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It's 1947, and twelve-year-old Clyde Thomason is proud to have an older brother who guards the Freedom Train - a train that is traveling to all forty-eight states carrying the country's most important documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Clyde is chosen to say the Freedom Pledge at the train's stop in Atlanta, but his terrible stage fright forces him to refuse the honor. Instead, it's the class bully, Phillip, who gets selected, and he begins to torment Clyde.
When an African-American boy saves him from a beating, Clyde is shocked. Especially when he learns that William lives in the white part of town. How can this be? And why can't he bring himself to be friends with William?
Clyde hasn't told his parents he won't perform the pledge, nor has he mentioned his confusing friendship with a boy of color. So when the townspeople threaten William's family, Clyde has a choice to make: Will he keep quiet, or stand up for real freedom?
Children Fiction Social Situations
Children Fiction Historical
Children Fiction African American̴Ì_ | <urn:uuid:d8592623-a36d-478b-b23a-527b53185c35> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://mylilyofthevalleychildrensboutique.com/products/freedom-train-9781442436527b | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560628000306.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20190626114215-20190626140215-00484.warc.gz | en | 0.963366 | 233 | 3.1875 | 3 |
To help teach little learners about our incredible country, I made a list of books all about America that they will surely love. Read these books for President’s Day, election time, 4th of July, Veteran’s Day, for an America theme, or for a unit about American symbols and the flag.
Students can learn about voting, US symbols such as Lady Liberty, past presidents, and so much more. The best part about these books is that they make learning fun, as books should!
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Celebrate America Books for Little Learners
This book is packed full of some of the most remarkable people that lived in America. From Harriet Tubman to Thomas Jefferson, your little learners will learn a lot from this book.
The Cat in the Hat is here to explain voting to young minds! Start them young so they are ready to use their voting rights responsibly for when they have grown up and are old enough to vote!
Let’s talk about Liberty. The first image the comes to mind with this word, is, of course, our lady of Liberty… the Statue of Liberty. Maybe this book will create a big enough interest to be added to a travel bucket list!
With an easy reading level, this book offers history in the form of simple text and vibrant pictures. This National Geographic book has a reading level of 2, perfect for preschoolers and kindergarteners.
This biography starts when Abe was just a young boy. A great way to get your little learners to relate to this historic figure.
Teach your little learners all about the pledge of allegiance along with some interesting facts about the United State’s flag. The pictures alone are worth a thousand words.
This book is perfect for Flag Day…. it’s also a great way to teach little learners about America. The story puts an emphasis on unity and a sense of family.
With easy to read text and cartoon drawings, kids can get an idea of what the president of the United States does to keep our country safe.
Learn about the life of the 16th president of the United States. Abraham Lincoln changed the way of life for the citizens of the United States. Reading about his accomplishments will educate little learners about a time in history that called for change.
George Washington wasn’t afraid to do things differently. It’s what made him a good leader. And it all started with his childhood.
The bald eagle is a representation of America through its strength and freedom to soar. Little learners love learning about this magnificent animal.
This book outlines the different symbols that represent the United States such as the bald eagle, rose, flag, lady liberty, and more. It is full of real pictures that students will be able to relate.
It is time to throw a little laughter into the mix with this hilarious book. I think the adults will also find this celebrate America book to be funny.
As we all know, little learners are always curious. Quench their curiosity with this book that teaches kids all about the job of a president through realistic pictures and simple text.
Your favorite pooch is running for president of the dog park! He will make one fantastic leader. What a great example to set for young kiddos.
This is a great book to read to your little learners because it has some incredible photos of Lady Liberty. Coupled with facts about this American symbol, it is a great resource to have in your classroom.
Take a look at all of the moms who are also soldiers. They help keep our country safe by completing a variety of jobs. This book will give little learners an understanding of servicewomen and the roles they play while protecting our country.
This book covers the important roles dads have while serving in the military. Some of your little learners might be children of soldiers, which makes this book and the one above a great conversation starter about this topic.
Veterans hold a special place in the community. With the help of this book, little learners will find out what makes veterans so special.
There is always so much anticipation for the celebration of our country’s birthday. Get your little learners to join in on the excitement with this fantastic book.
Teaching little learners about the foundation, traditions, symbols, and freedom our country holds will create a pocket of knowledge that they will carry with them throughout the rest of their lives.
Take the theme all over your classroom with my America Math and Literacy Centers! It’s loaded with 12 fun, engaging centers to help your students build math and literacy concepts!
Literacy skills covered are letter identification, letter formation, beginning sounds, sight words, vocabulary words, syllables, and writing/journaling. Math skills cover are one to one correspondence, counting, 2D shapes, patterns, adding, subtracting, graphing, and number identification.
Love these books? Pin this image! | <urn:uuid:3dd575d0-7e9e-40c4-90c4-3fe834c661d4> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://pocketofpreschool.com/celebrate-america-books-for-little-learners/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560628000306.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20190626114215-20190626140215-00484.warc.gz | en | 0.948289 | 1,007 | 3.25 | 3 |
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Instant clone technology is the mechanism that VMware uses to supply a base Linux OS to each of the containers running within the virtual container host environment created by VMware vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC).
How does VMware instant clone technology affect vSphere Integrated Containers?
In conventional container environments, each container instance runs on top of a common operating system (OS) -- typically a version of Linux -- and shares the OS kernel. VIC more closely resembles a virtualized environment where each container is basically run within its own virtual machine instance. As with traditional virtualization, this approach promises greater hardware isolation and security, which is preferred for important enterprise application deployments.
But spinning up lots of OSes poses a technical challenge for virtualized environments like VIC. Common VMs each use a unique OS. When a server runs multiple VMs, the multiple OSes can add up to significant duplication in OS components, which consume computer resources, ultimately limiting the number of VMs that the physical server can support -- thereby limiting scalability.
VMware gets around OS duplication and inflated container resource use by using a custom Linux OS based on Project Photon stored as a base image in the virtual container host (VCH). When a new container is started in the VCH, a thin copy of the Photon OS kernel is copied to the new container instance. In addition to using only a small amount of resources -- only a small fraction of the resources needed for a full OS -- the kernel copy can be modified, or forked, for the specific container application while still sharing common OS components within the VCH. These containers cannot communicate with each other directly, preventing malware, crashes and other issues from disrupting a large number of containers simultaneously. Even Docker components are relegated to the VCH rather than individual containers, further reducing the size of each container. VMware calls this approach "just enough VM" to run a container.
What sets vSphere Integrated Containers apart from other containers?
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Get answers from a TechTarget expert on whatever's puzzling you. | <urn:uuid:aea7693e-0e08-4def-b398-eb07c1b2d722> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://searchvmware.techtarget.com/answer/How-does-VMware-instant-clone-technology-modify-vSphere-Integrated-Containers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560628000306.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20190626114215-20190626140215-00484.warc.gz | en | 0.876914 | 568 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Written by: Dr Arien van der Merwe MBChB FRSPH MISMA NHA
Billions of microorganisms live on and inside us. Most are beneficial, some are potential pathogens. The beneficial ones are called probiotic microorganisms. Lactobacillus (e.g. L acidophilus and L plantarum) bacteria reside mostly in the small intestine, and Bifidobacterium bifidum are found in the large intestine (colon).
Probiotics improve the environment of the intestinal tract. The regular use of probiotics is important in healing many chronic gastrointestinal problems and allergies. Some experts feel that children with allergic tendencies, need several times the amount of probiotics than those without GI (gastrointestinal) problems, due to the frequency of dysbiosis (overgrowth of yeast, bacteria, etc.) and ‘leaky gut syndrome’ (increased intestinal permeability).
Examples of wellknown probiotics include Saccharomyces boulardii, Lactobacillus acidodiphilus and plantarum and Bifidobacterium bifidus, to restore normal gut flora, improve immune system function and assist in digestion and absorption of food. Also helpful are the pre-biotics, inulin and fructooligosaccharides (FOS). FOS and inulin are non-digestible oligosaccharides that help promote the growth and activity of friendly bacteria in the intestinal tract. These are called ‘pre-biotics’ because they are thought to help promote probiotic colonisation and growth. These are oligosaccharides which are non-caloric compounds that can not be broken down by our digestive enzymes and therefore do not adversely affect blood sugar levels. Research has shown that both FOS and inulin enhance the growth of lactic bacteria, especially Bifidobacteria, and inhibit the growth of a variety of undesirable organisms.
Scientific studies over the last 50 years show that probiotic organisms can improve the nutritional quality of foods, produce antibiotics, anti-carcinogens, and substances that break down and assist in secretion of toxins inside their human host.
The major benefits of adding probiotic organisms to the diet:
- Support of the immune system
- Improved resistance to allergies
- Reduction in yeast and other infections
- Inhibition of disease causing organisms
- Improved digestion, increased nutrient absorption and vitamin synthesis
- Detoxification and protection from toxins
- Prevention of diarrhea from various causes
- Reduction in the risk of irritable bowel syndromes
- Cancer-protective effects
It is essential to choose a probiotic that has been extensively researched with a great deal of scientific support behind it. Capsules are the preferred way to take probiotics because there is more protection from contamination, oxygen and moisture, while capsules maintain organism integrity. Some capsules are specially coated to ensure that the microorganisms will safely reach their destination. Probiotics are not adversely affected by the use of digestive enzymes. Both can be taken at mealtimes.
Probiotics act in various ways to restore and maintain gut health. The exact mechanism by which most probiotics exert their action is still unclear. Possible mechanisms, which have been demonstrated, include the production of a protease that inactivates the toxin A receptor, the production of increased levels of secretory IgA and IgA antitoxin A and competition for attachment sites. Research results suggest that probiotics effectively prevent diarrhoea caused by amoxicillin in combination with clavulanate as well as intravenously administered cefuroxime.
The mode of action of probiotics in summary:
- Microbial antagonism
- Anti-toxigenic effect
- Increase in the activity of the intestinal disaccharidases
- Support of the immune system
- Restoring balance of normal intestinal flora
Digestive enzymes are also very helpful in restoring balance to the intestinal flora population. These can be found in supplement combinations containing pancreatic enzymes (amylase, protease, sucrase, malt diastase, lipase, cellulose, lactase), papain form paw-paw, bromelain from pineapple stem and cultured moulds from Aspergillus species.
Dr Arien van der Merwe MBChB (Pretoria) FRSPH (London) MISMA (UK) NHA (SA) is a medical doctor with extensive experience in natural and complementary medicine, stress management, workplace wellness and health promotion. She has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health (FRSPH) in the UK for the work she does in South Africa to promote public health and wellness through education, training and communication. As director of Health Stress Management Gauteng (Pty) Ltd, Dr Arien acts as wellness advisor and consultant, stress expert and program developer to the health care industry, health care funders (medical aids), companies, interest groups, websites and the media. Arien is an accomplished author of 19 books and a CD-rom on health, wellness and natural remedies, the latest being ‘Health & Happiness’, ‘Herbal Remedies’ and ‘Stress Solutions’. She presents regular stress management and natural wellness workshops in South Africa and abroad. | <urn:uuid:fb3266de-ec1e-4053-ab1a-6176466ac7c9> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.drarien.co.za/gut-health/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560628000306.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20190626114215-20190626140215-00484.warc.gz | en | 0.91665 | 1,096 | 3.703125 | 4 |
Children are naturally curious and want to explore. As a result, they can come in contact with bees, wasps, yellow jackets, hornets, and fire ants.
Tips Keep Your Child Safe From Insect Stings:
Check for nests in areas where children play. Nests can be found in old tree stumps, around rotting wood, and in holes in the ground. Check in auto tires that are part of a playground. Look around trash cans.
Have insect nests removed by a professional exterminator.
Don’t allow children who are allergic to insects to play outside alone when stinging insects are active. Even a dead insect can sting if a child steps on it or picks it up.
Wear shoes. Avoid wearing sandals or going barefoot.
Avoid wearing bright colors and floral patterns. These can attract insects. Wear white, green, tan, and khaki. These colors are not as attractive to insects.
When eating outdoors, avoid foods that attract insects. Some examples are tuna, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and watermelon. Sweetened drinks, frozen sweet treats, and ice cream also attract insects.
Stay away from garbage cans and dumpsters.
If an insect is near, do not swat at it or run. These actions can trigger an attack. Walk away slowly. If you have disturbed a nest and the insects swarm around you, curl up as tightly as you can to reduce exposed skin. Keep your face down and cover your head with your arms.
A child who is allergic to insects should wear a medical alert necklace or bracelet.
Additional Information from HealthyChildren.org: | <urn:uuid:5edfa3f0-4801-46d7-becf-c25491513f16> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.healthychildren.org/English/health-issues/conditions/from-insects-animals/Pages/How-to-Protect-Your-Child-from-Insect-Stings.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560628000306.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20190626114215-20190626140215-00484.warc.gz | en | 0.938437 | 332 | 3.4375 | 3 |
Thousands of gulf oil spill clean-up workers were hired as a result of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. These workers were adorned with clean up suits, gloves and masks. Interactions between the workers and the oil and dispersants creates health problems for the workers.
Crude oil or Petroleum is a complex mixture of thousands of hydrocarbons and non-hydrocarbon compounds, including heavy metals. The toxicity of complex mixtures such as crude oils is extremely difficult to assess. The main concern is the organic chemical compound Benzene, which is a natural constituent of crude oil. Prolonged exposure to the crude oil by anyone spending time on the coast and beaches raises the level of Benzene entering the body. Very few studies have examined the long-term health risk of exposure to oil. Inhaling small amounts of crude oil or dispersants can cause drowsiness, dizziness, rapid heart rate, headaches, tremors, and unconsciousness. More over, extended exposure to oil and dispersants can cause central nervous system problems, or damage to the blood, the kidney, or the liver, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
History shows that following the Exxon Valdez oil spill, an estimated 11,000 clean-up workers made 5,600 visits to health clinics that summer for respiratory symptoms. Neither Exxon or the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has preformed any research on long-term health effects on the workers. All the while, many clean-up workers continue to report health problems that they trace back to their involvement to that spill.
Since crude oil started pouring from BP’s well into the Gulf of Mexico, there have been empty promises to “learn new lessons,” ensuring safety for the workers. However, scientist and physicians continue to remain concerned for the health and well being of anyone involved inhaling the fumes, and handling or cleaning up the crude oil that followed the disaster. | <urn:uuid:588f7f17-f881-4234-b9d1-8388746e8493> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.louisianainsurancelitigation.com/bp_cleanup_workers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560628000306.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20190626114215-20190626140215-00484.warc.gz | en | 0.958325 | 397 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Newswise — AMES, Iowa — In 1965, three Des Moines teenagers wore black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. Their suspension led to a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision that was a turning point for students’ First Amendment rights.
Fifty years later, siblings Mary Beth Tinker and John Tinker will discuss the significance of their historic case in a panel discussion at Iowa State University. “Stand Up! Speak Up! Youth and the First Amendment” begins at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 25, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. This event is free and open to the public.
The panel will be moderated by Mark Stringer, executive director of ACLU of Iowa. This event is part of the Lectures Program’s National Affairs Series: Building a Better Democracy, as well as the ISU First Amendment Day Series.
School officials decided the armbands were a disruption, and suspended the Tinkers and their friend Christopher Eckhardt for violating school policy. A lawsuit against the school district followed, eventually making its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968.
The court’s 1969 decision on Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District found that the students’ actions didn’t disrupt school, and that they hold the same constitutional rights to free speech as adults. The decision included the often-quoted line, “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
This event is co-sponsored by the ACLU of Iowa, First Amendment Day Committee, National Affairs series committee, Patricia Miller lecture fund and the Committee on Lectures, which is funded by Student Government.
Find more information about ISU lectures online or by calling 515-294-9934. | <urn:uuid:c8b64e4e-09f8-48a5-b33b-ad4701d413d6> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.newswise.com/articles/tinkers-at-heart-of-student-free-speech-will-mark-50th-anniversary-of-landmark-scotus-case-at-iowa-state | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560628000306.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20190626114215-20190626140215-00484.warc.gz | en | 0.956345 | 379 | 2.90625 | 3 |
The Torah commands a Pesakh observance of seven days. This is followed by Reform Jews and those who live in Israel. Conservative and Orthodox Jews outside of Israel celebrate Pesakh for eight days. Around the seventh century BCE, people were notified of a holiday's beginning by means of an elaborate network of mountaintop bonfires. To guard against the possibility of error, an extra day was added to many of the holidays. By the time a dependable calendar came into existence, the additional day was so deeply engrained, the talmudic sages made the practice halakha (law).
--excerpted from The Jewish Home: A Guide for Jewish Living (URJ Press, New York) | <urn:uuid:b10928e1-2652-4c8f-95d7-adc78b7aa26b> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.wct.org/worship/holidays/pesakh/how-many-days-do-we-celebrate-pesakh | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560628000306.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20190626114215-20190626140215-00484.warc.gz | en | 0.954766 | 143 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Inflammation of the prostate can occur at almost any age. It is often due to infection. Although cystitis – an infection of the urine causing burning and frequency – is more commonly a disease that affects women, these symptoms can occur in men. Such symptoms may be caused by an infection of the prostate called acute prostatitis. This may cause a high temperature and make the patient feel very unwell. In an older man who also has BPH, any prostate symptoms might become worse and prostatitis can sometimes cause retention of urine.
Sometimes an infection of the testicle called epididymitis complicates prostatitis and the symptoms from this might overshadow those from the prostate itself. As with simple cystitis, it is treated with antibiotics. However, the prostate does not take up antibiotics very well and some antibiotics do not work properly inside the prostate. If an infection of the prostate is suspected, the most likely type of antibiotic to be used is called a quinolone – examples are ciprofloxacin (Ciproxin), ofloxacin (Tarivid), norfloxacin (Utinor). It is important that the antibiotic is used for long enough to get rid of the infection completely. This usually means several weeks of treatment. It is important that the full course of antibiotics is taken, even if the symptoms have gone completely, to prevent the infection flaring up again.
Taking plenty of fluids and resting is important while the symptoms are bad. Avoiding sex is probably wise but most patients won’t feel like it anyway while the symptoms are bad! Afterwards, frequent sex might help, as every time a climax is reached the fluid from the prostate may flush out any remaining infection. Rarely an abscess might develop. This is treated by letting out the pus by an operation very similar to a TURP.
This can lead to occasional flare-ups of cystitis symptoms or cause more chronic pain. Such pain occurs in the lower abdomen, the testicles, between the legs or even in the back passage. Chronic prostatitis can be very difficult to diagnose, as the symptoms it produces can be due to all sorts of conditions, not necessarily involving the prostate. If they are caused by prostatitis, the prostate may be tender on examination. The doctor may try to grow bacteria from the prostatic fluid, which can be obtained by massaging the prostate or by getting a sample of semen.
Sometimes the prostate is inflamed, but does not seem to be infected by bacteria. The cause of this type of prostatitis is not really understood but the symptoms are sometimes helped by anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen (Brufen, Nurofen) or indomethacin (Indocid) – although many similar drugs might be used.
Similar symptoms to those of prostatitis are caused by a condition called prostatodynia. This probably results from spasm of the muscle in the prostate and certainly many men who suffer from it are helped by the same alpha-blocker drugs that are used in BPH.
Conditions caused by muscle spasm are often aggravated by anxiety and stress, and some men do find that their symptoms are likely to occur if, for example, they are having a difficult time at work. Worry about the condition itself can also make it worse. In such cases it is very helpful to have the prostate checked out and be reassured that there is nothing else wrong with it. It is very unusual for pain in the prostate to be caused by cancer.
Other Causes of Prostatitis
Remember that prostatitis can be very difficult to diagnose and its symptoms are not very specific. You might be referred to a urologist to see if you have prostatitis. If he finds nothing wrong you may be referred to another specialist to make sure that there is no other cause of your symptoms.
– Inflammation of the prostate (prostatitis) may be caused by infection.
– Treatment is usually with antibiotics. | <urn:uuid:f34e7d86-fbfa-4b7c-8472-9a99324ecec8> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://sphealthclinic.com/understanding-prostatitis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.962615 | 828 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Oceanography, one of the essential 4 branches of Earth Science , is the examine of the oceans. Technosociety 37 – An industrially developed society with a reliance on technology. The advancements of both science and technology have resulted to incremental improvement and disruptive expertise. This definition encompasses the definition of scientific development, development of scientific data and technological development.
Based in 1975, the Society for Social Research of Science , initially supplied scholarly communication services, including a journal (Science, Expertise, and Human Values) and annual conferences that were mainly attended by science studies scholars.
The evolution of applied sciences marks the numerous improvement of different applied sciences in different fields, like nano expertise, biotechnology, robotics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence and information expertise. Technological utopianism – A constructive outlook on the effect expertise has on social welfare.
Infrastructure in the society has grown with the assistance of science and expertise. A technological development is an attempt at extending or additional understanding the underlying science used to develop present supplies, units, merchandise or processes. Implementing National Economic Reform is essential for the future of not solely the United States but for all of mankind particularly when the Science and Expertise Directives are realized.
Science And Expertise
Science and technology provide many societal advantages, such as the enhancement of financial growth or quality of life. The only distinction is that scientific advancement and development of scientific knowledge relate to science whereas technological advancement relates to know-how. Simply take a look; in 2006 the European Union laid the groundwork for further improvement of this Web know-how for power.
Technosocial systems 38 – individuals and technologies that mix to work as heterogeneous but practical wholes. The democratization of power will carry with it a elementary reordering of all human relationships, impacting the very means we conduct enterprise, govern society, educate and have interaction in civic and cultural activities.
Welcome To Science And Know-how
Founded in 1958, the Society for the Historical past of Technology initially attracted members from the history profession who had interests in the contextual history of know-how.
Science and expertise provide many societal benefits, such because the enhancement of financial growth or high quality of life. Technology is the practical utility of scientific data and ideas. One such improvement was the rise of “science, expertise, and society” applications, which are also—confusingly—identified by the STS acronym. Similarly, the European Inter-College Affiliation on Society, Science and Expertise (ESST) researches and research science and expertise in society, in each historical and modern views.
When trying to answer the question ‘What is the that means of science and technology?’ we’ve to view science as the research of the natural world while technology has to be viewed as the study of how to manipulate the natural world in an effort to go well with man.
After spending due time to accumulate a Bachelor of Engineering (Metallurgy) diploma and some skilled knowledge about computer systems, Abhay Burande developed an aptitude for science and technology. Humanity will be capable to share with one another an “energy Web,” identical to we are in a position to now create and share data online today.
Science encompasses the systematic examine of the construction and behavior of the physical and natural world through statement and experiment, and expertise is the application of scientific data for practical functions. With out society then there could be no science and expertise and that’s the reason the invention of certain instruments and equipment have helped achieve large things.
Science And Expertise, IT And Space
Science and know-how is the most effective thing society may ever ask for. Drawn from a wide range of disciplines, together with anthropology , historical past , political science , and sociology , students in these programs created undergraduate curricula devoted to exploring the issues raised by science and know-how Unlike students in science research , historical past of technology, or the history and philosophy of science, they were and usually tend to see themselves as activists working for change fairly than dispassionate, ” ivory tower ” researchers citation needed For example of the activist impulse, feminist students on this and different emerging STS areas addressed themselves to the exclusion of ladies from science and engineering.
The Society for Social Studies of Science members also embody authorities and business officials concerned with analysis and improvement as well as science and technology coverage; scientists and engineers who want to higher perceive the social embeddedness of their professional follow; and residents concerned in regards to the influence of science and technology of their lives.
Science and technology provide many societal advantages, such as the enhancement of economic development or high quality of life. As soon as we do mankind just would possibly be able to like that saying “boldly go the place no man has gone earlier than.” It’s to this finish that the Science and Expertise directive concentrate on bringing together the remainder of the international community and other industrialized nations in creating an Worldwide Area Exploratory Federation utilizing all the obtainable aerospace contractors and encouraging extra countries to supply assets so that more opportunities in growing newer applied sciences will enable mankind to have the supply to fulfill our final future.
Inside the Science and Expertise Directive like a Phoenix rising to guide the world in various vitality. Technology refers the data and utilization of instruments, strategies and techniques as a way to serve an even bigger objective like solving problems or making life simpler and better.
science and technology encyclopedia, applied science & technology index retrospective, science technology news articles
Oceanography, one of many necessary 4 branches of Earth Science , is the study of the oceans. Our protection includes authoritative, extremely accessible info on the very latest terminology, concepts, theories, strategies, folks, and organizations regarding all areas of science and expertise—from astronomy, engineering, physics, computer science, and mathematics, to life and earth sciences, chemistry, environmental science, biology, and psychology. | <urn:uuid:6f61f009-1d5f-4e0a-a819-c39b90f0f07a> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://www.adobexpert.com/science-technology-and-intellectual-property-2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.919726 | 1,209 | 2.6875 | 3 |
1. Create a picture juxtaposing two objects/ideas/people
Juxtapose two ideas/objects/people in one paragraph (3-5 complete sentences)
1. Whose face would you like to see on our money? Why? Answer in three complete sentences.
1. If your life were a movie, what are three songs that would be on the soundtrack?
2. Why would you pick these songs? How do they describe who you are? Answer in three complete sentences.
1. Create a five-sentence long story using the following as the first sentence of your story:
"You may be wondering why I work at a hospital for pinatas."
1.Write a story using each of your 7 vocabulary words: | <urn:uuid:59afee6c-8acc-4f53-9445-80b1ce8ebc88> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://amuellerwheeler.weebly.com/9th-grade-literature/do-nows-week-4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.940864 | 155 | 3.796875 | 4 |
As one of the most common sleeping disorders, insomnia causes trouble falling and/or staying asleep. So, people who suffer from insomnia have a poor-quality sleep, get too little sleep, and wake up feeling even more tired than before going to bed.
Moreover, this sleep disorder can also make you anxious, irritable, sleepy, and depressed. In fact, it will impact your whole lifestyle and weaken your performance. It might sound like a benign condition, but in fact, insomnia can trigger drowsiness while driving, which is the leading cause of accidents.
Types of Insomnia
There are three kinds of insomnia, including transient, acute, and chronic. Transient insomnia lasts for less than a week and it is usually triggered by another disorder or the environment. On the other hand, acute insomnia or stress-related insomnia can last for a period of less than a month. Chronic insomnia lasts for longer than a month and it can either be caused by another disorder, or it can be a primary disorder.
Women and older adults are more prone to developing insomnia. Likewise, other risk factors which increase the chances for insomnia include inactive lifestyle, long distance travel, lower incomes, stress, other medical conditions and sleep disorders, and depression.
Sign and Symptoms
The main symptom of insomnia is experiencing a difficulty, falling or staying asleep. Thus, people who deal with this sleep disorder usually sleep only for a short period, lie awake for much of the night, wake up too early, and don’t feel refreshed after waking up.
Additionally, the lack of sleep can make you sleepy and tired throughout the day. You might experience difficulty, focusing and concentrating. Moreover, this sleep disorder might cause even some more serious consequences. So, if you think that you might have insomnia, make sure you see a sleep specialist.
The Link Between Artificial Light Exposure at Night and Insomnia in Older Adults
According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, artificial, outdoor light exposure at night is linked to insomnia in older adults. The study showed that when elderly people are being exposed to night-time levels of artificial, outdoor light, they are more likely to have an increased prevalence of hypnotic prescriptions and daily dose intake.
In fact, the artificial light might have a strong connection with sleep deprivation, as compared to people inside the house. The artificial light is a very strong environmental change which can disrupt the sleep of most individuals. This light is also known as "light pollution," and it definitely has a negative impact on human health. The light pollution doesn’t only disrupt your sleep, but also your circadian rhythms and triggers chronic and metabolic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, and depression. | <urn:uuid:888cb85d-4c5b-43ac-ba2f-23330a107244> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://blog.virtuox.net/post/artificial-light-exposure-at-night-linked-to-insomnia-in-older-adults | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.953563 | 549 | 2.921875 | 3 |
By James Chilton, Cowboy State Daily
CHEYENNE – Helium may be the second-lightest element, but it’s weighing heavily on a lot of minds these days as the world struggles with its third global shortage in just 14 years.
It’s gotten bad enough that, when party supply superstore Party City announced earlier this month it plans to shutter 45 of its 870 stores in the U.S., many outlets pointed to helium as the culprit. Party City has since said the closures are unrelated to the helium shortage, but it has acknowledged that some stores have had trouble fulfilling balloon orders due to inconsistent helium supplies, and it hopes to have a new commercial supplier in place by the summer.
It may not be the first thing that springs to mind when thinking of Wyoming, but the Cowboy State plays a key role in keeping the helium supply chain afloat, providing up to 30 percent of the world’s supply.
While most people probably know helium best for its role in the party balloon business, or for the funny way it raises the pitch of your voice, it’s actually one of the most critically important elements on the planet. In fact, helium is one of 35 mineral materials considered essential to U.S. national economic and security interests, as recently defined by the Department of the Interior.
That’s because, aside from making balloons and blimps float, helium has many important uses in the technology sector.
With the lowest boiling point of any element at -452 degrees Fahrenheit, liquid helium is used as a coolant for magnets in MRI machines and for research operations like Europe’s Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator. Because it’s light and nonreactive, it’s also used as a shielding gas in arc welding, and it’s added to air tanks to make it easier for lungs to take in oxygen during deep ocean dives.
“It’s almost too valuable to fill party balloons with,” said Scott Quillinan, the director of research at UW’s School of Energy Resources.
But while it makes up about a quarter of all the matter in the universe, helium is surprisingly hard to come by on Earth. The name is a bit of a giveaway – helium was named for the Greek sun god Helios, since it was first detected not on Earth, but as part of the sun’s spectral light signature, caught during a solar eclipse in 1868.
On Earth, it makes up just 0.0005 percent of the air we breathe, and while other important gases like hydrogen and oxygen can be easily separated from more complex molecules, helium is notoriously stable and doesn’t combine with other elements.
That leaves just one primary source for helium on Earth: deep within the ground. As radioactive elements like uranium and thorium break down, they throw off helium atoms that then become trapped in natural gas formations.
“There are competing hypotheses as to why there is even helium in natural gas anywhere,” said geologist Ranie Lynds, the manager of the Wyoming State Geological Survey’s Energy & Mineral Resources division. “Some people have it as being mantle-driven, coming from a lot deeper in the earth, and because it’s so light it’s able to make its way up to the surface where it’s stored with natural gas.”
“Other people have argued it forms more from uranium and thorium decay in sedimentary rocks, then it’s moved along with water through these systems,” Lynds added.
Regardless of how it got there, there’s still not much to go around – helium comprises less than 0.3 percent of most commercial natural gas deposits. But in a handful of places those concentrations rise to as high as 8 percent, making helium extraction economically viable.
In Wyoming, all the state’s commercially-produced helium comes from the LaBarge field in western Sublette County. Natural gas extracted from LaBarge is piped down to ExxonMobil’s Shute Creek natural gas processing plant in eastern Lincoln County, where the helium is separated out from other gases like methane and carbon dioxide.
“The CO2 is sold for enhanced oil recovery opportunities and the methane is used for natural gas sales,” Quillinan said. “The helium concentration is only about 0.6 percent of the gas that comes out, but there’s not many places in the world where you can find helium, so even at those low percentages, it becomes economic to produce.”
Quillinan noted that helium has to be cooled to almost absolute zero – the lowest physically-possible temperature – in order to be liquefied for storage and shipment. And even then, helium’s ultra-light nature makes it hard to keep contained. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good, since even Earth’s gravity isn’t enough to keep it from just floating off into space.
“It can be very difficult to handle,” Quillinan said. “I’m an isotope geochemist, and one problem with even sampling isotopes of helium is you can’t use glass containers, because it’ll just slip through the glass.”
The hassle is more than worth it, however. At least ExxonMobil seems to think so: figures published in 2014 in the scientific journal “Minerals” show that Wyoming accounted for 43 percent of U.S. helium production and 31 percent of global production from 2000 to 2012.
“Looking at the numbers for 2012 specifically, Wyoming does top the list, then very close behind it is Kansas, followed by Texas, then Colorado and Oklahoma,” Lynds said. “Right now there’s pretty significant production in Wyoming and I would expect that to continue.”
In January, Wyoming State Geologist Erin Campbell wrote that, along with uranium, helium has some of the best development potential of any mineral material in the state. In addition to the known supplies at LaBarge and elsewhere in southwest Wyoming, Campbell said the WSGS “estimates 14.78 billion cubic feet of marginally economic and subeconomic helium resources exist … in the Greater Green River, Wind River, Powder River, and Bighorn basins and the western Wyoming thrust belt.”
But while those untapped resources may one day help to meet global demand for the gas, industry experts expect the current shortage will likely last through the remainder of this year, unless either demand starts dropping or until other large-scale helium projects in Qatar and Russia come online in 2020 and beyond. | <urn:uuid:7e30e1c8-3691-43e0-bbeb-da6d8980675b> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://cowboystatedaily.com/2019/05/30/wyoming-helium-production-helps-keep-world-supply-afloat/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.939772 | 1,388 | 2.6875 | 3 |
The Evolution of Humanity. Social Influences on a Child's Mind.
Adults are the product of childhood learning
Rearing a child, and teaching them right from wrong is a daunting task for any parent. Children grow into adulthood and become products of their childhood teachings and influences. Some things lacking in many child rearing households are overtly apparent by the attitudes of many ill informed adults around us in this word.
Placing too much emphasis on the wrong concepts can damage a child for a lifetime. Simply attributes are the most important in shaping young minds, and influencing their attitudes toward peace, harmony, love, and humanitarianism. The following are few examples of that as opposed to instilling fear, guilt, hatred, and intolerance thru outdated religious concepts that were only designed to keep us subservient to the establishments of government and religion.
''Creating and sustaining a society that is beneficial for everyone.
What we need versus what we don't need that is harmful.
We should be shaping religions and politics instead of being shaped by them.
Positive influences are more beneficial to a child than negative influences.'
Love is not "taught", it is inherent - hatred and intolerance is a "learned" behavior.
Diversity is part of the beauty of humanity, not a disparagement.
But best of all is: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
- Teaching 'creationism' as fact is not appropriate for children - and other truths.
Our Creator speaks to us in a variety of ways. We just have to open our minds and listen to what comes in. Facts should always prevail over fantasies.
Importance of positive input
We are ALL just an individual summary of 'random' input data; with the exception of some very specific radical indoctrination choices by the parents.
Most of us live our lives based on what we believe is "acceptable" to someone else.
The influences forced on us, as children, are insurmountable. Although these influences are a mere fraction of the whole of our life experiences, they are of great importance in the shaping of the mind.
By history, the people imparting those influences were given the "right" to input 'anything' at all into the minds of children, by their parents, who trusted that what they were teaching the children was appropriate, simply because it was the same knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation.
That 'given' right, is totally influenced by the prevailing society from which those 'teachers' were brought up in. And whose members have "learned" to band together based on a common belief that has been accepted as a commonality of its own collective.
The end result is that every single teacher has their own version of what a society should, or should not be - or whether to reject, tolerate, or respect the views and beliefs of others as valid.
Leaving one to question whether those influences have benefited society as a whole, or caused irreparable harm to the individual.
- Programming your Computer vs. Brainwashing your child. Religion, Logic, and Abused Children.
The perils and pitfalls of Brainwashing your children before the age of reasoning sets in. These conflicts cause emotional turmoil, scars, and a life time of torment.
Not Appropriate for Children
Input without purpose is dangerous
Humanity has attempted to define itself as being "aware of its own existence'', but lacks the intrinsic knowledge to understand why we are "motivated" to do so.
The data input that is imprinted on a child's mind has everlasting impressionable influences throughout that child's lifetime in:
- the way they think;
- what they believe;
- how they think they are supposed to behave;
- how they perceive themselves as an individual;
- how they perceive others around them;
- and how they perceive themselves as a group.
This is all well and good, if humanity was meant to be a society of automatons.
The local societies we create today tend to:
- deny individuality;
- slow growth in all emotional aspects of life;
- hinder creativity;
- limit acceptance of others;
- retard the embracing of actively seeking knowledge;
- and inhibit civility toward others not of their group.
It is difficult to be more than what each family unit, and the society in which they dwell, 'expects' us to be.
With all the great and wondrous technology available today, one would think that some kind of "enlightenment" would inevitably take hold. Perhaps it will one day. Perhaps it already has, and we just don't see it manifesting itself yet.
What we are NOT teaching our children
Shaping a child's mind
There is an underlying influence that somehow humanity seems unable, or unwilling, to shed itself of:
It is like having a physical symptom of something abnormal happening within your body. A growth perhaps. An unknown growth that represents a threat to one's physical being.
But, you ignore it in "hopes" it will miraculously go away; disappear from your body and all will be well again.
However, this kind of miracle rarely happens. The tumor grows to a size that can no longer be ignored, spreads, and eventually destroys the host body. And so, this body dies prematurely because that individual did not see, or understand, the danger of this insidious invasion. A totally unnecessary demise.
Now, let's go back to humankind and view it as a whole "body".
What is this insidious growth destroying humanity?
Ask any one individual and each will have a different answer that is undoubtedly false, or only partially true. There is not just one tumor in the whole of humanity. It is the culmination of ignorance (s), due to many subversive influences that affect humanity as a whole.
It has nothing to do with a particular race of people; any particular religion; any particular sub culture; or any individual person. And most importantly, it has nothing to do with that greatest of all scapegoat for unawareness: "Good versus Evil" as described by the ancient harbingers of doom and gloom.
There are multiple factors that influence societies, as a whole, that are not in the best interest of humanity, that must be dealt with before any "healing" or progressive spiritual growth, [or rather healing], can begin to take place.
Here is my top 10 list (not in any particular order - all are top priority).
1. Education and knowledge:
Learning diverse concepts such as philosophy, ethics, physics, biology, psychology, sociology, match, art, etc., as being of equal importance; along with proper speech and writing skills, and encouraging the expression of individuality. Teaching logic and rational thought.
As an unacceptable state of being; and recognizing it (greed) as the greatest negative influence on any society. Greed is never good. This concept (greed) is not a necessity for survival, and most certainly NOT for spiritual growth. It is a concept of selfishness and creates nothing but harm when inflicted into any society. Healthy competitiveness is one thing. Greed should not be an acceptable substitute for competitiveness in any society.
Teaching children to be afraid of things is extremely harmful. It causes them to not try for betterment for fear of failure, ridicule, or other negative reactions. Being wary of things that are, or may be, harmful should be taught, but never fear of the unknown, the unseen, or the imaginary. Teaching them 'fear' of others because they are different teaches them distrust of others
There is nothing that a child needs to ever be made to feel guilty about in terms of their desires to learn and understand:
- their ability to reason with logic;
- their self worth;
- and accepting themselves as being a unique and beautiful individual.
Teaching societal 'rights and wrongs' should not involve guilt for something they may, or may not do, or be, but rather what they do to harm another individual.
Denying reality for the sake of fantasy is implanting seeds of distrust of anything that is not part of their limited lives.
Too often children are seen as "too young" to be aware of "certain things" that parents view as 'adult' topics.
If a child has the fortitude to ask a question, they deserve an honest (and factual) answer.
The intricate details need not be necessary, but the general concept cannot be ignored.
Children always know when they are being lied to, and lying to them will only stop them from asking uncomfortable questions in the future, or reporting, or sharing anything they may perceive as being 'unacceptable topics' by their parents.
Answers to uncomfortable questions should come from their parents, not from their peers, religious teachers, or other sources that may be telling them something that is inappropriate or harmful to them.
6. Lack of self awareness (on a global scale):
Parents tend to try and shield their children from the realities of the world.
Although it is good to instill a sense of self worth, and caution against potential hazards, it is also imperative to put our existence in perspective with the global picture. If we limit our teachings to their immediate surroundings it narrows their field of perspective in relation to the vastness of the world they actually must live in.
7. People who thrive on the overpowering of others:
People who tend to "control" others must be introduced to children, not as a "good thing", but rather to know the difference between "guiding others", "teaching others" and "leading others by example", as opposed to "bullying", "intimidating", "frightening" or otherwise trying to exert "control" over others.
Good leaders should be those who 'work with' their subjects rather than 'over power' them for selfish reasons.
8. Unawareness of diversity around the world:
Teach children that diversity is not a bad thing. It is an interesting phenomenon and should be viewed with respect, awe, and unconditional acceptance. Never by judging by comparison, to our own limited views.
9. Limited (narrow) input into a child's brain:
This is one of the worst hazards on the developing brain of a child.
Brainwashing is child abuse at its very worst. It denies diversity; causes hatred, intolerance, guilt; and promotes ignorance and mental instability.
A child cannot understand the complex concepts of religious beliefs before their age of reasoning sets in (that average age is around 7 years). And should never be subjected to those fears, guilt and intolerance of others, for any reason.
10. The wrong emphasis on childhood influences:
Placing the wrong emphasis on things that you teach your children is dangerous and extremely foolhardy.
Promoting fantasies, superstitions, mysticism, or fairy tales as reality, narrows the child to unrealistic expectations, or intolerance to everything outside their own limited sphere.
There are universal truths to be taught first: Love, trust, acceptance, loyalty, tolerance, and above all - everyone is of equal value and should be treated as such. There are no exceptions to this logic.
Intelligence versus Fantasy
- Intelligence, Logic, and Fantasy-Conflicting Religious Ideas Children are Unable to Reconcile.
Will we ever have logic and intelligence as a societal norm? Can we ever rid this earth of hatred? Hatred seems to be the greatest legacy we pass on to each generation.
Learning to judge others
So, here we are.
Do you think you know who I am?
Do you think you have the right to judge me, or others?
Do you even know the real you?
If you answered 'yes' to any of these questions, you are dead wrong and part of the global problem; and certainly not part of the solutions for creating a peaceful global humanity.
Perhaps, just perhaps, we need to stop looking at the world through our individual eyes, our individual lives, our individual religions, our individual societies, races, governments and countries.
Let us start the healing of a troubled planet by looking through the eyes of our global society; by being proud of our own individuality; as nations, societies, diverse cultures and our own family units, based on love and mutual respect for all others, instead of judging them by our limited (and learned) individual standards.
After all, we ALL collectively are a "true global society" with much diversity and beauty.
Trying to personalize the whole planet by ones own limited (world) view is a long gone thing of the past. It is a major deterrent to spiritual growth and taking our rightful place in our communities, our country, our global society, our solar system, our galaxy and the entire universe.
When Life and Logic collide
- When Life and Logic Collide. The birth and evolution of our global society.
We all seem to live in our own little fantasy worlds. Things are seldom as they seem. We are controlled by everyone with a self serving interest.
Truth is in the future - not the past
The real truth and knowledge lies in the future, not in the past.
Except for the acceptance of the superfluousness of the past for what it truly is:
- a learning tool,
- a stepping stone toward the future,
- and a guide as to what not to bring into a future.
A future that is truly bright with individual freedom, happiness, peace, and unimaginable knowledge to be gained. But most important, knowing the hazards of stagnating where we are because of our incessant obsessive need to try and hold onto the old views of the past.
We must all first learn to graciously let go of the past, learn from past mistakes, and embrace the future with open eyes, open hearts, open arms, and open minds.
To boldly go where no man has gone before.
by: d.william 06/28/2011
Learning should begin at birth and end at death.
© 2011 d.william | <urn:uuid:72ff1e7b-f149-4c50-a28f-19b7002d65e9> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/WHO-AM-I-You-Think-You-Know-Me | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.954168 | 2,904 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Minor planet designation
The naming of asteroids and comets expires after a two step process. Immediately after their discovery, they will get a so-called provisional name of numbers and letters, which primarily includes the discovery date for a by the International Astronomical Union ( IAU) defined scheme. After the precise orbit of a newly discovered asteroid was determined and confirmed by independent observers, the discoverer has the right to propose a name of this object, which is then formally awarded by the IAU considering various criteria. Comets are, however, now always named after their discoverers.
- 2.1 asteroids
- 2.2 comets
The current naming scheme was formed from older systems by extension, so older designations are consistent with more recent.
The provisional name of the newly discovered asteroid or comet is formed by the IAU reference to the discovery date of the following components:
Tabulated character encoding of the naming schema:
In 2004, therefore, the first discovered asteroid 2004 AA was called starting from January 1. This scheme is then passed through to 2004 AZ, which is then followed by the next run of 2004 AA1. It is long gone through until January 16 begins ( according to UTC time); the first letter changes so that on B, and the count is continued with BA in 2004.
An example of the order of the names in one half of the month, using the example of the second half of September 1995: 1995 SA, 1995 SB, ..., 1995 SY, 1995 SZ, 1995 SA1, ..., 1995 SZ1, 1995 SA2, ..., 1995 SZ9, 1995 SA10, etc.
The now under the name of ( 90377 ) Sedna known celestial bodies had the provisional designation 2003 VB12. So he was discovered in the first half of November 2003 ( V) and was the 302nd discovery in this period (B12 → 2 12 * 25 = 302).
Comet discoveries are named similarly: 2004 A1 is the first comet discovered the period from 1 to 15 January 2004, 2004 A2 of the second, etc.
The comet Hyakutake, for example, is also performed under the name C/1996 B2. Hyakutake was thus the second comet, which was discovered in the second half of January 1996. Its orbital period is how the C indicates greater than 200 years.
The names of the asteroids are composed of a prefix number and a name. The number used to line the order of discovery of the celestial body. Today it is a purely numerical Zählform, as it is only awarded if the orbit of the asteroid is secured (ie, the object is retrievable at any time ). This may well also be delayed until years after the Erstbeobachtung.
The discoverer has within ten years after the numbering right to nominate the allocation of a name. However, this must be confirmed by a Commission of the IAU, as there are guidelines for the names of astronomical objects. Accordingly, although many asteroids exist with number but no name, especially in the upper ten thousands.
The first asteroid was discovered in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi at the observatory of Palermo in Sicily. Piazzi christened the celestial body on the name Ceres Ferdinandea. The Roman goddess Ceres is the patron saint of the island of Sicily. The second name was Piazzi King Ferdinand IV, honor the ruler of Naples and Sicily. This displeased the international research community, and allowed this name part away. The official name of the asteroid is, therefore, ( 1) Ceres.
