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Cylinders, fluid power motors, and rotary actuators
Fluid power actuators
Fluid power actuators receive fluid from a pump (typically driven by an electric motor). After the fluid has been pressure, flow, and directionally controlled, the actuator converts its energy into rotary or linear motion to do useful work. Cylinders account for more than 90% of the actuators used in fluid power systems for work output. Of the approximately 10% of actuators that produce rotary output, more than 90% are hydraulic motors, while the rest are some form of rotary actuator.
Single-acting ram cylinders
The symbols and cutaway views in Figure 15-1 show single-acting ram cylinders in push and pull types. Rams can be as small and simple as a service station lift operated by air over oil, or as big and complex as a 100,000-ton extrusion press.
Single-acting rams often are mounted vertically up and are weight returned. When a ram cylinder is mounted vertically down or horizontally, it must have some method of retracting it to the home position. Figure 15-1 shows one method. Small single-acting pull rams -- mounted alongside the large working ram -- raise and hold it in the up position with a counterbalance valve (not shown). A directional valve or a bi-directional pump directs fluid to the push or pull rams to make them cycle. Another retraction method uses single-acting push rams that oppose the platen movement from the opposite side. (For a circuit that uses a large-diameter vertical down acting ram cylinder, see Figure 10-9.) Small ram cylinders may be returned manually or via a spring.
Ram cylinders only have seals where the ram passes through the body. Anytime a ram cylinder drifts from its stopped position, the cause is valve or pipe leakage if no fluid is coming out around the ram seal.
As the ram moves, stops and guide protrusions on it keep it aligned and indicate maximum stroke. Usually on large-area rams, the stops tear off the packing gland and bushing retainers if the ram is not stopped some other way. Most machines using rams have other methods to keep them from overstroking. (Some only have warning placards about problems if the ram is powered beyond certain limits.) The guide protrusions and bushing align the ram in its housing so it runs true.
Figure 15-2 shows another type of ram cylinder. When there is a need for a long-stroke actuator with a short retracted length, one option is a telescoping cylinder. Although the majority of telescoping cylinders are single acting, double-acting models are available. Most telescoping cylinders stroke slowly and cycle infrequently because their construction is not robust enough for high production applications.
Telescoping ram cylinders
The cutaway views and symbols in Figure 15-2 depict typical multi-stage telescoping cylinders. The one on the left is single acting; the one on the right is double acting.
Single-acting telescoping cylinders are usually mounted vertically with the small ram up. The cylinder then can be weight returned. This arrangement leaves the large ram with its ports attached to a stationary machine member.
Double-acting telescoping cylinders can be mounted vertically with the small ram down or horizontally when required. The best mounting position for any double-acting telescoping cylinder is with the small ram attached to a stationery machine member so the ports do not move. Long-stroke double-acting telescoping mounted horizontally need some sort of carrier to support the center section during extension so they will not sag and wear out seals and bushings prematurely. Also note: the return area may only be only 10% of the extend area, so the return force is not capable of doing much work. This small area also requires very little fluid to give maximum retraction speed without excessive backpressure at the extend port. Another possible problem with double-acting telescoping cylinders occurs if the retract port is blocked while the cylinder is trying to extend. Up to a 10:1 intensification can result and the high pressure may damage the housing or rams. Installing a safety relief valve at the retract port may be necessary if this port can be blocked or restricted for any reason.
For all telescoping cylinders, make sure the small ram can do the work required. As a telescoping cylinder starts to extend, the large ram always moves first at a lower pressure. When the first and subsequent rams bottom out, pressure and speed increase due to the decreased ram area. If the small ram produces insufficient force, the unit stops before making a full stroke.
Several suppliers build double-acting pneumatic telescoping cylinders in small sizes, with up to three stages.
One manufacturer makes a single-acting telescoping cylinder with internal porting and matching areas that cause all rams to move in unison as they extend and retract. These cylinders come in a maximum of three stages because the area staging would make any more rams into a vastly oversized package. An integral combination check and relief valve allows the rams to be filled and bled and to stroke fully in case of bypass at the seals. This design’s main advantage is smooth extension and retraction without the bumps of a typical telescoping unit.
The cutaway view and symbol in Figure 15-3 is for a typical industrial-grade tie-rod cylinder. This cylinder includes all the standard features available from most manufacturers. The names of the parts are what most fluid power glossaries propose, while the names in brackets may be in common use.
The cap end and head end seal off the tube ends with tube-end seals. Tie rods hold the assembly together. The tie rods are tightened to a torque that will resist as much as five times the cylinder’s rated pressure. Tie-rod construction gives the package some flexibility or stretch without permanent deflection or damage. The piston provides the area for fluid to work against. The piston seals stop bypass that would waste energy. The piston rod transmits the force on the piston to the outside of the envelope and is attached to the work mechanism. The rod bushing and rod seal keep the rod aligned and stop fluid leaks to atmosphere. Cap end and rod end cushion plungers block high fluid flow near the end of stroke to allow smooth, no-shock stopping. Cushion-adjusting screws make it possible to adjust stopping speed, while cushion-bypass checks let the piston move rapidly as the cushion plungers are leaving their chambers.
The symbol on the left is the detailed symbol for a hydraulic cylinder with adjustable cushions on both ends. This cylinder also could be as shown as: non-cushioned, cushioned rod end only, or cushioned cap-end only. (When the energy triangles at the ports are blackened, the cylinder is pneumatic.)
The simplified symbol shows less detail but represents the same unit. The 2:1 information over a single rod end cylinder indicates that the rod area is half that of the piston. (Cylinders with 2:1 area ratio will be discussed later in this chapter.)
The spring return and extend cylinders in Figure 15-4 illustrate another method of moving cylinder pistons and rods for some applications. The cutaway views show typical construction (using a tie-rod cylinder as the basic unit). Many other designs are available but essentially use similar parts. Notice that the pistons have mechanical stops to keep the spring from compressing enough to bottom out. Breather ports for air operation or connections for tank drains for hydraulic cylinders are commonly found at the spring end. Most manufacturers indicate that the spring is only capable of returning the piston and rod. It may not be capable of returning the external load. Springs can be less than reliable and difficult to monitor -- especially when they are internal. Because there usually is little savings in hookup or operation, use these cylinders with care.
The tandem cylinder in Figure 15-5 can produce almost twice the force from the same diameter, but it is a little over twice the length. The two cylinders can be independently piped or drained to give extra force in one direction only or both directions. The center heads have guide bushings and seals for both sections so a different fluid can also be used in either end. (See Chapter 17 to learn how tandem cylinders allow oil to control speed and air as the power source. Circuits for matched and unmatched tandem cylinders can be found in the author’s upcoming e-book Fluid Power Circuits Explained.)
The tandem cylinder in Figure 15-5 has a common rod for both pistons. The tandem cylinder in Figure 15-6 has two separate pistons and rods and two different stroke lengths. This combination can be used to get three positive stops from an air or hydraulic cylinder with no special valves or controls. The stops are mechanically fixed, so the stop positions are in the same place every time. However, the stop positions only work for one situation. A four- or five-way directional valve at each cylinder plus flow controls are all that is normally required to operate this circuit.
Special consideration must be used in circuit design for the unattached tandem cylinder in Figure 15-6. If the long-stroke cylinder is not restrained while the short-stroke cylinder extends, it can overtravel and miss the exact position. This problem is exaggerated with horizontal or vertical rod-down applications. Meter-out flow controls or counterbalance valves can eliminate the problem, but could increase cycle time in some cases.
The cap-to-cap mounted cylinders in Figure 15-6 depict another way to use pneumatic or hydraulic cylinders to obtain positive positioning without special valves or equipment. Two four- or five-way valves and flow controls usually make this circuit operate smoothly.
Some designers specify double-rod end cylinders such as those shown in Figure 15-7. These cylinders cost about twice as much as single-rod cylinders and the design has a second place for fluid to leak. In most cases the reason for using them can be accomplished by other methods with equal or better results. If you must use a double-rod end cylinder, remember to allow space for the extra rod and the safety hazard it can cause. Also, the rod reduces the area on the working side of the piston, so a larger bore or higher pressure is necessary in many cases.
A double-rod end cylinder might be specified so that the force and speed in both directions is the same when flow and pressure are equal. This may be true, but flow controls and a reducing valve can accomplish the same result at a reduced cost and in less space. Another alternative is a regeneration circuit, used when producing the exact speed and force in both directions is not critical. (Regeneration circuits are covered extensively in the author’s upcoming e-book Fluid Power Circuits Explained.)
It may appear that double-rod end cylinders reduce rod flexure when the cylinder is fully extended. The rods in their bushings and the piston in its bore provide snug bearing points -- but allow some play. As the piston nears the end of stroke, two of the bearing points get closer together, so lateral movement at the extended end of the rod can increase. It is supposed that the opposite rod will reduce lateral movement and hold the attached load closer to a centered position. However, from the cutaway it is obvious the distance between the piston bearing and the opposite rod bushing almost eliminates any centering effect of the piston. A better way to reduce lateral movement of the extended rod is to stop the piston short of full stroke – either by an internal stop tube or externally by machine members. This arrangement requires a longer cylinder but gives the desired results at a lower cost.
A main reason for using double-rod end cylinders is to mount limit switches to show cylinder position. A special bracket opposite the attachment end holds the limit switches and a doughnut-shaped protrusion on the rod contacts them as the piston strokes. For the same price (and consuming a lot less space), most cylinder manufacturers offer limit switches that attach to the head and/or cap and are activated by cushion plungers. Another signal indicator -- especially for pneumatics – is a Hall-effect switch and a magnetic piston to activate it.
All of the above cylinder-position indicators have one potential major flaw. If the part attached to the rod end gets disconnected for any reason, the machine still will cycle when the cylinder moves...even though the disconnected load may be in the way. If at all possible, mount limit switches on the machine member so its position is never misinterpreted.
Non-rotating rod cylinders
The cylinders in Figure 15-8 incorporate some method to keep the piston and rod from rotating as it strokes. A standard cylinder may try to turn as it extends and retracts, causing it to unscrew from its workpiece. In some applications, the cylinder is expected to orient the work piece it is driving and keep it aligned with mating parts. All the designs in Figure 15-8 attempt to accomplish this non-rotating function in different ways. At best they can keep the rod from turning but none can perfectly guide it when outside forces are acting to turn it. This is especially noticeable on long-stroke cylinders. It is always best to guide the workpiece externally and only use the cylinder to cycle it. Note that the oval-piston design offers the ability to mount cylinders side by side with minimum rod center distance between them and still produce ample force.
The cylinders in Figure 15-9 take up less space on long-stroke applications because they only need mounting space slightly longer than their stroke length. Conventional piston-and-rod cylinders require space more than twice their stroke length -- and can be difficult to conveniently place on many machines.
The earliest long-stroke design is the cable cylinder – shown at top left in Figure 15-9. A coated cable fitted with a work piece attachment, wrapped around two pulleys, and attached to a piston in a bore produces reciprocating motion as fluid -- usually air -- enters and exhausts through the ports. These cylinders are usually 4-in. bore or less, and may have strokes up to 30 ft (or more in certain configurations). Cushions may be specified when required. The cable is coated with nylon or Teflon so it can slide through seals with minimal damage to them. However, the coatings are prone to cracking and eventually will cut the seals until they leak. (The symbol for the cable cylinder is adapted from a manufacturer’s catalog because ISO does not show one.)
The rodless cylinder, top right in the figure, was introduced in the late 1970s. It is even more compact than a cable cylinder and avoids the coating wear problem. It consists of a piston in a bore that has a slot open to atmosphere along its whole length. A seal blocks air from escaping through the slot while the piston is not present. A second contamination seal keeps debris from filling the slot. The fluid seal and contamination seal pass through slots in the piston in slots as it reciprocates. The work piece attachment (connected to the piston) reciprocates to move machine members as fluid enters and exhausts the cylinder. Bores up to 2 12 in. and strokes as long as 33 ft are available from several manufacturers. Cushions may be specified when required.
The band cylinder is an alternative to the cable cylinder. Its smooth steel band passes through seals instead of a coated cable. The magnetic-drive cylinder uses magnetic attraction to keep the piston and workpiece attachment connected. It operates at pressures up to 120 psi and will maintain connection up to 180 psi.
One manufacturer has a modified rodless cylinder with a toothed belt and pulley arrangement to drive the workpiece attachment. It offers the option of an external output shaft to which a brake can be fitted to stop and hold position. This output shaft can also drive an encoder to show work piece position or can connect to another unit for synchronization. It also could act as a low power rotary actuator. It is available in 1- or 1 12-in. bores and up to 177-in. stroke.
Other types of linear actuators
The actuators in Figure 15-10 depict other ways of producing linear force. The rolling diaphragm, diaphragm, and bellows actuators are single acting. The rolling diaphragm is capable of long strokes but not long life at high cycles. The diaphragm is designed only for short-stroke applications only but can have high force due to large areas. All these single-acting devices use some internal or external method to retract them. Using vacuum and weight are two of the methods used for retracting bellows. The double-acting rolling diaphragm operates like a double-acting piston cylinder but is not designed for long life at high cycles.
Sizing linear actuators
Because most cylinders are round, the formula for figuring their area that most remember is: π r2. Another formula for circle area is .7854 D2 which does not require changing to radius before figuring area. There are also data books that have charts for all standard size cylinders. To determine maximum cylinder force, multiply the known area by the operating pressure in psi. The standard formula is written F=PA where F is force, P is pressure and A is area.
For pneumatic cylinders, the usual working pressure is 80 psi even though most plants cycle their air compressor between 115 to 125 psi. The reason for the lower working pressure is because line losses, especially during high flow surges, make it impossible to maintain compressor output pressure over the entire air supply system.
Operating pressure for hydraulic circuits often falls between 1500 and 2500 psi because most components are rated at 3000 psi. Lower pressures require larger actuators at higher flows and over-sizes the entire system. Pressures over 3000 psi often require special components and are usually relegated to very high force applications.
A factor that is often overlooked when sizing cylinders, especially pneumatic ones, is the force figured by the aforementioned formula is not available until after reaching full pressure. A pneumatic circuit does not reach full pressure quickly like a hydraulic circuit does. For example, when tank pressure is high and tire pressure is low it is easy to rapidly fill a flat tire from a portable air tank. However, as tire pressure starts approaching tank pressure, pressure drop decreases and the transfer rate slows to a crawl as rising tire pressure gets closer to lowering tank pressure. Pressure equalization can take several minutes, adding to cycle time when the tire is an actuator. The 3 1/4-in. bore air cylinder in Figure 15-11 will not move the load attached to it because force required and force available do not allow enough pressure drop to move fluid from inlet to the piston. The 4-in. bore gives nominal speed while the 5-in. bore would give fast speed.
To get nominal cycle times, always size air cylinders at least 25% above workforce whether moving a load or applying force. When cycle time must be fast, oversizing up to 100% could be required. Anything above 100% will quickly lessen the effect and is not worth the expense.
Even with hydraulic cylinders, pressure buildup may be fast but is not immediate. Oversizing of 10% is usually enough to achieve reasonably fast cycles in most situations. Other things that slow hydraulic actuator cycle time and pressure buildup include trapped air, slow shifting valves or valves with long spool overlap, and using pressure-compensated pumps without an accumulator.
Typical cylinder seals
The cutaways in Figure 15-12 show the standard ways of sealing pistons and rods from fluid bypass. O-rings and U-cups are resilient and continuous seals that can stop all fluid bypass so a cylinder can be stopped and held almost indefinitely. Cast-iron piston rings do not seal completely but do a good job when system shock or high heat is part of the operation.
O-ring seals are inexpensive but do not have long life in most applications. They must be setup with interference so as they wear they continue sealing. This also adds to breakaway and running friction. They are bi-directional and should not be used in pairs. With two O-rings on a piston, fluid can bypass and get trapped between the seals causing a lot of friction. At pressures above 500 psi, always specify backup rings to keep the O-rings from extruding and being damaged. Always keep O-rings well-lubricated because they can stick and roll in their cavity. When they start rolling they wear rapidly.
U-cups are long-life, low-friction seals because their flexible lips can be heavily preloaded without much increased friction. These seals are pressure energized, which means pressure inside the “U” forces the seal material tightly against the sealing surfaces. U-cups usually use backup rings at pressures above 1500 psi to keep them from extruding.
Material for the resilient seals discussed here is commonly Buna N rubber for pneumatics and many hydraulic cylinders. When synthetic fluid or high heat is encountered, resilient seals often are made of Viton. Buna N is good for temperatures up to 250° F with mineral oil and water glycol. Viton works at temperatures of 400° to 450° F and any fluid used in air or hydraulic circuits. Other seal materials such as leather, Neoprene, and Teflon are available and are standard for some suppliers.
Automotive-type cast-iron piston rings in sets of two or four seal well but not completely. A general rule is that they will leak approximately one cubic inch per minute per inch of bore per one thousand psi. Different end effects have been designed to reduce leakage at the expansion joint. Placing the expansion joint 180° from each other for consecutive rings helps slow leakage.
Cylinders that move at high speed need some sort of deceleration method to keep them from slamming when they reach end of stroke. Some applications with high speed and heavy loads may need valves and limit switches to give enough time to bring the load to a smooth stop. For most cases standard cylinder cushions work well. They are 3/4- to 11/16-in. long and can be in the head or cap end or both. Cushions add cost on most cylinders so should not be specified when unnecessary.
Hydraulic cylinder cushions
The cutaway in Figure 15-13 shows a cylinder with an oversize rod and standard cushions on both ends. The cushion-adjusting screw and cushion bypass check valve can only be installed in the cap end because the cushion plunger on the rod end is so large there is no room for them. The necessity of oversize rods is a problem for most manufacturers. It is possible to taper the cushion and get a smooth stop but it also slows the stroke as the cushion plunger leaves its chamber. The best option to control deceleration of oversize rod cylinders’ extend stroke is with external valves or proportional directional controls.
The other problem with oversize rods and rod-end cushions is the high intensification pressure present when working pressure is high and/or there is a heavy overrunning load. Pressure in the rod end can easily reach two-to-four times rated pressure each time the cylinder extends. High pressure can damage tube end seals and piston seals, and stretch the cylinder tube past its tensile limits.
The top cutaway in Figure 15-13 shows the cylinder piston moving to end of stroke with full flow exiting through the cushion chambers almost unrestricted. This means the cylinder can travel fast until the cushion plungers enter their chambers. The bottom cutaway is what happens after the cushion plungers have entered the cushion chambers. Trapped fluid decelerates the piston quickly to a speed set by the cushion-adjusting screws. Deceleration is sudden on the straight cushion plungers shown here because hydraulic fluid is almost non-compressible. The piston continues to end-of-stroke at a preset controlled speed without damage to itself or the machine.
On cylinders with standard and some oversize rod sizes, the rod-end cushion would function the same as one on the cap end. There is always some pressure intensification on the rod end but this is normally not a problem. When the cylinder starts to extend again, the cushion bypass check valve opens to allow fluid to the full piston area so it can extend quickly at full force. Without the bypass valves, takeoff speed would be as slow as deceleration on retract.
The cutaways in Figure 15-13 show a way of making cushions work. In actual cylinder design, cushions are built in many ways but the general function is the same. One company offers a self compensating non-adjustable cushion option without adjusting screws or bypass checks. Another supplier offers tapered or tapered slots in the plungers that give smooth deceleration instead of the sudden slowdown. Tapered cushions only work for a given pressure, load, and mounting position. They must be figured from information collected prior to building the cylinder.
Pneumatic cylinder cushions
Pneumatic cylinder cushions have similar designs but operate differently because the fluid is compressible. When the cushion plunger enters a cushion chamber, the trapped air starts compressing according to Boyles’ Law discussed in Chapter 1. When the load is light and the starting trapped pressure is high enough, the cylinder stops smoothly without slamming. When the load is heavy and/or starting trapped pressure is low, the cylinder slows but still may bang the end of stroke. This situation requires the addition of external deceleration in the form of valves and/or shock absorbers. Often the rod cushion is ineffective due to less area for the trapped fluid to work against. As with hydraulic cylinders, oversize rods exaggerate the problem.
Most suppliers offer standard cushions on both air and hydraulic cylinders. This option could smooth the operation of certain heavy loads that need extra deceleration distance. These longer cushions only work well for a fixed load and speed condition. If the machine has changing loads and/or speeds a cushion is not the way to go. Using external shock absorbers or proportional valves makes control easy to setup.
Cylinder rod column strength and buckling
Most cylinders are designed to have ample rod strength regardless of mounting style to rated pressure and strokes to 20 in. Above 20-in. strokes, standard rod size may be too small to keep it from bending in compression. Some mounting styles are more prone to buckling problems and need special attention. When an order is placed for cylinders with long strokes that operate above certain pressures, cylinder suppliers usually offer engineering help on design changes and/or rod modifications. Most cylinder catalogs have formulas and/or charts that show how to figure rod column strength for different mounting styles. In many cases the life of a cylinder is dependent on cylinder mounting type and rod size.
Another problem encountered in cylinder design is with bearing loads. A cylinder has bearing points at the rod and its bushing and the piston in the bore. Neither area is strong enough to carry external loads such as a machine member or other parts. Always use the cylinder to push and pull -- not as a guide.
Figure 15-14 shows column strength and bearing load problems on long stroke cylinders and how to overcome them. The vertical cylinder at top left with the heavy load does not have a large enough rod to lift it. When pressure is applied the undersized rod will bend and the load will not move. If the load does move, rod flex soon wears the bushing and allows leakage. Matching rod size to load and pressure makes a workable design.
The lower horizontally mounted long-stroke cylinder with a standard rod has two problems -- column strength and high bearing loads. The weight of the cylinder as the cylinder extends wears on the bearing points and high force will finally bend the rod instead of moving the work. The oversize rod on the lower, horizontally maintained cylinder is sized to handle the load at maximum force but does little to help bearing load problems.
Adding a stop tube to the piston rod keeps the bearing points farther apart and reduces wear. Notice the overall package is longer now because the stop tube takes up space inside the cylinder. Always check out bearing side-loading problems before building the machine. It can be difficult to fit the longer stroke cylinder or more costly to constantly change rod bushings and seals.
Cylinder mounting styles
The mounting styles shown in Figure 15-15 depict the standard NFPA-approved ways to mount cylinders. Up to 25 different companies make cylinders that match these styles in every dimension. This means no supplier has to be the sole source for any cylinder on a machine. Starting at top left are the least expensive mounting styles. Tie-rod mounts are extensions of the tie-rod threaded section. These extensions go through a machine member with nuts installed and tightened to hold the cylinder in place.
The standard offerings are designated two tie rods extended both ends, MX4, four both ends, MX1, four cap end, MX2, four head end, MX3. At best, these mounting styles hold a cylinder in place but not necessarily in a precise location. They should only be considered when what they are attached to does not travel a rigid path.
The tapped mount, top right, is another inexpensive mount but may be hard to locate and hold cylinder position. It can create problems on long-stroke cylinders that need to stretch when pressure is applied. With both ends tied down, the cylinder is not free to grow from pressure or external force without binding. They are designated by the MS heading.
The side and end lug-mounted cylinders are another way to rigidly mount a cylinder but also can be a problem on long strokes. The lugs are extra long so dowel pins can be installed after a precise position is determined. It is not good practice to have dowels in both ends of the cylinder or on opposite corners especially on long strokes. They are designated by the MS heading.
Other rigid mountings are flange mounts in rectangular and square style. They are designated by the MF and ME headings. The bolt-on flanges are for light-duty operation or where the flange is in compression. The extended head and cap flanges are extremely heavy duty and directly replace the bolt on flanges.
The most versatile mounting styles are pivot mounts. They allow freedom of movement in one or both planes and keep the cylinder in perfect alignment. The intermediate trunion is very good on long stroke applications since cylinder weight can be balanced and reduce bearing loads. Care in choosing cylinder mounting style can add years to its life and eliminate rod seal leaks for long periods. Interchangeable NFPA tie-rod design cylinders come in bore sizes of 1 1/2, 2, 2 1/2, 3 1/4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20 in. Rod sizes available are 5/8, 3/4, 1, 1 3/8, 1 3/4, 2, 2 1/2, 3, 3 1/2, 4, 4 1/2, 5, 5 1/2, 7, 8, 9, and 10 in. The largest rod diameter for any bore is equal to or slightly under half the area of the piston. This is commonly known as a 2:1 area ratio cylinder. Oversize rods give fast return at low force, allow for regeneration of rod flow, and allow for higher push force capabilities due to greater column strength. Many manufacturers make cylinders in smaller and larger bores but they are not necessarily interchangeable.
Steel mills often use what are called mill cylinders that have bolted-on heads and caps. They are special to a machine in most cases with little or no interchangeability. Mobile equipment uses cylinders with welded heads and caps that are designed to be thrown away when they fail. However, many repair shops cut them apart and repair them. Mobile cylinders also have screwed-on heads or special snap ring arrangements in their assembly.
The cylinder in Figure 15-16 has such a small diameter and is so far from the directional valve that the lines to and from it hold more fluid than it does. In this situation fresh filtered fluid never cycles through the cylinder so it overheats and all wear particles and rod ingestion stay in it until it fails. Failure is always premature and the amount of contamination present is excessive when it is repaired. Changing the lines to the dual flow path shown in Figure 15-16 eliminates the contamination problem. Cylinder operation and longevity is greatly increased because filtered fluid constantly flushes it.
A tee is installed at A and B ports and check valves facing opposite directions are placed at each end. Separate lines run from the check valves to a tee at each cylinder port. Now all fluid must go to the cylinder through one line and return through the opposite one. Fresh fluid is continually being fed to the cylinder while used fluid returns to be cooled and filtered.
The dual flow path circuit is more important when the cylinder is mounted vertically with long lines. Contamination in this configuration lays on the piston and seals and can score cylinder tube and cause premature seal wear when allowed to collect. | <urn:uuid:34bb6675-0fc4-483b-b1f7-2c82850289c5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hydraulicspneumatics.com/print/other-technologies/chapter-15-fluid-power-actuators-part-1?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00055-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928516 | 6,817 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Image by Lucinda Horan
PART TWOThe Listener: Developing a Dialogue with Self
“In Genesis, Yahweh’s first instruction to Adam is not something practical such as how to make a fire or fashion a weapon. He teaches the first man to name all of His creatures. By this act, Yahweh emphasizes that naming is the most potent power He will confer on mortals. Through naming, Adam gains ‘dominion over all the earth.’ Naming confers meaning and order. To name is to know. To know is to control.”
—Leonard Schlain, The Alphabet Vs. the Goddess
It is logical to presume that, before words were ever written down, they began as sounds. While we can only presume this about the species, we can observe it first hand when it comes to individuals. When a baby learns to speak it doesn’t build a vocabulary word by word (a process which begins later), it starts by making unintelligible sounds in imitation of what it hears. Gradually, these sounds begin to resemble recognizable language and verbal communication begins. Soon after this, the child learns to read and write and language becomes fixed, not only as sound but as image. It becomes script, code. Writing then introduces a new possibility, that of words separate from direct communication, and the corresponding possibility of communication occurring, not only across space, but across time. As Leonard Schlain writes in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, “The written word is essentially immortal. To a hyper-conscious primate who had become aware that death was inevitable, the discovery of a method to project one’s self beyond a single life span seemed nothing less than miraculous.”
There is another possibility which Schlain does not discuss, another purpose for writing which has nothing to do with immortality or even communication in the ordinary sense. That is the possibility of writing without any intention of ever sharing it with another human being—such as for example when writing a journal. Thousand, perhaps millions, of people do this every day (admittedly less so now that blogs and Facebook have opened up the possibility of communicating with strangers), and the assumed wisdom is that keeping a journal is a therapeutic process. If this is really the case, how does it work? The obvious answer is that writing a journal is a way to communicate with oneself.
“To start a dialogue,
Short of talking to oneself (which creates a very different effect), self-communication is only possible via writing. Writing down an account of one’s activities or thoughts creates a distance between oneself and the raw material of one’s existence, and potentially between one’s everyday “motor” self and one’s consciousness. As in good therapy, one is talking to an impartial, disinterested, but wholly attentive other, the difference being that, in this case, the “Listener” is oneself. This Listener is something we can all develop within ourselves, without which no real communication is possible. Before we can begin to listen to others, we have to learn to listen to ourselves. Only then can we find our true voice, because real speech can only come about as a response to listening, whether internally or externally.
We are all familiar with the phrase “to get something off your chest,” the idea being that, by talking about something that is causing us stress or discomfort, we can let it go, or at least see it in a less stressful light. The reason this works is that, by talking about something with a second party, we can see it from a different perspective, from the outside rather than the inside, and reduce its power to affect us. This can work when we have a sympathetic ear to vent our frustration to, but it tends to work better when we have a neutral ear, such as in therapy. Therapy allows us to re-experience our problem from the perspective of an impartial but curious observer who is devoid of any strong emotional reaction. This presence is the Listener, being at once both interested and disinterested, sympathetic but impartial, uninvolved. When we communicate with ourselves in this way, via writing, creative expression, deep thought or meditation, we bring forth The Listener—the part of us that is equivalent to a sympathetic but disinterested friend or a therapist—and can then reconceive the problem from a new perspective. The benefits of this are two-fold: not only do we experience our problem in a less stressful light, we also gain access to a part of ourselves that is able to rise above any problem because it is entirely uninvolved, while at the same time, privy to inside information about us. The Listener is our own inner therapist.
Whether by sharing with a neutral party or writing it down, what is occurring through the act of communicating is that we get to see what’s inside us in a way that feels safe to “take on board.” In terms of the issue being reconceived, if we are angry, we may describe our anger and the reasons for it, thereby seeing the shape of it and coming to “grips” with it. We can then own the anger in such a way that confronting the original cause of our anger becomes much easier and more straightforward. Instead of acting in anger, we “take” our anger to the person or situation and express it in a more balanced, less emotive fashion. Writing a journal, like talking to a therapist, is a way of testing the contents of our minds, both conscious and unconscious (writing will bring unconscious matter to the surface just as much as therapy), making sure that we have got to grips with it before letting others see it. It is a psychological rehearsal space in which we can see exactly what we are capable of and what we’re not—“where we’re at”—before going on stage and performing in front of a live audience.
This sort of dialoguing with the self can have an accumulative effect: it creates a recursive feedback loop in which, the more we reveal the contents of our minds to ourselves and integrate them, the more we accept ourselves as we are, the more we can open up to others, and so on. Alchemically speaking, we are drawing the lead into the laboratory of our minds and transmuting it, via awareness, over a long painful process, into gold. By establishing a different way of relating to ourselves through on-going dialogue, we are establishing a kind of private social identity which, little by little, we can take with us into the world. By strengthening our individual sense of truth, meaning, and value, we are slowly “finding our feet” in reality.
If we are too busy criticizing ourselves we won’t really hear what we are trying to communicate. In the same way, when we pretend to listen to others, we are actually too busy figuring out what we want to say next, and simply waiting for our chance to do so. This is not dialogue. | <urn:uuid:555e5d83-046d-47fc-956e-0adb8ed6e85c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://aeoluskephas.blogspot.com/2011/08/listener.html?showComment=1313189897503 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00055-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957065 | 1,452 | 2.59375 | 3 |
According to Dr. Zak Zarbock, one of the nation’s leading pediatricians and the founder of Zarbee’s, the nation’s fastest growing cough and cold brand, spring and summer cold viruses are on the rise. The four most common bugs to be concerned about this spring and summer are parainfluenza, adenovirus, parvovirus and the enteroviruses.
Following is an explanation from Dr. Zarbock about each virus, along with tips to help your family avoid them and advice for how to treat them if you and/or your kids do get infected.
Croup is the most common result of an infection from a parainfluenza virus. It is commonly seen during the winter months but extends well into the spring. It is a respiratory illness characterized by inspiratory stridor, cough and hoarseness. Younger children tend to have the classic barking cough that is much worse at night, while older children and adults may experience more hoarseness. These symptoms are the result of swelling just below the vocal cords. Most cases of croup are fairly mild; however significant breathing difficulty and airway obstruction can occur.
The parainfluenza virus is spread by droplet and airborne secretions. It typically infects the nose or throat and spreads to the area around the vocal cords. The most common age for croup is six months to three years, but it can affect children as old as six years of age. Home treatment consists of a cool mist humidifier, breathing in the cold air outside or from a freezer, or the use of a steam shower. For moderate symptoms, the use of a steroid may be useful to decrease inflammation around the vocal cords. A breathing treatment with epinephrine (adrenaline) may also be indicated for significant breathing difficulty. Traditional over-the-counter cough medicines that have Dextromethorphan (DM) or diphenhydramine have been proven ineffective and are not supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, so I don’t recommend them. A recent Penn State University study found that the best treatment for coughs in children suffering from an upper respiratory infection is buckwheat honey, which is why I started Zarbee’s. Zarbee’s uses buckwheat honey to calm coughs and sore throats gently while drug-based medications attempt to suppress a child's cough unnaturally. It is also the only cough treatment on the market safe and effective for children as young as 12 months of age.
Avoidance of this virus is best achieved by frequent hand washing and limiting unnecessary contact with the nose and mouth. Teaching proper hygiene and coughing into the elbow may also help keep young children from spreading the virus.
Adenoviruses are actually a family of viruses most prevalent in the late winter, spring and early summer. They can cause many symptoms but are often known for causing high fevers in children. Additionally, runny nose, sore throat, red eyes, pneumonias, and even vomiting and diarrhea may be seen with these viruses.
Adenovirus is highly contagious and may be readily spread by close contact in places like summer camps, schools, childcare centers and hospitals. Transmission of adenovirus can occur via airborne secretions (i.e. coughing or sneezing), the fecal-oral route (i.e. not washing hands after using the restroom) and by contact with contaminated surfaces like toys, furniture and hands. Adenoviruses can survive for long periods on environmental surfaces; they are inactivated by heat or a bleach cleaning solution made by mixing ¼ cup of bleach with one gallon of water. An infected individual can shed the virus from days to months in the stool.
There is no way to completely prevent adenoviral infections in kids. To reduce the risk of transmission, parents and other caregivers should encourage frequent hand washing, keep shared surfaces such as countertops and toys clean and remove kids with infections from group settings until symptoms subside.
Fifth disease is caused by infection with human parvovirus B19. The illness is characterized by a rash on the cheeks, giving the characteristic "slapped-cheek” appearance and occurs most commonly in children. The ill child may also have a lacy red rash on the trunk and limbs, a low-grade fever, cold symptoms, or general discomfort for a few days before the rash breaks out. The rash resolves in 7 to 10 days, however, an infected individual is contagious during the early part of the illness, before the rash even appears. Parvovirus is typically spread by direct contact with the respiratory secretions, e.g., saliva, sputum or nasal mucus, of infected persons. By the time you see the "slapped cheeks,” your child is probably no longer contagious and may return to school or daycare.
Although fifth disease is usually a mild illness that resolves on its own, it may cause a serious illness in persons with sickle-cell disease, certain chronic anemias, or in those with weakened immune systems. Occasionally, serious complications may also develop from a parvovirus B19 infection during pregnancy.
Treatment of symptoms such as fever, pain, or itching is usually all that is required for fifth disease. There is no vaccine or medicine that prevents parvovirus B19 infection. Frequent hand washing and the avoidance of sharing drinks or utensils are the most effective methods to decrease the chance of becoming infected. Excluding persons with fifth disease from summer camp, child care centers or schools is not likely to prevent the spread of the virus, since people are contagious before they develop the rash.
Enteroviruses are another family of viruses that include the polioviruses, coxsackieviruses, echoviruses, and several others. These viruses are widespread and second only to the "common cold" viruses, the rhinoviruses, as the most common viral infections in humans. The non-polio enteroviruses cause an estimated 10-15 million symptomatic infections a year in the United States alone. These infections are most commonly seen at the end of spring and moving into summer and early fall. Conversely, the polioviruses have been eliminated from the U.S. by the widespread use of vaccines.
Most people who are infected with a non-polio enterovirus have no disease at all. Infected persons who become ill usually develop mild upper respiratory symptoms (a "summer cold"), a flu-like illness with fever and muscle aches or a rash. Coxsackie viruses are responsible for hand, foot, and mouth disease as well as herpangina, both of which may result in a sore throat and sores in the mouth. Less commonly, some children may contract viral meningitis or, rarely, a person may develop an illness that affects the heart (myocarditis) or the brain (encephalitis).
Like many other viruses, enteroviruses can also be found in the respiratory secretions or the stool of an infected person. Direct contact with contaminated surfaces or objects, such as a drinking glass, telephone, diaper, or a bathroom door handle may transmit infection. Because most people who are infected with enteroviruses do not become sick, it can be difficult to prevent the spread of the virus. Strict adherence to proper washing and hygiene are the standard to avoid infection. Also, cleaning contaminated surfaces with a disinfectant or a dilute chlorine-bleach solution can be a very effective way to inactivate the virus, especially in crowded, high-traffic settings such as summer camps and community and child care centers.
About Dr. Zarbock
Zak Zarbock, M.D. is one of the country’s top pediatricians and the Founder and President of Zarbee’s, the fastest-growing children’s cough and cold brand in the country. As one of the nation’s leading experts on treating coughs and colds in children, Dr. Zak was invited to participate in the September 2010 FDA hearing on Capitol Hill and speak about the potential dangers of cough syrup. A member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Zak completed his medical training at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, his pediatric internship and residency at the University of Utah and Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City and practices at Families First Pediatrics in South Jordan, Utah. Married and the proud father of four boys between the ages of three and 11, Dr. Zak is a regular guest on TV and radio shows and serves as a resource for reporters writing stories about pediatric issues.
The fastest-growing children's cough and cold brand in the country, Zarbee’s is the only cough syrup on the market that has been proven safe and effective for children 12 months of age and older. Developed by one of the country’s top pediatricians, Zarbee’s is made from antioxidant-rich buckwheat honey, which clinical trials have shown to be the safest and most effective treatment for relieving coughs in children. Recommended by pediatricians nationwide, Zarbee’s Cough Syrup is all natural and gluten free, contains no drugs, alcohol and dyes, has no side effects and carries no risk of overdose. Zarbee’s does not include Dextromethorphan (DM), the most common over-the-counter treatment for coughs, which is not supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, has been banned for children ages 4 and younger and is being scrutinized by the FDA as ineffective and potentially dangerous for children. Available at Walgreens, Walmart, CVS, Rite Aid, Kmart, Kroger, Winn Dixie, Albertsons and Meijer stores nationwide, Zarbee’s Cough Syrup sells for a suggested retail price of $7.99 for a 4 fluid ounce bottle. For more information, visit www.zarbees.com.
Original All Natural Children’s Cough Syrup
- The only cough and cold syrup on the market that is safe and effective for children 12 months of age and older
- Contains antioxidant-rich blend of buckwheat honey, wildflower honey, and immune-system boosters zinc, vitamin C and natural flavors
- Available in grape and cherry flavors, flavors kids describe as “yummy” and “scrumbdidilyumptious.”
- Sells nationwide for a suggested retail price of $7.99 for a 4 fluid ounce bottle
Zarbee’s Nighttime Cough and Sleep Drink
- Helps soothe nighttime coughs and sore throats
- First product for children 2 years and older to help provide relief from coughs and sore throats and promote healthy sleep
- Contains 100% granulated honey, vitamin C, zinc gluconate, melatonin, natural grape and elderberry
- Comes in a powder form that mixes with soothing warm water
- Safe for children two years of age and older
- Sells nationwide for a suggested retail price of $8.99 for six two-ounce doses
Available at Walgreens, Walmart, CVS, Rite Aid, Kmart, Kroger, Winn Dixie, Albertsons and Meijer stores nationwide
For more information, visit www.zarbees.com also check out ZarBee's on Facebook.
This was not a paid post and honest/original opinions were used and they are my own. Thank you to the company and/or pr agency who supplied the product for review. | <urn:uuid:fe6fe73e-27ee-4166-b624-a05911d17fcd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mommykatie.com/2012/01/zarbees-spring-and-summer-viral.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951412 | 2,393 | 2.828125 | 3 |
For the first time in more than 100
years, astronomers on Planet Earth will be able to view a
Transit of Venus. On June 8, 2004, Venus will appear to travel
across the face of the sun. This exciting and rare astronomical
event can be see by observers in most of the world.
Venus transits currently occur at
intervals of 8, 105.5, 8, and 121.5 years. Only six transits of
Venus have occurred since the invention of the telescope.
Click this button to learn more about the Transit of Venus
and how you can observe this exciting event.
Venus Transit Certificate
Participate in the NASA / Astronomical
League Venus Transit certificate program. Visit the
Astronomical League website for
To register for the program, visit
select "For Amateur Astronomers," and then select registration
at the top of the screen.
For questions about the program, contact
Lou Mayo at NASA.
NASA Image of Venus
Venus is the 2nd planet from the Sun.
The planet Venus has a diameter of 7700 miles.
At a distance of 67 million miles,
it takes 225 days to circle the Sun.
One day lasts 244 days of Earth time.
A. Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love. It is the planet closest in size to Earth. It is shrouded
in a deep layer of clouds that reflect light very well. It is therefore a very bright object in our sky. Because
they orbit very close to the sun, Mercury and Venus are called morning and evening "stars," as they can
only be seen in the morning or evening. Aside from the sun and the moon, Venus is the brightest object in our sky.
B. The surface of Venus is often compared to the biblical notion of Hell. It is very hot (475 C), the air pressure
is almost 100 times that of Earth, and it often rains sulfuric acid. The atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide,
which creates a greenhouse effect some 300,000 times that of Earth's. This is the cause of the intense heat. The
atmosphere is also a secondary atmosphere. Its origin is in the plentiful volcanic eruptions on the planet. These
eruptions can be seen indirectly from Earth since they spew large amounts of ions into the atmosphere, which tend
to cause enormous lightning storms.
C. The surface of Venus is so hot that periodically the outer crust may melt. From radar images of the surface,
it can be seen that there are many volcanoes. The surface is roughly divided up between 65 per cent low rolling
plains, 25 per cent highlands, with the rest being volcanic areas. There are two major highland, or mountainous
areas, Ishtar and Aphrodite (Ishtar is the Babylonian goddess of love, and Aphrodite, the Greek). Ishtar is about
the size of Australia and Aphrodite is approximately the size of South America.
D. Although Venus has many volcanoes, there is no evidence of plate tectonic activity. The currents in the mantle
are deforming the crust, and forming large surface bulges, called coronae, and mountains, such as the Maxwell Monte,
which are almost twice as high as Mount Everest.
E. Venus is unique in the solar system because it spins, when viewed from a perspective looking down on Earth's
North Pole, in a clockwise direction. All of the other planets, except Uranus, exhibit a counter-clockwise rotation
with respect to our North Pole. This odd rotation makes Venus the slowest rotating planet, and contributes to its
meteorological patterns. An impact with a large object was probably the cause for this aberrant behavior
Named after the ancient Roman goddess of beauty and love, to the naked eye,
planet Venus is the brightest of the planets in our sky. This is partly due to
its size and partly due to its high albedo or reflecting power. It was once
called Hesperus, when it was the morning star and Phosphorus, as an evening
star. Venus, with its diameter of 12,104 kilometers, is almost a twin of Earth.
Though it's almost the size of the earth, it's not the same as earth. It's a
rocky sphere blanketed by dense yellowish clouds. The yellowish color is due to
presence of sulfuric acid. For a naked eye, Venus can be very bright, at times
almost as bright as the moon. It's easily noticeable in the evening or morning
sky at such times. Sometimes, if you are sure of its exact position; you can
even see Venus in broad daylight. Several amateur astronomers have taken photographs of
Venus in broad daylight. Venus also has its phases like the moon and Mercury.
During it's crescent phase, you will notice a faint glow on the darned region.
This is called Ashen Light.
Manoj Pai, Ahmedabad, Gujurat, India
Earn The Astronomical League's Award for Observing the Solar System | <urn:uuid:10b9187f-a0ad-48f0-84e2-edb82cbb2bd1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.astromax.org/planets/venus.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00182-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930935 | 1,061 | 4.0625 | 4 |
My 10-year-old daughter, who has had Type 1 diabetes for 2.5 years, is showing traces of protein in her urine. Is there any thing that we can do to reduce this? For example, decrease protein intake? Could this be a temporary occurrence?
Without any further details regarding the amount and length of proteinuria in your daughter's case, the presence of a stable raised amount of protein (microalbumin or macroalbuminuria) in the urine of a person with diabetes generally means incipient diabetic nephropathy, if other causes (such as urinary tract infection or some other forms of nephritis [kidney disease]) have been excluded.
However, it is rather unusual to develop diabetic nephropathy after having been diabetic only for 2.5 years, especially if she's still prepubertal. For this reason, I think you need to discuss this problem again with your pediatric diabetologist for a proper evaluation of other causes of proteinuria before beginning any dietetic manipulation of your daughter's diet that can affect her growth.
Original posting 4 May 1998
Posted to Complications
Last Updated: Tuesday April 06, 2010 15:08:58
This Internet site provides information of a general nature and is designed for educational purposes only. If you have any concerns about your own health or the health of your child, you should always consult with a physician or other health care professional.
This site is published by T-1 Today, Inc. (d/b/a Children with Diabetes), a 501c3 not-for-profit organization, which is responsible for its contents. Our mission is to provide education and support to families living with type 1 diabetes.
© Children with Diabetes, Inc. 1995-2016. Comments and Feedback. | <urn:uuid:143209b3-96fe-4d30-be57-ba3a44f9ef31> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/dteam/1998-05/d_0d_2o4.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00128-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936637 | 363 | 2.640625 | 3 |
This information is intended for patients and their families, making use of links to the website of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Alzheimer’s disease is a serious brain disorder that is unfortunately quite common. We estimate that about 5 million Americans currently have Alzheimer’s disease. Although symptoms vary considerably from person to person, the first problem experienced by many people is forgetfulness, which worsens over time. As the disease progresses, other symptoms inevitably appear, including disorientation to date and place, difficulty with organizing and planning, trouble with expressing and comprehending language, getting lost in familiar places, and changes in behavior and personality.
“Dementia” is a general term for a loss of memory and other cognitive abilities serious enough to impair daily functioning. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia. For more information about other causes of dementia, please see the following link.
There is presently no cure for Alzheimer’s disease. However, there are a number of treatments for the symptoms of the disease as well as services and support that can make like much better for people afflicted with the disease and their families. The Yale ADRU is participating in the worldwide effort to find better ways to treat the disease, delay its onset, or prevent it from developing.For more information about Alzheimer’s disease, please visit the website of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Caring for Alzheimer's
Caring for a person with Alzheimer’s disease is not an easy task. But by learning caregiving skills, finding appropriate resources and services, and getting enough emotional support for yourself, you can ensure that your loved one is living a full life. Taking steps to preserve your own well-being is a vital part of this process. Many caregivers find that a support group is very helpful.
Yale ADRU Caregiver Support Group
The Yale ADRU offers a free Caregiver Support Group that meets monthly on the first Tuesday of the month at 1:15 PM. For more information, contact Susan Good, APRN at 203-764-8100 or firstname.lastname@example.org.
If our group is inconvenient for you, please take a look at this list of other support groups in CT. | <urn:uuid:65c67159-d905-4a48-98cd-35434b42c516> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.alzheimers.yale.edu/info/index.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396945.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00039-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939957 | 467 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Once upon a time there were far more traditional foods consumed on particular days. Only Christmas Cake and Easter Eggs remain with fragile certainty. Who has Black Bun at Hogmanay, or Simnel Cake on Mothering Sunday anymore? And our local supermarket – the Twelve Days of Christmas barely over and some folk still tardy with removing the tinsel from the house – has Hot Cross Buns already! What is the traditional food world coming to? Food Things Fall Apart, and I am not happy about it.
As for the personal celebrations and milestones, even the white iced wedding cake can no longer be assumed, it has been usurped by chocolate mud cake and pyramids of vegan cupcakes and the like. And does anyone offer Groaning Cake and Groaning Cheese anymore, when the lady of the house has just been safely confined? And at the other end of life, where is the funeral bread?
The son of George Browne of
Arval bread was a type of bread provided at funerals, particularly in the North of England. No doubt it was different from region to region, as it is variously described as a ‘particular kind of loaf’, ‘a thin, light and sweet cake’, a ‘funeral loaf spiced with spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, and raisins, and ‘a coarse cake, composed of flour, water, yeast, currants, and some kind of spice; in form round, about eight inches in diameter, and the upper surface scored, perhaps exhibiting originally the sign of the cross.’ Remember, this was a century and a half before baking powder was developed, and a ‘cake’ was a sweet, fruity bread dough – which is why it was sometimes called Arval Cake. It was provided not just as sustenance at the wake, but mourners were given it to take home, and it was also distributed to the poor.
The word ‘arval’ is connected with ideas of kinship and inheritance - including inherited obligations and responsibilities. The arval dinner and arval bread were intended (according to Hazlitt) ‘to exculpate the heir and those entitled to the possessions of the deceased from fines and mulcts to the Lord of the Manor, and from all accusations of having used violence; so that the persons then convened might avouch that the person died fairly and without any personal injury.’ A heavy responsibility for a loaf of bread. The world should not have gotten rid of such a useful food.
There is then, no single, inviolable recipe for arval bread, but I offer you one from George Browne’s era that I am sure would do quite nicely. It is from The pastry-cook’s vade-mecum: or, a pocket-companion for cooks, house-keepers, country gentlewomen, &c. ... as also the art of distilling and surgery (1705).
To make Cake Bread.
Take to half a peck of Flower three pounds of Currants, rub’d dry in a Cloth, one pound and a half of Butter, half a pound of Sugar, a pretty deal of Cinnamon, half an ounce of Nutmeg, as much Mace, a good quantity of Ale-yest, and mix some Sack in it, temper all these with old Cream, and your Butter must be put in cold, temper it somewhat stiff, and let it lie half an hour to rise, then take a brown Paper and Butter it very well, and strow it well with Flower, and lay it under the Cake, then take Butter and a little Rosewater beaten well together, and wash your Cake over, and strow it well with Sugar before you set it in the Oven. Let your Oven be well heated.
Tomorrow’s Story …
An unfortunate invitation.
Quotation for the Day …
… I shall not hear your trentals*,
Nor eat your arval bread;
For the kin of you will surely do
Their duty by the dead.
… I shall not hear your trentals,
Nor eat your arval bread;
Nor with smug breath tell lies of death
To the unanswering dead.
Two verses from: Lines Written in the Belief that the Ancient Roman Festival of the Dead was called Ambarvalia, by Rupert Brooke.
*trental = A set of thirty requiem masses, said on the same day or on different days (OED). | <urn:uuid:2a47dda6-e935-469b-b986-b27d467f48bf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.theoldfoodie.com/2008/01/funeral-bread.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00022-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963651 | 937 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Working just around the corner from where (Holmdel, NJ) much of this innovation happened, I'm interested in reading how such a successful culture of innovation was created and ultimately how it fell apart.
Michiko Kakutani's review of ‘The Idea Factory,’ by Jon Gertner:
Bell Labs was behind many of the innovations that have come to define modern life, including the transistor (the building block of all digital products), the laser, the silicon solar cell and the computer operating system called Unix (which would serve as the basis for a host of other computer languages). Bell Labs developed the first communications satellites, the first cellular telephone systems and the first fiber-optic cable systems.
The Bell Labs scientist Claude Elwood Shannon effectively founded the field of information theory, which would revolutionize thinking about communications; other Bell Labs researchers helped push the boundaries of physics, chemistry and mathematics, while defining new industrial processes like quality control.
