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Saddam Hussein had high levels of
torture and mass
Secret police, torture, murders, deportations, forced
disappearances, targeted assassinations
, chemical weapons
, and the destruction of
(more specifically, the
destruction of the food sources of rival groups) were some of the
methods Saddam Hussein used to maintain control. The total number
related to torture and murder
during this period are unknown, as are the reports of human rights violations
issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment
Documented human rights violations 1979-2003
Human rights organizations have documented government approved
, acts of torture, and
for decades since Saddam Hussein came to
power in 1979 until his fall in 2003.
- In 2002, a resolution sponsored by the European Union was adopted by the Commission
for Human Rights, which stated that there had been no improvement
in the human rights crisis in Iraq. The statement condemned
President Saddam Hussein's government for
its "systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human
rights and international
humanitarian law". The resolution demanded that Iraq
immediately put an end to its "summary and arbitrary executions...
the use of rape as a political tool and all enforced and
- Full political participation at the national level was
restricted only to members of the Arab Ba'ath Party, which constituted only 8% of the
population. Therefore, it was impossible for Iraqi citizens to change their government.
- Iraqi citizens were not allowed to assemble legally unless it
was to express support for the government. The Iraqi government
controlled the establishment of political parties, regulated their
internal affairs and monitored their activities.
- Police checkpoints on Iraq's roads and highways prevented ordinary citizens from traveling
abroad without government permission and expensive exit visa. Before traveling, an Iraqi citizen had
to post collateral. Iraqi women could not travel outside of the
country without the escort of a male relative.
- The activities of citizens living inside Iraq who received
money from relatives abroad were closely monitored.
- Al-Anfal Campaign: In 1988,
the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the
Kurdish people living in Northern
Iraq. This is known as the Anfal
campaign. The campaign was mostly directed at Shiite kurds
(Faili Kurds) who sided with Iranians during the Iraq-Iran War. The
attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 (some reports
estimate as many as 100,000 people), many of them women and
children. A team of Human Rights
Watch investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons
of captured Iraqi documents, testing soil samples and carrying out
interviews with more than 350 witnesses,
that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross
violations of human rights, including mass executions and
disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants,
widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and
nerve agents that killed thousands, the
arbitrary imprisoning of tens of thousands of women, children, and
elderly people for months in conditions of extreme deprivation, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of
villagers after the demolition of their
homes, and the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand
villages along with their schools, mosques,
farms, and power stations.
April 1991, after Saddam lost control of Kuwait in the
Persian Gulf War, he cracked down
ruthlessly against several
uprisings in the Kurdish north and the Shia
south. His forces committed wholesale massacres and other gross human rights
violations against both groups similar to the violations mentioned
before. Estimates of deaths during that time range from 20,000 to
100,000 for Kurds, and 60,000 to 130,000 for Shi'ites.
- Also in April 2003, CNN revealed that it had
withheld information about Iraq torturing journalists and Iraqi citizens in the 1990s.
According to CNN's chief news executive, the channel had been
concerned for the safety not only of its own staff, but also of
Iraqi sources and informants, who could expect punishment for
speaking freely to reporters. Also
according to the executive, "other news organizations were in the
- After the 2003 Invasion of
Iraq, several mass graves were found
in Iraq containing several thousand bodies total, and more are
being uncovered to this day . While most of the dead in the graves
were believed to have died in the 1991 uprising against Saddam
Hussein, some of them appeared to have died due to executions or
died at times other than the 1991 rebellion.
- Also after the invasion, numerous torture centers were found in
security offices and police stations
throughout Iraq. The equipment found at these centers typically
included hooks for hanging people by the hands for beating, devices for electric shock, and other equipment often
found in nations with harsh security services and other
Collusion of foreign powers in Saddam-era human rights
rule Saddam Hussein was aided by foreign powers; the great bulk of
Iraq's conventional weapons (such as tanks and
artillery) were supplied by the Soviet Bloc, China, France, and
Egypt, all of whom helped
arm the Ba'athist government throughout the 1980s.
relations with Iraq seem to have been motivated mostly by the
potentially larger threat of an Iranian styled
Islamic Revolution, which might
have threatened foreign investment and disturbed the strategic
balance in the region.
It was hoped that an appropriate
amount of foreign aid would allow for an Iraqi victory over Iran in
the Iran–Iraq War
, but be
insufficient to allow for Iraqi expansion into Iran and other
countries in the region.Western relations with Iraq after the
Iran–Iraq War demonstrated a continued interest to support Iraq in
an effort to balance the power of Iran and other actors. As late as
, a week
before the invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. ambassador
to Baghdad, April Glaspie
, assured Saddam Hussein that the
U.S. "wanted better and deeper relations."
'Saddam's Dirty Dozen'
to officials of the United
States State Department, many human rights abuses in Saddam Hussein's Iraq
were largely carried out in person or by the orders of Saddam
Hussein and eleven other people.
The term "Saddam's Dirty
Dozen" was coined in October 2002 (from a novel by E.M. Nathanson
later adapted as a film directed by Robert Aldrich
) and used by US officials to
describe this group. Most members of the group held high positions
in the Iraqi government and membership went all the way from
Saddam's personal guard to Saddam's sons. The list was used by the
Bush Administration to help argue that the 2003 Iraq war
was against Saddam
Hussein and the Baath Party leadership, rather than against the
Iraqi people. The members are:
- Saddam Hussein (1937-2006), Iraqi
President, responsible for many torturings, killings and of
ordering the 1988 cleansing of Kurds in
- Qusay Hussein (1966 - 2003), son
of the president, head of the elite Republican Guard, believed to have
been chosen by Saddam as his successor.
- Uday Hussein (1964 - 2003), son of
the president, had a private torture chamber and of the rapes and
killings of many women. He was partially paralyzed after a 1996 attempt on his life, and
was leader of the paramilitary group
Fedayeen Saddam and of the Iraqi
- Taha Yassin Ramadan,
Vice-President. He oversaw the mass killings of a Shi'a revolt in 1991, and he was born in
- Tariq Aziz, Foreign Minister of Iraq,
backed up the executions by hanging of
political opponents after the revolution of 1968.
- Barzan Ibrahim
al-Tikriti, Hussein's half brother, leader of the Iraqi secret
Iraq's representative to the United
Nations in Geneva.
- Sabawi Ibrahim
al-Tikriti, Hussein's half brother, he was the leader of the
Mukhabarat during the 1991 Gulf
War. Director of Iraq's general security from 1991 to 1996. He
was involved in the 1991 suppression of Kurds.
- Watban Ibrahim
al-Tikriti, Hussein's half brother, former senior Interior
Minister who was also Saddam's presidential adviser. Shot in the
leg by Uday Hussein in 1995. He has ordered tortures, rapes,
murders and deportations.
- Ali Hassan al-Majid,
Chemical Ali, mastermind behind Saddam's lethal gassing of rebel Kurds in
1988. A first cousin of Saddam Hussein;
- Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri,
military commander, vice-president of the Revolutionary Command
Council and deputy commander in chief of the armed forces
during various military campaigns.
- Aziz Saleh
Nuhmah, appointed governor of Kuwait from
November 1990 to February 1991, ordered looting of stores and rapes
of Kuwaiti women during his tenure. Also ordered the
destruction of Shi'a holy sites during the 1970s and 1980s as
governor of two Iraqi provinces.
- Mohammed Amza Zubeidi,
alias Saddam's shi'a thug, Prime Minister of Iraq from
1991 to 1993 - to have ordered many executions.
Number of Victims
According to The New York Times, "he [Saddam] murdered as many as a
million of his people, many with poison gas. He tortured, maimed
and imprisoned countless more. His unprovoked invasion of Iran is
estimated to have left another million people dead. His seizure of
Kuwait threw the Middle East into crisis. More insidious, arguably,
was the psychological damage he inflicted on his own land. Hussein
created a nation of informants — friends on friends, circles within
circles — making an entire population complicit in his rule".
Estimates for the number of dead in the Iran-Iraq war vary from
500,000 to 1.5 million. Others have estimated 800,000 deaths caused
by Saddam not counting the Iran-Iraq war.
estimated that "a minimum of 100,000 and a more likely
estimate of 227,000 excess deaths among young children from August
1991 through March 1998" from all causes including sanctions. Other
estimates have ranged as low as 170,000 children. UNICEF Executive
Director Carol Bellamy said that
if the substantial reduction in child mortality
throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s,
there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children
under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period
1991 to 1998.
As a partial explanation, she pointed to a March
statement of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues
which states: "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to
external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not
be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged
measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of
The US State Department has stated that Iraq was offered the Oil-for-Food Programme designed to alleviate the humanitarian condition of Iraq in 1991 but that Iraq refused to accept it for years. It stated:
In Northern Iraq, where the UN administers humanitarian
assistance, child mortality rates have fallen below pre-Gulf War
Rates rose in the period before oil-for-food, but with
the introduction of the program the trend reversed, and now those
Iraqi children are better off than before the war.
Child mortality figures have more than doubled in the
south and center of the country, where the Iraqi government—rather
than the UN—controls the program.
If a turn-around on child mortality can be made in the
north, which is under the same sanctions as the rest of the
country, there is no reason it cannot be done in the south and
The fact of the matter is, however, that the government
of Iraq does not share the international community's concern about
the welfare of its people.
Baghdad's refusal to cooperate with the oil-for-food
program and its deliberate misuse of resources are cynical efforts
to sacrifice the Iraqi people's welfare in order to bring an end to
UN sanctions without complying with its obligations."
This view is disputed buy author Anthony Arnove, who writes:
Sanctions are simply not the same in the north and
Differences in Iraqi mortality rates result from
several factors: the Kurdish north has been receiving humanitarian
assistance longer than other regions of Iraq; agriculture in the
north is better; evading sanctions is easier in the north because
its borders are far more porous; the north receives 22 percent more
per capita from the oil-for-food program than the south-central
region; and the north receives UN-controlled assistance in
currency, while the rest of the country receives only
The south also suffered much more direct
UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Denis Halliday, also said the
situation was more complicated, and made worse because the United
States and British Governments routinely blocked humanitarian
supplies to Iraq, including medicine. "[T]he US and UK governments'
blocking of $4bn of humanitarian supplies is by far the greatest
constraint on the implementation of the oil-for-food programme."
Halliday accused the U.S. of obstructing the Sanctions Committee
from inception, which he himself setup in 1996, and resigned from
his position in protest. His successor, Hans von Sponeck, also
questioned why the U.S. would choose to make matters difficult,
knowing innocent Iraqis were trapped between a dictator and a
"bankrup" policy. "For how long should the civilian population,
which is totally innocent on all this, be exposed to such
punishment for something they have never done?" Von Sponeck also
resigned, and authored a book, A Different Kind of War: The UN
Sanctions Regime in Iraq
, in which he accused U.S.
policymakers with political interference. Chlorine
was desperately needed to disinfect water
supplies, but was banned from manufacture in the country and its
import severely restricted due to the potential that it may be used
as part of a chemical weapon.
The UN Resolutions had the express goals of eliminating WMDs
and extended range ballistic missiles, prohibiting
any support for terrorism
, and forcing
Iraq to pay war reparations and all foreign debt. Some analysts,
architects of American war policy such as Douglas J. Feith
and foreign observers have argued
that the sanctions diminished Iraq militarily, in terms of WMDs
, and in its capacity for attacks against its
neighbors as its supply lines were cut. In a 2004 Foreign
journal article, the scholars George A. Lopez
credit sanctions with: "Compelling Iraq to accept
inspections and monitoring; winning concessions from Baghdad on
political issue such as the border dispute with Kuwait; preventing
the rebuilding of Iraqi defenses after the Persian Gulf War; and
blocking the import of vital materials and technologies for
producing weapons of mass
." Cortright and Lopez argue that "the much-maligned
UN-enforced sanctions regime actually ... helped destroy Saddam
Hussein's war machine and his capacity to produce weapons."
told his FBI interrogator
that Iraq's armaments "had been eliminated by the UN
Accepting a large estimate of casualties due to sanctions, Walter Russell Mead
argued on behalf of
such a war as a better alternative than continuing the sanctions
regime, since "Each year of containment is a new Gulf War."
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney
, who called the sanctions "the most
intrusive system of arms control in history", cited the breakdown
of the sanctions as one cause or rationale for the Iraq war
- (requires login)
- Iraq surveys show 'humanitarian emergency'
UNICEF Newsline August 12,
- Arnove, Anthony. Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of
Sanctions and War, South End Press, April 2000.
- The most recent report of the UN secretary-general, in October
2001, says that the US and UK governments' blocking of $4bn of
humanitarian supplies is by far the greatest constraint on the
implementation of the oil-for-food programme. The report says that,
in contrast, the Iraqi government's distribution of humanitarian
supplies is fully satisfactory (as it was when we headed this
programme). The death of some 5-6,000 children a month is mostly
due to contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition. The
US and UK governments' delayed clearance of equipment and materials
is responsible for this tragedy, not Baghdad." Hans von Sponeck and
Denis Halliday, The hostage nation, The Guardian.
November 29, 2001.
- UN sanctions rebel resigns, BBC News. 14 February,
- Amnesty International report on torture in Iraq
- INDICT -
campaign to prosecute human rights abusers from the Hussein
- Iraq's dirty dozen
- Women recall terror, yet yearn to return,
Washington Times March 7, 2003
- Human Rights Archive 1999-2001 The Iraq
- UN condemns Iraq on human rights, BBC April 2002
- PM admits graves claims "untrue" As of July 18,
55 of 270 suspected mass grave sites have been exhumed, revealing approximately 5,000 bodies (as
opposed to previously claimed figures of 400,000).
- Iraq 1984-1992, Human Rights Watch
- Reports on Human Rights Practices, U.S. Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
- Human Rights Watch: Background on the Crisis
in Iraq (a contents page for the organization's various reports on
Iraq, mostly after Saddam's regime fell) | <urn:uuid:4c3d35f8-355d-4de8-b57c-a71fc38d87e2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://maps.thefullwiki.org/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein's_Iraq | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944057 | 3,780 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Reports of discolored and diseased shrimp in the northern Indian
River Lagoon in 2005 pointed researchers to the source of
Scientists' identification of a microscopic parasite affecting
pink shrimp (Farfantepenaeus duorarum) illustrates how the
public can assist marine research by reporting unusual
In February 2005, people in the Titusville and Melbourne area
began noticing shrimp with a purplish discoloration of the shell
and large white visible masses in the flesh, thought to be cysts or
tumors. Numerous reports from shrimpers and others prompted an
investigation by biologists with the FWC's Fish and Wildlife
Research Institute. Some observers sent specimens of affected
shrimp from the northern Indian River Lagoon.
By microscopically examining the samples, biologists identified
the cause: a parasite called microsporidia, which can affect
several species of shrimp. The parasite invades the blood system
and tissues surrounding the intestine and multiplies there until it
eventually destroys and replaces muscle tissue, creating opaque
white patches under the shell. The cottony appearance of the
abdomen gives the common name to this disease: "cotton" or "milk"
shrimp. Dark discoloration of the shell also occurs when pigmented
cells react to the parasite's presence by expanding or increasing
Infected shrimp can become weakened or paralyzed and thus more
susceptible to other diseases and predators. In aquacultured
shrimp, heavy infections of the parasite in the muscle can render
the product unmarketable.
This parasite in shrimp is not considered a risk to human
consumers; however, the Florida Department of Health advises
common-sense precautions against eating any catch that is obviously
weakened by infection. Diseased shrimp should be buried or
otherwise disposed of away from the water rather than tossed back.
Microsporidia are also known to infect fish, which could be other
hosts in the shrimp parasite's life cycle.
Though reports of this disease in Indian River Lagoon shrimp
tapered off the following year, reports from shrimpers in the fall
of 2010 alerted the FWC to the presence of a nonnative species of
shrimp, the tiger
prawn, in the area. Researchers encourage the public to report
all findings of abnormal shrimp to the FWC's Fish Kill Hotline,
Figure 1: White opaque patches
appear under the shell of shrimp infected by microsporidia.
Figure 2: The masses are not tumors
or cysts, but hundreds of microscopic parasites.
Figure 3: The parasite
can invade the muscle tissue and surrounding organs, appearing as | <urn:uuid:447b1b52-98e2-4202-b85c-97998398e6fa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://myfwc.com/research/saltwater/health/program-projects-research/shrimp-disease/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899018 | 563 | 3.90625 | 4 |
* Discusses the evolution of phytoplankton in the world's oceans as the first living organisms and the first and basic producers in the earths food chain
* Includes the latest developments in the evolution and ecology of marine phytoplankton specifically with additional information on marine ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles
* The only book to consider of the evolution of phytoplankton and its role in molecular evolution, biogeochemistry, paleontology, and oceanographic aspects
* Written at a level suitable for related reading use in courses on the Evolution of the Biosphere, Ecological and Biological oceanography and marine biology, and Biodiversity
This text reference examines how photosynthesis evolved on Earth and how phytoplankton evolved through time – ultimately to permit the evolution of complex life, including human beings. The first of its kind, this book provides thorough coverage of key topics, with contributions by leading experts in biophysics, evolutionary biology, micropaleontology, marine ecology, and biogeochemistry.
This exciting new book is of interest not only to students and researchers in marine science, but also to evolutionary biologists and ecologists interested in understanding the origins and diversification of life. Primary Producers of the Sea offers these students and researchers an understanding of the molecular evolution, phylogeny, fossil record, and environmental processes that collectively permits us to comprehend the rise of phytoplankton and their impact on Earth's ecology and biogeochemistry. It is certain to become the first and best word on this exhilarating topic.
Marine scientists, biological oceanographers, evolutionary biologists, Earth system scientists, paleontologists, systematists
Evolution of Primary Producers in the Sea, 1st Edition
1. An introduction to primary producers in the sea: Who they are, what they do, and when they evolved. Paul G. Falkowski and Andrew H. Knoll.
2. Oceanic photochemistry and evolution of elements and co-factors in the early stages of the evolution of life. David Mauzerall.
3. The Evolutionary transition from anoxygenic to oxygenic photosynthesis. Robert E. Blankenship, Sumedha Sadekar, and Jason Raymond.
4. Evolution of light-harvesting antennas in an oxygen world. Beverley R. Green.
5. Eukaryote and mitochondrial origins: two sides of the same coin and too much ado about oxygen. William Martin.
6. Photosynthesis and the eukaryote tree of life. Johanna Fehling, Diane Stoecker, and Sandra L. Baldauf.
7. Plastid endosymbiosis: sources and timing of the major events. Jeremiah D. Hackett, Hwan Su Yoon, Nicholas J. Butterfield, Michael J. Sanderson, and Debashish Bhattacharya.
8. The geological succession of primary producers in the oceans. Andrew H. Knoll, Roger E. Summons, Jacob R. Waldbauer, and John E. Zumberge.
9. Life in Triassic oceans: links between Benthic and planktonic recovery and radiation. Jonathan L. Payne and Bas van de Schootbrugge
10. The origin and evolution of dinoflagellates. Charles F. Delwiche.
11. The origin and evolution of the diatoms: their adaptation to a planktonic existence. Wiebe H.C.F. Kooistra, Rainer Gersonde, Linda K Medlin, and David G. Mann.
12. Origin and evolution of coccolithophores: from coastal hunters to oceanic farmers. Colomban de Vargas, Ian Probert, Marie-Pierre Aubry, and Jeremy Young.
13. The origin and early evolution of green plants. Charley O’Kelly, Bigelow Laboratory.
14. Armor: why, when and how. Christian Hamm and Victor Smetacek.
15. Does phytoplankton cell size matter? The evolution of modern marine food webs. Zoe V. Finkel.
16. Resource competition and the ecological success of phytoplankton. Elena Litchman.
17. Biological and geochemical forcings to Phanerozoic change in seawater, atmosphere, and carbonate precipitate composition. Michael Guidry, Rolf S. Arvidson, and.Fred T. MacKenzie.
18. Geochemical and biological consequences of phytoplankton evolution. Miriam E. Katz, Katja Fennel and Paul G. Falkowski. | <urn:uuid:f8316a66-8e7e-4685-8d73-3654de30da41> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://store.elsevier.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780123705181 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.827507 | 967 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Rosalynn Carter has led the fight against the stigma of mental illness for nearly 40 years. (Photo: The Carter Center)
Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter has been a driving force in the field of mental health throughout her public service career. She was a member of the Governor's Commission to Improve Services to the Mentally and Emotionally Handicapped when her husband was governor of Georgia. As active honorary chair of the President's Commission on Mental Health during President Carter's administration, she helped bring about passage of the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980.
Today, she continues her leadership through The Carter Center in Atlanta. Founded by President and Mrs. Carter in 1982, the center is dedicated to improving the quality of life for people at home and in the developing world through programs in peace and health.
In 1985, she initiated the Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy, which brings together representatives of mental health organizations nationwide to focus and coordinate their efforts on key issues. Since then, annual symposia held at The Carter Center have investigated such topics as mental illnesses and the elderly, child and adolescent illnesses, family coping, financing mental health services and research, treating mental illnesses in the primary care setting, and stigma and mental illnesses.
Responding to the need for local collaboration, she instituted in 1996 an annual Georgia Mental Health Forum for professionals and consumers statewide.
The Carter Center Mental Health Task Force, chaired by Mrs. Carter and composed of individuals in a position to affect public policy, meets quarterly to identify policy initiatives and set the agenda for The Carter Center Mental Health Program and annual symposia. Program staff work year round to sustain the momentum of the symposia and to unify professionals in various mental health disciplines. With the inception of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism in 1996, Mrs. Carter launched one of the most successful international programs in combating the stigma associated with mental illnesses.
Through the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving (RCI), established in her honor at her alma mater, Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, Ga., Mrs. Carter addresses the concerns of those who take care of people suffering from mental illnesses and other chronic illnesses and long-term disabilities. Through research, education, and training, the RCI promotes the mental health and well-being of individuals, families, and professional caregivers; delineates effective caregiving practices; builds public awareness of caregiving needs; and advances public and social policies that enhance caring communities. Both professional and family caregivers benefit from RCI programs to improve coping skills and foster greater emotional and physical well-being. As a result of research conducted at the RCI, Mrs. Carter published in 1994 Helping Yourself Help Others: A Book for Caregivers co-authored with Susan Golant.
Through statewide and international symposia, Mrs. Carter has empowered mental health professionals and consumers.
Following on the success of her caregiving book, Mrs. Carter teamed up again with Susan Golant in 1998 to write Helping Someone with Mental Illness: A Compassionate Guide for Family, Friends, and Caregivers. Building on her decades of experience in the field, Mrs. Carter discussed the latest treatments and research generated from her symposia and in consultation with the major mental health organizations in the United States. She also addressed how best to help those with illnesses such as depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety attacks, and obsessive-compulsive disorders by being an effective, compassionate caregiver and advocate. Helping Someone with Mental Illness was selected as the winner of the 1999 American Society of Journalists and Authors Outstanding Book Award in the service category.
In May 2010, Mrs. Carter issued a call to action for creating equity for mental illnesses in our health care system by publishing Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis (with Susan Golant and Kathryn Cade), a deeply personal account of her advocacy and an unsparing assessment of the state of mental health care. Using stories from consumers and professionals she has met over the years, Mrs. Carter crafted an intimate account of a subject previously shrouded in stigma and shadow, surveying the dimensions of an issue that has affected us all. She described a system that continues to fail those in need, even though recent scientific breakthroughs with mental illnesses have potential to help most people lead full and productive lives.
Mrs. Carter has received many honors and awards for her support of mental health causes including the Volunteer of the Decade Award from the National Mental Health Association, the Dorothea Dix Award from the Mental Illness Foundation, the Nathan S. Kline Medal of Merit from the International Committee Against Mental Illness, the Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health from the Institute of Medicine, the United States Surgeon General's Medallion, induction in the National Women's Hall of Fame, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. She is an Honorary Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Read the Mrs. Carter's full bio >
Revised March 29, 2013 | <urn:uuid:eeb29563-60dd-4e26-934d-b7d3a5facfae> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cartercenter.org/health/mental_health/rosalynn-carter-mental-health-leadership.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944937 | 1,040 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Monday was an exciting day for Susan Garrison and Michele Wiederspohn's fifth grade classrooms.
The tiny, red Late Fall Chinook eggs the students had been watching for the past month finally made it to the next stage. They became Alevins, the second stage of development for salmon.
The life of these 100 Alevins is under a microscope at Chief Kamakin Elementary School. The students have the opportunity to take a peek at a process that often isn't seen, but is part of nature as salmon grow and develop and go out to sea.
"It was so much fun to lift up the paper and see they were hatched," said Wiederspohn.
Although the tank, which has sheets of paper taped to it to keep the fish's environment dark, is outside the door of Garrison's classroom, the raising of hatchery salmon has become a project that has drawn the interest from classes around the school.
"Other classes come and observe the fish, so it's not just my class," said Garrison.
The Yakima Basin Environmental Education Program received a grant to have a college science student work with English as a second language students in the school to learn about the life cycle of salmon.
What Garrison's students have learned already from the project has proven invaluable, she believes.
"They've done a lot with real world graphing and real world math skills," said Garrison, explaining that the concepts are sparked in the minds of the students in real life situations. She added that reading and writing skills have also been honed in the project.
"I love these projects when they apply all their skills," said Garrison.
Students graph chemical testing of the water and study the stages of development as the eggs.
Garrison first learned about the project of putting salmon in classrooms this past summer when attending a Partners for Arid Land Stewardship conference. At first she wasn't sure her class would be able to have a salmon spawning project because the program lacked funding, but after much advocating, the South Yakima Conservation District adopted the project, paying for the equipment needed.
"Dave DeBoer brought the tank in and set it up," she said.
Since last November the students anxiously awaited the day they would be able to put their eggs in the water and watch them develop. The eggs weren't released into the tank until Jan. 4.
The first two months were spent treating the water so the fish could survive.
"Once the water sits for a while it clears itself up," said Garrison. Nutrients were also added to the water.
The fish raising project ties into the class's lessons on eco-systems and the environment, said Garrison, who likes to emphasize science in her classroom.
Before the salmon eggs touched the water, the students were able to discuss the life cycle of salmon, but now they are studying the environmental effect on them.
Jessie Leija, one of Garrison's students, said as the eggs developed they could see the eye and spine through the red yolk sack. He can tell inquirers about the process a salmon goes through, from eggs to smolts when they go out to the ocean.
"I hope this gives them more of an appreciation for the environment and what they can do to help," said Garrison.
Water quality testing is one of the processes the students have to study.
"They're more aware of the different things that will impact salmon in the real world," she said.
The students are enjoying the different lessons they are learning from their small project.
"I'm learning that first the salmon are little red balls and after a month the tail comes out and then two or three days later the whole body comes out. All that's left is the yolk sack," said Edgar Aguilar, adding that the yolk sack is what feeds the young fish.
He added that the best part was when the salmon eggs arrived. For many of the students, like Jessica Ramos, this is their first time around fish. Ramos, who has taken a particularly strong interest in the salmon project, said she finds it interesting that the young fish feed on their yolk sack, adding that the more they eat the smaller the sack will become.
"The best part is when we get to observe the tank," she said. "I don't want to release them."
Garrison's classroom isn't the only one in the Lower Valley to be participating in the program. Sixth graders in the same school also have a tank for salmon, as do classrooms in Grandview. All of the classrooms will release their fish at Horn Rapids in Benton City this spring. | <urn:uuid:3f8e275a-00e8-4927-b743-8d2ffca0f72f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dailysunnews.com/news/2005/feb/03/schools-of-learning/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982149 | 951 | 2.953125 | 3 |
|Tectonic Plates, Earthquakes, and Volcanoes|
According to theory of plate tectonics, Earth is an active planet -- its surface is composed of many individual plates that move and interact, constantly changing and reshaping Earth's outer layer. Volcanoes and earthquakes both result from the movement of tectonic plates. This interactive feature shows the relationship between earthquakes and volcanoes and the boundaries of tectonic plates. By clicking on a map, viewers can superimpose the locations of plate boundaries, volcanoes and earthquakes.
Intended for grade levels:
Type of resource:
Cost / Copyright:
Copyright 2002-2006, WGBH Educational Foundation. All rights reserved.
DLESE Catalog ID: DLESE-000-000-009-774
Resource contact / Creator / Publisher:
Publisher: WGBH Educational Foundation | <urn:uuid:1e648e0f-89ed-4f19-80af-4e28b1afa873> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dlese.org/library/catalog_DLESE-000-000-009-774.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.867583 | 177 | 3.765625 | 4 |
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible, a work that took 47 scholars seven years to translate from the Greek (for the New Testament) and from the Hebrew (for the Old). As a work of literature, the King James Bible stands on a par with the greatest works of the English language, and it has inspired millions of people down the ages, including numerous musicians. Ed Breen reflects on its remarkable power to draw extraordinarily powerful music from the composers who set it.
Celebrating the King James Bible may for many musicians feel like a slightly tangential event, but to those of us who grew up as cathedral choirboys it holds special significance as the language of many anthems that we sang long before we knew what the words meant and which first persuaded us into a life of music. Yet we are all influenced by the King James Bible whether or not we know it; one of my students commented recently that certain composers were ‘a law unto themselves’ and I’m pretty sure she has never read the bible. Indeed one can find many examples in casual speech just like this, but not all such cherished biblical English is solely due to the King James Version; there is also an enormous debt to earlier translations and, in particular, the work of William Tyndale. But at what point did the King James Version itself start to infuse the musical world?
The King James Bible Trust has made a series of compositions available to download as part of their celebrations. Interestingly, the first work they choose is Tallis’s famous setting of If ye love me a piece written by a composer who died almost 20 years before the King James Version was begun! This seems fanciful until we read that Tallis set words translated by William Tyndale in a passage which was later incorporated lock-stock into the King James Version. In this vein, it is interesting to note that William Byrd, a composer often mentioned in the same breath as Tallis, and who did live to see the publication of the King James Version, is conspicuous by his absence. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising for a composer who refused to attend Protestant services and used his royal pension to pay the fines. However considering that first prints were notoriously full of errors it is possible that Byrd’s reluctance to use the text might not have been entirely political.
In the beginning [sic], no one was forced to use the King James Version (or Authorized Version as it often gets called) but a quick glance through The Oxford Book of Tudor Anthems, ubiquitous in cathedral choir libraries, shows that two of the most famous pieces in modern circulation are settings of this very text. Tomkins’s unforgettably moving When David Heard and Gibbons’s verse anthem This is the record of John, now synonymous with the English countertenor voice. When David Heard is an anthem closely associated with King James himself – who, having lost his eldest son, may have unwittingly spawned settings of the David/Absalon story offered as tributes to his grief. Certainly related English settings are of an outstanding quality and were recently explored on albums by the ensemble Gallicantus (Signum – buy from Amazon) and the famous Westminster Abbey Choir (Hyperion – buy from Amazon). Personally, I find this is a curious case because here the English text is unexpectedly more resonant than the Latin. Just consider the setting Lugebat David Absalon (probably by Gombert), which begins with such an awkward cluster of consonants. When David Heard... invokes softer sounds that draw the listener towards a heart-stopping ‘Oh my son, Absalon my son, would God I had died for thee’ which in Latin possesses none of that whispering quality: ‘…ut moriar, O fili mi?’ strikes me as prosaic in comparison.
But such musical influence extends far beyond the Tudor orbit; there are Handel’s enduring coronation anthems to consider, the most performed of which, Zadok the Priest, is a famous instance of setting the words ‘God Save the King’. And this is not the only universally recognisable piece of choral music with Royal connections; there is also Parry’s I Was Glad which alongside the scent of fresh paint is surely one of the most frequent experiences of our Monarch. Ignoring the often inconvenient ‘Vivat’ section, consider the word ‘prosper’ in ‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee’. Where else but the King James Version could one find a sentence of such architecture?
With the weight of this cultural trajectory in mind, I asked Gabriel Jackson, Associate Composer of the BBC Singers, for his experience of setting the King James Version to music. He began by telling me that it was because the very style of this translation was no longer the style of our everyday speech that he found it attractive.
‘I think that if you are going to set stories which carry a great depth of meaning for so many people, using The Authorized Version keeps it at a slight distance from everyday speech. Not so far away that it cannot be understood, but just far enough to demand that we think about the words and their meanings that much more carefully.’
And does he think that days are numbered for composers using the King James Version?
‘I don't think King James Version is anywhere near the end of its useful life for a composer. A couple of years ago I was asked to set the first 14 verses of St John's Gospel – lines which, remarkably, don't seem to have been set before. Initially the commissioner wanted a different translation but I was able – rightly I think – to persuade him that these lines (‘In the beginning was the word...’) are so iconic, so well-loved and well known in their King James form that it would be perverse not to set that version; I also felt very strongly that the special poetry and resonance of those lines, with their almost ritualistic repetitions, were particularly conducive to musical setting.’
I'd suggest that what makes this anniversary refreshingly different from so many others in our musical field is that rather than celebrating the rediscovery of something that has been woefully underrepresented or unjustly forgotten, as we so often do, what we are celebrating is a text that we have been living alongside and using in art and in everyday life for 400 years. Now that is truly remarkable.
Edward Breen holds an Edison Research Fellowship at The British Library and teaches early music history and vocal studies at Morley College. He is currently writing his PhD at King's College London: 'The Performance Practice of David Munrow and The Early Music Consort of London'.
Details of the composition award given by the King James Bible Trust in association with the Royal School of Church Music and the Royal College of Music can be found by visiting their website.
On BBC Radio 3 on Saturday, May 28 at 12.15pm (and thereafter on the iPlayer for a week) the Revd Richard Coles assesses the influence of the King James Bible on composers down the centuries – 'Music of the King James Bible'. | <urn:uuid:d77becd4-1846-4fc8-8cfa-025c689a662d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/focus/celebrating-the-king-james-bible-at-400 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970409 | 1,497 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Mercury does expand with temperature; moreover, it expands more rapidly with temperature than glass goes. That's why the column of mercury rises inside its glass container. While both materials expand as they get hotter, the mercury experiences a larger increase in volume and must flow up the narrow channel or "capillary" inside the glass to find room for itself. Mercury is essentially incompressible so that, as it expands, it pushes as hard as necessary on whatever contains it in order to obtain the space it needs. That's why a typical thermometer has an extra chamber at the top of its capillary. That chamber will receive the expanding mercury if it rises completely up the capillary so that the mercury won't pop the thermometer if it is overheated. In short, the force pushing mercury up the column can be enormous.
The force pushing mercury back down the column as it cools is tiny in comparison. Mercury certainly does contract when cooled, so that the manufacturer is telling you nonsense. But just because the mercury contracts as it cools doesn't mean that it will all flow back down the column. The mercury needs a push to propel it through its narrow channel.
Mercury is attracted only weakly to glass, so it doesn't really adhere to the walls of its channel. However, like all liquids, mercury has a viscosity, a syrupiness, and this viscosity slows its motion through any pipe. The narrower the pipe, the harder one has to push on a liquid to keep it flowing through that pipe. In fact, flow through a pipe typically scales as the 4th power of that pipe's radius, which is why even modest narrowing of arteries can dramatically impair blood flow in people. The capillaries used in fever thermometers are so narrow that mercury has tremendous trouble flowing through them. It takes big forces to push the mercury quickly through such a capillary.
During expansion, there is easily enough force to push the mercury up through the capillary. However, during contraction, the forces pushing the mercury back down through the capillary are too weak to keep the column together. That's because the only thing above the column of liquid mercury is a thin vapor of mercury gas and that vapor pushes on the liquid much too feebly to have a significant effect. And while gravity may also push down on the liquid if the thermometer is oriented properly, it doesn't push hard enough to help much.
The contracting column of mercury takes hours to drift downward, if it drifts downward at all. It often breaks up into sections, each of which drifts downward at its own rate. And, as two readers (Michael Hugh Knowles and Miodrag Darko Matovic) have both pointed out to me in recent days, there is a narrow constriction in the capillary near its base and the mercury column always breaks at that constriction during contraction. Since the top portion of the mercury column is left almost undisturbed when the column breaks at the constriction, it's easy to read the highest temperature reached by the thermometer.
Shaking the thermometer hard is what gets the mercury down and ultimately drives it through the constriction so that it rejoins into a single column. In effect, you are making the glass accelerate so fast that it leaves the mercury behind. The mercury isn't being pushed down to the bottom of the thermometer; instead, the glass is leaping upward and the mercury is lagging behind. The mercury drifts to the bottom of the thermometer because of its own inertia.
You're right that the glass tube acts as a magnifier for that thin column of mercury. Like a tall glass of water, it acts as a cylindrical lens that magnifies the narrow sliver of metal into a wide image.
You're right about the glass expanding along with the liquid inside it. But liquids normally expand more than solids as their temperatures increase. That's because the atoms and molecules in a liquid have more freedom to move around than those in a solid and they respond to increasing temperatures by forming less and less tightly packed arrangements. Since the liquid in a thermometer expands more than the glass container around it, the liquid level rises as the thermometer's temperature increases.
The term "digital display" usually refers to a system that reports the value of a physical quantity in numerical form. A digital watch display is a good example. The physical quantity it reports is time and it makes its report in the form of hours, minutes, and second—all in numerical form. In a digital watch, the display makes use of liquid crystals that are sensitive to electric fields. When you look at the display, you are actually looking through a layer of polarizing filter, some transparent electric wires, and a layer of liquid crystals. Liquid crystals are liquids that contain molecules that naturally orient themselves relative to one another. In the display, these liquid crystals adopt different orientations when they are exposed to electric fields than when they're not exposed to such fields. This electrically altered orientation affects their optical properties and causes them to appear dark when viewed through the polarizing filter. The watch can control the appearance of each segment of its digital display by the pattern of electric charge on its transparent wires. Since it takes very little energy to change the orientation of the liquid crystals, the watch uses almost no power for its display and can operate for years on a button battery.
A common liquid in glass thermometer takes advantage of the fact that liquids generally expand more than solids as their temperatures increase. The glass envelope of the thermometer contains a fine hollow capillary with a sealed reservoir at its base that's filled with a liquid such as alcohol or mercury. If both the liquid and glass expanded equally as they became warmer, the thermometer would simply change sizes slightly as its temperature increased. But the liquid expands more than the glass and can't simply remain in place. Some of it moves up the capillary. That's why the level of liquid in the thermometer rises as the thermometer's temperature rises.
A Galileo thermometer combines Archimedes' principle with the fact that liquids generally expand faster with increasing temperature than solids do. Each sphere in the thermometer has an average density (a mass divided by volume) that is very close to that of the fluid in the thermometer. As stated in Archimedes' principle, if the sphere's average density is less than that of the fluid, the sphere floats and if the sphere's average density is more than that of the fluid, it sinks. But the fluid's density changes relatively quickly with temperature, becoming less with each additional degree. Thus as the temperature of the thermometer rises, the spheres have more and more trouble floating. Each sphere's density is carefully adjusted so that it begins to sink as soon as the thermometer's temperature exceeds a certain value. At that value, the expanding fluid's density becomes less than the average density of the sphere and the sphere no longer floats. The spheres also expand with increasing temperature, but not as much as the fluid.
Here is a picture of a combined Galileo thermometer and simple barometer. In addition to measuring the temperature with floating spheres, this device measures the outside air pressure with a column of dark liquid. It has a trapped volume of air that pushes the liquid (visible at the bottom of the unit) up a vertical pipe when the outside air pressure drops. The owner of this unit would like to know its history and origin, so if you have any information about it, please let me know.
A typical thermostat turns on the furnace whenever the temperature falls below a certain temperature and turns the furnace off whenever the temperature rises above another temperature. Those two temperatures are slightly separated so that the furnace doesn't turn on and off too rapidly. In a typical home thermostat, a bimetallic coil tips a small mercury-filled glass bottle. The bimetallic coil is made from two different metal strips that have been sandwiched together and then rolled into a coil. As the temperature changes, the two metals expand differently and the coil winds or unwinds. As it does, it tips the glass bottle and the mercury rolls from one end of the bottle to the other. When the mercury falls to one end, it allows an electric current to flow between two wires and the furnace turns on. When the mercury falls to the other end of the bottle, the current stops flowing and the furnace turns off. So the winding and unwinding of the coil controls the furnace and the home temperature tends to hover at the point where the bottle of mercury is almost perfectly level. When you adjust the set point of the thermostat, you tilt the whole coil and bottle so that the average temperature in your home must shift in order for the bottle to be almost level.
Most modern liquid-in-glass thermometers do contain alcohol rather than mercury, but these aren't the digital thermometers you are referring to. The alcohol thermometers are the ones with the red line that moves upward in a glass tube as the temperature increases. I believe that the digital thermometers you're interested in are the ones with numbers that change colors as the temperature changes. For example, when its 72° F, the number "72" is brightly colored while the other numbers are essentially black. Those thermometers use liquid crystals to measure temperature. More specifically, they use chiral nematic liquid crystals—long asymmetric molecules that arrange themselves in orderly spirals in the liquid. When light strikes these spiral structures, some of it reflects. But the reflection is strongest when the light's wavelength is an integer or half integer multiple of the spiral's pitch—the distance between adjacent turns of the spiral. Since light's wavelength is related to its color, the light reflected by these liquid crystals is colored. Because the pitch of a chiral nematic liquid crystal changes with temperature, so does its color. Slightly different liquid crystals are inserted behind each number on the thermometer so that each number becomes colored at a different temperature.
The electronic fever thermometers that you can buy in a grocery store use a thermistor to measure temperature. A thermistor is a semiconductor device that acts as a temperature-sensitive electric resistor. At very low temperatures, a thermistor is essentially an insulator—it has no mobile electric charges and thus can't carry electricity. But as its temperature increases, thermal energy rearranges the charges in the thermistor and it has more and more mobile electric charges. Its ability to conduct electricity increases with temperature fairly dramatically—it gradually becomes an electric conductor. The thermistor used in a fever thermometer is designed to undergo this rapid change in electric resistance at temperatures near 98° F. A simple computer inside the thermometer measures the thermistor's electric resistance and determines the thermistor's temperature. It then uses a liquid crystal-based display to show you what that temperature is.
A simple thermostat turns the furnace on when the temperature it senses falls below a certain value and turns the furnace off when the temperature it senses rises above that value. Because it takes time for the furnace to respond to signals from the thermostat, for the heat from the furnace to travel to the thermostat, and for the thermostat to respond to changes in the temperature around it, the furnace tends to stay on for too long after the thermostat turns it on and then to stay off for too long after the thermostat turns it off. The result is an oscillation in temperature: the home or building alternately overheats and then overcools. To reduce this oscillation, a thermostat with a heat anticipator limits the amount of time that the furnace stays on. Since the furnace turns off earlier, the temperature doesn't overshoot as much on the high side and the furnace turns back on again more quickly once the home or building drifts below the set temperature of the thermostat. Overall, the temperature still oscillates above and below the set temperature, but those oscillations are smaller and faster.
The fancy ear thermometers used in doctor's offices are almost certainly measuring the thermal radiation emerging from inside the ear. They probably use a thermopile detector that responds very quickly to the thermal radiation that reaches them. Since the thermal radiation emitted by a black object (or from within a deep cavity such as the ear) is characteristic of the object's temperature, a quick study of that thermal radiation is enough to determine the person's temperature.
Copyright 1997-2016 © Louis A. Bloomfield, All Rights Reserved | <urn:uuid:33fa273e-c78b-4195-83e9-748d7ad7a3fd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.howeverythingworks.org/thermometers_and_thermostats.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943373 | 2,544 | 3.703125 | 4 |
The bookworm and the crab
How to see the crab in the moon
How to see the bookworm in the moon
Since writing the pages on The Man in the Moon ,
The Toad and the hare ,
and The Utchat , I have discovered that the
South Sea Islanders see a crab in the full moon.
The crab is formed from the Oceanus Procellarum, the Mare Nubium
and the Mare Imbrium. It is sitting on the western side of the moon
looking east, with its legs curving towards the north and south poles.
Seen from another angle, this group of craters looks like a girl
reading a book. Her head is the Mare Nubium, and the book is
the same group of craters that form the crab's eyes
As a cancerian
(see horoscope ),
I find this very interesting. Cancer is the sign which the sun enters on
Midsummer's Day, and
it is ruled by the moon.
It's a very faint constellation, which doesn't look like anything in
particular. In the past, it has been represented as two
(donkeys are associated with the Midsummer solstice - just think of
A Midsummer Night's Dream)
and as a scarab beetle
(which the Egyptians believed
rolled the sun across the sky like a ball of dung).
Both of which make some sense to me.
I could never understand why the Greeks viewed it as a crab.
Most of the other signs are connected with important myths
(The golden fleece, Theseus, Orion, Ganymede etc.),
but the crab only appears briefly in the Greek legends,
when it pinches Hercules' toe as he battles the Hydra.
for more images seen in the craters of the moon
Back to main page
Back to bees
Back to the Man in the Moon
Back to the Toad and the Hare
Back to the Utchat | <urn:uuid:6518376f-c297-420f-ae44-757a3763e5af> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ianslunarpages.org/crab.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937299 | 415 | 2.859375 | 3 |
The Greeks had the god Dionysus, known as Bacchus to the Romans—the god of wine, grapes, and fertility. The festivals held in his honor were marked by reckless abandon and wild orgies, and it was often the women who initiated the revelry. They would seduce men with their dancing and drumming, reaching levels of drunken ecstasy that knew no bounds.
There is an echo of these pagan festivals in Jewish tradition as well. The book of Judges describes women who danced in the vineyards, where they were seen and seized by men: “And they commanded the people of Benjamin, saying: Go and lie in wait in the vineyards and watch. When the young women of Shiloh come out to join in the dancing, rush from the vineyards and each of you seize one of them to be your wife” (21:21).
In Jewish tradition, the ritual is somewhat tempered, but even so, why was it only the members of the tribe of Benjamin who were authorized to seize the dancing women? This is the result of a terrifying incident described in the book of Judges (chapters 19-21), the story of the concubine on a hill. A certain man from the tribe of Levi arrived with his concubine in a city belonging to the tribe of Benjamin. While they were dining in the home of their elderly host, a group of thugs came to the door and insisted that the host release the man so that they might have their way with him. Instead, the man offered his concubine to the mob, who raped and abused her all night long. Only in the morning, when he opened the door to hurry his concubine so that they might continue on their journey, did he discover that she was dead. He took her to his home, chopped up her body into twelve pieces, and sent them throughout all parts of the land.
This horrifying biblical story does not address the question of what the host and his guest did while the woman was being cruelly raped and abused by the mob. Was their dinner undisturbed? Did they go to sleep calm and unconcerned? Did they hear the screams of the woman and simply turn a deaf ear?
As a result of this incident, a war broke out between the tribes of Israel and the tribes of Benjamin, which was almost entirely decimated. The tribes of Israel decided not to marry their daughters to the men of the tribe of Benjamin, but so as to prevent this tribe from dying out entirely, they permitted the men of Benjamin to seize and wed the young women of Shiloh, who would dance in the vineyards. According to the biblical account in the book of Judges, the festival of the women dancing in the vineyards took place “since days of yore,” but it was only the Talmudic sages who associated this festival with the 15th of Av. And so the violent, isolated incident of seizing women by force became a regular, legally sanctioned occurrence.
According to Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel, “There were no better days for the people of Israel than the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur, since on these days the daughters of Israel would go out dressed in borrowed white clothing, so as not to embarrass anyone who did not have nice clothes… And the daughters of Jerusalem would go out and dance in the vineyards located on the outskirts of the city, and say: "Young man, lift up your eyes and choose wisely. Don’t look only at physical beauty – look rather at family” (Taanit 30b-31a). The holiday is described as a folk and nature festival, one that takes place in the vineyards when the grapes are ripe and intoxicating – an appropriate time for making matches. The dancing girls try to seduce the young men in the vineyards, an idea that would surely be frowned upon by today’s orthodox establishment.
In recent years, Tu B’Av has become a sort of Valentine’s Day in Israel, marked by all sorts of commercialized kitsch. It is worth noting that the Christian saint Valentine was killed in the year 270 CE because he defied the Emperor Claudius’s prohibition on marriage. Claudius wanted the men to devote themselves entirely to war, but Valentine secretly married off young couples. It seems unlikely that today’s yeshiva boys will adopt the ancient custom and seize upon seminary girls dancing in the vineyards, to renew the ancient custom of drunken revelry.Prof. Aliza Shenhar is the provost of the Max Stern Yezreel Valley College. | <urn:uuid:47644395-c6f1-42ef-a1d6-45e485811ad6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.jpost.com/Experts/The-Fifteenth-of-Av-370751 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980929 | 952 | 3.21875 | 3 |
(1844-1900) a German philosopher whose most famous books are Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Antichrist. He wrote that 'God is dead', meaning that people no longer had to accept the values of the Christian religion. He believed that a new type of person would exist, the 'übermensch' or superman, who would be free to follow his own moral principles.
Definition from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
Dictionary pictures of the day
Do you know what each of these is called?
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Loyola · Notre Dame Library
Science and Mathematics for Women, a Notre Dame Tradition
An exhibit in Archives and Special Collections through April 11, 2013.
This exhibit commemorates Women's History Month at Notre Dame - part of the annual celebration of National Women's History Month in March. The theme for 2013, "Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics" provides an opportunity to highlight the pioneering efforts of Notre Dame of Maryland University and its predecessor, Notre Dame of Maryland Collegiate Institute to instruct and encourage young women of the 19th century in the study of the sciences and mathematics, and as well document the ongoing tradition that continues to flourish on the campus today.
The actual artifacts and images are on display in our Archives through April 11, 2013.
Archives has compiled a 128 page scrapbook covering the exhibit. It includes past artifacts on past events, photographs of faculty through the years, and programs. To see an original image, contact our archivist. The exhibit (book) is in 5 parts:
Part 1: "Early Years."
Part 2: "About the Departments."
Part 3: "The House Built for Science."
Part 4: "School of Pharmacy."
Part 5: "Carrying on the Tradition." | <urn:uuid:6d0bbbca-4314-43b4-b780-d80c377c50b0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.loyola.edu/library/archives/ScienceMathematicsWomenExhibit.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919804 | 268 | 3.015625 | 3 |
The Prince MAUI-LOA was the first independent sovereign of Maui. This prince was born at Kaupo and came into his sovereignty at a young age. The beginning of his reign was marked by countless battles to establish his authority from many of the district chieftains of Maui who were loath to surrender their almost autonomous rule to the younger branch of the sacred ruling lineage of Hawai`i.
THE CHIEFS of Maui preferred to pay homage to the Kings of Hawai`i who were distant from them and actually not too interested in their affairs.
Maui-Loa, however, subdued his recalcitrant chieftains and vassals and with the help of his uncle, the Prince Haho, King of Hawai`i, established his authority over Maui. In return for this help, Maui-Loa ceded the District of Hana to the kings of Hawai`i, and he moved his capital to the village of Lahaina. This cession of Hana to Hawai`i was the root cause of many fierce battles between Hawai`i and Maui for the possession of this rich area.
TWENTY generations of independent monarchs ruled in Maui from the Prince Maui-Loa until the accession of Pi`ilani the Great who is perhaps the most renowned monarch of the island Kingdom of Maui. The kings of Maui consolidated their strength, built up their armies, and created a nation strong enough to threaten at times even the might of the powerful kings of Hawai`i.
The Prince Maui-Loa was succeeded by his son, the Prince Alau and the generation of Maui kings passed as follows: Maui-Loa wed Moe-I-Kaeaea and had Kanemo-ku-Heali`i, who wed Keakauhale and had Lono-Mai-Kalewa, who wed Kolu-Ku`i-Mulia and had Waka-Alana, who wed Kauai-Kapu and had Alo-I-Kahakau, who wed Puhia and had Kahekahoku, who established on Maui the worship of the Lizard-God La`a.
THE PRINCE Kahekahoku wed, Maia-o-Ula and had Ma-pule-o-Ula, who wed Kamai-o-Kalani and had the warlike Paukei, who conquered the Kingdom of O`ahu and then wed the Princess Painalea of O`ahu and had Luakoa the Stupid, who lost the Kingdom of O`ahu , Luakoa the Stupid wed the Princess Hina-Apeape of Kona and had the twin brother and sister, Kuhimana and Kaumana.
The Princess Hina-Apeape of Kona was the full sister of the Queen-Consort of Hawai`i, of the reigning monarch of Hapae. She was also a half-sister of the reigning monarch of Hawai`i, the Prince Kalapana.
THE PRINCE, Kuhimana wed his twin sister the Princes Kaumana and of this sanctified union was born the sacred Prince Kamalu-Ohua.
When the Prince Kuhimana was slain at the Battle of Kaeleiki, his sister-bride was so very distraught that she killed herself and fell over the corpse of her husband. The royal couple were buried together at the sacred burial caves at Iao.
The sacred Prince Kamalu-Ohua was a pleasure-loving monarch who hated the duties and responsibilities of government. He loved better the soft caress of his women than the stringency of battle.
For generations the wisdom of his predecessors had strengthened his kingdom so that Maui had been spared the invasion of inimical armies, and Kamalu-Ohua was content in this false security.
ON THE ISLAND of Hawai`i, reigned his own cousin, the Prince Kalaunui-Ohua. On the island of Moloka`i his maternal uncle, the High-Chief Ohua-Pouleilei, ruled as a vassal of Maui. Another cousin was the monarch of O`ahu, the Prince Kau-a-Kamaka-Ohua.
It seemed farfetched that any of his cousins would want to wage war upon him, and Kamalu-Ohua basked in his seeming safety. All the monarchs of this period carry the epithetic title of "Ohua" which means - servant. All of these princes were descendants of the sacred Prince Kanipahu, King of Hawai`i, the 110th monarch of that lineage.
Kanipahu was overthrown from power by his half-brother the High-Chief Kama-Iole, and was forced for a time to labor as a servant.
The title "Ohua" memorializes this period of humiliation and servitude and of the profanation of royal sanctity by menial labor. It is a title borne proudly by many princes of the royal houses of Hawai`i.
The island Kingdom of Hawai`i rises in majestic splendor from the depths of the Pacific and reaches with her snowy crest of Mauna Kea to kiss the very heavens - the highest mass of earth in the world.
OVER THIS Kingdom about half a millennium ago ruled an ambitious prince who, within the pasture of his eight-island universe, dreamed of empire. This was the Prince Kalunui-Ohua King of Hawai`i and the 122nd monarch of the Hawaiian race.
Throttled by the dream of empire and conquest, the Prince of Hawai`i let his covetous eyes wander over the seas to the other kingdoms of this archipelago.
HE GATHERED together the Warrior-Clans of Hawai`i ,collected provisions, and assembled a fleet of war-canoes. When all was ready, the armada of Hawai`i moved against the green coasts of Maui.
The armies of Hawai`i in one mightysweep had conquered Maui, O`ahu and Moloka`i. The monarchies of those kingdoms had surrendered their sovereignty before the conquering power of the King of Hawai`i, Kalaunui-Ohua.
And, now the victor stood on the shores of O`ahu and gazed 90 miles across the ocean channel to the richest prize of all - the rich and fertile lands of Kaua`i.
THE ISLAND of Kaua`i is a veritable garden; her fields are rich; her waters are sweet; her seas teem with abundance. For many decades since her invasion and conquest by the mighty Prince Moikeha, Kaua`i had enjoyed an era of fruitful peace.
These years of peace however had not debilitated the prowess of the warriors of Kaua`i. Their courage was renowned, and their skill in the arts of battle was to be feared.
AND NOT ALONE on their strength and bravery of their warriors did the people of Kaua`i depend for their security. High in their green mountains stood the great Heiau (temples).
