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7. Helianthus debilis Nuttall, Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., n. s. 7: 367. 1841. Annuals or perennials, 30–200 cm (taprooted). Stems decumbent to erect, glabrous, hirsute, or puberulent. Leaves mostly cauline; mostly alternate; petioles 1–7 cm; blades deltate-ovate, lance-ovate, or ovate, 2.5–14 × 1.8–13 cm, bases cordate to truncate or broadly cuneate, margins subentire to serrate, abaxial faces glabrate to hispid, not gland-dotted. Heads 1–3. Peduncles 9–50 cm. Involucres hemispheric, 10–22 mm diam. Phyllaries 20–30, lanceolate, 8–17 × 1–3 mm, apices acute to long-attenuate, abaxial faces glabrous or ± hispid, not gland-dotted. Paleae 7.5–8 mm, apices 3-toothed (middle teeth acuminate, usually glabrous or hispid, sometimes ± villous or bearded). Ray florets 11–20; laminae 12–23 mm. Disc florets 30+; corollas 4.5–5 mm, lobes usually reddish, sometimes yellow; anthers dark, appendages dark (style branches usually reddish, rarely yellow). Cypselae 2.5–3.2 mm, glabrous or sparsely hairy; pappi of 2 lanceolate or lance-linear scales 1.2–2.5 mm. Subspecies 5 (5 in the flora): United States (Atlantic and Gulf coasts). C. B. Heiser (1956) placed 8 subspecies in Helianthus debilis; he noted that alternative taxonomic treatments might recognize these in as many as three species, or expand the single species to include H. petiolaris. Later, Heiser et al. (1969) separated three of the subspecies as H. praecox. Isozyme data (R. P. Wain 1982, 1983; L. H. Rieseberg and M. F. Doyle 1989) show that all are closely related. Documented hybridization with H. annuus further complicates the situation. The treatment by Heiser et al. is followed here. Helianthus debilis is adventive beyond the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States.

Children’s eye health facts and figures: - Up to 1 million children in the UK currently have an undetected vision problem (Statistics provided by the Eyecare Trust and based on DCSF 2013 School Census 0-12 year olds). - Children with undiagnosed eye conditions are more likely to have difficulties with learning at school. - Over 90% of children visit a dentist regularly, whilst only 53% of children have ever had an eye examination (Johnson and Johnson Vision Care Survey 2013). - NHS Sight Tests are free for all children and are available at High Street Optometrists and Opticians. - 84% of parents agree that improved vision would have a positive impact on their child’s performance at school (Johnson and Johnson Vision Care Survey 2013). - A Sight Test can give every child the ability to see clearly, learn effectively and develop normally. Children’s Eye Care It is recommended that all children have an eye exam at the age of three and then annually, or as advised by your optometrist. It is essential for every child to have their eyes tested; healthy eyesight is an important part of every child’s development. Starting regular eye tests for children at an early age determines a healthier and positive outlook for their adult life. Did you know that 1 in 5 children have an undetected eye problem? Reports from Bob Huges, the chief executive of The Association of Optometrists, have shown that undetected eye problems are causing a damaging effect on children and their learning development. It is degrading their ability to learn, and it is also affecting their behaviour, as they are not able to perform to their best of their ability due to their poor sight. Health reports from The Guardian newspaper 2012 states that only 7% of children aged under the age of 5 are taken to the opticians and 15% of secondary children have never had their eyes tested. This means that they may have underlying eye problems that they aren’t aware of, so it is paramount that you get your child’s eyes tested to ensure they have healthy eyesight. Common eye conditions such as lazy eye (amblyopia) and squint (strabismus) are treatable if they are identified and treated early, the sooner vision problems are detected, the better the outcome. Furthermore, in Scotland we’re all entitled to FREE eye tests on the NHS. How to detect typical symptoms - Poor handwriting. - Frustration when reading. - Squints or frowns. - Excessive rubbing of the eyes. - Difficulty copying words from the board/computer. - Poor reading comprehension. - Skips words or whole lines of a text. Top tips for children’s eye care! - Aim to take your child for a thorough, personalised eye test at the age of three, especially if there is a family history of wearing glasses. - Children should have an eye examination at least once every two years, or as advised by their optometrist. It is important to know that the eye screening children receive at their schools is not a full eye examination. - Always protect your child’s sight in the sun. Ensure that they are wearing sunglasses, to reduce damage from sun exposure. Overexposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays (UV) can cause diseases such as cataracts or macular degeneration. Look for glasses with polycarbonate lens. - Make sure they eat their 5 a day! Eating fruits and vegetables are extremely beneficial for the eyes; they contain vitamin A and C that enable us to have stronger sight in the dark and healthy clearer eyes. So ensure your child eats plenty of carrots, spinach, broccoli, oranges, peas, kiwi, mangoes, and grapes! - Pay particular attention to lazy eye and squinting when reading and writing. This has a huge impact on a child’s sight and learning development. - Ensure your child is taking frequent breaks if they are working on a computer or watching television for a long period of time. - Always ensure there is a bright setting and plenty of light for when your child is doing their homework. - If your child plays any type of sports, such as cricket, basketball, tennis etc, you can get protective goggles to avoid any damage to your child’s eyes. These can be obtained from your optometrist and if you wish, you can have a prescription built in. - If you suspect your child has colour vision, or if there is a family history of colour vision, then it is important to arrange for an eye test. There is no cure for colour vision, however if teachers are told about it, it will make them aware of this problem and it will enable them to adapt their activities and use of colour to suit your child’s needs. At Vitality, we provide an excellent service for children, we cater to their individual needs and we care about the health of their eyes. We aim to look after young eyes, to enable them to see a better future!

Addition of two hex numbers program :( hi i'm a newbie to C programming and got a homework that I couldn't even start... It's about making a program that gets to hex numbers, add them and show the results. It should look like Enter the first number: Enter the second number: the thing is the results should be aligned to the right and the number of '-' in the results should equal to the largest number of digits... first number: A444444 second number: B1234567 A444444and the results should only contain capital letters (7 '-') => -------- Can anyone help me making a program like this? Thanks a lot....

Discovered: A twin baby boom, college leads to better health, how to turn skinny babies into skinny adults, and a PTSD gene. - There's a deluge of twins. There must be something fashionable about matching babies, because it's quite popular to have them these days. "Prior to 1980, the incidence of U.S. twin births was stable at about 2 percent of all births, but it has risen dramatically in the past three decades," said researcher Barbara Luke. In 2009 1 in 30 of every baby born in the U.S. was a twin, compared to one in every 53 in 1980. The big increase is not exactly about fashion, but it's not something in the water etiher. "Older maternal age accounts for about one-third of the rise, and two-thirds is due to the increased use of fertility treatments," continues Luke. [International Society of Twin Studies] - College is healthy. Um, certainly not the way we handled those four years. But, in general, science says, having a college education leads to overall better health in the end. Looking at over 3,000 countries, those with a higher percentage of college educated people had fewer premature deaths. Though four years of drinking, gluttony, drugs, and Aderall probably scrape years off of one's life, not going to college at all has worse effects. If you're unemployed, you're likely to be without insurance and to have a lot of stress in your life," researcher Pat Remington, said. "You often give up hope and that often leads to substance abuse and other self-destructive behaviors. So all these things are part of a web of health." [Reuters] - How to turn skinny babies into skinny adults. Put them on diets. Diets for babies. When babies come out too skinny, parents tend to overcompensate, fattening them up for life. "If there is a mismatch where the baby is growth-restricted at birth but exposed to plenty of calories after birth, then that leads to obesity," explains researcher Dr. Sherin Devaskar. Don't do that, says research. "While many trials that include exercise and various drug therapies have tried to reverse the tendency of low birth weight babies becoming obese, we have shown that a dietary intervention during early life can have long lasting effects into childhood adolescence and adult life," he continues. Skinny babies, get ready for a lifetime of diets. [Diabetes] - There is a PTSD gene. Actually there are two. Science believes two genes linked to serotonin production make certain people much more susceptible to post traumatic stress disorder. "We suspect that the gene variants produce less serotonin, predisposing these family members to PTSD after exposure to violence or disaster," said Dr. Armen Goenjian. As of now psychiatrists rely on trial and error to figure out if someone has PTSD, knowing a biological basis would clear things up a lot. [Journal of Affective Disorders] Image via Shutterstock by David Clark Digital Photography.

Adhesive bonding is capable of being used in load‐bearing engineering applications, particularly for joining sheet materials. However, it is also used for a wide range of applications up to the large structures used in civil engineering. Modern structural adhesives are strong, but will only work effectively if surface preparation is correctly carried out. It is possible to use simple design rules to predict the strength of some joints, but care must be used, especially where advanced composites are to be joined. MCB UP Ltd Copyright © 2000, Company

Told in pictures Overview / Children's books [in full] Wordless picturebooks form a corner of children’s literature in which illustrators and artists tell stories with images alone. What distinguishes the picturebook as a genre within children’s publishing is the way the images work with the words. Rather than merely illustrating the words, the images carry equal weight to them, achieving a harmonious balance between the two where each element adds something to the whole that the other does not. But there is an entire sub-genre of picturebook that eschews a written text altogether, relying entirely on a sequence of images to tell a story or create a meaning. Visual storytelling of this kind has always been around, from Rome’s Trajan column via Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress to the contemporary visual essay. Early twentieth-century artists, such as Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward, also developed wordless novels for adults (and in Ward’s case one for children, too). However the wordless picturebook for children is largely a phenomenon of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, part of the explosion of children’s publishing that paralleled both the postwar baby boom and rapid technological advances in colour printing from the 1960s to the present day. Not only can wordless picturebooks be beautiful objects themselves, as Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles suggest in Children’s Picturebooks (2012), they also offer a different kind of ‘reading’: one that requires the child to look at each picture carefully to decode the story. The wordless picturebook can take many forms, from small board books for toddlers, such as Helen Oxenbury’s witty Monkey See, Monkey Do (1982), to highly sophisticated narratives for an older readership, such as Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (2007). This spread from Mercer Mayer’s A Boy, A Dog and A Frog (1967) shows Mayer’s skill at conveying both plot and emotional arc through unbordered black and white line. Top: Eric Carle, I See a Song (1973). Some have simple narratives, with a single clear image on each page, relatively few characters and a straightforward plot. A good is example of this is A Boy, A Dog and A Frog (1967) by US artist Mercer Mayer, who is considered to be one of the principal creators of the wordless picturebook form. Another example of this style is Changes, Changes (1971) by Pat Hutchins of Rosie’s Walk fame. Others, such as Alastair Graham’s wonderfully anarchic Full Moon Soup (1991) or Danish artist Jan Mogensen’s The 46 Little Men (1990), have multiple narratives, with a cast of many characters featured in highly detailed illustrations that often fill a whole spread. These books are more likely to appeal to an older child who can disentangle the various storylines and understand the subtleties of the complex images. Slapstick Sci-Fi: Alastair Graham’s Full Moon Soup (1991) has a host of characters, each with his or her own storyline, as separate disasters strike the staff and guests of a hotel, which is cut away like a doll’s house. Each spread shows more chaos. Another variety of wordless picturebook follows the comic book format, showing a varying number of panels on each page. British examples of this type include Raymond Briggs’s The Snowman (1978, later adapted as a successful animated feature film), Shirley Hughes’s Up and Up (1979) and Peter Collington’s The Angel and the Soldier Boy (1987). US examples include Peter Spier’s evocative Rain (1982) and Christmas! (1983). In Charles Keeping’s River (1978), the strong vertical and horizontal lines of the industrial landscape contrast powerfully with the softer outline of the natural world glimpsed behind it. There are also books that deal with more demanding abstract concepts that can appeal across a very wide age range, from pre-teens to adults. This category includes works such as Swedish artist Tord Nygren’s surreal The Red Thread (1987), David Wiesner’s eerie dreamscape Free Fall (1988), and Istvan Banyai’s playful investigations of perspective and scale in Zoom and Re-zoom (both 1995). Successive images from Re-zoom, Istvan Banyai (1995). New York-based Banyai constantly changes viewpoint and scale in his books Zoom and Re-zoom (both 1995). Paradoxically, a wordless picturebook isn’t necessarily devoid of words. There is almost certain to be a title, and this may provide a clue to what is inside, say, the name of a character, an emotion, or a time frame. Johnny’s Bad Day (1970) by Edward Ardizzone is an example of this, where we learn at once that the protagonist is a boy, that the action takes place over a single day and that the principal emotion is negativity. A title may also indicate an event, as in Emily Arnold McCully’s Picnic (1984); or a certain type of story, as in April Wilson’s Magpie Magic (1999), where the word ‘magic’ immediately sets up expectations of a fantasy. In some wordless books there may be an opening or closing sentence, as in Brian Wildsmith’s The Circus (1970), or endpapers with information about the characters, as in Mogensen’s The 46 Little Men. Words may also appear within the pictures themselves – for instance, on signs, posters, shopfronts, newspapers, books, vehicles and even graffiti. All these may provide telling details that help set a book within a particular context, environment or timeframe. Charles Keeping, for example, frequently uses such text to locate his landscapes in a particular reality, as does Jeannie Baker in Window (1991). So how is a wordless picturebook actually ‘read’? The picturebook theorist Perry Nodelman says the process is ‘something like doing a puzzle … we must search for clues and put together apparently disparate bits of information’ (Words About Pictures, 1988), in order to recreate the story or stories the artist has chosen to portray. Clearly this is a demanding activity, perhaps more so than reading a book with words. Where’s Anno? In Anno’s Journey (1977), Mitsumasa Anno delights in optical illusions and puzzles, and his tableaux often include art historical references, such as Seurat’s La Grande Jatte and Van Gogh’s Bridge at Arles. Observing a group of children reading wordless picturebooks, Judith Graham noted that, on the first reading, all the children ‘told’ the stories in the present tense, much like an oral storyteller, which she said was ‘not surprising as they have been put into the position of commentator on events whose outcome they don’t know’. She also remarked that they all seemed very tired when they had finished (Graham’s essay in What’s in the Picture?, 1998). However, it is partly this experience of being an active participant in the creative act, a ‘co-creator’, that makes reading a wordless picturebook so empowering, as in doing so the reader claims a certain ownership over the story. Through ‘reading’ the pictures and bringing his or her own individual perspective to them, each reader makes a personal interpretation of the plot, the characters, the setting and the mood, and retells the events shown in a way that is unique to him or her. In theory, there can be infinite interpretations of every wordless picturebook, though in practice many books have such close sequences of pictures that surprisingly similar interpretations can result. In How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books (1997), US illustrator and teacher Uri Shulevitz describes a picture sequence as being like a pantomime that presents an action that can be readily understood, and where foreground ‘actors’ (the characters) appear on a background ‘stage’ (the setting). The readability of such a picture sequence, he says, depends on a clear actor-stage relationship, a consistent set of rules that the pictures will follow, and a logical progression from one image to another. ‘Storytelling is a process that takes place over time,’ he writes. Critic Jane Doonan, in Looking at Pictures in Picture Books (1993), argues that ‘every mark displayed in a picture is a potential carrier of meaning, beginning with the chosen material or medium and how the mark is made’. The choice of the board, card or paper on which the book is printed affects our response to the finished work, as does the artists’ choice of ‘marker’, such as pen and ink, crayon, coloured pencils, oil pastels, chalks, or watercolours. The Chicken Thief (2009) by Béatrice Rodriguez, makes good use of the picturebook’s wide format. In the twenty-first century, with the advent of new interactive digital technologies such as the iPad and Kindle tablets and mobile phone apps, there are new mediums and markers to be explored, as innovative publishers such as Nosy Crow are beginning to demonstrate. Petting Zoo (2013), the clever iPad app by Christoph Niemann, demonstrates what can be done with wordless sequences for a new medium. Niemann’s instructions are wordless, too: it is easy for children to learn how to swipe the surface of the tablet, and there is a small palette of symbols – pointing hands, a pair of cogs – to help navigation between animals. But there is still something special about the sheer physical pleasure of holding, exploring and sharing a printed and bound picturebook with a child. And a wordless picturebook can introduce that young reader to an alternative approach to storytelling through a sequence of images that need to be interpreted by him or her, thereby developing visual literacy – a skill increasingly relevant when so much information is currently communicated through images. Wordless picturebooks can cross cultural boundaries. An artist thinking and creating in one language may be ‘read’ – with little intervention from a translator – by a child who is thinking in another language. A narrative constructed in one country or culture can be reconstructed in another, making this specialised corner of the world of children’s literature a truly global village. Petting Zoo (2013), an iPad app by Christoph Niemann, allows children to engage with an appealing set of 21 line-drawn creatures – including an ostrich, a monkey and a chameleon. Petting Zoo responds to the child’s touch by bending, jumping, shrinking and changing colour. This app takes the wordless format into new areas of interactive play. Another spread from Eric Carle’s I See a Song (1973). By the end of the picturebook, the monochrome violinist has become infused with colour. Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published quarterly for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions, back issues and single copies of the latest issue. You can see what Eye 85 looks like at Eye before You Buy on Vimeo.

|Full-time Equivalency (FTE)| Full-time Equivalency (FTE) The ratio between the hours of work expected in a position and the hours of work normally expected in a full-time position in the same setting for each assignment. Identification Code (Common Attribute) A unique number or alphanumeric code assigned to a space, room, site, building, individual, organization, program, or institution by a school, school system, a state, or other agency or entity. - No option list available - N/A Identification System (Common Attribute) A coding scheme that is used for identification and record-keeping purposes by schools, social services, or other agencies to refer to an individual, organization, program, or institution. - Other - N/A - Social Security Administration number - N/A - US government Visa number - N/A - Personal identification number - N/A - Family unit number - N/A - + 27 More Codes... |Instructional Grade Level(s)| Instructional Grade Level(s) The school designation or set of grade levels for which the individual's assignment is responsible. - Early Childhood - N/A - Elementary - N/A - Kindergarten - N/A - Prekindergarten - N/A - Secondary/High School - N/A - + 2 More Codes... |Program Name||Secondary Teaching Assignment (Academic Subject)| Secondary Teaching Assignment (Academic Subject) The teaching field taught by an individual. - Arts - N/A - Bilingual/English as a Second Language - N/A - Career Tech (Vocational) Education - N/A - English/Language Arts - N/A - Foreign Language - N/A - + 7 More Codes...

THE Wilbur Wright Lecture this year is certainly one of the most thought‐provoking that has been delivered. Read in conjunction with the James Forrest Lecture, printed in our last issue, it gives a very complete picture of where we stand in aircraft and engines to‐day. This general survey comes very appropriately in time to appear in this number, which is devoted almost entirely to engines, and gives an opportunity that does not often occur of reading precept and practice simultaneously. Mr. Ricardo represents perhaps the most expert opinion obtainable in England on the general aspects of internal‐combustion engine design, and it is interesting to turn from his views to the other articles dealing with practice as exemplified in an American, a German, a British, and a French‐designed engine respectively: the wide field of which incidentally emphasises the attitude adopted in this paper from the beginning of endeavouring to maintain an international outlook. From another point of view they have a no less wide appeal, covering as they do almost the whole range of sizes in modern engines, from the 50 h.p. light aeroplane unit, through the 220 h.p. so‐called “Diesel” and the latest 300 h.p. interceptor fighter engine, to the largest 500‐h.p. air‐cooled radial. MCB UP Ltd Copyright © 1930, MCB UP Limited

Oklahoma's Zika threat pales compared to West Nile The Zika virus, which can cause devastating birth defects, has led to public fear but poses much less risk in Oklahoma than another mosquito-borne disease. Kristy Bradley, state epidemiologist for the state Health Department, said there have been no reports of locally acquired Zika in the United States, outside of two areas of Miami, Fla. On the other hand, West Nile virus, which is transmitted by a different type of mosquito, has killed 53 people in Oklahoma since 2002 and has forced the hospitalization of dozens of others. Some of those stricken with West Nile have been paralyzed or suffered encephalitis. "Many have long-standing complications and never fully recover," she said. Bradley testified Wednesday before Oklahoma legislators examining the risks of Zika. There have been 26 travel-associated cases of the disease in Oklahoma, including one pregnant woman. There is no vaccine or medicine to treat the virus, which: • Is transmitted by the Aedes-species mosquito and also can be transmitted sexually. • Can lead to flu-like symptoms, lasting as long as a week. • Can cause severe birth defects including microcephaly (abnormally small head), eye defects, hearing loss and impaired growth. Pregnant women are advised to stay out of areas where local transmission is occurring. • Doesn't pose a risk for birth defects in babies conceived after the disease has cleared a woman's blood. Bradley said there are several reasons for thinking Zika may not end up posing major problems in this country. "There is a consensus among U.S. health experts that Zika will not become widespread in the United States," she said. The mosquitoes that spread the disease fly only about 200 yards in their lifetime and prefer human blood. Only small numbers of this particular species of mosquito have been found in Oklahoma. Any potential outbreaks would likely take place in heavily populated areas, where people spend a lot of time outdoors and there is adequate breeding habitat like areas of standing water. The West Nile virus poses much more of a health challenge because it is carried by the Culex mosquito in a disease transmission cycle that includes birds that can travel long distances. This type of mosquito increases in numbers during mid- to late-summer when the temperatures climb and the weather pattern is drier. People over 50 are at greater risk of developing serious complications from West Nile, including serious illness involving the nervous system. Mosquito activity is highest during early morning and evening hours. Health officials advise use of insect repellents and recommend draining or treating standing water with a mosquito larvicide.

Guild of One-Name Studies One-name studies, Genealogy Variants: Weatheridge, Wetherage, Wetheredge, Wetheridge, Witherage Category: 3 - A study where research using core genealogical datasets and transcriptions is well under way on a global basis. Contact: Mrs Kim Cook The name Witheridge/Wetheridge is Anglo-Saxon, but there has been some dispute about its meaning. Ridge presents no problems, meaning an elevation deep in proportion to its width and height and generally having sloping sides. The first part of the word has been said to come from withy, meaning willow, or wether, meaning castrated ram - quite a difference there! As most Witheridge/Wetheridge families can trace their ancestry back to Devon, many thought that we all came originally from the town of Witheridge in mid-Devon. However, looking at the map showing where Witheridges had settled, it seemed unlikely that people would have moved across the dangerous tracks of Dartmoor to reach places like Wembury, Ermington, Kingsbridge and Plymouth. This raised the possibility of another place called Witheridge somewhere in South Devon. Subsequent research showed that a manor of Wederige, in Plympton Hundred, was recorded in the Domesday book of 1068. Much of the land belonging to this manor has apparently been lost as a result of coastal erosion, but what remains is on the cliffs above Jennycliffe Bay, between Plymouth and Wembury. Ironically, the manor's original Anglo-Saxon name (which relates to wethers) has changed over the years to the more elegant Withyhedge. If you look at the 6-inch OS map of the area, you can still see a field bearing the name Withyhedge Brake. It is now thought that most Witheridge and Wetheridge families came from one of these two manors, and took the surname only after they left their home village. There are a number of locations bearing the name Witheridge. These include: It is now thought that most Witheridge and Wetheridge families came originally from one of the two Domesday manors, one where the town of Witheridge now stands, and one in Plympton Hundred. However, as most moved away before surnames became fixed, they would have taken the surname of their home manor only after they had left it. From these two manors, branches of the family spread throughout north and south Devon. Across north Devon, there were key branches in Barnstaple, Berrynarbor, Bideford, and Ilfracombe, with sub-branches in Bradworthy and Combe Martin being particularly prolific. In south Devon most branches were in the area known as the South Hams, between Plymouth and Kingsbridge, notably in Plymstock, Wembury, Ermington (another very prolific branch), South Milton and Thurlestone. From the early 16th century, through to the late 17th century, many Witheridge mariners sailed in and out of the port of London, and settled in the city, with some eventually moving out to surrounding villages, now suburbs. Another branch was in Chatham, Kent in the late 17th century, but it has not yet been determined where this branch originated. Descendants of the Chatham branch moved to the Birmingham area and have since spread throughout the Midlands. Descendants from all these branches are now scattered throughout the UK and the world, as well as in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA. We are in touch with a great number of descendants all these places, except South Africa, and we are currently trying to locate known descendants of families who went to South Africa. Witheridge FHS Research Holdings Pt 1 - Data UK BMD records GRO Birth Indexes transcribed from original index ledgers 1837-2005 GRO Death Indexes transcribed from original index ledgers 1837-2005 GRO Marriage Indexes transcribed from original index ledgers 1837-2005 GRO Birth Certificates 135,as issued by GRO or facsimile thereof 1838-1975 GRO Death Certificates 75, as issued by GRO or facsimile thereof 1837-1984 GRO Marriage Certificates 142,as issued by GRO or facsimile thereof 1838-1978 GRO Overseas Births including Army, Marine & Consular 1761-1924 GRO Overseas Deaths including Army, Marine & Consular 1796-1915 GRO Oveseas Marriages including Army, Marine & Consular 1796-1915 Australian BMD records Australian Birth Listings NSW, Tasmania, Victoria & WA 1788-1905 Australian Death Listings NSW, Tasmania, Victoria & WA 1788-1905 Australian Marriage Listings NSW, Tasmania, Victoria & WA 1788-1905 Australian Birth Certificates updating in progress Australian Death Certificates updating in progress Australian Marriage Certificates updating in progress Canadian BMD records Canadian Birth Listings Ontario extracts 1869-1896 Canadian Death Listings Ontario extracts 1884-1916 Canadian Marriage Listings Ontario extracts 1882-1908 Canadian Birth Certificates updating in progress Canadian Death Certificates updating in progress Canadian Marriage Certificates updating in progress Social Security Deaths also contain DoB (38, Witheridge only) 1963-1995 PRO Census Returns 1841 Transcripts, Witheridge & variants 1841 1851 Devon, Norfolk, Warwickshire (all) 1851 1861 Transcripts, Witheridge & variants 1861 1871 Transcripts, Witheridge & variants 1871 1881 England, Scotland, Wales, RN, IoM & CI (all) 1881 1891 Transcripts, Witheridge & variants 1891 1901 Index of all Witheridge & variants 1901 1911 listings being updated Devonshire wills facsimile copies 1834, 1854 PCC listings 24 Witheridge & variants 1508-1855 PCC Facsimiles 20 Witheridge & variants 1508-1837 PPR Indexes Witheridge & variants only 1858-1963 Parish Records (transcripts) Devon, Combmartin Witheridge & variants only 1538-1880 Devon, Ermington Witheridge & variants only 1600-1900 Devon, Exeter Cathedral original images, all names 1593-1813 Devon, Wembury Witheridge & variants only 1611-1824 London, St Helen's Bishopsgate all names Devon, Combmartin Witheridge & variants only 1538-1880 Devon, Ermington Witheridge & variants only 1600-1900 Devon, Exeter Cathedral original images, all names 1593-1813 Devon, Wembury Witheridge & variants only 1631-1870 London, St Helen's Bishopsgate all names Cornwall various parishes, all names 1540-1837 Devon various parishes, all names 1813-1840 Devon, Combmartin Witheridge & variants only 1538-1880 Devon, Ermington Witheridge & variants only 1600-1900 Devon, Exeter Cathedral original images, all names 1593-1813 Devon, Plymouth various parishes, all names, indexed 1837-1998 Devon, Wembury Witheridge & variants only 1627-1851 Kent various parishes, all names 1538-1837 London, St Helen's Bishopsgate all names London, St Peter's, Westminster all names 1655-1875 Devon, Plymouth various parishes, all names, indexed 1837-1998 LMA registers (facsimile) Baptisms 42 Witheridge & variants 1606-1904 Burials 26 Witheridge & variants 1606-1889 Marriages 37 Witheridge & variants 1729-1912 ArchB Canterbury Faculty Office (all names) 1543-1869 Bishop of London Faculty Office (all names) 1520-1828 Parish Records (facsimile) Seamen's records 5 facsimile records Army documents Awards 3 facsimile records Cornwall (Pigot) 1823, 1844 Devon (Pigot) 1844 Kent (Pigot 1823, 1844 Kent 1828-29,1832-34 London 1828-29 Middlesex 1828-29 Somerset (Pigot) 1830 Witheridge FHS also holds a large number of extracts from other records, detailing Witheridges (and variants) in Muster Rolls, Subsidy Rolls, Manorial Rolls, land deeds, military and marine records, emigration and immigration, and criminal records. Pt 2 - Data Interpretations The WFHS Research Co-ordinator, Kim Cook, has combined records from various sources. Card Index This index covers over 2,500 Witheridges and Wetheridges, male and female, whether born or married into the family. The cards combine entries from parish registers, GRO registrations, census returns, wills, military, marine, and other documents. Each personal card includes some or all of the following information: Christian name(s), date and place of birth and/or baptism; date(s) and place(s) of marriage(s), with name(s) of spouse(s); date and place of death and/or burial; names of parents; names and dates of children; occupation; census information; probate details; military or naval records. Enhanced Narrative Pedigrees Each written pedigree covers one branch, or sub-branch, of a Witheridge family, generation by generation. Personal names are colour-coded, so that descendants of siblings can easily be found. In addition to the basic birth/baptism, marriage, and death/burial information, these pedigrees include available details of occupation, education, changes of address, and census information. Other personal details, such as when and where a person met his/her spouse, others who lived with the family, cause of death, military or marine service details, and even telephone numbers for 20th-century families, have also been included where possible. These pedigrees, which are constantly updated, include those for Australia Early immigrants 1842-1890 From Devon-Cornwall 1875-present day Bideford South Devon sub-branch 1802-present day Buckland, Devon Main branch 1800-1890 Chatham, Kent Main branch 1693-1836 Birmingham sub-branches 1806-present day Combmartin, Devon Main branch 1538-present day Bristol sub-branch 1863-present day Wales-USA sub-branch 1880-present day Ermington, Devon Main branch 1580-1934 Bridgwater sub-branch 1897-1947 Plymouth sub-branch 1815-present day Plymouth & Poole sub-branch 1811-present day Highgate, London Main branch 1765-1870 Camberwell sub-branches 1883-present day Newton Ferrers, Devon Main branch 1600-1700 North Tawton, Devon All branches 1791-present day South Africa Witheridge descendants 1820-1950 Thurlestone, Devon All branches 1700-present day Wembury, Devon all known descendants 1590-present day Family trees have been compiled for most branches and sub-branches of the Witheridge family. Information has been collated from a wide range of sources to provide a profile of parishes in which Witheridge or Wetheridge families lived. These profiles include geographic location, distance from nearest town, population at various dates, and main sources of employment. The date and style of the parish church, its furnishings, bells, and any renovations or additions to the building, as well as dates of non-conformist churches and chapels, are also included. The availability of schools, post office services, mail coaches, and local businesses, with dates, also form part of some profiles. Those for Cornwall and Devon include: Cornwall Antony, Jacobstowe, Maker, Tremaine, Week St Mary Devon Ermington, Ilfracombe, Malborough, Modbury, Plymouth Charles, Plymouth St Andrew, Stoke Damerel, Tamerton Foliot, Tavistock, Wembury. You may find our other Guild websites of interest:

Iliotibial band syndrome is a common knee injury that usually presents as lateral knee pain caused by inflammation of the distal portion of the iliotibial band; occasionally, however, the iliotibial band becomes inflamed at its proximal origin and causes referred hip pain. The iliotibial band is a thick band of fascia that is formed proximally by the confluence of fascia from hip flexors, extensors, and abductors. The band originates at the lateral iliac crest and extends distally to the patella, tibia, and biceps femoris tendon The pain is typically felt on the outside aspect of the knee or lower thigh. Treatment requires activity modification, massage, and stretching and strengthening of the affected limb. The goal is to minimize the friction of the iliotibial band as it slides over the femoral condyle. The patient may be referred to a physical therapist who is trained in treating iliotibial band syndrome. Most runners with low mileage respond to a regimen of anti-inflammatory medicines and stretching; however, competitive or high-mileage runners may need a more comprehensive treatment program. The initial goal of treatment should be to alleviate inflammation by using ice and anti-inflammatory medications. Patient education and activity modification are crucial to successful treatment. Any activity that requires repeated knee flexion and extension is prohibited. During treatment, the patient may swim to maintain cardiovascular fitness. If visible swelling or pain with ambulation persists for more than three days after initiating treatment, a local corticosteroid injection should be considered. Corticosteroid injection for iliotibial band syndrome. Gerdy’s tubercle and the femoral condyle are marked as landmarks. With the patient in a supine or side-lying position, the needle is inserted at the point of maximum tenderness over the femoral condyle. As the acute inflammation diminishes, the patient should begin a stretching regimen that focuses on the iliotibial band as well as the hip flexors and plantar flexors. The common iliotibial band stretches(Figure 4) have been evaluated for their effectiveness in stretching the band. The stretch shown in Figure 4C was consistently the most effective in increasing the length of the iliotibial band in a study of elite distance runners. Although this study demonstrates the effectiveness of stretching the iliotibial band, participants in the study did not have iliotibial band syndrome and studies have not demonstrated that stretching hastens recovery from the syndrome. Stretches of the right iliotibial band Once the patient can perform stretching without pain, a strengthening program should be initiated. Strength training should be an integral part of any runner’s regimen; however, for patients with iliotibial band syndrome particular emphasis needs to be placed on the gluteus medius muscle. A strengthening exercise geared toward the gluteus medius is shown in Figure 5. Exercise for strengthening of the right gluteus medius muscle in a weight-bearing position. (A) The patient stands on a platform and lowers the left leg toward the ground slowly. (B) Through contraction of the right gluteus medius, the patient then elevates the leg, returning the pelvis to a level position. Running should be resumed only after the patient is able to perform all of the strength exercises without pain. The return to running should be gradual, starting at an easy pace on a level surface. If the patient is able to tolerate this type of running without pain, mileage can be increased slowly. For the first week, patients should run only every other day, starting with easy sprints on a level surface. Most patients improve within three to six weeks if they are compliant with their stretching and activity limitations. For patients who do not respond to conservative treatment, surgery should be considered. The most common approach is to release the posterior 2 cm of the iliotibial band where it passes over the lateral epicondyle of the femur. In a retrospective study of 45 patients who underwent surgical release of their iliotibial band, 84 percent of the patients reported that their surgery results were good to excellent.

| Potentially edible!| Food irradiation is the practice of subjecting food to high doses of ionizing radiation - gamma radiation, X-rays or electron beams - in order to kill germs and prevent food poisoning. Irradiation extends the shelf life of foods and eliminates pathogens. At higher doses, it makes the food suitable for people suffering from deep immunosuppression, such as leukemia patients. Because the technology overlaps two areas of everyday life which are highly prone to woo and pseudoscience - food and nuclear technology - most of the time it is drowning in a tidal wave of bullshit. Lack of consumer acceptance is the primary reason why it is not used to a greater extent. Uses of irradiation Irradiation is conducted by subjecting food, typically already in its packaging, to radiation from a particle accelerator or a sample of radioactive material, such as cobalt-60 (which emits gamma rays and electrons as it decays). Bacteria, fungi, insects and parasites die due to DNA damage and inactivation of enzymes. The primary use of irradiation is to kill germs without heating the food after it is put in its airtight packaging. This allows the sterilization of foods which cannot be pasteurized, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, spices, frozen and raw meat and fish, French Camembert cheese, and complete prepared meals. Additionally, low doses of radiation can prevent sprouting of foods such as potatoes, garlic and onions, and delay ripening. Irradiation requires large and expensive equipment, although the technology can also be used for other applications such as sterilizing medical equipment, cosmetics, and packaging. In 2012 the UK Food Standards Agency reported that there were more than 20 sites in the EU and 10 outside the EU, "three in South Africa and India, two in Thailand and one each in Turkey and Switzerland". The Turkish site is GammaPak which offers a range of Cobalt-60 sterilisation. Irradiation will not inactivate metabolic enzymes naturally present in food, which cause its slow decomposition over time. It can't be used to "fix" partially spoiled food, as the toxins already produced by microorganisms are not destroyed. (Pasteurization, by contrast, can eliminate those toxins that break down on exposure to heat, such as the botulism toxin.) Doses of radiation used in food processing typically do not kill viruses. Foods high in unsaturated fat, such as nuts and vegetable oils, tend to taste bad after being subjected to radiation. Irradiation facilities tend to be capital intensive, with costs in the range of $1 million - $5 million. Mostly fictional concerns of opponents The most obvious fear is that irradiated food is radioactive itself and will cause you to grow a tail or an extra hand. In reality, all food is slightly radioactive, and irradiation does not increase its radioactivity. This is similar to visible light: no matter how long you sunbathe, you will not start glowing in the dark, even though sunlight is a form of radiation. Inducing radioactivity in food is only possible using neutrons, but irradiation does not use them. This fear is probably rooted in the all-too-common confusion — eagerly exploited by anti-nuclear scaremongers — between radiation (receiving rays produced by nuclear reactions) and radioactive contamination (having physical particles of radioactive materials on or in oneself). Other arguments against food irradiation are listed below. - Irradiation would hide hygiene problems at manufacturing plants. The inherent assumption is that maintaining hygiene standards is a goal in itself, whereas in fact the actual goal is safe food, with hygiene standards being only a means to that end. Proponents of irradiation do not think that irradiation is a substitute to hygiene, as irradiation is not equivalent to complete sterilization. Additionally, it cannot remove toxins already produced by microorganisms. - Irradiation reduces the nutritional value of food. This is true in case of some micronutrients such as vitamins. Protein, carbohydrates and fat are not affected to any significant degree. The loss of vitamins is lower than in alternative methods, such as canning, drying or pasteurization. Slightly less nutritious food is better than toxic food. - Irradiation extends the shelf life of food. It requires some really crazy logic to consider this a disadvantage. Longer shelf life reduces the amount of food lost to spoilage and allows smaller shops to keep a wider inventory. The only possible detrimental effect is that food might lose some nutrients when stored over long periods of time - but again, slightly less nutritious food is better than spoiled food or no food at all. An extended shelf-life also reduces the cost of a particular type of food, which plays into an unspoken prejudice that cheap food is synonymous with junk food - Irradiated food loses nutrients over time faster than non-irradiated food. Persistent free radicals are sometimes proposed as a chemical basis. They are supposed to somehow "catalytically" destroy antioxidants. However, such catalytic action is chemically impossible - when a free radical reacts with a molecule of an antioxidant, both molecules are inactivated. The fact that some of the radicals persist in irradiated food indicates that they simply failed to react with antioxidants. - Irradiation of fats produces 2-alkylcyclobutanones (2-ACBs), which might be carcinogenic. This is trying to answer the wrong question. Coffee contains over 1000 different compounds, and 19 of the 28 that were tested are rodent carcinogens. Despite this, coffee consumption is not a risk factor for cancer. A feeding study using the complete product is a better estimate of cancer risk than analyzing its chemical content. The same logic can be applied to irradiated food and 2-ACBs. Animal studies showed no carcinogenic effect of irradiated food, even at very high radiation doses. Therefore, whether isolated 2-ACBs are carcinogenic is irrelevant. - Food woo - FAQ on radioactivity and nuclear technology - Microwave oven, which uses a very different kind of radiation - Raisins, which are grapes irradiated with yet another sort of radiation - http://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2011.1930, p. 7 - See the Wikipedia article on food irradiation. - Irradiated food, UK Food Standards Agency, 26 Apr 2012 - GammaPak website - University of Wisconsin, Madison - The Facts about Food Irradiation - Position of the American Dietetic Association: Food Irradiation - New York Times - Spinach and Peanuts, With a Dash of Radiation - Which is exactly the opposite of the actual case: junk foods tend to be convenience foods, which in the long run are considerably more expensive per meal than foods prepared at home from basic ingredients. Convenience foods are an extremely expensive luxury, as people on food stamps, or otherwise on tight food budgets, rapidly learn. - New York Times - EATING WELL; Questions on Irradiated Food - The causes and prevention of cancer: the role of environment - Coffee consumption and risk of gastric and pancreatic cancer-A prospective cohort study

عنوان مقاله [English] Diversity of rural location-spatial characteristics in Iran indicates difference in needs and requirements of rural communities, raising the necessity of local planning. This article presents effective strategies and formulates general issues on "executive plan of rural development" of Sadrabad village of Rustaq sub-district in Yazd province of Iran. For this purpose, it used a participatory and strategic planning approach in survey and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) methods as well as SWOT model. The study results showed that among the weaknesses of the village, "water scarcity", among the strengths, "possibility of integrating the lands", among the opportunities, "presence of appropriate external markets for the supply of green house products", and among the threats, "environmental pollution of the village" were the most important factors affecting the rural development; in addition, the aggressive strategy with focus on internal strengths and external opportunities was found as the most suitable model for the development of the studied village.