In “The Idea Factory,” Mr. Gertner — an editor at Fast Company magazine and a writer for The New York Times Magazine — not only gives us spirited portraits of the scientists behind Bell Labs’ phenomenal success, but he also looks at the reasons that research organization became such a fount of innovation, laying the groundwork for the networked world we now live in.
The very success of Bell Labs, he notes, contained the seeds of its destruction. Not only was it producing too many ideas for a single company to handle, but some of its innovations (like the transistor) also altered the technological landscape so much that its core business would be reduced to a mere part of the ever-expanding field of information and electronic technology — a field increasingly dominated by new rivals, with which a post-monopoly AT&T had difficulty competing. | <urn:uuid:895020c0-6797-4047-9dcd-c6f23bc1a8ad> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://q-ontech.blogspot.com/2012/03/idea-factory.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00147-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960221 | 370 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Firstly, I will describe opera’s Florentine background and its impact on the Venetian scene. Keeping those ideas in mind, the discussion will delve into the socio-cultural environment of Venetian librettists and their conception or approach to the problem of verisimilitude. The last part of this essay will use Monteverdi’s opera, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, to illustrate some of the ideas previously explored.
Florentine opera like Monteverdi’s Orfeo or Peri’s Eurydice addressed the problem of verisimilitude through different means. As argued by Pirrotta, Florentine as well as Mantuan librettists and composers deliberately chose plots where mythical characters known for their natural abilities to sing were central. Librettists also made extensive use of pastoral settings where singing characters did not seem so unusual to the audience. It is worth noting that those views are not exactly shared by Tomlinson who claims that the audience of early opera did not require justification for music drama. Complaints about sung drama, he says, do not “seem to have emerged much earlier than the 1640’s.” Early operas, Tomlinson adds, were first rooted in the tradition of favolas or fabulas as Poliziano’s Fabula di Orfeo and:
…arose from a Florentine cultural elite captivated by notions of Orphic singing and its effect, an intellectual milieu permeated by Ficinian Neoplatonism that granted music a fundamental role in the structuring of the cosmos and magical powers in man’s interaction with it.
While the aristocratic audience of Florentine opera might have been prepared to accept musical speech, composers nevertheless addressed the problem of verisimilitude with the invention of recitative. Pirrotta refers to this as recitar cantando (as opposed to cantar recitando that is associated with songs and arias.) Monteverdi, Peri, and Caccini all contributed to the invention of this sung recitation meant to emulate speech. From those days, recitative has remained an important part of opera.
Mythological and pastoral subjects as well as recitative were initially transposed to the Venetian reality. As Pirrotta explains, the Venetian public was unprepared to hear sung speech as a normal way for humans to express themselves. By the 1650’s however, opera as a genre was firmly established in Venice. Yet, one of opera’s important premises, the verisimilitude or vraisemblance of sung drama, still seemed significant to its creators. As this witness of the past, Francesco Sbarra, writing in 1651, tells us:
I know that the ariette sung by Alexander and Aristotle will be judged contrary to the decorum of such great personages; but I also know that musical recitation is improper altogether, since it does not imitate natural discourse and since it removes the soul from dramatic compositions, which should be nothing but imitations of human actions. Yet this defect is not only tolerated by the current century but received with applause.
This account tells a good deal about ideological and intellectual questions that the new genre occasioned but also admits that the “suspension of disbelief” required by the audience in the face of musical speech could be taken for granted in Venice at that time.
Librettists took issues of verisimilitude seriously in the early days of Venetian operas. When was sung drama appropriate? Which characters could legitimately sing in an opera? What kind of poetry lent itself best to sung drama? Because they were the stars of early Venetian opera, librettists were credited with a work’s failure or success. That put a lot of pressure on this new “profession” where conventions did not yet exist. Librettists operated with the constant paradigm that their work could not stand alone, that the oeuvre was complete only with the addition of music. Hence, they claimed that their poetry, because of the exigencies of music, had to be deprived of some of its elegance and refinement. For those reasons and also issues of verisimilitude mentioned above, early Venetian librettists constantly justified their work. Rosand indicates in her work that these justifications and aesthetic preoccupations were sparked by the librettists’ “discomfort with verisimilitude.”
These issues are closely linked to the first librettists’ social background and education. Most librettists—almost all of them in fact—were closely associated with the prestigious Accademia degli Incogniti. The Incogniti was composed of well-learned aristocrats who shared interest in antique arts and literature as well as power in the Venetian Republic. The Incogniti promoted ideological and intellectual debates on every subject and had a predilection for questioning received dogmas. As Rosand puts it in “Opera in 17th Century Venice:
These attitudes—the heavy emphasis on Aristotle, the training in debate, and the appreciation of equivocation promoted by the academy—strongly conditioned the impact of the Incogniti writers on the development of opera. The very ambiguity of sung drama appealed to them. It gave them the opportunity to exercise their forensic skills, as illustrated by the variety of defenses and definitions they erected…in defense of their work.
Venetian librettists, in justifying sung drama, researched and questioned the received wisdom of the ancients. What were the theatrical practices of Ancient Greece for example? Were tragedies sung throughout or were choruses the only sung parts? Worse, was anything sung at all? Such issues were thoroughly discussed by librettists although some claimed the futility of such exercises. Busenello for example, dismissed the issue in the preface to his libretto La prosperità infelice di Giulio Cesare dittatore: “And may those who enjoy enslaving themselves to the ancient rules find their fulfillment in baying at the full moon.” Ironically, the same librettists who dismissed those issues, as Rosand explains further, are found elsewhere justifying their work through classical precedents.
While these intellectual debates about the practice of the ancients raged, the Venetian socio-political context forced a new kind of opera to emerge. In Venice, Florentine solutions could only offer a temporary answer to the problem of verisimilitude. As Tim Carter explains, opera was quickly used as a new tool in the political mythology of Venice “emphasizing greatness, magnificence and luxury.” The first Venetian operas, including Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and Incoronazione di Poppea, draw into this potent theme. Historical themes exploiting the mythic origins of Venice through the Troy-Rome-Venice succession (especially what Rosand refers to as the Rome-Venice paragon) were immediately adopted by librettists. Soon after those first years, however, the subject matter of librettos changed their focus from the Republic’s mythic origins to more “realistic” subjects. The shifting focus of librettos’ subject matter illustrates that Venetian writers quickly stopped relying on Florentine and Mantuan conventions to justify sung drama and its verisimilitude to speech. It might also show that the concern for verisimilitude did not last very long. However, as we have seen above, this concern seems to have been a deeply felt one in the 1640’s at the least.
The emergence of operatic conventions helped in defusing the problem of verisimilitude by allowing the audience to enter this state of mind where temporary “suspension of disbelief” was possible. From the very first year, new creations referred to and borrowed from past ones. The dependence on classical justification slowly began to ease off, the new genre swiftly establishing itself. La finta pazza, a libretto by Giulio Strozzi set to music by Francesco Sacrati, played a major role in the establishment of operatic conventions. Presented in 1641, the opera was a resounding success. As Rosand explains, beyond the vast campaign of publicity or propaganda organized by the Incogniti, the opera had inherent qualities that made it a success. La finta pazza established archetypical scenes—the mad scene, the sleep scene, the comic aria, etc.—that were widely imitated in other productions. Many of those conventions, however, were drawn from the “tradition of spoken theater, from comedy and the pastoral.” The opera, playing with the self-consciousness of being a sung text, exploits those types of scenes to justify singing. As Rosand explains, La finta pazza, constantly plays with aesthetic issues and blurs distinctions between “actors who sing and singers who act, between speech and song.”
While studying questions of verisimilitude, one can legitimately ask if they were merely intellectual games that did not concern lay people, games played mostly by the aristocrats of the Incogniti. I believe that this unreality of musical speech is inherent to opera as a genre. In my mind, there is something profoundly unnatural, and even at times disturbing, to musical speech. It is an acquired taste, one however, that the Venetian audience seems to have acquired rather quickly. I suspect that as we go to movie theaters nowadays and watch unrealistic dramas, the Venetian audience similarly deluded itself and accepted the vraisemblance of sung drama in order to happily escape reality. Unsurprisingly, the most accessible part of sung drama and also the quintessential representative of song in opera, the aria, imposed itself on the genre through the influence of performers and public demand. The aria, however, was not readily favored as a verisimilar mode of expression. By the 1630’s, while recitative was an accepted convention, songs (arias) were questioned as to their adequacy to represent “characters in highly emotional states.”
Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria
First presented in 1640, Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria stands exactly at this early point of early Venetian opera development and is a reflection of its time. Monteverdi was of course not new to the genre and he brought the sum of his experience when he returned to it in 1640. Il ritorno combines the wide array of the master’s compositional practices. In addition to musical devices used in Orfeo—dramatic and ornate recitative, canzonettas, strophic variations, etc.—Monteverdi adds to his palette the fruit of his Venetian experimentations. For example, the relatively new concitato style, first developed in the Combatimenti di Tancredi e Clorinda and explored further in the eighth madrigal book, is used in the opera.
In Il ritorno, as opposed to l’Orfeo, recitative is employed in a more integrated fashion. As Carter explains Il ritorno exemplifies a fluidity between the various compositional styles available to the composer. A fluidity, Carter argues, that illustrates the audience’s acceptance of the “musical conventions of opera.” Tomlinson corroborates Carter’s views adding however that in Monteverdi’s Venetian operas, “realistic acts and situations can be seen to accentuate the unreality of the medium in which they are presented.” (Tomlinson 1995, 10) In other words, librettos with more realistic or human characters, as Ulysses, accentuate the problem of verisimilitude. Song was appropriate only for certain types of character—pastoral characters, and gods—and in specific situations where convention was making it credible: love songs, mad scenes, comical scenes, sleep scenes, overwhelming joy, etc. Outside of a dramatic context allowing his singing, there was no reason for a character like Ulysses, unlike the ‘ divine’ Orfeo, to do so. The same argument applies to the other realistic characters as Penelope, Telemaco, the suitors, etc. Knowing the audience’s growing taste for arias, the challenge that Monteverdi and Badoaro faced was in justifying song for such characters.
It is therefore unsurprising that Monteverdi and Badoaro make use of conventions profusely. For example, Il ritorno contains a number of scenes where gods sing, a skill granted to them by their very nature. In the first Act, when Minerva tells Ulysses that he has reached Ithaca, she sings in an aria style. In the last Act, Minerva, Giunone, Giove, and Nettuno all communicate with each other in ornate recitative reminding us of Orfeo.
The character of Iro, a parasite “nutritionally” dependent of Penelope’s suitors, exploits the comical aria convention. As Pirrotta puts it: “Self-consciousness of operatic conventions lends itself to intentional caricature.” Iro is the perfect caricature. The fact that a parasite like him sings is in itself comical. Pirrotta rightly observe that the incongruity is in part what makes comical characters comical. Rosand interpretation of the character goes further as she argues that Iro brings light to the opera as a whole. Rosand, compares Seneca of l’Incoronazione di Poppea to Iro and suggests that: “Iro’s body representing the weakness of the flesh, is in effect set against the moral strength, the chaste love, of Penelope.” In this light, Iro’s death suggests that spirit will triumph over the body in the end.
However, Love more than anything else is the prominent justification for singing in Il ritorno. Ordinary characters as Melanto and Eurimaco sing their love for each other in the first act. The suitors frequently sing their love for Penelope, regardless of how honest they might be. Throughout the opera the language of Love is clearly identifiable because of its systematic setting in ternary meter. In this context, Penelope stands out of the opera as the character that refuses to yield to the language of love. As Tim Carter points out: “her refusal (inability?) to sing rather than speak is one of the most striking feature of Il ritorno.” Because of her intense depression over Ulysses’ absence, there really are no reasons for her to sing and therefore Monteverdi sets her role almost entirely to recitative thus preserving the verisimilitude of the opera. It is also important to note that most of her recitative is set to d minor.
Using the above arguments, many authors have pointed out that Penelope stays immaculately faithful to Ulysses throughout the opera. As Carter says, Penelope successfully resists Time and Fortune, the first two allegorical characters present in the opera’s prologue. Il ritorno’s questions is: Will she be able to resist Love? This question is better framed in the context of the opera’s prologue. In my sense, Love does not act independently of Time and Fortune. Could Penelope’s resistance have been overestimated? Is it possible that with Time and Constance the suitors would have truly succeeded in convincing Penelope? She does after all, yield to the pressure imposed on her by the suitors.
In comparison with the first Act of the opera where Penelope sings mostly in d, the second Act offers a lighter tone on her part. Act II, scene V, is the first example of this lighter atmosphere. (see Appendix I) In her response to the suitors ‘Non voglio amar, no, no,’ Penelope sings to triple-time music. Carter has rightly said of this passage that it is a: “foot-stamping refrain…which denies its status as aria even as it runs its petulant triple-time course.”
However, could this scene be an indication of Penelope’s declining resistance to seduction? Monteverdi could have well set her refusal to recitative but he chose the triple-time aria. In addition, the whole scene is in C which, as pointed out by Chafe is closely associated to joy (allegrezza) in the opera. Both the suitors and Ulysses (at the end of the opera) call upon Penelope to let her joy break out and in both cases the scene is set to C. In my sense, Penelope’s refusal is not one that leaves no room for the suitors to hope. To some extent, she seems pleased to be courted while she repeatedly says no. Additionally, she gives a clue of her possible weakening when she says:
Come sta dubbio
un ferro se, se, fra due calamite
da due parti diverse egli è chiamato, cosi
sta in forse il core
nel tripartito amore.
(Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, Penelope, Act II, Scene V)
However, she adds that only those who do not know Love are ignorant of its cruelty. Penelope finishes on an A triad leaving some ambiguity about her final thought. The door seemingly remains open for the suitors to insist again.
Act II of scene XII is central to the opera. It begins with a duel between Ulysses and Iro that Ulysses win. Interestingly, Penelope congratulates the winner while singing in C, referencing perhaps the tonality’s symbolic quality discussed above. In the next few moments, the suitors again try to win the queen’s love as they offer great gifts and consecutively romance her. Penelope finally decides to hold a tournament to settle who will be allowed to marry her. Her response to the suitors’ wooing is set to recitative mostly in G, a tone indicating some receptivity on her part. Most significantly, her decision to hold the tournament is highlighted by a repeated series of C chords. Temporarily forgetting Ulysses, the C chord announces that she is about to let go of her resistance and abandon herself to joy. (see Appendix II) However, a moment after she regrets her decision and returns to her usual depressing d.
While the suitors ultimately fail to fire Ulysses’ arc, they have succeeded at convincing Penelope. This scene, in my sense shows the temporary triumph of Time and persistence over chaste Love. Penelope also evokes a prodigious effect of heaven and stars to explain her sudden decision hence, mixing in Fate in the equation. In this scene however, Monteverdi carefully avoided to set Penelope’s part to triple-time music as he did in the previous act. He preferred to portray Penelope in a more austere mood as she was taking her defenses down. In this way, Penelope remains fateful to Ulysses while the harmony betrays her heart. Unsurprisingly, after the unsuccessful tournament, Penelope immediately returns to her depressing key of d. Ultimately, Ulysses finally convinces her of his identity allowing the opera to finish in a triple-time love duet expectedly set in C.
As we have seen in this essay, early Venetian operas creators were struggling to establish a new genre. Their intellectual background made them self-conscious of the problems of verisimilitude and they tried to make the audience “suspend their disbelief” through the use of different conventions. As exemplified by his first Venetian opera, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, Monteverdi did not escape this historical reality. Through the very subtle combination of recitative, song, and harmonic symbolism, the composer succeeded at preserving the verisimilitude of Penelope and the opera. Monteverdi demonstrates his mastery of the handling of those issues and his thorough comprehension of the workings of Human Frailty.
Carter, Tim. "’In Love's Harmonious Consort’"?: Penelope and the Interpretation of Il
ritorno d'Ulisse in patria.” Cambridge Opera Journal 5 (1993): 1-16.
_________. Monteverdi's Musical Theatre. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
_________. “The Seventeenth Century.” In The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 1-46.
Chafe, Eric T. Monteverdi’s Tonal Language. New York: Schirmer Books, 1992.
Pirrotta, Nino. Music and Theater from Poliziano to Monteverdi. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982.
Rosand, Ellen. Opera in Seventeenth Century Venice: the Creation of a Genre. California
University Press, 1991.
___________. “The Bow of Ulysses.” The Journal of Musicology: 12 (1994): 376-395.
___________. “Iro and the Interpretation of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria.” The Journal
of Musicology 7 (1989): 141-64
___________. “Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and the Power of Music.”
Cambridge Opera Journal 7 (1995): 179-84.
Tomlinson, Gary. Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1987
Tomlinson, Gary. “Pastoral and musical magic in the birth of opera.” In Opera and the
Enlightment, ed. Thomas Bauman and Marita Petzoldt McClymonds, 7-20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Monteverdi, Claudio. Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. Concerto Vocale, cond. René Jacobs.
Digital disc. Harmonia Mundi, 901427.29, 1992.
Monteverdi, Claudio. Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. Monteverdi-Ensemble Opernhaus
Zürich, cond. Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Digital disc. Teldec, 242 739-2, 1981.
Monteverdi, Claudio. Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, Volume 12, of Tutte le opere.
Nuovamente date in luce da G, ed. Gian Francesco Malipiero. Wien: [Universal | <urn:uuid:72fdcbb1-64df-4826-954a-0739ad9dd571> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.library.yale.edu/~rcastong/projects/monteverdi.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00066-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945113 | 4,860 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Grade Level: 3rd - 5th; Type: Physical Science
To investigate the ability of different whitening toothpastes to whiten teeth.
- Do whitening toothpastes really whiten teeth?
- What ingredients in whitening toothpastes help to whiten teeth best?
Who doesn’t want a bright sparkling smile? But several things can cause teeth to lose their luster including coffee, tea, soda, and cigarettes. Also poor dental hygiene and age can cause teeth to turn yellow or brown. Many toothpastes today claim to whiten teeth. These toothpastes contain special abrasives that gently polish teeth and chemicals, such as sodium tripolyphosphate, that help break down or dissolve stains.
- 5 white ceramic tiles, unfinished
- masking tape
- 4 whitening toothpastes
- 5 toothbrushes
- Gather the necessary materials.
- To simulate stained teeth, place the ceramic tiles in a bowl and cover with coffee. Let the tiles soak for a couple of days. Then remove the tiles and let them dry completely (about one or two days). Label four of the tiles with the type of toothpaste that will be used on each tile. Label the fifth tile water.
- One at a time, place a dab of toothpaste on a toothbrush and brush for two minutes.
- Then rinse the tile. Repeat with each toothpaste and corresponding tile. Be sure to use similar amounts of each toothpaste and similar brushing techniques. On the fifth tile, brush using water only. Let the tiles dry.
- Compare the tiles. Order the tiles from darkest to lightest. Record your observations.
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 27 more times to represent using the toothpaste twice a day for two weeks.
- Analyze your data and draw your conclusion.
Terms/Concepts: enamel: protective covering on a tooth dentin: hard bonelike tissue that makes up most of a tooth; Many whitening toothpastes claim to make teeth whiter, but do they? The outer layer of the tooth is called the enamel. Underneath the enamel is a layer called dentin. Dentin is what produces the color of teeth. To actually change the color of the dentin a bleaching process must occur. However, whitening toothpastes can help to remove stains on the enamel by gently scratching the surface and with chemicals that help to remove stains.
“Tooth Whitening Methods: What You Need to Know about Tooth Whitening” by Shawn Watson at http://dentistry.about.com/od/cosmeticdentistry/a/toothwhitening.htm “Best Whitening Toothpaste” at http://www.mynewsmile.com/whitening_toothpaste.htm “Do Teeth Whitening Toothpastes Really Work?” by Terry Ross at http://ezinearticles.com/?Do-Teeth-Whitening-Toothpastes-Really-Work?&id=353517 “Tooth Whitening: What you should know” at http://www.ada.org/sections/scienceAndResearch/pdfs/patient_83.pdf | <urn:uuid:04fb9bd9-d272-4bb2-a2b2-81705849d08d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.education.com/science-fair/article/smile/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00024-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.849563 | 674 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology automatically recognizes text in pictures and converts it to a text file we can work with – preserving the layout. This can help us a great deal in storing and editing physical documents on our computers.
If you are looking for an efficient OCR tool to with multilanguage support, pay “OCROnline” a visit.
OCR Online is a free to use website which can detect the text in images and convert the text into an editable text file; this procedure is supported for more than 150 languages. The number of compatible input image formats is impressive: JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF.
Your output text can be achieved in four formats: a simple Word file (DOC), a portable document format (PDF), Rich Text Format (RTF), or a simple text file (TXT). You can upload more than one file at a time to execute batch-OCR operations (each IP address can execute at most, 100 operations per day).
To achieve the best results on the site, it is recommended that you scan the documents at a resolution of 300 dpi and save the image file at a high image quality (at least 60%) if you save to the JPG format.
- Simple to use OCR tool helps you recognize text in images.
- Supports more than 150 languages.
- Supports 4 input image formats and 4 output text formats.
- Supports batch execution of image files.
- Each IP address can execute up to 100 operations per day.
- Very useful for people who want to make corrections to a physical document without typing up the entire thing.
- Similar tools: Free-ORC, NewOCR, Text-Image and TxtNinja.
- Also read related articles: Top 5 Free OCR Software Tools To Convert Images Into Text and Convert Images To Text Online With Free OCR.
Check out OCR Online @ www.ocronline.com | <urn:uuid:31cdb0bc-33b3-4d9f-8f51-2291a5f15d88> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ocronline-recognize-text-in-picture/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00185-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.804359 | 405 | 2.609375 | 3 |
It is difficult to overstate the influence Pablo Picasso had upon the avant-garde art of this century. His exploration of Cubism, itself triggered by Cézanne's pioneering endeavours, could be said to have changed art forever. First his Analytical Cubism took apart the forms he studied and reduced them to their most elemental shapes. Then his Synthetic Cubism experimented in a "putting together" of shapes in cubistic patterns. Certainly no artist was more influenced by Picasso than was Fernand Léger. He was especially enthralled with Picasso's exciting Synthetic Cubism. Putting his own stamp upon it however, he moved beyond "cubes" and began using cylinders and tubes in the compositions of his work. Hence, he has been accused of inventing "Tubism". | <urn:uuid:3c5e6c94-b2de-48fe-b661-f34a3489e07c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.humanitiesweb.org/spa/gai/ID/7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00092-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991783 | 166 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Born into a poor family at age thirteen Michael Faraday became an errand boy for book binding. Every book that he bound he read, soon becoming interested in the concept of energy, specifically force. A couple of years later when he was older he applied to Humphry Davy for a job, becoming his temporary assistant. For eighteen months he spent those days touring during Davy’s investigations into his theory of volcanic action. Davy gave Faraday a valuable scientific education also he introduc3ed him to important scientists in Europe. Another couple years after when Davy retired, Faraday replaced him as a professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Michael Faraday was an English chemist and physicist. He was best known for his work with electricity and magnetism. He built two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation, which is a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire. Faraday also discovered that magneto-electric induction is the production of a steady electric current. His biggest break through was the invention of the electric motor. In 1831another discovery of electromagnetic induction, this is the induction of generation of electricity in a wire by means of the electromagnetic effect of a current in another wire. Also in 1831, he made the first dynamo. In 1832, he proved that the electricity induced from a magnet, voltaic electricity produced by a battery, and static electricity. In 1837 Faraday demonstrated that electrostatic force consists of a field of curved lines of force, conceived a specific inductive capacity. This led him to be able to develop his theories on light and gravitational systems.
Michael Faraday had a law and it was the law of induction, which is a basic law of electromagnetism relating to the operating principles of transformers, inductors, and many types of electrical motors and generators. His law states that: the induced electromotive force (EMF) in any closed circuit is equal to the time rate of change of the magnetic flux through the circuit. Alternatively the EMF generated is proportional to the rate of change of the magnetic flux.
When the military asked him to help and develop poison gases to be used in the Crimean War he refused. He did not want to be a part of any war. Government recognized his contribution to science by granting him pension and giving him a house. Faraday published details of his research including condensation of gases, optical deceptions and the isolation of benzene from gas oils. He was also the author of several books including Experimental Researches in Electricity and Chemical History of the Candle. Michael Faraday’s greatest contribution to science was in the field of electricity.~~~By Kristina Price | <urn:uuid:83c61a38-b426-4524-86d1-25d6a39a88fc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://sites.google.com/a/imagineprep.com/theindustrialrevolution/inventors/michael-faraday | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00057-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976568 | 547 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Earlier theories of planetary motion, such as the geocentric Ptolemaic system and the heliocentric Copernican system, had allowed only perfect circles as orbits and were therefore compelled to combine many circular motions to reproduce the variations in the planets' motions. Kepler eliminated the epicycles and deferents that had made each planet a special case. His laws apply generally to all orbiting bodies.
Kepler's first and second laws were published in 1609 in Commentaries on the Motions of Mars. Because Mars was the planet whose motions were in greatest disagreement with existing theories, its orbit provided the critical test for his hypotheses. To do this Kepler was able to rely on the astronomical observations of his mentor, Tycho Brahe, which were much more accurate than any earlier work. The third law appeared in 1619 in Harmony of the Worlds.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:d85f5a0f-113b-4951-a16f-985e24f89f6a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia/science/kepler-laws-development-kepler-laws.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00172-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980278 | 197 | 4.25 | 4 |
There is a strategy that teachers use in classrooms to identify various interests in student reading. It’s a concept that parents can easily incorporate at home called a “Reading Survey.”
Teachers use a Reading Survey to discover what really interests a student. We want to obtain this kind of information to plan instruction, reading centers, and classroom libraries. We know from experience that subjects of great interest are likely to keep students engaged in a task.
A Reading Survey is easy to do at home, and it can be helpful for parents, grandparents, caregivers, and other to know what kind of books to get from the library or purchase as gifts. It helps an adult understand a child better.
Following is a step-by-step Reading Survey that is particularly successful and easy for young students in grades K-2.
Here’s what to do:
- Take a piece of plain, unlined 8.5-inch-by-11-inch white paper.
- Fold it in half vertically to make one line down the middle, from top to bottom.
- Then fold down from the top and up from the bottom into thirds, to make two lines across.
- When you open up the paper, you should have six equal-sizes boxes.
- Have your child write his name in the top left corner. Add the date in the top right corner.
- Then, in each of the six boxes on one side of the paper, have your child draw or write in detail about things that interest him, one interest per box. For example, dinosaurs, dancing, trucks, cooking, baseball, music, soccer, etc.
- As new interests develop, turn over the paper over and add them one at a time.
- Keep this page in a notebook or on a bulletin board for easy reference. Consult the list when going to the library, buying birthday gifts, or planning trips to museums or aquariums, for instance.
Completing a Reading Survey validates things that are important to your child, and it often turns that reluctant reader into a “can’t get enough” reader! | <urn:uuid:c3302867-248d-4db6-be62-fa5c1475a292> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.schoolfamily.com/blog/2013/04/30/do-a-reading-survey-with-your-child | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00053-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93376 | 439 | 4.1875 | 4 |
Home Page | Selecting Trees for Biodiversity | Pea Family
Japanese Scholar Tree, Pagoda Tree (Sophora japonica)
Like the chinquapin oak, this plant is relatively small in stature after thirty years of growth (~25-35 feet). As such it is considered a good choice for planting under powerlines. Over time, sophora can grow to become much larger. This plant has attractive white flowers in mid summer. The amber fruit is somewhat showy and attractive to birds. The tree holds its green leaves well into November in zone 5, and along with its bright yellow-green twigs provides fall and winter interest. This tree has adapted well to alkaline soils.
Like many legumes, Sophora also tolerates poor soils. The plant has done well in restricted root space and in urban sites. The bark is quite thin and subject to mechanical damage when the plant is young. This becomes less of a factor as the plant begins to exceed six inches in caliper.
The tree will grow in zones 5 and 6. A cold-hardy seed source is a primary concern for zones 5 and 6. Ohio tests have shown that some seed sources of Japanese Scholar tree not reliably hardy in the colder areas of the state. Sensitivity to Nectria canker is a manifestation of lack of cold tolerance. The proper seed sources should reduce this problem dramatically. Cultivars such as "Regent" have shown to be cold sensitive and should not be used in cooler zones.
Japanese Sohpora Tree, Late Autumn, Columbus, Ohio.
Shade Tree Home Page
T. Davis Sydnor, Ph. D. and Nick E. D'Amato
Urban Forestry Department
School of Natural Resources
The Ohio State University
2021 Coffey Road,
Columbus OH 43210 | <urn:uuid:6beff486-5c9b-4a07-886e-3c63bf985e1e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://shade-trees.tripod.com/families/selections/sophora_japonica.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395166.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00118-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939607 | 375 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Washington, January 18 (ANI): Mice exposed to normal bacteria of the GI tract (gut microbes) in their early life develop resistance against autoimmune disease, according to new research.
The study may also have uncovered reasons why females are at greater risk of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus compared to males.
Researchers from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) found that when female mice at high risk of autoimmune (type 1) diabetes were exposed to normal gut bacteria from adult male mice, they were strongly protected against the disease.
In this type of mouse strain, more than 85 percent of females develop autoimmune diabetes due to strong genetic risk factors. In contrast, only 25 percent of the females developed the disease after they were given normal male gut microbes early in life.
"Our findings suggest potential strategies for using normal gut bacteria to block progression of insulin-dependent diabetes in kids who have high genetic risk," says principal investigator Dr. Jayne Danska, senior scientist in Genetics and Genome Biology at SickKids and Professor in the Departments of Immunology and Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto.
A second unexpected finding was the effects of the gut microbe treatments on sex hormones. "We were surprised to see that when young female mice received normal gut microbes from adult males, their testosterone levels rose. We then showed that this hormone was essential for the gut microbe treatment to protect against the disease. It was completely unexpected to find that the sex of an animal determines aspects of their gut microbe composition, that these microbes affect sex hormone levels, and that the hormones in turn regulate an immune-mediated disease," says Dr. Danska.
The findings support the 'hygiene hypothesis,' which suggests that the dramatic increase in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases over the past 50 years results from changes in our exposure to microbes.
Gut microbes are essential for normal development and training of the immune system, for extracting nutrients from our food, and for protecting us from some infectious diseases.
The study was recently published in the journal Science. (ANI) | <urn:uuid:a85eec95-6c02-4d2a-90cd-3db319224fab> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/2013/01/18/227-Gut-bacteria-may-help-protect-against-autoimmune-disease.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00063-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955865 | 430 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Photograph by Malcolm S. Schongalla.
Photography contest, Honorable Mention.
Sondre Stromfjord (S�ndre Str�mfjord), Greenland. Mr. Schongalla writes, “View looking west down the fjord, from an altitude of approximately 500 m. The arctic is one of the environments most significantly affected by climate change. Greenland’s icecap has experienced significant peripheral thinning. I am not a geologist, but my lay interpretation of this photograph is that it reflects a region that is primarily Archaean gneiss dated to 2.7-2.8 Ga. A striking, dark-colored band is visible on both sides of the fjord.” | <urn:uuid:0839ebae-c402-4085-b926-381ba8f96ca8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2010/11/sondre-stromfjo.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397696.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00051-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911169 | 156 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Around the silhouette of a warrior taking aim with a bow and arrow, indigenous leaders, environmentalists and activists spelled out the message "SALVE A AMAZONIA," which means Save the Amazon in Portuguese.
Human banner at the World Social Forum January 27, 2009 (Photo courtesy Amazon Watch)
"We are the guardians of the forest," said Marco Apurina, vice-coordinator of COIAB, Brazil's leading Amazonian indigenous organization. "This is a critical moment for indigenous peoples to unite with non-indigenous, activists, teachers, environmentalists, unions, government. The Amazon rainforest needs everyone to work together now to defend it before it's too late."
The Amazon Basin encompasses 5.5 million square kilometers of rainforest and includes territory belonging to nine nations.
The Amazon contains over half of the planet's remaining rainforest, but nearly 20 percent of the Amazon wilderness area has been deforested over the past 40 years.
The mean annual deforestation rate from 2000 to 2005 amounted to 22,392 square kilometers per year, a rate that was 18 percent higher than in the previous five years.
The indigenous peoples of the Amazon see its conservation as their sacred responsibility. COIAB said in a statement, "With the permission of our ancestors' spirits, we indigenous peoples are here with our friends from all corners of the Earth. We build this symbol with our bodies as the cry of living beings from this green forest, this planet, for our continuity as humans and diverse creatures."
"The symbol of the bow and arrow has three meanings," COIAB explained. "The first, our aim that every man, woman, and child will decide to care for our planet; the second, the position of defending the rights of indigenous peoples, of nature, of the planet, and of our home the Amazon; the third, to send a message to the world so that each of us helps to protect our home, our air, our water, our food."
"It is urgent that the world act now to stop deforestation and to recognize the importance of the Amazon in stabilizing our climate," said Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch, an advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. "There needs to be an immediate halt to industrial resource extraction that is bringing the ecosystems and cultures of the Amazon to the brink of collapse."
Indigenous participants in the human banner at the World Social Forum (Photo courtesy Amazon Watch)
If development plans for the Amazon continue unchecked, warned Soltani, scientists predict that the entire Amazon region will be at the brink of permanent ecological collapse within the next 10 to 20 years. This process would release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, accelerating global climate change.
"This amazing action brought together indigenous people from all over the Amazon, raising spears and traditional weapons to the sky," said Andrea Samulon, campaigner at the Rainforest Action Network, based in San Francisco.
"This banner truly is a call to the world from indigenous peoples all over the continent," said Samulon "The world needs to pay attention now."
The state of the Amazon is a critical focus during this World Social Forum, with one full day devoted to discussing the problems facing the world's largest rainforest and the indigenous peoples who depend on it.
On Friday, the forum will host a panel on water, land and "the plundering of natural resources, the economic basis for national oppression."
For the first time at the World Social Forum, representatives of 30 different stateless nations and indigenous peoples from across the world will share a tent and a three-day program of lectures, roundtables and workshops.
Palestinian representatives join those from Kurdistan, Balochistan, Catalonia, Basque Country, Tamil, Saharan, Western Shoshone and Andean indigenous peoples, among others, to participate in the Space for Collective Rights of Peoples and other World Social Forum discussions.
Activities in the Collective Rights tent will explore the right of self-determination and sovereignty of peoples of stateless nations, indigenous communities, and marginalized groups.
One of the main issues in the Collective Rights tent is the conflict over the occupied Palestinian territory. At a General Assembly for Palestine slated for Saturday, Palestinian organizations and those groups that support Palestine will take part in a forum of discussion and debate.
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2009. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:a49681d3-5ff2-412f-9edc-53af74e1374a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2009/2009-01-29-03.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394937.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00048-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933943 | 895 | 2.8125 | 3 |
- freely available
Sustainability 2011, 3(9), 1486-1509; doi:10.3390/su3091486
Abstract: Storing municipal solid waste (MSW) in landfills is the oldest and still the primary waste management strategy in many countries. Russia is the third largest methane (CH4) emitter country after USA and China, representing 5% of total global CH4 emissions from waste landfilling. Due to high economical growth, the amount of waste generated in Russia has risen sharply over the last ten years. However, waste management in Russia is mainly based on landfilling. In order to design an optimal MSW utilization system considering various aspects related to sustainable MSW management, a linear programming model was introduced for this research. The performance of the proposed MSW utilization system in the target area has been evaluated in light of energy, economic, and environmental (3Es) aspects, such as system net cost, annual energy generated from the waste, and the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of the system. St. Petersburg city was considered as the target area for the present analysis. The results show that the introduction of the proposed MSW system with energy recovery from waste along with a high level of material recovery has energy, environmental and economic benefits compared to the conventional treatment system. This paper emphasizes the importance of introducing waste treatment methods as an alternative to landfilling, and to improve recycling activities in Russia.
Generation of municipal solid wastes (MSWs) is closely linked to the population growth process, the urbanization rate, change of lifestyle, and an increase in household income . MSW contains various types of organic materials that produce a variety of gaseous products, including GHGs, when dumped, compacted, and covered in landfills. However, storing MSW in landfills is the oldest and still the primary waste management strategy in many countries. Landfills generate methane (CH4) in combination with other landfill gases (LFGs) through the natural process of bacterial decomposition of organic waste under anaerobic conditions. Given that CH4 is about 21 times a more powerful greenhouse gas (GHG) than carbon dioxide (CO2), emissions of LFGs are an important source of GHGs. Worldwide CH4 emitted from landfilling of MSW accounted for nearly 750 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq.)in 2006, and represented over 12% of total CH4 emissions [1,2].
Russia is the world's top emitter of CH4 from the waste sector, followed by USA and China, representing 37.4 million tons of CO2-eq. or 5% of total global CH4 emissions in 2006 . The generation of MSW in Russia tripled during the period 1980 to 2007, and has continued to rise due to high economical growth. In 2007, the annual production of MSW per capita in Russia was 440 kg, which is approximately half that in Western countries . Currently, landfills are the primary means for disposal of MSW in Russia (Table 1).
It is worth noting that due both to the lack of accurate statistics, and also to the existence of thousands of unofficial landfill areas, the exact number of landfills in Russia is unknown . A rough estimate shows that the area occupied by landfills in Russia is equivalent to eight cities of the size of Moscow, or more than 0.8 million hectares; although it does not cover too much space on a geographical scale [5-7]. Current waste disposal in Russia is causes many environmental problems in Russia and also affects neighboring countries. As an example, the huge amount of solid waste generated in the North-Western part of Russia, in St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast (region), has been identified as the most extensive source of pollution around the Baltic Sea .
Due to international collaboration and the development of federal and regional MSW management programs, there is now a visible trend towards improvement of current waste management practices in Russia [6,7]. Development of such projects has increased since Russia's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005. The shift from waste landfill disposal to alternative treatment methods within Russian waste management is expected to have positive impacts on global warming, not only directly by decreasing GHG emissions, but also indirectly by saving energy and materials from non-renewable resources. However, due to the lack of studies on municipal solid waste management system (MSWMS) in Russia, such aspects have not yet been considered. A few evaluating studies addressing waste management in Russia have been presented recently [5,8-10]. However, all of these studies considered only evaluation of GHG emissions resulting from waste landfilling as an independent operation, and have not considered assessment of other waste treatment options. These options are very closely interlinked and can influence the central components of the MSWMS, such as waste generation, separation, collection, and transportation.
This study is an effort to design an optimal waste management/utilization system and to assess the current waste management practices as one system. This study reports the main outcome of the evaluation analysis conducted for St. Petersburg city. As an analysis tool a linear programming (LP) model has been formulated to design and to evaluate MSWMS considering various waste treatment options. The comparison between the different scenarios has been performed taking into account energy, and the economic and environmental aspects, representing the sustainability of the proposed MSW utilization system.
2. Sustainable Waste Management and Waste Management Models
According to Tchobanoglous and Kreith , MSWMS is a complex process because it involves many technologies, associated with controlling generation, handling and storage, transportation, processing and final disposal of MSW under legal and economically acceptable social guidelines that protect the public health, and the environment. The main function of any MSWMS is the treatment of waste generated; where in addition, energy and recyclable materials can be recovered as by-products. Currently, MSW generated by households and economic activities is seldom used as a renewable energy resource. However, utilizing MSW in waste-to-energy (WTE) processes helps to mitigate GHG emissions generated from waste treatment by reducing CH4 emissions. It also reduces the impact of GHGs as they replace fossil fuels in energy production activities.
Waste generation and disposal is generally considered as a major indicator of an unsustainable society. Based on waste hierarchy, the concept of sustainable waste management handles MSW in an environmentally effective, economically reasonable and socially acceptable way . The waste hierarchy represents the order of preference for main options of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) and has become a key waste management concept in many European countries . Based on environmental merits the waste hierarchy indicates that some strategies/technologies for waste handling are more appropriate than others, and could have very different impacts on climate change, not only directly by a decrease in (GHG) emissions, but also indirectly by saving energy and materials from non-renewable resources [16,17].
The complexity of a MSWMS can be described by the number of relationships between the components in the system. Due to the complexity of MSWMS, computer models should be built as supporting tools to explain, control or predict the behavior of these systems, as well as to plan and assess waste management . Over the past decades, various evaluation techniques have been used to analyze MSWMS. These techniques include numerical solving methods, life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle inventory (LCI), material flow analysis (MFA), input-output (IO) tables, and several optimization approaches, such as linear programming (LP), mixed integer programming (MIP), and dynamic programming (DP) [19-23]. The first MSW models, from the period between the 1960s to the 1970s, were optimization models and mainly dealt with specific aspects of waste management, that included the routing of waste vehicle collection and the location of waste transfer stations . Such models were limited to analyzing only one time period, one processing option, and a single waste generation source; making them unsuitable for long term planning [22,25]. Later, several computer models were developed for strategic planning to calculate recovery rates, costs and environmental impacts of MSWMS. In addition, there are studies involving technical, economic and environmental analysis in order to evaluate the potential energy production from MSW [26-28]. In the past ten years, the assessment of integration of WTE applications into existing energy systems has also been included in several studies [21,29].
MSW model applications highlight how waste can be used as an alternative way to landfilling and for reducing GHG emissions. The double role of MSW as a fuel and as a material that can be recycled, leads to a broader range of technologies for their treatment. This has given rise to a lot of different structures and solutions for MSW treatment systems.
In order to design the optimal MSWMS, several characteristics of the target area are required along with the aspects relating to MSW and its management, such as the annual amount of generated waste, waste composition and density, and an existence of treatment technologies. The following aspects may also be included: urbanization rate, waste composition, climatic condition, etc. . It needs to be mentioned that the presence of a market for by-products, such as recycled materials, compost, and/or energy carriers produced from waste is another necessary aspect of the designed MSWMS. To be sustainable waste management needs to be appropriate to the local conditions of the target area with respect to economic, environmental and social perspectives. Social issues considered within waste management may include a variety of factors, such as household size, occupation, income, consumption patterns, willingness to separate at source, willingness and ability to pay and public acceptance of waste management plans, etc. [31,32]. However, the literature reviewed showed that the third aspect of sustainability has received less attention than the economic and environmental issues. Given that waste represents an important and easily accessible source of sustainable energy, assessment of energy generated from waste could be considered as an additional aspect of sustainable waste management. This study considered the sustainability of MSWMS through energy, economic and environment components, namely the 3E's [33,34]. Such an approach can bring an important contribution to the improvement of MSWMS resulting in balances of environmental, economic and energy aspects.
3.1. The Proposed MSW Management System
This study presents a MSW utilization system considering a set of representative waste treatment technologies widely applied in many countries. The performance of the proposed waste management system is evaluated taking into account the 3E's aspects. These parameters were chosen as a set of criteria characterizing the sustainable MSWMS. A general representation of the proposed system is shown in Figure 1. The system considers thermal and non-thermal waste treatment technologies and several demand sectors for by-products generated due to waste processing.
3.2. Description of the Optimization Model
This section describes the mathematical formulation of the LP optimization model used in the study. In order to determine the lowest cost structure of MSWMS, the model formulated in this study used a common LP technique often applied to solve waste management problems. As a specific point, incorporation of economic, environmental and energy (3E's) aspects, as well as the introduction of several constraints which emphasize the utilization of waste for energy and recycling purposes are used to evaluate the sustainability of the designed system. Objective functions and model constraints are derived taking into consideration economic (total cost, revenue, unit treatment cost, etc.), environmental (CO2-eq. emissions), and energy parameters (energy produced from waste).
The model formulated in this paper has been developed and implemented in GAMS (General Algebraic Modeling System), a tool, developed for solving mathematical programming and optimization problems . The LP formulation of the optimization model, represented in Figure 2 is described below.
3.2.1. Objective Function
The objective function of the model includes minimization of the net cost of the proposed MSW utilization system defined as the difference between total cost and revenue, as described in Equations (1) and (2). The total cost of the MSW utilization system is calculated from the summation of the costs for collection / transportation, and treatment / landfill disposal. Revenue is derived from the selling of by-products, such as recyclable materials, compost, and energy generated by WTE facilities.
3.2.2. Features Evaluated by the Model
The developed model evaluates several aspects of the proposed MSW utilization system. These aspects, such as net cost, emissions and energy generated by the system represent the main sustainability features of the proposed MSWMS (Equations (3)–(5)).
System net cost
Environmental impact of the system
In order to assess emissions (CO2, CH4, and N2O) from waste incineration, as well as emissions from other waste treatment technologies, IPCC methodology has been used in the present research . According to this methodology, if incineration of waste is used for energy purposes, both fossil and biogenetic emissions should be estimated.
Energy generated by the system
The model is subject to the following constraints:
Mass balance constraints
All wastes generated in the study area should be transported to treatment plants or disposal site.
Maximum capacity constraints
These constraints consider that planned capacity at each facility should be less than or equal to the maximum allowable capacity of the facility.
Waste availability constraint
The waste flow used in the model is subject to the components of each waste material. Because of the different characteristics of waste materials, each type of waste should be processed in the suitable treatment facilities as shown in Table 2.
Waste utilization constraints
These constraints represent a relation between total amount of waste generated in the target area and amount of waste materials allocated for recycling, composting, and energy production purposes.
Landfill disposal constraint
This constraint defines the amount of waste allocated directly to landfill and untreated residues coming from other treatment facilities, which are to be transported to a final disposal site.
This constraint assures that only positive amounts of waste materials are considered in the solution.
3.3. Scenario Settings
In order to evaluate the impacts of different waste management options on the MSW utilization system, several scenarios were constructed in this study: A baseline or business as usual (BAU) scenario and four alternative scenarios are explained below. All scenarios are based on the same input data given for the generated amount of waste in the target area.
3.3.1. BAU Scenario (BAU)
The BAU scenario represents the existing MSWMS in the target area, and is the baseline upon which the results from other scenarios are compared.
3.3.2. Low cost Scenario (Low cost)
To achieve the optimal mix of treatment technologies with the minimal net cost of the proposed MSW utilization system, this scenario has been designed without considering regulation constraints, such as the desired amount of waste for recycling and/or for energy generation.
3.3.3. Max Energy Recovery Scenario (WTE)
In this scenario, the amount of waste allocated to energy production is maximized. In order to maximize the preference of energy produced from waste, the constraint on promoting the use of MSW for energy production is included in the model formulation.
3.3.4. Recycling Scenario (WTR)
The MSW utilization system presented in this scenario considers the maximum recycling capability of the proposed system. The constraint on the use of MSW for recycling purposes looking forward to increasing output of material recycled is considered in the model.
In this scenario high priority has been given to the energy generated from waste and the recycling of waste materials. Regulation constraints used in the model formulation have been defined as a combination of the average maximal value for the amount of waste used for energy production (50%), and the average material recycling rates (30%).
3.4. Study Area and Input Data
3.4.1. Study Area
A case study was conducted in the city of St. Petersburg, the third largest city in Europe after Moscow and London, and the second largest city in Russia. Also it is known as a major industrial center with a population of approximately 4.6 million. St. Petersburg is located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea and it is often recognized as the most western city in Russia (Figure 3).
In recent years the population of St. Petersburg has decreased, however, due to economic growth the amount of MSW increased by 20% from 1994 to 2008 [8,37]. Annually, over 1 million tons of MSW is generated in St. Petersburg, from which over 70% is directly disposed in five disposal landfill sites located around the city . In 2008 the annually collected amount of MSW was about 1.06 million tons, of which 25% was generated by commercial, and 75% by residential sectors (Table 3). Only a small amount went to the two waste treatment plants near the city. Insufficient waste treatment has been recognized as a problem by city authorities and several Russian environmental agencies and NGO's. The major challenges within waste management in St. Petersburg are long transportation distances and improper treatment and storage of waste. Furthermore, the lack of a suitable waste utilization system in St. Petersburg causes many problems, such as a huge loss of useful materials, and emissions of many dangerous pollutants which have a significant influence on the environment inside and outside the city. St. Petersburg is responsible for 20% of the pollution in the Baltic Sea, where the MSW generated in the city is one of the main sources of this pollution .
In order to solve the problems of ineffective waste management in St. Petersburg, the administration of the city has developed several environmental measures, such as increasing the capacity of the present composting and recycling plants and building several new facilities, such as modern landfills and WTE facilities to process all waste generated in the city. Increasing waste separation at source is also one of such measures . Given that St. Petersburg has a wide DHS network and an electrical grid; energy produced from MSW could be used as an energy source in the existing energy system located in the city.
3.4.2. Input Data
(1) Waste data
Generally, any MSW is composed of three groups of materials, such as organic waste (kitchen waste, garden waste, etc.), non-recyclable inorganic waste (dust, cinder, ash, etc.), and recyclable waste (paper, plastics, glass, metal, etc.). Typical composition of MSW in St. Petersburg and other Russian cities is shown in Table 1. It should be noted that organic waste is the main component of MSW in St. Petersburg representing more than 30% of the total waste. This study considers the nine largest fractions, totaling 98%, of the MSW currently generated in St. Petersburg, which are paper, glass, metal, plastic, textile, wood, organic waste, rubber, leather, and others. Current waste statistics data in Russia is based on volume measurements. For this reason the total annual amount of waste generated in the target area has been estimated according to the average density of the MSW 232 kg/m3. Since the data of the composition of the waste material and the heating values for each type of MSW generated in the target area was not available, it was estimated using the average data from several existing literature sources (Table 4).
(2) Treatment methods
The waste treatment technologies considered include landfilling of all types of waste with LFG extraction, incineration of all waste fractions with energy recovery, recycling of all types of waste except organic, anaerobic digestion and large scale composting of organic and paper waste (Table 5). The anaerobic digestion is assumed to be combined with composting facilities to increase the quality of composting product by including the digestate . Each technology is characterized by several specific parameters, such as costs (capital investments, operation and maintenance), emissions coefficients, and types of generated by-products. The energy produced from incineration, and the biogas produced from landfilling and anaerobic digestion, is assumed to be used either for heating and/or for electricity generation. Electricity or heat produced from waste treatment processes is assumed to be supplied to the existing electrical grid or to the district heating system (DHS). DHS is widely expanding in Russia and is currently used to heat most buildings in urban areas and also partially in rural areas. St. Petersburg has the oldest and largest DHS network in the world which covers about 6,000 km [44,45].
(3) Economic aspects
By using a combination of data collected for St. Petersburg and data for waste treatment technologies adapted from several sources, transportation costs and treatment costs for each treatment facility have been calculated. The calculated costs of treatment facilities include the country location cost factor that represents the relative cost difference between two geographic locations. No personnel costs were considered in the analysis due to lack of available data. The revenue of the system is based on the sale of by-products, such as sorted materials, compost and generated energy. The selling prices of the by-products are the same as current values in the recycling and energy markets (Table 6). Transportation cost and selling prices of by-products were obtained for year 2008.
(4) Environmental aspects
This study focuses on emissions directly related to the waste treatment, transportation and energy production processes within MSWMS in the target area. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) concept that assesses the possible warming effects in relation to CO2 equivalent on the atmosphere from the emission of each gas generated has been applied in this analysis. Based on IPCC methodology and Tchobanoglous and Kreigh , the main GHG pollutants such as CO2, CH4, and N2O have been evaluated.
3.4.3. System Boundaries and Major Assumptions
In order to obtain the optimal solution, the following assumptions were made in the model.
The geographical boundary of St. Petersburg set the limits for the included type of waste streams, but there are no limits to location of the processing facilities.
Current analysis is limited to the treatment of waste generated during a one year period. Constant residue rates have been set for all types of treatment technologies used in the present analysis.
