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by Tim Hornyak, BA’95
With more than 75 percent of the U.S. suffering extreme drought this summer, farmers can’t be blamed for looking to underground aquifers for relief. But a new analysis of groundwater shows that people are already overusing these subterranean sponges, some of which took thousands of years to form.
“Over 2 billion people drink groundwater everyday, and groundwater is important for growing food in many regions,” notes McGill hydrogeologist Tom Gleeson, who co-authored the study in the journal Nature. “Our results show that humans are over-exploiting groundwater in many large aquifers that are crucial to agriculture, especially in North America and Asia, and that a quarter of the world’s population live in regions where groundwater is being overused.”
Gleeson’s team, including researchers from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, developed an analysis tool called a groundwater footprint. It measures the amount of water flowing into aquifers, how much humans use, and how much should be left for the environment. It’s being heralded as the first measure of the sustainability of groundwater use around the world.
The researchers used this tool to examine data on water use from across the globe. While most sources of groundwater are not threatened, the study identified heavily overtaxed aquifers feeding population centres such as the Upper Ganges of India and Pakistan, California’s Central Valley and the North China Plain.
Getting billions of people to change their water use is a daunting task, and Gleeson, an assistant professor of civil engineering, says a multi-pronged approach is needed.
“A wide variety of water policy, management and governance options are possible for these regions that are being overused,” says Gleeson. “Options include setting limits on groundwater use, more efficient irrigation and the promotion of less meat-rich diets since they use less water.” | <urn:uuid:99ba9ad6-55be-43b9-88ae-e9407c2f84ca> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://publications.mcgill.ca/mcgillnews/2012/11/30/squeezed-dry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94137 | 412 | 3.765625 | 4 |
With autism rates soaring over the past 20 years, researchers are constantly looking for prevention or treatment methods. One scientist, Yehezkel Ben-Ari of the Mediterranean Institute of Neurobiology in Marseille, France believes autistic children may have suffered stress at birth. As a mother of three autistic children, this peaked my interest, especially since two of them suffered birth trauma.
While Ben-Ari has done some studies on autistic children, most of his research has been limited to mice and rats. Even so, there are noted parallels that seem to make the study applicable to humans in many ways. His focus is a simple diuretic called bumetanide that reduces levels of chloride in cells. As a diuretic, it helps lower blood pressure by making a person urinate more, reducing fluid in the body.
Ben-Ari's study says in utero, rats and mice brains are basically hyper, likely true in humans as well, and the chloride that's inside neurons appears to assist in that fast development. Oxytocin, known as the "love hormone" and is responsible for labor, breastfeeding and maternal bonding, calms down the chloride ions during labor, which helps babies deal with the stress of birth.
Since autism seems to occur more often in babies who experienced a stressful birth, Ben-Ari and his colleagues believe it's possible that the switch to calm the chloride ions down may not happen in babies who end up autistic. One of my boys had severe facial and head injuries from compression when the edge of my cervix wouldn't retract. The other had the umbilical cord looped around his neck twice and was nearly strangulated during the 20 minutes it took to remove it.
While they can't replicate it exactly in rodents, Ben-Ari's team used two models of autism. In one group, the mice had the most common genetic mutation associated with the human form. The second group consisted of rats "exposed in utero to sodium valproate, an epilepsy drug known to significantly increase risk of autism in children whose mothers take the medication."
The team used the drug bumetanide, which blocks chloride transport channels in neurons and is used to lower blood pressure, to see if it would lower chloride and restore normal neuron function in the autistic rodents. When given to pregnant rodents, it cured the offspring of both groups and even helped in autistic adult rodents. Since every attempt to find an effective drug has failed, this is very exciting news.
In 2012, the team did some trials on autistic children with some success. However, several issues need to be addressed. The biggest obstacle is the fact that there's no way to detect autistic babies in utero. There's also some concern over the fact that Ben-Ari has patented a version of bumetanide and formed a company, Neurochlore, that plans to test it on children, so he would profit from its success.
Some scientists question the vast difference between the human brain and rodent brain, but any progress towards the understanding, treatment or even a cure is welcome. One scientist, neuroscientist Emanuel DiCicco-Bloom, says the study is "pretty awesome" and other autism scientists are thrilled about the discovery. Andrew Zimmerman, a pediatric neurologist and autism expert at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass., says it's a "pretty incredible finding and really great."
It's believed that the earlier autistic children are diagnosed the better because treatment is more effective the earlier it starts. Ben-Ari is doing trials on kids as young as 2. It's usually discovered at about 4 years old. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 88 children in the United States are autistic, and the number is rising.
Ben-Ari says, "It's important for people to understand there is no drug to cure a medical disease as complicated as autism."
There's still many years of testing and trials ahead, but hopefully, this is one step closer to a cure. | <urn:uuid:4155e171-54a6-47c0-a65b-7155160b3d46> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.parenting.com/pregnancy/complications/study-autism-may-be-related-to-birth-stress | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00154-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972916 | 812 | 3.421875 | 3 |
2.10.2 Backwater Effects on Waterway Openings
It is necessary to distinguish between the following types of backwater effects.
Backwater on a floodplain resulting from construction of a long, skewed or curved road
embankment as sketched in Figure 2.38a, where the bridge opening is, in effect, located
up-valley from one end of the embankment. The backwater effect along the embankment
arises from ponding of water along a line running obliquely down-valley. In the case of steep
rivers with wide floodplains this effect can be very large, since a large pond is created. This
type of effect can be prevented by choosing a suitable location and alignment, or by providing
dikes (shown on the figure) to close off the affected part of the floodplain from flood waters,
or possibly by providing a relief span.
Backwater in an incised river channel without substantial overbank flow, resulting in part from
constriction of flow through an opening somewhat smaller than the natural cross section, and
in part from obstructive effects of piers (Figure 2.38b). The backwater effect arising from this
type is seldom large, but may be significant in developed areas.
Backwater in a river with floodplain where the road crossing is more or less normal to the
valley but the road approaches block off overbank flow (Figure 2.38c). In these cases the
backwater may be significantly greater than in type b. The effect of guide banks shown in
Figure 2.38c is to reduce the backwater effects by improving the hydraulic efficiency of the
It is advisable to be aware of other unusual backwater effects that might occur in special
circumstances, although they might never arise in ordinary bridge design practice.
2.10.3 Effects of a Submerged Superstructure
If the high-water level reaches the bottom of the superstructure, the bridge will act as a short
culvert. For bridges which are designed to be submersible under certain conditions, it is
advisable to provide a rounded nosing on the leading edge of the girder, in order to improve the
hydraulic efficiency and to reduce the tendency to catch driftwood and ice as illustrated in Figure
2.39. Also, the superstructure must be anchored to counter buoyancy.
2.10.4 Effects of Supercritical Flow
In contrast to the usual drop at a constriction in subcritical flow, in supercritical flow water levels
may rise suddenly at the contracted section. The phenomenon of "choking" is particularly likely if
the Froude number only slightly exceeds 1.0. "Choking" may occur even in subcritical flow if the
constriction is severe enough. Wider or additional openings should be designed if choking
effects are expected to occur.
2.10.5 Types of Flow in Bridge Openings
Three types of flow, I through III, illustrated in Figure 2.40 are often encountered in bridge
waterway design. As the scale of the normal depth is the same for all flow profiles, the
discharge, boundary roughness and slope of the channel must increase from Type I to Type II
and to Type III. | <urn:uuid:e311140c-6af7-41f0-8a33-111bd96a7b6f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://coastalhydraulicslaboratoryfact.tpub.com/4_010491/4_0104910147.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00010-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923644 | 685 | 3.515625 | 4 |
THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, NORTH CENTRAL COLORADO. AREA, 398 SQUARE MILES
THE Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and the Cascade Range of California, TOregon, and Washington have each three national parks which fully represent their kind and quality. The great central system of the United States, the Rocky Mountains, which also possess three national parks, are rep-resented in kind by only one, for Yellowstone is an exceptional volcanic interlude, and Glacier is the chance upheaval of shales and limestones from a period antedating the granite Rockies by many millions of years; neither in any sense exhibits the nature and scenic quality of the backbone of our continent.
This is one of the reasons for the extraordinary distinction of the reservation appropriately called the Rocky Mountain National Park, namely that it is the only true example of the continental mountain system in the catalogue of our national parks. It is well, therefore, to lay the foundations for a sound comprehension of its differentiating features.
The Rocky Mountains, which began to rise at the close of the Cretaceous Period at a rate so slow that geologists think they are making a pace today as rapid as their maximum, extend from the plateau of New Mexico northwesterly until they merge into the mountains of eastern Alaska. In the United States physiographers consider them in two groups, the Northern Rockies and the Southern Rockies, the point of division being the elevated Wyoming Basin. There are numerous ranges, known, like the Wasatch Mountains, by different names, which nevertheless are consistent parts of the Rocky Mountain System.
The Rockies attain their most imposing mass and magnificence in their southern group, culminating in Colorado. So stupendous is this heaping together of granitic masses that in Colorado alone are found forty-two of the fifty-five named peaks in the United States which attain the altitude of fourteen thousand feet. TOf the others, twelve are in the Sierra of California, and one, Mount Rainier, in Washington. Mount Elbert, in Colorado, our second highest peak, rises within eighty-two feet of the height of California’s Mount Whitney, our first in rank; Colorado’s Mount Massive attains an altitude only four feet less than Washing-ton’s Mount Rainier, which ranks third. In point of mass, one seventh of Colorado rises above ten thou-sand feet of altitude. The state contains three hundred and fifty peaks above eleven thousand feet of altitude, two hundred and twenty peaks above twelve thousand feet, and a hundred and fifty peaks above thirteen thousand feet; besides the forty-two named peaks which exceed fourteen thousand feet, there are at least three others which are unnamed.
Geologists call the Rockies young, by which they mean anything, say, from five to twenty million years. They are more or less contemporary with the Sierra. Like the Sierra, the mountains we see today are not the first; several times their ranges have uplifted upon wrecks of former ranges, which had yielded to the assaults of frost and rain. Before they first appeared, parts of the Eastern Appalachians had paralleled our eastern sea coast for many million years. The Age of Mammals had well dawned before they became a feature in a landscape which previously had been a mid-continental sea. | <urn:uuid:9abf9332-5bd6-4924-be87-c0f21b3b60c5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://travel.yodelout.com/the-heart-of-the-rockies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397748.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953093 | 675 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Series 2 - Bible Answers for...
Hello, friends! Welcome to this Bible study lesson on "Decision Making."
The main focus of the Bible is on helping us make godly choices in our
spiritual lives. But the wise principles given in the Bible can help us
in making good decisions in every area of our lives. Some decisions have
a clear right and wrong choice, but for those decisions with an array
of options, these biblical principles can help us identify and choose
the best ones.
We hope this lesson will give you practical and helpful information you
can use in your everyday life. We wish you all the best in all your decision
Lesson: Decision Making
We face decisions every day. How can we determine the best choices to make, especially in the big decisions and the ones that seemingly have no clear answer?
It's interesting to consider the decisions Abram (later called Abraham)
and Lot made in a conflict situation and the outcomes of those decisions.
The story is told in Genesis 13:5-15 (New Living Translation):
"Now Lot, who was traveling with Abram, was also very wealthy with
sheep, cattle, and many tents. But the land could not support both Abram
and Lot with all their flocks and herds living so close together. There
were too many animals for the available pastureland. So an argument
broke out between the herdsmen of Abram and Lot. At that time Canaanites
and Perizzites were also living in the land.
"Then Abram talked it over with Lot. ‘This arguing between our herdsmen
has got to stop,' he said. ‘After all, we are close relatives! I'll
tell you what we'll do. Take your choice of any section of the land
you want, and we will separate. If you want that area over there, then
I'll stay here. If you want to stay in this area, then I'll move on
to another place.'
"Lot took a long look at the fertile plains of the Jordan Valley in
the direction of Zoar. The whole area was well watered everywhere, like
the garden of the Lord or the beautiful land of Egypt. (This was before
the Lord had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.)
"Lot chose that land for himself—the Jordan Valley to the east of them.
He went there with his flocks and servants and parted company with his
uncle Abram. So while Abram stayed in the land of Canaan, Lot moved
his tents to a place near Sodom, among the cities of the plain. The
people of this area were unusually wicked and sinned greatly against
"After Lot was gone, the Lord said to Abram, ‘Look as far as you can
see in every direction. I am going to give all this land to you and
your offspring as a permanent possession.'"
There's more to this story, of course. But it is interesting to note
that God blessed Abram's generous decision for peace. Lot, on the other
hand, did not see the spiritual danger he was putting his family in
by choosing the fertile but corrupt area of Sodom.
Share Your Story
What Does the Bible Say About Decision Making?
The Bible is especially designed to help us make the most important
decision, the decision to repent, change and follow Jesus Christ for the
rest of our lives (Acts 2:38; 1 John 2:6). God tells us to put Him first,
to obey Him and thus choose eternal life and blessings (Matthew 6:33;
All other decisions in life should contribute toward that ultimate decision
and goal. We must avoid decisions that will detract from putting God and
His righteousness first in our life.
But not every decision is a choice of good versus evil. Many of our daily
decisions have multiple acceptable options. Some of our biggest decisions
also have a variety of possible choices, like what career to pursue, who
to marry and where to live. Thankfully the Bible also gives us principles
that can help us identify and choose the best options. Let's explore biblical
wisdom to find some of those keys.
What is the starting point in finding wisdom?
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise
wisdom and instruction.
So that you incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding;
yes, if you cry out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding,
if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures;
then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge
For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding…
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.
When we understand how great God is and see how small we are, we will
grow in a proper reverence and fear of God. That leads us to ask for His
guidance and to study His Bible to grow not just in knowledge but in understanding
of the principles behind those facts. Meditating on and applying that
biblical knowledge and understanding with God's Spirit leads to godly
So we seek wisdom when we fear God, pray for His help and study His Bible
to find principles that apply to the decisions we face.
How else does the Bible tell us to seek wisdom?
Where there is no counsel, the people fall; but in the multitude of counselors
there is safety.
Trusted experts and wise individuals can be a good source of advice.
Other people may see our problem from a different angle than we would,
allowing them to provide possible solutions we might not see.
How should we approach defining and understanding the problem—the
decision we face?
A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on
and are punished.
He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him.
"Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous
A wise person carefully looks ahead to the end, trying to foresee the
likely long-term consequences, before making a decision to plunge ahead.
For an important decision, we must invest the time to get the facts,
to examine the situation more than superficially and to clearly define
the problem. When we are able to accurately state the problem or opportunity,
we will be able to see the shape of the ideal solution more clearly.
But determining how to get to that ideal solution can still be challenging.
Brainstorm for possible options and include the advice of the counselors
you are consulting.
So we end this phase of decision making with a clearly stated problem
and a list of possible solutions to choose from.
How should we make our decision?
"I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I
have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore
choose life, that both you and your descendants may live..."
"For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down
first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—lest, after
he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it
begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able
If a possible solution requires disobeying a biblical principle, delete
that option from your list. Then compare the remaining options with positive
biblical principles, wise advice from others, the likelihood of success
and the effects your decision will have on others. Carefully weigh the
pros and cons and "count the cost."
If the decision is still not clear, you may need to repeat some of the
fact-finding, brainstorming and wisdom-seeking steps. In the end, if there
are two or more options that seem equally good, you may have to just decide
and then act on your decision. Indecision and inaction can sometimes be
worse than a less-than-perfect solution (as long as it does not violate
When we strive to seek God's wisdom and follow biblical principles, we
can entrust our decisions and the worries that naturally accompany them
to God (Proverbs 3:5-6; Matthew 6:33-34). | <urn:uuid:44469b3c-723d-4a73-ad0c-5c08897cb55f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.freebiblestudyguides.org/bible-answers/decision-making.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00091-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940015 | 1,753 | 2.828125 | 3 |
The scientists explained that omega-3 fatty acids work against all cancerous cell types, but were seen to be much more effective against the triple-negative cell lines. Proliferation in those types of cells was reduced by as much as 90%.
Sardines, tuna, trout, salmon (oily fish), flax and hemp are examples of foods rich in omega-3s. Several studies have already demonstrated their benefits in undermining the critical mechanisms in cancer cells, specifically those responsible for apoptosis (programmed cell death) and proliferation. Thomas J. Pogash explained that the team's finding underscores the vital role that compounds commonly found in our foods play in fighting off cancer.
"Diet can play a critical role in breast cancer prevention. When you compare a western diet to a mediterranean diet, which has more omega-3s, you see less cancer in the mediterranean diet. They eat much more fish."
Breast cancers are not all the same; they differ at molecular levels. That is why patients do not all respond the same to treatments.
Experts categorize breast cancer tumors into four distinct groups:
- Luminal A
- Luminal B In Luminal A and B, the luminal cells that line the milk ducts have estrogen and progesterone receptors. These patients generally have better prognoses.
- Tumors that test positive for the HER3 receptor
- Triple-negative tumors - these lack receptors for estrogen, progesterone and HER2/neu (a protein). For patients with this type of breast cancer, treatments with trastuzumab, which disrupts the HER2 receptor, and tamoxifen, which targets the estrogen receptor, do not work.
"This type of cancer, which is found more frequently in Latina and African-American women, is highly aggressive and has a low survival rate. There is not any specific treatment for it."
When a cancerous cell digests omega-3 fatty acids, they are broken down into metabolites (smaller molecules). The team wanted to determine what the effect might be of large omega-3 parent molecules, as well as their metabolic derivatives, on three luminal cell lines and seven basal-type triple-negative cell lines.
The scientists found that omega-3 and its metabolites undermine proliferation in all cell lines. However, they were dramatically more effective in inhibiting proliferation in the triple-negative cell lines.
They also found that the omega-3 metabolites reduced motility by 20% to 60% in triple-negative basal cell lines.
This study is being funded by the Komen Foundation and is part of a consortium between Fox Chase Cancer Center and Pennsylvania State University. The lead researchers are Dr. Jose Russo (at Fox Chase) and Dr. Andrea Manni (at Penn State).
Russo and team are currently working on the role of epigenetic events in the mechanism of cell transformation. They are also involved in another project which is looking at the potential action of peptides of the hormone hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) on breast cancer prevention.
Many studies on omega-3 fatty acidsOver the last fifteen years, there have been many studies on the benefits of consuming omega-3 fatty acids. Not all of them have had positive findings. Below are some of them:
- Skin cancer - scientists form the University of Manchester, England, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (February 2013 issue) that consuming omega-3 fish oils can help prevent skin cancer.
- Memory - healthy young adults who increase their consumption of omega-3s can have better working memory, a team from the University of Pittsburgh reported in the journal PLoS ONE (October 2012 issue).
- No benefit - a team from the University Hospital of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece, reviewed twenty studies involving 70,000 participants. They found no statistically significant evidence that omega-3 fatty acid supplementation helped reduce stroke, heart attack or premature death. They reported their findings in JAMA (September 2012 issue). The authors stressed that they did not rule out the possibility that some groups may benefit, and called for further studies to be carried out.
- Retinitis pigmentosa progression - experts from the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston, reported in Archives of Ophthalmology (February 2012 issue) that diets rich in omega-3 fatty acids help slow down the progression of retinitis pigmentosa. | <urn:uuid:5bb1b506-6619-4a9f-952e-5d3add564173> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/259069.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00092-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945065 | 912 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Wrens Listening for German Radio Transmissions
Members of the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service at HMCS Coverdale, at Coverdale, New Brunswick, listen for German radio transmissions.
Coverdale, which began operations in early 1944, was built to listen to radio transmissions from German U-Boats (submarines) and determine the direction, or bearing, from which they originated. The operators seen here listened for German radio transmissions and, after picking them up, would alert Wrens operating different equipment who would then determine the direction of the signal. Multiple bearings from bases like Coverdale helped Allied commanders determine the location of U-Boats and take action to avoid or attack them.
George Metcalf Archival Collection | <urn:uuid:db7fc939-e73e-4046-8c59-4da2a4938dae> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/navy/objects_photos_search-e.aspx?section=4-A&id=159&page=6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944404 | 150 | 3.40625 | 3 |
| These tests can determine which drug or drug combination
will or will not work for your cancer
What are these tests?
These tests or "assays" can be performed on pieces of tumors
taken directly from patients. They provide information on the likelihood
that different types of chemotherapy will provide clinical benefit to
What is the advantage to using these assays?
These assays are used to identify the best forms of chemotherapy for
cancer patients on an individual basis. If an assay is not performed,
chemo is chosen on the basis of a "one size fits all" approach.
Scientists and doctors who support the use of the assays believe that
by using the test to help identify the best type of treatment, toxic and
ineffectual chemotherapy can be avoided.
What kind of material is used?
The tests can be performed on all solid tumors (biopsies or larger specimens)
or cancer containing fluids from blood, bone marrow, or other parts of
the human body.
Is there a name for these tests?
Yes, they go by a number of names including: Human Tumor Assays (the
term used by Medicare) Chemosensitivity and Resistance Assays (CSRA's),
and Human Tumor Live Cell Assays (HTLCA's).
Is there scientific proof to support the validity of these tests?
Yes, there is scientific literature documenting the correlation between
test results and treatment results. The tests have been shown to identify
relatively "good" and relatively "bad" forms of chemotherapy
for individual patients. Patients treated with drugs active in the assays
have, on average, a 7-fold greater chance of benefiting from treatment
with drugs showing good results in the assays compared with treatment
with drugs showing poor results in the assays. Benefits from treatment
can mean both a response (temporary decrease in size of cancer) and lengthened
Are these tests widely accepted and used by most hospitals?
No. You must request these tests from your oncologist and/or directly
contact a lab that performs these assays. The use of these assays has
been opposed by some large insurance companies and by the American Society
of Clinical Oncology, based on the fact that there have been no prospective,
randomized trials to "prove" that assay-directed chemotherapy
provides superior results, compared to one-size-fits-all chemotherapy.
In other words, while there are studies that demonstrate that these assays
can and do provide helpful information to individual patients, there have
not been studies in which one group of patients was treated based on an
assay and another group of patients was treated with a one size fits all
approach and the results of the two randomized groups were compared to
see which did better.
Why haven't these randomized trials been performed?
Prospective, randomized, controlled clinical trials cost millions of
dollars, but the most promising assay technologies are public domain,
non-proprietary technologies. No company will invest that much money for
something that is difficult to patent. In addition, as noted by Dr. Maurie
Markman of the Cleveland Clinic, the trial to prove effectiveness in one
clinical situation would become instantly irrelevant with the introduction
of the first new drug which wasn't available for testing at the time of
Is their any danger in using these tests to help choose a cancer
There is a theoretical risk only in cases where a clearly superior form
chemotherapy has been identified in controlled clinical trials. However,
there are very few situations in cancer treatment where one clearly superior
form of chemotherapy has been identified. One such case might be previously-untreated
testicular cancer, where the combination of cisplatin/etoposide/ bleomycin
on one particular schedule has been shown to be superior to all other
treatments with which it has been compared. But there are almost no other
situations in cancer chemotherapy in which this is true. In virtually
all situations, there are several to many different forms of chemotherapy,
all of which would be expected to have similar probabilities of benefit,
if chosen by random selection and given to an "average" group
How much do these tests cost and are they covered by insurance?
The cost of these tests typically ranges from $1,500 to $4,000. Coverage
for these tests is officially disallowed by most BlueCross/BlueShield
plans (although there are exceptions, such as California Blue Shield,
which does officially provide coverage for testing). Many private insurance
plans (including many managed care plans) do pay for the testing. Medicare
has no national policy, leaving coverage decisions up to the various regional
Medicare contractors (the California Medicare contractor does provide
Is there additional information a patient should know?
It must also be realized that these assays are complex procedures, fraught
with the potential for error and misinterpretation. The results are only
meaningful to the extent that the laboratory in question is experienced
and diligent in its quality assurance practices. A patient interested
in this testing should not hesitate to ask specific questions and to require
specific answers of the laboratories under consideration.
Lastly, it must be realized that the assays only provide information,
and the information is useless if it is not seriously considered by the
treating oncologist in drug selection and treatment planning. Therefore,
if you are interested in using an assay it is important to identify a | <urn:uuid:f45ff473-42ba-41d4-acf2-510c3f89f89e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cancermonthly.com/chemotherapy.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00114-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940669 | 1,142 | 2.625 | 3 |
Apache HTTP Server, product of the Apache Software Foundation is a free software/open source web server for Unix-like systems, Windows, Novell NetWare and other platforms. Apache is notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web , and continues to be the most popular web server in use, serving as the de facto reference platform against which other web servers are designed and judged. Apache is primarily used to serve static and dynamic content on the World Wide Web. Many web applications are designed expecting the environment and features that Apache provides. Apache is the web server component of the popular LAMP web server application stack, alongside Linux, MySQL, and the PHP / Perl / Python programming languages.
A blog (short for web log) is a web application where entries are made and displayed in a reverse chronological order. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of most early blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media. Here are some exemples of free blog softwares : WordPress , DotClear , Blog:CMS , ...
The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard protocol for interfacing external application software with an information server, commonly a web server. This allows the server to pass requests from a client web browser to the external application. It's generally a CGI script that deals with the input of a form on a Web page and return the output from the application to the web browser.
A Content Management System (CMS) is a software system for organizing and facilitating collaborative creation of documents and publishing websites. A web content management system is often used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of web material ( HTML documents and their associated images). A CMS facilitates document editing. It offers standard visual templates that can be automatically applied to new and existing content, creating one central place to change that look across a group of content on a site. Most CMS software include WYSIWYG editing tools allowing non-technical individuals to create and edit content. Active CMS solutions usually receive regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to current web standards. The most commons free CMS are : Joomla! , Spip , Drupal , BitFlux , eZPublish , Plume , Typo3 , Postnuke ...
Short for Domain Name System (or Service or Server), an Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Because domain names are alphabetic, they're easier to remember. The Internet however, is really based on IP addresses. Every time you use a domain name, therefore, a DNS service must translate the name into the corresponding IP address. For example, the domain name www.example.com might translate to 18.104.22.168. The DNS system is, in fact, its own network. If one DNS server doesn't know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one, and so on, until the correct IP address is returned. The BIND DNS server is a very popular and free DNS server. When setting up a new web site one needs to register a DNS name at a DNS registry. One site can have serveral DNS names, also called server aliases.
FTP or file transfer protocol is a commonly used protocol for exchanging files over any network that supports the TCP/IP protocol (such as the Internet or an intranet). There are two computers involved in an FTP transfer : a server and a client. FTP is most commonly used to upload a file defining a Web page to a Web server using the Internet. A secure variante of FTP using SSL or TLS is FTPS. To access a FTP server, one uses a FTP client software (with a graphical interface or directly through command lines) such as gFTP or Filezilla . They both also support the SCP protocol.
HA clusters are often used for critical databases, file sharing on a network, business applications, and customer services such as electronic commerce websites.
HTML, short for Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for the creation of web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document — by denoting certain text as headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on — and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of labels (known as tags), surrounded by less-than and greater-than signs. Technically is HTML an application of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). The HTML development has been stopped since 1999. It's successor, the XHTML , is an application of the Extensible Markup Language ( XML ).
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a method used to transfer or convey information on the World Wide Web . Its original purpose was to provide a way to publish and retrieve HTML pages. HTTP is a request/response protocol between clients and servers . The originating client, such as a web browser, initiates a request by establishing a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection to a particular port on a remote host (port 80 by default). The destination HTTP server listening on that port, which stores resources such as HTML files and images, waits for the client to send a request message. HTTPS (with S for secure) is the sercure variation of HTTP that use an added encryption layer of SSL or TLS to protect the traffic.
The Internet Message Access Protocol, commonly known as IMAP, is an application layer Internet protocol that allows a local client to access e-mail on a mail server without dowloading it. In other words, it permits a "client" email program to access remote message stores as if they were local. That's why email stored on an IMAP server can be manipulated from a desktop computer at home, a workstation at the office, and a notebook computer while traveling, without the need to transfer messages or files back and forth between these computers. IMAP's ability to access messages from more than one computer has become extremely important as reliance on electronic messaging and use of multiple computers increase. Think about webmail , for instance, that allows one to read his e-mails in a cybercafé . IMAP is using the TCP port 143. IMAPS (IMAP over SSL) gives a secure access to the server via SSL . It is using the TCP port 993.
The acronym LAMP refers to a solution stack of software programs, commonly open-source programs, used together to run dynamic Web sites on servers. The original combination of these technologies is as follows: Linux , referring to the operating system ; Apache , the Web server ; MySQL , the database management system (or database server) ; PHP , the programming language. More recently, the P has come to refer frequently to Perl or Python as alternate programming languages. At all2all, standard LAMP systems also feature PostgreSQL as alternative database.
Mailman is a package for managing electronic mailing lists on a server . It is free software, distributed freely under the GNU General Public License . Mailman's chief distinction is its easy-to-use Web interface for list administration. Mailman is written in the Python programming language. It can work with any common Unix mail server software, including Postfix , Sendmail and qmail. The integration with the free mail server software exim (which is used by the Debian GNU/Linux by default) is probably best: using special configuration rules, exim knows which addresses are used by Mailman and automatically forwards all mails which are handled by Mailman to Mailman, without having to set customized aliases for each individual mailing list, as it is custom with most or all other mail servers. User features include the built-in archiving of messages, automatic processing of bounce messages, digest mode, and spam filtering. By default, Mailman sends out a reminder message on the first of the month (local time) to all subscribers (see : http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman ).
Perl is a dynamic programming language created by Larry Wall and first released in 1987. Structurally, Perl is based on the brace-delimited block style of AWK and C, and was widely adopted for its strengths in string processing, and lack of the arbitrary limitations of many scripting languages at the time. Perl has been used since the early days of the Web to write CGI scripts. It is known as one of "the three Ps" (along with Python and PHP), the most popular dynamic languages for writing Web applications (which now also include Ruby). It is also an integral component of the popular LAMP solution stack for web development. Large projects written in Perl include Slash, Bugzilla, TWiki and Movable Type.
PHP is a reflective programming language designed for producing dynamic web pages. The project's name originally stood for Personal Home Page; it now stands for the recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. PHP was written by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994 and is mainly used in server-side scripting. PHP generally runs on a web server , taking PHP code as its input and creating Web pages as output. PHP is free . It can be deployed on most web servers and on almost every OS platform free of charge. The PHP Group also provides the complete source code for users to build, customize and extend for their own use. PHP is commonly used as the P in the LAMP software bundle alongside Linux, Apache and MySQL.
A podcast is a digital media file , or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet. In other words, a podcast is a collection of audio or video files residing at a unique web feed address. People can "subscribe" to this feed by submitting the feed address to an aggregator. When new "episodes" become available in the podcast they will be automatically downloaded to the users computer. Though podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically, using an aggregator or feed reader capable of reading feed formats such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or Atom.
PostgreSQL is a free software object-relational database management system (ORDBMS), released under a BSD-style license . It offers an alternative to other database systems. Similar to other free software projects such as Apache, GNU/Linux, and MediaWiki, PostgreSQL is not controlled by any single company, but relies on a global community of developers and companies to develop it. PostgreSQL features the ability to define types, but also the ability to fully describe relationships. In PostgreSQL, the database "understood" relationships, and could retrieve information in related tables in a natural way using rules. Tables can be set to inherit their characteristics from a "parent" table. nheritance provides a way to map the features of generalization hierarchies depicted in Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD) directly into the PostgreSQL database. Phppgadmin is a web application written with PHP to manage the PostgreSQL database.
<<RSS feed 2%
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed," "web feed," or "channel," contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually. RSS content can be read using software called a "feed reader" or an "aggregator." The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds.
Ruby on Rails is a web application framework, released in 2004, that aims to increase the speed and ease with which database-driven web sites can be created and offers skeleton code frameworks (scaffolding) from the outset. Often shortened to Rails, or RoR, Ruby On Rails is an open source project written in the Ruby programming language and applications using the Rails framework are developed using the Model-View-Controller design pattern. The official web site is : http://www.rubyonrails.org/
The client-server architecture refers to a communication model between softwares. In information technology, a server is an application program that accepts connections in order to service requests by sending back responses. Each instance of the client software can send data requests to one or more connected servers. In turn, the servers can accept these requests, process them, and return the requested information to the client. These days, clients are most often web browsers. Servers typically include web servers, database servers, backup servers, print servers, mail servers, web servers, FTP servers, application servers, DHCP server, DNS server, etc. The client-server connection is established via communication protocols like, for instance, TCP/IP, which is most often used for accessing the Internet.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and its successor, Transport Layer Security (TLS), are cryptographic protocols which provide secure communications on the Internet for such things as web browsing, e-mail, Internet faxing, instant messaging and other data transfers. There are slight differences between SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0, but the protocol remains substantially the same. The term "SSL" as used here applies to both protocols unless clarified by context.SSL provides endpoint authentication and communications privacy over the Internet using cryptography. Typically, only the server is authenticated while the client remains unauthenticated; this means that the end user can be sure with whom they are communicating. The next level of security—in which both ends of the "conversation" are sure with whom they are communicating—is known as mutual authentication. Mutual authentication requires public key infrastructure (PKI) deployment to clients. SSL is used by numerous e-commerce web sites to secure payments over the Internet. This application also requires to obtain a certificat issued by a certificate authority .
Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a technical, Web-related term used to identify a resource over the Internet. Also called "Web address", it provides a means of locating the resource by describing its access mechanism (e.g., its network ‘location’) within a chain of ASCII letters. The idea of a uniform syntax for global identifiers of network-retrievable documents was the core idea of the World Wide Web. More information here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL
Revision control, also known as version control and source control (and an aspect of software configuration management), is the management of changes to documents, computer programs, large web sites, and other collections of information. Changes are usually identified by a number or letter code, termed the "revision number", "revision level", or simply "revision". For example, an initial set of files is "revision 1". When the first change is made, the resulting set is "revision 2", and so on. Each revision is associated with a timestamp and the person making the change. Revisions can be compared, restored, and with some types of files, merged. Read more
Virtualmin is a Webmin module for managing multiple virtual hosts through a single interface on Unix -like systems. It supports the creation and management of Apache virtual hosts, BIND DNS domains, MySQL databases, and mailboxes and aliases with Sendmail or Postfix. Together with the existing Webmin and Usermin modules, Virtualmin offers a total autonomy to administrators of web sites , virtual or dedicated servers who can access all control features and automatically set up user's limits appropriately. These server administrators can also manage the mailboxes and mail aliases via a web interface that is part of the module.
The Webalizer is a GPL application that generates web pages of analysis, from access and usage logs, i.e., a web log analysis software. It is one of the most commonly used web server administration tools. It was initiated by Bradford L. Barrett in 1997. Statistics commonly reported by Webalizer include: hits; visits; referrers; the visitors' countries; and the amount of data downloaded. These statistics can be viewed graphically and presented by different time frames, such as per day, hour, or month.
WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) refers to the set of extensions to the HTTP protocol that allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers. The WebDAV protocol's aim was to make the World Wide Web a readable and writable medium. It provides functionality to create, change and move documents on a remote server (typically a web server or "web share").WebDAV also allows client/server groupware systems to store and fetch objects such as calendar items and address book entries instead of web pages. It enables to share calendar events between Mozilla Sunbird , Apple iCal , Ximian Evolution (see : iCalendar in Wikipedia).
A Webmail refer to the implementation of an e-mail client as a Web application that allows users to access their e-mail through a Web browser, as an alternative to using a desktop-based client such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird or Eudora. A webmail client is usually offered by an email service to allow its users to access their mail stored on the service's server from any computer (e.g. in a cybercafé). The word Webmail refer to an email service that is offered through a website, sometimes the only way to users to access their email, and sometimes in addition other methods of making the email available to the user, such as the POP3 or IMAP4 protocols.
Webmin is a easy-to-use system configuration tool for Unix-like systems. It has a web-based graphical user interface for managing web server systems. Webmin is largely based on Perl, and is running as its own process, and web server. It usually uses TCP port 10000 for communicating, and can be configured to use SSL if OpenSSL is installed. It is built around modules, which have an interface to the config files, and an interface to the webmin server. This makes it easy to add new functionality, without too much work. Webmin offers a unique web interface to control a large variety of server applications ( Apache , Postfix , FTP , MySQL , PostgreSQL , BIND , SSH , etc.). Webmin enables the server administrator to easily manage all the users accounts, quotas, repositories, groups and rights. He can access the log files and stop or reboot the system. Due to Webmin's modular design, it would be possible, for anyone who is interested, to write plugins for desktop configuration. Webmin is an open source software released under the BSD license. The two major modules extending the functionality of Webmin are Usermin , designed for general usage tasks, and Virtualmin , which is for giving users visual means of administering web hosting accounts (see : http://www.webmin.com ).
<<Web Site 8%
A web site is a collection of web pages, images, videos and other digital assets that is hosted on a web server, usually accessible via the Internet. A web page is a document, typically written in HTML , that is almost always accessible via HTTP, a protocol that transfers information from the web server to display in the user's web browser. All publicly accessible websites are seen collectively as constituting the World Wide Web . The pages of websites can usually be accessed from a common root URL called the homepage, and usually reside on the same physical server. The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy, although the hyperlinks between them control how the reader perceives the overall structure and how the traffic flows between the different parts of the sites. The web pages can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to the web server that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own web sites accessible via Internet. One can set up his own web site by himself (with a little understanding of html) or call upon a web-designer to do the job.
The World Wide Web (or the "Web") is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, a user views Web pages that may contain text, images, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks. The Web was created around 1990 by the Englishman Tim Berners-Lee and the Belgian Robert Cailliau working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Since then, Berners-Lee has played an active role in guiding the development of Web standards (such as the markup languages in which Web pages are composed), and in recent years has advocated his vision of a Semantic Web. The Web is only one application of the Internet amongst others, like emailing, instant messaging, Usenet, etc.
The Extensible HyperText Markup Language, or XHTML, is a markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML , but also conforms to XML syntax. Whereas HTML is an application of SGML, a very flexible markup language, XHTML is an application of XML, a more restrictive subset of SGML. Because they need to be well-formed, true XHTML documents allow for automated processing to be performed using standard XML tools—unlike HTML, which requires a relatively complex, lenient, and generally custom parser. XHTML can be thought of as the intersection of HTML and XML in many respects, since it is a reformulation of HTML in XML. XHTML 1.1 became a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation on May 31, 2001. | <urn:uuid:bad816b1-016e-4175-b567-1adc372db1b5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://all2all.org/informations/glossary/?q=web | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396945.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00076-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905054 | 4,544 | 3.0625 | 3 |
From Missouri, USA:
I'm concerned about my best friend's son who is 8 with type 1 diabetes. He drinks 4 or 5 diet drinks every day and chews sugar free gum constantly. Does the body recognize the sweet flavor and try to release insulin even though there are no carbohydrates involved? I was told this in the Heller's high protein diet book. I'd like to know for him as well as the non-diabetic.
We know that some flavors and odors do stimulate appetite, make the mouth water and so on, but I know of no evidence that they increase the body's need for insulin. There is however, a lot of evidence -- both in scientific studies and in the experience of people who closely monitor their blood sugar levels after eating -- that less carbohydrate means a lower need for insulin.
Since your friend's son is meeting all of his insulin needs through injections, it is likely that his parents simply adjust the doses for the actual need. This is based on both the carbohydrate content of the food eaten and the current blood sugar level.
In passing, I'd like to add that it's not necessary for your friend's son to strictly avoid sugar because of his diabetes. As long as the carbohydrate value of sweets are accounted for and adequate insulin is supplied (just as the body would do if there were no diabetes), sweets can be a part of an overall healthful diet for youngsters with diabetes, just as they are for other kids. Diet foods can be a tool, if counted correctly when they contain carbohydrates other than sugar, but they are not a necessity.
Original posting 22 Jan 2000
Posted to Meal Planning, Food and Diet
Last Updated: Tuesday April 06, 2010 15:09:08
This Internet site provides information of a general nature and is designed for educational purposes only. If you have any concerns about your own health or the health of your child, you should always consult with a physician or other health care professional.
This site is published by T-1 Today, Inc. (d/b/a Children with Diabetes), a 501c3 not-for-profit organization, which is responsible for its contents. Our mission is to provide education and support to families living with type 1 diabetes.
© Children with Diabetes, Inc. 1995-2016. Comments and Feedback. | <urn:uuid:07926bf7-2ef2-4394-bd4f-b66891f56f53> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/dteam/2000-01/d_0d_4iq.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00074-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958001 | 470 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Vocational Education and Training
What is VET?
- Vocational education and training (VET) is that part of tertiary education and training which provides accredited training in job related and technical skills.
- It covers a large number of careers and industries like trades and office work, retail, hospitality and technology.
- Qualifications range from certificate II to certificate IV, and diploma and advanced diploma.
- Individuals can be trained in part qualifications or 'skills sets'
- VET is supported, managed and kept relevant by a network of organisations and VET authorities.
NSW Apprenticeships and Traineeships application approvals and In Training statistics
- Search for Apprentices and Trainees approved in the last 12 months ranked by vocation
- NSW statistics available for download
NCVER research and statistical resources
The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) is a not-for-profit company owned by the federal, state and territory ministers responsible for training.
It is unique in Australia's education system. It is responsible for collecting, managing, analysing, evaluating and communicating research and statistics about vocational education and training (VET).
NCVER's vision is for policy and practice in vocational education and training to be based on sound evidence.
Its mission is to be Australia's leading provider of quality, independent information relating to vocational education and training to governments, the sector, industry, and the community. | <urn:uuid:bbb8c036-a5fd-49f4-8275-6bce1aeb5cb5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.training.nsw.gov.au/vet/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00000-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946043 | 294 | 2.6875 | 3 |
SEPTEMBER 24, 2008 At the 2008 Joint Annual Meeting in Houston, the Smithsonian's Design Team will explain details about the making of the new Dig It the Secrets of Soil exhibit that recently opened at the Natural History Museum in Washington, DC. Jennifer Bine, Pat Megonigal, and Barbara Stauffer will talk about how the designs were brought to life, the popularity of the exhibit with the public, and planning for the exhibit to travel.
The "Update on the Soils Exhibition Debut," will be held on Wednesday, 8 October from 2:30 to 3:30 pm in Room 381ABC of the George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston, TX.
Texas's state soil, "Houston Black," is featured in the new 5,000-square-foot exhibition. Texas's very own Houston Black soil is proudly displayed as one of 54 soil samples in the exhibition, representing each U.S. state, territory, and the District of Columbia. These soils were selected for Dig It! because of their special significance to each state or region.
The Houston Black soils are characterized as vertisols with high shrink-swell with changes in soil moisture; surface is black clay; sugsoil is black clay with slickensides grading to containing calcium carbonates; substratum is light olive brown clay; form under prairie vegetation in calcareous clays and marls
Houston Black soils can be used for cropland - grain sorghum, cotton, corn, small grain, forage grasses; high shrink swell limits site development.
In the two months since the exhibit opened, an estimated 300,000 people have been though the exhibition. Visitor responses have been enthusiastic, with young children, teenagers, and adults alike commenting on how cool, weird, and interesting soils are. Later this year, the museum plans to conduct a comprehensive visitor survey to asses what visitors are learning as they go though the exhibition. The Smithsonian team hopes to reach even more people with its recent launch of the exhibit web site at http://forces.si.edu/soils/.
Gary A. Peterson, SSSA President said, "As a member of SSSA, you can be very proud of Dig It! as it is truly a world-class exhibition that is already attracting large numbers of visitors, many of whom are under the age of 16. The exhibition is a huge step forward in our efforts to educate youth about soils and to pique their interest in studying soils."
The next step is to take Dig It on the road. SITES, the Smithsonian Institution, Traveling exhibition service, is already preparing the exhibition for a four-year journey across North America, marketing it to a prospective large host museums and science centers. Discussions are proceeding with a several potential venues.
|Contact: Sara Uttech|
Soil Science Society of America | <urn:uuid:f191681d-1f43-4591-b412-ed4157ed8cfb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-1/The-making-of-Dig-It-21-the-Secrets-of-Soil-exhibit-5088-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00135-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951898 | 588 | 3.09375 | 3 |
- What is an Oral Assessment?
- Structure of an Oral Assessment
- Advantages of an Oral Assessment
- Disadvantages of an Oral Assessment
- More on an Oral Assessment - Download the full pdf
WHAT IS AN ORAL ASSESSMENT?
An oral assessment is a direct means of assessing students’ learning outcomes by questioning them. Unlike interviews which usually have a structured question list, oral assessment does not usually have a structured list of questions; assessors ask questions and request responses depending on the circumstances.
STRUCTURE OF MCQs
MCQ consists of a stem and a set of options. The stem is usually the first part of the assessment that presents the question as a problem to be solved; the question can be an incomplete statement which requires to be completed and can include a graph, a picture or any other relevant information. The options are the possible answers that the student can choose from, with the correct answer called the key and the incorrect answers called distractors.
There are three typical types of oral assessments
- Oral assessment after a direct observation assessment
An oral assessment is often used as part of a de-briefing session after a practical has been observed. The time duration is usually 3-5 minutes. There is usually no formal structure, assessors usually ask questions as they foresee, however, assessors may plan some general questions in which all students will encounter during the practical.
- Oral in the form of a viva voce
A viva voce is the Latin name for oral examination, often given for a university examination with spoken questions and answers. It is usually used to describe the oral examination at a postgraduate level, conducted after the submission of the thesis for a research degree, to ensure that the candidate knows enough about the subject to make it at least plausible that the dissertation is his own work. Vivas are traditionally conducted by an external and an internal examiner. There is no set time limit for a viva voce, but a full day examination is often normal.
- Oral/Aural in a language setting
Oral in a language setting is a direct speaking test geared at assessing a student's level of speaking proficiency.
Aural in a language setting is a listening test (often by devices such as tapes) geared at assessing a student's level of hearing proficiency.
Questions ask in classroom setting do not contribute as oral assessments, as not all students have the benefits of being assessed.
STRUCTURE OF AN ORAL ASSESSMENT
The structure of an oral assessment depends on the type of oral assessment, but in general, the followings are used.
- Depend on which type of oral assessments, it is sometimes desirable to allow the student to start the oral assessment by giving an account of the analysis of the practice. The sophistication of his spontaneous account can reveal far more than simply his responses to the questions. Questions such as: How do you think you did?
- Probing questions – to initiate and engage the student in conversation. Questions such as: How did you know that? What method did you use to arrive with that conclusion?
- Prompting questions – to give hints that point the student to the right direction to clarify his response, this however does not mean the assessor answers the questions himself. Questions such as: Remember the experiment on xx? What do you think this relates to?
- Challenging questions – to assess the deep understanding - the higher level of Blooms taxonomy. Questions such as: Can you justify why your method is more efficient than Prof. Einstein’s?
ADVANTAGES OF ORAL ASSESSMENT
- There can be no plagiarism or false reports.
- Assessors receive immediate reactions and responses.
- It complements perfectly with practical assessments.
DISADVANTAGES OF ORAL ASSESSMENT
- Oral assessment is very time-consuming, it is an expensive way of assessing.
- Validity is high but reliability is not. Clear assessment criteria and grading are required for all parties so that students and assessors are fully aware of how the performance will be judged to increase reliability.
- There are rarely any clear guidelines about what is fair to judge at a viva. There have been some contentious cases that the assessor has referred or even failed a dissertation because the assessor is unwilling to accept the results of a candidate due to difference in opinions. Although there will be examiners' reports, there is rarely any record of the process itself to ensure its fairness.
- Oral assessment may present significant difficulties for international students or students with certain impairments, who may require access to an alternative type of assessment that provides an acceptable test of learning outcomes. Students with some other impairments may be able to undertake oral assessment but may require some adjustments in order to have an equal footing.
- Immediate feedback is useful, but sometimes that is difficult due to time constraints.
- Oral assessment is usually ephemeral and dissenting views may later be contested if notes or recordings are not documented clearly.
Back to Top | <urn:uuid:6c86afb6-10ae-4cac-8b61-50b8bb20082e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://arc.caut.hku.hk/Orals.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00040-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954069 | 1,033 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Originally written by
- In the world, LVM (Logical Volume Management) was used on various
operating systems since... many years ago.
- In Linux, there was an initial implementation of LVM (now known as LVM1),
dating back to 1997.
- When work on kernel 2.5 begun, there were two competing implementations -
EVMS (made by IBM) and LVM2.
- Eventually, LVM2 won the entrance to the 2.6 kernel, and EVMS remained
as an out-of-tree project.
- EVMS, however, is much more then LVM. IBM's developers decided to get rid
of all the kernel parts, and turn EVMS into a front-end to LVM2, being
entirely user-space. Thus, EVMS made its way into distributions and to | <urn:uuid:a5da7533-dc9c-4843-8b63-272db0db4864> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://haifux.org/lectures/153/node3.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00019-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956183 | 181 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Late last week, the news broke that scientists at both NASA and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had officially confirmed that 2014 was the “warmest year on record,” underscoring the reality that climate change caused by human activity is real and needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later. Now that claim is beginning to appear on shaky ground scientifically, and even NASA itself is hedging its bets on the claim, the Daily Mail is reporting.
The claim that 2014 was the warmest year on record came from an analysis conducted by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) of over 3,000 weather reporting stations worldwide. GISS director Gavin Schmidt confirmed that two rather important facts about that claim were somehow overlooked in the media’s reporting, and were also conveniently left out of NASA’s own coverage of the claim.
The first problem with the claim that 2014 was the warmest year on record is the matter of just how warm the Earth supposedly got between 2010 (the previous warmest year on record) and 2014. The difference between 2010’s record and 2014’s record is two hundredths of (0.02) of a degree Celsius. Such a small number would hardly be alarming on its surface. Even more damning, however, is the fact that climate scientists expect a margin of error of 0.1 degree Celsius when calculating long-term temperature trends.
The other problem is just how sure NASA is about its own claims that 2014 was the warmest year on record. Pressed by a Daily Mail reporter about the data that lead to the claim, Schmidt admitted that.
“NASA thinks the likelihood that 2014 was the warmest year since 1880 is just 38 per cent. However, when asked by this newspaper whether he regretted that the news release did not mention this, he did not respond.”
There’s also a third problem with the claim that 2014 was the warmest year on record. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project has been analyzing temperature data – far more data from far more stations than NASA’s, according to the Register. Although the Register admits that BEST has clearly come down on the “warmist” side of the climate change debate, they’re not exactly buying NASA’s claim that 2014 was the warmest year on record.
“Our best estimate for the global temperature of 2014 puts it slightly above (by 0.01 C) that of the next warmest year (2010) but by much less than the margin of uncertainty (0.05 C). Therefore it is impossible to conclude from our analysis which of 2014, 2010, or 2005 was actually the warmest year.”
Regardless of which side of the man-made climate change debate you are on, one thing is clear: The claim that 2014 was the warmest year on record is shaky at best.