Table of Contents A monochromic image is composed of a single color—the word monochrome cones from the Ancient Greek: monochromes. A monochromatic image reflects colors in shades of limited colors or hues. Also read: What is SKU? – Definition, Functions, Benefits, and More Functions of Monochromic Describe paintings, photographs, designs, or drawings of a single color. The objects have monochrome tones with few shades or colors. However, in the case of an image, the term monochrome is often used to refer to black and white or grayscale, although it can be useful to create other combinations that contain shades of a color. They say everything is better when it is in color, but this is not always the case, especially when it comes to printers. If your use is mostly domestic or personal, having a color printer will make a lot of sense. However, if you print a large volume of documents, very often and that do not require color ink (such as letters in the name of a company, office notes, and invoices), then the ability to print in full color is practically a non-essential feature. Printers are indispensable accessories in an office. But due to the enormous volumes of printed documents that are essential in this type of workspace. Computers that can print only black and white text and graphics because of the advantages they offer in General efficiency terms. What is a Monochromic printer? A printer that works only with black ink. It can also be in red or violet as can happen with monochrome matrix printers. In general, it is a more profitable option than its color counterpart. The results they give are very reliable, being clean, crisp, and practical in terms of speed. Currently, although it may not seem like it. Monochromatic printers are the most sold and used in office spaces, because they only require an ink cartridge or an affordable price toner, resulting in a long-term cost cut and much more duration than color printers, requiring shorter times between each replacement. Not until many years ago, all the printers that were in homes and businesses were monochrome until the Laserjet Color, the first color printer for home use. Monochromatic printers are useful in professional environments due to their faster printing speed, lower cost per printed page, and in the case of laser printers, superior text quality. What kind of monochrome printer should I choose? Remember that everything will depend on your needs. So if you require a printer that needs to produce any document, the smartest thing is to acquire a multifunctional color with ink cartridges. Because this will allow you to do everything. Now, if the jobs are specifically text, working at the same time with more than one computer connected, opting for a monochrome printer is an excellent option. For more massive daily printing needs, a monochromatic printer is the most logical option. Because it can quickly print high production volumes while maintaining operating costs at a considerably low level. It is not as versatile as a color printer, but despite that, it is still the preferred printer for commercial use simply. Because the color is not a mandatory necessity in most professional spaces. Among the monochrome type printers, the laser one is still the preferred one in many cases. Imposing itself more and more against color lasers and inkjet devices for one simple reason. Not everyone needs to print in color. If the only thing you print are letters, bills, essays for school and the like, there is no good reason to spend money on a color laser or business inkjet. And at least two good reasons to keep a laser instead of considering an inkjet. Monochromatic lasers are faster than almost any inkjet and print more attractive text. Also read: What is a Scanner? – Definition, Function, Properties and Types Revolutionizing Home Buying By Embracing Technology in the Modern Real Estate Market Embracing Technology in the Modern Real Estate Market The landscape of homebuying is undergoing a seismic shift, propelled by technological… Why Engineering is a Promising Career Choice for The Future 5 Reasons Engineering is a Great Career Choice Engineering is a growing field in the U.S. with high demand due…

crisis of the 3rd century, the empire was already terminal. It continued on, but it was no longer the entity that it once was. When Emperor Diocletian established the Tetrarchy, it was an effort to try and make the empire more manageable, essentially splitting them up into separate entities (Imagine the US being split up into seperate administrative districts of Pacifica, New England, Dominion, Midwest, and Texas). The Roman empire had ceased to exist as a single entity, it was now an organization of seperate but cooperative empires, nominally it was one empire, but in practice many. The Roman empire was dead, only the still breathing corpse remained; it simply took a final push from outsiders to do her in. I say this because Rome throughout history had been beset, bested by, and occasionally sacked by barbaric tribes, such as the celts and gauls, and earlier in their history by the Etruscans and Samnites. Each time the eternal city came back from defeat and soldiered on, eventually reigning victorious and subjugating their attackers. However, what had changed in the millenia was that Rome was no longer a vibrant society; an age old scourge that had beset societies throughout the ages consumed it from within; much like a cancer attacking a persons immune system or termites eating away at a wooden pillar. This cancer was bureaucracy. The empire had always been large, had always had to deal with an occasional uprising, had always been beset by the very problems that appeared to eventually fell it, but the empires ability to deal with these problems effectively and quickly had changed, not the problems themselves. Where once defense of a region was left to the proconsul/propraetor (governor) of the province and the legionaries (Roman citizen soldiers) and auxiliaries (Non-citizen residents of the empire looking to obtain citizenship) under his command, occasionally with some help from Rome herself in the event of a major crisis. Over the centuries a large bureaucratic organization had sprung up hamstringing the governors ability to govern, and stealing away resources from more productive endeavour. This bureaucracy had been implemented by the first emperors themselves, to help them assist governance of the empire, and had gradually been expanded as emperors attempted to avoid any extremely popular governor or general from laying claim to the imperial seat. Over the centuries successive coups and civil wars lead the emperor to believe that he needed to exert more direct authority over the empire rather than less (though some Emperors such as Hadrian bucked that trend). Now this is all conjecture, as all hypothesises of what caused Rome to fall are, but I use this example to state my case. In 212 AD the emperor Caracalla issued an edict that fundamentally changed the empire. The edict was the Constitutio Antoniniana, which declared every freeborn person residing in the empire a Roman citizen with all the rights and responsibilities that it contained. This was a momentous occasion that one, symbolizes how bureaucratic the empire had become, and two, fundamentally changed its social system, and three, laid the seeds for the crises that would beset the empire in the next two centuries. The reason Caracalla passed the new law was simple, he wished to increase the taxable base of his empire. The Roman empire was very complex and its taxation system equally so, but to summarize it: outside of a census tax and polling tax, each administered by a puppet king or provincial governor, non-Roman citizens were exempt from direct taxation by the empire, i.e Roman tax collectors representing the city of Rome and not the provincial governors who then passed the tax on after collection some of the revenue for their administrations. Roman citizens were subject to direct taxes from the Empire, but were spared the census tax and polling tax. By passing the law, and making every person in the empire a citizen, he further strengthened an already large bureaucracy. But more importantly, it was why he did so, it was because the tax was to feed the behemoth itself. The bureaucracy had grown so large that the empire was having difficulty funding it with the revenue sources it had at its disposal. The emperor issued this edict, hoping that this move would solve the frequent funding problems that beset the empire during this time; I should also note that currency debasement was going on cocurrently as well. However, this short term solution had dire long term ramifications. Firstly, it grew the very bureaucracy that was slowly killing the empire. This bureaucracy had gradually, over the centuries, shifted power of action away from the governors of the provinces and more towards the emperor, making the empire as a whole much more vulnerable to incompetence or corruption of the emperor and his aids. Corruption gradually became a widespread problem that left the organization that ran the empire unable to do its very job. Secondly the edict continued the empires economic stagnation. Adding addition tax burdens to an ever strained productive middle class straing them even further, and as the middle class goes so goes society. When the middle class thrives and is productive society grows. When the middle class is squeezed and disappears a society stagnates. This edict created an additional massive tax burden, which the emperor made even more burdensome by raising the tax rates on the populace, and coupled with an ever debasing currency, made them unable to pay their dues to the state. This began the process of fuedalization of society because as the ability of the common man to pay his debts decreased the likelihood of seeking a wealthy benefactor rose. By the end of the empire the poor plebians had pledge themselves to the wealthy land owners, who had the power and ability to persuade or outright ignore imperial tax edicts, becoming serfs on land that they once had owned and worked for themselves. Thirdly the new universal citizenship that every person in the empire enjoyed had a major unforeseen consequence on Romes military ability. The legions of Rome had always been the elite force of the military, not the backbone that we imagine them to be simpy because of numbers. Open to citizens of the empire only, it was a lucrative prospect despite the lengthy mandatory service of 25 years. The average lifespan of a legionnaire was greater than that of an average citizen. The pay was very good, and to top it off, retiring legionaries received generous grants of lands in the outer territories. The empire created colonies where retired legionaries would settle, which helped maintain peace and stability in the region, and more importantly for the legionnaire, created an area where they were members of the wealthy landed class. But as I stated, the legion wasn't the backbone of the miliary. Though the legions were numerous there were far too few of them to patrol all of the empire alone. That was the purpose of the auxiliary, which also served a societal reason for existing along with a military purpose. During the principate and up to the middle of the 3rd century the auxiliary made up 3/5 of the Roman military forces. The pack mules and specialized soldiers of the military; a good analogy would be to think of the legions as construction engineers and the auxiliaries as the field crews. But most importantly, the auxiliary was comprised of non-citizens of the empire, and the auxiliary units were often stationed away from homeland of the soldiers who had enlisted. This helped prevent rebellions, by removing the armed subjects from their native lands, and increased integration amongst the auxiliaries into Roman societs as the reward for 25 years of auxiliary service was citizenship in the empire. It may be difficult to understand how lucrative a prospect this was, but citizens enjoyed special economic rights and privilages over other subjects. A person could become rich and successful merely as a subjuct, but it was far easier to become rich when one was a citizen. Citizenship could be awarded by the emperor to upstanding subjects or foreigners who greatly helped the empire, but the most common way to earn it was through military service. As I have mentioned before, the Romans were brutally effective in subjugating a population with an iron fist. On the flip side, they created many opportunities for the excellent or ambitious peregrini (foreigners under Roman control) to become standing members of society. Citizenship in the empire opened doors, it allowed for free travel throughout the empire, and the possibility to hold positions of power. The ability to travel freely was especially a big deal. This is still true today, as I know individuals that have acquired American citizenship simply because it offers greater ability to travel into other countries. However, the Constitutio Antoniniana removed a major incentive for members of the empire to enlist into the auxiliary and from it a major source of military manpower. This immediately created a man shortage problem. The legions alone were not enough to patrol the boundaries of the frontier lands, maintain peace in the inner empire, and build and maintain the vast roadworks that facilitated trade. This self inflicted crisis forced later emperors to seek out barbarian auxiliaries, though a better word would be mercenaries. Essentially the empire had put itself in a position where it was unable to raise its own army, it had to pay for protection. And this is where it all comes together. The edict removed any real reason for non-citizens to sacrifice for the empire, since everyone was a citizen now, why would they join the auxiliaries? Men still joined the legions, but the legions were expensive to maintain relative to the auxiliary units, further straining the empire that was already spending every coin it had on its massive bureaucracy. And as the bureaucracy grew, so did the corruption that comes with large organizations that answer to few individuals. It siphoned resources from the middle class, and actively forced out those who showed great ability for fear of losing their little fiefdoms. In the end those with ability, or simply the resources, stuck to their own fortunes and ignored the empire, carving out little fiefdoms of their own. When the west finally fell in 476 AD, the empire had long been dead, the usurping Germanic leader simply decided he did not want to play along with the farce any more. This is something we ourselves need to think about. Massive influx of migrants, economic troubles, even incompetent leaders are all survivable. Rome had its fair share over the millenia but survived them all. It was only when the bureaucracy became so large that it cannibalized everything productive and valuable that the empire finally succumbed. That is the threat that America faces today. We have dozens of agencies and and departments that need not exist each one vying for money and influence, and each one looking out for its own interest. It will not be the migrants, nor economic troubles, nor even a foreign power that will lay us low. It will be the very departments and programs that we create to help us rule our nation because the day is coming when we cannot even pretend to pay for our government as it exists now. And when that day comes, if we haven't fundamentally altered how the nation thinks, then we will see our own Constitutio Antoninana moment.

Reading & Phonics In order that our children have access to a wide range of genres, we use a broad spectrum of books, which are levelled in line with the National Curriculum. These are then colour coded to enable the children to independently choose their correctly levelled home reading books. However, support is given to children who need additional help in choosing their books. Within the classroom, children take part in scheduled guided reading lessons, where they are taught the skills of reading. These skills cover a range of strands, including basic word/sound recognition; locating information within a text; deducing what the author means using implied information and the strategies that are used to add interest to texts. Books chosen for these lessons are dependent on ability, age, interests and the particular assessment focus being taught. These books may include fiction, non-fiction, poetry or phonic specific. We are also lucky enough to have both a Key Stage 1 and a Key Stage 2 library, where children are invited to choose their own books. These may be personal interest choices, or topic specific for research within lessons. At the Meadows we teach through the recommended ‘Letters and Sounds’ programme (supplemented where appropriate by resources from the Read, Write Inc, scheme). This is a synthetic (hands-on) and systematic approach where the sounds are taught in a specific order. Some sounds (phonemes) are made up of single letter sounds (e.g. s, a, t, p, i, n), while others are made up of more letters (e.g. ch, ar, igh). The children begin their phonics journey in reception with something called ‘basic code’ – this means they learn one way of spelling each of the letter sounds to help them to read and write. Later on, within Key Stage 1 they will learn the ‘alternative code’ – different ways of making each of the sounds, (e.g. the ‘or’ sound can be written as or, au, augh, aw or oor). The children use a range of resources such as magnetic letters, games, play dough, glitter, flash cards and computer programmes to help them learn. Phonics is taught daily as a discreet subject in short bursts as recommended, but we also bring it into any lesson we are able within Key Stage 1, pointing out the phonemes (the sounds in a word) and the graphemes (how the sounds are written) in order to embed the learning.

You have a program as follows: class Location: def __init__(self, country="US", state="CA", city="Los Angeles"): self.country = country self.state = state self.city = city def printer(self): return [self.country, self.state, self.city] new_loc = Location("Mexico", "Mexico City", "Mexico City", "good neighborhood") print(new_loc.printer()) Here are your choices of what it could print out: a. TypeError: init() takes from 1 to 4 positional arguments but 5 were given b. TypeError: init() takes from 1 to 3 positional arguments but 4 were given c. ['Mexico', 'Mexico City', 'Mexico City'] d. None of the above Which one does it print? Scroll down to see the answer. A. The reason is that the class methods always pass the self when there are stanzas like this: new_loc = Location("Mexico", "Mexico City", "Mexico City", "good neighborhood") The self is invisible, but behind-the-scenes, it is there. It accepts four positional arguments: country, state, city, and self. The line causing the error includes "good neighborhood". To read more about this, see this StackOverflow posting. The arity of the __init__ constructor (in the class Location) is variable -- but passing four arguments is excessive. It can handle three explicit parameters as "self" is passed implicitly. Python will print out "__init__() takes from 1 to 4 positional arguments but 5 were given"

Ever since the term "crowdsourcing" was coined in 2006 by Wired writer Jeff Howe, group activities ranging from the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary to the choosing of new colors for M & Ms have been labeled with this most buzz-generating of media buzzwords. In this accessible but authoritative account, grounded in the empirical literature, Daren Brabham explains what crowdsourcing is, what it is not, and how it works. Crowdsourcing, Brabham tells us, is an online, distributed problem solving and production model that leverages the collective intelligence of online communities for specific purposes set forth by a crowdsourcing organization -- corporate, government, or volunteer. Uniquely, it combines a bottom-up, open, creative process with top-down organizational goals. Crowdsourcing is not open source production, which lacks the top-down component; it is not a market research survey that offers participants a short list of choices; and it is qualitatively different from predigital open innovation and collaborative production processes, which lacked the speed, reach, rich capability, and lowered barriers to entry enabled by the Internet. Brabham describes the intellectual roots of the idea of crowdsourcing in such concepts as collective intelligence, the wisdom of crowds, and distributed computing. He surveys the major issues in crowdsourcing, including crowd motivation, the misconception of the amateur participant, crowdfunding, and the danger of "crowdsploitation" of volunteer labor, citing real-world examples from Threadless, InnoCentive, and other organizations. And he considers the future of crowdsourcing in both theory and practice, describing its possible roles in journalism, governance, national security, and science and health. Retrieving notes about this item

- The population has doubled since 1975. - Venezuelans differ from most Latin Americans because a large and increasing majority already lives in cities, concentrated along the Caribbean coast. - Since 1998 the number of people receiving treated drinking water has increased by 3.5 million. - At over 5%, the prevalence of HIV/AIDs remains among the highest in Latin America. - New primary healthcare in poor barrios is still largely staffed from Cuba under barter arrangements for Venezuelan oil, which do not always figure in the statistics. - As in the US, for many years more resources were devoted to private healthcare for the rich than to public healthcare for the majority of Venezuelans. Even so, the Venezuelan total of $272 per person in 2002 spent on health was less than a 20th of that in the US. - Oil provides roughly a third of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, around 80% of export earnings and half of all government revenues. - With 75.6 billion barrels, Venezuela has the largest proven and useable oil reserves in the western hemisphere – sufficient for more than 70 years at current rates of extraction. - The extraction of an estimated 235 billion barrels of heavy oil deposits in the Orinoco delta and river basin is restricted by its cost and environmental destructiveness. - Venezuela also has the nineth largest gas reserves in the world. - It is the world’s fifth largest producer and fourth largest exporter of crude petroleum, supplying about 15% of US oil imports. - PDVSA, the national oil company, owns Citgo, which runs refineries and 15,000 gas stations in the US. - Production, which fell back sharply during the oil dispute in early 2003, has now been restored to previous levels – around three million barrels a day. - Expenditure on education as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product has risen continuously, from 3.4% in 1998 to 4.9% in 2004.2 - Primary education is now provided for 99% of primary-school-age children. - The Government claims that its ‘Misión Robinson’ programme brought literacy to 1.2 million adults in just one year (2004).2 - The biggest long-term improvement has been in secondary enrolment. Similar trends have been occurring more recently in higher education. - With almost 80% of private land owned by just 5% of all landowners, in 1996 (the most recent survey) land ownership was even more concentrated in Venezuela than in Brazil, which is often cited as the worst in the world.3 - By the end of 2003, the Government claimed that some 60,000 rural families had new titles to 2.2 million hectares of largely fallow land, far surpassing the target set by its Plan Zamora earlier in the year.6 - Slower progress has been made on the ‘Vuelta al Campo’ (‘Return to the Countryside’) project. It began in 2003 with 23 families from Caracas who occupied 23 hectares of unused land in the state of Lara.6 - Between 2000 and 2003 there was a small increase in the value added in agriculture, from 4.2% to 4.5% of Gross Domestic Product – matched by a slight decline in Venezuela’s long-established reliance on food imports, reversing long-term trends for the first time in many years.3 - Despite the emphasis on gender in the Bolivarian Constitution, less than 10% of seats in Congress are held by women, ranking the country 114th in the world. - Venezuela does much better with female professional and technical workers, at 61.3% of the total, ranking as high as 14th in the world. - But it does badly on the ratio of female to male earned income, which at 0.42 ranks 114th in the world again. - The Gender Development Index (GDI) adjusts the Human Development Index (HDI) downward for gender inequality, and shows that, nonetheless, Venezuela is ranked slightly better on the GDI (58) than on the HDI (75). - One of the 10 most biodiverse countries on earth, Venezuela officially lost 8.3% of its forest cover – 4.3 million hectares – between 1990 and 2005. There has been no proven reduction in the rate of deforestation since 1998.5 - Mining – much of it illegal – in the south and east causes widespread damage from pollutants such as mercury, used in the extraction of gold. - There are frequent spills from the 130 oil tankers every month which use a narrow channel out of Lake Maracaibo – the most important oil field. - Land surrounding Lake Maracaibo falls by roughly eight centimetres every year due to the extraction of oil beneath it. - Petroleum for vehicles in Venezuela is the cheapest in the world. - Emissions of carbon dioxide are the highest in the region and almost four times higher than in neighbouring Colombia – though still only a fraction of the levels in North America, Australasia or Europe. - The UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) provides a broad measure of a people’s general state of well-being, including health and education. The higher the HDI ‘value’ is, the better, with 1.00 representing absolute perfection. Other UN indices, derived from the HDI, measure poverty and inequality, as well as gender development (see below left). - Despite oil wealth, Venezuela’s people as a whole have so far prospered little, even relative to other countries in the region – though since 2003 their situation has undoubtedly improved. - In 2003 Venezuela still ranked well below the Latin American and Caribbean average on the HDI and was only a little less than halfway down the ranking of every country in the world. POVERTY AND INEQUALITY - Venezuela ranks towards the better end of the Human Poverty Index (HPI), which shows the proportion of people living below a threshold level of life expectancy, health, education and standard of living. - The country is no longer among the most unequal societies in the world – as most other countries in Latin America still are. - However, in 2003 15% of the population still lived on less than $1 a day, and 32% on less than $2 a day. - Unless otherwise stated, all figures are from Human Development Report 2006, UNDP. - World Development Report 2006, World Bank. - Handbook of Statistics 2005, UNCTAD. - ‘Land Reform in Venezuela’, Global Exchange, 2004. This first appeared in our award-winning magazine - to read more, subscribe from just £7

Review of The Psychology of Wants, Interests and Attitudes by Edward L. Thorndike The Psychology of Wants, Interests and Attitudes. By EDWARD L. THORNDIKE. New York: Appleton-Century Co., 1935. Pp. x+301. $3.50. This excellent treatise by a distinguished psychologist seeks to present with the liberal use of experimental findings a theory of the manner in which wants, interests, and attitudes are formed. The thesis presented, stated tersely, is that the emotional and appetitive activities of human beings are the result of a process of repetition and reward. To establish in an individual a desire, want, interest, or attitude, one must induce in him the desired response and then reward this response. With this conception, Thorndike indicates what he regards to be the deficiencies of the usual run of theories of habit formation. This volume will well merit serious consideration by students of social psychology. University of Chicago

The Flying Scotsman: Lessons from the Life of Eric Liddell - Michael J. Kruger President, Reformed Theological Seminary - Updated May 06, 2019 The Bible makes it clear that one of the greatest helps to running the Christian race is to look at the lives of the many saints that have gone before us. The author of Hebrews reminds us that “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” such as Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Sampson, David, and that therefore we should “run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). In other words, the examples of the saints inspire us. And we should follow those examples. Now, the word “example” has fallen on rough times in some quarters of the evangelical church. Some suggest that if we put forth biblical characters as examples that we are in danger of “moralizing” the Bible. However, the problem with such an idea is that the Bible itself puts forth the saints of old as examples. In addition to the passage above from Hebrews, Paul does something similar in 1 Corinthians. But instead of positive examples, Paul appeals to negative ones: “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did” (1 Corinthians 10:6). But it is not just to biblical characters that we can look as examples (positively or negatively). We can also look at the lives of the saints throughout modern history and be inspired, encouraged, and motivated by their faithfulness. One particular example of such a saint is the Scottish Olympic sprinter, Eric Liddell (1902-1945). I have recently read several biographies of Eric Liddell as I have prepared to teach on his life at my home church. Made famous by the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, Eric’s life was an example of what faithful devotion to Christ can accomplish. Refusing to run on Sunday, he withdrew from the 100 meters in the 1924 Paris Olympics—his very best event and the one for which he had trained. Instead he ran in the 400 meters, an event in which he was decidedly not favored. And he won the gold. His legacy, however, was not being an Olympic champion. His legacy was that he stood for truth even when his own well-being (and popularity) was bound to suffer. In short, Eric Liddell valued God’s glory more than his own glory. I also have a personal interest in Eric Liddell’s life simply because I have walked and lived in many of the same places he did. He studied at the University of Edinburgh (as did I) and lived there for many years of his life. In the 1981 film there is even a brief shot of Eric Liddell running up the steps at New College, where the Edinburgh divinity faculty resides. This is the view here: Over the next several months, I plan to offer a number of blog posts on lessons learned from the life of Eric Liddell. Why? Because he is a modern example of the man in Psalms 1: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked... but his delight is in the Law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalms 1:1-2). For more, visit Dr. Kruger's website: Canon Fodder.

Back to School: Tips for Parents and Caregivers Making the transition from summer fun to the start of the school year is difficult for children and, often, for adults. Who wants to go from sleeping in late and playing all day to waking up early and dealing with school work and social pressures? Parents and caregivers must also get back into the routine of helping kids with homework at night, preparing bagged lunches and snacks and following their children’s progress in school. There are ways, however, for parents and caregivers to ease the change in schedule and prepare themselves and their children for the challenges and, yes, even the fun of the school year. Dr. Andrea S. Libresco, a professor of Teaching, Literacy and Leadership at Hofstra University offers the following tips for parents and guardians: Prepare yourself and your child AND the teacher. Reduce anxiety of the unknown. *Spend time reading books about school, talking with your child about school, and what might happen on the first day before classes begin. *Bring your child to school in advance. (Teach your middle schooler how to open a lock.) *Let your child know it’s okay to feel nervous when starting school; let him know that teachers and other kids are nervous, too. *Help your child establish a regular routine to get ready for school – involve her in choices about what to wear, what to bring for lunch, what school supplies to purchase (depending on teacher’s instructions). *You and your child should get up early enough (and go to bed early enough) so that no one starts the day feeling rushed. (Ease into a back-to-school schedule over a period of at least a week.) And do leave a little time for the unexpected – a shoelace breaking, an extra bathroom visit – so there is no mad dash at the end. *If there’s anything that the teacher needs to know about your child or family situation (recent loss, special needs, stressful financial situation), be proactive and communicate with the teacher and other school personnel prior to the start of school. Be enthusiastic. Parents can set the tone of embracing exciting new changes. *Focus on fun. If you escort your child to school, check out the playground before you go in. Meet the teacher together. Take a look around the new classroom for things you know she enjoys – fish tank, art supplies, etc. *Don’t draw out the good-byes. Don’t let your separation anxieties become your child’s. *If your child seems unenthusiastic about school, ask him what is wrong. It may be a very specific problem (“The big kids on the playground never get off the swings.”) that you and your child together can talk about with the teacher. *And, if your child has ongoing trouble adjusting, do ask the school for help – teacher, guidance counselor, principal. Be a partner in your child’s learning. Learning is ongoing – in & out of school *Support your child’s reading – with reading aloud, shared reading from a variety of different types of sources. There is no age that is too old for read-alouds: picture books, chapter books, the funnies, a Metropolitan Diary story in the NY Times, sports page stats, a political cartoon, a compelling photograph. *Encourage questions of all kinds by wondering aloud and noticing things as you read, hang out or travel with your child. “I wonder how much weight that bridge could hold, how many trucks and cars at one time…” *Help your child become a problem-solver and independent learner by asking her to evaluate her work, versus your passing judgment on it. *Get to know the teacher and what goes on in the classroom by going to school events, seeing the work on the walls. If you have a positive relationship with the teacher and the school, your child will feel safer and can put his energy into learning. Be available. For your child and for her education. *Chat with your child about her day, but not with the old “How was school today?,” which requires a summary (and often a vague) judgment. Instead, ask a few more specific questions (without grilling): “What was the most fun today?” “How did soccer go?” “Did you ask your teacher about that math homework?” “Hear about any great books that you’re dying to read today?” *Let your child play and get exercise after school while it’s light outside; then support a particular work time and place where you can check in periodically. *Support your child’s work, but don’t do your child’s work. Find out the best ways to do this from the teacher. For example, with respect to writing, your teacher may be okay with going over your child’s writing, as long as she can see what the child did first and how you helped edit. *Over the first month, find out how you can support the teacher and the work that goes on in school. If the class is studying nature, take a walk with your child. If they’re studying Ancient Egypt, go to the Met. Be an activist. Education matters, so educate yourself about education matters. *Now that your child is in school, you have a vested interest in our education system. Work to get qualified teachers in every classroom, in buildings that are kept up, attended by children who are well-fed, whose families have books in their home, whose communities are safe. *Be alert to the role that standardized testing plays in your child’s education. If you have concerns, find out about groups that are challenging the time and emphasis given to testing in schools. *Get involved in passing school budgets. Work and vote for candidates who support good education for all children. As Teddy Roosevelt said, “This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in if it is not a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.”

Sexual Orientation, Determinants of Sexual Orientation, Determinants of A person’s sexual orientation concerns whether he or she is sexually attracted to people of the same sex, the opposite sex, or both. Starting in the nineteenth century, scientists, physicians, and mental health specialists have offered numerous theories of how people develop sexual orientations. What determines a person’s sexual orientation remains a question of much scientific, psychological, and social scientific controversy. Current biological theories focus on genes, brains, and hormones. For much of the twentieth century, scientists believed that gay men and lesbians had gender-atypical hormone levels in their bodies; for example, they thought that lesbians had more testosterone and less estrogen in their systems than did heterosexual women. Recent studies have shown that almost all lesbians and gay men have the same circulating hormone levels as their heterosexual counterparts. In response, current hormonal theories propose a link between sexual orientation and prenatal hormone levels. As prenatal hormone levels play a role in the organization of the developing brain, the idea is that different prenatal hormones levels could explain sexual orientation differences among adults. This prenatal hormonal hypothesis is premised largely on observations that early hormone exposure determines both the repertoire of mating behaviors exhibited by laboratory animals and the morphology of particular brain regions believed to modulate those behaviors. Over the past few decades, confirmed sex differences in the size of several brain structures in various laboratory animals have lead to speculation regarding parallel differences in the human brain associated with sex and sexual orientation. Several of the structural sex differences identified in animals involve specific cell groups in a region of the rodent hypothalamus involved in regulating particular mating behaviors. One such anatomical sex difference in rodents develops in response to sex differences in early exposure to sex hormones and involves a part of a rodent’s hypothalamus called the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area (SDN-POA). In the laboratory, damage in the vicinity of the SDN-POA decreases mounting behavior, and electrical stimulation of the region elicits mounting behavior. These observations established the belief that the SDN-POA participates in regulating male sexual behavior. That belief lacks critical support because the destruction of the SDN-POA of male rats does not, however, disrupt mounting behavior. The function of the SDN-POA remains to be elucidated. The belief that the SDN-POA participates in regulating sex behavior in rats led to the search for a comparable nucleus in humans. The human third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus (INAH3) has been identified as the most promising candidate. This nucleus is much larger and contains substantially more neurons in presumed heterosexual men than in women. By extrapolation from animal work, this human sex difference is widely believed to reflect sex differences in early hormone exposure, but this hypothesis is exceedingly difficult to test in humans. The AIDS epidemic has, however, made it possible to study this nucleus in men whose medical records indicate homosexual behavior. These studies suggest that the volume of INAH3 may be smaller in homosexual men than in heterosexual men; however, that finding must be viewed tentatively for various reasons, including that all the homosexual men in these studies died from complications of AIDS. Researchers have also sought to identify variation with sex and sexual orientation in the bundles of fibers that connect the left and right hemispheres of the brain. These studies have produced conflicting results regarding variation with both sex and sexual orientation. Inside each person’s cells are chains of DNA that act as a recipe for making that person. Determining the role a portion of genetic material plays in the development of a particular human trait is complicated, although there has been some success for specific anatomical and physiological traits. It is much more difficult to identify genetic material that influences complex psychological traits such as sexual orientations. One way to infer the extent to which a trait is genetic is to study twins. Identical twins share 100 percent of their genetic material. Fraternal twins are genetically only as closely related as non-twin biological siblings, sharing only 50 percent of their DNA. Because identical twins are genetically identical, differences between them are due to their pre- or post-natal environment, not genes. This inference does not work in the other direction. If identical twins have the same trait, it might be because they were raised in the same environment. Sophisticated studies have assessed sexual orientation in identical twins, same-sex fraternal twins, non-twin biological siblings, and similarly-aged unrelated adopted siblings. The idea is that if sexual orientation is genetic, identical twins should have the same sexual orientation, and the rate of homosexuality among the adopted siblings should be equal to the rate in the general population. If, on the other hand, identical twins and adopted siblings are as likely to have the same sexual orientation, then genetic factors make very little contribution to sexual orientation. Subjects recruited through ads in gay publications looking for volunteers with twins of the same sex were asked to rate their own sexual orientation, the sexual orientation of their relatives, and for permission to contact their siblings. In these studies, identical twins of gay men and lesbians were substantially more likely to share their sibling’s sexual orientation than were fraternal twins. The result of such twin studies are difficult to interpret because gays and lesbians seem more likely to volunteer themselves and their twin siblings for such studies when they have gay or lesbian siblings. When the proportions of identical and fraternal twins who are concordant for homosexuality are examined in databases of twins who were not selected on the basis of sexual orientation, the estimates for heritability of homosexuality are much lower than when subjects are selected from newspaper ads recruiting on the basis of sexual orientation. Building on the twin studies, scientists have tried to isolate the portion of the human genome that hypothetically influences sexual orientation. One such study began with the observation that some studies had found that homosexuality in men seems to follow the maternal line of the family. Some have interpreted this pattern among gay men’s families, which has only sometimes been observed, as suggesting that male homosexuality, similar to color blindness, is inherited from one’s mother on the X chromosome. To test the hypothesis that the X chromosomes contains genes that influence sexual orientation, families with at least two gay brothers were recruited from a sample of families in which homosexuality appeared to follow the maternal line. DNA samples were obtained from two gay brothers in each subject families. Samples were then analyzed using linkage analysis to determine how frequently the gay brothers had inherited markers from the same X chromosome of their mother. Because mothers have two X chromosomes but only pass one to their sons, one would expect two sons to have a 50 percent chance of sharing markers from the same maternal X chromosome. One research team, however, reported that when both sons were gay, 64 percent appeared to have inherited a particular portion of the same maternal chromosome (known as the Xq28 region). This finding was interpreted as suggesting that genes influencing sexual orientation in men may reside on the Xq28 region. That suggestion must be viewed cautiously because it has been criticized on the basis of multiple technical and statistical concerns, and two independent research teams have failed to replicate it. More generally, linkage analysis is best suited for discovering the genetic basis of traits determined in a genetically simple manner rather than traits that are influenced by several genes working in concert. This technique has mistakenly indicated that a specific genetic sequence plays a role in the development of a particular trait. Such mistakes are especially likely in the case of genetically complex traits, cognitively mediated psychological/behavioral traits, or those traits strongly affected by environmental factors. In addition to linkage analysis, some studies have looked for differences related to sexual orientation in candidate genes chosen on the basis of their involvement in the hormonal mechanisms of sexual differentiation and development. To date, these studies have not produced positive findings. In any event, genes in themselves cannot directly cause a behavior or a psychological phenomenon. Genes direct RNA synthesis that in turn leads to the production of a protein that may influence the development of psychological dispositions and particular behaviors. There are many intervening pathways between a gene and a behavior or a behavioral disposition and even more intervening variables between a gene and a cognitively mediated behavior. None of the most popular scientific theories of the determinants of sexual orientations are well supported. This does not mean, however, that sexual orientations are not biological in the sense that all psychological phenomena require the activity of a living brain. Rather than asking whether or not sexual orientations are biological, the more salient question is what role biology plays in the development of sexual orientations. Biology would still be a factor in sexual orientation if there are multiple pathways to the development of a particular sexual orientation. Biological factors may also play a role if they influence temperamental or personality factors that shape how a person interacts with the environment and experiences of it, which in turn affects the development of one’s sexual orientation. SEE ALSO AIDS; Gender; Gender, Alternatives to Binary; Sexual Orientation, Social and Economic Consequences; Sexuality; Twin Studies Byne, William, et al. 2001. The Interstitial Nuclei of the Human Anterior Hypothalamus: An Investigation of Variation with Sex, Sexual Orientation and HIV Status. Hormones and Behavior 40: 86-92. Hamer, Dean, and Peter Copeland. 1994. The Science of Desire: The Search for the Gay Gene and the Biology of Behavior. New York: Simon and Schuster. LeVay, Simon. 1996. Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mustanski, B. S., M. L. Chivers, and Bailey J. Michael. 2002. A Critical Review of Recent Biological Research on Human Sexual Orientation. Annual Review of Sex Research 13: 89-140.

One of the projects is to determine the genetic basis of high IQ. His team is sampling 1,000 Chinese adults with an IQ higher than 145, comparing their genomes with those of an equal number of randomly picked control subjects. Zhao acknowledges that such projects linking intelligence with genes may be controversial but “more so elsewhere than in China,” he says, adding that several U.S. research groups have contacted him for collaboration. “Everybody is interested in intelligence,” he says. Hong Kong supercomputers will be used to analyze the genetic information Ethical and privacy concerns have hindered such work in America and Europe. According to Professor Steve Hsu, who comes to the study from the University of Oregon, scientists have identified several candidate genes that may relate to IQ, although researchers are not yet sure. He said about 50 per cent of humans' IQ is substantially [heritable]. Dec, 2010, Yin Ye, BGI's vice-president, said researchers have already made some discoveries about IQ genes, but "it's too early to make public our results". Theoretically if the genetic basis could be found for 50% of high intelligence then some of the effects of those genes could be mimicked with medication or gene therapy. If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks

You might be wondering how and why the lottery exists. In this article, we’ll explore the history, rules, and odds of winning this popular game. But before we get into those, let’s look at the history of lotteries in general. Lottery history stretches back to ancient times, when the Old Testament Moses divided land amongst the Israelites, and the Roman emperors are said to have given slaves and property in lotteries. The United States began banging lotteries during the late 18th century, though a handful of states still operate lotteries today. The history of the lottery dates back to ancient times, when lots were used for the purpose of deciding ownership of land. Lotteries were popular in Europe in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The Netherlands was one of the first countries to adopt lotteries, and the name lottery comes from the Dutch word “lot” meaning “fate.” In the United States, the history of the lottery goes back to 1612 when King James I of England created a lottery to raise funds for his settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. The United States has a complicated relationship with gambling, yet many of its founding fathers participated in the lottery. It is also possible that many historical institutions such as universities and colleges were financed by organized lotteries. Odds of winning If you’ve ever pondered the odds of winning the lottery, you’ve probably wondered what the chances are of hitting the jackpot. The chances are so low that you might even lose your common sense. For example, the odds of winning a million dollars in the Powerball or Mega Millions are only one in 24.9. However, there are more unlikely outcomes: a murder in the Grand Canyon is 35 times more likely than winning the jackpot. The odds of getting polydactyly (extra fingers or toes) range from one in 500 to one in a thousand. A lottery scam is a classic example of advance fee fraud. The scam begins with an unexpected notification. A person may win the lottery and receive a cheque for an undetermined amount. However, this is not the end of the scam; it could just be the beginning of more trouble. In this article, we’ll look at how to spot lottery scams and how to avoid falling prey to them. After all, it’s always best to play it safe and protect yourself. The Rules of Lottery are a set of regulations that govern the operation of the lottery game. These rules may include the price of a winning ticket, methods of prize verification, and the payment of prizes. They should be read and studied carefully by any lottery enthusiast before participating in the game. To learn more about the Rules of Lottery, contact the governing body for your country’s lottery or seek the advice of lottery experts. Once you have a basic understanding of the rules, you can play the lottery safely and legally. The United States’ state lotteries are among the fastest-growing categories of consumer expenditure. Per capita lottery spending has increased by 13 percent annually after adjusting for inflation between 1975 and 1988. Lottery products are popular with the general public, but relatively few people account for the majority of the action. Several studies have examined socioeconomic patterns of lottery playing. The Engle curve shows that lottery expenditures decrease as income increases, but it is unclear whether this is true for all lotteries.

A lack of access to modern energy services such as household access to electricity and clean cooking facilities The modern world runs on energy. It is used to cook, heat homes, charge electronics and light cities. Because we always have access to energy we often take it for granted.There are 1 billion people in the world that do not have access to energy and 3 billion that their well-being is negatively affected by a low energy consumption, use of dirty or polluting fuels and excessive time spent collecting fuel to meet basic needs. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), for people in developing countries, having access to energy is fundamental to reducing poverty and improving health, increasing productivity, enhancing competitiveness and promoting economic growth. The IEA also says the cost of providing universal access to energy by 2030 would require annual investment of $35 billion. Black carbon - emitted by gas and diesel engines and released through the burning of wood, peat charcoal, and other solid fuels - is the second most significant contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide. The inefficient burning of solid fuels on an open fire or traditional stove indoors creates a dangerous cocktail of hundreds of pollutants, primarily carbon monoxide and small particles, but also nitrogen oxides, benzene, butadiene, formaldehyde, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and many other health-damaging chemicals. Stongest felt in Africa, 80 percent of people use some form of wood fuel as their primary source of domestic energy. In addition to damaging the environment by contributing to the rapid shrinking of Africa’s rainforests and woodlands, exposure to household air pollution, especially smoke from cooking fires, causes 3.8 million premature deaths each year, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). 98,000 Nigerian women die each year from the use of firewood, with thousands more at risk of severe health problems. Switch Energy Alliance Switch Energy Alliance (SEA) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to inspiring an energy-educated future that is objective, nonpartisan, and sensible. SEA's global video- and web-based approach engages students and general viewers in a positive conversation to work collaboratively on energy challenges. The organization reaches millions of people of all ages where they live and learn: online, in classrooms, in professional training and in museums. SEA has released its latest film, Switch On, about energy access in the developing world. The film addresses the issue of energy poverty and shows first hand how it effects 1 billion people. Switch On is the sequel to Switch the film that explores the world’s leading energy sites, from coal to solar, oil to biofuels and gets straight answers from the international leaders driving energy today. Articles about energy poverty: - These Kids Need Oil and Natural Gas: 325 Million Children Live on Less Than $2 a Day - Africa: End Energy Poverty in Africa to Combat Climate Change - Ending global energy poverty - how can we do better? How the energy industry is helping combat energy poverty: - Shell: Access to Energy - U.S. Natural Gas – Meeting the Energy Poverty Challenge American Petroleum Industry Blog, Sam Winstel - A Force for Good American Petroleum Industry Blog, Megan Bloomgren - How Hydrocarbons Lift People out of Poverty Plugged In Podcast #18: Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Oilfield Services and Executive Chairman of Liberty Resources

Imagine that you have received some land to use as you wish. How would you use this land? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer. Land is a valuable resource, and it is important to use it effective to create something that all people can enjoy. I therefore propose to use the land to build a campground. At the present time, there’s little low-cost recreation in the are where I live. Building a campground would change that. Ultimately a campground would make a more enjoyable environment for everyone. - Toefl writing: Do you prefer doing work by hand or using machines? - Looking forward to new experiences or staying the same, which one do you prefer? - Will you recommend a business or a farming research center for your country? - Do you agree or disagree: “Playing games teaches us about life” ? - Toefl ibt writing: What is the most important animal in your country ? Local entertainment is simply too expensive. A nice evening out can cost as much as one hundred dollars. Even movies and other less expensive types of entertainment are no longer cheap. Further, there are no real recreational facilities nearby. There are no parks within 30 miles. There are very few basketball courts, and most of those are ib poor condition. Building a campground could change all that. Staying overnight at a campground is very inexpensive. It can cost as little as thirty dollars. Further, there would be a sports area and picnic tables for use by campers and also those who do not wish to stay overnight. A campground would provide a lot of activities for very little money. That would definitely improve this area. The result of building a campground will be that many more people will be able to afford an enjoyable evening out .A campground also promotes healthy living. People can get out and breathe fresh air. They can walk and bike and play basketball or other sports. That is certainly better than spending an evening sitting down, eating buttery popcorn in a movie theater. A campground will make the area beautiful as well as functional. We have many wonderful natural resources, but we need to cultivate them. In addition to all the other good things it can bring, building a campground will help us do just that.

Nanosprings could hold biomolecules for micro-reactions used in the production of pharmaceuticals, for bio-sensors and for diagnostic medical devices. Look for biomedical applications of nanosprings within three years. RColinJohnson @NextGenLog Silicon dioxide nanosprings resemble old-style curled-up phone cords. Here is what EETimes says about nanosprings: Silicon nanosprings resembling old-fashioned phone cords can carry biological catalysts for medical electronics devices, according to researchers at Oregon State University (OSU). Nanotechnology has enabled a variety of tiny structures to be mass-produced for everything from smaller transistor channels to anti-counterfeiting mechanisms. Now the commercial production of nanosprings, fashioned from the semiconductor insulation material silicon dioxide and grown using the same chemical vapor deposition process used to manufacture semiconductors, could be poised to revolutionize biomedical devices. Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-daTU

As droves of longtime growers leave the tobacco business, Coyner, 29, is trying to break in. He raised a half-acre of the crop last year, producing 500 pounds of tobacco. He took it to an auction in Danville, Ky. and sold it all for $1.81 per pound. “I was surprised, the market was holding itself up,” he said. He plans to raise five and a half acres this year and predicts he’ll get at least 2,000 pounds of tobacco from it. There were 544 tobacco farms in West Virginia in 2002, according to a 2004 U.S. Department of Agriculture report. The state Department of Agriculture doesn’t track the number of tobacco growers. But Roger Quarles, president of the Kentucky-based Burley Tobacco Growers Co-Operative Association, says there aren’t many left. “If I said 20, I might be exaggerating,” he said. “It never was a huge thing, but it was something.” Quarles said many tobacco farmers left the business after the federal government’s 2004 buyout of tobacco quotas. For years, the federal government regulated tobacco growers by issuing allotments. Farmers were allowed to grow a certain acreage of tobacco on their lands, depending on the size of their fields. Growers had to purchase allotments from other landowners if they wished to increase their production or lease land from other farmers. The government eventually changed the system from an acreage-based allotment to a per-pound quota, where farmers were allowed to produce a specific amount of tobacco each year. All that went away when Congress passed a $10.1 billion buyout for tobacco growers. The buyout gave farmers a dollar for every pound of tobacco in their quota, with the payments spread over a 10-year period. Then in 2005, the government lifted all quota restrictions on tobacco growers. That drove tobacco prices down as supply overtook demand. According to a North Carolina State University article from that year, tobacco prices fell from $1.85 to $2 per pound before the buyout to $1.30 to $1.50 in November 2005. U.S. tobacco production has decreased dramatically since then. In 2002, the U.S. produced 428,631 acres of tobacco, according to USDA data. In 2011, the most recent data available, farmers raised 336,050 acres of tobacco. A new crop Many farmers have left the tobacco industry for other crops. Ray Ferguson now grows asparagus on his Lincoln County farm. His father-in-law, Joe Ware, started the farm about 40 years ago. When Ferguson married into the family 25 years ago, Ware was raising 10 acres of tobacco. By the time the farm stopped growing tobacco, it was down to five acres. “Everything was different back then,” he said. “Back then, I could make $750, $1,000 on just half an acre if you had good tobacco.” The family got out of the tobacco business a few years before the buyout. Ware Farms’ tobacco sold for $2.20 per pound that last year. Ferguson now sells his asparagus for $2.75 per pound. “It’s been good to me. It’s as good as tobacco ever was to me,” he said. Ware Farms is now the state’s largest asparagus grower and produces 6,000 pounds of asparagus yearly. Ferguson was inspired to grow the vegetable while preparing to grill steaks one day. He decided he wanted some asparagus to go with his meat, and went to pick some from a small patch in his wife’s grandfather’s garden. To his dismay, someone had already picked the asparagus patch clean. Ferguson headed to the local grocery store to purchase a pound or two. He became even more dismayed.

When looking at large corporations today a high percentage seem to combine the roles of CEO and Chairman meaning the two quite significantly different positions are carried out by the same person. Combining these two roles, however, can create a fundamental conflict of interest. It is vital to a company’s success to have different external perspectives but how can the CEO and Chairman have different perspectives if the role is played by the same person? There’s no right or wrong answer to this and different businesses operate in different ways but there are numerous reasons why companies can benefit if these two roles are separate. First let’s look at the difference between the two roles. The role of a CEO The CEO, formally known as the chief executive officer, is the highest ranking person in a company or organization. They are the person that all other executives within the company report to and the one that is responsible for making major corporate decisions and managing the overall operations of a company. The CEO should also act as the main point of communication between the board of directors and rest of the company. The role of a CEO can often vary depending on the size, industry and structure of a company but they are typically elected by the board of directors and instructed to deal with the important strategic decisions and be the public face of the company. The role of a Chairman A chairman is selected by the board of directors to lead, but not manage, all business that is carried out by the board. They are appointed to provide the board guidance and direction but they do not hold any sort of managing power over the other members. The chairman’s main roles are to communicate with shareholders, take the lead at board meetings and when reviewing or discussing the structure of the board. The board as a collective with a chairman appointed then has the highest level of authority in the company. Why should the roles be separate? These are two extremely important roles within high-growth companies, if not the most important and therefore there’s strong argument that the roles should be performed by two different people. Firstly, separating the roles means that there’s clear distinction between the board and the management and it eliminates conflict when it comes to performance evaluation, recruitment and other areas. Being the CEO of a company is a full-time role and all their efforts should be focused on company operations and strategy. If they have chairman responsibilities as well then it’s likely that some things will be neglected as they will have too much on their agenda. Being a Chairman can be an intense role and this should always be considered when recruiting for this position. The employment of an independent chairman means that one director can clearly speak on behalf of the board and can encourage open conversations between the board and the CEO. These meetings can encourage other members to share their opinions and views that could challenge and make the CEO think differently. Afterall, part of the CEO’s role is to report positive and negative company goings on and suggest improvements and ideas to be discussed by the board but if the CEO is the Chairman then he’s essentially reporting to himself and this can cause issues when it comes to the structure of the company. The debate about whether these two roles should be separate continues and although it’s advised it really depends on the company structure, size and what works best.