In the further discoveries, the nomenclature has been maintained, and the asteroids were named after Roman and Greek goddesses; These were ( 2) Pallas, (3) Juno, (4) Vesta, ( 5) Astraea, (6 ) Hebe, etc. Initially was also the unwritten law that asteroids were always female names; this was broken for the first time at the asteroid (334 ) Chicago.
As more and more asteroids were discovered, astronomers went from the ancient deities. So asteroids were, among others, by the wives of the discoverer, named in honor of historical figures or public figures, cities and fairytale characters. Examples include the asteroid (21 ) Lutetia, (216 ) Cleopatra ( 719) Albert, (1773 ) Rumpelstiltskin ( 2807 ) Karl Marx ( 5535 ) Anne Frank (9000 ) Hal, ( 17744 ) Jodiefoster. This practice also drove some strange flowers. So the 1935 discovered planetoid ( 1372 ) Haremari example, named in honor of the staff of the Astronomical Institute rake in Heidelberg, as the harem of ARI. Another interesting example is the asteroid ( 2309 ) Mr. Spock, who was not named after the Star Trek character, but after the eponymous cat of the discoverer. This meant that the IAU declared the naming of asteroids after pets as undesirable.
In addition to names from Greek and Roman mythology also names of deities from other cultures are used, especially for newly discovered large objects, such as ( 20000) Varuna, (50000) Quaoar and ( 90377 ) Sedna.
After 2006, the new category of dwarf planets was introduced, Ceres retained the number 1, and the previously classified as planet Pluto as well as Eris new numbers were assigned in this series.
For example, usually a comet is named after its discoverers, so is the comet Shoemaker- Levy 9 comet of the ninth, the Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker discovered along with David H. Levy. A few periodic comets are but also named after those astronomers who first calculated its orbit: Halley's comet is named, for example, by Edmond Halley, who first recognized that some comets past observations are part of a recurring at regular intervals of 76 comets.
Through systematic automated sky surveys, especially for potentially dangerous Earth's orbit cruisers (including the high number of passes of more recent discoveries therefore ) are among many asteroids, many comets have been found by these programs. The provisional name the name of the observer group is then additionally appended in brackets, in the tradition of naming after the discoverers. So all the comets found by the search program LINEAR have part of the name, LINEAR ', or (if the discovery at the same time another observer or another observer group succeeded ) a combined, eg, LINEAR - NEAT '. For example, the comet called C/2002 T7 (LINEAR ), which was discovered on 14 October 2002 and in May 2004, reaching an apparent magnitude of about 2mag.
Short-period comets, which are protected as such, receive a permanent serial number followed by the character encoding of their car and the name of the discoverer or Bahnberechners. For example, 2P/Encke the second (after Halley ) from the current 293 comets (as of: September 19, 2013) who has received such a permanent number. | <urn:uuid:2e80cda8-b202-4708-9b4e-cd9c1abcc49b> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://memim.com/minor-planet-designation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.953578 | 1,466 | 3.40625 | 3 |
Developing light metals that have desirable mechanical properties is always the object of the endeavor of materials scientists. Magnesium (Mg), one of the lightest metals, had been used widely in military and other applications. Yet, its relatively poor formability, as well as its relatively low absolute strength, in comparison with other metals such as aluminum and steels, caused the use of Mg to be discontinued after World War II. Owing to the subsequent energy crisis of the seventies, recently, interest in Mg development has been rekindled in the materials community. The main focus of research has been quite straight-forward: increasing the strength and formability such that Mg and its alloys may replace aluminum alloys and steels to become yet another choice for structural materials. This dissertation work is mainly focused on fundamental issues related to Mg and its alloys. More specifically, it investigates the mechanical behavior of different Mg-based materials and the corresponding underlying deformation mechanisms. In this context, we examine the factors that affect the microstructure and mechanical properties of pure Mg, binary Mg-alloy (with addition of yttrium), more complex Mg-based alloys with and without the addition of lanthanum, and finally Mg-based metal matrix composites (MMCs) reinforced with ex-situ ceramic particles. More specifically, the effects of the following factors on the mechanical properties of Mg-based materials will be investigated: addition of rare earths (yttrium and lanthanum), in-situ/ex-situ formed particles, particle size or volume fraction and materials processing, effect of thermal-mechanical treatment (severe plastic deformation and warm extrusion), and so on and so forth.
A few interesting results have been found from this dissertation work: (i) although rare earths may improve the room temperature ductility of well-annealed Mg, the addition of yttrium results in ultrafine and un-recrystallized grains in the Mg-Y alloy subjected to equal channel angular pressing (ECAP); (ii) the reverse volume fraction effect arises as the volume fraction of nano-sized ex-situ formed reinforcements is beyond 10%; (iii) nano-particles are more effective in strengthening Mg than micro-particles when the volume fraction is below 10%; (iv) complete dynamic recovery and/or recrystallization is required to accomplish the moderate ductility in Mg, together with a strong matrix-particle bonding if it is a Mg-based composite; and (v) localized shear failure is observed in all Mg samples, recrystallized completely, which is attributed to the reduced strain hardening rate as a result of the exhaustion of twinning and/or dislocation multiplication.
|Commitee:||Chen, Don, Cherukuri, Harish, Kecskes, Laszlo, Zhou, Jing|
|School:||The University of North Carolina at Charlotte|
|School Location:||United States -- North Carolina|
|Source:||DAI-B 76/11(E), Dissertation Abstracts International|
|Subjects:||Mechanics, Mechanical engineering, Materials science|
|Keywords:||Adiabatic shear banding, Dynamic loading, Magnesium alloys, Mechanical properties, Metal-matrix composites, Strain rate sensitivity|
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Depending on the size of the file(s) you are downloading, the system may take some time to download them. Please be | <urn:uuid:07f0c761-a941-444a-86d8-9deac9f6bb43> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1707693866.html?FMT=ABS | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.905375 | 885 | 2.765625 | 3 |
You need to be there for your child when they are being bullied or feel threatened but you may not know where to start. Below are some straightforward ways to engage with your child and help them deal with the situation. It’s important to understand how they are feeling and not assume they are just overreacting.
Monitor your child’s online activity and understand what they are doing and who they are communicating with.
Communicate regularly with your children and have them share their profile pages on the different networks with you. Point out areas of risk and make helpful suggestions without arguing. Let them know you are there to help.
Understand how social networking sites work and which ones your children frequent. These are often changing so communicate regularly and stay up to date.
Make sure to build trust with your kids and set appropriate boundaries. Provide time limits and explain why they are in place. Discuss rules for internet usage and social network posting. Take your kids input and make them part of the process.
If your kid is being bullied be understanding and supportive of the situation. Do not overreact but do let them know it’s not their fault. Explain to them that you will work with them to solve the problem.
Also don’t brush it off as part of growing up or tell them they just need to deal with it. Being bullied is upsetting and can have long lasting effects that need to be dealt with.
Let your children know they should not to respond to cyberbullying threats or comments online. They should involve you and discuss how to handle the situation instead of just reacting to it. Do not delete the messages but make copies for your records in order to prove that cyberbullying is happening.
Work with school counselors or administrators to see what they may know and to see if they can keep an eye out for any bullying at school.
If there are threats involved or any violence you should get law enforcement involved. | <urn:uuid:0414b8ed-fa41-4288-8016-98be42ca4a83> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.davidslegacy.org/2018/11/11/helping-your-child-cope-with-a-cyberbully/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.97194 | 395 | 3.484375 | 3 |
A circuit's flow rate can be set by the displacement of the pump e.g. a 10cc/rev pump running at 1500rev/min would give 10 * 1500 /1000 = 15 L/min, ignoring any losses.
In practice, a pump's actual displacement will vary. For a start the pump's nominal, catalogue figure is rarely exact and there will always be changes in a pump's volumetric efficiency with changes in pressure, temperature, and speed. There will also be the effect of the drive system slowing with changes in load.
It's common for a circuit's flow to be set by the flow control (restrictor) valve in the circuit.
The simple formula (shown in the diagram) can be reliably used for most sharp-edged orifice installations. In reality, there are always a large number of diameter and direction changes that will impact on performance but the reliability of this formula has been demonstrated by significant laboratory tests and field experience data.
Keeping the fluid velocity through the pipework to within normal limits is vital for ensuring good performance. Pipe sizes are calculated during the system design stage but it's important that these are not reduced during remedial work. The formula to establish the correct fluid velocity is shown in the diagram and typical values will be provided later in this training.
Closed circuit systems have NO flow control valve in the main lines but instead, use the pump/motor displacement to control the speed. With no pressure loss from the flow control valves, the overall system efficiency should be higher.
Modern electronics, and the need for reducing power loss throughout industry, is also bringing the use of more ‘secondary control' solutions into hydraulic design. These will not be discussed in this course but as engineers you should be aware that a wide range of control systems exist and may be used in your application. | <urn:uuid:54c3461c-b9e8-4219-ac98-7759f8ccf257> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.e4training.com/hyd_formula/flow1.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.946678 | 374 | 3.765625 | 4 |
Hoping to drive advances in global food safety, scientists from IBM Research and Mars Inc., McLean, Va., are reportedly tracking food’s microbiome to improve food safety and productivity. The data scientists from IBM are said to be developing a robust way to prevent food contamination bacteria that can kill thousands of Americans every year. The ambitious goal is to track food across the global supply chain by sequencing the DNA of the microorganisms that live on it.
Food has thousands of these tiny hitchhikers, the vast majority harmless, making up what’s known as a “microbiome.” Protecting the global food supply is a monumental public health challenge, says a news release from Mars. In the U.S. alone, one in six people are affected by food-borne diseases each year, resulting in 128,000 hospitalizations, 3,000 deaths, and $9 billion in medical costs. Another $75 billion worth of contaminated food is recalled and discarded annually.
Lead researcher Jeff Welser notes that food has thousands or microorganisms that live on it, most of which are harmless, but make up what's called the "microbiome." Conditions as diverse as soil and processing methods influence a food’s microbiome, making the collective DNA of its microorganisms a detailed and unique record of its path to the plate.
Early last year, the two companies formed the “Consortium for Sequencing the Food Supply Chain,” a collaborative food safety platform to leverage advances in genomics to further understanding of what makes food safe.
As a first step, the consortium’s scientists will investigate the genetic fingerprints of living organisms such as bacteria, fungi, or viruses and how they grow in different environments, including counter tops, factories, and raw materials. This data will be used to further investigate how bacteria interact, which could result in completely new ways to view supply chain food safety management.
Innovative approaches that use genetic data to better understand and improve food safety are emerging, and hold the promise of unparalleled insight and understanding of the total supply chain. In support of this goal, the consortium says it will conduct the largest-ever metagenomics study to categorize and understand micro-organisms and the factors that influence their activity in a normal, safe factory environment. This work could be extended into the larger context of the food supply chain -- from farm to fork -- and lead to new insights into how microorganisms interact within a factory ecology and be better controlled by new data and science-driven practices.
IBM is currently conducting tests in collaboration with Mars by tracking the ingredients arriving at one of the company’s dog food plants.
“The Consortium for Sequencing the Food Supply Chain has the potential to revolutionize food safety, providing a powerful tool to identify and address new threats on an unprecedented scale, enabling critical breakthroughs in global food safety,” says Dave Crean, vice president, corporate research and development, at Mars. “We are excited to be working with IBM Research on this, and look forward to welcoming additional partners in the future to help drive global innovation in genomics, food, and agriculture.”
While many food companies such as Mars already have rigorous processes in place to ensure food safety risks are managed appropriately, the companies say this application of genomics will enable an in-depth understanding and categorization of micro-organisms on a much bigger scale than has previously been possible.
“Genome sequencing serves as a new kind of microscope – one that uses data to peer deeply into our natural environment to uncover insights that were previously unknowable,” points out Jeff Welser, vice president and lab director, at IBM Research - Almaden. “By mining insights from genomic data, we’re seeking to understand how to identify, interpret and ultimately create healthy and protective microbial management systems within the food supply chain.”
The consortium’s research will initially focus on select raw materials and factory environments, with the first data samples gathered at Mars-owned production facilities, but will ultimately extend up and down the entire food supply chain and include applications for farmers. | <urn:uuid:274fa344-c4ac-4c77-9cc5-3fcc8daccb7a> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.foodprocessing.com/industrynews/2016/ibm-mars-to-improve-food-safety-by-cataloging-friendly-bacteria/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.943509 | 846 | 3.59375 | 4 |
By David L. Hudson Jr., First Amendment Center
Updated July 2009
An angry individual unleashes a torrent of profanity upon a police officer. The officer tries to remain calm and ignore the enraged individual. But the profanity does not stop with one curse word, and the officer arrests the person for disorderly conduct or breach of the peace.
The individual contends that the officer violated his First Amendment right to free speech, which includes the right to engage in offensive expression. The individual asserts he has the right to criticize government officials — one of the central rights the First Amendment is designed to protect. The government counters that the individual has no First Amendment protection because he has uttered “fighting words” — an unprotected category of speech. Freedom of speech is not advanced, the government asserts, by a stream of profanities with little or no intellectual substance.
Who should prevail in such a situation? Can the government constitutionally punish an individual for expressing himself in an offensive and uncivil manner? Does it matter whether the recipient of the profane outburst is a police officer?
These cases arise in two basic postures. In the first type of case, an individual faces criminal charges for disorderly conduct based on obnoxious, offensive speech and attempts to make a First Amendment-based defense. The question becomes whether the individual’s speech constituted unprotected “fighting words” or protected free speech.
In the second type, criminal charges are dropped against the individual, who then files a civil rights lawsuit alleging a violation of his First Amendment free-speech rights. He or she contends that the police violated his or her free-speech rights because they punished him (in the form of an arrest and perhaps criminal charges) for protected speech. The police counter that the individual engaged in fighting words and that the police should receive qualified immunity because a reasonable police officer in that situation would not know whether the individual’s speech constituted fighting words or protected speech.
Qualified immunity is a doctrine that shields government officials from liability when they do not violate clearly established constitutional or statutory law. If it is unclear whether an individual engaged in fighting words, the governmental official may receive qualified immunity even if the official wrongly assumes the individual uttered fighting words.
These hypothetical situations form the basis for a surprisingly complex area of First Amendment jurisprudence. The First Amendment protects a wide range of expression that many people do not like. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote in the Court’s 1989 decision in Texas v. Johnson: “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because it finds it offensive or disagreeable.”
But the Supreme Court has ruled that certain offensive words — called “fighting words” — can be prohibited. The genesis of the high court’s fighting-words jurisprudence began with the 1942 decision Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire.
The Supreme Court first developed the fighting-words doctrine in the case of Walter Chaplinsky in 1942. Chaplinsky, a Jehovah’s Witness, was distributing religious literature on the streets of Rochester, N.H.
Apparently, several citizens complained about Chaplinsky’s comments. Some alleged that he was denouncing all religion as a “racket.” A city marshal named Bowering confronted Chaplinsky and warned him that people were getting restless with his activities.
Chaplinsky then allegedly said to Bowering: “You are a God damned racketeer” and “a damned Fascist and the whole government of Rochester are Fascists or agents of Fascists.”
Chaplinsky was charged and convicted under a city ordinance that prohibited people in public from calling others they encountered “any offensive or derisive name.” Chaplinsky claimed that the city law violated the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court disagreed in its unanimous opinion in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, writing:
It is well understood that the right of free speech is not absolute at all times and under all circumstances. There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting” words — those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality. “Resort to epithets or personal abuse is not in any proper sense communication of information or opinion safeguarded by the Constitution, and its punishment as a criminal act would raise no question under that instrument.”
The Court noted that the state high court had limited the construction of the city law to apply only to those “face-to-face words” or “epithets likely to provoke the average person to retaliation and thereby cause a breach of the peace.”
Chaplinsky also argued that applying the statute to him violated the First Amendment because the state had not shown that the epithets he used were true “fighting words.” The Court rejected that argument, writing that “argument is unnecessary to demonstrate that the appellations ‘damn racketeer’ and ‘damn Fascist’ are epithets likely to provoke the average person to retaliation, and thereby cause a breach of the peace.”
Although the Court seemingly curtailed the fighting-words doctrine in later decisions, it has never overruled the Chaplinsky decision, so it remains in effect.
Free-speech expert Robert O’Neil, in his Law and Contemporary Problems article “Rights in Conflict: The First Amendment’s Third Century,” writes that “the Chaplinsky decision has caused no end of confusion during the ensuing six decades.”
In a series of decisions, the Court limited the fighting-words doctrine expressed in Chaplinsky. Before the end of the decade, the U.S. Supreme Court gave First Amendment protection to a controversial speaker in Terminiello v. City of Chicago. Arthur Terminiello, an ex-Catholic priest, was charged with disorderly conduct after he gave a racist, anti-Semitic speech in a Chicago auditorium to the Christian Veterans of America.
More than a thousand people were outside the auditorium gathering in protest of the meeting. Terminiello criticized the protesters and then criticized various political and racial groups.
Local police charged him with breach of the peace, defined by the trial court as any “misbehavior which violates the public peace and decorum.” The trial court instructed the jury that “misbehavior may constitute a breach of the peace if it stirs the public to anger, invites dispute, brings about a condition of unrest, or creates a disturbance.”
City officials argued that Terminiello could be punished because his speech constituted fighting words. The city’s argument carried the day in a state trial court and two state appeals courts. However, in May 1949, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction by a 5-4 vote. Writing for the majority, Justice William Douglas noted that the lower courts had analyzed the issue as whether the speech constituted fighting words under Chaplinsky.
However, Douglas decided the case on the overly broad nature of the jury instructions. In one of the most cited passages in First Amendment jurisprudence, Douglas wrote:
Accordingly, a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea.
Douglas concluded that a conviction could not stand on a jury instruction that permitted the punishment of a speaker for speech that invited public dispute. He rejected the argument that the statute only punished unprotected fighting words. “Petitioner was not convicted under a statute so narrowly construed,” the court wrote. “For all anyone knows he [Terminiello] was convicted under the parts of the ordinance (as construed) which, for example, make it an offense merely to invite dispute or to bring about a condition of unrest.”
In several later decisions, the Court continued to limit when individuals could be punished for uttering offensive language. For example, the high court ruled in Cohen v. California (1971) that an individual could not be criminally prosecuted for wearing a jacket bearing the words “Fuck the Draft” into a courthouse.
Officials charged Paul Cohen with violating a California law prohibiting “maliciously and willfully disturbing the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person by … offensive conduct.”
The state argued that Cohen’s jacket constituted fighting words under Chaplinsky. The Supreme Court disagreed, writing in its 1971 ruling that the words on the jacket were not a “direct personal insult” and that no one had reacted violently to the jacket.
In oft-cited language, Justice John Paul Harlan wrote:
“For while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric. Indeed, we think it is largely because governmental officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves manners of taste and style so largely to the individual.”
This ruling established that fighting words should be confined to direct personal insults.
O’Neil questions whether the Chaplinsky and Cohen decisions can be reconciled: “Cohen and Chaplinsky cannot coexist indefinitely, because one [Chaplinsky] declares that offensive epithets are ‘no essential part of any exposition of ideas’ while the other insists with equal conviction that ‘one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.’ ”
A year after Cohen, the Supreme Court struck down the conviction of a defendant under a Georgia breach-of-the-peace law in Gooding v. Wilson. James Wilson told a police officer: “White son of a bitch, I’ll kill you,” and “You son of a bitch, I’ll choke you to death.” For these words, Wilson was arrested and convicted of disorderly conduct.
He was charged under a statute that defined disorderly conduct as follows: “Any person who shall, without provocation, use to or of another, and in his presence … opprobrious words or abusive language, tending to cause a breach of the peace … shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”
The state argued that the statute was constitutional because it only applied to “fighting words.” However, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the conviction, finding that the statute punished more than fighting words as defined under Chaplinsky.
The Court first examined the language of the statute. “The dictionary definitions of ‘opprobrious’ and ‘abusive’ give them greater reach than ‘fighting’ words,” Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority. The court also noted that other Georgia courts had interpreted the statute to apply to more than fighting words.
The Court reached a similar result in 1974 in Lewis v. City of New Orleans. Mallie Lewis was convicted under a city law which prohibited using “obscene or opprobrious language” to police officers. Lewis was arrested after she yelled obscenities at a police officer who asked her husband to produce his driver’s license.
Justice Brennan determined that this law infringed on First Amendment freedoms because it was not confined to fighting words. He reasoned that “the proscription of the use of ‘opprobrious language,’ embraces words that do not ‘by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.’ ” Brennan ruled that the Louisiana Supreme Court had failed to confine the statute to just fighting words.
The Court again struck down the conviction of an individual for making offensive comments to a police officer in 1987 in City of Houston v. Hill, Raymond Wayne Hill was arrested after he yelled at a police officer who was questioning his friend. Hill said to the officer: “Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size?”
The officer arrested Hill for violating a city law prohibiting a person from opposing, molesting or abusing, or interrupting a police officer during his duties.
After Hill was acquitted in municipal court, he filed a civil rights lawsuit. In his lawsuit, he asked that the federal courts declare the ordinance unconstitutional. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court which sided with Hill. Before the high court, the city argued that the ordinance prohibited “core criminal conduct.”
The Supreme Court disagreed, finding that the ordinance dealt with speech. “Contrary to the city’s contention, the First Amendment protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers,” Brennan wrote.
“The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state,” Brennan wrote.
Brennan determined that the law was not narrowly tailored to prohibit disorderly conduct or fighting words. The court concluded that the ordinance “criminalizes a substantial amount of constitutionally protected speech, and accords the police unconstitutional discretion in enforcement.”
As a result of these Supreme Court decisions, many state and local governments have amended their statutes to narrow significantly the range of verbal conduct that can be criminalized. Many state supreme courts have limited their laws to apply only to fighting words.
Much of the case law now centers on whether a person’s speech qualifies as fighting words. The government tends to argue that the person was charged not for his speech, but for his conduct — flailing of arms or shouting of specific unprotected threats, for example.
In the 1992 cross-burning case of R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that “the exclusion of ‘fighting words’ from the scope of the First Amendment simply means that, for purposes of that Amendment, the unprotected features of the words are, despite their verbal character, essentially a ‘nonspeech’ element of communication.” (The Court invalidated the cross-burning law because it selectively punished only a particular form of fighting words. Justice Scalia considered this to an example of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.)
The lower courts have had a difficult time determining whether certain epithets constitute “fighting words.” At the very least, they have reached maddeningly inconsistent results. Consider the following situations in which offensive statements were found not to constitute fighting words:
However, other courts have determined that the expressions in the following situations were fighting words:
The different results reached in the lower courts, including the examples mentioned above, are difficult to explain. O’Neil writes that “much confusion surrounds the constitutional boundaries in the quest for civility.” Generally, if an individual engages in any threatening conduct in addition to verbal assaults, a fighting-words charge is more likely to stick. Many courts will look at the full circumstances to see if profane or insulting language was accompanied by any threatening behavior or conduct.
Some courts find that police officers are held to a higher standard than other people if the angry speech is likely to lead to an immediate breach of the peace. For example, in its 2000 decision in Martilla v. City of Lynchburg, a Virginia appeals court wrote that “the First Amendment requires properly trained police officers to exercise a higher degree of restraint when confronted by disorderly conduct and abusive language.” In other words, profanity or insults directed at police are less likely to be considered fighting words than if they were aimed at other people.
Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell articulated this concern in his concurring opinion in Lewis v. New Orleans, when he wrote that “the situation may be different where such words are addressed to a police officer trained to exercise a higher degree of restraint than the average citizen.”
Other courts have determined that the response of the recipient does not control whether expression qualifies as fighting words. For example, the Minnesota Court of Appeals wrote in its 1999 decision State v. Clay:
“A defendant can be convicted for disorderly conduct based on the utterance of fighting words without the prosecution having to prove that violence actually resulted. The focus is properly on the nature of the words and the circumstances in which they were spoken rather than on the actual response. The actual response of the addressee or object of the words is relevant, but not determinative, of the issue of whether the utterances meet the fighting words test.” [State v. Clay, CX-99-343 (Minn.App.)(9/14/99), citing In re M.A.H., 572 N.W.2d 752 (Minn.App. 1997).]
Another area of confusion in fighting-words cases stems from the use of the qualified-immunity defense. Recall that in many fighting-words cases, the question becomes whether a reasonable police officer should have known that he or she violated clearly established constitutional law in arresting an individual for disorderly conduct or breach of the peace partly because of the person’s profane or insulting language.
If the case law in a particular jurisdiction is divided on the fighting-words question, a reviewing court may grant the officer qualified immunity. In Purtell v. Mason (2008), a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit considered the question of qualified immunity and fighting words in an unusual cases involving a suburban Chicago man who erected tombstones with his neighbors’ names and insulting messages on them. Police officer Bruce Mason arrested Jeffrey Purtell, claiming that the messages on his tombstone qualified as fighting words. Purtell sued Mason, alleging that his free-speech rights had been violated. Mason countered that he was entitled to qualified immunity because any reasonable officer would have thought that the words on the tombstones were fighting words.
The 7th Circuit panel ruled that the tombstone messages did not qualify as fighting words because they “were not, in context, the sort of provocatively abusive speech that inherently tends to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” However, the panel also granted the Mason qualified immunity, writing that the officer’s “mistake in thinking he could constitutionally order Purtell to dismantle the tombstone display on pain of arrest was one a reasonable officer might make in this situation.” The panel concluded: “First Amendment line-drawing is often difficult, even in hindsight.”
The U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in 2009 on qualified immunity that changed the equation in constitutional law cases. Previously, in considering qualified immunity, a court — as the 7th Circuit did in Purtell — first had to determine whether there was a constitutional violation. Then the court would consider whether the law was clearly established. But in Pearson v. Callahan (2009), the Supreme Court ruled that judges can decide the “clearly established” question first without having to tackle the often-difficult question of whether there was a constitutional violation.
In the fighting-words context, this means that a reviewing court might skip over the question of whether certain profane or insulting speech constituted fighting words and simply rule that an officer did not violate clearly established law.
The varying decisions in the lower courts — and the complexity of the qualified-immunity doctrine — show that judges struggle with whether profane speech crosses the line from protected criticism or protected expression into the realm of unprotected fighting words. As Justice Harlan wrote in his Cohen opinion: “This case may seem at first blush too inconsequential to find its way into our books, but the issue it presents is of no small constitutional significance.” Whether expression constitutes fighting words, remains a difficult, contentious issue that is also of “no small constitutional significance.” | <urn:uuid:c7961b08-f796-4071-9dd5-573ab566defb> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/topics/freedom-of-speech-2/personal-public-expression-overview/fighting-words/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.964369 | 4,239 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Growing plants to harvest and use as grains is as easy as growing any flower or vegetable. Here are a few to consider:
Usually thought of as a vegetable, corn is actually a grain. You can grow dry corn the same as you would sweet, but allow it to dry thoroughly on the cob before harvesting the kernels to grind.
Be sure to take preventative measures if you are also growing sweet corn nearby, as their pollen is carried on the wind and there can be cross pollination.
Choose a variety that is meant to use for this purpose, they are less sugary and will dry more easily. One of the best varieties for making your own corn meal is Cherokee White Eagle.
Grind, store and use the way you would store bought cornmeal.
Technically a vegetable, quinoa is a relative of spinach that is fast gaining popularity in restaurants as well as home kitchens. Part of the reason is that quinoa carries a protein not normally found in a vegetable. Especially for vegetarians, this is a wonderful thing.
What you harvest here are the seeds as well, dry, store and use like you would rice. You can also grind the seeds to use like flour.
A beautiful delicate flower that is also grown for its use as a fiber, the seeds of flax are actually wonderfully nutritious. They are a good source of omega-3’s and high in fiber. The milled seeds can be added to many baked goods and can be used as a substitute for eggs.
Often listed under herbs, and sometimes under flowers, Amaranth is a beautiful tall edible whose flower seeds can be used as a grain. In some varieties you can also eat the leaves as a vegetable, bonus! Two of the most common varieties grown for the edible seeds are Love Lies Bleeding and Golden Giant, shown above.
One definition of grains is that they are grasses that produce small edible seeds. Millet fits this description well. Its seeds can be ground for flours or gruel, and it is often also used as bird seed.
One of the most common varieties used in the U.S. is Proso White.
Generally speaking these crops grow quite tall, and the harvest you get for the space may not compare to vegetables you plant instead. Some of these can easily be added to flower beds though, making that space more productive for your food needs. | <urn:uuid:9e2d5fd2-e35e-41bd-80a1-abf3f2a91fd5> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.grit.com/farm-and-garden/crops/5-grains-to-grow-in-the-home-garden | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.971834 | 487 | 2.890625 | 3 |
The shift from this condition to dementia is not necessarily inevitable.
Image: © gradyreese/Getty Images
Will I get dementia? That common question takes on urgency if you have mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a slight but noticeable change in memory and thinking skills. But the progression from MCI to dementia is not automatic. In fact, MCI is not always permanent. "It depends on the underlying cause," says Dr. Joel Salinas, a neurologist at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.
What are the causes of MCI?
MCI is not dementia (see "What is dementia?"), but it's not normal thinking, either. It often stems from disease or treatments for disease, including
degenerative brain disease, such as Alzheimer's disease (in which case, MCI is often a precursor to dementia)
stroke or other vascular disease
traumatic brain injury
a medication side effect
an underlying health problem, such as sleep deprivation, depression, or anxiety.
What is dementia?
Dementia is a condition of persistent impairment in brain activities — like thinking or speaking — that is severe enough to interfere with daily life.
Medical conditions — such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, traumatic brain injury, and strokes — are common causes of dementia. Symptoms can include forgetfulness, confusion, and the new inability to solve routine problems.
There are two kinds of MCI. In both, symptoms are not severe, although they can be upsetting and disruptive.
Amnestic MCI is memory-specific and is marked by signs like forgetting conversations and misplacing items.
Non-amnestic MCI involves changes in other brain activities regardless of whether you have memory loss. It may show up as problems with language (you lose your train of thought during a conversation), attention (you have a hard time accomplishing tasks like bill paying), or spatial sense (you can't find your way around a familiar place).
Prevalence and progression
New MCI treatment guidelines from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), based on the latest evidence, note that globally more than 6% of people in their 60s have MCI. The number climbs to more than 37% by age 85.
The guidelines, which were published online Dec. 27, 2017, by Neurology, also note that MCI cases progress to full-blown dementia about 15% of the time among people 65 or older. Dr. Salinas says the progression is much more likely if a neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer's is causing the MCI.
But how long it takes for MCI to progress to dementia is anyone's guess. "If it's Alzheimer's disease, it may take about two to five years. But I've seen patients stay in the MCI stage for many years, even when we presume it was a neurodegenerative disease," Dr. Salinas says.
Staving off dementia
Dr. Salinas says MCI can often be reversed if a general health condition (such as sleep deprivation) is causing the decline. In those cases, addressing the underlying cause can dramatically improve cognition.
When MCI can't be reversed, treatment is challenging. There are no pills to slow the worsening of memory problems.
But the AAN did find encouraging evidence linking exercise with better memory in people with MCI. Exercising can offer mental and social stimulation while improving blood flow to the brain, possibly even prompting the release of molecules that repair brain cells and create connections between them. The new MCI treatment guidelines recommend exercising at least twice a week.
The AAN also notes that cognitive training may improve thinking skills, although the evidence is weak.
Cognitive training involves computer- or video-based exercises that push you to sharpen your response times and attention. But those improvements don't clearly carry over to day-to-day life.
More habits, more impact
The 2015 FINGER trial — a randomized controlled trial (the gold standard of research) — found less cognitive decline over two years in older adults who maintained a combination of habits, such as eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, and taking part in social events. The adults in the study did not have MCI, but some were at risk for Alzheimer's disease. Similar trials are being conducted around the world.
Dr. Salinas says people with MCI can take a cue from these types of findings to maintain as many healthy habits as possible. That includes not only exercising, eating right, and staying connected with other people, but also engaging in mentally stimulating activities (particularly learning new things, like a new hobby or new language) and taking medications as prescribed.
There are no guarantees, but the evidence suggests these steps may delay or even prevent progression to dementia. "The people who spend the most time cognitively stable are often the ones who stick to lifestyle recommendations," says Dr. Salinas.
As a service to our readers, Harvard Health Publishing provides access to our library of archived content. Please note the date of last review on all articles. No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician. | <urn:uuid:46ee124b-c5f9-4a79-8bfc-a15590c3fcc2> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.health.harvard.edu/aging/staving-off-dementia-when-you-have-mild-cognitive-impairment | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.956591 | 1,065 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Swine-flu deaths far greater than reported
MedWire News: The true number of deaths from the 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic may be 15 times higher than the number confirmed by laboratory testing and previously reported to the World Health Organization (WHO), study findings indicate.
A total of 18,500 laboratory-confirmed deaths caused by the 2009 pandemic influenza A H1N1 were reported worldwide for the period April 2009 to August 2010.
However, using statistical modeling, an international team of researchers estimates that the actual number of deaths from associated respiratory illness was between 105,700 and 295,600.
Furthermore, adding cardiovascular deaths associated with 2009 pandemic influenza A H1N1 among people older than 17 years increases the mortality burden to 151,700‑575,400 deaths.
Consistent with previous reports, most deaths occurred in people aged 18‑64 years.
To arrive at their estimates, Fatimah Dawood (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA) developed an age-stratified probabilistic model that estimates mortality rates using data on virus-associated symptomatic attack rates from 12 countries and symptomatic case-fatality ratios (sCFR) from five high-income countries. They accounted for between-country differences in mortality risk, by developing multiplier factors based on respiratory disease mortality before the pandemic.
Writing in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, the researchers note that a disproportionate number of total deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases (51%) was estimated to have occurred in the African and southeast-Asian regions, where 38% of the world's population live and where data for influenza incidence are scarce.
This finding highlights the need to expand production and improve delivery of influenza vaccines to Africa and southeast Asia, the authors remark.
Dawood said in a press statement: "The study underscores the significant human toll of an influenza pandemic. We hope that this work can be used not only to improve influenza disease burden modeling globally, but to improve the public health response during future pandemics in parts of the world that suffer more deaths, and to increase the public's awareness of the importance of influenza prevention."
The researchers concede that their model was limited by a lack of globally representative data on symptomatic attack and case-fatality rates.
"Continued efforts to strengthen influenza surveillance worldwide, particularly for influenza-associated mortality, are needed both to guide seasonal influenza prevention strategies and to build influenza surveillance systems to provide better and more timely and globally representative data for influenza-associated mortality during future pandemics," they say.
MedWire (www.medwire-news.md) is an independent clinical news service provided by Springer Healthcare Limited. © Springer Healthcare Ltd; 2012
By Laura Cowen | <urn:uuid:9430698e-14a1-486a-b510-35bbc6686b6b> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.medwirenews.com/general-practice/pathology/swine-flu-deaths-far-greater-than-reported/108904 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.925784 | 565 | 2.765625 | 3 |
A futuristic scheme to collect solar energy on satellites and beam it to Earth has gained a large supporter in the US military. A report released yesterday by the National Security Space Office recommends that the US government sponsor projects to demonstrate solar-power-generating satellites and provide financial incentives for further private development of the technology.
Space-based solar power would use kilometre-sized solar panel arrays to gather sunlight in orbit. It would then beam power down to Earth in the form of microwaves or a laser, which would be collected in antennas on the ground and then converted to electricity. Unlike solar panels based on the ground, solar power satellites placed in geostationary orbit above the Earth could operate at night and during cloudy conditions.
“We think we can be a catalyst to make this technology advance,” said US Marine Corps lieutenant colonel Paul Damphousse of the NSSO at a press conference yesterday in Washington, DC, US.
The NSSO report (pdf) recommends that the US government spend $10 billion over the next 10 years to build a test satellite capable of beaming 10 megawatts of electric power down to Earth.
Abundant energy source
At the same press conference, over a dozen space advocacy groups announced a new alliance to promote space solar power – the Space Solar Alliance for Future Energy. These supporters of space-based solar power say the technology has the potential to provide more energy than fossil fuels, wind and nuclear power combined.
The NSSO report says that solar-power-generating satellites could also solve supply problems in distant places such as Iraq, where fuel is currently trucked along in dangerous convoys and the cost of electricity for some bases can exceed $1 per kilowatt-hour – about 10 times what it costs in the US. The report also touts the technology’s potential to provide a clean, abundant energy source and reduce global competition for oil.
Space-based solar power was first proposed in 1968 by Peter Glaser, an engineer at the consulting firm Arthur D. Little. Early designs involved solar panel arrays of 50 square kilometres, required hundreds of astronauts in space to build and were estimated to cost as much as $1 trillion, says John Mankins, a former NASA research manager and active promoter of space solar power.
After conducting preliminary research, the US abandoned the idea as economically unfeasible in the 1970s. Since that time, says Mankins, advances in photovoltaics, electronics and robotics will bring the size and cost down to a fraction of the original schemes, and eliminate the need for humans to assemble the equipment in space.
Several technical challenges remain to be overcome, including the development of lower-cost space launches. A satellite capable of supplying the same amount of electric power as a modern fossil-fuel plant would have a mass of about 3000 tonnes – more than 10 times that of the International Space Station. Sending that material into orbit would require more than a hundred rocket launches. The US currently launches fewer than 15 rockets each year.
In spite of these challenges, the NSSO and its supporters say that no fundamental scientific breakthroughs are necessary to proceed with the idea and that space-based solar power will be practical in the next few decades.
“There are no technology hurdles that are show stoppers right now,” said Damphousse.
Energy and Fuels – learn more about the looming energy crisis in our comprehensive special report.
More on these topics: | <urn:uuid:df853683-4638-44ac-a523-b1fa9f59daf2> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12774-pentagon-backs-plan-to-beam-solar-power-from-space/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.934033 | 711 | 3.609375 | 4 |
Carlos Fuentes, Mexico’s elegant public intellectual and grand man of letters, whose panoramic novels captured the complicated essence of his country’s history for readers around the world, died on Tuesday in Mexico City. He was 83.
His death was confirmed by Julio Ortega, his biographer and a professor of Hispanic studies at Brown University, where Mr. Fuentes taught for several years. He died at the Angeles del Pedregal hospital after his doctor, Arturo Ballesteros, found him in shock in his Mexico City home, The Associated Press reported. The doctor told reporters that Mr. Fuentes had had an internal hemorrhage.
Mr. Fuentes was one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world, a catalyst, along with Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortázar, of the explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and ’70s, known as El Boom. He wrote plays, short stories, political nonfiction and novels, many of them chronicles of tangled love.
Mr. Fuentes received wide recognition in the United States in 1985 with his novel “The Old Gringo,” a convoluted tale about the American writer Ambrose Bierce, who disappeared during the Mexican Revolution. It was the first book by a Mexican novelist to become a best seller north of the border, and it was made into a 1989 film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda.
In the tradition of Latin American writers, Mr. Fuentes was politically engaged, writing magazine, newspaper and journal articles that criticized the Mexican government during the long period of sometimes repressive single-party rule that ended in 2000 with the election of an opposition candidate, Vicente Fox Quesada.Continue reading the main story
Mr. Fuentes was more ideological than political. He tended to embrace justice and basic human rights regardless of political labels. He supported Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba, but turned against it as Mr. Castro became increasingly authoritarian. He sympathized with Indian rebels in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas and skewered the administration of George W. Bush over its antiterrorism tactics and immigration policies, calling them unduly harsh.
He was also critical of Venezuela’s leftist leader, Hugo Chávez, however, calling him a “tropical Mussolini,” and of his own country’s failure to stem its rampant drug violence. On the day he died the newspaper Reforma published a hopeful essay by him on the change of power in France.
Mr. Fuentes was appointed the Mexican ambassador to France in 1975, but he resigned two years later to protest the appointment of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz as ambassador to Spain. Mr. Díaz Ordaz had been president of Mexico in 1968 when Mexican troops opened fire on student protesters in Mexico City.
But it was mainly through his literature, Mr. Fuentes believed, that he could make his voice heard, and he did so prolifically and inventively, tracing the history of modern Mexico in layered stories that also explored universal themes of love, memory and death. In “The Death of Artemio Cruz,” a 1962 novel that many call his masterpiece, his title character, an ailing newspaper baron confined to his bed, looks back at his climb out of poverty and his heroic exploits in the Mexican Revolution, concluding that it had failed in its promise of a more egalitarian society.
His novels remained ambitious and topical. His last, “Destiny and Desire” (2011), is a sprawling work that Michael Wood, writing in The New York Times Book Review, described as “not exactly a parody of ‘War and Peace,’ but certainly a spectral, playful revision of the idea of a novel that competes with history.”
He added, “It offers lavish quantities of comedy, satire, allegory, fantasy and brilliant political commentary; makes coded allusions to recognizable celebrities like the communications magnate Carlos Slim; evokes the work of Spinoza and Machiavelli; includes ghosts, graves, murders, a voluble flying prophet and a talking severed head.”
The severed head had fallen victim to Mexico’s drug-gang wars, which Mr. Fuentes believed pose an ever-graver threat to Mexican society. The head speaks in darkly comic tones.
“I speak of my body because I’ve lost it,” the character says, then adds: “I am a 27-year-old man, one meter seventy-eight centimeters tall. Every morning I look at myself naked in my bathroom mirror and caress my cheeks in anticipation of the daily ceremony: Shave my beard and upper lip, provoke a strong response with Jean-Marie Farina cologne on my face, resign myself to combing black, thick, untamable hair. Close my eyes. Deny to my face and head the central role my death will be certain to give them. Concentrate instead on my body. The trunk that is going to be separated from my head. The body that occupies me from my neck to my extremities, covered in skin the color of pale cinnamon and tipped with nails that will continue to grow for hours and days after death, as if they wanted to scratch at the lid of the coffin and shout I’m here, I’m still alive, you made a mistake when you buried me.”
Though Mr. Fuentes wrote in just about every genre, including opera (a 2008 work inspired by the life of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna, the wooden-legged president of Mexico during the mid 19th-century), he declined to write an autobiography.
“One puts off the biography like you put off death,” he once said. “To write an autobiography is to etch the words on your own gravestone.”
Carlos Fuentes was born on Nov. 11, 1928, in Panama, the son of Berta Macías and Rafael Fuentes, a member of Mexico’s diplomatic corps. As his father moved among Mexican embassies, Mr. Fuentes spent his early childhood in several South American countries. Then, in 1936, the family was transferred to Washington, where Mr. Fuentes learned to speak English fluently while enrolled in a public school.
In 1940 the family was transferred again, this time to Santiago, Chile, where he began to experiment with writing. In an interview with The Times in 1985, Mr. Fuentes said he first had to decide “whether to write in the language of my father or the language of my teachers.” He chose Spanish, he said, because he believed that it offered more flexibility than English. There was also a practical reason. English, he said, “with a long and uninterrupted literary tradition, did not need one more writer.”
He was 16 when his family finally returned to Mexico. He knew his homeland through the stories that his grandmothers had told during the summers he spent with them.
“I think I became a writer because I heard those stories,” he said in 2006 in an interview with the Academy of Achievement, a nonprofit organization in Washington. His grandmothers fascinated him with their tales of bandits, revolution and reckless love. “They had the whole storehouse of the past in their heads and hearts,” Mr. Fuentes said. “So this was, for me, very fascinating, this relationship with my two grannies — the two authors of my books, really.”
When he told his family that he wanted to be a writer, his father was encouraging, but insisted that he also study law, which he did in Mexico and Switzerland.
After completing his degree, Mr. Fuentes entered Mexico’s diplomatic service, while also carving out time for his fiction. His first novel, “Where the Air Is Clear,” was published in 1958 when he turned 30. It was a literary sensation, mixing biting social commentary with interior monologues and portrayals of the subconscious. His reputation established, Mr. Fuentes left government service to devote all his energies to writing.
As an author, he said, he did not spend much time rewriting and never suffered from writer’s block. He liked to write on the right-hand pages of lined notebooks, making changes and corrections on the left-hand pages before sending a manuscript to be typed.
Professor Ortega called Mr. Fuentes “an unleashed cultural force” who avoided some of the trappings of literary celebrity. In a retrospective book that he wrote about Mr. Fuentes’s life when the writer turned 80 in 2008, Mr. Ortega wrote, “Fuentes detests the literary life, its obligations and commitments.”
“He hasn’t created his own group, and he belongs neither to parties nor ideologies,” Mr. Ortega added. “He isn’t controlled by either the power of the state nor the power of the market.”
Mr. Fuentes’s independent thought and reputation for supporting leftist causes led to his being denied visas to enter the United States in the early 1960s. When he was refused permission to come to New York in 1963 for a presentation of an English translation of one of his books, he reacted angrily, saying, “The real bombs are my books, not me.”
Congress intervened in 1967, and the restrictions against him were lifted. Later he traveled to the United States frequently, teaching at several Ivy League universities.
Mr. Fuentes is survived by his wife, Silvia Lemus, and a daughter, Cecilia, by a previous marriage to the actress Rita Macedo, who died in 1993. Two children from his marriage to Ms. Lemus, Carlos and Natasha, both died of illness before they were 30.
For much of his career Mr. Fuentes competed for recognition and influence in Mexico and abroad with another titan of Mexican letters, the poet Octavio Paz. Mr. Fuentes received the National Order of Merit, France’s highest civilian award given to a foreigner; Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award for literature in 1994; and, in 1987, the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world’s highest literary honor. Mr. Paz, however, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990. Mr. Fuentes, a perennial on the shortlist for the honor, never did.
The two became friends in 1950, when Mr. Paz published his landmark work on Mexican identity, “The Labyrinth of Solitude.” They worked together on several literary projects. But by the mid-1980s their political opinions had started to differ. Mr. Fuentes supported the Sandinistas, the leftist rebel group in Nicaragua, but Mr. Paz, who had more conservative views, condemned them. Then, in 1988, the literary magazine Vuelta, which Mr. Paz directed, published an article fiercely critical of Mr. Fuentes, accusing him of lacking true Mexican identity. That set off an often public feud that lasted until Mr. Paz died in 1998. Neither man apologized, diminishing the reputations of both.
