were shot. After being taken prisoner they were locked up in a stable and being called out by name they emerged from the doorway only to be shot in the back of the head. During the afternoon of June 8, twenty six Canadians were shot at the Chateau d’Audrie after being taken prisoner by a Reconnaissance Battalion of the SS Hitler Jugend. Other units of the German forces in France called the Hitler Jugend Division the ‘Murder Division’. After the war, investigations established that separate atrocities were committed in 31 different incidents involving 134 Canadians, 3 British and 1 American. Brought to trial before a Canadian military court at Aurich in Germany on December 28, 1945, Kurt Meyer was sentenced to death but later reprieved and spent six years in a Canadian jail at New Brunswick before being transferred to the prison at Werl in Germany where he was released on parole on September 7, 1954. He died of a heart attack on December 23, 1961, at age 51.
LE PARADIS (Pas-de-Calais, May 26, 1940)
A company of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, trapped in a cowshed, surrendered to the 2nd Infantry Regiment, SS 'Totenkopf' (Death's Head) Division under the command of 28 year old SS Obersturmfuhrer Fritz Knoechlein. Marched to a group of farm buildings, they were lined up in the meadow along side the barn wall. When the 99 prisoners were in position, two machine guns opened fire killing 97 of them. Knoechlein then ordered a group of his mem to fix bayonets and stab or shoot to death any who showed signs of life. The bodies were then buried in a shallow pit in front of the barn. Two managed to escape, Privates Albert Pooley and William O'Callaghan of the Royal Norfolk Regiment emerged from the slaughter wounded but alive. When the SS troops moved on, the two wounded soldiers were discovered, after having hid in a pig-sty for three days and nights, by Madame Duquenne-Creton and her son Victor who had left their farm when the fighting started. She then cared for them till captured again by another, much more friendly, Wehrmacht unit to spend the rest of the war as P.O.W.s. In 1942, the bodies of those executed were exhumed by the French authorities and reburied in the local churchyard now part of the Le Paradis War Cemetery. After the war, the massacre was investigated by the War Crimes Investigation Unit and Knoechlein was traced and arrested. During the war he had been awarded three Knight's Crosses. Tried before a War Crimes Court in the No. 5 Court of the Curiohaus, Altona, in Hamburg, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging and on January 28, 1949, the sentence was carried out. Married with four children, his wife attended the trial every day. (On May 27, 1970 a memorial plaque was affixed to the barn wall and unveiled by Madame Creton in the presence of members of the Dunkirk Veterans Association)
WORMHOUDT ATROCITY (Pas-de-Calais, May 27/28 , 1940)
The day after the Le Paradis massacre, around 100 men of the 2nd Royal Warwickshire Regiment, the Cheshire Regiment and the Royal Artillery, were taken prisoner by the No 7 Company, 2nd Battalion of the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. At Esquelbecq, near the town of Wormhoudt, about twelve miles from Dunkirk, the prisoners were marched across fields to a nearby farm and there confined in a barn with not enough room for the wounded to lie down. There the massacre began. About five stick grenades were lobbed in amongst the defenceless prisoners who died in agony as shrapnel tore into their flesh. When the last grenade had been thrown, those still standing were then ordered outside, five at a time, there to be mown down under a hail of bullets from the rifles of the executioners. Fifteen men survived the atrocity in the barn only to give themselves up later to other German units to serve out the war as P.O.W.s. Bodies of the murdered victims were buried in a mass grave dug up near the barn. A year later, the SS, in an attempt to cover up the crime, disinterred the bodies and buried them in various cemeteries in Esquelbecq and Wormhoudt. In 1947, the War Graves Commission erected headstones over the graves but as most of the bodies bore no identification, their ID tags and pay books being destroyed by the SS prior to the shootings, the names carved on the headstones bear no relation to the bodies buried underneath. Unlike the Le Paradis massacre, the victims of Wormhoudt were never avenged, as after the war no survivor could positively identify any of the SS soldiers involved. Where as the majority of soldiers serving in the Waffen SS were entirely blameless, the actions of some units have forever tarnished the name of the Waffen SS.
PARIS DEPORTATIONS (July 16-17, 1942)
A total of 12,884 non French Jews, 3,031 men, 5,802 women and 4,051 children were rounded up in Paris for deportation to the death camps in Poland. For a whole week, 6,900 of them including the 4,051 children, were confined in the huge sports stadium, the Velodrome d'Hiver, a stadium designed for cycle sports, on the Boulevard de Grenelle. Without food and little water and only four toilets, the victims were in a deplorable state for five days before being transferred to the camps at Drancy or Pithiviers on the outskirts of Paris. Here the Vichy French police separated the children from their parents. The parents were then transported to Auschwitz to be gassed. The children followed soon after. When the Red Army liberated Auschwitz on January 26, 1945, they found 2,819 inmates still alive but only thirty of the 6,900 non-French Jews were alive. Sadly, none of the 4,051 children survived.
