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Biographers have already used hundreds of pages to describe the life of this daughter of Henry VIII. In a super-brief page on a website the writer must keep things down to a bare minimum. Mary I was the first ruling queen in England since the Empress Matilda (1102 – 67). She was born into the terrible but brilliant sixteenth century in 1553, the only surviving child of Henry VIII and the Infanta Catherine of Aragón.
Sick and subject to migraine from birth, she had to suffer the indignities of her dreadful father’s attempts at divorce from her mother in order to marry another woman (Anne Boleyn). During these goings on Mary was separated from her mother and never saw her again. She was a teenager of fifteen.
Her father’s advisors suggested to Henry that Mary should be banished from the Court (what better fate?) declared illegitimate (utterly ridiculous and cruel), and barred from royal succession (she had her own ideas about that).
When the great monster of English history died, his ailing son Edward VI became king in 1547 at the under-age of ten. He was the result of the marriage between the monster and Jane Seymour (pronounced properly ‘Seemer). His painfully short reign (1547 – 53) was little more than a struggle for power. At first authority was exercised by Edward Duke of Somerset, in Edward’s name; powerful opposition forces were at work however and quite soon the Duke was short of a head, thanks to plotting by John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.
Young Edward is said to have liked the new Protestant religion, favouring Cranmer’s English Prayer Books. He is also said to have been half in love, at any rate very friendly, with little Lady Jane Grey. Tuberculosis carried him off at the age of sixteen, and Northumberland married Jane off to his own son Guildford Dudley.
When first told this was to happen, Jane refused to accept, but she was forced to, and as it turned out Guildford, with a bad reputation as a scoundrelly teenager loved her and the love became mutual. Meanwhile Northumberland had persuaded Edward VI to name Jane Grey as his successor! She was ‘queen’ for nine days, before being swept off to prison with her husband at the orders of Mary Tudor, whom you will remember had other ideas.
Thus Mary became Queen, and being a staunch Roman Catholic, she and her ‘advisors’ set about dealing in the usual manner with Protestants. In this she enjoyed considerable popular support. Northumberland (caught plotting) claimed to be as Catholic as the Pope, but this declaration did not stop his execution. Mary’s brief popularity ended when she announced her forthcoming wedding to King Felipe II of Spain, who could not have been more Catholic and was supposed to be a deadly enemy of the English.
Wyatt’s Rebellion (q.v.) was a direct result of the proposed marriage with Spain, and had to be put down savagely. The wedding took place, but King Felipe hardly ever came to England, being fully occupied with his enormous empire and the building of one of the wonders of the world – The Escurial, just outside Madrid. The marriage with Mary was unhappy and childless.
Mary was much advised by Reginald Pole, especially on the counter-attack to her father’s Reformation, in which all Catholic religious property had been stolen in order to provide money for Henry VIII and immense lands for his friends. Mary and Pole did not care much about this aspect however; it was the actual religious side that mattered to Mary, not the money or the lands. She set about burning archbishops and bishops such as Cranmer himself, and Ridley and Latimer, as well as rather more than three hundred other Protestants, thus earning for herself the nickname ‘Bloody Mary’.
Mary’s foreign policy, such as it was, was also unpopular, including as it did being dragged by King Felipe into his Habsburg-Valois struggle and losing Calais (last English outpost on the Continent) into the bargain. Jokers at the time said that Mary confessed to Pole that when she died, the word ‘Calais’ would be found etched on to her heart. Wracked with pain, separated from her husband, permanently ill, Mary I did indeed die in 1558 at the early age of forty-two. She was succeeded by the daughter of Anne Boleyn – Elizabeth I (q.v.), last of the Tudors. |
Article written by David Sweetnam, Executive Director of Georgian Bay
I have a dream. The waters of Georgian Bay are once again teeming with healthy fish. With the eradication of zebra and quagga mussels, sea lamprey and other invasive species, our native flora and fauna have once again settled into their niches and the ecosystem is thriving. The fish, chasing prey into the bays, once again cause the water levels to rise and we have all seen the Lake Sturgeon eating the cranberries along the re-naturalized shoreline.
The fish are once again edible…far from the bad-old-days when toxic air pollution from antiquated fossil fuel burning power plants across the ocean fouled the waters of Georgian Bay and kept pregnant and nursing mothers from eating any fish. Nasty chemicals from household and personal care products and industrial processes are no longer dumped into the water to pass through inadequate water treatment facilities.
The visual blight of wires strung across thousands of miles of wilderness leaking significant percentages of electromagnetic radiation is gone, now replaced by efficient energy storage capacity linked to clean energy sources located close to population centres.
Our mandatory zero-emission electric vehicles now scoot around the region autonomously logging more miles with fewer accidents. Solar recharging networks energize our automobiles with abundant efficiently captured light energy. Pipeline deconstruction in North America is now completed and all of the environmental impairments they accumulated have been cleaned up.
These new energy and transportation technologies have reversed the effects of climate change following two malodourous centuries of collective maleficence that proved costly in terms of lives, property, the economy and the ecosystems. The air is once again clean and next summer’s 2116 Olympics are being held in Beijing without the health concerns expressed a century ago because of historic poor air quality leading up to the last Olympics there in 2008.
Clean-up investments have now been completed throughout the Great Lakes repairing the damages done by short-sighted generations and industries using archaic accounting systems that ignored the harms they inflicted on the environment and passed onto future generations. Industry driven best management practices and de-listing criteria for so called “Areas of Concern” undertaken early in the last century proved insufficient to make real, lasting improvements. The outcry from the public over recurring losses of drinking water due to toxic algae blooms throughout the Great Lakes region finally forced governments to re-examine policies, enforce source treatment and remove and treat contaminated sediments in order to re-establish ecosystems that could actually improve water quality. Our countries can now finally look towards investing in the future to promote a new sustainable economy.
Canada’s vision to procure the world’s spent nuclear fuel supply has paid dividends reviving its world leading status in radio-isotope manufacturing and also in the burgeoning heavy element synthesis markets. New elements and alloys are being created for the first time in the history of the known universe, transforming materials science in every manufacturing process and enabling the state of the art femto-electronics field. The deep geologic repository is now almost empty and new sources of raw materials are being captured from near orbit asteroids at the Martian processing facility.
The foresight of the International Joint Commission in its century old 2018 study of the Great Lakes Protection Network was in large measure due to the leadership of Georgian Bay Forever, a grass roots charity focused on protecting water in Georgian Bay and the Great Lakes.
The Great Lakes Protection Network is a coordinated system of flow attenuating structures that use accurate predictive models to anticipate future Great Lakes water levels and provide enough flow modification in their connecting channels to compensate for climate impacts. This ensures that healthy historic water level ranges are maintained throughout the entire system. This protects the environment and ensures that the economic region’s inexpensive and non-carbon marine transportation advantage is maintained protecting the millions of jobs and families who live in this prosperous region.
After a 2012 study found that structural intervention could address all of the expected extreme water level conditions anticipated from early climate models, new research was completed to create an engineering model of what possible climate resilient solutions might look like. This visionary engineering study was the first of its kind in the Great Lakes to incorporate climate change impacts as an integral component of the design requirements. Until that time, previously engineered structures were little more than speed bumps of rocks in the river – inadequate to address the volatility of the past century’s exceptional storms and droughts.
And then I wake up.
Georgian Bay Forever is actually funding this engineering study this year, but will it lead to the world changing? I have a dream.
You have a unique opportunity to help realize the dream. Please support Georgian Bay Forever by making a donation.
The Engineering Study is due to be released in 2016. It seeks a long-term flow-attenuating engineered structural solution for our waters that will be flexible, viable and navigable for the next 50 to 100 years. We believe it must also be innovative, climate resilient and responsive over a range of climate scenarios. Further, it must be ecosystem friendly, with minimal impact on biodiversity and habitat, and involve very little in-water blasting or dredging during construction. As well, it must reflect integrated, systems thinking that takes into consideration the entire Great Lakes St. Lawrence water system, so that any solution we identify is mindful of both upstream and downstream needs and interests.
About Georgian Bay Forever – Our mission is to provide scientific research and education to enhance, protect and restore the waters of Georgian Bay as part of the Great Lakes to ensure that the waters of Georgian Bay are healthy and thriving for future generations. |
Last week and this week, we’ve read about research, source evaluation, and documentation. For this week’s assignment, write a 2-3 page, MLA-formatted evaluation of the video, HERE BE DRAGONS, in which you apply the source evaluation techniques from last week and express whether or not the video is reliable or credible.
Remember, this is an objective evaluation, the criteria for which will be taken from last week’s reading on source evaluation. So, you should have a clear point and support that point with evidence. And, since you’re likely going to use examples from the film, you’ll need to use this week’s reading on MLA and citation to effectively complete this assignment.
Submit as a Word document |
Children at Hawthorns School have the opportunity to take part in Forest school. These sessions take place either in the schools own Wildlife Garden of off-site at a woodland site in the Medlock Valley
An increasing number of children in this country spend little time in wild places, and the philosophy behind Forest Schools is to get more children to engage with the outdoors. This is done through play, exploration, learning tool use and becoming increasing familiar with the range of trees, plants, animals and birds in the countryside.
Research has indicated that such activities assist greatly in the development of language, self confidence and problem solving abilities, as well as helping to develop collaborative working and social skills.
Sessions take place throughout the year, so that children have the opportunity to observe nature in all seasons, and most weather conditions. The only times that sessions would be suspended-for safety reasons- are when high winds or thunderstorms are forecast.
Forest School sessions at Hawthorns are led by a trained Forest School Leader, accompanied by class staff. |
When Darwin published “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” in 1859, it immediately rendered all previous theories and systems of morality obsolete. If he was right, then everything about us, or at least everything with a significant impact on our odds of survival, exists by virtue of natural selection. Our innate behavioral traits, some of which give rise to what we commonly refer to as morality, are no exception. For the most part, the philosophers didn’t notice, or didn’t grasp the significance of what Darwin had revealed. Many of them continued to devote whole careers to things as futile as explicating the obscure tomes of Kant, or inventing intricate theories to “prove” the existence of something as imaginary as objective morality. Others concocted whole new theories of morality supposedly based on “evolution.” Virtually all of them imagined that “evolution” was actively striving to make progress towards the goal of a “higher” morality, thereby demonstrating an utter lack of understanding of the significance of the term “natural” in natural selection. Darwin himself certainly didn’t fail to grasp the moral implications of his theory. He tried to spell it out for us in his “The Descent of Man” as follows:
The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable – namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitable acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man.
To read Darwin is to wonder at his brilliance. He was well aware of the dual nature of human morality long before Herbert Spencer undertook a systematic study of the phenomena, or Sir Arthur Keith published his theory of in-groups and out-groups:
But these feelings and services (altruistic behavior, ed.) are by no means extended to all the individuals of the same species, only to those of the same association.