A and C are the opposite vertices of a square ABCD, and have coordinates (a,b) and (c,d), respectively. What are the coordinates of the vertices B and D? What is the area of the square? A 1 metre cube has one face on the ground and one face against a wall. A 4 metre ladder leans against the wall and just touches the cube. How high is the top of the ladder above the ground? Is there a relationship between the coordinates of the endpoints of a line and the number of grid squares it crosses? Compare this to the problem Vassil Vassilev from Lawnswood High School, has an idea for constructing pentagons from the midpoints of edges based on nested pentagons, and 5 pointed stars within them, which are all enlargements of each other. You might like to play with this

Sikh History – The Introductory Episode Welcome to the Sikh History podcast. This podcast series provides a fascinating look into the sparkling lives of the Sikhs from the 15th to the 18th centuries, transporting us back to the times of our ancestors. This podcast provides a historic context to the evolution of the Sikh religion, our values, our thoughts, our principles and our ethics and the reasons for our phenomenal successes as a strong knit worldwide community. Episode 1: This episode chronicles the birth and growth of the Sikh religion from the birth of the founder Guru Nanak in 1469 to the death of Guru Gobind Singh in 1708. At about the same time, the Mughal empire established itself in India and followed a policy of persecution and oppression. The Sikh gurus opposed such policies and sacrificed their lives to uphold the people’s right to religion, justice and freedom. This episode contrasts these developments and highlights the major events that led to the growth of the Sikh religion. Based on Panth Prakash by Rattan Singh Bhangoo, History of the Sikhs by Khushwant Singh and inspired by the Sikh History lectures of Bhai Amrik Singh. Waheguru ji da khalsa , waheguru ji di fateh. Welcome to the Sikh History podcast. This podcast series provides a fascinating look into the sparkling lives of the Sikhs from the founding of the Sikh faith in the 15th century to the present day, transporting us back to the times of our ancestors. This podcast provides a historic context to the evolution of the Sikh religion, our values, our thoughts, our principles and our ethics and the reasons for our phenomenal successes as a strong knit worldwide community. To understand the Sikh religion and way of life, the Sikh values and Sikhi better, I cannot but stress how important it is for us to be aware of our history – to know about the times our ancestors lived in. Sikh history is a wonderful peak into our past that tells us how we came into being – both as people and as a community. It is a huge repository of information about how Sikhs have evolved in the last 500 years; the path our ancestors took to preserve the teachings of our Gurus. History also has a message for us – for all of us living in the present – It is simply impossible to separate the Sikh identity from the Sikh history and the more we know our past, the better we can nurture our present selves. The second point about history is that it contributes to our moral understanding – in a sense that when we attempt to understand the moral dilemmas that people in the past faced, people who have weathered adversity in real difficult circumstances, we take away extremely valuable lessons in courage, in diligence and about how to shape our moral thinking. Everyday, around the world, in every Gurudwara, we do the Ardaas in which we recount our history, a history that connects us to our past – gives us the courage to face our present and the confidence to venture into the future with a blossoming pride in our heritage. It is only from history that we can learn things that would make us better humans. The stories of our past tell us what led to the success and failure of people. If we leave our history, we cannot understand our past and can never lead our future. For Sikhs, the period of early 18th century was one of tremendous upheaval. Sikhs were always in a state of war against the Mughal empire in North India, with the result that very few historical accounts were recorded. The East India company which had been rapidly colonizing India, finally managed to get a foothold in the Punjab. Curious to understand how a small community could stand up against the might of the Mughal empire, the British wanted to know everything about the Sikhs. It was necessary for them to understand the might of the Khalsa, in order to someday, establish their reign over Punjab. A British commander by the name of Captain David Murray commissioned Bute Shah, a well known Muslim cleric in the court of the Mughal emperor, Farrukh Siyar, to write a history of the Sikhs. By all measures his report was biased against the Sikhs. A chance meeting between Captain Murray and Rattan Singh Bhangoo set the record straight,. When Murray sought Rattan Singh’s opinion of the Sikhs, Rattan Singh Bhangoo responded by writing the Panth Prakash, which remains an authentic source of information on the Sikhs in the 18th century. The historical significance of Panth Prakash lies in the fact that its author Rattan Singh belonged to a historic family that had experienced various stages of persecution of the Sikhs. His grandfather Mehtab Singh was one of the leaders of 18th century Sikhs and had fought against the atrocities of Zakaria Khan, the most ruthless Mughal Governor of Punjab. Also through marriage he was close to the misl leaders. By narrating the accounts of Sikhs Rattan Singh Bhangoo has made significant contribution in understanding the lives of the 18th century Sikhs. He was the first person to record the history of Sikh martyrs in an objective manner and his writings have inspired many a tales of Sikh valor and folklore. With that introduction in mind, lets go back to the founding of the Sikh religion and through this series of podcasts, gradually trace our steps to the present. The history of the Sikhs starts in 1469 AD with the birth of Guru Nanak and can be divided into 3 major eras. We have the period of 1469 to about 1707 – which is characterized by the physical presence of the 10 Gurus. During this period, the rock solid foundation of Sikhism was laid. Sikh teachings were revolutionary in that they stressed on Ek Onkar, the monotheistic aspect of God, the equality of all men and women and advocacy for a casteless society, and the Sikh way of life that can be summarized as Naam Japna, or remembering God in our actions, the importance of Kirt Karni, or earning an honest living, and Vand Chakna, the practice of sharing with fellow humanity. The second period of Sikh history is between 1707 and 1839 – from the short lived period of Banda Singh Bahadur to the end of the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. This era tested the resolve of the Sikhs to survive as an independent community, distinct from the prevailing society and its norms. The third era comprises the lives of Sikhs since 1840 to the modern day, with a look at the partition of the Punjab between India and Pakistan in 1947, the Indian state sponsored anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984 and the emigration of Sikhs from the Punjab to all corners of the world, forming a truly global community, bound by a common history and the love of the Guru Granth Sahib. Guru Nanak traveled far and wide and wherever he went, he gained followers for his newly founded Sikh faith. These followers had broken away from their original communities for eg. the Hindus or Muslims or the Sufis etc. The result was that in his lifetime, Guru Nanak was able to create a community of people who had much more in common amongst themselves than to the communities they originally belonged to. Kushwant Singh, the famous Sikh author, has proposed that this ideal gave birth to the collective Punjabi consciousness and the Punjabi nationalism as distinct from all others. Guru Angad succeeded Guru Nanak and in his own quiet way he started to consolidate the still infant Sikh philosophy. He established Sikh centers of learning across the Punjab and sent out copies of Guru Nanaks shabads and hymns to each. In this process, Guru Angad also created the Gurmukhi script – consisting of 35 letters – all taken from Guru Nanak’s compositions. This step had far reaching consequences on the Sikh literary tradition and the Gurmukhi script became the nucleus of Sikh writings. It gave the Sikhs a written language distinct from the written languages of the Hindus and the Muslims and further fostered a sense of them being a distinct people. Almost concurrent to when Guru Nanak was preaching his message of Ek Onkar, at the turn of the 15th century, Babar, the founder of the Mughal empire, had started his invasion of the Punjab in order to establish his empire in India. Babar’s first contact with the Sikhs began when his army imprisoned Guru Nanak in Saidpur, a small town near Islamabad, while Guru Nanak was returning from his travels to Baghdad in Iraq. Guru Nanak was subsequently released at the personal intervention of Babur. Although Babur’s autobiography fails to mention the Guru, Guru Nanak wrote several passages criticizing the brutalities unleashed by the Mughal army in its invasion of India. Babur’s son, Humayun, came to power during the guruship of Guru Angad and remained indifferent to the Sikhs and to Guru Angad. By the time Humyun’s son Akbar inherited the throne, Sikhism was flourishing in Punjab under the Guruship of the third Guru – Guru Amar Das, who had established his own center at Goindval. When Akbar visited Goindval to meet Guru Amar Das, he was so impressed with the way of life in Goindval that he assigned the revenue of several villages to Guru Amar Das’s daughter Bibi Bhani as a marriage gift. Political and social relations between the Sikhs and the Mughals were at their best during this time. Guru Amar Das introduced many innovations which tended to break the close affiliations of the Sikhs with the Hindus or the Muslims in India. Prominently, women were given equal rights as men and the practice of sati, the burning of widows along with their husband’s funeral pyre, was strictly forbidden, second, recitation of hymns of the Gurus replaced the chanting of Sanskrit shlokas at the time of birth and death and third, Guru Amar Das advocated monogamy and widow remarriage as means to uplifting the state of women in society. THese measures aroused the hostility of the Brahmins who complained to Akbar – While Akbar never interfered with the Sikh way of life, there was evidence now of the strong opposition to sikh teachings from both the Hindu brahmins and the Muslims. This was the beginning of the oppression of the Sikhs – their first big break from the Hindu social polity and which subsequently compelled them to take up arms. The Fourth Guru, Guru Ram Das led a relatively peaceful life and composed hymns while consolidating the Sikh ethos in the midst of his followers. His son, Guru Arjan Dev, succeeded him as the Fifth guru and in 1588 built the Harmandir Sahib at Amritsar – it has since become the most important place in the Sikh history. By 1604 he had combined the teachings of all the gurus into the Guru Granth Sahib and anointed Baba Buddha as the first granthi. In 1606, Akbar passed away and Jehangir succeeded him. Jehangir was opposed to the geowing influence of the Sikhs and the political climate changed against the Sikhs. Jehangir demanded that Guru Arjan convert to Islam. Guru Arjan upheld his right to practice his religion in peace and when he did not agree to Jehangir’s wishes, he was tortured to death in Lahore on May 30, 1606. The brutal murder of Guru Arjan was a shock to the Sikhs – and when Guru Hargobind took over as the Sixth Guru, he had two swords girded around his waist – one to symbolize spiritual power and one temporal. At Gwalior, he cultivated an army and over 800 horses, 300 troopers on horseback and 60 men with firearms were always under his disposal. His real troubles however began after Jehangir’s death in 1627 when Shah Jahan became the emperor. There were now frequent clashes between the Sikhs and the emperor’s forces and the peaceful atmosphere gave way to war cries on all sides. Guru Hargobind was succeeded by Guru Har Rai, Guru Harkrishan and Guru Teg Bahadur in quick succession – in the meantime, Aurangzeb became the new Mughal emperor. Although quite learned in the Muslim tradition, Aurangzeb persecuted the Sikhs and was intolerant of other religions – he demolished temples and imposed taxes on Hindus for visiting their holy pilgrimage sites. Guru Tegh Bahadur stood up against Aurangzeb’s design of forcibly converting Hindus to Islam and paid dearly with his life. Aurangzeb had him executed on November 11, 1675 in Delhi. This was the final straw in the relationship between the Sikhs and the Mughals and there was open hostility between the two thereafter. Guru Gobind Singh, who succeeded Guru Teg Bahadur, organized the Sikhs as an army. In a letter to Aurangzeb titled the Zafarnama, he wrote: When all other means have failed, it is permissible to draw the sword”. Guru Gobind fought many battles to uphold the rights to freedom, equality and justice – the three most important virtues in Sikh philosophy and thought. The first battle was fought and won in 1686 against the Rajput kings who had betrayed the Guru’s army and sided with Aurangzeb. In 1687, he was again victorious against the uprising of the hill chiefs who were always looking to gain favor with the Mughals, not withstanding the earlier sacrifices of the Sikh Gurus to protect these same chiefs and their subjects from Mughal atrocities. The period between 1687 – 1699 was rather peaceful and during this time, Guru Gobind gave the Sikhs the gift of the the present day Khalsa – a whole new religion and identity came into being during the Baisakhi celebrations of 1699 – an identity that was focused on the ideals of equality for all humanaity, remembrance of God, earning an honest living and giving away in charity first taught by Guru Nanak. It should be noted that Sikhs did not shy away from living up to those same ideals even when the Mughal rulers subjected them to personal atrocities – and the magnitude of these inhuman tortures is just impossible to imagine today. Within a few months a whole new people were born – they kept their beards, wore their long hair in turbans, armed at most times, and with a zeal to build a new community. The proclamation of the Khalsa in 1699, most certainly made the hill chiefs even more nervous and they collaborated with Aurangzeb’s forces to “teach the Sikhs a lesson”. in 1701, they unexpectedly attacked Guru Gobind and the Sikhs at Anandpur – their only motive was to evict the Guru and the Sikhs from Anandpur, in what is called as the First Battle of Anandpur – the Sikhs were able to fend off the aggressors. In 1704, they regrouped and attacked the Guru again in the Second Battle of Anandpur. Aurangzeb, swearing on the holy Quran, offered a safe passage to the Sikhs if they fled Anandpur – however he later betrayed them and attacked them as they were enroute to Talwandi Sabo. – in the aftermath, a battle was fought at Chamkaur, where the Guru’s two elder sons, Ajit singh and Jujhar Singh were killed. Also, the Mughal governor of Sirhind, Wazir Khan apprehended the Guru’s two younger sons Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh. When they refused to convert to Islam, they were executed. Despite losing everything. Guru Gobind sent a letter to Aurangzeb, the famous Zafarnama, or the Letter of Victory, where he chided the emperor for his moral weakness in breaking all his promises and reprimanded him for his excesses in an unjust battle. In early 1707, Aurangzeb died, leaving behind Bahadur Shah as the new emperor – Bahadur Shah was friendly towards the Guru. However while traveling through Central India in 1708, Guru Gobind Singh was fatally wounded by two Pathans – realizing that his end was near, Guru Gobind assembled his followers and invested the Guruship to the Guru Granth Sahib and urged all Sikhs to look upon the Granth as the symbol of all 10 gurus and a constant guide. The 200 years from the time Guru Nanak founded the Sikh religion to Guru Gobind’s founding of the Khalsa panth, can thus be divided into two equal parts – in the first 100 years the 5 Gurus pronounced the ideals of a new social order in the Punjab. The religion was accessible to all humanity, strictly monotheistic, deriving its ideals from the teachings of the Gurus codified in the Guru Granth Sahib and its symbol was the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar – a place of worship whose foundation was laid by a Muslim and the structure was built by Hindus and Sikhs together. The second period of 100 years saw the development of traditions that supplemented this new social order. In the next five Gurus, the Sikhs found their martyrs and heroes, a new political order, the Khalsa panth, amidst the oppressions and tyrannies of the Mughal rulers. Above all, in everything that Guru Gobind wrote or spoke, there was a note of buoyant hope, the concept of Chardi Kala, a constant conviction that even if life was lost, the mission of Sikhi was bound to succeed thereby creating a free, just and equal society. So, this was a short introduction to the Sikh History and we will continue to talk about more events in subsequent podcasts. Keep Listening. Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh. Artwork Courtesy: www.SikhFoundation.org . Painting of a Granthi reading the Guru Granth Sahib at Amritsar, a William Simpson Watercolor.

In a square in which the houses are evenly spaced, numbers 3 and 10 are opposite each other. What is the smallest and what is the largest possible number of houses in the square? This article for teachers describes how modelling number properties involving multiplication using an array of objects not only allows children to represent their thinking with concrete materials,. . . . Can you see why 2 by 2 could be 5? Can you predict what 2 by 10 Find a cuboid (with edges of integer values) that has a surface area of exactly 100 square units. Is there more than one? Can you find them all? Imagine a wheel with different markings painted on it at regular intervals. Can you predict the colour of the 18th mark? The 100th Can you predict when you'll be clapping and when you'll be clicking if you start this rhythm? How about when a friend begins a new rhythm at the same time? You have 4 red and 5 blue counters. How many ways can they be placed on a 3 by 3 grid so that all the rows columns and diagonals have an even number of red counters? Exchange the positions of the two sets of counters in the least possible number of moves We start with one yellow cube and build around it to make a 3x3x3 cube with red cubes. Then we build around that red cube with blue cubes and so on. How many cubes of each colour have we used? Is it possible to rearrange the numbers 1,2......12 around a clock face in such a way that every two numbers in adjacent positions differ by any of 3, 4 or 5 hours? How can the same pieces of the tangram make this bowl before and after it was chipped? Use the interactivity to try and work out what is going on! Rectangles are considered different if they vary in size or have different locations. How many different rectangles can be drawn on a chessboard? A magician took a suit of thirteen cards and held them in his hand face down. Every card he revealed had the same value as the one he had just finished spelling. How did this work? Here you see the front and back views of a dodecahedron. Each vertex has been numbered so that the numbers around each pentagonal face add up to 65. Can you find all the missing numbers? Swap the stars with the moons, using only knights' moves (as on a chess board). What is the smallest number of moves possible? What is the best way to shunt these carriages so that each train can continue its journey? Can you shunt the trucks so that the Cattle truck and the Sheep truck change places and the Engine is back on the main line? 10 space travellers are waiting to board their spaceships. There are two rows of seats in the waiting room. Using the rules, where are they all sitting? Can you find all the possible ways? A huge wheel is rolling past your window. What do you see? An extension of noughts and crosses in which the grid is enlarged and the length of the winning line can to altered to 3, 4 or 5. In each of the pictures the invitation is for you to: Count what you see. Identify how you think the pattern would continue. Take a rectangle of paper and fold it in half, and half again, to make four smaller rectangles. How many different ways can you fold Investigate how the four L-shapes fit together to make an enlarged L-shape. You could explore this idea with other shapes too. A dog is looking for a good place to bury his bone. Can you work out where he started and ended in each case? What possible routes could he have taken? Think of a number, square it and subtract your starting number. Is the number you’re left with odd or even? How do the images help to explain this? How many different ways can you find of fitting five hexagons together? How will you know you have found all the ways? Use the animation to help you work out how many lines are needed to draw mystic roses of different sizes. How could Penny, Tom and Matthew work out how many chocolates there are in different sized boxes? Design an arrangement of display boards in the school hall which fits the requirements of different people. Building up a simple Celtic knot. Try the interactivity or download the cards or have a go on squared paper. On the graph there are 28 marked points. These points all mark the vertices (corners) of eight hidden squares. Can you find the eight In how many ways can you fit two of these yellow triangles together? Can you predict the number of ways two blue triangles can be fitted together? Hover your mouse over the counters to see which ones will be removed. Click to remover them. The winner is the last one to remove a counter. How you can make sure you win? An irregular tetrahedron is composed of four different triangles. Can such a tetrahedron be constructed where the side lengths are 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 units of length? Square numbers can be represented as the sum of consecutive odd numbers. What is the sum of 1 + 3 + ..... + 149 + 151 + 153? If you can copy a network without lifting your pen off the paper and without drawing any line twice, then it is traversable. Decide which of these diagrams are traversable. A game for 2 players. Given a board of dots in a grid pattern, players take turns drawing a line by connecting 2 adjacent dots. Your goal is to complete more squares than your opponent. Imagine starting with one yellow cube and covering it all over with a single layer of red cubes, and then covering that cube with a layer of blue cubes. How many red and blue cubes would you need? If you have only 40 metres of fencing available, what is the maximum area of land you can fence off? Triangle numbers can be represented by a triangular array of squares. What do you notice about the sum of identical triangle numbers? How many different symmetrical shapes can you make by shading triangles or squares? A game for two players on a large squared space. A tetromino is made up of four squares joined edge to edge. Can this tetromino, together with 15 copies of itself, be used to cover an eight by eight chessboard? What would be the smallest number of moves needed to move a Knight from a chess set from one corner to the opposite corner of a 99 by 99 square board? Cut four triangles from a square as shown in the picture. How many different shapes can you make by fitting the four triangles back Imagine a pyramid which is built in square layers of small cubes. If we number the cubes from the top, starting with 1, can you picture which cubes are directly below this first cube? A and B are two interlocking cogwheels having p teeth and q teeth respectively. One tooth on B is painted red. Find the values of p and q for which the red tooth on B contacts every gap on the. . . . A 2 by 3 rectangle contains 8 squares and a 3 by 4 rectangle contains 20 squares. What size rectangle(s) contain(s) exactly 100 squares? Can you find them all? What is the smallest cuboid that you can put in this box so that you cannot fit another that's the same into it? Slide the pieces to move Khun Phaen past all the guards into the position on the right from which he can escape to freedom.

|Welcome to China Virtual Tours, your premier online guide to travel in China.| Dragon & Phoenix content by Mr. Du Feibao The dragon and the phoenix are the principal motifs for decorative designs on the buildings, clothing and articles of daily use in the imperial palace. The throne hall is supported by columns entwined by gilded dragons, the central ramps on marble steps were paved with huge slabs carved in relief with the dragon and phoenix, and the screen walls display dragons in brilliant colours (see the Nine-Dragon Screen in Beihai Park). The names in the Chinese language for nearly all the things connected with the emperor or the empress were preceded by the epithet "dragon" or "phoenix"; thus, "dragon seat" for the throne, "dragon robe" for the emperor's ceremonial dress, "dragon bed" for him to sleep on, and "phoenix carriage", "phoenix canopies" and so on for the imperial processions. The national flag of China under the Qing Dynasty was emblazoned with a big dragon. The earliest postage stamps put out by China were called "dragon-heads" because they showed a dragon in their designs. Even today the dragon is sometimes adopted as the symbol of Chinese exhibitions held abroad or the cover designs of books on China printed by foreign publishers. "The Giant Dragon of the East" is becoming a sobriquet for the Belief in the dragon, and drawings of the imaginary animal, can be traced back to primitive society when certain prehistoric tribes in China adopted the dragon among other totems as their symbol and guardian god. Some of the recently unearthed bronze vessels of the Yin Dynasty, which existed more than 3,000 years ago, are decorated with sketches of dragons of a crude form. Earliest legends in China described the dragon as a miraculous animal with fish scales and long beards. As time went on, it became more and more embellished in the minds of the people, acquiring the antlers of the deer, the mane of the horse and the claws of the eagle -- in short, appropriating the distinctive features of other creatures until it became what we see today everywhere in the palace. The Chinese phoenix, likewise, exists only in legends and fairy tales. Sovereign of all birds, it has the head of the golden pheasant, the beak of the parrot, the body of the mandarin duck, the wings of the roc, the feathers of the peacock and the legs of the crane; gloriously beautiful, it reigns over the feathered world. An early design of the phoenix can be seen on the silk painting discovered in a tomb of the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.) near Changsha in Hunan Province. The dragon and the phoenix often served in classical art and literature as metaphors for people of high virtue and rare talent or, in certain combinations, for matrimonial harmony or happy marriage. As an important part of folk arts, dragon lanterns, dragon boats, dragon and phoenix dances are still highly popular on festivals among the people of all localities. go to the index of The China Experience

The olfactory bulb contains several populations of disposable cells: primary sensory olfactory cells and periglomerular neurons undergo continuous turnover and replacement throughout adulthood. New cells are generated in the subventricular zone (SVZ), and migrate through the rostral migratory stream (RMS). Upon arriving at the granule cell layer of the olfactory bulb, most of the cells cease migrating, and differentiate into granule cells, then extend processes into the external plexiform layer and form synapses with mitral cells. Some cells continue migrating into the glomerular layer and become periglomerular neurons. (These are inter- neurons found in the glomerulus, the structure in which olfactory cells expressing receptors for odorant molecules form synapses with the fibres of the olfactory nerve. About 1 month after each wave of migrating cells reaches the olfactory bulb, approximately 50% of them die, and the rest remain stable for at least several more months. Newly-generated olfactory neurons go through a number of developmental stages; these stages can be distinguished on the basis of morphology. Class 1 cells are neuroblasts migrating tangentially within the rostral migratory stream at 2-7 days after leaving the SVZ; class 2 are immature migrating neurons; class 3 cells are granule cells with a single, unbranched dendrite that extends no further than the mitral layer (days 9-13); class 4 are granule cells with a branched dendrite that lacks spines but projects into the external plexiform layer (days 11-12); and class 5 mature granule cells (days 15-30). Adi Mizrahi, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has used a novel technique to examine the dynamics of dendrites in new olfactory neurons as they become incorporated into the olfactory bulb during the later stages of their development (class 4 and 5 cells). Mizrahi injected a modified lentivirus containing the gene encoding green fluorescent protein (GFP) into the SVZ of adult mice. This resulted in the non-selective labelling of neurons and glial cells in the SVZ, as revealed by immunohistochemical staining for neuron- and glial cell-specific molecular markers; infected cells were not damaged. Craniotomies were then performed on the animals – the partial removal of the skull overlying the olfactory bulbs created a “cranial window” through which time-lapse lase scanning two-photon microscopy could be performed. In this way, cells in the superficial layers of the olfactory bulb – the glomerular and external plexiform layers, which are no more than 250 µm (one quarter of a millimetre) beneath the surface of the bulb – were visualized. By collecting stacks of images from different focal planes, Mizrahi reconstructed the dendrites and spines of the cells during the latter stages of development. (Watch film clips of the time-lapse imaging in the Supplemental data.) Mizrahi detected numerous GFP-labelled cells in the RMS and olfactory bulb within 2-3 days of injection of the modified lentivirus. All of these cells were neurons and not glia. The earliest granule cell dendrites appeared in the external plexiform layer between 10-14 days post-injection. At the start of this period, most of the neurons had smooth dendrites with few or no spines; the dendrites were sparsely distributed and had a short and stubby appearance. The dendrites were highly dynamic – within 24 hours of the onset of imaging, new dendritic branches formed, and spines appeared on existing dendrites. Similar dendrite dynamics were observed in the periglomerular neurons imaged in the study. However, differences in the development of the two types of periglomerular neuron – the spiny and non-spiny neurons – were also observed. The dendrites of non-spiny cells were highly dynamic over time – the morphology of the dendritic trees in these neurons was continuously changing throughout development. By contrast, the dendrites of spiny neurons were more stable, but had highly dynamic dendritic spines. Thus, both spiny and non spiny olfactory neurons seemed to be constantly rewiring, although in non spiny cells this process apparently occurs over a larger region. The time-lapse imaging also revealed that the structure of all the new cells remained highly dynamic even after incorporation into the olfactory bulb. Mizrahi imaged both granular cells and periglomerular neurons between 40-47 days after injecting the lentivirus-GFP construct. By this stage, the newborn cells had generated granule cells with diverse structures (see figure below), but the dendritic trees of all of them were densely covered with spines, and the dendritic dynamics were limited to partial elongations or retractions at the distal tips of the dendrites. Occasionally, however, new branches formed, or older ones retracted. Morphology of randomly selected perigranular neurons, reconstructed from in vivo imaging experiments of green fluorescent protein (GFP) labelled cells, 45 and 90 days after infection with lentiviral vector. (Scale bar = 50 µm; from Mizrahi, 2007.) Mizrahi also examined other aspects of cell migration in the RMS. Lentiviruses infect both mitotic and post-mitotic (i.e. dividing and non-dividing) neurons, so the ages of the fluorescent cells migrating into the olfactory bulb cells could not be accurately determined. By using bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU), which is incorporated into newly-synthesized DNA and therefore labels only dividing cells, and comparing the numbers of BrdU-positive cells with GFP-labelled cells, it was shown that, 3 months after lentivirus infection, only a small proportion of cells were labelled with both GFP and BrdU. Time-lapse imaging at 10, 45 and 90 after lentivirus injection further showed that the numbers of migrating cells decreased with time. Mizrahi then examined the role of sensory deprivation on the development of newly-generated periglomerular neurons. One nostril was blocked to prevent stimuli reaching the corresponding olfactory bulb, and the effect of this on the morphology of new cells incorporated into the bulb was determined. It was found that there was a small increase in the numbers of dendritic branches on periglomerular neurons in the deprived olfactory bulb. There appeared to be no significant effect on the morphology, dynamics or spatial distribution of the dendrites, suggesting that sensory input has only a minor role in the development of newborn cells and their incorporation into the olfactory bulb nerve network. But immature neurons migrating in the RMS express GABAA, AMPA, and, later on, NMDA receptors; electrical activity induced by sensory stimuli is therefore likely to be involved, but exactly how remains to be seen. The exact function of new olfactory neurons is unclear. Because the distal tip of the olfactory bulb is almost exposed to open air, neurons in that region of the bulb are prone to damage from, for example, toxic fumes. It seems logical that one function of the new cells coming into the olfactory bulb through the RMS would be to replace those cells in the distal tip of the bulb that get damaged. This study shows that neurons in the adult olfactory bulb remain highly plastic throughout adulthood; Mizrahi suggests that regeneration provides cells which act as a substrate for the plasticity of the wiring in the olfactory bulb. The study also demonstrates a novel experimental system for studying the development and plasticity of new cells in the adult olfactory bulb in vivo. The system may also offer a new way of investigating developmental processes, such as synaptogenesis, in the adult brain. The spatio-temporal dynamics of development make such processes difficult to study in the growing brain; this system may provide a means by which developmental processes can be investigated in the less chaotic environment of the adult brain. Petreanu, L. & Alvarez-Buylla, A. (2002). Maturation and death of adult-born olfactory bulb granule neurons: Role of olfaction. J. Neurosci. 22: 6106-6113. [Full text]

The Secret History of Hypertext The conventional history of computing leaves out some key thinkers. © Mundaneum, Centre d’archives (Belgium) Alex Wright May 22, 2014 Technology When Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” first appeared in The Atlantic’s pages in July 1945, it set off an intellectual chain reaction that resulted, more than four decades later, in the creation of the World Wide Web. In that landmark essay, Bush described a hypothetical machine called the Memex: a hypertext-like device capable of allowing its users to comb through a large set of documents stored on microfilm, connected via a network of “links” and “associative trails” that anticipated the hyperlinked structure of today’s Web. http://www.theatlantic.com Historians of technology often cite the Bush essay as the conceptual forerunner of the Web. And hypertext pioneers like Douglas Engelbart, Ted Nelson, and Tim Berners-Lee have all acknowledged their debt to Bush’s vision. But for all his lasting influence, Bush was not the first person to imagine something like the Web. In the years leading up to World War II, a number of European thinkers were exploring markedly similar ideas about information storage and retrieval, and even imagining the possibility of a global network—a feature notably absent from the Memex. Yet their contributions have remained largely overlooked in the conventional, Anglo-American history of computing. Chief among them was Paul Otlet, a Belgian bibliographer and entrepreneur who, in 1934, laid out a plan for a global network of “electric telescopes” that would allow anyone in the world to access to a vast library of books, articles, photographs, audio recordings, and films. “This synthesis of knowledge upon which you are working is the necessary beginning of a new world.” Read it all The word “hypertext” was first coined by Nelson in 1963, and is first found in print in a college newspaper article about a lecture he gave called “Computers, Creativity, and the Nature of the Written Word” in January, 1965: Ted Nelson’s first use of term “hypertext” Mike Joyce’s Ted Sed Page Nelson later popularized the hypertext concept in his book Literary Machines. His vision involved implementation of a “docuverse”, where all data was stored once, there were no deletions, and all information was accessible by a link from anywhere else. Navigation through the information would be non-linear, depending on each individual’s choice of links. This was more than text — it was hypertext. The web realizes part of this vision, except that there are deletions, and some information is stored in more than one place. Nelson has continued to develop his theory, and instantiates it with Project Xanadu, a high-performance hypertext system that assures the identity of references to objects, and solves the problems of configuration management and copyright control. Anyone is allowed to reference anything, provided that references are delivered from the original, and possibly involving micro payments to the copyright holders. Readit all: Wiki: Theodor Holm “Ted” Nelson (born June 17, 1937) is an American pioneer of information technology, philosopher, and sociologist. He coined the terms hypertext and hypermedia in 1963 and published them in 1965. Nelson coined the terms transclusion, virtuality, and intertwingularity (in Literary Machines). …Nelson founded Project Xanadu in 1960, with the goal of creating a computer network with a simple user interface. The effort is documented in his 1974 book Computer Lib / Dream Machines and the 1981 Literary Machines. Much of his adult life has been devoted to working on Xanadu and advocating for it… Nelson has stated that some aspects of his vision are being fulfilled by Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web, but he dislikes the World Wide Web, XML and all embedded markup – regarding Berners-Lee’s work as a gross over-simplification of his original vision: Read it all Summary of Hypertext Issues Ted Nelson: Ted Nelson The Mother of All Demos Douglas Engelbart independently began working on his NLS system in 1962 at Stanford Research Institute, although delays in obtaining funding, personnel, and equipment meant that its key features were not completed until 1968. In December of that year, Engelbart demonstrated a hypertext interface to the public for the first time, in what has come to be known as “The Mother of All Demos”. Funding for NLS slowed after 1974. Guide was a hypertext system developed by Peter J. Brown at the University of Kent in 1982. The original Guide implementation was for Three Rivers PERQ workstations running Unix. The Guide system became the third hypertext system to be sold commercially, marketed by Office Workstations Ltd (OWL) in 1984 and later by InfoAccess. “Guide” won Brown the British Computer Society’s award for technical innovation in 1988. He retired in 1999 and died of cancer in 2007, according to a tribute page at the University of Kent website. Wiki This seems to be the software used by Tim Berners Lee Ian Ritchie, founder of OWL, presented a Ted talk in 2011 describing his missed opportunity to convert Guide to a graphical browser for the Web at its inception in 1990, titled “The day I turned down Tim Berners-Lee.” In September 1986, Guide was ported by OWL to the Apple Macintosh, and in July 1987 to Microsoft Windows. (In 1987 Apple had begun giving away its own graphical programming system, HyperCard, which had some hypertext features.) According to news reports in 1988, OWL announced plans to release a version of Guide for the IBM PS/2 line of computers under the name “Hyper Document,” in competition with Hypercard on the Apple Macintosh. Wiki

Seeking to combat a debilitating and sometimes fatal disease commonly found in the San Joaquin Valley, three regional institutions are uniting to improve the area’s health. The University of California, Merced, Health Sciences Research Institute, University of California, San Francisco Fresno Medical Education Program and the California State University, Fresno Central California Center for Health and Human Services are working together to determine research priorities and public service needs to address valley fever. The campuses will hold “Valley Fever Research Day” from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9, at the UCSF Fresno Center for Medical Education and Research, 155 N. Fresno St., Fresno. The forum, funded in part by Sierra Health Foundation and Kaiser Permanente, is intended to facilitate a conversation that informs and guides valley fever research in the San Joaquin Valley with the goal of improving detection, prevention and treatment of the illness. The conversation includes community members and organizations, civic leaders, academics, clinical researchers, healthcare and public health professionals and others interested in addressing valley fever. “Community input is very important for this conversation,” said Paul Brown, a UC Merced professor and director of the Health Sciences Research Institute. “The voices of businesses, public agencies and community organizations that serve or work with people who may be at risk for valley fever are needed to make sure that the most appropriate research is available to serve the San Joaquin Valley and California.” Presentations from researchers, clinicians, advocates and community members will spark discussions and lead to a plan to improve healthcare, research and community interventions. This forum represents the first step in an action plan being developed by a consortium that includes UC Merced, UCSF Fresno, Fresno State, Community Medical Centers, Children’s Hospital Central California, the public health departments in the eight counties that make up the San Joaquin Valley and community organizations serving or working with people most at risk for valley fever. According to the Centers for Disease Control, researchers estimate that each year as many as 150,000 people are infected by Coccidioides, the fungus that causes valley fever. Infection occurs when fungal spores, which are not directly visible, are inhaled. Most people who are infected do not show symptoms, but some people may experience flu-like symptoms that last from weeks to months. Severe cases can even result in death. The fungus is commonly found in the Southwest, particularly Arizona and California, including the San Joaquin Valley. Because valley fever is a rare disease outside the Southwest, it does not attract sufficient research funding. More than 40 percent of people infected with valley fever have symptoms. Many of those infected with valley fever are sick without knowing why or without being diagnosed.

The paper: Life forms can’t digest wood: Why this is a problem for Darwinism |July 3, 2012||Posted by News under Darwinism, Design inference, Ecology, Intelligent Design| (whether or not it is acknowledged as such) Matti Leisola, Ossi Pastinen, Douglas Axe Humans have long used wood as a structural material for some of the same reasons that trees use it—it combines great strength, flexibility and durability with a relatively low density. These desirable properties depend partly on lignin, a major chemical constituent of many plants, including trees. Lignin is the most abundant aromatic polymer on earth and the second most abundant organic polymer of any kind, exceeded only by cellulose. It is estimated that 30% of the earth’s non-fossil organic carbon is in the form of lignin. Considering its massive abundance and its high energy content (40% higher than cellulose, gram for gram), it is striking that no organism seems to have tapped it as an energy source. After posing this as an evolutionary enigma, we prepare to address it by reviewing what is known about the structure, biosynthesis and biodegradation of wood in general and of lignin in particular. Then, returning to the enigma, we ask whether it is more readily explained within a Darwinian framework or a design framework. The Darwinian account must somehow reconcile 400 million years of failure to evolve a relatively modest innovation—growth on lignin—with a long list of spectacular innovations thought to have evolved in a fraction of that time. How can one mechanism have been at the same time so effective and so ineffective? That tension vanishes completely when the design perspective is adopted. Terrestrial animal life is crucially dependent on terrestrial plant life, which is crucially dependent on soil, which is crucially dependent on the gradual photo- and biodegradation of lignin. Fungi accomplish the biodegradation, and the surprising fact that it costs them energy to do so keeps the process gradual. The peculiar properties of lignin therefore make perfect sense when seen as part of a coherent design for the entire ecosystem of our planet.

Discussion regarding diversity in the workplace often focuses on gender and ethnicity. While these are important, age diversity is equally relevant. For the first time in history, our workforce is comprised of 5 generations of employees; the Silent Generation (ages 74 to 94), Baby Boomers (ages 55 to 73), Generation X (ages 39 to 54), Generation Y (ages 24 to 38) and Generation Z (ages 23 and younger). Some employers believe that age diversity is a detriment to communication and cooperation in the workplace but there are actually a number of benefits that are derived from an age-diverse workforce. Improved productivity: Age-diverse teams increase productivity especially when groups are involved in complex decision-making tasks. Reduced turnover: An environment that is accepting, inclusive and values the contributions of all is conducive to retention. Increased innovation: An age-diverse workforce provides a variety of experiences and perspectives which drives innovation resulting in an organization that appeals to a broad customer demographic. Enlarged knowledge base: Older employees bring knowledge that comes from experience while younger employees often come from recent cutting edge education. This combination gives your company a greater ability to create ground-breaking solutions. A diversified skill set: Each generation brings a different skill set. Young employees often have a strong understanding of high tech business mediums (social networking, online product demonstration, webcasting) while mature professionals often have interpersonal skills that are an asset. This diversity helps a company relate to a multi-generational demographic. Enables mentoring: Age-diversity creates the possibility of mentoring. Senior employees can teach younger peers the lessons experience has taught. Younger workers can teach their older coworkers about digital tools, technology and social media presence. Creates continuity: A company dominated by mature employees runs the risk of becoming obsolete and, when retirement age approaches, the chance that there is no one to receive accumulated knowledge. If the workforce is composed largely of young employees, there is little opportunity for generational mentoring that informs younger employees of a company’s history, trajectory and vision. Personal improvement: We all carry age bias. Working with people from other generations is a great way to bust these beliefs and create more tolerant individuals. Focusing on the benefits of each generation of workers helps to overcome the roadblocks to developing a thriving, diverse workforce. An age-inclusive brand attracts a wide range of talented individuals to strengthen the company. Understanding the career priorities of different generations is important to making your cooperation a choice for all ages. If you’re looking for an age-diverse recruiting strategy, the experts at EQ Staffing are here to help. It’s our mission to bring talented professionals, of all ages, together with growing businesses. Contact us to find your next hire!

I keep seeing years represented by coloured bars. First it was that demographic tsunami chart. Then there are examples like the one on the right, which came up in a web search today. I even saw one (whispers) at work today. I get what they are trying to do – illustrate trends within categories over time – but I don’t think years as coloured bars is the way to go. To me, progression over time suggests that time should be an axis, so as the eye moves along the data from one end to the other, without interruption. What I want to see is categories over time, not time within categories. So what is the way to go? Let’s ask “what would ggplot2 do?” The following charts illustrate different ways to visualise the same data using ggplot2. My motivation here is to show you that if you don’t immediately know or see a “right way” to do something, tools such as ggplot2 make it easy to “feel your way” to a solution, through exploration. The charts and their accompanying code are available at RPubs. Click each image at right for a full-size version. It looks better already just for being generated using ggplot2. But can we go better? Your first thought might be “why not just swap the years and categories around?” And sure, that gives us time along an axis. Now though, it’s a little difficult to follow each category, as the eye has to skip all the others when moving to the next time point. OK you say, I can get all the categories at the same time point by stacking. A couple of problems now: first, abrupt changes in value can make a category shrink dramatically or move around vertically in a distracting fashion. And second, making the categories proportional can make it difficult to determine the absolute values for anything other than the lowest row of the bars. I think this works much better: the continuous connection of categories makes it easier to follow each one through time. However, there is still the issue of relative versus absolute values. And to my eye, downward lines can be interpreted as decreases even when the width of the area for a category indicates that the value has increased. Now we’re getting somewhere – much easier to follow each category over time. One issue with this particular arrangement is that it’s a little difficult to compare categories and the eye finds it difficult to isolate a facet from surrounding facets. Not bad at all – this makes categories within a year very clear. But wait, we wanted a good view of each category over time. So how about… I think we have a winner. This clearly illustrates change per category over time and the layout and common scales even allow for comparison between categories. We started out complaining about time within categories but in fact, that is what we wanted after all: just arranged in a better way than years as coloured bars .

Family: Lamiaceae, Mint family Duration: Annual Size: Up to 1 ½ feet or more. Growth Form: Forb/herb; hairs sparse short and stiff. Leaves: Green; mostly basal, 1 or 2 pinnately dissected, lobes irregularly rounded, up to 3½ or 4 inches long with small stiff hairs. Flower Color: Blue or purple-tipped; flowers in 1 or 2 clusters, inflorescence scapose (elongated peduncle); fruit a nutlet. Flowering Season: March to May. Comments: Seeds eaten as grain, whole or ground. If soaked in water, seeds will absorb the moisture and transform it into a gelatinous coating, creating a chia gel which was consumed by indigenous people for energy, mixed with other grains and meals for a gruel-like pinole, and has been rediscovered in recent years. This is one of a few species of Salvia used in this way, the best known of which is the Mexican Salvia hispanica.

The EPA has released its FY2010 scorecard on sustainability and energy performance, revealing that it has met or exceeded all federal goals to decrease energy use per square foot; reduce potable water use per square foot; lessen fleet petroleum use; establish inventories of direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions; incorporate sustainable building practices; and increase renewable energy use. "The scorecard is an important tool for us to develop targets for waste reduction and energy efficiency for our facilities at EPA," says Craig Hooks, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Administration and Resources Management. "EPA is doing what the President envisioned us to do, 'lead by example,' by being good stewards of the environment, all the while realizing substantial savings to the government." EPA energy consumption dropped 22.8% compared to the 18% required federal target. Water usage was down 18.7% against the 6% target. Petroleum usage in the agency fleed declined 24.9% against the 10% target. An update to the EPA sustainability plan is due in June, and will be posted publicly on the EPA website. View the entire EPA Sustainability and Energy Scorecard at www.epa.gov/aboutepa/ombscorecard.html NASA Sustainability Base EPDM, Sustainability, and the Environment Community Health Through Sustainability

In 1970, the District of Columbia, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, and West Virginia started lottery games. Today, these games are available in eight more states. In the 1990s, South Carolina began offering a lottery. In early 2010, the District of Columbia approved a lottery in order to attract more people to play. Those who live in one of these states are able to play a lottery and win big prizes. Education is the most appropriate use of lottery proceeds A state-run lottery has failed to empower students, and the proceeds it generates are not used in the way that we expect. Instead, North Carolina cut its education budget by 12% in 2009, and allocates a smaller percentage of its budget to education today than when the lottery began. Similarly, lottery net proceeds in Georgia and Florida supplement existing funding for education and capital projects. While Florida and North Carolina have cut their education budgets, other states are increasing their spending on education. The use of lottery proceeds varies by state. In Illinois, for example, lottery proceeds go to the Common School Fund. But as the Washington Post reported, these funds do not always translate into a financial windfall for education. State governments allocate lottery profits to other purposes, so that education funding gets squeezed. But the money never reaches the classroom. Annual contributions to teachers’ pensions eat up the money that would have gone to education. Problems with jackpot fatigue Jackpot fatigue is a natural reaction to a large prize, and it can make you obsess over your numbers and fear missing a drawing. But overcoming jackpot fatigue can improve your chances of winning the lottery. Here are a few tips to help you fight the urge to obsess. By using these tips, you’ll be able to make better decisions, and your chances of winning the lottery will increase. First, learn the odds of winning a prize. This is important since the lottery numbers are so complicated. Playing the same numbers in successive drawings can result in jackpot fatigue. The odds are low, but if you know how to increase your chances of winning, you’ll be able to pass on prize claims to other lottery players. And if you’ve won a prize in a drawing, it’s time to pass it on to others. Legal minimum age to play In Britain, the legal minimum age to play the National Lottery has increased to 18 from 16 years. This move comes amid concerns about problem gambling and the risk of allowing minors to access gambling products. The age requirement for the National Lottery is a result of the Gambling Act, which is under review by the government. The lottery also has separate rules for retailers selling tickets to underage players. This makes it crucial to check the age of those who are selling tickets to underage players. The Gaming Board regulates the legal age limit for playing the lottery. In the state of Delaware, the age limit is 18 for pari-mutuel betting and 21 for slot machines. A 16-year-old is permitted to play Bingo with an adult, but cannot purchase a ticket or enter a raffle. However, in the state of New Hampshire, the legal minimum age for buying and playing lottery tickets is 18 years old.