It is estimated that around 60,000 Jews from 37 countries perished in France under the German occupation. This includes 22,193 French Jews and 14,459 Polish Jews who had fled to France earlier. Prior to this, on June 11, 1941, three hundred Jewish boys, aged between fourteen and nineteen were arrested and sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Of the three hundred, none survived. On May 15, 1944, a fifteen cattle-truck train left Paris (Convoy-73) heading for Kovno in Lithuania. On board were 878 male Jews including 37 boys aged between thirteen and eighteen. On arrival at Kovno 400 were taken to the slave labour camp at Pravieniskes where many were executed by Lithuanian SS auxilliaries. The other 478 were taken to Reval in Estonia where sixty of the prisoners were shot in a nearby forest. A hundred more, judged too sick to work, were also murdered. The rest ended up in the Stutthof concentration camp where many died. After the war it was found that only twenty-three of the original 878 deportees had survived.
During the Nazi occupation of France around 36,000 Gendarmes were in service. A total 338 gendarmes were executed by the Nazis, over 800 were deported and some 400 died fighting during the Liberation. Many were summarily executed by the Resistance without a trial. Their crime, 'anti-French behaviour' i.e. being forced to guard camps such as Drancy and in rounding up Jews for deportation.
ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE (Central France, June 10, 1944)
On their 450 mile drive from the south of France to the Normandy invasion area, the 2nd SS Panzer Division 'Das Reich' (15,000 men aboard 1,400 vehicles, including 209 tanks) under the command of SS General Lammerding, arrived at Limoges, a town famous for its porcelain. In the small town of St. Junien (30 kilometres from Limoges) the 'Der Führer Regiment' was regrouping. Following many encounters with the local maquis in which two German soldiers were killed, a unit of the regiment arrived at ORADOUR (believed to be a hotbed of maquis activity) in a convoy of trucks and half-tracks. At about 2 PM on this Saturday afternoon the 120 man SS unit surrounded the village ordering all inhabitants to parade in the market place for an identity check. Women and children were separated from the menfolk and herded into the local church. The men were herded in groups into six carefully chosen local garages and barns and shot. Their bodies were then covered with straw and set on fire. The 452 women and children in the church were then suffocated by smoke grenades lobbed in through the windows and shrapnel grenades that were thrown down the nave while machine-guns raked the interior. All flammable items in the church then caught fire.
Incredibly, one woman, Mme Marguerite Rouffanche, escaped by jumping through a window, she was the only witness to the carnage in the church. (Mme Rouffanche died, aged 91, in March, 1988). Unspeakable atrocities were committed throughout the village, but some men managed to escape. The commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the SS Regiment at ORADOUR was thirty-two year old SS Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, a survivor of the Russian Front. He was later killed in the Normandy battle area on June 30 when hit in the head by shrapnel. Many members of the "Das Reich" reacted with surprising venom against the officer who ordered the massacre and a court martial was established but Diekmann died before the trial took place. The world heard of this massacre eight years later when some of those responsible were brought to trial. In 1953, a French Military Court at Bordeaux, established that 648 people (245 women, 207 children and 196 men) had perished. This included 393 residents of the village, 167 people from surrounding areas, 33 from Limoges and 52 from other outlying districts. Twenty-one other members of Diekmann's company (including fourteen Frenchmen from Alsace-Lorraine who had been conscripted into the SS) were sentenced to death but later their sentences were commuted to terms of imprisonment. All were released by 1958. SS General Lammerding, who was sentenced to death in absentia, died peacefully at his home at Bad Toltz in Germany on January 13, 1971, of cancer. A close friend of Diekmann was Major Helmut Kampfe, commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion of the Der Führer Regiment He was kidnapped and executed by the FTP (Communists) the day before the massacre. His kidnapping was not the only reason for the events at Oradour. Gold, looted by the Nazis, and then stolen by the Maquis, was rumoured to be hidden in the village, why else the indiscriminate destruction? Today, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane stands in ruins, just as the SS left it. Entry to the memorial site can only be gained through the Centre de la Memoire museum and documentation centre at the entrance to the village. As of January, 2014, only two of the survivors were still alive.
THE TULLE MURDERS (Near Limoges, Central France, June 9, 1944)
The day before the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane, the SS murdered 99 men in the town of Tulle in central France. This was in response to activities by the local FTP resistance groups who had attacked and taken over the town. When the 2nd SS Panzer Division 'Das Reich' took over the town they found 40 dead bodies of the German 3rd Battalion/95th Security Regiment garrison troops near the school, their bodies badly mutilated. Other bodies were found around the town, bringing the total German dead in Tulle to sixty-four. Next day, the reprisals began. All males in the town were gathered together and 130 suspects were selected for execution. A number were released because of their youth and the remaining 99 were executed by the Pioneer Platoon of SS-Panzer Aufklarungs Abteilung 2. Their bodies were hung up on lamp-posts and from balconies along the main streets of the town in the hope that the hanging bodies would deter future attacks by the Maquis and the FTP. More would have been hanged had not the SS ran out of rope. Instead, they rounded up 149 civilians and deported them to Germany for slave labour. Of these, 101 did not return.