Still, in his later years, Mr. Fuentes became an elder statesman of international letters. On his 80th birthday hundreds gathered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to celebrate his life and work. He was introduced by Rubén Beltrán, the consul general of Mexico in New York at the time.
“To speak about Carlos Fuentes is to engage inexorably in Mexican history and culture,” Mr. Beltrán said. “We cannot fathom a debate on Mexican literary and humanistic traditions in which his name and work are absent.”
Because of an editing error, an obituary on May 16 about the author Carlos Fuentes referred incorrectly to the political career of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna, the inspiration for a 2008 opera for which Mr. Fuentes wrote the libretto. Although he was president of Mexico for many years, he was not in office during the Texas Revolution. | <urn:uuid:e6cef74f-431f-4288-ab75-79af217685c1> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/books/carlos-fuentes-mexican-novelist-dies-at-83.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627997533.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20190616022644-20190616044644-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.978337 | 2,571 | 2.53125 | 3 |
BEGINNER 1: FIRST STEPS
Total Views: 26,953,590
Module ID: BCS1
Learn three easy chords, A, D and E, very basic strumming and easy songs you can play with just these three chords (even some with just 2 chords!). Your fingers are going to be sore but it's going to be loads of fun :)
Quick Start Guitar - 5 Minute Overview
Guitar Quick Start! Learn the basics in 5 minutes: how to get in tune, basic shords, strumming and loads of songs.
The A Chord
In this lesson, we're going to learn the Open A Chord and then we might be able to have a go at some songs!
Fun play along with A & D
Wanna just get in and have some fun jamming along with a backing track - even though you're not really supposed to be ready yet? :)
The E Chord
For this Stage there is one more chord to get under your fingers. It's not a hard one and it combines with the A and the D real well and once you can play it you will ...
now you got your chords we can rip into changing between them.
Anchor Fingers for A, D and E
Using your 1st finger as an ‘anchor' will help you move between your chords smoothly and easily. Drop the anchor to guide the way Keeping your 1st finger on the ...
Stage 1: One Minute Changes
The concept is simple: time yourself for one minute and see how many changes between two chords you can do in that time. This works better than any other method I have...
All Down 4 to a Bar Strumming
For many people, strumming rhythms are the trickiest thing to learn so we are going to start very simply to build a solid foundation. This is very easy and I hope that...
How To Use The Beginner Song Course
The Justin Guitar Beginner Song Course by FourChords is a song based guitar course where you play awesome songs with a backing track right from the start.
Easy Songs for Stage 1
Believe it or not - but there are many songs that you can play with just the three chords we have learnt so far! And to help you out I have written a songbook which go...
Fun Play Along with A, D & E
Now I got a fun beginner play along for you - the song is Three Little Birds by Bob Markey!
JUSTIN Ear Training Exercises (S1)
In this lesson, we start on some Ear Training in the regretfully named Justin Use Sound To Improve Now.
Top 10 Guitar Practice Tips
We're all busy, so here are some tips to help you make the most of your practice time and make fast progress!
Beginner 1: First Steps
- Lesson Steps -
Found an issue?
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Driving at night is difficult for many and it is very different from driving during the day. This is because our field of vision is smaller when we do not have natural light to help us and vision is severely limited at night, thus making night driving dangerous. Unfortunately, night driving can not be avoided most especially for those who have to drive home late, or for those who have to work late. Accidents can happen during the night so the only way to stay safe is to take extra caution when you drive at night, or try to wait till morning comes before heading out on the road.
Factors That Affect Driving At Night
There are many factors that make driving at night dangerous. Here are a few factors:
Age – An older driver will have difficulty seeing during the night compared to a younger driver.
Fatigue – When you are tired after a long day at work, you will find yourself drowsy, thus impairing your concentration and affecting how you react to certain situations.
Alcohol – This is a common problem during the weekend nights and more accidents are often reported during the weekend nights than on any other day. It can also induce fatigue.
Smoking – The nicotine and carbon monoxide emitted when smoking can impair night vision.
Car Damage – When your car’s headlights are damaged or improperly aimed, you can expect to have difficulty navigating the car at night.
Speed – Many want to get home as quick as possible that they end up speeding and misjudging distances causing accidents in the event cars ahead stop abruptly.
Tips To Help You Reach Your Destination Safely At Night
Here are a few tips to help you drive safely at night reach your destination without meeting with an accident.
Your eyes will need to adjust to the darkness, so give your pupils time to fully dilate to allow maximum light to enter the eyes. Once more light passes through your pupils the better your vision will be. Take a few minutes to settle inside your car and never hurry as you let your eyes adjust.
When you reduce or control the speed of your driving, you allow yourself to have a longer reacting time if something happens on the road. It also offers you the ability to maintain a steady and safe distance from the car ahead of you.
If you are having trouble seeing with your lights on inside the car, it will only make sense to turn off all the interior lights. The lights inside your car will seem so bright making it more complicated for you to see the road.
If you want to make sure that you are safe driving your car regardless of whether it is night or day, you must ensure that your car is well maintained. Have the fluid levels, tires pressure and brake pads regularly checked. This also includes having the tail lights, signal lights and headlights cleaned thoroughly, while all the windows are cleaned inside and out.
Nevertheless, even if you take all the caution when driving at night, another driver can be reckless and cause an accident. As such, it is best to be prepared when you are involved in an accident, by having the contact information of a well experienced legal professional handy.
- License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://mrg.bz/LlXzqp
Valerie Britts is a freelance writer specializing in personal injuries and car accident claims. She regularly contributes articles to legal websites where well experienced personal injury lawyers can be consulted. | <urn:uuid:bfadb23f-0f82-4abb-bbc3-0711f15c8b59> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://www.memetics.com/road-safety-be-safe-while-driving-at-night/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.955743 | 694 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Scientists have found new hope for our damaged coral reefs in transplanting lab-grown coral larvae to the ocean. The venture has already seen a transplanted population of 100 healthy young corals thriving on Heron Island.
Coral can reproduce one of many different ways, depending on the type of coral. Coral can be male, female, or both! They can also reproduce inside or outside their bodies.
Most commonly, larvae are formed when eggs and sperm from the male and female are released into the water. Together, the eggs are fertilised by the sperm and form larvae that are attracted to the light at the water’s surface. The larvae will grow near the light, and eventually sink down to attach to rocks.
Larvae produced inside the body is a similar process; eggs inside the coral are fertilised by the water-borne sperm and mature inside the ‘mother’ until spat out to attach to a rock.
Sometimes, mass coral spawning can be observed. This is when all the coral of a particular species release their eggs and sperm all at once to increase chances of fertilisation. It occurs once a year, after a full moon when the tides are warm.
It was during the 2016 mass spawning event that Professor Harrison (Southern Cross University) and team funded by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation collected large amounts of sperm and eggs. The eggs and sperm were grown into over a million larvae before being transplanted back into the sea.
Eight months later, the 100 surviving young corals were discovered on Heron Island. “This is the first project of its kind on the Great Barrier Reef to successfully re-establish a population of juvenile corals from larvae settling directly on the reef,” says Professor Harrison.
“The results are very promising and our work shows that adding higher densities of coral larvae leads to higher numbers of successful coral recruits.”
The reseeding project has been repeated for the 2017 mass spawning on Heron Island, and has already seen success results from the project. “I’m excited to announce that we’ve already observed successful settlement of the new coral larvae this year so it’s worked again.
“We’ll be monitoring the growth of the colonies and working to further refine the technique for potentially large scale application in the future,” said Professor Harrison.
While the research is an important breakthrough in discovering reparative measures for the reef, it’s not a band-aid solution. “In recent years, the impacts of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef have undoubtedly accelerated, as we saw with back-to-back years of bleaching.
“It is vital everyone keeps working to address climate change and build the Reef’s resilience, and for restoration strategies to be developed that can work over large areas.” says Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority Chief Scientist Dr David Wachenfeld.
Liked this article? Read Bragg Writing Prize runner up, Carol Ge’s essay on the decline of the Great Barrier Reef.
Author: Eliza Brockwell
Eliza is the Digital Producer for Careers with STEM. Eliza is passionate about creating content that encourages diversity of representation in STEM. | <urn:uuid:801cec10-f098-4c4a-b8f6-ae0a3dacad56> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://careerswithstem.com.au/new-hope-coral-reefs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.95692 | 663 | 3.875 | 4 |
Recently someone asked: “I don’t suppose you’d like to blog a little on the pedagogical knowledge relevant to statistics teaching, would you? A ‘top five statistics student misconceptions (and what to do about them)’ would be kind of a nice thing to see …”
I wish it were that easy. Here goes:
When I taught second year regression we would get students to collect data and fit their own multiple regressions. The interesting thing was that quite often students would collect unrelated data. The columns of the data would not be of the same observations. These students had made it all the way through first year statistics without really understanding about multivariate data.
So from them on when I taught about regression I would specifically begin by talking about observations (or data points) and explain how they were connected. It doesn’t hurt to be explicit. In the NZ curriculum materials for high school students are exercises using data cards which correspond to individuals from a database. This helps students to see that each card, which corresponds to a line of data, is one person or thing. In my video about Levels of measurement, I take the time to show this.
First suggestion is “Don’t assume”. This applies to so much!
And this is also why it is vital that instructors do at least some of their own marking (grading). High school teachers are going, “Of course”. College professors – you know you ought to! The only way you find out what the students don’t understand, or misunderstand, or replicate by rote from your own notes, is by reading what they write. This is tedious, painful and sometimes funny in a head-banging sort of way, but necessary. I also check the prevalence of answers to multiple choice questions in my on-line materials. If there is a distracter scoring highly it is worthwhile thinking about either the question or the teaching that is leading to incorrect responses.
Well duh! Inference is a really, really difficult concept and is the key to inferential statistics. The basic idea, that we use information from a sample to draw conclusions about the population seems straight-forward. But it isn’t. Students need lots and lots of practice at identifying what is the population and what is the sample in any given situation. This needs to be done with different types of observations, such as people, commercial entities, plants or animals, geographical areas, manufactured products, instances of a physical experiment (Barbie bungee jumping), and times.
Second suggestion is “Practice”. And given the choice between one big practical project and a whole lot of small applied exercises, I would go with the exercises. A big real-life project is great for getting an idea of the big picture, and helping students to learn about the process of statistical analysis. But the problem with one big project is that it is difficult to separate the specific from the general. Context is at the core of any analysis in statistics, and makes every analysis different. Learning occurs through experiencing many different contexts and from them extracting what is general to all analysis, what is common to many analyses and what is specific to that example. The more different examples a student is exposed to, the better opportunity they have for constructing that learning. An earlier post extols the virtues of practice, even drill!
One of the most difficult things is for students to make connections between parts of the curriculum. A traditional statistics course can seem like a toolbox of unrelated but confusingly different techniques. It takes a high level of understanding to link the probability, data and evidence aspects together in a meaningful way. It is good to have exercises that hep students to make these connections. I wrote about this with regard to Operations Research and Statistics. But students need also to be making connections before they get to the end of the course.
The third suggestion is “get students to write”
Get students to write down what is the same and what is different between chi-sq analysis and correlation. Get them to write down how a poisson distribution is similar to and different from a binomial distribution. Get them to write down how bar charts and histograms are similar and different. The reason students must write is that it is in the writing that they become aware of what they know or don’t know. We even teach ourselves things as we write.
Another type of connection that students have trouble with is that between the data and the graph, and in particular identifying variation and distribution in a histogram or similar. There are many different graphs, that can look quite similar, and students have problems identifying what is going on. The “value graph” which is produced so easily in Excel does nothing to help with these problems. I wrote a full post on the problems of interpreting graphs.
The fourth suggestion is “think hard”. (or borrow)
Teaching statistics is not for wusses. We need to think really hard about what students are finding difficult, and come up with solutions. We need to experiment with different ways of explaining and teaching. One thing that has helped my teaching is the production of my videos. I wish to use both visual and text (verbal) inputs as best as possible to make use of the medium. I have to think of ways of representing concepts visually, that will help both understanding and memory. This is NOT easy, but is extremely rewarding. And if you are not good at thinking up new ideas, borrow other people’s ideas. A good idea collector can be as good as or better than a good creator of ideas.
To think of a fifth suggestion I turned to my favourite book , “The Challenge of Developing Statistical Literacy, Reasoning and Thinking”, edited by Dani Ben-Zvi and Joan Garfield. I feel somewhat inadequate in the suggestions given above. The book abounds with studies that have shown areas of challenge or students and teachers. It is exciting that so many people are taking seriously the development of pedagogical content knowledge regarding the discipline of statistics. Some statisticians would prefer that the general population leave statistics to the experts, but they seem to be in the minority. And of course it depends on what you define “doing statistics” to mean.
But the ship of statistical protectionism has sailed, and it is up to statisticians and statistical educators to do our best to teach statistics in such a way that each student can understand and apply their knowledge confidently, correctly and appropriately. | <urn:uuid:f2fc1df6-3535-4bee-9984-733ed0d66e57> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://creativemaths.net/blog/difficult-concepts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.968073 | 1,339 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Syslog is a standardized computer message logging technology, which can be used on many operating systems such as Windows and Linux.
In computing, syslog is a standard for message logging. It allows separation of the software that generates messages, the system that stores them, and the software that reports and analyzes them. Each message is labeled with a facility code, indicating the software type generating the message, and assigned a severity level.
Computer system designers may use syslog for system management and security auditing as well as general informational, analysis, and debugging messages. A wide variety … | <urn:uuid:cc6dc15a-0914-4ada-b6cb-0f4cab09b57a> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://crucialexams.com/study/questions/n10-006/philip-an-administrator-is-responsible-for-one-linux-and-two-windows/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.897163 | 117 | 3.140625 | 3 |
find the modulus of a given number
Output any real number that is neither positive nor negative
Create a two dimensional zero matrix
Area of an Isoceles Triangle
Calculate square and cube of number
Back to Basics - Find no. of elements in a matrix?
multiply an array by its position number
Determine whether the input is divisible by 3 as well as 5
Find remainder when x is divided by 3
find a specific element from an matrix
first element of matrix
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Contact your local office | <urn:uuid:992b67c9-012d-4df4-becd-ad2c81bc61d6> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://de.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/cody/problems/42940-modulus-of-a-number | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.850799 | 184 | 3.5 | 4 |
A tree is a living thing. Trees seem so peaceful and strong. They stand tall and erect through all weather conditions; rain, hail, sleet, snow, wind, clouds, and sunshine. A tree may lose its leaves, but no worries, the leaves will grow back during the appropriate time or season. Trees have a purpose. They provide beauty, shade, shelter, oxygen, and wood products such as paper, furniture, and housing. Some trees provide flowers, fruit, nuts, and maple syrup. Appreciate the trees. | <urn:uuid:f422fc16-d8d3-44bd-9483-1d18e8aaee06> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://deborahparise.com/tag/worries/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.969127 | 109 | 2.8125 | 3 |
When you think about sexually transmitted diseases, you probably don’t immediately think about your furry family members and their likelihood of catching one. When you hear about STDs, it’s usually about how people can avoid getting one by practicing safe sex. It is possible for your dog to get a canine STD as well. Not only that, it’s possible for your dog to transmit an STD to you — though this is extremely rare.
To keep your pup safe it’s important to be aware of the type of canine STD that your dog could transmit, their symptoms, treatment options, as well as how to prevent them. Finally, you also should know how to prevent yourself from catching an STD from your dog.
Three types of canine STD
The STDs that a human is in danger of catching and the STDs your dog is at risk of catching aren’t the same. Each disease is a little bit different and will carry different symptoms, treatment options, prevention tactics, and prognosis. The three most prevalent canine STDs you should be aware of are:
- Canine herpes virus: This virus, also known as CHV, is not the same as the herpes virus that can infect humans, though it is in the same family. While it’s not fatal to many adult dogs, it’s hazardous for newborn puppies. It can be transmitted through mating, inhaling the virus through coughs or sneezes, drinking from a contaminated bowl, or sniffing or licking a dog shedding the virus. Puppies commonly get the virus from their mothers.
- Brucellosis: Brucellosis is a bacterial infection that can cause fertility issues for both male and female dogs who are infected. It’s also highly dangerous for puppies. It’s spread through mating or contact with infected bodily fluids. Puppies can contract it from their mother during birth.
- Canine transmissible venereal tumors: This STD, also called CTVTs, and is one of the only transmissible cancers in mammals. Mating transmits the disease. Licking, biting or sniffing the tumor also can spread the disease.
The symptoms of each type of STD will be different, as will how it presents in a dog depending on its age, gender, and health. However, you should always visit the vet if your dog is exhibiting a worrisome change for a prolonged period. Some warning signs to see the vet are more visible, but may not mean the dog has a canine STD. Some STDs may not have any noticeable symptoms.
- Canine herpes virus: There often aren’t any symptoms of CHV in adult dogs, especially males. Rarely, you might see kennel cough related to CHV, or raised genital sores. Most often, symptoms include pregnancy loss or stillbirth. In puppies, symptoms include weakness, persistent crying, lack of appetite, nasal discharge, or blindness, among others.
- Brucellosis: Symptoms of brucellosis include lethargy, difficulty walking, back pain, vaginal discharge, or swollen testicles. Female dogs may experience pregnancy loss and stillbirths. Puppies with brucellosis may seem weak and lethargic and often don’t live long.
- Canine transmissible venereal tumors: Symptoms of CTVTs include the appearance of a tumor on both female and male genitals, or even the mouth or nose. It may present with a cauliflower-like appearance, discharge, or urinary retention.
Treatment and prevention
Thankfully, all three of the most common canine STDs are extremely rare in spayed and neutered domestic animals. Treatment and prevention will depend on the type of STD, though the best way to prevent each of them is to have your pet spayed or neutered. Just as human STDs like HIV and AIDS are most common in specific populations, the same goes for canine STDs. Stray dogs who are not fixed and have no access to veterinary care are the most at-risk for STDs. There are no vaccines for these STDs available in the United States.
- Canine herpes virus: Antiviral medication and supportive care can treat CHV in dogs, though when puppies contract the virus if often results in “fading puppy syndrome.” Puppies are often not given medication early enough, and many don’t survive even if they do receive medication. The best prevention is to have your dog spayed or neutered. Responsible breeding with frequent testing is also essential.
- Brucellosis: Brucellosis is incurable. Antibiotics can help control the infection, but no treatment is effective in eliminating the disease. Because brucellosis commonly causes infertility, puppies born with brucellosis are rare, and those that are born often don’t survive. The best prevention is for a dog to be spayed or neutered. Responsible breeders should test often.
- Canine transmissible venereal tumors: Treatment for CTVTs include surgery and chemotherapy. It’s most deadly in puppies and immunosuppressed dogs. The best prevention for CTVTs is to have your dog fixed and to keep them secure and supervised so they can’t interact with stray dogs that are most susceptible.
Can my dog infect me with a canine STD?
Of the three most common canine STDs, brucellosis is a zoonotic disease, which can be transmitted from animals to humans. It’s extremely rare for a human to contract brucellosis from their dog, but it can happen. Most often, brucellosis is transmitted from animals to humans through cows by way of unprocessed dairy. Those who breed dogs or treat them medically are more likely to come into contact with blood or secretions of an infected animal that can result in contracting brucellosis than a pet owner. People with a compromised immune system due to age or health problems should avoid contact with an infected dog.
It is possible for your dog to get an STD. Unfortunately, many of them are serious, especially for puppies. Because we can’t teach dogs to use protection or practice safe sex, it’s up to dog owners to work towards eliminating canine STD problems. Reducing the stray population, spaying, and neutering, and responsible breeding can minimize risk. It’s helpful to understand which canine STDs are most common as well as their symptoms, treatment options, and how to prevent them. Finally, though contracting an STD from your dog is extremely rare, it’s still good to be on the safe side. If you suspect your dog has contracted an STD, visit your vet immediately.
– Noah Rue | <urn:uuid:27c19ef1-15a0-4e08-ba37-b01443c68bae> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://dogsbestlife.com/dog-health/canine-std/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.954719 | 1,379 | 2.71875 | 3 |
- New Zealand
The report showed a decline in American happiness that pointed to a social crisis as opposed to an economic crisis. The downward drop in the United States continued and now ranks 18, down from number 14 in 2017 and 13 in 2016.
The report pays special attention to the social foundations of happiness for individuals and nations. It starts with global and regional charts showing the distribution of answers from approximately 3,000 respondents in each of more than 156 countries, up from 150 countries.
The 2018 report also measures 117 countries by the happiness of its immigrants. Finland ranks highest in this category also, with the rankings closely following the general ranking with the exception of Mexico being number 10, displacing the Netherlands from the top ten as it drops to the 11th rank. The United States, with an immigrant population of 15%, ranks 15th right behind Austria at 14th, Ireland at 13th, and Israel at 12th.
The top ten countries have remained the same as last year although some have switched places. Six key variables are surveyed for happiness, each of which digs into a different aspect of life.
These six factors are GDP per capita, healthy years of life expectancy, social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble), trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business), perceived freedom to make life decisions, and generosity (as measured by recent donations). All of the top ten countries rank high in all six of these factors. | <urn:uuid:fb41fea4-b441-4d06-9d02-be76fda3fbb6> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://happyeffectivelawyer.org/2018/11/13/where-in-the-world-is-happiness/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.959984 | 300 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Haiti is a country located in the caribbean, on the island known as Hispaniola, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. It was the first place Columbus landed in 1492 and he was in fact given governorship over the island in later year by the Spanish monarchy. Due to the harsh conditions of slavery on plantations, the native Taino populations were almost entirely wiped out and replaced over time by African slaves. After centuries of French control, a slave rebellion occurred, and in 1804, forming the second republic in the Western Hemisphere, and the first republic controlled by former slaves in the world.
Disturbed by their loss of economic potential and afraid of inciting slave revolts closer to home, the European powers and the United States refused to recognize the Haitians independence. France even forced Haiti to pay billions of dollars worth of recompense. The constant interference from Western powers kept Haiti from true political and economic stability, a condition that continues today.
Despite their challenges, the country holds real beauty and a remarkably resilient population of hard working and giving communities. Levo is confident that it’s work will have a “game-changing” impact and empower individuals to take advantage of their own abilities to move out of poverty, but the odds are steep.
Today Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and is one of the poorest in the world.
Population: over 10 million
Majority of the population is young adults under 24
High risk of infectious disease and AIDS has ravaged the country in the past
Haiti only recently recovered from a massive cholera outbreak caused during the relief of their 2010 earthquake
Only 40% of the population has access to basic health care
40% of the population is illiterate and only a small percentage receive higher than a high school education
Education is run privately, and is too expensive for the majority of Haitians
Over 60% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, below the international poverty line, and over 2,500,000 Haitians live in extreme poverty
Less than 50% of households have access to safe water and only 25% benefit from adequate sanitation.
50% of the nation's wealth is held by 1% of the population
The majority of Haitians finances are spent on food, leaving little money for other purchases
⅔ of children suffer from varying levels of anemia, almost half of all Haitian women are also anemic
100,000 children under five suffer from acute malnutrition while one child out of three is stunted, or irreversibly short for their age
Haiti is one of the most deforested nations on the planet, over 90% of their land is deforested
Only 10% of Haitian crops are irrigated
Agriculture is an important sector of Haiti’s economy, however the country fails to produce enough food and imports more than 50% for its population’s needs. It imports 80% of its main staple: rice.
Shocks induced by climate change threaten over 500,000 Haitians every year
The World Factbook: Haiti. Central Intelligence Agency. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ha.html February 01, 2018. Accessed 02, 2019.
"Haiti." World Bank: Haiti At-A-Glance. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti. Accessed April 02, 2019.
"Agriculture and Food Security | Haiti." U.S. Agency for International Development. https://www.usaid.gov/haiti/agriculture-and-food-security. January 25, 2018. Accessed April 02, 2019. | <urn:uuid:221bab65-7a09-4a46-8a80-40107216b9ce> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://levointernational.org/haiti-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.948728 | 768 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Insulin resistance is a condition during which the body’s cells don’t use hormone called insulin properly. this hormone helps cells use glucose for energy.
• Insulin resistance increases the danger of developing prediabetes, can lead to other problems such as stroke, and cardiovascular disease.
• Prediabetes or metabolic syndrome is a condition wherein glucose levels are over normal but not high enough for a designation of polygenic disease.
• Causes of insulin hormone resistance and prediabetes are many and include the current high glycemic diet that triggers production of high levels of insulin, genetic factors, excess weight, and lack of physical activity.
- Metabolic Syndrome
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of any 3 of the subsequent conditions:
- waist size of forty inches plus for men and thirty five inches plus for ladies
- triglyceride levels of one hundred fifty milligrams per metric capacity unit (mg/dL) or more, or taking medication for elevated lipid levels
- HDL, or “good,” sterol level below forty mg/dL for men and below fifty mg/dL for ladies, or taking medication for low high-density lipoprotein levels
- blood pressure levels of 130/85 or higher, or taking medication for elevated BP
- fasting blood sugar levels of one hundred mg/dL plus, or taking medication for elevated blood sugar levels
If you have belly fat, skin tags in the neck, or darker or thicker lines in the neck called Acanthosis Nigricans, you might be insulin resistant.
• What is Acanthosis Nigricans – velvety, mossy, flat, wart-like darkened skin on your neck or armpits or underneath your breasts?
What can be done to reduce risk of diabetes?
• Being physically active, creating wise food decisions, especially low glycemic, protein based diets, and reaching and maintaining a healthy weight can help forestall or reverse hormone resistance and prediabetes.
How can W8MD Medical Weight Loss Centers of America’s Prediabetes/Metabolic Medicine weight loss program help?
W8MD Medical Weight Loss Program could be a medical weight loss and sleep well-being program for those that are serious about losing weight and have failed other measures. We would like to provide you all the tools you would like to reach losing weight quickly and safe with offices in many nations within the us. we have a tendency to additionally supply a reasonable telemedicine program for those who don’t have W8MD center close to them thus you’ll be able to be evaluated by one among our physicians to know the advanced factors that result in weight gain and to plan a non-surgical strategy to assist you fight blubber.
Our weight loss group has helped patients accomplish their goals by employing a clinically proven evidence based four-step methodology for safe weight loss:
- a physician-supervised diet and weight loss medication,
- a in person structured and administered exercise program,
- comprehensive psychotherapy, and
- ongoing weight maintenance support.
We can assist you accomplish long lasting weight loss while not feeling perpetually hungry. once you resent your weight loss program as a result of you’re feeling perpetually hungry, it’s rather more tough to continue any important long term changes for weight loss. once you feel hungry, you’re biologically driven to eat, and diet plans that force you to fight that biological impulse will be tough to take care of. At W8MD Medical Weight Loss Program, we would like to assist you accomplish lasting weight loss results for long term weight loss success.
Dr. Prab R. Tumpati is an extremely trained and revered medical doctor familiar with the new obesity medicine drugs that are FDA approved. Dr Tumpati is also board certified in Sleep Disorder management such as sleep apnea as weight gain and sleep apnea go together.W8MD Medical Weight Loss Program is devoted to personalized treatment plan that works for you. As one of the very medical weight loss centers to accept health insurance for the weight loss physician visits, we can help you lose weight fast and safe. Your insurance might cover the cost of the weight loss physician visits, thanks to the Affordable Care Act that mandates insurance coverage for obesity. Our non-surgical medical weight loss program relies on the newest medical science and utilizes evidence based strategies to slim down and keep the weight off for a long duration.
Dr. Tumpati oversees all our patients and helps customise their individual weight loss treatments. You can learn more on our main web site at http://www.w8md.com or call us at 1(800) W8MD-007. We have Weight loss and sleep clinics in North East Philadelphia, King of Prussia, PA and New York City.
Learn more about the W8MD medical weight loss center‘s | <urn:uuid:1e59ed19-a868-43e4-9333-b8235fd39785> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://nycmedicalweightloss.com/2013/10/16/lose-weight-and-reduce-risk-of-diabetes-in-new-york-city/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.920226 | 997 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Long-legged, long-necked, and well-dressed into pink feathery coats, lesser flamingos must be top models in the world of birds. The shores of Lake Nakuru is then one of the world's greatest fashion podiums. In the peak season, local population overruns a million individuals, and the highest record was 1.5 million birds. Flamingos love the waters of Lake Nakuru for the abundance of algae they feed on. Unfortunately, recent climate changes aren't favourable for flamingos, and their numbers have been gradually decreasing.
Flamingos boom occurs in the rainy season, between November and May, when food in the lake is aplenty. However, in drier months, especially during droughts, pink flocks move north of Lake Nakuru to another famous flamingos' feeding ground in Kenya—Lake Bogoria where these birds are actually observed year-round.
Although gorgeous lesser flamingos are the main attraction of Lake Nakuru, be sure to see a range of other birds species, especially white pelicans, as well as other wildlife around Lake Nakuru National Park. | <urn:uuid:185a2395-60e0-41d7-ad61-23ffbbac1f86> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://rove.me/to/kenya/flamingos-rift-valley | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.957154 | 230 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Yellowhammers Emberiza citrinella can be observed all year round. The population has declined significantly in both distribution and number since the 1970’s, which has made them a Red List species in the list of Birds of Conservation Concern. We want to learn more about where they are found in our region. They eat insects, seeds and like to perch on hedges to sing their distinctive ‘a little bit of bread and no cheese’ song.
Identification: About the same size as a house sparrow. Males have a bright yellow heads & body with dark red/brown streaked pattern underneath. Females, are duller brown with a yellow tinge and can be mistaken for other buntings, including Reed buntings. When flying you can see white outer tail feathers.
Visit the BTO website to discover more facts about Yellowhammers.
SWSEIC records as of Feb 2019
SUP is registered in Scotland as a company limited by guarantee with charitable status. Registered address: The Southern Uplands Partnership, Studio 2, Lindean Mill, Galashiels, TD1 3PE. Company No. SC200827 / Charity No. SCO29475 | <urn:uuid:8fa8f82a-220a-420b-8839-10b669e393a7> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://swseic.org.uk/projects/wheres-wildlife-ayrshire/get-involved/postcard-surveys/yellowhammer-survey/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.942003 | 243 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Contribution to Book
The hero's transformationHandbook of Heroism and Heroic Leadership (2017)
In this chapter, we provide an analysis of human transformation in heroic storytelling and in the lives of everyday people. We describe what a transformation is, why it is important, what causes it to happen, and how it varies from hero to hero. We argue that the hero’s transformation is the most central yet most overlooked component of the monomyth of the hero as described by Joseph Campbell (1949) in his classic volume, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Our chapter discusses the ways in which the hero’s journey parallels various stages of healthy human development, during which people undergo moral, mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical transformations. We will describe the many triggers, dimensions, processes, and consequences of the hero’s transformation. Our concluding thoughts will focus on the role of the hero’s transformation in the personal development of the hero and for the well-being of society.
EditorScott T. Allison, George R. Goethals, Roderick M. Kramer
Citation InformationAllison, S. T., & Goethals, G. R. (2017). The hero's transformation. In S. T. Allison, G. R. Goethals, & R. M. Kramer (Eds.), Handbook of Heroism and Heroic Leadership. New York: Routledge. | <urn:uuid:462cd982-6818-4b21-87a1-e28ad0b0c236> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://works.bepress.com/scott_allison/39/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.839849 | 291 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Pocket Clinical Examination is an ideal companion resource to Clinical Examination: A systematic guide to Physical Diagnosis 6e by Talley & O'Connor. Featuring comprehensive tips on history taking and examination, this app is an invaluable revision tool for medical students performing examinations in a clinical setting.
Using a clear and structured layout, the app outlines all the essential skills required for effective evaluation of patients, while providing a solid foundation from which to develop your own systematic approach to history taking.
-Clinical Examination Skills: An overview of history taking and examination, with an emphasis on evidence-based medicine, examination techniques and documentation tips. This feature is ordered by body system and includes key anatomical drawings to reinforce the relevant clinical anatomy of regions of the body,
OSCE Hints: Tips and tricks for success in your OSCE
Practice OSCEs: A bank of OSCE scenarios to be practiced in pairs, with one student acting as the examiner and the other conducting the examination. Includes checklists and timer function.
Test Yourself: Interactive anatomy-based quizzes with drag-and-drop and short-answer options. Revise, reinforce and link to facebook to compete with your classmates!
- June 14, 2014 Initial release | <urn:uuid:cb38e793-b6fb-495e-992e-a968c140062d> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.148apps.com/app/535501381/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.884319 | 247 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Hadrian’s Wall (known in antiquity as the Vallum Hadriani or the Vallum Aelian) is a defensive frontier work in northern Britain which dates from 122 CE. The wall ran from coast to coast at a length of 73 statute miles (120 km). Though the wall is commonly thought to have been built to mark the boundary line between Britain and Scotland, this is not so; no one knows the actual motivation behind its construction but it does not delineate a boundary between the two countries. While the wall did simply mark the northern boundary of the Roman Empire in Britain at the time, theories regarding the purpose of such a massive building project range from limiting immigration, to controlling smuggling, to keeping the indigenous people at bay north of the wall. Its military effectiveness has been questioned by many scholars over the years owing to its length and the positioning of the fortifications along the route. Regarding this, Professors Scarre and Fagan write,
Archaeologists and historians have long debated whether Hadrian’s Wall was an effective military barrier…Whatever its military effectiveness, however, it was clearly a powerful symbol of Roman military might. The biographer of Hadrian remarks that the emperor built the wall to separate the Romans from the barbarians. In the same way, the Chinese emperors built the Great Wall to separate China from the barbarous steppe peoples to the north. In both cases, in addition to any military function, the physical barriers served in the eyes of their builders to reinforce the conceptual divide between civilized and noncivilized. They were part of the ideology of empire. (Ancient Civilizations, 313)
This seems to be the best explanation for the underlying motive behind the construction of Hadrian’s Wall. The Romans had been dealing with uprisings in Britain since their conquest of the region. Although Rome’s first contact with Britain was through Julius Caesar’s expeditions there in 55/54 BCE, Rome did not begin any systematic conquest until the year 43 CE under the Emperor Claudius. The revolt of Boudicca of the Iceni in 60/61 CE resulted in the massacre of many Roman citizens and the destruction of major cities (among them, Londinium, modern London) and, according to the historian Tacitus (56-117 CE), fully demonstrated the barbaric ways of the Britons to the Roman mind. Boudicca’s forces were defeated at The Battle of Watling Street by General Gaius Suetonius Paulinus in 61 CE. At the Battle of Mons Graupius, in the region which is now Scotland, the Roman General Gnaeus Julius Agricola won a decisive victory over the Caledonians under Calgacus in 83 CE. Both of these engagements, as well as the uprising in the north in 119 CE (suppressed by Falco) substantiated that the Romans were up to the task of managing the indigenous people of Britain. The suggestion that Hadrian’s Wall, then, was built to hold back or somehow control the people of the north does not seem as likely as that it was constructed as a show of force. Hadrian’s foreign policy was consistently “peace through strength” and the wall would have been an impressive illustration of that principle. In the same way that Julius Caesar built his famous bridge across the Rhine in 55 BCE simply to show that he, and therefore Rome, could go anywhere and do anything, Hadrian perhaps had his wall constructed for precisely the same purpose.
Emperor Hadrian (born Publius Aelius Hadrianus in 76 CE) ruled the Roman Empire from 117-138 CE. His building projects, especially in Greece, are legendary and his penchant for ambitious monuments is exemplified in his eponymous wall. The work was begun in stone (unlike other fortifications which began with timber) in the east and proceeded westward across uneven terrain to create an impressive reflection of the power of Rome. The wall was originally 9.7 feet wide (3 metres) and 16-20 feet high (six metres) east of the River Irthing, all built of stone, and 20 feet wide (6 metres) by 11feet high (3.5 metres) west of the river, made up of stone and turf, stretching 73 miles (120 km) across the breadth of the land. This ambitious building project was completed within six years through the labour of the Roman legions stationed in Britain. Plans for the construction of the wall were in place prior to Hadrian’s visit to Britain in 122 CE and, perhaps, construction had already begun before the traditional date assigned for the initial work on the wall, possibly as early as 118 CE. There were between 14-17 fortifications along the length of the wall and a Vallum (a ditch purposefully constructed of earthworks) which ran parallel to the wall. The Vallum measured 20 feet (6 metres) wide by 10 feet (3 metres) deep, flanked by large mounds of tightly packed earth. It is this composition of the site which has given rise to the traditional interpretation of the wall as a defensive work built to repel invasion from the north.
The Vallum was built after the construction of the wall and the forts as evidenced by its deviation from existing ruins and the clear indication of causeways across the ditch at intervals which correspond to established fortification sites. When the Antonine Wall was constructed further north (in c. 142 CE by Emperor Antoninus Pius) the Vallum appears to have been partially filled in for easier passage. The Antonine Wall was built after Hadrian’s Wall had been abandoned as an outpost and was positioned further to the north in present-day Scotland between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde. The Antonine Wall was perhaps constructed to serve the same purpose as Hadrian’s Wall but is thought to have functioned more pragmatically than the earlier construct. Hadrian’s Wall is thought to have been plastered and white washed so that it would be a shining beacon of the might of Rome, visible from considerable distances. The Antonine Wall does not suggest this same grandeur nor, in spite of the many fortifications along its route, the same intent in design and construction. Emperor Marcus Aurelius (ruled 161-180 CE) drew the Roman legions back from the Antonine Wall to Hadrian’s Wall under his reign and fortified the garrisons in his efforts to maintain the boundaries of the Empire. Hadrian’s great monument to Rome’s might continued as an impressive affirmation until 410 CE when the Roman legions left Britain. Activity around and along the wall seems to have continued as evidenced by archaeological finds but a disciplined Roman presence after 410 is not signified.
Following the Roman withdrawal, large portions of the wall were carried off for personal building projects by the local inhabitants. Huge sections were removed to provide paving for British troops heading north on muddy tracks to quell the Jacobite Uprising of 1745 CE. Hadrian’s Wall may have disappeared entirely were it not for the efforts of one man, the antiquarian John Clayton (1792-1890 CE) who, in 1834 CE, began buying the land around the wall in an effort to preserve it. Clayton’s excavations and enthusiasm for the site kept what remains of Hadrian’s Wall intact and, in 1987 CE, it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Today it is under the care of English Heritage commission and is cared for largely by volunteers who recognize its immense historical significance. | <urn:uuid:b85222c8-d393-4085-ace0-caed17663dd6> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.ancient.eu/Hadrians_Wall/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.973209 | 1,553 | 4.09375 | 4 |
Deep into the annual talks at the 8th Ecosystem Services Partnership conference held in South Africa’s mega diverse Western Cape, Bioversity International and Natural Capital Project colleagues filled the room with attendees hungry to learn more about MESH, the Mapping Ecosystem Services to Human Well-Being tool. Although it is still at an early stage, this clever tool has plenty of fans and a wide variety of uses for policy makers, scientific advisors and ecosystem services specialists.
So what is MESH about? As its name indicates, it is a free, downloadable software tool that ‘meshes together’ maps of ecosystem services from already existing tools (such as Natural Capital Project’s InVEST and King’s College of London’s WaterWorld) into a user-friendly interface that enables users to rapidly analyze how a policy or investment decision may impact ecosystem services such as food production, erosion or carbon sequestration.
Read the original blog post: New tool aims to shed light on links between ecosystems and human well-being
Photo: Fishing on Rupa Lake, Nepal. Upstream and downstream communities work together to develop fishing regulations to ensure sustainable benefits for all. Credit: IWMI/N. Palmer | <urn:uuid:be22a818-ad37-44af-be45-d59ecfb0b07e> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.bioversityinternational.org/news/detail/mesh-greatest-hits-of-ecosystem-service-modelling/?L=0&cHash=7b9f6ee4be4335e0a35e6f12a53358b9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.904992 | 251 | 2.546875 | 3 |
[This story was originally published September 14, 2012]
O’Yadaw district, Ratanakkiri province – In the beginning, the Jarai lived as one in the forested foothills on at the southern tip of the Anamite Cordillera. At that time, before cartographers and borders, the beloved daughter of a powerful Jarai chief died unexpectedly.
Stricken with grief, the distraught chief sacrificed water buffaloes, pigs, and all sorts of farm animal to mark his daughter’s death. But his sadness was unfathomable, and in his desire to honor his daughter’s passing he ordered an even greater blood sacrifice: Wild deer that roamed the forest were trapped and killed for the funeral ceremony.
The spirits of the mountains and rivers were so enraged by the sacrifice of the forest deer that they made the earth shake; Jarai longhouses collapsed; trees uprooted and great swathes of the land were upturned and the Jarai were scattered.
According to the legend, the Jarai have remained separated ever since – one community located in northeastern Cambodia and their sister communities in neighboring Vietnam’s Central Highlands.
“There is no one else who has ever lived here but the Jarai,” said Sui Hon, 75, said as he ended the story of the unholy sacrifice that split apart his people.
Anthropologists call Mr. Hon’s story an origin myth: Part metaphorical and part historical, such myths contain deeply buried meanings for a society.
The message in the Jarai story is not about a mythical past, Mr. Hon said. It could be the future for his community in Ratanakkiri province’s Lum village, where agro-industry companies have been given ownership of vast tracts of forest that the Jarai have long called home.
They survived the first scattering of their tribe, but they are unlikely to survive the second, Mr. Hon warned.
“We are worried about losing our piece of land. If our swidden farming stops, our way of life stops too,” he said in an interview at the communal meeting hall in Lum village.
“We cannot adapt to the Khmer modernity.”
Ratanakkiri was once covered by dense forests, and O’Yadaw district in the eastern portion of this northeastern province was one of the most remote places as Cambodian emerged from decades of war in the 1990s. Forest still encroached on the outskirts of tiny Banlung town a little over 10 years ago. Access to the province could take days by road from Phnom Penh, while most arrived by twin-propeller Antanov-24 planes that scattered stray dogs and unwatched cows as the Russian-made aircrafts bumped to a landing on the red-earth runway in the center of the provincial capital a couple of times per week.
A lot has changed in the province in recent years as roads have been paved, making travel between Phnom Penh fast and affordable.
Traveling along the new roads have been people in search of work, families in search of opportunities, and the companies of the powerful seeking to make fortunes from the land with cash-crop plantations.
Once a majority ethnic minority province where Tampoun, Jarai and Kreung speakers outnumbered the Khmer, Ratanakkiri is now one of the country’s fastest growing provinces where the inhabitants of lowland provinces, particularly Kompong Cham, Svay Rieng and Prey Veng, are flocking in search of a better future.
“Most of the people here are from Takeo and Kompong Cham,” said Ly Da, 20, who moved to Banlung three years ago from Prey Veng province, and now sells fruit near the main market.
“There is not much development in Prey Veng. If we compare to Prey Veng: it’s six months dry and six months wet, but here we can grow crops in every season,” Ms. Da said of the cooler up-country climate.
Business has been good since she moved here, she says, explaining that there is a ready market for food, clothes and other services among Banlung City’s new Khmer migrants.
The province’s hilltribes have had to adapt to the changes, Ms. Da admits, adding that many have already sold their land to the newcomers.
“In the past the hilltribe people were strict about their traditions, but now they adapt to the Khmer living style,” she said.
“They sold their land to the Khmer. If they did not, they would not have anything.”
In the wet season, the red dirt roads between Banlung and O’Yadaw district, a distance of some 50 kilometers, made the journey a daylong adventure until just a few years ago. Asphalt has now tamed the route, and the forests that once dominated in this eastern district have disappeared. Rubber, cassava and other crops have replaced hilltribe villages and their forest ‘chamkar’ (garden) farms.
In Lum village, one of the remaining forest patches that hugs the Vietnamese border in Paknhai commune, the Jarai residents had watched as cleared land crept ever closer.
Patches of red paint sprayed on the trunks of trees earlier this year was the first sign that plans were being made for Lum village’s land, said Sui H’vinh, 36. Then blue and yellow-colored earth excavators and bulldozers, Caterpillars and Komatsus, moved into the area in June. In a matter of days the machines had begun to flatten the forest in the Komar River valley several kilometers from the center of Lum village, Mr. H’vinh said.
The residents of Lum village, which has a population of 1,290 people, were told nothing and knew nothing about the company felling their forest, but they decide to do something, Mr. H’vinh explained. A group of 30 villagers confronted the workers operating the mechanical earthmovers. Though the meeting in the forest was peaceful, the workers were under no illusions that they had little choice but to stop their clear cutting.
“We didn’t know anything until villagers saw red paint marked on trees and then they were bulldozed,” Mr. H’vinh said.
“This village was okay. Now, since the company started work we are really worried… We only have this area. No other area.”
During a visit to the forest in July, the workers and their heavy machinery were camped and idle on an adjacent hill from where the Jarai had decided to draw a line in the destruction. The valley between the Jarai’s remaining forests and the workers’ blue tarpaulin tents looked as though a huge meteor had fallen from space and gouged a path through the valley. Broken in mid-trunk, the tall trees resembled broken toothpicks and logs, half sawn into strips of timber, lay discarded on a muddy hillside rutted with steel caterpillar tracks.
Standing in the tree-lined shade on the edge of the flattened forest, Mr. H’vinh told of how the machines and pulled back and the clearing cutting had ceased since the villagers protested, though the company’s workers had filed police complaints alleging that they had been intimidated by the locals. For their part, the Lum villagers lodged their own protests with commune, district and provincial official demanding to know how their ancestral land had now wound up the property of a private company – whose name they did not even officially know. No one at any of the local administrative levels had yet responded officially to their letters seeking to know more about the future of their land, Mr. H’vinh said in July.
“It seems we don’t have the right to complain or protest,” he said.
“There are a lot of small streams here where we can fish and there are trees that we can cut to make houses. We are afraid that the company will take everything we depend on for our lives,” Mr. H’vinh said.
Giving up the forest means giving up their rotational farming, Mr. H’vinh said, adding that the Jarai do not want to become laborers for someone else or shopkeepers. It is better to grow crops and sell any excess for profit, he said.