Glaucoma is a completely painless disease that has no symptoms or warning signs so it is often called the "silent thief of sight." Because there are no outward symptoms, it is important to get a COMPREHENSIVE eye HEALTH exam annually to check for any signs of glaucoma. Glaucoma falls into four main types: 1) Open Angle Glaucoma: Open Angle Glaucoma happens when the eye does not drain fluid as well as it should, the eye pressure rises and starts to damage the optic nerve and nerve fiber layers of the retina. 2) Normal Tension Glaucoma: This type of glaucoma occurs when a patient with "normal" eye pressure has sensitive optic nerves and still develops glaucoma damage over time. 3) Narrow Angle/Chronic Angle Closure Glaucoma: This type of glaucoma occurs when a person's "angle" (the area where the fluid drains) is narrow so the fluid does not have much room to drain, the eye pressure rises and starts to damage the optic nerve and nerve fiber layers of the retina. Again because there are few or no outward symptoms, it is important to get a COMPREHENSIVE eye HEALTH exam annually to check for any signs of glaucoma. 4) Secondary Glaucomas: Secondary glaucoma is the name used to describe glaucomas that occur as a side effect or “secondary” to another underlying medical condition or trauma. Most of the time, glaucoma develops very slowly which means that many people don’t realize that they are affected until some damage to their vision has already occurred. However, occasionally a person can have an Angle Closure Glaucoma "attack," their already narrow angles close, the fluid can no longer drain and the pressure in the eyes can rise drastically causing sudden and severe or complete vision loss. An Angle Closure Glaucoma attack can develop quickly, and symptoms do occur, especially when going from a dark environment into light. These can include: **If you notice any of these symptoms, it’s important to CALL DR. KUBOTA'S OFFICE RIGHT AWAY so that you can be examined as soon as possible. If the office is closed, please go IMMEDIATELY to the nearest emergency room and ask to see the ophthalmologist on call.** You might be surprised at how many tests are needed to diagnose glaucoma. A proper diagnosis requires careful evaluation of many aspects of your eye’s health from eye pressure to cornea thickness to the health of your optic nerve and nerve fiber layer of the retina. This section describes how Dr. Kubota will assesses your risk and all the tests needed to properly diagnose glaucoma. Dr. Kubota will begin by assessing your risk level for developing glaucoma. This will help determine the frequency and extent of testing needed. Through personal and family medical history questions, Dr. Kubota will weigh your risk factors for glaucoma which include: Ethnic background such as African or black Caribbean, Hispanic, Asian or Scandinavian descent Family history of glaucoma in any genetically related realtive such as a sibling, parent or grandparent. History of eye conditions, injuries or surgeries Prolonged corticosteroid use (eye drops, pills, inhalers or creams) Chronic conditions that affect blood flow, such as migraines, diabetes, low blood pressure or hypertension Current or former smoker Once you have completed your comprehensive eye exam, Dr. Kubota will also consider these risk factors: Eye pressure higher than normal (above 20 mm Hg) Anatomic measurement of your "Angle" (the area above the iris where the fluid of the anterior chamber drains During a comprehensive eye exam, Dr. Kubota will always check for glaucoma, regardless of the risk level. This provides a baseline for comparison as you age. Here are some of the tests performed: Tonometry measures the fluid pressure in your eye. The Non-Contact Tonometer measures this without touching you by blowing a puff of air. If Goldmann Tonometry is needed, then Dr. Kubota will instill anesthetic eye drops with fluorescein dye to numb your eyes. Then she will use a device with a probe to gently touch your cornea to read your eye pressure. Eye pressure is unique to each person, so ALONE, it is not always a reliable indicator for glaucoma. It is simply another piece of information to help Dr. Kubota assess your risk. Most glaucoma cases are diagnosed with pressure over 20mm Hg, however, some people have "Low Tension Glaucoma" where they are losing eyesight with "normal" eye pressure. These procedures examine your central and peripheral retina. The Optos Retinal Scan requires no dilation and it takes digital images of both the central and peripheral retina. It obtains a full, detailed view of the optic nerve, macula, blood vessels and peripheral retina. It can also provide a more in depth examination of the retina by allowing analysis of the different layers of the retina and allowing the comparison of previous images to check for subtle changes over time. During a Dilated Fundus Evaluation (Extended Ophthalmoscopy), Dr. Kubota will use eye drops to dilate your pupils. Then, using a head-mounted device with a light (binocular indirect ophthalmoscope), your central and peripheral retina can be viewed. You will be light sensitive and possibly blurry for up to 8 hours after the examination so you need a driver to take you home and you should stay indoors and avoid sunlight. Optical Coherence Tomography takes a scan of specific structures in the back of the eye, like the macula and/or optic nerve. The OCT measures the thickenesses of your retinal nerve fiber layer in microns, then statistically analyzes the results by age to determine if your eyes are normal for your age. It also allows Dr. Kubota to compare past OCTs to determine if a patient's eyes have changed over time. This instrument can pick up subtle, early nerve fiber layer loss, allowing glaucoma to be diagnosed even earlier than just by visually observing the optic nerve alone. Dr. Kubota may want to use pachymetry as another way to confirm a diagnosis. Pachymetry measures the thickness of your cornea, the clear window at the front of the eye. The OCT with a special lens attachment is used to take Pachymetry and can help clarify your diagnosis because corneal thickness has the potential to influence eye pressure readings. This diagnostic test helps examine the "angle" between your iris and cornea (the area where the aqueous fluid drains). First, you’ll receive eye drops to numb the eye. Then a special hand-held magnifying lens with mirrors is gently placed on the eye. The mirrors show Dr. Kubota more details of the angle (wide, open, narrow, closed, how much pigment is present, blood vessel growth, etc.) Glaucoma diagnosis is not as simple as you might expect. Be sure to have annual COMPREHENSIVE eye HEALTH exams , especially if you have any of the risk factors for glaucoma.

THE FIDE LAWS OF CHESS The FIDE Laws of Chess cover over-the-board play. The English text is the authentic version of the Laws of Chess, which was adopted at the 75th FIDE Congress at Calvia (Mallorca), October 2004, coming into force on 1 July 2005. In these Laws the words 'he', 'him' and 'his' include 'she' and 'her'. The Laws of Chess cannot cover all possible situations that may arise during a game, nor can they regulate all administrative questions. Where cases are not precisely regulated by an Article of the Laws, it should be possible to reach a correct decision by studying analogous situations, which are discussed in the Laws. The Laws assume that arbiters have the necessary competence, sound judgement and absolute objectivity. Too detailed a rule might deprive the arbiter of his freedom of judgement and thus prevent him from finding the solution to a problem dictated by fairness, logic and special factors. FIDE appeals to all chess players and federations to accept this view. A member federation is free to introduce more detailed rules provided they: a. do not conflict in any way with the official FIDE Laws of Chess b. are limited to the territory of the federation in question; and c. are not valid for any FIDE match, championship or qualifying event, or for a FIDE title or rating tournament. BASIC RULES OF PLAY Article 1: The nature and objectives of the game of chess 1.1 The game of chess is played between two opponents who move their pieces alternately on a square board called a 'chessboard'. The player with the white pieces commences the game. A player is said to 'have the move', when his opponent's move has been made. 1.2 The objective of each player is to place the opponent's king 'under attack' in such a way that the opponent has no legal move. The player who achieves this goal is said to have 'checkmated' the opponent's king and to have won the game. Leaving ones own king under attack, exposing ones own king to attack and also capturing the opponents king are not allowed. The opponent whose king has been checkmated has lost the game. 1.3 If the position is such that neither player can possibly checkmate, the game is drawn. Article 2: The initial position of the pieces on the chessboard 2.1 The chessboard is composed of an 8x8 grid of 64 equal squares alternately light (the 'white' squares) and dark (the 'black' squares). The chessboard is placed between the players in such a way that the near corner square to the right of the player is white. 2.2 At the beginning of the game one player has 16 light-coloured pieces (the 'white' pieces); the other has 16 dark-coloured pieces (the 'black' pieces): These pieces are as follows: A white king, usually indicated by the symbol A white queen, usually indicated by the symbol Two white rooks, usually indicated by the symbol Two white bishops, usually indicated by the symbol Two white knights, usually indicated by the symbol Eight white pawns, usually indicated by the symbol A black king, usually indicated by the symbol A black queen, usually indicated by the symbol Two black rooks, usually indicated by the symbol Two black bishops, usually indicated by the symbol Two black knights, usually indicated by the symbol Eight black pawns, usually indicated by the symbol 2.3 The initial position of the pieces on the chessboard is as follows: 2.4 The eight vertical columns of squares are called 'files'. The eight horizontal rows of squares are called ranks'. A straight line of squares of the same colour, touching corner to corner, is called a 'diagonal'. Article 3: The moves of the pieces 3.1 It is not permitted to move a piece to a square occupied by a piece of the same colour. If a piece moves to a square occupied by an opponent's piece the latter is captured and removed from the chessboard as part of the same move. A piece is said to attack an opponent's piece if the piece could make a capture on that square according to Articles 3.2 to 3.8. A piece is considered to attack a square, even if such a piece is constrained from moving to that square because it would then leave or place the king of its own colour under attack. 3.2 The bishop may move to any square along a diagonal on which it stands. 3.3 The rook may move to any square along the file or the rank on which it stands. 3.4 The queen may move to any square along the file, the rank or a diagonal on which it stands. 3.5 When making these moves the bishop, rook or queen may not move over any intervening pieces. 3.6 The knight may move to one of the squares nearest to that on which it stands but not on the same rank, file or diagonal. 3.7 a. The pawn may move forward to the unoccupied square immediately in front of it on the same file, or b. on its first move the pawn may move as in (a); alternatively it may advance two squares along the same file provided both squares are unoccupied, or c. the pawn may move to a square occupied by an opponent's piece, which is diagonally in front of it on an adjacent file, capturing that piece. A pawn attacking a square crossed by an opponent's pawn which has advanced two squares in one move from its original square may capture this opponent's pawn as though the latter had been moved only one square. This capture is only legal on the move following this advance and is called an 'en passant' capture. e. When a pawn reaches the rank furthest from its starting position it must be exchanged as part of the same move for a new queen, rook, bishop or knight of the same colour. The player's choice is not restricted to pieces that have been captured previously. This exchange of a pawn for another piece is called 'promotion' and the effect of the new piece is immediate. 3.8 a. There are two different ways of moving the king, by: i. moving to any adjoining square not attacked by one or more of the opponent's pieces. ii. castling'. This is a move of the king and either rook of the same colour on the same rank, counting as a single move of the king and executed as follows: the king is transferred from its original square two squares towards the rook, then that rook is transferred to the square the king has just crossed. (1) The right to castle has been lost: a. if the king has already moved, or b. with a rook that has already moved (2) Castling is prevented temporarily a. if the square on which the king stands, or the square which it must cross, or the square which it is to occupy, is attacked by one or more of the opponent's pieces. b. if there is any piece between the king and the rook with which castling is to be effected. 3.9 The king is said to be 'in check' if it is attacked by one or more of the opponent's pieces, even if such pieces are constrained from moving to that square because they would then leave or place their own king in check. No piece can be moved that will either expose the king of the same colour to check or leave that king in check. Article 4: The act of moving the pieces 4.1 Each move must be made with one hand only. 4.2 Provided that he first expresses his intention (for example by saying "j'adoube" or "I adjust"), the player having the move may adjust one or more pieces on their squares. 4.3 Except as provided in Article 4.2, if the player having the move deliberately touches on the chessboard a. one or more of his own pieces, he must move the first piece touched that can be moved , or b. one or more of his opponent's pieces, he must capture the first piece touched, which can be captured, or c. one piece of each colour, he must capture the opponent's piece with his piece or, if this is illegal, move or capture the first piece touched which can be moved or captured. If it is unclear, whether the players own piece or his opponents was touched first, the player's own piece shall be considered to have been touched before his opponent's. 4.4 a If a player deliberately touches his king and rook he must castle on that side if it is legal to do so. b. If a player deliberately touches a rook and then his king he is not allowed to castle on that side on that move and the situation shall be governed by Article 4.3(a). c. If a player, intending to castle, touches the king or king and rook at the same time, but castling on that side is illegal, the player must make another legal move with his king which may include castling on the other side. If the king has no legal move, the player is free to make any legal move. d. If a player promotes a pawn, the choice of the piece is finalised, when the piece has touched the square of promotion. 4.5 If none of the pieces touched can be moved or captured, the player may make any legal move. 4.6 When, as a legal move or part of a legal move, a piece has been released on a square, it cannot then be moved to another square. The move is considered to have been made when all the relevant requirements of Article 3 have been fulfilled a. in the case of a capture, when the captured piece has been removed from the chessboard and the player, having placed his own piece on its new square, has released this capturing piece from his hand; b. in the case of castling, when the player's hand has released the rook on the square previously crossed by the king. When the player has released the king from his hand, the move is not yet made, but the player no longer has the right to make any move other than castling on that side, if this is legal; c. in the case of the promotion of a pawn, when the pawn has been removed from the chessboard and the player's hand has released the new piece after placing it on the promotion square. If the player has released from his hand the pawn that has reached the promotion square, the move is not yet made, but the player no longer has the right to play the pawn to another square. 4.7 A player forfeits his right to a claim against his opponent's violation of Article 4.3 or 4.4 once he deliberately touches a piece. Article 5: The completion of the game 5.1 a. The game is won by the player who has checkmated his opponent's king. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing the checkmate position was a legal move. b. The game is won by the player whose opponent declares he resigns. This immediately ends the game. 5.2 a. The game is drawn when the player to move has no legal move and his king is not in check. The game is said to end in 'stalemate'. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing the stalemate position was legal. b. The game is drawn when a position has arisen in which neither player can checkmate the opponents king with any series of legal moves. The game is said to end in a dead position. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing the position was legal. c. The game is drawn upon agreement between the two players during the game. This immediately ends the game. (See Article 9.1) d. The game may be drawn if any identical position is about to appear or has appeared on the chessboard at least three times. (See Article 9.2) e. The game may be drawn if each player has made at least the last 50 consecutive moves without the movement of any pawn and without any capture. (See Article 9.3) Article 6: The chess clock 6.1 'Chess clock' means a clock with two time displays, connected to each other in such a way that only one of them can run at one time. 'Clock' in the Laws of Chess means one of the two time displays. 'Flag fall' means the expiration of the allotted time for a player. 6.2 a. When using a chess clock, each player must make a minimum number of moves or all moves in an allotted period of time and/or may be allocated an additional amount of time with each move. All these must be specified in advance. b. The time saved by a player during one period is added to his time available for the next period, except in the 'time delay' mode. In the time delay mode both players receive an allotted 'main thinking time'. Each player also receives a 'fixed extra time' with every move. The countdown of the main time only commences after the fixed time has expired. Provided the player stops his clock before the expiration of the fixed time, the main thinking time does not change, irrespective of the proportion of the fixed time used. 6.3 Each time display has a 'flag'. Immediately after a flag falls, the requirements of Article 6.2(a) must be checked. 6.4 Before the start of the game the arbiter decides where the chess clock is placed. 6.5 At the time determined for the start of the game the clock of the player who has the white pieces is started. 6.6 If neither player is present initially, the player who has the white pieces shall lose all the time that elapses until he arrives; unless the rules of the competition specify or the arbiter decides otherwise. 6.7 Any player who arrives at the chessboard more than one hour after the scheduled start of the session shall lose the game unless the rules of the competition specify or the arbiter decides otherwise. 6.8 a. During the game each player, having made his move on the chessboard, shall stop his own clock and start his opponent's clock. A player must always be allowed to stop his clock. His move is not considered to have been completed until he has done so, unless the move that was made ends the game. (See Articles 5.1, and 5.2) The time between making the move on the chessboard and stopping his own clock and starting his opponent's clock is regarded as part of the time allotted to the player. b. A player must stop his clock with the same hand as that with which he made his move. It is forbidden for a player to keep his finger on the button or to 'hover' over it. c. The players must handle the chess clock properly. It is forbidden to punch it forcibly, to pick it up or to knock it over. Improper clock handling shall be penalised in accordance with Article 13.4. d. If a player is unable to use the clock, an assistant, who is acceptable to the arbiter, may be provided by the player to perform this operation. His clock shall be adjusted by the arbiter in an equitable way. 6.9 A flag is considered to have fallen when the arbiter observes the fact or when either player has made a valid claim to that effect. 6.10 Except where Articles 5.1 or one of the Articles 5.2 (a), (b) and (c) apply, if a player does not complete the prescribed number of moves in the allotted time, the game is lost by the player. However, the game is drawn, if the position is such that the opponent cannot checkmate the players king by any possible series of legal moves, even with the most unskilled counterplay. 6.11 Every indication given by the clocks is considered to be conclusive in the absence of any evident defect. A chess clock with an evident defect shall be replaced. The arbiter shall replace the clock and use his best judgement when determining the times to be shown on the replacement chess clock. 6.12 If both flags have fallen and it is impossible to establish which flag fell first then a. the game shall continue if it happens in any period of the game except the last period. b. the game is drawn if it happens in the period of a game, in which all the remaining moves must be completed. 6.13 a. If the game needs to be interrupted, the arbiter shall stop the clocks. b. A player may stop the clocks only in order to seek the arbiter's assistance, for instance when promotion has taken place and the piece required is not available. c. The arbiter shall decide when the game is to be restarted in either case. d. If a player stops the clocks in order to seek the arbiter's assistance, the arbiter shall determine if the player had any valid reason for doing so. If it is obvious that the player has no valid reason for stopping the clocks, the player shall be penalised according to article 13.4. 6.14 If an irregularity occurs and/or the pieces have to be restored to a previous position, the arbiter shall use his best judgement to determine the times to be shown on the clocks. He shall also, if necessary, adjust the clock's move counter. 6.15 Screens, monitors, or demonstration boards showing the current position on the chessboard, the moves and the number of moves made, and clocks which also show the number of moves, are allowed in the playing hall. However, the player may not make a claim relying solely on information shown in this manner. Article 7: Irregularities 7.1 a. .If during a game it is found that the initial position of the pieces was incorrect, the game shall be cancelled and a new game played. b. If during a game it is found that the only error is that the chessboard has been placed contrary to Article 2.1, the game continues but the position reached must be transferred to a correctly placed chessboard. 7.2 If a game has begun with colours reversed, then it shall continue, unless the arbiter rules otherwise. 7.3 If a player displaces one or more pieces, he shall re-establish the correct position on his own time. If necessary, either the player or his opponent shall stop the clocks and ask for the arbiter's assistance. The arbiter may penalise the player who displaced the pieces 7.4 a. If during a game it is found that an illegal move, including failing to meet the requirements of the promotion of a pawn or capturing the opponents king, has been completed, the position immediately before the irregularity shall be reinstated. If the position immediately before the irregularity cannot be determined, the game shall continue from the last identifiable position prior to the irregularity. The clocks shall be adjusted according to Article 6.14. Article 4.3 applies to the move replacing the illegal move. The game shall then continue from this reinstated position. b. After the action taken under Article 7.4(a), for the first two illegal moves by a player the arbiter shall give two minutes extra time to his opponent in each instance; for a third illegal move by the same player, the arbiter shall declare the game lost by this player. 7.5 If during a game it is found that pieces have been displaced from their squares, the position before the irregularity shall be reinstated. If the position immediately before the irregularity cannot be determined, the game shall continue from the last identifiable position prior to the irregularity. The clocks shall be adjusted according to Article 6.14. The game shall then continue from this re-instated position. Article 8: The recording of the moves 8.1 In the course of play each player is required to record his own moves and those of his opponent in the correct manner, move after move, as clearly and legibly as possible, in the algebraic notation (Appendix E), on the scoresheet prescribed for the competition. It is forbidden to write the moves in advance, unless the player is claiming a draw according to Article 9.2 or 9.3. A player may reply to his opponent's move before recording it, if he so wishes. He must record his previous move before making another. Both players must record the offer of a draw on the scoresheet. (Appendix E.12) If a player is unable to keep score, an assistant, who is acceptable to the arbiter, may be provided by the player to write the moves. His clock shall be adjusted by the arbiter in an equitable way. 8.2 The scoresheet shall be visible to the arbiter throughout the game. 8.3 The scoresheets are the property of the organisers of the event. 8.4 If a player has less than five minutes left on his clock at some stage in a period and does not have additional time of 30 seconds or more added with each move, then he is not obliged to meet the requirements of Article 8.1. Immediately after one flag has fallen the player must update his scoresheet completely before moving a piece on the chessboard 8.5 a. If neither player is required to keep score under Article 8.4, the arbiter or an assistant should try to be present and keep score. In this case, immediately after one flag has fallen, the arbiter shall stop the clocks. Then both players shall update their scoresheets, using the arbiter's or the opponent's scoresheet. b. If only one player is not required to keep score under Article 8.4 he must, as soon as either flag has fallen, update his scoresheet completely before moving a piece on the chessboard. Provided it is the player's move, he may use his opponent's scoresheet, but must return it before making a move c. If no complete scoresheet is available, the players must reconstruct the game on a second chessboard under the control of the arbiter or an assistant. He shall first record the actual game position, clock times and the number of moves made, if this information is available, before reconstruction takes place. 8.6 If the scoresheets cannot be brought up to date showing that a player has overstepped the allotted time, the next move made shall be considered as the first of the following time period, unless there is evidence that more moves have been made. 8.7 At the conclusion of the game both players shall sign both scoresheets, indicating the result of the game. Even if incorrect, this result shall stand, unless the arbiter decides otherwise. Article 9: The drawn game 9.1 a. A player wishing to offer a draw shall do so after having made a move on the chessboard and before stopping his clock and starting the opponent's clock. An offer at any other time during play is still valid, but Article 12.5 must be considered. No conditions can be attached to the offer. In both cases the offer cannot be withdrawn and remains valid until the opponent accepts it, rejects it orally, rejects it by touching a piece with the intention of moving or capturing it, or the game is concluded in some other way. b. The offer of a draw shall be noted by each player on his scoresheet with a symbol (See Appendix E13). c. A claim of a draw under 9.2, 9.3 or 10.2 shall be considered to be an offer of a draw. 9.2 The game is drawn, upon a correct claim by the player having the move, when the same position, for at least the third time (not necessarily by a repetition of moves) a. is about to appear, if he first writes his move on his scoresheet and declares to the arbiter his intention to make this move, or b. has just appeared, and the player claiming the draw has the move. Positions as in (a) and (b) are considered the same, if the same player has the move, pieces of the same kind and colour occupy the same squares, and the possible moves of all the pieces of both players are the same. Positions are not the same if a pawn that could have been captured en passant can no longer in this manner be captured or if the right to castle has been changed temporarily or permanently. 9.3 The game is drawn, upon a correct claim by the player having the move, if a. he writes his move on his scoresheet, and declares to the arbiter his intention to make this move which shall result in the last 50 moves having been made by each player without the movement of any pawn and without any capture, or b. the last 50 consecutive moves have been made by each player without the movement of any pawn and without any capture. 9.4 If the player makes a move without having claimed the draw he loses the right to claim, as in Article 9.2 or 9.3, on that move. 9.5 If a player claims a draw as in Article 9.2 or 9.3, he shall immediately stop both clocks. He is not allowed to withdraw his claim. a. If the claim is found to be correct the game is immediately drawn. b. If the claim is found to be incorrect, the arbiter shall add three minutes to the opponent's remaining time. Additionally, if the claimant has more than two minutes on his clock the arbiter shall deduct half of the claimant's remaining time up to a maximum of three minutes. If the claimant has more than one minute, but less than two minutes, his remaining time shall be one minute. If the claimant has less than one minute, the arbiter shall make no adjustment to the claimant's clock. Then the game shall continue and the intended move must be made. 9.6 The game is drawn when a position is reached from which a checkmate cannot occur by any possible series of legal moves, even with the most unskilled play. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing this position was legal. Article 10: Quickplay Finish 10.1 A 'quickplay finish' is the phase of a game, when all the (remaining) moves must be made in a limited time. 10.2 If the player, having the move, has less than two minutes left on his clock, he may claim a draw before his flag falls. He shall stop the clocks and summon the arbiter. a. If the arbiter agrees the opponent is making no effort to win the game by normal means, or that it is not possible to win by normal means, then he shall declare the game drawn. Otherwise he shall postpone his decision or reject the claim. b. If the arbiter postpones his decision, the opponent may be awarded two extra minutes and the game shall continue in the presence of an arbiter, if possible. The arbiter shall declare the final result later in the game or after a flag has fallen. He shall declare the game drawn if he agrees that the final position cannot be won by normal means, or that the opponent was not making sufficient attempts to win by normal means. c. If the arbiter has rejected the claim, the opponent shall be awarded two extra minutes time. d. The decision of the arbiter shall be final relating to 10.2 a, b, c. Article 11: Scoring 11.1 Unless announced otherwise in advance, a player who wins his game, or wins by forfeit, scores one point (1), a player who loses his game, or forfeits scores no points (0) and a player who draws his game scores a half point (˝). Article 12: The conduct of the players 12.1 The players shall take no action that will bring the game of chess into disrepute. 12.2 a During play the players are forbidden to make use of any notes, sources of information, advice, or analyse on another chessboard. b. It is strictly forbidden to bring mobile phones or other electronic means of communication, not authorised by the arbiter, into the playing venue. If a players mobile phone rings in the playing venue during play, that player shall lose the game. The score of the opponent shall be determined by the arbiter. 12.3 The scoresheet shall be used only for recording the moves, the times of the clocks, the offers of a draw, matters relating to a claim and other relevant data. 12.4 Players who have finished their games shall be considered to be spectators. 12.5 Players are not allowed to leave the 'playing venue' without permission from the arbiter. The playing venue is defined as the playing area, rest rooms, refreshment area, area set aside for smoking and other places as designated by the arbiter. The player having the move is not allowed to leave the playing area without permission of the arbiter. 12.6 It is forbidden to distract or annoy the opponent in any manner whatsoever. This includes unreasonable claims or unreasonable offers of a draw. 12.7 Infraction of any part of the Articles 12.1 to 12.6 shall lead to penalties in accordance with Article 13.4. 12.8 Persistent refusal by a player to comply with the Laws of Chess shall be penalised by loss of the game. The arbiter shall decide the score of the opponent. 12.9 If both players are found guilty according to Article 12.8, the game shall be declared lost by both players. Article 13: The role of the arbiter (see Preface) 13.1 The arbiter shall see that the Laws of Chess are strictly observed. 13.2 The arbiter shall act in the best interest of the competition. He should ensure that a good playing environment is maintained and that the players are not disturbed. He shall supervise the progress of the competition. 13.3 The arbiter shall observe the games, especially when the players are short of time, enforce decisions he has made and impose penalties on players where appropriate. 13.4 The arbiter can apply one or more of the following penalties: b. increasing the remaining time of the opponent, c. reducing the remaining time of the offending player, d. declaring the game to be lost, e. reducing the points scored in a game by the offending party, f. increasing the points scored in a game by the opponent to the maximum available for that game, g. expulsion from the event. 13.5 The arbiter may award either or both players additional time in the event of external disturbance of the game. 13.6 The arbiter must not intervene in a game except in cases described by the Laws of Chess. He shall not indicate the number of moves made, except in applying Article 8.5 when at least one flag has fallen. The arbiter shall refrain from informing a player that his opponent has completed a move or that the player has not pressed his clock. 13.7 a. Spectators and players in other games are not to speak about or otherwise interfere in a game. If necessary, the arbiter may expel offenders from the playing venue. b. It is forbidden for anybody to use a mobile phone in the playing venue and any area designated by the arbiter Article 14: FIDE 14. Member federations may ask FIDE to give an official decision about problems relating to the Laws of Chess. A. Adjourned games A1. a. If a game is not finished at the end of the time prescribed for play, the arbiter shall require the player having the move to 'seal' that move. The player must write his move in unambiguous notation on his scoresheet, put his scoresheet and that of his opponent in an envelope, seal the envelope and only then stop his clock without starting the opponent's clock. Until he has stopped the clocks, the player retains the right to change his sealed move. If, after being told by the arbiter to seal his move, the player makes a move on the chessboard, he must write that same move on his scoresheet as his sealed move. b. A player having the move, who adjourns the game before the end of the playing session, shall be considered to have sealed at the nominal time for the end of the session , and his remaining time shall so be recorded. A2. The following shall be indicated upon the envelope: a. the names of the players b. the position immediately before the sealed move c. the time used by each player d. the name of the player who has sealed the move e. the number of the sealed move f. the offer of a draw, if the proposal is current. g. the date, time and venue of resumption of play. A3. The arbiter shall check the accuracy of the information on the envelope and is responsible for the safe-keeping of it. A4. If a player proposes a draw after his opponent has sealed his move, the offer is valid until the opponent has accepted it or rejected it as in Article 9.1. A5. Before the game is to be resumed, the position immediately before the sealed move shall be set up on the chessboard, and the times used by each player when the game was adjourned shall be indicated on the clocks. A6. If prior to the resumption the game is agreed drawn, or if one of the players notifies the arbiter that he resigns, the game is concluded. A7. The envelope shall be opened only when the player who must reply to the sealed move is present. A8. Except in the cases mentioned in Article 6.10 and 9.6, the game is lost by a player whose recording of his sealed move a. is ambiguous, or b. is recorded such that its true significance is impossible to establish, or c. is illegal. A9. If, at the agreed resumption time a. the player having to reply to the sealed move is present, the envelope is opened, the sealed move made on the chessboard and his clock started. b. the player having to reply to the sealed move is not present, his clock shall be started. On his arrival, he may stop his clock and summon the arbiter. The envelope is then opened and the sealed move made on the chessboard. His clock is then restarted. c. the player who sealed the move is not present, his opponent has the right to record his reply on the scoresheet, seal his scoresheet in a fresh envelope, stop his clock and start the absent player's clock instead of making his reply in the normal manner. If so, the envelope shall be handed to the arbiter for safe-keeping and opened on the absent player's arrival. A10. The player shall lose the game if he arrives at the chessboard more than one hour late for the resumption of an adjourned game (unless the rules of the competition or the arbiter decides otherwise). However, if the player who made the sealed move is the late player, the game is decided otherwise, if: a. the absent player has won the game by virtue of the fact that the sealed move is checkmate, or b. the absent player has produced a drawn game by virtue of the fact that the sealed move is stalemate, or a position as described in Article 9.6 has arisen on the chessboard, or c. the player present at the chessboard has lost the game according to Article 6.10. A11. a. If the envelope containing the sealed move is missing, the game shall continue from the position, with the clock times recorded at the time of adjournment. If the time used by each player cannot be re-established the arbiter shall set the clocks. The player who sealed the move makes the move he states he sealed on the chessboard. b. If it is impossible to re-establish the position, the game is annulled and a new game must be played. A12. If, upon resumption of the game, either player points out before making his first move that the time used has been incorrectly indicated on either clock, the error must be corrected. If the error is not then established the game continues without correction unless the arbiter feels that the consequences will be too severe. A13. The duration of each resumption session shall be controlled by the arbiter's timepiece. The starting time and finishing time shall be announced in advance. B1. A Rapidplay game is one where either all the moves must be made in a fixed time from 15 to 60 minutes; or the time allotted + 60 times any increment is from 15 to 60 minutes. B2. Play shall be governed by the FIDE Laws of Chess, except where they are overridden by the following Laws of Rapidplay. B3. Players do not need to record the moves. B4. Once each player has completed three moves, no claim can be made regarding incorrect piece placement, orientation of the chessboard or clock setting. In case of reverse king and queen placement castling with this king is not allowed. B5. The arbiter shall make a ruling according to Article 4 (The act of moving pieces), only if requested to do so by one or both players. B6. An illegal move is completed once the opponent's clock has been started. The opponent is then entitled to claim that the player completed an illegal move before the claimant has made his move. Only after such a claim, shall the arbiter make a ruling. However, if both Kings are in check or the promotion of a pawn is not completed, the arbiter shall intervene, if possible. B7. The flag is considered to have fallen when a player has made a valid claim to that effect. The arbiter shall refrain from signalling a flag fall. B8. To claim a win on time, the claimant must stop both clocks and notify the arbiter. For the claim to be successful the claimant's flag must remain up and his opponent's flag down after the clocks have been stopped. B9. If both flags have fallen, the game is drawn. C1. A blitz game is one where all the moves must be made in a fixed time of less than 15 minutes for each player; or the allotted time + 60 times any increment is less than 15 minutes. C2. Play shall be governed by the Rapidplay Laws as in Appendix B except where they are overridden by the following Laws of Blitz. The Articles 10.2 and B6 do not apply. C3. An illegal move is completed once the opponent's clock has been started. The opponent is entitled to claim a win before he has made his own move. However, if the opponent cannot checkmate the players king by any possible series of legal moves with the most unskilled counterplay, then the claimant is entitled to claim a draw before he has made his own move. Once the opponent has made his own move, an illegal move cannot be corrected D. Quickplay finishes where no arbiter is present in the venue. D1. Where games are played as in Article 10, a player may claim a draw when he has less than two minutes left on his clock and before his flag falls. This concludes the game. He may claim on the basis a. that his opponent cannot win by normal means, and/or b. that his opponent has been making no effort to win by normal means. In (a) the player must write down the final position and his opponent verify it. In (b) the player must write down the final position and submit an up-to-date scoresheet. The opponent shall verify both the scoresheet and the final position. The claim shall be referred to an arbiter whose decision shall be the final one. E. Algebraic notation FIDE recognizes for its own tournaments and matches only one system of notation, the Algebraic System, and recommends the use of this uniform chess notation also for chess literature and periodicals. Scoresheets using a notation system other than algebraic may not be used as evidence in cases where normally the scoresheet of a player is used for that purpose. An arbiter who observes that a player is using a notation system other than the algebraic should warn the player about of this requirement. Description of the Algebraic System E1. In this description, "piece" means a piece other than a pawn. E2. Each piece is indicated by the first letter, a capital letter, of its name. Example: K = king, Q = queen, R = rook, B = bishop, N = knight. (In the case of the knight, for the sake of convenience, N is used.) E3. For the first letter of the name of a piece, each player is free to use the first letter of the name which is commonly used in his country. Examples: F = fou (French for bishop), L = loper (Dutch for bishop). In printed periodicals, the use of figurines for the pieces is recommended. E4 Pawns are not indicated by their first letter, but are recognised by the absence of such a letter. Examples: e5, d4, a5. E5. The eight files (from left to right for White and from right to left for Black) are indicated by the small letters, a, b, c, d, e, f, g and h, respectively. E6 The eight ranks (from bottom to top for White and from top to bottom for Black) are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, respectively. Consequently, in the initial position the white pieces and pawns are placed on the first and second ranks; the black pieces and pawns on the eighth and seventh ranks. E7 As a consequence of the previous rules, each of the sixty-four squares is invariably indicated by a unique combination of a letter and a number. E8 Each move of a piece is indicated by (a) the first letter of the name of the piece in question and (b) the square of arrival. There is no hyphen between (a) and (b). Examples: Be5, Nf3, Rd1. In the case of pawns, only the square of arrival is indicated. Examples: e5, d4, a5. E9 When a piece makes a capture, an x is inserted between (a) the first letter of the name of the piece in question and (b) the square of arrival. Examples: Bxe5, Nxf3, Rxd1. When a pawn makes a capture, the file of departure must be indicated, then an x, then the square of arrival. Examples: dxe5, gxf3, axb5. In the case of an "en passant" capture, the square of arrival is given as the square on which the capturing pawn finally rests and "e.p." is appended to the notation. Example: exd6 e.p.. E10 If two identical pieces can move to the same square, the piece that is moved is indicated as follows: 1. If both pieces are on the same rank: by (a) the first letter of the name of the piece, (b) the file of the square of departure, and (c) the square of arrival. 2. If both pieces are on the same file: by (a) the first letter of the name of the piece, (b) the rank of the square of departure, and (c) the square of arrival. 3. If the pieces are on different ranks and files, method (1) is preferred. In the case of capture, an x must be inserted between (b) and (c). There are two knights, on the squares g1 and e1, and one of them moves to the square f3: either Ngf3 or Nef3, s the case may be. There are two knights, on the squares g5 and g1, and one of them moves to the square f3: either N5f3 or N1f3, as the case may be. There are two knights, on the squares h2 and d4, and one of them moves to the square f3: either Nhf3 or Ndf3, as the case may be. If a capture takes place on the square f3, the previous examples are changed by the insertion of an x: (1) either Ngxf3 or Nexf3, (2) either N5xf3 or N1xf3, (3) either Nhxf3 or Ndxf3, as the case may be. E11 If two pawns can capture the same piece or pawn of the opponent, the pawn that is moved is indicated by (a) the letter of the file of departure, (b) an x, (c) the square of arrival. Example: If there are white pawns on squares c4 and e4 and a black pawn or piece on the square d5, the notation for White's move is either cxd5 or exd5, as the case may be. E12 In the case of the promotion of a pawn, the actual pawn move is indicated, followed immediately by the first letter of the new piece. Examples: d8Q, f8N, b1B, g1R. E13 The offer of a draw shall be marked as (=). 0-0 castling with rook h1 or rook h8 (kingside castling) 0-0-0 castling with rook a1 or rook a8 (queenside castling) ++ or # checkmate e.p. captures en passant Sample game: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. d4 exd4 4. e5 Ne4 5. Qxd4 d5 6. exd6 e.p. Nxd6 7. Bg5 Nc6 8. Qe3+ Be7 9. Nbd2 0-0 10. 0-0-0 Re8 11. Kb1(=) F. Rules for play with Blind and Visually Handicapped Players F1. Tournament directors shall have the power to adapt the following rules according to local circumstances. In competitive chess between sighted and visually handicapped players (legally blind) either player may demand the use of two chessboards, the sighted players using a normal chessboard, the visually handicapped player using one specially constructed. The specially constructed chessboard must meet the following requirements: a. at least 20 by 20 centimetres; b. the black squares slightly raised; c. a securing aperture in each square; d. every piece provided with a peg that fits into the securing aperture; e. pieces of Staunton design, the black pieces being specially marked. F2 The following regulations shall govern play: 1. The moves shall be announced clearly, repeated by the opponent and executed on his chessboard. When promoting a pawn, the player must announce which piece is chosen. To make the announcement as clear as possible, the use of the following names is suggested instead of the corresponding letters, algebraic Ranks from white to black shall receive the German numbers: Castling is announced Lange Rochade (German for long castling) and Kurze Rochade (German for short castling). The pieces bear the names: Koenig, Dame, Turm, Laeufer, Springer, Bauer. 2. On the visually handicapped players chessboard a piece shall be considered touched when it has been taken out of the securing aperture. 3. A move shall be considered executed when: a. in the case of a capture, the captured piece has been removed from the chessboard of the player whose turn it is to move; b. a piece is placed into a different securing aperture; c. the move has been announced. Only then the opponents clock shall be started. As far as points 2 and 3 are concerned the normal rules are valid for the sighted player. 4. A specially constructed chess clock for the visually handicapped shall be admissible. It shall incorporate the following features: a. A dial fitted with reinforced hands, with every five minutes marked by one dot, and every 15 minutes by two raised dots. b. A flag which can be easily felt. Care should be taken that the flag is so arranged as to allow the player to feel the minute hand during the last 5 minutes of the full hour. 5. The visually handicapped player must keep score of the game in Braille or longhand or record the moves on a tape recorder. 6. A slip of the tongue in the announcement of a move must be corrected immediately and before the clock of the opponent is started. 7. If during a game different positions should arise on the two chessboards, they must be corrected with the assistance of the controller and by consulting both players game scores. If the two game scores correspond with each other, the player who has written the correct move but executed the wrong one must adjust his position to correspond with the move on the game scores. 8. If, when such differences occur and the two game scores are found to differ, the moves shall be retraced to the point where the two scores agree and the controller shall readjust the clock accordingly. 9. The visually handicapped player shall have the right to make use of an assistant who shall have any or all of the following duties: a. Make either players move on the chessboard of the opponent. b. Announce the moves of both players. c. Keep the game score of the visually handicapped player and start his opponents clock, (keeping rule 3.c in mind). d. Inform the visually handicapped player only at his request of the number of moves completed and the time used up by both players. e. Claim the game in cases where the time limit has been exceeded and inform the controller when the sighted player has touched one of his pieces. f. Carry out the necessary formalities in case the game is adjourned. If the visually handicapped player does not make use of an assistant, the sighted player may make use of one who shall carry out the duties mentioned under point 9a and b.

According to prosecutors, Ernst Zündel is one of the "most active" Holocaust deniers today. He began distributing Nazi and neo-Nazi propaganda in the 1970s and has written several books praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Since 1995, he has been associated with a Web site that carries his name and is one of biggest online repositories of Holocaust-denial propaganda. But Zündel, who was born in Germany's Black Forest region, was only able to engage in such activities because he was living outside of his native county, in Canada and the United States. Although freedom of the press and of expression is written into German law, the country is generally more wary of free speech than the US, where Zündel's dissemination of racist literature and refutation of the Holocaust -- while distasteful to most -- was perfectly legal. In Germany, however, it was not. Zündel was deported to his native country in March 2005 after a long legal battle with the Canadian government. He found himself immediately under arrest and up against the German justice system. If the 66-year-old is found guilty by a court in Mannheim of incitement to racial hatred, libel and defamation of the memory of the dead, he faces up to five years in prison. Constitutional rights and constraints Article 5 of Germany's constitution, or Basic Law, enshrines the right of freedom of speech and of the press. "Everyone has the right to freely express and disseminate their opinions orally, in writing or visually and to obtain information from generally accessible sources without hindrance," states paragraph one of the law. "Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting through audiovisual media shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship." But the next paragraph puts certain limits on that freedom, which were deemed necessary when the Basic Law was proclaimed in 1949, just four years after the end of World War II and the downfall of the Nazi dictatorship. "These rights are subject to limitations embodied in the provisions of general legislation, statutory provisions for the protection of young persons and the citizen's right to personal respect," reads the second paragraph. German law therefore constrains press freedom, said Udo Branahl, a professor of media law at the University of Dortmund. "The penal law code says Holocaust denial is a punishable offense," he said. "That ban limits press freedom and overrides the right to free expression in the mass media." Germany is not the only European country to make Holocaust denial a crime. France, Italy and Austria have similar statutes on the books. Criminal abroad, tried in Germany So while in the US and Canada, Zündel could freely present his "evidence" that the gas chambers and crematoria of the Third Reich did not exist, in Germany, he was committing a crime that he would be tried for, even though it was not committed on German soil. The country's Federal Constitutional Court confirmed in 1994 that Holocaust revisionism is not protected speech. "In weighing the importance of free speech against that of individual rights, courts must consider on the one hand the severity of the offense caused by Holocaust denial to the Jewish population in light of the suffering inflicted upon it by Germany," the court wrote at the time. "This court has consistently protected the personal honor of those defamed above the right of others to make patently false statements." In the United States, where a broader definition of the freedom of expression has traditionally been considered one of the country's most foundations, this limitation on expression is often met with disapproval. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," goes a citation from Voltaire that's often quoted. "I've spoken with a lot of Americans, and they don't understand us," said Wolfgang Wippermann, a professor at the Freie University in Berlin who studies Nazism and right-wing extremism. "I tell them, 'In your country, drug dealers also go to prison; these Holocaust deniers are like drug dealers, but dealing in mental poison'."

Seasons of the Moon - Elul 5761 / Tishre 5762 Elul 5761 / Tishre 5762 August 20 - October 17, 2001 MAN IN THE MOON It's uncanny how much the full moon resembles a human face. It wasn't so long ago that artists routinely depicted the moon as In October 1608, the Dutch government debated two patent applications - that of Hans Lipperhey of Middelburg, and that of Jacob Metius of Alkmaar. The application was for a device for "seeing faraway things as though nearby." It consisted of a convex and concave lens in a tube which magnified objects three or four times. The news of this new invention spread rapidly through Europe. By April 1609 three-powered spyglasses could be bought in spectacle-maker's shops on the Pont Neuf in Paris, and four months later there were several in Italy. Later that year, Thomas Harriot took his six-power telescope and pointed it at the Moon. And that was the end of the Man in the Moon. With the advent of the telescope, the Man in the Moon was struck a mortal blow. Now it was revealed for all to see that the "face" of the moon was not a face at all but an agglomeration of inert rock and dust. Do We Know What We See? Or Do We See What We Know?The Man in the Moon may have passed into folklore, but in some very fundamental ways, he is still very much with us. Look at the world. Do you know what you see? Sometimes it's difficult to be sure exactly what you're looking at. Preconceptions can often lead our eyes astray. Is the world really the way we see it? Do we recognize what's in front of our eyes? Or are we creating a virtual reality based on what our eyes expect to see? In other words, do we know what we see? Or do we see - what we know? The Way Of The WorldNothing, it would seem, is more incontrovertible than our own existence. I exist. I am here. I am an independent reality. Aren't I? Twice a day, a Jew covers his closed eyes with his right hand and proclaims "Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokenu, Hashem Ehad!" "Hear O Israel, Hashem our G-d, Hashem is One!" When we say that G-d is One, we are not just declaring that there is only one G-d; we are affirming that nothing else exists except for Him or outside Him whatsoever. Nothing. His is a Oneness that allows for no "other." When a Jew says Shema he gives over his very existence to the Creator. He declares that, on the ultimate level, he has no separate existence whatsoever. The message of Shema runs counter-intuitive to everything that our eyes tell us. Our physical senses do not teach us that nothing else exists except for Him. Quite the reverse. Our senses tells us that if anything exists at all - it's me. From my point of view, the world could be an Ultra-High-Definition 3D movie with SurroundSound. My instinctive perception is that nothing else exists except for me. The Shema is the way we reverse this paradigm; the Shema is the way the Jew 'sees' beyond the picture that his five senses paint. Sense Beyond PerceptionHow, you will ask, can we perceive something that is beyond our senses? If our senses are the sole agents of perception, how can we perceive anything beyond them? More - how can we perceive something that totally contradicts them? The Torah teaches us that there is an extra-sensory perception, a channel to that higher reality: "A G-d of faith and lacking sin; Righteous and Straight is He." (Devarim 32:4) A cursory reading of this verse would suggest that "a G-d of faith" means that G-d keeps his word, that He's "faith"-ful. However, there is another, deeper meaning here. "A G-d of faith" means that G-d "believed in the world and created it." What does it mean that G-d "believed" in the world? Surely it is the world that believes (or doesn't believe) in G-d - not the reverse? A World Called EmunaBefore this physical creation, G-d created another existence, another world. The name of that world is Emuna - belief. When the Torah teaches us that "G-d believed in the world and created it," it means that before this creation, G-d brought into being an existence called Emuna, and within the boundaries of Emuna, within that non-physical world, G-d created the universe. In other words, this entire physical existence from its absolute beginning till its ultimate end is created within, and depends upon, another system. Not a solar system. Not a galactic system. A system called Emuna. Contained within that world is all of this world. Nothing can exist outside of Emuna. The Other End of the TelescopeWhen we look at the world through physical eyes, it seems that the world's existence is self-evident, and within the world is a thing called belief, Emuna. Furthermore, our physical eyes would tell us that Emuna is optional: You can choose to believe, or you can choose not to believe. This is the way the rest of the world looks at reality. From the Jewish perspective, however, the world is looking through the other end of the "telescope". The world has mistaken that which is optional for that which is perforce, that which is necessary for that which is incidental. The world has mistaken the rocks and dust of this world for the Man in the Moon. Judaism takes the world's view of itself and reverses it. It takes the telescope and turns it around. Judaism sees that Emuna doesn't exist in the world - the world exists in Emuna. Solid As A RockWe tend to think that nothing is as solid as a rock. Nothing is as certain as what our eyes see. We think that these are the certainties - and Faith, Emuna, is not something "certain." The world's paradigm is that Emuna is something we can choose to subscribe to like some ultimate cable channel from the world above. You can channel hop. Or you can just turn the whole set off. The reverse is true. G-d created Emuna as a truth, a reality, and then placed within that creation every rock and mountain, every sea and shore. The Day Of The KingIt is with this sensitivity that a Jew draws close to Rosh Hashana. Rosh Hashana is the day that we crown the Creator as King of the world. What does it mean to crown a non-physical, non-spiritual Being of whom we can ultimately know nothing? Where is there a stadium that can contain His coronation? Where is there a crown large enough to place on His Head? The crown that we give to the Almighty is our gift of ourselves to Him. When we place our very existence within the world called Emuna, we place the Crown on the Creator. The Moon In The Man You have left Your Footprints SEASONS OF THE MOON is written by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair and edited by Rabbi Moshe Newman. Designed and Produced by the Office of Communications - Rabbi Eliezer Shapiro, Director Production Design: Michael Treblow © 2001 Ohr Somayach International - All rights reserved. This publication may be distributed to another person intact without prior permission. We also encourage you to include this material in other publications, such as synagogue newsletters. However, we ask that you contact us beforehand for permission, and then send us a sample issue. This publication is also available in the following formats: Explanation of these symbols | Seasons of the Moon Archives | This publication is available via E-Mail Ohr Somayach Institutions is an international network of Yeshivot and outreach centers, with branches in North America, Europe, South Africa and South America. The Central Campus in Jerusalem provides a full range of educational services for over 685 full-time students. The Jewish Learning Exchange (JLE) of Ohr Somayach offers summer and winter programs in Israel that attract hundreds of university students from around the world for 3 to 8 weeks of study and touring. Copyright © 2001 Ohr Somayach International. Send us Feedback.