ASCQ (Near Lille, April 2, 1944)
At the end of March, 1944, the 12th SS Panzer Division 'Hitler Jugend' set out on 24 rail trucks for Normandy to cover the coast in anticipation of an Allied landing. The convoy, under the command of SS Obersturmführer Walter Hauck, was approaching the small railway station of Ascq when a violent explosion blew the line apart. Stopping the train, it was found that two flat trucks had been derailed, holding up the whole convoy. Hauck, in a foul mood, ordered his men to search and arrest all male members of the houses on both sides of the track. They were assembled together and marched down the track about 300 yards where each man was shot in the back of the head. Altogether 70 men were shot beside the railway line and another 16 killed in the village itself. After an investigation by the Gestapo, six more men were arrested and charged with planting the bomb. They were all executed by firing squad. When the war ended, a search for the perpetrators was set in motion. Most of the SS men were found in Allied P.O.W. camps in Europe and in England. In all, nine SS men stood trial in a French Military Court at Lille. All were sentenced to death, including Hauck. The sentences were later commuted to a period of imprisonment and Walter Hauck was released in July, 1957.
OUTRAGE AT IZIEU (Central France, April 6, 1944)
The sleepy French village of Izieu lies overlooking the Rhone river between Lyon and Chambery in central France. A number of refugee Jewish children, most of them orphans, were being sheltered in a home in the hope that the Nazi Gestapo would not find them. Supervised by seven adults, they felt safe and secure. However, on the morning of April 6, 1944, as they settled down to breakfast, a car and two military trucks drove up in front of the home. The Gestapo, led by the regional head, Klaus Barbie, entered the home and forcibly removed the forty four children and their seven supervisors, throwing the crying and terrified children on to the trucks like sacks of potatoes. All were transported to the collection centre at Drancy outside Paris where they were put on the first available train to 'points east'. One carer, Miron Zlatin, and two of the oldest children ended up in Tallin in Estonia where they were all shot. The others found themselves in the notorious concentration camp of Auschwitz. Of the forty-four children, aged between five and seventeen kidnapped from Izieu, not a single one survived the war. Of the supervisors there was one sole survivor, twenty-seven year old Lea Feldblum. It is a tragic fact that patriotic French citizens willingly helped the Gestapo in their search for these Jewish children. On July 3, 1987, Klaus Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyon, was finally arrested, tried in a French court and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died of cancer in prison on September 25, 1991. (In Lyon, the number of hostages arrested and shot by the Germans in revenge for attacks on its forces numbered 3,674. In the whole of France, including Paris, the total amounted to a staggering 29,660)
(The former children's home in Izieu is now a memorial-museum, opened on April 4, 1994 by the then President of the French Republic, Francios Mitterrand.)
FRAYSSINET(Near Tulle, Central France, May 21, 1944)
In the small village of Frayssinet le Gelat south of Tulle, between Gourdon and Fumel, an SS Rifle company of the 2 Panzer Division 'Das Reich' stopped for a refreshment break. Believing that one of their officers had been shot by members of the French underground, fifteen hostages were taken and executed. These hostages were all young males from one child families. This, in the twisted minds of the SS, was to prevent any further family line of descent. Outside the entrance to the local church in Frayassinet le Gelat stands a small monument mounted with a stone cross, and a plaque bearing the names of all the fifteen young victims.
REPRISAL AT UGINE (June 5, 1944)
On this day, at 8.15am, members of the French Resistance exploded a roadside mine by remote control just as a column of German military police were passing by. Eleven of the policemen were killed and some twenty were injured. At Ugine, about thirty-five kilometres of Annecy, the enraged survivors of the police unit immediately set about grabbing all males walking along the streets or road and even those descending from a bus that had stopped and shot everyone of them, twenty-eight all told. Nineteen were taken to the exact spot where the mine exploded and there executed, their bodies falling into the hole. The youngest of these hostages was 17, the oldest, a man of 68. Next day, three apartment blocks, each of forty units, were blown sky high by the by police survivors depriving around 500 residents of all they possessed. By late evening the bodies of those shot were retrieved and placed side-by-side on the floor of the local garage to await proper burial next day. (One has cause to wonder what was gained militarily by attacking German soldiers knowing that such an act would result in heavy casualties in the civilian population)
REVENGE KILLINGS AT SAINT-JULIAN (August 9, 1944)
Fifteen kilometres north of Bergerac in the Dordogne region of France, lies the village of Saint-Julian. The surrounding forested area was a hiding place for many French Resistance groups. On Wednesday, August 9, a unit of German troops surrounded the village. (These troops were actually Soviet horse-mounted Cossacks collaborating with the Germans) They proceeded to round up all male residents and assembled them in the grounds of the village school. After questioning, some were released but the others, seventeen in all, were summarily shot leaving many families grief stricken. Two weeks later, during an action 50 kilometres west of Bergerac, a group of German soldiers, 82 in number, gave themselves up to the Maquis. They were transported to the Davoust Military Barracks in Bergerac. On Sunday, September 10, a group of Marquis decided to take their own revenge for the shootings at Saint-Julian. They entered the Barracks under a false pretext and removed 17 prisoners from their cells. Taken to Saint-Julian, some were ordered to dig a deep grave before all 19 P.O.W.s were shot. In the year 2003, after 59 years, the unmarked mass grave was found and the bodies of the 17 German P.O.W.s were reburied in the German Military Cemetery at Berneuil, near Bordeaux. None of the perpetrators of these crimes were ever brought to trial.