[Image courtesy of: Zastavki] | <urn:uuid:55669883-9565-43a3-8153-7dd674437bf1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.inquisitr.com/1768444/those-alarming-announcements-that-2014-was-the-warmest-year-on-record-are-falling-apart-under-scrutiny/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400572.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00015-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9653 | 609 | 3.125 | 3 |
Scientists have long known that the pituitary gland plays an important role in stress, depression and anxiety responses by releasing stress chemicals into the blood.
However, this is the first time that scientists have been able to describe the molecular structure of the protein receptor CRF1
and confirm its role as the chemical responsible for triggering the stress response.
According to the researchers at Heptares Therapeutics
, in a paper published on July 17, in the journal Nature
, titled: "Structure of class B GPCR corticotropin-releasing factor receptor 1,"
corticotropin-releasing factor receptor 1 (CRF1) is the receptor
for the stress hormone corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) produced in the hypothalamus which stimulates production of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)
and other stress hormones in the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland.
The hypothalamus is the part of the brain that produces hormones which control basic physiologic functions such as temperature control, mood and hunger.
used a particle accelerator called the Diamond Light Source
located in Harwell, Oxfordshire, to study the detailed structure of CRF1. Elucidating the structure of the protein will help pharmacologists to develop drugs that can be used to target special sites on its molecule as a way of blocking it and preventing it from triggering the cascade of biochemical activities that precede stress response.
Dr. Fiona Marshall, Chief Scientific Officer at Heptares, and lead author in the study, said
: "Stress related diseases such as depression and anxiety affect a quarter of adults each year, but what many people don't realise is that these conditions are controlled by proteins in the brain, one of which is CRF1."
: “Now we know its shape, we can design a molecule that will lock into this crevice and block it so that CRF1 becomes inactive — ending the biochemical cascade that ends in stress.”
Dr. Andre Dore, a senior scientist with Heptares, said
that knowledge of the structure of CRF1 can help to "solve closely related receptors that open up the potential for new drugs to treat a number of major diseases including Type 2 diabetes and osteoporosis." | <urn:uuid:1542f44b-d500-48a3-95b0-f85a69c7f977> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/354897 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00054-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937123 | 471 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Chapter 8. General Principles of Sensory Processing, Touch, and Pain
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Results from a new study, funded in part by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, demonstrate that mindfulness meditation works on a different pain pathway in the brain than opioid pain relievers. The researchers noted that because opioid and non-opioid mechanisms of pain relief interact synergistically, the results of this study suggest that combining mindfulness-based and pharmacologic/nonpharmacologic pain-relieving approaches that rely on opioid signaling may be particularly effective in treating pain. Previous research has shown that mindfulness meditation helps relieve pain, but researchers have been unclear about how the practice induces pain relief — specifically, if meditation is associated with the release of naturally occurring opiates. Researchers recorded pain reports in 78 healthy adults during meditation or a non-meditation control in response to painful heat stimuli and intravenous administration of the opioid antagonist naloxone (a drug that blocks the transmission of opioid activity) or placebo saline. Participants were randomized to one of four treatment groups: 1) meditation plus naloxone; 2) control plus naloxone; 3) meditation plus saline; or 4) control plus saline. People in the control groups were instructed to “close your eyes and relax until the end of the experiment.” The researchers found that participants who meditated during saline administration had significantly lower pain intensity and unpleasantness ratings compared to those who did not meditate while receiving saline. Importantly, data from the meditation plus naloxone group showed that naloxone did not block meditation’s pain-relieving effects. No significant differences in reductions of pain intensity or pain unpleasantness were seen between the meditation plus naloxone and the meditation plus saline groups. Participants who meditated during naloxone administration also had significantly greater reductions in pain intensity and unpleasantness than the control groups.
Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 22006 - Posted: 03.19.2016
BRAINS get data about the world through senses – sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. In a lab in North Carolina, a group of rats is getting an extra one. Thanks to implants in their brains, they have learned to sense and react to infrared light. The rats show the brain’s ability to process unfamiliar data– an early step towards augmenting the human brain. Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University School of Medicine is leading the experiment. His team implanted four clusters of electrodes in the rats’ barrel cortex – the part of the brain that handles whisker sensation (doi.org/bdb6). Each cluster is connected to a sensor that converts infrared light into an electrical signal. Feeding stations placed at the four corners of the rats’ cage take turns emitting infrared signals that guide the rats to them, releasing a reward only when the rats press a button on the feeding station that is emiting the infrared signal. In an older, single sensor version of the experiment, it took the rats one month to adapt. With four sensors, it took them just three days. “This is a truly remarkable demonstration of the plasticity of the mammalian brain,” says Christopher James of the University of Warwick, UK. All the extra data that goes into making the rats’ new sense doesn’t appear to diminish their original senses. “The results show that nature has apparently designed the adult mammalian brain with the possibility of upgrades, and Nicolelis’ team is leading the way showing how to do it,” says Andrea Stocco of the University of Washington in Seattle. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.
The CDC recommends non-opioid therapy, including exercise and over-the-counter pain medications, as the preferred treatment for chronic pain. It says opioids should only be prescribed — at the lowest effective dosage possible — when the benefits from pain reduction and bodily function outweigh the risks. In 2014, American doctors wrote nearly 200 million prescriptions for opioid painkillers, while deaths linked to the drugs climbed to roughly 19,000 — the highest number on record. The number of Canadians who die every year from opioids is not readily known — the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse does not track the statistics — but Toronto physician Nav Persaud told CBC News in 2014 that more than 1,000 Canadians die from painkillers every year. A 2012 study says one in eight deaths among young adults age 25 to 34 in Ontario and one out of every 170 deaths in the province as a whole are opioid overdoses. One in four people who entered a withdrawal management program at St. Joseph's Healthcare in Hamilton, Ont., were opioid patients in 2012, up from one in ten in 2002. Other studies have cast doubt on the effectiveness of opioids on chronic pain, raising questions on whether its limited long-term effects are worth the harmful risks. "The science is clear," CDC director Tom Frieden said Tuesday. "For the vast majority of patients, the known and often fatal risks [of opioids] far outweigh the proven and transient benefits." ©2016 CBC/Radio-Canada.
By Sandra G. Boodman Kim Pace was afraid he was dying. In six months he had lost more than 30 pounds because a terrible stabbing sensation on the left side of his face made eating or drinking too painful. Brushing his teeth was out of the question and even the slightest touch triggered waves of agony and a shocklike pain he imagined was comparable to electrocution. Painkillers, even morphine, brought little relief. Unable to work and on medical leave from his job as a financial consultant for a bank, Pace, then 59, had spent the first half of 2012 bouncing among specialists in his home state of Pennsylvania, searching for help from doctors who disagreed about the nature of his illness. Some thought his searing pain might be the side effect of a drug he was taking. Others suspected migraines, a dental problem, mental illness, or an attempt to obtain painkillers. Even after a junior doctor made what turned out to be the correct diagnosis, there was disagreement among specialists about its accuracy or how to treat Pace. His wife, Carol, a nurse, said she suspects that the couple’s persistence and propensity to ask questions led her husband to be branded “a difficult case” — the kind of patient whom some doctors avoid. And on top of that, a serious but entirely unrelated disorder further muddied the diagnostic picture. So on July 17, 2012, when Pace told his wife he thought he was dying, she fired off an emotional plea for help to the office of a prominent specialist in Baltimore. “I looked at Kim and it hit me: He was going to die,” she said. “He was losing weight and his color was ashen” and doctors were “blowing him off. I thought, ‘Okay, that’s it,’ and the nurse in me took over.”
Cathleen O'Grady When we speak, listen, read, or write, almost all of the language processing that happens in our brains goes on below the level of conscious awareness. We might be aware of grasping for a particular forgotten word, but we don’t actively think about linguistic concepts like morphemes (the building blocks of words, like the past tense morpheme “-ed”). Psycholinguists try to delve under the surface to figure out what’s actually going on in the brain, and how well this matches up with our theoretical ideas of how languages fit together. For instance, linguists talk about morphemes like “-ed”, but do our brains actually work with morphemes when we’re producing or interpreting language? That is, do theoretical linguistic concepts have any psychological reality? An upcoming paper in the journal Cognition suggests an unusual way to investigate this: by testing synaesthetes. Synaesthesia comes in many forms. Some synaesthetes associate musical tones or notes with particular colours; others attach personalities to letters or numbers. A huge number of synaesthetes have associations that are in some way linguistic, and one of the most common forms of all is grapheme-colour (GC) synaesthesia, which is the association of colours with particular letters or numbers. For instance, a GC synaesthete might have a consistent perception of the letter “A” being red. This association often extends to a whole word, so “ant” might be red, too. © 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited
Link ID: 21937 - Posted: 02.27.2016
Jo Marchant The brain cells of people with Parkinson’s disease can be trained to reliably respond to placebo drugs, Italian neuroscientists report. The training wears off after 24 hours but the effect shows it may be possible to reduce the medication needed to treat Parkinson’s by interspersing real drugs with inert injections or pills, says placebo researcher Fabrizio Benedetti at the University of Turin, Italy, who led the work. A few people with Parkinson’s disease do respond dramatically to placebos, but most do not1. People with the condition suffer characteristic tremors and stiff muscles because their dopamine-producing brain cells are gradually dying off. They alleviate their symptoms by taking drugs such as apomorphine, which activate receptors for dopamine. For some conditions — such as pain and immune disorders — trials have shown2 that it is possible to train people to respond to placebos, although this practice hasn’t made its way into clinical care. Benedetti and his colleagues wondered whether the same effect might be possible for neurological disorders. They studied 42 people with advanced Parkinson’s disease who were having electrodes implanted into their brains for a therapy called deep brain stimulation, which eases symptoms by stimulating affected brain areas directly. That surgery gave Benedetti’s team a rare opportunity to measure the activity of individual neurons in the thalamus, a brain region known to be inhibited by lack of dopamine in people with Parkinson's. © 2016 Nature Publishing Grou
Link ID: 21884 - Posted: 02.10.2016
Rare ‘allergy’ to vibrations tied to faulty gene By Kelly Servick If you have the rare condition known as vibratory urticaria, you may be wary of handling lawnmowers and electric mixers. Rubbing or vibration against your skin—even from drying off with a towel—can cause you to break out in hives, make your face flush, give you headaches, or produce the sensation of a metallic taste. The condition, which runs in families, is so rare that the researchers who work on it have only tracked down a few cases over years of searching. But a genetic study on three such unique families has revealed a potential mechanism for the strange symptoms. Research published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine describes a mutation in a gene called ADGRE2, found in 22 people with vibratory urticaria, but not in 14 of their unaffected relatives. The gene codes for a receptor protein that was found on the surface of mast cells—immune cells in the skin that dump out inflammatory molecules such as histamines that increase blood flow to an area and can cause hives. The researchers observed that shaking mast cells in a dish breaks apart two subunits of this receptor protein, which prompts histamine release. In people with the newly discovered mutation, the receptor is more prone to breakage, which causes this protective immune response at the site of physical trauma to run amok. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
A map for other people’s faces has been discovered in the brain. It could help explain why some of us are better at recognising faces than others. Every part of your body that you can move or feel is represented in the outer layer of your brain. These “maps”, found in the motor and sensory cortices (see diagram, below), tend to preserve the basic spatial layout of the body – neurons that represent our fingers are closer to neurons that represent our arms than our feet, for example. The same goes for other people’s faces, says Linda Henriksson at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. Her team scanned 12 people’s brains while they looked at hundreds of images of noses, eyes, mouths and other facial features and recorded which bits of the brain became active. This revealed a region in the occipital face area in which features that are next to each other on a real face are organised together in the brain’s representation of that face. The team have called this map the “faciotopy”. The occipital face area is a region of the brain known to be involved in general facial processing. “Facial recognition is so fundamental to human behaviour that it makes sense that there would be a specialised area of the brain that maps features of the face,” she says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.
Laura Sanders Pain can sear memories into the brain, a new study finds. A full year after viewing a picture of a random, neutral object, people could remember it better if they had been feeling painful heat when they first saw it. “The results are fun, they are interesting and they are provocative,” says neuroscientist A. Vania Apkarian of Northwestern University in Chicago. The findings “speak to the idea that pain really engages memory.” Neuroscientists G. Elliott Wimmer and Christian Büchel of University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany reported the results in a paper online at BioRxiv.org first posted December 24 and revised January 6. The findings are under review at a journal, and Wimmer declined to comment on the study until it is accepted for publication. Wimmer and Büchel recruited 31 brave souls who agreed to feel pain delivered by a heat-delivering thermode on their left forearms. Each person’s pain sensitivity was used to calibrate the amount of heat they received in the experiment, which was either not painful (a 2 on an 8-point scale) or the highest a person could endure multiple times (a full 8). While undergoing a functional MRI scan, participants looked at a series of pictures of unremarkable household objects, such as a camera, sometimes feeling pain and sometimes not. Right after seeing the images, the people took a pop quiz in which they answered whether an object was familiar. Pain didn’t influence memory right away. Right after their ordeal, participants remembered about three-quarters of the previously seen objects, regardless of whether pain was present, the researchers found. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015.
Pete Etchells Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, or ASMR, is a curious phenomenon. Those who experience it often characterise it as a tingling sensation in the back of the head or neck, or another part of the body, in response to some sort of sensory stimulus. That stimulus could be anything, but over the past few years, a subculture has developed around YouTube videos, and their growing popularity was the focus of a video posted on the Guardian this last week. It’s well worth a watch, but I couldn’t help but feel it would have been a bit more interesting if there had been some scientific background in it. The trouble is, there isn’t actually much research on ASMR out there. To date, only one research paper has been published on the phenomenon. In March last year, Emma Barratt, a graduate student at Swansea University, and Dr Nick Davis, then a lecturer at the same institution, published the results of a survey of some 500 ASMR enthusiasts. “ASMR is interesting to me as a psychologist because it’s a bit ‘weird’” says Davis, now at Manchester Metropolitan University. “The sensations people describe are quite hard to describe, and that’s odd because people are usually quite good at describing bodily sensation. So we wanted to know if everybody’s ASMR experience is the same, and of people tend to be triggered by the same sorts of things.” The study asked a range of questions about where, when and why people watch ASMR videos, whether there was any consistency in ASMR-triggering content, as well as whether individuals felt it had any effect on their mood. There was a remarkable consistency across participants in terms of triggering content – whispering worked for the majority of people, followed by videos involving some sort of personal attention, crisp sounds, and slow movements. For the most part, participants reported that they watched ASMR videos for relaxation purposes, or to help them sleep or deal with stress. © 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited
Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 21767 - Posted: 01.09.2016
By Emily Underwood As long as she can remember, 53-year-old Rosa Sundquist has tallied the number of days per month when her head explodes with pain. The migraines started in childhood and have gotten worse as she’s grown older. Since 2008, they have incapacitated her at least 15 days per month, year-round. Head-splitting pain isn’t the worst of Sundquist’s symptoms. Nausea, vomiting, and an intense sensitivity to light, sound, and smell make it impossible for her to work—she used to be an office manager—or often even to leave her light-proofed home in Dumfries, Virginia. On the rare occasions when she does go out to dinner or a movie with her husband and two college-aged children, she wears sunglasses and noise-canceling headphones. A short trip to the grocery store can turn into a full-blown attack “on a dime,” she says. Every 10 weeks, Sundquist gets 32 bee sting–like injections of the nerve-numbing botulism toxin into her face and neck. She also visits a neurologist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who gives her a continuous intravenous infusion of the anesthetic lidocaine over 7 days. The lidocaine makes Sundquist hallucinate, but it can reduce her attacks, she says—she recently counted 20 migraine days per month instead of 30. Sundquist can also sometimes ward off an attack with triptans, the only drugs specifically designed to interrupt migraines after they start. Millions of others similarly dread the onset of a migraine, although many are not afflicted as severely as Sundquist. Worldwide, migraines strike roughly 12% of people at least once per year, with women roughly three times as likely as men to have an attack. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
By Stephani Sutherland A technique called optogenetics has transformed neuroscience during the past 10 years by allowing researchers to turn specific neurons on and off in experimental animals. By flipping these neural switches, it has provided clues about which brain pathways are involved in diseases like depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. “Optogenetics is not just a flash in the pan,” says neuroscientist Robert Gereau of Washington University in Saint Louis. “It allows us to do experiments that were not doable before. This is a true game changer like few other techniques in science.” Since the first papers were published on optogenetics in the mid-aughts some researchers have mused about one day using optogenetics in patients, imagining the possibility of an off-switch for depression, for instance. The technique, however, would require that a patient submit to a set of highly invasive medical procedures: genetic engineering of neurons to insert molecular switches to activate or switch off cells, along with threading of an optical fiber into the brain to flip those switches. Spurred on by a set of technical advances, optogenetics pioneer Karl Deisseroth, together with other Stanford University researchers, has formed a company to pursue optogenetics trials in patients within the next several years—one of several start-ups that are now contemplating clinical trials of the technique. Circuit Therapeutics, founded in 2010, is moving forward with specific plans to treat neurological diseases. (It also partners with pharmaceutical companies to help them use optogenetics in animal research to develop novel drug targets for human diseases.) © 2016 Scientific America
Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 21758 - Posted: 01.07.2016
A woman born incapable of feeling pain has been hurt for the first time – thanks to a drug normally prescribed for opioid overdoses. She was burned with a laser, and quite liked the experience. The breakthrough may lead to powerful new ways to treat painful conditions such as arthritis. Only a handful people around the world are born unable to feel pain. These individuals can often suffer a range of injuries when they are young. Babies with the condition tend to chew their fingers, toes and lips until they bleed, and toddlers can suffer an increased range of knocks, tumbles and encounters with sharp or hot objects. The disorder is caused by a rare genetic mutation that results in a lack of ion channels that transport sodium across sensory nerves. Without these channels, known as Nav1.7 channels, nerve cells are unable to communicate pain. Researchers quickly sought to make compounds that blocked Nav1.7 channels, thinking they might be able to block pain in people without the disorder. “It looked like a fantastic drug target,” says John Wood at University College London. “Pharma companies went bananas and made lots of drugs.” But while a few compounds saw some success, none brought about the total pain loss seen in people who lack the channel naturally. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.
By David Noonan The 63-year-old chief executive couldn't do his job. He had been crippled by migraine headaches throughout his adult life and was in the middle of a new string of attacks. “I have but a little moment in the morning in which I can either read, write or think,” he wrote to a friend. After that, he had to shut himself up in a dark room until night. So President Thomas Jefferson, in the early spring of 1807, during his second term in office, was incapacitated every afternoon by the most common neurological disability in the world. The co-author of the Declaration of Independence never vanquished what he called his “periodical head-ach,” although his attacks appear to have lessened after 1808. Two centuries later 36 million American migraine sufferers grapple with the pain the president felt. Like Jefferson, who often treated himself with a concoction brewed from tree bark that contained quinine, they try different therapies, ranging from heart drugs to yoga to herbal remedies. Their quest goes on because modern medicine, repeatedly baffled in attempts to find the cause of migraine, has struggled to provide reliable relief. Now a new chapter in the long and often curious history of migraine is being written. Neurologists believe they have identified a hypersensitive nerve system that triggers the pain and are in the final stages of testing medicines that soothe its overly active cells. These are the first ever drugs specifically designed to prevent the crippling headaches before they start, and they could be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration next year. If they deliver on the promise they have shown in studies conducted so far, which have involved around 1,300 patients, millions of headaches may never happen. © 2015 Scientific American
Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 21662 - Posted: 11.28.2015
By Nala Rogers If you travel with a group of friends, you might delegate navigation to the person with the best sense of direction. But among homing pigeons, the leader is whoever flies the fastest—even if that pigeon has to pick up navigation skills on the job, according to a new study. To find out how the skills of individual pigeons influence flock direction, researchers tested four flocks on journeys from three different locations, each about 5 kilometers from their home loft near Oxford, U.K. At each site, the researchers tracked the pigeons during solo flights before releasing them together for several group journeys. The fastest birds surged to the front during group flights and determined when the flock turned, despite the fact that these leaders were often poor navigators during their initial solo expeditions. But on a final set of solo flights—made after the group journeys—these same leaders chose straighter routes than followers, the researchers report today in Current Biology. Apparently, being responsible for group decisions helped pigeons learn the route, say scientists, raising questions about the two-way interplay between skills and leadership. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science
Ian Sample Science editor Tiny biological compasses made from clumps of protein may help scores of animals, and potentially even humans, to find their way around, researchers say. Scientists discovered the minuscule magnetic field sensors in fruit flies, but found that the same protein structures appeared in retinal cells in pigeons’ eyes. They can also form in butterfly, rat, whale and human cells. The rod-like compasses align themselves with Earth’s geomagnetic field lines, leading researchers to propose that when they move, they act on neighbouring cell structures that feed information into the nervous system to create a broader direction-sensing system. Professor Can Xie, who led the work at Peking University, said the compass might serve as a “universal mechanism for animal magnetoreception,” referring to the ability of a range of animals from butterflies and lobsters to bats and birds, to navigate with help from Earth’s magnetic field. Whether the compasses have any bearing on human navigation is unknown, but the Peking team is investigating the possibility. “Human sense of direction is complicated,” said Xie. “However, I believe that magnetic sense plays a key role in explaining why some people have a good sense of direction.” The idea that animals could sense Earth’s magnetic field was once widely dismissed, but the ability is now well established, at least among some species. The greatest mystery that remains is how the sensing is done. © 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited
Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 21638 - Posted: 11.17.2015
By Virginia Morell Plunge a live crab into a pot of boiling water, and it’s likely to try to scramble out. Is the crab’s behavior simply a reflex, or is it a sign of pain? Many scientists doubt that any invertebrate (or fish) feels pain because they lack the areas in the brain associated with human pain. Others argue this is an unfair comparison, noting that despite the major differences between vertebrate and invertebrate brains, their functions (such as seeing) are much the same. To get around this problem, researchers in 2014 argued that an animal could be classified as experiencing pain if, among other things, it changes its behavior in a way that indicates it’s trying to prevent further injury, such as through increased wariness, and if it shows a physiological change, such as elevated stress hormones. To find out whether crabs meet these criteria, scientists collected 40 European shore crabs (Carcinus maenas), shown in the photo above, in Northern Ireland. They placed the animals into individual tanks, and gave half 200-millisecond electrical shocks every 10 seconds for 2 minutes in their right and left legs. The other 20 crabs served as controls. Sixteen of the shocked crabs began walking in their tanks, and four tried to climb out. None of the control crabs attempted to clamber up the walls, but 14 walked, whereas six didn’t move at all. There was, however, one big physiological difference between the 16 shocked, walking crabs and the 14 control walkers, the scientists report in today’s issue of Biology Letters: Those that received electrical jolts had almost three times the amount of lactic acid in their haemolymph, a fluid that’s analogous to the blood of vertebrates—a clear sign of stress. Thus, crabs pass the bar scientists set for showing that an animal feels pain. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
By Arlene Karidis Several years ago, Peggy Chenoweth began having excruciating cramping in her ankle. It felt severely sprained and as if her toe were twisting to the point where it was being ripped off her foot. “The pain is right here,” she told an orthopedic surgeon, “in my ankle and foot.” But the 41-year-old Gainesville, Va., resident no longer had that ankle and foot. Her leg had been amputated below the knee after a large piece of computer equipment fell off a cart, crushed her foot and caused nerve damage. Further, she insisted that since the amputation, she could feel her missing toes move. Chenoweth’s surgeon knew exactly what was going on: phantom pain. Lynn Webster, an anesthesiologist and past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, explains the phenomenon: “With ‘phantom pain,’ nerves that transmitted information from the brain to the now-missing body part continue to send impulses, which relay the message of pain.” It feels as if the removed part is still there and hurting, but pain is actually in the brain. The sensation ranges from annoying itching to red-hot burning. Physicians wrote about phantom pain as early as the 1860s, but U.S. research on this condition has increased recently, spurred by the surge of amputees returning from warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan and by increasing rates of diabetes. (Since 2003, nearly 1,650 service members have lost limbs, according to the Congressional Research Service. In 2010, about 73,000 amputations were performed on diabetics in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 21620 - Posted: 11.10.2015
By Jason G. Goldman When a monkey has the sniffles or a headache, it doesn't have the luxury of popping a few painkillers from the medicine cabinet. So how does it deal with the common colds and coughs of the wildlife world? University of Georgia ecologist Ria R. Ghai and her colleagues observed a troop of more than 100 red colobus monkeys in Uganda's Kibale National Park for four years to figure out whether the rain forest provides a Tylenol equivalent. Monkeys infected with a whipworm parasite were found to spend more time resting and less time moving, grooming and having sex. The infected monkeys also ate twice as much tree bark as their healthy counterparts even though they kept the same feeding schedules. The findings were published in September in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The fibrous snack could help literally sweep the intestinal intruder out of the simians' gastrointestinal tracts, but Ghai suspects a more convincing reason. Seven of the nine species of trees and shrubs preferred by sick monkeys have known pharmacological properties, such as antisepsis and analgesia. Thus, the monkeys could have been self-medicating, although she cannot rule out other possibilities. The sick individuals were, however, using the very same plants that local people use to treat illnesses, including infection by whipworm parasites. And that “just doesn't seem like a coincidence,” Ghai says. © 2015 Scientific American,
by Laura Sanders Babies’ minds are mysterious. Thoughts might be totally different in a brain that lacks words, and sensations might feel alien in a body so new. Are babies’ perceptions like ours, or are they completely different? Even if babies could talk, words would surely fail to convey what it’s like to experience, oh, every single thing for the first time. A recent paper offers a sliver of insight into young babies’ inner lives. The study, published October 19 in Current Biology, finds an example in which 4-month-old babies are happily oblivious to the external world. The research focuses on a perceptual trick that suckers adults and 6-month-old babies alike. When the hands are crossed, people often mistake which hand feels a touch. Let’s say your left hand (now crossed over to the right side of your body) gets a tickle. Your eyes would see a hand on the right side of your body get touched — a place usually claimed by your right hand, but now occupied by your left. Those mismatches between sight, touch and expectation can thwart you from quickly and correctly saying which hand was touched. Here’s the twist: 4-month-old babies don’t fall for this trick, Andrew Bremner of Goldsmiths, University of London and his colleagues found. In the experiment, a researcher would hold infants’ legs in either a crossed position or straight, while one of two remote-controlled buzzers taped to their feet tickled one foot. The researchers then watched which foot or leg wiggled as a result. If the buzzed foot moved, that meant that the baby got it right. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015. | <urn:uuid:c8dab108-b5fc-4aa3-a1c4-f8a46d043870> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.biopsychology.com/news/index.php?descType=always&id=8&type=bpchapter&page=1&book=BP | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403508.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00148-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957831 | 6,861 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Classical Chinese furniture is closely related both aesthetically and technically to traditional Chinese architecture. The basic mortise and tenon system of joinery found in hardwood furniture is deeply rooted in the more ancient tradition of architectural timber framing. The preference for exposed structural elements, reliance on the natural beauty of wood and refined proportions, are principles fundamental to both traditions.
Chinese furniture has ancient origins. A few, small examples of lacquer furniture have survived from Warring States (475-221 B.C.) and Han (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) tombs. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420-589), possibly under Buddhist influence, the Chinese began to change from the habit of kneeling or sitting on mats or low platforms to sitting with legs pendent on stools and chairs. By the Northern Sung dynasty (960-1127), the transformation to the use of tall tables and chairs constructed of soft wood seems to have been complete. The joinery system and decorative styles of Sung furniture laid the foundation for the technical and aesthetic perfection encountered in the classical hardwood furniture of late Ming and early Ch'ing (late 16th-18th century) dynasties.
With the importation of new, exceptionally durable and beautiful Southeast Asian hardwoods during Ming, Chinese joinery techniques were refined and undecorated woods gained acceptance. Furniture of Ming and early Ch'ing is characterized by simple, elegant structures with fluid lines, balanced proportions and concealed joints. Valued for their natural beauty, the expensive, richly grained hardwoods were finished with only wax. As the supply of imported hardwoods was depleted during the late seventeen hundreds, the high technical and artistic standards of the previous two centuries were largely lost. | <urn:uuid:6edf59ab-ecc2-4c49-b20e-3df547a2bdcb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://artsmia.org/art-of-asia/explore/explore-collection-chinese-furniture.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403825.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00017-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957227 | 354 | 3.296875 | 3 |
What is Vodka? To understand what vodka is, we need to first understand distillation. The basic idea of distillation is to take a beer or wine; something with an alcohol, and boil it until the ethanol turns into a steam vapor. In a pot still (the least efficient way of distilling) this vapor will travel up the still and once at the top cascades down a side pipe (line arm) this piping is then cooled by a cold water on the outside of the metal causing the vapor inside the pipe to condense back into alcohol.
In a column still (super efficient way of distilling) the beer or wine is poured from the top of a long tube column. Hence the name. Inside this column is multiple plates with little holes. The bottom of a column has steam rising up through these plates. What this does is cause each plate to be a different temperature. Once the beer or wine meets the vapor it strips out the alcohol. The reason why this is so efficient is unlike a pot still you only need one run to make high proof, low oil spirit. To make Vodka by the United States standards and definition we need to distill a spirit up to 190 proof and dilute to 80 proof to bottle.
We built this city on cheap NGS
Neutral grain spirit (NGS) is defined as a grain spirit that is distilled to such a high proof that very few oil congeners end up in the final product. This lack of oils is a very important part of vodka. Oils can possess both good and bad taste and are very apparent in whiskeys and tequilas. By definition Vodka is made from a neutral grain spirit with almost no flavor. When I say ‘almost’, that means that a little less than 5% water and oils will travel into the final product. Distilleries frequently claimed that the mash bill plays an integral part in the taste of their vodka. I personally have a hard time finding it, but if very subtle may still be evident to experience vodka connoisseur.
(side note) Vodka can be made from any sugar not just grain . The only thing is it needs to hit the same level of proof as a NGS to be Vodka.
Consumers are not ignorant. We are aware that there is a difference between premium vodka and plastic bottle vodka. The main problem that most consumers experience, from my own exploration of vodka and discussions with other vodka drinkers, is an understanding of what the differences are between the two. It’s easy to point out that one is cheap and the other is expensive, so quality differences based on appearance must also be the standard for production. I live in a world of hard definitions and this to me is not enough to be able to explain the differences. I hope within the next couple lines I can help you understand the true difference.
We need to look at the root of plastic bottle vodka. The producer understands that they’re making a mass-produced product that needs to be inexpensive to make and sell. Most plastic bottle vodka is produced by a major industrial distilleries. This is the simplest explanation of how plastic bottle vodka is made.
- Step one: Produce natural grain spirit in the column still
- Step two: Dilute to 80 proof with water
- Step three: Bottle in a inexpensive plastic bottle Vodka
Premium producers understand ethanol produces a burn in your mouth and throat, which on its own does not tend to be enjoyable. The same Premium producers understood that they had to change this to cater to an upscale market. This is the steps to produce a premium vodka product:
- Step one: Producing neutral grain spirit in a column or hybrid pot still. You also need to understand that most producers purchase this neutral grain spirit and don’t make their own.
- Step two: Filtration either by charcoal or other filtering materials. This step is a wonderful way to help pull out the last 5% of the oil congeners giving you a cleaner and crisper spirit.
- Step three: Sugar or citric acid is legal in the United States to be added to a vodka spirit. Adding this to your bottle of vodka will drastically tame the ethanol in the spirit. Glycerin is added in every other country outside the United States. You will frequently hear people talking about vodka products being made poorly in America because of the lack of glycerin.
- Step four: Diluting the product down to 80 proof
- Step five: Bottle in an extravagant bottle. The most important part of the premium market is always going to be marketing. The first thing you always see with premium vodka products is the bottle. The majority of consumers pick products based off of the bottle alone. This is just a disheartening statistic and one we have to work with. Packaging is not a sign of quality; it is just a sign of creativity. Once you break the two apart you will become a connoisseur instead of a consumer.
It’s extremely important for consumers to understand the products that they are purchasing. I know it’s a difficult thing to ask of you as a consumer, and I’m trying my best to help you understand the products without you having to put in a lot of legwork. I think it’s important for people that are vodka connoisseurs to get all the facts on the brands they love. In conclusion if you like buying an $80 bottle of vodka no one should be telling you that it’s a poor investment. It’s your money and you should spend it on the things you like. It’s my job to help you understand why you like it.
Photo source: Shutterstock | | <urn:uuid:b9ed3a76-d4b6-4074-9f8e-aa7eeb931bf8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.rsvlts.com/2012/10/04/differences-between-plastic-and-premium-vodka/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00008-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94467 | 1,174 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Thirteen-year-old Zahra has fled bombing, killings and chaos in Syria - but she says the worst thing has been losing her education. Like almost one in five schools in Syria, her school in Aleppo was destroyed, forcing her out of class for more than six months. As the situation deteriorated, her family made the heartbreaking decision to abandon their home and flee to Lebanon. Now, struggling with everyday life as a refugee in the Bekaa valley, Zahra is looking to the future, devastated that her dream of becoming a doctor is in jeopardy.
When we think of a humanitarian emergency, we don't necessarily think first of education. We think of immediate, life-saving needs, like clean water, health care and shelter. Of course, in Syria and across the region, these supplies and services are absolutely vital for children and families living with the daily consequences of conflict and displacement. However, learning is just as urgent. Almost two million Syrian children have been forced to drop out of school over the past year. And, as more than one million children have now fled Syria's borders, the needs in neighbouring countries are also acute. Education is the least-funded area of Unicef's emergency response and its importance is not resonating enough with donors. For this reason, the global education campaigner, Malala Yousafzai, travelled to the UN General Assembly in New York to call for urgent action to help Syrian children get back to learning. But perhaps we still haven't explained well enough why this is such a high priority for Unicef and our partners.
In the short-term, education during an emergency is vital for children. Going to class instils a much-needed sense of routine and normality amidst the chaos of conflict or life as a refugee. For refugee children, being in school offers a safe space to remember that they are children, to feel hope for the future, to play and to begin the process of healing the emotional damage of all they have experienced. It also gives parents, struggling to cope at an incredibly stressful time, the opportunity to deal with other aspects of their lives in the knowledge that their children are safe and cared for. Even for those still in the firing line in Syria, it is important for children, and their parents, to feel that they will not lose entirely the opportunity of a better future amid such a painful present. Every moment of learning is even more precious when it is under threat.
In the long-term, missing out on education for sustained periods could have untold consequences for individual children, and for the future society they will rebuild. Unicef workers have heard of Syrian refugee children who have been out of class for more than two years and have forgotten how to read. The danger is that a generation will lose their one chance at childhood, their chance to learn, their hopes for the future. Education also shapes the kind of society we want our children to grow up in. Article 29 - my favourite section of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which underscores all of Unicef's work - emphasises the relationship between learning, tolerance and peace, which is so vital when those concepts are in short supply. The text says the education of a child shall be directed to "the preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship amongst all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups." This is a great vision for education anywhere at any time, but especially describes exactly the spirit that the children of Syria will need in the future, to overcome divisions that have been deepened through conflict. If children are not to grow up imbued with hatred and fear, and are instead going to be empowered to build a better future, education must be a high priority.
Unicef is doing everything it can to get Syrian children back to learning - within Syria and in refugee communities in neighbouring countries. Unicef and partners are running lessons in schools, community centres, camps and homes. Zahra has joined specialist catch-up classes run by a Unicef partner organisation - "Sawa" - to try to help her gain a place in a mainstream school in Lebanon and gain the education she needs to set her on the road to her dream of studying medicine. She should not lose that dream, as well as losing her home, her school and the life she has known.
But much more needs to be done to help more children. Unicef is dealing with an escalating education emergency, behind the immediate humanitarian horror of the Syria crisis. We need your support now to prevent a generation of Syrian children losing the chance to move towards a brighter future.
To donate online visit www.unicef.org.uk. To donate by phone call 0800 316 5353 | <urn:uuid:570c564b-4aad-4bb2-b9f0-2b5e7da6bee0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/david-bull/syria-children-education_b_4027673.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397873.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00015-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97239 | 976 | 3.046875 | 3 |
The high standard and bio-electrochemical stability of any metallic biomaterial components are the main conditions for their safe implantation into human body. The most critically indispensable properties for metallic biomaterials are their corrosion resistance, inertness, low toxicity, and durability. The work aims at analyzing the titanium biomaterial characterization after electrolytic polishing in a magnetic field, named as the magnetoelectropolishing (MEP), in comparison with the material finish after a conventional electropolishing (EP).
Titanium and titanium alloys gradually became the main biomedical materials used presently in orthopaedic applications. The leaching of metallic ions such as nickel during the corrosion process from other biomaterials such as: 316L stainless steel, L-605 cobalt-chromium alloy, or Nitinol, has caused considerable concerns due to the allergies, inflammations, etc. It appears to be non existent when CP titanium is employed. Titanium is also insensitive to oxygen concentration and by this titanium ions release by this mechanism is not applicable in this case. Also it is well known that when titanium is exposed to body fluids, its surface undergoes spontaneous modification by Ca2+ and PO43- ions and prolong exposure leads to formation of hydroxyapatite layer, which is indispensable to bone-implant osseointegration.
High quality metal alloys of titanium are commonly used for orthopaedic prostheses as bone plates, nails, screws, etc. Fortunately, the oxides and hydroxides of titanium have extremely low solubilities − so a passive oxide film readily and spontaneously forms over the titanium’s surface. In spite of its very high corrosion resistance the spontaneously formed oxide film consists of some inclusion and discontinuity spots, which can cause the problems in integration at the bone-implant interface. To overcome these problems, several surface treatments are employed: chemical etching, plasma treatment, ion implantation, electrochemical or wet chemical hydroxyapatite precipitation following either hydrothermal treatment or sintering, anodizing, electropolishing, etc. The electropolishing process seems to be the best way to eliminate these problems. By dissolving the existing imperfect oxide, electropolishing process creates the base for formation the more perfect homogeneous oxide over the base titanium metal. As it was shown in many works, including also previous ours, it is the presence of this oxide film that is responsible for titanium’s excellent corrosion resistance, which enables it to be used in surgical applications.
2. Titanium biomaterial characteristics
Titanium and some of its alloys Ti6Al4V, TI6AL7Nb, Nitinol, are classified as biologically inert biomaterials and are commercially used in orthopaedic and dental application. This is a result of their outstanding corrosion resistance and inertness. The inertness of those materials is due to titanium oxide (TiO2) which spontaneously covers them after exposure to ambient air or water according to the following reactions:
The stability of TiO2 can be compromised only by complexing species such as HF or H2O2 and can lead to its dissolution. Without those species TiO2 is thermodynamically stable in the wide range of pH = 2-12 (Schenk, 2001) and by this CP-Ti is totally corrosion resistant in the presence of neutral physiological solutions. In the case of Al-containing alloys (Ti6Al4V, Ti6Al7Nb) acidification of solutions make them more prone to dissolution than CP-Ti (Ruzickova et al., 2005).
In present work our research concentrates on CP Titanium as on precursor of another titanium alloys. Along excellent corrosion resistance, inertness to human body and excellent osseointegration titanium offers more suitable properties for implantable biomaterials. Some of those properties include: fatigue resistance, strength, density, elastic module, etc. The density of around 4.5 g.cm–3 makes it almost two times lighter than cobalt-chromium or 316L stainless steel alloys. As pure element CP titanium also excludes possibility of leaching harmful elements which could be detrimental to surrounding tissues as can be in case of 316L stainless steel and Nitinol where possibility of leaching nickel is reality. The biggest disadvantage of CP-Ti is its relatively low wear resistance and by this it should not be used in devices where contact wear is unavoidable as for example modular interface corrosion between Co-Cr heads and Ti stem in total hip replacement prosthesis (Singh &, Dahotre, 2007; Salvati et al., 1995).
2.1. Mechanism of passive film formation and growth
Even that the passive film on titanium is only in nanometers range it creates very protective barrier against biological environment of human body. Its protectiveness depends on several features: morphology, homogeneousness, thickness, kind and quantity of foreign chemicals species incorporated in it. All of those properties of passive film determine the tunneling rate end speed of ions moving through the film as well as its dissolution by surrounding fluids.
According to (Cabrera & Mott, 1948) high field mechanism for oxide film formation and growth theory the main prerequisite is adsorption of oxygen on bare titanium surface which creates oxide monolayer (Fig. 1). The next step is electron tunneling from titanium to monolayer of adsorb oxygen which by adding electrons became electron traps on the outer surface of the oxide. As the number of electron traps increases the potential drop across the films grows. The drop of potential creates the electric field across the passive film which lowers the activation energy necessary for further ions transport though passive film. The oxide on titanium is classified as N-type semiconductor which means that anion transport through film is dominant way of film grow and is due to oxygen ions movement toward titanium metal. The thickening of oxide film increases the activation energy necessary for further oxygen ions transport and limits further passive film formation. The only way for further grow of passive film in this point is to increase the potential drop across the film which simultaneously increases the electric field.
2.2. Passive film components
The composition of titanium oxides depends on conditions and chemical media in which oxide is created. There are three main forms of titanium oxide which can exist on titanium separately or simultaneously in different proportions. The three main forms of titanium oxides are rutile-tetragonal crystals, anatase – also tetragonal crystals, but of more amorphous form and brookite-orthorombic crystals. To lesser extent Ti2O3, Ti3O5 and some hydrated oxides can also form on titanium surface. The naturally created oxide is mainly in TiO2 form, transparent, not visible to eye and less than 10 nanometer thick (Alekseeva, 1964).
2.3. The processes altering the titanium surface
To improve corrosion resistance, biocompatibility, osseointegration, cleanability, overcome galling and seizing problems many processes were invented in last several decades including: acid etching, DC anodizing, AC spark anodizing (Rokicki, 1992), electropolishing, thermal oxidation, conversion coating (fluoride-phosphate), alloying of surface layer with palladium by thermal decomposition, laser irradiation, phothocatalytic treatment, plasma spraying for hydroxyapatite incorporation, and most recently proposed magnetoelectropolishing process (Rokicki, 2009). From all of those processes the most popular is DC anodization. This is very easy to perform not complicated electrochemical process which gives very attractive colorized finish to titanium in following colour succession: yellow, purple, dark blue, sky blue, greenish, golden-purple (mosaic), violet-greenish (mosaic), and gray. The colour succession is due to thickening of oxide by rising voltage. This process is very often utilized as finish of standard micro-rough CP Ti orthopaedic locking compression plates (yellow colour) because this finish gives very high osseointegration. This is most probably attributed to anatase form of titanium oxide which predominantly covers anodized surface of titanium (Gopal et al., 2003; Simka et al., 2011). Another recently more demanded finish for titanium is electropolished finish. The electropolishing dissolves existing natural oxide with all its imperfections and creates new more corrosion resistant oxide mainly in the form of rutile (Rokicki, 1990) according to following reactions:
dissolution and transfer of titanium ions into solution
evolution of the oxygen from the anode surface
formation of the passive film on the anode surface
The oxide created by electropolishing process is very homogeneous with few dislocation sites. The advantage of this oxide over oxides created naturally on mechanically polished or chemically etched titanium surface was shown in experiment performed by the author over two decades ago (Rokicki, 1990). In that experiment two samples of titanium, one electropolished another chemically etched, were anodized to the same colour (golden-yellow which is first colour obtained during anodization). After one year of exposure to ambient atmosphere the colour on chemically etched titanium sample changed colour to purple (thickening of the passive film field). The colour on electropolished sample stays unchanged (and stayed unchanged to this day). Above experiment indicates that oxide on electropolished titanium resists further oxidation by ambient atmosphere. In the case of chemically etched titanium surface the oxide was very unstable and underwent further oxidation by ambient air. This fact supports the Cabrera & Mott (1948) theory of titanium oxide growth by oxygen movement toward titanium surface through existing oxide (Fig. 1).
3. Magnetoelectropolishing of titanium
Magnetoelectropolishing (MEP) appears to be an important and effective process for obtaining modified surface properties (Rokicki, 2009; Hryniewicz et al., 2008; Hryniewicz et al., 2009). In our studies, for comparison the electrolytic polishing was performed both in the absence and in the presence of a magnetic field. The experiments were carried out with the use of wires, commercial endodontic files, and flat samples (plates). For the MEP experiments, a constant external magnetic field below 500 mT was applied to the electropolishing (EP) system by neodymium ring magnets. For both processes, conventional EP and MEP, the same type of an acidic electrolyte was used, which was mixture of sulfuric, hydrofluoric and nitric acids. We use nitric acid addition to well known H2SO4/HF electrolyte composition for electropolishing titanium as a precaution from possibility of hydrogen adsorption during electropolishing. This method was successfully applied by Higuchi & Sato, (2003). Decreased hydrogen concentration in the stainless steel samples after MEP in comparison with EP, and MP ones, was recently reported by Hryniewicz et al., (2011).
The bath was unstirred during the process carried out with absence of externally applied magnetic field. During magnetoelectropolishing the stirring was self imposed by Lorentz Force as a result of interaction of electric and magnetic fields. For comparison, also Ti samples after mechanical polishing using an abrasive paper of the grit size up to 1000 were used.
4. Towards improving the titanium biomaterials
Much attention has been concentrated on improving the properties of titanium biomaterial (Schenk, 2001; Rokicki, 1992; Gopal et al., 2003; Simka et al., 2011; Rokicki, 1990; Hryniewicz et al., 2009; (2) Hryniewicz et al., 2009; Schultz & Watkins, 1998; Virtanen et al., 2008; Buly et al., 1994; La Budde et al., 1994; Burstein et al., 2005; Virtanen & Curty, 2004; Burstein & Souto, 1995; Mickay & Mitton, 1985; Khan et al., 1999; Hanawa et al., 1998; Budzynski et al., 2006; Hayes et al., 2010). Osseointegration of a metallic implant into bone or adaptation in soft tissue involves many complex physiological reactions related both to the material itself and to the living host. It was thus realized that during implantation a hydrated oxide layer grows on titanium, suggested to be due to the metabolic activity at the site of implantation (Virtanen et al., 2008). A prerequisite for clinical success of orthopaedic and dental implants is a strong and long-lasting connection between the implant and bone. Surface roughness has been suggested as one important factor for establishing clinically reliable bone attachments (Buly et al., 1994; La Budde et al., 1994; Burstein et al., 2005; Virtanen & Curty, 2004; Burstein & Souto, 1995). Implant-related factors, mechanical loading, surgical technique, implant site and patient variables influence bonding between implants and bone (Buly et al., 1994). Several authors suggest methods to modify the surface structure of titanium implants, which all may lead to altered chemical and mechanical properties of the metal surface (La Budde et al., 1994; Mickay & Mitton, 1985). Textured implant surfaces can be produced by several methods, all of which provide different characteristics of the biomaterial surface. It is not clear what influence these characteristics have on the bone response after implantation, or to what extent the response depends on geometry and degree of the surface roughness (Khan et al., 1999). Results from in vitro studies suggest a positive correlation between surface roughness and cellular attachment and osteoblast-like cell activity (Duisabeau et al., 2004).
5. Comparison of surface roughness
Definitions of roughness parameters are given in accordance to Polish Standard: PN-EN ISO 4287 (1999),
R – parameter calculated from the roughness profile
Ra – is the arithmetic mean of the sum of roughness profile values
where − absolute ordinate value inside the elementary measuring length, with l = lp, and lp − elementary length in x direction (on average line) used for identification of unevenesses characterizing profile under evaluation,
Rz − the height of roughness acc. to 10 points as the measure of the range of roughness values in the profile. It is generally determined as the mean of 5 single measuring lengths of the roughness profile it corresponds to the mean peak-to-valley height,
Rt – the total height of the primary roughness profile defined as the difference between height of the highest profile peak and the depth of the lowest profile valley of the respective profile within the evaluation length ln (l = ln).
A computerized HOMMEL TESTER T800 system of Hommelwerke GmbH for roughness measurement was used for the study of surface roughness. The comparison of roughness studies results after both conventional electropolishing (EP) and magnetoelectropolishing (MEP) were carried out on the Ti samples.
Surface roughness measurements on CP Ti Grade 2 samples were performed both on wires and plates after standard electropolishing (EP), and magnetoelectropolishing (MEP), with mechanically abrasive polishing (MP) samples serving as a reference. Comparison of the Rz, RzISO, Rt, and Ra results obtained after MP, EP, and MEP are presented in Fig. 2. Dependent on the treatment proposed, a decreasing surface roughness is observed with MEP roughness being the least (Figs. 2a,b,c).
The maximum height of scale limited surface Sz is the sum of the largest peak height value and the largest pit depth value within a definition area. The arithmetic mean height Sa is the arithmetic mean of the absolute of the height within a definition area
with A being the definition area (Standard ISO 25178-2, 2008).
The interferometric roughness studies were performed on CP Ti Grade 2 strips after MP, EP, and MEP (Fig. 3). The obtained results are even more pronounced with detailed data given in Table 1. Even if Sa surface roughness parameter measured after EP is very low (of 88%) in comparison with Sa after MP, this parameter of Ti sample surface after MEP is still reduced over 12%.
Our previous studies performed on MP, EP, and MEP sample surfaces of different metallic biomaterials indicated decreasing roughness, evaluated both by 2D standard roughness measurements (Ra, Rz, Rt), as well as 3D interferometry measurements (Sa, Sz), (Hryniewicz & Rokosz, 2009) as well as presented in our works elsewhere (Hryniewicz & Rokicki, 2007; (2) Hryniewicz & Rokicki, 2007; Hryniewicz et al., 2007). Consequently, regarding reduction in hydrogenation, the results obtained by SIMS are in agreement with the sample surface roughness data concerning their mode of treatment (Hryniewicz et al., 2011).
Some of the studies on surface roughness performed by other technique (Atomic Force Microscopy, AFM) on Nitinol (Fig. 4) also confirm improvement of MEP treated samples against EP ones (Rokicki et al., 2008; Hryniewicz & Rokicki, 2008).
6. Wettability and microscopic studies
The orthopaedic titanium implants can be divided in two groups. One group of implant consists of devices which after implantation will stay permanently in the body (spine implants). Second group covers implants which are temporarily implanted and after healing is over those devices are removed from the body (fracture fixation devices as bone plates, nail etc). The one of most desired property for permanent implants are their complete and strong osseointegration. For temporary devices the strong osseointegration is not desirable because it complicates removal procedure, which can lead to unnecessary blood loss, infection or even fracture. To accomplish this goal the metallic implants require different surface finish which was shown in recent work of Hayes et al., (2010).