He exposed the imbecility of the notion that natural selection “tracks” some imaginary objective moral law in a few sentences:
It may be well first to premise that I do not wish to maintain that any strictly social animal, if its intellectual faculties were to become as active and as highly developed as in man, would acquire exactly the same moral sense as ours. In the same manner as various animals have some sense of beauty, though they admire widely different objects, so they might have a sense of right and wrong, though led by it to follow widely different lines of conduct. If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering.
It is a tribute to the tremendous power of the evolved moral sense described by Darwin that it spawns a powerful illusion that Good and Evil are real things, that somehow exist independently of what anyone’s mere opinion of them happens to be. The illusion has been so powerful that even his clear and direct explanation of why it isn’t real was powerless to dispel it. Only one philosopher of note, Edvard Westermarck, proved capable of grasping the full import of what Darwin had written. Today one can complete an undergraduate degree in philosophy without ever seeing his name mentioned, even as a footnote, in the textbooks and anthologies.
We live in a world full of others of our kind, all of whom are chasing this illusion. They feel they “ought” to do things because they are good, noble, just, and moral. Using their big brains, they come up with all sorts of fanciful whims about what these things are that they “ought” to do. The reasons they use to arrive at these notions may be as complex as you please, but if you follow the chain of reasons to the end, you will always find they lead back to emotions. Those emotions spawn the illusion of the Good, and they exist by virtue of natural selection.
Do you feel a powerful impulse to join a Black Lives Matter demonstration? You are motivated by emotions that evolved eons ago. Do you imagine that you can serve the Good by pulling down statues? You are motivated by emotions that evolved eons ago. Do you think that the people who are doing these things are Evil, and should be destroyed? You are motivated by emotions that evolved eons ago. Do you think we need a revolution or a civil war to insure the victory of the Good. You are motivated by emotions that evolved eons ago. Have you considered the fact that the panacea you imagine will result from a successful revolution or civil war will inevitably be just as “unnatural” for our species as the system it replaces? We are simply not adapted to live in the massive societies we are forced to live in today if we want to survive, no matter how cleverly they are organized. The best we can hope for is that they be so structured as to minimize the inconvenience of living in them.
As for the emotions referred to above, we may find it useful to keep in mind the fact that they exist because they happened to motivate behaviors that increased the odds that the responsible genes would survive in an environment populated by small, widely dispersed groups of hunter-gatherers. Today, in a radically different environment, those same emotions still motivate our behavior. However, the odds that this will have the same effect now as they did then in promoting gene survival are vanishingly small.
What are the implications of all this at the level of the individual? For starters, it is neither Good nor Evil to rush around blindly responding to emotions by pulling down statues, joining demonstrations, organizing revolutions, or joining in civil wars. The obvious reason for this is that Good and Evil are terms for categories that simply don’t exist. They are imagined to exist. I merely suggest that individuals may want to stand back for a moment and consider whether, in their frantic efforts to promote the Good, they are accomplishing anything remotely connected to the reasons they imagine such a thing as the Good exists to begin with. The illusion of Good exists because it once promoted survival. As they pursue this mirage, individuals may want to consider whether their behavior will have a similar result today.
It is up to individuals to choose what their goals in life will be. No God or objective moral law can make the choice for them, because these things don’t exist. Supposing you’ve read Darwin, and understand that the sole reason for the existence of the emotions that motivate your behavior is the fact that, once upon a time, long, long ago, they happened to increase the odds that the genes you carry would survive. You can still choose to respond to those emotions in ways that make you happy, or in ways that make you feel good and noble, even if your behavior doesn’t improve the odds that you will survive, and may actually be suicidal. With a little effort, you may even still be able to delude yourself into believing that you really are fighting for the Good. Realizing that you are a link in a chain of living creatures that has existed unbroken for upwards of two billion years, you can make a conscious decision to be the final link. You can go through life imagining that you are as noble as Don Quixote, and then die, fully aware that you represent a biological dead end. None of these choices would be immoral. All I can say about them is that I don’t personally find them attractive.
I happen to have different goals. My goals are personal survival, and beyond that the continued survival of my species, and its continued evolution into forms that will promote the survival of biological life in general. To reach these goals, I realize it will occasionally be necessary to second guess my emotions, and to choose to act against the way they incline me to act. I have no basis for claiming that my goals are better than the goal of living a happy life, or of devoting my life to fighting on behalf of the illusion of Good. All I can say is that they are my goals, which I have chosen because they happen to be in harmony with the reasons I exist to begin with. Darwin explained those reasons to us. Perhaps it’s time to start listening to him. |
Visitors who walk across the footbridge from the Visitor Center to the James Fort site can easily spot the life teaming below in the Pitch and Tar Swamp. The numerous turtle species active on the island include snapping turtles, box turtles, painted turtles, spotted turtles, sliders, terrapin, and striped mud turtles. During the early years of the colony, turtles were a common part of the colonists’ diet. Most of the aforementioned turtle species have been found alongside other processed animal remains in the archaeological excavations. Some of these turtle species, such as the mud turtles, were likely consumed out of sheer desperation — their glands omit an awful smelling secretion when threatened! Although not common in the waters around Jamestown, the colonists also ate sea turtles which have also been found in the archaeological collection. These sea turtles may have been gathered in the waters around Bermuda by the survivors of the Sea Venture shipwreck or could have been caught in the Chesapeake Bay. |
Marooned Off Vesta was written in 1938 by Isaac Asimov when he was 18 years old. It was one of the first science fiction stories that I read as a kid back in the ’50s. It deals with three astronauts shipwrecked in orbit around the asteroid and how they use their limited resources to save themselves.
This video put together from images taken by the Dawn spacecraft shows what it might be like to be marooned off Vesta.
Video Credit: NASA, DLR |
In northwestern China lies the mostly rural, predominantly Muslim province of Xinjiang. Over ten years ago the Uyghur community, a largely Muslim Turkic ethnic minority, was at the epicenter of a resurgent, violent, separatist movement. A spate of bombings, shootings, and even large-scale knife attacks devastated the region for years, often leading to destructive riots. In response, the Chinese national authorities launched an aggressive counterinsurgency and pacification campaign.
Approximately the size of Alaska, Xinjiang is the largest province in China. Home to over twenty-three million people, Xinjiang is one of China’s several autonomous regions, granting it significantly more administrative and legislative authority over its own affairs than other Chinese provinces. The Chinese government felt that combating terrorist groups in an area of that size with probable ties to international groups like al-Qaeda, in a region with over a century of historically popular separatist agitation, demanded a multi-tiered, coordinated, and militarized solution.
Their solution has involved extensive human rights abuses, as well as the development of the most sophisticated and intrusive surveillance tools ever developed.
That should worry us.
OCCUPATION AND SURVEILLANCE
Today the political violence has largely stopped in Xinjiang. The People’s Liberation Army maintains a large presence there, police checkpoints are everywhere, and Beijing says that the Xinjiang economy is booming as construction cranes loom over every city in the province. The Uyghurs, meanwhile, are center stage in what many are calling a 21st-century Orwellian police state created in Xinjiang by the Chinese Communist Party.
[Xinjiang residents] are stopped by police at regular checkpoints where they are searched, their fingerprints and photographs taken, and biometric data, including DNA, gathered and added to government profiles.
Beginning in 2014, mass detentions of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people have been reported in the region. Xinjiang Muslims, especially the Uyghurs, have been placed into what the Chinese government refers to as “vocational education centers.” Journalists and governments outside of China regularly call them internment or concentration camps.
The majority of the people detained in these camps have never been, and likely never will be, charged with a crime. Reasons for their placement include: travel to or contact with people from countries like Turkey, that the Chinese government deems dangerous or suspicious; going to mosques; or sending or receiving Islam-related text messages. This has led many observers to suggest that China is punishing Uyghurs simply for being observing Muslims and spreading the practice across the country.
Chinese officials state bluntly that every measure they have taken in Xinjiang is aimed at reducing extremist and separatist ideology. They point out that there has not been a single terrorist attack in three years and credit the camps’ teaching of Mandarin, Chinese laws and customs, and vocational skills with the stability currently enjoyed by the province. According to the government, the camps are boarding schools where people voluntarily check themselves in-and-out, learning valuable cultural and job-training skills.
Critics point to the secrecy surrounding camp conditions and the government’s refusal to even confirm the number or location of the camps as evidence that they are perpetrating human rights abuses. Reports that detainees are forced to pledge fealty to the Chinese Communist Party, renounce Islam, and punished for speaking their own language also strongly suggest that China’s actions in Xinjiang are not to be trusted. Former camp residents who have since fled the country speak of the camps as prisons, where they were shackled, tortured, and interrogated, and in which suicide was common.
Facial recognition software is being perfected in Xinjiang and slowly expanded into other cities and provinces around the country. The tracking app has already been introduced to various cities, including Shanghai, where residents are reporting that it is not only mandatory, but residents need to pay for it.
Conditions outside of the camps are also described as repressive and discriminatory against the Uyghurs. Since 2017, it has been illegal for men to wear long beards and for women to wear veils in public in Xinjiang. The children of camp detainees are often forced to live in state-run orphanages, where they are subject to similar indoctrination practices. Other families report being forced to accept Communist Party members into their homes where they are monitored for signs of extremist behavior, such as observing Muslim holy days and not drinking alcohol. Traditional Islamic names like Mohammed are prohibited.
Mosques around the region have been destroyed. Halal grocers have been forced to shut down. Xinjiang residents are closely observed by the most sophisticated and intrusive surveillance network on the planet. They are stopped by police at regular checkpoints where they are searched (including their cell phones, which must be installed with software and tracks movements as well as monitors for 73,000 pieces of troublesome content such as passages from the Quran and pictures of the Dalai Lama), their fingerprints and photographs taken, and biometric data, including DNA, gathered and added to government profiles.
Facial recognition software is being perfected in Xinjiang and slowly expanded into other cities and provinces around the country. The tracking app has already been introduced to various cities, including Shanghai, where residents are reporting that it is not only mandatory, but residents need to pay for it. If they can’t afford it, they pay by watching ads in apartment elevators.
Beijing insists they are fighting terrorism. That their methods are increasingly voluntary and unobtrusive. They point to dozens of Muslim-majority nations that are openly defending China’s human rights record in Xinjiang. Technology is perfecting the ability of Chinese citizens to live in harmony with each other, under the Communist Party, first in Xinjiang, then in the rest of China.
A GLOBAL PROBLEM, NOT JUST A CHINA PROBLEM
The global marketplace has traded in bad ideas as often as good ideas; we regularly share our horrors as freely as we do our hopes. The calculated evils of the Holocaust didn’t spring fully-formed in the minds of Hitler and Goebbels and Eichmann; the very phrase concentration camp comes from the British camps set up during the Boer Wars. The Nazis studied not only the historical lessons of America’s organized removal of Native Americans but the then-contemporary segregation and miscegenation laws of Jim Crow. What the Chinese implement in Xinjiang and beyond will be copied by governments and corporations all over the world—even in the ‘free and democratic’ west. This is not only because the West has been helping China watch and control the behavior of its citizens for years, but because much of what the Chinese have been doing they learned from the West in the first place.