Just below the crest of Mount Kawaikini stood the holiest of the holy, the sacred Heiau of the Supreme IO - the only temple outside of the island of Hawai`i erected to honor IO.
THE PRIESTHOOD of Kaua`i had a profound knowledge of those mystic and truth which govern all elements and subdue the very forces of nature. The armies stood as the last measure of defense; before them in gray clouds of mystery rose the strange powers of the Kahuna the priesthood.
Even before the allied forces of Maui, O`ahu, Moloka`i and the conquering Hawai`i had prepared their invasion, the priest of Kaua`i had predicted their attempt and they smiled at the puny efforts of men against the gods.
On the hills above Koloa on the island of Kaua`i stood the Heiau and enclosures of the palace of the reigning princes of that island kingdom, the gracious Kukona. The name of this prince became in Hawai`i the symbol of the very highest ideals of chivalry in battle.
Long before the great pandanus sails of Hawai`i and her allies were seen, the court priests of Kaua`i had come before Kukona to warn him of the impending invasion. "And what is the outcome to be?" Kukona had asked, "Victory of defeat for us?" the priests had answered one word - Victory - and Kukona turned his eyes away and he wept. "O, that the blood of my people and my children, must flow again over their sacred land."
CENTURIES after Kukona had died, another monarch of Kaua`i, the Prince Kaumuali`i, a descendant of Kukona, was faced with the same threat of invasion from Hawai`i and her allies. He remembered the tears of his ancestor and the concern of Kukona for the lives of his people.
Kaumuali`i had naught to lose but his throne not half so precious to him as the blood of his subjects. He delivered his sovereignty to the invading Kamehameha. Few of this world's monarchs can boast of so deep a concern for the welfare of their people.
THE KING of Kaua`i, Kukona, had no intention to surrender nor to deliver his sovereignty to alien hands. When the armada of Kalaunui-Ohua, touched the shores of Kaua`i, they were met by an army of only 500 men - defenders of Kaua`i.
Kukona had not even bothered to attend; he sent his heir, Mano-Kalanipo, to represent him. In one brief battle, the armies of invasion suffered a complete and absolute defeat.
A small and greatly outnumbered force of Kaua`i warriors had decisively beaten the combined armies of all of the other islands. The invading monarchs now stood in peril of their very lives for ancient custom decreed that they might be slaughtered and offered as sacrifices before the great Ku temples of Kaua`i.
The Prince Kukona, however, decided otherwise and thereby set the pattern by which the acts in battle of the succeeding princes of Hawai`i were judged.
KUKONA SPARED the princes who had come to conquer him. Instead of death, he gave them presents: to their men he gave provisions and supplies. He repaired their canoes and gave them more from his own fleets.
He sent them back to their own realms over the seas in the regal state befitting a sovereign prince of Hawai`i.
CHIVALRY AND grace were embodied in Kukona, the King of Kaua`i, and he remained throughout the centuries of Hawai`i's history as the criterion whence all other acts of warfare are measured. Even Kamehameha violated all battle etiquette - yet we praise the results which he achieved putting an end to a disordered social system.
The Prince Kamalu-Ohua King of Maui, returned to his own kingdom after his defeat on Kaua`i. His cousin, Kalunui-Ohua, returned to Hawai`i.
These two monarchs had wed sisters. The elder sister, Kaheke, became the Queen-Consort of Hawai`i, and the younger sister, Kapu-I-Kaheke, became the Queen-Consort of Maui.
KAMALU-OHUA was succeeded by his eldest son, Loe-Ua-Kane, who wed a chiefess of Kaupo, Wao-Haapuna, and had Kahaoku-Ohua who wed the Princess of Hawai`i, Hai-Kekaiula, and had the Warrior - Prince Kaulahea the Great who invaded and conquered the Kingdom of O`ahu.
Kaulahea the Great wed the High-Chiefess Kapo-Hanai-Au-puni of Hilo and had Kakae, the King of Maui and O`ahu. Kakae wed his maternal aunt, the High-Chiefess Kapo-Hauo-la, and had Kahekili the Great who impoverished his Kingdom and people by his many war campaigns.
KAHEKILI the Great wed the Princess of Kaua`i, Hau-Kanuihoniala and had Kawaokanele whose name means, Our-Days-of-Poverty to commemorate the impoverishment of his kingdom.
Kawaokanele wed the High Chiefess Kapalaoa of O`ahu and of this union was born a son who was destined to become the most renowned of the monarchs of Maui. This was the mighty King of Maui, Pi`ilani the Great.
NO OTHER monarch is so revered by the people of Maui as this prince, and even in their poetic forms, the Island of Maui is often addressed as Na-Hono-A-Pi`ilani,
Pi`ilani the Great was the 130th generation descendant of Wakea, the God of Light, through the younger brance (Hana-La`aiki) of the divine royal house of Hawai`i. He was the 20th independent monarch and sovereign of Maui.
To all of the world's great men, time and mankind will bestow some form of divinity. Thus was it with Pi`ilani of Maui.
In order to certify the parentage of a royal child - especially the first born the nuptial rites of Hoao-Wohi demanded that the bride be secluded from all male company excepting her husband until her pregnancy was assured.
DURING THIS hymeneal seclusion of the Princess Kapa-laoa of O`ahu, Queen-Consort of Maui, a strange incident occurred. In the early evening, the peace of the nuptial bower was shattered by the screams of Kapalaoa.
Since not any of the warrior-guards was permitted - except under pain of death - to approach the Princess, only her ladies-in-waiting could rush to the aid of their queen. As they entered the darkened room, they beheld a fearsome sight.
RESTING UPON the prostrate princess was a huge dragon-like lizard. This form was one traditionally used by the dreaded God of Power and Destruction - KU in his physical manifestations.
Even as the women watched, the dragon slowly rose in the semi darkness and disappeared. They were struck blind for their sacrilege in daring to behold a divinity.
WHEN THE Princess Kapa-laoa gave birth to a child - a son he was given the name of Pi`ilani, the Ascent to Heaven, to memorialize the visitation of the divine Ku.
This tradition bequeathed to the royalty of Maui their claim of divine descent and also the belief that their kingdom could never be conquered except by a descendant of Kane, God of Life and Creation.
Kamehameha whose birth signified his descent from the Kane lineage - did take the Kingdom of Maui.
The eldest son and heir of the great Pi`ilani of Maui was the Prince Kiha who succeeded to the sovereignty of that kingdom at the death of his father. He too had many wives and concubines, and it has long been know in Hawai`i that the true might and strength of the Maui warriors lay primarily in the fact that they were all very close relatives.
THE PRINCE KIHA of Maui first married under the nuptial rites of "Hoao-Wohi", the Princess Kumaka-Kui-Kalani by whom were born the might Warrior King of Maui, Kamalala-walu, and his sister, the Princess Pi`ilani-Wahine.
All of the latter monarchs of Maui as well as the Kamehameha and Lunalilo Dynasties descend from these tow children.
THERE ARE two poetic description frequently used in Hawaiian melodies to describe the Island of Maui. The first calls Maui - The fields of Pi`ilani ( Na Hono a Pi`ilani). This refers to the great king of Maui, Pi`ilani.
The second calls that island Maui Nui a Kama (Maui Great Land of Kama). This refers to the great Kamalalawalu. Pi`ilani and his grandson, Kamalalawalu, have long been regarded a the greatest of monarchs of the Kingdom of Maui
KAMALALAWALU wed his own sister, the Princess Pi`ilani, and had a son, Kauhi-a-Kama, who took as his consort the sacred Niau-Pio Princess Kapukinia-a-Liloa of Hawai`i.
The Princess Kapukini (and/or [Kini][Iwi] Kaui Kaua and sister) was the daughter of the King of Hawai`i, Hakau, and his sister-consort, the Princess Kini-Laukapu.
The Princess Kapukini-a-Liloa wed first her uncle of half blood, the King Umi-a-Liloa of Hawai`i, and from them descend all of the kings and princes of that island.
KAPUKINI then married the King of Maui, Kauhi-a-Kama, and from this second marriage descend all of the kings and princes of Maui, O`ahu and Kaua`i.
The sacred Kapukini - daughter of Hakau and grand-daughter of the immortal Liloa of Hawai`i, was truly the Mother of Kings. It was by her that the kings of the various island kingdoms traced the sanctity of their descent from Wakea, God of Light, and the original star-born monarchs of the Hawaiian race.
The King of Maui, Kauhi-a-Kama, and his consort, the Queen-Consort of Hawai`i, Kapukini-a-Liloa, had two children, the Prince Kalani-Kau-Maka-o-Wakea and the Princess Kanea-Kauhi.
These children wed each other and had three children of their own; the Prince Lono-Honua-Kini, the Princess Pi`ilani II, and the Princess Umi-a-Liloa.
The Prince Lono-Honua-Kini wed the High-chiefess Kauana-Kinilani of Hana and four children were born. The eldest was the Prince Kaulahea II, later monarch of Maui, next was the Prince Lono-Maka-Honua followed by the Princess Kalani-[ ]-Mai-Heula and the Princess Kuhala.
BEFORE WE continue the long and involved story of these four children of Lono-Honua-Kini, we shall trace the descent of the Prince Kiha of Maui and his second consort of rank, the High-Chiefess Koleamoku.
We do this so that we shall have done with the collateral relatives of the reigning family of Maui prior to discussing those monarchs and princes of Maui who lived in the era of recorded history.
PRINCE KIHA of Maui and the High-Chiefess Koleamoku of Waimea had one son, the High-Chief Kekauhi-o-Kalani. Many island families descend from this chieftain. We neither have the time nor the scope to trace every ramification of the intricate genealogical descent of the many people who descend from this chieftain.
King Kiha-a-Pi`ilani of Maui and the Chiefess Koleamoku of Waimea had one son, the High-Chief Kekauhi-o-Kalani, who had two children of his own. From the eldest descended the Chieftain Kaha Kauila; from the younger came the Chiefess Koleamoku II. These two in turn were married and had a son and a daughter, Kameailihiwa and Wiwiokalani.
We have gone to great length to trace the descent of many of Hawai`i's best known families who descend from the union of the Prince Kiha of Maui and one of his consorts, the Chiefess Koleamoku. We have also traced the legitimate ruling dynasty of Kiha and his queen, Kumaka, through the four generations of Kamalalawalu, Kauhi-a-Kama, Kalani-Kaumaka-o-Wakea and Lono-Honua-Kini, all monarchs of Maui.
Lono-Honua-Kini and his queen, the High Chiefess Kaumakinilani had four children. The eldest was the Prince Kaulahea II later King of Maui. He had one brother, Lono-Maka-Honua, and two sisters, the Princesses Kalani-Maiheuila and Kuhala.
The Prince Lono-Maka-Honua married the Chiefess Kapoohiwi of Kalae, Moloka`i and had a son, the High-Chief Kauakahiakua-o-Lono. This royal chieftain by his first wife, the Princess Kekuiapoiwa the Great of Maui was the father of the Princess Kekelaokalani who married the Prince Haae-a-Mahi of Hawai`i and had the Princess Kekuiapoiwa II, mother of the great Kamehameha.
THE PRINCESS Kekelaokalani had a second husband who was the sacred High-Chief of the House of Keawe, Kamanawa the Great. They were the parents of the Princess Peleuli who married Kamehameha the Great and had the Prince Kahoanoku-Kinau, the Prince Kaikoolani and the Princess Kaleikiliwehi.
The High-Chief Kauakahia-Kua-o-Lono for his second wife of rank married the High Chiefess Umiaemoku (also called Umiaenaku) of the nobel Hawai`i House of the Mahi. They had one daughter, the Princess Kanekapolei, who was the favored queen of Kalaniopuu, King of Hawai`i during the arrival and visit of Capt. James Cook.
THE CHILDREN of Kanekapolei and the King of Hawai`i, Kalaniopuu, were first the tragic Sovereign Prince of Hilo. Keoua-Kuahuula, and second the Prince Pauli-Kaoleioku ancestor of the Most Excellent Ruth Keelikolani and her cousin, the Honorable Bernice Pauahi Bishop.
The Princess Ruth Keelikolani while not the epitome of grace and loveliness in the modern sense, was truly one of Hawai`i's great aristocrats. Her great mansion stood for many years on Emma street on the site now occupied by the Central Grammar school. It was she who inherited by order of the Hawaiian courts the vast lands of the Kamehameha family. These lands now make up the majority of the Bishop Estate.
The youngest daughter of Lono-Honua-Kini, King of Maui, was the Princess Kuhala. She was the great-grandmother of the High-Chief Kalahuimoku II, Titular chieftain of Hana and Kipahulu. This Maui chieftain married the Chiefess Kamehameha and had two daughters, Kahikikala and Kalani-Lehua.
When the young prince Keoua (surnamed Kupuapa-I-Kalaninui-Ahilapalapa), later father of the Kamehameha nd Lunalilo Dynasties, was a youth, he lived on the Island of Maui.
AS ANY YOUNG man would, he paid court to these two lovely Maui girls. Although the younger sister, Kalani-Lehua, was his favorite, he had no children by her.
By the elder sister, Kahikikala, Keoua had one son, his first, the Prince Kalokuokamaile, who is in all reality the eldest half-brother of the great King Kamehameha.
THE YOUNG Prince Keoua was later ordered by his father, the sacred Prince Keeaumoku, to return to Hawai`i and to leave behind him his Maui son and his wives. Keoua did this and his eldest-born was reared as a true Maui Prince.
On his arrival at Hawai`i Keoua was married to the Princess Kamakaeheukuli daughter of the Prince Haae-a-Mahi of Hawai`i and the Princess Kalelemaoli-o-Kalani of Maui. The sacred Prince Kaleimamahu (also called Kalaimamahu and Kalanimamahu) was born of this union. He is the ancestor of the Lunalilo Dynasty.
THIS PRINCE KEOUA then married the Princess Kekuiapoiwa II, sister of Kamakaeheukuli, and the great Kamehameha and his younger brother Kealiimaikai were born of this marriage.
The eldest branch of the Kamehameha Dynasty therefore is the House of Kalokuokamaile. The sanctity of the Hour of Keawe and the family of Keoua lies however in the House of Kaleimamahu whence springs the Lunalilo Dynasty.
THE TEMPORAL powers of the Hawai`i royal family lies in the House of Kamehameha by virtue of the conquests of Kamehameha and of this subsequent marriage to the sacred Niau-Pio Princess Keopuolani.
Kalokuokamaile married Kaloiokalani and had Kaohelelani, a daughter, who married the Chieftain, Nuhi-o-Waimea, and had two children Laanui, a son, and Kekaikuihela, a daughter. The daughter has no living descendants. Her only child Ulumaheihei (Mrs. J. K. Young), had no children.
LAANUI MARRIED Theresa Owana Rives, daughter of the secretary of Kamehameha II, they had two children, Gideon Kailipalaki and Elizabeth Kekaaniau (Mrs. Frank S. Pratt). Gideon Kailipalaki married first a woman named Puohu (later Mrs. Carsley) but had no children with her. His second wife was Kamaikaopa by whom he had the late Princess Theresa Owana Kaohelelani Wilcox.
The eldest child and only royal son of King Kaulahea II of Maui was the Prince Kekaulike (surnamed Kui-Hono-I-Kamoku) who succeeded to the sovereignty of Maui at the death of his father. This prince, founder of the last ruling dynasty of Maui, had fince consorts of rank - two of them were his own sisters of half-blood.
Through these consorts of Kekaulike and their children, the power of Maui was made absolute throughout the islands.
THE RANKING consort of Kekaulike and his queen was his half-sister, the Princess Kekuiapoiwa the Great, in whom was combined the sanctities of both the kingdoms of Maui and Hawai`i. His last consort was the Princess Kahilipoilani, another half-sister. She and the Queen Kekuiapoiwa the Great were sisters of full blood.
The second consort of the Prince Kekaulike was the High-Chiefess Holau of Hawai`i. She was the daughter of the High-Chief Kawelo-a-Aila and the Chiefess Kauakahialii-a-Kaiwi. Her paternal grandmother was the Princess Kaihikapumahana who was the daughter of Kaikilani the Great, the first Queen-Regant of Hawai`i.
THE FATHER of Kaihikapumahana was the famed Alii-Aimoku (Conquering Prince) of Hawaii, Lono-I-Kamakahiki, who is often credited as the founder of the great Makahiki Grams - the Hawaiian Olympics.
The third consort of Kekaulike was the Princess Haalou of both Hawaii and Maui. Her father was the Prince Haae-a-Mahi of Hawai`i, son of the High-Chief Kauauanui-a-Mahi and the sacred Kalani Kaulelea-Iwi of the House of Keawe. The Prince Haae was a younger half-brother of the great Alapai (Mahi-I-Kauakahi), King of Hawaii at the birth of Kamehameha.
THE MOTHER of the Princess Haalou was the Princess of Maui, Kaleiamaoli-o-Kalani, the full-blood sister of King Kekaulike.
Haalou had two sisters. The eldest was the Princess Kamakaeheukuli who is the mother of the Lunalilo and Kalaakaua families. The youngest was the Princess Kekuiapoiwa II, mother of the Kamehameha family.
THE FOURTH consort of Kekaulike was the Chiefess Kane-a-Lae of Molokai who wa also one of the consorts of the great King Keawe II (surnamed I-Kekahialii-a-Kamoku) of Hawaii. This chiefess descended from the famed Sovereign Prince of Molokai, Lono-I-Kahikina, through his first consort, the Chiefess Hina-I-Kalelaehu. As we have mentioned above the last of the consorts of Kekaulike was his sister of half-blood, the Princess Kahilipoilani.
By these five consorts, King Kekaulike of Maui had 15 children, each of whom played vital and very often critical parts in the revelation of Hawaii's destiny. In more ways that we can here consider, the Kekaulike Dynasty of Maui was the mightiest in island history.
No other royal dynasty in the Hawaiian Islands since the first partition of insular sovereignty during the reign of the sacred Prince Paumakua ever enjoyed the power, might and prestige held by the Kekaulike Dynasty of Maui.
The princes and nobles of the Principality of Molokai were vassals of the Kings of Maui. The Island of Lanai was their outright possession.
THE RULING HOUSE of Maui invaded and conquered the Kingdom of Oahu and overthrew the dynasty of Kakuhihewa-I-Kaleimanuia. Even the King of Kauai - rendered by its mighty priests inviolate from war-like aggression - was still invaded by the force of Maui.
Instead of a spear or a warclub, the princes of Maui used a heart filled with love. The sent their brother, the Prince Kaeo-Kulani of Maui, to wed and thereby to rule the Queen-Regnant Kamakahelei of Kauai.
EVEN ON THE great island Kingdom of Hawaii was the power of Maui manifested. The ranking queen-consort of the great Kamehameha was the sacred Princess Keopuolani, granddaughter of Kekaulike. She was the mother of the second and third Kamehameha monarchs.
WHILE IT MAY be true that Kamehameha the Great did finally conquer Maui and did really overthrow the Kekaulike Dynasty, it must still be remembered that his own mother, the Princess Kekuiapoiwa II, was a Maui princess. All of Kamehameha's consorts of rank were princesses of Maui and not of Hawaii. These were Keopuolani, Kalakua-Kaneiheimalie, Peleuli and Kaahumanu. The grandmother of Kamehameha IV and V as well as King Lunalilo was the Princess Kalakaua of Maui.
Of all of the latter monarchs of Hawaii perhaps only the last two, David Kalakaua and his sister, Lydia Liliuokalani, were of the true descent of Hawaii and without close alliance to Maui. In all of the other members of Hawaii's royal lines the infusion of Maui blood was very strong.
THE GREAT Kamehameha lived many years, and as those years passed most of the Hawaii chieftains who had helped him attain his power and throne had died. Slowly, cautiously, and with great cunning the chieftains of Maui had taken these places vacated by death. At his death, Kamehameha was surrounded by the princes of the Kekaulike Dynasty.
It was these who overturned the ancient religion and gods of Hawaii and thereby undermined the strength of the Hawaiian throne. They paved the road which led to the downfall of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
King Kekaulike of Maui and his queen, the Princess Kekuiapoiwa the Great, had three children. The eldest of these was a son, the Prince Kamehamehanui (surnamed Ai-Luau). This prince succeeded his father as the sovereign of Maui.
(research in progress, more to come soon...)
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DHAKA, Bangladesh (AA) – In the early hours of August 15 1975, a group of disgruntled and derailed junior military officers assassinated Bangladesh’s then-president, and iconic independence figure, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, at his residence in the capital of Dhaka.
Sheikh Mujib was killed along with 18 of his family members, including his wife, some of his children, and his brother. Two of his daughters — current Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her younger sister Sheikh Rehana — escaped because they were abroad at the time.
It was an event that marked a major split in Bangladeshi politics and is now celebrated by the ruling Bangladesh Awami League party as the National Mourning Day. Flags fly-half mast, the party and its associates hold cultural events and television channels air special programs documenting the slain leader’s life.
The assassination came only four years after Bangladesh won its independence in a brutal nine-month long war with Pakistan in 1971. The deaths caused a major shift in Bangladeshi politics, with military rule taking hold of the country until 1990. Muntassir Mamun, a historian at the University of Dhaka, said the event was linked to Bangladesh’s history since the partition of India in 1947 — when present-day Bangladesh became East Pakistan and was governed from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
“Now it is quite evident, our fate wasn’t rooted in the divide of 1947. The perpetrators of ‘1975’ [assassinations] wanted to establish that the ‘1971’ [independence] was nothing but a historical transgression and it was ‘1947’ where our genesis was rooted,” said Mamun. “As part of heinous ploy to infuse the spirit of Pakistan, the Father of the Nation was killed.”
One of the biggest debates that has marked Bangladesh’s political path since independence has been about the place of secularism. The death of Sheikh Mujib, who advocated a secular state, heightened this rift.
“The assassination of independence hero Mujibur Rahman also buried the secular fabric in society,” says Saleem Samad, a journalist and media rights activist. “The subsequent military regimes had circumcised the state constitution into an Islamic one.”
The return of electoral governance has meant Awami League governments have tried to re-establish their vision of secularism — alienating some but winning the support of others in an increasingly polarized political sphere.
Rafiqul Islam Miah, a senior figure in the Bangladesh National Party, said that Bangladesh has not followed a democratic path since independence, even under the new elected governments.
“The spirit that worked for the independence of Bangladesh was to establish a democratic country, government would be formed through a democratic process,” said Miah. “We are far away from democracy.”
Since returning to power in 2008, the Awami League government led by Sheikh Hasina has set up controversial war crimes tribunals relating to the 1971 independence war, which killed up to 3 million people according to government figures. It has indicted nine leaders of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party and two from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party for suspected war crimes.
The trials however, have been accused of being used to punish opposition politicians and, as a result, the political rift has expanded. The 2014 general elections saw the Awami League walk back into power after a large-scale opposition boycott.
A veteran of the independence war and prominent theatre activist Nasiruddin Yousuf Bachchu says the date marks not only Sheikh Mujib’s death and the beginning of a political divide, “but also an end of Bangalee’s cultural progress.
“The blooming culture was shattered and we are still on a continuous struggle to regain it.”
© 2014, Mainul Islam Khan . All rights reserved. – The views expressed here are purely those of the author and not necessarily those of the publishers. – Newstime Africa content cannot be reproduced in any form – electronic or print – without prior consent of the Publishers. Copyright infringement will be pursued and perpetrators prosecuted.
4,752 total views, 4 views today | <urn:uuid:4dff4245-dc3c-489b-966c-2b64ba41d38f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.newstimeafrica.com/archives/34965 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967166 | 884 | 2.65625 | 3 |
White Man's Pipe
the Kiowas had came from the buffalo. Their tipis were made of buffalo
hides, so were their clothes and moccassins. They ate buffalo meat....
Most of all, the buffalo was part of the Kiowa religion.... The buffalo
were the life of the Kiowas.
Of all the West's natural wonders, none surpassed the huge herds of buffalo that blanketed the Plains -- perhaps once as many as 30 million of them. They had frightened Coronado's horses by their smell, and astonished Lewis and Clark by their sheer numbers. One wagon train of pioneers was blocked for hours by a herd three miles wide and ten miles long. But for the native peoples of the Plains, they represented existence itself.
buffalo, which was the animal representation of the sun, was the sacrificial
victim of the sundance. The Sun Dance was a great celebration, a great
social occasion. And the Sun Dancers were expressing their spirit in order
to gain certain power. They wanted to be victorious in war. They wanted
to give thanks for something good that had come to them. A buffalo bull
is sacrificed, and its head is impaled in the Sundance lodge or near it.
And it's part of the ritual; you can't have a Sundance without the buffalo."
By the late 1860s, their numbers had already declined -- reduced by disease, competition from horse herds, and by the buffalo robe trade that encouraged some Indian bands to kill more than they needed.
And now the Union Pacific hired men to hunt buffalo to feed the hungry railroad crews as they built their iron road across Indian lands.
saw the first train of cars that any of us had seen. We looked at it from
a high ridge. Far off it was very small, but it kept coming and growing
larger all the time, puffing out smoke and steam; and as it came on, we
said to each other that it looked like a white man's pipe when he was
The Cheyenne and Arapaho and Lakota resented the railroad's intrusion. They de-railed trains, ransacked freight cars, fired on surveying crews. The Union Pacific fell behind schedule.
On June 26th, 1867, an Army detail was overtaken by a war party. One of those killed was Frederick Wyllyams who had come all the way from England in search of adventure. Another Englishman, an amateur ethnologist, photographed his countryman's corpse
muscles of the right arm, hacked to the bone, speak of the Cheyennes,
or "Cut arms;" the nose slit denoted the "Smeller tribe," or Arapahos;
and the throat cut bears witness that the Sioux were also present... it
was evident, from the number of different devices, that warriors from
several tribes had each purposely left one in the dead man's body.
Finally, five thousand troops were sent west to provide the railroad workers with protection. The crews went back to work.
Program | People | Places
| Events | Resources | Lesson
Plans | Quiz|
© 2001 THE WEST FILM PROJECT and WETA | <urn:uuid:84239eb3-f04b-4782-bbc7-3e53b1378c18> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/five/whitemanspipe.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98123 | 667 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Definition of Terms
Definition of "Jazz Musicians"
In the 2002 study, Study of Jazz Artists 2001, a relatively inclusive definition was used to identify jazz musicians in each of the two samples drawn for this study. The first sample was drawn from the membership lists of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) in New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Detroit. The second was a "respondent-driven sample" (RDS) of jazz musicians in each of the same four metropolitan areas.
In the AFM sample of union members, a respondent was considered a jazz musician if he or she answered "yes" to the question, "Do you ever play or sing jazz music?"
In the RDS sample of musicians, a respondent was considered a jazz musician if he or she answered "yes" to any of the following questions:
- Do you consider yourself a jazz musician?
- Did you earn more than 50 percent of your personal income in the last six months as a jazz musician or in jazz-related activities?
- Have you been engaged in your art/jazz more than 50 percent of the time during the last year?
- Have you performed in/with a jazz band at least 10 times in the last year?
- Have you performed with or without a jazz band for pay at least 10 times during the last year?
- Have you produced a documented body of work that is considered (self or externally) jazz? (Documented output = performances, compositions, collaborations, arrangements, recordings) [Jeffri, Joan. 2003. Changing the Beat: A Study of the Worklife of Jazz Musicians, Volume III: Respondent-Driven Sampling. NEA Research Division Report #43. Washington DC: National Endowment for the Arts.]
Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a method of locating members of hard-to-reach populations that are difficult or costly to sample using traditional methodologies. Developed by Cornell University sociologist Douglas Heckathorn, RDS is a form of chain-referral sampling with checks and balances built in to overcome the biases usually associated with this method. A detailed description of the theory and mathematical underpinnings of this sampling method may be found in the article, "Finding the beat: Using respondent-driven sampling to study jazz musicians," by Douglas D. Heckathorn and Joan Jeffri [Poetics 28 (2001) 307-329].
Originally developed to locate injection drug users for HIV-prevention studies and later adapted to find members of such "hidden" populations as gay Latinos in Chicago and Vietnam draft resisters who left the U.S. for Canada, the Study of Jazz Artists 2001 represents the first time this sampling methodology has been used to study artists. According to the research report for the study:
"RDS is a method based on peer recruitment. In each of the four metropolitan areas [New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Detroit], a city coordinator began the study by inviting six to eight jazz musicians to help start the project. These musicians were well connected in the community, not necessarily famous or very visible, but with many contacts since RDS depends on a high contact pattern of the subjects studied. Each of these musicians was interviewed [for the study]. Following the interview, each of these six to eight 'seeds' was given four coupons with which to recruit additional jazz musicians..."
"We paid the initial 'seeds' a modest $10 and for each coupon the seed gave out, another $15 each time one of the four coupons was redeemed. Any single jazz musician had the possibility to earn a total of $75. This limit on both coupons and payment incentives was to avoid over-representing one particular group of musicians to the exclusion of others." [Jeffri, Joan. 2003. Changing the Beat: A Study of the Worklife of Jazz Musicians, Volume III: Respondent-Driven Sampling. NEA Research Division Report #43. Washington DC: National Endowment for the Arts.] | <urn:uuid:3c257b44-cf49-4cab-906a-65bb1cfc6df7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/quickfacts/artists/jazz01defterm.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953299 | 829 | 2.6875 | 3 |
December 14, 2011
Social Exclusion Among Shift Workers And Older People
Older people and those who work non-standard hours are less likely to feel integrated into society, according to a study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
"Feeling part of society usually involves participating in certain activities such as sports, the arts, volunteering or social networking," says Dr Matt Barnes who led the research. "Our research shows that older people and those who work unusual hours face particular barriers to participating in such activities."The study points out that the Government promotes work as the best route to personal well-being, with worklessness going hand in hand with low income and social exclusion. Yet, Dr Barnes' research shows that working uncommon hours can also have implications for people's opportunities to engage and feel integrated in society.
Two-thirds of workers work at unusual times. Although shops and other facilities are beginning to adapt, such workers still find their leisure time constrained by the limited availability of services, as well as other people with whom to spend their free time.
Compared with people who work a standard week (Monday to Friday, between 8am and 7pm), these workers spend less time on face-to-face social and relational activities, particularly if they work in the evening or at the weekend. On average, evening workers spend six hours 43 minutes on participatory activities per week and Sunday workers just over five hours, compared with over eight hours for those who work normal hours.
"By getting people to keep a diary and analyzing the way they spend their time over a 24 hour period," says Dr Barnes, "we have been able to understand how they 'participate' and what might be done to create greater social inclusion."
The study also found that older people face barriers to participatory activities. Over one million older people experience poor social relations and social exclusion.
Spending time with friends is an important way of building social networks and support. They can be crucial for older people dealing with life-changing events such as retirement, bereavement or illness — each of which can pose an increased risk of social isolation. Spending time with people outside the household can also provide the elderly with a sense of independence.
The study found that older people who live alone spend a lot of time with friends and acquaintances, but on average, they can also spend eleven hours alone on a week day and ten and a half hours alone at weekends (excluding sleep).
Over a third of the time that older people spend with their friends is devoted to participatory activities - most often social networking such as visiting or receiving visitors, celebrating birthdays and catching up over the phone. Religious activity and doing acts of kindness involving friends are also important participatory activities.
The research also showed that women are more likely than men to spend time with friends on social networking activities. Their ability to participate, however, is limited by housework, caring for others and personal care.
"It is clear that social participation is important for an improved quality of life, both in older age and among those still working," says Dr Barnes. "Improving the accessibility of public transport and other facilities and services would go a long way towards increasing social inclusion in Britain."
These results suggest that local government and charities need to recognize that social participation is important to improve people's quality of life. "Local governments can encourage public leisure complexes and public transport services to operate wider hours or 24/7. Charities could be more aware of these groups when arranging social clubs targeting shift workers and elderly people", Dr Barnes concludes.
On the Net: | <urn:uuid:96e6a721-bc9b-40aa-befb-5850e99e55d8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112440199/social-exclusion-among-shift-workers-and-older-people/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967551 | 728 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Luther: A Life by John M. Todd
John M. Todd is the author of a number of books, including Reformation, and John Wesley and the Catholic Church. Luther: A Life was published in 1982 by The Crossroad Publishing Company. This book was prepared for Religion Online by Harry W. and Grace C. Adams.
When the news of Luther’s death arrived in Wittenberg, Melancthon announced it dramatically to his class: ‘Alas, gone is the horseman and the chariots of Israel.’ They were the words spoken in the Old Testament story by Elisha when Elijah was taken from him. Melancthon was conscious that a great Prophet had gone, and that he had been left perhaps with the burden of the Wittenberg movement on his shoulders. It was Melancthon who spoke in the castle church, along with Bugenhagen, where the funeral service was held there on 22 February. The procession up the long Wittenberg street was led by the coffin, followed by a carriage in which Katie and others were. Following them came the children and relations on foot, and then the University and town authorities. Finally there were thousands of mourners many of whom had come specially and crowded the town. Melancthon turned again to the great names in Christian history, as others did elsewhere, to find some measuring rod. He said God had raised Luther up as he had raised up Isaiah, John the Baptist, Paul, Augustine. He faced up to the matter of Luther’s language and said he would ‘not deny or excuse of praise, but reply as Erasmus often did: "God gave the world in these later times when severe and acute disease and failures prevail, a harsh and severe doctor."’ Dr Martin had indeed written too violently but he, Melancthon, had never known him to be anything but gentle and loving in person. Now, he said they were ‘entirely poor, wretched, forsaken, orphans, who had lost a dear noble man as our father’. The great historic figure and the deeply loved friend were both saluted.
Luther had died just in time. Two months before he died the Council of Trent had finally opened officially. While it would be years before notable results were to flow, it was clear that a serious reforming Council of the(Roman Catholic) Church had opened. Only a few months later the Emperor held a Diet, and suddenly without legal order declared the Electors John Frederick and Philip of Hesse outlawed. He had seen at last that he had the French beaten for the moment, that the Turks were contained, that he could make common cause with the Pope and could now at last use military force to bring the Protestant states to order. Luther’s death had made it easier, but he would have done it anyway. Luther would have seen the end of the world come even nearer.
But no military action could reverse Luther’s achievements, and meanwhile there was the great legacy of memories, of writings, of institutions and ways of carrying on in church and out of it, of music, and song. And, for a time, a special legacy of personal memories. Two months after his death, Katie wrote to her sister:
‘Who would not be sorrowful and mourn for so noble a man as was my dear Lord ? Truly I am so distressed I cannot tell the deep sorrow of my heart to anybody and I hardly know what to think or how to feel. I cannot eat or drink nor can I sleep. If I had a principality and an empire it would never have cost me so much pain to lose them as I have now that our Lord God has taken from me this dear and precious man. God knows that for sorrow and weeping I can neither speak nor dictate this letter.’
Luther had put the life of the great European ‘Myth’ into a new gear. The hordes of pensioned functionaries had gone from the streets and churches. A new sense of authority and responsibility was seen in the local communities. Doctrinally and institutionally, what Luther had put in the place of the papal Church was not, in one sense, so different. Christians were still required to live by a range of received doctrines and morals. And these were still underwritten by the civil authority. But the norm had changed. It was now the Bible, and not a Law Book. In practice both needed interpretation, so in a sense Christians were still back with Church authorities which had to be obeyed. And the Reformers’ Church could be narrower and more legalistic, in the end, than the papal Church; everything had to conform to the style of a single overarching doctrine, instead of being allowed to be deployed over a wide range of options. Puritanism was soon born.
But the changes were qualitative and substantial. The ‘Myth’ began again to look less like a myth and more like the Gospel of the New Testament. Jesus of Nazareth began to look less like a god, and more like the Word of God, suffering for and with his people. The ministers began to look more like disciples with a Christian message and less like purveyors of a marketed ‘grace’. It was possible to understand the Church as a community and a mystery, not just an institution with a set of rules. But polarisation hindered both the old Church and the new. Both turned away from the ‘almost everything’ which in fact they had in common. The new Church was powered by norms which the old Church had protected and conveyed to it. The Bible had appeared, though largely dishonoured, in its best modern edition (the Spanish Polyglot edition) under the auspices of the old Church, from one of its oldest homes in the Mediterranean basin. The Reformed and Roman Catholic Churches tended to become reverse images of each other, both institutionalised. As Rome finally produced its own reforms during the following twenty years, it became more law bound than ever. Luther never loved institutions, and a central factor in his disillusion was the continuing absence of the autonomous Word leading people to a life of faith, love and good works.
Of Luther himself it is impossible to speak summarily. The complex and remarkable story of his life, the tally of his works, and the witness of a great number of friends, acquaintances and enemies are there. Many loved him, many revered him, some were frightened of him, a few resentful. No one accused him, with any semblance of justification, of double dealing, or of cowardice. My principal image is of a man driven, driven by a passion for the Divine, driven, too, by a horror of evil; convinced of its eventual futility, he was ever conscious of its threat, and his life was one of prayer. His friends remembered him standing by the window of his room praying, often aloud. Under the rumbustious lover of life lay sensitivity, intelligence and imagination, and a failure to come to terms with a world which was never good enough, a failure he found confirmed in the crucifix, but glorified in what followed. At the Wartburg he wrote: ‘They threaten us with death. They would do better to threaten us with life’. | <urn:uuid:2ee54f41-7c89-4fde-8e36-6e1162d5035d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=801&C=1072 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990526 | 1,497 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Grammar and Style Guide
- Academic Terminology
- Corporations and Products
- Proofreader’s Marks and Editing Guidelines
- Semester Terminology
- Spelling and Usage
- Time and Numbers
There is no alternative to correct punctuation. Incorrect punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence with the result being an ill-informed reader. Even if the meaning of a sentence is not altered by poor punctuation, it can cause a reader to lose track of what is being said, leading to confusion.
“It’s” vs. “Its,” “Its” vs. “Their,” and Other Possessives
If you are talking about a contraction of the phrase “it is,” use “it’s.”
If you are talking about a possessive situation—“the thing belonging to it”—use “its.”
“It’s no secret that the university encourages diversity.”
Use “it” and “its” when referring to possessive situations involving groups, schools, corporations, etc.; they are entities. Do not use “their.”
The College of Science has increased the number of its (not “their”) faculty.
Xerox follows the progress of its (not “their”) co-op students carefully.
Singular possessives and plural possessives confuse a lot of folks. Here are some examples of words in singular possessive, plural, and plural possessive forms.
Possessive Plural Plural Possessive child's toy children children's toy boy's hats boys boys' hats Phyllis's home the Phyllises the Phyllises' home Santa's nose many Santas many Santas' noses its own their own their own
Never, absolutely never, use apostrophes to pluralize (“raining cat’s and dog’s,” etc.). Not even for proper names ending in “s.” In that case, either end the name in “es” or leave it singular as appropriate to the name; usually it’s “es.” (“The Myerses say they love teaching.”) For acronyms, don’t use an apostrophe unless the acronym ends in “S.” (CODs, IOUs, but MS’s, BS’s). When in doubt, consult the Associated Press Stylebook.
Use commas or semicolons to separate items in a series. Which to use? Here’s how to tell: If you have a series of three or more elements that are simple and similar, use commas.
apples, peaches, and pumpkin pie
Joe Smith, Mary Jones, and Susan Stacy received scholarships.
If you are listing many different elements to describe something, and the descriptions are wordy (especially if they also contain internal commas), separate with semicolons.
He is a 2014 graduate of RIT; a renowned illustrator for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic; and a talented tenor.
If you need to set off individual elements in a long list (such as a series of students’ names and their colleges), use a combination of the two, with a comma following the last item in the series.
Joe Smith, College of Science; Mary Jones, NTID; and Susan Stacy, College of Engineering, received scholarships.
Use an internal comma after the date and year when a specific date is given. Do not use internal commas when a specific date is not given.
On Sept. 28, 2015, we went to Toronto.
In September 2015 we went on vacation.
At 3 p.m., Sept. 28, we will hold a meeting.
Also use commas to separate the elements in addresses and places:
Colleen Clarke is originally from Ithaca, N.Y., but now lives in Hilton.
And use them to set off appositive (nonrestrictive) clauses:
Jim Miller, senior vice president of Enrollment Management, came to RIT from Eisenhower College.
Ditto for appositive words:
Neil’s wife, Barbara, is a teacher. (Her name is not essential; Neil has only one wife, so the reader knows who is the teacher.)
But restrictive words and phrases do not use commas:
Karen’s son Scott is excited about the Lions this year. (There could be more than one son, and the name is necessary to identify which one is a Lions fan.)
Use commas between the clauses in a compound sentence unless they are very short and closely related. Do not use commas with a compound predicate.
The client asked if the job could be delivered the next day, and the printer jumped out the window.
The student studied all night and took the test in the morning.
Use a comma before “including” and “such as” when followed by a nonrestrictive, nonessential phrase or clause.
The new policy applies to everyone, including faculty.
Some students make silly excuses, such as “My dog ate my homework.”
Do not use a comma when using a phrase like “as well as,” in which the clause is essential and restrictive.
The new policy applies to faculty as well as staff.
Do not use commas after a man’s name if he is a “Jr.,” “Sr.” “II,” “III,” etc.
Wrong: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Right: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Wrong: The Mod Squad featured Clarence Williams, III.
Right: The Mod Squad featured Clarence Williams III.
Em Dashes (Double Hyphens or Long Dashes)
These often are used to expand or highlight a part of a sentence that appears to be a break in thought or to introduce a clause or insert.
“What you or I need is the right word—fat or thin, brisk or lazy.” Willard Espy
Use the en dash, not the hyphen, for events that continue for a given length of time in calendar listings. In text, use the words “from” and “to.”
Hyphens are used to separate parts of a compound adjective, except those with an “-ly” ending. (Refer to the Chicago Manual of Style for the use of hyphenations with “-ly” endings.)
The course is for hard-of-hearing students. But He is hard of hearing.
It was a shoot-’em-up Western.
Frank Lloyd Wright was a highly regarded architect.
In suspended compounds, hyphens serve as placeholders for the omitted part of the compound:
The course is for full- and part-time students.
CIMS assists small- and medium-sized manufacturers.
Don’t hyphenate compound adjectives when they appear after or apart from the noun they modify or are used as adverbs:
part-time student Julie Jackson
Julie attends RIT part time
Frank Lloyd Wright, the well-known architect
well known as an architect
In words beginning with “co,” retain the hyphen when forming nouns, adjectives, and verbs that indicate occupation or status: co-author, co-chairman, co-owner, co-partner. Use no hyphen in other combinations: coed, coeducation, coequal, coexist, cooperate, cooperative, coordinate. But use co-op.
Do not hyphenate Student Alumni Union.
For telephone numbers, use hyphens between sections of the number. Do not use parentheses around the area codes. The form is 212-621-1500. For international numbers use 011 (from the United States), the country code, the city code, and the telephone number: 011-44-20-7535-1515. The form for toll-free numbers is 800-111-1000. If extension numbers are needed, use a comma to separate the main number from the extension: 212-621-1500, ext. 2.
Use a single space after a period at the end of a sentence.
Don’t use periods at the end of incomplete sentences or lists:
• Microelectronic Feats
• Hydroelectricity and Sound
• Transformer Conversions
Use an ellipsis (…) to indicate omitted words within a sentence or quote. In general, treat an ellipsis as a three-letter word, constructed with three periods and two spaces (that is, leave one regular space on both sides of an ellipsis).
“I’m sure the after effects will ... be with people for a while,” he said.
If the words that precede an ellipsis constitute a grammatically complete sentence in the original (or if quote is condensed), place a period at the end of the last word before the ellipsis. Follow it with a regular space and an ellipsis:
Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address speaks of the need to preserve
“... government of the people, by the people and for the people. ...”
Quotation Marks and Italics
Use quotation marks for titles of articles; chapters in books; academic papers; radio and TV programs that are not part of a regularly scheduled series; songs; seminars for which the name is descriptive; and workshops. Also use them for comments made by interviewed people, of course.
She thought “The MTV Video Music Awards” wasn’t as good this year as last.
Snow White sang “Someday My Prince Will Come.”
Don’t you want to go to the “Learning the Internet” seminar?
They hadn’t heard of the “Getting Along with Your Adult Kids” workshop.
Remember to put single quotes inside double quotes when quoting a person quoting someone else or quoting a title of the above:
"Everyone in Belgrade is singing ‘We Live Again,’” he reported.
“My article, ‘The Reproductive Cycle of Female Brown Shrimp in the North Sea,’ will be published soon,” she said.
Use italics (not underlines) for titles of books, magazines, newspapers, TV series, plays, and movies.
Titanic was as over-rated as the ship itself but stayed afloat nevertheless.
Al Pacino was featured in The Insider.
He wants to be published in The New York Times.
Everyone knows that appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated is a jinx.
The line was so long, I could have finished reading War and Peace before I got service.
Punctuation should always appear inside quotation marks, except when using semicolons and colons, and in the case of question marks and exclamation points that apply to the entire sentence, not just the quoted material:
Have you heard the song “Steamroller”?
“I can’t believe they actually sang ‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?’!”
When URLs must be broken at the end of a line of type, break the URL at a slash. | <urn:uuid:2edc3e40-ad9d-4b5f-b4c1-16668333fdd9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.rit.edu/upub/punctuation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919264 | 2,419 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Germany resents carrying the others, Britain resents Brussels. Even the weaker powers no longer love the EU
The history of Europe has been interspersed with the meetings of power. In 1084 the participants in one of the most famous were the Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII, one of the greatest of medieval popes. The Holy Roman Emperor had to abase himself before the Pope to expunge his excommunication, but the Germanic power of the Emperor eventually prevailed.
The question of emperor versus pope, of Germany versus France, can only go against Germany if a third party has been introduced to shift the balance of power. The third party in 1704 was England and the point | <urn:uuid:2db0aa97-4d91-40d7-b0e9-ca14646c9c3f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/williamreesmogg/article3138940.ece | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971328 | 141 | 2.625 | 3 |
NEW YORK, June 6 (UPI) -- Beetles that harvest water from desert air have inspired the creation of printable surfaces that improve on nature with the aid of glass nanoparticles. These surfaces could also help control the flow of microscopic amounts of fluid in labs on microchips, experts tell UPI's Nano World.
Currently, methods to collect water from the air using nets "are very inefficient, with most of the water in fog-laden winds passing right through the holes in the nets," said Oxford University zoologist Andrew Parker in England. These new surfaces "are far more efficient," he said.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge investigated the Stenocara beetle, which lives in the Namib Desert in Africa, "the hottest terrestrial environment on Earth," Parker explained. In the foggy dawn, the beetle tilts itself forward into the wind to capture water droplets on its back. These roll down into the beetle's mouth, providing it a fresh morning drink.
Earlier, Parker and his colleagues discovered the back of the beetle is made of surface bumps decorated with spots about 100 millionths of a meter wide that are hydrophilic, or water loving. Between these bumps is a surface that is superhydrophobic, or extremely water repellant. Small water droplets accumulate on the bumps until they coalesce into larger drops that overcome the binding forces of the hydrophilic spots due to sheer weight and get funneled down the water-repellant grooves.
To mimic the beetle's technique for harvesting water, the MIT researchers developed printable surfaces that are both superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic.
"We've gone beyond what nature has come up with. These aren't just hydrophilic patterns, but superhydrophilic patterns," said researcher Michael Rubner, a materials scientist.
First the researchers decorated a crinkled microporous polymer surface with glass-polymer nanoparticles coated with water-repellant Teflon-like molecules. Next they created superhydrophilic canals on top of this surface made of glass nanoparticles that do not possess water-repellant coatings. The nanoparticles in these canals possess many spaces in between them, making them act somewhat like sponges, "with water droplets immediately sucked into these voids," Rubner explained. Materials chemist Lei Zhai and chemical engineer Robert Cohen, along with Rubner and their colleagues, will report their findings in the June 14 issue of the journal Nano Letters.
Parker noted 22 countries with negligible rainfalls experience desert fogs "and could really benefit if you could make such a water harvesting material cheaply, to for instance put on roofs."
Improved water-harvesting surfaces could help outside the desert as well. "China has a huge problem with water shortages. You could imagine putting these up on mountainsides that would get run into by fast-moving clouds," Parker said.
Rubner noted the researchers are pursuing uses for their surfaces in microfluidic devices, which shuffle around microscopic amounts of fluid. These increasingly find use as miniaturized labs.
The most important question now, Parker said, is whether these surfaces can be manufactured reliably and cost effectively at large scales. Research might also want to explore incorporating heat reflectivity into these surfaces just as the desert beetles do, to minimize water evaporation, he added. | <urn:uuid:7f057a83-fae2-41e8-aa01-f4c85cf64108> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2006/06/06/Nano-World-Water-harvesting-surfaces/UPI-66541149618120/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953398 | 693 | 3.75 | 4 |
Antarctica is home to one of harshest environments in the world, but exactly because of this it exhibit a unique set of fauna to the world. As the local arctic climate warms, however, and an increasing number of tourists and scientists are bringing in thousands of seeds, once pristine ecosystems are now at risk.
Seeds and plant materials, quite practically “alien” for the last untouched continent of the world, are brought in constantly to the Arctic shore via the shoes and clothing of well-meaning scientists, ecotourists and support staff. And as the number of people visiting the content dramatically increases year after year, the risk of ecosystem contamination grows as well. During the 2007-08 summer season alone, about 33,000 tourists and 7,000 scientists (including support personnel) arrived in Antarctica.
Steven Chown of Stellenbosch University in South Africa and colleagues vacuumed clothes, bags and other travel gear of about 850 people, and found 2,686 plant seeds, which they went on to identify by species or family using photographs from plant databases. It’s estimated that around 70,000 seeds were brought in by visitors to the continent during the ’07-’08 summer season time frame.
Although many would argue that these seeds would’ve never survive the harsh antarctic environment, the researchers claim that the climate has changed dramatically in past few decades. Many of the stowed away seeds actually hail from the Arctic or Alps region, where they’re already accustomed to cold climates, making them good candidates for surviving and thriving in the harsh polar environment.
“Many people have thought Antarctica is just an ice-covered place, there’s no chance that things are going to establish there, but of course that’s not true,” Chown said. “One of the things that surprised us all was simply the scope of the numbers of seeds coming into the continent.”
To demonstrate how invasive plant species area already affecting the antarctic environment, the researchers reported the fates of nearby sub-Antarctic islands, where plants such as dandelions and mouse-eared chickweed have sprung up all over the place.
Although the study focused on invasive plants, animals could become a greater problem on the Antarctic islands as the climate warms, scientists said.
“If rodents ever got in, they’d be a real pest because rats have a habit of feeding on birds — and there’s huge, vast bird colonies in Antarctica,” Chown said. Even penguins might be at risk. “Penguins are more feisty than others, and rats don’t tend to feed on penguins. But if they were desperate they’d have a go.”
The reseachers’ findings were reported Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. | <urn:uuid:767b5e97-d5fe-4924-82fb-73892572c70e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.zmescience.com/research/studies/antarctic-plant-ecosystem-threatened-alien-seeds-0439243/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952828 | 598 | 3.84375 | 4 |
Useful Victorian Websites
Voice of the Shuttle
Victorian Women Writer's Project
Spartacus History Encyclopedia
Norton Anthology Website
Webliography of Important Victorian Dates
Create an annotated list of Websites illustrating each of the events in Victorian culture listed in your assigned decade. For each event, link and annotate the best website you can find to teach the class about that event. Enter all websites on the ENGL 3379 Wiki page as well as a paragraph (6-8 coherent sentences) annotating the event and website.
Due Tuesday, Sept 2.
[Paste url here]
After websites are posted, please post on the discussion board at least one comment on the 2 other decades you didn't work on.
Group work will be graded on the number of contributions of each member, the pertinence and quality of each website posted, and the quality of the paragraph explaining the historical event and the website.
The 1830s not only marked the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign and what we now call the Victorian Age, but it also forced changed in England. Reformation in Parliament and the construction of the first public rail system boosted England's economy and gave more power to the middle class. While new ways of thinking about women's roles and the growth of the periodical would come later in the period, the 1830s paved the way for a new way of living.
Liverpool/Manchester Railway opens
In 1830, the Liverpool/ Manchester Railway became the first steam powered public railway line in the world. With the development of the railway came the push to reform Parliament due to the fact that passengers could now travel easily about the country. The railway system also aided in the growth of England's economy and closed distances between cities. The line opened on September 15, 1830 in North West England and by the year 1900 had 15, 195 miles of lines and an underground railway system in London.
First Reform Bill
In 1832, British Parliament passed the First Reform Bill. The bill was put in place to transfer voting privileges from small, scarcely inhabited boroughs in England run by nobility to urban areas with large populations. The bill also extended the right to vote to all males owning property worth a certain amount in anual grant. The new voting rights gave power to middle class economic interests. The First Reform Bill was written by prime minister Charles Grey and was introduced to the House of Commons by John Russell. The bill was introduced in March of 1831 but did not pass through the House of Lords until until June 4, 1832.
The factory acts were put in the place in an attempt to improve industial labor and work conditions in England. The Factory of of 1833 restricted children ages fourteen-eighteen to a maximum of twelve work hours and a lunch break. Children ages nine-thirteen would permitted to work eight hours a day with a lunch break and were required to have two education hours. No one under the age of eighteen was allowed to work night shifys. Children under nine were restricted from the textile industry and mandatory factory inspections were put in place. The factory acts restricted child labor and limited hours of employment.
Abolition of Slavery in all British territories
In one day, a man by the name of Lord Mansfield abolished slavery in a ruling that pertained to a case where an African American slave was suing his master. This transpired before the court in May, the 14th day of 1772, four years before our nation founded and signed the Declaration of Independence. (I saw the play this summer at Prickett's Fort, it was great!) Slavery still continued, especially foreign, yet this decision made an impact on on the British abolition of the slave trade. Finally, in 1807, the Slave Trade act came into effect but slavery "still" continued to the point that citizens finally realized that slavery had to be made ILLEGAL for it to finally stop! This took place officially, for the majority of the British Empire, on August 1st in 1834. For the next 20 years or so, slavery slowly began to fade away as the slaves or "apprentices", which they were referred to as, were released by their masters.
Beginning of the Oxford Movement
The Oxford Movement was a religious movement that was originated by Angelican Clergymen at Oxford University, (hence the name). This movement revived certain Roman Catholic doctrines and rituals relating to the Roman Catholic ceremonies, i.e. reconstructing churches and their decor; hymn singing, and even changing the vestments that were worn by the priests and cloergymen. The decisions that activated this movement inspired, excited and outraged the opinions of the public and became a mode of transportation for advancements in social reform.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs were a group of six men who were agricultural labourers who tried to stand against wage cutting in Dorset, England. People were working hard for only a little bit of food provided by the meager sums that they earned for the work that they did. So, they decided to form a "friendly" Society (similar to the union, just not nearly as large) but they were arrested and basically kicked out of England, because they were then sent to Australia.
First photographs by Fox Talbot
William Fox Talbot was a man born into stature, becomming not only a photographer, but the inventor of a process that's called the negative/positive photographic process as well as the calotype process. Coupled with another man's technique's and photographic inovations, (a Frenchman by the name of Louis Daguerre) Fox Talbot was one of the main forerunners for innovative photographic science and experimentation!
Queen Victoria takes the throne
In 1837, Victoria became queen of Great Britain, ruling until her death in 1901. The daughter of Kent and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, Victoria inherited the throne after the death of her uncle (William IV). Her reign encompassed many industrial and technological advances, as well as the subsequent population increase and societal changes. In addition, her namesake era brought forth a powerful system of trade and commerce; this system led Great Britain into other countries and established it as a much stronger nation. After her husband, Albert, died, Victoria became the epitome of a mourning widow, making very limited public appearances, but generally remaining reclusive. After a 64-year reign, Victoria died at Osborne.