It is well known that wettability of metallic implant surfaces plays great role in their bio integrity with surrounding tissues in titanium case most importantly with bones. In our study electropolished and magnetoelectropolished surfaces had shown very different wettability (Rokicki & Hryniewicz, 2008). The simple experiment with drop of water dragged upon the EP and MEP surface have shown very different behaviour. Dragged droplet of water on EP surface was leaving the trace behind; this indicates that surface is very hydrophilic. Contrary dragged droplet of water on magnetoelectropolished surface did not leave any traces and this indicates very hydrophobic surface property. Taking under consideration finding of Hayes et al. (2010) that electropolished titanium surface leads to lesser bone integration we hypothesize that more hydrophobic in our case magnetoelectropolished titanium surface should lead to better and more fuller osseointegration which will be very desirable for permanent orthopaedic implants.
7. Corrosion measurements
A metal corrodes if the electrode potential E = Ecorr is the corrosion potential and flowing current ia = –ic = icorr in the created cell is the corrosion current. The relationship between current density and potential of anodic and cathodic electrode reactions under charge transfer control is given by the Butler-Volmer equations:
ba, bc – Tafel constants
ioa, ioc – exchange current densities for the anodic and cathodic processes, respectively
Eoa, Eoc – equilibrium potentials for the anodic and cathodic processes, respectively.
Summary current density:
The corrosion rate in the anodic sites on the metal surface is proportional to the current intensity. The current intensity flowing through the current cell results in change of potentials of both anodic (oxidation) and cathodic (reduction) reactions (Hryniewicz et al., 2009). The cathodic potential shifts into negative direction and anodic potential shifts into positive direction.
The GPES (General Purpose Electrochemical Software) provides a convenient interface for making Tafel plots, calculating Tafel slopes and corrosion rates. First we specify the anodic and cathodic Tafel region. Once the regions are selected the GPES software automatically calculates the Tafel slopes and the corrosion currents. A correct estimate of the Tafel slopes is possible only if the linear Tafel region covers at least one decade in current. Some additional data are the density of investigated material, equivalent mass, and the studied surface area. Having these the algorithm serves to calculate corrosion current density, polarization resistance, and the corrosion rate CR.
The corrosion studies of conventionally electropolished (EP) and magnetoelectropolished (MEP) titanium samples below oxygen evolution regime were carried out in a Ringer’s solution (Table 2) at 25 ºC (Figs. 5, and 6). Ringer’s (Solution Ringeri by Fresenius Kabi) and Hank’s solutions are the main artificially created human fluids generally recognized by the researchers to carry out the corrosion studies on biomaterials.
In the corrosion studies, polarization curves obtained on Ti samples in Ringer’s solution (Fig. 5) indicated a significant differentiation in their courses dependent on the treatment mode considered. Calculated corrosion rates CR (Fig. 6) reveal even more clearly the decrease in CR after electropolishing (EP), and further reduction in CR is observed after MEP process.
The microscopic observations of the Ti samples after EP, MEP and MP were performed to compare the results of the study ((2) Hryniewicz et al., 2009). The pictures which were taken by Neophot and SEM very well characterize visually the Ti surface after each of the treatment performed. The example images of the wire samples are presented in Fig. 7. Changes in surface topography after MP, EP, and MEP may be viewed, showing the smoothest surface after MEP (Fig. 7c). Fig. 7a presents the typical surface pattern after abrasive pretreatment, whereas Ti image after EP (Fig. 7b) shows multiple irregularities and cavities. The reason of increased fatigue resistance of titanium biomaterial after MEP was due to different plastic behaviour of the same Ti wire after two electropolishing treatments, EP and MEP (Hryniewicz et al., 2009).
8. XPS surface film composition studies
Surface film composition on wire samples of CP Ti (commercial purity titanium) Grade 2 after a standard electropolishing (EP), magnetoelectropolishing (MEP), compared with mechanically polished (MP) samples was studied and the results presented in consecutive Figs. 8, 9, 10, and in Table 3. In Fig. 8, the high resolution XPS (X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy) spectra of CP-Ti samples after MP, EP, and MEP, are compared. Characteristic peaks of titanium and oxygen may be observed, with a carbon peak coming from environment, occurring always in this kind of studies.
In Figs. 9a-f, the results of surface film composition measured on titanium samples are presented. Figs. 9a,b show the results after MP, Figs. 9c,d – after EP, and Figs. 9e,f – after MEP. In Figs. 9 (a, c, e) spectra are referred to titanium (Ti0, Ti2+, Ti3+, Ti4+), and in Figs. 9 (b, d, f) spectra are referred to oxygen group (O2−, OH−, H2O).
BE – binding energy
FWHM – an expression of the extent of a function, given by the difference between the two extreme values of the independent variable at which the dependent variable is equal to half of its maximum value
MPC – most probably compound
Each of the presented plots in Fig. 9 has been connected with the underlying Table 3 revealing all important data, indicating the most probable compound (MPC) with the relevant percentage in Ti surface film investigated.
The most interesting spectra referred to titanium (Ti0, Ti2+, Ti3+, Ti4+), concerning Fig. 9 (a, c, e), have been gathered and reported in Table 3. Visual presentation of the results is given in Fig. 10. In Fig. 10a the comparison with full presentation is given, and in Fig. 10b there are shares excluding Ti4+ reported. Depending on the surface treatment used, characteristic differentiation in composition of surface film is apparent.
9. Fatigue resistance
Our extensive studies over metallic biomaterials show that the kind of finish affects also some mechanical properties. The experiments carried out on samples of CP-titanium and Ti-alloys (Nitinol) indicate that electropolishing (EP) greatly affects the resistance to bending in advantage of this process against abrasive polishing (MP), and the results obtained on samples after MEP are better than those recorded after a standard EP process (Fig. 11). Our research study results performed on fatigue resistance according to the Polish Standard (1975) have been also confirmed by another team of authors on finished by us commercial endodontic files (Praisarnti et al., 2010).
Selection of titanium and titanium alloys with relatively high strength for critical high-temperature, corrosive environment application in the twentieth century was limited to those commercial alloys developed and designed specifically for aerospace use. Most commercial titanium and Ti alloys were not fully resistant to localized attack and/or stress corrosion in chloride environments.
Titanium (and its alloys), though long known, has found favour in recent years as biomaterial. As a biomaterial, titanium is widely used for surgical and medical implants, both skeletal and dental. The state of the surface finish is critical, and numerous studies have shown the benefits of electropolishing, with advantageous using of magnetic fields.
The application of externally applied magnetic fields to the electropolishing process provides the super-critical refinement of surface properties to the new high level required for medical implant devices. Improved corrosion resistance of magnetoelectropolished titanium surface is caused by more homogenized amorphous mixture of titanium oxides and hydroxides compared with very crystalline titanium oxide mainly in rutile form on conventionally electropolished surface.
The following final conclusions may be drawn after investigation of titanium biomaterial:
a new improved technology effective for titanium biomaterial has been offered
the surface roughness after MEP is much less than after a standard EP; all detected roughness parameters after MEP were better than those after EP
very good corrosion characteristics have been obtained with the best performance corrosion potential after MEP; the highest corrosion resistance has been obtained on samples after MEP (CR=1.84×10−4 mm/year), the worst one after MP (CR=9.63×10−4 mm/year), and CR=2.67×10−4 mm/year after EP (Figs. 5 and 6)
Ti biomaterial samples after MEP appeared to be the most resistant to fracture, of about 27% better than the same Ti samples after EP, and much better than after abrasive polishing MP (Fig. 11).
It was found that titanium biomaterial properties may be well improved after using a new technology utilizing the magnetic field during electrolytic polishing. This study shows that both titanium and titanium alloys for medical applications may be considerably improved. | <urn:uuid:45af1e5b-8488-4548-8495-6e17e00be353> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.intechopen.com/books/biomaterials-science-and-engineering/magnetoelectropolished-titanium-biomaterial | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00011-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919743 | 5,731 | 2.59375 | 3 |
- Coloring Pages
Cursive Small Letter Writing Practice Worksheets
This is the most important kind of Alphabet writing. Later in school the Cursive is the only mode of English writing. Ask your child to do it again and again. This practice gives him/her a lot of confidence to write in CURSIVE way. To make writing easier we put dotted directional lines with arrow marks, so a child will find no difficulty which way he is supposed to go.
All the worksheets are traceable and you can print them also to keep a track of your child’s progress. These worksheets make a to z small Cursive writing a lot more enjoyable experience for your child. | <urn:uuid:37326983-0b13-40cc-9aea-f8932e386f0c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://bestcoloringpages.com/cursive-small-letter-writing-practice-worksheets_1p248.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00086-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949303 | 144 | 3.875 | 4 |
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This year, two new records were set: A record 77 eggs were laid, an increase of six over last year, with a record 67 of those eggs hatching successfully. In addition, the state celebrated the second-best year on record for the number of fledglings that took to Arizona’s skies in 2009. Forty-seven eaglets reach the critical point of taking their first flight, an important milestone for a young bird’s chances of survival.
Bald eagle numbers over the past 30 years have grown more than 400 percent in the state.
“Arizona’s intensive management of the species is paying off,” said Kenneth Jacobson, Arizona Game and Fish Department bald eagle management coordinator. “The period between the bird hatching and taking its first flight is a critical time. The bald eagle nestwatch program and regular monitoring played a significant role in helping these nestlings develop from eggs into independent fledglings.”
The breeding season for bald eagles in Arizona typically runs from December through June, although a few bald eagle pairs at higher elevations nest later than those in the rest of the state. The eaglet at Woods Canyon Lake was the last to fledge. The closure area enacted to help protect that nest will be lifted on Aug. 17.
The Arizona Game and Fish Department, a leading partner in recovery efforts for the species, attributes the success to cooperative on-the-ground management, including monitoring and survey flights; recreational area closures during the breeding season; banding and visual identification; contaminants analysis and a nestwatch program to protect breeding activities. Through the Southwest Bald Eagle Management Committee (SWBEMC), a broad coalition of 23 government agencies, private organizations and Native American tribes, a plan is in place to help ensure the continued success of the bald eagle population in Arizona.
Management of the bald eagle falls under the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s program to recover species that are threatened, declining or that have been extirpated from the state.
Through its partnerships with other public agencies, non-profit organizations and the science community, the department’s wildlife recovery program aims to prevent species from becoming endangered and conserve them in a more cost-effective manner. State-level involvement provides closer oversight of wildlife species on a day-to-day basis. Specific emphasis is placed on identifying and managing the wildlife and habitat of greatest conservation need, or those species that are no longer abundant and facing increasing threats from habitat degradation, disease, introduction of non-native species and climate change.
Adaptive management of these species helps ensure their continued presence in Arizona and protects the delicate balance of the ecosystem for future generations.
For more information on bald eagles in Arizona, visit www.swbemc.org. | <urn:uuid:4b960e53-9e7b-43a4-9339-1bea3c632ade> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.azgfd.net/wildlife/conservation-news/bald-eagles-in-arizona-continue-to-flourish/2009/08/12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00012-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936126 | 576 | 3.03125 | 3 |
|Home | EMS | CMP | Photos | Admissions | Resources|
by James Bohn
In 1958, Lejaren Hiller transferred from the Chemistry department to the Music department in order to start an Experimental Music Studio. This studio was the second electronic music studio developed in the United States. In the first five years of its existence, the funds used to supply equipment amounted to only $8,000, a rather small amount of money, even for the sixties. This low amount of investment was due to Hiller's pragmatism and resourcefulness. Much of the equipment used in the original studio came from miscellaneous sources within the University of Illinois. While much of this equipment was far from perfect, it was free, and it served its purpose. Two of the original tape decks were supplied in this manner. An old broadcasting studio control panel was used as the central control console for the studio. This control console served mainly as a mixer, providing routing control and amplification. Other items that were supplied for free included miscellaneous items, such as: microphones, amplifiers, and oscilloscopes. Money was also saved by constructing some of the equipment from kits.
The main sound sources used in the original studio consisted of oscillators that provided sine, sawtooth, pulse, and square waves. White noise was supplied by high-gain amplifier that amplified the random noise provided by stray electrons in a electric tube. A special additive synthesis tone generator allowed for up to ten partials, each of which can be turned off or detuned as desired. A special photo-waveformer allowed desired wave-forms to be cut out of cardboard, and placed against a cathode ray tube. The photomultiplier tube controlled the vertical gain of the cathode ray tube, allowing the waveform to be traced. An associated circuit was used to produce the traced wave-form. This unit was also used for the creation of complex envelopes. Additional sound sources consisted of a theramin, a record player, and a portable tape recorder, which was used to bring sounds into the studio.
Processing possibilities consisted of filtering, envelope control, reverberation, and vibrato / tremolo. Filtering was done through a band pass filter. Envelope control was done through an envelope generator which was used to control an amplifier. Reverberation was done through standard tape techniques using two tape decks. Vibrato and tremolo was created through the use of simple circuits that were made according designs similar to those used in electronic organs.
Tape equipment consisted of three professional decks and the aforementioned portable tape deck. An additional device was created to keep tape loops taut when they are played back. This device was connected to a tape deck, and consisted mainly of movable tape guides. Sound analysis equipment consisted of an oscilloscope, a frequency counter, and a timer.
Home | EMS | CMP | Photos | Admissions | Resources | <urn:uuid:456d9fe4-0b0b-4c8f-95fd-7508fcf10f29> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ems.music.uiuc.edu/history/ems.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00015-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970711 | 598 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Between the 15th and 20th weeks of pregnancy, expectant mothers usually are offered a blood test called the multiple marker test. Sometimes called a triple screen or a quad screen, depending on the number of things measured, it also might be done in combination with blood tests and an ultrasound in the first trimester.
For the multiple marker screening, a sample of blood is drawn from the mother to measure the levels of:
Sometimes the level of inhibin-A, which is made by the placenta, also is measured. The levels of these substances can help doctors identify a fetus at risk for certain birth defects, including neural tube defects (like spina bifida) and some chromosomal abnormalities (like Down syndrome).
In determining the results of the test, doctors take into account factors such as:
These variables can affect the levels of the substances being measured and the interpretation of the test results, so the accuracy of this information is vital. If any of the information is incorrect, the screening results might be inaccurate.
If you have undergone the multiple marker test and received abnormal results, there is no need to worry yet. Just because the test is abnormal doesn't mean that your child has a birth defect or chromosomal abnormality. Rather, an abnormal screen indicates that the fetus should be evaluated further.
Usually, when a pregnant woman's results show high levels of AFP, pointing to a possible risk of spina bifida or another neural tube defect, her doctor will order a detailed ultrasound to examine the fetus, including the fetal skull and spine. In addition, an ultrasound can confirm the age of the fetus and whether the woman is carrying multiples. The doctor also may offer amniocentesis, which is the withdrawal of amniotic fluid from the uterus for further testing.
If a woman's multiple marker screen results reveal low levels of AFP and estriol and high levels of hCG and inhibin-A, she has an increased risk of having a baby with Down syndrome. The next step may be an ultrasound to confirm the baby's due date and to look for any obvious abnormalities. Unfortunately, ultrasound is not a very good test for detecting Down syndrome. For this reason, pregnant women are offered a follow-up test in order to get more information. This may be another screening test that looks at DNA from the fetus in a woman's blood, or amniocentesis so chromosome testing can be done on the fetal cells found in the amniotic fluid.
In general, remember that the multiple marker test is just a screen. It can identify many fetuses that are at risk for certain birth defects, but will not identify them all. A positive screen does not necessarily mean that there is a birth defect, but that there is a need for more evaluation.
If you have any questions or concerns about multiple marker testing, talk to your doctor or seek the advice of a genetic counselor.
Reviewed by: Larissa Hirsch, MD
Date reviewed: October 2013
|National Society of Genetic Counselors This organization represents the genetic counseling profession through research, advocacy, and education.|
|March of Dimes The March of Dimes seeks to prevent birth defects, infant mortality, low birthweight, and lack of prenatal care.|
|American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) This site offers information on numerous health issues. The women's health section includes readings on pregnancy, labor, delivery, postpartum care, breast health, menopause, contraception, and more.|
|Lab Tests Online This non-commercial site was developed by laboratory professionals to educate caregivers, patients, and patients' families about lab tests.|
|Pregnancy Precautions: FAQs Questions regarding what you can and can't do during pregnancy abound. Knowing what could truly be harmful to your baby versus what's no real cause for concern is key to keeping your sanity throughout the 40 weeks.|
|Spina Bifida Spina bifida is a birth defect that involves the incomplete development of the spinal cord or its coverings. It's usually detected before a baby is born and treated right away.|
|Birth Defects Birth defects are relatively common. Some are minor and cause no problems; others cause major disabilities. Learn about the different types of birth defects, and how to help prevent them.|
|A Guide for First-Time Parents If you're a first-time parent, put your fears aside and get the basics in this guide about burping, bathing, bonding, and other baby-care concerns.|
|Pregnancy & Newborn Center Advice and information for expectant and new parents.|
|Down Syndrome Down syndrome is a condition in which extra genetic material causes delays in the way a child develops, both physically and mentally.|
|What Is the Triple Screen Test? Find out what the experts have to say.|
|A Week-by-Week Pregnancy Calendar Pregnancy is an exciting time. Our week-by-week illustrated pregnancy calendar is a detailed guide to all the changes taking place in your baby - and in you!|
|Medical Care During Pregnancy The sooner in pregnancy good care begins, the better for the health of both moms and their babies. Here's what to expect.|
|FAQs: Prenatal Tests Find out what tests are available to keep you informed of your -- and your baby's -- health throughout pregnancy.|
What to expect when coming to Akron Children's
For healthcare providers and nurses
Residency & Fellowships, Medical Students, Nursing and Allied Health
For prospective employees and career-seekers
Our online community that provides inspirational stories and helpful information. | <urn:uuid:6ee8294e-ce1a-4ef2-878b-959f04a7728e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.akronchildrens.org/cms/kidshealth/db0aee92063ce0e5/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00118-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936763 | 1,164 | 2.84375 | 3 |
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|JFK Presidency||Political Assassinations||Catalog|
|NID Conferences||Video, Audio & Photos||Educational Links||Assassination Information|
|The JFK assassination and the study of history|
Why Study History?
People live in the present. They plan for and worry about the future. History, however, is the study of the past. Given all the demands that press in from living in the present and anticipating what is yet to come, why bother with what has been? Given all the desirable and available branches of knowledge, why insist—as most American educational programs do—on a good bit of history? And why urge many students to study even more history than they are required to?
History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. There are many ways to discuss the real functions of the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different paths to historical meaning. All definitions of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts.
History Helps Us Understand People and Societies
In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt.
An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human behavior. But even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act.
History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be
The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious study follows closely on the first. The past causes the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major development, but often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.
History Contributes to Moral Understanding
History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances can provide inspiration. "History teaching by example" is one phrase that describes this use of a study of the past—a study not only of certifiable heroes, the great men and women of history who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who provide lessons in courage, diligence, or constructive protest.
Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship
A study of history is essential for good citizenship. This is the most common justification for the place of history in school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely to promote national identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in individual success and morality. But the importance of history for citizenship goes beyond this narrow goal and can even challenge it at some points.
History that lays the foundation for genuine citizenship returns, in one sense, to the essential uses of the study of the past. History provides data about the emergence of national institutions, problems, and values—it's the only significant storehouse of such data available. It offers evidence also about how nations have interacted with other societies, providing international and comparative perspectives essential for responsible citizenship. Further, studying history helps us understand how recent, current, and prospective changes that affect the lives of citizens are emerging or may emerge and what causes are involved. More important, studying history encourages habits of mind that are vital for responsible public behavior, whether as a national or community leader, an informed voter, a petitioner, or a simple observer.
Historical study, in sum, is crucial to the promotion of that elusive creature, the well-informed citizen. It provides basic factual information about the background of our political institutions and about the values and problems that affect our social well-being.
Studying the JFK Assassination will assist in the development of
The Ability to Assess Evidence. The study of history builds experience in dealing with and assessing various kinds of evidence
The Ability to Assess Conflicting Interpretations. Learning history means gaining some skill in sorting through diverse, often conflicting interpretations.
Experience in Assessing Past Examples of Change. Experience in assessing past examples of change is vital to understanding change in society today—it's an essential skill in what we are regularly told is our "ever-changing world." Analysis of change means developing some capacity for determining the magnitude and significance of change, for some changes are more fundamental than others.
Our goal is to help one special student get to college, and one special teacher be recognized. We do this to encourage teacher and student participation in the further study of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Since 1995, JFK Lancer has donated hundreds of dollars' worth of research materials to students, teachers, schools and libraries. We are committed to the our goal of educating people by making research materials available for everyone.
It has been proven that more than 50% of what is learned results from what we see, not what we hear.
Utilize the events surrounding the JFK assassination to: | <urn:uuid:eb34d5f9-40d1-4271-b6c2-daecb044bd1c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://jfklancer.com/Education.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00098-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93195 | 1,234 | 3.046875 | 3 |
US researchers develop compound to reverse effects of fatty liver disease
December 20, 2012
Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed the first synthetic compound that can reverse the effects of a serious metabolic condition known as fatty liver disease. True to its name, the disease involves an abnormal buildup of fat in the liver.
The compound -- known as SR9238 -- is the first to effectively suppress lipid or fat production in the liver, eliminating inflammation and reversing fat accumulation in animal models of fatty liver disease. The new compound also significantly lowered total cholesterol levels, although precisely how that occurred remains something of a mystery.
To read full article, click here.
To learn more about fatty liver disease, click here. | <urn:uuid:2ab29a8d-c7a8-4545-bbe0-fb04416511c5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.liver.ca/newsroom/liver-in-the-news/Liver_in_the_news_treatment_for_FLD.aspx | 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 | 0.944911 | 152 | 2.921875 | 3 |
How to Get Rid of Ear Infection
An ear infection is commonly related to the infection in the middle ear. There are times that the middle ear is filled with mucus especially during cold season. Eventually, this mucus will cause infection due to viruses and bacteria. The signs and symptoms of ear infections include severe pain, feeling of discomfort inside the ear, pus excretion and temporary decreased hearing. Aside from the foul smell, having this problem causes shame and is very disturbing. The following are the best ways on how to get rid of ear infections:
Learn about misconceptions
Whenever there’s some nasty feeling in the ear, then you should clean your ear as soon as possible to avoid complications. Aside from your self-assessing hygiene in the ear, you should be aware that ears are sensitive. While cleaning, you might feel an itchy feeling which you treat as a need of more cleaning. Here comes the error where itchy ears due to cleaning means your ears are already irritated.
Learn how to clean the ears
Ears are naturally cleaning itself. Dirt comes out in the ear, in which if not helped to be removed for a long time, may cause infection. Using cotton buds is a good way to remove the dirt. But not knowing how to do the cleaning is a crucial matter. In cleaning your ears, make an outward direction of sweeping stroke. Do not push the buds into the ear; that will make the mucus enter the ear instead. A safer way to avoid this is to use the spoon. From the name itself, it has a head of that a miniature spoon, specialized to scoop the mucus out.
In order to relieve pain, warm heating pads should be place on ears to encourage the glands to produce additional wax that helps to relieved pain. The heat being produced will dilate the veins and capillaries around the ears which in turn, improve the blood flow allowing the white blood cells to reach the infected area and fight the ongoing infection.
Try garlic oil
Purchase garlic oil at a local supplement store such as GNC or even online. Place a capsule full in each ear and let it sit there for around 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes are up, clean them up. Only attempt this once to see if it helps the problem. Another alternative that may work as well is Tea Tree Oil. Place a couple drops in each ear and allow them to sit there for a few minutes.
Try over the counter medications
Medication such as Motrin or Aspirin may help ease the pain with an ear infection. While the infection may not go away, it’s a temporary solution to consider. If an infection tends to last more than 24 hours, it may be best to c0nsult with a doctor to discuss what kind of prescriptions that they can prescribe for you.
Ear infections occur if fluid is entrapped at the back of the eardrum. This is typically the effect of a cold, upper respiratory infection, or an allergic reaction. An ear infection can result to soreness, strain, fever, decreased hearing ability, ear rigidity, and in-ear puss discharges. Coping with an ear infection is no joke, so to avoid unwarranted distress, know ways to get rid of it.
Antibiotics are the most widespread cure to ear infections. Lately however, medical specialists’ apprehension regarding over dosage of antibiotics became more intense due to the fact that these drugs can result to bacteria which makes consumer defiant and make voids their effect. Hence physicians are also hesitant to recommend antibiotics for minor ear infections; they’d prefer to observe if the condition will get better by itself.
Learn about limitations
Refrain from activities that can cause damage to the ears during and after the duration of the treatment. Activities like scuba diving and swimming should be lessened or even avoided. | <urn:uuid:8d1cb6d3-c1e6-4ae0-8c7f-e13f3cdbef0a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mygetridofguide.com/get-rid-of-ear-infection/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398075.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00034-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950331 | 787 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Environmental Health - Toxic Substances
How Reliable are Chemical Property Data in the Literature?
A recent USGS report raises the question of whether scientists and managers can rely on the scientific literature for data on physical and chemical properties that describe how contaminants behave in the environment. Environmental regulations, ecosystem restoration activities, and hazardous waste clean-up actions depend on predicting the environmental fate and transport of contaminants. Scientists who make these predictions rely on the accuracy of physical and chemical property data in the literature, such as water solubility (SW) and octanol-water partition coefficient (KOW). Reduced confidence in the values of these physical and chemical properties casts doubt on the environmental predictions scientists make and the decisions based on them.
Two USGS scientists assessing sediments contaminated with DDT found to their surprise that the data on the physical and chemical properties of DDT were not as reliable as they first thought. After an extensive 2-year search of the literature involving over 700 references, they found errors in reporting data and references, and inadequate documentation of procedures used to measure coefficients. Their report, which has been downloaded over 8,000 times, has sparked a worldwide debate on the reliability of the physical and chemical property data (coefficients and other measurements) for many common environmental contaminants. One camp is of the opinion that it is an old problem and there are several workarounds, while the other camp feels that the poor quality of the data casts doubt on the validity of the science the workarounds are based on. Both camps agree that there is a need for higher quality data on the physical and chemical properties (coefficients, constants, and other measurements) that govern the fate of contaminants.
"The USGS claims are especially significant because of new U.S federal data quality guidelines issued by the White House Office of Management and Budget in January that establish new benchmarks for the scientific data used by federal agencies to craft regulations and policy. some observers suggest that the uncertainties uncovered by the USGS report may not withstand this unprecedented scrutiny."
Renner, Rebecca, 2002, The KOW Controversy: Environmental Science and Technology, v. 36, no. 21, pp. 411A-413A.
The concern over this issue is heightened by the Data Quality Act (Public Law 106-554, H.R. 5658, Section 515), which requires federal agencies to set guidelines that guarantee "the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information" they produce. The White House Office of Management and Budget has issued guidelines for federal agencies to develop to meet the standards of the act. Whatever the outcome of the debate, the USGS report and the new act have sparked a growing movement to create higher quality measurements of the properties, such as water solubility (SW) and octanol-water partition coefficient (KOW), that many environmental studies and policy decisions are based on.
Pontolillo, J., and Eganhouse, R.P., 2001, The search for reliable aqueous solubility (SW) and octanol-water partition coefficient (KOW) data for hydrophobic organic compounds--DDT and DDE as a case study : U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 01-4201, 51 p.
Related Science Features | <urn:uuid:3f8ee279-3d3a-4231-afd6-93fbba2720b3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/kow.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00184-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924821 | 667 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite
Launch Date: June 2018
Mission Project Home Page - http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.php
Program(s):Earth Systematic Missions
ICESat (Ice, Cloud,and land Elevation Satellite) is the benchmark Earth Observing System mission for measuring ice sheet mass balance, cloud and aerosol heights, as well as land topography and vegetation characteristics. The ICESat mission is providing multi-year elevation data needed to determine ice sheet mass balance as well as cloud property information, especially for stratospheric clouds which are common over polar areas. It will also provide topography and vegetation data around the globe, in addition to the polar-specific coverage over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
As envisioned by the Decadal Study, the ICESat-2 mission is to deploy an ICESat follow-on satellite to continue the assessment of polar ice changes. ICESat-2 is also expected to measure vegetation canopy heights, allowing estimates of biomass and carbon in above ground vegetation in conjunction with related missions, and allow measurements of solid earth properties. ICESat-2 is expected to launch in 2016. | <urn:uuid:505439e3-93f4-4dea-bc82-f1d043bf67c9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://science1.nasa.gov/missions/icesat-ii/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396875.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00121-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.8966 | 245 | 3.234375 | 3 |
|Fables and Fairy Tales||Stories Before 1850||Stories After 1850||Periodicals and Annuals||Religious Books, Bibles, Hymns, etc||Books of Instruction||Nursery Rhymes and Alphabets|
|Movable and Toy Books; Myths and Heroes||Poetry, Verse and Rhymes; Games||Games and Pastimes||Natural Science||Geography and Travel||History and Biography||Mathematics|
|Title:||The History of Sandford and Merton, Abridged from the Original. For the Amusement and Instruction of Juvenile Minds. Embellished with Elegant Plates|
|Publisher:||Darton, Harvey, and Darton, Gracechurch-Street|
|Pages:||1 vol., 107pp.|
|Size:||14 x 8.5 cm|
|Illustrations:||Frontispiece plus five engravings|
Images of all pages of this book
Sandford and Merton was published anonymously in three parts in 1783, 1786 and 1789. Almost immediately, Thomas Day (1748-1789) was recognised as the author, and, much to his surprise, the book went on to become his most famous work. It was perhaps the most famous children's book of its own day, and was still being read a century later.
Day had at first intended a work of this sort to serve as a contribution to a larger project planned by his friend Robert Lovell Edgeworth, perhaps something like Day's own Children's Miscellany of 1787 (0090). In the event, Sandford and Merton took on a life of its own, and swelled to volume-length, and then to three volumes when its popularity became clear. Similarly surprising to the author would have been what would become most celebrated about his work. As his preface to the full edition makes clear (not reproduced in the Hockliffe editions), Day originally thought of his book as a collection of separate stories bound together by a frame narrative of his own devising. The narrative, he hoped, would have the effect of making each story 'appear to rise naturally out of the subject', and would therefore make 'a greater impression' on 'the tender mind of a child' (6th 'corrected' edn., 1791, 1:vi). For Day, the narrative was to be subordinate to the individual inset stories and lessons - some moral tales, some lectures on anything from astronomy or zoology - which fill the book. What Sandford and Merton became known for, however, was this connecting narrative, the account of the friendship, and fallings out, of the two boys, Tommy Merton and Harry Sandford. Day drew their characters, and more especially their relationship, too well to allow the frame to remain as unobtrusive as that of, say, the Arabian Nights.
That readers soon came to value the frame narrative more than the inset tales is evident from the emphasis of the many abridgements produced in the half century or so after Sandford and Merton's first publication. As early as 1790, just a year after the appearance of volume three, the book was abridged by Richard Johnson who produced a version for Elizabeth Newbery to publish. Although only one of the Hockliffe editions of Sandford and Merton is advertised as being abridged, both in fact omit large sections of Day's original. The earlier edition, dated 1813 (0092), can be regarded as a 'traditional' abridgement of the full text. It condenses long passages, removes those sections on educational theory ('not one word of which any child will understand', as Day admitted in his preface) and omits several of the longer inset tales, but for the most part, it stays true to Day's overall plan. The abridger of the later edition in the Hockliffe Collection (0091) adopted a different approach. Here almost the entirety of volume one is retained, but in volume two, several passages are excised, some small and some large, and as for volume three, which was over 300 pages long in the full version, it has been condensed into just five and a half pages. Volume three of the original edition was dominated by three long inset narratives, with Tommy merely an auditor and Harry entirely absent, and this surely explains why it has been almost wholly excised. What has been cut from volume two - amongst much else, a long discourse on the use of telescopes, the natural history of the whale, a lecture on the use of levers, the story of Leonidas the Spartan - is similarly irrelevant to the story of the two protagonists, although it had surely been central to Day's design. Oddly, however, this digest of Day's original omits what was probably the most dramatic moment in the book - Harry's rescue of Tommy from an angry bull and his subsequent decision, in the very moment of his victory, to leave Tommy to his new, fashionable friends and to depart for home. (Had this been included, it would have fitted into 0091 at p.215, but it does appear in 0092 at pp.73-74.)
In these abridgements much of what was controversial about Day's text is also omitted, although this cannot be ascribed to deliberate censorship since such large chunks of the original text are missing. Out, for instance, go Mr. Barlow reflections on wealth:
the accumulation of riches .. can never increase, but by the increasing poverty and degradation of those whom Heaven has created equal; a thousand cottages are thrown down to afford space for a single palace. (6th 'corrected' edition, 1791, 1:36)
or, more concisely, 'the rich do nothing and produce nothing, and the poor everything that is really useful...' (6th 'corrected' edition, 1791, 3:91). And out, also, go those sections which Mary Wollstonecraft praised in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Most instructional writing, she lamented, 'which has hitherto been addressed to women, has rather been applicable to ladies', but from this general censure she specifically exempted 'the little indirect advice that is scattered through "Sandford and Merton"' (Wollstonecraft 1792: 81). Later she quoted the particular passages she meant, and it is easy to see just why they gained her approval. 'If women are in general feeble both in body and mind,' Day had written,
it arises less from nature than from education. We encourage a vicious indolence and inactivity, which we falsely call delicacy. Instead of hardening their minds by the severer principles of reason and philosophy, we breed them to useless arts, which terminate in vanity and sensuality. (Quoted in Wollstonecraft 1792: 126-127n.)
In fact, when Wollstonecraft first published her Vindication, it was not generally regarded as at all controversial (she only began to be demonised after her husband, William Godwin, published her Memoirs in 1798), and it would also be wrong to think of Sandford and Merton as adopting a radically feminist position. After all, as conservative a writer as Jane West would take a similar stance against female 'accomplishments' - dancing, playing the piano or harp, drawing, and so on - in her Sorrows of Selfishness (0140, see for example pp.32-33).
On the other hand, West or her ally Sarah Trimmer would surely have unleashed the full measure of their invective against Day for his thoughts on the wrongs of wealth had he published during the more politically fraught 1790s. In the age of the French Revolution and the anti-Jacobin response to it in Britain, Rousseau became a hate-figure. He was as much an enemy of the state, in the eyes of the conservative majority, as Robespierre or Marat, Paine or Godwin, or any of the Jacobins, French or British. Day (like Wollstonecraft) made no secret of his admiration of Rousseau, and his own well-known (and unsuccessful) attempt to take a young, uncorrupted girl from an orphanage and 'rear' her up as a perfect wife for himself testifies to his willingness to out-Rousseau Rousseau. The influence of Rousseau's mile is everywhere in Sandford and Merton. Harry is the personification of Rousseau's ideas. He abjures the decadence of modern life, as the reader sees when he is first taken to the Merton home. To the surprise of Tommy Merton and his parents, Harry is unimpressed, and even critical, of their luxuries, their fine food, their many possessions, preferring his own uncomplicated life of hard work, active virtue and simple pleasures. The narrative follows Tommy's conversion to these same values, the first step towards which is his return to the land, Harry and Mr. Barlow showing him how to work in the garden to produce what food he needs. Another indicator of the influence of Rousseau are the many Robinsonnades which are used as inset stories. Robinson Crusoe had been the one book recommended for mile, and no genre of stories better illustrates the pleasures of the simple, 'uncivilised' life (and for a discussion of Day's revision of a pseudo-Robinsonnade, 'The Gentleman and the Basket-Maker' (pp.17-23), for use as one of the inset stories in Sandford and Merton see the essay accompanying 0121).
Yet another hall-mark of Rousseau's influence is the absence of fairy tales from the inset narratives chosen by Day. In this contempt for the supernatural, Day would have found an ally in Sarah Trimmer, but she certainly would not have been able to stomach his Rousseau-inspired view of religion. Sandford and Merton is a religious book, but in a broad sense. Day wished to encourage an appreciation of the numinous, but even though his mentor-figure, Mr. Barlow, was a clergyman, he eschewed any discussion of theology or organised religion. Such writing for children may have been what West, Trimmer's lieutenant, had in mind when she wrote in her Sorrows of Selfishness (1802, rpt. 1812; 0140) that,
Every serious person must lament the striking alteration which has taken place in the fabrication of children's books within these few years; formerly the writers of these bagatelles remembered that they were addressing the offspring of christian parents. They frequently inforced their observations by quotations from scripture; they recommended a punctual performance of religious duties; and they reminded their young readers, that they were immortal beings. It is not from accident, but design, that these subjects are now avoided. Our nurseries are stored with very liberal publications, equally adapted to the instruction of Jews, Turks, Pagans, or infidels. No degree of cleverness in the composition, however superlative it may be, can atone for this insuperable contamination. (p.ix.n)
It seems likely that Day would have been proud of producing a book for children with such universal appeal. And in any case, in spite of West's admonitions, Day's deism did not hinder Sandford and Merton's success. It was still being read long after West, and even Trimmer, had been all but forgotten. It is ironic, though, that a text which in the era of its first publication was radical in so many ways, came to be regarded by the mid-nineteenth century as the embodiment of a conventional, priggish, overly-moral and obsolete form of children's literature.
The date of the later version of Sandford and Merton in the Hockliffe Collection is difficult to establish with certainty. The book was published by 'Darton and Co.' at 57 Holborn Hill, and it has been established that this imprint was being used at least from 1845 to 1847 (Brown 1982: 53). This loosely fits with the dates of publication of 'Peter Parley's Works', advertised in the book-list at the back of the volume, which were in print with Darton in the early 1840s. On the other hand, I have been able to find no record of those books advertised as 'now in the course of publication' on the final page of the book-list - 'Peter Parley's New Series' - until the early 1860s.
For a work which might perhaps have been written as a riposte to Sandford and Merton see 0208. For further discussion of Sandford and Merton see Darton 1983: 144-47; Rowland 1996: ch.14; and Jackson 1989: 157-59.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792; rpt. ed. Miriam Brody, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985
Wollstonecraft, Mary, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792; rpt. ed. Miriam Brody, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985
Brown, Philip A. H., London Publishers and Printers, c.1800-1870, London: British Library, 1982
Darton, F. G. Harvey, Children's Books in England: Five centuries of social life, Cambridge: CUP, 1932; third edition, revised by Brian Alderson, 1982
Rowland, Peter, The Life and Times of Thomas Day, 1748-1789. English Philanthropist and Author. Virtue Almost Personified, Studies in British History, Vol. 39, Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1996
Jackson, Mary V., Engines of Instruction. Mischief, and Magic: Children's Literature in England from Its Beginning to 1839, Lincoln, Neb., 1989 | <urn:uuid:bfc722b6-bb66-4f0d-bcca-9700e0091679> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hockliffe.dmu.ac.uk/items/0092.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00058-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967577 | 2,913 | 3.453125 | 3 |
A History & llustrated Gallery of The Much Loved & Collected Penny 1839 - 1901
Welcome to Victorian Penny.com
A History & Illustrated Gallery of The Much Loved & Collected Penny 1839 - 1901 & Victorian Commemorative Medals
In the Victorian age some of the world's most beautiful copper & bronze coins were struck for circulation in the United Kingdom & British empire, bearing portraits of Queen Victoria 1837 - 1901
On these pages you will find reference information on the Victorian Young Head Copper penny coinage (1839 - 1860), the 'Bun' Penny series (1860 1894) & The Veiled or Widow head issues (1895 - 1901
These large copper pennies were designed by William Wyon (1795-1851) & bear the engravers initials W.W. on truncation. On the Obverse Victoria's 'young head' surrounded by the Legend 'VICTORIA DEI GRATIA' The reverse depicts Britannia with shield & trident & the legend 'BRITANNIAR; REG: FID: + DEF: '
The young head penny was 34mm diamiter, YH 1ds were issued over a twenty one year period including 1839 (proofs only) & in total seventeen different dates occour.
The highest mintage was is 1854 when 6,720.000 were struck, but this is by far the highest & overall considerably lower mintages occour. In the final year (1860) just 32K were issued. In total over 21.23 million coins were issued. This compares to later post-victorian penny dates for example 1917 when 107.9m were issued. Experienced collectors will be aware that Numerous varieties occour in this series such as ornamental trident, spaced colon etc.
'Bronze 'Bun' Penny
In 1860 a new bronze penny (plus halfpenny & Farthing) coinage was introduced. This issue was of a much lighter type & of 31mm in diamiter.
Victoria was depicted by the Engraver Leonard Charles Wyon ( 1926 - 1891) in a laurete style & a bun hairstyle. This coin is therefore known as the 'Bun' penny. The obverse legend reads (latin) VICTORIA D: G: BRITT: REG: F: D:
The reverse again depicts Britannia with a lighthouse to the left & Sailing Ship to the Right. The date is below in exergue. The inscription reads 'ONE PENNY'
Numerous varieties occour such as the 1860 toothed or beaded border. An extreme rarity is the 1863 with die numbers below date, also 1882 without 'H' Mintmark. Heaton mint pennies exist for the years 1874, 1875, 1876, 1881 & 1882 (H below date) One of the most sought after dates is 1869 (although 1868 has a mintage of less than half of the 1869 figure)
Victoria Young Head Penny 1854
Better Grade example
Veiled or 'Widow' Head Penny
In 1895 the last series of the bronze penny, designed by Sir Thomas Brock 1847 - 1922 was introduced. By this time Victoria was in her seventy-sixth year & had been widowed for fifteen years, this final bronze coinage portrait is often referred to as the widow or also simply 'Old' head.
By and large the mintage figures tend to be higher for this series than the earlier 'Bun' pennies.
Some varieties occour & in total the series lasted for seven years, 1895 until 1901 when the great victorian age ended with the queen's death in january of that year.
Victoria 'Bun' Head Penny1862 A Brilliant Lustrous UNC example 1889
Victoria 'Veiled' or Widow Head Penny 1901 HIGH Grade Example
Thank you for visitingwww.victorianpenny.com
We hope you found this visit informative & interesting | <urn:uuid:4c1bc031-df8c-40c0-a67a-74ef7c714505> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.victorianpenny.com/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00060-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927014 | 825 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Photo credit: Lewis Katz Building, courtesy of the Penn State Law
Terms such as “sustainable,” “energy efficient” and “high performing” as used to describe the future of our nation’s built environment. If we erect a new skyscraper, it needs to be sustainable. If an existing structure is to be retrofitted, it needs to be energy efficient. If an edifice is to be considered high performing, it needs to meet resiliency standards to withstand a natural disaster.
Very likely you have seen any number of data charts with daunting statistics outlining amazing achievement or a grand result of this new and evolving infrastructure environment. To date, the public’s and policymakers’ interest in building statistics has been largely confined to numbers pertaining to real estate or the economy. In the future, however, the metrics of accessibility, safety, security, resilience, aesthetics and cost effectiveness will matter most, as the focus turns to how well “high-performing” buildings are actually performing.
What Makes a Building High Performing?
High performance in buildings goes beyond standards for energy consumption and water use. True high performance results from a range of transparent components that make the building efficient, sustainable and reliable, thus reducing its impact on the environment. While energy reduction, water recycling and disaster resiliency all play a role in a building’s efficiency and sustainability, the most high-performing and energy-efficient buildings take into consideration not only the structure and systems, but also the occupants and how the building is to be used.
Think about it. You can gather the best design professionals in the world, put them in a room, and have them create a cost-effective and energy-efficient college campus building. The entrance to the building could have a ramp, railings and lighting that would make it accessible for persons with disabilities. The doors could be made of fiberglass or wood-clad steel that are lightweight and provide greater thermal efficiency, thus reducing condensation while keeping heat inside during the winter and out during the summer. The windows’ glass could be coated with a layer of silver that would refract solar radiance while permitting enough visible light so as to eliminate the need for electric lighting during the day. On the roof there could be solar panels, windmills and rainwater recycling systems to reduce energy and water consumption.
By most standards, this building would be considered very sustainable and energy efficient. However, let’s suppose the design professionals that built this structure — a building purposed to sustain the daily activities of thousands of college students, faculty and staff — did not include an attractive and appealing cafeteria. Those thousands of students might then choose to drive off-campus to have a more congenial environment in which to interact during lunchtime. All the effort to maximize the energy-efficiency of the building would be compromised because the facility does not fully support the needs of the occupants.
How Can We Achieve High Performance in Buildings?
As this little example shows, meeting all the requirements of a high-performance building takes coordination and teamwork. Along with ensuring buildings become increasingly energy efficient and that they address issues of human health and productivity, the major stakeholders that make up the building industry need to work together in a more cohesive, integrated way. Various stakeholders have spent much effort and time on research and collecting data to inform solutions for tomorrow’s builders and designers. For the industry to succeed as a whole and achieve its long-term goals, however, all industry sectors, including trade associations, professional societies and manufacturing interests, need to cooperate with one another and work toward a common goal: the success of high-performance buildings.
To this end, the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) recently hosted the Building Innovation 2014 Conference & Expo. The Expo was an excellent opportunity for all building and design professionals to gather with manufacturers to discuss how each sector of the built environment can work together on high-performing and sustainable buildings. Topics and research ranging from sustainable design and low-vision accessibility for new buildings to innovative materials and products that will ensure a healthy indoor environment for occupants were shared and discussed among industry professionals.
In addition, the conference included a meeting of the High Performance Building Congressional Caucus Coalition (HPBCCC) where multiple stakeholders of the built environment gathered to discuss federal policy issues of mutual interest, around which there was much agreement . Unfortunately , what benefits one segment of the industry may be perceived as a detriment by another, and this has led to a failure to reach unanimity among design professionals, organizations and manufacturers. Without total collaboration, it is less likely legislators will support the public policy being developed by various industry professionals represented by the HPBCCC. For its part, the American Society of Interior Designer’s Government and Public Affairs team will continue to participate as a voting member of the policy committee to ensure that the design industry and policymakers recognize our national legislative strategies and, of course, that proposed policies benefit the general public.
For more information on ASID GPA initiatives and how you can be involved email email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:74ccaf2f-59a8-4ae6-83dc-eacd9b78ec6b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://icon.asid.org/index.php/2014/05/09/uniting-to-achieve-high-performance-buildings/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00182-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957525 | 1,037 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Lloyd Wright (1890-1978) was the eldest son of Frank Lloyd Wright. He trained as a draftsman/delineator in his father's Oak
Park Studio, and studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin (1908-09). He was a landscape architect for various Los
Angeles projects (1922-24), provided the shells for the Hollywood Bowl (1924-25 and 1928), and produced the Swedenborg Memorial
Chapel (or Wayfarer's Chapel) at Palos Verdes, California (1946-71). The collection consists of Wright's original drawings,
renderings, blueprints, photographs, models and office files. Many of the photographs in the collection are by Will Connell.
Lloyd Wright, eldest son of Frank Lloyd Wright, was born in 1890; trained as a draftsman/delineator in his father's Oak Park
Studio; studied engineering, University of Wisconsin, 1908-09; joined Olmsted and Olmsted in Boston, Massachusetts; sent to
San Diego, California, to work on Panama California Exposition, 1911; worked for Irving J. Gill; formed landscape architectural
practice with Paul Thiene and continued professional activities as landscape architect through the 1920s; worked with father,
Frank Lloyd Wright, on Hollyhock House and other Los Angeles projects, 1922-24; produced project for multilayered civic center,
Los Angeles, 1925; provided the shells for the Hollywood Bowl, 1924-25 and 1928; much of his work from 1930s through post-World
War II dealt with variations of California ranch houses; produced Swedenborg Memorial Chapel (or Wayfarer's Chapel) at Palos
Verdes, California, 1946-71; died in 1978.
83.0 linear ft.
(42 boxes, 62 cartons, and 375 oversize folders)
Papers cannot be published without permission of Eric Lloyd Wright.
COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF: Open for research. Advance notice required for access. Contact the UCLA Library Special
Collections Reference Desk for paging information. | <urn:uuid:056f99f2-463a-47cb-b5f2-873e97f6e224> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf0290036p/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00110-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932918 | 440 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Paha Sapa [the Black Hills]
This was passed on by Chief Joe Chasing Horse, a relative of the great Lakota warrior Crazy Horse. He translated it from the words of a grandmother who was present when the words were spoken.
This is a statement of Crazy Horse as he sat smoking the Sacred Pipe at Paha Sapa with Sitting Bull for the last time, 4 days before he was assassinated.
Many of these words are often repeated, but there is one line often left out, that of the “young white ones.”
I post this in honor of my Native American elders, including Grandfather Wallace Black Elk, Bear Heart and Sun Bear, who had the courage to fulfill this prophecy by passing on such beautiful Native teachings to the “young white ones” who came to them for help.
Thanksgiving prayers are common to most religious groups. Native Americans had entire ceremonies just for the purpose of expressing thanks – sometimes they lasted for days.
This Thanksgiving Prayer comes from the Seneca Nation and is at least 500 years old.
It is traditionally done around a fire, with spiritual food on the altar. I have adapted it to be used as a Thanksgiving Prayer on our national holiday:
Thanksgiving Prayer from the Seneca Nation
And now we are gathered together to remember the Great Mystery’s first instruction to us: to love one another always, we who move about on this earth.
And the Great Mystery said that when even two people meet, they should first greet each other by saying: “Nyah Weh Skenno” which translates to “thank you for being” and then they may take up the matter with which they are concerned.
[Nyah Weh Skenno more literally means: “thank you for being alive in the here and now and not adding to the confusion of the world.”]
“The magic of family meal time comes not from the food on the plate but from who’s at the table and what’s happening there. The emotional and social benefits that come from family dinners are priceless,” said Elizabeth Planet, CASA’s Vice President and Director of Special Projects.
Christmas and Thanksgiving have always been my favorite times of the year: time with family and joyous celebrations. From my 20s on, I lived in California and my family was on the East Coast so I chose Christmas as the time to go East to visit, and spent Thanksgiving with friends in California.
It was always a great day, but there was one very interesting phenomenon that happened most years: everyone was very attached to having dishes from their childhood Thanksgivings. That meant we often ended up with multiple duplicate dishes, just made with different recipes.
I recall a Thanksgiving dinner for 8 that had two large turkeys, four different bowls of cranberries and an assortment of other dishes that could have fed 40. I knew at the time it was because each of us wanted to recapture the magic of our childhood Thanksgiving, but only recently did I start to give it more serious thought.
To me, Veterans Day, celebrated this Monday November 12, just isn’t enough to honor what our veterans have done for this country.
Although I am a pacifist, and was an active anti-war activist during the Vietnam War, I was ashamed of the way our veterans were treated when they returned home.
And I am still deeply saddened by the lack of support and care our veterans receive today.
Yes, war is horrendous, and perhaps if women were running the world there wouldn’t be any wars. But those who did their duty and fought for us deserve better than one day to celebrate them.