The global marketplace has traded in bad ideas as often as it has good ideas; we regularly share our horrors as freely as we do our hopes. The calculated evils of the Holocaust didn’t spring fully-formed in the minds of Hitler and Goebbels and Eichmann.
A lesser-known consequence of globalization is that countries and companies share their technology, their data, and their strategies with each other, even for vastly different objectives. American companies like Google and IBM have been roundly criticized for helping to create and expand China’s modern surveillance state. Even companies that would seem to have no interest in state censorship or surveillance are key players. Recently, U.S. game developer Riot Games was contracted to help enforce the Chinese government’s monitoring and control over gamers in that country.
The tangled web of corporate ownership makes it difficult to know who owns what technology. Companies like Disney and Amazon are comprised of dozens of smaller (a relative term at this level) companies that provide services seemingly in tension with the interests of the parent company. What does a grocery store like Whole Foods have to do with Internet shopping on Amazon?
Chinese software and hardware companies are even more involved in the global manufacturing, data collection, and development industries. And just as American companies have discreetly helped build China’s Great Firewall, Chinese firms have covertly purchased systems with direct control over millions of Americans’ personal data. This is what modern globalization looks like: an invisible web of connected industries operating in ways the public has no knowledge or control over.
China’s unprecedentedly huge market and state control over its technology firms allow them to dictate what the Internet, digital freedom, and data privacy look like in those regions. Almost 100 countries around the globe have imported some type of surveillance or censorship technology from the People’s Republic of China, including most of Europe and the U.S.
China’s market size and state control have effectively made the Chinese public history’s largest testing ground for surveillance regimes. The products they export to foreign governments include facial recognition technology, smart national identity cards, and intelligent databases.
Maya Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, says that “[i]n the U.S., the use of credit scores, predictive policing and bail-related ‘risk assessment’ software, and other tools relying on problematic algorithms already marginalize or pose rights risks to poor people and minority communities.” The Chinese government’s doublespeak and obfuscations surrounding its treatment of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang may suddenly seem much closer in the context of these developing ‘technospheres.’
But as Wang points out, the West doesn’t need to expressly allow the importation of technologies and practices specifically designed to control and restrict individual behavior from the Chinese technosphere in order to imperil democratic freedoms. The West has been doing it to themselves with alarming efficiency for years. Westerners, especially the Americans and the British, already—or should—have legitimate concerns over direct and indirect interference by data collection and social media companies (but I repeat myself) in their elections.
The deliberate use of Big Data technology for directed social engineering and political control shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. A powerful central government is no longer necessary to subtly or overtly crush individual freedoms.
Freedom and TV-loving westerners gape in entertained horror as popular shows like Netflix’s Black Mirror presciently display, in a more familiar context, the Social Credit System that China is rolling out. Social Credit rates citizens and businesses on a broad range of behaviors including what they buy and from whom, how they advertise and consume advertising, and how patriotic or harmonious their online and offline speech and behavior is. Low scores could mean being barred from buying train and plane tickets, prohibitions on employment, and obstacles in obtaining an education for their children. Businesses may be prevented from receiving government contracts or advertising in certain markets, and forced to display their low scores so consumers can know to avoid doing business with them at all.
Earlier this year, New York began allowing life insurance companies to consider a person’s social media content when calculating premiums. A Canadian software company called PatronScan is building an international database of ‘problem customers’ by offering an integrated customer management system to bars, clubs, and restaurants in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia. What defines a ‘problem customer’ is solely up to the individual PatronScan client; customers have little ability to appeal the decision. Some places (like Queensland, Australia) are mandating such systems, and PatronScan and similar businesses are lobbying states and municipalities to make such a system compulsory.
Over 400 city police forces across the U.S. have partnered with the doorbell-camera company Ring, owned by Amazon, to share video footage from homeowners’ cameras. New York City is proposing the installation of RFID chips into government-issued IDs, not only exposing untold reams of new types of personal data to everyone from advertisers and businesses but also potentially enabling police to track anyone. The U.S. and E.U. don’t have to build Xinjiang-style concentration camps in order to use the lessons China learns on its own citizens.
The deliberate use of Big Data technology for directed social engineering and political control shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. A powerful central government is no longer necessary to subtly or overtly crush individual freedoms. Chinese technology isn’t a problem anymore than Chinese companies are, in the 21st-century borders are porous and easily penetrated by technology developed anywhere on the planet. Data is provided freely by eager consumers and then used by unaccountable companies and governments in increasingly inventive and sinister ways.
China watches and learns from the West, just as the West watches and learns from China. |
There is a hazard of putting students off studying newspapers if content articles are used very similar as course books, with tiresome comprehension activities. If present in a much more inspiring way, newspapers might help students to build up not just studying skills but in addition writing, grammar, vocabulary and speaking skills. Listed below are a few recommendations and activities that individuals believe might help.
- Encourage students to find out newspapers outdoors the classroom, explaining that ongoing studying can help them to articulate/discuss ideas more fluently, furthermore to determine and understand an entire volume of texts.
- Use different newspapers to fit your students’ tastes. If you’re teaching in a area where British-language newspapers are created for your residents, this could include articles and topics of particular interest and relevance for that students.
- You don’t need to possess a powerful way to obtain newspapers within the classroom. Most newspapers offer an online version, to print off articles, e.g. internet.guard.company.united kingdom/ or internet.bbc.co.united kingdom/worldservice/
- Get hold of your students about studying and idea of British texts. It may be useful to discuss methods for studying. For instance, How frequently would they use a dictionary? Would they take notes, or jot lower new vocabulary? Would they skim read to get a general concept of a text?
- Guess the headline
Eliminate numerous headlines and from each one of these remove an incredible word (e.g. Missing Painting Found In ________ ). Stick the incomplete headlines on certificates, photocopy and distribute to groups of three-4 students. Ask each team to produce two possible solutions for every headline: probably most likely probably the most likely word along with the funniest word. Collect all of the responses and offer each team an area for virtually any correct answer, along with the funniest solutions. Get everybody involved by holding a election for the funniest / most original answer for every headline.
- Guess the data
Choose a fascinating newspaper article, preferably one which involves an incredible / unusual story. Choose eight keywords and key phrases inside the article and write them across the board. Ask students to operate in groups of three-4 to build up an account including these words. When they’ve finished, read out / tell them regarding the original article. Get students to find out aloud their unique versions – this might produce lots of laughs!
- Newspaper lies
Ask students to select a brief item of reports and to summarise it having a partner / team, altering a few in the details. Partners need to guess which within the details are true and that have been altered.
- Wall quiz
Write all of the questions with assorted choice of newspaper articles, and distribute the quiz to groups of two-3 students. Pin inside the articles over the room and acquire students stroll over the room trying to find that solutions. The winning team may be the first ones to locate all of the solutions. This can be an energetic activity!
To inspire students to find out newspapers in British round the more consistent basis, organise short presentations in the beginning of every class. Ask another student inside the finish of each class to uncover an amazing newspaper article and to summarise it to a new students with the next class, explaining why they chose it. This can lead to interesting discussions about current issues.
- Newspaper treasure search
Using this activity you may need a pile of old newspapers, enough to distribute among groups of four-5 students. Write all of the articles / words / pictures the scholars need to get, and offer teams a duplicate within the list. Tell them to lessen out their ‘treasures’ and glue them near to the appropriate word within the list (or perhaps be aware in the page number). Possible list:
- Employment advert
- The great factor
- Some not too great
- Mention of a famous political figure
- News of the star
- Weather forecast
- News of the sport
- Name of the united states
- Favourite news item
It is really an easy activity so that you can students to summarise articles. Using this activity you need to use tabloid newspapers or articles involving some scandal, possibly about celebrities. Educate students helpful phrases for chatting or gossiping, e.g. ‘Have you heard about…?’, ‘Did you realize that…?’, ‘Guess what?’ etc. Use appropriate gestures and intonation. Ask students to choose articles in the choice, underline or jot lower important parts need to know , and report it having a friend, as if acquiring an informal chat. They might review the category, contacting each individual regarding news article. You might educate students some helpful phrases for responding, e.g. ‘Really? I don’t think it!’, ‘Are you joking?’, ‘How / when achieved it happen?’
- News programmes
A great team activity for studying and speaking practice. Put students into small teams and offer them a couple of recent newspapers. Tell them that they may interact to produce a news programme, such as the headlines, special reports, interviews, possibly some footage within the story (if students like acting!), most likely the weather forecast. Their programme must be according to news products inside the papers, and everybody must participate in ways. If you possess equipment, you might like to film the programmes, or even not, each team could digital rebel their programme to all or any of people other class. |
What is most impressive about the curated collection of material reuse architecture that Bahamón and Sanjinés found is the creativity. Peach pits are used as flooring, tire treads are used as roofing material, and plastic water tanks are used as light fixtures. The designers of these projects worked closely with the materials and created beautiful, organic buildings that certainly don’t look trashy, even if they are made from waste.
Now, this isn’t your typical architecture look-book with huge glossy photos — this is more of an idea book, full of diagrams, construction photos, and info on reclaiming processes, along with great photos of the final product. You’ll recognize a couple of the more famous material reuse projects like the Big Dig House or the Heineken Bottle that can be used as a building material, but for the most part the projects are relatively unknown and totally beautiful. We had a chance to speak with Alejandro Bahamón about his new book to get a little more insight into material reuse in architecture.
Inhabitat: What originally inspired you to write an architecture book about utilizing waste as a construction material?
Alejandro: We originally started researching recycling in architecture, and we realized that the reuse of structures goes back a very long time; roman structures converted into churches and then converted into libraries and so on. So we wanted to look for a new perspective in this field and that is how we came across some projects that reused materials for their construction. We decided to narrow down our research and focus on this topic.
Inhabitat: What are the main challenges associated with reusing waste?
Alejandro: Probably the most important challenge when recycling is to keep in mind that reusing the materials should not waste more energy (water for washing, transportation, heating, etc.) than using a new material. Another challenge would be to know as much as possible the properties of the materials in order to improve their functionality in their new use; this is a concept that some architects and designers call “super-use”.
Inhabitat: Do you think reusing materials is more economical than new materials or does it just depend on the project?
Alejandro: It definitely depends on the project. In some cases like Millegomme Cascoland in Cape Town, South Africa, the material was just there, the process was very simple and the costs in general were just a few hours of the community work. While in other cases, like the Pittsburgh Glass Center, the recycling of glass was probably more expensive than using new materials but the concept itself of the project asked for this recycling involved in the making.
Inhabitat: What was the most innovative material reuse you came across while writing the book?
Alejandro: More than innovative materials, we were impressed by innovating ideas of how to reuse. We are always surrounded by materials as “waste” but not all of us have the talent to see a new life in them. The floors made from Peach Pips in South Africa or the Penumbra Installation made of broken umbrellas is a perfect example of this.
Inhabitat: What materials are out there that are “no-brainers,” and should be used all the time?
Alejandro: Pallets are definitely one of the most basic, versatile and easy to reuse structures. The fact that they are used to ship food and medical supplies to emergency situations (earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.) makes them an even more obvious construction material.