The waste source separation rate of 100% has been set for all types of waste materials. In addition, the average value for the recovery factors used for material recovery facilities is assumed to be 90% . It needs to be noted, that the value set for recovery factor represents the maximum available rate which can be used in this technology. However, decreasing this rate may cause an increase of energy produced from MSW or/and increase in final disposal rate.
The model assumes the average round trip transportation distance of 40 km and average cost of transportation of 2.1 USD/t/km associated with all waste treatment facilities. Waste materials accumulated in the collecting places are moved to the treatment and disposal sites using 11 tons trucks.
Another important assumption of this model is the omission of the scale effect for the waste treatment facilities.
3.5. Sensitivity Analysis
Currently, the long distance of MSW transportation is pointed out among other things as one of the major problem within waste management in Russia [52,53]. In order to study the performance of the proposed MSW utilization system, the changes in the distance for waste transportation have been conducted as a sensitivity analysis.
4. Results and Discussion
4.1. Optimal Solution for Each Scenario
This section presents the results obtained from the calculation using a LP model, as well as an assessment of the 3E's aspects of the system in each scenario. For each modeling scenario the optimal solution representing designed MSWMS is calculated. The calculated results for the value of the objective function for the five different scenarios and evaluated aspects of the system are presented in Table 7. Figure 4 shows the changes in configuration of the proposed MSWMS. Results can be interpreted as follows.
In the BAU scenario, it is assumed that there is no introduction of alternative waste treatment technologies, except existing low capacity treatment plants and landfills without LFG collection and recovery systems. Under this scenario, there is no energy production from waste and GHG emissions achieve the maximum value compared to other scenarios considered. Over 70% of waste materials generated in the target area are directly allocated to landfill site and the rest is processed in the composting and material recovery facilities (Figure 5). However, more than half of the composted material finally goes to landfill, due to low quality of the produced compost . The low quality of the produced compost results because of the low efficiency of the separation and sorting process and the existence of glass, plastics and heavy metal in the final product. The final disposal rate in this scenario represents almost 90% of the total MSW generated.
In order to achieve the optimal solution of the MSWMS under Low cost scenario, the majority of the waste flow (98%) is allocated between material recovery, composting and landfilling composed with LFG recovery systems. These technologies represent a central part of the designed waste management system.
The optimal system representing the best technology mix for the WTE scenario is mainly based on incineration and waste landfilling with LFG recovery. This scenario shows the complete utilization of waste for energy purposes without material recovery, except metal fractions collected from the ash.
As an alternative to waste landfilling, maximal recycling capability was introduced in the MSWMS designed under the WTR scenario. Waste flow allocated in material recovery and composting facilities represents more than 85% of total waste generated in the target area.
The design of MSWMS, with high priority given to energy produced from waste and material recycling is considered in the WTE&WTR scenario. Complete recovery of plastic, glass and metal waste, and low capacity composting facilities are introduced in this scenario. In contrast to the other designed scenarios, landfill facilities constructed with LFG recovery, represent the main WTE option.
In addition, the introduction of RDF production facilities in all designed scenarios was found to be the most economically feasible choice for treatment of waste materials, such as wood, rubber and leather.
4.2. Performance of the Designed System
In order to evaluate the sustainability of the designed MSWMS, the 3E's aspects, represented by net cost, energy and emissions generated by the system were evaluated. The BAU scenario representing the current MSWMS was used as a baseline for comparison. This scenario presents the minimal system cost (111.31 M USD/year) and a low level of revenue (2.12 M USD/year) generated from the system due to low recycling ability. As a result, the net cost of the system is high compared to the other designed scenarios. Unit treatment cost is equal to 104.45 USD/t. This scenario had the highest values of GHG emissions due to the large quota of waste landfilling without LFG recovery systems and represents 1.32 M tons of CO2-eq. t/year or 1.23 tons of CO2-eq./t. The cost of the waste management system mainly consists of transportation and treatment costs. Transportation cost is equal to 88.5 M USD/year or 80% of the total cost for waste management.
The optimal MSWMS which considers a mix of alternative waste treatment methods is represented by the Low cost scenario. This scenario with no limitation on the amount of waste for recycling and for energy generation represents the best solution or best scenario in comparison with other designed scenarios. The objective function of the best solution has a total value of 77.80 M USD/year or 72.9 USD/t. The introduction of alternative waste treatment technologies has an effect on the system cost and emissions Thus, the system cost and the unit treatment cost increase more than 15% compared to the BAU scenario and reaches values equal to 129.76 M USD/year or 121.75 USD/t. Moreover, CO2 emissions decreased by 70% in this scenario, resulting from the improvement of recycling activities.
From an energy point of view, the best strategy is the WTE scenario, representing maximal amount of energy (1,188.25 GWh/year) produced from waste. Although the WTE scenario considers maximal utilization of waste for energy production; it does not show a significant reduction of system emissions (1.16 M tons of CO2-eq./year or 1.08 tons of CO2-eq./t). This scenario shows the highest system cost (165.78 M USD/year) and unit treatment cost (155.56 USD/t) with little environmental benefits in comparison to the BAU scenario. The energy generated from MSW may substitute fossil fuels and reduce GHG emissions resulting from energy activities. Currently, natural gas (with share of 97%) represents the main fossil fuel resource used for energy generation in the target area. The energy produced under the WTE scenario represents 2.5% of the total annually consumed energy (44,812 GWh/year) in St. Petersburg. Moreover, replacing the energy generated from fossil fuels results in a 3% decrease in GHG emissions resulting from the energy sector.
A common treatment technology used by all designed scenarios is material recovery, representing the major source of income of the proposed system. The WTR scenario with a high level of materials recovery shows the highest amount of revenues from the sale of recycled materials equal to 53.29 M USD/year. In terms of CO2 emissions, results obtained from this scenario showed that the introduction of a high recycling rate ultimately reduces GHG emissions up to 0.15 M tons CO2-eq./year. This result was obtained by considering several assumptions related to the waste collection and separation, and represents an unrealistic scenario compared with the present situation in St. Petersburg. Currently, the selective collection of MSW is not well organized in the target area, however there are several programs coordinated by the municipality, and improvement of the source separation of waste is expected. In addition, changes in policy, the improvement of the recycling efficiency of treatment facilities, and the improvement of households with regard to recycling processes could achieve feasible goals. Due to the lack of suitable data associated with the types and composition of waste materials generated in St. Petersburg, compensative effects, such as substitution of raw materials, resulting from the recovery of waste materials has not been considered in the present analysis.
The targets set for the WTE&WTR scenario are close to the real targets which can be set in St. Petersburg in order to solve the current waste management problem. Figure 6 illustrates waste material flow and energy flow of the optimal MSWMS, designed for the WTE&WTR scenario while considering the introduction of regulation constraints for waste utilization. More than 60% of total waste generated in the target area is allocated to landfilling with a LFG recovery system. The rest of the waste materials are allocated between recycling, RDF and composting facilities. The results of this scenario show that due to low market price, recycling of waste paper is not an economically favorable option. In this scenario, the landfill site plays a significant negative role as a main contributor of GHG emissions generated by the designed MSWMS. Based on the assumption that only 45% of LFG produced is effectively recovered, the remaining 55% is released into the atmosphere. CO2 emissions generated by landfill sites represent over 90% of total emissions (0.83 M tons of CO2-eq./year) produced by the system. Compared to other designed scenarios, this scenario represents the minimal system costs (127.92 M USD/year) and unit treatment cost (120.02 USD/t).
According to the calculation results, transportation costs consume the largest portions of the total cost of the proposed MSW utilization system. From the sensitivity analysis of the best scenario (Low cost), it can be seen that changes in waste transportation distance have a significant effect on the cost of the proposed MSW system (Figure 7). Moreover, it can be concluded from the results that the increase of the waste transportation distance will result in a decrease of the system revenue and growth of the final disposal rate due to reduction of recycling activity. For example, if the waste transportation distance increases by 10 km, the final disposal rate grows sharply by more than double. On the other hand, smaller distances for waste transportation, resulted in the growth of the waste recycling rate, and a decrease in waste to energy and final disposal rates (Figure 8).
Introduction of new waste treatment technologies would reduce the total system emissions. All developed scenarios give a significant reduction of GHG compared to the BAU scenario. The best way to achieve maximum GHG reductions (more than 50%) from the system is to apply the WTR scenario based on the assumption that the maximum amount of waste is recycled, with a high recycling rate at more than 80%. This effect is due to the reduced emissions of LFG from landfills. From an economic point of view, the WTR and Low cost scenarios allow the highest revenue from the sale of the by-products generated from the waste treatment process. Finally, the optimal balance between the amount of waste allocated to energy production and recycling can be achieved in the WTE&WTR scenario. The achieved results demonstrate that the presence of an LFG recovery system, as a WTE treatment option, has a significant influence on the modeling results. As an alternative to landfill, anaerobic digestion systems and incineration were not included in the technology mix calculated in the model. One of the possible reasons is the high cost compared to other waste treatment technologies. In order to introduce such a technology, additional financial instruments or policies have to be implemented, such as landfill tax, or carbon tax. Due to the low price of electricity generated from fossil fuels, the results of the study show that the energy recovery from waste in the form of electricity is not involved in the optimal solution for the designed MSWMS.
In this research, the municipal solid waste management system in St. Petersburg has been modeled while considering the introduction of alternative waste treatment facilities. The model has been solved using the GAMS software.
This study indicates that an increase of alternative MSW treatment options gives positive energy, and economical and environmental benefits compared with the present MSWMS.
Recycling of the MSW was the main waste processing option in the model results. Introduction of recycling is an appropriate solution to manage the increasing amount of waste generated by society. Theoretically the consumers may be motivated to increase the source separation rate of MSW if forced to pay for each kg of waste. However, because of a lack of equipped collection places for separated waste materials this does not currently seem realistic in St. Petersburg or other Russian regions . Another way to involve the population in the waste separation process is the introduction of customer benefits, such as introducing low collection and transportation fees for completely separated waste. Incentives, such as the introduction of financial support to stimulate the development of markets for recovered materials with more stable market prices, could also increase recycling rates.
Heat generated from waste treatment processes was the most optimal energy carrier according to the results of the calculation as it was assumed in this study, the heat generated from waste is supplied to DHS because of the existing heat transfer network. However, in Russia however, typical district heating distribution for space heating is operational for only part of the year from October to April . During the summer period, the heat generated from MSW could be used for water heating. This would then bring an additional benefit due to reduction of GHG emissions generated from the consumption of fossil fuels.
The main limitation of this paper is the quality of input data. The actual optimal solution can be reached only with highly detailed data for the target area. The results of the presented model are based on some assumptions in the absence of the available data, such as waste composition, heating values, and waste transportation distance. This could change with more accurate data. In addition, consideration of compensative effects related to material recycling and energy production from waste may have a strong influence on the output results of the model.
For further research on MSW management in other regions of Russia, the model can be easily modified to meet local conditions; however the model accuracy is directly proportional to the set of detailed input data. Regional differences, such as climatic conditions, location, urbanization rate, waste compositions, transportation distance, and existence of markets for by-products, are an important feature of the designed system. In order to design an optimal MSW utilization system in other regions of Russia, regional differences must be considered as a major feature of the system.
|Administrative center (city)||National average a||Moscow a||Rostov b||St. Petersburg c|
|MSW composition (%)|
|Rubber and leather||1.5–2.5||0.5||1.0||1.0|
|Per capita (kg/year)||252||301||339||232|
|Treatment methods (%)|
|Treatment facility||Waste composition|
|Landfill||all types of waste|
|Incineration||all types of waste|
|Anaerobic digestion||paper, organic waste|
|Composting||organic waste, paper|
|RDF production||paper, plastic, wood, rubber and leather|
|Material recycling||paper, glass, metal, plastic, textile, wood, rubber and leather|
|Population||4.6 × 106|
|Total area||1.35 × 103||km2|
|Share in heat demand|
|Waste fraction||Composition (%)||LHV (MJ/kg) a||Carbon content (%) b||Fossil carboncontent (%) b||LFG generation rate (Nm3/t) c|
|Rubber and leather||1.0||20.24||0.67||0.20||0|
|Treatment technology||Capital cost||O&M costs||Operation time||Residue rate|
CRF = [i (1 + i) n]/[(1 + i) n − 1]; Operation life = 25 years, Discount rate = 11%; Thermal efficiency = 70%; Electrical efficiency = 20%; Heat losses = 15%; Electricity distribution losses = 10%; HVRDF = 12 MJ/kg; HVbiogas = 21 MJ/m3; HVLFG = 17.7 MJ/m3; Biogas collection efficiency =100%; LFG collection efficiency = 45%; Cost location factor = 1.47 (2007 year); Sources: [13,25,41,46].
|Ferrous materials, USD/t||229.01||(f)|
|* 1 USD = 25 RUB (2008)|
|Total system cost||M USD/year||111.31||129.76||165.78||131.91||127.92|
|Total revenue||M USD/year||2.12||51.96||28.17||53.29||43.49|
|Net cost||M USD/year||109.19||77.80||137.61||78.62||84.43|
|Unit treatment cost||USD/t||104.45||121.75||155.56||123.77||120.02|
|System emissions||M tons of CO2-eq./year||1.32||0.401||1.16||0.155||0.83|
The authors are thankful to the anonymous reviewers for the valuable comments and time allocated for revising this paper. Mikhail Rodionov is grateful to the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for the financial support provided through his scholarship program.
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waste availability coefficient (%)
by-product generated in treatment facility (t/year or GWh/year)
capital cost of treatment facility (USD/t capacity/day)
truck load capacity (t)
operation and maintenance cost of treatment facility (USD/t)
capital recovery factor
transportation cost (USD/t/km)
round trip distance to treatment facility (km)
residue's round trip distance from treatment facility to landfill (km)
energy carrier generated from waste
gas collection efficiency (%)
emissions factor for treatment facility (tons of CO2-eq./t)
emissions factor for transportation (tons of CO2-eq./km)
biogas generation rate (m3/t)
type of waste material
type of treatment facility
type of by-product
country location cost factor
landfill gas generation rate (m3/t)
lower heating value (MJ/kg)
lower heating value for biogas (MJ/m3)
lower heating value for landfill gas (MJ/m3)
lower heating value for RDF (MJ/t)
net costs of each treatment facility (USD/year)
unit price of by-product (USD/t or USD/GWh)
waste material allocated to treatment facility (t/year)
fraction of residue production at treatment facility
fraction of materials (waste and residues) allocated for landfill disposal
fraction of waste allocated for energy production
fraction of waste allocated for recycling
planned capacity of treatment facility (t/year)
total cost of each treatment facility (USD/year)
treatment facility operation time (day/year)
conversion efficiency (electricity, heat; %)
© 2011 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). | <urn:uuid:4e4b2b52-36db-4352-9722-c90fdf809309> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/3/9/1486/htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00033-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.887187 | 11,449 | 2.875 | 3 |
A new study shows that the Houston region is now the most ethnically diverse large metropolitan area in the country, according to The Houston Chronicle:
The findings come from a new report from Rice University based on an analysis of census data from 1990, 2000 and 2010.
Report co-author Michael Emerson, a sociologist and co-director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice, attributed the growth in diversity to a 1965 shift in immigration laws, which changed the way visas were granted.
Before that change, immigration was dominated by people from Europe. Once the United States began granting equal numbers of visas to every country, immigrants from Latin America, Asia and Africa became dominant.
The report found that Pearland and Missouri City have surpassed Houston as the most diverse in the region.
The report produced by the Kinder Institute and the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas also found:
The city of Houston remained more segregated than other areas of the metropolitan area.
Segregation among African-Americans and Latinos has declined the most rapidly.
According to the analysis, the percentage of metropolitan area residents who are Anglo dropped to 40 percent by 2010, down from almost 58 percent in 1990.
Five strategies to facilitate the paradigm shift in transportation
Stop investing in roads to build new neighborhoods that cause other neighborhoods to flood
Houston's mean streets: Our city's road design is killing people | <urn:uuid:b1f8c2d1-5370-432b-ad27-9e35a01028ad> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.houstontomorrow.org/livability/story/greater-houston-now-the-most-ethnically-diverse-region-in-the-us/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00092-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955457 | 278 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Barbara Ann Renick presented “Online Tools for Genealogists” at the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society (NGS).
Renick is secretary for the NGS board of directors and authored Genealogy 101: How to Trace Your Family’s History and Heritage.
In her session titled “Online Tools for Genealogists” she spoke on “seven types of online tools genealogists find helpful: language and handwriting, time and calendar, geographic and map, history and background information, help and educational, utilities, and locator tools.”
One of the tools she mentioned was the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), a national gazetteer.
“All of you pay your taxes and you deserve to get something back,” she said. GNIS is produced by the United States Geological Survey (USGS)
GNIS includes not just current place names but historic names as well. I used this capability recently. I wanted to visit the Happy Valley Cemetery in Oswego County, New York. I couldn’t find it on any map (and I didn’t think to use Find-A-Grave.) I searched on GNIS and found it easily. With an additional click I had it plotted on a map.
Renick has published links to the online tools on her Z Links page, www.zroots.com/links.htm. | <urn:uuid:6da834f4-0306-4c12-b390-01a6f82da660> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ancestryinsider.org/2013/05/ngs2013-online-tools-for-genealogists.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393442.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00104-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934512 | 297 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Bible (World English)/Nehemiah
1The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace, 2that Hanani, one of my brothers, came, he and certain men out of Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. 3They said to me, “The remnant who are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and its gates are burned with fire.” 4It happened, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days; and I fasted and prayed before the God of heaven, 5and said, “I beg you, Yahweh, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness with those who love him and keep his commandments: 6Let your ear now be attentive, and your eyes open, that you may listen to the prayer of your servant, which I pray before you at this time, day and night, for the children of Israel your servants while I confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Yes, I and my father’s house have sinned. 7We have dealt very corruptly against you, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances, which you commanded your servant Moses.
8“Remember, I beg you, the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you trespass, I will scatter you abroad among the peoples; 9but if you return to me, and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts were in the uttermost part of the heavens, yet will I gather them from there, and will bring them to the place that I have chosen, to cause my name to dwell there.’
10“Now these are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power, and by your strong hand. 11Lord, I beg you, let your ear be attentive now to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants, who delight to fear your name; and please prosper your servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.”
Now I was cup bearer to the king.
1It happened in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king, when wine was before him, that I took up the wine, and gave it to the king. Now I had not been before sad in his presence. 2The king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing else but sorrow of heart.”
Then I was very much afraid. 3I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why shouldn’t my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs, lies waste, and its gates have been consumed with fire?”
4Then the king said to me, “For what do you make request?”
So I prayed to the God of heaven. 5I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you would send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may build it.”
6The king said to me (the queen was also sitting by him), “For how long shall your journey be? And when will you return?”
So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him a time. 7Moreover I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah; 8and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king’s forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple, for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall enter into.”
The king granted my requests, because of the good hand of my God on me. 9Then I came to the governors beyond the River, and gave them the king’s letters. Now the king had sent with me captains of the army and horsemen. 10When Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, heard of it, it grieved them exceedingly, because a man had come to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. 11So I came to Jerusalem, and was there three days. 12I arose in the night, I and some few men with me; neither told I any man what my God put into my heart to do for Jerusalem; neither was there any animal with me, except the animal that I rode on. 13I went out by night by the valley gate, even toward the jackal’s well, and to the dung gate, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and its gates were consumed with fire. 14Then I went on to the spring gate and to the king’s pool: but there was no place for the animal that was under me to pass. 15Then went I up in the night by the brook, and viewed the wall; and I turned back, and entered by the valley gate, and so returned. 16The rulers didn’t know where I went, or what I did; neither had I as yet told it to the Jews, nor to the priests, nor to the nobles, nor to the rulers, nor to the rest who did the work. 17Then I said to them, “You see the evil case that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come, let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we won’t be disgraced.” 18I told them of the hand of my God which was good on me, as also of the king’s words that he had spoken to me.
They said, “Let’s rise up and build.” So they strengthened their hands for the good work.
19But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, heard it, they ridiculed us, and despised us, and said, “What is this thing that you are doing? Will you rebel against the king?”
20Then answered I them, and said to them, “The God of heaven will prosper us. Therefore we, his servants, will arise and build; but you have no portion, nor right, nor memorial, in Jerusalem.”
1Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brothers the priests, and they built the sheep gate; they sanctified it, and set up its doors; even to the tower of Hammeah they sanctified it, to the tower of Hananel. 2Next to him built the men of Jericho. Next to them built Zaccur the son of Imri. 3The fish gate did the sons of Hassenaah build; they laid its beams, and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars. 4Next to them repaired Meremoth the son of Uriah, the son of Hakkoz. Next to them repaired Meshullam the son of Berechiah, the son of Meshezabel. Next to them repaired Zadok the son of Baana. 5Next to them the Tekoites repaired; but their nobles didn’t put their necks to the work of their lord. 6The old gate repaired Joiada the son of Paseah and Meshullam the son of Besodeiah; they laid its beams, and set up its doors, and its bolts, and its bars. 7Next to them repaired Melatiah the Gibeonite, and Jadon the Meronothite, the men of Gibeon, and of Mizpah, that appertained to the throne of the governor beyond the River. 8Next to him repaired Uzziel the son of Harhaiah, goldsmiths. Next to him repaired Hananiah one of the perfumers, and they fortified Jerusalem even to the broad wall. 9Next to them repaired Rephaiah the son of Hur, the ruler of half the district of Jerusalem. 10Next to them repaired Jedaiah the son of Harumaph, over against his house. Next to him repaired Hattush the son of Hashabneiah. 11Malchijah the son of Harim, and Hasshub the son of Pahathmoab, repaired another portion, and the tower of the furnaces. 12Next to him repaired Shallum the son of Hallohesh, the ruler of half the district of Jerusalem, he and his daughters. 13The valley gate repaired Hanun, and the inhabitants of Zanoah; they built it, and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars, and one thousand cubits of the wall to the dung gate. 14The dung gate repaired Malchijah the son of Rechab, the ruler of the district of Beth Haccherem; he built it, and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars. 15The spring gate repaired Shallun the son of Colhozeh, the ruler of the district of Mizpah; he built it, and covered it, and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars, and the wall of the pool of Shelah by the king’s garden, even to the stairs that go down from the city of David. 16After him repaired Nehemiah the son of Azbuk, the ruler of half the district of Beth Zur, to the place over against the tombs of David, and to the pool that was made, and to the house of the mighty men. 17After him repaired the Levites, Rehum the son of Bani. Next to him repaired Hashabiah, the ruler of half the district of Keilah, for his district. 18After him repaired their brothers, Bavvai the son of Henadad, the ruler of half the district of Keilah. 19Next to him repaired Ezer the son of Jeshua, the ruler of Mizpah, another portion, over against the ascent to the armory at the turning of the wall. 20After him Baruch the son of Zabbai earnestly repaired another portion, from the turning of the wall to the door of the house of Eliashib the high priest. 21After him repaired Meremoth the son of Uriah the son of Hakkoz another portion, from the door of the house of Eliashib even to the end of the house of Eliashib. 22After him repaired the priests, the men of the Plain. 23After them repaired Benjamin and Hasshub over against their house. After them repaired Azariah the son of Maaseiah the son of Ananiah beside his own house. 24After him repaired Binnui the son of Henadad another portion, from the house of Azariah to the turning of the wall, and to the corner. 25Palal the son of Uzai repaired over against the turning of the wall, and the tower that stands out from the upper house of the king, which is by the court of the guard. After him Pedaiah the son of Parosh repaired. 26(Now the Nethinim lived in Ophel, to the place over against the water gate toward the east, and the tower that stands out.) 27After him the Tekoites repaired another portion, over against the great tower that stands out, and to the wall of Ophel. 28Above the horse gate repaired the priests, everyone over against his own house. 29After them repaired Zadok the son of Immer over against his own house. After him repaired Shemaiah the son of Shecaniah, the keeper of the east gate. 30After him repaired Hananiah the son of Shelemiah, and Hanun the sixth son of Zalaph, another portion. After him repaired Meshullam the son of Berechiah over against his chamber. 31After him repaired Malchijah one of the goldsmiths to the house of the Nethinim, and of the merchants, over against the gate of Hammiphkad, and to the ascent of the corner. 32Between the ascent of the corner and the sheep gate repaired the goldsmiths and the merchants.
1But it happened that when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry, and took great indignation, and mocked the Jews. 2He spoke before his brothers and the army of Samaria, and said, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, seeing they are burned?” 3Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, “What they are building, if a fox climbed up it, he would break down their stone wall.”
4“Hear, our God; for we are despised; and turn back their reproach on their own head, give them up for a spoil in a land of captivity; 5don’t cover their iniquity, and don’t let their sin be blotted out from before you; for they have insulted the builders.”
6So we built the wall; and all the wall was joined together to half the height of it: for the people had a mind to work. 7But it happened that when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabians, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem went forward, and that the breaches began to be stopped, then they were very angry; 8and they conspired all of them together to come and fight against Jerusalem, and to cause confusion therein. 9But we made our prayer to our God, and set a watch against them day and night, because of them. 10Judah said, “The strength of the bearers of burdens is fading, and there is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall.” 11Our adversaries said, “They shall not know, neither see, until we come into the midst of them, and kill them, and cause the work to cease.”
12It happened that when the Jews who lived by them came, they said to us ten times from all places, “Wherever you turn, they will attack us.” 13Therefore set I in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in the open places, I set there the people after their families with their swords, their spears, and their bows. 14I looked, and rose up, and said to the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, “Don’t be afraid of them! Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.”
15It happened, when our enemies heard that it was known to us, and God had brought their counsel to nothing, that we returned all of us to the wall, everyone to his work. 16It happened from that time forth, that half of my servants worked in the work, and half of them held the spears, the shields, and the bows, and the coats of mail; and the rulers were behind all the house of Judah. 17They all built the wall and those who bore burdens loaded themselves; everyone with one of his hands worked in the work, and with the other held his weapon; 18and the builders, everyone had his sword girded by his side, and so built. He who sounded the trumpet was by me. 19I said to the nobles, and to the rulers and to the rest of the people, “The work is great and large, and we are separated on the wall, one far from another. 20Wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally there to us. Our God will fight for us.”
21So we worked in the work: and half of them held the spears from the rising of the morning until the stars appeared. 22Likewise at the same time said I to the people, “Let everyone with his servant lodge within Jerusalem, that in the night they may be a guard to us, and may labor in the day.” 23So neither I, nor my brothers, nor my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us took off our clothes. Everyone took his weapon to the water.
1Then there arose a great cry of the people and of their wives against their brothers the Jews. 2For there were that said, “We, our sons and our daughters, are many. Let us get grain, that we may eat and live.” 3Some also there were that said, “We are mortgaging our fields, and our vineyards, and our houses. Let us get grain, because of the famine.” 4There were also some who said, “We have borrowed money for the king’s tribute using our fields and our vineyards as collateral. 5Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children as their children. Behold, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters have been brought into bondage. Neither is it in our power to help it; for other men have our fields and our vineyards.”
6I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words. 7Then I consulted with myself, and contended with the nobles and the rulers, and said to them, “You exact usury, everyone of his brother.” I held a great assembly against them. 8I said to them, “We, after our ability, have redeemed our brothers the Jews that were sold to the nations; and would you even sell your brothers, and should they be sold to us?” Then they held their peace, and found never a word. 9Also I said, “The thing that you do is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God, because of the reproach of the nations our enemies? 10I likewise, my brothers and my servants, lend them money and grain. Please let us stop this usury. 11Please restore to them, even this day, their fields, their vineyards, their olive groves, and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money, and of the grain, the new wine, and the oil, that you are charging them.”
12Then they said, “We will restore them, and will require nothing of them; so will we do, even as you say.”
Then I called the priests, and took an oath of them, that they would do according to this promise. 13Also I shook out my lap, and said, “So may God shake out every man from his house, and from his labor, that doesn’t perform this promise; even thus be he shaken out, and emptied.”
All the assembly said, “Amen,” and praised Yahweh. The people did according to this promise.
14Moreover from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year even to the two and thirtieth year of Artaxerxes the king, that is, twelve years, I and my brothers have not eaten the bread of the governor. 15But the former governors who were before me were supported by the people, and took bread and wine from them, besides forty shekels of silver; yes, even their servants ruled over the people: but I didn’t do so, because of the fear of God. 16Yes, also I continued in the work of this wall, neither bought we any land: and all my servants were gathered there to the work. 17Moreover there were at my table, of the Jews and the rulers, one hundred fifty men, besides those who came to us from among the nations that were around us. 18Now that which was prepared for one day was one ox and six choice sheep; also fowls were prepared for me, and once in ten days store of all sorts of wine: yet for all this I didn’t demand the bread of the governor, because the bondage was heavy on this people. 19Remember to me, my God, for good, all that I have done for this people.
1Now it happened, when it was reported to Sanballat and Tobiah, and to Geshem the Arabian, and to the rest of our enemies, that I had built the wall, and that there was no breach left therein; (though even to that time I had not set up the doors in the gates;) 2that Sanballat and Geshem sent to me, saying, “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages in the plain of Ono.” But they intended to harm me.
3I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work, so that I can’t come down. Why should the work cease, while I leave it, and come down to you?” 4They sent to me four times after this sort; and I answered them the same way. 5Then Sanballat sent his servant to me the same way the fifth time with an open letter in his hand, 6in which was written, “It is reported among the nations, and Gashmu says it, that you and the Jews intend to rebel. Because of that, you are building the wall. You would be their king, according to these words. 7You have also appointed prophets to preach of you at Jerusalem, saying, ‘There is a king in Judah!’ Now it will be reported to the king according to these words. Come now therefore, and let us take counsel together.”
8Then I sent to him, saying, “There are no such things done as you say, but you imagine them out of your own heart.” 9For they all would have made us afraid, saying, “Their hands will be weakened from the work, that it not be done. But now, God, strengthen my hands.”
10I went to the house of Shemaiah the son of Delaiah the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home; and he said, “Let us meet together in the house of God, within the temple, and let us shut the doors of the temple; for they will come to kill you; yes, in the night will they come to kill you.”
11I said, “Should such a man as I flee? Who is there that, being such as I, would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in.” 12I discerned, and behold, God had not sent him; but he pronounced this prophecy against me. Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. 13He hired so that I would be afraid, do so, and sin, and that they might have material for an evil report, that they might reproach me. 14“Remember, my God, Tobiah and Sanballat according to these their works, and also the prophetess Noadiah, and the rest of the prophets, that would have put me in fear.”
15So the wall was finished in the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty-two days. 16It happened, when all our enemies heard of it, that all the nations that were about us feared, and were much cast down in their own eyes; for they perceived that this work was worked of our God. 17Moreover in those days the nobles of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah, and the letters of Tobiah came to them. 18For there were many in Judah sworn to him, because he was the son-in-law of Shecaniah the son of Arah; and his son Jehohanan had taken the daughter of Meshullam the son of Berechiah as wife. 19Also they spoke of his good deeds before me, and reported my words to him. Tobiah sent letters to put me in fear.
1Now it happened, when the wall was built, and I had set up the doors, and the porters and the singers and the Levites were appointed, 2that I put my brother Hanani, and Hananiah the governor of the castle, in charge of Jerusalem; for he was a faithful man, and feared God above many. 3I said to them, “Don’t let the gates of Jerusalem be opened until the sun is hot; and while they stand guard, let them shut the doors, and you bar them: and appoint watches of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, everyone in his watch, with everyone near his house.”
4Now the city was wide and large; but the people were few therein, and the houses were not built. 5My God put into my heart to gather together the nobles, and the rulers, and the people, that they might be reckoned by genealogy. I found the book of the genealogy of those who came up at the first, and I found written therein: 6These are the children of the province, who went up out of the captivity of those who had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away, and who returned to Jerusalem and to Judah, everyone to his city; 7who came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Raamiah, Nahamani, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispereth, Bigvai, Nehum, Baanah. The number of the men of the people of Israel: 8The children of Parosh, two thousand one hundred seventy-two. 9The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy-two. 10The children of Arah, six hundred fifty-two. 11The children of Pahathmoab, of the children of Jeshua and Joab, two thousand eight hundred and eighteen. 12The children of Elam, one thousand two hundred fifty-four. 13The children of Zattu, eight hundred forty-five. 14The children of Zaccai, seven hundred sixty. 15The children of Binnui, six hundred forty-eight. 16The children of Bebai, six hundred twenty-eight. 17The children of Azgad, two thousand three hundred twenty-two. 18The children of Adonikam, six hundred sixty-seven. 19The children of Bigvai, two thousand sixty-seven. 20The children of Adin, six hundred fifty-five. 21The children of Ater, of Hezekiah, ninety-eight. 22The children of Hashum, three hundred Twenty-eight. 23The children of Bezai, three hundred twenty-four. 24The children of Hariph, one hundred twelve. 25The children of Gibeon, ninety-five. 26The men of Bethlehem and Netophah, one hundred eighty-eight. 27The men of Anathoth, one hundred twenty-eight. 28The men of Beth Azmaveth, forty-two. 29The men of Kiriath Jearim, Chephirah, and Beeroth, seven hundred forty-three. 30The men of Ramah and Geba, six hundred twenty-one. 31The men of Michmas, one hundred and twenty-two. 32The men of Bethel and Ai, a hundred twenty-three. 33The men of the other Nebo, fifty-two. 34The children of the other Elam, one thousand two hundred fifty-four. 35The children of Harim, three hundred twenty. 36The children of Jericho, three hundred forty-five. 37The children of Lod, Hadid, and Ono, seven hundred twenty-one. 38The children of Senaah, three thousand nine hundred thirty. 39The priests: The children of Jedaiah, of the house of Jeshua, nine hundred seventy-three. 40The children of Immer, one thousand fifty-two. 41The children of Pashhur, one thousand two hundred forty-seven. 42The children of Harim, one thousand and seventeen. 43The Levites: the children of Jeshua, of Kadmiel, of the children of Hodevah, seventy-four. 44The singers: the children of Asaph, one hundred forty-eight. 45The porters: the children of Shallum, the children of Ater, the children of Talmon, the children of Akkub, the children of Hatita, the children of Shobai, one hundred thirty-eight. 46The Nethinim: the children of Ziha, the children of Hasupha, the children of Tabbaoth, 47the children of Keros, the children of Sia, the children of Padon, 48the children of Lebana, the children of Hagaba, the children of Salmai, 49the children of Hanan, the children of Giddel, the children of Gahar, 50the children of Reaiah, the children of Rezin, the children of Nekoda, 51the children of Gazzam, the children of Uzza, the children of Paseah. 52The children of Besai, the children of Meunim, the children of Nephushesim, 53the children of Bakbuk, the children of Hakupha, the children of Harhur, 54the children of Bazlith, the children of Mehida, the children of Harsha, 55the children of Barkos, the children of Sisera, the children of Temah, 56the children of Neziah, the children of Hatipha. 57The children of Solomon’s servants: the children of Sotai, the children of Sophereth, the children of Perida, 58the children of Jaala, the children of Darkon, the children of Giddel, 59the children of Shephatiah, the children of Hattil, the children of Pochereth Hazzebaim, the children of Amon. 60All the Nethinim, and the children of Solomon’s servants, were three hundred ninety-two. 61These were those who went up from Tel Melah, Tel Harsha, Cherub, Addon, and Immer; but they could not show their fathers’ houses, nor their seed, whether they were of Israel: 62The children of Delaiah, the children of Tobiah, the children of Nekoda, six hundred forty-two. 63Of the priests: the children of Hobaiah, the children of Hakkoz, the children of Barzillai, who took a wife of the daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite, and was called after their name. 64These sought their register among those who were reckoned by genealogy, but it was not found: therefore were they deemed polluted and put from the priesthood. 65The governor said to them, that they should not eat of the most holy things, until there stood up a priest with Urim and Thummim. 66The whole assembly together was forty-two thousand three hundred sixty, 67besides their male servants and their female servants, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred thirty-seven: and they had two hundred forty-five singing men and singing women. 68Their horses were seven hundred thirty-six; their mules, two hundred forty-five; 69their camels, four hundred thirty-five; their donkeys, six thousand seven hundred twenty. 70Some from among the heads of fathers’ houses gave to the work. The governor gave to the treasury one thousand darics of gold, fifty basins, and five hundred thirty priests’ garments. 71Some of the heads of fathers’ houses gave into the treasury of the work twenty thousand darics of gold, and two thousand two hundred minas of silver. 72That which the rest of the people gave was twenty thousand darics of gold, and two thousand minas of silver, and sixty-seven priests’ garments. 73So the priests, and the Levites, and the porters, and the singers, and some of the people, and the Nethinim, and all Israel, lived in their cities. When the seventh month was come, the children of Israel were in their cities.
1All the people gathered themselves together as one man into the broad place that was before the water gate; and they spoke to Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which Yahweh had commanded to Israel. 2Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women, and all who could hear with understanding, on the first day of the seventh month. 3He read therein before the broad place that was before the water gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women, and of those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. 4Ezra the scribe stood on a pulpit of wood, which they had made for the purpose; and beside him stood Mattithiah, and Shema, and Anaiah, and Uriah, and Hilkiah, and Maaseiah, on his right hand; and on his left hand, Pedaiah, and Mishael, and Malchijah, and Hashum, and Hashbaddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam. 5Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people; (for he was above all the people;) and when he opened it, all the people stood up: 6and Ezra blessed Yahweh, the great God. All the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” with the lifting up of their hands. They bowed their heads, and worshiped Yahweh with their faces to the ground. 7Also Jeshua, and Bani, and Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, and the Levites, caused the people to understand the law: and the people stood in their place. 8They read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly; and they gave the sense, so that they understood the reading. 9Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest the scribe, and the Levites who taught the people, said to all the people, “This day is holy to Yahweh your God. Don’t mourn, nor weep.” For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law. 10Then he said to them, “Go your way. Eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to him for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Don’t be grieved; for the joy of Yahweh is your strength.”
11So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, “Hold your peace, for the day is holy; neither be grieved.”
12All the people went their way to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had understood the words that were declared to them. 13On the second day were gathered together the heads of fathers’ houses of all the people, the priests, and the Levites, to Ezra the scribe, even to give attention to the words of the law. 14They found written in the law, how that Yahweh had commanded by Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in booths in the feast of the seventh month; 15and that they should publish and proclaim in all their cities, and in Jerusalem, saying, “Go out to the mountain, and get olive branches, and branches of wild olive, and myrtle branches, and palm branches, and branches of thick trees, to make booths, as it is written.”
16So the people went out, and brought them, and made themselves booths, everyone on the roof of his house, and in their courts, and in the courts of the house of God, and in the broad place of the water gate, and in the broad place of the gate of Ephraim. 17All the assembly of those who were come again out of the captivity made booths, and lived in the booths; for since the days of Jeshua the son of Nun to that day the children of Israel had not done so. There was very great gladness. 18Also day by day, from the first day to the last day, he read in the book of the law of God. They kept the feast seven days; and on the eighth day was a solemn assembly, according to the ordinance.
1Now in the twenty-fourth day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, and with sackcloth, and earth on them. 2The seed of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners, and stood and confessed their sins, and the iniquities of their fathers. 3They stood up in their place, and read in the book of the law of Yahweh their God a fourth part of the day; and another fourth part they confessed, and worshiped Yahweh their God. 4Then stood up on the stairs of the Levites, Jeshua, and Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani, and cried with a loud voice to Yahweh their God. 5Then the Levites, Jeshua, and Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said, “Stand up and bless Yahweh your God from everlasting to everlasting! Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise! 6You are Yahweh, even you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their army, the earth and all things that are on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve them all. The army of heaven worships you. 7You are Yahweh, the God who chose Abram, and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gave him the name of Abraham, 8and found his heart faithful before you, and made a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Jebusite, and the Girgashite, to give it to his seed, and have performed your words; for you are righteous.
9“You saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and heard their cry by the Red Sea, 10and showed signs and wonders against Pharaoh, and against all his servants, and against all the people of his land; for you knew that they dealt proudly against them, and made a name for yourself, as it is this day. 11You divided the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land; and you cast their pursuers into the depths, as a stone into the mighty waters. 12Moreover, in a pillar of cloud you led them by day; and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light in the way in which they should go.
13“You came down also on Mount Sinai, and spoke with them from heaven, and gave them right ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments, 14and made known to them your holy Sabbath, and commanded them commandments, and statutes, and a law, by Moses your servant, 15and gave them bread from the sky for their hunger, and brought forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and commanded them that they should go in to possess the land which you had sworn to give them.
16“But they and our fathers dealt proudly and hardened their neck, didn’t listen to your commandments, 17and refused to obey, neither were they mindful of your wonders that you did among them, but hardened their neck, and in their rebellion appointed a captain to return to their bondage. But you are a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and didn’t forsake them. 18Yes, when they had made them a molten calf, and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed awful blasphemies; 19yet you in your manifold mercies didn’t forsake them in the wilderness: the pillar of cloud didn’t depart from over them by day, to lead them in the way; neither the pillar of fire by night, to show them light, and the way in which they should go. 20You gave also your good Spirit to instruct them, and didn’t withhold your manna from their mouth, and gave them water for their thirst.
21“Yes, forty years you sustained them in the wilderness. They lacked nothing. Their clothes didn’t grow old, and their feet didn’t swell. 22Moreover you gave them kingdoms and peoples, which you allotted according to their portions. So they possessed the land of Sihon, even the land of the king of Heshbon, and the land of Og king of Bashan. 23You also multiplied their children as the stars of the sky, and brought them into the land concerning which you said to their fathers, that they should go in to possess it.
24“So the children went in and possessed the land, and you subdued before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into their hands, with their kings, and the peoples of the land, that they might do with them as they pleased. 25They took fortified cities, and a rich land, and possessed houses full of all good things, cisterns dug out, vineyards, and olive groves, and fruit trees in abundance. So they ate, were filled, became fat, and delighted themselves in your great goodness.
26“Nevertheless they were disobedient, and rebelled against you, and cast your law behind their back, and killed your prophets that testified against them to turn them again to you, and they committed awful blasphemies. 27Therefore you delivered them into the hand of their adversaries, who distressed them. In the time of their trouble, when they cried to you, you heard from heaven; and according to your manifold mercies you gave them saviors who saved them out of the hand of their adversaries. 28But after they had rest, they did evil again before you; therefore left you them in the hand of their enemies, so that they had the dominion over them; yet when they returned, and cried to you, you heard from heaven; and many times you delivered them according to your mercies, 29and testified against them, that you might bring them again to your law. Yet they dealt proudly, and didn’t listen to your commandments, but sinned against your ordinances, (which if a man does, he shall live in them), turned their backs, stiffened their neck, and would not hear. 30Yet many years you put up with them, and testified against them by your Spirit through your prophets. Yet would they not give ear. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands.
31“Nevertheless in your manifold mercies you did not make a full end of them, nor forsake them; for you are a gracious and merciful God. 32Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness, don’t let all the travail seem little before you, that has come on us, on our kings, on our princes, and on our priests, and on our prophets, and on our fathers, and on all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria to this day. 33However you are just in all that is come on us; for you have dealt truly, but we have done wickedly; 34neither have our kings, our princes, our priests, nor our fathers, kept your law, nor listened to your commandments and your testimonies with which you testified against them. 35For they have not served you in their kingdom, and in your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land which you gave before them, neither did they turn from their wicked works.
36“Behold, we are servants this day, and as for the land that you gave to our fathers to eat its fruit and its good, behold, we are servants in it. 37It yields much increase to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins: also they have power over our bodies, and over our livestock, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress. 38Yet for all this, we make a sure covenant, and write it; and our princes, our Levites, and our priests, seal to it.”
1Now those who sealed were: Nehemiah the governor, the son of Hacaliah, and Zedekiah, 2Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, 3Pashhur, Amariah, Malchijah, 4Hattush, Shebaniah, Malluch, 5Harim, Meremoth, Obadiah, 6Daniel, Ginnethon, Baruch, 7Meshullam, Abijah, Mijamin, 8Maaziah, Bilgai, Shemaiah; these were the priests. 9The Levites: namely, Jeshua the son of Azaniah, Binnui of the sons of Henadad, Kadmiel; 10and their brothers, Shebaniah, Hodiah, Kelita, Pelaiah, Hanan, 11Mica, Rehob, Hashabiah, 12Zaccur, Sherebiah, Shebaniah, 13Hodiah, Bani, Beninu. 14The chiefs of the people: Parosh, Pahathmoab, Elam, Zattu, Bani, 15Bunni, Azgad, Bebai, 16Adonijah, Bigvai, Adin, 17Ater, Hezekiah, Azzur, 18Hodiah, Hashum, Bezai, 19Hariph, Anathoth, Nobai, 20Magpiash, Meshullam, Hezir, 21Meshezabel, Zadok, Jaddua, 22Pelatiah, Hanan, Anaiah, 23Hoshea, Hananiah, Hasshub, 24Hallohesh, Pilha, Shobek, 25Rehum, Hashabnah, Maaseiah, 26and Ahiah, Hanan, Anan, 27Malluch, Harim, Baanah. 28The rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the porters, the singers, the Nethinim, and all those who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, everyone who had knowledge, and understanding— 29they joined with their brothers, their nobles, and entered into a curse, and into an oath, to walk in God’s law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of Yahweh our Lord, and his ordinances and his statutes; 30and that we would not give our daughters to the peoples of the land, nor take their daughters for our sons; 31and if the peoples of the land bring wares or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, that we would not buy of them on the Sabbath, or on a holy day; and that we would forego the seventh year, and the exaction of every debt. 32Also we made ordinances for ourselves, to charge ourselves yearly with the third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our God; 33for the show bread, and for the continual meal offering, and for the continual burnt offering, for the Sabbaths, for the new moons, for the set feasts, and for the holy things, and for the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God. 34We cast lots, the priests, the Levites, and the people, for the wood offering, to bring it into the house of our God, according to our fathers’ houses, at times appointed, year by year, to burn on the altar of Yahweh our God, as it is written in the law; 35and to bring the first fruits of our ground, and the first fruits of all fruit of all manner of trees, year by year, to the house of Yahweh; 36also the firstborn of our sons, and of our livestock, as it is written in the law, and the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks, to bring to the house of our God, to the priests who minister in the house of our God; 37and that we should bring the first fruits of our dough, and our wave offerings, and the fruit of all manner of trees, the new wine and the oil, to the priests, to the chambers of the house of our God; and the tithes of our ground to the Levites; for they, the Levites, take the tithes in all the cities of our tillage. 38The priest the son of Aaron shall be with the Levites, when the Levites take tithes: and the Levites shall bring up the tithe of the tithes to the house of our God, to the chambers, into the treasure house. 39For the children of Israel and the children of Levi shall bring the wave offering of the grain, of the new wine, and of the oil, to the chambers, where are the vessels of the sanctuary, and the priests who minister, and the porters, and the singers. We will not forsake the house of our God.
1The princes of the people lived in Jerusalem: the rest of the people also cast lots, to bring one of ten to dwell in Jerusalem the holy city, and nine parts in the other cities. 2The people blessed all the men who willingly offered themselves to dwell in Jerusalem. 3Now these are the chiefs of the province who lived in Jerusalem: but in the cities of Judah lived everyone in his possession in their cities, to wit, Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the Nethinim, and the children of Solomon’s servants. 4In Jerusalem lived certain of the children of Judah, and of the children of Benjamin. Of the children of Judah: Athaiah the son of Uzziah, the son of Zechariah, the son of Amariah, the son of Shephatiah, the son of Mahalalel, of the children of Perez; 5and Maaseiah the son of Baruch, the son of Colhozeh, the son of Hazaiah, the son of Adaiah, the son of Joiarib, the son of Zechariah, the son of the Shilonite. 6All the sons of Perez who lived in Jerusalem were four hundred sixty-eight valiant men. 7These are the sons of Benjamin: Sallu the son of Meshullam, the son of Joed, the son of Pedaiah, the son of Kolaiah, the son of Maaseiah, the son of Ithiel, the son of Jeshaiah. 8After him Gabbai, Sallai, nine hundred twenty-eight. 9Joel the son of Zichri was their overseer; and Judah the son of Hassenuah was second over the city. 10Of the priests: Jedaiah the son of Joiarib, Jachin, 11Seraiah the son of Hilkiah, the son of Meshullam, the son of Zadok, the son of Meraioth, the son of Ahitub, the ruler of the house of God, 12and their brothers who did the work of the house, eight hundred twenty-two; and Adaiah the son of Jeroham, the son of Pelaliah, the son of Amzi, the son of Zechariah, the son of Pashhur, the son of Malchijah, 13and his brothers, chiefs of fathers’ houses, two hundred forty-two; and Amashsai the son of Azarel, the son of Ahzai, the son of Meshillemoth, the son of Immer, 14and their brothers, mighty men of valor, one hundred twenty-eight; and their overseer was Zabdiel, the son of Haggedolim. 15Of the Levites: Shemaiah the son of Hasshub, the son of Azrikam, the son of Hashabiah, the son of Bunni; 16and Shabbethai and Jozabad, of the chiefs of the Levites, who had the oversight of the outward business of the house of God; 17and Mattaniah the son of Mica, the son of Zabdi, the son of Asaph, who was the chief to begin the thanksgiving in prayer, and Bakbukiah, the second among his brothers; and Abda the son of Shammua, the son of Galal, the son of Jeduthun. 18All the Levites in the holy city were two hundred eighty-four. 19Moreover the porters, Akkub, Talmon, and their brothers, who kept watch at the gates, were one hundred seventy-two. 20The residue of Israel, of the priests, the Levites, were in all the cities of Judah, everyone in his inheritance. 21But the Nethinim lived in Ophel: and Ziha and Gishpa were over the Nethinim. 22The overseer also of the Levites at Jerusalem was Uzzi the son of Bani, the son of Hashabiah, the son of Mattaniah, the son of Mica, of the sons of Asaph, the singers, over the business of the house of God. 23For there was a commandment from the king concerning them, and a settled provision for the singers, as every day required. 24Pethahiah the son of Meshezabel, of the children of Zerah the son of Judah, was at the king’s hand in all matters concerning the people. 25As for the villages, with their fields, some of the children of Judah lived in Kiriath Arba and its towns, and in Dibon and its towns, and in Jekabzeel and its villages, 26and in Jeshua, and in Moladah, and Beth Pelet, 27and in Hazar Shual, and in Beersheba and its towns, 28and in Ziklag, and in Meconah and in its towns, 29and in En Rimmon, and in Zorah, and in Jarmuth, 30Zanoah, Adullam, and their villages, Lachish and its fields, Azekah and its towns. So they encamped from Beersheba to the valley of Hinnom. 31The children of Benjamin also lived from Geba onward, at Michmash and Aija, and at Bethel and its towns, 32at Anathoth, Nob, Ananiah, 33Hazor, Ramah, Gittaim, 34Hadid, Zeboim, Neballat, 35Lod, and Ono, the valley of craftsmen. 36Of the Levites, certain divisions in Judah were joined to Benjamin.