SAULX VALLEY ATROCITIES (August 29, 1944)
In the Saulx Valley, in the Meuse départment of eastern France, stands the sleepy villages of Robert-Espagne, Couvonges, Mognéville and Beurey-sur-Saulx. Late in August, 1944, as the German armies were retreating eastwards in the face of the Allied advance, units of the British 2nd S.A.S. Regiment were parachuted in behind the enemy lines to harass the retreating Germans. Joining up with units of the local maquis, their first action, on August 28, was the ambush of a German staff car carrying two officers and two NCOs. The deaths of these four men so infuriated an SS officer to such an extent that he ordered several lorry loads of his soldiers into the nearby village of Robert-Espagne. Their first act was to destroy the telephone equipment at the local post office, thus cutting off the village from the outside world. All males were then rounded up (49 in number) and marched off to the station and there, with their backs to the embankment, they stood, three deep along the rails, and awaited their fate. Three machine-guns, firing in unison, sent their deadly stream of bullets into the helpless group while from nearby houses, their pale faces streaming with tears, wives and mothers watched helplessly from their windows. When the foul crime was over, the SS ordered the women out of their homes to look at the carnage, after which their houses were deliberately set on fire. In the village of Couvonges, 26 men were killed and 54 out of the 60 houses were burned to the ground. Two kilometres further on, the village of Beurey-sur-Saulx was also targeted by the SS and seven inhabitants met their deaths, the church and houses put to the torch. In Mogeville, three people died as a result of the SS retaliation. Similar atrocities were also carried out almost simultaneously in the villages of Sermaize-les-Bains (thirteen died), Cheminon and Tremout-sur-Saulx by the SS 3rd Panzer-Grenadier Division.
KALAVRYTA( December 13, 1943 )
Due to partisan activity around the town of Kalavryta in southern Greece, a unit of the German army 'Kampfgruppe Ebersberger' the 117th Jager Division, under the command of General Karl de Suire, surrounded the town on the morning of Monday, December 13. All the inhabitants were herded into the local school. Females and young boys were separated from the men and youths, the latter being marched to a hollow in a nearby hillside. There the soldiers took up positions behind machine-guns. Below, they witnessed the town being set on fire. Just after 2pm a red flare was fired from the town. This was the signal for the soldiers to start firing on the men and youths who were huddled in the hollow. At 2.34pm the firing stopped and the soldiers marched away. Behind them lay the bodies of 696 persons, the entire male population of Kalavryta. There were 13 survivors of the massacre, the town itself totally destroyed. Only eight houses out of nearly five hundred, were left standing. It was not until late afternoon that the women and young boys were released to face the enormity of the tragedy. Today a memorial stands on the site of the massacre on which are carved the names of 1,300 men and boys from Kalavryta and 24 nearby villages who were murdered that day. (Around 460 villages were completely destroyed and approximately 60,000 men, women and children were massacred during the occupation of Greece)
THE KOS MASSACRE( October 4, 1943 )
When the island of Kos in the Aegean, fell to the German forces, a total of 1,388 British and 3,145 Italian troops were taken prisoner. Italy had signed an armistice on September 8 and the Italian troops were now fighting on the British side. On September 11, Hitler gave the order to execute all Italian officers who were captured. The officer in charge of the Italian troops was Colonel Felice Leggio. He, and 101 of his officers, were marched to a salt pan just east of the town of Kos and there, shot in groups of ten. They were buried in mass graves. When Kos was returned to Greece after the war, the bodies were dug up and transported back to Italy for burial in the Military Cemetery at Bari.
CEFALONIA MASSACRE ( September, 1943)
Almost unknown outside of Italy, this event ranks with Katyn as one of the darkest episodes of the war. On the Greek island of Cefalonia, in the Gulf of Corinth, the Italian ‘ACQUI DIVISION' was stationed. Consisting of 11,500 enlisted men and 525 officers it was commanded by 52 year old General Antonio Gandin, a veteran of the Russian Front where he won the German Iron Cross. When the Badoglio government announced on September 8, 1943, that Italian troops should cease hostilities against the Allies, there was much wine and merriment on Cefalonia. However, their German counterparts on the island maintained a stony silence and soon began harassing their Italian comrades, calling them 'traitors'. The German 11th Battalion of Jäger-Regiment 98 of the 1st Gebirgs (Mountain) Division, commanded by Major Harald von Hirschfeld, arrived on the island and soon Stukas were bombing the Italian positions. The fighting soon developed into a wholesale massacre when the Gebirgsjäger troops began shooting their Italian prisoners in groups of four to ten beginning with General Gandin. By the time the shooting ended four hours later, 3,339 Italian soldiers lay dead in twenty five different locations all over the island. But that was not the end for the Acqui Division, some 4000 survivors were later shipped to the mainland for further transportation to Germany for forced labour. In the Ionian Sea three of the ships hit mines and sank soon after leaving port taking around 3,000 men to their deaths.