Too much emphasis on blaming individuals can lead to a failure to identify the true root of the problem. Take the story of the Israeli Air Force fighter pilots and their trainers. The trainers noticed that pilots executed better flights after they’d been criticized, and flew worse after they received positive feedback. Their conclusion: Blame must get the pilots to focus better. So trainers adopted the practice of withholding positive feedback and liberally applying blame, so pilots wouldn’t grow too cocky. But two psychologists, Daniel Kahnemann and Amos Tversky, came to a different conclusion: If a pilot logged a poor flight, the “anomaly” was unlikely to repeat itself, regardless of feedback. Similarly, if a pilot had a stellar flight, the odds were that he would drift back toward the mean. In other words, the blame or credit didn’t have the impact the trainers had believed. Once they knew the true causes of the flight variation, they could begin exploring new ways of teaching. lesson: Blaming the wrong factors and variables can be distracting at best; harmful at worst. — Adapted from The Blame Game, Ben Dattner.

By isolating dental stem cell lines, researchers from Inserm and Paris Descartes University have been able to demonstrate the natural mechanisms by which these stem cells repair lesions in the teeth. Publishing in the journal Stem Cells, it is hoped that this breakthrough discovery will allow the initiation of unprecedented therapeutic strategies to mobilise the resident dental stem cells and magnify their natural capacity for repair. When a dental lesion appears, dormant stem cells in the dental pulp, or “living” part of the tooth, springs into action and try to repair the tooth. Through successfully extracting and isolating tooth stem cells from rats, the researchers were able to analyse them in detail. They identified 5 specific receptors for dopamine and serotonin on their surface, two neurotransmitters that are essential to the body. They then observed that the blood platelets, activated by the dental lesion for releasing a large quantity of serotonin and dopamine. Once released, these neurotransmitters then recruit the stem cells to repair the tooth by binding to their receptors. Furthermore, in rats were dental repair was absent, it was found that these rats had modified platelets that did not produce serotonin or dopamine, i.e. a failure to signal to repair the lesion. Lead author of the research, Odile Kellermann, commented: “In stem cell research, it is unusual to be simultaneously able to isolate cell lines, identify the markers that allow them to be recognised (here the 5 receptors), discover the signal that recruits them (serotonin and dopamine), and discover the source of that signal (blood platelets). In this work, we have been able, unexpectedly, to explore the entire mechanism.” The researchers were also able to analyse the characteristics of the 5 receptors and found encouraging signs there also. Only one 1 of the 5 receptors was found not to affect the repair process. The other 4, meanwhile, all strongly participated. In vivo blocking of just one, then, would not prevent dental repair occurring. Speaking of how this could influence current dental strategies for repairing teeth, Odile Kellermann concluded: “Currently, dentists use pulp capping materials (calcium hydroxide) and tricalcium phosphate-based biomaterials to repair the tooth and fill lesions. Our results lead us to imagine unprecedented therapeutic strategies aimed at mobilising the resident pulpal stem cells in order to magnify the natural reparative capacity of teeth without use of replacement materials.”

Daniel Maurer / AP This 35,000-year-old bird-bone flute, held by the University of Tübingen's Nicholas Conard, is considered one of the world's oldest handcrafted musical instruments. But researchers say human musicmaking has much more ancient roots. If you think about, there's no escape, really. Music holds humanity in a vise grip. Every culture you can think of has it, hears it and taps their feet to it. So how did music first take hold? A new analysis proposes that music hijacked our ancestors' ability to hear and interpret the movements of fellow human beings. That claim is at the heart of “Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man,” a new book by neurobiologist Mark Changizi. Changizi analyzed the rises and falls in the rhythm and intonation of more than 10,000 samples of folk music from Finland and found that they bear a stamp — an auditory fossil of sorts — that can be traced back to the rises and falls and rhythms associated with the movement of people. It’s the latest in a series of theories that have drawn upon evolutionary biology, developmental biology, psychology and neuroscience to explain how human beings came to cultivate music as a complex, expressive craft. Music has persisted in society, but it doesn't seem to come with any obvious survival benefit. If it wasn't essential to survival, why did it stick around? "Harnessed," a new book by neurobiologist Mark Changizi, focuses on the origins of music - and how music helped shape humanity. “Music really is the story about a person moving or doing something around you,” Changizi told me. “It’s just like listening to a story. We’re having an auditory story about people moving our midst.” The appreciation for music grew and developed from this primal urge, monopolizing a natural faculty meant for human survival. Music essentially “harnessed” this urge, Changizi says, which also explains the title of the book. “A lot of thinking is remote from the physical act of making music,” William Benson, a jazz musician and author of the book "Beethoven’s Anvil," told me. “And [Changizi] gets right to the physical aspect of making music.” For one thing, it explains music's emotional appeal. In his book, Changizi described a study that looked at the foot patterns of people in different emotional states. When they were happy, sad or angry, their gaits betrayed their feelings. “Music may not be marching orders from our commander, but it can sometimes cue our emotional system so precisely that we feel almost compelled to march in lockstep with music’s fictional mover,” Changizi writes. “And this is true whether we are adults or toddlers. When music is effective at getting us to mimic the movement it mimics, we call it dance music, be it a Strauss waltz or a Grateful Dead flail.” The relationship between movement and music may come as a surprise for some, but not so much for others. In some African cultures, the word for "music" and "dance" are one and the same. In contrast, concert pianists or cellists sit still when they perform. Why this difference? Blame the Gregorian chant, says Benson. Monasteries were the intellectual centers of Europe in the Middle Ages. Monks chanted tonal, arrhythmic verses daily, developed the Western musical notation, and set the pattern for the understanding and performance of Western music during the centuries that followed. “And if you think of that as the basis for music, then you’re not going to get the kind of music you get in Africa and India,” Benson told me. Essentially, the Gregorian chant decoupled the ideas of movement and rhythm from music in the Western world. But Changizi's theory brings the ideas together once again, backed by a statistical approach that looks more deeply into the correlation between dance and movement and music. Take a deeper look into the brain, and you may have an even more convincing case for music being an intrinsic characteristic of the human experience, says Edward Large, who studies how the brain processes sound and rhythm. While Changizi's musical analysis sounds reasonable, there may be an even deeper universality. "The paydirt is where you find the same patters in the brain that you find in the music," he told me. So, the human brain was harnessed. A faculty that came into being for survival — recognizing the behavioral patterns in the movements of others — was tweaked, and music hitched a ride into the lives of modern humans. We see such behavior all the time, Changizi explains. Just look at cats: “Although tuna is not what cat ancestors ate, tuna is sufficiently meat-ish in odor and taste that it fits right into a cat’s finicky diet disposition.” And music, it seems, is tuna for our finicky brains. More about the science of music: - Making music from weather data - Music of spheres and the stars - The geometry of music - Music made for monkeys - Music for cavemen - The sounds of science

ASIST trains participants to reduce the immediate risk of a suicide and increase the support for a person at risk. The workshop provides opportunities to learn what a person at risk may need from others in order to keep safe and get more help.It encourages honest, open and direct talk about suicide as part of preparing people to provide suicide first aid. Participants also consider how personal attitudes and experiences might affect their helping role with a person at risk. Active participation is encouraged. It is stimulated by audio-visuals and working with others in small groups. A suicide first aid model provides a framework for skills practice. If you have any queries or would like the training delivered in your organisation, please contact the HSE National Office for Suicide Prevention by clicking here www.nosp.ie/html/training.html

Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle. There are various causes but it is usually caused by a virus. Depending on the cause and severity, symptoms and possible problems can range from no symptoms at all, to life-threatening heart failure. Many people with myocarditis recover completely but it can cause serious problems and even death in some cases. What causes myocarditis and who is affected by it? Myocarditis means inflammation of the myocardium. The myocardium is the heart muscle. Myocarditis can affect anyone and occur at any age. There are various causes; many are mild and some are serious. Causes include the following: Many types of viral infection can affect several parts of the body, including the heart muscle. Myocarditis may develop at the same time as, or more often just after, a viral throat or chest infection. The body's immune system can clear many types of virus. This means that many cases of viral myocarditis go away on their own within a week or so. In the UK, the most common infections causing myocarditis are viruses called Coxsackie B and adenovirus. Other viruses which sometimes cause myocarditis include: - Flu (influenza). - Glandular fever (Epstein-Barr virus). - German measles (rubella). - Chickenpox (varicella). - Yellow fever. - Dengue fever. - Polio (poliomyelitis). - Viruses that cause hepatitis A and hepatitis C. Sometimes the inflammation in the heart lasts longer than other features of the infection. The virus may have gone but the immune system may over-react and cause inflammation which persists for a time in the heart. Unknown cause (idiopathic myocarditis) In many people with myocarditis, the cause is not found. However, for the majority of these people it is likely to be caused by a virus that could not be confirmed by a test. Other causes of myocarditis are much less common. They include: - Other types of infection. The heart can sometimes become infected by various bacteria, fungi, parasites and other germs. For example: - Chagas' disease. This is an infection caused by a protozoan called Trypanosoma cruzi. You can catch this infection from an insect bite in certain tropical countries. Worldwide, this is a common cause of myocarditis (but is rare in the UK). With this infection a form of myocarditis develops many years after the initial infection. This leads to a gradual destruction of heart tissue, which can cause severe heart failure. - Lyme disease. This is an infection caused by a germ (bacterium) called Borrelia burgdorferi. You can catch this infection by a bite from an infected tick. - Giant cell myocarditis. This is a very rare condition and gets its name from abnormal cells which develop in the heart. The cause is not known but it tends to develop in some people who have a growth on the thymus gland (a thymoma), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) - also known as lupus - or an overactive thyroid (thyrotoxicosis). - A rare side-effect of some medicines and a rare complication of various diseases. - Other damaging agents. For example, inflammation in the heart can be caused by excess alcohol, radiation, certain chemicals and certain poisons. - Rejection following a heart transplant. What are the symptoms of myocarditis? The symptoms depend on the cause and severity of the inflammation. Many people with viral myocarditis do not have any heart-related symptoms. The heart inflammation may be suspected by some changes on a heart trace (electrocardiogram, or ECG) - see 'How is myocarditis diagnosed?', below. If symptoms do develop they can include: - Chest pain. - Raised temperature (fever). - A fast heartbeat - faster than usual for a normal high temperature. - An irregular heartbeat. - Shortness of breath. What are the possible complications? Complications may develop if the inflammation damages the heart muscle or the fibres that conduct the electrical impulses in the heart. Complications develop quickly in some cases following sudden-onset (acute) symptoms listed above. Some cases of myocarditis develop gradually (such as in Chagas' disease) and have no acute symptoms. It may be that the complications are the first indication that you have had myocarditis in the past. Possible complications include: - Sudden loss of consciousness (syncope). - Abnormally fast, slow or irregular heartbeats (cardiac arrhythmias). - Heart failure which can cause shortness of breath, swelling of the legs and tiredness. See separate leaflet called Heart Failure for more details. How is myocarditis diagnosed? Your symptoms are likely to lead your doctor to make the possible diagnosis of myocarditis. A heart trace of your heart's electrical activity (an electrocardiogram) may be done. A chest X-ray may show that your heart is larger than normal. It is also likely you will have some blood tests to test for some of the viruses that can cause myocarditis. An ultrasound scan of the heart (an echocardiogram) may also be arranged. You may also have an MRI scan to show how your heart is being affected. Some people need to have an endomyocardial biopsy. This involves taking a very small tissue sample of the heart to investigate for the cause of myocarditis. Newer tests which are more sensitive at diagnosing some of the viruses are currently being developed. What is the treatment of myocarditis? The treatment of myocarditis will depend on the cause and severity of your myocarditis. Bed rest is usually recommended at the onset of myocarditis and athletic activities should be avoided for six months. This aims to avoid putting undue strain on the heart muscle. Painkillers will help to ease chest pain and high temperature (fever). There is no treatment that will cure a viral infection. However, for most people with viral myocarditis, the virus clears away on its own without any treatment, often within a week or so. In the past, the use of medicines called steroids has been tried. However, there are no clinical studies which demonstrate steroids as being beneficial other than for giant cell myocarditis. Different treatments for myocarditis are currently being investigated in other clinical studies. For the more uncommon causes, or if complications develop, a range of treatments may be needed. For example: - Medication to treat heart failure or irregular heartbeats. - A pacemaker if certain irregular heart rhythms develop. - Antibiotic medicines if the cause of the myocarditis is a germ (a bacterial infection). - Steroid medication if the cause is giant cell myocarditis. - Stopping alcohol if alcohol is the cause. What is the outlook (prognosis)? In most cases of viral myocarditis, the illness goes away on its own and there are no complications. Symptoms may last only a few days or weeks. However, some types of viral infection are more serious and can cause more severe or persistent inflammation and complications. Complications are more likely with the more uncommon causes of myocarditis. Sometimes the inflammation clears but the heart is left with some permanent damage. You may be left with a degree of heart failure which may require long-term medication. In some cases, the inflammation and heart damage are so severe that the only treatment option is a heart transplant. Myocarditis is fatal in some cases. In some cases death occurs some time after the diagnosis is made if the condition becomes worse and unresponsive to treatment. Also, some cases of sudden death in a previously healthy person are due to an acute myocarditis that develops rapidly. Did you find this information useful? - Schultz JC, Hilliard AA, Cooper LT Jr, et al; Diagnosis and treatment of viral myocarditis. Mayo Clin Proc. 2009 Nov 84(11):1001-9. doi: 10.1016/S0025-6196(11)60670-8. - Shauer A, Gotsman I, Keren A, et al; Acute viral myocarditis: current concepts in diagnosis and treatment. Isr Med Assoc J. 2013 Mar 15(3):180-5. - Dennert R, Crijns HJ, Heymans S; Acute viral myocarditis. Eur Heart J. 2008 Jul 9. - Chen HS, Wang W, Wu SN, et al; Corticosteroids for viral myocarditis. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2013 Oct 18 10:CD004471. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD004471.pub3. Disclaimer: This article is for information only and should not be used for the diagnosis or treatment of medical conditions. Patient Platform Limited has used all reasonable care in compiling the information but make no warranty as to its accuracy. Consult a doctor or other health care professional for diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions. For details see our conditions.

Declared value refers to the value placed on a package or shipment imported for the purpose of resale, based on the declaration of the shipper. An alternative term for declared value is entry value. There are two main classifications under declared value. Declared value for carriage is that which is declared by the owner or shipper which will then serve as the basis for the computation of freight charges. This value is generally the same as the cost price of the item for shipment. The declared value for carriage also serves to set limits for the carrier’s liabilities in the event of loss, delays, or damage to the shipment. On the other hand, the declared value for customs is that which is declared by the shipper for the purpose of duties and taxes computations. In contrast to the declared value for carriage, it is usually equal to the selling price of the shipment. Oftentimes, the declared value for customs is higher than that for carriage. It must be noted, however, that customs tariffs are not usually applied to domestic products. Tariffs are taxes assessed and imposed by the appropriate government authority on goods which go through international borders or ports. Tariffs may be based on the type of good, but are generally dependent on its declared value. Once a batch of goods crosses an international border, it becomes subject to the inspection of a customs officer who then applies the appropriate tariffs. In order to avoid tariff payments, some entities engage in smuggling activities and sell their goods in the black market.

In Vancouver last winter, the United States proved its competitive spirit by winning more medals—gold, silver, and bronze—at the Winter Olympic Games than any other country, although the German member of our research team insists on pointing out that Canada and Germany both won more gold medals than the United States. But if there is some dispute about which Olympic medals to count, there is no question about American math performance: the United States does not deserve even a paper medal. Maintaining our productivity as a nation depends importantly on developing a highly qualified cadre of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and other professionals. To realize that objective requires a system of schooling that produces students with advanced math and science skills. To see how well schools in the United States do at producing high-achieving math students, we compared the percentage of U.S. students in the high-school graduating Class of 2009 with advanced skills in mathematics to percentages of similarly high achievers in other countries. Unfortunately, we found that the percentage of students in the U.S. Class of 2009 who were highly accomplished in math is well below that of most countries with which the United States generally compares itself. No fewer than 30 of the 56 other countries that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) math test, including most of the world’s industrialized nations, had a larger percentage of students who scored at the international equivalent of the advanced level on our own National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests. Moreover, while the percentage of students scoring at the advanced level on NAEP varies considerably among the 50 states, not even the best state does well in international comparison. A 2005 report from the National Academy of Sciences, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, succinctly put the issue into perspective: “Although many people assume that the United States will always be a world leader in science and technology, this may not continue to be the case inasmuch as great minds and ideas exist throughout the world.” The Demand for High Achievers The gap between the burgeoning business demand for a highly accomplished workforce and a lagging education system has steadily widened. Even as the United States was struggling with a near 10 percent unemployment rate in the summer of 2010, businesses complained that they could not find workers with needed skills. New York Times writer Motoko Rich explained, “The problem…is a mismatch between the kind of skilled workers needed and the ranks of the unemployed.” Skill shortages have severe consequences for a nation’s overall productivity. Two of the authors of this report have shown elsewhere that countries with students who perform at higher levels in math and science show larger rates of increase in economic productivity than do otherwise similar countries with lower-performing students (see “Education and Economic Growth,” research, Spring 2008). Public discourse has tended to focus on the need to address low achievement, particularly among disadvantaged students. Both federal funding and the accountability elements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have stressed the importance of bringing every student up to a minimum level of proficiency. As great as this need may be, there is no less need to lift more students, no matter their socioeconomic background, to high levels of educational accomplishment. In 2006, the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Coalition was formed to “raise awareness in Congress, the Administration, and other organizations about the critical role that STEM education plays in enabling the U.S. to remain the economic and technological leader of the global marketplace for the 21st Century.” In the words of a National Academy of Sciences report that jump-started the coalition’s formation, the nation needs to “increase” its “talent pool by improving K–12 science and mathematics education.” We give special attention to math performance because math appears to be the subject in which accomplishment in secondary school is particularly significant for both an individual’s and a country’s economic well-being. Existing research, though not conclusive, indicates that math skills better predict future earnings and other economic outcomes than other skills learned in high school. The American Diploma Project estimates that “in 62 percent of American jobs over the next 10 years, entry-level workers will need to be proficient in algebra, geometry, data interpretation, probability and statistics.” There is also a technical reason for focusing our analysis on math. This subject is particularly well suited to rigorous comparisons across countries and cultures. There is a fairly clear international consensus on the math concepts and techniques that need to be mastered and on the order in which those concepts should be introduced into the curriculum. The knowledge to be learned remains the same regardless of the dominant language spoken in a culture. Data and Methodology Our analysis relies on test-score information from NAEP and PISA. NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, is often called the nation’s report card. It is a large, nationally representative assessment of student performance in public and private schools in mathematics, reading, and science that has been administered periodically since the early 1970s to U.S. students in 4th grade and 8th grade, and at the age of 17. PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment, is an internationally standardized assessment of student performance in mathematics, science, and reading established by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It was administered in 2000, 2003, and 2006 to representative samples of 15-year-olds in all 30 OECD countries (which include the most developed countries of the world) as well as in many others. We focus on performance of the international equivalent of the U.S. high-school graduating Class of 2009 at the time when this population was in the equivalent of U.S. grades 8 and 9. NAEP was administered to U.S. 8th graders in 2005, while PISA 2006 was given one year later to students at the age of 15, the year at which most American students are in 9th grade. In 2005, NAEP tested representative samples of 8th-grade public and private school students in each of the 50 states in math, science, and reading. For each state, NAEP 2005 calculates the percentage of students who meet a set of achievement standards: a “basic” level, a “proficient” level, and an “advanced” level of achievement. The focus of this report is the top performers, the percentage of students NAEP found at the advanced level of achievement (subsequently referred to as “advanced”). Only 6.04 percent of the students in the United States in 8th grade in 2005 scored at the advanced level in math on the NAEP. Some critics feel that the standard set by the NAEP governing board is excessively stringent. However, the 2007 Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS 2007), another international test that has been administered to students throughout the world, appears to have set a standard very similar to NAEP 2005, as only 6 percent of U.S. 8th graders scored at the advanced level on that test as well. We use the NAEP 2005 advanced standard to compare U.S. performance with that in other countries. Because U.S. students took both NAEP 2005 and PISA 2006, it is possible to find the score on PISA that is tantamount to scoring at the advanced level on NAEP, i.e., the score that will yield the same percentage of students as the percentage of U. S. students who scored at the advanced level on the NAEP. A score on PISA 2006 of 617.1 points is equivalent to the lowest score attained by anyone in the top 6.04 percent of U.S. students in the Class of 2009. (The PISA assessment has an average score of 500 among OECD students and a standard deviation of 100.) It is assumed that both NAEP and PISA tests randomly select questions from a common universe of mathematics knowledge. Given that assumption, it may be further assumed that students who scored similarly on the two exams will have similar math knowledge, i.e., students who scored 617.1 points or better on the PISA test would have been identified at the advanced level had they taken the NAEP math test. Inasmuch as a score of 617.1 points is more than one standard deviation above the average student score on the PISA, it is clear that a group of highly accomplished students has been isolated. (For more methodological details, see sidebar.) We start with the national share of 8th-grade U.S. public and private school students (most of whom are 14 years of age) who reach the advanced level in math on NAEP 2005: 6.04 percent. These students are assumed to be part of the cohort of 15-year-olds who participated in PISA 2006 one year later. Thus, using the PISA 2006 microdata, we can calculate the PISA math test score at which the 93.96th percentile (100.00 – 6.04) of the U.S. student population performs. All PISA calculations use the PISA sampling weights to yield nationally representative estimates. The PISA scaling methodology returns student performance estimates through a range of five plausible values, which are random draws from the estimated probability distribution for a student’s underlying performance. We perform our analysis separately for each of the five plausible values provided by PISA 2006. We then average these results. Based on these calculations, we estimate the PISA score at which the 93.96th percentile of the U.S. student population performs to be 617.1 PISA points. Next, we calculate from the PISA microdata the share of students reaching this cutoff point for each country participating in the PISA 2006 test. This provides an estimate of the share of students in each PISA country who reach the equivalent of the advanced level in 8th-grade math on NAEP 2005. The share of students who reach the advanced level in 8th-grade math in each U.S. state is taken from NAEP 2005. For information on the statistical significance of differences among jurisdictions, see the unabridged version of this study, available here. Because representative samples of student performance on NAEP 2005 are available for each state, it is possible to compare the percentages of students in the Class of 2009 who were at the advanced level for each state to the percentage of equally skilled students in countries from around the globe. In short, linking the scores of the Class of 2009 on NAEP 2005 and PISA 2006 provides us with the opportunity to assess from an international vantage point how well the country as well as individual states in the United States are doing at lifting students to high levels of accomplishment. U. S. Math Performance in World Perspective We begin with an overall assessment of the relative percentages of young adults in the United States and other countries who have reached a very high level of mathematics achievement. It is frequently noted that the United States has a very heterogeneous population, with large numbers of immigrants. Such a diverse population, with students coming to school with varying preparation, may handicap U.S. performance relative to that of other countries. For this reason, we also examine two U.S. subgroups conventionally thought to have better preparation for school—white students and students from families where at least one parent is reported to have received a college degree—and compare the percentages of high-achieving students among them to the (total) populations abroad. Overall results. The percentage of students in the U.S. Class of 2009 who were highly accomplished is well below that of most countries with which the United States generally compares itself. While just 6 percent of U.S. students earned at least 617.1 points on the PISA 2006 exam, 28 percent of Taiwanese students did. (See Figure 1 for these results as well as for the international rank of each U.S. state.) It is not only Taiwan that did much, much better than the United States. At least 20 percent of students in Hong Kong, Korea, and Finland were similarly highly accomplished. Twelve other countries had more than twice the percentage of advanced students as the United States: in order of math excellence, they are Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Japan, Canada, Macao-China, Australia, Germany, and Austria. The remaining countries that educate a greater proportion of their students to a high level are Slovenia, Denmark, Iceland, France, Estonia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Slovak Republic, Luxembourg, Hungary, Poland, Norway, Ireland and Lithuania. The 30-country list includes virtually all the advanced industrialized nations of the world. The only OECD countries producing a smaller percentage of advanced math students than the United States are Portugal, Greece, Turkey, and Mexico. The performance levels of students in Spain and Italy are statistically indistinguishable from those of students in the United States, as are those of students in Latvia, which has subsequently joined the OECD. State-level performance. The percentage of students scoring at the advanced level varies among the 50 states. Massachusetts, with over 11 percent of its students at the advanced level, does better than any other state, but its performance trails that of 14 countries. Its students’ achievement level is similar to that of Germany and France. Minnesota, with more than 10 percent of its students at the advanced level, ranks second among the 50 states, but it trails 16 countries and performs at the level attained by Slovenia and Denmark. New York and Texas each have a percentage of students scoring at the advanced level that is roughly comparable to the United States as a whole, Lithuania, and the Russian Federation. Just 4.5 percent of the students in the Silicon Valley state of California are performing at a high level, a percentage roughly comparable to that of Portugal. The lowest-ranking states—West Virginia, New Mexico, and Mississippi—have a smaller percentage of the highest-performing students than Serbia or Uruguay, although they do edge out Romania, Brazil, and Kyrgyzstan. In short, the percentages of high-achieving students in the United States—and in most of its individual states—are shockingly below those of many of the world’s leading industrialized nations. Results for many states are at a level equal to those of third-world countries. (Click the image below for an interactive map providing specific information for each state.) White students. The overall news is sobering. Some might try to comfort themselves by saying the problem is limited to large numbers of students from immigrant families, or to African American students and others who have suffered from discrimination. For example, the statement by the STEM Coalition that we “encourage more of our best and brightest students, especially those from underrepresented or disadvantaged groups, to study in STEM fields” suggests that the challenges are concentrated in nonwhite segments of the U.S. population. Without denying that the paucity of high-achieving students within minority populations is a serious issue, let us consider the performance of white students for whom the case of discrimination cannot easily be made. Twenty-four countries have a larger percentage of highly accomplished students than the 8 percent achieving at that level among the U.S. white student population in the Class of 2009. Looking at just white students places the U.S. at a level equivalent to what all students are achieving in the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Poland. Seven percent of California’s white students are advanced, roughly the percentage for all Lithuanian students. Children of parents with college degrees. Another possibility is that schools help students reach levels of high accomplishment if parents are providing the necessary support. To explore this possibility, we assumed that students who reported that at least one parent had graduated from college were likely to be given the kind of support that is needed for many to reach high levels of achievement. Approximately 45 percent of all U.S. students reported that at least one parent had a college degree. The portion of students in the Class of 2009 with a college-graduate parent who are performing at the advanced level is 10.3 percent. When compared to all students in the other PISA countries, this advantaged segment of the U.S. population was outranked by students in 16 other countries. Nine percent of Illinois students with a college-educated parent scored at the advanced level, a percentage comparable to all students in France and the United Kingdom. The percentage of highly accomplished students from college-educated families in Rhode Island is just short of 6 percent, the same percentage for all students in Spain, Italy, and Latvia. The Previous Rosy Gloss Many casual observers may be surprised by our findings, as two previous, highly publicized studies have suggested that—even though improvement was possible—the U.S. was doing all right. This was the picture from two reports issued by Gary Phillips of the American Institutes for Research, who compared the average performance in math of 8th-grade students in each of the 50 states with the average scores of 8th-grade students in other countries. These comparisons used methods that are similar to ours to relate 2007 NAEP performance for U.S. students to both TIMSS 2003 and TIMSS 2007. His findings are more favorable to the United States than those shown by our analyses. While our study using the PISA data shows U.S. student performance in math to be below 30 other countries, Phillips found the average U.S. student to be performing better than all but 14 other countries in his 2007 report and all but 8 countries in his 2009 report. (Oddly, the 2007 report takes a much more buoyant perspective than the 2009 report, though the data suggest otherwise.) Phillips also finds that individual states do much better vis-à-vis other countries than we report. Why do two studies that seem to be employing generally similar methodologies produce such strikingly different results? The answer to that puzzle is actually quite simple and has little to do with the fact that Phillips compares average student performance while our study focuses on advanced students: many OECD countries, including those that had a high percentage of high-achieving students, participated in PISA 2006 (upon which our analysis is based) but did not participate in either TIMSS 2003 or TIMSS 2007, the two surveys included in the Phillips studies. In fact, 19 countries that outscored the U.S. on the PISA 2006 test did not participate in TIMSS 2003, and 22 higher-scoring countries did not participate in TIMSS 2007. As a report by the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics has explained, “Differences in the set of countries that participate in an assessment can affect how well the United States appears to do internationally when results are released.” Put starkly, if one drops from a survey countries such as Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, and New Zealand, and includes instead such countries as Botswana, Ghana, Iran, and Lebanon, the average international performance will drop, and the United States will look better relative to the countries with which it is being compared. Did NCLB shift the focus away from the best and the brightest? Some attribute the comparatively small percentages of students performing at the advanced level to the focus of the 2002 federal accountability statute, No Child Left Behind, on the educational needs of very low performing students. That law mandates that every student be brought up to the level a state deems proficient, a standard that most states set well below NAEP’s proficient standard, to say nothing of the advanced level that is the focus of this report. In order to comply with the federal law, some assert, schools are concentrating all available resources on the educationally deprived, leaving advanced students to fend for themselves. If so, then we should see a decline in the percentage of students performing at NAEP’s advanced level subsequent to the passage of the 2002 federal law. In mathematics, however, the opposite has happened. The percentage performing at the advanced level was only 3.7 percent in 1996 and 4.7 percent in the year 2000. But the percentage performing at an advanced level climbed steadily to the 7.9 percent attained in 2009. Perhaps NCLB’s passage in 2002 dampened the prior rate of growth in the achievement of high-performing students. To ascertain whether that was the case, we compared the rate of change in the NAEP math scores of the top 10 percent of all 8th graders between 1990 and 2003 (before NCLB was fully implemented) with the rate of change after NCLB had become effective law. Between 1990 and 2003, the scores of students at the 90th percentile rose from 307 to 321, an increment of 14 points, or a growth rate of 1.0 points a year. Between 2003 and 2009, the shift upward for the 90th percentile was another 8 points, or a change of 1.3 points a year. Our results are confirmed by a more detailed study of NCLB’s impact on high-performing students conducted by economists Brian Jacob and Thomas Dee. In short, the incapacity of American schools to bring students up to the highest level of accomplishment in mathematics is much more deepseated than anything induced by recent federal legislation. The economic and technological demand for a talented, well-educated, highly skilled population has never been greater. Not only must everyday workers have a set of technical skills surpassing those needed in the past, but a cadre of highly talented professionals trained to the highest level of accomplishment is needed to foster innovation and growth. In the words of President Barack Obama, “Whether it’s improving our health or harnessing clean energy, protecting our security or succeeding in the global economy, our future depends on reaffirming America’s role as the world’s engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation. And that leadership tomorrow depends on how we educate our students today, especially in math, science, technology, and engineering.” Unfortunately, the United States trails other industrialized countries in bringing a large proportion of its students up to the highest levels of accomplishment. This is not a story of some states doing well but being dragged down by states that perform poorly. Nor is it a story of immigrant or disadvantaged or minority students hiding the strong performance of better-prepared students. Comparatively small percentages of white students are high achievers. Only a small proportion of the children of our college-educated population is equipped to compete with students in a majority of OECD countries. Major policy initiatives within the United States have in recent years focused on the educational needs of low-performing students. Such efforts deserve commendation, but they can leave the impression that there is no similar need to enhance the education of those students the STEM coalition has called “the best and brightest.” Yet, with rapidly advancing technologies in an increasingly integrated world economy, no one doubts the extraordinary importance of highly accomplished professionals. Admittedly, the United States could simply ignore the needs of its own young people and continue to import highly skilled scientists and engineers who were prepared by better-performing schools abroad. But even such a heartless, irresponsible strategy relies on both the nature of immigration policies and the absence of better opportunities abroad, two things on which we might not want the future to depend. It seems much more prudent to encourage the most capable of our own people to reach high levels of academic accomplishment. Eric A. Hanushek is senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. Paul E. Peterson is the director of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Ludger Woessmann is professor of economics at the University of Munich.

Purim for the year 2026 is celebrated/ observed on sundown of March 2 ending at sundown on Tuesday, March 3. Purim is celebrated on the 14th day in the month Adar using the Jewish calendar. For the Gregorian calendar the day falls in the months of February and March. The day commemorates back in the 4th century BC, when Jewish people were saved from a death decree according to the book of Esther. Why do Jewish holidays start at nighttime? According to the Torah, the story of creation in Genesis says “And it was evening, and it was morning day one”, “And it was evening, and it was morning; the second day”, thus night comes before day. So for the Jewish calendar all days begin at nightfall and end the next day at nightfall including holidays. Days to Purim 2026 Monday, March 2nd is day number 61 of the 2026 calendar year with 2 years, 3 months, 1 day until Purim 2026. |When:||14th day of Adar in Hebrew Calendar| Dates for Purim |Holiday||Date||Days to Go| |Purim 2022||Friday, March 18, 2022||-623| |Purim 2023||Wednesday, March 08, 2023||-268| |Purim 2024||Monday, March 25, 2024||115| |Purim 2025||Saturday, March 15, 2025||470| |Purim 2026||Tuesday, March 03, 2026||823| |Purim 2027||Tuesday, March 23, 2027||1208|

By: Dr. Stacey Solomon Chair, Department of Psychology and Counseling Coordinator of School Counseling Programs at Caldwell University. Imagine this. Shortly after the semester begins, you are having trouble getting along with some of the people at your school, a common experience among college students. Here’s some advice for resolving conflicts during your college career. Some researchers say that how people handle the college transition indicates how they will handle future life transitions. Many factors make the transition to college tough, but the most significant is the necessity of getting along with people who hold different levels of influence and authority and have a variety of personality types. Conflict usually starts with a single problem and snowballs. In the Psychology and Counseling Department, we teach students that clients entering counseling may mistakenly identify the problem they are experiencing. In a relationship, the problem could be muddled and complicated by the history of either party, including hurt feelings, hurt pride, or shame, resentment and jealousy. Only when you understand what the problem is can you begin to solve it. Here is an example of a five-step problem-solving model. 1) What is the problem? 2) What are each person’s goals? 3) What are the ways to get what each person wants? 4) Pick and try a solution, looking for fairness and appropriate compromise. 5) Evaluate how that worked out for both parties. What would make it better? How People Respond to Conflict If conflict resolution were that simple, we wouldn’t have four more things to talk about. Another complication to conflict is how people react to it. Conflict is usually riddled with feelings of anger and hurt. John Gottman, founder of the Gottman Relationship Institute, spent years studying how people reacted to conflict. He says that masters and disasters of relationships have distinct patterns of dealing with conflict. Gottman found that people who are ineffective in arguments use what he calls the four horsemen of the apocalypse: 1) Contempt. You show contempt when you are mean, irritated or disrespectful or when you use sarcasm such as rolling your eyes. Contempt is toxic to relationships, and people who use this are most at risk for having unsuccessful relationships—relationship disasters. 2) Criticism. This can easily become a bad habit. It’s especially harmful in an argument, for instance in responding to a person who is upset and mispronounces a word or uses flawed English. 3) Defensiveness. Feeling accused escalates the conflict. 4) Stonewalling. This involves avoiding conflict or anything else by shutting down. Examples are the silent treatment, looking away or not responding to questions. Relationship Masters and Disasters Gottman says one thing that separates the relationship masters from the disasters is repair attempts. Usually after people argue, one person may try to make up or be nice. This is an attempt to repair the relationship. Relationship masters are first to make the repair attempt or are quick to respond in a positive way to it. This requires the ability to forgive the other person. Relationship disasters neither make an attempt to repair or respond positively to attempts by another person mostly because they do not easily forgive others. The ability to forgive can reduce anger, resentment and negative thoughts about others. Two additional traits that Gottman found in unsuccessful conflict participants are what he calls “harsh startups” and “the bombarder.” A person engages in a harsh startup by beginning a “discussion” in a negative, accusatory or harsh way. Doing so makes it just about 100 percent certain that the conversation won’t end well. Starting positively or evenly requires emotional self-control. The bombarder overwhelms an opponent with whatever has been festering inside for hours, days, weeks or, in some instances, years. Females are more prone to this than are males. Women tend to keep a mental list of offenses by others, and when they reach a boiling point they can recite the list from memory. Successful conflict resolution requires a present state of mind and letting go of the past. The next strategy comes from Oprah. She once had on her show an author who discussed how to have a breakthrough effect in relationships. It is based on the concept of intentionality—creating a breakthrough in a relationship by evaluating your thinking to improve the situation. Think about the relationships in your life and contemplate the following questions. 1) Which relationship is most difficult for you? 2) How do you feel in this relationship? 3) How do you show up in this relationship? 4) What feelings do you experience in this relationship? 5) Have you felt these feelings before? 6) What behaviors would you like to stop displaying in this relationship? 7) What is one breakthrough action you can take this week, either with this person or with yourself, to improve the relationship or how you feel about it? 8) What is the best possible outcome for this relationship? 9) How would you show up in this relationship if this were happening? When It Is Time to Get Help The final area of this discussion is perhaps the most crucial. It is recognizing when you are in an abusive relationship and need help. Abusive relationships can pertain to dating, friendships, roommates and teammates. You are in an abusive relationship when: - Someone takes or breaks your belonging - A person tries to control you by being bossy or demanding or is jealous or possessive toward you. (Jealousy is the primary symptom of abusive relationships.) - Someone tries to isolate you by demanding you cut off social contacts and friendships. - Someone is violent and/or loses his or her temper quickly. - A person claims you are responsible for his or her emotional state. - A person blames you when he or she mistreats you. - You frequently worry about how a person will react to things you say or do. - Someone makes “jokes” that shame, humiliate, demean or embarrass you, whether privately or around family and friends. - You have trouble ending the relationship, even though you know inside it’s the right thing to do. If you are concerned about an abusive relationship, you should reach out to someone who can help. Students can turn to the college counseling office. The link for Caldwell University’s counseling office is http://www.caldwell.edu/counseling/. Dr. Stacey Solomon is chair of the Department of Psychology and Counseling & Coordinator of School Counseling Programs at Caldwell University.

(CNN) -- At the edge of the heliosphere, you wouldn't know by looking whether you left the cradle of humanity behind and floated out into interstellar space. You would just see unfathomably empty space, no matter which side of the invisible line you were on. But scientists now have strong evidence that NASA's Voyager 1 probe has crossed this important border, making history as the first human-made object to leave the heliosphere, the magnetic boundary separating the solar system's sun, planets and solar wind from the rest of the galaxy. "In leaving the heliosphere and setting sail on the cosmic seas between the stars, Voyager has joined other historic journeys of exploration: The first circumnavigation of the Earth, the first steps on the Moon," said Ed Stone, chief scientist on the Voyager mission. "That's the kind of event this is, as we leave behind our solar bubble." A new study in the journal Science suggests that the probe entered the interstellar medium around August 25, 2012. You may have heard other reports that Voyager 1 has made the historic crossing before, but Thursday was the first time NASA announced it. The twin spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977, 16 days apart. As of Thursday, according to NASA's real-time odometer, Voyager 1 is 18.8 billion kilometers (11.7 billion miles) from Earth. Its sibling, Voyager 2, is 15.3 billion (9.5 billion) kilometers from our planet. Technically, if you include the distant comets that orbit the sun, then Voyager 1 has not left "the solar system," Stone said. For that, we'll have to wait another 30,000 years. Another milestone for long after we're gone: The probe will fly near a star in about 40,000 years, Stone said. Read more from CNN

A big problem was waiting for Matt Jensen, the superintendent of the Bigfork public schools, as he arrived to work on a Monday in November. His 900-student Montana district was under a cyberattack. A self-replicating computer virus had eaten its way through most of the schools’ servers—including the student-information system—and encrypted huge amounts of data, making it inaccessible to Bigfork employees. The perpetrators of the breach had also left a disconcerting message for Jensen’s IT director: They were demanding a ransom in exchange for a decryption key that would immediately unlock the data. The alternative to paying up would be to rebuild the district’s data systems from backups or, in a worst-case scenario, from scratch. Experts have seen a spike in “ransomware” attacks across all sectors of the economy in recent years. Criminals have hit all types of organizations, public and private, including K-12 districts. Multiple strains of the computer virus exist, but most versions of such malware behave much like the type that infected the Bigfork network. “Ransomware does not discriminate,” said Will Bales, a supervisory special agent in the FBI’s cyber division. “Whether it’s a big school district or a small school district, they have the same possibility of being hit.” Once the virus has infected a network and scrambled every Word document, spreadsheet, and data file it finds, the people behind the attack will ask for a ransom in bitcoin, an untraceable virtual currency, in return for the decryption key. But Jensen said he never even considered paying the cybercriminals: “We weren’t going to negotiate with them.” Even if his district paid the ransom, he said, there would be no iron-clad assurances that the hackers would actually return access to the data. Paying, said Jensen, “would only empower a criminal group.” ‘A Business Decision’ Other ransomware victims haven’t had the luxury of taking Jensen’s hard-line approach. In many cases, the criminals’ ransom request is far smaller than the dollar value of the damage the malware has inflicted. Some districts have been forced to weigh the ethics of paying a few thousand dollars to untrustworthy and anonymous criminals against surviving for weeks without access to lesson plans, learning software, or student records. “Paying the ransom was not a philosophical decision, but a business decision,” said Charles Hucks, the executive technology director for South Carolina’s Horry County schools. “What’s it worth per day to not have access for our 43,200 students?” After his district was critically hit by a ransomware attack last school year, Hucks immediately shut his servers down to stop the spread of the virus. He then urged his bosses, who oversee a half-billion-dollar yearly operating budget, to pay the nearly $10,000 ransom. School districts can take a number of steps to avoid ransomware attacks on their computer systems, including: • Back up everything, and make sure safeguards are in place so malware cannot easily jump to infect backup systems. • Make sure network users scrutinize incoming email and report rather than open strange attachments from unsolicited addresses. • Download software only from secure and trusted sources. Never pirate software from illegal or questionable peer-to-peer websites. • Have strong access controls. Student accounts shouldn’t have administrative privileges. Internal restrictions on access can prevent a bug from spreading. • Make sure system updates, including for anti-virus software, are installed regularly. • Change passwords regularly, and train staff members in best cyberpractices. • Test your own defenses. Hire a vendor to try to hack the system to find vulnerabilities and address them. • Have an incident-response plan ready in case something goes wrong. SOURCES: FBI and BitSight Technologies Even with the risk that the hackers would take the money and run—Hucks said officials “were horrified” the culprits wouldn’t follow through with a decryption key—the cost and time associated with laboriously rebuilding district networks from compromised backups outweighed all other considerations. Law-enforcement agencies like the FBI generally discourage hacked organizations from paying ransoms. Special agent Bales agrees with Jensen that doing so only emboldens criminal enterprises. But in practice, some experts and law-enforcement officials have conceded that acquiescing to the demands can, at times, be in an organization’s best financial interests. Regardless of whether an organization decides to pay the ransom, Bales and the FBI want to hear from all ransomware victims to gather evidence. Cybercrimes can be reported to the FBI’s local field offices or its website, www.ic3.gov. In some cases, the FBI or private industry has already found a “key” or antidote to a ransomware strain, and by reporting the attack, organizations have been able to easily recover their files. But what if a school district, like Horry schools, can’t find a decryption key, and decides to pay the ransom? “The criminals have an incentive to unlock the data” once they are paid, said Stephen Boyer, a co-founder of BitSight Technologies, a Cambridge, Mass.-based cybersecurity company. The criminals need a track record of victims’ getting their data back, he explained, or new targets will stop paying. Preventing Future Attacks That’s not to say that Boyer typically advises his clients to pay the ransom: “That’s a tough question that can only be taken on a case-by-case basis.” Boyer also cited cases in which a ransom is paid and files are decrypted, but the malware remains in the system, allowing the hackers to come back weeks or months later. The best defense, Boyer said, is to have strong backups in place, and have outside professionals reset the system and do a full incident report if a district network is compromised. That was the course of action Jensen used in Montana’s Bigfork district. Bigfork’s network was backed up twice: one set of servers on-site that was compromised in the attack, and another housed by an outside vendor that was spared. It took Jensen’s technology team a week to restore all its systems and ensure the computer systems were clean. In South Carolina, the hackers of the Horry County district came through with a working decryption key soon after the ransom was paid. Hucks was able to get the “mission critical” functions of his servers—like the district’s student-information system—back up in days. The ultimate damage to the school system was a two- to three-week disruption and $30,000 from its budget. In addition to the ransom, the district hired cybersecurity consultants to ensure the malware had been expunged and the criminals could not come back through the same weaknesses in the network. The Horry County attack was widely publicized in the weeks following its resolution, and Hucks was invited to testify before Congress about the ransomware threat. For both school districts, as is common in such cases, the crimes were reported but the perpetrators went undiscovered. Like other cybercrimes, ransomware attacks can be difficult to trace. They often originate overseas, sometimes in countries that do not have extradition treaties with the United States. That’s why more districts should be focusing on preventive measures, said Boyer, the cybersecurity expert. His firm compiled a report that sampled the IT infrastructure of thousands of organizations in the education, government, health-care, energy, retail, and finance sectors to gauge their exposure to ransomware. It found that educational institutions and companies had the highest rate of ransomware infection. Small technology budgets, less emphasis on cybersecurity, and bring-your-own-device policies in schools make it harder to establish uniform firewalls and contribute to the challenges of protecting ed-tech infrastructure, Boyer said. Bales, of the FBI, agreed that districts have a lot of ground to cover: “Faculty, students, every single person who is connected to a school network is a potential liability.” Although some of the attacks are targeted, and higher education is more at risk than K-12 systems—universities tend to have larger networks and more financial wherewithal to pay ransom demands—Boyer’s team has found the attacks are usually “more opportunistic than targeted.” That means that rather than singling out victims, hackers might blast out thousands of emails with compromised links or attachments to thousands of organizations. That process, called “phishing,” allows hackers to prey on groups with the weakest controls and requires only a small proportion of the emails’ recipients to fall for the trap. For hackers, “even a one percent rate can be very lucrative,” said Boyer. The relatively small individual ransom payments add up quickly, he explained, and in addition to making it more likely that a targeted group will pay, small sums tend to draw less attention and resources from law enforcement. The good news for harried school district technology systems chiefs? Reducing risk exposure to ransomware attacks is relatively straightforward. (See box, this page.) “It’s not cutting-edge,” Boyer said of the standard preventive measures. “If you are doing the basic blocking and tackling of network security, your risk goes way down.” A version of this article appeared in the January 11, 2017 edition of Education Week as Ransomware Attacks Force School Districts To Shore Up — or Pay Up

The Šsioŵe Łuŵuŕ alphabet was created in 2006 by Jacob Collard. The alphabet began as an alternative script for English that was meant to be very compact but still easy to learn. However, the alphabet was later used for writing a conlang that Jacob had been writing, and has rarely been used for English since. The language has become the basis for a book that Jacob has been writing, which currently has no definite title. The basis for the compact writing is a square which can hold five or six letters depending on the first, therefore using space more efficiently. The cell structure is, in Šsioŵe Łuŵuŕ, the way that the letters combine into five-letter groups. One group is called a cloister and one space that may hold a letter is called a cell. There are also four digraphs: 'io' and 'ea' are pronounced as [ɪ] and [æ], respectively. 'Th' and 'dh' may be pronounced as either aspirated alveolar plosives or as dental fricatives, i.e. [tʰ] and [dʱ] or [θ] and [ð]. The 'X' shown represents any cloister. There are four basic diacritics in Šsioŵe Łuŵuŕ, all of them based on a curved stroke. All of them perform the same function, which is to make a voiceless sound voiced, but they each affect a different cloister in the cell. The primary diacritic voices the first cloister, the secondary voices the second cloister, the tertiary the third, the quaternary the fourth, and the quinary the fifth. There is also a senary diacritic, which voices the sixth cloister. The senary diacritic appears the same as the primary except with a vertical line through the center. Anam’Aŋ Ełie Šsioŵe Thorn Ši Eałan E Teŕe T’ Tam Tamawe Kŵu Peath Emis Šsioŵe Wu Elewi Eałan F’ Ŕin Tała Poŕau Anam’Aŋ Ši Dhoše M’ Thorn Ts’ Šsioŵe Ts’ Elewi Mai Kŵu Šsioŵe Thorn In Haian’Aale Unum’Uŋ Thorn Šeŵi Me Ełie Ts’ Mi Wu Elewi Mai Elewi All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) If you have any questions about the Šsioŵe Łuŵuŕ alphabet, you can contact Jacob at: email@example.com

Math Cards helps students reinforce their math skills by building math equations or verifying facts. Children and teenagers can play against the PC or a partner in this mathematical facts game. Reinforce whole numbers, integers, fractions, roots, percents, exponents, equations and roman numerals. Match Cards offers the ability to use equivalent cards, eg: 0.75 equals 75%, Roman XIV equals 14.MathCards 1.0 is licensed as Shareware for the Windows operating system / platform and can be used as a free trial until the trial period ends. MathCards is available to all software users as a free download (Shareware) with potential restrictions and is not necessarily the download of the full version. MathCards Virus and Malware Tests: For security reasons, you should also check out the MathCards virus and malware test that has been uploaded; additional MathCards screenshots may be available, too.