“We are ethnic people. We find it very hard to make a living selling groceries and doing business,” he said. “We have seen, in this village, that those who work as laborers for other people they do not prosper,” he added. “We grow crops and sell them and that makes our living conditions better than theirs.”
Even before the heavy machinery crested the hills in Komar River valley, Sui H’lin, 50, the chief of Lum village, had asked provincial officials to recognize his community’s land with an official communal title. He never received a response.
When the forest clearing began in June, Mr. H’lin went to alert the chief of Paknhai commune, who was as mystified as the village chief. The commune chief then went to the chief of O’Yadaw district, who did know that two companies, Try Pheap and Men Sarun Co, had concessions on what Lum villagers had long considered their land. The district officials knew, but they didn’t tell anyone else, Mr. H’Lin said.
Mr. H’lin also discovered that a special task force, consisting of the provincial departments of agriculture, the environment, forestry administration and land management had also known about the two companies, and had said their concessions would not affect local villagers.
“They could say this village is not affected because they didn’t come to see me or the village,” an exasperated Mr. H’lin said, sitting at a table in his modest wooden home in the center of Lum village in July.
Mr. H’lin ducked into his bedroom to grab a pile of hand-written documents, letters and petitions he had penned in ink asking provincial authorities to respect the Jarai’s land in Lum: 800 hectares of communal farmland and 12 hectares of land for the community’s spirit forest. He sent his request a second time on June 11, around the time of the first protest, and then a third time on June 27.
“I am still waiting for a response,” Mr. H’lin said.
“Despite having motorbikes or cars, we cannot live without the forest and spirit forest,” Mr. H’lin said. ”Please have a pity upon the rocks and the spirit forest we live with.”
Paknhai commune chief Rocham H’lech confirmed that the bulldozers of the concession company came without giving any notice to the local authorities. The bulldozing only stopped after the protest by Lum villagers, and that provincial authorities have now decided to measure how much of Lum villagers’ farmland falls within the already-granted concessions.
Officials at Try Pheap and Men Sarun Co. could not be reached for comment.
Pen Bonnar, coordinator of human rights group Adhoc in Ratanakkiri, said there are around 100 land dispute cases ongoing in the province between local communities and powerful individuals and companies. Not one of these cases has yet been solved, or will probably ever be, Mr. Bonnar said.
Last year alone, the government granted 28 economic land concessions, measuring about 223,370 hectares, in Ratanakkiri province to companies to grow rubber and other crops, according to a report by Adhoc.
“There will be a lot of impacts,” Mr. Bonnar said of the grab for land in the province.
“For the short term it is less impact, but in five years there will be a huge impact because they have small pieces of land now. In the future, I foresee that [the indigenous minorities] would be poorer.”
Giving vast tracts of the country to private companies, according to the government’s rationale, was intended to develop the industrial agricultural sector as the country moved from a centrally planned economy to the free market in the early 1990s.
“The major goal of this opening [of land concessions] is to provide free (non use) land for agricultural and agro-industrial plantation, and processing for export, which is expected by the government to create the jobs and generate income for the people living in the rural area,” states the 2005 sub-decree governing the sector.
In theory, concessions appear reasonable on paper: they would promote small and large investment in agriculture, increase employment in rural areas, improve livelihoods, ensure the appropriate management of the country’s natural resources, and generate revenue for the state at the provincial and communal level “through economic land use fees, taxation and related services charges.”
According to the sub-decree, among other criteria, economic land concessions may only be granted, when “environmental and social impact assessments have been completed with respect to the land use and development plan for economic land concession projects.”
And, they may only be granted on “land for which there have been public consultations, with regard to economic land concession projects or proposals, with territorial authorities and residents of the locality.”
The proof of their value to the country, according to the sub-decree’s section on evaluating economic land concession proposals, “shall be based on the following criteria… Creation of increasing employment; Promotion of living standards of the people; Perpetual environmental protection and natural resources management; Avoidance or minimizing of adverse social impacts.”
But based on the experiences of the ordinary farmers from Lum village, all the way up to the U.N. special envoy on human rights to Cambodia, Surya Subedi, the practice of land concessions is at grave variance with the theory.
“With regards to the impact of economic land concession on people’s rights, the Special Rapporteur is of the view that the human cost of such concessions has been high. The absence, in many instances, of proper consultation and negotiation with the people affected when granting such concessions has been a major concern,” Mr. Subedi wrote in his official report in July.
Mr. Subedi, however, also welcomed in his report Mr. Hun Sen’s decision earlier this year to halt the granting of new concessions and the review of existing concessions too.
It is also not known how much money economic land concessions have raised for state coffers, and few government officials seem to know where to obtain such information.
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Chea Peng Chheang, secretary of state at the Ministry of Finance.
Contacted last week, Paknhai commune chief Rocham H’lech said that he had just been informed that the volunteer students dispatched by Mr. Hun Sen to resolve disputes between communities and land concessions are slated to visit Lum village in November.
Rubber trees have already been planted on the cleared forest in the Komar valley, though the heavy machinery has not cleared any further land. Although unhappy with the planting of the rubber, residents of Lum say they are not going to demonstrate any further until the students arrive to measure the land.
“Now we are waiting for the volunteer students,” Mr. H’lech said. Gordon Paterson, who has worked with indigenous communities in Ratanakkiri since the mid-1990s, said the loss of land has led to “a general sense of hopelessness” for hilltribe communities.
“People feel like they are not in control of their own future, their destiny,” Mr. Paterson said.
“On the one hand is the Land Law, so they do have right. But on the other they see those rights being denied,” he said.
While the official development vision for northeastern Cambodia appears focused on large-scale agro-industry companies, such a model fails to recognize the value of the indigenous people and their contribution to Cambodian society and the economy.
In terms of agriculture production, many indigenous communities already produce a large array of cash crops—cashews, cassava, soybean—and many are starting to grow rubber in their forest farms.
Rather than displacing the communities from their land to give to private companies, the government could mobilize the existing human and natural resources in Ratanakkiri, and with minimal input, could generate income for the nation and the communities themselves through agricultural production.
Indigenous communities “have the wherewithal to develop their land,” Mr. Paterson said, noting that local communities produce a diversity of products that the market needs, and their farming methods are a lot less harmful to the environment in terms of pesticide use and forest protection.
“Industrialized mono-culture is obviously bad for the environment,” he said, adding, “It is better when people are on their own land.”
“The population is a reason for developing a nation. Why not invest in that population?” Mr. Paterson asked, noting that the current thinking would seem to view local communities in rural areas as “an obstruction instead of a resource.”
Productive smallholdings would also preserve the tourist potential of Ratanakkiri for visitors in terms of the natural environment—Who would want to visit an industrialized rubber plantation? Mr. Paterson asks.
Historically, the indigenous communities of the northeast have “served the country well,” and their culture and way of life enriches Cambodia. However, what is taking place now in the province is unlike anything that has happened to them before, Mr. Paterson said.
“The changes happening around them now are more far reaching than in the past, Pol Pot included. The potential impact is far more reaching,” he said.
In Lum village, Mr. Hon, the 75-year-old who recounted the Jarai’s creation myth, said the issue is about more than even land. It is about the spirit of the province and the Jarai people.
“The spirits will be very furious if there is no forest left because they won’t have a place to live,” Mr. Hon. “It would be like a human whose house has been broken down.”
© 2012 – 2013, The Cambodia Daily. All rights reserved No part of this article may be reproduced in print, electronically, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without written permission. | <urn:uuid:c1ded34e-2d6f-4ea6-80a0-e9fefc44443d> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/spirit-of-the-forest-2926/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.969292 | 3,961 | 2.578125 | 3 |
How to Whistle. Whistling can be as simple as 1-2-3, but it can take a few tries before you produce a sound. With the right technique and a little practice, though, you'll be whistling in no time. Pucker your lips. Pretend like you're...
If you want to whistle your favorite tunes, you’ll need to learn to whistle out of your mouth using your lips. Here’s how: Wet your lips and pucker them. Blow air through your lips, softly at ...
Experiment with wetting your lips. Some believe that it's a myth to say that wetting your lips is necessary to whistle while others swear by it. If you're having a hard time producing a whistle, try moistening your lips. Think of it as wetting your finger before you produce the sound around the rim of a glass. By wetting, we don't mean drenched.
Once you get the hang of whistling by blowing air out through your lips, you can challenge yourself to learn how to whistle with your fingers in your mouth. You may have seen some people do this on occasion .
Your fingers do two things that allow you to create an ear-piercingly loud whistle. First, they keep your tongue pushed back, and second, they keep your lips tucked back over your teeth. The pushed back tongue and tucked lips will create a bevel which will produce a tone when you blow.
How Do You Whistle With Your Mouth? Whistling Tom explains that the first step in whistling with your mouth is to put the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth. The air that flows between the roof of your mouth and the top of your tongue is what dictates the note that leaves your lips.
I see some people try it and they squeeze their lips together like a normal whistle. If you do that you'll just end up spitting all over the place. Lips stay relaxed, and curl over your teeth, so when you put your fingers in your mouth, they will not touch the teeth at all. Also, your lips should be wet.
How to whistle loud using Lips and Fingers – Whistling can be used to attract attention, call the dog, or sing beautiful melodies. When you’ve found a condition that makes you comfortable, practice it as often as possible so that you can control the tone and volume of Your whistling.
How to Whistle With Your Fingers | The Art of Manliness - Duration: 3:06. Art of Manliness 4,228,647 views. 3:06. Loading more suggestions... Show more. Language: English | <urn:uuid:24762b0f-f777-4e16-bc1b-7bc0c2116173> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.reference.com/web?q=How+Do+You+Whistle+With+Your+Lips%3F&qo=contentPageRelatedSearch&o=600605&l=dir&sga=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.923724 | 550 | 2.75 | 3 |
Degrees and Certifications:
Ms. Hubbard - 7th Grade Science
Hello! Welcome to Ms. Hubbard's homepage.
Ms. Hubbard is a graduate of Jacobsen, Tehachapi High, and UC Santa Cruz. She has been teaching science at Jacobsen for over 20 years and still loves her job! Her favorite aspect of teaching science is encouraging curiosity and doing hands-on labs and activities with kids.
Click the Science 7 link on the left to see our weekly schedule and assignments.
Species Project Websites
You will be choosing a species to do research about and creating a multimedia project to present to the class. You can choose a wild species of fungus, plant, or animal (insect, cnidarian, arachnid, crustacean, fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, mammal, etc). A small amount of Extra Credit may be offered for those choosing something besides a mammal!
Look at some of the species on these web pages to help you decide.
https://xerces.org/endangered-species/ insects and other invertebrates
https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp0/reports/species-listed-by-state-report?state=CA&status=listed California endangered species
https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp0/reports/ad-hoc-species-report?kingdom=P&status=E&status=T&status=EmE&status=EmT&status=EXPE&status=EXPN&status=SAE&status=SAT&fcrithab=on&fstatus=on&fspecrule=on&finvpop=on&fgroup=on&ffamily=on&header=Listed+Plants endangered plants
Phet Lab Simulations | <urn:uuid:323f3fe6-60af-4007-b7e0-2ffb6772b272> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.teh.k12.ca.us/Domain/369 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.78807 | 385 | 2.5625 | 3 |
A lot of people think that wet wipes are made from toilet tissue and many people simply flush them down the toilet without a second thought.
Millions of pounds are spent on cleaning drains and sewers right across the UK because of items that shouldn't be in them. Wet wipes, cotton wool, nappies, cotton buds, sanitary towels and dental floss are just some of the culprits.
As much as we live in a 'disposable age', it's vital that you think before you flush.
Things like wipes and nappies don't just disappear down the toilet and dissolve - they clump together and cause havoc in the sewers. This causes people complete misery when blocked drains and sewers cause their homes and gardens to flood.
Please join the national ‘Bin It, Don't Flush It’ campaign to reduce blockages and protect the environment. | <urn:uuid:2b4670c0-fea4-43b6-bc70-1b2db9279f09> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.twc-draincare.com/post/bin-it-dont-flush-it | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.958229 | 183 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Passover seder plate is the longest and most complex family meal of the Jewish holiday cycle sometimes takes as long as three hours or longer and involve several centuries old rituals and traditional foods. Central to the table setting is the Seder plate, containing several symbolic and ritual foods, which represents reminders of the bitterness of slavery and the celebration of Easter in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Set the table with a durable fabric that can handle spills of wine or grape juice. White is traditional but not mandatory color screen (some hosts prefer to cover it with a plastic tablecloth). Wine or grape juice is also central to the passover seder plate, and four cups poured for each participant to symbolize the four different levels of redemption from slavery.
Passover seder plate on the table. A single serving can be used, in which case the order of the items on the plate are the following (clockwise from top): roasted bone Harosheth, romaine lettuce, vegetable, roasted eggs. Horseradish should be placed in the center. This is the traditional Ashkenazic layout, other Jewish traditions place objects in different ways: If you own a decorative Seder plate, following the labels provided or see Resources below for other layouts. Place another plate with three unbroken matzahs on the table within reach of the leader of the Seder.seder plate facts, distinctive passover seder plate, distinctive passover seder plate sale, distinctive passover seder plate cheap, how much distinctive passover seder plate | <urn:uuid:a1ad40fb-b8da-4712-bc2c-da672231fb19> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.yourmoneybus.com/distinctive-passover-seder-plate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998462.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190617083027-20190617105027-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.896042 | 310 | 2.875 | 3 |
Math: We have added in some new math choices for after we are done with independent work- Xtra Math and Versatiles. We have also learned about all of the math resources around our classroom and where all math materials are located. This way, second graders can be independent and can try using a math material to help them solve a challenging problem and then if they’re still stuck, can ask a teacher for help. Here are some pictures of second graders making math choices:
Second Step: One important social emotional skill we discussed this week was whole body listening. The components of this are ears listening, eyes on the speaker, quiet mouth, calm body, and mind thinking. We also discussed what it means to be respectful and how we can show respect to others during the school day.
What are the parts of a tree that all trees have in common?
How were you a good reading partner this week?
Dates to Remember:
October 8: No School | <urn:uuid:7b8341cf-01c8-4ea0-a117-83517f9c26af> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://mrshedstrom.weebly.com/mrs-hedstroms-blog/archives/09-2018 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.965249 | 201 | 3.515625 | 4 |
In the first post in this topic, three aspects were identified as being key to organising photo collections: dealing with the physical images and negatives, digitisation of the images/negatives, and indexing. I’ve already discussed Indexing so this post is going to be about the physical images and negatives.
Whether your photos and negatives are in lots of different places and all mixed up, or are a little more ordered than that, the first step is to organise them so they can be indexed. To do this follow the general Order From Chaos approach outlined in the OFC White Paper i.e. assemble, sort and index.
Assemble: Be clear about what material is being included and identify where it all is. If possible collect it all together in one place – and then do another check to find anything you might have missed. Generally speaking the material should include printed photos, negatives, photo albums and electronic images.
Sort: Identify a sort criteria (examples could include people, dates, or places), and go through all the material placing individual items into piles according to the criteria you have selected. For example, if your criteria is date, have a separate envelope for each year or span of years and place the photos into the relevant envelopes. Once you have done an initial sort, go through each subset checking the allocation is correct and getting the order correct within each subset. For prints, their physical appearance and whatever numbers or information has been recorded on them (front or back), can be used to identify which prints were produced at the same time. The same approach can be used to match up different strips of negatives that came from the same film. At this stage negatives can also be matched to the prints.
If you are not familiar with the contents of the photos (if, say, they belong to parents or relatives, or are a job lot purchased at an auction), use whatever means are available to identify what they are of and when they were taken. If there is someone available who is familiar with them, talk with them about each photo. Consider recording the conversation (perhaps using a mobile phone app) to both assist with identification downstream and to augment the historical background of the material. Note the contents and date on the back of each photo. Alternatively, note an interim serial number on the back each photo and record the information about it in a notebook or computer.
Index: When all the material has been sorted, decide what you want to do with the physical items. An obvious option is to put them into a photo album – I use slip-in albums that take two 6×4 prints on a page. An alternative is to keep them in envelopes or some other storage system and just access the images on screen or in a printed photobook.
Once you have decided on your approach, do a final check to ensure that you have sorted the images into the same order that you are going to put them into photo albums or to store them. If not, sort them again to get them into the right order. Now create the Index and ensure it has columns for all the information you will need to manage and find the images downstream (further details about index contents are in my earlier post on the subject). I use an Excel spreadsheet to maintain the index – here’s a template as a starting point if you want to go down that route (Photo Index Template v2.0).
Once your index is ready for use, go through all the images methodically creating index entries and numbering each print accordingly (I tend to use a biro on the back of each print and haven’t noticed any problems with doing it this way). Negatives should also be numbered according to the index and can be stored in a separate box, folder or other storage system (I keep negatives in the pockets they came in, write the numbers on the pockets and keep them in serial number order in a box in the loft).
After you have indexed all the material, now is the time to scan the images to obtain electronic versions of each one (this exercise will be discussed in a subsequent post). Once the scanning has been completed the material must then be placed into its final destination(s). If this is to be a slip-in photo album, here’s some further guidance based on my own practical experience:
Spaces: There’s nothing more infuriating than coming across another photo sometime later only to find there’s no room for it in the album. To avoid this, leave a couple of empty spaces after every 20 photos or so.
Large photos: If you are using an album that will take two or more 6x 4 prints on a page, I’ve found that you can include larger prints by slicing a slot in the top of the acetate of the lowest print slot and slipping the photo into it as shown in the example below.
Small photos: To keep multiple small photos (such as photo booth prints) in place in a single 6×4 slot, take a piece of paper or card roughly the size of the 6×4 slot and make some diagonal cuts for the bottom corners of the prints you want to include as shown below (the photos have been reversed for the purposes of this illustration). These don’t need great accuracy and can be done very quickly and roughly. Once the prints are in place, just slide the piece of paper into the 6×4 slot. Here’s a Template for printing out a piece of paper that will fit in a 6×4 slot – cut to the guide marks – there are two to a page.
Slip-in tabs: If your album has spaces for slip-in tabs, record each print’s number on the tab together with any descriptive information you want to include. The approach I take is to print out slip-in tabs with the information that’s contained in the file name of each image (i.e. reference number and short description). Detailed instructions and a template for this are provided in another post.
Spine labels: If you fill several photo albums you’ll need something on each album spine to identify it. I try and avoid sticking and gluing approaches as they tend to discolour over the years. Instead I print out a label to the width of the spine and leave enough space at the top to bend it over and push it down the inside of the spine as shown below. The albums I use are sold with removable plastic covers so the labels sit underneath the plastic cover and, with the tops pushed down the inside of the spines, tend to stay in place quite well. If the tops won’t stay in place inside the spine you could try using Glu Dots.
Having done all this, your physical prints and negatives should all have a home. If you have chosen to put your prints into physical photo albums, you may wish to continue the collection with new images even if you don’t normally get prints of the electronic photos you are now taking with your modern camera or phone. I do so – but only with the most interesting photos i.e. a very small subset of the photos I take. On-line photo shops such as Snapfish, PhotoBox and many others make the process of getting prints easy and cheap. | <urn:uuid:7ab5cf57-ee6e-4afe-8784-042508797d03> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://www.pwofc.com/ofc/category/journeys-completed/organising-family-photos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.941495 | 1,489 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Rare marine species and habitats in extreme southern Chile have come under protection in the Diego Ramírez-Drake Passage marine park. Approved last year and entering into force last month, it will be the most southerly park in the Americas and provide a 144,390 square kilometre refuge for endangered penguins, albatrosses and whales. It will also protect important seabed formations.
The shape of the Diego Ramírez-Drake Passage park – Chile’s new marine reserve.
The park will provide a haven for many bird species, including the grey-headed albatross. This majestic seabird faces extinction due to the combined threats of climate change, which is affecting the location of squid, its main food source, entanglement in fishing gear and invasive species on the islands where it nests. (Image: Omar Barroso)
The striated caracara is a large, dark raptor found in the Diego Ramírez islands, located south of Cape Horn in the Drake Passage. The Diego Ramírez-Drake Passage park is Chile’s 25th marine protected area and the seventh established in Chilean Patagonia, where nearly 14.2 million hectares have been safeguarded. (Image: Omar Barroso)
Scientists collecting samples in the Diego Ramírez-Drake Passage park. The park’s location, at the southern end of the continental shelf of the Americas, makes it a strategic area for monitoring global climate change. (Image: Omar Barroso)
Gonzalo is one of the islands in the Diego Ramírez archipelago. Extreme southern Chile contains a range of habitats including fjords, deep channels, and kelp forests, which host a unique mix of wildlife. The Cape Horn and Diego Ramírez archipelagos are the most southerly locations in the Americas, and some of the least explored places on Earth. (Image: Omar Barroso)
The grey-headed albatross breeds at six island groups or archipelagos in the seas above the Antarctic, including the Diego Ramírez. The islands are also an important migration route for whales and other cetaceans. (Image: Omar Barroso) | <urn:uuid:8dff9884-1622-43cf-9f96-b1d26fba310e> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://chinadialogueocean.net/6197-chiles-latest-marine-park/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.87914 | 459 | 3.578125 | 4 |
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a chronic, degenerative neurological disorder that affects roughly one in 100 people over the age of 60. With no biomarker or objective test to make a definitive diagnosis, PD has kept researchers searching for clues on how to treat, and hopefully prevent, the disease.
April is National Parkinson’s Disease Awareness Month, and so we sat down with Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives member Robert Edwards, M.D., who specializes in the treatment of PD at the Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Clinic. Edwards is a professor of neurology and physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. His lab has received international recognition for demonstrating that vesicular monoamine transport protects against MPTP toxicity, suggesting an important mechanism that may also protect against Parkinson’s.
Regular exercise is proven to have positive effects on gait speed, strength, balance, and overall quality of life for people with PD. Though studies are still limited, dance therapy is said to greatly improve quality of life for this group, even more so than typical exercise. Can you talk a little bit about this?
RE: I am not an expert in this area, but exercise has clear short-term effects on function and for those more severely affected, on quality of life—those earlier in the disease are doing pretty well in any case. Presumably, exercise helps by improving the function of the basal ganglia circuitry that controls movement, much as it would in normal individuals. Dance therapy focuses on balance and other aspects of motor function different from standard exercises, so might be expected to add something new.
The big question with any kind of exercise is whether it affects the underlying degenerative process. Some studies have shown longer-term effects that substantially outlived the exercise itself. But again, this may simply reflect long-term improvement in motor function that would occur with any sustained exercise. There is little clear evidence to suggest that exercise helps the underlying degenerative process, which is our ultimate goal in treating and even preventing Parkinson’s disease. That will require something new.
Besides exercise, are there other lifestyle changes that can aid in slowing the underlying degeneration of PD?
There are some things that we do not recommend because they carry their own morbidity. For example, it has recently been found that high uric acid levels seem to protect against Parkinson’s disease, but we do not usually recommend trying to raise uric acid (through diet or medication) because it is also associated with gout. On the other hand, some organic pesticides such as rotenone can produce a model of Parkinson’s disease, so you might want to stay away from those—they are sold widely, and you can just look on the contents to see if they are present. Other than that, there is not too much else to do because we do not know what really causes Parkinson’s—once we know that, we will be able to intervene much more effectively.
Symptoms of Parkinson’s can often be similar to those of other neurological conditions, which causes a high rate of misdiagnosis—an estimated 25 percent. What distinctions should people be aware of?
There are a range of other neurological disorders that can resemble PD, but a good neurological exam can distinguish many of them, such as essential tremor or more remotely, ALS (motor neuron disease). The ones difficult to distinguish are closely related disorders such as Multiple System Atrophy, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, Corticobasal Ganglionic Degeneration and Lewy Body Dementia, which is basically a variant of PD, involving very similar pathological changes in the brain, but in different locations.
In many cases, these so-called atypical parkinsonian disorders are not apparent at diagnosis, so patients are labelled as PD. However, failure to respond to L-Dopa, faster progression, and a host of other clinical findings usually arise to indicate a different disorder. Unfortunately, these atypical parkinsonian disorders can sometimes progress more quickly than PD; and it is also more difficult to manage their symptoms. DaT scans can distinguish between some of the more distantly related disorders (ALS) but not those more closely related to PD.
What are the most effective treatments for PD available now? How effective are they?
The current treatments for PD do a good job of managing symptoms early in the disease. In many cases, patients can feel almost entirely normal. As the disease progresses, however, the symptoms become more difficult to treat in several ways: the required increase in medication can precipitate intolerable side effects; some symptoms (such as the gait disorder) can be more difficult to treat; fluctuations develop due to more rapid wearing-off of the medication; non-motor symptoms (cognitive decline, incontinence, hypotension) can be difficult to treat; and sometimes the medication just stops working. Recent developments have helped to manage aspects of these problems: a new long-acting version of L-Dopa helps to reduce medication-related fluctuation; and deep brain stimulation provides a very effective way around intractable fluctuations.
[Editor’s note: See the Cerebrum article, “Gut Feelings on Parkinson’s and Depression” to learn more about the microbiota, which scientists are hailing as a new frontier in neuroscience for its potential in treating a number of disorders.]
Regarding your own research in Parkinson’s disease, what are you most excited about?
I am most excited about the prospect of stopping the progression and better yet preventing the onset of Parkinson’s disease. As indicated above, we have generally effective treatment for symptoms early in the disease, but nothing that addresses the cause of the disease and could therefore slow the underlying degeneration. This is because we do not know what causes it. However, we do know that regular PD involves the protein alpha-synuclein. Mutations in the gene encoding synuclein cause PD, and although they are rare, synuclein accumulates in the brain of essentially everyone with regular PD. What we do not know is what triggers this protein to cause PD, and that is because we do not know what synuclein normally does.
In PD and other degenerative disease, including Alzheimer’s and ALS, a lot of attention has been paid to the way synuclein and a small group of other proteins produce toxicity. Rather than focus on the different forms of toxicity, we are more interested in the origin of disease since that will give us the best option to arrest or prevent disease. This requires knowing the normal function of synuclein and these other proteins, but has proven difficult.
Recently, we found that synuclein normally acts at a particular step in the release of neurotransmitter. In essence, this tells us what the protein is good for and why it might go up, down, or misbehave in disease. Thus, we can work backward from the disease toward its origins and arrest degeneration, potentially before it has begun. This might not require a medication, but something as simple as exercise or diet—we just need to know what kind, and that requires more basic information.
This year’s awareness month theme from the Parkinson’s Foundation is “Start a Conversation,” which is a call to action that urges people to talk about the disease with their loved ones, neighbors, care team, and community.
– Seimi Rurup | <urn:uuid:784f38b7-e298-4ad9-81ce-b05b7a5715c4> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://danablog.org/2018/04/24/national-parkinsons-awareness-month-interview-with-robert-edwards-m-d/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.956222 | 1,533 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Tonight – May 1, 2018 – watch for the waning gibbous moon and the bright star Antares to climb above your southeastern horizon. The moon is now a couple of evenings past full and rising later at night. From mid-northern latitudes, the moon and Antares will be up by 10 to 11 p.m. local time (the time on your clock for much of the Northern Hemisphere). From temperate latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, the twosome will be up 8 to 9 p.m. local time. From around the world, an even brighter object than Antares – the planet Jupiter – is nearby.
Click here for recommended sky almanacs that’ll let you know the rising time of the moon, Antares and Jupiter in your sky.
And there’s yet another bright planet you won’t want to miss, Venus. It’ll be blazing low in your western sky shortly after sunset, around the same time Jupiter will be shining low in your eastern sky. In other words, these two brilliant beauties will be shining opposite one another as dusk deepens into nighttime. These two worlds will be easy to see (given an unobstructed horizon) because Venus and Jupiter rank as the third-brightest and fourth-brightest celestial objects, respectively, after the sun and moon.
As evening deepens, Venus will sink westward while Jupiter will climb upward. Venus will follow the sun beneath the western horizon a few hours after sunset, at or near which time the moon and Antares will then follow Jupiter into the starry sky.
Once the moon and Antares enter the sky, they’ll be out (along with Jupiter) for rest of the night. If you live at northerly latitudes, and don’t wish to stay up late, you can always wake up early to see the moon and Antares in the predawn sky instead. If you do that, you can see two more planets, Mars and Saturn, as shown on the chart below:
The planet Saturn follows Antares into the starry sky about two hours after Antares rises, and then the planet Mars follows Saturn into the sky an hour or two after Saturn comes up. Unless you’re a night owl, however, you’ll probably prefer to view Saturn and Mars in the early morning hours before sunrise.
The moon will continue to wane, and it’ll continue to move eastward in front of the star background in the nights ahead. Thus the moon will inevitably inch toward Saturn and Mars in our sky, passing them around May 4 to 6, as shown on the two charts below:
Bottom line: On May 1, 2018, the bright star near the moon is Antares in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. An even brighter planet, Jupiter, is nearby.
Bruce McClure has served as lead writer for EarthSky's popular Tonight pages since 2004. He's a sundial aficionado, whose love for the heavens has taken him to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and sailing in the North Atlantic, where he earned his celestial navigation certificate through the School of Ocean Sailing and Navigation. He also writes and hosts public astronomy programs and planetarium programs in and around his home in upstate New York. | <urn:uuid:a6f0e368-4607-4971-9ab0-da7c7ad5af0b> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://earthsky.org/sky-archive/moon-antares-from-evening-till-dawn | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.922729 | 675 | 2.671875 | 3 |
By Geoff Day
On the 13th of September in 1912, General Nogi Maresuke and his wife Shizuko ended their lives following the classical Japanese warrior tradition of junshi, following one's master into death.
The general's master was none other than the Emperor Meiji and after his funeral procession had left the Imperial palace, Maresuke and Shizuko went back to their home in Nogizaka, Tokyo and followed him into the hereafter.
It is with much regret that not much is known about Madame Shizuko's thoughts and feelings about following her husband into the void. Her memory raises many questions that may never be answered. General Nogi, however, left behind a clear explanation for his decision. A man of much respect and dignity, a man of letters, the general was haunted by the loss of his soldiers' lives many years before.
His poetry exhibits much in the way of regret; the general took the deaths of his men personally and wished to atone for their loss. At one point, he asked the Emperor for permission to take his own life but was refused. In his final letter, Nogi reiterated his desire to expunge the guilt he felt for losing so many men almost a generation prior and to follow his Emperor into the world beyond. In his own words, "I have made up my mind to take the step."
A celebrated national hero, Nogi lived his life during Japan's emergence from almost three hundred years of feudal isolation. His ritual death, considered by many now to be an anachronism from a bygone age shocked many. It also revealed Nogi to be a man of deep loyalty, dignity and for many, Japan's last samurai.
Dedicated to him and his wife, the immaculately kept grounds of the Nogi Shrine in Nogizaka features the home of the general and his wife. The room where both ended their lives is visible, a solemn reminder of the spirit of another time.
Take the Chiyoda Subway Line to Nogizaka Station. The Nogi Shrine is a short walk from Exit 1.
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A Japanese Permanent Resident who enjoys drooling over proper soba and sushi, Japanese aesthetics ticks all the right boxes for me and I enjoy stringing words together. I've almost one hundred published articles on Japan as well as five English language books written in the traditional Japanese zuihitsu-style. | <urn:uuid:85b3fb78-fd18-457b-9da3-e22d1e314871> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://en.japantravel.com/tokyo/general-nogi/59261 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.98472 | 501 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Outreach/Bible Marking - Advanced
|Bible Marking - Advanced|
South Pacific Division
|Skill Level Unknown|
|Year of Introduction: Unknown|
The Bible Marking - Advanced Honor is a component of the Witnessing Master Award .
- 1 1. Mark an additional two Bible studies using a minimum of twenty texts each.
- 2 2. Using a concordance mark ten texts for devotional study
- 3 3. In writing
- 4 4. Give a Bible study from an outline your have marked.
1. Mark an additional two Bible studies using a minimum of twenty texts each.
These Bible studies are over and above those marked to meet the requirements in the Bible Marking honor.
2. Using a concordance mark ten texts for devotional study
A Biblical concordance is an alphabetical list of the words used in the Bible, with their immediate contexts. There are at least three types:
- An exhaustive concordance, such as Strong's, has a list of every single word used in the Bible. The most common words (such as pronouns, prepositions, and articles) are listed without context in a different section. Strong's also assigns a number to each word corresponding to the word in the original Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek from which it was translated.
- An abridged concordance is similar to an exhaustive concordance, except that it omits some words. Some omit more than others.
- A topical concordance lists various texts having to do with a particular topic. The texts listed may or may not contain the word being indexed. This is helpful when you know the topic you wish to study, but may not be able to think of all the words having to do with that topic.
By its nature, selection of the texts included in a topical concordance will be more subjective than those included in an exhaustive concordance. An exhaustive concordance has the advantage of being unbiased, but the user must know all the words related to the topic under consideration. Which type of concordance you choose is a personal choice.
The first step in putting a Bible Study together is to pray and ask God to guide you. You need to put aside any preconceived notions and not be trying to "prove" something from the Bible. Once you have prepared your heart for honest Bible study, select a topic and look it up in the concordance. If the word you have looked up appears frequently in the Bible, you will need to scan the context provided to decide if the passage applies to what you are studying. Sometimes it will, and sometimes it will not. Once you find a promising text, find it in your Bible and read more of the surrounding text. If it still looks promising, write down the reference. Then return to the concordance and examine more texts.
As you read, you may become aware of more words having to do with your topic. Write these down as you go so you can look them up later. When you have a good list of texts, re-read them all and see if you can come up with a logical order for them. Once you have the texts listed and know the order you would like them to appear, it is time to mark your Bible using one of the methods outlined in the Bible Marking honor.
3. In writing
a. State the guidelines taken to maintain a clear marking procedure.
Often when people begin marking their Bibles, they deviate from the "standard" way of doing it because they find a way that suits them better. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, it makes Bible marking even more personal and meaningful to the serious Bible student. After you have marked a few studies, it is a good idea to record your procedure. Having it written down will allow you to share the method with others, or remind you of the details of your procedure sometime in the future (it's easy to forget).
b. Provide a key to understanding your Bible markings.
A key would be a summary of your shorthand notations. For instance, you might abbreviate the Second Coming as "SC", or baptism as "BZ". It may be difficult to remember what your shorthand meant later, so it's a good idea to write it down. This is true of any method you employ.
4. Give a Bible study from an outline your have marked.
To younger Pathfinders this may seem a bit scary at first. They get the idea that they will have to go door-to-door offering to give strangers a Bible study. While there is much to be gained from doing that, it is not really an appropriate task for a new Bible student.
If your club has a worship period during club meetings, this is an excellent opportunity to give a Bible study. In fact, you could look at some of the AY requirements you need to meet - many of them can be met by presenting a Bible study to your club during worship time, or at a campout, during Sabbath School, or even during a family worship. The important thing is to overcome your fears and just do it. | <urn:uuid:c8a1bc2d-7654-443c-9cd3-9c1442d9c3a4> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Adventist_Youth_Honors_Answer_Book/Outreach/Bible_Marking_-_Advanced | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.953897 | 1,071 | 2.65625 | 3 |
On The Ethical Use Of Data Vs. The Internet Of Things
The number of “things” in the Internet of Things is expanding at an astronomical rate. In 2016, 5.5 million new things become connected every day, such as a smart mattress that helps optimize your sleep, but could also alert customers of potential partner infidelity.
As consumers rapidly adopt these connected devices that add value and convenience to their lives, they are creating, passively, lots of data. This data serves quite a few purposes — anything from delivering on the advertised benefits of the device to fueling the economy, powering further innovation and delivering societal benefits. This is called the data value exchange. As our societies leap into digital life and the Internet of Things, enabling the benefits while preventing the harms is central to getting the data value exchange right.
The Accountability Shift Of Data
The Internet of Things provides fertile ground for marketing, but it is a minefield for the Ethical Use of Data (EUoD). As consumers adopt a more connected lifestyle, the responsibility of how this information is collected, shared and applied will become increasingly complex, and essentially impossible for the consumers themselves to be fully accountable for.
Most consumers are not preoccupied with knowing exactly how data about themselves is collected, analyzed and used. Consider how often the average person actually reads privacy policies before agreeing to the terms – not often. Instead, consumers pick brands they trust, and expect them to take proper precautions to keep the data safe and use it responsibly.
This is a shift of the accountability burden from the consumer to brands. Brands that want to operate with confidence and demonstrate their trustworthiness to their customers should begin the process of being accountable for the EUoD. This requires a few things: A commitment to respecting consumer privacy and policies that reflect accountability for ethical use; mechanisms to put policies into effect; monitoring to assure mechanisms work; providing consumers transparency and choice opportunities; and standing ready to demonstrate and remediate when necessary. In other words, the operationalization of data use ethics.
Consumers expect brands to follow the “do right rule,” which is essentially to follow an ethical standard for all uses of and analytics on data and not cross any lines that would harm or offend them. This requires brands to know where the “line” is, and understand that the line will move, over time. But the lines of the data value exchange are becoming increasingly difficult for brands to determine as the volume, velocity and variety of data, plus the application of big data analytics, continues to accelerate.
As technology becomes a more integrated and intimate part of our lives, some data and some uses will be more sensitive and other data and uses less sensitive. Knowing where the line is will be tricky because some data uses will be expected by default and other uses will be unanticipated, triggering surprise, shock or even harm…which then, of course, can break brand trust.
Let me illustrate with an example. Assume you own a connected car that tracks your time, speed and location, and that the manufacturer is permitted to share this data with third parties. One such recipient is your insurance provider, which analyzes the data to discover you drive more at peak traffic times, and as a result it increases your premium, only disclosing the reason upon request. Has the car manufacturer crossed the line?
Here’s another example – one that I think we’d all say yes to. Suppose you are wearing an advanced fitness tracker capable of detecting whether you are having a heart attack. Should it be default-set to communicate this medical emergency with the authorities, dispatch an ambulance and potentially save your life?
These are just a couple of digital ecosystem situations where brands must be equipped to get it right and not cross the line. It’s important to recognize that just because you can do something with data and analytics, does not mean you should. Brands must consider data use in context and make sure that the impact to the consumer is legal, respectful and fair. Ultimately consumers draw the lines. Operating on the right side of the line is vital to ensure consumer trust in your brand is not compromised.
The Governance Of Ethical Use
Given that data will be the currency of the Internet of Things and shared between parties and platforms, EUoD methodologies will become critically important to ensure that data is used appropriately, the consumer is protected and innovation flourishes. As companies extend the use of their first party data beyond the walls of their brand, they should develop an accountability program, centered on the EUoD that also extends to all players in the ecosystem.
There are several key questions that marketers in particular should be asking when they work with data: What is the purpose of my data-driven project? What is the data provenance? Under what privacy promise did the data originate? What was the consumer expectation when it was collected? Was the consumer given meaningful notice and choice? Will the outcome of my data-driven project and impact deliver articulate-able value to all stakeholders, including the consumer, or does it violate a line that may be undefined, but could be discerned against all the facts with good judgment? | <urn:uuid:eae71491-ed67-4728-a600-117e57b230ef> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://irabec.com/on-the-ethical-use-of-data-vs-the-internet-of-things/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.939186 | 1,049 | 2.859375 | 3 |
An overview of the continental shelves of the world
Link to publisher version (URL)
This Memoir explores the variability and controlling processes of sedimentation, morphology and tectonics on the world's continental shelves, with emphasis on their evolution during the last glacio-eustatic cycle. This work builds on some earlier volumes on continental shelves, notably those by Trumbul et al. (1958), Boillot (1978), De Batist & Jacobs (1996), Nittrouer et al. (2007) and Li et al. (2012) among others, although there has not been a previous comprehensive global-scale synthesis. The subject material presented here was developed in several International Geoscience Programmes (formerly the International Geological Correlation Programme, IGCP) concerned with shelves. Project 396 'Continental Shelves in the Quaternary' (1996-2000) was followed by IGCP 464 'Continental Shelves during the Last Glacial Cycle: Knowledge and Applications' (2001-2007) and finally by IGCP 526 'Risks, Resources and Record of the Past on the Continental Shelf' (2007-2011). In this Memoir, 23 papers are devoted to the description of different aspects of shelves from all seven continents and which are representative of the world's shelves. However, there remain significant gaps in our compilation. A glance at Figure 1.1 indicates the sparse coverage of data, particularly using modern techniques of investigation, for Africa, Russia and the Polar regions. However, new data are presented from some frontier provinces, such as Myanmar, Morocco and Ecuador. | <urn:uuid:0fafbed4-3653-43c2-8876-d85dff892668> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://ro.uow.edu.au/smhpapers/2813/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.910739 | 326 | 2.71875 | 3 |
(Or St. Giovanni Melchior Bosco; Don Bosco.)
Founder of the Salesian Society. Born of poor parents in a little cabin at Becchi, a hill-side hamlet near Castelnuovo, Piedmont, Italy, 16 August, 1815; died 31 January 1888; declared Venerable by Pius X, 21 July, 1907. Note: Pope Pius XI beatified him in 1929 and canonized him in 1934.
When he was little more than two years old his father died, leaving the support of three boys to the mother, Margaret Bosco. John’s early years were spent as a shepherd and he received his first instruction at the hands of the parish priest. He possessed a ready wit, a retentive memory, and as years passed his appetite for study grew stronger. Owing to the poverty of the home, however, he was often obliged to turn from his books to the field, but the desire of what he had to give up never left him. In 1835 he entered the seminary at Chieri and after six years of study was ordained priest on the eve of Trinity Sunday by Archbishop Franzoni of Turin.
Leaving the seminary, Don Bosco went to Turin where he entered zealously upon his priestly labours. It was here that an incident occurred which opened up to him the real field of effort of his afterlife. One of his duties was to accompany Don Cafasso upon his visits to the prisons of the city, and the condition of the children confined in these places, abandoned to the most evil influences, and with little before them but the gallows, made such an indelible impression upon his mind that he resolved to devote his life to the rescue of these unfortunate outcasts. On the eighth of December, 1841, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, while Don Bosco was vesting for Mass, the sacristan drove from the Church a ragged urchin because he refused to serve Mass. Don Bosco heard his cries and recalled him, and in the friendship which sprang up between the priest and Bartolomeo Garelli was sown the first seed of the “Oratory”, so called, no doubt, after the example of St. Philip Neri and because prayer was its prominent feature. Don Bosco entered eagerly upon the task of instructing this first pupil of the streets; companions soon joined Bartolomeo, all drawn by a kindness they had never known, and in February, 1842, the Oratory numbered twenty boys, in March of the same year, thirty, and in March, 1846, four hundred.
As the number of boys increased, the question of a suitable meeting-place presented itself. In good weather walks were taken on Sundays and holidays to spots in the country about Turin where lunch was eaten, and realizing the charm which music held for the untamed spirits of his disciples Don Bosco organized a band for which some old brass instruments were procured. In the autumn of 1844 he was appointed assistant chaplain to the Rifugio, where Don Borel entered enthusiastically into his work. With the approval of Archbishop Franzoni, two rooms were secured adjoining the Rifugio and converted into a chapel, which was dedicated to St. Francis de Sales. The members of the Oratory now gathered at the Rifugio, and numbers of boys from the surrounding district applied for admission. It was about this time (1845) that Don Bosco began his night schools and with the closing of the factories the boys flocked to his rooms where he and Don Borel instructed them in rudimentary branches.
The success of the Oratory at the Rifugio was not of long duration. To his great distress Don Bosco was obliged to give up his rooms and from this on he was subjected to petty annoyances and obstacles which, at times, seemed to spell the ruin of his undertaking. His perseverance in the face of all difficulties led many to the conclusion that he was insane, and an attempt was even made to confine him in an asylum. Complaints were lodged against him, declaring his community to be a nuisance, owing to the character of the boys he befriended. From the Rifugio the Oratory was moved to St. Martin’s, to St. Peter’s Churchyard, to three rooms in Via Cottolengo, where the night schools were resumed, to an open field, and finally to a rough shed upon the site of which grew up an Oratory that counted seven hundred members. Don Bosco took lodgings nearby, where he was joined by his mother. “Mama Margaret”, as Don Bosco’s mother came to be known, gave the last ten years of her life in devoted service to the little inmates of this first Salesian home. When she joined her son at the Oratory the outlook was not bright. But sacrificing what small means she had, even to parting with her home, its furnishings, and her jewelry, she brought all the solicitude and love of a mother to these children of the streets. The evening classes increased and gradually dormitories were provided for many who desired to live at the Oratory. Thus was founded the first Salesian Home which now houses about one thousand boys.
The municipal authorities by this time had come to recognize the importance of the work which Don Bosco was doing, and he began with much success a fund for the erection of technical schools and workshops. These were all completed without serious difficulty. In 1868 to meet the needs of the Valdocco quarter of Turin, Don Bosco resolved to build a church. Accordingly a plan was drawn in the form of a cross covering an area of 1,500 sq. yards. He experienced considerable difficulty in raising the necessary money, but the charity of some friends finally enabled him to complete it at a cost of more than a million francs (about 200,000). The church was consecrated 9 June, 1868, and placed under the patronage of Our Lady, Help of Christians. In the same year in which Don Bosco began the erection of the church fifty priests and teachers who had been assisting him formed a society under a common rule which Pius IX, provisionally in 1869, and finally in 1874, approved.
Character and growth of the oratory
Any attempt to explain the popularity of the Oratory among the classes to which Don Bosco devoted his life would fail without an appreciation of his spirit which was its life. For his earliest interaction with poor boys he had never failed to see under the dirt, the rags, and the uncouthness the spark which a little kindness and encouragement would fan into a flame. In his vision or dream which he is said to have had in his early boyhood, wherein it was disclosed to him what his life work would be, a voice said to him: “Not with blows, but with charity and gentleness must you draw these friends to the path of virtue.” And whether this be accounted as nothing more than a dream, that was in reality the spirit with which he animated his Oratory. In the earlier days when the number of his little disciples was slender he drew them about him by means of small presents and attractions, and by pleasant walks to favorite spots in the environs of Turin. These excursions occurring on Sunday, Don Bosco would say Mass in the village church and give a short instruction on the Gospel; breakfast would then be eaten, followed by games; and in the afternoon Vespers would be chanted, a lesson in Catechism given, and the Rosary recited. It was a familiar sight to see him in the field surrounded by kneeling boys preparing for confession.