1Now these are the priests and the Levites who went up with Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua: Seraiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, 2Amariah, Malluch, Hattush, 3Shecaniah, Rehum, Meremoth, 4Iddo, Ginnethoi, Abijah, 5Mijamin, Maadiah, Bilgah, 6Shemaiah, and Joiarib, Jedaiah. 7Sallu, Amok, Hilkiah, Jedaiah. These were the chiefs of the priests and of their brothers in the days of Jeshua. 8Moreover the Levites: Jeshua, Binnui, Kadmiel, Sherebiah, Judah, and Mattaniah, who was over the thanksgiving, he and his brothers. 9Also Bakbukiah and Unno, their brothers, were over against them according to their offices. 10Jeshua became the father of Joiakim, and Joiakim became the father of Eliashib, and Eliashib became the father of Joiada, 11and Joiada became the father of Jonathan, and Jonathan became the father of Jaddua. 12In the days of Joiakim were priests, heads of fathers’ houses: of Seraiah, Meraiah; of Jeremiah, Hananiah; 13of Ezra, Meshullam; of Amariah, Jehohanan; 14of Malluchi, Jonathan; of Shebaniah, Joseph; 15of Harim, Adna; of Meraioth, Helkai; 16of Iddo, Zechariah; of Ginnethon, Meshullam; 17of Abijah, Zichri; of Miniamin, of Moadiah, Piltai; 18of Bilgah, Shammua; of Shemaiah, Jehonathan; 19and of Joiarib, Mattenai; of Jedaiah, Uzzi; 20of Sallai, Kallai; of Amok, Eber; 21of Hilkiah, Hashabiah; of Jedaiah, Nethanel. 22As for the Levites, in the days of Eliashib, Joiada, and Johanan, and Jaddua, there were recorded the heads of fathers’ houses; also the priests, in the reign of Darius the Persian. 23The sons of Levi, heads of fathers’ houses, were written in the book of the chronicles, even until the days of Johanan the son of Eliashib. 24The chiefs of the Levites: Hashabiah, Sherebiah, and Jeshua the son of Kadmiel, with their brothers over against them, to praise and give thanks, according to the commandment of David the man of God, watch next to watch. 25Mattaniah, and Bakbukiah, Obadiah, Meshullam, Talmon, Akkub, were porters keeping the watch at the storehouses of the gates. 26These were in the days of Joiakim the son of Jeshua, the son of Jozadak, and in the days of Nehemiah the governor, and of Ezra the priest the scribe. 27At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sought the Levites out of all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem, to keep the dedication with gladness, both with giving thanks, and with singing, with cymbals, stringed instruments, and with harps. 28The sons of the singers gathered themselves together, both out of the plain around Jerusalem, and from the villages of the Netophathites; 29also from Beth Gilgal, and out of the fields of Geba and Azmaveth: for the singers had built them villages around Jerusalem. 30The priests and the Levites purified themselves; and they purified the people, and the gates, and the wall. 31Then I brought up the princes of Judah on the wall, and appointed two great companies who gave thanks and went in procession. One went on the right hand on the wall toward the dung gate; 32and after them went Hoshaiah, and half of the princes of Judah, 33and Azariah, Ezra, and Meshullam, 34Judah, and Benjamin, and Shemaiah, and Jeremiah, 35and certain of the priests’ sons with trumpets: Zechariah the son of Jonathan, the son of Shemaiah, the son of Mattaniah, the son of Micaiah, the son of Zaccur, the son of Asaph; 36and his brothers, Shemaiah, and Azarel, Milalai, Gilalai, Maai, Nethanel, and Judah, Hanani, with the musical instruments of David the man of God; and Ezra the scribe was before them. 37By the spring gate, and straight before them, they went up by the stairs of the city of David, at the ascent of the wall, above the house of David, even to the water gate eastward. 38The other company of those who gave thanks went to meet them, and I after them, with the half of the people, on the wall, above the tower of the furnaces, even to the broad wall, 39and above the gate of Ephraim, and by the old gate, and by the fish gate, and the tower of Hananel, and the tower of Hammeah, even to the sheep gate: and they stood still in the gate of the guard. 40So stood the two companies of those who gave thanks in the house of God, and I, and the half of the rulers with me; 41and the priests, Eliakim, Maaseiah, Miniamin, Micaiah, Elioenai, Zechariah, and Hananiah, with trumpets; 42and Maaseiah, and Shemaiah, and Eleazar, and Uzzi, and Jehohanan, and Malchijah, and Elam, and Ezer. The singers sang loud, with Jezrahiah their overseer. 43They offered great sacrifices that day, and rejoiced; for God had made them rejoice with great joy; and the women also and the children rejoiced: so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off. 44On that day were men appointed over the chambers for the treasures, for the wave offerings, for the first fruits, and for the tithes, to gather into them, according to the fields of the cities, the portions appointed by the law for the priests and Levites: for Judah rejoiced for the priests and for the Levites who waited. 45They performed the duty of their God, and the duty of the purification, and so did the singers and the porters, according to the commandment of David, and of Solomon his son. 46For in the days of David and Asaph of old there was a chief of the singers, and songs of praise and thanksgiving to God. 47All Israel in the days of Zerubbabel, and in the days of Nehemiah, gave the portions of the singers and the porters, as every day required: and they set apart that which was for the Levites; and the Levites set apart that which was for the sons of Aaron.
1On that day they read in the book of Moses in the audience of the people; and therein was found written, that an Ammonite and a Moabite should not enter into the assembly of God forever, 2because they didn’t meet the children of Israel with bread and with water, but hired Balaam against them, to curse them: however our God turned the curse into a blessing. 3It came to pass, when they had heard the law, that they separated from Israel all the mixed multitude. 4Now before this, Eliashib the priest, who was appointed over the chambers of the house of our God, being allied to Tobiah, 5had prepared for him a great chamber, where before they laid the meal offerings, the frankincense, and the vessels, and the tithes of the grain, the new wine, and the oil, which were given by commandment to the Levites, and the singers, and the porters; and the wave offerings for the priests. 6But in all this time I was not at Jerusalem; for in the two and thirtieth year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I went to the king: and after certain days asked I leave of the king, 7and I came to Jerusalem, and understood the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, in preparing him a chamber in the courts of the house of God. 8It grieved me sore: therefore I cast forth all the household stuff of Tobiah out of the chamber. 9Then I commanded, and they cleansed the chambers: and there brought I again the vessels of the house of God, with the meal offerings and the frankincense. 10I perceived that the portions of the Levites had not been given them; so that the Levites and the singers, who did the work, had fled everyone to his field. 11Then I contended with the rulers, and said, “Why is the house of God forsaken?” I gathered them together, and set them in their place. 12Then brought all Judah the tithe of the grain and the new wine and the oil to the treasuries. 13I made treasurers over the treasuries, Shelemiah the priest, and Zadok the scribe, and of the Levites, Pedaiah: and next to them was Hanan the son of Zaccur, the son of Mattaniah; for they were counted faithful, and their business was to distribute to their brothers. 14Remember me, my God, concerning this, and don’t wipe out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God, and for its observances. 15In those days saw I in Judah some men treading winepresses on the Sabbath, and bringing in sheaves, and loading donkeys therewith; as also wine, grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day: and I testified against them in the day in which they sold food. 16There lived men of Tyre also therein, who brought in fish, and all manner of wares, and sold on the Sabbath to the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem. 17Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said to them, “What evil thing is this that you do, and profane the Sabbath day? 18Didn’t your fathers do thus, and didn’t our God bring all this evil on us, and on this city? Yet you bring more wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath.”
19It came to pass that, when the gates of Jerusalem began to be dark before the Sabbath, I commanded that the doors should be shut, and commanded that they should not be opened until after the Sabbath. I set some of my servants over the gates, that no burden should be brought in on the Sabbath day. 20So the merchants and sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside of Jerusalem once or twice. 21Then I testified against them, and said to them, “Why do you stay around the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you.” From that time on, they didn’t come on the Sabbath. 22I commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves, and that they should come and keep the gates, to sanctify the Sabbath day. Remember to me, my God, this also, and spare me according to the greatness of your loving kindness. 23In those days also saw I the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab: 24and their children spoke half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in the Jews’ language, but according to the language of each people. 25I contended with them, and cursed them, and struck certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons, or for yourselves. 26Didn’t Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? Yet among many nations was there no king like him, and he was beloved of his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless foreign women caused even him to sin. 27Shall we then listen to you to do all this great evil, to trespass against our God in marrying foreign women?”
28One of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite: therefore I chased him from me. 29Remember them, my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and of the Levites. 30Thus I cleansed them from all foreigners, and appointed duties for the priests and for the Levites, everyone in his work; 31and for the wood offering, at times appointed, and for the first fruits. Remember me, my God, for good.
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Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) causes a slow increase in white blood cells called B lymphocytes, or B cells. Cancer cells spread through the blood and bone marrow, and can also affect the lymph nodes or other organs such as the liver and spleen. CLL eventually causes the bone marrow to fail.
IThe cause of CLL is unknown. There is no link to radiation, cancer-causing chemicals, or viruses.
This cancer mostly affects adults, around age 70. It is rarely seen under age 40. The disease is more common in Jewish people of Russian or East European descent.
Symptoms usually develop slowly over time. Many cases of CLL are detected by blood tests done in people for other reasons or who do not have any symptoms.
Other cancers, including a much more aggressive lymphoma (Richter’s transformation)
Side effects of chemotherapy
When to Contact a Medical Professional
Call health care provider if you develop enlarged lymph nodes or unexplained fatigue, bruising, excessive sweating, or weight loss.
Kantarjian H, O'Brien S. The chronic leukemias. In: Goldman L, Ausiello D, eds. Cecil Textbook of Medicine. 24th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2011: chap 190.
National Comprehensive Cancer Network. National Comprehensive Cancer Network Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology: Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphomas. 2012. Version 1.2012.
David C. Dugdale, III, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. Yi-Bin Chen, MD, Leukemia/Bone Marrow Transplant Program, Massachusetts General Hospital. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M. Health Solutions, Ebix, Inc. | <urn:uuid:6f85e665-b77a-4b67-bd9d-79e5a228c453> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.northside.com/HealthLibrary/?Path=HIE+Multimedia%5C1%5C000532.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00017-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.83941 | 391 | 2.96875 | 3 |
See what questions
a doctor would ask.
An underlying condition is a second condition that you may have in addition to the first diagnosed condition, and this underlying condition is believed to cause the first condition. In this case, the underlying condition is the true primary condition, since it occurred first, and the originally diagnosed condition is actually called the "secondary" condition.
Example: Hemochromatosis underlying diabetes: For example, most people diagnosed with diabetes have only that disease, but in a small percentage the diabetes is actually caused by a second underly condition called hemochromatosis. The hemochromatosis is called the underlying condition, and the diabetes is actually called secondary diabetes, because the real primary condition is hemochromatosis and the diabetes is a secondary complication of the primary disease.
Example: Metabolic syndrome or PCOS underlying obesity: As another example, people who have the condition of obesity or being overweight might simply have poor lifestyle habits. On the other hand, they might have an underlying condition such as metabolic syndrome or polycystic ovary syndrome (women only).
Misdiagnosis of underlying conditions: Failure to diagnose an underlying condition is a reasonably common occurrence and represents a partial misdiagnosis. In some cases, the misdiagnosis is critically important (hemochromatosis-caused diabetes is curable), and in other cases it is less so: a full diagnosis of underlying metabolic syndrome does not necessarily help treat obesity, though it makes it more important to watch out for other conditions and risk factors for heart disease.
In a sense, the issue of underlying conditions is really just a generalization of the disease-symptom pattern. The underlying condition has the first disease as one of its symptoms or complications.
Search Specialists by State and City | <urn:uuid:0534a9a3-fe9a-4fcb-9f8f-89512ef61c6c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/intro/underly.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00022-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954169 | 367 | 3.40625 | 3 |
|Utility Analysis: An Overview
- Raphael L. Vitalo, Ph.D.
Utility analysis is a quantitative method that estimates the dollar value of
benefits generated by an intervention based on the improvement it produces in
worker productivity. Utility analysis provides managers information they can
use to evaluate the financial impact of an intervention, including computing
a return on their investment in implementing it.
The concept of utility was originally introduced by Brogden (1949) and Brogden
and Taylor (1950) and further developed by Cronbach & Gleser (1965). The
concept has been researched and extended by Cascio (1982); Schmidt, Hunter,
and Pearlman (1982); and Reilly and Smither (1983), among others. It was introduced
as a method for evaluating the organizational benefits of using systematic procedures
(e.g., proficiency tests) to improve the selection of personnel but extends
naturally to evaluating any intervention that attempts to improve human performance.
The first assumption of utility analysis is that human performers
generate results that have monetary value to the organizations that employ them.
This assumption is also the basis on which people claim compensation for the
work they do.
The second assumption of utility analysis is that human performers
differ in the degree to which they produce results even when they hold the same
position and operate within like circumstances. Thus, salespersons selling the
same product line at the same store on the same shift will show a variation
in success over time with a few doing extraordinarily well, a few doing unusually
poorly, and most selling around the average amount for all salespersons. This
assumption is broadly supported in common experience and in research. It is,
for example, the basis on which some performers demand and receive premium compensation.
The direct implication of these assumptions is that the level of results produced
by performers in their jobs have different monetary consequences for the organizations
that employ them. Performers are differentially productive and the productivity
of performers tends to be distributed normally (Exhibit 1).
How Utility Analysis Builds on These Assumptions
The approach of utility analysis asserts that the utility of any intervention
can be valued by determining how far up the productivity distribution the intervention
moves the performer. The distance the performer is moved is translated into
a productivity gain and the dollar value of that productivity gain is what is
termed the utility (U$) of the intervention.
What Is Needed to Complete a Utility Analysis
In completing the analysis, the performer needs to generate the following:
- A method for measuring role productivity,
- A way to assign monetary value to role productivity,
- The distribution of productivity among performers of the role,
- The dollar value of a one standard deviation difference in role productivity
- A method to measure the intervention's impact on role productivity.
With these elements of information, the analyst can compute the utility of
the intervention in dollars.
To accomplish the analysis, the analyst must be skilled in the methods of quantitative
analysis in general and utility analysis in specific. This person needs to be
aware of the variety of ways one can measure human productivity, determine its
monetary value, and gauge the affects of interventions on participant performance.
Given that there are a variety of methods for computing utility, the exact
resources needed for the task will depend on the method the analyst selects.
The least set of resources anyone will need are:
- Access to the people who will be using the results of the study to make
- The identity of the intervention whose utility you will measure;
- A subject matter expert who is knowledgeable of the intervention;
- A description of each affected role including its duties, outputs, and
- The compensation scale for each affected role; and
- A subject matter expert who is knowledgeable of the role(s) affected by
Getting Ready for the Analysis
1. Understand the people whose decision-making the study will support.
Tip: You need to meet the people who will use your study's findings
in order to understand what information they are seeking, what decisions they
will use the information to make, and any issues or concerns they may have
about the study. You should also alert them to your ongoing need for their
feedback on the methods you will propose for accomplishing the study. Assure
them that you will guarantee that the methods you propose satisfy the professional
criteria, but that their feedback is needed to ensure that the methods are
also credible in their eyes and the eyes of anyone with whom they will share
2. Learn about the intervention you will assess.
Tip: Identify the intervention whose utility you will measure and
contact the subject matter expert who is knowledgeable about it. Learn about
the intervention's purpose, target population, content, operations, cost,
and any metrics used to measure its implementation and effects. Also, uncover
what the thinking is about how the intervention affects the productivity of
the performers it targets. With these facts, you can determine what information
needed for the analysis exists and what information you will need to develop.
3. Learn about the role(s) whose productivity is affected by the intervention.
Tip: Obtain a description of each affected role. Contact the
subject matter expert who is knowledgeable of each role. Learn each role's
purpose, duties, outputs, and success criteria. You also need to understand
how the role is valued from a compensation perspective. For example, is compensation
linked to output or is it paid as a salary? You will want to understand, as
well, how the company values the output of each job. If the output is sold,
is it valued by cost or price? And you need to uncover how much responsibility
each role has for the outputs its performers produce. Finally, for each job
that is salaried, obtain its compensation scale and the average salary paid
to its incumbents. If salaries are not normally distributed, you may need
to obtain either the median or modal salary instead of the mean.
4. Determine how to measure the productivity of the performers of each role.
Tip: You will need to develop a productivity measure and a method
for determining the status of each role incumbent on the measure. You will
need to use your understanding of each affected role and the assistance of
its subject matter expert. The subject matter expert will have to approve
the method of measurement you devise, otherwise your approach to measuring
productivity will not have credibility in the workplace.
In devising the productivity measure, it is preferable to base the measure
on production of correct outputsfor example, the total amount of sales
generated less returns or the number of welds made per unit of time less the
number of welds that fail inspection. Outputs are the tangible contributions
a role makes to an enterprise and measuring the quantity, quality, and complexity
of outputs generated by performers is usually a measure of productivity that
is readily accepted.
Sometimes, however, a workplace will not accept a measure of productivity
that is tied to outputs. In these situations, you still need a way to measure
how well the role is performed. Sometimes supervisor ratings of successful
performance are used or multirater approaches that use rating of supervisors,
peers, and subordinates (when appropriate).
If the workplace will not agree that different performers achieve different
levels of success or that the level of a performer's success in performing
the role can be measured, then the utility analysis cannot be done.
Once you have devised a measure of productivity, plan how you will gather
information about the status of role incumbents on the measure. Your method
must be feasible meaning that its cost must be reasonable, its result credible,
and its burden on participants acceptable.
5. Determine how to value role productivity in dollars.
Tip: The method you choose will be determined by how you measure
productivity. If you use a method that calibrates outputs produced, then you
will assign monetary value based on the dollar value of the outputs. If the
job produces an interim output, some component of a larger final product,
then determine the component's contribution to the total product and determine
the value of the role's output by adjusting the value of the final output.
Material outputs can be valued based on cost or sales price. Service outputs
that are used in-house (e.g., a marketing plan, a processed personnel action)
can be valued using market pricingthat is, what it would cost to purchase
the service from external sources.
If you are not using a measure of productivity that is tied to output, then
you can use the typical salary paid for the job (i.e., mean, median, or mode).
Salary is acknowledged as reflecting the value a role contributes to a company.
6. Decide how to measure the affect of the intervention on role productivity.
Tip: Basically, you need to find a mathematical bridge that
relates participation in the intervention and change in role productivity.
There are very many ways to accomplish this. One way is to use a control group
comparison. Here, you identify two sets of people who are comparable in all
important ways except that one set went through the intervention and the other
did not. You compare the differences in productivity of these two sets of
people. If the intervention was effective, the people who went through it
will have higher productivity scores and the difference between the groups
will represent the intervention's impact on productivity. Another way is to
use correlational methods to associate some indicator of participation or
benefit from the intervention with scores on role productivity. Be sure that
the information with which you are working satisfies the requirements of the
statistical method you use and that your approach makes sense to the people
who will use the results of the analysis. Your solution needs to satisfy both
professional standards and credibility to provide benefit.
7. Create a plan for the utility analysis.
Tip: Be sure your plan documents how you will produce each of
the information elements needed to accomplish the utility analysis. Include
in it any decision rules you will apply in making judgments. For example,
if you are also computing a return on investment ratio, what rule will you
apply to decide if the ratio is positive? Will 1.0 be sufficient? Will the
ratio need to be 2.0 or higher? In a professionally conducted analysis, all
decision rules must be documented prior to the study.
Doing the Analysis
1. Determine the productivity of performers.
Tip. Execute your plan for measuring the productivity of current
2. Determine the dollar value of a one standard deviation difference in role
Tip. Distribute the productivity scores you gather. Confirm
the distribution is essentially normal and compute its mean and standard deviation.
If the distribution is not normal, use a transformation method (e.g., z-transformation)
to normalize it. Apply your method for valuing role productivity. Derive the
dollar value of productivity achieved by average performers and the dollar
value of a one standard deviation difference in productivity (SD$).
3. Compute the effects on performer productivity associated with the performer's
participation in the intervention being evaluated.
Tip. Apply your method for measuring the affect of the intervention
on productivity. Determine how many standard deviations of change in worker
productivity the intervention produces (SD).
4. Compute the dollar value of productivity improvements generated by the
Tip. The dollar value of productivity improvements generated
by the intervention is the intervention's utility (U$). To compute utility,
multiply the number of standard deviations of change the intervention produces
in worker productivity (SD) and the dollar value of a one standard deviation
difference in productivity (SD$) (SD x SD$ = U$).
Following Up the Analysis
1. Add context to the findings.
Tip. Statistical methods are systematic and, when properly applied,
produce reliable results. They do not, however, guarantee meaningful results.
Sometimes quantitative relationships are found for which there is no reasonable
explanation. One reason this occurs is that you rarely can control all the
possible factors that may influence whether a found relationship is valid.
Sometimes what your data says is causing the effect is not, rather some other
intervening factor which you have not identified or controlled may create
the appearance of a relationship that does not actually exist. One way to
eliminate this possibility is through the use of controls during the process
of relating participation in the intervention and changes in productivity.
Another way is to explore whether the content of the intervention or the experiences
of its participants suggest a meaningful mechanism for the effects your analysis
detects. Study the intervention to see if any aspects of it suggest such a
mechanism. Gather or review existing accounts of the actual experience of
people participating in the intervention. Their experiences will help provide
qualitative information that may either suggest a lack of reasonableness to
the quantitative findings or provide a bases for making the findings understandable.
In analyzing the intervention itself, we look for content or activities that
previous research supports as reliably affecting human performance. With respect
to gathering participant experiences, our typical approach is to use focus
groups in which we gather the participants' observations of what happened,
whether in their viewpoint it affected their performance, and how it affected
2. Report the results of the analysis.
Tip. Be sure to describe the methods you used to generate your
findings and the rationale for each. After you draft your report, obtain feedback
on it from the subject matter experts of the role(s) affected by the intervention
and the intervention itself. This feedback may identify issues you need to
address and assist you in improving the communication of your results.
Learning More About Utility
Read the example of a utility analysis we completed to evaluate the monetary
return of a training intervention. Use this example to clarify how the steps
are performed. Also, study each of the references listed at the end of this
article. They provide a sound introduction to the various methods of utility
analysis one may employ.
Example of a Utility Analysis
We were asked to evaluate a contracts management course offered on a fee-for-service
basis by the human resource department of a government agency. The course trained
contract officer's technical representatives (COTRs) in how to specify requirements,
build a request for quote or proposals, evaluate bidders, select and contract
with the best supplier, manage contract performance, and ensure the delivery
of the needed products or services on time, at cost, and to specifications.
One of the questions being asked was whether the course returned a monetary
value greater than its cost. We proposed a utility analysis as the means to
assess the monetary benefits produced by the course and a return on investment
analysis to determine the ratio of benefits received to the cost expended. Prior
to these evaluations, we determined that the content offered by the course was
relevant to the COTR role and that the course participants did demonstrate increased
proficiency in their performance as a result of completing the course.
Measuring Productivity and Determining Its
With the role identified, we studied the job it accomplished by reviewing its
tasks, outputs, and performance expectations. No measure of productivity existedyet
the means for deriving a measure appeared evident. First, the COTR role had
a defined output and criterion for judging success. COTRs were responsible for
successfully satisfying a product or service need within their agency through
contracting. Successful satisfaction of the need meant the timely delivery of
products and services that met technical specifications and the accomplishment
of these ends at the cost specified. Second, there was a monetary value associated
with the output. The dollar value of every contract a COTR managed was systematically
determined. Third, there was a logical way to relate the monetary value of the
role's output and its success criterion. A COTR realized the value of a contract
to the degree that the contract was concluded on time, at cost, and to specifications.
Conversely, to the degree it was not concluded on time, at cost, and to specifications,
monetary value was lost.
While the basic logic was sound, conversations with incumbents and supervisors
quickly revealed that while the COTR was responsible for the contract,
sometimes he or she was not free to exercise complete control over its contents
or the decision-making associated with it. Therefore, some amount of the value
of the contract was outside the control of the COTR and its realization or loss
should not be credited to the performer. We also learned that contracts sometimes
yielded benefits greater than their face value and that this could be the result
of the COTR's forward thinking, selection of the means for accomplishing the
contract, speed of execution, and other factors.
To measure role productivity, we developed and tested the COTR Productivity
Rating Form. This form measured the degree to which each COTR brings in his
or her assigned contracts at cost, on time, and to specification. It also calibrated
the importance of each of these factors for the contracts managed and the typical
degree of control over each contract the COTR has. The different component measures
were converted into an overall productivity score. This score was a percentage
that represented the degree to which each COTR realized the value of the contracts
he or she manages on a yearly basis.
The COTR Productivity Rating Form was sent to the 266 supervisors of COTRs
randomly selected so that the ratings would reflect the status of COTRs in the
general population. One hundred and thirty (130) responses were received (48.9%
response rate). The response level provided estimates of productivity that were
accurate to +/- 5% at a 95% level of confidence.
Establishing the Dollar Value of Productivity
We completed three steps to determine the dollar value of improved productivity.
First, we distributed the productivity scores achieved by COTRs to determine
their average level of productivity and the productivity levels of performers
at the 15th and 85th percentiles. Exhibit 2 depicts the distribution of COTR
productivity. The average performer is 81.65% successful in extracting the controllable
value from the contracts he or she manages. In contrast, the exemplary COTR
realized 94.04% of the value from the contracts he or she manages and the poor
performing COTR extracted only 69.26%.
To calibrate the value of productivity in dollars, the study used the median
face value of contracts managed by COTRs during one year as modified by the
control the COTR has over the outcome of the contracts. The degree to which
a COTR brings in his or her assigned acquisitions at cost, on time, and to specifications
determines how much of the controllable dollar value of those contracts is realized.
The median face value of contracts fulfilled per year by COTRs was $500,000.
Corrected for the degree of control COTRs have over outcomes, as perceived by
their supervisors, the median potential single year benefit a 100% productive
COTR produces is $397,525. By multiplying the average actual productivity of
COTRs (81.65%) against the controllable dollar value of the contracts a COTR
manages on a yearly basis ($397,525), the study estimated the dollar benefits
generated by the average performing COTR at $324,583.13. Poor performing COTRs
that is, performers achieving at or below the 15th percentile of all COTRsgenerated
only $274,344.10 of value each year. Exemplary performing COTRs, defined as
incumbents whose productivity was at or above the 85th percentile of all COTRs,
generated $373,895.44 of value.
Establishing the Dollar Value of Productivity
To determine the monetary value of improvement in productivity, the study computed
the dollar value of one standard deviation in change (SD$) in role productivity.
The SD$ for the current distribution of performers is $49,239.04. This means
that if some intervention advanced the productivity of a COTR by one standard
deviation, that COTR would generate $49,239.04 in additional benefits to the
agency each year.
Measuring the Course's Affect on COTR Productivity
The correlation between COTR's job proficiency and productivity ratings served
as the mathematical bridge for estimating the course's impact on performer productivity.
The elements required to use this bridge were the amount of proficiency change
produced by the course, the regression coefficient (beta) relating job
proficiency scores to productivity ratings, and the standard deviation of productivity
scores. Applying these elements, the course advances COTRs upward in productivity
by .1547 standard deviations (Exhibit 3).
3. Measuring the Course's Impact on COTR Productivity
in Proficiency Produced by the Course
in Productivity Produced by Increased Proficiency
Deviation (SD) Difference in Productivity Scores
in Productivity Expressed in Standard Deviation Units
Determining the Course's Utility
As stated above, utility is the dollar value of the increased productivity
of a single COTR that is generated by the course. To determine the utility of
the course, the study translated the distance the course advanced COTRs along
the productivity continuum into dollars. As reported, the course advanced COTRs
.1547 standard deviations up the productivity continuum. We previously determined
that one standard deviation change in productivity has a monetary value of $49,239.04.
Multiplying this amount by the .1547 provides us the course's utility (.1547
x $49,239.04 = $7,617.27). This figure ($7,616.18) is the dollar value of the
improvement in productivity evidenced by each COTR as a result of training (Exhibit
4. Computing the Utility (U$) of Contracts Management Training
in Productivity Expressed in Standard Deviation Units
Value of a 1 Standard Deviation Change (SD$) in Productivity
Value of Productivity Improvement Produced by COTR Course
Assessing Return on Investment
The return on investment was computed using the method of dividing the dollar
value of the productivity benefits generated by the course by the cost of participating
in the course (benefit to cost ratio). In this study a desirable ROI was defined
as any value greater than 1. The study determined the per student cost for
completing the COTR course. It added the fee charged to departments for each
COTR taking the course with the cost of lost opportunity associated with the
COTRs not performing their regular job during the 10-day period of the instruction.
This fee ($700) included all expenses associated with the course. The cost of
lost opportunity was computed by dividing the salary of the typical COTR who
participated in the course (GS-14, Step 1) by the number of hours that define
full time employment in the Government (2,087). This per hour cost is then multiplied
by the 80 hours that the COTR is off the job. The opportunity cost per student
was $2,385.63. The total cost for participating in the course was computed as
$3,005.63 per COTR.
The ROI for the course was 2.53 ($7,616,18/$3,005.63) for one year of COTR
performance following completion of the course. This means that for every dollar
invested in completing the course, the sponsoring department receives $2.53
in benefits the first year. Any reasonable assessment of return should
recognize that the benefits of the course extended forward. Given the general
stability of the content the course teaches, a three year period for return
on investment was considered conservative. Within 3 years, the total productivity
improvement benefit is $22,848.54 and the ROI is 7.60 meaning, for every
dollar spent, $7.60 in agency benefits is generated (Exhibit 4).
How Productivity Was Improved
The completion of the two focus group discussions with COTRs who completed
the contracts management course provided insight into the course's mechanism
of impact. Participants uniformly confirmed their experience of benefit from
the course. They listed 17 ways their performance was improved by what they
learned. One major element they emphasized was that the course provided a cognitive
map of the contracting process that allowed them to see ahead, to plan and prepare,
and feel more confident in the conduct of their role. As well, the course equipped
them to produce the products required by the role and to know how to judge the
adequacy of each product. Also stressed was the learning about the various players
in the contracting process, their responsibilities, the importance of communicating
with them, and the importance of creating a teamed effort. Equally important,
the course participants felt they grasped the principles that ensured the integrity
of the contracting process and that they were able to see how these principles
apply in different contracting situations. Finally, participants also reported
the training coursebook provided with the course served as a continuing learning
resource that they turned to as they encountered new contracting experiences.
References and Suggested Readings
Bernstein, Allen L. (1966) A handbook of statistical solutions for the behavioral
sciences. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Brogden, H.E. & Taylor, E.K. (1950) The dollar criterion: applying cost
accounting concepts to criterion selection. Personnel Psychology, 3,
Burke, Michael J. & Frederick, James T. (1986) A comparison of economic
utility estimates for alternatives SDy estimation procedures. Journal
of Applied Psychology, 71, 334-339.
Byron, James & Vitalo, Raphael L. (1991) Quality improvement through exemplar-based
productivity analysis. American Productivity & Quality Center, Brief #82,
Cascio,W. (1982) Applied Psychology in personnel management. Reston,
VA: Reston Publishing Company (see Chapter 7, Utility: the concept and its measurement).
Cronbach, L.J. & Gleser, G.C. Psychological tests and personnel decisions.
(2nd ed.), Urbana: University of Illinois, 1965.
McDaniel, Michael; Schmidt, Frank L.; & Hunter, John E. (1987) Job experience
as a determinant of job performance. Paper presented at the 95th Annual Convention
of the American Psychological Association, August 1987.
Myers, Jerome L. (1966) Fundamentals of experimental design. Boston:
Allyn and Bacon, Inc.
Reilly, Richard R. & Smither, James W. (1983) An examination of two alternative
techniques to estimate the standard deviation of job performance in dollars.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 70, 651-661.
Rossi, Peter H.; Freeman, Howard E.; & Wright, Sonia R. (1979) Evaluation:
a systematic approach. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Schmidt, F.L.; Hunter, J.E.; & Pearlman, K. (1982) Assessing the economic
impact of personnel programs on workforce productivity. Personnel Psychology,
U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare (1975) A practical guide
to measuring project impact on student achievement. Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office (Stock Number 017-080--1400-2).
Published April 2004
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Louisiana Believes has a simple idea at its core: if you believe in our children, you have to believe in the adults closest to our children. In particular, we must have faith that teachers can learn the Common Core through teamwork and practicing, rather than through being told exactly what, how, and when to teach.
This is why in 2013-2014 the state will end its use of a comprehensive curriculum and will ask schools and school districts to instead define for themselves how to help students reach standards. The PARCC assessment prototype test items and the PASS sample test items are examples of tools Louisiana educators are using to learn the Common Core for themselves.
The scale on which our students will be assessed will also be more rigorous in future years. It's for this reason that BESE passed changes to the state's accountability system and that these changes were linked to the state's ESEA waiver. For a great summary of the accountability changes, and for sample cases that show how the scoring works, see this summary from Stand for Children.
While the new system is not designed to drop school letter grades, one critical change is that schools will no longer receive credit when a student scores below "basic" on LEAP or iLEAP or below "good" on End-of-Course tests. This shift was made explicitly to align with the PARCC assessments, whose definitions of college and career readiness will far exceed "approaching basic" or "fair" scores.
At the same time, schools often enroll students who come to the school performing at low levels. Schools that do well with these students should be rewarded, which is why, for the first time, schools will now receive a bonus for making significant progress with students who are below grade level. In schools that test students within grades 3-8, this means that if 30 percent or more of students meet or exceed their projected growth on the value-added model for LEAP or iLEAP in ELA or math, the school will receive a bonus. The same will be true for high school students in grades 9-11 on the Explore/Plan/ACT series. See the Stand for Children summary for more information.
Too many teachers are not provided full information about the accountability system. In this case, the bar has been raised. But just as important, the system calls teachers to focus on students who are performing below level, and to make progress with those students. Let's make sure every teacher has identified those students and is working to make the progress the system now rewards.
As always, my thanks for all you do for our children,
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[FOM] Mathematical explanation
neilt at mercutio.cohums.ohio-state.edu
Sat Oct 29 21:31:09 EDT 2005
Afterthought: in the Frege quote
,,Die Summe von zwei Anzahlen ist durch diese bestimmt",
in diesem Ausdrucke ist der Gedanke des Satzes unserer
Haupt"uberschrift am leichtesten zu erkennen ...
the word "diese" is probably feminine singular, in agreement with
"...schrift", and the referent of "Haupt"uberschrift" is to the whole
statement of (what is subsequently proved as) theorem 469, not just to its
consequent consisting of the numerical identity at its top line.
Even with that corrected grasp of how the German should be rendered, the
main points of my last posting stand. It is not the case that the word
"diese" has "Anzahlen" as a grammatical antecedent. So one should not
translate the German as
The sum of two numbers is determined by them.
A better translation would be
"The sum of two numbers is determined by this"---
the easiest way to recognize the thought behind the (formal)
sentence of our main heading [i.e., thm. 469] is by means of this
where "this" at its first occurrence is understood to be referring to the
formal sentence itself. And the referent of "this expression" is to the
expression within double quotes with which the indented passage begins.
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The Author of Our Lives
It was Joseph's first real attempt to take his fate into his own hands, and it failed. Or so it seemed.
Consider the story so far, as set out in last week's parsha. Almost everything that happens in Joseph's life falls into two categories. The first are the things done to him. His father loves him more than his other sons. He gives him a richly embroidered cloak. His brothers are envious and hate him. His father sends him to see how the brothers are faring, attending the flocks far away. He fails to find them and has to rely on a stranger to point him in the right direction. The brothers plot to kill him, and sell him as a slave. He is brought to Egypt. He has acquired as a slave by Potiphar. Potiphar's wife finds him attractive, attempts to seduce him, and having failed, falsely accuses him of rape, as a result of which he is imprisoned.
This is extraordinary. Joseph is the centre of attention whenever, as it were, he is onstage, and yet he is, time and again, the done-to rather than the doer, an object of other people's actions rather than the subject of his own.
The second category is more remarkable still. Joseph does do things. He runs Potiphar's household. He organises a prison. He interprets the steward's and baker's dreams. But, in a unique sequence of descriptions, the Torah explicitly attributes his actions and their success to God.
Here is Joseph in Potiphar's house:
God was with Joseph, and He made him very successful. Soon he was working in his master's own house. His master realized that God was with [Joseph], and that God granted success to everything he did. (Gen. 39:2-3).
As soon as [his master] had placed him in charge of his household and possessions, God blessed the Egyptian because of Joseph. God's blessing was in all [the Egyptian] had, both in the house and the field. (Gen. 39:5)
Here is Joseph in prison:
God was with Joseph, and He showed him kindness, making him find favor with the warden of the dungeon. Soon, the warden had placed all the prisoners in the dungeon under Joseph's charge. [Joseph] took care of everything that had to be done. The warden did not have to look after anything that was under [Joseph's] care. God was with [Joseph], and God granted him success in everything he did. (Gen. 39:21-23).
And here is Joseph interpreting dreams:
'Interpretations are God's business,' replied Joseph. 'If you want to, tell me about [your dreams].' (Gen. 40:8)
Of no other figure in Tenakh is this said so clearly, consistently and repeatedly. Joseph seems decisive, organised and successful and so he appeared to others. But, says the Torah, it was not him but God who was responsible both for what he did and for its success. Even when he resists the advances of Potiphar's wife, he makes it explicit that it is God who makes what she wants morally impossible: "How could I do such a great wrong? It would be a sin before God!"(Gen. 39:9).
The only act clearly attributed to him occurs at the very start of the story, when he brings a "bad report" about his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah the handmaids (Gen. 39:2). This apart, every twist and turn of his constantly changing fate is the result of someone else's act, either that of another human or of God (as for Joseph's dreams - were they a Divine intimation or a product of his own imagination? - that is another story for another time).
That is why we sit up and take notice when, at the end of the previous parsha, Joseph takes destiny into his own hands. Having told the chief steward that in three days he would be pardoned by Pharaoh and restored to his former position, and having no doubt at all that this would happen, he asks him to plead his cause with Pharaoh and secure his freedom: "When things go well for you, just remember that I was with you. Do me a favor and say something about me to Pharaoh. Perhaps you will be able to get me out of this place" (Gen. 40:14).
What happens? "The chief steward did not remember Joseph. He forgot about him" (Gen. 40:23). The doubling of the verb is powerful. He did not remember. He forgot. The one time Joseph tries to be the author of his own story, he fails. The failure is decisive.
Tradition added one final touch to the drama. It ended the parsha of Vayeshev with those words, leaving us at the point that his hopes are dashed. Will he rise to greatness? Will his dreams come true? The question "What happens next?" is intense, and we have to wait a week to know.
Time passes and with the utmost improbability (Pharaoh too has dreams, and none of his magicians or wise men can interpret them - itself odd, since dream interpretation was a specialty of the ancient Egyptians), we learn the answer. "Two full years passed." Those, the words with which our parsha begins, are the key phrase. What Joseph sought to happen, happened. He did leave the prison. He was set free. But not until two full years had passed.
Between the attempt and the outcome, something intervened. That is the significance of the lapse of time. Joseph planned his release, and he was released, but not because he planned it. His own attempt ended in failure. The steward forgot all about him. But God did not forget about him. God, not Joseph, brought about the sequence of events - specifically Pharaoh's dreams - that led to his release.
What we want to happen, happens, but not always when we expect, or in the way we expect, or merely because we wanted it to happen. God is the co-author of the script of our life, and sometimes - as here - He reminds us of this by making us wait and taking us by surprise.
That is the paradox of the human condition as understood by Judaism. On the one hand we are free. No religion has so emphatically insisted on human freedom and responsibility. Adam and Eve were free not to sin. Cain was free not to kill Abel. We make excuses for our failures - it wasn't me; it was someone else's fault; I couldn't help it. But these are just that: excuses. It isn't so. We are free and we do bear responsibility.
Yet, as Hamlet said: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will." God is intimately involved in our life. Looking back in middle- or old age, we can often discern, dimly through the mist of the past, that a story was taking shape, a destiny slowly emerging, guided in part by events beyond our control. We could not have foreseen that this accident, that illness, this failure, that seemingly chance encounter, years ago, would have led us in this direction. Yet now in retrospect it can seem as if we were a chess piece moved by an invisible hand that knew exactly where it wanted us to be.
It was this view, according to Josephus, that distinguished the Pharisees (the architects of what we call rabbinic Judaism) from the Sadducees and the Essenes. The Sadducees denied fate. They said God does not intervene in our lives. The Essenes attributed all to fate. They believed that everything we do has been predestined by God. The Pharisees believed in both fate and free will. "It was God's good pleasure that there should be a fusion [of divine providence and human choice] and that the will of man with his virtue and vice should be admitted to the council-chamber of fate" (Antiquities, xviii,1,3).
Nowhere is this clearer than in the life of Joseph as told in Bereishit, and nowhere more so than in the sequence of events told at the end of last week's parsha and the beginning of this. Without Joseph's acts - his interpretation of the steward's dream and his plea for freedom - he would not have left prison. But without divine intervention in the form of Pharaoh's dreams, it would also not have happened.
This is the paradoxical interplay of fate and freewill. As Rabbi Akiva said: "All is foreseen yet freedom of choice is given" (Avot 3:15). Isaac Bashevis Singer put it wittily: "We have to believe in free will: we have no choice." We and God are co-authors of the human story. Without our efforts we can achieve nothing. But without God's help we can achieve nothing either. Judaism found a simple way of resolving the paradox. For the bad we do, we take responsibility. For the good we achieve, we thank God. Joseph is our mentor. When he is forced to act harshly he weeps. But when he tells his brothers of his success he attributes it to God. That is how we too should live. | <urn:uuid:8e8f2683-de42-44dd-bb1c-5f7d224a9d3c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.aish.com/tp/i/sacks/The-Author-of-Our-Lives.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00071-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986224 | 1,958 | 2.65625 | 3 |
|DMA is an abbreviation for the Direct Memory Access method of data transfer. Windows and Linux users should ensure DMA is enabled on their hard drives, as described here. This will help ensure fast and efficient editing, and smooth playback and recording.
Methods of data transfer
In DMA mode, data transfer is not done by the central processor, but by a small special processor called a DMA controller. It uses a procedure called cycle stealing, where the central processor memory access cycles are delayed for very short times to intersperse DMA controller memory access cycles. Some newer, faster DMA modes are called UDMA (Ultra DMA).
The alternative, slow and inefficient data transfer mode is called PIO, or Programmed Input-Output, where the central processing unit (CPU) transfers data byte for byte or word for word. This requires many processor commands for each data word and therefore causes a high and unwanted processor load. On a modern system, DMA can increase read and write speed by tenfold or more whilst substantially reducing CPU use.
DMA should be enabled on almost all modern Windows systems by default, and will cause problems if not. Note that unused slots won't allow enabling of DMA. Older CD-ROM drives especially may not work with DMA on, or may have DMA mode permanently disabled. These drives should be left as they are. Consult your hardware driver documentation for guidance.
To enable DMA, follow the instructions below for your version of Windows.
- Click , right-click over , then on 2000 or XP click on the Hardware tab, then on the "Device Manager" button (on Vista click on "Device Manager" in the left-hand panel)
- Look for "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" and click the "+" sign to left of it
- Right-click on each channel in turn, hit Properties, and click the "Advanced Settings" tab
- For each listed device, make sure the transfer mode is set to DMA, not to PIO. On 2000 or XP this is done by selecting "DMA if available" in the dropdown of each device (on Vista, this is done by highlighting each device, then check "Enable DMA" in the panel underneath)
- Click OK (and a second OK on 2000 and XP), then reboot
Forcing DMA by uninstalling
If after reboot you find that the drive has reverted to PIO, the only real solution is to uninstall the drive (or channel on Windows XP and later), and allow Windows to detect and reinstall the drive or channel upon reboot. After this, DMA should be enabled and should persist. For example on Windows XP or Vista:
- Right-click over the Channel or Controller that has the disk which only offers PIO mode
- Click "Uninstall", or Properties > Driver tab then click "Uninstall"
- Confirm the uninstall if prompted, then reboot
- If the "Add new hardware" Wizard does not run, click
- Install the driver Windows prompts you to
- PIO mode should now be replaced with UltraDMA mode
Macs should not need any user intervention as hardware is usually very closely supported by the operating system.
Linux supports DMA but it is off by default in many distributions and this will compromise performance. If you use the hdparm command (as root), DMA can then be added to your initialisation scripts to run at boot time. To Enable DMA on Linux systems:
- Run as root
- Issue the command
# hdparm /dev/hda
- Look for the line that says "using DMA"; If it says "using_dma = 1 (on)", DMA is enabled on this drive, or if it says "using_dma = 0 (off)" then you aren't using DMA
- Issue the command
# hdparm -d1 /dev/hda
For more information see some of the many articles on the web, such as this one. | <urn:uuid:e900db2d-7264-407e-9d6e-0f3dfb4307b3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=DMA_mode | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00111-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.881704 | 833 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Diabetes mellitus is one of the most common hormonal diseases affecting dogs. Most affected dogs have Type 1 diabetes, meaning that their condition is not caused by a poor diet or being overweight, but usually by an abnormal autoimmune response that destroys the pancreatic cells responsible for manufacturing insulin.
Insulin moves glucose, a type of sugar, out of the bloodstream and into cells where it can be used for energy. Without enough insulin in the body, blood sugar levels rise to dangerous heights while cells essentially starve. Type 1 diabetes cannot be cured, but it can be successfully managed in most canine patients with twice daily insulin injections paired with an appropriate diet and lifestyle.
Treating a dog with diabetes is a balancing act. Many things affect blood sugar levels, including the amount and type of food eaten, exercise, stress, hormonal fluctuations, and more. A healthy pancreas can alter the amount of insulin it secretes from one minute to the next, but when we give insulin injections to dogs we cannot make these types of fine adjustments. Therefore, a consistent routine is vital to keeping diabetic dogs healthy. Here are things to keep in mind:
- Dog should be fed the same amount and type of food roughly every 12 hours.
- Insulin injections should be given immediately after meals so the dog’s dose can be lowered if he eats less than normal.
- Dogs should be exercised in the same way at the same time each day.
- Stressful situations should be avoided.
- Intact female dogs should be spayed to prevent the hormonal changes associated with the reproductive cycle.
Close communication between veterinarian and owner is essential to designing a protocol that is convenient enough to be followed day in and day out while still meeting the dog’s medical needs. Never alter your dog’s regimen without first talking to your vet.
Dogs with Type 1 diabetes should eat foods that are relatively high in fiber and low in simple sugars. This reduces the chances that their blood sugar levels will swing wildly up and down throughout the day. Prescription dog foods that meet these criteria are manufactured under strictly controlled conditions so that one bag is essentially identical to the next. This helps maintain the consistency that is so important for diabetes management.
If a dog refuses to eat one of the available prescription foods, over-the-counter diets can also be considered. High quality foods that are designed for weight loss are a good option since they tend to be higher in fiber and lower in simple sugars than other options. Keep in mind that, when necessary, almost any high quality dog food can be matched with an appropriate insulin dose to manage a dog’s diabetes.
A diagnosis of diabetes is not a death sentence for dogs. With appropriate treatment, many canine diabetics enjoy a good quality of life and normal life expectancy.
Dr. Jennifer Coates
Image: leungchopan / via Shutterstock | <urn:uuid:c4267473-09c0-4ca8-bf69-a32782db99da> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.petmd.com/blogs/nutritionnuggets/jcoates/2012/aug/feeding_dogs_with_diabetes-26672 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00009-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92784 | 587 | 3.078125 | 3 |
In her revisionist Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (7-8), Susan Reynolds traces common notions of feudal society, feudalism, feudal system back to sixteenth century legal historians, from where they made their way into Montesquieu and Adam Smith’s historical evolution of political economy: “In smith’s description of feudal government the framework of the sixteenth century discussions is still clearly visible.”
On the continent, these notions were put to political use: “To lawyers and intellectuals of the French Enlightenment [feudalism] survived in France and would do so until les droits feodaux et censuels were abolished in 1789. For the German, von Justi, common sense demanded the abolition of a system that shortage of cash had made necessary in a bygone age. The French Revolution brought the package view of feudalism as a past stage of history to a wider public and accentuated the tendency to attribute to the middle ages whatever seemed most irrational and oppressive about the Ancient Regime, like the classification of society into distinct orders with a defined and legally privileged nobility. Ideas of progress suggested that such deplorable arrangements must have been archaic survivals. The package view of the middle ages as feudal and of feudalism as oppressive then got a new lease of life when Marx took it over, along with a newer version of the four-stage theory. He put new driving forces behind the beginning and end of what was not called simply feudalism.”
As Reynolds’s rhetoric makes clear, she doesn’t believe that this “feudalism” has much to do with what actually took place in the middle ages. Her rapid summary, though, provides a good example of the potency of mythohistory. | <urn:uuid:159d5a4f-1a26-4c5d-b7a9-be88e80173f6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2012/12/feudal-oppression | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00191-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959482 | 372 | 2.75 | 3 |
In the annual State of the Union address, President Barack Obama addressed several policy areas of importance to the 56 million Americans with disabilities and their families. As the independent federal agency which advises the President and Congress on disability policy, the National Council on Disability (NCD) applauds the significant agenda proposed by the President and recommends the following actions to guarantee full participation and integration in all aspects of society for Americans with disabilities.
The President called for an increase in the minimum wage to $9.00 an hour by stating “in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty.”
NCD agrees. In 2010, statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau revealed that nearly 28 percent of Americans with disabilities aged 18 to 64 live in poverty.
Today, hundreds of thousands of Americans with disabilities earn less than minimum wage under a little-known relic of employment policy that assumed people with disabilities were not capable of meaningful, competitive employment.
As the President said, “America is not a place where chance of birth or circumstance should decide our destiny. And that is why we need to build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class for all who are willing to climb them.”
Twenty three years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the time has come for minimum wage to be available to everyone who works, including Americans with disabilities. Over a quarter of a million Americans with disabilities work under the Fair Labor Standards Act 14 (c) program resigning people with disabilities to earning less than minimum wages and the poverty, isolation and segregation that often results.
In our August 2012 Report on Subminimum Wage and Supported Employment, NCD recommended a gradual phase out of the 14 (c) program. The ladders our nation builds to opportunity must be accessible to every American – including those with disabilities. As America works toward increasing minimum wage, implementation of a comprehensive set of supports and targeted investments in integrated employment services to make it possible for people with disabilities to rise to the same heights as other Americans must also be assured.
In addition, the President announced a non-partisan commission to improve voting in America by emphasizing “our most fundamental right as citizens: the right to vote. When any Americans ... are denied that right ... we are betraying our ideals.” A Fact Sheet on the Voting Commission issued by the White House lists voters with disabilities and “physical barriers” among the issues to be corrected.
NCD appreciates inclusion of the difficulties faced by voters with disabilities as part of the Commission’s work. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found as recently as 2008, only 27 percent of polling places were barrier-free. In fact, the Federal Election Commission confirmed that, in violation of state and federal laws, more than 20,000 polling places across the nation are inaccessible, depriving Americans with disabilities of their fundamental right to vote. People with disabilities and senior citizens are particularly disenfranchised by long lines at polling places and by constraints on and, in some places, the discontinuation of early voting.
To address this disparity, NCD has been collecting the experiences of voters with disabilities in the November 2012 General Election from across the nation in coordination with the National Disability Rights Network and EIN SOF Communications. NCD will issue a report on our findings later this year.
NCD urges the Voting Commission to consider the findings of our upcoming report and to include voters with disabilities on their Commission.
The President also stressed the importance of key reforms to realize cost savings in the Medicare program, including the shift from a fee for service payment system to a managed care model designed to pay for performance. NCD understands the importance of shifting to payment models that both manage costs and increase quality for our health care financing infrastructure. However, it is crucial that people with disabilities and seniors retain the ability to have their needs met.
