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A large coalition of public health, environmental, and good government groups filed a petition today demanding that full health and safety information be made available for all of the chemicals used in oil and gas development, including the controversial process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” Fracking is when oil and gas companies blast millions of gallons of water treated with chemicals into the ground to force oil and gas from hard-to-reach places deep inside the earth. Along with a fracking-fueled gas rush have come troubling reports of poisoned drinking water, polluted air, mysterious animal deaths, and sick families.
“The more information we have about the chemicals used in fracking and drilling, the easier it will be to keep people safe and healthy,” said Earthjustice Associate Attorney Megan Klein. “But EPA needs to move quickly—we learn of new problems related to this industry almost daily.”
Earthjustice filed the petition on behalf of Environmental Defense Fund, The League of Women Voters and more than 100 other groups from across America including those with national membership and others with membership from among 23 states (view list). The petition asks the EPA to draft rules that—for the first time—would require manufacturers and processors of drilling and fracking chemicals to conduct testing and produce health and safety data needed to evaluate the health and environmental risks of their substances and mixtures.
“The complications linked to the chemicals used in oil and gas development are emblematic of a larger problem in this country—in which we allow dangerous or untested chemicals to be used in everyday consumer products and, in this case, mixed with water and pumped underground,” said Richard Denison, Senior Scientist with Environmental Defense Fund. “Ultimately, the goal of this petition is to encourage companies to do the right thing. If health impacts associated with their products are widely known, it will serve as a powerful incentive for companies to act more responsibly.”
Little is known about many of the chemicals used in drilling and fracking. What information is available is sobering: 78 percent of known fracking chemicals are associated with serious short-term health effects such as burning eyes, rashes, asthma-like effects, nausea, vomiting, headaches, dizziness, tremors, and convulsions. Between 22 and 47 percent of those chemicals also are associated with longer-term health effects, including cancer, organ damage, and harm to the endocrine system.
“People are understandably concerned about the potential health impacts posed by fracking. Here in Pennsylvania and across the region, as the pace of drilling has skyrocketed, so too have reports of illness and pollution,” said Roberta Winters of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. “The League of Women Voters is deeply concerned about this national issue that threatens the environment and public health. The state Leagues of New York and Pennsylvania are working hard to educate the public about the environmental, public health, and economic impacts associated with fracking. As we continue to advocate for public participation and transparency, we encourage citizens to make their voices heard to regain necessary environmental protections. Our nation’s leaders are on notice that our organization, and more than a hundred others nationwide are pressing for swift action on this petition.”
The petition also asks the EPA to require Halliburton and 8 other fracking chemical companies to provide any documentation these companies have of environmental or health problems associated with the chemicals they manufacture, process, or distribute.
“Here in Pavilion, we’re surrounded by fracked gas wells. The EPA told us over a year ago not to use our well water anymore for drinking or cooking,” said John Fenton of Pavilion (WY) Area Concerned Citizens. “The way the rules work right now, it’s easy for companies to sidestep responsibility. I don’t think we should stand for it any longer, which is why I’ve signed onto this petition.”
Kathleen Sutcliffe, Earthjustice, (202) 667-4500, ext.235
Richard Denison, Environmental Defense Fund, (202) 387-3500
Roberta Winters, League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, (610) 527-3706
John Fenton, Pavilion Area Concerned Citizens, (307) 856-7098
Earthjustice is the premier nonprofit environmental law organization. We wield the power of law and the strength of partnership to protect people’s health, to preserve magnificent places and wildlife, to advance clean energy, and to combat climate change. We are here because the earth needs a good lawyer. | <urn:uuid:05420b7e-b8b6-481b-ac07-84674cabaf66> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2011/100-groups-from-23-states-file-petition-for-drilling-and-fracking-chemical-testing-info | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00169-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946874 | 943 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Science Experiment Games
Learning about different kinds of science experiments and science is fun! However, it can be difficult to remember all the things we need to when learning about new things. The best way to remember new things is by playing fun unscramble games! When unscrambling science vocabulary terms, we remember them much faster. It forces us to recall the words over and over again.
Try playing other games to help remember difficult things too. Soon you’ll be a pro at learning new words and concepts! | <urn:uuid:28b88440-9ab1-4536-8354-58c59e1a032b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/science_experiments/sc-science-unscramble.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00022-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937603 | 105 | 3.40625 | 3 |
Upton, Dominic and Upton, Penney and Taylor, Charlotte (2012) Fruit and Vegetable Intake of Primary School Children: a Study of School Meals. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics. ISSN 1365-277x
This is the latest version of this item.
Despite an increasing focus on the nutritional content of school meals and initiatives such as the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme, children are not meeting the recommended levels of fruit and vegetable consumption. The study aimed to examine children’s fruit and vegetable consumption in 15 primary schools across the West Midlands region. A total of 1296 children, aged 4-11 were observed for five consecutive days and consumption of all food items measured using the weighed intake method. Differences in mean intake of fruit, vegetables and foods high in fat and sugar between Key Stage 1 and 2 were determined. Two thirds of the children in the study did not consume any fruit at lunch time and only 3% of children consumed at least one portion as part of their school meal. The proportion of children consuming some quantity of vegetable at lunchtime was more than double that consuming fruit. Children in Key Stage 1 consumed significantly more vegetables on average than children in Key Stage 2 (p=<0.05), however no significant differences were found for consumption of fruit.Despite the introduction of food based standards for school meal provision; children are not consuming adequate portions of fruit and vegetables at lunchtime. The importance of strategies used by catering staff to encourage consumption of fruit and vegetables should be harnessed to encourage children to taste fruit and vegetables provided. Further research is recommended to increase the evidence base on strategies to promote fruit and vegetable consumption in children.
Early view (Online version of record). The electronic full-text cannot be accessed for this article. Please check availability with your local library or Interlibrary Requests Service.
|Uncontrolled Keywords:||Children, diet, fruit, school meals, vegetables|
|Subjects:||B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics > RJ101 Child Health. Child health services
|Divisions:||Academic Departments > Institute of Health and Society|
|Depositing User:||Charlotte Taylor|
|Date Deposited:||30 Oct 2012 15:17|
|Last Modified:||23 May 2016 12:13|
Available Versions of this Item
- Fruit and Vegetable Intake of Primary School Children: a Study of School Meals. (deposited 30 Oct 2012 15:17) [Currently Displayed]
Actions (login required) | <urn:uuid:4d37c714-17e2-438a-8272-4e435221563e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/2022/ | 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 | 0.922483 | 527 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Skye Gould/Tech Insider
Are you ready? Daylight-saving time starts on Sunday, March 13, 2016 at 2:00 a.m.
At 1:59 a.m., many of us will have to move up our clocks an hour to 3:00 a.m. instead of letting them tick over to 2:00 a.m.
But it means much more than that: an hour less sleep and a grab-bag of other unfortunate consequences.
Daylight-saving time (yes, that's the right way to say it) was created during World War I to decrease energy use. This John Oliver clip also says it started with the Germans during wartime as a fuel-saving measure.
The debate still rages as to if this time-switch does save energy — there are even groups that want to abolish it all together — but along the way we've seen signs that it has negative effects on our health and the economy.
The impacts of DST are likely related to our body's internal circadian rhythm, the still-slightly-mysterious molecular cycles that regulate when we feel awake and when we feel sleepy, as well as our hunger and hormone production schedules.
Light dictates how much melatonin our bodies produce. When it's bright out, we make less. When it's dark, our body ramps up synthesis of this sleep-inducing substance.
Similar to how jet-lag makes you feel all out of whack, daylight-saving time is like scooting one time zone over for a few months.
The problems with DST are the worst in the spring, when we've all just lost one hour of sleep. The sun rises later, making it more difficult to wake in the morning. This is because we reset our natural clocks using the light.
When out of nowhere (at least to our bodies) these cues change, it causes big confusion.
The time change disrupts sleep
Transitions associated with the start and end of DST disturb sleep patterns, and make people restless at night, which results in sleepiness the next day.
Even during the fall change, we might have trouble adjusting to going to sleep "later" after the time change, but still having to get up early for work or school.
As with anytime your sleep is shortened or disrupted, springing forward or falling back due to DST changes can cause decreases in performance, concentration, and memory common to sleep-deprived individuals, as well as fatigue and daytime sleepiness.
A recent study of undergraduate students showed that the start of daylight-saving time is associated with later bedtimes, increased time in bed, and a later wake up time.
Night owls are more bothered by the time changes than morning people. For some, it can take up to three weeks to recover from the sleep schedule changes, according to a 2009 study in the journal Sleep Medicine. For others, it may only take a day to adjust to this new schedule.
Some studies are more worrisome, though. A 2007 study published in the journal Current Biology suggested that humans never really adjust to DST. The researchers explained that the biological clock is in tune to natural changes in light throughout the seasons, and doesn't respond well to artificial or social changes in the time.
A 2014 study showed that our body's natural rhythms can be disrupted by the change. Cortisol is a stress hormone that is important in our metabolic activity, immunity, and sleep — it reaches its lowest levels in the middle of the night and peaks in the early morning.
"Our data suggest this rhythm is resistant to the arbitrary changes in clock time with daylight-saving,” the researchers wrote.
The hormone cortisol peaked almost a full hour later — 58 minutes to be exact — during daylight-saving time than it did after daylight-saving time ended, their analysis showed.
The resulting sleepiness leads to a loss of productivity and an increase in "cyberloafing," when people muck around more on the computer instead of working. That finding was from a 2012 report in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
Losing sleep makes us unhappy
A study of Germans in the weeks before and after the transition to daylight-saving time, when the clock switches forward, showed a negative impact in well-being for a full week after the change takes place. The effect was about twice as large when they looked at results only from full-time employed males.
The researchers translated this effect into a monetary amount by calculating how much of an increase in monthly income would be needed to offset how much each participant's well-being declined.
"The cost of transition is approximately €213 [about $238] when considering the full sample, €332 [$370] for the sample in full employment and €396 [$442] for the male sample," they said in the paper.
Surprising health impacts
Those sleep and well-being impacts also translate into real health effects.
During the first week of DST in March, there's also a spike in heart attacks, according to a study in the The American Journal of Cardiology (and other previous studies). Researchers suspect the link is because an hour of sleep increases stress and provides less time to recover overnight.
(The opposite is true when we gain an extra hour of sleep in the fall. The end of daylight-saving time causes a decrease in heart attacks.)
Certain types of work accidents happen more often and are more severe after springing forward, according to a study of miners published in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2009.
Deadly car crashes do tend to decrease during DST (the spring, summer, and fall), because it's more likely to be light out when there are more people on the road, for example going to and returning from work or school. Also, in many places — like the US's East Coast — there is less snow during these months, so the roads are less likely to be slick.
Researchers have theorized that having DST all year round (never changing the time during the year) could decrease deaths from traffic accidents — saving up to 366 lives, according to a 2004 study in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention.
But, that's not likely true on the Monday after DST starts in the spring. Groggy people driving in the dark are more prone to accidents.
A study published in 2008 in the journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms found an uptick in suicides in Australian men during the first weeks after daylight-saving time.
One of the arguments for DST is that, in the fall, it gives people more time to be active after work and school. There's not much evidence for that, though.
In a 2014 study of data from about 400 children wearing activity monitors in the days before daylight-saving time ended and the days after, researchers determined that daylight-saving time had a small impact — less than a two-minute increase in outdoor play time for every hour of additional evening light.
But even that small increase was only observed in Europe and Australia. The study also included American children, who didn’t show more activity after daylight-saving time had ended.
In another study of Americans between 18 and 64 in Arizona (which doesn’t observe daylight-saving time), as well as Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, researchers found no increase in physical activity after daylight-saving time ended in the fall.
And that's not all
These impacts have economic costs, too.
An index from Chmura Economics & Analytics released in 2013 suggests that the cost could be up to $434 million in the U.S. alone. That's the calculated sum of the costs of all of the health and lost productivity mentioned above.
Other calculations suggest this cost could be up to $2 billion — just from the 10 minutes twice a year that it takes for every person in the U.S. to change their clocks. (If you calculate 10 minutes per household instead of per person this "opportunity cost" is only $1 billion.) These days, the time on our devices usually changes itself, so this figure may be outdated.
And there's some debate as to how much energy DST actually saves. Analysts at the US Department of Energy found that extending DST by four weeks — an act signed into effect by President Bush in 2005 — saved 1.3 trillion watt-hours of electricity.
But regional reports have shown a different perspective. For example, a 2007 report from the California Energy Commission showed that DST had essentially no effect on the state's energy consumption. And a study in Indiana showed that DST actually increased energy demand, presumably because of an increased need for air conditioning.
All in all, there's a fair case that daylight-saving time is bad for us puny humans, even if it might save a little energy or stimulate the economy slightly. That's why some people are campaigning to get rid of it. | <urn:uuid:cac0804e-a36b-4d9c-845a-9a6fc3c02c99> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.techinsider.io/daylight-savings-time-bad-health-effects-sleep-2016-3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00053-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958063 | 1,829 | 3.390625 | 3 |
SUMMARY: For all children ages pre-K to 9 years who see perfectly, teaching them how others may see differently. A glimpse into the world of a child’s own visual limitations or those of others, building confidence and acceptance, fostering sensitivity to disabilities. For the youngest child it is a beautiful picture book; then, as he or she learns to read, there is the simple story in verse form. This “twin vision” book contains a Braille transcription at the bottom of each story page as a learning opportunity for the sighted child and as an aid to the child who is blind. An anti-bullying and teaching tolerance tool, stories are told through the eyes of “Glen” who wears glasses, “Paul”, who wears a patch, and “Brenda” who is blind. Enlivened with upbeat illustrations to complement its text, a CD of the story set to music is included. I SEE THE WORLD© is offered as a bridge to increasing a young child’s compassion for those who may see differently from themselves. A unique experience for any child and his family at home, or in a classroom or library setting.
At the present time, the author is self-publishing, self-promoting, and self-financing this book. Thank you for your interest in and support of I SEE THE WORLD©! | <urn:uuid:fca05cb1-5de5-4ecc-83c8-5afa78b1cdca> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.iseetheworld-childrensbook.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00197-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969122 | 289 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Looking at many 19th century articles on the bonding period and the excise tax, I realise just how much a 21st century outlook effects our view of the taxes. The tax that was put on spirits during the Civil War had quite a bit of support and not from where you would think that support would come from - it was supported by the distillers. Here are a few of the reasons for their support:
1) It was believed that the tax would serve to prevent over production of whiskey. The tax meant only those with capital to spare would be able to produce.
2) The tax would serve to create an equal market place with prices being controlled by the tax - everyone would have to sell at price to pay the tax.
3) It would help fight prohibition. Indeed the prohibitionist fought the hardest against increases in the excise tax. They knew the more the government came to depend on the money raised, the harder it would be for them to prohibit alcohol in the United States.
4) The tax would give the distillers more political power in Washington as the government became more dependent on the money raised. This would help them get such items as Bottled-in-Bond passed and a final decision by President Taft in the Pure Food dispute of what is whiskey.
Even though the modern bourbon drinker cringes everytime the politicians start talking about raising the "Sin Tax", it is helpfull to know that the taxes are not completely a bad thing. Many of these original reasons still apply today. Now if they would only go back to $1.00 a proof gallon tax rate, I think everybody would be happy. | <urn:uuid:4816029f-e8b4-4044-9d0b-332ee5bc073a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://bourbonenthusiast.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1210&view=unread | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397873.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00020-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988172 | 335 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Carolina Clear is a comprehensive approach developed by Clemson University to inform and educate communities about water quality, water quantity and the cumulative effects of stormwater. Carolina Clear addresses the special significance of South Carolina’s water resources and the role they play in the state’s economy, environmental health, and overall quality of life.
Carolina Clear is designed to assist two primary groups:
- MS4s, counties, and cities impacted by a new EPA mandate to manage water pollution.
- Communities, groups, industries, and individuals committed to preserving our resources for future generations.
Currently, more than 1150 of our lakes, rivers and creeks have been listed as impaired by the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC). Stormwater is the leading threat to water quality, and it is recognized that control of such pollution is most effectively implemented when people and organizations understand its impacts, its sources and the actions each individual can take to minimize their contribution to stormwater. Carolina Clear was developed to inform and educate communities about water quality, water quantity, and the cumulative effects of stormwater.
Carolina Clear strives to meet the needs of South Carolinians through the development of comprehensive education programs that result in changes in daily behavior and improved awareness of stormwater-related issues. Carolina Clear works hand-in-hand with environmental educators, higher education institutions, municipalities, counties, stormwater engineers, and local non-profits as well as utilizing resources available through Clemson University and the Cooperative Extension Service. Watershed education activities typically include the following:
- Presentations and information distribution to homeowner's associations and gardening clubs;
- Participation in Master Gardener training and low impact gardening demonstration sites;
- Technical training for erosion prevention and sediment control;
- Technical advising on stormwater pond management;
- Stormwater awareness bulletins and mass media campaigns;
- Youth-based environmental education;
- Presence at environmental festivals and participation at fairs;
- Low impact development training and demonstration sites. | <urn:uuid:16dc9967-6acd-45ff-8497-ff149928db98> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.clemson.edu/public/carolinaclear/about/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00058-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938299 | 411 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Tifereth Israel (The
For more on the congregation's history,
In 1873 Tifereth Israel became one of the original members of
the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now the
Union for Reform Judaism).
The prayer book Minhag Amerika (the American rite) by
Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise was adopted.
In 1894, as the Jewish community moved steadily eastward (a trend which is still ongoing), Tifereth Israel moved three miles east to the southeast corner of Willson Avenue (now East 55th Street) and Central Avenue. It was called "The Willson Avenue Temple" and then simply "The Temple."
From a picture postcard titled "Wilson
(sic) Avenue Jewish Temple"
Dancyger (13) writes of a dispute during the design of the new building. Would the sanctuary have an Ark for the Torah scrolls? Gries did not want one; the Board did. The compromise was to build the Ark, but each week Moses Gries would read from an English Bible and leave the Torah scrolls in the Ark.
Rabbi Gries initiated more changes that would take the Temple to the forefront (some would say to the periphery) of Classic Reform Judaism. The congregation adopted the Union Prayer Book, Hebrew was dropped from the Sunday school curriculum and from much of the religious service, and the main weekly service was moved to Sunday. In 1896 Confirmation ceremonies would begin. We should note that the Torah Scrolls were used in those ceremonies. (Learn more about Confirmation ceremonies at The Temple over four generations.)
In 1900, on its 50th anniversary, the Temple had a membership of 476 families and was one of the nation's largest and best known Reform congregations.
In 1916 Rabbi Gries, in poor health, announced that he would be leaving The Temple the following year. The congregation, now more than 700 families, began to search for his successor. For more on the Gries years and the search for his successor, click here.
Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver
Comes to Cleveland
His sermons eloquently displayed his extraordinary scholarship, concern for social justice and commitment to a homeland for the Jewish people. They attracted many non-Jewish visitors and would often be reported in Cleveland's newspapers. He continued the custom of Sunday morning services, but restored the teaching of Hebrew in the Temple's school.
Three years after Abba Hillel Silver became its rabbi, The Temple began to build a new home, two miles east, in University Circle. It moved to this location in 1924 and took its place in a square-mile area that was to became the home of more than 50 educational, cultural and religious institutions.
For a full page on the University Circle Temple, click here.
Though many (perhaps most) of its membership were not Zionists, The Temple gave Abba Hillel Silver freedom to pursue Zionist activities. Members came to accept his absences and to take pride in his accomplishments. In 1947 it made an important contribution to the Zionist cause, granting Abba Hillel Silver an indefinite leave of absence. He could now devote all his energies to the decisions at the UN.
In 1948 about 100 member households, many from some of The Temple's oldest families left to start a suburban congregation. But the Temple kept growing and by the late 1950s its membership stood at more than 2,000 households. (Dancyger, 38)
The Temple - Tifereth Israel Today
The Temple was the last of the large Jewish congregations to move outside the city limits, to the suburbs. In 1964, as many younger Jewish families moved farther east beyond the inner-ring suburbs, it built what it called a 'branch' in Beachwood, six miles east of its University Circle location. Now, nearly 50 years later, this building, much expanded, is the home for nearly all congregational activities.
But the congregation still owns the old building at University Circle, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Silver Sanctuary is used on the High Holy Days and for life cycle events and meetings. The building also houses the Temple Museum of Religious Art. In March 2010 the building was given to Case Western Reserve University to become the Maltz Center for Performing Arts. more ...
The congregation is now "The Temple - Tifereth Israel", combining the two names it has been known by over the years. | <urn:uuid:ce43bd4f-8fba-4a85-bf38-d5b623cafb50> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.clevelandjewishhistory.net/silver/temple.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00118-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977896 | 913 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Largely out of the ruins of Nefez Keui (anc. Tavium), by Chapan Oghlu, the founder of a powerful Dere Bey family.
(I) A city of Turkey (anc. Ancyra) in Asia, capital of the vilayet of the same name, situated upon a steep, rocky hill, which rises 500 ft.
BARTAN, more correctly Bartin, a town in the vilayet of Kastamuni, Asiatic Turkey, retaining the name of the ancient village Parthenia and situated near the mouth of the Bartan-su (anc. Parthenius), which formed part of the boundary between Bithynia and Paphlagonia.
LARNACA, LARNICA or Larneca (anc. Citium, Turk.
VOLTURNO (anc. Volturnus, from volvere, to roll), a river of central Italy, which rises in the neighbourhood of Alfedena in the central Apennines of Samnium, runs S.
How would you define anc? Add your definition here. | <urn:uuid:9ed29593-d8ff-4949-b6ab-ab0513ead4a4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.yourdictionary.com/anc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00019-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90221 | 234 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Powerful Combination of Adaptive Learning and Visual Models
PETALUMA, Calif. — Sept. 26, 2013 — Conceptua Math announces Fact Fluency: a new adaptive computing module for its ground-breaking math curriculum. Fact Fluency uses personalized learning algorithms along with Conceptua’s patent-pending visual models. With the introduction of Fact Fluency, Conceptua Math adds the power of adaptive learning to its rich adaptive teaching curriculum.
Conceptua’s new fluency component builds speed and accuracy in math facts. The first Fact Fluency module is in multiplication and division under 100. This scientific advancement takes a baseline measure of student speed on a given computing device, provides practice in math facts with the support of visual models, and then applies a timed skills check.
Fact Fluency is delivered as part of the Conceptua Math core instructional program for grades 3-5. It presents facts in an order that is supported by research and is presented in the Conceptua curriculum. Instead of simply moving from 1s to 2s and up the ladder, Fact Fluency starts with numbers that students can easily skip count, such as 2s, 5s and 10s, and then moves to facts beyond skip counting, such as 7s, 8s and 9s.
Fact Fluency adapts to each student’s personal pace. It provides students with the support of visual models of their choice when they encounter difficult math facts. Students are encouraged to take charge of their own learning experience and monitor their own progress. Fact Fluency includes a Fact Mastery Grid that provides students with a quick snap-shot of their personal progress.
Arjan Khalsa, Conceptua Math CEO, explains, “This new adaptive learning module and Conceptua’s adaptive teaching curriculum offer a powerful combination that employs technology to support both teachers and students. It is an important step forward in our complete classroom solution. ”
To learn more about Fact Fluency, watch this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Hj8umaV5w) or visit (www.conceptuamath.com/fact-fluency).
About Conceptua Math
Conceptua Math, an innovator in online K–8 math curriculum, was founded by a team of educational publishing and research leaders with a mission to transform the teaching and learning of mathematics. Conceptua Math offers best-in-class visual models that are based on leading research, interactive discussion guides that empower a teacher to facilitate the Standards for Mathematical Practice, and adaptive teaching technology that allows a teacher to diagnose and remediate student misconceptions. For more information, visit www.conceptuamath.com or phone 888.768.MATH. | <urn:uuid:df2d7c46-1433-4423-a0e3-92f218ff2ca1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.techlearning.com/thewire.aspx?entryid=593&status=view | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00116-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909315 | 562 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Premenstrual dysphoric disorder
Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is an illness associated with the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. It is characterized by severe irritability, anxiety and anger. It is similar to premenstrual syndrome (PMS), but differs from it in severity and in that it requires treatment, because it interferes in a woman's ability to function in her environment. It has been proposed as a disorder requiring further study by the American Psychiatric Association in the DSM-IV-TR.
The cause of PMDD is not known, but several theories exist. One theory suggests it is due to the lack of serotonin (a neurotransmitter in the brain) and mediated by the levels of the level of sex hormones (progesterone and estrogen) in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. A common treatment for PMDD is selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
The information above is not intended
for and should not be used as a substitute for the diagnosis and/or treatment
by a licensed, qualified, health-care professional. This article is licensed
under the GNU Free Documentation
License. It incorporates material originating from the Wikipedia article
2012 Anxiety Zone - Anxiety Disorders
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If current and former felons had been allowed to vote, the outcome of as many as seven U.S. Senate races and one presidential election since 1978 might have been altered. Felon disenfranchisement laws, combined with high rates of criminal punishment in the United States, sometimes play a decisive role in elections. This is the finding of a study by sociologists Christopher Uggen, University Minnesota, and Jeff Manza, Northwestern University, reported in the most recent issue of the American Sociological Review. From the American Sociological Association:If felons could have voted, national election outcomes would have been different
WASHINGTON, DC– If current and former felons had been allowed to vote, the outcome of as many as seven U.S. Senate races and one presidential election since 1978 might have been altered. Felon disenfranchisement laws, combined with high rates of criminal punishment in the United States, sometimes play a decisive role in elections. This is the finding of a study by sociologists Christopher Uggen, University Minnesota, and Jeff Manza, Northwestern University, reported in the most recent issue of the American Sociological Review.
The right to vote is a cornerstone of democratic governance, yet there are populations in this country disenfranchised from this civic process. The United States is unique among postindustrial democracies in that most states have established restrictions on voting rights for nonincarcerated felons, which make up three-quarters of the disenfranchised felon population. Currently 48 states disenfranchise felons (although ballot restrictions are specific to each state). The incarcerated are primarily the working-class poor and African Americans who traditionally vote Democratic.
In their article, “Democratic Contraction? Political Consequences of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States,” Uggen and Manza analyze whether felon disenfranchisement had meaningful political consequences in past elections. They calculated the number of felons and ex-felons affected, then estimated voter turnout and vote choice based on their known characteristics (i.e., gender, race, age, income, labor force status, marital status, and education). They then adjusted for over-reporting of voting to determine the number of votes lost/gained by both Republican and Democratic candidates.
The researchers estimate that the disenfranchised felon population is composed of approximately 35 percent ex-felons, 28 percent probationers, 9 percent parolees, and 27 percent prison inmates. The impact of felon disenfranchisement would have been greatly reduced had ex-felons, parolees, and probationers–all citizens not currently in prison–been permitted to vote in all states. Their survey data suggest that Democratic candidates would have received about seven out of every ten votes cast by this disenfranchised population [Author: ok?] in 14 of the last 15 Senate election years.
“By removing those with Democratic preferences from the pool of eligible voters, felon disenfranchisement has provided a small but clear advantage to Republican candidates in every presidential and senatorial election from 1972 to 2000,” wrote Uggen and Manza.
Since 1978, there have been more than 400 Senate elections, and the outcomes of seven of those might have been different if the vote had been given to felons and ex-felons. While the percentage change is small, the difference might have had a significant long-term effect, given the well-known advantage of incumbency.
In 1978 two of the 32 Senate elections might have had different outcomes if not for felon disenfranchisement, and this would have increased the Democrat majority from 58:41 to 60:39. Of the 32 senators elected, the incumbent party retained its seat through at least 1990 in 29 cases (91 percent) and through at least 2002 in 23 cases (72 percent).
“Assuming that Democrats who might have been elected in the absence of felon disenfranchisement had held their seats as long as the Republicans who narrowly defeated them,” said Uggen and Manza, “we estimate that the Democratic Party would have gained parity in 1984 and held majority control of the U.S. Senate from 1986 to the present.”
According to Uggen and Manza, the outcome of the most contested presidential race in history, the 2000 Bush vs. Gore election, would almost certainly have been reversed had voting rights been extended to any category of disenfranchised felons. Had only ex-felons been enfranchised in Florida and participated at the estimated rate of Florida turnout (27.2 percent) and with the Democratic preference (68.9 percent), they would have yielded an additional 60,000 net votes for Gore. This would have been more than enough to overwhelm Bush’s narrow victory margin.
“If disenfranchised felons in Florida had been permitted to vote, Democrat Gore would certainly have carried the state, and the election,” said Uggen and Manza. “We can thus conclude that the outcome of the 2000 presidential race hinged on the narrower question of ex-felon disenfranchisement rather than the broader question of voting restrictions on felons currently under supervision.”
The researchers examined only national presidential and senatorial outcomes and did not explore the potential consequences of felon disenfranchisement on U.S. House, state, local, and district-level elections (e.g., in urban legislative districts, where felons and ex-felons are concentrated geographically and where disenfranchisement therefore likely has an even greater impact).
The American Sociological Review publishes original works of interest to sociology in general, new theoretical developments, results of qualitative or quantitative research that advance our understanding of fundamental social processes, and important methodological innovations. To acquire a copy of ASR or for further information, contact the ASA’s Public Information Office at 202-383-9005 x332 or firstname.lastname@example.org.
The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions and use of sociology to society. | <urn:uuid:9b69a480-6a6f-4f25-a863-45125134eda5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://scienceblog.com/708/if-felons-could-have-voted-gore-would-have-won/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00167-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962128 | 1,251 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Authors: Nolan L. Aljaddou
This work is an analytic establishment of the proper underlying theoretical foundation of the science of physics, in terms of its most fundamental precept - measurement - in order to formulate the proper solution to some of its ultimate problems as well as to explain some of its greatest mysteries. It is grouped into two primary sections, the first covering the purely mathematical foundation, with the latter the application of the mathematical tools derived in order to construct the proper physical foundation. These two groups are further divided into subsections exemplifying a dual logic premise/implication structure of establishing necessary first principles alone, followed by the ultimate extent of the logical consequences of those principles. In the mathematical section this takes the form of first addressing the mathematical principle common to all physical measurement and then demonstrating the extent of its logical application in deriving the various branches of mathematics necessary for physics. In the following physical section, the nature of fundamental measures such as space and time and their exact interrelationship is established, followed by an examination of their consequential manifest properties in producing the existence of matter and its counterpart anti-matter, as well as the nature of their mutual interaction. The origin of fundamental particle variety is then established, following its effects through to the cosmological phenomena of black holes and the big bang, and the organization of subatomic structure. The exposition concludes in deducing the fundamental universal principle which governs all physical phenomena in their varied forms. Broadly speaking, the categories of foundation established are listed in order as follows: Foundations of Mathematics, Fundamental Branches of Mathematics, Quantum Physics, General Relativity, Classical Physics, Elementary Particle Physics, Cosmology, and Unification Physics - covering the spectrum of general mathematical physics classification. Fundamental problems solved include: the identity of the most fundamental axiom of mathematics, the proper axiomatic establishment of the calculus, the proper derivation and establishment of the correct framework of quantum physics - and clarification of quantum misunderstanding - the explanation for matter's curvature of space-time, the reason for classical inertia and the form of the electromagnetic equations, the explanation for the divisions of fundamental particles and the fundamental forces, the mathematical proof of the existence of Yang-Mills theory of chromodynamics and its relation to producing the big bang and the internal effects of black holes, the identity of the unification principle of physics, and several others. Its reductionist nature establishes that it is the ultimate, unique foundation of all physical principles and by its nature the only means of solving and understanding the essential problems addressed therein.
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Do the math and you will see that this puzzle is based on the fact that ½(2)= 1 and 1 + 1 = 2
They are equidistant since they meet in the same place.
No, if Bob were right then the apple and the pear cost the same amount. He is mistakenly counting his apple twice which is why he thinks he can exchange for a pair that is worth double the apple./p>
There are three people --a grandfather, a father, and a grandson. Therefore, the father is both a son (of the grandfather) and a father (of the grandon). Example to illustrate answer to puzzle.
Joseph is a 70 year old man whose son Michael is 40 years old. Michael has a son named Jeffrey.
In this example, Michael is both a son of the grandfather, Joseph, and Michael is the father of jeffrey.
They are in the same spot since they 'met' so neither is closer.
The puzzles below are not necessary math related but they are so great that I thought I'd include them.
The minister can do something along the lines of acting like he's too worried to actually read the note that will determine his fate, then saying, "II choose this note " as he grabs and eats that note.
Then the minister says, "Now please tell me what the remaining note says so I can know which fate I chose." (which of course is the OPPOSITE of the note remainig in the king's hands) | <urn:uuid:4ec22f3f-6324-46e3-b8cd-a781353a4ce5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mathwarehouse.com/puzzles/math-puzzles.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00005-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97639 | 309 | 3.125 | 3 |
Richard Reeves and Joanna Ventor of the Brookings Institution have a new paper out examining the impact income level has on unintended childbearing among single women.* They found that women have about the same amount of sex regardless of class, but poorer women are five times as likely to have unintended births than more affluent women. A huge chunk of the reason, they conclude, is because of the gap in abortion and contraception access. From the study summary:
Using National Survey of Family Growth Data from the Centers for Disease Control, the authors calculate that women living at 100 percent or less of the federal poverty level (single households earning approximately $11,200 per year or less) who are not actively trying to conceive are twice as likely not to use contraception as their wealthier counterparts (those at 400 percent or above of the poverty level, or earning over $44,700 per year). Poor women not trying to conceive are also three times more likely to get pregnant than their higher income counterparts (9 percent compared to 3 percent), and ultimately at 5 times more likely to give birth. In addition, abortion rates among the poor are lower, with 32 percent in the highest income bracket having an abortion compared to 9 percent of low-income terminations.
Using economic modeling, they found that if poorer women had the same access to contraception as more well-off women, it would cut the birth rate for single women living in poverty in half. Doing the same for abortion would also have a dramatic impact, reducing the birth rate from 72 births per 1,000 women to 49. Of course, the real solution would be to make both contraception and abortion accessible to lower-income women, which would probably result in their unintended birth rate coming very close to what it is for higher-income women.
One of the peculiar facts the Brookings Institution pulls out is that the abortion rate is higher for the highest income bracket they looked at, which was 400 percent of the poverty rate. Single women who make $47,000 or more a year abort 32 percent of their pregnancies, whereas single women making $11,670 a year or less abort only 8.6 percent of their pregnancies. Women in the middle abort 11 percent of their pregnancies. That may seem hard to square with data from the Guttmacher Institute that shows that the majority of abortions are obtained by women living in or near poverty: Nearly 70 percent of abortions are for women who make 200 percent or less of the federal poverty line.
How can it be true that middle-class single women abort nearly one-third of their pregnancies, but lower-income women, who abort a smaller percentage of their pregnancies, still make up most of patients sitting in abortion clinic waiting rooms on any given day? The answer is simple: Lower-income single women get pregnant way more often. Way more often. The Brookings Institution found that single women at or below the federal poverty line were three times as likely to get pregnant in a given year than middle-class single women. That's because lower-income women were twice as likely to have had unprotected sex.
These statistics matter because they underline the one unchanging truth about the abortion rate: The only reliable way to lower the overall number of abortions women get is to make contraception accessible and affordable. Study after study shows this. Reducing abortion access isn't just cruel but ineffective. Middle-class women may abort more of their pregnancies, but since they get pregnant way less often, they still have fewer abortions overall. Discouraging abortion just doesn't work nearly as well as preventing unintended pregnancy in the first place.
Contraception is the best anti-abortion program there is. Yet, just this weekend, Chris Christie was trying to shore up his “pro-life” credentials at CPAC by bragging about how he slashed family planning funding from the New Jersey budget. The supposedly anti-abortion crowd gave a rousing cheer for this man who removed $7.5 million from a program providing the best prevention we have on hand for abortion, which is birth control.
Correction, March 2, 2015: This post originally misidentified the Brookings Institution as the Brookings Institute. | <urn:uuid:6df62fa2-ada3-4b0d-add4-a53c83244ecf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/03/02/poor_women_have_more_abortions_even_though_middle_class_women_abort_more.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00115-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968409 | 836 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom
March 2014, Wiley-Blackwell
Poland in the Modern World presents a history of the country from the late nineteenth century to the present, incorporating new perspectives from social and cultural history and positioning it in a broad global context
- Challenges traditional accounts Poland that tend to focus on national, political history, emphasizing the country's 'exceptionalism'.
- Presents a lively, multi-dimensional story, balancing coverage of high politics with discussion of social, cultural and economic changes, and their effects on individuals’ daily lives.
- Explores both the regional diversity within Poland and the country’s place within Europe and the wider world.
- Provides a new interpretive framework for understanding key historical events in Poland’s modern history, including the experiences of World War II and the postwar communist era.
Pronunciation Guide x
1 Poles without Poland, 1795–1918 6
2 The Political Landscape at the Start of the 20th Century 43
3 Nation and/or Revolution, 1914–22 65
4 The Ambivalence of Democracy and Authority, 1922–39 90
5 Hyperinflation and Depression: The Interwar Period 105
6 Jews, Ukrainians, and Other Poles in the Interwar Period 126
7 World War II, 1939–45 144
8 Conquest or Revolution? 1945–56 186
9 The Year 1956 and the Rise of National Communism 231
10 Communism and Consumerism 258
11 The End of the PRL, 1976–89 285
12 Shock Therapy 328
13 Politics in the Third Republic 348
“While the authors largely agree that the main motif of Polish history is the way in which leaders and communities pursued modernization and nationalization in the modern era, each writes about these topics in unique and fascinating ways.” (Pol-int.org, 1 October 2015)
“Brian Porter-Szucs’s new book Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdomis like a breath of fresh air . . . In sum, this is a splendid book and an optimistic one. Porter-Szucs tries to find some good in everyone (well, maybe not in Stalin), for which he is to be commended. This reviewer believes that his book will become the standard general work on recent Polish history.” (The Polish Review, 1 October 2014)
"Moving in a new direction, Porter-Szûcs’ work adds an important and distinct voice to the fray. It is a genuine attempt to look at Poland’s history through that new prism of a transnational spirit. It forces us to look at history in different waysfrom the outside in, from the bottom upand to rethink it in significant ways. Ultimately, at times, it challenges us to reconsider the existing master narrative." (Cosmopolitan Review, 1 October 2015)
“Poland in the Modern World is a valuable contribution to central and eastern European historiography and the study of Communist and post-Communist societies. In presenting sophisticated insights from a variety of disciplines and from a comparative perspective, the author characterizes Poland's history of the last two centuries as a history of neither winners nor losers. In doing so, he gets beyond stereotypes and clichés about the country, particularly the "national martyrology" that informs much of Polish historiography.” (H-SAE, February 2015)
“Well researched, engagingly written, and full of striking anecdotes, Brian Porter-Szûcs’s Poland in the Modern World deserves a wide readership.” (Slavic Review, 1 October 2014)
A remarkable achievement, Poland in the Modern World
offers the stuff of real history. Instead of heroes and
villains so often featured in national narratives,
Porter-Szücs emphasizes the everyday lives of ordinary people
in a global context, bringing the history of modern Poland down to
earth in an easily accessible yet highly informative text.
—Robert Blobaum, West Virginia University
By virtue of its avoidance of patriotic clichés, its
comparative approach and the sophistication of its discussion of
politics and economics, this comprehensive and well-written
overview will be the first destination for all of us teaching the
history of Poland in the modern era.
—Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University
There's nothing remotely like this work out there. The approach
is authoritative and enlightening yet in an interesting way
"democratic". Poland in the Modern World reads very well and
will serve as an excellent basis for classroom discussion.
—John Connelly, University of California at Berkeley | <urn:uuid:271793ae-6439-4844-b682-1ab5890fa04e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1444332198.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00023-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.887311 | 966 | 3.015625 | 3 |
October 12, 2003.
By Katie Pennicott,
The US government is investing $9 million in project that could see microelectromechanical systems restore blind people's sight.
A US collaboration of government laboratories, universities and businesses is developing arrays of electrodes based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMs) that could be used to restore the sight of blind people.
The arrays, which will consist of 1000 electrodes, will be implanted in the retina and electrically stimulate the optical nerve endings in patients with damaged retinas. The US Department of Energy is funding the $9 million dollar project.
Eye diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration attack the rod and cone cells that detect light inside the eyeball, but leave most of the nerve endings intact. Although millions of people suffer from these conditions, project member Mark Humayun of the University of Southern California believes that the solution to the problem already exists.
"There is a considerable amount of advanced technology literally sitting on the shelf or being used for defence purposes that we could use to help solve blindness," he says.
The array of electrodes being developed by the American researchers is made from silicon components that are micrometres across - that is, a similar size to the nerve endings in the retina. A small camera attached to the patient's spectacles activates the array by transmitting radio signals to it. Each electrode then fires an electrical pulse into a group of nerves, and the brain interprets this pulse as a visual signal.
The researchers are testing different electrical waveforms to find the one that best mimics the electrochemical response of the retina to light. Since the retina is very sensitive to pressure, the team plan to use spring-loaded electrodes to keep the devices in contact with the retina using the least possible force. The materials used to encase the arrays must also be highly reliable and compatible with the saline conditions in the eye.
Patients using the MEMs arrays will only be able to see 1000 pixels, in contrast with the millions of pixels visible to the healthy human eye. But project leader Kurt Wessendorf of Sandia National Laboratory says that the device should enable people to perform household tasks and read large type. He is also optimistic that his team will be able to make larger arrays in the near future.
. MEMS may also be the key to making affordable adaptive optics (AO) systems for improving human vision. Deformable mirrors that are currently deployed in AO systems cost around $1000 per channel and at least 97 channels needed to correct aberrations of the eye.
In contrast, recent research by scientists at the University of Rochester and Boston Micromachines suggests that a surface machined MEMs mirror that only costs around $10 may be a cost-effective and compact alternative.
Go to ...
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What are the advantages and disadvantages of this kind of lesson?
1. In an abstract lesson, the student is challenged to focus on the
concept, isolated from a concrete application of it.
2. The concept can be made clear, when the lesson is about the concept
and not the application.
1. Some students will have difficulty maintaining focus through steps
of an abstract lesson.
Are "mathematics only" lessons important in your classroom?
Yes - it is important to isolate and clarify concepts. However,
abstract and contextualized lessons are both necessary for students to
learn and be able to apply mathematical concepts and skills.
What purpose do they, as opposed to contextualized lessons, serve?
1. "Mathematics only" lessons challenge the student to move back and
forth between abstract and concrete thinking.
2. These lessons also challenge the student to apply the concept to
I teach high school special education students, who have a variety of
learning disabilities, and attentional and behavioral problems. They
resist any lessons that are not concrete and highly structured.
"Discovery" activities are likely to frustrate them, because they have
difficulty working independently, and they want the security of "doing
it right". However, I do believe it is necessary to teach concepts
isolated from context. I combine "mathematics only" lessons with
applications, and make sure I provide a way for students to see their
Channel-talkgeometry mailing list
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The range of Pteropus conspicillatus comprises Northeast Queensland, Australia above 19 degrees South; the Halmahera Islands; and New Guinea and adjacent islands.
Biogeographic Regions: australian (Native )
This species is sexually dimorphic in size.
Females weigh 510-665 g, while males weigh 950-100 g.
Forearm length is 157-181 mm and head and body length is 220-240mm.
Pteropus conspicillatus is black with a yellow mantle. The fur surrounding the eyes is yellow-green, giving the appearance of spectacles.
(Flannery, 1995; Andersen, 1912; Chambers, 1998)
Range mass: 510 to 1000 g.
Other Physical Features: endothermic ; bilateral symmetry
Pteropus conspicillatus occupies primary and secondary growth tropical rainforest. Roosting generally occurs in dead trees or trees stripped of their foliage.
Terrestrial Biomes: rainforest
Habitat and Ecology
Pteropus conspicillatus is a frugivore specialist (sensu Richards, 1995), meaning >90% of its diet consists of the fruits of forest trees and palms. This species locates its food visually; thus, fruits pollinated by P. conspicillatus are light-colored and stand out against the dark upper rainforest canopy. Common fruits eaten include citrus, mango, Northern Bloomwood, and Apple Box. In addition, Pteropus conspicillatus raids orchards.
(Richards, 1995; Chambers, 1998)
Life History and Behavior
Perception Channels: tactile ; chemical
Lifespan, longevity, and ageing
Female P. conspicillatus reach sexual maturity at two years of age. Copulation occurs between March and May, followed by a 7-month gestation period. Generally, females give birth to one young per year. Young bats are weaned after four months.
(Chambers, 1998; Martin et al. 1995).
Key Reproductive Features: gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate); sexual
Average gestation period: 180 days.
Average number of offspring: 1.
The "vulnerable" status is based on a listing by the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage for the Queensland Nature Conservation Act (QDEH 1994). QDEH only considers a species' status within Queensland, so a species that is stable or common
elsewhere in Australia may still be on the Queensland listing.
However, P. conspicillatus is fairly common throughout its limited range.
Due to habitat modification, P. conspicillatus is now feeding closer to the ground within reach of a paralysis tick; the tick causes deaths within the colonies, particularly of young bats.
(Cyplus On-Line--Cape York Peninsula Land Use Strategy; Chambers, 1998; Richards and Hall, 1998)
CITES: appendix ii
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: least concern
IUCN Red List Assessment
Red List Category
Red List Criteria
Relevance to Humans and Ecosystems
Flying foxes cause an estimated $20 in damage to fruit crops annually in Australia; the proportion of this damage inflicted by P. conspicillatus is not known. In addition, P. conspicillatus and other species of flying foxes have caused power outages by "roosting" on electrical wires.
(Mickleburgh et al, 1992; Tideman, 1998)
Pteropus conspicillatus is an important disperser of many rainforest species. Plants that are adapted to bat dispersal tend to have light-colored fruits, in contrast to the brightly-colored fruits of species adapted to avian dispersal and pollination. As a result, P. conspicillatus is an integral part of the rainforest ecosystem. Tourist visits to the tropical forest in Far North Queensland are economically important to the region.
In addition, P. conspicillatus is eaten both by aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians. The growth and harvest of these animals as a food source has been proposed as an economically profitable and ecologically sustainable practice.
(Mickleburgh et al, 1992; Tideman, 1998; Richards, 1995)
Spectacled flying fox
The spectacled flying fox (Pteropus conspicillatus), also known as the spectacled fruit bat, is a megabat that lives in Australia's north-eastern regions of Queensland. It is also found in New Guinea and on the offshore islands including Woodlark Island, Alcester Island, Kiriwina, and Halmahera.
The spectacled flying fox was listed as a threatened species under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act of 1991. They were considered vulnerable due to a significant decline in numbers as a result of loss of their prime feeding habitat and secluded camp sites. It has also been reported that spectacled flying foxes skim over the surface of water to drink and are sometimes eaten by crocodiles. The species was classified as "least concern" by the IUCN in 2008.
The head and body length is 22–24 cm, forearm 157–181 mm, weight 400–1000 g. A large spectacled flying fox has pale yellow or straw-colored fur around its eyes. The mantle is pale yellow and goes across the back, neck, and shoulders. Some have pale yellow fur on the face and top of the head.
Spectacled flying foxes are forest dwellers and rainforests are their preferred habitat. They prefer to roost in the middle and upper canopy strata in the full sun. Colonies of the Spectacled flying fox can be found in rain forests, mangroves, and paperbark and eucalypt forests. No colony is known to be located more than 7 km from a rainforest.
The spectacled flying fox's natural diet is rainforest fruits, riparian zone flowers, and flowers from Myrtaceae (primarily Eucalyptus and Syzygium species) and fruits from the Moraceae (figs) and Myrtaceae (primarily Syzygium).
Spectacled flying foxes have one pup annually. Females are capable of breeding at one year of age. Males probably do not breed until three to four years of age. They are polygamous (similar to the grey-headed flying fox, Pteropus poliocephalus. Female to male ratio may be as high as 2:1. Conception occurs April to May. Sexual activity is continuous from about January to June. Females give birth to one young per year in October to December. Juveniles are nursed for over five months, and on weaning, congregate in nursery trees in the colony. The juveniles fly out for increasing distances with the colony at night and are 'parked' in nursery trees, often kilometres distant from the colony, and are brought back to the colony in the morning.
Spectacled flying foxes typically live to be around 12 to 15 years old. However healthy bats in captivity can exceed 30 years of age. Natural causes of mortality include predation mainly by rufous owls and pythons, death by paralysis tick when bats climb low to the ground to feed, as well as the death of premature babies that are born too early when either something goes wrong in the fetus' development, or the mother suffers from prolonged stress. Flying foxes are also frequently killed in human related incidents such as landing on power lines, and getting entangled in nets or barbed wire. Most wild flying foxes are assumed to live much shorter lives.
The species is part of Organization for Bat Conservation's many international conservation projects.
In 2012, the Queensland Government reintroduced the issuing of permits which allows farmers and fruit-growers (with permits)to kill limited numbers of flying foxes in order to protect crops. The shooting of bats had been banned by the previous Qld Labor government after advice from the Qld Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (AWAC) that the practice was inhumane.
- Helgen, K., Salas, L. & Bonaccorso, F. (2008). "Pteropus conspicillatus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 3.1. International Union for Conservation of Nature. Retrieved 23 December 2013.