London to Birmingham Railway
As Great Britain grew increasingly technological and industrial, investors began to invest in transportation systems. Yet few small railways could function aptly on their own, and as a result, many of the smaller railways were eventually consolidated into much larger routes that spanned the country. The original London to Birmingham line was combined with the Grand Junction Railway and the Manchester and Birmingham Railway to form a larger company, the London and North Western Railway. This London and Manchester railway, in turn, was one of the seven most important railway lines to form the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. The massive directional range of the large railroad companies transformed the landscape of Great Britain and made products and services more easily accessible.
The People’s Charter launches the Chartist
During the 1830s, Great Britain saw a surge of rebellion against the constraints of a very capitalist society. In 1938, several established organizations joined to draft the People's Charter, which sought to increase the political rights of the working class. Obviously, Parliament and the upper class refused to act on the demands of the group, which resulted in further resentment and even hostility. However, a primary problem that plagued the collective group was that they were not uniform in idea. Disagreement occurred between individuals and internal groups, and weakened the arguments they presented to Parliament. Yet, the Chartist movement brought forth recognition of an active British proletariat, and help establish its rightful place in society.
First Chinese Opium War
== The 1840's ==
As transportation grew more advanced, so did opportunities for trade and commerce. Businessmen, eager to develop a more balanced trade system with the Chinese, began to export opium. The demand for the drug soon escalated, and soon, an extreme percentage of the population was addicted to British-procured opium. This frightening epidemic threatened to topple China's economy, and led Chinese officials to establish a ban on the drug. This ban, however, was highly resisted, and illegal trade continued between the British and Chinese. As a result, China attempted to completely eradicate the trade by battling the British navy, during which the Chinese lost several vessels under British fire. By selfishly increasing trade with the Chinese by exporting an addictive drug, Great Britain facilitated the falling power of the Qing dynasty.
Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert
Queen Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Germany, in 1840. They first met when Victoria was sixteen years old. At that point, it was suggested to Victoria that they marry. In 1839, when Victoria was nineteen years old and had been named Queen, Prince Albert returned to England. She fell in love with him at first sight, and she proposed to him. They were married the following year and had a very happy marriage until he died of typhoid fever in 1861.
The fact that Queen Victoria proposed to Prince Albert is really interesting and proves that she was beyond her time. It would take a strong woman like this to propose the type of reform England experienced during her reign and force her country to start to think differently about a woman's role in society.
Niger Expedition attempts to explore West Africa
In 1841, Thomas Fowell Buxton persuaded Parliament to allow a mission to the Niger River Delta in West Africa. The mission stemmed from Buxton's desire to see the slave trade ended and Africa renewed. He believed that Africa's people and natural resources could be renewed, thus strengthening the country. Despite his good intentions, Buxton's expedition failed. Forty members of the died from diseases contacted in Africa. The resulting failure also cost Buxton his credibility.
Mudie’s Circulating Library founded
Charles Edward Mudie developed the select library in 1842. It was not like current public library's, in which books can be borrowed for free. Mudie's library system consisted of selling subscriptions of non-fiction works and novels to readers. During the fifty years that his circulating library was in business, Mudie had a great impact on the Victorian novel. Novels, as demanded by Mudie, were only released as three-volume works. This affected how novels were written. Through his influence in the publishing industry, Mudie also demanded that novels contain certain subjects and morality for the middle-class readers.
I love the fact that Mudie created his own sense of literary ideals by "picking and choosing" exactly what he wanted to distrubute, i.e. sell, out of his "library store" but I think it's horrible that he milked it so outrageously and then had the audacity to change Moby Dick's title to "The Whale" and censor some of the finer pieces of literature because his opinions were "suitable". Boo-hiss-rabble,rabble! In MY opinion, that's just pure literary tyranny...LITERALLY!
Lord Shaftesbury’s Mines Act
Lord Shaftesbury helped bring about legislation that improved mining conditions and restricted the age of mine workers. In 1840, after being persuaded by Lord Shaftesbury, Parliament formed a Royal Commission to inspect and report on the working conditions in mines. The report was published in 1842. The content and photos detailed the horrible working conditions and the impact of the work on the young children working there. The report led to the Mines Act of 1842. The act required that mine workers had to be at least ten years of age. Inspectors were also nominated to maintain the conditions of the act.
Crop failures in England and Potato blight in Ireland
The Potato Blight and Crop Failures were caused by an airborn fongus called, phytophthora infestans. It caused the potato plant to turn black and rot. It came from ships traveling from North America to England and spread quickly through the country and soon Ireland as well. Due to moist conditions one infected potato could infect many more in just a matter of days. In the eyes of many religious people the faminie was caused by sin or was considered a blessing since it would transform Ireland, which was too dependent on the potato.
Corn Laws Repealed
British Prime Minister, Robert Peel repealed the Corn Laws in 1846. In 1838 the Anti-Corn Laws League was formed and pressure from it and the potato faminie caused Peel to make this choice and it practiclly ended his career. The Corn Laws themselves protected the wealthy in Britian but made it more diffucult for the less wealthy to buy bread.
Mary Ann Evans’ translation of Strauss’s Life of Jesus published
Evans was born in 1819 and by the age of twelve she was teaching sunday school. After her mother's death in 1839 she became associated with free-thinkers and began questioning the anglican church. By 1846 she had translated D. F. Strauss's The Life of Jesus Critically Examined.
Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning marry and move to Italy
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in 1806. In 1821 she began suffering from a nervous disorder which cause headaches, weakness, and fainting spells and in 1838 she became seriously ill. She wrote a lot of poetry and attracted by the praise she gave his work Robert Browning wrote to her and one of the greatest literary loves began. A year later in 1846 they were secretly married since her father forbid any of his children to wed. Her father was so angry he refused to see her again. She died in her husbands arms in 1861.
Ten Hours Factory Act
The Ten Hours Factory Act was one of many attempts beginning with a Factory Act in 1819 that attempted to better working conditions. It was established through the Whig government under Lord John Russell. It established a ten hour work day for both women and children between the ages of 13 and 18. Another positive aspect to the Ten Hours Factory Act was that it limited work time to a maximum of 58 hours weekly for both groups. Nothing was mentioned in the regulation, however, regarding day or night work and so women and children were still forced to work throughout the day and night. Unfortunately, nothing was done to regulate the hours of adult males and so their work days continued to be very long.
Communist Manifesto published in Paris
The Communist Manifesto was first published in Paris on February 21, 1848. It was commissioned by the Communist League. Two Communist theorists, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, wrote the manifesto as a call to the working class. It was created as a means to shorten the gap between the lower and upper classes. They suggested that to achieve a stateless society, the proletarian class needed to stage a revolution against the bourgeois social order. The ten planks of the manifesto included, among other things, "abolition of private property" and "abolition of all rights of inheritance."
Great Chartist Demonstration
Chartists were members of the working class who attempted to rise up against the upper classes. Many of these uprisings were attributed to Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto. The Great Chartist Movement took place on April 10, 1848 on Kennington Common. It was organized by an Irish Chartist leader, Feargus O’ Conner. In fear that the group would start a violent uprising, thousands of military personnel were stationed in the area. Thousands of Chartists were in attendance and although the protest was relatively peaceful, it was also relatively ineffective in their goal to alter classes in society.
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Founded
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, John Everett Millais, Frederic George Stephens, Thomas Woolner and William Holman Hunt, a group of English artists, created the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The brotherhood encouraged artists to defy the conventions of art established particularly by the founder of the English Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and to create a new artistic movement. The movement encouraged artists to draw upon new inspiration and sources. Intense detail and vibrant colors were encouraged as a way to create more accurate, lifelike paintings. Because of their radical approach to conventional art, many historians consider this group to be among the first avante garde artists. The brotherhood also published the Germ, a periodical lasting only four issues.
Tennyson’s In Memoriam published
Written for the death of his good friend Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson completed his work “In Memoriam A.H.H.” over the long stretch of seventeen years. Completed in 1849, “In Memoriam” was published in 1850. While written to grieve over the sudden death of his friend, Tennyson used this long poem of 133 cantos to ponder many issues of the Victorian Era, including those regarding developments in science. Much of England connected with the work's discussion of both universal emotions and pertinent Victorian issues, especially Queen Victoria, who connected with the work as a way to cope with the passing of Prince Albert.
Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace
In celebration of all of Britain's scientific, cultural and artistic triumphs of the Victorian Age, Prince Albert suggested an exhibition in honor of Britain's stance as the most advanced civilization on planet. True to the name the Great Exhibition, over 13,000 exhibits were displayed in a huge endeavor housed in the massive Crystal Palace which earned its name due to its composition of more than a million feet of glass. The artistic and scientific accomplishments, as well as natural wonders and other spectacles of the Victorian Age and many other societies of the past were put on display for over 6,000,000 visitors to marvel at. The Crystal Palace itself was surrounded by an equally grandiose park with equally impressive sets of fountains spraying nearly 12,000 gallons of water. In 1854, the Crystal Palace was relocated to South London as the focal piece of a Victorian theme park until its destruction by fire in 1936.
Westminster Review acquired by John Chapman; edited by Mary Ann Evans
After John Chapman's acquisition of the Westminster Review, he looked to Mary Ann Evans, perhaps better known by her pen name George Eliot, to amass writers for a new beginning to the periodical. Gathering articles and support from some of the brightest minds of the Victorian Era such as John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer and Thomas Huxley, the Westminster Review became the forerunner of modern scientific discussion during the Victorian Age. Initial articles were in response to Thomas Malthus' ideas toward population theory, mostly in support. Later issues can also be accredited in paving the way for Darwin's ideas in ''The Origin of Species'', with the term “Darwinism” being coined by Thomas Huxley in an 1860 article.
John Snow proves that cholera is spread through drinking water
John Snow proved that Cholera was spread through drinking water instead of the false belief at the time that all diseases or illnesses were contracted through inhalation. Snow did this by mapping the outbreak of Cholera. At the time, the Soho District in London, around Broad Street, had seen a mass number of outbreaks in 1854. Snow purposed, after mapping the infected, that since this outbreak was limited to one area, the theory that cholera was airborne was false, and closing the water pump that distributed to this area was essential. After the closing of the pump, the outbreaks stopped almost literally overnight.
Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole are rivals nursing soldiers in the Crimean War
Mary Seacole was Jamaican (Creole, she was Scottish and Jamaican) nurse who was very experienced in the ways of healing, especially cholera and yellow fever epidemics. Seacole was also very dedicated to her work as a healer. When war broke out in Crimea, word eventually spread and got the attention of Secaole. She offered her services, but was turned by all due to racsim and possibly Nightingale's opinion about Seacole. Nightingale had been working administratively at making the nursing profession respectable (at the time nurses were seen as sloppy and drunks, not much higher than prostitutes). Eventually, Seacole decided to expense her trip herself, and give the obviously needed aid to the British. Seacole ended up in Florence Nightingale's unit despite Nightingale's attempts to keep her out because she saw Seacole as, "a dependent, strong-willed rival." Seacole began being known as the, "Black Nightingale", although her actions in Crimean were much more hands on than Nightingale's. Seacole was regarded as the first nurse practitioner because of the lack of advising by a doctor in medical situations, and because she was often seen on the field of battle tending to wounded soldiers (even while battles were still being fought). Although Seacole is not as well known as Nightingale in our time, she gained respect throughout England and her own country after her bravery at Crimean. Though respect was given, she never recieved and reward or compensation for her time, effort, and money spent during the war.
Christian Socialism mocked as “Muscular Christianity”
The rise of Christian Socialism saw typical Christian ideals intermixed with the idea that spirituality is connected to physical well-being, with emphasis on both religious piety and healthy physique. Christian Socialism, typically accredited to the works of Reverend Charles Kingsley, was mocked as “Muscular Christianity” for the implication that British Christianity should be dominant spiritually as well as physically. Though considered elevated savagery by critics, “Muscular Christianity” flourished for a time, spreading worldwide and integrating itself with the organization of the early YMCA in both Britain and America.
Indian Mutiny (or First War of Independence)
The reason for the Indian revolt was the General Service Enlistment of 1856 which required troops to serve overseas. This brought about many threats to troops which they were not forced to face before. The famous greased cartridge which was brought about the same year was the last straw. Although some Indians stayed loyal to the British Empire. On May 9th 1857, troops refused to be "drummed-out" and near Delhi, led an attack on British soldiers as well as European civilians. What happened in Cawnpore seemed to overshadow all previous violent attacks. General Wheeler commanded a small force of soldiers along with about 330 women and children along the river Ganges where they were viciously attacked by Indians. About 200 women and children were taken captive only to be slaughtered later and thrown into a well. After the mutiny was over, and the East India Company was demolished (previous government rulers of India), the revolt was declared over on July 8, 1859, the British government took direct control of India.
David Livingstone urges Britain to spread “Commerce and Christianity” in Africa
"Dr. Livingston, I presume?" ~ H.M. Stanley
This website talks about how David Livingston presented a two-fold objective to benefit Britain in both commerce and christianity. The Queen liked the idea she attached the importance of the moral influcence. It goes on to talk about those that mocked the link between the two.
Matrimonial Causes Act permits divorce
The Matrimonial Causes Act allowed people to get a divorce through the law courts instead of through parliment, which was a slow and expensive process. Under this act all husbands had to do to get a divorce was prove that their wife was having an affair. It was a little harder for women because they had to prove that thier husband not only committed adultery but also incest, bigamy, cruelty or disertion.
Darwin publishes Origin of Species, his theory of evolution
Darwin introduced his theory on natural selection. Natural selection is a process that acts to preserve and accumulate minor advantageous variations within living systems. Darwin's observation of natural selection was keen but he lacked a strong conclusion. Darwin concluded that natural selection could explain the variety in speices, but in someway they are all related with a common ancestor.
Holly and Bethany
1860 Italian unification declared
This page contains a timeline that describes Italy's unification process in the 18th century. A series of political and militart events resulted in Italy's unification. Liberal ideas from France and Britain spread rapidly and caused Italy to rethink its country's unification formation.
1861 Prince Albert dies of typhoid
This a BBC website dedicated to historic figures. This short summary of Prince Albert's life includes the effects his death from typhoid had on his wife, Queen Victoria, and his country. Queen Victoria never recovered from his premature death.
1862 Education funding becomes linked to pupils' results
This a timeline describing the progression of England's education system. In 1862 England revised the code for education and created government funded schooling. The vice president at the Education Board, Robert Lowe, accepted the main points set out by the Newcastle Commission and in 1862 announced a Revised Code for Education.
1863 London Underground railway is world’s first
London's Metropolitan underground railway opened on January 10, 1963. Within a few months, the railway was carrying over 26,000 passengers a day. The first underground lines were only ten feet deep.
1865 Lewis Carroll publishes Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland was first published July 4, 1865.In 1865, Dodgson's tale was published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by "Lewis Carroll" with illustrations by John Tenniel. The first print run of 2,000 was destroyed because Tenniel had objections over the print quality. (Only 23 copies are known to have survived; 18 are owned by major archives or libraries, such as the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, while the other five are held in private hands.) A new edition, released in December of the same year but carrying an 1866 date, was quickly printed.
1865 Joseph Lister introduces sterile surgery procedures
1867 Second Reform Bill doubles the electorate
1869 Suez Canal opens
1869 Girton College, first women’s college at Cambridge, founded
Kim and Scott
1870 Forster Act introduces secular Board Schools
The Education Act of 1870, also referred to as the Forster Act, for its main proponent, introduced Board Schools to England. This act opened opportunities for working class children to attend non-denominational public schools. England was divided up into school districts, and school boards were elected to monitor the needs of the individual schools and the students. Attendance was required of all children from ages 5 to 13.
1870 Married Women’s Property Act
Until the Married Women's Property Act of 1870, women had no legal rights after marriage. Any property that they owned or were willed became their husbands property. The new act granted women independence from their husbands, in terms of wages and property ownership. Women were allowed to keep any earnings that they earned separate from their husbands. They were also granted continued ownership of property that had been willed to them.
1870 Irish Land Act
The first of three land acts, the Irish Land Act of 1870 was created to protect Irish peasants/ farmers. The act allowed for tenants to be reimbursed for any improvements that they had made to the land that they rented, but the protection ended there.
1870 Charles Dickens dies
Charles Dickens has a long list of works, including Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, and David Copperfield. He worked hard through his whole life, constantly concerned about money. He died of a stroke at the age of 58, after suffering some persistent health problems.
1871 George Eliot’s Middlemarch
Middle March is George Eliot's seventh and final novel. The novel an excellent representation of the time period. Eliot uses her novel to examine "the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism and self-interest, religion and hypocrisy, political reform, and education". The novel is divided into eight parts, according to the period trend of publishing novels in parts.
1872 Secret Ballot Act
The Secret Ballot Act of 1872 was a firm step in establishing democracy. Until this point, all voting was public. Voting was tainted, therefore, by the influence of other powers. Some voted a certain way because they feared the retaliation of their landlords of employers. The Secret Ballot Act established the right for people to vote in private, thus granting voters the ability to vote without intense outside pressures.
1873 Ashanti War
The Ashanti War came about when the King of Ashanti tried to keep his last trade route to the coast open. He sent a troop of 12000 to 60000 warriors across the Pra River. When the war ended, the Ashanti had to pay an indemnity of 50,000 ounces of gold, to renounce claims to Elmina and to all payments from the British for the use of forts, and to terminate their alliances with several other states, including Denkyera and Akyem. They also had to the withdraw troops from the coast, to keep the trade routes open, and to halt the practice of human sacrifice.
1874 Benjamin Disraeli becomes the Conservative Prime Minister of Britain http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/uk-pm1.htm
The first Jewish Prime Minister. After Derby's resignation, the Queen asked Disraeli to become Prime Minister.
1875 Disraeli buys the Suez Canal http://www.britannia.com/gov/primes/prime35.html
Disraeli became Prime Minister at the age of 70. He acted on his own and purchased a controlling interest in the Suez Canal. This earned his the title of Earl of Beaconfield. Disraeli represented Britain in the Congress of Berlin which brought peace under the British Flag.
1876 Queen Victoria proclaimed “Empress of India” http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1700
The soveriegnty of India became weak and was transfered to the Queen when Disraeli purchased the controlling intreset in the Suez Canal.
1877 Telephone adapted for general use
1878 London adopts electric street lights
1879 Zulu War
Jordan and Kristen
1882 Phoenix Park Murders in Dublin
1884 Third Reform Act—almost universal manhood suffrage
1884 Safety bicycle mass-produced
1884 Shaw joins the Fabian Society
1885 Gladstone supports Home Rule for Ireland
1885 General Gordon dies at Khartoum
1886 Conference of Berlin--European powers divide up Africa
1887 Conan Doyle introduces Sherlock Holmes
1887 Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee
1888 Kipling publishes Plain Tales from the Hills
1888 Jack the Ripper terrorizes the East End of London
Letitia and Amie (include 1900 dates)
1891 Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles
http://www.enotes.com/urberville/ Thomas Hardy’s penultimate novel was initially serially published by The Graphic, a British illustrated newspaper. Tess of D’Ubervilles’s subtitle, “A Pure Woman,” was heavily criticized as an impossible judgment of the main character. The subject matter, the story of a married milkmaid who is seduced by a man and eventually commits murder, was considered too risqué and was criticized heavily. When the work was originally published it was heavily censored to make it fit for the general public. It is speculated, from Hardy’s own journal entries, that the criticism he received from this book caused him to quit writing novels.
1894 Death duties introduced
Death duties were established to effectively break up large estates. The goal was to keep large inheritances from being passed down through generations. The fear of passing inheritances through generations was that it breeds generations of idle citizens who will not work to support the economy. Another reason for death duties was the redistribution of wealth to create a more level economy. Many of these laws are still in place now under the titles of “inheritance tax” or “estate tax.”
1895 The Importance of Being Earnest is a stage hit
It premiered in St James's Theatre, London on Valentine’s Day on 1895. This play was his fourth hit play in only three years. His works were so popular at this time that his previous play was still showing at the time of this debut. The play itself lost attention when Wilde’s personal life became the focus. First, Wilde was accused by John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry,of conducting an illicit relationship with his son. Wilde was then arrested on April 5 1895 on a charge of gross indecency. The play quickly fell apart after a run of 83 performances. The last viewing from this debut was on May 8th.
1895 Oscar Wilde tried and sentenced to 2 years hard labor
The charge, gross indecency, began with an assertion from the 9th Marquess of Queensbury, John Sholto Douglas. Douglas was the father of Wilde’s young male lover. He left a calling card revealing Wilde’s acts of sodomy at one of Wilde’s clubs, the Albemarle. Despite Wilde’s libel charges against Douglas, Wilde was later arrested for his actions. As soon as Wilde had fulfilled his court ordered duties, he returned to his young lover. Although he is regarded in our time as a brilliant playwright, his reputation during a very anti-homosexual era was forever marred.
1897 Marconi patents wireless telegraph
Marchese Guglielmo Marconi is attributed with being one of the founders of radio communication. He was an Italian inventor who despite his complicated inventions, did not do well in school. Others were highly skeptical of his inventions and he was once even taken by friends to have his head examined when “he announced he had discovered a principle through which he could send messages through air.” He and Karl Ferdinand Braun were awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to telegraphy. Interestingly, Marconi has ties to the Titanic. Marconi International Marine Communication Company employed two of the radio operators on board the Titanic. Marconi “gave evidence to the Court of Inquiry into the loss of the Titanic regarding the marine telegraphy's functions and the procedures for emergencies at sea”
1897 Bram Stoker publishes Dracula
www.online-literature.com/stoker is another site to check out.
"Just over a century ago, the novel Dracula was published, written by the Irish author Bram Stoker. It created a widespread interest in vampirism. But what was Stoker’s inspiration? On June 24, 1897, Midsummer’s day, the London publisher Arthur Constable published Dracula, by author Bram Stoker" (Phillip Cowen) http://www.philipcoppens.com/dracula.html
1898 Britain obtains a 99 year lease for Hong Kong from China
"In 1898, the British and Chinese governments signed the Second Convention of Peking, which included a 99-year lease agreement for the island of Hong Kong.
The lease awarded control of a piece of the Chinese mainland, Kowloon, and more than 200 surrounding small islands to the British. In return, China got a promise that Hong Kong Island and the adjacent area would be returned to it after 99 years.
So, on December 31, 1997, the lease ended and the government of Great Britain transferred control of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China." http://asianhistory.about.com/od/asianhistoryfaqs/f/HongKongFAQ.htm
Basically, Britain wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They didn't want to control opium in their own country, they just wanted to import it and have a place that could produce it and still control it. This site below is also a good link. http://www.stormfront.org/truth_at_last/sassoon.htm
1899 Boer War begins in South Africa
"The year was 1899. Queen Victoria had recently celebrated her Diamond Jubilee. The British Empire was at its zenith in power and prestige. But the High Commissioner of Cape Colony in South Africa, Alfred Milner, wanted more. He wanted to gain for the Empire the economic power of the gold mines in the Dutch Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. He also wanted to create a Cape-to-Cairo confederation of British colonies to dominate the African continent. And he wanted to rule over it. To do this, Milner precipitated a war with the Boers."
1900 Boxer Rebellion in China (http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/fists.html)
"In northern Shandong province, a devastating drought was pushing people to the edge of starvation. Few people there were thinking about making peace. A secret society, known as the Fists of Righteous Harmony, attracted thousands of followers. Foreigners called members of this society "Boxers" because they practiced martial arts. The Boxers also believed that they had a magical power, and that foreign bullets could not harm them. Millions of "spirit soldiers," they said, would soon rise from the dead and join their cause. Their cause, at first, was to overthrow the imperial Ch'ing government and expel all "foreign devils" from China. In the early months of 1900, thousands of Boxers roamed the countryside. They attacked Christian missions, slaughtering foreign missionaries and Chinese converts. Then they moved toward the cities, attracting more and more followers as they came. Nervous foreign ministers insisted that the Chinese government stop the Boxers. From inside the Forbidden City, the empress told the diplomats that her troops would soon crush the "rebellion." Meanwhile, she did nothing as the Boxers entered the capital."
1901 Queen Victoria Dies at age 81. (http://www.information-britain.co.uk/famdates.php?id=181)
"On January 22 1901 the reign of Queen Victoria ended with her death of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 81 while staying at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, as was her custom every Christmas. Her reign had lasted 63 years seven months.
" I am every day more convinced that we women, if we are to be good women, feminine and amiable and domestic, are not fitted to reign; at least it is they that drive themselves to the work which it entails.
"Her reign still stands as the longest in British history, though the current queen has surpassed her as the oldest reigning British monarch. There were enormous social changes during her reign, with the industrial revolution at its peak, the railway age changing transport in the land, and the rise of the middle classes as parliament was reformed and the franchise expanded." | <urn:uuid:2eade43d-1131-4037-b614-bcaca89e5504> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.fairmontstate.edu/fsuwiki/engl-3379 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976036 | 8,110 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Although Florida is not usually considered to be a state subject to earthquakes, several minor shocks have occurred there. Only one of these caused damage. Additional shocks of doubtful seismic origin also are listed in earthquake documents.
A shock occurred near St. Augustine, in the northeast part of the State, in January 1879. The Nation's oldest permanent settlement, founded by Spain in 1565, reported that heavy shaking knocked plaster from walls and articles from shelves. Similar effects were noted at Daytona Beach, 50 miles south. At Tampa, the southernmost point of the felt area, the trembling was preceded by a rumbling sound at 11:30 p.m. Two shocks were reported in other areas, at 11:45 p.m. and 11:55 p.m. The tremor was felt through north and central Florida, and at Savannah, Georgia.
In January 1880, Cuba was the center of two strong earthquakes that sent severe shock waves through the town of Key West, Florida. The tremors occurred at 11 p.m. on January 22 and at 4 a.m. on the 23rd. At Buelta Abajo and San Christobal, Cuba, many buildings were thrown down and some people were killed.
The next tremor to be felt by Floridians also centered outside the State. It was the famous Charleston, South Carolina, shock in August 1886. The shock was felt throughout northern Florida, ringing church bells at St. Augustine and severely jolting other towns along that section of Florida's east coast. Jacksonville residents felt many of the strong aftershocks that occurred in September, October, and November 1886.
On June 20, 1893, Jacksonville experienced another slight shock, apparently local, that lasted about 10 seconds. Another minor earthquake shook Jacksonville at 11:15 a.m., October 31, 1900. It caused no damage.
A sudden jar caused doors and windows to rattle at Captiva in November 1948. The apparent earthquake was accompanied by sounds like distant heavy explosions. Captiva is located on Captiva Island, in the Gulf west of Fort Myers.
On November 18, 1952, a slight tremor was felt by many at Quincy, a small town about 20 miles northwest of Tallahassee. Windows and doors rattled, but no serious effects were noted. One source notes, "The shock interfered with writing of a parking ticket." It didn't say in what way.
The three Florida shocks of doubtful seismic origin rumbled through the Everglades - La Belle - Fort Myers area in July 1930, Tampa in December 1940, and the Miami - Everglades - Fort Myers area in January 1942. Most authorities attribute these incidents to blasting, but a few contend they were seismic.
Abridged from Earthquake Information Bulletin, Volume 3, Number 5, September-October 1971.
For a list of earthquakes that have occurred since this article was written, use the Earthquake Search. | <urn:uuid:b67c4c2b-cd11-458a-9ecc-c2d7f943220e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/florida/history.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980866 | 592 | 3.625 | 4 |
Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA said on Monday (March 28, 2016) that wintertime Arctic sea ice has reached a record low maximum extent, for the second year in a row. The record began with the advent of satellites in 1979, 37 years ago. At 5.6 million square miles (14.52 million square km), this year now has the lowest maximum extent in the satellite record.
This year’s maximum was slightly smaller than the previous record low maximum extent of 5.612 million square miles (14.54 million square kilometers), set last year.
The 13 smallest maximum extents on the satellite record have happened in the last 13 years.
This year’s maximum is 431,000 square miles (1,116,285 square km) below the 1981 to 2010 average maximum extent.
Notice we’re talking about wintertime maximum extent, which happens every year between February and April. Unlike Antarctica – which is a continent surrounded by ocean – the Arctic is a cap of frozen seawater, ringed by continents. Arctic sea ice melts during the spring and summer; scientists track a summertime minimum extent, too, and 2015’s was the 4th lowest in the satellite record. It grows back in the fall and winter.
The short animation below shows the Arctic sea ice freeze cycle from the last summertime minimum extent to March 24, when it reached 2016’s wintertime maximum.
NASA said in a statement:
The new record low follows record high temperatures in December, January and February around the globe and in the Arctic. The atmospheric warmth probably contributed to this lowest maximum extent, with air temperatures up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit above average at the edges of the ice pack where sea ice is thin, said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The wind patterns in the Arctic during January and February were also unfavorable to ice growth because they brought warm air from the south and prevented expansion of the ice cover. But ultimately, what will likely play a bigger role in the future trend of Arctic maximum extents is warming ocean waters, Meier said.
Meier added that, because the ocean has also warmed up, the Arctic ice edge can’t expand as far south as it used to. He said:
Although the maximum reach of the sea ice can vary a lot each year depending on winter weather conditions, we’re seeing a significant downward trend, and that’s ultimately related to the warming atmosphere and oceans.
Since 1979, NASA said, that trend has led to a loss of 620,000 square miles (1,605,792 square km) of winter sea ice cover, an area more than twice the size of Texas.
NASA also said that 2016’s record low wintertime sea ice maximum extent won’t necessarily means a low summertime minimum extent:
Summer weather conditions have a larger impact than the extent of the winter maximum in the outcome of each year’s melt season; warm temperatures and summer storms make the ice melt fast, while if a summer is cool, the melt slows down.
Bottom line: In 2016, Arctic sea ice reached its lowest wintertime maximum extent in the 37-year satellite record. It’s slightly lower than the previous record, set last year. This year’s wintertime sea ice in the Arctic peaked on March 24 at 5.6 million square miles (14.52 million square km).
Deborah Byrd created the EarthSky radio series in 1991 and EarthSky.org in 1994. Today, she serves as Editor-in-Chief of this website. She has won a galaxy of awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named 3505 Byrd in her honor. A science communicator and educator since 1976, Byrd believes in science as a force for good in the world and a vital tool for the 21st century. "Being an EarthSky editor is like hosting a big global party for cool nature-lovers," she says. | <urn:uuid:afb2be0c-c420-4798-8d16-c2d53d3a74aa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://earthsky.org/earth/2016-record-low-winter-arctic-sea-ice | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93057 | 839 | 3.390625 | 3 |
AJN, American Journal of Nursing:
Liu Weihua is an associate professor and Liu Jing is studying for her master's degree at the Taishan Medical University School of Nursing in Tai'an City, Shandong Province, China. Both are also members of the Cochrane Nursing Care Field.
Preliminary study results are encouraging.
Editor's note: This is the sixth in a series of summaries of nursing care–related systemic reviews from the Cochrane Library.
Are probiotics effective in treating persistent diarrhea in children?
TYPE OF REVIEW
This is a Cochrane review and meta-analysis of four trials.
RELEVANCE FOR NURSING
Persistent diarrhea, defined as infectious diarrhea lasting 14 days or longer, can cause significant morbidity and mortality in children under five years of age, especially those in developing countries. Probiotics are live microorganisms (usually bacteria), similar to the beneficial microorganisms found in the human gut, and their use has produced encouraging results in several studies on treating acute infectious diarrhea. Nurses play an active role in providing probiotic interventions; therefore, it's important for nurses to know whether probiotics are effective in children with persistent diarrhea.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EVIDENCE
Four randomized controlled trials (with a total of 464 participants) met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. All participants had to be 18 years of age or younger and have documented persistent diarrhea for at least 14 days. The intervention used in the trials was at least one probiotic compared with placebo or with no probiotic. The types of probiotics varied (and included Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Saccharomyces boulardii, Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus acidophilus sp, and Lactobacillus GG powder), as did the doses and frequency of dosing.
According to the authors of the review, the methodologic quality of the studies was generally poor. Only one trial had a low risk of bias; the risk of bias in two was unclear, and the remaining trial had a high risk of bias. The primary outcome was duration of diarrhea. The secondary outcomes were stool frequency, stool volume, weight-for-age. score, hospital stay, and death from any cause.
Only two studies reported the primary outcome; a combination of the results of these two trials (324 participants) showed that probiotics significantly reduced the duration of diarrhea by 4.02 days compared with placebo or with no probiotic. Two studies showed a significant decrease in stool frequency on day 5 with probiotics compared with placebo, and one of these studies also showed a reduction in length of hospital stay. Weight-for-age. score or death from any cause weren't reported in any of the studies. Three studies reported that no adverse events occurred and the remaining study didn't comment on adverse events.
BEST PRACTICE RECOMMENDATIONS
Although preliminary results are encouraging, there is insufficient evidence to recommend the use of probiotics in children with persistent diarrhea at this time. No solid conclusions could be reached because of the limited data available.
Future research should focus on methodologically well-designed and sufficiently powered trials to determine whether probiotics are beneficial as an adjunctive therapy in children with persistent diarrhea. Trials that use standardized definitions for persistent diarrhea and resolution of illness as well as specific probiotic strains and doses in well-defined participant subgroups should also be carried out.
Box. No caption avai...Image Tools
© 2011 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc. | <urn:uuid:0f7fcb75-6437-415b-9346-8cd4f50575f7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/Fulltext/2011/12000/Probiotics_for_Treating_Persistent_Diarrhea_in.29.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938747 | 748 | 2.75 | 3 |
10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Plague
The plague has killed hundreds of millions, sweeping across entire countries and bringing civilizations to their knees. Even though we now know more than those who suffered through the biggest outbreak, knowing more about the disease makes it no less frightening.
10There Are Different Types
We hear most about the bubonic plague, but that’s actually just one of three plague varieties. The bubonic plague is distinguished by swollen lymph nodes, called “buboes,” which give the disease its name. This type is spread only through the bites of fleas and blood contact with the infected insect; there is no way that bubonic plague can spread from one person to another.
Similarly, septicemic plague is spread only through breaks in the skin and by blood contact. It worsens as bacteria multiply in the blood stream. Septicemic plague has many of the same symptoms as bubonic plague, including fever and chills, but it lacks the bubonic plague’s telltale nodes.
The third type is the only one that can transmit from person to person. Pneumonic plague is airborne and can pass from one person (or animal) to another just by breathing in close proximity to someone. The different types of plague can mutate into one another; pneumonic plague and septicemic plague are often complications of untreated bubonic plague.
Because the different types have similarly devastating effects, we’ve long thought that bubonic plague was the disease that swept across Europe during the Black Death. New research supported by DNA evidence suggests the Black Death wasn’t bubonic plague after all but the faster-spreading pneumonic plague.
9It Originated In China
Researchers have successfully traced the presence of bubonic plague back to its origins in China, more than 2,600 years ago.
Different strains of the plague have different bacterial structures. By looking at each strain’s distribution, researchers have traced bubonic plague backward along the Silk Road, isolating 17 different bacterial strains. All these mutations trace back to a single type of bacteria that only started spreading outside of China in the last six centuries, carried by rats on ships leaving Chinese ports.
In 1409, ships carried the plague into East Africa. It also spread outward both east and west, through Europe and through Hawaii. It eventually came to the United States in the late 1800s after an epidemic swept through the Yunnan province.
8The Village That Sacrificed Itself
In 1665, a tailor from the village of Eyam in Derbyshire, England ordered cloth from London. When the delivery came, the village received much more than just cloth—it became infected with the plague, which was already laying waste to the capital. People started dying, but they knew the plague hadn’t spread to nearby villages. So, led by clergyman William Mompesson, the villagers decided to quarantine themselves, staying in the plague-stricken town to prevent the disease from spreading.
The quarantine began in June 1666. From that point onward, no one could enter or leave the village. Neighboring towns left food at designated places well outside of the village proper. Pre-quarantine, 78 died, and by the end of the plague, that number climbed to 256. Before the townspeople opened their village once again to outsiders, they burned furniture and clothing, hoping to eradicate any traces of the disease that might still lie dormant.
The sacrifice was a success. None of the neighboring villages had a single case of the plague. Mompesson lost his wife Katherine to the disease, but he himself survived.
7Conspiracy Theorists Used It To Persecute Jews
With the plague decimating Europe during the 14th century, Christians and Jews started playing the blame game. An estimated 25 million people died in the first part of 1348, and a rumor soon began that the plague was a Jewish conspiracy to wipe out Christianity. Supposedly, the conspiracy had begun in Toledo, Spain and spread throughout Europe.
The Count of Savoy started arresting and interrogating Jews, determined to find his version of the truth. His brutal torture elicited many confessions of responsibility, mostly people confessing to poisoning town and city water supplies. The count sent these confessions to other towns as a warning, but the people there took them more seriously. Hundreds of Jewish settlements were burned to the ground, and countless people were murdered.
In Strasbourg, nobility and city authorities clashed over whether to massacre their Jewish citizens. The nobles figured doing so could remove the threat of plague and their creditors in one go. On Valentine’s Day 1349, around 2,000 Jews burned on a massive wooden platform in Strasbourg, their wealth seized and redistributed among the Christian nobles.
The plague still came to Strasbourg. It took 16,000 lives.
6The Plague Wasn’t A Guaranteed Killer
Many of us imagine that the plague was a certain death sentence. That belief comes from the massive, widespread devastation the plague caused rather than its effects on individual sufferers. Many stories actually tell of people simply immune to the plague, and others record those who contracted the disease but survived. Marshall Howe was one such individual.
Howe lived in the village of Eyam during its quarantine, and after recovering from the plague, he helped bury those who died from it. He was reportedly carrying one man to his grave when the corpse spoke and asked for something to eat. The supposed dead man eventually recovered. Another Eyam resident, Margaret Blackwell, recovered from the plague after being so overcome with thirst that she drank a pot of melted bacon fat.
Studies of Black Death victims’ skeletal remains reveal a telling tale. Most already suffered from some other ailment, such as disease or malnutrition, before contracting the plague. The plague did kill previously healthy individuals, but it’s now thought that many who were healthy stood a chance at survival.
5A Teenage Nostradamus Became A Successful Plague Doctor
Nostradamus is today largely remembered for his vaguely worded prophecies. But in 1518, he was traveling the French countryside acting as a plague doctor—and he was a mere 15 years old. After living this way for several years, he reenrolled in university (he’d started at 14 but had dropped out to become a traveling apothecary) and earned his degree in medicine in 1522. He continued to work as a plague doctor, as he was seemingly immune to the disease himself.
According to his writings, Nostradamus felt he was doing little good in treating the afflicted because his remedies only made victims comfortable rather than curing them. In actuality, he was one of the first doctors to get it right. Instead of typical medieval treatments like leeches and bleeding, Nostradamus pushed for curing the plague with cleanliness. Patients were encouraged to go outside and to get fresh air. He kept those patients and their surroundings clean and disposed properly of infected corpses.
He also subscribed to the notion that the plague was caused by bad air, and he developed a spice and rose lozenge that would ease sufferers’ symptoms. At one point, he had such success curing people of the plague that he was comfortably supported by donations from individuals who lived in the city of Provence.
4It Changed World Culture
The plague’s spread left survivors in a world forever changed. It brought a new awareness of death and mortality, and the artists of the time turned to painting what they saw around them. In eras of plague, particularly the 14th and 16th centuries, art got much darker. Religious paintings often featured the dead. Hell was depicted more often than heaven—and oftentimes, it was a hell on Earth.
One of the eeriest styles of art to come out of the 16th century was a change in tomb and gravestone design. Before, people were often shown at rest. Now, artists introduced the transi, a form of sculpture that more accurately showed the dead rotting flesh and skeletal form.
The plague had another strange effect on the world’s art and literature, and that wasn’t just a change in content but in style and quality. When the plague struck, it attacked without heed to a person’s standing, status, or occupation. Many great masters died in the midst of teaching their proteges. That in turn led to a dynamic shift in the quality and techniques present in art from the time.
3The Plague Bacteria Starved Fleas
Bubonic plague is spread by fleas, but the whole process is actually a lot more complicated and disturbing than that description suggests.
Fleas survive on the blood of animals, and so does the plague bacteria. Once a flea ingests diseased blood, the infection goes to work on the flea itself. It begins to reproduce in the flea’s stomach, living in the digestive tract of the insect and effectively blocking its digestive process. This often kills the flea, but in the meantime, it starves it. This means that the flea bites more often and looks for more animals for nourishment, spreading the disease faster than a flea with a normal life cycle.
Cats and rats are particularly susceptible to the plague virus, which further helps it spread. When the flea’s usual host—rodents—start dying out in massive amounts, it seeks other hosts, pushing the disease to domesticated animals and humans. (Dogs have a natural resistance to the plague bacteria, and even if they’re bit and are repeatedly exposed, they usually don’t become sick.)
2Death-Bringing Plague Ships
As we mentioned earlier, the plague sometimes traveled from one area to another by ship, and this was actually one the quickest ways in which it spread. In 1347, Italian ships spread the plague from Constantinople to Alexandria to Marseilles and then on to Venice, Genoa, and next on to the rest of Europe.
Why didn’t the trading ships just stop? Surely captains would weigh the benefits of bringing a plague-stricken crew to land against preventing the spread of the plague throughout the continent?
It turns out the plague was much too sneaky to allow such precautions. It would appear on ships well before making itself known. First, it would incubate, multiply, and makes the rounds of the rat population. Then it would jump to humans, and even then, it could take up to five more days to make a person ill. A trading ship could become a death ship for almost a month before anyone on board would have the slightest idea anything was wrong.
By nature, rats on a ship would largely avoid human contact. In many cases, plague-bearing fleas would find new rat hosts once ships made port or would stow away in cargo that was then taken and distributed throughout the destination city.
1Believed Causes Of The Plague
The rampant illness and the countless deaths left survivors throughout history looking for a reason for their suffering. One common idea was that mankind brought on the plague by its own evil. Supporters of this theory pointed to passages in the Bible where God used pestilence and plagues as a weapon to punish the unholy.
In the Book of Revelation, Pestilence is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and people felt that this disease surely heralded the end of the world. To the nobility and other authority figures, this idea had a practical advantage. Should the masses believe that a higher power was holding them accountable for their actions, said authorities could more easily regulate activities that they thought troublesome, like gambling and brothels.
Ideas about cures for the plague were linked to possible causes. It was long thought that the balance of the humors and states of the body was crucial to staying healthy; if that was true for humans, then the same might be true for the universe. This led to a number of astrological theories on what was causing the clear imbalance of life and death on Earth.
Quoting Greek philosophers and their writings on the balance of life, astrologer Geoffrey de Meaux tried to use the positioning of the planets within the zodiac to determine how long each outbreak would last, why certain cities were vulnerable, and who would die next. | <urn:uuid:98364db2-03d6-4b12-aeae-bbd73ddab820> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://listverse.com/2014/04/11/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-plague/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972428 | 2,534 | 3.4375 | 3 |
Panel of Scientists Says UN Study Retreats, Misleads, and Misinforms
A panel of 50 scientists from 15 countries says the newest report from the United Nations on climate change is filled with concessions that its past predictions were too extreme and contains “at least 13 misleading or untrue statements and 11 further statements that are phrased in such a way that they mislead readers or misrepresent important aspects of the science.”
The Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) was created to act as an independent auditor of the work of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The NIPCC receives no government or corporate funding. On September 17, ten days before the IPCC released its fifth assessment report, NIPCC released Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science, a 1,000-page report listing some 50 climate scientists as authors, contributors, or reviewers.
While the IPCC reports growing confidence that climate change is man-made and likely to be harmful, the NIPCC finds just the opposite: The human impact is likely to be very small, and a modest amount of warming would probably produce as many benefits as costs.
“Why should we believe what the IPCC predicts, given the model prediction/projection failures, plus manipulation of the data, plus hiding of data, plus false claims that those preparing IPCC reports are experts, plus Climategate in general, plus Glaciergate?” asked Laurence Gould, professor of physics at the University of Hartford, a chapter peer-reviewer for the NIPCC report.
“Pick an area of physics and ask whether that area has been subjected to the same kind of behavior as engaged in by the IPCC,” Gould continued. “Would those working in that area be believed?”
IPCC Summary Critiqued In a new and smaller report issued in mid-October, four of the lead authors of the NIPCC report offer a withering critique of the IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers, a 30-page summary of the much larger report, which is still being revised. Among the “retreats” they identify in the IPCC’s latest report:
- Global temperatures stopped rising 15 years ago despite rising levels of carbon dioxide, the invisible gas the IPCC claims is responsible for causing global warming.
- Temperatures were warmer in many parts of the world approximately 1,000 years ago, during the so-called Mediaeval Warm Period, due entirely to natural causes.
- Antarctic sea ice extent is increasing rather than shrinking.
- Climate computer models fail to reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10-15 years.
The scientists also fault the IPCC for claiming the warming of the late twentieth century was “unequivocal” when many temperature databases show no warming, and for saying changes since 1950 were “unprecedented” when the historical record contains many examples of changes due to natural causes that were more rapid or more extreme.
The scientists are especially critical of the IPCC’s claim that it is “95% confident” that global warming is man-made and will be harmful. “This terminology is unscientific,” they write. “It has been used improperly to create a false impression of increasing statistical certainty through the most recent IPCC assessment reports.... IPCC’s quasi-numeric confidence statements represent considered ‘expert opinion,’ reflecting a process not very different from a show of hands around a discussion table. The terminology confers an impression of scientific rectitude onto a process that is inescapably subjective and has been widely criticized as misleading.”
Jim Lakely (firstname.lastname@example.org) is communications director for The Heartland Institute.
The 18-page critique of the IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers, as well as the complete text of the NIPCC’s Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science and its Summary for Policymakers, is available online at www.climatechangereconsidered.org. | <urn:uuid:67638eb5-7e6a-41d6-9d0b-6a2b8cea1600> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2013/10/01/panel-scientists-says-un-study-retreats-misleads-and-misinforms | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930287 | 843 | 2.875 | 3 |
The flu is a highly contagious respiratory illness. Every year, more than 200,000 people in the U.S. are hospitalized because of the flu. About 36,000 of those people die from the flu every year. Those most at risk for serious flu complications are pregnant women, young children (less than 6 months of age), older individuals (more than 65 years old) and people with certain health conditions such as chronic heart or lung disease.
Ways to receive the flu vaccine:
- School of Medicine faculty may be vaccinated at the Semi-Annual Medical Staff meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 5:30 p.m. at the Friday Center.
- School of Medicine employees should follow up with the Immunization Review Program.
- If you do not qualify for the Immunization Review Program, UNC Environment, Health & Safety holds a flu shot clinic. Contact John Covely at 962-6975 for more information.
- Faculty and staff who work in a health care setting may get a flu shot at the University Employee Occupational Health Clinic (UEOHC). Please call the UEOHC at 966-9119 for an appointment. Walk-in hours will be set up soon.
- Other faculty and staff who do not work in a health care setting should contact their health care provider (the State Health Plan should pay for it) or take advantage of the flu clinic offered by local drug stores.
- Students may get a flu shot at the UNC Student Health Service. Please call 966-6573 for an appointment.
There are two kinds of flu vaccines available in the United States:
- One vaccine is an "inactivated" vaccine (containing killed virus) that is given with a needle. In an adult, the vaccine is given in the upper arm. Since it contains killed virus, it is impossible to get the flu from taking the vaccine. The flu vaccine is approved for use in people older than 6 months, including healthy people and people with chronic medical conditions. It is also recommended for pregnant women.
- The other vaccine is the nasal-spray flu vaccine, which is made with live, weakened flu viruses that do not cause the flu (sometimes called LAIV for "live attenuated influenza vaccine"). LAIV is approved for use in healthy people 2 years to 49 years of age who are not pregnant or immunocompromised.
- The vaccine, like any medication, may rarely cause serious problems, such as severe allergic reactions. If these problems occur, they begin soon after the vaccine and usually last one to two days. The most common side effects are soreness in the area of the vaccine injection, low-grade fever and aches.
Because of medical conditions, some persons should avoid the flu vaccine. These populations include:
- Those with a severe allergy to chicken eggs.
- Those with a severe reaction to a flu vaccination in the past.
- Those who developed Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) within six weeks of getting a flu vaccine previously.
- Children less than six months old.
- Those who have a moderate or severe illness with a fever should wait to get vaccinated until symptoms lessen. | <urn:uuid:f5c5540e-d7fb-47f9-bbcd-cde4f8ce8c65> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.unchealthcare.org/som-vital-signs/2008/october/flu-vaccines-under-way | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943834 | 652 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Yesterday, Kirt von Daacke, history professor and former Special Collections student employee, and his HIUS 4501: Slavery & Social Life at Early U.Va. researched through some of our most treasured, old, and fragile University Archives materials. They pored through these early records, which document the founding, building, and day-to-day management of U.Va. These early records include Board of Visitors minutes, faculty chairman journals, faculty minutes, letters from Thomas Jefferson’s descendants, proctor’s ledgers, etc. So what do these records have in common? The threads of a slave economy run through them.
One student was doing preliminary research on the University’s practice of hiring out slaves for labor. He searched through the proctor’s ledgers (proctor’s ledgers show evidence of financial transactions) and found many kinds of payments, including purchases of stoves, fees for brick work, and the hiring out of slaves. Although challenged by the stylized script of the time, the student found several entries related to his topic in the February 12, 1820 labor account. Lines 4 through 8 from the top of part of the ledger page, below, show the University paying a Boxley, Nu[nce], Sandridge, and Barksdale for the hiring of negroes. Incidentally, N[elson] Barksdale was a University employee, so it appears that the University may have been getting enslaved workers owned by their employees. These enslaved workers likely worked on crews, building the University.
The student not only learned about the topic he was researching, but gained insight into the materials and methods of primary research scholarship. | <urn:uuid:4bd09abc-ca36-4d76-ae80-4fff3595335a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://smallnotes.library.virginia.edu/2013/02/07/class-notes-slavery-social-life-at-early-u-va/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961492 | 347 | 2.609375 | 3 |
This question from the 2001 Bay Area Math Olympiad (BAMO) is the sort of math problem tackled by middle and high school students in the Berkeley Math Circle. Virtually unknown in America until recently, mathematical circles for talented school children originated in Hungary more than a century ago and spread over Eastern Europe and Asia. They eventually led to the start of many national and international math contests, including the first International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) held in Romania in 1959. The United States, which will host the 42nd competition in July, joined the IMOin 1974, and since then its team has performed among the very top of the approximately 80 participating countries.
Math circles are led by mathematicians and teachers trained in solving problems for Olympiads. IMO problems come from various areas of mathematics, many of which are covered in math curricula at secondary schools. The tantalizing problems, however, require not only computational skill but also deep thinking, creativity and the ability to explain each step of the reasoning that leads to a solution.
The middle school years are ideal for nurturing this kind of mathematical talent, and it is then that interested students should begin to study algebra and geometry and to construct proofs. High school is often too late, and even then a good high school mathematics course in the United States generally brings a student no farther along than the 18th century.
Former International Math Olympian for Bulgaria, Zvezdelina ("Zvezda") Stankova-Frenkel, A.B., M.A. '92 is one of the pioneers establishing math circles in the United States. An assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at Mills College, she is a founder of the Berkeley Math Circle and BAMO. "I always wanted to be close to the most talented young kids in the United States and give them the same chance of early encounter and joy with mathematics as I was given in Bulgaria through the math circles," says Stankova-Frenkel, who has coached the U.S. team in preparation for the IMO at the Math Olympiad Summer Program (MOSP) in 1998-2000.
When she joined her Bulgarian middle school math circle in fifth grade, mathematics was just one of her interests along with piano, ballet and poetry. Only three months after joining the circle, she won first prize in a regional competition that included problems in geometry and elementary algebra.
"It was a very creative and competitive atmosphere," she remembers. She entered an elite high school in which many courses were taught in English and was selected for the Bulgarian national mathematics team, winning silver medals in the Mathematics Olympiads in Cuba in 1987 and in Australia a year later. In Australia, her unique solution to a complex problem-"If (a2 + b2)/ 1+ab is an integer, then it is the square of an integer"-made her well known in Bulgaria and in the mathematical world. In 1989, already attending Sophia University, she was among 15 Bulgarian students selected to study in the United States. (She was one of two chosen by the American Embassy for Bryn Mawr, which in turn chose her.)
One of her advisors at Bryn Mawr, Paul Melvin, Rachel C. Hale Professor in the Science and Mathematics, comments, "Zvez enriched our program in many ways, both as a role model for other math majors and, because of her advanced training in Bulgaria and her remarkable mathematical talent, as an active participant in our graduate seminars. In her junior year, she ran an immensely successful course on "Olympiad Problems with Some Theory," which was attended by a mixture of advanced undergraduates, graduate students and faculty."
Nominated by Helen Herrman Professor of Mathematics, Rhonda Hughes, with whom she also worked, Stankova-Frenkel won the Schafer Prize for the top undergraduate woman math student in the country. Hughes also arranged for her to visit many mathematicians at Harvard and Penn when she arrived at BrynMawr.
View from other side
In order to learn about pre-college education in the United States, she worked for certification as a school teacher in Massachusetts while completing her Ph.D. in algebraic geometry at Harvard. "I realized that there is very little, if any, connection between professional mathematicians and secondary school teachers here (not so in Eastern Europe!)," she says. "So, I needed to get on 'the other side of the fence' and see what kind of problems teachers faced every day in school." After receiving her Ph.D in 1997, she also became certified in California, where she was a post-doctoral fellow of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkeley and Morrey Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Berkeley.
Stankova-Frenkel did not know Harvard from Bryn Mawr before coming to the United States and says that it took her some time to realize the necessity of women's colleges. "I grew up in a culture that nurtured scientific talent equally in boys and girls from an early age. I never felt slighted or given less of a mathematical chance in Bulgaria based on my gender," she explains. "In fact, for the two years when I was on the Bulgarian IMO team, there were two girls out of six students. Compare this with the U.S. IMO team, which finally had a girl on it (Melanie Wood from Indiana, currently at Duke University) only three years ago! Since starting to teach at Mills two years ago, I have seen many cases of exceptionally bright young women who were indoctrinated with the idea that they would never be good in math. I am proud to say that I have turned a number of cases around and I am sure the same thing happens all the time at Bryn Mawr."
Return to Summer 2001 highlights | <urn:uuid:1590acbc-433b-4e4f-987f-f704abcedb32> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.brynmawr.edu/alumnae/bulletin/mathcirc.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977135 | 1,187 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Debug means to fix (remove the bugs). So if your program has a problem you would debug it. There are lots of different ways of doing that. Sometimes looking at the code is all you need to do to find the problem. The next step would be to put a bunch of "println" statements into your code, and use them to figure out what the problem is. The best way to debug is to use a "debugger". Some debuggers are command line ones, like jdb, and others are graphical ones. All of them are suppose to help you by showing you what you program is actually doing. Most IDEs have built in debuggers.
Please ignore post, I have no idea what I am talking about. | <urn:uuid:9d5e9cc6-6431-4988-85cc-a7000b6383ad> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.coderanch.com/t/393324/java/java/Debugging | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972702 | 149 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Iceland country fiche - Water (02/09/2011)
Country fiches are overviews of available environmental information (reports, indicators, statistics) per country organised alongside two thematic areas: water and related ecosystems and green economy. When possible the fiches were complemented with information about the main institutional players holding environmental information in the country and regional level. The country fiches have been compiled with the support of the National Focal Points and National Contact Points from the pan-European region.
