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1. The act of entering or going into; ingress; as, the entrance of a person into a house or an apartment; hence, the act of taking possession, as of property, or of office; as, the entrance of an heir upon his inheritance, or of a magistrate into office.
4. The entering upon; the beginning, or that with which the beginning is made; the commencement; initiation; as, a difficult entrance into business. "Beware of entrance to a quarrel." "St. Augustine, in the entrance of one of his discourses, makes a kind of apology." (Hakewill)
Origin: OF. Entrance, fr. OF. & F. Entrant, p. Pr. Of entrer to enter. See Enter.
(01 Mar 1998)
|Bookmark with:||word visualiser||Go and visit our forums| | <urn:uuid:fd8fdd25-583f-411e-8b6e-7b7b98ad327a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mondofacto.com/facts/dictionary?entrance | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00073-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903833 | 182 | 2.96875 | 3 |
A musical instrument designed or adapted to be used with electronic sensors whose output controls the computerized generation or transformation of the sound.
- As you see on Frontiers, the Brain Opera uses high-tech hyperinstruments to create musical compositions.
- The hyperinstrument that will probably get the most attention, and draw the longest lines, is Harmonic Driving.
- The hyperinstrument project is designed to use technology to give extra power and finesse to virtuoso performers.
For editors and proofreaders
Definition of hyperinstrument in:
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
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1805: One of the curious' numismatic situations in recent decades involved Alfred J. Ostheimer, 3rd, well-known collector of silver dollars, who contributed an article-to The Numismatist, June 1961, which began with these words:
"The most important chapter in the long and involved history of the 1804 dollars has been written with the announcement that one coin dated 1804 and another dated 1805 have been fully authenticated by M.H. Bolender of San Marino, Cal., the recognized authority on early silver dollars. After careful study, Bolender has pronounced these to be authentic coins struck at the United States Mint by the same manufacturing processes used for the silver dollars coined from 1794 through 1803.
"These two coins were known to Spink & Son, Ltd: Of London, before they reached the late B.G. Johnson of St. Louis early in 1939. In November 1939 they were purchased by the late Farran Zerbe for his private collection. Zerbe was then the curator of the Chase Manhattan Bank's Museum of Moneys of the World. In-March 1941 he sold these two coins to Louis S. Werner of New York."
Ostheimer went on to say that Werner was Well known for his 'expertise in detecting counterfeits, and had made many important contributions to numismatics. In 1960, Werner submitted the 1805 and 1805 dollars to Academy Testing Laboratories, Inc., of New York, and Lucious Pitkin, Inc., of the same city; both of these firms concluded that the pieces were genuine. After due discussion, Mr. and Mrs. AJ. Ostheimer, 3rd bought the pair from Werner, and wrote the aforementioned article for The Numismatist.
A couple of things were missing from this nice story: First, Werner had purchased them as fakes. Second, Zerbe had written an article about these specific phony "1804" and "1805" dollars for The Numismatist, March 1944.
While Mr. Bolender was a very nice old man, and while he had kept records of the appearances of early dollars over a long period of time, and had published a book on the subject in 1950, he 'was not an expert numismatist from a technical viewpoint. Apparently, he had only a rudimentary knowledge of coining procedures, and, for example, thought that clash marks on dies were caused by "suction." The two testing laboratories in question may have been excellent in some other field, but not in numismatics. In any event, at the 1961 American Numismatic Association convention in Atlanta, Eric P. Newman gave a talk on the Ostheimer "1804" and "1805" dollars, and demonstrated that the first was an alteration of 1802 B-4 and the second an alteration of 1803 B-6. Thus, the highly-trumpeted new discoveries were discredited, and soon faded from view. (For details see: "Contemporary 1804, 1805 Silver Dollars Authenticated," by Alfred]. Ostheimer, 3rd, The Numismatist, June 1961; and "Diagnosing the Zerbe 1804 and 1805 Dollars," by Eric P. Newman, The Numismatist, October 1961.)
1819: It is said that an engraved "1819" silver dollar, depicting on the obverse the head of Miss Liberty facing left, with long, flowing tresses, with an engine-turned border design, 13 stars above, and the date 1819 below, is the work of Jacob Perkins, die engraver of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Engraved in silver, the only known specimen is in the collection of the American Numismatic Society. This piece is not of Mint origin and is simply a curiosity. Illustrated in Appendix C of United States Pattern, Experimental and Trial Pieces, by J. Hewitt Judd, M.D.
The Year 1804 in History
The Lewis and Clark expedition, headed by Captain Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the American Northwest, set forth from St. Louis on May 14 and would remain on the trail until returning to its point of origin on September 23, 1806. Its mission was to explore the upper reaches of the land acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Among the gifts taken for presentation to Indians were peace medals, today known as Seasons Medals, featuring designs by John Trumbull, struck in England from dies engraved by Conrad Kuchler.
On July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton was killed in a pistol duel with Aaron Burr. The two had been adversaries since Hamilton resisted Burr's effort to become president in 1800. After this incident, Burr became one of the scoundrels of American history. Hamilton, a gentleman, deliberately misfired, while Burr shot with the intent to kill.
On December 5, 1804, Thomas Jefferson was reelected president, and George Clinton, the first governor of New York, was elected vice president. The election was the first with separate ballots for each office.
The country of Haiti was established in the western section of Hispaniola, under a black republican government; all slaves were freed, and whites who did not flee were killed.
The Era 1805-1835 in History
1806: In 1806 the Lewis and Clark Expedition returned from exploring the upper reaches of the Louisiana Purchase.
Noah Webster's Compendious Dictionary of the English Language was published. In Newport, Rhode Island an American city utilized gas street lighting for he first time. On November 15, 1806 Zebulon Pike sighted the Colorado peak that now bears his name during an expedition in the Southwest. He did not climb it, however.
1807-1836 Half dollar coinage: After silver dollars were last coined in 1804 (bearing the dates 1802 and 1803), the mantle of the largest domestic silver coin fell upon the half dollar, and from that point until gold coins became plentiful (after August 1, 1834), half dollars were popular for bank reserves. Those of the Capped Bust type, designed by John Reich, were made in large quantities from 1807 to 1836.
1808: James Madison was elected the fourth president of the United States.
1809: The first humor book to widely circulate in America, History of New York, by "Diedrich Knickerbocker" (Washington Irving), was published.
1810: The third federal census listed the population at 7,239,881. This included 1,211,364 slaves, 186,746 free Negroes, and 60,000 immigrants. On June 23, 1810, John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant who would eventually become the richest man in America, organized the Pacific Fur Company.
1824: Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolution, returned to the United States to a triumphal welcome and was honored by Congress as "the nation's guest." One cent pieces and other coins were counters tamped with the portraits of Washington and Lafayette in commemoration of the event, but it is not known who stamped them.
1824-1827 Economic conditions: There was a great expansion of private banks and insurance companies in 1824 and 1825. Due to prosperity in England, American exports to Britain climbed sharply. In 1825, prices fell, causing financial problems in the United States. A crisis swept through the banking community, and in New York alone there were 50 failures. The controversial Bank of the United States was beset with problems, had a shortage of specie, and could not redeem its own notes. In 1826 there was a business recession in the United States, but by 1827 conditions improved.
1834: The Act of July 31, 1834 reduced the weight of fine gold in United States coins, so that they were no longer worth more than face value. After August 2, 1834, when the Act was implemented, newly-minted gold coins began to circulate once again. | <urn:uuid:61507150-8c02-490d-87f1-17d3e568aa54> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pcgs.com/books/silver-dollars/Chapter06Listings-031.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00019-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975111 | 1,643 | 2.515625 | 3 |
NASA Challenges 350 Rocketeers Nationwide to Aim a Mile High
NASA has invited more than 350 student rocketeers from middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities -- 37 teams nationwide -- to take part in the 2009-2010 NASA Student Launch Projects. Their challenge is to build powerful rockets of their own design, complete with a working science payload, and launch them to an altitude of one mile.
On Tuesday morning, April 13, at 11 a.m. EDT, Julie Clift, a graduate co-op with the Marshall Academic Affairs Office and a longtime organizer of the rocket challenge, answered questions about the Student Launch Projects.
More About the Student Launch Initiative
NASA's annual rocketeering projects include the Student Launch Initiative for middle and high school teams and the University Student Launch Initiative for colleges and universities. Both challenges are designed to inspire students to parlay their interests in science, technology, engineering and mathematics into rewarding careers in fields critical to NASA's mission of exploration and scientific discovery.
The Student Launch Projects will culminate April 15-18, 2010, when the teams gather at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Marshall manages the projects. NASA engineers will put the students' rockets through a professional design review similar to that undertaken for every NASA launch. The students then will embark on a two-day "launchfest" at Bragg Farms in Toney, Ala., where they are cheered on each year by hundreds of Marshall team members and North Alabama rocket enthusiasts.
For more information about the Student Launch Projects and a list of participating schools, visit:
For more information about other NASA education initiatives, visit:
Janet Anderson, 256-544-0034
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. | <urn:uuid:3938c448-6e69-4c2c-a25f-cb64cdef41b8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nasa.gov/connect/chat/student_launch_chat.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00181-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.889715 | 354 | 2.515625 | 3 |
The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has finally decided to do something about the lack of oversight regarding fracking fluids. A new proposal by the agency would finally require the fracking industry to disclose the chemical cocktails they are injecting into the ground at fracking well sites. The only problem with the proposal is that it would only require disclosure after the chemicals were put into the ground, meaning that the potential for contamination wouldn’t change a bit.
ENS Newswire lays out the basics of the BLM proposal:
Now, the BLM proposes three new practices to protect public health, drinking water, and the environment. First, the agency proposes to require the public disclosure of chemicals used in fracking operations on federal and Indian lands after fracturing operations have been completed.
Second, the BLM proposes to require confirmation that wells used in fracturing operations meet appropriate construction standards. The agency says this would improve assurances of well-bore integrity to verify that fluids used in wells during fracturing operations are not escaping.
And third, the agency proposes to confirm that oil and gas operators have a water management plan in place for handling fracturing fluids that flow back to the surface.
While the proposal to force disclosure on fracking fluid contents is a step forward, the fact that they would still be allowed to be injected underground without disclosure is a step backwards. | <urn:uuid:30c728b4-0122-4a73-8130-f07b0eca8773> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/7613 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00167-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950145 | 266 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Production of Sustainable Biomass
In Germany, the BLE is the competent authority for the implementation of the sustainability criteria laid down in Directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources (Renewable Energy Directive).
By adopting the Renewable Energy Directive, the European Union has established sustainability requirements for energy production and the use of biomass. This applies to all types of liquid and gaseous biomass, among others palm oil, soybean oil and rape seed oil, biodiesel, vegetable oil fuel, bioethanol, biomethanol and biomethane. The requirements of the Renewable Energy Directive are implemented into national legislation with the Biofuel sustainability ordinance (Biokraftstoff-Nachhaltigkeitsverordnung -Biokraft-NachV-) and the biomass-electricity-sustainability ordinance (Biomassestrom-Nachhaltigkeitsverordnung -BioSt-NachV-).
The requirements as laid down in the sustainability ordinances apply to all operations at all stages of the entire production and supply chain, from the farmer to the party required to provide proof in the field of biofuels and/or the network operator and installation operator in the field of bioelectricity.
The BLE is also the competent authority:
- in the field of biofuels, for providing data which are required by the biofuel quota body or the German main customs offices for counting liquid or gaseous biomass towards the biofuels quota or for a tax relief,
- for the management of data on the sustainability of liquid or gaseous biomass of the governmental web application Nachhaltige Biomasse System (Nabisy) and the issuing of partial proofs of sustainability upon application by economic operators,
- for evaluating the implementation of sustainability criteria as laid down in the Renewable Energy Directive in Germany, and the drawing up of an annual progress report for the Federal Government,
- for the recognition and monitoring of certification bodies pursuant to the sustainability ordinances and
- for the recognition and monitoring of certification systems pursuant to the sustainability ordinances. | <urn:uuid:287ec411-2af3-425e-9124-21fdeec044d6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ble.de/EN/02_Control/05_SustainableBiomassProduction/SustainableBiomassProduction_node.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399522.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00125-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.878025 | 441 | 2.875 | 3 |
acute our sense of smell is. In fact we humans can outperform the most sensitive measuring instruments in detecting certain odours, and distinguish smells from strangers from those of our blood relations. Now new research suggests our natural olfactory talents may be even greater when we use modest amounts of alcohol to reduce our inhibitions.
A team led by Yaara Endevelt-Shapira tested participants on two days: on one, tests took place before and after drinking a cup of grape juice, and on the other day, before and after a drink containing a dose of alcohol (vodka). Even though the alcohol dose was based on a single measure (35ml) adjusted for the participants’ weight, differences in how people’s bodies process alcohol meant that breathalyser measures of Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) varied from as low as 0.01 to as high as 0.1 across participants.
A smell-detection experiment involved participants indicating which of three jars of oil contained a highly diluted scent. Higher BAC did not influence performance, but when a dose of alcohol produced a low BAC (below .06), participants were able to identify more highly diluted scents than they could on their no-booze day.
In a second experiment, participants sniffed three scents and tried to tell which one differed from the other (identical) two. High BAC made this discrimination task harder, but again, low BAC had a facilitative effect, making it easier to determine the odd smell out. This task was also replicated in a field experiment, pulling people aside at a bar to test their discrimination for trios of scratch-and-sniff stickers: those punters who had already had a drink (all had a low BAC) performed significantly better than those who had not.
Taken together the findings suggest that low alcohol doses improve smelling ability, but why does it have this effect? We can’t yet be certain, however the study offers some clues that it has to do with removing people’s inhibition.
First, smell detection was worse for candidates who scored highly on an aspect of motivation called “baseline inhibitory state”, which refers to a person’s tendency to avoid or prevent negative outcomes (it was measured with items such as "I worry about making mistakes"). Participants who were inclined to hold back in this way were poorer at detecting smells.
Second, alcohol-fuelled improvement in smell discrimination correlated with how much participants’ performance dropped on the Stroop task when under the influence. This classic task involves inhibiting the meaning of a colour word in order to complete the challenge of naming the ink colour that the word is printed in. Smell discrimination improved more for participants who displayed weaker inhibitory powers on the Stroop.
The authors explained that the prefrontal cortex has inhibitory connections to the olfactory cortex, our smell centre. And cases exist where frontal brain injury has led to near-immediate improvements in olfactory ability. This evidence signature presents a reasonable case that we are constantly suppressing a superior sense of smell, but that this inhibition can be reduced by various means…including a drop of the hard stuff.
Endevelt-Shapira, Y., Shushan, S., Roth, Y., & Sobel, N. (2014). Disinhibition of olfaction: Human olfactory performance improves following low levels of alcohol Behavioural Brain Research, 272, 66-74 DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2014.06.024
Post written by Alex Fradera (@alexfradera) for the BPS Research Digest. | <urn:uuid:c4406049-d821-407c-8690-59cef2c9a64c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://digest.bps.org.uk/2014/08/drinking-small-amounts-of-alcohol.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95734 | 754 | 3.09375 | 3 |
called also ANTECURSO´RES.
1. Horse-soldiers, who were accustomed to precede an army on the march, in
order to choose a suitable place for the camp, and to make the necessary
provisions for the army. They were not merely scouts, like the speculatores.
(Hirt, Bell. Afr.
who speaks of speculatores et antecessores
17; Caes. Gal. 5.47
.) 2. Teachers of the Roman
law. (Cod. 1, tit. 17, s. 2, § § 9, 11.) | <urn:uuid:d7d5f5bc-6c8c-4b05-8819-f94780c5fc5c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0063:alphabetic%20letter=A:entry%20group=6:entry=antecessores-cn&toc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0063%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DA%3Aentry+group%3D2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00029-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.822355 | 130 | 3 | 3 |
>> overview research
Media and the Make-Believe Worlds
Television kills the imagination of children!
This long cherished prejudice is as old as the medium itself. Closer observation, however, reveals a great richness of imagination in today’s children – although they grew up in a media society. The relationship between the imaginations of children and television is more complex than usually thought. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of children television in Germany, the International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television in cooperation with national and international colleagues researched the relationship between imagination and television for children with a multinational and cross-generational comparison.
A. Children’s imaginations compared across cultures
The focus is on the imaginations of 8 to 9-year-old children and the role media play therein. The results from Germany are compared to the studies from the USA, Israel and Korea. Co-operation partners for this project are:
Dr. Amy Aidmann, University of Illinois, USA; Dr. Dafna Lemish, University of Tel Aviv, Israel; Dr. Hyesung Moon, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea; Dr. Norbert Neuss, Pädagogische Hochschule Heidelberg, Germany
About 200 children imagined their “big daydream” on a journey into the imagination accompanied by music and text. Afterwards they painted it and wrote some sentences about it. They were interviewed about their imaginations and media favourites. Additionally, parents and educators contributed with background information.
The “big daydreams of children” are similar across national borders
The international comparison showed many similarities in the children’s imaginations. This was most obvious in the fantasy-worlds, the position and the behavioural options within this fantasy world, but also in the references to biography and everyday life. In all four countries the world of the “big daydream” shows the same nine characteristics:
The world of the big daydream
The world of harmony and peace / the world of conflict and threat / the world of supernatural power/ the world of technology / the world of travel / the world of sensual pleasure / the world of amusement / the world of royalty/ the stage world
In this world the children imagine themselves in a specific position, which in all four countries is connected with very similar behavioural wishes that can be subsumed in six categories:
The child in the world of the big daydream
To experience a feeling of well-being/ to experience thrill / to be special / to be connected to others / to protect and be protected / to act independently There are also structural similarities in the relations between the imaginations and the biography and real life-world of the children.
The imaginations could have been communicated by a significant other in their social circle. But also friends, parents and family members can play a role in these imaginations as well as locations and real existing animals. Several children’s their imaginations reflected individual interests that were important for identity formation in their life world. Partially, an actual experience served explicitly as a starting point for the fantasy world. Positive experiences are imagined again, negative experiences get corrected.
Media and especially television are part of children’s fantasy
Media traces in the imaginations can be found to some extent in an clearly explicit (articulated by the child) but also an implicit way (reconstructed by researchers). Again, the international comparison shows structural similarities. Children take characters, the setting, objects or even the plot or factual information from media or media arrangements that are attractive to them and incorporate them into their fantasy. Television and its media arrangements play an especially important role in the symbolisation of threat and action-directed defence of threat as well as the dramatization of the supernatural. However, there is also a number of “big dreams” without implicit or explicit media references. In the German survey, these constituted a quarter of the imaginations, three-fourths of which were those of girls. If there were detectable media traces, they were used by the children as symbolic material, in order to
a.) represent sensual experience and self-reception
b.) invent an own narration that would allow a steady fulfilment of behavioural wishes
c.) get into communication with others or create an adequate shared space
Children don’t use television as a single medium but mostly as part of a media arrangement, e.g. home video, radio play and books based on TV-series, that they watched regularly on TV. One part of the selected media were globalized media arrangements like Harry Potter, Pokémon, and Jurassic Park, whereas there are also items that are (so far) relevant to children in only one country.
A detailed analysis of the media traces (taking Germany as an example) revealed genre- or design-specific tendencies of how media relevant for children are used as building blocks for the imagination.
Fiction: Animation allows children to project themselves, where they can find themselves represented and which they can use to make up their own stories. The sequences they relate to are much more snatches, that quickly leave the media text. Children use children’s live-action movies in the context of “the big daydream” to imagine themselves in the leading part and to comprehend the plot. The assimilated media parts are likely to be longer and the fantasy is relatively close to the media text. Children use fantasy films and science fiction as settings in a faraway world in which they appear as a person equipped with according abilities. To some extent, the characters also become part of the child’s life-world that therefore becomes charged with magic.
Documentaries: Animal, nature and travel documentaries become the factual basis and starting point for the children’s own stories in which they imagine themselves in the role of the protector in order to resolve problems.
National and regional differences between countries
Besides commonalities there also appeared a set of national and regional particularities. Some examples:
The pictures in Korea are made with great care for detail. Computer games do have more relevance, at least for boys, for those imaginations in which they provide the setting and the plot for some imaginations. Looking at action-desires it becomes apparent that “standing out” does not occur, since a “public exposure” compared to others is frowned upon in Korean society. In only one case a girl showed this action-desire, even if in a very covert way.
In the imaginations of Israeli children the constant violent actions from their real life-world don’t have any presence. Different from Jewish educated children, Arabic educated children don’t include the state Israel into their imaginations; only the city they live in. In the USA the children painted their images with less care. However, the stories behind the imaginations are very rich, especially rich in media traces. One reason for this is the stronger impact of Fast-Food-Chains on everyday life and the common marketing of subject matters relevant to children there.
In Germany special issues emerged that did not appear with such dominance in other countries. Environmental protection is a central concern of the 8- to 9-year-olds, which they associate with a feeling of strength and competence. The antagonism between love of animals and meat consumption is another typically German issue that affects children’s imagination. Looking at the action-desire there is a large number of girls whose imaginations revolve around acting independently. One of the regional tendencies that came out is that horses offer suitable symbolic material for children from northern parts of Germany whereas in the south queens, princesses and castles have a much stronger presence.
B. Cross-generational comparison of children’s imaginations
A second project part deals with a cross-generational comparison of children’s imaginations and their media references. Cooperation partners of this project are:
Prof. Dr. Lothas Mikos and Dr. Elisabeth Prommer, Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen “Konrad Wolf”, Potsdam
First, biographical interviews with 20 young adults about their childhood imaginations and their media references were conducted. A second reference comes from 21 adults who grew up in the Third Reich, during the Second World War or in the post-war period – mostly without television. It is a special sample: the “influential professionals of German children’s television in the 50s, 60s and 70s” who were interviewed about their childhood. It became evident that – caution is recommended due to the differing methods of collecting data – especially the action-desires manifested in the “big daydream” were very similar.
Even with those growing up in totally different conditions, the imaginations of some revolved around experiencing harmony or suspense; standing out; being connected with others; protecting and being protected or acting independently. However, there is also the desire to gain more knowledge, which does not define toady’s children’s imaginations to such an extent.
The worlds the adults and children imagined themselves into were also similar. Differences appeared in reference to their life-worlds. Part or starting point of imaginations is a strongly felt deficit (food, education, own living space etc.). In the children’s imaginations in the Nazi period, during the war or in the post-war period media traces are rather implicit. If possible, the interviewees liked to use mass media, especially radio, cinema and books. However, they often cannot remember direct references to their imagined worlds, but do remember the significance of being pedagogically “un-protected” at times, in which experience of nature played a much bigger (at time also life-threatening) role. Accordingly, the action desires “to experience thrill” or “to make oneself special” connected to actual nature experiences. With today’s children the media-influenced worlds prevail.
Given the dissimilarities and methodical limitations, it nevertheless becomes clear how children use the cultural material for their imagination as appropriate. Individual experience, self image, social context, but also social interpretive patterns, like i.e. the ideology of National Socialism or values of the German Democratic Republic’s socialism, do enter the children’s “inner images”.
C. Creative visions of the influential professionals of German children’s television
Imaginations are not only important for children. Also in the editing offices of children’s television imaginations can be revealing. A third study’s focus lies here. The creative visions of editors, hopes of what they would create in life, were analysed in relation to their own childhood dreams through interviews with altogether 38 “influential professionals” of German children’s television. The ideals of the largest group of “influential professionals” were directed towards knowledge transfer, meaning cognitive as well as social knowledge, and the passing on of values.
Children’s television should communicate a view on, an understanding of and knowledge about the world, cognitively as well as socially. Others focus on specific childhood problems that they like to tell in order to support children to “sail around the rocks of everyday life” (Elmar Lorey). The tenor of children’s television should be, to take the children serious, to accept them in their diversity and to give them hope (Wolfgang Buresch). Dieter Saldecki points out that childhood is marked by a very own experience-world which children’s television should take up and reflect. The creator of the popular German “Program with the Mouse”, Gert Müntefering, points out that childhood should neither be portrayed as problematic, nor be idealized.
In their professional lives the editors incorporate their childhood memories – some, especially from the early children’s television, did so quite concrete, wishing to convey values to children in children’s television that they had been passed on to themselves (i.e. values conveyed by their mothers like tidiness and punctuality). For the majority of the program makers this relation between their own childhood and creative vision is to be understood as structural. Thus, they tried to save the children from experiences they themselves perceived as negative. Children’s television should give the children what the program makers had missed: reliability, support in finding their own way, acknowledgement of diversity and emotions, but also knowledge and a view of the world. In their creative vision, other editors subjectively draw from the experiences they perceived as positive and try to offer wide ranges of experience that can be considered pedagogically unsupervised and which they found helpful for themselves.
D. Pedagogical Evaluation: Does Television help or hinder the imagination?
Children have rich fantasy worlds (today as well). They express them for the most part with noticeable media traces, but partially without them. Hereby television is the central medium, tending to be stronger and clearer in the articulation and expression of boys than those of girls. It is known from research on imagination that there needs to be space for the children’s imagination to flourish and that they need material that supports these imaginations. Lack of idols that can live their imaginations and especially negative feedback on the imaginations curtail any imaginative activity. Against this background one can evaluate the impact of television on the imagination of children.
Television can serve as material for imagination
Television’s easy accessibility, visual nature and condensed stories offer wide ranges of imaginations and experiences and can prompt communication. Therefore, television that responds to the issues, experiences and patterns of appropriation of the children is actually suited to offer space for imagination. Television can help children to understand themselves and to actively appropriate the world.
Television as accessible material nevertheless carries interpretive patterns and creates (buying) desires
However, it also delivers interpretive patterns, i.e. values, gender roles and ideas about other countries that are not always appropriate for children and their circumstances and future. Especially the commercial networks’ programs are tightly connected to advertising and licensed markets. Since advertising also partially finds its way into the “big daydreams” (i.e. Disneyland Paris) there is the potential danger to look at children as mere consumers.
Constant television consumption can limit imaginations
At the same time television is an intense experience. Exactly the space necessary for developing and continuing imaginations is threatened by constant reception of this intense and stimulating medium.
The social environment of the children can limit their imagination through negative feedback
If children express their imaginations in everyday life through the symbolical material of their culture – and television is part of that – they often receive negative feedback from parents and educators. This limits their imaginative activity, the more so as there are rarely positive role models, not only with regard to competent use of television but also living the own imaginations.
For many children growing up today, television is part of their imagined worlds. The make-believe worlds they create and the position and power that they imagine themselves to have there, are very similar across cultures. Information from television, media characters, media settings or even complete plots become part of their imagination. The cross-generational comparison showed that the children who grew up without television, imagined very similar action desires and worlds, but with different material (i.e. ideologies from National Socialism or GDR Socialism). For all interviewees it is their own stories with which they deal with and interpret their own issues and experiences. For children who are eight or nine years old in 2001, television plays a prominent role. (Children’s) Television could foster imaginations, if it acknowledges children in their diversity, with their experiences and patterns of appropriation and offers them space for imagination. Regarding the content, television limits imagination where it offers values and interpretive patterns contrary to the children’s interests. In the children’s everyday life the imagination is also limited by negative feedback on their imaginations and through a long time of watching television. Insofar the conclusion does not reflect cultural pessimism, but it is not uncritical: Television does have an impact on children’s imagination that should not be underestimated. It could stir the imagination, if children and parents dealt with the contents, the viewing time or the conversations containing media traces in a media-savvy way – and if producers are aware of their responsibility, don’t use children, try to help them grow and take them seriously as those who are our present and will shape our future. In this sense, it should be the aim to offer room for imagination and not to close it.
Publication: Media and the Make-Believe Worlds of Children | <urn:uuid:e5be7da8-18fe-4d7f-b44a-c41b7e8c2fb0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.br-online.de/jugend/izi/english/research/e_fanta.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00033-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956879 | 3,448 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Lester Asheim in Cyberspace: A Tribute to Sound Reasoning
For over 50 years, " Not Censorship But Selection" ( Wilson Library Bulletin, Sept. 1953) by Lester Asheim (1914–1997) has remained the definitive statement on the distinction between these two aspects of library collection development.
"The major characteristic which makes for the all-important difference seems to be this: that the selector's approach is positive, while that of the censor is negative," Asheim said. "The aim of the selector is to promote reading, not to inhibit it; to multiply the points of view which will find expression, not limit them; to be a channel for communication, not a bar against it. . . . Selection seeks to protect the right of the reader to read; censorship seeks to protect—not the right—but the reader himself from the fancied effects of his reading. The selector has faith in the intelligence of the reader; the censor has faith only in his own."
This distinction pertains to the Internet and electronic resources no less than to books. Libraries evaluate and purchase access to databases that address the needs of the users they serve. In fact, these databases often replace the periodicals and serials that librarians have selected for years. Many libraries also offer users freely available Web sites by highlighting them on the library's home page or including them as bookmarked sites. The choice of these sites is the equivalent of compiling print bibliographies or pathfinders, which libraries have provided for years to help their users find material available locally or at other libraries.
If the true process of selection were applied to the Internet as a whole, libraries would make available only those specific site they actively located, evaluated, and added to their systems from the millions and millions of sites on the Web. Libraries do not approach the Internet in this way, and providing access to the Internet is not the same as selection.
Some libraries have installed software filters on public-access computers and claim the filters do nothing more than replace the selection process used by the librarian who chooses not to purchase particular items for the library's collection. However, the library cannot actually review all the sites that are excluded, since the list of blocked sites is not made available by filtering software producers.
A few critics have compared this process to the practice of using book approval plans offered by many vendors. But in the case of filters, although the library is usually able to select categories for which the filter is activated, it may not be able to add individual sites to those that are allowed, particularly without action by the producer of the filter. The library may also find it difficult to identify sites it would like to add if the filter is already blocking them. Throughout the approval process, unlike that of applying filters, the library controls all the decisions.
Most important in this consideration is Asheim's analysis of motivation. Software filters are used to prevent users from having access to potentially objectionable material, not to seek and include potentially valuable and useful material. Furthermore, they prevent the users from making that determination themselves and seek "to protect—not the right—but the reader himself from the fancied effects of his reading." This is censorship, not selection.
Another perspective of this discussion is the legal liability that may result from the library's decision. Asheim wrote, "The real question of censorship versus selection arises when the librarian, exercising his own judgment, decides against a book which has every legal right to representation on his shelves."
This "legal right to representation" is particularly cogent to a discussion of filters. Even the producers and proponents of filters admit that all of them block access to material that is constitutionally protected. When the library knows about this problem in advance and still decides to install filters to prevent access to controversial sites, most of them legal, it is engaged in censorship, especially if it does not provide an option for unfiltered access.
When the courts examine the question of censorship, they, too, look to the institution's motivation. In recent cases that deal with access to the Internet, courts have held that preventing access to protected speech is an unlawful infringement of the user's First Amendment rights. Perhaps it is this liability—if the user of filters will place the library at risk for a lawsuit over violation of the user's constitutional rights—that is the most basic distinction between selection and censorship.
Asheim said, "Selection is democratic while censorship is authoritarian, and in our democracy we have traditionally tended to put our trust in the selector rather than in the censor." His reasoned and eloquent statement of this critical aspect of librarianship is as pertinent today as it was in 1953. Although much has changed in the intervening years, his analysis still applies, whether examining the Harry Potter books or an explicit Internet site. His challenge to every member of our profession—to assess our decisions rigorously and honestly—remains one of the most important and difficult we face.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
June Pinnell-Stephens, collection services manager, Fairbanks (Alaska) North Star Borough Public Library
Article first appeared in American Libraries, October 2002, p. 70, 72 | <urn:uuid:a2302a66-88f9-4af2-8c42-d16ccba88294> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/basics/lesterasheim | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00020-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956951 | 1,070 | 2.84375 | 3 |
The Republic of Ghana is located in West Africa and is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Togo and the Gulf of Guinea. Some of its major cities are Accra, Kumasi, Tamale, Tema, Takoradi and Cape Coast.
There are 79 living languages of Ghana, but only 11 of them are recognized officially. The school policy is to make sure that all children can speak English by Primary 3.
Ghana has a population of about 20,000,000 people that live in various areas of the country. The culture is ethnically diverse and is evident through the arts, clothing and food.
Ghana has 10 regions and 172 districts within those 10 regions. There are hundreds of thousands of Ghanaian children who are educated within these regions.
Education is the key to any country’s success and the TLM program works closely with the Ministry of Education to help improve the literacy of the youth there.
The children are educated in school houses throughout Ghana. The locations of these schools vary, but some of them are crowded, located in rural areas and have very little resources for the abundance of children that they educate. Despite some of the shortcomings, these children are eager to learn and excited about education. | <urn:uuid:2e592fe6-3434-4a9a-b71e-0890f045396a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.csu.edu/TLMP/aboutghana.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00109-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979005 | 260 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Why looking at a map of news headlines could help us see critical patterns and trends in wildlife crime.
- By Kalev LeetaruKalev H. Leetaru is a senior fellow at the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security and a council member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Future of Government. He created the GDELT Project and focuses on big data and global society.
By many accounts, 2013 was the year wildlife crime jumped to global prominence. The illicit trade in wildlife products doubled over the preceding four years to become what the World Wildlife Fund argues is now the “fifth-most profitable illicit trade in the world.” The uptick in wildlife poaching has also become a growing threat to the stability of central Africa, with proceeds increasingly funding terrorist organizations. Upwards of 40 percent of al-Shabab’s operating costs, for example, allegedly stem from the ivory trade.
Yet, despite growing interest and media coverage of its impact, there are still significant information gaps in understanding its reach, scale, and enablers. For example, the USAID-supported Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge seeks “innovative solutions to detect, monitor, and predict illicit transit routes,” while the United Nations noted in March the need to “improve the data and evidence base for interventions.”
What kind of story about poaching in Africa would we be able to piece together if we could use “big data” to sift through global news reporting of wildlife and environmental crime over the last three months to create a map of its scale as sifted through the lens of the international media? Using the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) Project, which monitors local media around the world (and live-translates it from 65 languages, along with Google’s BigQuery system and CartoDB’s online mapping platform), the map offers a glimpse through the nearly 30,000 articles relating to wildlife and environmental crime monitored by GDELT from Feb. 19 through June 2. Each dot on the map represents a location mentioned alongside wildlife crime during that period — clicking on a dot will display a list of monitored coverage mentioning that location. A separate live-updating map refreshes every hour and provides a real-time glimpse of the most recent coverage.
Globally mapping the news involves enormous technical challenges — meaning there will be inevitable false positives in the map above, as a result of headlines with language like “poached eggs” and “poached executives,” translation difficulties, errant “breaking news updates” or information boxes, and dead links. But overall the map should reflect a reasonable view of global media coverage of wildlife crime over the past three months.
So what does the map actually tell us? By arranging the world’s news reporting on wildlife crime geographically, we are able to see how actions in one part of the globe affect another, how the wildlife trade impacts almost every country, the range of plants and animals affected, and its human cost. It would be difficult for a single person to read all 30,000 news reports in 65 languages, yet computers can do so within a matter of minutes, making it possible to look across all of those reports to paint a picture of the trade’s global impact. Perhaps most striking is that by using the map, we can see that wildlife crime is not something that only affects a handful of game preserves in Africa — it is a global phenomenon that affects almost every country.
The numbers of animals affected by wildlife crime can be staggering: By some estimates, upwards of 73 million sharks are killed each year for their fins alone to create shark fin soup. Given that Texas serves as the gateway for over half the shark fin trade in the United States, the Texas legislature passed a new bill last month formally banning the trade.
National Geographic reported that in Africa, more than 100,000 elephants were killed by humans between 2010 and 2012, with the population declining more than 64 percent in central Africa over just the last decade (the article sites a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). This increase is, perhaps, in large part a result of the availability of modern weaponry, which then increases poachers’ ability to maximize fatalities. In one particularly violent incident, poachers armed with AK-47 machine guns and grenades slaughtered more than 300 elephants in a single attack. In the Itapagipe Peninsula in Brazil, illegal fishermen are resorting to dynamite and explosives to kill and catch large numbers of fish at once, simultaneously causing damage to houses along the coast.
Yet, modern technology is also providing solutions to help deter poaching, especially drones. In Africa, drones are increasingly being used both to monitor elephants and even to herd them out of harm’s way. In Jamaica, drones are being tested to monitor fishing activity via live video feeds. Social media has also been used in anti-trafficking campaigns, with a recent effort in India claiming to reach over 1.4 million people.
It is not just animals that are illegally caught and sold. The 2013 theft of more than 1,000 Venus’ flytraps in Wilmington, North Carolina, led to a new law making theft of the plants a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. Yet, even with the threat of jail time, in January of this year four men were caught with 970 of the poached plants, representing 3 percent of the entire natural population. In California, redwood forests are increasingly grappling with poachers targeting the redwood burls that are critical to the trees’ health.
Clashes between legitimate hunters or fishermen and poachers can become violent. In one confrontation between Sri Lankan fishermen and alleged poachers, “three fishermen were injured and fishing nets and a boat damaged when Indian fishermen threw petrol bombs, pelted stones and sharp objects” at them. Violent confrontations with security services can also result. When 100 red sandalwood poachers were confronted by police in Seshachalam forest in India in April, they first “attacked policemen with sickles and axes and pelted stones on them,” followed by a “heavy exchange of gunfire from both sides” in which 20 of the poachers were killed.
Poaching can have a terrible human cost, with human trafficking sometimes used to provide the necessary labor force. This past March global headlines focused on nearly 4,000 foreign fishermen trapped on remote Indonesian islands after the government began cracking down on illegal fishing boats. Some had previously been forced into slavery and “beaten and locked in cages” with their illegal catch sold in American grocery stores.
Through the emerging lens of big data, we are able to transform a bulleted list of tens of thousands of news articles into a holistic visualization that highlights geographic patterns. We can hopefully make it possible to find new ways of understanding global trends in wildlife crime, publicize its local impacts, and better communicate to the public its impact on society. Perhaps this is big data’s greatest potential today: not as a crystal ball seeing into the future, but as a mapmaker that transforms chaos into cartography.
FIKRI RAMADHAVI/AFP/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:1de1e9c8-8eb7-4ef5-829a-c77dfcc85b02> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/12/can-you-use-big-data-to-track-an-elephant-poacher/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00121-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94491 | 1,488 | 2.75 | 3 |
Growing energy demands require a diverse portfolio of energy resources, including energy efficiency and renewable, natural gas, coal and nuclear power.
Coal is an important part of the nation’s energy mix, and clean coal technologies are critical to ensure the continued delivery of the reliable and affordable electricity you depend on and to manage greenhouse gas emissions.
Tri-State is a leader in advancing clean coal technologies.
Tri-State’s Greenhouse Gas Management Roadmap, which is focused on technology development, identifies how the association could manage the risks associated with possible constraints on greenhouse gas emissions.
As part of the Roadmap, a Tri-State-supported pilot project is successfully demonstrating the viability of capturing carbon dioxide emitted from a coal-based power plant utilizing a chilled ammonia process. The study is being conducted through the Electric Power Research Institute at the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant near Prairie, Wis.
About 35 utilities other from the United States, Germany, Australia and France have been helping to fund approximately $7 million toward the cost of the project.
Tri-State is also a partner in a $4.8 million research assessment of geologic formations in western Colorado for their ability to store carbon dioxide underground. With the University of Utah, Colorado Geological Survey, Shell Exploration and Production, Schlumberger Carbon Services and the Utah Geological Survey, the partnership was awarded a $3.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Tri-State, Shell and Schlumberger are providing the remainder of the funding.
A goal of the three-year project is to evaluate the potential of carbon dioxide storage at a site near Craig, Colo., where Tri-State operates the Craig Station coal-based power plant.
“A vital part of our New Energy Economy initiative is finding cleaner ways of producing and consuming traditional fuels,” said Colorado Governor Bill Ritter. “This grant award will enable us to expand our research into the viability of climate protection technologies such as carbon sequestration, which is not only important for northwest Colorado, but also for carbon sequestration potential throughout the Rocky Mountain Region.”
Ken Anderson, Tri-State’s executive vice president added, “This site specific carbon dioxide sequestration assessment complements Tri-State’s ongoing participation in collaborative demonstrations of carbon capture technology in power plants. Together, these research efforts can develop options to manage carbon dioxide at a significant scale.” | <urn:uuid:517e9a08-acb5-4db6-9180-82f42320d114> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.poweringthewest.org/tag/new-energy-economy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400572.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00098-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927148 | 505 | 2.53125 | 3 |
The giants who dance under water
The hippopotamus is an enormous, semi-aquatic mammal with smooth, naked skin which lives in swampy areas, lakes, and rivers in Africa. Hippopotamus means ‘river horse’ in Greek, although the hippo is more closely related to a pig than a horse. It is the 3rd largest living land mammal, after the elephant and white rhino.
It has an inflated-looking body supported on short, relatively thin legs. The male weighs around 1,600-3,200 kg, and its height is about 140-165 cm whereas the female weighs 655-2,344 kg and is 130-145 cm high. It has a huge muzzle and eyes, nostrils, and small ears are placed high on head.
Its color is brown to gray-purple with pink underparts and creases; short bristles on head, back, and tail. It also has mucous glands which secrete an oily red fluid that protects skin from sunburn and drying, and perhaps infection.
Hippos do not have sebaceous or sweat glands, spending most of the day in water or mud to stay cool. At night they exit at the water at the same spot to graze on vegetation.
A bull hippo's canines can grow to 70cm (28 in) long, and their mouths can open over 1 m (4 ft) wide! Hippos are extremely graceful in the water, despite their clumsy appearance on land. Their specific gravity allows them to sink to the bottom of rivers and literally walk or run along the bottom. Adult hippos are able to stay underwater for as long as 5 minutes.
The hippos advertise their territory by dung-showering on middens: the bull backs up to heap, simultaneously urinates and defecates backward, paddling excrement with its tail.
Your chances of seeing one in the wild
Historically, hippos have been found throughout all of sub-saharan Africa, but most populations have been reduced or exterminated. Now largely confined to protected areas it still survives in many major rivers and swamps. Good places to see it would be almost any park and reserve with sizeable lakes and rivers bordered by grassland.
In 1995 it was listed on CITES appendix II. One subspecies, Hippopotamus amphibius tschadensis, is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN 1996 Redlist. | <urn:uuid:6b45f359-8dda-4208-b17d-31cb38dda696> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/teacher_resources/best_place_species/current_top_10/hippopotamus.cfm?src=footer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00059-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94817 | 507 | 3.375 | 3 |
Pulau Kimaam, Pulau Dolok, Pulau Yos Sudarso, and Frederik Hendrik Island
are all names used to refer to this island, which is part of the
Indonesian province of West Papua (also known as Irian Jaya).
The answers to this quiz appear in blue below each question.
1. The island is known by at least three different names.
TRUE: Pulau Kimaam, Pulau Dolok, Pulau Yos Sudarso, and Frederik
Hendrik Island are all names used to refer to this island, which is part of
the Indonesian province of West Papua (also known as Irian Jaya).
2. At least one language spoken on the island is not in common usage
TRUE: Linguists have identified over 500 languages spoken within the
"Trans-New Guinea" region (comprising West Papua and Papua New
Guinea). At least two languages within this group, Ndom and Riantana,
are only used by people living on the island.
3. The capital city of the province to which the island belongs is located
within 200 kilometers of the northern boundary of the image area.
FALSE: Jayapura, the capital city of West Papua, is located more than
500 kilometers from the northern boundary of the image area.
4. The island's shores are home to its country's most spectacular coral reefs.
FALSE: Although there are many well-developed reefs in the waters of West
Papua, none are found along the southeastern coast. Large amounts of
sediment (apparent in the image around the entire coastline) prohibit reef
development in this region.
5. Due to the extreme depth of the sea floor surrounding the island, sea
level fluctuations during the Quaternary Period have not changed the
horizontal location of its coastline by more than 500 meters.
FALSE: Sea level fluctuations cause major displacements in the horizontal
location of coastlines in this region. The Arafura Sea surrounding the island
is a shallow (50 to 80 meters) continental shelf, and sea levels during the
peak of the last ice age (about 20,000 years ago), were more than 100
meters lower than today.
6. There are no fruit bats on the island.
FALSE: Among the bats known to live on the island are the Lesser tube-nosed
fruit bat and Broad-striped tube-nosed fruit bat.
7. The region within which the island is situated harbors a freshwater
turtle that is exceptional in its possession of an anatomical characteristic
otherwise typical of marine turtles.
TRUE: The pig-nosed turtle found in northern Australia and southern Papua,
possesses flippers resembling those of marine turtles.
8. Insect control has been tested as a means of combatting an invasive
aquatic weed that threatens wetland habitats in the island's vicinity.
TRUE: Many of the wetland areas in this region are choked with Water
Hyacinth. In November 2000, a course was conducted on the breeding
and use of insect biocontrol agents (weevil Neochetina) of Water Hyacinth
9. Species of Avicennia are found in the island's coastal regions.
TRUE: The island's coastline includes some of the largest mangrove forests
in the world, and several types of Avicennia mangroves can be found at the
Pulau Kimaam Wildlife Reserve.
MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC. The
Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD. JPL is a division of the California Institute of | <urn:uuid:7ae7bbba-c123-43f4-b357-9024a4c3979b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03723 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00093-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927975 | 808 | 3.765625 | 4 |
From the time it became a federal prison in 1934
until it was closed down in 1963, the steel doors clanged shut
behind more than 1,000 hardened convicts, criminals and escape
artists. Alcatraz was not conceived as a facility for
rehabilitation. It was a place of total punishment and minimum
privilege. And those who survived it often did so at the cost of
their sanity... and some believe their souls.
Alcatraz Island, located in the mists off of San
Francisco, received its name in 1775 when the Spanish explorers
charted San Francisco bay. They named the rocky piece of land La
Isla de los Alcatraces, or the "Island of Pelicans". The island was
totally uninhabited, plagued by barren ground, little vegetation and
surrounding water that churned with swift currents.
In 1847, Alcatraz was taken over by the United
States military. The Rock had extreme strategic value, especially
during these times of tension between the United States and the
Mexican government. Topographical engineers began conducting
geological surveys and by 1853, a military fortress was started. One
year later, a lighthouse was established (the first on the Pacific
Coast) to guide ships through the Golden Gate.