- "Spectacled Flying-fox". Australian Museum. 2010. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
- Australian Museum Business Services (2004). The Provision of Data for Draft National Fauna Survey Standards: Bats Draft Report to the Commonwealth Department of Environment and Heritage.
- Richards, G.C. (1987). "Aspects of the Ecology of Spectacled Flying-foxes, Pteropus conspicillatus (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae) in Tropical Queensland". Australian Mammalogy 10 (2): 87–88.
- Garnett, S.T.; Whybird, O.A.; Spencer, H.G. (1999). "Conservation status of the Spectacled Flying-fox Pteropus conspicillatus". Australian Zoologist 31: 38–54.
- Richards, GC & Spencer, HJ (1998). "Spectacled Flying-fox, Pteropus conspicillatus (Gould, 1850)". In: Strahan, R, ed. The Mammals of Australia.
- Hall, L.S. (1995). "Bare-backed Fruit-bat Dobsonia moluccensis", pp. 430–431 in Strahan, R, ed. The Mammals of Australia. Chatswood, NSW: Reed Books.
- Flannery, T.F. (1995). The mammals of New Guinea. Revised and updated edition. Chatswood, N.S.W: Reed Books
- Birt, P., Markus, N., Collins, L. & Hall, L. (1998) Nature Australia, Spring, pp. 55–59.
- Churchill, Sue. (1998) Australian Bats. Sydney: Reed New Holland, pp. 84–85.
- Hall, L. (1983) "Spectacled Flying Fox." In Ronald Strahan (ed.). The Mammals of Australia, Reed Books, Chatswood, p. 282. | <urn:uuid:5d9daf27-9852-4452-9a95-2bcdacd76c24> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://eol.org/pages/327262/details | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396455.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00132-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.880469 | 2,131 | 3.40625 | 3 |
January 23, 2012 | by Jamie Maltman
Most of us love our physics-based Android games, and all the technology that is packed into our phones and tablets. With cameras, GPS, accelerometer, magnetic sensor and so many other features standard, the average Android phone was a science fiction device only 20+ years ago. Individual devices for many of these capabilities would have been expensive and complex machinery available only to advanced labs or military applications. Now they are in the hands of every amateur scientist who wants them.
Its no surprise then that there’s people coming up with creative ways of putting these capabilities to real life scientific and educational use. It may not be as sexy as how the technology is used in gaming, but there are so many real life applications possible from a single device. Here’s a few apps that can get you using your Android’s measurement and sensing capabilities to the fullest.
Smart Tools has come up with a great line of apps that turn your Android into a measuring device.
- Smart Ruler lets you place a small item on your screen and use the onscreen ruler to take the measurement.
- Smart Distance uses your camera and an estimate for one reference figure in the photo to calculate distance.
- Smart Measure does the same for effective distances from 1-50m. Great for amateur surveyors or even golfers!
- Smart Protractor lets you either measure an angle in touch mode, or you can use plumb mode where you can check slope or level with a virtual weight attached to the protractor.
- Sound Meter lets you measure the decibel level using the microphone.
- Metal Detector uses the magnetic sensor in the phone to see if the Electromagnetic field (EMF) values change, indicating the presence of metal or other electronic devices.
- Smart Compass uses the magnetic sensor to show a compass on the screen. So if you want to try your hand at traditional orienteering instead of GPS geocaching, you can too.
- Speed Gun extends Smart Distance to turn your phone into a speedometer!
All are available in Lite versions that provide the basic functions, Pro versions with more and a paid Pro bundle called Smart Tools that adds additional functionality.
Physics Gizmo, by science educator and avid Android for education Phil Wagner, aims to give students or amateur scientists the chance to use the accelerometer for experimental purposes. He suggests you could use it for motion experiments like collision carts, while riding a roller coaster, free fall, linear motion – as long as you’re protecting your phone of course. Start the app, select the amount of time you want the phone to collect accelerometer data, push start and it starts recording. When it finishes it stores the results in a CSV file on your SD card, or you can e-mail or upload to Google Docs.
I’m excited to see how a whole generation of budding scientists and engineers will use their phones to make discoveries for themselves or for the benefit of humanity as a whole. I’m especially excited to see what my small sons will do growing up with access to these capabilities and more at their fingertips! For the Trekkies out there, it might not be a fully functioning Tricorder yet, but the capabilities and apps to use them are moving in that direction!
What are some scientific ways you’ve been using your Android device in your life and work? | <urn:uuid:52ff157e-74c4-447a-8c6e-833e0811571e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://androinica.com/2012/01/android-apps-for-experimenting-with-measurement-and-physics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00116-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91377 | 699 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Fluorescein is a synthetic dye made by fusing resorcinol with phthalic anhydride (see acid anhydride) and zinc chloride catalyst. A red crystalline solid, fluorescein dissolves in alkalis to give a deep red solution showing very intense yellow-green fluorescence, visible at very low concentrations. It is used as a water tracer, and was used in World War II to mark spots on the sea.
Related category INORGANIC CHEMISTRY
Home • About • Copyright © The Worlds of David Darling • Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy • Contact | <urn:uuid:f9acdd01-8c6d-4344-bfb1-0a147abad892> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/F/fluorescein.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00166-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.871786 | 125 | 2.828125 | 3 |
2011 Resources, References and Research
Play Helps Your Child
- Understand and care about his peers and the external environment
- Develop his confidence and self-esteem
- Develop good physical coordination
- Develop focus, creativity and independence
- Prepare themselves for adulthood
- Discover their talents and passion
- Communicate their feelings
- Make decisions on their own
Play Helps Parents
- Understand their child’s interests, feelings and thoughts
- Impart values that influences their children’s attitude at home, school and his peers
- Communicate to their child
- Learn how their child reacts to success, failures and obstacles
- Determine the learning style that works best with their child
- Develop a special bond with their children
“The evidence is broad. It starts objectively by watching animals at play and seeing what it does for them — it improves their performance, immune system, their capacity to remember things. And if you follow that through to a human system, those same benefits appear to us — particularly in fertile imagination, in a sense of optimism, in capacity to persevere and to do things that you enjoy — are all by-products of play. And if you then hook someone up to a brain imaging machine you’ll find out that when they’re at play, the brain lights up more from that than virtually anything else they can do.”
…– if we get fear based, and we don’t access our playful imagination, we’re not going to come up with solutions, which have to be fresh … as far as I’m concerned, the very fact that we humans have play as a part of our nature is to help us adapt to the unexpected and help us be flexible for the future.”
From “The Science of P-L-A-Y.” Dr. Stuart Brown is co-author of the new book, “Play — How it Shapes Our Brains, Opens the Imagination, and Shapes the Soul.” He’s also the founder of The National Institute for Play.
Seven patterns of play articulated by the National Play Institute
- Attunement play: When an infant makes eye contact with her mother, each experiences a spontaneous surge of emotion (joy). The baby responds with a radiant smile, the mother with her own smile and rhythmic vocalizations (baby talk). This is the grounding base of the state-of-play. It is known, through EEG and other imaging technologies, that the right cerebral cortex, which organizes emotional control is “attuned” in both infant and mother.
- Body and movement play
- Object play: Along with other special patterns of play, the curiosity about and playing with “objects” is a pervasive innately fun pattern of play, and creates its own “states” of playfulness. Early on, toys take on highly personalized characteristics, and as skills in manipulating objects (i.e., banging on pans, skipping rocks, etc.) develop, the richer become the circuits in the brain. Hands playing with all types of objects help brains develop beyond strictly manipulative skills, with play as the driver of this development.
- Social play: Play and belonging, rough and tumble play and celebratory play are subcategories of social play.
- Imaginative and pretend play: The ability of the young child to create their own sense of their mind, and that of others, takes place through pretend play, which continues to nourish the spirit throughout life, and remains key to innovation and creativity. Deprivation studies uphold the importance of this pattern of play, as understanding and trusting others and developing coping skills depends on its presence.
- Storytelling-narrative play: Making sense of the world, its parts and one’s particular place in it is a central aspect of early development. And as we grow, the constancy of stories that enliven and help us understand ourselves and others, from a parent’s telling how it was when they were young, to media-driven stories like Big Bird’s rants to Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon yarns; all involve us in a never ending fun-giving experience.
- Transformative, integrative and creative play: We can access fantasy-play to transcend the reality of our ordinary lives, and in the process germinate new ideas, and shape and re-shape them. Given enriched circumstances, and access to novelty, our play drive takes us into these realms spontaneously.
: Innovation, flexibility, adaptability, resilience, have their roots in movement. The play driven pleasures associated with exploratory body movements, rhythmic early speech (moving vocal cords), locomotor and rotational activity – are done for their own sake; pleasurable, and intrinsically playful. They sculpt the brain, and ready the player for the unexpected and unusual.
Piaget’s four stages of development:
- Sensorimotor stage (birth – 2 years old)–The child, through physical interaction with his or her environment, builds a set of concepts about reality and how it works. This is the stage where a child does not know that physical objects remain in existence even when out of sight (object permanence).
- Preoperational stage (ages 2-7)–The child is not yet able to conceptualize abstractly and needs concrete physical situations.
- Concrete operations (ages 7-11)–As physical experience accumulates, the child starts to conceptualize, creating logical structures that explain his or her physical experiences. Abstract problem solving is also possible at this stage. For example, arithmetic equations can be solved with numbers, not just with objects.
- Formal operations (beginning at ages 11-15)–By this point, the child’s cognitive structures are like those of an adult and include conceptual reasoning.
Seven Stages of Play
Developed by Mildred Parten in the late 1920s at the Institute of Child Development in Minnesota, these stages of play are unlike those of Jean Piaget who saw children’s play in primarily cognitive developmental terms. Parten emphasized the idea that learning to play is learning how to relate to others.
- Unoccupied play: the child is relatively stationary and appears to be performing random movements with no apparent purpose. A relatively infrequent style of play.
- Solitary play: the child is are completely engrossed in playing and does not seem to notice other children. Most often seen in children between 2 and 3 years-old.
- Onlooker play: child takes an interest in other children’s play but does not join in. May ask questions or just talk to other children, but the main activity is simply to watch.
- Parallel play: the child mimics other children’s play but doesn’t actively engage with them. For example they may use the same toy.
- Associative play: now more interested in each other than the toys they are using. This is the first category that involves strong social interaction between the children while they play.
- Cooperative play: some organization enters children’s play, for example the playing has some goal and children often adopt roles and act as a group.
Eight Categories of play
- Physical play. When children run, jump, and play games such as chase, hide-and-seek, and tag, they engage in physical play. This play has a social nature because it involves other children. It also provides exercise , which is essential for normal development.
- Expressive play
- Manipulative play. Children control or master their environment through manipulative play. They manipulate the environment and other people as much as possible. Manipulative play starts in infancy. Infants play with their parents; for example, they drop a toy, wait for the parent to pick it up, clean it, and return it, and then they drop it again. This interaction brings the infant and parent together in a game. Children move objects such as puzzle pieces and gadgets to better understand how they work.
- Symbolic play. Certain games can symbolically express a child’s problems. Because there are no rules in symbolic play, the child can use this play to reinforce, learn about, and imaginatively alter painful experiences. The child who is in an abusive family may pretend to be a mother who loves and cuddles her child rather than one who verbally or physically abuses her child. Or in play this same child might act out abusive experience by hitting or screaming at a doll that symbolizes the child. Parents can be surprised by their child’s perception of family issues. Children mimic their parents in certain play; in other games they may pretend they are the heroes they read about in books or see on television. At certain developmental stages children believe they can fly or disappear. Symbolic play may be used by children to cope with fear of separation when they go to school or to the hospital.
- Dramatic play. Children act out situations they suspect may happen to them, that they are fearful will happen, or that they have witnessed. Dramatic play can be either spontaneous or guided and may be therapeutic for children in the hospital.
- Familiarization play. Children handle materials and explore experiences in reassuring, enjoyable ways. Familiarization prepares children for potentially fearful and painful experiences, such as surgery or parental separation.
- Games. Some video and card games are played by one child alone. Games with rules are rarely played by children younger than four years of age. Board games, card games, and sports are enjoyed typically by school-age children. In these games children learn to play by the rules and to take turns. Older children enjoy games with specific rules; however, younger children tend to like games that allow them to change the rules.
- Surrogate play. For children who are too ill or incapacitated to play, another child or a parent may serve as surrogate. Watching the surrogate who plays on behalf of the sick child is stimulating to the sick child. When parents engage in expressive art by painting or redecorating a room while the physically challenged child watches, they stimulate the child.
. Certain forms of play give children opportunities to express feelings by engaging with materials. Materials used in expressive play include tempera paints, fingerpaints, watercolors, crayons, colored pencils and markers, and drawing paper; clay, water, and sponges; beanbags, pounding benches, punching bags, and rhythm instruments; and shaving cream, pudding, and gelatin. Parents can take an active role in expressive play by using the materials alongside the child.
- Provide playthings that kids can use in a variety of ways: blocks, paper and crayons, dolls and toy animals, balls, playdough, etc.
- Encourage kids to play with ordinary household objects like pots and pans and outdoor materials like sticks and grass
- Provide simple playthings that encourage children to be active and use their imaginations, not to watch while the toy does tricks.
- Play with your children, ask them questions about their play (“What are those animals doing?”), and point out things you notice (“You used a lot of bright colors in that picture!”)
- Look for child care and preschool programs where children learn through play.Ask: How does this program use play to help children learn?
Other easy and fun ways to engage in beneficial play with children:
• Blocks allow children to experiment with construction techniques while learning the vocabulary of spatial concepts like “inside,” “outside,” “next to” or “on top of.” In addition, blocks help children express ideas and feelings, interpret what they have observed and learn cooperation and planning.
• Pretend Play with housekeeping equipment, adult clothes and other materials, let children experience role-playing with their own family life or other people they encounter. With the right props, children can become firefighters, grocery clerks, truck drivers, postal workers, fast food clerks or any other roles they want to explore. Creativity flows as children express their feelings, imagination and ideas.
• Art Materials include a variety of paper, crayons, paint supplies, pens, scissors, markers, collage materials, tape, a hole punch, glue, glitter and any other items that allow children to explore, experience their five senses and enjoy the
freedom of creativity.
• Sensory Play can include containers of water, sand, dirt, birdseed, rice, cornmeal, ground walnut shells or any other texture that encourages experimentation with volume, measurement and other math skills. Using measuring cups, buckets, water wheels, sifters, spoons and recycled containers, children can pour from one container to another. These activities stimulate a child’s sense of touch and are calming for children who need to relax or spend time alone.
• Puzzles and Manipulatives like small blocks, Legos®, stringing beads, pegs and pegboards on tabletops or on the floor encourage children to develop their creativity, math skills, small muscles and hand-eye coordination. Watch out for small pieces around younger children.
• Music and Movement can be encouraged with recorded music, musical instruments (made or purchased), songs, finger plays and other items such as scarves, ribbons or streamers. These activities offer a change of pace, an opportunity to express feelings, release tension and provide fun with vocabulary and nonsense words.
• Cooking provides an opportunity for children to experiment with science, math skills and measurement. It also encourages them to follow directions, build vocabulary and try new foods. Cooking gives children the opportunity to observe changes from heat, cold or the addition of liquids. Single portion recipes allow children to make their own snacks while developing their reading skills.
• Books and Storytelling offer a different world to children. Visits to the library during storytelling hour give children a chance to experience the magic of a performance by a storyteller, find books on their favorite subjects and discover new things they would like to explore.
Articles and research about the importance of play and current challenges:
- The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, discusses why play is essential to child development and what factors have reduced play. Includes recommendations for promoting the importance of play with families and in communities.
- “Parent-Child Play: Descriptions and Implications“
- Comfort Play and Teach resources for young children
- The Alliance for Childhood: Multiple play articles
- Mutuality in Parent-Child Play: Consequences in Peer Competence
- Linkages between parent-child interaction and conversation of friends
- Reciprocal Negative Affect in Parent-Child Interactions and Children’s Peer Competency
- Parent-Toddler Play Interaction and it’s Relation to the Home Environment
- American Association of the Child’s Right to Play
- Parent-Child Play
- The Science of Play Bibliographic References
- Original Play reading room:
- Playful Parenting
- Children’s Play Information Service research listing
- Children’s Play Update play in the news | <urn:uuid:3b15b6b0-4fbe-4c67-852c-cf50a4c33678> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://apmonth.attachmentparenting.org/2011-resources-references-and-research/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403825.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00070-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945936 | 3,159 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Health Tip: Don't Let GERD Interrupt Your Sleep
(HealthDay News) -- Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a gastrointestinal condition that often triggers uncomfortable nighttime heartburn that affects sleep.
The National Sleep Foundation lists these suggestions to help keep GERD under control so you can get a better night's sleep:
- Don't lie down after eating a big meal.
- Try to eat smaller meals instead of large ones; practice an upright but relaxed posture as you eat.
- Try to avoid onions, chocolate and high-fat foods, as well as alcohol.
- Don't take potassium supplements.
- Take medications while sitting in an upright position and swallow with a lot of water.
-- Diana Kohnle
Health News Copyright © 2013 HealthDay. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:188f882b-295c-4752-b092-0946f244c0f2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ecommunity.com/news/healthstory.aspx?id=673717 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00015-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908574 | 170 | 2.75 | 3 |
I’m sorry to tell you that you’ve been duped! I didn’t want to be the one to inform you that nobody can multiply faster than a calculator. It just isn’t possible. I’ve misled you. However, those of you who did not take my title literally, I do have good news.
Consider the following scenario. The process of using a calculator is not nearly as fast as it is portrayed to be. First, you need to get it out and turn it on. Then, you need to enter in the numbers. Finally, it will display the answer for you. Think about it. How long does it really take to do all this? I claim that I can do this task faster in my head, and that I can teach you to do the same. I’ll teach you how to be lazy, save time, and avoid the hassle of getting out the calculator all at the same time!
There are two methods that I would like to share with you: Round And Adjust, and Multiply In Parts. Along with these two techniques, I’ll share with you a couple of tricks that I apply to simplify both of these methods.
Trick #1: Ignore the trailing zeros
What this means is that if you have a number such as 250, pretend it is just 25. Once you do the multiplication, you just add the zero back to the end of your answer. This works for any number of zeros. 250000, 250, and 25000000 should all be treated the same as 25. Just remember to add the respective amount of zeros to the end of your answer. However, you cannot simplify a problem when the zeros are in the middle. You can only use this for trailing zeros (zeros at the far right side). For example, 205 must be thought of as 205. This cannot be reduced to anything smaller. On the contrary, 2050 can be treated as 205, because there was one trailing zero. This helps quite a bit.
Trick #2: Ignore the decimals
This trick is the exact same as the first one. If you have a decimal, forget about it. Pretend it isn’t there. It only has an affect on your answer, so you can completely ignore it while you’re multiplying. Doing work in your head requires you to simplify things as much as possible, or you can mess up real easily. So, pretend there is no decimal. 2.54 becomes 254, and 12.3 becomes 123. It is as simple as that. Now, how does this affect the answer? You need to count the number of digits that come after the decimal. 12.3 has 1 digit after the decimal, and 2.54 has 2 digits after the decimal. You are multiplying two numbers together, so you add the total. If you were multiplying 12.3 and 2.54, there are 3 total digits that come after the decimal. This should be reflected in your answer. If there is a total of 3 digits after the decimals, you will place the decimal in your answer so there are 3 digits after the decimal! It is as simple as that. For example, if you have a number that is XX.X multiplied by Y.YYY, the answer will be in the form ZZ.ZZZZ. I think that is enough said about this trick. If you have a question about it, you can always leave a comment below or email at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Now for the main course, my methods!
Round And Adjust
I’d like to explain this method by using an example. Let’s say you want to multiply 98 by 52, and try and do it quickly in your head. The answer is 5096, and I did that in around 8-10 seconds – much faster than getting out a calculator. So, what did I do? I rounded, did the multiplication, and then adjusted my result. I rounded 98 up to 100. Then, it is extremely easy to multiply 100 by 52: 5200. Then, I think about how much I rounded by. I rounded up by 2. 100 x 52 is 2 x 52 more than 98 x 52. This means, that 98 x 5equals 100 x 52 minus 2 x 52. Therefore, I find a quick answer by multiplying 100 by 52, then I subtracted 2 times 52 from that. 2 times 52 is 104. 5200 – 104 is 5096. Simple as that.
Now, what if you round down? What is 72 times 45? 3240. In my head, this was the process that I followed. 72 is close to 70, so let’s start with that. 70 times 45 is like 7 times 45. 7 times 45 is 315. Since I turned 70 into 7, I’ve got to add a zero to the end. 3150. I rounded down by 2, this means that I now have to add this 2 back in. To do so I multiply 2 by 45, and add this to my answer. 2 times 45 is 90, and 3150 + 90 is 3240. I know that took a little while to read, but it goes much faster in your head once you understand the method.
Why does this work?
98 x 52 = (100 – 2) x 52 = (100 x 52) – (2 x 52) = 5200 – 104 = 5096.
See? This is the algebra that allows for this method to be used. The same proof can be applied to rounding down. Basically, you look to round one of the numbers to a multiple of ten. It needs to be somewhat close to that number already, in order for this method to really be useful. Remember that you can only round ONE of the numbers. Do not round both numbers. Only one. Try it out =)
Multiply In Parts
What the heck does this one mean? Well, actually, it is very similar to my first method, however it is a bit more universal. It works because of the same logic, but it does not require rounding or adjusting. It is simply breaking down a number piece by piece. What do I mean by that? I’ll show you an example, using algebra to solve it.
1234 x 32 = (1000 + 200 + 30 + 4) x 32 = (1000 x 32) + (200 x 32) + (30 x 32) + (4 x 32)
= 32000 + 6400 + 960 + 128 = 39488
Could you have done that in your head? I think you can =) You need to break up the larger number into it’s parts. For example, think of 345 as a 3, 4, and 5 separately. Multiply them individually, and then add the results. Remember that 3 is really 300, so you must add two zeros to that result, and add one zero to the result from the 4. This is the same way we do multiplication when we do it on paper. The difference is the perspective in which you are thinking about it. You are multiplying each number individually, and then adding the results. It’s not all that hard one you get used to it. 64 x 55. 6 x 55 is 330, and 4 times 55 is 220. The answer is simply 3300 + 220. The extra zero on the 3300 was inserted because the 6 is really a 60. The answer is just 3520!
What do you think? I promise that doing multiplication in your head is much faster than doing it on paper, and can even be faster than using a calculator. If you have a calculator out already, then by all means use it. However, if it is out of the way to go get it, you should try to do it in your head! I’ll do a couple of examples using all the tricks I showed you above.
31 x 4.5?
31 x 4.5 is like 30 x 45, which is like 3 times 45. 135. 1350. When you add back in the 1 that we rounded down from, this becomes 1395. There was 1 digit to the right of the decimal. The final answer is 139.5. This is exactly what I thought in my head. I know it takes a while to read, however it is much faster when I’m thinking it. Try it out! It is really easy to make up an example for yourself.
2.40 x 314?
2.40 x 314 is like 24 x 314. 24 x 3 is 72. 24 x 1 is 24. 24 x 4 is 96. 7200 + 240 + 96 = 7536. When you add back the zero and decimal, you get 753.60.
To be honest, I don’t add all those large numbers in my head all at once. I keep a running tally. This helps when the numbers get much, much larger. What does that mean? In the example above, I say 24 x 3 is 72, which is 7200. I repeat that number in my head. 7200. 24 x 1 is 24, which is really 240. 7440. I then repeat that in my head, so that I remember it better. 7440. I continue this, until I get to the last number, 24 x 4 which is 96. 7536. Then I add in my zeros and decimal, and get the final result.
The most common use for this is shopping. Do you ever go to a store and see that the price is 30% off? Is that really a good deal? What if it is 30% off, but then take an additional 20% off? Doesn’t that get a bit more complicated? Of course, cell phones can act as a calculator on the go, but is it worth the time to get it out and type in the numbers? I think not.
You go into a store and see a pair of shoes you’d like to purchase. The price for them is 49.99, and they are onsale for 30% off. However, they are having a special 1 day only sale, that allows you to take an additional 20% off the original sale price.
So, you need to take 30% off of the original price. Then, take 20% off of that.
First, sales need to be thought of in an opposite way of thinking. If something is 30% off, that means you are paying 70%. If you multiply the price by 0.7, this will give you the sale price. So, find 49.99 x 0.7.
49.99 x 0.7 is like 5 x 7, or 35. With the zeros, 35000. Subtract 1 x 7, from rounding. 34993. Now, add back in the decimal. 34.993. This is the new price! 34.993, or just 34.99! Now, you can take 20% off of that price. So, we will multiply by 0.8, because you are really paying 80% of the price when you take off 20%.
34.99 x 0.8 is like 35 x 8, 280. 28000. Subtract 1 x 8. 28992. The answer is 28.992, with the decimal. The final cost of the shoes will be 28.99! That is a great deal =)
How else could we have done this problem? Well, you are taking off 30%, and then another 20%. This is the same as paying 70%, and then paying 80% of that. We could just do 0.7 x 0.8 = 0.56. Multiply this by 49.99, and you will get the same answer. Just another way to think about it =)
I know I’m really geeky and all, but when I’m bored I multiply things in my head sometimes. It keeps my mind sharp, I believe. I also like to do some calculus in my head. I work a part-time job after school, and this helps pass the time when things are slow. I know it seems useless to do this sort of thing randomly, however when the time comes when you need to use it, you can do it much, much faster. I hope this has been somewhat helpful!
If there is anything you would like to be explained further, please comment below or email me at email@example.com. Thanks! | <urn:uuid:45f23bab-6e8e-4096-ba87-4de0394bf1bc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://calculustricks.com/tricks/multiplication/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00041-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958579 | 2,601 | 2.53125 | 3 |
House sparrows, starlings and song thrushes are rapidly declining in number, but there's plenty we can do to help them in our gardens.
House sparrows are seed eaters, but they feed live food – particularly aphids – to their young, so try to leave an area in your garden where aphids have free rein. Availability of nest sites is also important; house sparrows nest in loose colonies, so add a few nest boxes to the north or east sides of your house, but avoid locations where house martins breed.
They also need large shrubs and hedges to socialise in, so why not plant a hedge? A mixed, native hedge will provide them with thick cover, as well as a wide range of insects to feed to their young. A good choice of plants includes hawthorn, beech, spindle, hazel, holly, field maple and buckthorn.
Starlings also eat a lot of insects, particularly beetles, flies and flying ants, as well as earthworms and leatherjackets (the larvae of crane flies, or daddy long legs). Some gardeners have problems with leatherjackets in their lawns, but if you can strike a balance and tolerate starlings digging around for grubs, they will be better for it. Plant an elder tree as starlings seem to be fond of elderberries, and erect a large nest box with a 2in (45mm) diameter hole high up on a shady wall of your house.
Song thrushes love to eat snails, so avoid using slug pellets as these may harm any wildlife that eats the dead bodies. Instead, you may have success by leaving a rock or piece of slate in the garden, which song thrushes might use as an anvil to smash snail shells. Mulch borders with leaf mould to retain moisture and increase the number of invertebrates for song thrushes to eat, and grow berry-bearing shrubs such as holly, ivy, blackthorn and hawthorn, to provide food for them in autumn and winter. Supplement this food by leaving grated cheese, rehydrated raisins, halved apples and breadcrumbs on the ground in winter.
To take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch, simply spend an hour recording the highest number of each bird species seen in your garden or local park at any one time. Visit rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/ for more details.
Kate Bradbury is the author of The Wildlife Gardener (Kyle Books, £14.99)
Read more: Top 10 places to go birdwatching in winter | <urn:uuid:d54b4d6c-edb6-4944-9886-5fa436faa67d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/gardenprojects/10595158/How-to-help-our-most-threatened-garden-birds.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00112-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956172 | 541 | 3.25 | 3 |
The general rules to be followed vary depending upon the existence or absence of stable clay strata. These strata, when present, have little tendency to cave about the water-bearing strata from which the water is to be pumped.
Where the well penetrates sand, gravel or other such formations of a caving nature for its entire depth and the pumping level is not deeper than 20 ft., the casing should extend 10 ft. below the pumping level. For pumping levels 20 ft. to 25 ft., the casing should extend to a depth of 30 ft., and for pumping levels deeper than 25 ft., the casing should extend at least 5 ft. below the pumping level. Water from wells of this nature (shallower than 20 ft. where an impermeable stratum underlies the unconsolidated formation) are considered unpotable unless properly treated.
Where clay, hardpan, shale or other relatively stable material overlies water-bearing sand or gravel, the upper part of the well casing should be sealed in this non-caving formation by grouting or an equivalent type of seal. An upper drill hole larger than the well casing is required to provide space for a grout type seal.
If the overburden above the aquifer contains layers of sand or gravel at a depth of less than 20 ft., it is desirable to extend the larger drill hole 5 ft. into clay below any of these loose strata. The annular space should be filled with cement grout or with drill cuttings that are of a cementing nature. The permanent well casing should extend to a depth of 5 ft. below the expected pumping level.
Where the overlying material is only clay or similar material to a depth of 25 ft. or more, the upper drill hole should be at least 20 ft. deep. The permanent well casing should extend to a depth 5 ft. below the pumping level.
During the driving of the permanent casing, the upper drill hole should be kept partly filled with clay slurry. The annular space should be completely filled with heavy clay slurry or cement grout after the well screen has been installed in the water-bearing sand. This assumes that the well has been drilled by the cable tool method and that the screen has been installed by telescoping it through the casing with the casing subsequently pulled back to expose the screen in the water-bearing sand.
Drilling by the conventional rotary method involves a different procedure to insure a tight seal around the casing in the upper drill hole. The drilling mud itself can provide the seal in the annular space provided the driller does not circulate the mud out of the upper portion of the hole when setting the well screen and developing the well. If the mud is washed out during these operations, it is necessary to fill the upper drill hole with cement grout or heavy clay slurry as one of the last steps in completing the well in a manner similar to a well drilled by a cable tool method.
The use of the telescoping method of well screen installation offers some definite advantages in sanitary well construction. The well casing can be set initially to its permanent position and grouted in place, or left undisturbed long enough to allow the drilling mud to attain its maximum gel strength. Using a smaller bit, a hole can then be drilled into the water-bearing formation below the end of the casing to permit setting the well screen by telescoping it through the casing.
Often it is desirable to drill to the full depth of the well to get samples of the water-bearing formation before deciding upon the depth to which the casing is to be set. The drilling and sampling may be carried out, and the bottom portion of the hole can be backfilled with sand after the formation samples are taken. The casing may then be set to the desired depth and the grouting accomplished to seal the casing in the drill hole.
The temporary sand backfill may be washed out by using drilling mud in preference to water to permit the well screen to be installed without disturbing the seal around the well casing.
Schemes other than those specifically described can be used to accomplish the desired results. The basic principle is to leave the casing tightly sealed in the ground with particular attention to the upper 20 ft. of the casing. The telescope method of installing the well screen lends itself to this procedure. This method also permits removal and reinstallation of the well screen at any future time, if this should become necessary, without disturbing the watertightness of the casing and its surroundings.
Wells Completed in Consolidated Formations
Two types of water-bearing rocks need to be kept in mind in devising construction details for sanitary wells drilled into consolidated formations. Sandstone is a type in which water is found and moves through small pores similar to the pores in and unconsolidated sand formation. The size of the openings is usually small enough to effectively filter the water as it moves into and through the aquifer.
Limestone and basalt aquifers, on the other hand, are rocks in which the water occurs in crevices, fractures and solution channels. These openings are of a size the produce practically no filtering effect on the water moving through them. While the real determination of the potability of water must be based on bacteriological tests rather than on arbitrary distances, limestone and similar creviced or fractured formations generally should be used as a source of ground water only where they are buried under at least 40 ft. of overburden of unconsolidated material and where the overburden extends 2,000 ft. in all directions from the well site.
These overburden conditions cannot be met in some places, yet no other source of water may be available. Procedure in those situations is to disinfect the water by continuous chlorination. Chlorinators for individual water systems are available.
Where 40 ft. of overburden exists, the well casing should pass entirely through the overburden and be firmly seated in the rock. The upper 20 ft. of the casing should be grouted in an oversized drill hole. If the overburden is sand, which will cave tightly around the well casing, the grout seal is unnecessary.
Where the overburden is less the 25 ft., the well casing should extend as far as practicable into the creviced formation and should be cemented or grouted in an oversized drill hole throughout its length.
Wells completed in sandstone formations should have the casing grouted to a minimum depth of 30 ft. where the unconsolidated overburden is 25 ft. or less. If more than 25 ft. of sand rests on top of the sandstone, the casing must be seated into the firm rock material but does not necessarily need to be grout-sealed. If the overburden is clay, the upper 20 ft. of the casing must be sealed by grouting in an oversize drill hole.
Sandstone is sometimes overlain by creviced rock. In such situations, contaminated surface water can readily flow through the creviced rock to the top of the sandstone formation. To complete a well properly in the sandstone under these conditions, the creviced formation should be cased off. The casing should extend 15 ft. into the sandstone and should be sealed by grouting throughout its length. | <urn:uuid:beeacaaf-ac11-463c-868a-8f22d3b44889> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hansenwell.com/general-formation-information/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396959.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00038-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942127 | 1,490 | 2.71875 | 3 |
A genetically engineered virus has ‘cured’ patients of cancer for the first time in a breakthrough which raises hopes of an end to chemotherapy.
In a worldwide study which was led by the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK, scientists showed that the new treatment allowed some patients with skin cancer to live for more than three years – the benchmark many oncologists use to define a cure.
The therapy – called T-VEC - works by infecting and killing cancer cells while also sparking the immune system into action against tumours.
Currently most cancers are treated with using invasive chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, all of which carry the risk of further harm.
The new therapy has far fewer side effects and does not damage healthy tissue or cells.
While the breakthrough came in skin cancer patients, scientists said it raises hopes that the same process could be used for other cancers.
Charities said the development was ‘exciting’ and offered new hope to many patients.
“Patients showing responses beyond three years is something that up until now, we could only have imagined,” said Gillian Nuttall, Founder of Melanoma UK.
Malignant melanoma is the fifth most common cancer in the UK, with more than 13,000 diagnosed each year. It kills more than 2,000 people each year.
Professor Paul Workman, Chief Executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: “We may normally think of viruses as the enemies of mankind, but it’s their very ability to specifically infect and kill human cells that can make them such promising cancer treatments.
“In this case we are harnessing the ability of an engineered virus to kill cancer cells and stimulate an immune response.”
The clinical trials, which have been ongoing for more than three years, have been conducted in 64 centres across the UK, US, Canada and South Africa.
The results show that 163 patients with stage three and early stage four melanoma who were treated with T-VEC lived for an average of 41 months. That was compared with an average survival of 21.5 months for 66 patients who were given the current best immunotherapy drugs.
And the response was most pronounced in patients with less advanced cancers, underlining the potential benefit as a first-line treatment for metastatic cancers which cannot be surgically removed.
T-VEC is a modified form of herpes virus which multiplies inside cancer cells and bursts them from within. It has been genetically engineered to produce a molecule called GM-CSF, which stimulates the immune system to attack and destroy the tumour.
It has also been modified to remove two key genes so that it can’t replicate within healthy cells. Normal cells detect and destroy T-VEC before it can cause damage – but it replicates easily in cancer cells because their infection defences are compromised by genetic errors.
It is one of a new wave of virus-based drugs to show benefits in cancer trials, and is now the first to do so in a major randomised, controlled phase III trial.
“There is increasing excitement over the use of viral treatments like T-VEC for cancer, because they can launch a two-pronged attack on tumours – both killing cancer cells directly and marshalling the immune system against them,” said Prof Kevin Harrington, Professor of Biological Cancer Therapies at The Institute of Cancer Research.
“Because viral treatment can target cancer cells specifically, it tends to have fewer side-effects than traditional chemotherapy or some of the other new immunotherapies.
Dr Hayley Frend, science information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: “Using a virus to both kill cancer cells and nudge the immune system into attacking them is exciting.
“Previous studies have shown T-VEC could benefit some people with advanced skin cancer but this is the first study to prove an increase in survival. The next step will be to understand why only some patients respond to T-VEC, in order to help better identify which patients might benefit from it.”
The research was also welcomed by British academics who said the results were ‘very promising.’
Prof Leonard Seymour, Professor of Gene Therapies, University of Oxford, said: “This T-Vec study shows powerful stimulus of an anticancer immune response in patients with melanoma skin cancer.
“Increasingly we understand that cancer is characterised by suppression of the immune system within tumour deposits, meaning that cancer vaccines have struggled to create useful responses.
“However T-VEC appears to be able to overcome this suppression. At this stage it’s very promising that this appears to have positive results for melanoma skin cancer.”
British Skin Foundation spokesperson Muzlifah Haniffa, Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Dermatologist at Newcastle University added: “This study reports another treatment strategy based on harnessing the power of our immune system to destroy melanoma, offering new hope to many patients.”
The trial was funded by the manufacturer of T-VEC, Amgen, and is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. | <urn:uuid:54160899-372e-4921-b333-c872a763c7bd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11631626/v.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00031-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960912 | 1,071 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Todays Scripture readings pertain to the basis of our resurrection hopes. Psalm 17 is typical of the ambiguity about this topic that one finds in the Psalms and the earlier parts of the Old Testament. For the early biblical writers the abode of the dead is Sheol, a shadowy place more like limbo than heaven or hell. By the second century B.C., there emerged within Israel, as the the Book of Daniel shows, a more lively hope for resurrection, divine judgment and reward and punishments after death. These hopes are reflected in Wisdom 3 (a passage read at many Catholic funerals), various Jewish apocalyptic texts and todays selection from 2 Maccabees 7. There a woman and her seven sons resist the wicked kings urgings to disavow Judaism, and they appeal to their beliefs in bodily resurrection and in just rewards and punishments from God.
This Sundays passage from Luke 20 is a controversy story, in which Jesus debates with some Sadducees about resurrection. On this matter Jesus stood with the Pharisees (strong proponents of resurrection). We may presume that the Sadducees already knew Jesus view on the matter and wanted to trap him into admitting that belief in resurrection is unbiblical and illogical. Since they accepted only the first five books of the Hebrew Bible as authoritative, and since the evidence for resurrection in them is slim, the Sadducees held that belief in resurrection was not biblical. To show its absurdity, they put forward a hypothetical example based on Dt 25:5-10, according to which when a man died and left a childless widow, his brother was to marry the widow. They construct a case in which seven brothers in turn marry the same woman. All die, and finally the woman dies. The Sadducees ask Jesus whose wife she will be at the resurrection?
Using the debating techniques of his time, Jesus argues that the Sadducees have failed to understand the nature of resurrection and the Scriptures. He first contends that in the resurrection we will become children of God more fully and our life will be different from earthly life and need not follow its standards. To show that resurrection is biblical (even pentateuchal), Jesus cites Ex 3:6 and 3:15-16, where God identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The logic of this argument is that if in revealing himself to Moses God claimed to be the God of these three dead patriarchs, then they must still be alive somehow and that the God of Israel is the God of the living. While to us today this biblical argument may seem artificial, it was presumably understandable and even convincing to Jews in Jesus time.
Behind these arguments is Jesus affirmation that the God of the Bible is the God of the living, and that resurrection is based on the nature of God and is Gods gift to us. It is not owed to us by our human nature (immortality of the soul). Rather it is based on the nature of God, who is the God of the living. The absence of any reference to Jesus own resurrection in this text suggests that we are hearing the voice of the earthly Jesus on this matter, and not merely the belief of the early church.
In November we recall those who have died. In doing so there are surely feelings of sadness, loss and abandonment. Yet beyond these very real feelings there is the hope that we will see our loved ones again in the resurrection of the dead and that we are even now in communion with them. Todays passage from 2 Thessalonians reminds us of our membership in the communion of saints. In it we participate in the lives of God the all holy one, of all the holy people who have gone before us and of all those with whom we are bound together by faith. Paul reminds us that God has loved us first, has given us encouragement and hope through his divine favor and will guard and strengthen us in our struggles. The communion of saints is first and foremost the work of God. The saints who have gone before us include not only great figures like Paul and the canonized saints but also the saints who have shaped our lives by their faith, example and encouragement. And we have one another here on earth. As Paul suggests, supporting, encouraging and praying for one another are important obligations for those in the communion of saints.
• Do you believe in life after death? Why? What do you imagine it will be?
• How do you respond to someone who denies life after death and belief in resurrection?
• Do you ever reflect on being a member in the communion of saints? What might it mean in your life? | <urn:uuid:8f5b9468-b212-4f6a-994b-387962f16a9a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://americamagazine.org/print/content/the-word/resurrection-and-communion-saints | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00183-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96129 | 942 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Adam Zoll: For Morningstar, I'm Adam Zoll.
Teaching your kids about financial responsibility can be a challenge any time of year, let alone during the holidays. Here with some tips is Eleanor Blayney; she is the consumer advocate for the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards.
Eleanor, thanks for being with us today.
Eleanor Blayney: Thank you for having me.
Zoll: What are some of the basic skills that parents can teach their children about being financially responsible, and what are some ways that they can go about doing that?
Blayney: One of the best ways to teach children about financial responsibility is to be financially responsible yourself. Kids learn by seeing what their parents are doing. So, if money is a real stressor in your household, an occasion for arguments and difficulty in communicating, well, obviously, these are not the lessons we want our children to learn. So, it's cleaning up your own financial act and also finding ways to talk to your children about money.
Today, I think, a lot of kids have a very unclear notion of what money is, probably because there are so many forms of currency that they can use now. For example, it's no longer just the quarter or the bill that I got once upon a time as an allowance. [Today,] they have gift cards, you can put money on your phone. It's very digital, it's very virtual, and hence not very real.
Zoll: Are there specific ways you would recommend--for example, maybe as you are making a purchase at a store or paying a bill--showing the child exactly what you are doing to help reinforce the financial implication of the action that you are taking?
Blayney: There are. It's all in talking it through. For example, when you take a young child grocery shopping, I know it's hard, but if you can talk through some of your decisions. You are standing in front of an array of cereals, and you can maybe articulate while your child is standing there, why might I pick this brand over that? Or talk about a generic label rather than a brand label. Talk about prices and quality, and give them some of the dimensions of making a financial decision and some of the trade-off that we all make. I think young elementary school kids can understand that.
I think another really good modeling behavior is shopping with a list and having the child help you with that list, either compiling it or monitoring it as you go through your shopping excursion or through the grocery store. A list is a really handy tool. It's a very primitive form of budgeting, which is also an important strategy and discipline to be teaching our children. Shopping with a list and keeping within a budget.
Zoll: Given that this is the holiday season and people are focused on gifts--spending money, not so much about saving money--are there specific ways to not take your eye off the ball in terms of teaching financial responsibility to children?
Blayney: Yes. You don't want to be overzealous--it is Christmas after all and kids are kids, and it's a wonderful time of the year. But nevertheless, I have a couple of ideas that I'm rather partial to. One is, explaining to them how savings work when you're shopping. I think it's really confusing when a kid walks into a store and sees that they are going to save 50% on an item, and you're seeing that all the time in the big holiday sales and not realizing that that's not in fact money saved. It's simply money not spent. I think it's really easy to come home and say, "Look! I saved all this money," when in fact you really haven't put any money aside whatsoever.
Also talking about how there are all these sales to get you to buy, and this can in fact get you to buy more than you intended or spend more than you intended. Turn them on to some of the retailing tricks of the trade to get them more sensitive to what it means to shop smart.
Zoll: Are there particular kinds of gifts that you think are more likely to encourage financial responsibility than others during the holiday season?
Blayney: Yes. I want to talk specifically about the whole growth of gift cards and how often we use gift cards as a way to avoid giving a child cash or money. I guess for some reason, [giving cash] doesn't feel as nice. But I really am a big proponent of giving a child cash as opposed to a gift card, which sends them to a particular retailer to spend all the money or not to spend it, but to have an unused balance. We all know that the gift cards benefit the retailer primarily.
But when you give a child cash, the child now has the occasion--and you can help them think this through--of using that cash for more than one use. Maybe using cash to buy themselves something they really would like, to save some of the cash, and even maybe give away some of the cash. We all know money has multiple purposes, and responsibility comes in learning how to juggle those various purposes. A gift card tells me, go spend the money. A gift of cash gives the child an opportunity to learn that maybe I should be saving some, and using some, and even possibly giving some away.
Zoll: Those are certainly wise tips, especially for this time of year. Eleanor, thank you so much for your time today.
Blayney: You are absolutely welcome. Thank you, and have a happy holiday.
Zoll: For Morningstar, I'm Adam Zoll. Thanks for watching. | <urn:uuid:2c02636b-151f-4f83-95d5-24291a5e4bde> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.morningstar.com/cover/videocenter.aspx?id=621842 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00126-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975389 | 1,174 | 2.875 | 3 |
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
In the early 20th century, immigrants were, if not welcome, mostly tolerated. They provided an essential labor force to build a rapidly growing country. They were mostly poor people looking for a better life, and many of them had to sell all of their possessions and borrow money just to get here. They didn’t travel first class.
Fourth class travel was often called “Steerage Class” because the passengers were crowded like cattle. But that was nearly a hundred years ago. Immigrants and the way they travel have changed drastically.
Instead of Europeans arriving by ship, today’s immigrants are mostly Mexicans entering on foot or in vehicles.
But sometimes conditions aren’t any better.
Recently, Mexican police found 513 people squeezed together in two trucks just outside Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas – a painful 18-hour-drive away from the nearest US border.
They were caught when the trucks sped through a vehicle scanner at a police checkpoint. After the incredible X-ray image came up on the screen, police gave chase, finding 240 people in one truck and 273 crammed into the other.
The vacationers are being given spacious apartments before being repatriated to their home countries.
An elementary school in Arizona is giving the Michael Jackson treatment to their poster boys. The mural featuring the faces of kids who attend the school has been the subject of constant daytime drive-by racist screaming, from adults, as well as a radio talk-show campaign (by an actual city councilman, who has an AM talk-radio show) to remove the black student’s face from the mural, and now the school principal has ordered the faces of the Latino and Black students pictured on the school wall to be repainted as light-skinned children.
The Arizona Republic reports:
The project’s leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children’s ethnicity. But the school’s principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure.
The “Go on Green” mural, which covers two walls outside Miller Valley Elementary School, was designed to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation. It features portraits of four children, with a Hispanic boy as the dominant figure.
R.E. Wall, director of Prescott’s Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town’s most prominent intersections.
“We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars,” Wall said. “We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).”
City Councilman Steve Blair spearheaded a public campaign on his talk show at Prescott radio station KYCA-AM (1490) to remove the mural.
In a broadcast last month, according to the Daily Courier in Prescott, Blair mistakenly complained that the most prominent child in the painting is African-American, saying: “To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?” | <urn:uuid:d63448a7-29a1-4cb6-88e7-12edc1e1255f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.kazak.com/wordpress/?tag=hispanic | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00049-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977517 | 721 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Evvy's Civil War
Brenaman, Miriam. Evvy's Civil War. New York: Putnam's, 2002.
Evvy Chamberlyn is the eldest in a family of daughters on a Virginia plantation that is entailed to a male heir. Evvy comes of age on the eve of the Civil War. Her new status as an adult means that the secrets of her family, both white and black, reveal themselves to her gradually. She comes to realize that the Chamberlyns are an important point of resistance to slavery, and in so realizing, she learns that she can make her own way in the world as an independent young woman. | <urn:uuid:d1271ad7-db49-460f-8c81-e127a55d0769> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.uta.edu/english/tim/civilwar/2002breevv.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00090-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972546 | 133 | 2.796875 | 3 |
When Samantha Menefee can’t find a letter on the keyboard, she usually turns to her mother.
But the first-grader at Summit Road STEM Elementary in Reynoldsburg was on her own when she took a computerized English test earlier this year. In one question, she said she had to spell out words such as cat, like and live.
“It took me a long time,” said Samantha, 7. “It’s just hard to type.”
As more school and state assessments move online, educators are worried that students lack the typing skills to take those tests or compose responses using a keyboard. The new Common Core assessments, for example, will be online and require students to type as early as third grade.
As a result, several local districts have ramped up their lessons, some as early as kindergarten.
“When we started hearing about this a couple of years ago, we were all terrified,” said Tricia Faulkner, principal at Madison Elementary. “This is going to be a whole new ballgame for students and staff, and we are all adjusting to it.”
The Groveport Madison school district started integrating new lessons for elementary students this year that include keyboarding for kindergarten students, which raised concerns for some teachers, Faulkner said.
How would kindergartners — who are just getting acquainted with letters and words — understand how to find letters and how to place their fingers on a keyboard?
“They may not master (keyboarding) in kindergarten, but they will by the time they get to the third grade,” Faulkner said. “They will get the skills they need so they’ll be ready to take those tests.”
Some schools don’t begin formal typing lessons until third grade, in part because that’s when keyboarding is first introduced in the Common Core writing standards.
Many districts cover typing skills in classroom lessons. Some, including Canal Winchester, Hilliard, Pickerington and Reynoldsburg, use online keyboarding programs for additional help.