Section in State of Environment report
- Iceland in Figures 2009-2010 (2011)
- Statistical Yearbook of Iceland 2010 (2010)
- Energy Statistics in Iceland 2010 (2010)
- Health statistics in the Nordic countries 2008 (2010)
- Statistics on salmon catch in Icelandic rivers for 2006 (2007)
- Environment and pollutant emissions (2006)
- Statistics: Geography and Environment (Statistics Iceland)
Environmental indicator set
State of water assessment/report
Water indicator set
Water sector or NGOs report
For references, please go to www.eea.europa.eu/soer or scan the QR code.
This briefing is part of the EEA's report The European Environment - State and Outlook 2015. The EEA is an official agency of the EU, tasked with providing information on Europe's environment.
PDF generated on 30 Jun 2016, 08:04 PM | <urn:uuid:efc03363-53de-41ec-899c-ebaf2bcc4ccc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/regions/pan-european/virtual-library/Iceland-Water | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.837173 | 289 | 2.765625 | 3 |
- peace (n.)
- mid-12c., "freedom from civil disorder," from Anglo-French pes, Old French pais "peace, reconciliation, silence, permission" (11c., Modern French paix), from Latin pacem (nominative pax) "compact, agreement, treaty of peace, tranquility, absence of war" (source of Provençal patz, Spanish paz, Italian pace), from PIE *pag-/*pak- "fasten," related to pacisci "to covenant or agree" (see pact).
Replaced Old English frið, also sibb, which also meant "happiness." Modern spelling is 1500s, reflecting vowel shift. Sense in peace of mind is from c. 1200. Used in various greetings from c. 1300, from Biblical Latin pax, Greek eirene, which were used by translators to render Hebrew shalom, properly "safety, welfare, prosperity."
Sense of "quiet" is attested by 1300; meaning "absence or cessation of war or hostility" is attested from c. 1300. As a type of hybrid tea rose (developed 1939 in France by François Meilland), so called from 1944. Native American peace pipe is first recorded 1760. Peace-officer attested from 1714. Peace offering is from 1530s. Phrase peace with honor first recorded 1607 (in "Coriolanus"). The U.S. Peace Corps was set up March 1, 1962. Peace sign, both the hand gesture and the graphic, attested from 1968. | <urn:uuid:475489af-6ae8-417a-99cf-63ed1a6daf86> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=peace&allowed_in_frame=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937011 | 332 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Three exciting and easy-to-play games in one! A fun and effective way to teach students the characteristics of eight different animal phyla, including three classes of arthropods and six chordate classes. Students can play Classification Concentration, Don't Get Hooked! or Go Fish! using one deck of 52 colorful animal cards. Kit includes five decks of Animal Kingdom cards, instructions with reproducible student handouts, and valuable Teacher Notes. Complete for 30 students playing in groups of six.
Additional ResourcesNo Additional Resources at the time.
Flinn Catalog/Reference Manual Page 905
Flinn Middle School Catalog/Reference Manual Page 544
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- Taxonomic Keys Kit | <urn:uuid:7b6f6e42-65ad-41d8-830b-0606d3ef1de1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.flinnsci.com/store/Scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=21832 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.815754 | 231 | 3.71875 | 4 |
How can city directories be used to help my research?
City directories are an alphabetical listing of residents, businesses, and/or advertisements dating back to the 1700s. The value of city directories is that they were published annually, allowing researchers to determine when an ancestor first appears and then disappears from an area, or moves from one place to another within an area. City directories not only identify ancestors in time and place, but can also provide important information such as names, addresses, occupation and employer; some directories include the wife's name, and some may include death or relocation information. City directories may also be used to identify local school, churches, cemeteries, businesses, industries, and other institutions and organizations, leading researchers to other source material. Many directories include advertising, which can provide information on ancestors who were in business such as business name, owners and partners, business addresses, etc. City directories can serve an important role as substitute when census records are missing or when ancestors cannot be found in a particular census.
City directories are widely available, some have been digitized and made available online, through free and subscription websites. Many are held through various repositories such as the Family History Library; state archives and historical societies; state and local libraries, etc. A Google search for city directories plus your locale may yield positive results, including directory sites that provide links to known collections. In addition, a growing collection of City and Farm Directories is available through the Genealogy Today Subscription Data.
<< FAQ Section
Help us improve this frequently asked questions area. Please send us feedback or additional questions. | <urn:uuid:e615e9d3-1dec-474e-8b9f-8c584016d336> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.genealogytoday.com/genealogy/answers/How_can_city_directories_be_used_to_help_my_research.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953496 | 325 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Four years ago, archaeologists unexpectedly discovered the remains of a wooden ship at the former World Trade Center site in Manhattan. Now in a newly published study, scientists have announced that the relic found near the scene of the worst terrorist attack on American soil is connected to one of the country’s most treasured symbols of liberty, and tree rings held the key to solving the mystery.
On the morning of July 13, 2010, the roar of backhoes and bulldozers echoed through lower Manhattan as construction continued on the rebirth of the World Trade Center site, which had been destroyed nearly nine years earlier in the worst terrorist attack in American history. Molly McDonald and her fellow archaeologists from consulting firm AKRF had arrived early that morning to a parcel between Liberty and Cedar Streets to document the remains of timber wharves unearthed during excavation work for a planned underground parking complex. More than 20 feet below street level on what was once the bottom of the Hudson River, McDonald suddenly spotted a hewn, curved piece of timber sticking out of the thick black mud that was quite different from the planks used to build wharves. She knew immediately what had been discovered—the remains of a ship.
Construction stopped as archaeologists began the careful process of digging. Although the work was painstaking, time was also of the essence, not just to make sure construction continued on schedule, but also to ensure the relic’s preservation. To protect the wooden ship from damage, workers blocked the searing summer sun by hoisting a gray tarp over the site, and they regularly hosed down the timbers to prevent them from drying out, which would cause warping and splitting. By the third day, the full outline of the 32-foot-long partial hull from the rear of the ship could clearly be seen. It took two weeks to complete the labor-intensive task of cleaning, cataloging and excavating the fragile timber pieces before they were shipped to the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory for preservation.
With the ship’s skeleton finally removed from the construction site, work then began to solve the mystery. What were the origins of this ship and how did it end up below the World Trade Center site? According to a new study published in the July 2014 edition of the journal Tree-Ring Research, scientists believe they have the answer, and the key to solving the mystery was buried with the ship itself.
After uncovering the ship, scientists quickly determined that its frame had been constructed of white oak. Since white oak is common all over the world, however, the identification offered little help in identifying the ship’s origins. The discovery of hickory in the keel, however, proved to be the big breakthrough. Hickory trees are found only in eastern areas of Asia and the United States, and given that the ship was highly unlikely to have come from Asia, scientists focused their investigation on American origins.
With the geographic focus narrowed, the investigation turned to dendrochronology—the science of dating artifacts by analyzing tree-ring patterns. Since trees add tighter rings in dry years and wider rings in wet years, they carry unique fingerprints of the particular climates and times in which they live. By examining slices of the ship’s timber and comparing them to other archaeological samples, tree-ring scientists from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, found that the well-defined ring patterns in the white oak used to build the vessel actually matched wooden samples they had taken in the late 1980s from Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, the historic landmark where the Founding Fathers signed both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The ship’s timber matched a dense, old-growth forest near Philadelphia, and the dendrochronologists determined that the white oaks used to build it were felled in 1773.
Scientists identified the vessel as a Hudson River Sloop—a boat type designed by Dutch settlers to transport passengers and cargo in shallow, rocky waters—that was likely built in a small shipyard near Philadelphia. Small holes discovered in the ship’s frame likely resulted from shipworms native to the salty, warm waters of the Caribbean, which means the vessel was likely among the commercial flotilla engaged in the Colonial triangle trade, transporting rum and sugar along the Atlantic seaboard.
How did the Philadelphia-constructed ship end up below ground in lower Manhattan? Two centuries ago, the site of the World Trade Center would have been in the Hudson River. But as Manhattan prospered after the American Revolution, land on the lower part of the island became scarce, so New Yorkers began to create land by filling the river with garbage, rock, scrap wood and other fill material that sometimes included the hulks of ships that were no longer seaworthy. The area around the World Trade Center was built on this extended shoreline, and the shipworm damage found on the unearthed vessel suggest it was a prime candidate to have been used in Manhattan’s westward expansion. Since the location where the ship was found was not part of the original World Trade Center site, it remained undisturbed for two centuries below the ground.
The study’s authors note that since few 18th-century ships have been discovered and little historical documentation about their construction exists, “the hull encountered at the World Trade Center represents a rare and valuable piece of American shipbuilding history.” The ship’s timbers now reside at the Center for Maritime Archaeology & Conservation at Texas A&M University. It’s possible that the timbers will be reassembled in the future, but no plans have been announced. | <urn:uuid:f3e6b156-ed9f-4ebe-b514-24255154bb50> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.history.com/news/tree-rings-solve-world-trade-center-ship-mystery | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969811 | 1,157 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Average precipitation in depth (mm per year)
Definition: Average precipitation is the long-term average in depth (over space and time) of annual precipitation in the country. Precipitation is defined as any kind of water that falls from clouds as a liquid or a solid.
Description: The map below shows how Average precipitation in depth (mm per year) varies by country. The shade of the country corresponds to the magnitude of the indicator. The darker the shade, the higher the value. The country with the highest value in the world is Colombia, with a value of 3,240.00. The country with the lowest value in the world is Egypt, with a value of 51.00.
Source: Food and Agriculture Organization, electronic files and web site.
Development Relevance: The agriculture sector is the most water-intensive sector, and water delivery in agriculture is increasingly important. Data on irrigated agricultural land and data on average precipitation illustrate how countries obtain water for agricultural use.
Limitations and Exceptions: The data are collected by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) through annual questionnaires. The FAO tries to impose standard definitions and reporting methods, but complete consistency across countries and over time is not possible. | <urn:uuid:848e6c7d-e67a-4224-938e-ad45d81467a5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/AG.LND.PRCP.MM | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.88632 | 256 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Oregon is a player in a nationwide push to produce power from waves. Next spring, Ocean Power Technologies is set to anchor a power buoy off Reedsport, and has plans to build 10-buoy wave park soon after. In Washington, the Snohomish County Public Utility District plans to install two large test turbines in Puget Sound to see if tidal energy development is feasible there.
A story in the Los Angeles Times today notes tidal energy is capable of providing 10 percent of America’s electricity, but the industry is still a ways from realizing its potential:
“Tapping the tides is the latest niche in the search for affordable, renewable energy. Widespread use may be years off, but advocates say tides and other hydrokinetic systems, from ocean waves to free-flowing rivers, ultimately could meet up to 10% of America’s electric power needs — more than hydropower dams now supply.
Pilot projects or studies are underway not only in Hawaii, but in Washington’s Puget Sound, in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, off the coasts of Florida, California, Oregon and Maine, in New York City’s East River, along the Mississippi River and elsewhere.
“These are coastal resources, and most people live along the coasts,” said Hoyt Battey, a water power expert at the U.S. Energy Department. “When you’re talking about providing half the power of Alaska or Hawaii, or half the power of New York, that’s significant.”
For now, the technology for marine and hydrokinetic power remains in its infancy, and costs are prohibitive. Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, South Korea, China, Australia and other nations have been testing the waters for years. Commercial operations are rare.
“It’s much more difficult to do things underwater than on dry land,” said Robert Thresher, research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. “The water tears stuff apart. There’s fish, rust, fouling … all kinds of problems.” | <urn:uuid:0a4bfdaa-6ffd-4149-96fe-a9803b6fbfec> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/wave-energy-could-outproduce-dams-one-day/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914102 | 442 | 3.046875 | 3 |
The internet gives citizens new paths to government services and information
As government agencies at all levels bring their services online, Americans are turning in large numbers to government websites to access information and services. Fully 82% of internet users (representing 61% of all American adults) looked for information or completed a transaction on a government website in the twelve months preceding this survey. Some of the specific government website activities in which Americans take part include:
48% of internet users have looked for information about a public policy or issue online with their local, state or federal government
46% have looked up what services a government agency provides
41% have downloaded government forms
35% have researched official government documents or statistics
33% have renewed a driver’s license or auto registration
30% have gotten recreational or tourist information from a government agency
25% have gotten advice or information from a government agency about a health or safety issue
23% have gotten information about or applied for government benefits
19% have gotten information about how to apply for a government job
15% have paid a fine, such as a parking ticket
11% have applied for a recreational license, such as a fishing or hunting license
Throughout this report, we refer to anyone who did one or more of these activities in the preceding twelve months as an online government user, and most of these online government users exhibit a relatively wide range of behaviors: the typical online government user engaged in four of these activities in the last year.
The way we ask about the use of government services has changed over the years, making direct comparisons to our prior findings difficult. However, even accounting for these methodological changes it is clear that going online to complete basic transactions with government (such as renewing a license or paying a fine) is now much more commonplace than it was earlier in the decade. Conversely, online informational activities (looking up services, downloading forms, etc) are roughly as common within the online population as they were the last time we asked about these activities in 2003.
In this report, we identify several other common characteristics regarding citizens’ interactions with government. Specifically, these interactions are frequently:
Data driven – Efforts by government agencies to post their data online are resonating with citizens. Fully 40% of online adults went online in the preceding year to access data and information about government (for instance, by looking up stimulus spending, political campaign contributions or the text of legislation). These “government data users” are discussed in more detail in Part 4.
Organized around new online platforms – Citizen interactions with government are moving beyond the website. Nearly one third (31%) of online adults use online platforms such as blogs, social networking sites, email, online video or text messaging to get government information. These “government social media users” are discussed in Part 2.
Participatory – Americans are not simply going online for data and information; they want to share their personal views on the business of government. Nearly one quarter (23%) of internet users participate in the online debate around government policies or issues, with much of this discussion occurring outside of official government channels. These “online government participators” are also discussed in more detail in Part 2 of this report.
These are among the key findings of a Pew Internet and American Life Project survey of how Americans interact with government online. Some of the other findings from this research:
40% of online Americans have gone online for data about the business of government
Recently, many government agencies have begun making data such as agency spending, visitor logs or political donations available to citizens as a way to encourage openness and transparency in government. Indeed, Americans appear to have a fairly healthy appetite for such information, as 40% of internet users took at least one of the following actions in the twelve months preceding our survey:
23% of online adults looked online to see how money from the recent stimulus package was being spent
22% downloaded or read the text of legislation
16% visited a site that provides access to government data, such as data.gov, recovery.gov or usaspending.gov
14% looked for information on who contributes to the campaigns of their elected officials
At least when it comes to the federal government, these government data users tend to have more positive attitudes towards government openness and accountability. However, political ideology and partisan affiliations tend to outweigh this effect. Specifically, Democrats (and Democratic-leaning independents) tend to have more positive attitudes towards the federal government’s openness compared with two years ago if they go online for government data. On the other hand, Republican voters tend to cast a skeptical eye towards government openness whether they get this type of data online or not.
More information about government data users can be found in Part 4.
Use of government services and information online is most common among Americans with high incomes and education levels
While many Americans interact with government using online channels, this engagement is not evenly distributed across the online population—particularly when it comes to income and education. High-income and well-educated internet users are much more likely than those with lower levels of income and education to interact with government using many of the online channels we evaluated in our survey.
There are also racial differences in the use of online government services. Whites are significantly more likely than either African Americans or Latinos to participate in the online debate around government issues or policies (25% of online whites do this, compared with 14% of African Americans and Latinos) and are also much more likely to go online for data about government activities such as stimulus spending or campaign finance contributions (42% of online whites are what we call government data users, compared with 25% of blacks and 29% of Latinos). However, these differences are more modest when it comes to completing basic transactions and information searches on government websites, and minority internet users are just as likely as whites to get information about government agencies using tools such as email, blogs, online video or social networking sites.
Government use of social media offers the potential to reach currently underserved populations, such as minority groups
As noted above, African Americans and Latinos are just as likely as whites to use tools such as blogs, social networking sites and online video to keep up with the workings of government. They also have very different attitudes towards the use of social media tools by government agencies and officials. Minority Americans are significantly more likely than whites to agree strongly with the statement that government outreach using tools such as blogs, social networking sites or text messaging “helps people be more informed about what the government is doing” and “makes government agencies and officials more accessible”.
African Americans and Latinos are also much more likely than whites to say it is “very important” for government agencies to post information and alerts on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Based on these users’ expressed attitudes, these tools may offer the ability for government agencies to reach underserved populations in a way that is not currently occurring with other online offerings.
These findings are discussed in more detail in Part 3.
Online Americans typically rely on search engines to guide them to their destination when seeking government information online
As we found in our previous studies on this topic, search engines are frequently the first option when Americans need to find government information or services online. Fully 44% of those who could remember the last government website they visited found that site by conducting an online search. This is much higher than the percentage who visited a site they had used before (16% did this) or who relied on a friend or family member (14%), a government publication or notice (11%) or a general government website such as usa.gov (4%).
The majority of online government interactions lead to a successful outcome
Government website visitors are also generally successful in solving their problems once they reach their online destination. Half of government website visitors said that they accomplished everything they set out to do in their last government website interaction, and an additional 28% were able to do most of what they wanted to do. Just 5% said that their most recent government website interaction was completely unsuccessful.
Americans tend to interact with government using a mix of online and offline methods. Internet users prefer contacting government online, but the telephone remains a key resource for government problem-solving
In this survey, we found that 44% of all Americans had contacted a government agency or official in the preceding twelve months via the telephone, a letter or in-person contact, and that these traditional methods are frequently used as a supplement to online information-seeking behavior. More than half of online government users have contacted government using offline as well as online methods.
The continued relevance of offline channels can also be seen in the way Americans prefer to interact with government agencies. Among the population as a whole, Americans are somewhat divided on their preferred method of contact when they have a problem or question that requires them to get in touch with government. Being able to call someone on the telephone is the most preferred option overall (35% said this) followed by contact via email or a website (28%) and in-person visits (20%). However, internet users prefer online contact to the telephone—although not by a large margin (37% vs. 33%). The technologically proficient (those with a home broadband connection and mobile internet users) and those who engage in a wide range of online government interactions more strongly prefer online contact to other means.
About This Survey
This report is based on the findings of a telephone survey conducted between November 30 and December 27, 2009, among a sample of 2,258 adults, age 18 and older. Interviews were conducted in both English (n=2,197) and Spanish (n=61) and a total of 565 interviews were conducted using the respondent’s cell phone. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points. For results based Internet users (n=1,676), the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points. | <urn:uuid:63f57db6-00eb-473c-a5c9-449a8927a02b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pewinternet.org/2010/04/27/government-online/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957584 | 2,048 | 2.75 | 3 |
India vs. China has become a topic of numerous articles and discussion for the past decade or so for a variety of reasons, not only for their large populations but more recently for their growing global economic influence and military prowess, and on what environmental fall out is going to be from the continued development of India and China.
While there is a substantial presence of Chinese and Indian people in the Western countries, particularly in the United States, there is very little cultural impact of India or China in the United States, except for some influence of Buddhism mainly because of Dalai Lama and obsession with Chinese herbal medicine and Indian yoga for health reasons.
In the current intellectual discourse, India and China are projected as rivals, vying for regional power and economic advantage. One fact is generally ignored that the two countries have co-existed for millennia. Six hundred years ago, Sino-Indian share of world GDP was about 75%. As late as 1700 India and China together shared about 46% of world GDP (China 23% and India 23%), there was no apparent envy, let alone any conflicts unless perhaps British took over India and developed some land disputes with China.
Current share of world GDP for China and India is about 6% on nominal basis (20% on PPP basis), which is a lot more than what it was in 1947 when India secured its independence. Both countries adopted pro-people ideologies, socialism in India and communism in China. Interestingly, the two economies did not move much till about 1979 when China decided to open its economy and adopt more of a capitalistic approach to invite FDI which has resulted in today's China.
India decided only in early 1990s to free up the state control of much of its economy and subsequently has opened up its economy to multinationals quite embracingly within the past seven years or so. The results have been dramatic for India not only because its economy is growing about 8% for the past several years, but a democratic India is more visible in the media for its free press and population..
The interest of the Western world in India and China goes back to ancient times, but even in the modern times, India and China have been looked upon in a typical Western binary vision. Unfortunately, the two countries have complied with this vision for a variety reasons. And, the 1962 war has cemented this vision permanently in the memory of generations that followed, particularly in India, where it is widely accepted that India lost the war badly. The fact that the land dispute that apparently led to the war and also that resulted from the war has not been solved till today remains a continuous reinforcement of adversarial relationship between the two countries.
India and China, Current Intellectual Constructs
Both India and China are very old civilizations without any history of animosity and conflicts, which would have been impossible if these two countries followed the binary vision of the Western world. Some may suggest that the two countries could not have conflicts primarily because of the Himalayan height, but that could not be true considering the fact that two countries have had extensive cultural and even economic interactions.
To repeat ancient practice of peaceful and harmonious neighborly living between India and China, the challenge is not for the political leaders, who have come to represent a corrupt class throughout the world, but to the intellectual class in both the countries. They need to trace back their history critically, perhaps following their own cultures of learning and leading. That is not just a need for these two countries but a need of the hour for the rest of the world trapped in the cycle of violence and suffering.
The challenge of learning from their past is a formidable task for the intellectuals of both India and China, although for entirely different reasons.
China has adopted and practiced the Marxist ideology of materialism for about 60 years. It has gone through a cultural revolution wiping out millions of people, and with them millions of examples of traditional ideas. And, despite the failure of economic ideas of Marxist theory it has developed an entrenched political system based on the infrastructure meant to implement the communist philosophy. As is true throughout the history, rulers showing hypocrisy have been removed all the time, but most of the time violently. Given the flexibility shown by the communist leadership in opening the Chinese economy, and the experience in reaping its benefit, it is quite possible that the grip of the political leadership will be loosened towards more free society for sustained growth. Intellectuals will have to assert and also be given freedom to think beyond the current framework of mind.
India, on the other hand, experimented socialism in combination with democracy, the only form of governance possible, given diversity of its people in terms of languages, religions, culture, and history. Two hundred years long British rule of India has left India's intellectuals with subservient mindset, looking up to the Western scholars for guidance and approval. India's political system is a hodge-podge of British form of parliamentary democracy and American system of a President as head of the state. It has attempted to translate many a term from the Western philosophy of governance to Indian life, most of the time at odds with Indian ethos. So, despite being a democratic country with free press, judiciary, and people, its constitution, education system, and its governance structure have remained derivative of a Western way of looking at things through the glass of binary vision.
The challenge for Indian intellectuals is to try to quickly reach the pinnacle of the essence of Western thought process so that they will get an opportunity to look back at their own heritage without the bogey of a subservient mind. How fast this process could occur is anyone's guess. However, given the role today's globalization is playing, a substantial fraction of Indian population of India is moving towards being accepted as a leader in Westernized capitalism, English language and literature, and is developing a cultural mindset of Westernized society.
India and China will have to find some common ground, preferably some common cause, to work together for some common good. There have been some moves along with Russia to build a coalition of triangular group to counter the sole superpower in the world. However, that has not worked so far, in part because all the three countries have dependence on the United States in more than one ways. Moreover, there are major problems amongst themselves as well, especially between India and China. As it overtly stands today the three countries share little philosophically, economically, and strategically. There is no common outlook, there is no common goal, such as a joint drive in confronting a menace to all three countries. US is too much of a free and sophisticated country to be considered such a menace.
So, what is needed is a proactive effort on the part of India and China to develop their own ideas of moving up their societies with cooperation for mutual benefits that can become a model for rest of the world. This is likely to bring the old glory the two civilizations shared with others that attracted Europeans to their shores.
India, China's Ancient Ideal
China and India, according to Tan Chung, an Indian citizen of Chinese descent, and son of Tan Yunshan, the founder of the Sino-Indian Cultural Society in 1934, observed "Some time around 1957, Chairman Mao Zedong startled his hosts in the Indian Embassy, Beijing, by his after-dinner witty talk that 'every Chinese wished to reincarnate in India after death.'
Explaining a historical dimension of this episode, Professor Tan Chung (who taught Chinese at my alma mater, Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi) observed that what "Mao disclosed to the modern world, a myth called guixi (literally "return to the west") is a Chinese social reproduction, viz. people consoling those whose near and dear has passed away with a sincere wish: 'May the deceased return to the Western Heaven.'
Professor Tan Chung further observed in a lecture in June 2004, "Today, this sincere wish still survives in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, India, in places where Chinese diaspora have settled around the world, and even in the Chinese countryside where traditions diehard. This wish was reproduced in China for nearly two thousand years by Buddhists who used to call India xitian (western heaven) or zhongtian ("central heaven," i.e., Madhyadesa or present Bihar), and their own motherland dongtu (eastern land). So, our fierce revolutionary Mao was the messenger of a precious information from the sedimentation of Chinese civilization, which has such a soft corner for the neighboring civilization of India."
There are very few people in India who are even aware of such a Chinese tradition. I myself learned of it from a Chinese graduate student of mine at UMass Dartmouth in early 1990s. My recent visits to Taiwan certainly reinforced this view, not only by the sights of Buddha statues throughout the country, but also by many of the essential cultural practices of respecting nature, elders, and guests.
A story that had a telling impact on me was related to the accommodation of my hosts in Taipei made at my dinner once they learned I was a vegetarian. The dinner was attended by a very wide variety of people from Yang Ming University in March 2005, and it was an absolute surprise to me that they all ordered vegetarian dishes despite being non-vegetarians. This would not be expected even in India, at least amongst educated class living in cities. During my second two-week visit in 2006, Professor Wan-Jr Syu, the Dean of Life Sciences at Yang Ming, as well as my hosts at other universities like National Taiwan University and Tzu Chi University always ordered vegetarian food themselves even if the restaurants offered both vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods.
Living in the United States, one would never imagine such a behavior. In the Western world, individual choices are always emphasized over the concerns about the groups, be them family, relatives, friends, or community. The expression of the Chinese culture towards a guest as I saw in Taiwan, I believe, bonds China and India at a much deeper level. A guest in India is traditionally given a status of god. Everywhere I visited in Taiwan there was a visible sign of respect, in large part since I was from India, the xitian perhaps.
My day long visit to Tzu Chi University, especially to their medical school, was an eye opener. They hold an enviable position of pledges of thousands of people to donate their body after death for medical education. This is not because they provide any monetary incentive, but how they treat the body in accordance with the Chinese tradition of Buddhist and Confucian thoughts of respect to others even after death.
Nobility of their thoughts and dedication of their work under the leadership of its founder, Dharma Master Cheng Yen, has allowed Tzu Chi Foundation to serve the people even in mainland China. I was told that they succeeded after initial hurdles faced due to the suspicion of the Chinese government about Tzu Chi being a Taiwan-based organization.
A true dedication to the service of people can overcome any hurdles, can fill any gaps, and can elicit cooperation from all. Sino-Indian relations will have to use such an approach.
In a speech on December 5, 2006, Honorable Song Deheng, the Consul General of People's Republic of China at the College of Naval Warfare, Mumbai exhorted to these values openly.
"We [are] destined to stand up on the center of world stage again after centuries of being abased and downtrodden tragedies, only if we follow the path of peaceful development and mutual benefit. After all, compare to the longest friendly communications between our two countries for more than 2000 years, the unpleasant experience is minimum, which should be by every means forgettable."
He continued, "The friendly exchanges between China and India could be traced back to more than 2200 years ago when some Chinese businessmen climbed over the precipice Himalayas and arrived in India subcontinent. Since then, the footprints of businessmen, monks and envoys that shuttled between India and China linked the two great nations closer. Two great civilizations have been benefited from the close and comprehensive interactions and exchanges: India became the terminal of the world-famous "Silk Road" in its southwest direction, the Chinese people's soul was enriched by Buddhism from India and Indian people learnt how to produce sugar from China, that is the reason why China is "Chini" in Hindi. Our friendship and cooperation went down to World War II when both of us were struggling for liberty from Fascist trample."
China's Engagement with India
India and China made a very promising start in 1954 by agreeing to the Five Principles (Panchasheela) of Peaceful Co-existence as the basis for developing relations between States. These principles provided for peaceful co-existence, mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in each-other's internal affairs, and recognition of equality and mutual benefit. These principles formed the basis of non-alignment movement (NAM) that attracted most of the countries in the world who wanted to keep away from the erstwhile Soviet and American blocks. However, implementation of Panchasheela principles was not effectively implemented, and the 1962 war between India and China shattered any dream of an Eastern leadership to the world affairs.
It took 17 years before the ice was broken by a high level visit of Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee in February 1979 as a foreign minister, and paved the way for a relationship that has moved so far that today China is India's second largest trade partner with a total volume of more than $20 billion. While there is a lingering distrust in India about China, only some of it real whereas quite a few of them remain imaginary. China's military ambitions, totalitarian political structure, and strategic defense relationship with Pakistan form the major issues in the minds of Indian people. India faces a band of violent thugs in the name of Maoists or Naxals (as they are called locally for the origin of the movement at Naxalbadi). While this group may not be directly supported by the Chinese government, there is a general perception in India that Indian communists, particularly Communist Party of India (Marxists; CPM) are stooges of the Chinese communists.
The problem with communist ideology in India, unlike in China, is that Indian intellectuals in general are so Westernized and elitized that they see Indian culture and traditions as backward, something to despise. This puts communists at the forefront of those who may be considered traitors, intellectually subservient to foreigners. Despite a lofty goal of fair and equitable treatment of masses, communism throughout the world has not delivered its promised economic equality. India being an ancient country with democratic freedom of expression and practice is traditionally bound with its culture. Any attempt to remove the culture, as generally attempted by Indian communists, is not appreciated.
China has much better link to India directly through the masses, and that relies on thousands of years of culture rather than communism. Relations between China and India are more likely to grow on the foundation of culture and tradition rather than economic "competition" of each other by vying to the standards and definition of the Western world. Economic growth is important, but it must be attained with cooperation rather than cut-throat mentality of competition, because that inevitably leads to distrust and ego clashes.
Western world has historically made plenty by creating clashes amongst different peoples. Their attempt to create a wedge has worked to their advantage for at least 500 years, and it has all come through the economic channel in the beginning, assuming a military dimension later. That is how colonialists worked their way into India and rest of the Eastern world.
The question is whether China and India, recently clubbed together as Chindia by the Western economic interest groups, would recognize this in time, take corrective measures, and lead their future away from the framework of Western binary vision.
This is going to be a tall challenge, given the history of Eastern world, as outlined by Kishore Mahbubani, the Dean and Practice Professor of public policy at the LKY School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, in a comprehensive review of India's relations on the Eastern and Western fronts, and a prediction for India's independent path for the future.
China's Break from the Past
He quoted the first great Chinese reformer, Sun Yat Sen, who had no hesitation in recommending that China should learn from the West: "Chinese civilization has been around for several thousand years now, while Western civilization has only been around a mere several centuries. Chinese people cannot change a past civilization into a modern one. This is why people say that China is the most conservative and that is the reason for its accumulated poverty ... we, the modern people of China, are all useless, but if in the future we use Western civilization as a model, we can easily turn weakness into strength, and the old into the new. I think that everyone should go to the West and find something new, then go to the East and find something old, and if we Chinese can bring this about, then there will be nothing hard about the old turning into the new."
Is China ready to listen to Sun Yet Sen's advice of turning the old into new, and will that be done in collaboration with India? Part of the problem the West has with China and India may be not that Chindia will use the Western technology to enhance their GDP and military power (they remain assured of their superiority for another half century or so), but to turn their old into new, which may be too hard for the West to compete with.
Clyde Prestowitz , the author of 'Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East' points out that China has overwhelmingly become the location of choice for global manufacturing, and India is fast becoming the preferred place for production of software and the handling of outsourced business services.
According to Prestowitz "Globalization is no longer a matter of Americanization; globalization is going truly global at the speed of light. India and China have become not only the world's fastest growing economies, but are also destined to become the world's largest – surpassing both Japan and the United States."
Interestingly, Japan's economic position today may also be attributed to its early decision to westernize itself. Japanese Meiji reformers, Yukichi Fukuzawa, said: "Our immediate policy, therefore, should be to lose no time in waiting for the enlightenment of our neighboring countries in order to join them in developing Asia, but rather to depart from their ranks and cast our lot with the civilized countries of the West. We should deal with them exactly as the Westerners do." This attitude may in part have been responsible for the brutal treatment of Chinese population by Japanese rulers during their occupation of China.
There is a great deal of debate whether India will represent the Western or the Eastern viewpoint. In my recent conversation with a colleague here, he suggested that actually Westerners like to think that the Eastern world starts after India. This is primarily because of Sanskrit, the ancient yet still in use, language of India being considered as the origin of the Indo-European languages, and a now virtually defunct Aryan Invasion Theory advanced by colonialists to relate Indian civilization to the European civilization.
In the words of Mahbubani "India's role as it emerges as a great power may therefore be quite different from the roles played by Japan and China. Japan tried to demonstrate forcefully that it could be as good a member of the Western club as any Western nations. China, by contrast, has made no effort to prove that it can be as Western as any other Western society."
Opportunities of Cooperation and the Diasporas
The cooperation between China and India has to involve a lot more people to people contact than it has been in the past. A beginning of such an effort is in offing with a leading role being played by Singapore to revive Nalanda University in India that was a major Buddhist learning center till 12th century when Turkish invaders burned down the university. China can take a prominent role in this effort.
Another untapped source of people to people contact and cooperation is the large diaspora population of China and India. China has over 40 million diasporic population spread over half of the countries of the world, Similarly, there are over 22 million Indian diaspora living outside India. If this diaspora was a country, it will be the 49th largest country based on population. With an estimated GDP of $1 trillion of Indian diaspora outside India, their economic strength is larger than that of India with a GDP of only $720 billion.
In recent years, as the interest of people throughout the world grows in India, and also in the Indian diaspora. world has turned to Indians in general and Indian Americans in particular to watch their culture, behavior, food and lifestyles, to a peek at what is actually India really made of. There is a population of over 3 million Chinese-Americans who could become a major resource of interaction with Indian-Americans. There is already an organization of Asian Americans in the US which could provide a formal structure for the two communities to work together.
While the Chinese-Americans interaction with China is more investment based than those of the Indian-Americans, the latter make far more family remittances, suggesting a stronger family bond, providing a stronger opportunity to link and influence the mass opinion in India. As an evidence of this influence was recently observed when it was revealed that the US popularity is second highest in India after USA itself. At least part of the reason for this popularity is a strong presence (over 2 millions) of Indian-Americans who in turn shape the opinion of Indians.
Indians make a favorable impression in the world about their tolerant and accepting nature, amenable for business. Forbes in its June 21, 2004 issue stated that "all societies flourish mightily when tolerance is the norm, and our age furnishes many examples of this." Paul Johnson, author of the article explains this point using examples of Indians in India as well as in the diaspora.
"It is the nature of the Hindu religion to be tolerant and, in its own curious way, permissive….Take the case of Uganda's Indian population, which was expelled by the horrific dictator Idi Amin and received into the tolerant society of Britain. There are now more millionaires in this group than in any other recent immigrant community in Britain."
Johnson offers a philosophical basis of this success by stating "they are a striking example of how far hard work, strong family bonds and a devotion to education can carry a people who have been stripped of all their worldly assets."
In a recent article (April 1, 2006) UK's Guardian newspaper reported that Hindus and Sikhs in Britain are the best at money managing. The newspaper interviewed members of Indian diaspora to fathom the reason for their unusual success.
Geeta Nanda, a housing association director said: "I've inherited a different ethos to my contemporaries….It's all part of our ethos. We save before we buy - you can have a big car or flashy jewelry but you get them with cash and not through debt. You have what you can afford," she continued.
Explaining part of the reason for such a record as spiritual the newspaper said "Hinduism stresses that increasing the family's wealth is a duty and a blessing from the goddess Lakshmi, the consort or wife of Lord Vishnu. She is the goddess whose four hands represent prosperity, purity, chastity and generosity."
These are the examples of how even Westerners are willing to look at the role of cultural ethos in business successes. Recent successes of Mittal Steels and Tata Steels in taking over Arcelor ($33.1 billion) and Corus ($13.7 billion), the two European steel giants make the linkages of family-based businesses with success at the international level even stronger. Both Mittal and Tata groups are family owned businesses, one located in Europe and owned by non-resident Indian (part of Indian diaspora) and the other located in India.
Greatness is really just a perception by the inside and outside world. While inside perceptions build morale and confidence, outside perceptions are no less important for an entity or institution, including a country. Both China and India are fortunate to have attained very positive perceptions from the outside world. Their respective diasporas have played a major role in this process, and can perhaps play even greater role in shaping the perception as well as real change not only in their respective ancestral lands but even between them. At least in the United States, both communities work well, and generally have different areas of strengths, both in technology and service sectors.
Indians settled throughout the world are not only known for their computer skills and high education, and very high prosperity, but also for their philosophical temper towards life. Popularity of yoga in the Western world has provided it with a new glass through which to look at India. What is so unique about India that it has remained the zenith of philosophy, science, music, and culture for thousands of years? The answer lies, among other things, in nature's benevolence toward India. India's geography and geology provide natural settings for human learning. India is the only country blessed with the highest mountain peaks of the Himalayas on one end and the lowest level of earth (the ocean) on the other, with numerous geological formations in between. India is the only country that witnesses six clear and distinct seasons during the year. Such crisp variation in weather supports many diverse species of life.
India's tradition of celebrating diversity remains a key to its success in the spiritual growth of its people, and its natural resources of fertile land and amenable weather to human living lends support for its prosperity and leisure time for developing thoughts in science and philosophy. In other words, India is truly a special land where ideas and observations intertwine to create an understanding of harmonious living. There is plenty of evidence of this when one examines numerous philosophical and spiritual thoughts, be it Vedanta, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Sufism, etc. These ideas have generally been living in peace with each other, which is more than can be said for rest of the world.
Non-resident Indians (NRIs) are being looked at as living examples of India's values and traditions in their adopted lands. The same can be true with the Chinese diaspora at least for their language and food habits. However, because there is an apparent lack of education in their spiritual and religious heritage, the young immigrants become vulnerable to work stress and social isolation in a foreign land. Many of the young living in a foreign culture adapt foreign names and turn to Christianity for spiritual support.
Notably, Chinese diaspora has maintained a strong bond with the mainland through FDI, which is over 20-times higher than that of the Indian diaspora. However, foreign remittances of the Indian diaspora is over 7-fold higher than that of the Chinese diaspora, suggesting stronger family bond of the Indian diaspora, who are yet to catch up with Chinese diaspora's investment zeal (over 20 times higher than that of the Indian diaspora) in connecting with their ancestral land. China's economic structure, particularly with the inclusion of Hong Kong, has made it very attractive investment avenue for its diaspora.
India, on the other hand, is still in the process of developing such a structure, but has started wooing NRIs and persons of Indian origin by celebrating NRI day in every January for the past five years. The celebration day coincides with the return of Mahatma Gandhi on January 9, 1914, from South Africa. The 3-day event is a state celebration involving the President, the Prime Minister, and many other ministers and government officials. It is a mixture of cultural and economic summit, and at least symbolically connects Indian diaspora with India very strongly. There may be some wisdom for the Chinese government to engage its diaspora similarly, in particular to connect with them culturally.
Possible Future Moves
In the final analysis, China and India will need to extend their engagement beyond current framework of nation-state concept defined by the Western world, yet utilize the opportunities present within the current framework of international concepts and conditions. For example, globalization, a concordant mantra, although as old as the human history has been a frontier phrase for the past 15 years or so, albeit mostly for the benefit of multinationals. However, due to the advent of Internet communications and information, globalization now seems to have unexpected and totally unintended repercussions on the existence of the nation-state concept for world organization. Today, globalization seems to undermine the nation-state concept at its core, and threatens the role of political masters much the same way as the colonial masters or slave masters. The long yearning for freedom from masters is finally inching towards its final steps. This reality can be utilized by cultures like India and China, which have promoted the sense of multiple ideas to exist together peacefully.
Western world's treasured concept of democracy and diplomacy can be recast to create a more just and free world without the instrument of constant manipulation to have a zero sum game. For democracy, Mahatma Gandhi had a totally different idea than the state of nation-states we see in the world today, i.e., at each other's throat pretending diplomacy. Gandhi said, "Democracy must in essence, therefore, mean the art and science of mobilizing the entire physical, economic and spiritual resources of all the various sections of the people in the service of the common good of all." There is a great need to develop the concept of democracy further to let people become independent and free from constant control of corrupt rulers.
India and China must take leadership in developing fundamental concepts for the welfare of all the people in the world by implementing them first in domains of their own influence, such as Kashmir for India, and Tibet for China, or in their neighborhood (Pakistan, Nepal, Taiwan, etc.). With the current level of violence and terrorism in the world, even Western world is anxious for new way of thinking.
Concern about the environment pollution and a sustainable planet is opening the mind for a new way of global thinking. Public in the West is becoming restless with impending global warming and planetary doom. While Western governments keep pointing fingers at India and China for continuous and potential contribution to greenhouse gases, I believe people in the Western countries where social fabric has become very tenuous are looking up to the Eastern wisdom for a sustainable society living in peace with nature. The challenge for India and China is to develop ideas outside the box, based perhaps on their millennia old civilizational wisdom.
There is a need to develop Panchatantra (five approaches) and Panchamantra (five goals) for the humanity irrespective caste and creed, for the creation of a new world order beyond political and military clichés. My tentative suggestions for Panchatantra to be implemented should be universal health, enlightened education, prosperous living, non-violence, and righteous governance. The Panchamantra would be independence, freedom, pursuit of truth, celebration of diversity, and harmony with nature.
The structural complementarity in current economic practices of China (manufacturing and infrastructure) and India (business management and software and information technology) is accidental yet significant for a synergistic action plan if China and India decide to work together in providing leadership in the globalized world. China as a historically organized society can provide strong leadership in developing ways to implement the Panchatantra, and India with its very long tradition of philosophy could leadership in developing elaborate argument for the Panchamantra as a replacement of current paradigm of democracy, human rights, diplomacy, nation-states, and money-based social security.
Bal Ram Singh, Ph.D., Center for Indic Studies, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. | <urn:uuid:394074ef-e5a3-4fd0-ba05-76dacd1ed3f9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.umassd.edu/indic/facultyandstaff/director/indicstudiesbusinessheraldmay102007/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963607 | 6,531 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Essay on industrialization and it’s impact on politics, education, religion and family.
The process of industrialization has transformed the entire old socio-economic structure which was founded on traditional feudal and pre-feudal principles of birth and status. It has brought about changes in property system and in division of labour, and has given rise to new social strata and classes which stand above the traditional division of region and religion.
Industrialization has brought about many changes non-existent in pre-industrial societies. It has introduced new social relation, urbanisation, geographical concentration of people and changes in occupational structure. It has resulted in certain common features which are different from the features of pre-industrial or traditional agricultural societies. Various changes that have taken place in political, educational, religious, familial and stratification spheres due to impact of industrialization are discussed below.
Capitalism was already well set by the time industrial revolution commenced. It stimulated the growth of industry as large machines were costly and individual worker could not purchase for use. The weaving industry was the first to come fully under the grip of capitalists. Role of weaver got confined to labour selling and wage earning.
These in fact came to be established, owned and controlled by capitalists. Under the new system the workers were rendered completely dependent on their employers. They lived together, in large agglomerating, in absolute misery and total poverty.
Their misery and poor working conditions forced them to think about their well being. The liberal and revolutionary ideas as propounded by the thinkers from time to time, stimulated their thinking. The Chartist movement in Britain was the first manifestation of worker’s collective action against the capitalist regime.
The Revolution in Europe in 1830, 1848 and 1870 on the whole provided the inspiration to the working class. The rulers did not fail to take note of it. The liberal leadership took up the cause of working men. Men like Charles Early Grey, Robert Peel, Grladstone educated the ‘master’s, the working class of their real strength. They invested the people with a political consciousness and made them earnest, about their rights. They were desirous to change their condition, generated keenness for it, and set the change in motion.
Constitutionalism in England for centuries was the intellectual exercise of the Constitutional lawyers and of elected parliamentarians. For the generality democracy was name not a fact. But the process that came to be set a foot soon galvanised the working class to unity and action.
The Parliamentary Reform Act 1832, did not bring democracy to the British, but effected a breach in the strong hold of autocracy and aristocracy. After the representation was conceded to the new industrial towns and to the industrial classes, the composition of the House of Commons underwent a distinct change. With it began the liberal legislations.
The second Reform Act enfranchised the lower middle class and the industrial worker. It was given further extension by the third Reform Act 1884. All working men, not under the age of 21 were enfranchised. These changes left, the House of Lords unaffected. In fact it had all along hindered the progressive legislations.
Lloyd George, in his Newcastle speech, 9 Oct., 1909 took up the cause, and expounded the situation, thus: “The question will be asked” should 500 men (reference to the members of the House of Lords.) ordinary men, chosen accidentally from among the unemployed, override the judgement, the deliberate judgement of millions of people who are engaged in the industry which makes the wealth for the country?
Another question will be: who ordained that a few should have the land of Britain as a pre-requisite, who made 10,000 people owners of the soil, and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth ?.. These are questions that will be asked.
The answers are charged with peril for the order of the things the peers represent: but they are fraught with rare and refreshing fruit for the parched lips of the multitude who have been treading the dusty road along which the people have marched through the dark ages, which are now emerging into the light”. Mr. Lloyd George, thus warned the Lords that they were ‘forcing revolution’. By the Act of 1911, its power was taken away and democracy rendered safe in England. Successively, women were also enfranchised.
Power, thus came to be rationalised. The gap between the centre of authority and common citizen vanished. The party system, regular election, the House of Commons became the institution which enabled all citizens to share power equally.
Once the politically unowned, the humble, poor and poverty stricken became the partners in the political fortunes of their country, there followed the political transformation. In other European countries politics of similar type led the enfranchisement of the adult voter. We too, on our independence opted for democratic policy. But, we have yet to develop a political culture.
The people in the pre-industrial West in general were illiterate. There was not much need for literacy. Learning was the privilege of the aristocrats, vocation of the priest and a necessity for the trader. National educational system did not exist in any European country.
There were public schools for well to do. The atmosphere in these schools was not good. Flogging was common. Dr. Arnold, the Principal of Rugby, in England, improved the conditions there. He insisted on religion and morality being accepted as the basis of education.
The grammar, Private and the Church school served the rest of the community. In the continental countries the state of education was no better. In the modern industrial society literacy is an expediency. In view of the high skills, acute division of labour and job differentiation, higher level of technical training is essential.
This has necessitated the differentiation in the fields of knowledge and specialization in several areas of learning. By the Fosters Education Act (1870) in England the country was divided into school boards. Schools were placed within the reach of everybody.
By the abolition of Test Act, Cambridge and Oxford were opened to everybody: To stimulate education at the university level recruitment to the Civil Service, except to the Foreign Service, came to be made on the basis of competitive examination. Education, finally was made compulsory at the primary stage.
In France, education was specially attended to after the revolution of 1789, and during the Napoleon regime. But, it continued to be dominated by church down to the closing decades of nineteenth century. The Third Republic (1874), relieved education from the church control, and primary education was made compulsory in 1882.
Education in the industrial West has remained the concern of the State. There exist educational institutions of various types. Education is imparted according to the social requirements. From the normative learning there is shift to the acquisition of knowledge and technical skills. All higher education is profession-oriented.
Orthodoxy and superstitions have flourished under the grab of religion. Superstitions are due to ignorance. The process of industrialization has resulted in spread and dissemination of science and practical knowledge. It attacked religion and superstition. Misery, distress and exploitation made religion and morality as if nonexistent.
Hence, science and technology as well as the conditions of life resulted in lost of faith in the goods of heaven and divinity. Religion ceased to be solace of man. The industrial prosperity and the social reforms brought leisure and comfort, literacy and missionary activity.
Christianity was subjected to a devastating intellectual attack in the nineteenth century, largely from the perspective of the new doctrine of biological evolution. The ancient corpus of sacred literature was subjected to minute examination. The Bible began to be treated not as a thing apart but as any other book: it was submitted to those canons of proof and probability which the scrupulous conscience of the historical scholar applies to a classical text or to a medieval chronicle.
In face of this evidence it was no longer possible to accept the narrative of genesis as other than a religions and poetical allegory.
As the area of scientific knowledge and technology widened, the area of religion shrinked. In modern industrial societies, the hold of religious beliefs has declined. Many of the traditional functions of religion are now taken care of by secular institutions.
As a result of industrialization family came under heavy pressure. The structure and functions of family underwent change considerably. Family which for ages had remained the production-consumption unit, ceased to be so, with the advent of industry. One had to go away for work to the factory or a mill. Mobility, ensured individualism, at the cost of kinship relation.
It also ensured nuclear compact family in place of corporate one. This process was stimulated further by complex division of labour, the characteristic of the industrial economy. The role of family in certain respects got minimized.
It does not now perform all those comprehensive functions that once were attributed to it. Its activities are now limited to reproduction, maintenance and placement. In its place, State has undertaken most responsibilities. Now in industrial West, State looks after the individual from pre-natal to post-burial time.
In the past, women enjoyed no independence. From economic and social points of view women was subject to man. As a result of industrialization there has been much improvement in the status of women. They became economically independent because they worked in all walks of life along with men. With wage in their hands women gained independence. This resulted in change in the husband-wife relation.
The loss of economic base caused the disintegration of family.
Sphere of Stratification:
In industrial societies there is a unique kind of social stratification. The system of stratification is based social class.
In Europe, civilization is comparatively of recent origin and the classes are no less. Beginning with acquisition of small property and slaves, petty trade and merchandise; feudal life and land tenure; commerce and industry; there developed the class structure. Between the capitalist and the working class there developed the professional class, which is further subdivided into the upper, middle and the lower class.
The emergence of class structure in Europe is the direct result of the industrial and technological revolution. The Complexities of division of labour further stimulated the class structure. As industrialization advanced, as large industrial organizations replaced many smaller family enterprises, as capitalism changed from the competitive, laissez-fair model of the eighteenth century to twentieth century capitalism with giant corporations in monopolistic and semi-monopolistic positions, a modification of class structure occurred. | <urn:uuid:139fbcbc-cda2-4e37-9bbd-01a2a956d4bd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/industries/essay-on-industrialization-its-impact-on-politics-education-religion-and-family/8535/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967887 | 2,155 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Many sensors output a voltage waveform. Thus no signal conditioning circuitry is needed to perform the conversion to a voltage. However, dynamic range modification, impedance transformation, and bandwidth reduction may all be necessary in the signal conditioning system depending on the amplitude and bandwidth of the signal and the impedance of the sensor. The circuits discussed in this section and in subsequent sections are treated as building blocks of a human-computer input system. Their defining equations for their operation are given without proof. For a more detailed description of how they work, see Design with Operational Amplifiers and Analog Integrated Circuits, Franco 1988 or The Art of Electronics, Horowitz and Hill 1989. It is especially important to review the analysis of ideal op-amp circuits.
The most common circuit used for signal conditioning is the inverting amplifier circuit as shown in Figure 15 This amplifier was first used when op-amps only had one input, the inverting (-) input. The voltage gain of this amplifier is . Thus the level of sensor outputs can be matched to the level necessary for the data acquisition system. The input impedance is approximately and the output impedance is nearly zero. Thus, this circuit provides impedance transformation between the sensor and the data acquisition system.
It is important to remember that the voltage swing of the output of the amplifier is limited by the amplifier's power supply as shown in Figure 16. In this example, the power supply is +/- 13V. When the amplifier output exceeds this level, the output is ``clipped''.
Just as the dynamic range of the amplifier is limited, so too is the bandwidth. Op-amps have a fixed gain-bandwidth product which is specified by the manufacturer. If , for example, the op-amp is specified to have a gain-bandwidth product, and it is connected to have a gain of 100, this means that the bandwidth of the amplifier will be limited to ( ). Another important limitation of the amplifier circuit is noise. All op-amps introduce noise to the signal. The amount and characteristics of the noise are specified by the manufacturer of the op-amp. Also, the resistors introduce noise. The equation for this thermal noise is ; where k is Boltzmann's constant, T is the temperature, B is the bandwidth of the measurement device, and R is the value of the resistance. The main point to remember, is the larger the resistor values used, the larger the amount of noise introduced. One more limitation of the op-amp is offset voltage. All op-amps have a small amount of voltage present between the inverting and non-inverting terminals. This DC potential is then amplified just as if it was part of the signal from the sensor. There are many other limitations of the amplifier circuit that are important for the HCI designer to be aware. Too many, in fact, to describe in detail here (refer to the previously mentioned references.)
Another commonly used amplifier configuration is shown in Figure 17. The gain of this circuit is given as . The input impedance is nearly infinite (limited only by the op-amp's input impedance) and the output impedance is nearly zero. The circuit is ideal for sensors that have a high source impedance and thus would be affected by the current draw of the data acquisition system.
If and is open (removed), then the gain of the non-inverting amplifier is unity. This circuit, as shown in Figure 18 is commonly referred to as a unity-gain buffer or simply a buffer.
Summing and Subtracting
The op-amp can be used to add two or more signals together as shown in Figure 19.
The output of this circuit is . This circuit can be used to combine the outputs of many sensors such as a microphone array. The op-amp can also be used to subtract two signals as shown in Figure 20 This circuit is commonly used to remove unwanted DC offset. It can also be used to remove differences in the ground potential of the sensor and the ground potential of the data acquisition circuitry (so-called ground loops).
The output of this circuit is given as . Thus can be the output of the sensor and can be the signal that is to be removed.
Possibly the most important circuit configuration for amplifying sensor output is the instrumentation amplifier (IA). Franco defines the requirements for an IA as follows:
CMRR (common mode rejection ratio) is defined as:
That is, CMRR is the ratio of the gain of the amplifier for differential-mode signals (signals that are different between the two inputs) to the gain of the amplifier for common-mode signals (signals that are the same at both inputs). The difference amplifier described above, clearly does not satisfy the second requirement of high input impedance. To solve this problem, a non-inverting amplifier is placed at each one of the inputs to the difference amplifier as shown in Figure 21. Remember that a non-inverting amplifier has a nearly infinite input impedance. Notice that instead of grounding the resistors, the two resistors are connected together to create one common resistor, . The overall differential gain of the circuit is:
Lowpass and highpass filters
The non-inverting amplifier configuration can be modified to limit the bandwidth of the incoming signal. For example, the feedback resistor can be replaced with a resistor/capacitor combination as shown in Figure 22 Thus the gain of the circuit is now: where:
A filter ``rolls off'' at 20dB per 10-times increase in frequency (20dB/decade) times the order of the filter, i.e.: . Thus a first order filter ``rolls off'' at 20dB/decade as shown in Figure 23.
The input resistor of the inverting amplifier can also be replaced by a resistor/capacitor pair to create a high pass filter as shown in Figure 24 The gain of this filter is given by: where:
The frequency response of this filter is shown in Figure 25.
Higher order filters, which consequently have faster attenuation rates, can be created by cascading many first-order filters. Alternatively, the filter circuit can include more resistor/capacitor pairs to increase its order. The technique for doing this can be found in either of the references given previously. For the HCI designer, however, the two important steps are to determine the required filter order and to pick a circuit of that order - making sure that the circuit also meets any of the other previously described requirements of the signal conditioning circuitry.
As mentioned previously, a common implementation practice is to sandwich a piezoelectric crystal between two metal plates. Figure 26 shows an equivalent electrical circuit of this arrangement. The voltage source represents the voltage that develops due to the excess surface charge on the crystal. The capacitor which appears in series is due to the capacitor formed by the metallic plates of the sensor. An important point to make is that piezo sensors cannot be used to measure a constant force, but rather is only useful for dynamic forces. If one is familiar with basic circuit theory, it should be clear that the capacitor blocks the direct current (the constant voltage resulting from a constant force).