The final death toll in this tragic episode was 9,646 men and 390 officers. Major Harald Hirschfeld was later killed by a bomb splinter during the fighting at Duklapass in Warsaw in 1945 after he was promoted to Lieutenant General. General Hubert Lanz, commander of the Gebirgsjäger troops, was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. He was released in 1951. In the 1950s, the remains of over 3,000 soldiers, including 189 officers, were unearthed and transported back to Italy for proper burial in the Italian War Cemetery at Bari. Unfortunately, the body of General Gandin was never identified. In 2002, the investigation into this massacre was reopened in Germany and ten ex-members of the 1st Gebirgs Division, of the 300 still alive, have been investigated and may be charged. The youngest is 81 and the oldest is now 93. There is no Statute of Limitations for murder.
MASSACRE AT DISTOMO (June 10, 1944)
Four days after the Allied invasion of Normandy, a most despicable atrocity took place in the village of Distomo in the province of Boeotia in Central Greece. A unit of the SS Police Panzergrenadier Regiment No 7, on an anti-partisan sweep, massacred 218 Greek civilians in the village. Packed into seven trucks, the unit drove through the village without incident but a short distance beyond the village the convoy was ambushed by a guerrilla band that resulted in the killing of seven SS soldiers. The SS unit doubled back into the village and in a last ditch effort to crush partisan activities, the reprisals, including looting, burning and rape, began. When a Red Cross delegation visited the village some days later they found bodies hanging from trees along the main street. One survivor, Yannes Basdekis, recalled, 'I walked into a house and saw a woman, stripped naked and covered in blood. Her breasts had been sliced off. Her baby lay dead nearby, the cut off nipple still in its mouth'. The body of the village priest was found headless.
The unit commander, SS Hauptstrumführer Lautenbach, was later charged with falsifying a military report on the massacre but the charges were dropped as the massacre was judged a 'military necessity'. Today, the skulls and bones of the victims are displayed in the Mausoleum of Distomo. In 1960, Germany paid the Greek government 115 million marks as compensation for the suffering of its citizens during the German occupation but as yet no payment is forthcoming for the victims of Distomo. It was not until 1990 that members of the German embassy first took part in the wreath laying ceremony on the annual anniversary of the massacre. (It is somewhat ironic that other massacres took place on a same date, the 10th of June, Lidice in 1943, Oradour-zur-Glane and Distomo, in 1944)
ETHNIC CLEANSING IN CAMËRIA JUNE 27, 1944
Cameria was a region in Northern Greece populated mostly by Albanian Muslems. These Muslems suffered the most cruellest atrocities during their ethnic cleansing by Greek Fascists. Beginning Tuesday June 27, 673 men women and children were killed in the town of Paramithia. In Gumenica, 192 persons were killed and in the towns of Margellic and Parga, 626 people met their deaths at the hands of the Greek gangs. In the town of Filat, 1,286 persons were killed during the period June, 1944, to March, 1945. Hundreds of persons went missing. In all, 2,877 Albanian men, women and children were massacred, 475 women were raped and 68 small villages were razed to the ground including 5,800 houses and places of worship (110 Mosques). After March, 1945, the remaining Albanian Muslims (Around 30,000) were expelled from their ancestral lands and forced to flee to Albania or Turkey.
Anther village in Greece which suffered under the Swastika was...
KOMMENO (August 16, 1943) The eight hour massacre by the First Alpenjäger Division 'Edelweiss' commanded by General Stetner, started early in the morning at 5.30 and finished at 12.30 midday. Of the 680 inhabitants of the village, 317 were murdered, 74 of whom were children aged between one and ten years old. In the house of Thedoros Mallios, a wedding reception was taking place for his son Spyros and his new bride. In the early morning, after a celebration that lasted all night, the bride and groom and all guests were confronted by the machine guns of the Edelweiss soldiers and shot to death. The house was then burned to the ground. In all, 34 persons died. Both priests of the village were shot and after the massacre the rest of the houses in Kommeno, about 180, were put to the torch.