Eyes in the sky Do you ever get the feeling that you're being watched? This friendly-looking object is the result of two galaxies merging into one another, complete with a pair of eyes hiding two growing supermassive black holes and a swirling grin. Such mergers are rare in our galactic neighbourhood; Mrk 739 is close enough (astronomically speaking) to study the event in detail, and thus gain a better understanding of the dramatic processes that take place during these cosmic mergers. By using the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, the team of astronomers, led by master’s student Dusán Tubín at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, were able to study the effects of both the merger and the radiation emitted by the growing gigantic black holes. Their study answers questions about the motion of the galaxies, the age of their stars, and the elements they are made up of. They have found that one of these galaxies is much older than its companion, and that their merging process is at an early stage. MUSE is a 3D spectrograph that takes images — known as “datacubes” — of the object being observed over thousands of wavelengths. With MUSE, astronomers are therefore able to map in great detail the properties of the objects they study, because each individual pixel contains an impressive amount of information. Obtaining these exciting insights into galaxy merging and evolution with MUSE is enough to make anyone smile.Credit: ESO/Tubín et al. About the Image |Release date:||26 April 2021, 06:00| |Size:||882 x 824 px| About the Object |Position (RA):||11 36 28.99| |Position (Dec):||21° 35' 42.11"| |Field of view:||0.98 x 0.92 arcminutes| |Orientation:||North is -0.0° left of vertical| Colours & filters |438 nm||Very Large Telescope| |475 nm||Very Large Telescope| |625 nm||Very Large Telescope|

N.B. If you’re after a quick answer then see here, if you want an in-depth outline see here or if you want to know how science works see here– this blog is more concerned with the broader conceptual framework within which science fits. Knowledge is an interesting concept – how can we really “know” anything? How do we determine truth from untruth? Does knowledge even require what is “known” to be true? I don’t think so – I think it merely needs to appear true. The human brain looks for explanations – being able to identify cause and effect is a powerful capability, after all, it underpins all human achievement. For example, if our ancestors were unable to identify that seeds grow into plants, we could never have established agriculture (and subsequently civilisation). There are a variety of ways in which we make links between cause and effect, from straightforward reflexive Pavlovian classical conditioning, through more complex methods of identifying concept-based causation, to the rigourous statistical analysis of double-blind randomised controlled trials of modern biomedical research (which marks our current best attempt at linking cause to effect, whilst minimising the influence of coincidental factors). However, one of the most common ways in which we find explanations is by relating an observed occurance with an observed outcome – we look for a correlation. Of course, the trouble with correlations is that you will often be spotting a relationship that doesn’t really exist. Factor A might occur at the same time or increase at the same rate as factor B, but it could be due to factors 1,2 and 3. For example, seasonal sales of ice-cream in the UK can be directly correlated with seasonal umbrella sales in Australia – obviously they are not directly related to each other, but they share the factor of seasonality in their respective hemispheres. So a summer in the Northern Hemisphere sees more ice-cream being bought, whilst in the Southern Hemisphere it is winter and people are buying umbrellas to keep off the rain. This is a simple illustration that is intended to be clear, but unfortunately most of the time we find it very difficult to identify what the factors involved in a correlation actually are – but that doesn’t stop us drawing conclusions from what we see, or think we see. So what else do we use as a way of acquiring knowledge, beyond drawing inspiration and conclusions about causation from what we experience? I suppose the other source of knowledge would be social/cultural – what we learn from others (link to pdf). This kind of knowledge can be supported by our own observations and experience, but it can also help inform us beyond our own experience. The trouble is, both personal and cultural knowledge are prone to inaccuracy – after all, cultural knowledge was personal once. Moreover, cultural knowledge has to be communicated, which provides opportunity for error to creep in; it also presupposes honesty – making it vulnerable to both genuine error and deliberate manipulation and misinformation. Some people may also want to add divine inspiration as a source of knowledge, after all, various religious texts are supposed (by some) to be transcriptions of the word of God. This concept of divine inspiration can be grouped with cultural knowledge, since no-one has direct access to the original source material, meaning that only copies or interpretations made by error-prone humans are available. The inconsistencies throughout religious texts (examples from the Bible and Quran) and the numerous examples of their observations not being supported by subsequent observations or even plain logic (examples from the Bible and Quran) clearly identify existing religious texts to be the works of mere mortals (if we assume that an omnipotent god should know what S/He’s talking about). So I suggest that we have two main sources of knowledge (or routes of learning) – what we’re told and what we’ve experienced. We use a combination of these sources of knowledge to inform our opinions and decisions, but we also use them as a foundation on which to formulate new ideas that themselves may contribute to further knowledge. It is this processing of information that humans are so good at, to the point where we take it for granted – it can be very difficult to pick apart just how we arrive at conclusions about the world. However, we each process information in different ways: some people are quick to pick up or develop new ideas in an unstructured way (let’s call this a heuristic approach), whilst others may be slower and more systematic (let’s call this an algorithmic approach); some people rely on intuition and emotionally informed processes, whilst others are more calculating or emotionally detached. One big difference in method of processing is doubt (a disposition towards rejection of information), compared to belief (a disposition towards acceptance of information). Opposite extremes of this spectrum could be considered cynicism and gullibility. It is this information processing that actually determines what (we think) we know. Such knowledge exists in our brain conceptually – supported only by the information and processes that we used to construct it. Of course between the errors in determining cause and effect, the errors of communication, the errors of misinformation and the errors arising from our imperfect ability to process information, we end up with a knowledge product that is likely to be incomplete, inaccurate or just plain incorrect. This is where science comes in. Science is a method that is used to test what we think we know. It is intended to provide a structured approach to critically assess knowledge, where ideas and assumptions arising from the processing of what we’re told and what we’ve experienced are compared against the material world (see links at top for more detail). Importantly, science can be applied by people with any kind of thought processing – as long as they stick to the procedure. If people don’t stick to the procedure it ceases to be science, which means that the outcomes cannot be treated with the same degree of confidence. Science is not the only way to test knowledge, but it is the most thorough and powerful method at our disposal. Science cannot claim to offer truth, because the iterative nature of science means that it must always be open to questioning. Science is not values-based and although ethical considerations are imposed on the practice of the scientific method, they are not part of it. Science is atheistic, because it functions without recourse to belief in gods, but it is not antitheistic since it can only deal with the natural: the supernatural is beyond the scope of the scientific method. Science is not about the interpretations or conclusions drawn by scientists, it is about experimental results demonstrating that a testable idea has a foundation in observable fact, or not. Therefore, when people start suggesting that science is somehow against their opinion, what they are actually saying is that the best available observations of fact are against their opinion. This is something that is common in people who are making claims for which there is only evidence in the form of anecdote or received cultural knowledge (or both). The reason that science is against their opinion is that their opinion is not supported by evidence stripped of its errors and co-factors. When people accuse science of being closed-minded it tends to be because science doesn’t support their opinion and they would rather cling onto their unsupported opinion than change it to fit the evidence. The scientific method could not (and certainly should not) care less about opinions or preconceived doctrine or dogma; indeed the dogmatic adherence to a set of opinions is the antithesis of science and is an indicator of ideological stagnation. Science is only useful as a tool when applied by people who are willing to change their mind to suit the evidence. For some reason this flexibility is seen by many as a weakness, but in the words of John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” – after all, surely it’s better for future knowledge if we build on facts, rather than go into denial about our mistakes? After all, we learn from our mistakes and the alternative is building knowledge on an unstable foundation of misinformation and lies. That said, science is not perfect. There is always room for improvement and scientists are just people, some of whom are ambitious, inept, dishonest or greedy. However, the scientific community is founded on robust confrontation, suspicion and scepticism about other scientists and ideas. This means that the outcomes of the scientific method tend to be pretty well assessed (links to pdf) before they ever see public light (unless the journal publishers flout the process or the scientists involved are trying to sneak past the peer-review process by going straight to the public press) or at least they tend to be found out if they’ve been faked (that’s what reproducability of results is all about). Bear in mind that other methods of testing knowledge don’t have any controls at all – so although science is far from perfect, it’s far better than methods of enquiry that have no internal critical review process. In short, science helps us to identify what we actually know from what we think we know.

Dawn Journal | November 26, 2008 The Dawn spacecraft is healthy and on course for its flyby of Mars early next year. The planet’s gravity will help boost the probe on its way to rendezvous with Vesta. While the spacecraft has its sights set on the asteroid belt (via Mars), its path is now bringing it closer to Earth. Meanwhile, from Earth’s perspective, Dawn appears to be approaching a blindingly close encounter with the Sun. With so much happening in the solar system, all readers, whether local or not, are invited to turn their attention here. In the last log, we saw that Dawn was nearing the end of an extended period of thrusting with is ion propulsion system that began on December 17, 2007. When it left Earth on September 27, 2007, the Delta II rocket deposited the spacecraft into a carefully chosen orbit around the Sun. By October 31, 2008, the spacecraft had completed the thrusting it needed to change that orbit so it would encounter Mars at just the right time, location, and angle to sling it on its way to Vesta. During this interplanetary cruise phase, Dawn thrust for 270 days, or 85% of the time. Expending less than 72 kilograms (158 pounds) of xenon propellant, the spacecraft changed its speed by about 1.81 kilometers per second (4050 miles per hour). Although controlling an interplanetary probe across hundreds of millions of kilometers (or miles) of deep space and guiding it accurately enough to reach its remote destination seems as if it should be a very simple task, readers may be surprised to know that it is not. Let’s consider just one aspect of the problem. Suppose you want to shoot an arrow at a target. Unlike typical archers, you are so far from the target that you can only barely see it. In that case, aiming for the bull's-eye is essentially out of the question. Adding to the problem may be a variable breeze that could nudge the arrow off course. Shooting sufficiently accurately to get the arrow even to the vicinity of the target would be challenging enough; hitting the precise point you want on the target is just too difficult. For readers who are principally interested in archery, this concludes our in-depth analysis of the sport. Now let’s consider how to change the situation to make it more similar to an interplanetary mission. If the arrow had a tiny radio locator mounted on it, you would be able monitor its progress as it flew closer to the target. This would be like watching it on a radar screen. You might see your arrow miss the target entirely or, if you had made a particularly good shot, hit somewhere on it. Now if you could occasionally send a signal to the arrow, perhaps to change the angles of the feathers, you might not be able to alter its course drastically, but you could change it a little. So if your initial shot had been good enough, you could guide the arrow to the desired destination. (To buy your radio controlled archery set, visit the Dawn gift shop on your planet. The set may be found between the display case with xenon ion beam jewelry and the shelves and shelves and shelves and shelves of really cool new Dawn Journal reader action figures -- be sure to buy the one that looks just like you!) Shooting the arrow is akin to launching a spacecraft, and its flight to the target represents the interplanetary journey, although operating a spacecraft involves far greater precision (and fun!). Our knowledge of where the spacecraft is and where it is heading is amazingly, fantastically, incredibly accurate, but it is not perfect. This point is essential. Keeping most spacecraft on course is a matter of frequently recalculating the position, speed, and direction of travel and then occasionally fine-tuning the trajectory through burns of the propulsion system. Dawn’s near-constant use of its advanced ion propulsion system for most of 2008 changes the story, but only a little. The thrust plan was calculated before launch and then updated once our arrow was free of the bow. Throughout the interplanetary cruise phase, a new thrust plan was transmitted to the spacecraft about every 5 weeks, each time with slight updates to account for the latest calculations of Dawn’s orbit around the Sun. With this method, the small adjustments to the trajectory have been incorporated into the large, preplanned changes. The mission control team requires about 5 weeks to design, develop, check, double-check, transmit, and activate a 5-week set of commands. By the time the spacecraft is executing the final part of those instructions, it is following a flight plan that is based on information from 10 weeks earlier. During most of the mission, when there are months or even years of thrusting ahead of it, subsequent opportunities to adjust the trajectory are plentiful. In contrast, for the last period of preplanned thrusting before Mars, controllers modified their normal process for formulating the commands, making a fast update for the final few days of thrusting. By including the latest navigational data in the computations for the direction and duration of the concluding segment of powered flight, the mission control team put Dawn on a more accurate course for Mars than it otherwise would have been. Even with this strategy, navigators recognized long ago that subsequent adjustments would be required. The plan for approaching Mars has always included windows for trajectory correction maneuvers (which engineers are physiologically incapable of calling anything other than TCMs). Dawn’s first TCM occurred on November 20. As navigators refined their trajectory calculations after thrusting finished on October 31, they determined that the spacecraft was quite close to the aim point they wanted, but still not exactly on target. In fact, rather than being on a course to sail a few hundred kilometers above Mars, the probe’s path would have taken it to the surface of the planet. Despite the power of the ion propulsion system, Dawn does not have the capability to bore through the rocky planet and continue on its way to Vesta. Such a situation is not surprising. Suppose in the archery, the bull’s-eye were 30 centimeters (1 foot) in diameter, but we preferred to hit a point 2.2 centimeters (7/8 inch) outside the bull’s-eye, near the 11:00 position (corresponding to where we want Dawn to fly past Mars). As our arrow approached the target, it might turn out that it was going to miss the target entirely, it might be headed for some other point on the target, and it just might be that it was headed for the bull’s-eye itself. Dawn’s case was this last one, so TCM1 put it on track for the destination we desired. Amazing sports analogies for the fantastic accuracy of interplanetary navigation usually fail to account for TCMs, as most arrows, balls, and other projectiles do not include active control after they are on their way. Your correspondent has presented his own simile for the astonishing accuracy with which a spacecraft can reach a faraway destination, but most such analogies neglect TCMs, without which deep-space missions could not be accomplished. (Note that the accuracy is impressive with or without TCMs. We shall extend our archery example in a future log, making it more quantitative. It will be important, however, to keep in mind that the ion propulsion system provides so much maneuvering flexibility that Dawn does not need to achieve the degree of accuracy in its gravity assist that a mission using conventional chemical propulsion might.) For reasons we will not divulge, Dawn’s first TCM has been designated TCM1. On November 20, just as it had for all of its previous thrusting, the spacecraft pointed a thruster (TCM1 used thruster #1) in the required direction and resumed emitting the familiar blue-green beam of xenon ions to alter course. While typical thrusting during the mission has lasted for almost 7 days at a time (followed by a hiatus of 7 to 8 hours), in this case only a short burn was necessary. Propelling itself from about 4:31 pm to 6:42 pm PST was just enough to fine-tune its course and change its speed by a bit more than 60 centimeters per second (1.3 miles per hour). This adjustment was modest indeed, as at that time Dawn was traveling around the Sun at more than 22.5 kilometers per second (50,400 miles per hour). Dawn and Mars, following their separate orbits that will (almost!) intersect on February 17, 2009, were moving relative to each other at 3.17 kilometers per second (7100 miles per hour). Dawn’s second TCM window (inexplicably named TCM2) is in January. Traveling two-thirds of the way from here to Mars, the navigational accuracy then will be still better, with smaller deviations from the planned target point being detectable, so another refinement in the trajectory then is likely. In the meantime, Dawn will follow its orbital path with its ion thrusters idle. As Dawn travels through space on its own, its path has been essentially independent of Earth’s. We saw in a previous log that the weaker grasp exerted by the Sun at Dawn’s greater distance means that it travels more slowly around the solar system. While Earth has completed more than 1 full revolution (each revolution requiring 1 year) since launch, Dawn has not yet rounded the Sun once. After receding from the Sun until early August, the spacecraft began falling back, albeit only temporarily. The probe attained its maximum distance from Earth on November 10. (For anyone who was on Earth on that date and plans to use this information in an alibi, it may be helpful to know that the greatest range was reached at about 3:07 am PST.) The spacecraft was more than 384 million kilometers (239 million miles) from its one-time home. Although it will make substantial progress on its journey in the meantime, Dawn’s distance to Earth will continue to decrease until January 2010, when it will be less than one-third of what it is today. In the summer of that year, however, as Earth maintains its repetitive annual orbital motion and the explorer climbs away from the Sun, it will surpass this month’s distance to Earth. (Readers are encouraged to memorize the contents of this log for reference in 2010 in case we fail to include a link to this paragraph.) The complex choreography of the solar system’s grand orbital dance rarely calls for a circular orbit; rather, the dancers follow ellipses (ovals in which the ends are of equal size) around the Sun. Thanks to the details of the shapes of their orbits, the greatest separation between Earth and Dawn did not occur when they were precisely on opposite sides of the Sun, although the alignment was close to that. On December 12, their dance steps will take them to points almost exactly on opposite sides of the Sun. For observers on Earth, this is known as solar conjunction, because the spacecraft and the Sun will appear to be in the same location. (Similarly, from Dawn’s point of view, Earth and the Sun will be almost coincident.) In reality, of course, Dawn will be much farther away than Earth’s star. It will be 147 million kilometers (91.5 million miles) from Earth to the Sun but 379 million kilometers (236 million miles) from the planet to its cosmic envoy. Its apparent proximity to the Sun presents a helpful opportunity for terrestrial readers to locate Dawn in the sky. On December 9 - 15, the spacecraft will be less than 1 degree from the Sun, progressing from east to west and passing just 1/3 degree south of that brilliant celestial landmark on December 12. (As Dawn does not orbit in the same plane as Earth, it will not pass directly behind the Sun.) The Sun itself is 1/2 degree across, so this is close indeed; the spacecraft will sneak in to less than 1 solar diameter from the disk. To demonstrate how small the separation is, if you blocked the Sun with your thumb at arm’s length during this week around conjunction (and you are exhorted to do so), you also would cover Dawn. For those interested observers who lack the requisite superhuman visual acuity to discern the remote spacecraft amidst the dazzling light of the Sun, conjunction still may provide a convenient occasion to reflect upon this most recent of humankind’s missions far into the solar system. This small probe is the product of creatures fortunate enough to be able to combine their powerful curiosity about the workings of the cosmos with their impressive abilities to explore, investigate, and ultimately understand. While its builders remain in the vicinity of the planet upon which they evolved, their robotic ambassador now is passing on the far side of the extraordinarily distant Sun. This is the same Sun that has been the unchallenged master of our solar system for 4.5 billion years. This is the same Sun that has shone down on Earth throughout that time and has been the ultimate source of so much of the heat, light, and other energy upon which the planet’s inhabitants have been so dependent. This is the same Sun that has so influenced human expression in art, literature, and religion for uncounted millennia. This is the same Sun that has motivated scientific studies for centuries. This is the same Sun that acts as our signpost in the Milky Way galaxy. This is the same Sun that is more than 100 times the diameter of Earth and a third of a million times the planet¹s mass. And humans have a spacecraft on the far side of it. We may be humbled by our own insignificance in the universe, yet we still undertake the most valiant adventures in our attempts to comprehend its majesty. Solar conjunction means even more to Dawn mission controllers than the opportunity to meditate upon what magnificent feats our species can achieve. As Earth, the Sun, and the spacecraft come closer into alignment, radio signals that go back and forth must pass near the Sun. The solar environment is fierce indeed, and it causes interference in those radio waves. While some signals will get through, communications will be less reliable. Therefore, controllers plan to send no messages to the spacecraft from December 5 through December 18; all instructions needed during that time will be stored onboard beforehand. Deep Space Network antennas, pointing near the Sun, will listen through the roaring noise for the faint whisper of the spacecraft, but the team will consider any signals to be a bonus. There is plenty of other work to do while waiting to resume communications after conjunction. In addition to preparing for the visit to Mars, engineers will continue to interpret the results of election day. On November 4, the Dawn team voted unanimously for more power. They commanded the spacecraft to execute a set of steps to yield data that will reveal the full potential of the enormous solar arrays to generate electrical power. The method was tested first on July 21, and then refined for a test on September 22. For this month’s measurement, the commands were identical to those used for the second test with one exception that had been planned from the beginning: the solar arrays were rotated to point 60 degrees away from the Sun instead of 45 degrees. The solar arrays are so powerful that when they are pointed directly at the Sun, the spacecraft could not draw enough power to measure their full capability. The data collected show the electrical behavior of the arrays as the ion propulsion system was commanded through its start-up, drawing more and more power. Unlike the two tests, this calibration was designed so that with the arrays pointed so far from the Sun, they would not be able to provide as much power as was requested. Engineers wanted to find the point at which the arrays would no longer be able to satisfy the demands. They were not disappointed; power climbed up and up until no more was available. The prospect of having a spacecraft not be able to meet its own power demands may seem risky, but the procedure was carefully designed, analyzed, and simulated, and it executed perfectly. When the ion propulsion system asked for more power than the arrays could deliver, in the language of the trade, the solar arrays “collapsed.” Now to some (including even some engineers unfamiliar with the terminology), this suggests something not entirely desirable, such as 2 bent and twisted wings, each with 5 warped panels, and 11,480 shattered solar cells, the fragments sparkling in the sunlight as they tumbled and floated away from the powerless probe. In this case though, “collapse” is an electrical, not a mechanical, phenomenon and hence would be somewhat less visually spectacular and quite reversible -- a key attribute for a mission with well over 6 years of space exploration ahead of it. Once all the data are analyzed, controllers will have a better prediction for how much power the arrays will be able to generate for the rest of the voyage. Dawn is 20 million kilometers (12 million miles) from Mars. It is 383 million kilometers (238 million miles) from Earth, or 950 times as far as the moon and 2.59 times as far as the Sun. Radio signals, traveling at the universal limit of the speed of light, take 43 minutes to make the round trip. Dr. Marc D. Rayman 7:00 am PST November 26, 2008 |<< Previous entry||All entries||Next entry >>|

As @SQLChicken states, a good data model is a very important start to have for stable, consistent, extensible and scalable databases. After you have a logical model, the next step is implementation of the logical model in the target RDBMS. There are many important considerations and actions that are required to do this. For example, depending on the anticipated size of your database, you may decide that certain structures should be de-normalized for performance reasons but this decision should be made carefully, with the implications fully considered. Other considerations: - If you haven't done so already, decide on a naming standard/convention. Name your objects in a consistent way. Take time to define each object such as tables and columns in the database by adding a comment to each. - Define your table primary keys, foreign keys, data constraints, and indexes. Indexes can be added later, so don't worry about getting them all up front. The need for them tends to become apparent over time ;-) - Define views of data that may be useful for reports, ad-hoc queries, etc. - Minimize trigger use - these can be expedient, but have many pitfalls. By no means is this list exhaustive. Become familiar with the (voluminous) Oracle documentation.

For the past couple of months I had the amazing opportunity to work with third graders at Davis Bilingual Elementary School. As someone who did not grow up speaking Spanish but instead spent years learning it as an adult, I have spent a lot of time thinking about language, translation, and the feelings evoked by words. I have discovered that being able to express myself in more than one language has enabled me to see the world differently not only because of the readings and conversations it has opened up, but also how the ways things are described can spark understanding in new ways. This love of and appreciation for the power of language was something I sought to explore in our time together. Based off of a lesson shared by Julia Alvarez in Luna, Luna, my teaching assistant and I brought in a poem by Nicolás Guillén, a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer. Below is an excerpt: Esta es el hambre. Un animal todo colmillo y ojo. Nadie lo engaña ni distrae. No se harta en una mesa. No se contenta con un almuerzo o una cena. Anuncia siempre sangre. Ruge como león, aprieta como boa, piensa como persona. This is hunger. An animal all fangs and eyes. It cannot be distracted or deceived. It is not satisfied with one meal. It is not content with a lunch or dinner. Always threatens blood. Roars like a lion, squeezes like a boa, thinks like a person. We read the original and translation of the poem and then spent time discussing it. What does hunger look like? How does it act? How does it sound? Is it nice? We then brainstormed a list of feelings such as happiness, anger, jealousy, doubt, and sadness and each chose one to describe in detail as either an animal or person. The students agreed that simply stating an emotion didn’t help the reader to feel it in their body, and thus eagerly dove into exploring and describing their chosen feeling. Below are some poems that were created that day. Anger. A lion with red Skin and fangs. Walks slowly Making sure nobody scares him. Hair standing up and eyes dark And cold. Fire coming out Of its head. Has a low growl. Roars loudly. Stomps Loudly thinks carefully. Acts like a snake Who’s going to bite and a Burro ready for anything. Es un animal con ojos verdes y Tiene una voz baja. Le gusta hacer ejercicio y Se ve azul. Se siente estresado. ¡Su pelo esta largo! ¡Ay! ¡Que largo! Siempre quiere jugar y no le gusta estar Ignorado ni le gusta que alguien Sea malo con otros. This is sadness. A person Who always has tears. He can’t be happy or Calm. He’s not like others. He gets sadder Near happiness. He’s as blue as water and sad Like you’ve never seen. He sounds like La Llorona. Sadness made lots of people Sad. Almost all of his town is sad. Please don’t be happy near him. Happiness sometimes you Don’t know if you are Happy or sad. But happiness Thinks like a thousand Dolls of giggles trying to Get out of your stomach And it does. But instead of Giggling you smile or you Can giggle too. Brook Bernini is a teacher and organizer guided by a commitment to working for social justice. She currently teaches GED classes at Pima Community College, where she has had the opportunity to focus on the art of teaching and developing curriculum, and is loving learning from and with the students there. She engages in migrant, racial, and climate justice organizing. Brook holds a Masters in Geography from the University of Minnesota, where she was driven by a desire to learn about how solidarity economic efforts can effectively be fostered as a way to both increase economic security and social equity. She enjoys dancing wherever and whenever possible, writing, growing food, and biking and hiking as ways to experience the world around her.

The plots in this Demonstration show precision error. The formula is true for all real . To plot for various , Mathematica correctly finds numerical values very close to 0. In the plot, these infinitesimal deviations are magnified a quadrillion-fold. Various types of machine error—round-off, precision, accumulated—have led to the loss of lives and fortunes. For example, the Patriot missile system relies on a .1 second internal clock. The binary machine considers this as a 209715/2097152 second clock. In a 1991 incident during Operation Desert Storm, after being on for 100 hours, the missile tracking timing had accumulated a .34 second error. This rendered it unable to track an incoming missile, which subsequently fell intact on a barracks and killed 28 people.

Science that threatens a person's 'world view'; can backfire: researcherAugust 21, 2012 in Other Sciences / Social Sciences Using evidence to back up' science can actually have the reverse psychological effect on some people, according to a researcher at The University of Queensland. UQ Global Change Institute research fellow John Cook said reporting evidence that is perceived to threaten a person's view of the world can actually backfire. People derive a large part of their sense of identity from their world view, how they see the world. So they react defensively to any information that threatens their world view, he said. What's fascinating, is that new, contradictory evidence can actually cause people to feel stronger in their initial beliefs. Mr Cook, the mastermind behind the successful Skeptical Science website, is developing a psychological model that simulates how people react to evidence that threatens their world view. One of the features of the model is that distrust of science is a key factor in the so-called backfire effect. If you distrust the science that threatens your world view, then more scientific evidence will make you react with suspicion, causing you to double down on your beliefs, Mr Cook said. Mr Cook hopes the model will shed light on how people process information and give way to better, more effective approaches in science communication. If distrust in science is a key element to denial, maybe we're better off targeting trust in the science - by explaining the peer-reviewed process and the checks and balances in the scientific method, he said. Mr Cook's model, however, predicts that this approach will have minimal impact at the extreme end of the ideological scale. When people have extreme views, you can't pull trust one way and world view the other. By and large, world view wins, he said. A better tack is to attempt to reduce the biasing influence of the world view, by showing that science doesn't threaten it. According to Mr Cook's model, this works better when delivered by someone that shares the values of the recipient. Provided by University of Queensland "Science that threatens a person's 'world view'; can backfire: researcher" August 21, 2012 http://phys.org/news/2012-08-science-threatens-person-world-view.html

An archaeological dig is to take place to uncover a model of a World War I battlefield in Staffordshire which was built as a training aid for soldiers. The mock up of the village and surrounding area of Messines in Belgium was built in Brocton on Cannock Chase. It was also maintained as a memorial to soldiers who died in the Battle of Messines Ridge in June 1917. Staffordshire County Council said after WWI it became a tourist attraction before becoming deserted and overgrown. The model was built by German prisoners of war, supervised by troops from the New Zealand Rifle Brigade, on their return from Messines in 1917. It was used as a training ground in the build-up to the much larger battle of Passchendaele which began in July of that year. It included replica trenches and dugouts, railway lines, roads, and accurate contours of the surrounding terrain. Staffordshire County Council said it would dig up the site this week and use a laser-scanning device to make a 3D computer model. The site will be covered over again in October. Council leader Philip Atkins said: “Due to the location, scale and fragile nature of the model it is impossible for it to be moved or left uncovered. “For a brief moment in time we all be able to share with the nation, memories of a piece of Staffordshire which helped change the course of history.” The project is being funded by Natural England. Source and read more: BBC

Transport of indigenous bacteria through sandy aquifer sediments was investigated in forced- and natural-gradient tracer teste. A diverse population of bacteria was collected and concentrated from groundwater at the site, stained with a DNA-specific fluorochrome, and injected back into the aquifer. Included with the injectate were a conservative tracer (Br- or Cl-) and bacteria-sized (0.2-1.3-??m) microspheres having carboxylated, carbonyl, or neutral surfaces. Transport of stained bacteria and all types and size classes of microspheres was evident. In the natural-gradient test, both surface characteristics and size of microspheres affected attenuation. Surface characteristics had the greatest effect upon retardation. Peak break-through of DAPI-stained bacteria (forced-gradient experiment) occurred well in advance of bromide at the more distal sampler. Transport behavior of bacteria was substantially different from that of carboxylated microspheres of comparable size. ?? 1988 American Chemical Society. Additional publication details Transport of microspheres and indigenous bacteria through a sandy aquifer: Results of natural- and forced-gradient tracer experiments

Have you noticed that there are some SFP modules with colorful markings on the market? For SFP, we are not unfamiliar. SFP (Small Form-Factor Pluggable) is a compact, hot-pluggable transceiver used for both telecommunication and data communication applications. But do you know why they are designed with different colors? These colorful SFP modules are called WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) SFPs. WDM is a technology which combines two or more kinds of optical signals at different wavelengths and transmits them on a single optical fiber. By using WDM technology, SFP module can transmit signals at different wavelengths, which are identified by different colors. WDM SFPs can be divided into two basic types. One is CWDM (Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing) SFP, and the other one is DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) SFP. The following passage is mainly about CWDM SFP. Overview of CWDM SFP CWDM SFP is a kind of optical transceiver which uses CWDM technology. Similar with traditional SFP module, CWDM SFP is also a hot-pluggable transceiver that interfaces a network device port (of a switch, router, media converter or similar device) to a fiber optic networking cable. Generally speaking, CWDM SFP modules come in 8 wavelengths that range from 1470 nm to 1610 nm. Through the color markings on the devices, it is easy to identify the wavelength to which the Gigabit Ethernet channel is mapped. That is why SFP modules are designed with different colors. The following table lists the CWDM SFP modules with their wavelengths and color codes. In addition, CWDM SFP is a compatible transceiver which provides data rates from 100 Mbps up to 4 Gbps, and reach a transmission distance at 20 to 40km, 40 to 80km and 80 to 120km. CWDM SFP modules also feature digital diagnostics, also known as digital optical monitoring (DOM), which is supported by the majority of switch and router OEMs in their operating system software. CWDM SFP is a MSA standard build and it is designed for operations in Metro Access Rings and Point-to-Point networks using Synchronous Optical Network (SONET), SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy), Gigabit Ethernet and Fiber Channel networking equipment. For it is low in cost, CWDM SFP can be regarded as a convenient and cost-effective solution for the adoption of Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel (FC) in campus, data-center, and metropolitan-area access networks. Comparison With DWDM SFP DWDM (Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplexing) SFP transceivers are used as part of a DWDM optical network to provide high-capacity bandwidth across an optical fiber network, which is a high performance, cost effective module for serial optical data communication applications up to 4.25Gb/s. From a low cost point of view, CWDM SFP module is inexpensive than DWDM SFP. For other aspects, the key in selecting CWDM or DWDM SFP lies in the difference between CWDM and DWDM. They refer to different methods of splitting up the light. For example, CWDM uses broader spacing between channels, allowing for inexpensive SFPs, while DWDM uses denser channel spacing, which allows for more wavelengths to be used on a single fiber. DWDM is typically used in large optical networks over longer distance. Therefore, DWDM SFP module is the ideal choice for SFP modules over long distance and with better scalability. Data communication and fiber optical network develop rapidly. During the process, some problems occur which push forward the improvement of the products. SFP modules, essentially just completed the converted of data between different media, can realize the connection between two switches or computers within a long distance. CWDM technology is an effective way to meet the rapidly increasing demand of bandwidth in transmission network, and it can provide a cost-effective solution for high capacity in metropolitan area network and local area network. As a functional and economical optical communication product, CWDM SFP, combined with the advantages of them, becomes more and more popular with users and applied to various fields.

is a chronic respiratory condition most often caused by the destruction of lung tissue by toxins contained in cigarette smoke. This, in turn, leads to chronic overinflation of the lungs, greatly decreasing their ability to function. chronic bronchitis, emphysema is a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that evolves over a period of time. Emphysema results in destruction of the alveoli, the tiny air sacs in the lungs. Oxygen is delivered to the lungs and carbon dioxide is carried from the lungs across the walls of the alveoli. As more and more alveoli are damaged, it becomes harder and harder for the lungs to function, which can cause these symptoms: Shortness of breath Increasing difficulty exercising Great difficulty exhaling Cough with mucus production As the disease progresses, breathing becomes increasingly difficult. In its most severe stage, virtually any physical activity becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible. When a person complains of the chronic presence of the symptoms of emphysema, a physical exam and various lung function tests (spirometry) are done to confirm the diagnosis. may also be done. Since, at present, emphysema cannot be cured, the goals of treatment are to: To slow emphysema's progression, the agent causing it must be removed. Since long-term smoking causes an overwhelming number of cases of emphysema, the only effective way to slow the progression of emphysema is to There are many smoking cessation therapies available. Your doctor may also be able to prescribe a medication that may help you stop smoking. COPD. EBSCO DynaMed website. Available at: ...(Click grey area to select URL) Updated July 15, 2014. Accessed July 24, 2014. Explore COPD. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute website. Available at: ...(Click grey area to select URL) Updated July 31, 2013. Accessed July 24, 2014. Tutic M, Lardinois D, Imfeld S, Korom S, Boehler A, Speich R, et al. Lung-volume reduction surgery as an alternative or bridging procedure to lung transplantation. Ann Thorac Surg. 2006 Jul;82(1):208-13. This content is reviewed regularly and is updated when new and relevant evidence is made available. This information is neither intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider prior to starting any new treatment or with questions regarding a medical condition. To send comments or feedback to our Editorial Team regarding the content please email us at firstname.lastname@example.org. Our Health Library Support team will respond to your email request within 2 business days. EBSCO Information Services is fully accredited by URAC. URAC is an independent, nonprofit health care accrediting organization dedicated to promoting health care quality through accreditation, certification and commendation.

In 1981, HIV was infecting and killing tens of thousands of people. By 1985, scientists were able to develop and commercialize a blood test that did two things: it determined if someone had been infected with HIV, and it assessed how much damage HIV had done to the immune system. This test helped identify a medicine that blocked one route that HIV used to take over the immune system. Within two short years, under pressure from HIV patients and advocates, new drugs were developed and approved by the FDA that radically improved outcomes. Between 1995 and 1998, four new HIV medicines were introduced to block other HIV pathways. These medicines were combined to create an anti-HIV 'cocktail' for each individual. By 1998, deaths from HIV dropped by 90 percent and 15 new drugs followed. The good news is that in the United States today, HIV is a treatable disease, not a death sentence. How can we achieve the same sense of urgency to speed up the development of new cancer treatments? We need a little bit of more information to send occasional email updates about The Value of Medical Innovation.

“Eat Local” has become the mantra of a new generation of food activists. Implicit in the locavore agenda is the belief that it combines healthy eating and a high standard of environmental stewardship while delivering important economic benefits and increasing food security within local economies. In a newly published book titled The Locavore’s Dilemma, geographer Pierre Desrochers and his wife, Hiroko Shimizu, offer the first book to seriously question the locavore perspective. Desrochers concludes that “eating local” would only deliver increased social and economic misery, environmental degradation, greater food insecurity, and poorer nutrition. Gary Blumenthal, president of World Perspectives, Inc., a firm specializing in international agricultural commodities marketing, and supply, will provide a critical discussion of Desrochers and Shimizu’s challenging assessment of the environmental costs of “eating local.”

"The region is looking ahead to the completion of the Central American Electrical Interconnection System (SIEPAC)", which involves putting up 1,800 kilometres of 230-kilovolt transmission lines from Guatemala in the north to Panama in the south, he said. The SIEPAC project, which has a planned interchange capacity of 300 megawatts, three times the present capacity, and a projected cost of 500 million dollars, is due to come onstream for commercial operation later this year. In recent weeks, the pockets of Central American consumers have been hurt by constant increases in fuel prices. Gasoline, for instance, has climbed to nearly five dollars a gallon (3.8 litres), and diesel fuel is four dollars a gallon, with the usual knock-on effect on the basic basket of goods, an index of the cost of living. This scenario has made renewable energies more attractive in the region because of their low environmental impact and lower consumer prices, in contrast with the volatile prices of fossil fuels and the high levels of pollution they cause. Costa Rica, for example, is building the largest hydroelectric dam in the country on the Reventazón river, close to the town of Siquirres on the Atlantic coast. It will be capable of generating 306.5 megawatts, and will cost $1.2bn. In Honduras the British power company Globeleq, together with Mesoamerica Energy, a Central American firm, are working on a 250 million dollar wind farm in Cerro de Hula with wind turbines from Gamesa, 24 kilometres south of Tegucigalpa, with a capacity of 102 megawatts. According to Roberto Leiva, of the Honduras Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD-Honduras), several hydroelectric plants are under construction or in process of being approved in Honduras. A wind farm is also being built, and plans for at least two geothermal facilities are being studied. Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala have also embarked on new projects for solar power, wind energy, geothermal energy and hydroelectric power that will change their energy mix, at present based mainly on oil. Central America could develop renewable energy sources with a potential capacity of more than 31,000 megawatts, comprising 60 per cent hydroelectric power, 30 per cent wind power and the remaining 10 per cent geothermal energy, BUN-CA studies say. However, the region is still "highly dependent on imported fossil fuels, which provide 80 per cent of total energy consumption," Blanco said. Costa Rica is the exception in the region. Over 80 per cent of its energy mix is derived from renewable sources, according to the state Costa Rican Institute of Electricity (ICE). But Dinora Sandino of the Nicaraguan Association for Renewable Energy and the Environment told said that, because of high oil prices, "we have seen a marked trend over the last decade towards substitution of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources." In 2008, clean energies represented 36 per cent of installed capacity within the country’s energy mix, and the aim is for them to grow to 90 per cent by 2016, according to the government of left-wing president Daniel Ortega. To meet this goal, the plan is to generate 600 megawatts, mainly from a geothermal project at San Jacinto-Tizate, in northwestern Nicaragua, and hydroelectric developments at Tumarín, in the eastern province of Atlántico Sur, and Larreynaga and HidroPantasma, in the northern province of Jinotega, according to the Nicaraguan Ministry of Energy and Mines. "The entry into force of the Electrical Industry Law in 1998 was an incentive for the private sector to participate in the generation of renewable energy and increased state participation in carrying out hydroelectric and geothermal projects," Sandino said. El Salvador is not lagging far behind. "The rising price of oil has had a major influence on the development of clean energies, but so has concern for the environment," said Luis Miguel Vázquez of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Last year, JICA-El Salvador began drawing up a master plan to develop renewable energies in the country over the next 15 years, including solar photovoltaic technology, concentrated solar thermal power, wind energy, geothermal energy and hydroelectric power and biomass. At present, El Salvador depends on fossil fuels for 80 per cent of its energy. "This illustrates the pressing need for renewable energies, which at first glance might seem more expensive, but in the long run are affordable and environmentally friendly," Vázquez said. Oswaldo García, with the Guatemalan Ministry of Energy and Mines, said that "the trend is to use more renewable energy" due to the high prices of crude, but also because of disasters like the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, caused by the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami. "There is a great deal of international pressure to use environmentally friendly sources of energy, in order to avoid accelerating climate change," he said. Guatemala is aiming for an energy mix in 2022 made up of 58 per cent hydroelectric power, 37 per cent thermoelectric power produced by stations fuelled by coal, natural gas and biomass, 4 per cent geothermal energy and only the remaining 0.6 per cent based on oil. This will require heavy investments, since statistics for 2008 indicated that oil generated 46 per cent of the country’s energy consumption. César Barrios of FUNDAECO, a foundation for eco-development and conservation, thinks renewable energy is a good option in view of the high price of oil and the problem of pollution. "The difficulty is that companies do not make an effort to empower the local communities in the vicinity of their installations. They should educate local people so that they can participate in the management of the projects, and generate real development in the communities," he said.