In order to measure the force, one must measure the voltage which appears across the terminals of the sensor. It is impossible to measure voltage without drawing at least a little electrical current. This situation is summed up in Figure 26 where represents the load impedance inherent in the measuring device. Figure 27 shows a typical response which might arise if a constant force is applied to the piezo. In the absence of a load resistance, a force applied to the crystal will develop a charge which will remain as long as the force is present. In the case where the load resistor is present, an electrical path is formed which serves to allow the charge to dissipate, which in turn reduces the voltage. The higher the value of the resistance, the longer it will take for the charge to dissipate. The time-constant of the system is defined as the time it takes the charge (or voltage) to decrease to approximately 37its original value. The time constant is give by . Typical values for common piezo sensors is about ( nano-farads), and typical input impedances for measuring devices is on the order of ( mega-ohms). These values result in a of . Roughly speaking, this means that forces that are constant, or vary slowely will suffer from the fact that the voltage across the sensor will tend to decrease in amplitude, and the overall amplitude of the measure voltage will be reduced. Alternatively, forces which vary rapidly will not be subject to much if any decrease in amplitude.
This situation can also be described in the frequency domain. In the time domain, the system is characterized by its time constant whereas in the frequency domain it is characterized by its cutoff frequency . A plot of the frequency response of piezo sensor along with a load resistance is shown in Figure 28. For the sensor mentioned earlier with an internal capacitance of and a load resistance of , the cutoff frequency is equal to . Specifically, this means that a force varying at a frequency of will result in a measured voltage which is less than a more rapidly varying force with the same amplitude. In many applications it is important to make the frequency as low as possible. In order to do this one must make the input impedance of their measuring circuit as high as possible. Thus a non-inverting amplifier is connected to the piezo output as shown in Figure 29.
Hence the circuit amplifies the voltage by the factor . The cutoff frequency of this circuit is , where C is the internal capacitance of the sensor. It is clear that an increase in the value of the input resistor will result in a decrease in the cutoff frequency.
As mentioned several times, piezo sensors find many applications. Figure 30 shows a mechanical system which implements an accelerometer. In this system, a mass is placed on the tip of a piezo sensor forming a cantilever beam. When the mass undergoes an acceleration, a resultant force will cause the piezo film to bend, which will result in a voltage. Remember that the piezo sensor cannot measure a constant force, so this device can only measure dynamic acceleration, and cannot be used for applications such as tilt sensors. | <urn:uuid:14ca4dd9-d114-4aba-8a13-a83dcc0d627f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://ccrma.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Courses/252/sensors/node15.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931229 | 2,083 | 4 | 4 |
“ Engineering chimeric flagella for a better worldmore...
Using flagella as scaffoldsclose
This year, our team is investigating new methods of increasing the efficiency of biosynthesis and bioremediation using modified bacteria. Most bacteria possess tail-like appendages called flagella, which can be genetically altered for novel functions. Each flagellum is made up of a number of polymerizing proteins, often called flagellin.By making chimeric insertions in the variable domain of the flagellin, we can incorporate fluorescent proteins, enzymes, and scaffolding proteins to extend the possible applications. By having a protein inserted into each monomer, it is possible to cluster thousands of proteins in close proximity to each other, thereby increasing the efficiency of production and break-down of various products.
“ A handy guide for introducing you to chimeric protein design.more...
How to make chimeric proteinsclose
There are a lot of considerations that need to be made in the design of chimeric proteins. To help introduce future teams to chimeric proteins and their standard design, we have summarized our work into a resourceful guide that covers all (or almost all) of the considerations that need to be made in designing a chimeric protein from start to finish.
“ The first dance group to perform at a research conferencemore...
SynthetiQ Experimental Dance is a group devoted to creating, testing and analyzing movement, in the form of dance, as a means of explaining scientific concepts. Inspired by Dr. John Bohannon's “Dance Your PhD Contest” and his TEDxBrussels talk in 2011, our first project was partnered with the Queen's Genetically Engineered Machine (QGEM) Team. Because our research and learning goals align perfectly with those of the QGEM team, we will be researching and presenting together at the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition in the fall.
As a part of our 2012 iGEM project, we started this group, devoted to using dance to explain concepts associated with synthetic biology, as well as our own research.
We made dance into our own unique tool for teaching others scientific concepts, as an alternative to use powerpoint presentations.
“ Who we arespan>more...
QGEM is an undergraduate team composed of both full-time members and volunteers. All faculties of the university are eligible to participate in the iGEM team and previous members have from the departments of Chemical and Mechanical Engineering, Engineering Chemistry, Biology, Biochemistry, Life Science and Computing. | <urn:uuid:e668d6c5-8057-4624-b5df-825339c56356> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://2012.igem.org/Team:Queens_Canada | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932159 | 528 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Volume 13, Number 1 (June, 1998)
Comparing Methamphetamine and Cocaine
Methamphetamine and cocaine belong to the broad class of drugs called psychostimulants that also includes amphetamine and methylphenidate. The two drugs often are compared to each other because they produce similar mood-altering effects and both have a high potential for abuse and dependence. Methamphetamine and cocaine also share other similarities. However, the two drugs also exhibit significant differences. Here are some of these similarities and differences.
- Methamphetamine is man-made.
- Cocaine is plant-derived.
Common Methods of Use
- Both methamphetamine and cocaine are commonly smoked, injected intravenously, or snorted.
- Methamphetamine also is commonly ingested orally.
Geographic Patterns of Use
- Methamphetamine use is highest in Honolulu, Hawaii, and western areas of the continental United States, particularly urban areas of California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona. In recent years, methamphetamine use has increased in both rural and urban areas of the South and Midwest. (Source: Epidemiologic Trends in Drug Abuse: Advance Report, 1997, NIDA.)
- Cocaine use shows no clear geographic pattern; regional
rates of use vary from year to year. Cocaine use also is significantly higher in large metropolitan areas than in nonmetropolitan areas. (Source: Preliminary Results from the 1996 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.)
- When they are smoked or injected intravenously, both methamphetamine and cocaine produce an intense, extremely pleasurable "rush" almost immediately, followed by euphoria, referred to as a "high."
- When snorted, both methamphetamine and cocaine produce no intense rush and take longer to produce a high; orally ingested methamphetamine produces a similar effect.
- Methamphetamine's high lasts anywhere from 8 to 24 hours,
and 50 percent of the drug is removed from the body in 12 hours.
- Cocaine's high lasts anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes, and 50 percent of the drug is removed from the body in 1 hour.
Physical and Mental Effects
- The immediate effects of both
methamphetamine and cocaine can include irritability and anxiety; increased body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure; and possible death.
- Methamphetamine's and cocaine's short-term effects also can include increased activity, respiration, and wakefulness, and decreased appetite.
- Effects of chronic abuse of either methamphetamine or cocaine can include dependence and possible stroke.
- Chronic abuse of either methamphetamine or cocaine also can lead to psychotic behavior characterized by paranoia, hallucinations, mood disturbances, and violence. Anecdotal evidence suggests that violent behavior may be more common among chronic methamphetamine users than it is among chronic cocaine users.
- Drug craving, paranoia, and depression can occur in addicted individuals who try to stop using either methamphetamine or cocaine.
- Methamphetamine is neurotoxic in animal species ranging from mice to monkeys; the drug damages the neurons that produce the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. The usual doses taken by human methamphetamine abusers are comparable to the doses that produce neurotoxicity in
- Cocaine is not neurotoxic to dopamine and serotonin
Transmission of HIV/AIDS
- Both methamphetamine and cocaine use contributes to transmission of HIV/AIDS through intravenous injection.
- Methamphetamine use in conjunction with high-risk sexual behaviors and cocaine use in "sex-for-crack" exchanges also contribute to transmission of HIV/AIDS.
NIDA NOTES - Volume 13, Number 1
[Home Page][NIDA NOTES Index][Index of this Issue] | <urn:uuid:ae1245c4-d498-4d0c-910c-bd68897b2dbd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://archives.drugabuse.gov/NIDA_Notes/NNVol13N1/Comparing.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913475 | 741 | 2.921875 | 3 |
The following is one of the art essay selections for the fifteenth annual Young Masters exhibition. It is based on and inspired by the art piece pictured.
“Inua:” The Cycle of the Soul
By Conner Frew
Like many tribal groups throughout history, the Yup’ik peoples of northwestern Alaska have for centuries incorporated the natural world into their culture, customs, and traditions; however, due to the isolation of the Alaskan natives from the global network until the late 19th century, the Yup’ik culture fostered a unique approach to representing the cycle of the soul, or inua, and the thriving entity of nature., This isolated development of nature worship is well represented by the ceremonial mask with seal or sea otter spirit, which reinforces the nature-mother concept through ritualistic symbols of nature and the motif of circular arrangement, an embodiment of the cycle of the spirit.
The Yup’ik people observed cycles all around them and incorporated them into their artwork in what cultural anthropologist Phyllis Morrow considers to be the “circle-and-dot motif.” This concept, Morrow explains, is emphasized through the use of circular objects—particularly hoops, eyes, and dots. These circular forms are apparent in the artwork shown, and are commonly used to represent the passage of the spirit. In fact, holes drilled into joints and appendages (such as the hands of this mask) were common among the Yup’ik. In spiritual rituals, these holes provided aid or prevented the cycle of spiritual rebirth to continue—as is the case in captured game. Naturally it would be this cycle that stabilizes the structure of all masks, bringing a sense of both visual and spiritual harmony to the works of the Yup’ik natives, a structure that is evidenced in the arrangement of the mask with seal or sea otter spirit. Not only does this central portion have eyes that signify knowledge and wisdom but the hands of the otter/seal also contain holes, which signify the passage of the spirit of the animal from one world to the next.
Also present among almost all Yup’ik masks, and yet another distinguishing factor and example of natural reverence, is the pervasiveness of animal worship. In almost every ceremonial mask, the incorporation of animals speaks to their spiritual importance and cultural significance. These masks were used during the Bladder Festival, a festival dedicated to honoring the animals killed in the previous year’s hunt. This was so that the spirits of these animals, released after their physical death, would provide food the next year. The mask with seal or sea otter spirit, therefore, honors the otter or seal, both highly valued for their fur and blubber, respectively. The animals’ sacrifices were vital in order to protect the Yup’ik from the harsh winter freeze, and thus they were treated as honored guests. This mask holds a fish in its mouth, further reinforcing the concept of life and abundance that characterized westernAlaska, and displays the telltale “spirit holes,” emphasizing the passage of the spirit this festival celebrates.
This reverence for the cycle of life and the soul is easily seen as a response to the environment the Yup’ik people inhabited. They lived in a land of natural abundance, a land that had given them plenty of food and shelter from the harsh winters, and a land that they saw as sentient—a living, breathing being whose actions were both an all-powerful force and a reaction to the native peoples ofAlaska.
“Yup’ik,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed October 21, 2012, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/655025/Yupik.
“Yup’ik Mask with Seal or Otter Spirit,” Dallas Museum of Art, accessed October 20, 2012, http://dallasmuseumofart.org:9090/emuseum/view/objects/asitem/2032/73/title-asc?t:state:flow=801b1a37-b13c-432d-92af-2c914f4f0997.
Ann Fienup-Riordan, “The Mask: The Eye of the Dance,” Arctic Anthropology 24, no. 2 (1987): 43, n. 3.
Ibid., 43, n. 5.
Ibid., 44.
Ann Fienup-Riordan, The Living Tradition of Yup’ik Masks: Agayuliyararput (Our Way of Making Prayer)
(Washington: University of Washington Press, 1996), 38.
“Sea Otter,” Smithsonian Natural History, accessed October 21, 2012, http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/html/sea_otter.html.
Ann Fienup-Riordan, “Eye of the Dance: Spiritual Life of Bering Sea Eskimo,” Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska, ed. William W. Fitzhugh et al. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988), 256–70. | <urn:uuid:49671136-0e41-443d-9514-efb6abda6445> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://artsblog.dallasnews.com/2013/01/young-masters-2013-inua-the-cycle-of-the-soul.html/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925965 | 1,080 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Every minute millions of tiny red blood cells flow through your arteries. The process is so natural, so effortless that it goes unnoticed. But for some people, circulating blood causes pain.
Red blood cells should be soft and round to flow smoothly through the tiniest blood vessels. People with sickle cell disease (SCD) have cells that become sickle-shaped and stiff. As these cells attempt to move through small blood vessels, they clog, causing pain, or worse, a stroke. When oxygen-rich blood has trouble reaching all parts of the body’s organs, tissues begin to die.
Sickle cell disease is an inherited disorder. It is most common in those of African-American descent, and is also found in those with Mediterranean, Saudi Arabian, Latin American and Asian origin. One in every 12 African-Americans carries the sickle cell trait. While carriers don’t normally experience symptoms, they can pass the disease on to their children. One in 500 African-American babies is born with sickle cell disease.
Sickle cell patients need blood transfusions to reduce complications from this disease. Blood transfusions supply their bodies with normal-shaped, healthy blood cells. Transfusions also give energy. Klay, a young man with sickle cell says, “A few days before treatment, I sleep more and feel very tired. But after the blood transfusions, wow! I feel hyper!”
Because SCD affects African-Americans on a larger scale than any other ethnic group, more African-American blood donors are needed to help these chronically transfused patients. Receiving blood transfusions from the same ethnic group often helps prevent the formation of antibodies which can weaken the immune system.
African-American blood donations can empower sickle cell patients to live active, healthy lives. For more information about SCD, or to schedule a donation near you, visit www.southtexasblood.org. | <urn:uuid:237a4735-2ecb-4653-bd13-ad9b87a04280> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.mysanantonio.com/blood/2012/08/did-you-know/?gta=commentlistpos | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936121 | 397 | 3.09375 | 3 |
mile ( miles plural )
1 n-count A mile is a unit of distance equal to 1760 yards or approximately 1.6 kilometres.
They drove 600 miles across the desert..., The hurricane is moving to the west at about 18 miles per hour..., She lives just half a mile away..., ...a 50-mile bike ride.
2 n-plural Miles is used, especially in the expression miles away , to refer to a long distance.
If you enrol at a gym that's miles away, you won't be visiting it as often as you should..., I was miles and miles from anywhere...
3 n-count Miles or a mile is used with the meaning `very much' in order to emphasize the difference between two things or qualities, or the difference between what you aimed to do and what you actually achieved.
INFORMAL usu pl (emphasis)
You're miles better than most of the performers we see nowadays..., With a Labour candidate in place they won by a mile..., The rehearsals were miles too slow and no work was getting done.
4 If you say that someone is miles away , you mean that they are unaware of what is happening around them because they are thinking about something else.
miles away phrase v-link PHR
What were you thinking about? You were miles away.
5 If you say that someone is willing to go the extra mile, you mean that they are willing to make a special effort to do or achieve something.
go the extra mile phrase V inflects
The President is determined `to go the extra mile for peace'.
6 If you say that you can see or recognize something a mile off, you are emphasizing that it is very obvious and easy to recognize.
a mile off phrase PHR after v (emphasis)
You can spot undercover cops a mile off.
7 If you say that someone would run a mile when faced with a particular situation, you mean that they would be very frightened or unwilling to deal with it.
run a mile phrase V inflects
If anybody had told me when I first got married that I was going to have seven children, I would have run a mile...
8 If you say that something or someone sticks out a mile or stands out a mile, you are emphasizing that they are very obvious and easy to recognize.
stick out a mile/stand out a mile phrase V inflects (emphasis)
`How do you know he's Irish?'—`Sticks out a mile.'...
Translation English Cobuild Collins Dictionary
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"Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners 4th edition published in 2003 © HarperCollins Publishers 1987, 1995, 2001, 2003 and Collins A-Z Thesaurus 1st edition first published in 1995 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995" | <urn:uuid:6c33a53f-2321-454f-a54e-b9233b7bc204> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-cobuild/miles%20away | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962478 | 640 | 3.0625 | 3 |
A variety of data are used to investigate Larsen B, which is at present the northernmost section of the Larsen Ice Shelf. Recently declassified USArgon satellite photographs of 1963, Kosmos photographs of 1975, Landsat images of 1986, 1988 and 1990, ERS-1/2 SAR images from 1992 to1997, Radarsat of 1998 and field surveys are used to analyze the areal extent, surface characteristics and dynamic behaviour of this ice shelf sectionover more than three decades. Visible and radar imagery together with field observations are used synergistically to describe the ice shelf morphology,including meltwater features and rifts. In contrast to the retreat of the ice shelf sections in the north, Larsen B advanced steadily from 1963 to early1995 when the area decreased significantly due to a major calving event. Analysis of different satellite images indicates that melting is proceedingfurther south in coincidence with the regional warming trend. In addition, fracturing processes and rapid development of new rifts are observed,associated with recent acceleration of ice motion close to the front. All observations indicate that major calving events should be expected for this iceshelf section in the near future. | <urn:uuid:592e290a-f3a0-4ac7-a812-a35afa4d1b2f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://epic.awi.de/6004/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.898416 | 237 | 2.984375 | 3 |
PHIL 338A: Study Questions on Topic #4: Moral Relativism and Moral Universality
1. Explain or distinguish the following terms. You may use examples to do so:
Normative Cultural Absolutism/Descriptive Cultural Relativism/Metaethical Relativism/Normative Cultural
Relativism (about Morality)
Epistemic Modesty/Immodesty with respect to morality
Metaphysical Modesty/Immodesty with respect to morality;
Subjective/Objective Universality of Human Rights Norms
2. (a) What is normative cultural absolutism? (b) What is moral imperialism, as the term is used in this course? (c) Why is normative cultural absolutism a form of moral imperialism?
3. (a) What is the argument that in this course is referred to as "the cultural imperialism argument"? (b) Explain why there is an incoherence in the cultural imperialism argument. (Hint: Explain why one of its premises is incompatible with its conclusion.)
4. What is the difference between a relative and a non-relative norm of tolerance? (b) Explain the following: If one accepts a non-relative norm of tolerance, it is still possible to be a Normative Cultural Relativist about Internal Norms. In your explanation, show that you understand what Normative Cultural Relativism About Internal Norms is. (c) Is Normative Cultural Relativism about Internal Norms metaphysically modest or immodest? Explain. (d) Explain why Normative Cultural Relativism about Internal Norms is incompatible with a non-relative (i.e., strictly universal) individual right of religious freedom.
5. (a) Give an example from the 1948 "Statement on Human Rights" of the American Anthropological Association that shows that the AAA was advocating a form of moral relativism and explain why it is a form of moral relativism. (b) What would explain the AAA's advocating a form of moral relativism in 1948? (c) Explain how the AAA's 1999 "Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights" differs from the 1948 statement on the issue of moral relativism. (d) What would explain the AAA's change in its position from the 1948 statement to the 1999 declaration?
6. (a) What is a self-serving reason? (b) Explain why there is no logical test for a reason's being self-serving. (c) What kind of behavioral test does Professor Talbott propose as a potential indicator of a reason's being self-serving?
7. (a) What is moral imperialism, as the term is used in this course? (b) For most of his life, Bartolomé de las Casas was a moral imperialist. Explain why. (c) What change in his beliefs represented the end of his moral imperialism? Explain.
8. (a) What would an "overlapping consensus" on human rights norms be? (b) Give an example of a traditional Muslim or Akan practice that could fit into an international "overlapping consensus" on human rights norms and explain why. (c) Give an example of a traditional practice in any tradition you choose that seems to be an impediment to the development of an international "overlapping consensus" on human rights norms and explain why.
9. (a) Explain why the idea of "overlapping consensus" (and consensual universality) of human rights often is associated with the Top-Down model of moral reasoning; (b) Explain why the idea of genuine universality of human rights fits better with the Bottom-Up model of moral reasoning. (c) Do you think there are any internal rights norms that should be universal even though they are not universally accepted by all cultures? Explain and justify your answer.
10. Explain with an actual or hypothetical example each of the following possibilities (your explanation should show that you understand the terms):
(a) someone whose moral views are is metaphysically immodest and epistemically immodest;
(b) someone whose moral views are metaphysically immodest and epistemically modest;
(c) someone whose moral views are metaphysically modest and epistemically immodest;
(d) someone whose moral views are metaphysically modest and epistemically modest.
(e) Which category do your moral views fall into? Explain. | <urn:uuid:5d43ddce-8546-4a5b-8619-105ce058af72> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://faculty.washington.edu/wtalbott/phil338/sqrelative&universal.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931707 | 921 | 3.21875 | 3 |
This tool provides local authority level estimates for several topic areas, based on what 15 year olds themselves said about their attitudes to healthy lifestyles and risky behaviours (self-reported), including diet and physical activity, smoking, alcohol, use of drugs, bullying and wellbeing. For each topic area, the information is shown by gender, ethnicity, deprivation, sexuality, region and local authority.
The data in this tool has been collated from the What About YOUth 2014 (WAY 2014) survey. The Children and Young People’s Health Outcomes Forum identified gaps in data relating to the health and wellbeing of young people in the Public Health Outcomes Framework. As part of a direct response to this, the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) was commissioned by the Department of Health to develop the WAY 2014 survey. | <urn:uuid:9a1d5acb-928b-4929-a649-a4a686d422d9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/what-about-youth | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945985 | 166 | 3.03125 | 3 |
The contribution of phonological skills to spelling, word recognition, and reading comprehension in learning -disabled and achieving readers
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relative contribution of phonological skills to the word recognition, spelling, and reading comprehension of learning disabled and achieving readers. A learning disabled sample (LD) consisting of 38 students (mean age = 10.10 years) was compared to two achieving reader groups: a younger, reading level matched sample (RL) consisting of 41 students (mean age = 9.2 years) and an older, chronological age matched group (CA) consisting of 42 students (mean age = 11.2 years). Tests of both phonological accuracy and speed were used to assess phonological abilities. The skills that were compared included word recognition (Woodcock-Johnson Letter-Word section), reading comprehension (Woodcock-Johnson Passage Comprehension section), and spelling (WRAT-R spelling section).^ Data were analyzed using means, standard deviations, and ANOVAs to assess differences between the reading groups. Multiple regression analysis identified the relative contributions of different phonological skills to spelling and reading processes. A discriminant analysis explored the amount of association of phonological skills to reading group.^ Results of the regression analyses indicated that measures of phonological accuracy provided the greatest contribution to the prediction of word recognition and reading comprehension for all three reading groups. The strongest relationships were seen for the less skilled readers (i.e., the LD and RL groups). The results of the analysis for spelling found that phonological accuracy measures predicted for the less skilled readers, but did not predict for the CA group.^ Measures of phonological speed contributed additional variance to the prediction of word recognition and spelling for the LD group, and to the prediction of word recognition for the RL readers, but did not contribute to any of the equations for the CA group.^ A discriminant analysis performed using the phonological measures as predictors accounted for 32% of the variance that differentiated the three reading groups, with rapid naming of colors providing the greatest contribution to this function.^ The results support the importance of phonological skills in the acquisition of reading and spelling skills. However, the prominence of these skills diminishes as the reader gains in proficiency. As the achieving reader masters these skills, the contribution of other skills increases. The LD student, who has not acquired phonological skills, still attempts to use them, albeit unsuccessfully, when trying to read and write. ^
Education, Language and Literature|Education, Educational Psychology|Education, Reading|Psychology, Cognitive
John Francis Kugler,
"The contribution of phonological skills to spelling, word recognition, and reading comprehension in learning -disabled and achieving readers"
(January 1, 1993).
ETD Collection for Fordham University. | <urn:uuid:ea1059ef-a4ea-4da4-8355-c732184d7e73> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI9809007/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923305 | 562 | 3.09375 | 3 |
There are many theories, but most lead to the question: “Who was watching the store during repairs?”
In past columns, I often refer to hazard analysis, a technique for proactively avoiding product failures and unsafe conditions. It should be used for all designs, including bridges.
Prior to building this bridge, the design should have been analyzed for all reasonably foreseeable situations. This would include the expected life of the bridge. Was it? I do not know. This information is not readily available, but I hope it is included in the accident report when it finally comes out.
Without design information other than an occasional statement in the press, I believe that the initial design and maintenance had nothing to do with the failure. It was more likely the flexing and fatigue of the bridge deck during repairs that caused the accident. During repairs, the west side of the bridge was stripped of concrete and closed to traffic; the east side carried all the traffic, and during rush hour, it was always stop and go, bumper to bumper. So although I have no evidence, I believe flexing caused the bridge to collapse. Here is how I came to this conclusion.
A security camera showed that the bridge initially broke from the supports at the south end. Subsequently, the bridge fell northward into the Mississippi River. It was flexing faster and with greater amplitude than if the bridge roadway had been uniformly covered with concrete. The covering and weight of the concrete would have slowed the flexing and limited its movement. The bridge span was cantilevered on main supports (one at each end). Flex or bend a cantilevered beam heavily and it will fatigue and fail. (You can see this in action whenever you repeatedly bend a paper clip back and forth. Before you know it, you’re holding two pieces of wire instead of one.) In addition to the bridge flexing along its length, it was also twisting due to the uneven load across its width, i.e., concrete on just one side of the roadway. This accelerated fatigue in the bridge and made the failure more severe. Eventually we should know:
- Details of the analysis of the bridge’s original design.
- Whether or not the contractor who built the bridge took any shortcuts.
- What bridge inspections over the years showed and what recommendations inspectors made.
- If the repair contractor evaluated the approach being used to repair the bridge under all reasonably foreseeable conditions, and if he was carefully watching as work on the bridge progressed.
- And hopefully what caused the bridge to collapse. | <urn:uuid:dc70c1a7-d536-4d50-8997-041151a878ac> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://machinedesign.com/archive/berke-safety-i-35-bridge-truth-out-there | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975483 | 519 | 2.625 | 3 |
|Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 1997. 35:
Copyright © 1997 by . All rights reserved
The existence of super metal-rich (SMR) stars was first claimed by Spinrad & Taylor (1969), based on low-resolution spectra. The term SMR is generally meant to signify that a star is more metal-rich than the sun by an amount that cannot be explained as simple measurement error. The existence of SMR stars is, historically, a controversial subject; the main question is whether SMR stars are really metal-rich or just appear so because of some kind of measurement dispersion or systematic error. Perhaps the notion of SMR stars became more acceptable with claims that the Galactic bulge red giant stars are on average more metal-rich than the sun (e.g. Whitford & Rich 1983, Frogel & Whitford 1987, Rich 1988). McWilliam & Rich (1994) showed that the average bulge [Fe/H] is the same as in the solar neighborhood, but that the most metal-rich bulge giant, BW IV-167, at [Fe/H] = +0.44 is almost identical to µ Leo, a metal-rich disk giant. Taylor (1996) has reviewed abundance estimates for SMR stars, including low- and high-resolution results, and concluded that true SMR stars do not exist.
Given the controversy and the potential significance for chemical evolution, it seems important to establish whether any firm cases of SMR stars exist at all. In the Galactic disk, the most well-studied SMR candidate is the K giant star µ Leo. High-resolution high-S/N model atmosphere abundance analyses of µ Leo have been performed by several groups: Gustafsson et al (1974), Branch et al (1978), Brown et al (1989), Gratton & Sneden (1990), McWilliam & Rich (1994), Castro et al (1996) all found values near [Fe/H] = +0.45 for a solar scale of (Fe) = 7.52; on the other hand, Lambert & Ries (1981), McWilliam (1990), Luck & Challener (1995) found [Fe/H] from +0.1 to +0.2 dex.
Metal-rich stars in the McWilliam (1990) study (e.g. µ Leo) were affected by two systematic problems: CN blanketing depressed most of the µ Leo continuum regions in the two small 100-Å portions of the spectrum observed (found by McWilliam & Rich 1994), which resulted in smaller equivalent widths; second, McWilliam (1990) did not have access to metal-rich model atmospheres, which caused underestimation of the [Fe/H] for metal-rich stars (~ 0.1-dex underestimate for µ Leo). Both of these effects decreased the measured µ Leo [Fe/H] in the McWilliam (1990) work; accounting for the model atmosphere correction alone would increase [Fe/H] to +0.30 dex.
The Luck & Challener (1995) study concluded that their sample of strong-lined stars showed only small iron abundance enhancements at [Fe/H] ~ +0.1 dex; in the case of µ Leo they found [Fe/H] = +0.20 dex. Luck & Challener (1995) chose not to use a SMR model atmosphere for µ Leo, thus artificially lowering the computed [Fe/H] by ~ 0.08 dex (Castro et al 1996). Castro et al (1996) showed that the low Luck & Challener [Fe/H] must result from differences in analysis because of the good agreement between equivalent widths of lines in common. Furthermore, Luck & Challener confused the [A/H] = 0.0 of the Bell et al (1976) atmosphere grid with a solar iron abundance of (Fe) = 7.67 (from Anders & Grevesse 1989), whereas the models were actually calculated with (Fe) = 7.50. Castro et al noted that when these two problems are taken into account the Luck & Challener result for µ Leo becomes [Fe/H] = +0.43, assuming the solar (Fe) = 7.52.
Thus the most recent high resolution abundance studies of µ Leo that are discordant with the notion of [Fe/H] = +0.45 can be readily resolved, and it appears that there is a convergence of the µ Leo iron abundance near [Fe/H] = +0.45 dex with the assumed low value for the solar iron abundance. I do not have an explanation for the Lambert & Ries (1981) low [Fe/H], although it seems possible that the heavy line blanketing and limited spectral coverage may have affected the continuum placement.
Studies with the highest S/N spectra, and the most detailed abundance analyses (e.g. Gratton & Sneden 1990, Branch et al 1978, Castro et al 1996, McWilliam & Rich 1994), consistently find [Fe/H] ~ +0.4 dex for µ Leo. In conclusion, the high dispersion abundance analyses confirm at least one case of super metallicity.
High-resolution abundance analyses of SMR stars have also been carried out by Edvardsson et al (1993), who found F dwarf stars up to [Fe/H] = +0.26 dex; Feltzing (1995), who extended the Edvardsson sample to find stars between [Fe/H] of -0.08 and +0.42 dex; and Castro et al (1997), who studied a subset of the sample identified by Grenon (1989) and found [Fe/H] ranging from +0.10 to +0.50 dex. McWilliam & Rich (1994) found two SMR Galactic bulge giants, BW IV-167 and BW IV-025, with [Fe/H] of +0.44 and +0.37 dex, respectively. It appears that high-resolution abundance studies do find SMR stars with [Fe/H] up to approximately 0.4-0.5 dex. | <urn:uuid:08ebba51-582b-4087-a124-d3c6a466efca> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March03/McWilliam/McWilliam3.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905631 | 1,269 | 2.609375 | 3 |
for National Geographic News
Tired of winter? Good news: Spring arrives an average of 1.7 days earlier now than it did in the first half of the 20th century, according to a new study.
Summer, fall, and winter are also starting 1.7 days earlier. And there is less of a temperature difference between winter and summer.
The shifts, which are occurring over land (seasonal shifts are different over oceans), appear to stem from as-yet-to-be determined changes in the physics of the Earth's climate system, said Alexander Stine, a graduate student of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the study.
The shifts occur at the same time humans are known to be influencing the climate. (Read up on global warming.)
"The Earth is certainly warming," said Stine, whose findings will be published in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature. "It would seem reasonable that there's some relationship."
(Related: "Warming Sign? Another Early Spring for Rocky Mountains" [April 9, 2007].)
Other research has documented the earlier arrival of spring based on biological factors, such as when plants flower and animals begin to migrate, but the new results are based on physics.
The planet's tilt toward the sun defines its seasons. On land, there's about a 30-day lag between the sun at its maximum intensity and when the Earth is warmest. That's because it takes the Earth those extra 30 days to soak up all the sun's energy.
The study found that the Earth is responding faster, shifting all of the seasons.
Michael Mann directs the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, and was not involved in the study. He said the findings are consistent with similar observations he reported more than a decade ago, though what's causing the earlier seasons remains poorly understood.
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES | <urn:uuid:ab4a7916-cbbe-4329-aaa2-e628d9180683> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090121-earlier-spring.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957384 | 398 | 3.625 | 4 |
Physicists put a new twist on radio
Mar 7, 2012 10 comments
Physicists in Italy have shown that, like light, radio waves can have their wavefronts twisted so that they take on a corkscrew shape. The researchers have successfully transmitted twisted beams several hundred metres across the lagoon in Venice using a specially shaped antenna. They believe that such beams could dramatically enhance the information capacity of wireless communications by multiplying the number of channels that can be encoded in a given frequency range.
Physicists have known for many years that a beam of light can be twisted so that its wavefront rotates around its direction of propagation in a spiral shape. The twisting is achieved by controlling the orbital angular momentum of the light. This property is associated with the shape of a light beam's wavefront – the imaginary line or plane joining the points on a wave that have the same phase.
The phenomenon was first seen inside laser cavities and then researchers worked out how to tune a beam's orbital angular momentum to create "optical tweezers" that can move tiny objects. The orbital angular momentum should not be confused with the more familiar spin angular momentum of light, which is associated with a wave's polarization or direction of oscillation.
Inspired by black holes
Now, Fabrizio Tamburini of the University of Padova in Italy, Bo Thidé of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Uppsala and colleagues have manipulated the orbital angular momentum of radio waves. This work stems from earlier research by Tamburini and Thidé in which they calculated that a spinning black hole should distort space–time in such a way as to leave a noticeable twist in the wavefront of electromagnetic radiation that passes close by.
The researchers believe it should be possible to create a similar twisting effect on Earth, without the need for an ultra-massive object. To do this they set up a spiral-staircase-like structure inside a room insulated against sound and electromagnetic waves at the University of Uppsala. They bounced radio waves off the structure and used a pair of receiving antennas in a plane some metres from the structure to record the variation in phase across the plane. They found that the phase varied as would be expected from a twisted wavefront.
Now, the researchers have transmitted radio waves with a well-defined orbital angular momentum in noisy, real-world conditions – 442 m across St Mark's Basin in Venice. A specially adapted satellite-dish-style antenna on the lighthouse on St George's Island was used to create radio waves with a frequency of 2.4 GHz and an orbital angular momentum of 1 – the latter meaning that the wavefront is rotated 360° in the space of one wavelength. A standard "Yagi" antenna was also used to send waves of the same frequency but without orbital angular momentum across the same stretch of lagoon.
A "revolution" in radio technology
By varying the distance between the two receiving antennas on the balcony of the Doge's Palace, the researchers were able to tune in to either the twisted or the untwisted beam. This proves, they say, that they were able to transmit two channels simultaneously using just a single frequency.
According to Tamburini, this demonstration could lead to a "revolution" in radio technology, since, he says, it means in principle being able to create an infinite number of channels in a given bandwidth, with each channel encoded using a different orbital angular momentum. He points out that a vast expansion of wireless capacity would be highly prized, given the huge and rapidly growing demand for wireless services, estimating that 11 new channels per frequency band (corresponding to five orbital angular momentum states – five clockwise, five anticlockwise and one untwisted) should prove "economically reasonable" in the short term.
Michael Berry of Bristol University, who with John Nye showed in the 1970s that phase singularities are pervasive features of waves of all kinds, was present at the demonstration. He says the event was "a splendid occasion" that caused him to change his mind about the potential of twisted radio waves. "I initially thought that this was a clever but unsurprising example of wave interference," he admits, "but then I witnessed the intense interest of executives from the satellite broadcasting industry." However, he adds that the practical importance of the technology "remains to be explored by communications engineers".
Taco Visser of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands is also enthusiastic about the latest research, describing it as "a very elegant real-world demonstration of encoding information by using orbital angular momentum". But he too cautions that more work must be done to prove its practical utility. "How many beams with different angular momentum can you still distinguish when they have travelled through, say, two miles of atmospheric turbulence?" he asks.
In fact, Tamburini and colleagues hope to perform new tests of the twisted radio waves over distances of several kilometres within the next few months. These tests will be carried out with new kinds of antenna designed to minimize the "singularity" that is created at the centre of a twisted wave and that reduce the intensity of the transmitted radio signal. "The modified parabolic dish was a brutal approach that we know works," he says. The new approach will involve generating the beam electronically using a set of dipole antennas rather than a dish.
Tamburini adds that the group is also continuing with its astronomical research. It is hoping to use the Very Large Array radio telescope (and possibly the planned Square Kilometre Array) to make measurements of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way to prove that it is indeed rotating.
The work is described in New Journal of Physics.
Fabrizio Tamburini describes the research in great detail in the video below, which also contains images from the test in Venice.
About the author
Edwin Cartlidge is a science writer based in Rome | <urn:uuid:7724ea3f-c3eb-48db-808d-4d31857f7395> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/mar/07/physicists-put-a-new-twist-on-radio | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951448 | 1,215 | 3.59375 | 4 |
In computers, parallel processing is the processing of program instructions by dividing them among multiple processors with the objective of running a program in less time. In the earliest computers, only one program ran at a time. A computation-intensive program that took one hour to run and a tape copying program that took one hour to run would take a total of two hours to run. An early form of parallel processing allowed the interleaved execution of both programs together. The computer would start an I/O operation, and while it was waiting for the operation to complete, it would execute the processor-intensive program. The total execution time for the two jobs would be a little over one hour.
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The next improvement was multiprogramming. In a multiprogramming system, multiple programs submitted by users were each allowed to use the processor for a short time. To users it appeared that all of the programs were executing at the same time. Problems of resource contention first arose in these systems. Explicit requests for resources led to the problem of the deadlock. Competition for resources on machines with no tie-breaking instructions lead to the critical section routine.
Vector processing was another attempt to increase performance by doing more than one thing at a time. In this case, capabilities were added to machines to allow a single instruction to add (or subtract, or multiply, or otherwise manipulate) two arrays of numbers. This was valuable in certain engineering applications where data naturally occurred in the form of vectors or matrices. In applications with less well-formed data, vector processing was not so valuable.
The next step in parallel processing was the introduction of multiprocessing. In these systems, two or more processors shared the work to be done. The earliest versions had a master/slave configuration. One processor (the master) was programmed to be responsible for all of the work in the system; the other (the slave) performed only those tasks it was assigned by the master. This arrangement was necessary because it was not then understood how to program the machines so they could cooperate in managing the resources of the system.
Solving these problems led to the symmetric multiprocessing system (SMP). In an SMP system, each processor is equally capable and responsible for managing the flow of work through the system. Initially, the goal was to make SMP systems appear to programmers to be exactly the same as single processor, multiprogramming systems. (This standard of behavior is known as sequential consistency). However, engineers found that system performance could be increased by someplace in the range of 10-20% by executing some instructions out of order and requiring programmers to deal with the increased complexity. (The problem can become visible only when two or more programs simultaneously read and write the same operands; thus the burden of dealing with the increased complexity falls on only a very few programmers and then only in very specialized circumstances.) The question of how SMP machines should behave on shared data is not yet resolved.
As the number of processors in SMP systems increases, the time it takes for data to propagate from one part of the system to all other parts grows also. When the number of processors is somewhere in the range of several dozen, the performance benefit of adding more processors to the system is too small to justify the additional expense. To get around the problem of long propagation times, message passing systems were created. In these systems, programs that share data send messages to each other to announce that particular operands have been assigned a new value. Instead of a broadcast of an operand's new value to all parts of a system, the new value is communicated only to those programs that need to know the new value. Instead of a shared memory, there is a network to support the transfer of messages between programs. This simplification allows hundreds, even thousands, of processors to work together efficiently in one system. (In the vernacular of systems architecture, these systems "scale well.") Hence such systems have been given the name of massively parallel processing (MPP) systems.
The most successful MPP applications have been for problems that can be broken down into many separate, independent operations on vast quantities of data. In data mining, there is a need to perform multiple searches of a static database. In artificial intelligence, there is the need to analyze multiple alternatives, as in a chess game. Often MPP systems are structured as clusters of processors. Within each cluster the processors interact as in a SMP system. It is only between the clusters that messages are passed. Because operands may be addressed either via messages or via memory addresses, some MPP systems are called NUMA machines, for Non-Uniform Memory Addressing.
SMP machines are relatively simple to program; MPP machines are not. SMP machines do well on all types of problems, providing the amount of data involved is not too large. For certain problems, such as data mining of vast data bases, only MPP systems will serve.
Continue Reading About parallel processing
- Carnegie-Mellon University hosts a listing of supercomputing and parallel processing research terms and links.
- At the University of Wisconsin, Doug Burger and Mark Hill have created The WWW Computer Architecture Home Page . | <urn:uuid:5710497a-fe29-49df-945e-cf187f7c383c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/parallel-processing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959527 | 1,100 | 4 | 4 |
Tularemia was confirmed in a cat from Dakota County (Apple Valley area) on October 19, 2015. Tularemia is a zoonotic disease (can affect a wide range of animals and humans) that is caused by a bacteria called Francisella tularensis. Tularemia can be transmitted by horseflies, ticks and through contact with infected animals (though it is not transmitted person- to- person). Dogs are relatively resistant to the infection, however, cases have been reported. Cats that are outdoor or outdoor/indoor cats are at higher risk and can get infected with tularemia after hunting an infected rodent or rabbit, however, tularemia has been reported in indoor cats that have no obvious exposure. Clinical signs in animals are usually high fever, lethargy, lymphadenopathy and ulcerations of the tongue and palate. This cat is only the seventh cat to be reported in Minnesota since 2008 but the third case of tularemia in Minnesota this year. Humans can also acquire tularemia, though it is not transmitted person-to-person. The incubation period for tularemia in humans is generally 2-5 days (range, 2-14 days). Acute symptoms include sudden onset of fever, chills, joint and muscle pain, headache and nausea. Please consult your healthcare provider and notify MDH if you have symptoms consistent with tularemia and have recently cared for a suspect tularemia patient.
Reports of the Canine Flu Virus being in Minnesota have now been confirmed. Friday, June 19th, the Animal Humane Society in St. Paul has confirmed that one of their dogs has come up positive for the virus. Currently they are working on testing and treating all dogs that may have been exposed to the infected dog. To read more about the case at the St. Paul Animal Humane Society please click here.
Here at Skyline Veterinary Hospital we are recommending that if your pet(s) are showing any signs of coughing, fever, sneezing, or upper respiratory infection that you call (763-574-9892) and make and appointment and possibly have your pet tested for the Canine Flu. We are also recommending that you keep your dog up-to-date on Distemper (DHPP) and Rabies vaccines, as well as considering getting the Bordetella vaccine (for Kennel Cough) if your pet leaves your house and is around other pets. The Canine Flu is very contagious and we recommend that you keep your dogs out of dog parks and away from large groups of dogs where you do not know the health and/ or vaccine status of the other dogs.
For more information of the Canine Flu Virus please click here.
If you have any questions please call our staff at 763-574-9892
Algae is common in our lakes and rivers, but at high levels a type called Blue-Green Algae can form and make people and our pets sick. If you see algae in the water and it looks “pea soupy” and has a smell keep out of the water. Blue- Green Algae can cause a fever, vomiting, irritation to skin, eyes, and nasal passages. If you or your pet have come in contact with Blue- Green Algae contact your doctor or veterinarian. For more information on Blue- Green Algae click here.
Dogs vomit occasionally for a variety of relatively benign reasons – to expel something unwanted from their stomach, as a result of gastric irritation or in response to colonic stimulus, for example. Prolonged, unrelenting vomiting or regurgitation, however, can be the sign of a serious condition, anything from head trauma or toxin exposure to pancreatic cancer or gastrointestinal obstruction.
January Product of the Month
Does your dog love rawhides? We have a rawhide available that they will love AND it will help their teeth! Our Dentahex Oral Care Chews are easy to digest, processed without formaldehyde, and are coated with Chlorhexidine that helps protect the teeth from plaque build up. Together the natural abrading action of the rawhide and Chlorhexidine help remove plaque and prevent buildup of tartar forming bacteria. Talk to you staff today about getting a bag of Dentahex Oral Care Chews for your dog today!
Proctor and Gamble has voluntarily recalled certain lots of both IAMS and Eukanuba dry dog and cat food due to a potential for contamination with Salmonella. No reports of illness associated with these lots of pet food have been reported yet. Please check out this link to get the full list of lot numbers of pet food affected by the recall and what to do if you have affected pet food: Pet Food Recall Announcement. If you have any concerns or questions about this recall or if your pet may have eaten any of the affected food, please feel free to call us at 763-574-9892.
Natura Pet announced it is expanding its recall of certain lots of some of its most popular dry dog and cat foods due to possible contamination with Salmonella bacteria.
Please click on the following link to see the full list of recalled food: Natura Pet Food Recall List.
If you have any concerns about this food or your pet’s health, please feel free to call us at 763-574-9892.
While there is still plenty of snow out there, the groundhog did not see his shadow this year predicting spring to come early. So in preparation for spring we are offering awesome deals currently on Frontline Plus for cats or dogs! We are price matching Petmeds, Menards and others stores. We are also giving out a free dose when you buy three doses or two free with six doses. Fleas and ticks won’t bother your pet with Frontline Plus on-board.
Follow the links to get more information on these wonderful products to keep our pets safe from flea, tick and mosquito-borne diseases.
How to Keep Pets Safe During a Tornado
Things You’ll Need:
- Kennel or Crate
- Bottled water
- Safe place
- “Pet Inside” stickers
Make an Emergency Plan to Keep Pets Safe During a Tornado
Find a kennel, crate or cage for every animal you have. Buckets work well for fish and turtles. Keep all of the animal carriers together in an easy to get to place inside the house.
Choose the safest room in the house for surviving a tornado. A basement is best or the most interior room of the home, preferably a closet or bathroom. Tell everyone living in the house that this is the safe room for tornadoes.
Make an emergency food supply for the pets in case it is in short supply or hard to get to after the storm. Get pull tab cans or pouches for easy opening, and you can toss in a cheap bowl or paper plates. Pack a collar and leash for each dog or cat as well.
Add an extra gallon or two of water to the family emergency supply. This way there will be plenty to go around.
What To Do When a Tornado Siren Sounds or a Tornado Warning is Issued
Put all pets in cages or carriers and in the safe room when the tornado watch is issued. Animals sense bad weather and will look for a place to hide if they sense it is near. There will probably not be much of an argument from the pets in the safe room where it is quiet.
Get all people to the safe room as soon as a tornado warning is issued or a siren is sounded.
Stay in the safe room for several minutes after the storm, large tornadoes have an eye so more destruction could be coming. After several minutes of silence, carefully open the safe room door.
Leash all pets when outside after a tornado. Power lines could be down and dangerous objects will be littered about everywhere. Do not let pets outside unsupervised.
Tips & Warnings
- Practice the emergency weather plan before bad weather strikes. Get pets used to kenneling or being caged during storms.
- There are only seconds to act before a tornado strikes, so don’t wait to put pets in carriers and get them in the safe room. | <urn:uuid:6be84a96-c49b-40de-a721-1c39c2d566ad> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://skylineveterinary.com/category/dogs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936039 | 1,691 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Von Braun selected nitric acid/hydrazine propellants, perhaps as a result of the same Peenemuende research that influenced the French team. He very conservatively used a combustion chamber pressure of 15 atmospheres (as in the V-2 engine). Ideal engine performance for each stage was based on combustion chemistry and gas dynamics calculations. The nozzle expansion ratio differed for each stage, so 'based on experience' Von Braun allowed for expected efficiency losses of 5%, 7%, and 10% on the first, second, and third stages. Total nozzle exit area for each stage was calculated, but no particular detailed engine design was presented. However the height of the engine nozzles was indicated for vehicle sizing.
Specific impulse and thrust for the engines was not expressed in common modern terms, which causes some confusion in the literature. The figures given are the specific impulse at the condition of the ambient atmospheric pressure equalling the nozzle exit pressure. The figures adjusted to vacuum and sea-level specific impulse terms indicate the upper stage versions of the engines would have a specific impulse of 297 seconds, a very respectable value not achieved in flight for a storable propellant engine until 1962.
The nitric acid/hydrazine propellant combination used was found not to be practical without additives. These were developed during the course of the 1950's. But by 1962 nitric acids were replaced as a storable oxidiser by nitrogen tetroxide. Furthermore, in comparison with Von Braun's 15 atmosphere assumption, by 1962 chamber pressures of 40 atmospheres had routinely been achieved, allowing higher expansion ratios (and higher performances) for first-stage engines.
Von Braun used a constant thrust/weight value of 69:1 in calculating the engine mass for all stages. In fact this would be nearly met on the next US large engine design after the V-2, the Redstone. Von Braun's engine used a separate propellant (hydrogen peroxide) to drive the engine pumps. This was the practice used on the V-2, and in Russia was continued even in the R-7 ICBM (which still flies today as the Soyuz launch vehicle). But thereafter the US and Russia moved quickly to turbopumps driven by the same propellants used in the same engine.
The 1948 calculations assumed the exhaust nozzle was in the shape of a continuous annular ring around the central parachute container in the first and second stages. The nozzle completely occupied the base of the third stage. The concept almost presages the aerospike engine designs of the 1960's. It may have been a continuation of the V-2 philosophy of having many combustion chambers feed a single nozzle. It may have been that this was just a means for roughly sizing the base of the launch vehicle.
In the 1952 Collier's series the number of engines per stage were indicated, allowing their mass, diameter and thrust to be allocated. However it must be noted that these diameters cannot be reconciled with the geometry of either the 1948 or 1952 stage designs! Nevertheless it is interesting to compare the figures calculated by Von Braun for his engines with the actual figures achieved for the Titan 2 ICBM engines, the only US storable propellant engines of this size ever developed, first flown in 1962:
|Parameter||Von Braun, 1948||Titan 2, 1962|
|Isp (sea level)-sec||217||259|
When considering Von Braun's estimates for the structural weight of his rocket, he arrived at values near those achieved in the late 1960's for the Saturn and N1 vehicles in the US and Russia. His values look larger at first, but they include the mass of recovery equipment (parachutes and soft-landing retrorockets) that amounted to 18% and 11% of the empty weights of the first and second stages respectively. Deducting these amounts, and the hydrogen peroxide consumed during the ascent, and it is apparent that Von Braun calculated values for the structure of his launch vehicles essentially equivalent to those for the only vehicles of those size built in the US and Russian in the late 1960's:
|Structure||Von Braun 1962||Saturn V 1968||N1 1969|
|Stage||First Stage||S-IC||N1 Block A|
|Stage||Second Stage||S-IB||N1 Block B|
Third-Stage Re-entry Vehicle
The third stage itself made a long re-entry glide for 22,000 km from atmosphere entry interface at 80 km -- 55% of the earth's circumference! During this time the glider experienced a peak deceleration of 0.45 G and a peak airframe temperature of 1005 deg K. The airframe of the glider was seen as reaching a thermal equilibrium during the long glide, where it could re-radiate heat as quickly as it was absorbed. Based on this Von Braun concluded the glider could be built of existing steels (although he admitted that 'latest information' indicated the peak heating could be 300 deg K higher).
Research during the 1950's showed that the higher value was nearer the truth and that the temperatures at the leading edges of re-entry vehicles far exceeded the theoretical average values calculated in 1948. The Dynasoar design of the early 1960's, the closest analogue to Von Braun's design to reach an advanced stage of development, would have experienced peak nose temperatures of 2140 deg K, with the structure stabilising at 1255 deg K during an equivalent long-glide re-entry. It was necessary to build the Dynasoar's external skin from coated molybdenum, and the internal structure from Rene-41 nickel alloy. Von Braun's plan to use conventional steel would not have worked. Furthermore, to cool the pilot and payload, it was necessary to encase the cockpit and payload bay in a heavy 'water wall' insulation/cooling system. The lightweight refrigeration system used in Von Braun's calculations would not have been adequate.
The conventional solution for re-entry design became the use of ablative or exotic heat-radiative skin materials, and to get the re-entry accomplished as quickly as possible to avoid heat-soaking the structure. The space shuttle, for example, experiences actual maximum external temperatures of 1800-1250 deg K, lands just 5450 km down-range from an altitude of 80 km, and pulls a maximum of 2 G's during re-entry. The internal structure is nearly completely protected from the heat of re-entry (as long as there is no breach, as on STS-107), and is primarily 2024-T81 aluminium alloy.
However a minority of the technical community continues to advocate Von Braun's long-glide, high-lift, re-radiative approach. These included Nonweiler waverider advocates, who proposed to actively cool the sharp, hot leading edge of their designs but claimed the rest of the spacecraft could be built from conventional metal structure. The following compares several designs to show the effect of wing loading on peak and minimum underbelly heating for gliding re-entry vehicles.
|Peak heating deg K||Min underbelly deg K|
|Von Braun 1948||73||>1400||1100-1400|
|Black Horse 1996||102||1640|
The Recovery Systems
Von Braun's glider was designed to deliver nominally 25 tonnes of cargo, plus 14.5 tonnes of 'excess propellant'. This would be used to assemble the enormous planned Mars expedition - 70 crew aboard ten spacecraft with a mass of 3720 tonnes each!
Since assembly of an expedition of this size would take 950 launches, Von Braun was very concerned to make sure all of the launch vehicle was recoverable and reusable. The first stage would return to earth under a 64.5 m diameter parachute weighing 85 tonnes! Just prior to splashdown 40 tonnes worth of solid rockets would ignite and allow the stage to splashdown at zero velocity 304 km downrange. It would be towed back to the Johnston Island launch site by a tug, refurbished, and reused. The total mass of the recovery provisions amounted to 18% of the stage empty mass. The second stage required a 20.4 diameter chute with a mass of 3.8 tonnes and 4 tonnes of braking rockets. It would be recovered 1459 km down-range and the recovery provisions were 11% of the stage empty mass.
If we delete the recovery provisions and the manned glider provisions from the design, we can calculate that the three stages Von Braun's design could deliver 60 tonnes, or one percent of its lift-off mass, into a 200 km polar orbit. By comparison, the three-stage Titan 3A (with transtage) could deliver 1.33% of its lift-off mass into the same orbit. This again emphasizes the modernity of the design.
LEO Payload: 25,000 kg (55,000 lb) to a 1,730 km orbit at 23.50 degrees.
Stage Data - Von Braun 1948
Status: Study 1952.
Gross mass: 6,400,000 kg (14,100,000 lb).
Payload: 25,000 kg (55,000 lb).
Height: 97.00 m (318.00 ft).
Diameter: 20.00 m (65.00 ft).
Thrust: 119,300.00 kN (26,819,700 lbf).
Apogee: 1,730 km (1,070 mi). | <urn:uuid:b186ef64-298f-414e-804a-a0fd6337aa5c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/vonn1948.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928548 | 1,951 | 3.53125 | 4 |
by Fernando Pessoa
How yesterday is long ago! The past
Is a fixed infinite distance from to-day,
And bygone things, the first-lived as the last,
In irreparable sameness far away.
How the to-be is infinitely ever
Out of the place wherein it will be Now,
Like the seen wave yet far up in the river,
Which reaches not us, but the new-waved flow!
This thing Time is, whose being is having none,
The equable tyrant of our different fates,
Who could not be bought off by a shattered sun
Or tricked by new use of our careful dates.
This thing Time is, that to the grave will bear
My heart, sure but of it and of my fear.
First published in 35 Sonnets, by Fernando Pessoa, 1918
About the Author:
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) was a Portuguese poet and writer. | <urn:uuid:450877f0-9448-4c45-9cd4-ec2e7e808368> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.berfrois.com/2013/02/sonnet-27-fernando-pessoa/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936922 | 205 | 2.5625 | 3 |
1. Milton Erickson came from the American Midwest and received the majority of his education and preliminary work experience in Wisconsin and _____.
2. Erickson was responsible for the development and introduction into therapies of _____.
3. What is the title of Chapter 1 in the book?
4. During the 1950s, there was still debate about what in psychotherapy?
5. Hypnosis is described as a special way of _______.
6. Voluntary and involuntary behavior is discussed to show how therapeutic techniques transform an individual into being able to perform certain ______.