A few years later, a military fort was erected on
the island and in 1859, Alcatraz saw its first prisoners, a
contingent of court-martialed, military convicts. Then in 1861,
Alcatraz started to receive Confederate prisoners, thanks to its
natural isolation created by the surrounding waters. Until the end
of the Civil War, the number of prisoners here numbered from 15 to
50. They consisted of soldiers, Confederate privateers, and southern
sympathizers. They were confined in the dark basement of the
guardhouse and conditions were fairly grim. The men slept
side-by-side, head to toe, lying on the stone floor of the basement.
There was no running water, no heat and no latrines. Disease and
infestations of lice spread from man to man and not surprisingly,
overcrowding was a serious problem. They were often bound by
six-foot chains attached to iron balls, fed bread and water and
confined in "sweatboxes" as punishment.
After the war ended, the fort was deemed obsolete
and was no longer needed. The prison continued to be used though and
soon, more buildings and cell houses were added. In the 1870’s and
1880’s, Indian chiefs and tribal leaders who refused to give into
the white man were incarcerated on Alcatraz. They shared quarters
with the worst of the military prisoners. The island became a
shipping point for incorrigible deserters, thieves, rapists and
In 1898, the Spanish-American War sent the
prisoner population from less than 100 to over 450. The Rock became
a holding pen for Spanish prisoners brought over from the
Phillipines. Around 1900 though, Alcatraz again became a
disciplinary barracks for military prisoners. Ironically, it also
served as a health resort for soldiers returning from the
Phillipines and Cuba with tropical diseases. The overcrowding caused
by a combination of criminals and recovering soldiers resulted in
pardons to reduce the number of men housed on the island.
By 1902, the Alcatraz prison population averaged
around 500 men per year, with many of the men serving sentences of
two years or less. The wooden barracks on the island had fallen into
a ramshackle state, thanks to the damp, salt air and so in 1904,
work was begun to modernize the facility. Prisoner work crews began
extending the stockade wall and constructing a new mess hall,
kitchen, shops, a library and a wash house. Work continued on the
prison for the next several years and even managed to survive the
Great Earthquake of 1906. The disaster left San Francisco in
shambles and a large fissure opened up on Alcatraz, but left the
buildings untouched. Prisoners from the heavily damaged San
Francisco jail were temporarily housed on the island until the
city’s jail could be rebuilt.
Construction of the new buildings was completed
in 1909 and in 1911, the facility was officially named the "United
States Disciplinary Barracks". In addition to Army prisoners, the
Rock was also used to house seamen captured on German vessels during
the First World War. Alcatraz was the Army’s first long-term prison
and it quickly gained a reputation for being a tough facility. There
were strict rules and regulations with punishments ranging from loss
of privileges to solitary confinement, restricted diet, hard labor
and even a 12-pound ball and ankle chain.
Despite the stringent rules though, Alcatraz was
still mainly a minimum-security facility. Inmates were given various
work assignments, depending on how responsible they were. Many of
them worked as general servants, cooking and cleaning for families
of soldiers housed on the island. In many cases, the prisoners were
even entrusted to care for the children of officers. However, this
lack of strict security worked to the favor to those inmates who
tried to escape. Most of those who tried for freedom never made it
to the mainland and were forced to turn back and be rescued. Those
who were not missed and did not turn back usually drowned in the
harsh waters of the bay.
Other escape attempts were made by men who did
not go into the water. During the great influenza epidemic of 1918,
inmates stole flu masks and officer’s uniforms and causally caught a
military launch heading for the base at the Presidio. The convicts
made it as far as Modesto, California before they were captured.
During the 1920’s, Alcatraz gradually fell into
disuse. The lighthouse keeper, a few Army personnel and the most
hardened of the military prisoners were the only ones who remained
on the island. The mostly empty buildings slowly crumbled... but a
change was coming.
The social upheaval and the rampant crime of the
1920’s and 1930’s brought new life to Alcatraz. Attorney General
Homer Cummings supported J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI in creating a
new, escape-proof prison that would send fear into the hearts of
criminals. They decided that Alcatraz would be the perfect location
for such a penitentiary. In 1933, the facility was officially turned
over to the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Attorney General asked
James A. Johnston of San Francisco to take over as warden of the new
prison. He implemented a strict set and rules and regulations for
the facility and selected the best available guards and officers
from the federal penal system.
Construction was quickly started on the new
project and practically the entire cellblock building was built atop
the old Army fort. Part of the old Army prison was used but the iron
bars were replaced by bars of hardened steel. Gun towers were
erected at various points around the island and the cellblocks were
equipped with catwalks, gun walks, electric locks, metal detectors,
a well-stocked arsenal, barbed and cyclone wire fencing and even
tear gas containers that were fitted into the ceiling of the dining
hall and elsewhere. Apartments for the guards and their families
were built on the old parade grounds and the lighthouse keeper’s
mansion was taken over for the warden’s residence. Alcatraz had been
turned into an impregnable fortress.
Wardens from prisons all over the country were
polled and were permitted to send their most incorrigible inmates to
the Rock. These included inmates with behavioral problems, those
with a history of escape attempts and even high-profile inmates who
were receiving privileges because of their status or notoriety. Each
train that came from the various prisons seemed to have a
"celebrity" on board. Among the first groups were inmates Al Capone,
Doc Barker (who was the last surviving member of the Ma Barker
Gang), George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Robert "Birdman of Alcatraz"
Stroud, and Floyd Hamilton (a gang member and driver for Bonnie &
Clyde), and Alvin "Creepy" Karpis.
When they arrived on Alcatraz, the inmates were
driven in a small transfer van to the top of the hill. They were
processed in the basement area and provided with their basic
amenities and a quick shower.
Al Capone arrived at the prison in August 1934.
Upon his arrival, he quickly learned that while he may have once
been famous, on Alcatraz, he was only a number. He made attempts to
flaunt the power that he had enjoyed at the Federal prison in
Atlanta and was used to the special benefits that he was awarded by
guards and wardens alike. He was arrogant and unlike most of the
other prisoners, was not a veteran of the penal system. He had only
spent a short time in prison and his stay had been much different
than for most other cons. Capone had possessed the ability to
control his environment through wealth and power, but he was soon to
learn that things were much different at Alcatraz.
Warden Johnston had a custom of meeting new
prisoners when they arrived and he gave them a brief orientation.
Johnston later wrote in his memoirs that he had little trouble
recognizing Capone when he saw him. Capone was grinning and making
comments to other prisoners as he stood in the lineup. When it
became his turn to approach the warden, Johnston ignored him and
simply gave him a standard prison number, just like all of the other
men. During Capone’s time on Alcatraz, he made a number of attempts
to convince Johnston that he deserved special consideration. None of
them were successful and at one point, Capone finally conceded that
"it looks like Alcatraz has got me licked."
And he wouldn’t be the only one to feel that way.
Alcatraz was not a recreational prison. It was a
place of penitence, just as the Quakers who had devised the American
prison system had planned for all prisons to be. There were no
trustees here. It was a place where the inmates had but five
rights... food, clothing, a private cell, a shower once a week and
the right to see a doctor.
Each of the cells in America’s "first
escape-proof prison" measured 4 x 8 feet, had a single
fold-up bunk, a toilet, a desk, a chair and a sink. An
inmate’s day would begin at 6:30 in the morning, when he
was awakened and then given 25 minutes to clean his cell
and to stand and be counted. At 6:55, the individual
tiers of cells would be opened and prisoners would march
in a single file line to the mess hall. They were given
20 minutes to eat and then were marched out to line up
for work assignments. The routine never varied and was
The main corridor of the prison was given the
name "Broadway" by the inmates and the cells here were considered
the least desirable. The ones on the bottom tier were always cold
and damp and they were also the least private, since guards, inmates
and staff members were always passing through this corridor. New
prisoners were generally assigned to the second tier of B Block in a
quarantine status for the first three months of their sentence.
The guards at Alcatraz were almost as hardened as
the prisoners themselves. They numbered the inmates one to three,
which was stunning considering that most prisons were at least one
guard to every twelve inmates. Gun galleries had been placed at each
end of the cell blocks and as many as 12 counts each day allowed the
guards to keep very close tabs on the men on their watch. Because of
the small number of total inmates at Alcatraz, the guards generally
knew the inmates by name.
While the cells the prisoners lived in were
barren at best, they must have seemed like luxury hotel rooms
compared to the punishment cells. Here, the men were stripped of all
but their basic right to food and even then, what they were served
barely sustained the convict’s life, let alone his health.
One place of punishment was the single "Strip
Cell", which was dubbed the "Oriental". This dark, steel-encased
cell had no toilet and no sink. There was only a hole in the floor
that could be flushed from the outside. Inmates were placed in the
cell with no clothing and were given little food. The cell had a
standard set of bars, with an expanded opening to pass food through,
but a solid steel door enclosed the prisoner in total darkness. They
were usually kept in this cell for 1-2 days. The cell was cold and
completely bare, save for a straw sleeping mattress that the guards
removed each morning. This cell was used a punishment for the most
severe violations and was feared by the prison population.
The "Hole" was a similar type of cell. There were
several of them and they were all located on the bottom tier of
cells and were considered to be a severe punishment by the inmates.
Mattresses were again taken away and prisoners were sustained by
meals of bread and water, which was supplemented by a solid meal
every third day. Steel doors also closed these cells off from the
daylight, although a low wattage bulb was suspended from the
ceiling. Inmates could spend up to 19 days here, completely silent
and isolated from everyone. Time in the "hole" usually meant
psychological and sometimes even physical torture.
Usually, convicts who were thrown into the "hole"
for anything other than a minor infraction were beaten by the
guards. The screams from the men being beaten in one of the four
"holes" located on the bottom tier of D Block echoed throughout the
block as though being amplified through a megaphone. When the
inmates of D Block (which had been designated at a disciplinary unit
by the warden) heard a fellow convict being worked over, they would
start making noises that would be picked up in Blocks B and C and
would then sound throughout the entire island.
Often when men emerged from the darkness and
isolation of the "hole", they would be totally senseless and would
end up in the prison’s hospital ward, devoid of their sanity. Others
came out with pnuemonia and arthritis after spending days or weeks
on the cold cement floor with no clothing. Some men never came out
of the "hole" at all.
And there were even worse places to be sent than
the "hole". Located in front of unused A Block was a staircase that
led down to a large steel door. Behind the door were catacomb-like
corridors and stone archways that led to the sealed off gun ports
from the days when Alcatraz was a fort. Fireplaces located in
several of the rooms were never used for warmth, but to heat up
cannonballs so that they would start fires after reaching their
targets. Two of the other rooms located in this dank, underground
area were dungeons.
Prisoners who had the misfortune of being placed
in the dungeons were not only locked in, but also chained to the
walls. Their screams could not be heard in the main prison. The only
toilet they had was a bucket, which was emptied once each week. For
food, they received two cups of water and one slice of bread each
day. Every third day, they would receive a regular meal. The men
were stripped of their clothing and their dignity as guards chained
them to the wall in a standing position from six in the morning
until six at night. In the darkest hours, they were given a blanket
to sleep on.
Thankfully, the dungeons were rarely used, but
the dark cells of D Block, known as the "hole, were regularly
Al Capone was in the "hole" three times during
his 4 1/2-year stay at Alcatraz. The first years of Alcatraz were
known as the "silent years" and during this period, the rules stated
that no prisoners were allowed to speak to one another, sing, hum or
whistle. Talking was forbidden in the cells, in the mess hall and
even in the showers. The inmates were allowed to talk for three
minutes during the morning and afternoon recreation yard periods and
for two hours on weekends.
Capone, who remained arrogant for some time after
his arrival, decided that the rule of silence should not apply to
him. He ended up being sent to the "hole" for two, 10-day stretches
for talking to other inmates. He also spent a full 19 days on the
"hole" for trying to bribe a guard for information about the outside
world. Prisoners were not allowed newspapers or magazines that would
inform them of current events. Each time that Capone was sent to the
"hole", he emerged a little worse for wear. Eventually, the Rock
would break him completely.
Many of the prisoners who served time in Alcatraz
ended up insane. Capone may have been one of them for time here was
not easy on the ex-gangland boss. On one occasion, he got into a
fight with another inmate in the recreation yard and was placed in
isolation for eight days. Another time, while working in the prison
basement, an inmate standing in line for a haircut exchanged words
with Capone and then stabbed him with a pair of scissors. Capone was
sent to the prison hospital but was released a few days later with a
The attempts on his life, the no-talking rule,
the beatings and the prison routine itself began to take their toll
on Capone. After several fights in the yard, he was excused from his
recreation periods and being adept with a banjo, joined a four-man
prison band. The drummer in the group was "Machine-Gun" Kelly.
Although gifts were not permitted for prisoners on the Rock, musical
instruments were and Capone’s wife sent him a banjo shortly after he
was incarcerated. After band practice, Capone always returned
immediately to his cell, hoping to stay away from the other
Occasionally, guards reported that he would
refuse to leave his cell to go to the mess hall and eat. They would
often find him crouched down in the corner of his cell like an
animal. On other occasions, he would mumble to himself or babble in
baby talk or simply sit on his bed and strum little tunes on his
banjo. Years later, another inmate recalled that Capone would
sometimes stay in his cell and make his bunk over and over again.
After more than three years on the Rock, Capone
was on the edge of total insanity. He spent the last year of his
sentence in the hospital ward, undergoing treatment for an advanced
case of syphilis. Most of the time he spent in the ward, he spent
playing his banjo. His last day on Alcatraz was January 6, 1939. He
was then transferred to the new Federal prison at Terminal Island
near Los Angeles. When he was paroled, he became a recluse at his
Palm Island, Florida estate. He died, broken and insane, in 1947.
And Al Capone was far from the only man to
surrender his sanity to Alcatraz. In 1937 alone, 14 of the prisoners
went rampantly insane and that does not include the men who slowly
became "stir crazy" from the brutal conditions of the place. To
Warden Johnston, mental illness was nothing more than an excuse to
get out of work. As author Richard Winer once wrote, "it would be
interesting to know what the warden thought of Rube Persful".
Persful was a former gangster and bank robber who
was working in one of the shops, when he picked up a hatchet, placed
his left hand on a block of wood and while laughing maniacally,
began hacking off the fingers on his hand. Then, he placed his right
hand on the block and pleaded with a guard to chop off those fingers
as well. Persful was placed in the hospital, but was not declared
An inmate named Joe Bowers slashed his own throat
with a pair of broken eyeglasses. He was given first aid and then
was thrown into the "hole". After his release, he ran away from his
work area and scaled a chain-link fence, fully aware that the guards
would shoot him. They opened fire and his body fell 75 feet down to
the rocks below the fence.
Ed Wutke, a former sailor who had been sent to
Alcatraz on murder charges, managed to fatally slice through his
jugular vein with the blade from a pencil sharpener.
These were not the only attempts at suicide and
mutilation either. It was believed that more men suffered mental
breakdowns at Alcatraz, by percentage, than at any other Federal
In 1941, inmate Henry Young went on trail for the
murder of a fellow prisoner and his accomplice in a failed escape
attempt, Rufus McCain. Young’s attorney claimed that Alcatraz guards
had frequently beaten his client and that he had endured long
periods of extreme isolation. While Young was depicted as
sympathetic, he was actually a difficult inmate who often provoked
fights with other prisoners. He was considered a violent risk and he
later murdered two guards during an escape attempt. After that,
Young and his eventual victim, McCain, spent nearly 22 months in
After the two men returned to the normal prison
population, McCain was assigned to the tailoring shop and Young to
the furniture shop, located directly upstairs. On December 3, 1940
Young waited until just after a prisoner count and then when a
guard’s attention was diverted, he ran downstairs and stabbed
McCain. The other man went into shock and he died five hours later.
Young refused to say why he had killed the man.
During his trial, Young’s attorney claimed that
because Young was held in isolation for so long, he could not be
held responsible for his actions. He had been subjected to cruel and
unusual punishment and because of this, his responses to hostile
situations had become desperately violent.
The attorney subpoenaed Warden Johnston to
testify about the prison’s conditions and policies and in addition,
several inmates were also called to recount the state of Alcatraz.
The prisoners told of being locked in the dungeons and of being
beaten by the guards. They also testified to knowing several inmates
who had gone insane because of such treatment. The jury ended up
sympathizing with Young’s case and he was convicted of a
manslaughter charge that only added a few years on this original
After the trial, he was transferred to the
Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. After
serving his Federal sentence, he was sent to the Washington State
Penitentiary and was paroled in 1972. He had spent nearly 40 years
in prison. He later disappeared and it is unknown whether he is
still alive today.
During the 29 years that Alcatraz was in
operation, there were over 14 escape attempts in which 34 different
men risked their lives to try and make it off the Rock. Almost all
of the men were either killed or recaptured. Only one of the men was
known to have made it ashore. John Paul Scott was recaptured when he
was found shivering in the rocks near the Golden Gate Bridge. As for
the men who vanished, it was believed that most of them succumbed to
the cold water and the always churning currents that moved past the
island. Although no bodies were ever recovered, the authorities
always assumed that the men had drowned and marked the cases as
Of all of the escape attempts though, two of them
left a lasting mark on the history of the island. The most traumatic
and violent of the two took place in 1946. It was later dubbed the
"Battle of Alcatraz" and it began as a well-planned and
well-organized breakout from the "escape-proof" prison.
In May 1946, six
inmates captured a gun cage, obtained prison keys and
took over a cell house in less than an hour. The
breakout attempt might have succeeded if not for the
fact that a guard, Bill Miller, didn’t return one of the
keys to the gun cage as soon as he finished using it, as
was required by prison regulations. The strange twist of
fate completely disrupted the escape attempt. When the
cons captured the gun cage, they found all of the keys
except for the one that would let them out of the cell
building. This was the key that Miller failed to return
to the guard cage. The breakout was grounded before it
But the prisoners, Bernard Coy, Joe Cretzer, and
Marvin Hubbard, Sam Shockley, Miran Thompson, and Clarence Carnes,
would not give up. They took a number of guards hostage and before
the escape attempts was over, three of the guards were dead and
others were wounded. Two of them were murdered in cold blood in
cells 402 and 403, which were later changed to C-102 and C-104.
Thousands of spectators watched from San
Francisco as U.S. Marines invaded the island and barraged the cell
block with mortars and grenades. The helpless inmates inside of the
building took refuge behind water-soaked mattresses and tried to
stay close to the floor and out of the path of the bullets that
riddled the cells. But even after realizing that they could not
escape, the six would-be escapees decided to fight it out.
Warden Johnston, unable to get a report on how
many convicts were actually involved in the battle, came to believe
that the safety of San Francisco itself might be at risk. With the
entire prison under siege, he called for aid from the Navy, the
Coast Guard, as well as the Marines. Before it was all over, two
Navy destroyers, two Air Force planes, a Coast Guard cutter, a
company of Marines, Army officers, police units, and guards from
Leavenworth and San Quentin descended on the island.
The fighting lasted for two days. With no place
to hide from the constant gunfire, Cretzer, Coy and Hubbard climbed
into a utility corridor for safety. The other three men returned to
their cells, hoping they would not be identified as participants in
the attempt. In the bloody aftermath, Cretzer, Coy and Hubbard were
killed in the corridor from bullets and shrapnel from explosives.
Thompson and Shockley were later executed in the gas chamber at San
Quentin and Carnes received a sentence of life, plus 99 years. His
life was spared because he helped some of the wounded hostages. The
cell building was heavily damaged and took months to repair.
While this may be the most violent escape from
Alcatraz, it is by all means not the most famous. This attempt was
that of Frank Morris and brothers Clarence and John Anglin. In 1962,
a fellow prisoner named Allen West helped the trio to devise a
clever plan to construct a raft, inflatable life vests and
human-like dummies that could be used to fool the guards during head
counts. Over a several month period, the men used tools stolen from
work sites to chip away at the vent shafts in their cells. They
fabricated the life vests, the rafts and the dummies. They also
ingeniously created replicated grills that hid the chipped away
cement around the small vents. The quality of the human heads and
faked grills was remarkable as they used only paint kits and a soap
and concrete powder to make them. They also collected hair from the
barbershop to make the dummies more lifelike. These painstaking
preparations took over six months.
On the night of June 11, 1962, immediately
following the head count at 9:30, Morris and the Anglin’s scooted
through the vents and scaled the utility shafts to the upper levels.
Once they reached the roof, they climbed through a ventilator duct
and made it to the edge of the building. After descending pipes
along the cement wall, all three climbed over a 15-foot fence and
made it to the island’s shore, where they inflated the rafts and
vests. They set out into the cold waters of the bay and were never
The next morning, when one of the prisoners
failed to rise for the morning count, a guard jammed his club
through the cell bars at the man. To his shock, a fake head rolled
off the bunk and landed on the floor!
Almost 40 years later, it is still unknown
whether or not the prisoners made a successful escape. The story has
been dramatized in several books and was made into a gripping film
starring Clint Eastwood. The FBI actively pursued the case but never
found any worthwhile leads.
After this last escape attempt, the days of the
prison were numbered. Ironically, the frigid waters around the
island, which had long prevented escape, were believed to be the
leading ruin of the prison. After the escape of Morris and the
Anglin’s, the prison was examined because of the deteriorating
conditions of the structure, caused mostly by the corrosive effects
of the salt water around it. In addition, budget cuts had recently
forced security measures at the prison to become more lax. On top of
that, the exorbitant cost of running the place continued to increase
and over $5 million was going to be needed for renovations.
According to U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the prison was no
longer necessary to have open.
On March 23, 1963, Alcatraz closed it doors for
good. After that, the island was essentially abandoned while various
groups tried to decide what to do with it. Then, in 1969, a large
group of American Indians landed on the island and declared that it
was Native American property. They had great plans for the island,
which included a school and a Native American cultural center. The
Indians soon had the attention of the media and the government and a
number of meetings were held about the fate of Alcatraz.
The volume of visitors to the island soon became
overwhelming. Somehow, during the talks, the island had become a
haven for the homeless and the less fortunate. The Indians were soon
faced with the problem of no natural resources and the fact that
food and water had to be brought over from the mainland. The
situation soon became so desperate that island occupants were forced
to take drastic measures to survive. In order to raise money for
supplies, they began stripping copper wire and pipes from the island
buildings to sell as scrap metal. A tragedy occurred around this
same time when Yvonne Oakes, the daughter of one of the key Indian
activists, fell to her death from the third story window. The Oakes
family left Alcatraz and never returned.
Then, during the evening hours of June 1, 1970, a
fire was started and raged out of control. It damaged several of the
buildings and destroyed the Warden’s residence, the lighthouse
keeper’s home and even badly damaged the historic lighthouse itself.
Tension now developed between Federal officials
and the Indians as the government blamed the activists for the fire.
The press, which had been previously sympathetic toward the Native
Americans, now turned against them and began to publish stories
about beatings and assaults that were allegedly occurring on the
island. Support for the Indians now disintegrated, especially in
light of the fact that the original activists had already left
Alcatraz. Those who remained were seen as little more than
"squatters". On June 11, 1971, the Coast Guard, along with 20 U.S.
Marshals descended on the island and removed the remaining
Alcatraz was empty once more.
Congress created the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and
Alcatraz Island fell under the purview of the National Park Service.
It was opened to the public in the fall of 1973 and has become today
one of the most popular of America’s park sites. If you want to
verify the ghostly presence of Alcatraz for yourself, then check out
the experiences offered by IfOnly.
Aside from that, there are plenty of tour operators that host
The Hauntings of
During the day, the old prison is a bustling
place, filled with tour guides and visitors... but at night, the
building is filled with the inexplicable. Many believe that the
energy of those who came to serve time on the Rock still remains,
that Alcatraz is an immense haunted house... a place where strange
things can and do happen today!
Every visitor who arrives by boat on Alcatraz
follows the same path once walked by the criminals who came to do
time on the Rock. The tourists who come here pass through the
warden’s office and the visiting room and eventually enter the cell
house. After passing the double steel doors, a visitor can see that
just past C Block. If they look opposite the visiting room, they
will find a metal door that looks as though it was once welded shut.
Although the tour guides don’t usually mention it, behind that door
if the utility corridor where Coy, Cretzer and Hubbard were killed
by grenades and bullets in 1946.
It was also behind this door where a night
watchman heard strange, clanging sounds in 1976. He opened the door
and peered down the dark corridor, shining his flashlight on the
maze of pipes and conduits. He could see nothing and there were no
sounds. When he closed the door, the noises started again. Again,
the door was opened up but there was still nothing that could be
causing the sounds. The night watchman did not believe in ghosts, so
he shut the door again and continued on his way. Some have wondered
if the eerie noises may have been the reason why the door was once
welded shut? Since that time, this utility corridor has come to be
recognized as one of the most haunted spots in the prison.
Other night watchmen who have patrolled this cell
house, after the last of the tourist boats have left for the day,
say that they have heard the sounds of what appear to be men running
coming the from the upper tiers. Thinking that an intruder is inside
the prison, the watchmen have investigated the sounds, but always
One Park Service employee stated that she had
been working one rainy afternoon when the sparse number of tourists
were not enough to keep all of the guides busy. She went for a walk
in front of A Block and was just past the door that led down to the
dungeons when she heard a loud scream from the bottom of the stairs.
She ran away without looking to see if anyone was down there. When
asked why she didn’t report the incident, she replied "I didn’t dare
mention it because the day before, everyone was ridiculing another
worker who reported hearing men’s voices coming from the hospital
ward and when he checked the ward, it was empty."
Several of the guides and rangers have also
expressed a strangeness about one of the "hole" cells, number 14D.
"There’s a feeling of sudden intensity that comes from spending more
than a few minutes around that cell," one of them said. Another
guide also spoke up about that particular cell. "That cell, 14D, is
always cold. It’s even colder than the other three dark cells.
Sometimes it gets warm out here - so hot that you have to take your
jacket off. The temperature inside the cell house can be in the
70’s, yet 14D is still cold... so cold that you need a jacket if you
spend any time in it."
Oddly, the tour guides were not the only ones to
have strange experiences in that particular cell. A number of former
guards from the prisons also spoke of some pretty terrifying
incidents that took place near the "holes" and in particular, Cell
During the guard’s stint in the middle 1940’s, an
inmate was locked in the cell for some forgotten infraction.
According to the officer, the inmate began screaming within seconds
of being locked in. He claimed that some creature with "glowing
eyes" was locked in with him. As tales of a ghostly presence
wandering the nearby corridor were a continual source of practical
jokes among the guards, no one took the convict’s cries of being
"attacked" very seriously.
The man’s screaming continued on into the night
until finally, there was silence. The following day, guards
inspected the cell and they found the convict dead. A horrible
expression had been frozen onto the man’s face and there were clear
marks of hands around his throat! The autopsy revealed that the
strangulation could not have been self-inflicted. Some believed that
he might have been choked by one of the guards, who had been fed up
with the man’s screaming, but no one ever admitted it.
A few of the officers blamed something else for
the man’s death. They believed that the killer had been the spirit
of a former inmate. To add to the mystery, on the day following the
tragedy, several guards who were performing a head count noticed
that there were too many men in the lineup. Then, at the end of the
line, they saw the face of the convict who had recently been
strangled in the "hole"! As they all looked on in stunned silence,
the figure abruptly vanished.
If, as many believe, ghosts return to haunt the
places where they suffered traumatic experiences when they were
alive, then Alcatraz must be loaded with spirits.
According to sources, a number of guards who
served between 1946 and 1963 experienced strange happenings on
Alcatraz. From the grounds of the prison to the caverns beneath the
buildings, there was often talk of people sobbing and moaning,
inexplicable smells, cold spots and spectral apparitions. Even
guests and families who lived on the island claimed to occasionally
see the ghostly forms of prisoners and even phantom soldiers.
Phantom gunshots were known to send seasoned guards cringing on the
ground in the belief that the prisoners had escaped and had obtained
weapons. There was never an explanation. A deserted laundry room
would sometimes fill with the smell of smoke, even though nothing
was burning. The guards would be sent running from the room, only to
return later and find that the air was clear.
Even Warden Johnston, who did not believe in
ghosts, once encountered the unmistakable sound of a person sobbing
while he accompanied some guests on a tour of the prison. He swore
that the sounds came from inside of the dungeon walls. The strange
sounds were followed by an ice-cold wind that swirled through the
entire group. He could offer no explanation for the weird events.
As the years have passed, ghost hunters, authors,
crime buffs and curiosity-seekers have visited the island and many
of them have left with feelings of strangeness. Perhaps those who
experience the "ghostly side" of Alcatraz most often are the
national park service employees who sometimes spend many hours here
alone. For the most part, the rangers claim to not believe in the
supernatural but occasionally, one of them will admit that weird
things happen here that they cannot explain.
According to one park ranger, he was in one of
the cell houses one morning, near the shower room, and heard the
distinctive sound of banjo music coming from the room. He could not
explain it --- but many who know some of the hidden history of
Alcatraz can. In his last days at the prison, Al Capone often hid in
the shower room with his banjo. Rather than risk going out into the
prison yard, where he feared for his life thanks to his
deteriorating mental state, Capone received permission to stay
inside and practice with his instrument.
And perhaps he sits there still, this lonesome
and broken spirit, still plucking at the strings of a spectral banjo
that vanished decades ago. For on occasion, tour guides and rangers,
who walk the corridors of the prison alone, still claim to hear and
an occasional tune echoing through the abandoned building. Is it Al
Or could it be merely another of the countless ghosts who
continue to haunt this place, year after year.....? | <urn:uuid:9ece3d23-daf0-4b9d-8309-bf8faf6d2eba> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.prairieghosts.com/gpalcatraz.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00088-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980082 | 8,834 | 4.0625 | 4 |
Industrial facilities dumped over 18 million pounds of toxic chemicals into Virginia’s waterways, the second-most in the nation, according to a new report released today by Environment Virginia. Wasting Our Waterways: Industrial Toxic Pollution and the Unfulfilled Promise of the Clean Water Act also reports that 226 million pounds of toxic chemicals were discharged into 1,400 waterways across the country.
“Virginia's waterways are a polluter’s paradise right now. Polluters dump 18 million pounds of toxic chemicals into Virginia's lakes, rivers and streams every year,” said Laura Anderson, field organizer with Environment Virginia. “We must turn the tide of toxic pollution by restoring Clean Water Act protections to our waterways.”
The New River saw the most toxic pollution in the state, with over 12 million pounds dumped into its waters. More than 1.1 million pounds were discharged into the James River, and over 370,000 pounds were dumped into the Shenandoah River.
"The James river is vital to the history and culture of Richmond and Virginia," said Caroline Kory, state associate with Environment Virginia. "We shouldn't be tarnishing our legacy with toxic pollution."
"The Shenandoah River serves to remind us what happens when industrial sites are allowed to pollute,” said Jeff Kelble, Shenandoah Riverkeeper. “Before we had the Clean Water Act in 1972, industries contaminated the river with mercury, PCB and other toxic chemicals. People are still unable to eat fish on over 100 miles of the Shenandoah because these toxic chemicals don't break down or go away.”
The Environment Virginia report documents and analyzes the dangerous levels of pollutants discharged to America’s waters by compiling toxic chemical releases reported to the U.S. EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory for 2010, the most recent data available.
Major findings of the report include:
• Virginia's Upper Roanoke watershed is ranked second-worst in the nation for highest amount of total toxic discharges, with over 12 million pounds discharged in 2010.
• Richmond's James River saw over 1.1 million pounds of toxic pollution in 2010.
• 377,090 pounds of toxic pollution were dumped into the Shenandoah River in 2010. Virginia polluters alone dumped 203,480 pounds into the Potomac River, and other states dumped additional toxic pollution for a total of 402,261 pounds into the Potomac in 2010.
Environment Virginia's report summarizes discharges of cancer-causing chemicals, chemicals that persist in the environment, and chemicals with the potential to cause reproductive problems ranging from birth defects to reduced fertility. Among the toxic chemicals discharged by facilities are arsenic, mercury, and benzene. Exposure to these chemicals is linked to cancer, developmental disorders, and reproductive disorders.
“There are common-sense steps that we can take to turn the tide against toxic pollution of our waters,” added Anderson.
In order to curb the toxic pollution threatening Virginia's waters, Environment Virginia recommends the following:
• Pollution Prevention: Industrial facilities should reduce their toxic discharges to waterways by switching from hazardous chemicals to safer alternatives.
• Protect all waters: The Obama administration should finalize guidelines and conduct a rulemaking to clarify that the Clean Water Act applies to all of our waterways - including the 33,778 miles of streams in Virginia and 2.3 million Virginians’ drinking water for which jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act has been called into question as a result of two polluter-driven Supreme Court decisions in the last decade.
• Tough permitting and enforcement: EPA and state agencies should issue permits with tough, numeric limits for each type of toxic pollution discharged, ratchet down those limits over time, and enforce those limits with credible penalties, not just warning letters.
“The bottom line is that Virginia's waterways shouldn’t be a polluter’s paradise, they should just be paradise. We need clean water now, and we are counting on the federal government to act to protect our health and our environment,” concluded Anderson.
Environment Virginia is a state-wide, citizen-funded environmental group working for clean air, clean water and open space. For more information, please visit www.environmentvirginia.org | <urn:uuid:232be790-e1c1-4353-8b13-eb01f8801b5d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.environmentvirginia.org/news/vae/virginia-second-worst-state-toxic-chemicals-dumped-its-waterways | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00073-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931061 | 877 | 2.96875 | 3 |
FEV Joins Energy Star Challenge
Powertrain and vehicle technologies developer FEV has taken the EPA’s Energy Star Challenge in a step toward improving energy efficiency, the company says.
Commercial buildings and industrial facilities are responsible for 45 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, according to EPA.
The Energy Star Challenge calls for an energy efficiency improvement of at least 10 percent for the more than 5 million commercial and industrial buildings in the US.
EPA estimates that if the energy efficiency of commercial and industrial buildings in the US improved 10 percent, companies would save about $20 billion on annual utility bills.
Over the past 20 years, US businesses and families have saved a total of almost $230 billion on utility bills and prevented more than 1.7 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions through the voluntary program, EPA says.
Some 35,000 buildings that used the Energy Star Portfolio Manager tool to track and manage energy use between 2008 and 2011 realized an average annual savings of 2.4 percent with a total savings of 7 percent, according to EPA. In its analysis, EPA translates energy savings into financial value, and says a 2.4 percent savings for three consecutive years means a cumulative energy cost savings of $120,000 for a 500,000-square-foot office building, $2.5 million for a medium-box retailer with 500 stores, $4.1 million for a full-service hotel chain with 100 properties or $140,000 for an 800,000-square-foot school district.
Last month, FEV partnered with charging infrastructure supplier Better Place and Coda Automotive, Environmental Leader reports. The three companies are working together to convert six Coda electric cars with fixed batteries into switchable-battery cars.
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- Building Energy Benchmarking & Transparency Laws
- How to Thrive in Today's EHS Landscape | <urn:uuid:4152a73c-324c-464e-af77-d6df70759836> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.energymanagertoday.com/fev-joins-energy-star-challenge-086867/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00080-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906757 | 496 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Brief SummaryRead full entry
Edwin R. Lawson
September elm (Ulmus serotina), also called red elm, is one of two fall-flowering native elms. This medium-sized, rapid-growing tree is found most frequently on moist clay or sandy loam soils, but it also grows on dry, rocky soils of limestone origin. It is never abundant and in early development it is an inconspicuous understory component of hardwood stands. This species may appear more frequently within its range than is currently documented because it may be confused with other elm species. The lumber is cut and sold with four other elm species and marketed as rock elm. Wildlife browse young trees and eat the seeds and buds. September elm is planted in landscapes but succumbs to Dutch elm disease. | <urn:uuid:698160bc-3aa0-473f-aebe-cbb02386dfaf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.eol.org/pages/594917/overview/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00030-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96499 | 168 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Middle School Geometry
Put your geometry skills to the test by figuring out the area, circumference, diameter and radii of these delicious cookies!
Does your child know the features of an isosceles triangle? Have him try out this worksheet that serves as a quick intro to middle school geometry.
Get your lines and angles straight with this geometry practice page! Students will get plenty of practice understanding parallel lines.
Get an angle on triangles with a geometry practice sheet! Find the missing angles in these triangles by solving for x.
Get an grip on geometry with this helpful worksheet! Your student will learn the difference between complementary and supplementary angles.
Put your child to the test with this geometry worksheet about parallel lines cut by a transversal. Your kid will review terms and concepts about transversals.
Get to know your complementary angles with this helpful practice sheet! Remember, complementary angles add up to make 90 degrees.
Master your knowledge of supplementary angles with this geometry practice sheet! Remember that supplementary angles add up to make 180 degrees. | <urn:uuid:d7a6a258-c95f-4d3f-95d3-33306323ef8b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.education.com/collection/jenrog/middle-school-geometry/?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.886017 | 215 | 4.5625 | 5 |
This breed was created by the German zoologists Lutz Heck and Heinz Heck in their attempt to recreate the tarpan. They started their back breeding programme in the early 1930s. They believed that all living creatures were the result of their genetic make-up and that genes could be rearranged like the pieces of a puzzle to recreate certain vanished species. Only breeds that still had living descendants could be recreated because those living breeds would be a source for genetic material. The tarpan still has these living descendants in the form of domestic horse breeds. The brothers selected Polish Koniks, Icelandic Ponies, Swedish Gotlands and Polish Primitive Horses from the preserve in Bialowieza. Mares from these horse breeds were then mated to stallions of the Przewalski horse, because the Heck brothers felt that the blood of this wild horse would serve as a catalyst to draw out the latent tarpan characteristics dormant in these more modern breeds. At first the Przewalski horse influence was too strong, but by 1960s the brothers succeeded to produce a horse, which resembled the skeletal evidence of the extinct tarpan in the archives of Munich Zoo. One characteristic of the true tarpan that the Heck brothers did not succeed in recreating are the upright manes. The first bred back "tarpan" or Heck horse, a colt, was born May 22, 1933 at the Tierpark Hellabrunn in Munich, Germany. These horses still survive as Heck horses.
The Heck horse is a breed of horse that resembles the extinct tarpan. This breed was created by the German zoologists Lutz Heck and Heinz Heck in their attempt to recreate the tarpan.
No heck horse pets yet!
No heck horse pictures yet!
No heck horse videos yet!
No heck horse owners yet!
No heck horse blogs yet!
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Heck Horse". | <urn:uuid:d7fe76f0-6548-43d9-8b25-8a2bb27ef02e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.youpet.com/heck-horse/ | 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 | 0.952784 | 411 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Schools cannot afford to function independent of other segments of their communities. Now, more than ever, it is essential that schools form relationships with community members, groups, and agencies for the mutual benefit of the students and schools.
With so many problems facing our country -- and our communities -- schools cannot afford to function independent of other segments of society. More than ever, it is essential that schools form relationships with community members, groups, and agencies for the mutual benefit of the students and schools.
Aside from the obvious benefits to students from forging connections to the community, public schools have other reasons for connecting with their publics. While nearly 70 percent of adults do not have school-age children, those adults do have a voice in determining the direction of local schools. And, more than ever, they are using that voice. That's why school boards and school principals are wise to continuously funnel news to the public about their schools' programs, successes, and needs. Keeping all stakeholders informed is essential to developing a mutual trust that will reap benefits for the schools and the entire community.
The process of establishing partnerships with parents, social service agencies, businesses, and the general public can vary greatly. The ability to form viable partnerships hinges on the organizations, their interest in the schools, and the duration of the planned partnership. Whether the relationship is intended to be broad-based or to focus on a special objective can also impact the ability to connect.
[content block] It's a proven fact that parent involvement can lead to increased student achievement, improved student behavior, and reduced absenteeism and dropout rates. In particular, the involvement of fathers has been shown to bring about improvement in reading achievement and vocabulary development. In addition, recent research points to the fact that reading with and to young children does yield results.
Many school principals encourage students to share information about what they learned in school each day. Some of those same principals suggest to parents that they ask their children to teach them what was learned at school each day. The discussions need not go into great detail, but they should focus on the main concepts learned. If you believe -- as most educators do -- that teaching someone helps you understand better, you will know that it is possible that students' understanding of concepts will grow by teaching their parents.
I mentioned this to one of my sons and he thought the idea had merit, so he asked his 14-year-old daughter about what she learned in her math class. After she related the details, her dad asked her to explain some of the important concepts -- and to their mutual surprise, she was able to do it.
One of Sam Walton's rules was that associates in his Wal-Mart stores had to make eye contact with customers who were within 10 feet of them. In addition, if anyone asked for directions, the associate was expected to walk the customer to the destination and make small talk along the way. On a recent visit to a neighborhood Wal-Mart, I found that Mr. Walton's expectations were still used at that store. Do you think this strategy used in your school might send the message that the school is a welcome place for everyone?
School principals who go out of their way to involve service agencies in their schools have found those relationships to be mutually beneficial. Developing relationships with mental health, youth development, human service, and other education agencies can be a win-win for schools and the agencies. Introducing service learning programs that involve a wide variety of community groups can bring huge benefits to all. And many school principals team up with principals in the grades above and below them (and, for high school principals, with nearby colleges and universities) in order to offer programs that enable students to complete advanced academic work.
In many school districts, students in the middle and high school grades are expected to complete community service projects or community connection experiences. There is usually a coordinator assigned at the district level to establish connections with civic and business resources. Then the teachers and civic/business representatives are connected to finalize plans and expectations. Building effective community partnerships takes time and effort, but the resulting rewards almost always far outweigh the challenges. These types of partnerships can provide opportunities for student growth and lifelong learning while also building new relationships with community organizations.
Developing such relationships can take time, or it can happen very quickly. I remember how a short presentation I made to a group of senior citizens about one of my schools led quickly to the direct involvement of a group of seniors who regularly to read with students, supported learning in the computer lab, and helped out in many other ways that added meaning to the curriculum and a family atmosphere to the school.
Many paths can lead to getting businesses involved in schools. There is no single, proven way to accomplish that. The one essential component of any plan for involving businesses involves proactive work on the part of the school principal.
Several principals of schools at all levels have used their memberships with community agencies and groups to form alliances with key business leaders. One of the more successful programs that many of them use is the Principal for a Day (PFAD) program. Inviting community leaders to shadow you for a day is a way for the participants to understand the rewards and responsibilities of the principalship. The principals who have invited business or community leaders, legislators, PTA presidents, and school board members to participate in the program report the participants have become strong supporters of the schools.
You never know where the contacts you make with the larger community might lead. One of the most important PR efforts that a school community can undertake is to examine -- and emphasize -- the way it treats others. It really is so simple and so important to do this right. Customer service should be near and dear to the hearts of all members of a school's "family."
I recall the words of a seasoned veteran principal who told me, when I was a "rookie" principal, "If you want to have a successful school, parents and the larger community must know that you look to them, value them, and treat each of them as partners." I know that advice has been good for me throughout my career and is equally good today.
Be sure to see other columns by George Pawlas in his article archive.
Article by George Pawlas
Copyright © 2007 Education World | <urn:uuid:855be5f2-8b4c-4467-8aa9-fdecffeb5b63> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/columnists/pawlas/pawlas013.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396455.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00109-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976949 | 1,275 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Not sure you would get an antibody response to a DNA fragment that small. Also in humans there is a fair amount of cell free DNA in the blood (cfDNA) which does not elicit an immune response (it's around 30 ng/ml in humans which can increase to 180 ng/ml when cancer is present).
Those DNA elements that do generate an immune response (here it is IgG they mention) seem to be bacterial
"anti-DNA in the serum of normal human subjects (NHS) bind DNA in a sequence-specific manner [8,9]. Thus, these antibodies target sites that are present on some, but not all, DNA from bacterial sources. These antibodies can react with both ss as well as dsDNA, although they are highly specific for particular DNA. This specificity reflects binding to non-conserved base sequences that occur variably in DNA depending on species origin."
NHS = Normal human subject. The above is from: "The influence of DNA size on the binding of antibodies to DNA in the sera of normal human subjects and patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)"
D S Pisetsky and T C Gonzalezhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1905279/
I have not conducted an extensive literature search so you may want to check if anything more applicable has been published.
Perhaps you could do some kind of modification of the "proximity ligation assay" using this oligo?
(Google the above in quotes). | <urn:uuid:01f100c7-fa59-41ce-88fa-8c2fae92893c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://molecularbiology.forums.biotechniques.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=32580 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396222.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00040-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937466 | 323 | 2.75 | 3 |
Facts about West Goshen Township
The lands of Goshen were purchased in 1681 from William Penn as part of the Welsh tract of Westtown. By 1704, Goshen and Westtown had become separate townships. In 1788, the formation of the Borough of West Chester reduced the size of Goshen. Finally, in 1817, the Township divided into East and West Goshen Townships. At the time of the 1820 census, West Goshen's population numbered 757.
West Goshen was primarily a farming community in its early history. Before long, many different businesses began to appear, including several women-owned enterprises. Trades such as cabinet-making, tailoring, weaving, clock-making, and wool-making characterized the area. The completion of railroads in the 1830's and 1850's facilitated the delivery of goods and services to the Township, and marked the migration of many Philadelphians seeking country residences.
By 1930, West Goshen's population had risen to 1,958. The farming community had grown into a suburban neighborhood. In 1950, the population was 3,500. The Township experienced its most explosive growth during the 1960's and 1970's, and today can boast over 20,000 residents and a balanced mix of residential, business, office, retail, and industrial uses.
Government & Demographics
Form of Government: Second Class Township
0 - 20 Age Group: 28.6%
21 - 44 Age Group: 40.5%
45 - 64 Age Group: 19.9%
65+ Age Group: 11.0%
Median Age: 34.0 years
Millage & TaxesMunicipal Millage: 2.0
School Millage: 18.67
Transfer Tax: 0.5%
Municipal Earned Income Tax: 0.5%
School Earned Income Tax: 0.5%
Emergency & Municipal Services Tax: $52
Township Services: Full services, including police, sewage collection and treatment, solid waste collection, and parks and recreation programs
Services Provided by Others: Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA); Aqua America Pennsylvania; fire protection provided by Fame, Good Will, Goshen, and West Chester Fire Companies; EMS provided by Goshen Fire Company and Good Fellowship Ambulance Company
Services Provided to Areas Outside the Township: The Sewer Authority and the Township have entered into agreements with East Goshen, Westtown, and West Whiteland Townships to accept flows from these municipalities into the West Goshen Sewer system
Public Schools Serving West Goshen Students: East Bradford Elementary School, Exton Elementary School, Fern Hill Elementary School, Glen Acres Elementary School, Hillsdale Elementary School, Mary C. Howse Elementary School, Sarah W. Starkweather Elementary School, Westtown-Thornbury Elementary School, J.R. Fugett Middle School, E.N. Pierce Middle School, G.A. Stetson Middle School, B. Reed Henderson High School, West Chester East High School, Rustin High School
Public Schools Located in West Goshen Township: Fern Hill Elementary School, Glen Acres Elementary School, Fugett Middle School, E.N. Pierce Middle School, West Chester East High School | <urn:uuid:3bdf00b8-7888-4fdd-932a-2e3f527a76e8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.westgoshen.org/Facts.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403825.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00063-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950265 | 668 | 2.6875 | 3 |
They've Got Connections...