Inhabitat: Shipping containers are one of the most well-known reuse materials available for construction. What do you think about their use, and how practical do you really think they are?
Alejandro:Containers have been reused for many years precisely for their optimal properties – they are transportable, stackable, easy to assemble and the container itself already fulfills the principle of an architectural structure. The only big issue about containers is isolation.
Inhabitat: Besides saving material from the landfill, what are some of the other benefits of reusing materials instead of new?
Alejandro: Besides the fact that reusing promotes creativity, reused materials have a unique character that bring a special soul to the projects. The history of each material, their shapes and textures offer inimitable qualities to each project.
Inhabitat: If you were going to build a house for yourself, what materials would you use?
Alejandro: It depends on the site we will build that house. If it was a rooftop in Barcelona, we would use one of the thousands of containers from the port; if we were building a house in a Caribbean island we would use PET bottles. The most important thing that we have learned about recycling is to be aware of the surrounding environment and what it can provides us with.
+ Rematerial: From Waste to Architecture
Photo Credits: From Rematerial: From Waste to Architecture. Copyright (c) 2010. With permission of the publisher, W.W Norton & Company, Inc. |
Miners Memorial Park in Diamondville, Wyoming.
A nice park right off the main road in Diamondville.
Miners Memorial Park was built totally by donations and volunteer labor. It was established to honor the coal miners, both men and women, of south Lincoln County, past, present, and future, who have created a unique culture in our country, many of them losing their lives in the mines. On display in the park is Diamondville’s only memorial statue. The park was dedicated on June 1, 1990 with Wyoming’s Governor, Mike Sullivan, and the United Mine Workers of America President, Cecil Roberts, cutting the ribbon. The dedication coincided with the 100th year commemorations for both Wyoming and the UMWA.
WHEREAS, in 1868 coal was discovered on the hillside, across the Hams Fork River, from the present site of the Town of Diamondville; and WHEREAS, Diamondville’s name was derived from the quality of the coal mined here, as it seemed to resemble black diamonds and was of a superior grade; and WHEREAS, the Miners Memorial Park was built to honor the coal miners of South Lincoln County; past, present and future; the men and women who created a unique way of life in our country; the many who gave their lives in the mines.
NOW THEREFORE, I, MIKE SULLIVAN, Governor of the State of Wyoming, do hereby proclaim June 1, 1990, to be “DEDICATION OF MINERS MEMORIAL PARK” in Diamondville, Wyoming. |
2007-6-1 · Thermodynamics shows that work and efficiency of a steam generator will improve with increased pressure. Let's increase the steam pressure to 2,000 psia from Example 2,
The convection section is designed to preheat the softened feed water, and the radiant section further heats the steam pipe for generating steam. A steam generator produces 60 to 80% quality steam, depending on the reservoir requirements. Higher-quality steam can be generated if good-quality water and fuel gas are used.
2018-8-5 · boiler is typically manufactured to low pressure steam or hot water applications. The firebox boiler is a compact, economical unit and serves as a good fit for seasonal use and when efficiency is not the driving factor. Sizes range from 12 to 337 horsepower. Commercial Watertube Boilers
In addition to analysis of the measured tube thicknesses and the failure statistics data, computational fluid dynamic (CFD) methods are used to simulate flow distribution inside and outside of the tubes in one header of the low pressure circuit of the plant steam generator.
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2016-9-7 · A steam turbine is driven with high pressure steam produced by . a boiler or heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). Unlike gas turbines or microturbines, steam turbines do not directly consume fuel. Rather, the fuel driving the process is the fired boiler or plant equipment that produces heat for the HRSG (e.g., a gas turbine). Table 1.
The overall coal plant efficiency ranges from 35 % to 48 %. The value varies with technology, material, parameters (Temp., Pressure) used . 1. Most of the large power plants operate at steam pressures of 170 bar and 570 °C Super-heat, and 570 ° C
It would seem to be a good idea to use the higher steam pressure, until we look at what we lose when using this higher steam pressure. We lose some temperature control and flash steam. By the way, when selecting the heat exchanger, we normally assume a 50% pressure drop through the steam
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Composite boilers are often used in conjunction with Diesel machinery, since if the exhaust gas from the engine is low in temperature due to slow running of the engine and reduced power output; the pressure of the steam can be maintained by means of an oil fired furnace.
2017-2-6 · treated hot water is used for heating a steam generator. A pplications of pure or clean steam are found in the food and the cosmetic production industries, for sterilisation or direct steam input, where the demands on steam quality are very high. > The TLV steam generator features a crevice-free design with reliable production and output of
During periods of low steam demand, or when all the use points require pressure-reducing stations, boilers are often operated at substantially less than design pressure. While operating at lower pressure can, in some boilers, provide slightly higher energy efficiency, low-pressure operation also reduces steam quality.
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2019-10-27 · Normally, the makeup is of good quality (e.g., deionized or sodium zeolite softened water). Chemical treatment consists of sodium sulfite (to scavenge the oxygen), pH adjustment, and a synthetic polymer dispersant to control possible iron deposition. The major problem in low-pressure heating systems is corrosion caused by dissolved oxygen and
2011-9-10 · Steam Quality Testing Hints and tips - Steam Quality Testing Hints and tips de-aerators atomise water to present a large surface area and the resulting aerosol is heated with a contra flow of low pressure steam. The steam heats
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2019-10-27 · How to Validate an Autoclave: Steam Quality Testing. The quality of the steam feeding an autoclave is an important factor in steam sterilization. Like time, temperature, and pressure, steam is a critical variable in the success and repeatability of the sterilization process. As such, steam quality should be part of the validation of any steam
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Koon Yew Yin 16 Aug 2020
As soon as the coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan in January, the Chinese Government immediately lockdown the city and quickly took all the necessary action to stop the spread of the virus.
Until a couple weeks ago, Trump did not believe in wearing a face mask. He called it Kongflu and Chinese flu. Currently US has 5.53 million Covid 19 cases, 2.9 million recovered and 172,606 deaths. Studies shows the Covid 19 recovered patients will continue to have ill health. Unfortunately, the number of Covid 19 cases in the US will continue to spike for a long time. Many scientists predicted it will not be under control for at least 1 or more years, despite a few Vaccine are under phase 3 testing.
President Xi Jinping sees an opportunity to advance Chinese interests while the US is preoccupied with the fallout of COVID-19. China’s bid to become the world’s economic superpower has been a long time coming.
Following the economic stagnation and isolationism of Chairman Mao’s leadership fifty years ago, China has developed a sophisticated high-tech economy that is the envy of many in the Western world. A key part of this was a massive infrastructure drive: China owns more high-speed rail than the rest of the world put together, and has the busiest, largest ports and container storages on the planet. Middle-class growth is also tangible with home ownership on the rise.
Chinese economy recovers ahead of other countries
The economic ramifications of lockdown are clear even to the layman. Fiscal packages and bailouts have been the most common ways Western countries have responded to the crisis, while, China’s strict reaction to the pandemic, which has succeeded in controlling the spread of the virus, lies in its ability to firmly curtail people’s freedoms and, as a result, the economy. Its centralised government has a capacity that extends beyond most western democracies, enabling it to act swiftly and enforce measures well. It has capitalised on both.
US recession inevitable
Since March, 33 million people have lost their jobs in America, dwarfing the unemployment fallout the coronavirus has caused in China, which contributes further to China’s advantage. This has compounded the economic gains it has made since the turn of the millennium. These gains were achieved because of huge development in infrastructure and foreign investments, for example, The Belt and Road Initiative (a global development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 involving infrastructure development and investments in nearly 70 countries and international organisations). It is also the largest economy in terms of Purchase Power Parity since 2014, although it still lies behind the USA in GDP, according to World Bank data.
What is happening to the Chinese economy as a result of the Coronavirus is not the shrinking of the economy, nor decreased domestic and external demand. Factories and shops are opening ahead of other countries; as a result, China won’t get hit as hard as the United States. But it’s not just that businesses will have to remain shut for longer. It’s also which businesses. The US economy is far more reliant on the service industry – shopping malls, restaurants, hotels etc. – than China’s, and it is this industry that is more affected by social distancing measures. China is further advantaged by the size of its agricultural sector, which is ten times larger of the USA’s and an area of the economy far less hit by social distancing. The pandemic, therefore, will affect the world’s largest economic power far more than its rising star.
Speculation or logical conclusion?
Due to the 2008 financial crisis and now the coronavirus pandemic, the primacy of the American economy is being threatened by the rocketing economic expansion of China. As of May this year, the American economy has not spiked to the 24% rate of unemployment seen during the Great Depression of the 1930s, but the figure it is currently at – around 14% as reported by the Guardian – is likely to increase. Less than half of all working age Americans are estimated to earn a wage in May 2020, in an economy, according to the Business Insider, where consumption contributes to nearly 70% of GDP. Compare this with the Chinese unemployment figure of just 5.9%, and it becomes clear that its recovery is several steps ahead. Chinese construction, oil refinement and power plant activity have all begun to normalise, and on top of this, China was already on the way to recovering from the brief trade war with the US which ended in a bilateral trade deal that leaves China in a good position, and could precipitate the US redirecting protectionist policies towards Europe. It is for these reasons that China could very soon take the top spot as the world’s largest economy – not least because of this pandemic. |
Have you ever wondered why some people develop crooked teeth?
Do you think that it is dad’s sized teeth in mum’s sized mouth or that we are just born this way. Why is it that some people have almost no chin and others have pronounced chins?
The mouth and face is genetically programmed to develop in an optimal and balanced way to give us the best form and function. If the genetic program is allowed to develop to its full potential, the jaws and teeth will usually end up in a straight and uncrowded manner.
However sometimes factors like breathing through the mouth will interfere with this genetic blueprint and the result is the under growth of the jaws. Mouth breathing caused by habit, blocked nose, large tonsils and or adenoids forces the tongue to be displaced away from the roof of the mouth. The tongue is a powerful force in the mouth that will push the top jaw forward and to the sides to make space for it, due to the around 2000 times we swallow a day. However abnormal breathing and swallowing will not allow for this force to be expressed. Normal breathing is completely through the nose day and night and normal swallow is with the tip of the tongue just to the top and back of the upper front teeth in the roof of the mouth curling back and up from there.
An abnormal tongue position forces the lower jaw down and towards the back and could result in further problems like snoring, grinding of teeth and sleep disturbances (sleep apnoea, sleep hypoxia or sleep hypopnoea). Think of this like the need for the lower jaw to be lifted and pulled forward when mouth-to-mouth breathing is initiated in order to get the air past the neck and into the lungs.
There is however good news as these abnormal forces can to a large extend be reversed with exercises and appliance therapy and even better news is that there are appliances available that can remind nature how the jaws are supposed to develop. With children if intervention happens at the right time we may only need fixed braces for a short period after the appliance therapy and even in some cases not need them at all. In adults, the appliance therapy will however lead to the placement of fixed braces after the therapy. The treatment however is not primarily aimed at the very important aesthetics but at the balanced development of the jaws and we like to call it Forward Dental Orthopaedics rather than Orthodontics.