THE CURRENT CRISIS IN OUR MILITARY CARE | <urn:uuid:893ee1ee-f59e-44ba-b925-291ef057f97c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mollylarkin.com/2012/11/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396875.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00182-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978654 | 776 | 2.75 | 3 |
Novel route for fabricating nanowire transistors
Field effect transistors (FETs) are switches that form the basis for electronics all around us - from high performance computers to mobile devices. A field effect transistor is like a tap, or a valve, where the turning of the tap knob controls the flow of water. In the case of transistor the gate electrode is the knob that modifies the flow of electrons between two terminals called the source and the drain. In order to make faster transistors that operate at high frequencies one has to make them really small, and also be able to rapidly turn off and on the flow of electric current which requires an efficient gate electrode. Such devices are fabricated from tiny semiconductor nanowires, 1000 times narrower than a human hair, and need to have gate electrodes with a high capacitive coupling to the semiconducting channel that connects the source and the drain electrodes. These devices are important not only from technological standpoint of future devices but are also interesting as they provide a unique platform to study the nature of the quantum mechanical behaviour of electrons flowing in a nanowire.
At TIFR, a team of researchers has shown that this efficient gate for a nanowire can be fabricated rather simply using technology that is compatible with today's fabrication technology. This technique can have a significant impact on how the transistors will be fabricated in the future. This work is the result of a close collaboration between two groups with expertise in "Nanoelectronics" and "semiconductor optoelectronics" . The article reporting this work was featured on the cover of the journal "Applied Physics Letters" and also featured in 12th January 2012 issue of "Nature" .
For further details about this work, please email Mandar Deshmukh (firstname.lastname@example.org) or Arnab Bhattacharya (email@example.com). | <urn:uuid:968ea35b-0194-43be-9774-8cea5a094bf7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.tifr.res.in/TIFR_Science_News/faq.php?telid=24 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00058-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932683 | 394 | 3.609375 | 4 |
The Theme of Structure and Function in Animal Nutrition and Digestion
Variation on a Theme
We learned all about the amazing nephrons in the vertebrate kidney, but what happens in the invertebrates? These guys don't have kidneys or nephrons, but they still need to regulate how much water they keep and how much waste they get rid of. Each animal's body has to have some sort of mechanism to take in or expel water, and keep things balanced.
Since many invertebrates are more primitive, understanding how these animals regulate ion concentrations, conserve water, and excrete wastes gives us a unique glimpse into the evolutionary processes underlying osmoregulation and vertebrate kidney function.
If you are a freshwater sponge (and perhaps live in a pineapple under the sea), you'll use contractile vacuoles for osmoregulation. These are little pouches that gather water from inside the cell depending on its osmotic state, and then contract to push water out of the cell. The speed that the water fills the vacuoles and get expelled changes. Since they physically move water from one place to another, contractile vacuoles also regulate cellular volume.
If you happen to be a flatworm, things are a bit different. You'll probably use a type of nephridial organ. Since the word nephridial shares a root with nephron, it basically means that the nephridial organ functions sort of like a nephron. Genius, we know. This nephridial organ is a super basic nephron with dead-end tubules. At the dead ends are terminal cells, and within the terminal are cilia (picture hair blowing in the wind) whose movement encourages wastes to leave the animal and enter the tubule. Other small molecules can filter into the tubule too, but bigger stuff stays put. This waste-laden solute then passes through the nephridial organ and exits through a pore on the animal's surface. It's sort of like they are sweating urine. How's that for a mental image?
Mollusks have a similar, albeit more developed, osmoregulating system. These animals have longer tubules that are open at both ends and allow for a decent amount of reabsorption of nutrients back into the blood. There's even an area for fluid storage (which is similar to our bladders).
Crustaceans, like lobsters and crabs, use a totally awesome excretory system called antennal glands. Yep, their excretory system actually uses their antennae! At the base of an antenna is a gland that has an end sac, a bladder, a twisting tubule, and an excretory pore. When water and other ions enter the antennae, they end up interfacing with blood vessels (imagine a vertebrate glomerulus), wastes get secreted, and important ions get reabsorbed back into the blood. This coiled excretory tubule ends with a pore at the base of the antennae, where water and waste are removed. For those keeping score at home, we've now discussed creatures that basically sweat urine, and ones that expel waste from the front of their face. Be glad to be a human.
Since grasshoppers and other insects are more developed creatures, their excretory and osmoregulating systems look relatively similar to ours. They use malpighian tubules, a mess of twists and turns that are somewhat permeable to ions, water, and waste. Once these tubules connect to the midgut and hindgut, a lot of the filtrate gets reabsorbed back into the blood, and urine becomes concentrated since water conservation is a must. Their solid urine then "flows" out of a rectum-like organ.
We've just discussed a bunch of different ways for living creatures to get their waste out of their bodies, but comparing them, the basic fundamental principle is the same. Gather up the waste and water that's gone through the system, recover whatever salvageable water or ions there are, and get the rest of it out of there. | <urn:uuid:e435d83c-9944-45bd-bfd8-c0acfb2dd052> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.shmoop.com/animal-digestion/structure-function.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00175-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938176 | 856 | 3.796875 | 4 |
Stargazing: When is a Constellation Not a Constellation?
Every culture in the world has its own myths and legends and had different ways of joining up the stars into patterns. The ancient Greek constellation names were passed on only by historical accident, and it’s these names that are the formally recognised astronomical constellations.
Chinese astronomy has 31 constellations (called enclosures), while the Native Americans also drew patterns in the stars, as did Australian Aborigines, the ancient Egyptians and cultures the world over.
In 1922, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) formally defined 88 constellations and their boundaries, and stargazers around the world use these constellations. Having a defined set of constellations helps prevent possible confusion when astronomers in one part of the world refer to a constellation as looking like a queen while others see that group of stars looking like a camel!
But when is a constellation not a constellation? Quite a few famous patterns in the sky aren’t one of the 88 constellations, including the:
Big Dipper (aka Plough)
Stargazers call these nonconstellation patterns asterisms, and they shouldn’t be confused with the official constellation patterns.
The Big Dipper is one of the most famous asterisms in the sky – so famous, in fact, that most people think it’s a constellation in its own right. Actually, the Big Dipper is only part of a bigger constellation, Ursa Major, the Great Bear, shown in the figure.
The table lists some of the more famous asterisms and the constellations that you can find them in.
|Big Dipper||Ursa Major|
|Little Dipper||Ursa Minor|
|Summer Triangle||Made up of the three brightest stars in the constellations Cygnus, Lyra and Aquila|
|False Cross||Made up of two stars in Vela and two in Carina| | <urn:uuid:b01744f9-e8f4-4a05-ba2c-83e1ac5345ac> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/stargazing-when-is-a-constellation-not-a-constella.navId-817342.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00148-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.896783 | 412 | 3.421875 | 3 |
The failure of General Lee to find supplies at Amelia Courthouse, when the Army of Northern Virginia arrived there on the morning of April 4, 1865, gave rise to various rumors.
Writing in 1866, James D. McCabe, Jr.,1 charged specifically that "the trains which had been sent from Danville [to Lee at Amelia] had been ordered to Richmond to help carry off the government property, and that, through the inexcusable blundering of the Richmond authorities, the cars had been sent on to the Capital without unloading at the stores at Amelia Courthouse." Fitz Lee2 quoted but did not altogether credit a report, of unstated origin, that "on that famous Sunday a train load of supplies arrived at Amelia Courthouse from Danville, but the officer in charge was met there by an order to bring the train to Richmond because the cars were needed for the transportation of the personal property of the Confederate authorities."
No foundation exists for that part of these stories alleging that supply trains were run past Amelia Courthouse after orders had been received to accumulate supplies there. Mr. Davis, however, thought it necessary, in his own defense, to show that his administration had not been guilty of neglect in failing to set up a depot at Amelia. In 3 S. H. S. P., 97 ff., he caused to be published a series of letters from p510 General St. John and other officers denying that Lee had requested them to send supplies to Amelia Courthouse. These letters are convincing proof that no specific directions naming the village had ever been received.
On the other hand, in his final report General Lee stated: "Not finding the supplies ordered to be placed there [i.e., at Amelia] twenty-four hours were lost," etc. In his appeal to the Amelia farmers,3 he said he was expecting to find at Amelia "plenty of provisions, which had been ordered to be placed here by the railroad several days since. . . ."
There is, then, no doubt that Lee thought supplies had been ordered to Amelia, and no doubt that the commissary bureau received no direct instruction to place food and provender at that point. Was Lee mistaken, or were his orders misunderstood? There are no letters in the Official Records showing that General Lee requested prior to April 2 that supplies should be collected at Amelia Courthouse. Colonel W. H. Taylor is authority for saying that no such orders were sent from General Headquarters.4 Whatever was done, then, in this particular, was done on April 2. Lee's first dispatch that day to the Secretary of War was received at 10:40 A.M. In it Lee said that he would withdraw to the north side of the Appomattox that night and could concentrate "near the Danville Railroad." He did not mention Amelia. "I advise," he said, "that all preparation be made for leaving Richmond tonight."5 It can hardly be claimed that this was notice to the War Department to accumulate supplies on the Richmond and Danville Railroad, certainly not at Amelia. After the contents of this telegram had become known in Richmond, General St. John telegraphed Lee's chief commissary, Colonel R. G. Cole, asking what should be the destination of the reserve rations then in Richmond.6 The message, of course, should have been delivered and answered at once; but it is a matter of record that the telegraph station at Edge Hill had then been abandoned,7 and it probably was some time before a field station was opened elsewhere. Late in the day Lee telegraphed the Secretary of War that he would proceed to abandon his position that night. "I have given all the orders to officers on both sides the river. . . . Please give all orders that you find necessary in and about Richmond. The troops will all be directed to Amelia Courthouse."8 This, needless to say, was indirect notice to the Secretary of War to provide supplies at Amelia. But this message, whenever sent, was not p511 received until 7 P.M.9 Meantime, St. John had received no answer to his message to Cole. Not "until night" did it arrive. It read: "Send up the Danville Railroad if Richmond is not safe."10 This language was, in itself, evidence of a long delay in transmission, for if Cole had written late in the day he would have known that Richmond was not safe.
Colonel Taylor may now be cited as a witness. In 1906 Captain W. Gordon McCabe wrote him for information regarding this incident. On December 9 Colonel Taylor replied as follows:
"I . . . will gladly do what I can in giving an answer to your inquiry 'whether (and where) there is extant the order of General Lee touching the collection of supplies for the Army of Northern Virginia at Amelia Court House in early April 1865.'
"I cannot say that any specific, written order for the collection of supplies at Amelia Court House is extant; nor do I assert that any such order was ever written.
"The presentation of the matter given in Mr. Davis's account would impress one with the idea that the several reports quoted were made in refutation of a charge that sometime previous to the 2nd April 1865, General Lee had given orders for the collection of supplies at Amelia Court House. I am sure that no such order was ever issued, but that is not the real question.
"On the second of April, however, a crisis in our affairs was reached. An emergency, not unexpected, compelled the immediate evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond and the retirement to the interior of General Lee's army.
"At that time large collections of supplies were at Richmond, Danville, Lynchburg and other points on the railroads, from which General Lee's army was supplied daily.
"When General Lee confronted the inevitable and notified the authorities at Richmond on April 2nd that he would have to evacuate his lines that night, he said in his telegram to the Secretary of War, 'Please give all orders that you find necessary in and about Richmond. The troops will all be directed to Amelia Court House.'
"What more did the War Department require in the matter of notice that rations would be required at Amelia Court House? The army was being supplied from day to day; in leaving its lines, it would for some days be necessarily cut off from the railroad; but its objective point on the railroad would be Amelia Court House; in the meantime p512 opportunity was given the Department to send supplies to that point.
"Was it necessary for General Lee to say specifically 'Have bread and meat ready for the troops on their arrival at Amelia Court House'? To the intelligent officers directing the operations of the Commissary Department was not the necessity for providing supplies for the troops at Amelia Court House apparent, when the Department was informed that that would be General Lee's objective point?
"Moreover, I am sure that General Lee gave verbal orders to the Chief Commissary and Chief Quarter-master of his army concerning supplies to the troops; and while I cannot say that each communicated with the head of his department at Richmond, yet, such is the estimate that I place upon their intelligence and efficiency, I am quite sure they must have done so.
"Of one thing I can speak positively and that is that General Lee thought that he had given all the orders necessary and expected to find supplies at Amelia Court House."
In quoting the request to Secretary Breckinridge to "give all orders that you find necessary in and around Richmond" Colonel Taylor evidently overlooked the hour of the receipt of the dispatch. He knew that orders — adequate in his opinion — had been given earlier in the day; it did not occur to him that their receipt had been delayed.
As Lee and Taylor, then, were both confident that the necessary orders had been issued, and as the internal evidence in Cole's despatch points to the fact that it was written hours before it was received, the conclusion is inescapable that there was a long delay on April 2 in forwarding some of the many telegraphic orders that must have been despatched. To that delay is doubtless due the misunderstanding and the apparent conflict of testimony. The commissary bureau, receiving no order, did not requisition the quartermaster-general for cars. Consequently, when the President asked for transportation for himself, his cabinet, the most indispensable records, and the government's bullion, he was told that it was available. When the despatch from Cole was at hand it was too late. St. John subsequently reported to Lee, "The transportation upon [the Richmond and Danville] road having been taken up by the treasury department and the personnel of the Confederate government officers. . . ."11 Had Cole's answer come explicitly and earlier in the day the cars would have been used for food, of course, and the supplies could have been sent easily and in p513 reasonable abundance, for, it will be recalled, there were 350,000 rations of bread and meat in the capital.12 If Lee's telegram had been received prior to 7 P.M., it, too, might have served every purpose. As it was, on a delay of a few hours in transmitting a message the immediate fate of the army may have hung.
1 Op. cit., 617.
2 Op. cit., 383‑84.
6 St. John's report, Lee MSS. — L.
9 It is marked "Received 7 o'clock," but the reference to the issuance of orders makes it clear that this was post meridian, as orders had not been given before 7 A.M.
10 St. John's report, Lee MSS. — L.
11 St. John's report, Lee MSS. — L.
12 St. John's report, Lee MSS. — L. As it was, St. John requisitioned all the wheeled transportation left in Richmond, loaded the wagons with food, and sent them after Lee.
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Robert E. Lee
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Page updated: 26 Jan 15 | <urn:uuid:e9b3b75f-ce77-4cff-9afc-342acca56abb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/People/Robert_E_Lee/FREREL/4/Appendices/2*.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00103-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983988 | 2,165 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Alternate name: Western Bird's-foot Trefoil
Family: Fabaceae, Pea view all from this family
Description Many flexible green branches arising from a woody base have flimsy, widely spaced leaves and abundant yellow flower clusters.
Habit: native perennial subshrub; sometimes prostrate.
Height: to 3 ft (1 m).
Leaf: alternate, soft, pinnately compound; 3 leaflets (rarely 4-6), elliptic, 0.25-0.6 in (6-15 mm) long.
Flower: yellow, sometimes red-splotched, fading to red or orange, pea-like, 0.25-0.6 in (6-15 mm) long; in cluster of 1-7 flowerheads, from leaf axil.
Fruit: curved pod, long-beaked, sometimes mottled, to 0.6 in (1.5 cm).
Flower March to August.
Habitat Fire-damaged sites, dry brushy slopes, coastal sage scrub, desert
scrub, washes, coastal bluffs, coastal dunes, roadsides; also cultivated for erosion control, landscape restoration, and as an ornamental.
Range Most of California and Arizona, into northern Baja California.
Discussion Also called common deerweed, California broom. The latin name Syrmatium glabrum is also used. Two varieties are proposed.
This is one of the many species of flowering plants that thrive after fire has ravaged chaparral-covered slopes. It vigorously persists for several years, although it is choked out of most areas by the thick brush that eventually returns. By taking advantage of the open habitat and quickly covering exposed slopes, it helps reduce erosion, which would be far greater if the soil depended for cover on the slower-growing brush. Like most other members of the Pea Family, it has the capacity to enrich the soil with nitrogen. | <urn:uuid:1fc4b05a-9e52-4ab0-b81c-fa8ca3705d37> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?shapeID=1132&curGroupID=11&lgfromWhere=&viewType=&curPageNum=35 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00197-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920757 | 406 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Hey, Calories = Fat. GI? I would say more related to blood sugar level and carbohydrates than calories. Just some ideas to share with you on GI/ GL.
GI, Glycemic Index, refers to the measurement of the effect of carbohydrate-rich food on the rises of blood sugar level over hours after consumption (which means to measure the rates of rising blood sugar level over 2 -3 hours after eating certain carb-rich food).
High GI food does not mean high calories, but excessive daily intake of high GI food will lead to increases of blood sugar level, and thus, affects our health which leads to high risk of some cardiovascular disease, fatty liver, and might lead to weight gain (as extra energy from extra glucose is a lot available to be used, so our body will conserve those calories (fat) instead, and hence, contributes to weight gain).
Range of GI in food:
Low GI refers to less than 55. Examples of food: Beans, apple, orange, milk, oatmeal porridge, and bran.
Intermediate GI refers to 55 to 70. Example of food: Sugar, orange juice, and wholemeal bread.
High GI refers to more than 70. Examples of food: Potato, biscuit, cake, white bread and white rice, cornflakes and Honeystars.
As mentioned earlier, excessive intake of high GI food will leads to health issues. It is, however, not all true. GL, Glycemic Load, which refers to how rapidly a carbohydrate can be converted into blood glucose, plays apart, to a certain extent. GI together with GL gives a clearer picture to explaining GI values in food. GL is normally referred as the concept of GI x the available carbohydrate of the food. It does not tell how much of carbohydrate it has in a particular food. So, we need both GI and GL, to understand the effect of a food on our blood sugar. That’s where GL is placed into the picture. Low GI is always has low GL, but not the other way round. High GL can range from very low to very high GI. An example, the carbohydrate in a glass of orange juice has high GI, but the carbohydrate isn’t a lot in it, so it has relatively low GL (and low calories).
Intake of food with high GI with low GL (e.g. watermelon) in large amount = intake of food with high GI and high LG in minimal amount (e.g. Potato), will give about the same level of blood glucose. Therefore, it’s best to take into consideration of both GI and GL.
Range of GL in food:
Low GL of a food refers to less than 10
Medium GL of a food refers to 11- 19
High GL of a food refers more than 20
Eating no more than 50 – 80 GL a day is considered as moderate. If you are a dieter, eat no more than 40 GL if you want to lose weight. Low Glycemic diet is basically a healthy diet. Gives dieter, diabetes and even children a low glycemic meal starting from breakfast is always more beneficial.
Remember also, ingestion of balance food range is always the most beneficial to our health.
Click here for a list of food examples on GI/GL and Calorie range!
*List of Food on different GI/ GL/ Calorie Range | <urn:uuid:bf3fe676-70e3-4f1e-bea2-a7913b9cb786> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mywoklife.com/2008/06/diet-on-low-calories-low-gi-or-low-gl.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00169-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934658 | 696 | 3.0625 | 3 |
A language of India
ISO 639-3: pgg
||Himachal Pradesh, Chamba District, Pangi Tahsil, Lahul-Spiti District, Udaipur down the Chenab (Chandra-Bhaga) River to Chamba border at Purthi. Possibly from Tandi to Sach Pass.
||Pahari, Pangi, Pangwali Pahari
||64% inherent intelligibility with Mandeali [mjl], 52% with Kangri [xnr], 44% with Chambeali [cdh], 50% with Bhadrawahi [bhd]; some dialect variation throughout the valley in Chamba District; Purthi reportedly most divergent. Lexical similarity: 55% with Hindi, 77% with Kullu Pahari [kfx]; 45% with Bhadrawahi.
||Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan, Northern zone, Western Pahari
||Vigorous. Home, village, religion. Positive attitude. Some also use Hindi; a few use English.
||Literacy rate in L2: 9% men, 1% women. In 1981, 9% of the men had a 5th grade education, 1% of the women; 3% of the men had an 8th grade education, fewer than 1% of the women. Poetry. Radio programs.
||Speakers are called ‘Pangwala’ or ‘Pangi’. A Scheduled Tribe. Agriculturalists: wheat, barley, maize, ragi, millet, potatoes, pulses; animal husbandry: cattle, yak, sheep, goats. Hindu. | <urn:uuid:607434d5-dbfa-4761-b403-295ec79614ba> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://archive.ethnologue.com/16/show_language.asp?code=pgg | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393442.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.845607 | 357 | 3.03125 | 3 |
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Significance and Use
This test method is primarily comparative. However, it does have application as a discriminator in determining variations in adherend surface preparation parameters and adhesive environmental durability. The test method has found applications in controlling surface preparations, primer, and adhesive systems for determining strength properties of tested systems.
The misuse of strength values obtained from this test method as design-allowable stress values for structural joints could lead to product failure, property damage, and human injury. The apparent shear strength of an adhesive obtained from a given small single-lap specimen may differ from that obtained from a joint made with different adherends or by a different bonding process. The normal variation of temperature and moisture in the service environment causes the adherends and the adhesive to swell or shrink. The adherends and adhesive are likely to have different thermal and moisture coefficients of expansion.
Even in small specimens, short-term environmental changes may induce internal stresses or chemical changes in the adhesive that permanently affect the apparent strength and other mechanical properties of the adhesive. The problem of predicting joint behavior in a changing environment is even more difficult if a different type of adherend is used in a larger structural joint than was used in the small specimen.
The apparent shear strength measured with a single-lap specimen is not suitable for determining design-allowable stresses for designing structural joints that differ in any manner from the joints tested without thorough analysis and understanding of the joint and adhesive behaviors.
Single-lap tests may be used for comparing and selecting adhesives or bonding processes for susceptibility to fatigue and environmental changes, but such comparisons must be made with great caution since different adhesives may respond differently in different joints. See Guide D4896 for further discussion of the concepts relative to interpretation of adhesive-bonded single-lap-joints.
1.1 This test method covers the determination of the apparent shear strengths of adhesives for bonding metals when tested on a standard single-lap-joint specimen and under specified conditions of preparation and test.
1.2 The values stated in SI units are considered to be the standard. The values given in parentheses are for information only.
1.3 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety and health practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use.
2. Referenced Documents (purchase separately) The documents listed below are referenced within the subject standard but are not provided as part of the standard.
A109/A109M Specification for Steel, Strip, Carbon (0.25 Maximum Percent), Cold-Rolled
A167 Specification for Stainless and Heat-Resisting Chromium-Nickel Steel Plate, Sheet, and Strip
B36/B36M Specification for Brass Plate, Sheet, Strip, And Rolled Bar
B152/B152M Specification for Copper Sheet, Strip, Plate, and Rolled Bar
B209 Specification for Aluminum and Aluminum-Alloy Sheet and Plate
B265 Specification for Titanium and Titanium Alloy Strip, Sheet, and Plate
D907 Terminology of Adhesives
D4896 Guide for Use of Adhesive-Bonded Single Lap-Joint Specimen Test Results
E4 Practices for Force Verification of Testing Machines
E177 Practice for Use of the Terms Precision and Bias in ASTM Test Methods
E691 Practice for Conducting an Interlaboratory Study to Determine the Precision of a Test Method
ICS Number Code 83.180 (Adhesives)
UNSPSC Code 31201601(Chemical adhesives); 41113046(Adhesion tester)
|Link to Active (This link will always route to the current Active version of the standard.)|
ASTM D1002-10, Standard Test Method for Apparent Shear Strength of Single-Lap-Joint Adhesively Bonded Metal Specimens by Tension Loading (Metal-to-Metal), ASTM International, West Conshohocken, PA, 2010, www.astm.orgBack to Top | <urn:uuid:02c9e2f5-1c84-4711-bb13-2240be5c4df5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.astm.org/Standards/D1002.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00077-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.863563 | 934 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Guest Author - Connie Krochmal
In a nutshell, indoor cactus or succulents need the correct amounts of water, light, and fertilizer with appropriate soil mix and temperatures.
However, the specific needs can vary from one species or kind to another.
You really do need to have some kind of idea what kind of plant you are dealing with. Often, gardeners are given cuttings, offsets, or even entire plants from someone else without being told what kind of plant it is or what sort of care it requires. Personally, I find this very unhelpful, and encourage recipients to quiz the donor in order to get more details.
As a general rule, most indoor succulents as well as desert cactus will do well with full sun. The exceptions are obviously the jungle cactus species, which includes orchid cactus and other epiphytic species. These need partial shade as full sun is burning. In addition, there are just a few succulents that can do with less sun than the others with the gasterias being an example.
So far as water is concerned, the desert cacti and most succulents like to be kept on the dry side, particularly during their rest period. However, again jungle species are the exception as they originated in moist conditions.
Regarding potting soil, it is generally true that desert cacti and most succulents need a very well drained, porous, quick draining soil. For the most part, a lean soil that is low in organic matter is fine. On the other hand, the jungle cacti prefer a more humusy rich soil mix.
With the nutrient or fertilizer needs, there are similar differences for the desert and jungle types. The jungle cacti need the most fertilizer of all, but they will still need less than most other indoor plants. Use only about ľth the strength listed on the label for the jungle species about every two weeks during the time when they are actively growing. For the desert species, donít apply quite as often. For both types, a tomato-type fertilizer is excellent as these tend to be high in potassium but low in nitrogen. Nitrogen promotes lush green growth, which you donít want in cacti or succulents. Phosphorus will be the middle number on the label, such as 15-30-15.
For desert cacti and other succulents, apply the same type of fertilizer at ľ the strength less often, about every three weeks or so during the plantís growing season.
The temperature needs vary, depending on the time of year. Most will need a slightly lower temperature during their resting period. For plants that are native to the New World, this will be the winter months. For those species from other areas of the globe, this can differ. | <urn:uuid:3030170d-08ca-4d28-9a3f-324b97eee096> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art49655.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00091-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950484 | 583 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Arbitration, Mediation, and Conciliation - Jay's treaty and the treaty of ghent
The United States and Great Britain for the first time agreed to use arbitration in their relations with each other when they concluded their first commercial treaty, usually called Jay's Treaty, in 1794. That treaty provided for three joint commissions to deal with disputes over boundaries, compensation due British creditors for obligations incurred by Americans before the Revolution, and questions arising from Britain's treatment of American shipping in the war with revolutionary France then in progress. The commission for maritime matters decided several questions, and the boundary commission also attained some success. It identified the Schoodiac River as the St. Croix, the river which was supposed to be part of the boundary between Maine and British territory according to the treaty of independence. But the debt commission broke up in an angry exchange, and it was necessary for the two governments to resume negotiations. According to a treaty concluded in 1802, the United States paid Britain a lump sum and the controversy came to an end.
The Treaty of Ghent, signed 24 December 1814, like Jay's Treaty, provided for three joint commissions. Only one commission completed its assignment—determination of the ownership of islands in the Passamaquoddy Bay. One commission tried to determine boundaries between British territory and the United States from the St. Lawrence River to the Lake of the Woods; it agreed upon a boundary through the Great Lakes but failed to determine the line from Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods. The third commission was supposed to decide the boundary from the St. Croix to the St. Lawrence, but it failed to reach accord. The two governments thereupon referred the dispute to William I of the Netherlands. That monarch failed to find a clear basis for a decision but in 1831 made an award anyway, giving the United States and Britain what he believed to be equitable shares of a wilderness. The United States refused to accept this award, protesting that the king had not acted in accord with the agreement referring the controversy to him. While arbitration had failed in this instance, the case was of considerable importance, for it clearly established the principle that arbitrators should abide by the terms of a compromis or other preliminary agreements. (The U.S. government probably erred in refusing to accept the award, for the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842 gave the United States less territory than it would have received according to the king's decision.)
The United States and Britain meanwhile had one other arbitration in connection with the Treaty of Ghent. The two powers were supposed to restore all property, both public and private, that they had seized from each other during the War of 1812. The treaty specifically mentioned slaves, but the British failed to return all American slaves under their jurisdiction at the close of hostilities. After many protests from Washington, British leaders agreed that an arbitrator should deal with the matter, and the two governments referred their dispute to Alexander I of Russia. The czar decided that Britain had failed to meet its obligations and should pay an indemnity. Upon his recommendation the United States and Britain concluded a convention setting up a commission to decide the amount due the United States. After elaborate proceedings, the commissioners decided that the indemnity should be $1,204,960, and, in a convention concluded 13 November 1826, the British government accepted this decision. | <urn:uuid:24544196-db0a-4dba-b24b-ef98a5c52e63> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/A-D/Arbitration-Mediation-and-Conciliation-Jay-s-treaty-and-the-treaty-of-ghent.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00156-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975119 | 682 | 3.46875 | 3 |
October 15, 2013
The Highlander Magazine
Lady Sutherland and the Highland Clearances; Tragedy in the Name of Progress
Composition: Mountain Landscape, by Elizabeth Leveson-Gower, Duchess-Countess of Sutherland, date unknown, Photo: © Tate, London 2013
In the time before the Jacobite Rebellions, landowners and clan chiefs were entrusted with safeguarding their tenants, the crofters. Life was hard for these crofters who farmed, raised cattle and horses, and whom their clan chief could call to military service at any time, but despite the hardships, this relationship was a reasonable compromise for most Highlanders. Revolutionary theories introduced during Scotland’s Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century would cause this traditional lifestyle to change dramatically. The adoption of agricultural advancements on the estate of the Countess of Sutherland in the early 1800s led to the displacement and death of many Highlanders, and mass migration to the colonies in the New World.
The Jacobite uprisings and the subsequent retaliation by the English government had caused the deaths of countless Highlanders. The freedom of these hardy people was restricted due to the Acts of Proscription, enacted after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, which banned traditional Highland cultural practices upon penalty of imprisonment, indentured servitude, or execution. The English army had established a strong presence in the area to discourage more rebellion, maintaining garrisons across the Highlands. Scottish military expert Duncan Murchison estimates that 30- to 40,000 innocent people, including women and children, were massacred in the Highlands in a four to five year period by government forces following the Acts of Proscription.1 The people, in this humbled state, were in constant fear for their lives and livelihoods.
Elizabeth Sutherland was born May 24, 1765 to the Earl of Sutherland, Chief of Clan Sutherland, and his wife, who owned a... | <urn:uuid:3966e32d-b13f-4234-9113-1e4241b45c20> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.studymode.com/essays/Lady-Sutherland-And-The-Highland-Clearances-42612202.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 | 0.968722 | 388 | 3.46875 | 3 |
Cell phone use may increase brain cancer risk
Cell phone use may increase a rare yet deadly brain cancer called glioma, according to a new study published in the May 18 International Journal of Epidemiology. But news media reported all over the Internet that the study is inconclusive.
The world's largest study found that heavy users were 40 percent more likely than those who used cell phone least often to develop a brain cancer.
Heavy users in the study were defined as those using cell phones for 30 or more minutes per day. The risk for today's HEAVY cell phone users is expected to be much higher than those heavy users in the study.
The study of more than 10,000 was led by Jack Siemiatycki, at the University of Montreal and an epidemiologist at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Center and 20 other epidemiologists from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the UK.
The Associated Press reported that it takes 20 or 30 years to develop brain tumors meaning that the real impact of cell phone on the brain cancer risk remains unknown because most studies ever conducted involved people who used mobible phones for less than 10 years.
Researchers warn that children are more vulnerable to the radiation or readio waves from cell phones and they should avoid using cell phones whenever possible.
Many studies have been conducted, but findings as always are inconsistent. Most studies only followed study subjects for a few years, which critics say are not long enough to observe any possible harm from the modern communication tool.
Dr. Lennart Hardell, an oncologist in Sweden, may be one of only a few researchers who conducted long term studies and found positive associations between long term use of cell phone and elevated risk of brain cancer.
Dr. Hardell reviewed 23 studies and found there is no association between use of cell phones and brain cancer. He published his findings in 2007.
But he also noted that only eight of these 23 studies are scientifically sound.
When he meta-analyzed data from 11 studies that followed subjects using cell phones for more than 10 years, he found that ipsilateral cell phone use (or use of cell phones on the same side) would increase risk of acountstic neuroma, a benign tumor, by 140 percent and risk of glioma by 100 percent.
The cell phone industry says the current study is inconclusive and there is no evidence that use of cell phones increases risk of brain cancer.
A health ovserver suggests that cell phone users need to make their own conclusion and they should not wait for others to tell them whether long term use of cell phones is safe.
(Send your news to firstname.lastname@example.org, Foodconsumer.org is part of the Infoplus.com ™ news and information network)
- Skin-lightening creams may contain mercury says EPA
- Genetically Engineered Corn May Cause Food Allergies
- Could drinking soy milk stop prostate cancer?
- Hot beverages like hot coffee, hot tea now classified as possible carcinogens
- Eating walnuts may help prevent colon cancer | <urn:uuid:2f114998-4907-4ba6-9a42-4d980a2aaa46> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Non-food/Environment/cell_phone_use_may_increase_brain_cancer_risk_1805100953.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396222.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00024-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943487 | 644 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Lowering Salt Intake to Improve Health May Backfire
Lowering sodium intake, a drumbeat of doctors’ efforts to improve patient health, may have the opposite effect if taken to the extreme, scientists said.
U.S. dietary guidelines to reduce sodium intake to 1,500 milligrams a day for certain people aren’t supported by enough scientific evidence, an Institute of Medicine panel said in a report yesterday. Studies reviewed by the panel didn’t prove health outcomes improved when salt consumption was cut to that level.
“Lowering sodium intake too much may actually increase a person’s risk of some health problems,” Brian Strom, the panel chairman and a public health professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, said in a statement. The studies still “support previous findings that reducing sodium from very high intake levels to moderate levels improves health.”
Adults consume an average 3,400 milligrams of salt each day. The U.S. recommends 2,300 milligrams for the general public and as low as 1,500 milligrams for those with high blood pressure, diabetes or chronic kidney disease, black people and people older than age 50. The American Heart Association, which advises 1,500 milligrams for everyone, challenged the report.
“The report is missing a critical component -- a comprehensive review of well-established evidence which links too much sodium to high blood pressure and heart disease,” said Nancy Brown, chief executive officer of the association.
In addition, studies that don’t show a benefit on heart disease or adverse effects were conducted on sick people, the Dallas-based association said in a statement.
The IOM panel said it looked at studies that measured health outcomes such as heart disease and death rather than high blood pressure as an indicator of heart disease.
“These studies make clear that looking at sodium’s effects on blood pressure is not enough to determine dietary sodium’s ultimate impact on health,” Strom said. “Changes in diet are more complex than simply changing a single mineral. More research is needed to understand these pathways.”
The report recognizes that blood pressure is only one of many factors that should be considered when evaluating dietary changes, the Salt Institute, an Alexandria, Virginia-based trade group that represents companies including Morton Salt Inc., said in a statement. Morton Satin, vice president of science and research for the Salt Institute, praised the report’s caution against reducing sodium to 1,500 milligrams.
“The recognition by the IOM experts that such low levels may cause harm may help steer overzealous organizations away from reckless recommendations,” Satin said.
The panel’s report didn’t list what a healthy sodium range would be, and the authors said further research is needed on associations between lower levels of sodium and health outcomes.
The Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the Washington-based nonprofit National Academies, provides medical advice to policy makers and the public. The report was sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
To contact the reporter on this story: Anna Edney in Washington at email@example.com
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"It's hard to be humble," says an old country song, "when you're perfect in every way." Of course, few people actually think they're perfect in every way. But it can still be pretty hard to be humble, especially if you live in a society that encourages competition and individuality.
Yet even in such a culture, humility remains an important virtue. Learning to be humble is of paramount importance in most spiritual traditions, and humility can help you develop more fully and enjoy richer relationships with others, as well as create opportunities and earn you respect.
Accepting Your Limitations
1Admit that you're not the best at everything -- or anything. No matter how talented you are, there is almost always somebody who can do something better than you. Look to those who are better and consider the potential for improvement. Nobody is the best at something.
- Even if you are 'the best' in the world at doing one thing, there are always other things that you cannot do, and may never be able to do.
- Recognizing your limitations does not mean abandoning your dreams, and it does not mean giving up on learning new things or improving your existing abilities. It simply means acknowledging that, as human beings, none of us are perfect and none of us can do everything by ourselves.
2Recognize your own faults. We judge others because it's a lot easier than looking at ourselves. Unfortunately, it's also completely unproductive and, in many cases, harmful. Judging others causes strife in relationships, and it prevents new relationships from forming. Perhaps even worse, it prevents us from trying to improve ourselves. Everybody makes mistakes.
- We make judgments about others all the time, usually without even realizing it. As a practical exercise, try to catch yourself in the act of judging another person or group of people, and whenever you do, judge yourself instead. Consider how you can improve yourself, instead of how you think others should act. After all, you cannot control other people's decisions and behaviors - but you can control yours.
- Work to address your flaws. Remember that growth and improvement is a lifelong process that never stops happening, even when you're very skilled at something.
3Be grateful for what you have. Suppose you graduate from an Ivy League university at the top of your class. You definitely deserve a lot of credit for the many hours of studying and for your perseverance. Consider though, that there is someone just as intelligent and hardworking as you who had less supportive parents, grew up in a different place, or just made one wrong choice in life. You could be in their position instead.
- Always remember that with a bad choice yesterday, your whole life could be different today and, furthermore, that today could be the day your good choices change your life.
- Though you have undoubtedly worked hard for what you have, you could not have done it all without other people's support. Everything we do is a result of what many other people have done to us. It is all because of the people around us that we get shaped and become better persons at some point so that we could achieve our goals.
4Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Part of being humble is understanding that you will make mistakes. Understand this, and understand that everyone else makes mistakes, and you will have a heavy burden lifted off of you. However, this doesn't mean that you should be sloppy - try to avoid obvious mistakes, but don't be afraid to try new methods or ways of accomplishing your goals.
- Each person can only experience a tiny sliver of life at a time. There will always be people who are older and wiser than you. Your elders' opinions could be worth listening to, although you must make the decision based on your knowledge of them.
5Admit your mistakes. Although you may fear that people will be angry and frustrated with you, it is always better to admit than to cover it up. Whether you've made a mistake as a boss, parent, or friend, people will appreciate the fact that you're willing to admit that you're not perfect and that you're working to improve yourself and the situation. Admitting your mistakes shows that you're not stubborn, selfish, or unwilling to not look perfect.
- Admitting your mistakes will make people respect you more, whether they are your own children or your coworkers.
6Avoid bragging. It's okay to have a healthy self-esteem and to feel proud of your accomplishments, but nobody likes it when someone constantly tries to bring attention to themselves and their own achievements. If you feel like you really have done something great, chances are people will have already begun to notice that, and they will come to respect you even more for your humility.
- This doesn't mean you should lie about achieving something; if someone asked if you ran a marathon then it's perfectly acceptable to say 'yes'. But don't constantly talk about how absolutely amazing you were for running the marathon, or achieving other goals.
7Be considerate in conversations. Humble people don't have to be meek wallflowers - being humble doesn't mean not having any self-esteem. However, a humble person should be mindful of everyone in the conversation and shouldn't talk down or disrupt anyone. As a humble person, you should recognize that everyone, including you, has their own goals and dreams and they may want to talk about their achievements and their opinions on things.
8Don't take all the credit. We are human beings and who we are now has a lot to do with other people's influence and guidance. Countless people have given you support and helped you to become the person you are so that you can achieve your dreams. It's totally fine to be proud about your achievements, but keep in mind that nobody ever does anything totally by themselves, and that as people, we are all helping each other to accomplish our goals.
- Share the love. Recognize others who have helped you on your path to success.
1Appreciate the talents and qualities of others. Challenge yourself to look at others and appreciate the things they can do and, more generally, to appreciate people for who they are. Understand that everybody is different and relish the chance you have to experience different people. You will still have your personal tastes, your likes and dislikes, but train yourself to separate your opinions from your fears and you will appreciate others more - you will be more humble as well.
- Being able to appreciate the talents and qualities of other people can also make you recognize qualities that you want to improve or attain within yourself.
2Stop comparing yourself to others. While competition can be healthy and stimulating, it's nearly impossible to be humble when we're constantly striving to be the "best" or trying to be better than others. Instead, try looking at yourself more. Remember, the ultimate goal isn't to be better than anyone else, it's to be better than the person you used to be. When you focus your energy on improving yourself instead of comparing you to everyone else, you'll find that it is much easier to make yourself better since you don't have to worry about whether or not you're better or worse than anyone.
- Every individual is unique. Appreciate people for who they are as human beings, not for their skills and appearance in relation to yours.
3Don't be afraid to defer to others' judgment. Although it is ultimately up to you to decide if you were right or wrong, it is a whole different thing to acknowledge that you make mistakes and that you're not always right. Somewhat more difficult however, is the ability to acknowledge that in many cases other people — even people who disagree with you — may be right. Deferring to your spouse's wishes, to a law you don't agree with, or even, sometimes, to your child's opinion takes your recognition of your limitations to a different level.
- Instead of simply saying you are humble and as a person you will make mistakes, you should also concentrate on living with that mindset - being humble is a way of life, not a one-time action.
4Seek guidance from written texts. This is another way of appreciating others. Contemplate moral texts and proverbs about humility. Pray for it, meditate on it, do whatever it takes to get your attention off yourself and your perception of your own worth (especially compared to others). You can read inspiring biographies, memoirs, the Bible, nonfiction and fiction on how to improve your life, or whatever it is that makes you be more humble and appreciate the insight that others have to offer.
5Remain teachable. Nobody is perfect or the best at anything. There will always be people who are better at you at something, and therein lies the opportunity to learn from them. Find people you aspire to be like in certain areas, and ask them to mentor you. Under mentorship; good boundary setting, confidentiality and discernment is required. As soon as you cross the line of being 'unteachable', bring yourself back down to earth again. Being teachable means that you admit that you always have more to learn about life.
- You can be more humble by taking classes in something you know nothing about, such as pottery or screen writing, and knowing that you will let others teach you and show you the way. This can help you realize that everyone is good at different things and we all need to help each other in order to become better people.
6Help others. A big part of being humble is respecting others, and part of respecting others is helping them. Treat other people as equals and help them because it is the right thing to do. It's been said that when you can help others who cannot possibly help you in return, you have learned humility. Helping people in need will also make you appreciate what you have even more.
- It goes without saying: don't boast about the volunteering you've done. It's great if you're proud of your work, but remember: volunteering is not about you, it is about the people you have helped.
7Go last. If you're always rushing to get things done first and get to the front of the line, challenge yourself to allow others to go before you - for example, elders, disabled people, children, or people in a hurry.
- Ask yourself, "Do I really need to do this first so badly?" The answer will almost always be no.
8Compliment others. Give someone you love, or even someone you barely know, a compliment. Tell your partner that he/she looks great today; compliment your co-worker's new hairdo, or tell the cashier at the grocery store that you like her earrings. Or you can go deeper, and compliment important aspects of people's personalities. Give at least one compliment a day and you will see that other people have so much to offer to the world.
- Focus on the positive attributes of others instead of always looking for their flaws.
9Apologize. If you've made a mistake, then confess and admit that you're wrong. Even though saying you're sorry to someone else is painful, you'll have to get over your pride and tell another person that you're sorry for the harm you've done. Eventually the pain will subside, replaced by a feeling of relief because you know that you have made amends. This will show the person that you value him or her greatly and that you acknowledge that you've made a mistake.
- Make eye contact when you apologize to show that you really care.
- Don't be a repeat offender. Apologizing about something does not give you a license to do it again. Doing so will make people distrusting of you and what you say.
10Listen more than you talk. This is another great way of appreciating others more and being more humble. The next time you engage in a conversation, let the other person talk, don't interrupt, and ask questions to keep the person talking and sharing. Though you should contribute to the conversation, make a habit of letting others express themselves more than you do so you don't act like you're only concerned with the things that are going on in your life.
- Ask questions to show that you understand what the person is talking about. Don't just wait for the person to stop talking so that you can start talking. Remember, if you're busy thinking about what you want to say, then you'll have a harder time focusing on what they are saying.
Rediscovering a Sense of Wonder
1Rejuvenate your sense of wonder. Because we as individuals know very little about the world, you'd expect that we'd be awestruck more often than we typically are. Children have this sense of wonder, and it inspires the curiosity that makes them such keen observers and capable learners. Do you really know how your microwave works? Could you build one on your own? What about your car? Understand your brain? A rose?
- The jaded, "I've seen it all" attitude makes us feel far more important than we are. Nobody has seen it all - nobody knows it all. Be amazed like a child and you will not only be humbled; you will also be readier to learn.
2Practice gentleness. Gentleness of spirit is the sure path to humility. Use 'Aikido' where possible when faced with conflict: absorb the venom from others' attacks and turn it into something positive by trying to understand why they are angry and reacting with gentleness and respect. Practicing gentleness will help you rediscover your sense of wonder as you focus on the positive aspects of life.
3Spend more time in nature. Go take a walk in the park. Stand near the bottom of a waterfall. Look at the world from the top of a mountain. Go for a long hike. Swim in an ocean. Find your own way of being in nature and take the time to truly appreciate all that it entails. Close your eyes and feel the breeze on your face. You should feel completely humbled by nature - a force that is so immense in its depth and power. As you develop your wonder and respect for all of the things that were there long before you were and which will be there long after you are gone, you will began to realize just how small you are in this world.
- Spending more time in nature will make you see how big and complicated the world is -- and that you're not at the center of it.
4Do yoga. Yoga is the practice of love and gratitude, and it will make you develop your sense of wonder about your breath, your body, and the love and kindness in the world around you. Yoga makes you see how fleeting your time on earth is and to appreciate it even more. Make a habit of practicing yoga at least twice a week and reap all of the emotional benefits as well as the physical ones.
- Yoga is all about being humble. There is no such thing as bragging about how you've hit a new pose in yoga. It's all about doing everything at your own pace.
5Spend time around children. Children possess a sense of wonder at the world that is difficult to replicate as an adult. Spend more time around kids and see how they appreciate the world, are constantly questioning it, and how they get pleasure and joy out of the smallest and most mundane things. To a child, a flower or a toilet paper roll can be the most incredible thing in the world -- for an afternoon, anyway.
- Spending more time around children will remind you of how magical the world really is.
How long does it take to be humble?wikiHow ContributorHumility does not come overnight. Each one of us has a sense of pride to overcome. However, if we dedicate ourselves to becoming more humble, eventually it will become a habit.
What does it mean to be humble?wikiHow ContributorBeing humble means you are modest and you do not brag about yourself.
What should I do if someone brags so much?wikiHow ContributorFirst, direct them to this page: http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Humble. Let them know that while it's ok to have a high self esteem, but also let them know that no one really likes a braggart.
- Learn to admit when you are wrong and don't allow your pride to allow you to feel that your actions are justified...
- Keep in mind that being humble has many benefits. Humility can help you be more content with your life, and it can also help you endure bad times and improve your relationships with others. It's also essential to being an effective learner. If you think you know it all, you won't be open-minded enough to seek out new knowledge. Humility is also, somewhat counter-intuitively, an excellent tool for self-development in general. After all, if you feel superior, you have no incentive to improve. Most of all, being humble allows you to be honest with yourself.
- Be loving and kind-hearted at all times,you never know when someone might need to reach out to you.
- Ask questions when you don't know, when you know a little, and when you think you know it all.
- Never brag about what you have ~ give to receive.
- It is fine to talk about yourself a little, but make a conscious effort to ask people about themselves too. It's also a good idea to listen more when you are being talked/responded to.
- Be kind and considerate. Help others and tell them you there for them.
- Appreciate your talents. Being humble doesn't mean you can't feel good about yourself. Self-esteem is not the same as pride. Both come from a recognition of your own talents and qualities, but pride, the kind of pride that leans toward arrogance, is rooted in insecurity about yourself. Think about the abilities you have, and be thankful for them.
- Seek trusted and wise counsel and obtain accountability partners if you find this to be a weakness in your life. Pride comes before the fall, and prevention is definitely better than cure.
- Living a selfless life brings more satisfaction than living a selfish one.
- Before you think about yourself,think about someone else.First think of being a need to someone instead of you needing someone.
- Associate with and help out people, especially the poor, weak, etc.
- Never wish you were anyone else and had the things they have. You are fearfully and wonderfully made by God. Be grateful for what you have and who you are.
- Appreciate the talents and possessions you have instead of constantly wanting more. Often, the richest people are still left wanting something -- money, fame, etc. If you embrace who you are, you will be happier and more humble.
- Try to avoid boasting at others.
- Similarly, don't confuse being humble with being sycophantic (being overly-praiseful of someone for your own profit). This is a common misconception, but the two attitudes are completely different.
- While humility is a good thing, don't take it too far, thus becoming a doormat. Remember, everything in moderation. Humility is not a weak trait, it is actually a very strong one in the same way kindness is strong. Standing up for yourself with humility is entirely possible and just takes some practice. Be prepared to need to practice this, and don't be discouraged if you don't get the balance right initially.
- To be humble isn't the same as being humble, and often people who pretend to be humble do it in order to seek out praise. Other people will recognize this, and even if you fool some, you won't derive the same benefits as you would through actually developing humility.
In other languages:
Italiano: Essere Umile, Español: ser humilde, Português: Ser Humilde, Français: être humble, Deutsch: Bescheiden sein, Русский: быть смиренным, 中文: 谦逊, Čeština: Jak být skromný, Bahasa Indonesia: Menjadi Rendah Hati, हिन्दी: विनम्र बनें, ไทย: ถ่อมตัว, العربية: التواضع
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Crystal Balls in the Parlor
This year we’ve moved our collection of crystal and mirrored balls from the mantle in the
Iris Room to the piano in the parlor. Lots of guests and tour-goers ask about them, and one of our guests suggested that we write this blog post about them.
No Witches at Leith Hall
First, they are not Witch Balls. Those were blue or green blown-glass balls used to catch evil spirits. These beliefs existed in Europe in the 17th century and before. They are sometimes ascribed to New England – probably because of the Salem witch trials – but without much evidence. Usually, fishing floats, which are also blown glass blue or green balls, are brought out as evidence.
Our collection is of mirrored balls and crystal balls. Gazing balls are the big mirrored balls seen on pedestals in gardens. They were very popular in the 19th century. Then again, Victorians could never leave well enough alone and packed their gardens with statuary, sundials, urns, gazing balls, trellises and arbors, obelisks, cupids and gnomes. We have a gazing ball in the tiny front garden at Leith Hall.
In the parlor, we have lots more mirrored balls. Some are mercury glass which was very popular in the early and mid-nineteenth century. It contains no mercury, but is silvered on the inside, then sealed. It was called mercury glass because it looks like mercury. One interesting use for them was to display one large reflective globe on the sideboard in a dining room. That way, the master or mistress of the house could keep an eye on the servants during a dinner party and make sure they were doing their jobs properly.
The clear balls are “crystal balls” for communicating with the “other side.” These became very popular after the Civil War, along with séances, Ouija boards, clairvoyants, and Theosophy. The explosion of interest in spiritualism probably resulted from the number of young men lost in the Civil War and their families’ reluctance to be cut off from them. Or, maybe being a clairvoyant was one of the few ways for women to be famous in Victorian times. Or, maybe it’s just another one of the new religions of the nineteenth century, like Mormonism, Christian Science, Seventh Day Adventism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.