Though the coast
redwood is not affected severely by any sort of diseases, recent
studies show the pathogen
Phytophthora ramorum, or
Sudden Oak Death, is now known to have
an effect on
Sequoia sempervirens, along with more than three dozen other plant
species in California. Luckily though, there is still no evidence that mature
redwoods are harmed by the pathogen.
is a parasitic water mold that has a wide range of hosts among
native California plants. Even if redwood seedlings and sprouts
are affected, the possibility that mature redwoods could show
resistance to infection still remains. Even if further research
specifies that redwoods are not significantly affected by Sudden
Oak Death, the disease still creates a major threat to the
ecosystem of the coast redwood. The most vulnerable species, tanoak, is a very common tree in the southern range of the redwood
forest that several animals depend on for food and shelter. The
death of these trees could potentially put the forest at risk
through loss of food and habitat, and thus could raise the total
amount of combustible material in the area, resulting in more
severe fires that could kill larger redwoods and Douglas firs.
As mentioned in the earlier section, Adaptations, redwoods have no insects that cause serious damage. However, several insects are found living on the redwood. These include a flatheaded twig borer and girdler, two redwood bark beetles, and the sequoia pitch moth.
When growing with other species of trees, redwoods are usually the dominant tree. Although this is true, it is generally mixed with other conifers and broad-leaf trees. Douglas fir can occupy dominant and co-dominant positions along with the redwood, competing with them for height. Common species of trees on the coastal side of the redwoods include grand fir, western hemlock, and Sitka spruce. The Sitka spruce outcompete the redwoods in these areas because they are able to endure salty conditions. These trees assist the redwoods by shielding them from salt and wind. Other conifers found mixed with the redwoods include Gowen cypress and various species of pine.
The two most common hardwoods in the redwood areas are tanoak and Pacific madrone. The tanoak grows far beneath the towering redwoods, where its seedlings can tolerate shade better than redwoods. In addition, their acorns establish themselves on the forest floor more efficiently than the seeds of most trees. Other hardwoods found with redwood are vine maple, bigleaf maple, red alder, giant chinkapin, Oregon ash, Pacific bayberry, Oregon white oak, cascara buckthorn, willows, and California-laurel. The most common species of lesser vegetation found in association with the coast redwood are bracken, sword fern, azalea, California huckleberry, Pacific rhododendron, salmonberry, coyote-brush, and snowbrush. The redwoods provide protection and shelter for these plants and various others.
The redwoods offer shelter to many animals as well such as birds like the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet, both of which nest almost exclusively in old-growth redwood and Douglas fir forests. Two species of threatened bird species that depend greatly on the bay near the coast redwoods for food include the peregrine falcon and the bald eagle. Red tree voles, relatives of mice, live almost in the very tops of the redwood trees, eating the needles. Deer ticks that carry Lyme disease also occur in the coast redwood forests. Other animals found among the coast redwoods include mammals like black bears, elk, deer, cougars, raccoons, squirrels, and martens. Unfortunately, the black bear has been known to cause serious damage to parts of the redwood region by stripping the bark of the trees. Wide sections of bark are torn from the tree mainly during the months of April to August. Younger, thinner trees are damaged the most by this occurrence. Click here to read more about this issue between the black bear and the coast redwoods.
In figure (A), I captured a photo of the rare teddy bear species while I was out walking through the Prairie Creek State Park. There are not many sightings of this vicious creature, so I was very lucky to have caught the wild beast on camera. However, the more common species one would normally find in the Redwood State Parks is Ursus americanus, generally known as the black bear (B).
The banana slug is also a very common organism found among coast redwoods. Banana slugs chew leaves, waste from other animals, and dead plant material, which it later recycles into soil. In addition to working well as decomposers, they also benefit the forest by spreading seeds and spores of different plants through their waste. These slugs eat everything but redwood seedlings and seeds.
forestsalso contain various organisms in the forest soil where fungi, microscopic invertebrates, and bacteria play critical roles in nutrient cycling and overall forest health. One common species of fungi often found growing beneath coast redwoods is Caulorhizae umbonata, also known as the rooting redwood mushroom. Luckily, this fungus does not harm the coast redwoods in any way. More fungi associated with the coast redwood are members of the phylum Glomeromycota. Species of this phylum form mutualistic relationships between the roots of plants and fungi called mycorrhizae. The fungus benefits from this relationship by obtaining sugars from the plant, while the plant benefits by acquiring an increase in surface area to allow for greater absorption of water and nutrients.
If you would like to know more about any of the following organisms that are connected to the coast redwood, just click on the website!
Peregrine falcon: http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2008/lauterba_jona/
Sweet violet: http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2008/tacke_kati/
Lyme Disease bacteria: http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2007/joyce_kait/
Even more organisms can be found by going to:
Click on Human Impacts to learn how humans have affected coast redwoods throughout history.
Go back to Reproduction. | <urn:uuid:7bf9c869-fd41-482e-83d8-d75b86526d88> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2009/hemmeric_nata/interactions%20with%20other%20species.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00187-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943988 | 1,367 | 3.46875 | 3 |
LINKS TO INTERESTING AND USEFUL SITES
Adapted in part from Darin Penneys Melastomataceae WebSite and used with his permission.
- A centralized location for a vast scope of phylogenetic information.
of Life - A searchable, clickable cladogram with information
about every form of life on earth.
PAUP* - PAUP* is the most commonly used phylogenetic analysis program. The MAC version is a necessity for anyone seriously interested in molecular systematics.
Orchid Tree of Life Project - This links to an unsuccessful proposal to assemble a complete phylogeny of the Orchidaceae.
Herbaria and Collections
Types at the Smithsonian Institution
- Search the Smithsonian (US) collection of thousands of
New York Botanical Garden
- Search the entire collection at the New York Botanical Garden
Types at NYBG - Type specimens at the New York Botanical Garden (NY).
- Type and general specimens at the Harvard University Herbaria
Types at the University of Florida
- Type specimens at the University of Florida herbarium (FLAS).
the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (P).
Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad
(INBio), Costa Rica
- A directory of genera, species, and collection label data for
Orchidaceae in the collection at the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad
(INBio), Costa Rica.
Missouri Botanical Garden - TROPICOS - The source for tropical specimens, most of Atwood's specimens databased here.
DNA - find gene sequences, chromosome numbers, or see how PCR and cycle sequencing work
NCBI - Search GenBank
for DNA sequences of anything.
Index to Plant Chromosome Numbers.
DNA Learning Center - This takes you to a great site devoted to public genetics education. An operating unit of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, it offers news and information about resources, workshops, and programs. Good animation to show how PCR and cycle sequencing work. Essential to understanding molecular systematics. Works on PC's and MAC's, but you need to download the animations.
Kew Orchid Checklist - The Kew Orchid Checklist of all currently recognized genera and species [Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2004)] is used as our reference. The current link is to the entire live, database-driven monocot checklist.
IPNI - The ultimate in plant
names and bibliographic references.
- This is an important resource for conducting literature searches. This is what we used to call Kew Record. It now takes you to a more extensive database. Here you can search across Kew's three major bibliographic databases in one go.
Just a few links to get you to some interesting pages.
Flora Mesoamericana - THE major floristic work for Central America. In Spanish and English.
Biological Diversity of the Guianas - Covers the three countries in northeastern South America.
Orchid Related Web Sites
This part could go on and on and on, so only a few preliminary links are given here. This should get you started in finding orchid web pages.
Selby Gardens - The Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota Florida - great to visit, large display collection of orchids
Key to Costa Rican Maxillarias by John Atwood - John's work is the basis for our molecular work, but this is now somewhat out of date.
Orchid Research Newsletter - Newsletter from Kew, covers all aspects of scientific research on orchids
The Tribe Maxillarieae - This site has a number of good photographs of species of Maxillaria, as well as photos of numerous other interesting orchids.
The Orchid Mall - A set of links to a number of orchid related pages, many commercial ones. We have no relation to any of these vendors or web pages, but thought this link might be useful.
American Orchid Society - The major organization devoted to all aspects of orchids
The Sobralia Page - Not maxillarias, but devoted to another very intersting group of orchids, and has some good links. We have some molecular data on this group and should have it available soon.
The Stanhopea Page - Another good page for interesting genera. | <urn:uuid:99d7fb77-0831-4950-b5b0-0d7118f6838e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/herbarium/max/links/links.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00144-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.821396 | 911 | 3.0625 | 3 |
You don't need/want to use atoi() on a single character. You'd simply take the value of the char variable:
char word = "total";
for (i = 0; i < sizeof word - 1; i++)
printf("%c %d\n", word[i], word[i]);
As for your "hash table", you are not really implementing a hash table, you just need an array to store all possible character values, so something like:
You can then iterate through the string like my for loop above, increasing count[value] each time. Then you can iterate through the string again, finding the first character where count[value] is still 1.
int count[CHAR_MAX + 1]; /* but see footnote */
Most systems you encouter will likely have a CHAR_MAX of 127 and a CHAR_MIN of -128, which denotes that a char on that system can be between -128 and 127. These values don't matter, but the point is that CHAR_MIN can (and often will) be negative.
Therefore you have to be careful you do not end up trying to access count[negative_number]. One simple approach is to check that it's >= 0 before assignging it to your count array and ignore characters that fall outside.
A more thorough approach would be to declare your array instead as:
And then use an offset when you assign to make sure your result is always in range:
int count[CHAR_MAX - CHAR_MIN + 1];
instead of just:
count[value - CHAR_MIN]++;
Of course, another solution is just to explicitly use an unsigned char instead. | <urn:uuid:71f1c333-559a-4a7b-a803-873ce89bc398> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://cboard.cprogramming.com/c-programming/74877-hash-table-creation-insertion.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394605.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.859159 | 350 | 2.671875 | 3 |
The Governor, Lord Rowallan, addressing the annual dinner of the Launceston Legacy Club, 1961
Legacy is a volunteer organisation dedicated to the care of the widows and children of deceased servicemen – their 'legacy'. Legatees' work involves emotional, practical and financial support for deceased veterans' families, including social activities, employment, and education support for their children.
The Legacy movement originated in Hobart in 1923 with the formation of the Hobart Remembrance Club under war hero Sir John Gellibrand. This consisted of a group of returned soldiers who agreed to support the employment opportunities of returned soldiers and their businesses, which were suffering alarming rates of failure. The Hobart club inspired the formation of Legacy in Melbourne, yet repeatedly rejected requests to officially join the growing Australia-wide Legacy movement. The Launceston Remembrance Club (formed 1927) however was affiliated with Legacy in 1930, officially changing its name to Launceston Legacy in 1933. Despite adopting some Legacy-type work, the Hobart Remembrance Club did not officially join Legacy until 1940. During and after the Second World War Legacy broadened its activities in Tasmania, to include not only care of veterans' children but support for their widows.
Legacy in Tasmania is divided into Hobart and Launceston branches with smaller regional sub-organisations. In 2003, approximately 5000 widows and 30 children were receiving some form of assistance from Legacy's support network.
Further reading: M Lyons, Legacy, Melbourne, 1978; Hobart Legacy, Hobart Legacy, [Hobart, 1995]. | <urn:uuid:b730352b-8ca7-419a-8588-7b7e9cc85869> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/L/Legacy.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00112-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954315 | 323 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Diabetes & Oral Health: A Well Research by Phoenix Dentists
Your diabetes can influence your teeth and it is well researched by phoenix dentist. A Dentist in Phoenixhas found that uncontrolled diabetes will probably get gum malady or alternate issues underneath. The uplifting news: Good propensities will help keep your mouth solid.
Phoenix dentisthave revealed that diabetes can make you more inclined to have cavities and parasitic contaminations. Other potential issues include:
• Difficulty battling off contaminations, including those that may prompt gum sickness
• Slower mending time after dental surgery
Dry mouth, called xerostomia, is normal among individuals with diabetes. Saliva is essential to oral wellbeing - it helps to wash away nourishment particles and keep the mouth soggy. When you don't sufficiently deliver dampness, microbes flourish, tissues can get chafed and kindled, and your teeth can be more inclined to rot.
Indeed, you can ensure your teeth and oral wellbeing. Here's the way given by Dentists in Phoenix.
Ventures to Take
• Make beyond any doubt a routine for brushing your teeth at any rate twice every day and floss once per day.
• Use a good prescribed mouth wash twice every day to help check microbes that can bring about plaque development on teeth and gums. Must get prescribed by Aesthetic Family Dentistry before using mouthwash.
• Check your mouth for aggravation or indications of draining gums. On the off chance that you see either, tell your dental practitioner at the earliest opportunity.
• Have your teeth professionally cleaned at regular intervals, or even after every 3 or 4 months. YourCosmetic Dental Servicesmay also recommendyou to going up the cleaning calendar on the off chance that you tend to develop plaque or tartar rapidly.
• Make beyond any doubt to informyour Best Phoenix Dentiststhat you have diabetes. Give her the names of all remedy and over-the-counter medications you take.
Your dentistmay elude you to a periodontist or Cosmetic Dentistry - a Dentists who has some expertise in gum ailment - if your gum issues continue or appear to get bad. These care and precautionary measures are really very important in routine life but unfortunately we are lacking in this regard. A special attention is required too for this important aspect because teeth are also part of our health and body. | <urn:uuid:b1628bc6-b39b-4181-bcb5-71f98aa0167c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://cosmeticdentistry.neosites.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919798 | 491 | 2.5625 | 3 |
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A new report by the Arizona PIRG Education Fund, "Highway Boondoggles: Wasteful Spending and America’s Future," calls I-11 an example of wasteful highway spending based on its outdated assumptions of ever-increasing driving. The study points to data showing that the $2.5 billion proposed project is based on forecasts that are out of sync with current trends and that, at nearly all of the highway’s traffic counter locations, traffic growth has been slower than forecasted in project documents or has actually declined. The study, which also details ten other highway "boondoggles" across the country, calls for state and federal policy makers to reprioritize scarce transportation dollars to other projects.
"Arizona tax dollars shouldn’t be gambled on a highway to Las Vegas, particularly when the odds are based on reversing a trend in how Arizonans travel," stated Diane E. Brown, Executive Director of the Arizona PIRG Education Fund. "Bikes, Trains and Less Driving," a report by the Arizona PIRG Education Fund and St. Luke’s Health Initiatives, found that between 2005 and 2012 Arizona saw a 10.5 percent decline in annual vehicle miles traveled per capita and Arizonans increasingly look to public transportation to get around.
According to the report, despite the end of the Driving Boom in Arizona and across the country, the United States continues to spend tens of billions of dollars each year on highway expansion. More specifically:
- U.S. federal, state and local governments spent roughly as much money on highway expansion projects in 2010 as they did a decade earlier, despite a dramatic change in anticipated future growth in driving. In 1999, the federal government anticipated that Americans would be driving 3.7 trillion miles per year by 2013 – 26 percent more miles than we actually did.
- States continued to spend $20.4 billion a year constructing new roads or expanding the capacity of existing roads between 2009 and 2011, according to Smart Growth America and Taxpayers for Common Sense. During that same period, states spent just $16.5 billion repairing and preserving existing roads, even as those roads’ surface conditions worsened.
- If the states had spent their road expansion money on repairs instead, they could have halved the portion of road surfaces in poor condition by 2011. If that practice had continued, no state-owned roads would have surfaces in poor condition by the end of 2014.
The report also states that the eleven highway projects it highlights – slated to cost at least $13 billion – exemplify the need for a fresh approach to transportation spending. Brown said that the projects, some of them originally proposed decades ago, either address problems that do not exist, or have serious negative impacts on surrounding communities that undercut their value. Brown added that the report points to a sampling of many questionable highway projects across the country that could not only cost taxpayers billions of dollars to build but many more billions of dollars over the course of upcoming decades to maintain.
"Americans have been driving less, yet state and federal policy makers want to spend billions of dollars on highway expansion projects based on obsolete assumptions," said Brown. "While Arizona struggles to maintain basic infrastructure and meet growing demands for investment in public transportation and other non-driving forms of transportation, our state should not waste money building unnecessary new roads."
The Arizona PIRG Education Fund encourages state and federal policy makers to:
- Reconsider all plans for new and expanded highways in light of new transportation trends and recent changes in traffic volumes. This includes projects proposed to be completed via public-private partnerships.
- Reorient transportation funding away from highway expansion and toward repair of existing roads and investment in other transportation options.
- Encourage transportation investments that can reduce the need for costly and disruptive highway expansion projects. Investments in public transportation, changes in land-use policy, road pricing measures, and technological measures that help drivers avoid peak-time traffic, for instance, can often reduce congestion more cheaply and effectively than highway expansion.
- Reevaluate transportation forecasting models to ensure that they reflect changing preferences for housing and transportation among Millennials and others, and incorporate the availability of new transportation options such as carsharing, bikesharing and ridesharing.
- Invest in research and data collection to more effectively track and react to ongoing shifts in how people travel.
We're teaming up with big restaurant chains to stop the overuse of antibiotics on factory farms. Call on KFC to stop selling meat raised on routine antibiotics.
Your donation supports Arizona PIRG's work to stand up for consumers on the issues that matter, especially when powerful interests are blocking progress. | <urn:uuid:051409dc-b2ba-4e44-9801-099ec5d399d4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.arizonapirg.org/news/azf/report-calls-i-11-example-wasteful-spending-based-outdated-assumptions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00048-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95196 | 956 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Acid loving plants prefer a soil pH of about 5.5. This lower pH enables these plants to absorb the nutrients they need to flourish and grow. The list of what type of plants grow in acidic soil is extensive. The following suggestions are only a few of the most popular plants that need acid soil. Generally, the eastern half of the United States and the Pacific Northwest are best for plants that need acid soil.
Before asking what types of plants grow in acid soil, check your soil pH. A neutral soil can be treated with acid producing materials to lower the pH enough to satisfy acidic soil flowers. If you live in an area where soil is alkaline, it will probably be easier to grow your acid loving plants in containers or raised beds.
Acid Loving Plants – Shrubs
Popular acid loving plants include:
Plants for Acidic Soil – Flowers
These acidic soil flowers grow best at a lower pH.
What Plants Grow in Acid Soil – Trees
Almost all evergreens are plants that need acid soil. Some acid loving trees are:
No list of what type of plants grow in acid soil would be complete without the hydrangea. Bright blue flower heads cover the plant when the soil is acidic.
While most acid loving plants become chlorotic (yellow-green leaves) without a low enough pH, the hydrangea’s flowers bloom pink with no visible discoloration in the leaves, making it a good indicator of the pH in your garden soil. | <urn:uuid:ba724ab2-407f-4231-bd90-b0e5c235c548> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/soil-fertilizers/acid-loving-plants.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00038-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905238 | 309 | 3.296875 | 3 |
One of the relatively unknown trivia about the design of the CD is how Philips decided on the size of the hole in the middle. The answer is so simple it is almost laughable. One of the engineers simply picked a Dutch 10 cent coin (dubbeltje) out of his pocket and used it as a mask. This means that if you put a dubbeltje in the center hole it fits but doesn't fall through. Amazing.
Unfortunately, with the Euro now being the official currency in the Netherlands this gets more and more difficult to demonstrate, because 10 cent coins are not in circulation anymore. So if you come across one, save it so that you can show this trick to your grandchildren when they admire your antique CD collection.
I haven't been able to verify this for sure anywhere (thanks stupot for getting me to research this), but my story is supported on http://184.108.40.206/success/sony.htm where it says:
Did you know?
The size of the compact disc, the playing length and the size of the hole in the middle were determined during negotiations between Philips and Sony in the 1980s. They figured that the size of a (Heineken?) beer coaster would be "in the ballpark". The hole in the middle is exactly the size of a Dutch dime. The playing length was determined by the Japanese. The wife of Akio Morita, the president of Sony, played classical music, among which Beethoven's 9th (72 minutes). This had to fit on the CD. The inner diameter in combination with the playing length determined the eventual outer diameter of 12 cm.
There are also mentions on the following site: | <urn:uuid:7915fa96-58a0-40cc-bd5b-c3721a389a84> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://everything2.com/user/blondino/writeups/compact+disc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00195-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95742 | 345 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Abraham Cooper(1787-1868), Painter
Sitter in 9 portraits
Artist associated with 1 portrait
Showed an aptitude for drawing from an early age. When he was twenty-two, wishing to possess a portrait of a favourite horse under his care, he bought a manual of painting. His employer bought the resulting work and encouraged him to continue. Cooper was introduced to Benjamin Marshall, the animal painter, who took him into his studio. From 1811 he was a regular contributor to the illustrated periodical Sporting Magazine and soon after began exhibiting paintings at the Royal Academy and the British Institution. Initially his subjects were animals; he later started making meticulously researched battle paintings, often of the civil war, and acknowledged as the country's principal battle painter. | <urn:uuid:fc0d28d5-65b8-430f-ba22-fe6bdf12104b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp01014/abraham-cooper?role=art | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00007-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987579 | 154 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Study nature and use of areas of earth's surface, relating and interpreting interactions of physical and cultural phenomena. Conduct research on physical aspects of a region, including land forms, climates, soils, plants and animals, and conduct research on the spatial implications of human activities within a given area, including social characteristics, economic activities, and political organization, as well as researching interdependence between regions at scales ranging from local to global.
More Tasks for Geographers
More Skills for Geographers
More Abilities for Geographers
More Work Values for Geographers
More Interests for Geographers | <urn:uuid:bf15b39e-b13d-489b-bd28-05f8458d1b1e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/cgi/databrowsing/occExplorerQSDetails.asp?soccode=193092 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397696.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00060-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92976 | 118 | 2.75 | 3 |
This is a story of about how the parts of a puzzle locked into place 800 million years ago. The puzzle is an ion pump that you can find in any mushroom, mold, or yeast. I’ve reproduced a picture of it here.
Fungus cells, like our own cells, have lots of little pouches inside of them for carrying out special kinds of chemical reactions. In order for those reactions to work, there have to be a lot of positively-charged protons inside the pouches. To get those protons into the pouches, ion pumps like this one force them through membranes.
This pump (which is is offically known as a vacuolar ATPase complex) is a wonderfully complex collection of proteins. They fit together elegantly, and they cooperate to get this vital job done. One particularly cool feature of this pump is the ring lodged in the pouch’s membrane, where it spins around like a wheel. The ring is made up of six proteins–four copies of a protein called Vma3, and a single copy of two other proteins called Vma11 and Vma16–that lock together. If a mushroom can’t make all three types of proteins, its pump won’t work. And without a pump, it’s a dead mushroom. Simple as that.
Joe Thornton, a biologist at the University of Oregon, and his colleagues wondered how this pump came to be. Readers of the Loom may recall a couple previous posts I’ve written about Thornton’s work. He traces the molecular history of life by resurrecting proteins from hundreds of millions of years ago and playing around with them to figure out how they work. This week in Nature, Thornton and his colleagues describe the history of the fungus ion pump. It’s the first time they’ve reconstructed the history of such a molecular “machine” this way. It’s also a useful lesson in the ways complex things evolve–especially things that seem so complex that it’s hard to imagine how they could have evolved step by step from something simpler.
The closest major group of species to fungi are animals. Like fungi, we have vacuolar ATPase complexes in our cells. But they’re different. Instead of three types of proteins in the ring, we only have two types–five copies of Vma3, and one of Vma16. When it comes to ion pumps, at least, we are pretty primitive compared to mushrooms.
The scientists compared the genes for these ring proteins to other genes in order to reconstruct their evoluationary history. They discovered that Vma11, the ring protein unique to the fungi, and Vma3 are closely related. At some point after the ancestors of fungi branched off from the ancestors of animals, an ancestral ring protein duplicated, forming the Vma3 and Vma11 proteins in fungi. Both of the proteins evolved a lot after the duplication. Thornton estimates that 25 amino acids changed between the ancestral protein and Vma3 in fungi, and 31 changed on the way to Vma11.
By comparing Vma3 and Vma11 in yeast, Thornton and his colleagues were able to infer the structure of their ancestral protein. They then created that long-vanished protein (which they dupped Anc.3-11) and ran an experiment to see how it worked 800 million years ago.
To run their experiment, the scientists first shut down the Vma3 and Vma11 genes in yeast cells. Normally, this would stop the yeast from growing. But then they inserted the Anc.3-11 gene into the yeast. The yeast build a two-protein ring instead of its normal three-protein ring, and did just fine with them. Thornton and his colleagues then created yeast strains with just Vma3 shut down. The yeast could combine Vma11 and Vma16 with Anc.3-11 to make a working ring. The same success occurred when they only shut down Vma11.
Based on experiments such as these, Thornton has developed a hypothesis to explain how the ring evolved. This picture illustrates the steps. The ancestral ring in the common ancestor of animals and fungi is shown on the right. It only has two types of proteins. Green is the ancestral form of Vma3 and 11, and red is the ancestral Vma16. The black squares, circles, and triangles represent parts of the proteins that can only lock onto certain parts of other proteins (represented by the matching recesses). As you can seen, the green protein (the ancestor of Vma3 and Vma11) is versatile, able to lock onto several different proteins.
Animals have the same basic ring. In fungi, on the other hand, some important changes happened. First, Anc.3-11 duplicated. (Vma11 is shown in yellow.) Then the links between the proteins changed. None of the proteins gained any new functions, however. Instead, simple mutations caused them to lose an interface. The red dots on the blue and yellow fungal protein show where these interfaces disappeared. These mutations robbed the proteins of their former versatility. As a result, the ring now only fits together if all three types of proteins are present in one particular arrangement.
You might think that life gets more complex as it evolves new features. Our eye can form sharp images, for example, but in order to do so, it first had to evolve a cavity, a pinhole opening, and a lens. In the case of this ring, however, Thornton has found just the opposite. Its simpler ancestor was made up of more versatile proteins. As the proteins duplicated and degenerated, their arrangement became more complicated. No one can say yet how often this kind of evolution happened. We’ll have to wait for some more molecular time travel for an answer. | <urn:uuid:8f7a5502-6dd7-46f4-8090-1df3eb617070> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2012/01/10/resurrecting-evolution-to-solve-an-800-million-year-old-puzzle/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00164-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959686 | 1,211 | 3.90625 | 4 |
Music is a language everyone can understand! Music is an excellent way to help children recognize the Spirit of the Lord. Music supports gospel principles and testifies that these principles are true.
The Friend magazine often includes wonderful songs that are fun and engaging. Many of the songs support the yearly theme for Primary and may be used during sharing time, in classes, and even in activity days! The good feelings the songs bring will help those we teach recognize and remember they are children of God.
Music used in Primary brings reverence, creates an atmosphere that invites the Spirit, teaches children the gospel, and gives them joy as they sing songs using fun and engaging methods.
* The audio for this selection could not be included due to copyright restrictions or availability. | <urn:uuid:9004b24a-9590-4d41-a04a-9878a3a9a63d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.lds.org/music/library/music-for-children?lang=eng&country=car | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00041-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952072 | 150 | 3.171875 | 3 |
10 Kasinas (Devices): (pp. 139-165)
The ten Kasinas are simple physical phenomena upon which one can meditate. The
first four are the traditional elements: earth, air, fire, and water. These can
be used by people of all dispositions. The next four are on the four colors,
blue, red, white, and yellow. These should be used by people with hateful
natures. The last two are space and light. These can also be used by people of
10 Asubhas (Objects of Impurity):
The ten objects of impurity are various sorts of corpses. Meditating on corpses
is useful is reducing lust. This practice should only be followed under the
guidance of a master. Below is a list of the asubhas and who will find them
Swollen Corpse: Those who lust after beauty of form.
Discolored Corpse: Those who lust after beauty of the skin and complexion.
Festering Corpse: Those who lust after a sweet-smelling body, using perfumes.
Fissured Corpse: Those who lust after the firmness and solidity of the body.
Mangled Corpse: Those who lust after fullness of the flesh, such as the breasts.
Dismembered Corpse: Those who lust after graceful movements of the body.
Cut & Dismembered Corpse: Those who lust after perfection of the joints of
Blood-stained Corpse: Those who lust after beauty produced by adornments.
Worm-infested Corpse: Those who are attached to the idea that the body is
"me" or "mine."
Skeleton: Those who lust after perfection of the teeth and nails.
10 Anussatis (Recollections):
The first six anussatis (pp. 183-208) are meditations upon the Buddha, the
Dharma, the Sangha, the devas, morality, and generosity. These meditations are
most useful for those with devotional natures. These practices will gladden the
mind when it is in distress and will increase faith and virtuous tendencies. The
first three are particularly useful in reducing fear and dread.
The next anussati is concentration on breathing (pp. 227-258). It is a
particularly useful meditation, being
the only one
the Buddha described which can lead to both mindfulness and insight. This
is the only meditation which can lead a practitioner from beginning practice all
the way to enlightenment. Concentration on breathing is especially recommended
for those who are deluded or excitable.
The eighth anussati is meditation on death (pp. 209-215). This is useful for
people who are intelligent. This meditation leads to a deep realization of
The ninth anussati is mindfulness of the body (pp. 216-226). This is useful for
those with lustful natures. (This is probably the only meditation of these forty
which will be useful to Westerners in reducing lust, as the other meditations
for reducing lust all require a decaying human corpse, and these are difficult
to come by.)
The last anussati is meditation on tranquility (pp. 259-262). Not surprisingly,
this leads to peace and tranquility. It is useful for those who are intelligent.
4 Brahma-Viharas (Excellent
Qualities): (pp. 263-313)
The four brahma-viharas are metta (friendliness or loving-kindness), compassion,
sympathetic joy, and even-mindedness. Meditation on these qualities leads to an
increase of them, causing excellent conduct in interactions with the external
world. They are "an essential preliminary to the whole training of the religious
aspirant" (p. 263). Meditation on these qualities is especially useful for those
with hateful natures.
Ahare patikkula sanna (Perception of
the Loathsomeness of Food): (pp. 314-317)
This meditation is designed to eliminate the greed and sensual excitement which
is often caused by food. This practice is most suited to those who are
Catudhatuvavat-thana (Analysis of the 4
"The main object of this meditation is to free the mind from the conception of
individuality in regard to the physical body and to realize its elemental nature
with no thought of personal distinction" (p. 318). The meditation consists of
noticing how the body is merely a synthesis of physical elements, without
entity. This practice is most suited to those who are intelligent.
4 Arupas (Formless Spheres): (pp.
These are four formless stages which are developed in turn after all
psychological impediments are removed. In order, they are the sphere of infinite
space, the sphere of infinite consciousness, the sphere of nothingness, and the
sphere of neither perception nor non-perception. The goal of these stages is
complete self-possession, free from all thoughts of the world. This is not
nirvana, but it is very close to nirvana. These formless spheres are suitable
for people of all dispositions, after they have reached the fifth absorption
All page numbers refer to Paravahera Vajirana Mahathera, Buddhist
Meditation in Theory and Practice (Malaysia: Buddhist Missionary
Society, 1962). Back to top | <urn:uuid:221d6897-2cee-42a6-a318-3fb98ed9c848> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dhammatalks.net/Articles/Karen_Andrews_Forty_Meditations_Who_should_use_Which.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00180-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895503 | 1,133 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Archbishop of Paris, born at Nantes, 1 March, 1819; died in Paris, 28 January, 1908.
Educated at the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice he became in 1849 secretary to Bishop Jacquemet at Nantes, then, from 1850 to 1869, vicar-general. In 1871 he became Bishop of Belley where he began the process for the beatification of the Curé d'Ars. On 7 May, 1875, he became coadjutor of Cardinal Guibert, Archbishop of Paris, whom he succeeded 8 July, 1886, becoming cardinal with the title of Santa Maria in Via, 24 May, 1889. He devoted much energy to the completion of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Montmartre, which he consecrated. Politically, Cardinal Richard was attached by ties of esteem and sympathy to the Monarchist Catholics. In 1892, when Leo XIII recommended the rallying of Catholics to the Republic (see FRANCE, The Third Republic and the Church in France ), the cardinal created the "Union of Christian France" ( Union de la France Chrétienne ), to unite all Catholics on the sole basis of the defence of religion. The Monarchists opposed this "rallying" ( Ralliement ) with the policy which this union represented, and at last, at the pope's desire, the union was dissolved. On many occasions Cardinal Richard spoke in defence of the religious congregations, and Leo XIII addressed to him a letter (27 December, 1900) on the religious who were menaced by the then projected Law of Associations. In the domain of hagiography he earned distinction by his "Vie de la bienheureuse Françoise d'Amboise" (1865) and "Saints de l'église de Bretagne" (1872).
The Catholic Encyclopedia is the most comprehensive resource on Catholic teaching, history, and information ever gathered in all of human history. This easy-to-search online version was originally printed between 1907 and 1912 in fifteen hard copy volumes.
Designed to present its readers with the full body of Catholic teaching, the Encyclopedia contains not only precise statements of what the Church has defined, but also an impartial record of different views of acknowledged authority on all disputed questions, national, political or factional. In the determination of the truth the most recent and acknowledged scientific methods are employed, and the results of the latest research in theology, philosophy, history, apologetics, archaeology, and other sciences are given careful consideration.
No one who is interested in human history, past and present, can ignore the Catholic Church, either as an institution which has been the central figure in the civilized world for nearly two thousand years, decisively affecting its destinies, religious, literary, scientific, social and political, or as an existing power whose influence and activity extend to every part of the globe. In the past century the Church has grown both extensively and intensively among English-speaking peoples. Their living interests demand that they should have the means of informing themselves about this vast institution, which, whether they are Catholics or not, affects their fortunes and their destiny.
Copyright © Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company New York, NY. Volume 1: 1907; Volume 2: 1907; Volume 3: 1908; Volume 4: 1908; Volume 5: 1909; Volume 6: 1909; Volume 7: 1910; Volume 8: 1910; Volume 9: 1910; Volume 10: 1911; Volume 11: - 1911; Volume 12: - 1911; Volume 13: - 1912; Volume 14: 1912; Volume 15: 1912
Catholic Online Catholic Encyclopedia Digital version Compiled and Copyright © Catholic Online | <urn:uuid:336acb41-7461-489c-9db5-97a45bfcba39> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=10026 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00200-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946706 | 752 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Marbled Murrelet Monitoring
The marbled murrelet is a seabird that spends most of its life in coastal waters, while nesting primarily in the trees of late-successional and old-growth forests. The marbled murrelet monitoring program assesses status and trends in marbled murrelet populations and nesting habitat to answer the basic questions:
- Are the marbled murrelet populations associated with the Northwest Forest Plan area stable, increasing, or decreasing?
- Is the Plan maintaining and restoring marbled murrelet nesting habitat?
Murrelet monitoring is an interagency cooperative effort. We monitor marbled murrelet population size and trends by annual sampling of populations in near-shore waters, using a standardized, boat-based line transect method. Trends in the amount and quality of nesting habitat in the Plan area are evaluated periodically using habitat suitability models applied to current vegetation maps developed by the Late-Successional and Old Growth Forest monitoring program. | <urn:uuid:f9925e2d-0b40-4750-a7c5-0c863a5d1a27> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.reo.gov/monitoring/mm-overview.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403825.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00110-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903871 | 201 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Imagine that the year is 1919. You have just survived one of the greatest infectious disease disasters
of the 20th century. Twenty million people world-wide (500,000 in the United States) have died from
a brutal disease that causes their lungs to fill with fluid and their bloodstream to be filled with deadly toxins. A large
number of these people were young adults with no previous health problems.
The disease responsible is influenza : the common flu.
An outbreak such as the one in 1918 could easily occur again if the influenza virus were to undergo a
process known as "antigenic shift".
The information below and on following pages describes antigenic shift in influenza and its consequences for public health. | <urn:uuid:fc0550fa-1658-40b5-87ce-65695e50928f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.colorado.edu/Outreach/BSI/k12activities/interactive/actidfluanimation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00163-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971446 | 144 | 3.640625 | 4 |
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Kidney and renal tract disorders are conditions affecting the function of the body's urinary system, which involves the kidneys, ureters, bladder and urethra . These organs play a primary role in the regulation of chemical balance within the body by filtering and excreting blood-borne wastes and excess fluid.
Most people have two kidneys, which are located just below the rib cage on either side of the spine. Each kidney is about 11.5 centimetres long, 5-7.5 centimetres broad and 2.5 centimetres thick, and weighs about 150 grams .
The kidneys have several functions that are necessary for maintaining life . The major job of the kidneys is to remove waste from the blood and eliminate it in the urine. In order to do this, the kidneys filter the entire blood supply every two minutes. The filtering is done by tiny clusters of looping blood vessels, each of which is known as a glomerulus (derived from the Greek word for filter; the plural word is glomeruli). There are approximately 1 million glomeruli in each kidney. Blood is filtered in the glomeruli, and water and wastes pass into the tubules and become urine.
The kidneys also keep the right amount of fluid in the body by making more urine when there is too much fluid, and by reducing urinary output when the body has less fluid than required (such as when a person is dehydrated) . The water to be eliminated from the body as urine passes from the kidneys to the bladder via the ureters - two thin-walled tubes of around 30 centimetres in length (the left ureter is slightly longer than the right) . This urine is stored in the bladder - a muscular, distensible reservoir with a capacity of around 500 millilitres - and is then discharged from the body via the urethra.
The kidneys also help control blood pressure by producing a chemical called renin . Several other chemicals are produced and released by the kidneys as a part of maintaining body balances.
The kidneys and each of the components of the urinary tract is subject to a variety of adverse conditions that may affect the filtration and excretion process and alter the body's chemical balance . Disorders of the kidneys and urinary tract range in severity. End-stage renal disease (ESRD) is the most severe disorder, but other less serious conditions may facilitate progression to this stage of kidney disease which, if left untreated, results in death.
The pathological conditions of the kidney and urinary tract can be divided generally into two groups , . The first encompasses conditions that result in damage to the kidneys (broadly referred to as renal disorders) such as glomerulonephritis and renal failure. The second includes disorders of the urinary tract, such as urinary tract infections. However, a few conditions (for example, urolithiasis) are more difficult to categorise as they may affect the components of either sub-system.
Kidney and urinary tract disorders are generally attributed to various combinations of multiple risk factors including: infections, heavy drinking, smoking, dietary factors, low birthweight and infant malnutrition, increasing adult weight, genetic susceptibility, and the signs of syndrome X (increasing blood pressure, insulin, blood glucose and lipid levels) . The contributory role of syndrome X in the development of kidney dysfunction is of particular note as it links renal disease with a range of other chronic conditions, specifically type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
Renal failure occurs when the kidneys allow harmful waste products to build up in the body . The failure can be acute - having a rapid onset and generally a relatively short course - or chronic - of long duration.
Acute renal failure may be due to trauma, conditions that impair the blood flow to the kidneys, some toxic substances (such as mercury compounds, carbon tetrachloride, or ethylene glycol), bacterial toxins, glomerulonephritis, or acute obstruction of the urinary tract . Treatment consists of specific therapy for the primary condition and either peritoneal dialysis or haemodialysis.
Chronic renal failure is a slow and progressive loss of kidney function over several years, often resulting in permanent kidney failure, known as end-stage renal disease (ESRD) . People with ESRD need dialysis or transplantation to replace the work of the kidneys.
Glomerulonephritis refers to a number of conditions that result in inflammation of the glomeruli and subsequent damage to the filtration process of the kidney . This condition may be acute, subacute or chronic . Acute glomerulonephritis, also known as acute nephritic syndrome, frequently follows infections, especially those of the upper respiratory tract caused by particular strains of streptococcal bacteria.
Of the various conditions that are encompassed by the term glomerulonephritis, acute post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis (APSGN) continues to pose a significant public health problem in developing countries and among Indigenous populations of the developed world. APSGN is a potentially serious, non-suppurative condition that occurs two to three weeks after skin or throat infection with nephritogenic strains of group A streptococcal streptococci (GAS) .
Glomerular diseases damage the glomeruli, initially letting protein and sometimes red blood cells leak into the urine . Glomerular disease can also interfere with clearance of waste products by the kidney, allowing them to build up in the blood. Loss of blood proteins like albumin in the urine can result in a fall in their level in the bloodstream, resulting in a reduced capacity of blood to absorb extra fluid from the body. Fluid can then accumulate outside the circulatory system in the face, hands, feet, or ankles and cause swelling.
A urinary tract infection (UTI) is an infection anywhere in the urinary tract . UTIs are usually caused by bacteria that can also live in the digestive tract, in the vagina, or around the urethra. These bacteria can enter the urethra and travel to the bladder, where they are usually flushed out with urine and do not cause an infection. On occasions and among some people (women are more prone to UTI than men, and older people are more prone that younger people) the bacteria multiply sufficiently to cause an infection.
A UTI may be present despite few physical symptoms, but lower urinary tract infection is typically associated with frequent, painful urination, and tenderness in the lower pelvic area . Upper urinary tract infection is associated with a range of clinical features, most commonly: fever, back or loin pain; and chills and rigors . Single episodes of UTI rarely have serious consequences, but recurrent or persistent infections may promote kidney damage when coupled with conditions such as diabetes.
© Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet 2013
This product, excluding the Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet logo, artwork, and any material owned by a third party or protected by a trademark, has been released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) licence. Excluded material owned by third parties may include, for example, design and layout, images obtained under licence from third parties and signatures. | <urn:uuid:a06c15b5-76a9-4ccc-a0f5-1f0ebf94f3f0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/chronic-conditions/kidney/reviews/background-information | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00151-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941023 | 1,492 | 3.921875 | 4 |
Aug 15 2010
When attempting to model complex physical processes one rapidly comes upon the fact that measurements become so noisy you cannot detect and reliable signal in the data. Â This ‘noise’ comes from any number of sources, but usually it is caused by the limited accuracy of the measurement device, or the fact even an accurate measurement can decay over time or distance.
In the world of satellites let me use an example of each noise source. When we need to confirm a satellite’s orbit path we use the RF signal between the satellite and the earth to measure the distance travelled by the RF signal. We do something similar when we bounce a laser off the moon’s surface to measure it’s distance to incredible precision. But the problem is the fact the satellite is whipping by us and it is impossible to measure the velocity in 3 dimensions from a single distance measurement. We actually have to ping the satellite many times for a long time to drive out the noise and derive a fairly accurate position and velocity vector. That over-sampling removes the measurement noise by repeatedly measuring the distance and computing velocity in three dimensions. It works even better if you can measure from to different points on the Earth with divergent views of the orbit path (just like how GPS uses triangulation to fix the point on the Earth).
The second source of noise in satellite orbits is the fact even orbits in space are not simple physical processes. The Newtonian orbit equations of gravity are just fine, but there are other more subtle forces at play. So the orbit ‘decays’ off the Newtonian solution within days, and within a week most satellites need to be resampled to correct for all these other forces. This decay basically builds up error in the initial solution, which itself had to over-sample to remove measurement error. Understanding the sources of errors over time and distance is what we call an error budget. Something completely foreign to the ‘scientist’ at CRU/IPCC/GISS, et al.
In the poor science of Climate Change the most strident voices of Doom & Gloom seemed to be the ones least able to grasp the factors of noise (or error). These people ran statistical models and saw or derived what they wanted to see out of pure noise (of both kinds of error). In the temperature records from 1880 to present time we have ever increasing measurement accuracy and sampling leading to the current age. But you cannot equate measurements of 1880-1940 with measurements taken from 1950-2010 with equal quality. The fact is the older data is riddled with measurement error and low samples. Even the modern data, while accurate, has been thinned to the point the sampling is way too sparse (which is how you can have one thermometer represent a cell of 1200 km or 700 miles in the NASA GISS data sets) to be considered accurate.
Temperature simply decays rapidly in accuracy with distance and time. And I mean time in the sense of historic measurements and distance in terms of all measurements over all times. Even worse, prior to 1880 the accuracy just collapses, as there are no measurements at all. You have proxies from local regions which are inaccurate and both in measurement and distance. For example, trees that exist on the edge of the tree line are supposed to be good temperature proxies (while they are probably, at best, mediocre CLIMATE proxies). A recent study of Russian tree rings, a subset used by CRU and IPCC to claim recent global warming, shows the vast majority of tree line region do not show recent warming and conflict with the one data set IPCC and CRU have placed all their claims on.
Except for the Yamal reconstruction, all tree-ring and non-tree ring reconstructions appear to agree, and so indicate no correlation between temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Proxies are not thermometers, and anyone who treats them as such is not performing science. Proxies can only point to a wide range of temperatures OR climate conditions.
So the noise level gets really high once we go in history prior to 1880, and these regional proxies can represent a wide range of possible climates, even when they are within 1200 km of each other. Conclusion: they are meaningless benchmarks.
Over at WUWT there is now another earth shattering study coming out proving how bad the science of CRU and IPCC has been in reconstructing the global climate for the last 1000 years. The study is an independent statistical assessment of the infamous hockey stick, and it has concluded there is no way the IPCC-Mann graph is valid. It uses a different method to assess the proxy data and compare it to the modern record. What is most damning in the results is the conclusion that the proxy data is so noisy with regards to pulling out any temperature record that any number of possible climate histories could be artificially pulled from the noise:
We find that the proxies do not predict temperature significantly better than random series generated independently of temperature. Furthermore, various model specifications that perform similarly at predicting temperature produce extremely different historical backcasts. Finally, the proxies seem unable to forecast the high levels of and sharp run-up in temperature in the 1990s either in-sample or from contiguous holdout blocks, thus casting doubt on their ability to predict such phenomena if in fact they occurred several hundred years ago.