This year, Westerville’s technology team crafted online keyboarding lessons for elementary students that teachers can embed in their lessons.
Students at Robert Frost Elementary recently received their first lesson. They learned about the “home row” and how to position their fingers on the keyboard. They learned that their thumbs rest on the space bar and that their pinkies cover a lot of territory.
They took their first steps typing without looking at the keyboard.
Third-grader Margaux Guerin still had to look at the keys but thought it was easier than using two fingers.
“I liked it because I learned more,” she said.
Stephanie Donofe, the district’s technology coordinator, said she hopes students will become so adept at typing that they can focus on the test instead of the keyboard.
“They’ll be able to write and not think about hunting for the letter h,” for example, she said. “ The fingers will know it.” | <urn:uuid:dbfb942e-d224-4140-994d-536bf351c7aa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/10/21/elementary-students-learn-to-type-to-take-tests.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00105-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971314 | 646 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Occupational therapy is the holistic health profession that works with individuals to attain, restore, and maintain function in daily life activities and meaningful life roles such as student, homemaker, hobbyist, and worker. The word “occupation” in the context of occupational therapy refers to activities that are valued by that individual in his or her culture. Areas of occupation include activities of daily living (grooming, dressing, eating); instrumental activities of daily living (financial, household, and health management); work (job performance, volunteering); social participation (family, friends, community); education; play; and leisure.
As a profession established in 1915, the first occupational therapists were women, a trend that continues today with 90% of women in the workforce. As of December 31, 2002, there were 104,741 registered occupational therapists (OTRs) and 43,019 certified occupational therapy assistants (COTAs). Ninety percent of OTRs and 89% of COTAs are women. Occupational therapists treat a variety of human conditions and are found in diverse practice areas such as mental health, rehabilitation, schools, home health care, nursing homes, pediatrics, outpatient, community/day treatment, hospice, teaching, management, and research. Therapists can be self-employed contracting their services and/or providing staff to facilities needing occupational therapy. Those with entrepreneurial aspirations can find new niches for occupational therapy to benefit populations either underserved or not yet identified. Work in these settings can provide flexibility in work hours beneficial to women with other responsibilities and roles.
The profession of occupational therapy has two classifications of therapists: OTRs and COTAs. OTRs must graduate from an accredited master’s or doctoral program in occupational therapy, successfully complete a minimum of 24 weeks of supervised fieldwork experience, and pass the national certification exam. COTAs work under the supervision of the occupational therapist, must graduate from an accredited associate’s degree or certificate program in occupational therapy, successfully complete 16 weeks of supervised fieldwork experience, and pass the national certification exam.
Educational programs for both the occupational therapist and occupational therapist assistant include the following: biological, behavioral, and health sciences, human development, anatomy, pathology, activity analysis, health policy, reimbursement, and ethics. Occupational therapist programs emphasize physiology, kinesiology, the neurosciences, occupational therapy theory, evaluation, and research. Assistant programs emphasize occupational therapy skills and treatment. Occupational therapists evaluate, establish, and implement treatment programs. The occupational therapy assistant focuses on the implementation of the treatment.
The fieldwork experience is designed to blend theory and practice. These integrated experiences promote clinical reasoning and the development of a repertoire of clinical skills.
Upon passing the national certification exam, occupational therapists are registered and assistants are certified. If working in the United States, they must adhere to licensure laws regulating the practice of occupational therapy, which vary from state to state.
In most instances the process of occupational therapy begins with a referral from a physician. The referred individual is first interviewed and evaluated. The evaluation gives the therapist an understanding of the individual’s experience, builds a therapeutic relationship, identifies strengths and limitations, defines what the individual feels is important regarding goals, and establishes treatment priorities. Evaluations assess areas of occupation and performance components (motor, process, and psychosocial skills needed to do daily activities). Motor skills include muscle strength, joint range of motion, sensation, balance, mobility, and coordination. Process skills include concentration, problem solving, judgment, and memory. Psychosocial skills include reality testing, orientation, coping skills, and self-esteem.
After the initial occupational therapy evaluation, goals are established collaboratively with the individual and their significant others. Treatment interventions are identified and implemented. Clients can be seen individually or in group treatment sessions. Examples of diagnoses and treatment include the following:
|Stroke||Increase coordination and balance for grooming|
|Hip replacement||Adaptive equipment training to simplify self-care|
|Hand injury||Purposeful activities to improve range of motion|
|Chemical dependency||Explore healthy leisure pursuits to structure time|
|Mental retardation||Practice and simulation of job performance activities|
|Chronic pain||Biofeedback techniques to better manage pain|
|Depression||Coping, stress management, and assertiveness training|
|Dementia||Adapt the environment to help orient the individual|
|Pediatric||Play activities that promote balance and coordination|
|Learning disabilities||Adaptive techniques to enhance the educational process|
The occupational therapy treatment plan may warrant more extensive testing. Occupational therapy assessments can help clarify diagnoses and aid in determining legal issues such as competency, guardianship, and placement. The data and recommendations of an occupational therapist can more clearly identify functional abilities and illuminate appropriate options to pursue.
Throughout treatment the occupational therapist monitors and reassesses the individual’s response to treatment and documents progress in accordance with regulatory agencies to ensure reimbursement by third-party payers. Communication with team members (physician, nurse, social worker, physical therapist), the patient, family, or caregivers is important in developing appropriate discharge plans to maintain and promote wellness.
Helping individuals achieve optimal function and satisfaction in their life roles is the unique ability of occupational therapists.
SEE ALSO: Activities of daily living, Alzheimer’s disease, Dementia, Disability
- American Occupational Therapy Association. (1999). Standards for an accredited educational program for the occupational therapist. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 53, 575—582.
- American Occupational Therapy Association. (1999). Standards for an accredited educational program for the occupational therapy assistant. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 53, 583—589.
- American Occupational Therapy Association. (2002). Occupational therapy practice framework: Domain and process. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 56, 609—639.
- Crepeau, E. B., & Neistadt, M. E. (1998). Willard and Spackman’s occupational therapy (9th ed.). Philadelphia: Lippincott.
- NBCOT certifies 6,727 during 2002. (2003, Spring). Report to the Profession, p. 6.
- occupational therapy violence to women | <urn:uuid:79e69510-cda0-487c-b65f-d8fa3bffd740> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://womenshealthency.com/o/occupational-therapist/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404405.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00099-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909538 | 1,297 | 3.65625 | 4 |
With technology it is easier than ever to communicate overseas. Communication can be done through telephone, cell Costa Rica Maymesterphones, blogging, email, instant messages, mail, and video. It is important to communicate with family, friends and acquaintances at home.
Students need to be cautious on the amount of time communicating with friends and family. They need to immerse themselves into the culture. Communicating too much can interfere with the experience. The time differences, different modes of communication, traveling adventures, expenses, school work, and immersion play a factor in how much time should be spent in communicating. | <urn:uuid:27dcdfb9-1748-49f9-a388-5a5a103a34fc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www2.ag.purdue.edu/ipia/studyabroad/Pages/communication.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00183-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950246 | 122 | 2.53125 | 3 |
May 15, 1996
"Most Alabamians know by now that the state Board of Education voted last month to paste a warning label inside biology texts used in public schools...The push to adopt this label was provided by religious fundamentalists whose fear of science is rooted in a poor understanding of the methods of science...Must we now portray Alabama as a state that mocks science, confuses its children, insults its teachers and trivializes religious faith?" (From December 8, 1995, Mobile Press Register editorial)
This quotation is an example of a highly emotional reaction to the Alabama State Board of Education's decision to place an educational aid at the beginning of all high school biology texts. Is this reaction warranted? The purpose of this paper is to present the data upon which the State Board of Education's decision was based, and to allow the readers to make up their own minds.
What constitutes good science teaching? The answer to this question determines the shape of the science curriculum and the type of textbooks selected. In 1995, Alabama's answer to this question changed the direction of science teaching in the state:
"Scientific literacy for all Alabama students serves as the goal of Alabama's K-12 Science Education Program. ...Scientific literacy enhances a person's ability to observe perceptively, reflect thoughtfully upon those observations, and comprehend the explanations offered. ...The K-12 science program is an inquiry-based program that allows for observation, discovery, prediction, problem-solving, theory usage, appreciation of the natural world, and finally a fascination with the scientific quest" (Alabama Course of Study Science, Bulletin 1995, No. 4, p. 1).
Alabama determined that good science teaching uses inquiry-based methods to reach the goal of "scientific literacy." The "Alabama Course of Study Science" gives further operational definitions of "inquiry-based methods" under the category of "required scientific processes." For example, required scientific processes for the Biology Core include:
"Understand fundamental assumptions... . ... Exhibit attitudes and habits appropriate to the scientific enterprise - curiosity, imagination, creativity, honesty, patience, logical reasoning, attention to detail, critical thinking, openness to new ideas, skepticism "(ibid, pp. 114-115).
The Alabama State Board of Education also adopted an amendment to the entire Course of Study which reads in part: "Explanations of the origin of life and major groups of plants and animals, including humans, shall be treated as theory and not as fact." This statement was adopted to insure that the controversial topic of origins is treated in a fair, impartial way, and subject to the same rules of inquiry as any other area of study.
The "Alabama Course of Study Science" is the standard for evaluating all science textbooks. It is the main tool used by the State Textbook Committee in determining which textbooks are acceptable for adoption. The problem faced by the 1995 State Textbook Committee, of which I was a member, was how to avoid a major train wreck between the "Alabama Course of Study Science"and the current crop of inquiry-deficient science textbooks submitted by mainline publishers.
When teaching evolutionary theory, current science textbooks read more like a catechism than scientific literature - they give the appearance of trying to indoctrinate rather than educate. They fail to meet high standards of good science education by inadequately defining terms, by presenting assumptions as conclusions, by not distinguishing between scientific evidence and inference, and by omitting all discussion of anomalous scientific data and unsolved problems.
An article in "The American Biology Teacher" analyzed 1991 biology textbooks and found the same problem of impeding the acquisition of critical thinking skills as we find in the 1995-96 editions:
...(I)t should be apparent that the errors, overstatements and omissions that we have noted in these biology texts, all tend to enhance the plausibility of hypotheses that are presented. More importantly, the inclusion of outdated material and erroneous discussions is not trivial. The items noted mislead students and impede their acquisition of critical thinking skills. If we fail to teach students to examine data critically, looking for points both favoring and opposing hypotheses, we are selling our youth short and mortgaging the future of scientific inquiry itself " ("Origin of Life Evolution in Biology Textbooks - A Critique," Mills, Lancaster, Bradley, The American Biology Teacher, Volume 55, No. 2, February, 1993, p. 83)
Good principles of science education have been sacrificed for a perceived greater good - to protect the theory of Darwinism. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, contends:
"In my opinion, using creation and evolution as topics for critical-thinking exercises in primary and secondary schools is virtually guaranteed to confuse students about evolution and may lead them to reject one of the major themes of science" (The Sciences, New York Academy of Science, January/February, 1996, pp. 20-25).
Perceived threats often lead to extreme reactions. The danger is the development of a type of scientific McCarthyism in which those who make constructive criticisms are lumped with "the enemy" and their comments dismissed. The purpose of the Alabama Insert is not to bring any "ism" into the science classroom. On the contrary, its purpose is to keep "isms" out and to insure that science is taught objectively.
"This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants, animals and humans. No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact."
The Insert's introductory statements correct a problem found in many textbooks: confusing data with inference. For example, one textbook reads:
"...(N)early all biologists now see evolution as an extensively documented feature of life, much as historians who did not personally witness the U.S. Civil War are convinced, based on an accumulation of evidence, that the war really happened" (Biology, Campbell, Benjamin/Cummings, Addison-Wesley, 1993, p.12).
The critical difference between these phenomena is that no written eye-witness documents exist for macro-evolutionary events. Written eye-witness records do exist for the Civil War.
As any historian knows, interpreting a past event without eye-witness documents requires a greater degree of sophistication and hypothetical interpretation than if such documents exist. The fossil record is not a written document, but a collection of artifacts subject to interpretation based on selected assumptions. Fossils are analogous to artifacts such as canteens, cannons, and swords found on a battlefield. The fossil record contains nothing analogous to diaries or military documents.
The attempt to establish a false analogy between fossils and a written record does not serve the goal of teaching science as inquiry. The goal should not be to convince students of the validity of a given interpretation - as attempted by the authors of Understanding Biology: "...if the principle of evolution is central to biology, then we ought to be able to convince our students of its validity" (Times Mirror Mosby, 1998, p. vi). Instead, the goal should be to show the true nature of data and how to interpret it. To call an explanation a "theory" is not to demean it, but to show the type of interpretation required.
"The word "evolution" may refer to many types of change. Evolution describes changes that occur within a species. (White moths, for example, may "evolve" into gray moths.) This process is microevolution, which can be observed and described as fact. Evolution may also refer to the change of one living thing to another, such as reptiles into birds. This process, called macroevolution, has never been observed and should be considered a theory. Evolution also refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things." (continuation from the Alabama Insert)
Good science education is based on the accurate definition and use of terms. Unfortunately, the word "evolution" is used in such an ambiguous manner as to actually be misleading. Here are some examples:
"Evolve" is defined as "to change over time" (Evolution, Prentice Hall, p. 114F).
"So, when you hear someone wonder about whether 'evolution' occurs, remind yourself that evolution simply means change through time" (Biology Concepts and Applications, Cecie Star, Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1994, p. 191).
Note that these first two definitions could also apply to aging, migrations, and the effects of weight lifting. One book has a section entitled "Evolution on the Farm"(Science Interactions, Glencoe, 1995, Course Three, p. 557). "Evolution" does not even appear in the glossary of Biological Science An Ecological Approach (BSCS Green Version). Some books refer to designs by human intelligence as analogous to evolutionary events:
"In the previous investigation, you gathered evidence that bicycles have changed a lot in the past 170 years....In this investigation, you will examine evidence for change in horses" (Middle School Science And Technology, BSCS, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1994, Level C, p. 108).
Note how the following definition blurs the distinction between what is an inferred process and what is an observed process:
"evolution: process by which modern organisms have descended from ancient organisms; any change in the relative frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population" (Biology, Miller Levine, Prentice Hall, 1995, reference / p.29).
The second part of the definition refers to the process used to produce different breeds of dogs such as poodles or fox terriers. Once this definition is established, the book then treats evolution as "fact" (a directly observed process) because part of the definition includes a process that is observed. Thus, a big jump is made from micro-evolution (variations within a species) which is an observed process to macro-evolution (formation of major groups of life forms) which is an unobserved inference from fossils and other data. This linguistic slight of hand confuses rather than instructs students in the proper methods of scientific inquiry.
Perhaps the most important definitional clarification is that "evolution" can also refer to the unsupported belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things. The greatest failures of the texts are that philosophical assumptions are not identified, and that such assumptions are treated as "scientific knowledge". An unwarranted world view is presented to students under the color of scientific authority and knowledge. The following quotations illustrate this problem:
"We can learn a great deal about the nature of life by comparing body systems among invertebrate groups and by tracing the patterns of change as we move from one phylum to another. As we do so, it is important to keep this concept in mind: Evolution is random and undirected. ...In many ways, each animal phylum represents an experiment in the design of body structures to perform the tasks necessary for survival. Of course, there has never been any kind of plan to these experiments because evolution works without either plan or purpose" (Biology, Miller Levine, Prentice Hall, 1995, p. 658).
"One of the great wonders of our existence and of life itself is that it has all arisen through a combination of evolutionary processes and chance events (Biology Concepts and Connections, Benjamin Cummings, 1994, p. 390).
".. neither human nor divine agency is needed for evolution to occur" (Biology, Fourth Edition, Arms and Camp, Saunders College Publishing, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1995, p. 371).
Statements such as "evolution works without either plan or purpose" illustrate that Darwinism is a theory with explicitly anti-theistic implications. Clearly, those who promote Darwinianism as fact have a theological ax to grind:
"...the material world is all that exists...there is nothing supernatural, no God or gods, no creator, no creation" (Monkey Business, Eugenie Scott, New York Academy of Science, Jan/Feb 1996, pp. 20-25).
To teach this philosophy uncritically in state schools establishes a religion antagonistic to all theistic views. Students who are theists (such as Muslims, Christians, Jews) are misled by switches back and forth between a scientific meaning of evolution and an ideological one. By identifying the ideological meaning of evolution the Insert helps to create a more impartial science classroom, one that, hopefully, is free of religious biases.
"There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbooks, including:
Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the fossil record (known as the Cambrian Explosion)?
Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the fossil record in a long time?
Why do major groups of plants and animals have no transitional forms in the fossil record?
How did you and all living things come to possess such a complete and complex set of "instructions" for building a living body?
Study hard and keep an open mind. Someday you may contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth." (continuation of the Alabama Insert)
Missing in current texts is one of the key elements of teaching science as inquiry. This element is described in materials pioneered in 1963 by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) using the coined word "enquiry":
"The teaching of science as enquiry would also include a fair treatment of the doubts and incompleteness of science and indicate the possibility that through the advance of enquiry scientific knowledge can change" (Biology Teachers' Handbook, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1963, p. 41).
In most biology texts reviewed by the State Textbook Committee no mention is made of any problems with current theories of origins. The texts read more like a legal brief than an objective presentation of a theory subject to continual re-evaluation and modification. These texts deprive students of information that would help them evaluate what is being taught and that would stimulate them intellectually. Students should be exposed to evidences at variance with the prevailing Darwinian theory. The Insert attempts to remedy this problem by highlighting several areas where further research is needed.
All texts, except one, omit any reference to one of the most classic and intriguing problems - the Cambrian explosion. As Time magazine expresses it:
"For billions of years, simple creatures like plankton, bacteria and algae ruled the earth. Then, suddenly, life got very complicated"("Evolution's Big Bang," Time, December 4, 1995, p. 67).
"Suddenly" is the operative word. All phyla but one appeared during 10 million years of the Cambrian explosion, 530 million years ago. Why so fast? Why no new phyla level body plans since the "explosion?" Why no transitional forms between the phyla? The uniqueness of the Cambrian explosion is summarized by James Valentine, Douglas Erwin, and David Jablonski:
"The paleontological data are consistent with the view that all of the currently recognized phyla had evolved by about 525 Ma. Despite half a billion years of evolutionary exploration by the clades generated in Cambrian time, no new phylum-level designs have appeared since then" ("Developmental Evolution of Metazoan Bodyplans: The Fossil Evidence," Valentine, Erwin, and Jablonski, Developmental Biology 173, Article No. 0033, 1996, p. 376).
Why are students not informed about this explosive pattern of phyla origins as well as that it is at variance with Darwinian predictions? Is there a fear that they will "lose faith" in the alleged power of natural selection? The first three questions in the Insert touch on phenomena related to the Cambrian Explosion and will challenge students to think more deeply about theories of origins. Shame on the textbooks for omitting information about evolution's "big bang."
The last question in the Insert points to a very challenging problem for contemporary evolutionary theory - the origin of information. I have on my desk a guide to using Windows 95. It is composed of paper, glue, and ink. But is that all? The paper, glue, and ink serve only as material carriers for the manual's most important ingredient, instructions on how to use the program. An organism's DNA is directly analogous to my manual. No current proposed evolutionary mechanism can account satisfactorily for the origin of information. Information has never been shown to arise from any type of random, chance based mechanism.
This last question in the insert also opens the door for a thoughtful analysis of the major mechanism of evolution, natural selection. Some texts treat natural selection as the prime "creative" force in the biological world:
"Darwin not only stated that evolution has occurred, he also proposed its mechanism - Natural selection" (Biology Visualizing Life, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1994, p. 186).
The power of natural selection is then demonstrated by reference to minor variations such as color change in peppered moths, beaks of finches, and antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
From these examples of minor variations, a huge jump is made to the assumption (presented as knowledge) that the major phyla were produced by the creative work of natural selection. This is a particularly difficult jump because natural selection is unable to account for the origin of the genetic information required to generate the new phyla produced during the "short" ten million years of the Cambrian explosion. The failure of the mechanisms of microevolution to explain the process of macroevolution is highlighted in a recent paper:
"Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest" ("Resynthesizing Evolutionary and Developmental Biology," Scott Gilbert, John Opitz, and Rudolf Raff, Developmental Biology 173, Article No. 0032, 1996, p. 361).
Science educators must avoid making unwarranted extrapolations from minor variations to major innovations as is common in the textbooks.
It is also hard to conceive how natural selection can account for certain biochemical and physical structures exhibiting "irreducible complexity." Picture three mouse traps each with a part missing. Which of the three would natural selection select? The answer is, none. A mouse trap is an irreducibly complex structure because ALL of its parts must be present for it to have any meaningful function. Natural selection cannot select if its object has no function. In a soon-to-be published book (Darwin's Black Box, The Free Press, A Division of Simon and Schuster, NY) Michael Behe discusses several irreducibly complex biochemical and biological structures that cannot have emerged gradually via natural selection. Examples include the cilium, blood clotting, antibodies, and cellular regulation mechanisms.
What then is the role of natural selection? Again, the textbooks do a disservice to thinking students by relating natural selection only to the process of change. The main observable function of natural selection - stabilization - is practically ignored. Natural selection can be observed to preserve a population from radical harmful changes, and to provide a plasticity in the midst of changing environments. Perhaps the process should be renamed "natural stabilization," and a new mechanism sought for major innovation. The textbooks fail to stimulate student inquiry when they treat only the strengths and not the weaknesses of natural selection as a creative force. They also fail, as mentioned before, when they make unwarranted extrapolations from minor variations to major innovations. Hopefully, the Insert will help promote the objective discussion of evolutionary mechanisms.
The inclusion of questions in the Insert has elicited many attacks such as the following from a letter to the editor:
"The most misleading part of the disclaimer is the list of so-called 'unanswered questions about the origin of life' - particularly the three pertaining to 'major groups,' which are actually inaccurate assertions calculated to convince students that the fossil record does not support evolution. Such misrepresentations of the evidence are the stock-in-trade of 'scientific creationism'" (The Harbinger, December, 1995, p. 3).
The issue is not whether the fossil record does or does not support the highly manipulative word, "evolution." The critical point is that the pattern of appearance of the phyla in the fossil record does not support the primary Darwinian mechanism, natural selection, that is reported to have created them. As is the case with most of the attacks on the insert, the authors of the attacks see the purpose of the insert as opening the door for the teaching of "creationism". This is the same type of unwarranted fear that has produced a crop of textbooks more dedicated to indoctrination than to education. The real purpose of the insert is to avoid indoctrination of any kind and to stimulate scientific inquiry. The rationale for the questions in the Insert is best expressed in the following quotation:
"The conservatism in the treatment of evolution at the introductory level is also reflected in the concentration on seemingly solved problems As practicing scientists, much of what we talk about, think about and occasionally even work on are problems which are not solved. Much of the pleasure of being an evolutionary biologist is speculating on the answers to unanswered questions. Nevertheless, in teaching evolution at the introductory level, we tend to avoid giving students the opportunity to participate in these speculations by presenting pat nonsolutions - to see what I mean just consider the treatment of the evolution of sex in most introductory texts. While the display of humility in the face of unanswered questions may tarnish our facade of authority, the recognition of our limitations and the realization that they can make significant contributions to speculative discussions will certainly increase student interest and self-confidence. Indeed, with their relative absence of preconception and bias, their contributions are likely to be even greater than ours" (Bones of Contention: Controversies in the Search for Human Origins, Lewin, R., Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987, p. 452).
As one who was involved with promoting the Alabama Insert I can honestly say that I am unaware of any attempt to use the Insert to bring creationism into the classroom. On the contrary, the reasons for supporting the Insert were to keep religious indoctrination out of the science classroom, whether it be theistic or anti-theistic, and to promote full disclosure of both the strengths and weaknesses of all scientific theories.
Bradly Byrne (D), Alabama State School Board member from Mobile, gives a clear statement of the board's motives for adopting the Insert:
"Many persons including some scientists, believed that the textbooks taught evolution as an established and absolute fact instead of presenting it as a scientific theory. Others, including some scientists, did not feel that the textbooks inappropriately addressed evolution. The state board resolved the issue by approving the textbooks without any deletions and by adopting a statement for inclusion in high school biology textbooks. The statement does not mention religion or creationism. It does state that evolution is a scientific theory and not an observable fact, then differentiates between microevolution and macroevolution, and raises certain scientific questions which challenge the material offered in the main text. This statement was endorsed by science professors from major state universities, scientists in the private sector and physicians and dentists from around the state" (Mobile Register, Nov. 19, 1995).
Some have questioned why explanations of evolutionary theory should be "targeted" with an educational aid such as the Alabama Insert. Evolutionary theory is so poorly taught that an insert is required. Many other theories do not require an insert because they are presented properly in the texts examined by the Textbook Committee. For example, here is the exemplary way in which one text treats the Big Bang Theory:
"Was there a Big Bang? No one knows, but you now know some of the evidence" (Project Star, Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 1993, p. 321).
If evolutionary theory were presented in the same way, there would be no need for an insert. We hope the Insert will motivate publishers to correct their textbooks and bring them into conformity with the inquiry requirements of the State of Alabama.
Finally, I would like to appeal both to those who strongly defend current evolutionary theory and to those who perceive its weaknesses. We have an opportunity through discussion and disagreement to be good role models for students. Let us put aside ad hominem arguments, and let us debate ideas. Let us not impugn one another's motives, but let us work together to improve science education. Let us not allow our philosophical beliefs to divide us, but let our belief in the search for truth be the shared value that unites us.
Copyright © 1996 Norris Anderson. All rights
reserved. International copyright secured.
File Date: 5.14.96 | <urn:uuid:0a9acebd-48eb-4adb-9a01-5589fea5571c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.arn.org/docs/anderson/insert.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00009-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939269 | 5,107 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Francis Bacon describes a new and ingenious method for writing in code.
The Shakespeare First Folio is published.
The Shakespeare Code reveals the story of codes concealed in the works of Shakespeare and other writers of his time.
For over 250 years the codes were undiscovered. More than one person suffered severely for daring to speak the secrets they contain.
The codes reveal an explosive story—the hidden marriage of Elizabeth, the "Virgin Queen," murder and scandal, corruption and lies at the highest levels.
And they tell the true life-story of Francis Bacon, the one who devised the codes.
The secret history could not be told in Bacon's own time, so he concealed it in code, hoping for a future when it would be discovered, when men could be free to speak and know the truth.
"The book is a wonderful, thrilling, fascinating story....The story is extremely important and needs to be told. It's inseparable from the Shakespearean authorship puzzle."
Simon Miles, Author and Researcher | <urn:uuid:8f5b2e40-1003-4ed0-8ca3-1c27bc35d167> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.shakespearecode.com/ShakespeareCodeBackCover.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00181-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930603 | 209 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Botanical name: Amorphophallus commutatus Family: Araceae (Arum family)
Synonyms: Conophallus commutatus, Amorphophallus commutatus var. wayanadensis
Amorphophallus is a large genus of some 170 tropical and subtropical tuberous herbaceous plants, which includes the world's largest flower, Titan Arum. Dragon Stalk Yam grows from a subterranean tuber. From the top of this tuber a single leaf is produced atop a trunk like petiole followed, on maturity, by a single inflorescence. This leaf consists of a vertical leaf stalk and a horizontal blade, which may consist of a number of small leaflets. The leaf lasts one growing season. This flower appears before the onset of the monsoon and the leaves appear with the rains. Flowers have a fetid smell and attract flies for pollination. Amorphophallus commutatus fruits are eaten by koels and bulbuls.
Medicinal uses: Tuber paste is applied externally to cure scabies.
• Is this flower misidentified? If yes,
The flower labeled Dragon Stalk Yam is ... | <urn:uuid:e14f8dc6-9cec-4dbe-8798-645e71f605c5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.flowersofindia.net/catalog/slides/Dragon%20Stalk%20Yam.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00149-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.886548 | 239 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Can you reproduce the Yin Yang symbol using a pair of compasses?
A first trail through the mysterious world of the Golden Section.
Published May 2006,February 2011.
There are two main forms of patchwork that I have come across. "English" patchwork is mainly based on tessellations, largely of squares and hexagons. "American" patchwork or "piecing" is usually based on patterns in squares that are built up into the finished quilt. There are many different kinds of designs. I find those based on an octagon in a square the most satisfying.
This pattern is called "Castle Wall". One square (made larger than usual) is a cushion cover.
Here are some of the stages in making the design:
My next octagon-based patchwork was a wedding present. The design is called "Kaleidoscope". Here is a small section of the finished quilt:
The basic square is shown below on the left and on the right you can see what it looks like when it is put together:
Colouring it brings out the interlocking, almost circular, shapes in the design:
Now I have started to make another quilt. It is a pattern known as "World without end" and it too is based on an octagon in a square.
The Kaleidoscope pattern is turned about so that the square is the centre of the pattern piece instead of the octagon. Two of the isosceles triangles are joined and then sliced the other way to make half of a rhombus.
These diagrams show the transformations required:
It looks like this when the squares are put together:
Again the design looks different when it is coloured. The changes are even more noticeable when the quilt is "pieced" from fabric.These are the first four squares out of thirty-six! | <urn:uuid:d933854b-dc41-48fc-a50f-9de89bf19151> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nrich.maths.org/4878 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00090-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963862 | 384 | 3.265625 | 3 |
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Left: An oil rig - pumps oil
from deep underground. Right:
A coal mine - large quarry diggers carve out the resource.
What is a fossil fuel?
Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons such as coal, oil and natural gas, sourced
from the organic remains of prehistoric organisms.
From left: a lump of coal, liquid
petroleum and a gas flame.
When these fuels are burnt, the energy released can be harnessed
to produce electricity, power vehicles, heat homes, cook food and
much more. They are also used in the production of important
materials such as plastics.
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How do fossil fuels form?
In order to answer this question, we must first distinguish oil
and gas from coal. Generally speaking, oil and gas are formed from
the organic remains of marine organisms which become entrained
within sea-floor sediments. Coal, by contrast, is typically formed
in non-marine settings from the remains of land vegetation.
Oil and gas formation begins with the accumulation of
organics on the sea-floor; these are the dead remains of organisms
living in the water column, such as microscopic plankton, which rain
down on the sea floor below. This will only occur in rather unusual
settings, where the sea floor is stagnant such that there is no
oxygen present to break the organic remains down and no sea-floor
dwelling organisms present that might feed on the organics. A high
sediment accumulation rate of may also help to bury the organics
before the action of decay can break them down. As the sediment pile
becomes deeper the organics within it are subjected to heat and
pressure which leads to formation of oil and then gas. For oil and
gas extraction, it is important that the source rock is not
'over-cooked' or the hydrocarbons will be destroyed. There must be
suitable reservoir-rock, such as a porous sandstone, into which the
hydrocarbons can migrate and accumulate. This must be overlain by an
impervious cap-rock, such as a clay, which prevents the hydrocarbons
from escaping to the surface. Finally, the geometry of the reservoir
and cap-rock bodies must be such that the hydrocarbons become
trapped; usually folding will suffice.
explaining the generation and entrapment of oil and gas.
Fossil ferns within a sheet of coal.
Coal typically forms on land from vegetation in lowland, swampy,
mire environments. Stagnant waterlogged soil prevents the
accumulated plant debris from breaking down. The recognisable
remains of plants are often visible within coals and associated
shales, confirming their plant-origin. The picture above shows a
piece of coal containing a network of fossilised fern leaves - clear
evidence that it was formed from vegetable remains.
More recent peat deposits.
The accumulated plant debris initially forms a material known as
peat. The geological processes of burial beneath later sediment and
alteration by heat and pressure convert the peat to coal; a process
known as coalification.
For the peat to become coal, it must be buried by sediment.
Burial compacts the peat and, consequently, much water is squeezed
out during the first stages of burial. Continued burial and the
addition of heat and time cause the complex hydrocarbon compounds in
the peat to break down and alter in a variety of ways. The gaseous
alteration products (methane is one) are typically expelled from the
deposit, and the deposit becomes more and more carbon-rich as the
other elements disperse. The stages of this trend proceed from plant
debris through peat, lignite, sub-bituminous coal, bituminous coal,
anthracite coal to graphite (a pure carbon mineral). Source:
From left: Oil is refined to produce
petrol and diesel, power stations burn fuel to produce energy, gas
is used for everyday cooking.
Fossil fuels are burnt to release energy in the form of heat.
This energy can be used to power cars, produce electricity, heat
homes, cook food to name but a few.
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What are the advantages of fossil fuels?
Straightforward combustion process
What are the disadvantages of fossil fuels?
Thought to be a major cause of global warming
Cause of acid rain
Not sustainable in the long-term
Politics and Economics can cause major price
Extraction can be very damaging to the landscape
Will fossil fuels run out?
Fossil fuels are essentially a non-renewable energy source. The
geological processes which create them take millions of years, so
they cannot be replaced within human timescales once they have gone.
It is impossible to estimate when fossil fuels will disappear, but
within the next 100 years it is widely believed that the cost of
finding and extracting new deposits will render them too expensive
for everyday use.
What are the alternative renewable energy sources?
From left: Wind turbines generate
electricity, solar panels convert sunlight into electricity, geothermal
plant utilise underground heat.
Renewable energy sources can provide comparable energy production and
heating. At present some technologies are cost inhibitive, but the rate of
technological development is making them more affordable with time. Other
examples of renewable energy sources include: water powered turbines, tidal
generators, nuclear, compost and rape seed oil.
Join us on a fossil hunt
Left: A birthday party with
a twist - fossil hunting at
Right: A family hold their prized ammonite at Beachy Head.
Discovering Fossils guided fossil hunts reveal evidence of life that existed
millions of years ago. Whether it's your first time fossil hunting or you're
looking to expand your subject knowledge, our fossil hunts provide an
enjoyable and educational experience for all. To find out more | <urn:uuid:fb2cbac0-4b05-4b68-8379-ca8ff790891c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.discoveringfossils.co.uk/fossilfuels.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00067-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91126 | 1,305 | 3.90625 | 4 |
>> Sunday, September 26, 2010
As one the great psychologist Sigmund Freud was born May 6, 1856, in small town, Freiberg- in Moravia. He father was very good sense of humor. His mother had a second husband and Freud had two older half-brothers and 6 younger siblings. Later on, they moved to Vienna, where Sigmund Freud grow up and discover his theory of Unconscious mind. As the time passed, he became a doctor and started to treat his patients, also slowly he started to investigate and discover the theory of the unconscious mind to treat his patients. Actually, what Freud is referring to his method of free association, which he used in his practice as a way into a patient’s unconscious. Ideational elements are thoughts, memories, motives, and other unconscious lumber. In this way, he finally discovered the function of the unconscious mind and the nature of the Unconscious mind.
Summary of the Unconscious Mind
In 1938, during the last year of his life Sigmund Freud was old and sick but his mind was still sharp. He said; “I discovered some important new facts about the unconscious…Out of these findings grew a new science, psychoanalysis.” Freud suggests that all our behavior is motivated by the desire to feel pleasure. That motivation is organized and directed by two instincts: sexuality, and aggression. Freud conceptualized both these instincts as being powered by a form of internal psychic energy that he called the libido. Libido is the pleasure principle, or basic psychic energy. It can perhaps be considered equivalent ch’i or parana of esotericism and yoga. So from this point we understand that with psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud opened the doors to the unconsciousness. Forever changing the way we view the human mind.
Here, in the concept of the psychoanalysis theory of personality developed by Freud that focuses on repression and unconscious forces and includes the concepts of immature sexuality, resistance, transference, and division of the psyche into the id, ego, and superego. In explaining the interactions between the various parts of the psyche, Freud suggested several overlapping theories: the economical (the hydraulics of unpleasure-avoidance through pleasure), the dynamic (libido movements through id, ego and superego), and the topographic (psyche as structured into conscious, preconscious, and unconscious layers). Of these psychic structures the id (literally the "It") is the source of libido, and the only structure present at birth. The Id thinks primarily in visual and irrational terms - called primary process thinking. Ego is that part of you that is interacting with the outside world at any moment. We all have different ego types, different "sides" to our personality, or ego-states that we use to consciously interact with the world; we use different ego-states and combinations of ego-states depending on circumstances, e.g., at work, with family, or meeting strangers. Genetics, childhood experiences, social pressures and other psychological factors shape these interconnected ego-states. Finally, the superego is divided into two parts - the conscience, which contains the internalized taboos, and the ego ideal, which contains the internalized ideal aims and goals. The learned societal conventions, morals, etc. are here.
Psychologist Sigmund Freud explained the fact that the motivation of perception can continue for some time so that in the path of it the perception of them can be repeated. The whole position can be clearly seen from the conscious perception of our intellective processes; it is true that these may continue, but they may just as easily pass in a flash. Everything unconscious that behaves in this way, that can easily exchange the unconscious condition for the conscious one, is therefore better described as “capable of entering consciousness,” or as preconscious. There are other mental processes or mental material which have no such easy access to consciousness, but which must be inferred, discovered, and translated into conscious form in the manner that has been described. It is for such material that we reserve the name of the unconscious proper.
According to the Sigmund Freud, he ascribed that there are three qualities to mental processes: either conscious, preconscious, or unconscious. The partition between these three qualities of material which have these qualities is neither absolute nor permanent. As Sigmund Freud stated that what is preconscious becomes conscious, as we have seen, without any activity on our part; what is unconscious can, as a result of our efforts, can be made conscious, though in the process we may have an impression that we are overcoming what are often very strong struggles. So when we try to make an effort to someone else, we must not to forget that the conscious filling up of the breaks in his perceptions. The construction which we are offering him does not so far mean that we have made conscious in him the unconscious material in question. All that is so far true is that the material is present in his mind in two versions, first in the conscious reconstruction that he has just received and secondly in its original unconscious condition.
Sigmund Freud vast influence was an arguable turns around his basis claim that most of our behavior is a product of an unconscious but very active part of the mind. For Sigmund Freud, he view that this unconscious is full of unacceptable urges, painful memories, conflicts, defense mechanisms, and so forth. In the history of ides of important Sigmund Freud is that therapy was imagined as a means of opening the black box of the unconscious. In general Freud wanted to know about the unconscious as a psychologist. What structures, forces, processes are found in every mind’s unconscious part? As a psychiatrist Sigmund Freud wanted to know more about a given patient’s unconscious. What is in there that might account, in psychoanalytic theory, for that patient’s symptoms? Sigmund Freud believed that his method was at once a way to investigate a given patient’s unconscious and a way to investigate the unconscious generally.
As far as we know an important principle of Freud’s system is that psychopathology, a word that for Freud covered a much broader territory than its current meaning of mental illness is not limited to neurotics, but manifests itself in seemingly innocent and meaningless everyday occurrences such as slips of the tongue, errors in reading and writing, and forgetting. In a logical tour de force, Freud leads him through a series of associations that illuminate the unconscious motive for forgetting that word.
Exploring the Unconscious Mind
The late 18 hundred marked as the Victorian age, a period extreme of rhetorical restrictions. Any expression of human sexuality was considered an out race. Respectable woman only went to their doctor with the sporran, personal matters was never discourse in polite society. Professional therapist didn’t exist and people with psychological problems had no where to go. Mental patients were treated like out caste. They were put in a silence and receive antiquated and even some cases even barbaric care. Treatments included alternative hot and cool bags, lengthy period of drags induce and sleep and in some cases brain surgery that resulted in death. There was a myth of this in 1886; Doctor Sigmund Freud began treating patients with a simple but reticle approach, he listened. Freud’s goal was to get his patients to talk as much as possible about anything and everything. In Freud office no subject was taboo. But rather than interview them in face to face, he had a patient lay down on a coast turn away from him. So that they would be more comfortable in reviling in their deepest thoughts. If his methods seems peculiar but the theory behind them were even more outlandish. Sigmund Freud developed a revolutionary new way of thinking about the human mind. He introduced the idea of the unconscious. Freud believed that “the unconscious is place where we bury conflicts such a painful memories or unaccepted thoughts that we do not want to deal with and this can make conscious life more difficult.”
According to James Maas, he said that “Sigmund Freud said that the unconscious is the real us bury down like the bottom of an iceberg. All we see is the tripe of the iceberg above the surface of the ocean, that’s the present day us. But what really makes us is down stair the sub-conscious. We are driven by sexual desire for example, but trying to somehow affect our behaviour.”
Freud was convinced that his patients could bring their refresh thought through conversations. They would have to confirm them. This alone can diminished their anxieties and event surely relief them of their symptoms.
According to Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, she said that this Centrum notion of the unconscious mind, is the one every one has to deal with, whether they accepted or rejected. They can’t ignore it. There are many ideas within the history of ideas that have that kind of galvanizing power.
Later on, Sigmund Freud, in his is way of life while treating patients with his utmost effort of experiments done with different types of patients. In his efforts of better access his unconscious mind, Freud discovered a home new road to the unconscious, the dream. Over time he faradized the dreams were place where minds runs unsensed playing out thoughts and memorizes we dare not to discuses in the waking world. Freud believed dreams could provide him with remarkable access to the request thought to his own mind as well as his patients.
The Nature of Unconscious Mind
Concerning the ideas of the psychology, those psychologists during the times of Sigmund Freud, they have the ideas that, all the psychodynamic theorists generally stick to five basic propositions. They are as follows:
1. First, and most central, much of mental life--including thoughts, feelings, and motives--is unconscious, which means that people can behave in ways or develop symptoms that are inexplicable to themselves.
2. Second, mental processes, including affective and motivational processes, operate in parallel so that, toward the same person or situation, individuals can have conflicting feelings that motivate them in opposing ways and often lead to compromise solutions.
- Third, stable personality patterns begin to form in childhood, and childhood experiences play an important role in personality development, particularly in shaping the ways people form later social relationships.
- Fourth, mental representations of the self, others, and relationships guide people's interactions with others and influence the ways they become psychologically symptomatic.
- Finally, personality development involves not only learning to regulate sexual and aggressive feelings but also moving from an immature, socially dependent state to a mature, interdependent one.
Not only that but also we can see that the psychologists focuses on the ideas of conscious mental processes or overt behaviour or moving in a very different direction. Those psychologists believe that the characteristic of human psychology was neither mental processes nor the behaviour that we human beings aware of, but to a certain extent those mental process we are unaware of. In this way, in the filed of psychology, psychologists pay attention to the unconscious Mind.
As a psychologist Sigmund Freud was a unique person that time among those other psychologists. So what he discovered was the main door of the opposite of Conscious mind that is the Unconscious mind. The theory of that Unconscious mind that Sigmund Freud believed was “Conscious mental processes were of trivial importance compared with the workings of the Unconscious mind. Sensation, learning, memory, and other cognitive processes so important to the other founding psychologists were of little interest to Freud. Freud felt that the roots of the psychological problems that he tried to treat were innate motives, particularly sexual and aggressive ones that reside in an unconscious part of the mind. He believed that these unconscious motives and the conflicts that surround them influenced our behaviour, even through we do not know they exist.”
At one time Sigmund Freud argues that much of our psychic energy is devoted either to finding acceptable expressions of Unconscious ideas or keeping them unconscious. He created his notion of the unconscious from the study of slips of the human tongue, our dreams, neuroses, psychoses, works of art and rituals. According to the psychoanalytic theory, our mental life is divided into three levels of Awareness that I talk above in this paper. So they are as:
i. Unconscious-System – It is one of the largest portion of our mind that formed by it and only a very small part by the Conscious.
ii. Preconscious-System – It stands like a partition screen between the unconscious-system.
iii. Consciousness – It is the conscious mind is like the tip of an Iceberg, with its greatest part – the unconscious – submerged.
In accordance with the theory of Psychoanalytic is essentially a motivational theory of human behaviours and Sigmund Freud declared that psychoanalysis aims at and achieves nothing more than the discovery of the unconscious in mental life. The unconscious processing goes on in the mind of humans, not because we have to filter out threatening stimuli and impulses, but because many cognitive operations go on without conscious participation. Our brain operates in this way in order not to flood the conscious part of the mind with impressions. The unconscious is a type of process, a way of constructing perception, memories and other kinds of cognition, not a portion of the mind. This view agrees with Roger's concept of the unconscious, who theorized that the unconscious is only a part of the phenomenological field and does not control our personality.
So what we understand about the Unconscious mind from the theory of Sigmund Freud is what we are aware of at any particular moment, our present perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, what have we. Working closely with the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious, what we might today call "available memory:" anything that can easily be made conscious, the memories we are not at the moment thinking about but can readily bring to mind. Now no-one has a problem with these two layers of mind. But Freud suggested that these are the smallest parts!
Also the major part by far is the unconscious. It includes all the things that are not easily available to awareness, including many things that have their origins there, such as our drives or instincts, and things that are put there because we can't bear to look at them, such as the memories and emotions associated with trauma.
In accordance with the ideas of the Sigmund Freud, I believe the unconscious is the foundation of our motivations, whether they be simple desires for sex or food, neurotic compulsions, or the motives of an artist or scientist. Yet we are often driven to reject or resist becoming conscious of these motives, and they are often available to us only in disguised form.
From my opinion I understand that in 1938, Sigmund Freud start to treat his patients and around in 1886 he discovered the concept, the theory of the Unconscious. As far as I understand Sigmund Freud understand the Unconscious and he believed that the Our Unconscious is the place where we hide conflicts of our painful memories and unaccepted thoughts that we don’t want to talk or deal with and all these makes our conscious life more harder. To understand better the Unconscious process Sigmund Freud, he ascribed that there are three qualities to mental processes: either conscious, preconscious, or unconscious.
Finally, his essential theory of the Unconscious mind is the theory of that Unconscious mind with Conscious mental processes that were of trivial importance compared with the workings of the Unconscious mind. Sensation, learning, memory, and other cognitive processes so important to the other founding psychologists were of little interest to Freud. Freud felt that the roots of the psychological problems that he tried to treat were innate motives, particularly sexual and aggressive ones that reside in an unconscious part of the mind. That is what we are aware of at any particular moment, our present perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, what have we. Working closely with the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious here, what we might today call "available memory" anything that can easily be made conscious, the memories we are not at the moment thinking about but can readily bring to mind.
I believe the unconscious theory of Sigmund Freud is the foundation of our motivations, neurotic forces and is the roots of the psychological problems that he tried to treat were innate motives, particularly sexual and aggressive ones that reside in an unconscious part of the mind of his patients.
Sigmund Freud Documentary Movie, Produced and Written By Adam Strernberg, Associate Producer: Kristin Pichaske, Editor: Joe De Francesco; Copyright 2007 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM.
Chi or parana is power of training that help you to use your energy for literallyanything, supercharge the laws of attraction, heal yourself and others, progress at a much faster rate, learn focus, control and develop power.
Kheper, Psychoanalytical Psychology, http://www.kheper.net/topics/psychology/Freud.html - Viewed on - 12/09/2010
Ibid. See the footnote: - 3
Ibid. see the footnote: - 3.
P-i-a, Psychic Energy and Remote Viewing, Issue 25: July - December 2005, http://www.p-i-a.com/Magazine/Issue25/Connections_25.html - viewed on 12/09/2010
Ibid. see the footnote: - 6
Anupamm, Sigmund Freud, "The Structure of the Unconscious", http://anupamm.tripod.com/freudst.html - Viewed on - 26/08/2010
Sigmund Freud Documentary Movie, Produced and Written By Adam Strernberg, Associate Producer: Kristin Pichaske, Editor: Joe De Francesco; Copyright 2007 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM.
Tour de force - is a French expression meaning an exceptional creative achievement.
James Maas – He was a Professor of Psychology Cornell University.
Ibid. See the footnote:- 3
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl- Author, Anna Freud: A Biography.
Ibid. See the Footnote:- 3
Drew Westen, The Scientific Legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a Psychodynamically Informed Psychological Science, Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Hospital/Cambridge Health Alliance; http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IscVawIdeS0J:www.psychsystems.net/lab/scileg.pdf+Psychoanalysis+was+once+a+single+theory,+identified+with+its+founder+and+his+particular+ideas,+so+that+summarizing+its+basic+tenets+was+once+less+problematic.&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=th – Viewed on 26/08/2010
Benjamin B. Lahey, - Psychology: An Introduction, 7th ed., Published by McGraw-Hill, an imprint of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1998, Copyright in 2001, in New York.
Pervin & Oliver, 1997
Cited in: Pervin and Oliver (1997, 71). | <urn:uuid:39ca0523-9120-4ef4-a894-74415283841a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://cltpeace.blogspot.com/2010/09/concept-of-unconscious-mind-according.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397696.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00173-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957268 | 3,994 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Paul Bürde, Homage to Kaiser Wilhelm I [Die Huldigung Kaiser Wilhelm I] (1871)
The straight-line version of history propagated by scholars like Heinrich von Treitschke in the 1860s and 1870s becomes tangible in this painting by the little-known artist Paul Bürde (1819-1874). According to this Borussian teleology, Prussia was preordained to realize Germany’s “destiny.” Thus, we see a Prussian uhlan holding up a portrait of Wilhelm I before a gathering of three generations of Germans in a rural household. Everyone in the scene draws pride from Prussia’s recent military victories and German unification. At the bottom left, two boys are rolling up a portrait of the archenemy, French Emperor Napoleon III (1808-1873), while a girl prepares to hang a garland on the portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm I. In the background at the right, another boy pounds a nail into the wall, thereby showing where the portrait will be hung in a moment. The message is clear: the emperor will assume his rightful “place” at the end of a historical saga that began with Martin Luther and continued through Frederick the Great and the hero of Waterloo, Field Marshall von Blücher. Just as Luther was transformed into the personification of the German spirit when he denounced the Catholic hierarchy and Rome, Wilhelm has been transformed from Prussian king to German emperor by virtue of his victory over the meddlesome adventurer Napoleon III. Thus, it is Prussia’s pantheon of heroes – and not the German people – who have brought the nation to its full and proper realization in the new empire.