This section contains 5,606 words
(approx. 19 pages at 300 words per page) | <urn:uuid:591114dd-2dd4-429c-86e3-10e8ee4d7e6a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bookrags.com/lessonplan/uncommon-therapy/shortanswer.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970462 | 139 | 2.890625 | 3 |
The basic technology for electronic television (as opposed to earlier mechanical efforts) was invented by Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin around 1930, and the first sets became commercially available in the late 30's. Collectors draw a sharp distinction between these vintage pre-war and post-war television sets, as very few of the former were manufactured and only a few hundred still survive.
1946 through 1955 was the first big growth period for television sets. In 1947 there were only about 100,000 TV sets in the U.S. (many of them in bars and clubs) but by 1953 there were 13 million. CBS started broadcasting in color in 1951, and all-electronic color sets were first introduced in 1954. By far the largest television set manufacturer in those early days was RCA, but other vintage television brands include General Electric, Dumont, Andrea, and Zenith. RCA also made sets for Westinghouse and for Sears.
Most collectors collect black and white sets from 1939 to 1949 and color sets through 1960. For black and white sets made after 1949, the values drop off dramatically, with some exceptions. There were a lot more TVs produced after the mid 1950s, so there are many still around (and they started to become less visually interesting, with metal cabinets). There are also people who collect early transistor sets from the 1960s and 70s, and micro TV sets. | <urn:uuid:b9493b48-fda7-4870-8c30-b6449bee5635> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.collectorsweekly.com/electronics/televisions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98977 | 286 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Vulnerability Management with the GSMATTENTION: This page was moved to a new location and eventually will be removed here.
Vulnerability management provides a substantial benefit in the organisation of IT security in general and in particular the hardening of IT systems to prevent internal and external attacks from succeeding.
Realisation of these benefits is dependent upon incorporation of vulnerability management into a security process. Detection of vulnerability must be followed either by the appropriate remedy (update, patch or reconfiguration) or by a reaction through other security mechanisms (IDS, firewall rules). Vulnerability management allows system administration to detect and remedy vulnerabilities. It also provides IT management with a useful tool to manage risk and compliance, as well as monitor the quality of IT security.
Vulnerability assessment refers to the detection of vulnerabilities in IT systems. The causes of vulnerabilities are misconfiguration and programming mistakes ("software bugs"). Vulnerability assessment detects and documents such cases. The vulnerability can then be remedied by a patch or reconfiguration of the software. If reconfiguration is not possible, other measures can be taken to reduce the risk, such as creation of a firewall rule or a so-called "intrusion prevention" rule.
The information generated by the detection of vulnerabilities needs to be embedded into a management process. This process is referred to as "vulnerability management".
This process enables documenting the state of IT security and respective changes to the security status, as well as benchmarking security. Transferral vulnerability assessment results into this management process allows to use simple rating numbers or traffic lights to visualise known vulnerabilities, whether they have been addressed by IT administration, or whether new vulnerabilities have been discovered as part of the consecutive vulnerability assessment.
Patching is not a substitute for Vulnerability Management
Regular application of security patches is not a substitute for vulnerability management.
This is due to a variety of factors, such as dependencies of the system that do not allow applying the current patch-level because a certain database or other business-critical application which might become unusable or lose its certification.
There are also issues caused by lack of available patches for some vulnerabilities, or vulnerabilities that have been created by misconfiguration despite software that has been kept up to date.
A classic example is an administrator password "12345678" or shared disks that are accidentally exposed to the internet.
Scanning for vulnerability is insufficient without follow-up action
The security of an IT infrastructure is not increased by registering and documenting all vulnerabilities by means of vulnerability assessment. It is essential that vulnerabilities are handled by a designated person as part of an organisational process.
This needs to be accompanied by a management process that ensures adequate follow-up to the vulnerabilities, including technological or managerial consequences, if necessary. These countermeasures must be documented as part of the process to assess their technical effectiveness. This can be addressed by a repeated vulnerability assessment scan or a detailed test with another software tool.
A vulnerable service that is not necessary for core business processes can be disabled temporarily or permanently, or be hardened by means of a firewall or IPS rule set. In case other alternatives are unavailable, a vulnerable service can also be secured by documentation with control and monitoring. An example would be a logging rule in the firewall providing documented evidence of authorized and unauthorized access to a potentially vulnerable system, allowing to disprove allegations of attempted attacks.
The misunderstanding of vulnerability management as a purely technical issue
Successful vulnerability management is always based upon organisational processes which translate the technical findings by vulnerability assessment into a working process to remedy the vulnerability. In order to achieve this, system administration must be supplied with the appropriate tools to map this security process according to the respective risk.
It is likewise necessary to provide the technical IT department with the means to close or at least defuse the vulnerabilities. Security guidelines that help prevent misconfiguration likewise need to be mapped through an organisational process.
Organisational framework of Vulnerability Management and Security Guidelines
As part of the organisational process it is possible to implement testing for compliance with the various guidelines in Greenbone test scripts. The resulting automation of compliance testing substantially improves ease of work.
Where to start and how big is the risk?
Practical experience suggests starting where the operational risk is the greatest.
This risk can be determined by an in-house risk management system. Less complex situations can be assessed by the following rule of thumb:
Risk = Threat Probability * Possible Damage
It is also possible to adapt this calculation to a known vulnerability "V":
Risk(V) = Threat Probability(V) * Possible Damage(V)
In this case the threat probability is a function of the threat scenario and severity of the vulnerability, resulting in
Risk(V) = Threat Scenario(V) * Severity of Vulnerability(V) * Damage(V)
The threat scenario for a web server in a DMZ which is therefore connected to the internet is certainly higher than that of a web server which is only reachable via telephone dial-in. Damage to a production machine will be much more costly than damage to an in-house server for image movies.
Even with substantially simplified categories for threat scenarios, severity of vulnerability and damage it is possible to obtain a reference number that will allow setting priority of which vulnerability to address first. Since the severity of vulnerability is automatically supplied for each vulnerability, management only needs to categorise threat scenario and damage according to a set of predefined categories.
New Tool, new risk
Every new IT security tool also carries an inherent risk.
Because they are being used in sensitive and security relevant places, such software tools can negatively impact daily business operations. Vulnerabilities in security software can additionally turn it into a security risk.
Some vulnerability scanners require the administrator password for the domain, the digital equivalent of an all-access pass. How and for what operations this pass is used is typically unknown, including whether a back door in the software allows unauthorized third parties to access the software for maintenance or other, potentially malign purposes.
Centralist solutions are inefficient and bring additional risk
The so-called "Scan-Engine" is the core of a vulnerability scanners. Some providers are running this engine centrally in their own data processing centre. The scan appliance places at the customers location opens a so-called "Layer-2 Tunnel" between the customer's IT network, the target of the scanner, and the data processing centre of the scan provider.
All information about known vulnerabilities is then being made available over the internet by means of a web portal.
On the contractual level it is often difficult to impossible to obtain information about storage of your company's vulnerability information. In many cases it is stored on servers in central locations in the USA or India. Such a concentration of known vulnerabilities provides an extremely attractive target and a sought-after source of data for insider attacks.
From a risk-management perspective it is hardly acceptable to introduce tunnels into sensitive infrastructures and then store all known vulnerabilities outside a companies' guidelines and control. Such a solution does not allow a customer to directly influence archival and deletion of their data. At a time when company guidelines to control the IT department have become topical, e.g. due to cases of used hard disks being offered on Ebay, either from insolvencies or simply as part of the usual hardware replacement cycle. Typically the data on those disks can be restored, if the deletion of data has been attempted, at all.
If, on the other hand, the scan engine is operated in its entirety from an appliance in the data centre of the company it requires additional effort for the maintenance of the scan engine. On the upside this solution provides higher security by reduction of incalculable risk factors and consequently reducing operative and business risk.
Proprietary solutions are black boxes
A unique selling proposition of the Greenbone Security Manager is its proven and independently verifiable security. Because the entire scan engine and all test routines are available in source code as Open Source Software it can be audited by customers and third parties in their entirety.
Where proprietary solutions offer marketing promises and assurances, Greenbone Networks provides facts that can be assured by any third party that enjoys the confidence of the customer.
By opening the entire process, any customer is in the position to better assess the risk associated to deployment of the Greenbone Security Manager. The transparent scan engine provides proven security and the subscription to the daily update of test routines ensures discovery of most relevant vulnerabilities and insight into the technology used for testing. | <urn:uuid:b561d619-cd34-41ab-82c4-c77c4dc89af1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.greenbone.net/learningcenter/vm_with_gsm.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92775 | 1,733 | 2.90625 | 3 |
303 West Hastings St Vancouver BC
5pm-11pm 7 days a week
Image of Belladonna retrieved from Above Top Secret in January 2013.
Belladonna is a shrub-like, perennial, European herb with dull reddish to bluish-or-greenish-purple, bell shaped, axillary flowers, shiny black fruits (berries), and leaves that are more evenly margined than some of its solanaceous relatives. Belladonna and related genera and species in the nightshade family such as henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), Mandrake (Madragora officinarum), and jimsonweed (Datura stramonium) have had a long and sometimes sordid history of human use, that is, in intentional poisoning or in black magic. In particular, belladonna, henbane, and mandtrake were used in the practice of witchcraft and sorcery during the European Middle Ages. They were employed in witches’ brews to induce hallucinogenic states for communing with the supernatural, particularly during witches; celebrations (known as sabbats). Through the use of these plants, witches could induce the desired visual and sometimes frenzied, states in their subjects.
Belladonna and its botanical cousins contain atropine-like alkaloids, a relatively simple category of alkaloid (tropane type) consisting fundamentally of a single ring with nitrogen bonded across the molecule. In Belladonna, three very similar, principal alkaloids may occur: hyoscymine, scopolamine, and atropine itself. Hyoscyamine is usually most abundant in the plant, with scopolamine perhaps most effectively psychoactive. However, all three alkaloids are potentially present and hallucinogenic.
But all for Belladonna is not a dark history, focusing on witchcraft and psychoactivity. To the contrary, belladonna had probably been put to as many different medicinal (and related) uses as has any other plant. The atropine can reduce mucous secretions, and it is utilized in some nasal sprays or decongestants (in which it acts as an antihistamine). Because of the bronchodilating properties of atropine (that is, its activity in relaxing constricted bronchial tubes) belladonna has been used to treat asthma. For years, belladonna extract was employed as “the drop” used by ophthalmologists as a mydriatic agent, to dilate the pupil of the eye during examination. In a similar vein, belladonna was used by Italian women to brighten their eyes, the red sap of the plant was also being employed as a cosmetic; the meaning of the common name belladonna, from the Italian language is “beautiful lady”. Belladonna has been used to control unwanted, nocturnal urination and also night sweating, as a treatment of symptoms in Parkinson’s disease, as an aid in limiting epileptic seizures, for control of whooping couch spasms, to treat bradycardia (atropine is used to stimulate the heart following cardiac arrest), and to counter the effects of opiate overdose. Indeed the medical benefits of belladonna over time would seem to outweigh by far the less attractive features in the history of its use.
Excerpt from pg 284-285 of Poisonous and Medicinal Plants by Will H. BlackwellShareThis | <urn:uuid:a7a1a6f8-fbd5-4535-ab07-b3a2ed0a853e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.herbmuseum.ca/content/belladonna-deadly-nightshade | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95384 | 714 | 2.828125 | 3 |
October 5, 2001 | Backgrounder on Federal Budget
The September 11 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have quickly reshaped the priorities of Congress, the Administration, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to efforts that will strengthen the government's ability to protect Americans. During this national crisis, common sense dictates sound budgeting of government's resources. The Administration and Congress should shift dollars away from programs that are wasteful, unproven, or demonstrably ineffective to fund those that are central to government's core mission. An analysis of current DOJ programs shows that refocusing its spending priorities in this way could free over $2 billion for counterterrorism initiatives in fiscal year (FY) 2002.
Many of the programs under the Justice Department umbrella, for example, deal with problems or functions that lie within the jurisdiction of state and local governments and should therefore be handled by state and local officials. Grants from the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) are given to state and local governments for local police officer salaries as well as juvenile justice and other criminal justice programs.
Not only is this an unnecessary use of federal tax dollars, but it is costly. From FY 1996 to FY 2000, OJP and COPS programs cost U.S. taxpayers a total of $23 billion, compared with just $1 billion that Congress appropriated for the counterterrorism and national security efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 1 over that same period. In just these five years, OJP and COPS program spending dwarfed the FBI's counterterrorism and national security efforts by a ratio of more than 22 to 1. (See Chart 1.)
Despite this sizeable investment, many OJP and COPS programs either have been found to be ineffective in achieving their stated purposes or reducing crime, or have never been scientifically evaluated for their effectiveness. Congress has proposed FY 2002 appropriations for the Justice Department (S. 1215 and H.R. 2500) that include over $4 billion for these programs. Regrettably, this is nine and 10 times larger, respectively, than the amount Congress appropriated in these bills for the FBI's counterterrorism and national security programs. (See Chart 2.) A large portion of this $4 billion should be shifted away from these ineffective programs to fund DOJ activities that could better protect Americans from terrorism.
Ineffective Crime Prevention
In 1997, the U.S. Department of Justice published a report by the University of Maryland's Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice that looked at various evaluations of the federal crime programs. 2 One of the authors of the report noted that many of DOJ's crime-prevention programs either were evaluated as ineffective or escaped scrutiny altogether; he added that "By scientific standards, there are very few `programs of proven effectiveness.'" 3 The report called for Congress to devote more resources to evaluating crime prevention programs. 4 Yet Congress still has not given significant attention to this request to ensure that federally funded crime prevention efforts are in fact preventing crime.
Given the new and broad-based need for funds to address the needs of the nation during this crisis, Congress should set high standards of effectiveness for programs that are not an appropriate function of the federal government. Enforcing federal laws, not funding the responsibilities of state and local governments, is the appropriate mission of the Justice Department. Further, programs that cannot scientifically be shown to be effective should be eliminated to enable the DOJ to support its new priorities with adequate resources.
For the past seven years, the most prominent federal crime-prevention initiative has been the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, which gives grants to state and local law enforcement agencies to increase the number of police officers on the streets. Federal funds, initially granted in December 1993, were to be used to place 100,000 additional officers on the streets by October 2000. Since the inception of the program, however, local law enforcement agencies have instead used billions of the almost $9 billion appropriated to fund officer salaries, computer technology, and clerical support.
To evaluate the effectiveness of the COPS program, analysts in The Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis (CDA) compared the historical hiring trend of police officers from 1975 to 1993 to the hiring of officers after COPS was initiated in 1994. The 2000 study found that COPS grants may have placed about 40,000 additional officers on the street by 1998. 5
Another estimate appeared in a 2000 report titled National Evaluation of the COPS Program. This report, funded by the COPS Office and published by the Department of Justice, estimates that the number of officers that COPS placed on the streets would, at most, peak at around 57,000 by 2001. 6 This finding reinforced the conclusion that the COPS program has failed to achieve its goal of placing 100,000 more officers on the streets to reduce crime. COPS claimed that the program had "funded" more than 100,000 officers, including officers who may or may not have been hired or deployed. 7
Although this "national evaluation" failed to measure the impact of COPS on crime, it did find a clear indication that crime fighting was not a priority of the program. For example, the law enforcement agencies that had reported over half of all U.S. homicides in 1997 had received less than one-third of the COPS funding from 1993 to 1997. 8
The Center for Data Analysis conducted another independent analysis of the effectiveness of the COPS program in 2001. This analysis looked specifically at the impact of COPS grants on violent crime rates from 1995 to 1998. 9 After accounting for socioeconomic factors that could influence crime in 742 counties, the analysis found that COPS grants for the hiring of additional police officers as well as grants for redeployment--the Making Officer Redeployment Effective (MORE) grants--have no statistically significant effect on reducing the rates of violent crime. 10 Yet these grants are major components of the COPS program. 11
The 1997 DOJ review of crime-fighting programs acknowledges that community policing with no clear strategy for targeting crime risk factors is ineffective: "While the COPS Program language has stressed a community policing approach, there is no evidence that community policing per se reduces crime without a clear focus on a crime risk factor objective." 13 Recent research demonstrates that when police clearly identify problems and go after them strategically, their efforts can reduce crime. 14
In many instances, the COPS hiring and redeployment grants may have been used for community policing in name only. Grant recipient agencies may have done the paperwork to apply for the grants without ever fully implementing community policing techniques. For example, a DOJ study found that the COPS grantees too frequently established partnerships with the community that were nominal and temporary. 15 Developing a proactive crime-fighting strategy and working with the community are extremely important in dealing with crime effectively, yet agency applicants for the COPS hiring grants are not required to specify how they will use the grants to reduce crime. 16 Without accountability, the focus of the program is on disbursing COPS grant money, not reducing crime.
Proponents have argued that providing state and local law enforcement agencies with additional funds above what they would typically spend on operational expenses is effective in fighting crime. Yet as the CDA analysis indicates, the major components of the COPS program--its hiring and redeployment grants--have had no statistically measurable effect on reducing violent crime rates at the county level. 17
The House of Representatives plans to spend $557.3 million on the ineffective and questionable COPS grants to hire officers and provide technology and clerks to law enforcement agencies--nearly 25 percent more than the House wants to spend on the FBI's counterterrorism and national security budget. 18 (See Table 1.) The Senate has virtually the same spending priorities. It intends to spend $603 million on the same grants--almost 25 percent more than it intends to spend on the FBI's counterterrorism and national security budget. 19
It would be better, especially during this national crisis, if Congress took immediate steps to redirect all or a substantial portion of the $1 billion it has appropriated for COPS in FY 2002 to the Justice Department's counterterrorism efforts.
Office of Justice Programs
The Office of Justice Programs funds a number of important programs and functions, including the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), National Institute of Justice (NIJ), terrorism and domestic preparedness grants, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). BJS and NIJ provide important research functions for the Justice Department, and the funds allocated for the nonprofit NCMEC help to locate missing children and prevent their exploitation. The Office of Victims of Crime (OVC) responded to the recent terrorist attacks by serving the victims as a resource for information, counseling, and referrals.
The terrorism and domestic preparedness program in the Department of Justice helps to train state and local governments to respond to terrorist attacks and provides grants for the purchase of protective chemical, biological, and radiological gear and communications equipment. The House and the Senate plan to spend $220 million and $364 million, respectively, on state and local terrorism and domestic preparedness assistance in FY 2002. 20 These amounts are considerably less than the $1 billion either chamber intends to spend on COPS. It is an appropriate time for Congress to reassess the other OJP programs for their effectiveness.
Recipients of these federal grants should be required to demonstrate through scientific means that the programs are in fact reducing crime. Anecdotal examples or measures other than actual crime reduction should not be substituted for rigorous impact evaluations. Specifically, Congress should consider shifting resources to counterterrorism from Local Law Enforcement Block Grants (LLEBG), Byrne grants, juvenile accountability and delinquency prevention grants, drug treatment grants for state prisons, and Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) grants. Ideally, assuming that policymakers think these programs are effective, they should be funded by state and local governments, but the appropriation bills before Congress call for over $2 billion in spending on these programs. (See Table 2.)
Too frequently, prevention advocates measure a program's "intermediate effects" instead of how well it prevents delinquent behavior. 21 During the 1990s, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) sponsored a book-length report, Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions , identifying successful delinquency intervention programs. 22 Of the 56 "successful" delinquency prevention studies presented, only nine measured whether or not official acts of delinquency (i.e., criminal arrests) were prevented. 23 Most of the studies measured "intermediate effects"--perhaps a teacher's perception that a juvenile's behavior in school had improved. If that juvenile had committed a crime after going through the program, however, that "intermediate effect" of better school behavior would matter little to society. Tracking official acts of delinquency would be a better measure of crime prevention.
What Congress Should Do
Over the past few years, Congress has poured billions of taxpayers' dollars into ineffective crime prevention programs or programs whose effectiveness has never been shown. Given the recent terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, as well as the nation's continuing susceptibility to future terrorist attacks, Congress should reprioritize DOJ's program spending to meet more critical needs.
Because both chambers of Congress have passed their own versions of the Commerce, Justice, and State appropriation bill, the conference committee reconciling the bills could transfer at least $2.6 billion of the more than $4 billion appropriated for COPS and OJP to FBI counterterrorism efforts and other DOJ activities that would protect the nation from terrorism. (See Table 1 and Table 2.) Transferring only the COPS funds identified in Table 1 to the FBI's counterterrorism and national security budget would more than double that line item. The funds could be used to hire additional FBI agents and provide them with more sophisticated equipment; they could also be used to increase airport security and boost OJP assistance for state and local government responses to acts of terrorism.
The United States cannot afford, during this critical period following last month's destructive terrorist attacks, to waste valuable resources on misplaced priorities and ineffective programs. Too often, the Justice Department has funded grant programs that have been ineffective at reducing crime while shortchanging the FBI's counterterrorism efforts. Common sense dictates that Congress and the Administration take steps to shift DOJ resources away from ineffective programs to programs that will better protect America's security.
David B. Muhlhausen is a senior policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.
1. U.S. Department of Justice, Budget Trend Data 1975-2000, p. 188, at http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/budgetsummary/btd99tocpg.htm (September 21, 2001), and Public Laws 104-134, 104-208, 105-277, 105-120, and 106-113. In each of these laws, Congress set the minimum amount that the FBI must spend on counterterrorism, foreign intelligence, and national security. While the maximum amount that Congress would spend on counterterrorism is unknown, it has a track record of setting higher budget priorities for ineffective and untested programs than for terrorism.
2. Lawrence Sherman, Denise Gottfredson, Doris Mackenzie, John Eck, Peter Rueter, and Shawn Bushway, University of Maryland Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 1997).
5. Gareth Davis, David B. Muhlhausen, Dexter Ingram, and Ralph Rector, "The Facts About COPS: A Performance Overview of the Community Oriented Policing Services Program," Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. CDA00-10, September 25, 2000.
7. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General, "Special Report, Police Hiring and Redeployment Grants, Summary of Audit Findings and Recommendations," Report No. 99-14, April 1999. See also Michael R. Bromwich, "Management and Administration of the Community Oriented Policing Services Grant Program," U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General, Audit Division, Report No. 99-21, July 1999.
8. U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, National Evaluation of the COPS Program, Title I of the 1994 Crime Act , August 2000, p. 65. Although the COPS program became official with enactment of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (P.L. 103-322) in September 1994, Congress appropriated funding for community police officers in the FY 1994 appropriation bill for the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State (P.L. 103-121). These "PHS grants" were awarded in December 1993. Congress intended them as a down payment on reaching the goal of placing 100,000 additional officers on the street. For purposes of this analysis, PHS grants were allocated to 1994 because the award date fell in the last month of 1993.
9. David B. Muhlhausen, "Do Community Oriented Policing Services Grants Affect Violent Crime Rates?" Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. CDA01-05, May 25, 2001, at http://www.heritage.org/library/cda/cda01-05.html .
10. Ibid. It was intended that COPS hiring grants would be used by law enforcement agencies to hire additional officers. COPS redeployment (MORE) grants provide law enforcement agencies with funds for equipment, technology, civilian personnel, or overtime so that officers can be redeployed from administrative duties to community policing. For more information on these variables, see the Appendix in the cited report.
11. Some may argue that COPS grants had a displacement effect on crime within counties that this study will not observe. In theory, displacement could occur when crime in cities or towns that received COPS funding shifted to other parts of their counties; in other words, the COPS grants were effective in reducing crime in these municipalities, but the reduction was offset because criminals chose to commit crimes in other parts of the counties in which the municipalities were located. First, for this theory to be valid, displacement would have to be systematic throughout the 752 counties in the study. This is highly unlikely. Second, one would have to assume that grants awarded to agencies that serve municipalities are automatically more effective than grants awarded to agencies that serve counties. This also is highly unlikely.
12. For information on the failure of police departments to add officers after receiving COPS grants, see Davis et al ., "The Facts About COPS"; U.S. Department of Justice, "Special Report: Police Hiring and Redeployment Grants, Summary of Audit Findings and Recommendations"; and Bromwich, "Management and Administration of the Community Oriented Policing Services Grant Program."
14. Anthony A. Braga, David L. Weisburd, Elin J. Waring, Lorraine Green Mazerolle, William Spelman, and Francis Gajewski, "Problem-Oriented Policing in Violent Crime Places: A Randomized Controlled Experiment," Criminology , Vol. 37, No. 3 (1999), pp. 541-580, and Anthony A. Braga, David M. Kennedy, Elin J. Waring, and Anne Morrison Piehl, "Problem-Oriented Policing, Deterrence, and Youth Violence: An Evaluation of Boston's Operation Ceasefire," Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , Vol. 38, No. 3 (2001), pp. 195-225.
16. For example, the application for the 2000 Universal Hiring Program (UHP) is only four pages long and does not require the applicant to demonstrate that the grant will be used effectively. This application, no longer available on the COPS Web site, was obtained from http://www.usdoj.gov/cops/pdf/ gpa/uhp/uhp_pdfs/e022k0060.pdf (July 17, 2001). For a copy of the application, contact the author at The Heritage Foundation.
18. In H.R. 2500, the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, and the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2002, the House sets the minimum amount that the FBI must spend on counterterrorism, foreign intelligence, and national security.
19. In S. 1215, the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, and the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2002, the Senate sets the minimum amount that the FBI must spend on counterterrorism, foreign intelligence, and national security.
20. See H.R. 2500 and S. 1215, at www.thomas.loc.gov .
21. For an example, see Gail A. Wasserman and Laurie S. Miller, "The Prevention of Serious and Violent Juvenile Offending," in Ralph Loeber and David P. Farrington, eds., Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions (Thousand Oaks, Cal.: Sage Publications), pp. 197-247. | <urn:uuid:bca174da-563a-420b-bf48-37be423fd01d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2001/10/where-the-justice-department-can-find-26-billion | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937775 | 3,961 | 2.78125 | 3 |
The purpose of disability benefits is to strengthen the autonomy and quality of life of persons with disabilities or long-term illnesses.
Assistive devices help sick or disabled persons cope with challenges faced in work or study. They are provided as part of rehabilitation.
Children under 16 can be paid disability allowance if they have an illness or injury that creates a need for care and rehabilitation that lasts at least 6 months and imposes particular strain and requires a greater commitment than the care of non-disabled children of the same age.
Disabled or chronically ill persons aged 16 years or over can be paid disability allowance if their ability to function remains diminished for at least a year and their illness or injury causes impairment and need of assistance.
Disabled or chronically ill persons pensioners can be paid Care Allowance for Pensioners if their ability to function remains diminished for at least a year and their illness or injury causes impairment or need of assistance.
Dietary Grant for persons with coeliac disease
Persons with coeliac disease over the age of 16 years are eligible for a Dietary Grant towards the cost of maintaining a gluten-free diet.
Last modified 06/06/2015 | <urn:uuid:2c067c14-7616-4c27-81de-bb5d219c30b2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.kela.fi/web/en/disability | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92296 | 237 | 2.5625 | 3 |
People & Power
Building of Owen Falls dam begins in Jinja
Posted Sunday, January 10 2016 at 02:00
Hydro power. Kawalya Kaggwa has been credited as the person who pleaded with the Queen of England to bring hydroelectric power to Uganda. However, his request only led to the construction of a thermal plant at Lugogo which supplied power to Kampala and Entebbe for some time. In our series From the Archives we look back at the construction of the Owen Falls dam and Egypt’s influence in the availability of power in Uganda.
The decision to have the Owen Falls hydroelectric scheme in Uganda was taken at a time when World War II was just ending.
The end of the war came with post-war economic unrest and constitutional changes. These posed a challenge to the new governor to Uganda, Sir John Hathorn Hall, who introduced new measures to curb the unrest.
The new measures were based on the Uganda Development Plan by Dr E. B. Worthington. The plan was to develop Uganda as an agricultural country with as much industry as possible.
According to Gal Wilson’s book Owen Falls Electricity in a developing country, “References to the hydroelectric scheme were short because at the time a comprehensive report was being prepared. Electricity was considered as one of a number of services which the government should provide to encourage industrialisation.”
Dr Worthington recommended a large hydroelectric scheme capable of meeting an expanded future demand. As Worthington was preparing the Uganda Development Plan, the future chairman of the Uganda Electricity Board, Charles Redvers Westlake, was investigating the hydroelectricity project.
According to a 1947 publication, Uganda Electricity Survey by Westlake, a survey on the potential of the Nile being able to generate power was conducted as early as 1935.
“Engineers had concluded that, although technically feasible, such a project would not pay, as electricity consumption, both actual and potential, was too low,” the report said.
The Uganda Electricity Survey had two recommendations based on two stated beliefs. The first was that the provision of electricity was not merely a commercial enterprise but a service to be undertaken by the government; and that in the past power schemes were undertaken in order to satisfy existing demand, but that the time had come to begin a scheme which would be capable of supplying foreseeable potential demand.
The Egypt factor
The construction of the dam was subject to the Egyptian government approval; failure to secure one meant it would have taken Uganda much longer than it did to have the dam constructed.
In May 1929, the governments of Britain and Egypt signed what was known as the 1929 Nile Waters Agreement. This agreement gave Egypt “historical rights” to the River Nile waters, where no country which shared the Nile could do anything that would affect the flow of the Nile waters without consent of the Egyptian government.
As a result, in the Egyptian circles, the Owen Falls dam project came to be known as Egypt’s Century Storage Scheme on the Nile.
After deciding on the construction, the British government, through its ambassador in Egypt Ronald Campbell, presented its plans to the Egyptian government.
Act of faith
Though created by a special ordinance in 1947, the Uganda Electricity Board project, according to financial secretary Hugh Dalton, was “an act of faith”.
Dalton’s argument was that both the survey and the Uganda Development Plan were prepared at a time when little statistical material was available and economic conditions were artificial and unstable.
However, the survey’s predictions stated that the scheme’s success depended on two conditions: One, the power produced should be cheap, and the other was that demand should be built up before the hydroelectric station began production so that the full potential of the first generating set could be used at once.
The site and construction
The decision to construct the dam was done hurriedly. Between May 1947 and January 1948, the Uganda Electricity Survey report was presented, the Uganda Electricity Board (UEB) ordinance 1947 was passed and the UEB board came into being.
For the site of the dam, there were several options which included the Napolean Gulf where the Nile leaves Lake Victoria, the Ripon Falls, the Owen Falls and the Bujagali Falls.
The choice of the site was based on the document Owen Falls, Uganda Hydroelectric Development by Westlake R. W. Mountain and T. A. L. Paton which stated that water levels records of Lake Victoria had been kept since 1896 by the physical department of the Egyptian ministry of public works.
“The highest and lowest flows recorded were 43,000 and 10,500 cusecs, with an average of 22,100 cusecs. For these reasons, the dam could be constructed to pass the highest recorded flow of 43,000 cusecs without fear for its safety,” the document said in part.
“The flow of the Nile at Jinja was directly related to the level of the lake and was, therefore, predictable. The average flow of the river could be calculated from a base of 50 years.”
The total budget approved for the scheme totalled £7,120,000 (Shs35.6 billion at current exchange rate) as opposed to the earlier estimates of £4,298,000 (Shs21.5 billion) by Westlake. The increase in costs was as a result of a larger generating station.
Westlake’s earlier recommendations were for a capacity of 90,000kW. But it was finally decided to raise the capacity to 15,000kW.
However, all project reports had pointed to 30,000kW as the amount of power that could be produced by the dam. Unfortunately, the railway line from Mombasa could not, at that time, transport anything bigger than what can be used in the power production.
For fast progression of the scheme, UEB estimated a labour force of 2,000 would be employed. UEB decided to build labour quarters at the Amberly Estate north of Jinja, for Europeans and Asian at a cost of £400,000 (Shs2 billion at current exchange rates).
The estate was complete with a club, community centre and swimming pool. The African staff had their quarters across the bridge in Njeru.
They ordered for the generating equipment as soon as the construction started in July 1948. However, the contracting of the site engineers was delayed, waiting the completion of negotiations with the Egyptian government.
Once the negotiations were done, a consortium of British, Danish, Dutch and Italian firms was awarded the contract in September 1949.
At the time of signing a contract agreement, there was a shortage of building materials. Cement was at first to be imported. In 1949, UEB agreed to act as managing agents for a local cement factory to be established at Tororo.
Immediate effects of the scheme
The construction of the dam had some indirect effects on the surrounding country. By the time of completion, it had employed 2,500 Africans, 200 Europeans and 123 Asians. Many of these came with their dependents to Njeru and Jinja respectively. In addition, others not directly employed by the Owen Falls construction company settled in Jinja.
As would be expected, this sudden increase in the population had a marked effect on the town. Offices, shops and flats were built. However, once the dam was completed in 1954, the labour force fell rapidly and stood at 600 at the end of 1955. | <urn:uuid:c28c7845-7f50-4b00-9953-ebd486c48764> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/PeoplePower/Building-of-Owen-Falls-dam-begins-in-Jinja/-/689844/3026930/-/nouyiaz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97985 | 1,544 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The basic principle of American representative democracy is that every vote must be of equal weight. When governments draw districts with equal populations, they ensure that each resident has equal access to government, no matter where she or he lives. When districts are of substantially different sizes, the weight of each vote starts to differ: in underpopulated districts, each vote is worth more, and in overpopulated districts, a vote is worth less.
The U.S. Supreme Court first declared that the “One Person, One Vote” principle applied to state legislative redistricting in the 1963 landmark case Reynolds v. Sims. The Court struck down an apportionment scheme for the Alabama state legislature that was based on counties and not population. In 1960 Alabama, Lowndes County, with 15,417 people, had the same number of state senators as Jefferson County, with 634,864 people, giving the residents of sparsely-populated Lowndes County 41 times as much political power as the residents of densely-populated Jefferson County. The Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause required that districts be drawn to be substantially equal in population.
Subsequent U.S. Supreme Court cases defined the limits of “substantially equal.” In White v. Regester, the Court ruled that the State of Texas was not required to justify how it drew lines resulting in an average district deviation of less than 2% and a maximum deviation of 9.9%. Today, most states draw their districts so that the smallest district is no more than 5% smaller, and the largest no more than 5% larger, than the average district. This keeps the difference between the largest and smallest district within 10%.
Wisconsin has historically applied a much higher standard, drawing districts with a maximum deviation of less than 2%. Only four states currently have districts that are more equal in population than Wisconsin’s. For three decades, federal judges have drawn the state Assembly and Senate legislative district maps. In 1982, at the first redistricting since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Texas to have a population deviation of 10%, the federal judges who drew Wisconsin’s districts set a higher standard, explaining that “We believe that a constitutionally acceptable plan should not deviate as high as 10%, and should, if possible, be kept below 2%.” The plan they drafted met even that high standard: “The deviation in our plan is a scant 1.74%.”
In 1992, the court drew a plan with an even smaller total deviation from exact population equality: 0.52%. In 2002, the court drew a plan with a deviation of only 1.48%, still within the 2% threshold established in 1982.
Wisconsin rightly prioritizes population equality when drawing districts, but the Census Bureau has undermined these efforts by crediting thousands of prisoners to the wrong place.
This last figure is doubly ironic because the prison facility isn’t even in Marquette. The Census mistakenly counted Oxford Prison at its postal address in Marquette County, when it actually is in neighboring Adams County. (The published Census figures were used for state redistricting and remain the official numbers for most purposes, but the distortion would be almost the same if the prison had been counted in the right place. The Census Count Question Resolution program states that Adams County has 19,920 people, of whom 6.4% are incarcerated.)
Reynolds v. Sims, 377 US 533 (1964).
White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755 (1973).
Illinois, California, Washington and Minnesota drew more equal House districts, and Illinois, California, Florida and Washington drew more equal Senate districts. National Conference Of State Legislators, Redistricting 2000 Population Deviation Table, (visited August 8th, 2007)
AFL-CIO v. Elections Bd., 543 F. Supp. at 634 (E.D. Wis. 1982).
AFL-CIO at 637.
Prosser v. Elections Bd., 793 F.Supp. 859, 870 (W.D. Wis. 1992).
Baumgart v. Wendelberger, (2002). Wendelberger Slip Copy, 2002 WL 34127471 at 8. Also available at http://legis.wisconsin.gov/ltsb/redistricting/PDFs/decision.pdf | <urn:uuid:0a803107-0310-48e5-9050-91c23df2dd84> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/wisconsin/one-person-one-vote.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939014 | 908 | 4.0625 | 4 |
It takes work to send video from space.
"Live from Space," a National Geographic Channel TV show airing Friday (March 14), will feature live video of International Space Station astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata speaking about their lives on orbit. But how does that video get beamed down to Earth?
When International Space Station astronauts speak to people on Earth during the TV broadcast, it won't be as easy as picking up a phone and dialing home. The orbiting outpost makes use of a complex fleet of satellites to keep in touch with ground controllers, but even with a constellation of satellites at the ready, regular blackouts in communication do occur. [See amazing space photos taken by Koichi Wakata]
NASA mainly uses the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) network to communicate with the crew on the space station, NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said. The newest TDRS satellite launched to space in January. The TDRS-L satellite is one of nine currently operational TDRS satellites that enable a nearly continuous stream of information to beam back to Earth from spacecraft in orbit.
The orbiting outpost loses signal every 20 to 30 minutes due to satellite locations and line of sight. These dropouts will be quite a challenge for the "Live from Space" program. Producers with the two-hour show will have to contend with some major difficulties inherent in communicating with the space station.
"One of our studios is orbiting the earth at 4.79 miles per second, and two of our cast are 250 miles above us," said Al Berman, executive producer for Live from Space. "Every bit of our technical apparatus, from the mobile satellite truck to the two-way radios, has to be integrated into the NASA system and deemed secure. NASA has a huge infrastructure for sending up and pulling down signals from the International Space Station."
Once the broadcast gets closer, engineers will potentially be able to predict when the blackouts will occur, but it's not exact.
"As we get closer to air, those blackout periods become more clear," Berman told Space.com via email. "But, we have to build our broadcasts with the expectation of losing signal with some regularity."
Sending photos down from the station is easier today thanks to upgrades installed in the system, Byerly said. Astronauts share their experiences in space with photos on Twitter and other social media sites. They can also send recorded videos of live in space down to Earth.
Generally, the astronauts have more audio coverage than video coverage because audio doesn't take up as much bandwidth. Interested members of the public can listen in to live audio sent down from the station thanks to a NASA live stream here.
"Live from Space" airs March 14 on National Geographic Channel at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT (0000 March 15 GMT). | <urn:uuid:9fe47eea-5806-4383-9902-ddf5c9481f1d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.space.com/25043-live-space-tv-tech-astronaut-videos.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953165 | 583 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Abundance means plenty, or a very large quantity of something.
It is the innate tendency of nature to grow and become more. It is the tendency of the life force to produce more, and create more of everything. There are always new trees, new plants, more fruit and new grass.
New things are being constantly invented; new cars are being produced; new houses are being built, and new jobs are created.
Scientists say that the Universe is always expanding and growing, and even new stars are being created.
Abundance is everywhere in the Universe, and it can also appear in your personal life, if you let it.
People often associate abundance with money. Wealth, and having a lot of money is abundance, but abundance manifests in many other ways, not only as plenty of money and possessions. | <urn:uuid:329d236e-b81e-4128-b47b-c1448b2a1313> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.successconsciousness.com/blog/success/what-is-abundance-and-how-does-it-manifest/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979254 | 168 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Watching TV ups heart attack risk by 80%
A study published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation suggests that watching TV - or sitting in front of a PC for that matter - can increase the risk of a heart attack or stroke by a staggering 80 percent.
The survey assessed 7,000 Australian people based on the amount they watched TV and continued monitoring the people for six years.
The findings showed that every hour spent being a couch potato increased the risk of cardiovascular ailments by 18 percent.
The figures are irrespective of other elements that tend to cause heart disease, including obesity and smoking.
And it's not just your heart that might suffer. According to the survey every hour spent sitting in front of a TV increases the risk of cancer by nine percent.
The news will not be regarded with much favor by manufacturers of LCD TVs or 3D TVs, we suspect. | <urn:uuid:4f593745-3931-43a1-b3a6-209b827503fc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.tgdaily.com/business/45449-watching-tv-ups-heart-attack-risk-by-80 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95537 | 178 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Identifying People using Anonymous Social Networking Data
Computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Dr Vitaly Shmatikov, from the University of Texas at Austin, developed the algorithm which turned the anonymous data back into names and addresses.
The data sets are usually stripped of personally identifiable information, such as names, before it is sold to marketing companies or researchers keen to plumb it for useful information.
Before now, it was thought sufficient to remove this data to make sure that the true identities of subjects could not be reconstructed.
The algorithm developed by the pair looks at relationships between all the members of a social network -- not just the immediate friends that members of these sites connect to.
Social graphs from Twitter, Flickr and Live Journal were used in the research.
The pair found that one third of those who are on both Flickr and Twitter can be identified from the completely anonymous Twitter graph. This is despite the fact that the overlap of members between the two services is thought to be about 15%.
The researchers suggest that as social network sites become more heavily used, then people will find it increasingly difficult to maintain a veil of anonymity.
In "De-anonymizing social networks," Narayanan and Shmatikov take an anonymous graph of the social relationships established through Twitter and find that they can actually identify many Twitter accounts based on an entirely different data source—in this case, Flickr.
One-third of users with accounts on both services could be identified on Twitter based on their Flickr connections, even when the Twitter social graph being used was completely anonymous. The point, say the authors, is that "anonymity is not sufficient for privacy when dealing with social networks," since their scheme relies only on a social network's topology to make the identification.
The issue is of more than academic interest, as social networks now routinely release such anonymous social graphs to advertisers and third-party apps, and government and academic researchers ask for such data to conduct research. But the data isn't nearly as "anonymous" as those releasing it appear to think it is, and it can easily be cross-referenced to other data sets to expose user identities.
It's not just about Twitter, either. Twitter was a proof of concept, but the idea extends to any sort of social network: phone call records, healthcare records, academic sociological datasets, etc.
Here's the paper.
Posted on April 6, 2009 at 6:51 AM • 41 Comments | <urn:uuid:d1860793-4fdf-4ac4-aaf1-2334d3bb684e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/04/identifying_peo.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96486 | 504 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Pronunciation: (al-gong'kē-un, -kwē-un), [key]
—n., pl. -ans, (esp. collectively) -an for 2,
1. a family of languages spoken now or formerly by American Indians in an area extending from Labrador westward to the Rocky Mountains, west-southwestward through Michigan and Illinois, and southwestward along the Atlantic coast to Cape Hatteras, including esp. Arapaho, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Cree, Fox, Massachusett, Micmac, Ojibwa, and Powhatan. Cf. family (def. 14).
2. a member of an Algonquian-speaking tribe.
of or pertaining to Algonquian or its speakers. Also,Algonkian,Algonkin,Algonquin.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease. | <urn:uuid:f9d5cc84-2ce2-4002-9470-316a174fb5b2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://dictionary.infoplease.com/algonquian | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.876451 | 203 | 3.1875 | 3 |
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Can I Compost This?
What you put in your compost is the most important factor in whether it will keep cookin' at a decent clip and behave itself — i.e., not cause a stink. It will help you get fertilizer in about a month or two vs. a season or even a year. You want happy micro-organisms in your compost that hungrily transform your kitchen scraps into garden goodies.
To keep those microbes munching, maintain the correct ratio of “green” to “brown” ingredients. In my compost bin, we aim for a 50/50 mix, give or take, with great success. Some compost bin makers recommend a ratio of more like 60/40, more green material than brown. One easy way to keep the peace between green and brown is to add the same volume of each type of material every time you add materials. So if you fill a mixing bowl with veggie scraps and toss those in, fill that same bowl almost full of anything from the brown/dry materials list and pour that in before you turn the compost.
Start with this guide to “dump and dump-nots” — what's compostable, what's not, and what's green, brown, wet, dry, good scrap, bad scrap.
Green materials are rich in nitrogen; brown materials are rich in carbon. Microbes thrive in the particular ratio of carbon to nitrogen created by the balance of green and brown materials, allowing for efficient composting.
Green / wet materials
- Fruit and veggie scraps
- Egg shells
- Tea bags, tea leaves
- Fresh green grass clippings and plant trimmings grown without pesticides or weed killers
- Plate scrapings (excluding meat and bones)
Brown / dry materials
- Dry leaves, dried grass clippings
- Wood shavings or sawdust
- Nuts and shells
- Coffee grounds and filters
- Pinecones, pine needles
- Shredded egg cartons (the paper kind)
- Shredded newspaper and tissue paper
- Peanut shells
- Cold wood ashes
- Dryer lint
- Shredded cereal boxes and other paperboard items
Can I compost this?
Compostable plates, cups, utensils and other partyware: Depends. Many home compost bins don't get hot enough to break down this type of picnic ware, at least not as quickly as is practical. (Compostable plates, cups and utensils are often more compostable in a commercial composting facility where the piles get much hotter.) Some newer paper plates and partyware on the market are labeled “compostable in home compost bin” or the like; try them out and see how it goes. We've found that this works better if the plates are ripped or cut into smaller pieces, as with any raw material added to a composter. (Read more tips for making composting easy as pie!)
Leftovers, plate scrapings: Absolutely, except meat and bones.
Pet poop: Avoid adding animal waste to your compost, unless you plan to use your compost strictly on ornamental plants — not on veggie or fruit trees/bushes. If you have a commercial composting facility nearby that takes drop-offs or has curbside pickup, ask if they accept pet waste. Or consider an in-ground dog-poo composting setup like the Doggie Doolie.
Meat and bones: Not in a home composter. As with compostable plates and such, compost in a residential compost bin or pile typically doesn't get hot enough to sufficiently break down meat or bones. Same goes for dairy products, sauces, oils and fats: These may be OK in small doses as part of plate scrapings, but you don't want to pour a cup of bacon grease or cheese sauce in your compost.
Diseased plants, seeding weeds or wet grass: They can cause plant diseases or weeds to grow in your compost or among the plants you apply them to.
Inorganic materials such as synthetic pesticides, weed killer, plastics, medicines, cleaning chemicals: Composting is a natural organic process; inorganic stuff unsurprisingly messes it up — i.e., kills the microorganisms that make compost happen.
“Moldy bread, eggshells, banana peels, lemons, the outside of the lettuce that's all brown and nasty, strawberry tops ... Oh and lots of coffee grounds. I thought it would be a pain, but putting stuff through a blender first makes for some REALLY happy dirt. Makes a nice compost slurry and there's no real waiting involved for anything to break down. I'm a smoothie person so my blender's always out on the counter anyway.” – Marie T. via Facebook
“There are so many items you can compost such as egg shells (they also provide a nice little nesting area if you have any red wigglers), tea bags, COFFEE GRINDS!!! No meat products — this will attract animals. Also, keep the acidic products to a minimum, as most plants prefer a PH level of around 5. Be sure to water your compost about once a week; rotation will also expedite the process! Before you know it, you'll have black gold right in your back yard. :) ” – Katharine L. via Facebook
“OK, someone told me [you can compost] a T-shirt. You think?” – EcolabelFund via Twitter
“The pulp left over from a juicer makes great compost.” – greenergirl via Twitter
“You need leaves. At least 50 percent wet to 50 percent dry materials. Saw dust is too acidic. Have fun with it!!” – PranaHeals via Twitter
For more info on how to make compost, see our Complete A to Z Compost Guide.
Learn how to live green on our streaming video site, Gaiam TV! | <urn:uuid:3d469260-5f1c-4102-b38d-c0c236b50f6a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://life.gaiam.com/article/compost | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920114 | 1,241 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Thanks to this handy dandy book....
We just started last week on Monday. This is how our week went last week with our Reader's Statements...
Monday- Reader's know that non-fiction texts are different than fiction texts
Tuesday- Reader's make predictions about what they will learn in non-fiction texts
Wednesday- Reader's know they don't have to read a non-fiction text from front to back.
Thursday- Reader's can compare and contrast fiction & non-fiction texts.
Friday- Reader's can notice and remember new learning from a non-fiction text. (Incorporating Schema, and connecting new learning with what we already knew).
For comparing and contrasting Fiction with Non-Fiction, I asked students to come to the carpet with a fiction book and a non-fiction book. Then, I actually gave each student a Venn diagram. We talked about what we use Venn diagrams for and how we would fill this one out. Then, I asked students to work with their reading budding to search their books to find similarities and differences in both texts.
Click the picture to get a copy of the venn diagram for students to fill out.
They did a really great job on this! Probably a little bit due to the fact that I strategically assigned their partners.. Whaaat? Teachers never do that.. do they?
So the thing that they were MOST excited about is our Wonderbox! We've only done it once, but even on FRIDAY AFTERNOON (Yes, Friday afternoon) when we had only about 3 minutes left before the dismissal bell rings, my kiddos are asking, "Ms. G, do we have enough time to figure out a wonderbox question?" I felt awful saying no :(. Ok, so our Wonderbox (Thanks to Debbie Milller) is just a box in our classroom where students write questions about things they are wondering. Here is the handy dandy little slip they fill out...
When they have something they are wondering, they write down the questions and drop it in our Wonderbox. Then, 2-3 times per week, we pull one question out of the box and see if we can find the answer. This has taught them to think about.. "Hmm, where will we find the answer to this question?? Oh probably in the weather books in the weather bin!" We have also talked about giving credit to the right person and citing our information by writing the title of the book where we found the information, the author, and the page number. We will build up to using online sources as well. We have a "Look what we've learned from our non-fiction books" bulletin board. Students will make small posters that have the question, the answer, and the citation for each Wonderbox question we complete.
Now- what happens if we can't find the answer to the questions? What else than to ask other people? But we all know that's nearly impossible with our crazy days. So we put up a bulletin board outside of our classroom that says. "We can't find the answers to these questions, can you help us?- Don't forget to tell us where you found your information! Here's an example.." (Pointing to an example) We attached markers to the paper with string and will check it everyday to see if anybody was able to answer our hard to find questions! Wish I had a picture of it, but I forgot to take one!
So the last thing we did this week that y'all might like.. On Friday, when I introduced noticing and remembering new learning, we talked a lot about Schema, thinking about what we already knew about the topic we were going to read about, and then keeping track of our new learning on sticky notes. I referred to the schema as a "File" in their head that stored all of the information about that topic. I had a big file folder cut out of poster paper. We put what we already knew about weather on one side of the open folder on sticky notes. Then, we read a book about weather and kept track of our new learning on a different color sticky note and put it on the opposite side. Last, we made new schema by connecting what we already knew with what we learned to make it easier to remember. They really got it! They put it to good use when they got their own "Schema" Folder (I gave each student a file folder). They had to do the same thing we had done during our mini-lesson. They seriously loved it! They keep their Schema folders in the Book Box so that they can always use this strategy.
So- that's what going on in our world of Non-Fiction! Hope that maybe you can use some of the freebies. I'll post sometime during the week about our "Conventions Notebooks." We are starting those this week! Hope everyone had a great Monday, I know I did.. I LOVE days off!! :) | <urn:uuid:0e978603-a79b-464d-9a9d-18c70b21f801> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://primaryteacherhood.blogspot.com/2012/11/non-fiction-fun-and-few-freebies.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97395 | 1,021 | 3.1875 | 3 |
1Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
2Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
3NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University, New York, USA
Received: 18 May 2010 – Published in Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss.: 28 Jun 2010
Abstract. Climatic effects of short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs) differ from those of long-lived greenhouse gases, because they occur rapidly after emission and because they depend upon the region of emission. The distinctive temporal and spatial nature of these impacts is not captured by measures that rely on global averages or long time integrations. Here, we propose a simple measure, the Specific Forcing Pulse (SFP), to quantify climate warming or cooling by these pollutants, where we define "immediate" as occurring primarily within the first year after emission. SFP is the amount of energy added to or removed from a receptor region in the Earth-atmosphere system by a chemical species, per mass of emission in a source region. We limit the application of SFP to species that remain in the atmosphere for less than one year. Metrics used in policy discussions, such as total forcing or global warming potential, are easily derived from SFP. However, SFP conveys purely physical information without incurring the policy implications of choosing a time horizon for the global warming potential.
Revised: 12 Nov 2010 – Accepted: 11 Jan 2011 – Published: 16 Feb 2011
Using one model (Community Atmosphere Model, or CAM), we calculate values of SFP for black carbon (BC) and organic matter (OM) emitted from 23 source-region combinations. Global SFP for both atmosphere and cryosphere impacts is divided among receptor latitudes. SFP is usually greater for open-burning emissions than for energy-related (fossil-fuel and biofuel) emissions because of the timing of emission. Global SFP for BC varies by about 45% for energy-related emissions from different regions. This variation would be larger except for compensating effects. When emitted aerosol has larger cryosphere forcing, it often has lower atmosphere forcing because of less deep convection and a shorter atmospheric lifetime.
A single model result is insufficient to capture uncertainty. We develop a best estimate and uncertainties for SFP by combining forcing results from 12 additional models. We outline a framework for combining a large number of simple models with a smaller number of enhanced models that have greater complexity. Adjustments for black carbon internal mixing and for regional variability are discussed. Emitting regions with more deep convection have greater model diversity. Our best estimate of global-mean SFP is +1.03 ± 0.52 GJ g−1 for direct atmosphere forcing of black carbon, +1.15 ± 0.53 GJ g−1 for black carbon including direct and cryosphere forcing, and −0.064 (−0.02, −0.13) GJ g−1 for organic matter. These values depend on the region and timing of emission. The lowest OM:BC mass ratio required to produce a neutral effect on top-of-atmosphere direct forcing is 15:1 for any region. Any lower ratio results in positive direct forcing. However, important processes, particularly cloud changes that tend toward cooling, have not been included here.
Global-average SFP for energy-related emissions can be converted to a 100-year GWP of about 740 ± 370 for BC without snow forcing, and 830 ± 440 with snow forcing. 100-year GWP for OM is −46 (−18, −92). Best estimates of atmospheric radiative impact (without snow forcing) by black and organic matter are +0.47 ± 0.26 W m−2 and −0.17 (−0.07, −0.35) W m−2 for BC and OM, respectively, assuming total emission rates of 7.4 and 45 Tg yr−1. Anthropogenic forcing is +0.40 ± 0.18 W m−2 and −0.13 (−0.05, −0.25) W m−2 for BC and OM, respectively, assuming anthropogenic emission rates of 6.3 and 32.6 Tg yr−1. Black carbon forcing is only 18% higher than that given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), although the value presented here includes enhanced absorption due to internal mixing.
Bond, T. C., Zarzycki, C., Flanner, M. G., and Koch, D. M.: Quantifying immediate radiative forcing by black carbon and organic matter with the Specific Forcing Pulse, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 1505-1525, doi:10.5194/acp-11-1505-2011, 2011. | <urn:uuid:305f9fa7-49f7-450b-96e1-809bed8568b8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/1505/2011/acp-11-1505-2011.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90406 | 1,009 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Quorum sensing is the ability of cells to sense cell density in a population. Cells use molecules called Auto-Inducers as transcriptional activators for density-dependent genes. As cells grow, they produce small concentrations of auto-inducers. In low concentrations, the auto-inducers do not have any activity. Once a certain cell-density is reached, enough auto-inducer is produced to trigger the expression of density dependent phenotypes. These new phenotypes contribute to factors that only help survival of the bacteria when large cell numbers are present. If these genes were expressed in small cell density, the cells would waste energy without exhibiting a use for the phenotype.