Forward Dental Orthopaedics look at improving the position of the jaws, that will have a beneficial effect on the bite, teeth position, jaw joints and airways as well as the smile. The last procedure we want to do in Dental Orthopaedics is the extraction of teeth as this will result in a still smaller space for the tongue to fit into and have further negative effects on all these areas we seek to improve.
In the past, it was widely accepted that the only way to fix unbalanced jaw positions would require surgery. However, we employ orthopaedic devices. Particularly, the Anterior Guided Growth Appliance (AGGA) partnered with Controlled Arch orthodontics gradually
restructures the top jaw to allow for better function.
A clinical assessment will allow for a treatment plan and the following is just a guide as to some of the treatment that may need to be applied and is general in nature.
This lovely patient, a medical professional, has had longstanding jaw clicking and jaw joint and facial pain. She also suffered with on average 4 migraines a month. The assessment revealed that this patients symptoms could be attributed to mid face deficiency that has resulted in her lower jaw being forced back compacting her jaw joints causing the pain and clicking.
The treatment option decided upon was upper jaw development and lower jaw de-compaction to allow for better movement and better breathing. We did 10 months of jaw development and this patients jaw has stop clicking and there is no jaw joint pain. Also her migraine frequency has decreased significantly to 1 migraine in 8 months. She also reports better sleeping as her breathing has improved and she feels less pain.
Forward Dental Orthopaedics at Lake View Dental
If you have any questions about Forward Dental Orthopaedics or improving the position of your jaw, don’t hesitate to contact us at Lake View Dental. |
Archaeology and Education
Module code: AR7533
This module examines the use of archaeology in education in the broadest sense, from formal schools education through to public education strategies of state institutions, non-governmental organisations, and charities, etc., as well as the role, use, and portrayal of archaeology in the arts and media. By reflecting upon the aims and goals of archaeology as an academic discipline and a profession, the objective of this module is to critically engage with debates over the value of archaeology to contemporary society.
You will explore issues concerning the value of archaeology in a broad range of educational 'contexts' including schools and public education, in both formal and informal settings. You will access and critique educational resources for teaching archaeology in various contexts, construct educational materials and critically analyse educational strategies employed by archaeologists, educators, artists, and the media to influence our perceptions of the past.
- Written assignment, 3,000 words (40%)
- Essay, 5,000 words (60%) |
The truth is out there: Scientists unlock X-Files DNA mystery
Scientists have unlocked a crucial part of the mystery as to how our DNA can replicate and repair itself – something which is essential for all life forms. The new research has revealed how branched DNA molecules are removed from the iconic double-helical structure -a process which scientists have been looking to unlock for over 20 years.
“Branched DNA features in several episodes of the X-Files as Agent Scully suspects aliens inserted it in her blood,” Jon Sayers lead author of the study, said.
“In reality, far from being of alien origin, branched DNA is formed every day in our bodies. It happens every time our cells divide. These branches are essential intermediates formed during the process of copying our DNA.”
The interdisciplinary team from the University’s Departments of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease, and Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, captured never-before-seen snapshots of the molecular events in incredible detail. They show how Flap EndoNuclease enzymes (FENs) trim branched DNA molecules after cells have divided.
The scientists found the FEN threads the free end of the branch through a hole in the enzyme before sliding along to the trunk where it acts like a pair of molecular secateurs, trimming the branch and restoring the iconic double-helix.
“The FENs analysed in the study are very similar to those used in diagnostic tests for genetic diseases, bacteria and viruses. Understanding how they work will help to engineer better and more reliable tests and tools for laboratory research and hospital diagnostics labs.”
“Because DNA replication is essential for all life forms, understanding how it works at a molecular level provides insight into one of the most basic cellular processes common to all life,” Professor Sayers said.
The team made the discovery using the Diamond Light Source – the UK’s synchrotron which works like a giant microscope harnessing the power of electrons to produce bright X-ray light which scientists can use to study anything from fossils and jet engines to viruses and vaccines.
“The enzymes that carry out this process are sometimes involved in cancer. They have been linked to tumour progression and mutation, so this discovery could pave the way for better diagnostics or new drugs.”
“Knowing how these enzymes work could aid development of new antimicrobial drugs that may one day be used to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria.”
“We can now see the details of how cells have evolved to tidy up after themselves as they copy their DNA, which reduces their risk of harmful mutations,” Dr John Rafferty said.
“This sort of information is fundamental in helping us understand and maybe treat those cells where occasionally things do go wrong.”
AlMalki, F., Flemming, C., Zhang, J., Feng, M., Sedelnikova, S., Ceska, T., Rafferty, J., Sayers, J., & Artymiuk, P. (2016). Direct observation of DNA threading in flap endonuclease complexes Nature Structural & Molecular Biology DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.3241 |
BayesDB, a Bayesian database, lets users query the probable implications of their data as easily as a SQL database lets them query the data itself. Using the built-in Bayesian Query Language (BQL), users with no statistics training can solve basic data science problems, such as detecting predictive relationships between variables, inferring missing values, simulating probable observations, and identifying statistically similar database entries.
BayesDB is suitable for analyzing complex, heterogeneous data tables with up to tens of thousands of rows and hundreds of variables. No preprocessing or parameter adjustment is required, though experts can override BayesDB’s default assumptions when appropriate.
BayesDB’s inferences are based in part on CrossCat, a new, nonparametric Bayesian machine learning method, that automatically estimates the full joint distribution behind arbitrary data tables.
A fascinating read on the Bayes theorem history:
The German codes, produced by Enigma machines with customizable wheel positions that allowed the codes to be changed rapidly, were considered unbreakable, so nobody was working on them. This attracted Alan Turing to the problem, because he liked solitude. He built a machine that could test different code possibilities, but it was slow. The machine might need four days to test all 336 wheel positions on a particular Enigma code. Until more machines could be built, Turing had to find a way for reducing the burden on the machine.
He used a Bayesian system to guess the letters in an Enigma message, and add more clues as they arrived with new data. With this method he could reduce the number of wheel settings to be tested by his machine from 336 to as few as 18. But soon, Turing realized that he couldn’t compare the probabilities of his hunches without a standard unit of measurement. So, he invented the ‘ban’, defined as “about the smallest change in weight of evidence that is directly perceptible to human intuition.” This unit turned out to be very similar to the bit, the measure of information discovered using Bayes’ Theorem while working for Bell Telephone.
If the whole thing is too much for you, at least read the “Bayes at War” section. |
Keeping blood sugar levels within a safe range is key to managing both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. In a new finding that could lead to fewer complications for diabetes patients, Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that changes in the size of mitochondria in a small subset of brain cells play a crucial role in safely maintaining blood sugar levels.
The study is published in the Feb. 9 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism.
“Low blood sugar can be as dangerous as high blood sugar,” said senior author Sabrina Diano, professor in the Departments of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences, Neuroscience, and Comparative Medicine. “We’ve found that changes in the size of mitochondria — small intracellular organelles responsible for energy production — in certain cells in the brain, could be key to maintaining the blood sugar within a safe range.”
“This new finding adds to our understanding of how the body keeps blood sugar levels within a safe range when sugar levels drop, like during fasting, or when they spike after a meal,” Diano added.
Diano and her research team designed the study to help understand how neurons in the brain that regulate appetite affect systemic glucose levels. The team used mouse models in which a specific mitochondrial protein, dynamin-related protein 1 (DRP1), was either missing or present in varying amounts in the subset of brain cells that sense circulating sugar levels.
The researchers found that depending on whether the mouse was hungry or not, mitochondria displayed dynamic changes in size and shape, driven by the DRP1 protein.
“We found that when DRP1 activity in the neurons was missing, these neurons were more sensitive to changes in glucose levels,” said Diano, who is also a member of the Program in Integrative Cell Signaling and Neurobiology of Metabolism and the director of the Reproductive Neuroscience Group at Yale University School of Medicine. “What surprised our research team was that these intracellular changes in this small subset of neurons were specifically important to increase blood sugar levels during a fasting period by activating the so-called counter-regulatory responses to hypoglycemia, in which the brain senses lower glucose levels and sends signals to peripheral organs such as the liver to increase glucose production.”
Diano said the findings suggest that alterations in this mechanism may be critical for the development of hypoglycemia-associated autonomic failure (HAAF), a complication of several diabetes treatments occurring most often in people with type 1 diabetes who must take insulin for survival.
Diano’s research team will now focus on assessing how mitochondrial morphological changes relate to mitochondrial function in this subset of neurons in the development of HAAF.
Other authors on the study include Anna Santoro, Michela Campolo, Chen Liu, Hiromi Sesaki, Rosaria Meli, Zhong-Wu Liu, and Jung Dae Kim.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Featured in this article
- Jung Dae Kim, PhDResearch Scientist |
Difference between revisions of "Candidatus Accumulibacter Phosphatis"
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Order: unclassified Betaproteobacteria
Order: unclassified Betaproteobacteria
Family: Candidatus Accumulibacter
Family: Candidatus Accumulibacter
Revision as of 20:34, 11 May 2015
Kingdom: Bacteria Phylum: Proteobacteria Class: Betaproteobacteria Order: unclassified Betaproteobacteria Family: Candidatus Accumulibacter
Candidatus Accumulibacter phosphatis
NCBI Taxonomy ID: 522306
Description and Significance
Candidatus Accumulibacter phosphatis (A. phosphatis) is ecologically significant because it is used to remove phosphorous from waste water. Waste water effluent can be a major contributor of phosphorous pollution to the environment, causing excess nutrient loading that leads to algal blooms. Traditional methods of phosphorous removal include chemical removal process and enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR). A. phosphatis and other polyphosphate-accumulating organisms (PAO) are key species in the EBPR process. Advantages of operating a waste water treatment plant with EBPR are that it significantly lowers operating costs, reduces sludge production, enables sludge to be reused easier, and eliminates chemical byproducts used in chemical treatment methods (Blackall, 2002). A. phosphatis has been found in 4-18% of plants treating domestic sewage (Fukushima, 2007).
Accumulibacter spp. has as many as eleven lineages so far discovered in full scale waste water treatment plant bioreactors around the world (Peterson, 2008). It is suspected that differences between lineages are due to competitive advantage in different environmental conditions (Peterson, 2008).
The ‘‘A. phosphatis’’ Genome consists of one circular chromosome and three plasmids.
The size of this genome is 5,306,133 base pairs, coding for 4,790 genes. 3.82% of the A. phosphatis genome is unlike all other organisms in relation to both sequence similarity and function.
The A. phosphatis clade IIA str. UW-1 was mapped by the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) in 2004 with an isolate collected from an EBPR wastewater treatment bioreactor in Madison, WI.
Oligonucleotide probes which can help detect DNA and RNA sequences specific to A. phosphatis have been developed. This has allowed for studies of A. phosphatis using fluorescent in situ hybridization and polymerase chain reactions (PCR) (Blackall, 2002).