Consider a distillation column separating a binary mixture of methanol and water at . This column has 10 stages, a total condenser, and a partial reboiler. Feed stage location is stage nine counting from the top. The feed composition is equimolar. The feed vapor fraction is is the feed quality. The feed flow rate is set to . The values of both the reboil ( ) and the reflux ( ) ratios are to be selected by the user. This Demonstration uses a rigorous approach (solving MESH equations) and displays the composition versus stage for both components (methanol in orange, water in blue), the temperature profile inside the column, as well as the vapor and liquid flow rates (magenta and blue, respectively). Comparisons with the results obtained with Aspen HYSYS are shown for . Finally, the Ponchon–Savarit graphical construction is shown and several checks of external overall and partial mass balances and condenser and external energy balances are performed.

How Does Health Information Exchange Affect Patient Care? It enables hospitals, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, pharmacies, as well as other health care providers to access and securely share patient vital medical information electronically, ensuring a faster, more cost-effective delivery of healthcare services. In addition to improving quality of care and increasing efficiency, HIE can promote public health surveillance, facilitate quality-of-care measurement, as well as make it easier for organizations to identify contagious illnesses. What Is Health Information Exchange And How Can It Benefit Patient Care? The Electronic Health Information Exchange (HEIN) facilitates the sharing of ermation providers and patients to appropriately access and securely share a patient’s vital medical information electronically—improving the speed, quality, safety and cost of patient care. How Does Emr Affect Patient Care? Improved medication management, reduced medication error rates, reducing unnecessary investigations, improved communication and interactions among medical providers, patients, and healthcare providers are some of the benefits of electronic medical records. How Does Health Information Exchange Improve Patient Safety? In addition to improved patient safety, health information exchanges (HIE) may also bring greater efficiency and productivity. When the right information is available at the right time, as many as 70% of adverse drug events would possibly be eliminated as well as as around 18% of patient safety errors. How Does The Hie Help Improve The Quality Of Patient Care? Hospitalized patients are more empowered to directly interact with their healthcare providers using HIE, and duplicate tests are reduced. Medication errors are avoided, and decision-making is facilitated. What Are Challenges Related To Hie? HIE use poses a number of common challenges. It has always been a key focus of health care providers for ensuring data privacy and security across a full data exchange process. Consumers cited the problem of sharing their digital health information beyond their doctors’ offices. What Is The Importance Of Hie? Can you tell me what Health Information Exchange (HIE) is HIE and Why Is It Important? A Health Information Exchange allows healthcare providers to access, edit, and transmit patient medical record data. Their importance is critical due to the fact that so many documents are on paper in filing cabinets. Why Are Health Information Exchanges Needed What Are The Benefits? By sharing patient medical records securely and electronically, health information exchanges make medical records easier to access. It’s critically important because paper medical records are among the most valuable belongings. How Does Health Information Improve Patient Care? Patients are better cared for by health care providers who are able to provide complete and accurate information. There can be gains to diagnose diseases, which is better for patient outcomes, and decreased – even prevented – medical errors. How Emr May Reduce The Cost Of Patient Care? An EHR can reduce the amount of paperwork that providers have to process. It is common for health care costs to be split between administrative tasks, such as filling out forms and dealing with billing requests. Electronic health records can increase practice efficiency and reduce expenses by streamlining these tasks. What Is The Role Of An Emr In The Health Care System? An electronic medical record (EMR) displays medical diagnoses in one office while providing the clinician and patients’ medical histories. There’s no conflict between EMRs and paper records in the clinic. Make it easy for doctors to identify the patients with which they are in need of preventive checks and examinations. Does Health Information Exchange Improve Patient Outcomes? Providing timely and accurate clinical information makes a world of difference in health care. Enhance health care quality by reducing medication and medical errors can be done by allowing more health information to come together as Health information exchange (HIE). What Are 3 Advantages Associated With A Health Information Exchange? Report publicly and monitor the health of health care consumers; engage them about health care information; provide better healthcare outcomes and patient satisfaction, by reducing healthcare costs. Watch How Does Health Information Exchange Affect Patient Care Video

November Community Game Changer MSU Denver’s April Hill makes science accessible to blind students By Greg Henry April Hill has been a faculty member at Metropolitan State University of Denver for just three years, but she’s already made a lasting impact. Hill, an assistant professor of chemistry and director of forensic science, brought to the University a passion to help visually impaired students gain hands-on knowledge of science and to improve access to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. While doing post-doctoral work at Pennsylvania State University, she met Cary Supalo, a graduate student at the time, who was developing tools to give blind students a richer experience in the chemistry lab. “Dr. Supalo was the first blind scientist I’d met, and I had honestly never had a reason to wonder how a blind person might complete a chemistry lab experiment,” says Hill, 33. “As someone who was planning to go into education, I realized that I could very well have a blind student in a course one day and it would be my responsibility to teach him or her science, including the important aspect of experimentation.” A curriculum Hill helped create drew skepticism from sighted students. “The immediate dismissal of a blind student’s ability — not to mention their right — to an education in science is frustrating for me,” Hill says. “And I can only imagine how hearing [skepticism] might affect a young person with a visual impairment who has an interest in science.” She and Supalo ran several hands-on workshops and summer science camps, largely through collaboration with the National Federation of the Blind. Since joining MSU Denver in 2010, she has put on chemistry workshops for students who attend the Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton. The use of adaptive technology helps even the playing field for visually impaired students. Vernier Software and Technology has worked closely with Independence Science (based at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and founded by Supalo) to develop the Talking LabQuest. Through Talking LabQuest students access tools like text-to-speech software and probes for measuring pH, temperature, conductivity, etc. “There are a lot of schools for the visually impaired that do a good job of providing hands-on science experiments for their students, but they are limited by a lack of technology,” Hill says. “There is also a perception that allowing a blind student to handle chemicals is unsafe. This has led to the common practice in public high schools of simply pairing a blind student with a sighted partner who does all of the actual experimentation and simply provides a running commentary for the blind student. This is not an effective way to teach chemistry, and it is certainly not a good way to inspire a blind student to pursue chemistry as a career.” Thomas Vogt, an assistant professor of chemistry at MSU Denver, shares Hill’s passion and introduced her to the Colorado Center for the Blind and its science fairs in the spring and fall. “Using plastic baggies, the students mix chemicals that we provide to produce simple polymers which they can touch and handle after the reaction is completed.” Vogt says. “We have shown that blind students can do wet chemistry. It is exciting to see the excitement of the students.” Content provided By Metropolitan State University of Denver

Replace(target, find, source[, start[, count[, compare]]]) Replace returns a string which has had one substring replaced by another a specified number of times. The required parameter, target, is a string expression containing the substring to replace. The required parameter, find, is the string expression to be replaced. The required parameter, source, is the string expression used as the replacement. The optional parameter, start, is a numeric expression that specifies the starting position of the search within the target string; if start is not provided, the search defaults to 1, which represents the first character position. The optional parameter, count, is a numeric expression that specifies the number of substitutions to perform; if count is not provided -1 is used and all possible substitutions are made. The optional parameter, compare, is used to specify the type of search performed. Table: Comparison constants |vbBinaryCompare||0||Binary comparison case sensitive (default)| |vbTextCompare||1||Textual comparison, case insensitive| Rem Replace Example 'Replace performs string substitutions Dim Message, Ride Message = "Good morning, class." Print Message Message = Replace(Message, "morning", "afternoon") Print Message Ride = "big Al's big boat ride" Ride = Replace(Ride, "big", "Big", 1, 1) Print Ride Good morning, class. Good afternoon, class. Big Al's big boat ride

Robert S. Pickart Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Woods Hole, MA 02543-1541 Program Manager: John Calder NOAA Related NOAA Strategic Plan Goal: Goal 2. Understand climate variability and change to enhance society’s ability to plan and respond. In summer 2004 the Russian icebreaker Khromov carried out the inaugural cruise of the Russia-US Long-term Census of the Arctic (RUSALCA) program. RUSALCA resulted from the 2003 Memorandum of understanding for World Ocean and Polar Regions Studies between NOAA and the Russian Academy of Sciences. The three-leg expedition was a great success, during which US and Russian scientists carried out an array of multidisciplinary projects aimed at furthering our understanding of climate change in the Arctic. Leg 2 focused on the region from Bering Strait northward into the Chukchi Sea, and our part of the hydrographic component of this leg consisted of a detailed survey of the flow through Herald Canyon (Figure 1). This is the first time that the canyon, which lies in Russian territorial waters, has been sampled at high cross-stream resolution, enabling us to resolve fully the currents and water masses. The survey was done using a conductivity/temperature/depth (CTD) package with the addition of dissolved oxygen, turbidity, fluorescence, a lowered acoustic Doppler current profiler, and a video plankton recorder for measuring zooplankton and particle (marine snow) content in the water. Pacific water enters the Arctic through Bering Strait and is largely steered through the Chukchi Sea by the topography of the shelf. In particular, the two canyons on either side of the Chukchi Sea−Barrow canyon in the east and Herald canyon in the west−tend to concentrate the flow before it reaches the shelfbreak. Presently we know very little about the flow through Herald canyon, although this branch contains a significant amount of the transport of the Pacific water, and carries most of the nutrient load into the Arctic. The topography of the canyon is such that hydraulic control may be active, which in turn could influence the downstream entrainment of the flow as well as its ability to form eddies. These are the kind of things we need to know in order to determine the ultimate fate of the Pacific water when it reaches the open Arctic, and the associated implications for climate change. FISCAL YEAR 2004 PROGRESS The final processing, calibration, and de-spiking of the RUSALCA CTD data set were completed, and a data report was written and distributed to the PIs in the RUSALCA group. The processed data, station profile plots, and vertical section plots of the data were made available to the group on a website. The lowered ADCP velocity data are still being processed, and will soon be complete. The analysis of the CTD data are now underway. Figure 2 shows the vertical sections of potential temperature, turbidity, and fluorescence from the crossing at the head of Herald canyon. On the western side of the canyon one sees cold, dense winter water (magenta color) above the bottom, adjacent to warm summertime Bering water on the eastern side of the canyon. Presumably both of these water masses are flowing northward. The turbidity and fluorescence distributions show a strong plume emanating from the bottom beneath the summer water (near station 54) while the fluorescence shows a distinct plume surrounding the winter water. These features may arise in part due to the dynamics of the flow through the canyon−for instance bottom boundary layer detachment or convergence and downwelling of the jet. We will pursue these ideas in the coming months, and describe the overall adjustment of the Pacific water, including the ramifications for the chemistry and biology of this region.

This week, the University of Oklahoma Aeroecology Biologging group started a crowdfunding campaign for LunAero: an automated lunar bird tracking device. Since this is one of the projects I’m spearheading as part of my postdoctoral position in the lab of Dr. Eli Bridge, I’d like to walk through the current design here. Take a look at the crowdfunding page while you are thinking about it. LunAero is a robot designed to track the moon as it crosses the sky. This isn’t new. Lots of astronomy mounts can be programmed to follow a specific path of a celestial body across the sky. But LunAero doesn’t do it that way. By using a Raspberry Pi as a brain, LunAero tracks the moon by computer vision. This means that it “sees” the moon and tracks it in real time. By using visual tracking, we can compensate for things like wind and excitable dogs in our backyard (true story) knocking the scope off course. We are using OpenCV as a platform for LunAero. If you have ever worked with computer vision, you might say to yourself that this seems like overkill for tracking the moon, a body which follows a very well known and predictable path. There is a reason we do it this way. The end goal of LunAero is not to simply track the moon, but the goal is to identify birds crossing in front of the moon. If you are like me, you may not realize how many birds migrate at night. Since they stop chattering and chirping once the sun sets, it is easy to think they all just sleep. But this is not the case. Birds migrate at night to minimize predation on their massive trek. In a single night, LunAero recorded hundreds of birds crossing the full moon. It was amazing! If you do the math, the moon is a small percentage of the sky. Eventually, the massive scale of night migration will begin to dawn on you. The best method we have for quantifying this event is radar. Our modern weather radars work by detecting water in the air, telling us if that cloud over there is about to rain or not. If you think about it though, all organisms are just bags of water. Don’t think of birds as feathered, flying friends. Instead, think of them like a radar does: as little water balloons. Meteorologists often view our water balloon friends as a source of noise, a nuisance. But a new scientific discipline is emerging called Aeroecology which is very interested in the applications of technologies to study thins living in the air. Using radar isn’t perfect. There is no real baseline for the fast-moving water balloons the radar detects unless you send an ornithologist out to visually count the birds. Doing this at night is a challenge, since light conditions do not favor observation. So we need to use the silhouettes of birds flying in front of the moon to establish a reasonable estimate. Now I don’t know about you, but standing outside with my neck crooked and binoculars plastered to my face instead of sleeping does not sound like a fun time. Thus: LunAero. LunAero is controlled by a Raspberry Pi computer. This computer handles the image capture through a dedicated camera and scope adjustment with the GPIO pins. The GPIO pins communicate directions to a TB6612FNG board, which I have discussed in prior posts. The TB6612FNG provides pulses to 5V gearmotors. The gearmotors supply power to two large gears. The azimuthal axis (the one that spins like a top) rotates the gear that is supporting the rest of the structure. The altitudinal axis (the one that lifts and lowers) is a partial gear that moves a cradle. We don’t need the whole gear, since the moon will rarely pass directly overhead without deviation. The cradle is what holds our spotting scope. Since LunAero is meant to be employed by bird-nerds, we designed it to accommodate a spotting scope for the optics. It is a reasonable assessment that a serious birder will probably have access to a spotting scope. This is good, because optics are expensive. A ‘low-cost’ spotting scope can be had for $500, while the one I am using at the moment to capture moon footage is ~$3000. The challenge then becomes, how do we attach a standardized camera? Since all of the eyepieces of scopes are a little different, we had to design a custom adapter for the Raspberry Pi camera which would allow for adjustment in all 3 spatial dimensions. In the end, our adapter looks like a complicated monstrosity, but it works very well. We have a design update planned for it, so I am sure I will discuss more about it later.

Broadly, assets can be defined as possessions that carry value. These include cash and various types of investments. Real estate, stocks, and bonds are common types of investments included. Typically, any tangible or intangible possession that can be owned and can be traded for money is counted as an asset. They are commonly important for account reporting in business. A description and valuation of all assets must be presented to the government for tax purposes. In accounting terms, assets include the sum of all liabilities, such as debt with all equities. Equities include all cash and investments owned by the proprietor. The declaration of assets makes up the whole of a company's balance sheet. This can include extensive lists detailing each liability and equity that discloses total assets owned by the company. Assets can be either tangible or intangible. Tangible assets are physical objects that carry intrinsic value such as cash or land. Intangible assets generally reflect intellectual property such as patents and copyrights.

Today’s post comes from Gregory Marose, an intern in the National Archives Office of Strategy and Communications. Americans often associate the month of August with family vacations and the summer heat, but that was not the case in 1961. Fifty years ago this month, a Cold War chill filled the air as construction began on the Berlin Wall. After the end of World War II, the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union each occupied a piece of postwar Germany. The four powers intended to jointly govern through the Allied Control Council until the country could be reunified under one government. But as relations between the West and the Soviet Union deteriorated in the late 1940s, Germany became a central part of the Cold War. In 1949, the the three western zones merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Soviet Union responded by establishing the German Democratic Republic. Although the capital city of Berlin was located within Soviet-controlled East Germany, it remained divided as a multinational area. Between 1949 and 1961, millions of East Germans defected from the German Democratic Republic by crossing into West Berlin. The mass exodus of young, well-educated individuals—which led to both economic stagnation and political turmoil—compelled Communist leaders to refortify East Germany’s borders. East German troops and workers began construction on the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961. The first phase of the wall included 27 miles of barbed-wire fencing, covering the entire border between East and West Berlin. In addition, streets near the wall were ripped up in order to prevent cars and trucks from driving through. Through the years, the wall was reinforced with concrete and extended to over 90 miles in length. The final version of the Wall was 12 feet high and almost 4 feet wide. The massive fortification was more than just a physical barrier. The Berlin Wall symbolized the ideological barriers that divided the United States and Soviet Union during the heart of the Cold War. When demolition of the Wall began in November of 1989, it marked the end of an era of East-West hostilities. Germany reunified in 1990, and the Soviet Union dissolved the following year. Do you want to learn more about the Berlin Wall’s impact on the Cold War? The National Declassification Center at the National Archives, in partnership with the Historical Review Program of the CIA, will be a hosting a one-day conference on October 27 at the Archives in downtown Washington, DC. For more information on this event, check out “Building the Wall, from Vienna to Checkpoint Charlie”.

Assistant Professor - Natural Resource and Ecology Management Iowa State University Perhaps the greatest reward for living in a place with four well-defined seasons is the marked return of spring. It’s now that the long, motionless days of winter are, seemingly overnight, replaced with the sights and sounds of species whose likeness we haven’t seen for months. While the site of a chickadee or deer on a cold winter day is a welcome reminder that we’re not in it alone, we are reminded that we’ve made it through another winter when flocks of geese, bound for the Arctic Ocean, grace the skies on the second warm day of March or robins flock to our yards and sing their melodious songs at day break. Another season is behind us and rapid changes are in the air. If this spring revitalization were a cast of characters, I think we’d agree that geese and robins play the leading role. Their arrival is conspicuous and sudden and plays out in nearly every corner of the state. I pity anyone who fails to notice this act. But, playing supporting roles are a wide diversity of other wildlife, showcasing their smaller parts, often in specific geographies, present during short time windows or perhaps less conspicuous to the untrained eye. The chorus of breeding frogs in wetlands, the emergence of insects, the courtship display of countless birds and many other examples comprise this roster. But my favorite, and perhaps one of the most undervalued supporting characters in this annual revival, is the American Woodcock. The woodcock’s show begins each year in the same sequence as the arrival of the geese and the return of the robin’s chorus. In shrubby grasslands or young forests, at dusk, the male woodcock begins his performance with a few unmistakable monotonous “peents” vocalizations that signal the bird’s intent to put on a show. Then, with the speed and ascent of a hobby rocket launch, the male shoots straight up into the air, 50-100 yards, nearly out of sight in the fading sky. He immediately follows with a vertical descent back to the launching pad, making what can only be described as kissing noises akin to schoolyard taunts, and a hollow whistling sound as the air sweeps past his uniquely shaped flight feathers during the fall. In an instant, the bird is back on the ground, peenting again and preparing for another launch. The show will go on until the light fully recedes over the horizon at which point it breaks until an encore performance the next night. And so it continues through March, April and portions of May until the heat of summer marks the passing of yet another season. Male woodcocks engage in this annual behavior for the same reasons we can observe curious behaviors in a whole suite of other species: courtship. Females observe the nightly displays from nearby vantages and eventually, when impressed by the acrobatics of one male or another, move in on the displaying grounds for further inspection. The good news for us is that the females ordinarily welcome company in the gallery for the show, and human observers careful to not get too close can observe and enjoy these nightly displays played out in every corner of the state. Aldo Leopold shared my fascination for what he called the “Sky Dance” in an essay of the same name in his iconic 1949 book “A Sand County Almanac.” There he captured a common sentiment among avid observers, that after learning of the display he and his family were “reluctant to miss even a single performance.” This show has been playing out across Iowa, which defines the western border of the species range that drops off as eastern forests cede to the prairies of the Great Plains, for centuries. However, it is likely that the show plays in fewer theaters across the state each year as has been the documented case across much of the eastern part of its range. Here, and across the eastern United States, the woodcock finds fewer places to display each year. Woodcock need young forests or old prairies to live their lives. In an environment where we often focus on keeping grasses free of trees (for grazing or for other grassland dependent wildlife) and foster growth of maturing forests rather than cutting them or allowing new ones to grow up, we find fewer and fewer places for these and many other so-called early successional wildlife to thrive. Efforts are underway across the U.S. to bring back young forests and old prairies, and to acknowledge the unique value these areas bring to wildlife and the people that value them. Landowners can help in this effort by learning about where young forests can fit on their land. A meeting with a professional forester or wildlife biologist will help interested landowners learn more about these ecosystems and approaches for restoring them. But, one need not own land to enjoy the sights and sounds of a displaying woodcock. There is a much simpler way: Find a nice quite spot overlooking a recently harvest stand of trees or an aging grassland with a mix of shrubs and grasses on a county park or state wildlife area. Arrive as the sun is setting, and wait patiently, listening closely for that peculiar “peent,” announcing the show is about to begin. There you’ll have a front row seat to for what is perhaps the best-kept secret in Iowa, that mesmerizing Sky Dance.

Få varsel ved oppdateringer av «Introduction» Du har meldt deg på nyhetsvarsel for: Innhold på denne siden Qualitative evidence can be useful when exploring stakeholders’ perceptions and experiences related to acceptability, feasibility, and implementation. Qualitative research aims to describe the social world, to understand people’s underlying reasons, opinions and motivations and to explain the social world by developing hypotheses, theories and models. Common methods include interviews, focus group discussions, observation, and document analysis. The aims of qualitative evidence synthesis are the same as those of primary qualitative research with aim being to synthesize across primary studies. The process of conducting a qualitative evidence synthesis (QES) follow the same steps as conducting a systematic review of effect, including publishing a clearly written protocol. However, QES can be less linear in nature and more flexible in their design, adapting to the type of data that is identified. It is common to move back and forth between steps and take a more inductive approach to the project, learning as the review progresses. - A clearly stated set of objectives with pre-defined eligibility criteria for studies (this can be flexible and change during the review process) - An explicit, transparent methodology (not necessarily linear in nature) - A well-defined, systematic search that attempts to identify studies that meet the eligibility criteria (does not need to find everything) - A statement of the methodological limitations of the included studies - A systematic and transparent method of data extraction, synthesis and presentation of the characteristics and findings of the included studies Before starting the process of conducting a QES, the team should think through the following: Is a QES appropriate for the question? Is the question related to how people perceive or experience an event or intervention? Does it explore problems related to acceptability, feasibility, implementation, equity or similar? Is a QES on this topic needed? Do a quick scoping search to see if there is already a QES that answers the question. What experience does the QES team need to have in order to be successful? The lead author needs to have experience with conducting a QES and primary qualitative research. A minimum of one other team member must have experience conducting primary qualitative research. No matter how a QES is conducted, clear and transparent reporting of the steps that were taken is necessary. In a QES it is very important to report both the data audit trail (how many studies at which stages through the PRISMA diagram) along with a decision audit trail. A decision audit trail explains the thought process and reasoning for the decisions taken during the QES. This is both at the protocol stage (for example, why a certain study selection or synthesis approach) and at the review stage (any changes to what was planned and why). Enhancing transparency in reporting the synthesis of qualitative research: ENTREQ is a guideline on this topic (1).

Clues to African archaeology found in lead isotopes Microscopic specs of lead are offering clues about the enormous cultural changes that swept across northern Africa a thousand years ago. At The University of Arizona in Tucson, a young archaeologist is analyzing lead traces in artifacts to shed light on the relatively little-understood archaeology of Africa, especially the period marked by the spread of the new religion of Islam. Thomas R. Fenn, a doctoral student in the UA anthropology department, is unraveling evidence of centuries-old trade patterns across the Sahara Desert by identifying smelted metal artifacts, mainly copper, found in the continent's sub-Saharan regions. Fenn will report the results of his work ("Getting to the source of the problem: Lead isotope analysis and provenance determination of ancient African copper artifacts") on Sunday, March 26, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern Time at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Atlanta. Fenn's presentation is in the Georgia World Congress Center, Room C-108. As Islamic forces moved across northern Africa, they set in motion trading opportunities between the arid lands bordering the Mediterranean and the dense jungles and savannahs south of the Sahara. One of the questions Fenn wants to answer concerns the sources of copper and other raw materials that became manufactured goods that were traded throughout the region. Specifically, why were metal workers in a sophisticated metallurgical industry in the sub-Sahara importing copper ingots when there were perfectly good copper ore deposits nearby? Knowing where these and other materials originated, said Fenn, may offer larger insights about not only trade, but also about technologies, economics and social organization. Who controlled bankable natural resources and transportation routes? How was labor distributed in these societies? David J. Killick, a UA associate professor of anthropology and expert on the archaeology of metallurgy in Africa, said tracing metals is a crucial part of understanding the development of trade in Africa. "Most of the money circulating in the western half of the Islamic world between the 11th and 16th centuries was minted with gold from sub-Saharan west Africa, and competition for the wealth generated by the trade fueled the growth of major West African states like Ghana, Mali and Songhai," Killick said. Using a process called lead isotope ratio analysis, or LIA, Fenn has examined more than 100 Iron-Age artifacts, most of them copper, from sub-Saharan Africa. The experiments were done in the W.M. Keck Isotope and Trace Element Laboratory at the UA. The lab is partially funded by the National Science Foundation and run by Joaquin Ruiz, a professor of geosciences and dean of the UA College of Science. "LIA is extremely accurate as a forensic tool in identifying lead traces found in metal ores," said John Chesley, a research scientist in the UA department of geosciences who developed the laboratory and analytical techniques for Fenn's project. Lead has four different isotopes, three of which occur as the natural decay of uranium and thorium. The isotopic ratios change as a function of time. Smelting doesn't change the ratios, making them a virtual fingerprint for a metal's source of origin. Scientists need only about 100 billionth of a gram for analysis. The trick, said Chesley, is making sure the sample remains completely free of contamination. The process takes about two weeks, but offers a high degree of certainty of linking objects to their source. LIA has been used successfully to determine the sources of non-ferrous metals from sites in other parts of the world for years, but its use in African archaeology is fairly recent. "In reality, I am dating the deposition of the ores on a geological timescale - millions of years - but I am not dating them within an archaeological time scale," Fenn said. "I am, in fact, using the geological age, derived from the lead isotope ratios, as a means of provenancing raw and refined copper metals, and metallurgical debris, to a potential ore source based on the similarity of their geological age, i.e., their lead isotope ratios, as well as by examining and comparing their chemical compositions." From his analysis, Fenn theorizes that the ore used to make the copper ornaments and other items found in the sites in West Africa likely came from North Africa. He said merchants there traded gold from regions like present-day Niger for copper from the north via camel caravans across the desert. Refined copper, Fenn said, likely was prized as a commodity that fit in with the value system of the region, where it was easily worked into ornamental objects and other items that could be bartered for other goods and services. Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Feb 2009 Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.

Skip to content Skip to navigation menu 17 May 2012 On Friday May 18, the National Museum Cardiff will host around 120 local primary school pupils for a series of workshops delivered by Cardiff University, University of Glamorgan and Museum researchers. The pupils will get hands-on opportunities to learn how plants develop, grow and produce fruit and seeds. The exhibition will also be open to the general public on May 18 and 19. Dr Roberto Sonnino, of the University’s Centre for Business Relationships Accountability Sustainability and Society (BRASS) is also one of the speakers at a public debate on sustainable food in the evening of May 18. Held at the Museum, the debate is titled "Global food security: Can we feed the growing world population while also practicing more sustainable agriculture?". The debate will be chaired by agronomist and farmer, Jonathan Harrington and other speakers include Professor Peter Gregory (Chief Executive of East Malling Research) and Phil Bloomer (Director of Campaigns & Policy for Oxfam GB), . On Saturday May 19, the public will also invited to a series of talks, research demonstrations and tours of the laboratories in Cardiff University’s School of Biosciences. The tours will illustrate the breadth of basic plant science and biotechnology research in South Wales and will introduce participants to some of the cutting edge technologies involved. The first International Fascination of Plants Day, launched under the umbrella of the European Plant Science Organization (EPSO, Brussels), is bringing together more than 450 institutions in 39 countries to celebrate the role of plant science in the social, environmental and economic landscape now and into the future. The goal is to get as many people as possible around the world fascinated by plants and enthused about the importance of plant science for agriculture, in sustainably producing food, as well as non-food products such as paper, timber, chemicals, energy, and pharmaceuticals. The South Wales event is one of more than 80 public events and activities which will be held by universities, institutes, botanic gardens, and other organizations in the UK. ENDS Stephen RousePublic Relations OfficeCardiff UniversityWalesUnited Kingdom029 208 75596RouseS@cardiff.ac.uk Cardiff University Cardiff University is recognised in independent government assessments as one of Britain’s leading teaching and research universities. Founded by Royal Charter in 1883, the University today combines impressive modern facilities and a dynamic approach to teaching and research. The University’s breadth of expertise in research and research-led teaching encompasses: the humanities; the natural, physical, health, life and social sciences; engineering and technology; preparation for a wide range of professions; and a longstanding commitment to lifelong learning. Cardiff is a member of the Russell Group of Britain’s leading research universities.The University website is at: www.cardiff.ac.uk . This is an externally hosted beta service offered by Google.

A Year of Hands-On Science:This invaluable yearlong resource, rich in hands-on learning experiences, helps teachers meet the science standards and reinforce key process skills. Each month features engaging activities that revolve around two favorite themes, from butterflies and phases of the moon in September, to animal homes and the sun in May. Includes background information, carefully selected picture books for read-aloud and independent reading, reproducible science journal pages, Science-at-Home newsletters, assessment tips, and more. For use with Grades K-3. Back to top Rent A Year of Hands-On Science 1st edition today, or search our site for Lynne textbooks. Every textbook comes with a 21-day "Any Reason" guarantee. Published by Teaching Resources.

NORD gratefully acknowledges Matthew R. G. Taylor, MD, PhD, Director, Adult Medical Genetics Program, Colorado Lysosomal Storage Disease Center, University of Colorado, and Ryan D’souza, BSc, University of Colorado School of Medicine, for assistance in the preparation of this report. Symptoms of Danon disease vary from case to case and depend on gender. Boys usually show early signs of muscle problems (difficulty sitting or walking) and motor skills may be awkward or delayed. Intellectual disability is usually noticed by parents and/or teachers and can be quite mild. The development of heart disease can lead to further fatigue and shortness of breath. Visual complaints are also prevalent with serious color vision disturbances and near-complete loss of retinal pigment in some patients. In general, young girls may have no symptoms and will report normal muscle strength and have normal intellect. As females age, symptoms of heart disease can begin to develop. Muscle symptoms are reported by some girls and women but overt findings of frank muscle weakness are usually absent. Visual complaints may also be reported in women and can be an early feature of the disease, although manifestations are less severe than in men. Clinical researchers believe that the skeletal muscle involvement in Danon disease preferentially involves the muscles of the back, shoulder, upper legs and the neck muscles. These are the proximal muscles; that is, those closest to the center of the body. Symptoms of weakness in these muscles can include back pain and difficulty raising one’s arms over the head, getting out of a chair, or walking up steps. In a young boy, these problems may be suggested by problems meeting motor milestones (sitting, crawling, and walking, running). An experienced neurologist can recognize the extent of muscle disease by performing a physical examination. The diseased heart muscle (cardiomyopathy) can lead to a thickened, stiff heart (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) or to an enlarged heart (dilated cardiomyopathy). Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is more common in males (approximately 90% hypertrophic and 10% dilated), whereas females are more apt to show features of dilated cardiomyopathy (approximately 50% hypertrophic and 50% dilated). Sometimes the cardiomyopathy can be the first sign of disease in male children. In both instances, problems with heart function and symptoms of heart failure (shortness of breath, fatigue, fluid gain) can occur. Death from the heart disease seems to occur frequently in males, especially as they reach the second and third decades of life. Heart transplantation has been performed successfully and can greatly improve symptoms and extend life. The extent of intellectual disability in affected males has been described in some epidemiological studies. In the original description of Danon disease, the intellectual disability was classified as a form of mental retardation. However, it is clear that the majority of boys will be mildly affected cognitively, usually allowing them to achieve the ability to read, hold jobs, form relationships, and live independently. Furthermore, providing education and learning support may help some boys improve their intellectual functioning. In women, intellect appears to be normal, although very little information in the literature addresses this question. Less prevalent symptoms also include liver and lung involvement, although these have not been studied extensively and might be secondary to muscle involvement (e.g. serum liver enzyme elevation and respiratory muscle weakness). Some speculation also exists on psychiatric disease, with some case reports detailing depression, psychosis, suicidal ideation, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in Danon disease patients. However, it is unclear if psychiatric episodes are related to Danon disease. Males with Danon disease typically have abnormalities on certain laboratory tests. The creatine kinase (sometimes referred to as the CPK level) in the blood is often elevated, and is a reflection of ongoing muscle damage. The CPK is usually elevated in males, but can be normal in some females who have Danon disease. Abnormalities in liver enzyme tests are common in males; in some cases these are mistakenly interpreted as a sign of primary liver disease rather than a reflection of skeletal muscle dysfunction; frank liver dysfunction has not been well-described in Danon disease. The electrocardiogram (ECG), which measures electrical impulses made by the heart, is often abnormal. This abnormality in conduction and electrical impulse is also known as an arrhythmia. Frequently, an arrhythmia called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome or a pre-excitation syndrome will be seen on the ECG. An examination of the retina by an experienced eye doctor (ophthalmologist) will often detect changes in the pigment of the retina. This can be a useful sign in women, as the retinal changes appear to precede other symptoms of the disease in some cases. Danon disease is caused by a genetic defect (mutation) in a gene called LAMP2. To date, there are over 70 different mutations in the LAMP2 gene identified in case reports that could lead to Danon disease. Mutations that lead to a complete absence of LAMP2 protein have been shown to be most detrimental in terms of prognosis. Other mutations that lead to an incomplete LAMP2 protein that is only missing a component is less deleterious. In many instances the disease is inherited from a parent, typically the mother who is far more apt to remain healthy enough to reach reproductive age than the typically affected male. Without a heart transplant, only a few males may be healthy enough to father their own children. New genetic mutations (sporadic mutations) could also account for the first case in a family, but these have not been widely reported. Affected mothers will pass on the genetic defect to half of their children (both sons and daughters). Affected fathers who are healthy enough to have children will pass on the genetic defect to all of their daughters and none of their sons. This pattern of inheritance is consistent with what occurs in other X-linked genetic conditions. Since females have two X chromosomes (and males have one), females are somewhat protected from the Danon disease genetic defect. This is explained by the fact that each woman with Danon disease is expected to have one mutated X chromosome (containing a Danon disease mutation) and one normal X chromosome (where the LAMP2 gene is functioning normally). The normal X chromosome protects females and explains, in part, the less severe symptoms and the delay in onset of symptoms until adulthood. However, some women with Danon disease have progressed to the point of needing a heart transplant. The location of the malfunctioning gene has been traced to gene map locus Xq24. The genetic characteristics of this gene (LAMP2) are transmitted as an X-linked dominant trait. Chromosomes, which are present in the nucleus of human cells, carry the genetic information for each individual. Human body cells normally have 46 chromosomes. Pairs of human chromosomes are numbered from 1 through 22 and the sex chromosomes are designated X and Y. Males have one X and one Y chromosome and females have two X chromosomes. Each chromosome has a short arm designated “p” and a long arm designated “q”. Chromosomes are further sub-divided into many bands that are numbered. For example, “chromosome Xq24” refers to band 24 on the long arm of the X chromosome. The numbered bands specify the location of the thousands of genes that are present on each chromosome. Genetic diseases are determined by the combination of genes for a particular trait that are on the chromosomes received from the father and the mother. All individuals carry a few abnormal genes. Parents who are close relatives (consanguineous) have a higher chance than unrelated parents to both carry the same abnormal gene, which increases the risk to have children with a recessive genetic disorder. X-linked recessive genetic disorders are conditions caused by an abnormal gene on the X chromosome. Females have two X chromosomes but one of the X chromosomes is “turned off” and all of the genes on that chromosome are inactivated. Females who have a disease gene present on one of their X chromosomes are carriers for that disorder. Carrier females usually do not display symptoms of the disorder because it is usually the X chromosome with the abnormal gene that is turned off. A male has one X chromosome and if he inherits an X chromosome that contains a disease gene, he will develop the disease. Males with X-linked disorders pass the disease gene to all of their daughters, who will be carriers. A male cannot pass an X-linked gene to his sons because males always pass their Y chromosome instead of their X chromosome to male offspring. Female carriers of an X-linked disorder have a 25% chance with each pregnancy to have a carrier daughter like themselves, a 25% chance to have a non-carrier daughter, a 25% chance to have a son affected with the disease, and a 25% chance to have an unaffected son. X-linked dominant disorders, like Danon disease, are also caused by an abnormal gene on the X chromosome, but in these rare conditions, females with an abnormal gene are affected with the disease. Males with an abnormal gene are more severely affected than females, and many of these males do not survive. In the case of Danon disease, males can survive to adulthood, however, their medical problems and the typical need for heart transplantation likely limits their ability to have many children. The function of the LAMP2 protein (made from the LAMP2 gene) is not well understood. It appears that the LAMP2 protein is important for the function of the cell’s lysosomes. Lysosomes, often compared to waste disposal plants, are small structures inside cells that are responsible for breaking down certain molecules and compounds in cells. When the lysosomes do not function properly, cellular products accumulate. One such product that may build-up is glycogen and in some cases the diagnosis of Danon disease is suggested because of excess glycogen seen on a skeletal muscle biopsy. However, it is important to realize that excess glycogen is not always visible on a single muscle biopsy. At present, it is thought that Danon disease can affect all ethnic populations. The prevalence of Danon disease is unknown, but may be rising due to increased detection from wider availability of LAMP2 gene testing. Histories of affected patients at birth are usually normal. As discussed, males are more severely affected in this X-linked dominant disease. Because Danon disease is rare and unfamiliar to most physicians, diagnosis is difficult and takes substantial time. The diagnosis is suggested on the basis of a family history compatible with X-linked dominant inheritance and symptoms in affected relatives (cardiomyopathy, skeletal myopathy, intellectual disability, Wolff-Parkinson White, etc.). Skeletal muscle biopsy is probably done in some males in an effort to determine the cause of muscle weakness. If, in the course of examining the biopsy materials, glycogen buildup and/or empty spaces appear in the cells of the muscle tissue (vacuolization), Danon disease must be considered. This also holds true for the analysis of a heart biopsy. A muscle biopsy that yields evidence of glycogen build-up and empty spaces in the muscle cells are key signs and indications that a diagnosis of Danon disease is a high probability. It is important to recognize that, in early stages of Danon disease, and probably also in women, the muscle biopsy can be non-specific. Thus, a normal or non-specific muscle biopsy does not exclude Danon disease. If other features of Danon disease are present, a non-diagnostic muscle biopsy should not discourage more definitive genetic testing. Patients who appear to have Pompe disease (based on muscle biopsy for instance) but have normal acid maltase activity, should be evaluated for Danon disease. Unexplained hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in males is probably due to Danon disease in some proportion of cases. Antibodies to the LAMP-2 protein are available and tissue staining (of a muscle biopsy) for the absence of LAMP-2 protein is another potential, but not widely available, diagnostic approach. LAMP-2 antibody testing is likely to be normal in women with Danon disease and if done should be interpreted with caution due to the possibility of a false-negative result. Genetic testing of the LAMP2 gene is currently the gold standard for diagnosis and is available in specialized genetics laboratories. Most genetic mutations causing Danon disease predict reduced levels or even absence of the LAMP2 gene product, the LAMP-2 protein. Although the sensitivity of LAMP2 genetic testing is not known at this time, it is the best that is available. The noninvasive nature of DNA-based testing and the inclusion of LAMP2 gene testing in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy genetic diagnostic panels favor this method as the most common route to diagnosis. The treatment of Danon disease is directed toward the specific symptoms that are apparent in each individual. It requires a team that should include a primary care physician as well as several specialists, including a cardiologist, neurologist, ophthalmologist, geneticist, genetic counselor, rehabilitation physician, educational specialist, and physical therapist. Currently there is no specific therapy that is known to slow the underlying biological problems caused by LAMP-2 protein deficiency. The severity of cardiomyopathy is the major prognostic factor. Imaging studies including echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance can assess heart function, extent of hypertrophy, and degree of cardiac fibrosis (formation of scar tissue on the heart). Medications for heart disease should be given when indicated by clinical signs and symptoms. The rapid progression of the cardiomyopathy in some males necessitates prompt consideration for heart transplantation. Early involvement of electrophysiology to study the electrical conduction system of the heart is warranted in patients with arrhythmias. A device called a Holter monitor can be used to continuously record the electrical impulses of the heart. For symptomatic arrhythmias, early implantation of a cardioverter-defibrillator may be appropriate. Cardiac ablation therapy, which is a technique utilized to destroy the abnormal focus in the heart generating the irregular rhythm, can also be performed. As the disease can progress rapidly in males, consideration for early defibrillator implantation and evaluation for cardiac transplantation are appropriate in males as cardiomyopathy progresses. Assessment of muscle strength, especially the proximal muscles of the shoulder, neck, and legs, should be performed regularly. Physical therapy can be helpful in maintaining muscle strength and flexibility. Intellectual disability should be screened for in males and appropriate educational interventions applied as needed. Regular eye examinations, to track the development and progression of retinal disease, should be considered. Biological relatives who are at risk for Danon disease should be evaluated by a physician for early signs of disease. At a minimum, evaluation of such relatives should include a medical history, physical examination (attention to cardiac, neurological, and ocular exams), CPK testing, ECG, and echocardiogram. Genetic consultation and counseling is recommended for all patients and families so that inheritance and reproductive risks are clearly communicated. Future investigation should focus on the biochemical role of the LAMP2 gene in Danon disease. Information on its molecular function can provide insight on its pathogenesis and help initiate investigations to novel therapy. Information on current clinical trials is posted on the Internet at www.clinicaltrials.gov. All studies receiving U.S. government funding, and some supported by private industry, are posted on this government web site. For information about clinical trials being conducted at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, MD, contact the NIH Patient Recruitment Office: Toll-free: (800) 411-1222 TTY: (866) 411-1010 For information about clinical trials sponsored by private sources, contact: For information about clinical trials conducted in Europe, contact: Danon disease results from a missing protein, LAMP-2. Other diseases that result from insufficiency or lack of other proteins have been successfully treated with protein replacement therapies. This approach is theoretically possible in Danon disease, but has not been developed to date. There is no evidence or rational to support a high protein diet to treat Danon disease and any protein replacement effort would have to involve the LAMP-2 protein. A researcher in Colorado, Matthew Taylor, MD, PhD, has developed a registry of Danon disease patients and families to collect information that may advance the understanding of this disease and be helpful in the future development of treatments. He may be contacted at: Matthew Taylor, MD, PhD Adult Medical Genetics Program Colorado Lysosomal Storage Disease Center 12700 East 19th Avenue, F442, Room 8022 Aurora, CO 80045 Web site: www.danondisease.org Hirschhorn R, Reuser AJJ. Glycogen Storage Disease Type II: Lysosomal Glycogen Storage Diisease Without a-Glucosidase Deficiency (Danon Disease). In: Scriver CR, Beaudet AL, Sly WS, et al., eds. The Metabolic Molecular Basis of Inherited Disease. 8th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies; 2001:3410. D’souza RS, Levandowski C, Slavov D, Graq SL, Allen LA, Adler E, Mestroni L, Taylor MR. Circ Heart Fail. 2014;7(5):843-9. PMID: 25228319 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE] Boucek D, Jirikowic J, Taylor M. Natural history of Danon disease. Genet Med. 2011;13(6):563-8. PMID: 21415759 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE] Stevens-Lapsley JE, Kramer LR, Balter JE, Jirikowic J, Boucek D, Taylor M. Functional performance and muscle strength phenotypes in men and women with Danon disease. Muscle Nerve. 2010;42(6):908-14. PMID: 21104865 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE] Eskelinen EL. Roles of LAMP-1 and LAMP-2 in lysozyme biogenesis and autophagy. Mol Aspects Med. 2006;27:495-502. Prall FR, Drack A, Taylor M, Ku L, et al. Ophthalmic manifestions of Danon disease. Ophthalmology. 2006;113:1010-13. Fanin M, Nascimbeni AC, Fulizio L, Spinazzi M, Melacini P, Angelini C. Generalized lysosome-associated membrane protein-2 defect explains multisystem clinical involvement and allows leukocyte diagnostic screening in Danon disease. Am J Pathol. 2006;168:1309-20. Echaniz-Laguna A, Mohr M, Epailly E, Nishino I, et al. Novel LAMP-2 gene mutation and successful treatment with heart transplantation in a large family with Danon disease. Muscle Nerve. 2006;33:393-97. Yang Z, McMahaon CJ, Smith LR, Bersola J, et al. Danon disease as an underrecognized cause of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in children. Circulation. 2005;112:1612-17. Balmer C, Ballhausen D, Bosshard NU, Steinmann B, et al. Familial X-linked cardiomyopathy (Danon disease) : diagnostic confirmation by mutation analysis of the LAMP2 gene. Eur J Pediatr. 2005;164:509-14. Sugie K, Noguchi S, Kozuka Y, Arikawa-Hirasawa E, et al. Autophagic vacuoles with sarcolemmal features delineate Danon disease and related myopathies. J Neuropathol Exp Neurol. 2005;64:513-22. Charron P, Villard E, Sebillon P, Laforet P, et al. Danon’s disease as a cause of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy : a systematic survey. Heart. 2004;90:842-46. Sugie K, Yamamoto A, Murayama K, Oh SJ, et al. Clinicopathological features of genetically confirmed Danon disease. Neurology. 2002;58 :1773-78. Nishino I, Fu J, Tanji K, Yamada T, et al. Primary LAMP-2 deficiency causes X-linked vacuolar cardiomyopathy and myopathy (Danon disease). Nature. 2000;406 :906-10. Danon disease. Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research. www.gfmer.ch/genetic_diseases_v2/gendis_detail_list.php?cat3=1480 Edited July 4, 2014. Accessed March 25, 2015. Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM). The Johns Hopkins University. Danon Disease. Entry No: 300257. Last Edited 09/11/2013. Available at: http://omim.org/entry/300257 Accessed March 25, 2015. Welcome to DanonDisease.org. DanonDisease.org. www.danondisease.org Accessed March 25, 2015. The information in NORD’s Rare Disease Database is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the advice of a physician or other qualified medical professional. The content of the website and databases of the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) is copyrighted and may not be reproduced, copied, downloaded or disseminated, in any way, for any commercial or public purpose, without prior written authorization and approval from NORD. Individuals may print one hard copy of an individual disease for personal use, provided that content is unmodified and includes NORD’s copyright. National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) 55 Kenosia Ave., Danbury CT 06810 • (203)744-0100