Susan says, “We have lots of collections beside the mirror balls; Victorian Eastlake style silver, decorated Easter eggs, shells, and Japanese woodblock prints. Come visit us and see all of the Victorian stuff at Leith Hall.” | <urn:uuid:a95fce7e-b22a-4352-b3e3-b7ed0548e27b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.leithhall.com/index.php/gaze-into-my-crystal-ball/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397696.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00187-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969308 | 556 | 2.625 | 3 |
This presentation demonstrates the new capabilities of PowerPoint and it is best viewed in Slide Show. These slides are designed to give you great ideas for the presentations you’ll create in PowerPoint 2010!For more sample templates, click the File tab, and then on the New tab, click Sample Templates.
Myths about learning to speak english
www.auroracs.lk Realistic approach - Part 2Learning EnglishFacts, Myths & Reality by Nalaka Gamage
I want to learn English, but….. Myths Facts Reality
There are lots of myths preventing people from learning and using English language effectively. Once you know the facts, you will identify those myths that prevent you from being a confident English user. The reality is much simpler and easier than what you think.
“English is difficult” is the biggestmyth among students. This has been spread by thosewho have acquired only Englishspeaking skill and feared of loosingtheir undue social status iftalented others learn it.
There is hardly any differencebetween spoken & written English ! In fact easier and naturalsequence is to begin quietly withreading and writing and then startspeaking in English.
It is a myth spread by peoplehaving colonial underdog mindset. They are slaves of English culture than using English as a communication tool. They use this myth to discourage others from learning English.
English is no longer an ornament. It is just another important tool in your competency tool box. If one is just a fool who only knows of using English language, now he has wider audience to show off his idiocy. i.e. Using his mother tongue & English
English alphabet is much simplerthan the alphabet of most of theEastern languages. Only 26 letters used in English. All letters are used only in simpleform only. No combined letters or variations
English grammar is extremelysimple. Only few rules that you needto learn. Rules are clear andunambiguous than most of otherlanguages.
There is hardly any differencebetween spoken and writtenEnglish. Therefore, effort for learningEnglish is less than learning alanguages that has big variationsin spoken and written form.
Majority use English as their second language. There are more English speaking people in China or India alone than in UK or USA. Understanding English books and other contents like web pages are much easier than you think. Content publishers are aware of the nature of target audience.
English is now dominantly used as an international language. English speaking international community accept, acknowledge and even appreciate accents of different geographical and cultural communities.
Yes, English language has thousands or words. But commonly used word are only a small portion of it. Do not get afraid by seeing big dictionaries. Dictionary (Just like a directory) is for references and not to learn all the words.
English is easy to learn. When you speak or use English asa second language, no one expectyou to be perfect. Unless you are talking to an idiot ! There are plenty of resourcesavailable to learn English.
You speak English according to your natural accent, Unless one of your ancestor has crossed with an Englishman!! Or you are talking to an arrogant Englishman. Billions of English speaking people all over the world from German to India and Brazil to China happily speak with their own accent in self confident manner.
First learn common and frequently used words. Then get familiar with the words in the domain that you are going to use the language (eg: Engineering, Accounting, etc.).
As long as you can comprehend the context, be brave to start reading content published in English despite you find few unknown words. Use common sense for guessing. If the word is frequently appearing get the dictionary and learn it and add it to your vocabulary.
When you talk, you can confidently use what ever simple words you know. Because listener has no way of knowing the words that you do not know. Just make sure your grammar is fairly sound. Here you are speaking in English now.
Get out of common myths. Put up initial learning effort. Learn the grammar well. Learn the words necessary for your common use. Proud of your own native accent or use neutral accent. Never mimic western accent which is natural only for those live in cold climate. Use common sense and guessing to be effective.
“Use English as a useful tool and not as a petty weapon or ornament.” | <urn:uuid:e1034e4d-d6ec-4f0a-b1a2-87b5249a620e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.slideshare.net/auroracslk/myths-about-learning-to-speak-english | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00020-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935536 | 890 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Major Viking Hall Identified in Sweden
A Viking feasting hall measuring almost 50 metres in length has been identified near Vadstena in Sweden. Archaeologists from Stockholm University and Umeå University used ground-penetrating radar, a non-invasive geophysical method, to locate and map the house foundation. The study was published today in the journal Archaeological Prospection.
The Aska barrow, where the hall has been found, was long seen as a burial mound. But archaeologists have now revealed that it is a foundation platform for a large building, most likely dating from the Viking Period. The hall was probably the home of a royal family whose rich graves have previously been excavated nearby.
“Parallels are known from several of the era's elite sites, such as Fornsigtuna near Stockholm and Lejre near Roskilde. The closest similarities are however seen in a recently excavated feasting hall at Old Uppsala near Stockholm. Such close correspondences suggest intensive communication between the two sites”, says Martin Rundkvist of Umeå University
The building was about 14 metres wide and was equipped with double walls and four entrances. The measurements also indicate a large fireplace at the centre of the floor.
“Our investigation demonstrates that non-invasive geophysical measurements can be powerful tools for studying similar building foundations elsewhere. They even allow scholars to estimate the date of a building without any expensive excavations”, says Andreas Viberg of the Archaeological Research Laboratory at Stockholm University who directed the fieldwork.
The study was published today in the journal Archaeological Prospection:
For more information
On archaeological geophysics:
Andreas Viberg, PhD, Archaeological Research Lab, Stockholm University, phone 0046 8 16 45 90, mobile 0046 70 489 79 15, e-mail firstname.lastname@example.org
Home page http://www.andreasviberg.se
December 8, 2014
Source: External Relations and Communications Office | <urn:uuid:639e6a12-35dc-47f6-b260-5477f0d4b93a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.su.se/english/research/leading-research-areas/humanities-law-and-social-sciences/major-viking-hall-identified-in-sweden-1.213300 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00123-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938358 | 425 | 2.75 | 3 |
As your eyes age, their lenses become less flexible, and they slowly lose their ability to focus on nearby objects. It's an ongoing, lifelong process called presbyopia, which you begin to notice between ages 40 and 45, when the condition starts to affect close-up tasks such as reading. It requires some attitude adjustment, especially if have to start wearing glasses for the first time. Presbyopia affects almost everyone over the age of 50.
Until now, you could choose your own working distance: You could hold things wherever you wanted, and your eyes would adjust. But eyeglass lenses can't mimic what the eyes actually do. Glasses can help you focus, but they don't have the depth of focus your eye muscles provide.
So, even with glasses, you may still have to adjust to compensate for vision changes. That may mean holding reading material at a certain distance, raising or lowering your eyes or moving your computer terminal.
Fortunately, there are corrective lenses that can make those adjustments less complicated. Lightweight lenses put the correction in your glasses exactly where you need it for your comfort.
Single-power lenses correct for only one visual deficiency such as nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism. Glasses worn only for reading are an example of single-power lenses. People with more than one vision problem need multi-focal lenses.
The most common solution for reading glasses is the bifocal, a lens with two different prescriptions. The one on the lower half is your reading prescription; the one on the upper half is your prescription for distance vision.
Trifocals have distance correction on top, reading correction on the bottom and a band of "intermediate vision" in the middle, for seeing things at arm's length. Intermediate vision correction can be helpful for people who spend a lot of time working at a computer terminal.
An option that is becoming popular is to wear task-specific lenses you keep at your desk and wear only for working on your computer. Many people don't like to have to change glasses if they're up and down from their desks a lot, but it's a positive solution for some people.
Here's how you can further ease your vision adjustment:
Take care of your eyes—they are the only ones you have.
Online tools to help manage your daily life.
FIRSTCALL Employee Assistance Program 1-800-382-2377
Copyright ©2016 FIRSTCALL | <urn:uuid:ceb3d1bb-851b-4697-80aa-54a59754728f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mainlinehealth.org/oth/Page.asp?PageID=OTH007233 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00039-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954823 | 503 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Nanoparticles help scientists harvest light with solar fuelsBy Louise Lerner • May 18, 2011
The humble alga, hated by boaters and pool owners, may someday help provide us with the raw machinery to power our appliances.
A group of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, led by chemist Lisa Utschig, has linked platinum nanoparticles with algae proteins, commandeering photosynthesis to produce hydrogen instead. The system produces hydrogen at a rate five times greater than the previous record-setting method.
"If you are considering the question 'How do we get energy from the sun,' you always come back to photosynthesis," Utschig said. "Photosynthesis does it best. It's been engineered over millions of years."
Utschig and fellow chemist David Tiede are part of Argonne's Photosynthesis Group, which has worked for fifty years to understand photosynthesis—one of the most mysterious and wonderful chemical processes in the world. Photosynthesis built a green Earth out of the bare, meteor-blistered planet which had sat empty for a billion years; it tipped the composition of the atmosphere towards oxygen, allowing all kinds of life to blossom, including us.
The chemistry group is part of a larger effort to develop efficient ways to produce what are termed solar fuels. Most people think of solar panels when they think of solar energy, but the energy that solar panels generate has to be used right away—they directly create electricity, which can't be stored easily.
The alternative is solar fuels, which pull energy from the sun to create fuel that can be stored for later, such as hydrogen. Hydrogen, a promising fuel in the effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, is appealingly clean: when it's burned as fuel, water is the byproduct. But we have yet to discover a low-cost way to manufacture large amounts of hydrogen.
"Basically, we've been reverse-engineering photosynthesis," said Tiede, who co-authored the paper. "If we understand how Nature does it, we can tweak the process to produce hydrogen."
Most solar fuel efforts focus on a type of protein complex called Photosystem I, or PSI, which is the first half of the photosynthetic duo found in all green plants.
When light strikes the PSI complex, it momentarily knocks an electron into an "excited" state. The goal is to separate this electron from its home atom—leaving behind a "hole" of positive charge—and channel it to an artificial catalyst to make hydrogen. But the electron only remains excited for the tiniest fraction of a second; the catalyst needs to grab it during this tiny window.
With co-author Nada Dimitrijevic, the team designed platinum nanoparticle catalysts. These catalysts have a size and surface chemistry that allows them to stick to PSI molecules at the point where the light-generated electrons accumulate. When the modified platinum nanoparticles and PSI are mixed in water, the two link together.
"The platinum nanoparticles have the same size and surface charge as the molecule that PSI would bind to naturally," Tiede said.
Because the study design used platinum as a catalyst, which is too expensive to be cost-effective, the research serves as proof-of-concept. Further studies hope to improve the method's efficiency, reliability and economics.
"The next step we'll take is experimenting with non-platinum catalysts," Utschig said. "Hopefully we can find a catalyst that can be made with a cheaper metal, which would make the process much more attractive on a large scale."
The paper, "Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production from Noncovalent Biohybrid Photosystem I/Pt Nanoparticle Complexes," was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters and is available online.
The research was supported by the Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences. | <urn:uuid:a4c1fa32-cd1c-4f15-a8f1-14e5127f2e27> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.anl.gov/articles/nanoparticles-help-scientists-harvest-light-solar-fuels | 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 | 0.945525 | 838 | 3.546875 | 4 |
By Andrea Bennett
Flowing through rolling hills, forests and farms, small and big towns, the Brandywine, White Clay and Red Clay Creeks, and the Christina River constitute the watershed of the Christina River Basin, which then empties into the Delaware River. This beautiful watershed is historically significant as a site where Revolutionary battles were fought, as well as the area where one of America’s most famous painters, Andrew Wyeth, flourished. This watershed also provides over 100 million gallons of drinking water per day for over 500,000 people in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Many nonprofit and governmental organizations are implementing projects and programs to protect the watershed and its sources of drinking water. Several years ago, these groups received an EPA Targeted Watershed Grant of $1 million to support the health of the watershed by restoring streams and installing agricultural and stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) to reduce runoff flowing into streams and groundwater.
I had the opportunity to see some of these BMPs in action recently on the annual Christina River Basin Bus Tour, sponsored by the Chester County Conservation District (CCCD), the Brandywine Valley Association, the Water Resources Agency at the University of Delaware, and the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. As we traveled through the watershed, Bob Struble, executive director of the Brandywine Valley Association, pointed out stream restoration and watershed protection projects.
At the Barclay Hoopes dairy farm, Mr. Hoopes showed us 1,500 feet of stream bank fencing installed to reduce manure loading to White Clay Creek. United Water Delaware and the City of Newark worked with the CCCD to install these fences to help prevent Cryptosporidium (a protozoan that can cause gastrointestinal illness) from entering the water.
We also stopped at the Stroud Water Research Center where we saw a brand new LEED-certified education building – the Moorhead Environmental Complex. The Center manages stormwater run-off through natural landscaping with porous surfaces, a green roof, and rain gardens with native vegetation. The new building has a plethora of energy efficient technologies, including radiant heating, natural ventilation, solar power, and high efficiency windows. Wherever possible, the center uses materials that were found locally, sustainably harvested, reclaimed, or recycled, and have low emissions of pollutants.
We visited the Kennett Square Golf Course and Country Club where Paul Stead, the Superintendent, gave us a tour of the stream bank and flood plain restoration of the section of Red Clay Creek, which flows through the golf course. Because Mr. Stead educated the club membership about the importance of protecting the watershed, this project was funded not only by a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Growing Greener Grant, but also by members of the golf club itself. The result is improved flood control, less impact to Red Clay Creek during storm events, and a more scenic golf course.
These are just some of the projects going on right now in the beautiful Christina River Basin. Not only do they help to protect sources of drinking water, they also ensure that the basin remains a wonderful place to visit. The basin is one of my favorite places to go kayaking, hiking, and birding, and it’s easy to see how the White Clay Creek was designated as a National Wild and Scenic River in 2000.
As I left Myrick Conservation Center that day, it was fitting that I saw a Bald Eagle, a national symbol of America’s environmental treasures. It’s one more reason to protect the waters of the Christina River Basin, so that eagles, as well as humans, have a clean and safe water resource today and in the future.
About the Author: Andrea Bennett has been with EPA for over twenty years as an Environmental Scientist in the region’s Water Protection Division. Prior to joining EPA, she conducted ornithological research and produced films. When outside of the office Andrea enjoys birding and playing the mandolin. | <urn:uuid:c1d617cf-4c78-40d3-a693-23e5fa88cc8c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.epa.gov/blog/2012/09/embarking-into-the-christina-river-basin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397696.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00024-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942243 | 807 | 2.734375 | 3 |
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Let's Play House! Grocery Boxes
Keep the pantry stocked with fun! This colorful set of play food boxes makes an engaging pretend-play experience on its own, or perfectly complements a kitchen- or grocery store-themed play area. Ten play-food boxes of pretend cereal, snacks and sweets assemble easily (in three simple folds!) to create a whole pantry-full of realistic food boxes. Perfect for open-ended creative play, the set also includes play ideas to encourage learning and keep imaginations "cooking."
Extension Activities: More Ways to Play and Learn:
- Ask the child to look at all the boxes and group them by size. How many boxes are there in each group?
- Ask the child to identify all the food items, and to sort them into groups by type of food. For instance, you could establish one pile for salty foods and one for sweets. Ask the child to suggest other ways to sort the items.
- Divide the boxes into three unequal groups, and ask the child to predict which group can make the highest tower. Then ask the child to build the towers to find out if the guess was right.
- Ask the child to line up the boxes on the shelves of a pretend grocery store. Give the child a shopping list with three food items written clearly on a piece of paper, or list them aloud. Ask the child to collect the items in a bag or basket. For added difficulty, increase the number of items or give just the product's initials instead of the complete name of each food.
- Place three or four boxes in a row. Ask the child to study them, then to look away while you remove one piece. Ask the child which piece was removed. Increase the number of boxes for a greater challenge.
- Gather a group of food boxes according to one common feature or rule--for instance, you could gather all the boxes showing foods shaped liked circles, all the medium-size packages, or all the boxes with the color blue on them. Allow the child to observe the group that contains your selections, and also the group of items that don't belong. Ask the child to guess what your rule was for grouping the items.
- Ask the child to set up a dining table for a teddy bear or doll. Pretend the teddy or doll is a very picky eater and is refusing to eat. Ask the child to convince the teddy or doll to try one bite of each type of food by describing all the best things about it.
- Give the child three boxes and ask him/her to describe a silly recipe using the three ingredients. Ask what the finished dish would taste like, how it would be served, and which family members or friends would be brave enough to try it. Then ask the child to choose three boxes for you to make up a recipe.
Adult assembly required.
Dimensions: 15" x 10" x 2.25" Packaged
Please share your thoughts about this toy with your Facebook friends in the Comment box below. | <urn:uuid:aaeef256-77b1-4f01-a8e7-d3b05fef9b0b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.melissaanddoug.com/toy-grocery-boxes-play-food | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397567.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00154-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929657 | 629 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Atmospheric Sciences & Global Change
Shallow Clouds Make the Case for Remote Sensing Instrumentation
Results: Findings from a recent study on cloud formation by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researcher Sally McFarlane and collaborator Wojciech Grabowski show that thin, low-lying cumulus clouds are significantly diluted by mixing with surrounding dry air. The study also shows that mean cloud droplet size varied significantly relative to a droplet's height and position within the cloud. This level of detail is important for accurately representing cloud properties such as the cloud height, thickness, and depth, in climate models. The study also illustrates the utility of using remote sensing data to validate models of cloud microphysical processes—such as water condensation, evaporation, and conversion of cloud water to rain—which typically are used in studies concerning these shallow cumulus clouds. The team's recent findings are summarized in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
Why It Matters: Properties of shallow clouds, such as those examined by this study, play an important role in the Earth's energy balance. The effects of aerosols on clouds, particularly the influence of aerosols on cloud droplet size and distribution, are major sources of uncertainty in climate models. Modeling these effects requires assumptions about how clouds and their properties might be impacted by the mixing of dry and cloudy air. To constrain models, observations of the relationship between mixing and cloud droplet size are needed.
Traditionally, observations of air mixing and cloud droplet size come from in situ aircraft probes, which collect data at very high horizontal resolution. However, it is very expensive to sample numerous clouds with an aircraft, and measuring vertical profiles, especially in shallow clouds, is difficult. The use of remote sensing data allows analysis of significantly more cloud cases than would be possible, or practical, with aircraft data.
In this figure, the lines indicate theoretical calculations of cloud droplet size for clouds with various droplet concentrations in which no mixing occurs. The cloud droplet size shows significant variability with height. Enlarged View.
Methods: Data for this study were obtained from remote sensing instruments at Nauru, one of three ARM Climate Research Facility sites in the Tropical Western Pacific region. Using 6 months of data collected from shallow cumulus clouds, the researchers examined the size of individual water droplets that form clouds, in light of the amount of mixing with the dry air in the surrounding area.
What's Next: After analyzing the data collected from this study, the researchers hope to compare these results to datasets from Nauru during periods with significantly different conditions, such as El Niño and La Niña years, or from other ARM Climate Research Facility sites. Comparison of these data sets will contribute to the representation of optical properties, such as height of cloud and size/distribution of cloud droplets, in climate models. The science team also hopes to use data from this study to confirm existing models of cloud microphysical processes.
Acknowledgments: The research team included Sally McFarlane, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Wojciech Grabowski, National Center for Atmospheric Research.
This work was supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research of the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC06-76RL01830 as part of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (McFarlane) and by NOAA grant NA05OAR4310107 (Grabowski).
Reference: McFarlane, S. A., and W. W. Grabowski (2007). Optical properties of shallow tropical cumuli derived from ARM ground-based remote sensing, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L06808, doi:10.1029/2006GL028767. | <urn:uuid:64cbcb6b-22bc-4822-b0f8-e3a2a793a8f5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.pnnl.gov/science/highlights/highlight.asp?groupid=749&id=12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00060-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921693 | 762 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Making a Difference: Illinois Commission on the Elimination of Poverty
Aug 29, 2011
People who live in extreme poverty live below half the official poverty line. That translates into living with less than $9 per person per day for a family of three. In Illinois, one in 20 people is currently living in extreme poverty. Of these people, more than 17 percent are workers, with more than 3.5 percent working full time, year round. These are some of Illinois' most vulnerable people, and the numbers have grown in the wake of the Great Recession.
In 2008, the Illinois legislature unanimously passed a law creating the Illinois Commission on the Elimination of Poverty to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015. In the three years since, the commission has worked to reframe poverty as a human rights issue, made numerous recommendations, created new and strengthened existing champions, and increased awareness and understanding of both poverty and human rights in Illinois.
A recently released CLASP report, Poverty and Opportunity: What Difference Can a Task Force Make?, profiles Illinois' task force, as well as task forces in Colorado, Ohio and Minnesota. Illinois is one of 20 states, including D.C., which have established a state government poverty and opportunity task force. Eleven of these states have set poverty reduction targets, but Illinois is unique in being the only state to focus on extreme poverty in its target.
A cornerstone of its work has been engaging a large cross section of stakeholders to provide a variety of voices and expertise. Meetings and public hearings held throughout the state allowed committee members to gain insight into the every-day experiences of those living in poverty, as well as allowing those who would be most impacted by its recommendations to actively participate in the commission's meetings. The commission developed three "person-focused" working committees, designed to develop recommendations to address the diverse circumstances, barriers, and needs facing Illinois residents living in extreme poverty.The committees were organized around the capacity to work and sought solutions for "Living with Dignity" (for those unable to work); "Making Work Accessible (for those disconnected from the workforce); and, "Making Work Pay" (for those working yet living within extreme poverty).
The task force's successes and challenges provide a guide for other states looking to create a strategic government body for poverty reduction. From the introduction of recommendations to reframing poverty as a human rights issue, the Illinois commission has shown that a task force can make a difference.
For more information about Illinois and the three other state task force profiles, read Poverty and Opportunity: What Difference Can a Task Force Make?
What Difference Can a Task Force Make? is part of CLASP's Poverty and Opportunity series. For a chart of all state task forces: Poverty and Opportunity: State Government Task Forces and for operational Poverty and Opportunity: State Government Task Forces' Member Composition and Operations. For a summary of task force recommendations: State Poverty Task Force Recommendations. | <urn:uuid:06c7d5f1-a66c-4f8a-93b6-5c9a101333ff> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.clasp.org/issues/poverty-and-opportunity/in-focus/making-a-difference-illinois-commission-on-the-elimination-of-poverty | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00193-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944874 | 596 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Wooden Flutes have been used to play music all over the world for as long as mankind has had the ability to make things from wood. Earlier instruments were made of bone which often comes with the hole down the middle thus saving the difficult task of boring it out. Another technique used in early instruments and still used today by people to make instruments in rural situations for impromptu entertainment or for children's instruments, is to take the wood from the elder bush which has a soft pith which can easily be removed by burning with a hot wire. Early makers of wooden flutes overcame the problem of getting the bore concentric with the outside of the instrument by boring the hole in a log first and then cutting a square piece containing the hole. This square would be mounted in a simple lathe by the holes and then the turning of the outside became automatically concentric.
Later instruments required more complex bores which might have tapers curved sides to the bore and even complex tapers which required boring from both ends. The reamers made for this process have an equally complicated history, early ones being made as flat iron blades by blacksmiths whose expertise in making knives and other edged tools would have been most useful to the instrument maker. It can be seen from studies of renaissance recorders that the reamer was an item of great value which was difficult to source, the maker often achieved the double ended tapered bore using the same reamer from both ends of the instrument but inserted to different depths. Today's makers produce reamers from hard steel accurately ground to produce the required bore profile and sharpened to give quick cutting with as little pressure as possible on the wood to reduce distortion while cutting, sometimes multiple reamers are used to produce the bore for a single instrument. Manufacturing the reamers for a particular instrument can be a very long and expensive task as it is often necessary to modify or even remake the reamers in order to fine tune the finished instrument, accordingly instrument makers prize a reamer which produces a good bore very highly. This ability to create a bore to his own specifications and not just to use a parallel tube was the key to the early simple system flute makers technique. Parallel head joints combined with complex tapered bores gave the flutes from the classical era the quality of tone so keenly sought after by today's players of traditional music.
Like many modern folk flutes and whistles, the instruments were six holed and did not have any keys.
Players of renaissance flutes will understand the difficulty of producing a chromatic scale from an instrument with only six tone holes and it this very technique which is practised by many of today's traditional musicians who choose the classical tapered bore instrument with its keys removed in order to achieve a sound unique to their music. In the early days of the current revival of traditional playing techniques musicians were known to cut off the blocks which mounted the keys on what were seen to be old instruments of little value to modern musicians. This technique was successful but later to be regretted when the rise of the early music world started to add value to those instruments many of which have been sold at auction for several thousand pounds. Several makers have consequently started to produce instruments based on those early classical keyed flutes but without the keys fitted thus saving the musician the trouble of cutting them off. | <urn:uuid:4110c2a6-9796-46c6-8b53-cc323ddd6232> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.woodenflutes.co.uk/wooden-flutes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00055-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978692 | 674 | 3.734375 | 4 |
ĀB “water.” (آب)
ii. Water in Muslim Iranian culture
Water constitutes an essential element in Islamic ritual, as a means of purification, and serves as a common theme in folklore. The Koran, in describing the creation of life, indicates that water is its basis: “And of water We have made everything living” (21:30); and “Allāh has created every animal of water; some of them go upon their bellies, some upon two feet, and some upon four” (24:45). Ṭabarī discusses the Koranic verse “And He it is Who created the heavens and the earth in six days, and His throne was upon the water” (11:7). On the authority of many early commentators, he states that God first created water and from water created the heavens and the earth (Ṭabarī [Cairo2], I, pp. 39f.; cf. Kolīnī, Rawżat al-kāfī, Naǰaf, 1385/1965-66, pp. 80-81, 134).
A folktale tells how, when God willed the universe into being, he first created a substance which, when he looked upon it, became water, from which the heavens and the earth emerged (Ṯaʿlabī, Qeṣaṣ al-anbīāʾ, Cairo, n.d., pp. 3-4, 7; Kesāʾī, Qeṣaṣ al-anbīāʾ, ed. I. Eisenberg, Leiden, 1922, pp. 6-7; Nīšābūrī, Qeṣaṣ al-anbīāʾ, ed. Yaḡmāʾī, Tehran, 1961, p. 3). According to tradition (ḥadīṯ), the Prophet was asked about the beginning of the creation, whereupon he replied: “God existed and there was nothing before him, his throne being on the water. He then created the heavens and the earth” (Tabrīzī, Meškāt al-maṣābīḥ, ed. M. Albānī, Damascus, 1961-62, III, pp. 111f.).
Water, the source of life, is indispensable for the growth of crops, and prayer for rain is well known in Islam. A tradition states that when the people complained to the Prophet of the lack of rain, he took them out to the place of prayer and prayed for rain (Tabrīzī, Meškāt I, pp. 476-80). The bounties of rain are repeatedly stressed in the Koran: “The water Allāh has sent down from the heaven whereby he has revived the earth after its death” (Koran 2:164). “[He] has sent down water from the heaven, and thereby produced fruits as a provision for you” (ibid., 2:22).
Water is used for ritual purification (see Ablution [vożūʾ and ḡosl] in Islam: “He might purify you” (Koran 8:11). Purification is required before prayer, and a ḥadīṯ states that being purified is half of faith (Tabrīzī, Meškāt I, p. 93). In another, the Prophet is reported as saying, “When a believer washes his face during ablution, every sin he contemplated with his eyes will come forth from his face along with the water; when he washes his hands, every sin they wrought will come forth from his hands with the water; when he washes his feet, every sin toward which his feet have walked will come out with the water, with the result that he will come forth pure from offenses” (ibid., p. 94). According to its suitability for use in ritual purification, water is of two kinds. Māʾ-e maṭlaq (“absolute” water) is suitable, while māʾ-e możāf (“solute” water, to which something has been added [możāf], such as rose water) is not. Māʾ-e moṭlaq can be either running or standing. Running water is considered pure for ritual purposes unless its color, taste, or smell indicates the presence of impurities. Standing water in ponds or reservoirs whose capacity exceeds a certain limit (one ḵorr, or about 350 liters) is the equivalent of running water. Water in a vessel or container is polluted by admixtures. Well water, a kind of standing water, is considered pure unless obviously polluted (Ṭūsī, al-Nehāya, Beirut, 1970, pp. 2-5; idem., Tahḏīb al-aḥkām, ed. M. Ḵorāsānī, Tehran, 1959, I, pp. 214-31; Ḥellī, Šarāʾeʿ al-eslām, ed. ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn, Naǰaf, 1969, pp. 12-16; Qāżī Noʿmān, Daʿāʾem al-eslām, ed. Fyzee, Cairo, 1963, I, pp. 111-13; Tabrīzī, Meškāt I, pp. 148-52; Šaʿrānī, Ketāb al-mīzān, Cairo, 1932, I, pp. 99-105; M. Maḡnīya, al-Feqh ʿalā al-maḏāheb al-ḵamsa, Beirut, 1967, pp. 14-21). Detailed rules are prescribed for removing various kinds of impurities (Šaybānī, Ketāb al-aṣl, ed. Afḡānī, Hyderabad, 1966, I, pp. 78-87; Ṭūsī, al-Nehāya, pp. 5-9; idem, Tahḏīb al-aḥkām, I, pp. 231-49; Ḥillī, Šarāʿeʾ, pp. 13-14; Maġnīya, Feqh, pp. 22-23). Rights regarding water and related matters are discussed elaborately in Islamic jurisprudence.
Revelation (tanzīl) is likened to “water sent down from the heaven by God”: Both are considered lifegiving (Martin Lings, “The Qoranic Symbolism of Water,” in Studies in Comparative Religion 23, 1968, p. 153). In the taʾvīl (esoteric interpretation) of the Koran by the Ismaʿilis, water is a symbol of knowledge. As water is indispensable for the preservation and growth of life, knowledge is vital for the soul. As water washes away the material pollution from the body, knowledge purifies the soul from spiritual impurities (Qāżī Noʿmān, Taʾwīl al-daʿāʾem, ed. M. Aʿẓamī, Cairo, n.d., I, pp. 72, 105f.). This symbolic meaning of water is espoused by the Sufis and the Imamis. On the verse “He sendeth down Water from the sky, so that valleys flow according to their measure” (Koran 13:17), Ḡazālī states, in comment on the text, that water is gnosis and the valleys are hearts (his Meškāt al-anwār, ed. ʿAfīfī, Cairo, 1964, p. 72). On the verse “If they trod the right path, We should have given them to drink of water in abundance” (Koran 72:16), Māǰlesī states in comment that water is knowledge (Qommī, Safīnat al-beḥār, Naǰaf, 1355/1936, II, pp. 562). Several verses of the Koran and traditions of the Prophet are similarly interpreted by Māǰlesī.
Muslim tradition abounds in references to Āb-e Zamzam, Āb-e Kawṯar, and Āb-e Ḥayāt. Zamzam is a sacred well near Kaʿba. It is said to have sprung miraculously for Ismael, the son of Abraham, when he was thirsty as a little child. His mother, Hagar, went seeking water but could not find it, so she went up to the hillocks al-Ṣafā and al-Marva, praying to God and imploring aid for Ishmael. God sent Gabriel, who with his heel hollowed out a place in the earth where water appeared. In the period of paganism, the well was filled in by Jorhomīs; then the Prophet’s grandfather ʿAbd-al-Moṭṭ¡aleb was ordered by God, in a vision, to dig it out. Performance of pilgrimage rites culminates in the drinking of Zamzam water, and the pilgrims carry it home to give it to the sick (Ebn Hešām, Sīra, ed. M. al-Saqqā et al., Cairo, 1936, I, pp. 150f.; Ṭabarī [Cairo2], I, p. 252; ibid. II, p. 240; Ṯaʿlabī, Qeṣaṣ, pp. 47-50; Kesāʾī, Qeṣaṣ, pp. 142-43; Nīšābūrī, Qeṣaṣ, pp. 67-68; EI2, s.v. Zamzam).
Kawṯar, mentioned in the Koran (108, the Sūrat al-Kawṯar), is described as a river (or water basin) in paradise intended for the Prophet and shown to him on his ascension there. This river is said to have beds of pearls and rubies and banks of gold. Its water is whiter than milk and sweeter than honey, its odor is more aromatic than musk, and its jugs are like stars in the sky. On the Day of Judgment the believers will drink from it, and one who drinks thereof shall never thirst (Ebn Hešām, Sīra II, pp. 34-35; Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, Cairo, 1322-30/1904-12, XXX, pp. 179-80; Ṭabresī, Maǰmaʿ al-bayān, ed. Maḥallātī, Tehran, 1339 Š., V, pp. 548-49; Tabrīzī, Meškāt III, pp. 68f.; EI2, s.v. Kawthar). The Shiʿi tradition describes ʿAlī (q.v.) as the sāqī of Ḥawż-e Kawṯar (Maǰlesī, Beḥār al-anwār, Tehran, n.d., VIII, pp. 16-29; ibid., XXXIX, pp. 211-19).
Āb-e Ḥayāt, also called ʿAyn al-Ḥayāt or Nahr al-Ḥayāt, meaning the fountain of life, is associated with Ḵeżr, who is identified with the unnamed companion of Moses in the Koran (18:65-82). Ḵeżr is the patron saint of wayfarers, appearing whenever a pious person is in need. He is immortal because he drank from the fountain of life which is hidden somewhere in the darkness (Ṭabarī, Taʾrīḵ I, pp. 365f.; Ṯaʿlabī, Qeṣaṣ, pp. 121f., pp. 205f.; Kesāʾī, Qeṣaṣ, pp. 230-33; Nīšābūrī, Qeṣaṣ, pp. 338-42; EI2, s.v. al-Khaḍir).
The Shiʿis, during Moḥarram, commemorate the sufferings of the Imam Ḥosayn, his children, and his followers at Karbalā, where they were martyred. In Shiʿi lore, their greatest trial was thirst, because their enemies denied them water from the Euphrates (see ʿAbbās b. ʿAlī, below). As part of Moḥarram observances, the faithful distribute drinking water in memory of Ḥosayn’s thirst. A pious act is widely observed in Islamic countries is the foundation of saqqāḵānas (q.v.), or public drinking fountains, again to commemorate the events at Karbalā. The Persian language is rich in proverbs and sayings alluding to water and the thirst of the martyrs of Karbalā.
Bibliography: Given in the text.
آب در فرهنگ مسلمانان ایرانی
ab dar farhange moslmanan irani
(I. K. Poonawala)
Originally Published: December 15, 1982
This article is available in print.
Vol. I, Fasc. 1 pp. 27-28
I. K. Poonawala, “ĀB ii. Water in Muslim Iranian culture,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, I/1 pp. 27-28, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ab-ii-water-in-muslim-iranian-culture (accessed on 30 December 2012). | <urn:uuid:a1df61b3-c5c0-4355-b08b-fe725bec864c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ab-ii-water-in-muslim-iranian-culture | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00117-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911906 | 3,126 | 3.171875 | 3 |
- "technical protocols" typically serve to facilitate machine to machine
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- the key components of this are meta-data, negotiation, and signatures. | <urn:uuid:2a4c1028-96c1-4afe-a092-6ffe573959b8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.w3.org/Talks/980428-MIT4.195/slide3-0.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00029-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.879965 | 102 | 2.578125 | 3 |
We all know that the digital age can provide a world of wonders for today’s youngsters. But the effects of digital media can be quite damaging for a developing mind, as a recent study suggests. The study, which included 1,345 children between the ages of 1 and 3, found that for every hour a preschooler watches television each day, their chances of developing attention deficit problems later in life increase by approximately 10 percent.
Camille Paglia, whom I consider to be one of today’s greatest thinkers, has just published a paper that plays on a similar theme. She argues that students have become accustomed to the quick, flashy images found in today’s media, and as a result, their attention spans have diminished. She proposes that a humanities-based curriculum should adapt to these changes, and teach student how to understand and interpret these images. Here’s a portion of the paper. I know it’s long, but read it:
“Interest in and patience with long, complex books and poems have alarmingly diminished not only among college students but college faculty in the U.S. It is difficult to imagine American students today, even at elite universities, gathering impromptu at midnight for a passionate discussion of big, challenging literary works like Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov—a scene I witnessed in a recreation room strewn with rock albums at my college dormitory in upstate New York in 1965. As a classroom teacher for over thirty years, I have become increasingly concerned about evidence of, if not cultural decline, then cultural dissipation since the 1960s, a decade that seemed to hold such heady promise of artistic and intellectual innovation. Young people today are flooded with disconnected images but lack a sympathetic instrument to analyze them as well as a historical frame of reference in which to situate them. I am reminded of an unnerving scene in Stanley Kubrick's epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where an astronaut, his air hose cut by the master computer gone amok, spins helplessly off into space. The new generation, raised on TV and the personal computer but deprived of a solid primary education, has become unmoored from the mother ship of culture. Technology, like Kubrick's rogue computer, HAL, is the companionable servant turned ruthless master. The ironically self-referential or overtly politicized and jargon-ridden paradigms of higher education, far from helping the young to cope or develop, have worsened their vertigo and free fall. Today's students require not subversion of rationalist assumptions—the childhood legacy of intellectuals born in Europe between the two World Wars—but the most basic introduction to structure and chronology. Without that, they are riding the tail of a comet in a media starscape of explosive but evanescent images.
“The extraordinary technological aptitude of the young comes partly from their now-instinctive ability to absorb information from the flickering TV screen, which evolved into the glassy monitor of the omnipresent personal computer. Television is reality for them: nothing exists unless it can be filmed or until it is rehashed onscreen by talking heads. The computer, with its multiplying forums for spontaneous free expression from e-mail to listservs and blogs, has increased facility and fluency of language but degraded sensitivity to the individual word and reduced respect for organized argument, the process of deductive reasoning. The jump and jitter of U.S. commercial television have demonstrably reduced attention span in the young. The Web too, with its addictive unfurling of hypertext, encourages restless acceleration.
“Knowing how to "read" images is a crucial skill in this media age, but the style of cultural analysis currently prevalent in universities is, in my view, counterproductive in its anti-media bias and intrusive social agenda. It teaches students suspicion and paranoia and, with its abstract European terminology, does not offer an authentic anthropology of the North American media environment in which they came to consciousness. Post-structuralism and postmodernism do not understand magic or mystique, which are intrinsic to art and imagination. It is no coincidence that since postmodernist terminology seeped into the art world in the 1980s, the fine arts have receded as a major cultural force. Creative energy is flowing instead into animation, video games, and cyber-tech, where the young are pioneers. Character-driven feature films, on the other hand, have steadily fallen in quality since the early nineties, partly because of Hollywood's increasing use of computer graphics imaging (CGI) and special effects, advanced technology that threatens to displace the live performing arts.
“Works that make the most immediate as well as the most lasting impact on undergraduates, I have found, usually have a magic, mythological, or intensely emotional aspect, along with a choreographic energy or clarity. Here is a quick overview of objects from the Western tradition that have proved consistently effective, as assessed by student performance on midterm and final exams. Among ancient artifacts, the bust of queen Nefertiti, with its strange severity and elegance; the monumental Hellenistic sculpture group of the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two sons being strangled by serpents; and the Varvakeion Athena, our small Roman-era copy of the colossal, chryselephantine statue of the armed Athena from the Parthenon. The latter in particular, with its dense iconography of coiled serpent, winged Victory, triple-crested helmet, and aegis with gorgon's head medallion, seems to burn its way into student memory. Images from the Middle Ages, aside from elegant French Madonnas and Notre Dame's gargoyles and flying buttresses, have proved less successful in my experience than the frankly carnal images of the Italian Renaissance. A dramatic contrast can be drawn between Donatello's sinuously homoerotic, bronze David and his late, carved-wood Mary Magdalene, with its painful gauntness and agonized posture of repentance. Two standards never lose their power in the classroom: Botticelli's Birth of Venus, where the nude goddess of love stands in the dreamy S-curve of a Gothic Madonna, and Leonardo's eerie Mona Lisa, with its ambiguous lady, barren landscape, and mismatched horizon lines. From Michelangelo's huge body of work, the deepest response, independent of the students' religious background, has been to his marble Pietà, where a ravishingly epicene dead Christ slips from the lap of a heavily shrouded, strikingly young Mary, and second to a surreally dual panel in the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Temptation and Fall: on one side of the robust tree wound by a fat, female-bodied serpent, sensual Eve reaches up for the forbidden fruit, while on the other, an avenging angel drives the anguished sinners out of paradise.
“Because of its inherent theatricality, the Baroque works resoundingly well with undergraduates. Paramount exhibits are Bernini's designs for St. Peter's Basilica: the serpentine, 95-foot high, bronze pillars of the Baldachino (canopy) over the main altar; or the elevated chair of Saint Peter—wood encased in bronze and framed by a spectacular Glory, a solar burst of gilded beams. Next is Bernini's Cornaro Chapel in Rome's Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, with its opera-box stage setting, flamboyant columns of multicolored marble, and over the altar the wickedly witty marble-and-bronze sculpture group, Ecstasy of St. Teresa, where spiritual union and sexual orgasm occur simultaneously.
“Nineteenth-century Romantic and realist painting offers a staggering range of image choices. Standouts in my classes have included the following: Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, a grisly intertwining of the living and the dead, bobbing on dark, swelling seas against a threatening sky. Delacroix's The Death of Sardanapalus, inspired by a Byron poem, with its swirl of luxury and butchery around the impassive king of Nineveh, who has torched his palace and capital. Turner's The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (chronicling a disaster Turner witnessed in 1834), where nature conquers politics and the Thames itself seems aflame. (Of several views in this series, the version owned by the Cleveland Museum of Art is best because most panoramic.) Manet's Girl at the Bar of the Folies Bergère, a penetrating study of social class and exploitation amid the din and glitter of modern entertainment: we ourselves, thanks to a trick mirror, become the dissolute, predatory boulevardier being waited on by a wistful young woman lost in the harsh night world of the city.
“Twentieth-century art is prolific in contrasting and competitive styles but less concerned with the completeness or autonomy of individual images. Two exceptions are Picasso's still intimidatingly avant-garde Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, with its brothel setting, contorted figures, and fractured space, and second, his monochrome mural, Guernica, the most powerful image of political protest since Goya, a devastating spectacle of fire, fear, and death. Also unfailingly useful are Hollywood glamour stills from the 1920s to the 1950s, which are drawn from a slide collection that I have helped build at the University of the Arts since 1990. I view these suave portrait photos, with their formal poses and mesmerizing luminosity, as true works of art in the main line of Western culture.
“But an education in images should not simply be a standard art-survey course—though I would strongly defend the pedagogical value of survey courses, which are being unwisely marginalized or dismantled outright at many American colleges. Thanks to postmodernism, strict chronology and historical sweep and synthesis are no longer universally appreciated or considered fundamental to the graduate training of humanities professors. But chronology is crucial if we hope, as we must, to broaden the Western curriculum to world cultures. To maintain order, the choice of representative images will need to be stringently narrowed. I envision a syllabus based on key images that would give teachers great latitude to expand the verbal dimension of presentation, including an analysis of style as well as a narrative of personal response. I will give three examples of prototypical images for my proposed course plan. They would play on students' feeling for mystery yet ground them in chronology and encourage them to evaluate historical evidence. The first example is from the Stone Age; the second from the Byzantine era; the third from pre-Columbian Central America." | <urn:uuid:b0ea1e01-e47d-4cac-9bbe-2e0f8949eee4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://purplestates.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_purplestates_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00167-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942643 | 2,217 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Chromium is required for normal protein, fat, and carbohydrate metabolism. Chromium plays a role in regulating appetite, reducing the cravings for sugar and increasing lean body mass. Chromium contains a special bioactive formulation called Glucose Tolerance Factor (GTF). GTF facilitates insulin action by binding insulin to cell membranes, serving as a bridge between the insulin molecule and the cell membrane receptor sites. Remember, glucose is used by cells for energy, insulin is used by by the body to transport the glucose into the cells, Chromium's GTF factor essentially assist the glucose to enter the cell. Therefore, all both insulin and GTF are needed for proper glucose metabolism. Chromium deficiency can lead to Type II diabetes and heart disease. Chromium deficiency is thought to contribute to glucose intolerance. Chromium has also been shown to reduce levels of harmful LDL cholesterol (a form of cholesterol that has been linked to heart disease) and increase beneficial HDL cholesterol (HDL cholesterol helps return cholesterol to the liver, keeping it from building up in the blood vessels). | <urn:uuid:c6ca2611-ffdc-4b32-9345-f84c71ef0f06> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.foodfacts.com/ci/ingredientsoverlay/chromium-chelate/4465 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00036-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91226 | 213 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Perhaps if the residents of Miami-Dade County had been better rested last
November, the citizens of the United States would have decided the election
2000 outcome instead of the TV networks and lawyers.
Could it be that many of our most serious national problems spring from the
fact that our leaders and voters are just plain sleepy? There is an old
often-repeated myth that says you need less sleep as you grow older. Well,
that old “myth” is wrong!
The need for sleep does not change with age, but sleep patterns may change
with age, according to Sonia Ancoli-Israel, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry
at The University of California, San Diego, and Director of the Sleep
Disorders Clinic, V.A. San Diego Health Care System.
The truth is that while the need for sleep does not decrease with age,
sleep problems do, indeed, become more prevalent. Various studies show that
about one-third of seniors report symptoms of insomnia, and problems are
more prevalent in women.
Unfortunately, when sleep disturbances occur, they may result in behaviors
that can be associated with signs of normal aging. These include attention
difficulty, slowed response time, difficulty with memory and decreased
performance — all of which may be misinterpreted as dementia. The elderly
note that their time in bed increases, the number of awakenings increase,
total night sleep time decreases, time to fall asleep increases, sleep is
less satisfying, they are more tired during the day and they nap more
Insomnia and daytime sleepiness can occur at any age, and the resulting
symptoms should not be presumed to be a factor of age. But it is true that
seniors are more at risk to insomnia because of lifestyle changes, illness
and use of medications.
Studies show that retirement, isolation, loneliness, bereavement, and lack
of physical activity have profound effects on sleep in the elderly. All of
these issues can contribute to mood disorders such as major depression and
generalized anxiety — with insomnia being a major symptom.
Medical conditions that have a direct link to insomnia are hyperthyroidism,
arthritis, chronic renal failure, chronic lung disease, heart failure,
neurological disorders, restless legs syndrome, Dementia/Alzheimer’s,
Parkinson’s disease and primary sleep disorders.
Drugs that cause insomnia are alcohol, CNS stimulants, beta-blockers,
bronchodilators, calcium channel blockers, corticosteroids, decongestants,
stimulating antidepressants, thyroid hormone and nicotine.
The role of melatonin to combat insomnia remains under discussion. The best
dose is not well defined, and the over-the-counter preparations are not FDA
controlled and may not be pure. Melatonin can induce sleep but the timing
is extremely crucial and beyond the scope of this column.
So what to do to combat insomnia, especially in seniors? Dr. Ancoli-Israel offers these
1. Exercise every day. Lack of physical activity is one of the most
prevalent reasons for insomnia.
2. Curtail daytime naps. Limit naps to one per day for less than 30
minutes. While catnaps can rejuvenate, longer naps and more of them will only make insomnia worse.
3. Check medications. Make sure you aren’t overmedicating.
4. Avoid alcohol, caffeine and nicotine. Yeah, we know a glass of red wine may help you feel sleepy. But common sense tells us to avoid these in the evening.
5. Limit liquids. Take that last glass of milk or juice at least 3 hours
6. Keep regular hours. The circadian rhythm is a powerful force and more
sensitive to interruptions in seniors.
Sleeplessness causes daytime drowsiness and less than optimal daytime
functioning. Circadian rhythms naturally advance a few hours with age, so
older people may feel sleepy earlier and wake up earlier in contrast to
teen-agers who, as we know, are just getting started when the rest of us
want to go to sleep. Physical activity and natural light exposure can
promote better sleep. Natural light helps reset the circadian clock and a
regular schedule stabilizes the circadian rhythm. Try taking that walk late
in the afternoon.
If you’re a senior experiencing a sleep disturbance, don’t assume that’s the
best you can do. Instead, address the primary cause, whether it’s
medication, physical ailments, depression or emotional problems. Just
because you are a little older, the extra wisdom in itself does not cause
sleep problems. Although sleep patterns do change, the need for sleep does
not change with age.
Remember that when the best years of your life are ahead, approaching, or
here, you don’t want to spend them sacked out or making bad decisions.
And in the meantime, maybe we can all take a cue from Presidents Reagan and
Kennedy, who were both notorious for their afternoon catnaps. Maybe our
current leaders would make better future decisions if better rested!
Our thanks again to Dr. Sonia Ancoli-Israel for providing us with sound sleep
advice so these AARP-eligible authors of this article could stay awake long
enough to write this one.
For more information write the National Sleep Foundation. | <urn:uuid:894e8173-2f9f-4817-8213-a56d8e86eb33> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wnd.com/2001/02/8190/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402516.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00129-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916847 | 1,132 | 2.75 | 3 |
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Buggy
BUGGY, a vehicle with either two (in England and India) or four wheels (in America). English buggies are generally hooded and for one horse. American buggies are for one horse or two, and either covered with a hood or open; among the varieties are the "Goddard" (the name of the inventor), the "box," so called from the shape of the body, the "cut under," i.e. cut out for the front wheels to cramp beneath and so turn in a narrow space, the "end-spring" and "side-bar," names referring to the style of hanging. A skeleton buggy, lightly constructed, is used on the American "speedways," built and maintained for fast driving. The word is of unknown origin; it may be connected with "bogie" (q.v.) a truck. The supposed Hindustani baggī, a gig, often given as the source, appears to be an invention or an adaptation into the vernacular of the English word. | <urn:uuid:81ae3303-45eb-4e0a-83fb-46aa5798eddd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Buggy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00184-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955416 | 225 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Disguised as lymph nodes, cancer can evade detection, researchers find
THURSDAY, March 25 (HealthDay News) -- New research from Switzerland provides insight into how tumors remain undetected by the body's immune system by mimicking lymph nodes.
"The tumor tricks the body into thinking it is healthy tissue," lead author Melody Swartz, head of the Laboratory of Lymphatic and Cancer Bioengineering, said in a news release about the study, published online March 25 in Science.
According to Swartz and her colleagues at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, the findings could lead to better treatments for cancer.
In the study, the researchers focused on a protein that is typically found in lymph nodes and discovered that certain tumors can secrete the protein, making them appear to be lymph nodes. This disguise allows the tumors to manipulate immune cells known as T-cells, just like lymph nodes do, the study authors explained.
The findings have "important implications for tumor immunotherapy," Jacqui Shields, another researcher, explained in the news release.
The U.S. National Cancer Institute has details on different types of cancer.