Over the last two years, NCD has conducted a detailed exploration of managed care within Medicaid, issuing comprehensive recommendations on due process safeguards, program design, performance measures and other facets of responsible managed care frameworks that consider the needs of Americans with disabilities without causing adverse consequences on the quality of care we receive. As the Administration considers various measures to enhance health care quality while controlling costs, NCD stands ready to apply this expertise to Medicare reforms.
As President Obama affirmed, “the responsibility of improving this union remains the task of us all.” NCD looks to continuing its role in developing and promoting robust disability policies in close collaboration with the Administration, Congress and the public.
-- Jeff Rosen, Chairperson
On behalf of the National Council on Disability | <urn:uuid:afd9dfd4-ce97-4ecf-a698-d802c29abdcb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/2013/021413 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00145-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959571 | 948 | 2.53125 | 3 |
mammoth, name for several large prehistoric relatives (genus Mammuthus ) of modern elephants which ranged over Eurasia and North America in the Pleistocene epoch. The shoulder height of the Siberian, or woolly, mammoth, which roamed throughout the Northern Hemisphere, was about 9 ft (2.7 m), and that of the imperial mammoth of the North American Great Plains was up to 131/2 ft (4.1 m). Mammoths were covered by a long, shaggy, black outer coat and a dense, woolly undercoat. They had complex, many-ridged molar teeth; long, slender upward-curved tusks; and a long trunk. Ivory hunters have collected their tusks for centuries in Siberia, where tens of thousands have been discovered; it is from these and from the drawings left by the Cro-Magnon people in the caves of S France that the mammoth's appearance is known. Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) people hunted mammoths, as is evidenced by remains of the animals found together with tools, and may have contributed to their extinction. The last population, on Wrangel Island, Russia, in the Arctic, survived until c.5,000 years ago. Mammoths are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Proboscidea, family Elephantidae. | <urn:uuid:b2ba9f99-259b-4699-bf7f-b34601df260c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia/science/mammoth.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00036-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961016 | 286 | 4.34375 | 4 |
State officials keep finding Asian-carp DNA in Lake Erie but have yet to find the invasive fish.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources reported yesterday that the DNA of silver carp, one of four Asian-carp species, was detected in three of 350 water samples taken from Maumee Bay. On Aug. 28, the agency reported finding silver-carp DNA in 20 of 150 samples taken from Sandusky Bay.
State and federal officials took the samples from the bays in July after an initial round of water samples detected carp DNA in both.
However, teams of wildlife officials with nets and electro-shock fishing gear have yet to find invasive carp in the areas where the samples were taken, said Bethany McCorkle, a natural-resources spokeswoman.
McCorkle said another fishing trip probably will take place in Maumee Bay.The DNA might have come from Asian-carp scales, mucus or feces. It doesn’t mean that a breeding population of carp is in the lake.
Finding breeding carp in the lake would signal a huge threat to Erie’s $1 billion-a-year fishing industry and its $10 billion-a-year tourism industry.
The carp outcompete native fish for food. After escaping fish farms during massive floods in 1993, they now dominate several stretches of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers. | <urn:uuid:260bef5b-f6f1-4c0a-b72f-ebe800d9cfa9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/09/26/carp-dna-found-in-2nd-bay-of-lake-erie.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00069-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960098 | 279 | 2.953125 | 3 |
"British fashion is self confident and fearless. It refuses to bow to commerce, thus generating a constant flow of new ideas whilst drawing in British heritage."
The misunderstanding about fashion is that it is associated with people and personalites who are 'shallow' and therefore turn to their looks and what people see on the outside as something they have a passion for. But when people percieve people in this fashion, they are missing out the idea that fashion and someone's style should not be a basis of shallow judgement about them having less intellect than someone who is plain.
Fashion is a statement.
The famous british fashion designer Alexander McQueen who unfortunetly passed away this year, managed to capture fashion as having an impact on how we should percieve people. If someone is to dress in a unique style, they shouldn't be judged on how different they are to other people, but how they are expressing their personality in what they are wearing.
To be self confident and have self esteem, individuals will use fashion as a way of expressing this. McQueen describes it as 'fearless' which I think is very powerful, to lose your inhibitions of other people's criticisms but to find a style for yourself and not for other people.
Fashion is constantly changing, just like society is and just like we adapt to new challenges in our lives. The point that Alexander McQueen is trying to make is that there is so much diversity in the style of British people, and this does not necessarily just apply to Britain but I believe can apply all over the world. The diversity of fashion promotes the influx of new ideas and new styles being created. We should look up to people who take pride and have passion for the clothes they wear and it is representing their identity.
"Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”
This quote I believe is very impacting and provides a good explanation of what fashion isn't. Fashion isn't just clothes, it isn't just what is displayed in shop windows or what is walking down the catwalk. Fashion is the ideas which produce these clothes and the things that inspire us to dress this way. It is a part of our life and we are influenced by so many different things which can affect our own personal style. Ideas and new concepts, exposing ourselves to new experiences all build up a sense of fashion.
I think this quote by Stella Blum is very inspiring showing her take on what fashion is:
"Fashion is so close in revealing a person's inner feelings and everybody seems to hate to lay claim to vanity so people tend to push it away. It's really too close to the quick of the soul.”
Fashion is a statement, not just a dress. | <urn:uuid:b15a26e6-0c0c-4b9a-903e-de5a61875f39> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bellaonline.com/ArticlesP/art3880.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00011-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973391 | 587 | 2.65625 | 3 |
There are big differences between gold-filled and gold-plated jewelry, mostly the actual amount of gold in each product. Here I will debunk the rumors and let you know that the differences are. You can also find this information on our resources page in the learning center.
What is gold-filled?
Gold-filled jewelry is made from components that have a layer of gold that is mechanically bonded with heat and pressure to another material, usually a base metal which is most commonly brass. Gold-filled products are resistant to tarnishing because the outside layer is actually gold and is thick enough to prevent oxidation of the inner material. The gold content must be at least 1/20th of the total weight, where the gold itself is no less than 10 karat in purity. Under FTC regulations, the purity (karat) of the gold content must be part of the marking or designation. As an example, a piece of gold-filled jewelry made with 14 karat gold filled could be stamped “14/20 GF”.
What’s the difference between gold-filled and gold-plated?
Gold-plated jewelry has a smaller percentage of gold and goes through a different manufacturing process than gold-filled jewelry. To create gold-plated jewelry, a base metal goes through a series of processes and is eventually dipped into a bath of electroplating solution which contains gold. When an electric current is applied, an electrochemical reaction occurs and a thin layer of gold is deposited onto the metal. This layer is much thinner than the coating of gold that covers gold-filled jewelry, which goes through a process of mechanically bonding and heating the gold to the base metal.
While gold-filled components must include gold that is at least 1/20th the weight of the entire piece, gold-plated components can have gold that only makes up a very tiny percentage. As such, gold-plated jewelry items are more prone to tarnishing as well as having the thin layer of gold eventually rubbing off than similar products made from gold-filled. Because of the lower gold content, gold-plated items are generally less expensive than similar gold-filled products.
What is gold-filled wire?
Gold-filled wire is made by having a layer of gold that is mechanically bonded with heat and pressure to another material, usually a base metal which is most commonly brass, which is then drawn through a series of tools and dies, until the final desired diameter of the wire is attained. Gold-filled wire is resistant to tarnishing because the outside layer is actually gold and is thick enough to prevent oxidation of the inner material. The gold content must be at least 1/20th of the total weight, where the gold itself is no less than 10 karat in purity.
Hopefully this answers any questions you may have had pertaining to gold components. You can browse all of our gold and feel better knowing you now know how to shop for it! | <urn:uuid:85c95999-f528-4ebe-a515-a7e4e4adf0ae> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.artbeads.com/2011/05/gold-filled-vs-gold-plated-jewelry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00097-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950659 | 602 | 3 | 3 |
Thanks to Aaron Churchill from the Fordham Institute for sharing the informative guest blog post below. It's a great read for parents who are navigating Ohio's new state report cards.
Parents! How you can use Ohio’s new A-F school report cards
The Buckeye State’s new A-F report card is a wonderful opportunity for parents to gain a better appreciation of how their child’s school is doing, and to take action if necessary. This August, Ohio switched to a conventional A-F letter grading system to report (public) school and district performance. The A-F grades provide a clear and transparent way of reporting whether a school is academically strong, weak, or somewhere in between.
But with nine (!) indicators of school performance in play (and more to come), parents also need to know which of the letter grades are the most crucial to understand, and how they ought to interpret them. (Ohio will not issue an “overall” A-F letter grade to schools and districts until August 2015.)
So, how is a parent to understand the state’s new school report cards? To start, let’s begin with the two big questions that parents likely want to know about their child’s school (or potential school).
- Is the typical student in my child’s school achieving at a high-level?
- Is my child’s school helping students learn?
There are two key A-F letter grades that answer these questions.
To answer question one, parents should look towards a school’s performance index A-F rating. The performance index letter grade indicates how well a school’s students perform on Ohio’s standardized exams. Hence, this is the key gauge of raw student achievement within a school.
By looking at the performance index rating, parents can gain a sense of whether their child’s classmates are generally doing well, middling, or struggling academically. A school rated an “A,” for example, is a place with many high achieving students, while an “F”-rated school has many students whose academic achievement is low.
To answer question two, parents should look towards a school’s overall value-added A-F rating. This is the key indicators of whether a school is contributing to student learning progress. Value-added based on a statistical model that gets at whether a school is helping the typical student attain more, less, or the expected amount of knowledge that can be reasonably expected of her during a school year.
In short, this letter grade allows parents to know whether their child’s school is “doing its job” or “being effective.” Under value-added, an “A”-rated school is helping students make atypically large learning gains over the course of a school year, whereas an “F”-rated school is having a relatively weak impact on student learning.
Many of Ohio’s schools do well on both the performance index (“achievement”) and the overall value-added (“progress”) indicators. For example, nearly half of Ohio’s school districts (290 out of 610) earned a “B” or above on both key dimensions of school performance. If your child attends a school or district that has earned an A or B letter grade on both indicators, rest assured, the quality of your child’s school is fairly good on the whole.
However, if you are a parent—perhaps a parent in an urban or rural area—you may find “mixed” ratings. What if your child’s school is rated a “D” on the “performance index” indicator, but an “A” on the “value-added”?
Foremost, you should understand that the achievement level in your school is dismal. But the ratings also show that your child’s school is making a noble effort to help children learn.
Now, if your child attends a school with a low rating on both indicators (“D’s” and “F’s”), the school is failing academically. Ohio provides scholarships for eligible children to attend a private school. If that doesn’t appeal, there may be a high-performing charter school, or a magnet program or an “alternative” (i.e., lottery-based admissions) school within your district in which you could enroll your child.
Finally, parents should be aware that Ohio’s new school report cards include ratings for three student “subgroups”: students with disabilities, gifted students, and very low-achieving students. Parents who have a child with special needs, a child who has been identified as “gifted,” or a child who struggles academically, should pay attention to a school’s A-F letter grades for these subgroups.
What Parents Want
In Fordham’s recent report What Parents Want, we found that parents’ main concern is whether their child’s school is academically “good.” And, Ohio’s new A-F school report cards give parents just what they want, in terms of academic information. By examining a school’s performance index and overall value-added A-F letter grades, parents can gain a clearer understanding about whether their child is in a school with high-achievers (or not) and whether their child’s school is making progress (or not) in helping kids learn.
Every parent-child-school situation is different, of course. Selecting the right school for a child sometimes goes beyond academics (e.g., sports, friendships, after-school programs, etc.). Nevertheless, in general, for parents of children who attend a great academic school, they ought to celebrate their school’s success (if not their own child’s success). For parents in failing schools, we hope Ohio’s new A-F report cards will motivate them to explore better schooling opportunities.
For a detailed analysis of Ohio’s new report cards, see our publication Parsing Performance: Analysis of Ohio’s New A-F School Report Cards. | <urn:uuid:5cffeef4-f757-45a8-85b8-808c0943a816> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scohio.org/home/blog/2013/09/18/guest-blog-parents!-how-you-can-use-ohio%E2%80%99s-new-a-f-school-report-cards/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394605.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00170-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959064 | 1,315 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Different RC Models
Different RC Models | By Nikoli Funston
RC is one of those phrases that have become a catch-all sort of like Coke. In truth, the different types of RC models available are staggering.
The world of Remote Control is growing rapidly as new and more sophisticated devices continue to be developed. One of the oldest and still most popular types of remote control toy device is the remote controlled car. One of the important distinctions used in the remote control hobby is scale. Remote controlled cars can come in various scales such as 1:6 or 1:10 scale. This means that the car is 1/6 or 1/10 the size of a normal car. Many remote controlled cars are designed for racing and RC racing clubs are popular.
Another major RC field is the RC airplane. Airplanes come with either electric or gas powered engines. The remote control features allows movement of the flaps for flight control while the electric or gas engine turns the propeller for power. Transmitters can send signals to control other functions such as the retraction and lowering of wheels. As with other RC devices, airplanes come in many different sizes and configurations. Some are purchased already assembled and ready for flight. Others come in kits and must be assembled prior to use.
The helicopter is closely related to the airplane in real life as well as in the remote control hobby. The major difference in the helicopter is its ability to hover. This feature makes the RC helicopter able to fly in a more restricted space than the airplane. It does not need as much area to take off or land. Some smaller scale RC helicopters can even be flown indoors even within your living room.
Boats are another popular RC device. The RC boat needs only a body of water like a lake or a pond. Much like the airplane, the RC boat comes with either gas or electric powered propellers for motion. The RC transmitter controls the rudder for steering. There are also RC sailboats that use wind for motion like a full sized sailboat. In this case, the RC transmitter also controls the rudder for steering purposes. Multi-function transmitters can be used to perform a myriad of other actions on the RC boat. Tugboats can have spraying water hoses and moveable cranes while warships can have moveable gun turrets. There are even RC submarines available for exploring the bottom of the family pond.
One of the best known and most popular types of RC vehicle is the truck. Since it is not often easy to run your remote controlled vehicle always on a smooth surface, off road type RC trucks are common. These trucks can generally go over any type of terrain and are also used for racing clubs. Cars, planes, boats, trucks, and helicopters are just some of the major types of RC toys available. Just about anything that exists or can be imagined can be converted into a RC adventure.
Find RC hobby stores
NOTE: to keep the site running smoothly, product data is only refreshed once every 10 minutes, approximately. Click on a product to see the most up-to-date data on the seller's page. | <urn:uuid:84759927-2fb8-4fc1-967f-0bf0e5d648a3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.rc-hobbie.com/different-rc-models/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397567.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947944 | 631 | 2.609375 | 3 |
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LITURGY
One of the first steps toward organizing the ceaseless cyclic psalm-chanting of early monastic vigils into a liturgy—that is, a prescribed order—was taken by St. Benedict of Nursia in his famous Regula monachorum, the book of rules that governed the lives of the monks in the monastery Benedict founded at Monte Cassino in 529. With apologies for the laxity of his ordinance, he required that the Psalter be recited not in a single marathon bout but in a weekly round or cursus of monastic Offices, eight each day. The greatest single portion went to the Night Office (now called matins, literally “wee hours”), in which twelve or more full psalms were performed, grouped by threes or fours (together with prayers and readings from scripture) in large subdivisions known as “nocturns.”
- Citation (MLA):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 1 The Curtain Goes Up." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 26 Jun. 2016. <http://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-001008.xml>.
- Citation (APA):
- Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 1 The Curtain Goes Up. In Oxford University Press, Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 26 Jun. 2016, from http://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-001008.xml
- Citation (Chicago):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 1 The Curtain Goes Up." In Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 26 Jun. 2016, from http://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-001008.xml | <urn:uuid:2daedffb-97c5-4a18-a88d-fc5418057dbd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-001008.xml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00068-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.784508 | 469 | 3.34375 | 3 |
This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplementary Volume, (MUP), 2005
Worthy Worthington George Nicholls (c.1808-1849), workman, carrier and socialist, claimed to have been born in a London slum. After a training 'under the fear of the Lord and a broomstick', George later avowed that he was bundled into a workhouse when aged 3, was taken out at 5, and at 7 was sold by his mother, a drinker and card player, for £10. He also claimed that he started work in a factory, had eight years service in a sweep's cellar and was imprisoned when struggling for a free press. Through radical politics he became known to Robert Gouger, whom he followed to Adelaide. Nicholls was described as a bricklayer when he arrived in the Navarino with his wife Maria and three children in December 1837. 'Complete with black beard, red shirt and immoral habits', he quickly became notorious locally as a self-avowed socialist with atheistic views.
The press chronicled Nicholls's progress, beginning as a builder and earning the nickname 'Pisé' for his improved method of pisé building. He offered to work for goods or labour in kind and undertook to supply freehold plots and cottages to those with few means, but refused to meet his wife's debts. Tribulations followed. Turning to water carting, Nicholls suffered abuse from fellow carters, and only by compromising his religious views could he swear the oath and bind other carters to keep the peace. He proclaimed himself the most ill-used person ever in a British colony; when a drunken mob invaded his house he escaped in his shirt through the roof. Forced to carry arms, he attributed his misfortune to 'a mere report, that I am what I am not, namely an infidel'. In 1843 he opened a boarding house in Hindley Street for 'sober and orderly' guests, while offering other property for sale, including his water cart and horse, Old Windsor Castle, 'warranted to draw 2 tons' weight, and anything else in reason, except an inference'.
Despite announcing his return to England, Nicholls remained in Adelaide as a carrier, water carter and advocate of reform. He recommended a refuge for destitutes; he warned about polluting the Torrens River but equivocated about letting conditionally pardoned convicts pollute South Australia. At a meeting in 1842 he condemned Governor (Sir) George Grey and the biased press. Editors often pilloried him as an ignorant socialist, though his replies, supporting the universal rights of man, were not those of an ignorant man. His public performances, when he attacked land jobbery, mining magnates and workers' disadvantages, were usually denounced. In 1846 he won praise for introducing a fast passenger cart from his boarding house to Burra, but by 1848 his life had become frenzied. He proclaimed his Owenite views more fervently in advertisements, which he often embellished with verse, and in public meetings, where few took him seriously.
Nicholls's home was a refuge for the downtrodden and his charitable acts were recognized, but first his wife and then a widow–companion left him. He suicided by taking drink and an overdose of laudanum on 13 December 1849 at Black Forest, leaving his wife and seven children unprovided for. His vision of a better society for small capitalists and workers had not been unreasoned, yet gained few adherents in a colony that championed outward rectitude and personal gain.
R. M. Gibbs, 'Nicholls, Worthy Worthington George (1808–1849)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/nicholls-worthy-worthington-george-13128/text23757, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 25 June 2016.
This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplementary Volume, (MUP), 2005 | <urn:uuid:e0ff6b1c-1204-448b-b25f-ce98e847bf6f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/nicholls-worthy-worthington-george-13128 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00097-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984688 | 852 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Other Names for this Disease
- Gronblad Strandberg syndrome
See Disclaimer regarding information on this site. Some links on this page may take you to organizations outside of the National Institutes of Health.
claudication); or bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract, particularly the stomach. A clinical diagnosis of PXE can be made when an individual is found to have both the characteristic eye findings and yellow bumps on the skin. ABCC6 is the only gene known to be associated with this condition. Currently, there is no treatment for this condition, but affected individuals may benefit from routine visits to an eye doctor who specializes in retinal disorders, and by having regular physical examinations with their primary physician.Pseudoxanthoma elasticum, PXE, is an inherited disorder that causes calcium and other minerals to accumulate in the elastic fibers of the skin, eyes, and blood vessels, and less frequently in other areas such as the digestive tract. PXE may cause the following symptoms: growth of yellowish bumps on the skin of the neck, under the arms, or in the groin area; reduced vision; periodic weakness in the legs (
Last updated: 8/16/2011
- Terry SF, Bercovitch L. Pseudoxanthoma Elasticum. GeneReviews. June 12, 2012; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK1113/. Accessed 5/21/2015.
- The Monarch Initiative brings together data about this condition from humans and other species to help physicians and biomedical researchers. Monarch’s tools are designed to make it easier to compare the signs and symptoms (phenotypes) of different diseases and discover common features. This initiative is a collaboration between several academic institutions across the world and is funded by the National Institutes of Health. Visit the website to explore the biology of this condition.
- Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) is a catalog of human genes and genetic disorders. Each entry has a summary of related medical articles. It is meant for health care professionals and researchers. OMIM is maintained by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
- Orphanet is a European reference portal for information on rare diseases and orphan drugs. Access to this database is free of charge.
- PubMed is a searchable database of medical literature and lists journal articles that discuss Pseudoxanthoma elasticum. Click on the link to view a sample search on this topic. | <urn:uuid:fd7792fb-de80-4219-bd44-875385ccb8c3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/gard/9643/pseudoxanthoma-elasticum/resources/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00193-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913235 | 505 | 2.875 | 3 |
Economics play a very important role in the development of any country. The general economical condition of the people, indicate that total development. There are many national and international factors, which affect the economic conditions. Some terms are important in this regard like inflation, recession and great depression. They are commonly used in terms of economic conditions of any country; here we are discussing the differences between them.
When prices of goods and service increase on general level over a period of time, it is called as inflation. Inflation leads to the reduction in purchasing power of the people. People can buy fewer goods and services in the same amount of money, for which they were, use to get more. Excessive money supply leads to higher rates of inflation. Inflation has both negative and positive effects on the economy of any country.
When general economic activity of any country slows down, this condition is called as recession. It is a business cycle in which many changes occur, like rate of unemployment increase, GDP, household incomes and business profits all reduce. Macroeconomic policies are a good way to break the cycle of recession.
Great depression is remembered in the history of the world as the worst economic decline. It was started from United States in 1929. The main reason was crash of stock exchange but it rapidly engulfed almost all the countries of the world. It lasted for many years and took the world on the verge of economic destruction.
Inflation vs Recession vs Great depression
Inflation is the gradual increase in the prices of goods and services, while recession is the slowing down of economic activity. They both are different terms, yet closely related with each other. They both affect the life of a common man, as in case of recession rate of unemployment increase while inflation reduces the buying power of a common man. On the other hand, great depression is a sad economic incident in the history of the world, when whole world was facing the economic crisis.
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- What is the Difference between Tax Deduction, Credit, Write Off, Exemption, Rebate | <urn:uuid:73918dd0-9509-45d0-abcf-893ddcfbaee4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.whatisdifferencebetween.com/business/what-is-the-difference-between-inflation-recession-and-great-depression.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00111-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962087 | 579 | 3.546875 | 4 |
The Life and Times of America's First Murderer
John Billington isn’t a household name today, but when Englishmen started settling in the New World, he became infamous as the colonies’ first convicted killer.
In 1620, the Mayflower left England and sailed across the Atlantic to New England. Many of the ship’s passengers were Puritan dissenters who had separated from the Church of England -- the so-called “Saints,” or what we now call the Pilgrims -- and were seeking religious freedom.
Also on board were a group known as the “Strangers.” These other settlers didn’t necessarily share the Saints’ ideals and piety, and went to the New World for a variety of non-religious reasons. Among the group were John Billington, his wife Elinor, and his teenage sons John, Jr. and Francis, who are thought to have fled England to escape John’s debts.
Rocking the Boat
Before the Mayflower even landed in North America, the family caused trouble. One of the Billington boys -- it’s not clear which -- almost blew the ship apart as it sat anchored offshore. He’d been playing with his father’s gun and firing it off in one of the below-deck cabins. Never mind that the cabin was full of people -- the real problem was that he was shooting just a few feet from an open barrel half-filled with gunpowder. Had the muzzle flash of one of the shots ignited the powder, the Pilgrims would have settled their colony on the ocean floor.
Things didn’t improve much once the settlers got on dry land, and Billington scoffed at taking part in the military service required of the able-bodied men. He was to be punished by being hogtied, but the colonial leaders chose not to carry out the sentence after Billington pleaded with them and pointed out that it was his first offense.
It wouldn’t be his last. Billington disliked the governing style of Plymouth’s Puritan leaders and was implicated in a plot to overthrow them. Settlers John Oldham and John Lyford had been banished from the colony for writing letters critical of its government, and Oldham had fingered Billington as part of their group of dissenters before he left. When questioned by the governor’s council, Billington denied any involvement and was never charged.
Billington's anti-government rhetoric didn’t die down after the near-miss, and he continued to rail against Governor William Bradford, the rest of the colony’s leadership, and church and government officials in England. In a letter to Deacon Robert Cushman in England, Bradford wrote, “Billington still rails against you and threatens to arrest you, I know not wherefore. He is a knave, and so will live and die."
After ten years in Plymouth, Billington got caught up in trouble he wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of. In early 1630, Billington and John Newcomen, a recent arrival in Plymouth, got into an argument, the subject of which isn’t clear. According to an early chronicle of the colonies, A General History of New England (which contains some details not found in the colonial records and can’t be corroborated), Billington waylaid Newcomen in the woods soon after their quarrel and attacked him with a musket. “The poor fellow, perceiving the intent of this Billington, his mortal enemy, sheltered himself behind trees as well as he could for a while; but the other, not being so ill a marksman as to miss his aim, made a shot at him, and struck him on the shoulder….”
The wound was survivable, but after Newcomen returned to the village, he fell ill with a cold. An infection developed and then gangrene. Several days later, Newcomen died, and Governor Bradford had Billington arrested and tried for the first recorded homicide committed by a settler in the New World -- America’s first murder.
On the last day of that September, Billington was hanged until he died.
Bradford gives a succinct account of the incident in The History of Plymouth Colony:
"This year John Billington the elder…was arraigned, and both by grand and petty jury found guilty of willful murder by plain and notorious evidence, and was accordingly executed. This, the first execution among them was a great sadness to them. They took all possible pains in the trial, and consulted Mr. [John] Winthrop [governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony], and the other leading men at the Bay of Massachusetts recently arrived, who concurred with them that he ought to die, and the land be purged of blood. He and some of his relatives had often been punished for misconduct before, being one of the profanest families among them. They came from London, and I know not by what influence they were shuffled into the first body of settlers." | <urn:uuid:d3527bb0-2948-4222-b4bc-7e8f2d7db80d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/12446/life-and-times-americas-first-murderer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399522.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00096-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981032 | 1,057 | 2.9375 | 3 |
The plan is to build arrays of nanorods on a silicon substrate, providing a huge increase in the surface area of the solar cell. This will make the solar cells more efficient at converting the solar energy that is directed at them, but still does not address the issue of the relatively low power density of sunlight. The average (yearly) power density of sunlight in the northeast is about 4 kWh/m^2. This is equivalent to about 0.86 barrels of crude oil per year, assuming 100% efficiency. On top of that, solar energy conversion is generally less efficient than petroleum energy conversion. The U.S. consumes somewhere around three billion barrels of crude oil per year, or the equivalent of about 3.5 billion m^2, an area slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island.
Despite this fact, solar energy companies are ramping up production and supplying hundreds of megawatts of the world's energy supply. They also expect the cost of solar energy to significantly decrease in the next decade, and perhaps even compete at oil energy prices.
USER COMMENTS 30 comment(s)
|Go Solar (3:52pm EST Thu Jun 29 2006)
Go Solar and bring on the competition. Gods know the oil companies need it! – by Green River
|please, Please, PLEASE!!! (4:39pm EST Thu Jun 29 2006)
Do your calculations carefully, Nick!
First off … let's look at power density. Each square meter of the planet is bathed by 1,370 watts of sunlight. Depending on your latitude, average air density, average particulate load, average cloud cover, the “northeast” might expect 40% of a 12 hour day of theoretical maximum as an average. That would be 35% ( 1370 x 12 ) = 5,700 watt-hours of insolation pre square meter, PER DAY.
That, my good colleague, is 2.1 megawatt hours per year.
Let's in turn say that this nanowire revolution ups the efficiency of silicon solar cells 100%. Doubles their basic efficiency (which turns out can't ever be 100% 'cuz of each physical material absorbing the radiation in peculiar “band-gap” ways). Double. Double what? Today's run-of-the-mill polycrystaline cells huff into the finish line showing 5% to 8% average conversion efficency. A good single-crystal, carefully made, anti-reflection coated “aerospace grade” cell might top 15%. So, let's go with 25% for the new tech.
25% of 2 megawatt hours is 500 kilowatt hours. That's pretty decent sounding at $0.10 a kWh. Fiddy bucks of electricity from each square meter. How much is your home electricity bill per month? Mine (8 computers, 3 refrigerators, 1 humungo TV and 2 others, but 100% fluorescent lights!) runs about $175 a month. So, just on the $'s … I guess I would need 4 square meters worth to cover the month's needs.
What about transportation, filling up some next-generation super-duper-ultra battery powered commuter car? A gallon of gas is roughly worth 20 horsepower-hours of useful motive energy, or about 15 kWh, put in MKS units. Converting (why not?) back to dollars gives a buck fiddy. Per gallon of equivalent motive energy. Now, if you equiv.car gets 50 mpg's, then it takes 15kWh/50mi = 0.3 kWh to go a mile. I commute/junket about the Bay Area about 1 tankload, or 300 miles a week. Divide by 7 and you get what, 42 miles a day? Times 0.3 equals maybe 13 kWh/day. That's cool … cuz my new-and-improved solar cells ought to be producing 1.6 kWh (25% of (1370 x 12 x 35%)) of delivered energy per day. Whizmo, bango, I need 8 meters of solar cell for the car. Let's say another 8 for The Wife's, and another 4 for The Kids.
So, now we're up to 8+8+4+5 = 25 square meters of solar cell surface. I would think so that we could still be sappy-happy in Winter, we ought to plan on 50% more than absolutely required. Just for breathing room. So, 40 square meters, or about 400 square feet.
I don't really much care how much of Rhode Island is taken up by the specious equivalencing of barrels-of-crude and 100% replacement by solar, but I will tell you this: Except for apartment dwellers who aren't exactly in control of the roof over their head, most families have that 400 square feet up there someplace. It sounds to me like “just about all” of urban power for citified folks could be wrung from super-efficiency solar cells, very efficient power storage and conversions systems, and some key inventions.
And that would be something.
Finally, thanks for writing up the topic. In the future please take the time to do the calcs, and get the numbers right to start with. Thanks!
– by GoatGuy
|Chagrin… (4:45pm EST Thu Jun 29 2006)
I'm dissin ya for not checking your calcs, and mine are off too – by a factor of 12! I'd need 40 square meters to cover the electricity needs for JUST the house. Add another 35 for the various cars. 75 square meters.
Well, it just goes to show – we do need to check our calcs! – by GG / Sigh…
|Go Solar (5:16pm EST Thu Jun 29 2006)
I have a grid tied PV system on my garage roof, with 23 very high grade monocrystalline cell based panels. these panels are rated with slight optimism at 185 watts, and are about 1.3 square meters each. In southern california on a long summer day, the system produces 22kwh. One could do better from a panel placement POV, but suburbia limits this. During the winter, obviously, generation is much less, maybe 15kwh or so on a clear day. The system covers most of my garage roof, as the panels are tilted and must be spaced apart. The garage roof has an area of roughly 80 square meters. – by ljk
|Indeed (5:50pm EST Thu Jun 29 2006)
Down here in the good old South we get plenty of sun all year long. Winder a little less, but roof mounted panels would be extremely productive here.
Super efficient panels, super efficient LED light sources, super efficient heat pumps, more/better insulation and finally those wonderful nano-tube capacitance batteries. What a combination that would be. You might finally be able to have an electrically powered car that is worth something, and push your excess power back to the grid during summer months.
Let's not forget the massive surface area of all those commercial/industrial roofs out there that could easily be turned over to solar generation.
BTW has anyone ever wondered why thos nice Hybrid cars don't have a good Solar panel build into their roof? Everyone who has one of these things drives to work and parks the vehicle in the sun for at least 8 hours. How much further could the beastie run if that 8 hours was spent charging from that 1 square meter or so of space called the roof.
I'm always amazed that the makers of these cars haven't yet figured out a way of harnessing some of that massive solar gain a car makes while parked in the sun.
Call me optimistic, but these technologies together offer almost limitless benefits.
I must go and install some solar shingles on my roof….
|I can't type (5:52pm EST Thu Jun 29 2006)
Sorry, in Winter we get less sun….
BTW try this link for a 133 lumen per watt white LED (replace the '*' with '.').
|Re Goat Guy (6:04pm EST Thu Jun 29 2006)
Thanks for reworking the numbers. I have been interested in solar for awhile, and something didn't smell right with the numbers originally ally proposed. – by k2h
|I'm glad… (6:44pm EST Thu Jun 29 2006)
I don't have a nanorod. – by Ron Jeremy
|Cars would only go about 5 extra miles a day with solar cells (8:57pm EST Thu Jun 29 2006)
It takes quite a bit of energy to get the buggy down the road. 400 watt hours for every mile that an average highly efficient car goes. A car's roof and hood offer about a square meter. And with all of that square meter filled with 25% efficient solar cells, you can get around 2000 watt hours if it sits in fairly direct sun for 8 hours. So highly efficient solar cells under optimal conditions could add around 5 miles of range daily. For the average American commute of around 10 miles, this means half the trip is free. (Well, you'll have to replace batteries, but at least it's lots less environmental impact.) Note that this is for a very lightweight car such as an Insight.
Although this seems like a wondeful use for all those free photons, the price of the cells on a car would keep most people from buying into such a system at this point. So hopefully in the future it will become affordable.
|huh? Do YOUR math! (10:28pm EST Thu Jun 29 2006)
When did 40 square meters become 400 square feet? – by VaTecher
|VaTeacher (11:05pm EST Thu Jun 29 2006)
Actually 40 square meters comes out as more or less 430.5564 square feet.
Saying that 40 square meters is about 400 square feet seems an acceptable approximation. Dontcha think?
– by HighlandCynic
|I say (12:34am EST Fri Jun 30 2006)
Take all the deserts in nevada and turn them into giant solar panels to supply the US.. thats bigger then Rhode island – by mitch
|Nano Rods vs Dendrites (2:26am EST Fri Jun 30 2006)
Stumbled on this site from a Yahoo news link. I love the idea of Nano-Rods – At 64 I've been toying with and observing solar developments for in excess of 40 years – “way back when” someone (IBM, I think) came up with a neat trick – vacuum deposited tungsten on a sapphire substrate produced an approximation of a black body – the dendrite array of the tungsten captured IR and held it until something on the order of 900 Deg F. – NOW, if we were to use that energy to heat air and water, the need for electricity would be reduced and the conversion loses between electricity and heat eliminated. This in turn would reduce the need for photovoltaic systems and free up their energy for lighting and communications – readers are invited to visit my strange ideas on a new kind of solar powered utility based on heat collection at world wide web solar-also dot com – like this site, mine are protected from spam so be prepared to follow a few links and use some brain power to find out where to send email. – by solartoo
|Not unrealistic (8:06am EST Fri Jun 30 2006)
“the equivalent of about 3.5 billion m^2, an area slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island.
Despite this fact,”
9,161,923 sq km = North American land coverage.
Even though the goat points out your mathematical inadequacy, you are talking about covering 0.029% of the US with solar cells. Hardly a big deal.
Going with GoatGuys 500KWh per sqm, we can take the 3.656 trillion kWh (2003) consumption of the USA and find that we need to cover 7312 sq km or 0.078% of the US.
Hardly noticable considering it would supply the entire USA! – by TGuv
|addendum (8:38am EST Fri Jun 30 2006)
Earth: 150,000,000 sq km
Electrical consumption by 2020: 12 trillion kWh (Is the US really consuming a third of this already?!?)
So we need to cover 24,000 sq km (0.016%) of the earths surface by 2020.
Now, the average human head circumference (hat size) is 54cm which provides a beeny approx. 464 sq cm or 0.046 sq m, if half the worlds population wore nanotube solarcell beenies we would have covered around 139 sq km, get them outside for most of the day and you have 0.6% of the worlds electrical needs provided for.
More interestingly is that (on the goats 500kWh) each person on the planet needs solar panel coverage 100 times the size of the top of their own head. – by TGuv
|SOLAR CELL EFFICIENCY QUESTION (12:42pm EST Fri Jun 30 2006)
I've heard plant photosynthesis only gets like 1% of the solar energy it receives(from nano-enthusiasts) vs the higher efficiency we currently get with solar cells, let alone future nanotech versions. Is this true?
– by SILENT LAKE
|solution (2:32pm EST Fri Jun 30 2006)
make the trees our slave..find a way to channel the energy and collect them from plants. – by muahahaaaaAA!
|lots of open space (4:02pm EST Fri Jun 30 2006)
line the south side of the east west highways with solar cells and use hydrogen plants to store the energy for night use. the hydrogen plant can get the hydrogen while thier cleaning up the rivers. it a win win. cheap clean power and clean water. – by some guy
|Re: SILENT LAKE (9:13am EST Sat Jul 01 2006)
probably, photosynthesis only converts red light to “energy”, whereas solar cells convert infrared, red, green and blue light. – by Bee
|Environment… (11:07pm EST Sat Jul 01 2006)
“I say (12:34am EST Fri Jun 30 2006)
Take all the deserts in nevada and turn them into giant solar panels to supply the US.. thats bigger then Rhode island – by mitch” I also think we should tap the caldera under yellow stone. If we dont harness that power it will vaperize part of the US eventualy and I think you could get ALOT of cheap electricity. Maybe enough to power most of the US. – by MarketWatcher
|Goat… (5:04am EST Sun Jul 02 2006)
Ya beat me to it Goat. I was about to jump all over this article. Eloquent reduction as always Goat. I do have one issue with it though. Tossing up a 25% efficiency for solar is a lil much. Even with profound breakthroughs in plastic-solar or nano-solar. And, I think the efficiency for Satellite grade solar panels is more like 12%. Those frickin things are like 20,000 bucks a square foot and they make em in pressurized thermal ovens. Think that tech will be like the black bird…60s old, still futuristic, and will blow the doors off anything we can currently field in aeronautics. Anyways, just a footnote otherwise great post. And, if you do read this. Completely on another subject. Would you happen to know why there is a square in the equation for kinetic energy E = Mass x Velocity squared. I know it can be shown empirically. But is there a good theory on why it squares? Same Idea for Einsteins equation. I dont have access to top flight physicists these days and thought you might be able to point me in the right direction. I know how you love equations. Thanx Goat. – by MasterBlaster
|Goat (4:17pm EST Sun Jul 02 2006)
you beat me to it. But I could have explained the same thing in three to four sentences. It'll also be easier to read and understand. – by MasterBlaster
|re-goatguy (5:39pm EST Mon Jul 03 2006)
your calculations are based on the assumption that the solar panel is clean and directly facing the sun.
Accumulated dust might reduce the panels effeciency by 50%. For rays incident angel, you either apply a Guassian model on your calculations, or compute the extra power needed for steerable panels. DC to AC conversion reduceses the effeciency by 30%. Cost of gas turbine electricity generators is 0.3 million dollars per Mega Watt). Cost of 15% effecient solar panel is 1 grand. Extra cost should be considered for stearable systems, energy storing batteries, and DC to AC converters. – by the best
|MasterBlaster,… (6:58pm EST Mon Jul 03 2006)
Well, a simple physics question. How quaint!
Consider what kinetic energy is: the sum of the Work it takes to get something to a particular velocity. Imagine you're driving a manual transmission car. Put 'er in first. ZOOOM! Up the tachometer goes!!! Shift to second. ZOoooooooom! Up it goes again, but curiously, a bit slower, even though you floored the engine. Third – Zoooooooooooooooooom! It is taking longer and longer to get to the same RPM, isn't it? Fourth? … you get it.
Why would that be? Well, if transmissions change RPM's and rotational forces interchangeably, then an engine putting out 100 foot-pounds of torque in first gear might be exerting 1,000 foot-pounds of torque on the wheels. That kind of force gets the car going in a hurry. By the time you're in fourth gear, there's only 300 foot-pounds being exerted on the wheels. The car doesn't accellerate as fast, does it?
There's the principal: the faster you're going, the more WORK it takes to go faster. No way around it, actually.
Now the physics.
F = M a [force equals mass times accelleration]
And intuitively, it isn't hard to figure out that
W = a D [work equals force times distance travelled]
Well assuming a constant accelleration for equation conveniece, we have:
V = A T (velocity = accelleration times time)
and using integration to merge the two
D = (A T²)/2 (distance equals…)
If you think about that it makes intuitive sense: the distance you go depends not just on how much accelleration you've been experiencing, but as a double factor of time.
OK, now finish it off…
D = (AT²)/2 = V²/2A
— — — — — — — — — —
– by GoatGuy
|I Also Invented … (10:10pm EST Mon Jul 03 2006)
Solar Power … so there ! – by Al Gore
|GoatGuy (2:48am EST Tue Jul 04 2006)
You beat me to it again. I could have done that! good going. Clear as a bell. – by MasterBlaster
|… (6:14am EST Tue Jul 04 2006)
hmmmmm not sure thats quite it – by MasterBlaster
|… (6:17am EST Tue Jul 04 2006)
Oh and guy impersonating me. I always use 3 periods in my title…
–MasterBlaster runs barter town – by MasterBlaster
|Solars Dirty little secret (11:34am EST Wed Jul 05 2006)
Sorry but you have to incorporate all of your efficiency losses over the life-time of the product to calculate any real paybacks and solar just doesn't last. In order for existing solar technology to compete the systems as a whole must remain viable for at least 30 years in the field and at this time due to material issues they simply won't. Solar Panel Manufacturers have known for years that there deployed panels products will never remain operating at their top efficiencies for the next thirty years. In fact solar conversion efficiencies drop off sharply in just a few years and then consistently worsen. In an accurate payback model one solar exec explained the 50% efficiency losses in a payback model are realized in less than ten years. These losses have a myriad of sources but most will stem from premature failure of discreet cells from atmospheric sources like wind and weather from premature failure of current hermetic packaging materials.
Add to that plain old factors like trying to keep the glass clean from dirt and bird droppings and the like… then don't forget to factor in the insideous and unstoppable atmospheric corrosion of copper conductors from things like air polution. These will take their tool on the fragile circuits in failures like shorts, inneficient / dead circuits and power robbing hot spots. If that's not enough to give your accuarial angina need you add in adjustments for light/ glass transmission erosion from wind and rain. Bottom line over the full life of solar panels you'll do much worse than 8%. In fact I've been told that it's not unusual to find the oldest panels panels functioning at under 1%. – by Svenahir
|hydrogen from hybrid systrems (4:31pm EST Thu Jul 27 2006)
the combo of solar and wind works the best. when its sunny sometimes theres no wind sometimes there is, solar power plays the part, wind somewhat.
when its cloudy wind plays the part. both extract electricity from nature, picking up the slack for each other. using water in this equation, by dividing the hydrogen from the water using the hybrid electricity could possible fuel your car or heat your car but only if washington gets off its greedy oil on the brain ass and invests the energy bills money on the programs that really need the money and the fat cats that make record profits, reverse the energy bill for the american public. – by howfire | <urn:uuid:631099da-0b0c-4bdf-8ec4-9bcbdc2ddaa7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.geek.com/science/nanorods-may-make-better-solar-cells-562486/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00146-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936827 | 4,655 | 2.96875 | 3 |
*Manhattan. Borough of New York City that seems to be a place where much is offered. In reality, however, this is not the case. Wintertime has traditionally reflected death, and in the Glass house it has been winter for seven years; Seymour’s death haunts the other characters, who have not yet recovered from his passing. J. D. Salinger knows Manhattan well, having lived there through most of his early publishing life. The fact that he does not go into detail about the city the way he does in Catcher in the Rye (1951) reflects his assertion in this novel that people are more important than places. Franny and Zooey, for the most part, could take place anywhere.
Glass living room
Glass living room. At once homey and forbidding, the Glass living room is a reflection of the Glasses themselves. The house sits a story higher than the school across from it, suggesting the Glasses’ superiority in things intellectual (all the Glass children have been on the quiz show “It’s a Wise Child”). All the furniture is marred in one way or another and does not match, just as Zooey and Franny do not match. Even though it is bright and sunny, the light brings out the worst in the living room (stains from pets, for example). As wonderful as it is outside, Franny and Zooey stay inside as if trying to keep the outside world from crashing in on them.
(The entire section is 526 words.) | <urn:uuid:5ec587a5-6f1c-4111-87fd-8beb96e6cc1e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.enotes.com/topics/franny-zooey/in-depth | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403823.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00054-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969352 | 316 | 2.71875 | 3 |
A voltage signal source with a resistance Rs=10kO is connected to the input of a common-emitter BJT amplifier. Between base and emitter is connected a tuned circuit with L=1�H and C =200pF. The transistor is biased at 1mA and has �=100, Cp=10pF, and C�=1pF. The transistor load is a resistance of 5kO. Find ?o, Q, the 3-dB bandwidth, and the center-frequency gain of this single-tuned amplifier. | <urn:uuid:d997d40a-efde-4c04-9917-9c0aa0bf7403> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-answers/voltage-signal-source-resistance-rs-10ko-connected-input-common-emitter-bjt-amplifier-base-q1627262 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00171-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.898905 | 115 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Hadley, John, 1682–1744, English instrument maker. An optician by trade, Hadley built reflecting telescopes, based on Newton's model, that had greater resolution than the cumbersome refractors then in use. In 1731 he built a reflecting octant, based on Newton's sketch, that prefigured the modern nautical sextant. Hadley was a leading member of the Royal Society.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:7d3aaf83-3d4e-43a7-8f20-8210070ae91e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia/people/hadley-john.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00047-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932797 | 107 | 2.765625 | 3 |
LAUNCHED JANUARY 26, 2009
A Portrait of Mississippi: Mississippi Human Development Report 2009
Mississippi ranks last among U.S. states on the American Human Development Index. But some groups in the state enjoy well-being levels similar to those in top-ranked Connecticut, while others experience levels of human development of the average American nearly a half century ago. The Mississippi State Conference NAACP commissioned this analysis by county, gender, and race to stimulate dialogue and action about Mississippi’s disparities.
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Main findings on Mississippi
The top three county groups in the state, Rankin, Madison-Hinds, and DeSoto, are well ahead of the rest of the state in well-being with a human development level around the U.S. average.
A resident of top-ranked Rankin County lives, on average, 6 years longer than a resident of the bottom-ranked Panola-Coahoma area, is 3 times more likely to complete college, and earns over $12,000 more. Mississippians living in Panola-Coahoma have a human development level similar to that of the average American in 1975, more than thirty years ago.
Whites who are worst off in the entire state in terms of income are still better off than the vast majority of African Americans. Earnings for white Mississippians in all county groups spans from $22,000 to $38,000. For African Americans, the range is $13,000 to $25,000.
An African American baby boy born today in Mississippi can expect a shorter lifespan than the average American in 1960.
Mississippi’s females have a higher Human Development Index than do males, despite the fact that they earn 33 percent less, because females live over 5 years longer and have far higher rates of school enrollment.
White men in Mississippi earn an average of $5,000 more per year than the typical American worker today, at $33,390. But white women have median personal earnings about equal to what typical Americans earned in 1980, $21,453.
Reduce infant mortality by improving health care for African American girls and women. African American babies die in Mississippi at more than twice the rate of white babies. The death of a child is a loss like no other, and the burden of grief borne by the African American community is heavy. The solution lies in ensuring that women have access to quality medical care and that girls grow to adulthood in an environment that supports them to eat a nutritious diet, get adequate exercise, manage chronic conditions like diabetes and HIV, cope with stress, and enjoy overall mental health.
Improve the health of African American men. An African American baby boy born today in Mississippi can expect to live 68.2 years. This is a lifespan shorter than that of the average American in 1960. African American men in Mississippi die at higher rates than white men from the leading causes of death—heart disease, cancer, and stroke—as well as from other causes like homicide, accidents, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. The premature loss of African American men is a source of both economic and emotional distress in African American communities.
Improve the quality of public education in Mississippi. Mississippi has some of the worst scores in the nation on most measures of K–12 educational quality. It is difficult to imagine how the state can make economic progress when the future workforce is deprived of the opportunity to develop even basic skills, much less the higher-order skills needed to obtain better-paying jobs, such as independence of thought, communications skills, interpersonal skills, and technology literacy.
Connect at-risk boys to school. About a third of Mississippi’s African American men over 25 do not have a high school diploma. And today, still greater numbers of African American boys are leaving high school without graduating. Without a high school diploma, prison becomes a far likelier destination than college. The high rate of juvenile detention in Mississippi, especially for nonviolent offenses, is a worrisome impediment to long-term ability of African American boys to become productive members of society and to lead fulfilling lives of choice, freedom, and dignity.
Ensure that working families can make ends meet. White men in Mississippi are, on average, earning about $5,000 more per year than the typical American worker today. But African American women today earn less than the typical American in 1960; African American men earn what typical Americans earned in 1970; and white women what typical Americans earned in 1980. More than one in five Mississippians lives below the poverty line; nearly seven in ten public school students qualifies for a subsidized lunch. Other states help working families meet a basic monthly budget with a state earned income tax credit, state minimum wages, affordable housing, affordable health care options, and subsidized childcare. Such policies help to create an infrastructure of opportunity for all.
For media and all other inquiries, contact Alex Powers: firstname.lastname@example.org | (718) 517-3685. | <urn:uuid:70bb29d6-2ea5-4b90-be43-1c322cd1fa88> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.measureofamerica.org/mississippi/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00115-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928902 | 1,078 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Details about Introduction to Early Childhood Education:
Introduction to Early Childhood Education, 5E offers all of the tried and true, comprehensive information available in previous editions, along with many new and pertinent features and benefits. Most importantly, this book provides a fully comprehensive overview of early childhood education that is solidly based on current research and theories. Readers will have at their fingertips an introduction to the field of early childhood education that is grounded in constructivist theory but also covers other theories. With a focus on developmentally appropriate for infants and toddlers, preschoolers, early elementary school children, and children with special needs, the book also includes extensively revised subsections covering appropriateness within a range of relevant topics, including the scope and need of the field of early childhood education; families, teachers and caregivers; and goals, objectives, and evaluations. The bulk of the book examines curriculum, fostering creativity, as well as physical, cognitive, language, and social development. Every facet of early childhood education is examined and explained, and with the new enhancements, will leave each reader with a thorough and comprehensive education. There is also new information about professional development to help guide the reader into the field of early childhood education. With a strong focus on DAP (developmentally appropriate practice) as well as updated references, examples from practitioners and additional legislation information, this book has become the most comprehensive resource available.
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Need help ASAP? We have you covered with 24/7 instant online tutoring. Connect with one of our tutors now. | <urn:uuid:e7e68c75-f021-435e-8a20-81332e061ee1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.chegg.com/textbooks/introduction-to-early-childhood-education-5th-edition-9781418000790-1418000795 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397865.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00164-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953645 | 353 | 3.46875 | 3 |
Stroke in patients with sickle cell disease involves large vessels in the arterial circulation (1). The internal carotid artery and the middle cerebral arteries are affected with particular frequency, with devastating consequences. Other vessels commonly compromised are the anterior cerebral and basilar arteries. Blockade of these large arteries by deformed red cells is implausible.
Transcranial doppler studies of children show that high blood flow velocity through these vessels is associated with higher probabilities of arterial occlusive stroke (2, 3). Children with flow rates of >190 cm/minute through the internal carotid artery are at great risk of stroke. The Stroke Prevention (STOP) Trial was designed to determine whether prophylactic transfusions could prevent arterial-occlusive stroke in children in whom the flow rate through the assessed arteries equaled or exceeded 200 cm/sec (4). Those randomized to receive chronic transfusion had significantly fewer strokes than did those observed without transfusion during the study. The results were so convincing that the trial was terminated prematurely and a clinical alert was issued by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (5).