Let me put these 3 conclusions into simple english:
- The proxy data is no better at predicting past or current temperatures than a set of random numbers. In other words, so many other factors influence the proxies you could throw dice and get an as good or better guess at temperature.
- When they did tweak their models to align the proxies with the modern temperature record (1880-2010), these models produced a wide range of historic patterns, proving it is impossible to use proxies to look back in time with any accuracy.
- The proxies completely missed the temperature rise of the last 20-30 years, which indicates they cannot detect major temperature swings now or in the past.
This pretty much throws out all the IPCC-CRU conclusions because they were based on faulty premises and ignorance of how to model complex systems. I have said from day 1 the CRU data was too noisy to detect sub degree changes, and would be lucky to accurately make claims of regional temperatures within 2-5°C. This report confirms my back-of-the-envelope conclusions.
The report goes on to show why these limited proxies (so few in number that go back in time and limited in geographic distribution) simply fail to the claim to represent historic temperatures:
This is disturbing: if a model cannot predict the occurrence of a sharp run-up in an out-of-sample block which is contiguous with the insample training set, then it seems highly unlikely that it has power to detect such levels or run-ups in the more distant past. It is even more discouraging when one recalls Figure 15: the model cannot capture the sharp run-up even in-sample. In sum, these results suggest that the ninety-three sequences that comprise the 1,000 year old proxy record simply lack power to detect a sharp increase in temperature. See Footnote 12
Why? Because the true historic temperature is lost in the noise. There is no way, with current scientific understanding, to pull the historic temperature record within an 1°C. None. Can’t be done. Therefore, we don’t confidently know if today is warmer or cooler or the same as the Roman and Medieval Warming periods.
QED: The cult of Global Warming now has no scientific basis behind it.
Here is  the new temperature record, with its massive error bars and indication things are still normal on planet Earth. All we can say for sure from this new look back in time is that it was not much different from now 1,000 years ago. Then a Little Ice Age hit and the Earth cooled, before springing back in the last 200 years. Which is what we knew already.
BTW, I was going to post on this study showing why grid size does matter, and why the smaller the grid (and the more samples per grid) produces more accurate (less noisy) results. And here is another example from Nepal on why one thermometer only produces wide spread noise, not accuracy, in the temperature record. In fact, this 2nd post hints that the local record was completely fictionalized by NASA GISS to turn raw data showing cooling into ‘adjusted’ data showing warming.
Both just emphasize the basic conclusions from the bombshell that just hit the Church of Al Gore/IPCC – there is no scientific foundation for all the Chicken Little cries. Â I found this conclusion to sum it up nicely:
Research on multi-proxy temperature reconstructions of the earth’s temperature is now entering its second decade. While the literature is large, there has been very little collaboration with universitylevel, professional statisticians (Wegman et al., 2006; Wegman, 2006). Our paper is an effort to apply some modern statistical methods to these problems. While our results agree with the climate scientists findings in some respects, our methods of estimating model uncertainty and accuracy are in sharp disagreement.
Climate scientists have greatly underestimated the uncertainty of proxy based reconstructions and hence have been overconfident in their models.
Emphasis added. Yeah, if you ignore the lack of accuracy and all the error noise and squint just right – everything looks good. | <urn:uuid:22e931d5-c998-48bd-99bf-6bacf0241fd4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/13969 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00024-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939889 | 1,939 | 3.234375 | 3 |
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These small group study notes contain outlines, cross-references, Bible study discussion questions, lessons to learn, and applications. Feel free to print them, copy them, or share them. I only ask that you remember these are are personal study notes and are only meant as a supplement to your own study, not a replacement. I hope you can find some helpful information inside. Visit our inductive Bible study main page for more studies on this and other books of the Bible.
Romans 8:1-17 Inductive Bible Study Notes, Cross References, Outline, and Discussion Questions
Romans 8:1-17 By Jason Dexter
I. The Law of the Spirit frees us from sin (verses 1-4)
II. Contrast of the old and new natures (verses 5-11)
A. The goal of the mind is different (verses 5-6)
B. The old is an enemy of God (verses 7-8)
C. The new life is filled with the Spirit and with life (verses 9-11)
III. We are given the high position as children of God (verses 12-17)
What key words do you see in this passage that indicate the main point or points?
1. What does the word "therefore" indicate? What is the connection of these verses to the previous verses?
2. What is the law of the Spirit of life? Why does Paul use the word "law" here? (Probably he uses it loosely for the gospel to maintain parrallelism.)
3. Then what does "the Law" in verse 3 refer to?
4. What does it mean that Jesus was in the likeness of "sinful flesh"? In what way did Jesus' coming condemn "sin in the flesh"?
5. Who are those who "are according to the flesh"? (The unregenerate) What does it mean to set their mind on the things of the flesh? Give some examples. Can you think of one word that means "set your mind on" (meditate). What does it mean to set one's mind on the things of the Spirit? Give some examples. Will the inner thoughts and meditations of a person come out in their actions? How? Give some verses that show us what a believer should be setting their mind on and meditating about. Negative: James 4:4, 1 John 2:15, Positive: Psalms 1, Colossians 3:2, Php 4:8
6. What are the consequences of the two different mindsets? In other words, where do they lead?
7. What is the point of verse 7? (No neutrality) What did Jesus say about those who weren't for Him?
8. Can an unbeliever please God? Why not? What does the Bible say our good deeds are like in the sight of God?
9. What is true of those who belong to Christ?
10. What doctrine is taught in verse 10-11? Why is it important that the Holy Spirit indwells believers? How is this different than the Old Testament? What will the Holy Spirit do for believers? (Seal us, convict of sin, intercede for us, give us wisdom such as disciples when they were confronted by authorities.)
11. What does it mean that the Spirit will give life to our mortal bodies?
12. What doctrine is taught in verses 12-17?
13. What does it mean "you will live" at the end of verse 13?
14. How does the Spirit lead us?
15. What does "spirit of slavery" mean? What does "spirit of adoption" mean? What is the difference between how a slave and how a son feels? How might their actions be different? How might their motivations be different?
16. What are the benefits of being children of God? What are the obligations?
17. What does it mean that we are "heirs"? What do we inherit? In what way are we fellow heirs of Christ? What condition is attached to the verse? This seems like a strange condition, why do you think Paul mentions it? How can we suffer with Christ? What does suffering for Christ show evidence of a person's relationship to God? What does God normally allow to happen to someone before He exalts them? What is the difference between the Jewish form of passing on inheritances and the form God will use with believers? (Romans divided the inheritance equally among all children.)
Law- Once again the “law” is a key word. The first few verses contrast the results of the old law that could not free us from being slaves to sin and death and the new law we have since Christ, which sets us free.
Flesh- I’m not sure what word your Bible has for this, possibly yours has the word “body”. Both mean the same thing. This is a word used for our old sin nature. It talks about the old self, the one that is full of evil desires, lusts, temptations and selfishness. Those who are still living in the flesh and practicing the deeds of the flesh found in Galatians 5:16-21 (please read it) are not believers and are selfish, pursuing goals to serve themselves.
Spirit- The spirit was mentioned only once in the first seven chapters, but is mentioned over 20 times in chapter 8 alone. This is not surprising since the first 5-6 chapters focused mostly on sin and judgment and the law. But after justification and the indwelling of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit's role in our lives becomes paramount. This is the opposite of the flesh. If we are following the Spirit our new life in Christ is having the victory. Our goals are completely different than before. What about you? What are your goals now? Is it your goal to be rich? Is it your goal to get a great job? Is it your goal to get respect and honor from others? I ask myself the same questions. If these types of worldly things are our goals then we are living in and serving the flesh. If we are living in the Spirit and following the deeds of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-26 then we are children of God and His heirs.
There are probably some other key words you will find besides these. What are they? Why are they important? I look forward to reading your thoughts!
Verses 1-4: This part of the chapter has several sections. The first is in verses one to four. You can see that verse one is almost connected to the last chapter. In the last chapter Paul was describing his difficult struggle between the flesh and the Spirit. In verse 24 of the last chapter he asks, “Who will set me free from the body of this death?” Also in the last chapter he shows we should be condemned for our sin. But here in verse one he says we have NO condemnation because we believe in Christ. Consider this for a moment. It is an amazing thought.
For example suppose you are little baby with no home. A very kind and rich old man makes you his son or daughter. He gives you a beautiful room and raises you up with everything you could ask for. But he gives you one command, one rule. You ungratefully break this rule so he must put you out of the house. Later he sends his one and only son to help you, but instead of welcoming him you beat him, make fun of him, and finally kill his only son. You would expect the old man to be very angry and put you in jail or give you some large punishment. But instead he forgives you and gives you a great inheritance. That would be an amazing thing and in this world it will probably never happen. Except it did happen once. That is what happened when God forgave you and me our sins and did not condemn us for the evil we did. Now I know this story isn’t exactly like the one in the Bible. I just made it up, but it shows the great mercy and love of God. And you may say, “but we didn’t sin in the garden of Eden, Adam did”, or, “I didn’t kill Jesus on the cross, the Jews did.” Actually each of us are responsible. We would have done the same thing if we were there. And it was our sins that put Jesus on the cross. He was thinking of you in particular when He died. And if you were the only person in the whole world Jesus still would have given His life for you. That is amazing! (Luke 15 has some good examples of God’s love).
Ok, back to the verses. So we have no condemnation. The law of the OT was not enough to take away our sins. In the OT they had to make the same sacrifices again and again and again. But it was never enough. It only covered the sin. It did not take it away. What thousands of sheep and cows could not do Jesus did when He died on the cross. He was the perfect Lamb of God, the final sacrifice. Sins were taken away and we were redeemed. This is what set us free. Only by the power of Christ’s blood (Hebrews 9:22b) could do it.
Verses 5-6. Look at questions. These are two of my favorite verses in the chapter. They show the completely different goals that we have after we believe in Christ. It says, “set their minds”. To me the word “set” is important. It shows a complete focus on something. They are making a firm decision. Sometimes I stubbornly “set” my mind on something. You can see the change in my face as my eyes focus in and my jaw hardens and I clench my teeth! (Give example from playing basketball the other day.) Are you ever like that? You make a decision and follow your decision with action; no one should get in your way! Well this is like what these verses are talking about. Before Christ we are “set” on doing the evil deeds of the flesh. Look at verses in Hebrews 12:1-29, Php 3:7-16, 1 Cor 9:24-7. After Christ comes in our lives we live by the Spirit and are “set” on following the Spirit of life and peace, God’s law. You see there are two choices. We can’t “set” our mind to do both things. We either have to give our hearts and lives completely to following God or we have to give ourselves completely to following the flesh. I choose God. This doesn’t mean we never make mistakes or sin. But our firm desire, our main goal for our life is to serve God. Negative: James 4:4, 1 John 2:15, Positive: Psalms 1, Colossians 3:2, Php 4:8.
Set your mind on something also shows that you continue thinking about it through force of will. It describes deliberate meditation. If we allow our minds freedom to roam as they choose, they will naturally turn to the worries and troubles we face, our worldly dreams, or even worse, temptations that may cause us to stumble. Do you control your mind or do you allow your mind to control you? What is the solution if our mind roams to an area it shouldn't? Simply take it to God in prayer and then occupy your mind with something else. Can you think of any verses that touch on this? We've looked at some. Proverbs 4:23, Psalms 26:2, Proverbs 18:15.
Verses 7-8 This is very simple. If we set our mind on serving our-self we make ourselves enemies of God. Only non-believers will set their mind on this. They do not want to submit to God’s law. They cannot submit themselves to God’s law. Believers on the other hands are regenerate. Titus 3:5. We are new creatures. We are born again and there has been a radical shifting of our priorities. The unregenerate cannot please God. This is a very important truth, but one that is hard to accept for many people. They think that God should be pleased with the "moral" unbelievers actions and look more to what a person does and less to what he believes. This is why you have many people accusing God and Christians of being narrow-minded. After all, aren't good things done by people of other religions? How would you answer this?
Imagine the story of the prodigal son taking place in modern day China. The boy rebels against his father, steals the estate, runs off and uses it in wild spending and crazy business ideas. One of the crazy business ideas takes off and the son ends up rich and successful, all the while still living in rebellion and pursuing his wild lifestyle. Is the father pleased? No, he is not. He is grieved by the sons' actions and until the major issue of rebellion, theft, and lack of respect are solved, the sons' other accomplishments fade in comparison. More importantly, the father knows the son's heart. He knows that the son is evil and desperately wicked and has an "angle" for any good he does.
As humans, we can't look into people's hearts and that often makes us conclude that a good action shows a good heart. But Jesus condemned the Pharisees for their motivations although their actions were often right. This is why the unregenerate cannot please God. They are living in rebellion of their Maker. Their hearts are sinful and desperately wicked. And the good that they do, they probably have a selfish motivation for. You might say I am being cynical, but this is what the Bible teaches. We are all naturally sinful. In the flesh, we cannot please God, because the flesh is inherently sinful.
Only by walking in the Spirit can we please God.
Verses 9-11 But the regenerate are not like this. Each of us who has been born again is in the Spirit. Christ often describes Himself as “life”. And He often tells of the “life” He will give to us who believe in Him. I was thinking about it and I realize that non-believers don’t have a good life even if it looks like they do. Suppose they believe in evolution (Darwin). In this case they are just believe they are just a higher animal. They will live and die and that is the end. There is no God or no one in control. Life is meaningless. There is no goal, no purpose, no meaning. They only serve themselves. There is no hope for them. There is no peace for them. Just like James 4:14 says they are just a vapor, mist, steam, that appears for a little while and disappears. This type of life is very sad. It is dark and empty. But for us it is totally different. Because of the new life we have in Christ we do have a goal. We do have meaning. We do have peace and hope and our life is full of light and love. Here are some verses talking about the great life that is Christ or the great life we have in Christ. John 6:35, John 11:25, John 14:6, John 17:3, John 20:31. Also these verses guarantee that the Holy Spirit lives in EVERY believer. There is no question about this. If you are a believer the Holy Spirit will always live in your heart. Discuss the effects of the Holy Spirit indwelling us.
Verses 12-17 There are sort of two parts in these verses. The first is in verses 12 and 13. These tell us to “put to death” the deeds of the flesh. We must have a changed life. If someone lives just like their colleagues or neighbors or mother or father or brother or sister or classmates who don’t believe in God then probably they don’t believe God either. We must be different (1 Peter 1:13-16).
The second part is from verses 14 to 17. This tells us of the high position we have in Christ. We were enemies, now we are friends (This is called reconciliation). We were strangers, now we are children (This is called adoption). In verse 15 the word for father or Abba really means “daddy”. It is a very close and personal word. It shows the very close and loving relationship we can have with the God of the universe. Verse seventeen is one of my favorite in the whole Bible. It tells us we are God’s children and we have a great inheritance through God. What is this inheritance? I will let you think about that. There is one requirement for this inheritance. We must be willing to suffer for Christ. If we do He will glorify us. Check out Ephesians 1 if you want to read more about the high position we have in Christ and specifically Ephesians 1:4-5 to read about our adoption into God’s family.
Well, this part of the chapter surely had many great treasures in it. Continue meditating on this chapter through the week. Remember we must put to death the deeds of the flesh and follow the fruits of the Spirit. We must be different. The Holy Spirit is always with us and will help us. We should thank God for and rejoice in the wonderful (notice the “ful”, our life is full) life we now have. We should “set” our mind on following spiritual goals. And we should thank God for the high position we have since God adopted us.
Series on Romans Chapter by Chapter
Or go to the resources tab on the right and then click on Inductive Bible Study Notes. | <urn:uuid:c82d4341-c820-4862-9a0f-c32a0bcccacb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.calligraphyforgod.com/biblestudy/romans8-1-17.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00045-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964765 | 3,783 | 2.546875 | 3 |
For an adult, there's not much fun to be had when it comes to personal finance! But when it comes to teaching your child about money, the best thing you can do is make a game of it. Not only will this keep their attention, but it will also begin to plant the seeds of a sound financial future for them.
Learning the coins
The first step should be teaching your child what each coin is called.
Recognition - The simplest game of all, and one which teaches your child to recognise the different coins.
Lay out a selection of coins on a flat surface, and randomly say the name of each one. The children should point to the coin they think you've named.
You could play this with several children, making sure you have enough of each coin for each child. The first one to point to the correct coin keeps hold of it, and the winner is the one with the most value of coins at the end.
Treasure Hunt – Children love an excuse to go rummaging around the house!
Hide a number of coins around the home. Give each player a list of coins to find and send them on their way. The winner is the first child who arrives back with the correct amount of coins.
Allocating a color to each child and sticking the coins to that color paper will avoid confusion if there are several players.
Bingo – A nice noisy game for all the family!
Draw a 5x5 grid on a piece of paper. In each square, do 'rubbings' of different coins (don't forget to randomize the order on each grid). Give each player a grid and a marker, then place a handful of coins in a bag and pull them out one at a time, calling out the name. The players should mark off one instance of that coin on their grid. The winner is the first one to get a full house.
You could laminate the grids so the game can be played over and over.
Learning the value of coins
Next, you can begin teaching them the monetary value of each coin.
High/Low – A simple game which teaches the child relative values.
Each player starts with a handful of random coins. One player puts down a coin and says either "higher" or "lower". Each other player should then put down one of their coins which is higher or lower in value than the center one. The first child to put down a corresponding coins wins that round, and takes a turn at placing the starting coin.
You could expand the game with the use of paper money (real or Monopoly notes).
Snap – as if children needed an excuse to shout!
Give each child a handful of coins (lots of spare change will be needed here!). Prepare some pieces of paper with amounts written on them, and place these in the center of the table, one at a time. As each piece goes down, the players should find the correct combination of coins from their stash to equal the amount written on the paper, then yell snap!. The winner of each round keeps hold of the coins, and the winner of the game is the one with the most value of coins.
This game is also useful for teaching children how to add up money.
Instead of pieces of paper, you could use paper money.
Shops – a classic favorite which really needs no introduction!
Gather some empty packets, jars and tins (make sure all sharp edges are removed and everything's clean!) from around the home, and clearly label a price on each one, setting them out on tables. Then let the child's imagination run riot! This game is best played with two or more children, with one acting as shopkeeper.
You could give each child a 'shopping list', and ask them to get as many things on their list as they can with the money they have.
When shopping, tell your child what you're doing as you add up purchases, count out the money, and check your change. They'll grasp the idea that money is used to buy things much faster if they see you doing it regularly. If you usually pay with a card, try keeping loose change to pay for smaller items when your child is with you.
Let your child pick out a piggy bank and encourage them to put loose change in (perhaps their winnings from the games!). Open it periodically and count the contents, to demonstrate saving money to your child.
For every dollar or pound your child saves, add a small amount yourself, such as a dime/10p. Explain that you are paying them to save their money – the basic principle behind interest-paying savings accounts! Use a savings calculator to further demonstrate what happens to saved money when interest is added.
A big thank you goes out to Louise for helping our children learn about money in such a fun and easy way!
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Technorati Tags: money learning children kids youth Fun 4 The Children | <urn:uuid:8a381e62-0c6f-4626-a2a2-e5b44f01e225> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://fun4thechildren.blogspot.com/2010/09/money-and-fun-can-play-together.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00110-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958995 | 1,034 | 3.90625 | 4 |
Physical Best Activity Guide: Elementary Level, Third Edition,
presents fun activities that help students gain the knowledge, skills,
appreciation, and confidence they need to lead active, healthy lives,
regardless of physical and mental abilities or disabilities. It includes
instructions on adapting 78 activities for kids of all skill levels and
a CD-ROM with numerous reproducibles.
This comprehensive health-related fitness education program is back and better than ever!
Developed by top-level physical educators, this third edition will help students gain the knowledge, skills, appreciation, and confidence they need to lead active, healthy lives, regardless of physical and mental abilities or disabilities.
Physical Best Activity Guide: Elementary Level has been used with much success across the United States, and for good reason: The text contains 78 easy-to-use activities ranging from noncompetitive to competitive and less demanding to more demanding. It also includes activities that allow for maximum time on task. All the instructional activities address the national physical education standards, dance standards, or health standards.
This new edition retains the best activities from previous editions and offers new ones from outstanding teachers throughout the United States. You will learn how to adapt the activities for all children, regardless of skill level or ability. Students will also learn skills to help them set realistic goals, manage their activity levels, and remain healthy throughout their lives.
This text offers the following features:
A new chapter, “Combined-Component Training,” combines aerobic fitness, muscular strength and endurance, and flexibility into single activities.
A CD-ROM contains a wealth of reproducibles, including charts, posters, signs, station cards, handouts, and worksheets, many of which can be adapted to meet your needs.
A section of Internet resources helps you develop your own special events.
Physical Best Activity Guide: Elementary Level, developed by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, can stand alone or be used in conjunction with Physical Education for Lifelong Fitness: The Physical Best Teacher’s Guide, Third Edition, and Physical Best: Middle and High School Level. It can also be used with Fitnessgram®/Activitygram®, an activity assessment and computerized reporting system, and Fitness for Life: Elementary School, a comprehensive program promoting lifetime health-related fitness.
Part I: Introduction Chapter 1. Teaching Elementary Health-Related Fitness
National Standards for Physical Education
National Health Education Standards
National Standards for Dance Education
Integrating Physical Best Into the Elementary Physical Education Curriculum
Physical Best Activity Template
Chapter 2. Introduction to Health-Related Fitness Concepts
Health-Related Fitness Versus Skill-Related Fitness
Inclusion in Physical Education
Principles of Training
Key Physical Activity Guidelines for Children and Adolescents
The Activity Session
Part II: Activities Chapter 3. Aerobic Fitness
Defining Aerobic Fitness
Teaching Guidelines for Aerobic Fitness
Training Methods for Aerobic Fitness
Safety and Aerobic Fitness
Aerobic Fitness Newsletter
Chapter 4. Muscular Strength and Endurance
Defining Muscular Strength and Endurance
Teaching Guidelines for Muscular Strength and Endurance
Training Methods for Muscular Strength and Endurance
Motor Skill Development Through Muscular Strength and Endurance Activities
Muscular Strength and Endurance Newsletter
Chapter 5. Flexibility
Teaching Guidelines for Flexibility
Training Methods for Flexibility
Motor Skill Development Through Flexibility Activities
Chapter 6. Body Composition
Defining Body Composition
Relating Body Composition to the Other Health-Related Components
Teaching Guidelines for Body Composition
Body Composition Resources on CD-ROM
Chapter 7. Combined-Component Training
Teaching Guidelines for Combining Health-Related Fitness Activities
Chapter 8. Special Events
About Physical Best
CD-ROM User Instructions
Reference for elementary school physical education teachers.
Supplemental text for physical education college methods courses as well
as Physical Best workshops and certification programs.
SHAPE America — Society of Health and Physical Educators (formerly
AAHPERD) — is the largest organization of physical educators
in the country, with close to 20,000 members. SHAPE America created the
first-ever K-12 physical education national standards; developed the
Let’s Move in School public awareness campaign to increase physical
activity before, during, and after school; and originated the Shape of
the Nation Report, which reviews the status of physical education across
the United States. Among its many partners, SHAPE America works with the
Alliance for a Healthier Generation, the American Heart Association, The
Cooper Institute, First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative,
and the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition. | <urn:uuid:a53516d6-ee9c-4f40-8c21-02ee4667b309> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all-products/Physical-Best-Activity-Guide:-Elementary-Level---3rd-Edition | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393442.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00189-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.87316 | 972 | 2.9375 | 3 |
안녕하세요!In this lesson, let’s look at how to say “let’s” in Korean! There are many different ways to say this, but let’s look at the most common and neutral way to say it, as well as how you are NOT supposed to say it. 감사합니다.
We have a dialogue prepared in 100% Korean based on all the lessons in Level 3. If you want to check how much you can understand before studying all of the Level 3 lessons, try listening to the dialogue here.
Level 3 Grammar Textbook and Workbook
We’ve made the Level 3 lessons even better and published them as a grammar textbook! The grammar textbook itself is filled with very effective comprehension questions, but you can practice even further with our workbook for Level 3. Both are available now on our online bookstore. | <urn:uuid:71332897-982f-4062-ae0f-3c6c4ece7fa5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.talktomeinkorean.com/lessons/level-3-lesson-16/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00118-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961404 | 200 | 2.625 | 3 |
There’s evidence that mindfulness meditation can improve how we age and even fight disease. Yet, little is known about the brain changes behind the effects.
A new study may offer clues. The results suggest this type of meditation lowers levels of interleukin-6, which is involved in inflammation.
“We’ve now seen that mindfulness meditation training can reduce inflammatory biomarkers in several initial studies, and this new work sheds light into what mindfulness training is doing to the brain to produce these inflammatory health benefits,” says David Creswell, associate professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University.
For the randomized controlled trial, 35 job-seeking, stressed adults were exposed to either an intensive three-day mindfulness meditation retreat program or a well-matched relaxation retreat program that did not have a mindfulness component. All participants completed a five-minute resting state brain scan before and after the three-day program. They also provided blood samples right before the intervention began and at a four-month follow-up.
As reported in the journal Biological Psychiatry, the brain scans showed that mindfulness meditation training increased the functional connectivity of the participants’ resting default mode network in areas important to attention and executive control, namely the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Participants who received the relaxation training did not show these brain changes.
The participants who completed the mindfulness meditation program also had reduced IL-6 levels, and the changes in brain functional connectivity coupling accounted for the lower inflammation levels.
“We think that these brain changes provide a neurobiological marker for improved executive control and stress resilience, such that mindfulness meditation training improves your brain’s ability to help you manage stress, and these changes improve a broad range of stress-related health outcomes, such as your inflammatory health,” Creswell says.
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Ohio State University are coauthors of the study. The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse Opportunity Fund funded the work.
Source: Carnegie Mellon University | <urn:uuid:6386759a-8580-40a1-a970-ef04f41b6f49> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.futurity.org/mindfulness-meditation-inflammation-1101762-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00113-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926095 | 408 | 2.71875 | 3 |
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This Week in History - June 22, 1913
Shortly after abandoning his floundering career as an artist, Adolf Hitler tried his hand at stand-up comedy. Though he enjoyed some popular success at his new craft, the relentless abuse he received from the mostly Jewish comedic press - who almost unanimously dismissed his material as stupefyingly trite and misogynistic - left Hitler severely embittered, and he soon stomped off the stage for good, leaving generations to wonder, "What if?"
Presented here is a rare excerpt from one of his live performances at the Glucksen Haus in Berlin -
German to English translation:
"My girlfriend asked me if her butt looked big in her new pants and I said yes, because I don't give a shit."
"How come women are always complaining that men leave the toilet seat up? As if they should never lift a finger?"
"I want to know what international body met to sanction the down position as the correct position for a toilet seat! Did I miss a meeting here?! I say quit bitching and go wipe my pee off the floor, go clean the kitchen, go polish my shoes, go make me a sandwich! I'm out of here!" | <urn:uuid:b7084276-7696-49eb-bd57-191f8d41587e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://newsmutiny.com/pages/Farts/HitlerStandUp.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00002-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968332 | 269 | 2.78125 | 3 |
[ History | Maps | References ]
Other map pages:
[ Locations | Map themes & related | Cartographers ]
[ Return to mythical geography home page ]
Nicolo Zeno, a descendant of the Zeno brothers, supposedly found the manuscript along with a map, which he published in Venice in 1558. It was claimed that this showed that it was not the Genoese Christopher Columbus who had discovered America, but the Venetian Zeno brothers a century before. In the map, Frisland and Icaria are islands near Greenland, Estotiland is part of the North American continent, and Drogio is a large island nearby, perhaps Nova Scotia. It is now generally thought that this volume was a complete fabrication, but it was widely accepted as true when first issued.
The original map was published in 1558 and this was followed in 1561 by another version issued by Giordano Ruscelli, also from Venice. Gerard Mercator, in his seminal world map of 1569 included the Zeno geography, and this depiction was followed closely by Abraham Ortelius in his influential map of the Northern Atlantic in 1573. The non-existent lands of the Zeno brother's account, then, were spread widely to most other cartographers of the late sixteenth century.
The most interesting of these mythical lands is Frisland, which Mercator included in a separate inset on his 1595 map of the North Pole. This non-existent island led to considerable confusion in the mapping of Greenland and Baffin Island in the following centuries. Martin Frobisher, in his important exploration of 1576, reported "sight of a high and rugged land." What he had sighted was the coast of Greenland, but as he was following Mercator's map of the world, he though he had seen Frisland (which he claimed for England in the name of Queen Elizabeth). When he then got to Baffin Island, he thought he was at Greenland, and so the reports of all his explorations around Baffin Island were ascribed to Greenland. Thus it was that for many years "Frobishers Strait" (which interestingly is actually a bay) was put at the southern tip of Greenland rather than on Baffin Island. Frisland, which was accepted by most cartographers during the following century, appeared as late as the eighteenth century on a map by T.C. Lotter!
An early derivative of the Oretlius map of the North Sea, containing many non-existent lands and islands, most based on the Zeno geography. This map was introduced to Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia by Sebastian Petri in 1588, replacing an early map of the same region. It is based upon Abraham Ortelius' map first issued in 1573. The non-existent islands of Frisland and Icaria are shown near Iceland, and further west Estotiland is shown as a part of North America. Other mythical features abound, including the islands of St. Brendan, Brazil, Verde, and Groclandt. Whatever its link to reality, this is a graphic image of Renaissance cartography and legend; a truly fabulous map. (Nordenskiold; p. 52ff.) $1,400
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In 1600, Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori, now a nice plaza lined with cafés, was one of the city’s execution grounds, and on Ash Wednesday of that year Giordano Bruno, a philosopher and former priest accused of heresy by the Inquisition, was taken there and burned. The event was carefully timed. AshWednesday is the primary day of Christian penance. As for the year, Pope Clement VIII chose it because 1600 was a jubilee for the Church—a festivity that would be enhanced by the execution of an important heretic. Bruno rode to the Campo on a mule, the traditional means of transport for people going to their death. (It was also a practical means. After years in the Inquisition’s prisons, many of the condemned could not walk.) Once he arrived and mounted the pyre, a crucifix was held up to his face. According to a witness, he turned away angrily. He could not speak; he had been gagged with a leather bridle. (Or, some say, an iron spike had been driven through his tongue.) He was tied to the stake, and the pyre was lit. When it had burned out, his remains were dumped into the Tiber. As Ingrid Rowland writes in “Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $27), the Church thereby made Bruno a martyr. But “a martyr to what?” she asks. That is the question that her book, the first full-scale biography of Bruno in English, tries, with difficulty, to answer.
Bruno was born in Nola, a small city east of Naples, in 1548. His father was a mercenary in the service of the Spanish crown, which had ruled Naples since the beginning of the century. According to Rowland, he was a lonely, bookish boy. At the age of fourteen, he was sent to Naples to be educated—a move that apparently left a permanent mark on his mind. At that time, Rowland writes, Naples was the fifth-largest city in the world, housing masses of “fishermen, seamstresses, vendors, porters, laundresses, carpenters, sausage makers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and water sellers who went barefoot in the mild climate and lived largely on bread and figs.” Above those plain folk were the grandees who ruled the city; below them were the beggars and prostitutes who swarmed the alleys. No one knows where Bruno lived during his first years in Naples, but Rowland imagines him in crowded student quarters, “a solitary teenager plunged suddenly into urban chaos.” This experience, she says, taught him survival skills, which he would need in his life. It may also have been the source of what would later be his governing image of the universe: fullness, infinitude.
At seventeen, he entered the Dominican monastery of San Domenico Maggiore, in Naples, a learned institution staffed with sons of the nobility. That didn’t mean that they behaved any better than other priests—or noblemen—of the period. During Bruno’s time, friars of San Domenico were involved in cases of assault, theft, and forgery, not to mention the chronic problem of fornication. But this rich monastery was useful to Bruno. There, Rowland writes, he learned to move among the ruling class. He also acquired intellectual rigor. San Domenico was a conservative institution. It taught Scholastic philosophy—the world of Aristotle, revived and Catholicized by St. Thomas Aquinas and other scholars of the Middle Ages—as if no other philosophies existed. They did exist. From the early Renaissance onward, that world picture—limited, tidy, and comforting—had been challenged by a rebirth of the ideas of Plato, who had a very different slant on things: visionary, poetic. After Bruno’s Scholastic training at San Domenico, Rowland says, he encountered Neoplatonism, and it transformed his thinking. She gives this a lot of space. As a Renaissance historian—see “The Culture of the High Renaissance” (1998) and “From Heaven to Arcadia” (2005), a collection of essays for The New York Review of Books—she has been dealing with Neoplatonism for years, and she likes the idea of philosophy as rapture. That’s probably why she decided to write a book on Bruno. She sees Neoplatonism as his beacon, but she is glad for him that, before he stuck his head up among the stars, his feet had been planted on the ground by Aristotle and Aquinas.
That dichotomy becomes the basis of her portrait of Bruno. He had three personalities, she says. One was Scholastic—strict, system-building. The second was “a Platonist’s poetic exaltation.” He added a third, all his own: “a dark wit born in his parents’ little house . . . and stiletto-sharpened on the streets of Naples.” In time, the darkness came to rule his thoughts. In one of his books, he described himself as “irritated, recalcitrant, and strange, content with nothing, stubborn as an old man of eighty, skittish as a dog that has been whipped a thousand times.” His nickname, he said, was “the exasperated.”
He became a priest at the age of twenty-four and received the equivalent of a doctorate in theology three years later. He was apparently a brilliant student and also, now and then, an exasperated one. Upon moving into his cell at the monastery, he disposed of the holy art—pictures of the Madonna, St. Catherine of Siena, a pious bishop—that decorated its walls. Another time, in a discussion with an older priest, he defended the logic (not the substance) of an argument made by the fourth-century priest Arius that Christ was not fully divine—the so-called Arian heresy. Eventually, a copy of Erasmus’s proscribed “Commentaries,” with notes by Bruno in its margins, was found in the latrine that he used. Even at the height of the Counter-Reformation, which this was, such offenses, distributed over ten years in the monastery, seem trifling. They sound like notations from the F.B.I. file of some poor professor who dared to teach Gorky in the fifties. Nevertheless, Bruno, at around the age of twenty-seven, was informed that he was being investigated by the Inquisition. Was someone trying to get rid of him? (Why the latrine search, an unpleasant task in the sixteenth century?) Was he trying to get out of the priesthood? (Why annotate the Erasmus? Why not just read it?) Whatever the real story, Bruno, hearing of the proceedings, discarded his priest’s garments and headed north, eventually crossing the border into Switzerland. To the Church authorities, that was as good as a confession; they defrocked and excommunicated him in absentia. To Bruno, apparently, it was a liberation, and he became the man we know, or think we know: the freethinker, the heretic, the man who would be burned.
For fifteen years, he travelled—to Geneva, Toulouse, Lyon, Paris, London, Oxford, Wittenberg, Prague, Helmstedt, Frankfurt, Zurich, Padua, Venice—never staying more than two or three years in any city. Wherever he went, he looked for a job teaching philosophy, and in some places he got one. In Paris, he gave a series of thirty lectures on logic and metaphysics. Elsewhere, he had less luck. At Oxford, when he gave a tryout presentation, the audience laughed at his accent and his Neapolitan way of talking with his hands. (He hated the English ever after. They “look down their noses,” he said, “laugh at you . . . fart at you with their lips.”) Sometimes he damaged his own cause. During his stay in Geneva, he published a broadsheet listing twenty mistakes that a highly placed professor had made in a single lecture. He was sued for slander and had to leave town in a hurry.
By about the age of twenty-eight, he was publishing as well as teaching. In his lifetime, he produced some thirty works—treatises, pamphlets, dialogues, poems, even a play. Some of these writings were in Latin, the language of his schooling; accordingly, they were rigorous, systematic, Scholastic. The others were in vernacular Italian, and these were often ebullient, concrete, and dramatic—Neoplatonic, by Rowland’s definition. Either way, they advanced the concept of the universe that he said he had begun developing soon after his departure from Italy.
In this system, there were three main ideas. One was heliocentrism, the notion that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of the universe. This revision of the standard, Ptolemaic cosmos was, of course, not original to him. It had been made by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in 1543, five years before Bruno was born. But while Copernicus’s repositioning of the earth and the sun was a radical proposal—indeed, a heresy (the Church needed the Earth, the arena of salvation, to be the center of the universe)—in other respects his cosmos was quite orthodox: a finite structure consisting of fixed spheres that revolved in concentric circles, just as in Ptolemy. Bruno, on the other hand, proposed an infinite cosmos, consisting of innumerable heliocentric worlds. This, his second and most important idea, was also not new. It had been put forth by Nicholas of Cusa, a German cardinal, in the fifteenth century. But here, too, Bruno went further, claiming that the universe was a vast, wheeling, unknowable thing, and that all theories about it, including his own, were not descriptions but merely approaches—“models,” as we would call them today.
Finally, Bruno developed an atomic theory, whereby everything that existed was made up of identical particles—“seeds,” in his terminology. Other people, notably Lucretius, had had this idea, but, again, Bruno expanded it. Not only were all parts of the cosmos constituted of the same elements, but God, whom the Church strictly set apart from the material world, resided in these elements. It was his love, informing every “seed,” that unified the world.
In all these ideas, there seems to have been a single preoccupation: immensity—things incalculably large and incalculably tiny, and all joined together in a kind of choral exultation. I think that this mental image, more than any quarrel with the Church, underlay Bruno’s philosophy. In an Italian dialogue that he wrote in his mid-thirties, he paints a fanciful portrait of his home town, Nola. There, he says, fate has decreed
that Vasta, wife of Albenzio Savolino, when she means to curl her hair at her temples, shall burn fifty-seven hairs for having let the curling iron get too hot, but she won’t burn her scalp and hence shall not swear when she smells the stench, but shall endure it patiently. That from the dung of her ox fifty-two dung beetles shall be born, of which fourteen shall be trampled and killed by Albenzio’s foot, twenty-six shall die upside down, twenty-two shall live in a hole, eighty shall make a pilgrim’s progress around the yard, forty-two shall retire to live under the stone by the door, sixteen shall roll their ball of dung wherever they please, and the rest shall scurry around at random. . . . Antonio Savolino’s bitch shall conceive five puppies, of which three shall live out their natural lifespan and two shall be thrown away, and of these three the first shall resemble its mother, the second shall be mongrel, and the third shall partly resemble the father and partly resemble Polidoro’s dog. . . . Paulino, when he bends over to pick up a broken needle, shall snap the red drawstring of his underpants, and if he should blaspheme for that reason, I mean for him to be punished thus: tonight his soup shall be too salty and taste of smoke, he shall fall and break his wine flask.
Here the structural rule of Catholic theology, and of Western thought—hierarchy—is serenely discarded. The things of the world are numberless, and they are all equal, and interesting. In Bruno’s cosmology, that rule applied not just to humble matters like the goings on in Nola but also to great and sacred things. In his book “The Song of Circe” (1582), the sorceress calls the universe to order, beginning with the sun: “Apollo, author of poetry, quiver bearer, bowman, of the powerful arrows, Pythian, laurel-crowned, prophetic, shepherd, seer, priest, and physician. Brilliant, rosy, long-haired, beautiful-locked, blond, bright, placid, bard, singer, teller of truth. . . . Reveal, I pray, your lions, your lynxes, goats, baboons, seagulls, calves, snakes, elephants. . . . The turtle, butterfish, tuna, ray, whale, and all your other creatures of that kind.” To enumerate was Bruno’s joy and, in some of his writings, such as these, the engine of his dizzying prose.
Another idea of his, which has not attracted as much attention, because it is not a heresy, had to do with “artificial memory,” the science of improving recall. This was not a side project. It was the subject of many of his Latin writings, and often the source of his income during his wandering years—he tutored people in memory skills. Ancient orators had used artificial memory systems, mentally attaching their ideas onto statues, or objects in the rooms of a building, so that later, in their minds, they could revisit those statues and rooms, retrieve their ideas, and thus give seven-hour speeches without note cards. Closer to Bruno’s time, a Catalan mystic named Ramon Llull had refined the method, imagining memory as a system of concentric wheels. Bruno adopted Llull’s schema and enlarged it. Rowland bravely tries to summarize the methods he developed. One involves storing words by their syllables, she says: “the first syllable as an ‘agent’ who is a mythological figure (the Egyptian Apis bull, Apollo, the witch Circe); the second syllable as an action (sailing, on the carpet, broken); the third syllable as an adjective (ignored, blind, at leisure); the fourth as an associated object (shell, serpent, fetters); the fifth as a ‘circumstance’ (a woman dressed in pearls, a man riding a sea monster).” Given these rules, Bruno described to his readers how, for example, one would remember the word numero, “number.” In Rowland’s paraphrase:
The “NU” . . . is the Apis bull, “ME” is “on the carpet,” “RO” is “neglected.” . . . Bruno, clearly influenced by Ramon Llull, advises envisioning these stored sets of syllables and their imagery on concentric wheels, each with thirty compartments corresponding to the various combinations of letters. The outermost wheel in the system stores the agents (or first syllables of words), the second wheel stores the actions (or second syllables), the third wheel stores adjectives (or third syllables), and so on inward to the fifth wheel. A single sentence thus becomes a pageant of mythological characters set in strange places, engaged in strange actions in strange company.
How marvellous, and how utterly incomprehensible! And this was only one of his systems. But Bruno may have used such methods—he was known for his prodigious memory—and with their endless numbers of combinations, as in a giant slot machine, they obviously contributed to his vision of an infinite cosmos.
Inconveniently, that vision was heresy from end to end. If there were countless worlds besides ours, this sidelined the Christian story. Creation, expulsion, salvation: such things might have happened, but somewhere off in a corner, while other things were happening on other planets. Also eliminated was God’s difference from humanity. If, as Bruno saw it, God was present in every atom of the universe, then transubstantiation became a silly idea. (God was already in the wine.) Ditto incarnation. Bruno later said that he started having doubts about Jesus at the age of eighteen; in his mature philosophy, the Messiah has no place. Nor does original sin, or pretty much any sin. God “makes his sun rise over good and bad,” Bruno wrote. Even devils were going to be pardoned. To lead a virtuous life, you had only to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As the reader may have noticed by now, much of this constitutes liberal Christian thought in our time. (What Bruno discarded was the Church’s literalism—exactly what many of today’s believers have done.) Likewise, Bruno’s cosmology anticipated modern physics and astronomy. But it did not accord with the views of the sixteenth-century Church. It sounded like Protestantism, or worse.
That was why he had fled his homeland. For fifteen years, he lived in relative safety in the cities of the North, which, if not Protestant, were more tolerant than Italy. Then he did something inexplicable. Was he homesick? Had he become overconfident? In any case, he returned to Italy, and within a year he had been captured by the Inquisition.
Soon after recrossing the border, he took a job tutoring a Venetian nobleman, Giovanni Mocenigo, in artificial memory, but Mocenigo made little progress, and he came to suspect that his teacher was cheating him, holding back some key to the method. So one day he locked Bruno in the attic of his palazzo and called the Inquisition. In his deposition, he accused Bruno of the heresies listed above, plus some more, and of saying (in Mocenigo’s words) “that our Catholic faith is full of blasphemies . . . that our opinions are the doctrine of asses, that we have no proof that our faith has any merit with God, and that he marvels at how many heresies God tolerates among Catholics.”
Venice was a modern-minded commercial city, far less conservative than Rome or Naples. Furthermore, Bruno eventually recanted. Therefore the Venetian inquisitors let him live, but they did not release him, because the Vatican had got wind of the case and was demanding extradition. Venice complied, and in Rome Bruno was retried on essentially the same charges, with a few additions obtained from his cellmates in Venice. One of them reported that Bruno had called Christ “a dog cuckold fucked dog” and had given him the finger—a not unreasonable action on the part of a man who had been locked up for months in a Venetian hellhole, with four other, equally maddened prisoners. The proceedings in Rome, however, lasted longer—seven years. The Roman jurists, eventually headed by Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, an eminent Jesuit theologian (he was later canonized), were more methodical than the Venetians. They tracked down his books, and read them. According to Rowland, they may also have worried that to execute Bruno, who in his exile had enjoyed the patronage of various noblemen, might be politically unwise. Bruno parried with his inquisitors. Twice he offered to recant and then withdrew the offer. We don’t know all the particulars of the inquiry. (The trial records are lost. Only a summary, discovered in the Vatican in 1941, survives.) But, in the end, Bruno gave his inquisitors an unanswerable ultimatum: he told them that if the Pope came forward to certify that the actions he was charged with were definitely heretical, or that the Holy Spirit had said they were, then he would recant. If not, not. The Pontiff did not condescend to join in this discussion, and the inquisitors probably did not invite him to. They insisted on their own ability to recognize false doctrine. So, as in other heresy trials, the conflict came down to a simple quarrel: the Church’s word versus the individual’s understanding of his own experience. The Church won. Bruno was declared an “impenitent, pertinacious, and obstinate heretic,” and he was condemned to die.
Rowland does the best she can with this material, but she has a big problem, which is that very little is known about Bruno’s life. She is unable to tell us much of anything about his childhood, his teaching, his friendships, or his moral character. And, when she does have something to report, it is often a wild card, which she has trouble fitting into the rest of the story. She says, for example, that Bruno, after being thrown out by the Roman Catholic Church, was also excommunicated by the Calvinists, in Geneva, and by the Lutherans, in Helmstedt—clearly, organized religion was not for him—but we hear nothing about his prior conversion to these faiths. She also tells us that in his exile he applied repeatedly (she cites three separate occasions) to be taken back into the Roman Catholic Church, and was refused each time. That is curious. Returning to the Church, as Bruno knew, would have involved a major act of penance, including the disavowal of most of his writings. How could he—famously intransigent, a champion of free thought—have contemplated that? And, if he did, what possessed him, in a public lecture in Helmstedt, to compare the sitting Pope to the Medusa head, infecting the world with “ignorance and depravity”? Did he think that this would get him back into the Church?
What about his love life? Rowland writes that after his departure from the priesthood he “pursued women with Falstaffian matter-of-factness.” Whom, when, where? She doesn’t say. Whatever his sexual activities, a passage that Roland quotes from one of his dialogues suggests that he did have strong feelings about women. How could men pine, he asked,
for that bosom, for that white, for that crimson, for that tongue, for that tooth, for that lip, for that hair, that dress, that mantle, that glove, that slipper, that high heel, that avarice, that giggle, that scorn, that empty window, that eclipse of the sun, that throbbing, that disgust, that stench, that sepulcher, that cesspit, that menstruation, that carrion, that malaria, that uttermost insult and lapse of nature?