-- Randy Dotinga
SOURCE: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, news release, March 25, 2010
All rights reserved | <urn:uuid:5182fa9e-2a3d-4d1d-acb4-a14a1cbc196a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Tumors-Use-a-Protein-to-Hide-From-Immune-System-69574-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00010-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921922 | 270 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Stanza 3 Summary
Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
- These lines start a new stanza, and a new description of the lovely palace. The speaker tells us that, when "wanderers" (notice the emphasis on aimless relaxation) passed through the "happy valley," they could see through two "luminous" (that just means full of light) windows in the palace.
- We don't know what they could see, because Poe is saving that for the next line. Breaking up the meaning of a sentence over several poetic lines is called enjambment, and in a case like this it helps to pull us along through the poem. (Go hit up "Form and Meter" for more on that technique.)
- Why just two windows? Well, we can't quite tell what that's about yet, but let's just keep an eye on these odd details.
Spirits moving musically,
To a lute's well-tuned law,
- The wanderers see "spirits" through the window, "moving musically" (alliteration alert!) around the palace.
- The music they are moving to comes from a lute, which is an old-fashioned stringed instrument, a little like a guitar. The "law" of the lute is its rhythm, which regulates the way the spirits move. The basic idea here is that everything is in harmony. This palace is in good shape, inside and out.
Round about a throne where, sitting
- The spirits are moving around a throne, where someone is sitting. We don't know who exactly, yet, but Poe gives us a (kind of dorky) little hint with that single, weird-looking word in line 22.
- In case you're wondering why you've never seen this word before, it's because Poe made it up.
- What does it mean? Glad you asked! It's derived from another $500 SAT vocabulary word, "porphyrogenite," which literally means "born to (or in) the purple." Hmmm… that's probably not much help, is it? Well, purple was a color associated with royalty in ancient Constantinople, and so someone born to the purple was a member of the royal family.
- So, when all is said and done "Porphyrogene" means something like "royal" or "born a king." It seems safe to assume that it's the king sitting on that throne that the spirits are dancing around.
In state his glory well-befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
- It turns out that it is the king, the "ruler of the realm" sitting on that throne. He sits in "state," which in this case means opulent or magnificent surroundings, the kind of beautiful that would be suitable "well-befitting" for a king.
- Just who is this ruler? Well, we learned in line 5 that the ruler of this kingdom is "Thought." What does that mean, though?
- Well, it's part of the riddle at the heart of this poem. Let's see if we can decode it… | <urn:uuid:2e038097-9572-4bd3-8df2-eaec664fddf5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.shmoop.com/the-haunted-palace/stanza-3-summary.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393533.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972297 | 690 | 3.265625 | 3 |
An environmental controversy surrounding the construction of Gilgel Gibe III Dam in Ethiopia’s Highlands appears to be close to resolution. Kenyan authorities have raised concerns about the dam because it is being built along Ethiopia’s Omo River which is the major source of water for Kenya’s Lake Turkana.
The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) has been working with Kenyan and Ethiopian governments on developing a joint project on sustainable development of the basin.
An agreement between the two water ministries may be signed in November, said an official for UNEP
in Nairobi. The draft agreement proposes joint management of all natural resources in Lake Turkana and its river basin which extends upstream into Ethiopia.
Lake Turkana defenders in Kenya anticipate an agreement could save the lake.
At issue is the question of whether Ethiopia’s Gilgel Gibe 111 dam will drain upstream waters to irrigate large plantations on the Ethiopia side of the border, a move that Kenya fears will critically damage Lake Turkana, 675 kilometers downstream. More than 80 percent of the Kenyan lake’s waters come from the Omo in Ethiopia and water levels in the lake could drop by as much as 10 meters once the dam is operational. Lake Turkana is also a World Heritage site where some of earliest evidence of man has been found and is currently home to thousands of fishermen and others who use the lake waters for their livestock.
“Our big concern is the water levels of Lake Turkana,” said Thomas Wildman, Horn of Africa director for Oxfam Great Britain. “The big question is whether Ethiopia is going to release all the water from the dam once they’ve drawn it for hydro or if they’re going to keep any of that water.”
Irrigation a major concern for Kenya
The Gilgel Gibe III is the third of three dams to be built on the Omo River and its tributaries that run south and empty into Lake Turkana across the Kenyan border. Recent Ethiopian proposals to divert Omo waters for irrigation of a major sugar plantation in the basin have alarmed officials in the administration President Uhuru Kenyatta.
“For the first time this year, the president of Kenya actually accepted that the dam has an impact on Lake Turkana,” said Akil Angelei, president of The Friends of Lake Turkana
. “After years of back and forth, UNEP is trying to convene meetings to look at a way forward on the issue.”
As part of its development strategy Ethiopia is seeking to become a major source of global sugar. It is building 10 new refineries and devoting another 5 million hectares to growing sugarcane. South Omo is to host six of those factories and half of the plantation lands.
Oxfam said the Omo River dam construction – originally identified as a hydroelectric project – is now viewed as “quite a large-scale irrigation project which could really reduce the levels and create an ecological impact on the fish populations which are a primary sources of livelihood for the people on the lake and on the floodplain for livestock.”
“We know that Ethiopia’s main drive had been not just hydro but irrigation,” said Angelei, “so we are trying highlight that we need them to look at what the entire basin needs.”
Thousands displaced by the dam
Another issue of concern surrounding construction of the Gilgel Gibe III dam is the displacement of people. Claudia Carr
at the University of California at Berkeley reported
that large numbers of Mursi people in the north of the basin and Dasanech groups along the eastern shore have already been removed by the Ethiopia government. The Dasanech occupy the northern and eastern shores of the lake and straddle both countries. Gabbra and Turkana groups live to the south and west of the lake.
More than a dozen indigenous tribes have lived in the basin for centuries, raising cattle and goats and fishing the lake. Some estimates say that beyond the 20,000 who depend directly on the lake’s waters, more than 200,000 Kenyans and Ethiopians would be impacted by a drop in lake waters.
Cattle raids and tribal clashes are frequent among the tribes such as the Rendille. Many who study the region are concerned that reduced water flows will increase competition for water and lead to increased clashes. Rights groups have reported
that in Ethiopia many villagers been removed to provide up to 300,000 hectares in South Oromo for proposed sugar and cotton plantations.
An early champion of Lake Turkana, Kenyan paleoanthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey
said four years ago that the Gilgel Gibe III was based on flawed studies and “the dam will produce a broad range of negative effects, some of which would be catastrophic to both the environment and the indigenous communities living downstream.”
The ongoing debate focuses on an under-populated desert region where the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan – and the disputed Ilema Triangle – meet. Recent news of the satellite-based discovery of a vast network of subterranean aquifers
holding 250 billion cubic meters of fresh water could boost the fortunes of this drought-prone corner of Kenya but will not impact the future of Lake Turkana. Now the fate of the region depends on the ability of Kenya and Ethiopia to jointly manage the waters of the Omo River in the Turkana basin. | <urn:uuid:82731eb6-234e-45d1-a5e9-8d376d38f9b7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.voanews.com/content/kenya-ethiopia-mediating-omo-river-water-controversy/1770973.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00128-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952768 | 1,121 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Eating disorders affect an estimated 13 to 42% of athletes, depending on sport and gender. The number of reported cases appear to be on the rise as a result of increased public awareness and a greater willingness of athletes to seek treatment.
The effect of eating disorders on athletes is greater than on non-athletes because of the increased stress they place on their bodies on a daily basis. Those most vulnerable participate in so-called "appearance" sports (i.e. gymnastics, swim, figure skating and dance), but eating disorders are also common in endurance sports (e.g. long-distance running, triathlons, cycling) and sports with weight classifications (e.g. wrestling). Eating disorders are subject to chronic under-reporting or are handled in secret, due to the pressures on athletes to perform from coaches and parents (as well as pressures the athletes place on themselves to achieve high levels of performance).
Many different forms
Eating disorders in athletes can take a variety of different forms, including:
- Restriction of calories or purging behaviors to drop weight or improve performance;
- Binge eating in response to hunger resulting from a high level of physical activity;
- Excessive exercise or vomiting to compensate for any extra calories consumed; and
- Disordered or idiosyncratic eating patterns due to the physical demands athletics place on their bodies or training schedules.
Less is known about eating disorders among male athletes, since most studies involve female athletes. One issue males contend with is body dysmorphia, which leads to a preoccupation with becoming muscular, and a desire to promote size and strength. They may limit the types of foods eaten to decrease body fat or stimulate weight loss, or increase protein intake or complex carbs to gain muscle mass. Many males affected with the disorder go unnoticed or untreated, as they avoid discussing their concerns, and instead attribute it to a desire for success in their sport.
Coaches, teammates and parents should be aware of the traditional physical warning signs of eating disorders, which if left untreated can have serious health risks, including cardiac failure. These consist of:
- Menstrual irregularities or amenorrhea
- Fine hair on the body
- Low blood pressure or dizziness
- Swollen or puffy cheeks
- Decreased stamina in performance
- Frequent complaints of feeling cold
- Weight loss
- Bradycardia or heart arrythmias
- Hair loss
Parents whose children participate in athletics should closely monitor their child for any warning signs of disordered eating. Consistent communication with the coach can help to ensure that the child is being appropriately monitored, and creating an open dialogue about any concerns will also allow the child to be accountable for their actions as they build their talents and strengths. If you notice that your child is becoming extremely competitive, exhibiting an unhealthy preoccupation with their ability level or feeling pressure to perform, intervention may be necessary. Further, consult with your child's physician to ensure that they are medically stable to perform.
Targeting eating disorders
For parents of children entering college, the NCAA has made a specific effort to target eating disorders in college athletes, conducting research and screenings. The NCAA has posted a 53-page brochure online dedicated to the female athlete triad (which comprises disordered eating, amenorrhea and osteoporosis), but unfortunately, there is nothing to specifically address males at this time. More information on NCAA resources can be found at: http://www.ncaa.org/health-safety.
While sports participation itself is not necessarily the cause of an eating disorder, it may, coupled with any genetic/temperament predisposition to eating disorders, create a convergence of risk factors for athletes. While the research of these factors are still under investigation, experts agree that the "perfect storm" of influences often contributes and leads to the perpetuation of disordered eating among athletes.
Lyndsay Elliott, Psy.D. is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice in Newport Beach, California, and has extensive experience treating eating disorder and body image issues. To visit Dr. Elliott's website, click here, follow her on Twitter @DrLyndsay, or visit her Facebook page at Dr. Lyndsay Elliott, Inc.
Sundgot-Borgen J, Torstveit M.K. Prevalence of Eating Disorders in Elite Athletes Is Higher Than in the General Population. Cl. J. Sports Med. 2004;14(1):25-32 (accessed November 11, 2011 at http://journals.lww.com/cjsportsmed/Abstract/2004/01000/Prevalence_of_Ea...)
Beals K. Disordered Eating Among Athletes: A Comprehensive Guide for Health Professionals (Beals 2004).
Thompson, S, Sherman R.T. Athletes, Athletic Performance, and Eating Disorders: Healthier Alternatives. J. Soc. Issues 1999; 55(2):317-337 (accessed November 11, 2011 at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/0022-4537.00118/pdf)
Thompson S , Sherman, R.T.. Managing the Female Athlete Triad. (accessed November 11, 2011 at http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/2db7d8004e0db26bac18fc1ad6fc8b25/fem...)
Pearson C.. Male Athletes Struggle with Eating Disorders. Huffington Post September 2011. (accessed November 11, 2011 at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/16/eating-disorders-men_n_928206.h...)
Posted November 16, 2011 | <urn:uuid:efad658a-dad4-440b-a4e8-4c50d832ff7c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.momsteam.com/health-safety/disordered-eating-body-image-issues-among-athletes-rising | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399117.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00052-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92498 | 1,190 | 3.875 | 4 |
New research has found that cases of MRSA - a bacteria that causes serious infections of the skin, blood, lungs and bones - decreased when prescriptions of ciprofloxacin were reduced, suggesting that the common antibiotic is helping the deadly superbug spread through hospitals.
The University of London research- published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy - also challenged the widely held belief that improved hygiene and hand-washing significantly hinders the spread of the bug, the Daily Star reported.
For the study, researchers led by St George's, University of London, tracked MRSA infection over 10 years from 1999 to 2009 at St George's Hospital, looking at how it has adapted to survive in a hospital environment and what factors affected its prevalence.
They found that a significant drop in MRSA rates coincided with a reduction in hospital prescriptions of ciprofloxacin, the most commonly prescribed antibiotic of the fluoroquinolone family.
MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, causes hospital-acquired infection and is resistant to all of the penicillin-type antibiotics frequently used in hospitals to prevent and treat infection.
Hand-washing and strict hygiene procedures do reduce the spread of the bug, but the St George''s study found that they appeared to have only a small effect on lowering MRSA infection rates during the period studied.
During a short period at the hospital, ciprofloxacin prescriptions fell from 70-100 daily doses for every 1,000 occupied beds to about 30 doses. In the same timeframe, the number of patients identified by the laboratory to be infected with MRSA fell by half, from an average of about 120 a month to around 60.
Over the final two years of the study, both the drug prescription level and MRSA rates remained at the reduced levels. It is not known how many of the cases examined in the study were serious. | <urn:uuid:96db65aa-d632-4635-9887-eab3a9c08f2e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2012/09/uk-common-antibiotic-boosts-spread-of-deadly-superbug.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397873.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954327 | 397 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Video. Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying and broadcasting of moving visual images.
History Video technology was first developed for cathode ray tube (CRT) television systems, but several new technologies for video display devices have since been invented. Charles Ginsburg led an Ampex research team developing one of the first practical video tape recorder (VTR). In 1951 the first video tape recorder captured live images from television cameras by converting the camera's electrical impulses and saving the information onto magnetic video tape. Motion compensation. Visualization of MPEG block motion compensation.
Blocks that moved from one frame to the next are shown as white arrows, making the motions of the different platforms and the character clearly visible. Motion compensation is an algorithmic technique employed in the encoding of video data for video compression, for example in the generation of MPEG-2 files. Motion compensation describes a picture in terms of the transformation of a reference picture to the current picture. The reference picture may be previous in time or even from the future. When images can be accurately synthesised from previously transmitted/stored images, the compression efficiency can be improved.
Motion interpolation. Motion interpolation or motion-compensated frame interpolation (MCFI) is a form of video processing in which intermediate animation frames are generated between existing ones, in an attempt to make animation more fluid, and to compensate for display motion blur.
Applications Software Some video software suites and plugins offer motion-interpolation effects to enhance digitally-slowed video. Adobe After Effects has this in a feature called "Pixel Motion". The effects plugin Twixtor is available for most major video editing suites and offers similar functionality. Raster graphics. 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전.
RGB 비트맵 그림의 맨 위 왼쪽 모퉁이에 웃는 얼굴이 있다고 치자. 확대를 하면 커다란 웃는 얼굴은 오른쪽과 같이 보이게 된다. 각 사각형은 화소를 나타낸다. 더 확대하면 각 화소는 더 커 보이게 되며 빨강, 초록, 파랑색의 값을 추가함으로써 색을 이루고 있음을 알 수 있다. 전산학에서 래스터 그래픽스(Raster graphics) 이미지, 곧 비트맵은 일반적으로 직사각형 격자의 화소, 색의 점을 모니터, 종이 등의 매체에 표시하는 자료 구조이다. 비트맵은 화면에 표시되는 그림의 비트 대 비트와 일치하며, 일반적으로 장치 독립 비트맵으로서, 디스플레이의 비디오 메모리의 기억 장치에 쓰이는 포맷과 일치한다. 인쇄 산업은 래스터 그래픽스를 연속 톤으로, 벡터 그래픽스를 선형 작업으로 부른다. Interleaving. Interleaving may refer to:
CRT. Cutaway rendering of a color CRT:1.
Three Electron guns (for red, green, and blue phosphor dots)2. Electron beams3. Focusing coils4. Deflection coils5. Anode connection6. Overscan. Overscan is the term used to describe the situation when not all of a televised image is present on a viewing screen.
It exists because television sets from the 1930s through the 1990s were highly variable in how the video image was positioned within the borders of the cathode ray tube (CRT) screen. The solution was to have the monitor show less than the full image ie. with the edges "outside" the viewing area of the tube. In this way the image seen never showed black borders caused by either improper centering or non-linearity in the scanning circuits or variations in power supply voltage all of which could cause the image to "shrink" in size and reveal the edge of the picture. With the ending of CRT displays, this issue has largely (but not completely) disappeared. YUV pixel formats. YUV formats fall into two distinct groups, the packed formats where Y, U (Cb) and V (Cr) samples are packed together into macropixels which are stored in a single array, and the planar formats where each component is stored as a separate array, the final image being a fusing of the three separate planes.
In the diagrams below, the numerical suffix attached to each Y, U or V sample indicates the sampling position across the image line, so, for example, V0 indicates the leftmost V sample and Yn indicates the Y sample at the (n+1)th pixel from the left. Subsampling intervals in the horizontal and vertical directions may merit some explanation.
The horizontal subsampling interval describes how frequently across a line a sample of that component is taken while the vertical interval describes on which lines samples are taken. For YVU9, though, the vertical subsampling interval is 4. This indicates that U and V samples are only taken on every fourth line of the original image. Chrominance. Luminance only, Chrominance only, and full color image. History The use of two channels, one transmitting the predominating color (signal T), and the other the mean brilliance (signal t) output from a single television transmitter to be received not only by color television receivers provided with the necessary more expensive equipment, but also by the ordinary type of television receiver which is more numerous and less expensive and which reproduces the pictures in black and white only.
Previous schemes for color television systems, which were incompatible with existing monochrome receivers, transmitted RGB signals in various ways. Television standards In analog television, chrominance is encoded into a video signal using a subcarrier frequency. MPEG. MPEG logo Sub Groups ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 – Coding of moving pictures and audio has following Sub Groups (SG): RequirementsSystemsVideoAudio3D Graphics CompressionTestCommunication Cooperation with other groups
MPEG-2 system. MPEG-2 (aka H.222/H.262 as defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission bandwidth.
Main characteristics MPEG-2 is widely used as the format of digital television signals that are broadcast by terrestrial (over-the-air), cable, and direct broadcast satellite TV systems. It also specifies the format of movies and other programs that are distributed on DVD and similar discs. TV stations, TV receivers, DVD players, and other equipment are often designed to this standard.
PSI. Program-specific information (PSI) is metadata about a program (channel) and part of an MPEG transport stream. The PSI data as defined by ISO/IEC 13818-1 (MPEG-2 Part 1: Systems) includes four tables: PAT (program association table)CAT (conditional access table)PMT (program map table)NIT (network information table) PSI is carried in the form of a table structure. Each table structure is broken into sections and can span multiple transport stream packets.
Adaptation field also occurs in TS packets carrying PSI data. The sections comprising the PAT and CAT tables are associated with predefined PIDs as explained in their respective descriptions below. DSM-CC. Digital storage media command and control (DSM-CC) is a toolkit for developing control channels associated with MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 streams. It is defined in part 6 of the MPEG-2 standard (Extensions for DSM-CC) and uses a client/server model connected via an underlying network (carried via the MPEG-2 multiplex or independently if needed). DSM-CC may be used for controlling the video reception, providing features normally found on Video Cassette Recorders (VCR) (fast-forward, rewind, pause, etc.). It may also be used for a wide variety of other purposes including packet data transport. It is defined by a series of weighty standards, principally MPEG-2 ISO/IEC 13818-6 (part 6 of the MPEG-2 standard).
These specifications include numerous implementation options. PES. A typical method of transmitting elementary stream data from a video or audio encoder is to first create PES packets from the elementary stream data and then to encapsulate these PES packets inside Transport Stream (TS) packets or Program Stream (PS) packets. The TS packets can then be multiplexed and transmitted using broadcasting techniques, such as those used in an ATSC and DVB.
Transport Streams and Program Streams are each logically constructed from PES packets. PES packets shall be used to convert between Transport Streams and Program Streams. In some cases the PES packets need not be modified when performing such conversions. PES packets may be much larger than the size of a Transport Stream packet. MPEG-2 video compression. Video compression picture types. DCT. Entropy coding. 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전. 엔트로피 인코딩 혹은 엔트로피 부호화(entropy encoding)는 심볼이 나올 확률에 따라 심볼을 나타내는 코드의 길이를 달리하는 부호화 방법이다. 보통 엔트로피 인코더는 모든 심볼에 대해 같은 길이를 갖는 코드를 심볼이 나올 확률값의 음의 로그에 비례하는 서로 다른 길이의 코드로 바꾸어 부호화한다. 즉 가장 자주 나오는 심볼에 대한 코드가 가장 짧다. 새넌 정리(Shannon's theorem)에 따르면, 가장 좋은 코드 길이는 b를 부호화할 진수(2진수로 부호화 할 경우에는 b=2가 된다), P를 심볼이 나올 확률이라고 할 때 −logbP 라고 한다. 엔트로피 코딩 중에 가장 자주 쓰이는 세 가지는 허프만 부호화, 범위 부호화와 산술 부호화이다.
Huffman coding. Huffman tree generated from the exact frequencies of the text "this is an example of a huffman tree". The frequencies and codes of each character are below. Encoding the sentence with this code requires 135 bits, as opposed to 288 bits if 36 characters of 8 bits were used. MPEG PS. Program streams are used on DVD-Video discs and HD DVD video discs, but with some restrictions and extensions. The filename extensions are VOB and EVO respectively. Coding structure Program streams are created by combining one or more Packetized Elementary Streams (PES), which have a common time base, into a single stream. It is designed for reasonably reliable media such as disks, in contrast to MPEG transport stream which is for data transmission in which loss of data is likely. Program streams have variable size records and minimal use of start codes which would make over the air reception difficult, but has less overhead.
MPEG TS. Diff. TS vs PS. | <urn:uuid:5e54487e-9abd-4a62-93ca-509357d3326e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pearltrees.com/ch.baek/graphics/id2346964 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00009-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.851812 | 3,395 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Point-to-Point over Ethernet, or PPPoE, is a network protocol used to establish a DSL connection to the Internet. If you have a high-speed DSL connection in your office, your Windows computer uses the PPPoE protocol to connect your computer to the Web. Finding the settings can help you troubleshoot problems or customize the connection to suit your needs.
Click the "Start" button and select "Control Panel" from the menu to open the Control Panel.
Click the "View network status and tasks" link in the "Network and Internet" section.
Click the "Change adapter settings" link in the left pane to view all connections.
Double-click the PPPoE connection that you want to see.
Click the "Properties" button to open the Properties window for the connection. Click the tabs of the Properties window to see the settings of your PPPoE connection.
- The Options tab contains various dialing and redialing options. You can click the "PPP Settings" button to edit the advanced settings.
- The Security tab contains the security settings of your PPPoE connection.
- You can edit any of the settings, including those in the Networking and Sharing tabs, as long as you know what you're doing.
- Clicking "OK" applies and saves the new settings.
- Editing the PPPoE settings can result in connectivity problems. | <urn:uuid:93c9efc6-09e4-4956-8eaf-fd3cd785369e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://smallbusiness.chron.com/pppoe-settings-computer-55889.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00179-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.873036 | 297 | 2.75 | 3 |
President Armando Guebuza has called for closer South-South cooperation to help the countries of the south escape from backwardness and poverty. Speaking on 15 June, President Guebuza said that if such cooperation is to be successful, the 132 countries of the southern hemisphere must embark upon a genuine and dynamic partnership, allowing them to make common use of the potential and technological capacities of each country.
President Guebuza was speaking in Doha, capital of the Gulf state of Qatar, during the second summit of the Group of 77 plus China. The Group was formed from the 77 developing countries that were members of the United Nations in 1964. Although membership has now swollen to 132, it has kept the original name for historical reasons.
President Guebuza added that south-south cooperation needed to exploit better the potential of those countries "who have already achieved relatively high levels of development, and have accumulated experiences in particular areas, such as health, agriculture, education, and information technologies".
Such sharing of potential and capacities, he argued, would make use of the differences between the nations of the South, and help promote a new, alternative form of cooperation.
President Guebuza said that, while all members of the group were underdeveloped at the time it was founded 41 years ago, many have subsequently made great strides in various spheres. This experience could be transplanted to other members who have not yet mastered such areas.
The Mozambican leader stressed that it is the African nations that currently need a friendly hand from the other members of the Group of 77. While on other continents the percentage of people living in extreme poverty had dropped from 27.9 per cent in 1990 to 21.3 per cent in 2001, in Africa the number of poor people had risen from 44.6 to 46.5 per cent of the population. Given the rapid population growth in Africa, this meant there were now 314 million people on the continent living on less than one US dollar a day, compared with 227 million in 1990.
Only with outside support, President Guebuza said, could many African countries hope to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. These are goals set by the UN's Millennium Summit of 2000 and should be achieved by 2015. They include halving the number of people living on less than a dollar a day, achieving universal primary education, cutting child mortality by two thirds and maternal mortality by three quarters, and reducing by half the number of people with no access to clean drinking water and adequate sanitation.
At the current rate of progress, there is no chance for most sub-Saharan African countries to meet the majority of the goals by 2015.
To deal with the ills that afflict Africa, it was imperative that nations of the south should work together in a co-ordinated way, said President Guebuza. Solutions which had proven valid in some countries should be adopted and applied in other countries facing similar problems.
President Guebuza made clear he was not excluding the advanced economies from his vision: all countries, he stressed, should work for a better world where all can live a dignified life. This would be easier if both South and North "combine their efforts so as to build together a safe world and a truly global partnership".
Meetings such as the Qatar summit, he added, had the merit of bringing together leaders and experts from both hemispheres to reflect on the paths to follow to reach a prosperous future for all of humanity.
Malaria is responsible for 40 per cent of out-patient consultations in Mozambique, 60 per cent of all hospitalisations, and 30 per cent of deaths in hospitals, according to data from a session of the Ministry of Health's Coordinating Council currently under way in Maputo.
Ministry spokesperson Martinho Djedje told reporters on 7 June that all the provincial directorates who reported to the meeting have mentioned malaria as one of the most serious problems they face. The provincial delegations, Djedje added, were unanimous in stressing the need to redouble efforts to combat malaria.
He said that the Ministry is considering extending successful projects, such as that undertaken jointly by Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland as part of the Libombos Spatial Development Initiative.
In the areas covered by this project, the number of malaria cases has been slashed by more than 50 per cent. The project involves health education, spraying homes against mosquitoes twice a year, and the use of rapid diagnoses and treatment of any cases.
"In that region there are well organised spraying teams, with rigorous control to avoid any theft of insecticides, and to ensure that all houses are sprayed", said Djedje.
The Ministry wants to extend this project to the rest of Maputo provinces, then to the neighbouring province of Gaza and the central province of Zambezia. But Djedje admitted that such anti-malaria projects were "very expensive".
Prime Minister Luisa Diogo told reporters in Maputo on 17 June that she believes the debt cancellation agreed by the finance ministers of the G8 group of most industrialised countries provides "a golden opportunity" for Mozambique. Annual debt servicing would be sharply reduced, allowing Mozambique to channel many more resources to the education and health services.
There remains some ambiguity over the exact amount of debt to be cancelled following the agreement on 11 June by the ministerial meeting in London. However, Prime Minister Diogo believed that the cancellation refers, not to the totality of the country's debts to multilateral institutions, but to what remained after the two phases of the HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) initiative.
The starting point for the HIPC negotiations was Mozambique's debt as of 1984: this was the cut-off date, because it was then that Mozambique made its first approach to creditors seeking debt rescheduling and cancellation.
The country's total debt stock at the time was about $6 billion. By September 2001, after the two phases of HIPC, most of this had been written off. The remainder of this debt, Diogo said, was $1.3 billion in nominal terms, or $761 million in real, net present value terms. She believed that it was the bulk of this $761 million that was now being cancelled.
But in the two decades since 1984 Mozambique has continued to negotiate loans, with the result that the total current debt stock of the country is between $3.5 and $4 billion. These later loans have been negotiated with long maturities, and low interest rates.
When the G8 ministers talked of "total" debt cancellation, Prime Minister Diogo doubted that they had in mind loans that were only contracted in the last couple of years. The World Bank remains the country's largest creditor. Diogo pointed out that about a billion dollars worth of World Bank soft loans, under various agreements, are being disbursed at the moment.
Diogo was optimistic about further preferential treatment from the country's creditors. "Our hope is that Mozambique continues with the favourable image it has, and our partners will continue granting special treatment. We shall try to obtain the maximum possible relief".
President welcomes debt relief
On 12 June President Armando Guebuza expressed his satisfaction at the cancellation of all of Mozambique's multilateral debt, announced by the finance ministers of the G8 group.
In a statement issued in Washington, President Guebuza stressed that the debt write-off "is an important step in consolidating an environment conducive to the economic and social development of Mozambique".
He added that Mozambique would now cease spending tens of millions of dollars a year in servicing its debts. This money could be ploughed into socio-economic development, so that Mozambique could meet the Millennium Development Goals.
The inclusion of Mozambique on the list of countries receiving immediate debt relief "is a recognition by the international community of the efforts that we Mozambicans are making in the struggle against poverty, and for the consolidation of democracy and good governance in our country", he added.
President Guebuza also described the debt cancellation as an important contribution towards implementing the Mozambican government's five year programme. The Mozambican leader said that, in the wake of the debt relief, there were now expectations that the July G8 summit in Scotland "may adopt other important initiatives in favour of developing countries".
While this statement was distributed to the press, President Guebuza was in a meeting with the four other African leaders whom US President George Bush has invited to Washington - namely Festus Mogae of Botswana, Hifikepunye Pohamba of Namibia, John Kufuor of Ghana and Mamad Tanja of Niger.
The World Bank has started disbursing the $130 million necessary for the rehabilitation of the Sena railway line, work that should be completed by early 2009, reports "Noticias" on 7 June, citing Prime Minister Luisa Diogo.
Prime Minister Diogo was speaking in Chimoio, capital of the central province of Manica, during the second interministerial extraordinary session of the Zambezi Valley Planning Office.
The Sena line runs from the port of Beira to the Moatize coal mines in the western province of Tete, with a spur into Malawi. It was comprehensively sabotaged by the apartheid backed Renamo rebels in the early 1980s, and no trains have run on the line for more than two decades.
The publicly owned port and rail company CFM began rehabilitating the Sena line with its own funds. The work will now be continued by the Beira Railroad Company (CCFB), the consortium dominated by the Indian Rites and Ircon International, which has the lease on the Beira rail system.
The most important result of rebuilding the Sena line will be the revival of coal mining at Moatize: the concession on the Moatize mines has been won by the Brazilian Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD), which hopes to market 14-15 million tonnes of coal a year, most of which will be exported, reaching the sea along the Sena line.
The full-scale reconstruction work, capitalising on what CFM has begun will start later this year, Diogo said. Rebuilding the line will provide employment for about 2,500 Mozambicans.
"When we speak of 2,500 workers during the reconstruction phase, we mean that people residing along the line will have employment, besides other impacts that will promote development in the region", she said.
Diogo said that clearing the bush from the line of rail, placing the sleepers, relaying the tracks, as well as auxiliary tasks such as providing meals for the construction brigades, building their workshops, and supplying timber and firewood will reactivate the economy in this entire area.
Although Mozambique has been at peace for over 12 years, anti-personnel mines buried in the soil remain a threat to human life and to free circulation within the country. The annual meeting of demining operators with those of the government's cooperation partners who donate to this activity, held in Maputo on 8 June, also noted that land mines are still a serious obstacle to economic development programmes in parts of the Mozambican countryside.
Nonetheless, Foreign Minister Alcinda Abreu, who chaired the meeting, described the overall balance sheet of demining activities as "positive". She stressed that, in its five year programme, the government considered demining as a cross-cutting issue to be taken into consideration in all development areas.
In 2004, the area known to be affected by mines was reduced by more than half. At the end of 2003, suspected minefields affected an area of 528 million square metres, and 583 villages. By the end of 2004, these numbers had been reduced to 171.6 million square metres and 204 villages.
The remaining 204 villages cover a total population of 806,000. The most affected area is the south of the country, with 96 villages affected, containing a population of almost 479,000 - 59 per cent of the total. 87 villages in the central provinces, with a population of 274,000 are affected, and 21 villages in the north, where about 53,000 people are living.
Demining in 2004 freed 379 villages of the threat of land mines, benefiting about 217,000 people. There were 13 land mine incidents in 2004, which resulted in three deaths and 27 injuries.
As for the physical removal of mines, in 2004 a total of 18,600 mines and 80,628 other items of unexploded ordnance were located and destroyed - a considerable increase on the 10,613 mines and 13,499 other ordnance destroyed the previous year.
This is probably explained by the operations of one of major humanitarian demining operators, the Halo Trust in the northern province of Cabo Delgado. There was a high density of land mines in Mueda and Nangade districts, near the Tanzanian border: these were mostly planted by the Portuguese during the war for Mozambican independence.
The priorities for 2005 are continued research (which can narrow down the area where mines are believed to be located), and clearance of mines from areas of "high and medium impact". Mine awareness programmes and assistance to mine victims will be stepped up.
The target Mozambique is aiming for is to find and destroy all land mines by 2009 - that is the deadline set by the Ottawa Treaty outlawing anti-personnel mines, to which Mozambique is a signatory.
The co-ordinator of the UN system in Mozambique, Marylene- Spezzati, told the meeting that this target can only be reached with a coordination of efforts from the government, the demining operators, civil society and the donors.
Over the past ten years or so, about $150 million has been spent on demining. For 2005, the amount pledged for demining is $10.6 million.
The Annual Demining Plan placed before the meeting pointed out that this is nowhere near enough to meet the programme's needs "and so additional efforts should be made in order to obtain complementary support".
The Mozambican government on 7 June launched a literacy programme by radio to benefit initially about 20,000 people in Maputo, Manica and Cabo Delgado provinces. The programme was launched by Education Minister Aires Aly in the Maputo district of Manhica, during a visit by President Armando Guebuza.
The radio programme, that involves 45 lessons and takes three months, as well as the production of manuals for the teachers and the students, was piloted in Manhica.
Speaking on the occasion, Aly described the programme, that is also to be broadcast on television, as an important contribution to the fight against illiteracy. By offering fast practical knowledge, it will be an important instrument in the battle against poverty, he stated.
"Poverty is not just the lack of material goods. It is mainly the absence of skills for everyone to perform well in their area of activity. This programme will help develop professional skills", he said.
Aly stressed that only through knowledge can one improve the quality of production, even in agriculture, through the introduction of new technologies and diversification of crops, thus helping the country haul itself out of poverty.
The Spanish government on 7 June pledged to provide €3 million (about $3.6 million) in aid, directly to the Mozambican state budget.
A memorandum of understanding on the grant was signed in Maputo by Finance Minister Manuel Chang and the visiting Spanish Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Leira Pajin.
With the agreement, Spain has become the 17th donor to provide at least some of its assistance to Mozambique through direct budget support. The only significant donors who have not yet channelled any aid through the budget are the United States and Japan.
Last month the 17 donors (known as "Programme Aid Partners"), at a joint review with the Mozambican government, agreed an aide-memoire with a strong emphasis on fighting corruption and strengthening the rule of law.
But they also noted that aid remained "fragmentary", with even members of this group still giving much of their aid via dozens of dispersed projects, instead of through the state budget.
The spokesman for the donors at this meeting, Swiss ambassador Adrian Hadorn noted that over 60 per cent of the foreign aid Mozambique receives still falls outside of the Finance Ministry's normal budgetary procedures.
He thought that a priority for donors in coming months was "to reduce the administrative burden on the government", and to reduce drastically the amount of aid that is still off-budget.
The Mozambican police have detained Ribeiro Marquebo, head of the roads and bridges department, in the public works directorate in the western province of Tete, on suspicion of involvement in the theft of seven billion meticais (about $292,000), according to "Noticias" on 18 June. Marquebo thus joins an accountant in the roads and bridges department, Zebedeu Maria, who was arrested in April.
The seven billion meticais, intended for the maintenance and repair of roads in Tete, disappeared gradually over the past two years. The Tete provincial director of public works, Octavio Chicoco, made the matter public knowledge at the start of this month.
According to the Tete chief attorney, Arone Nhaca, investigations into the theft are continuing. He believed that this was a well organised theft that must have involved other people in various sectors of the public works directorate.
The Mozambican government's campaign to persuade parents to register their children is meeting with resistance. The campaign was formally launched on 16 June, in the town of Morrumbala, in the central province of Zambezia. The turnout at the launching ceremony was disappointing - the Minister for Women's Affairs and Social Welfare, Virgilia Matabele, found herself with an audience largely consisting of children and adolescents. The parents of Morrumbala were notable by their absence.
Local officials confirmed to AIM that some parents had taken their children off to the fields rather than attend the ceremony: apparently they believed that the ceremony would be an occasion where adults would be forced to register their children.
"As you can see, there aren't many parents here", one official told AIM. "They allege cultural motives for not registering their children".
Registration of a child's birth is free of charge in the first 120 days of the child's life. After that period, registration should cost 50,000 meticais (about $2). But resistance to registration does not seem to be a financial issue. Rumours circulate according to which parents who register their children will lose paternal rights, or even that this is a ruse to recruit youngsters into the army.
In her speech Matabele made a strong appeal for parents to register their children. For it was only when the government knew how many children of particular ages were living in a particular area that it could plan properly in such areas as education and health.
The representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Mozambique. Leila Pakkala, told the meeting that the registration of births "is fundamental, if we are to support orphaned and vulnerable children".
"Obtaining a birth certificate is a fundamental right for every human being", she said. "It ensures recognition before the law, and safeguards his or her individual rights. When children are not registered, they become invisible to the eyes of the state".
Pakkala took the opportunity to speak of the battle against HIV/AIDS, and stressed that the protection of children should be at the forefront of the national response to AIDS.
"All of us must urgently speed up and expand our efforts in prevention, treatment and support for all children infected or affected by HIV/AIDS", she said. "That way we will not only help stop the spread of the pandemic, but we will also reduce its impact on an entire generation of Mozambican children and youth".
"We cannot wait any longer. We must act now", Pakkala declared. "Our children have the right to know how to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS, and the right to support if they suffer the consequences of the pandemic".
She warned that the impact of AIDS on children was still being underestimated. But she praised the Mozambican government and its development partners for their understanding of the problem. "Even so", Pakkala added, "the epidemic continues to have a terrible impact on thousands of children in Mozambique".
During the 1997 census, 243,751 people were counted in Morrumbala. About half of these are aged 16 and under, and in most cases their births were not registered.
The registration campaign is run by the Ministry of Justice, with the support of the Ministry of Women's Affairs, and financial backing from UNICEF to the tune of $300,000 a year.
Kenya Airways announced on 14 June that it will operate flights between Nairobi and Maputo as from 4 August.
The Kenya Airways director for southern Africa, Rosemary Adogo, told reporters in Maputo that the airline will fly twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays, between the two capitals, via Harare, using a Boeing 737.
The Maputo travel agency Aquarium has been chosen to represent the Dutch group KLM, which is the main shareholder in Kenya Airways, following the latter's privatisation in 1996.
Kenya Airways is expanding its networks, and other new destinations this year include Bamako, Dakar, Freetown, Shanghai and Istanbul.
For Mozambican travellers, the deal also offers an alternative route to Europe. The only European capital that can be reached directly from Maputo is Lisbon: other destinations in Europe are normally reached via Johannesburg.
As from August, it will be possible to fly from Maputo to London and Amsterdam changing planes in Nairobi.
This is a condensed version of the AIM daily news service - for details contact firstname.lastname@example.org
Mozambique News Agency
c/o 114 Stanford Avenue Brighton BN1 6FE UK.
Tel: +44 (0) 7941 890630,
email: Mozambique News Agency
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Lawn diseases are usually not a major pest/problem of home lawns. They are more likely to cause trouble in highly maintained turfgrass areas such as golf courses and sports fields. When a disease causes extensive damage to a lawn it is most likely a sign that something is out of balance and maintenance practices need to be reviewed.
Lawn diseases are, for the most part, caused by plant parasitic fungi. However, a disease can be defined as any abnormal condition that results in decline or death of grass plants. Therefore, disease symptoms can be caused by either abiotic or biotic agents. Abiotic agents are non-living or non-parasitic while biotic agents (pathogens) are living organisms that are parasitic.
A common reaction to turfgrass injury is to place the blame on an insect or disease causing organism. In many cases, injury or decline is from a non-living source.
Examples of abiotic injury/agents include soil compaction from heavy traffic, nutrient deficiencies or fertilizer burn, over-watering or drought, animal damage such as dog urine, gasoline spills, salt damage from ice melt chemicals, and herbicide misapplication. Often, abiotic lawn diseases can be corrected by simply changing or improving maintenance practices.
Biotic agents include plant-parasitic fungi, bacteria, viruses and nemitodes. These pathogens have the ability to reproduce and spread from diseased to healthy plants.
All of the major grass diseases are caused by plant parasitic fungi.
Plant-parasitic fungi are simple organisms that feed on plants. The fungi cannot produce the nutrients needed to survive, so they basically steal it from the host causing decline and disease symptoms to appear. These fungi are highly specialized and parasitic to specific groups of plants.
Occasionally, bacteria or viruses will cause a lawn disease but these are rare. The most common is St. Augustine Decline -- this disease is caused by a virus and is specific to St. Agustinegrass.
Nemitodes are microscopic worm-like organisms that occur naturally in all soils. Nemitodes can be either beneficial or parasitic to plants -- feeding on roots. Most of the time, damage from plant-parasitic nemitodes goes unnoticed. In rare occasions, populations are high enough to cause injury. Affected plants show symptoms of wilt, stunted growth, or are off-color.
Three things are needed for a lawn disease to develop: a disease pathogen, a susceptible host, and environmental conditions that favor the development of the disease. This interrelationship is known as the Disease Triangle.
Fungi can spread from an infected plant to neighboring plants by vegetative growth called mycelium. They also reproduce by large numbers of spores that originate from specialized structures called fruiting bodies. Fungal spores are abundant and widespread. They are spread in a variety of ways including: air, rain, irrigation, lawn maintenance equipment, insects, or animals transporting them from infected plants to healthy plants.
When a fungal spore contacts a host plant and environmental conditions are favorable for spore germination, a disease is likely to develop.
Turfgrass disease control involves managing the disease triangle. This is accomplished by:
Most of the time we don't even notice grass diseases because they are minor. A healthy lawn has the ability to recover from damage by outgrowing it. When disease injury is noticeable and even threatens to destroy a lawn, I recommend taking the following steps:
1. Identify the grass type and determine what is normal.
Know your lawn and understand the grass species you are growing. Each grass species has a specific compliment of diseases and will react to environmental and lawn care activities in its own way. Examine healthy lawns of the same grass type to determine what "normal" looks like. Make sure you are following proper maintenance practices.
2. Determine if injury is caused by an abiotic or a biotic agent.
Under what circumstances and when did the disease appear? What is the recent history of the site? List recent lawn maintenance practices such as watering, fertilizing, and herbicide applications. Has there been any extreme changes in the weather such as a sudden hard frost?
How did the disease develop? Did it appear over night? Is it spreading? Or did it start in one spot and progress slowly? Abiotic injury does not spread and will often appear suddenly. The edges of the damage are usually well defined. Damage caused by a fungus or insect will usually start in one area and spread throughout the yard.
Get on your hands and knee and take a closer look. Look for signs of insect feeding, fungal mycelium, fruiting bodies, or lesions on the leaves. Leaf blades will show symptoms of disease or insect damage. The symptom is usually specific to the pest.
Disease symptoms include small or large patches of off-color, circular grass in the lawn and spots (lesions) on the grass blades. Fungal mycelium are usually present in the early morning when the lawn is wet with dew.
3. Identify the disease.
The table below lists common lawn diseases along with the host species that they infect. The links will take you to an N.C. State University Turffiles web page where you will find a detailed description and photos of the disease.
If you are having trouble identifying the disease or the cause of injury, ask for help at your local Cooperative Extension office or call a lawn care professional (find a local lawn service).
The Turffile web pages are a valuable resource. Cultural and chemical disease management and control options are listed along with the detailed descriptions and photos.
4. Decide how to manage or control the disease.
Once you have positively identified the disease (or cause of damage), research the environmental conditions that promote disease development and then determine the best way to manage the disease.
Visit the Lawn Disease Help Area if you would like our input.
|Turfgrass Diseases||Host Species|
|Brown Patch||bentgrass, Kentcky bluegrass, fescues, perennial ryegrass|
|Brown Blight||perennial ryegrass|
|Damping Off||bentgrass, bluegrasses, fescues, ryegrasses|
|Dollar Spot||All species|
|Fairy Ring||All species|
|Grey Leaf Spot||tall fescue, perennial ryegrass, and St. Augustinegrass|
|Grey Snow Mold||bentgrass, bluegrasses, fescues, ryegrass|
|Large Patch||bermudagrass, centipedegrass, seashore paspalum, St. Augustinegrass, zoysiagrass|
|Leaf Spot/Melting Out||Kentucky bluegrass, bermudagrass|
|Pink Snow Mold||bentgrass, bermudagrass, Kentucky bluegrass|
|Net Blotch||tall fescue|
|Powdery Mildew||Kentucky bluegrass, fine fescue, perennial ryegrass|
|Pythium Blight||bentgrass, Kentucky bluegrass, fescues, perennial ryegrass|
|Pythium Root Rot||All Species|
|Red Thread||Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue, fine fescue, perennial ryegrass|
|Rust||Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue, St. Augustinegrass, zoysiagrass|
|Slime Mold||All Species|
|Spring Dead Spot||bermudagrass, zoysiagrass|
|Summer Patch||creeping bentgrass, Kentucky bluegrass, fine fescue|
|White Patch||tall fescue|
|Yellow Patch||creeping bentgrass, Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue|
|Yellow Tuft or Downey Mildew||bentgrass, Kentucky bluegrass, zoysiagrass|
If you are having trouble with lawn damage and would like our input, this is the place to get help. Simply gather the recommended information and fill out the form below.
To help us help you, we need as much info as you can supply. Please include the following:
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A current-carrying wire oriented north-south and laid over acompass
deflects the compass 8° to the east. What is themagnitude of the
magnetic field made by the current? The horizontalcomponent of
Earth's magnetic field is about 2 10-5 tesla.
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Scientists have successfully dated 120,000-year-old Antarctic ice using a new method called radiometric krypton dating. The technique will allow them to study ice that is more than 1 million years old, which will reveal important details about the planet’s ancient climate cycles, according to a report released Monday.
Accurately dating ancient ice is critical because it contains little air bubbles that scientists can analyze to construct a record of the composition of the atmosphere throughout history. Ice cores can be used to determine the composition of the air as well as temperature at the time.
By studying the past climate, scientists can better understand the effects that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have on temperatures — and can then make more accurate predictions about how the climate will change in the future.
“The oldest ice found in drilled cores is around 800,000 years old, and with this new technique, we think we can look into other regions and successfully date polar ice back as far as 1.5 million years,” said Christo Buizert, a postdoctoral researcher at Oregon State University and a lead author of the report.
“That is very exciting because a lot of interesting things happened with the Earth’s climate prior to 800,000 years ago that we currently cannot study in the ice core record.”
Results of the radiometric krypton dating will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy funded the study.
Krypton dating is much like the carbon-14 dating technique that measures the decay of a radioactive isotope. Unlike carbon, krypton is a noble gas — it doesn’t interact chemically and is more stable — with a half-life of about 230,000 years. Carbon-14 is reliable for dating objects only up to about 50,000 years old, so it isn’t useful for ancient ice.
About a decade ago, scientists drilled a two-mile-long ice core in Antarctica that revealed 800,000 years of the planet’s climate history. During the early period, concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, like carbon dioxide, typically rose with the temperature, website Live Science reported.
But scientists want to go even farther back in time, to what is known as the mid-Pleistocene transition, which took place 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago. Because of shifts in Earth’s orbit, warmer and cooler periods naturally occur, according to Live Science. Prior to the transition, those shifts happened about every 41,000 years — but afterward, the shifts switched to 100,000-year cycles.
Some scientists believe a change in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere spurred the mid-Pleistocene transition, but to be sure, they must find ice that is almost twice as old as the oldest scientists have found so far.
“Why was there a transition from a 40,000-year cycle to a 100,000-year cycle?” study author Buizert said Monday. “Some people believe a change in the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide may have played a role. That is one reason we are so anxious to find ice that will take us back further in time.”
Though most people would think the oldest ice could simply be found at the bottom of the Antarctic ice pack, researchers said it’s not that simple.
“Very old ice probably exists in small isolated patches at the base of the ice sheet that have not yet been identified, but in many places it has probably melted and flowed out into the ocean,” Edward Brook, an Oregon State University geologist and a co-author of the krypton dating study, said in a press release Monday.
Last year researchers said they had identified regions in Antarctica they believe could have the oldest ice, including some that could be 1.5 million years old.
“The mid-Pleistocene transition is a most important and enigmatic time interval in the more recent climate history of our planet,” Hubertus Fischer, an experimental climate physics professor at the University of Bern in Switzerland and a lead author of the study, said in a press release in November 2013.
Information on greenhouse gas concentrations from that time can be gained only from an Antarctic ice core covering the last 1.5 million years, and finding a core that old will be scientists’ next challenge. | <urn:uuid:6c0e148f-859e-4cc7-b7f0-0ff863465938> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/21/antarctic-ice-dating.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00037-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951885 | 920 | 3.984375 | 4 |
of a Mill that makes a Mill look like a Mill
Workings of an "Early Grist Mill," before Oliver Evans inventions
and automated milling system.
Drawing from: "Mills on the Tsatsawassa: Techniques for Documenting
Early 19th Century Water-Power Industry in Rural New York,"A case study
illustrating the coordinated use of maps, deeds, and archeological survey
to reconstruct the locations of interrelationships of early industrial sites
and to reveal previously undocumented elements of local water power technology,"
by Philip L. Lord, The University of the State of New York, Purple Mountain
Press, Fleischmanns, New York, 1983
Basic elements of a mill that makes a mill look like a mill
A. Main elements and primary machinery are: Water wheel, gear pit wheels,
and the millstones. If it is a millstone mill. A roller system means much
B. Secondary elements or secondary machinery are: These are the bolters
(sifters), grain cleaners, sack hoist, etc., perhaps a hopper-boy if correct
for time period.
C. Third most important element is what is a mill? A mill is a business,
a factory, a place were grain is processed into flour, it produces a food
stuff. It process a staple of life. It is part of a larger chain that begins
with the farmer and his farm, and leads to the mill and possibly onto a
bakery or some sort of store or export facility.
D. The fourth most important element of what a mill is how it is tied into
the community? At one time almost everyone had to make a trip to the mill.
You met your neighbors there and may be fell in love. Not with the mill
or the miller but someone's daughter who happened to go to the mill with
her father. "Down by the old mill stream that is were I first met you............."
What were we all doing there taking our grain to be processed into flour
What is the element that ties the mill into the community?