Red cell adherence to the endothelium mediated by von Willebrand's protein my be important in arterial occlusive stroke in sickle cell disease. Von Willebrand's protein enhances adherence of sickle red cells to endothelial cells (7). This fact concurs with the observation that high rates of blood flow (which produce high linear sheer stress) through the major cerebral arteries correlates with the risk of stroke (2,3).
The membranes of sickle red cells are strikingly abnormal. For instance, the ratio of membrane phospholipids and cholesterol is abnormal in sickle cell disease (8), (9). As a result, sickle red cell membranes have pro-coagulant activity(10). Therefore, a cascade could occur in which von Willebrand's protein promotes sickle red cell/endothelial cell adhesion, which then is a nidus for thrombus formation.
This hypothetical series of events in arterial occlusive stroke would explain the benefit derived from exchange transfusion and subsequent chronic transfusion in patients with arterial occlusive stroke. Removing the abnormal sickle red cells would interrupt this cascade of events in thrombus formation. The prediction that flows from this model is that stopping chronic transfusion would return the risk of stroke to its previous level. This is, in fact, observed (11).
|This is head CT scan was performed five days after a 37 y.o. man with hemoglobin SC disease suffered a stroke due to occlusion of the right middle cerebral artery. The image shows swelling of brain tissue with displacement of the ventricles. The patient expired the next day due to compression of his brainstem.|
The median age at which patients with sickle cell disease suffer stroke is five years (12). Patients who survive strokes show disturbed learning profiles and psychoemotional problems. Children perform poorly in school relative to their peers. Stroke impairs intellectual development (13).
Neovascularization occurs in the areas of the brain that are left underperfused by the stroke. The network of small, delicate vessels that appear as cloud-like puffs on an arteriogram are called "moyamoya." The name derives from a disorder described most often in people of Japanese ancestry in which a similar network of vessels develops idiopathically (14).
The network of vessels in moyamoya have a propensity to rupture. Hemorrhage produces additional neurological deficits. The problem frequently is complicated by pre-existing defalcations from the earlier arterial occlusive stroke. Bleeds from moyamoya can be extremely debilitating and even fatal in patients with sickle cell disease.
Another late complication of arterial occlusive stroke in patients with sickle cell disease is aneurysm in the contralateral circulation. Neural tissue in the region of the brain whose blood flow is compromised by the stroke often remains viable due to blood flow up the contralateral circulation and between the cerebral hemispheres by the Circle of Willis. Aneurysms can develop due to the increase in blood flow rate and arterial wall pressure. Bleeds from these sources are catastrophic and frequently fatal.
The duration of chronic transfusion needed to prevent recurrent stroke is undefined. Cessation of chronic transfusion after as long as five years was associated with a high incidence of recurrent stroke in some studies (16). Clearly, most children do not continue indefinitely with chronic transfusion after a stroke. Many adults with sickle cell disease have a history of stroke in childhood. Very few of these adults continue receive chronic transfusions, however. At some point, often during the transition between pediatric and adult care facilities, chronic transfusions are terminated. One report highlights an experience in which chronic transfusions were stopped in several adults without deleterious consequences (17). Clearly, more data are needed to address this critical question.
The STOP trial is a major step forward in the treatment of patients with sickle cell disease. The prospect of long-term chronic transfusion therapy creates new potential problems for patients with sickle cell disease. Complications of chronic transfusion include:
Iron overload is a substantial problem. Chronic transfusion regimens initiated on the basis of transcranial doppler evaluation would convert children clinically from sickle cell disease to thalassemia major. Chronic transfusion therapy would not only prevent strokes, but would suppress many of the other clinical problems of sickle cell disease, including recurrent vaso-occlusive pain. The major challenge faced by these children would then be transfusional iron overload. The problems of compliance with or intolerance of Desferal® loom as major difficulties in managing these children. | <urn:uuid:90390ca5-9479-47d4-99d9-af650ddc6bc0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://sickle.bwh.harvard.edu/stroke.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396455.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00013-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946772 | 1,193 | 2.796875 | 3 |
In a previous thread about black holes and their event horizons, the discussion turned to how the equation for time dilation....
Gravitational time dilation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
.....only relates coordinate time measured by a distant observer to local proper time at the event horizon. It doesn't relate local proper time at the event horizon to local proper time at a location further away. Meaning that, even though the formula predicts that a distant observer would observe time to be standing still at the event horizon, it isn't exactly standing still. Things can still fall into the black hole during that observer's lifespan.
Now, looking for a more practical real world example, we have the global GPS system.
Because an observer on the ground sees the satellites in motion relative to them, Special Relativity predicts that we should see their clocks ticking more slowly (see the Special Relativity lecture). Special Relativity predicts that the on-board atomic clocks on the satellites should fall behind clocks on the ground by about 7 microseconds per day because of the slower ticking rate due to the time dilation effect of their relative motion.
Further, the satellites are in orbits high above the Earth, where the curvature of spacetime due to the Earth's mass is less than it is at the Earth's surface. A prediction of General Relativity is that clocks closer to a massive object will seem to tick more slowly than those located further away (see the Black Holes lecture). As such, when viewed from the surface of the Earth, the clocks on the satellites appear to be ticking faster than identical clocks on the ground. A calculation using General Relativity predicts that the clocks in each GPS satellite should get ahead of ground-based clocks by 45 microseconds per day.
The combination of these two relativitic effects means that the clocks on-board each satellite should tick faster than identical clocks on the ground by about 38 microseconds per day (45-7=38)! This sounds small, but the high-precision required of the GPS system requires nanosecond accuracy, and 38 microseconds is 38,000 nanoseconds. If these effects were not properly taken into account, a navigational fix based on the GPS constellation would be false after only 2 minutes, and errors in global positions would continue to accumulate at a rate of about 10 kilometers each day! The whole system would be utterly worthless for navigation in a very short time. This kind of accumulated error is akin to measuring my location while standing on my front porch in Columbus, Ohio one day, and then making the same measurement a week later and having my GPS receiver tell me that my porch and I are currently about 5000 meters in the air somewhere over Detroit.
GPS and Relativity
I'm not sure what formula they used to calculate the 45 microseconds per day from GR. Without knowing the satellites' altitude and etc, it would be hard to try and test it against the time dilation formula above.
What I'm wondering is: clearly the effect measured by the satellites is not just an artefact of our choice of coordinate system. If we didn't correct for the daily shift of 38 microseconds, then let the satellite stay up there for a long time, and then brought the satellite back down to Earth, we would surely find that in the course of it's round trip up there and back, the satellite had quite literally "aged" more than we have.
Wouldn't an observer who spent a long time at or near the event horizon of a black hole also age slower than we do on Earth? What formula describes that difference if the formula above doesn't? | <urn:uuid:11db534b-6170-410f-9770-b159b128c20c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thescienceforum.com/physics/27337-how-real-gravitational-time-dilation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00098-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941453 | 736 | 3.21875 | 3 |
The Romantic Era
Born: Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, March 1, 1810
Died: Paris, October 17, 1849
One of the best-known and best-loved composers of the Romantic period, Chopin was born in Poland and lived most of his life in Paris, which was at that time the musical hub of Europe. Chopin's entire musical output was devoted to his favorite instrument, the piano. His over 200 solo compositions for the piano all demonstrate his highly individual melodic style, and include two sets of etudes (studies), three sonatas, four ballads, many pieces he variously titled preludes, impromptus, or scherzos, and a great number of dances. Included among the latter are a number of waltzes, but also a great many mazurkas and six polonaises, both of which are dances from his native Poland. Some of these dance pieces are among Chopin's best-known works, including the proud Polonaise in A-flat major and the haunting Waltz in C-sharp minor.
Among Chopin's most individual works are the Préludes. Intended to serve as improvisatory beginnings to an intimate recital, these pieces range from tender melancholy to the dramatic utterances of the stormy Prelude in D minor. Many of Chopin's most beautiful compositions come from the series of short, reflective pieces he called Nocturnes. As can be heard in the Nocturne in F-sharp, these works are usually gentle and dreamlike with a flowing, rocking bass, and aptly demonstrate Chopin's predeliction for sweet, song-like melodies, very much in the style of Italian bel canto opera of the period.
Music History 102: a Guide to Western Composers and their music | <urn:uuid:9f152084-6265-4078-b27e-88d392f67cf5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ipl.org/div/mushist/rom/chopin.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965832 | 376 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Did you know?
The ancient Magaliesberg mountains north of Johannesburg contain 3-million-year-old hominid fossils. .
Johannesburg might be something of an urban jungle, but it also has some wonderful natural attractions, adding much to the fascinating nature of this city.
The land on which Johannesburg is built was once grassland, but is now the biggest urban forest in the world, with over 10 million trees in its city, gardens, 600 parks, open spaces and suburbs.
The Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden in Kloofendal conserves a piece of the original grassland as well as succulents and ferns. It has over 120 bird species, including the only pair of nesting Verreaux's (black) eagles in Johannesburg.
The Johannesburg Botanical Gardens in Emmarentia is famed for its Rose Garden and the numerous waterfowl found in the reed beds of Emmarentia Dam (a great spot for an impromptu picnic). Another worthwhile spot is Suikerbosrand Nature Reserve on the way to Heidelberg: this reserve covers over 13 000 hectares and has excellent hiking trails as well as an abundant antelope and bird population.
Just as close to the city centre are the Melville Koppies, hills where an Iron Age village and smelting works are to be found. You can enjoy guided walks in this undeveloped natural area.
Further out of town, it's a good idea to make your way to the Sterkfontein Valley and the Cradle of Humankind - one of the world's most significant palaeontological sites. Take a trip underground and visit the exquisite Wonder Cave and while you're in the area enjoy a trip to the Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve to see the big cats.
The Magaliesberg mountains and the watersport mecca of Hartbeespoort Dam are also accessible from Johannesburg in little under an hour's drive.
Travel tips & Planning info
Who to contact
Johannesburg Tourism Association
Tel: +27 (0)11 214 0700
How to get here
Johannesburg is easily accessible by plane, train and car. International and domestic flights land and depart from the very busy O R Tambo International Airport on the outskirts of the city.
Around the area
Make time to visit the townships of Soweto and Alexandra, take in a Johannesburg nightclub, enjoy the restaurants and the late night vibes, and head out of town to see the Cradle of Humankind, the Magaliesberg and the Hartbeespoort Dam.
Tours to do
Tours of Soweto, Gold Reef City, Constitution Hill, and the Apartheid Museum. Don't miss a trip to Maropeng and the Cradle of Humankind, you won't be disappointed.
Self-drive is always best to explore at your own pace, and then on foot.
What to pack
Johannesburg has exceptionally fine weather - mild and temperate in summer (October to March) and chilly winters (May to September). But even in winter, the days are usually fine and sunny.
Where to stay
B&Bs, home-stays, township guesthouses, country lodges, world-class city hotels...you name it, Johannesburg has it.
There are winter concerts held at both the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens and the Emmarentia Botanical Gardens. | <urn:uuid:20b2718f-54dd-4ac1-be4a-a55575e4c070> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-green-johannesburg | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00016-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911652 | 728 | 2.625 | 3 |
Ninety-five percent of low-income students who take the ACT want to go to college, reports The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2013: Students from Low-Income Families. That’s higher than the rate for all students who take the ACT.
However, low-income students (defined as a family income under $36,000) are less likely to take a strong college-prep curriculum in high school. Only 20 percent meet at least three of the four college readiness benchmarks set by ACT. Only 59 percent of low-income students who take the ACT go directly from high school to college. That compares to 71 percent of all ACT test-takers.
Colleges are using “predictive analytics” to advise high-risk students, writes Libby Nelson on Vox. The goal is to raise “dismal graduation rates.”
Is flunking a course the sign of a bad semester, or the harbinger of much worse to come? Is a student with a 2.3 GPA going to be fine — “C’s get degrees,” after all — or a future dropout in the making?
But what if the numbers show some students have little chance of success?
Studies show teachers expend more time and attention with students they know will succeed; will professors neglect students data shows are likely to fail? States are under pressure to improve their graduation rates; if they can identify the students least likely to graduate, will it be too tempting to shut them out rather than admit them and help them through?
. . . The American ethos of college-going rests on “if you can dream it, you can become it.” But when we can pinpoint the students least likely to succeed, what will happen to them?
Many students rely on “magical thinking,” writes Nelson. “From kindergarten through high school graduation, students are steeped in a can-do spirit. Believe in yourself. Reach for the stars. Never give up.”
Students will say an F on a midterm “isn’t a real F,” says Linda McMillin, a provost at Susquehanna University. Professors can use data to persuade them to get real.
“Ninety-eight percent of people who got this grade in this class were not able to change it. Tell me how you’re the exception. Let’s get real here, and let’s think about how we move you into another major that really aligns with your strengths and with your passions and gets you through in four years.”
“This is not a tool to highlight to students that they’re in trouble or can’t make it, says John Nicklow, provost at Southern Illinois University. “It’s an awareness tool to make them aware that now’s the time to buckle down.”
Perhaps middle-school and high school counselors should be armed with predictive analytics. The time to get real and buckle down occurs much earlier. | <urn:uuid:c17fbba3-2b87-4aa7-95a1-f048d979a4cf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.joannejacobs.com/2014/07/high-hopes-long-odds/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00062-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956088 | 640 | 2.5625 | 3 |
“Nano sand” is a product that was originally invented to help clean up oil spills in water. Since the “nano sand” is hydrophobic, it does not let water molecules pass through. It does, however, let oil molecules pass through. When oil-contaminated water is exposed to “magic sand”, the oil passes through and leaves clean water behind. And when “magic sand” is sprinkled on top of oil spills, the sand binds with the oil and creates oil- filled sand clumps that fall to the bottom of an ocean or lake.
Purpose of the lesson is to: • Explore the properties of molecular bonding • Introduce students to the engineering of hydrophobic surface. • Demonstrate the concepts of hydrophobic and hydrophilic behavior.
These 'Do It Yourself' Nano activities and experiments allow families to experience and learn about nanoscale science, engineering, and technology at home or on the go! They are are designed to be done in the comfort of your own home. Each activity includes lists of widely available, inexpensive materials, step-by-step instructions, and detailed explanations. Go ahead, give 'em a try! | <urn:uuid:df03365b-36c6-4c31-863b-9a95125ad3be> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nisenet.org/catalog/topics/nano_sand | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00199-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954411 | 249 | 4.03125 | 4 |
'80 Million-Year-Old' Mosasaur Fossil Has Soft Retina and Blood Residue
by Brian Thomas, M.S. *
Mosasaur fossils have been recovered from Late Cretaceous rocks all over the world. Most are just a fossilized tooth or perhaps a loose rib or vertebra. Occasionally, several bones are discovered still together. Conventional wisdom holds that creatures from this period died millions of year ago. If that's true, why do some still have soft tissue?
The best preserved mosasaur remains, found in Kansas, have been kept in a California museum for over 40 years. So much of the original mosasaur body remained intact that a recent study was able to glean unique insights into mosasaur swimming abilities, as well as details about its skin, eyes, and possibly its internal organs.
Paleontologist Luis Chiappe led a team of scientists in examining the unique specimen housed at the Dinosaur Institute of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. In a study published online in PLoS ONE, the researchers analyzed purple residue in the eyeball area of the mosasaur skull and concluded that it "may represent remnants of the retina."1
They verified that the residue was original soft tissue from a mosasaur eye when they found microscopic pigment-filled structures called melanosomes, which serve to reduce light scattering. Found also in modern eyes, including those of humans, the darkly pigmented area in the back of the eye is familiar to anatomy students from eyeball dissections.
But soft tissues, like this retinal tissue residue, are known to decompose quickly in laboratory conditions. If this mosasaur was deposited "80 million years" ago,1 why did its soft tissue remnants remain soft? The obvious implication of a more recent deposition went unreported.
Some might counter the statement that the melanosomes represent soft tissue by claiming that the tiny, darkly colored oblong structures were bacteria that may have arrived long after the fossil formed. The research refutes this possibility for a number of reasons. First, bacteria would have grown on the outside of the fossil and the melanosomes were located deep inside. Second, bacteria would have grown all over--on the skin, in the preserved stomach contents, and in the internal organ remains. But the melanosomes were found only in the eyes. Third, their microscopic shapes matched those of melanosomes, not bacteria.
And these soft-tissue melanosomes are not the first to be found in fossils. Researchers have found them in fossilized feathers, as well.2,3,4
Also found among the "exceptionally preserved soft tissue" were interesting dark red patches in the chest cavity.1 To find out what chemical stained the rocks red, the investigators submitted samples for chemical analysis--and the result was spectacular. They identified "hemoglobin decomposition products."1 Hemoglobin is a major chemical constituent of blood, and biochemists know that it breaks down fast.
The researchers corroborated that the red color came from broken-down blood when they examined the positioning of the heart and liver within living ocean creatures. In dolphins and whales, these organs--as well as the lungs--are situated near the head to give them a streamlined shape. One of the dark red patches in the mosasaur was right where a dolphin's heart would be located. It appears that these two blood-rich organs did not completely decay.
Despite the amazing find of the mosasaur's purple retinal and still-red blood tissues, "the most remarkable features of [this fossil] are the preservation of skin structures from all parts of the body."1 The researchers were able to describe in detail the scale sizes and shapes almost from head to tail. Many of the small scales retained their three-dimensional shapes.
So, considering its "wide range of soft tissue structures,"1 including skin, eyeball tissue, and blood-stained organ patches, it is highly unlikely that this mosasaur is even thousands of years old, since these tissues decay so quickly. Therefore, insisting that they are over 80 million years old defies all reason.
- Lindgren J. et al. 2010. Convergent Evolution in Aquatic Tetrapods: Insights from an Exceptional Fossil Mosasaur. PloS ONE. 5 (8): e11998.
- Thomas, B. Fossil Feathers Convey Color. ICR News. Posted on icr.org July 21, 2008, accessed August 17, 2010.
- Thomas, B. Fresh Fossil Feather Nanostructures. ICR News. Posted on icr.org September 16, 2009, accessed August 17, 2010.
- Thomas, B. Feathered Dinosaur Debate Exhibits Young Earth Evidence. ICR News. Posted on icr.org February 8, 2010, accessed August 17, 2010.
Image credit: Copyright: © 2010 Lindgren et al, PloS ONE 5 (8): e11998.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on August 20, 2010. | <urn:uuid:c286d87c-294c-4be0-8c43-35e4f390eb3d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.icr.org/articles/view/5587/365/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952977 | 1,052 | 3.96875 | 4 |
Using the Transparency Tool in Xara Designer
The transparency tool is normally used to make opaque objects transparent. Various alterations can be made to the object (when it comes to transparency) in an easy way. The following are the steps to how you can make an object see-through using the transparency tool in Xara Designer.
Step 1: Using the Slider
The first action that you will need to take is to click on the transparency tool. After that, choose the object that you would like to use. Once you have selected the object that you would like to use, click and drag the slider that is on the information bar. You will notice that as you move the slider, the object becomes more and more transparent, with the objects beneath gradually showing through.
Step 2: Graduated Transparency
Just like straight forward flat transparency, it is also possible to apply graduated transparency simply by clicking and dragging. The start and end points can also be varied. By selecting the pointer, the object can fade from completely solid to fully transparent gradually.
Step 3: The Transparent Effect
It is also possible to move the transparent effect. There are various transparency shapes which include circular and elliptical transparencies. Once they are applied, they can be easily edited. This can be done by changing the angle of fade using the start and end points. When you select the repeating option, you will generate a series of transparency effects on the object that make it look more interesting in the end. | <urn:uuid:2a80e4c1-9a78-4ca6-bd93-508962860fe3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/how-tos/photo-software/using-the-transparency-tool-in-xara-designer.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00112-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932134 | 301 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Lama Chuck Stanford, Rime Buddhist Center: The English word “spirit” comes from the Latin word spiritus meaning “breath.” In Buddhism, the main spiritual practice is meditation, and in meditation we focus our attention upon our breath (spirit).
Other words derived from the root “spirit” have different connotations yet retain their original meaning. For example, the word “inspire” means both to breathe in, but it also means to become encouraged or motivated. Likewise, the word “expire,” while having to do with exhaling, also refers to death.
From the Buddhist perspective, it is believed that all living things with awareness are called “sentient” beings and are subject to karma and rebirth.
At death, when the body dies and begins decomposing, it is this subtle essence/spirit that continues on. This disembodied essence experiences something called the “bardo,” which translated means “in-between state.” This state is similar to a dream in that what is experienced is nothing more than a manifestation of one’s own mind.
This in-between state may last up to, but no longer than, 49 days. At that time, one’s essence/spirit either attains enlightenment or more likely continues on to the cycle of rebirth once again.
It is through the practice of meditation that we learn to cut the clinging and grasping of our mind. As we quiet our minds and cut through the discursive thoughts raging there, our mind and body become one, allowing us to connect with our true essence/spirit.
The result is the pure awareness (Buddha-nature) with which we were born.
Arvind Khetia, Hindu on the Interfaith Council: In the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, the nature of the Divine is explained as the Infinite Spirit.
Although we worship many deities, we recognize that beyond all gods of name and form there is only one transcendental reality called Brahman, the all- pervading Infinite Spirit.
The Upanishads and the Gita also explain that our real self is not our body or mind, because they are constantly changing. Our real self is Atman our inner Spirit, the immanent aspect of Brahman, which is divine.
The goal of religion is to realize this divine within by practicing the spiritual disciplines of yoga and meditation. When one becomes aware of one’s inner Spirit, one transcends ego and realizes that beyond the phenomenal world of name and form, at a deeper spiritual level, there is oneness of all existence.
Thus through self-realization, one becomes united with the universal Spirit (Brahman).
The inclusive and universal nature of Hinduism originates from its recognition of the truth of the universality of God as Spirit (Brahman), which is eternal and pure.
Spirituality is to recognize the Divine as Spirit within all beings and in all of existence. Only then can one see the underlying unity in an apparent diversity and realize the ideal of “shared humanity.”
Swami Vivekananda explains that true joy rests in the Spirit, and not in transient and finite happiness derived from the material world. He states that “within ourselves is the one source of all true joy, dependent upon nothing. The more we find our bliss within us, the more spiritual we are. The eternal joy of the Spirit is what the world calls religion.”
To reach the Voices of Faith columnists, send email to firstname.lastname@example.org . | <urn:uuid:71e27c10-83a9-45f4-98be-6ec55dd4ca97> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://thedailyworld.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-columnist/voices-faith-what-place-does-spirit-have-your-family | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00105-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943343 | 745 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Unisexual plants have flowers that bear only one set of reproductive parts, whether male or female. This means the flowers will either have stamen (the male parts) or a pistil (the female parts). In such plants, self-pollination cannot occur unless the plant has both male and female flowers. These plants are called monoecious, according to Western Kentucky University. Dioecious plants have only male or only female flowers.
Vegetables and Fruit
The flowers of squash are unisexual. The first blooms that appear on the squash plant are male flowers. Later in the growing season, the plant starts to produce both male and female flowers, in order to pollinate itself and produce seeds. Cucumber plants go through the same cycle as squash plants do. Persimmon trees (Diospyros) have dioecious flowers, which means you will have to plant a male-flowering tree near a female-flowering tree in order for pollination to occur and persimmons to develop. The same holds true for mulberries and bayberries, according to Michigan State University.
There are many trees that are monoecious. These trees have unisexual flowers of both types on one tree. Flowers with male parts are mixed with flowers with female parts. In this way, the tree pollinates itself. Fir, birch, cedar, cypress, fig, spruce, pine and oak are just some examples of trees with unisexual flowers. Trees that have just male or just female flowers include holly, aspen, willow and yew trees. These trees will not produce seeds unless there is an opposite (male or female flowering) tree nearby.
Other plants that have unisexual flowers include the gingko plant and the Juniperus genus, which consists of both towering trees and low-growing groundcover plants. Marijuana (Cannibis sp.) is dioecious. It has either male or female flowers, and it is the female-flowering plants that are illegal to grow in most states, according to Western Kentucky University. | <urn:uuid:994b97e2-e2c3-4832-a7cb-2fedde1568ba> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gardenguides.com/124664-examples-unisexual-flowers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00044-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967282 | 427 | 3.46875 | 3 |
NASA Satellite, Natural Hazard Networks Supporting Disaster Recovery
NASA's considerable Earth-observing and data analysis and distribution capabilities have been mobilized to provide information to support disaster recovery efforts in Haiti after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
NASA has tasked two of its space-based, high-resolution instruments to image areas hardest hit by the earthquake. Before-and-after scenes of Port-au-Prince, for example, will be used to aid with damage assessment and recovery.
The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER)
, a Japanese-U.S. instrument with visible, infrared and thermal infrared sensors flying on the Terra spacecraft, took observations of the region on Jan. 14. The data are being processed and compared with pre-earthquake imagery. ASTER will again revisit the area on Jan. 19 and Jan. 21.
NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1)
satellite is scheduled to obtain multispectral images of the region on Jan. 15.
NASA and the NASA-funded SERVIR
Rapid Response Mapping team at the Center for Water in the Humid Tropics in Latin America and the Caribbean are on standby to support the damage assessment efforts once EO-1 and ASTER data are available.
NASA is coordinating its efforts with international space agencies through the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response, as well as agreements with the Committee on Earth Observations and the Group on Earth Observations. | <urn:uuid:ae81c352-4725-4e24-b36b-302e6d37f2e7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/haiti_nasa.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00002-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.882357 | 311 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Dispersal is a crucial ecological process, driving population dynamics and defining the structure and persistence of populations. Measuring demographic connectivity between discreet populations remains a long-standing challenge for most marine organisms because it involves tracking the movement of pelagic larvae. Recent studies demonstrate local connectivity of reef fish populations via the dispersal of planktonic larvae, while biogeography indicates some larvae must disperse 100–1000 s kilometres. To date, empirical measures of long-distance dispersal are lacking and the full scale of dispersal is unknown. Here we provide the first measure of long-distance dispersal in a coral reef fish, the Omani clownfish Amphiprion omanensis, throughout its entire species range. Using genetic assignment tests we demonstrate bidirectional exchange of first generation migrants, with subsequent social and reproductive integration, between two populations separated by over 400 km. Immigration was 5.4% and 0.7% in each region, suggesting a biased southward exchange, and matched predictions from a physically-coupled dispersal model. This rare opportunity to measure long-distance dispersal demonstrates connectivity of isolated marine populations over distances of 100 s of kilometres and provides a unique insight into the processes of biogeography, speciation and adaptation.
Citation: Simpson SD, Harrison HB, Claereboudt MR, Planes S (2014) Long-Distance Dispersal via Ocean Currents Connects Omani Clownfish Populations throughout Entire Species Range. PLoS ONE 9(9): e107610. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0107610
Editor: John A. Craft, Glasgow Caledonian University, United Kingdom
Received: June 8, 2014; Accepted: August 19, 2014; Published: September 17, 2014
Copyright: © 2014 Simpson et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.
Funding: SDS was supported by a NERC Postdoctorate Fellowship (NE/B501720/1), a NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship (NE/J500616/2), a Royal Society Exchange grant and an EPHE Fellowship. The Project NEMO Expedition Team was funded by the Davis Trust, University of Edinburgh Development Trust, Carnegie Trust, BS-AC Jubilee Trust, Weir Trust, Genetics Society, British Association and Shell Oman. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist
Dispersal drives population dynamics, allows the replenishment of harvested marine species and defines the structure and persistence of marine populations across fragmented and often ephemeral habitat landscapes –. Since most coastal marine organisms are site-attached as adults, connectivity between discreet populations depends on the successful dispersal of planktonic larvae . However, larvae spend days to months developing in the open ocean before settling to new habitats, thus tracking the dispersal trajectories of individuals during the larval stage is not feasible, and the full scale of dispersal remains largely unknown , . In recent years, substantial effort has been made to understand patterns of connectivity in marine species between discreet patches of coastal habitat in order to inform conservation efforts and better manage natural resources . At small spatial scales (10 s km), dispersal can facilitate the replenishment of local fished areas by neighbouring protected populations , . Over large spatial scales (1000 s km) dispersal can drive the spread of invasive species – and facilitate species range shifts in response to climate change . At intermediate scales (100 s km) dispersal is predicted to allow the recolonisation of disturbed and depleted populations , however direct measurements of the successful movement and colonisation of individual larvae at this scale have been thus far elusive.
Many recent studies have focussed on coral reef fish, which are generally highly site-specific to naturally fragmented habitats, thus providing a valuable model system for studying dispersal and connectivity in marine ecosystems. Findings show that recruitment on coral reefs is largely driven by the retention of larvae within their populations of origin , combined with immigration from neighbouring populations , –. However, the behavioural and ontogenetic characteristics of coral reef fish larvae , , broad-scale genetic homogeneity seen in some species – and predictions of coupled-biophysical models – all suggest larvae also have the potential to undertake long migrations during their pelagic phase. Indeed, the vast species ranges seen in many reef fish, some spanning entire ocean basins, suggest that occasional long-distance dispersal or background gene flow along regional stepping-stones must occur to maintain genetic coherence of species and prevent speciation. To date, evidence for long-distance dispersal (100–1000 s km) comes from studies of evolutionary processes that measure historical gene flow –, while attempts to infer large-scale patterns of dispersal using oceanographic models , – are, as yet, unvalidated estimates of demographic connectivity.
Combining direct measurements of successful colonisation following long-distance dispersal with validated estimates of demographic connectivity, we investigate the potential for coral reef fishes to disperse over long distances during only a short pelagic phase. Our study focuses on the Omani clownfish Amphiprion omanensis (Fig. 1), which is endemic to the Arabian Sea and found only on shallow coral reef dominated habitat located in two regions of the southern coast of Oman, separated by over 400 km of high exposure sandy shores . This provides a unique opportunity to investigate dispersal between distant populations spanning an entire species range. Over large spatial scales, where gene flow is restricted, genetic assignment tests can be used to identify the origin of individuals provided that discrete populations are genetically distinct and that all populations have been sampled –. Using population-specific assignment thresholds, we determined whether individuals were local-type, first-generation migrants or local-migrant hybrids within each region. We compared our empirical findings to predictions from a simple physically-coupled individual-based dispersal model to determine whether oceanographic current flows could predict long distance dispersal events.
Adults provide high levels of parental care to their young that hatch with well-developed swimming and sensory capabilities before embarking on a <3 week pelagic larval phase, during which time they may disperse over long distances (>400 km).
Materials and Methods
a) Field sampling of Amphiprion omanensis (including Ethics Statement)
During an expedition in December 2006 and January 2007, we sampled 136 clownfish in the northern province of Ash Sharqiyah and 260 in the southern province of Dhofar (Table S1). Fish were collected and released without causing lasting harm and with specific approval for this study from both the University of Edinburgh Ethical Review Committee and the University of Edinburgh Expedition Committee, and with permission from the Ministry of Regional Municipalities, Environment and Water Resources, Sultanate of Oman and Department of Nature Conservation and Wildlife, Governate of Dhofar. A small section of the pectoral fin was removed from each individual and preserved in 95% ethanol. Based on available habitat in each region we estimate that we sampled 5–20% of all individuals in each region.
b) DNA extraction and microsatellite genotyping
Genomic DNA was extracted from fin tissue samples using standard proteinase K digestion (Gentra Puregene, QIAGEN). Samples were genotyped with a panel of six microsatellite loci previously described for two congeneric species , (Table S2) and optimised for Amphiprion omanensis in two multiplex reactions. Each locus was sequenced to confirm the presence of simple sequence repeats and integrated to multiplex PCRs on the basis of fragment sizes, heterodimer duplexing and complementarity of melting temperatures. Multiplex PCRs consisted of 1 µl genomic DNA, 0.2 µl MgCl2, 1.5 µl dNTPs, 1 µl buffer, 0.5 µl Taq polymerase, and 1 µl H2O. Multiplex A contained 0.8 µl forward and reverse primers for loci Ao120, Ao84 and AoCF3. Multiplex B contained 0.6 µl forward and reverse primers for loci Ao55 and Ao22, and 1.2 µl of each primer for locus AoCF11. All PCR reactions were performed on a Eppendorf Mastercycler ep with the following cycling conditions: an initial denaturation of 2 min at 94°C followed by 10 cycles of 45 s at 94°C, 45 s at 60°C (multiplex A) or 66°C (multiplex B), and 45 s at 72°C, followed by 20 cycles of 45 s at 94°C, 45 s at 55°C (multiplex A) or 61°C (multiplex B), and 45 s at 72°C, with a final elongation period of 45 min at 72°C. Amplified PCR products were analysed on a CEQ 8000 Genetic Analysis System (Beckman-Coulter, Fullerton CA) and the resulting electrophoregrams were scored using CEQ 8000 software. Alleles were scored manually (twice, blind) to eliminate scoring errors.
c) Population genetics statistical analysis
Samples were grouped within northern and southern regions. Nei’s unbiased expected and observed heterozygosity , number of alleles and allelic richness over all samples, and Weir & Cockerham’s estimator of inbreeding FIS were computed in FSTAT v.220.127.116.11 . Observed genotypes were tested for linkage disequilibrium and departures from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) due to heterozygote deficiency at each locus with genotypes randomised among samples as implemented in ARLEQUIN v3.5 . Significance of multiple tests was assessed with sequential Bonferroni corrections applied for multiple comparisons . The occurrence of null alleles and large allele drop-outs were assessed at each locus using MICROCHECKER v.2.2.3 . Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) and pairwise genetic distances within and between provinces (FST) were computed in ARLEQUIN. Missing data accounted for 0.9% and 1.5% of the data in northern and southern populations, respectively.
d) Assignment tests and study-specific assignment thresholds
We applied a model-based Bayesian clustering method implemented in structure 2.3.3 , using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) resampling procedure, to estimate the most parsimonious allocation of samples to distinct genetic clusters and distinguish between local-type, first-generation migrants and local-migrant hybrids. With the optimum solution (K = 2), we performed 10 independent runs using 100,000 MCMC iterations with a burn-in period of 50,000 steps and computed the arithmetic mean of posterior probabilities of assignment amongst runs.
To determine population-specific thresholds of assignment we first used a conservative threshold of 0.9 to identify northern and southern-type individuals and determine unbiased allelic frequencies for each region. We then randomly selected 100 individuals from each region and simulated 5,000 local-type individuals for each population and 10,000 north-south hybrid individuals using hybridlab v1.0 . By examining the distribution of posterior probabilities of all 20,000 simulated individuals (5 runs with K = 2, 50,000 iterations and burn-in of 50,000) we identified population-specific thresholds of assignment that give a 95% probability of correct allocation of individuals to local-type, first-generation migrant and north-south hybrid classes in our samples (Fig. S1).
e) Physically-coupled individual-based Lagrangian stochastic dispersal model
We constructed and parameterised an a priori dispersal model to simulate dispersal of the larval stage of A. omanensis. The model was forced using daily surface current data obtained from the Navy Coastal Ocean Model (US Naval Research Laboratory) for the period 2005–2008, and simulations of larvae released from both northern and southern locations were made for the A. omanensis spawning period during three successive seasons (see Information S1). The proportions of larvae that were retained locally, were dispersed to distant reefs or did not settle were retained from each simulation for comparison with our empirical measurements of long-distance dispersal.
A total of 136 A. omanensis individuals were collected in the northern province of Ash Sharqiyah and 260 individuals from the southern province of Dhofar. These two populations are separated by over 400 km of high exposure sandy shore with no suitable habitat and representing the limits of the species range. We found significant genetic differentiation between the two regions (FST = 0.042; Information S1; Fig. S2), with higher genetic diversity in the southern population (Table S3). Significant departures from HWE due to heterozygote deficiency were observed for three of six loci in both northern and southern regions after Bonferroni correction (Table S3). Locus Ao84 showed significant departure from HWE in the northern populations only, whereas AoCF11 showed evidence of heterozygote deficiency in the southern populations. Only Ao120 showed no significant deviation from HWE expectations, although expected heterozygosity was marginally higher than expected in the southern population. The underlying causes of heterozygote deficiencies were likely due the presence of genetic sub-structure within southern and northern populations that were not captured in our sample. Allelic richness was higher in the southern population, however the mean observed heterozygosity was comparable between regions. Tests for genotypic disequilibrium identified 2 of 30 pairwise comparisons as showing significant linkage after Bonferroni correction (p<0.0017).
Using assignment tests, we detected an asymmetrical dispersal pattern between the two regions with a higher occurrence of southward dispersal than vice versa (Fig. 2a). Our analysis revealed a total of 14 migrants (5.4% of locally sampled individuals) in the southern province of Dhofar that had originated in the northern province of Ash Sharqiyah, but only 1 individual (0.7% of locally sampled individuals) identified as having made the opposite journey (Fig. 2b). Study-specific thresholds were 0.741 and 0.765 for the northern and southern regions respectively, and minimum and maximum thresholds to distinguish hybrid individuals from local-type were 0.413 and 0.711 respectively. Study-specific thresholds were 0.741 and 0.765 for the northern and southern regions respectively, and minimum and maximum thresholds to distinguish hybrid individuals from local-type were 0.413 and 0.711 respectively. Individuals identified as migrants were collected in multiple locations and included both adults and juveniles, demonstrating that some migrating larvae had subsequently become successfully integrated into local populations since maturation in clownfish is socially mediated .
(a) Bayesian clustering analysis identified individuals that had migrated to distant populations over 400 km from their natal origins. Dashed lines indicate the thresholds of assignment of individuals to northern and southern types. Dotted lines indicate the thresholds of assignment of individuals as north-south hybrids. Percentage values indicate proportion of assigned individuals to different types in each region. (b) The southern Omani coastline has two regions of coral reefs separated by over high exposure sandy shores. The Indian summer monsoon is the main driver of both atmospheric and oceanic regimes causing strong southeasterly winds during summer months (the Khareef monsoon), which then reverse to weaker northeasterly winds during the winter monsoon. These current regimes favour southward dispersal of the Omani clownfish.
In addition to first-generation migrants, we identified 17 north-south hybrids, 10 (3.8% of locally sampled individuals) in the south and 7 (5.1% of locally sampled individuals) in the north. The majority of individuals sampled in each population (221 or 85.0% in the south and 127 or 93.4% in the north) were identified as local-type (Fig. 2a). An additional 15 individuals in the south and 1 in the north could not be confidently distinguished from local and local-migrant hybrid types based on population-specific modelled assignment thresholds. The greater number of unclassified individuals in the southern population is most likely due to the limited proportion of individuals sampled (we estimate 5–20%), greater genetic diversity and higher immigration rates in this population pertaining to a less distinct genetic signature than the northern population and a more conservative minimum threshold of assignment. While migrants and local-migrant hybrids are minority components of the overall population, this study highlights the dispersal potential of pelagic larvae and demonstrates that exchange of larvae between distant populations is likely to be a regular background process rather than one restricted to rare and stochastic events.
The measured southward bias of dispersal matched a priori predictions of a physically-coupled individual-based dispersal model parameterised for the larval stage of A. omanensis and forced using seasonal current data. Movement of larvae released into the model between December to February, when A. omanensis usually reproduces, was predominantly southward as a result of the winter monsoon (Table S4). Conversely, realisations of the model outside of the clownfish spawning season (March/April) predicted northward movement of larvae due to the onset of the summer Khareef monsoon. Depending on the date (between 1 December to 30 January) and year of release, a small percentage (ranging from 0.00 to 5.10%) of larvae were exchanged between the northern and southern populations within a single month and ‘settled’ to appropriate habitat within the 40 days competency period. Averaged over the three winter spawning seasons, the transport of larvae from the northern region to southern reefs was 0.06% to Mirbat and 0.32% to the Halaaniyat Islands, while northward exchange was ≤0.01% (Table S4). Although quantitatively sensitive to initial population size and associated output of larvae, which is not known, qualitatively the model consistently predicted higher migration rates from the northern to the southern populations as seen in our direct measures of long-distance dispersal. Our combined empirical and modelling results for A. omanensis suggest that regional current regimes directly influence the dispersal of larvae between southern and northern extremes of its species range.
Geography, oceanography, ecology and behaviour combined favourably in this study system to provide a unique opportunity to empirically measure connectivity between distant populations of a coral reef fish. We found demographically relevant bidirectional exchange of A. omnanensis individuals between two regions of suitable coral reef habitat separated by >400 km of high exposure sandy shore, representing the longest direct measure of larval dispersal for any marine fish species to date. Local immigration rates were 5.4% in the south and 0.7% in the north, indicating a biased southward exchange, and these rates matched a priori predictions from a physically-coupled individual-based dispersal model (maximum connectivity in a single spawning event 5.1% and 0.1% respectively), which simulated passive larval transport in realistic current fields during the reproductive season. Local migrants were found at all life stages suggesting that these long-distance dispersal events occurred over multiple events and are a regular phenomenon rather than a process limited to chance . Additionally, we identified individuals with mixed north-south genotypes in both regions demonstrating social and reproductive integration of migrants into local breeding populations.
The combination of rarity and conspicuousness meant that our team of 22 divers over 92 dives sampled an estimated 5–20% of all A. omnanensis individuals, providing subsequent analyses with sufficient discriminatory power. With more markers and a higher proportion of individuals sampled we would expect intra-regional patterns in dispersal and retention to also become evident as in previous local-scale studies of congeneric species , , –, , and would allow the 16 individuals that could not be distinguished between local and local-migrant hybrid types to be confidently assigned. Nonetheless our approach, based on qualifying the unique genetic signature of regional populations, provides a powerful tool to identify local migrants and measure connectivity in marine organisms that is applicable to a wide range of species.
Harvested and threatened populations under spatially variable levels of exploitation, or exposed to environmental stressors including fluctuations in habitat quality and climate change, are offered substantial resilience if replenishment from far beyond the range of local impact is possible. While there are obvious benefits to staying close to home , the spatially heterogeneous landscape of coral reef habitats may further confer selective advantage to long-distance dispersers that carry novel mutations across vast stretches of open water. Theory suggests that low rates of migration can rescue individual populations from local extinction and ensure long-term prevalence of species –, although until now the nature of long-distance larval exchange in coral reef fishes has remained elusive. Our finding of regular exchange between distant populations explains how seemingly isolated populations maintain their genetic coherence, preventing local adaptation-driven ecological separation that leads to reproductive incompatibility and ultimately speciation. Additional studies using the same geographic case study but comparing a range of contrasting species would enable the influences of life history and oceanography on long-distance dispersal to be determined.
The persistence of spatially structured populations is a factor of both local growth rates and connectivity between populations , . Coral reef associated organisms are naturally fragmented and dispersal amongst patches is a fundamental aspect of population dynamics. For the Omani clownfish, the persistence of populations in the northern and southern provinces of the Arabian Sea appears heavily dependent on larval connectivity and larval retention within each province. However, even the low levels of immigration observed between provinces have importance consequences for demographic processes. The greater immigration from north to south indicate a shortfall in local retention in the southern population , and a dependence on immigration from the northern population, which itself is comparatively more isolated. In the context of marine spatial planning, these asymmetries in connectivity patterns would warrant a need for greater protection of the northern population. If such high levels of demographic connectivity can be expected between two populations separated by over 400 km, populations in continuous reef habitats or complex barrier reef systems are likely to be much more homogeneous than previously assumed.
Our study also demonstrates that simple physically-forced models can give valuable predictions for realised patterns of connectivity. It is likely that if ocean currents are important for driving the long-distance dispersal events we observed, for fishes with prolonged pelagic larval durations (weeks to months), including many commercially important coastal fishes, long-distance dispersal may be even more prevalent , , . Further development of the model would allow an ensemble of parameter sets, capturing temporal variability in circulation and the full range of phenological and larval biological traits to be used to generate distributions of self-recruitment and long-distance dispersal for other species in the region. The ability to predict the degree of connectivity between fragmented populations will allow fisheries and conservation managers and marine spatial planners charged with developing national and regional networks of marine protected areas to better manage these populations , . Furthermore, better characterisation of the tails of dispersal kernels would provide valuable insight into the ecological and evolutionary processes of biogeography, speciation and potential for species to adapt to current and future climate change.
Frequency distributions of simulated genotypes for the derivation of population-specific assignment thresholds. A total of 5,000 northern-type, 5,000 southern-type and 10,000 north-south hybrid genotypes were simulated using location specific allelic frequencies. Bayesian clustering analysis determined the posterior probability of assignment of each simulated individual to either northern or southern populations.
Scatterplot of the two main components of the discriminant analysis of principal components in four populations of the Omani clownfish Amphiprion omanensis. Sampled populations are shown using different colours and 95% inertia ellipses and dots represent each individual in the sample. The x-axis represents 82.9% and the y-axis represents 9.6% of genetic information retained in each discriminant function (inset).
Sampling sites and number of samples collected.
Details of six polymorphic dinucleotide microsatellite loci developed for Amphiprion omanensis.
Details of genetic analysis of each marker. Number of alleles (Na), observed heterozygosity (Ho), expected heterozygosity (He), the inbreeding coefficient (F), and departure from Hardy-Weinberg’s equilibrium (HWE) were calculated for each locus.
Connectivity matrices (% of larvae successfully reaching a reef) for simulated dispersal events. The upper three panes are yearly averages (10 realisations); the lower panes are overall means, maximum values, standard deviation, coefficient of variation of connectivity and number of non-zero larval transport events over all 30 realisations. Matrices read from-row to-column; grey cells indicate long-distance dispersal. Mirbat and Halaaniyat combine to form the southern region; Masirah and Bar Al Hickmann (MasBAH) combine to form the northern region (see Fig. 2B).
Physically-coupled individual-based Lagrangian stochastic dispersal model; Graphical representation of genetic variation in the Omani clownfish; Supplementary References.
We thank Jennifer McIlwain and Andrew Halford for first introducing SDS to the Southern Coast of Oman, and for logistical support on early scoping trips. We thank the other 22 members of the Project NEMO Expedition Team and Jonathan Smith for assistance in the field, Elisabeth Rochel and Cecile Fauvelot for assistance in the lab, Jonathan Kool for assistance with the statistical analyses and Phil Munday, Mark Meekan, Mark Beaumont, Martin Genner and Andy Radford for comments on the manuscript. We also thank Henry Carson and an anonymous reviewer for constructive comments. We are grateful to Ali Al-Kiyumi (Director General of Nature Conservation, Ministry of Regional Municipalities, Environment and Water Resources), Ali Salem Bait Said (Director of Nature Conservation and Wildlife, Governate of Dhofar) and Anton McLachlan (Dean of Science, Sultan Qaboos University) for authorising the work.
Conceived and designed the experiments: SDS. Performed the experiments: SDS HBH MC SP. Analyzed the data: SDS HBH MC SP. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SDS HBH MC SP. Contributed to the writing of the manuscript: SDS HBH MC SP.
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Using low-cost OTP MCUs to simplify embedded
Cost-effective devices can sometimes be
As engineers look to reduce the cost of their
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Fig. 1. Porting code to an OTP device from
a flash-based device.
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actually can be programmed multiple times.
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code memory could be modified up to eight times by clearing one bit
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most cases, an external programming voltage needs to be applied for
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Some OTP devices are capable of in-application
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The IAP feature makes these devices an option
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cost. For example, resistive touch screen applications require the
use of MCUs with the ability to take A/D converter samples to
calculate which coordinates are touched on the screen. As long as
the necessary peripherals are available, OTP devices are a great
choice for appliances such as washing machines, drying machines and
blenders, as well as security devices, blood glucose meters or any
other devices that perform a fixed function.
Code development process
The code development process for OTP MCUs is
very similar to the process for flash MCUs, but with one added
step. Because a code image is typically only programmed once on an
OTP device, the majority of the code development and debugging is
performed on a flash-based MCU and then ported to the OTP device.
In most cases, the OTP device has a similar flash device for code
development. Figure 1 illustrates
Silicon Laboratories offers several OTP device
families which range in size, performance, and package type and
provide combinations of the following peripherals and
System management bus (SMBus) and a Universal
asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART).
Serial peripheral interface (SPI) and universal
serial bus (USB).
Timers and a programmable counter array
A/D and D/A converters and comparators.
Temperature sensor and voltage reference.
5 to 3-V regulator and in-application
Development kits include an evaluation board for
test/debugging, a programming socket that connects to the
motherboard to program the OTP device, and a flash-based daughter
card that connects to the motherboard to aid in the code
development. The motherboards included in the OTP development kits
can provide the necessary programming voltage. ■ | <urn:uuid:1f8f4260-adf7-401e-aba2-da976ea38c0c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.electronicproducts.com/Digital_ICs/Microprocessors_Microcontrollers_DSPs/Using_low-cost_OTP_MCUs_to_simplify_embedded_apps.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.887675 | 891 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Definition of Disease, Kok
Disease, Kok: A genetic disorder also known as hyperekplexia in which babies have an exaggerated startle reflex (reaction).
This disorder was not recognized until 1962 when it was described by Drs. Kok and Bruyn as a disease with the onset at birth of hypertonia (stiffness), exaggerated startle response, strong brain-stem reflexes (especially head-retraction reflex) and, in some cases, epilepsy. The hypertonia (stiffness) was evident with flexion of limbs, disappeared during sleep and diminished over the first year of life. The startle reflex was sometimes accompanied by acute generalized hypertonia (sudden stiffness) causing the person to fall like a log to the ground. There were 29 affected males and females in 6 generations, indicating that the disorder is an autosomal (non-sex-linked) dominant trait.
A number of other families have since been found with this disease. Additional findings include a tendency to umbilical and inguinal hernias (presumably due to increased intraabdominal pressure) and congenital dislocation of the hip. The exaggerated startle response persists throughout life; startles can be elicited by lightly touching the person's nose, clapping or making other noises, or suddenly jolting the person's chair.
The gene responsible for this disease has been found on chromosome number 5. (It is in bands 5q33.2-q33.3 and is a mutation in the gene for the alpha-1 subunit of the glycine receptor).
Treatment is with medications.
Hyperekplexia is also called startle disease, exaggerated startle disease, hyperekplexia, and stiff baby syndrome.Source: MedTerms™ Medical Dictionary
Last Editorial Review: 7/1/2016 | <urn:uuid:50602b0f-8a3e-499e-bc0e-06a2175881f3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.rxlist.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=8299 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00042-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943548 | 381 | 3.53125 | 4 |
|Ayers, Edward - COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY|
|Wall, Diana - COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY|
|Simmons, Breana - COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY|
|Field, Chris - STANFORD UNIVERSITY|
|Milchunas, Daniel - COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY|
|Roy, Jacques - CNRS, FRANCE|
Submitted to: Soil Biology and Biochemistry
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: November 29, 2007
Publication Date: December 31, 2007
Citation: Ayers, E., Wall, D.H., Simmons, B.L., Field, C.B., Milchunas, D., Morgan, J.A., Roy, J. 2008. Belowground grassland herbivores are resistant to elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations in grassland ecosystems. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 40:978-985. Interpretive Summary: Grasslands are known to be especially susceptible to climate change and rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), but little work has been conducted on the biological responses of organisms which live in the soil and have important impacts on grassland ecology. This report describes the results from a five-year field experiment conducted in the shortgrass prairie of north-eastern Colorado in which CO2 was elevated to twice the present-day concentration to observe how rising levels of atmospheric CO2 will affect this ecosystem. The focus of the belowground work reported here was on nematodes, small parasitic worms which live in the soil, consume a major portion of plant biomass, and have important consequences for nutrient cycling. Despite increased plant shoot and root production in grassland plots exposed to elevated CO2, abundances of different classes of nematodes were generally unaffected by CO2. Elevated CO2 also had no affect on total nematode abundance, numbers of nematode species, or diversity of the nematode community. The results seem counter-intuitive, in that nematodes were unresponsive under conditions which promoted root growth, which they feed on. We suspect that other factors which occurred at elevated CO2, like increased soil water content and lower quality plant tissues may have hindered potential nematode responses to the increased root biomass. The lack of nematode responses to CO2 suggests that some of the increased belowground biomass may go uneaten, and therefore tend to increase the soil’s organic matter as CO2 increases in the atmosphere.