Cell Structure, Metabolism, and Life Cycle
A. phosphatis is a gram negative, rod shaped organism.
A. phosphatis is a chemoheterotroph and can exist in both aerobic and anaerobic conditions. This organism has an interesting metabolism, adapted for survival in both aerobic and anaerobic environments. It cycles molecules for energy generation or storage depending on the environmental conditions. A. phosphatis is an acetate oxidizer
Anabolic Pathway: Under aerobic conditions A. phosphatis uptakes orthophosphate from the environment and transforms it to polyphosphate, an energy rich phosphate chain. Polyphosphates are stored until conditions change from aerobic to anaerobic. A. phosphatis also stores glycogen in a similar manner to polyphosphate (Zhoua 2009).
Catabolic Pathway: Poly-B-hydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), stored during anaerobic conditions, are reduced to produce energy for growth (Levantesi 2002).
Anabolic Pathway: Under anaerobic conditions A. phosphatis uptakes VFAs and stores the carbon in the cell as PHAs (Levantesi 2002).
Catabolic Pathway: Polyphosphate, stored during aerobic conditions, is reduced to orthophosphate for the purpose of energy generation. The orthophosphate is released into the environment (Pijuan 2003). Another pathway exists through the reduction of glycogen by glycolysis. This process produces ATP and NADH reducing equivalents (Blackall, 2002).
Summary of metabolism for A. phosphatis.
Ecology and Pathogenesis
Industrial Habitat: A. phosphatis inhabits sediment and sludge in waste water treatment facilities. It is seeded in industrial wastewater treatment bioreactors for the purpose of accumulating phosphorous in the EBPR process. The EBPR process involves using bacteria to accumulate phosphorous in their cells so that it can be easily separated from waste water. The bacteria accumulate in a layer of solids in the bottom of the waste water treatment bioreactors called the sludge layer. Once an initial culture of A. phosphatis is successfully developed in aerobic wastewater sludge layers, small amounts of the sludge is put back into the beginning of the system, or mixed with the anaerobic incoming wastewater, in order to start a new culture of phosphate removing microbes. The microbes will reproduce, consume and concentrate phosphorous in their biomass, and accumulate in the aerobic sludge layer. At this point, the process begins again. The use of anaerobic and aerobic tanks is important because of the differences in metabolism depending on the conditions. A. phosphatis stores phosphate in the aerobic stage.
Natural Habitat: A. phosphatis was recently found in estuary and fresh water sediments (Peterson, 2008). Survey of freshwater, terrestrial, and estuary soil samples with PCR indicated presence of Accumulibacter. Additional evidence for the existence of ‘’A. phosphatis’’ in a natural environment is that genetic sequencing of this species in labs on two different continents showed close genetic similarity (Peterson, 2008). Sequence similarities over large distances leads to a high probability that A. phosphatis exists in the space in between the tested locations, allowing for gene transfer. This species has numerous traits that could give it competitive advantage in oligotrophic environments, including accelerated phosphorous and nitrogen uptake (Peterson, 2008).
Biogeochemical Significance: A. phosphatis is a type of polyphosphate accumulating organism (PAO). PAOs are able to accumulate large amounts of phosphorus in the anaerobic zones of waste water treatment sludge. Sludge that was formed with the help of PAOs measures 4-5% phosphorous content by dry weight; this is in contrast to 1.5-2% phosphorous content by dry weight in the absence of PAOs (Blackall, 2002).
Interaction With Other Microbes: A. phosphatis competes for resources with glycogen-accumulating organisms (GAO) because they both thrive on the same carbon source- acetate (Schroeder, 2008). This is undesirable in wastewater treatment processes because GAOs do not provide the favorable phosphate removing processes that PAOs do. Attempts have been made to give A. phosphatis a competitive advantage over GAOs by supplementation of a different carbon source, but no successful results have been yielded so far (Schroeder, 2008). The sludge layers that commonly contain A. phosphatis also have communities of actinobacteria, gammaproteobacteria, and other species of betaproteobacteria (Blackall, 2002).
Blackall L., Crocetti G. Saunders A., and Bond P. "A review and update of the microbiology of enhanced biological phosphorus removal in wastewater treatment plants ". Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. 2002. Volume 81. p. 681-691.
Fukushima T., Uda N., Okamoto M., Onuki M., Satoh H., and Mino T. "Abundance of Candidatus Accumulibacter phosphatis in Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal Activated Sludge Acclimatized with Different Carbon Sources". Microbes and Environments. 2007. Volume 22. p. 346-354.
Levantesi C., Serafim L., Crocetti G., Lemos P., Rossetti S., Blackall L., Reis M., and Tandoi V. "Analysis of the microbial community structure and function of a laboratory scale enhanced biological phosphorus removal reactor". Environmental Microbiology. 2002. Volume 4. p. 559-569.
Peterson B., Warnecke F., Madejska J., McMahon K., Hugenholtz P. "Environmental distribution and population biology of Candidatus Accumulibacter, a primary agent of Biological Phosphorus Removal". Environmental Microbiology. 2008. Volume 10(10). p 2692–2703.
Pijuan M., Saunders M., Guisasola A., Baeza J., Casas C., and Blackall L. "Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal in a Sequencing Batch Reactor Using Propionate as the Sole Carbon Source". Biotechnology and Bioengineering. 2003. Volume 85. p 56-67.
Schroeder S, Ahn J, Seviour RJ.,"Ecophysiology of polyphosphate-accumulating organisms and glycogen-accumulating organisms in a continuously aerated enhanced biological phosphorus removal process." Journal of Applied Microbiology. 2008 Volume 105(5). p 1412-20.
Page authored by Johanna Kinsler and Kevin Koryto, students of Prof. Jay Lennon at Michigan State University. |
Effects of birdwatchers on sandhill crane (Grus canadensis) behavior at spring stopover sites in the San Luis Valley, Colorado
Human recreational activities can disturb wildlife by causing animals to alter feeding patterns, or change feeding locations. Migratory birds in particular can be susceptible to disturbance since they have limited time for resting, feeding and courtship along their migratory routes. Sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) are an iconic and charismatic species that stop in Colorado's San Luis Valley during each spring and fall migration, which has led to an annual spring bird watching festival at the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge. The goal of this research was to understand how birdwatchers drawn ...
(For more, see "View full record.") |
- Scientific Name: Phlomoides pedunculata (Y.Z.Sun) Kamelin & Makhm.
- Ref: Bot. Zhurn. (Moscow & Leningrad) 75:243. 1990
- Synonym: Phlomis pedunculata Y.Z.Sun
- Chinese Common Name: 具梗糙苏 jùgěng cāosū
- Family: Lamiaceae
- Genus: Phlomoides
- Distribution: Thickets, grassy slopes; 1300-3200 m. Sichuan.
- Photo: 07/26/2012, Mt. Emei, Sichuan
Lateral roots fusiform. Rhizome woody. Stems erect, 50-80 cm tall, slender, mostly glabrous, stellate puberulent apically and on nodes. Petiole 1-7 mm; stem leaf blades elliptic to ovate-lanceolate, 7-12.5 × (3-)5-6.5(-8) cm, adaxially simple hairy or stellate hispid and hairs with very long central arms, abaxially very sparsely stellate pubescent, base slightly unequally rounded to shallowly cordate, margin coarsely dentate, apex acuminate. Verticillasters (6-)8-14 (-34)-flowered; floral leaves with petiole less than 1 cm, blade 2-4.5 × 1-3 cm; bracts 2-15 × 1-2(-5) mm, sparsely stellate ciliate, margin pubescent. Pedicel to 2 mm. Calyx tubular, ca. 1.1 × 5.5 mm, densely stellate tomentulose outside; lobes double toothed, spines slightly hooked, 2.5-3 mm; teeth triangular, tufted hairy inside. Corolla white or purplish, ca. 1.9 cm; tube ca. 1.1 cm, glabrous except for pubescent outside of apex back, pilose annulate inside; upper lip obovate, ca. 8 × 7.5 mm, margin denticulate, densely silky villous outside, bearded inside; lower lip ca. 8 × 9 mm, middle lobe obovate ca. 6 × 4 mm; lateral lobes ovate to oblong, ca. 4 mm. Stamens included; filaments hairy, posterior 2 with a hooked basal appendage. Nutlets glabrous. Fl. Jul-Aug, fr. Aug-Oct. (Flora of China)
07/26/2012, Mt. Emei, Sichuan |
The members of flight crew members have a much higher than average risk of getting cancer. This has been revealed in a study done on about 5000 US based flight attendants. After this research, author and researcher Irina Mordukhovich of Harvard TH School says, “The risk of getting flight crew, breast cancer, melanoma cancer and non-melanoma skin cancer in crew members of the flight is much higher than the common people. “At the same time, she points out that the results of this study are surprising because those in business such as flight attendants and flight crew members. Get are their weight is to be more and much less likely to smoke. Explain that 5 thousand 366 flight attendants were included in this study, out of which about 15 percent were diagnosed with cancer.
The members of flight crew members have a much higher than average risk of getting cancer.
Of the female flight crew members included in this study, 3.4 percent were found to have breast cancer while 2.3 percent among the common people were found to have breast cancer. Whereas the rate of Uterine cancer was 0.13 percent among the common people, it has been found to be 0.15 percent in the flight crew. Cervical cancer is 0.70 percent among the common people while 1 percent of flight crew members, colon cancer is 0.27 percent among the common people, 0.47 percent for flight crew members and thyroid cancer is 0.56 percent for the common people while 0.67 percent for flight crew members. Gaya. In addition, the risk of breast cancer was higher in women who never gave birth, as well as women who had 3 or more children. Irina said that not having children is a well known risk factor for breast cancer. The study’s researchers reported that the risk of cancer in flight crew members is higher because flight crew members are regularly exposed to cancer-causing elements. |
1. When transaction costs are positive, buying at a low price in one market and reselling at a higher price in another market
a)will not generate any profit because of transactions costs.
b)will eventually eliminate all of the price differences.
c) will eventually eliminate most, but not necessarily all, of the price differences.
2. The best example of demand-based price discrimination among the following is:
a. A bald person’s haircut costs less than yours.
b. Dry cleaner charges lower price for cleaning men’s cotton shirts than women’s silk blouses.
c. A similar pair of flip-flops costs less at Walmart than at Macy’s.
d. New York Times paper costs $1 and Daily News costs $2.
e. “Early-bird specials” at restaurants.
3. Bubba’s Hula Shack bar and bistro has begun giving customers who can show proof that they arrived at the establishment by public transportation a 10% discount on their total bill. All else equal, customers who arrive by public transportation to take advantage of Bubba’s Hula Shack discount have a_____________________________________________________________________ for the services of the establishment
than customers who drive to the establishment.
A) higher price elasticity of demand C) higher price elasticity of supply
B) lower price elasticity of demand D) lower price elasticity of supply
4. Are grocery store coupons a form of price discrimination? Why or why not?
5. Which is NOT required for a firm to price discriminate successfully?
a. It must have some market power.
b. It must be able to differentiate the buyers into different groups.
c. Its product must be expensive.
d. Consumers unable to resell the product.