A. The miller's office. It is the first place a farmer would look for the
B. It was a place with a warm fire to warm the miller and the farmer, a
place for food and drink. It is where the business records were kept. Miller's
log books and ledgers are a record of the farming community and business
of the mill.
C. Storage place for important tools and books. Some tools used in a mill
would be used nowhere else in the community, and the mill may have the first
books and writing material in the community. Schools may only have blackboards
and slates and a book brought from home.
D. The mill may have a work bench or work found somewhere else in the mill
but the miller's office was a gathering place for the community. It is where
you asked the miller questions about grain, farming, machinery. Local news
was told. Cards and checkers played. Sometimes this also served as the first
town bank, post office, power company, etc.
E. The mill had the first and only scales for weighing things in a community.
F. The mill might have been the first industry of a community. The miller
and the blacksmith are early town fathers. To build a mill you need a millwright
and a blacksmith.
G The mill may have been the best place in a community to find employment.
A blacksmith shop is hot in the summer and if you grew up on a farm you
already knew something about grain.
H. You took grain to be ground at the mill and only then might the miller
let you go fishing in the mill pond, mill race, mill stream, ice skating,
What type of milling operation was the mill?
A. Was it a merchant mill, a custom mill or a combination mill (it did both).
Many early mills were plantations mills, these operated much like the medieval
feudal mills of Europe. Plantation mills usually had two pairs of millstones,
one millstone for grinding wheat and for export, and the other millstone
for grinding grains for plantation usage by classes. A good example of this
type of mill is the George Washington Grist Mill, Historical State Park,
Route 1, Jefferson Davis Highway and Dogue Run, Fairfax County, Mount Vernon,
B. Most custom mills had one or perhaps two pairs of millstones. One millstone
for corn and another for wheat. Custom mills would have one or two pairs
of millstones but usually not more than two pairs of millstones. The machinery
is very simple, usually the millstones and little or no other machinery.
The grain was not usually cleaned and it was often not bolted. If it was
bolted it was done by hand or carried to a bolting mill where another toll
would be collected by that miller. Custom mills operated seasonally mainly
at harvest time and the miller did something else most of the year. That
is maybe why the mill also had a saw mill and a fulling mill. The miller
may also have been a saw miller. Some times with the saw mills the miller
also collected a toll for custom saw milling. The owner, builder and the
miller usually may be the same person.
C. Most merchant mills had two, three or more pairs of millstones. Most
merchant mills had French millstones for grinding white flour. With merchant
mills the man who constructed the mill was a millwright. The mill was owned
by a mill owner and that would have been his only function in the operation
of the mill. He would employ millers to operate the mill. These mills were
larger and had more complicated machinery. These mills would operate year
round grinding flour and usually packing it into wooden flour barrels. Larger
merchant mills employed millers, millstone dressers, millwrights, oilers,
cleaners, packers, warehouse personal and office management. These mills
would buy grain from grain dealers and make a profit or loss upon the sale
of the flour.
D. Some mills had millstones that were used for reason other than milling
grain. They had hulling stones for oats, buckwheat and barley. Some early
mills used ending stones for cleaning grains, and some later used millstones
in 'new process' milling to regrind middlings.
E. How does the other mill operations tie into the mill story and history?
Such as a fulling mill, carding mill, saw mill, plaster mill, etc.
F. Can the artifacts tell us more about the mill? What type of milling operation
was it? And perhaps how did the machinery and the power source change over
the years of operation?
Minimum requirements of representational milling machinery:
A. Have one set of millstones complete with all furniture, and have one
that set apart for millstone dressing (with millstone dressing tools and
millstone crane) and explanation, and have possibly one possible pair of
millstones made to see through or cut away to understand the action of crossing
and cutting furrows, and gearing below.
B. Hurst frame (husk frame), gears, water wheel, sack hoist, bins.
C. Small milling related artifacts, displays, recorded sounds of an operating
mill and visual images, and exhibits.
What is the theme or mission of the Mill?
A. Milling along the millstream. Historical uses of the waterway and how
it is used today. Locate all of the mills and water powered industries along
the millstream. Molinology is the study of mills and milling. Molinolography
is the geographical study of the distribution of mills, mills along one
stream or water shed.
B. The mission of the mill is to help each visitor rediscover the vital
role that grist mills played in the early communities of the area Mills
provided efficient processing of grain into flour and were centers of community
life. The miller provides demonstrations of the processing of grain into
flour and how mill streams and ponds supply mechanical power.
How to interpret the mill.
A. Maintain, restore, or build the mill dam. What is a mill or what are
the features of a mill? The dam, the water course (head mill race, sluice
box, overflow, head gate, sluice or control gate, trash rack, and tail race),
mill with machinery and water wheel.
B. Eliminate the water supply or sever the connection to the stream and
it becomes difficult or impossible to interpret the story of how the mill
C. How the mill fits into the story of how millstream is used today. Construct,
restore or rebuild mill dam. Construct head race to mill with bulkhead to
stop flow of water into the mill, but water flows bypasses mill by the overflow.
The traditional mill race overflow is constructed as a fish ladder. This
will demonstrate the adaptive usage of mill dams today and show that mill
dams do not have to be eliminated. In some historical mill usages the fish
did swim up the overflow and thus bypassed the mill dams.
D. And you will maintain the water course to the mill. If you ever want
to install a water wheel to turn- free wheel or to ever make the mill function
again you will have all of the elements in place. Why spend 30-35 thousand
a year to operate a recirculation pump to just turn a water wheel when you
could use the stream to do so.
E. What did all the mills along the millstream do to benefit the waterway?
What could mill do to benefit the stream yesterday and today? And greatly
help to interpret the process of milling to visitors? Have a water wheel
that will function. A water wheel that just free wheels or turns independently
of any other machinery. The turning water wheel mixes oxygen into the water-stream
and greatly benefits aquatic life in that stream. Also the mill dam and
overflow acting as a fish ladder will mix oxygen into the water of millstream.
F. Elimination of the mill dam and water course to the mill will not eliminate
the chance of flooding in mill. Mills were generally constructed in flood
plans. This is part of the story, mills were powered by the streams. They
provided them with power or life and they also took it away. Mills were
effected by the streams, too much water and the mills could be carried away
or the dams washed out, and too little water and mills added an alternative
power source like a steam engine. Turbines do not operate when the water
levels are low.
Drawing of Peirce Mill, Rock Creek Park, Washington, DC, by T. R. Hazen,
o Note portions of the text from Forward Physical Space or Characteristics
of Barnitz Mill of the FEASIBILITY RESTORATION STUDY for the BARNITZ MILL
(JAMES WEAKLEY MILL)Yellow Breeches Creek, Dickinson Township, Cumberland
County, Pine Road and Barnitz Mill Road, Mount Holly Springs, Pennsylvania.,
by Theodore R. Hazen,1999.
Return to Home Page
Copyright 1999 by T. R. Hazen | <urn:uuid:559d81a3-0a6b-4e16-843b-f63929cc0655> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.angelfire.com/journal/millrestoration/elements.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393093.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944191 | 2,405 | 3.484375 | 3 |
Power outages part of local energy disruption report
Among the interesting data reported in the assessment of American Samoa’s energy supply disruption are the most frequent causes of short-term power outage in the territory and the total power outages over two fiscal years.
The comprehensive assessment report title ‘Addressing the Threat of Long-Term Energy Supply Disruption: A Strategic Energy Assurance Plan (EAP) for American Samoa’ was conducted by the U.S. base Westmoreland Associates.
According to the report — released this summer — data from the American Samoa Power Authority shows that the most frequent causes of short-term power outages to ASPA generation and distribution systems from 2008 to 2010 were:
• elevated cooling water temperatures;
• tripping of temporary Aggreko units (used at the Tafuna power plant following the September 2009 tsunami that destroyed the Satala power plant);
• under-frequency causing feeders to trip;
• fallen tree branches and electrocuted birds;
• malfunctioning components such as blown transformers, a broken primary jumper, a faulty liquid vacuum switch, etc.; and
• a number of causes reported only as “unknown”.
The report went on to say that the total number of customer-outages in FY 2008 was reported by ASPA as 35,710; in FY 2009 the number was 35,697, and in FY 2010 the number of customer outages was almost 55,000.
“Depending on circumstances of each outage, some customers may have suffered multiple outages while others experienced only a single outage, while still others may have not experienced an outage in electrical service at all in a given year,” it says.
Moreover the leap in customer-outages in FY 2010 reflects the continued, post-tsunami load stresses placed on the Tafuna station when the Satala power plant was destroyed by the 2009 tsunami.
“When electrical outages occur, those customers with back-up generators are able to continue operations at least on an emergency, short-term basis,” it says. “Other customers have no choice but to await system repairs that allow for resumption of service.”
It also explained that whenever unplanned outages occur on the ASPA grid or anywhere else in the system, ASPA has the ability to shut down individual feeders, and sections of the distribution system are then prioritized and cut off to the extent needed to allow repairs on the disrupted areas to occur efficiently and safely.
The report also explained the process ASPA goes through when there is an outage. It says that the electrical systems operation data are personally monitored by an operator 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Whenever system outages are observed, they are reported by an on-site monitor with problems being communicated through a chain-of-command to the ASPA chief executive officer.
“ASPA is expecting FEMA to provide an upgrade to this system to allow an improved supervisory access element for capturing and responding to outages,” according to the report, which pointed out that at the time it was being prepared, there remained a continuing challenge for ASPA to deliver firm, reliable electrical power across Tutuila island due to system stressors created by the 2009 disaster.
At the same time, ASPA must contend with ongoing and historical system vulnerabilities due to weather, accidents, malfunctioning due to equipment age or overuse and delayed operation and maintenance. | <urn:uuid:993546f6-feec-4769-a931-dc1990b26daf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.samoanews.com/?q=node/14328 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393093.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951986 | 713 | 2.578125 | 3 |
4/15/2014 6:46:30 AM
STANFORD, Calif. — Carrying a copy of a gene variant called ApoE4 confers a substantially greater risk for Alzheimer's disease on women than it does on men, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
The scientists arrived at their findings by analyzing data on large numbers of older individuals who were tracked over time and noting whether they had progressed from good health to mild cognitive impairment — from which most move on to develop Alzheimer's disease within a few years — or to Alzheimer's disease itself.
The discovery holds implications for genetic counselors, clinicians and individual patients, as well as for clinical-trial designers. It could also help shed light on the underlying causes of Alzheimer's disease, a progressive neurological syndrome that robs its victims of their memory and ability to reason. Its incidence increases exponentially after age 65. An estimated one in every eight people past that age in the United States has Alzheimer's. Experts project that by mid-century, the number of Americans with Alzheimer's will more than double from the current estimate of 5-6 million.
According to the Alzheimer's Association, it is already the nation's most expensive disease, costing more than $200 million annually. (The epidemiology of mild cognitive impairment is fuzzier, but this gateway syndrome is clearly more widespread than Alzheimer's.)
The number of women with Alzheimer's far exceeds that of men with the condition. That's partly because women on average live longer than men. But greater longevity explains only part of women's increased susceptibility to Alzheimer's. "Even after correcting for age, women appear to be at greater risk," said Michael Greicius, MD, assistant professor of neurology and neurological sciences and medical director of the Stanford Center for Memory Disorders.
Greicius was the senior author of a study, to be published April 14 in the Annals of Neurology, in which he and his colleagues analyzed records on more than 8,000 people, most of them older than 60, who have been monitored over time at any one of about 30 Alzheimer's centers nationwide. Postdoctoral scholar Andre Altmann, PhD, was the lead author.
The records were stored in two large, publicly available repositories. In one, the researchers analyzed clinical assessments of 5,000 people whose test results were normal at the outset and 2,200 people who had initially showed signs of mild cognitive impairment. In both groups, being an ApoE4 carrier increased the likelihood of Alzheimer's disease, as expected. But a closer look revealed that among those who initially tested normal, this increased risk was only marginal for men, whereas women who carried the ApoE4 variant had close to twice the likelihood of progressing to mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease as those who didn't.
"Our study showed that, among healthy older controls, having one copy of the ApoE4 variant confers a substantial Alzheimer's disease risk in women, but not in men," Greicius said.
The second repository holds imaging data and measurements of several biochemical substances from spinal fluid that can serve as useful biomarkers of impending mild cognitive impairment and eventual Alzheimer's disease. Analysis of 1,000 patients' records from this database not only confirmed ApoE4's differential effect on women versus men, but also yielded clues that may help investigators begin to explore, and perhaps someday explain, the molecular mechanisms linking ApoE4 to Alzheimer's disease, Greicius said.
The ApoE gene is a recipe for a protein important for shuttling fatty substances throughout the body. This is particularly important in the central nervous system, as brain function depends on rapid rearrangement of such fatty substances along and among nerve cell membranes. The ApoE gene comes in three varieties — ApoE2, ApoE3 and ApoE4 — depending on inherited variations in the gene's sequence. As result, the protein that the gene specifies also comes in three versions, whose structures and fatty-substance-shuttling performance differ.
Most people carry two copies of the ApoE3 gene variant (one from each parent). But about one in five people carries at least one copy of ApoE4, and a small percentage have two ApoE4 copies. Numerous studies going back to the early 1990s have confirmed that ApoE4 is a key risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, with a single copy of ApoE4 increasing that risk twofold or fourfold. Carrying two copies confers 10 times the risk of Alzheimer's.
One of those many studies, published in 1997 in The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggested that female ApoE4 carriers are more at risk for Alzheimer's than male carriers are. But for various reasons, that study wasn't followed up, and both clinicians and scientists designing clinical trials tend to dismiss this distinction to this day, Greicius said. "I'd been practicing for five years before I ever heard of this paper, which had essentially been ignored for 10 years already," he said.
But on unearthing the 1997 paper, Greicius became curious. In 2012, an imaging study by his group showed provocative differences in brain function in female versus male ApoE4 carriers even when they were still completely asymptomatic. "Brain connectivity in the ApoE4 men didn't differ much from normal. But connectivity in the ApoE4 women did," he said. "That convinced me that this is a real phenomenon."
The pooled data of numerous dedicated Alzheimer's centers continuously accumulates, yielding ever-larger population samples for enterprising researchers to mine. There lies the beauty of the large government- and industry-supported repositories to which Greicius and his team turned.
Drug developers designing clinical trials for Alzheimer's are already paying plenty of attention to whether or not their trial participants carry a copy of the ApoE4 variant, as previous trials have showed a differential effect on carriers versus noncarriers. Greicius said they would do well also to differentiate between a candidate drug's effect on male versus female ApoE4 carriers. Meanwhile, basic researchers can take a cue from his findings and ask themselves, "Why the difference?" The effort to answer that question may reveal an important molecular mechanism, or set of them, that explains the differential effect. "Now we can work toward understanding the cause of this sex difference, which may reveal new potential drug targets, "Altmann said.
Greicius, who in addition to his research spends about one-fifth of his time seeing patients, said that the differential male/female ApoE4 effect implies that clinicians need to take different approaches to patients with this gene variant, depending on their sex. "These days, a lot of people are getting genotyped either in the clinic or commercially. People come to me and say, 'I have an ApoE4 gene, what should I do?' If that person is a man, I would tell him that his risk is not increased much if at all. If it's a woman, my advice will be different."
Other Stanford co-authors of the study were Lu Tian, ScD, associate professor of health research and policy, and Victor Henderson, MD, professor of health research and policy and of neurology and neurological sciences.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NS073498) and the JNA Foundation.
For information about Stanford's Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, which also supported this work, visit http://neurology.stanford.edu.
The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford. For information about all three, please visit http://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.
Print media contact: Bruce Goldman at (650) 725-2106 (firstname.lastname@example.org)
Broadcast media contact: M.A. Malone at (650) 723-6912 (email@example.com)
comments powered by | <urn:uuid:45e5a4bc-65bd-40de-b586-2e3da5db3f87> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.biospace.com/news_story.aspx?StoryID=330111 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00132-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961341 | 1,718 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Reaction time (e.g. pressing a button as fast as possible in response to a light or sound) correlates with general intelligence 'g' - faster reactions correlating with increased intelligence.
However, in principle reaction time would be expected to be less affected by socio-cultural factors than standard IQ tests.
Therefore long term trends in reaction time might be an objective and direct measure of true, underlying general intelligence compared with normal IQ tests.
In particular, reaction time trends might resolve the apparent paradox between
1. the long-term decline in inferred underlying general intelligence due to differentially greater fertility among those with differentially lower IQ (the 'dysgenic' argument);
2. and the long term increase in the results of normal IQ tests (the 'Flynn effect' - or more accurately 'Lynn-Flynn' effect, since the observation was first published by Richard Lynn).
The dysgenic argument is that g has declined over the past century and a half and the increase in IQ scores is superficial - in other words genetic intelligence has declined even while phenotypic intelligence has increased; while the Flynn effect argument is that phenotypic increase in measured IQ also reflects underlying an increase in underlying 'genetic' g.
In essence, dysgenics advocates agree with the Flynn-effect advocates that phentoypic IQ has increased over the twentieth century but infer that underlying, genotypic IQ has declined.
However, the dysgenics viewpoint has had no objective, directly measurable evidence that genotypic IQ has declined.
Dr Michael Woodley (http://publicationslist.org/M.A.Woodley) has pointed-out to me a paper by Irwin W Silverman of Bowling Green State University from 2010 which resolves this question, and provides convincing evidence to support the dysgenics argument.
Silverman IW. Simple reaction time: it is not what it used to be. American Journal of Psychology. 2010; 123: 39-50.
Abstract: This article calls attention to the large amount of evidence indicating that simple visual reaction time (RT) has increased. To show that RT has increased, the RTs obtained by young adults in 14 studies published from 1941 on were compared with the RTs obtained by young adults in a study conducted by Galton in the late 1800s. With one exception, the newer studies obtained RTs longer than those obtained by Galton. The possibility that these differences in results are due to faulty timing instruments is considered but deemed unlikely. Of several possible causes for longer RTs, two are regarded as tenable: that RT has been increased by the buildup of neurotoxins in the environment and by the increasing numbers of people in less than robust health who have survived into adulthood. The importance of standardizing tests of RT in order to enable more refined analyses of secular trends in RT is emphasized.
In a nutshell, Prof Silverman reviews data from Francis Galton between 1884 and 1893, extracted from a study of visual reaction times in 2,522 men and 302 women. The average reaction times were 183 milliseconds (ms) for men and 187 ms in women.
Silverman notes that in reviews of reaction time studies in 1911 (but not including Galton's work), it is clear that Galton's results were typical of the era - the range being from 151-200 milliseconds - median of 192 milliseconds.
By contrast, Silverman reviews twelve modern (post 1941) studies of visual reaction time (using a comparable methodology to Galton) - and the modern reaction times are very significantly longer - the total number of subjects was 3,836 - the mean reaction time was 250 milliseconds for men (SD 47) and for women was 277 ms (SD 31).
Looked at separately, in only one study, only for men, were Galton's average values contained within the 95 % confidence interval - in other words, in 11 of 12 studies and 19 of 20 comparisons - as well as the overall meta-analysis - the difference in reaction times reaches conventional levels of statistical significance.
Conclusion: Victorians had faster reactions, on average, than moderns.
Implication: Victorians were more intelligent, on average, than moderns.
It therefore seems that average reaction times have become slower over the past 100 years.
Since reaction times correlate with IQ then the measured decline in reaction times is consistent with a significant decline in general intelligence over the past century, as argued by the 'dysgenic' theorists.
Note added 30 April 2012.
I thought of this way of testing the dysgenic hypothesis using historical reaction time data in 2008, as shown by the following e-mail sent to Prof Ian Deary of Edinbugh University. However, at that time I could not find anything relevant in the online scientific literature, and gave-up looking.
E-mail: Monday 07.07.2008 timed at 09:51
I'm sorry to badger you when you are still catching up but I have had an idea for measuring dysgenic change by using reaction times which I am keen to follow-up.
Since reaction time correlates with IQ, and since reaction time is an old physological measurement, it is possible that there are representative data on national population reaction times over the past 100 or so years.
Because high IQ people have a fertility considerably below replacement level, my prediction would be that average reaction time in developed countries should have become longer, and that the standard deviation would have become smaller (due to selective loss of shorter reaction times).
But probably somebody has already done it (perhaps your group?)?
Or maybe reaction time correlates with 'phenotypic' (or measured) IQ (and therefore gets enhanced by the Flynn effect) rather than correlating with underlying 'genotypic' IQ? - I don't know.
If it hasn't already been done - do you know of any databases of reaction times (or somebody whom I might contact about this?
Best wishes, Yours, Bruce | <urn:uuid:18a0fd95-ac5a-4c78-a732-609afae01a2b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/02/convincing-objective-and-direct.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396875.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00195-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962336 | 1,223 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Honor Martin Luther King through Community Service
Give Blood with the American Red Cross
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, celebrated Monday, celebrates the life and legacy of a man who brought hope and healing to America. Dr. King was a civil rights champion who valued courage, truth, justice, compassion, dignity, humility and service.
One way to honor Dr. King’s legacy is through service to your community. Donating blood is a great way to serve your community. You may give blood in memory of Dr. King this week and continue to honor his commitment to service by donating blood throughout the year.
Blood donors of all races and ethnic backgrounds are important to maintaining an adequate blood supply. Whether you are type A, B or O, your blood donation is important to the American Red Cross. In fact, just one blood donation has the potential to save up to three lives. Think how many lives you can impact by becoming a regular blood donor today.
Each day, approximately 44,000 units of blood are needed for patients in the United States. In fact, approximately every two seconds, someone in this country needs blood. All eligible donors are encouraged to become an Everyday supporter of the Red Cross and their communities by giving blood or platelets this winter.
The American Red Cross is reporting lower donations than expected since the start of 2012. O blood types are particularly low, but all blood types are needed. | <urn:uuid:cc0a16ca-2d03-4b1d-8bcf-cfd1d0e78e47> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.redcrossblood.org/news/missouri-illinois/honor-martin-luther-king-through-community-service | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00097-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951241 | 291 | 2.625 | 3 |
This book provides discussion on the fundaments of the Smart Grid concept and then describes the technologies that are required for its realisation. It allows the reader to engage with the immediate development of the power system and to take part in the debate over the future Smart Grid. The book opens with an overview on understanding the Smart Grid, and then is divided into three sections. Section 1 ('Information and Communications Technologies') covers communication standards for the Smart Grid. Section Two discusses sensing, measurement, control and automation.Smart metering and demand side participation are described in detail, before distribution automation and the distribution management system. The last chapter of this section covers advanced transmission system operation. Section Three looks at power electronic and advanced components. First of all the topic of power electronics in power demand and supply is presented. Enabling technologies and advanced components are described last of all, giving a balanced view of Smart Grids. | <urn:uuid:52d437f9-5986-4824-8a41-a5abfd329293> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.sgiclearinghouse.org/Resources?q=node/4788&lb=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00000-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917036 | 180 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Old Testament Essays
versão On-line ISSN 2312-3621
MASENYA, Madipoane. In the Ant's School of Wisdom: A Holistic African-South African reading of Proverbs 6:6-11. Old testam. essays [online]. 2015, vol.28, n.2, pp. 421-432. ISSN 2312-3621. http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2015/V28N2A11.
Committed to the ethic of industry, also, possibly persuaded by the precarious context of the production of the text of Prov 1-9, the wis-dom teacher persuades his (male) students to watch and learn from the ways of the ant (nemālâ). The nemālâ can be regarded as one of the lowest members of the created species. Apart from the optimistic wisdom mentality embedded within Prov 6:6-11, noteworthy is also the inter-connectedness between human beings and nature. The latter reveals the holistic outlook which typified biblical Israel, including the members of the post-exilic community in Yehud. Research on the wisdom underlying both the HB proverbs and selected African (Northern Sotho/Pedi)1 proverbs, has revealed apparent resemblances between Israelite and African world views. If Prov 6:6-11 is read from an African-South African holistic point of view, which insights might be gained from the text regarding the interconnectedness between human beings and Earth? How may the insights gained be received in an unequal context such as present day South Africa ? The preceding questions will form the core of the contents of the present investigation.
Palavras-chave : Nature; nemalâ; wise; sage; sluggard. | <urn:uuid:15af2c47-56b2-47c2-b631-06d1d56c36d1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S1010-99192015000200010&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901293 | 379 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Buddhism's Northern Transmission
A different thrust took Buddhism northwards from India into Central Asia, China, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea and Japan, as well as the kingdoms straddling the Himalayan chain: Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal and Ladakh. Both Theravâda and Mahâyâna was disseminated in the process, but in the long run the Mahâyâna was to prevail.
Ghandara with Purushapura (Peshawar), Kashmir and parts of Punjab were the springboard for Buddhism to Afghanistan, parts of Iran and Central Asia and further to the north and to the east. This area was one of the breeding grounds of Mahâyâna Buddhism. Buddhist missionaries are thought to be sent to Ghandara not long after the Parinirvâna of the Buddha but it only became firmly rooted under the rule of Emperor Ashoka, whose grandfather Chandragupta Maurya had extended imperial power in this direction. Ashoka himself was a viceroy at Taxila, a great centre of learning and trade that once flourished near Ghandara.
After the decline of the Mauryas during the 2nd century BC, the Greco-Bactrians reasserted their powers and strengthened Buddhism (King Menandros/Milinda). Later the Greeks were suplanted by other peoples, including the Scythians and the Parthians. Afterwards came the Kushâns, a nomadic people originating from China. They built a great empire (from Chinese Turkestan into Afghanistan and northern India and as far as Lake Aral) and became later (after initial enemyship towards Buddhism) great supporters of Buddhism and built many monasteris and stûpas. Thus between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD, Buddhism blossomed in this vital part of the world. Its greates patron was King Kanishka (c. 78-101 AD).
The Kushâna dynasty was ousted by the Iranian Sassanids which were followers of Zarathustra but were tolerant towards Buddhism. Bamiyan with the largest Buddha statue in Afghanistan was created in this time. Buddhism had reached its apogee in the 5th century AD, thereafter it declined, hit by the depradations of the White Huns (Hephthalites), by general economic decline and a resurgence of Hinduism.
The Silk Road
The importance of the ancient communities along the different routes of the Silk Road (Parthians, Soghdians, Bactrians, Kûshans, Indians etc.) was not merely as staging posts on the route along which the Dharma was transmitted to China. A great Buddhist civilisation, now called Serindian or Sino-Indian, once flourished here, brought no doubt by Buddhist missionaries from the Central Asian springboard and consolidated by Kanishka's conquests in this area. It had its own art too, in which Greco-Roman and Iranian as well as Indian influences were strongly reflected, with traces of Chinese influences.
add: http://hinduwebsite.com/buddhism/chinese_buddhism.asp + http://villa.lakes.com/cdpatton/Buddha/ +
Later Han Dynasty (25-220 AD) and Period of Disunity
Around the turn of the common era, Buddhism started to move into China from Central Asia via the Silk Road. Down to the end of of the Han period, during which China enjoyed a fairly stable centralised government, its progress among the native Chinese was fairly slow due to the deep-rooted xenophobia of the Chinese and due to the fact that Buddhism was in many cases inimical to the prevailing ideology, which derived from the sayings of the sage of Confucius (551-479 BC). Confucianism is a this-worldly creed and uphelds the ideal of a stable, harmonious social order in which every human unit plays its part according to hallowed custom. Thus, its devotees could only look with disfavour on any religion in that seemed to encourage the abandonment of all worldly ties in favour of the pursuit of a remote and vague spiritual idea. Also the fact that the Buddhist Sangha did not work but looked to other people to support them cut totally against established Chinese values.
Gradually, however, the barriers began to break down, aided by the Chinese mystical tradition of Taoism. Taoism is derived from the teachings of the mythical Yellow Emperor Huang ti (2698-2597 BC) but it was reformed by the great sage Lao Tzu, author of the classic Tao Te Ching. The Taoist were very un-Confucian in their dislike of the social world. They advocated a return to simplicity and harmony with nature. The Chinese found thus points of similarities between Taoism and Buddhism. The existence of a serious Buddhist community in Loyang emerged in 148 AD, when a Parthian missionary An Shih-kao made his appearance. A Kûshan named Lokaksema played also a role. They brought the Mahâyâna teachings to China. The early appearance of "meditation handbooks" showed a special Chinese brand of Buddhism.
The fall of the Han dynasty in 220 AD and the prevailing instable circumstances (Period of Disunity) created the right conditions for Buddhism with its profound teaching on suffering and impermanence to gain popularity and spread to other parts of China. Buddhism started to infiltrate court circles in many parts of the fragmented empire. Under the northern Wei dynasty, patronage of Buddhism soared and colossal schemes for building monasteries, temples, pagodas and stûpas were initiated. Buddhism was also taken up by native rulers in the south, notably by the 6th century ruler Wu, who tried to develop into a kind of Chinese Ashoka by surpressing Taoism in favour of Buddhism. This resulted in the emergence of a native Sangha by the middle of the 3rd century when a Chinese version of the Vinaya (monastic code) was produced.
Due to worldly developments and the jealousy of Confucians and Taoists there was an anti-Buddhist backlash around 446 and 574.
Buddhism also gained ground on the popular level. Chinese Buddhism therefore developed into a two-tier system, with a sophisticated brand and a popular variety with a strong superstitious element in it. But, even on the height of Buddhism in China, there has always been Confucianism, Taoism and the folk religions.
The Silk Road remained the Buddhist activity route from Central Asia into China with many translations. The Indo-Scythian Tun-huang (late 3rd century) translated the Saddharma- Pundarîka Sûtra (White Lotus of the True Dharma Sûtra), a highly influential Mahâyâna scripture that was to become the basic text of the indiginous T'ien T'ai school. The other four most influential Mahâyâna Sûtras in China were: Prajnâaramitâ, Vimalakîrti- nirdésa, the Sûrângama-samâdhi and the Sukhâvati-vyûha.
The Vimalakîrti-nirdesa was re-translated by Kumâravija who was most influential in the north (Kucha, Karashar, Kansu, C'ang-an)(around 400 AD) in the spreading of Mahâyâna and Mâdhyamîka teachings.
Sui and T'ang Dynasties (581-907)
During the Sui And T'ang dynasties a fully fledged Chinese Buddhism reached its golden time. In particular, a number of highly developed schools emerged, nearly all of the Indian by origin but adapted to Chinese culture. These schools were subsequently transmitted to Korea and Japan.
The following are the principal schools:
Vinaya School (Lü-tsung)
The principal text is Vinaya in four parts: translated by Buddhayashas and Chu Fo-nien. This strict monastic order school was founded by Tao-hsüan (596-667)
Realistic School (Chü-she)
The principal text is the Abhidharma-kosha of Vasubhandu. It derived its inspiration from ideas by Vasubhandu, the brother of Asanga and a native from Purushapura (Peshawar) who, before his conversion to Mahâyâna, was an ordained member of the Sarastivâda (All-Things-exist), one of the 18 schools of the Hînayâna.
The Abhidharma-kosha was translated into Chinese by Paramârtha (563-567) and later Hsüan-tsang. The school that arose in China eventually became an appendage of the Idealist School (Fa-hsiang).
The Three Treatises School (San-lun)
The principal text is the Mâdhyamika-shâstra and the Dvâdashadvâra (Twelve Gates) of Nâgârjunja, also the Shata Shâstra (One hundred Verse Treaties) of Aryadeva. The school is based on the Mâdhyâmika or "Middle Way" teachings of Nâgârjuna who sought to advance the perfect wisdom of absolute emptiness by the use of a "transcendental dialect" negating all views. Introduced by Kumarajiva, these teachings were refined by Chih-tsang (549-623) in the Chia-hsiang monastery. The school declined after the rise of the Idealist School (Fa-hsiang), but was later revived by the Indian master Suryaprabhasa (679).
The Idealist School (Fa-hsiang)
The principal text is the Vimsatikâ-kârikâ or "Twenty Stanzas" and other texts by Vasubandhu and his followers. This is the Chinese development of the Indian Yogâcâra school (founded by Vasubandhu and Asanga which propounded the Doctrine of citta-mâtra (mind only)). Its great teacher in China was Hsüan-tsang (596-664). He studied in India at Nâlandâ Yogâcâra philosophy under his teacher Sliabhandra before he returned to Ch'an-gan in 645.
The Mantra or Tantric School (Mi-tsung or Chen-yen)
The principal text is the Mahâvairocana (Great Brilliance) Sûtra. This school is the Chinese manifestation of Tantra with its esoteric paraphernalia of yogas, mantras, mandalas, mudrâs, dharanis, initations and secret doctrines. It was introduced from India during the T'ang dynasty by Subhakarasimha (637-735) who translated the Mahâvairocana Sûtra into Chinese. In 720 Vajrabodhi (670-741) and later Amoghavajra (705-774) came from India in order to strengthen Tantra in China. The school flourished for less than a century and was finally supplanted by Lamaism. It was taken to Japan by Kukai, where it became known as Shingon.
The Avatamsaka or "Flower Adornment" School (Hua-yen)
The principal text is the Avatamsaka Sûtra. Although it emerged from India it developed fully in China and was later transmitted to Japan (Kengon). Avatamsaka is regarded as the ultimate teaching by Buddha. It can be described as a link between Yogcâra and Tantra (although it was not concerned with the attainment of liberation by magical manipulation but rather by contemplation and aesthetic appreciation).
The outstanding figure in the early history of Hua-yen is Fatsang (643-712/3) (third patriarch). Finally, when the general decline of Buddhism commenced in the 9th century, the Hua-yen school also went into eclipse.
The T'ien-t'ai or White Lotus School (Fa-hua)
The principal text is the Saddharma- Pundarîka Sûtra (White Lotus of the True Law). It was founded by Chih-i as a truely genuine Chinese development. The T'ien-t'ai differs from the Hua-yen in providing alternative classifications of Buddhist scriptures. The White Lotus Sûtra is thought to include the essence of all the other teachings. It was therefore the perfect mean that could ferry all men across the ocean of Samsâra to the far shore of Enlightenment. Allied to this was the notion of a single vehicle (ekayâna) in which all other doctrines were united. Most important was the "Three Levels of Truth"-development, which bears traces of the influence of Nâgârjuna: Void of Emptiness, Temporariness and Mean which have to be treated as "all in one and one in all". Emptiness means that no dharma can exist by itself but is causally generated in dependence. Mean arises from the fact that void and temporariness are two sides of a dualism. The school advocated "concentration and insight". Concentration puts an end to erroneous thinking by making it clear that all dharmas are devoid of self-nature and hence exist without really existing. Insight means to fully penetrate the core of all dharmas and to become grounded in Absolute Mind (Womb of the Tathâgata). After Chih-i the line of T'ien-t'ai was contined by several schools (Kuanting, T'ien-kung, Tso-chi, Ch'an-jan and Tao-sui) and was finally introduced to Japan (Tendai) in the 9th century.
The Pure Land School (Ching t'u)
The principal text is represented by the Smaller and Larger Sukhâvatî- vyûha Sûtras. The devotees of this school venerate Amithâba and seek rebirth in the Western Paradise (Pure Land of Amithâba), also called Sukhâvatî. This school is founded on the idea that during degenerate periods Enlightenment could not be achieved by the own effort, but that oneself would be dependable on external grace: Amithâba. This represents the opposite of egoistic "self-power" but "other-power" (tariki). Pure Land Buddhism reflected the Mahâyâna accommodation to devotional forms of practice. The mantric repitition of the name Amithâba (O-mi-tô-fô) was the practice developed here.
The teachings of this school were later transmitted to Korea and then to Japan, where divisions into the Jôdo and Jôdo Shin sub-schools occurred.
The Dhyâna School (Ch'an; Jap.: Zen)
This school is actually based on the Lankâvatâra, Heart, Vimalakirti- nirdésa and Vajracchedikâ Sûtras. Ch'an represents the finest achievement of Chinese Buddhism: an original and highly creative re-expression of the essence of Buddha's teaching in terms that are distinctively Chinese. It can be regarded besides Abhidharma, Mahâyâna and Tantra as a major creation of Buddhism. It was transmitted to Korea (Son), to Vietnam and Japan (Zen).
Ch'an is often described as the "down-to-earth" practical attitude of simplicity of the Chinese while the Indians, on the other hand, are more airy and metaphysical. Ch'an is about a return to the basic Buddhist essentials with the final objective of Enlightenment. The general thrust of Ch'an (dhyâna) is typified by its rejection of book- learning and verbalisation. What, however, was transmitted was Enlightenment itself from master to disciple and, in-spite of the contempt of the written word, the Ch'an- masters were well-versed with the Lankâvatâra, Heart, Vimalakirti- nirdésa and Vajracchedikâ Sûtras. What the early Chinese masters stressed was the "non-abiding mind" - the mind that rests nowhere, beyond all thought and relativity. Ch'an can be practised during the normal activity of the day: continual introspection of the mid arouses an inner potentiality (nei chih) which eventually breaks through into ordinary consciousness and finally into marvellous emptiness.
A leading figure in early Ch'an is Bodhidharma, a south Indian master, who is said to have arrived in China around 520. The history of the Ch'an school begins in earnest with the Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng (638-713). Some later sub-schools survived: the Lin-chi (Jap. Rinzai) and the Ts'ao-tung (Jap. Sôtô). Ch'an also managed to break the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane. In a similar spirit, some Ch'an masters were disposed to announce that there was nothing special about any of Buddhism.
The picture that emerges of Buddhism in T'ang dynasty China is very impressive with thousands of temples and monasteries and flourishing Sanghas where the Sangha was often and in very Chinese style practically involved in doing good works. As a cultural contribution the invention of printing by Chinese Buddhists is of great significance (9th century). Buddhist monasteris developed into powerful centres of commerce which introduced modern-style capitalism and banking in China, but since bureaucracy was pioneered in China, the Sangha was later strictly controlled by the authorities.
Church/state tensions became acute towards the middle of 9th century the T'and dynasty was ravaged by civil war. This resulted in a weakening of Buddhism in China and a revival of Confuzian values, as new and improved variety, equipped with a sophisticated metaphysic that owed not a little to Buddhist philosophy. Another blow was the decline of Buddhism in India due to the penetration of Islam and some deterioration in the quality of the Sangha, caused in part by the practice inaugurated by the Sung dynasty (960-1279) of trafficking in monk certificates in order to raise funds, although the Sung period can be seen as golden Ch'an age.
The decline of Buddhism in China was inevitable. A minor but perhaps indicative popular development during the Sung period was the transformation of the dignified Maitreya, the Buddha-to-be, into Pu-tai, the "Hemp Sack Monk", often known as the "Laughing Buddha". As Pu-tai is depicted as a grinning, pot-bellied hedonist, he suggests the celebration of worldly rather than spiritual values: there is also a hint of decadence about him.
The Mongols established the Yüan dynasty in China in 1280 and made Buddhism (Lamaism) the state religion - for the final time.
Vietnam and Korea
The Sri Lankan Theravâda Buddhism was not successful in Vietnam due to the strong links with China. Chinese forms of Mahâyâna Buddhism (Ch'an and Pure Land) were introduced.
Buddhism was introduced in Korea from China around the 4th century AD. The transmission continued consequently and many of the principal Chinese schools were introduced but, at the end Korea concentrated mainly on Ch'an (Son). Korean Buddhism enjoyed its golden age during the Silla (668-935) and Koryo (935-1392) periods.
From the 13th century Korea followed the Chinese model by growing neo-Confucianism. During present history Korean Son was revitalised as a unified Chogye order.
The Kamakura Period (1185-1333) was a period of crisis. Power was taken from the class of the imperial aristocracy by the warrior class (Samurai) and a military governorship (Shôgunate) was 1185 established at Kamakura, well away from the capital Kyôto. Consequently the spiritual schools of Tendai and Shingon were replaced by the more earthly Zen school. The devotional cults brought Buddhism within reach of the ordinary man. Two major Pure Land schools developed: Jôdo-shû (Pure Land School) and Jôdo Shinshû (True Pure Land School).
The founder of the Shin sub-school was Hônen Shônin (1132-1212) who advocated an "easy path" with assistance of Amida coupled with the recitation of Nembutsu (Amida recital). This practice was strengthened by his successor Shinran Shônin (1173-1262), the founder of Jôdo Shinshû. A highly controversial figure was Nichiren Shônin (1222-82) who preached, based on the Lotus Sûtra, that Enlightenment of Buddha Shakyamuni could be evoked here and now.
Arguable more important than the development of popular devotional forms of Buddhism was the rise of Zen with an emphasis on self-power to the realisation of Enlightenment. It was favoured by the Samurai class for practical reasons and to face death with equanimity. Zen also influenced the Japanese arts like the tea ceremony (cha-no yu).
The two major surviving branches of the Chinese Ch'an (Lin-chi-Rinzai: transmitted by Eisai (1141-1215)(he reportedly introduced tea from China to Japan) and Ts'ao-tung-Sôtô: transmitted by Dôgen (1200-1253)) were introduced during the Kamakura period.
During the Ashikaga (or Muromachi) Period (1336-1573) until the establishment of the Tokugawa Shôgunate, Buddhism in Japan experienced a decline. A slide into "long narcosis" (Suzuki) now began that was to broadly last into the 19th century. Of the various Buddhist schools the Rinzai Zen School fared best during the 14th and 15th centuries.
During the Azuchi-Momoyama and Edo periods (1573-1868) Buddhism went down, although Japan became re-united, especially under the Tokugawa Shôgunate which ruled Japan from Edo (modern Tokyo) for more than two centuries, with complete closure to the outside world. Neo-Cofucianism became the official creed in Japan. Hakuin Zenji (1685-1768) reformed the Rinzai Zen and laid the foundation for the future development of the Zen-School to the modern time. Since 1868, with the coming of the Meiji restoration, Shintô as detachment of Buddhism became a state cult.
Although the Mongols came in contact with Chinese Buddhism as early as the 4th century, Mongolian Buddhism really came into being through contacts with the Tibetan Buddhism and no truly local development took place. The Mongol Yüan dynasty brought Lamaism to China. The chief monastery in Outer Mongolia is Gandenthekchenling in Ulan Bator, seat of the Khambo Lama. In the past various Mongol tulkus appeared, among them the Hutuktu tulku or "Grand Lama of Urga" (Ulan Bator).
The Mongols brought Buddhism to Russia into three pockets (Buryatia: near Lake Baikal: 40 miles from the capital Ulan Ude there is a large monastery, the Ivolginsky, furthermore in Chita and secondly among the Kalmuks and thirdly in Tuva, east of the Altai mountains, with half a million Buddhists in all these regions.
Buddhism developed in Ladakh together with Spiti and Zanskar enclaves (Gelug-Pa and Drug-Pa Kargyu schools), in Sikkim (Tibetans from Kham brought the Karma-Pa, the Karma Kargyu school which subjugated the gentle Lepcha animists) as well as in Aruna Pradesh, in Nepal (mix of Buddhism and Hinduism: with four schools of philosophy: Svabhâvika, Ashvarika, Karmika and Yatrika: in the Hindu-environment Sangha forsook the monastic Vinaya and became a caste on their own, although many fleeing Buddhists from India during the Islam invasion brought their traditions)(with the Buddhist Sherpa enclave in the Rolwaling and Khumbu as well as also in Dolpo and Mustang) and Bhutan (Drug-Pa Kargyu School: Deb Râjas).
Based on the Buddhist Handbook, John Snelling. | <urn:uuid:2104351e-b19e-4b5d-bf7c-b97d7f82a3dd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://dharmanet.org/historynasia.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00015-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964334 | 5,192 | 3.65625 | 4 |
"I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none.
There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history;
the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston
and Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain
- Daniel Webster, 1830
Massachusetts takes its name from the Massachusett tribe of Native Americans, who lived in the Great Blue Hill region, south of Boston. The Indian term, roughly translated as, "at or about the Great Hill".
There are, however, a number of interpretations of the exact meaning of the word. The Jesuit missionary Father Rasles thought that it came from the word Messatossec, "Great-Hills-Mouth": "mess" (mass) meaning "great"; "atsco" (as chu or wad chu) meaning "hill"; and sec (sac or saco) meaning "mouth". The Reverend John Cotton used another variation: "mos" and "wetuset", meaning "Indian arrowhead", descriptive of the Native Americans' hill home. Another explanation is that the word comes from "massa" meaning "great" and "wachusett", "mountain-place".
Massachusetts, like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky, is called a "Commonwealth". Commonwealths are states, but the reverse is not true. Legally, Massachusetts is a commonwealth because the term is contained in the Constitution. In the era leading to 1780, when the state Constitution was ratified, a popular term for a whole body of people constituting a nation or state was the word "Commonwealth". This term was the preferred usage of some political writers. There also may have been some anti-monarchic sentiment in using the word "Commonwealth". The name, which in the eighteenth century was used to mean "republic", can be traced to the second draft of the state Constitution, written by John Adams and accepted by the people in 1780. In this second draft, Part Two of the Constitution, under the heading "Frame of Government", states, "that the people…form themselves into a free, sovereign, and independent body politic, or state by the name of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts". The people had overwhelmingly rejected the first draft of the Constitution in 1778, and in that draft and all acts and resolves up to the time between 1776 and 1780, the name "State of Massachusetts Bay" had been used. Thereafter, John Adams utilized the term "Commonwealth" when framing the Massachusetts Constitution. In his "Life and Works", Adams, wrote: "There is, however, a peculiar sense in which the words republic, commonwealth, popular state, are used by English and French writers, who mean by them a democracy, a government in one centre, and that centre a single assembly, chosen at stated periods by the people and invested with the whole sovereignty, the whole legislative, executive and judicial power to be included in a body or by committees as they shall think proper".
The Coat of Arms, according to legislative enactment, consist of "a shield having a blue field or surface with an Indian thereon, dressed in a shirt and moccasins, holding in his right hand a bow, and in his left hand an arrow, point downward, all of gold; and, in the upper corner of the field, above his right arm, a silver star with five points. The crest is a wreath of blue and gold, on which in gold is a right arm, bent at the elbow, clothed and ruffled, with the hand grasping a broadsword". The shield's shape is called "Plantagenet"; the Native American model used was of the Algonquin nation; the arrow points downward to indicate that the Indian is peaceful; and the star indicates that Massachusetts was one of the original thirteen states; it was sixth. The sword illustrates the Latin motto that is written in gold on a blue ribbon around the bottom of the shield: "Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem". This is the second of two lines written about 1659 by Algernon Sydney, English soldier and politician, in the Book of Mottoes in the King's Library in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was adopted in 1775 by the Provincial Congress and means, "By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty".
The State Seal, adopted by Governor John Hancock and the Council on December 13, 1780 and made official by the General Court on June 4, 1885, is circular and bears a representation of the arms of the Commonwealth encircled with the words, "Sigillum Reipublicae Massachusettensis" (Seal of the Republic of Massachusetts). The final form of the seal was determined by a statewide contest.
The State Flag is white, bearing on both sides a representation of the coat of arms like the state seal (except that the five-pointed star is white instead of silver). It was approved for the Commonwealth in its final form on July 3, 1971; before that, the obverse side depicted a green pine tree.
The MAYFLOWER (Epigaea regens), also commonly known as the ground laurel or trailing arbutus, has ovate hairy leaves and fragrant, pink or white, spring-blooming flowers with five petals. It grows in woods, preferring sandy or rocky soil, under or near evergreens. It was adopted as the official flower of the Commonwealth by the General Court on May 1, 1918. Unfortunately, since 1925 it has been on the endangered list.
The American Elm (Ulmus Americana) was adopted as the state tree on March 21, 1941, to commemorate the fact that General George Washington took command of the Continental Army beneath one on Cambridge Common in 1775. It is a large tree with gray flaky bark. When growing in the forest it often attains a height of 120 feet, but in the open it is wide-spreading and of lesser height. The leaves are oval, and dark green, turning to a clear yellow in the autumn. The American Elm, like most elms, has been severely afflicted by Elm Disease.
The BLACK-CAPPED Chickadee (Penthestes atricapillus) was adopted as the state bird by the Massachusetts Legislature on March 21, 1941. It is also known as the titmouse, tomtit, and the dickybird, and it is one of the most familiar of the North American birds. It is from four to five inches in size, its tail accounting for nearly half its length. The general coloring is ashy-grey, the back having a brownish tinge; the crown, nape, chin, and throat are black, and the cheeks white. It nests in a stump, tree, or fence post close to the ground, and broods twice a year. It is a cheerful bird and has a pleasing call: "Chick-adee-dee-dee".
Cranberry juice was named the beverage of the Commonwealth on May 4, 1970. This was a tribute to the great Massachusetts cranberry industry.
The Morgan horse (Equus cabullus morganensis), descended from a little bay stallion born in West Springfield, MA, in 1789, who could outrun and outwork any horse brought against him. Named "Figure" by his owner, schoolteacher and singing master Justin Morgan, in later years he was known by his master's own name, "Justin Morgan". The gallant little horse died in Vermont in 1821 at the age of 32; the sturdy breed bearing his name was adopted as the state horse on May 14, 1970.
Most common in the state is the Two-Spotted Lady Beetle (Adalia bipunctata). Its head is black with pale yellowish margins; elytra reddish, with two black spots. The idea originated with a second-grade class in the Town of Franklin and the Ladybug became the state insect on April 17, 1974.
The Cod (Gadus morrhua). A soft-finned fish, usually 10-20 lbs. General coloring is olive grey with lateral lines paler than rest of body tint. Indians and Pilgrims used them as common food and fertilizer. A sculpture of a cod hangs in the House of Representatives as a tribute to this useful aquatic creature. For over 200 years, the emblem of the cod has remained a symbol of the Commonwealth's economic beginnings, as the fishing industry provided the Puritans with food, fertilizer, and revenue for trade. The Cod was approved as the state fish as of May 2, 1974.
The Boston Terrier (Canis familiaris bostenensis), the first purebred dog developed in America (1869), is a cross between an English bulldog and an English terrier. It was recognized by the Legislature on May 14, 1979 as the state dog or dog emblem of the Commonwealth.
Rhodonite is the most beautiful gem material found in the state. It varies in hue from a light pink to a deep rose or reddish pink and is associated with black manganese. It was adopted in 1979 as the gem or gem emblem of the Commonwealth.
The RIGHT WHALE (Eubalaena galcialis) got its namesake from whalers for being the "right" whale to hunt due to slow speed, surface feeding habits, buoyancy, and high profits in blubber products. By the late 1800's it was critically endangered and became illegal to hunt. The RIGHT WHALE became the marine mammal or marine mammal emblem of the Commonwealth in 1980.
The dinosaur tracks in Massachusetts, which were made over 200 million years ago. In Granby, the prints of a theropod dinosaur fifty feet in length from head to tail (the first record of a theropod of such magnitude), were found. They were made the state fossil in May 23, 1980.
Although the commonwealth is not overly blessed with mineral resources, Massachusetts is one of the few locations in the world where Babingtonite is found. This jet black material with a brilliant submetallic luster is the finest quality babingtonite found in America. The Legislature made this mineral the ‘state mineral' of the Commonwealth on April 24, 1981.