Essay PreviewMore ↓ In the novel, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins, Sissy Hankshaw is a young woman who gets introduced to the world via hitchhiking. From the beginning of the novel, Sissy’s sexuality is foreshadowed. She goes with her mother to see a psychic, Madame Zoe. When asked if Sissy will ever get married, Madame Zoe replies, "There is most clearly a marriage. A husband, no doubt about it, though he is years away…There are children, too. Five, maybe six. But the husband is not the father. They will inherit your characteristics" (Robbins 33). There is also a lot of defying of traditional gender roles in this novel. Sissy hitchhikes all over the eastern United States by herself. Her self-reliance and determination was previously thought to be more of a male characteristic. Along these lines it is also relevant to use Feminist Literary Criticism to assess this novel. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and its main character, Sissy Hankshaw epitomize the change in women and sex roles in the late 1960s and 1970s. First of all, this novel can be looked at as representative of the sexual revolution in the 1970s. According to Linda Grant, author of Sexing the Millenium, up until the mid-1960s, single women had a difficult time obtaining birth control and were given the responsibility of remaining virgins until they consummated a marriage. Abortion and homosexuality were not only illegal, but were taboo topics of discussion. Furthermore, a number of women were trapped in loveless marriages due to strict divorce laws (2). Lillian B. Rubin, author of Erotic Wars, describes the beginnings of the Sexual Revolution: Then came the sixties and the sexual revolution. The restraints against sexual intercourse for unmarried women gave way as the Pill [oral contraceptive] finally freed them from the fear of unwanted pregnancy. Seduction became abbreviated and compressed, oftentimes bypassed altogether, as women, reveling in their newfound liberation, sought the sexual freedom that had for so long been ‘for men only.’ The assumption of the era was that she wanted sex as much as he did, the only question being whether or not they wanted to do it with each other. Young people lived together openly, parading their sexuality before their parents’ outraged and bewildered gaze (13). She goes on to report about an interview with a 15-year-old boy who says, "I guess sex was originally to produce another body; then I guess it was for love; nowadays it’s just for feeling good" (13). How to Cite this Page "Feminism in Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues." 123HelpMe.com. 21 Jul 2019 Need Writing Help? Get feedback on grammar, clarity, concision and logic instantly.Check your paper » - Cultural Perspectives in Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues Literary works are always affected by the times and places in which they are written. Those crafted in Western America often reflect conflicts that occurred between advancing civilization and the free spirited individual. The 1970’s was a particularly popular time for authors to introduce new ideas for living in the modern world. There are few authors who captured the essence and feeling of culture quite like Tom Robbins. Robbins comments on the differences and similarities between Western civilization and Eastern philosophies.... [tags: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues Essays] 3432 words (9.8 pages) - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues - Within the Guidelines of Feminist Discourse Surprisingly, in spite of being a male from the 1970s, Tom Robbins has written a novel, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, supporting feminism. This is a term that most of us are familiar with; yet, what is feminism. The Routledge Critical Dictionary of Feminism and Postfeminism defines "feminist purpose" for us as "an active desire to change women's position in society" (Brown, Meginis, and Bardari, 231). In order to discuss feminism in terms of Robbin's novel, we need to know what feminist theory means when applied to literature.... [tags: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues Essays] 1847 words (5.3 pages) - Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume In his 1984 novel Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins presents a narrative that rivals the often fantastical tales told in myth. Using classical mythology as a foundation, and, in particular, providing a loose adaptation of The Odyssey by Homer, Robbins updates and modifies characters and concepts in an effort to reinforce the importance of the journey of life and the discovery of self. Like the ancient myth-makers, Robbins commands the reader’s attention with outrageous situations and events while at the same time providing characters that the reader can relate to and learn from.... [tags: Tom Robbins Jitterbug Perfume] 3105 words (8.9 pages) - If Samuel Johnson were alive today he would most certainly marvel at the longevity of his unlikely literary creation-the novel. Of course, Johnson might have also been equally impressed by the creative genius of Tom Robbins who put pen to paper and transformed verbs, nouns, and adjectives into an appealing tale of religiosity, world affairs and art while steadfastly conforming to Johnson's credo that "the books we read with pleasure are light compositions which contain a quick succession of events." In an age in which the novel and other creative variations of literary expression are constantly competing with new and emerging forms of electronic media, the success of the nove... [tags: Biography Biographies Essays] 1065 words (3 pages) - Questioning Myths in Tom Robbins’s Another Roadside Attraction Tom Robbins’s controversial first novel, Another Roadside Attraction, epitomizes the declination of religious devotion, especially Catholicism, in America during the 1960s. Influences on Robbins while conceiving this novel include the early history of Christianity, eastern religion, and author Joseph Campbell. Campbell is famous for his massive and detailed comparisons of Western and Eastern spirituality, myth, and belief. Additionally, the experimentation with psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms led Robbins to new perspectives and mind expansion and consequently to question the validity of Christianity and t... [tags: Another Roadside Attraction] 5355 words (15.3 pages) - “The Real Valley of the Dolls”, by Tom Robbins, reminded me of my grandfather, who would tell “off-color” jokes while keeping them acceptable for “mixed company”. Robbins and two of his friends, Alexa and Jon, take the reader on a trip to a place somewhere between Winnemucca and Las Vegas “smack dab in the middle of the Wild American West” (509) in a short story that flows between humor and spirituality, the reverent and the libidinous, the distant and not so distant past. “The Real Valley of the Dolls” refers to North Canyon, which Robbins describes as “rather vaginal in shape, terminating in a scooped out basin .... [tags: Analysis, Tom Robbins] 735 words (2.1 pages) - The True Significance of Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins In his review of Tom Robbins' Skinny Legs and All entitled "Through Salome's Veils to Ultimate Cognition", Tom Clark expressed his dichotomy of opinions regarding the author's style and also the author's message. Although I agree with Mr. Clark in several aspects, I believe he overlooked the true significance of Skinny Legs and All. Clark accurately described Robbins as an extremely clever writer, but unfortunately also one whose uncertainties of tone and stylistic overreaching affect nearly every page.... [tags: Skinny] 2155 words (6.2 pages) - Boys Will be Boys in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” Mark Twain uses “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” to reveal his own childhood; thus, many specifics in the book, such as the characters and the setting are very dear to his heart. It is the story about life in a boy’s world, and it discloses the feelings of Mark Twain concerning his boyhood, his town, and the people there. The time period is about two decades before the Civil War, and the setting is in St. Petersburg, Missouri, a small village on the Mississippi River.... [tags: Tom Sawyer Essays] 1511 words (4.3 pages) - Mark Twain uses the story to reveal his own childhood; as a result, many details in the book, such as the characters and the setting are very dear to his heart. The story is about life in a boy's world, it tells about the feelings Mark Twain had regarding his childhood, his town, and the people that lived there. The time period is about twenty years before the Civil War, and the setting is in St. Petersburg, Missouri, a small community on the Mississippi River. The main character in the book is Tom Sawyer.... [tags: Mark Twain Tom Sawyer] 1045 words (3 pages) - The novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and published in the United States in 1852. The novel depicted slavery as a moral evil and was the cause of much controversy at the time and long after. Uncle Tom's Cabin outraged the South and received praise in the North. The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin was a major turning point for the United States which helped bring about the Civil War. Uncle Tom's Cabin is said to have contributed to the Civil War because it brought the evils of slavery to the attention of Americans more vividly than any other book had done before ("Harriett's Life").... [tags: Uncle Tom's Cabin Essays] 1305 words (3.7 pages) - An Analysis of Yeats’ An Irish Airman Foresees His Death - Cultural Criticism in W.B.Yeats’ An Irish Airman Foresees His Death - Politics and Religion in the Herbert’s Dune Novels - Masculinity, Femininity and Simone Benmussa’s Singular Life of Albert Nobbs - Theme of Love in Joyce’s Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses - Identity in the Works of Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney These ideas about the Sexual Revolution are displayed in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues very clearly. Sissy’s mother leaves the psychic shortly after she is informed that Sissy’s future children will not be fathered by her future husband. She gives Sissy a "rare embrace" and leaves. Sissy goes on to travel from Richmond to Manhattan, where she meets the Countess, a homosexual male socialite. She is introduced to Julian Gitche, who she spends a weekend making love with after she has a group sexual experience with a married couple. She ends up marrying Julian. She goes on later in the novel to meet Bonanza Jellybean, a cowgirl at the Rubber Rose Ranch, and feels sexual desire for her. They have sexual experiences together a few times throughout the novel. Another man that Sissy has sexual intercourse with is the Chink, a sort of legendary wise man. It is not so much that she is in love with any of these sexual partners, as earlier generations would have as a prerequisite, but that all of these people make her feel desirable. Also note that Sissy is technically an adulteress because during her sexual escapades with Bonanza Jellybean and the Chink, she is still married to Julian Gitche. Clearly she did not have sexual relations with all of these individuals for procreation or love, but rather personal pleasure. As for the Countess, a homosexual who is obsessed with feminine hygiene and enterprises upon it, he also deviates from traditional sex roles. According to Love, Sex, and Sex Roles by Constantina Safilios-Rothschild, prior to the 1960s, homosexuality was taboo. Men were not able to express emotional need to other men, but rather had to compete in work, sports, etc. (74). Prior to the era of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, lesbianism was viewed by some psychoanalysts as "narcissistic regression." This means to say the lesbians were immature in that they could only love themselves and "loving" one of the same gender was only an expression of self-love (Jeffreys 316). Homosexuality is a theme in Robbins’ novel. The countess is homosexual and is very emotionally sensitive, a stereotypical characteristic of male homosexuals, but he is also a shrewd businessman, a more dominant characteristic. The same gender experiences that Sissy has in the novel defy the earlier psychoanalytical view of lesbians. Sissy truly does care for Bonanza Jellybean and wants to help her on the Rubber Rose Ranch. They become close friends throughout the novel in addition to Sissy’s attachment to the other cowgirls. Feminist theory can easily be applied to this novel. In Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, author Jonathan Culler writes: …We consider gender as performative, in the sense that it is not what is but what one does. A man is not what one is but something one does, a condition one enacts. Your gender is created by your acts, in the way that a promise is created by the act of promising. You become a man or a woman by repeated acts, which…depend on social conventions, habitual ways of doing something in a culture. Just as there are regular, socially established ways of promising, making a bet, giving orders, and getting married, so there are socially established ways of being a man or being a woman (99). There are several examples in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues to back up Culler’s theory, the most prominent examples being the Countess and Bonanza Jellybean. One could arguably say that the Countess is not, in fact, male. He is often referred to in the novel as "she" and at one point in the novel asks Sissy to imagine what it is like to be a "male Countess." In reality, there is no such thing as a male Countess, as he would be a Count. Not only does her refer to himself as a female, but he dresses like one in very ornamented clothing. Bonanza Jellybean exhibits traditional male roles of aggression. At one point, she holds the ranch manager hostage and demands that certain things are changes. Traditionally women would take a more passive approach to confrontation. The Sexual Revolution and Feminism have paved the way for women of my generation and beyond. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is a timeless record of the Sexual Revolution and gives strong examples of women in power. It makes strength in women, sexual liberation, homosexuality, and independence into desirable qualities. This novel is also easily criticized formally from a Feminist Theory perspective with multiple examples of female domination. Sissy Hankshaw is the perfect example of a sexually liberated women, just as Bonanza Jellybean and the Countess are examples of redefined sex roles in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Grant, Linda. Sexing the Millenium: Women and the Sexual Revolution. New York: Grove Press, 1994. Jeffreys, Shiela. Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution. Washington Square, NY: New York University Press, 1991. Robbins, Tom. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. New York: Bantam Books, 1977. Rubin, Lillian B. Erotic Wars: What Happened to the Sexual Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Girous, 1990. Safilios-Rothschild, Constantina. Love, Sex, and Sex Roles. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977.

Soil is a natural body consisting of layers (soil horizons) of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics. Uses of Soil: 1. Soil is used in agriculture, where it serves as the primary nutrient base for the plants. Soil resources are critical to the environment, as well as to food and fiber production. Soil provides minerals and water to plants. Soil is used to make plants grow healthy. The types of soil used in agriculture (among other things, such as the purported level of moisture in the soil) vary with respect to the species of plants that are cultivated. 2. Soil is used in constructions and arts. Soil material is a critical component in the mining and construction industries. Soil serves as a foundation for most construction projects. Massive volumes of soil can be involved in surface mining, road building, and dam construction. Earth sheltering is the architectural practice of using soil for external thermal mass against building walls. Soil is used to make pots. 3. Soil play an important role in filtrating and purifying water. After coming down as precipitation, much of the rain water is percolated through the many horizons of a soil profile and renamed as groundwater. As the water moves through different areas such as wetlands, forests, and riparian zones many pollutants are removed. Pollutants such as viruses, oils, metals, excess nutrients, and sediments are filtered out by the soil and surrounding organisms. 4. Waste management often has a soil component. Landfills use soil for daily cover. Septic drain fields treat septic tank effluent using aerobic soil processes. 5. Organic soils, especially peat, serve as a significant fuel resource.

Vertical gardening is an approach used to grow vegetables up and down, rather than side to side like in a traditional horizontal garden. In a vertical garden, vegetables grow up tall structures instead of across the ground. Vertical gardening is an alternative for gardeners with limited space. Through vertical gardening, you also can obstruct undesirable views or create an area of architectural interest. Use these tips to grow vegetables vertically. Prepare a Vertical Garden 1Determine where to situate the vertical garden. Most vegetables require at least 6 hours of sun, so choose a sunny location for the vertical garden. If you live in an apartment building, a sunny balcony may be an option. If you have a yard, consider a sunny location against a south-facing wall of your house. 2Select vertical structures. In order for plants to grow vertically, they need a vertical support system. Common support structures include trellises, tripods, pyramids, walls, fences, wire cages and walls. Arches or arbors can serve as focal areas while also supporting vegetables. Almost any structure that points toward the sky can be used for vertical gardening. Consider creative options like bamboo poles, tree branches, ladders, sunflowers or corn stalks. - Choose a support structure strong enough for the vegetables you want to grow. Mature plants loaded down with vegetables can be heavy. For example, tomato plants require very sturdy vertical structures, while peas may climb almost any structure without bearing much weight on it. - Place the support system in your garden or on your patio before planting vegetables. This prevents you from damaging plants. - Locate vertical supports on the north or east side of the garden where they won't block the sun from the growing vegetables. - Anchor the support system securely. Vertical supports like trellises or wire cages can be staked directly in the ground. Trellises and other flat vertical supports also can be attached to the exterior wall of a home. If you attach a vertical support to a wall, leave space between the wall and the trellis for air circulation as the plant climbs. 3Prepare the soil. Whether you plant vegetables in the ground or in containers, soil quality is important for your vertical garden. Use weed-free, compost-rich soil. To encourage proper drainage in containers, mix the soil with peat moss or perlite. 4Choose containers as applicable. If you are growing vegetables in containers, you can use almost any type of container. Make sure that the container is deep enough to accommodate the type of vegetable you are growing. Larger and heavier vegetables will require larger and sturdier containers. Consider hanging baskets, urns, window boxes, washtubs, coffee cans, clay pots or wooden crates. If the container does not have drainage holes, drill small holes on the bottom of the container before filling it with soil. Grow Vegetables Vertically 1Understand the basics of growing vegetables vertically. Almost any type of vegetable can be grown vertically as long as the container is deep enough to accommodate the plant and the vertical staking is strong enough to hold the plant. - Evaluate your garden conditions. Choose vegetables that will thrive in your garden based on its lights, wind, heat and moisture. If you are growing vertical vegetables in containers, be prepared to water the containers daily. - Plant the "vine" varieties of plants when applicable. If you are growing beans, cucumbers, squash or beans, be sure to plant the vine variety, which will climb vertically, instead of the bush variety. 2Select vegetables to grow. While most vegetables can be grown vertically, several types of vegetables are known for their success in vertical gardens. If you are just starting out in vertically gardening, consider these vegetables. - Grow pole beans vertically. Pole beans will climb almost any structure, including other plants. The Native Americans often planted beans and corn together because the corn would provide a vertical support for the beans. - Grow peas in a vertical garden. Like pole beans, peas will climb almost any structure and need little encouragement to twine around vertical supports. Consider growing peas on trellises, bamboo sticks or even over an arbor. - Grow winter squash and gourds vertically. Winter squash and gourds have long vines that can extend up to 10 feet (3.0 m) for the squash and 25 feet (7.6 m) for the gourds. Because the vines grow so long and become heavy, you must provide a sturdy, secure vertical support. To provide extra support to heavy winter squash, such as butternut, wrap cloth twine or strips of pantyhose around each fruit and tie to the vertical supporting structure. Do not use string to support the squash because it may cut into the stems. Some garden centers sell materials made specifically for supporting large vegetables, like winter squash and gourds. - Grow melons and pumpkins in a vertical garden. Like winter squash, melons and pumpkins have long vines and the fruit needs additional support when growing vertically. Grow melons and pumpkins up strong, secure vertical structures. Wrap slings made of old sheets, rags, towels or fabric scraps around the melons and pumpkins and secure them to the fence or trellis to provide needed support. - Grow cucumbers vertically. Cucumbers (the vine variety, not the bush variety) are ideal for a vertical garden because they naturally climb. They can be grown up almost any structure, such as an A-frame, cage or trellis, but it must be strong enough to support the weight of the vines. Initially, cucumbers may need a little encouragement to attach themselves to the vertical structure, but as soon as the tendrils wind around the support, they will climb vertically without assistance. The cucumbers will hang vertically from the plant, making them easy to harvest. - Grow tomatoes in a vertical garden. Because tomatoes are heavy plants, they require a sturdy vertical structure. As the tomato plants grow, tie the branches to the structure with a soft twine or cotton cloth at regular intervals. - If you use bamboo stakes or iron rods as vertical structures, buy "cane toppers" for the ends. These toppers, which can be a plastic ball or a ceramic decorative structure, keep the stakes or rods from poking you in the eyes while working around them. - Do not pull fruits or vegetables like cucumbers, melons or squash off of the vertically growing vines. Pulling the fruits or vegetables too hard may separate the vine from its vertical structure or uproot it. Rather, use a small knife or pruning shears to remove fruits and vegetables from the vine. - The climbing vines of many vegetables can have sharp, prickly edges. To protect your hands, wear garden gloves when harvesting vegetables. Things You'll Need - Vertical support structures - Vegetable seeds or seedlings - Compost-rich soil - Peat moss or perlite - Cloth twine or strips of fabric - Old sheets, rags, towels or fabric - Garden gloves - Small knife or pruning shears

I-cell disease (mucolipidosis II) is a rare inherited metabolic disorder characterized by coarse facial features, skeletal abnormalities and mental retardation. The symptoms of I-cell disease are similar to but more severe than those of Hurler syndrome. The symptoms associated with this disorder typically become obvious during infancy and may include multiple abnormalities of the skull and face and growth delays. This disorder belongs to a group of diseases known as lysosomal storage disorders. Lysosomes are particles bound in membranes within cells that break down certain fats and carbohydrates. Multiple enzyme deficiencies associated with I-cell disease lead to the accumulation of certain fatty substances (mucolipids) and certain complex carbohydrates (mucopolysaccharides) within the cells of many tissues of the body. I-cell disease is caused by a mutation in the GNPTA gene that leads to a deficiency in the enzyme UDP-N-acetylglucoseamine-1-phosphotransferase. I-cell disease is inherited as an autosomal recessive genetic trait. Some of the physical features associated with I-cell disease (ML II) may be apparent at birth (congenital), whereas other features may become apparent between the ages of 6 to 10 months. Craniofacial abnormalities may include coarse facial features, a depressed nasal bridge, a long and narrow head, an unusually high and narrow forehead, and/or skin folds on the inner corners of the eyes (epicanthal folds). The skin may appear to be unusually thick and tight in certain areas of the body (e.g., face, arms, and legs). The corneas of the eyes may appear cloudy. Infants with I-cell disease may also have skeletal malformations including abnormal curvature of the spine from side to side (scoliosis) and/or from front to back (kyphosis), an unusually short neck, dislocation of the hip at birth (congenital), swelling or enlargement of the top portion of the spine (lumbar gibbus), and/or limited mobility of the shoulders. Skeletal abnormalities may also include misaligned bones in the spinal column (vertebral breaking and wedging), wider than normal spaces between ribs, and/or unusual positioning of the fingers (metacarpal pointing). On occasion, infants with I-cell disease may have fingers that are fused together (split hand deformity or ectrodactyly). (For more information on this disorder, choose “split hand” as your search term in the Rare Disease Database.) Children with I-cell disease typically have severe delays in the development of gross and fine motor skills, hearing loss, lack of muscle tone (hypotonia), and varying degrees of mental retardation. Growth delays usually result in short stature (dwarfism). In some children with this disorder, a portion of the intestines may protrude through an abnormal opening in the abdominal wall in the area of the navel (umbilical hernia) and/or the groin (inguinal hernia). Abnormal enlargement of the liver (hepatomegaly), is often observed in association with a protruding abdomen in infants with I-cell disease. Other symptoms of I-cell disease may include frequent respiratory infections, constipation and/or diarrhea, overgrowth of gum tissue (gingival hyperplasia), and/or joint stiffness or joints that are “frozen” in place (contractures). Some children with I-cell disease may have abnormalities of the heart such as defects of the heart valves, enlargement of the heart (cardiomegaly), congestive heart failure and/or heart murmurs. Individuals with I-cell disease often die in childhood, although some patients survive into their teens. I-cell disease (Mucolipidosis II) is caused by a mutation in the GNPTA gene that is located on the long arm of chromosome 4 (4q21-q23). Chromosomes, which are present in the nucleus of human cells, carry the genetic information for each individual. Human body cells normally have 46 chromosomes. Pairs of human chromosomes are numbered from 1 through 22 and the sex chromosomes are designated X and Y. Males have one X and one Y chromosome and females have two X chromosomes. Each chromosome has a short arm designated “p” and a long arm designated “q”. Chromosomes are further sub-divided into many bands that are numbered. For example, “chromosome 4q21” refers to band 21 on the long arm of chromosome 4. The numbered bands specify the location of the thousands of genes that are present on each chromosome. The GNPTA gene mutation leads to a deficiency in the enzyme UDP-N-acetylglucoseamine-1-phosphotransferase that is involved in the synthesis of mannose-6-phosphate, resulting in decreased intracellular levels of lysosomal enzymes and increased levels in blood serum and body fluid. The symptoms of I-cell disease develop due to deficiencies of a variety of lysosomal enzymes in the cells of the body causing an abnormal accumulation of certain fatty substances (mucolipids) and certain complex carbohydrates (mucopolysaccharides) within the cells of many tissues of the body. I-cell disease is inherited as an autosomal recessive genetic trait. Genetic diseases are determined by the combination of genes for a particular trait that are on the chromosomes received from the father and the mother. Recessive genetic disorders occur when an individual inherits the same abnormal gene for the same trait from each parent. If an individual receives one normal gene and one gene for the disease, the person will be a carrier for the disease, but usually will not show symptoms. The risk for two carrier parents to both pass the defective gene and, therefore, have an affected child is 25% with each pregnancy. The risk to have a child who is a carrier like the parents is 50% with each pregnancy. The chance for a child to receive normal genes from both parents and be genetically normal for that particular trait is 25%. The risk is the same for males and females. I-Cell Disease is a rare disorder that affects males and females in equal numbers. Siblings of affected infants have a 1 in 4 chance of being affected by this disorder. Approximately 30 cases of I-Cell Disease have been reported in the medical literature. This disease appears to be more common in Japan than in other countries. I-cell disease can be diagnosed before birth (prenatally) utilizing amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling. Amniocentesis is a procedure in which a small portion of the fluid that surrounds the fetus (amniotic fluid) is removed and cells from the fluid are then tested in the laboratory. Chorionic villus sampling (CVS) is a prenatal diagnostic procedure in which a small sample of tissue is removed from the placenta. Abnormally low levels of UDP-N-acetylglucoseamine-1-phosphotransferase enzyme activity in amniotic fluid cells or chorionic villi suggest the diagnosis of I-cell disease. The diagnosis of I-cell disease may be confirmed in an infant by a thorough clinical evaluation, patient history, and specialized laboratory testing. UDP-N-acetylglucoseamine-1-phosphotransferase enzyme activity can be measured in white blood cells or in cultured fibroblasts. Lysosomal enzymes are typically elevated in the blood serum and decreased in cultured fibroblasts. The treatment of I-cell disease is symptomatic and supportive. Antibiotics are often prescribed for respiratory infections and yearly flu shots are important. Physical therapy is encouraged to maintain joint function and mobility as long as possible. Total hip replacement has been most effective when performed after puberty. Other orthopedic complications may be managed as they arise. Hearing aids should be considered. Sleep studies can determine the degree of obstructive sleep apnea and the need for treatment. In some cases, heart problems may be treated surgically. Genetic counseling is advised for families who have a child with this disorder. Experimental therapies are aimed at treating I-cell disease as early as possible. Bone marrow replacement transplantation has been attempted for the treatment of this disorder but the benefit was limited. Information on current clinical trials is posted on the Internet at www.clinicaltrials.gov. All studies receiving U.S. government funding, and some supported by private industry, are posted on this government web site. For information about clinical trials being conducted at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, MD, contact the NIH Patient Recruitment Office: Tollfree: (800) 411-1222 TTY: (866) 411-1010 For information about clinical trials sponsored by private sources, contact: Muenzer J and Wedehase B. Mucolipidosis ll and lll. In: The NORD Guide to Rare Disorders, Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins, 2003:472-473. Kornfeld S, Sly WS, I-cell and pseudo-Hurler polydystrophy: disorders of lysosomal enzyme phosphorylation and localization. In: Scriver CR, Beaudet AL, Sly WS, et al, eds. The Metabolic and Molecular Basis of Inherited Disease, 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995:2495-2508. Buyse ML, ed. Birth Defects Encyclopedia. Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1990:1157-58. Wyngaarden JB and Smith LH. Cecil Textbook of Medicine, 19th ed. W.B. Saunders Co. 1992:1121. Beck M, Barone R, et al. Inter-and intrafamilial variability in mucolipidosis ll (I-cell disease). Clin Genet 1995;47;191-200. Pazzaglia UE, et al. Study of bone pathology in early mucolipidosis ll (I-cell disease). Eur J Pediatr 1989;148(6):553-57. Pazzaglia UE, et al. Mucolipidosis ll: Correlation between radiological features and histopathology of the bones. Pedatr Radio 1989;19(6-7):406-13. Poenaru L, et al. Prenatal diagnosis of mucolipidosis type ll on first-trimester amniotic fluid. Prenat Diagn 1990;10(4):231-35. FROM THE INTERNET McKusick VA, ed. Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM). Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University; Entry No. 252500; Last Update: 5/30/03. The information in NORD’s Rare Disease Database is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the advice of a physician or other qualified medical professional. The content of the website and databases of the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) is copyrighted and may not be reproduced, copied, downloaded or disseminated, in any way, for any commercial or public purpose, without prior written authorization and approval from NORD. Individuals may print one hard copy of an individual disease for personal use, provided that content is unmodified and includes NORD’s copyright. National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) 55 Kenosia Ave., Danbury CT 06810 • (203)744-0100

Cognitive therapy is based on the theory that much of how we feel is determined by what we think. Disorders, such as depression, are believed to be the result of faulty thoughts and beliefs. By correcting these inaccurate beliefs, the personís perception of events and emotional state improve. Rating: 2.00 (out of 10.0, based upon 1 votes) > Vote for this resource Submitted by: MICHAEL HERKOV, PH.D Submitted on: 7-Jan-2002

Signs and Symptoms of Substance Abuse Substance abuse is a serious issue and can have grave consequences when not addressed. Simply, someone has a substance abuse issue when they use, or overuse, psychoactive substances such as alcohol, recreational drugs, or prescription drugs. These drugs can have serious side effects, especially when not used properly or overused. Addicts lose control of their relationships, their work, and sometimes even lose their lives, so it’s important to act fast when faced with a substance abuse issue. Substance abuse can start out in a seemingly harmless fashion – an extra drink of alcohol or a few pills to ease the pain. It can start by taking drugs to help focus for an exam or relax after the work is done. Some people start taking drugs to make them feel cool or to deal with complex issues at home. Whatever the cause is, the person continues to take the drug, sometimes increasing the amount or adding a new drug to the mix until their problems go from small to large. How to Spot Substance Abuse If you believe someone you love is having substance abuse issues, the first thing you should do is learn how to spot the problem. The signs can vary depending on the type of substance, but there are a few common signs that tell you things are not as they should be. - Blackout and Memory Loss: This generally occurs after drinking too much and results in not remembering what happened while intoxicated. If excessive alcohol or drugs are consumed, the person can black out completely and get themselves killed. - Violent Outbursts: When someone starts engaging in violent fights with family and friends, it may be a sign of depression, mood swings, and addiction. - Unnatural Relaxation: On the other end, when someone is unnaturally relaxed in what is normally a tense situation or they’re not contributing in their normal way, appearing to be zoned out instead, it can also be a sign of addiction. This relaxation can lead to skipping school or work, sleeping too much, and generally shirking responsibilities. - Change in Personality: Both with violent outbursts and unnatural relaxation, you’re seeing a drastic change in someone’s normal behavior. These changes are pronounced to the people who love them. Some substances can even change someone’s appearance (and not for the better), yet people will continue to abuse until steps are taken to get treatment. - Preoccupation: Addicts often get preoccupied with when they’re going to get their next drink or their next fix of their drug of choice. Often, they are unable to control their behavior. - Physical Symptoms: Often, drugs can cause our bodies to react in different ways, from pupils that are over dilated to increased heart rate to unusual nosebleeds. Pay attention to these symptoms to understand a pattern of behavior. - Withdrawal Symptoms: If someone has been abusing a drug or alcohol and is trying to treat themselves, you may notice increased anxiety, sickness, trembling, and even blood in their vomit. Withdrawal can be painful and harmful; it is wise to seek medical intervention immediately. How Friends and Family Can Help Families can be key to identifying substance-abuse problems and helping their loved ones find the right treatment and stay on track. Family members need to remember that their own physical and mental health can be key to helping their loved one recover. - Learn About Addiction: There are lots of resources available online, in bookstores, and in the library to teach families how to spot, handle, and treat addiction. There’s scientific research about how drugs work and what can be done to reverse the damage, and this same science can help explain how and why people become addicted. - Create Dialogue: When you first talk to your loved one about substance abuse, focus on listening to what they are saying. Even if they initially deny the problem, they may still drop hits about what might be causing the issue. Show that you are willing to listen and take the time necessary to understand and relate to them. - Find a Support Group: Just as there are support groups for people struggling with addiction, there is support for family members. These groups can help you address issues of failure, trust, and frustration in an effective manner. - Try Family Therapy: Family therapy can provide the tools and setting for family members to learn how to communicate effectively and listen to what others are saying. They can also learn how to help the addict deal with triggers in their daily life that are causing the issues. - Spend Time as a Family: This can seem silly, especially as everyone is hurrying about, but sitting down together and eating is a chance to provide support to every member of the family. Reconnecting, sharing, and spending time together builds on work done in family therapy, which makes everyone feel like they’re an important part of the whole. - Set Expectations: While entering treatment is a positive first step, it’s only the first step. Family members need to understand that their work will continue even when the addict returns from their treatment and that aftercare is important to the overall success of the treatment. - Take Care of Yourself: You can’t help someone else if you have your own physical or mental health issues. Exercise, eat nutritious meals, and find your own joy in life so that you can help set a good example for your loved one. Choosing the Right Treatment and Rehabilitation Center Once there’s a commitment to seek treatment, the next step is deciding the best direction to go from the options available. You may want to start by seeing a doctor or a mental health counselor, or it may make sense to find a rehab facility and start the detox process. When you feel good and your body is healthy, it’s less likely that you’ll want to screw it up with drugs. In the most severe cases, the patient may need medical attention immediately either in the form of a hospital or the detox services of a treatment center. Other special needs such as a handicap or dietary restrictions may require additional considerations. Families also need to consider their financial situation and whether their insurance will cover the cost of a treatment program. We can’t answer those questions without your input, but we can help you find the best treatment situation. You may need to know if they offer inpatient detox, the specific types of programs and therapies they offer, and whether they will accept your insurance. Once you’ve found a facility that offers the specific combination of services and amenities required, but before the treatment begins, make sure you know what the average length of stay at the facility is and how long the patient is expected to stay. You will also want to know what the cost of the treatment is and how family members can be involved. Then, there are questions you want to ask around licensing, making sure the staff members are certified, the facility is accredited, if they’re licensed to deal with the specific situation, the patient-to-staff ratio, and how long they’ve been in business. You also want to know if there’s a waiting list and how long it is, how they differentiate themselves from other facilities, what their treatment philosophy is, and how they follow up with patients to prevent relapse. Location is also a big consideration. While it may seem that closer to home is better, in general, getting away from stressors and bad influences to put normal life on hold can help get people in the right mind-set to make a change. This is true for those who can put their lives on pause and work remotely. Other individuals with children or other family to care for may opt for treatment closer to home. Choosing the right treatment center from the multitude of options can seem daunting, so it is helpful to have someone guide you through the process thoroughly and quickly so that the patient can be assured of starting the right program for them. Whether they need to start with an intense medically supervised detox or go into individual counseling and other kinds of behavioral therapies, there’s a treatment center that can work for them. Fighting through detoxification, withdrawal, and initial cravings can be easier when removed from the home and with the support of trained professionals. What to Expect at a Rehabilitation Center Once you’ve chosen a rehab center and arrived, they’ll start by helping you through the withdrawal process. This can take hours or days, depending on the substance you’re addicted to and how much you’re taking. You may simply be asked to go cold and not take any more, but in many cases, you’ll start weaning off the substance. In some cases, you’ll switch to a different, less harmful drug and then start weaning slowly off that instead. If necessary, you’ll have medical supervision and around-the-clock care as your body detoxes. After you’ve finished detoxing, you’ll start counseling to help you handle withdrawal and cravings. This is often based around a 12-step program. You’ll stay in the center anywhere from a few days to 12 months (depending on your addiction and personality), and get the structure and support from the community and staff the entire time you’re in residence. You may also be prescribed medicine to help you handle your cravings and side effects, and be monitored while on that medication. You are also likely to participate in individual and group therapy along with other treatments designed to help you learn to take better care of yourself mentally and physically. Counselors will address any underlying causes of the addiction and help you make a plan to deal with those issues when you return back to normal life. Depending on the facility you choose, you may find that additional options are offered including access to gyms and personal trainers to help you get your fitness on the right track, and nutritionists to help you learn how to eat healthy. When you feel good and your body is healthy, it’s less likely that you’ll want to screw it up with drugs. Once you leave the rehab facility, your treatment isn’t over. You’ll go into an aftercare program that is designed just for you to help prevent a relapse. After all, once you’ve gone through the detoxification and withdrawal process and learned how to live a healthy lifestyle, you want to make sure the positive changes stick. How to Afford a Trip to a Rehabilitation Center This may sound like a lot of treatment and a huge expense. Depending on the facility, it very well could be. However, in many situations, insurance will cover or subsidize your treatment. Rehab-Finder.Org can look at your insurance plan and discover which treatment options are covered, fully or partially, by your insurance, and then help you determine which one of those options best fits in with your treatment plan. From there, you can start doing your research about the facility’s accreditation, what types of amenities or other treatments they offer, and what therapies you want to take part in. Again, Rehab-Finder.Org is here to help you streamline this process and help you collect the information you need to make the best decision for you. Learn more about paying for rehab. Attending a treatment facility can be the first step towards a new, healthy life and a positive perspective. While you’re in the treatment, take the time to think about what you truly want out of life, both personally and professionally. One advantage of many treatment programs is that you’re far away from the stressors of your normal life and can take the time to truly think about your goals. As you come off the substance abuse, you will be clear-headed and able to think about things you may have avoided in the past. While we can’t promise you’ll find your life’s purpose, we know that going to treatment will help you get back on track to being healthier and happier. When you’re ready to make the commitment, or if you are seeking advice to help a loved one, give us a call at 877-251-4813 to learn what options are available.

More than a million pets in the U.S. have heartworms. But heartworm disease is preventable What is heartworm disease? Heartworm disease is a life-threatening parasite (worm) that affects the bloodstream of both dogs and cats, that live in the heart. This parasite can decrease blood flow, cause damage to the heart and lungs, and is one of the leading causes of death of pets in East Texas. How does my pet get heartworm disease? Pets are infected with heartworms by ONE bite from an infected mosquito. Not all mosquitos are infected with this parasite, however, if you will refer to the incidence map above, you will note that Rains County and most of East Texas is in the highest population of disease, which indicates a significant amount of our mosquitos are carrying this disease to your pets. What can I do to ensure my pet does not get heartworm disease? Keeping your pets indoors, or with long hair, are NOT ways to prevent heartworm infection. The very deadly disease is only prevented and treated using veterinary administered, or prescribed products. Please contact our clinic today to discuss starting your pet on heartworm preventative. If my pet does have heartworm disease, what can I do about it? Here at Emory Veterinary Clinic, we treat patients weekly with heartworm disease, though it is both costly and does not come without consequences. Each pet is treated and staged as an individual and a treatment plan will be discussed with you that fits the needs of your pet, and your financial capability. For more information regarding heartworm disease, please visit the American heartworm society website, where you will find the latest research and information.

Individual differences | Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology | In scientific theory a hypothetical construct is an explanatory variable which is not directly observable. For example, the concepts of intelligence and motivation are used to explain phenomena in psychology, but neither is directly observable. A hypothetical construct differs from an intervening variable in that it has properties and implications which have not been demonstrated in empirical research. These serve as a guide to further research. An intervening variable is a summary of observed empirical findings.

Guest Blog by the Society for the Improvement of Rural People (SIRP) In Igbo land, FGM is usually carried out to coincide with the child’s naming ceremony, which is a festive event with gifts and refreshments. In Igbo culture, the naming ceremony comes up almost immediately after the birth of the child. It is normally done on the 7th to the 12th day after the birth of the child. When a child is born in Igbo land, he or she is welcomed into the world with joyous songs. In our culture, as soon as the news of a safe delivery of a baby is broken, the women around will assemble and start singing joyous songs. These women will then go into the house and rub “Nzu” (a white powder) on their necks as a mark of purity of heart, goodwill and welcome for the new child. After this, the family will then start making arrangements for the child’s naming ceremony, which is a very big event in Igbo land. In Igbo culture, the naming ceremony of a child is often referred to as “ikuputanwa or igu nwa’ aha” and this marks the formal presentation of the child to his people, which comprises of his kinsmen, family, friends, well-wishers and the entire community at large. This event is normally done to fulfill the social- religious obligations, that are believed to become activated when a child is born, as well as to thank God for the safe delivery of the child and to ask him to guide the child, as he embarks on a journey through the earth. In traditional Igbo life, there is a lot in a name. The name is more than just a tag; it’s more of an identity. An Igbo name always bears a message, a meaning i.e. like my own name Somtochukwu which simply means (follow me and praise God). Now coming to the naming ceremony proper, in Igbo land, the paternal grand-parents officiate Igbo naming ceremonies. The child is brought out by the paternal grandmother, who hands him/her to the child’s father. The ceremony then begins with the usual breaking of kola-nuts and prayer, which involves the pouring of wine libation to the gods. After this, the child is then given a name by the father. In some communities in Igbo land, a tree is also planted to represent the life and survival of the child. The ceremony is then ended with the presentation of gifts to the child. It is under the scenario, that the girl child is also mutilated. In Igbo land, the naming and cuttings are intertwined. Society for the Improvement of Rural People (SIRP) has found out that poor mothers could not openly resist their girls undergoing FGM because it would also mean there would be no naming celebration. It is because of this situation, that SIRP introduced the sponsorship of naming ceremonies for children, whose parents showed a commitment not to cut their infant daughters. These parents then went on to become SIRP’s FGM Abolition Champions and Peer Educators in their communities, working hard and often facing social persecution.

https://bhikkhucintita.wordpress.com/ho ... -buddhism/ that Ven Gavesako linked to recently are an interesting, though somewhat rambling, discussion of Folk vs Essential Buddhism, and how they are necessary for each other. In particular, the theme is how Folk Buddhism involves integration of local culture. And, of course, the key question (not fully developed in the series yet) is: Which aspects of Western Buddhist practice are Folk Buddhism? Here are a few random snippets. https://bhikkhucintita.wordpress.com/20 ... uddhism-7/ A common factor in the way the Refuges are practiced and understood in American Folk Buddhism is free-thinking, captured for instance in the following quote: “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” - “The Buddha”Free-thinking is related to the Protestant rejection of authority that we discussed last week, but more importantly to the post-(European-)Enlightenment regard for rational or critical thinking and the parallel disparagement of “faith,” and accounts for the popularity in the West of the quote above. This passage was however never spoken by the Buddha. I don’t know who made it up. https://bhikkhucintita.wordpress.com/20 ... uddhism-9/ It is hardly surprising that individualism as a strong factor in American and Western culture should also be a strong factor in American and Western Folk Buddhism. Here, as with other aspects of Folk Buddhism, my interest will be in investigating to what extent its particular forms are friendly to, indifferent to or inimical to Essential Buddhism. Our Authentic Self. A common Western Folk understanding is that Buddhism (or sometimes Zen) is about getting to know, trust and to free your authentic, inner or true self or nature, a self that has been suppressed by social conditioning and other inauthentic factors, but when unleashed is the source of creativity, spirituality, virtue and wisdom. Often the authentic self is identified with Buddha Nature, a pristine aspect of ourselves free from defilement, which is capable of awakening or even already awakened. If these statements do not have a Buddhist origin, where did they come from? The answer is … European Romanticism and its later expressions. As Bhante says, a characteristic of Folk Buddhism is drawing on local culture...

This article was originally published under the name Chris Duggan in the Guardian newspaper’s Face to Faith column in June 2007. These days in the Church of England, “let us pray” usually means “sit down”, whereas a Roman Catholic congregation will take this as an invitation to stand up. This is a trivial example of a favourite pastime of mine: translating words and concepts between religions. Mahmoud Ayoub, a Muslim scholar with a deep knowledge of Christianity, once drew a parallel between the Prophet Muhammad and the Virgin Mary: the prophet brought the Qur’an into the world, and the Qur’an can be seen as the incarnate word of God. It’s much more than a sacred text: its written and spoken Arabic form embody its meaning, and any translation is seen merely as a commentary on the original. Reciting the daily prayers taken from it, with the appropriate movements, could be compared to taking holy communion. The comparison may offend some Muslims and Christians, and history is stuffed with battles fought over creeds and single texts, even over single words such as filioque (“and from the son”) in the western Christian creed – does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father or from the Father and the Son? Few now even understand the terms of the debate, let alone the passions it engendered. In a world dominated by Middle East conflicts, it is more urgent than ever that words and creeds emerge from the trenches and dare to divest themselves of the armour that is designed to shore up a reassuring sense of identity, under the guise of religious faith. This process has always been a central concern of the mystical tradition of all the world religions: those who penetrate to the heart of their faith invite their coreligionists to go beyond words and concepts to a level of experience that escapes definition. It is at this point that the dialogue with atheism and agnosticism begins. Ibn Arabi, a hugely important thinker from medieval Andalusia, where Christian, Jewish and Muslim ideas freely cross-fertilised, preferred al-Haq to any of the other 99 names of God in the Islamic tradition. If this is translated as “the Truth”, it sounds like a metaphysical entity. If it is translated as “the Real”, or just “reality”, transcendence is brought down to earth, where it belongs. This can spark a train of thought about just what we mean by God, and whether all that believers attach to that loaded word is really the preserve of theism. Is it too much to argue that to speak of God is idolatrous? To avoid the word completely may be impractical for believers, but to hesitate to name what is beyond words is a good discipline. The Jews have long insisted that the letters YHWH that denote God should not be pronounced. I find substituting the word “life” for “God” in religious texts very illuminating. It is tempting to think that the mystic’s “cloud of unknowing” is some transcendental, floaty experience that has nothing to do with the unknowing of the agnostic. And yet the position of the atheist or the agnostic, rejecting any notion of God as a concept that can be defined, has much to teach religious people who think they have the source of everything sussed. So does the inquiring scepticism of a scientist approaching nature with an open mind. Ibn Arabi is not popular with fundamentalist Muslims, but fundamentalism may be another religion we need to translate from. What are we to make of fundamentalism finding security in its certainty that the opposing camp is wrong? Is there a non-pejorative word for that in the language of pluralism? An image stays in my mind of Richard Dawkins, a high priest of fundamentalist atheism, in his documentary The Root of All Evil? He could have been a sixth-century Celtic monk as he flung his arms wide in a wilderness to bear witness to what some might call the glory of creation. Do we dare translate “Creator God” to “the big bang” or “evolution” and back again, to see what might be lost – or found – in translation? © Chris Fewings 2007

In this section, we will learn what the type attribute is and how to use it. What is type Attribute in HTML <link> Tag? With the `type` attribute, we can set the media type of the target document set in the `href` attribute. This type then helps browsers to know how to deal with the target document (interpretation and display) For example, if the type of the target document is CSS, then we set the value of this attribute to “text/css”. HTML type Attribute in <link> Tag Syntax: <link href = “document address” type = “document type”> <link> Tag type Attribute Values Depending on the type of the target document, we can choose one of the values listed in the media type.