Technical Abstract: Grasslands are considered to be one of the most sensitive ecosystems to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Moreover, grasslands support large populations of belowground herbivores that consume a major portion of plant biomass. The direct trophic link between herbivores and plants suggests that primary consumers may be particularly sensitive to rising CO2 concentrations, however, the responses of belowground grassland herbivores has rarely been investigated. Here we report the response of a range of herbivorous nematode populations to elevated CO2 concentrations from three distinct grassland experiments. The three studies each involved 5-6 years of CO2 fumigation, utilized natural or representative plant and soil communities, and were sampled at the end of the growing season. In the vast majority of cases elevated CO2 did not affect the abundance of nematode families; only two nematode families were significantly influenced by CO2 enrichment. Similarly, elevated CO2 did not influence the total abundance, family richness, diversity or plant parasitic index of the herbivorous nematode community. These neutral responses to CO2 enrichment occurred despite increased root production in all three experiments, suggesting a simultaneous antagonistic mechanism may have operated, possibly decreased root quality. Whatever the mechanism, our findings suggest herbivorous nematodes in grassland ecosystems are resistant to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. | <urn:uuid:bb237100-f0aa-4515-8c66-dd5922672759> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?SEQ_NO_115=201478 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396945.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00101-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928954 | 793 | 2.75 | 3 |
In his second year at the college he attended a cybernetics lecture given by Adam Montandon, who was a student at Plymouth University. After introducing himself to Montandon and explaining his condition the pair started to work on what became known as the eyeborg project.
What they came up with was a camera, mounted on Harbisson’s head that picks up colours and converts them in to sound waves. By memorising the different frequencies Harbisson became the first person in history with the ability to hear colors.
The eyeborg was further developed by Peter Kese, a Slovenian software developer. This further development meant that Harbisson can now perceive three hundred and sixty color hues through varying frequencies. Not only that by adjusting the volume levels accordingly he can also measure color saturation.
Here is more of the science, courtesy of YouTube.
The paintings are certainly a new take on old subjects. Below, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor is converted in to color. Harbisson has also used his eyeborg to help him paint the colors of the capital cities of Europe as well as a host of celebrities. His sound portraits are created by listening to the colors of faces with his eyeborg and then translating these sounds on to canvas.
Harbisson’s passport application was rejected on the grounds that his prosthetic was in the picture. There is a little irony here as Harbisson will not himself work from photographs when painting people - only real human faces as, it seems, photos produce different sounds.
Cyborg Head - Wikimedia
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If you enjoyed this article, please consider making a gift to help Kuriositas to continue to bring you fascinating features, photographs and videos. | <urn:uuid:c41146fa-1b61-4bb5-ba4a-5364d3618e75> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.kuriositas.com/2010/06/i-am-borg-worlds-first-recognized.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00049-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976 | 355 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Healthcare workers face a wide range of workplace hazards, including ergonomic and needlestick injuries, chemical exposures, hazardous drugs and radiation, airborne diseases, latex allergy, and violence.
The goal of Safe Work, Safe Care is to help achieve safe and healthy work environments for healthcare workers.
Safe Work, Safe Care promotes workers and managers working together and stresses the role of joint labor/management health and safety committees that rely on group problem-solving strategies to identify, analyze, and prevent hazards.
Safe Work, Safe Care provides training using the Small Group Activity Method (SGAM). SGAM is a participatory training method that develops the problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication skills of participants. Training promotes the "systems of safety" approach to health and safety that is supported by comprehensive reporting of injuries, efficient and thorough follow-up, and consistent evaluation.
With the Health Professionals and Allied Employees, Communications Workers of America, United Steelworkers, NJ State Nurses Association, other healthcare unions, and other organizations, WEC has trained hundreds of workers about preventing healthcare hazards. | <urn:uuid:778892e3-c04b-4748-8053-b84059506119> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.njwec.org/swsc.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00104-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925129 | 225 | 2.984375 | 3 |
This tutorial is for people who are just starting out Photoshop or for the people who have been using Photoshop but don’t know how to use Layer Masks.
The basics of Layer masks are incredibly simple but very powerful.
As always we’ll go over a simple tutorial that will quickly teach you how to use Layer Mask Basics. I think that actually doing something is the best way to learn. At least doing some thing is much, much better than just reading about it 😀
First, a tiny intro:
What happens when someone wears a mask?
Dumb Question, yeah? It’s obvious that everything behind the mask is not visible and everything else is visible. That’s basically how Layer masks work except that you choose where the mask is and how opaque it is. Simple huh? So let’s follow a quick tutorial.
The Final Result of the tutorial is:
Yeah, so it’s a glass that is behind some rocks but in front of the ocean. Notice that the glass is partially transparent and you can see the ocean from inside it but the straw, slice of lemon and the stem of the glass are opaque. And yeah… I know the image isn’t going to win any awards but it’s great for explaining Layer masks 😀
Step 1: Find two images that you want to combine. Here are the images I used:
Step 2: Open both the images in Photoshop. Then, choose the Arrow / Move Tool. Click on the glass image and drag it over to the image with the guy fishing. You can resize the glass so that it’s not too big or you can leave it the way it is. Your choice. Click here for a short flash video of this step if you are having trouble moving the glass image on top of the ocean image.
Step 3: Choose the layer with the glass and then click on the Layer Mask button. It’s the rectangle with the circle in it.
After clicking you’ll see something like this:
There it is! The layer mask. Currently it is set to reveal all of the image, meaning that the mask is off and nothing is hidden (since it is revealing everything!)
Now we actually use the mask. First let’s think of what we’re trying to do.
- We want just the glass visible so we need to get rid of the background of the glass image.
- We also don’t want all of the stem of the glass visible because we want to give the illusion that the glass is sitting behind the rocks.
- We also want part of the top of the glass transparent because we want the viewer to see through it.
If we used just layers and opacity of layers to accomplish this then we’d end up cutting up glass in lots of portions and messing with the opacity and it would be tedious and really, really annoying and would take a long time. That is why we’ll use the layer mask!
Hmm, you’ll also notice that when you click on the layer mask your colors in the color picker turn to black and white. So here it is… the secret of Layer masks: Depending on what the settings are, the color WHITE shows or reveals the image AND the color BLACK hides or masks the image (We’re talking about the image on which the layer mask is applied, not the layer below it). So on to step 4…
Step 4: Grab your PAINTBRUSH. Choose BLACK and start wildly painting. Paint over the stem so it looks like the rocks are infront. Paint over the background of the glass image. Keep on painting until you only have the glass. Now what if you make a mistake and hide part of the glass? No problem. Layer masks are not destructive so just change the color to WHITE and paint over the glass and it’ll magically reappear. You can basically adjust the brush size, or the shade of
gray and you get way more control than using destructive methods. If you use an eraser you can’t easily undo something you did 20 steps before etc etc.
So here is my version of this step:
I’m not worried about being perfect because nothing is being deleted. It’s all there. Just hit the “X” key on your keyboard and you’ll quickly switch between black and white and you can fix your mistakes. Now after you have quickly erased everything that is not needed just zoom waaay in and with a small brush just fix up the edges so they look good. Be sure to get that area in between that lemon slice 😀 .
So now I have something like this:
Step 5: Finally, we need to make the glass a bit transparent. You can do two things. You can a) Set the opacity of the brush to 50% and then paint right over the glass or b) You can change the color of your brush to gray and then paint over the areas you want to make transparent. Using the current settings (i.e White reveals) then if you make your brush dark gray then your glass will be less opaque and more transparent. If you choose light gray then your glass will appear less transparent. Just
paint it gray in the areas where you want it to appear slightly transparent but not in the areas with the lemon slice and straws. If you can’t make the transparent area look smooth (ie. you can see the brush strokes) then just grab the smudge tool and lightly smudge the gray area until it looks good and smooth. You can use any filter or tool on the layer mask and it’ll give you a new sort of effect :D.
That is all. You have the final image:
I hope I was able to show you how layer masks can make your life easier. This is obviously not the only thing you can do with layer masks so keep playing with this and learn more. If you have any questions then leave me comments below and I’ll try my best to get back to you in a timely fashion.
- Layer Masks are one of the easiest features of Photoshop to understand. A Layer mask is just what it sounds like: a mask that goes on a layer. Think of what happens when a person wears a mask. You can see through the holes but not through the mask itself. It’s a great way to non-destructively hide parts of a layer. You will not lose any data and to go back to the original state you’ll just delete the mask.
- You can go to Layer > Layer Masks > Reveal All or Hide All to apply the mask (also you can just choose the rectangle with the circle from the Layers window.)
- Use the “X” key to quickly switch between Black and White (to show and hide)
- Shades of Gray in a layer mask change the opacity of the layer.
- A link icon appears in the middle of the layer and the layer mask. If it is linked then both the mask and layer can be moved together. If it is unlinked then you can independently move the layer and its mask.
- Be sure to click the Layer mask rectangle in the layer window when working with layer masks.
- Commonly, layer masks are used with Text and Gradients so experiment with those.
- I’ll continue updating this page with more tutorials and examples if I can think of any 😀
- Comments, Critiques and suggestions are always welcome. | <urn:uuid:cb3a5be8-8b96-404a-af91-960e4864c5d1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://photoshoptips.net/2006/07/25/layer-masks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00184-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909255 | 1,562 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Tue, 09/07/2010 - 8:00pm
The story of the San Francisco dockworkers who stood up against extreme odds and changed the course of American labor history.
This Emmy®-winning documentary tells the story of longshoremen fighting for their rights in the midst of the great depression. Faced with unsafe labor conditions and unfair treatment, they decide to form a Union for protection. During this period many mainstream newspaper publishers, fearful of unionization efforts at their own businesses, launched attacks against the dockworkers and drove public sympathy against them with accusations of communism. Politicians and police openly used their resources to side with the shipping companies against the striking dockworkers. On July 5, 1934 police killed two longshoremen at a massive dockworker strike in San Francisco, a tragedy known as Bloody Thursday. The tragic events of Bloody Thursday turned public opinion against the shipping companies and lead the citizens of San Francisco to go on a general strike in support of the dockworkers. This lead to the formation of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, now known worldwide as the ILWU.
Bloody Thursday encores Tuesday, September 7 at 8 p.m. on PBS World (cable 524/DT21.2).
Bloody Thursday includes a range of filmed interviews with union officials and historians who provide fascinating insight to the dockworker’s struggles during the depression. These interviews are visually supported through an extensive archive of photographs, film, and old newspapers. Dramatic accounts of the longshoremen, labor activists, and politicians who were participants in the tumultuous events of the historic West Coast strike of 1934 are poignantly brought to life by actors who read their accounts verbatim and bring a new level of emotional impact to the story through their performances. | <urn:uuid:861c0806-c6c2-4af7-9f93-2c565b40e02e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://interactive.wxxi.org/highlights/2010/08/bloody-thursday | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00089-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955111 | 359 | 3.015625 | 3 |
5 NC counties are under alert, including Wake, Johnston, Wayne, and Wilson counties. Details
Published: 2013-01-28 08:07:37
Updated: 2013-01-28 08:07:37
Posted January 28, 2013
By Mike Moss
On Sunday morning, we got a couple of reports of possible snow in the Wake Forest and north Raleigh areas, while there was nothing on radar and no indication from computer models that the atmosphere would support a typical snowfall scenario. Nonetheless, Sloane Heffernan drove in from the area and said it appeared there was snow on the ground and crystals in the air, and since that time we've received a couple of photos from the area (shown above) that were taken early Sunday, and the area was impressively whitened during the night and had a very wintry appearance in these shots.
For most of us on Sunday morning, there was a very low deck of shallow clouds and/or some fairly thick fog, with that fog mainly composed of tiny supercooled water droplets. Sometimes in a situation like that, "freezing fog" can occur, in which the tiny droplets freeze on contact with surfaces and create a fairly smooth white icy coating. The appearance in the photos above, however, looks much more like ice crystals settled on the ground, trees, deck railings and so on, and implies that either a slightly deeper cloud capable of producing a light period of snow (yet still shallow enough that weather radar beams passed over top of it undetected), or, perhaps more likely, that the combination of humidity and temperature within the fog in the area led to an "ice fog," with the fog itself composed of tiny ice crystals that accumulated into the coating we see here.
In order to form the classic dendritic, six-sided complex snow crystals that fall in our more typical snows (sometimes as individual small crystals, often as a collection of crystals clumped together into a snowflake), temperatures usually need to be around 14 degrees F or colder, but reports from our viewing area were not that cold yesterday. Instead, they were in the low to mid 20s, a temperature range where the correct amount of water vapor and the right kind of suspended particles of dust, minerals and salt or smoke (called ice nuclei) would more likely lead to crystals shaped like six-sided columns and needles, and possibly some six-sided plate-like crystals. If these formed within the fog and shallow low clouds over a sufficient period, they could have produced the nice-looking effects seen here.
I mentioned to Sloane yesterday that she may have seen ice fog or "diamond dust," which is a similar phenomenon in which tiny suspended ice crystals form in the absence of other precipitation. However, after seeing these photos, I think the "diamond dust" description was probably not the most appropriate, since it classically refers to situations where there are some tiny crystals in the air, but skies are otherwise fair and visibility is not very restricted, and it would be unlikely under those conditions that enough crystals would settle out to give the appearance we see here.
If anyone reading this was in that area early yesterday morning and saw this all occur in process, let me know if it had the appearance of a typical snowfall, or if it was more in the "ice fog" category with crystals floating around and gently settling - also if you noticed the shape of any crystals that fell, it would be interesting to know if they matched the description I gave above for the temperature range that was in place. These kinds of slight mysteries are always interesting to look into! | <urn:uuid:dc9fd211-1c48-40f2-9187-b24d641e897b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wral.com/what-whitened-wake-forest-/12032313/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397865.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00080-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976205 | 740 | 2.578125 | 3 |
The major early developments in industrial design occurred in continental Europe, principally England, Germany and Scandinavia.
Industrial Design, as defined by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), "is a creative activity the aim of which is to determine the formal qualities of objects produced by industry. These formal qualities include the external features, but are principally those structural and functional relationships which convert a system to a coherent unit both from the viewpoint of the producer and the user. Industrial design embraces all aspects of human environment that are conditioned by industrial production." Though allied to the disciplines of ARCHITECTURE and ENGINEERING, industrial design has a shorter history and did not come into being until the mid-19th century. Prior to this time, the production of everyday objects was mainly the result of individual manual effort within a craft-based economy. The Industrial Revolution made mass production of these same objects possible. Thereafter, artist and craftsmen were largely excluded from the industrial modes of manufacturing. The need for a balance between art and industry, however, was soon expressed by concerned groups and individuals, and ultimately led to the profession now called industrial design.
The major early developments in industrial design occurred in continental Europe, principally England, Germany and Scandinavia. In England, William Morris founded a crafts-based school of design and "production" that was anti-industry, whereas Henry Cole advocated the introduction of art to industry; in 1837 the Normal School of Design (later named Royal College of Art) was founded; in 1849 theJournal of Design began publication; and in 1851 the Great Exhibition was held in London. A comparable development occurred in Germany. In 1907 industrialists, businessmen, artists and architects joined to form the Deutscher Werkbund; their manifesto protested the ugliness of the built environment and demanded the revival of artistic, moral and social ethics in industry. This philosophical direction was to eventually become the founding basis of the Bauhaus, the design school which would influence the development of contemporary industrial design in Europe and elsewhere. In Scandinavia, particularly Denmark and Sweden, industrial design adopted a very cultural and democratic posture, relying on the use of natural materials and organic forms. Industrial design's presence was most evident in furniture and housewares. All objects had a homogeneous style which came to be known as Scandinavian Modern.
In the US, the profession of industrial design took a slightly different direction than its European counterpart and began as a method of sales promotion, concerned with product styling and packaging. Essentially a post-Depression phenomenon, this approach was used by American designers such as Norman Bel Geddes, Henry Dreyfuss, Raymond Loewy and Walter Dorwin Teague in the design of manufactured objects ranging from kitchen appliances to railway locomotives.
Industrial design became firmly established in Canada only after 1945, as a direct result of the development of secondary industry during the war. C.D. HOWE, the federal minister of reconstruction, was concerned that this particular industrial potential be preserved. He requested that a display of industrial discoveries by the NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF CANADA be arranged. The exhibit, organized by Donald Buchanan to show that design and technical competence are not mutually exclusive, opened in 1946 at the annual convention of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, then travelled across Canada. Buchanan pushed for further exposure of industrial design both through the NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA and in several small publications. In June 1947 he received a federal government grant to investigate the role of industrial design in Canada, and later that year he proposed a list of recommendations. One of these led to the Industrial Design Act of 1961 and the founding of the National Design Council, a policy and promotional body which had great impact on Canadian design and which became a model for many design councils in other counties. Unfortunately, the council was disbanded in 1985. During the same postwar period, industrial designers began to organize as a profession. In 1946 the Affiliation of Canadian Industrial Designers was formed, which by 1947 had incorporated itself as the Assn of Canadian Industrial Designers.
Industrial design education was not formalized in Canada until the late 1940s. The ONTARIO COLLEGE OF ART offered its first course of study in industrial design in 1947 while, in Québec, l'Institue des arts appliqués, formerly l'École du meuble, had a similar design program. By the late 1960s, various community colleges in Ontario also offered programs in industrial design technology. The first degree programs were instituted in 1969, one at l'U de Montréal and another at the U of Alberta. Other universities followed suit and degree programs now exist at Carleton U, l'U du Québec à Montréal and at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design. Graduate degrees are awarded at l'U de Montréal, the U of Alberta and the U of Calgary.
Many Canadian designers have left their mark on industrial design in Canada. Jacques Guillon, Julien Hébert, Jan Kuypers and Frank Dudas were pioneers in the profession. Their impact was especially evident in transportation design (Montréal's Métro in the 1960s, VIA Rail's LRC in the 1970s), and in exhibition design (Expo 67, Expo 70) and furniture. In the years that followed, Douglas Ball became known internationally for his office furniture. Ian Bruce played the principal role in designing the Laser sailboat and in making possible its fabrication in many countries. Similarly, John Tyson, Morley Smith, Michel Dallaire, Claude Gidman and Koen de Winter have influenced the design of a great many everyday products: telephones, snowmobiles, leisure products, streetcars and housewares. Thomas Lamb, Keith Muller, and André Jarry are known in Canada and abroad as leading furniture designers.
More recently, a generation of young designers is making its presence felt. Karim Rashid, Tom Deacon, Richard Brault, Diane Croteau, Jean-François Jacques and Michel Morelli are providing leadership and vision in industrial design in Canada. A number of Canadian manufacturers, small and large, have also contributed to both a better utilization and a better integration of industrial design in industry, notably Northern Telecom through its sister company Bell Northern Research, Bombardier, Black & Decker, Noma, Danesco, Prévost, Canstar, Teknion Furniture and Umbra. Within Canada, both industry and the general public are developing a growing awareness of the value of industrial design. | <urn:uuid:1303f745-5282-4163-84c4-90185c64342b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/industrial-design/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00155-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962273 | 1,351 | 3.609375 | 4 |
We all know a heavy
construction project such as the Columbus Crossroads project can generate a lot
of noise, dust and vibrations. And it doesn’t always happen at convenient
times, since portions of this project are pretty much a round-the-clock
Since we’ve had questions about this from you and
your neighbors, we wanted to get you some answers.
the actual construction affect my neighbors and me?
In order to keep the I-71/670 Interchange
project on schedule, crews are working overnights and on weekends to remove old
bridges. That’s when traffic is at a minimum on local streets and highways, and
most of all it is safer for you and the construction workers
is much more to demolish in the next few weeks before reconstruction can begin.
are a few examples
· You may hear a machine called a hoe-ram crunching away at old
concrete as it demolishes old pavement and bridge surfaces. Some of this work
occurs at night, but only when we have no other choice.
· Pile driving (sinking metal columns for bridge supports)
normally happens during daylight hours, so any noise will be heard during those
hours. Businesses and residences within up to 400-500 feet away could feel some
vibrations, although these vibrations are not damaging.
· Mining work on the underground micro-tunnel is also underway and
can generate considerable noise. Mining operations will
occur approximately half the calendar days between now and mid May. When
crews are mining, they will work 22 hours per day. The noise is mostly generated as the
mining slurry (a mix of water and materials) is cleaned and separated for
either recycling or disposal.
· Beginning on or about January 29th, 2012 crews will
begin demolishing the old I-670 East “flyover” bridge, which will take several
days. When construction begins on
the new flyover, there will be more heavy equipment and pile driving, which
usually means noise, dust and vibration. While Kokosing, the contractor, will
do everything it can to minimize noise and dust, some of it can’t be avoided.
How noisy will it be and what can we do
and pile driving to build new bridge supports can be loud. Depending on weather
and wind conditions, noise can carry or seem louder.
business and residences are advised to make sure doors and windows are shut to
minimize noise exposure. Relocating to interior rooms of the home or keeping
curtains closed will reduce audible noise. You might also consider turning on a
fan or similar device that creates “white noise” to minimize sounds from
be constant pounding?
will be times when workers will be welding the pile together to build bridges,
performing mechanical checks of equipment and changing operators. During
these times, noise from the operation may be notably reduced.
also be aware that the vehicle back-up alarms you may hear are required by law
to protect the safety of those working in the construction zone. Noise like
back up alarms on trucks can be annoying but are safety features that save
lives and are required by law to help ensure the safety of the construction
and Kokosing, the contractor, are working closely with the City of Columbus to
be respectful of the people who live and work in the area. That includes
coordinating with local churches to make sure construction zone noise and
vibrations don’t interfere church services or special events. Some noise and
vibration, however, cannot be avoided.
Please be assured that ODOT and Kokosing will continue
minimize noise to the extent possible. We will also continue to reach out
through our neighborhood visits and you can follow us on both Facebook and Twitter for updates. | <urn:uuid:1ef98259-e26d-421b-baf4-5f524be67d4f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dot.state.oh.us/projects/71670/Pages/FAQs-ConstructionZoneNoise.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00053-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935401 | 800 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Sometimes it is hard to comprehend how much effect volcanic activity has on countries where erupting volcanoes are more commonplace. The United States has at least 65 known active volcanoes, but many of those volcanoes are in remote places like the Aleutian Islands. The majority of volcanoes near populated areas are fairly quiet right now — think Hood in Oregon or Rainier in Washington. However, some countries have a much higher density of volcanoes near population centers. The Volcanoes of the World – 3rd Edition had a graph of number of volcanoes compared to the population near these volcanoes and Indonesia leads the world in quantification — what they call a “VPI”. This stands for “Volcano Population Index” and more or less is a measure for how many people live within X km of a volcano that is known to have erupted since 1500 AD. So, VPI10 will tell us how many people live within 10 km of a historically active volcanoes. For a country like the United States, that number of relatively low, somewhere in the vicinity of a few thousand people (see below). However, for Indonesia, where there are at least 167 active volcanoes, the VPI10 is 5-10 million people. If you compare that to the total population of each country, for the U.S., only 0.001% would be considered VPI10, but in Indonesia, that percentage is closer to 3-5%. If you look at the VPI100 for Indonesia (people within 100 km of a Holocene volcano), the figure grows to a staggering ~200 million — almost the entire population of the island nation.
Why all this discussion of population and active volcanoes? Well, I saw an article today where Surono, the director of the Indonesian Volcanology and Disaster Mitigation Center, said that around 5 million people in Indonesia are currently refugees from volcanic activity – yes, 5 million! That is roughly the same as the population of Colorado, all in shelters or away from their homes due to volcanic activity in their country. Some of these people are fleeing actively erupting volcanoes like Sopatan or Gamalama, while others are still staying away from volcanoes that the Volcanology and Disaster Mitigation Center has declared safe, like Sinabung that has not erupted since 2010. The landscape — both geographically and socially — in Indonesia is dominated by volcanism, and even small eruptions can have a significant impact of thousands of people’s lives.Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article. | <urn:uuid:bee4e0de-204d-4103-8ea0-88283f4b86f6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wired.com/2012/09/volcanism-and-society-the-case-of-indonesia/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00005-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962873 | 520 | 3.53125 | 4 |
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Tutorials : Apr 1, 2011 ( )
Real-Time Cytometric Assay for Gender Bias
New Methodology Makes It Faster and Easier to Selectively Bias Births of Female Dairy Cows!--h2>
The 2011 Final Report of the Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures Project predicted that global population size will increase from nearly seven billion today to eight billion by 2030, and probably to over nine billion by 2050. With these increases in population, global food production will need to increase without the use of substantially more land and with diminishing impact on the environment.
Technologies that support increased, sustainable productivity and which are practical for the poorest farms to adopt can increase the supply of diverse foods at affordable prices. Dairy products are one of the most efficiently produced and safely transported protein foods. However, to meet the demands of population growth, the current 277 million worldwide dairy cow population needs to expand. This is not an easy feat: dairy farmers are already in constant need of more female calves to grow their herds and replace their aging cows.
Artificial insemination (AI) is widely used for breeding dairy cattle and has made bulls of high genetic merit available to all. A normal ejaculate from a dairy bull will contain 5 to 10 billion sperm, which can be diluted and used to inseminate 300 to 1,000 cows. The natural bias leans slightly toward bull calves as with most mammal species. While the basic principles controlling the sex of mammalian offspring are well known, only recently has technology allowed the advent of commercialization of sexed semen.
Female sperm have 3–4% more DNA than male sperm. Traditional sexed semen techniques rely on this difference in DNA content to separate female, male, and undefined sperm on a fluorescence-activated cell sorter. The process sorts sperm with high (approximately 90%) purity but is inefficient and requires extensive manipulation of sperm prior to cryopreservation.
In addition cell sorters are expensive, both in terms of instrument acquisition and day-to-day operation. Extensive training and a dedicated operator are typically required. Recovery of female sperm after sorting is only about 15%. This, combined with slow sorting speeds, has limited the application of sex-sorted semen to low-dose inseminations of about 2 million sperm, instead of the 10–20 million sperm used in conventional doses. Female birth rates do increase (up to 80%) but with drawbacks—lower conception rates, process variability, a steep learning curve, and high instrumentation costs. Easy-to-perform, cost-effective complimentary alternatives are needed to make widespread commercialization of sexed-sperm techniques viable.
Natural (Sex) Selection
The EnGender™ biomarker assay from Arex Life Sciences is used in real time to guide the processing of semen from elite dairy bull sires into doses of sperm for the artificial insemination of cows and heifers. The EnGender assay uses the Cohen biomarker to monitor cell surface changes that have different temporal occurrences post collection on female and male sperm.
X-bearing sperm (female sperm) gain expression of the biomarker and ability to fertilize slightly later than male sperm (Figure 1). Expression of the biomarker is measured in small samples of the ejaculate in real time to adjust the processing time to bias fertilization by female sperm.
Results from three trials, containing over 957 calf births and 300 fetal ultrasounds, on working dairy farms, demonstrated an 8–20% increase in female calvings to both heifers and cows. This supports Cohen’s hypothesis that temporal, rather than physical, separation can be used to obtain female-biased doses for AI, which eliminates the concerns of sperm loss and damage.
The EnGender biomarker assay does not rely on complex, expensive cell sorting for gender bias; rather biomarker expression is monitored by fluorescence measurement. Early work during assay development used fluorescence microscopy to score the biomarker fluorescence. However, this was so labor intensive in a real-time environment that it caused process deviations; it was too difficult to collect enough assay points and as a result, quality was compromised.
Analysis of Samples
Flow cytometry allows analysis of thousands of sperm per sample, achieving a much higher precision than is possible with microscopic assessment, and removes the subjectivity and labor intensity affiliated with microscopic scoring. However, flow cytometers are not common commodities at stud farms, and the high cost, complexity, large footprint, and special installation requirements of most cytometers preclude them from becoming standard equipment at small farms.
In order to measure enough cells in real time, Arex is using the Accuri® C6 Flow Cytometer® System. The small footprint and computer workstation make the C6 (Figure 2) highly portable. Portability combined with ease-of-use and low acquisition and operating costs make the C6 a good choice for quick, real-time use in a crowded bull hall.
Samples for the biomarker assay are prepared by transferring a few microliters of semen from the ejaculate to a tube containing EnGender biomarker assay reagents. The sample is incubated for 20 minutes and then analyzed on the C6 to measure the percentage of sperm that are positive for the Cohen biomarker.
Light-scatter signals from the sperm are initially plotted on a 2-D dot plot of forward scatter versus side scatter, and a gate (Figure 3A, gate R1) is drawn to exclude debris. Biomarker expression by sperm within the R1 gate is determined using a ligand conjugated to AlexaFluor® 488, detected in the FL1 channel of the C6, and represented in histogram plots (Figure 3B and C).
Early studies indicated that assessing biomarker expression at four or more time points is important for defining the peak of biomarker expression for a particular ejaculate. While the timing from ejaculate collection to peak-biomarker expression can vary between ejaculates, early studies indicated that the time to progress from peak biomarker expression to the point of obtaining female bias is relatively constant. Therefore, to allow straightforward sample preparation and analysis in real time, biomarker expression is currently the only parameter monitored.
The samples run during the course of incubation detect the biomarker change that dictates the appropriate time for further processing of the ejaculate into frozen doses for shipment to dairy farmers. Incorporating the EnGender biomarker assay utilizing the C6 into semen processing allows production of 500–1,000 standard doses (10–20 million sperm per dose) of semen from a single ejaculate, just as with unsexed semen—with the added benefit of gender bias.
To meet the increased food demands caused by population growth, the worldwide dairy cow population will need to expand dramatically over the next two decades. Technologies that selectively bias conception of female dairy cows may enable efficient expansion of milk production while allowing smaller herds.
The EnGender bioassay, along with the C6, can be used to increase births of female calves while maintaining conception rates typically observed following AI with unsexed sperm. Maintaining high conception rates after AI is important; only cows that have been pregnant produce milk.
Erin Gatza, Ph.D., is applications scientist and MaryAnn Labant ([email protected]) is marketing communications manager at Accuri Cytometers. Ron Parkinson is CEO and Barb A. Cohen, Ph.D., is founder and CSO at Arex Life Sciences.
© 2016 Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, All Rights Reserved | <urn:uuid:2dfb0543-733d-47e7-bc2f-7b0c2c60aa3e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.genengnews.com/keywordsandtools/print/1/22471/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00129-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925631 | 1,554 | 3.078125 | 3 |
This year marks five centuries since the death of Hieronymus Bosch. Harvard Art Museums is paying tribute to the Dutch artist with the exhibit, “Beyond Bosch: The Afterlife of a Renaissance Master in Print.”
While the literature dealing with Bosch is vast, his art has inspired an ongoing conflict of interpretations, which the exhibit nods to through its location, the University Research Gallery — a space earmarked for curatorial experimentation that encourages a range of faculty engagement, from generating exhibition concepts to evaluating visitor experience.
“Teaching with objects is a huge part of who we are as an institution, it’s one of the things we can do as a university art museum, and that’s really nice,” said the exhibit’s curator, Danielle Carrabino, associate research curator in European art.
Visitors might expect to see Bosch’s work lining the walls of the gallery, but instead, more than 30 prints by other artists point to his influence on printmaking from the 16th century to the present.
“There’s not a single original work by Bosch, but that concept of originality is something that I think the exhibition really tackles,” Carrabino said. A Boschian phenomenon began in the 16th century and continued strongly into the 17th century, mostly in printmaking.
“Bosch comes to the fore at the same time as the printmaking medium is being discovered, perfected, disseminated, learned — so it’s really the timing that allows for these prints to proliferate,” said Carrabino.
Included in the show is work by Alart du Hameel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jacques Callot, and Joannes van Doetecum, a 1935 lithograph by M. C. Escher, and Belgian artist Antoine Roegiers’ 2011 animated video, “The Seven Deadly Sins.” There are also pieces that appear to be Bosch creations, but aren’t — except perhaps in spirit.
“He’s a tricky artist, because a lot of the paintings that bear his signature aren’t actually by him,” said Carrabino, “That’s something you’ll see through this exhibition, that they’re signed Hieronymous Bosch, even 60 years after his death.”
Magnifying glasses hanging from the walls encourage exhibit visitors to get up close to the prints. In such a digital-heavy world, where people are often scrolling, clicking, moving, Carrabino wanted to create a space to match the gallery’s investigative nature.
“That’s one of the things that art is so great for, that it really can stop you and make you think, and ponder, and consider in a way that is really healthy in our time.”
In Bosch’s paintings you find vivid imagination and a strong sense of human frailty. “They’re meant to show you what will happen if you choose the wrong path. They’re not meant to promote hell or sinning, they’re meant to do just the opposite, to kind of frighten the viewer,” Carrabino said.
It’s a world of creatures built as fantastic hybrids. Eggs with legs that look like trees, fire-breathing monsters, and visions of hell — all seemingly out of place amongst the acrylics, sculptures, and textiles found in the rest of the museum.
But if you look closely, you will notice that the collection sits adjacent to “Everywhen,” an exhibit of work by indigenous artists of Australia in which time is a central, if never quite straightforward, motif. This placement, though unplanned, seems to fit well with Bosch’s artistic afterlife.
Carrabino smiled and said, “That’s kind of the magic of museums. Sometimes great things happen that you don’t plan.”
“Beyond Bosch” runs through May 8. | <urn:uuid:b9c2c1da-2b30-4605-bac1-60d28b9b8a42> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/02/spawn-of-bosch/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00183-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949147 | 860 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The more that bike lanes multiply in cities, from New York to São Paulo, the more people ride. Over the past decade, bike commuting in the U.S. has grown 62%. But it's still a tiny fraction of overall transportation.
In order to really get people out of cars, a group of Australian designers thinks we need to fully redesign cities—including the way we make buildings.
"The city of the future should not have infrastructure for cycling," writes Steven Fleming, an urban design professor and director of Cycle Space, an organization that reimagines bike-based urban design. "It should be infrastructure for cycling."
In Sydney, the designers looked at how the city could be rebuilt with a new network of lanes—including a bike-friendly apartment building in the center, with ramps that lead directly to each floor. Cyclists could take an elevator up to their floor and coast down the ramp into their apartment; when they want to leave, they can coast down several stories of ramps directly into a bike lane. Basically, the network of bike lanes extends into the building itself.
"Residential bike parking should have the same space-syntax relationship to the front door and kitchen as car parking does in a contemporary house in the suburbs," Fleming says.
He calls it the "start of trip" problem—even if a city has great bike lanes, if someone doesn't have a good way to store and access their bike, they may not want to ride. Bike-friendly cities like Copenhagen still struggle with what happens when you get home or arrive at a destination.
"They've done the cycle tracks and are now doing more pedestrian bridges," Fleming says. "There's no doubt they are leaders. The city's problem, though, is the lack of . . . housing stock that protects bikes from vandals and thieves."
Done right, he says, architecture would have space for people to store bike in their kitchen, and maybe even wheel their bike through stores as they shop, with a sleeping baby in the bike carrier, or use the basket to hold groceries. "Bicycletecture, as I like to call it, would do more for families than the 'carchitecture' they can get in the suburbs," he says. "They could raise their babies, work, shop, and exercise more efficiently."
The designers' mockup for Sydney also incorporates a distribution center at the bottom of the bikeable apartment building, based on the idea that if the city has a good bike network, it can actually be faster to deliver your latest Amazon order on the back of a cargo bike rather than on a van.
Bike lanes would also be redesigned, with covers that protect cyclists from rain, snow, or sunburn, so they can ride in any weather. "Since ancient times, urban mobility has gone undercover," Fleming says. "Motorists and patrons of public transport have their carriages' roofs. Pedestrians have awnings and colonnades—or did have, before traffic engineers intervened. I don't see why cycling should be the exception to an eternal rule of urban design, and instead celebrate Gore-Tex and sunscreen."
Traffic systems can be redesigned for bikes as well; Fleming points out that if cyclists didn't have to stop for cars at traffic lights, they could often run errands faster than someone driving in heavy traffic. "This is one of those neat revelations like finding it's faster making dinner with a chopping board and a knife than a food processor," he says.
In another set of sketches, the designers lay out what a full "Velotopia" might look like. On the streets, everyone would use a bike, from police to taxis. Heavier electric bikes would handle deliveries. Buildings are spanned by pedestrian bridges, while bikes can fly down dedicated lanes and up ramps into shops or offices. All of the buildings have built-in bike lanes to reach each floor, and could be topped with parks or urban farms.
Fleming hopes it's the kind of grand vision for cycling that can help lead to bigger changes, just like older visions for other forms of transport.
"The car has Wright's Broadacre and all of those 1930s avant-garde visions," he says. "Public transport has Howard's plan of the ideal garden city. Walking has the European old town as its hero. If the city were a football field, then those three town planning paradigms are being played all at once, like separate games of soccer, gridiron, and rugby—the messy vitality we love about cities. Academia gave me the time and the freedom to devise a fourth code."
Now he's hoping that cities take the ideas and start to use them. He's been testing the designs in the real world already, and says they are designed to meet the world's toughest building codes. "So yes, this is 100% real," he says. | <urn:uuid:7df87f8d-cf67-4876-add9-f0188ff579a9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.fastcoexist.com/3052018/what-a-city-would-like-if-it-was-designed-for-only-bikes-no-cars-allowed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976411 | 1,006 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Taekwondo-A Powerful Tool for Self-Defense
The martial art of Taekwondo, literally meaning "art of hand and foot fighting," is more than two thousand years old. Yet its physical and spiritual content have never been so vigorously sought after and practiced as it is now.
Taekwondo is considered the oldest self-defense martial art in the world and uniquely developed in Korea. It was first recorded in the Koguryo dynasty founded in 37 b.c. of whose vast territory included the Korean Peninsula north of the Han River and the Manchurian territory of China.
Taekwondo Power Stems from Body Systems
Taekwondo is a sport that responds to survival needs in a powerful and rational manner and maintains, as well, an orderly system uniformly related to the inner and outer spheres of the human being. The immense power of Taekwondo stems directly from the scientific use of the body systems. The power is so formidable that several bricks, roof tiles, or wooden boards can be broken merely with the bare hands or fists. Taekwondo employs almost every part of the body in defensive and offensive moves. Its techniques comprise units combined together for maximum efficiency in free fighting. These practice units are body drill in postures, punching, kicking, striking, blocking, combinations of these moves in formal patterns, pre-arranged attacks and counterattacks, and more. Conscientious training in these areas not only results in the ultimate self-defense techniques, but also in a mental discipline, which creates the strength of character necessary for success in many fields of endeavor.
Some History of Taekwondo
Taekwondo may be considered as old as history itself. Since man first learned to protect himself, it could be said that the primitive features of Taekwondo had spontaneously arisen. This form of self-defense became such an essential part of daily life that was gradually streamlined and organized into a unique and powerfully efficient weapon for survival.
In the process of the development of Taekwondo, a new sense of awareness of both physical and mental potential in the human body was discovered. Through a myriad of thought stimuli, experimentation, and experience, this skill of unarmed combat became what is today, a martial art technically moralized and scientifically formalized.
Before the birth of Christ, the three kingdoms of Koguryo, Baek-je, and Silla had been established on the peninsula now known as Korea. In each of these kingdoms, the skills and techniques of su su bak or kwon bupsu, later on called tae kyon, the predecessors of Taekwondo, were already highly sophisticated. They were a basic component of the military training of soldiers as a weapon based solely on fists, hands, and feet.
Royal Tombs Depict Fighting Stances
Some of the earliest known features of Taekwondo can be found in the murals of the royal tombs of Kakjeochong and Mooyongchong of the Koguryo period. These murals clearly show physical combat movements and fighting stances.
From the murals, we can visualize that Taekwondo was then already familiar to the people of Koguryo. And because it was such a highly respected sport among the people, it was thus depicted in murals and paintings in tombs.
Substantial documentary evidence of the martial arts spirit in Baek-je also exists. In that era, the sport was officially encouraged, and not only the military had their soldiers trained in Taekwondo, archery and horse riding, the general populace too were warriors who excelled in the arts.
The temples and shrines during the Silla dynasty produced a great many stone engravings depicting a variety of Taekwondo forms. During the reign of Chin Heung, twenty-fourth king of Silla, Korean culture and martial arts rose to flourishing heights. Silla, at the time, was a mere weak and tiny kingdom constantly harassed and threatened by its more powerful neighbor kingdoms of Koguryo and Baek-je. But Silla did not stir and proving itself with national character of strength and integrity, existed for 992 years.
At the time the most outstanding contribution to the development of the martial arts emanated from an elite officer corps called Hwa Rang Do—a military and social organization for noble youths formed by King Chin Heung. The Hwa Rang Do were well trained not only in the usual sports of archery, target practice, and horsemanship, but also practice of mental and physical discipline, as well as many forms of hand and foot fighting. Through their unrelenting efforts to conquer turbulent rivers and rugged terrain, the group of young knights grew strong and fearless. Their merciless strife to defend their country and their refinement of their souls became well known throughout the peninsula. Their victories helped to advance the movement for the unification of the three separated kingdoms for the first time in the history of the Korean Peninsula.
The Koguryo dynasty (a.d. 935–1392) further popularized the study of unarmed combat. It was during this period that the martial arts were scientifically analyzed and systematized. They were later adopted into the Yi era (a.d.1392–1910). However, strong anti-military sentiment soon pervaded among the ruling classes and tae kyon was generally and openly debased. By the end of the Yi dynasty, the martial arts appeared to have lost all traces of their original vigorousness and liveliness in the midst of the period of civil enlightenment.
For several decades after the turn of the twentieth century, the Japanese occupation of Korea forbade the practice of any of the martial arts. Only in secrecy were the arts passed on to a small number of students and kept alive by ardent proponents, such as Song, Duk Ki and Han, Il Dong.
After Korea was liberated in 1945, many dojang (martial arts institutes) sprang forth, each announcing its presence with its own particular standard of style and method. It was nevertheless the dawning of a new day for the ancient art of tae kyon. Its revival in various forms can explain that it has successfully remained deeply implanted in the fabric of Korean society to be able to flower and blossom once again to its full colors. A decade later, Taekwondo was selected as the new name of the national martial art. The name resembles the old name of tae kyon and it perfectly describes the art (do) of hand (tae) and foot (kwon).
This brings us to the interesting aspect regarding the distribution of the variety of strikes. A strike, whether by kicking, punching or other use of body parts for attacking, produces a direct effect on the known target. And it is the effect, such as the extent of target damage, tissue injury, contact time, area of displacement, etc. which ultimately determines the characteristic of the strike itself.
In striking a target, if contact time and displacement are zero or minimal, the strike would be of the First degree, as it is in free sparring. A Second-degree strike renders the target maximal extent of damage for the gravity of the force used. The total energy is dispersed instantaneously. For a Third-degree strike, contact time is relatively longer than the First- and Second-degree strikes because this time the attacking force pushes a target for a variable distance whereby all of the power is administered throughout the total displacement. | <urn:uuid:00346f5f-746c-4f8e-9a82-97d2ddf7338f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ymaa.com/articles/taekwondo-a-powerful-tool-for-self-defense | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00147-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960316 | 1,537 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Although there are many reasons to quit smoking, probably the biggest motivator to quit is how dangerous smoking is to your health⎯and the health of those around you. Smoking harms nearly every part of your body and is a major cause of many diseases , including cancer, heart disease, emphysema, stroke, aneurysms and bronchitis. Smoking can also cause pneumonia, cataracts, chronic lung diseases, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). In all, smoking is responsible for nearly 1 in 5 deaths in the United States.
In this section we talk about the dangers of smoking not to scare you, but to help you understand the risk you are taking every time you light a cigarette, and all you have to gain by quitting. The following are some of the many health benefits you can look forward to as a non-smoker:
- Quitting smoking cuts your risk of heart attack in half.
- According to the US Center for Disease Control, men who don’t smoke can look forward to an average of 13.2 more years of life. Women who don’t smoke live an average of 14.5 years longer.
- No matter what your age, people who quit smoking are less likely to die from a smoking-related illness than people who continue smoking. Quitting before age 50 means you will have half the risk of dying in the next 15 years as someone who continues to smoke.
- Cigarette smoking is known to cause at least 30 percent of all cancer deaths, and 90 percent of lung cancer deaths. Quitting will greatly reduce your risk of developing many different types of cancer, including lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, kidney cancer, and cervical cancer as well as bladder, mouth and throat cancers.
- Cancers only make up about half of smoking-related deaths. If you quit now, you can reduce your risk of other serious diseases linked to smoking, including heart disease (the leading killer of people in the United States), emphysema, stroke, aneurysms, chronic bronchitis and pneumonia.
- Smoking has specific dangers to women’s health. For women who are over 35 and use birth control pills quitting is particularly important, because smoking puts them in a high risk group for heart attack, stroke and blood clots in the legs. Quitting will also decrease risk of miscarriage, complications during pregnancy, reduced fertility, having premature and low birth weight infants, and infant death.
- Smoking has been linked to erectile dysfunction in men. However, quitting smoking can reduce your risk of developing this condition to the same level as someone who never smoked.
- Quitting will reduce your risk of developing other health problems, such as cataracts, gum disease, hip fractures and bone thinning.
Learn more about the health benefits over time.
Of the 45.1 million adults who were smokers in 2005, an estimated 70 percent said they wanted to quit smoking. | <urn:uuid:24a82705-85fe-4be5-8490-b44a874c69de> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.determinedtoquit.com/motivatingtoquit/benefits/healthbenefits/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00000-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967317 | 606 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Lillies Kill Cats
It may not come as much of a shock to know that certain plants and flowers can be toxic to pets. In fact, pet owners are so aware of certain toxicities that it’s not uncommon come December for emergency pet hospitals to start receiving calls from pet owners worried because their cat was seen nibbling on the leaf of a poinsettia plant. This is great (it’s always a good thing for pet owners to be educated and informed), but...
...the truth is that there are other plants and flowers that are more common and more dangerous to pets than poinsettias. One such flower is the lily.
It only takes a nibble or a lick:
- Lilies are one of the most dangerous flowers to have around cats. It takes only a nibble or lick to send a cat into acute kidney failure, which can be fatal.
- If you live with cats, never have lilies in the home. When sending flower bouquets to friends or family members with cats, specifically request no lilies.
True lilies - including the Stargazer lily, Tiger lily, Easter lily, Day lily, Japanese show lily, Asiatic lily, Rubrum lily, and others - are beautiful, sweet-smelling flowers that are so common, you’ll find them everywhere from everyday table centerpieces to wedding bouquets. Unfortunately, they are one of the most dangerous flowers to have around cats. It takes only a nibble on one leaf or stem, or the ingestion of a small amount of lily pollen (easy to do when a cat grooms itself) to send a cat into acute kidney failure and you rushing to the emergency vet.
Acute kidney (renal) failure is always debilitating to your pet and expensive for you. The outlook for cats with acute kidney failure resulting from eating lilies can be good, so long as early and aggressive treatment is pursued. But if too much time passes before ingestion is recognized and appropriate treatment is started, the outlook becomes much worse and death from the disease or from euthanasia is more likely. The sad truth is that without treatment, acute kidney failure is going to be fatal.
Treatment for lily-induced acute kidney failure involves aggressive IV fluids, injectable medications, nutritional support, and very close monitoring. If such treatment is proving unsuccessful, advanced options, such as peritoneal dialysis, continuous renal replacement therapy, or renal dialysis are considered. These treatments are not cheap and are also not available at all veterinary clinics. In fact, because treatment for acute kidney failure resulting from lily toxicity is so intense, it is best to have your cat treated at a specialty veterinary emergency hospital right from the get-go.
Hospitalization and treatment costs for this condition will depend on the severity of the case and the cat’s response to therapy. It can safely be assumed, though, that a hospital bill will likely start at $2,000, and could increase to $4,000 or more. This is not a condition that can be conservatively treated – delay in starting the appropriate treatment both worsens the cat’s prognosis and increases treatment costs.
As you are hopefully appreciating, preventing your cat’s exposure to lilies is truly of the utmost importance, and there are several easy ways you can help prevent this toxicity.
- If you live with cats, never have lilies in the home. Regardless of how out of reach you think they may be, it’s just not worth the risk. Cats jump, dead leaves fall, vases spill, and pollen travels on breezes – any of these scenarios can kill your cat.
- Keep your cats indoors. Many people have lilies in their garden. If your cat is outdoors, unless they are in a secure outdoor enclosure (such as the Kittywalk System), there is no way to ensure that they will not eat or rub up against those lilies.
- When sending flower bouquets to friends or family members with cats, specifically request no lilies. To make sure they listen to your request, tell them that the recipient is deathly allergic to the flowers. Some florists may not be aware of the dangers of lilies to cats, and they don’t need to know that the ‘recipient’ you are referring to is your friend’s cat.
- Inform your friends and family members of the dangers of lilies to cats. The more people that know about the risk, the more cats we can save from lily toxicity and possible death. Please share our Lilies Kill Cats article and infographic. And see here for a more extensive list of poisonous plants and flowers – and some non-toxic alternatives. | <urn:uuid:7bc94392-3f22-4221-b7f9-469ad76bfafa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.preventivevet.com/cats/lesser-known-pet-toxicities-lily-toxicity-in-cats | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00024-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950573 | 987 | 2.546875 | 3 |
AI - artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the branch of computer science concerned with making computers behave like humans. The term was coined in 1956 by John McCarthy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Artificial intelligence includes the following areas of specialization:
Can Computers Exhibit Full AI?
Currently, no computers exhibit full artificial intelligence (that is, are able to simulate human behavior). The greatest advances have occurred in the field of games playing. The best computer chess programs are now capable of beating humans. In May, 1997, an IBM super-computer called Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Gary Kasparov in a chess match.
In the area of robotics, computers are now widely used in assembly plants, but they are capable only of very limited tasks. Robots have great difficulty identifying objects based on appearance or feel, and they still move and handle objects clumsily.
Natural Language and Voice Recognition
Natural-language processing offers the greatest potential rewards because it would allow people to interact with computers without needing any specialized knowledge. You could simply walk up to a computer and talk to it. Unfortunately, programming computers to understand natural languages has proved to be more difficult than originally thought. Some rudimentary translation systems that translate from one human language to another are in existence, but they are not nearly as good as human translators. There are also voice recognition systems that can convert spoken sounds into written words, but they do not understand what they are writing; they simply take dictation. Even these systems are quite limited -- you must speak slowly and distinctly.
Systems Fall Short of Early Expectations
In the early 1980s, expert systems were believed to represent the future of artificial intelligence and of computers in general. To date, however, they have not lived up to expectations. Many expert systems help human experts in such fields as medicine and engineering, but they are very expensive to produce and are helpful only in special situations.
Today, the hottest area of artificial intelligence is neural networks, which are proving successful in a number of disciplines such as voice recognition and natural-language processing.
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Network Topology refers to layout of a network. How different nodes in a network are connected to each other and how they communicate is... Read More » | <urn:uuid:61a68c3d-2c01-4cf7-912c-2f0dcc7244d7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/artificial_intelligence.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396455.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00068-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941416 | 631 | 3.453125 | 3 |
On Halloween night, a mob of scholars and readers will descend on the New York Public Library, in Midtown Manhattan, in pursuit of a nightmare. Their quarry: Frankenstein's monster, dreamed up by Mary Shelley on the shores of Lake Geneva during the cold, dank summer of 1816, almost 200 years ago.