DE WOESTE HOEVE (March 6, 1945)
On the night of March 6, a BMW car, carrying the SS General Hans Albin Rauter, the most feared man in Holland, was ambushed, his driver and orderly being killed. Rauter was seriously wounded. Some hours later the damaged car was found by German troops and Rauter was taken to the St. Joseph-Stichting hospital on the outskirts of Apeldoorn where he recovered after a series of blood transfusions. Soon after the ambush, the SD arrived and what followed was one of the most notorious war crimes ever committed in Holland. In charge of the investigation was SS Brigadefuhrer Dr Eberhardt Schongarth, who immediately ordered reprisals. One hundred and seventeen men were rounded up and transported to the scene of the ambush where they were all shot dead, their bodies being buried in a mass grave in Heidehof Cemetery in the village of Ugchelen. The 117th man was a German soldier, Helmut Seijffards, a member of the firing squad who refused to take part in the shootings. In Gestapo prisons all over Holland, prisoners were taken out and shot in reprisal for the ambush. In all, a total of 263 people had been shot. The irony was, that the Dutch underground fighters had intended to ambush and steal a German lorry, and had no idea that the car they shot up contained a German General. Rauter himself survived the war. He was arrested by British Military Police in a hospital at Eutin and turned over to the Dutch. Before a Special Court of Justice in the Hague, he was sentenced to death and on March 25, 1949, he was executed by firing squad in the dunes near Scheveningen Prison. Schongarth was tried by a British Military Court, found guilty on another war crime charge and sentenced to death. He was hanged in 1946.
TEXEL MASSACRE (April 1945)
On the island of Texel, just off the coast of Holland, some 800 Soviet soldiers from Georgia (drafted into the Red Army and who volunteered to join the German Army after being taken prisoner during the German advance into the Soviet Union) decided to mutiny against their German masters. They had been formed into the 822nd Infantry Battalion, and were led by around 400 German officers and NCOs. One night at the end of April, the Georgians, led by a Lt. Shalva Loladze, stealthily entered the German quarters and killed 246 German soldiers as they slept. German battalions were sent from the mainland to secure the island and hunt down the rebels. Summary justice was then dispensed to the Georgians, four or five being tied together and grenades placed between them. Only 235 were left alive out of the original 800 when the Canadians occupied the island in May. Unfortunately, during the hunt, 117 Texelers were also killed. A total of 476 Georgians lie buried in unmarked graves in the Georgian War Cemetery on Texel.
PUTTEN ATROCITY (September 30, 1944)
On the night of September 30, 1944, a group of Dutch resistance fighters ambushed four German soldiers near the small Dutch village of Putten. The attack went wrong and three of the soldiers escaped to raise the alarm, the fourth being kept hostage. The German commander of the area, General Heinz Helmuth von Wuhlisch, ordered a reprisal raid on the village. Most of the male population (602) were arrested and deported to various concentration camps and the village to be burned down. Thirty nine were arrested immediately and lined up on the square. Hoping to save the 39 men, the resistance group released the hostage, Lt. Eggert. It made no difference, all the other men in the village were rounded up and together with the 38 men on the square, forced to board a train bound for the Reich. In all, 589 men from the village were transported to Germany for forced labour. Only 48 of these deportees were alive at the end of the war. Luckily, of the 600 or so houses in Putten, 'only' 87 were actually burned down. On October 1, 1949, Oueen Juliana unvieled a monument to the 660 victims and a Statue 'Lady Of Putten' in the Memorial Garden.
IDDERKERK ATROCITY (1945)
The last atrocity of the war in Europe took place in the small town of Ridderkerk, near Rotterdam. The Mayor had ordered the local police to arrest some 'Hun girls' (women collaborators). While standing with three of their prisoners in front of the house, a German officer and his girl friend passed by in a truck. The police stopped the truck but at a signal from the German officer, a group of ten drunken soldiers stormed out of a nearby house and started firing at the police and their prisoners who had fled to safety back into the house. The soldiers then stormed the house, dragging women and children outside. Eleven men were found inside the house and forced outside to stand up against the wall to be shot down. A wounded man, hiding behind a sofa, gave himself away by his moans. He too was shot dead. The soldiers departed, leaving behind three survivors.
THE AMSTERDAM REPRISAL (October 24, 1944)
When S.D. officer Herbert Oelschagel was murdered by the Dutch resistance on October 23, 1944 in Amsterdam, the Nazi reprisal was swift and severe. Next day, 29 civilians were arrested and pedestrians on the Apolloaan were forced at gunpoint to witness their execution. At the same time, several buildings were deliberately set on fire. | <urn:uuid:3f251342-f5c8-48aa-990a-9c630e2c1e4b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00115-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983862 | 9,982 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Jan. 3, 1954: George Carnahan, a respected judge who clashed with his political makers during a short term as Rochester's mayor, died and was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery.
Carnahan was born in Ohio in 1862 and came to Rochester in his 20s to study law. He was elected to the Municipal Court in 1894 at age 32, then served on the County Court until 1900, when he was elected mayor with the help of two political heavyweights, George Aldridge and Good Government leader Joseph Alling. He was the first mayor to serve under the White Charter, newly passed by the state Legislature, which granted expanded power to big-city mayors by abolishing executive boards.