© Deutsches Historisches Museum | <urn:uuid:a7f32e00-5a87-4c85-9837-fda0f1b7e08f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=1406 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00131-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919381 | 362 | 3.515625 | 4 |
New Mexico is enormously rich in biodiversity and fortunate in that a history of that biodiversity is still available to scientists and the public in the form of collections housed in the state's natural history museums. To protect those collections and to make the information stored in them available to the scientific community and the general public, NMBCC has integrated museum data at the University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University, Western New Mexico University, Eastern New Mexico University, and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History into a searchable geospatial format accessible via the Internet.
We currently have over 350,000 records in the NMBCC searchable database representing specimens from 23 different New Mexico collections. Over 100,000 of these are mappable (you must register to be able to use our mapping capabilities). Use the left sidebar links to find out more or use the box below to search our collections.
- June 1, 2009. The New Mexico Museum of Natural History has been a long-time friend and member of the NMBCC, so it is with great pleasure that we have at last added NMMNH data to the NMBCC database. We now have nearly 2,000 records from their mammal collection, about half of which are mappable.
- May 21, 2009. With our new refreshed data, NMBCC passed two milestones. We now serve over 350,000 specimen records, over 100,000 of which are mappable.
- May 10, 2009. Data for most Herbaria collections refreshed. Thousands of new specimen records and tens of thousands of more georeferences. New upload protocol improves content for nomenclature and georeferencing details.
- April 1, 2009. We have added mapping capabilities for registered users. You can now map records that have been georeferenced in either Berkeley Mapper or in our own Advanced IMF Mapper. The IMF Mapper has all kinds of cool options like mapping against numerous background layers and printing out your maps.
- March 15, 2009.NMBCC has partnered with the Southwest Environmental Information Network (SEINet) to provide more and better resources to support study of the biodiversity of the American Southwest. Checkout the new Southwest Biodiversity Consortium site (currently geared toward regional herbaria).
Register now, if you haven't already, for access to more features.
Prior to 2008, NMBCC was known as the Biodiversity Division of the Institute of Natural Resource Analysis and Management (INRAM). | <urn:uuid:9e8b54aa-214f-4f27-a1a9-e77727acdfd4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nmbiodiversity.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00132-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92779 | 512 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Researchers at the University of Chicago, Cornell University and iRobot who developed the Universal Jamming Gripper have recently taught their robot to throw things!
Why is this so cool?
The Universal Jamming Grippers consists of a balloon filled with sand or coffee grounds. When slightly inflated it can wrap itself around an object. Then when the air is removed the balloon tightens its grip and holds tight.
Universal Jamming Grippers in Action Picking up a Glass of Water
Kilobots made by the Self-Organizing Systems Research Group
Kilobots are quarter-sized robots that move on three little legs designed to interact and coordinate their behavior. Created by the Self-Organizing Systems Research Group at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) these little robots can be used to experiment with swarming algorithms. They have recently teamed up with the K-Team Corporation, a Swiss manufacturer of high-quality mobile robots, to mass produce kilobots so that researchers and enthusiasts alike can experiment with their own robot swarms.
More information can be found at Science Daily.
Their research group has some amazing videos of quadrotors in coordinated flight, and quadrotors working together to perform a coordinated construction task. The GRASP lab is involved in numerous other projects that are worth checking out.
Here is a video of quadrotors in coordinated flight:
Cyberphysics is the physics of information-based control in systems that display a strong coupling between computing and control elements. Such systems are called cyber-physical systems. Cyberphysics is closely related to cybernetics, which is the study of regulatory systems. | <urn:uuid:32855a92-f716-4cec-b534-4c441d22649a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.brickengineer.com/robots/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00024-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939527 | 338 | 3.140625 | 3 |
As a potted plant, the ponytail palm (Beaucarnea recurvata) with a bulbous base and slender stem topped with a mop of long, straight foliage thrives indoors on homeowner neglect. The plant, a succulent rather than a true palm, was even named one of 15 "houseplants for the inept" in a 2010 roundup of hard-to-kill plants in "The New York Times." As long as you don't overwater or change the lighting on your ponytail palm, it may outlive you. Ponytail palms can grow for decades in the same pot, but the swollen bulb, called a caudex, at its base eventually expands so much it can crack its pot. Before this happens, it's time to repot.
Spread a tarp or newspaper on the ground near the ponytail palm, depending on its size.
Tip the plant over on its side and roll the pot gently to loosen it. Pull the pot off the plant to expose the firmly packed root ball.
Slice an inch from the bottom of the root ball with a clean, sharp, serrated knife when you are repotting in the same pot. Shear away an inch of root mass from the sides of the plant to repot it into the same pot and if you can do so without cutting into the bulb at the base of the stem. Do not remove more than one-third of the root ball. An inch all around is ideal when you're repotting the palm in the same container.
Make six to eight vertical, inch-deep slices around the circumference of the root mass with a sharp, clean knife and several across the bottom of the root ball when repotting the ponytail palm in a larger pot.
Rough up the exterior of the root ball, either sheared or sliced, with your fingers or a small garden fork. Loosening the compacted roots helps encourage them to grow into new soil.
Scrub the pot you are reusing with a solution of 1 part bleach to 9 parts water. When potting up to a larger pot, use one that's no more than 2 inches in diameter larger than the previous pot to avoid problems with overwatering the ponytail palm -- the more soil space, the more water the pot retains.
Fill the bottom of the pot with fresh potting mix. Ponytail palms need a mix made for cacti and succulents. Either purchase one ready-made or mix one up that is 2 parts each potting soil, coarse sand and peat moss, and 1 part perlite.
Center the plant in the pot and fill in around the rejuvenated root ball with the same mix.
Move the ponytail palm back to the spot where it was doing so well as to need repotting, and water it well. Do not water again until the soil is dry at least several inches down.
Things You Will Need
- Tarp or newspaper
- Serrated knife
- Potting soil
- Scrub brush
- Ponytail palms grow 8 to 30 feet tall outdoors in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 10 and up.
- The New York Times: Hard to Kill: Houseplants for the Inept
- Missouri Botanical Garden: Beaucarnea Recurvata
- Burke's Backyard: Fact Sheet -- Ponytail Plant
- The New York Times: Cuttings: What to Do When Pruning Plant Roots
- University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences: Growing Plants Indoors With Success
- San Diego Edible Gardening Society: Container Gardening | <urn:uuid:7d59d46b-e384-4630-9c01-2e3421a2c584> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://homeguides.sfgate.com/cut-roots-potting-ponytail-palm-plants-indoors-43884.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00044-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915871 | 748 | 2.578125 | 3 |
(1) Community organization incorporates children in the range of ongoing endeavors of their families and communities. Children are treated as regular participants in the community, with expectations and opportunities to contribute according to their interests and skills, like everyone else .
(2) Learners are eager to contribute and belong as valued members of their families and communities. They engage with initiative, to fulfill valued roles. Other people present are trying to accomplish the activity at hand, and may guide or support the learners’ contributions.
(3) The social organization of endeavors involves collaborative engagement as an ensemble, with flexible leadership as the people involved coordinate fluidly with each other. Learners are trusted to take initiative along with the others as everyone fluidly blends their ideas and agendas at a calm mutual pace.
(4) The goal of learning is transforming participation to contribute and belong in the community. Such transformation involves learning to collaborate with consideration and responsibility, as well as gaining information and skills. (A paradigm shift is involved in thinking of learning as transformation of participation rather than as the acquisition of knowledge and skills [see Rogoff, 1997, 1998].)
(5) Learning involves wide, keen attention, in anticipation of or during contribution to the endeavor at hand. Guidance comes from community-wide expectations that everyone contributes with responsibility (as in cultural values indicating that everyone in a family pitch in to help with household work). Guidance may sometimes also come from other people engaged in the activity, supporting learners’ opportunities to observe and contribute and sometimes providing pointers regarding the ongoing shared activity.
(6) Communication is based on coordination among participants that builds on the shared reference available in their mutual endeavors. This involves a balance of articulate nonverbal conversation and parsimonious verbal means. When explanation occurs, it is nested within the shared endeavors, providing information to carry out or understand the ongoing or anticipated activity. Narratives and dramatization that bring remembered or hypothetical scenarios to life also guide learning and development in a way that contextualizes information and ideas in the service of skilled problem-solving and appropriate action.
(7) Assessment includes appraisal of the success of the support provided for the learner as well as of the learner’s progress toward mastery. The purpose of assessment is to aid learners’ contributions, and it occurs during the endeavor. Feedback is available from the outcome of learners’ efforts to contribute to the endeavor and others’ acceptance, appreciation, or correction of the efforts as productive contributions. | <urn:uuid:c2345ac9-a440-4ece-8680-49145fa6648c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.learningbyobservingandpitchingin.com/icp-overview-english | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00095-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957671 | 504 | 3.703125 | 4 |
George Herbert Mead (February 27, 1863 – April 26, 1931) was an American
philosopher, ..... To illustrate the game stage, Mead gives his famous example of
a baseball game: But in a game where ...
When a baby is first born, he doesn't seem to have a sense of who he is, but that
changes as he grows. In this lesson, we'll look at George Herbert...
Mead's Three Stages of Self-Development 1. Preparatory Stage (up to age 3) •
Children prepare for role-taking by imitating the people around them 2.
www.ask.com/youtube?q=George Herbert Mead Stages&v=eqLVYMUowPI
Jan 3, 2013 ... An overview of Mead's Interaction theory contribution: The Stages of Self.
www.ask.com/youtube?q=George Herbert Mead Stages&v=3ainoIMAjKc
Nov 14, 2014 ... Meads stages of child development. I do not own ... Introduction to Sociology:
George Herbert Mead: The I and the Me - Duration: 5:27. Brooke ...
Oct 7, 2008 ... George Herbert Mead ... Sociologist who identified 3 stages for how self develops
... 1st Stage of Mead's 3 stages of self ...
George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) ... means by the generalized other and how
this concept is important to understanding stages of an individual's development.
Apr 19, 2012 ... Sociologists sometimes come back to George Herbert Mead as a founder who
still has something important to contribute to contemporary ...
Biography of George Herbert Mead, a sociologist who pioneered the
development of the symbolic interaction perspective. He is also the founder of
George Herbert Mead is a major figure in the history of American philosophy, .....
At this stage, the conversation of gestures is transformed into a conversation of ... | <urn:uuid:8e97acd5-cd93-4771-9729-930f12ad2ab6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ask.com/web?q=George+Herbert+Mead+Stages&o=2603&l=dir&qsrc=3139&gc=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00019-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.889589 | 398 | 3.71875 | 4 |
|[This is a MPIWG MPDL language technology service]|
Solar (a.) A loft or upper chamber; a garret room.
Solar (a.) Of or pertaining to the sun; proceeding from the sun; as, the solar system; solar light; solar rays; solar influence. See Solar system, below.
Solar (a.) Born under the predominant influence of the sun.
Solar (a.) Measured by the progress or revolution of the sun in the ecliptic; as, the solar year.
Solar (a.) Produced by the action of the sun, or peculiarly affected by its influence. | <urn:uuid:da0c0303-1e76-4c26-bbc4-35d57f4e52b3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mpdl-service.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/mpiwg-mpdl-lt-web/lt/GetDictionaryEntries?query=solar&queryDisplay=Solar&language=en&outputFormat=html&outputType=morphCompact&outputType=dictFull | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00012-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.841668 | 134 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Within a decade, the FAA is predicting that space tourism will become a billion-dollar industry, according to a Reuters report.
"Based on market studies, we expect to see this type of activity result in a billion-dollar industry within the next 10 years," George Nield, associate administrator for the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST), said in a statement before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics hearing Tuesday.
There is a handful of companies planning to offer sub-orbital private space flights, most notably Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. Branson announced earlier this week that "Two and a Half Men" television star Ashton Kutcher was the 500th person to sign up for a $200,000 ride aboard Virgin Galactic's Space Ship Two. According to Discovery News, Virgin Galactic expects to begin flights in 2013.
XCOR Aerospace, a small company based in California's Mojave Desert, also is already selling seats aboard its winged Lynx suborbital space vehicle. Mike Massee, a spokesperson for XCOR, told The Huffington Post that the company expects to begin testing late this year or in early 2013, and that commercial flights should begin by 2014. Tickets cost $95,000 per flight.
Four other companies -- Blue Origin, Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corporation -- have contracts with NASA to develop technology to transport crew members to low-earth orbit and the International Space Station. In summer 2011, NASA's space shuttle program, which brought personnel and supplies to the space station, was discontinued.
Kirstin Brost Grantham, a spokesperson for SpaceX, said that while the company plans to carry private citizens in the future, it has not sold any tickets yet.
At the subcommittee meeting Tuesday, lawmakers expressed concern about the safety of the commercial spaceflight industry, Space.com reports.
"The public needs a clear understanding of the risks involved with commercial space transportation, and it will need to be convinced those risks are being effectively managed,” said Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Il.), acting ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology’s Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, according to a release from his office.
“AST will be at the center of establishing those expectations, as it will have a critical role in ensuring the safety of would-be space tourists, and potentially even of NASA astronauts or other spaceflight participants," said Costelo.
According to Space.com, space tourism companies have until October 2015 before the FAA institutes safety regulations for space tourists.
"It's kind of like the early days of flight, right after the Wright Brothers," XCOR's Massee said. "That's the best way to describe it. It's the beginning of our golden age of travel for space flight."
LOOK: Space travel of the future:
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Get top stories and blog posts emailed to me each day. Newsletters may offer personalized content or advertisements.Learn more | <urn:uuid:30f4a2c8-9864-4d4b-8c14-82710d08ce00> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/22/space-tourism-1-billion-industry_n_1371354.html?ref=tw | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00157-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937828 | 622 | 2.578125 | 3 |
The brain's an incredibly rich and complex computational core that we don't really fully understand—but that isn't stopping IBM building a new form of computing architecture around what's happening inside our heads.
Building on a collaboration it ran with DARPA's SyNAPSE program back in 2011, where it developed a neurosynaptic computing chip, the company is taking things a step further to create a whole computational ecosystem inspired by the brain. That original chip simulated some of the brain's functions—including the inter relations between 530 billion neurons—but the idea now is to create something even more realistic.
That means creating a whole new computing architecture—which is exactly what IBM is doing. So, as it's just announced, it's building all kinds of weird and wonderful things: multi-threaded software simulators that replicate the way the brain processes data; a neuron model that uses deterministic and stochastic computations to make sense of the world; and programs made out of arrays of "corelets," each of which represents a discrete neurosynaptic core. This is the stuff of science fiction.
It's a lot to imagine, but the applications are mind-boggling: computers that can think and process data just—or at least, a little—like humans. It's still some way off, mind, especially given that even an 83,000-processor supercomputer can still only match 1 percent of your brain right now.
That doesn't deter IBM, though. Apparently, its long-term goal is to essentially build an actual silicon version of the brain. As they put it, that means they need a chip system with ten billion neurons and hundred trillion synapses, which consumes one kilowatt of power and occupies less than two liters of volume. That's what people refer to as a challenge. [IBM via Engadget] | <urn:uuid:2c4cfbad-8f81-4f65-b099-543b93647983> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://gizmodo.com/ibm-is-creating-an-entire-computing-architecture-based-1063836530 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00186-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95546 | 379 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Monday, June 27, 2016
Hereditary condition affecting the nerve root
Is there a proper diagnostic name for a genetic conditon that destroys the nerve on the front tooth only? I ask because my father, brother, aunt (on my father`s side), my niece and now my 14yr old son all have or have had a graying of the front tooth on the right side and most have had to have several root canals on that tooth and the area comes back. The nerve dies for no apparent reason. Is a simple root canal the tx of choice in this incident?
I looked into the situation you described but could not find a named neural syndrome for it. A number of tooth pathologic entities could be the cause of the problem, however. The most common cause is usually due to a deep lingual pit on the front teeth. This is where the back side of the front teeth develop (as a fetus) a deep invaginated form that is impossible to keep clean. Eventually bacteria are able to enter the dental pulp from the depth of this pit and kill the nerve of the tooth. This could have a genetic component to it. These teeth may also have a "lingual groove" where the invagination is not limited to the crown of the tooth, but runs down the entire side of the root. These teeth are very difficult to treat and often get periodontal disease because of the bacteria that are harbored within the groove.
A more severe form of this would be called "dens invaginatus" or "dens-in-dente" (tooth within a tooth) but this is rare and has no familial component. Another possibility is a syndrome called "dentinogenesis imperfecta" or "hereditary opalescent teeth". However in this syndrome, all the teeth are affected and the appearance of the teeth ranges from gray to brown-violet. Radiographs of the teeth would show the defect and would have a specific clinical appearance.
My final thought on this is that the changes could be due to trauma of some type and there is just a coincidence that all these people in your family have had this problem. That is a long-shot, but possible. Trauma to a tooth can cause the tooth to discolor and sometimes require a root canal. Recurrence of the lesion on the tooth could be due to a number of things. I would recommend an evaluation by a root canal specialist if the symptoms continue to return.
John M Nusstein, DDS
Associate Professor of Endodontics
College of Dentistry
The Ohio State University | <urn:uuid:8dd307df-065f-4ef7-9f89-6ec50c5180da> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.netwellness.uc.edu/question.cfm/57906.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00128-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964739 | 533 | 3.015625 | 3 |
An Interview with Mirjana Maletic-Savatic, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics
Neurological Research Institute, Texas Children’s Hospital
Baylor College of Medicine
Dana Foundation Grantee, 2008-2011
You and your collaborators have been pioneering a novel method to track neurogenesis—the growth of new neurons—in the living human brain. Your approach uses Magnetic Resonance Spectroscropy (MRS) to look for telltale signals given off by neural stem cells. What is the key significance of this work, in your view?
Mirjana Maletic-Savatic: The development of the methodology to detect neural stem cells in the human brain is the key significance of our work. People have tried various approaches over the past 20 years to capitalize on Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) as a noninvasive, functionally meaningful imaging method. Unlike MRI scans, which provide a photograph of the brain, MRS tells us about the processes that are going on in the cells far before structural changes are evident. MRS looks at small molecules—metabolites—present in cells and tissues, including amino acids, sugars, fatty acids, lipids, neurotransmitters, etc. Molecules that are enriched in neural stem cells are one example.
With a few exceptions, these molecules are present in low quantities in the brain, which makes them very difficult to study. We have been trying to develop novel mathematical approaches to isolate spectroscopic signals from molecules with very small intensities—to identify telltale signal patterns that could serve as biomarkers for these molecules. But progress has been limited by the difficulties in acquiring quantifiable data. Petar M. Djurić, Ph.D., our Stony Brook collaborator who is an expert in engineering and applied mathematics, has focused on working out how to do this in the living human brain.
First, we had to find a biomarker for the cells and confirm that the biomarker was enriched in only those cells. Then we looked for the same signal in the animal brain, in the area where neural stem cells are found. In doing so, it became clear that we needed better signal-processing methods to isolate this signal, which was very small. Traditional techniques did not work.
Explain the importance of finding biomarkers and how this methodology might help us understand the roles of other small molecules in the brain.
MMS: When we talk about biomarkers, we’re referring to telltale biological signals that indicate the presence of a particular molecule associated with a disease or condition. (Elevated blood sugar levels, for example, is a biomarker for diabetes.) In general, the identification of reliable biomarkers would enable better diagnosis, prognostic prediction, and treatment evaluation for a range of medical conditions. Currently, we are limited by the tools that we have. To detect certain conditions and disease, we can perform behavioral assessments, neurological exams, and other tests, but what we really need in so many aspects of clinical neurology are reliable biomarkers.
The hope is that we can use the methodology we have developed to detect biomarkers not only from neural stem cells, but also from any other small molecules that are present in low concentrations in the brain—molecules that we know are there and we know are performing important roles in cellular physiology. But we have not been able to figure out how to pull out the relevant signals from all the noise using traditional methods.
What is “metabolomics”? Why study small molecules?
MMS: In the last decade or so, we have witnessed the emergence of a novel, so-called “systems-biology” approach to studying complex biological processes. This approach is expected to ultimately contribute to personalized medical care. Genomics was first of the “-omics,” or systems-biology, sciences, and it has driven enormous breakthroughs in medicine by analyzing huge sets of genes at the same time. Other “-omics” applications have been developed since, including the new field called metabolomics.
Metabolomics looks at very small molecules that are vital to cell functioning and are at the intersection of gene-environment interactions. It’s evident that environmental events can influence these molecules, and the effects can be transferred to the genome and back to the molecules. By studying them, we may find features of diseases that we have not been able to test directly through genetic or other types of analyses. This is critical for the development of noninvasive diagnostic or prognostic tests for many human diseases. Metabolomics has already shown promise in cancer research.
You are currently using these algorithms to track neurogenesis in premature infants. Where are you with that work?
MMS: As a child neurologist, my interest is in early brain development. The Dana grant was awarded to test whether an increased risk of developing mental retardation after premature birth is related to the possible lack of neural stem cells in the brain. We would like to develop routine tests that could provide useful prognostic information about the future cognitive development of these children.
It’s very clear that early brain-developmental disorders are a huge burden on societies, families, and individuals. Many studies have shown that the earlier we start to intervene therapeutically, the better babies do because of the extreme plasticity of the brain during the first two years of life. The goal is to try to help babies at risk as soon as possible in the best possible way so that we’re offering every opportunity for the brain to grow and become as close to healthy and normal as possible.
Our prospective study is underway. We hope to scan 10 to 15 babies within a week of their birth and again when they are 18 months old, with complementary neuropsychological and neurological evaluations. The goal is to correlate the degree of neurogenesis at birth and 18 months with these other measures, and then compare those data to healthy babies and to healthy 18-month olds.
The original paper reporting your method for tracking neural stem cells in the human brain was published in Science in 2007. How have the findings been received in the scientific community?
MMS: The approach we published in 2007 has been met with diametrically opposite views. People either love it or hate it. Some reviewers have raised questions about the methodology and the validity of the algorithms when applied to different settings.
During the last two years, our lab has been working on validating the method in collaboration with Dr. Djurić. We’ve done many different biological validations to confirm that the algorithm is indeed isolating and detecting the weak signals that the neural stem cells are giving off. We have run thousands of tests to detect the signals in simulated and semi-simulated conditions. And we have analyzed spectroscopy data from about 100 volunteers in order to figure out when this method is valid. These results are being submitted to a high-profile journal for publication.
Further, we are working on identifying the molecular structure of the biomarker that is enriched in neural stem cells. It seems that it is a complex lipid with some peptide structure associated with it. We have much more to do to be sure we have the right molecule, and we are performing those studies.
How are the findings being used by others who are interested in the potential role of neurogenesis in diseases?
MMS: Neurogenesis has been widely investigated over the past 20 years and appears to be important for learning and memory and for mood disorders such as depression. Antidepressants, for example, seem to directly affect neurogenesis. All of the neurogenesis studies to date have been done in animals, and there are a lot of unanswered questions. More animal studies are needed, but we also need human data before we can make any real conclusions.
Our collaborative efforts include work with Columbia University looking at neurogenesis for depression, a study that is near completion; with Harvard/Massachusetts General Hospital for schizophrenia and cognition; with New York University for investigations of Alzheimer’s and dementia; and with the University of Norway in Oslo for epilepsy. We are studying both psychiatric and neurologic disorders associated with cognitive dysfunction in adults and in children. In each case, we are examining what is happening to the neural precursor cells as these diseases develop or progress.
What would you like to see happen next to move this work forward?
MMS: I hope that our paper on the validation of the methodology used to detect low signals from MRS will be accepted by a wide scientific community and that our algorithms will be available to those scientists who are interested in using them.
Right now this is the only direct methodology to look at the roles that neural stem cells play in the human brain. My hope is that it will be validated by others and that it will help in clinical medicine to test whether neurogenesis is a factor in the development of certain disorders, or is a therapeutic possibility for other diseases. If we know that certain drugs or modalities, such as physical activity, enriched environments, and so on can increase neurogenesis, then we can develop specific therapeutic interventions to increase it. However, we need to test this in people and not only in animal models. If we had a methodology to assess neurogenesis in humans who suffer from the disorders that seem to be associated with it—akin to say, a blood-sugar test for diabetes—that would really be a major achievement.
Published July 2010 | <urn:uuid:2fdd4e11-b60c-403e-b872-90d05dadee61> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://sfischweicher@dana.org/Briefing_Papers/A_Glimpse_of_Stem_Cells_in_the_Living_Human_Brain/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958289 | 1,942 | 2.765625 | 3 |
The Perrysburg-based land trust known as the Black Swamp Conservancy has now expanded its reach to more than 5,000 acres of land throughout northwest Ohio and southeastern Michigan. Nearly all of it is farmland or property in its natural state that is to be kept undeveloped.
Through voluntary agreements known as conservation easements, the nonprofit group has helped property owners in 10 area counties keep their land in its existing state even after it's sold or passed along to future owners. State government and conservation leaders have said the Black Swamp Conservancy has an important niche in local land-preservation efforts.
It complements the Nature Conservancy, one of the nation's oldest and most venerable land trusts. The Nature conservancy, formed in the 1950s, is a high-profile international group that tends to focus on land with certain attributes. The Nature Conservancy has an Ohio chapter active in preserving land in the Oak Openings region now known as portions of Lucas, Henry, and Fulton counties. Historically, the globally rare Oak Openings - where western prairie grasses met dense eastern forest - had a massive, sandy belt that extended east to Wood County and as far northeast as Michigan's Wayne County.
The Black Swamp Conservancy, established in 1993, is a homespun land trust buoyed largely by voter passage of the Clean Ohio Fund in November, 2000. That fund authorized the state to raise $400 million over four years for land reclamation and preservation projects.
Kevin Joyce, Black Swamp Conservancy executive director, said surpassing the 5,000-acre mark in May is a new milestone. The group's total went up to 5,199 acres of protected land in May, with 520 new acres via conservation easements signed by owners of two Seneca County farms near Tiffin, a Fulton County farm near Delta, and a Catawba Island Township park near Port Clinton, in Ottawa County, called Cedar Meadow Preserve. Mr. Joyce said the milestone "provides a tremendous benefit to people across this region. The conservation of open space contributes greatly to our quality of life."
The conservancy visits each site under a conservation easement at least once a year to ensure terms have not been violated. The conservancy acquired its first easement in December, 1997. It passed the 3,000-acre mark in April of 2004 and the 4,000-acre mark in May of 2006.
The land trust said its properties include 2,023 acres in Fulton County, 933 acres in Sandusky County, 1,020 acres in Seneca County, and 679 acres in Wood County. Of the 5,199 acres, it owns 257. Easements protect the rest.
For more information, see www.blackswamp.org. The group's Lake Erie Islands chapter is at www.blackswamp.org/LEIC.html.
Contact Tom Henry at: email@example.com or 419-724-6079. | <urn:uuid:540f58b3-3663-4324-b0cc-f94325a309d3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.toledoblade.com/West/2007/06/14/Land-trust-at-new-high-in-acreage-protection.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00176-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943756 | 602 | 2.578125 | 3 |
The Oregon Senate recently voted in favor of SB 695, which would ban BPA use for children’s food containers, baby bottles and sippy cups starting in January 2013. The Oregon House has yet to vote on the bill. While environmental activists were unable to get an all-out ban on BPA in other food packaging, they did get a provision that they will use to build momentum for such bans in the future: The bill creates a panel to “study” the potential for similar bans on other food packaging. However, BPA has already been studied extensively around the world. This new state-level panel is unlikely to discover any new information, but instead it simply will be used to push the activists’ agenda to ban more uses of BPA.
This anti-BPA legislation is based on environmental activists’ wrongheaded claims that BPA poses unreasonable risk to human health, specifically to children, although the overwhelming body of research suggests otherwise. Ironically, these policies threaten to undermine food safety because BPA is used to make resins that line metal cans and other packaging to prevent development of dangerous pathogens and other contamination. And there are few good alternatives should lawmakers eventually ban BPA. According to a World Health Organization report: “[A]t present, there appears to be no single replacement for BPA for all food contact applications. Furthermore, data on the safety of some of these replacement materials are limited or non-existent.” In other words, misguided bans of BPA in food packaging could have serious, adverse public health implications.
WHAT IS BPA? Bisphenol-A is a chemical intermediary used in the manufacturing of certain products, including polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. These plastics are used in a variety of products: baby bottles, five-gallon water jugs used in water coolers, medical equipment, sports safety equipment, cell phones and other consumer electronics, household appliances, and many other products. The resins are used for industrial flooring, adhesives, primers, coatings and computer components. Its applications for food packaging and containers, particularly uses for water cooler jugs, canned foods and baby bottles, have been the focus of much debate.
NEGLIBLE RISK. In wide use for over 50 years, BPA has been extensively studied. The best science tells us that consumer exposure to BPA is far below levels of concern. An analysis published in Medscape General Medicine reveals that consumers are most likely exposed to BPA at levels that are 100 to 1,000 times lower than EPA’s estimated safe exposure levels. It notes further that the research on BPA also shows that the exposure levels per body weight are similar for adults and children, which indicates that infant exposure is not significantly higher. Moreover, risks to humans are probably much lower than these estimates suggest because humans metabolize BPA faster and better than do the rodents used in BPA studies.
ENDOCRINE SCIENCE. Scientific research identifies BPA as “weakly estrogenic.” Humans are regularly exposed to such estrogen mimicking compounds. Most are produced by plants: so-called phytoestrogens. Phytoestrogens are found in all legumes, with particularly high levels found in soy. The impact of weakly estrogenic synthetic substances like BPA is insignificant compared to human exposures to naturally occurring phytoestrogens in the human diet. According to data from a 1999 National Academy of Sciences study, exposure to natural phytoestrogens is 100,000 to 1 million times higher than exposure to estrogen mimicking substances found in BPA. “Given the huge relative disparity between the exposure to phytoestrogens as compared to BPA concentrations, the risk of BPA in consumer products appears to be about the same as a tablespoon of soy milk,” notes researcher Jonathan Tolman.
COMPREHENSIVE STUDIES AND REVIEWS. Scientific panels around the world have reviewed, and continue to review, the complete body of evidence and none report serious concerns about BPA. These include:
U.S. Food and Drug Administration:
“An adequate margin of safety exists for BPA at current levels of exposure from food contact uses.”
The European Union Risk Assessment: The EU’s risk assessments in 2006 and reviews in 2008 and 2010 find no compelling evidence of BPA-related health effects at estimated human exposure levels.
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (Japan): This extensive study found that “the risks posed by BPA were below the levels of concern.”
U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP): This review found no direct evidence of problems among humans. It expressed minimal to negligible concern for almost all factors. It called for more research in one area where it has only “some concern” because rodent studies showed some association of potential effects on behavior.
Health Canada: “Health Canada’s Food Directorate has concluded that the current dietary exposure to BPA through food packaging uses is not expected to pose a health risk to the general population, including newborns and young children.”
BPA bans will do little for public health, since they do not address significant risks. They are part of an ever-expanding arbitrary regulatory state that places many valuable products and freedoms at risk.
Angela Logomasini is Director of Risk and Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. At CEI, Angela conducts research and analysis on environmental regulatory issues. She is co-editor of CEI’s book The Environmental Source, and her articles have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The Washington Times and other papers. This Commentary is drawn from “Anti-BPA Packaging Laws Jeopardize Public Health,” by Angela Logomasini, Ph.D., published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. | <urn:uuid:07373532-ad94-48da-adce-96330406fcc7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://oregoncatalyst.com/9146-oregons-antibpa-packaging-legislation-jeopardize-public-health.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00016-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941594 | 1,212 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Dutch Design Week: in Eindhoven last week Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Amelie Onzon presented equipment for producing foie gras that allows you to choose between a better-quality product or a better life for the duck.
Called From Fable to Table, the objects include a feeding bowl where bread can be softened with water to make it edible for the duck, or force-fed to the bird dry (increasing the duck's suffering but improving the quality of foie gras).
Onzon also presented a bird-bath for the ducks to play in during their lifetime, which can also be used to drain the blood when the duck is hung to bleed to death.
Top photo is by Rene van der Hulst.
Here's some more information from the designer:
From Fable to Table
Amélie Onzon allows us to choose: will you use From Fable to Table for the production of foie gras or to give ducks a more pleasant life? With the chair and funnel you can force-feed a duck, but allowing water to drip from the same funnel you can soften bread to make it more digestible for the duck. Duck bread made from special grain is force-fed directly into the stomach in the production of foie gras. Onzon made bread from it that can be used for feeding ducklings. Ducks can enjoy drifting about in the little ‘swimming pool’, but you can also use it to collect the blood that pours out of the duck’s neck when it is slaughtered. Onzon does not wish to shock people with From Fable to Table. “By allowing them to react to these objects through their feelings, I let them see how ambivalent our relationship with animals is.”
Cherry wood, copper, glazed ceramic
Being both fish and fowl, ducks love water and rain. They can live in any part of the world as long as they have acess to water. For the foie gras process, the liver has to be blood free. Once the force-feeding period is over the duck will be killed by a cut below the tongue. The duck bleeds to death.
This object is a pond and shower for the duck. It is also a hook to suspend the animal for its execution. The blood can be collected in the sink.
Cherry wood, copper, porcelain
Ducks are eating machines. They force-feed themselves before migration. The foie gras process is inspired by ducks eating behaviour. We force-feed the duck with grain using a funnel until the liver expands to the right size. This object is a duck feeder and a force feeding stool. The ducks bowl is also the force-feeding funnel. A simple irrigation system softens the food to make it edible for the animal.
Designer Amélie Onzon
Department Man and Well-being
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A Romanian Renaissance
One nun writes a new chapter in the history of iconography
text and photographs by Andreea Câmpeanu
“Writing an icon is liturgy,” says Sister Eliseea Papacioc, a Romanian Orthodox nun and world-renowned iconographer. “For the liturgy is the intervention of God through man, and in making an icon, one should transmit to people what God wants.”
The thin 42-year-old woman wears a long black skirt and matching sweatshirt. Her dark hair is pulled back in a single, thick braid.
Sister Eliseea lives and works in a simple house in the rural village of Bradetu, nestled in the heavily wooded southern foothills of the
Fagaras Mountains (part of the southern Carpathian Mountains) in central Romania, 150 miles northwest of Bucharest.
On this afternoon in August, the sun’s rays shine through a large window, filling the living room and studio. The room is simple but modern. A plush rug covers the floor. Two armchairs are situated in front of a coffee table and television set. On one of them rests a computer. A worktable runs along the opposite wall under the window. An assortment of paint jars, brushes and books clutters the surface.
The nun sits at the table, hunched over a small icon of the Virgin and Child she just sketched in black. With her mouth, she wets the bristles of a small brush, gently twists them into a sharp point and dips it into white paint made from organic materials that she has poured into a plastic bottle cap. The paint, she says, rots quickly when wet but lasts a hundred years in an icon. With a surgeon’s precision, she then runs the paint-soaked bristles along the black lines of her sketch.
As the sun begins to set, Sister Eliseea takes a break. She stands, walks away and returns a moment later with a recently completed icon, roughly the size of an index card. Sister Eliseea holds it up to a window to illuminate its vibrant colors and fine details. It shimmers in the light, as would a precious jewel.
For months she worked on the piece, yet the soft-spoken nun explains its meaning as if were made not by her but by some other iconographer. The icon, she says, depicts the “Blessing of the Children” from the Gospel of St. Matthew. On the left, Jesus cradles an infant, wrapped in a light blue cloth; his disciples stand behind him while, on the right, a group of mothers and their children have gathered.
Sister Eliseea’s iconography has caught the attention of experts and enthusiasts around the world as much for its exquisite detail as for its unique style. From her studio in Romania, she crafts the icons for parishes and collectors — Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant — from as far away as France and the United States.
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|Questions & Topics|
25 questions to teens and people along the tea road|
1. Describe your family life. Include information about the number of kids in your family, do you live with your extended family?
2. What chores and responsibilities do you have in your family?
3. Describe your daily routines.
4. Describe the food you regularly eat?
5. Who are the leaders in your community and how do they make rules?
6. What do you have, want and need?
7. Describe your school experience.
8. Describe your housing and others in your community.
9. Describe other buildings in your community.
10. What languages do you speak and what languages are spoken in your community?
11. What technology do you have and use regularly?
12. What type of transportation do you use regularly?
13. Name and describe celebrations you and your family participate in
14. What is important to you and what do you value?
15. What jobs do you and your family members have and or want to have in the future?
16. What are popular products produced and traded in your in your culture?
17. What type of money do you use in your country?
18. Show and explain examples of local art and architecture.
19. Describe/show your dress/clothing.
20. Describe, show and give examples of pop(ular) culture in community. This could include music, entertainment, fashion, film, mass media, etc...
21. What is your view of America/describe typical American/Californians?
22. Who passes down the culture in you community?
23. Describe the geography of your community and country. Please include land and water features.
24. Describe the climates in your community.
25. What significant historical event(s) within the last 5 years in the world?
a. in your country?
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A Nobel prizewinner, a paleontologist, a taxidermist, an ornithologist, a field naturalist, a conservationist, a big-game hunter, a naval historian, a biographer, an essayist, an editor, a critic, an orator, a civil-service reformer, a socialite, a patron of the arts, a colonel of the cavalry, a ranchman … the list goes on. Add to that the 26th president of the United States, and you’ve got Theodore Roosevelt.
Teddy was a beloved figure in American politics and a favorite subject of political cartoonists. His exuberance, larger-than-life personality and exploits lent themselves perfectly to the medium. As author Rick Marschall has stated, “Presidents were boring up until Roosevelt and boring after him.”
Marschall was on hand at the Library late last year to discuss his new book, “Bully! The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt,” the webcast of which is now available. You can watch it below.
The Library’s collection of political cartoons includes a variety of Roosevelt-related items, many coming from Puck, America’s first successful humor magazine. Roosevelt was favored on the cover more than 80 times in his career.
The youngest president at age 42, Roosevelt was also the first to have his life and career chronicled on film. The Library’s online presentation includes a selection of 87 motion pictures that represent different times and phases in his life.
Perhaps one of the most bully boons in the Library’s presidential collections are the papers of Teddy Roosevelt. Numbering some 250,000 items, they constitute one of the largest among our presidential holdings. While plans for future digitization are still being made, selections from his diaries can be see here. | <urn:uuid:0cf682a9-8656-4b48-b630-c06bff4b51ca> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2012/03/see-it-now-a-bully-president/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00003-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961689 | 383 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Local Transmission of Zika Virus — Puerto Rico, November 23, 2015–January 28, 2016
Weekly / February 19, 2016 / 65(6);154–158
On February 12, 2016, this report was posted online as an MMWR Early Release.
Dana L. Thomas, MD1,2; Tyler M. Sharp, PhD3; Jomil Torres, MS1; Paige A. Armstrong, MD4; Jorge Munoz-Jordan, PhD3; Kyle R. Ryff, MPH1; Alma Martinez-Quiñones, MPH5; José Arias-Berríos, MD6; Marrielle Mayshack1,7; Glenn J. Garayalde, MD8; Sonia Saavedra, MD, PhD8; Carlos A. Luciano, MD6; Miguel Valencia-Prado5; Steve Waterman, MD3; Brenda Rivera-García, DVM1 (View author affiliations)View suggested citation
SummaryWhat is already known about this topic?
Zika virus emerged in the Region of the Americas in mid-2015, and since then, outbreaks have occurred in multiple South American and Caribbean countries and territories. Zika virus infection appears to be related with increased risk for fetal microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome.What is added by this report?
The first locally acquired case of Zika virus disease in Puerto Rico was identified in early December 2015. During the subsequent months, 29 additional laboratory-confirmed cases have been detected, including in one pregnant woman and in a man with Guillain-Barré syndrome.What are the implications for public health practice?
Clinicians in Puerto Rico and other clinicians evaluating patients with recent travel to Puerto Rico should report all cases of suspected Zika virus disease to public health authorities. Residents of and visitors to Puerto Rico should strictly follow steps to avoid mosquito bites including using air conditioning or window and door screens when indoors, wearing long sleeves and pants, using permethrin-treated clothing and gear, and using insect repellents. When used according to the product label, Environmental Protection Agency-registered insect repellents are safe for pregnant women.
Zika virus, a mosquito-borne flavivirus, spread to the Region of the Americas (Americas) in mid-2015, and appears to be related to congenital microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome (1,2). On February 1, 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the occurrence of microcephaly cases in association with Zika virus infection to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.* On December 31, 2015, Puerto Rico Department of Health (PRDH) reported the first locally acquired (index) case of Zika virus disease in a jurisdiction of the United States in a patient from southeastern Puerto Rico. During November 23, 2015–January 28, 2016, passive and enhanced surveillance for Zika virus disease identified 30 laboratory-confirmed cases. Most (93%) patients resided in eastern Puerto Rico or the San Juan metropolitan area. The most frequently reported signs and symptoms were rash (77%), myalgia (77%), arthralgia (73%), and fever (73%). Three (10%) patients were hospitalized. One case occurred in a patient hospitalized for Guillain-Barré syndrome, and one occurred in a pregnant woman. Because the most common mosquito vector of Zika virus, Aedes aegypti, is present throughout Puerto Rico, Zika virus is expected to continue to spread across the island. The public health response in Puerto Rico is being coordinated by PRDH with assistance from CDC. Clinicians in Puerto Rico should report all cases of microcephaly, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and suspected Zika virus disease to PRDH. Other adverse reproductive outcomes, including fetal demise associated with Zika virus infection, should be reported to PRDH. To avoid infection with Zika virus, residents of and visitors to Puerto Rico, particularly pregnant women, should strictly follow steps to avoid mosquito bites, including wearing pants and long-sleeved shirts, using permethrin-treated clothing and gear, using an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered insect repellent, and ensuring that windows and doors have intact screens.
In November 2015, PRDH, with assistance from CDC, initiated surveillance for Zika virus disease in Puerto Rico by modifying the existing Passive Dengue Surveillance System (3) to include suspected Zika virus disease. Patients in whom a clinician suspected Zika virus disease were reported by sending a serum specimen with a modified dengue case investigation form.† In January 2016, PRDH initiated enhanced surveillance for Zika virus disease by performing Zika virus testing on specimens submitted during November 2015–January 2016 that had tested negative for dengue or chikungunya.
Specimens collected within 7 days of illness onset were tested by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) with updated primers to detect Zika virus RNA. Specimens collected ≥4 days after illness onset were tested by immunoglobulin M (IgM) capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to detect serologic evidence of recent Zika virus infection. Laboratory-confirmed Zika virus disease cases were defined as detection of either Zika virus RNA by RT-PCR, or anti-Zika virus IgM antibody by ELISA with a simultaneous negative anti-dengue virus IgM antibody test.
During November 23, 2015–January 28, 2016, a total of 155 suspected Zika virus disease cases were identified in Puerto Rico, including 82 reported through passive surveillance, and 73 specimens tested through the enhanced surveillance protocol. Overall, 30 (19%) cases had laboratory confirmation of Zika virus disease. Among these cases, one (3%) patient had reported illness onset in November 2015 (the index patient), eight (27%) in December 2015, and 21 (70%) in January 2016. One patient with illness onset in late December reported travel to the Dominican Republic within 14 days of illness onset.
After identification of the index case, two cases were detected during the first 2 weeks of December; six cases per week were reported during the 2nd and 3rd weeks of 2016 (Figure 1). Patients resided in municipalities throughout eastern Puerto Rico and the San Juan metropolitan area, and one each resided in Ponce and Guánica (Figure 2). The most frequently reported symptoms were rash, myalgia, arthralgia, and fever (Table). Fever, rash, arthralgia, and conjunctivitis were reported in seven (23%) patients. Coinfection with influenza B virus was reported in one patient. Three (10%) patients were hospitalized: the index patient, one patient with Guillain-Barré syndrome, and another patient who was hospitalized because of thrombocytopenia and clinical suspicion of dengue.
Index case. The first case of Zika virus disease identified in Puerto Rico occurred in a man aged 80 years from southeastern Puerto Rico with multiple chronic medical conditions, who reported onset of symptoms on November 23, 2015. Eight days after illness onset, he was evaluated in a hospital emergency department for progressive weakness after several days of watery, nonbloody diarrhea, recent episodes of falling, shoulder pain, chills, malaise, and abdominal pain. He did not report myalgia, headache, or retro-orbital pain. He was febrile, tachycardic, tachypneic, and hypotensive, with bilateral erythematous sclera. Laboratory results revealed leukocytosis with a predominance of neutrophils; hemoconcentration; thrombocytopenia; elevated serum transaminases, blood urea nitrogen, and creatinine; hyponatremia; and hypoglycemia. He received a diagnosis of sepsis, was admitted to the intensive care unit for fluid resuscitation and monitoring, and was treated with broad spectrum antibiotics. Diagnostic considerations included leptospirosis and dengue. He experienced respiratory decompensation requiring intubation and 5 days of mechanical ventilation. He was hospitalized for 2 weeks, during which time he underwent an extensive evaluation. Blood and stool cultures were negative, as were serologic tests for human immunodeficiency virus, Leptospira, and Strongyloides. Schistosoma immunoglobulin G titers were elevated, for which praziquantel was administered. On December 2, serum was collected for dengue and chikungunya diagnostic testing, and was positive for anti-dengue virus IgM, negative for anti-chikungunya virus IgM, and negative for detection of dengue virus and chikungunya virus RNA. Because a hospital-based enhanced surveillance protocol was in place for detection of Zika virus, the same serum specimen was tested for Zika virus infection by RT-PCR with a positive result. Confirmatory molecular diagnostic testing was performed at CDC. Detection of anti-dengue virus IgM antibody likely was a result of cross-reactive anti-Zika virus IgM antibody. Although no pathogen other than Zika virus was identified, the patient’s clinical course suggests that he also had an occult bacterial infection.
Case A. On January 13, 2016, a man aged 37 years developed a rash, which resolved over the next 2 days; the next day, he noted paresthesias in his hands and feet, followed by progressive weakness in bulbar and limb muscles and uncontrolled fluctuating hypertension consistent with dysautonomia. On medical evaluation he had bilateral facial weakness, weakness in the upper and lower limbs, and areflexia, and was hospitalized for ascending paralysis. Cerebrospinal fluid protein was elevated, and electrodiagnostic studies showed evidence of a demyelinating polyneuropathy, consistent with the acute inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy variant of Guillain-Barré syndrome. The patient responded to treatment with intravenous immunoglobulin. A serum specimen collected 15 days after illness onset, and before administration of intravenous immunoglobulin, was positive for anti-Zika virus IgM antibody, negative for anti-dengue IgM antibody, and negative for Zika, dengue, and chikungunya virus RNA by RT-PCR. A urine specimen collected 19 days after illness onset was also negative for Zika virus RNA by RT-PCR. This is the only patient in Puerto Rico with Guillain-Barré syndrome and confirmed Zika virus disease identified to date.
Case B. On January 22, 2016, RT-PCR–confirmed Zika virus disease was diagnosed in a woman in her first trimester of pregnancy; she had sought care because of a 2-day history of nonfebrile eye, body, and joint pain; petechial rash; conjunctivitis; and nausea. Her obstetrician provided counseling regarding risks to her fetus and recommended clinical follow-up, according to CDC interim guidelines (4).
The public health response has focused on educating clinicians and the public, establishing laboratory capacity, improving epidemiologic capacity for detecting and monitoring all laboratory-confirmed cases of Zika virus disease in pregnant women, and reducing risk for infection to women who are pregnant. Community cleanup campaigns are being organized throughout the island to remove standing water from containers where Aedes aegypti mosquitos might breed. Additional approaches to effective and sustainable mosquito control are being considered.
No cases of microcephaly potentially associated with Zika virus infection have been reported to PRDH. Because microcephaly was not previously captured through routine surveillance, retrospective medical record review of live births during 2013–2015 will be conducted to define the baseline annual incidence of congenital microcephaly among live births, as defined by head circumference below the third percentile for sex and gestational age (5). The Puerto Rico Birth Defects Surveillance and Prevention System (BDSPS) case definition has been modified to capture microcephaly cases not associated with another major birth defect of the central nervous system. Clinicians in Puerto Rico have been advised to report all cases of congenital microcephaly to the BDSPS. PRDH, with assistance from CDC, will maintain a registry of all pregnant women with laboratory-confirmed Zika virus infection, who will be followed throughout their pregnancy.
Guillain-Barré syndrome is not a reportable condition in the United States, including Puerto Rico. In conjunction with neurologists in Puerto Rico, a Guillain-Barré syndrome surveillance system is being established to identify cases of clinically diagnosed Guillain-Barré syndrome. . After identification of a case of clinically confirmed Guillain-Barré syndrome, testing for arboviral and other infections will be performed. Cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome will be further investigated to define the association between Zika virus infection and Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Because of reports of detection of Zika virus RNA in saliva and urine (6,7), as well as reports of sexual transmission of Zika virus (8,9), patients with laboratory-confirmed Zika virus infection will be followed to determine the persistence of Zika virus RNA, as well as the presence of infectious virus in saliva, urine, and semen.