"All Hail to Massachusetts", words and music by Arthur Marsh, was designated by an act of the Legislature on July 6, 1981 (informally "official song" since September 1966.) Play a MIDI version of "All Hail to Massachusetts".
"Massachusetts", words and music by Arlo Guthrie, was adopted by the Legislature on July 6, 1981. View the lyrics.
On September 24, 1981, the General Court designated "The Blue Hills of Massachusetts" by Katherine E. Mullen of Barre as the official state poem of the Commonwealth.
The Roxbury Puddingstone, sometimes called Roxbury Conglomerate, became the state rock or rock emblem of the Commonwealth on May 23, 1983.
Plymouth Rock, although the Pilgrims did not actually land on it, has historical significance that led the Legislature to commemorate it on May 23, 1983.
Dighton Rock was made the explorer rock of the Commonwealth on May 23, 1983.
Granite was made the building and monument stone of the Commonwealth on May 23, 1983. The last Ice Age did leave Massachusetts with exceptionally fine samples of this rock; granite from Quincy was used to build the Washington Monument.
DEBORAH SAMSON fought in the War of Independence under the name of Robert Shurtleff (also spelled "Shurtliff" and "Shurtlieff") with courage, determination, and outstanding service, and rendered a unique contribution as a woman to American independence. Her masquerade remained undiscovered until she was wounded in battle. In later years, she travelled extensively, lecturing about her experiences, and a grateful nation gave her the first military pension ever awarded to a woman. The Governor annually issues a proclamation setting apart May 23 as an anniversary day to appropriately observe her enlistment in the Continental Army. The Legislature recognized her heroism on July 22, 1983. (Note: While "Sampson" is the generally used spelling, "Samson" has also been said to be correct and is the spelling used in the statute).
The song "The Road to Boston", whose composer is unknown, has been the official ceremonial march of the Commonwealth since November 13, 1985.
The school children of Massachusetts petitioned for the corn muffin, a staple of New England cooking, and the Legislature made it official on May 27, 1986.
The New England Neptune (Neptuna lyrata decemcostata) was made the Shell of the Commonwealth on June 26, 1987./p>
The Tabby cat (Felis familiaris) was made the official state cat on July 11, 1988, in response to the wishes of the school children of Massachusetts.
"Massachusetts (Because of You Our Land is Free)", words and music by Bernard Davidson, was made official on October 23, 1989 of the Commonwealth.
Square dancing became the official folk dance on April 8, 1990 of the Commonwealth.
The Paxton Soil Series was adopted by the Legislature on July 10, 1990.
The Vietnam War Memorial was approved on December 11, 1990 and is located in the City of Worcester, Massachusetts.
On December 18, 1990, the Legislature decided that the people of the Commonwealth would be designated as Bay Staters.
The Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), which was eaten at the first Thanksgiving, was designated the state game bird of the Commonwealth on December 23, 1991.
The Southwest Asia War Memorial was approved on June 2, 1993.
Cultivated plants and the colloquial names for them change over the centuries, but on June 23, 1993 the legislature finally determined that the NAVY BEAN had been the original bean in the famous and venerable Boston Baked Bean recipe.
On January 13, 1994, the Schooner Ernestina was designated the official vessel of the Commonwealth, with New Bedford as its official homeport.
A fifth-grade class on the North Shore adopted the cause of making the CRANBERRY (Vaccinium macrocarpon) the official berry of the state. Their two years of lobbying, petitions, and hearings were finally rewarded on July 11, 1994.
Johnny Appleseed was designated the official folk hero of the Commonwealth on August 2, 1996. Appleseed was born John Chapman on September 26, 1774 in Leominster, MA and lived until 1845. An American pioneer and hero of folklore, he was nicknamed Johnny Appleseed due to his planting of apple trees from New England to the Ohio River Valley.
The Boston Cream Pie, created in the 19th century, was chosen as the Commonwealth dessert on December 12, 1996. A civics class from Norton High School sponsored the bill. The pie beat out other candidates, including the toll house cookie and Indian pudding.
The chocolate chip cookie was designated the official cookie of the Commonwealth on July 9, 1997. A third grade class from Somerset proposed the bill to honor the cookie invented in 1930 at the Toll House Restaurant in Whitman.
The song "The Great State of Massachusetts", words by George A. Wells, and music by J. Earl Bley, was designated the state glee club song of the Commonwealth on November 24, 1997.
In recognition of veterans who served in WWI, the Orange Peace Statue shall be the official peace statue of the Commonwealth as of February 25, 2000.
Located in the Shipyard Park of the Charlestown Navy Yard, the State Korean War Memorial was approved on April 7, 2000 for the Commonwealth.
On November 22, 2000 the words and music of "Ode to Massachusetts" by Joseph Falzone was approved as the official ode of the Commonwealth.
Download the song. (MP3, 2.4M)
The state MIA/POW memorial is located in the town of Bourne at the Massachusetts National Cemetery and was approved on July 3, 2002 for the Commonwealth.
Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey was designated the official children's book of the Commonwealth on January 1, 2003. The third grade class at the Dean S. Luce Elementary School in Canton sponsored the legislation.
On January 1, 2003, author Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, was made the official children's author and illustrator of the Commonwealth.
In 2003 the Boston Creme donut was officially made the Commonwealth donut.
On August 14, 2003, the Bay State Tartan became the official district tartan of the Commonwealth. Registered with the Scottish Tartans Authority, and may be viewed at www.tartansauthority.com/.
On February 21, 2005, blue, green and cranberry became the official colors of the Commonwealth.
On February 8, 2006, musician Henry St. Clair Fredericks, better known as Taj Mahal, was approved as the official blues artist of the Commonwealth.
On August 8, 2006, basketball became the official state sport. Invented in 1891 by Springfield, Massachusetts teacher Dr. James Naismith.
On November 16, 2006, Benjamin Franklin became the official inventor of the Commonwealth.
The Garter Snake became the official reptile of the Commonwealth on January 3, 2007.
On February 21, 2008, Norman Rockwell became the official artist of the Commonwealth.
On August 4, 2008, Rolling Rock located in the city of Fall River became the state glacial rock of the Commonwealth.
On August 11, 2011, SALEM became the birthplace of the National Guard for the Commonwealth.
On July 31, 2014 MS. G OF THE MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY was named the Official Groundhog of the Commonwealth and shall be utilized as a way to educate elementary school children on the importance of meteorology.
On July 31, 2014 VOLLEYBALL was named the Official Recreational and Team Sport of the Commonwealth. | <urn:uuid:55b555eb-eb82-4996-a0a3-1c3d8308bb08> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sec.state.ma.us/cis/cismaf/mf1a.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00005-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969131 | 3,748 | 3.796875 | 4 |
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 23.126 Thursday, 22 March 2012
Date: March 21, 2012 8:21:17 PM EDT
Subject: Recent Entries in Lexicons of Early Modern English
Lexicons of Early Modern English - Word of the day
Glossator, or Glossographer, he that makes a Glosse or Comment to interpret the hard meaning of words or things. Edward Phillips, The New World of English Words (1598)
Locating historical references and accessing manuscripts can be difficult with countless hours spent searching for a single text for the sparsest of contributions to your research.
Lexicons of Early Modern English is a growing historical database offering scholars unprecedented access to early books and manuscripts documenting the growth and development of the English language. With more than 580,000 word-entries from 176 monolingual, bilingual, and polyglot dictionaries, lexical encyclopedias, hard-word glossaries, spelling lists, and lexically-valuable treatises surviving in print or manuscript from the Tudor, Stuart, Caroline, Commonwealth, and Restoration periods, LEME sets the standard for modern linguistic research on the English language.
Use Modern Techniques to Research Early Modern English!
- 176 Searchable lexicons
- 122 Fully analyzed lexicons
- 588,721 Total word entries
- 368,372 Fully analyzed word entries
- 60,891 Total English modern headwords
Lexicons recently added to LEME - http://leme.library.utoronto.ca/
Anonymous, Catholicon Anglicum: The Remedy for all Diseases (ca. 1475), an English-Latin dictionary from Lord Monson’s manuscript, reconstructed from a 19th-century Early English Text Society edition. The earliest such lexicon surviving in the language holding some 7,180 word-entries, distinguishes itself by the extensive use of Latin synonyms in explanations.
John Lydgate, The Horse the Ghoos and the Sheep (1477)
William Caxton, French and English (ca. 1480)
Anonymous, The Fromond List of Garden Plants (ca. 1525),a list of about 138 plants associated with Thomas Fourmond / Formond of Carssalton, Surrey (died March 21, 1542/43). The list has nine sections: for a garden, for pottage, for sauce, for the cop, for salad, to still, for savour and beauty, roots, and for an herber.
Niels Hemmingsen, A Postle, or Exposition of the Gospels (1569), a translation of Niel Hemmingsen’s Postilla seu enarratio Evangeliorum (Copenhagen, 1561)
John Florio, Florio his First Fruits (1578), parallel Italian-English dialogues, followed by a brief Italian-English glossary and a grammar
Anonymous, The Academy of Pleasure (1656)
William Lucas, A Catalogue of Seeds, Plants, &c. (ca. 1677) a trade-list in eleven sections: seeds of roots, sallad seeds, potherb seeds, sweet herb seeds, physicall seeds, flower seeds, seeds of evergreen & flowering trees, sorts of pease, beans, &c., seeds to improve land, flower roots, and sorts of choice trees & plants
Peter Levins, Manipulus Vocabulorum (London, 1570), a dictionary of 8,940 English-Latin word-entries, organized by English rhyme-endings (with accentuation). This analyzed text owes much to Huloet (added in 2009) and replaces the simple transcription now in the LEME database.
Coming soon to LEME
Henry Hexham’s Copious English and Netherduytch Dictionarie (English-Dutch; 1647-48)
John Rider’s Bibliotheca Scholastica, an English-Latin dictionary first published by the University of Oxford in 1589.
University of Toronto Press Journals
5201 Dufferin St., Toronto, ON, Canada M3H 5T8
Tel: (416) 667-7810 Fax: (416) 667-7881 | <urn:uuid:6a86d5e0-36b1-4b61-a177-cb51e3e93946> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://shaksper.net/announcements/28448-recent-entries-in-lexicons-of-early-modern-english | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00113-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.828397 | 888 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Mushrooms are a type of fungus that grows by feeding off of decaying tree bark or other materials. Unlike plants, mushrooms do not contain chlorophyll and do not require sunlight to grow. Whether mushrooms grow indoors or in the wild, they have certain light, water, heat and growing-medium requirements to thrive and produce their fruit. Some mushroom varieties are safe for human consumption, while others are not. Commercially grown mushrooms are a safe choice for those who do not know how to identify edible mushrooms in the wild.
Since mushrooms do not contain chlorophyll they do not require light or photosynthesis to grow. While the environment needs to be as dark as possible to for mushrooms to spawn, some light does not harm their growth. Mushrooms do need a dim light to form fruit bodies, but only requires a few hours a day for successful fruiting. When growing indoors, indirect sunlight or a florescent lamp can suffice. Wild mushrooms often grow in shady, wooded areas where they receive filtered light.
Water and Humidity
Mushrooms require moisture to produce their fruit; however, they have no skin, so moisture is easily lost. For this reason, mushrooms need an environment that has a high humidity to avoid water loss. Mushrooms breathe and exchange gases with the atmosphere, so it is possible to "drown" mushrooms. When growing mushrooms indoors the soil needs to be moist, not wet. Wild mushrooms growing outdoors disappear during dry weather, and may reappear when moisture levels and humidity improve.
Some mushrooms may grow on trees, decomposing leaves, dung, mulch, soil or compost, feeding off the dead or decaying matter in those substances. Commercially grown mushrooms are often grown in a combination of manure and straw. The growing medium for wild mushrooms may not be easily visible, such as a dead vegetation under the ground. Many wild mushrooms, like morels (Morchella) are found at the base of trees and among dead leaves on the forest floor.
Mushroom prefer a cool environment with temperatures around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Wild mushrooms are less finicky when it comes to temperatures, as they can form mycelia, which are the threads of the fungus body, in temperatures that range from 40 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The mushrooms form the fruit or visible parts when temperatures reach between 50 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Commercially grown mushrooms prefer temperatures about 55 degrees and not much above 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Jupiterimages/liquidlibrary/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:8a486611-9751-4819-addc-a8297b09a188> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://homeguides.sfgate.com/environment-mushroom-growth-28551.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00170-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923357 | 506 | 3.765625 | 4 |
This programm counts words from input and then i have to print out the longest word, im i bit stuck on that, need to somehow loop trough all words and compare them, but thing is, that there can be whatever count of words and spaces, depends on input.
teikums=string, teikums in my language=sentence,thats just how i named my string, yes its up to user, how long the string will be, the size is not defined.you have to enter the sentence that will be stored in "teikums"
int words, len, position, nextposition;
cout<<"Write a sentence!\n";
for (int i=0; i<len; i++)
if (sentence[i]==' ') words++;
cout<<"There are this amount of words in a sentence: "<<words<<endl;
nextposition=sentence.find(" ", position+1);
this works,thanks, I did read the link, just im very much a beginner and dont really understand this function, as far as I understand is, istringstream copies my previous string teikums into new array and words are separated now, somehow i also have to make this display just the longest word | <urn:uuid:3e9b3d47-f569-4a40-bd0d-2d006f01f173> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/beginner/116735/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00146-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.834079 | 267 | 3.484375 | 3 |
Read this Book
Number of Pages - 243
Find other books like this one in the library
This book is about the life and friends of a young girl who lives in a Swedish speaking community in Finland at the end of the 19th century.
Finnish Institute for Children's Literature, Helsinki University Library - Finland
G.W. Edlunds Förlag - Finland
This is the first girl's novel in Finnish-Swedish literature. The language used is very typical of the 19th century - relatively formal and with old spelling and old words. The themes of liberation of young women and the struggle between the social classes in society were very popular topics of the day.
Link to This Book | <urn:uuid:b59122bd-d93e-4fd5-8a8c-026e6dbe01e5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/BookPreview?bookid=tplutvc_00070009&route=advanced_149_129,4,71,286,473_0_English_0_all&lang=English&msg=&ilang=English | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00139-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920824 | 145 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Study: Aspirin may help prevent ovarian cancer
A study in the October issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology suggests that regular use of aspirin can help women prevent the development of ovarian cancer, Reuters Health reports. Researchers at the University of South Florida College of Medicine treated ovarian cancer cells with varying doses of aspirin and found that doses of five millimoles per liter or higher slowed cancer cell growth by 68%. Lower doses were not effective. It's not clear how aspirin works to slow cancer growth, but the researchers believe that the widely used compound may block a key enzyme found in high concentrations in many types of cancerous cells. | <urn:uuid:0e875e5e-e123-45b9-bfbe-edca3f9a88b7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.advocate.com/health/health-news/2002/10/04/study-aspirin-may-help-prevent-ovarian-cancer-6519 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403508.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00050-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940084 | 130 | 2.734375 | 3 |
The presentation is free and open to the public.
Lazan was 13 years old when she arrived in the United States after surviving Nazi concentration camps, including Bergen-Belsen in Germany. As an eyewitness to history, she will recount the ordeal of life in the camps. During her presentation she will stress the importance of positive thinking to overcome adversity as well as exercising tolerance and respect for others.
Organizers of the event say the current generation of students will be the last to hear a first-hand account of the tragedy of the Holocaust.
Lazan has spoken to thousands of students in Central New York in recent years.
Last year, she visited Eagle Hill Middle School in the Fayetteville-Manlius school district. She told students there how she was imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen during the years she should have been learning the alphabet and how to read.
When her family was liberated, Lazan was 10 years old and weighed less than 35 pounds. She had never been in a store, never had any formal education and didn't understand table manners. She hadn't been able to brush her teeth in over a year and a half.
"It was like learning to live all over again, " she said.
Organizers in the North Syracuse Central School Distict say Lazan's presentation will be powerful once again at Roxboro Road Middle School. They are encouraging students in sixth grade and above, their parents, teachers, community leaders, pupils studying the Holocaust and world history, anyone interested in promoting and preserving human rights, and anyone seeking hope and inspiration to attend.
"As painful as it is, the horror of the Holocaust must be told, studied and kept alive," Lazan told Eagle Hill Middle School students last year. "That is the only way to keep it from ever happening again."
For more information on Lazan’s presentation at Roxboro Road Middle School, call the school at (315) 218-3300. | <urn:uuid:65eb27a1-6378-475c-b5a2-18e7ce009c58> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/05/holocaust_survivor_author_to_s.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397865.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00114-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975918 | 402 | 3.09375 | 3 |
The United Nations has been a forum for unrelenting attacks
on Israel and Jewish nationalism. Draft
language up for adoption
at the U.N. Conference brands Israel's "occupation" as a "crime against humanity" and revives the charge of
Zionism as a "movement which is based on racial superiority."
In 1975, the General Assembly, by a vote of 89 to 67, passed a resolution
declaring that "Zionism is a form of racism." That resolution sat on
the books until 1991 when it was revoked by a vote of 87 to 25.
The 1975 resolution was aimed at denying Israel its political legitimacy by
attacking its moral basis for existence. The resolution was used for decades by
Arab and many third world countries as a way to attack Israelís international
standing. Each year a campaign was launched to deny Israel its U.N. credentials
and to expel Israel from international agencies.
Although this hostility began to wane at the outset of the Israeli-Arab peace
process in the early 1990s, today the U.N. still has not completely normalized
its relations with the Jewish state. For more information on the history of this
relationship, see the League backgrounder,
and the United Nations.
There remain, from the last recorded vote, at least 25 states that maintain
the position that Zionism is a form of racism. That formulation was a conscious
attempt to de-legitimize Israel and to deny the Jewish people their right to | <urn:uuid:c16c6206-84e1-4f11-92b1-53e9536ab27d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://archive.adl.org/durban/un_anti-zionism.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396945.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00029-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956211 | 313 | 2.5625 | 3 |
New directions in special needs: innovations in mainstream schools.
Clark, C., Dyson, A., Skidmore, D. and Millward, A., 1997. New directions in special needs: innovations in mainstream schools. Cassell.
Related documents:This repository does not currently have the full-text of this item.
You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided below.
This work addresses one of the greatest challenges faced by education in recent years - to adapt teaching practices in order to accommodate children with special needs. This book presents an analysis of these challenges, and reports on the ways in which schools are developing innovatory responses to them. It then studies the implications of these for schools, in terms of classroom practice, professional development and the relationship of the school with its environment. It also looks at the history of the integration of special needs pupils into mainstream schools
|Creators||Clark, C., Dyson, A., Skidmore, D. and Millward, A.|
|Departments||Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences > Education|
Actions (login required) | <urn:uuid:f3de7619-d7a2-4d5a-b7d3-895167ea01b5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://opus.bath.ac.uk/15896/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00076-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899322 | 230 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Compress Data in a Table
How to compress data in a table?
Storage optimization by way of compressed data was made available as of 11.50.XC4. You can compress a table or table fragments using SQL Admin API commands. Either “task” or “admin” API functions can be used to execute SQL Admin API command. In this document we will use the task function.
As user informix or a user with connect permission to the sysadmin database, perform the following steps to compress data in a table:
1. Connect to sysadmin database
2. Before 11.50.xC6, compression has to be enabled in order to use it. This is done using the command:
EXECUTE FUNCTION task(“enable compression”);
3. You can perform data compression for a table or table fragments. Compression can be performed in one step or two steps. A compressed table requires a compression dictionary and the compression operation in order to complete the compression task. When the operation is done in one step, the operation will automatically create the compression dictionary, if it not already created.
Table compression syntax:
EXECUTE FUNCTION task("table compress",
" TableName" , " DatabaseName", "OwnerName" );
The name of the table that needs to compress
The name of the database that contains the table
The name of the database owner
Table fragmenting syntax:
EXECUTE FUNCTION task("fragment compress",
The list of partition numbers that belong to the same table
Use space as a delimiter
More support for:
Software version: 11.5, 11.7
Operating system(s): AIX, HP-UX, Linux, OS X, Solaris, Windows
Software edition: Ultimate
Reference #: 1381306
Modified date: 2014-06-26 | <urn:uuid:39c353a4-5ccb-4371-bb98-a1caec54997a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21381306 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00157-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.741224 | 395 | 2.921875 | 3 |
ERNST MACH AND PIERRE DUHEM ON PHYSICAL THEORY
BOOK II - Page 2
Duhem on Physical Theory and Metaphysics
Mach influenced Duhem who called his own philosophy of science Positivist. But there were other intellectual influences in Duhem’s thought, and as a result Duhem differed from Mach in at lease two important respects: firstly Duhem accepted scientific theory as a valid and integral part of science, and secondly he reserved a place in human knowledge for metaphysics. Mach's philosophy is often called "scientistic", by which is meant the view that only science offers valid knowledge and that no nonphenomenalist discourse, which is summarily called "metaphysical", is valid. While Mach was a physicist, philosopher, historian of science, and atheist, Duhem was a physicist, philosopher, historian of science and believing Roman Catholic. Like Mach, Duhem rejected the mechanistic, atomistic physics although for very different reasons than Mach. But unlike Mach, Duhem wished to retain the natural philosophy and cosmology of the Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophies upon which had been built the theology of his religion since Thomas Aquinas.
The outcome of these differences between Mach and Duhem is a complex philosophy of science that affirms and protects the autonomy of physics from any encroachment by metaphysics, while conversely affirming and protecting the autonomy of metaphysics from any encroachment by physics. This mutual isolation of physics and metaphysics is due to Duhem's view that metaphysics, natural philosophy, and cosmology on the one hand pertain to realities that are hidden and that underlie the phenomenal appearances accessible by the senses, while physics on the other hand pertains only to observed phenomena. Furthermore and contrary to Mach, Duhem maintained that theories are integral to physics and are valid science. The only criterion for scientific criticism of a theory, unlike a phenomenal description, is the theory’s ability to make predictions that are correct with a sufficient degree of approximation, i.e. correct within the range of indeterminacy produced by a degree of measurement error that always exists in experimental data. Thus when Duhem rejected mechanism, one reason that he gave is that no mechanical atomic theory has been found to be sufficiently accurate, when judged by his purely scientific criterion for the criticism of theories. But his principal reason for saying that the autonomy of physical theory is protected from the metaphysical thesis that physics must be mechanistic, is that physical theory has a special semantics that forbids interpreting the hypothetical postulates realistically, even if a proposed mechanistic hypothesis were scientifically adequate. Physical theory in Duhem's view can never be given a realistic semantics. No metaphysical or cosmological philosophy may be called upon to supply theoretical physics with its axioms. For this reason Duhem denies that physical theory has any explanatory function in science; only metaphysics is able to “explain”, and metaphysics has no place in physics. The distinctive semantics of physical theory is a very strategic part of Duhem's philosophy of science. His religious and other intellectual influences may have operated in his developing this distinctive philosophy of science, but his stratifying the semantics of the language of science into the realistic and the nonrealist has as its basis reasons that are entirely integral to his concept of empirical science itself. These reasons are semantical, and must be examined before attempting an exposition of his philosophy of science.
Duhem's Stratified Semantics for Physics
As mentioned above, the second respect in which Duhem differs from Mach is the former's views on physical theory, and the difference is the most distinctive aspect of Duhem's philosophy of science. Mach had rejected theory as "metaphysical", meaning nonphenomenalist, and he maintained that ultimately in the ideal state of science all theory would be eliminated from science. Duhem's alternative view is set forth in his Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906). In this work as well in other works he not only recognized a valid metaphysics distinct from science, but also considered theory to be characteristic of science in its highest state of development. Over and above the economy that Mach saw in the empirical laws of science, Duhem furthermore saw an additional economy offered by theory. Theory is a hypothetical axiomatized system of equations that orders the multiplicity of experimental laws by means of a symbolic structure, which is not identical with the empirical laws but which "represents" them in a parallel language.
This symbolic structure consisting of the axiomatized mathematical system, which constitutes the theory, is a distinctive language in science. It is different from all other language of science including the realistic semantics of common discourse, the nonmathematical generalizations of descriptive sciences such as physiology, and the phenomenalist semantics of mathematically expressed empirical laws of science such as Kepler's laws. The language of theory is distinctive from nontheory language, because the nontheory language has a semantics that describes either the phenomenal or real world, while the language of theory does not have these semantics. Instead the semantics of theory language is called "symbolic", which means that its meaning is a sign of the meanings of the nontheory language. Thus the semantics of science in Duhem's philosophy is stratified into two levels, in which one represents the other.
The basis for Duhem's distinguishing the semantics of theory language from that of all other language is the existence of a numerical indeterminacy caused by the fact that measurements, which may occur in the equations of theory, are always approximate. There are two reasons for the indeterminacy between the equations of theory and the nontheoretical language. The first reason is simply the approximate character of all measurements. When measurements are made, a "translation" must also be made from what Duhem called a “practical” fact to a “theoretical” fact. The practical fact describes the observed phenomena and circumstances of the experiment; the theoretical fact is the set of mathematical data that replaces the practical fact in the equations of the theory. Duhem calls the method of measurement the dictionary that enables the physicist to make this translation.
For any practical fact there is always an infinity of potential theoretical facts, even though the degree of indeterminacy is reduced with improved instruments and measurement procedures. So long as the one or several equations of a theory are correct, the numbers that are the solution set for the equations will fall within the range of measurement indeterminacy. Duhem illustrates the semantical duality caused by this numeric indeterminacy in his discussion of the different meanings of the phrase "free fall.” One meaning is contained in a phenomenal description given by any person who knows nothing about physical theory. And a second meaning occurs in the physical theory that includes the idea of uniform acceleration. These are two distinct meanings; the former may be either a realist or phenomenalist meaning, while the latter is called the symbolic meaning. The latter is a sign of the former, so long as the theory is accurate enough to be accepted as true.
However, the numerical indeterminacy that occasions the semantical distinction between practical facts and theoretical facts is not unique to the variables occurring in the equations of theories, the equations that are the conclusions drawn from the hypotheses which are the postulates of the theory. It also occurs in the variables occurring in the equations of empirical laws, the equations that are developed by experimental or other observational judgments. This creates another occasion for numerical indeterminacy, one which exists between the values of the variables in the equations of theory and the values of the corresponding variables in the equations of the empirical laws that a theory orders. Duhem discusses this numerical indeterminacy and the semantical duality to which it gives rise, when he criticizes Newton's claim that his theory of gravitation is not based on hypotheses. The basic question is whether or not Newton's theory was or could be developed empirically by generalizing from Kepler's laws. Duhem argues that Newton had actually created hypotheses, because the mathematical deduction from these hypotheses produces conclusions that formally contradict Kepler's observational laws. In other words the solution sets for the empirical law and for the theory are not the same. Kepler's laws are approximate, and therefore admit to an infinity of small deviations. The measurements by Tycho Brahe permit the theorist to choose a variation of Kepler's laws, which is also produced by deduction from Newton's theory. Just as there must be a translation from practical facts to theoretical facts resolving the indeterminacy in measurements, so too there must be a translation from empirical laws such as Kepler's laws to "symbolic" laws such as Newton's dynamics. Here again the numeric indeterminacy causes a semantic duality, and a translation is made in which the new symbolic formulas derived from Newton's hypotheses, are substituted for the old realistic formulas, which are Kepler's observational laws.
Having shown that there are different semantics for theory and nontheory language in science, Duhem then gives two ways in which the meanings of the symbols in theory language differ from the meanings in all the other language of science. The first way, which is most important to him, is that the semantics of theory language is neither realistic nor phenomenalist; it does not describe the world of phenomena as does the semantics of empirical laws, nor the real world as does the semantics of common sense discourse. When Duhem states, therefore, that theories represent laws, he means to be taken literally; he means that theories do not represent the world but instead represent the empirical statements, which in turn represent the phenomenal world. Thus he cannot be called an instrumentalist in the sense that he denies that theory language has any semantics. He has stratified the semantics of science such that theory has its own higher level semantics.
He also states that when a theory agrees with experimental laws to the degree of approximation corresponding to the measuring procedures employed, and furthermore when the theory predicts the outcome of an experiment before the outcome has occurred, then there is reason to believe that the theory is not merely an economical representation of the experimental laws. Such a theory is also a natural classification of these laws in which the logical order in which the theory organizes the experimental laws is a reflection of the metaphysician’s ontological order that underlies the physicist’s phenomenal order. However, professionally the physicist cannot pass judgment on this analogical apprehension of the underlying ontological order, because this order is the proper subject only of metaphysics or natural philosophy.
The second way in which the meanings of the symbols in theory language differ from those in the other language of science is that the meanings of theory are determined by their context, by the statements that constitute the theory itself. Therefore, according to whether the physicist adopts one or another theory, the variables in the symbolic law change their meaning, so that the law may be accepted by one physicist who admits one theory while it may be rejected by another physicist who admits an alternative theory. Duhem illustrates this contextual determination of meaning in theory language in his discussion of Kepler's observational laws and the symbolic laws of Newton's theory. The formulas that constitute Kepler's laws refer to orbits, but when they are replaced by the symbolic formulas that are deduced from Newton's dynamics, the symbolic law contains variables referring to forces and masses also. The translation from Kepler's laws into symbolic laws presupposes the physicist's prior adherence to the hypotheses of the theory. The contextual determination of the meanings of theories is Duhem's wholistic concept of theory, a concept that is strategic to his views about scientific criticism of theories. With his wholistic view he says theoretical physics is not like a machine but is more like an organism.
Finally it should be noted that although the higher level semantics of theory language is relatively remote from the phenomena described by the semantics of the nontheory language, nevertheless theory is not remote from the experimental situation. He states that an experiment in physics is not simply the observation of a phenomenon, but is furthermore the theoretical interpretation of it. And this theoretical interpretation is not just a technical language, but one that makes possible the use of instruments. He illustrates this distinction between observation and interpretation in physical experiment by offering two descriptions of an experimental apparatus in a laboratory. One description is given in the vocabulary of the physicist who understands the theory of electricity, and the other description is given in the observational language of the observer innocent of such theoretical understanding. The experimenting physicist actually has two distinct representations of the instrument in his mind. One is the phenomenal image of the concrete instrument that he manipulates in reality. The other is a schematic model of the same instrument constructed mentally with the aid of the symbols from the theories that the physicist accepts. Without knowing the theories that the physicist regards as established and that he uses for interpreting the facts he observes, it is impossible for anyone to understand the meaning he gives to his statements. And when a physicist discusses his experiments with another physicist, who accepts an alternative theory, it is necessary for the two physicists to seek to establish a correspondence between their different ideas and then to reinterpret the experiment. Twenty years before the development of the quantum theory Duhem cited as an example the two alternative theories of light: Newton's emission theory and Frensel's wave theory. He maintained that the observations and experiments interpreted in the concepts of one theory could be translated into the concepts of the other theory. In his philosophy this is possible, not because he anticipated quantum theory, but because he was a Positivist, who believed that the two theories could be related to a common theory-neutral phenomenalist semantics.
Duhem's stratification of the semantics of the language of theoretical science is central and strategic to his philosophy of science. It is not surprising that he stated that the approximate fit between measurements and theory creates a semantical difference. It might seem more correct were he to have said that the resolution of the indeterminacy in measurement by the calculated value for a variable in a theory actually resolves a semantic vagueness instead of saying, as he does, that it creates two distinct meanings. But it is surprising to find him concluding that the distinct meaning of the symbol in the theory is a "sign" of the phenomenal meaning defined by the experimental measurement method. It is this latter position that stratifies the semantics of science, so that theory cannot be given a realistic or phenomenalistic interpretation. Nonetheless Duhem has a reason for taking this position. In his "The Physics of a Believer", an appendix to Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, he reports that earlier in his career he attempted unsuccessfully to conform to Newton's methods set forth in the "General Scholium". He concluded that physical theory is neither a metaphysical explanation nor a set of general laws, whose validity is established, but rather that theory is an artificial construction manufactured with the aid of mathematical magnitudes. Thus the relation of the magnitudes to the abstract notion emergent from experiment is that of sign to thing signified. The key concept seems to be the idea of artificial construction. The artificial nature of theory gives it an artificial semantics, and this artificial semantics is of a different kind than the natural semantics of language that describes the phenomenal world.
Throughout most of the history of philosophy, philosophers believed that while the multiplicity of languages argues for the existence of a conventional aspect in human language, still, as Aristotle said, while men speak different languages, they have the same cognitive experiences. This is the thesis of a naturalistic semantics; all men have the same cognitive experience when in the presence of the same reality, because there is a natural relation between knowledge and reality. Mach’s theory of sensations and of their identification with elements of the phenomenal world is a variation of this thesis. But Duhem could not fit this thesis to the language of physical theory, even while he, like Mach, maintained it for the language of observation. He viewed physical theory as so artifactual that its meanings could not be natural but had to be artificial. Thus physical theory does not describe either the real or the phenomenal world of nature. But he was not led to conclude that theory is meaningless. His reconciliation strategy was to make the artificial semantics of theory describe the language of science. | <urn:uuid:2f839798-c583-4280-806d-2147f457582f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.philsci.com/book2-2.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00075-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957224 | 3,297 | 3.109375 | 3 |
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ON TV Explorer: Inside Guantanamo airs Wednesday, April 8, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel. Details >>
Detainees may be leaving the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but a host of rare animals—giant snakes, "banana rats," nesting sea turtles—are there to stay, protected by the same razor wire fences that keep prisoners in (Guantanamo animal pictures).
Best known for its controversial role in the U.S. "war on terror," the Guantanamo Bay base is also an important refuge for animals pressured by Cuba's tough economic conditions.
"The protein situation is poor in Cuba," explained the Toledo Zoo's Peter Tolson, who has years of experience reserching wildlife at Guantanamo Bay. "There are laws that protect [animals] on paper, but in general there is not a lot of enforcement.
People are eating Cuban boas and rock iguanas, Tolson said.
But on the Guantanamo base's 28,800 acres (11,660 hectares), plants and animals found only in Cuba thrive in virgin subtropical dry forests and swim in clear waters along relatively undisturbed coastline.
"There is an overt effort on the part of the [U.S.] Navy to protect what's there," Tolson added.
The United States has operated Naval Station Guantanamo Bay since 1898, during the Spanish-American War. The country maintains the base by virtue of a lease that can end only by the consent of both Cuba and the U.S.
Giant Snakes and Rock Iguanas
Tolson works with the Navy to radio-track Cuban boas on the base, where their numbers and sizes, he said, are incredible. The snakes are listed as near threatened on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
"We routinely find animals ten feet (three meters) long and larger. My correspondence with Cubans who are studying them indicates that [such large snakes] are extremely rare in mainland Cuba," he said.
The Cuban rock iguana, which the IUCN lists as vulnerable, also thrives—and reaches great sizes—on the base.
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|THE CHURCH AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN|
There occurs this year the twentieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10th 1949. In its 30 articles the document tabulates the rights and fundamental liberties which belong to all human beings in every part of the world without any discrimination.
The current year has been designated by the United Nations as International Human Rights Year. Various celebrations have been arranged and attempts will be made to make the Declaration better known and appreciated and to promote the cause of Human Rights in every sector of life, social, economic, moral, educational, cultural, political, and civil.
The Church has always been in the vanguard in affirming, defending and promoting the rights of man. Its work in this regard will be the subject of several articles and commentaries during the current year.
In the meantime we give the salient points of an article "The Church and the Rights of Man " written by Monsignor Alberto Giovannatti, Permanent Observer of the Holy See at the United Nations, and already published in an American review.
1968 has been proclaimed "International Human Rights Year" to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man. The Holy See has announced its intentions of taking part in the various celebrations of the International Year. It will, for example, be represented at the Conference on Human Rights to be held in Teheran during the Summer. The Secretariate of State has invited all catholic organisations to promote with all the means in their power knowledge of and respect for human rights during 1968.
The battle for human rights is old as the history at mankind. Men and women have engaged in a constant struggle against despotism, intolerance, and superstition and in favour of a life both dignified and free.
The institution of the United Nations was an important moment in this struggle. The preamble to the Charter of the UNO, in fact, proclaims the obligation of the member states of the United Nations to reaffirm their faith in the rights of man, in human dignity and in the value of the human person, and in the quality of rights between man and man, as between nations great and small. Article one of the Charter affirms that "the principal scope of the United Nations is international co-operation to promote respect for human rights and for the liberty of all without distinction of race, language or religion.
The Charter of the United Nations not only reaffirms the rights of man, but asks the United Nations to promote them. It imposes a legal obligation upon all to promote a policy both conjointly and apart from that of the Organisation to realise this task. It lays down also the means by which these rights are to be realised.
The first, and certainly the most important step taken by the United Nations in the field of human rights, was the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1947 at Geneva the Commission for the Rights of Man prepared a draft declaration that, on December 10th of the following year, at Paris, came to be approved by the General Assembly. The vote was unanimous (the six members of the Soviet block, Saudi Arabia, and the Union of South Africa abstained.)
The time devoted by the commission to bring this task to a conclusion might appear brief. Nevertheless, many observers, and among them myself, maintain that if the drafting of the declaration had been delayed for at least a year, the historic document might never have been able to see the light. Between 1948 and 1949 the sweet honeymoon of the United Nations was coming to an end and the icy blasts of the cold war were beginning to get up.
The document is a declaration of general principles of the highest moral value. It is not a treaty and does not require any ratification on the part of states. It is not an international agreement. It does not constitute a legal obligation. The value of the Declaration lies in the fact that, though it may not be a binding instrument, it renders more precise the obligations already contracted in the Charter of the UNO. The latter does not define human rights. The Universal Declaration furnishes an authoritative interpretation of the obligation assumed by the member states "to develop action conjointly and separately to promote respect and universal observance of human rights". The reverberation of the Declaration has been very great, both nationally and internationally. The principles are incorporated or cited in numerous constitutions and treaties, have been realised in numerous international conventions, both inside and outside the United Nations, recorded in verdicts of national courts of justice and, finally, adopted as a basis for the programmes of specialised Agencies and of regional intergovernmental organisations.
In brief, the Universal Declaration has become a point of reference for judging the conduct of governments and of individuals. Thanks to its influence people of diverse cultural and religious influences are appreciating ever more clearly that which Pope John called "the links that unite each one of us to others, which derives from the common human nature that all possess".
The Universal Declaration of the UNO is a leaven, a ferment that raises, confounds, transforms diverse influences in our society. The aspiration for human rights that once found its expression in the work of political democracy now extends to a higher and more universal level and encompasses the hopes of the hundreds of millions of men who previously rejected it. The great documents referred to above in their interpretation of such hopes have transformed them into irresistible petitions.
Are such human rights, such principles and affirmations different from those taught and proclaimed by the Church?
The Holy See watched with some perplexity the drawing up of the Declaration. It was not pleased by the absence of a reference to God as first source of human dignity. Besides, some articles seemed wanting in an adequate definition of liberty of religion and of religious teaching. Notwithstanding that the Holy See has recognised that the adoption of the Declaration has constituted a noble exercise, considering the diverse origins and ideologies of the members of the General Assembly. Note how Pope John referred to the Declaration in the Encyclical "Pacem in Terris", An act of the very highest importance carried out by the United Nations is the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man, approved by the General Assembly on December 10th 1948. In the preamble of the Declaration there is proclaimed as an ideal to be followed by all peoples and by all nations, the effective recognition of and respect for those rights and their respective liberties. On some particular points of the Declaration objections and reservations were indicated. There is no doubt, however, that the document signified an important point on the way towards the juridico-political development of world communities. In it, in fact, has come to be recognised, in the most solemn fashion, the dignity of personality and of all that is human; and it has came to be recognised as their fundamental right that of moving freely m the search for truth, in finding moral good and justice, and in finding a life of dignity. And there have came to be proclaimed other rights connected with those outlined above. "We send our good wishes, in fact, that the United Nations Organisation may became ever more adequate—in its structures and in its means—to the fulfilment of its vast and noble tasks; and that there may arrive the day in which each single human being may find in it an effective guardian of the rights which spring immediately from his dignity as a person, and which are, for that reason, universal, inviolable and inalienable". The United Nations have adopted 15 such conventions, of which 10 are already in operation; for example, the supplementary convention on slavery, the convention on genocide, the convention on the political rights of women and the convention on the elimination of racial discrimination. All of these have been adopted under the auspices of the United Nations. Another four, on forced labour, on discrimination in employment, on the equitable payment of labour and on freedom of association have been adopted by the International Labour Organisation. UNESCO has encouraged the adoption of the Convention on discrimination in education. Two other conventions, on the elimination of every form of religious intolerance and on freedom of information, are at present under examination by the United Nations General Assembly.
Many of these conventions have been ratified by the Holy See. It has been among the first to deposit instruments of ratification, for example, of the convention on racial discrimination, not withstanding the Holy See’s traditional policy which is to wait until a certain number of states have given their approval to international agreements.
Besides, the Holy See has welcomed the proposal to constitute a United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, and international "ombudsman". The proposal is, as yet, before the General Assembly. It favours, besides, the so-called "rights of petition" that would concede to non-governmental organisations the right to complain about violations of human rights in every country.
The United Nations, none the less, are carrying forward the cause of human rights in diverse directions. At the United Nations—"school of peace"—as Paul VI called it, the lesson of human rights is being learnt slowly and painfully, but it is being learnt. The activity of the United Nations is not enough by itself. The governments of the world must integrate themselves with that work and they can only do it when peoples request an international system of guarantees for the rights of man and when governments and peoples are prepared to accept the limitations of their national sovereignty that this system in some measure requires.
The teaching of the last three pontiffs has underlined this necessity for a superior institution endowed with supranational powers, because only such an institution can solve the problems of contemporary international life. The success of this venture depends upon each man and woman in the world.
In this struggle for the rights of man, in this fundamental "operation for building peace" no one can be neutral, no one can reduce himself to being a spectator; we are all involved in the game. Our objective is far from being reached. Much remains to be done. Personal dignity and human dignity continue to be violated. The myth of the inequality of peoples and of races is still alive. The scandal of apartheid is still with us. The very evident disparity between rich nations and poor nations, hunger, ignorance, misery, discrimination are still obstacles that block the realisation of a better world.
We are faced with a moral obligation and with a great challenge, but difficult obligations cannot be faced without the stimulating hope of bettering the human condition. Our reply to this challenge, as Christians, as Catholics, is awaited and completely vindicated by all the peoples of the world.
Weekly Edition in English
11 April 1968, page 5
L'Osservatore Romano is the newspaper of the Holy See.
The Cathedral Foundation
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Often part of a sperm penetration assay, an acrosome reaction test assesses just how well sperm are able to perform during the fertilization process.
What is the Acrosome Reaction?
During the fertilization process, sperm must first fuse to, then penetrate, the female egg in order to fertilize it.
While fusing to the egg is usually little problem, penetrating through the egg's hard shell can present a problem to the sperm. For this reason, sperm cells go through a process known as acrosome reaction.
Shortly before penetration of the egg occurs, the tip of the head of a sperm cell will rupture. As it does this, surface antigens, which had been hidden within the sperm cell, become exposed. Numerous enzymes are also released.
These enzymes are responsible for breaking through the eggs tough coating and allowing fertilization to occur.
To perform the test, a sample of sperm will need to be provided. Most likely, your fertility specialist will ask you to provide this sample at the fertility clinic in order to ensure that the sample was given properly and is fresh. Once a sample has been obtained, sperm can be examined for a number of different criteria, including acrosome reaction.
In order to see how well sperm perform acrosome reaction, your fertility doctor will need to artificially induce the reaction. Once this has been done, the sperm’s ability to go through the acrosome reaction process will be evaluated.
Sperm that are unable to properly go through the acrosome reaction will not be able to fertilize an egg. However, this problem only occurs in about 5% of men that have the test done. If a lack of acrosome reaction is found to be the cause of male infertility, then the most effective infertility treatments would be ICSI, as this would by-pass the natural penetration of sperm by injecting a sperm cell directly into the egg, or sperm donation.
If you decide to use a sperm donor, then fertilization will likely take place through IUI, although IVF can also be done with a sperm donor if necessary.
The acrosome reaction assay can be rather expensive and offers limited information as to a man's fertility. Because so few men have sperm that fail to go through acrosome reaction, some fertility doctors choose not to do the test. | <urn:uuid:3c4022fc-51ce-4141-9d0f-816f0141d3e8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sharedjourney.com/define/mcp.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00144-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961289 | 479 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Definition of Darkling beetle
1. Noun. Sluggish hard-bodied black terrestrial weevil whose larvae feed on e.g. decaying plant material or grain.
Generic synonyms: Weevil
Group relationships: Family Tenebrionidae, Tenebrionidae
Specialized synonyms: Flour Beetle, Flour Weevil
Darkling Beetle Pictures
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Lexicographical Neighbors of Darkling Beetle
Literary usage of Darkling beetle
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. Hands-On Science 20 Themes by Jo Ellen Moore, Evan-Moor Educational Publishers, Kay Ballantyne, Sarah Martin, Marilyn Evans, Ann Iosa (2003)
"In this unit, students examine the life cycle stages of a flowering plant (garden pea plant) and an insect (darkling beetle). The life cycle of the insect ..."
2. Teachers' Manual: Or, the Best Method of Teaching the Natural History of by Matthew Cooke (1884)
"119, darkling beetle ; Fig. 138, beetle which produces the grub commonly known as the Flat-headed Apple-tree Borer, and Fig. 139, the June Beetle. ..."
3. Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series of by Richard Owen, Royal College of Surgeons of England Museum (1840)
"... darkling beetle. No. 2354. Order ORTHOPTERA. Species, Locusta serrata, Serrated Locust. No. 443. Genus, Locusta ? Locust. Nos. ..."
4. Chambers's Encyclopædia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge for the People by Chambers, W. and R., publ (1876)
"It is sometimes called darkling beetle, and CHURCHYARD BEETLE, sometimes neems to share with the Cockroach (qv) the appellation of BLACK BEETLE. ..." | <urn:uuid:672e4ad3-fa07-4b91-81c5-822823ee490a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/darkling_beetle | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399117.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00088-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.838642 | 439 | 3.125 | 3 |
BY DUANE A. VACHON, PH.D. Little did Wilson’s parents know on June 2, 1921 that their son would grow up to become a one-man army. Benjamin F. Wilson was born and spent his youth in the small sleepy coastal town of Vashon, Washington.
When Wilson was 18 and anxious to see the world beyond the shores of Vashon Island, he enlisted in the United States Army.
Ironically he was to find himself on another island, albeit a lot bigger one. In the summer of 1940 Wilson was stationed at Schofield Barracks on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. Wilson was woken from a rare sleep-in on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
In 1942 Wilson attended Officer Candidate School and was commissioned in the infantry as a 2nd Lieutenant. When the war was over, he thought he had all of the Army he wanted for one lifetime. Resigning his commission he returned home to Vashon Island.
After a very short time as a civilian he decided the Army wasn’t all that bad compared to lumber mills in Washington.
Because the war had ended, the Army was thinning its ranks and had no need for a lieutenant, even an experienced one. Wilson started at the beginning again as a private recruit. Because of his experience, he moved quickly through the ranks and by the summer of 1951 had become a First Sergeant.
On June 4, 1951, Wilson’s company was ordered to take the largest hill overlooking the Hwachon Reservoir in South Korea..
On June 5, Wilson led a charge against the far superior force and was responsible for 27 enemy dead. The North Koreans launched a counter attack and Wilson single handedly killed seven North Koreans. Wilson ordered his platoon to withdraw, and even though he was severely wounded he stayed behind to cover the withdrawal of his men.
The wounded Wilson was being carried down the hill on a stretcher as the battle was coming to an end. About half way down the hill the fellows carrying the stretcher Wilson was on put him down to rest. Wilson, not being one to give in easily and clearly in pain, never the less got up from the stretcher and made his way back up the hill.
On June 6, just one day after the exploit that earned him the Medal of Honor, First Sergeant Wilson killed 33 more Chinese soldiers with his rifle, bayonet, and hand grenades in another one-man assault. In the process, he reopened the wounds he suffered the day before and was finally evacuated to a hospital. He was again recommended for the Medal of Honor, but Army policy prohibited any man from being awarded more than one. Wilson received the Distinguished Service Cross instead and was commissioned when he returned to the States. He retired from the Army as a major in 1960 and died in Hawaii in 1988.
Medal of Honor citation
Place and date: Near Hwach’on-Myon, Korea, June 5, 1951
Entered service at: Vashon, Wash. Birth: Vashon, Washington
G.O. No.: 69, September 23, 1954
1st Lt. Wilson distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and indomitable courage above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. Company I was committed to attack and secure commanding terrain stubbornly defended by a numerically superior hostile force emplaced in well-fortified positions. When the spearheading element was pinned down by withering hostile fire, he dashed forward and, firing his rifle and throwing grenades, neutralized the position denying the advance and killed 4 enemy soldiers manning submachineguns. After the assault platoon moved up, occupied the position, and a base of fire was established, he led a bayonet attack which reduced the objective and killed approximately 27 hostile soldiers. While friendly forces were consolidating the newly won gain, the enemy launched a counterattack and 1st Lt. Wilson, realizing the imminent threat of being overrun, made a determined lone-man charge, killing 7 and wounding 2 of the enemy, and routing the remainder in disorder. After the position was organized, he led an assault carrying to approximately 15 yards of the final objective, when enemy fire halted the advance. He ordered the platoon to withdraw and, although painfully wounded in this action, remained to provide covering fire. During an ensuing counterattack, the commanding officer and 1st Platoon leader became casualties. Unhesitatingly, 1st Lt. Wilson charged the enemy ranks and fought valiantly, killing 3 enemy soldiers with his rifle before it was wrested from his hands, and annihilating 4 others with his entrenching tool. His courageous delaying action enabled his comrades to reorganize and effect an orderly withdrawal. While directing evacuation of the wounded, he suffered a second wound, but elected to remain on the position until assured that all of the men had reached safety. 1st Lt. Wilson’s sustained valor and intrepid actions reflect utmost credit upon himself and uphold the honored traditions of the military service.
|Wilson is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific Honolulu Hawaii, USA
Plot: Section A, Grave 1060-A
In an article about Medal of Honor Recipient Richard B Anderson that originally appeared in June 2011 in the Hawaii Reporter, I failed to acknowledge that a portion of that article was from an interview with Harry Pearce that had appeared in the Peninsula Daily News. I apologize for any distress that this unintentional oversight has caused Mr. Pearce and the Peninsula Daily News. These articles are meant to honor the men they are written about and this oversight on my part should in no way detract from the honor due to these brave men. | <urn:uuid:58fc6d14-9f95-4579-9eca-243f101c470a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.hawaiireporter.com/a-one-man-army-major-benjamin-f-wilson-u-s-army-1921-1988/123 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00046-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983432 | 1,164 | 2.703125 | 3 |
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