This is something other than matter-of-factness. Rowland tries to argue that Bruno didn’t really hate women. She says that since this dialogue, written in England, ends with a tribute to Elizabeth I, Bruno “must have believed on some level, that male and female made no difference in the potential of an individual soul.” But evidence for such a belief is nowhere in sight. Rowland is well aware of the gaps in her portrait of Bruno’s life, and she tries to fill them with other material. For his years in the monastery, she again has almost no facts to go on, so, once she deposits him there, she switches gears and offers a series of history-of-ideas chapters—on Neoplatonism, on Kabbalah, and so forth—in order to let us know what intellectual trends might have influenced him at that time. She is a lively writer, and these chapters are interesting. Still, we’re sitting there wondering, How’s he doing in the monastery?
We do not get a firm hold on his ideas, either. In the past half century, there have been two large trends in Bruno scholarship. In the nineteen-sixties, the English historian Frances Yates claimed that he was a hermeticist, carrying on the tradition of the Renaissance mystics and alchemists. She called him a “poet-magician.” Later, in the nineteen-nineties, this view was disputed by Hilary Gatti, a historian of science, who argued that Bruno’s contributions were mainly to natural science, which grew so fast during his time. (Nine years after Bruno died, Galileo invented his telescope, and the information that he gained from it landed him, too, before the Inquisition, under Bellarmine. Rowland thinks that Bellarmine, feeling guilty over Bruno, may have pressed Galileo to recant, and thus saved his life.) Rowland wants nothing to do with the hermeticism theory, and though her book is dedicated to Gatti, she is also skeptical about Bruno’s credentials as a scientist. To her, he was primarily a philosopher. Her discussions of his philosophy are often sketchy, however. Trying to explain why the Roman inquisitors took seven years to decide Bruno’s case, she guesses that maybe they didn’t understand his books. I think she had the same problem. At one juncture, poignantly, she suggests that Bruno may have held back some of his material, so as not to give away the store—the same charge that Giovanni Mocenigo made. As she wrote eight years ago in an essay in The New York Review of Books, but apparently could not bear to say in the biography, where so much more was at stake, “His surviving work supplies no clear explanation” of what constituted his philosophy.
The book has one great, compensating virtue. Whatever else Bruno was, he was wild-minded and extreme, and Rowland communicates this, together with a sense of the excitement that his ideas gave him. She quotes from a poem of his:
Suddenly I am raised aloft by primordial
I become Leader, Law, Light, Prophet,
Father, Author, and Journey,
Rising above this world to the others
that shine in their splendor.
I wander through every part of that
Then, far away, as they gape at the
marvel, I leave them behind me.
That sounds thrilling, and Rowland relates it to other instances of the exuberance of the late Renaissance; for example, the language of Shakespeare. (“Hamlet” was written within a year or two of Bruno’s death.) It’s that feeling for the explosiveness of the period, and her admiration of Bruno for participating in it—indeed, dying for it—that is the central and most cherishable quality of the biography. Mocenigo, in his deposition, reported that one day, when he and Bruno were going to church, Bruno told him “that he knew how Christ had performed his miracles, and using the same art he intended to do as much and more.” Rowland seems to smile as she considers this “excitable little Neapolitan,” in a gondola, on his way to church, “bragging more and more extravagantly” about how he’s going to displace the founder of the Church. Even when he’s acting crazy, she is fond of him, and I like her for that.
Bruno’s writings were placed on the Church’s “Index of Forbidden Books,” so that they would not lead the faithful astray. As always, important people found a way to get hold of the proscribed material. Kepler told Galileo that one of his (Galileo’s) ideas was a steal from Bruno. After the seventeenth century, Bruno seems to have dropped from view, but then, in the nineteenth century, he rose again, as a hero to the revolutionary movements of that time. In 1889, soon after Italy’s establishment of a secular republic, a group of Roman students, with the help of eminent thinkers from across Europe—Victor Hugo, Herbert Spencer, Ernst Haeckel, Henrik Ibsen—raised a statue in his honor in the Campo de’ Fiori. According to Rowland, the statue, which shows Bruno going to his death, looks nothing like him. It depicts a tall, glowering figure, in a cowl, with a book between his manacled hands. The real Bruno was a short, skinny man, who at the time of his execution hadn’t worn a Dominican habit for twenty-four years. Furthermore, he was burned naked. The inscription at the base of the statue begins, “To Bruno, from the generation that he foresaw.” In other words, the students claimed him for their story. Every year, on the anniversary of his execution, various groups of freethinkers—Masons, atheists, pantheists—gather at the monument, and a representative of Rome’s mayoralty places a wreath at its feet. If Bruno had not been burned, would he receive these tributes? Maybe not, but he was burned, and he thereby entered our history. Fittingly, a crater of the moon was named for him, in 1960. ♦ | <urn:uuid:ed143a5c-bb46-471c-8cee-dcdfed8fd042> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/08/25/the-forbidden-world | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00039-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983934 | 6,371 | 3.15625 | 3 |
The Case for a Marine Reserve Off East Antarctica
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet flows off the Antarctic continent into the Southern Ocean that surrounds it. It is an expanse of ice abruptly surrendering to sapphire seas. Coastal currents, among them the Prydz Bay Gyre, mingle with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, supporting marine life throughout the circumference of the continent. Penguins, seals, krill, and toothfish rely on this vast expanse of frigid habitat.
Few people have ever seen East Antarctica. Although some areas and features have been well studied, others remain enveloped in mystery. Scientists are still trying to understand the region's oceanography and the breadth of resident species. East Antarctica's unique oceanographic features, coupled with its high biological value to seabirds, seals, and other animals, make it a prime area for protection. It is also an area extremely vulnerable to climate change.
Twenty-four countries and the European Union will soon decide whether to create permanent safeguards for the East Antarctic marine area or to leave it vulnerable to industrial fishing.
Unique habitat sculpted over millennia
Glacial streams have over millennia carved deep canyons into the continental shelf and slope along the East Antarctic coastal region. The Gunnerus Ridge rises from the depths of the ocean bed, to a seamount—a mountain that sits beneath the surface rich in biodiversity—off its northern end. The unique marine habitat off the continental shelf of Prydz Bay is due to a large channel formed during prehistoric times.
The seals and seabirds off the shores of East Antarctica feed mostly on krill and silverfish—both of which are vital to a healthy ecosystem. Prydz Bay alone is home to at least 1 million breeding pairs of snow petrels, as well as Antarctic terns and a variety of albatross species. East Antarctica also supports many colonies of Adélie and emperor penguins. About 750,000 pairs of Adélie penguins and an estimated 50,000 pairs of emperor penguins forage over great distances, with emperors traveling up to 900 kilometres (560 miles) from their colonies and Adélies more than 480 kilometres (300 miles).
Large populations of minke, humpback, blue, and fin whales also inhabit the waters of the East Antarctic.
The area is home to crabeater, Weddell, Ross, and leopard seals. Crabeaters are particularly prolific, with 1 million estimated to breed off East Antarctica. The region also harbors up to 42 percent of the world's little-known Ross seals, designated a Specially Protected Species under the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty.
Due to the wide range of unique species and habitats in and around the East Antarctic marine area, only a permanent, comprehensive system of fully protected marine reserves will ensure the long-term conservation of this region's extraordinary life. The system of marine reserves must be large enough to safeguard broad foraging areas for whales, seals, penguins, and other seabirds. Fishing fleets must also be kept out of the region's polynyas—areas of open water surrounded by sea ice that are crucial food sources for many species.
The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, or CCAMLR, should designate a series of reserves in the East Antarctic region.
This new network of marine sanctuaries would protect large-scale ecosystem processes in their entirety, including:
- East Antarctica's unique geomorphic features, such as the Gunnerus Ridge, Bruce Rise, seamounts including the d'Urville Sea- Mertz Seamounts, and abyssal eco-regions.
- Prydz Bay, an area that supports large numbers of seabirds and mammals and is a likely nursery for krill and Antarctic toothfish.
- Other critical nursery areas for Antarctic toothfish.
- Foraging areas for Adélie and emperor penguins, which extend far beyond their breeding grounds.
- Protection of East Antarctica as a critical climate reference area and a climate refuge for ice-dependent species.
In order for the EU, French, and Australian proposal for the East Antarctic to be meaningful, the designation must be largescale, ecologically diverse, and permanent. Review language that allows management to be adjusted if necessary is an approach supported by both The Pew Charitable Trusts and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Scientific endeavors to collect data that underpin important research, including the consequences of climate change, should be encouraged. | <urn:uuid:fc5e4908-94e5-4a24-8379-e736955d1014> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2013/10/18/the-case-for-a-marine-reserve-off-east-antarctica | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00045-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908812 | 924 | 3.90625 | 4 |
Overview of Cooperation with Europe
Similar systems of government and shared social values, as
well as the long and sometimes tragic history of Jewish
communities in Europe, form the foundation of relations between Israel and the European countries.
Each bilateral relationship is expressed in a wide range of economic,
cultural, scientific, technological and political activities, as well
as by ongoing dialogues maintained with heads of state, ministers, parliamentarians
and public figures through frequent reciprocal visits.
Since economic relations
with neighboring Arab countries are just
Europe is Israel's most natural trading partner.
The establishment of a free trade zone (1975)
with the European Community (EC) led to a
significant increase in exports to Europe
from 1975 to 1996, and an even greater increase
in EC exports to Israel. This growth in trade
has been accelerated by the development
of close business connections between entrepreneurs
and investors and the setting up of joint
ventures, as well as by efforts to strengthen
economic ties with the member countries of
the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
Association Agreement, signed in
1995, came into force in June 2000, allowing
for heightened political dialogue, as
well as closer economic relations. Earlier
in 2000, the EU-Israel Forum was established
with the aim of increasing understanding
and cooperation between the parties.
The flow of tourists between Europe and
Israel has established an ever-deepening
fabric of personal relationships and
Europe has long held economic relations with Israel, and this includes the import of Israeli goods and export of European goods. In February 2014, the European Union adopted a resolution that affects the import of chicken and milk products from what they regard as illegal settlements in Israel. Pursuant to the resolution, the EU has stopped recognizing the authority of Israeli veterinary inspectors who inspect the poultry and dairy products for export because Israel does not label or distinguish between poultry and dairy products that come from settlements and those originating from within Israel.
The European Union announced a comprehensive ban on dairy products produced in West Bank settlements on October 9 2014, prompting the Israeli Agriculture Ministry to inform dairy producers that they would no longer be able to export anything produced beyond the 1949 armistice line to Europe. The ban is expected to have little implications on the Israeli economy, since dairy products from settlements are mostly for local consumption and only make up a tiny portion of the total export of Israeli dairy products to the EU.
European Union nations voted in November 2015 to label all products produced on Israeli land seized following the 1967 War as “made in settlements,” a move that prompted harsh criticism from Israeli officials. , “The EU decision is hypocritical and constitutes a double standard,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It singles out Israel and not the 200 other conflicts around the world. The EU has decided to label only Israel, and we are not prepared to accept the fact that Europe is labeling the side that is being attacked by terrorism. The Israeli economy is strong and will withstand this; those who will be hurt will be those Palestinians who work in Israeli factories. The EU should be ashamed.” To read the letter penned by the European Union nations expressing their support for the labelling of these goods, please click here. During the week following the E.U.'s decision to label these products, the Israeli Foreign Ministry suspended all Diplomatic contacts with European Union on matters related to Israeli-Palestinian peace. A statement released by the Israeli Foreign Ministry on November 29, 2015, clarified that Israel would continue diplomatic relations with individual countries, but the ban applies to E.U. institutions and officials. A European Union spokesperson responded, stating that they would continue to work towards peace in the Middle East with the quartet and their other partners, despite being shut out by Israel.
The President of German Parliament came out during the week following the EU's decision, stating that Germany did not support the decision to label the goods, and in fact rejected the idea when it was presented. German Bundestag (Parliament) President Norbert Lammert said during a joint press conference with Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein, that “Germany can imagine a better law, if it were to apply to everyone, on principle, to all occupied land. Because it's specifically against Israel, I repeat that it is unnecessary and not very smart.” The Czech and Hungarian governments rejected the EU decision as well, with the Czech parliament calling on the government to ignore the labelling rules.
Europe and Euro-Asia
Relations between Israel and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe,
, which were renewed when democratic governments were elected, are becoming
increasingly close, especially in economic
matters, culture, tourism and international
As these countries had been
the center of world Jewry before World
War II, the memory of the Holocaust is a significant factor in relations with
them. Issues being dealt with include restoration
of nationalized Jewish public and private
property to their owners or legal heirs and
recognition of the Righteous
Persons who risked their lives to save
Jews during the Nazi era.
Israel's relations with Russia
and the Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS) have gained momentum
in recent years. Relations
with the Muslim countries of the CIS (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan) as well as with Georgia and Armenia, have been established. The leaders
of several of these countries have visited
Israel and signed mutual cooperation agreements,
while expanding economic ties.
Israel has signed free trade agreements
with the Czech
Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia.
Israel has limited contacts in Afghanistan - the only state in this region that does not maintain diplomatic relations
Ministry of Foreign Affairs;
Sobelman, Batsheva. “A diplomatic brouhaha erupts over 'Made in Israel' labels,” LA Times (November 30, 2015);
Shamee, Maureen. “Germany rejects EU's labeling of Israeli settlement products, says Bundestag President,” European Jewish Press, (December 3, 2015);
“Czech parliament rejects labelling goods from Israeli settlements,”YNet News (December 17, 2015). | <urn:uuid:03183c9b-a1a4-4331-845e-725106380fb8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Politics/Europe.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00064-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952675 | 1,301 | 2.984375 | 3 |
by Rob Leighton
Research spanning over four decades has shown that a traditional Mediterranean diet sharply reduces many health risks. People following this style of eating have:
- Lower levels of heart attacks
- Lower risks for diabetes and cancer
- Reduced forms of dementia, and even Alzheimer’s
You may associate the Mediterranean diet with extra virgin olive oil and red wine, but it is far more. It is the way the people of this region eat, beginning at breakfast and ending with the last bite taken each day.
- Vegetables, fruits and grains serve as the dietary foundation.
- Beverages, particularly tea, coffee or wine, provide other health-full nutrients.
- Red meat, dairy and eggs, seafood and poultry are added to this foundation to make some meals more delicious and the weekly meal plan more interesting.
But let me tell you about the forgotten ingredients of the Mediterranean diet. It’s blended spice and herb.
The benefits of spices extend beyond great flavor. Spices and herbs are Mother Nature’s most potent forms antioxidant compounds.
- Cinnamon, thyme, turmeric and oregano, for instance, deliver 20x more antioxidant power than blackberries or blueberries.
- Rosemary provides more than 15x the antioxidant power of cranberries.
This list goes on, but here is the challenge. Many modern cooks simply do not understand how to use spices and herbs, each and every day – breakfast, lunch and dinner. This is a lost opportunity to support long term, vibrant living while elevating the pleasure of eating. Let me show you how to harness the power of spice blends for the best disease-fighting nutrients available.
Antioxidants: What Do They Do?
So, what do antioxidants do? There is lots of chemistry here, but what’s important to understand is that our bodies’ naturally create oxidized compounds. These oxidized compounds are by-product of generating energy within every cell in our bodies. Left uncontrolled, they cause damage, contributing to heart disease, cancer and even aging itself.
Smoking and pollution increase the levels of these harmful compounds. We are also eating more foods that deliver the harmful compounds, like deep fried foods and flame-broiled meats. When plain meat is cooked, lots of harmful, oxidized compounds are created. When the meat is marinated with herbs and spices, or cooked with herbs and spice (like you might in a stew), the levels of harmful compounds created are sharply reduced. You see, herb and spice antioxidants are already working before you put the food in your mouth!
Similarly, when oils and fats are heated – even the health-full omega-3 oils – oxidized compounds are a by-product of high temperatures. Again, herbs and spices are the natural neutralizers and actually enhance the your body’s ability to absorb nutrients.
Now, here is what we also know. Different antioxidants work to support your health in different parts of the body. For example,
- Cinnamon supports healthier blood sugar levels.
- Cocoa supports a healthier cardiovascular system.
- Turmeric contributes to healthy brain function.
A leading spice in curries, turmeric intake may help explain the low rate of Alzheimer’s disease in India. Among people aged 70 to 79, the rate is less than one-quarter that of the United States. Turmeric also is widely used in North African cooking, a Mediterranean cuisine.
Globalization – Driven by the Spice Trade
World trade has been defined by the spice trade. Cinnamon, imported from Southeast Asia, can be found referenced in the Old Testament and in Egyptian documents dating to 2000 BCE. Spices initially came to the Mediterranean via overland trading routes and then by ship sailing around the Horn of Africa. The search for alternative trade routes led Columbus to venture west to the Americas.
Here is the key! Study after study is proving that the power of these plant-based nutrients is made many times more effective when they are used together. That is exactly what spice and herb blends do. They deliver multiple types of antioxidant compound.
And here is the tragedy. Most people cooking in the home today do not know how to use herbs and spices in ways that can really support health.
Spicing the Mediterranean Way
I may have one very delicious recipe that is far from healthy, but I surround it with other dishes that bring a healthy balance to the meal. The meal itself is health; the one indulgence adds deliciousness. A Mediterranean diet builds on this philosophy.
Many Americans take the opposite view. They approach the meal with the view that one healthy dish, perhaps a side salad, is sufficient to make an unhealthy meal, healthy.
This is a daily eating mindset. For example, start in the morning with a healthy bowl of oatmeal. Move through the day with a salad at lunch and a few health snacks. Arrive at dinner believing the right to splurge has been earned – pizza and coke, fettuccine Alfredo, mac and cheese, steak and potatoes (with butter and sour cream), or sushi with lots soy sauce and white, sweetened rice.
But remember, a Mediterranean diet defines how one eats from the first bite in the morning to the last bite at night. It certainly makes room for all forms of delicious foods, but it keeps the right balance – at every healthy meal.
As I take my clients on a journey toward healthier eating, I take a similar view of spice and herbs. These flavorful ingredients are not something we look to add to a few recipes each week. We find ways to enjoy these ingredients throughout the day.
My commitment to spice has had another benefits, as well. It has helped me and my clients break free of eating habits that push up cholesterol, blood pressure and inflammation levels, while adding pounds to the waistline. A commitment to spicing will help you find new and delicious ways to satisfy the love of food, healthfully.
I wrote Mediterranean Spice Blends: The Forgotten Ingredients of a Heart Healthy Diet, to help my clients create healthier and tastier foods with spice blends. We start with 5 different spice blends, delivering 25 different natural herbs and spices (how’s that for a multivitamin!). No salt, no sugar and no MSG. At least five different recipes are provided for each spice blend. In the book you will find recipes for appetizers, soups, vegetables, whole grains, chicken, fish and even dessert and breakfast.
Here are some of the recipes that you will find in the e-book:
- Roasted Spiced Salmon
- Marinate Chicken Kabobs
- North African Spiced Sweet Potatoes
- Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler
- Spice Bean Salad
- Brown Rice Pilaf with Onions & Lentils
- Barley Pilaf with Smoked Paprika, Hot Pepper & Sweet Spice
- Artichoke, Red Pepper Pizza
- Brussels Sprouts, White Beans, Pasta & Pine Nuts
- Apricot Lentil Soup
- Spiced Poached Pears
- Dark Chocolate Truffles with Cinnamon and Cocoa
Another Mediterranean Diet Secret – Start the Meal Right
In Mediterranean-style eating, the meal often will start with medley of vegetable dishes. A variety of fresh, marinated, grilled or roasted vegetable recipes is prepared. Each is seasoned differently. Two, three, four or more may be served.
- In Italy, these dishes are part of the antipasto.
- In Phoenicia (modern day Israeli, Lebanon and Syria) and North Africa, these salads are part of the mezze.
- In Spain, these are part of the tapas tradition.
Together, they deliver a highly satisfying course – and you may well find yourself filling-up on health-full foods.
These dishes also have a great place in busy life. Many can be made ahead of time and stored for a few days.
Here’s another benefit! Great chefs all over the world are showing how spice blends cut the need for salt. Spice, herbs and spice blends impart the more intense flavor that meats, grains and vegetables often lack. Salt does enhance subtler flavors of blander foods – spices and herbs can be used instead to add flavor intensity, especially when blended with acidic ingredients, like vinegars, wines and lemon. Many of the recipes I’ve put together combine these power house ingredients in marinades and sauces.
In Mediterranean Spice Blends, you will find great recipes to get you started, and I send all my readers more recipes to keep every healthy meal interesting and delicious.
So discover how to use the forgotten ingredients from one of the world’s healthiest diet, in Mediterranean Spice Blends: The Forgotten Ingredients of a Heart Healthy Diet.
Rob is known as a food passionisto and life’s magic moments occur over meals with family and friends. He happily wanders the aisles of gourmet food stores, farmers’ markets and ethnic delicatessens, preferring to end the day with a good cookbook. Rob brings a career as an executive in food and nutrition to reduce his cholesterol levels to the point where no medications are necessary. He wrote The Kardea Gourmet, Smart & Delicious Eating for a Healthy Heart, with Mayo Clinic-trained cardiologist, Dr. Richard Collins, also known as the Cooking Cardiologist. Rob is the founder of Kardea Nutrition. Kardea, which means heart in Greek, combines a love food with a deep knowledge on how to use the best natural solutions to support heart health. | <urn:uuid:5baeb2da-da1d-48b5-9518-67cd5b5d95d1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.homecuresthatwork.com/tag/herb-and-spice/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00059-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930337 | 1,968 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Scientific knowledge is simply mushrooming for SUNY Cortland seniors Melcolm Crutchfield and Cassandra Elliott.
New species in the non-plant life form commonly called “fungi” are popping up all over the place, with a possible 1.5 million species suspected, of which only 100,000 have been described.
So Crutchfield and Elliott, a pair of budding biological researchers, have all they can do keeping up with photographing and entering identification and field notes about SUNY Cortland’s impressive collection of fungi, that is to be part of a huge, national database.
They’re collaborating in the College’s recent participation in building the Mycology Collections Data Portal, a website that is the New York Botanical Garden’s answer to anything anyone anywhere with a computer and curiosity about mycology might have.
The arrangement will help bring the College’s world-class fungal collection into the Internet age, where formerly remote details will now be just a few keystrokes or mouse clicks away.
On a recent afternoon inside the College’s Bowers Hall science building Elliott, a biology major from Whitney Point, N.Y., busily opened a small, cardboard box and after adding new barcodes to the box and information inside, photographed the specimen identification, and scientific notes using a classic Canon camera with macro lens mounted on a tabletop light stand.
Next to her Crutchfield, a conservation biology major from Locke, N.Y., entered these snapshots of information into an Excel database from a laptop plugged into output from the camera. The barcodes will make the specimens easy to track down later once the tiny box is labeled with them and carefully replaced among thousands of others in the College’s moderate sized herbarium.
“I can do about 10 an hour,” said Crutchfield recently as the materials passed rapidly between the pair. “To make things more interesting, sometimes I time myself in competition with Cassandra. So far, she’s winning.”
|Melcolm Crutchfield and Cassandra Elliott consider a fungal specimen in a box, having just entered identifying information about the sample into a database that allows the College to share its existence with the scientific and hobby world.|
Elliott cautioned that they understand the need to not rush their work.
“You have to concentrate when you’re working on these images,” she noted. “We learn how to go back and check for our mistakes but they can be very hard to find later.”
The gigantic online herbarium represents four centuries worth of dedicated world-wide scientific documentation of the earth’s plant and fungal diversity, according to its website. Approximately 3,400 herbaria in the world with roughly 10,000 associated curators and biodiversity specialists are involved in documenting an estimated 350,000,000 specimens from the Earth’s vegetation.
Last fall, the College received a $30,000 Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections grant through the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the project’s lead scientific investigating institution, the New York Botanical Garden.
With the award, SUNY Cortland Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences Timothy Baroni was trained at the New York Botanical Garden on how to manage the technical details of this online biology reference. Baroni is a mycologist, or fungi specialist. SUNY Cortland, with its share of the NSF grant funds, bought the camera, light table and supplies like barcodes and currently pays Crutchfield and Elliott to undertake this hands-on learning opportunity.
Faculty and students will work on the project through summer 2015.
“Questions will keep coming up on how to enter information into the database,” Baroni commented, from his seat at a desk where he can keep an eye on his assistants. His efforts, assisted since the 1980s by a few graduate and many undergraduate students, have approximately doubled the size of the College’s herbarium collection. The NSF over the course of the last 40 years has contributed close to $1 million to enable SUNY Cortland to collect, maintain and share its world-class fungal and plant collections.
Until now however, that collection has remained locked up in cabinets but sometime in the future will go live.
“It’s really kind of a jewel for SUNY Cortland to have something like this,” Baroni said.
For hundreds of years, scientists have identified new species by finding out what each others’ collections contain and, for the sake of comparison, loaning interesting specimens to one another across state and international boundaries in order to produce scholarly publications, Baroni said. The process is easier, now. Take Boletus frostii — or Frost’s bolete as it is more commonly known. Today a scientist or amateur enthusiast could quickly learn a lot about Frost’s bolete — the species discovered by Charles C. Frost, an early amateur collector in Vermont — through the Mycoportal website. The individual can open a page that will contain Boletus frostii’s scientific name and lineage, very precise description, pictures of dried or living specimens and a precise geographic positioning system (GPS) map of where this capped mushroom was harvested for a specific herbarium. Many examples may be posted to the page for each species, collected by different scientists working at different institutions across the United States.
That’s amazing, considering that Boletus frostii is just one of 1,300 species in the Boletaceae, or porcini family of mushrooms alone; which in turn is among 177 families of the major fungi group called basidiomycota. Currently mycologists, that is, scientists specializing in this non-plant life form, have identified approximately 32,000 different species in basidiomycota.
SUNY Cortland’s herbarium was named to a rather short list of college facilities in the U.S. working diligently to share their considerable wealth of information about their collections of dried specimens — collected both in this country as well as abroad.
|Scientists from far away can investigate the unique qualities of this fungal specimen housed in SUNY Cortland's herbarium, thanks to a project to put information about it on the Internet. In the background students Cassandra Elliott and Melcolm Crutchfield can be seen photographing and entering information about the mushroom into the computer.|
That enabled the College to join the Mycology Collections Data Portal project, which consists of a network of universities, botanical gardens, museums and agencies in the U.S. that provide taxonomic, environmental and specimen-based information on the biodiversity of macrofungi found in North America.
The College had founded its herbarium in 1908, when it was a modest teaching and research collection of plants from Cortland and surrounding counties, according to a history penned by Michael Hough, lecturer in the Biological Sciences Department, and posted on the College’s herbarium website. Today the Cortland Herbarium specializes in plants of New York state, especially central and western and the Adirondack Park; and fungi, especially Agaricales and fleshy ascomycetes of the state, with a focus on the Adirondacks; and Agaricales and Boletales of northern California, Massachusetts, the southern Appalachian Mountains, the Gulf Coast, Central America, Mexico, South America and Caribbean basin islands.
“We have plant collections that date back to the 1890s and the (former) Cortland Normal School, some very important historic collections made by what appear to be former students and staff,” Baroni said.
“Our fungal collections, obtained mostly by me and my many students over the past 34 years, are most likely numbering more than 11,000 and could be close to 12,000,” Baroni said.
Baroni’s budding scientists complete their work as part of a Bioinformatics independent study that culminates at semester’s end with a research paper.
“The experience of learning how to organize everything is invaluable,” Elliott said. “Most important to me is learning how to work with a very large data set.”
The research work inspires Crutchfield and Elliott to set their sights on a graduate education in their chosen areas of biological science. Crutchfield aspires to earn a doctorate in conservation biology while Elliott hopes to work in wildlife management once she has a related master’s degree.
Already they have a sense of having joined a wide, scientific community.
“While doing this work I noticed a familiar name, Tracy Armstrong Curtis ’01,” Elliott said. “Then I realized she was my professor at Broome Community College and she had collected the samples I am now cataloging.”
Armstrong Curtis was one of Baroni’s original research assistants that travelled with him to the Caribbean to collect and identify new forms of fungi on the first NSF funded project in 1996, Baroni said.
“I felt very excited to realize that,” Elliott said. “I felt a connection.”
Everyone who cares about human health and who cares about the planet should be interested in the database, according to Baroni.
Two miracle drugs produced from fungi are Penicillin, an antibiotic, and Cyclosporin, which enables organ transplantation.
“We have a medicine chest out there that we haven’t event cracked the door on,” Baroni said. | <urn:uuid:a75d838b-7885-4a8b-a865-8748819ce41d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www2.cortland.edu/news/detail.dot?id=090865f7-8e89-4020-b1d3-564eb8eb6063 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00030-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936101 | 2,004 | 2.78125 | 3 |
One was the Civil War's first submarine, the other was the first sub to take down an enemy ship. One sank en route to attack Charleston, South Carolina, the other sank after defending that same Confederate harbor. One rests somewhere along the shifting ocean floor, the other rests in a well-monitored laboratory tank.
One was the USS Alligator, which sank in April of 1863. The other was the H.L. Hunley, which plunged some ten months later. For all their differences, both Civil War submarines have a rapidly improving science of shipwrecks working in their favor. Advances in that field have helped researchers narrow the search for the missing Alligator and preserve the remains of the recently recovered Hunley.
"It's a good time to be a marine archaeologist," says Michael Overfield of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Since 2004, Overfield has been searching for the Alligator near Cape Hatteras, an area off the coast of North Carolina known as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" for the abundance of ships it has consumed. Records indicate that's where the Alligator ended its promising but abortive existence.
Engineered by a French immigrant, the Alligator featured several innovative mechanisms, including a system for removing carbon dioxide from the vessel's interior and a chamber through which a diver could leave, plant a mine and return. The Union Navy considered the Alligator for several missions—most notably, a plan to destroy an important railroad bridge over the Appomattox River—but withdrew the submarine from each of them.
In late March of 1863, shortly after its capabilities had been demonstrated for President Abraham Lincoln, the Alligator headed toward a Confederate harbor in Charleston, towed by the USS Sumpter. On April 2, the tandem sailed full speed into a furious storm. "The Alligator was steering wildly and threatening to snap," the Sumpter's captain later wrote to the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles. At around 6 p.m., the commanders agreed to cut the line, and the angry waves swept the submarine's signature green hull out of view.
Using letters and other primary sources, Overfield and his colleagues at the National Marine Sanctuary Program refined the search area to some 625 square nautical miles. From there, the crew had several new and improved tools to aid their mission. "It's almost like the computer industry," says Overfield. "Think about where we were ten years ago. Did we think we'd be where we are today?"
One of Overfield's options was a magnetometer, which surveys the floor for any magnetic signal—particularly useful when searching for an iron ship such as the Alligator. He also used side-scan sonar, which throws down an acoustic signal to create a picture of everything beneath the boat.
Though these tools have been around for decades, they are now much easier to control, he says. Others, however, have really emerged within the past five years.
Overfield has used what's known as an ROV—a remotely operated vehicle—to further investigate a large object picked up by a magnetometer. The device scours the ocean floor and videotapes the desired area, sparing the cost and danger of sending out a diver. When he wished to cover several targets of interest at once, Overfield employed an autonomous underwater vehicle. These archaeological stunt doubles can be programmed to search a particular area and are equipped with their own magnetometers and sonar.
Though Overfield's search for the Alligator continues, these tools have enabled him to dismiss certain areas where he once believed the ship to be. "That's not always a bad thing, to say 'she is not there,'" he says. "It increases the likelihood of finding her on the next mission, and that's what keeps me going."
Not far from where Overfield conducts his searchers, marine researchers at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston work to preserve the Hunley. In February of 1864, the Hunley became the first submarine to torpedo an enemy—bringing down the USS Housatonic, the largest Union ship among those blockading the Confederate harbor. At that time, such an attack required ramming a torpedo into an opposing ship's hull and backing away to trigger an explosion. The Hunley sank on its return voyage, however, and in the end lost more men (nine) than did the Housatonic (five).
More than a century later, a search team led by novelist Clive Cussler located the lost ship. With that obstacle out of the way, the problem became dislodging the vessel safely from beneath the ocean floor. "When you find something, it doesn't always mean you'll recover it," says Robert Neyland, who is head of underwater archaeology at the Naval Historical Center and directed the Hunley's recovery.
In August of 2000, Neyland and his colleagues successfully removed the submarine with the help of a unique system that cradled the Hunley with hard-setting foam, locking the ship in place. Once the sub broke the surface, saltwater sprinklers showered the vessel to protect it from damage caused by oxygen as it made its way to the conservation facility.
Back at the lab, the ship was transferred to a state-of-the-art tank. Conservationists chilled the 300 tons of water to preserve any organic remains—including those of the crew members—locked inside the sub. Typically, chemicals must also be added to the water to prevent corrosion of the iron hull. However, such chemicals could have damaged the organic materials, so researchers instead used a new method known as "impressed current" to preserve all aspects of the ship.
"To my knowledge, it was the first time that a team of people would use this impressed current in order to avoid using chemicals," says Paul Mardikian, the Hunley's senior conservator. Put simply, the method sprays the ship's material with a stabilizing stream of electrons. "It worked," says Mardikian, "and it saved the sub."
The researchers also used a novel mapping technology to recreate the position of objects inside the submarine when it sank. To record these data points by hand would have taken a full crew 86 years; the new surveying system completed the task in four days.
These techniques made it possible for researchers to excavate the ship's artifacts with minimal damage. Eventually, however, the salts trapped in the ship after a century of submersion must be removed—otherwise, the submarine would crumble into a pile of dust after about six months of exposure to the air. To do that, researchers have decided to soak the Hunley in a high-pH solution.
Over several years—at least until 2010, says Neyland—this process will remove the salts and prepare the sub for public display. Meanwhile, Mardikian is researching a way to speed up the procedure using "subcritical fluids," a high-temperature treatment that diffuses salts more quickly than traditional soaking. If subcritical fluids test well enough, he says, "we may be able to treat two tons of ballast blocks from the submarine in two months instead of two or three years."
Today's marine archaeology is hardly recognizable from the field that, just several decades ago, had no identity at all. "There was no standard in the 1970s for how to conduct an archaeological investigation," says marine historian Tim Runyan of East Carolina University. "You couldn't just take what you do on land and transfer it underwater."
George Bass, the founder of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology who helped shape the field's current reputation as a solid science, describes the early days more crudely: "We made gaskets out of leather shoes."
When Bass began searching for wrecks in the 1960s, he says, a diver could not check how much air was left in his tank, submersible vehicles had six-inch windows and the best way to locate a potential shipwreck was to talk to sponge divers. Now, divers can check air gauges on demand, plastic submersibles are entirely clear and global positioning system technology enables researchers to navigate an ocean floor with ease.
The most impressive technology looming on the horizon is a diving suit being developed by Phil Nuytten that allows excavators to work for hours underwater, says Bass. Right now, divers can only work below the surface for some 20 minutes, perhaps twice a day. "If that happens," he says, "that will revolutionize our field."
But for all the advances in searching for, rescuing and conserving shipwrecks, says Bass, the biggest change is the field's establishment as an academic discipline. "Our students take a year and a half to know 50 times more than I did when I started," he says. "It's a scholarly field now, and that's what's changed more than anything else." | <urn:uuid:5a67052a-0381-48ef-a25d-c06d8f5122be> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/saving-our-shipwrecks-155579777/?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00039-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969506 | 1,827 | 3.65625 | 4 |
What are Hives (Urticaria)?
Hives, also known as urticaria are a common disorder affecting about 20 percent of the general population. Hives are red or white raised or swollen patches on the skin and usually accompanied by uncomfortable itching. Hives are caused by release of histamine from mast cells and can be worsened by scratching, alcoholic beverages and daily exercise. Depending on the duration of symptoms they can be classified as acute or chronic hives or acute or chronic urticaria.
Acute Hives: In general it lasts up to 6 weeks or less and may resolve after treating the underlying cause. Acute hives are likely caused by close contact with allergens such as food, medications, pollen and insect bites. Common infection such as strep throat or urinary tract infections have also been identified as common causes of acute hives.
Chronic Hives: People suffering from long-term hives may have symptoms that last longer than six weeks and in some cases even more than a year. Although it could be caused by the immune system, hormonal problems or thyroid disease, the true underlying cause of most chronic hives may not be clearly identified.
Here is a review of 5 types of medications used for treating hives.
Next: H1 Antihistamines Used in Treatment of Hives | <urn:uuid:ae2ada33-840b-4f2d-94f8-267a7308e340> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.rxeconsult.com/healthcare-articles/Review-of-Medications-For-Hives-Urticaria-Treatment-598/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00128-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952381 | 268 | 3.828125 | 4 |
Rosenthal, Eric T.
Patient navigation—the concept conceived of and coined by Harold P. Freeman, MD, more than two decades ago to address disparities in access to health care among the poor and uninsured—will soon become a mainstream medical necessity since the American College of Surgeons' Commission on Cancer mandated that cancer centers offer patient navigation services by 2015 as a condition for accreditation.
HAROLD P. FREEMAN, M...Image Tools
The goal of patient navigation is to reduce cancer mortality by eliminating barriers (financial, communications, medical system, psychological, and logistical) to cancer screening, diagnosis, treatment, and supportive care—helping patients between the time of an abnormal finding and resolution of the finding by diagnosis and treatment.
Over the years, patient navigation has been expanded to help patients with chronic diseases other than cancer, and spans the full spectrum of health care, including prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment, supportive care, and end-of-life care.
What began as pioneering program at Harlem Hospital in 1990 was officially recognized in 2005 by then-President George W. Bush when he signed the Patient Navigator Outreach and Chronic Disease Prevention Act (HR 1812), which funded more than 20 patient navigation demonstration sites throughout the nation.
In 2007 the Harold P. Freeman Patient Navigation Institute was established in Harlem with a $2.5 million grant from the Amgen Foundation and the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention to train patient navigators -associated with various organizations.
And with more than 1,400 cancer centers in the United States needing to comply with the College of Surgeons' upgraded accreditation standards within the next three years, it seems that patient navigation training is set to become something of a growth industry.
However, even though the Freeman Patient Navigation Institute provides a proven, effective model for emulation, there are currently no specific regulations regarding standardized training, which prompted OT to look at the history and evolution of patient navigation, and how — and if — the cancer community is responding by providing quality programs to prepare individuals to guide patients through an increasingly complex health care system.
Freeman, a member of OT's Editorial Board, has received numerous awards for this work including membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a Lasker Award for Public Service, and various honorary doctorates and other recognition from organizations and professional societies. He is also featured in the HBO documentary The Education of Dee Dee Ricks, which aired last fall and followed the story of a former hedge fund manager diagnosed with breast cancer who changed her life to become an activist and philanthropist, including raising $2.5 million for Freeman's institute and lobbying for the passage of the Patient Navigation Act.
Also emeritus professor of surgery at Columbia University, he was director of surgery for 25 years at Harlem Hospital, as well as founder, past president, and chairman emeritus of the Ralph Lauren Center; founder and medical director of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's Breast Examination Center of Harlem; and founding director of the National Cancer Institute's Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities. He also chaired the President's Cancer Panel from 1991 to 2000 under presidents Bush and Clinton.
In a telephone interview, he spoke about patient navigation and the professional and personal factors that drove him to devise and develop the concept.
Following graduation from Catholic University of America, he was initially interested in becoming a psychiatrist but after spending some time as a Howard University medical student working in psychiatric institutes, he decided he didn't want to be in a field that didn't have much of an impact on patients. He opted instead for surgery, which he said he found thoughtful and analytical, with results that appealed to him. “I thought of myself as an internist who knows how to cut,” he said.
He finished his surgical oncology fellowship at MSKCC in 1967 and became assistant attending surgeon at Harlem Hospital the next day. “The concept of patient navigation came about in two ways, from my local experience in Harlem and then augmented by my national experience,” he explained.
His father died of testicular cancer at age 48 when he was 13 years old, and he decided he wanted to work in a poor black community, because he understood racism and bias—growing up in Washington, DC, in a world of sergregation.
Freeman noted that he graduated in 1954, which was the same year the Supreme Court made its landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision declaring as unconstitutional state laws that established separate public schools for black and whites.
Mentor to Arthur Ashe
Freeman was also the black national tennis champion at age 15, and had helped to mentor Arthur Ashe, 10 years his junior, who went on to close the color divide in tennis.
“I came ready to operate, to cut cancer out of Harlem, but I became very frustrated very early on because most of the people coming in with cancer were too late for surgery,” he said.
Realizing that he was treating a population that was poor and about 98% black, he said he faced a turning point that forced him to look at the community itself, and to ask who were these people, and why were they coming in for a first visit with incurable cancer?
“Their breasts were replaced with cancers that were bleeding ulcerated masses and I started thinking of the meaning of being poor and being black and about the interrelationship between poverty, race, and cancer.”
Obstacles at the Clinic
He began talking to women with late-stage breast cancer, asking them why they came in so late, and learned that this was not typically their first visit and that they had come in previously and had to wait for a long time before being told they were in the wrong place and had to go to the clinic instead.
But this necessitated getting a Medicaid card first, and that meant having to go 100 blocks downtown, and then rescheduling their appointment. “I heard lots of stories like this, with some patients thinking the process of being diagnosed was more painful than the pain of the breast cancer itself,” he said.
Several years later Freeman was named Harlem Hospital's director of surgery, which gave him the opportunity to pursue a study that looked at 606 patients with breast cancer over 22 years. The results showed that only 6% were diagnosed at stage one, while 49% were diagnosed at stages three and four, and only 39% of the patients were alive at the end of five years.
He started to look at poverty and race, although at first, he said, he was naïve, not knowing if being black was part of the problem or not.
Soon, though, he said, he learned it was important to distinguish culture from race, and that culture included lifestyle, attitude, behavior, belief systems, and worldviews.
Then-New York Governor Hugh Carey's wife died of breast cancer in 1974, which led to the commissioning of a blue-ribbon panel to advise the governor about breast cancer in the state. After Freeman testified before the panel in 1978, money was made available for a breast examination center in Harlem, and his testimony brought him to the attention of Arthur I. Holleb, MD, who had been at MSKCC and would become the ACS's chief medical officer.
“Arthur invited me to join the ACS's board, and I became a member-at-large, which then gave me the elevation and platform to look at the problem [of cancer and the poor] at a national level. I became chairman of the Cancer in Minorities Committee and began to look at whether minorities were having a problem because they were minorities or because they were poor, leading to ACS's 1986 paper on cancer and the poor,” he said.
Freeman established a free breast-screening clinic in Harlem in 1979, but admits he was initially driven to create the clinic in a not-quite-open way: “I independently started the program with a $25,000 ACS grant in Harlem Hospital on Saturday mornings, when the place was empty, but I didn't exactly get permission from the hospital.” Patients were instructed to come straight up to the seventh floor, bypassing admissions.
Nine months later, though, the hospital administration caught on and said he had to close the clinic. Instead, he -contacted New York's Health and Hospitals Corporation and got permission to continue. “They made it legal, and we've been meeting every Saturday since 1979,” he said. Poor black women were now able to get free breast exams and mammograms with some of the findings leading to biopsies and treatment, and that prompted Freeman to think about a patient navigation system that could take patients from findings to resolution.
A decade after establishing the free clinic, he was national president of the ACS and used the opportunity to hold hearings on cancer in the poor in several cities, with people of all races coming to testify from nearly all 50 states. “This was the first time we saw the universal meaning of poverty, and it underscored in our minds the issue of barriers to care that caused more death, pain, and suffering because of late-stage disease,” he said.
ACS also held a briefing related to cancer and the poor at the National Press Club in 1989, and he was interviewed for the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, which helped bring national attention to the issue.
By 1990 Freeman was back at Harlem Hospital and steering the patient navigator concept into reality by focusing on a patient-centric health care delivery model that would eventually evolve into an integrated component of high-quality cancer care.
The training institute offers an intensive three-day course for trained health care professionals such as nurses and social workers, and lay individuals who can coordinate health care services, and the Institute defines clear boundaries between what services are limited to health care professionals.
Most participants are sponsored by health care institutions and organizations, which pay the $1,500 fee, and the training includes practical experience based on best-practice research and information that focuses on cancer but that can also be applied to other chronic conditions including mental health, infectious diseases, diabetes, and heart disease.
‘Poverty is the Determinant…’
Asked for his opinion in the midst of the uproar involving Susan G. Komen for the Cure's now-reversed decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings, Harold Freeman noted that although the CDC has had a free breast and cervical cancer screening program for poor women since 1990, only 13 to 15 percent of women who qualify for the program actually get screened. “Poverty is the determinant of who gets screened.”
But, he said, the Komen events shed light on an issue even bigger than lack of access to screening: lack of access to cancer care when screenings yield -abnormal results. “Although we paint the picture that all women should be screened at age 40, and people know that, it's not necessarily easy for those women who had abnormal findings to get the next step. That's a problem that I don't think is so well talked about—the point of connecting access to care to screening.”
The message the Komen debacle points out is not political, but about patients' needs, he emphasized: “Poor women need to have screening wherever they can get it—whether through Komen funding or Planned Parenthood or anywhere else.”
Part 1 of a Series
Next: The philosophical and practical paradigms of patient navigation and how the cancer community is meeting the challenges of training navigators and establishing institutional programs.
© 2012 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc. | <urn:uuid:76dc0896-ca38-4dac-89bc-356a14892dea> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://journals.lww.com/oncology-times/Fulltext/2012/03100/How_Harold_Freeman_Navigated_the_System_to_Take.1.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00080-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980131 | 2,406 | 2.640625 | 3 |
More than 1.6 billion years ago, one cell engulfed another and put it to work. More specifically, a eukaryotic cell, the sort of cell that contains distinct structures with different functions, took in a blue-green bacterium that could do something it could not: use sunlight to make sugars. The ancient eukaryote then reproduced the bacterium in all of its cells, making it a permanent part of the intracellular environment. What was once an independent microbe was now the chloroplast: the cellular structure, or organelle, that plant cells use to photosynthesize. They’ve been together ever since, an absorption known as endosymbiosis.