In May 2015, WHO reported the first local transmission of Zika virus in the Americas in Brazil (10). As of February 3, 2016, local transmission of Zika virus has been reported in 26 countries and territories in the Caribbean and South and Central America.§
The cases described in this report are the first documented local transmission of Zika virus in a jurisdiction of the United States. Aedes aegypti, the most common mosquito vector of Zika virus worldwide, is present throughout Puerto Rico. Therefore, Zika virus is expected to continue to spread throughout the territory, and the 3.5 million residents of Puerto Rico, including approximately 43,000 pregnant women per year, are at risk for Zika virus infection.
Approximately 80% of Zika virus infections are asymptomatic (11). The most common symptoms reported by patients in Puerto Rico with laboratory-confirmed Zika virus disease were rash, body and joint pain, and fever. Approximately 25% of patients reported all of the signs and symptoms most commonly associated with Zika virus disease: fever, rash, arthralgia, and conjunctivitis (11). Whether these signs and symptoms are reflective of all persons with symptomatic Zika virus infection, or represent patients with more severe disease, is unknown, as these patients had all sought medical care. This bias might be reflected in the observed rate of patient hospitalization, which was higher than expected on the basis of previous reports (11). Because symptomatic persons with less severe Zika virus disease might not have sought care, the cases reported here might underestimate the incidence of symptomatic Zika virus infection in Puerto Rico.
Clinicians in Puerto Rico should report all patients with fever, joint pain, rash, or conjunctivitis to PRDH as a suspected case of Zika virus disease if another etiology has not been identified. All patients with suspected dengue, chikungunya, or Zika virus disease from whom a specimen has been collected during the first 6 days of illness will be tested by PRDH with an assay currently under development at CDC that simultaneously tests for Zika, chikungunya, and dengue virus RNA. Because of possible complications associated with dengue, including increased vascular permeability that might lead to shock and hemorrhage, patients with suspected Zika, dengue, or chikungunya should be managed as dengue patients¶ until another diagnosis is established. Clinicians in Puerto Rico should also be aware of currently ongoing influenza virus transmission at epidemic levels,** and consider influenza in the differential diagnosis when evaluating patients with acute febrile illness. Current case counts of laboratory-confirmed Zika virus disease cases are available online.††
Currently, no medication or vaccine is available to treat or prevent Zika virus disease. To prevent infection, persons residing in affected areas or traveling to areas of active Zika virus transmission should strictly follow steps to avoid mosquito bites. Men who reside in or have traveled to an area of active Zika virus transmission who have a pregnant partner should abstain from sexual activity or consistently and correctly use condoms during sex, and men who reside in or have traveled to an area of active Zika virus transmission who are concerned about sexual transmission of Zika virus might consider abstaining from sexual activity or using condoms consistently and correctly during sex.§§ Mosquito-bite prevention includes using air conditioning or window and door screens when indoors, wearing long sleeves and pants, using permethrin-treated clothing and gear, and using insect repellents. When used according to the product label, EPA-registered insect repellents are safe for pregnant women.¶¶ Residents of Puerto Rico should cover, empty, or discard water containers that might serve as mosquito breeding sites (e.g., tires, plastic containers, and water cisterns). PRDH, CDC, and other partner organizations are urgently implementing broader plans for mosquito control and reduction of risk for Zika virus infection among pregnant women.
Corresponding author: Dana Thomas, Zika@salud.gov.pr, 787-265-2929.
- Pan American Health Organization. Epidemiological alert: neurological syndrome, congenital malformations, and Zika virus infection. Implications for public health in the Americas. Washington, DC: World Health Organization, Pan American Health Organization; 2015. http://www.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&Itemid=&gid=32405&lang=en.
- European Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Zika virus epidemic in the Americas: potential association with microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Stockholm, Sweden: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control; 2015. http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications/Publications/zika-virus-rapid-risk-assessment-8-february-2016.pdf.
- Noyd DH, Sharp TM. Recent advances in dengue: relevance to Puerto Rico. P R Health Sci J 2015;34:65–70. PubMed
- Petersen EE, Staples JE, Meaney-Delman D, et al. Interim guidelines for pregnant women during a Zika virus outbreak—United States, 2016. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2016;65:30–3. CrossRef PubMed
- Staples JE, Dziuban EJ, Fischer M, et al. Interim guidelines for the evaluation and testing of infants with possible congenital Zika virus infection—United States, 2016. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2016;65:63–7. CrossRef PubMed
- Musso D, Roche C, Nhan TX, Robin E, Teissier A, Cao-Lormeau VM. Detection of Zika virus in saliva. J Clin Virol 2015;68:53–5. CrossRef PubMed
- Gourinat AC, O’Connor O, Calvez E, Goarant C, Dupont-Rouzeyrol M. Detection of Zika virus in urine. Emerg Infect Dis 2015;21:84–6. CrossRef PubMed
- Foy BD, Kobylinski KC, Foy JLC, et al. Probable non-vector-borne transmission of Zika virus, Colorado, USA. Emerg Infect Dis 2011;17:880–2. CrossRef PubMed
- Musso D, Roche C, Robin E, Nhan T, Teissier A, Cao-Lormeau VM. Potential sexual transmission of Zika virus. Emerg Infect Dis 2015;21:359–61. CrossRef PubMed
- Zanluca C, de Melo VC, Mosimann AL, Dos Santos GI, Dos Santos CN, Luz K. First report of autochthonous transmission of Zika virus in Brazil. Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz 2015;110:569–72. CrossRef PubMed
- Duffy MR, Chen TH, Hancock WT, et al. Zika virus outbreak on Yap Island, Federated States of Micronesia. N Engl J Med 2009;360:2536–43. CrossRef PubMed
¶ Dengue clinical case management online training course (http://www.cdc.gov/dengue/training/cme.html).
FIGURE 1. Zika virus disease cases* (N = 30), by week of onset of patient’s illness — Puerto Rico, November 23, 2015–January 28, 2016
*All cases laboratory-confirmed, Dengue Branch, CDC.
FIGURE 2. Municipality of residence of persons with Zika virus disease*,† — Puerto Rico, November 23, 2015–January 28, 2016§
*All cases laboratory-confirmed, Dengue Branch, CDC.
† Total number of cases = 30; 1 case not shown because location unknown; 1 case in Juncos was travel-associated.
§ Data current as of February 11, 2016.
TABLE. Demographic characteristics, clinical course, and signs and symptoms in 30 patients with Zika virus disease identified by the Puerto Rico Department of Health — Puerto Rico, November 23, 2015–January 28, 2016
|Age/Illness onset (range)||No. (%)|
|Median age (yrs)||40 (10–80)|
|Median time from illness onset to specimen collection (days)||3 (0–15)|
|History of recent travel*||1 (3)|
|Signs and symptoms†|
|Eye pain||20 (67)|
|Sore throat||12 (40)|
Suggested citation for this article: Thomas DL, Sharp TM, Torres J, et al. Local Transmission of Zika Virus — Puerto Rico, November 23, 2015–January 28, 2016. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2016;65place_Holder_For_Early_Release:154–158. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6506e2.
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The Sun is reporting a study into primary school children undertaking SATs last year which found that nearly half were so nervous they couldn’t eat beforehand and some were even smoking cigarettes…
Primary school children are under such pressure to do well in SATS exams that they are using energy drinks and even cigarettes to cope, new research reveals.
Pupils aged ten and 11 are sitting the exams this week, which test them on knowledge of the National Curriculum.
A study of those who sat the test last year found 43 per cent could not eat beforehand, because they felt so nervous — while 2.5 per cent relied on energy drinks.
And one in 200 did not eat at all — but went into the exam having only smoked cigarettes.
Child psychology expert Emma Kenny from cereal firm Kellogg’s, which carried out the study, said: “They’re clearly not getting the vital emotional and practical support they need through a stressful time.”
More at: Stressed primary test kids use cigs | <urn:uuid:bf5b3fa0-c41e-4f47-af74-965b59fc8e27> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://schoolsimprovement.net/stressed-primary-pupils-not-eating-and-some-smoking-cigarettes-before-sats/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00010-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96982 | 212 | 2.609375 | 3 |
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The Ohio Graduation Test (OGT) is the high school graduation examination given in the U.S. state of Ohio. It fulfills the state achievement test requirement under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which requires annual testing in reading and mathematics. The OGT replaced the Ohio Ninth Grade Proficiency Test (NGPT) as the statewide exit exam. It tests student knowledge of course material set out in Ohio's Academic Content Standards, which are the state benchmarks.
Students take the OGT for the first time in March of their sophomore (second) year in high school, but have six additional opportunities (including an optional summer administration) to pass all parts of the OGT, which is required in order to graduate. The test consists of sections on reading, math, writing, science and social studies sections. While the Ohio Department of Education began administering practice tests to students in 2002, the first official OGT was given in March 2005.
Like other state high-stakes tests, the OGT has received criticism because of the lower passing rate for ethnic minority and poor students, who are not able to obtain a high school diploma if they fail the OGT.
The OGT has an extremely high level of security regarding access to the testing material. There are no set passing score levels announced, although so-called "cut" scores are between 40 and 50 percent.
The tests include multiple-choice (one point), short-answer (two points), and extended response (four points) questions. The non-writing sections consist of 44 items (some of which are "field test" questions which are used for research and do not count toward a student's score). Calculators designed especially for the test are allowed for the math and science sections. The writing test consists of two essays and several multiple-choice questions. Students have two and half hours to take each section, with the exception of those students granted additional time because of an IEP, 504 Plan, or LEP status.
- Ohio Department of Education official profile of the OGT | <urn:uuid:2cef04c2-1baa-43c8-9f30-71f9b7076f7d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Ohio_Graduation_Test | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00107-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94191 | 436 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Everyone is well aware of just how much we enjoy the Kinect, both for its gameplay and hacking potential, here at Developer Fusion. Over the weekend, Microsoft Research gave everyone a fascinating insight into one of the software components that they built to leverage the Kinect hardware, specifically the human body tracking component.
The algorithm that they describe is implemented in software that runs on the Xbox device itself; it is built into the Kinect drivers on there, which is then provided to games and developers (you can also see its results if you have a development Xbox and go into the Kinect console). It provides an extremely reliable 3D joint orientation and location map which fully describes a human's pose in Cartesian space, for at least one person in the Kinect's view. This allows developers to build gestures and actions support on top of this to allow gamers to use Kinect to interact with the environment.
The algorithm, as described in the paper to be published at an upcoming conference, uses what's called a decision forest (a collection of decision trees, of course!) trained using thousands of sample datasets over even more thousands of hours of cluster compute hours. This provides advantages such as not requiring a calibration pose prior to use; not causing problems if pose varies greatly over a small amount of time; and efficient working with the type of visual data that Kinect provides. Developers who have studied the paper describe it as a fairly standard and understood but well implemented approach to solving the problem - the added bonus being that it works in the real world in all kinds of varied environments.
Not only is the algorithm a very smooth implementation - it is also reliable, and efficient. Due to the fact that most of the Cartesian space (x, y, z) manipulations can easily be handed off to the GPU for quicker computation, 200 frames per second can be achieved on fairly standard hardware. This is not so necessary in production games, as the Kinect hardware only runs at 30 frames per second itself, but it does allow a lot of other processing to occur in between. | <urn:uuid:ac877e22-719c-4047-944f-beb6df4ddbe3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.developerfusion.com/news/116479/microsoft-paper-reveals-kinect-body-tracking-algorithm/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00186-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949981 | 407 | 2.546875 | 3 |
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Bees were last night declared the most invaluable species on the planet at the annual Earthwatch debate. The audience heard from five eminent scientists who battled it out for fungi, bats, plankton, primates and bees.
Photograph by Rex Features
Bees gather around a honeycomb
While of course all species are invaluable for our ecosystem, the debate is designed to raise awareness about conservation by asking the audience to vote for just one of the species to receive a fictitious check for one trillion pounds to be spent on their conservation.
It comes us no surprise that the audience voted to save the bees. Who would want a world without honey, flowers, and third of everything we eat including chocolate and coffee? Not me.
Some 250,000 species of flowering plants depend on bees for pollination. Many of these are crucial to world agriculture. Bees increase the yields of around 90 crops, such as apples, blueberries and cucumbers by up to 30%, so many fruits and vegetables would become scarce and prohibitively expensive.
In addition, many of our medicines, both conventional and alternative remedies, come from flowering plants. And cotton is another essential product pollinated by the bee, so we could say goodbye to cheap T-shirts and jeans.
But it's not just the human race that would suffer. Spare a thought for the poor birds and small mammals that feed off the berries and seeds that rely on bee pollination. They would die of hunger and in turn their predators – the omnivores or carnivores that continue the food chain would also starve. We could survive on wind-pollinated grains and fish, but there would be wars for control of dwindling food supplies. South America's ancient Mayan civilisation is thought to have died of starvation.
Although other insects and animals do pollinate – such as bats, butterflies and even wasps – none is designed like the bee as a pollinator machine.
There are 20,000 bee species around the world including solitary bees, bumblebees and honeybees. Many are monoletic – pollinate one plant – others like bumblebees and honeybees are polylectic. While bumblebees live in colonies of a few hundred, the sheer number of honeybees in a hive – up to 50,000 in the summer - and their ability to be managed, manipulated and transported by man makes them the most valuable pollinator.
Unfortunately all bees are already under serious industrialized farming with its monocultures and pesticides has destroyed biodiversity and robbed the majority of bees of their habitat and food. While across the globe, the western honeybee – bred for its gentle nature and prolific honey making and pollination – is plagued by parasites and viruses, and also jeopardized by modern agricultural practices. More than a third of honeybees were wiped out in the US this year by Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease which is thought to be a combination of these assailants.
As Dr George McGavin, who was batting for the bees said: "Bee populations are in freefall. A world without bees would be totally catastrophic."
The Earthwatch audience should be applauded for heading his call and voting to save them, and itself as well.
For more, see Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons.
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Thank you for visiting all-creatures.org. | <urn:uuid:d614a9a1-eea1-466f-b910-f6b4a1c63e02> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/env-whybees.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00025-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94268 | 883 | 2.96875 | 3 |
- COG 301: Cognition and Design.
- Spring 2008. Per Aage Brandt.
Urbanism is design; architecture is design; of course, the aesthetic
shaping of artifacts (such as cars or coffee machines) is design.
Configuring surfaces, volumes, and portions of space in special
ways, creating and changing formats for things and places that allow
cultural practices to unfold, are essential "designing"
endeavors of human civilization and are, necessarily, activities
based on the cognitive capacities of our species. We "cognize"
the human world in terms of "designed" surroundings. Design
is a basic expressive activity, by which we interact with our artificial
and natural surroundings and create "interfaces" between
mind and reality, thus upholding an interpretable world.
Landscapes and cityscapes, work spaces of all sorts, buildings and
parks, exteriors and interiors of homes, factories, and temples;
furniture, artifacts such as machines, tools, weapons, symbolic
objects, even our own bodies, are design.
An inquiry into cultural cognition, aiming to understand how humans
as social beings think and feel, therefore needs to explore this
dimension of spatial expressivity and acknowledge it as a constitutive
fact of human meaning production, and needs to study the aesthetic
and pragmatic, political and historical, philosophical and religious,
and other semiotic aspects of this basic form of human creativity.
This course will focus on spatial expressivity – design –
in several primary keys and scales, including design for learning;
design for verbal and technical communication, interaction, and
commerce; design for expressions of authority; and design for emotional
The course will offer ample opportunities for empirical analyses,
presentations, and include two written assignments. Grading is based
on active participation (50%), presentations (25%), assignments
Cross, Nigel. 2006. Designerly Ways of Knowing. London:
Eastman, C., Newstetter, W., McCracken, M. 2001. Design knowing
cognition in design education. New York: Elsevier. The journal | <urn:uuid:398d0278-066a-4735-b2b9-9466fb3d929b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://case.edu/artsci/cogs/CognitionDesign301.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00111-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.888447 | 446 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Rather than the traitor as Judas is portrayed in the New Testament, The Gospel of Judas indicates that he acted at the request of Jesus to help him shed his earthly body.
Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton University, said that "the people who loved, circulated and wrote down these gospels did not think they were heretics".
Terry Garcia, of the National Geographic Society, which made the manuscript public, said it was probably written around AD300 in Coptic script and was a copy of an earlier Greek manuscript.
The manuscript was discovered in
a desert cave in Egypt
The papyrus script, known as a codex, was found in the desert in Egypt in the 1970s and has now been authenticated by carbon dating and studied and translated by biblical scholars, National Geographic announced.
Garcia said: "The codex has been authenticated as a genuine work of ancient Christian apocryphal literature on five fronts: radiocarbon dating, ink analysis, multispectral imaging, contextual evidence and paleographic evidence."
Unlike the four gospels in the Bible, this text indicates that Judas betrayed Jesus at Jesus's own request.
The text begins with "the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot".
The key passage comes when Jesus tells Judas: "You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothed me."
Scholars said this indicates that Judas would help liberate the spiritual self by helping Jesus get rid of his body.
Garcia said the codex "enhances our knowledge of the history and theological viewpoints of the early Christian period".
The manuscript was first mentioned in a treatise in around AD180 by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon. The bishop denounced the manuscript as differing from mainstream Christianity.
There were several gospels in circulation at the time in addition to the four in the Bible. When those gospels were denounced, it was thought that believers hid them away.
The gospel of Judas was kept by a group called the Gnostics, who believed that the way to salvation was through secret knowledge given by Jesus to his inner circle.
National Geographic said the author of the gospel of Judas believed that Judas Iscariot alone understood the true significance of Christ's teachings. | <urn:uuid:64d5847a-6929-4d90-aa9d-054f3e9e87d5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2006/04/200841011535022899.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00065-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976497 | 476 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Dec. 21 is the day many believe the ancient Maya predicted the world would end. The hype has spread on social media, illustrating the world's fascination with the end of time. NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports.
After years of claptrap about the Maya apocalypse on 12/21/12, the Big Day has dawned in many parts of the world. It's daytime in China, one of the world's hot spots for doomsday angst. So far, no solar flares have fried the earth, and no mountains have fallen into the sea. The sun will soon rise on Mexico's ancient Maya monuments, where thousands are gathering to greet a new era.
"I don't think there's going to be a herd of jaguars descending from the heavens," said John Henderson, an anthropologist at Cornell University who specializes in the Maya world.
Archaeologists and astronomers have thoroughly debunked everything about the doomsday myth: The Maya never expected that the world would end when their Long Count calendar rolled over to the next 144,000-day cycle in 2012. Earth's magnetic field is not going haywire. There's no threat from the Large Hadron Collider, or the sun, or unseen planets, or the galactic plane.
Not everything about the Big Day is doom and gloom: Tourists and New Age types have flocked to the Maya ruins of Chichen Itza to greet Friday's dawn and the start of a new age with rituals old and new. "There is an explosion of consciousness through this," a gray-haired Californian musician named Shambala Songstar told Reuters. "We are becoming billionaires of energy. Opening to receive more light and more joy."
Minu Nair, a 27-year-old tourist from India, joked about the doomsday connection after hiking up to the top of the Maya pyramid at Coba, about an hour's drive from Chichen Itza. "At least we can die saying we saw the end of the world," he said with a laugh.
But not everything is sweetness and light, either. "We have to beware of mass psychosis," said Mexico's best-known soothsayer, Antonio Vazquez Alba. According to The Associated Press, Vazquez warned his followers to stay away from mass gatherings on Friday, out of concern about stampedes — or even mass suicides "of the kind we’ve seen before."
Victor Ruiz Garcia / Reuters
A man in a warrior costume dances in front of the Pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza in Mexico on Thursday.
Hector Retamal / AFP - Getty Images
A member of a folklore group places a Maya mask on his head in front of the Gran Jaguar temple in the Tikal archaeological site, north of Guatemala City.
Hector Retamal / AFP - Getty Images
A member of a folk group performs wearing a Maya mask at the Tikal archaeological site.
Orlando Sierra / AFP - Getty Images
Guatemalan shaman Christian Nottbohn conducts a Maya ceremony in Rastrajon, which was once a settlement for warriors tasked with protecting the ancient city of Copan in present-day Honduras.
Elsewhere, more than 1,000 members of Church of Almighty God were reportedly detained in China for spreading doomsday rumors. Hundreds more were heading for Serbia's Mount Rtanj and the French town of Bugarach, in search of a haven from the apocalypse. Authorities in Argentina limited access to a mountain called Cerro Uritorco after rumors spread about a plan for "massive spiritual suicide." In Michigan, dozens of schools were shut down early, partly because of end-of-the-world worries stoked by the Maya hype.
What would the ancient Maya think? "The Maya thought about everything in terms of cycles," Henderson told NBC News today. "Some may have expected the gods to fine-tune their creation of humanity. But others may have taken it more as an occasion to contemplate whether they were the kind of people they ought to be. And we can take it in the same way."
Think of it as the opportunity for New Year's Resolutions — or, in this case, New Baktun's Resolutions.
The Maya Long Count calendar divides time into a series of periods, building up to a cycle called the baktun that lasts 144,000 days, or a little more than 394 years. Dec. 21 marks the completion of 13 baktuns, which the Maya saw as a full cycle of creation. In some texts, the end of the 13th baktun — 126.96.36.199.0, in numerical notation — was used to refer to a long, long time.
"It would be like you and I saying, 'George Washington was such a great leader for us that we'll still be talking about him in the year 3000,'" said Walter Witschey, an anthropologist and Maya expert at Longwood University in Virginia.
But the Maya never thought time stopped in 2012 — or the year 3000, for that matter. A recently discovered Maya workshop demonstrated that calendar-makers contemplated time frames well beyond 2012, and the longest Maya calendar cycle, the alautun, goes out about 63 million years.
The concept of a Maya apocalypse appears to date to the 1960s: That was when anthropologist Michael Coe wrote a book speculating that the Maya saw the final day of the 13th baktun as the time for an "Armageddon" that would overtake all creation. Over the years, that idea became wrapped up with Christian ideas about the end times.
"So much of this Maya calendar fascination plays to very natural human tendencies to look for sources of information about the future, right?" said Loa Traxler, an archaeologist who is the curator of a "Maya 2012" exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. "When you add to that a lot of opinions that would point us to the end of days, and events of great reckoning, and destruction as the opening chapter of great change ... those are trends that play very strongly in modern society."
Some cultures get more concerned about it than others. In May, an international public opinion survey conducted by Ipsos for Reuters found that 20 percent of the Chinese respondents agreed that the Maya calendar would mark the end of the world. About 12 percent of the U.S. respondents felt that way, compared with only 4 percent in Germany.
Traxler said she encountered several well-educated people who asked her serious questions about the 2012 Maya apocalypse during a cruise through the Mediterranean in 2009. "It caught me by surprise," she said.
Her experience on that cruise was one of the reasons why she went to work on the "Maya 2012" exhibit, which tells the full story about the ancient Maya and their attentiveness to the cycles of time. "It has been quite an amazing adventure over the last several months," she said. "People have decided to make hay out of this."
Dec. 21 has arrived, and predictions about the end of the world have proven false. TODAY's Jenna Wolfe asks people who believed the prophecy how they plan to move forward, now that we're all still here.
So when exactly does it stop? The consensus view among archaeologists is that the 13th baktun will end, and the 14th will begin, at sunrise Friday. "That would be sunrise in the Maya world, not in Beijing," Henderson joked.
But Witschey said there's still a bit of uncertainty about how the dates are calculated. "Most scholars would agree that we have a match within about three or four days," he said. "That means that the rollover of cycle 13 is going to hit on Dec. 21, or 23, or 24."
If past doomsday scares are any guide, it will take a while for the folks who were so worried about 12/21/12 to settle down. Some might claim that the date for the apocalypse was miscalculated, and will actually come at a later time. Others might say that the world-shifting change has actually begun, but the rest of us just can't sense it yet. Case studies abound, ranging from the Great Disappointment of 1844 to the Planet Clarion prophecy of 1954 to the Rapture of 2011.
The precise day or hour of the Maya calendar turnover doesn't matter all that much to Witschey.
"It's no big deal," he said. "Whatever day it is, I'm going to wake up the next day, going forward."
That sounds sensible to me. How's it sound to you? Even though it's no big deal, we'll be passing along updates during the Big Day and beyond. Just check in with http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/2012 for the latest.
Update for 9:15 p.m. ET: Although New Zealand hasn't had to contend with a Maya apocalypse, they might have to deal with the remnants of Cyclone Evan over the long weekend.
Update for 11:15 p.m. ET: NASA says it has been fielding hundreds of questions a day from people who are worried about 12/21/12. "We have done all we can to answer questions from the public," David Morrison, an astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center, told NBC News in an email. "Unfortunately, many don't believe us, like several mothers who have written to me in the last few hours asking if they should keep their children at home today."
Morrison forwarded one email message (with the sender's name removed) that he said was typical. Here's what it said: "Just like to know how I can survive the end of the world? Two friends of mine committed suicide this week because of that dreaded day, date. I just want to try to survive, and please tell me what to do!?"
It's impossible to verify the substance of that particular email, but if the sentiment is "typical," I'm hoping such folks are getting the reassurance they need. DON'T PANIC!
Update for 9:20 a.m. ET Dec. 21: I've added a video from TODAY that sounds the all-clear in the apocalypse drill.
More about 2012:
- Why NASA jumped the gun on doomsday
- Doomsday hot spots around the globe
- Video: 'We're very respectful of traditions'
- Five apocalyptic dooms and why they won't happen
- Apocalypse-shmockalypse: 6 genuine natural threats
- Cosmic Log archive on 2012 and doomsday fears
This report includes information from Reuters and The Associated Press. The issue of when the 13th baktun ends is addressed in depth in "Exploring the 584286 Correlation Between the Maya and European Calendars" by Simon Martin and Joel Skidmore, published in the Fall 2012 issue of The PARI Journal.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. | <urn:uuid:5de3a066-a8b4-426e-a258-a516d786fb4d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/20/16048963-the-maya-calendars-big-day-dawns-with-no-doomsday-in-sight?lite | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00080-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962201 | 2,358 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Two hundred years before the Sioux ceded their land to the American government, the explorers, fur traders, and missionaries who came to this region found what the Native Americans had long treasured for it’s beauty and sustenance. The exploration of the Lake City area by Europeans is believed to date to 1654 when the French explorers Radisson and Grosseilliers came to the area. These explorers lived for a time with the Native Americans and engaged in the fur trade.
In 1823, the Virginian was the first steamboat to venture up the Mississippi River. In 1853, Jacob Broody was the first white settler in the area and a year later, ex-President Millard Fillmore led the Grand Excursion which brought a flotilla of boats up the Mississippi to this area. Lake City grew rapidly since early settlers could see the potential of the area’s lush soil and the natural beauty of Lake Pepin. The steamboat St. Paul is shown at the Washington Street landing c. 1890.
By the late 1880’s, there was a very active historical society in the Lake City area called the Old Settlers Association. Many of the original members of the community belonged to this association which in the 1930’s evolved into the Lake Pepin Valley Historical Society. Many of the artifacts from these organizations were transferred to the Lake City Historical Society when it was formed in 1986. The mission of the Lake City Historical Society is to collect, preserve and disseminate the history of Lake City, Minnesota.
The Lake City Historical Society meets at 2pm on the 4th Tuesday of each month in the 2nd floor conference room of the Lake City City Hall. You’re welcome to attend these meetings. | <urn:uuid:23f8d175-d80d-41ad-b7fd-078a128f084e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.lakecityhistoricalsociety.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00165-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948169 | 354 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Oregon Historical County Records Guide
Clatsop County Scenic Images
A view of part of the West Battery at Fort Stevens. The fort helped protect the mouth of the Columbia River in the first half of the 1900s and is now a state historic site. (Photo No. clatDA0110)
About this image
Dimensions: 2571 x 3872 pixels (300 dpi version); Date created: August 2010; Camera: Nikon D80 Digital SLR; Lens: Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED; Photographer citation: Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives; Keywords/Tags: vertical, Oregon, Clatsop County, Fort Stevens State Park, West Battery, U.S. Army, military, fortification, concrete, Columbia River, artillery, defense, history.
County guide home | Scenic images home | <urn:uuid:70a24e70-5ee4-4529-b3db-6af0e48831f4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sos.state.or.us/archives/pages/records/local/county/scenic/clatsop/20.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403508.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00065-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.746031 | 194 | 2.59375 | 3 |
About 13 percent of the ice around Antarctica could collapse without catastrophe
The crumbling of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is kind of like a game of Jenga. Except instead of pulling blocks one-by-one from a shaky tower while your asshole friends watch, this version involves Mother Nature removing pieces one-by-one from a mass of ice roughly seven times the size of Mexico while we all watch, utterly horrified that the next piece will lead to catastrophic collapse resulting in massive sea level rise (required for ages 0+; lifeboats not included).
But thanks to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, we no longer have to just close our eyes and hope for the best. Researchers in France and Germany have mapped out the parts of Antarctica that could fall away without taking a bunch of other ice with it. So while we’re still largely helpless in the slow-moving disaster, we can now at least cross our fingers and pray that the next piece is part of this so-called “safety band.”
The study’s lead author, Johannes Fürst of the Institute of Geography at the University-Erlangen-Nuremberg, explained in a press release why it’s so important to understand these potential cascading effects, especially in Antarctica:
“In contrast to the situation in Greenland, the loss of inland ice in West Antarctica is not caused by melting. It is much too cold for that to happen,” Johannes Fürst explains. “The decrease is due to the glaciers there flowing into the sea at a faster rate than 20 years ago. This is what we call dynamic ice loss.”
But using a computer model to simulate ice flow, Fürst and his colleagues found that about 13.4 percent of the ice floating around Antarctica qualifies as “passive,” meaning that its collapse won’t actually lead to further ice loss. Non-passive ice, meanwhile, serves as a kind of buttress that, if removed, will lead to accelerated flow of ice from further inland. And it’s that release of inland ice that leads to sea level rise (floating ice shelves don’t lead to sea level rise when they collapse, since they were already in the water).
So for the next round of Nature’s Jenga (™ Human Stupidity), cross your fingers and hope that Mother Nature reaches for these passive pieces: the Mertz glacier (52.5 percent passive ice), the Drygalski glacier (49.5 percent), the Brunt/Stancomb-Wills ice shelf (35.5 percent), the Shackleton ice shelf (28.8 percent), and the Larsen C ice shelf (10.3 percent).
And throw yourself at the feet of Julia Roberts, begging that she doesn’t reach for anything along the Amundsen and Bellingshausen seas, where the average amount of passive ice hovers at around 7 and 5 percent, respectively.
In the mean time, don’t forget that Greenland’s collapsing, too: | <urn:uuid:343205a4-5696-464f-ba54-7e9b7cb55b11> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://grist.org/science/about-13-percent-of-the-ice-around-antarctica-could-collapse-without-catastrophe/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395166.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00040-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933441 | 639 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Quantum Communications and Cryptographyby Alexander V. Sergienko
Pub. Date: 11/28/2005
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
All current methods of secure communication such as public-key cryptography can eventually be broken by faster computing. At the interface of physics and computer science lies a powerful solution for secure communications: quantum cryptography. Because eavesdropping changes the physical nature of the information, users in a quantum exchange can easily detect
All current methods of secure communication such as public-key cryptography can eventually be broken by faster computing. At the interface of physics and computer science lies a powerful solution for secure communications: quantum cryptography. Because eavesdropping changes the physical nature of the information, users in a quantum exchange can easily detect eavesdroppers. This allows for totally secure random key distribution, a central requirement for use of the one-time pad. Since the one-time pad is theoretically proven to be undecipherable, quantum cryptography is the key to perfect secrecy.
Quantum Communications and Cryptography is the first comprehensive review of the past, present, and potential developments in this dynamic field. Leading expert contributors from around the world discuss the scientific foundations, experimental and theoretical developments, and cutting-edge technical and engineering advances in quantum communications and cryptography.
The book describes the engineering principles and practical implementations in a real-world metropolitan network as well as physical principles and experimental results of such technologies as entanglement swapping and quantum teleportation. It also offers the first detailed treatment of quantum information processing with continuous variables. Technologies include both free-space and fiber-based communications systems along with the necessary protocols and information processing approaches.
Bridging the gap between physics and engineering, Quantum Communications and Cryptography supplies a springboard for further developments and breakthroughs in this rapidly growing area.
Table of Contents
Quantum Communications with Optical Fibers
N. Gisin, S. Iblisdir, W. Tittel, and H. Zbinden
Advanced Quantum Communications Experiments with Entangled Photons
M. Aspelmeyer, H. R. B¨ ohm, A. Fedrizzi, S. Gasparoni, M. Lindenthal, G. Molina-Terriza, A. Poppe, K. Resch, R. Ursin, P. Walther, A. Zeilinger, and T. Jennewein
The DARPA Quantum Network
Experimental Cryptography Using Continuous Polarization States
S. Lorenz, N. Lütkenhaus, G. Leuchs, and N. Korolkova
Quantum Logic Using Linear Optics
J.D. Franson, B.C. Jacobs, and T.B. Pittman
Practical Quantum Cryptography: Secrecy Capacity and Privacy Amplification
G. Gilbert, M. Hamrick, and F.J. Thayer
Quantum State Sharing
T. Symul, A.M. Lance, W.P. Bowen, P.K. Lam, B.C. Sanders, and T.C. Ralph
Free-Space Quantum Cryptography
C. Kurtsiefer, M. Halder, H. Weinfurter, P. Zarda, P.R. Tapster, P.M. Gorman, and J.G. Rarity
Noise-Immune Quantum Key Distribution
Z.D. Walton, A.V. Sergienko, B.E.A. Saleh, and M.C. Teich
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OK, so death is not a new concept to us but Dickinson does a good job making it fresh and strange by having death take the form of a man. You might be tempted to think of the grim reaper, with his black cloak and dangerous-looking scythe (the curved sharp thing he's always carrying around), but, no, Dickinson's Death is a real smooth operator. He's the kind of guy who would hold the door open for his date and offer her his coat on a chilly night. Dickinson uses the character of Death as an extended metaphor to examine what real death might be like.
- Lines 1-2: Death is introduced right away as the leading character and focus of the poem, performing a human action – stopping for someone on his way. If this were a play he'd be cast as the leading male role who gets a lot of lines. Substitute Death for any guy's name: "Because I could not stop for Tom – / He kindly stopped for me." Now, the beginning of this poem seems like the first meeting of two lovers. This personification of death as a male suitor continues throughout the poem. What does that say about the speaker's thoughts and feelings about death?
- Line 5: Now that we've established Death as a human character who represents actual death, let's start making those connections every time he reappears in the poem. In this line we know that the character Death is driving along slowly. What might this action mean when we apply it to thinking about real death? Well, it's definitely not a quick death, like from a gunshot wound or a gory decapitation. Perhaps this could be something more similar to death from a long illness, or slowly dying of old age in one's sleep. Dickinson doesn't really say, but we can look at the evidence she does give us to make educated guesses.
- Line 8: Further character development shows us that Death is polite and courteous. So if we were going to continue to relate this to the real thing, we'd probably come to the conclusion that this end wasn't too painful, and that the speaker (the one dying) didn't put up any struggle.
- Line 9: The "He" (referring to Death) has now changed to "We." This might be a hint that the two have joined and that the speaker is actually dying.
- Line 17: This marks the end of their journey, where Death has brought her home. This might, in more literal terms, mean that the speaker is no longer dying but is in fact dead, and laid to rest in her grave. | <urn:uuid:9a4c61d8-9a34-4667-abc7-7ba886e1b176> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.shmoop.com/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death/death-symbol.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00025-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98139 | 537 | 2.9375 | 3 |
March 27, 2007
CHICAGO, IL - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory are trying to design catalysts inspired by photosynthesis, the natural process by which green plants convert sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbohydrates. The goal is to design a bio-inspired system that can produce fuels like methanol, methane, and hydrogen directly from water and carbon dioxide using renewable solar energy. Four Brookhaven chemists will discuss their research on this so-called "artificial photosynthesis" at the 233rd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Mother Nature's work isn't so easy to perform in a laboratory. In the beginning stages of photosynthesis, the absorption of light by chlorophyll - a molecule responsible for the green color in plants - drives the complex photosynthetic reaction. The energy of sunlight is transferred in the form of electrons and positive charges throughout a pathway of various steps before the final products - carbohydrates (the plants' food) and oxygen - are produced. However, because the components of natural photosystems do not work properly outside their normal environment, the Brookhaven scientists are investigating other cataylsts that could be used to replicate these natural functions. Below are summaries of these talks, which are part of the American Chemical Society symposium "Catalysis Relevant to Energy and Sustainability."
NOTE: The embargo date/time for each talk is specified after the title.
Catalyzing Oxygen Production from Water
EMBARGOED until 11:20 a.m. Central Time/ 12:20 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, March 25, 2007
To replicate one of the important steps in natural photosynthesis, Brookhaven chemists James Muckerman and Dmitry Polyansky have turned to molecular complexes containing metals such as ruthenium that can drive the conversion of water into oxygen, protons, and electrons. These ruthenium catalysts hold water molecules in place to make oxygen bonds while the protons and electrons are transferred among the molecules and the catalyst, providing the charges necessary to continue the photosynthesis process. During this multi-step reaction, Polyansky tries to experimentally determine the stability and geometry of the molecules with different kinds of time-resolved optical spectroscopy techniques. Muckerman compares the lab results to calculations based on theory. Because the intermediate species can be very unstable, they might exist for much less than a millisecond, or one thousandth of a second. This makes catching the molecules in action very difficult. "The catalysts we're using are not necessarily the ultimate catalysts to be used in any practical photosynthetic device," Muckerman said. "The aim of our work is to understand how theses catalysts work and to elucidate the detailed mechanistic steps so we can design better catalysts." Muckerman will discuss his work at 10:50 a.m. Central Time/ 11:50 p.m. Eastern Time in room E270, Level 2, of the McCormick Place East, Chicago, Illinois. Polyansky will follow at 11:20 a.m. Central Time/ 12:20 p.m. Eastern Time.
Building a Bio-inspired Catalytic Cycle for Fuel Production
EMBARGOED until 3:45 p.m. Central Time/ 4:45 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, March 25, 2007
Further down the photosynthetic line, there's another molecule whose function scientists are trying to replicate. Like a robotic arm on an assembly line, a special molecule called the NADP+/NADPH coenzyme cycles back and forth, picking up a proton and two electrons and depositing them (or their combined negative ion, called a hydride) for use in the eventual production of carbohydrates. This coenzyme molecule is recyclable in natural photosynthesis, but cannot perform its catalytic function in the laboratory. The goal for scientists is to find an NADPH-inspired catalyst that will mimic nature's cyclical motion. "Using visible light, we want to regenerate hydride donors, where the same molecule will just keep turning over," said Brookhaven chemist Etsuko Fujita. Like Muckerman and Polyansky, Fujita and her coworkers are also using a ruthenium-based complex for their functional model. This artificial complex has been shown to work similarly to NADP+/NADPH, acting as the source of two electrons and a proton in the transformation of acetone to isopropanol. The researchers are investigating how the hydride donors can be generated using light, and plan to use this type of artificial catalyst for the production of fuels from carbon dioxide (or related molecules) in the future. Fujita will discuss her research at 3:45 p.m. Central Time/ 4:45 p.m. Eastern Time in room E270, Level 2, of the McCormick Place Lakeside, Chicago, Illinois.
Finding a "Supercritical" Solution to CO2 Reduction
EMBARGOED until 11:45 a.m. Central Time/ 12:45 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, March 27, 2007
One of the final steps in "artificial photosynthesis" is turning carbon dioxide molecules (CO2) into clean, useful fuels. Catalysts capable of converting CO2 into carbon monoxide (CO) - a powerful source of fuel - already exist. However, "the problem is that the catalysts are inefficient and slow - nowhere near efficient enough to use in a practical application," said Brookhaven chemist David Grills. One of the reasons for this is that the liquid solvent used to dissolve the chemicals deactivates one of the key intermediate species that reacts with CO2. So Grills is trying to eliminate the need for this solvent by pressurizing and heating up the CO2 (which is a gas under normal conditions) until it takes on some of the properties of a liquid and can act as a good solvent. "Now, our solvent is the reactant and nothing else is getting in the way," Grills said. In addition to speeding up the reaction time, the physical properties of this so-called supercritical CO2 can be easily tuned to change the reaction, and the use of toxic organic solvents is avoided. Grills will discuss his research at 11:45 a.m. Central Time/ 12:45 p.m. Eastern Time in room E270, Level 2, of the McCormick Place East, Chicago, Illinois.
The Brookhaven research is funded through the DOE's Chemical Science Program (Photochemistry and Radiation Research) and Hydrogen Program, which implements the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, a five-year program that began in 2003 to sponsor research, development, and demonstration of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. Specifically, the funding derived from DOE's Office of Basic Energy Sciences. Collaborators include scientists at the University of Houston, the Institute for Molecular Science in Japan, and the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.
Note to local editors: James Muckerman and Etsuko Fujita live in Port Jefferson, NY; Dmitry Polyansky lives in Wading River, NY; and David Grills lives in Coram, NY.
2007-604 | Media & Communications Office | <urn:uuid:0923b60b-9900-4147-b620-953ab7c22093> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=1604 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00080-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923502 | 1,507 | 3.5 | 4 |
Depression in Older People Linked to Development of Diabetes
A large study has shown signs of a link between having depression and developing diabetes. The study looked at 4,681 men and women 65 or older who did not have diabetes when the research began in 1989. The participants were screened each year for 10 symptoms of depression.
The results showed that participants who had symptoms of depression were more likely to develop diabetes, and that the more severe the depression was, the more likely the participants were to develop diabetes. This was true even after researchers accounted for lifestyle factors that contribute to diabetes, such as lack of exercise and being overweight.
The researchers believe it's possible that people who suffer from depression are less likely to take care of themselves. And they also believe that the stress hormone cortisol, which is found in higher levels among people who are depressed, could also contribute to the development of diabetes. When cortisol levels are high, people may be less sensitive to insulin, which increases the likelihood of diabetes.
This study points to the importance of taking care of all aspects of health—physical and mental. And it also stresses the importance of being tested for diabetes if depression is present.
Archives of Internal Medicine, 23 April 2007 | <urn:uuid:8ef8c357-3c11-4182-8d9f-74ffdffdb37f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mercyweb.org/mercy_health_articles_view.aspx?article_id=1437 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00189-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970555 | 246 | 2.59375 | 3 |
The survey of 1,031 US adults found ownership of laptops (64% own) and iPods/MP3 players (45%) is up most dramatically since 2005, when Gallup last conducted a similar poll.
Smartphones, which were not included in the earlier survey, have become common, with 62% of respondents saying they have one. Most respondents report that they now have Internet access, either at home through Wi-Fi (73%) or via smartphones.
Since 2005, VCR ownership has dropped rapidly (from 88% to 58%), as has desktop ownership (65% to 57%).
Ownership of cable TV (68%) has not changed since 2005, and essentially the same share of Americans own DVD or Blu-ray players (80%).
- The types of devices owned by the youngest adults surveyed (age 18-29) vary significantly from those of older respondents.
- Smartphones are the most common devices with this younger group (88% own). The majority also have have wireless Internet access at home (83%) and laptops (79%).
- Older Americans (65+) were most likely to report owning older forms of technology, including cable TV (74%) and VCRs (74%).
- A majority of Americans age 65 and older own a basic cellphone (61%), whereas only 25% own a smartphone.
About the research: The report was based on data from a telephone survey conducted in December 2013 of 1,031 US adults. Roughly half of the respondents were reached on cellphones and half on landlines. | <urn:uuid:dccf35d9-05a9-4965-b1f0-23a6f97db5be> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2014/24163/how-tech-tastes-have-changed-since-2005?adref=nlt011714 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00146-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978087 | 313 | 2.609375 | 3 |
The best approach to reducing incidences of foodborne illnesses in U.S. produce is prevention.
And frequent hand washing may be one of the most important preventive steps a produce facility manager or a grower can encourage employees to take to reduce risks.
“Prevention is the key,” said Patrick Hiller, Texas AgriLife Extension, delivering a talk prepared by Extension vegetable specialist Joe Masabni, who was unable to attend the recent Texas Plant Protection Association annual conference in College Station.
Masabni’s remarks indicated that recent foodborne illness outbreaks focused more attention on the produce industry, resulting in recent legislation to address the issue.
Good Agricultural Practices (GAPS) are being adopted by the industry to reduce potential for contaminants infecting produce and causing illness for consumers and workers.
From 1998 through 2008, 72 outbreaks involving contaminated produce were reported. Crops involved included lettuce, tomatoes, green onions and cantaloupes.
Contamination comes from three areas—chemical, physical and pathogens. “Pathogens are the most common contaminant,” he said.
Chemical contamination includes lubricants, cleaners, sanitizers, coating and pest control products. Physical contaminants include glass, wool, stones, insulation, plant parts and other foreign materials.
“Microbial contaminants are the most common cause of foodborne diseases,” Masabni said. ‘Most are present in the field.”
E-coli, Salmonella, Shigella and Listeria are all possible agents of foodborne illnesses.
“There are more than 200 different types of E-coli,” Masabni said, “and only a few of those affect humans.” | <urn:uuid:fc44ed07-a081-483f-a760-518cec612242> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://southwestfarmpress.com/vegetables/prevention-best-approach-reduce-foodborne-illness?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00100-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92746 | 359 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Sharks' troubles run deep.
The lagoon and other coastal nursery habitats for sharks are reeling from pollution, fishing pressure and other threats. Sharks that survive to adulthood then face an ocean of troubles, from fishermen seeking an adrenaline rush to others after fins for $100 bowls of soup.
"We're killing about 6 1/2 to 8 percent of the sharks out there per year," said Boris Worm, professor of marine biology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
Shark reproduction, even at its best, can't keep pace with shark deaths. Most shark species are losing ground, including many that roam the Space Coast. Some could face extinction within a decade or two.
And while sharks might not exactly tug at our heartstrings like dolphins and other more cuddly creatures, think about those scallops or that lobster you enjoy. Sharks play such an integral role in the food web that if they vanish, the effect could be felt on your dinner plate.
"They're like slow-moving disasters," Worm said of shark declines. "I think overall, the ball is with the public, with the policymakers. I think scientists have done their work."
Fishing pressure from those who slaughter sharks only for their fins is the main threat.
"This is a global problem. We pick on the apex predators," said Grant Gilmore, a fish ecologist who's studied the lagoon for four decades.
Shark finning has grown more lucrative as China's emerging middle class increasingly desires shark fin soup, a delicacy that quenches upwardly mobile Asian appetites for status.
But finning is not just a Pacific Ocean problem.
"There's finning south of us in the Caribbean and in South America," Gilmore said.
He's even seen evidence of finning off Cape Hatteras, NC.
"There were carcasses laying all over the bottom without their fins," he said.
According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Shark Specialist Group, 28 percent of shark species are at risk of extinction.
An estimated 100 million sharks are killed annually, Worm and other researchers estimate, 20 million or more per every fatal shark attack.
And that wholesale slaughter could already be sending dire consequences cascading down the food chain, much to the bane of scallop and lobster lovers.
"What we're finding is that for some of these big species, if you don't have them, you're going to be in trouble," said Michael Heithaus, marine biologist at Florida International University.
He likens the ecological effects to how wolf declines enabled deer population booms.
Researchers suspect the collapse of some lobster and scallop fisheries in recent decades might have been due, in part, to shark declines. The theory: With fewer sharks to eat them, octopuses that feast on spiny lobster can flourish. And rays — no longer fodder for sharks — are free to gobble up bay scallops at will.
In western Australia, fewer tiger sharks resulted in more sea turtles, Heithaus said, and other grazing species that denuded marine plants, the foundation of the food web.
"Without those sharks, you can wipe out large swaths of seagrass beds," Heithaus said.
Shark declines can trigger coral loss, as well. Fish spread disease to larger areas of the reef when fewer sharks are around to keep them in check.
So to better protect sharks, scientists want to know more about their life cycles. By identifying crucial nursery grounds, they hope to improve federal management of large coastal sharks.
But recoveries for many shark species could require decades, because many take 20 years or more to reach reproductive age and have small litters, every other year or so.
Scalloped hammerheads are among the most imperiled. Foreign vessels target them for their high-priced fins, which are used in soups that can cost more than $100 a bowl. The species is easy to catch in large numbers because it schools together.
The meat is considered unpalatable. But the fins are so valuable that fishermen dump the rest of the shark at sea to die, making room for more fins.
Scalloped hammerheads and many other sharks also are killed as "by-catch" in fisheries targeting other species.
Last month, the federal government listed four key populations of scalloped hammerhead sharks under the Endangered Species Act. The move didn't include scalloped hammerheads off Florida's east coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, where strict fishing rules already exist.
While finning is rare — and illegal — off Florida, scientists say the bigger problem here is the drastic drop in lagoon seagrass which has stressed one of the most vital shark nursery habitats.