Carnahan reorganized the city's fiscal structure and served on a committee combating child labor, but fell out of favor with Aldridge over some of his department head appointments. A scandal emerged when the Rochester Herald reported in December 1900 on widespread organized gambling, happening seemingly with the city's implicit permission.
"No man of ordinary intelligence who knows the streets of the city can have the slightest difficulty in convincing himself that gambling rooms are running wide open here at this time," the Herald reporter wrote. "Apparently about the only frequenters of Mill Street who are ignorant of the game are Officers Hennessy and Snyder, who solemnly patrol up and down the street every afternoon and evening, to all appearances unconscious that ... one of the most notorious gambling joints in the city is running under their very noses."
Accusations of collusion were eventually disproven, but Carnahan got another black eye in a dispute between territorial rights for two competing power companies. After Carnahan's two years in office, Aldridge instead put his considerable political clout behind Adolph Rosenbeck, who became the next mayor in 1902.
In a 1922 speech to the Rochester Bar Association, Carnahan produced a memorable quote about the law: "Whoever thinks the law is made once and forever is guilty of a grave error. It always has and it always must be capable of growth and adaptation to new conditions." | <urn:uuid:f4c1a263-a8e1-49f0-8347-cbe5d8111bc5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/RochesterHistory/2014/01/03/jan-3-mayor-george-carnahan-dies/4300779/?from=global | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00183-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980886 | 418 | 2.65625 | 3 |
|Click here to view the item|
|Title:||Oral history interview with Barbara Lorie, February 26, 2001|
|Date:||2001 Feb. 26|
After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Barbara Lorie became radicalized. She worked at Durham Academy for a year before Chapel Hill High principal May Marshbanks hired her as a literature teacher at the newly built integrated high school. There she employed unconventional teaching methods to eliminate racial barriers within her classroom. The Chapel Hill superintendent of schools as well as white Chapel Hill parents questioned Lorie's tactics because of the uncomfortable atmosphere they felt it created for blacks and whites. Following the resultant demotion, Lorie quit and worked for Pinecrest High School in Southern Pines. There she encountered similar racial tensions between the students, leading her to conclude that racism is endemic. She argues that racism breeds violence, and she blames television for perpetuating a dominant and violent white male culture. Lorie also contends that not only blacks but whites were psychologically damaged by segregation; she maintains that whites isolate themselves from other cultures and that blacks lose their cultural identities when not integrated into the dominant society. Lorie's social justice activism continues into her old age: she joined a predominantly black church to maintain an intimate relationship with blacks, and she identifies herself as a left-wing, environmentalist radical feminist.
The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata.
|Types:||Transcripts | Sound recordings | Oral histories|
|Subjects:||Lorie, Barbara | Women teachers--North Carolina | Women civil rights workers--North Carolina | School integration--North Carolina--Chapel Hill | African Americans--North Carolina--Social conditions | North Carolina--Race relations | Chapel Hill (N.C.) | Orange County (N.C.)|
|Collection:||Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement|
|Institution:||Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)|
|Contributors:||Southern Oral History Program | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project) | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library | Oral histories of the American South (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project))|
|Online Publisher:||[Chapel Hill, N.C.] : University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. | 2007|
Title from menu page (viewed on Nov. 10, 2008).
Interview participants: Barbara Lorie, interviewee; Melissa Froemming, interviewer.
This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.
Text encoded by Jennifer Joyner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.
Forms part of Oral histories of the American South collection.
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Searching for Wolverines in the West Cabinets
Last winter, nearly 150 volunteers spent 2,000 hours trying to capture images of the elusive furbearer with trail cameras in a remote wildlands area along the Montana-Idaho border.
This story is featured in Montana Outdoors November-December 2012 issue
Of North America’s many reclusive wildlife species, the wolverine is among the hardest to find. The aggressive carnivore can be as equally ferocious as a wounded grizzly bear and can kill a full-grown elk. Yet its reputation as a take-no-prisoners predator belies the wolverine’s secretive side. These animals do not want to be found. And because they are so difficult to locate and study, less is known about wolverines than any other furbearer.
In recent years Gulo gulo (Latin for “glutton”) has, with reluctance, entered the spotlight, thanks in large part to the success of the Glacier Wolverine Project. In that study, researchers identified nearly two dozen wolverines within Glacier National Park, where the covert carnivores were once thought to be extirpated (locally extinct). Since then, researchers have begun casting a wider net. Because it contains all the habitat components wolverines require, one attractive location for conducting a search is the Cabinet Mountains (known in Montana as the “West Cabinets”), straddling the Idaho-Montana border.
“Partly because it’s such a wet environment, and partly because it’s so remote, the West Cabinets are rich in both plant and wildlife species,” says Jerry Brown, a recently retired Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks wildlife biologist in the Libby area. Brown, who has traveled much of the West Cabinets on foot looking for evidence of wolverines, says the mountains are packed with deep snow in winter, a feature important to the carnivore. “Some parts register more snow than anyplace else in Montana,” he says.