Nor, scientists think, were chloroplasts the only parts of cells that were once bacteria: Mitochondria, organelles that produce energy in plant and animal cells, got their start the same way, and some other organelles may have, as well. Now researchers have found another useful bacterium that they think is on its way to becoming a modern organelle of another eukaryotic cell—this time, an alga rather than a plant or animal. Studying this relationship would allow scientists to witness endosymbiosis in action, something they had long theorized but never seen.
Turning the sun’s rays into usable energy is a skill thought to be limited to plants, algae, and solar panels. But a new study suggests that aphids may be also possess this ability.
Aphids already stand out from other animals for their production of carotenoids, pigments that also help out the immune system—most organisms get carotenoids from food, rather than making them themselves. A group of French and Israeli researchers now suggests that the reason aphids expend energy making these pigments is because they play an additional role in aphid life: Carotenoids, which plants use in photosynthesis, could be helping aphids do some of the same tricks.
For years, solar energy researchers have tried to imitate the success of photosynthesis by building devices like an artificial leaf and a solar cell that hijacks chemistry of photosynthetic bacteria. Now researchers at MIT have come up with an innovative technique that also happens to be very cheap: all you need is some “stabilizing powder” and plant waste. Mowed your lawn lately?
The stabilizing powder is a mix of safe, easily attainable chemicals that preserves photosystem I, a protein complex that captures light energy in plant cells. (In contrast, the newest photovoltaic cells in solar panels require metals that are rare or toxic.) The powder is mixed with plant matter such as grass clippings and crushed, and the resulting green goo is spread onto glass or metal substrate. Hook up wires to capture the electric current and that’s your solar panel.
The efficiency of these solar panels is only 0.1%, compared to the 15 to 18% efficiency of solar panels out in the market right now. Lead researcher Andrew Mershin says the technology still needs to improve 10-fold to become practical. After all, being able to power only one lightbulb with a whole house covered in solar panels isn’t much help. But the great advantage of all this is that it’s easy and
dirt grass cheap. Because the barrier to entry is so low, anyone would be able to order a bag of chemicals and make their own solar panel. Mershin hopes home tinkerers experiment with the cells and find new ways to make improvements.
Correction, February 6: We eliminated a reference to mulch in the headline: mulch is low in chlorophyll, so it wouldn’t actually work for these plant-powered solar cells.
Biologists have recently had cause to wonder whether the molecules they know and love are pulling some quantum trickery while they’re not looking: one of the large proteins that captures light in photosynthesis was observed in several studies apparently using coherence, one of the hallmarks of quantum mechanics, to determine the best possible route for shunting energy through its atoms. Now, further experiments that use lasers to tweak such proteins and observe their response have provided more evidence that this is happening—an exciting indication that the strange laws of quantum mechanics can affect the behaviors of large agglomerations of atoms.
Our own Sean Carroll of Cosmic Variance explained how coherence works when this phenomenon was observed in real plants at room temperature last year: Read More
What’s the News: This week, scientists say that they’ve passed a chemistry milestone by creating the world’s first practical photosynthesis device. The playing-card-sized photosynthetic gadget uses sunlight to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, which can then be used to produce energy, and is reputedly 10 times more efficient than a natural leaf. Researchers say they expect it to revolutionize power storage, especially in remote areas that don’t currently have electricity. “A practical artificial leaf has been one of the Holy Grails of science for decades,” says lead researcher Daniel Nocera, who’s presenting this research at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society this week.
How the Heck:
What’s the Context:
Reference: Daniel Nocera et al. 241st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. March 27-31, 2011 Anaheim, California, USA
Image: Wikimedia Commons / Daniel Schwen
“It’s a catastrophe. Relax!”
Those are the words of Michael Beard, the Nobel laureate physicist long past his prime who is the anti-hero of Ian McEwan’s new novel Solar, out this week in the United States. McEwan, no stranger to writing scientist characters or scientific themes, dives this time headlong into climate change. McEwan says he was nervous attempting to write fiction about a subject that has the potential to be, well, dull. But Solar is a laugh-out-loud read thanks to its ridiculous protagonist and willingness to make light of the apocalyptic seriousness of the conversation.
At the book’s outset, in the year 2000, Beard isn’t particularly convinced about climate change. He’s coasting on his reputation as a Nobelist, making money giving repetitive lectures and sitting on various boards, when suddenly he finds himself in charge of a shiny new British government research center out to build the next new thing in alternative energy. In the second part of “Solar,” Beard has become a believer in global warming, working on a way to get non-carbon power from artificial photosynthesis—a new application of a never-quite-explained theory that he came up with in his 20s. Unfortunately, he didn’t discover the application himself. He stole it from his dead assistant [Wall Street Journal], the marvelously enthusiastic (or at least enthusiastic until an unfortunate encounter with a coffee table) Tom Aldous.
The primary reactions in photosynthesis—the first steps in plants’ conversion of sunlight energy into energy stored in carbohydrates—are incredibly efficient. And in a new study in Nature, chemists reveal that they may have found part of the reason why: quantum mechanics.
A couple years ago, scientists first showed in bacteria proteins that the electrons were moving according to a quantum mechanical phenomenon called coherence, rather than abiding by the classical laws of physics. But where those early experiments had been cooled to 77 kelvins (–196 degrees Celsius)—this experiment was the first conducted at room temperature, 294 K, to replicate such effects [Scientific American]. Thus, the new study, which was done on marine algae, suggests this phenomenon can occur in a living biological system.
Part animal, part plant, bright green, and totally bizarre: Meet the sea slug Elysia chlorotica.
Biologists already knew that this organism, native to the marshes of New England and Canada, was a thief that somehow pickpocketed genes from the algae it eats. At last week’s meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle, researcher Sidney Pierce said he has found that the slugs aren’t just kleptomaniacs—they use the pilfered genes not only to make chlorophyll, but also to execute photosynthesis and live like a plant. Said Pierce: “They can make their energy-containing molecules without having to eat anything,” Pierce said. “This is the first time that multicellular animals have been able to produce chlorophyll” [LiveScience].
In a salty hot spring near Mono Lake, California, researchers have found two new species of bacteria that use arsenic for photosynthesis, and require no oxygen to fuel the process. Researchers say the bacteria may be similar to those that existed on primordial Earth where oxygen was scarce, and may illustrate an important stage of how early life developed in mineral-rich waters over 2 billion years ago.
Arsenic is well-known for its toxicity; it was used so often as tool for homicide in the 1800s that it earned the nickname “king of poisons” [The Scientist]. Yet the newly discovered bacteria can not only tolerate the element, they require it to survive. One of the first steps most organisms perform in photosynthesis is to split water molecules, creating oxygen. Oxygen donates energy in the form of electrons to other molecules, setting off a chain reaction that eventually results in the building of sugars for the organism’s own food. For the red and green bacteria found in Mono Lake, arsenic plays the role of oxygen [Science News].
Who knew that a white spruce in northern Canada, a red maple in Pennsylvania, and a mahogany tree in Puerto Rico have so much in common? Their environments are certainly very different, with icy winds buffeting the spruce tree’s needles and hot, humid air bathing the mahogany tree’s leaves. But despite these external variations, a new study shows that inside each tree leaf (or needle) it’s always just the right temperature for the delicate and vital process of photosynthesis, and the leaves are responsible for keeping that thermostat steady.
The findings, published in Nature [subscription required], show that trees all across North America favor the temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit for the photosynthesis process, which uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and sugars. To keep in that comfort zone, they’ve come up with some clever adaptations. Trees release water, and during hot times, that botanical sweat cools them down. And trees that grow in cold places tend to cluster their leaves. These tight formations can affect the rate at which leaves lose heat on cold days, just as fingers pressed together in mittens stay warmer than fingers separated by space in gloves [Science News]. | <urn:uuid:5e05e440-7230-4bdd-9345-1dfa41813272> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/tag/photosynthesis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00149-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948898 | 2,245 | 4 | 4 |
Monday, January 4, 1999 Published at 23:26 GMT
HIV therapy tricks cell into suicide
The new drug sets a booby trap, killing the cell when the HIV tries to reproduce
A new treatment for HIV has been revealed which uses the virus itself to select and trigger the death of infected cells.
Crucially the gene therapy leaves healthy cells alone.
It is also the first use of a biomolecular technology which can smuggle large proteins into cells, a vital requirement in gene therapy.
Experts have welcomed the treatment. "It is a very elegant strategy in which the HIV induces cell suicide," said Dr Guiseppe Pantaleo at the University Hospital of Lausanne, Switzerland.
He told BBC News Online: "It also selectively targets the infected cells, unlike currently used drugs."
The new drug has not yet been tested in patients. But Dr Pantaleo said: "All gene therapies need more experiments to prove their clinical worth. But if these researchers continue their success we may see something in three or four years time."
This is because it simultaneously uses up to 10 molecular features of the virus. Scientists say it is "statistically impossible" for all these features to mutate at the same time.
The gene therapy exploits HIV's reproductive cycle to kill infected cells. The virus uses a protein called a protease as scissors to cut out the enzymes it needs to replicate itself.
Current drugs sit in the hinge of the scissors, preventing them closing but can become ineffective if the protease mutates to a different shape.
However the new treatment tricks the HIV protease into cutting different enzymes out of a drug molecule. These enzymes causes the cell to self-destruct.
To make the drug molecule, researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine had to fuse together a brand new protein, TAT-Casp3.
They joined a protein piece that can slip through cell membranes with two pieces of a human enzyme called caspase-3. When activated, caspase causes cells to commit suicide. They then added "cut-here" molecular markers to show the HIV protease where to cut out the caspase.
In their experiments, TAT-Casp3 successfully wormed its way into HIV infected cells and was then cut open by the viral protease. This freed the caspase and resulted in the infected cells dying in a few hours. HIV-free cells were not affected as they did not contain the protease "scissors".
"This Trojan horse approach should be applicable to many other infectious diseases, such as hepatitis C, malaria and herpes," said Dr Steven Dowdy, who led the research. Dr Dowdy is also developing a fusion protein that aims to kill prostate cancer cells.
One advantage of using large proteins as medicines is that, unlike small drugs, they fit only onto the molecules for which they were designed. They could therefore be given in substantially lower doses and should cause fewer side effects.
A second new treatment was also announced in the journal Nature Medicine. It tackles the idea that HIV thrives because the body's immune system has too few "killer T cells", which would normally destroy the virus.
The researchers, also at the Washington University School of Medicine, injected HIV-positive patients with additional killer T cells. These had been genetically engineered so they could be tracked in the body.
The cells successfully sought out and killed HIV-infected cells in the lymph nodes, suggesting that this therapy could boost the ability of infected people to fight the virus.
However, Dr Pantaleo told BBC News Online: "It does home in on where the virus is, proving a point, but I think this has a very small chance of working clinically. It is difficult to make killer T cells, they need to be injected every day and they have rather minimal effect anti-viral effect." | <urn:uuid:eeef134b-87e8-4662-bf4a-f40ecfaea7f6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/248357.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00099-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963007 | 788 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The personal learning network for educators
Meatiness - the degree to which something deepens or accentuates an experience. For example, the meatiness of discussion relies on the depth of knowledge each person(s) has about the topic. Or, a class is meaty because it gives so much to think about. We need meaty learners, learners who can identify their passions and learn about them. What is this kind of learning and what is it not? Let's start with what it is not. It is not sitting in a lecture or presentation. It is not having a teacher download information to students as they listen passively information interaction other than to take notes. It is not listening to a webinar.
Meaty learning is when the learner is immersed in the curriculum being coached how to learn content and demonstrate what is learned (curriculum is different than standards). Contextually, the learner's atmosphere drives him/her to ask questions and inquire about how the content adds relevancy to their life. Inquiry - asking questions and answering them, or solving problems - is meaty because the learner is choosing to delve deeper into the curriculum through their own lens. Connections between ideas, concepts, and generalizations are made bridging new learning synapses. The teacher in this kind of learning loses authorship giving it up for learnership. Learnership is learning with students facilitating "learning how to learn". The student guides this auto-biographical experience as problems are solved, questions are asked and answered, and learning products are created with the teacher being nearby as the guide. No longer is there teaching in its original sense but transformed to guide individual learners to their own original thoughts and ideas expressed in a variety of ways. Students learn the content and teacher is the guide. ICT gives learners multiple paths to learn and express their learning - a beauty of technology. Teachers are now the new learner - the kind of learner that learns alongside students. Meaningful interaction, or facilitation, with students is the glue in the classroom. Teachers and students lose the classification of "student" and "teacher" to an encompassing category of "learner" because there is the atmosphere of learnership all love and desire. This desire is the meaty learning as meatiness in the classroom for each person wants to grow.
Meaty teaching is learnership where the teacher is both learner and leader in the love of learning. | <urn:uuid:55e313d5-7436-4869-883d-9bd825e9e89c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://edupln.ning.com/profiles/blogs/meaty-learning-as-learnership-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00192-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9683 | 493 | 2.890625 | 3 |
June 28, 2008
Phoenix Scrapes To Icy Soil In Wonderland
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander scraped to icy soil in the "Wonderland" area on Thursday, June 26, confirming that surface soil, subsurface soil and icy soil can be sampled at a single trench.
Phoenix scientists are now assured they have a complete soil-layer profile in Wonderland's "Snow White" extended trench.By rasping to icy soil, the robotic arm on Phoenix proved it could flatten the layer where soil meets ice, exposing the icy flat surface below the soil. Scientists can now proceed with plans to scoop and scrape samples into Phoenix's various analytical instruments. Scientists will test samples to determine if some ice in the soil may have been liquid in the past during warmer climate cycles.
It's another encouraging step to meeting Phoenix mission goals, which are to study the history of Martian water in all its phases and determine if the Martian arctic soil could support life.
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of The University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, located in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more information on the Phoenix mission, link to http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.
Image Caption: This image was acquired by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager on the 31st Martian day of the mission, or Sol 31 (June 26, 2008), after the May 25, 2008 landing. This image shows the trenches informally called "Snow White 1" (left), "Snow White 2" (right), and within the Snow White 2 trench, the smaller scraping area called "Snow White 3." The Snow White 3 scraped area is about 5 centimeters (2 inches) deep. The dug and scraped areas are within the digging site called "Wonderland."
The Snow White trenches and scraping prove that scientists can take surface soil samples, subsurface soil samples, and icy samples all from one unit. Scientists want to test samples to determine if some ice in the soil may have been liquid in the past during warmer climate cycles.
The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University | <urn:uuid:285f1b1e-8d7b-423d-8c3a-2d54ea0c6ae1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1454651/phoenix_scrapes_to_icy_soil_in_wonderland/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402516.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00112-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917162 | 557 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Potato Patch- We trialled different ways of preparing the soil to grow potatoes. We grew many different cultivars and therefore the trial was not a comparable scientific one, but we hope to do directly comparable trials in the future. However despite this there were significant differences in the yields obtained.
1 Potatoes planted straight into the turf - The grass was so vigorous that the potatoes couldn't compete and slugs, hidden by the long grass, were a significant pest. Yield was significantly less than with the other methods.
2 Top few inches of turf inverted, no mulch - Inverting the turf was hard work but quickly gave a nice clean patch of soil. Due to the cleared land the potatoes got off to a good start before weeds got a chance to become a problem, and their thick canopy of foliage was self mulching. We suspect that early in the season plants would have benefitted from a mulch, until the canopy developed to retain available moisture.
3 Inverted turf and mulch - Turf from elsewhere was inverted and placed on an existing nettle patch and topped with layers of newspaper and well rotted manure. A metal bar was used to make holes about 25cm deep into which we pushed the seed potatoes, before covering them with a handful of soil. This method produced the highest yield but also involved higher initial inputs of labour and materials.
Following these trials and much discussion we will be trialling two different methods using the same cultivar of potato to gain a more scientifically comparable result. 1 Invert turf, top these with layers of cardboard and manure and plant in holes made through the mulch 2 Layer cardboard and manure directly on the ground and plant in holes made through the mulch. This should enable us to decide whether the extra effort of inverting the turfs to loosen the soil is worth it. | <urn:uuid:7342ff7f-b3ee-416d-8f5a-038705639d78> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thoseplantpeople.com/research.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00085-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974761 | 371 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Go With the Salmon
Oily, cold-water fish like salmon, trout, and mackerel are especially good sources of PUFAs, namely omega-3 fatty acids. According to a 2012 study, 2 servings a week are associated with a modest but clinically significant reduction in stroke risk. Of note, omega-3 supplementation was not associated with a risk reduction, a finding that study author Oscar H. Franco, MD, PhD, Professor of Preventive Medicine at Erasmus Medical Center in The Netherlands, attributes to “the interplay of a wide range of nutrients abundant in fish.” A 2010 study suggested that consuming a moderate amount of oily fish was protective against the risk for psychotic symptoms; however, greater intakes were associated with an increased risk. This J-shaped relationship between fish or PUFA intake and mental health problems has also been suggested by other studies and is consistent with the importance of a balanced diet. However, concurrent work from randomized controlled trials has suggested that fish oil may help prevent psychosis in high-risk individuals. A multicenter, randomized double-blind study is under way to determine whether omega-3 fatty acid supplementation can help prevent the onset of psychosis and improve symptoms and outcomes in those at high risk for schizophrenia.
Cut the Soda, Keep Up the Coffee
2012 saw more evidence that coffee might be the original wonder drug. A new observational study to be presented at the American Academy of Neurology meeting in March shows that people who drink 4 cups of coffee a day are 10% less likely to develop depression. Those who opted for 4 or more servings a day of diet soda or fruit punch were 30% and 38% more likely, respectively, to develop depression. Past work also suggests that the world’s most widely used stimulant cuts depression risk, possibly by altering serotonin and dopamine activity and through its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
What Not to Eat: Cut the Carbs
Various 2012 studies further clarified how overly sweet, unhealthy foods affect the brain. An animal study out of UCLA found that diets high in fructose can impair cognitive function, which is reversible with omega-3 fatty acid supplementation. Coauthor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, PhD, told Medscape Medical News, “High fructose consumption can induce some signs of metabolic syndrome in the brain and can disrupt the signalling of the insulin receptors and reduce the action of insulin in the brain.” Other work published in JAMA suggests that fructose consumption modulates the neurophysiologic pathways involved in appetite regulation and encourages overeating. An October 2012 study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease reported that a diet high in carbohydrates and sugar raises the risk for mild cognitive impairment in the elderly, while a diet high in fat and protein may reduce this risk. Lead author Rosebud O. Roberts, MD, an epidemiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, commented to Medscape Medical News that an “optimal balance” of carbohydrates, fat, and protein may help “maintain neuronal integrity and optimal cognitive function in the elderly.”
by Bret S. Stetka, MD | <urn:uuid:834436a4-0f25-4181-bbb4-1d1b6adb5c3a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sardaa.org/2013/02/09/medscape-the-best-foods-for-the-brain/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00192-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936124 | 631 | 2.609375 | 3 |
- Historic Sites
Built about 1740 as a four-room private residence by Jean le Poincet and later purchased by Francois Saucier, son of the designer of Fort de Chartres, the Cahokia Courthouse is an example of the French Creole poteaux-sur-solle (post-on-sill) construction method which French settlers brought over their native Normandy in northern France. In this method upright hewn logs are seated on a horizontal log sill and the spaces between the logs are filled with stone and mortar chinking. This type of construction is different from the more familiar horizontal Anglo-American style and is quite rare with only about thirty buildings of this type left in North America.
The vertical-log Courthouse has a double-pitch roof of cedar shingles and galleries on all four sides. Inside are three exhibit rooms and another furnished to represent the courtroom in the 1790s. Exhibits in the Courthouse depict issues that came before the court around 1800 and a history of the structure as it was moved in the early twentieth century to St. Louis and Chicago before its eventual return to Cahokia. Interior features include two massive limestone fireplaces, shuttered casement windows, and French-style doors.
The Courthouse staff and volunteers provide guided tours, or guests may experience the site at their leisure. Exhibits in the Courthouse depict issues that came before the court around 1800 and a history of the structure as it was moved in the early twentieth century to St. Louis and Chicago before its eventual return to Cahokia. The Courthouse is not fully disabled accessible. The visitor center houses exhibits depicting the Jarrot Mansion, currently undergoing restoration, and placing area historic sites within the context of the eighteenth-century French occupation. | <urn:uuid:a376717b-72a4-4f9e-8da6-53ff60a201c1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.americanheritage.com/content/cahokia-courthouse | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00071-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952661 | 361 | 3.453125 | 3 |
The compound, α-difluoromethylornithine or DFMO, targets the activity of a specific enzyme and, even in very limited doses, is effective in protecting against the malignancy in animal models.
The study was published in the January 15, 2009 issue of the journal, Cancer Research (Volume 69, Issue 2).
"The drug, which was developed as a cancer therapy and later shelved because of toxicity concerns, has been around since the 1970s," said John Cleveland, Ph.D., chair of the Scripps Florida Department of Cancer Biology whose laboratory conducted the study. "But over the past five years, it has undergone a rebirth as a chemoprevention agent, first showing efficacy in animal models of human cancer and more recently in human prostate and colon cancer. Our study shows that it likely works in a large cast of tumors, even those having poor prognosis, like high-risk neuroblastoma."
Neuroblastoma is a childhood malignancy of the sympathetic nervous system (part of the nervous system that serves to accelerate the heart rate, constrict blood vessels, and raise blood pressure) that accounts for nearly eight percent of all childhood cancers and 15 percent of pediatric cancer-related deaths. Its solid tumors arise from developing nerve cells, most commonly in the adrenal gland, but also in the abdomen, neck, and chest. Neuroblastoma usually occurs in infants and young children, appearing twice as frequently during the first year of life than in the second.
Tragically, children with stage IV, high-risk neuroblastoma have a less than a 40 percent chance of long-term survival.
The best-known genetic alteration involved in neuroblastoma is the amplification of the proto-oncogene--a molecule that when overexpressed can cause cancer--called MYCN. Amplification of MYCN occurs in about 20 percent of all neuroblastoma and is associated with the high-risk form of the disease. Targeting this and related genes directly might be therapeutically tempting, the study noted, but highly problematic because the oncoproteins they produce are also required for the growth of most normal cell types.
As a result, Cleveland and colleagues focused on inhibiting ornithine decarboxylase (Odc), a protein that contributes to cancer cell growth and that is a target of the proto-oncogene MYCN. Increased levels of Odc are common in cancer, and forced Odc expression in animal models has been shown to lead to increased tumor incidence. Recent findings have shown that Odc overexpression is also an indication of poor prognosis in neuroblastoma. DFMO, the drug used by the Cleveland team, inhibits the activity of Odc.
To test the effect of DFMO on preventing neuroblastoma, the study used a transgenic mouse that faithfully models many of the hallmarks of MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma in humans.
"We were able to prevent neuroblastoma caused by MYCN, delaying the onset and incidence of this tumor type" said Cleveland. "What's even more compelling, we used low doses of the drug, and DFMO only had to be given for a moderate amount of time to prevent cancer."
While DFMO selectively impaired the proliferation of MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma, it had no appreciable effect on non-MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma cell lines, indicating that the growth of the former is "addicted" to Odc.
"Our study offers a strong suggestion to the clinical cancer community that they should keep an open mind about the Odc-polyamine pathway, and that this particular pathway might represent a novel therapeutic angle to tackle this malignancy." Cleveland said. "While there are valid safety concerns about giving DFMO to pediatric patients suffering from advanced stage MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma, it may be time to revisit the issue as our study showed that transient treatment with DFMO is sufficient to provide chemoprevention and may show benefit for this otherwise lethal malignancy."
The first author of the study, "Targeting Ornithine Decarboxylase Impairs Development of Q2 MYCN-Amplified Neuroblastoma," is Robert J. Rounbehler of The Scripps Research Institute. In addition to Cleveland, other authors of the study are Weimin Li, Mark A. Hall, Chunying Yang, and Mohammad Fallahi at Scripps Florida.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the State of Florida.
About The Scripps Research Institute
The Scripps Research Institute is one of the world's largest independent, non-profit biomedical research organizations, at the forefront of basic biomedical science that seeks to comprehend the most fundamental processes of life. Scripps Research is internationally recognized for its discoveries in immunology, molecular and cellular biology, chemistry, neurosciences, autoimmune, cardiovascular, and infectious diseases, and synthetic vaccine development. Established in its current configuration in 1961, it employs approximately 3,000 scientists, postdoctoral fellows, scientific and other technicians, doctoral degree graduate students, and administrative and technical support personnel. Scripps Research is headquartered in La Jolla, California. It also includes Scripps Florida in Jupiter, Florida, whose researchers focus on basic biomedical science, drug discovery, and technology development. Scripps Florida has now completed its move into its permanent campus, and dedication ceremonies for the new campus will be held February 26-28, 2009. | <urn:uuid:7db85fe8-b522-4222-beec-1a8207ad9c92> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/sri-sfs011509.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396222.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00169-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942241 | 1,135 | 3.03125 | 3 |
[b-hebrew] elephants or ivory ?
yaakov_s at rad.com
Wed Aug 20 02:58:45 EDT 2008
In Kings I 10:22 (and the parallel passage in Chronicles)
we read that every three years Hiram sent Solomon
ZHB WKSF $NHBYM WQPYM WTCYYM.
The use of the conjunction and the cantillation marks
separate the good sent into two groups,
namely 1) gold and silver, 2) shenhavim and monkeys and tukim.
The former group consists of inanimate objects,
while two of the three in the latter are animals found in Africa
(without going into a discussion of the precise meaning of tuki).
Is it possible that shenhavim here means elephants rather than ivory ?
This would seem to match the sentence structure better.
The present word for elephant PYL does not appear in the tanach.
Elephants do appear in the first book of Macabees
(having been adopted by the Greek army after its conquest of India)
but unfortunately as the original Hebrew has been lost,
we can't see what word was used.
There are those who believe that the fourth animal in Daniel
is an elephant, but once again no specific Hebrew word is used.
Were ivory intended, why is the word in the plural,
rather than the singular as for gold and silver ?
Of course the proper translation could be "elephant tusks",
i.e. that unprocessed tusks were sent for carving in Israel.
But since there were no elephants in Solomon's Israel,
why would there be artisans skilled in ivory carving there ?
Yaakov (J) Stein
More information about the b-hebrew | <urn:uuid:358f3200-5426-4aac-8603-2e09e6d2bba9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/2008-August/036138.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393442.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00105-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943238 | 379 | 2.71875 | 3 |
NEC Corporation announced the development of a water-cooling module for notebook personal computers that employs a piezoelectric pump driving method. This water cooling-module enables a highly advanced, slim sized, notebook PC with minimal operating noise.
The water-cooling module uses a piezoelectric pump to drive the cooling liquid. This newly structured water-cooling module is developed by integrating the pump and the tank with the aluminum radiation plate that contains the water circulation channel.
Main features of NEC’s water-cooling module
(1) Through optimized design of the radiation plate and the ingenuity of the coolant passage configuration below the CPU attached area, a cooling performance of 80W (2 times that of conventional systems) is realized. Moreover, the optimized piezoelectric pump structure suppresses the operating noise up to the whisper level of about 30dB, in turn enabling highly efficient water-cooling performance.
(2) By development of a piezoelectric pump with higher water pressure and slimmer size (thickness 5mm), the thickness of the aluminum radiation plate that contains the water circulation channel is reduced to within 3 mm. The increase in the thickness of the chassis is reduced to 4mm, half that of conventional water-cooling methods.
(3) By integrating the aluminum radiation plate, the tank and the piezoelectric pump, ease of installation in personal computers and long-term reliability is achieved.
(4) Hermetical sealing is improved through the use of materials with little liquid permeability. In turn the size of the cooling liquid tank is reduced by 9/10 compared to conventional tanks.
Features of the conventional water-cooling system
(1) Water pressure of the electromagnetic centrifugal pump is relatively weak. If the thickness of the circulation channel is decreased, cooling-liquid flow is restricted.
(2) The system is difficult to install as the tank, pump and CPU attached area are all inter-connected to a metal pipe and a rubber tube.
(3) Installation of a large tank is necessary as cooling liquid seeps through the resin parts of the tank, pump and the connection tubes resulting in liquid reduction over time.
The water-cooling module developed by NEC is the slimmest model in the world. When installed in a notebook personal computer increase in thickness is minimized. In order to drive a conventional piezoelectric pump alternating voltage of 100V is necessary. However, with NEC’s water-cooling module system the pump can be driven with 5V of direct voltage. As a result it is easy to install in all IT equipment. This product is suitable not only for use in notebook PCs, but also in servers and desktop computers. It is expected that it will be positioned as a core technology for spreading the water-cooling system in IT equipment and that it will be used as an alternative to the conventional water-cooling heat sink and heat pipe.
NEC Personal Products, Ltd. plans to commercially produce the water-cooling module within two years. NEC aims to create a de-facto industry standard and will actively work towards licensing supply of its module technology to parties outside the NEC Group. | <urn:uuid:55ede4f5-a8e1-460c-b9ac-a2f90c394cbf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mobilemag.com/2003/07/08/nec-develops-water-cooling-notebook-module/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00119-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917053 | 661 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Peter Paul Rubens: The Holy Family with Elizabeth and St John the Baptist (P81)
The Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was the most imaginative and influential painter of Catholic Europe in the seventeenth century. His extraordinary energy is reflected in his prolific output of portraits, landscapes, histories and religious pictures. His powerful narrative style was the perfect vehicle for religious imagery in the service of a Catholic church on the offensive against Protestantism and its emphasis on the written word. His historical and religious paintings are brightly coloured, often highly innovative and remarkable for their dramatic composition, sculptural form and variety of attitude and gesture. This painting shows Christ held by his mother Mary with her husband Joseph in the background. Mary's cousin Elizabeth holds her son, St John the Baptist, who clasps his hands in a gesture of devotion towards Christ. Christ wears a coral necklace symbolising the blood he will later shed on the Cross; St John sits on an animal skin symbolic of the one he will wear as an adult when preaching in the desert. This subject is not found in the Bible. Instead it was taken from a thirteenth-century text, the Meditationes Vitae Christi (Meditations on the Life of Christ), which was a popular source for seventeenth-century artists. The Spanish painter Murillo's version of the same subject may be seen at the far end of the opposite wall of this gallery.
The picture demonstrates Rubens's exceptional powers of characterisation and narrative. He carefully differentiates between the ages of the people represented and emphasises their relationship to one another by a skilful use of look and gesture. The brilliant colours and the seemingly effortless way in which he has brushed in his forms owe much to the oak panel on which the picture has been painted.
Commissioned by Archduke Albert, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and painted 1614-15, it hung in the Duke's oratory (a small chapel for private worship) at his palace in Brussels. In the eighteenth century it belonged to the Austrian Emperor Joseph II who gave it to one of his councillors. In 1846 it was bought by the 4th Marquess of Hertford, father of Sir Richard Wallace, for the considerable sum of 2,660 guineas (£2,793).
Also in this gallery may be seen (opposite) another of Rubens's religious paintings, Christ's Charge to Peter, and (in the centre of this wall) his greatest landscape painting, The Rainbow Landscape. A superb group of six oil sketches by the artist hangs in East Gallery I, also on this floor. | <urn:uuid:804efd5d-9aa3-402d-9beb-c06c8cb439ed> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wallacecollection.org/whatson/treasure/29 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00170-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975571 | 537 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Cairo - The Past
- Abbasid Period
- Fatimid Period
- Ayyubid Period
- Mameluke Period
- Bahri Mameluke Period
- Burgi Mameluke Period
- Ottoman Turk Period
- French Occupation Period
- British Occupation Period
While the City of Cairo sprang from the foundations of a "recent" town, by Egyptian historical standards, it is no wonder that this location developed the foremost Egyptian city. With one of the few river crossings, the area around Cairo was originally settled in Paleolithic times and later saw the development of Neolithic trading communities.
Yet it was Menes, the legendary first King-God of the Dynastic period who united upper and lower Egypt and established his capital at Memphis. While it has been suggested that Memphis already existed upon Menes arrival, what is known is that this city, with its ruins 15 miles south of current Cairo, was a dominate influence throughout most of Egypt's pharaonic history. Nearby Memphis (nine miles north and on the opposite side of the Nile) was the contemporary religious center of On located in the community the Greeks called Heliopolis, not to be confused with the nearby modern suburb of Cairo by the same name.
In 525 BC, the invading Persians conquered Egypt and built a strategic fort north of Memphis called Babylon-on-the-Nile. This was where the Persians controlled Egypt until its capture by Alexander in 332 BC. During the Greek period, the fort held little importance, but after the Roman conquest, it regained prominence as a stronghold because of its strategic location guarding the Roman trade routes. The Roman general Trajan repaired the old Red Sea Canal, originally built by the pharaohs, which allowed vessels to sail up the Red Sea, turn west toward Babylon, and then down the Nile to the Mediterranean.
During the Roman period, Babylon continued to be a dominant influence in the region and a Christian community grew up around it, which was likewise a prominent center of the new religion. It was here that St. Mark lived, and where St. Peter sent his greetings from the sister church in Rome. But in the later Roman period, the Coptic church of Egypt grew apart from most of the world's Christianity. This split resulted in unrest and often persecution of the Coptics. Hence, when the Arab Muslims led by Amr arrived in 640 AD, Babylon was an easy target and was captured after a disastrous battle for the Romans. Soon, all of Egypt was in the hands of the Islamic Arabs.
Legend has it that when Amr departed the Babylon area to lay siege to Alexandria, he left his tent standing in the tent camp next to Babylon. Upon his return, the tent was still standing and a dove had built a nest in it. So it was here that Amr built his Mosque, the first in Egypt, and around the Mosque, Fustat or al-Fustat al-Misr (the Camp of Egypt), the City of the Tents and the original Muslim capital of Egypt grew up from his original tent encampment. This encampment was divided into khittat, or districts which originally divided the various Arab tribes which made up Amr's army.
Throughout ancient times, Egypt has been one of the most important trade routes for the world and so it was from that, just as the archaic cities which proceeded Fustat, this new city also prospered from all manner of goods which where transshipped to wealthy markets in Europe. They also developed their own markets in spices, textiles and perfumes which were legendary throughout the world. Beginning as a haphazard conglomeration of tents and huts, Fustat grew into a sophisticated commercial center where its residents enjoyed great wealth. They built high rise houses with rooftop gardens, public baths modeled from the Romans (but smaller, earning the name al-hammamat al-far, or mouse baths). Their architecture grew in both splendor and magnitude, and they even built covered streets to protect themselves from the sun.
Last Updated: June 9th, 2011
Who are we?
Tour Egypt aims to offer the ultimate Egyptian adventure and intimate knowledge about the country. We offer this unique experience in two ways, the first one is by organizing a tour and coming to Egypt for a visit, whether alone or in a group, and living it firsthand. The second way to experience Egypt is from the comfort of your own home: online. | <urn:uuid:5463362c-4263-4432-8b4b-02f43075ca76> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.touregypt.net/cairo2.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00000-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969911 | 913 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Nandina 'Sacred Bamboo'
Scientific: Nandina Domestica
Despite the common name, it is not a bamboo but an erect evergreen shrub up to 2 m (7 ft) tall by 1.5 m (5 ft) wide, with numerous, usually unbranched stems growing from ground level. The glossy leaves are sometimes deciduous in colder areas, 50–100 cm (20–39 in) long, bi- to tri-pinnately compound, with the individual leaflets 4–11 cm (2–4 in) long and 1.5–3 cm broad. The young leaves in spring are brightly coloured pink to red before turning green; old leaves turn red or purple again before falling. The flowers are white, borne in early summer in conical clusters held well above the foliage. The fruit is a bright red berry 5–10 mm diameter, ripening in late autumn and often persisting through the winter.
Flowering occurs from May to July. Flowers are in terminal, or sometimes axillary, panicles 8 to 15 inches long with several hundred perfect Flowers. Flowers are ¼ to ½ inches across and pinkish in bud, maturing to white with yellow anthers. Flowers are fragrant. Petals are variable in number ranging from 2 to 6.
<< Return to Plant List | <urn:uuid:148d750c-157f-4dc6-8bea-0adcf68ecad7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/landscape/plants/nandina.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00159-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937325 | 280 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Farming and agriculture may not seem cool to young people, but if they can learn the thrill of nurturing plants to produce food, and are provided with their favorite apps and communications software on agriculture, food insecurity will not be an issue, food and agriculture experts said during the Asian Development Bank (ADB)’s Food Security Forum from June 22 to 24 at the ADB headquarters here.
One in five migrant workers – about 50 million people - lives and works in Europe, making the region home to a quarter of global remittance flows, according to a new report by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Geeta Selvaraj and a few other women take turns to prepare meals with just one large gas cooker in a tiny shop.
The international community’s post-2015 development agenda will depend, in key aspects, on whether the delegates of 195 countries meeting now at the climate summit in the Peruvian capital reach an agreement to reduce global warming, since climate change affects all human activity.
Jahanara Begum, a 35-year-old housewife, is surrounded by thatched-roof homes, all of which are partially submerged by floodwater.
Latin America and the Caribbean, the world’s most unequal region, has made the greatest progress towards improving food security and has become the region with the largest number of countries to have reached the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of undernourished people.
Some 842 million people still suffer from chronic hunger, according to the State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI 2013), published Tuesday by the three Rome-based U.N. food agencies.
Women and young people are central players in dozens of small businesses and environmental protection plans that are changing the lives of poor rural families in the Andes highlands of southern Peru.
Over 40 percent of Nepal is covered in thick forest, but most of it has been degraded. Rural communities that have traditionally relied on the forests for survival now live in abject poverty, struggling to secure the food necessary for survival. Most men have migrated to the Gulf in search of employment.
When 45-year-old Kaswati joined an income-generating project in her village in Indonesia’s West Java province in 1999, all she hoped to do was supplement her family’s income at a time of erratic harvests.
Nearly 300 km from Nepal’s teeming capital, Kathmandu, in a small village dug into the steep slopes of the mountainous Palpa district, 35-year-old Dhanmaya Pata goes about her daily chores in much the same way that her ancestors did centuries ago.
Nangnyi Foung reaches into the dryer, pulls out another pair of pants and places it on the ironing board. "I still have several more loads to go," she says as the clock strikes nine p.m., marking the start of her 14th
hour on the shift.
New data from the United Nations reveals that there has been progress in reducing the number of hungry people worldwide. But an estimate that nearly 870 million people, one in eight, suffered from chronic undernourishment over the last two years is “unacceptable”, experts say. | <urn:uuid:f20faebe-6829-4456-8cb2-35f5a4a452fd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ipsnews.net/topics/international-fund-for-agricultural-development-ifad/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00104-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960068 | 675 | 2.546875 | 3 |
How to identify canker sores.
Dentists distinguish canker sores (recurrent minor aphthous ulcers) from other types of mouth lesions by way of:
- Their appearance.
- The location / type of tissue on which they've formed.
- The fact that they are recurrent.
The dentist will also quiz their patient about the signs and symptoms that they experienced (or didn't experience) both immediately preceding and during their ulcer's formation.
What do they look like?
Stage 1 - (24 hours)
The earliest sign of canker sore development usually isn't visible. It involves just the sensation of tingling, burning or numbness in the area (see below) where the lesion will ultimately form.
Pictures of canker sores (aphthous ulcers).
Stage 2 - (18 to 72 hours)
The earliest visible signs have now started to form. This includes the formation of a circular raised, reddened area on the skin. The lesion gradually develops a membrane coating.
Stage 3 - (1 to 14 days)
At this point, the membrane sheds off revealing a well defined ulcer as describe below. The sore may continue to grow in size for 4 to 6 days.
Sores have a grayish, membrane-coated central ulceration with a surrounding red border. The skin around the lesion looks normal.
- A single shallow ulcer that has a round or oval shape.
- It will usually be no more than a 1/4 inch in diameter.
- Its center will form a loosely attached yellowish or grayish membrane.
- Its edges will be regular (not jagged) and surrounded by a reddish halo.
Other signs and symptoms.
- The skin adjacent to the sore will appear healthy.
- There usually is some pain associated with the lesion. The person often will want to restrict their oral activities somewhat.
- There are no distinguishing systemic features such as a fever or malaise.
Where do canker sores form?
They usually only form on the "loose" (movable) tissues of the mouth, meaning those areas where the skin is not tightly bound to the bone underneath. (These are also the "nonkeratinized" tissues of the mouth.)
Canker sores form on the "loose" tissues of the mouth.
Areas that have this type of tissue covering are the:
- Inside of the lips and cheeks.
- The floor of the mouth.
- The tip or underside of the tongue.
- The soft palate.
- The tonsillar areas.
Healing time frames.
- A canker sore will usually heal within 4 to 14 days, although some can heal in as little as 3 to 5. In most cases this healing is uneventful and results in no residual scarring. (Woo 1996) [topic references]
- The pain associated with the lesion usually starts to subside around day 3 to 4.
- Any ulcer that has not healed within a 2 week time frame should be evaluated by a dentist.
- There is another, larger, kind of aphthous ulcer (see below) that characteristically does have an extended healing time frame.
- Once a person has experienced an initial outbreak, the probability of recurrence is high, although the rate at which this occurs can be quite variable.
- A rate of one outbreak every 1 to 3 months could be considered typical (encompassing 50% of those who get them). 30% of people who suffer deal with their presence on a monthly basis. (Woo 1996)
- It's been estimated that roughly 20% of the general population gets them.
- A person's first outbreak will typically take place between the ages of 10 and 20 years and then decrease in frequency and severity as the person ages.
- They're most prevalent in people 10 to 40 years of age.
- It's been suggested that women are more likely to experience them than men but not all studies have confirmed this fact.
- A person's risk seems to be unrelated to race.
- They are more common in people who live in North America. as opposed to those who live on other continents.
- Non-smokers and people in upper socioeconomic groups are more likely to experience them.
Can a person have more than one at a time?
- Outbreaks of multiple canker sores can and do occur (in contrast to the classic single-ulcer form).
- Usually the total number of sores that will form at one time will be six or fewer. If multiple canker sores do develop they tend to be widely distributed throughout the person's mouth (as opposed to being clustered together).
- If two sores form close to each other, they may combine into a single larger and irregularly shaped ulcer (as opposed to the classic round or oval shape).
- The number of outbreaks that a person experiences can vary greatly. Most people will have only a few episodes a year while, at the other extreme, others will have nearly continuous outbreaks and will never be free of ulcers for an extended period of time.
Are they contagious?
- No, canker sores are neither contagious nor infectious.
What are "major aphthous ulcers"?
Canker sores, like we have described above, are formally termed "recurrent minor aphthous ulcers." There's another type of aphthous ulcer termed "major aphthae" (also called Sutton's ulcers).
They take the form of a large deep ulceration. The healing of these lesions is typically slower and more painful than that associated with the minor variety. They may cause regional or even facial swelling.
Unlike minor aphthae, the major kind can form on all types of oral tissues (both keratinized and nonkeratinized tissues). And they can approach 1/2 inch (or more) in diameter.
Their healing usually takes between 10 and 40 days. It can, however, take months (even as new ulcers are forming). Healing is often associated with scarring.
Continue reading about canker sores -
- What causes them? / Risk factors.
- How to identify them. / Pictures. ◀
- How to tell them from herpes.
- Home Remedies.
- Over-the-counter products.
- Prescription medications. | <urn:uuid:ef8dc0c7-1762-47fb-b941-12f52721a14d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.animated-teeth.com/canker_sores/t2_mouth_ulcers.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00012-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94956 | 1,344 | 3 | 3 |
Johnston in Edgefield County, South Carolina — The American South (South Atlantic)
Johnston, founded in 1868 as Johnston's Station on the Charlotte, Columbia, & Augusta Railroad and also known as Johnson's Turn Out, was named for railroad president William Johnston. It was first incorporated in 1875 and rechartered with its present name of Johnston in 1897. The Johnston Historic District, a collection of 146 houses, businesses, and churches dating from ca. 1880 to ca. 1920, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
Erected 1997 by Town of Johnston. (Marker Number 19-12.)
Location. 33° 49.9′ N, 81° 48.067′ W. Marker is in Johnston, South Carolina, in Edgefield County. Marker is on Calhoun Street, on the right when traveling north. Click for map. Marker is located in the southeast corner of the intersection of Calhoun and Lee Streets. Marker is in this post office area: Johnston SC 29832, United States of America.
Other nearby markers. At least 10 other markers are within 7 miles of this marker, measured as the crow flies. William Johnston (within shouting distance of this marker); Edwards Building (within shouting distance of this marker); Johnston Schools / Johnston Educators (approx. 0.2 miles away); Johnston Civil War Monument (approx. 0.2 miles away); Johnston Presbyterian Church (approx. ¼ mile away); Lott's Tavern & Post Office (approx. 1.2 miles away); Spann Methodist Church / Captain Clinton Ward (approx. 4.6 miles away); William Barret Travis (approx. 5.8 miles away); Old Simkins Cemetery (approx. 6 miles away); Benjamin R. Tillman House (approx. 6.4 miles away). Click for a list of all markers in Johnston.
Also see . . .
1. Johnston Historic District. The Johnston Historic District is composed of 146 properties within and adjacent to the town of Johnston.
2. Charlotte, Columbia, & Augusta Railroad. In 1869 the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad and the Columbia and Augusta Railroad merged to form the Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta Railroad.
3. Johnston, South Carolina. Johnston is a town in Edgefield County, South Carolina, United States.
4. "100 years for city of Johnson", Augusta Chronicle, May 23, 1997. One hundred years ago, a small railroad village called Johnston Turn Out became a full-fledged town chartered by the state of South Carolina and renamed simply Johnston for the railroader who helped make it possible.
Categories. • 20th Century • Railroads & Streetcars • Settlements & Settlers •
Credits. This page originally submitted on October 10, 2008, by Brian Scott of Anderson, South Carolina. This page has been viewed 1,343 times since then. Photos: 1, 2. submitted on October 10, 2008, by Brian Scott of Anderson, South Carolina. 3, 4. submitted on September 30, 2011, by Mike Stroud of Bluffton, South Carolina. 5. submitted on October 7, 2012, by Mike Stroud of Bluffton, South Carolina. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. submitted on October 10, 2008, by Brian Scott of Anderson, South Carolina. | <urn:uuid:31e133e2-8f3a-4108-9af0-e680afb9653e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=12338 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00015-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931572 | 692 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Bluetooth is a popular method of wirelessly transferring data between two devices such as your phone and your headphones, your media player and a speaker, or your iPad and a keyboard. It’s one of the most widely used wireless technology in the world, according to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. More than 3 billion Bluetooth products will ship this year alone, and that number will likely almost double within the next three years.