Don Bosco’s method of study knew nothing of punishment. Observance of rules was obtained by instilling a true sense of duty, by removing assiduously all occasions for disobedience, and by allowing no effort towards virtue, how trivial soever it might be, to pass unappreciated. He held that the teacher should be father, adviser, and friend, and he was the first to adopt the preventive method. Of punishment he said: “As far as possible avoid punishing . . . . try to gain love before inspiring fear.” And in 1887 he wrote: “I do not remember to have used formal punishment; and with God’s grace I have always obtained, and from apparently hopeless children, not alone what duty exacted, but what my wish simply expressed.” In one of his books he has discussed the causes of weakness of character, and derives them largely from a misdirected kindness in the rearing of children. Parents make a parade of precocious talents: the child understands quickly, and his sensitiveness enraptures all who meet him, but the parents have only succeeded in producing an affectionate, perfected, intelligent animal. The chief object should be to form the will and to temper the character. In all his pupils Don Bosco tried to cultivate a taste for music, believing it to be a powerful and refining influence. “Instruction”, he said, “is but an accessory, like a game; knowledge never makes a man because it does not directly touch the heart. It gives more power in the exercise of good or evil; but alone it is an indifferent weapon, wanting guidance.” He always studied, too, the aptitudes and vocations of his pupils, and to an almost supernatural quickness and clearness of insight into the hearts of children must be ascribed no small part of his success. In his rules he wrote: “Frequent Confession, frequent Communion, daily Mass: these are the pillars which should sustain the whole edifice of education.” Don Bosco was an indefatigable confessor, devoting days to the work among his children. He recognized that gentleness and persuasion alone were not enough to bring to the task of education. He thoroughly believed in play as a means of arousing childish curiosity — more than this, he places it among his first recommendations, and for the rest he adopted St. Philip Neri’s words: “Do as you wish, I do not care so long as you do not sin.”
At the time of Don Bosco’s death in 1888 there were 250 houses of the Salesian Society in all parts of the world, containing 130,000 children, and from which there annually went out 18,000 finished apprentices. In the motherhouse Don Bosco had selected the brightest of his pupils, taught them Italian, Latin, French, and mathematics, and this band formed a teaching corps for the new homes which quickly grew up in other places. Up to 1888 over six thousand priests had gone forth from Don Bosco’s institutions, 1,200 of whom had remained in the society. The schools begin with the child in his first instruction and lead, for those who choose it, to seminaries for the priesthood. The society also conducts Sunday schools, evening schools for adult workmen, schools for those who enter the priesthood late in life, technical schools, and printing establishments for the diffusion of good reading in different languages. Its members also have charge of hospitals and asylums, nurse the sick, and do prison work, especially in rural districts. The society has houses in the following countries: Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, England, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Palestine, and Algiers; in Central America, Mexico, in South America, Patagonia, Terra del Fuego, Ecuador, Brazil, Paraguay, The Argentine Republic, Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, and Colombia. In the United States the Salesians have four churches: Sts. Peter and Paul and Corpus Christi in San Francisco, California; St. Josephs in Oakland, California; and the Transfiguration in New York City. Very Rev. Michael Borghino, Provincial for America, resides in San Francisco.
Source: The Catholic Encyclopedia | <urn:uuid:ac3e4e15-c2ea-4788-91f1-3384c6192813> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://ssjb.org/blog/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.983865 | 2,495 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Professional photographers understand the complexities of compensating for errant reflections when shooting a scene through a window. But what about the rest of us who are using arguably less than stellar equipment for the same kinds of shots?
MIT researchers are getting ready to present a new algorithm — at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in June — that can automatically remove such reflections from images shot with a digital camera. The algorithm relies on photos showing two nearly identical, offset reflections.
Researcher, YiChang Shih, the first author of the paper, noted that the windows in Boston that he used were double-paned and that they produced double reflections.
“With that kind of window, there’s one reflection coming from the inner pane and another reflection from the outer pane. But thick windows are usually enough to produce a double reflection, too. The inner side will give a reflection, and the outer side will give a reflection as well.”
The double reflection is the key to this solution and relies on finding the edges of the reflection via a repeating offset pattern. Once the reflection is pinpointed, it can be reduced.
A new technique co-developed by Daniel Zoran and Yair Weiss of Hebrew University in Jerusalem created an algorithm that divides images into 8-by-8 blocks of pixels; for each block, it calculates the correlation between each pixel and each of the others. The aggregate statistics for all the 8-by-8 blocks in 50,000 training images proved a reliable way to distinguish reflections from images shot through glass.
Shih and his colleagues searched for photos on Google and the Flickr using the terms, “window reflection photography problems” and turned up 96 images that had double reflections offset far enough for the algorithm to work.
What’s the point? Eventually, if such an algorithm is strengthened, it can be of widespread use in consumer digital photography to give people more control over their pictures, as well as assist robot vision technology for distinguishing glass reflections. | <urn:uuid:bd656c9d-7719-4929-9ccb-78f3855838ee> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/05/15/mit-researchers-create-an-algorithm-that-removes-digicam-photo-reflections/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.938959 | 407 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Instead of a specific date, such as Dec. 25, the weekday tells us when to start downing turkey — the fourth Thursday in November.
We've celebrated Thanksgiving then since 1941. But getting there required some complicated moves, mostly from politicians.
At the request of Congress, President George Washington tried to set a date back in 1789. He wanted America to dine and give thanks on Nov. 26, which happened to fall on a Thursday that year. But no one really listened. The timing continued to vary, and other presidents even tried to make their own proclamations.
Until President Abraham Lincoln rolled up his sleeves. His 1863 proclamation (no, not the emancipation one) officially commemorated Thanksgiving as the last Thursday in November.
In 1939, however, the last Thursday in November fell on the last day of the month. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, concerned consumers didn't have enough time between Thanksgiving and Christmas to shop for gifts, moved Thanksgiving to the second Thursday in November. Thirty-two states followed suit, but 16 refused to listen. For the next couple years, the country celebrated Turkey Day at two different times.
Congress decided to end the confusion once-and-for-all in 1941. The House passed a joint resolution declaring the last Thursday in November as the legal day for Thanksgiving. But the Senate, thinking back to what happened in '39, amended the bill to say the "fourth" Thursday in November. Some years, November does have five Thursdays.
Roosevelt signed the bill into law on Dec. 26 that year.
So now you know. | <urn:uuid:7a5eb7e7-34b5-4930-97c3-25f7471c8cb7> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.businessinsider.com/why-thanksgiving-is-the-fourththursday-in-november-2013-11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.960486 | 326 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Or download our app "Guided Lessons by Education.com" on your device's app store.
Celebrate the Easter holiday with your preschooler! She will surely enjoy adding color to this scene of a child her own age coloring Easter eggs in preparation for the big egg hunt. Encourage her to practice her hand coordination by coloring in the small designs on each egg.
For more printable Easter activities, click here. | <urn:uuid:a8c9e0b3-9976-4c31-bdc6-1b2ff8c427d3> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.education.com/worksheet/article/printable-easter-activities-1/?source=related_materials&order=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.942435 | 86 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Ashburn, Virginia, United States
|Vinayaka Chaturthi in June, 2017|
|27 June, 2017 (Vinayak Chaturthi)|
There are two Chaturthi Tithis in each lunar month in the Hindu Calendar. In the Hindu scriptures, Chaturthi Tithi belongs to Lord Ganesha son of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati. The two Chaturthi Tithis are named as Vinayaka Chaturthi and Sankashti Chaturthi. The one which falls after the new moon or Amavasya during Shukla Paksha is known as Vinayaka Chaturthi while the one which falls after the full moon day or Purnima during Krishna Paksha is known as Sankashti Chaturthi.
List of Vinayaka Chaturthi Dates 2017
When is Vinayaka Chaturthi?
The most important Vinayak Chaturthi falls in the month of Bhadrapada, though the fasting for Vinayaka Chaturthi is done every month. Vinayaka Chaturthi falling during Bhadrapada month is known as Ganesha Chaturthi. Ganesha Chaturthi is one of most auspicious festival in Hinduism which is celebrated on a very large scale all the over the world, especially in India
Ganesha Chaturthi also known as Vinayaka Chaturthi is one of the most auspicious Hindu festival celebrated in India with a great devotion. Lord Ganesha is the symbol of prosperity, wisdom and good fortune. This festival is celebrated for 11 days throughout India with lot of enthusiasm and passion.
Importance of Ganesh Chaturthi / Vinayaka chaturthi
Ganesh Chaturthi, also known as Vinayaka Chaturthi, is a Hindu festival that denotes the significance of Pratham Pujya Lord Ganesha over other deities in the Hindu religion. It is commended on the fourth day of the Shukla Paksha (brightening or waxing phase of the Moon) amid Bhadrapada month of the Hindu calendar. As per the Gregorian schedule, this day usually falls around the time of August or September. On the day of Ganesh Chaturthi, individuals praise the birth of Lord Ganesha by introducing his clay icon on their Puja altar for ten days.
Ganesh Chaturthi celebration is commended to a large extent in the Indian state of Maharashtra with much euphoria and drooling over the divinity. The general population of Maharashtra sees him as their dearest God and echo the mantra of "Ganpati Bappa Moriya" amid this 10-day long festivity. On the tenth day, substantial openly parades of the Ganpati idols are conveyed alongside music and Bhajans. The statues are then submerged in the sea or some other near-by water body. It is thought that every year Lord Ganesha descends for a time of 10 days from Mount Kailasha to fulfill his worshippers desires and, he later returns to his folks i.e. Goddess Parvati and Lord Shiva on the final day. It is the most passionate minute for his aficionados and, they bid him farewell by requesting his willful promise that he will turn back sooner next year (Hindi: Ganpati Bappa Moriya, Agle Baras Tu Jaldi Aa).
The legend connected to the birth of Lord Ganesha says that, Lord Ganesha was made from sand by Devi Parvati to watch over the pathway while she bathes, at the same time, Lord Shiva, when denied entry by the naive Lord Ganesha, got aggressive and, separated his brain while the battle between the duo unfolds. At the point when Goddess Parvati initially caught wind of it, she got angry and, requested back her child's life from her married man. Shiva revealed to her that it's against the laws of nature to go down a disjointed head back to its original spot. However, he found an escape clause in the rules and, coordinated the devas to look for a deceased individual who lies still facing North.
As per the Ganesh Chaturthi Story suggests, the devas could only locate a dead elephant meeting each one of the necessities, so, they burn off its head and took it to their Lord who settled it on Lord Ganesha's neck. It is one of the many explanations for Lord Ganesha being called Vakratunda and Gajanand. | <urn:uuid:3ca46172-3f8d-457d-9fa7-82d65f65d9f6> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.mpanchang.com/Vrats/vinayaka-chaturthi/2017/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.959142 | 959 | 2.578125 | 3 |
A recently published study by AAA says teen drivers who have teen passengers in the car with them increase their chances of a crash becoming deadly for everyone involved by 51 percent.
In 2016, teen drivers were involved in more than 1-million reported crashes resulting in thousands of deaths.
Researchers were able to determine when teen drivers have teen passengers in a vehicle fatality rates jump by the following.
- 56 percent for passengers in the other vehicle
- 45 percent for the teen driver
- 17 percent for pedestrians and cyclists
Officials with AAA recommend parents spend as much time as possible behind the wheel with students as they prepare to hit the roads on their own.
Below are a few other tips AAA officials recommend for parents with teen drivers.
- Require teens to log at least 100 hours of supervised practice driving with a parent before driving solo
- Begin by driving in low risk situations and gradually move to situations that are more complex
- Allow no more than one non-family passenger under the age of 20 to ride with the teen driver during the first six months of driving
- Use slightly different driving routes each practice session
- Practice adjusting speed based on three factors: visibility, on-road traffic and different roads | <urn:uuid:ee5038a8-1445-46e4-bfa3-f2cba799f50e> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.newschannel5.com/news/national/aaa-study-teen-drivers-with-teen-passengers-increase-chances-of-deadly-crash | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.977221 | 245 | 2.578125 | 3 |
In modern society, plastic is our go-to material of convenience. It is used to wrap any product you can think of and is seemingly present in some quantity everywhere you turn. While plastic is valued by manufacturers for its durability and low cost, our staggering rates of plastic consumption have taken a great toll on the planet.
Part of the problem is that plastic does not break down easily. It can take hundreds of years for the substance to disintegrate through photodegradation — a process in which UV rays break its structural bonds apart — and even then, it simply separates into billions of microplastic fragments, rather than truly “disappearing.” In the meantime, this material can wreak a whole lot of havoc, whether it ends up in landfills or is among the 8.8 million tons of plastic that find the way into the oceans each year. In landfills, plastic waste often leaches harmful chemicals into the surrounding groundwater, with significant health implications for local human and animal populations. In the oceans, approximately 700 species are at risk of extinction as a direct result of plastic pollution, with leading threats including the ingestion of plastic bags and other waste, or entanglement in this waste. If our current consumption rates continue, there could be more plastic than fish in our planet’s oceans by 2050.
Luckily, there have been a growing number of citizen-led endeavors to curb plastic in recent years. Last year, Kenya completely banned the production, sale, or usage of plastic bags, with heavy penalties for those who fail to comply. The decision was hailed as one of the world’s most bold and determined actions to halt plastic pollution. And now, this country has taken another step toward a plastic-free future with its decision to spearhead a new technique that will remove the necessity for plastic bags within its forestry sector.
Nairobi resident Teddy Kinyanjui pioneered this new technique for the afforestation and reforestation method, which involves the use of small, portable seed balls instead of plastic bags.
Kinyanjui, the founder of Cookswell Jikos Limited — a company that sells stoves that run on renewable energy sources — believes that these seed balls can grow and disperse seedlings more easily than plastic bags.
He explained that when tree seedlings are grown in plastic bags, the roots get squeezed, and this limits their ability to grow. The seed balls can be seen in the image below.
The new seed ball method enables roots to easily adapt to their new environment, with minimal disturbance to their growth.
In order to more effectively spread his innovation throughout the country, Kinyanjui has partnered with the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), a body that grants official certification to seeds.
To date, about one million seeds, covering a wide array of different species of indigenous trees, have been dispersed throughout Kenya using Kinyanjui’s new technique. The germination rate of these seeds stands at about 60 percent. Through further partnerships with local communities, Kinyanjui hopes to reach even more areas of the country in the future.
“People use charcoal every day, necessitating more trees,” he stated. “Climate change has also caused community conflict, especially among pastoralists in Northern Kenya who fight over pasture for their animals. Good environmental management is, therefore, crucial for peace among these communities. We would also like people to see the value of this simple technology as a contributing factor in combating and adapting to effects of climate change, as this is the cheapest way to encourage tree planting, especially in arid and semi-arid areas.”
There is no doubt that this new technique could have revolutionary effects. In the fight to help our planet, small changes can make an enormous difference. If you need some inspiration on how to reduce your own usage of plastic, read about these seven amazing people who have proven that life without plastic is possible, or the seven-year-old boy from Orange County, California, who started his very own company, Ryan’s Recycling, to encourage his friends and neighbors to recycle their waste.
You can also make a difference by joining One Green Planet’s #CrushPlastic campaign. Working together, we can help eliminate the scourge of plastic from our planet.
All Image Source: SciDevNet | <urn:uuid:0f565380-8b4e-4c48-88f7-d2c4d90430dd> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/kenya-spearheads-new-technique-remove-plastic-bags-forestry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.951302 | 896 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Living with HIV is associated with a doubled risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD). Additionally, as people around the world live longer with the virus thanks to antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, their health is increasingly compromised by CVD. This is according to an analysis of a massive pool of data spanning a 15-year period.
Previous studies have reached similar findings about HIV’s ties to a raised CVD risk.
REPRIEVE, a major trial currently under way, is testing whether taking a statin medication mitigates CVD risk among a large population of people living with HIV who would not otherwise be indicated to take such a drug. Results are expected in 2020.
Publishing their findings in the journal Circulation, researchers conducted a systematic review across five databases that included data from longitudinal studies of CVD conducted around the world through August 2016. Ultimately, they analyzed data from 80 studies.
The study authors sought to calculate the CVD-associated disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) among the HIV population—a composite measure of years of life lost and years of healthy life lost. For this assessment, they examined data from 1990 to 2015 that came from 154 of the 193 United Nations member states.
Ultimately, the investigators analyzed data from 793,635 people with HIV, who contributed a cumulative 3.5 million years of follow-up.
For each 10,000 cumulative years of follow-up, 61.8 people were diagnosed with CVD. This diagnosis rate was 2.16-fold greater than that of HIV-negative individuals.
The proportion of all CVD worldwide, among those with and without HIV, that the study authors estimated was attributable to the virus increased from 0.36 percent in 1990 to 0.92 percent in 2015. During the same period, the annual DALYs lost due to HIV-associated CVD increased from 740,000 to 2.57 million. There was considerable regional variation in the DALY figures, with most lost in sub-Saharan African and the Asia-Pacific regions. The nations that experienced the greatest HIV-driven impact on all CVD cases as well as the most DALYs lost were Swaziland, Botswana and Lesotho.
To read a press release about the study, click here.
To read the study abstract, click here. | <urn:uuid:fd52bf4c-f424-4fd8-baba-dd1902cfad41> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.poz.com/article/hiv-linked-doubled-heart-disease-risk | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.957762 | 486 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Peripheral Vascular Arterial
Learn More About Peripheral Vascular Arterial
Peripheral vascular disease, or PVD, is a condition in which the arteries that carry blood to the arms or legs become narrowed or clogged, hindering normal blood flow. PVD can occur in anyone; however, it is more common in men and women over the age of 50. If you have PVD, you are at a higher risk for heart disease and stroke.
Approximately 10 million people in the United States may have PVD. Risk factors include:
- age over 50
- lack of exercise
- high blood pressure or high cholesterol
A family history of heart or vascular disease may also put you at higher risk for PVD.
The most common test for PVD is the ankle-brachial index (ABI), a painless exam in which ultrasound is used to measure the blood pressure in the feet and arms. A blood pressure cuff and a Doppler unit (microphone) are used to determine pressures in the leg. A Doppler device is placed on the skin over the pulse. If there are any blockages, the Doppler makes a specific sound that will be detected by the technologist. This screening procedure takes approximately 15 minutes. A physician must refer you for this procedure.
Based on the results of your ABI, as well as your symptoms and risk factors for PVD, the radiologist can decide if further tests are needed. If your screening test indicates you are at moderate or high risk for PVD, you will return to one of our centers for a Doppler Ultrasound scan. This more extensive color exam will take approximately one hour. Echoes from the sound waves will create an image on a TV-like monitor. A vascular interventional radiologist will interpret these results, along with your history, and discuss with you and your physician any further testing or treatment.
The disease, which affects both men and women, often goes undiagnosed. Many people mistakenly think the symptoms are a normal part of aging. The following are symptoms associated with PVD:
- Leg or hip pain occurring during exercise
- Pain stops when resting
- Numbness in legs or feet
- Tingling in legs or feet
- Weakness in the legs
- Burning or aching pain in feet or toes when resting
- Sore on leg or foot which doesn’t heal
- Cold legs or feet
- Color change in skin of legs or feet
- Loss of hair on legs
The most appropriate treatment for PVD is based on a number of factors, including your overall health and the severity of the disease. In some cases, lifestyle changes (diet, exercise, smoking cessation) are enough to stop the progression of PVD and manage the disease. Sometimes, prescription drugs or procedures that open up clogged blood vessels are used to treat PVD. There are several ways that physicians can open blood vessels at the site of blockages and restore normal blood flow. In many cases, these procedures can be performed using modern, interventional radiology techniques. Vascular interventional radiologists are physicians who use tiny tubes called catheters and other miniaturized tools and X-rays to perform these procedures. Procedures performed by vascular interventional radiologists include:
Angioplasty a balloon is inflated to open the blood vessel. Thrombolytic therapyclot-busting drugs are delivered to the site of blockages caused by blood clots. Stentsa tiny metal cylinder, or stent, is inserted in the clogged vessel to act like a scaffolding and hold it open. Stent-grafts a stent covered with synthetic fabric is inserted into the blood vessels to bypass diseased arteries. Our vascular radiologists, after interpreting your Doppler Ultrasound exam, and after consulting with your physician, may determine that you are a candidate for one of the above procedures. They will be available to discuss the procedure, risks and expected results at the time of your visit. | <urn:uuid:b9391434-c2e3-4a86-9ced-071d4abdb21b> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.radassociates.com/procedures/peripheral-vascular-arterial/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.944516 | 836 | 2.875 | 3 |
BUS 372 Employee & Labor Relations
Instructor: Robert Freeborough
May 19, 2013
Over the years unions have been forced to change with the times. Looking at some of these changes and discussing how the unions have evolved over time will be discussed in this paper. Also the philosophy and how the unions accommodate its members have changes so this to will be discussed. After looking at all of this a couple of proposals will be discussed to help unions broaden their appeal. Unions all over the world are considered to be failing because of their low numbers. The influence and power unions had over management in companies when it came to policies has faded due to the huge decline in total number of members. (Troy, 2001). Troy stated in his research that the unionism which is experiencing a huge membership demand and the market share in past is now lagging far behind from the expected objective in this regard (Troy, 2001). According to facts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), countries that are impacted by unions are facing challenges in terms of the diminishing ratio of the workers associated with the union. (Kumar & Murray, 2002). Looking at the evaluations from the past years concerning union history, one can analyze that the real challenge that the companies have is to change the organization so that the threat of losing competent union members will be null. Unions should evaluate their history so that they can use the data to formulate a strategy to keep control over the influence of management. Before unions were born the people were born into poor families and had to work in organizations from the age of six, where the average day consisted of 18 hours. During this time such things as a day off, overtime compensation, and minimum daily wages were only a thing of dreams. “There exist no rules and regulations related to the job...
References: Kumar, P. & Murray, G. (2002). Canadian Union Strategies in the Context of Change. Labor Studies Journal, 26(4), 1-28.
Troy, L. (2001). Twilight for Organized Labor. Journal of Labor Research, Vol. 12, No. 2, 245-259.
Stanley F. Slupik. (2005) A UNION VIEW OF THE LAST CENTURY, accessed on 4 June 2011,http://www.nwial.com/HTMLfiles/A%20Union%20View%20Of%20The%20Last%20Century.htm
Please join StudyMode to read the full document | <urn:uuid:cc766f39-45b3-43bb-84b8-73effe8c9312> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.studymode.com/essays/Today's-Unions-1839364.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.947485 | 508 | 2.703125 | 3 |
On October 1, a broad area of low pressure formed over the southwestern Caribbean Sea, absorbing the remnants of Tropical Storm Kirk by the next day. Early on October 2, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) began monitoring the system for tropical development. On the same day, the disturbance experienced a burst of convection, possibly associated with a tropical wave moving into the region, which led to a small surface low forming to the southwest of Jamaica on October 3. While strong upper-level winds initially inhibited development, the disturbance gradually became better organized as it drifted generally northward and then westward toward the Yucatán Peninsula. By October 6, the disturbance had developed well-organized deep convection, although it still lacked a well-defined circulation. The storm was also posing an immediate land threat to the Yucatán Peninsula and Cuba. Thus, the NHC initiated advisories on Potential Tropical Cyclone Fourteen at 21:00 UTC that day. By the morning of October 7, radar data from Belize found a closed center of circulation, while satellite estimates indicated a sufficiently organized convective pattern to classify the system as a tropical depression. The newly-formed tropical cyclone then quickly strengthened into Tropical Storm Michael at 12:00 UTC that day. The nascent system meandered before the center of circulation relocated closer to the center of deep convection, as reported by reconnaissance aircraft that was investigating the storm. Despite moderate vertical wind shear, Michael proceeded to strengthen quickly, becoming a high-end tropical storm early on October 8, as the storm's cloud pattern became better organized. Continued intensification occurred, and Michael attained hurricane status later on the same day.
Shortly afterwards, rapid intensification ensued and very deep bursts of convection were noted within the eyewall of the growing hurricane, as it passed through the Yucatán Channel into the Gulf of Mexico late on October 8, clipping the western end of Cuba at Category 2 intensity. Meanwhile, a 35-nautical-mile-wide (65 km) eye was noted to be forming. The intensification process accelerated on October 9, with Michael becoming a major hurricane at 18:00 UTC that day. Rapid intensification continued throughout the day as a well-defined eye appeared, culminating with Michael achieving its peak intensity at 17:30 UTC that day as a Category 5 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 160 mph (260 km/h) and a minimum central pressure of 919 millibars (27.1 inHg). In just under 24 hours, its central pressure had fallen by 42 mbar (1.2 inHg). Simultaneously, Michael made landfall on the Gulf Coast of the United States near Mexico Beach, Florida, ranking by pressure as the third-most intense Atlantic hurricane to ever make landfall in the United States, and making it the first Category 5 hurricane to strike the contiguous United States since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The storm was originally considered a high-end Category 4 hurricane, but post-season reanalysis (which the NHC routinely performs for every tropical cyclone in their area of responsibility) concluded that it was indeed a Category 5 hurricane at this point.
Michael maintained Category 5 intensity for less than one hour; once inland, Michael began to rapidly weaken, as it moved over the inner Southeastern United States, with the eye dissipating from satellite view, weakening to a tropical storm roughly twelve hours after it made landfall. Moving into the Carolinas early on October 11, the inner core of the storm collapsed as the storm's rainbands became prominent to the north of the center. Later that day, Michael began to show signs of becoming an , as it accelerated east-northeastward toward the Mid-Atlantic coastline, with cooler air beginning to wrap into the elongating circulation, due to an encroaching frontal zone; it became extratropical at 00:00 UTC October 12. Afterward, Michael began to restrengthen while moving off the coast, due to baroclinic forcing. Michael subsequently accelerated towards the east, strengthening into a powerful extratropical cyclone by October 14. On October 15, Michael's extratropical remnant approached the Iberian Peninsula and turned sharply towards the southeast, making landfall on Portugal early on October 16. Soon afterward, Michael's extratropical remnant absorbed the remnants of Hurricane Leslie to the east, following a brief Fujiwhara interaction. Afterward, Michael's remnant quickly weakened, dissipating over Spain later on the same day. | <urn:uuid:21642a25-cff7-44ee-8b7d-e5601c75049a> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.wikiplanet.click/enciclopedia/en/Hurricane_Michael | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998724.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618123355-20190618145355-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.962644 | 914 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Travelling The Renewable Energy Route
South Africa’s energy sector is slowly falling into line with the rest of the world when it comes to reducing its dependence on fossil fuels, as it begins to travel the renewable energy route. The country is, after all, endowed with solar, wind, hydro and biomass energy sources. The central and western regions of the country have an abundance of wind and solar resources, while some of the central and south-eastern parts are well suited to small hydro and biomass.
Of course, the country also has several newly built coal-fired stations that will inevitably have a long lifespan, and there remain concerns that with unemployment as it is, the country may not be able to afford to eliminate the many jobs associated with coal.
According to Jo Dean, chairwoman of the SA Photovoltaic Industry Association (SAPVIA), the country’s National Development Plan (NDP) actually envisages that by 2030, the country will have made headway in transitioning to a society that is just, inclusive, sustainable and resilient. This will be achieved by developing pathways for the transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient society.
“It is important to note that upcoming renewable projects are not causing the closure of the coal chain and resultant job losses. In fact, five of Eskom’s power stations have planned decommissioning before 2025, and the objective of the Department of Energy (DoE) in revising the energy mix is to align the creation of quotas for clean energy to take up this demand supply,” she says.
Brenda Martin, CEO of the South African Wind Energy Association (SAWEA), says in line with the NDP goals, SA should resume its utility-scale renewable power procurement programme in order to immediately benefit from the continuing decline in renewables prices achieved globally.
“We are heading towards a major energy transition, something that will be punctuated by two critical tipping points. The first will be when new renewables become cheaper than new thermal generation technologies. The second tipping point will occur when new renewables become cheaper than running existing thermal plants. Big energy hubs like the US, China and Germany are expected to reach this point by the early 2020s,” she says.
Coal versus renewables
National power blackouts and unprecedented tariff increases over the past 12 years have taken a toll on electricity demand, the economy and jobs, says Martin. SA’s over-reliance on coal-fired electricity is clearly exposing the country to significant socio-economic and environmental risks that can no longer be sustained.
“Furthermore, Eskom’s older coal-fired stations are currently exempt from meeting the country’s environmental standards and are negatively impacting the health and environments of local communities. SA cannot continue to underplay the negative impacts of coal power supply on human health and on the environment, particularly when much cheaper, cleaner, job-creating renewable supply options are now readily available.”
The country has plentiful wind and solar resources to diversify and strengthen the power mix, she adds, along with clear evidence that renewable power costs are competitive with that of new coal. Energy investment choices made in the updated integrated resource plan (IRP) will have long-term effects for consumers, the natural environment and the economy as a whole.
“It is essential that the final IRP is based on choices that are in the national interest and that see South Africa get into alignment with the global energy transition that is well under way. SAWEA certainly looks forward to seeing a base case selected for a cost-optimal build and technology mix in support of private sector inclusion, socio-economic development and environmental sustainability.”
Getting local government in on the act
Earlier this year, the SA Local Government Association (SALGA) held an Energy Summit which outlined that energy was at a tipping point, where critical decisions must be made and government would have to embrace this transition, unless it wanted to take the chance that the industry became unsustainable.
Dr Willem de Beer, member of the Ministerial Advisory Commission on Energy, points out that SA remained the 14th worst pollutant in the world, due to its high dependence on coal.
“While there are many initiatives around the globe aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it will take strong cooperation from all three levels of government if the country is to successfully overcome its energy challenges,” he says.
“We need new solutions to demonstrate that we are willing to change the way we do things and we need to understand that the road to true equity and emancipation of all the citizens of South Africa lies in energy.”
There are, he explains, clearly many new opportunities available in the energy sector, particularly in the renewables space, which in turn affords opportunities for municipalities to form public-private partnerships (PPPs) with willing businesses.
“In turn, it will be necessary to empower municipalities to enable them to undertake such PPPs. Other opportunities include charging stations for electric vehicles; power trading; using infrastructure for other revenue; waste to energy; mini-grids, such as solar and wind; servitudes and wayleaves; small-scale embedded generation; and smart and prepaid meters.
“One thing that is vitally important is that whatever opportunities we consider, we need to also think about the employment issues around it. Remember that if we are replacing one form of generation with another, we must always consider the people who work in that particular sector,” suggests De Beer.
What about jobs?
SAPVIA’s Dean is quick to point out that investment in skills, technology and institutional capacity will be critical to support the development of a more sustainable society, via the transition to a low-carbon economy.
“There is no doubt that focused, institutionalised capacity building and management structures are needed. At the same time, we must remember that the development of environmentally sustainable green products and services, including renewable energy technologies, will contribute to the creation of jobs in niche markets, where SA can possibly even develop a competitive advantage,” she says.
“The transition to renewables will certainly create new jobs, investment and local business opportunities. SA’s manufacturing and construction industries in particular stand to benefit immediately from the recently concluded power purchase agreements.”
The recovery and growth of the domestic manufacturing industry is particularly critical, she continues, given its potential to increase investment, create jobs and drive down the price of renewable technology.
Dean adds that transitioning to a sustainable and resilient economy and society will require systemic and structural changes. These should also see the use of the country’s natural resources – including water and energy – in such a way that this results in appropriate economic and social development, so as to address the triple challenges of inequality, poverty and unemployment.
“As South Africa moves away from an energy mix dominated by fossil fuels, there is no doubt that there will be a number of socio-economic challenges, particularly for those workers in legacy energy systems. This is why it is imperative that adequate resources are given to planning for a just energy transition,” she concludes. | <urn:uuid:57dd05db-5600-4b20-9c06-db465bc0c042> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://businessmediamags.co.za/built-environment/infrastructure/travelling-the-renewable-energy-route/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.947618 | 1,471 | 2.6875 | 3 |
PV (Photovoltaic) modules currently have lifetime guarantees of 25 years plus. Ideally all components of the modules would be tested in field conditions for at least 25 years, however this is unrealistic, so accelerated, laboratory based testing is required.
When using accelerated testing it is important to ensure the test does not result in false negatives, leading to the ruling out of good materials, and more importantly, does not give rise to false positives, which could lead to material failure in the field. A key question to answer is: "Can yellowing be used as a reliable method to rank materials after accelerated testing and to predict failures in the field?"
Emily Parnham, a Research Scientist for DuPont Teijin Films compares seven accelerated test conditions combining different temperatures, irradiance and condensation and their impact on a range of PV backsheet materials with regards to yellowing and loss of mechanical properties.
The final part of this paper will compare unstabilised white PET (polyethylene terephthalate) film in Xenon weatherometer, Florida weathering and backsheet failures reported in the field. Using these data, looking at colour change and mechanical properties, we are able to increase the confidence in the predictions being made from correctly conceived accelerated tests.
To hear more on this subject visit EU PVSEC 2016 the 32nd European PV Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition taking place 20th -24th June 2016, Munich, Germany.
Tuesday 21st June - 13.30 | <urn:uuid:a8bf2808-f9ed-42ba-9fe5-bbc30483987c> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://europe.dupontteijinfilms.com/news/2016/yellowing-of-pv-backsheets-in-accelerated-tests-can-be-used-as-a-realistic-indication-of-possible-field-failures-fact-or-fiction/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.923315 | 301 | 2.640625 | 3 |
The schools help the students to get the right skills and educational knowledge. The individuals are looking for the proper learning institutions where the kids can study in the best manner. There are two types of schools where the students learn including public and private schools. All the public schools are owned by the government an also endorsed by the government sectors. Search Schools has become a common challenge among the people. There are online links such as Schools Near Me, Schools Around Me and School Search which describe Private Schools in each state and Public Schools in Each State among other Schools in Each State. The article shows the vital ways which assist in getting the correct public and private schools.
At first, it is recommended that the people should seek guidance from the agencies which offer the services for school search. There are many companies which enable the people to find the best public and private schools. The firms have programs which aid in accessing the right public and private schools where the students can learn. The companies are reliable since they equip the people with adequate skills for accessing the best public and private schools.
People are encouraged to rely on the surveys since they offer updates for the best public and private schools which produce the best results after every examination. The research activities are beneficial since they provide updates about the best public and private schools. The investigations are crucial and thus allow the people to identify the best public and private learning institutions. The internet is beneficial since it is resourceful and fast in delivering the right information about the best public and private schools.
The people should communicate with the references at all the time to get information about the best friends and relatives. Many references should be consulted since they know the best learning facilities which are controlled by the government and individuals. The friends and relatives share their experience and thus allow the people to find the best public and private schools. The inquiries are beneficial since they assist in finding the best schools within a short time. The inquiries help the people to identify the right public and private schools which can handle the students in the right manner.
It is advisable for the individuals to search for the public and private schools which enable the students to learn in a good way and perform well in the national examinations. There exists a wide range of schools which produce different results for the examinations undertaken by the students. It is advisable for the people to search for the best schools which can offer quality educational training to their children. | <urn:uuid:68b2516c-5906-4731-a254-5bf35d09987e> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://golchinleather.com/2019/05/18/the-best-advice-about-ive-ever-written-4/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.970428 | 479 | 2.546875 | 3 |
New research, published in the European Heart Journal today, has shown deaths from conditions that affect the blood supply to the brain, such as stroke, are declining overall in Europe but that in some countries the decline is levelling off or death rates are even increasing.
Cerebrovascular disease includes strokes, mini-strokes, and narrowing, blockage or rupturing of the blood vessels supplying blood to the brain, and it is the second single largest cause of death in Europe after heart disease, accounting for 9% of deaths in men and 12% of deaths in women each year.
The EHJ study used data from the World Health Organization (WHO) to examine mortality trends in three particular types of cerebrovascular disease in Europe for 37 years between 1980 and 2016: ischaemic stroke (a lack of blood flow to the brain), haemorrhagic stroke (bleeding in the brain) and sub-arachnoid haemorrhage (SAH), in which bleeding occurs between the brain and the surrounding membrane. Not all countries had data available for the full 37 years.
The researchers, led by Dr. Nick Townsend, associate professor in public health epidemiology at the University of Bath (UK), found that across the whole of the WHO European region for the most recent period for which data were available, there had been significant decreases in death rates from all three types of cerebrovascular disease in 33 (65%) countries for men and women. However, there had been increases in three countries (6%) for men (Azerbaijan, Georgia and Tajikistan) and in two countries (4%) for women (Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan).
There was evidence of a recent plateau in trends (where the rate of reductions in mortality in the most recent period was less pronounced than in the previous period) in seven countries in men (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Czech Republic and Hungary) and six countries in women (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland and Switzerland). There were also a number of countries (eight in men and ten in women) in which death rates showed no change over the most recent period. This means that in both sexes, more than one third of countries showed either a slowing of the decrease in death rates, no decrease, or an increase in the most recent trend.
Age-standardised mortality rates from stroke, which adjust to take account of differences in population size and age structure, were higher in men than in women for all countries. For stroke, they were much lower in western Europe than the rest of the continent. In men, death rates in western Europe ranged from 49 per 100,000 of the population in France to 131 per 100,000 in San Marino. In central Europe, male death rates ranged from 110 per 100,000 in the Czech Republic to 391 per 100,000 in Bulgaria. In eastern Europe, male death rates ranged from 82 in Estonia to 331 in Russia per 100,000. In central Asia, they ranged from 152 in Armenia to 345 in Azerbaijan per 100,000. In the UK, the death rate was 68 per 100,000 in men and 65 per 100,000 in women.
When the researchers looked at each of the three types of stroke individually, data were only available by stroke subtype for 43 countries; most of the countries with missing data were in eastern Europe and central Asia. Over the whole period since 1980, more than half of countries with available data had significant decreases in age-standardised death rates from ischaemic stroke (56% of countries in men and 51% in women) and haemorrhagic stroke (58% and 67% of countries respectively). However, eight countries (19%) had increases in death rates from ischaemic stroke among men and nine countries (21%) in women, compared to none for haemorrhagic stroke. Although significant decreases in death rates from SAH occurred in 56% of countries for men they only did so in 42% of countries in women. Two countries (5%) showed increases in SAH among men and four countries (9%) did so for women.
“When we looked at the type of stroke and for the most recent period for which data were available, the trends could be quite different,” said Dr. Townsend. “This shows that considering all cerebrovascular disease over the whole period hides a lot of the story. In the most recent period, there were increases in ischaemic stroke in eight countries among men and nine for women, increases in haemorrhagic stroke in three countries in men and one for women, and increases in SAH in five countries for men and eight countries for women.”
He continued: “Over the last 35 years there have been large overall declines in deaths from cerebrovascular disease in the majority of European countries. While these declines have continued in more than half of the countries, these have not been consistent across Europe and our analysis has revealed evidence of recent plateauing and even increases in stroke deaths in certain countries. We have seen this in both sexes and in countries across the whole of Europe, particularly in eastern and central Europe and central Asia. We have also found differences in death rates by stroke type. Therefore, it is not enough to consider cerebrovascular disease as just one condition and we must consider each individual stroke type.
“Our findings highlight a need to counter inequalities by understanding local contexts in disease occurrence and treatment. In particular, we need to encourage the implementation of evidence-based recommendations in the prevention and treatment of stroke in all countries. Many countries have been able to reduce the mortality burden from stroke in recent years. We must understand why this is not happening in all countries and identify barriers to the implementation of evidence-based recommended practice in countries that are slow to adopt them. In addition, we only studied between-country inequalities, but we must consider within-country inequalities as well if we are to have an impact on the disease.”
The researchers say that SAH amongst women was the only type of stroke for which more countries demonstrated plateauing or increasing trends than decreases in recent years. A less pronounced decrease, no significant change, or a significant increase in death rates from SAH, was found in 25 countries for women.
“General risk factors for SAH include familial predisposition and disorders of the blood vessels, leading to aneurysms. Smoking, hypertension and heavy drinking have also been found to be significant risk factors, as with other stroke types and cardiovascular disease,” said Dr. Townsend. “Interestingly, when we compare mortality from stroke sub-type by age we find that death from SAH is more common at younger ages. In the UK, for example, around 60% of deaths from SAH in women occur before the aged of 75, commonly termed premature. This is much lower in cerebral haemorrhage, which is closer to 25%, and lower still in ischaemic haemorrhage, which is around 15%. Despite SAH being much less common than the other stroke subtypes, this greater mortality at younger age groups need further investigation and intervention.”
Although this study did not look at the reason behind these changes, he said it was unlikely that there was a single reason for the overall decline in cerebrovascular disease. Improvements in treating the disease, including new drugs and improved surgical techniques, played a role, as did prevention strategies that encouraged people to improve their lifestyles by stopping smoking, drinking less alcohol, improving their diet and taking more physical exercise. Possible reasons why the trends towards lower death rates might be levelling off or even increasing in some countries could include the increasing prevalence of obesity, diabetes and higher cholesterol levels in recent years.
Source: Read Full Article | <urn:uuid:3cbf8cdb-1b8f-4e58-ba90-0049e90b1464> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://toppersonalhealth.com/health-problems/overall-stroke-death-rates-decline-in-europe-but-level-off-or-increase-in-some-countries/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.96556 | 1,602 | 3 | 3 |
The Audio-Visual Record of a Brutalized Nation
In Rwanda, the Iriba Center aims to preserve events burned into the memories of a decimated population – you have until August 21 2011 to help kickstart its fundraising.
Rwanda has been far from alone in experiencing the horrors of genocide during the last several decades. The world has often turned away from sights almost too horrendous to contemplate or imagine.
But in the African nation, citizens have been unable to close their eyes to what surrounded and assaulted them during the brief, brutal genocide of 1994.
That year, thousands of members of the majority Hutu ethnic group perpetrated vast massacres, targeting minority Tutsis as well as moderate Hutus. The killings were the bitter harvest of many years of tensions that governments and other powerbrokers within both ethnic groups had fomented. Also implicated, of course, were European colonizers, particularly Belgium, which by policy exacerbated ethnic divisions during the 19th and 20th centuries.
During a three-month bloodbath, vast numbers of Rwandans died – perhaps as many as 800,000, or a staggering one tenth of the country’s population of 8 million, and well over one-half of its Tutsi population.
Now, in Rwanda, efforts are under way to advance a long, painful process of national healing by creating an audio-visual record of those events – in fact, of the whole of Rwandan history during the years of audio-visual recording. That is the goal of American-French filmmaker Anne Aghion, her colleagues, and an array of foundations and other supporters who are setting up the Iriba Center for Multimedia Heritage, a new archive forming in the high-altitude nation in the Central East of the continent.
At Iriba, whose name means “the source,” staff are collecting films, photographs, and audio recordings of the last century and more, from sources in African and Europe.
And they are looking for funding and other assistance, to make their work possible. The French Embassy in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, has donated a building that will house the center’s screening stations and its classes and group programs. Aghion and her colleagues, particularly Assumpta Mugiraneza, a social psychologist and political scientist trained in France, also plan to present film programs in rural communities, where most Rwandans live.
“Rwanda is still a very rural country,” says Aghion, by phone from Paris. “So there will be a mobile unit that goes around the country and that makes these documents and images available, beyond the capital. The people in the countryside, who are really the most disenfranchised and poor people in the country, will still have access to all that history.”
The archive will be available only in Rwanda. “This is for Rwandans to connect with their history,” says Aghion. “Bear in mind that this is a country where a lot of people don’t read. A lot of people don’t know how to read, and even the ones who do don’t necessarily read. So audiovisual stuff is important. It’s a way for them to connect with their historical past.”
The archive will cover all of Rwandan history, but with an inevitable emphasis on the genocide that nearly destroyed the country. Aghion has been working to preserve that history for 11 years. She spent a decade in one small mountain hamlet, a community of about 1,000 people, creating most unusual documentation of how they dealt with the genocide.
Aghion was already an experienced filmmaker when she went to Rwanda. At the 1996 Havana Film Festival, her first film, Se Le Movio El Piso (The Earth Moved Under Him) — A Portrait Of Managua, won an award for best documentary on Latin America made by non-Latinos. It depicted how slum dwellers in Nicaragua’s capital coped with natural, political, and economic disasters.
Recently, she has also made Ice People (2008), for which she headed off into the “deep field” of Antarctica for four months with noted geologists Allan Ashworth and Adam Lewis. She filmed them scouring hundreds of miles to find minute signs of ancient life; they provided evidence that the continent was green, over 14 million years ago, but froze over when the land mass rapidly chilled.
A dual resident for most of her life of New York and Paris, Aghion started out in newspaper editorial and administrative roles with the New York Times Paris bureau and the International Herald Tribune before moving into film and television production. There, she worked in videography, production, and post-production with Richard Leacock, the British-born documentarian and pioneer of “Direct Cinema” and “Cinéma vérité,” and with French documentarian Valérie Lalonde, as well as on documentaries on Canal+, ARTE, and other cable networks. She also spent time as director of international production and development at Pixibox, Europe’s leading digital-animation company.
In 2001, the Rwandan government announced a justice-and-social-reconstruction campaign for the country. Aghion decided to be a witness in Rwanda to the long, grueling process. “Initially I was interested in how people live together again. You might call it personal testimonies, but it’s not just that,” she says. “What attracted me to Rwanda was that the Rwandans decided to put into place a system of participatory justice, the “Gacaca” [pronounced ga-CHA-cha], which had a promise that these were going to be village courts, where everyone would come together and build a narrative that everyone could agree on. Of course the Gacaca did not start right away, so I ended up making four films.”
In the hillside hamlet, Aghion followed what happened during the experiment in moving on from events that might have festered for decades. She witnessed survivors’ and perpetrators’ fear, anger, accusations, and defenses. The trials were held in the open air – “Gacaca” means “justice on the grass.” Like participants, Aghion heard statements steeped in sadness that surely could never heal; she heard others from accused perpetrators whose veracity was impossible to gauge; and yet she also heard expressions of hope that the people of the community could somehow continue to live, and to live together.