"The seagrass is the basis of the food chain," Gilmore said. "The food resources have really gone down substantially."
Among the lagoon sharks potentially in peril: bull sharks, scalloped hammerheads and sawfish, to name a few.
The Indian River Lagoon is the most vital nursery habitat for bull sharks on the Atlantic coast.
Large pregnant bull sharks, some upward of 8-feet long, enter the lagoon through Sebastian Inlet and other inlets, usually between May and August. They typically don't eat while in the lagoon but just give birth to their pups and exit the estuary, unbeknownst to swimmers and waders.
Despite the bull shark's reputation as among the most dangerous offshore, there's never been a documented shark attack in the 156-mile-long lagoon.
Scalloped hammerheads and lemon sharks are also known to enter the lagoon, but mostly near inlets.
Another lagoon dweller, the sawfish — an intermediate between sharks and rays — is the Rodney Dangerfield of the shark world. These lowly "flat" sharks garner much less press, fear or respect. But they are among the most endangered shark-like species, and the strangest.
This odd-looking creature swims through schools of mullet, swiping its saw side-to-side, stunning fish to make them easy eating.
Sawfish can grow more than 20 feet and were once commonplace in the lagoon. They have all but vanished from overfishing. While classified as rays, they're primarily shark-like in appearance and closely related to sharks.
In the 1800s, net fishermen wanted to rid the lagoon of sawfish because they ruined nets.
"Some fishermen caught well over 100 sawfish in a single season," Gilmore said.
The 1995 ban on nets that entangle fish by the gills helped sawfish and other Florida sharks rebound, fish biologists say.
"Without question, I think they are rebounding in the southern end of the lagoon," Gilmore said. "We're hearing more and more reports of them."
But collectively, sharks have a long road to recovery, and much of their fate lies far off our shores, says Worm, of Dalhousie University.
Market forces are already starting to make shark fin soup unfashionable in China, he said. "You do see the culture shifting at the marketplace. It's a real race against time, though." | <urn:uuid:81c824b9-cc24-419a-8c70-6841e551ef0c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.portclintonnewsherald.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/13/sharks-threats-extinction/13991033/?from=global | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00165-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956052 | 1,494 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Introduction and Timeline for Acts 13–15
Acts 13–14 contains events and teachings from Saul’s first missionary journey, during which time he began to be known as Paul. This mission led to the establishment of branches of the Church in areas far removed from Jerusalem and “opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles” (Acts 14:27). Despite sometimes facing intense opposition, including enemies who stoned him, Paul persisted in his mission with faith in Jesus Christ and tireless efforts, and he experienced much success in the Lord’s work.
As the Church continued to grow, it faced a pivotal juncture, as recorded in Acts 15. The influx of many Gentile converts into the Church gave rise to a disputation among the Saints. Some Jewish Christians insisted that Gentile converts needed to be circumcised in order to be saved (see Acts 15:1), while others, like Peter and Paul, taught that salvation came through Jesus Christ and not through observing the law of Moses (see Acts 13:38–39; 15:11). Apostles and elders of the Church met at a conference in Jerusalem (often referred to as the Jerusalem conference) and were provided an inspired solution to the problem.
Commentary for Acts 13–15
Acts 13:1–14:26. Saul’s First Missionary Journey
During the 10-year period between Saul’s conversion and his first recorded missionary journey, Saul (later known as Paul) taught the gospel in Damascus, Arabia, Tarsus, and finally Antioch. As recorded in Acts 13:1–3, Saul and Barnabas were called by their priesthood leaders in Antioch, including the “prophets” mentioned in verse 1, to go on a mission, which would become Saul’s first missionary journey. For more information about Barnabas with Saul, see the commentary for Acts 9:26–31; 11:22–30.
This first missionary journey resulted in the establishment of branches of the Church in areas far removed from Jerusalem and Samaria (see Acts 1:8). Saul and Barnabas journeyed over 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers) on this first mission, teaching the gospel in areas where people had never heard it before. When Saul and Barnabas arrived at a location where there were no members of the Church, they would typically go first to the local synagogue and announce the gospel message to fellow Jews and to Gentiles who believed Jewish teachings (see Acts 13:5, 14; 14:1; the commentary for Acts 13:14–41). After teaching and baptizing those who accepted the gospel message, they called and set apart local leaders to watch over the Church after they departed (see Acts 14:23). Often they would visit the newly formed branches as they were returning to Church headquarters. The account of this first mission depicts Saul in his new capacity as a Church leader.
Acts 13:2–3. Leaders Receive Revelation about Callings
The Church leaders who called Saul and Barnabas to go on a mission had fasted and received revelation before making this important calling. Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Presidency of the Seventy told about a time when he assisted President Henry B. Eyring in assigning full-time missionaries to their fields of labor. After sharing what took place that day, Elder Rasband stated: “At the end of the meeting Elder Eyring bore his witness to me of the love of the Savior, which He has for each missionary assigned to go out into the world and preach the restored gospel. He said that it is by the great love of the Savior that His servants know where these wonderful young men and women, senior missionaries, and senior couple missionaries are to serve. I had a further witness that morning that every missionary called in this Church, and assigned or reassigned to a particular mission, is called by revelation from the Lord God Almighty through one of these, His servants” (“The Divine Call of a Missionary,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2010, 53).
Acts 13:3–4. They “Laid Their Hands on Them [and] Sent Them Away”
In connection with Acts 13:3, Elder Bruce R. McConkie (1915–85) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught, “Saul and Barnabas were called by prophecy and were either ordained or set apart or both by the laying on of hands” (Doctrinal New Testament Commentary, 3 vols. [1965–73], 2:120). The laying on of hands by priesthood leaders to set people apart for callings is a long-established practice in both the ancient and modern Church (see Deuteronomy 34:9; D&C 36:1–2; Articles of Faith 1:5).
President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) explained that being set apart is of great importance today, just as it was in the ancient Church:
“The setting apart is an established practice in the Church and men and women are ‘set apart’ to special responsibility, in ecclesiastical, quorum, and auxiliary positions. …
“To some folk the setting apart seems a perfunctory act while others anticipate it eagerly, absorb every word of it, and let their lives be lifted thereby.
“The setting apart may be taken literally; it is a setting apart from sin, apart from the carnal; apart from everything which is crude, low, vicious, cheap, or vulgar; set apart from the world to a higher plane of thought and activity. The blessing is conditional upon faithful performance. …
“In my experience there have been numerous people who like Saul … have, through the setting apart, received ‘largeness of heart,’ extended influence, increased wisdom, enlarged vision, and new powers” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1958, 57).
Acts 13:4–11. Priesthood Power to Curse
At Paphos, a Roman official, Sergius Paulus, desired to hear the gospel and called for Paul and Barnabas. As they attempted to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ, they were opposed by “a false prophet” and “sorcerer” ironically named Bar-Jesus (son of Jesus), also called Elymas (see Acts 13:6–8). Paul declared that Elymas was trying “to pervert the right ways of the Lord” and cursed him with blindness (Acts 13:10–11). This experience demonstrates that the Lord gives His authorized servants the power both to bless and to curse (see D&C 124:93; compare Alma 30:49–50).
Elder Bruce R. McConkie clarified that the priesthood should never be used to curse someone unless the priesthood holder is directed by the Spirit to do so: “Cursings as well as blessings may be administered by the power and authority of the priesthood … , but the Lord’s earthly agents are sent forth primarily to bless and not to curse, and no curse should ever be decreed except by direct revelation from the Lord commanding such to be done” (Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed. , 175–76; see also the commentary for Matthew 10:14).
Acts 13:5, 13. John Mark Accompanied Paul on His First Mission
John, who is mentioned in Acts 13:5, is elsewhere called John Mark, Mark, and Marcus. He probably wrote the Gospel According to St. Mark. He was the cousin of Barnabas (see Colossians 4:10), and he accompanied Saul and Barnabas at the beginning of their first missionary journey. John Mark’s unexpected departure from the other missionaries at Perga caused a later disagreement between Saul and Barnabas as they prepared to leave on their second mission (see Acts 15:37–40). The scriptures do not mention the reason Mark left the mission field. But he later accompanied Barnabas to Cyprus, was with Timothy at Ephesus, and is probably the Marcus whom Peter spoke of as “my son” (see Acts 15:37–39; 2 Timothy 4:11; 1 Peter 5:13). Thus, Mark became a powerful force for good in the early Church.
Acts 13:9. “Saul, (Who Also Is Called Paul)”
In the early chapters of Acts, Luke referred to Saul by his Hebrew name. But beginning with Saul’s first mission among the Gentiles and continuing through the remainder of Acts, Luke referred to Saul by his Latin name, Paul, which means “little” or “small.” This was also the name by which Paul referred to himself in his letters.
Acts 13:14–41. Paul’s Sermon to Jews and to Gentiles Who Feared God
In Antioch in Pisidia (not to be confused with Antioch in Syria, where Church members were first called Christians), Paul preached both to Jews and to others who “feared God” (see Acts 13:16, 26; 14:1). God-fearers were Gentiles who accepted Jehovah as their God and lived various aspects of Judaism but did not fully convert to Judaism by undergoing the rite of circumcision. Many of Paul’s Gentile converts were God-fearers who worshipped in synagogues, knew the Jewish scriptures (the Old Testament), and were in a state of readiness to accept the gospel message. For more on the practice of circumcision, see the commentary for Acts 15:1, 5, 24.
Acts 13:22–23. Jesus Christ as the Seed of David
Acts 13:34. “The Sure Mercies of David”
Acts 13:38–39. Forgiveness of Sins and Justification
“Whether the violation be great or small, the solution is the same: full repentance through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement with obedience to His commandments. …
“I testify that of all the necessary steps to repentance, the most critically important is for you to have a conviction that forgiveness comes in and through Jesus Christ. It is essential to know that only on His terms can you be forgiven. You will be helped as you exercise faith in Christ [see 2 Nephi 9:22–24; Alma 11:40]. That means you trust Him and His teachings” (“Peace of Conscience and Peace of Mind,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2004, 16–17).
Paul also declared that the Savior made possible justification for “all that believe” and that this justification could not happen “by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:39). Justification is a gift from the Savior. He declares that a person is guiltless, free from the full demands of justice, being put back into a right relationship with God so that progress toward perfection can continue. To study more about the doctrine of justification by faith in Jesus Christ and not by the law of Moses, see the commentary for Romans 3:27–31.
Acts 13:45–46. “We Turn to the Gentiles”
Many Jews in Antioch reacted to Paul’s sermon by “contradicting and blaspheming” (Acts 13:45). The Bible Dictionary defines blasphemy as “contemptuous speech concerning God or concerning something that stands in a sacred relation toward God, such as His temple, His law, or His prophet” (Bible Dictionary, “Blasphemy”).
In response to the Antioch Jews’ opposition, Paul and Barnabas proclaimed that they would “turn to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46). This moment foreshadowed what would increasingly happen in the missionary work of the Church as many Jews opposed the gospel and Gentile conversions. After this event, as Paul traveled to other areas, he typically continued to teach the gospel “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16), but when Jews rejected his message, Paul readily “turned to” the Gentiles, finding many ready to receive the gospel.
Acts 13:47–48. “As Many as … Believed”
Paul taught the Jews of his day that the Lord had called Israel to be “a light of the Gentiles” (Acts 13:47; Isaiah 42:6). Israel was to provide salvation for all people who would accept it, including the Gentiles. The Jews of Paul’s day knew this, but they rejected Jesus Christ and His gospel (see Acts 13:47). However, many Gentiles heard Paul’s words and accepted “the word of the Lord” (Acts 13:48). The Joseph Smith Translation of Acts 13:48 states that “as many as believed were ordained unto eternal life.”
Acts 13:51. “Shook Off the Dust of Their Feet”
To read about shaking the dust off of the feet, see the commentary for Matthew 10:14.
Acts 14:1–6, 14. Paul and Barnabas Were Apostles
This is the first reference in the New Testament to Paul being an Apostle. According to the Bible Dictionary, “Apostle … was the title Jesus gave (Luke 6:13) to the Twelve whom He chose and ordained (John 15:16) to be His closest disciples during His ministry on earth and whom He sent forth to represent Him after His Ascension into heaven. … The title was also applied to others who, though not of the number of the original Twelve, yet were called to serve as special witnesses of the Lord. Paul repeatedly spoke of himself as an Apostle (Rom. 1:1; 1 Cor. 1:1; 9:1; Gal. 1:1). He applied the title to James, the Lord’s brother (Gal. 1:19), and also to Barnabas (1 Cor. 9:5–6; see also Acts 14:14)” (Bible Dictionary, “Apostle”).
President Joseph Fielding Smith (1876–1972) stated: “Paul was an ordained apostle, and without question he took the place of one of the other brethren in [the Council of the Twelve]” (Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols. [1954–56], 3:153). A vacancy in the Council of the Twelve was probably created because one of the other Apostles had been put to death.
A major theme in Acts, illustrated in Acts 14:1–6, is that the preaching of the gospel caused great divisions among the people.
Acts 14:8–10. “Faith to Be Healed”
When Paul and Barnabas learned of a plot against their lives in Iconium, they departed to Lystra and Derbe. In Lystra, they met a man who had been crippled from birth. Perceiving that the man “had faith to be healed,” Paul commanded the man to walk, which he did (see Acts 14:8–10). This episode illustrates that faith is a prerequisite for all who would be healed through priesthood administration.
In a notable talk on administering to the sick, President Spencer W. Kimball said: “The need of faith is often underestimated. The ill one and the family often seem to depend wholly on the power of the priesthood and the gift of healing that they hope the administering brethren may have, whereas the greater responsibility is with him who is blessed. … The major element is the faith of the individual when that person is conscious and accountable. ‘Thy faith hath made thee whole’ [Matthew 9:22] was repeated so often by the Master that it almost became a chorus” (“President Kimball Speaks Out on Administration to the Sick,” New Era, Oct. 1981, 47).
Acts 14:11–18. Paul and Barnabas Called Gods
When Paul healed a crippled man at Lystra, the people of the area who believed in and worshipped idols thought he and Barnabas were gods, and they sought to worship Barnabas as Jupiter—probably because Barnabas was older than Paul and perhaps larger in stature—and Paul as Mercury, the messenger of the gods, “because [Paul] was the chief speaker” (Acts 14:12).
Acts 14:19–22. Persecution of the Lord’s Servants
Some Jews from Antioch and Lyconium so vehemently opposed Paul and Barnabas that they followed them to Lystra and persuaded people there to help stone Paul. Paul survived the ordeal, and it did not dissuade him from continuing his labors in spreading the gospel. Elder Robert D. Hales of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles explained that one reason the Lord does not always shield His servants from persecution is that trials allow us to experience refining, strengthening blessings:
“There is meaning and purpose in our earthly challenges. Consider the Prophet Joseph Smith: throughout his life he faced daunting opposition—illness, accident, poverty, misunderstanding, false accusation, and even persecution. One might be tempted to ask, ‘Why didn’t the Lord protect His prophet from such obstacles, provide him with unlimited resources, and stop up the mouths of his accusers?’ The answer is, Each of us must go through certain experiences to become more like our Savior. In the school of mortality, the tutor is often pain and tribulation, but the lessons are meant to refine and bless us and strengthen us, not to destroy us” (“Faith through Tribulation Brings Peace and Joy,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2003, 17).
Acts 14:21–22. “Continue in the Faith”
When Paul and Barnabas returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, they were following their general pattern of returning to cities where they had established branches of the Church, “confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith” (Acts 14:22). In this context, “confirm” means to “strengthen.” In modern times, President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) taught that each of us has a similar responsibility to strengthen new members of the Church: “With the ever-increasing number of converts, we must make an increasingly substantial effort to assist them as they find their way. Every one of them needs three things: a friend, a responsibility, and nurturing with ‘the good word of God’ (Moro. 6:4). It is our duty and opportunity to provide these things. … This is a work for everyone. It is a work for home teachers and visiting teachers. It is a work for the bishopric, for the priesthood quorums, for the Relief Society, the young men and young women, even the Primary” (“Converts and Young Men,” Ensign, May 1997, 47–48).
Acts 14:23. “Ordained Them Elders in Every Church”
Paul and his companions called and set apart faithful men to lead the Church in the various cities where branches of the Church were established and then “commended them to the Lord” (see Acts 14:23). Paul later exhorted Church members to honor and respect their local leaders (see 1 Thessalonians 5:12–13). Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles also taught that we should support local Church authorities: “The Lord told the early members of His Church that the voice of His servants is the voice of the Lord, and that the hand of His servants is the hand of the Lord (see D&C 1:38; 36:2). I testify to the truthfulness of that principle, which imposes a solemn duty upon the members of this Church to be loyal to their leaders and faithful in following their direction. I affirm that the Lord will bless us for doing so” (“Bishop, Help!” Ensign, May 1997, 23).
Acts 14:24–28. Paul and Barnabas Conclude Their First Mission
Paul and Barnabas continued their first missionary journey by visiting several additional cities that lie within present-day Turkey and Cyprus. They concluded this journey by returning to Antioch in Syria, where they had begun their mission over two years earlier.
Acts 15:1–5. “Certain Men Which Came Down from Judea”
Christians from Judea visited Paul, Barnabas, and the other members in Antioch. These men from Judea and others like them are sometimes referred to as “Judaizers” because they insisted that Gentile converts to the Church must also convert to Judaism by undergoing circumcision and living the law of Moses. They likely saw themselves as upholding God’s commandment that Abraham and his followers be circumcised as they entered the covenant with the Lord: “And my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant” (see Genesis 17:10–14, italics added). However, Judaizers failed to understand that circumcision was merely a sign of the covenant rather than the covenant itself. They did not understand that for both Jews and Gentiles, entry into the new covenant with Christ was not by circumcision, but by faith, repentance, baptism, and receiving the Holy Ghost (see Acts 2:37–38).
The Judaizers’ teachings conflicted with the teachings of Paul and Barnabas, and as a result, Paul and Barnabas and other Church members were sent to Jerusalem to ask the Apostles how this issue should be resolved.
Acts 15:1, 5, 24. “Circumcised after the Manner of Moses”
Jehovah instituted the practice of circumcision among Abraham and his descendants as a token of their covenant with Jehovah. The token reminded them of their obligations and of the sacred and eternal blessings given to all who served the Lord in righteousness (see Abraham 2:8–11; Genesis 17). The law of Moses directed that every male child was to be circumcised when he was eight days old (see Leviticus 12:3) “that thou mayest know forever that children are not accountable before me [the Lord] until they are eight years old” (Joseph Smith Translation, Genesis 17:11 [in the Bible appendix]). In New Testament times it was common to refer to Jews as being of the circumcision and to Gentiles as being of the uncircumcision (see Acts 10:45; Romans 3:30; Galatians 2:7–9; Ephesians 2:11).
In the new covenant instituted by Jesus Christ, the token of circumcision was replaced by the ordinance of baptism. In a revelation given to Mormon and recorded in the Book of Mormon, Jesus Christ said: “The law of circumcision is done away in me” (Moroni 8:8). The debate over circumcision concerned not only the interpretation and application of doctrine, but also the accepting of new revelation through Church leaders.
Acts 15:6. Councils Seek Revelation from God
In order to settle the dispute regarding circumcision, the Apostles and elders of the Church “came together for to consider of this matter” (Acts 15:6) at what is sometimes called the Jerusalem conference. Acts 15:7–29 relates the discussion that took place among these leaders. Through counseling together and seeking the Spirit of the Lord, Church leaders were able to resolve the dispute and receive a confirming witness from the Holy Ghost. Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke of the eternal role of councils and how counseling together can bless the Church today:
“God called a grand council in the premortal world to present His glorious plan for our eternal welfare. The Lord’s church is organized with councils at every level, beginning with the Council of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and extending to stake, ward, quorum, auxiliary, and family councils.
“President Stephen L Richards said, ‘The genius of our Church government is government through councils. …
“‘I have no hesitancy in giving you the assurance, if you will confer in council as you are expected to do, God will give you solutions to the problems that confront you’ (in Conference Report, Oct. 1953, p. 86). …
“… When we act in a united effort, we create spiritual synergism, which is increased effectiveness or achievement as a result of combined action or cooperation, the result of which is greater than the sum of the individual parts” (“Strength in Counsel,” Ensign, Nov. 1993, 76–77).
Acts 15:6–31. The Questions Addressed at the Jerusalem Conference
The council at Jerusalem addressed two main questions. First, were Gentile converts required to be circumcised? Second, what, if any, obligations did Gentile converts have toward the law of Moses?
The question of circumcision was evidently settled early in the proceedings when Peter, the senior Apostle, “rose up” and spoke of his earlier revelation that Gentiles be accepted into the Church (see Acts 10:9–16; 11:18). He also related how uncircumcised Gentile converts had received the Holy Ghost, proving that God had “put no difference between us and them” (Acts 15:7–9). Peter affirmed that circumcision was not a requirement for their salvation. For both Jew and Gentile, salvation came through Jesus Christ (see Acts 15:10–11). The silence that followed Peter’s remarks implies that those in attendance understood and accepted the guiding authority of Peter’s revelation (see Acts 15:12).
James addressed the second issue of whether Gentile converts should conform to other requirements of the law of Moses (see Acts 15:13–21). James first cited scriptural support for Peter’s words, referring to the prophecy in Amos 9:11–12 that Gentiles would seek after the Lord. This scripture would have been persuasive to members of the council who were Pharisees, encouraging them to support Peter in accepting Gentile converts.
Next, James proposed that Gentile converts be instructed to observe some requirements of the law of Moses (see Acts 15:20). James recommended that Gentile converts be taught to abstain from “pollutions of idols” (meaning meats that have been polluted by being offered to idols) and from fornication. In short, converts were to avoid becoming entangled with the sexual sin and idolatry that were rampant in the ancient Greco-Roman world. Because the law of Moses prohibited the eating of blood (see Leviticus 3:17; 17:10–14; 19:26), James’s counsel to abstain from “things strangled, and from blood” may have been meant to avoid giving offense to Jews and thus hindering missionary work among them. James explained, “For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him” (Acts 15:21). In other words, since there were Jewish communities throughout the Mediterranean world, Gentile converts should avoid offending Jews and dissuading them from embracing the gospel.
Acts 15:7–30. The Council at Jerusalem
The following chart indicates some of the principles of effective counseling that were demonstrated at the Jerusalem council:
Principles Used by Effective Councils
Members of the council were free to voice their opinions. (“There had been much disputing.”)
The presiding authority explained his thoughts and referred to previous revelation. (Peter, the chief Apostle, presided over the council and, by referring to revelation he had already received, clarified that Gentiles need not be circumcised.)
Council members shared experiences and listened to each other. (Barnabas and Paul testified of the miracles God had wrought among the Gentiles, supporting the revelation received by Peter.)
Council members expressed their opinions. (James expressed his support of Peter’s counsel not to require circumcision of Gentile converts and offered his opinions about related problems.)
The council came to a united decision, which was confirmed by the Holy Ghost. (The council’s decisions “seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us.”)
The decision was communicated to those involved. (The decree was sent to the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia.)
Acts 15:13–29. James
James played an important role at the Jerusalem conference. He was the son of Joseph and Mary and the half-brother of Jesus Christ. At this time he was the leader of the branch of the Church in Jerusalem. Because of Jerusalem’s importance, James’s position in the Church was highly regarded. Paul called him an Apostle (see Galatians 1:19). He is the same James mentioned in Acts 12:17; 21:18; and 1 Corinthians 15:7. He is also the probable author of the Epistle of James.
Acts 15:22–28. The Holy Ghost Guided Leaders
In order to come to a unified decision that was in harmony with God’s will, members of the Jerusalem council sought the guidance of the Holy Ghost. Speaking of the proceedings of the conference, Elder Bruce R. McConkie stated: “Having arrived at what they considered to be an appropriate solution—that is, adopting James’ statements which were based on Peter’s announcement of principle—[the council] then asked the Lord if their conclusions were true and in accord with his mind. The answer, coming by the power of the Spirit, certified to the verity of their conclusion” (Doctrinal New Testament Commentary, 2:144–45). Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles also spoke of the Holy Ghost’s role in the Jerusalem conference:
“After Paul, Barnabas, and perhaps others spoke in support of Peter’s declaration, James moved that the decision be implemented by letter to the Church, and the council was united “with one accord” (Acts 15:25; see also verses 12–23). In the letter announcing their decision, the Apostles said, ‘It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us’ (Acts 15:28), or in other words, this decision came by divine revelation through the Holy Spirit.
“These same patterns are followed today in the restored Church of Jesus Christ. The President of the Church may announce or interpret doctrines based on revelation to him (see, for example, D&C 138). Doctrinal exposition may also come through the combined council of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (see, for example, Official Declaration 2). Council deliberations will often include a weighing of canonized scriptures, the teachings of Church leaders, and past practice. But in the end, just as in the New Testament Church, the objective is not simply consensus among council members but revelation from God. It is a process involving both reason and faith for obtaining the mind and will of the Lord” (“The Doctrine of Christ,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2012, 88).
Even though there were differences of opinion and “much disputing” (Acts 15:7) among Church leaders, they ultimately achieved unity as they responded to the promptings of the Holy Ghost. President James E. Faust (1920–2007) taught about the importance of harmony in Church councils: “In some legislative assemblies of the world, there are some groups termed the ‘loyal opposition.’ I find no such principle in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Savior gave us this solemn warning: ‘Be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine’ (D&C 38:27). The Lord made it clear that in the presiding quorums every decision ‘must be by the unanimous voice of the same; that is, every member in each quorum must be agreed to its decisions’ (D&C 107:27). This means that after frank and open discussion decisions are reached in council under the direction of the presiding officer, who has the ultimate authority to decide. That decision is then sustained, because our unity comes from full agreement with righteous principles and general response to the operation of the Spirit of God” (“Keeping Covenants and Honoring the Priesthood,” Ensign, Nov. 1993, 37–38).
Acts 15:23–28. Decisions of the Jerusalem Conference
Despite Church leaders’ unanimous resolution to not require Gentiles to be circumcised prior to baptism, many Church members did not readily understand or accept the decision. Robert J. Matthews taught: “The action of the Jerusalem council involved a significant policy decision. … Peter’s unmistakable experience with Cornelius makes it clear that the Brethren understood that the law of Moses was fulfilled in Christ, but evidently many members of the church did not understand. It was a matter of doctrine, tradition, culture, and emotion. Even though the Brethren had settled the matter doctrinally a decade before, considerable time passed before the matter was settled culturally and emotionally in the minds of some Jewish Christians. Furthermore, at least ten years after the council, many Jewish Christians in Jerusalem were still following the law of Moses. (Acts 21:17–25.)
“The decision of the Jerusalem council was not definitive and did not forthrightly say that the law of Moses should be discontinued. Although it declared that Gentiles did not need circumcision for salvation, it did not say that Jewish members of the church need not circumcise their sons” (“Unto All Nations,” in Studies in Scripture, Volume Six: Acts to Revelation, ed. Robert L. Millet , 39).
In the years following the Jerusalem conference, Paul still found it necessary to combat contrary teachings and attitudes wherever he went (see Romans 2–4; 1 Corinthians 7:19; Galatians 5:6; 6:15; Colossians 2:11; 3:11; Bible Dictionary, “Circumcision”).
Acts 15:30–40. Contention between Paul and Barnabas
Paul and Barnabas were chosen to travel to Antioch and report on the Jerusalem council’s decision. They took with them two Church leaders, Judas and Silas, “being prophets also themselves,” who helped preach and strengthen Church members in Antioch (Acts 15:32). After some time, Paul suggested to Barnabas that they return to the cities they had preached in during their first missionary journey in order to visit their converts “and see how they do” (Acts 15:36). However, a disagreement between Paul and Barnabas began when Barnabas suggested that John Mark join them. John Mark, Barnabas’s cousin (or nephew), had accompanied Paul and Barnabas on their first mission but had departed from them early on (see Acts 13:13). Though little is known about why John Mark left or what impact it had on the other missionaries, apparently Paul was still apprehensive about him. Ultimately Paul and Barnabas separated, with Paul choosing Silas as his new missionary companion and Barnabas choosing John Mark. Paul and John Mark were later reconciled, as evidenced in 2 Timothy 4:11 and in Colossians 4:10. Barnabas took John Mark and sailed to Cyprus (see Acts 15:39), and Paul and Silas journeyed to cities on the mainland.
Acts 15:40. Who Was Silas?
Silas was probably the “Silvanus” mentioned by Paul in several of his letters (see 2 Corinthians 1:19; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1). Silas was prominent among Church leaders in Jerusalem, and Paul chose him to accompany him on his second missionary journey. Silas was apparently the scribe for the book of 1 Peter (see 1 Peter 5:12).
In Acts 13–15, we read accounts of Paul and others performing miracles, preaching, and following direction from the Holy Ghost. How does each of these help to bring about the conversion of souls?
Paul was able to overcome intense opposition because of his faith in Jesus Christ. How strong is your faith and belief in Jesus Christ? How well do you stand against opposition to your faith and beliefs?
Points to Ponder
Carefully study the account of the Jerusalem conference in Acts 15:6–31. List four or five things the Apostles and elders did that illustrate principles of counseling together. Write a paragraph or two describing how those same principles could be followed in a family council to address issues faced by a family. | <urn:uuid:f124a2ce-f526-4620-8f91-5addfa90edaf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.lds.org/manual/new-testament-student-manual/acts/chapter-32-acts-13-15?lang=eng | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00145-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967217 | 7,737 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Mary Ellen Egan, None
Robin Giese, 59, kicks off each day by getting out of her wheelchair for a half-hour ride on a stationary bike followed by 30 minutes of stretching exercises. Most afternoons she visits friends or one of of her five grandchildren, and in the evenings she and her husband, Clifford, entertain guests or go out to dinner.
Giese hasn’t always been so active. She has multiple sclerosis, the degenerative disease of the central nervous system that afflicts 400,000 Americans. In MS the immune system attacks myelin, a fatty substance that protects nerve fibers much the way insulation protects electrical wires. When the unprotected nerve fibers, or axons, are damaged, signals are blocked or delayed traveling to and from the brain. This causes a variety of symptoms that can include blurred vision, incontinence, difficulty walking and paralysis.
Over three decades multiple sclerosis has slowly robbed Giese of her mobility and weakened her muscles, and without treatment she would be all but immobilized in her wheelchair. But an experimental drug has changed the course of her disease–and her husband’s career path.
The compound, called dirucotide, is a chain of 17 amino acids that mimics a portion of the protein in myelin. It works by acting as a decoy to divert the attacking immune cells. It has had such a profound impact on Robin’s condition that her husband has started a company, BioMS Medical, to bring it to market. Today dirucotide is one of two novel MS drugs in late-stage clinical trials. The other, from a small firm called Acorda, improves muscle strength.
There are four kinds of MS. Most sufferers are first given a diagnosis of a mild relapsing form of the disease marked by occasional flare-ups followed by months or years without symptoms. Ninety percent of patients with this condition eventually develop a progressive MS characterized by continuous deterioration. The two remaining types of MS, less common, entail a rapid decline.
Most existing MS therapies work by suppressing the immune system, and they’re generally effective only when the disease is at an early stage. They include
Dirucotide began with research conducted at the University of Alberta by doctors Kenneth Warren and Ingrid Catz. In 1989 Warren developed a synthetic peptide that mimics myelin protein. He began testing his compound on MS patients in 1994, and Robin Giese, who became a patient of his that same year, received her first infusion in 1996. Three weeks later, she says, her energy level had increased dramatically, and her head, which had felt “fuzzy” for years, was suddenly “clear.” “It was the best I’d felt in years,” she says.
Even though the drug didn’t allow her to throw away her wheelchair, she credits it with restoring her zest in life. “Before I started taking it, I couldn’t predict how I’d feel or what I could do each day. Now I wake up feeling great and have energy for the entire day.” She gets dirucotide infusions twice a year.
The university lacked money for clinical trials, so Clifford, who had made a fortune with a chain of Canadian oil-change stores, stepped in to help. He and his brother, Kevin, licensed the drug from the university and founded BioMS in September 2000. The following year they started selling shares to the public, and they’ve raised $180 million so far on top of the $1 million that they estimate they invested themselves at the outset. Kevin took the role of chief executive, and Clifford became chairman.
BioMS moved to late-stage clinical trials of dirucotide in January 2005 and has done them with 611 patients with the progressive form of MS. Testing should wrap up in mid-2010.
The results so far have been very promising. Patients with either of two genes associated with autoimmune disorders, HLA-DR2 and HLA-DR4, have gone five years without any progression of the disease. Those genes are found in 65% to 75% of all MS patients, and because of that analysts estimate that the potential market for drugs like dirucotide, effective for patients at later stages of the disease, could reach $10 billion a year. The current market for all existing MS drugs is $6 billion.
Acorda’s drug, Fampridine-SR, works differently from dirucotide and specifically addresses one of the most devastating symptoms of the disease, loss of muscle strength. Its key compound, 4-aminopyridine, has been around for 100 years. Academic researchers originally used the synthesized chemical to study nerve cell conduction. Not until the 1980s did they figure out how it works and how it might help with MS.
In MS the damage to myelin exposes channels on the surface of the axon, allowing potassium ions to leak out and thus dissipate the electrical current that carries nerve signals. The 4-aminopyridine molecule patches the exposed channels so the current can pass through.
But, early on, using the compound in humans proved to be tricky. Dosages were hard to control, and patients given too much had seizures. The drug languished until the mid-1980s, when
In 1994, after a decade of tinkering, Elan began testing a sustained-release version in patients with MS. A year later Acorda, then privately held, approached Elan for permission to test Fampridine-SR, as the new version was named, in spinal cord injury patients. Acorda began clinical trials in 1998 and, five years later, when Elan was struggling, secured the rights for Fampridine-SR for all applications.
Acorda started its tests of Fampridine-SR in MS patients in late 1999, and in June this year the now public company completed late-stage trials in 540 patients with all four types of MS. The results are impressive: 43% of the patients showed consistent improvement in walking speed, as against 9% of patients on a placebo.
“One of the first questions patients ask is if they’ll be in an wheelchair. Anything that helps to keep them out of a wheelchair longer is very important,” says Dr. Hillel Panitch, one of the drug’s clinical investigators and director of the University of Vermont’s Multiple Sclerosis Center. Acorda plans to submit its data to the FDA early next year and ask the agency for fast-track approval. | <urn:uuid:956a5c30-57bc-4555-8408-78bb72d4822e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0901/062.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967554 | 1,369 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Chongtiangong Palace, called Zhishan (means the hill of management) in old days, lies on Yeshan Hill in the southwest of Nanjing. It is said that, because Fu Chai, the emperor of Wu State the Spring and Autumn Period, used to cast swords here, the later emperors built their temples and palaces in this place. The Chongtiangong was named by Taizu Zhuyuan Zhang in the Ming Dynasty, which contains the meaning of worshiping the Son of Heaven. At that time, the nobility worshiped their ancestors in this palace. At the end of Qing, the Chongtiangong Palace was reconstructed as Jiangning, which was once used as a school for privileged children.
The Chongtiangong Palace is said to be the largest and most well-preserved group of ancient buildings in the south of Yangtze River. The present structures, based on a grand scale at the end of the Qing Dynasty, are built symmetrically on either side of the axis. The Chongtiangong Palace is now transformed into the Municipal Museum but it was formerly an imperial palace in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).In imperial times and Ming dynasty court life were conducted daily at the palace square, completed with eunuchs, courtiers, guards and dancing girls. And now large-sized performances of ancient music and ceremony of worshiping Tianzi are reenacted as an attraction in the Chongtiangong every day. | <urn:uuid:1d4b80c1-fd63-432b-962a-980f53f96b74> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.chinatravel.com/nanjing-attraction/chongtiangong-palace/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00089-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973028 | 304 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Haiti two years after the devastating earthquake: Help must continue
03/01/2012 - On 12 January 2010, a massive earthquake struck Haiti claiming the lives of more than 230,000 people and affecting three million others. Significant progress has been made in reconstructing Haiti. Nevertheless, the country remains closer to a state of emergency and not close enough to a path of stability and a future that offers opportunities. In 2011, SOS Children's Villages helped to address the problem and began constructing new schools and expanded long-term social programmes for children and families.
In joint initiatives with other international NGOs (including Save the Children, World Vision, Plan, Care and the International Rescue Committee, among others), in 2011 SOS Children's Villages has appealed to the EU and the UN Security Council to systematically continue their efforts while also supporting the Haitian government under President Michel Martelly.
The protection of population groups who are especially exposed to certain risks, such as women, children and adolescents, and the awareness for their needs must be given top priority, along with the creation of an inclusive social safety net, stronger participation of the general population and building up communal resources.
"Otherwise", says Helmut Kutin, President of SOS Children's Villages, "Haiti, which is at a crossroads and has a chance of managing a turnaround, will take the wrong turn and be thrown back even further in its development than it has ever been. Those of us who have committed ourselves to helping the people of Haiti must make good on our promises, even if true consolidation is still years away. The people here must be able to see and feel that things are going in the right direction and that they can participate and take responsibility."
SOS Children's Villages, which has been active in Haiti as a locally embedded organisation since 1978, is concentrating its long-term reconstruction efforts on children without parental care, on the support of families at community level and on schools. SOS Children's Villages began the step-by-step transition from an emergency relief programme to permanent social programmes in 2010. During the first twelve months following the earthquake, SOS Children's Villages provided tens of thousands of children with food every day, giving medical care where needed and providing shelter to unaccompanied children.
Number of abandoned children still high
Today some 130 additional children are still living in the SOS Children's Village Santo. To provide long-term care, a second SOS Children's Village will be necessary in Port-au-Prince. In 2012 a further programme for children without parental care will commence in Les Cayes, in the south of the country. Twenty children were placed in the SOS Children's Village at Cap Haïtien. SOS Children's Villages Haiti is concerned that the number of abandoned children is still very high - an alarming indicator that, due to poverty and impossible living conditions, families are no longer able to provide for themselves. SOS Children's Villages constantly receives requests to admit more children, but has only limited capacity to offer quality family-based care in SOS families.
The lives of many abandoned children in Haiti are dire. The conditions in most orphanages are catastrophic; measures to ensure children's rights are respected should be enforced as soon as possible. SOS Children's Villages is in a position to provide its ample expertise to work on the urgently needed improvement of the quality of care for, and the legal situation of, abandoned children together with government authorities and other NGOs.
Seven new schools under construction
SOS Children's Villages supports disadvantaged families in Port-au-Prince, Cap Haïtien and soon in Les Cayes. The main objective is to strengthen the resources of the communities in order to help families support themselves and to support women in particular. An additional focal point is the expansion and construction of schools and the provision of quality teacher training. In total, SOS Children's Villages is financing the construction of a community school and four public schools in Santo and the area of Les Cayes; furthermore, two new SOS Schools will accommodate a total of 1,000 students at each of these locations. Comprehensive training courses in child-centred education are being offered for teachers in cooperation with the University Quisqueya.
Situation in the camps is critical
Over the last two years, the government of Haiti, the international community, international NGOs and countless aid initiatives have contributed to erasing the devastation left by the earthquake. Reconstruction on this scale is an exceedingly complex and time-consuming process, even more so when the country has a long history of permanent political, social and economic crises.
The situation is especially precarious in the temporary shelters and urban slums. According to the most recent Humanitarian Bulletin issued by OCHA (the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), 550,000 people were still living in over 800 camps under worsening hygienic conditions (there were 1.7 million in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake). Cholera remains a serious threat in the camps - and not just there. Reports about a massive growth in the number of acts of violence and sexual attacks on children and women are also alarming.
The food security situation of an estimated 4.6 million Haitians - that's about 45% of the population - is unsatisfactory according to OCHA, though there is reason to expect some relief from the coming harvest. Food prices remain high. Massive investment in the education system is required for the construction of schools, the training of teachers and the eradication of school fees that restrict school access for many of Haiti's poorest families. | <urn:uuid:82624800-9bf6-4cfc-a293-ba4baf5ae03f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://reliefweb.int/report/haiti/haiti-two-years-after-devastating-earthquake-help-must-continue | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958469 | 1,128 | 2.640625 | 3 |
HTML Frames Code
You can use the following HTML code to create a web page split into separate frames. You can also check out these frames templates for HTML5 compliant frames templates.
HTML5 Compliant Frames
Since HTML5 became an official recommendation, frames (in the traditional sense) are not supported in HTML. Frames used to be created using the
<frame> elements, but those elements are no longer supported in HTML.
The CSS method is probably the better choice in most scenarios. It involves using a
<div> element (or any other suitable element) for each frame. Then using the CSS
overflow property to hide any "overflowing" content on an element, and enable scrollbars for the user to scroll with. You can do this by specifying
overflow:auto. You can also specify
overflow:hidden to prevent scroll bars from appearing.
This method of creating frames requires that the contents of each "frame" is actually included in the same file. So rather than creating a separate HTML file for each frame as well as another file for the frameset (as one would do using the old method of creating frames), you only need to create one file.
Here's a mini-example to demonstrate the concept:
The main difference when doing this on a whole page (as opposed to the small example above), is that you will need to use CSS to position each
<div> element on the page.
Check out these frames templates for a bunch of ready-made templates that are HTML5 compliant using the above method.
Traditional HTML Frames Code
As mentioned, this method is no longer supported in HTML. However, if you still need to do it, here's how.
To make frames the traditional way, you need 3 or more pages. One page is the frameset page, the other pages are for each individual frame. The following code is for a frameset page. Note the code pointing to 2 other pages - one for the left frame, the other for the right frame.
The frameset page:
<html> <head> <title>Frameset page<title> </head> <frameset cols = "25%, *"> <noframes> <body>Your browser doesn't support frames. Therefore, this is the noframe version of the site.</body> </noframes> <frame src ="/html/tutorial/frame_example_left.html" /> <frame src ="/html/tutorial/frame_example_right.html" /> </frameset> </html>
The left frame (frame_example_left.html):
<html> <body style="background-color:green"> <p>This is the left frame (frame_example_left.html).</p> </body> </html>
The right frame (frame_example_right.html):
<html> <body style="background-color:yellow"> <p>This is the right frame (frame_example_right.html).</p> </body> </html>
Don't forget to check out these HTML frames templates. | <urn:uuid:5c285bf7-d5fd-4bf4-9fe0-e3dc0d6c4351> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.quackit.com/html/codes/html_frames_code.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00113-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.752289 | 653 | 2.9375 | 3 |
February 15, 2005 The Jetpod is a Very Quiet Short Take-Off and Landing (VQSTOL) light twin-jet aircraft, can cruise at 300 knots (350 mph, 550 kmh) and requires just 125 metres to take-off or land using a combination of horizontal and vertical thrust. The Jetpod takes off then reconfigures from a VQSTOL jet and into a fast-jet in few seconds, then accelerates to 350 mph in just a few seconds more. If the Jetpod due for flight testing in 16 months, it will be a significant advancement in aircraft design. The aircraft will sell for less than US$1,000,000 and might be available to the military as early as 2009. Certification of the civil passenger version will be 4-5 years from first application, which is not planned for at least another 16 months - the time scheduled to complete the building of the first proof-of-concept. The flight trial phase will follow.
In addition to being nimble and quiet, the Jetpod is also big - it has a wide-bodied fuselage with a high cabin ceiling and wide rear clamshell doors with a walk/run-in foot-ramp.
There are extra-large passenger windows for viewing and increased ambient light.
There's room for eight people including the pilot. The cabin height is 1.82 metres throughout, and the cabin width of 1.55m also extends throughout.
Though the Jetpod seems ideal for a host of medium range door-to-door trips, commercial and private are likely to come behind a long queue of army, navy, police, emergency, rescue, ambulance and coast guard keen to make use of its unique capabilities, namely very fast point-to-point times over medium distances.
The biggest hurdle to overcome for an inner-city commuer taxi is noise - UK-based Jetpod developer Avcen's silencing technologies for the jet engines are the key to the Jetpod. The company claims that it will not be heard above the routine noise of street traffic.
Avcen claims its noise attenuation technologies will reduce the noise output of any existing engine manufacturer's relevant sized 3500 lb thrust jet engine by up to two recognised Stages or Chapters of jet noise, enabling jet noise to be reduced by as much as 50%.
The company believes its "in-house developed technologies are capable of going much further toward eradicating jet noise altogether."
Private & Commercial Use
The Jetpod can carry seven fare-paying passengers in the commuter/taxi role. With no noise and a short take-off distance, the Jetpod could become the future of fast inner-city air transport with incredible point-to-point times for distances over 20 kilometres.
Built for multiple daily sectors, the Jetpod can land on any flat piece of ground longer than 125 metres, and Avcen sees an ideal role for the Jetpod being low-cost, free-roaming, multi-sector, low-level, very quiet, city centre air-taxis.
Such taxis could take you 300 kilometres from the inner city to a country property or ski resort inside 30 minutes. Or from city centre to the airport in five minutes instead of an hour in an earthbound taxi. Avcen's new word for this class of aircraft is a "Transpeeder." Somewhere between Superman's "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" and "Beam me up Scotty" the Jetpod will transpeed you from one place to another.
Such scenarios are a long way off as the development of a safe air safety infrastructure to cater for such a scenario is many years away, though NASA is working on a Personal Air Vehicle project designed to enable such a scenario.
As a boy's toy, the Jetpod will be a true prize. A personal, low-noise countryside Transpeeder capable of landing on grass or roughly prepared dirt strips anywhere you like. Once airborne it accelerates all the way to 350 mph in a few seconds.
There are many transport tasks at which a Jetpod would excel, from moving corporate staff to multiple localised destinations through to use as an all hours country-city courier.
Police, Emergency, Rescue, Ambulance And Coast Guard Usage
For this type of work, the Jetpod is immensely flexible in its capabilitieis. With advanced "eyesight", the Jetpod can fly all hours and all weather. As it can loiter at 45 knots, it is also suitable with those eyes for quiet night surveillance operations by Police, Customs and Coast Guard or as free-roaming police security over major cities. Should it lock onto a target, it will not be outrun by anything on the ground, Bugatti Veyron or not.
For emergency response teams, the ability to relocate anywhere within 500 kilometres inside an hour would save many lives. As a civil surgical air-ambulance with the space to run straight in with a stretcher it would also save many lives.
The military M-300 Jetpod's 300 knots high-speed cruise is well suited to 7-man special operations rapid ingress/egress, battlefield command-and-control, fast extraction of wounded troops, and for Aircraft Carrier operations it does not need a catapult or arrester gear. A squadron of M-400s could conceivably operate from modified versions of other Navy ships.
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Jetpods
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), is a term you'll hear a lot more about over the coming years. In the past it has mainly been mentioned whenever a technologically advanced country (aka the USA) is involved in warfare.
The biggest advantage of a UAV is that it can be put 'in harm's way' - it can be put in a dangerous situation where the odds of losing a pilot (the most valuable part of any aircraft) are simply too great.
Used on a limited but increasing scale since the Vietnam War for aerial surveillance - 10 UAV systems were used in the US invasion of Iraq - UAVs are now taking on a more active combat role as well as finding applications in the private sector.
There are two Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) variants planned, and these offer some unique capabilities, including the ability to maintain a hover as well as sweeping areas at 300 knots.
With its advanced eyesight, it would be capable of fire watch, coast guard search and surveillance, 24 hours a day in all weather and will be capable of rescuing one person remotely under the control of base-station operatives up to 300 miles away.
The U-600 has been designed to carry out autonomous light resupply, construction and engineering repair tasking along-side oil rigs, large ships, high-rise buildings and other very remote scientific stations in desert or polar regions.
Gizmo has written some extensive articles on unmanned aerial vehicles, the worlds most advanced commercial UAV, multi-vehicle and voice controlled UAVs, the X45-C Unmanned Aerial Bomber and a host of others. | <urn:uuid:1489b20d-a03a-4bde-87cd-306c8401def4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gizmag.com/go/3695/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00130-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94363 | 1,462 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Deer and Lyme Disease, Research and News on the Relationship
This page presents a collection of the latest research and news on the deer-Lyme disease relationship. Browse our store for tick control products
Ecology of Infection Disease: A Special Report (On Lyme Disease) National Science Foundation
... Areas of patchy woods, which are very common in cities and suburban and rural areas, may have higher populations of Lyme-disease carrying ticks than forest fragments, which generally have fewer species than continuous habitat. This is because some species thrive in smaller places. White-footed mice, for example, are more abundant in forest fragments in some parts of the country, likely because fewer predators and competitors remain there. These mice are particularly abundant in patches smaller than about five acres, which could spell trouble for people living nearby: the mice are the main carriers of Lyme disease-causing bacteria ...
"Our results suggest that efforts to reduce the risk of Lyme disease should be directed toward decreasing fragmentation of deciduous forests of the northeastern United States, particularly in areas with a high incidence of Lyme disease ...The creation of forest fragments smaller than five acres should especially be avoided."
Tick expert: Killing deer, keeping chickens won't cut Lyme risk in Fayetteville May 26, 2016 New York, Syracuse Post-Standard... Felicia Keesing, a Bard College biology professor who has researched the distribution of ticks and Lyme disease since 1999, said culling some deer hasn't been shown clearly to cut the risk of Lyme in communities. She said many of the studies that indicate culling deer could help have been found to be unreliable....