Bluetooth is all great when it works. But if you’re someone who likes to play around with these kinds of connected gadgets, you know it can be frustrating when there’s a hang-up pairing the two. Here are some common causes of pairing problems as well as advice on what you can do about them.
Why Bluetooth pairings fail
Bluetooth depends on both hardware and software to work properly. So if your devices can't speak a common Bluetooth language, they won’t be able to connect.
In general, Bluetooth is backwards compatible: Bluetooth devices supporting the Bluetooth 4.2 standard, announced last year, should still be able to pair with devices using, say, the ancient Bluetooth 2.1, launched back in 2007.
The exceptions are gadgets that use a low-energy version called Bluetooth Smart, which works on a different protocol than older, or "Classic" Bluetooth devices. Bluetooth Smart devices are not backward compatible and won't recognize (or pair with) older devices that support Classic Bluetooth. (For example, an old Sony Ericsson phone sporting Bluetooth 3.0 won't be able to connect to a Bluetooth Smart device.)
However, if a device supports Bluetooth 4.0, it can potentially recognize both Bluetooth Smart and Classic. If it does, it's officially labelled Bluetooth Smart Ready.
Gadgets that commonly use Bluetooth Smart include personal health gadgets such as fitness bands or heart-rate monitors. These gadgets will only pair with a smartphone or tablet that also uses Bluetooth Smart – or are Bluetooth Smart Ready.
iPhones running iOS 7 and newer should be Bluetooth Smart Ready as should Android phones running 4.3 or newer, Windows Phone 8.1 devices, and all BlackBerry 10 devices. Ensure your phone is running the latest version of its operating system – but if your device isn't new enough to run relatively current software, you may not be able to pair it with that fitness band.
Devices also come with specific Bluetooth profiles. If Bluetooth is the common language connecting devices, you can think of a profile as a dialect associated with a certain use. For example, you probably aren't going to be able to connect a mouse and a camera because a camera doesn’t support the Human Interface Device Profile. But if both a mobile phone and a wireless headset support the Hands-Free Profile, you should be able to pair them.
However, if the pairing failure is a matter of user error, there are steps you can take to get your devices happily communicating with each other.
What you can do about pairing failures
1. Make sure Bluetooth is turned on. You should see the little Bluetooth symbol at the top of your phone’s screen. If you don’t, go into the settings to enable it.
2. Determine which pairing process your device employs. The process for pairing devices can vary. Sometimes, for example, it involves tapping a code into your phone. Other times, you can just physically touch your phone to the device you want to pair it with. Or in the case of the Bose SoundLink, you only have to hold down a button on the speaker to pair it with a phone.
If you’re not sure how to pair a device, refer to its user guide; you can usually find one by searching online.
3. Turn on discoverable mode. Let’s say you want to pair your phone with your car’s infotainment system so you can enjoy hands-free calling, texting and navigation. First, go into your phone’s settings and tap on Bluetooth; doing so makes the phone visible to the car. Then depress the buttons on your car's infotainment system, usually on the steering wheel or center stack, to get it looking for the device.
Once it finds your phone, the car may ask for a numeric code you need to confirm or input on your phone. After you do so, the devices should be paired. Keep in mind your phone or your car may only stay in discoverable mode for a few minutes; if you take too long, you’ll need to start over.
4. Make sure the two devices are in close enough proximity to one another. While you wouldn’t think someone might try to pair an iPad with a keyboard if the two weren’t sitting right next to each other, it’s probably worth noting that you should make sure any devices you're trying to pair are within five feet of one other.
5. Power the devices off and back on. A soft reset sometimes can resolve an issue. With phones, an easy way to do this is by going into and out of airplane mode.
6. Power down likely interferers. Say that faithful Bluetooth speaker usually connects to your partner's smartphone instead of yours. If you're having trouble pairing your phone with the speaker, it could be because the speaker is trying to activate its usual connection. Some older devices are very simple. They just try to connect with the last thing they paired with. If a Bluetooth device was previously paired with something else, turn off that other gadget.
7. Charge up both devices you're trying to pair. Some devices have smart power management that may turn off Bluetooth if the battery level is too low. If your phone isn't pairing, make sure it and the device you're trying to pair with have enough juice.
8. Delete a device from a phone and rediscover it. If your phone sees a device but isn’t receiving data from it, sometimes it helps to start from scratch. In iOS settings, you can remove a device by tapping on its name and then Forget this Device. In Android settings, tap on a device’s name, then Unpair. After removing a device, start at step 1 on this list.
9. Get away from the Wi-Fi router. Another potential obstacle to successful pairing is interference from devices that use the same spectrum, such as your Wi-Fi router. “Wi-Fi has been designed to cope with this, but it might not be a good idea to have your devices directly on top of the router,” Powell says.
10. Move away from a USB 3.0 port. “Interference from USB 3.0 is also possible,” Powell says. Newer laptops, for example, often have the higher-speed USB 3.0 port, so if the connection isn't happening, try pairing your Bluetooth gadgets away from the computer.
11. Make sure the devices you want to pair are designed to connect with each other. Whether it’s a headset, speaker, mouse, keyboard, camera or something else, your device has a specific profile that spells out what it can connect with. If you’re not sure, check the user manual.
12. Download a driver. If you’re having problems pairing something with your PC, you might be lacking the correct driver. The simplest way to figure this out is to do an online search for the name of the device you’re trying to pair along with the word “driver.”
13. Update the hardware’s firmware. Some automotive audio systems recently wouldn’t pair with the iPhone 5, for example, because the Bluetooth drivers in these systems didn’t work with Bluetooth 4.0. If you’re not sure how to get the latest firmware for your hardware, check with the device manufacturer.
14. Keep in mind that not all wireless devices use Bluetooth. Alternatives include the Wireless Gigabit specification, Wireless HD, ANT+, ZigBee, NFC as well as Wi-Fi Direct. These other technologies typically won’t work with your phone, tablet or PC without some kind of additional hardware.
We hope this guide has helped you with your Bluetooth pairing problems. If you know of any tip we've missed, share in the comments below!
Updated on 12/29/2015
[ Bluetooth devices with phone via Shutterstock] | <urn:uuid:62134ee3-f292-4eb3-943c-5252ec06f6ef> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.techlicious.com/how-to/how-to-fix-bluetooth-pairing-problems/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00133-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933552 | 1,729 | 2.75 | 3 |
Gender and climate change: mapping the linkages. A scoping study on knowledge and gaps
Some of key areas analysed in this paper include:
- the differential impacts of climate change on men and women, highlighting implications for gender in/equality.
- a gendered approach to climate change adaptation, drawing particularly on a recent study from ActionAid and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) which centres around rural women’s own experiences of and responses to climate change.
- insights into the complexities of climate change mitigation, which emphasises the need to include women in developing and implementing mitigation strategies.
The paper recommends priority areas for future research and highlights some practical steps required to achieve more equitable, appropriate climate change policies and programmes. Some of the suggested areas of future research include:
- identifying and overcoming barriers to participation in decision-making
- identifying the gendered impacts, coping strategies and adaptation priorities of women and men in urban contexts
- identifying how gender affects people’s consumption and lifestyles. | <urn:uuid:7594ab87-966d-466e-a645-40bcdb7d2994> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.eldis.org/go/home&id=37711&type=Document | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403823.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00113-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901184 | 205 | 3.09375 | 3 |
One of the great puzzles among scientists (they are called paleoanthropologists) who puzzle over things like this is why the Neanderthals became extinct while the ancestor of modern humans thrived and survived in the same habitat at the same time.
There are a number of theories, but a recent one that is gaining notice is that modern humans domesticated dogs and the Neanderthals didn’t.
The dogs helped the humans hunt more efficiently by locating quarry and boxing it in until the hunters could make the kill. Finding the game is often the most difficult part of hunting. Using dogs would have allowed the hunters to ensure a more plentiful food supply as they refined their skills and their weapons.
There is also evidence that dogs were used to carry the meat from the kill back to the place where the group was living. Even after feeding the dogs, the hunters would have been able to transport heavier loads and save more energy than they would have without the dogs.
Additional food generally has marked effects on the health of a group. Better-fed females can have more babies, can provide them with more milk and can have babies at shorter intervals. Before long, using pack dogs could have caused the human population to increase. American Scientist
Pre-historic dogs may have saved our whole species by domesticating us while we domesticated them.
As time went on dogs were used to guard the homesteads, shepherd the livestock, destroy vermin, and generally allow humans the freedom to build a civilization. | <urn:uuid:941dfbe7-e9b5-4068-bcef-506fd991c47e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://thepoodleanddogblog.typepad.com/the_poodle_and_dog_blog/2012/06/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00059-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978161 | 304 | 3.484375 | 3 |
A mistake at a federal laboratory may have exposed as many as 75 researchers to the dangerous bacteria anthrax, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said today.
The error occurred when researchers at a CDC laboratory did not properly inactivate live anthrax bacteria, according to Reuters. The bacteria were then transferred to another lab, where workers did not wear proper protective equipment because they believed the bacteria were inactivated, according to the New York Times.
The chances that anyone was actually exposed to anthrax is small, and no employees have symptoms, Thomas Skinner, a spokesman for the CDC, told the New York Times.
But 75 employees — including those who may have walked into labs with the live bacteria — are being offered a two-month course of antibiotics, Reuters said.
When people become infected with anthrax bacteria — through inhalation, touch or food — the bacteria can produce toxins and cause severe illness, including fever and chills, vomiting and body aches, according to the CDC. | <urn:uuid:21814105-42f5-4d6a-adce-9c7716668aee> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.livescience.com/46423-anthrax-cdc-scientists-exposed.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00031-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967675 | 200 | 2.90625 | 3 |
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Date posted: 9 September 2009
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released the Experimental estimates and projections, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 1991 to 2021. The publication contains experimental estimates and projections of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population for the period 1986 to 2021, based on the 2006 census of population and housing for Australia. The estimates and projections are based on some assumptions on past and future fertility, mortality and migration, and includes projections for Indigenous regions and remoteness areas by sex and five-year age groups, for the period 2007 to 2021.
The ABS estimates that Australia's Indigenous population will grow by 2.2% per year between 2006 and 2021, and will reach between 713,300 and 721,100 people in 2021.
Australian Bureau of Statistics
GPO Box 796
Sydney NSW 2001
Ph: 1300 135 070
Fax: 1300 135 211 | <urn:uuid:88ec603e-33c3-4324-a9f2-efd5a7ba4630> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/about/news/55 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00129-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.896331 | 191 | 2.875 | 3 |
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Seattle Neighborhoods: Greenwood -- Thumbnail History
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The bog once known as Woodland has become, over the past century, Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood. Greenwood extends beyond the former city limits at N 85th Street to Holman Road NW and angles into N 100th Street. The community's western boundary at 8th Avenue NW marked the city limits when the neighborhood took its name, and Aurora Avenue N runs along its eastern edge. Only the southern boundary, which divides Greenwood from the Phinney Ridge neighborhood, floats, depending upon who is speaking. Most people agree that N 80th Street, the former terminus of the electric trolley Phinney line, should serve as the logical white chalk line. Greenwood began as a bog and a cemetery, but has become a vibrant neighborhood known for its antiques shops and art walk.
Burials in the Beginning
In 1903, when the nearby Green Lake community could boast a population of 8,000 residents, including 2,000 who called the eastern slope of Phinney Ridge home, its neighbor to the northwest, Greenwood (originally Woodland), could hardly brag about its commercial district that had in its inventory only a grocery store, a real estate office, and a feed and fuel business.
The main draw to the area seems to have been its cemetery, the Woodland Cemetery, which David T. Denny (1832-1903) laid out in 1891 on 40 acres, bordering W 85th Street and Woodland Avenue. Directly to the west was a 40-acre parcel of school land. The cemetery, which in 1903 became known as the Greenwood Cemetery, was sold in 1907 to former state governor Henry McBride (1901-1904) for $75,000. He immediately platted the one-eighth section into residential lots, calling his development the Greenwood Park Addition. During the cemetery's 17-year existence, few bodies had been interred on the grounds, making removals to the City of Ballard's nearby Crown Hill cemetery relatively simple.
Too Boggy to Build
As McBride was staking out his residential development, the Seattle School District sold off its adjacent 40 acres west of 3rd Avenue W, which had been set aside by the Washington territory. City officials deemed the boggy soil unsuitable for building.
Instead, for $19,517 it purchased from McBride 18 lots at the southwest corner of the former cemetery where, in 1909 the Greenwood Elementary School rose. Anticipating future growth in the area and the need for additional classrooms, the District instructed its architect, James Stephens, to design a rectangular brick building onto which additions could easily be built on either end. A combined Tudor and Elizabethan style building resulted, one of five designed by Stephens during his tenure. As anticipated, the school was enlarged in 1928. In 2001 the addition was razed and replaced, and the original structure, having been placed on the historic register, was restored.
Rails and Dirt Roads
In 1906, work began on the new Seattle-Everett Interurban Railway, which soon reached Greenwood from Ballard along W 85th Street. By 1910, when service between the two cities was inaugurated, the route led its trolleys along Greenwood and Phinney avenues, following the Phinney streetcar line through the Fremont district, down Westlake Avenue and into the heart of downtown Seattle. Given this new ease of movement for both people and commerce, the Greenwood area began to grow.
Certainly rail travel was easier than slogging through mud roads in the early automobiles. In the early 1900s, the Greenwood area was mostly marshy swamp, lakes and woods cut by trails, with a dirt and plank road cutting through which connected Seattle with Edmonds and the hinterlands to the north.
On the country side of the city limits, the road became known as Country Club Road because it ran along the eastern flank of the Seattle Golf and Country Club, which opened in 1909 at N 145th Street. Since much of the land in the area was peat bog, it might better have been left as open space. In 1909, when Oscar Williamson opened a grocery at N 74th Street and Greenwood Avenue, the main road was plank and there were no sidewalks. The so-called avenue was suitable for horses and buggies and an electric trolley line, but not for automobiles. Open, weedy ditches drained the boggy ground, and houses built on the unsuitable land often flooded.
The "Miracle Mile"
Despite nature's lack of cooperation, development proceeded once the trolley cars entered the area, which included both the Interurban and the Phinney line, whose various terminuses finally reached N 85th Street. The business district finally established permanence with construction of brick and stone storefronts built during the 1920s and into the early 1930s, many of which survive today. The Greenwood State Bank opened in 1925, bringing money to the area. It later became a branch of Seattle First National Bank.
By the 1940s, the Greenwood Commercial Club boosters had created a "Miracle Mile" along Greenwood Avenue with businesses that made the neighborhood self-sustaining: bakeries, appliance shops, shoe repair stores, taverns, restaurants, grocery stores, hardware stores, druggists, supermarkets, doctors, dentists, barbers, variety stores, and a branch of the Seattle Public Library. Even a MacDougall & Southwick department store opened a branch store on the main intersection of the neighborhood at N 85th and Greenwood Avenue.
Muddy and Slipping
Before 1954, most of Greenwood lay north of Seattle city limits. Separated at birth, the two parts joined with annexation of the hinterland that extended north to N 145th Street. This brought the promise of paved streets, sewers, and other city services. It would be 15 years before these improvements began.
By then much of the neighborhood was slipping into slum. Neighborhood improvement could not be sustained without proper drainage, and as late as the 1970s the storm drains were not forthcoming. Well maintained houses south of the former city limits enjoyed sidewalks and good drains. That part of the neighborhood thrived.
A Neighborhood of Art Walks, Antiques, and Classic Cars
Today Greenwood is a Seattle neighborhood with an active commercial core. It is a destination for art and for antiques shops that run along Greenwood Avenue N. The N 85th Street and Greenwood Avenue N intersection is still the heart of the neighborhood, a crossroads where banners are hoisted to highlight the Greenwood/Phinney Art Walk in May and the Greenwood Classic Car & Road Show in June. Residents, too, are an eclectic mix. Senior citizens mix with young families new to the area, and a new low-income housing complex sits blocks from a custom built upscale home. Much of the original housing stock is now gone, but what remains are brick ramblers, old Tudors dating to the 1930s, bungalows, and split-levels from the 1960s.
The Greenwood neighborhood, with its boggy beginnings and delayed drainage systems, cannot compete with nearby Green Lake, Phinney Ridge, or Ballard for their wealth of housing stock, well maintained parks, or natural beauty. Nonetheless, a walk along its side streets still without sidewalks is a reminder of what was once country living beyond the N 85th Street city limit.
Warren W. Wing, To Seattle by Trolley: The Story of the Seattle-Everett Interurban and the "Trolley that Went to Sea" (Edmonds: Pacific Fast Mail, 1988); G. W. Baist, et al. Baist's Real Estate Atlas of Surveys of Seattle, Washington, (Philadelphia: G.W. Baist, 1905, 1908); Kroll's Atlas of Seattle, Washington, (Seattle: Kroll Map Company, Inc., 1912, 1920); The Seattle Times, October 24, 1971, p. C-9; Ibid. November 13, 1976, p. C-8; Ibid., June 23, 1946, Rotog. p. 5; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 11, 1998 (http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/neighbors).
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Seattle-Everett Interurban tracks north of Seattle, 1900s
Map showing location of Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle
Map by Chris Goodman, Courtesy HistoryLink
O.C. Williamson Grocery, 7401 Greenwood Avenue N, Seattle, 1912
Courtesy UW Special Collections
Greenwood School (James Stephen, 1908), ca. 1919
Courtesy MOHAI (W & S 83.10.1,606.1)
F. E. MacKenzie Greenwood Garage, 8531 Greenwood Avenue N, ca. 1920
Photo by Jacobs, Courtesy UW Special Collections (Neg. SEA0207)
Greenwood street scene, Seattle, 1930s
Courtesy MOHAI (Neg. No. 83.10.4,969.24)
Greenwood-Phinney Branch, Seattle Public Library, 1931
Courtesy UW Special Collections
N 85th Street and Greenwood Avenue N, Seattle, ca. 1921
Courtesy UW Special Collections
Ridgemont Theater, 7720 Greenwood Avenue N, Seattle, ca. 1930
Courtesy UW Special Collections
Trolley on Seattle's 85th Street in Greenwood, May 6, 1940
Photo by James Turner, Courtesy Warren Wing
NE 85th Street and Greenwood Avenue N, 2001
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See the original article on KGW here.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A commercial supply ship carrying fluids research experiments created at Portland State University is on its way to the International Space Station.
The California-based SpaceX launched its unmanned Falcon rocket from Cape Canaveral on Sunday night. Aboard the rocket was a Dragon capsule holding 1,000 pounds of cargo, including chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream for the three station residents.
This is the first Dragon launch under a $1.6 billion contract between SpaceX and NASA. The contract calls for 12 resupply missions.
A Dragon flew to the space station in May, but it was a test so nothing vital was aboard. The newest Dragon is hauling key experiments and other precious gear.
Dragon will reach the orbiting lab Wednesday. It will remain docked for nearly three weeks before returning to Earth with an even bigger load.
The Portland State experiments will be done by the staff of the International Space Station in direct contact with PSU researchers | <urn:uuid:7439eafa-7b92-4b0f-8116-a78838a47c87> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pdx.edu/hr/news/kgw-psu-research-payload-blasts-space | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00196-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930541 | 209 | 2.625 | 3 |
Types of Ware
For almost 100 years Wiltshaw & Robinson, the makers of Carlton Ware, produced an extraordinary range of earthenware and china at its Copeland Street works in Stoke-on-Trent.
Here we briefly describe and show most of the main categories, roughly in chronological order.
Not long after its formation, about 1890, Wiltshaw & Robinson introduced a highly successful range of earthenwares, now called Blush Ware. This name aptly describes the delicate pastel shaded backgrounds to patterns, either printed or freehand.
The quality of some of these wares is very high, and, in the style of the time, W&R employed many elaborate shapes, often adorned with sumptuous gilding, including raised gold. ❑ ©HP If you would like to see a range of Blush Ware patterns named by the Pottery then click here.
Blue & White
As an adjunct to Blushware described above, the pottery used the same shapes and pattern prints to produce monochrome decorations such as Blue & White and Flow Blue, again often embellished with gold. ❑ ©HP If you would like to see more detail and examples, then click here.
Wiltshaw & Robinson was one of the first of many potteries to follow WH Goss's lead in the production of Heraldic Souvenir China emblazoned with heraldic crests. W&R introduced their models around 1903.
Production of this fascinating range of miniatures continued well into the 1920s. Initially W&R based its models on ancient artifacts found in museums, but within a short time, offered models of an entertaining and humorous nature.
Suffragettes, modes of transport, latest inventions, seaside themes and popular songs also provided inspiration to the pottery.
The 1914-18 war brought about the introduction of many models of a military nature. To commemorate the centenary of the beginning of the war During 2014 we published a series of 12 articles on Carlton Heraldic China related to the conflict. Click on the image on the right to view.
The quality of this Carlton China was high and W&R prided themselves on their accuracy of the heraldic devices. The wide range of shapes, estimated to have been almost 1000 in total, provide a fascinating record of the social history of the earlier part of the twentieth century. ❑ ©HP
Best Ware was the name given on the works for the more highly decorated wares, usually employing elaborate printed and enamelled patterns. The highly skilled techniques needed to make them had been established early on with the Blush Ware patterns, the Best Ware of their time.
Often Best Ware patterns were underglaze painted, as well as using onglaze enamels and lustres, gold printing and raised enamelling. The most popular were the many Chinoiserie patterns such as MIKADO, TEMPLE and the elaborate CHINALAND.
Perhaps, the most extraordinary Best Ware is from the Art Deco era with archetypal patterns such as FAN, BELL and JAZZ. Such exotic decorations will never be created again, because of the high cost of production and loss of expertise.
Best Ware can be divided into different categories, one of which is Handcraft. This is listed separately below. ❑ ©HP
Salad Ware's considerable popularity generated the revenue that enabled the extravagances of the highly original and expensive Best Ware patterns.
All was expertly modelled and hand painted in attractive colours. Today, we divide this wide range into Floral Embossed and Fruit Embossed wares, although on the works it was all known as Salad Ware, primarily because the first of these ranges was the highly popular Lettuce & Tomato, variants of which remained in production for more than fifty years.
Other popular designs were Apple Blossom, Foxglove, Buttercup and Wild Rose, but there were many more. ❑ ©HP
Predominantly, Handcraft was decorated using the palette of colours shown in the picture on the right, though eventually there were quite a number of exceptions.
W&R introduced this range c.1928, as a response to the fashion for freehand painted decorations.
Around this time, many other British potteries offered modern freehand painted wares, such as Poole Pottery, Grays Pottery, Susie Cooper and Clarice Cliff. Such was the zeitgeist.
Most significant for Carlton Ware was its introduction of matt glazes, which distinguish much of this important range and which presents a luxurious, silky appearance. ❑ ©HP
Coloured Ware or Novelty Wares
Coloured Ware was the name the pottery gave to a range of novelty wares first introduced in the 1920s. All were executed with a wonderful sense of humour.
Novelties were to become another hallmark of Carlton Ware. It was widely acknowledged throughout the pottery industry that Carlton excelled in their production.
Carlton Ware produced so many different models that there was always something new for a customer. Coloured Ware complimented the vast array of Salad Ware, and like it, offered items to suit all pockets, as well as raising a smile. ❑ ©HP
In 1928, as a means of expanding its already extensive range of wares, Wiltshaw & Robinson bought the nearby Vine Pottery, previously the china works of Birks Rawlins & Co.
Carlton Ware had already established itself as makers of fine earthenware tea and coffee sets, so the diversification to china versions was a natural progression for the forward looking pottery.
Initially, Carlton Ware continued to fulfill orders for Birks Rawlins patterns, most of which were of a traditional nature, but within a short time many new and modern designs were introduced.
In 1931, somewhat erroneously, W&R's bank, forced the sale of the Vine Pottery. During its four or so years of production, astonishing numbers of new patterns were introduced. Two of the fourteen Founder members of Carlton Ware World Wide, Derek and Jane Towns, run a website specifically on Carlton China, where you can see many examples. Go to our links pages to view their site. ❑ ©HP
The earliest known Advertising Ware dates from about 1900 and took the form of match holders and strikers for companies such as Bryant & May and Burton Ale. From the 1930s onwards John Haig & Sons, distillers, became big customers using ware to advertise their whisky in pubs and hotels with specially modelled ashtrays and water jugs.
Others brewers and distillers took advantage of the skills at Copeland Street, most notably Arthur Guinness, Son & Co., especially with a range or bar ornaments. These were based on John Gilroy's animals and zoo keeper that had he first created for Guinness adverts. Alas, Master moulds for these charming figures have ended up in the hands of the unscrupulous and fakes abound. See our Guinness fakes pages to see these and more.
Of similar distinction are the models of vintage cars made for the British Motor Corporation and British Leyland. Cadbury's, Harrods and even Singapore Airlines were amongst many other customers. Like Heineken, another client, Carlton Ware reaches the parts that other potteries cannot reach! ❑ ©HP
Contemporary Ware - the 1950s & 60s
During the post war period many pottery designers looked towards Scandinavia for inspiration and Carlton Ware was no exception.
Fluid and freeform shapes were the order of the day. Windswept, a large range of tea, coffee and table ware, is a good example. The Triform and Shelf ranges are others employing the fashionable fluid shapes of the time.
Even Salad Ware was given the treatment with ranges such as Convolvulus, Magnolia and Orchid, all of which were popular and used new background colours.
This era of Carlton Ware's production is underappreciated at the moment, but its day will come. ❑ ©HP
The early Woods period 1968-1974
Two years After Cuthbert Wiltshaw's death in 1966 Carlton Ware was bought by Arthur Wood & Sons. The printed and enamelled Best Ware patterns that had generated so much prestige for the pottery were discontinued. They were replaced by a a much smaller range of less costly lithographic decorations, similar in appearance to their predecessors.
New Salad ware lines were introduced in the form of Canterbury, New Buttercup, with its variant Somerset. The new owners also looked to the past for inspiration with the resulting remodelling of Apple Blossom, to give us New Apple Blossom, and a range of flow blue decorations on traditional shapes.
Emphasis was given to the less expensive wares, many of which were of a practical nature, especially coffee sets in fashionable plain colours, but gift ware continued to play an important part. The mood of the time was caught by many of these items, especially a range of money boxes with psychedelic lithographic decorations. ❑ ©HP
Walking Ware period - c.1974 - 1986
In 1974 Roger Michell and Danka Napiorkowska approached Carlton Ware to make pottery under license for their Lustre Pottery. And so began the manufacture of the charming and amusing Walking Ware at Copeland Street. It's enormous success led to the introduction of similar ranges such as RJS (Running, Jumping and Standing still!) and Big Feet.
The popularity of Walking Ware stimulated the introduction of many other amusing ranges by Carlton Ware's in-house designer Pam Souch and a large number of more highly original and quirky designs entered production.
These wonderful wares were to be the swan-song for an extraordinary pottery, which survived for almost 100 years in an industry that had always been precarious. In 1987 Copeland Street was sold to a holding company. ❑ ©HP
County Potteries - a dark period
Disastrously, in 1987 County Potteries, a holding company, bought James Kent and then Carlton Ware. Two years later, the directors put Carlton and Kent into voluntary liquidation. County Potteries went into compulsory liquidation shortly afterwards.
Eventually, Paul Thompson, one of the directors of Kent, Carlton and County Potteries, was disqualified from running any company. The loss of so many jobs was a tragedy for the Potteries and the many former employees, who had dedicated their working lives to Carlton Ware.
During County Potteries mismanagement, little new ware was introduced. Carlton Ware, however, did rise again, though production ceased at Copeland Street when, during liquidation, the works was sold to a property developer and turned into student accommodation. After 125 years as a pottery, the building, at least, was saved. ❑ ©HP
John McCluskey 1989
Receivership meant that all Carlton Ware's assets had to be sold and in 1989 John McCluskey, a manufacturer of ceramic door furniture, bought the pattern and shape records, along with the goodwill and master moulds. His aim, initially, was to concentrate on more expensive lines and perhaps introduce high quality dinnerware. A limited range of ruby lustre ware would be available and all to be made at his industrial unit in nearby Stone.
Within a short time, Mr. McCluskey introduced more novelty teapots, all of which were modelled with great precision. His new venture, however, was short lived and production ceased about 1992. ❑ ©HP
Carlton Ware today
In 1997 John McCluskey sold the Carlton Ware trade mark to Francis Salmon. Mr. Salmon revived the Carlton Ware name, though not its originality. Ware was made for Mr. Salmon by various Staffordshire potteries including Moorland Pottery and Bairstow Manor Pottery.
For the first ten years or so designs were very much in pastiche, being copies of the work of Clarice Cliff, Shelley Potteries, Mabel Lucie Attwell, Florence Upton and other notable ceramic and graphic designers from the early part of the twentieth century.
In 2011 more original designs began to be introduced. There were short associations with Anita Harris, Marie & Peter Graves as well as Lorna Bailey,
Mr Salmon's Carlton Ware was aimed primariliy at the collectors market with ware being made in small limited editions to create rarity, though this marketing technique may have run its course since by 2015 it appears that production has ceased. ❑ ©HP
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Report (PDF): Ecological and Genomic Exploration of Environmental Change: Assessing a Century of Climate Change Adaptation
Agricultural conversion, urban encroachment, landscape fragmentation and species invasions have eroded global biodiversity. Understanding the patterns and mechanisms involved that have and will alter biodiversity is thus paramount to developing strategies for mitigating current and future losses and the attendant ecological and socioeconomic costs.
The purpose of this IWG is to design a study that will produce a ‘white paper’ suitable for submission to NSF as a pre-proposal or as a draft proposal for a resource agency, and to develop a manuscript that will be a ‘how to’ guide to conduct a resurvey effort.
This effort will:
- take advantage of existing natural history collections,
- contribute to existing collections,
- extend the model of what natural history collections encompass,
- advance our knowledge of global change effects (e.g., climate change, urbanization, habitat conversion),
- offer conservation and management strategies for global change mitigation, and
- pull together knowledge gaps, methodology and future directions.”
March 25-28, 2013
Activity Lead: Dr. Gary Roemer
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CUMBERLAND ISLAND, Ga. - Another animal has been added to the list of threatened and endangered species on Georgia's largest barrier island.
National Park Service officials predict this animal could be extinct on Cumberland Island within three years. In this instance, the species'sdemise is welcome.
The park service has begun its long-awaited feral hog eradication program by using a combination of hunting and trapping to eliminate the estimated 1,000 animals on Cumberland Island.
"The goal is to eliminate every hog on the island," said John Fry, the resource management specialist for the park service. "This is the No. 1 natural resource project on the island and will be the next two or three years."
Feral hogs, animals once domesticated but freed or escaped, are being targeted for elimination because they damage the island's sensitive landscape and harm endangered sea turtles and other animals.
Hogs have run wild on the 18-mile-long island since British settlers brought the animals there more than 200 years ago, Mr. Fry said.
Feral hogs compete with native animals for food. The biggest impact can be seen where the animals search for grubs and roots. Two or three hogs can destroy 1,000 square feet of land searching for grubs and roots in about 15 minutes, said Ed O'Connell, a biologist assigned to Cumberland Island to deal with the hog problem.
Scars from hogs searching for food are visible across the island. Areas where hogs recently have fed look like someone took a land-tilling machine and randomly overturned as much land as possible. Some areas, such as low-lying sand dunes, take as long as two years to recover, Mr. O'Connell said. Hogs also are responsible for nearly two-thirds of the endangered sea turtle nests destroyed on Cumberland Island in recent years.
"This is a significant problem," Mr. O'Connell said. "There are very few areas of the island they don't impact."
Hal Wright, a St. Marys attorney and member of the environmental group Defenders of Wild Cumberland, said the start of the hog program was welcome news.
"The park service has long recognized the need to remove hogs from the island," Mr. Wright said. "The park service is to be commended for implementing the plan."
Mr. Fry said rangers already have met with island residents, and they explain the hog elimination program to campers before they go to the island. So far, the park service has received no complaints about the program.
Mr. O'Connell said rangers plan to be as "unobtrusive as possible" while trapping or hunting hogs. Campers and island residents won't see hogs being shot, and traps are in areas where people are unlikely to see them, he said.
"Our No. 1 goal is safety," he said. "We're not in areas where we're going to encounter people. We don't want to impact a visitor's experience."
Rangers have been pre-baiting traps - large wooden pens with a trap door - with corn so the animals associate the traps with food, Mr. O'Connell said. In upcoming weeks, the traps will be activated.
The strength of the traps is that it's not unusual to capture a sow and her entire family in a trap, Mr. Fry said. Plus, traps work 24 hours a day, he said.
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Everybody wants to live a long and healthy life. But, if you carry excess body fat on your frame, then you may be setting yourself up for a shorter lifespan than the one you were aiming for.
Excess body fat is directly linked to so many diseases that it can no longer be thought of as solely a cosmetic issue. Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, numerous cancers, gallbladder disease, immune dysfunction, sleep apnea, infertility, and osteoarthritis (degeneration of the cartilage and bone in the joints) are just the tip of the iceberg. The more body fat you have on your frame, the higher your risk of checking out well before your time.
So why do the majority of us seem to find it so easy to pack on the pounds after age 35, all the while losing the features that defined our youth – strength, vitality, immunity, sexual function and desire, skin tone, and memory?
Keep it long and lean
Lean body mass (muscle) to a very large extent controls the overall metabolic rate of the body. In fact, a study of 84 men and women aged 90 to 106, presented in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society in 1997, showed that loss of muscle is the primary longevity factor.
When you grow or reactivate muscle metabolism, you actually enhance overall energy production, burn more calories and in the process, more fat. Enhanced muscle mass has also been linked to lower levels of stress hormones. Elevated stress hormones are a contributing factor to muscle breakdown. Research indicates that stress levels (cortisol) in older people are typically two to four times those of younger ones – both at rest and with exercise.
Many studies have shown that the maintenance of muscle mass is not only associated with lower body fat levels, but also increased energy, better mood, stronger connective tissue and bones, better immunity and according to Japanese researchers, possibly even enhanced memory. Researchers have discovered that low cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) – well documented in the elderly – is a possible risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. It turns out that elderly people who maintain muscle mass through full range-of-motion exercises have the same level of CSF as younger people.
The take-home message is that healthy aging is controlled to a large extent by your metabolism and, in turn, your metabolism is controlled by your muscle mass and activity.
How to maintain muscle mass
(1) Consume sufficient protein every two and a half to three hours (high-alpha whey protein shakes are a great substitute for one or two protein meals).
(2) Perform weight-bearing exercise every other day. Resistance exercise stimulates new muscle growth and helps maintain metabolism.
(3) Supplement with ergogenic (muscle-enhancing) aids like high-alpha whey protein, micronized creatine monohydrate, and branched chain amino acids (BCAAs), before or immediately after training.
(4) Reduce stress. Excess stress interferes with DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone), one of your body’s most powerful anabolic hormones. Research shows that lowered stress levels cause an increase in DHEA levels. For starters, try reducing your caffeine consumption.
Ravaglia G, et al. Determinants of functional status in healthy Italian nonagenarians and centenarians: a comprehensive functional assessment by the instruments of geriatric practice. J Am Geriatr Soc. 1997 Oct;45(10):1196-202.
Ziegler, MG, Lake, CR, Kopin, IJ (1976) Plasma noradrenaline increases with age. Nature 261,333-335
Mitsui S, Okui A, Uemura H, Mizuno T, Yamada T, Yamamura Y, Yamaguchi N. Decreased cerebrospinal fluid levels of neurosin (KLK6), an aging-related protease, as a possible new risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2002 Nov;977:216-23.
Cherniske S. The Metabolic Plan. Ballantine Books, New York, 2003. Pg. 23-24.
Bassit RA, Sawada LA, Bacurau RF, Navarro F, Costa Rosa LF. The effect of BCAA supplementation upon the immune response of triathletes. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2000 Jul;32(7):1214-9.
Cruess DG, et al. Cognitive-behavioral stress management buffers decreases in dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S) and increases in the cortisol/DHEA-S ratio and reduces mood disturbance and perceived stress among HIV-seropositive men.Psychoneuroendocrinology. 1999 Jul;24(5):537-49. | <urn:uuid:9630e1ae-df17-4f34-a7d8-f0fd556a6139> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wellwise.org/blogs/brad-king/metabolic-aging-muscle-your-way-longer-life | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00023-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.89824 | 1,009 | 2.546875 | 3 |
There's a character in Khaled Hosseini's expansive new novel And the Mountains Echoed who has stayed with me ever since I finished it: Nila Wahdati, the gifted, stylish, condemned French-Afghan housewife who writes impassioned poetry about love, sex, desire, and loss in 1950s Kabul. Nila, who marries a wealthy heir and later adopts a daughter by way of the child-selling scheme that sets the book's many interconnected plots in motion, finds herself and her poetry the objects of scorn among some crowds in her native Afghanistan—but the objects of high praise and admiration among others. As a result, she maintains a tragically conflicted relationship with her writing throughout her life.
In creating Nila Wahdati's story and its backdrop, Hosseini seems to have drawn inspiration from a real, far-reaching historical saga that deserves a novel or two of its own: the centuries-long, ongoing struggle of Afghanistan's female poets, who have enjoyed eras of flourishing freedom of expression and endured eras of forced secrecy. Today, female poets hold a special place in the canon of Afghan literature.
Poetry has always been a cherished form of expression in Afghanistan and its surrounding area for both the literate and the non-literate; as Hosseini writes in And the Mountains Echoed, even the graffiti artists in Kabul spray-paint verses of Rumi on the walls. The centuries-old Persian written tradition boasts some of the great poets of Iran, India, and Central Asia, and among these poets are a few women—like the 10th-century poet Rabe'eh Qozdari, who wrote bitter, satirical poems about suffering and unhappiness in love. And though the work of male poets has been better preserved over the years, the works by surviving female poets have, as Nancy Hatch Dupree put it in a 2002 article in Third World Quarterly, "pleaded for the right of women to be seen as individuals freed from societies' inequities."
Poetry written in Pashto, the language of the Pashtun ethnic group, has a particularly rich legacy of women's poetry: The landai, a short, vitriolic verse form that takes its name from a Pashto word meaning "short, poisonous snake," became the chosen form centuries ago for women who railed against the widespread notion that the female sex was inferior or submissive. According to a 2012 New York Times story by Eliza Griswold,
The word also refers to two-line folk poems that can be just as lethal. Funny, sexy, raging, tragic, landai are safe because they are collective. No single person writes a landai; a woman repeats one, shares one. It is hers and not hers. Although men do recite them, almost all are cast in the voices of women. "Landai belong to women," Safia Siddiqi, a renowned Pashtun poet and former Afghan parliamentarian, said. "In Afghanistan, poetry is the women's movement from the inside." Traditionally, landai have dealt with love and grief. They often railed against the bondage of forced marriage with wry, anatomical humor. An aging, ineffectual husband is frequently described as a "little horror." But they have also taken on war, exile and Afghan independence with ferocity. ... Like most folk literature, landai can be sorrowful or bawdy. Imagine the Wife of Bath riding through the Himalayan foothills and uttering landai so ribald that they curled the toes of her fellow travelers. She might tease her rival: "Say hello to my sweetheart/If you are a farter [tizan, one who farts a lot], then I can fart louder than you." She might make a cutting political joke: "Your black eyelashes are Israel/and my heart is Palestine under your attack." She might utter an elegiac couplet: "My beloved gave his head for our country/I will sew his shroud with my hair."
Hosseini's novel, though, takes place in the 20th century, and Nila's story unfolds (at first) in the cosmopolitan Kabul of the early 1950s. By then, Kabul had become profoundly Westernized, in sharp contrast with the rest of the nation: Beginning in the 1920s, the sons and daughters of the wealthy were often educated at secular international secular schools (often called lycées) opened by French, German, English, and American teachers, so students in these schools often studied literature in their teachers' native languages and in Dari (Persian) and Pashto. According to a 2002 article by Anthony Hyman in the Journal of Middle East Studies, the literature coming out of Afghanistan at the time was heavily influenced by both Western and European writers (like John Steinbeck and Maxim Gorki) and ancient and contemporary Middle Eastern texts.
And in the mid-20th century, according to Dupree, "educated men and women adopted Western dress... Many group-identifying symbols began to fade as a result, particularly in matters of dress."
So Nila, with her fluency in French, her love of literature, her high heels, sleeveless pastel mini-dresses, and white-framed sunglasses, is a recognizable product of that particular place and time in Afghanistan. But Nila's outward expressions of female desire (both poetic and otherwise) remain somewhat controversial in the story—even in an era that was, historically, a progressive one in Kabul. Nila's husband's family doesn't approve of their marriage, and when the subject comes up in a discussion between the immigrant household helpers of their neighborhood, the following exchange ensues:
He said it was well known in Kabul that she had no nang and namoos, no honor, and that though she was only twenty, she had already been "ridden all over town" like Mr. Wahdati's car. Worst of all, he said, not only had she made no attempt to deny these allegations, she wrote poems about them. A murmur of disapproval spread through the room when he said this. One of the men remarked that in his village they would have slit her throat by now.
Later in life, Nila bitterly remembers her Afghan father's reaction to her poetry: "No one in Kabul considered me a pioneer of anything but bad taste, debauchery, and immoral character. Not least of all, my father. He said my writings were the ramblings of a whore. ... He said I'd damaged his family name beyond repair."
And yet, when she hosts parties for her wealthy friends, Nila's guests beg her to recite some of her poems. In the presence of the Kabul elite, she recites arresting poetry about "lovers whispering across pillows, touching each other," about "pleasure."
"I had never heard language such as this spoken by a woman," the narrator—an immigrant from a small village a day's walk from the capital city—marvels.
So maybe the varied reactions to Nila's gift for self-expression are meant to reflect the divergent social norms and attitudes toward women that were developing in the various areas of Afghanistan at the time. After all, Dupree writes, it wasn't even until young female broadcasters appeared on the nationwide radio station Radio Afghanistan in the 1950s and 1960s that "the stigma attached to female voices being heard outside family circles" in parts of Afghanistan began to lessen.
Today, the tradition of women's poetry lives on—and so does its uneven reputation. As Griswold wrote last year, post-Taliban Afghanistan's largest women's literary society, called Mirman Baheer, has "no need for subterfuge" inside Kabul, where its hundred members include educators, scholars, government officials, and professional writers. "They travel on city buses to their Saturday meetings, their faces uncovered, wearing high-heeled boots and shearling coats," Griswold wrote. "But in the outlying provinces—Khost, Paktia, Maidan Wardak, Kunduz, Kandahar, Herat and Farah—where the society's members number 300, Mirman Baheer functions largely in secret."
Female poets in rural Afghanistan (where, as Griswold writes, only five women in 100 graduate from high school, and a majority of whom are forced into marriages by the age of 16) often phone in to meetings and recite their poetry for women on the other end of the line to transcribe. Some are illiterate, others are simply afraid of their written poetry being found; as both Griswold's story and the Al-Jazeera report below explain, girls and women who have been discovered writing sensual poems or love poems have been punished, beaten, and even killed by their husbands and families.
In Hosseini's novel, Nila takes advantage of an opportunity unavailable to many Afghan women: She flees the country in 1955, leaving her husband and part of her family behind, and enjoys a moderately successful career living abroad in Paris. But in creating the complex, conflicted Nila Wahdati, Hosseini likely drew from the bravery and the struggles of centuries' worth of female poets in Afghanistan, whose fight to be heard continues. | <urn:uuid:59085a56-7fcd-4145-96a0-707b3e2683be> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/05/the-tumultuous-history-behind-i-and-the-mountains-echoed-i-s-female-poet/276335/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00159-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975844 | 1,914 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Minnesota considers scrapping basic skills test for teachers
ST. PAUL – Minnesota is considering making it easier to become a teacher by eliminating what educators say is an overly demanding test of their academic skills.
A committee created during the 2013 legislative session is recommending that lawmakers scrap a “basic skills test” of math, reading and writing skills that teachers must now pass before they can command a classroom. The proposal will be presented to lawmakers next month.
Advocates for eliminating the tests say it is not an accurate measure of competency, has cultural bias and accommodations have not been made for test-takers with disabilities. They say it also serves as an unnecessary hurdle for out-of-state teachers or non-native English speakers who come to Minnesota to work in language immersion programs.
John Bellingham, a Faribault Middle School teacher and chair of the state board of teaching, said testimony from license candidates who were unable to pass the test convinced him the exam was too difficult a requirement. Minnesota already has a variety of other requirements – including measures of classroom performance and content knowledge – that ensure teachers are prepared for the classroom.
The task force also recommends that the board of teaching put more responsibility on teacher preparation programs to guarantee candidates have the proper academic skills.
“As an educator, I know a test is just a snapshot of one day, it doesn’t matter if it’s a sixth-grader or a teacher candidate,” Bellingham said. “These people attended colleges with accredited teacher preparation programs. I believe they have basic competency. I wouldn’t want a test to hold them back.”
Supporters of the skills test say they are designed to keep academically unqualified teaching candidates out of the classroom. The current tests were designed by Minnesota educators.
State data from July 2013 shows about 20 percent of candidates fail the basic skills test. The passage rate of minority teaching candidates is significantly lower than those of their white peers.
Most states are working to strengthen what it takes to become a teacher rather than removing requirements, said Jim Bartholomew, education policy director for the Minnesota Business Partnership. Bartholomew sat on the committee and was one of four members to oppose its recommendation.
“The rest of the world is going in the opposite direction,” Bartholomew said. “The goal should not be to make it easier; we need the best people we can get.”
Nationally 42 states require prospective teachers pass a skills test, with 29 of those states requiring entrance exams to enroll in teacher preparation programs, according to the most recent data compiled by the National Center of Teacher Quality. Just eight states require no academic skills exam to get a teaching license.