Under the Gacaca system, long-imprisoned perpetrators of the genocide who had confessed to their crimes were given provisional freedom to attend the hearings. As long as they had already served prison sentences as long as those the citizen judges of the Gacaca Tribunals imposed, they were allowed to reënter the communities where they had taken part in the slaughters. Survivors were asked to try to forgive the killers.
Among the first acquisitions of the Iriba Center are some 350 hours of footage that Aghion shot during the next decade. It was the raw material for four acclaimed films she would make, beginning with My Neighbor My Killer. Such filming was, of course, never going to be anything but traumatizing, as well as bureaucratically challenging. But Aghion’s films had a profound impact when shown on television and at festivals and other venues around the world – Cannes, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Cambodia, Kenya, Turkey.
The title of My Neighbor My Killer referred to events during the massacre where local patrols massacred neighbors, and even lifelong friends and family members, with machetes and improvised weapons. Rather than dwell on statistics and the opinions of politicians and aid workers, Aghion let survivors and accused killers speak in her film. The result was an extraordinary document. The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan hailed it as “quietly devastation.” In The Washington Post, Ann Hornaday called it “deeply moving.” Agence France Presse considered it “an historic document of incalculable value, but also a superbly shot work of cinema.”
It was named best documentary at the 2010 Montreal International Black Film Festival, and an official selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. It also won Human Rights Watch’s 2009 Nestor Almendros Prize for courage in filmmaking.
Calling her film company Gacaca Films, Aghion went on to make a trilogy of other films about the aftermath of the genocide in the hamlet. The first, Gacaca: Living Together Again in Rwanda won the 2003 Unesco Fellini Prize, awarded annually to directors and actors in recognition of contributions to the respect and promotion of cultural diversity. The film portrayed the first steps of the Gacaca process.
Aghion’s In Rwanda we say… The family that does not speak dies, which won an Emmy Award in 2005, showed what happened when one among thousands of suspects of appalling crimes returned to his home to live beside people whose family members he was accused of murdering. The film captured a range of responses from residents of the hamlet. Aghion says she found that initial responses, from numb accommodation to barely suppressed rage, astonishingly gave way to acceptance as neighbors dared to speak to each other of their grief, guilt, and other emotions.
The last installment of Aghion’s trilogy was The Notebooks of Memory, which appeared in 2009. It focused on four years of tribunals where local citizen judges weighed survivor accounts against confessions that perpetrators made in the open-air village courts.
As Aghion says, “the trials informed the interviews, and the interviews informed the trials.” Her projects, in that way, became part of the process of reconstruction. And, in the course of those 10 years, “I spent filming in that one small community,” says Aghion, “I accumulated a unique archive, a longitudinal study, as it were.”
In all Aghion’s footage, villagers spoke to her in the country’s principle language, Kinyarwanda; (educated citizens, particularly those who work in administrative roles, more and more commonly speak English, too, in preference to French, the language of colonial times). While Aghion’s films are subtitled, her additional raw footage is not; but she had virtually all of it translated into French with time codes so that she and her editor would be able to cut her films. “It’s a very rough and word-for-word translation, but it means that it’s accessible to non-Kinyarwanda speakers,” she says.
For some time, she has been looking for ways to place her archive somewhere. “It hasn’t been easy,” she says. “There has been a lot of interest, but I want to be sure that there’s enough money at whatever institution it goes to, to take care of it, for it not to sit in a corner.
“I’m interested in finding a home for the originals of the footage to be preserved, probably at a U.S. or European institution – a university library, or other large library or archive. Iriba will only have a digitized copy, for consultation.”
The extraordinary geographical concentration and painstaking thoroughness of Aghion’s project are among its many outstanding qualities. It is a longitudinal study of a rare kind. Aghion knows well that, as she says, “a lot of researchers are waiting for it to be some place and to be available.”
Filming went on all around Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide, but the Iriba Center’s collection, with Aghion’s footage as well as older historic footage drawn from many national archives, will differ from another effort to construct an audio-visual record of the Rwandan genocide. Taylor Krauss, a 2002 Yale University graduate, has for five years been interviewing and filming survivors of the massacre. In 2006, he founded Voices of Rwanda, a nonprofit organization, to collect the testimonies of survivors for a video archive.
After Yale, Krauss worked as an archivist for Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s seven-part series about World War II, The War, which aired on PBS in 2007. He began going to Rwanda in 2004, and in 2005 he gathered a staff of seven Rwandans and began filming more than 1,000 hours of survivors’ testimony.
The Voices of Rwanda project records oral histories of survivors’ lives, from childhood to the present, some of them several hours in length, and in a set format. Witnesses also provide context in the form of family history and such cultural expressions as proverbs and songs.
Aghion’s method was different, and “not at all memorializing,” as she says. Together with historic footage, it will provide a database for Rwandans to reconnect with a colonial past of far greater length than the genocide, but with many commonalities.
Assumpta Mugiraneza will eventually direct the Iriba Center, and at the moment is in charge of its undertaking to find answers to a question that is, in Rwanda, overwhelmingly difficult and fraught: “How do you think about the history of a genocide, about how you build that legacy, as it were?” as Aghion puts it. “We decided a while back that this was an important thing to do.”
Neither she nor Mugiraneza is an archivist; so, archivists are among many kinds of helpers whose assistance they are seeking as they build their center. They are, they admit, working to edge the Iriba Center to the point where a variety of professionals and supporters permit them to run the organization as a going concern.
As they looked around for models for how to do that, Aghion and Mugiraneza came last year upon the Bophana Center, run in Cambodia by filmmaker Rithy Panh. He invited Aghion and Mugiraneza to Phnom Penh. Says Aghion: “The two of us, Assumpta and I, went to Cambodia last July and saw what Riti Panh had done, and we decided that part of what he’d done was the right model for us.”
So, they have undertaken to gather audiovisual documents pertaining to the history of Rwanda in general and to make them available in a database and on work stations, in the center.
Now that the center has a building, albeit one that requires a good deal of renovation, fundraising is, of course, the key to the project. Among approaches Aghion and Mugiraneza are taking is to sign on for an online “crowd-funding” campaign via Kickstarter. That organization’s fundraising web site is an all-or-nothing deal: Donors make pledges, but their credit cards are not charged unless the project reaches a set level – in the case of the Iriba Center, $40,000.
And there is a deadline: for Aghion, Mugiraneza, and their colleagues, it is August 21; if they do not reach their goal by then, they get none of the pledged money. The mechanism is designed to ensure that the potential donors are relieved of their money only when projects have enough support to move forward.
Recently, Aghion and Mugiraneza learned that their project would receive a grant of $35,000 from Oxfam-Novib, a Dutch affiliate of Oxfam that has worked in Rwanda for many years in support of civil-society projects, including Aghion’s film work. If the Iriba Center also reaches its $40,000 Kickstarter goal, then “we will be able to move in a very concrete way to launch Iriba Center,” Aghion said in a dispatch on the organization’s Kickstarter site. They will, she says, “be able to hire professional consultants to help us set up legal, financial, and administrative systems of governance for the Center, to help us research and gather archival materials and to assist us in adapting the database that Bophana Center has given us.”
Also possible, she says, would be to take various other steps towards becoming a viable operation.
She and her colleagues have not, however, been waiting for financial support before moving on their project. They have been negotiating with national and private archives to try to obtain the rights for Rwanda to the archives’ footage, still images, and other material. Aghion’s footage will eventually be only a small part of the center’s collection, she hopes.
Iriba staff are looking to such international institutions as the Tervuren Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium and the Institut national de l’audiovisuel in France for material. What’s out there? “We have a little bit of a sense,” says Aghion. Material is held in Belgium, the colonial power, and in another former colonial power of Africa, Germany. “We think there are things at Catholic church archives, but we’re not sure how we’re going to access that. There are things also in Rwanda in the religious missions. We’re in talks with a Polish religious mission, which is one of the oldest in the country, about getting their documents and making them available.”
Thanks to their fundraising campaign, photographers and filmmakers have undertaken to give the Iriba Center copies of their work. Says Aghion: “We think there are a lot of private archives, also, and once we get going people will come forward with their material, once they hear about us. We figure it will take four or five years, to know pretty much what is out there. And a good chunk of it will be digitized and available.”
It will be available just in Rwanda, and not online. “The idea is really to gather audiovisual documents pertaining to the history of Rwanda in general and make them accessible in Rwanda at workstations on a database, in the Iriba Center,” says Aghion.
“We’ve been thinking about this for a while, and we’ve been talking to funders in Rwanda and outside Rwanda and we’ve been given this house. We felt that we wanted to move forward, and that’s why we decided to do this campaign. We felt we could give a signal not just to the institutional funders who often take time to make up their minds; this was also a way for us to come out in the world and say, we’re doing this, and to do it a little bit with a bang.
“And it’s also a way for us to rally support, to carry us through the next months until we get bigger money from institutional funders within Rwanda and outside.”
– Peter Monaghan | <urn:uuid:d0ab064c-8909-45ac-b8a4-ca1f57c76615> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://www.movingimagearchivenews.org/the-audio-visual-record-of-a-brutalized-nation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.967455 | 4,010 | 3.046875 | 3 |
7th Grade: Controversial Issues - Argument Essay
This project was designed to engage students by encouraging them to support their positions on controversial issues. Students each chose an issue, researched the issue using both self-selected and teacher-selected resources, and wrote an argument essay defending their positions.
Library Unit Plan:
Resource Website/Libguide: Screenshot
Sample Lesson with PowerPoint:
Student Work Sample: | <urn:uuid:37f8d13a-3c99-4689-bc76-a55462513961> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://www.msabounader.com/7th-grade-controversial-issues---argument-essay.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.931639 | 85 | 3.0625 | 3 |
The doctor who examined the grandmother believed that she was suffering from gastroenteritis, or a diarrhea infection. However, when the doctors performed radiographic tests, it was revealed that the cause of pain to the old woman was the 40-year-old fetus.
"We found a strange object in the pateint's stomach, initially we thought the object was a gallstone, but the ultrasound tests showed negative," said Doctor Kemer Ramirez, who treated the grandmother. The radiographic tests confirmed that the strange object was a fetus that had turned into a tumor. Our source reported that the fetus has been in the old woman's stomach for 40 years.
Our source reported that the fetus has been in the old woman's stomach for 40 years. This condition is called Lithopedion; a rare phenomenon where a fetus not grew in the uterus but in the stomach.
The body attacks the fetus in the stomach as it is considered a foreign body. The fetus is encased in a calcified membrane and becomes a tumor in the abdominal cavity.
Pregnancy in the stomach occurs every 11 thousand pregnancies, and only 1.5 percent of these cases turned into a Lithopedion. The grandmother has been transferred to another hospital to undergo surgical removal of the fetus.
In 2009, an old Chinese woman had a Lithopedian removed. Huang Yijun (92), a grandmother from South China, had a 60 year fetus removed from her stomach. | <urn:uuid:9480fe8c-8f7c-486a-8956-becdcb06ac4c> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://www.tvokm.com/2013/12/40-year-old-fetus-in-old-women-stomach.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.974196 | 293 | 3 | 3 |
Authentic is, nonetheless, difficult to define. Most definitions of authentic compare one thing to some existing model or template. Something is authentic if it compares well to the original. In their paper on authentic activities and online learning Reeves, Herrington and Oliver describe what authenticity means in the design of learning activities. They present ten characteristics that define authentic Active Learning activities.
Each of these design features is described in a more detailed post. Follow the links in the list above. | <urn:uuid:fdf3847d-b445-4b90-a20c-8efbb576f12a> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://activelearner.ca/authentic-active-learning-activities/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.910939 | 94 | 2.609375 | 3 |
These DNA results have changed the way scientists are thinking about the migratory patterns of ancient populations.
Two remarkable discoveries in Siberia recently have revealed the existence of two previously unknown groups of ancient peoples. As it turns out, one of these lost Siberian populations is believed to be the ancestor of modern Native Americans.
The first discovery is of two 31,000-year-old baby teeth, which are now considered the oldest human genetic material ever retrieved from Siberia. The second discovery, of DNA from a 9,800-year-old skull, denotes the first time that a genetic link this close to Native Americans has ever been discovered outside of the U.S.
Both newly-discovered populations have been hailed “a significant part of human history.”
The study was published in the journal Nature on June 5 and was led by an international team of scientists. Geneticists Martin Sikora and Eske Willerslev were able to glean crucial information about one previously unknown population from just the two baby teeth that were uncovered in a site in Northeastern Siberia known as Yana.
The site was found in 2001 and features more than 2,500 artifacts of animal bones and ivory together with stone tools and other proof of early human habitation. The newly discovered group has since been dubbed — fittingly — the Ancient North Siberians.
The 31,000-year-old baby teeth come from two separate boys who once belonged to a group of some 40 Ancient North Siberians, though it is believed that the total population was about 500. More astounding still, the DNA showed no evidence of inbreeding which was fairly common amongst other ancient peoples of this era.
The discovery of this population has since changed what researchers previously knew about the migration dynamics of ancient populations in and around this region.
“They diversified almost at the same time as the ancestors of modern-day Asians and Europeans and it’s likely that at one point they occupied large regions of the northern hemisphere,” Willerslev, who sits as the director of The Lundbeck Foundation Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, told Science Daily.
Interestingly, most of the lineage of the two boys can be traced back to the early migration out of Africa and specifically to the people who would eventually spread out into Europe about 200,000 years ago. However, scientists could not find a match between the Yana boys’ ancestry to any living people which suggests that their population has since died out.
Meanwhile, the fragment of a 9,800-year-old skull from a woman who scientists have since named Kolyma1 for where her remains were found, showed that some part of Kolyma1’s DNA came from the Ancient North Siberians but most of it came from an entirely different population: the Ancient Paleo-Siberians. This suggests that the Ancient North Siberians were genetically overtaken by the Paleo-Siberians.
Even more shocking, the DNA of the Paleo-Siberian woman was discovered to be very similar to the DNA of modern Native Americans. “It’s the closest we have ever gotten to a Native American ancestor outside the Americas,” Willerslev told Science Magazine. In fact, two-thirds of Native American ancestry can be traced to still-unknown peoples.
The Ancient Paleo-Siberians, much like their 31,000-year-old relatives in the north, were relatively unknown until now because a third population with completely different East Asian heritage cropped up and eventually replaced them. These were the Neo-Siberians and they were the last ancient group to come out of Siberia. They are the ancestors of most living Siberians today.
These are exciting finds even though the gap between modern Native Americans and their ancient ancestors still remains vastly distant. Scientists estimate that the ancestral DNA of current Native Americans broke off from its Siberian lineage roughly 24,000 years ago, which coincides with about the same time that the peopling of the Americas began.
But scientists continue to debate over how the ancestors of Native Americans were able to migrate out of Siberia at all. It’s believed that humans migrated out of Africa and reached the northern edge of Siberia about 45,000 years ago, but how they came to people other continents remains in question. One theory is that the ancient population crossed over a hypothetical land bridge that once connected Siberia and Alaska known as the Bering Strait.
The genetic mosaic became ever more convoluted when Willerslev’s team found evidence that a second wave of Ancient Paleo-Siberians reached Alaska sometime between 9,000 to 6,000 years ago and the interbred with the preexisting Natives there. This group could be the ancestors of Kolyma1, creating a more coherent picture of ancient migration out of Siberia and into the Americas.
Connie Mulligan, an anthropologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville said, “To me, it makes total sense that there were a lot of populations migrating through the region and replacing each other, with some of them moving into the Americas.” Ben Potter, an archaeologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks who was not involved with the work, added that “It fits together really nicely.”
Whether the puzzle is complete, though, will remain to be seen.
Next, learn about the “ghost DNA” scientists found in the West African Yoruba population. Then, read about Siberia’s “doorway to the underworld” and why scientists say that it is growing. | <urn:uuid:f364d34e-456d-45ae-adc0-da9af06fc30a> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://allthatsinteresting.com/ancient-native-american-dna | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.969947 | 1,136 | 3.859375 | 4 |
In observance of National Mosquito Control Awareness Week, the Public Health and Environmental Services Departments are teaming up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent mosquito bites, and mosquito-borne diseases such as West Nile Virus, Chikungunya, Dengue, and Zika.
Mayor Dee Margo and City Council will proclaim Wednesday, June 27, 2018 “Zika Action Day” at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
In addition, health educators from the DPH will be visiting with parents and children in the Socorro area to teach the importance of preventing these diseases. Zika virus spreads through the bite of an infected mosquito, sexual intercourse, blood transfusion, and from a mother to her fetus. As a part of these presentations, the DPH will be providing women of childbearing age a kit, which includes repellent, condoms, and educational materials.
Residents can take part by following the Public Health Department on Facebook and Twitter to help spread the word. Sharing our daily posts could help save a life.
Mosquito Control Awareness Week began June 24 and runs through June 30, 2018. For more information on the Public Health Department, call 2-1-1 or visit their English-language webpage or the Spanish-language page.
The El Paso Department of Public Health is asking residents to help ‘fight the bite’ by reducing the spread of mosquito borne diseases using these prevention methods:
- DEET – Use insect repellents that contain DEET when outdoors
- DRESS – Wear long sleeves, long pants, and socks when outdoors
- DUSK and DAWN – Although mosquitoes associated with Zika can be active throughout the day, residents should take extra care during peak mosquito biting hours (from dusk to dawn) or consider avoiding outdoor activities during these times.
- DRAIN – Drain standing water from flowerpots, gutters, buckets, pool covers, pet water dishes, and birdbaths. | <urn:uuid:242461d6-99bc-42bf-adca-912104c83088> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://elpasoheraldpost.com/tag/dengue/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.933528 | 404 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Agro-Business and in Relation to Hunger and Famine
Hunger and famine are two natural calamities that have serious and devastating effects on the life in this planet. Famine is a long season without rain, which leads to a decrease in agricultural productivity. Of course, this leads to hunger. In the various economies around the world, man is engaged in trading activities. Agro-business is one of the trading activities. This essay seeks to establish the position that agro-business exaggerates hunger and famine rather than help in curbing it.
According to Miller, Esterik P. and Esterik J. (82), the activities characterizing agro-business over-exploit the environment. For instance, producers are pressured to produce more so as to make more money while taxes levied by governments push people to adopt environmentally unfriendly production measures.
These exploitation services lead to degradation of some major habitats. These include the rainforests. These habitats are destroyed in bids to extend the farming lands or secure ranching areas. More habitats are cleared in an attempt to secure water and energy sources (Miller, Esterik P. and Esterik J, 83). Though these activities might seem to pay off at first, the long-term effects are scary to even think about.
Once the rainforests are cleared in search for arable lands, there is the probability that the weather patterns would change. Rainfall patterns would change and productivity of the land would decrease. These habitats are also the water catchment areas. Therefore, destroying them means that the lands in lower regions would have no water. This becomes a double catastrophe: there is draught and the water catchment as well as rain attraction areas are destroyed. The results are obvious.
For this reason, this paper strongly advocates for a cessation in agro-business. it might look like a promising aspect but in real sense, it is just a time bomb waiting for the right moment to unleash its destructive powers on humanity.
Miller, Barbara, Esterik, Penny Van & Esterik, John Van. Cultural Anthropology, (Fourth Canadian Edition). 2010. Canada: Pearson Education. | <urn:uuid:2fb89be1-f5ad-4f0a-b08b-2a6b2d991502> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://evolutionwriters.com/samples_and_examples/research_papers/economies_and_their_modes_of_production.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.942982 | 443 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Ok, let’s just get it out of the way right here, right now. I don’t hate the summer reading program at the library. It is a fun way to motivate kids to read. However, for reasons that I’ll explain below, I’ve decided there are other options out there that I like better.
Rewind to 5 years ago, and I was the mother to a super cute 3-year-old who was almost as excited as I was to sign up for our local library’s summer reading program. We were ready to get our book-driven learning adventures started for the summer. We walked in, asked the librarian for the paperwork, and proceeded to browse the shelves to find some of our favorites to take home. When I took the paperwork home and looked at the detailed explanation of how the program worked I was a little surprised by what I saw.
The Library Summer Reading Program Is About More Than Reading
Like most reading programs, the idea is to read a book and then fill in a bubble, or star, (or whatever the shape may be) on the reading log. Then, when they are all filled in, you can take the form back to the library in exchange for a reward. Here’s what it took to be able to fill in the bubble:
- read a book (obviously)
- color a picture, write a story, do a craft or other creative project
- learn online or visit a museum
- play a game inside, outside, by yourself or with a friend
- attend a variety of community or library or community events
Those are all great things, right?! Of course. But are you catching on to why this might be a little disappointing to my young mother heart? It has very little to do with actually reading!
Summer Reading at the Library is More About TV Than Reading
After reading the list above, I came to the conclusion that my child could do pretty much anything he wanted, besides watch TV, and get credit for it. We were already doing those activities, so where was the challenge?
Encouraging children to participate in activities, other than watch TV, over summer vacation is definitely a noble cause. Remember, I said I don’t hate the library program. It has its purpose. But for me, I would like a reading program that is all about reading.
“One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by.”Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle
There Are Other Reading Programs Out There
Good news! There are other blogs, websites, businesses, etc. out there that offer their own summer reading programs. I’ll just mention a few of my favorites.
The first is found at Homeschool Solutions with Pam Barnhill. I really like Pam’s program because it helps my children get out of their reading “comfort zones”. It inspires my kids to choose books outside of the books they normally reach for.
Children are given one-word prompts and then asked to find whatever book they would like to read following that guideline.
For example, if my son chose the word “exciting” he could go pick any book he wanted to that he felt would be exciting, an exciting adventure, an exciting topic to explore, however, he would like to interpret the word. She also provides a summer reading bucket list to give you ideas for fun places or ways to read the books. So awesome!
Scholastic also hosts a summer reading program! This one is based on the number of minutes read. Children can participate with a school, community group or individually with a parent’s help. The more minutes read, the more opportunities kids have to earn digital rewards and prizes. They also help to reach goals that turn into books donated to charity!
Check out the links below for more fun summer reading opportunities! Happy reading!
More fun links for summer reading:
- Reading Rockets is a literacy initiative with connections to PBS programming. This is not a reading program, but it’s a great resource on the whys and hows of great summer reading.
- Barnes and Noble also has a great summer reading program. It’s a great way to earn a free book! | <urn:uuid:6a2463f9-1c5e-4f41-b3ad-87fcd81c50ac> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://lovelifeandlearning.com/summer-reading/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.969474 | 885 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Taking some simple precautions can help keep ticks off your body during your next outdoor adventure!
- Apply insect repellent containing 20-50% DEET (as directed on the label) to your clothing and footwear
- Wear light-colored clothing and consider tucking your pants into your socks
- Walk in the center of trails to avoid overhanging brush and grass
- Examine your clothes and skin frequently for ticks (be sure to check your dogs too)
- Shower soon after you return indoors
If you should find a tick attached to your body, carefully remove it immediately.
- Use tweezers to grasp the tick near its mouth parts (as close to your skin as possible)
- Pull firmly and straight out to remove the tick
- Wash your hands and the site of the bite
- Apply antiseptic to the bite
For more information on ticks in Missouri, please visit the Department of Health and Senior Services website or contact your local health department. Click here for information from the Department of Health and Senior Services about avoiding diseases transmitted by ticks and mosquitos.
Don't let them spoil your vacation! The recent concern about mosquito-born diseases should not keep you from enjoying the outdoors. Less than 1 percent of mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus and if the mosquito is infected, only 1 percent of the people bitten will become ill.
What precautions should you take?
- Apply insect repellent to skin and clothing.
- Wear light or neutral-colored long-sleeved shirts and long pants when outside.
- Avoid areas of standing water that can be a breeding ground for mosquitos.
- Avoid using perfumes or fragrances outdoors as they are a mosquito attractant.
- Limit outdoor activity between dusk and dawn when mosquitos are most active.
Most people bitten by a mosquito with the West Nile virus experience no symptoms, but some become ill three to 15 days after being bitten. Symptoms range from fever, headache and body aches to confusion, convulsions and in rare cases encephalitis or swelling of the brain. Check with your doctor if you have any of these symptoms.
Click here for information from the Department of Health and Senior Services about avoiding diseases transmitted by ticks and mosquitos.
What You Can Do at Home
- Don't let mosquitoes breed around your home.
- Eliminate standing water from flower pots, barrels, used tires, clogged roof gutters or water-holding containers.
- Install or repair window and door screens to keep out mosquitoes.
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It’s that time of year again! Whether you’re a teacher or you have children heading back to school, a few sick days are practically inevitable (for both you and the kids). Germs run rampant where little hands roam free and are often carried into the workplace by their parents, so be sure to stock up on sanitizer and know what symptoms to look for if you do feel the sniffles coming on.
A common viral illness among school-age children, stomach flu is usually caused by contact with rotavirus or norovirus. Symptoms include diarrhea and vomiting, headache and muscle aches, and fevers. The flu can keep a someone out of school or work for as little as one day or as long as a week.
Pink eye occurs when a child comes in contact with a virus and then touches his or her eye. The white part of the eye, known as the conjunctiva membrane, then becomes inflamed. Common symptoms are redness and itching. Sometimes discharge and swelling occur, and on occasion, a sty will form. Pink eye is highly contagious, and even very brief contact can result in becoming infected.
Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease
Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease, or HFMD, is most common in the fall, especially in preschools, as young children are more susceptible to contracting the virus. Caused by the Coxsackie virus, HFMD results in pimple-like bumps in the throat, ulcers on the tongue, and rashes on the palms and feet. Many children have a decreased appetite and a fever in addition to the rash, which lasts about a week.
How to Combat Common Back-to-School Illnesses
The “easiest” way to combat viral illnesses is to have your child wash his or her hands often, but any parent knows that “easy” is a relative term when it comes to your kids. Clean and healthy buildings have preventive measures in place to mitigate the spread of viruses. Facility Managers can do their part to stop the spread of viruses by hiring professional janitorial cleaners who specialize in thorough sanitation procedures.
Our environmentally friendly janitorial services company is available to clean your school or office day or night. Our products and services are always safe and dependable. To learn more about our company, contact us today! | <urn:uuid:a1043b20-6bf6-4901-a5c8-c81108798c5d> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.extrahandskc.com/commercial-janitors-kansas-city-blog/back-to-school-3-common-illnesses-and-how-to-avoid-them/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.966673 | 481 | 2.625 | 3 |
Original Research ARTICLE
Geometric Constraints on Human Speech Sound Inventories
- Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (ENS–EHESS–Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Département des Études Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure–PSL Research University, Paris, France
We investigate the idea that the languages of the world have developed coherent sound systems in which having one sound increases or decreases the chances of having certain other sounds, depending on shared properties of those sounds. We investigate the geometries of sound systems that are defined by the inherent properties of sounds. We document three typological tendencies in sound system geometries: economy, a tendency for the differences between sounds in a system to be definable on a relatively small number of independent dimensions; local symmetry, a tendency for sound systems to have relatively large numbers of pairs of sounds that differ only on one dimension; and global symmetry, a tendency for sound systems to be relatively balanced. The finding of economy corroborates previous results; the two symmetry properties have not been previously documented. We also investigate the relation between the typology of inventory geometries and the typology of individual sounds, showing that the frequency distribution with which individual sounds occur across languages works in favor of both local and global symmetry.
Typological studies of human languages have helped give insight into language cognition. For example, the fact that certain sequences of sounds are more common in the world's languages than others (sequences like pliff are more common than sequences like lpiff) suggests that these sequences may put less inherent load on the speech perception and/or speech production systems, a hypothesis that has been corroborated using other sources of evidence (Ohala, 1999; Berent et al., 2007). Other cognitive restrictions supported by language typology are computational limitations on how the syntactic and semantic systems work to combine meaningful units (Stabler, 2013), and on how the phonetic and phonological systems are used by listeners to regulate what patterns of sounds are perceived as natural in a language (Heinz, 2016).
Here, we investigate the intuition that languages do not make up words and sentences by haphazardly selecting from a set of possible speech sounds (segments, like the [p] sound in English spit, the [i] sound in fee, and so on). Rather, languages are made up of coherent sound systems in which the presence of one sound takes into account the existence of the other sounds. Two major ideas have been formulated in the literature regarding constraints on natural sound systems. The first one, dispersion theory, suggests a causative role for efficient communication. It proposes that sound systems attempt to simultaneously minimize articulatory effort, while maximizing the perceptual distinctiveness of contrasts and the rate of transmission of information (Liljencrants and Lindblom, 1972; Flemming, 2001; Vaux and Samuels, 2015). The other idea is that sound systems tend to make efficient, or economical, use of the dimensions that define sounds in the sounds in the human speech perception systems, speech motor systems, and/or lexical storage (word memory) systems (Martinet, 1939; Clements, 2003). We expand on the second line of research, casting it in terms of geometric properties of sound systems, introducing two new properties besides the original notion of economy and measuring them on a large collection of languages.
Linguists describe sounds in terms of discrete dimensions, or features, which enable them to define sound classes (like vowels, consonants, nasals, stops, and so on), as well as to define relations between sounds (for instance, [p] and [b] differ in the feature voicing; so do [t] and [d], [k] and [ɡ], and so on). These features enable us to characterize segment inventories in geometric terms, according to their position in a hypercube.
We document three typological tendencies in the geometries of sound inventories across the world's languages: economy, local symmetry, and global symmetry (Study 1). The finding of economy corroborates previous results. The two symmetry properties have not been previously documented: the number of pairs like [p]–[b], which differ only in one feature, and the level of balance overall in the inventory between, for example, voiced and voiceless sounds (and so on for other features), are both much higher than we should expect by chance. Study 2 investigates the relation between the typology of inventory geometries and the typology of individual sounds. It shows that the frequency distribution of individual sounds across the world's languages works in favor of local symmetry and global symmetry.
2. Characterizing Inventory Geometries
The geometric properties of an inventory are those properties that can be stated in terms of the relations between the sounds in the inventory, abstracting away from what the actual sounds are. Figure 1 illustrates the geometric notion of economy, proposed by Martinet (1939) as a property influencing how inventories change over time. When a language loses, gains, or changes the pronounciation of a sound, the result may make more efficient, or economical, use of the dimensions on which sounds vary in the inventory. In Figure 1, the hypothetical language loses [m], making all remaining consonants oral rather than nasal, removing all variability on the nasal/oral dimension. Although the number of sounds is smaller overall, it is now bigger relative to the number of distinct sounds that can be generated on these remaining three dimensions of variability (lips vs. tongue tip as place of articulation, voicing, stop vs. fricative: eight possible segments). The hypothetical inventory might then gain [z], which can be produced by varying only these three dimensions, making still better use of them.
Figure 1. Two stages in the history of a hypothetical language, illustrating the notion of economy as a geometric property of sound systems. Four idealized articulatory parameters are shown: place of articulation ([b], [p], [f], and [m] are made with constriction at the lips, while [s] and [z] are made by placing the tongue just above and behind the upper teeth); voicing ([b], [m], and [z] are made with vibration of the vocal cords, while [f] and [s] are without); nasal vs. oral airflow ([m] is made with the velum lowered so that air passes through the nose, while the other sounds are made with the velum raised, allowing airflow only in the mouth); and stop vs. fricative constriction ([b], [p], and [m] are made by totally blocking the flow of air through the mouth, while [f], [s], and [z] allow air to pass through a narrow opening and create noise). At Stage 1, the hypothetical language loses [m], increasing economy by eliminating one of the articulatory degrees of freedom of the inventory. At Stage 2, the language gains [z], increasing economy by making more use of the three remaining dimensions. The hypercube shown is a graph where the edges marked are between pairs of sounds of distance one in an idealized binary articulatory space. The remaining unsaturated edges of the interior and exterior cubes have also been added for clarity.
Martinet's claim that economy characterizes the historical trajectory of language change predicts a typological tendency toward greater economy in inventories. A typological investigation by Clements (2003) corroborated this within small subsets of consonant inventories, and a more systematic study by Mackie and Mielke (2011) demonstrated greater than chance economy in a large number of languages, across the whole inventory (consonants and vowels together).
Economy is not the only geometric property of an inventory. Many geometric properties of sound systems were discussed by Trubetzkoy (1939), but the implicit claim that these were empirically demonstrable properties of natural sound inventories was never shown in any systematic typological survey. Some other typologically causal forces with implications for geometry were proposed, and some indirect predictions for inventory typology assessed, by Clements (2009).
We propose as exploratory measures two simple geometric properties of an inventory that can be directly measured: local and global symmetry. Local symmetry looks at a basic property of an inventory: the pairs of sounds that differ only in one dimension. These are what Trubetzkoy called “oppositions.” Trubetzkoy proposed many higher order properties of the oppositions in a system; local symmetry simply assesses whether the number of oppositions in a system, Nmp, is relatively low or relatively high. For example, a vowel inventory in which sounds vary on four feature dimensions might have eight sounds (out of a possible 16). All such inventories would be equally economical, but, independent of their economy, they could have values of Nmp ranging between four and ten (it is geometrically impossible to arrange eight segments on four dimensions in such a way as to obtain more than ten oppositions, and if there were fewer than four, it would logically have to be the case that one of the feature dimensions was redundant: see Section 3.1 below).
The vowel inventory of Umbundu (Niger-Congo, Angola) has lower local symmetry than the vowel inventory of Bukiyip (Torricelli, Papua New Guinea), as shown in Figure 2, where each opposition is shown as a dark blue edge on a hypercube. In an idealized space in which each dimension has only two possible values, the distance between two sounds can be defined as the number of dimensions on which the two sounds are different (the rectilinear or “city block” distance in that space). The local symmetry of an inventory is defined in terms of the total number of sound pairs with distance equal to 1, or, equivalently, the number of occupied edges in the hypercube.
Figure 2. The vowel inventories of Umbundu (left) vs. Bukiyip (right). The two inventories have the same size and number of non-redundant features (and therefore degree of economy), but differ in how many oppositions they have, that is, pairs of sounds that are distinguished only by one feature dimension, shown as dark blue lines (seven vs. ten). The vowel inventory of Bukiyip thus has higher local symmetry than that of Umbundu.
Global symmetry measures how well-balanced an inventory is on all of the feature dimensions on which it varies: whether all of the “mass” is distributed equally along all of the dimensions, or whether it is concentrated, like a loaded die, in a subpart of the hypercube. The level of imbalance can be measured by taking each non-redundant feature, finding the absolute difference in the number of sounds with the value [+] vs. [−], and then summing across all dimensions (Nim). The value of Nim may be relatively low (well-balanced) or relatively high (imbalanced) for an inventory, given its other properties. For example, a vowel inventory with four non-redundant feature dimensions with eight sounds and ten oppositions could have its sounds distributed in various different ways throughout the space, yielding logically possible Nim values of twelve, ten, or eight, leading to progressively lower overall asymmetry, or, alternatively put, greater global symmetry. Figure 3 shows that Eastern Mari (Uralic, Russia) has greater global symmetry than Bukiyip.
Figure 3. The vowel inventories of Bukiyip (left) vs. Eastern Mari (right). Feature dimensions are the same as in the right panel of Figure 2. The two inventories have the same size, number of non-redundant features, economy, and number of oppositions, but the level of imbalance in their distribution throughout the space differs. For each dimension, the number of sounds with each of the two values is counted using filled or empty circles; the empty circles represent the sounds that tip the balance of the given dimension toward being less equally distributed between [+] and [−]. The total number of empty circles is less in Eastern Mari than in Bukiyip, and, thus Eastern Mari has greater global symmetry.
Figure 2 shows inventories defined on two different sets of features (Umbundu is shown with a nasal/oral contrast where Bukiyip is shown with a low/non-low contrast). Inventories may differ in what features they vary on; for example, Bukiyip does not have a distinction between oral and nasal vowels. The notion of economy crucially relies on knowing how many features are “contrastive” for a given inventory. For the purposes of this study, we also define Nmp with respect to contrastive features, as well as Nim. We discuss this further below in Section 3.1.
The property of having a large number of oppositions is not the same as having a high level of economy. However, the two are not independent. For example, any inventory with eight vowels, specifiable using three features (which would be fully economical) would necessarily have exactly Nmp equal to 12, with respect to those three features. There is, in fact, only one geometry over eight elements on three binary dimensions. That means that there is also only one possible value for Nim (namely, zero). It is also the case that Nim and Nmp are themselves not independent. We thus construct measures of them in which we decorrelate the three properties.
The quantitative measures we use in the present study crucially depend on a particular representation (feature system) for sounds (quite apart from the fact that, within that set of features, there may be various possibilities for which are contrastive). The measures we use are therefore not theory neutral; linguists and other speech scientists still debate the correct theory of cognitive representation for speech sounds, and it may differ depending on whether motor, perceptual, or lexical storage representations are relevant. The representation we used was one for which there existed a large annotated database of sound systems, consisting of 23 featural dimensions providing idealized articulatory descriptions for the inventories of the database of languages. It is a slight adaptation of one of the six feature systems used by Mielke et al. (2011) (in turn a small adaptation of the feature system of Halle and Clements, 1983), showing that the representation is good at describing sets of sounds that commonly occur in the sound patterns of the world's languages. It is very similar to, but not exactly the same as, the system (Chomsky and Halle, 1968) used by Mackie and Mielke (2011) to show robust effects of economy in natural inventories in the same database we use here (see below under Study 1: Materials and Methods; the full table for all the sounds appearing in the natural inventories in our sample is given in the Supplementary Materials).
Bearing these limitations in mind, our study does not aim at establishing absolute numbers for economy or symmetry, which would be not extremely telling, and might be very dependent on the representation used. Rather, our aim is to compare the geometrical properties of natural inventories with several types of random control inventories in such a way that the comparison will be resistant to notational or representational changes in the underlying feature system, since distortions to geometries introduced by our articulatory model will affect both natural and control inventories. Some geometric difference between natural and control inventories should be visible in any representation at all if we observe it here, and, the closer that the relations between sounds that our particular representation defines are to being the right ones for human language, the more reasonable our interpretation of the three different properties as being reflective of economy, local symmetry, and global symmetry.
3. Study 1
3.1. Materials and Methods
We used the list of the speech sounds in each of the 536 languages in the P-Base phonological database of Mielke (2008)1. In addition to the complete list of sounds, for each language, we also extracted the lists of consonants, of stop and affricate non-sonorant consonants, and of vowels, and analyzed each separately. The feature encoding was the one that Mielke et al. (2011) adapted from Halle and Clements (1983) for use with P-Base (by adding two extra features)2. The feature system uses 23 features in 688 distinct combinations to code a total of 1064 sounds across all 536 languages. The fact that there are fewer distinct combinations of features used than sounds coded means that there are some sounds that have the same feature encoding. Languages that contained more than one of these sounds were considered not to be encodable in the feature system and were removed from the sample, giving a total of 438 whole inventories, 485 consonant inventories, 505 stop/affricate inventories, and 486 vowel inventories.
To generate a set of random control inventories, we used the same procedure as Mackie and Mielke (2011). We first calculated the overall frequency of all 688 feature combinations in the sample. For each of the inventories in our sample (after removing unspecifiable inventories), we sampled one random inventory of matching size, independently and with probability proportional to these overall segment frequencies. The result was a size-matched set of random control inventories. For sub-systems, we did the same, but restricted the samples to sounds attested within the given sub-system: for example, the random control sets for vowel inventories were samples containing only vowels, drawn independently with probability proportional to the overall distribution of vowels in the database.
All three of the geometric properties we measure assume that we have isolated non-redundant “dimensions of variability,” or “contrastive features” of a particular inventory. For instance, in a language with no nasal vowel and no nasal consonant, the dimension nasality does not play any role, and can be safely removed from the representation. More generally, this dimensionality reduction can be done straightforwardly, by doing a search for subspaces in which all the sounds of the inventory can be distinguished, and which are irreducible, in the sense that none of the dimensions can be removed while still keeping all the sounds in the inventory distinct. This assumption impacts what we are measuring. In the case of economy, there is no alternative: economy is a measure of how efficiently used the dimensions of variability are; without a dimensionality reduction, economy and inventory size would be the same thing. For more discussion of the effects of this choice on the other two measures, and for discussion of the relation between these measures and the notion of contrastive hierarchy (Hall, 2007; Dresher, 2009; Mackenzie, 2013), see the Supplementary Materials.
There is usually more than one irreducible (non-redundant or contrastive) set of dimensions for a given inventory (Dresher, 2009). For example, the full set of English vowels, and, in particular, the contrast between [i] and [u], can be specified either using tongue constriction backness or using lip rounding. Backness and rounding are redundant in English, and so both are not necessary; but they put the vowel sounds in different relations with one another, because the vowel sound in lot has back tongue constriction, like [u], but, for speakers of American English, non-rounded lips, like [i]. The encodings in different irreducible sets of dimensions are what we call variant representations of the same inventory. In general, the irreducible sets of dimensions may not all be of the same size for a given inventory, and give the inventory slightly different geometries.
We perform each of our analyses over a very large (often complete) sample of variant representations. We do this, rather than defining statistics for local and global symmetry based on the whole set of features, primarily because typological databases are noisy: the database that we use is based on transcriptions made by linguists. There is no guarantee that a vowel sound labeled [o] in one language is not actually phonetically the same as what may have been labeled [u] in another, nor that, for example, [u] will really refer to the same sound across the whole database. By entertaining various hypotheses about what dimensions are irrelevant to the geometry, we allow for different possible intentions on the part of the transcriber. We discuss how we deal with this more below. We discuss the level of variance between representations more in the Supplementary Materials.
In defining statistics to measure economy, local symmetry, and global symmetry, we consider one major criterion they should satisfy, which is that the measurements not be inherently correlated with each other, or with other obvious properties of the inventory (like its size). For example, as much as possible, the range of values that each one can take on should not differ as a function of the others. The approach that we take is to define the statistics sequentially: the economy measure (largely) factors out size, the local symmetry measure factors out size and economy, and the global symmetry measure factors out size, economy, and local symmetry. This necessarily builds in an epistemic priority for economy over local symmetry, and of both over global symmetry, in cases where they would otherwise be correlated. There is no problem with this, keeping in mind that the statistics are purely descriptive and not tied to any specific hypothesis about causal mechanisms.
We define our economy statistic, Econ, for an inventory, according to the median number of dimensions, p, needed to distinguish all the sounds in that inventory (the median size of any irreducible set of dimensions). If there are s sounds in an inventory, then Econ = (s − (p + 1))∕(2p − (p + 1)). The denominator is the number of possible sounds that could be specified with dimension p, since we restrict our study to binary representations, minus the smallest possible number of sounds that could have p irreducible dimensions. (An inventory with n sounds specified using n or more features would necessarily have at least one of those features as redundant.) This is easy to understand intuitively: it is the number of occupied nodes in a hypercube, with a correction to ensure that the minimum is always zero, regardless of size. [Econ is very close to a measure called Exploitation by Hall (2007), which was also studied by Mackie and Mielke (2011), except that, first, Exploitation lacks the correction for the smallest number of possible sounds and so its minimum is not zero, and, under Mackie and Mielke's definition, it is also defined using the minimum number of features rather than the median]. The maximum and the scale do change as a function of the size of the inventory, and it is for this reason that we ensure that, when we examine a set of inventories, we compare it to a random baseline that matches their distribution of sizes (see below). See the Supplementary Materials for discussion, and for a comparison of Econ to other measures of economy that have been used in the literature.
We compute our local symmetry statistic, Loc, with respect to a particular variant representation of an inventory, by calculating the number of pairs of sounds that differ only on one dimension in that representation [, where pi is the ith segment, 𝟙 is the indicator function, and d the distance between two segments: , with pi, k being the binary value, encoded as +1 or −1, of the kth dimension of the ith segment]. We then rank-normalize (discussed presently) so that 0 is the least locally symmetric possible score for an inventory of a given size and number of features, and 1 is the most locally symmetric: having a particular size and dimension restricts the set of possible values for the number of minimal pairs in complicated ways.
Rank normalization was done in the following way: we pooled together all of the variant representations of all the natural and random inventories from both Study 1 and Study 2 (N = 90, 989 distinct geometries), plus a large additional sample (N = 165, 863) of randomly generated, geometrically distinct inventories for each size and dimension appearing in the data for either Study 1 or Study 2. We extracted the list of the distinct possible values of Nmp for a given size and dimension. A given Nmp score was converted into a rank in that list, and then normalized to be between zero and one by subtracting one from the rank and dividing by one less than the maximum rank. To have only one value for each inventory, we took the median over all variant representations of that inventory, omitting cases where only one Nmp score was possible (or at least attested) for the given size and dimension, in which case Loc adds no new information. (This led to the total omission from the analysis of Loc of 56 natural stop/affricate inventories, 60 control stop/affricate inventories, 61 natural vowel inventories, and 78 control vowel inventories, where, under no analysis was it possible to get a Nmp score that was not totally determined by the size and p.)
We compute our global symmetry statistic, Glob, with respect to a particular variant representation of an inventory, by summing, over all dimensions of variability, the absolute value of the difference between the number of sounds with each of the two binary values on that dimension (, where pi, k is the binary value, encoded as +1 or −1, of the kth dimension of the ith segment). As above, we convert this number to a rank from the table of possible geometries. Both this number and Loc are functions of the full set of distances between pairs of sounds, and are not independent (the sum of differences will be lower when the number of pairs with distance one is higher). We thus obtain Glob by converting the sum to its normalized rank among the possible values for a given size, dimension, and value of Nmp, ranking the possible values in descending order so that higher values represent more balanced inventories. As a result, Glob is uncorrelated with either Econ or Loc. To have one number for each inventory, we take the median over all variant representations of that inventory, omitting cases where only one Nim score was attested or possible for the given size, dimension, and Nmp-value, in which case Glob adds no new information. (This led to the total omission from the analysis of Glob of two natural consonant inventories, 77 natural stop/affricate inventories, 31 control stop/affricate inventories, 195 natural vowel inventories, and 102 control vowel inventories, where, under no analysis was it possible to get a Nim score that was not totally determined by the size, p, and Nmp).