Where foxes thrive, Lyme disease doesn't September 10, 2012 New York, Poughkeepsie Journal
... Taal Levi has studied environments from Brazil to Alaska ... His statistical analysis showed little correlation between the prevalence of deer and the incidence of Lyme. If that were the case, Levi said, “then why is Lyme disease so relatively rare in Western New York when deer are more abundant than in places here that have lots of Lyme disease?” ...Levi used statistical data to show that as fox populations went down, Lyme went up. The statistical connection between Lyme and other species wasn’t as consistent. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in June...
Lyme study highlights why small mammals spread disease September 23, 2014 New York, Poughkeepsie Journal
... The research also undercuts a misconception that Lyme disease is spread primarily by ticks that feed on deer, a notion that has incorrectly popularized the label "deer tick" for the black-legged tick that can be infected by other mammalian hosts... large litters of mice, shrews and chipmunks correspond with the increased chance that a tick will pick up Lyme disease and two malaria-like diseases... [read the article in PLOS ONE]
State of New Hampshire Tickborne Disease Prevention Plan [PDF] March 31, 2015
... For the years 2008 and 2012, NH had the highest incidence rate of Lyme disease in the US.... Because NH is near the northern limit of white-tailed deer range it is known to have one of the lowest density deer herds in the eastern US ... The main, and shared, reservoir host for the four tickborne diseases known to be transmitted in NH is the white footed mouse. Chipmunks, shrews, voles and birds, including the American Robin, have also been identified as reservoirs for Lyme disease, although are of lesser importance. Wild
rodents have been identified as possible reservoirs for anaplasmosis and babesiosis; woodchucks, squirrels and the white footed mouse are the three known reservoirs for Powassan virus...
Co-Infections Possible from Tick Bites June 24, 2014 Massachusetts, Boston
... New to this study, said co-author Felicia Keesing, is that the small mammals the ticks feed on also carry multiple infections... Ticks resort to feeding exclusively on small mammals when there aren’t larger animals, like raccoons or deer, to feast upon. ... scientists at Bard College, Sarah Lawrence College and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies...
Have deer gotten a false rap for Lyme disease? August 3, 2012 Earthwise [includes pictures and podcast]
... While deer host lots of ticks, so do other vertebrates, including raccoons, skunks, and white-footed mice. Eliminate deer, and ticks will feed on other hosts. Also, while deer don’t transmit the Lyme bacterium to ticks—the smaller mammals do. Rick Ostfeld, a senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, has written a book on Lyme disease ecology…
Help Stop the Spread of Lyme Disease and Kill Deer Ticks With Damminix Tick Tubes August 22, 2013 Massachusetts, Comtex
... "Homeowners trying to kill ticks in their own yards need to target the rodents that carry the Lyme disease bacteria," says the CDC's Division of Vector-Borne Diseases Director Lyle Petersen in its recent report. That's how Tick Tubes target deer ticks. Developed at the Harvard School of Public Health, Damminix relies on the natural nesting instincts of rodents that carry Lyme disease and is the only rodent-targeting deer tick control solution on the market today. "Historically, people focused on deer as the culprit, but it's mice that spread Lyme disease," says Damminix Company Director Ariana Ganak. "When deer ticks hatch, they are disease free. Immature ticks feed on mice twice a year, and when they bite the infected mouse they become carriers of Lyme and pass it on to the unsuspecting general public. At long last people are becoming aware that mice are the real cause of this public health epidemic ...
Spritzing deer with tick insecticide is one way to fight Lyme disease September 1, 2013 New Hampshire, Nashua Telegraph
... the black-legged tick picks up the bacteria – a spirochete, to get technical – as a larva from the blood of the white-footed mouse, which carries the bacteria. ... They aren’t called “deer ticks” anymore ... even if every deer in New Hampshire became tick-free, we could still get Lyme from ticks via the white-footed mouse... the population of white-footed mice has exploded ... A variant of the deer feeding station idea is available for ticks: cardboard tubes filled with cotton balls treated with permethrin, a tick insecticide. Mice take the cotton back to their nests as building material, and it kills the ticks...
Forest Journal: Winter in New Hampshire a time for survival of the fittest January 18, 2014 New Hampshire, Union Leader
... Deer don't experience severe winter tick infestations. They tend to groom off questing winter ticks in autumn...Overwintering deer ticks may be reduced by extreme cold. That good news translates into a reduction in future rates of human Lyme disease...
East Hampton, Deer in Town Sights July 5, 2012 New York, East Hampton Star
... As for Lyme disease, the Group for Wildlife suggests that the town do more to educate the public about how to avoid tick bites and to prohibit the hunting of turkeys, which eat immature ticks. Because Lyme disease is also spread by ticks that feed on the white-footed mouse, the report says, “it’s unlikely that any reduction of deer populations can alleviate the disease.” ... if deer were eliminated, the ticks would feed on other animals ... two recent studies show that “four-poster” stations, where deer are exposed to tick-killing chemicals, reduced ticks by 69 to 100 percent....
Hunting Isn’t the Answer to Animal “Pests” November 27, 2013, Time
... Efforts to reduce Lyme disease with deer hunting are ineffective because the ticks feed on a wide variety of host species ... The only places where hunting is effective are in isolated areas—islands and peninsulas–where the ticks have few alternate hosts. To reduce the incidence of Lyme disease in humans on the mainland, the number of ticks needs to be reduced, not the number of deer. A 2011 study published in Public Health Reports found that a tick-killing device led to a reduction in the incidence of Lyme disease in humans in the area, while deer hunting “did not show a clear decreasing trend.” ...
Missing Foxes Fuel Lyme Disease Spread June 18, 2012 LiveScience.com
Researchers used to think the increases were due to increasing deer populations ,,, However, the new data show these increases were independent of deer population levels... "Increases in Lyme disease in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States over the past three decades are frequently uncorrelated with deer abundance and instead coincide with a range-wide decline of a key small-mammal predator, the red fox, likely due to expansion of coyote populations,"... in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (June 18, 2012 article).
Council Talks Deer Management, Chevy Chase Program Deemed A Success? February 28, 2013 Maryland, Bethesda Now
... County data shows the deer management program racked up 5,598 deer kills during the 2012-2013 seasons, 5,571 in 2011-2012, 5,969 in 2010-2011 and 5,599 in 2009-2010. Despite those totals... In the case of Lyme disease, which some dispute is related to deer overpopulation, the numbers have also remained steady. There were 297 confirmed and probably cases of Lyme disease in the county in 2011 and 296 in 2010, the two most recent years that those statistics were available.
Surprise Culprits of Lyme Disease Boom June 18, 2012 Discovery News
Deer are not to blame for rising rates of Lyme disease ... Foxes don’t spread Lyme disease directly. Instead, they cull populations of small mammals, which are responsible for the bulk of infectious ticks. Where foxes are thriving, the risk of disease drops. But when fox numbers fall – often because coyotes move in, small mammal populations surge and Lyme disease flourishes.
Killing deer is no solution [to Lyme Disease] September 17, 2013 Connecticut, The Advocate, Laura Simon
Preventing Lyme disease is a vital goal, but killing deer isn't a solution ... Even when deer numbers are drastically lowered, ticks have no trouble finding other hosts and reproducing merrily.... Mice and chipmunks are important hosts for the immature stages of the tick, and popular songbirds bring ticks to new areas... National health authorities, such as the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Authority, as well as Connecticut State Health Department, are not calling for increased hunting because it will not effectively reduce human disease risk...
Predators, Prey and Lyme Disease June 18, 2012 New York Times (blog)
... While people used to blame deer for the spread of Lyme disease, Dr. Levi said that scientific evidence has indicated that deer probably aren’t significant transmitters of B. burgdorferi bacteria because their systems tend to quickly flush it out. ... models showed higher numbers of Lyme disease cases in places where there are fewer foxes. They detected no significant relationship between numbers of deer and numbers of Lyme disease cases.
Deer, predators, and the emergence of Lyme disease Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. June 18, 2012. Taal Levi, A. Marm Kilpatrick, Marc Mangel, and Christopher C. Wilmers
Lyme disease is the most prevalent vector-borne disease in North America, and both the annual incidence and geographic range are increasing. The emergence of Lyme disease has been attributed to a century-long recovery of deer, an important reproductive host for adult ticks. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that Lyme disease risk may now be more dynamically linked to fluctuations in the abundance of small-mammal hosts that are thought to infect the majority of ticks. The continuing and rapid increase in Lyme disease over the past two decades, long after the recolonization of deer, suggests that other factors, including changes in the ecology of small-mammal hosts may be responsible for the continuing emergence of Lyme disease. We present a theoretical model that illustrates how reductions in small-mammal predators can sharply increase Lyme disease risk. We then show that increases in Lyme disease in the northeastern and midwestern United States over the past three decades are frequently uncorrelated with deer abundance and instead coincide with a range-wide decline of a key small-mammal predator, the red fox, likely due to expansion of coyote populations. Further, across four states we find poor spatial correlation between deer abundance and Lyme disease incidence, but coyote abundance and fox rarity effectively predict the spatial distribution of Lyme disease in New York. These results suggest that changes in predator communities may have cascading impacts that facilitate the emergence of zoonotic diseases, the vast majority of which rely on hosts that occupy low trophic levels.
Climate, Deer, Rodents, and Acorns as Determinants of Variation in Lyme-Disease Risk Ostfeld RS, Canham CD, Oggenfuss K, Winchcombe RJ, Keesing F (2006) Climate, Deer, Rodents, and Acorns as Determinants of Variation in Lyme-Disease Risk. PLoS Biol 4(6): e145. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040145
Indices of deer abundance had no predictive power, and precipitation in the current year and temperature in the prior year had only weak effects on entomological risk. The strongest predictors of a current year's risk were the prior year's abundance of mice and chipmunks and abundance of acorns 2 y previously. In no case did inclusion of deer or climate variables improve the predictive power of models based on rodents, acorns, or both. We conclude that interannual variation in entomological risk of exposure to Lyme disease is correlated positively with prior abundance of key hosts for the immature stages of the tick vector and with critical food resources for those hosts.
Biodiversity and Disease Risk: The Case of Lyme Disease Richard S. Ostfeld and Felicia Keesing
Conservation Biology Vol. 14, No. 3 (Jun., 2000), pp. 722-728
"A positive correlation between Lyme disease per capita and species richness of ground dwelling birds . . ."
Full Abstract: Utilitarian arguments concerning the value of biodiversity often include the benefits of animals, plants, and microbes as sources of medicines and as laboratory models of disease. The concept that species diversity per se may influence risk of exposure to disease has not been well developed, however. We present a conceptual model of how high species richness and evenness in communities of terrestrial vertebrates may reduce risk of exposure to Lyme disease, a spirochetal (Borrelia burgdorferi) disease transmitted by ixodid tick vectors. Many ticks never become infected because some hosts are highly inefficient at transmitting spirochete infections to feeding ti cks. In North America, the most competent reservoir host for the Lyme disease agent is the white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus), a species that is widespread and locally abundant. We suggest that increases in species diversity within host communities may dilute the power of white-footed mice to infect ticks by causing more ticks to feed on inefficient disease reservoirs. High species diversity therefore is expected to result in lower prevalence of infection in ticks and consequently in lower risk of human exposure to Lyme disease. Analyses of states and multistate regions along the east coast of the United States demonstrated significant negative correlations between species richness of terrestrial small mammals (orders Rodentia, Insectivora, and Lagomorpha), a key group of hosts for ticks, and per capita numbers of reported Lyme disease cases, which supports our "dilution effect" hypothesis. We contrasted these findings to what might be expected when vectors acquire disease agents efficiently from many hosts, in which case infection prevalence of ticks may increase with increasing diversity hosts. A positive correlation between per capita Lyme disease cases and species richness of ground-dwelling birds supported this hypothesis, which we call the "rescue effect." The reservoir competence of hosts within vertebrate communities and the degree of specialization by ticks on particular hosts will strongly influence the relationship between species diversity and the risk of exposure to the many vector-borne diseases that plague humans.
Dilution Effect, "the scientific evidence as I’ve reviewed it, without any preconceived notion or political agenda or any other agenda, does not support the notion that tick numbers and Lyme disease risk are strongly correlated with deer numbers, and the data do not suggest that if you manage deer by hunting, you’ll reduce the number of Lyme cases.” Dr. Richard S. Ostfeld Disease Ecologist Ph.D., 1985, University of California. Buy the book on Amazon: Lyme Disease: The Ecology of a Complex System
Acorns And Mice Driving Unusual Lyme Disease Risks (ICEID 2) March 14, 2012, Wired News
Dr. Richard S. Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, explained .. Mice also can survive in much smaller areas than the larger animals, chiefly deer, that are usually blamed for perpetuating Lyme, Ostfeld pointed out. In sampling of “forest fragments” sliced up by development in three northeastern states, his team has not found a parcel in which mice did not thrive. Larger parcels with more balanced ecosystems, with natural mouse predators and larger mammals, actually tend to have lower Lyme density ...
White-tailed deer live throughout Minnesota, but blacklegged ticks are not found everywhere that deer live
From Michigan Department of Natural Resources (Lyme disease): The relationship between deer and the disease is complex. Deer show no symptoms of the disease. Deer may carry small numbers of the spirochete that causes Lyme disease but they are dead-end hosts for the bacterium. Deer cannot infect another animal directly and no deer hunter has acquired the disease from dressing out a deer. Infected ticks that drop from deer present little risk to humans or other animals since the ticks are now at the end of their life cycle and will not feed again. There is no evidence that humans can become infected by eating venison from an infected deer. In addition, the Lyme organism is killed by the high temperatures that would be reached when venison is cooked or smoked. Deer supply the tick that transmits the bacterium with a place to mate and provides a blood meal for the female tick prior to production of eggs. Research has shown that white-tailed deer are important to the reproductive success of the black-legged tick. In the absence of deer, this tick will opportunistically feed on other medium sized mammals and humans. As a management tool for Lyme Disease, there is still debate in the scientific community as to whether reducing the number of deer present in an area will effectively or dramatically reduce Lyme Disease "risk".
Research Summary: Deer are immune to Lyme disease and do not carry the diseases. If an infected tick bites a deer, the disease does not spread to other ticks that may bite the deer as it would if the tick bit a mouse. Reducing the number of deer may reduce the number of ticks, but because of the dilution effect, the result can be a higher percentage of remaining ticks with the disease since the ticks will choose other hosts that may be carriers of the disease. Deer also browse on the vegetation that provide tick habitat. While deer may provide a meal for the adult tick, research shows the risk of Lyme disease is statistically correlated to mice, chipmunks, and ground dwelling birds. Deer groom themselves, eliminating many ticks. Lyme disease originated in Connecticut
Duke Forest, Our illogical war on deer February 9, 2013 North Carolina, The Durham News, Karin Yates
... According to John Rohm of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, “Reducing deer density by X will not = X percentage reduction in Lyme disease cases. ... Deer should not be blamed for the current Lyme disease situation. Integrated pest management would be more effective than focusing solely on deer.”
Deer ticks thriving in Ohio December 3, 2013 StarBeacon.com
... “Migratory birds probably brought them to Ohio from Pennsylvania,” Needham said [Glen Needham, Ph. D., a deer tick expert and associate professor emeritus at Ohio State University] ... “Deer ticks will feed on anything despite their name,” ..
... Western Fence Lizards, more commonly known as “Bluebellies,” ... Bluebellies eat ticks, which reduces the numbers of these parasites, but they also do something more extraordinary: a protein in the blood of Western Fence Lizards kills the Lyme disease bacterium in ticks that feed on the lizards ... Professor Jeff Burkhart of the University of La Verne ...
Studies confirm lizards fight Lyme disease May 30, 2015 California, Tehachapi News
Explanation for Chronic Lyme Disease
Does this new study put an end to the chronic Lyme Disease controversy? Allentown Morning Call November 16, 2012
... It's not one stubborn infection that is making them ill, states a study released this week by the New England Journal of Medicine, but multiple new infections. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and New York Medical College studied 17 patients, who had the classic erythema migrans rash associated with Lyme disease, more than once in a span of 20 years. They analyzed the genetic makeup of the Lyme-causing bacteria in those who had been sick several times. Each time, they were infected by different strains of the bacteria, ruling out relapses.
Crucial Player For Lyme Disease Transmission Identified Decenber 21, 2013 RedOrbit
... Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, hitchhikes in ticks for dissemination to mammalian hosts–including humans. An article in the 19 December issue of PLOS Pathogens identifies HrpA, an RNA helicase, as a crucial player in the transmission from ticks to mammals... The authors say, “We now know that HrpA is involved in both parts of the B. burgdorferi lifecycle: animal infection and tick transmission, making it a very important protein in B. burgdorferi gene regulation and establishing gene regulation through an RNA helicase as an important regulatory pathway in the Lyme spirochete.”
Other Motives for the Lyme Disease Hunts
Odgen Dunes, Deer Management Task Force Publishes Findings/Opinions July 12, 2012 Indiana, SaveOurDeer.Org
... Ogden Dunes has not come to a consensus on whether there is an overabundance of deer in Ogden Dunes. But they have come to a consensus that killing deer will not eliminate the risk of Lyme Disease ... Despite this development, the threat of a deer cull within Town limits seems to remain. Why? ... It appears the real reason for the deer cull was never to protect young families from the risk of Lyme Disease. The Town government was using the fear factor of Lyme Disease to promote the idea of a deer cull when the real reason was to kill deer to keep them from eating the plants of prominent town residents...
Moose Die-Off Alarms Scientists October 14, 2013 New York, New York Times
... Across North America ... moose populations are in steep decline. And no one is sure why... Minnesota had two geographically separate moose populations. One of them has virtually disappeared since the 1990s, declining to fewer than 100 from 4,000... In New Hampshire, a longer fall with less snow has greatly increased the number of winter ticks, a devastating parasite... Deer are grooming animals, so they are able to keep tick numbers fairly low ...
Some Contradictory Results from Connecticut, based on Insular Enivronments
The Relationship Between Deer Density, Tick Abundance, and Human Cases of Lyme Disease in a Residential Community Journal of Medical Entomology, Howard J. Kilpatrick,1,2 Andrew M. Labonte,1 and Kirby C. Stafford, III3
... Reducing deer density to 5.1 deer per square kilometer resulted in a 76% reduction in tick abundance, 70% reduction in the entomological risk index, and 80% reduction in resident-reported cases of Lyme disease in the community from before to after a hunt was initiated... [This study shows a short term reduction but it was done one a pennisula with limited other animals. This relationship has only been documented on insular environments, not in open environments] ... from page 778 of the article: "The study area was the Mumford Cove (MC; 80.9-ha) community in Groton, CT. The number of occupied residences in MC year-round varied from 98 to 119 during the study. House lots were 0.61 ha each. MC was situated on a 1.9-km2 coastal peninsula bordered by Long Island Sound to the east and west. North of the peninsula was an 80-ha undeveloped state park closed to hunting and separated from MC by a
1.83-m-high chain-link fence. South of MC was the 105.9-ha residential community of Groton Long Point..."
Jamestown, Deer cull is counterproductive, says opponents September 11, 2014 Rhode Island, The Jamestown Press
... what about Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine? Professional sharpshooters eliminated the deer there in the 1990s, and the Lyme disappeared... Monhegan Island does not have mice. “It’s a whole different host ecology,” [Laura Simon] said. To compare Monhegan Island to Jamestown would be “like apples and bananas.” ...
The use of deer vehicle accidents as a proxy for measuring the degree of interaction between human and deer populations and its correlation with the incidence rate of Lyme disease. DH Wiznia, PJ Christos, AM LaBonte - Journal of environmental health, 2013
... The authors also examined the relationship between deer population density and human Lyme incidence rate. They analyzed data from Connecticut's Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Public Health from 1999 through 2008 by deer management zone (DMZ) and town. For DVA incidence rate versus Lyme incidence rate for both DMZs and towns, most of the correlation coefficients computed yearly were moderate to strong and all of the p-values were significant. A weak correlation was observed between deer population density and Lyme disease incidence rate by DMZ. The authors propose DVAs as a proxy for measuring the interaction between coexisting populations of humans and deer.
MisInformation from USDA
Long Island, 2014 East End Deer Damage Management Report August 2014 New York, Prepared by: United States Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Wildlife Service
... White-tailed deer are a vector of several prevalent and serious tick borne diseases on the East End of Long Island, including Lyme disease ... [White-tail deer are not a vector for Lyme disease. They are immune to Lyme and do not transmit the disease.]
... New York entomologist Rick Ostfeld, who stressed that so-called deer ticks actually pick up Lyme disease when they feed on field mice, not deer. As we have stressed for many years, deer ticks may never even see a deer — but they all have to feed on mice as part of their life cycle. That’s why I just spread my annual batch of Tick Tubes around the outskirts of my property...
Discussion about the relationship between deer and Lyme disease January, 2016 Bowsite.com
Use the link above to follow a discussion between local hunters and Dr. Scott Williams of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station related to the effectiveness of conducting community deer culls to reduce the risk of contracting Lyme disease. [Information provided by participants in the discussion]: Westport, CT has seen a dramatic decline with their Lyme casesfrom 2005 (57) to 2012 (6) cases. Westport has a stabile deer populatio of approximately 600 deer per a recent FLIR survey conduceted in 2012 and does not allow hunting in their town. Redding, CT, on the other hand has used a "destroy all deer" mentality to try and eradicate Lyme with little success. Redding's Lyme ases in 2005 were (18) cases and in 2012 (10) cases. More complete information in PDF.
Dr. Williams comments that as the information in the graph below shows, Lyme disease cases have "dropped precipitously in the last 15 years" when there was no hunting in the town of Westpoint based on "credible" data from the department of health: [Below the long term graph, 2000 to 2014, of the number of reported cases of Lyme disease in Westport, CT, where the deer population has been relatively stable because the community decided not to cull their deer]
The CT DEEP is charged with the management of wildlife, [deer density not correlated to Lyme disease] January 18, 2016 Conneticut, ReddingNews.Info
... The town of Westport, CT does not allow hunting and surveys, one as recent as 2012, have shown that Westport has a stable population of approximately 600 deer, or a density of 26.8 deer per square mile. Interestingly enough, the city has seen a steady decline in the number of lyme disease cases, going from 57 cases in 2005 to just 1 confirmed case in 2014... Redding has seen an all-out siege on its deer herd the past four years resulting in a decrease of 80% in the deer herd, yet Redding has seen an increase in the number of reported cases of lyme disease...
Ireland's deer are not to blame for humans contracting Lyme disease May 9, 2016 Irish Examiner
... ‘Deer ticks’ of the species Ixodes scapularis do not draw their crucial sustenance from deer... in one small island off Cape Cod, of state wildlife biologists going out with guns and destroying 70% of the deer...outdoorsy types on the island were just as likely to acquire a Lyme-disease infected tick in the now largely deer-free woods as they were before the deer were killed. All of the other animals carried just as many of the bugs as ever they did. However, the notion that white deer effectively caused the disease had taken hold in rural America ...
Speaker Combats Lyme Disease Spread November 4, 2015 Vermont, Middlebury Campus
... in Cranes Beach, Massachusetts. In this scenario, when the deer population was driven to zero, the nymphal tick population also decreased – but after a certain point, it began to increase again, almost reaching its initial size ... This has led Dr. Ostfeld to conclude that species other than the white tail deer influence the size of the tick population...
Many upstate communities are taking action against rising deer populations September 4, 2015 New York, WRVO Public Media
... the village of Trumansburg in the Finger Lakes started a deer management program which baits deer with corn so archers can shoot and kill ... fewer deer sightings were reported. But residents have continued to contract Lyme disease, including one of the village board members...
The growing global battle against blood-sucking ticks August 25, 2015 Nature
... most Lyme-control measures focus on white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) ... When Sam Telford, an epidemiologist at Tufts University in North Grafton, Massachusetts, and his colleagues cut the deer population on Great Island in Cape Cod by 50% in the early 1980s, they saw no drop in tick numbers — the number of tick larvae on the island actually increased ... Richard Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies ... Ostfeld and others contend that mice are a major driver for both the tick problem and the disease problem ...
Will Culling White‐Tailed Deer Prevent Lyme Disease? KJ Kugeler, RA Jordan, TL Schulze, KS Griffith… - Zoonoses and Public Health, 2015
... Elimination of deer from islands and other isolated settings can have a substantial impact on the reproduction of blacklegged ticks, while reduction short of complete elimination has yielded mixed results. To date, most studies have been conducted in ecologic situations that are not representative to the vast majority of areas with high human Lyme disease risk. Robust evidence linking deer control to reduced human Lyme disease risk is lacking. Currently, there is insufficient evidence to recommend deer population reduction as a Lyme disease prevention measure, except in specific ecologic circumstances. [island environments]
Don’t feed the ticks ... April 24, 2015 WTOP
Redding, Deer Reduction = Increased Lyme January 2, 2014 Connecticut, Bowsite.com
... From 2009-2014 the deer harvest rates in Redding; town owned open spaces plummeted by 95% ( 141 to 7 ) and town wide by 78% ( 321 to 70 ). In sharp contrast reported cases of Lyme increased by 62% + over the last 4 years despite this drop in deer harvest numbers. In comparison, Greenwich and Westport have stable populations of 25+ deer per square mile and Lyme disease rates remains low, even with deer populations nearly three times that of Redding.
Redding Deer Population and Harvest Down 80% December 18, 2014 Connecticut, ReddingNews.com
... 2009 to 2014 we see the Redding deer population and harvest rate go down by approximately 80%. [321 to 63] ...They are no longer taking about ticks as reported cases of Lyme increased by 62.5% + over the last 4 years in Redding despite the significantly decreasing deer population... When will the CT DEEP step in and put a stop to the over kill of deer...
An Increase in Ticks Carrying Lyme Disease in Connecticut June 23, 2015 Connectcut, WNPR News
... On average, scientists found about 27 percent of ticks tested positive for the Lyme-disease bacterium. "However, this year, we are early in the season, and we have found that nearly 34 percent of these ticks are infected with Lyme disease [the deer population is trending down while the percent of infected ticks increase] ...
Jamestown, Deer cull won’t work October 16, 2014 Rhode Island, The Jamestown Press, Myrna Lee, Member, board of directors Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation
... your Town Council is terribly misled in culling deer as a solution to your tick problem ... Deer are not the only carriers of Lyme-bearing ticks. Ticks attach to anything that brushes against the vegetation where they wait for a host. So you would have to cull all creatures living in your area, including birds...
Many California bird species host Lyme disease bacteria, study finds February 26, 2015 Los Angeles Times
... Although Lyme disease cases are relatively rare in California, DNA sequencing showed B. burgdorferi’s presence in 23 of 53 species of birds tested in Mendocino County... “Our findings underscore the importance of bird behavior to explain local tick infestation and Borrelia infection in these animals,” ...
Shifting the conversation about deer control September 4, 2014 Connecticut, Stamford Advocate, Laura Simon is a wildlife biologist for The Humane Society of the United States.
.. There's a good reason that national health authorities such as the Centers for Disease Control and our own Connecticut State Health Department are not calling for increased killing to control Lyme disease -- because it won't work... In studies where as many as 83 percent of the deer were removed, tick numbers weren't impacted. They merely switched to alternate hosts...
Lyme Disease - Will Shelton go the Wrong Way? June 29, 2014 Connecticut, Shelton Patch
... After reviewing the numbers from the last four years, provided by both the Connecticut Health Department and the CT DEEP we see that the deer population is now down 60% + and that Lyme disease, reported cases in Redding are up 62.5%. In 2010 the Redding, CT reported Lyme cases were 8 and in 2013 they are now 13. What happened to all the " Wildlife Experts " that said, " Less Deer = Less Lyme " ? ...
A dismissal of correlation between deer, Lyme disease September 11, 2013 Connecticut, Greenwich Time
... The public needs to be provided with facts and not fear-mongering. Required reading should be "Lyme Disease: The Ecology of a Complex System" by Dr. Richard Ostfeld published last year, which synthesized just about every study written on this topic. He concluded that there is little to no correlation between deer and Lyme disease and no studies that correlate a reduction in the deer population to a reduction in the incidence of the disease. There are four small mammals, including the white-footed mouse that account for 90 percent of infected ticks...
The Truth about Lyme Disease October 23, 2013 Humane Society of the United States
..Killing deer can make matters worse ... Deer are one of many vertebrate hosts that carry this tick... Killing deer will not reduce the risk of Lyme disease for people ... If one were to really try to exterminate Lyme disease by focusing on the tick's hosts, that would mean killing most mice, chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, skunks, rabbits, popular songbirds, and even lizards ...
Culling deer won't reduce Lyme disease June 20, 2013 British Columbia, Victoria Times Colonist
... According to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, there is no evidence to support an epidemic of Lyme disease in B.C. ,,, Culling deer does not reduce Lyme disease occurrence... unless we want to eradicate all small mammals as well as the songbird population, our dogs and horses and the deer, we will have to learn to tolerate the western black-legged tick ...
The automatic association of Lyme disease with deer may be flawed August 27, 2014 Massachusetts, Martha's Vineyard Times
... The abundance of deer and near absence of ticks in Aquinnah’s lush wetland forest, and abundance of ticks despite a lower number of deer in Chilmark’s dry oak forest suggest that the differences go deeper than the relationship between deer and their parasites...One of the chief differences between them is that oak forests produce more starch in the form of acorns that squirrels can hoard, leaving plenty for other rodents such as white-footed mice, which serve as the hosts for immature deer ticks. The mice are a crucial carrier of the ticks, which thrive, even when there aren’t many deer ...
Strange events will lead to increase of Lyme disease this year March 22, 2012 Fox News
... But don't blame the deer. The predicted rise in ticks that carry Lyme disease is actually the result of a cascade of ecological events that started back in 2010 and involves acorns and mice, says Richard S. Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y.... The white-footed mouse is the perfect host for ticks (low to the ground and not bothered by the parasites), said Ostfeld, who has published several studies showing the population of mice, not deer, is more directly correlated to the tick population
Duke Forest, Our illogical war on deer February 9, 2013 North Carolina, The Durham News, Karin Yates
... I recently witnessed a buck lying down in a yard in Chapel Hill with an arrow protruding form his left hind quarter... It is important for us to understand that deer do not “carry” or “spread” Lyme disease. In fact, deer provide a buffer between the host (white-footed mouse) and humans by “collecting” the ticks on themselves. According to John Rohm of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, “Reducing deer density by X will not = X percentage reduction in Lyme disease cases. ... Deer should not be blamed for the current Lyme disease situation. Integrated pest management would be more effective than focusing solely on deer.”
Tick...Tick...Tick, white-footed mouse main reservoir for Lyme disease March 16, 2011 Rhode Island Patch.com Directed, produced, and narrated by Mary Healey Jamiel, "Hidden in the Leaves" is a 24-minute film about deer ticks. The DVD features the work of Thomas N. Mather, Ph.D., Director of the University of Rhode Island's Center for Vector-Borne Disease. ...
One study often cited as an example of reducing Lyme disease by reducing the deer population, was done on an offshore island with little biodiversity so few alternate hosts for ticks. Rand, P.W., et al. 2004. Abundance of Ixodes scapularis (acari:Ixodidae) after complete removal of deer from an isolated offshore island, endemic for Lyme disease. Journal of Medical Entomology 41:779-784
TICK CONTROL B Trapping, H Munugement - Biology of Ticks, 2013, p. 427
... some years after deer reduction tick densities were similar to those in some years before deer reduction (Deblinger, 1993). Indeed, a meta-analysis of deer exclusion data sugged that small deer exclosures can actually increase densities of some tick species (Perkins, 2006). These conflicting results apparently are derived from interacting factors that influence tick numbers beyond the effects of host density alone (e.g. the movement of small vertebrates hosts, physical conditions in differend habitat types, exclosure size and habitat fragmentation effects), and some of these can shift in importance from year to year. For example... The numbers of nymphs in these exclosures declined after 3 years their levels within exclosures had increased enough to be comparable to outside control areas.
WILSON, M. L., DUCEY, A. M., LITWIN, T. S., GAVIN, T. A. and SPIELMAN, A. (1990), Microgeographic distribution of immature Ixodes dammini ticks correlated with that of deer. Medical and Veterinary Entomology, 4: 151–159. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2915.1990.tb00273.x
ABSTRACT. In order to determine whether the small-scale distribution of immature Ixodes dammini Spielman et al. corresponds closely to the activity patterns of white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus (Zimmerman), these relationships were examined in a site on Long Island, New York, U.S.A. We first determined the extent and temporal pattern of adult ticks feeding on deer by examining twenty-three resident deer tranquilized during September-December 1985.1, dammini adults infested deer throughout this fall period, most abundantly during October and November. With radio-telemetry collars attached to deer we determined the relative frequency that they occupied 0.25 ha quadrats of the study site. During the following summer, we examined white-footed mice, Peromyscus leucopus (Rafmesque), that inhabited these quadrats and removed immature ticks from each. 8975 larval and 163 nymphal /. dammini were removed from 208 mice trapped in forty-three such quadrats. The frequency of deer using these quadrats was positively correlated with both the number of larval and of nymphal ticks per mouse. These results suggest that risk of I.dammini-borne zoonotic disease may be decreased by locally reducing deer density in sites that experience intense human activity.
Localized Deer Absence Leads to Tick Amplification
Localized Deer Absence Leads to Tick Amplification
Sarah E. Perkins, Isabella M. Cattadori, Valentina Tagliapietra, Annapaola P. Rizzoli and Peter J. Hudson Ecology Vol. 87, No. 8 (Aug., 2006), pp. 1981-1986 Published by: Ecological Society of America
Deer support high tick intensities, perpetuating tick populations, but they do not support tick-borne pathogen transmission, so are dilution hosts. We test the hypothesis that absence of deer (loss of a dilution host) will result in either an increase or a reduction in tick density, and that the outcome is scale dependent. We use a complementary methodological approach starting with meta-analysis, followed up by a field experiment. Meta-analysis indicated that larger deer exclosures reduce questing (host-seeking) tick density, but as the exclosure becomes smaller (<2.5 ha) the questing tick density is increased (amplified). To determine the consequences for tick-borne pathogen transmission we carried out a field experiment, comparing the intensity of ticks that fed on hosts competent for tick-borne pathogen transmission (rodents) in two small (<1 ha) deer exclosures and their replicated controls. Intensity of larval ticks on rodents was not significantly different between treatments, but nymph intensity, the tick stage responsible for tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) transmission, was higher in deer exclosures. TBE seropositive rodents were found in a deer exclosure but not in the controls. We propose that localized absence of deer (loss of a dilution host) increases tick feeding on rodents, leading to the potential for tick-borne disease hotspots.
Deer-free areas may be haven for ticks, disease Penn State Study
Reduced abundance of immature Ixodes dammini (Acari: Ixodidae) following incremental removal of deer. J Med Entomol. 1993 Jan;30(1):144-50 Deblinger RD, Wilson ML, Rimmer DW, Spielman A. Trustees of Reservations, Beverly, MA 01915.
The abundance of immature Ixodes dammini Spielman, Clifford, Piesman & Corwin was monitored for 9 yr (1983-1991) before and during the controlled, limited hunting of white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus (Zimmerman), at a coastal Massachusetts site. Deer abundance was reduced from an estimated 350 during 1985 to approximately 60 during 1991. Although annual fluctuations were large, mean larval I. dammini abundance declined from 20.8 per white-footed mouse, Peromyscus leucopus (Rafinesque), during 1983-1986 before deer reduction to 10.3 per mouse following deer reduction (1987-1991). Similarly, mean nymphal I. dammini abundance declined from 2.7 per mouse before intervention to 1.6 per mouse after intervention. Immature I. dammini population fluctuations were not associated with those of P. leucopus. The total population of larvae infesting P. leucopus declined from 3,596 ticks before intervention to 1,535 ticks after intervention. Concurrently, the total nymphal population declined from 417 ticks before intervention to 187 ticks after intervention. The number of feeding adult female I. dammini on deer increased as deer density decreased.
Freehold Township > Tick Borne Disease Ecology > Current Research Study Results. After three seasons, the estimated deer population was reduced by 46.7 %, from the 2002 post-fawning estimate of 2,899 deer (45.6 deer/km2) to a 2005 estimate of 1,540 deer (24.3 deer/km2). There was no apparent effect of the deer culling program on numbers of questing nymphal ticks in the culling areas and the overall numbers of host-seeking ticks in the culling areas appeared to increase in the second year of the program. The Lyme disease incidence rate generated by both passive and active surveillance systems showed no clear trend among years and did not appear to vary with declining deer density. Cayuga Heights, NY: Richard Ostfeld, PhD Senior Scientist, the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies Author of Lyme Disease: The Ecology of a Complex System(2010, Oxford Univ. Press)
• DEIS incorrectly states that linear correlations exist between deer and ticks • No scientific data support the existence of a deer density threshold below which ticks decline to low numbers • Deer actually reduce the prevalence of Lyme infection in tick populations • Adult blacklegged ticks feed on at least 27 mammal species, not just deer • It’s misleading for DEIS to use Monehgan Island study to predict what will happen in Cayuga Heights. Read Statement
Cayuga Heights, NY: Tamara Awerbuch, PhD ,Instructor, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health
• Incorrect assumptions are made in DEIS about the relationship between deer and “deer ticks”, which have no basis in science • There is no linear correlation between killing deer and the tick population • White-footed mice, and not deer, are the carriers of the agent of Lyme disease • In Ipswich, MA, Lyme disease kept growing following deer-killing program • “there is NO scientific justification for a deer killing program in your community”. Read Statement
POPULATION AND COMMUNITY ECOLOGY,
Effects of Reduced Deer Density on the Abundance of Ixodes scapularis
(Acari: Ixodidae) and Lyme Disease Incidence in a Northern
New Jersey Endemic Area
ROBERT A. JORDAN,
TERRY L. SCHULZE, AND MARGARET B. JAHN
Freehold Area Health Department, 1 Municipal Plaza, Freehold, NJ
J. Med. Entomol. 44(5): 752Ð757 (2007)
ABSTRACT We monitored the abundance of Ixodes scapularis Say (Acari: Ixodidae) and the Lyme disease incidence rate after the incremental removal of white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus Zimmermann, within a suburban residential area to determine whether there was a measurable decrease in the abundance of ticks due to deer removal and whether the reduction in ticks resulted in a reduction in the incidence rate within the human population. After three seasons, the estimated deer population was reduced by 46.7%, from the 2002 postfawning estimate of 2,899 deer (45.6 deer per km2) to a 2005 estimate of 1,540 deer (24.3 deer per km2). There was no apparent effect of the deer culling program on numbers of questing I. scapularis subadults in the culling areas, and the overall numbers of host-seeking ticks in the culling areas seemed to increase in the second year of the program. The Lyme disease incidence rate generated by both passive and active surveillance systems showed no clear trend among years, and it did not seem to vary with declining deer density. Given the resources required to mount and maintain a community-based program of sufficient magnitude to effectively reduce vector tick density in ecologically open situations where there are fe impediments to deer movement, it may be that deer reduction, although serving other community goals, is unlikely to be a primary means of tick control by itself. However, in concert with other tick control interventions, such programs may provide one aspect of a successful community effort to reduce the abundance of vector ticks.
Overpopulation problems December 20, 2010 Part 2 of 3 The Adirondack Daily Enterprise
Biologists Felicia Keesing and Richard Ostfeld reject the tick-Lyme disease connection, noting that studies in New York and New Jersey found no correlation between the number of deer and the number of ticks in a region. These researchers argue that when deer are scarce, ticks simply move to alternate hosts: raccoons, skunks, opossums and other medium sized animals. Keesing and Ostfeld note that Lyme disease is rare in Southeastern and most Midwestern states, regions of the country where deer are plentiful.
Tick Management for Deer Deer and Elk Farmers DIscussion
The dosage rate we use is 250ml of Ivomec (pour-on) per ton of feed. We prep the feed in the following manner. Using a small spray bottle, we mix 12 ml of ivomec to 2 pints of water. We then take 100# of feed and spread it out on a 4x8 sheet of untreated plywood. We spray a light coat( about 1/2 of the mixture) of the ivo/H20 mix over the feed, then allow to dry completely. If you use a feed with a water sheild on it, it less effective. Using a simple dust-pan, we scoop and flip the feed over, much like flipping a pancake on the griddle, then apply the remaining amount of the mixture to the other side of the feed and allow to dry completely. Replace it back into the bags and distribute it just like you are using normal feed. It is important to do this on a warm sunny day when possible, and always wear latex g
loves. In our bulk trough feeders, we coat the top of the feed with the same dosage rate per pound, and allow the deer to eat through the layer of ivomec. We do this every6 months, alternating with Purina Exotic Animal De wormer on a 6 month rotation, providing a worming treatment every quarter. We try to time it as to not have any of the treatments closer than one month to the birthing of fawns. This is easy if you have a single species in the enclosure, but in multiple species populations, it requires a good deal of thought to maximize the gaps between birthing cycles. Having said that, we have had births in some of the horned species within days following a treatment with no adverse affects. This works well in helping control ticks. In addition to these treatments, we use powdered garlic in our feed at the rate of 2# per ton of feed throughout the year. I find it to be very effective in reducing ticks and the animals do not seem to mind the taste. | <urn:uuid:4e6b761f-64e3-4783-b983-5337c1a799d3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.deerfriendly.com/a/deerfriendly.com/home/lyme-disease | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00112-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943279 | 11,110 | 3.125 | 3 |
Piotr Skórka, Magdalena Lenda, Dawid Moroń and Piotr Tryjanowski New methods of crop production and farmland birds: effects of plastic mulches on species richness and abundance Journal of Applied Ecology 50
Our results provide the first evidence that the use of foil for mulching has negative effects on farmland bird populations, probably through the trophic cascade and habitat disturbance. Therefore, foil mulches must be considered as another factor contributing to the decline of farmland biodiversity. We suggest limiting the use of this method of vegetable production at the farm level. Decreasing the field size and converting some arable fields into grassland patches are proposed as mitigation measures in landscapes with high foil cover.
Complete the form below and we will send an e-mail message containing a link to the selected article on your behalf | <urn:uuid:2788b487-9a09-406e-ba57-ae9028ce3031> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/emailArticleLink?doi=10.1111/1365-2664.12148&issueDoi=10.1111/jpe.2013.50.issue-6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00057-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899325 | 171 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Fagan’s research, based on data gathered from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, found that increased divorce rates and more children born outside of marriage “have turned growing up in a stable, two-parent family into an exception, rather than the rule, for young Americans.” Especially relevant, he found, were statistics showing that while 62 percent of Asian-American teens and 54 percent of Caucasian teens live with both married parents, only 17 percent of African-American youth — less than one in five — live in intact homes with both married parents.
Fagan found that the age, education, employment, and income levels of parents were important determining factors in stable two-parent homes, with educated parents typically better employed, earning a higher income, and waiting until later to have children. His research confirmed the well-documented truth that “children in intact families are significantly less likely to be poor or dependent on government welfare, show better academic achievement and more positive social development, have fewer accidents or injuries, exhibit better mental health and fewer behavioral problems, and have better relationships with their parents.”
However, Fagan’s study moved on to focus on a root cause of the problem of deteriorating traditional families that most studies ignore: the issue of rejection between parents which destroys the harmony that is essential to raising stable children. “This rejection is now the dominant feature of American family life,” writes Fagan, adding that the cost of this tragedy has been a generation and more of dysfunctional individuals and groups increasingly dependent upon government social programs that are collapsing under a weight they are totally unable to bear.
“The decrease of strong families in the United States has major implications for the nation, and by extension, the rest of the world,” he writes. “A nation is only as strong as its citizens, and a lack of strong families weakens human, social, and moral capital, which in turn directly affects the financial (and thus indirectly the military and foreign policy strength) of the United States. A great nation depends on great families, but weak families will build a weak nation.” If the U.S. is to continue to be a positive influence on the rest of the world, “pursuing what is good for itself and other nations,” he challenges, “its parents must first be leaders of their own homes and children.”
While the study documents the extent to which families have been decimated across geographic, ethnic, and racial boundaries, Fagan emphasizes the particularly dramatic impact upon black families, advising that the problem offers a distinct opportunity for African-American families to take the lead in helping to re-establish an American culture based on belonging and acceptance. “If Black communities and churches are able to re-establish successful families, and raise children that are capable to marry and raise their children of their own well, the rest of America will be able to look to them as an example for restoration and follow their lead,” he predicts.
“The culture of rejection burdens communities with higher levels of poverty, unemployment, welfare dependency, domestic abuse, child neglect, delinquency, crime and crime victimization, drug abuse, academic failure and school dropout, and unmarried teen pregnancy and childbearing,” he notes, with the nation facing ever burgeoning costs for education, healthcare, mental health, law enforcement, and justice. | <urn:uuid:b51a98df-7c31-4f19-90ed-d9b958fb4a0d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/family/item/650-new-study-chronicles-crisis-of-traditional-families | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00133-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967927 | 701 | 2.609375 | 3 |
(in , in ancient times known as Dežbār
as well as Shāpūr-Khwāst
) is a castle situated on the top of a large hill with the same name within the city of Khorramabad
, the regional capital of Lorestan
. This gigantic structure was built during the Sassanid
era (226 – 651).
The Khoramabad River
runs past the eastern and south-western side of the Falak-ol-Aflak hill providing the fortress with an element of natural protection. Today, the western and northern sides of the hill are bordered by the residential districts of Khorramabad
Falak ol-Aflak castle is amongst the most important structures
built during the Sassanid
era. It has been known by a number of names since it was built over 1800 years ago. Recorded names have referred to it as Shapur-Khast or Sabr-Khast fortress, Dezbaz, Khoramabad castle, and ultimately the Falak ol-Aflak Castle.
During the Pahlavi dynasty
it was used as a prison.
of the actual castle
measure approximately 300 meters by 400 meters. The height of the entire structure, including the hill, reaches to 40 meters above the surrounding area.
The castle itself covers an area of 5,300 square meters. It is 2,860 meters
in perimeter and its tallest wall is 22.5 meters high. This space is divided into four large halls, and their associated rooms and corridors. The rooms all surround two courtyards
with the following measurements: the first courtyard measures... Read More | <urn:uuid:ce2a0459-a0c8-4410-8b30-6108c460d601> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://pages.rediff.com/falak-ol-aflak-castle/446983 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950045 | 347 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Iron on patches show a new and interesting way of displaying one’s personality or representing a certain brand, sports team or business organization. People attach these patches to jeans, shirts, skirts, trousers, backpacks, shoes and other related outfits for both mending and decorative purposes. Those who are interested in purchasing these patches can go to arts and craft stores to choose from various designs.
Functions of Iron on Patches
- These patches are small pieces of fabric that people put on top of another layer of fabric. The purpose of this is to cover faded and torn parts of an outfit. Decorative type of patches may not need to cover something. Most people mainly use them for customizing their outfits.
- On mending garments, these types of patches are used to cover discolored, faded, torn or stained parts of an outfit. They are also useful in hiding holes and rips that are unpleasant to see when wearing garments. By using these patches, people can save a lot of money on purchasing new clothes. Older ones can still be used but with more decorative looks this time. The use of these patches is ideal for people who have favorite clothes that are already damaged yet they don’t want to throw away simply because they believe that these are still usable after minor repairs.
- When it comes to decorative purposes, a lot of people use these types of patches to create a certain fashion statement when wearing tops and bottoms. Sometimes, they are not just used for decorative purposes. Anyone can also use these as commemorative patches to celebrate historical events or support certain social causes. Most soldiers, police officers and other professionals wear uniforms with iron on badges.
How to Attach an Iron on Patch?
- Two essential things should be kept in mind when attaching an iron on badge to any garment. The first one is that the fabric where the patch should be placed must not melt after applying a specific amount of high heat. When purchasing garments, customers can look for a sticker or label indicating that a particular garment is iron-friendly. There should be an ideal amount of temperature to be applied on a particular type of fabric when attaching an iron patch.
- For wool fabric, it should be 300 degrees F; for cotton – 400 degrees F and for linen – 445 degrees F. Keep in mind that this process is not applicable on delicate fabrics like nylon, silk and leather. If people want to put patches on these fabrics, it’s recommended to glue or sew them on the surface.
How to Prepare a Fabric Before Attaching the Iron on Patches?
Make sure that the garment is clean and free from dirt because if an iron on badge is pressed on a dirty fabric, the dirty particles will get trapped inside. It’s also essential to wash the garment or fabric with sizing because it stiffens the surface of the fabric. After that, gently iron the garment’s surfaces to remove all creases. Once done, the patch is now ready for pressing or ironing onto the fabric.
What are the benefits of Iron On Patches?It’s much faster and easier to attach these patches using a flat iron than manually sewing embroidered patches into the fabric. Also, sewing patches or badges can leave minute holes in the garment’s underlying surface while the iron-on ones don’t leave holes or other damages. They already become part of the garment’s surface once pressed by heat. Plus, people can also attach other types of iron on badges or patches that are made of beads, metals or sequins to the surface of the garments and any other items such as caps, belts, bags and others. | <urn:uuid:a01d5d15-c1cc-4ddd-9b75-f736ba6f7176> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hardhero.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00114-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937591 | 746 | 2.71875 | 3 |
- Course Number:
- CAS 140
- Course Title:
- Beginning Access
- Credit Hours:
- Lecture Hours:
- Lecture/Lab Hours:
- Lab Hours:
- Special Fee:
Course DescriptionIntroduces the basic features of Microsoft Access. Covers beginning database management concepts including tables, forms, reports, queries, and basic macros. Stresses a working knowledge of database management vocabulary. Emphasizes efficient use of Access toolbars and menus. Discusses database design issues. Recommended: Placement into RD 115 and WR 115. Audit available.