The first evidence of quorum sensing came from Myxobacterium in the 1960s. This experiment suggested that a secondary metabolite [substrate] was produced that triggered the differentiation of cells (8). In 1972, the classical QS system came from bioluminescence in the marine bacteria Photobacterium fischeria (now reclassified as Vibrio fischeri) (2). Until this research, cell-to-cell signaling was believed only to be a trait of multicellular organisms; these studies were initially taken with much skepticism. However, since the study of V. fischeri, many more density-dependent phenotypes have been identified in a wide range of bacteria.
QS is capable of controlling a large variety of phenotypes, many of which are of great interest in medicine and pathology. For example, some virulence factors in Streptococcus and Staphylococcus are only expressed once the population of bacteria is large enough to defeat the host immune system.
In Streptomyces species, mupirocin (a potent antibiotic) is only produced in late exponential and stationary phases (6). QS regulates the antibiotic production (15), so that they are only produced when surrounding cell count is high. By killing the cells around it, Streptomyces increases its own available nutrients.
A phenomenon known as swarming, the coordinated movement across a substrate by a population is also controlled by QS (7). Swarming motility is a virulence factor for some species, and also provides antibiotic resistance to the swarming cells (10). By inhibiting the QS of swarming cells, these virulence factors may be repressible.
It's believed that most prokaryotes have some sort of signaling mechanism for cell-to-cell communication. As experiments that attempt to elude QS mechanisms increasingly become more popular, so are the promises of QS targeting molecules for industry and medicine.
One of the most understood signaling mechanisms for prokaryotes is that of the bioluminescent bacteria Vibrio fisheri. V. fischeri is a Gram negative bacteria that lives in salt water either as non-luminous free plankton, or inside the light organs in marine fish where they are luminous. In 1972, it was shown that luminescence is a density-dependent phenotype; it is only expressed once a high enough density of cells is reached (2). In the experiments, it was shown that there is both an inhibitor and inducer (as the gene regulation mechanism was not investigated, the terms "repressor" and "activator" were not used) that are responsible for the regulation of the luminescent enzyme Luciferase. Cells were non-luminescent when first placed in fresh medium, where the inhibitor was present. The optical density of cells increased as expected; however luminescence did not change significantly until the threshold density was reached. This occurred when the bacteria were enough to consume the inhibitor and produce an activator, triggering luminescence. K. Nealson described the activator molecule responsible for activation as an "Auto-inducer"; a bacterial signaling molecule (13). In 1977, Nealson grew V. fischeri cells in medium with a contained cell density of 107 CFU/ml. At this density in normal growth medium, the cells produced no significant luminescence. However, when the presumed auto-inducer was artificially added, the cells did show considerable luminescence; showing that the auto-inducer is responsible for luminescence (14). When compared to the in situ life of V. fischeri, the results correspond with the evolutionary benefit for sensing neighboring cells. A QS system prevents single cells from producing the energy-consuming luminescence while not in the presence of a population; when the luminescence can not be seen. When the cells grow in symbioses with marine fish, nutrients are rich, and the cell density can trigger bioluminescence. New quorum sensing mechanisms are often compared to that of V. fischeri, and are often named "lux operon-like", after the auto-inducer regulatory mechanism of Luciferase.
Cells can use a variety of signaling molecules for QS systems; however some are much more common than others. Short peptides and amino acids, coded by gene sequences previously thought to be insignificant due to their short length, can be used as signaling molecules. These oligopeptides are used by Gram-positive bacteria by triggering phosphocascades. However, Homoserine Lactones (HSLs) are used by a wide variety of organisms. Bacteria also use a class of acylated HSLs (Acyl-Homoserine Lactone, or AHL) as their signaling molecule. HSLs and AHLs are found in Gram-negative bacteria. AHLs are hydrophobic, and able to diffuse through cell membranes to affect gene expressions. AHLs have a carbon side-chain with a variable length which is responsible for its effector selectivity.
Some signal molecules use transduction cascades to activate their target genes. And peptides generally use transport machinery in the membrane to interact with an intracellular target. Cells can even use more than one type of signal molecule to target gene expression. Pseudomonas aeruginus is a bacterial pathogen which causes severe infections in cystic fibrosis patients, often leading to death. P. aeruginus uses 2 AHLs (C4-HSL and C12-HSL) to trigger the formation of bio-film (11). These 2 AHLs are packaged into vesicles to convey their signal to neighboring cells. The packaging of the molecules is controlled by a molecule 2-heptyl-3-hydroxy-4-quinoline (Pseudomonas quinolone signal), which is also controlled by a quorum sensory molecule. Studies like that of Nakamura in P. aeruginus have shown how widespread quorum sensing is, and how important it is to the survival of a species.
Not only can cells respond to cells of the same species, but some experiments have shown cells to be able to respond to cells of other species (20). One of the most common signaling molecules is auto-inducer 2 (AI-2). AI-2 is highly conserved throughout bacteria; Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria both contain AI-2 producing genes. Many of these organisms use AI-2 as a growth regulatory molecule. The conservation of AI-2 suggests that cells can use it as an inter-species communication molecule. It's been hypothesized that different species in a population can use AI-2, but have reciprocal effects. A cell of one species can induce itself to enter logarithmic growth, while sending neighboring cells of different species into stationary phase.
QS systems are also capable of inter-kingdom communication. Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a bacteria that produces tumors in plants by transferring of a virulent Ti plasmid. A. tumefaciens can also transfer the Ti plasmid to other bacteria via conjugation. Conjugation requires high cell density. The Ti plasmid codes for conjugation genes which are expressed by a lux-like QS system activated by an AHL. The Ti plasmid forces tumor cells in the plant to produce opines, which trigger the conjugation to occur. (19)
One of the most important prospects of studying QS mechanisms is the idea of containing virulent factors in pathogens. There continues to be more studies being done on auto-inducer targeting molecules to fight against antibiotic resistance in industry and medicine. AI-2 mediated quorum sensing is common for activating virulent factors in enteric species. Cinnamaldehyde is one known molecule that disrupts AI-2 activity (1). While Cinnamaldehyde does not inhibit bacterial growth, it is able to inhibit AI-2 induced virulence factors in Vibrio spp., a common marine pathogen. Cinnamaldehyde inhibits the bio-film formation of a population, which makes the bacteria considerably more susceptible to stress and antibiotics. This suggests that molecules that target QS systems can be used themselves as a prophylactic, or in combination with an antibiotic to more efficiently kill pathogens. This is good news for the aquaculture industry, where Vibrio spp. infection is a large part of the economic loss. After years of overuse, Vibrio spp. has become resistant to common antibiotics used to prevent disease.
Molecules that mimic AHLs are also capable of inhibiting QS mediated phenotypes. It has been shown that N-nonanoyl-cyclopentylamide, an AHL-like molecule, is also capable of inhibiting virulence factors in Serratia marcescens (9). These new studies allude to a broad spectrum of molecules being used to inhibit microbial virulence. It may be possible to custom-make these molecules, targeting only specific systems and species. QS targeting molecules can be used in conjunction with antibiotics, rather than contributing to pathogen resistance by increasing the antibiotics being used.
Many pathogenic bacteria require the formation of bio-film colony morphology before they become virulent. These bacteria can often be beneficial to the host in a symbiotic relationship. However, bio-film can interfere with the host, starving it from oxygen and nutrients. Some marine plants have evolved to produce compounds that target QS systems responsible for bio-filming. The marine seaweed Delisea pulchra is one such host. D. pulchra has been shown to produce a halogenated furanone that interferes with bio-film formation on the level of quorum sensing (16).
The study of bio-filming bacteria is important in realizing how widespread quorum sensing systems are in bacteria. By studying marine sponges and invertebrates it is evident that most, if not all bacteria produce auto-inducers at some point in their life cycle (17). These studies also show that there is a sort of bio-cycle between growth stages in different species. That is to say, different bacteria species produce their auto-inducers at different life stages on the same host, which is indicative of the density-dependent nature of quorum sensing. Marine sponges appear to produce diketopiperazines (17) a molecule also shown to be produced by P. aeruginosa as an AHL system antagonist towards some bacteria (4). These molecules target the swarming motility in Serratia liquefaciens.
Swarming motility is a coordinated movement of bacteria across a substrate. Another example of multicellular activity in single-celled organisms, swarming motility is coordinated by quorum sensing. Reduced virulence was shown in Erwinia chrysanthemi when a null mutation was introduced to genes encoding for the AHLs responsible for swarming (10). Not much is known as to why some bacteria swarm, however the benefit has been demonstrated; antibiotic resistance. It's been suggested that alteration of LPS repels cationic antibiotics such as polymyxin and kanamycin in swarming Salmonella enterica. The proposed mechanism for resistance is addition of 4-amino-4-deoxy-L-arabinose to the lipid A of LPS, causing a more positively charged outer membrane. L-AraN is controlled under the QS pmrHFIJKLM operon, which is up-regulated in swarming cells (7).By targeting QS systems, it may be possible to prevent microbial infection without the negative side effects of antibiotics. It has been shown that virulence can decrease a number of ways; mimic auto-inducers, or molecules that inhibit auto-inducer synthesis or deletion of genes that code for auto-inducers. Hopefully by controlling QS involved with population and morphology, virulent and parasitic phenotypes can be repressed for medical and industrial purposes.
Quorum sensing has immediate obvious uses in medicine and improving human quality of life. But QS systems may also be manipulated for industrial uses. While QS antagonists can be used in industries such as aquaculture as an antibacterial agent, QS can also be manipulated for increased metabolite production for industrial purposes. While strain selection and genetic cloning are already techniques used in industry, QS may become easier, cheaper, and even more efficient than existing practices.
Acetic acid is a simple carboxylic acid, best known as the main ingredient in vinegar. Besides being a popular salad dressing, acetic acid is the precursor to many other products including Polyethylene Terephthalate (often called PET), a partially recyclable thermoplastic used in food and drink packaging. Acetic acid is normally produced synthetically from petrol products. Historically, humans have used bacteria to produce acetic acid, and acetic acid for vinegar is still produced biologically today. Oxidation of ethanol by Acetobacter produces acetic acid in aerobic conditions. Some anaerobes such as Clostridium can metabolize sugars straight to acetic acid, without the ethanol intermediate, making biologically produced ethanol much more efficient. It's very difficult to increase acetic acid yield in biological production because the product becomes toxic to cells, and will inhibit growth. The best available method to increase yield is to select strains that have a high resistance to acetic acid. Strains can also be genetically modified to produce high activity enzymes and growth; but it seems that a negative QS system is the biggest limiting factor in overall production.
Gluconacetobacter intermedius is an obligate aerobe, and produces acetic acid oxidatively from an alcohol precursor. By genetically manipulating cells to overexpress aldH from Gluconacetobacter polyoxogenes, cellsshow an increase in overall acetic acid production (3). aldH encodes a high activity aldehyde dehydrogenase - the enzyme responsible for acetic acid synthesis. aco from Acetobacter aceti, which encodes an aconitase can also be cloned to improve acetic acid production. Aconitase synthesizes isocitrate, an eventual precursor molecule for acetic acid.
Recently, it has been shown that genes that limit the overall acetic acid production in G. intermedius are controlled by a quorum sensing system (5). The quorum sensing system affects fermentation negatively, decreasing fermentation, and therefore energy yield and growth rate. Biologically, decreasing growth rate decreases production of acetic acid before it becomes toxic to the cells. This control mechanism helps in preventing a toxic level of acetic acid. A higher product yield can also be achieved by inhibiting the negative QS regulating cell growth. Inhibition of the QS system gives a higher product yield than genetic manipulates such as aldH cloning (1.4 fold compared to 2.4 fold, respectively)(5).By combining existing genetic techniques with new QS-level manipulation product yield could be even higher. While these techniques would most certainly be popularized in the vinegar industry, the plastic industry may stick to common petrol chemistry. Ideally, with further enhancement and on a larger scale, biological production may be a possible "green" solution to petrol reaction synthesis. Many industrial products have been known to be regulated by cell growth and density. QS may provide a way to molecularly trick cells into producing a desired product.
HSL – Homoserine Lactone
ASL – Acyl-Homoserine Lacton
AI-2 – Autoinducer-2
LPS – Lipopolysaccharide
Although only discovered just 3 decades ago and previously taken with skepticism, it has been shown that quorum sensing is an integral part of bacterial survival and life cycles. The importance of quorum sensing has not gone unnoticed; new studies are popularly being done from both medical and industrial sides of microbiology. By studying the biochemistry of quorum sensing, a better understanding of how bacteria become virulent can be obtained. Drugs that inhibit quorum sensing systems can help in containing virulent factors and keep patients, like those with Cystic Fibrosis, healthy. New drugs that target auto-inducers can provide a powerful solution to antibiotic resistance, which can save lives as well as industrial live stock. Manipulation of cell-to-cell communication can also result in a higher product yield in microbiological industries, such as acetic acid. By combining QS manipulation with genetic engineering and strain selection, a much higher product yield can be reached. Quorum sensing provides the perfect explanation for how industrial-products are regulated. It has been over 300 years since man first saw bacteria through a microscope, and although science has increased knowledge immeasurably since then, there still remains much to be seen. | <urn:uuid:eaad4861-9496-4700-a74a-d845925b400d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.biology-online.org/kb/print.php?aid=5710 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93778 | 3,619 | 3.875 | 4 |
The Ultimate Guide to Designing, Constructing, Planting and Maintaining Garden Ponds and Water Features
Whether it's a simple pond, an imaginative waterfall, or a lavish fountain, the water garden is fast-becoming one of the most popular and exciting backyard features.
Water weaves an exciting strand into the tapestry of any garden. A calm pool mirrors the sky and surrounding trees. Fountains, streams and waterfalls introduce movement and the relaxing sound of splashing water.
The Water Garden Encyclopedia opens with a section that explains how to get started and covers the basic principles of siting, finding the right equipment, and calculating sizes and capacities. The contents are then divided into six main sections: Water gardening in containers Formal ponds and water gardens Natural water gardens Waterfalls and fountains Imaginative use of pond features and decorations Pond plants and cultivation
Each section includes step-by-step illustrations and design ideas to spark the reader's imagination.
The Water Garden Encyclopedia provides all the expert guidance that's needed -- for beginner and experienced gardener alike. Lavishly illustrated and comprehensive The ultimate guide to designing, constructing, planting, and maintaining garden pools and water features Packed with tips, instructions, and photographs that guide the gardener through each stage
|Book:||The Water Garden Encyclopedia|
|Publisher:||Firefly Books, Limited|
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Not Even One’s Self is Belonging to Oneself
In the Dhammapada there is a profound verse:
“I have children, I have wealth,”
(thinking) thus the ignorant man is afflicted,
for even his own self is not owned by himself,
so how his children, how his wealth?” (Dhp 62)
which brings us straight to the core of the Buddha’s teaching: nothing whatsoever can be held onto as one’s self. If we can’t own and control even what is most close, dear and personal to us, our very selves, how can the other things closest to us, our families and belongings be so?
Why is our self not belonging to ourselves? Because everything, our whole world, is impermanent, unstable. What we take as “my self” is wholly dependent upon various impermanent, unstable conditions. According to the Buddha, all conditioned phenomena have the nature to arise, change, and pass away. Children are born, grow up, and go away. Expensive cars are bought, become rusty and defective after some years, and then are sold or discarded. The newest model of mobile phone or laptop is outdated in a year or two, if it does not break down or get stolen earlier. All worldly happiness is based on unstable things, and therefore this happiness eventually will pass away and give way to suffering.
The wealth gained through hard work, the children raised, houses built; the positions, status and repute we have gained, our bodies—all these things that we so wholeheartedly identify with will change and part from us, or we will part from them. Therefore, from the ultimate viewpoint of the Dhamma, they are not leading to true happiness and are not of ourselves.
To give an example of children bringing affliction and suffering: in Sri Lanka many young people, in search of greener pastures, emigrate. Their parents raise them with much concern and expense and then have to let go of them. The children give up their Sinhala nationality and become citizens of foreign nations. Their grandchildren are complete foreigners. Expatriate Sinhalese parents sometimes complain that their children don’t behave like Sinhalese children, but what else can be expected if their children don’t grow up in Sri Lanka?
The wealth, the belongings that are amassed are not of oneself, not “mine.” Tax officers, greedy children and spouses, jealous relatives, thieves, dishonest employees, internet scammers, economical crises, wars, terrorists, termites, cockroaches and rats, etc.—all can take away one’s wealth. One always has to guard one’s wealth and worry about it. And then, finally at death everything that one has amassed and has been able to hold on to has to be left behind.
Spouses and lovers are not self too: they will change in appearance; they are not as nice as one perceived them to be; they might run away with another; and they will get sick and die. The pretty young women or the handsome young man so craved for will after some years gain weight, get wrinkled skin and lose beauty. Attractive spouses are looked at by other men and women, and are often a source of jealousy and concern. When in love, only the nice aspects of the partner are perceived and focussed on, but when the strong feelings of romantic love fade, and the unpleasant habits of the partner become apparent, great disillusionment often takes place. This is why so many marriages fall apart after a few years, or if they don’t, then it is often for sake the children or out of respect for social and religious conventions. As an Italian proverb about marriage goes, “one year of fire, forty years of ashes.”
The Buddha said that he only teaches suffering and its cessation. Here are two abridgements of discourses given to laypeople which show how attachment to children and family gives rise to unhappiness.
Once King Pasenadi was dismissive when he heard that the Buddha had said that sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are born from those who are dear. His wife, Queen Mallika, after consulting with the Buddha, asked the king about his daughter: “Is Princess Vajiri dear to you?” The king agreed. Then the queen asked: “If the princess were to become ill or die, would sorrow and despair arise in you?” The king agreed again. Then the Mallika said, “This is why the Buddha said that sorrow and despair are born from those who are dear.” The queen continued to ask the king about his other wife, his son, herself, and his country, and the king realized that the Buddha was right and highly praised his wisdom. (Piyajatika Sutta, MN 87)
Another time the householder Bhadraka asked the Buddha if he could teach him about the arising and cessation of suffering. The Buddha said that if he were to teach Bhadraka with reference to the past and future that it would lead to doubt, so he would teach him suffering and its cessation right there itself. He asked Bhadraka whether there were people in his village whose death and misfortune would cause him suffering. Bhadraka replied, “Yes.” Then the Buddha asked the opposite, whether there were people whose death and misfortune would not cause him suffering. Bhadraka again agreed. The Buddha asked why there was a difference. Bhadraka replied that he was attached to the people, particularly his son and wife, whose misfortune would cause him suffering but not to the others. The Buddha then told Bhadraka to methodically apply this same principle, which is seen, known and immediately attained and penetrated in the present, to the past and future. “Whatever suffering arose in the past and future, all that is rooted in desire, conditioned by desire, for desire is the root of suffering.” (Bhadraka Sutta, SN 42:11)
Returning to the Dhammapada verse, it continues by stating that the ignorant one (or “foolish one,” balo), that is, one who does not understand and practise the teaching of the Buddha, is afflicted by suffering when he grasps children and wealth as “mine.” The ignorant person is blinded by deluded, distorted perceptions of beauty, permanence, happiness and self, and will suffer as a result. One suffers because one’s perceptions do not accord with actual reality. As the Buddha says in the Udana (Ud 2.8):
The disagreeable in an agreeable guise,
The non-dear in the guise of the dear,
Suffering in the guise of happiness—
Overwhelm the one who is negligent.
The Buddha does not deny that there are beauty and happiness in the world but he says that the causes for these are impermanent, and that when one does not clearly see that they have arisen dependent upon unstable conditions and therefore will change and fall away, then one will be afflicted. Only when one sees things as they are—as impermanent, suffering, and not-self—then one will realize the true happiness of freedom from suffering. Only Nibbana, the highest happiness, is unconditioned and therefore stable and lasting. But this highest happiness, like worldly wealth, has to be brought about by the right means, by effort. In the Ahara Sutta in the Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha teaches that wisdom and liberation of the mind (vijjavimutti) are due to a sequence of nourishing conditions (ahara): associating with good people, hearing the True Dhamma, faith, wise reflection, mindfulness and awareness, restraint of the senses, right conduct, the four foundations of mindfulness, and the seven factors of awakening.
Turning to the findings of modern Western science, according to cognitive psychotherapy, depression—which is the most prevalent mental disease these days, reaching epidemic proportions in many developing countries—can be caused by unrealistic expectations about such things as married life and gaining wealth. These unrealistic expectations can lead to low self-esteem. In order to overcome the resultant depression, patients are taught to change their thought patterns and perceptions and make their minds more balanced and realistic. This psychotherapy is not new at all; it was already taught by the Buddha 2500 years ago. The Buddha taught in his very first discourse that not getting what one wishes is suffering. He described the distorted perceptions mentioned above. He also taught three kinds of self-esteem: “I am better,” “I am worse,” and “I am equal,” which are also all causes of suffering. However, in contrast to cognitive psychotherapy, which aims at alleviation through lessening irrational ideas and perceptions, the Buddha taught the full eradication of the suffering through developing deep calm and insight. When one perceives with wisdom that all things that one builds oneself on, and gets self-esteem from, are not as permanent, pleasant and self as they first appear to be, but, upon wise reflection, are seen as bound to fall apart and therefore leading to affliction, then the mind will not regard them as self and ultimately will dissociate itself from everything and be liberated.
Many people strive hard to become attractive like the movie stars they see on TV, or to have an expensive car and fancy phone like their neighbours and colleagues. They are influenced by advertisements with beautiful models and stars encouraging them to buy things they don’t really need. When they can’t achieve what they want, many feel that they are unsuccessful and become depressed. Ten years ago there were no mobile phones in Sri Lanka, and no one had to worry about earning the money for them, but now everyone needs to have one and needs to work harder—and to complain harder about “rising costs of living” to their employers —to get and keep it, which adds to mental suffering. Wisely reflecting on the real need and purpose of what one strives for will lead to happiness. When seeing pictures of beautiful movie stars and when reading about the financial successes of millionaires, instead of focussing on what, at first, appears to be their happiness and beauty, one may wisely reflect on the emptiness and suffering in the lives of these apparently “successful” people. Many movie and pop stars and millionaires go through divorces, are addicted to alcohol and other drugs, are suffering from stress, depression and other psychological problems, have to undergo painful plastic surgery operations to stay beautiful, have to compete with others to stay at the top, have heart attacks, etc. Furthermore, the pictures of the beautiful people one sees in magazines are not real in the first place. Besides the thick layers of make-up, nowadays pictures are manipulated with photographic computer software so that even a person considered quite ugly can be made beautiful. There is this appropriate verse in the Udana (Ud 7.10):
The world is bound by delusion, it is regarded as if it were fine,
The fool bound to his acquisitions, enveloped by darkness,
Regards it as if it is eternal, but for one who sees, there is nothing.
The Buddha’s emphasis on seeing impermanence, suffering and not-self might seem negative, pessimistic and depressing, but this is not so at all. On the contrary, the Buddha is a realist and a true optimist because realistically seeing things as they actually are leads to true happiness, the happiness of liberation. Those who are just looking for worldly pleasures, status and material gain in life are the ones who will suffer and get depressed because of their unrealistic perceptions and expectations. Contemplating impermanence is not something recommended just for monks and nuns. In the Anguttara Nikaya (AN 5:57) the Buddha says: “A man or woman, whether lay or renunciant, should frequently reflect: ‘There will be separation and absence from all those who are dear and pleasing to me.’”
What Is the Real Sal Tree?
The sala or sal tree is an important tree in Buddhism. The twin sal trees in the sal wood of the Mallans near Kusinara dropped their fragrant flowers upon the Buddha while he was lying on his deathbed (D II 137-8, S I 157, A II 79, Ud 37, Th 948, Ap I 101). According to the commentary to the Majjhima Nikaya (M-a IV 182), the Buddha was born in the Sal wood park at Lumbini (lumbinisalavanuyyana); his mother giving birth while standing and holding the branch of a sal tree.
The important Mulapariyayasutta (M I 1), was taught by the Buddha while sitting at the root of the royal sal tree in the Subhaga grove at Ukkattha (M I 1 ff.). In the Gosinga Sutta, Sariputta Thera described the sal wood of Gosinga as follows: “The Gosinga wood is delightful, the night is moonlit, the sal trees are all in blossom; it is like heavenly scents are wafting. What kind of Bhikkhu could illuminate this grove?” (M I 212). The Canki Sutta describes how the Brahmin Canki and other Brahmins of Opasada village visited the Buddha while he was staying in the nearby sal wood, called the “Gods’ wood” (M II 164). The Brahmin Navakammika went to the Buddha while he was sitting meditating at the root of a sal tree in a sal wood (S I 179/SN 7:17). The Gavesisutta (A III 214–18) was taught in a large sal wood that the Buddha noticed while travelling with a big group of monks on a road in the Kosala country.
The previous Buddha Vessabhu attained enlightenment under a great sal tree (D II 4). The tree is also mentioned in the suttas in relation to its wood, used for making boats (A II 201). In the Sonaka Jataka the sal is said to be a delightful tree with a straight trunk and leaves with a bluish lustre (J V 251).
The sal tree’s Latin name is Shorea robusta. The sal tree belongs to the Dipterocarpaceae family and is related to the hora tree (Dipterocarpus zeylanicus) of Sri Lanka. It grows naturally in the foothills of the Himalaya, such as in Terai region of Northern India and Southern Nepal, and also in central India in Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, etc. It can reach 35 meters high with a girth of 2.5m.
Large clusters of small, but pretty, fragrant, drooping white flowers cover the tree in spring, usually in April, depending on the altitude. In dry regions it loses its leaves in the dry season, which lasts from February to April. The seeds are dispersed through helicopter-like fruits. The wood is renown for its robustness and durability. Being waterproof it is used as an outdoor wood, for railway sleepers, bridges, boats, etc, and also indoor for roof-beams, windows, etc. The resin is used for making wooden boats water proof, as an astringent and detergent medicine, and as an incense. Sal forests are prominent in Indian national parks such as the Bandhavgarh and Kanha tiger reserves in Madhya Pradesh.
In areas with regular forest fires, this fire-resistant tree grows in open stands with no other kinds of trees and no or little undergrowth, which would explain why the Buddha and arahants chose it as a convenient place to stay. The following description from the World Wildlife Fund describes the sal forest well:
“In the lowland parts of the Terai, you can sometimes end up in a forest comprising entirely of one tree species, the majestic sal tree. Standing in a sal forest is a completely different experience from the nearby diverse and dense jungles. The tree trunks are long and straight, and there is plenty of light. During spring, while the sal trees are in blossom, the air is filled with a strong, sweet and pleasant smell. Sal is a hardwood species that is unusually resistant to rotting and to attacks of hungry insects.”
Captain Forsyth, in his High land of Central India, described the Sal woods of the Kanha reserve as follows:
“Throughout the summer, the glossy dark-green foliage of sal reflects the light in a thousand tints, and first when all other vegetation is at its worst, a few weeks before the gates of heaven are opened in the annual monsoon, the sal selects its opportunity of bursting into a fresh garment of the brightest and softest green.”
In Sri Lanka, Thailand and other Buddhist countries there is confusion as to the identity of the sal tree. What is called “sal” in Sri Lanka and Thailand is a beautiful tree with many large fragrant pink flowers and large, melon-size woody round fruits hanging from its trunk and branches. This is not Shorea robusta; instead, it is the cannonball tree, Couroupita guianensis, native to the jungles of Northeastern South America. It was introduced to Asia in colonial times, probably as a curiosity by the plant loving Victorian British. It is quite a different tree from the sal tree that grows in northern India and Nepal and is not related to it. There are no reports of cannonball trees forming groves and they are not growing in the wild in Asia. It is not possible to stay under a cannonball tree because of the heavy fruits falling down and the fallen, rotting flowers forming a slippery sludge on the forest floor.
From Impermanence to Liberation
Buddha’s contemporaries like Heraclites saw the impermanence of everything and said that one cannot step into the same river twice. We don’t really know anything else they may have said about impermanence, nor do we know what they did with their knowledge of impermanence. Mere theoretical knowledge of impermanence does not do anything for us, unless it is used for some purpose. The ancient Greeks seem to have stopped right there, apparently without knowing what to do with this knowledge.
When I was in the Buddhist Vihara in Washington D.C. there was a little baby boy. He was only ten days old. His father brought him to the Vihara very often. This very tiny little baby appeared to be very happy to see me. When he began to crawl he crawled towards me and affectionately stretched his hands towards me to be lifted and be carried. He grew up like my own child. One day, when he was almost ten years old, and I returned to the Vihara from one of my trips, he came to me and wanted to hug me. I told him, “You are big, and you are unhuggable.” The boy said: “Bhante, let us face facts. Everything is impermanent. I am grown up and you cannot hug me any more.”
Not only philosophers and scientists but also even this little boy knows that everything is impermanent.
Almost twenty-five or thirty years ago a very good friend of mine took a walk with me. He was a very serious meditator. So, whenever he and I were together, we would discuss something related to meditation. During this particular walk I said to him that everything is impermanent. Being a mathematician he asked me, “What about mathematics? Is mathematics impermanent too?”
I was quiet for a while, thinking how best to answer his question, when he said, “I don’t think of mathematics as impermanent.”
Ever since then, I have been thinking about it. I always thought he was right. “Yes mathematics is something permanent.”
Then one day this thought occurred to me again during my meditation paying attention to impermanence. I saw that impermanence does not exist in isolation by itself. There must be some thing to be impermanent. If there is nothing there is no impermanence. In the absence of anything, impermanence does not make any sense. Then I asked myself “How about mathematics? Can mathematics exist by itself without any object to work with?”
Just as impermanence does not make any sense without any object, mathematics does not make any sense if there are no objects in the entire universe for the mathematics or mathematicians to work with. If there are no beings to make use of the application of mathematics, then all the theories of mathematics don’t make any sense.
As long as objects exist, impermanence exists. Similarly, as long as objects exist, mathematics exists. Because the objects are impermanent, the mathematics that uses those impermanent objects is also impermanent. So, from that perspective, mathematics cannot be permanent.
We can all understand impermanence superficially. But deep down in our subconscious mind a sense of permanence is lurking. So we keep patching up our broken teeth, wrinkled dry skin, brittle nails, grey hair, hunched backs, weak eyes, impaired hearing, becoming sick, breaking bones and many other things caused by impermanence in this fragile body. Similarly our moods, our feelings, our thoughts, our perceptions, and our memories all go through many changes in every moment. We take medicines, see mental health specialists, and do many other things, including meditation, to correct our minds. While we are doing all this, impermanence is still going on crushing everything inside our body and mind very systematically. While all the organs, all the cells, nervous system, quality of blood, capacity of oxygen content in the lungs and the bone structure are going through this very rapid and unmistakable change, no matter how much we patch up on the surface and beneath the skin, impermanence is working its course very consistently underground or inside the body and mind. Nothing on earth, no science, no technology, no magic can help to stop this change. It keeps burning everything systematically.
Seeing impermanence is the key that opens our mind to see suffering, and non-self. The moment we understand this very clearly, our mind opens to the fact that things change without leaving a trace behind to trace the path that impermanence has taken. This is called signlessness. This awareness evaporates the desire for anything impermanent. It also evaporates our hatred or resentment from our mind. Then naturally, this clean mind becomes fully aware of not having any immovable mover, which sometimes is called self or soul by some people. This element of Dhamma, this steady intrinsic nature of all, this law of Dhamma is known in Buddhism as emptiness of self. Seeing impermanence with wisdom is the key to nonattachment, cessation and abandonment.
Discovering impermanence the Buddha, independently, without anybody’s support, went a few steps further and with his profound wisdom he saw that not only is it impossible for a man to step into the same river twice, but he also saw clearly that the same man cannot step into the same river twice. And yet, even this knowledge doesn’t do any service to us.
The Buddha is the only one who saw the connection between impermanence and suffering and the elimination of suffering. He did not try to stop impermanence by attaining enlightenment. He knew that it is an impossible and unattainable goal. So, the Buddha not only saw that everything is impermanent, he also realized that impermanence has a very direct relationship with suffering. It is not impermanence itself that causes suffering, but the clinging to impermanent things that causes suffering, and by not clinging to impermanent things that suffering can finally be brought to an end.
It is not simply because things are impermanent that we suffer, but it is because of our attachment to impermanent things that we suffer. The Buddha points out in Mahasuññata Sutta that suffering arises from the attachment to impermanent things.
“I do not see even a single kind of form, Ananda, from the change and alteration of which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair in one who lusts for it and takes delight in it.” (MN 122)
This passage clearly states that suffering arises from the attachment to form not because the form is impermanent but because we are attached to impermanent form. When we attain full enlightenment we do not suffer. This happens not because we make any impermanent thing permanent. This happens only when we give up our attachment to impermanent things. Impermanent things continue to be impermanent whether we attain enlightenment or not. We don’t stop their impermanent nature that exists whether the Buddhas come into existence or not. If impermanence itself causes suffering even after attainment of enlightenment, the enlightened individual would continue to suffer because he or she has not been able to stop impermanence being impermanent. Suffering can be stopped by not being attached to impermanent things, but it is impossible to make impermanent objects permanent.
The nature of the Dhamma
“Bhikkhus, whether Tathagatas appear or do not appear, there is this established element of Dhamma, this fixed law of Dhamma. All that is conditioned is impermanent. To this a Tathagata fully awakens and fully understands. So awakened and thus understanding, he announces, points out, declares, establishes, expounds, explains, classifies and clarifies it: all that is conditioned is impermanent.
“Bhikkhus, whether Tathagatas appear or do not appear, there is this established condition of Dhamma, this fixed law of Dhamma. All that is conditioned is unsatisfactory. To this a Tathagata fully awakens and fully understands. So awakened and thus understanding, he announces, points out, declares, establishes, expounds, explains, and clarifies it: all that is conditioned is unsatisfactory.
“Bhikkhus, whether Tathagatas appear or do not appear, there is this established condition of Dhamma, this fixed law of Dhamma. All dhammas are without self. To this a Tathagata fully awakens and fully understands. So awakened and understanding, he announces, points out, declares, establishes, expounds, explains, and clarifies it: all dhammas are without self.” (A I 286)
“Seeing thus, impermanence, suffering and selflessness of all conditioned things, one becomes disenchanted with everything. Disenchantment leads to dispassion towards everything. With a dispassionate mind one sees cessation of everything. With this insight or wisdom one lets go of attachment. This is how one becomes insightful into reality. Alternately being dispassionate, he liberates himself from suffering. Being liberated, he knows that he is liberated, has ended birth, has lived the noble life, has done what was to be done, and there is nothing more to be done. This means attaining full liberation from suffering begins with perfect awareness of impermanence.
Here we must remember that disenchantment does not mean anything negative. It is the positive and mature attitude of someone who is spiritually grown into spiritual adulthood. The Buddha has given a very meaningful simile of children playing with sand castles on beaches. While making castles and playing with them children imagine that they are real castles. After a while, they grow tired of playing with these castles. Then they break them and scatter them here and there. Adults watching them playing with the sand castles are amused, reflecting on the nature of the children’s minds. Neither the adults nor children are disgusted or disappointed with the sand castles. They simply let the castles go.
Likewise, the attachment to impermanent objects (feelings, perceptions, thoughts and consciousness) is the cause of suffering. Because things are changing without any prior notice, unsatisfactoriness arises. Since there is nothing to stop or control impermanence, the realization arises that there is no self. Seeing with wisdom this entire process, mindful meditators are disenchanted with all conditioned things.
So the Buddha used the knowledge of impermanence to gain liberation from suffering and attain permanent peace. Other philosophers saw impermanence and yet still stayed in samsara. They did not know what to do with the knowledge of impermanence.
—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha
With the support of a generous donor the BPS arranged for Wisdom Publications to print 4000 copies of a special, cheaply priced Middle Length Discourses for distribution only in Sri Lanka and India. The books are available at the BPS bookshop in Kandy for Rs. 1500,- more than two thirds cheaper than the current Sri Lankan price. BPS members in Sri Lanka and India can also order it from the BPS at this price, not including mailing costs.
In Colombo the books are available for Rs. 1750,- at the Buddhist Cultural Centre bookshops.
- Jataka Stories of the Buddha
- Buddhist Nuns
- Bound Wheels Volume VI
- Mindfulness of Breathing
- Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization
Forthcoming within the next few months
- Facets of Buddhist Thought, K. N. Jayatilleke
- Buddhism, A Living Message, Piyadassi Thera
- Noble Eightfold Path, Bhikkhu Bodhi
- Bound Wheels Volume VII,
- Wheels 91–105 Buddha and his Teaching, Narada Thera
- The word bhabbarupa or bhavyarupa means suitable, becoming, capable, handsome, right. It is mentioned in the Kalamasutta as one of the criteria not to be used for accepting a teaching [Back] | <urn:uuid:97c9eedf-9cd8-457e-85d8-aa97e227f75e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bps.lk/olib/nl/nl063-p.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961517 | 6,300 | 2.796875 | 3 |
The SIN function returns the trigonometric sine of a REAL or COMPLEX argument.
x is an INTENT(IN) scalar or array of type REAL or COMPLEX and must be expressed in radians.
The result is of the same type and kind as x. Its value is a REAL or COMPLEX representation of the sine of x.
Examplereal :: x..5,y(2)=(/1.,1./) complex :: z=(1.,1.) write(*,*) sin(x) ! writes .4794255 write(*,*) sin(y) ! writes .8414709 .8414709 write(*,*) sin(z) ! writes (1.298457 .6349639) | <urn:uuid:e11257f8-cbb8-4a09-b217-b52549916806> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.lahey.com/docs/lfpro75help/f95arsinfn.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.666662 | 154 | 3.25 | 3 |
Water safety for kids should be taught as early as possible. Kids over the age of four should be able to begin swimming lessons, although there are benefits to introducing children to water from as little as a year old.
Try not to expose children under the age of five to any water colder than 28 degrees, with usually around 30 for babies. Body temperatures drop faster in the water than on land so if they complain of leg cramps or appear to be shivering take them out immediately.
It can take as little as two centimetres of water for a child to suffer from secondary drowning. A small amount of water prevents oxygen from flowing through the bloodstream properly, and fatalities may occur anywhere between one and seventy two hours after inhalation. Look out for the symptoms, including troubled breathing, changes in behaviour, chest pains, fatigue and coughing.
With children under the age of five, almost anything can present a drowning risk – even more so for babies under a year old, who can drown in just a few centimetres of water.
Constant supervision is the ideal solution to the problem but, as any parent will tell you, is simply not possible at all times. So the next best thing is to keep your house free of any and all potential risks, including mop buckets with any water left in them and inflatable paddling pools.
Children should never be left unattended when in the bathroom, especially when in the bath, although even an unlocked toilet seat could present enough danger.
The danger becomes far greater when the home has a swimming pool. Although there is no substitute for supervision, there are several excellent security measures you can put in place to make your swimming pool less of a death trap.
Swimming pool safety covers, especially the automatic kind which have pressure sensors designed to stop the closing process upon coming into contact with something, are the best method of protection although you need to ensure that it is a genuine safety cover capable of taking the weight of an adult. Winter and solar pool covers are not the same as safety covers.
The second line of defence is with a pool fence, which in many countries is a legal requirement – not just for the family in that house but for neighbouring children and animals.
Fences which separate the pool from the outside of the garden are not nearly as effective as those which cover all four sides of the pool. The fencing should be at least four feet high, you should be able to see through it, the latch should be at least three feet from the floor, and the door should be self-closing and self-latching.
You can also get covers for the pool’s drains which prevent the suction from trapping anyone under water, and alarms which will alert you if any motion is sensed underneath the water line.
Some other safety tips for the pool include
- Not keeping anything near the fence that can be used to climb over
- Install a pool alarm that senses motion beneath the water
- Keep slats or holes in the fence less than a few inches wide
- Remove all toys from the pool area so children aren’t tempted to fetch them later
- Don’t allow any toys with wheels in the vicinity
- Keep rescue equipment nearby – a lightweight pole which covers the length of the pool and a buoy ring
- Always have a portable telephone on hand, in case of emergency
- Tie up long hair so it doesn’t become trapped and cause a hazard
- Keep children under five within arm’s length at all times
Water conducts electricity – salt water even more so – which means being the highest object in a body of water makes you the prime target for lightning strikes.
It’s also important that you teach anyone who uses the pool to adhere to your safety rules – if necessary you should print out information to put up around the pool. No one should be:
- Pretending to be in distress (this could derail a genuine emergency)
- Pushing anyone into the pool
- Using electrical equipment in the pool area
- Using glass in the pool area
Remember that the vast majority of children who drown in back garden pools had been out of sight for less than five minutes.
Hygiene is just as important as safety when using a swimming pool. Young children, pregnant women and those with poorly functioning immune systems are most likely to be affected.
To avoid illness, don’t allow anyone who has had diarrhoea in the last eek into the pool, and children should be taken to the toilet regularly and washing their hands. If the child is still young enough to use a nappy it should be a waterproof one, and they should be change far away from the pool – the parasite cryptosporidium is spread through water by leaking nappies and can give horrible symptoms to anyone who catches it.
After swimming, clean the child’s hair and ears very carefully to avoid swimmer’s ear and other bacterial infections.
On hot days, it can be difficult to recognise the signs of dehydration and sun stroke. Reapply sun screen regularly, as water effectively magnifies the UV rays, and wear sunglasses and hats when possible.
It’s also important to continually drink water to stay hydrated, as it can be hard to tell how much you have been sweating. Nausea, light-headedness and dizziness are all common symptoms of dehydration.
On hot days, there is little more pleasant than splashing around in a local river with friends. Most of the time, this is a perfectly safe environment to stay cool – you just need to be aware, and make children aware, of the potential dangers.
They may be a lot colder than expected, have difficult sides to get in and out of the water, and there may even be strong currents which aren’t apparent from the bank. There is also the chance that weeds, grass and dumped rubbish could be hiding beneath the water, potentially entangling swimmers.
Encourage children to always wear foot protection when swimming outdoors, especially where the bottom of the river can’t be seen. They should be aware of the fact that there are no lifeguards there, and taught the correct procedure for helping a friend who’s drowning.
- Do NOT get in the water after them
- Find a long piece of rope or stick nearby
- Lie down on the bank, offering the rope or stick out, preferably with another friend holding your legs
It’s also important that children know not to swim in boating areas, not to dive into water where they aren’t completely sure of the depth.
Swimming in the sea can often be a relatively safe way to get exercise in the water, but only when there is a lifeguard around – that is the most important lesson you can impart to children about swimming in the sea.
Teach children to only swim where a lifeguard can see them, to stay away from any piers or buildings that strong currents could push them into, and never stand in the water with their back to the waves.
Knowledge is Power
Anyone around the ocean should be aware of what drowning looks like. Media representations have taught us that when people drown, they scream and flail their arms around, but this usually isn’t the case.
Drowning tends to be silent, as the victim is unable to scream while trying to breath, and they will usually float on top of the water with their arms outstretched straight. This is called the “instinctive drowning response” and can appear to be quite calm, but leads to submergence below the water.
Impart the message to kids that if they are in trouble, they should tread water and try to wave for help. Lying on your back can help to keep your face out of water.
With some time and patience, you can explain water safety to your kids in a way they’ll understand, and will keep them safe around any bodies of water in the future. | <urn:uuid:7292ed1c-99e3-4f87-997d-32f13a46954d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.paramountpools.co.uk/news/water-safety-for-kids/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964929 | 1,644 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Stanza 3 Summary
Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
- The valley of Death turns out to be just about as lousy as it sounds. The soldiers are surrounded by enemy cannon, left, right, and front. Bad news for the Light Brigade.
- Notice how Tennyson stretches this simple information out over three lines. What effect does that have?
- Well, for one thing, it echoes the three lines in the section above (13-15), which also all start with the same word.
- It also makes the feeling of being surrounded much more intense. It's almost as if we are right there, turning our heads right, left, and forward, and seeing cannon everywhere. Scary, huh?
Volleyed and thundered;
- A little vocab here: a "volley" from a cannon is just a round of firing.
- So these huge walls of cannon all around them are firing, and making a sound like thunder.
- Want to know what cannon fire is like? Check out this YouTube video.
Stormed at with shot and shell,
- The soldiers in the Light Brigade are being "stormed at," by gunfire, an image that picks up on the word "thundered" in the line we just read.
- The "shot" (bullets) and "shell" (big explosives fired from cannon) are a violent, noisy, destructive force that reminds the speaker of a storm.
Boldly they rode and well,
- These guys aren't scared of some gunfire, though. In fact, they ride "boldly" (bravely) even though this is looking more and more like a suicide mission.
- The point of this poem is to show us how heroic these men were.
Into the jaws of Death,
- Tennyson has a lot of images for this scary valley, and he brings some more of them in here. Now the valley of Death becomes the "jaws of Death."
- We'll admit it's not a super-original image, but it works well here. It's almost as if these guys were riding into the mouth of some kind of ferocious animal.
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
- This is the spot (at the end of the stanza) where the refrain belongs (see lines 7-8 and 16-17), but Tennyson switches things up a bit here. Instead of "Into the valley of Death," now the men are riding "Into the mouth of hell."
- The "mouth of hell" matches up nicely with the "jaws" in the line before, and it's just one more way of emphasizing how bad the valley is and how brave these men are.
- Changing the refrain also helps to keep us on our toes a little, and keeps the poem from seeming stale or repetitive. | <urn:uuid:c541c86c-4c14-4a44-be09-4892b3d02af4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.shmoop.com/charge-of-light-brigade-poem/stanza-3-summary.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95064 | 634 | 2.78125 | 3 |
The town of Las Médulas is located in the region of El Bierzo, Leon. This small mountain town marks the natural beginning of the ascent towards Las Médulas, a unique cultural landscape that was declared a World Heritage by UNESCO. The serrated relieve of this landscape, marked by red clayey mountains and covered by chestnut trees, owes its appearance to the Romans, who altered the natural environment in this area when they established a gold mine in the 1st century AD. For this purpose they came up with an ingenious system called "ruina montium", which used water force to crumble down the soil and expose the gold. The two centuries that this type of mining went on, caused the formation of the peculiar relieve of Las Médulas. Red-clay erosion gullies, towers, and underground galleries, all surrounded by chestnut trees, make up this cultural landscape. Peaks higher than 100 metres lead to the centre of the gold mine, the Cueva Encantada (Enchanted Cave) and Cuevona (the Huge Cave). Eight kilometres away from Las Médulas, the viewpoint of Orellán offers one of the best views of the whole place. Once in the town of Las Médulas we can see an exhibition at the archaeological learning centre, which provides the visitor with all kinds of information about the history of this singular Roman site. In the region of Bierzo, crossed by the "Camino de Santiago" (Pilgrim's Road to Santiago de Compostela), we can visit other interesting places, like Villafranca del Bierzo, Cacabelos, and the monastery of Santa María de Carracedo.
- See all the information on the destination at:
Must see views in: Las Médulas
In the following map you'll find the locations of all the incredible views that we have recommended. Don't miss a thing! | <urn:uuid:4915f5bc-5f24-4bc1-80ad-73db2f884e37> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.spain.info/en/que-quieres/ciudades-pueblos/otros-destinos/las_medulas.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.89648 | 390 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Here's How Oysters Can Solve Our Ag Pollution Problems
Think of it as a surf-and-turf solution to agriculture runoff. Rivers and waterways across the country are carrying high loads of nitrogen, much of which originates as fertilizer and livestock waste from farms upstream. A growing amount of research, including a new study published in the journal Aquatic Geochemistry, suggests the most promising solution to that pollution is oysters.
The new study, conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey, looked at the Potomac River in particular. The research suggests that if shellfish populated 40 percent of the riverbed, the estuary could be completely rid of nitrogen pollution. Because a full oyster takeover of the brackish waters where the Potomac flows into the Chesapeake Bay is highly unlikely, the authors offer this middle-ground proposal too: Covering just 15 to 20 percent of the river’s bottom with oysters, which filter the water as they feed, could pull nearly half of the excess nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, out of the water.
While shellfish and ag runoff are both mainstays of the Chesapeake Bay, filtering polluted waterways via oysters isn’t a solution that’s limited to the coast of Maryland and Virginia. Rebuilding wild oyster beds and farming oysters is a viable solution to water pollution across the country. It has even been suggested that the Gowanus Canal, the Brooklyn creek that’s so toxic, new forms of pathogens are developing there, could benefit from an oyster bed.
Which begs the question: Why aren’t we introducing oysters and other shellfish to all estuaries? Not only could they help reverse years and years of excess ag runoff around the country, but the oysters from cleaner waters are good to eat too—but don't expect to be slurping Gowanus bivalves any time soon. | <urn:uuid:42b40c12-afcf-46aa-92af-8f750912e6e6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/04/15/oysters-ag-pollution | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94669 | 403 | 3.4375 | 3 |
Fat fliers weigh down on airlines
Heavy suitcases aren't the only things weighing down airplanes and requiring them to burn more fuel, pushing up the cost of flights. A new government study reveals that airlines increasingly have to worry more about the weight of their passengers.
America's growing waistlines are hurting the bottom lines of airline companies as the extra kilos on passengers are causing a drag on planes.
Heavier fliers have created heftier fuel costs, according to the government study, and the extra fuel burned also had an environmental impact, as an estimated 3.8 million extra tonnes of carbon dioxide were released into the air.
Through the 1990s, the average weight of Americans increased by 4.5kg, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
The extra weight caused airlines to spend $US275 million ($A364 million) to burn an additional 1.4 billion litres of fuel in 2000 just to carry the additional weight of Americans, the federal agency estimated in a recent issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
"The obesity epidemic has unexpected consequences beyond direct health effects," said Dr Deron Burton of the CDC.
"Our goal was to highlight one area that had not been looked at before."
The extra fuel burned also had an environmental impact, as an estimated 3.8 million extra tonnes of carbon dioxide were released into the air, according to the study.
The agency said its calculations are rough estimates, issued to highlight previously undocumented consequences of the ongoing obesity epidemic.
The estimates were calculated by determining how much fuel the extra 4.5kg per passenger represented in Department of Transportation airline statistics, Burton said.
Obesity is a life-or-death struggle in the United States, the underlying cause of 400,000 deaths in 2000, a 33 per cent jump from 1990.
If current trends persist, it will become the nation's number one cause of preventable death, the CDC said earlier this year.
More than half - 56 per cent - of US adults were overweight or obese in the early 1990s, according to a CDC survey.
That rose to 65 per cent in a similar survey done from 1999 to 2002. | <urn:uuid:cd96e70e-b544-400a-9ba2-22efc6864437> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/05/1099547363723.html?from=storylhs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964179 | 445 | 2.875 | 3 |
Native American Child HealthHome | Awards | Locum Tenens | Activities | Resources | Reach Out & Read
National Children's Study Box Lunch Session
International Meeting on Inuit and Native American Child Health
April 29, 2005
Alan Fleischman, MD
James Jarvis, MD (Moderator)
Dr Alan Fleischman is a pediatrician and Acting Chair of the Federal Advisory Committee and Ethics Advisor to the National Children's Study at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH. Dr Fleischman began the session by providing an overview of the National Children's Study.
The National Children's Study (NCS) will be the largest and most ambitious study of child health ever to be conducted in the US. It will be a longitudinal study of children, their families, and the environment from preconception through age 21. The study defines "environment" in a broad way to encompass chemical, biological, physical, behavioral, social, and cultural environments. The NCS plans to study a wide range of common environmental exposures and will measure the impact of the environment on children and on the genetic expression of their inherent genetic capacities.
History of the National Children's Study
The study has a long and mobile history that originated from a large body of epidemiological work "Framingham Study for Children". The study officially began in 1997, when President Clinton created a Task Force on Environmental Health and Safety Risks to Children. This Task Force was charged with developing strategies to reduce risk of environmental exposures to children. This was a very high-level Task Force, as the co-chairs included the US Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.� Task Force members included Cabinet officers and senior staff. This group was created because there was awareness that the annual economic burden to society for just a few child health conditions was $800 billion. This figure represents only the economic burden (does not take humanity into account) of just a few conditions.�
By 2000, the Task Force reported that children are especially vulnerable to environmental exposures, which possibly lead to serious developmental effects. They suspected that many conditions had suspected environmental contributions (ie. learning disabilities, autism, diabetes, asthma, behavioral disorders, prematurity); however, the Task Force concluded that the existing research was inadequate. They felt that a large longitudinal study was required to link multiple exposures to multiple outcomes. At first, discussions centered around environmental exposures such as chemicals (eg. pesticides), but experts indicated that there are multiple factors in a child's environment that are even more important. The need to measure all of these factors became evident, as this one would not be able to make clear inferences or associations otherwise.
In 2000, Congress passed the Children's Health Act. This legislation authorized the NICHD to conduct a national longitudinal study on environmental influences in children's health and development. Although the NICHD was identified as the lead agency, a concept central to the study was that it would integrally involve other agencies such as the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency. At this point, a broad-based consortium has been developed, with over 40 government agencies engaged.
Planning of the National Children's Study
There are several challenges inherent to a study of this nature:
� Biostatisticians have told them they need a minimum study cohort of 100,000 children in order to obtain a true probability sample.
o Determining sampling strategy and creating cohort
o Maintaining cohort over a long period of time
� Exposure period begins during conception and goes all the way through the life cycle.
� Genetic expression is affected by the environment and gene-gene interactions.
The NCS plans to utilize state of the art technology in all of their approaches and measurement. This will involve extensive public-private partnerships. They are committed to involving academic scientists and social scientists in this process through a center-based structure. They do not want this to be a federally implemented study, rather they would like this to be a federally funded and planned study. Public-private collaborations have already been established, with over 2,400 individuals (both federal and academic communities) involved in the planning process.� Once a dataset is created, it was also felt that scientists and social scientists could mine the public use datasets to ask and answer research questions over many decades.
It was determined that hypotheses were needed to guide the study. Hypotheses will help ensure that important questions are being asked and that the big questions are being answered. In addition, hypotheses can help to justify some costly elements to the study ? so if there were trade-offs for what was going to be measured, the hypotheses could help to guide the trade-offs that are being made. It was also felt that hypotheses were needed to know that the questions were going to be answerable with a cohort of 100,000 children.��
The NCS has developed a series of hypotheses guides. Dr Fleishman shared an example of hypotheses that have been developed related to asthma.�
� What is the relationship of maternal stress during pregnancy to asthma?
� What is the relationship of early exposure to microbial products and asthma?
� How is asthma incidence and severity influenced by incidence of early life infection and air quality?
There are also priority exposures related to asthma such as:�
� Physical environment (neighborhoods and communities, housing stock, radiation, air pollution)
� Chemical exposure (pesticides, pollution)
� Pharmaceuticals (medicines, vaccines)
� Biologic environment (infectious agents, metabolic issues)
� Genetic environment (gene environment and gene-gene issues)
� Psychosocial and Cultural Environment (social capital, social networks, social support,� communities, racism, psychosocial import to children and families)
Priority Outcomes of the National Children's Study
Dr Fleischman identified several priority outcomes for the NCS. In general, they will try to gather data to determine what correlates to health and ill-health. In addition, they are committed to the development of an anonymized data set; with public data sets that are made available to the research community as soon as physically and feasibly possible. He stated that although there were other important outcomes, the following were considered the priorities:
� Neurodevelopment and Behavior
� Injury (primarily unintentional)
� Obesity/Physical Development
Methodology of the National Children's Study
It is expected that children who take part in the NCS will be born by 2010. Children will be identified through the use of a national probability sample, which will therefore be representative of all children in the US. Use of a probability sample will allow the NCS to make exposure-outcome inferences, and be scientifically more powerful.
The National Center for Health Statistics at the CDC utilized a probability mechanism to select 101 sites, which are counties or clusters of counties. These sites were chosen based on metropolitan and rural status, geography across the country, average number of births/year, race, ethnicity, and percent low birth rate. There are 3 types of sites: large metropolitan areas, modest metropolitan areas, and rural areas. It was noted that at least 20% of the sample will come from rural areas. Dr Fleischman shared a map of the sites, and noted that not all states are represented. This was a chance occurrence, and part of having a random probability sample.