Shelley brought to life the story of Victor Frankenstein and his creature in notebooks that passed back and forth between her and her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who made some changes and additions. Now held by the Bodleian Library, at the University of Oxford, the notebooks are essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about the birth of Frankenstein, but for decades they have been very hard to see.
On October 31, in a ceremony at the New York library, publicly available digital editions of the Frankenstein notebooks will go online at last, marking the official debut of the Shelley-Godwin Archive.
The archive is the offspring of a partnership among the Bodleian, the New York Public Library, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, or MITH, located at the University of Maryland at College Park. Like Victor Frankenstein, the organizers have a grand ambition. They want to stitch together elements from different collections—especially the rich holdings of the Bodleian and the New York Public—and bring to life a major new digital resource, not just for scholars but for anyone interested in Mary and Percy Shelley or in Mary's parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.
The Bodleian and the New York library's Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle together hold about 90 percent of the important archival material, according to the institutions. The British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Huntington Library, and the Houghton Library at Harvard University also own significant Shelley-Godwin documents that may eventually be included in the archive as well.
"We're bringing those distributed manuscripts together and putting them online for everyone," says Neil Fraistat, a professor of English at the University of Maryland, where he directs MITH. He and Elizabeth C. Denlinger, curator of the Pforzheimer Collection, have been leading the development of the Shelley-Godwin Archive with the help of a $300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Body of Work
They decided to put the Frankenstein notebooks online first because the story has such a grip on the popular imagination and because they had excellent scholarly editions to build on. Charles E. Robinson, a retired professor of English at the University of Delaware, published a well-regarded facsimile edition in 1996, but it had a print run of only a few hundred copies, "and it was fantastically expensive," Ms. Denlinger says. "So not only individuals couldn't afford it, a lot of small libraries couldn't afford it."
In 2008, after much careful study of the original notebooks, Mr. Robinson published an edition of Frankenstein in which he was able to distinguish words and passages in Mary's handwriting from those in Percy's. (Just how big a role Percy played in Mary's creation was long the subject of scholarly debate.) That work and his earlier facsimile edition form the backbone of what will be available through the Shelley-Godwin Archive; a team of graduate students and scholars at MITH checked and retranscribed everything. Mr. Robinson will be on hand at the New York library to talk about his work, the evolution of close textual scholarship and the technologies that enable it, and how a reader can use the online edition.
When the site rises to life on Thursday, "you'll be able to experience Frankenstein, all of the known drafts, all of the known fair copy, and you'll be able to see it several different ways," Mr. Fraistat says. "You'll be able to go through the pages of the notebooks, one by one," as Mary and Percy worked on them, or order the sections in narrative sequence, as if reading through the novel.
Readers will be able to separate out Mary's contributions from Percy's, down to the level of specific words. "Let's say you're interested in the word 'monster,'" Mr. Fraistat says. "You can search and find every instance of the word 'monster' in the drafts and fair copy," along with every instance where that word was added or struck out by one Shelley or the other. "You can get some really interesting analysis going," he says.
"It's wonderful to have the transcriptions" online, Mr. Robinson says, although he notes that some useful elements may be lost in the move. For instance, in his 1996 edition he was able to capture the "fairly exact positioning" of any change that either Shelley made in a line or a margin; that has proved hard to do in the online version. "It's a trade-off," he says, "but I think the benefits far outweigh" that loss.
Mr. Fraistat emphasizes that the Shelley-Godwin Archive will be in an experimental phase for some time. He does not anticipate that the site will experience the kind of spectacular technical snafus that have beset the rollout of the federal health-care reform, but "there's no way it will work perfectly" on every device or browser, he says. "There's plenty of places where things could go wrong."
A Summons to Citizen Humanists
For now, readers will be asked to report technical problems (or textual errors, if they spot them) via email. Down the road, though, the organizers hope to develop the site into something far more robust and participatory, recruiting users to flag errors, transcribe manuscripts, and so on. Beginning with the Frankenstein notebooks, texts in the archive will be color-coded to signal how much work has already been done on them, according to Mr. Fraistat. Green will indicate that a manuscript is "fully curated," transcribed, and encoded; yellow will indicate that some work has been done on that particular text, but more remains; and red will mean "you're just looking at a page" of raw manuscript.
Mr. Fraistat's team at MITH built the Shelley-Godwin Archive using the Shared Canvas linked-data model, created by Stanford University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Open Annotation Collaboration. It "allows you to take any single image, like a page image," and add annotations and layers to it, Mr. Fraistat says. The next step is to finish building an expanded technological framework, called Skylark, to make possible the kind of participatory experience the archive's organizers would like to create. The MITH group has applied for another grant to support the development of Skylark, but Mr. Fraistat says they're committed to making it happen with or without that money. If they do get the grant, he says, they hope to have a Skylark pilot up and running a year from January. They'll make the code openly available through GitHub so that other project developers can use it too.
With or without a grant for Skylark, the Shelley-Godwin Archive will be years in the making. The next manuscript to go online will probably be Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, according to Mr. Fraistat, but the organizers haven't set a rollout date for that yet. Fans of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft will have to wait longer still to see any of their manuscripts—how long isn't yet clear.
Mr. Fraistat sees the archive as part of a much larger project: to engage the public in the work of the humanities. There are plenty of citizen scientists eager to pitch in on science-research projects like Galaxy Zoo, Mr. Fraistat says, but "there are very few citizen humanists." He'd like to see the Shelley-Godwin Archive develop from an access point into what he calls a "work site," where all kinds of people—students and general readers as well as trained scholars—will be able to work with the raw stuff of literature.
"I hope this is the future of literary archives," Mr. Fraistat says, "a kind of collaboration between people in the academy, people in the classroom, and people in the general public who are interested in the material."
Correction (10/30/2013, 5:11 p.m.): This article originally misidentified one of the organizations participating in the archive project. It is the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, not the Maryland Institute for the Humanities. The article has been updated to reflect this correction. | <urn:uuid:3777779f-ed50-4489-aaef-0c50b46074c3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://chronicle.com/article/Frankensteins-Manuscript/142701 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951882 | 1,786 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Construction prices for highways and streets represent the price to government in providing a key component of transportation infrastructure.
|Producer Price Index (Jan-92=100)||Oct-01||Oct-02|
|Highways and streets||124.4||123.6|
|Highways and streets percent change from same month previous year||-2.24||-0.66|
NOTES: The current value is compared to the value from the same period in the previous year to account for seasonality.
Data from July 2002 to October 2002 are preliminary. The base period of the original index is June 1986. January 1992 is set to be the new reference point (=100) by dividing the values of the original index by the value of January 1992 in the original index. It is important to point out that this process changes only the reference point, and not the base period of the index because the weight structure of the index did not change.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics; December 4, 2002; available at: http://www.bls.gov/ppi/. | <urn:uuid:bd62bfe4-814b-41fa-aacb-d71a2fd5a3a5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/transportation_indicators/december_2002/Economy/html/Producer_Prices_of_Highway_and_Street_Construction.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00026-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912959 | 231 | 2.671875 | 3 |
The Pacific War changed abruptly in November 1943 when Admiral Chester W. Nimitz unleashed his Central Pacific drive, spearheaded by U.S. Marines. This new American initiative of bold amphibious assaults into the teeth of prepared defenses astonished Japanese commanders, who called them "storm landings" because they differed sharply from earlier campaigns. This is the story of seven of these now epic long-range assaults executed against murderous enemy fire—Tarawa, Saipan, Guam, Tinian, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa—and a potential eighth, Kyushu. Alexander describes each clash as demonstrating a growing U.S. ability to concentrate overwhelming naval forces against a distant strategic objective and to mount successful frontal assaults despite the high cost of storming these heavily fortified islands.
Award-winning historian Joseph Alexander relates this extraordinary story with an easy narrative style bolstered by years of research of original battle accounts, Japanese translations, and interviews with survivors. Richly illustrated and abounding with human-interest stories of colorful "web-footed amphibians," his book vividly portrays the sheer drama of these three-dimensional battles whose magnitude and ferocity may never again be seen in warfare. Storm Landings was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature in 1997, presented by the Naval Order of the United States
Col. Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret.) served in the Corps for 29 years as an assault amphibian officer. He wrote six books, including Utmost Savagery and Edson’s Raiders. He was the Naval Institute Author of the Year in 1996 and Naval History Author of the Year in 2010. He was the principal historian and writer on the exhibit design team throughout the construction of the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Col. Alexander passed away on 28 September 2014. He was 76 years old.
Praise for Storm Landings
“Joseph Alexander’s concise volume is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of warfare in the Pacific. It deserves to find a wide readership among both military historians and the public at large.”
— The Northern Mariner
“In Storm Landings [Alexander] combines diligent research (much of it in Japanese sources) with a vivid writing style…Casual readers will enjoy the book and serious students will not be disappointed.”
— The Journal of Military History | <urn:uuid:407f72e0-d9e0-439b-8ec4-e68ad831725c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.usni.org/store/catalog-fall-2012/storm-landings | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00006-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943398 | 480 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Do you need a single object from a picture, say, a beach ball or a dog? With GIMP (a freeware, powerful image editor) and a little patience, you can extract the object from the picture. Tell me, which of the following images is the original?
(It is the second one, in case you didn’t guess it already.)
To start, you’ll need to have GIMP open. If you don’t have GIMP, you can download it at Sourceforge .
Once you have GIMP opened and the picture loaded, duplicate the picture’s layer with Ctrl+Shift+D; then disable the new layer by clicking on the eye (if you can’t see this dialog box, press Ctrl+L):
If you’re not being terribly accurate, don’t worry. For one, you’re zoomed very far in, so it’ll look better once zoomed out; for two, you can always hit backspace to undo the last point.
When you’ve gone around the entire object, press “Enter” on the keyboard to get an actual selection of marching ants. Now you need to reverse the selection so you’re selecting the background; go to”Select” ->”Invert”. After you’ve inverted it, press “Delete” on the keyboard to get rid of the background.
Press Ctrl+Shift+A to clear the selection, and congratulations–you’ve removed the background:
If you want learned how to put the object on a new background, continue reading this article; if not, go practice those background deletion skills!
When wanting to insert a foreign object into an image, the first thing to do is copy + paste the object from one image into the image you want to insert it to. You can copy + paste the object by pressing Ctrl + A to select it, and Ctrl + C to copy it; then go to the image that you want to insert the object and press Ctrl + V to paste in the object. Next you need to use the “Scale Tool” (Shift+T) to scale the background and the object so they match. Lastly, if the extraction of your object was a little sloppy, you can remedy this in a few ways:
- Use the “Fuzzy Select Tool” to select the transparent area of the object layer. Go to “Select” -> “Grow” and click OK (it should be on one pixel). Now go to “Filters” -> “Blur” -> “Gaussian Blur” and blur by five pixels (you can experiment with lower or higher).
- You can zoom in again and delete extraneous parts of the object–it’s the slowest and hardest, but it gives the best results.
- Use the “Fuzzy Select Tool” to select the transparent area of the object layer. Then go to “Select” -> “Grow” and grow by one pixel. Last go to “Layers” -> “Transparency” -> “Color to Alpha”. (This one will look great in some situations, and bad in others.)
After some practice, you will (hopefully) get something like this:
If you have any tips on how to go about object extraction/background removal, feel free to share in the comments below. | <urn:uuid:2d9392e4-04d4-4f0d-a16d-90cad4f0ca88> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://dottech.org/17986/how-to-remove-backgroundsextract-objects-from-pictures/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00127-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.87869 | 740 | 2.75 | 3 |
The site known as Two Guns, where Interstate 40 now crosses Canyon Diablo, was long avoided by the region's Native American tribes. It was believed to be an area fraught with ill fortune, cursed by the dead. White settlers who inquired about the site or attempted to build there were warned to steer clear. Naturally, outsiders didn't always listen, and those who ignored the warnings eventually learned of the spirits that stirred in the canyon's shadows.
The ghosts are said to be those of a band of Apaches who were executed in 1878 after raiding Navajo encampments. The Apaches had crossed north over the Little Colorado River and charged a neighboring Navajo tribe in a surprise attack. Except for three girls taken prisoner, the invaders swiftly murdered every man, woman and child in camp, then ransacked the victims' homes. At the same time, a second band of Apaches looted another camp a few miles away, murdering 30 more Navajos before both groups returned south.
Receiving word of the attacks, Navajo leaders immediately organized 25 men and raced off in pursuit of the invaders. The posse tracked them across the river, rushed to intercept them, then set up along logical routes hoping to ambush the party. The Apaches, however, never came through. It was as if they had disappeared.
The Navajos combed the region, but could find no trace of the assassins. It looked as though the Apaches had outsmarted them. When two Navajo scouts thought to check a short arm of Canyon Diablo, however, they were startled by a stream of hot air emanating from a crack in the earth, followed by the sound of voices. The Apaches were underground! This shallow side canyon, which became extremely narrow, passed beneath a short natural bridge that concealed the entrance to a cave. It was practically undetectable. Here, the Apaches had holed up, horses and all.
Having discovered their hideout, the Navajos descended on the cave as night began to fall. They crawled to the edge of the canyon, aimed their guns at the passageway and waited. With only one way out, the Apaches were trapped.
Still oblivious to their discovery, two Apache men then unwittingly walked out into the canyon. They instantly fell dead from Navajo gunfire. When the remaining Apaches realized what happened, they tried to fight back, but the cave opening was too narrow to negotiate a shot. Moreover, the only way they could advance into the open canyon would be single file, completely vulnerable to the Navajos' bullets. They had nowhere to go and no way to defend themselves.
Meanwhile, intent on seeking justice for their slain brethren, several of the Navajo warriors began to gather brush and kindling. This they set ablaze and dropped down in front of the cavern's entryway. For fear of suffocation, some Apaches tried to push the burning mass away, but were killed in the process. From inside, others threw water on the fire and attempted to block the entrance with stones, but their efforts had little effect.
One Apache tried to negotiate with his captors, but when the Navajo leaders demanded he release the three girls they had kidnapped, the man hesitated. His stalling confirmed what the Navajos feared: the girls had already been executed.
Enraged, the Navajos threw on more fuel. They filled the entrance with all the sagebrush and driftwood they could gather. Smoke rose from the surrounding cracks. Screams echoed from inside, mixed with the sounds of panicked horses. Toward the end, the men above could hear the last survivors choking out their death chants.
Once the embers faded and the rocks cooled, a few Navajos entered the cave to recover their stolen possessions. There, they witnessed the horrific aftermath. Just inside, a wall of charred animal meat obstructed the entrance. Having slain their horses, the Apaches tried to extinguish the flames with the blood, then butchered the carcasses and stuffed them into the entryway in an effort to block the smoke. When this last attempt failed, all 42 Apaches succumbed to the fire. The cave, intended as a refuge, had become their final resting place.
In the decades that followed, pioneers who ignored the Indians' warnings concerning the area relayed recurring reports of ghostly activity. Their settlements were plagued by groans and disembodied footsteps outside their cabins.
In addition, the town of Two Guns, which was built practically on top of the cave, suffered from what locals believed to be a curse. Buildings were ravaged by multiple fires and the landowner murdered. Additionally, the section of Route 66 that passed nearby was responsible for a disproportionate number of accidents.
One entrepreneur went so far as to turn the Apaches' tomb into a tourist attraction and use the skeletal remains he found inside as props; he was later mauled twice by wild cats and eventually run out of town. No business venture has survived on the site since.
The charred walls of the Apache Death Cave have since faded, its remaining bones removed and its natural bridge collapsed by an earthquake. But those who have dared disturb it would surely tell you it has never been completely vacated. | <urn:uuid:68be2227-40db-40a4-ab32-f55f9fa4f401> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.roadsideresort.com/stories/the-apache-death-cave | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00089-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980232 | 1,059 | 2.75 | 3 |
Stiquito For Beginners : An Introduction to Robotics
This is the second book on the popular
Stiquito robot. Stiquito for Beginners is much more basic than the original book.
It is aimed at the novice and it presents you with a unique opportunity to learn about the
fields of engineering, electronics, and robotics in an original way.
This book may also be the first affordable educational book to
describe a robot and include the robot with the book! This book will provide you with the
skills and equipment to build a small robot, and will also provide you with instructions
on how to build electronic controls for your robot.
The star of this book is Stiquito, a small, inexpensive hexapod
(six-legged) robot. Stiquito has been used since 1992 by universities, high schools, and
hobbyists. It is unique not only because it is so inexpensive but because its applications
Stiquito is a robot that is intended for use as a research and educational tool. This book
is written at a level for High School and College students. It provides an engineering,
electronics, and robotics curriculum, and presents experiments and projects that
illustrate what they teach. It also illustrates Stiquito's uses in education by presenting
lab exercises and describes the use of nitinol in experiments. Stiquito has already
successfully been used to teach in primary, secondary, high school, and college classes.
Contents: Chapter 1: An Introduction to Robotics and
Stiquito This chapter presents a brief overview of robotics and describes the
Stiquito robot. This chapter will also describe the skills needed to build a Stiquito
Chapter 2: Engineering Skills and the Design Process
What is an engineer? What skills do an engineer need? How does an engineer go about
designing something? This chapter explores these questions.
Chapter 3: Electricity Basics This chapter
discusses some of the basic properties of electricity. This chapter also provides some
experiments to show how electricity and electronic components work.
Chapter 4: Nitinol Basics This chapter discusses
some of the basic properties of the Stiquito's muscle, nitinol wire. It also provides some
experiments to show how electricity and nitinol work.
Chapter 5: Stiquito: A Small,
Simple, Inexpensive Hexapod Robot This chapter gives step-by-step instructions on
how to assemble the robot kit included in the book.
Chapter 6: A Manual Controller for the Stiquito Robot
You have finished building the robot kit. Now how do you make it walk? This chapter
gives step-by-step instructions on how to build the simplest tethered controller for
Chapter 7: A PC Based Controller for the Stiquito Robot This
interface allows you to use an IBM PC or compatible computer to control the actuators on
the Stiquito robot and experiment with various gaits.
Chapter 8: A Simple Circuit to Make Stiquito Walk on Its Own
This chapter contains detailed instructions on how to build an electrical controller to
allow Stiquito to walk autonomously.
Chapter 9: Uses of Stiquito and the Future of Small Walking Robots
Now that you have built Stiquito, what can you do with it? What can it be used for
in the future? This chapter explores these questions.
A biography, a list of suppliers, and an index are also included.
The book includes all materials needed to build Stiquito.
You only need a hobby knife,
pliers, and a battery to complete the robot.
We recommend this
Stiquito Controlled! : Making a Truly
Build your own Stiquito "walking-stick" robot insect with the included kit!
Stiquito Controlled! is a widely accessible, user-friendly book that
provides step-by-step instructions for building Stiquito, a small,
multi-legged robot that resembles a "walking-stick" insect. The book
includes comprehensive instructions and all the parts needed to complete
assembly. Most notably, the kit contains a microcontroller board that allows
Stiquito to walk on its own. Key features of the book include:
Complete kit to build Stiquito—no additional materials necessary (common
Detailed, step-by-step instructions for assembly of the robot
Comprehensive lessons on making Stiquito walk using the
Engineering teachers and students, researchers, and science enthusiasts will
find Stiquito Controlled! a fascinating and fun hands-on project.
Shape Memory Materials
memory materials are fascinating materials, with the potential for
application as "smart materials" and also as new functional materials. This
book presents a systematic and up-to-date account of all aspects of shape
memory materials, from fundamentals to applications. Starting from the basic
principles of the martensitic transformation, on which the shape memory
effect and the super-elasticity of alloys are based, the mechanisms of the
two phenomena are clearly described, together with possible applications.
The characteristics, fabrication techniques and thermo-mechanical treatment
of various shape memory alloys are described in detail, with special
emphasis on Ti-Ni and Ti-Ni-X (with X being Cu, Fe etc.) alloys.
The book also describes various applications and design principles, for example in
actuators, medical applications and as smart materials. The book contains
chapters on shape memory ceramics and polymers as well as shape memory
alloys, making it a comprehensive account of the field. | <urn:uuid:b818d951-bbc1-4e16-8635-2ec10433ebdb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.robotbooks.com/Muscle_Wires.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402516.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00127-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.887835 | 1,168 | 3.6875 | 4 |
American Indian Languages
American Indian Culture
What's new on our site today!
As a complement to our Mohegan-Pequot language information, we would like to share our
collection of indexed links about the Pequot people and various aspects of their society. The emphasis
of these pages is on American Indians as a living people with a present and a future as well as a past. Pequot history is interesting and
important, but the Pequots are still here today, too, and we try to feature modern authors as well as traditional
folklore, contemporary artwork as well as museum pieces, and the issues and struggles of today as well as the tragedies
of yesterday. Suggestions for new links are always welcome.
Our Pequot Websites
Information and language learning materials from the Pequot Indian language.
Pequot Facts for Kids:
Questions and answers about Pequot culture.
Mohegan and Pequot Legends:
Collection of Pequot Indian legends and folktales.
Tribal and Community Links
Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation:
Official website of the Mashantucket Pequots of Connecticut.
Mashantucket Pequot Museum:
Homepage of the Pequot tribal museum.
Foxwoods Resort and Casino:
Homepage of the Mashantucket Pequot casino.
Maps of Pequot Lands
New England Tribal Maps:
Map of early Pequot and other New England Indian territory.
Connecticut Indians Map Massachusetts Indian Map:
Tribal maps showing the original territory of the Mohegan and Pequot Indians and their neighbors.
Pequot Lifestyle and Traditions
The story of the Pequot Indians from prehistoric times through the Pequot Massacre.
Article on Pequot history and culture.
Collection of Mohegan and Pequot Indian legends and folktales.
New England Indian Clothes Traditional Indian Clothing Head Dress Native American Hairstyles:
Sketches and photographs of traditional Mohegan and Pequot clothing.
Pequot Pow Wow Photographs Mohegan Powwow Video:
Photos and a video from contemporary Mohegan and Pequot powwows.
Mashantucket Pequot Flag:
Photo and description of the Pequot tribal flag.
The Pequot War The Pequot Indian War Pequot War:
History of the Pequot Indian War of 1637-1638.
Pequot Indian History:
Article on Pequot history and genealogy.
Native American Genealogy:
Direction for those seeking Pequot and other American Indian ancestors.
Four Directions: Pequot:
Timeline and links about Pequot history.
Pequot Literature and Arts
Background, bibliography and links for the Pequot author.
Homepage of a contemporary Pequot artist.
American Indian Crafts:
Information, photographs and links about Pequot and other native art.
A Vocabulary of Mohegan-Pequot:
Pequot glossary for sale.
History of the Indians of Connecticut:
Thorough overview of the many Mohegan tribes of Connecticut, including the Pequots.
The Pequot War The Pequots in Southern New England:
Overviews of Pequot Indian history.
On Our Own Ground A Son of the Forest and Other Writings:
The works of 19th-century Pequot author William Apess.
Hitting the Jackpot Revenge of the Pequots:
Books on the Foxwoods casino and the revival of the Pequot Nation.
American Indian Books:
Evolving list of books about Pequots and Native Americans in general.
Links, References, and Additional Information
Pequot Tribe Pequot Mashantucket Pequot Tribe Eastern Pequots:
Encyclopedia articles about the Pequots.
Information about the Pequots in Spanish.
Pequot: Mashantucket Pequot Tribe:
Go back to our main Mohegan tribes page
Go back to Native American tribes
American Indian Homes
American Indian Names
American Indian Poetry
Would you like to support our work on the Pequot language? | <urn:uuid:9211164a-de98-462c-b2af-ced935a3fcfc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.native-languages.org/pequot_culture.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397873.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00006-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.8262 | 899 | 2.765625 | 3 |
What does SELA mean in Software?
This page is about the meanings of the acronym/abbreviation/shorthand SELA in the Computing field in general and in the Software terminology in particular.
Find a translation for SELA in other languages:
Select another language:
What does SELA mean?
- Sela was the capital of Edom, situated in the great valley extending from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea. It was near Mount Hor, close by the desert of Zin. It is called "the rock". When Amaziah took it he called it Joktheel or Kathoel in the Septuagint. It is mentioned by the prophets as doomed to destruction. Sela is identified with the ruins of Sela, east of Tafileh in Jordan and near Bozrah, all Edomite cities in the mountains of Edom. Sela appears in later history and in the Vulgate under the name of Petra. "The caravan of all ages, from the interior of Arabia and from the Persian Gulf, from Hadhramaut on the ocean, and even from Sabea or Yemen, appear to have pointed to Petra as a common centre; and from Petra the tide seems again to have branched out in every direction, to Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, through Arsinoe, Gaza, Tyre, Jerusalem, and Damascus, and by other routes, terminating at the Mediterranean Sea." | <urn:uuid:6eebd94f-79e6-4274-90a9-38d6b5571bb1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.abbreviations.com/term/230410 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00140-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961459 | 301 | 2.859375 | 3 |
In honor of this month's 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, pilots from Britain's Royal Air Force recreated the first images taken of the fateful landings on the beaches of Normandy by their counterparts during World War II.
Two Tornado jets used modern technology to recreate the images of the French beaches Gold, Juno, Utah and Sword, where the Allies landed on June 6, 1944. On that day, Air Commodore Andrew Geddes, flying a 2 (AC) Squadron Mustang, snapped the first pictures of the D-Day landings. Two other aircraft, piloted by Flight Lieutenant R. H. G. Weighill and Flying Officer H. J. Shute, were also flying overhead at the moment when the Allies first landed on the Normandy beaches, according to the U.K. Ministry of Defence.
The squadron flew 36 sorties, or single-aircraft missions, on D-Day in order to monitor for naval bombardment. Almost 70 years later, RAF Wing Commander Jez Holmes flew one of the Tornados over France. [See the Royal Air Force's recreated D-Day images]
"After imaging the D-Day beaches from 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) using the same type of reconnaissance pod that we were flying with in Afghanistan only a fortnight ago, we flew down the beaches at 1,000 feet (300 meters), replicating Air Commodore Geddes' flight," Holmes told the U.K. Ministry of Defence. "It is difficult to imagine the apocalyptic vision that [Commodore Geddes] was faced with."
During World War II, the British squadron took these images using large, bulky cameras attached to the bottom of the aircraft. More than 30 flights would have been required to produce a panorama of the beaches of Normandy. Today, these images can be captured in a single flight, according to the Ministry of Defence.
Today, Tornado jets are equipped with a suite of precision-guided weapons and some of the best reconnaissance sensors, including the RAPTOR (short for reconnaissance airborne pod for Tornado), which can read the time on the face of London's iconic Big Ben clock from the Isle of Wight, located nearly 100 miles (160 kilometers) away.
The 70th anniversary of D-Day falls on Friday, June 6. | <urn:uuid:d6ca993f-ee49-4c26-8621-cad3652da865> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.livescience.com/46064-pilots-recreate-d-day-images.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00012-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93795 | 472 | 3.21875 | 3 |
A campaign is under way to end the transportation of millions of animals over long distances for slaughter.
Cattle are being transported from the Amazon to the Middle East
The global campaign is led by Handle With Care, a coalition of leading animal welfare charities including the RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming.
It has released undercover footage, filmed over two years, of "cruel and unnecessary journeys" animals endure.
It highlights journeys of thousands of miles, including sheep transported from Australia to the Middle East.
The coalition says disease, hunger and stress during transportation are killing tens of thousands of animals a year, while many more suffer overcrowded and filthy conditions only to be slaughtered on arrival at their destination.
It wants animals taken to slaughterhouses near where they are reared.
It says horses are being trucked from Spain to Italy on journeys lasting up to 36 hours, in overcrowded conditions in which EU legislation is "routinely ignored".
It also says four million sheep a year are shipped for up to 32 days between Australia and the Middle East, with an estimated 30,000 dying en route.
The coalition also says 100,000 cattle are transported by truck from Amazon ranches to ports in Brazil each year and then sailed into the ports of Beirut in Lebanon. Mortalities are estimated at up to 10%.
And 15,000 pigs are transported over 3,500 miles, by truck from Canada to California and then shipped to Hawaii.
The public is being urged to sign an online petition urging governments across the world to ban the trade.
WSPA campaigns director Leah Garces said: "We were determined to show people the truth of this hidden and brutal traffic in animals: if you see it for yourself, you just know it must be stopped."
Compassion in World Farming's chief executive Philip Lymbery added: "The cruelty these animals endure is completely unacceptable in the 21st century."
Britain started exporting live calves to the continent for veal and beef again in 2006, after the lifting of a decade-long EU ban imposed to prevent the spread of made cow disease.
Handle with Care says a small number of sheep are still exported from the UK to the continent.
The footage, which includes distressing images, and the petition can be accessed at www.handlewithcare.tv. | <urn:uuid:9899aecd-35b6-4824-8af9-40b38681a5c8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7239456.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00154-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954238 | 473 | 2.625 | 3 |
When they did this it caused their supply lines in the economy to be broken. It overall just caused the soviet economy to decline even further. On March 11, 1990 Lithuania declared the restitution of independence and announced that it was pulling out of the Soviet Union. Then on March 30, 1990 Estonia started the process to become an independent state also... displayed 300 characters
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Then on March 30, 1990 Estonia started the process to become an independent state also. But even after Lithuania became
Mod. Eur. History
an independent state the Red Army was still there to secure the rights of ethic Russians. Then in January 1991 a clash between troops of the red army and the civilians of Lithuania happened and killed 20 people... displayed next 300 characters
Instead he made it so the winners of the elections are to be supportive of the Soviet Union, so the countries eventually became communist. Stalin wanted to secure the western border between the USSR, and Germany so that it may never pose as a threat to Soviet Union again...
If Joseph Stalin never died
and Boris Yelstin never took control the USSR may
still have existed now. The question that is the most
provoking to me is what the Soviet Union would have
been like know? Would it be a peaceful country or
would it be worse than it was before?
When they did this it caused their supply lines in the economy to be broken. It overall just caused the soviet economy to decline even further. On March 11, 1990 Lithuania declared the restitution of independence and announced that it was pulling out of the Soviet Union...
Sometime around the 1970's the computer and automation revolution had emerged. This revolution took over the West, but practically missed the Soviet Union, except in the military sector (Baylis & Smith, 2001...
Our aim is to provide a new option which can help students write their researches taking as guideline excellent examples of any kinds of papers. This option is new and progressive; it is even easier than buying a custom written paper! Due to this service you can find and choose what you need by yourself without paying almost anything. | <urn:uuid:3ed92ead-28d7-482b-b115-9f1876fa6518> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://essaysbank.com/essay/the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union-1985-1991 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973619 | 583 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Dr. Aghababian begins with a short reference to historical forces that influenced competency such as an ancient practice to pay physicians only for a good outcome and ethical standards that emerged from the teaching of Hippocrates. In recent times, however, increasing complexity of therapeutic options and increasing workloads have made it difficult for the physician to stay on the cutting edge of medical knowledge and skills. Increasing scrutiny by hospitals also adds to time pressures on busy practitioners.
Dr Aghababian continues that addressing a physician's own competence, while preserving the integrity of relationships with patients, are principles that are being tested in the current medical environment. A physician must adopt a commitment to, and set aside time for, continuous professional development. This development includes such steps as: Performance of self assessment with a review of feedback from patients, payers, and other providers; identification and acceptance of gaps in one's medical knowledge and skills; participation in educational activities that identify those gaps and a willingness to adjust one's practice style; participating in reassessment activities and observing whether patient outcomes and satisfaction have improved.
A promising learning technique is the Medical Education Theater which employs professional actors, computerized mannequins, and theatrical style sets to demonstrate such matters as the proper and improper ways to assess and treat patients. Dr. Aghababian then introduced two skits that were performed for the appreciative audience and which portrayed such patients encounters. After discussion of the lessons learned, Dr. Aghababian pointed out that interacting in such skits can also teach contemporary treatments, skills, and how to function efficiently under a variety of circumstances.
The development of such novel teaching techniques must be encouraged along with research in educational methods to assist the practitioner in improving the care provided to his/her patients. | <urn:uuid:794d05dc-d21c-42ed-9295-e4964527fad5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://library.umassmed.edu/wdms_orations/details.cfm?recordid=223 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402699.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00171-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956018 | 360 | 2.796875 | 3 |
I've been revamping my lesson plans as I go this year to give them a new twist, and try to help my students understand the skill we're practicing each month even better. These activities mentioned briefly in this post would be perfect to be incorporated into your preschool classroom curriculum, or even to be used at home with your own kiddos.
November had us reading Rhyming Dust Bunnies (Jan Thomas), I'm Your Bus (Marilyn Singer), and Each Peach Pear Plum (Allan and Janet Ahlberg). How much do I love Rhyming Dust Bunnies? A better question would be "How much do my students love it?" The answer: A LOT! We couldn't get enough of this one and its sequel Here Comes the Big, Mean Dust Bunny!. I'm Your Bus was another great one for allowing my students to predict and fill-in the rhyme that would end each page's text.
We brainstormed rhyming words, made rhyming buses, hunted for hidden rhymes in a drawing, and made rhyming signs that were fun to hold up proudly each time we heard rhyming words in our stories. | <urn:uuid:11bc3a80-ea41-4915-ba60-5955e0064e4e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://literacylaunchpad.blogspot.com/2013/01/lessons-in-rhyming-and-predicting.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00080-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969688 | 237 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Green says this is part of the effort to make engineering education on par with the course loads that doctors and lawyers have to take to become licensed. However, in this case, the focus now is on softer skills, such as humanities and social skills. “It used to be that students would take 128 hours of all technical courses, but now it might be 100 hours of technical classes plus an additional 28-plus hours of humanities,” Schwartz says. “A balance has to be struck.”
Green concurs. “Many young people go into college without a firm understanding of what kind of career they want to have. There are economic and time factors; it could be a factor in the number of students who choose to pursue engineering.”
Dan Hebert, P.E., senior technical editor for several engineering magazines, believes that the undergraduate engineering experience weeds out all the underachieving engineers, and the ones who graduate and go on to the working world have to be competent as a result of making their way through the training. “They’re not going to accomplish anything by making the requirements harder,” he says. “Making it harder has the drawbridge effect” of not getting more people into the profession, he says. “It’s an elitist thing.”
Speaking of making things harder, there is also a movement to create graduated titles for engineers based on their work experience and possible testing status. Instead of having two classes of engineers – those with P.E.s and those without – there would be more classes or tiers. It is being developed by the NCEES Engineering Licensure Qualifications Task Force (ELQTF). Although this movement is in its infancy, it recommends conferring titles on engineers based on their career progress. Titles include graduate engineer, registered engineer, associate engineer, etc. You can find more information about this topic at www.ncees.org. Adoption of a model by the state licensing boards is voluntary; it probably will be some time before a measure like this is ready for institution.
Train to stay in the game
Having separate tiers of engineers draws attention to another issue: Less than 20% of engineers are licensed P.E.s to begin with. Although the pass rate for first-time chemical engineering test-takers hovers in the 60% to 70% range, which is higher than in other engineering disciplines, a small percentage of all engineers attempt the exam each year.
Green says that there is an average of 65,000 engineers who graduate from American schools each year; there are only 15,000 P.E. licenses issued each year. Although there isn’t a direct correlation because new grads have to have four years of experience to be eligible to take the exam and foreign-schooled engineers working in the United States also can take it, you can see the disparity between these numbers. Many engineers either think they don’t need a P.E. or don’t have the motivation or time to prepare for the comprehensive exam.
Some engineers foresee a time in the future when all engineers will be required to be licensed. One chemical engineer with a P.E. designation, who declined to be named, says licensing for engineers is a noble concept, but earning a license isn’t mandatory to be successful in the field. “Many of the best engineers I know are not licensed,” he says. “It doesn’t matter that much at this particular time. If you’ve gone to a good engineering school and have good grades, technically, you’re competent.” But he foresees a time when things could change. “But right now, I don’t think it helps you career-wise or money-wise,” he says.
But Joe Cimini, P.E., special project manager for PPG, Lake Charles, La., says a P.E. license helps you get through the door when you’re looking for a job. “It’s also for your own personal satisfaction,” he says. His P.E. designation came in handy when he was doing consulting work many years ago, but it hasn’t been a big factor in his career since he stopped consulting. “It used to be that when we hired someone here, we would expect [that person] to continue the process to become registered within five years,” he says. “At the time we felt that was important.” It might become that way again. “Government keeps getting more and more involved in everything we do,” he says, and the requirements could eventually change.
NSPE’s Schwartz says, “Any time you have additional credentials, it helps.” This is especially true for consultants, expert witnesses or those who want to start their own businesses. “It’s an insurance policy for your career,” he adds. “Unless you know that you’ll never need a professional engineering license, you may want to get one.” As companies begin to outsource more work, there are more individuals who will become private practitioners and they will need an engineering license simply to be considered for such work.
These issues aside, once you’ve earned your bachelor’s degree and have passed the tests to become a licensed engineer, there’s yet another requirement in some states: Continuing Professional Competency (CPC). Twenty-seven states already require engineers to complete CPC requirements as a condition of license renewal, and other states are considering making it part of their licensing requirements. For example, Illinois and Louisiana require engineers to complete 30 CPC hours every two years to be eligible for renewal. Those 30 hours can include attending lectures, publishing articles and other career-enhancing educational opportunities.
Texas also requires engineers to complete 15 CPCs per year, but requires P.E.s to complete one hour of engineering ethics as well. “We had a voluntary continuing education program in Texas, but that was discontinued,” says Aker Kvarner’s Edwards, and replaced by the new requirement. For a listing of state requirements, visit www.ncees.org.
Of course, all of this study and work to satisfy requirements is meant to keep American engineers among the best-trained in the world. Who wouldn’t want to keep up that mantle? | <urn:uuid:280437d5-3877-4b6c-8a62-df008253542d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.chemicalprocessing.com/articles/2005/391/?start=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00174-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970245 | 1,345 | 2.5625 | 3 |
(Image: Dave Johnson, reproduced with permission)
The UK is littered with deserted air bases, lonely yet poignant reminders of a time when Europe was torn apart by war. Most surviving airfields were heavy bomber bases hurriedly constructed amid the quiet British countryside during World War Two, often utilising three large runways in an “A-frame” layout. Many were returned to agricultural use after the war. But even today their giant forms can still be seen from the air, hiding in the long grass and adopting a far more serene atmosphere than was ever present in their active days.
Hundreds of airfields were built across Britain before and after the outbreak of war. The latest generation of heavy bombers required extensive runways, hangars, dispersal facilities and support buildings. Many abandoned airfields are visible on Google Earth, especially in southern and eastern counties. Brunton Airfield (above) in Northumberland, a former wartime training base, had no large hangars but the runways and hard standings are well preserved, in addition to bomb shelters and several abandoned buildings.
Some former bases – like the Great West Aerodrome (now Heathrow) grew into massive international airports. Others remain military bases, light airfields or industrial estates, with companies taking advantage of vast empty hangars. RAF Winthorpe (above right) is now part of the Newark Showground and retains a private air museum. Syerston airfield (above), is especially well preserved.
For the vast majority, however, 1945 saw wartime airfields returned to the farmers and landowners they were purchased from. The images above reveal only runway outlines, while dispersal areas are slowly reclaimed. Despite their slow disappearance, these modern ruins remain a treasure trove of recent history, with crumbling control towers and other abandoned buildings betraying their former purpose. | <urn:uuid:4dc30b77-d048-4b34-86f2-fbff948cc110> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2009/09/deserted-air-force-bases/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00073-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968436 | 371 | 3.328125 | 3 |
I am having some troubles remembering the application of slope intercept form. The question is:
Write the line in slope intercept form. Identify slope and y-intercept. Then graph.
-2x + 3y=9
I understand slope intercept form, but forget how to find slope and y-intercept.
I think the y intercept is 3, but am completely blank on the slope.
Thank you all very much | <urn:uuid:f8b0bc44-b99f-440d-8cb3-1f05a325bb22> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mathhelpforum.com/pre-calculus/25469-slope-intercept-form.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402516.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00109-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923026 | 89 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Using your mobile phone in an EMERGENCY
In an emergency, your mobile phone can be a lifeline. Knowing how your device works and the best way to reach out for help can save your life and/or the lives of others. Here are a few facts you need to know before using your phone in an emergency.
NEW – Text with 9-1-1 (T9-1-1)
T9-1-1 is a service available to you if you are part of the deaf, deafened, hard of hearing or speech impaired (DHHSI) community in Canada. During an emergency, T9-1-1 provides 9-1-1 call centres with the ability to converse with you using text messaging. Members of the DHHSI community are encouraged to visit www.textwith911.ca to learn more about T9-1-1, including information about how to register with their service provider.
Wireless carriers provide further location identification information for 9-1-1 calls from mobile phones. Learn more.
In most parts of the country, your mobile phone number and approximate location will be forwarded automatically through the 9-1-1 network to the 9-1-1 operator. However, it is important to allow the operator to confirm your number and identify your precise location or the precise location of the emergency.
When you call 9-1-1, you should give your complete 10-digit phone number to the 9-1-1 operator. This is important because the operator may have to call you back if the call is disconnected.
In addition, tell the operator as best you can exactly where you are. Remember, your mobile phone can be used anywhere service is available. Only you can provide your precise location or the location of the emergency.
If you are driving, stop your vehicle if it is safe to do so and look for street signs, addresses or landmarks. If you are driving on a highway, try to provide the highway number, your direction of travel and look for exit numbers or major buildings.
Not all local governments in Canada operate 9-1-1 systems. Wireless carriers endeavour to route 9-1-1 calls to an appropriate call-taking agency (the local police department, for example) in areas where no 9-1-1 service exists. However, if you routinely use your mobile phone in areas where a 9-1-1 system does not exist, you should know the phone numbers for local police, fire and ambulance services.
WHEN TO CALL 9-1-1
You should call 9-1-1 in situations where the safety of people or property is at risk. Examples of 9-1-1 emergencies include: fire, a crime in progress, or a medical emergency. Please direct non-emergency calls to the appropriate resource so that 9-1-1 call-takers can devote all of their attention to responding to true emergencies. Remember, in an emergency situation, a few wasted seconds can be a matter of life or death.
DO NOT PRE-PROGRAM 9-1-1 INTO SPEED-DIAL
Unintentional emergency calls from mobile phones can occur if you accidentally press a speed-dial key that has been pre-programmed to call 9-1-1. In some instances, you may not even be aware that the emergency key has been pressed. Check your phone’s manual or contact your retail dealer to ensure any pre-programmed emergency numbers have been disabled. In parts of the country, it is illegal to pre-program 9-1-1 into speed-dial. Other tips to avoid accidental calls to 9-1-1 include:
• Do not allow children to play with cell phones.
• Lock keypads using the keypad lock feature. Choosing to lock your device’s screen and/or keyboard can reduce the chances of placing unwanted calls to 9-1-1 or other parties.
• Parents, especially, have a responsibility to ensure young people are familiar with how their cell phones work and the importance of using their cell phones responsibly at all times.
• Contact your wireless device manufacturer or service provider if you have any questions about how your device works and if there are any further steps you can take to prevent accidental calls.
• If you discover that you have accidentally called 9-1-1, do not hang up. Stay on the line and tell the operator the call was placed in error. This will allow the operator to devote his or her time to assisting others with true emergencies, rather than waste time calling you back to confirm that the call was placed in error.
• Remove batteries from deactivated phones that can access wireless networks to prevent accidental calls to 9-1-1.
TIPS FOR USING 9-1-1
Remain calm and speak clearly. Identify which emergency services you require – police, fire or ambulance – and be prepared to provide the following information:
What is your 10-digit mobile phone number?
What is the location?
What is the emergency?
Please remain on the line to provide additional information if requested by the call-taker. Do not hang up until the operator advises you to do so. After hanging up, leave your mobile phone turned on in case the operator must call you back.
TEXTING DURING AN EMERGENCY
Most mobile phones can send text messages, but remember that you cannot send text messages to 9-1-1.
During a large scale emergency, such as a natural disaster, voice networks can become congested or overloaded with an influx of mobile phone voice calls. This can result in individuals not being able to speak with the people they want to contact, such as friends or loved ones. In some rare instances, congestion on the voice network can also hinder communications amongst emergency service personnel.
Text messages, however, use less network capacity than normal mobile phone voice calls and can be more reliable for brief communication with friends or loved ones during emergencies. So, even if a network is congested with voice calls, a text message to a friend or loved one may have a higher likelihood of getting through sooner than a voice call. And equally as important, by texting during an emergency, you are freeing up the voice lines for emergency officials to use.
The wireless telecommunications industry is committed to supporting improvements to 9-1-1 service. Wireless phone service providers are working with 9-1-1 call-takers, local telephone companies and government agencies to implement a national approach to enhancing 9-1-1 services.
The information in this brochure has been developed in cooperation with various 9-1-1 service providers across Canada. | <urn:uuid:49f31a42-e107-454a-9a30-180bf8963344> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cwta.ca/for-consumers/e911/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393093.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00157-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928945 | 1,371 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Egyptian Temples, part IV: The Temple Building
From at least the New Kingdom on the Egyptian cult temple building was a symbolic model of the universe. It was built along an east-west axis, following the sun´s course through the day and surrounded by a brick wall built in alternating concave and convex sections. These symbolized the Primeval waters out of which Creation had risen. A processional path led up to the pylon towers, which were a reminiscent of the early, predynastic reed shrine that once had stood at the back of just such a guarded enclosure as the mud brick wall. The great portal which was set in between the pylons lead into one or several open courtyards in line, thereafter followed one or several covered pillared halls until finally the darkened sanctum where the naos which held the cult statue of the deity was reached.
The floor slanted gradually upwards from the outer courts to the sanctum, symbolizing the Primeval mound which had emerged from the chaotic waters when the world was created. Often the temple site was chosen where a natural incline could be found. The roof of the halls symbolized the sky and was decorated with stars and protective deities in the form of flying birds. The pillars and columns represented palm trees, lotus and papyrus plants and along the walls the reliefs depicted all kind of marsh vegetation. In fact, in some places the outer courts and halls were flooded with water during the yearly inundation of the Nile, something which must have helped to strengthen the symbolic message in the temple layout.
Approaching the pylon towers which made out the entrance into the Outer Court the processional path lead up to the great portal which was set between them. Passing through it one reached an outer court. The general worshipper was probably not allowed further into the temple building than this. Here he was met by priests who received his offerings and forwarded them into the temple. Shrines with statues of other gods beside the one which the temple was built for was often found here and the visitor could honor these, leave offerings and pray by them.
Often yet another pair of pylons had to be passed before the inner court was reached. These courtyards were without roof, this open space in front of the pylons went back to the original reed shrines in predynastic times. Reliefs on the walls depicted the king in battle or making offerings to the gods. It is uncertain if the common townspeople were allowed entry here, perhaps they were allowed to watch some of the rites on festival days.
Behind the open courts where the sun blazed down, there was usually one or more dusky pillared halls (hypostyle halls). This was considered the reception area of the god and accessible only to the priesthood. The pillars, arranged in groups, were richly decorated with painted reliefs depicting deities and religious symbols, intended to ensure the same abundance to the surrounding land. Their capitals were formed as lotuses, papyruses or palms. Smaller sidedoors, intended for bringing in offerings, lead into the halls. The only windows were narrow and set high up below the ceiling, otherwise the light would come from the priesthood carrying torches.
The floor sloped steadily upwards until the sanctum was reached, helping to induce a feeling of awe and mystery as the deity was approached. Symbolically this recreated the shape of the Primeval Mound on which the god had appeared on the First Time (Zep Tepy). This was a small, dark room, where the cult statue was kept in a naos, hidden from view. A temple could be consecrated to more than one god, but the sanctum of the main deity was always situated along the main axis, and lesser deities were placed on either side.
The naos was the very shrine of the god, often made of wood, with doors that were kept closed and locked at all times except for at the daily rituals, which occurred at morning, midday and evening, and which were performed by the High Priest or someone appointed by him. In close connection to the sanctum and the naos were other rooms for storage of the god's belongings, jewelry, insignia and ritual tools.
Somewhere on the temple precinct were the purifying lake, a rectangular pool with stairs leading down into the water. Ritual purity was of the highest importance and the priests were required to purify themselves several times each day. The so called wae´b priests who were responsible for this purifying had been trained from the start of their priestly education. Also ritual tools and everything used at offerings were required to be purified for nothing unclean must come into the god's presence. One might speculate also about the natural necessity of this, in a climate where heat could be quite bothersome.
Suggested Pdf Resources
- Architectural Features - UCLA
- Many of the best preserved examples of Egyptian temples date to the New King- ... Although each temple s layout is unique, these buildings show a remarkable unity of plan, .... walls extend only part way up the height of the support.
- Introduction to the Temple of Karnak - UCLA
- Luxor. A series of important temples, composing the religious heart of Thebes, ... construction, as the earliest temple buildings are located behind the sixth pylon, and the .....
- The Development of the Temple of Karnak1 - UCLA
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- Army and Egyptian temple building under the - Princeton University
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- Architecture of Great Temple Complexes The golden age of the New
- The Temples at Karnak, part of the great city of Thebes, were constructed as an ... Mut, the Precinct of Montu, and the Temple of Amenhotep IV. ...
Suggested News Resources
- A new beginning for Egypt's ancient capital
- The creator god Ptah was associated with Memphis and it is here that he had one of the largest temples ever built in his name in the New Kingdom.
- The Unexpected: Six Surprising Destinations
- My own words echo in my head like a bad dream, "Meet me at Track 4 in the Cairo train station at noon. You can't miss it. ...
- Israeli hiker finds rare 2000-year-old gold coin
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- Cleveland Museum of Art Opens Massive Ancient Egypt Exhibition
- As part of their ongoing, yearlong centennial celebration, the Cleveland Museum of Art presents Pharaoh: King of Ancient Egypt. This special ...
Suggested Web Resources
- Ancient Egyptian Temple Elements Part IV: The Sanctuary and its
- Ancient Egyptian Temple Elements Part IV: The Sanctuary and its Environs, Beyond the hypo style hall in smaller temples we might find the sanctuary, but in ... Offset to the main sanctuary there might also be additional sanctuaries build for ...
- Philae Temples Part IV: Temple of Isis Inner Chambers and
- Learn about the Pharaohs and the Ancient Egyptian Civilization ... Philae Temples Part IV: Temple of Isis Inner Chambers and Structures to the West ... o the second Pylon stands a gateway and a ruined vestibule built by Emperor Hadrian.
- Egypt: The Other Temples on the West Bank at Thebes, Part IV
- Learn about the Pharaohs and the Ancient Egyptian Civilization ... In part two of this series, we explored the temples of Ramesses IV (mortuary), Amenophis ... Tuthmosis III built his mortuary temple just south of the entrance to Deir el-Bahri on ...
- Egyptian temple - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Temples were built throughout Upper and Lower Egypt, as well as at ... Most Egyptian towns had a temple, but in some cases, as with mortuary ... These were conducted, at least in theory, by the king as part of his ...
- Karnak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The area around Karnak was the ancient Egyptian Ipet-isut ("The Most Selected of ... as being the Precinct of Amun-Ra only, because this is the only part most visitors see. ...
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fermat number other interesting facts | <urn:uuid:752173c9-7032-469d-8cc4-7bf67c629f21> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.realmagick.com/5442/egyptian-temples-part-iv-the-temple-building/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00086-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97562 | 1,797 | 3.34375 | 3 |
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