Addendum to Course Description
This course is presented in a hands-on lecture/lab format. Self-paced format and online instruction may also be utilized. Out-of-class preparation will be required.
Intended Outcomes for the course
Upon successful completion of this course, student will be able to:
1. Use Microsoft Access to create personal and/or business databases following current professional and/or industry standards.
2. Use critical thinking skills to design and create database objects.
3. Communicate in a business setting using database management vocabulary.
Outcome Assessment Strategies
A letter grade will be issued for this course based upon
- Performance tests
- May include objective tests, scored assignments, or projects
- May include the use of skill assessment software
Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)
Themes, Concepts, Issues
- Communicate effectively using appropriate database management vocabulary.
- Use critical thinking and problem solving skills in designing databases for various business and personal projects.
- Proofread for accuracy in the entry of data and creation of database objects such as, tables, reports, forms and queries.
- Assess the databases for accuracy, readability, and appearance.
- Develop efficiency with specific sets of skills through repetitive reinforcement.
- Students will develop proficiency through reinforcement and assessment on the following skills:
- Creating tables by defining fields composed of various data types and entering text and numeric records.
- Creating and modifying forms including sub-forms.
- Creating, modifying and customizing basic, grouped and summary reports.
- Use queries to update and delete records, sort information and create reports.
- Designing and creating queries using wildcard characters, multiple criteria, joined tables, and calculated fields.
- Create and modify basic switchboard interfaces using simple macros
- Establish relationships between two tables to ensure integrity and accuracy
- Design and create a database management system from scratch using original information.
Students will be familiar with the following skills:
- Using help features.
- Establishing relationships between more than two tables
- Printing mailing labels
- Documenting and compacting databases
- Using additional functions such as combo boxes.
- Using additional field data types such as memo, OLE, and hyperlink fields
- Students may be exposed to additional database management skills/concepts as time allows. | <urn:uuid:b3d8a4c5-59d4-486e-bb87-5b3695388fa1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pcc.edu/ccog/default.cfm?fa=ccog&subject=CAS&course=140 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00057-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.86994 | 607 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Several factors need to be put back into the standard account of the Arab conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries, says Robert Hoyland in his forthcoming In God’s Path.
The first is process. Speed plays such a large role in the standard accounts that we miss the variability, and the variability of pace, in the conquests. The second is to restore the voices of the vanquished and of the conquerors who were not Muslims. Muslim histories suppress or marginalize pre- and non-Muslim voices, but these are often the only sources we have for the period before the Arabic conquests.
Another thing Hoyland wants to restore is context. The Arab conquests might have in some ways caused the retreat of Byzantium and Persia, but the opposite is perhaps more true: The decline of these powers, who had been at odds for some centuries, opened up the possibility for Arabs to seize territory and power. In fact, both Byzantium and Persia used Arab tribes in their wars, thus helping to inculcate the very military skills that were later turned against them.
Part of the pre-conquest context is the spread of Christianity. As Philip Jenkins emphasized in The Lost History of Christianity, Christianity flourished in the east: “By the mid-seventh century there were twenty Christian dioceses east of the river Oxus, including Samarkand and Kashgar. One can observe a similar process in Arabia. As early as the mid-fourth century emissaries were being sent from Constantinople ‘to persuade the ruler of the people (of Himyar) to become Christian and to give up the deceits of heathenism,’ and this momentum was sustained via Byzantium’s Christian ally in the region, Ethiopia. The church in the Persian realm was very dynamic and established offshoots in all the islands and coastlands of east Arabia in this period, and Christian missionaries were active in all the frontier zones of Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and north Arabia. The tribal folk of these latter regions are portrayed as accepting the new faith as a result of the power of the Christian God, made manifest by the miraculous deeds of various holy men. By their transition from paganism to “true belief ” the tribesmen were considered to have entered the civilised fold: ‘Those who were formerly called the wolves of Arabia became members of the spiritual flock of Christ.’”
He also wants to disabuse Western readers of the image of Arabia presented in popular histories, novels, and film. Not all Arabs were nomads: “Arabia has harboured a number of very different peoples, some of which did not define themselves as Arabs, and some of which possessed advanced and complex cultures.”
The result is an illuminating, richly detailed, highly readable study of one of the crucial periods of history. | <urn:uuid:5ef81eb3-3b2e-4a0d-b2a7-ec14824b2628> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2014/09/in-gods-path | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396875.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00036-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975985 | 588 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Not so parched? The dry-looking lunar landscape as seen by the Apollo astronauts.
By Irene Klotz
NASA is developing a lunar rover to find and analyze water and other materials trapped in deep freezes at the moon’s poles and to demonstrate how water can be made on site.
Slated to fly in November 2017, the mission, called Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction (RESOLVE), will have a week to accomplish its goals.
To stay within a tight $250 million budget cap -- including the rocket ride to the moon -- project managers are planning to use solar energy to power the rover’s systems and science instruments. However, sunlight on the places where water and other volatiles may be trapped only occurs for a few days at a time.
“To do a mission of any significance (at the lunar poles) it would take nuclear power, but we don’t have that kind of money,” said William Larson, a recently retired project manager at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
“Solar-powered missions are more affordable and that’s the way we’re going to try to go,” Larson said.
That leaves scientists with a long to-do list and a very tight timeline.
Upon landing on the moon, the rover would have about 2.5 days of sunlight to get started searching for hydrogen, then hibernate for two days of shadow. The rest of the mission would play out over the next five days of sunlight and would include drilling about 1 meter (3.3 feet) deep into the ground to extract a sample for mineral analysis.
The sample also would be heated in hopes of producing liquid water. Finally, the rover would demonstrate how oxygen can be chemically pulled out from the lunar soil and mixed with hydrogen to produce water.
“The primary mission is lunar ice prospecting, but since we’re there and since we don’t know if we’ll find water, we wanted to also demonstrate that we can extract oxygen from the lunar soil,” Larson told Discovery News.
“That is the most challenging timeline of any surface mobility mission NASA has ever attempted before -- and we’re trying to do it on the cheap,” he added.
RESOLVE builds upon the ongoing Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mapping mission and the 2009 impacts of its companion LCROSS spacecraft and rocket motor into a permanently shadowed crater called Cabeus, located near the moon’s south pole. LCROSS is an acronym for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.
Material blasted above the crater’s rim during the impacts and other analysis showed the crater contains about 5 percent frozen water. The origin of the water, however, remains a mystery.
RESOLVE may provide some answers. The rover’s science instruments are designed to analyze hydrogen isotopes in any water recovered, an experiment that may at least narrow down the options of where it came from. The theories range from water-rich comets and asteroids crashing onto the surface to indigenous water supplies inside the moon that were transported during past volcanic eruptions.
The mission also is expected to provide some ground truth for ongoing efforts to determine what minerals are on the moon.
“The polar regions of the moon are extremely cold. This is of very great interest because there’s the possibility for trapping a wide range of volatiles in these areas,” said lunar scientist David Paige, with the University of California at Los Angeles.
“We know it’s cold enough on the moon to support these deposits. The question is are they actually there,” he said.
Larson outlined the RESOLVE project at the Lunar Superconductor Applications workshop in Cocoa Beach, Fla., last week. NASA plans to partner with the Canadian Space Agency on the project. A simulated mission was conducted in Hawaii this summer. | <urn:uuid:0152f413-d19b-49e0-ac8d-fc9d739e10f4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/15/17763225-nasa-hopes-to-make-water-on-the-moon?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00082-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942981 | 823 | 3.78125 | 4 |
A woman who is 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 126 pounds is not classified as overweight. According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, she has a body mass index of 21.6, which is classified as a normal, healthy body weight. However, if her goal is weight loss, she can lose a few pounds and still be within a healthy weight category.
Healthy Weight Range
According to the University of Washington, a healthy weight range for a 5-foot-4 woman is 120 pounds, plus or minus 10 percent to account for differences in frame sizes. Therefore, small-framed women who are 5 feet 4 inches tall may weigh as little as108 pounds, while large-framed women of the same height can weigh up to 132 pounds and still be within a healthy weight range. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute classifies 5-foot-4 women who weigh less than 108 pounds as underweight, meaning they are at risk for nutrient deficiencies, fatigue and hair loss.
If you’re 5-foot-4 and weigh 126 pounds, reducing your intake by 500 to 1,000 calories daily will help you shed 1 to 2 pounds per week. This rate of weight loss is safe and will help you keep lost weight off long term, notes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You can also create a 500- to 1,000-calorie deficit by increasing your physical activity, or combining a reduced-calorie diet with a regular exercise program.
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute provides general weight-loss recommendations for women. Based on these guidelines, a woman who is 5-foot-4 and weighs 126 pounds requires 1,000 to 1,200 calories daily for weight loss if she’s sedentary, but 1,200 to 1,600 calories daily to lose weight if she exercises regularly. Women should avoid dropping below 1,000 calories per day unless supervised by their doctor. Very low-calorie diets can cause nausea, fatigue, constipation, nutrient deficiencies and even gallstone formation, according to Weight-control Information Network.
Calories per Pound
You can use your goal weight to estimate your individualized calorie needs for weight loss. The University of Washington reports that eating 10 calories for each pound of your ideal, or desirable, body weight can help you reach your goal. For example, a 1,200-calorie diet will help a 5-foot-4 woman weighing 126 pounds with a goal weight of 120 pounds reach that goal. If you’re 5-foot-4 with a small frame, your goal weight should not fall below 108 pounds, and if you’re a medium-framed 5-foot-4 woman, your goal weight is about 120 pounds.
- National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute: Calculate Your Body Mass Index
- University of Washington: Weight Management
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Losing Weight
- National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute: How are Overweight and Obesity Treated?
- Weight-control Information Network: Very Low-calorie Diets
- Siri Stafford/Lifesize/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:4a215380-8a29-4705-a6e7-e84fdd761266> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/calories-takes-5foot-4inch-126pound-female-lose-weight-9449.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395166.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899551 | 646 | 2.75 | 3 |
We can all agree that empowering patients to engage in their healthcare is a good thing. Improving patients’ understanding of their disease and health so they take a more active role in their healthcare has been shown to lead to better health outcomes and reduced costs.
But patients are individuals with different needs and issues, and engaging them may not be as simple as it looks on paper.
Following are four common barriers to patient engagement and what healthcare providers can do to overcome them.
1. Patients get too much information at one time and feel overwhelmed.
Patient engagement centers on the relationship between the patient and the physician. This relationship can be more powerful than either side may realize. For instance, a Surgeon General’s report showed that a physician simply telling a patient to stop smoking can increase smoking cessation rates 5-10%.
Keeping this relationship in mind, healthcare providers should focus on one part of disease prevention or treatment (for example, diet or exercise) and educate the patient on that single health behavior at one time. It’s only one step, but it can help change the direction of a patient’s long-term health and risk profile.
2. Patients are given too many choices and then asked to make decisions on the spot.
To help patients better understand decision-making elements like risk or outcomes, healthcare providers should use terms that patients are familiar with and offer examples. It’s also a good idea to ask patients at the outset what level of involvement they are comfortable with when making decisions.
Healthcare providers may also want to put a system in place that provides patients with decision-making help—whether as part of an online group of patients or one that meets in person at the doctor’s office.
3. Patients are not willing or able to learn more on their own.
Patients feel more confident taking part in their healthcare when they know more about it. To help them accomplish this, healthcare providers need to be able to connect patients with materials that they can access and understand easily. How this is done will vary among patients, with some wanting information electronically, and others preferring print materials.
Getting a caregiver or other loved ones involved can help patients be more willing to try lifestyle changes or treatments. Family and friends may also be able to provide ideas on how to communicate better with a patient who is having trouble understanding your instructions.
4. Patients are elderly, and do not have access to a computer/the Internet/a smartphone.
According to a report by the Center for Advancing Health, just 30% of elderly people feel motivated and knowledgeable enough to participate in their own healthcare. One possible reason for this is that technology can be intimidating to those who don’t use it regularly.
Explain to elderly patients that using computers as part of the exam can help keep track of information. One helpful practice is to include the patient in the information collection process. Let them see the screen as you type, and show them their lab results and imaging tests firsthand, to help them become a little more comfortable with technology.
There is no universal approach to patient engagement. What works for a mobile-savvy person will not work for someone who has never used technology. Multiple approaches are needed to make an impact with these different groups. Regardless of how you decide to provide information, keep in mind that it only takes a few minutes to show a patient that you care about them and are interested in engaging them in their healthcare. | <urn:uuid:5939fbd2-7c66-4a08-8da8-1529178b724d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/230326/4-barriers-to-patient-engagement-and-how-to-overco.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00172-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960073 | 707 | 2.96875 | 3 |
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Book of Mormon evidences
Evidence of the Book of Mormon
Much evidence exists to support the claims made by the Book of Mormon.
Native American Evidences of Book of Mormon Contents
Native American writings are potentially strong evidence that the occurrences described in the Book of Mormon actually happened. For example, evidence to support the claim by Mormons that Native Americans are descendants of Israel,(non-LDS website that believes the Native Americans are descendants of the Israelites ) is given by a translator of the Title of the Lords of Totonicapán. (For understanding, be aware that the Book of Mormon claims to be a record of ancient groups of people who left Jerusalem and other lands to sail to the Americas.) “The original text of Title of the Lords of Totonicapán was recorded in 1554 in the language of the Quiché of Guatemala from legends centuries old.” The translator seems to indicate that such migratory groups might possibly have existed. In summary of his findings, he makes the following statements:
“The three great Quiché nations ... are descendants of the Ten Tribes of the Kingdom of Israel, whom Shalmaneser reduced to perpetual captivity and who, finding themselves on the border of Assyria, resolved to emigrate....
‘These, then, were the three nations of Quichés, and they came from where the sun rises, descendants of Israel, of the same language and same customs.... They were sons of Abraham and Jacob....
“Now on the twenty-eighth of September of 1554 we sign this attestation in which we have written that which by tradition our ancestors told us, who came from the other part of the sea, from Civán-Tulán, bordering on Babylonia” (Title of the Lords of Totonicapán, trans. Dionisio José Chonay and Delia Goetz, Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953, pp. 167, 170, 194).
It has been claimed that the blood of these migratory people flows in the veins of the Blackfoot and the Blood Indians of Alberta, Canada; in the Navajo and the Apache of the American Southwest; the Inca of western South America; the Aztec of Mexico; the Maya of Guatemala; and in other Native American groups in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific islands.
Ted E. Brewerton, “The Book of Mormon: A Sacred Ancient Record,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 30
The White Bearded God – Quetzalcoatl in the Book of Mormon
Ancient American literature frequently refers to a “white, bearded god who descended out of the heavens.” Called by many names, this legendary figure is often referred to as Quetzalcoatl. “Historians of the sixteenth century recorded pre-Hispanic beliefs concerning the white, bearded god who came to the Americas long before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors” (Brewerton, 30). While this may seem to be merely a legend or an unexplainable part of history, the Book of Mormon, believed to be written by ancient American prophets, reports the visitation of Jesus Christ to the American continent following his resurrection. The congruencies between the Book of Mormon account and Native American legends are astonishing. The following paragraphs contain examples of these Native American legends:
Bernardo de Sahagun (born 1499) wrote: “Quetzalcoatl was esteemed and considered as a god, and was worshipped in older times. He had long hair and was bearded. The people worshipped only the Lord” (Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España, Mexico: Editorial Porrua, S. A., 1985, pp. 195, 598).
Diego Duran (born 1537) wrote: “A great man—a person venerable and religious—bearded, tall, long hair, dignified deportment, heroic acts, miracles—I affirm he could have been one of the blessed apostles” (Historia de las Indias de Nueva España, 1867, first ed., 2 vols., Mexico: Editorial Porrua, S. A., 1967, 1:9).
Bartolomé de las Casas (born 1474) wrote that Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent, was white, had a rounded beard, was tall, and came from the sea in the east, from whence he will return (see Los Indios de Mexico y Nueva España Antologiá, Mexico: Editorial Porrua, S. A., 1982, pp. 54, 218, 223).
The Tamanacos Indian tribes in Venezuela have the same legend of a white, bearded god: “[Amalivacá] had a face the color of the light fluffy clouds of the morning, and white was his long head of hair. … He said: ‘I am Amalivacá, and I come in the name of my father INA-UIKI’ ” (Arturo Hellmund Tello, Leyendas Indígenas del Bajo Orinoco, trans. Ted E. Brewerton, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Imprenta Lopez Peru 666, 1948, pp. 19–22). (Brewerton, The Book...)
Although it is not a commonly told tale in the Christian world, it is possible that the congruencies in the Book of Mormon and Ancient American legends teach us that Jesus Christ Himself appeared to the people in America following His resurrection. These accounts may reveal the meaning behind Jesus Christ’s statement to his apostles in John 10:16 when he says, “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (King James Version). Holy Bible John 10 In the Book of Mormon, Christ explains to the ancient American people that they were the "other sheep." Read Jesus' words to the ancient Americans
While these studies may be intriguing and thought-provoking, Mormons claim that the only way to know if the Book of Mormon really is true and if Christ really did visit the Americas is to ask God himself through prayer. If the Book is true, God will help the book to make sense and it will bring a positive influence every time it is read. An answer from God will be the most reliable evidence in determining if the Book of Mormon is true or not. Request a Free Book of Mormon
- "Mormon Bible?"
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- Video lecture:Horses in the Book of Mormon
- Ted E. Brewerton, “The Book of Mormon: A Sacred Ancient Record,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 30.
- Symbolism or Science: A Preliminary Look at Ether 2:3 | <urn:uuid:ab720ec1-864f-4d7d-ae99-1d82b0766ab3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mormonwiki.com/Book_of_Mormon_evidences | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00115-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928787 | 1,484 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Sunshine powers Uganda's school computers
- 19 March 2014
- From the section Business
Turning on a computer shouldn't be that difficult. Except if you don't have any power supply.
Most rural schools in Uganda don't have mains electricity or any other reliable power, leaving them cut off from learning about modern technology.
So while the education world is awash with talk about technology and keeping up with the global race, many children at school in sub-Saharan Africa don't even get on the starting grid.
But a project serving rural schools in Uganda is taking a direct approach to the problem.
It's using the abundant equatorial sunshine to provide electricity for mobile classrooms, using portable solar panels.
Run by an education charity, the Maendeleo Foundation, it's a relatively low-tech answer to a hi-tech gap.
A sturdy vehicle drives to outlying schools, bouncing up and down along snaking, dusty, pot-holed roads, with solar panels attached like a photovoltaic roof rack.
These are not tarred roads, but bright red earthen tracks, pressed down by vehicles and villagers, goats and cattle, hemmed in by deep green vegetation, which is to say that this isn't exactly a motorway and it's slow progress.
When the jeep arrives at a school, it provides an instant pop-up classroom. There's a tent, chairs, desks and enough laptops for a class - and the charge from the solar panels allows the pupils to have a computer lesson lasting several hours.
The foundation has two jeeps, each going to five schools each week in rotation, reaching about 2,000 pupils.
When the jeep arrives at Kyetume Church of Uganda Primary School, near Mukono, in central Uganda, it's like an emissary of the outside world.
It's not that the teachers and children here are unaware of technology and the internet, but apart from this project they cannot get their hands on it.
Once the laptops are plugged into a solar-driven battery, children tap away on learning games, much as they would anywhere else in the world.
Except this is an outdoor classroom and a green lizard sits on a hot stone watching them work.
John Walusimbi, a trainer with the project, says these computer lessons are essential for the future job chances of these rural youngsters.
"If children have these skills they won't be left behind."
Although laptops, tablet computers and internet access are now expensive in Uganda, he says that like mobile phones, they are likely to become more affordable.
Migrating to the city
When that happens these youngsters will be severely disadvantaged if they have never even taken their first steps in touching a computer.
"These skills are very rare in this community," says Judith Nankya, a teacher at the school. Without electricity, there is no computer in the school office or anywhere else for the staff to train.
There are wider infrastructure questions about why so few schools in Uganda have access to affordable electricity. Permanently installing and maintaining solar panels is also said to be too expensive for many schools.
And even when there is a connection to the electricity grid it can be unreliable.
Uganda has year-round sunshine and there's solar energy even on an overcast day. So for now, this is something that is reliable, self-reliant and works.
This is a lush, quiet place, not far from the shores of Lake Victoria. But many of these youngsters are likely to have to follow the path of migration from the country into the cities to look for work.
The Maendeleo Foundation's co-founder Asia Kamukama says that when these children leave school and begin working, they will have to "compete with people all over the world".
"Without prior introduction to these machines, they are afraid, they have nowhere to begin. We're preparing the next generation to know how to use computers," says Ms Kamukama, who was a finalist in last year's international education awards at the WISE summit in Qatar.
It isn't just about schools, she says that technology and the internet will be an important part of helping local communities to improve health and education services. It will give them information that other people take for granted.
The foundation is also working to provide online agricultural information for farmers in their local languages. It wants to provide information and improve skills.
This is being supported by a not-for-profit organisation called Electronic Information for Libraries, which makes digital information available in developing countries.
Uganda faces a huge challenge in providing skills for a population that is rising at a staggering rate.
When the country gained independence in 1962, the population was eight million. In 2012, it had quadrupled to 34 million and at the current rate of growth, it is forecast to almost quadruple again to 130 million by 2050.
That's like going from a population similar to Switzerland to a size similar to the UK and France combined.
What will all these young people do? Only about one in four currently gets a place in secondary school.
The capital, Kampala, is already overcrowded with young families in makeshift huts trying to scratch out a living. There are already more under-18 year-olds in the country than there are adults.
If there are millions more without the education and skills that could help them get work, it's going to raise big challenges for political stability.
It isn't just rhetoric to talk about youngsters having to compete in a "global village".
The outside influences are visible everywhere, whether it's Chinese factories and mobile phone adverts or English premiership football shirts.
There are competing cultures. This is a place where barracks have been named after Colonel Gaddafi and a stadium after Nelson Mandela.
The children trying out their solar-powered laptops are going to have to decide in which way they want to connect with the future. | <urn:uuid:ef8a4b12-4855-4f81-a61e-9ef6215e22a6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26546413 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00131-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967244 | 1,224 | 2.875 | 3 |
In terms of reproduction, little is known about the general behaviour of the ringed boghaunter. However, the female ringed boghaunter is known to deposit eggs amongst sphagnum moss in shallow breeding pools, up to 30 centimetres deep (3). After passing through a number of moults, the aquatic nymph emerges in April, using stable vegetation in its pool to crawl about five centimetres out of the water. While clinging to the vegetation, the nymph emerges as the recognisable winged adult (4).
The adult ringed boghaunter emerges as early as April, and its flight period lasts until early June (3). In the three weeks of its adult life, the ringed boghaunter spends the majority of its time basking in sunny spots on tree trunks and rocks in woodland (2) (4).
Not a great deal is known about the diet of the ringed boghaunter, but, like other dragonflies, it is predatory. During the nymph stage it feeds on aquatic invertebrates, and the adult predates small flying insects (3). | <urn:uuid:cb184422-6fb8-4991-99e5-ac1b6664452b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.arkive.org/ringed-boghaunter/williamsonia-lintneri/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398075.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00057-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947244 | 234 | 3.375 | 3 |
Like the person you are, no matter how you change
Published: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 12:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, August 26, 2013 at 2:06 p.m.
As a new school year begins we are reminded about the process of change and why young people need to know the process is constant.
We're guessing that most students would rather have extended the starting date a few weeks, and most teachers, too. Isn't that the case every year? Some things never change.
Like that verse in Ecclesiastes states, there is a time and season for everything,
While there is a grand attempt to create grade school curriculum that is all inclusive, some things that young people need to learn just can't be found in a textbook.
There is a general belief, we think, that humans change during three basic stages. That is, there is childhood, teenage years and then when someone turns 21 adulthood. It is important to know that change doesn't stop there. We are not alluding to physical change. As we age, that becomes an all too obvious aspect.
The most important part of change is how we become different people emotionally and cognitively through the years. Some of this can be lumped into the process of maturity, but that's only a brief part of the process.
In this age of constant advancements in technology that is changing the way we work, learn and communicate, some aspects of our lives are altered from week to week. We are probably changing at a faster pace today than ever before.
We continue to change in terms of who we are throughout our lives. One reason for this, of course, is that our priorities change. What was important to us, say, five years ago may not be very important to us today. And then, we look back and wonder why it was important to us at that time.
You have likely heard someone remark that their grandfather or father has really mellowed out over the years. We seldom think that mellowing has more to do with changing and less to do with aging. They've likely figured out ways to create less stress in their lives.
Young people need to know that it is natural for them to feel awkward at various stages of their teen years. It is natural for them to feel insecure. It is natural for them to wonder why their best friend grew six inches over the summer while they remained the same height. They also need to realize this will not always be important to them.
And they always need to like who they are, no matter how old they are.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:87a50204-4571-4ff9-b906-0c487c4f07b4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.the-dispatch.com/article/20130827/OPINION01/308279991/0/OBITUARIES | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00168-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980242 | 567 | 2.59375 | 3 |
In our last episode in this series, we described the genesis of the Cruising Everyman in the mid- to late 19th century. These were sailors who were not aristocratic bluebloods looking to flaunt their wealth, but a simpler breed of more middle-class sailors who enjoyed cruising under sail for its own sake. These are cruisers we can easily relate to today, and what most interests us, of course, is the sort of boat they most often went cruising in.
For many sailors of more modest means who wanted vessels that were both substantial enough to survive a bit of weather and large enough to live aboard for limited periods of time in some comfort, the easiest and cheapest thing to do was simply to buy an old working boat and refurnish it. Some paint, some furniture tacked in down below, and perhaps some rig alterations could quickly transform many such boats into perfectly serviceable cruisers. It helped, of course, that working sailboats everywhere were steadily being replaced by power vessels, and thus were available at reasonable prices in ever-growing numbers.
Fishing boats were probably the most popular candidates for conversion. Indeed, some types established secondary reputations as cruising boats that ultimately eclipsed their previous identities. We tend to forget, for example, that two popular American craft now considered classic coastal cruising vessels–the Cape Cod catboat and the Friendship sloop–were both originally designed and used as inshore fishing boats.
Sailplan of a typical Friendship sloop. These were working fishing boats that morphed into coastal cruisers as cruising under sail became more popular
In Britain, lifeboats were also seen as ideal vessels to make over into cruising boats. This practice, which continues to this day, started at least as early as 1886, when E.F. Knight made a name for himself cruising from England to the Baltic and back aboard Falcon, a converted ship’s lifeboat he purchased for just 20 pounds.
Pilot boats were another logical choice, as they were usually designed to be both fast (so they could compete with other pilot boats racing out of a harbor to do business with inbound vessels) and seaworthy enough to go out in any weather. Several types were pressed into service as yachts on both sides of the Atlantic. Bristol Channel pilot cutters became particularly popular as cruisers in Britain, but by far the most influential type was a beamy double-ended 47-foot pilot and offshore rescue boat designed by Colin Archer in 1893 for work along the coast of Norway. The simple symmetrical lines of these boats, known as Redningskoites (see photo up top), were explicitly copied by others seeking to create durable all-purpose cruising boats. The best-known example was Eric, a scaled-down 32-foot Redningskoite designed by William Atkin in 1925. Meanwhile, the design for another very influential double-ended cruising boat, the Tahiti ketch, conceived by John Hanna in 1923, was explicitly based on boats sailed by Greek sponge fishermen.
A British pilot cutter under sail
For a generation of cruisers John Hanna’s Tahiti ketch, based on old sponge fishing boats, was considered an ultimate “get-away boat”
By far the most famous converted working boat was Joshua Slocum‘s Spray. Slocum does not at all fit the template of the amateur cruising yachtsman described in our last installment, but his influence on the sport was extraordinary. Ironically, he did have something in common with George Crowninshield, the owner of Cleopatra’s Barge, which we discussed at the very beginning of this series. Like Crowninshield, Slocum gained his nautical expertise as a professional merchant mariner. Unlike Crowninshield, he lived in the latter part of the 19th century, when commercial sail was being driven into extinction.
Crowninshield took up cruising because it amused him, and he had been successful enough as a commercial mariner that he could indulge his fancy in a grandiose manner. Slocum, on the other hand, became a cruiser mostly in desperation. His professional life had been destroyed, and he was shorebound and down on his luck when, in 1892, a fellow ship captain, perhaps as a joke, gave him a decrepit 36-foot Delaware oyster smack that had been left in a field to rot. With characteristic tenacity Slocum rebuilt the boat and, after a brief attempt to earn a living fishing her, set out on a protracted singlehanded cruise around the world. This voyage and Slocum’s book describing it, Sailing Alone Around the World, not only helped to legitimize “alternative” cruising, it also spread the seed of the cruising dream much farther than before. Indeed, Slocum’s book is still in print today and still works its magic in the minds of most cruising sailors.
Joshua Slocum aboard Spray
Sailplan of Spray
Lines of Spray
What perhaps is most significant about Spray is how anachronistic she was. Even at the time of her circumnavigation, which Slocum completed in 1898, she was in many respects completely obsolete. She was, by Slocum’s account, approximately 100 years old when he acquired her, and her hull form reflected this. Her shape tended toward the old “cod’s head and mackerel’s tail” school of naval architecture, with a fat entry, maximum beam at or a little forward of amidships, and a finer run aft on her waterline. She was wide (over 14 feet) with a relatively shoal draft (about 4 feet) and short ends–her waterline length (about 32 feet) was just 4 feet shy of her length overall. She was also immensely heavy for her size, displacing 24,000 pounds, and carried all her ballast in her bilges, with none at all in her keel.
Spray had almost nothing in common with modern turn-of-the-century yachts (a fact in which Slocum seemed to take great pleasure), but she served well enough as a cruiser. Indeed, her performance, given her particulars and the fact that she was sailed singlehanded, was extraordinary. Slocum reported top speeds on the order of 8 knots, and he routinely averaged 150 miles a day on passage–numbers more typical of 36-foot yachts built in the mid-20th century that weigh half as much. He also boasted of the boat’s ability to steer herself, but credit for this, and for the speeds achieved, must in fact go to Slocum himself. He was a master mariner who had the skill and nerve to drive a vessel hard and was an intuitive expert when it came to sail trim.
What is also significant about Spray is that, in spite of her putative obsolescence, her design is still considered viable today. Contemporary cruising boats that mimic her lines, most particularly steel hulls built to plans drawn by designer Bruce Roberts, though not exactly common, are not hard to find. Some devotees, in fact, still insist that Spray represents the “ultimate” cruising boat.
Example of a Bruce Roberts ketch based on Spray
What this really demonstrates is that–unlike a racing yacht, which succeeds only if it wins races–the worth of a cruising boat can be measured in any number of ways. One good reason, for example, why some traditional designs based on old workboats like Spray are still viable is that they yield lots of interior accommodation space, which is, for many cruisers, a key consideration. Other reasons for favoring such boats may include, as mentioned above, their affordability and availability, plus they are often extremely seaworthy. But perhaps their most powerful (and most subjective) attraction is their strong romantic appeal. Traditional boats tap directly into the zeitgeist of the cruising dream, and this unquestionably influenced the development of cruising boat design as cruising became more popular.
Of course, not all early small-boat cruisers were inclined to go sailing in old work boats. Many had the resources to commission the building of modest yachts and this led to a proliferation of specialized designs. As was the case with R.T. McMullen’s 42-footer Orion, which we mentioned last time, these were often unremarkable adaptations of mainstream yacht designs. It became common, however, for experienced amateur cruisers to commission idiosyncratic designs that reflected personal prejudices and preferences. Here again McMullen provides a useful example, as both Procyon and Perseus, his smaller purpose-built singlehanders, were unique vessels that must have seemed odd to mainstream yachtsmen of the time.
Some amateur cruisers acquired enough knowledge and expertise to become amateur designers as well. One of the first and most influential of these was Albert Strange, a British headmaster and art teacher born in 1855 who first started cruising the Thames estuary as a teenager in a converted workboat. As a member of the Humber Yawl Club, which was directly descended from one of John MacGregor’s canoe clubs, Strange’s design work followed a fascinating trajectory from small sailing canoes similar to those sailed by MacGregor to much larger double-ended deep-keeled vessels known as “canoe yawls.”
A Strange canoe-yawl under sail
Lines of a Strange canoe-yawl with overhanging stern
Strange did not invent the canoe yawl, but he is credited with inventing the elegant overhanging pointed canoe stern that initially distinguished his boats from others and was later widely copied. Among the many amateur cruiser/designers who followed in his wake were T. Harrison Butler, W. Maxwell Blake, Fred Fenger, and Maurice Griffiths. Although the work of such men is unique and identifiable, their boats on the whole tended to be conservative, featuring moderate proportions, full ballast keels, narrow to moderate beam, and relatively short ends.
Yet another intriguing wrinkle was the advent of cruisers who sought to build their own boats. For a certain sort of fellow the notion of constructing a boat was just as alluring as the prospect of sailing it. Also, of course, for those with the time and skills backyard building could be a more economical way to get afloat.
The most adventurous build-it-yourself cruisers worked without plans and made things up as they went along. Remarkably, this was yet another trail blazed by Joshua Slocum. Some years prior to his voyage in Spray, Slocum had owned and commanded a 138-foot trading bark, Aquidneck, that he lost on a sandbar in Brazil in 1887. To get his family home to the United States, he and his oldest son, Victor, built a bizarre 35-foot unballasted junk-rigged sampan (Slocum actually called it a canoe) that they christened Liberdade. Slocum and his wife and two children not only sailed this unlikely vessel more than 5,000 miles from Brazil to the U.S., they then lived aboard the boat and cruised it on the East Coast for nearly a year.
A vessel as eccentric as Liberdade did not immediately inspire imitations, but Slocum’s use of the Asian junk rig did anticipate such modern designers as Blondie Hasler, Tom Colvin, and Jay Benford, who installed junk rigs on both racing and cruising vessels. Liberdade also provided an important creative precedent, setting an example for future designers and sailors willing to think “outside the box.”
The backyard builders who had the biggest impact on the development of cruising boat design were those who wanted or needed plans to build to. To meet this demand, some designers started conceiving boats with simplified lines that were easy for amateurs to put together. Often such designs were published and marketed through the several boating magazines that sprouted up on both sides of the Atlantic.
One of the earliest and most significant was an American publication, The Rudder, founded in 1891 by a fiery small-boat evangelist named Thomas Fleming Day. Day believed strongly in the concept of backyard building–“No Boats, No Sport: All Hands Build Hulls” was a favorite slogan of his–and he published many build-it-yourself designs in his magazine. He also believed in practicing what he preached and in 1911 sailed one of these boats, a 26-foot yawl named Sea Bird, across the Atlantic from Rhode Island to Gibraltar with two companions as crew.
Sea Bird under sail
Drawing of Sea Bird
Sea Bird had a simple V-bottomed hull with a single hard chine on either side and was explicitly designed for ease of construction. Her plans specified two underwater configurations; she could be built either with a centerboard or with a deep keel supporting 700 pounds of ballast. She also reportedly carried about 1,000 pounds of internal ballast. With her low freeboard, Sea Bird may not have looked particularly seaworthy, but Day’s transatlantic voyage hushed many nay-sayers, while convincing others that Day himself most likely was a lunatic. Further support for the latter proposition came the following year when Day went transatlantic again, this time in a 36-foot powerboat carrying 1,200 gallons of gasoline.
Over the years, several hundred copies of Sea Bird were built by amateur cruisers. Among these was a larger sistership, a 34-foot boat named Islander built by Harry Pidgeon, a farm boy from Iowa, in a vacant lot in Los Angeles in 1917. Pidgeon, a self-taught sailor, completed a singlehanded circumnavigation in Islander in 1925, becoming only the second man (after Joshua Slocum) to perform this feat. He subsequently lived aboard for 16 years, made another circumnavigation, and was in the middle of a third (this time with his wife) when he finally lost Islander in a hurricane in the New Hebrides. Fortunately, both Pidgeon and his wife escaped with their lives.
NEXT: The Golden Age of the Cruiser-Racer | <urn:uuid:67050c12-ccfe-460a-908a-a91f699bb442> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sailfeed.com/2014/03/cruising-boat-evolution-from-work-boats-to-yachts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00183-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982545 | 2,958 | 2.703125 | 3 |
cataract, in medicine, opacity of the lens of the eye, which impairs vision. In the young, cataracts are generally congenital or hereditary; later they are usually the result of degenerative changes brought on by aging or systemic disease (diabetes). Cataracts brought on by aging are most common; most individuals over 60 exhibit some degree of lens opacity. Injury, extreme heat, ultraviolet light, X rays, nuclear radiation, inflammatory disease, and toxic substances also cause cataracts. There is growing concern that further disintegration of the ozone layer will increase the incidence of cataracts. Advanced cataracts are usually treated by surgical removal of the lens and implantation of an artificial lens. After cataract surgery, which is the most common surgical procedure in the United States, most patients do not require thick glasses or contact lenses. | <urn:uuid:c2088db5-ab28-495f-b196-83628e3e0feb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia/science/cataract.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00060-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940875 | 174 | 3.46875 | 3 |
In this article, we’ll be looking at the main differences between the two and if aquaponics really is the best of both worlds of hydroponics and aquaculture.
What Is Hydroponics?
Hydroponics uses only water and chemical nutrients to cultivate plants, without the necessity of soil. It’s not only the main production method of much of the greenhouse tomato, basil and lettuce grown in North America, but it’s also popular among marijuana growers.
The advantages of using hydroponics to grow plants are:
- No soil is necessary.
- It’s stable and produces high yields.
- There is no damage from pesticides.
- The controlled system means that no nutrition pollution is released into the environment.
- Lower nutrient requirements due to control over nutrient levels.
- Lower water requirement as water stays in the system and can be reused.
The Differences Between Hydroponics & Aquaponics
Hydroponics and aquaponics share a few similarities. They both use nutrient-rich water that’s highly oxygenated to bathe the plants’ roots continuously, and in both systems, plants see better growth rates in comparison with those that are grown in soil.
Although aquaponics borrows many techniques from hydroponics such as their NFT (nutrient film technique) and DWC (deep-water culture), there are many significant differences where aquaponics improves upon.
- Cost Of Chemical Nutrients – In a hydroponics system, chemical nutrients used to feed plants are expensive and costs are gradually rising due to over-mining and scarcity. In an aquaponics system, fish feed is used instead which is not only cheaper, but will provide you with bigger as well as support for plants.
- Retain Nutrient Solution – Certain periods, water in hydroponic systems needs to be unloaded because of the build-up of salts and chemicals to the point where levels become toxic to plants. Where the waste water is disposed of needs to be carefully considered, but in an aquaponic system, there’s a natural balance of nitrogen and water is never replaced, only topped up due to evaporation.
- Productivity – It has been shown in several studies and research that once the aquaponic biofilter is fully established (after a period of 6 months), an aquaponic gardener will generally see quicker and more efficient results in terms of plant growth compared to hydroponics.
- Ease Of Maintenance – An aquaponic system is much easier to maintain since there’s no need to check the electrical conductivity once everyday as you would have to in a hydroponic system. The natural ecosystem in aquaponics means that elements have a tendency to balance each other out, and you would only need to check pH and ammonia levels once a week, and nitrate levels once a month.
- Organic Growth – Hydroponics is made up of a sterile man-made environment while aquaponics is a replication of a natural ecosystem, thus making it completely organic. Hydroponic systems use costly nutrients made up of a mixture of chemicals and salts to feed plants, but in an aquaponic system, plant food is made from the conversion of solid fish waste by bacteria and composting worms. This natural process results in better plant growth and lower disease rates.
The modern concept of hydroponics has existed longer than aquaponics, but the practice of aquaponics can actually be traced back to ancient times. More and more people are beginning to realize the benefits and advantages that aquaponics has over other gardening systems.
There has been an increasing amount of institutes and gardeners around the world on every level of society that are adopting the aquaponics method, and it’s only a matter of time before this sustainable food system is standardized.
To get the most out of your aquaponics system, I highly recommend the following articles, where you can decide from the highest rated and bestselling products for aquaponics. | <urn:uuid:873ba21e-d76c-4dd5-8b41-0f2b3b62f944> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://homeaquaponicssystem.com/basics/hydroponics-vs-aquaponics-which-is-better/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00167-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932998 | 829 | 2.9375 | 3 |
In Central India, far from the grid of power lines, telephone poles and power transformers an electrical experiment has been taking place. For the last year, the village of Meerwada has been learning to live with solar energy. Located some 90 minutes from the nearest city by way of a rocky 4×4 dirt road, this small town sits on the cutting edge of a modern-day industrial revolution.
In December 2011, sixty-three homes surrounding Meerwada’s community center were connected to a small solar-panel microgrid that was established by the California-based company SunEdison. The pilot program (later officially named The Eradication of Darkness Plan), selected Meerwada to determine whether small rural villages, such as those found in India’s Guna District, could actually benefit from solar energy. Equally important says Dawn Brister, who serves as SunEdison’s senior manager of marketing communications, was whether the residents would be comfortable with this new change, and what they personally would want to see from the project.
(The) mistake we feel a lot of companies have made when they are trying to take electricity in (to communities) is they don’t take into account how the residents are going to receive it.”
“So we wanted to make sure that the villagers were receptive to it and understood what it could do for them.”
After hearing what the villagers thought of the idea, the engineers then developed a plan that would address the needs of the citizens. The community members were consulted throughout the process to ensure the project would meet their needs. For example, the community center received lighting in and outside the building to allow for comfortable settings for meetings; the privately owned water pump was converted to electrical power from diesel, and a system was set up for other community members to pay for use of the well (rather than walking two miles a day for water); and outside lighting was implemented in areas to allow residents to walk lighted paths and to safely manage livestock after dark.
For much of India, access to electrical power is nothing new. The experience of turning on a lamp to read or cook by at night can be taken for granted as part of 21st century technology.
Solar energy microgrids in Central India
But for some 400 million people in India, electrical power does not exist and has never existed in their homes. Living by the light of day has been a way of life for 28 other villages near Meerwada, where their physical distance from conventional power lines has kept the communities reliant on diesel generators and kerosene lamps.
Meerwada’s success in converting to solar power may change that, says Brister.
“The solar makes perfect sense because of the solar radiance and the meteorological conditions not to mention that they don’t have the grid infrastructure that we have to add to traditional power sources.” The answer, she said, was what was called distributed generation which generates and distributes electricity based on a microgrid, such as the solar power system centralized in Meerwada.
“(A) lot of the people who are without electricity right now are never going to be touched by grid because of the sheer expense and engineering effort that would be required to bring traditional transmission lines out to them,” Brister explains.
The Solar India project
SunEdison has been working to implement solar energy in India since 2010, when the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh, announced the government’s Solar India project with the bold target of 20,000 MW by 2022, with 3,000 MW by 2017.
Recent studies have shown that economic viability in small communities can be tied directly to the quality of one’s living conditions. Improved access to electricity, water and sanitation can have a large impact on residents’ earning capacity, which in turn can play a role in the economic health of a community. It is for this reason that organizations like Water.org and other nonprofits see improved infrastructure and access to water and electricity as essential components in combating poverty in developing nations.
And it’s why SunEdison believes that equipping 29 small communities in Central India with sustainable electricity options will have an impact on India’s own economic wellbeing. Improving the living conditions in small rural communities, Brister says, goes “hand in hand” with improving India’s economic potential as a nation.
“For India to be a good business opportunity, it needs to continue to grow economically. Their economy needs to expand, and for their economy to expand, that needs to include all the people in the country. It can’t be just the cities. So (SunEdison has) always seen it as a hand-in-hand effort,” Brister says. “We want to improve peoples’ quality of life, but we also want to improve their ability to have economic opportunity that is not available to them right now.”
Solar power’s potential in rural India
For many of SunEdison’s staff however, bringing solar power to Meerwada’s 400 residents was a more personal endeavor.
The people who oversaw the project, says Brister, “could tell you a lot about our technical innovation capability, a lot about our go-to-market strategy, a lot about our product set and our differentiation in the market, but if you ask them why they come to work every day, it’s about helping people get electricity.
“Almost everyone on the executive staff has, at some point, been in contact with the people of Meerwada and have seen firsthand what unfettered joy it brings to their life to just be able to turn a light bulb on,” she says, in a village and a geographic area far away from the grid that powers India’s largest cities.
And that, Brister points out, is solar energy’s greatest asset. | <urn:uuid:c91f2028-1f1c-42bd-a0c8-1ddd3e5df308> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/12/solar-energy-brings-power-rural-india/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00158-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968984 | 1,242 | 3.34375 | 3 |
World’s most brilliant X-rays illuminate origin of volcanic hotspotsPublished On: Thu, Jul 19th, 2012 | Geology | By BioNews
Using the world”s most brilliant beam of X-rays, scientists have observed a strong evidence for the theory that volcanic hotspots like the Hawaiian Islands originate from mantle plumes generated at the Earth”s core-mantle boundary.
They have recreated the extreme conditions at the boundary between Earth”s core and its mantle, 2,900 km beneath the surface.
With the help of X-rays, they probed speck-sized samples of rock at very high temperature and pressure to show for the first time that partially molten rock under these conditions is buoyant and should segregate towards the Earth”s surface.
The group of scientists was led by Denis Andrault from the Laboratoire Magmas et Volcans of University Blaise Pascal in Clermont, and included scientists from the CNRS in Clermont and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France.
Most volcanoes are situated where continental plates are pushed or pulled against each other. Here, the continental crust is weakened, and the magma can break through to the surface. The Pacific “Ring of Fire”, for example, exhibits such plate movements, resulting in powerful Earthquakes and numerous active volcanoes.
Volcanic hotspots are of a completely different nature because most of them are far away from plate boundaries. The Hawaiian Islands, for example, are a chain of volcanoes thought to have their origin in a mysterious hot spot beneath the Pacific ocean floor. Every island in the chain starts as an active volcano fed by the hot spot that eventually rises above the ocean surface.
As plate tectonics move the volcano away from the hotspot, it becomes extinct. The hot spot will in the meantime create another volcano: the next island in the chain. The Hawaiian Islands are one of many examples of this process, like the Canary Islands, La Reunion or the Azores.
The nature of the hot-spot source and its location in the mantle have remained elusive to the present day. One explanation is narrow streams of magma conveyed to the Earth”s surface from the boundary between the Earth”s core of liquid iron and the solid mantle of silicate rock. Whether the lowermost mantle expels such streams of magma called mantle plumes is one of today”s major controversies among geologists.
What material can be stored at the core-mantle boundary and become sufficiently light to rise through 2900 km of thick solid mantle? This was the question Denis Andrault and his colleagues addressed when they set out to recreate in a laboratory the conditions found at the core-mantle boundary.
They compressed tiny pieces of rock, the size of a speck of dust and ten times thinner than a human hair, between the tips of two conical diamonds to a pressure of more than one million bar. A laser beam then heated these samples to temperatures between 3000 and 4000 degrees Celsius, which scientists believe is representative of the 200km-thick core-mantle boundary.
The samples are extremely small compared to the natural processes occurring in the Earth. However, the melting processes are very well reproduced experimentally. Therefore, the observations can be confidently transferred from micron scale in the experiments to kilometre scale in the deep mantle.
Beams of X-rays at the ESRF, focused to a diameter of one 1000th of a millimetre, were used to map these samples and identify where the solid rock had melted.
“Obviously, these tiny samples produce weak interaction signals, and this is why it is important to have the most brilliant X-ray beams for this type of experiments,” said Mohammed Mezouar, the scientist responsible for the high-pressure beamline ID27 at the ESRF.
Once regions with molten rock had been identified, another X-ray technique was used at the ESRF to compare the chemical compositions of previously molten and solid parts.
“It is the iron content which is decisive for the density of molten rock at the core-mantle boundary. Its accurate knowledge allowed us to determine that molten rock under these conditions is actually lighter than solid,” said Denis Andrault.
Gravity makes the light liquid rock from a hotspot move slowly upwards like a bubble in water until it reaches the surface where the magma plume will form a volcano. The hotspots of liquid occur in the relatively thin boundary region between the solid lower mantle and the liquid outer core of the Earth where the temperature rises over a distance of just 200 kilometres from 3000 to 4000 degrees. This steep rise is caused by the vicinity of the much hotter core and induces a partial melting of the rocks.
The results of the experiment are also of great significance for the understanding of the early history of the Earth, as they provide an explanation why many chemical elements playing a key role in our daily life gradually accumulated from the Earth”s inside to its thin crust, close to the surface.
The results have been published in Nature. | <urn:uuid:39ce3eb9-ff5e-4dbd-84eb-ca5cbd4b9477> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.bioscholar.com/2012/07/world%E2%80%99s-most-brilliant-x-rays-illuminate-origin-of-volcanic-hotspots.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00016-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945161 | 1,067 | 4.21875 | 4 |
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