Centers for Excellence will also be integrally involved with conducing research at individual sites. So, sites are geographic areas; whereas centers are entities/institutions who will be conducting the study. Contracts will be established with these Centers to ensure consistency between sites, and that research is conducted in a high quality and rigorous way. Although contracts do not typically allow for much flexibility and collaboration, they are hoping for a collaborative process, where academic leaders can contribute to actual protocols. Each Center will have it's own probability sample; as there will be secondary sampling strategies at each site. Eight potential "Vanguard Centers" have been selected to help operationalize the protocols for the study. These 8 Centers will be chosen to represent a broad geographic distribution across the US.��
"Segments" (or communities) will be created within each site. Although Centers will help to define the segments and provide input, they will not determine the segments, as this too will be done using a probabilistic methodology. Researchers will conduct household enumeration to determine where there are young women in these segments. These young women will be sought out and asked to enroll in the study.
Data collection will begin pre-birth, with several interactions occurring with women. During the first year, they will be gathering data in the delivery room, and during home visits at 1 month, 6 months, and 12 months. Thereafter, they plan to observe children periodically from 18 months of age to young adulthood. Observations will take place during home visits, at child care settings, at schools ? any place that a child spends more than 30 hours/week. Overall, they are hoping to obtain a 20-25% pre-conception cohort; with the rest of cohort being recruited within the 1st trimester of pregnancy, if possible.�
There will be some incentives for families to participate in the study. They believe that families will learn a great deal about themselves and others like them and unlike them. This information will help parents make good choices. Data will be consistently given back to parents to inform them of what is being learned about their children and their environments, and efforts will be made to interpret this data for parents to help them understand what we do and don't know. Families will also receive financial compensation for their time, inconvenience, and expense. Modest gifts of appreciation will also be given.�
A lot of discussion has also taken place whether or intervene if a child or family is at risk for harm. Dr Fleischman reported that they will intervene to help families in positive ways, using community resources. They plan to ask each of the Centers to identify community partners, so that children identified as having a need can be referred. For example, if they determine that someone has no health insurance, they will tell people where more information can be obtained about health insurance; but they will not enroll people.
The study is in process. On November 16, 2004, they announced the RFP's for the Data Coordinating Center as well as for the Vanguard Centers. Many proposals were received, reviews have been completed, and contract negotiations will begin soon. By September 1, 2005, they will announce who has received the contracts. Then final protocol development will begin, so that in 2006, they will have the final protocol ready to roll out for recruitment. Recruitment will begin in 2007. They hope to have all Centers aboard by 2008. In 2010, they will have pregnancy outcome data. They plan to evaluate outcome data periodically throughout the life of the study through the year 2030.
Another RFP is currently being developed for a data repository. This repository will be necessary to save environmental and biological samples. The CDC has agreed to supervise laboratory analysis of biologic samples, and they are committed to revealing clinically relevant data to families in a timely manner. If there is a test with a clinical correlate, this test will be done in real time and test results will be given back quickly. If tests are being conducted for inferential reasons, these results will be given back more periodically. The information systems have tagged all clinically relevant red flags. If data reveal a test result outside of normal ranges, they will be able to quickly notify clinicians near the child to investigate further.
Involvement of Native Americans in the NCS
Dr Fleischman noted that Native Americans comprise a substantial but small proportion of our overall population. He showed the audience a slide revealing the distribution of sites relative to Native American populations. One predominately Native American site has been selected (Apache, AZ). This county is 71% Native American. There are also 9 regions, generally in the SW that will participate in the study and give us a proportionate view of Native American children. It was further noted that some Native American people will be represented at urban sites.�
Dr Fleischman noted that the NCS stands prepared to partner with other agencies/organizations to conduct adjunct and special studies with communities across the country. If the NCS is fully funded and has a probability sample of 100,000, there will be a methodology/platform that could be duplicated in other counties/communities; for example, as part of an IHS initiative. The NCS is prepared to share the technology and be the place that coordinates data collection for colleagues in adjunct and special studies.
The NCS is prepared to oversample some special populations as well. For example, the National Bioethics Council asked the President and Congress to study assistive reproductive technologies. They wanted to answer the question, "Does assistive reproductive technology lead to children with more health deficits?" This is unclear in the US, and the NCS is prepared to oversample women who use assistive reproductive technology.�
Cost of the National Children's Study
The total cost of the NCS will be close to $3 billion in today's dollars. The cost may increase due to inflation by completion of the study. While this cost seems large, this translates to about $100 million/year over a 25 year period, and is not that large when comparing to other federal expenditures. Dr Fleischman indicated that they have spent about $20 million in the study's planning phases; and about $69 million will be needed in the next fiscal year to kick off the Vanguard Centers. $150 million will be needed during the year that all of the sites kick off; and about $100 million will be needed in all other years. It was emphasized that those who advocate for children need to understand the power and importance of this study for the future of children.
If this study is successful, they will have answers to many hard questions. They will be able to tell absence of effects as well as effects. They will also look at causal factors that "immunize" toward health of children, and will look at early life factors that contribute to many adult conditions. The will look at health disparities issues; uncovering evidence about causation, social factors, access factors, and other factors within biology. The will attempt to close the health gaps in America's children and among the highest health priorities. If study is successful, they may continue the study into adulthood.���
Dr Fleischman urged everyone to learn more about the study and to become part of the NCS listserv. Regular updates are provided on the listserv. Additional information can be obtained by emailing firstname.lastname@example.org.
Dr Fleischman was very interested in obtaining input/feedback from participants at the International Meeting on Inuit and Native American Child Health. He posed several questions to the audience and invited participants to also ask questions of him:
� What are the most effective ways for the study to involve Native Americans?
� How can we best encourage participation?
� Are there special strategies?
� What incentives are acceptable or appropriate?
� How can we address special issues such as visiting people's home, analyzing placental tissues, looking at genetic and other biologic samples?
Leo Nolan, IHS, Rockville, MD:� Mr Nolan reported that there is a special relationship between the federal government and the 562 tribal nations; and that there are executive orders in place that state that tribal nations MUST be consulted. Mr Nolan indicated that he could share email addresses and other contact information for individuals that they can contact to begin this consultation process. Mr Nolan informed Dr Fleischman that on May 17-18, 2005, the Secretary will be holding a meeting with tribal leaders to discuss the FY 2007 budget at the Great Hall. He suggested that it might be worthwhile to come by and discuss the study. Mr Nolan asked, "Are we involved with the fathers at all in the NCS?"
Dr Fleischman:� Dr Fleischman believed that initial consultations with tribal leaders have occurred. He was pleased to hear that tribal consultation MUST occur. Regarding fathers? participation in the NCS, he stated that they are focusing on the index research participant, which is the women. They will consent for her involvement and the involvement of the child. However, because the vast majority of children are born in families, they will seek consultation and consent of fathers to participate as a subject for the study (ie. questionnaires, biologic samples). They plan to learn about families through 3 major subjects: women, children, and fathers. Dr Fleischman indicated that it was important to obtain the buy-in of fathers, as fathers could stop mothers from participating; however, there is no legal/regulatory obligation that a father must consent.
Dr Fleischman also noted that in 2005, they will spend a substantial amount of effort to create culturally sensitive materials to inform the public about the NCS. Specific information for women will also be created, encouraging them to talk with husbands, mothers, and others to discuss the study. The goal is for people to be informed about the study and fully understand the risks and burdens prior to making a decision to participate. He indicated that the NCS is a minimal risk study with modest burden. Enrollees may opt to withdraw from the NCS at any time.�
Jennie Joe, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ:� Dr Joe wanted to give a reminder that research is not something that is welcomed in many Native communities. She stated that Native people need to be involved not only at local level, but also at Vanguard Centers and at the clinical coordinating centers. She suggested that Centers should really involve Native people on their advisory committees to help recruit participants and coordinate any interventions that need to take place. In addition, it would be beneficial to involve respected community leaders, particularly when intervention is necessary.
Dr Joe also stated that in most circumstances, utilizing a community's resources works; however, in urban settings and rural communities, resources are very limited. She noted that if IHS facilities or tribal health programs were going to be counted on to help provide follow-up testing, etc, this could put a strain on already stretched resources.� This could prove to be another barrier.�
Finally, Dr Joe expressed her concern about children's health, and her feelings that we don't do enough. She stated that we tend to look at deficits; and a greater emphasis needs to be placed on looking at strengths. She felt that if we provide this kind of message, outlining benefits, there will probably be a lot more mothers that want to participate. She also emphasized that much education needs to take place, so that mothers will understand the longer-term benefits and want to participate.
Dr Fleischman:� Dr Fleischman commented that if there is a reasonable participation rate, there will be about 2,000 Native participants in the NCS. He stated that the RFP for the Vanguard Centers included real dollars for a 1-year lead time between contract and enrollment. This lead time offers the opportunity for the Centers to obtain community involvement and engagement in meaningful ways; such as hiring community members to be part of the research enterprise. The intention of the NCS was to hire people from the communities that will be served. This was made clear in the expectations outlined for the Centers, and Dr Fleischman hopes that would be clear in reality as well. Dr Fleischman also noted that some Centers will have community boards; whereas other Centers will have structures that are fairly sophisticated. He noted that the Federal advisory committee is committed to providing technical assistance; so that each site has a real community engagement strategy.�
Finally, Dr Fleischman noted that funds have been built into the overall cost of the study; so that local sites who conduct laboratory studies, testing, etc should be able to get their costs reimbursed.
Bill Freeman: NW Indian College, past-IHS Research Director:� Dr Freeman offered his perspective and suggestions to the NCS. He stated that much could be learned from the Human Genome Diversity Project; a well-intentioned project to get specimens of Native communities throughout world that were dying - prior to their genes dying out. This went over very negatively with Native people, as taking genes and specimens was a BIG issue. Dr Freeman stated that the NCS is a very important study that can be very important to American Indians. However, he cautioned that not every well-intentioned thing gets accepted.
Dr Freeman also indicated that Native governments don't want to study the genetics of environment (gene/environment interaction) until you've taken care of all of the other things that can be corrected; and that they probably would not be in favor of this kind of study (ie. NCS) that is looking at a broad picture. He felt that we need to demonstrate how the study would benefit the community, and probably Native governments would come on board. He stated that some interventions that benefit the environment and address problems at the time of the study need to be included. He also questioned whether the Navajo Nation can add research questions to the survey that are especially useful to them.�
Finally, Dr Freeman questioned who was going to make sure that specimens from American Indians are not identified as American Indian so that research can go and search for the alcoholism gene? He stated that Native communities need to have a good understanding of who will control specimens and what this control will be like. Dr Freeman believed these things were all doable, but emphasized that these were things that people who are not familiar with working with Native communities need to address.�
Dr Fleischman:� Dr Fleischman responded that they plan to cluster segments in order to say something about environmental influences.�
He also noted that a data safety and monitoring board will be developed, independent of the researchers. This Board will look at the scientific validity of the data and look at communities. Therefore, problems can be identified in real time. Even when data is unclear, they are committed to giving data and sharing their uncertainty.�
Dr Fleischman stated that the Navajo Nation can add questions to the survey. He indicated that every site will have some core questions that NCS wants to gather, but that each sites will be able to add adjunct questions. These adjunct questions will go through a formal review process, because the NCS is concerned about the burden to study participants.��
Dr Fleischman also agreed that anonymization of data, particularly related to race/ethnicity/tribal status is REALLY important. They have begun conversations with some of the world's leading people who do this (de-identifying information, separating out data to maintain confidentiality), and it's a real challenge. Dr Fleischman stated that datasets that have the potential to harm the public or communities, or that cannot be adequately anonymized will not be released to the general public.��
Kristin Lujan, Turtle Mountain Community College, Belcourt, ND: Ms Lujan asked how many of the 101 sites were located on tribal lands. She also was wondering if there is a list of all counties/sites available.
Dr Fleischman:� Dr Fleischman stated that some of the counties have a fair density of American Indians; but there was one county (Apache County, AZ) that has a 70% density. He reiterated that the NCS is prepared to partner with the IHS if they wish to fund something more specific to a tribe/reservation. A list of potential sites and demographic information about the sites is available on the NCS Web site http://nationalchildrensstudy.gov/
Dr Jarvis stated that if there are tribal organizations that are interested in spinning off research from the NCS, he could be the point person, as he is on the Federal Advisory Committee for the NCS.
Don Warne, Family Physician, Arizona State University: Dr Warne stated that close to 60% of all American Indians live off-reservation in urban settings. He questioned whether there was specific outreach planned to the 34 urban Indian clinics, some of which are in the identified counties.�
Dr Fleischman:� Dr Fleischman indicated that there will be outreach to ALL health care facilities in all selected sites. Some of this outreach has already begun, as the commissioner of health, the maternal-child health office, and the Governor's office of the selected sites received information about the NCS. In 2006, the Vanguard Centers will be involved in extensive outreach efforts. They've been given a 6-12 month lead time, as they understand that this will be necessary to inform clinicians, clinics, and the community in it's broad array of community structures; from AI community/ tribal leaders/ health clinics, community churches, senior centers, child care centers, etc. They want the community assets to know about this study; so that if a mother is thinking about becoming part of the study, she will be able to ask someone in the community who is important to her about it.��
Dr Fleischman also indicated that they plan on doing broad-based media and health-based media publicity. He noted that they are beginning to do broad-based media and health-related media interactions; as they get closer to the sites, will be doing much more local, on-the-street work. It is a little early to do more on-the-street work, since the study is still about 18 months out from recruitment.�
Bill Freeman, NW Indian College, past-IHS Research Director:� Dr Freeman clarified that his previous concerns not only related to de-identifying specimens regarding the ethnicity of the individual the specimen was obtained from, but also were related to the genetic markers that were inherent in the specimen. There may be instances where a specimen cannot be completely de-identified and this is a significant issue for American Indians.�
Dr Fleischman:� Dr Fleischman agreed, but stated that there are mechanisms within the process for how you array the data, so you can still use the information in a constructive manner without identifying individuals or communities.
Melanie Nadeau, Turtle Mountain Community College, Belcourt, ND:� Ms Nadeau asked whether participants can withdraw from the study at any time. She also stated that the need for intervention may be defined differently from the Native American perspective and the researcher's perspective (ie. What is considered a need?). Ms Nadeau also stated that one thing that might help individuals to participate would be to identify who will be partners and how they can access resources that are available, instead of waiting until there is a need. Finally, Ms Nadeau stated that home visits may take much longer in Native communities.
Dr Fleishman:� Dr Fleishman stated that they hope to have sensitive research assistants out in community who are working with clear protocols. Therefore, will be no interventions without knowledge or involvement of the family. He believed that there will be instances where the family doesn't wish for intervention, and the study will not intervene unless there risk for immediate harm - that is assessed by a protocol. They very much want to work with families to see if we can optimize their ability to make choices. Each site will need to have resources available so the research assistants can help the families, by saying that "if you have these needs, here's where you might go." Dr Fleischman stated that the NCS is not prepared to solve all of the problems of US children during the study; but they hope the study will be able to impact long-term on those critical needs. | <urn:uuid:b91e5a25-3015-4454-9ed1-a5b044af4350> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www2.aap.org/nach/NationalChildren's%20StudySummary.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966988 | 5,632 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Final EIS Issued Today: Administration Urged To Move Quickly To Restore Mexican Wolves To The Southwest In '97
Defenders, a nonprofit conservation group that has worked intensively on Yellowstone and other wolf restoration efforts for decades, stressed the need for quick Clinton Administration approval of the FWS recommendation because the Mexican wolf is already extinct in the wild and there are only 149 individuals alive in captive breeding facilities today.
Defenders' President Rodger Schlickeisen said, "Despite more than a decade of stalling, the FWS has made the right recommendation, and we now have an historic choice that can give the world's rarest wolf a new chance for survival. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt proved himself a good friend of wolf recovery two years ago when he approved reintroduction of the gray wolf to the Northern Rockies. Now he can do the same for El Lobo." Schlickeisen continued, "However, he should move quickly to implement restoration plans in 1997 because captive breeding facilities are approaching maximum capacity. Also, the longer wolves are held in captivity, the less their chances will be for success in the wild. The clock is ticking."
Although these wolves have not existed in the wild for years, Schlickeisen noted that the forced delay for the Mexican wolf resulted from political factors and not from a lack of public support: "Just as with the successful Yellowstone wolf restoration, public support for Mexican wolf recovery is overwhelming." The final release of the environmental impact statement (EIS) on Mexican wolf restoration was released at a FWS press conference in Phoenix today. On October 3, Defenders of Wildlife and other regional conservation groups filed a legal notice of an intent to sue the FWS after sixty days had elapsed unless the EIS was released. On December 4, the FWS published a notice of its intent to announce its wolf reintroduction recommendations in the EIS.
The preferred alternative in the final EIS calls for reintroduction of 3 to 5 family groups of wolves to the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area in Arizona near the New Mexico border. Defenders' President noted that, "I toured this area a few years back, and it is a fantastic location. But the Fish and Wildlife Service should expand recovery to include the White Sands area in New Mexico and sites along the Texas-Mexico border as well." Schlickeisen noted that the White Sands area is already in the wolf recovery plan for later consideration. At the press conference Defenders presented the FWS with several thousand petitions to amend the recovery plan to also include the Big Bend area of Texas or the Sierra del Carmen of Mexico. This EIS followed a public comment period during which the FWS heard from more than 18,000 individuals, organizations and government agencies. Those comments and opinion polls conducted throughout the Southwest consistently demonstrated that the public supports reintroduction by nearly a 2:1 margin.
Mexican wolf restoration has been under active consideration since 1982, when the FWS finalized the Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan, which was jointly signed by the U.S. and Mexico. According to Craig Miller, Defenders' Southwest Representative, "The Fish and Wildlife Service has gone the extra mile to address the concerns of private landowners and the livestock industry. Now it's time to move forward and get the wolves on the ground."
According to the draft EIS, the economic impacts of wolf restoration will be largely favorable and recent experience in the Yellowstone region bear this out. In addition, the final EIS does not contain permanent land-use restrictions on behalf of the wolf. "The only legitimate concern about Mexican wolf restoration is that wolves may very occasionally kill livestock," according to Miller. "Defenders of Wildlife has established a $100,000 fund to pay ranchers for all verified livestock losses to wolves; those of us who support wolf restoration are addressing this concern directly by assuming financial responsibility for the wolves' return."
There is no public comment period on the final EIS. Decision- makers are required, however, to wait at least 30 days before selecting how to proceed. If Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt promptly issues a final decision at the end of January, wolves could be released as soon as fall 1997. The FWS predicts that Mexican wolves could reach recovery goals as early as 2004.
Miller says, "The resistance to wolves specifically and to endangered species generally has been fueled by the so-called wise-use groups. These groups claim wolf reintroduction will cost jobs and result in land-use restrictions, but there are no facts to support these scare claims. Their real agenda is the continued excessive domination of public land management by commodity interests."
Contact(s):Joan Moody, 202-682-9400 x220 (Media)
Bob Ferris, 202-682-9400 x229 (Conservation)
Craig Miller, 520-578-9334 (S.West) | <urn:uuid:c0b0eca3-e74f-4a97-bcb6-acc675f07f38> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.defenders.org/press-release/final-eis-issued-today-administration-urged-move-quickly-restore-mexican-wolves | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951321 | 982 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Can you give us a bit of a chronological time-frame for ogham script? Neo-lithic? Ah, well the exact origin hasn’t been firmly established, but to date the presence of the ogham script has been traced as far back as two centuries BC. In fact, it’s commonly believed that a lot of the found examples of ogham were coded messages to those still loyal to their old ways, easily read by those they intended to, but indecipherable to Roman authorities. Though these were by no means the only examples, and the same characters are also found in clothing and tools not so much for sending messages but more for the talismanic benefits. Complex line patterns were more than just decorative in their culture, not strictly by themselves.
So, the figures themselves (letters?) were thought to have power? Yes, the figures would be the equivalent of letters. I will explain that. Let’s say you seek a deep understanding of the natural world, especially one that reflects what you feel to be the sacred aspects of nature. Like any language you would have to start somewhere, yes? What would you say is nature’s most common landmark?
Tree? But trees were not seen as objects, not just as convenient landmarks.
Or stones. Stones were included also in druid lore, but ogham focused on trees.
In the druid lore, no single being created anything. The world arose as a part of a complex creative process with many creative agents and didn’t fall into a fixed form as most contemporary Christian thinking would seem to suggest. Many beings have a creative impact on the world, and trees have one of the oldest roles in the creative process. It wasn’t thought that a tree just accidentally grew near the river, it was thought to manifest its own power and character in the features of the area it grew in. Willows don’t just grow by the river, they help shape the river. Pines don’t just grow in the hills, they participate in the events that unfold in the hills. So much of the druids lore revolved around the relationship of trees to the land they grew in. Trees are even still commonly seen to have a preference for where they grow, where they “live.”
A grand ecology! Yes, and they understood the roles of animals and the seasons based on what trees they seemed connected to, or rocks, but mostly trees. Even the cycles of the seasons were understood by how they impacted the trees and the plants that grew among them. There was spiritual meaning in the fact that the oak seemed to “die” but the pine remained ever green.
Perhaps the Christmas tree was an extension of this? Yes, it was, and the figure of the Holly King. Druids role in their own communities was even described by the tree symbolism. A newly inducted druid would be a sapling, and elder druid would be a great old oak. This tradition shows up in a lot of names to this day, even though we often don’t recognize the name because it has deviated from its root word. Hawthorn is an obvious example though.
A common name where I live is “Upthegrove.” Likely of druidic origin.
Did the fact that a tree shows one particular elemental nature (i.e. earth, air, fire, water) also show up in their symbolism? It did. The elements and the seasons. Even growing patterns showed up in their math connecting a mathematical value to different trees. Some seem to grow in groups, other seem almost isolated, that sort of thing.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
- Next Page » Intuit the Message of the Earth Mother | <urn:uuid:5e967c6a-2730-4946-a766-14d8faa0d6a7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://dragonintuitive.com/relationship-of-trees/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982055 | 782 | 2.53125 | 3 |
The cost of college is growing faster than inflation, and now many students find it difficult to go to college without some type of loan financing.
To illustrate this, Heather Boushey, economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research explains, “In 1981, a student could work full time all summer at minimum wage and earn about two-thirds of annual college costs. Today, a student earning minimum wage would have to work full time for a year to afford one year of education at a four-year public university–and that assumes she saves every penny” (USA Today).
According to FinAid.org, “Two-thirds (65.6%) of 4-year undergraduate students graduated with a Bachelor’s degree and some debt in 2007-08.”
While the vast majority of those student loans are federal student loans, a small portion of them are private student loans.
Getting in student loan debt too deeply is a risk for all students, but private loans in particular come with inherent risks.
Before you sign on the dotted line, make sure you know what you are getting yourself into.
The Benefits of Private Student Loans
Private student loans help fill a gap for many students from what they qualify for in federal financial aid (including federal student loans) and what they can actually pay. Besides serving as a bridge, private student loans have a few other benefits:
1. There is no need to fill out a FAFSA.
People qualify for private student loans based on their credit score and history, not a FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). In fact, there is no need to fill out a FAFSA, which some people may prefer.
2. Payment is deferred until after graduation.
Students do not need to begin paying on their private student loans until after they graduate or leave school, whichever comes sooner.
The Drawbacks of Private Student Loans
While there are a few benefits of private student loans, there are drawbacks that many are not aware of. Here are some of the most significant:
1. Private student loans have a variable interest rate.
Unlike federal student loans where the rate is fixed through the life of the loan, private student loans have a variable interest rate. The interest rate can climb and leave borrowers with a payment they cannot afford on their salary.
2. Deferment and forgiveness rules are much stricter.
Federal student loans offer deferment if the borrower goes back to school or if they have an income hardship. There are also several programs that can lead to loan forgiveness based on the borrower’s job and if they serve in a low income area for a certain number of years.
These options are largely unavailable for private student loans.
3. Inflexible repayment options.
Federal student loans offer students a number of different repayment plans including one based on the borrower’s income (income contingent), one based on the theory that the borrower will make more money as the years go on and can therefore pay a little more every two years (graduated), and a standard 10 year repayment plan.
Private student loans generally don’t offer such flexibility. Borrowers have one payment plan you must follow.
4. Cosigners are still responsible if you die.
Although most college students don’t die young, if they do, their parents must still repay the loan if they were the cosigner. This was recently brought to light when Ella Edwards, 61, mother of Jermaine Edwards, tried to start an online petition to demand that she not be responsible for repayment of her deceased son’s private student loans. (The federal government forgave Edward’s federal student loans when he passed away just a few years after graduation.)
Financial planners have gone so far as to suggest that if parents cosign private student loans for their college age students, they should make sure that the students have enough life insurance coverage to cover the amount borrowed. In the unlikely event that the student passes away, the parents won’t have to continue paying as Ella Edwards does. Instead, the life insurance policy would cover the remaining balance on the loan.
The problem of private student loans has gotten so bad that two senators, Dick Durbin and Tom Hawkin, are introducing The Know Before You Owe Act to educate students and their parents about the realities of private student loans.
Private student loans can fill in financial aid gaps for students, but it may be better to consider a college the student can afford without private loans.
Other options are available also such as going to a community college first to cut costs or working at the university to help pay college expenses. While students may not feel like they are having as much fun as other students at college, they will be glad to not have the private student loan monkey on their back when they graduate. | <urn:uuid:17c5be14-8461-4361-a165-db2d27077cc2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://freefrombroke.com/the-perils-of-private-student-loans/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973895 | 996 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Photo: Pat Gaines (Flickr)
In the late 1990s, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park after an absence of seventy-five years. The hope was that allowing wolves to once again roam the park would help cull the elk population, which had increased dramatically while the wolves were gone.
The problem was that elk ate lots of stems of willows, the most important shrub on the banks of the park’s streams. And so the park’s willow population began to wane, which upset the ecosystem’s delicate balance.
But even though the wolves have been doing their job since their reintroduction, there have been fewer elk feasting on willows, the shrubs have not returned as quickly as expected. Because ecologists overlooked another crucial piece of the puzzle: beavers.
Willows best grow near small streams made sluggish by beaver dams. But when the elk took over in the absence of wolves and ate most of the willows, beavers didn’t have enough wood left to build dams. And so they gradually disappeared.
Where Are The Beavers?
The banks of beaver ponds that made great habitat for willows faded as well. Without dams, Yellowstone’s streams flowed faster, making it more difficult for new willows to take root.
The upshot is that beavers as well as wolves are needed to fully restore the ecosystem. Beaver dams will slow the streams, which in turn will encourage more willow growth, creating habitat for beaver.
The takeaway, ecologists say, is that ecosystems are complex and that removing one component can have unintended consequences that are not easily reversed. | <urn:uuid:cfc7dd94-9f33-4bb7-be1a-2422e2bea5f0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/ecosystem-disruption-led-disappearance-yellowstone-beaver/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974393 | 345 | 4.09375 | 4 |
|The red giant stars in the M10 globular cluster are seen fairly obvious here as the reddish-orange orbs of light. Image credit: Till Credner, Sven Kohle (Bonn University), Hoher List Observatory.|
According to Olofsson (1999), the red giant stars are divided into two components: "a small, very hot (~108 cm, ~108 K) core that is strongly gravitationally bound, and a huge, much cooler mantle (~1013 cm, ~103 K) at the surface where the external parts are only weakly gravitationally bound." The Mira stars are typically on the order of about 1 solar mass, but undergo substantial mass loss of about 10-7 to 10-6 solar masses per year, whereby the large circumstellar shells are formed (Lattanzi et. al 1997). This mass loss limits the Mira stage to about 1 million years. Those stars experiencing He-burning in the core populate the AGB branch. The AGB stage of stellar evolution is the final phase for the majority of stars in the Universe following the main sequence. It is through this mass loss, however, that they avoid ending in supernova events. When the envelope of the star is nearly gone, an enhanced time of loss with a rapid velocity produces a planetary nebula, and eventually leaves behind a white dwarf star around 0.6-0.7 solar masses (Willson 1986). During this stage of life (AGB) the mass given off by these stars is going into enriching the interstellar medium. Hence, contributing to the sea of stellar life. The red giant stage is ultimately where the Sun will evolve to.
For more information about Mira stars, see the Proceedings of the AAVSO Session on Mira Stars Commemorating the 400th Anniversary of the Discovery of Mira in a special edition of the Journal of the AAVSO. The papers in this publication are available online.
|The above image of Mira in visible light taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (AURA/STScI) for AAVSO Council Member Margarita Karovska (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophyics) reveals its oblong shape.|
In a 1996 press release (no. STScI-PR96-26), NASA revealed that Hubble's Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS) had retrieved data showing that perhaps not all Mira stars are spherical, but may be somewhat egg-shaped. The report issued stated that "FGS measurements showed that R Leonis' apparent diameter (in visible light) is 70x78 milliarcseconds (eight by nine hundred million miles at the star's distance of about 390 light-years) along the star's long and short axis, respectively, and 76 by 91 milliarcseconds (with linear dimensions similar to those of R Leonis) for W Hydrae." In addition, an impressive account of size of these objects was also given: "If placed within our solar system, both of these stars would extend well beyond the orbit of the Earth and almost to Jupiter."
The observed asymmetry is believed to take place in the extended atmosphere of the star, but the exact cause is currently not understood. It is speculated that the odd shape may be a result of nonradial pulsations (the star not pulsating equally in all directions) or could possibly be an optical illusion as a result of large dark spots on the star, perhaps caused by giant convection cells (Lattanzi et al. 1997). The first indications of this oblong shape were detected in Mira, but through interferometric means have been observed in the stars R Cas, R Leo, and W Hya as well (Karovska 1997). Further investigation is needed to determine the cause of the nonspherical shape and whether more stars can be added to this list.
In a world of faster is better, many observers feel that the shorter period, but more unpredictable dwarf nova-type stars are more rewarding to observe since their entire range of variation can typcially be seen within a few days, weeks, or months. Another common misconception is that the long period variable stars are very regular, have been overobserved, and don't need any further monitoring. Nothing could be further from the truth. Longterm data have shown that many of these stars have undergone a dramatic change in visible light output over time. Long period variables are the class of variable star that benefit most from amateur astronomer participation. Automated telescopes simply do not monitor these stars for a long enough span of time. Therefore, we need the help of observers like you to help maintain and extend our database into the future.
To help observers plan their observing time more efficiently, the AAVSO publishes the AAVSO Bulletin 64: Predicted Maxima and Minima for Long Period Variables on a yearly basis. Here you will find anticipated dates of maximum and minimum activity for 562 long period variable stars. This is a valuable tool for those observers looking for bright stars to view with their moderate equipment, or for those with more advanced means looking to go after faint minima.
Borrowing the words from the 1986 Journal of the AAVSO article by AAVSO President and world-renowned Mira expert Lee Anne Willson: "I will end with a plea to the observers: While observations of other classes of variable stars are important and can seem more exciting than the monitoring of slowly varying Miras, continuing to monitor the long period variables is vital for the development of our understanding of stellar evolution. These stars are also capable of surprising behavior, even after 75 or 100 or 200 years of regularity. Please contiue to observe the Miras!" If you haven't yet started with this plight, then you may consider following in the footsteps of Leslie Peltier by making R Leo your first (Mira) variable too!
A wealth of Mira-related information may be found in the "Proceedings of the AAVSO Session on Mira Stars Commemorating the 400th Anniversary of the Discovery of Mira" published in the Journal of the AAVSO. | <urn:uuid:699d4216-0e79-48a4-9dd1-196c51558e8a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://isi.ssl.berkeley.edu/aavso_mira_information.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931831 | 1,263 | 3.109375 | 3 |
In 1985, Buckles wrote “Interactive Fiction: The Computer Storygame ‘Adventure,’ ” a scholarly look at the early text-based game Adventure and the people who played it.
Buckles was hardly a devotee of the game herself, and the topic didn’t have a lot to do with her main area of study at UCSD, which was German literature, particularly poetry.
But something about players’ passionate attraction to Adventure piqued her interest.
Like other text-based games (also known as interactive fiction), Adventure is essentially a mini-novel that enlists the player as a character. Through myriad choices about where to go or what action to take next, the player determines the course of the story. —James Hebert —Mary Ann Buckles bucked academia, and found the poetry in computer games (SignOnSanDiego.com) | <urn:uuid:9e0e2a8c-3438-47fa-bff3-16b7f03e4f7c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://jerz.setonhill.edu/blog/2006/01/26/4001/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964893 | 185 | 2.515625 | 3 |
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One Jew's Actions Affect All Jews
At age 13, a violin virtuoso appeared on a Berlin stage and overwhelmed his audience. In fact, the young prodigy so inspired one audience member, namely Albert Einstein, that he uttered, "Now I know there is a G-d in heaven." The name of that virtuoso and eventual member of Britain's House of Lords was Yehudi Menuhin.
Do you recognize the first name? Yehudi is the Hebrew word for Jew. But why would parents name a son Yehudi?
Menuhin's parents were Russian Jewish immigrants, newly arrived in New York. They moved into a tenement in the city while Mrs. Menuhin was pregnant. The landlord chanced to say: "Thank goodness you're not Jewish. We don't allow Jews here." Mrs. Menuhin, on the spot, decided that if her baby were a boy she'd name him Yehudi. "Whenever they will call my son by his name," she said, "they will acknowledge my people." Clearly, Mrs. Menuhin was a virtuoso in her own right.
In this, the final parashah of the first Book of Moses, Jacob is about to die. And so he gathers his children to endow each with a special gift -- an individual blessing. But it's the b'rachah that he bestows on his fourth son, Yehuda, that becomes a tipping point for the Jewish people. Here is what he says: "Yehuda, ata yodukha achekha -- Judah, your brothers will acknowledge you."
In the Midrash, the rabbis made this claim: The descendants of Jacob -- Israelites -- will not be called Reubenites or Shimonites or any other name; they will call themselves Yehudim -- Jews. Yehuda became the eponym of the Jewish people.
Why so? What was so special about Judah that he merited to name the Jewish people?
The drama between Joseph and his brothers holds the key to Judah's virtuosity, say our sages, and, by extension, the genius of our people.
The ultimate price of doing "business" with Joseph was by bringing the youngest child, Benjamin, to him. It was Judah who succeeded in overcoming the trepidations of his father, and he did so by uttering two words that tipped the scale of Jewish destiny. He said in effect, "Dad, don't worry. Send Benjamin with me. Anokhi er'e'venu -- I will take responsibility for him."
The phrase is even more pregnant with meaning than might be obvious at first. Areiv does not just mean to take responsibility; it means to be intertwined. Judah, and by extension all Jews, are unique because there is an acute sense of inextricable connectedness, one to the other.
In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King wrote, "What affects one person directly affects all peoples indirectly." But to be a Jew is to know that "what affects one Jew directly affects all Jews --directly."
In a shocking statement, Maimonides declared: "One who separates oneself from the community, even if that person was free from sin, has no share in the world to come" (Hilkhot Teshuva 3:11). Think about this: If a person was scrupulous in observance, but still divorced from the community, there will be no merit in the world to come.
We are called by a name that speaks of responsibility and interconnectedness -- both spatially to those next to us, and temporally to the generations that came before and are yet to be.
So how about we all make a new year's resolution? I'm not suggesting that we all become violin virtuosos, but I am suggesting that we strive to become Jewish virtuosos, so that when people look at us and our comportment and values, they will be filled with a sense of affirmation and adulation.
Rabbi David Gutterman is the executive director of the Vaad: Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia. | <urn:uuid:09f367c0-74cb-4c5f-950a-f02d8653ab11> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://jewishexponent.com/one-jews-actions-affect-all-jews | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972574 | 872 | 3.15625 | 3 |
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a standard set of rules that define an email message format, and the message transfer agent (MTA), which stores and forwards email.
SMTP was originally designed for only ASCII text, but MIME and other encoding methods have been added which allow other types of files, such as graphic images, to be attached and sent with email messages. SMTP servers route email messages throughout the Internet to incoming mail servers, such as POP or IMAP, which provide message stores for incoming mail. SMTP servers are also referred to as outgoing mail servers.
The SMTP server at MIT is called outgoing.mit.edu. | <urn:uuid:42c999c4-3238-4ac0-8731-92dbc006ea39> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://kb.mit.edu/confluence/display/glossary/SMTP | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933752 | 134 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Throughout my study, I have touched on all of the preliminary questions with which I began my study; however, it is convenient to discuss these questions and conclusions in a separate section. The first observation that needs to be made is the surprising amount of Islamic mathematics which is relevant to contemporary studies, but is not part of any mathematical course. This is vastly apparent even with my three questions that I set out to answer; many of my presuppositions and assumptions were wrong, which made the questions themselves invalid. It is astounding how much historical mathematics is omitted from mathematical courses, which could greatly benefit from the inclusion of even a small amount of this material. In many cases, my understanding of modern mathematics, especially algebra, was enhanced by my study of Islamic mathematics; the historical overview gave insights to modern notation and modern methods of problem-solving.
Algebra vs. Geometry
I began my study with the question: "Why was the geometry of Euclid transmitted verbatim while algebra was created and innovated by Muslim mathematicians? In other words, why was geometry not developed while algebra was both created and developed?" As my research shows, the question itself is not correct. Geometry was developed and added to by Muslim mathematicians, though I began my study without knowing this. Still, geometry only developed so far, and usually developed in conjunction with algebra, so the topic remains one of interest and can still be discussed.
Abū Sahl's explanation of the construction of a regular heptagon shows his innovation as a geometer and his contribution to Islamic mathematics by providing solutions to "impossible" problems within known mathematical theories. Though Archimedes provided a construction of a regular heptagon inside a circle, his construction was not proven and so was more of a proof of the existence of a regular heptagon inside a circle rather than a valid construction. Abū Sahl was able to construct and prove the "impossible" by reducing the problem to the construction of two conic sections. By doing this, Abū Sahl showed that the construction of a regular heptagon belonged to an intermediate class of problems which required at times the use of cubic curves. Abū Sahl was able to reduce a problem into a method which was already accepted, that of conic surfaces, to provide a general solution for the regular heptagon problem. Further, the geometry of Ibrāhīm ibn Sinān shows the Muslim importance of concise proofs and constructions, and he improved upon the methods of the Greeks in drawing the parabola, ellipse, and hyperbola. The extension of geometry into practical spheres was also a development which was not seen in Greek mathematics. The existence of many treatises on the problems facing artisans as they constructed their geometrical artwork shows the intersection between theory and practice in Islamic geometry, and in all Islamic mathematics.
Geometry may not have developed to our modern form, or to 3-dimensional geometry beyond conic sections because of the environment in which Muslim geometers worked. In Islam, it is prohibited to make likenesses of people, and so Muslim artists developed geometrical design over attempting to draw people and objects in 3-dimensions. It is this drawing in 3-d which may have sparked the Western European geometrical development; therefore, the Islamic culture in the House of Wisdom precluded the further development of geometry past the point already discussed.
The Nature of Proofs in Islamic Mathematics
Another question with which I began my study was the following: "Why didn't the Persian mathematicians expand or invent new theorems or proofs, though they preserved the definition-theorem-proof model for geometry? In addition, why did the definition-theorem-proof model not carry over from Greek mathematics (such as geometry) to algebra?" This question was also misinformed from the beginning. Though al-Khwarizmi did not adopt the definition-theorem-proof model, later algebraic treatises do so. Al-Khwarizmi still recognizes the importance of proving all assertions, though he did not structure his theorem-proofs in exactly the same way that Euclid's Elements or other Greek mathematical treatises do. Still, the topic can be discussed even if the question was originally misstated.
Al-Khwārizmī did not, as I had previously assumed, have access to most Greek mathematical treatises. In fact, al-Khwārizmī only had access to a very few parts of Euclid's Elements. His college Thābit ibn Qurra was engaged in the translation of many Greek treatises during and after al-Khwārizmī's publication of Algebra, so al-Khwārizmī must have relied on Hindu and local Syriac-Persian sources for his studies. Al-Khwārizmī did not have access to Greek manuscripts, as seen in his proof of a2 + b2 = c2 which is only valid in the case when a = b. Euclid's Elements provides more rigorous proof which holds for all cases; if al-Khwārizmī had access to this text, he surely would have recognized this and included Euclid's proof, as he included the proofs from Hindu texts of other theorems, such as how to take a square root, when the Hindu proofs surpassed his own. In this case, then, it is an easy answer regarding why the definition-theorem-proof model was not carried over from Euclid to algebra; the founder of algebra was not aware of the existence of the definition-theorem-proof model.
The study of Islamic mathematics, both geometry and algebra, have shown that the definition-theorem-proof model was commonly used after the Greek treatises, and therefore the Greek definition-theorem-proof-model, were available to Muslim mathematics. For example, this can be seen in the already mentioned proofs of Ibn Sinān, who followed this model when discussing the area of a segment of a parabola, or in the discussion of x3 + mx = n by Umar al-Khayyami, which includes a theorem, solution, and proof. It is clear that though it was not considered necessary, most Muslim mathematical treatises included some form of the definition-theorem-proof model that they admired so much in Euclid's Elements and other Greek texts.
The final question I asked before I began this study was the following: "Why were most of the leading mathematicians, in this time period, Muslim? Including, why were there no Jewish mathematicians? Why were there no Orthodox or Arab Christian mathematicians?" This question, too, is flawed; there were Jewish and Christian mathematicians at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. However, they were employed mainly as translators, as they knew either Hebrew and Arabic or Greek and Arabic. The discussion of this question requires a brief look at the status of Jews and Christians within the Islamic Empire.
The Qur'an accords Jews and Christians the status of "People of the Book." Under Islamic law, then, Jews and Christians are given protected status as "dhimmi". As dhimmi, Jews and Christians are given the freedom to practice their own religion, with the condition that they may not attempt to convert Muslims to their religion, as long as they pay a special tax to the Islamic government. Though this afforded them a protective status, Jews and Christians were thus second-rate citizens; they did not have equal benefits under the law or in court. Further, many Muslims and Islamic governments wished for their second-class status to be reflected in their standard of living and their political and societal prominence.
This may help account for the position of Jewish and Christian mathematicians. Though employed as translators by al-Rashid and al-Ma'mun, these scholars were not seen as equals of Muslim scholars at the House of Wisdom. The formation of Islamic theology was also happening during this period, and many Jews and Christians gained prominence from their positions as religious authorities; they were asked to account for their religion before the Caliph, Islamic theologians, and Islamic legal analysts. However, it seem that it was not recognized that Arab Jews and Arab Christians could be experts in intellectual fields besides religion; at least, it was thought that Muslim scholars could perform just as well in all intellectual fields besides religion, where the caliphs were fair enough to let Jews and Christians speak for themselves. This bias may be recognized in the financial support given by the Caliph to specific Muslim mathematicians to allow them to write original treatises. The caliphs may have been willing to pay Arab Jews and Arab Christians for their translation works, but seemed to favor Muslim mathematicians when requesting original mathematical treatises.
Please see the "Paper" section for further information on these conclusions. | <urn:uuid:42876d2c-dc40-4da2-8057-c3d0dccc45ed> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://new.math.uiuc.edu/im2008/rogers/questions.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97702 | 1,812 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Cambridge, Massachusetts - From the increasing information transmitted through telecommunications systems to that analyzed by financial institutions or gathered by search engines and social networks, so-called “big data” is becoming a huge feature of modern life.
But to analyze all of this incoming data, we need to be able to separate the important information from the surrounding noise. This requires the use of increasingly sophisticated techniques.
Alice Guionnet, a professor of mathematics at MIT, investigates methods to make sense of huge data sets, to find the hidden correlations between apparently random pieces of information, their typical behavior, and random fluctuations. “I consider things called matrices, where you have an array of data,” Guionnet says. “So you take some data at random, put it in a big array, and then try to understand how to analyze it, for example to subtract the noise.”
The field of random matrix theory, as it is known, has grown rapidly over the last 10 years, thanks to the huge rise in the amount of data we produce. The theory is now used in statistics, finance, and telecommunications, as well as in biology to model connections between neurons in the brain, and in physics to simulate the radiation frequencies absorbed and emitted by heavy atoms.
Mathematics as patchwork
A world-leading researcher in probability, Guionnet has made important theoretical contributions to random matrix theory. In particular, she has made recent advances in understanding large deviations — the probability of finding unlikely events or unusual behavior within the array of data — and in connecting the theory with that of topological expansion, in which random matrices are used to help solve combinatorial questions.
“It’s a bit like when you make a patchwork quilt,” Guionnet says. “So you have all of your pieces of patchwork, and then you go to sew them together so that they make a nice pillow with no holes, and you have many possibilities for how to lay them out,” she says.
Random matrices can be used to calculate the number of ways in which this “patchwork” can be sewn together, Guionnet says. She also considers several of these random arrays simultaneously, to help solve problems in the field of operator algebra.
Guionnet was born in Paris. She completed her master’s degree at the Ecole Normale Superieure Paris in 1993, and then moved to the Universite Paris Sud to undertake her PhD. The focus of her PhD was the statistical mechanics of disordered systems, a branch of mathematical physics in which the world around us is modeled down to the level of microscopic particles. In this way, researchers attempt to determine how microscopic interactions affect activity at the macroscopic level.
In particular, Guionnet was interested in objects called spin glasses — disordered magnetic materials that are similar to real glass, in that they appear to be stationary, but which are actually moving, albeit at an incredibly slow rate. “If you looked at the windows of your house millions of years from now, they may be shifting downward as a result of gravity,” she says. “I was attempting to analyze the dynamics of these kinds of systems.”
Before she had completed her PhD, Guionnet was offered a position within the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), and moved to Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) Lyon, where she continued to focus on the spin glass model, before branching out into random matrices. “I initially wanted to work in applied mathematics,” Guionnet says. “But as I started to consider questions in random matrix theory, I moved into purer and purer mathematics.”
While at ENS Lyon, she was made a director of research for CNRS, and was given the opportunity to build her own team of top researchers in probability theory.
She moved to MIT in 2012, where she continues her work in random matrix theory. In the same year, Guionnet was chosen as one of 21 mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and theoretical computer scientists named as Simons Investigators. Awarded by the Simons Foundation, a private organization that aims to advance research in math and the basic sciences, Simons Investigators each receive $100,000 annually to support their work.
“What I like about my work is that it crosses over into different fields — probability theory, operator algebra, and random matrices — and I’m trying to advance these three theories at the same time,” Guionnet says. “These different fields are all merging and connecting with each other, and that is what I try to understand in my work.”
The opportunity to work with people from different mathematical fields, and to learn new ideas from them, is one of the things Guionnet loves most about the subject. “When you work with people from different fields you begin to make new connections, and get a new point of view on the object you are studying, so it’s kind of exciting,” she says.
What’s more, the math itself is always evolving and progressing, she says: “Mathematics is beautiful.” | <urn:uuid:ba4c3808-807e-40d1-8c63-4da400bf8841> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://sandiegonewscape.com/index.php/9-latest-news/1329-mathematical-patchwork | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957468 | 1,083 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Military personnel at a bandstand during the 1943 Salute to Michigan Agriculture, Labor and Industry tour.
In August of 1943, as World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific, the U.S. Army visited several Michigan cities with a traveling cavalcade of military vehicles, weapons and equipment billed as a Salute to Michigan Agriculture, Labor and Industry.
The twenty-six-day tour began in Port Huron, where twenty thousand civilians attended the demonstration of military vehicles and weaponry, while an estimated fifty thousand onlookers gathered for a parade. Included in the parade procession were units from the Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Canadian Air Force, Michigan State Police, U.S Coast Guard Reserve, veterans, firemen, Red Cross and Boy Scouts. Colonel August M. Krech of the army’s Sixth Service Command reviewed the troops and gave a speech warning against a letdown in defense production.
Several days later, the entourage rolled into Jackson for an encampment at Ella Sharp Park. The 792nd Military Police Battalion conducted a mock battle complete with Sherman tanks, jeeps, anti-aircraft guns and 155 mm field Howitzers. The soldiers demonstrated field mess and drill, and Maj. Wayne King (aka “The Waltz King”) and his orchestra provided the entertainment.
A military staff car at an encampment site during the 1943 tour.
While in Jackson, army officers inspected twenty-seven local defense factories and the battalion baseball team played a local team at the Sharp Park baseball diamond. After leaving Jackson, the tour was bound for Muskegon, Holland, Grand Rapids, Benton Harbor, and Niles. | <urn:uuid:3b8c803e-a6ca-4b71-8df5-e09330a77d87> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://seekingmichigan.org/look/2012/12/11/military-tour-of-michigan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944883 | 337 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Commonwealth Electoral Division of: Cook (New South Wales)
- Division name: Cook
- State: New South Wales
- Name derivation: Named after Captain James Cook (1728-79), the first European to discover the east coast of Australia in 1770.
- Size & Location description: Cook covers an area of approximately 100 sq km from Kurnell and Cronulla in the east to Kirrawee and Bonnet Bay in the west and from Botany Bay and Georges River in the north to that part of the Royal National Park to the east of Farnell Ave, Audley Road and Hacking River in the south. Suburbs include Bonnet Bay, Burraneer, Caringbah, Caringbah South, Como, Cronulla, Dolans Bay, Grays Point, Gymea, Gymea Bay, Kangaroo Point, Kareela, Kirrawee, Kurnell, Lilli Pilli, Miranda, Oyster Bay, Port Hacking, Sylvania, Sylvania Waters, Taren Point, Woolooware, Yowie Bay and parts of Jannali and Sutherland.
- Products/industries of the area: Petroleum refineries at Kurnell, steel fabrication, pharmaceutical plant, boat building and oyster farming.
- First proclaimed/election: 1906 | <urn:uuid:9814ffaf-4fda-456d-ac5c-fe9abac67560> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://theaustralian.coredata.com.au/electorate/Cook | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.850283 | 276 | 2.65625 | 3 |
The international debate over animal testing got a shot in the arm last week when renowned primatologist Jane Goodall urged the European Union to find alternatives to experimentation on animals. Armed with 150,000 signatures and a lifetime of heralded research, Goodall called for the introduction of a Nobel Prize to reward research that avoids testing on live, sentient beings.
Goodall delivered her message as the EU prepares to update its 22-year old directive on animal testing. Scientists and animal rights campaigners also descended on Brussels to join the debate over how to proceed on the controversial issue.
Campaigning for animal rights is nothing new for Goodall (pictured), who founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 to “advance the power of individuals to take informed and compassionate action to improve the environment for all living things.” Goodall also heads up Advocates for Animals, an animal rights organization in Edinburgh, Scotland.
It didn’t take long following Goodall’s call to action in Brussels for supporters of animal research to chime in. Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at Oxford, argues that while strict controls should be required, animal experimentation is a necessary evil in the world of scientific research. Blakemore is no stranger to controversy; according to a 2003 article, he endured over a decade of attacks and abuse by animal rights campaigners for engaging in experiments that led to the deaths of newborn kittens.
The animal testing debate clearly raises important ethical questions (not to mention the blood pressure of its participants). Which procedures should be considered acceptable, and at what expense to the animals? How can we determine when animal suffering is “minimized?” Should animals be considered part of the polity?
Perhaps the most important question relates to the human mind. Goodall mentions that the “amazing human brain” should work to find new ways of testing that don’t involve animals. The brain’s capacity to reason gives humans an incredible gift—one filled with responsibility. As new methods of conducting scientific research evolve, the debate over that responsibility will define the future of animal experimentation. | <urn:uuid:0d875700-3463-44a0-985f-28096de8953d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://womensbioethics.blogspot.com/2008/06/old-fashioned-science-or-necessary-evil.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914259 | 428 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Staff of Zilvermuseum Sterckshof Provincie Antwerpen
(click on photos to enlarge image)
CORALS AND BELLS - A COLLECTION OF RATTLES
An Exhibition at the Zilvermuseum Sterckshof Provincie
October 6, 2009/January 10, 2010
Rattles are among the oldest toys in the world. They
appear in pre-Columbian America, in Pharaoh's Egypt and
even in the Hittite kingdom. It is thought that during
the earliest civilizations rattles consisted of a dried
fruit whose seeds sounded like little bells when shaken.
So it is hardly surprising that the oldest known
examples, which are made of earthenware and bronze, are
in the shape of a gourd or pomegranate.
Though a rattle was first and foremost a small toy used
to distract the young child and calm it when teething,
it was always believed that the object had exorcising
and protective powers as well. It was thought to avert
calamity and to help dispel evil.
A rattle was considered the ideal object to protect the
child from illness and adversity; it was seen as a
guarantee of a long and happy life. At a time when the
infant mortality rate was very high because there was no
known cure for a whole host of illnesses, the rattle
served as an amulet. Great importance was attached to it
and hope drawn from it.
Materials like coral, rock-crystal and wolf's tooth were
used for rattles not only because of their beauty, but
also because of the special, supernatural powers
attributed to these costly materials. Wolf‘s tooth, for
example, symbolized power. It was supposed to transfer
power from the animal to the child and in that way
protect it against danger. Coral was widely known as a
defense against evil, while rock-crystal was reputed to
soothe wounds. In other words, a rattle was once much
more than just a toy.
Besides the historical collection of rattles, the
exhibition "Corals and Bells - A Collection of Rattles"
also shows a series of portraits of children
depicted with their rattle. The rattles in these
paintings are made of silver or gold and have a handle
made of red coral, rock-crystal or wolf's tooth. These
sorts of rattles began to appear in children's portraits
at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Later on the
basic design was elaborated on by adding a whistle or
little bells. These accessories were also believed to
dispel evil spirits.
The use of costly materials largely determines a
rattle's price tag and can make it very valuable. But
not everyone favoured such sophisticated toys. For
example in his book Emile ou de l'éducation (1762), the
eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau criticized these luxury rattles because they
accustomed children to opulence at a very young age.
Rousseau believed that a twig, a stick of liquorice or a
poppy head is equally effective when it comes to
distracting or entertaining a child.
Not until the nineteenth century was the rattle
popularized. Inexpensive pewter versions appeared for
the first time. Many were in the shape of a mini-drum
filled with dried grain which produced a jingling sound
when shaken. In the same period rattles were also
produced depicting an important person or commemorating
a significant event. In the twentieth century plastic
became the material of choice and rattles were
One of the most striking aspects of the Corals and Bells
exhibition is the sheer variety of jingling toys, both
in terms of their shape and decoration. The private
collection comprises 167 rattles which cover the period
from the beginning of the eighteenth century through to
the middle of the last century. They were made in
Belgium, England, France, the Netherlands and Spain. The
objects are shown alongside captivating miniature
portraits and portraits of children depicting the tiny
owner holding his or her rattle.
t +32 (0)3 360 52 52
Visiting the Corals and Bells exhibition you will
see the child, its toy and reproductions of both in
their historical context.
To tie in with the exhibition, Sterckshof Silver Museum
is producing a catalogue containing illustrations of the
artworks and objects on show. The publication is Number
39 in the Sterckshof Studies series and includes
articles by Marc Jacobs, Director of FARO (Flemish
Centre for Cultural Heritage), and by Annemarieke
Willemsen, Curator Middle Ages Collection at the Dutch
National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden)
The exhibition is realized in association with Emil
ASCAS is in debt
for their kindness to Zilvermuseum Sterckshof
Provincie Antwerpen and to Emil Fonfoneata | <urn:uuid:d93ba2ba-e0bb-4dae-853e-9e2f1d69a88b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ascasonline.org/articoloDICEM122.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939825 | 1,085 | 3.140625 | 3 |