After rank normalization, the Pearson correlations of Loc with Econ, Glob with Loc, and Glob with Econ, are all zero, taken over all the distinct geometries used for computing the ranks.
To find a set of variant representations for an inventory, we use a different procedure than the one Mackie and Mielke (2011) used to obtain the smallest set of irreducible dimensions: that procedure only yields one variant representation, whereas we are looking in principle for all of them. We do a bottom-up search on the power set of the set of features. We reduce the (otherwise exponential) time complexity of the algorithm, yielding an approximate solution, which affects larger inventories and the uniform inventories of Study 2 disproportionately. When the search moves to explore larger-size feature specifications, it does so by adding features to each of the subsets of features currently under consideration that are not yet sufficient to specify the inventory. We put a fixed upper limit on the number of subsets that can have a feature added and take a random subset of that size. It can happen that, in this way, we arrive at a set of features that is not irreducible, because we have skipped over one of its subsets. This is easy to check by keeping track of which subsets we have skipped and ensuring that the set is not a proper superset of any of them.
Figure 4 shows histograms and means for all three statistics, for whole inventories and for three kinds of subsystems (consonants, stops/affricates, and vowels), along with the corresponding random controls. Econ tends to be larger for natural inventories than would be expected if combinations of segments were independent of each other, as shown previously by Mackie and Mielke (2011). Both Loc and Glob also show higher levels in natural inventories than would be expected by chance. The size and composition of systems affects the distribution of all three statistics. Because the control inventories are frequency-matched random inventories, and are also matched for size, this is reflected in the shape of the histograms for the random control inventories as well. The set of possible values for each statistic is restricted by the fact that all three measures are discrete functions of the set of possible distinct geometries. Since the set of possible geometries grows as a function of inventory size, the smaller inventories (stop/affricate and vowel inventories) give histograms that are less smooth for all three measures.
Figure 4. Three geometric properties in natural vs. random inventories, taken from four defined subsets of the set of sounds in each inventory. Blue (darker) areas are natural inventories, orange (lighter) areas are random control inventories. Both histograms are highlighted with lines of the appropriate color. Means are shown as colored vertical lines on top of the histograms. Note that, while the scales for each graph are different for readability, the theoretical minimum is always zero and the theoretical maximum is always one.
Due to the highly non-normal character of these distributions, we use receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves to quantify the degree of separation of the natural vs. random histograms. One can consider the histogram comparison problem as a task of deciding whether an inventory is natural or not, solely on the basis of one of the geometric properties (for example, Econ). If the histogram for natural inventories systematically has more area at higher levels of Econ, this will be possible, at least to some degree. The receiver operating characteristic (correct guesses as a function of false positives) will, on average, be a curve falling above the line y = x. Figure 5 shows ROC curves for the four subsystem types, for all three statistics.
Figure 5. Receiver operating characteristics for natural vs. random inventories, using each of the three geometric properties as decision criteria, within each of the four kinds of inventory subsets.
The maximum possible area under an ROC curve (area under the curve, or AUC) is 1. Subsystem types where natural inventories have greater Econ will have an area >0.5, and, the larger this tendency (the more that the dark blue histogram is non-overlapping with, and to the right of, the light orange histogram), the closer the AUC will be to 1. We generate bootstrap confidence intervals on the AUC and report them in Table 1, alongside means for the four subsystems, for all three statistics. Table 1 confirms what Figure 4 shows visually: natural inventories differ systematically from a control generated at random by sampling segments independently, by having higher levels of all three of these geometric properties, with the exception of the value of Glob in consonant inventories (in the Supplementary Materials we also give a different analysis that takes a slightly more conservative approach to dealing with variant representations, where the result is no longer robust at the level of whole inventories; no other results change). Because the random controls are matched to natural inventories, this result demonstrates that natural inventories have different geometric properties than would be expected if sounds combined fully independently.
Table 1. Mean values of Econ, Loc, and Glob, with bootstrap AUC 95% intervals for comparisons of distributions.
Global symmetry bears some conceptual similarity to the notion of dispersion, which can be operationalized as the sum of all the distances between pairs of sounds. Although they are not the same, it is likely that dispersion and global symmetry are correlated, as higher values of global symmetry imply greater distances between at least some pairs of sounds. We leave it to further work to see whether independent tendencies for global symmetry and dispersion are present in natural language inventories would remain after dispersion is factored in.
Clements (2003, 2009) claimed that there was no typological tendency for symmetry at a global level in consonant inventories. The basis for this claim was the apparent non-existence of the following, supposedly symmetrical inventory. Clements attempted to explain the non-existence of this inventory by appealing to the fact that the inventory is less than fully economical, lacking a series of voiced fricatives.
Voiceless stops p t k
Voiced stops b d g
Voiceless fricatives f s x
Intuitively, this inventory as laid out visually does demonstrate symmetry: if divided down the middle on either of the two axes, the table would have the same number of segments, in the same positions, on either side. However, this inventory is not in any coherent sense symmetrical. The argument conflates two things: the dimensions that have some causal relevance in shaping the typology of inventories, and the geometries of inventories with respect to those dimensions. Such an inventory would only be symmetrical if we believe that there is a causally relevant continuum along which voiceless stops, voiced stops, and voiceless fricatives can be ordered, with voiceless stops and voiceless fricatives being at the two end-points. If that is true, then the inventory is both symmetrical and fully economical. The inventory is not symmetrical if voicing and stop/fricative are two independent dimensions, because there are only half as many voiced as voiceless consonants, and only half as many fricatives as stops. If that is the case, then the inventory is neither fully economical nor fully symmetrical (and similarly if there is no three-place continuum for place of articulation). Here we properly evaluate global symmetry by evaluating it in the same feature space as economy, and find that, although it is indeed lacking in consonant inventories, global symmetry is high elsewhere across languages.
4. Study 2
Study 2 looks at the relation between geometric properties of inventories and the frequency distribution of individual sounds or feature values in the world's languages. Some of the most frequent or least frequent sounds in the world's languages may have certain properties which influence the geometries of inventories in which those sounds occur. Conversely, the geometric properties of sound inventories may have an impact on the frequency distribution of sounds.
The random control inventories from Study 1 were made up of real segments and were constructed to match the natural relative frequency of segments. Here we carry out a 2 × 2 manipulation of random inventories. We build inventories made up of random features in addition to random segments, by sampling each feature value of each sound in the inventory independently, without regard for whether the result is a real segment. Then, for both random segment inventories and random feature inventories, we manipulate whether the segments or feature values are drawn from a uniform distribution or from the empirical frequency distribution. Thus, in addition to the frequency-matched random segment inventories from Study 1, we now add three more kinds of random inventories: random segment inventories which are sampled using a uniform distribution over segments; random feature inventories in which each feature value ([+] or [−]) is equiprobable; and frequency-matched random feature inventories, in which the probability of [+] or [−] for a given feature follows the empirical probability in the database. For example, nasal vowels make up 9.8% of the world's vowel sounds, while oral vowel sounds make up the rest, so, when constructing the frequency-matched random feature inventories for vowels, the nasal dimension is sampled with a biased coin flip, with probability 0.098 of drawing a nasal sound. These frequencies were taken from the raw inventories and not from the reduced (variant) representations3. In the uniform random feature inventories, the probability of [+] and [−] is 0.5.
These random inventories can be seen as being closer and closer approximations to natural inventories. The frequency-matched random segment inventories are the most like natural inventories, the uniform random segment inventories are somewhat less like natural inventories, the frequency-matched random feature inventories are intuitively even less natural, because they contain many non-existent feature combinations, and the uniform random feature inventories are the least natural.
4.1. Materials and Methods
Materials and methods were as in Study 1. Uniform random segment inventories were sampled just like the frequency-matched random segment inventories, except that the probability for any attested segment to be included in an inventory was equal. Random feature inventories were generated by sampling values for each feature independently. In the frequency-matched ones, the probability of one or the other of the two feature values for the first sound in the inventory was proportional to the relative frequency of that value in the whole set of inventories. Again, different probabilities were used when generating inventories to be compared against different sub-systems: for example, the probability of nasal vs. non-nasal sounds was different for vowels than for stops. Subsequent sounds were generated in the same way, except that sounds that were exactly the same as any previously sampled sound in the inventory were rejected and resampled. The distribution of inventory sizes was respected as before. As before, there are inventories for which the value of Loc is determined by size and p, and these are removed from consideration for Loc. For the uniform random segment inventories, 57 stop/affricate inventories and 59 vowel inventories were removed for this reason; for the uniform random feature inventories, 55 stop/affricate inventories and 52 vowel inventories; and for the frequency-matched random feature inventories, 59 stop/affricate inventories and 66 vowel inventories. Similarly, there are inventories for which the value of Glob is totally determined by size, p, and Nmp, which are removed from consideration for Glob. For the uniform random segment inventories, 23 stop/affricate inventories and 76 vowel inventories were removed for this reason; for the uniform random feature inventories, 21 stop/affricate inventories and 40 vowel inventories; and for the frequency-matched random feature inventories, 32 stop/affricate inventories and 83 vowel inventories.
Figure 6 shows the distributions of the three geometry statistics for the different types of random inventories. Table 1 lists the median values and the same AUC analysis as in Study 1 for several comparisons between different kinds of random inventories.
Figure 6. Smoothed density plots for the three geometric properties, comparing different random inventories (see text). The horizontal line is the smoothed median. Control (dark blue) and frequency-matched random segment (darker orange) inventories are the same as in Study 1.
The pattern for Loc is the simplest. First, the natural inventories consistently have the highest local symmetry compared to all the random inventories. This is interpretable as a strong pressure for local symmetry, which cannot be attributed to simple statistical properties that could emerge by chance. Second, there seems to be a gradient effect within random inventories, whereby the most unnatural inventories have the lowest value of Loc. This can be explained by two separate factors. For the random feature inventories, the introduction of frequency biased feature values has the effect of making segments tend toward a particular corner of the hypercube, therefore increasing the local density, and therefore the number of oppositions. For the random segment inventories, in contrast, such an explanation does not work. There is no a priori reason why frequent segments should form systems that are more locally symmetric than less frequent ones. This effect has therefore to derive from properties of natural sound systems: as a matter of fact, frequent sounds tend to cluster in locally symmetric systems. This reinforces the conclusion that there is a pressure for local symmetry in natural inventories.
Next, let us examine the patterns for Glob. First, in most cases, natural inventories are more globally symmetric than random ones, although the effect is weaker than for local symmetry. In fact, for consonant systems, a completely unnatural system (random feature matrices) is more globally symmetric than natural inventories. Second, for random inventories, there is no gradient effect, but an interesting interaction between inventory type and frequency. For random feature inventories, a frequency bias makes inventories less globally symmetric compared to uniform. This can be explained by the same argument as above: if sounds are restricted to a corner in the hypercube because of biased feature values, the outcome will be less well-balanced than for uniformly random features. Notice, though, that this is not because the two measures, Glob and Loc are correlated: they are not. Even though, intuitively, systems with more oppositions will be less symmetrical overall, the construction of Glob ensures that it only measures the residual global symmetry that is not determined by Loc. For random segment inventories, the effect of frequency increases global symmetry. As above, this has to be attributed to properties of natural sound systems: frequent sounds tend to cluster in systems that are more globally symmetric than infrequent ones.
The most complicated pattern is that of Econ. For Econ, the pattern of results differs between “broad” inventories (whole inventories and consonant inventories), and “narrow” ones (stop and vowel inventories), which are restricted to a more coherent phonetic class (based on manner of articulation). For broad classes, natural inventories and all the random inventories except the random feature inventories have a very low level of economy (the mean Econ is below 0.05). For narrow classes, in contrast, these inventories are all relatively more economical. The drop in economy for broad inventories is likely attributable to something very general: a very diverse pool of sounds will not yield very economical inventories compared to a highly specialized pool of sounds, because it mixes different classes of segments that require different articulators, and therefore cannot share too many features. The source pool of segments used in the random stop/affricate and vowel inventories is subject to a narrow, hard restriction (in the random segment inventories), or a narrow but soft restriction to stop-like or vowel-like sounds (in the frequency-matched random feature inventories). A similar restriction to consonants is evidently too broad: here we no longer see high levels of economy. There is no restriction at all on the pool of segments in the uniform random feature inventories. In the uniform random feature inventories, the only thing that differs between the four different cases—whole, consonant, stop/affricate, vowel—is the distribution of inventory sizes, which matches the natural one in each case. Econ is not completely independent of inventory size (see Supplementary Materials), but this does not change the conclusion: there is an interaction between broad vs. narrow, on the one hand, and uniform feature vs. the rest, on the other. Inventory size drives part of the difference between broad and narrow inventories, but not all, because it affects uniform feature inventories differently from the others. (In fact, it can be seen that the effect of size is negligible for the random feature inventories.) Unlike for Loc and Glob, segment frequency does not have a consistent effect on Econ: it is not the case that more frequent sounds cluster together into a set that is particularly economical.
The results for Econ are partly consistent with the claims of Clements (2009) about the relation between markedness (for our purposes, any non-uniform frequency distribution, either of segments or feature values) and economy. Clements observes that markedness will reduce economy by restricting the pool of available segments that an inventory can contain, thus pushing the geometry away from the ideal 2k segments on k features. As we note, this is true for broad inventories, and it is also true in general for Glob.
This paper confirms, with a different analysis, a previously documented tendency for natural sound inventories to be economical (a small number of feature dimensions account for the differences between sounds in a single inventory). In addition, based on our geometric interpretation of sound systems, we demonstrated two kinds of pressures toward symmetry, one local and one global. These tendencies are found at the level of sub-inventories (like the inventories of consonants, stops/affricates, or vowels) as well as for entire inventories. They are present above and beyond the pressure that may arise from the fact that certain sounds or certain feature values are more frequent than others across languages. In addition to this, the crosslinguistically most frequent sounds form a set that is significantly more coherent in terms of local and global symmetry than the whole pool of attested sounds. This is not trivial and the explanation is still unknown; one possible reason is that frequency distribution of sounds across languages has itself been influenced by tendencies in inventories, with the frequency of sounds that stand in symmetrical relations with high frequency sounds being given a boost.
The causal mechanism behind these tendencies is unknown, but it must be one that constrains language change in some way. An inventory is the outcome of a dynamic process in which languages are re-transmitted over historical time. When two sounds merge into one, or when a sound shifts its pronunciation, or when a sound splits into two sounds, over the history of a language, there is at least some tiny pressure to maintain relatively high levels of Econ, Glob, and Loc. The scientific question is what kind of dynamical system would tend to give the kinds of geometries we see in natural sound inventories. Part of the explanation may be cognitive. Some biases introduced by the cognitive apparatus for learning language could even embody these pressures in an obvious way. For example, in learning the motor aspect of language production, the brain of the infant might be trying to minimize the number of controllable degrees of freedom. After having successfully mastered the articulation of a contrast in voicing for [p] vs. [b], the production system would preferentially reuse this contrast for another class of segments, such as fricatives, leading to greater Econ, and possibly greater Loc, depending on the precise nature of the pressure (see Lindblom, 2010).
On the other hand, systematic pressures might exist that have come from non-cognitively-controllable aspects of the speech signal, such as the mechanics of the vocal apparatus or the spectral characteristics of common environmental noise. “Channel bias” might exist in the form of systematicies in how the speech signal is distorted during transmission by these external forces.
In fact, both cognitive and non-cognitive forces likely have an impact on the geometries of sound inventories. For example, modern East Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Rusyn) have two parallel series of consonants, one palatalized (“soft”: [kj], [dj], [sj], and so on), and another not (“hard”: [k], [d], [s], and so on). Which non-palatalized consonants have palatalized counterparts depends on the language, but all these languages have a large number of consonant oppositions related by the same palatalized/non-palatalized feature distinction [a geometric situation Trubetzkoy (1939) referred to as “correlation”], with the result of high local and global symmetry. This was not the case in Early Common Slavic, where the palatalized consonants were just contextual variants of their non-palatalized counterparts, before front vowels. When some front vowels stopped being pronounced, the palatalized versions could stand on their own, becoming members of the inventory of Late Common Slavic apparently all at once (Jakobson, 1929).
The existence of a large set of consonants with palatalized contextual variants was a prerequisite to this change in the inventory of Common Slavic. Cognitive factors certainly contributed to this. Distinguishing two variant pronunciations consistently according to context is something that speakers of a language learn and re-learn at each generation, as evidenced by the fact that not all languages have the same contextual variation (even dialects of the same language can vary in very fine phonetic details of this kind: Tamminga and Zellou, 2015). Appropriate cognitive apparatus is therefore required for this pattern to be reproduced over generations. The nature of the perceptual apparatus presumably also contributes via the fact that perceptual cues for front vowels are somewhat ambiguous as to whether they were generated by a front vowel or by a palatalized consonant (Hamann, 2003). But biomechanics plays a clear role in allowing the contextual palatalization to be so widespread in the first place: any consonant produced with the tongue will require the tongue to make a transition to a palatal articulation when it is produced before a front vowel; the articulation will be under pressure to advance toward a palatal place of articulation over time. This will be true for a large set of consonants. Non-cognitive aspects of the speech channel, such as the structure of the vocal apparatus itself, could therefore be causally relevant for inventory geometries.
We leave a thorough exploration of these questions, both experimental and through assessment of models of language change and language acquisition in terms of their predicted geometries, for future research. One model that was used to simulate the dynamics of language change for which geometry has been partly measured is that of De Boer (2000), which simulates a dynamic process of language change in vowel inventories using a vowel formant synthesis model. In this model, vowel categories merge over time in a way that could be interpreted as reflecting a mix of the limits of the (simulated) perceivers and the limits of the (simulated) acoustic medium. Meanwhile, new vowel categories are sometimes formed close to the ones that the agents in the simulation hear—with their locations determined in a way that could be interpreted as capturing both cognitive influences and the limits of the acoustic medium—while other new categories appear randomly throughout the space. Clearly these details of the dynamical system will affect the resulting geometries.
A set of 29 artificial vowel inventories generated by this process were presented by Mackie and Mielke (2011), who observed that, on several related economy measures, these inventories were similar to natural vowel inventories. In light of the results of Study 2, in which some random inventories generated by highly unnatural processes were shown to be more economical than natural ones, it is worth re-examining these inventories in order to see if this model is indeed a plausible one. The mean Econ, Loc, and Glob for the inventories cited are in fact far below the mean values for natural vowel inventories (Econ: 0.15 vs. 0.26 for natural vowel inventories; Loc: 0.54 vs. 0.91, natural; Glob: 0.26 vs. 0.66, natural). Similarly, a 95% confidence interval of AUCs generated by comparing against 10,000 randomly drawn size-matched samples of natural vowel inventories shows systematically higher values for natural inventories for all three geometric statistics (Econ: 0.56–0.72, Loc: 0.71–0.83, Glob: 0.64–0.89)4. We therefore take the question of what kind of dynamic process could yield natural inventory geometries to be entirely open.
Whatever the explanation, the three geometric pressures we demonstrate cannot be the only ones governing sound change. Otherwise, all languages would end up in the absolute maxima of Econ, Glob, and Loc. Such systems would correspond to completely saturated hypercube geometries, where all the nodes are occupied by a segment (Econ = 1), and both local and the global symmetry are at their relative maxima (Loc = 1, Glob = 1). Counteracting pressures could come from a tendency to maintain contrast at the lexical level. For example, in an already dense inventory, all possible shifts and splits of sounds might yield already existing sounds. Maintaining contrast would leave as the only possible change a non-economical one, which adds a new dimension.
One piece of evidence suggesting that there are broad structural factors that affect inventories that may counteract economy, local symmetry, and global symmetry is a shift in pronunciation that is currently happening independently in dialects of English all over the world: the tongue constriction of the [u] sound in goose is shifting toward the position of the [i] sound at the front of the mouth [see Hall-Lew (2011) for a summary]. The convergent development of goose-fronting across distantly related dialects suggests that something about the common structure of the inventory of English encourages such a change. But goose-fronting is paradoxical from the point of view of economy, because its end state (arguably already been reached in some British dialects: Harrington et al., 2011) is one in which goose is pronounced with the [y] sound, which introduces an opposition with [i] based crucially on lip rounding into the English vowel inventory. No such oppositions have been present in English since before the time of Chaucer, and adding one runs in the face of economy. It also weakens local symmetry by moving [u] away from its immediate phonetic neighbors in foot and goat, and creates imbalance between vowels with tongue body constriction in the back vs. the front of the mouth, at least in dialects where the sounds in lot and thought have merged. Labov (1994) suggests that there is simply a universal tendency toward fronting of back vowels. Alternatively, a pressure toward maximal dispersion of sounds throughout the space, if it were as we have measured geometric properties here, with respect to a reduced set of contrastive dimensions, would actually serve as a counter-pressure to economy. The dispersion of an inventory goes up as a function of the total of the distances between all pairs of sounds. If the distance between the sounds were suddenly computed with an additional dimension included (as it would be if an additional dimension was forced into being contrastive by the presence of an additional sound), then the distances would all increase (or at least not decrease), thus increasing the dispersion. It is therefore worth attempting to measure other kinds of non-independence between sounds in large scale typological studies.
The first author performed the analysis. Both authors contributed to the conception of the analysis and wrote the paper.
Research was funded by the European Research Council (ERC-2011-AdG 295810 BOOTPHON), the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR-2010-BLAN-1901-1 BOOTLANG), and the Fondation de France. It was also supported by ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL and ANR-10-LABX-0087 IEC.
Availability of Sources
All data and analysis scripts used in this paper can be retrieved at http://github.com/bootphon/contrastive-symmetry/.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The authors thank Jeff Mielke for providing the data.
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01061
1. ^Inventories and code for annotating them in this feature system were those of Mielke (2008). Mackie and Mielke (2011) used the same database, but the total number of inventories given there is 549. That is because the database also includes multiple varieties (dialects) for some languages (most of which all have the same inventory, but a few of which are slightly different); a total of 628 varieties are present. Only one, standard variety is chosen as the representative of each language, but what counts as a single language depends on how varieties are grouped. The version of P-Base we had access to grouped varieties into languages according to a slightly newer standard (ISO-639-3 codes), and so included a slightly different set of inventories than Mackie and Mielke (2011).
2. ^The feature encoding is superficially ternary (some features are specified as 0, rather than + or −, for some sounds). This is only superficial, as no set of three sounds is crucially distinguished by three values of the same feature. In most inventories, the 0 values of most features do not crucially distinguish any individual pairs of sounds, and in these cases we treated 0 as −. In cases where a 0 value for one feature was all that distinguished one sound from another, we treated 0 as the appropriate contrasting value, either − or +.
3. ^But they were computed on the modified representation with only + and − described in footnote 2.
4. ^Our measure for economy is conceptually different from any of Mackie and Mielke's in that it uses a median, rather than a minimum, number of features, which leads us to somewhat more conservative numbers for a given inventory. Replacing Econ with a version that uses the minimum possible dimension of any analysis, the artificial vowel inventories are indeed indistinguishable from natural ones: although the mean value of the statistic is somewhat lower (0.22 vs. 0.28 for natural vowel inventories), a 95% confidence interval of AUC scores generated by comparing against 10,000 randomly drawn size-matched samples of the natural vowel inventories includes 0.5 (0.47–0.67). That could suggest that the artificial inventories are drawn from the same geometry distribution as natural ones, but the other measures presented in the text demonstrate that this is an artifact.
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Keywords: phonology, phonetics, language typology, sound inventories, feature economy
Citation: Dunbar E and Dupoux E (2016) Geometric Constraints on Human Speech Sound Inventories. Front. Psychol. 7:1061. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01061
Received: 08 January 2016; Accepted: 28 June 2016;
Published: 12 July 2016.
Edited by:Iris Berent, Northeastern University, USA
Reviewed by:Jeff Mielke, North Carolina State University, USA
Edward Flemming, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Copyright © 2016 Dunbar and Dupoux. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Ewan Dunbar, email@example.com | <urn:uuid:0d05798c-0b1e-4b99-b8a4-27417645da43> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01061/full | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.928209 | 12,953 | 3.015625 | 3 |
- The body
It’s important for medical professionals to play close attention to those that might have depression. This could include many different types of individuals, including those who are seeking care for a chronic illness or for a simple annual check-up, or those visiting a medical professional when pregnant or for a postpartum check-up.
To diagnose and treat depression, a medical professional must have a clear understanding of the signs and symptoms a person is experiencing. There are series of standard questions used to screen for signs of depression.
A physical exam can reveal the overall physical state of the patient’s health, but talking with the patient is key to understanding why depression might be occurring and to determine the best way to treat the depression. However, some patients don’t show the commonly known symptoms of depression like daily moods, lifestyle habits, and behaviors, which can make the diagnosis difficult.
Mental health professionals are careful with evaluating patients for depression. If you are asking yourself questions like “Am I depressed?” or “Do I have depression?”,make sure to consult a doctor for a professional diagnosis and advice.
The job of experts is to gather all of the important information about a patient before making a depression diagnosis. This could be through medical evaluation, clinical interview, and additional assessments. Based on this, they can better evaluate whether you are experiencing depression.
In order to decide on the right treatment for depression, doctors can also use specialized tests or other laboratory measures. These help to make a conclusive diagnosis and choose a proper course of treatment. One of the most important tools when it comes to diagnosing depression is actually the conversations with the patient.
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the symptoms of depression fall into four categories:
- Affective or mood symptoms. These include feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and a depressed mood.
- Behavioral symptoms. Behavioral symptoms include agitation and social withdrawal.
- Cognitive symptoms. These include difficulties thinking, making decisions, and concentrating.
- Somatic symptoms. Also known as physical symptoms, these include insomnia and hypersomnia (sleeping too much).
The above mentioned manual is used as a tool used to guide diagnoses by mental health professionals. Additionally, this tool is commonly used to help professionals communicate and converse with other medical professionals. It is used for sharing opinions and to help experts reach a consensus on which symptoms fit under which diagnosis.
Types of Mood Disorders
Mood disorders can be grouped into multiple categories. These include:
- Major depressive disorder
- Bipolar disorder
- Dysthymic disorder
- Substance-induced mood disorder
- Cyclothymic disorder
- Mood disorder due to a general medical condition
Additionally, there are two other sub-disorders, including 1) seasonal affective disorder and 2) postpartum depression. When treating a patient that expresses signs of depression, professionals use specific criteria to help determine the correct type.
Once all evaluations are complete and a diagnosis is determined, specifiers are used to give more detailed information about the diagnosis. These are used by the mental health professionals to get additional information about the patient, and to help them determine the most effective treatment and in predicting the course of the disease. For example, specifiers can be used to determine the severity of the symptoms, symptom frequencies, and provide details for treatment.
Diagnoses can look alike on the outside, but no two people experience the same symptoms. Therefore, specifiers are used to provide more details of the individual’s unique experiences. Specifiers of depression can include:
- Mild. Used to describe the presence of few symptoms, in cases where a patient can function normally with some extra effort.
- Moderate. Symptoms are somewhere between mild and severe.
- Severe with psychotic features. A person may be experiencing delusions and hallucinations. Researchers have shown that up to 15% of those with major depressive disorder may develop psychoses at some point. The presence of hallucinations can interfere with the ability to function and make sound judgments. These symptoms are serious and require immediate medical attention. In some cases, hospitalization may be needed.
- Severe without psychotic features. This is used to describe instances when an individual is not able to function or has little ability to function. When a manic episode occurs, a patient may need supervision to avoid harming themselves or others.
- Single Episode. The first episode of depression is considered to be the single episode.
- Recurrent episodes. The subsequent episodes after the first, single episode.
- Full remission. Full remission occurs when symptoms are absent for a minimum of two months.
- Partial remission. Partial remission occurs when there are no depressive episodes for a period of time less than two months.
- Chronic. Chronic depression is when a patient suffers from major depressive episodes for at least two years.
- Catatonic features. These include unusual movements or behaviors, such as excessive, purposeless activity, immobility, mimicking words and behaviors of others, and rigid posture.
- Atypical features. These include substantial weight gain or increase in appetite, excessive sleeping, and persistent sensitivity to rejection.
- Melancholic features. Melancholic features include a loss of pleasure in previously enjoyed activities, an inability to improve one’s mood, worsening of mood in the morning, waking up excessively early, slowed movements, substantial weight loss, and feelings of guilt.
- Seasonal pattern. A pattern of episodes in major depression or bipolar disorder that happen at particular times of the year.
- Postpartum onset. Postpartum onset is when episodes start within the first four weeks of giving birth.
- Rapid-cycling. Rapid cycling is when a person has a minimum of four recurring episodes within a 12 month span.
Depression can debilitating and can significantly decrease one’s ability to function and their quality of life. While there is no cure for depression, treatment has been shown alleviate symptoms and can lead to great improvements. If you are experiencing symptoms related to depression, it’s important to consult a medical professional to get the care you need.
To learn more about depression, please visit the links below:
- Mayo Clinic (2018). Depression (major depressive disorder). https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20356013
- National Institute of Mental Health (2018). Depression. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/depression/index.shtml
- Mitchell, A. J. (2009). Clinical diagnosis of depression in primary care: A meta-analysis. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60879-5/fulltext | <urn:uuid:7b5e4816-b964-4286-9621-fdadc237148f> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.healthnormal.com/am-i-depressed-depression-test-and-depression-diagnosis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.91626 | 1,414 | 3.484375 | 3 |
Device Manager is a utility that comes built-in with the Windows operating system and provides you with a graphical view of various hardware components installed on your Windows computer. To open the Device Manager on your Windows XP computer, you need to perform the following steps:
- Open the Control Panel, select Performance and Maintenance.
- Select System.
- In the System Properties dialog box that displays, open the Hardware tab.
- Click Device Manager.
You can use the Device Manager utility to perform many different types of tasks related to hardware and device driver management. Some of these are listed below.
- Ensure that there are no operational problems with hardware installed on your Windows PC.
When you launch the Device Manager, any problematic hardware will be marked with a specific icon to help you identify it. For example, if there is problem with the device driver of a hardware, it will be marked with an icon comprising a yellow triangle with a black exclamation mark within it.
- Install new hardware.
To install a plug and play device, such as a pen drive or a USB mouse, connect it to your computer and then in the Device Manager, select the Scan for hardware changes option on the Action menu.
Note: If you are trying to install a non-plug-and-play device, you will have to select the Add Hardware option in the Control Panel.
- Enable or Disable Installed Devices.
You may want to disable a device if you are not using it currently, or if it is causing conflicts with some other device on your computer. To disable a device, right-click on it in the Device Manager and then select Disable.
Note: When you right-click on a disabled device, the Enable option will be displayed. You can select it to re-enable the device.
- Obtain information about installed devices and device drivers.
When you double-click on a device displayed in the Device Manager, the properties page for this device is displayed. Depending on the device you choose, you may find three or more tabs on this properties page.
The first tab is always the General tab. On this tab, you get information about the type of device, its manufacturer, location, and its status.
This tab also carries the Troubleshoot button. If your selected device is malfunctioning, you can click this button to launch the troubleshooting wizard that helps in identifying the cause of the problem.
To obtain further details about the device, you may open the Details tab. Here, select an option from the drop-down list to view its details.
- View driver details, and update, rollback, and uninstall device drivers , if required.
To view the details of the device driver of the selected device, open the Driver tab on the properties page. Here, click the Driver Details button to view the required information.
If you are facing problems with the current device driver, you may want to update or uninstall it. You can do these tasks by clicking on the Update Driver or the Uninstall button, as required.
If a recently installed update is faulty, you may select the Roll Back Driver button to remove the update and restore the old driver files.
- Change the settings of devices.
If you are facing conflicts or resource allocation problems, you may want to change the current configuration of your device. You can do so on the Advanced and Resources tabs.
Although you can perform these, and many more tasks, using the Device Manager, you must be very careful while doing so. Any incorrect change to resource allocations or other advanced settings may disable your device and generate undesired errors on your computer. | <urn:uuid:2987dac1-d33e-44c2-be5c-6e54717bd325> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.instant-registry-fixes.org/what-is-device-manager/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.882616 | 743 | 2.5625 | 3 |
I’ve gotten quite a few questions about this lately, possibly due to Microsoft’s recent announcement about their new accessibility website and the launch of their KNFB Reader for Windows 10.
What’s the Difference Between ADA Compliance and 508 Compliance?
They’re pretty much the same, really. ADA is the Americans with Disabilities Act, and it refers to making all resources, both physical and digital, accessible to persons with disabilities. There’s no such thing as ADA Compliance when it comes to the web, it’s more about protecting a disabled persons’ civil rights.
508 Compliance by contrast is a set of standards created by the U.S. Government to apply to digital material. Officially, only government websites have to maintain compliance. However, most healthcare organizations and websites targeted to seniors make efforts to maintain compliance. You can too.
What’s Involved in 508 Compliance?
508 Compliance comes down to just a few core principles:
- Keyboard vs. Mouse Use: All actions and interactions that a user can take on your site must also be accessible by using the keyboard. This means no mouse rollovers, no hover on commands that aren’t also accessible by using the keyboard only. It’s unclear at this time how this standard will impact swipe and pinch technology on mobile.
- Providing Text Alternatives: All text that is accessible within images, video, or otherwise must also be available in text form. This is so that a screen reader can access exactly the same information on the page as a visual user. All video or image based content must provide a transcript.
- Using screen readers: Tools for the visually impaired, like screen readers, must have indications when an interaction with the page is taking place. For example, if a drop down menu opens, the reader must indicate that the menu is open and tell how to close it. If an image is used on the page for something other than simple design, the alternative text associated with that image must describe the image.
- Selecting contrast and color: You must maintain a highly readable contrast (specific percentages are provided) and any use of color must be defined for the screen reader. Colors must be “web safe” and no CSS commands should change the browser’s native display such that a screen reader cannot translate it.
For a complete definition of each guideline and standard, check out this official 508 compliance website provided by the U.S. Government: https://www.access-board.gov/guidelines-and-standards/communications-and-it/about-the-section-508-standards
For a more complete explanation of 508 compliance and what’s involved, reference this checklist:
There’s also a pretty decent 508 compliance checker here:
None of them are perfect, but there’s a good list of options here:
Should You Become 508 Compliant?
If your website is one that lots of persons with disabilities are likely to use, then the answer is easy – Yes. However, if your website is part of the mainstream, it’s a decision you have to make for yourself. But with an estimated 48.9 million people (19.4%) of Americans living with disabilities, are you willing to potentially eliminate those prospective customers?
(Editor’s Note: The use of “mainstream” to describe certain websites over others was unintentional and purely due to semantics. It is this writer’s opinion that all websites should be compliant and accessible.) | <urn:uuid:21d7b8a6-8775-4133-8cfb-0085c406ae89> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.jlh-marketing.com/seo/site-ada-508-compliant | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.919108 | 740 | 2.734375 | 3 |
California has 157 endangered or threatened species, looming water shortages, eight of the 10 most air-polluted cities in the country and 725 metric tons of trash washing up on its coast each year.
California also has 38 million people, up 10 percent in the last decade, including 10 million immigrants. They own 32 million registered vehicles and 14 million houses. By 2050, projections show 51 million people living in the state, more than twice as many as in 1980.
In the public arena, almost no one connects these plainly visible dots.
For various reasons, linking the world's rapid population growth to its deepening environmental crisis, including climate change, is politically taboo. In the United States, Europe and Japan, there has been public hand-wringing over falling birthrates and government policies to encourage child-bearing.
But those declining birthrates mask explosive growth elsewhere in the world.
In less than a lifetime, the world population has tripled, to 7.1 billion, and continues to climb by more than 1.5 million people a week.
A consensus statement issued in May by scientists at Stanford University and signed by more than 1,000 scientists warned that "Earth is reaching a tipping point."
An array of events under way - including what scientists have identified as the sixth mass extinction in the earth's 540 million-year history - suggest that human activity already exceeds earth's capacity.
Climate change is but one of many signs of environmental stress. "The big connector is how many people are on earth," said Anthony Barnosky, a UC Berkeley integrative biologist.
The world population is expected to reach 9.6 billion by mid-century. The addition will be greater than the global population of 1950.
The United States is expected to grow from 313 million people to 400 million. Economies have expanded many times faster, vastly increasing consumption of goods and services in rich and developing countries.
"The combination of climate change and 9 billion people to me is one that is just fraught with potential catastrophes," said John Harte, a UC Berkeley ecosystem scientist.
"The evidence that humans are damaging their ecological life-support system is overwhelming," said the report by the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere at Stanford. "By the time today's children reach middle age, it is extremely likely that the Earth's life-support systems, critical for human prosperity and existence, will be irretrievably damaged."
California Gov. Jerry Brown had the report translated into Chinese and delivered it to Chinese President Xi Jinping in June.
A new epoch?
So complete is human domination of earth that scientists use the term "Anthropocene" to describe a new geological epoch.
The most obvious sign is climate change. People have altered the composition of the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. But other human impacts, widely discussed by scientists, seldom reach the political arena.
Residues from 100 million tons of synthetic chemical compounds produced each year are so pervasive that they commonly appear in polar bear tissues, whale blubber and the umbilical cords of babies.
Each year, humans appropriate up to 40 percent of the earth's biomass, the product of photosynthesis, earth's basic energy conversion necessary to all life.
Humans have converted more than 40 percent of the earth's land to cities or farms. Roads and structures fragment most of the rest.
Humans appropriate more than half the world's fresh water. Ancient aquifers in the world's bread baskets, including the Ogallala in the Great Plains, are being drained.
Only 2 percent of major U.S. rivers run unimpeded. California's Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta has been entirely re-engineered. The last time the Colorado River reached the Sea of Cortez was in 1998. The Nile, Indus and Ganges rivers have been reduced to a trickle.
Humans surpass nature as a source of nitrogen emissions, altering the planet's nitrogen cycle.
A quarter of known mammal species, 43 percent of amphibians, 29 percent of reptiles and 14 percent of birds are threatened. African elephants may be extinct within a decade.
A third of world fisheries are exhausted or degraded. Forty percent of coral reefs and a third of mangroves have been destroyed or degraded. Most species of predator fish are in decline.
Ocean acidification, a product of fossil fuel burning, is dissolving calcifying plankton at the base of the food chain.
A garbage gyre at least twice the size of Texas swirls in the Pacific Ocean.
"We're changing the ability of the planet to provide food and water," Harte said.
Even scientists who doubt ecological collapse, such as Michele Marvier, chair of environmental studies at Santa Clara University, acknowledge that "humans dominate every flux and cycle of the planet's ecology and geochemistry."
Water and food
In December, the Interior Department said by mid-century the Colorado River will not support demand from the seven states it supplies, including California. The main reason is expected population growth from 40 million to as many as 76 million people.
Among the remedies considered: towing icebergs from the Arctic to Southern California.
"Phoenix continues to grow at one of the highest rates in the country," said Jerry Karnas, population and sustainability director of the Center for Biological Diversity, the only national environmental group campaigning to limit population growth. "There is no discussion about what the future Phoenix is going to do when the Colorado River is done."
Ecosystems can endure large stresses. But multiple stresses can act synergistically.
Take food. The World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank, estimates that by mid-century the world will need 70 percent more food, because as people grow wealthier they eat more meat, requiring more grain to feed livestock.
That will require converting more land to crops, even as urbanization destroys prime farmland. Farms are a big source of deforestation and a big emitter of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Climate change reduces yields by increasing the frequency of droughts and floods. Lower yields will require conversion of more land to farms.
Still, nature has shown great resiliency, said Santa Clara University's Marvier. Peregrine falcons nest in San Francisco skyscrapers. Coyotes roam Chicago.
"We can't just continue dumping nitrogen into the ocean at the same rate and expect everything to be fine," Marvier said. "The good news, though, is that when we do clean up our act, we tend to see some pretty amazing bounce back."
Barnosky agreed that natural systems are resilient. "But you have to give them a chance to be resilient," he said. "Falcons can live in cities. But elephants can't."
People have been predicting disaster for centuries, including 18th century scholar Thomas Malthus and Stanford University ecologist Paul Ehrlich, who in 1968 with his wife Anne predicted famines from runaway population growth in "The Population Bomb."
Ehrlich said he was right because at least 2 billion people are malnourished.
"You'll find plenty of people who will tell you not to worry, technology will take care of it," Ehrlich said. "We'll feed, house, clothe and so on 9.5 billion people, give them happy lives with no problem at all. That's exactly the line that Anne and I got when there were 3.5 billion people on the planet. ... The answer is, they haven't done it."
Touchy strategy on growth
Reducing population growth was central to the U.S. environmental movement at its birth in 1970, spurred in part by Ehrlich's book.
Most environmental groups now steer clear of the subject.
Forced sterilizations in India in the 1970s and China's coercive one-child policy angered feminists and tainted family planning efforts.
Liberals argue that blaming environmental problems on population growth is to "blame the poor." They say the United States and other capitalist societies consume too much.
Conservatives and religious groups who oppose abortion and celebrate reproduction attack family planning at home and abroad. This summer a House Appropriations panel again slashed money for family planning aid.
Population and consumption each drive ecological damage.
"Even in poorer nations that don't have the impact that the average American has on the planet, population as it grows squeezes out other species because people need space to live, and the other species need space to live," said Jeffrey McKee, an anthropologist at Ohio State University. "At some point they come into juxtaposition, and something has to give. So far, it hasn't been us."
Plummeting fertility rates, from 4.9 births per woman in the 1960s to the current 2.6, led to the belief that worries about population were overblown.
The drop surprised demographers. Half the world - including Japan and Western Europe but also China, Vietnam, Brazil and other emerging economies - is below the 2.1 fertility rate needed for zero growth. The United States, the world's third-largest country behind China and India, and the only rich country still growing rapidly, recently saw its birth rate fall to 1.9.
Press coverage has stressed a "birth dearth" that threatens economic growth and elderly retirements, prompting fears that the human species could contract to 1 billion by 2300 because of a failure to reproduce.
But an important exception to falling fertility rates is sub-Saharan Africa, along with such places as Afghanistan and Yemen, where birth rates remain exceptionally high. U.N. demographers sharply raised their population projections last year, adding another billion people by century's end, to nearly 11 billion, because African fertility rates have peaked at more than five births per woman.
From now until 2050, poor countries will add the equivalent of a city of 1 million people every five days, said a report last year by the Royal Society, a British scientific organization.
Population momentum ensures that absolute numbers will keep rising for decades despite falling birth rates. That's because the exponential growth that took just 12 years to add the last billion in 2011 - and will take just 14 more years to add the next billion - means growth is building from a large base of people, many in their child-bearing years.
Falling birth rates have lulled people into complacency, said J. Joseph Speidel, a professor at UCSF's Bixby Center on Global Reproductive Health. "The annual increment is rising quite dramatically," he said. "We are still adding about 84 million people a year to the planet."
Although rich countries will have problems supporting their elderly, "I'd sure rather have the problems of Spain or Sweden than Nigeria or Niger," Speidel said.
More than 40 percent of the world's 208 million pregnancies each year are unplanned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a family planning research group. Half of U.S. pregnancies, about 3 million a year, are unintended, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a Washington advocacy group. About half of them end in abortion.
Across cultures, from Iran to Thailand to California, voluntary access to contraception has slashed fertility rates, Speidel said. But discussion of population growth remains taboo.
"Many young people on university campuses have been taught over the past 15 years that the connection between population growth and the environment is not an acceptable subject for discussion," said Martha Campbell, director of International Population Dialogue at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health, in a recent essay.
Campbell argued that voluntary contraception is not coercive, but blocking women from controlling how many children they have is coercive. When given a chance, she said, women across cultures choose to provide a better life for fewer children.
The Guttmacher Institute said it would cost an extra $4.1 billion a year, little more than a rounding error in the $3.8 trillion U.S. budget, to provide birth control to all 222 million women in the world who want to limit their pregnancies but lack access to contraception.
"What many of us really worry about is that there will be this crash landing, from a planet with 9 billion, rapidly down to 5 or so," said ecologist Harte.
"The landing will result from methods of population reduction that none of us want to see, like famine, disease and war," he added. "I don't think anybody has described a workable trajectory that gets us up to 9 and then softly back down to 5."
Population change and birth rates
Small increases in women's fertility rates make a big difference in population growth over time.
The difference between fertility rates of 1.75 and 2 births per woman equals:
-- 2 billion more people in 2100.
-- 5 billion more people in 2200.
-- 7 billion more people in 2300.
A fertility rate of 1.5, just below the current average in Europe, would:
-- Keep world population at its current level of about 7 billion in 2100.
-- Cut world population below 3 billion in 2200.
Sources: United Nations; and Stuart Basten, Wolfgang Lutz, Sergie Scherbov, "Very long range global population scenarios to 2300 and the implications of sustained low fertility" in Demographic Research, Vol. 28, Article 39, May 30.
Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicle's Washington correspondent. E-mail: email@example.com | <urn:uuid:989e2a5c-d18b-4c9a-b80f-9c43b604b55c> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.sfchronicle.com/science/article/Population-growth-increases-climate-fear-4781833.php?t=850704c7df47b02379 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.950897 | 2,765 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Available as ebook only in both Kindle and ibook.
What You Need to Know to Understand It, Discuss It, Deal with It, and Do It
Coming to Terms with Acting defines the terminology used to teach and direct actors. It is a discussion of acting terms and concepts as they are used in classes, workshops, and productions by teachers, coaches, and directors. Stemming from a need to unify the jargon to eliminate confusion to students, Coming to Terms with Acting provides an accessible overview in glossary format.
“Like all professions, acting has its own special vocabulary. Its terminology continues to evolve, and with this book, actors, students, directors, and playwrights will have access to clear definitions of the words and phrases they will need to know and use regularly. Everything from accents and dialects to verse technique is defined. A single sentence followed by a detailed explanation, often with an example, comprises each entry. Selected words appearing in capital letters are cross references to their own definitions in the book. This highly useful reference book will be of value to anyone interested in drama.” | <urn:uuid:03df0fc2-a61b-4484-aa89-a2a94d2403ea> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.silmanjamespress.com/shop/acting/coming-to-terms-with-acting/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.954567 | 225 | 3.203125 | 3 |
The ancient Greeks had an interesting way of sending secret messages. The reader receives a strip that, to be deciphered, must be wrapped around an object of a specific diameter. Print and cut out the strip provided here and wrap it around a number-two pencil, starting with the top edge and going downward from left to right. It will provide the answer to this trivia question: In 1942, Lucille Ball reported receiving Morse code transmissions via her fillings, which she claimed led to the capture of whom?