6. The Paramount movie theatre has a seating capacity of 270. On any given night, there are 180 people who would potentially attend a movie at the Paramount. There are 80 people who are willing to pay up to $15 to attend a movie at the Paramount, and there are an additional 100 people who are willing to pay up to $5 to attend a movie at the Paramount. The total cost (including movie rental, labor, and rent on the theatre) to the theatre owners of showing a movie at the Paramount is fixed at $800 per night no matter how many people watch the movie. If they must charge the same price to all buyers, what price should the owners of the Paramount charge for movie tickets in order to maximize their profits? (show work)
a) $15 b) $5 c) $4.44 d) $10 e) $8.89
7. In the problem above, suppose all those people who are willing to pay no more than $5 are students. The theatre decides to offer a $10 discount to anyone with a student ID. What will the total profit of the theatre be? (show work)
a) $100 b) $400 c) $900 d) $1200 e) $1700
8. If a firm could practice perfect price discrimination, it would
A) allow resale of its product. C) charge a price based on the quantity of a product bought.
B) charge every buyer a different price. D) use odd pricing.
9. Give your own example of price discrimination.
10. What is the price charged in the two markets? How do you explain the difference?
|Ob ad ad||amity|
11. If the selling price of a firm’s product is $500 and the estimated average cost of producing this product is $400, what is the firm’s markup?
12. Which of the following firms is most likely to use cost-plus pricing?
A) A firm that makes one product.
B) A firm that sells one product and has a sizable research and development budget.
C) A firm that makes several products and has a sizable research and development budget, the cost of which cannot be easily assigned to each product.
D) A firm that makes many products but has a small research and development budget, the cost of which can be easily assigned to the different product lines.
13. Some firms require consumers to pay an initial fee for the right to buy their product and an additional fee for each unit of the product they purchase. This practice is referred to as
A)odd pricing. C) a two-part tariff
B)dual pricing. D) perfect price discrimination.
14. Argue with the following statement. Monopolies overcharge and underproduce. This imposes costs on the society. Therefore all monopoly businesses should be banned by the government. Give 2 arguments in defense of monopolies.
15. Products produced for mass consumption are often criticized as being of poor quality. We know, however, that markets create many assurance mechanisms to help consumers monitor product quality. “Piece of Crap” by Neil Young discusses several of these mechanisms. In reference to the song, what market mechanisms help to alleviate problems arising from the lack of information about the quality of goods? Does Neil Young think these mechanisms work well?
Tried to save the trees Bought a platsic bag The bottom fell outIt was a piece of crap
Saw it on the tube Bought it on the phone Now you’re home alone It’s a piece of crap
I tried to plug in it I tried to turn it on When I got it home It was a piece of crap
Got it from a friend
On him you can depend I found out in the end
It was a piece of crap
I’m hying to save the trees I saw it on TV
They cut the forest down To build a piece of crap
I went back to the store They gave me four more The guy told me at the door
1. The characteristic most closely associated with oligopoly is:
a. easy entry into the industry. c. product standardization.
b. a few large producers. d. no control over price. e. zero profits
2. Which of the following is the poorest example of an oligopoly market?
a. breakfast cereals in the US c. OPEC
b. domestic cars in the US d. bars/night clubs in NYC e. universities in Manhattan
3. OPEC as a cartel will, in comparison to a competitive industry:
a. Produce less output and charge a higher price
b. Produce greater output and charge a higher price
c. Produce greater output and charge a lower price
d. Produce less output and charge a lower price
4. When the player of a game chooses a dominant strategy,
a. it is the best strategy only if other players are cooperative
b. it is always leads to a Nash equilibrium that makes all players equally well off
c. the game can never reach a Nash equilibrium
d. it is the best strategy, regardless of choices made by other players
5. Each cell in the strategic chart above shows (payoff to Firm A, payoff to Firm B) given two different price strategies. Mark each firm’s dominant strategy and answer the following question. Find Nash equilibrium of this game.
6. The incentive to cheat is strong in a cartel because:
a. the marginal revenue is greater than marginal cost at the profit-maximizing price set by the cartel.
b. there is a significant lack of government regulation of cartels, especially those in worldwide production.
c. the costs of production are the same for each firm, but the product demand differs.
d. each firm can increase its output and thus its profits by cutting price.
A)is rampant in perfect competition as all firms charge the same price.
B)reduces market concentration in an industry.
C)among firms is difficult to maintain because it eliminates long run economic profit.
D)is more difficult when there are many firms producing differentiated products in an industry.
8. Boeing an Airbus are considering whether to build a new factory. What is the Nash equilibrium of this game?
Build Don’t Build
|Boeing||Build||(-10, -10)A||(-5, -15)B|
|Don’t build||(-5, 5)c||(10, OP|
Next 3 questions are based on the following table. The table shows the payoff 111011k for Walmart and Target from every combination of pricing strategies for the popular PlayStation 3. At the start of the game each firm charges a low price and each earns a profit of $7,000.
|Target||High price||Low price|
|High price||(10, 10)||(5, 14)|
|Low price||(14, 5)||(7, 7)|
10. Is the current strategy in which each firm charges the low price and earns a profit of $7,000 a Nash equilibrium? If not, why and what is the Nash equilibrium?
11. For each firm, is there a better outcome than the current situation in which each firm charges the low price and earns a profit of $7,000?
12. Suppose Walmart and Target both advertise that they will match the lowest price offered by any competitor. What is the purpose of such a strategy?
13. Suppose pricing PlayStations is a repeated game in which Wal-Mart and Target will be selling the game system in competition over a long period of time. In this case, what is the most likely outcome?
Microeconomics =IMP° Externalities, Public Goods
1. If violent crime rates rise in hot weather, the growth of air conditioning generates
a. A negative externality c. Negative private net benefits
b. A positive externality d. No link to the crime rate e. Public goods
2. Dioxin emission that results from the production of paper is a good example of a negative externality because
A) self-interested paper firms are generally unaware of environmental regulations, and information is costly.
B) self-interested paper producers will not consider the full cost of the dioxin pollution they create.
C) there are fines and taxes for producing too much dioxin.
0) toxic emissions are public goods.
3. If producing plastic toys generates acid rain that damages wildlife habitat in a region downwind from a factory, from a social perspective, the price of toys will bebut the quantity produced will be
a. too low; correct b. too low; too high c. correct; too lowd. too high; too low e. too high; too high
4. Dick owns a dog whose barking annoys Dick’s neighbor Jane. Suppose that the benefit of owning the dog is worth $500 to Dick and that Jane bears a cost of $700 from the barking. A possible private solution to this problem is that
A) Jane pays Dick $450 to get rid of the dog.
B) Jane pays Dick $650 to get rid of the dog.
C) Dick pays Jane $650 for her inconvenience.
D) Dick pays Jane $450 for her inconvenience.
E) There is no private solution that would improve this situation.
5. If a community is assigned property rights over air quality and the environment, a steel mill in the community that generates air pollution:
A) will sue damages and for the right to produce steel.
B) will cease to pollute.
C) can contract to pay the community to allow some level of air pollution.
D) must shut down.
E) will outsource production to a “pollution heaven” country, such as China.
6. Externalities weaken the efficiency of the market system because they:
A) increase prices and restrict competition
B) are a major source of inflation
C) mean that certain essential goods and services do not get produced at all
D) are a major source of unemployment
E) cause certain goods to be overproduced or underproduced relative to socially optimal level
7. When dealing with externalities, the free-market equilibrium can be moved closer to the optimum by:
a. taxing positive externalities and subsidizing negative externalities.
b. taxing negative externalities and subsidizing positive externalities.
c. taxing both positive and negative externalities.
d. subsidizing both positive and negative externalities.
e. None of the above is correct, because government has no corrective policy with regards to externalities.
8. Some policymakers have argue that products like cigarettes, alcohol, and sweetened soda generate negative externalities in consumption. All else equal, if the government decided to impose a tax on soda, the equilibrium quantity of soda would and the equilibrium price of soda would
A) increase; increase B) increase; decrease C) decrease; increase D) decrease; decrease
9. An ice cream cone is
A) excludable and rival in consumption. D) not excludable and not rival in consumption.
B) excludable and not rival in consumption. E) a good breakfast
C) not excludable and rival in consumption.
10. Which of the following is the best example of a public good (nonexcludable and nonrival)?
a. an iPod. b. a bottle of soda. c. clean air. c. an economics lecture. e. a highway.
11. Which one of the following is the LEAST likely to be considered a publiewridiale
a. A golf course b. A national park c. An interstate highway d. Wildlife e. A river
12. The Great Lakes are
a. natural monopolies. b. private goods. c. public goods. d. common resources.
13. Private firms will not provide such goods as flood-control projects, research in basic sciences, space exploration and wildlife preservation because:
A)such projects generate harmful spillover effects
B)marginal benefits invariably fall short of marginal costs in such projects
C)these are major sources of revenue for government
D)there is no way of denying benefits to those who are unwilling to pay
E)these projects do not benefit the society
14. The free-rider problem is that:
A) free education is not free for the tax payers.
B) free public transportation is overcrowded.
C) government supplies goods at no charge to people who could otherwise afford them.
D) people will not voluntarily pay for a good when they can obtain the benefits of the good without paying
E) public goods often create external costs.
15. Why has the value of ivory threatened the extinction of the elephant, whereas the value of beef has enhanced the survival of the cow?
A)Elephants are larger than cows, requiring more economic resources.
B)Cows are a common resource, whereas elephants are owned by governments.
C)Elephants live in Africa, where economic resources are scarce.
D)Elephants are a common resource, whereas cows are privately owned.
16. The Ogallala aquifer is a large underground pool of fresh water under several western states in the United States. Any farmer with land above the aquifer can at present pump water out of it. Which of the following statements about the aquifer is correct?
A)The aquifer is a artificially scarce good which should be left as it is.
B)The aquifer is a private good which must be privately owned to be used efficiently.
C)The aquifer is a public good which must be publicly owned to be used efficiently.
D)The aquifer is a common property resource which will be overused if no one owns it.
.17. Which of the following quotations illustrates the Tragedy of the Commons?
A)A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
B)You can’t always get what you want.
C)Anyone who is not a socialist before he is 30 has no heart; anyone who is still a socialist after he is 30 has no head.
D)What is common to many is taken least care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than for what they possess in common with others.
E)The only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money.
18.Give one example of a positive externality. Suggest a policy that could encourage this activity.
19.Give one example of a negative externality. Suggest a policy that could discourage this activity. |
There are two main OBD systems, OBD1 and OBD2, used in the vehicles found on the roads. There’s a vast difference between the two as they differ in terms of standardization, features, connectivity, and reliability.
OBD1 was the first system introduced. However, it is now at the brink of extinction as almost all new vehicles contain the updated OBD2 system.
We’ll have a look at OBD1 and OBD2 in this OBD1 vs. OBD2 comparison piece:
Table of Contents
- 1 OBD1 vs. OBD2: The Basis
- 2 Is My Car OBD1 Or OBD2?