Kate Walsh, president of the teacher quality group, said it’s not enough to rely on teacher colleges to ensure graduates are academically prepared to teach. Her group has been critical of teacher preparation programs and found one-third of Minnesota colleges restricted admission to teacher training programs to the top half of college students’ academic performance.
“Most people are trying to figure out how to put more restrictions in, not take them out,” Walsh said. “Minnesota is the only state in the country contemplating removing their test.”
It wasn’t long ago the state was moving in the other direction.
In 2010, state leaders increased the rigor of the basic skills test, requiring college-level competency. In 2012, after a nearly unanimous vote in the Republican-led legislature, Gov. Mark Dayton signed a bill requiring that teachers pass the skills test before entering the classroom, ending a grace period for those who couldn’t pass.
“I see this as a lowering of expectations for our teacher licensing candidates,” said state Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton, who sat on the task force and wrote a dissenting report on its recommendation. “It’s a terrible message for parents to learn there may be a licensed teacher in their child’s classroom that has not shown college-level reading, writing and math skills.”
Supporters of keeping the exam say education leaders should take test provider Pearson up on an offer to revise the test for free. They also would consider alternative licensing for candidates who cannot pass the test because of a disability or if they are non-native English speakers.
Christopher Magan, St. Paul Pioneer Press, INFORUM
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Confucius (孔子), the great teacher and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period of Chinese history, has been selected by Time magazine as one of the most influential people in world history.
After unveiling the “Time 100” list of the most influential people in the world on Wednesday, the weekly released a list of the most influential people of all time that included household names such as Jesus Christ, Buddha, Homer, Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Confucius.
Dubbed the Time 100 of All Time, the list tells the story of the human race, Time columnist Joel Stein said in a humorous introductory article.
“It is a list, I assume, that will be carved in stone, put in every time capsule and projected by lasers into space. Also, please tweet it and post it on your Facebook walls,” Stein wrote.
The list includes controversial bad guys such as Adolf Hitler and Cuban Communist leader Fidel Castro.
Introducing Hitler, Stein wrote: “Nearly 70 years after his death, the meanest thing you can do is compare someone to Hitler.”
Besides Confucius, the list includes five other important Chinese historical figures — Lao Tzu (老子), Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇), Liu Bang (劉邦), Genghis Khan and Zheng He (鄭和).
Stein said Confucius was selected because he wrote books like the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother long before Amy Chua. Confucius is credited with having authored or edited many of the Chinese classic texts that champion family loyalty and respect for elders.
Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China who ruled the state of Qin from 246 BC to 221 BC, was chosen because he “instituted legalism, without which the Chinese would not have been so ready for communism,” Stein said. “Also, he built a lot of the Great Wall and those terracotta soldiers, without which China would not have tourism.”
Zheng He, an early 15th-century explorer, was propelled to fame because his “voyages were so legendary that an epic about them was written in 1597 called The Romance of the Three-Jeweled Eunuch,” Stein wrote in the article.
Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is the only person from the 21st century on the list.
“Steve Jobs just made things pretty. Zuckerberg ushered in an age where it’s totally acceptable to take near-naked photos of yourself in the bathroom mirror, post them publicly and then refer to it as part of your self-branding,” the article said. | <urn:uuid:f5e51ea6-40e2-4f45-b7c3-c441ce3e36eb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2012/04/21/2003530901 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00039-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965756 | 568 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Worried that public schools are failing to prepare students for a complex and changing world, educators Tuesday called for sweeping changes in the way science is taught in the United States, emphasizing hands-on learning and critical scrutiny of scientific evidence.
Known as the "Next Generation Science Standards," the guidelines mark the first time that anything close to national principles for science education have been developed. They were devised to combat widespread scientific ignorance, standardize teaching among disparate states and raise the number of high school graduates who choose scientific and technical majors in college, a critical issue for the country's economic welfare.
California is one of several states expected to give the standards serious consideration. The state Board of Education is likely to discuss the issue at its July meeting and could consider adopting them as early as November.
"In the next decade, the number of jobs requiring highly technical skills is expected to outpace other occupations," said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson in a statement Tuesday. "These Next Generation Science Standards will help students achieve real-world practical skills so they can help maintain California's economic and technological leadership in the world."
In a move that could prove controversial, the guidelines call for introducing the science of climate change into the curriculum starting in middle school, and teaching high school students in detail about the effects of human activity on climate. Groups critical of mainstream science thinking have criticized this step.
The guidelines also take a firm stand that children must learn about evolution, the central organizing idea in the biological sciences for more than a century, but one that has rallied state lawmakers and some religious conservatives to insist that alternative notions like intelligent design be taught.
Though 26 states representing well over half the U.S. population have committed to giving serious consideration to formal adoption of the guidelines, and at least a dozen more states are expected to study the guidelines closely, there is no guarantee that the standards will be adopted in any state.
The central thrust of the guidelines, which were devised in collaboration with a national association of science teachers, scientists and federal science agencies, is to move teachers away from simply presenting scientific facts in the classroom and expecting children to memorize them.
The focus instead would be on learning how science is done: how ideas are developed and tested, what counts as strong or weak evidence and how insights from many scientific disciplines fit together into a coherent picture of the world.
"We're going to go from teaching kids how to memorize terms to giving kids hands-on, 21st century learning," said Muhammed Chaudhry, President and CEO for the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization that has long advocated for more robust instruction in math and science. "There's a strong emphasis on engineering, which is huge for the Valley."
With the guidelines, educators foresee more use of real-world examples, like taking students to a farm or fish hatchery to help them learn principles of biology, chemistry and physics.
They want students to learn to construct at least basic versions of scientific models -- the simplified representations of reality that undergird tasks as diverse as building a skyscraper that will not collapse, designing a drug to treat illness and accurately predicting the effects of global warming.
And they want to introduce students to topics that can be made comprehensible only by drawing on the ideas and methods of many scientific disciplines.
Several educators said in interviews that pulling all that off in U.S. schoolhouses will be no small task.
Many states are likely to adopt the guidelines over the next year, but it could be years before the guidelines are translated into detailed curriculum documents and specific lesson plans, teachers are trained or retrained in the material and centralized tests are revised.
And all of this has to happen at a time when state education departments and many local schools are under severe financial strain.
"You can't do education on the cheap," said Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, an Oakland-based group that counters efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution and climate science. "Teachers are going to need some help in mastering this approach."
Bay Area News Group staff writer Dana Hull contributed to this story.
NExt generation science standards
Among the highlights of the Next Generation Science Standards:
1. The standards identify content and science and engineering practices that all students should learn from kindergarten to high school graduation and take into account the latest research on how students best learn science.
2. The standards call for introducing the science of climate change into the curriculum starting in middle school, and teaching high school students in detail about the effects of human activity on climate. The guidelines also take a firm stand that children must learn about evolution.
3. The development of the standards was led by several states, the National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association and others. California is among the states expected to adopt the standards.
For more information, go to: http://www.nextgenscience.org/ | <urn:uuid:958da255-563a-4b0a-a0f6-34e4fae86f03> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_22989599/educators-scientists-call-revamping-science-education | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00109-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953928 | 1,010 | 3.015625 | 3 |
The US Bishops continue their observance of the Fortnight for Freedom, but north of the border of my country, another nation with Catholic roots observes its day today. I thought it appropriate to get informed about Canadian saints and feature someone worthy. I remembered from my pilgrimages to Montreal the stories of the mistreatments of Frere André and I assumed it would not be hard to find saintly women battered from within their own Church. And I was not wrong.
Rumor had it that Marie-Marguerite d’Youville‘s group of lay women had taken up the bootlegging business from her late husband and father-in-law. That was enough for the clergy of Montreal to deny them Communion–never mind that their group had shouldered the burden of running a hospital for the poor. The hermeneutic of complaint is well-rooted in envy.
I eventually settled on the woman who was born Esther Blondin, and who later founded the Sisters of Sainte Anne. Religious orders seemed to be sprouting everywhere in the 19th century. Esther Blondin didn’t start one, at the start. She worked as a convent servant for the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame in her home village of Terrebonne, Québec. She learned to read and write in her early twenties. But poor health scuttled the possibility of being a member of that community.
Esther became a schoolteacher instead. In the 1800’s separate schools for boys and girls were mandated, men teaching boys and women teaching girls, of course. For poor communities, building one school could be a challenge, let alone supporting two. You can imagine that between the boy’s school and the girl’s, which would be built. Esther, however, thought that the problem of illiteracy was a bit more grave than the separation of the sexes, so she conceived a plan for girls and boys to be educated in the same building. She proposed to her bishop, Ignace Bourget, that a religious congregation be founded to address this situation. Bishop Bourget endorsed her limited plan, mindful that colonial authorities were already in favor of saving money by combining the education of children under one roof.
And so in 1850, Esther Blondin founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Anne, and to her community, was known as Mother Marie-Anne. Nothing attracts abuse like success. Within a few years, Mother Marie-Anne had a thirving community of teachers, but the clergy swooped in to take control. This bit from the Vatican’s own web site:
The new chaplain, Father Louis Adolphe Marechal, interfered in an abusive way in the private life of the Community. During the Foundress’ absence, Father changed the pupils’ boarding fees. Should he be away for a while, he asked that the Sisters await his return to go to confession. After a year of this existing conflict between the chaplain and the Foundress, the latter being anxious to protect the rights of her Community, Bishop Bourget asked Mother Marie Anne, on August 18, 1854, “to resign”. He called for elections and warned Mother Marie Anne “not to accept the superiorship, even if her sisters wanted to reelect her”.
As quickly as nineteenth century apostolates were discerned and communities founded to serve, it seems men in the Church could not refrain from taking over. I would like to report that Mother Marie-Anne and her community followed in the footsteps of Mother Guérin, but that was not the discerned path of this worthy woman. She was banished from taking any leadership role in the community she founded. Twice in the 1870’s, her sisters elected her, but clergy put a stop to any return to leadership.
Serving in the community’s laundry, and ironing the sisters’ clothing continued to give a profound witness to newcomers to the Sisters of Sainte Anne. Mother Blondin herself commented on her role:
The deeper a tree sinks its roots into the soil, the greater are its chances of growing and producing fruit.
The depth of roots are hidden, and alas, by hiding, it seems that the fact of persecution was hidden as well.
I hesitated about writing this essay. I’m reminded of a quote attributed to Thomas Aquinas, “To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.”
Did the fledgling community identify themselves with the founder so closely that they saw her bearing wrongs as a burden they too should shoulder? Was the education apostolate placed at the absolute forefront of their service to the children of their schools? Did their witness have any impact on the men who brutalized them? People are made saints and see the fruits of ministry whether they resist oppression or accede to it. Is there a difference?
Some men wish separation from women, but it seems that many of them just can’t keep their hands out of the doings of women, especially when the fruitfulness of an apostolate is obvious.
In the end, I decided this story required sharing. Not every worthy woman stands up to the clergy and bishops. Some of those who do not have found their lives very much in God’s hands. I struggle mightily with perceived slights, as my friends and foes well know. I don’t know that I would have the strength to walk Mother Blondin’s path. But I feel compelled to respect it, and present it to the readers here. Like her more uppity sisters in the US, France, Mexico, and elsewhere, she is now “Blessed” and her persecutors are criticized even on the Vatican’s own web site. None of them achieved veneration for worthy service to the Gospel. That is perhaps significant testimony that permits us all to breathe easier.
Happy Canada Day, northern friends. | <urn:uuid:4755cf3d-c6fe-4e03-b4fc-1bcc6f583d43> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://catholicsensibility.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/two-weeks-of-worthy-women-marie-anne-blondin/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=55bb07b550 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00130-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977949 | 1,260 | 2.609375 | 3 |
If you like to play tennis aggressively, then the volley is a key shot that can help you close out many points. Even if you play a baseline style, you’ll have to volley short balls occasionally. Indeed, if your opponent knows that you don’t like to volley, he may hit some short shots to force you closer to the net. No matter what style you play, you can improve your volleying by practicing against a wall or backboard.
Assume the correct volleying grip before you start practicing. Form a continental grip by holding the racket in front of you with the head perpendicular to the court. Grasp the racket so the V-shape between your thumb and index finger is a bit left of center on the top of the grip.
Hit against a backboard on a tennis court that already has a horizontal, net-high line. Alternatively, draw a line across the wall to represent the net. A standard tennis net is 3 feet, 6 inches high at the ends and 3 feet high in the middle. Try to hit your volleys no more than 6 inches above the line.
Use a one-handed grip for your backhand volleys, even if you normally play a two-handed backhand. You can’t reach as far with two hands on the racket. Because you’re so close to the net when you volley, it’s better to sacrifice a bit of power for greater reach.
Hit your volleys from different distances. Start close to the wall and hit the ball softly, then gradually back up to about 10 feet.
Vary your routine by mixing up forehand and backhand volleys. Instead of volleying every shot back, you can also improve your hand quickness by popping some balls into the air, then volleying the ball when it comes down. Increase the challenge by popping the ball up with your forehand, then shifting your position and volleying with your backhand, and vice versa.
Practice serving and volleying by standing about 35 feet from the wall, serving, then running toward the wall to volley the rebound.
Lean a thick, 10-foot by 8-foot board against the wall at a 45- to 60-degree angle. Hit your volleys against the board. Hit down on the rebounds, which will fly toward you at an upward angle.
- Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:f54b607a-60f4-450f-afe6-e6636a5e409b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://livehealthy.chron.com/improve-tennis-volley-using-wall-2078.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00055-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923734 | 499 | 2.53125 | 3 |
A tiny and very rare bat could frustrate efforts to build a new relief road for Weymouth in the southwest of England.
The barbastelle bat, which measures just 4.5 centimetres from head to toe, was discovered in a piece woodland next to which the new, proposed highway would run.
One of the rarest species in the UK (Image by BCT/Hugh Clark)
The conservation charity the Woodland Trust is now threatening legal action to stop Dorset County Council approving the transport plans.
The animal, known to scientists as Barbastella barbastellus, is on the government's Biodiversity Action Plan, which means there is official concern about its continued existence in the UK.
It turned up along with other bat species in a survey commissioned by the trust to see what was living in a corner of ancient woodland called Two Mile Coppice.
The trust, which owns the coppice, fears the road could do irreparable damage to what is a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
The current proposals would see the by-pass built on the edge of the woodland and run parallel to a railway line on a raised embankment.
The plans have already been altered once this year to limit their environmental impact - again because of concern about bat roosts.
"The barbastelle is probably one of our rarest species," John Stobart from English Nature, the government's wildlife advisory body, told BBC News Online.
Their pug-like faces made them look ugly to some, he said.
Despite their small body size, a wingspan of around 25 cm enabled them to travel up to 18 kilometres in one night, he added.
Licence to build
No barbastelle breeding roosts have been officially recorded in Dorset and only a single pregnant female was found in a previous study in the county.
Since their calls are silent to us, they are very difficult to track down.
The Woodland Trust survey used high-tech bat detectors to identify calls.
Their survey also picked up the presence of pipistrelle, noctule and possibly even Bechstein's bats in the ancient woodland.
Wild bats in the UK are protected by the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act.
Therefore, any development that affects wild bats requires a licence from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
A spokesperson for Dorset County Council indicated they would seek a licence: "Even if the bats are there, it does not mean that there will be no relief road.
"If the bat presence is confirmed then we will seek a licence from government and the road can still go ahead."
The Woodland Trust plans to commission a more detailed study of the bats in the woodland and says it would consider a legal challenge to any licence.
"The ongoing existence of the ancient woodland habitat will be threatened if the road goes ahead," said Graham Bradley, of the Woodland Trust.
Ancient woodland - defined as land continuously wooded for at least 400 years - now covers just 2% of the UK.
Conservation groups say every effort should be made to protect what remains of "Britain's rainforests", because of the very diverse wildlife they host, such as the endangered dormouse.
The Weymouth relief road is designed to ease congestion into the town. If built it would substantially improve the quality of life for hundreds of people living along Dorchester Road and Preston Road which carry the traffic at the moment.
The escalating costs resulting from environmental concerns have angered local politicians. | <urn:uuid:df6d3211-eab0-4841-84b3-8f253612a524> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3117460.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396875.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00144-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955753 | 733 | 2.953125 | 3 |
That’s Lac Hertel, the lake that is rather curiously perched in the middle of the ring of hills that comprises the “Mont”. (It rather looks like a volcanic caldera lake, but that is not the case; the Monteregian Hills are igneous intrusions, not extinct volcanoes, and the lake was formed by glacial erosion.) The Gault House where the retreat was held is the building visible on the lake shore. Nice digs.
Below, Krista Oke and Shahin Muttalib write a bit about the research they presented at the retreat; but first, trivia! These questions were prepared by Gregor Fussman to test the wits of the assembled graduate students. Answers are at the bottom of the post.
Question 1. What happened in which year? (Match each lettered year with one of the listed events.)
a) 1821, b) 1822, c) 1831, d) 1851
McGill University founded
Hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone deciphered
Voyage of the Beagle starts
Question 2. Whose equation? (Match each lettered equation to its author.)
W. D. Hamilton (1964)
C. S. Holling (1959)
Richard Levins (1969)
Russ Lande (1976)
Question 3. The Latin name of which plant (which you would correctly assume that we consumed that evening) contains the letter ‘u’ six times, and contains no other vowels?
Question 4. The path of this traveller is suggestive of what?
Question 5. Rank these bodies of water according to their actual area, from largest to smallest.
The balance between selection and gene flow evaluated in threespine stickleback
The degree to which gene flow can constrain adaptation is still an open question, and inferring causality from correlation studies between levels of divergence and levels of gene flow isn’t quite convincing enough. Another approach is to measure selection in a site where we expect to find maladaptation: maladapted populations should experience higher selection. With this in mind, I tagged hundreds of fish over two winters and two summers in Misty Outlet and Misty Inlet, hoping to estimate natural selection on body shape. Since good selection estimates are dependent on capturing as many surviving fish as possible, I first estimated survival and recapture probability. It turns out recapture probability was higher in the outlet, so selection estimates are more precise for the outlet. Survival probability was lowest in the winter in the outlet, which is also where I found the highest selection intensity. I am using two metrics to measure total selection intensity: one for overall selection due to the traits that I have measured, and a measure of relative selection taking into account selection on unmeasured traits. So while the outlet has higher overall selection in the winter, it also has more selection due to other traits. At the level of particular traits, I have found effects for fin positioning, head size, body depth and position of the pelvic spine. These are traits that contribute most to total selection intensity, show the strongest selection gradients, and also show selection in the expected direction, i.e.: towards the more adapted inlet trait values. This spring the stickleback team will be wading through the streams for one last season of data to confirm if selection is indeed consistently higher over the winter in the outlet. Watch out for those Misty Lake zombies!
An investigation into the genetic versus plastic basis of parallel evolution in lake and stream stickleback
The study of parallel evolution is important because it provides evidence for a deterministic role of natural selection in evolution and speciation, but parallel evolution is much more often inferred from field studies. Laboratory studies on parallelism have been relatively rare. Since plasticity could affect parallelism in several ways, the use of common garden studies could provide much insight into this process. A genetic basis for parallelism has been detected in some traits in one lake-stream stickleback pair, the Misty Lake pair, although plasticity was also detected. My MSc work asks whether there is a genetic or plastic basis to parallel evolution in three other watersheds on Vancouver Island. I currently have first generation lab fish growing in a common garden setup in our lab at McGill, but so far no results to report. I will be part of the field crew Shahin mentioned heading back to BC soon, where we will also be creating crosses to supplement the fish I have in the lab now. No one warned me about the zombies, though!
Question 1: a) McGill, b) Rosetta Stone, c) the Beagle, d) Moby-Dick
Question 2: a) Hamilton, b) Levins, c) Lande, d) Holling
Question 3: Humulus lupulus (hops)
Question 4: the sites of the last five annual ESA meetings
Question 5: c (Caspian Sea), b (Lake Superior), a (Lake Baikal), d (Great Slave Lake)
If you now have the warm, triumphant glow of a life spent immersed in the companionship of friends who love biology – but you also have a hangover and are in desperate need of a shower – then this post has given you a taste of what the CEEB retreat is like. Hey, at least we didn’t bring up meme-sex this time!
BUT, the trivia wasn’t quite over. A surprise last question moved the team rankings around, so a final challenge was issued. It was a combination of physical speed (running around the building twice), teamwork, memorization, and knowledge of your field. What was most interesting about it was that the team of the person running had to come up with a canonical paper in the field of ecology and evolution. The team would whisper it to the runner, and then they had to write it on a blackboard. This was all fine and good, but several interesting things came out:
1) We all know the authors and years, but do you know the exact title of papers that are important in your field?
2) Do you know which ones are books, and which ones are articles?
3) How do you weigh the relative importance of different papers?
4) Did you know that marker caps, manipulated with excessive haste, can cause wounds?
It was an interesting and contentious final round. Of the articles the teams came up with, the citation counts for the articles ranged from 6 (Hendry and Gonzalez – Whither adaption?) to 12,528 (Fisher – The genetical theory of natural selection). Fisher’s ought to have been eliminated because it is a book, not an article, but that felt like too large a penalty, so the top two teams ended up splitting the prize: a bottle of rare Hendry wine.
Food for thought: at what point does an article become canonical or seminal in your field, and how might this be measured? H-index of the authors? Average citations per year? Total citations? First author awesomeness?
Until next year... hopefully our livers (and our marker-cap-inflicted wounds) will heal by then!
Ben, Kiyoko, Krista and Shahin (Hendry Lab)
PS. Kiyoko apologizes for the publishing, subsequent dissapearance, and then reappearance of the post. In an attempt to add pictures, she managed to edit the draft to nothing. After much teeth gnashing, luck, and hair pulling, she realized Blogger plays nicest with Chrome. She should have known like begets like. Thanks to those who never close their browser windows and were able to send Kiyoko the text so she could ressurect this post. I think the original post has gone to hang out with the Misty Lake zombies. What fun! | <urn:uuid:28b2ebd5-4d13-432b-9ef0-327ddede044f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.ca/2012/04/biological-refugium_22.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00135-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95072 | 1,627 | 3.15625 | 3 |
- Government scientists are to check deer to see whether
they harbour BSE-like diseases under a research programme designed to close
loopholes in the battle against a menace that has probably killed more
than 100 Britons since 1995 and dogged agriculture for nearly 10 years
longer. Precautionary steps to reassure officials about the safety of
will involve collecting specimens from farmed animals to check their brains
and tonsils for both BSE and a similar killer of deer and elk in the United
States, chronic wasting disease (CWD).
- Britain's large wild deer population may also be
for the two diseases although no laboratory experiment to ascertain whether
BSE in cattle can be transmitted by injection or feed to deer has been
- In another step to ensure livestock is BSE-free, pigs
and poultry in laboratories may be fed affected material. These farm
ate far more meat and bonemeal contaminated with BSE than cattle before
the feeding practice was banned, but there is no evidence so far from
experiments that the disease can be transmitted to pigs or poultry by food.
Large injections of infected material can produce the disease in
- The measures are among several demanded by the food
agency to bolster defences against the threat of more consumers being
poisoned by infected food eaten years before the signs of variant CJD -
the human form of BSE - even occur.
- Work on implementing them was delayed by the foot and
mouth crisis and they come on top of vastly increased testing regimes for
cattle, sheep and goats demanded by the EU.
- The deer survey will involve both a postal questionnaire
of farmers to establish whether they have noticed BSE-like diseases and
checks on animals which fall ill or die. Organisations that cull wild deer
for environmental management and hunters may become involved if the net
- Official figures suggest there are 36,000 deer on just
over 300 farms in the UK, although the food standards agency does not know
the size of venison consumption in Britain. The scale of wild deer is
although there may be 500,000 in Scotland alone.
- Deer experts believe wild populations are healthy, apart
from some outbreaks of TB.
- A Department of the Environment spokesman said that
laboratories already cross-checked some deer samples collected for other
purposes and had found no evidence of BSE-like diseases.
- Jane Emerson, of the British Deer Farmers Association,
said members had been kept up to date with news of the CWD outbreak in
the US and it was highly unlikely that deer in the UK had been infected
through feed with BSE.
- "But you have to be aware of the risks and what
the symptoms are," she said. | <urn:uuid:67afd9c9-a871-4b12-a462-c60804a07b1b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://rense.com/general18/UKscientistswiden.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393533.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94579 | 568 | 3.40625 | 3 |
|New American Bible|
2002 11 11
IntraText - Text
The last four books of the Hebrew canon are Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 and 2 Chronicles, in that order. Originally, however, Ezra and Nehemiah followed the Books of Chronicles, and formed with them a unified historical work so homogeneous in spirit that one usually speaks of a single author for the four books. He is called "the Chronicler." The treatment of Ezra-Nehemiah as a single book by the earliest chroniclers was undoubtedly due to the fact that in ancient times the two books were put under the one name-Ezra. The combined work Ezra-Nehemiah is our most important literary source for the formation of the Jewish religious community after the Babylonian exile. This is known as the period of the Restoration, and the two men most responsible for the reorganization of Jewish life at this time were Ezra and Nehemiah.
In the present state of the Ezra-Nehemiah text, there are several dislocations of large sections so that the chronological or logical sequence is disrupted. The major instances are pointed out in the footnotes. Although Ezra appears before Nehemiah in this work, it seems probable that Nehemiah's activity preceded his.
What is known of Ezra and his work is due almost exclusively to Ezr 7-10 (the "Ezra Memoirs") and to Neh 8-9. Strictly speaking, the term "Ezra Memoirs" should be used only of that section in which Ezra speaks in the first person, i.e., ⇒ Ezra 7:27-⇒ 9:15. Compare the ""Nehemiah Memoirs'' in ⇒ Nehemiah 1:1-⇒ 7:72a; ⇒ 11:1, 2; ⇒ 12:27-43; ⇒ 13:4-31. The Chronicler combined this material with other sources at his disposal. The personality of Ezra is less known than that of Nehemiah. Ben Sirach, in his praise of the fathers, makes no mention of Ezra. The genealogy of Ezra (⇒ Ezra 7:1-5) traces his priesthood back to Aaron, brother of Moses. This was the accepted way of establishing the legality of one's priestly office. He is also called a scribe, well-versed in the law of Moses (⇒ Ezra 7:6), indicating Ezra's dedication to the study of the Torah, which he sought to make the basic rule of life in the restored community. It was in religious and cultic reform rather than in political affairs that Ezra made his mark as a postexilic leader. Jewish tradition holds him in great honor; the Talmud even regards him as a second Moses, claiming that the Torah would have been given to Israel through Ezra had not Moses preceded him.
Ezra is sometimes accused of having been a mere legalist who gave excessive attention to the letter of the law. His work, however, should be seen and judged within a specific historical context. He gave to his people a cohesion and spiritual unity which prevented the disintegration of the small Jewish community. Had it not been for the intransigence of Ezra and of those who adopted his ideal, it is doubtful that Judaism would have so effectively resisted Hellenism, then or in later centuries. Ezra set the tone of the postexilic community, and it was characterized by fidelity to the Torah, Judaism's authentic way of life. It is in this light that we can judge most fairly the work of Ezra during the Restoration.
The Book of Ezra is divided as follows:
1. The Return from Exile (⇒ Ezra 1:1-⇒ 6:22)
2. The Deeds of Ezra (⇒ Ezra 7:1-⇒ 10:44)
The following list of the kings of Persia, with the dates of their reigns, will be useful for dating the events mentioned in Ezra-Nehemiah:
Cambyses - 529-521 B.C.
Darius I - 521-485 B.C.
Xerxes - 485-464 B.C.
Artaxerxes I - 464-423 B.C.
Darius II - 423-404 B.C.
Artaxerxes II - 404-358 B.C.
Artaxerxes III - 358-337 B.C.
End of the Persian Empire - 331 B.C.
(Defeat of Darius III) | <urn:uuid:86e6a7c7-60ca-4759-a709-77375c6c713b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PBL.HTM | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00107-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968266 | 950 | 2.703125 | 3 |
THURSDAY, June 21 (HealthDay News) -- First-born children possess IQs that are 2.3 points higher, on average, than their younger siblings, a new study contends.
This finding held true even when first-born children didn't survive and a younger child was reared as the eldest, scuttling the idea that genetics determines the difference in IQ among siblings, according to the Norwegian researchers who authored the report, published in the June 22 issue of the journal Science.
"This study really puts to an end a debate that's been going on for more than 70 years," said Frank J. Sulloway, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Personality and Social Research, and the author of an accompanying commentary in the journal. "The theory of biological differences is pretty much dead as a doornail."
While a 2.3 IQ point difference doesn't seem large, it translates into about a 30 percent increased chance of a child getting into an Ivy League university, Sulloway said.
However, study lead researcher Dr. Petter Kristensen, of the National Institute of Occupational Health in Oslo, noted that the difference in IQ doesn't predict what will happen to children in the future.
"This IQ difference has impact on educational potential on the population, giving first-born an advantage over later-born," he said. "However, on the individual level, this effect is so small that it gives little predictive power."
In the study, Kristensen and co-researcher Tor Bjerkedal, of the Institute of Epidemiology, Norwegian Armed Forces Medical Services, collected data on more than 241,000 male Norwegian draftees, 18 and 19 years old. The data included birth order, vital status of elder siblings, and IQ scores.
Kristensen and Bjerkedal found that the association between IQ and birth order wasn't genetic but rather related to the social birth order of the children.
"We provide evidence that suggests quite strongly that this effect is not an artifact, and that it is not linked to gestational factors -- adverse pregnancy effects," Kristensen said.
"Indirectly, it supports the theory that social support and attention within the family explain the difference. First children will not have to share this attention at first. The more children, the less attention will be provided to each child if parental resources are limited," he added.
Sulloway noted that there are several theories that might explain the difference in IQ between first-born and younger siblings. Among these is one that says that more money is spent on the oldest child, and, as family size increases, less money is available for other children, leaving them with less opportunity. "But this doesn't intuitively strike me as the explanation," he said.
Another theory holds that the first-born child gets more of the parents' attention, but Sulloway also discounts this theory.
Still another explanation is that older children teach younger children, and the act of teaching raises the IQ. "The problem with this theory is that teaching has to raise the IQ of the first-born more than it does the IQ of younger siblings, in order to produce a birth order difference," he said.
A theory that Sulloway likes is called "niche partitioning." This theory suggests that once a role in the family is filled, others have to find roles that help them compete for attention in the family.
Sulloway noted that first-borns are judged to be more disciplined and more hard-working and more intelligent than their younger siblings. "The explanation for this is that first-borns occupy the role of a surrogate parent in the family," he said. "It is a great way to get brownie points from parents."
Because older children already occupy that niche in the family, younger children have to find other roles to play, Sulloway said. "So, younger siblings look for other things to be good at," he said. "It may be that that extra 2.3 points in IQ reflects an investment of time to get that, and the later-born is investing that time in something else and is getting 2.3 extra points in something else," he added.
Given that each child is finding his or her own niche, the difference in IQ is nothing for parents to worry about, Sulloway said.
Interested in what else birth order means? Visit the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
SOURCES: Petter Kristensen, M.D., National Institute of Occupational Health, Oslo, Norway; Frank J. Sulloway, Ph.D., visiting scholar, Institute of Personality and Social Research, University of California, Berkeley; June 22, 2007, Science | <urn:uuid:9fe6dc81-c48d-4cb4-8ede-dcf01289476b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=4507663&page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970846 | 977 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Yard and Garden column for the Week Beginning July 14
Tree Cankers: Nature's Scavengers
Canker diseases are among the most destructive and hard-to-manage disorders of nursery, landscape, shade, forest and fruit trees. Cankers -- localized dead areas in the bark of stems, branches or twigs -- cause limb dieback that mars the beauty of landscape trees. Cankers can create openings for invasion by wood decay fungi, which can make a bad situation even worse.
Viewed through the windshield, girdling cankers are eye-catching by their results -- dead branches, sometimes with the wilted leaves still attached, scattered among healthy-appearing foliage. Close up, cankers look different according to the particular canker fungus and the plant they attack. On shoots, cankers are sometimes easy to spot since the cankered area can be dark and discolored in contrast to nearby healthy bark. On older and thicker-barked hardwoods, discoloration may not be so evident, but the diseased area is frequently sunken, the branch can appear somewhat flattened and the bark at the margins of the canker can be swollen and cracked where a roll of callus has developed.
Especially on thin-barked trees, numerous tiny bumps, called fruiting bodies, may protrude from the bark in or around cankers. These fruiting bodies and the spores they contain provide very helpful clues in identifying the causal fungus. On conifers, cankers are often marked by leakage of resin, which crystallizes to a whitish, sticky mass on the bark. The sapwood beneath cankered bark is typically dark and discolored.
Many canker fungi survive and thrive on dead plant tissue, plant debris or in the soil. But most of them do not cause problems for healthy, vigorous trees. Instead, they are scavengers, part of Mother Nature's cleanup crew. So they pick on trees weakened by environmental stresses. A stress-weakened tree lacks the energy to erect chemical and physical barriers, so invading canker fungi can have a picnic at the tree's expense.
Among the most common sources of environmental stress are drought, flooding, freezing, extreme temperature fluctuations, nutrient deficiencies, defoliation, mechanical injury, chemical injury and transplant shock. Here in Iowa, with its harsh continental climate, our trees are often buffeted by multiple stresses: drought one month, flood the next, then freeze injury to top it off. With all this stress, it's a wonder we have any trees without cankers.
Trees are especially stress-prone during transplanting. Another stress-prone period comes after trees reach maturity and begin to decline in vigor. Because canker-causing fungi are already hanging around on or in healthy trees, cankers usually begin at a wound or a dead stub and expand in all directions from the entry point. Expansion is typically fastest along the main axis of the limb, so cankers tend to be elliptical in shape with their long axis parallel to the limb.
Other cankers are caused by mechanical injury. Many such cankers result from "mower blight," a too-close encounter between a lawn mower and an innocent tree.
Fungicide sprays are seldom useful against fungal cankers. Wound dressings have not shown much benefit either, and are even more laborious to apply than fungicide sprays. Many canker fungi are ubiquitous, colonizing all sorts of live and dead plant tissues, so chemical warfare is usually futile.
Instead, a good general recommendation is to treat the tree, not the fungus. Since most canker diseases single out severely stressed trees, practices that prevent or reduce tree stress can prevent cankers. If our patients were human, we'd call this strategy "wellness." In other words, the key to avoiding canker diseases is to keep our patients -- landscape trees -- in vigorous health.
Wellness practices for drought-prone trees include mulching, which reduces both water loss from the soil and competition by thirsty, water-hogging turfgrass. A 3- to 4-inch-thick layer of mulch, from just beyond the trunk out to the drip line (below the tips of the tree's branches) works well in Iowa. Timely watering and fertilizing (when justified by soil test results) helps to keep a tree in vigorous, canker-proof condition.
Because most canker-causing fungi enter the tree through wounds created by insect feeding, pruning or other damage, it's helpful to avoid wounding and severe pruning when possible. But pruning out cankers can delay the appearance of new cankers by removing a large proportion of the fungal spores from the tree. It's a good idea to burn, bury or otherwise destroy cankered prunings promptly. Try to avoid pruning out cankers during wet weather because infections occur readily during this time.
Tree wellness begins before planting. Probably the most important step to wellness is to match the tree with the site. The emphasis on planting native species is commendable, but practicing "safe selection" doesn't end there. If the site has special challenges -- say, for example, the building contractor bulldozed and sold off the topsoil right down to the clay before the trees were transplanted -- the trees selected should be adapted to these challenges. For this type of site, safe selection is more than a bit challenging. Naturally, proper transplanting technique and post-planting maintenance are also critical to wellness.
Some canker diseases can be deterred by selecting the right cultivar. Doing your homework, and contacting local experts, in advance can prevent cankered trees down the road by making sure you've selected tough, hardy trees.
When tree cankers appear, it's already late in the game. The tree, and you, are losing. For cankers, prevention -- wellness -- means doing everything feasible to keep trees in vigorous, canker-proof health. Wellness is the only anti-canker strategy that really works.
Extension programs are available to all without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, or disability. | <urn:uuid:f6b5c729-abe3-49d8-aa54-be7688736280> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.extension.iastate.edu/newsrel/2000/jul00/jul0003.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397842.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00178-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937645 | 1,271 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Note: click images in this article to see larger versions.
Last week I was scouting for alfalfa weevil larvae in a field near Ames and was reminded of the fact that alfalfa harbors a tremendous number of insects, some of which are pests but most are not. The first cutting of alfalfa is occurring in many fields across the state this week, but other fields are still standing. As these fields are scouted, you may be curious about the identification of the insects in the sweep net. This article briefly discusses the identification and pest status of first-cutting alfalfa insects I found; however, this list is not exhaustive and other insect species may occur in your alfalfa.
This large green aphid is common on alfalfa stems. Hundreds may be collected in several sweeps with a net. They cause damage by sucking plant sap from the terminal leaves and stem, causing the plants to wilt. They are pear-shaped with long legs and antennae. The antennae have dark bands on the antennal segments. They walk very slowly and do not jump.
Hundreds of insects can be collected from alfalfa in a sweep net. (Marlin E. Rice)
Pea aphid giving birth to nymph. (Marlin E. Rice)
Larvae feed on terminal leaves, removing the tender leaf tissue while leaving a "skeleton" of tougher leaf veins. Their feeding reduces forage quality. Adults also feed on plants and are more likely to damage the regrowth of the second cutting by eating the new buds. Larvae have a black head and white stripe down the back. Newly hatched larvae are yellow or light green; older larvae are dark green. Adults are 1/4 inch long, with a long "snout," and a dark brown stripe down the back.
Alfalfa weevil larva. (Marlin E. Rice)
Alfalfa weevil adult. (Marlin E. Rice)
Clover root curculio--pest
This weevil is 3/16 inch long and slightly smaller than the adult alfalfa weevil. It has a short, broad "snout," there is no broad stripe on the back, and the body is sparsely covered with upright hairs. Feeding by adults is usually insignificant, but larvae feed underground and can deeply scar the taproot. This feeding can contribute to alfalfa stand decline.
Clover root curculio. (Marlin E. Rice)
Bean leaf beetle--pest
Alfalfa serves as a refuge for this common pest of soybeans before soybeans emerge from the ground. When the hay is cut, the beetles fly to nearby soybean fields where they lay eggs and continue to feed. Beetles may be colored dark yellow or red and are best recognized by the black triangle behind the pronotum ("neck" region). Additionally, most beetles have four rectangular spots on the wing covers, but some may be spotless. Their feeding in alfalfa is considered to be insignificant.
Bean leaf beetle�typical color and pattern. (Marlin E. Rice)
Bean leaf beetle with no spots on wing covers (Marlin E. Rice)
Tarnished plant bug or Lygus bug--pest
This insect is 1/4 inch long and brown with wings that are bent downward near the tip. Adults run and fly rapidly. Feeding injury occurs when the bugs suck sap resulting in crinkled or puckered leaves and stunted alfalfa growth. Significant damage from this insect rarely occurs in Iowa.
Lygus bug. (Marlin E. Rice)
Adults of four species of lady beetles were found. Most likely they were feeding on pea aphids. The convergent lady beetle (with converging lines immediately behind the head on the pronotum) and 12-spotted lady beetle (pink with 12 black spots) are native to North America. The 7-spotted lady beetle (7 black spots on the wing covers and two small white patches behind the eyes) and multi-colored Asian lady beetle (0 to 19 spots with large white patches on the pronotum) are native to Eurasia. No larvae were found of any species, but adults were laying eggs. Eggs are bright yellow, stacked side-by-side on their ends and are laid in clusters.
Convergent lady beetle. (Marlin E. Rice)
12-spotted lady beetle. (Marlin E. Rice)
7-spotted lady beetle. (Marlin E. Rice)
Multicolored Asian lady beetle (Marlin E. Rice)
Lady beetle eggs. (Marlin E. Rice)
There are many species of soldier beetles and this one is black and tinged with red on the pronotum and legs. Soldier beetles feed on nectar, pollen, and some species feed exclusively on aphids. This species may have been feeding on pea aphids.
Soldier beetle. (Marlin E. Rice)
Damsel bug or Nabis bug--beneficial
This slender, mottled brown bug is a predator of pea aphids, alfalfa weevil larvae, and anything else it can stab. Adults are 5/16 inch long and can run quickly, but unlike the tarnished plant bug, their wings are not bent downward and they are less prone to fly.
Nabis, or damsel, bug. (Marlin E. Rice)
Green and delicate with lace-like wings, this beautiful insect also has a foul-smelling odor. Adults fly with a fluttering motion. Adults and larva are great predators of pea aphids, but only adults have been found so far.
Green lacewing adult. (Marlin E. Rice)
This long-jawed orb web spider represents the many species of spiders that occur in alfalfa. All spiders are predators and they eat of variety of insects--some of which are pests and some of which are beneficial insects.
Long-jawed orb weaver spider. (Marlin E. Rice)
Several species of parasitic wasps, also called parasitoids, attack alfalfa weevils (larvae and adults) and aphids. Adults are small (always smaller than the insect they attack) with long antennae and clear wings, and the females have long ovipositors for jabbing an egg into their target host.
Parasitic wasp. (Marlin E. Rice)
Many species of insects may briefly feed in alfalfa as they fly from field to field in search of a mate, a suitable host, or they may feed on weeds, grasses, or leaf litter in the field. These insects are incidental as they are neither pests or beneficial in helping to reduce pest populations. They are shown here because they should not be confused with the pest species.
Striped cucumber beetle--incidental
This beetle resembles a western corn rootworm, but it has dark, black "knees" and the three stripes on the wing covers are distinctive--they never touch or blend together. This insect is a pest of garden vegetables.
Striped cucumber beetle. (Marlin E. Rice)
Many species of leafhoppers occur in alfalfa, especially if there is a mixture of grasses, and they can easily be confused with the potato leafhopper. Only the potato leafhopper damages alfalfa, and it is a solid, light green color. Most leafhoppers have the same general shape--long and slender with a head slightly wider than the rest of the body. This brown-colored leafhopper is not a pest of alfalfa.
Leafhopper (not the potato leafhopper). (Marlin E. Rice)
Many species of flies can be found in alfalfa. The habits of this small (<2 mm) fly are unknown, but it is not a pest. The only fly pest in Iowa is the alfalfa blotch leafminer and it occurs in northeastern Iowa.
Numerous species of flies occur in alfalfa; this species is not a pest. (Marlin E. Rice)
Sawflies are larvae of wasps. The larvae resemble the larvae of moths and butterflies, but they have more than five pairs of prolegs. They feed on a wide range of plants, and this particular species is suspected of feeding on grass.
Sawfly larva (Marlin E. Rice)
This article originally appeared on pages 136-138 of the IC-496(12) -- May 22, 2006 issue. | <urn:uuid:46833533-77bd-4553-b33e-1c032c0cd415> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/icm/2006/5-22/alfalfainsects.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397567.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00120-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933681 | 1,826 | 3.21875 | 3 |
An abalone (mollusc), especially one used as food in the Channel Islands.
- Genus Haliotis, in particular H. tuberculata.
- The ormer is a favourite with islanders who can spend hours wading through rock pools on Guernseys coastline in search of the elusive abalone.
- The Oormer is a single-shelled gastropod that crawls (limpet-like) over the rocks feeding on algae.
- Although the ormer is not a commercially exploited species, it is very important both biologically and socially to Jersey.
Mid 17th century: Channel Islands French, from French ormier, from Latin auris maris 'ear of the sea' (because of its ear-like shape).
For editors and proofreaders
Line breaks: ormer
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed. | <urn:uuid:aa882129-c5f3-4e2f-9747-fb464c7e8aa0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ormer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908291 | 201 | 2.84375 | 3 |
"Edward O'Reilly: The popular report of the country is that a great battle was fought between this hill and Sigh Mor at a very remote period, in which the celebrated Fionn MacCubhal and his Fianna Eirionn were defeated. One of Fionn's heroes, who was killed in the engagement, is said to lie entombed in Sighbeg, and a celebrated champion of the opposite party who was killed in the same battle had his remains deposited in the center of Sigh Mor. Some insist that it was over the body of Fionn himself that the mote on Sighbeg was erected...
George Reynolds had a gigantic effigy of Finn built from an immense pile of lime and stone over the carn, the supposed place of Finn's sepulchre.
Hardiman: This pile remained for several years, a conspicuous object ot the surrounding country, but it was at length prostrated by a storm. It was afterwards rebuilt, but another storm laid it in ruins and so it has remained ever since. . .and the people of the country assert and firmly believe that the storms by which it was overthrown were raised by the "good people."
The carn on Shebeg has been excavated; it is 5 feet 6 inches long, 3 feet wide and 4 feet in height. It could only be entered by a person lying at full stretch. Two human skeletons, one male and one female, both facing towards the former royal seat of Tara, were found. One set of teeth believed to have been those of the woman were found to be in a perfect state of preservation.
I climbed up both Shebeg and Shemore and played the tune on my tin whistle across the valley between. It is really a lovely place and with the fog lying between the two hills you can almost see the ghostly armies rushing across the plain." | <urn:uuid:66463543-9772-4ed0-b88f-a425e822ce05> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.contemplator.com/carolan/sheebeg.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00033-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991021 | 389 | 2.53125 | 3 |
||The Dormeuse, or French Night Cap,
was especially popular in the 1770's. This style was also referred to as a
baigneuse, or bathing cap. The crown of the cap fits loosely over the head, with
rounded wings or ears framing the face. The night cap may be worn close to the face
over a natural head, or away from the face covering a high coiffure. This cap is
designed to be trimmed with two rows of ruching over the ears, a band of pouffing around
the crown, and a ribbon bow at center front.
|The dormeuse, like the English night gown, was intended
to be worn during the day. Generally, 1770's undress, or informal, caps were large
while dress, or formal, caps were small. The styles and materials were often the
same. This original cap pattern is based primarily on caps illustrated in The West Family,
c.1772, and The Six Children of George III, 1776 by Benjamin
West. Similarly styled caps may be seen in Fashion Plate #51,
1778, Galerie des Modes; and the French engravings Le Lever and Le
Bain, 1774, A. Romanet, Sculpt., in the designer's collection. | <urn:uuid:a97297de-adc4-46ed-8610-a4c24a5eeb52> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.jpryan.com/details/dormeuse.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00110-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93923 | 273 | 2.828125 | 3 |
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