The centerpiece of the West Cabinets is the Scotchman Peaks proposed wilderness area. Looming over the Cabinet Gorge of the Clark Fork River, the Scotchman Peaks encompass 88,000 acres of rocky summits, subalpine meadows, and steep, brushy drainages. No roads enter the Scotchmans, and only a few footpaths penetrate the periphery—in short, ideal living conditions for creatures that shun humans.
Last winter, in collaboration with volunteers led by the Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness (FSPW ) conservation group, and with funding from Zoo Boise, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) installed and monitored dozens of bait stations with infrared cameras throughout the West Cabinets in the hopes of documenting wolverine presence. The study was part of Idaho’s Multi-Species Baseline Initiative, a project to establish population numbers for a wide range of wildlife species.
“In 2000, some folks in Congress got together and decided that we needed an early warning system to determine which species were in danger of becoming endangered down the road,” says Michael Lucid, IDFG regional wildlife biologist. “Congressional leaders created the State Wildlife Grant Program with the intent of allowing every U.S. state and territory to plan and carry out proactive conservation actions to prevent fish and wildlife from becoming endangered.”
The wolverine is a species “of greatest conservation need” in Washington and Idaho. But is the species actually in danger of disappearing from those states? No one knows. That’s one reason researchers started looking in the West Cabinets during the winter of 2011-12. “Whether you’re of the opinion that wolverines need more federal protection or of the opinion that we need to keep the species from being listed under the ESA, you can appreciate that we need more information,” says Lucid. “If we have no data, we can’t make defensible management decisions.”
For decades the West Cabinets have essentially been “a ‘no info’ zone,” says Kelsey Brasseur, FSPW wolverine project coordinator. “Our study was a fact-finding mission to solve that problem.”
Adopt a bait station
Searching for animals that don’t want to be found takes enormous manpower, which IDFG lacked. So Brasseur recruited nearly 150 volunteers, including individuals, families, church groups, and others. The volunteers signed up to “adopt” bait stations, where remote sensor cameras were set up to record visiting wildlife.
From each bait tree, volunteers hung a beaver carcass—obtained from trappers—or part of a road-killed deer. Brass-bristle brushes were installed under the bait to snag hair samples from curious carnivores. Hair samples were later analyzed by a lab to verify species identity. On an adjacent tree, volunteers attached a motion- and heat-activated infrared camera. Anything that was warm and moving triggered the shutter.
The environment of deep snowpack, steep drainages, and avalanche-prone cirques that attracts wolverines unfortunately also inhibits wolverine research. “[The Wolverine Way author] Doug Chadwick writes that ‘studying wolverines doesn’t come at anyone’s convenience,’” says Lucid. “In northern Idaho, it can be 20 degrees below zero out or it can be raining—all in the same day. In addition, in winter you’re dealing with really short days. You’ve got less than eight hours to get it done in daylight, so a lot of the time the volunteers were coming back in the dark.”
That didn’t dissuade the Idaho and Montana volunteers. “We’re fortunate to live in an area that’s rugged and is populated with rugged people,” says Brasseur. “Volunteers were really good at finding ways to get back into these areas.” The Idaho Conservation League and staff of Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education helped recruit and train volunteers. Some cross-country skied up to seven hours into the backcountry to reach the most remote bait stations, Brasseur adds. Then they had to come out again, often using headlamps.
At the end of the winter season, volunteers sorted through nearly 100,000 images captured by the 36 camera stations. “Each time we checked a camera’s file, we sort of held our breath, wondering what we’d see,” says Brasseur.
Researchers and volunteers were disappointed not to find a single wolverine image. However, the cameras still provided the most complete picture of Scotchman Peaks carnivores to date—including a few surprises. Fishers—until recently thought to be nearly extirpated from their range in northwestern Montana—appear to have established a stronghold in the West Cabinets. The study documented fishers visiting 23 bait stations over the winter. Researchers were also surprised by the inordinate number of northern flying squirrels in the study area. One picture shows seven flying squirrels simultaneously feasting on a single beaver bait. In addition, the cameras captured pine martens at 41 stations. Other species included ermine: 20 stations; bobcat: 7; coyote: 5; wolf: 4; and red fox: 1.
“With this evidence of carnivore diversity, you go a long way toward establishing with the public that the Scotchman Peaks is truly a special place,” says Brown.
As for the lack of wolverine images, Lucid says that, for now, it appears the area is not home to the large mustelid. “You can never say for sure a species is absent. But the bait station technique is an excellent way to detect wolverines. Not detecting even one with the high sampling intensity we applied to the West Cabinets suggests no resident and reproductive wolverines are in that area.”
Lucid notes that IDFG biologists and others have found wolverine tracks in the West Cabinets, “so we know that wolverines are at least traveling through the area.” Also, wolverines have been recorded by IDFG cameras in the Selkirk Mountains to the north and by a U.S. Forest Service camera in the adjacent Cabinet Mountains Wilderness to the east.
It could just be a matter of time before the elusive carnivores once again call the Scotchman Peaks home.
Aaron Theisen is a freelance writer in Spokane, Washington.
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