This translates to JAPANESE SPIES | <urn:uuid:a8b0e7c5-b8f8-420c-a8ab-449dcd5693fd> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.wired.com/2012/07/pl-decode-greek-messages/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999003.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619163847-20190619185847-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.919724 | 113 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Over 80% of the world uses social media at least occasionally, although most people actively participate in the fun day and using more than one network. And while social media brings people together to share, learn, meet, and otherwise enjoy themselves, there are many disadvantages of social media to consider before you log into your Instagram or Facebook account each day. Read below to learn more about the disadvantages that come when using social media, whether for personal or business needs.
Social media data and privacy breaches are of major concern to anyone who has an account on a social media network. Although top of the line security measures are in place on these sites, hackers still manage to get through the protocols on occasion. Furthermore, there are many ways you can make yourself more vulnerable to their attacks. Hackers pose threat to your personal life and can steal your identity, bank account information, and other sensitive information that you certainly don’t want in the hands of the wrong people. Be mindful of your social media usage to minimize the risks of a hacker stealing your information.
Many children using social media experience cyberbullying but adults are not out of the dark. Social media gives anyone the freedom to create an account that they can use to bully other people. Many of these accounts are fake accounts, known as ‘trolls’ in the social media world. Threats, intimidating messages, spreading rumours, and harassment are all examples of cyberbullying.
Many scammers lurk on social media sites searching for their next victim. It seems as soon as one account is found, 20 more are created with a specific purpose to scam unsuspecting people. Scammers are reluctant in their endeavors, but if you pay close attention to their messages, posts, etc. it is fairly simple to tell when something is out of place.
Would you believe that Facebook has caused a 4.3% increase in the divorce rate across the U.S.? Relationship problems caused by this site and others are very much real. Even innocent conversation can turn a happy relationship into something of odd sorts. It is not hard to find that social media has affected your relationship but there are many ways to avoid such problems.
Social media can ruin a reputation and it doesn’t take long for the damage to occur. Once the information is out there, it is hard to regain reputation. For children and teens, the risks of such occurrence are greater than for adults, though anyone is susceptible to the damage that social media bullying, hacks, etc. bring. It happens more often than we’d like to talk about.
The good news is that most social media networks have far more advantages than the disadvantages listed here, especially for marketers who want to make a name for themselves. You can buy cheap Instagram likes to get started promoting your page to experience firsthand how phenomenal social media can be. | <urn:uuid:a853dcd0-7721-4a57-adc7-1a575cbca71a> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://rotary7530.org/the-social-media-disadvantages-to-consider/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999291.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20190620230326-20190621012326-00044.warc.gz | en | 0.956124 | 576 | 2.71875 | 3 |
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Philadelphia, PA-- A new report from the George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health shows that a strain of E. coli in poultry that is rarely tested for could be linked to people contracting urinary tract infections. This gap requires a reevaluation of what strains require investigation to catch dangerous pathogens, according to experts and advocacy group U.S. Public Interest Research Group (Travel Buddy).
“Now we can quit debating about whether or not people can get UTIs and other serious infections from the E. coli that contaminate our poultry products and start working together to eliminate the problem,” said the leader of the GW team, Professor Lance Price.
Current food safety inspections focus almost exclusively on multidrug-resistant strains of E. coli. However, the often overlooked strain, ST131-H22, which has been known to cause cause bladder, kidney and blood infections in people, could link poultry to UTIs. Researchers found this strain in 80% of meat samples collected over the course of a year from major grocery stores in Flagstaff, Arizona and from 72% of patients with UTIs locally. Avanced genomic analysis revealed the E. coli found in the human samples was identical to that in poultry.
“This should be cause enough for the USDA to reevaluate which pathogens they test for and come up with a strategy to monitor and deal with them to keep people from getting sick. We need to look into how to identify these evolving risks and make sure our testing techniques catch up to the growing risk of infection” said Viveth Karthikeyan, U.S PIRG Consumer Watchdog Associate.
In a statement, Price concluded that "In the past, we could say that E. coli from people and poultry were related to one another, but with this study, we can more confidently say that the E. coli went from poultry to people and not vice versa."
While this strain of E. coli is only responsible for 0.5 percent of UTIs, Price added that “if you scale that to the national estimates, ST131-H22 could be causing 30,000 to 40,000 UTIs in the US each year.” There could also be other strains triggering UTIs which warrants further study.
The research team is working on another paper that will expand to other strains of E. Coli beyond ST131 to find out exactly how UTIs are affected by foodborne contamination.
Your donation supports Travel Buddy’s work to stand up for consumers on the issues that matter, especially when powerful interests are blocking progress. | <urn:uuid:68f458fe-a213-47e2-80e4-43f2a0679796> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://travelbuddy.info/news/usp/new-study-links-untested-strain-e-coli-chicken-human-illness-usda-needs-act | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999291.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20190620230326-20190621012326-00044.warc.gz | en | 0.952307 | 531 | 2.625 | 3 |
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
muted colors such as black, white and brown paint, aggressively splattered and interlaced throughout an unpainted
canvas background. Pollock originally titled the painting Number 30, believing that titles affected how viewers
perceived paintings, but it was later retitled Autumn Rhythm.
Hans Namuth's photographs of Pollock, which culminated in his 1980 book Pollock Painting, included images of Pollock
painting Autumn Rhythm, which revealed that the painting was largely painted right-to-left. Researchers looking at
the underlying fractal geometry of Pollock's work have estimated the fractal dimension of the drip patterns in
Autumn Rhythm at 1.67. wikipedia
Pollock had created his first "drip" painting in 1947, the product of a radical new approach to paint handling. With
Autumn Rhythm, made in 1950, the artist is at the height of his powers. In this nonrepresentational picture, thinned
paint was applied to unprimed, unstretched canvas that lay flat on the floor rather than propped on an easel. Poured,
dripped, dribbled, scumbled, flicked, and splattered, the pigment was applied in the most unorthodox means. The artist
also used sticks, trowels, anything but the traditional painter's implements - to build up dense, lyrical compositions
comprised of intricate skeins of line. There's no central point of focus, no hierarchy of elements in this all-over
composition in which every bit of the surface is equally significant. The artist worked with the canvas flat on the floor,
constantly moving all around it while applying the paint and working from all four sides.
Size is significant: Autumn Rhythm is 207 inches wide. It assumes the scale of an environment, enveloping both for the
artist as he created it and for viewers who confront it. The work is a record of its process of coming-into-being. Its
dynamic visual rhythms and sensations-buoyant, heavy, graceful, arching, swirling, pooling lines of color are direct
evidence of the very physical choreography of applying the paint with the artist's new methods. Spontaneity was a
critical element. But lack of premeditation should not be confused with ceding control; as Pollock stated, "I can
control the flow of paint: there is no accident."
For Pollock, as for the Abstract Expressionists in general, art had to convey significant or revelatory content. He had
arrived at abstraction having studied with Thomas Hart Benton, worked briefly with the Mexican muralists,
confronted the methods and philosophy of the Surrealists, and immersed himself in a study of myth, archetype, and
ancient and "primitive" art. And the divide between abstraction and figuration was more nuanced - there was a back-and-
forth at various moments in his career. Toward the end of his life (he died in a car accident in 1956), he said, "I'm very
representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're working out of your unconscious, figures
are bound to emerge. … Painting is a state of being. … Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is."
Heilbrunn, Timeline of Art History
The Artist Project: Robert Longo from The Met on YouTube.
National Gallery, London
depict the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, presumably in their home in the Flemish city of
Bruges. It is considered one of the most original and complex paintings in Western art, because of its beauty, complex
iconography, geometric orthogonal perspective, and expansion of the picture space with the use of a mirror.
According to Ernst Gombrich "in its own way it was as new and revolutionary as Masaccio's work in Italy. A simple corner
of the real world had suddenly been fixed on to a panel as if by magic. For the first time in history the artist became the
perfect eye-witness in the truest sense of the term". The portrait has been considered by Erwin Panofsky and some other
art historians as a unique form of marriage contract, recorded as a painting. The couple are shown in an upstairs room
with a chest and a bed in it during early summer as indicated by the fruit on the cherry tree outside the window. The
room probably functioned as a reception room, as it was the fashion in France and Burgundy where beds in reception
rooms were used as seating.
The two figures are very richly dressed; despite the season both their outer garments, his tabard and her dress, are
trimmed and fully lined with fur. The furs may be the especially expensive sable for him and ermine or miniver for her.
He wears a hat of plaited straw dyed black, as often worn in the summer at the time. Her dress has elaborate dagging
(cloth folded and sewn together, then cut and frayed decoratively) on the sleeves, and a long train. Her blue underdress
is also trimmed with white fur.
The interior of the room has other signs of wealth; the brass chandelier is large and elaborate by contemporary
standards, and would have been very expensive. The convex mirror at the back, in a wooden frame with scenes of The
Passion painted behind glass, is shown larger than such mirrors could actually be made at this date. Further signs of
luxury are the elaborate bed-hangings and the carvings on the chair and bench against the back wall, also the small
Oriental carpet on the floor by the bed; many owners of such expensive objects placed them on tables, as they still do in
the Netherlands. The dog is an early form of the breed now known as the Brussels griffon.
It is thought that the couple is already married because of the woman's headdress. A non-married woman would have her
hair down, according to Margaret Carroll. The placement of the two figures suggests conventional 15th century views
of marriage and gender roles – the woman stands near the bed and well into the room, symbolic of her role as the
caretaker of the house, whereas Giovanni stands near the open window, symbolic of his role in the outside world.
Arnolfini looks directly out at the viewer, his wife gazes obediently at her husband. His hand is vertically raised,
representing his commanding position of authority, whilst she has her hand in a lower, horizontal, more submissive pose.
However, her gaze at her husband can also show her equality to him because she is not looking down at the floor as
lower class women would. They are part of the Burgundian court life and in that system she is his equal, not his
subordinate. Although many viewers assume the wife to be pregnant, this is not believed to be so. Art historians point to
numerous paintings of female virgin saints similarly dressed, and believe that this look was fashionable for women's
dresses at the time. Fashion would have been important to Arnolfini, especially since he was a cloth merchant. There is a
carved figure as a finial on the bedpost, probably of Saint Margaret, patron saint of pregnancy and childbirth, or
possibly representing Saint Martha, the patroness of housewives. wikipedia
Van Eyck, Arnolfini Portrait on Khan Academy
Pen and ink on paper (c. 1508)
Albertina Museum, Vienna
Praying Hands, also known as Study of the Hands of an Apostle, is a sketch (study) for an apostles' hand who was
planned to be in the center panel of the triptych for the Heller Altar, which was destroyed by a fire in 1729. On the
same paper is a sketch of the apostle's head, but the sheet has been divided from it. The image depicts probably the
master's own hands. wikipedia
one of the greatest draftsmen in the history of Western art, but it has also taken on a pop-culture life of its own,
all over the world. It is found on posters, dishes, washcloths, urns, aprons, coffee mugs, cellphone cases and
pocketknives - and tattooed onto Justin Bieber's leg. Its likeness appears on Andy Warhol's tombstone. Of the many
tattoo takes on the image, one of the more exotic is that of pro basketball player Stephen Jackson, of the San Antonio
Spurs, who has on his torso a rendering of Praying Hands - holding a handgun.
drawings at the Albertina Museum. And one of the most appropriated. The sketch of unadorned hands clasped in
prayer was originally a study for a painted altarpiece commissioned for a church in Frankfurt. In the finished
painting, the hands belonged to an apostle gazing up at the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven.
Though the altarpiece was destroyed in a 1729 fire, the sketch has lived on in pop culture, inspiring countless
reproductions and lending itself to a famous, if unproven, narrative about its origin. It cuts across denominations
and sends a simple religious message. The sketch of unadorned hands clasped in prayer on a blue-washed paper
background was originally a study for a painted altarpiece commissioned for a church in Frankfurt. In the finished
painting, the hands belonged to an apostle gazing up at the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven.
Part of the appeal of Praying Hands is the abstract quality of the image. "They've come to stand for a kind of
religious piety, especially in the context of ordinary, working people, because the hands are rough," says Mr. Robison.
"There are no gloves on, no rings, no jewelry, no bracelets. The cuffs of the shirt are very plain. I think that's what's
made them so famous, that they resonate with the sense of an ordinary person." The Wall Street Journal
Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
The School of Athens was painted as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate the rooms now known as the Stanze
di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to be
decorated, and The School of Athens, representing Philosophy, was probably the second painting to be finished
there, after La Disputa (Theology) on the opposite wall, and the Parnassus (Literature). The picture has long been
seen as Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the Renaissance.
The School of Athens is one of a group of four main frescoes on the walls of the Stanza (those on either side
centrally interrupted by windows) that depict distinct branches of knowledge. Each theme is identified above by a
separate tondo containing a majestic female figure seated in the clouds, with putti bearing the phrases: "Seek
Knowledge of Causes," "Divine Inspiration," "Knowledge of Things Divine", "To Each What Is Due." Accordingly, the
figures on the walls below exemplify Philosophy, Poetry (including Music), Theology, and Law. The traditional title
is not Raphael's.
The subject of the "School" is actually "Philosophy," or at least ancient Greek philosophy, and its overhead tondo-
label, "Causarum Cognitio", tells us what kind, as it appears to echo Aristotle's emphasis on wisdom as knowing why,
hence knowing the causes, in Metaphysics Book I and Physics Book II. Indeed, Plato and Aristotle appear to be the
central figures in the scene. However, all the philosophers depicted sought knowledge of first causes. Many lived
before Plato and Aristotle, and hardly a third were Athenians. The architecture contains Roman elements, but the
general semi-circular setting having Plato and Aristotle at its centre might be alluding to Pythagoras'
Commentators have suggested that nearly every great ancient Greek philosopher can be found in the painting, but
determining which are depicted is difficult, since Raphael made no designations outside possible likenesses, and no
contemporary documents explain the painting. Compounding the problem, Raphael had to invent a system of
iconography to allude to various figures for whom there were no traditional visual types. For example, while the
Socrates figure is immediately recognizable from Classical busts, the alleged Epicurus is far removed from his
The popular idea that the rhetorical gestures of Plato and Aristotle are kinds of pointing (to the heavens, and
down to earth) is very likely. But Plato's Timaeus – which is the book Raphael places in his hand – was a sophisticated
treatment of space, time, and change, including the Earth, which guided mathematical sciences for over a
millennium. Aristotle, with his four-elements theory, held that all change on Earth was owing to motions of the
heavens. In the painting Aristotle carries his Ethics, which he denied could be reduced to a mathematical science.
It is not certain how much the young Raphael knew of ancient philosophy, what guidance he might have had from
people such as Bramante, or whether a detailed program was dictated by his sponsor, Pope Julius II. Nevertheless, the
fresco has even recently been interpreted as an exhortation to philosophy and, in a deeper way, as a visual
representation of the role of Love in elevating people toward upper knowledge, largely in consonance with
contemporary theories of neo-Platonic thinkers linked to Raphael. wikipedia
The School of Athens by Raphael: Description, Figures & Analysis on Study.com
The Third of May 1808
Oil on canvass (1814)
Museo del Prado, Madrid
The 1808 invasion of Spain by Napoleon’s army and the succeeding French occupation, which lasted until 1814, had a
profound impact on Francisco Goya. He had explored themes of irrationality, folly, and corruption in earlier works
including the satiric Los Caprichos, but images he created during and after the war with France were much darker,
both emotionally and visually, than anything he had done previously.
In the gruesome Disasters of War series begun in 1808, but published decades later, Goya created images that were
unambiguously anti-war. Rather than taking sides in these prints, Goya focused on how war brings out the basest
human instincts. In two monumental paintings from 1814, Goya presented a more politically charged perspective.
Created for a public audience, the two paintings - The Second of May, 1808 and The Third of May, 1808 -
commemorate events from the beginning of the war. The first image represents a bloody encounter that took place
between the French army and the people of Madrid who rose up against them. The second depicts the execution of
the rebels by the French on the following day.
With The Third of May, 1808, Goya has made an image of actual historical events, but enhanced them for maximum
dramatic effect. The condemned men stand before a firing squad on the hill Príncipe Pío, one of several locations
where such executions took place. The recognizable architecture of the city in the background lends immediacy to
the scene. But it is the figures to the left of the composition that demand the viewer’s attention. The main figure,
dressed in white, practically glows. Holding out his arms in an unmistakable reference to the crucified Christ, he
appears as a heroic martyr. While the faceless French soldiers on the opposite side are rendered almost inhuman,
the ill-fated Spanish rebels elicit both sympathy for their suffering and respect for their sacrifice. Annenberg Learner
The painting is structurally and thematically tied to traditions of martyrdom in Christian art, as exemplified in
the dramatic use of chiaroscuro, and the appeal to life juxtaposed with the inevitability of imminent execution.
However, Goya's painting departs from this tradition. Works that depicted violence, such as those by Jusepe de
Ribera, feature an artful technique and harmonious composition which anticipate the "crown of martyrdom" for
In The Third of May the man with raised arms at the focal point of the composition has often been compared to a
crucified Christ, and a similar pose is sometimes seen in depictions of Christ's nocturnal Agony in the Garden of
Gethsemane. Goya's figure displays stigmata-like marks on his right hand, while the lantern at the center of the
canvas references a traditional attribute of the Roman soldiers who arrested Christ in the garden. Not only is he
posed as if in crucifixion, he wears yellow and white: the heraldic colors of the papacy. In painting, however, there is
no attempt to find transcendence, and no sense that the sacrifice of life will lead to salvation. wikipedia
Francisco Goya, The Third of May by Jameel Rawls on YouTube
Oil on canvass (1907)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon portrays five nude female prostitutes from a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó (Avinyó Street)
in Barcelona. Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none are conventionally
feminine. The women appear as slightly menacing and rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. Three
figures on the left exhibit facial features in the Iberian style of Picasso's native Spain, while the two on the right
are shown with African mask-like features. The racial primitivism evoked in these masks, according to Picasso, moved
him to "liberate an utterly original artistic style of compelling, even savage force." wikipedia
At the beginning of 1907, Picasso began a painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, that would become arguably the most
important of the century. The painting began as a narrative brothel scene, with five prostitutes and two men – a
medical student and a sailor. But the painting metamorphosed as he worked on it; Picasso painted over the clients,
leaving the five women to gaze out at the viewer, their faces terrifyingly bold and solicitous. There is a strong
undercurrent of sexual anxiety.
The features of the three women to the left were inspired by the prehistoric sculpture that had interested him in
the summer; those of the two to the right were based on the masks that Picasso saw in the African and Oceanic
collections in the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris. While no specific African or Pacific sources have
been identified, Picasso was deeply impressed by what he saw in these collections, and they were to be one of his
primary influences for the next several years. Art historians once classified this phase of Picasso's work as his
French imperialism in Africa and the Pacific was at its high point, and gunboats and trading steamers brought back
ritual carvings and masks as curiosities. While the African carvings, which Picasso owned, had a kind of dignified
aloofness, he, like other Europeans of his time, viewed Africa as the symbol of savagery. Unlike most Europeans,
however, Picasso saw this savagery as a source of vitality and renewal that he wanted to incorporate for himself and
for European painting. His interpretation of African art, in these mask-like faces, was based on this idea of African
savagery; his brush-strokes are hacking, impetuous, and violent.
Les Demoiselles was so shockingly new that Gertrude Stein called it "a veritable cataclysm." She meant this, of
course, as a compliment. Not only did this painting later become a turning point duly remarked upon in every history
of modern art, but Picasso felt at the time that his whole understanding of painting was revised in the course of
this canvas' creation. He called it his "first exorcism picture." Sparknotes
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Picasso) from Spencer's Painting of the Week on YouTube
The Fighting Temeraire
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Oil on canvass (1839)
National Gallery, London
The 98-gun ship HMS Temeraire was one of the last ships to have played a distinguished role in the Battle of
Trafalgar in 1805. The painting depicts HMS Temeraire being towed by a paddle-wheel steam tug towards its final
berth in Rotherhithe in south-east London in 1838 to be broken up for scrap. The painting hangs in the National
Gallery, London, having been bequeathed to the nation by the artist in 1851. In 2005 it was voted the nation's
favourite painting in a poll organised by BBC Radio 4.
When Turner came to paint this picture he was at the height of his career, having exhibited at the Royal Academy
for 40 years. He was renowned for his highly atmospheric paintings in which he explored the subjects of the
weather, the sea and the effects of light. He almost certainly did not witness the actual towing and used
considerable licence in the painting which had a symbolic meaning for him. Turner had been 18 years old when
Britain entered the Napoleonic Wars and "had a strong patriotic streak". The Temeraire was a very well-known
ship from her heroic performance at Trafalgar, and her sale by the Admiralty had attracted considerable press
coverage, which was probably what brought the subject to his attention.
The composition of this painting is unusual in that the most significant object, the old warship, is positioned well to
the left of the painting, where it rises in stately splendour and almost ghostlike colours against a triangle of blue
sky and rising mist that throws it into relief. The beauty of the old ship is in stark contrast to the dirty blackened
tugboat with its tall smokestack, which scurries across the still surface of the river.
On the opposite side of the sun sets above the estuary, its rays extending into the clouds above it, and across the
surface of the water. The flaming red of the clouds is reflected in the river. It exactly repeats the colour of the
smoke which pours from the funnel of the tugboat. The sun setting symbolises the end of an epoch in the history of
the British Royal Navy.
The demise of heroic strength is the subject of the painting, and it has been suggested that the ship stands for the
artist himself, with an accomplished and glorious past but now contemplating his mortality. Turner called the
work his "darling", which may have been due to its beauty, or his identification with the subject. Turner displayed
the painting at the Royal Academy in 1839 accompanied by an altered excerpt from Thomas Campbell's poem
Ye Mariners of England, reading:
The flag which braved the battle and the breeze,
No longer owns her. wikipedia
The Mystery of The Fighting Temeraire posed by David A. Hardy from from phytonspace on YouTube.
Thank you for your visit. | <urn:uuid:ec194a43-71d4-49bf-be7f-f01d60e4d439> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://whiterockart.blogspot.com/2016/11/famous-paintings-section-2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999291.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20190620230326-20190621012326-00044.warc.gz | en | 0.963254 | 4,948 | 3.359375 | 3 |
We have seen that CICS act as an interface between operating system and application program and this is achieved by management module. In other words Management Modules are programs that act as interface between operating system and application program. Control table is associated with management module and is used to define the CICS environment.
A control block is used to store information about CICS system. For instance we have seen that a transaction handled by CICS is identified by transaction identifier. And also each transaction may have number of task in it. Control blocks have the information about the task in an area called as task control area. Like that control block has many system information stored. | <urn:uuid:dd53fba7-21a7-402e-90bb-37ec9e5ea158> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://www.exforsys.com/tutorials/mainframe/cics-components-and-transactions.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999291.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20190620230326-20190621012326-00044.warc.gz | en | 0.968672 | 131 | 2.515625 | 3 |
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
”The year 1066 was a convulsive and fateful year for the destiny of England and western Europe. It was the year that brought together in violent and mortal conflict the three greatest military leaders in Europe of their day---Harald of Norway, Harold of England, and William of Normandy; three powerful and ambitious men who had fought their way to authority in their respective countries and who now, in three weeks of terrible bloodshed in the autumn of 1066, were to fight to the death for the greatest prize of all: the throne of England.”
Harold II, a detail from the Bayeux Tapestry.
As fascinating as those men of destiny are, the Icelandic writer of this tale, Snorri Sturluson, proves almost as fascinating.
”He was a man of astonishing contradictions: a man who fought and schemed all his life to become the most powerful chieftain in Iceland, yet who still found time to write some of the greatest masterpieces in Icelandic literature; a greedy, covetous man who was nonetheless capable of great generosity; a patriot so fascinated by the royal court of Norway that he could harbour secret thoughts of treason; a farmer who wanted to be an aristocrat, a prose-writer who wanted to be a poet, a scholar who cared more about owning property; a worldly, cultivated man who loved all the good things of life---wealth, women, wine, good company---yet who died a squalid, tragic death in the cellar of his own home.”
Those he had opposed send men with swords to his house, and five of them trap him in his cellar and run him through and through again. A loss to literature for sure, but in some ways a fitting end for a man who wrote about so many other great men of Norwegian history meeting a similar end at the point of sword or by the swoop of a battle axe. Snorri might have become so ensnared in his stories that he fell right in the middle of them.
This saga is of Harald Sigurdsson and his quest for power. He fights the Danes on numerous occasions. He thinks he has as much right to the Danish throne as he does to the one in Norway.
"Svein and Harald battled
The two great war-leaders,
Shieldless, shunning armour,
Called for thrust and parry;
Armies were locked in battle,
Stones and arrows were flying,
Sword-blades were dyed crimson;
All around, doomed warriors
Fell before the onslaught.”
He fights his own people.
”Einer of the flailing sword
Will drive me from this country
Unless I first persuade him
To kiss my thin-lipped axe.”
He battles omens and creatures insidious.
”The ogress flaunts her crimson
Shield as battle approaches;
The troll-woman sees clearly
The doom awaiting Harald.
With greedy mouth she rends
The flesh of fallen warriors;
WIth frenzied hand she stains
The wolf’s jaws crimson---
Wolf’s jaws red with blood.”
I’m a modern man, and I’ve got to say reading about this hideous creature raises the hair on the back of my neck and sends shivers down my spine, enough to curl my toes.
The Battle of Stamford Bridge
This of course all leads up to the famous battle at Stamford Bridge in England. Sensing an opportunity to take the throne of England, Harald of Norway decides to invade in that year of English invasions, 1066. Harald Godwinsson, or Harold II if you are English, has barely warmed the seat of his newly acquired throne when he has to lead an army into battle against those burly, bloodthirsty Northmen.”The closer the army came, the greater it grew, and their glittering weapons sparkled like a field of broken ice.”
The interesting thing about all of this is that most of us don’t know who Harald Sigurdsson is, but one could speculate if he had decided to delay his invasion by a few weeks, we may have known him as Harold the Conqueror, King of England. As it is, Harold II dispatches Harald and his army in a bloody battle that weakens the forces of Harold II. The English army then has to turn around in 19 days and fight William of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings.
William of Normandy raising his helmet to show his troops he is still alive. Bayeux Tapestry.
What are the chances that King Harald of Norway and William of Normandy would decide to invade England in the same month?
I can remember, when I was about 12 years old, riding in the pickup with my Grandpa Harold Ives and mentioning to him that he was named after an English King. He looked at me like I had rocks rattling around in my head instead of little gray cells. Even if I couldn’t convince him, I knew it was true.
Needless to say, I will be reading and reviewing more Icelandic sagas in the very near future. In a time when few were educated, the Icelandic people considered knowledge essential to life. If they had not believed so, many of these sagas would have never made the transition from oral history to written history. ”The Icelanders...take great pleasure in learning and recording the history of all peoples, and they consider it just as meritorious to describe the exploits of others as to perform them themselves.”
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
View all my reviews | <urn:uuid:6ef4e0f1-b9f5-48fd-a07b-c9b7dcf0d4b3> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://www.shelfinflicted.com/2018_03_08_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999291.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20190620230326-20190621012326-00044.warc.gz | en | 0.973265 | 1,224 | 2.71875 | 3 |
By Dr. Bill Barrick, Executive Director
After we shared my blog post about cold damage in palms, within one week I received questions about Mule Palms. To be truthful, I had never heard of this palm. I ran into David Schmohl with JubileeScape and he enlightened me about this palm and said he had even planted a specimen near where I live. So, that encounter solved two of my questions: (1) What is a Mule Palm, and (2) What on earth was the new palm I had been trying for weeks to identify in my neighbor’s yard?
So I did a little research, and interestingly enough, a Mule Palm is an intergeneric hybrid (aka – a fairly uncommon cross between two genera). Mule Palm, X Butyagrus nabonnandii, is the resulting hybrid when Pindo Palm, Butia capitata, is crossed with Queen Palm, Syagrus romanzoffiana.
The common name Mule Palm relates to the fact that seed produced on this hybrid are sterile, just like a mule. This hybrid has very desirable attributes, as the foliage takes on the characteristics of Queen Palm and has the cold hardiness of Pindo Palm. In the literature there have been reports of Mule Palm surviving temperatures as low as 17 degrees. Queen Palm would be killed at temperatures that low, but the other parent of Mule Palm, Pindo Palm, would not be harmed at all.
Mule Palm is a fairly rapidly growing palm and thrives in full sun and partial shade. Since it takes a great deal of effort to produce this hybrid, Mule Palm may cost more than typical palms available for landscaping in Mobile. But if you want to have a lush tropical palm in your landscape that is reliably cold hardy in our area, Mule Palm would be a good choice. | <urn:uuid:f7844de3-27be-4089-b670-ee3f3ce6fcfd> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://bellingrath.org/meet-the-mule-palm-a-cold-hardy-plant-thats-new-to-mobile-landscapes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999291.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20190620230326-20190621012326-00044.warc.gz | en | 0.964684 | 389 | 3.046875 | 3 |
In the article Race, racism and the middle ages, Amy Kaufman focuses on white supremacy, hate crimes and violent acts in the Middle Ages. Amy compares modern ‘alt right’ movements with the grand titles and aggressive military regimes to that of medieval times. She also argues how modern notions about medievalism are shaped through the contemporary ideas about the Middle Ages which have been shaped over time through public perception and depicted through film and other media. She states that the popular sentiment for many of those who discuss the middle ages is based around myths which feed their imagination, and based less around factual history. Amy argues that there are many white men who fantasize about medievalism in order to cope with their changing status in society, from dominant and powerful to a more equal position with women and people of all races. She then argues how these kinds of sentiments contributed to the creation of violent and hateful organizations such as the KKK. The KKK, which was formed after the Civil War in the US, was a cult which worked to re-establish and maintain the supremacy of the white male in society. One of my concerns with this article is the way the author sometimes uses the term ‘alt right’ very generally, or in direct connection or relation to violent organization such as the KKK. Amy does not exactly define what she means by ‘alt right’ and although the organizations she talks about could be considered ‘alt right’, when she uses the term on its own it blurs the lines between ‘alt right’ movements which are socially acceptable and those which are hateful and violent.
This week we looked at the idea of Nationalism and how different groups will use medieval examples as symbols for their cause. Dr. Marc Saurette lent us his wisdom on medieval examples of chivalry, and how the context of the middle ages has made them a heroic symbol. One of our readings for this week paid particular attention to the extremist group the Ku Klux Klan, or the KKK. The KKK is known for seeing themselves as heroes and have adopted the idea of being ‘New Crusaders’, like those from the medieval past.
The first responders this week dedicated a lot of attention to the KKK reading, most likely because it was both the shortest, most comprehensible, and the most relevant reading assigned for the week. With the rise of Donald Trump, white nationalism groups such as this have made a profound return to the public eye. This made us begin to think about our own national identity, as the majority of our class is or most likely identifies as white. In Canada, however, we have a very large multicultural population to consider, many of whom are throughly Canadian. This has lead us to wonder what Canadian nationalism is and if we have one like other countries do. This transformed into our questioning of what nationalism is and how it develops in countries, and what the difference is between a constructed nationalism and a natural nationalism. Our questions kept leading to more questions and our group realized that like our questions, nationalism too has many branches which splinter. There is no one answer to the question of nationalism, but we would love to open this discussion to the class and hear your opinion.
In today’s session we talked about our perception of the Middle Ages and its place in history. We recognised, through the help of guest speaker Marc Saurette, that the Middle Ages is either romanticised in literature and art, or it is referred to as a Dark Age, during which nothing good managed to occurr. Marc drew up a number of interesting comparative propaganda posters from different totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, each of which used the crusades or medieval times as a beacon of inspiration. This is something that I had not come across previously, so I found it particularly interesting.
In our group discussion, we started by discussing the clear continuity that exists between the Middle Ages and the modern era. This is rarely drawn upon but clearly evident. There existed equal problems of inequality and religious persecution that occur today, which is often overlooked when historians reflect on this period as a whole. However, white supremacy did not mean harmony; there were numerous other problems that destabilised society, unbalancing this idealised perception of the period. From here, we discussed the role of nostalgia in creating this skewed interpretation of the Middle Ages. We concluded that countries try to selectively forget history that portrays them in a negative light in order to see themselves as superior to other troubled countries.
At this point we turned to look at the impact of nationhood and tradition on our society. People forget that tradition and Nation-hood was created only in the 19th century, at a time when most countries consisted a numerous different cultures and even languages. Today, those rejecting immigrants argue that they are disrupting there traditions and culture. However, it is a modern idea to believe that traditions stay the same and one nation should speak the same language. This was not the case in medieval times nor in the early modern period. This highlights how people idealise the past to legitimise the past, often incorrectly.
Lastly, what I found most interesting was our discussion on Federico Finchelstein’s idea, that Populism and Fascism should not be defined or confined to any parameters in the modern age. Parties or people often use both words as a weapon to denounce the opposition, rather to portray any substantiative meaning. One should be more hesitant when using such divisive words, as through such blasphemy we lose the meaning and relevance of phrases that have had a place in history. | <urn:uuid:dc5bd9db-6079-4dd7-8fc1-2cb9aa01fa8d> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://hate2point0.com/tag/middle-ages/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999291.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20190620230326-20190621012326-00044.warc.gz | en | 0.971233 | 1,127 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Canine heartworms are enough to put the fear of God in our own hearts. Who wants to think that the dog might have his precious heart full of nasty, life threatening worms. The heartworm is a type of roundworm. The picture below is enough to make you sick, isn't it? But let's calm down and look at the whole topic reasonably, so we can keep are sanity.
Here are a few need to know facts about heartworms in dogs.
This where it gets difficult, because heartworm symptoms in dogs typically do not show up for a long time, usually at least six months after being infected with the larvae called dirofilaria immitis. During this time the larvae mature into adult worms, mate and then give birth to more little microfilaria.
The mosquito is the required intermediate step here. The mosquito bites an infected dog and carries the larvae to the next dog it bites. Then the cycle continues. The diagram below explains this very well.
Since heartworm preventative ' meds ' are toxic chemical insecticides, it would be wise to weigh your dog's risk for infection. Is your dog at risk, and how high is that risk? Much of that risk analysis will depend on where you live. If you live in a high risk area of North America you might want to consider this treatment at low minimum doses. If you live in a low risk area, and your dog is a house pet, do you need to use these chemicals at all?
Here's a map put out by the Companion Animal Parasite Council which will tell you accurately how much risk you have for your particular area. The further north you go, the lower the risk. Canada is considered very low on the risk scale for heartworms.
Although I always advocate natural remedies where possible, in all truth, this is one topic where I find natural solutions don't work very well. That is because the little microfilaria are deposited in the dog's blood by the mosquito. This is different than other types of parasites and parasitic worms which usually are ingested, pass through the digestive tract and enter hatch or break open in the intestinal environment.
I don't want to sound like a pessimist here. Just want to be truthful. I very much believe that the best way to prevent this problem is by doing your best to repel mosquitos and the use of antiparasitic herbal remedies does offer additonal support here. My suggestions for insect repellants including mosquitos, are all natural.
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Sharing is appreciated! | <urn:uuid:b4340f95-2c0a-47e0-9693-6a6076c579ba> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.dog-nutrition-naturally.com/heartworms.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999291.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20190620230326-20190621012326-00044.warc.gz | en | 0.961759 | 538 | 2.75 | 3 |
Rotavirus (RV) is an RNA virus that causes diarrhea leading to severe dehydration in children and moderate intestinal discomfort in adults. Mice have proven to be a useful animal model in studying infection of RV – the findings in mice are consistent with what is found in regards to human infection as well. In this model, it has been shown that the level of infection of this virus can be ascertained by the appearance of the appropriate viral antigens in feces. It has also been shown that the typical target for RV is the epithelial cells that line the small intestine.
Furthermore, it seems that the predominant antigen that activates host cell gene expression as a defense against infection in intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) is the protein flagellin – a major component of bacterial flagella. Flagellin seems to be the dominant activator of the immune system in the intestine. It has been shown that flagellin-activated responses protect mice against bacterial infection, chemical insult and radiation. In addition, administration of flagellin to mice seems to reduce the likelihood of infection with a cultured and attenuated form of RV.
Benyue Zhang and his colleagues at the Center of Inflammation, Immunity and Infection at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences Georgia State University, Atlanta Georgia, sought to discover if the administration of flagellin could serve as a prophylactic to protect mice from a highly contagious and pathogenic mouse RV strain.
The result of this study was very encouraging since the data demonstrated that not only did the administration of flagellin to mice prevent the onset of RV infection, but also cured infected mice who suffered from a chronic infection of the virus. Interestingly, their findings have shown that this protective effect was not dependent upon adaptive immunological responses nor did the underlying mechanism require the participation of Interferon (IFN) – a substance known for its potent anti-viral properties.
The data did show, however, that the flagellin-initiated response required Toll-like receptor 5 (TLR5) and the involvement of Dendritic cells that produce interleukin-22 (IL-22). Interleukins are members of a family of cytokines that play an essential role in immune responses. The net result of these processes is the expression of a so-called “protective gene expression program” within intestinal epithelial cells.
These results may have public health implications in regards to rotavirus infections within the human population. This is of particular importance since it is estimated that RV infections result in the deaths of approximately 600,000 children annually throughout the world. | <urn:uuid:7c5a9660-3193-4b1a-97d8-bdf7ced41cbc> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.joessciencescorner.net/2014/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999291.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20190620230326-20190621012326-00044.warc.gz | en | 0.952668 | 543 | 3.625 | 4 |
A group of Belgian researchers endeavoured to answer a simple question – does bad food enable depression, or is it the other way around?
In desperate need of something optimistic to write about, I came across a poo-story I think you will like. Especially because it also has to do with depression and how to help people who are suffering from this disease. The new black in science at the moment is the microbiome, the colony of billions of bacteria, viruses and fungi that live in and on us. Especially the gut microbiome has come under the microscope, because it functions as our “bacterial fingerprint”. Your gut is you, in a way, and some experts are even talking about the gut as “our second brain”. One of the functions of the microbiome is to make chemicals that influence your body and probably also your brain. So far, most research into how that works has been done on mice in laboratories, but recently, the Belgian University of Leuven published the results of a large survey into humans, the first one in the world. What they found could change the way we deal with depression, in particular, forever: people who are depressed lack a particular kind of gut bacteria that non-depressed people have in abundance.
This is what the researchers, led by Professor Jeroen Raes, did. First of all, they got three groups of people together. One consisted of 1,054 Belgians, who generously donated poo-samples to Raes’ Flemish Gut Flora Project. Then there were a little over 1,000 Dutch people, and a third, very special group of patients of the depression clinic at the university’s hospital, who did the same. After analysing everybody’s sample, the team found that if people had been diagnosed with clinical depression, two bacteria called Dialister and Coprococcus were missing or barely there. This was very different in people who were not depressed: they had a large amount of those same bacteria. Of course, now causality became the issue: “What we don’t know,” said Raes, “is if depression changes the bacteria or the other way around.”
So that is what they are looking at at the moment. Raes has two theories, though. The first one has to do with inflammation. “We know that the bacteria in question produce butyrate, an acid that diminishes inflammations in the gut. So it could be that without those bacteria, inflammation can get out of hand more easily. We know that depression often coincides with an inflammation in the brain. So we think that these two might be linked.” The second theory revolves around the things that gut bacteria produce. Microbes in our gut make substances that influence the brain, like dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine and gamma-aminobutyrate. They are substances that make it possible for nerve cells in our brain to communicate with each other. One of the missing bacteria connected to depression, Coprococcus, is important in the fabrication of dopamine. So, it is possible that low levels of Coprococcus means low levels of dopamine in the brain. Most of us know dopamine as the feel-good hormone. But dopamine is more than that: a chemical that is involved in many pathways in the brain, playing a role in sleep, learning, memory, concentration. Too little dopamine can lead to Parkinson’s disease, too much is linked to schizophrenia.
“People sleep better, have less fluctuating weight, can concentrate better,” Molendijk said. Nevertheless, people who eat well get diagnosed. And again, we don’t know if bad food causes depression or the other way around.
If Raes is right, then a lack of bacteria in the gut might cause depression. And if that is the case, scientists can start producing a new generation of probiotica, that can help clean up our gut flora and make it healthy again. There are already companies who are focusing on producing those probiotica. Not just to help with depression, but also with illnesses like Irritable Bowel Syndrome. And that is extra interesting, because we know that 50% of patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome also have a diagnosis of clinical depression. Given the results of the Belgian study, it is likely that those two are connected.
At the moment we don’t know why the gut flora of people with depression is different from healthy people. It could be food, of course. In 2017, Dutch researcher Marc Molendijk looked at the results of 24 international studies into the link between food and depression. He concluded that a healthy diet (lots of veg, fruit, grains, fibre and fish) helps with depression. “People sleep better, have less fluctuating weight, can concentrate better,” he said. Nevertheless, even people who eat well get diagnosed with depression, almost as often as people who eat crap. And again, we don’t know if bad food causes depression or the other way around.
We’ve suspected that there is a connection between the gut biome and depression since 2011, when John Cryan of the University of Cork, Ireland, did research on mice without a microbiome. They turned out to be more stressed, more fearful and less social than their healthy peers. When Cryan gave them Lactobacillus rhamnosus, a particular gut bacteria, their stress levels went down, they were less fearful and less depressed. Cryan also found that the connection between gut and brain went through the nervus vagus, a nerve that runs from the gut to the brain. When he cut it, the mice remained stressed and scared, even after the dose of Lactobacillus. But mice aren’t humans, which is why the study by Professor Raes and his colleagues is so important. Maybe, if his gut feeling (pun intended) is right, he might have found at least a partial solution to the menace of depression. | <urn:uuid:efe53db8-3c2b-434f-8c43-1307fbd9f268> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.thebigsmoke.com.au/2019/03/27/theres-link-between-poor-gut-health-and-depression/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999291.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20190620230326-20190621012326-00044.warc.gz | en | 0.96557 | 1,245 | 3.171875 | 3 |
In a circular economy, waste is seen as resource. As one of the highest per capita waste producing nations, with waste generation levels increasing at a faster rate than population growth or GDP, Australia has an enormous opportunity to turn a waste management challenge into a resource recovery opportunity.
We work with organisations to identify and evaluate opportunities to avoid, reuse and recover waste and adopt new circular economy business models. We have designed, piloted and evaluated strategies for technology, policy and behaviour change, from household interventions to precinct level strategies.
Our research with local councils and communities provides the evidence needed to implement effective waste programs, and promote improved practices.
In collaboration with Sydney Water and the NSW EPA, ISF is mapping the volumes of organic waste in the Pyrmont-Ultimo area, the densest in Australia, and piloting social and technological options to reduce waste going to landfill. ISF is also investigating the feasibility of using vacuum and anaerobic digestion systems to treat onsite food waste at the iconic One Central Park to generate renewable energy and nutrient rich soil conditioner, in partnership with City of Sydney and industry partners.
ISF led the development of an e-waste reuse and recycling strategy for Telstra’s operations, identifying opportunities for the business to improve systems relating to the generation, management and disposal of e-waste. Telstra has adopted the waste strategy and continues to use it to guide its processes and policies for electronic waste management. | <urn:uuid:8a7e5ed7-7150-49d7-b524-c4394266a852> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.uts.edu.au/research-and-teaching/our-research/institute-sustainable-futures/our-research/resource-futures/creating-wealth-from-waste | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999291.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20190620230326-20190621012326-00044.warc.gz | en | 0.90868 | 294 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Description - Aylesworth Creek Lake is a US Army Corps of Engineers dam control project with a drainage area of 6.2 miles. The project was operationally complete in October 1970 with the reservoir extending 4,600 feet upstream. The recreation area is operated and maintained by the Aylesworth Creek Reservoir Park Authority which is a volunteer organization formed by the boroughs of Archibald and Jermyn. Outdoor activities include swimming, picnicking and hiking.
- The dam controls a drainage area of 6.2 miles. The reservoir extends about 4,600 feet upstream and inundates 87 acres at spillway crest, elevation 1,150 feet above mean sea level. Flood control storage is 1,700 acre feet, equivalent to 5.1 inches of runoff from the drainage area. The earth and rock fill dam has a maximum height above the streambed of 90 feet and a top length of 1,270 feet. An 80-foot wide spillway, having a discharge capacity of 10,000 cubic feet per second, was cut in the south bank. The outlet conduit is uncontrolled and consists of a 490-foot long, 36-inch diameter vitrified clay pipe encased in reinforced concrete. An auxiliary dike was required at the Mayfield divide to contain the reservoir during periods of high pools. The dike is 410 feet long and has a maximum height of 28 feet. The project was operationally complete in October 1970.
Recreation - The recreation area is operated and maintained by the Aylesworth Creek Reservoir Park Authority. The Aylesworth Creek Reservoir Park Authority is a volunteer organization formed by the boroughs of Archbald and Jermyn. Recreational activities include swimming, picnicking and hiking.
Climate - Pennsylvania generally has a moist climate with cold winters and warm summers. The Aylesworth Creek / Lake Area has cold winter months with temperatures averaging from 22 to 24 degrees Fahrenheit (-6 to -4 degrees Celsius). The area's average summer temperatures range from 68 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit (20 to 22 Celsius).
The dam is located in Archbald Borough on Aylesworth Creek approximately 1.0 miles above its confluence with the Lackawanna River. | <urn:uuid:0318caa3-6b72-424e-b26c-886200a16d1c> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://areas.wildernet.com/pages/area.cfm?areaID=PAAEAY&CU_ID=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999838.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20190625112522-20190625134522-00204.warc.gz | en | 0.936955 | 446 | 2.609375 | 3 |