- 3 OBD1 To OBD2: Excellent Development Of Car Technology
- 4 OBD1 Vs. OBD2 Key Differences Explained
- 5 Should I Take An OBD1 Or OBD2 Scanner For My Car?
- 6 Difference Between OBD1 And OBD2: Comparison Chart
- 7 OBD1 vs OBD2: FAQs
OBD1 vs. OBD2: The Basis
OBD: What Is It?
OBD stands for onboard diagnostics. It refers to a vehicle’s ability to self-diagnose issues and report them. The system consists of built-in sensors that help find engine faults.
OBD1: California Standard
OBD1 was introduced in 1991 and offered a mix of features including reporting and finding engine faults. It can also communicate with the vehicle’s computer systems.
Cars manufactured between 1991-1996 support this platform. OBD1 is used for vehicles to focus on emissions and discharge system. This system was first of its kind. It allowed the car to communicate and give feedback.
The primary function of the OBD1 system was to develop vehicles that were dependable and controlled. It made cars more reliable and durable as it gave access to valuable information that helped developers improved vehicles.
OBD2: Federal Universal Standard
OBD2 is the updated version of OBD1 and offers more features as well. Moreover, it’s said to be more reliable and convenient as well.
OBD2 can find problems not only in the engine but also in other parts of the vehicle. You will, however, need an advanced OBDII scanner to perform such tasks.
It is the currently used standard as it offers real-time output and helps save time. The system was introduced in 1996, and it supports a large variety of vehicles manufactured in and after 1996.
Unlike the first system, this new system helps not only companies make better cars but also allows mechanics to identify problems. It can be used by car owners to detect and solve problems on their own to reduce trips to the mechanic.
Is My Car OBD1 Or OBD2?
A lot of forums are flooded with the question ‘what type of OBD is my car?’ to know this, you need to check the nameplate or the sticker under the hood. It will tell you if your car is OBD2 or OBD1 compliant.
Other than that, if you know the model and year of manufacture then you can identify the OBD system your car supports.
- Cars made before 1996: OBD1 compliant.
- Cars made in and after 1996: OBD2 compliant
OBD1 To OBD2: Excellent Development Of Car Technology
The good thing about technology is that it keeps on improving. OBD2 is the result of changing technology. It’s made to do more than just what OBD1 did or does.
OBD1 did not take too long to dissolve or become obsolete as it was not adequately implemented by companies. It was a semi-automatic system and had limited functionalities. Plus, scanners were manufacturer-specific, i.e., one scanner worked for one manufacturer only.
To improve these issues, OBD2 was developed. It is a standardized system that offers more functionalities and covers a wide diversity of OBD2 compliant vehicles. In other words, an OBD2 scanner will include most manufacturers, unlike OBD1 scanner.
Another reason for development was to provide with better connection facilities. OBD1 system didn’t allow remote connections, but OBD2 does. Thus, you can use Bluetooth and WiFi to control OBD2 scanners as some offer wireless connections.
OBD1 Vs. OBD2 Key Differences Explained
Let’s check out the main difference between OBD1 vs. OBD2.
If you own an older car that was manufactured before 1996 then you have no choice but to go for an obd1 scanner. This is because older cars do not support modern obd2 scanners.
While obd1 scanners do offer a few functionalities, the cons outweigh the pros. They support manufacturer-specific scanners only, which means that one scanner can work with just a single brand.
Moreover, they offer limited features and can be slow to respond. Plus, it can be hard to pinpoint the exact cause of a problem due to a lack of explanation.
Still, if your car is OBD1 compliant then investing in a scanner can help you save money.
Cars manufactured in 1996 and later support OBD2 scanners. These scanners offer a mix of primary and advanced functions based on the scanner selected.
Should I Take An OBD1 Or OBD2 Scanner For My Car?
You should pick a scanner that is compatible with your vehicle. Also, pay attention to the features a scanner offers as they differ from unit to unit.
Difference Between OBD1 And OBD2: Comparison Chart
|Vehicles Supported (Year)||OBD1 year were 1991-1995||OBD2 years are 1996 - Present|
|Scanner Support||One OBD1 scanner can support one car only||One OBD2 scanner can support many OBD2 supported cars|
|Cars Supported||Cars manufactured between 1991-1996 including a few 80’s models as well||Supports all compliant cars manufactured in 1996 and later|
|Installation||OBD1 scanners are connected to the console but don’t offer remote connectivity||OBD2 scanners are connected to the OBD2 port and may work wirelessly via Bluetooth or WiFi.|
|Connectivity||Supports only corded OBD1 scanners||Corded and wireless|
|Accuracy||Poor with no detailed explanations of the code||High with detailed code explanations|
OBD1 vs OBD2: FAQs
Is it okay to drive the car with the scanner plugged in?
While it is not technically risky, you should not leave the scanner plugged in as it will continue to draw power from the battery and may cause the battery to weaken.
Can one car support both the systems?
No, one car is made to support only one system.
Can one scanner support both the systems?
Some scanners may be able to support both the system, but they will require different cables as both the systems have different connectors.
Where can I find the OBD port?
The port is usually found under the dashboard, right beneath the steering. However, it may be placed elsewhere in some cars. It is best to look at the manual or ask an expert if you can’t find it.
Can I upgrade my OBD system?
It is possible to change the system (OBD1 to OBD2), but the process can be complicated and expensive. Plus, it is also not legal in the US. Hence it may not be a good idea to try to upgrade the system.
Can I use the OBD system without a scanner?
No, you cannot. You will need a compatible scanner to read codes and identify problems.
Will there be a new system after OBD2?
OBDII is already in development, but there is not much known yet about what it has to offer. |
Did you know the time spent on TV can be risky for your kid’s nutrition? Many children spend a lot of time watching TV and research shows they are easily persuaded to choose the food being advertised. On average, each child usually sees between 10-13 TV commercials that promote food and beverages.
Most of the foods presented in TV ads do not provide any nutrients when it comes to nourishment, rather, they have lots of solid fats, sodium, added sugar, and extra calories. They definitely lack in essential minerals, vitamins, and dietary fiber.
Childhood obesity is a serious public issue that escalates morbidity, mortality, and has considerable long-term social and economic costs. Various research has shown that the rates of obesity, of children and adolescents in America, have tripled in only the last quarter of the century. About 20% of American youth are now overweight and obesity rates in school-going children are increasing at an alarming speed.
Risk factors related to obesity in children and adolescents are associated with poor health conditions including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthma, and sleep apnea.
Kids under age 6 are unable to differentiate between advertising and programming and children under age 8 cannot identify influential intent of TV advertisements. These kinds of food advertisements are exploitative for children of all ages. Studies proved a direct link between TV ads for unhealthy food and increased rates of obesity in children.
Children have an extraordinary capability to recall content they have seen on TV. They easily form preferences for certain products after repeated exposure to a specific ad, which affects their product purchase demands and these demands influence parents’ decision about purchasing.
Effect of TV Ads on Behavioral & Mental Health of Children
- Food industry targets children and youth as their primary audience which results in increased rates of childhood obesity.
- Many TV advertisements objectify women, especially girls, contributing to eating disorders, body dissatisfaction, depression, and low self-esteem.
- Teenage girls develop concerns regarding the body and engage in dietary behavior or unhealthy ways to control weight. These unhealthy behaviors include fasting, eating fewer calories, skipping meals, using diet pills, purging, diuretics, or laxatives.
- Weight prejudice may sideline children & youth by teachers and peers and make them vulnerable to bullying and teasing.
Association of TV ads and Childhood Obesity
- There is a detrimental effect of TV ads on the eating behavior of children. The rate of obesity increases with increasing TV hours in children.
- Children’s exposure to TV commercials for food products (i.e., fast food, energy drinks, low-nutrient snacks, high-calorie, deep-fried products, bakery products, products with cheese, and artificial sweets) is a considerable risk factor for obesity.
- The food industry has centered its marketing campaigns on children, but it didn’t show any improvement in healthy food marketing such as fruits, vegetables, fish, poultry, whole grain, low-fat dairy, beans, or lean meats. On average, three out of four food commercials fall into the category of unhealthy food for children that cause obesity.
How To Tame Television Temptations & Promote Healthier Eating?
- No TV while Eating: As parents, you can limit watching TV especially while eating meals or snacking. You should consider applying this rule to not only TV but also to other electronic devices as well. Eating together without distractions will support healthy eating and family bonding too.
- Choose Kid’s TV Programs without Ads: Try to DVR your kid’s favorite shows so you have the ability to skip the commercials. Or pop in a DVD if you still have them lying around.
- Decide to Limit Screen Time: As most of the children spend more time in front of screens, you can limit the time. The recommended time for TV is no more than one hour per day by the American Academy of Pediatrics. You can clearly explain this to your children and indulge them in other healthy play activities.
- Promote Healthy Foods: You can try growing a garden and ask your children to help you with learning about different foods. You can take them to a farmer’s market or a grocery store to give them an insight into how many healthy food options are there. Young children can be taught how to check the Nutritional Facts labels while purchasing anything from grocery stores.
- Engage Children in Kitchen: Children and Youth have a willingness to learn new things. This is a great time to engage them in learning about healthy food options. You can tell them about food safety such as hand washing, washing fruits and vegetables before eating, kitchen tasks, setting the table, and how to cut salads. They might start liking healthy fruits such as fruits and vegetables.
- Exercise Hour: Set one hour for physical activities. Involve your children in a slight walk, jog, or run. You can also join in for an exercise session such as dancing, yoga, or Zumba. Children usually enjoy such activities. For pre-school children, you can purchase a cycle and let the kid drive it as much as he can. It will help in burning extra calories in kids.
- Fresh Smoothies: Instead of giving your children artificial juices, give them natural fresh drinks. Young children get attracted to colorful beverages. You can add different fruits and vegetables to make fresh smoothies. Beetroot can be used in drinks for a bright color. You can find a variety of fresh juice recipes online.
- Be a Role Model: Kids learn most of the information by simply observing others. As a parent, your healthy food choices will help your children to eat healthy as well. You can limit your TV time or spending time on electronic devices. Performing regular exercise, eating healthy food, and opting for a healthy lifestyle for yourself can be very helpful for your kids as well. They will observe and behave like that.
What Obesity Prevention Foundation of America is all about!
We’re a Nation-wide Foundation that offers support services for parents of overweight and obese children, along with providing interactive and animated health-oriented programs that children can relate to and learn from. |
- What if Charles dies before the Queen?
- What will the Queen be called when Charles is king?
- Why did post boxes change from green to red?
- What does ER mean for the queen?
- What does ER on post boxes stand for?
- Why does Queen Elizabeth always have a purse?
- What is London’s ER?
- What is the R in Queen Elizabeth’s signature?
- What will er change to when Charles is king?
- Does the queen carry a gun in her handbag?
- Why are some post boxes blue?
- What are those blue mailboxes called?
- What does ER mean in British police?
- What does the Queen carry in her handbag?
- Will Camilla be queen if Charles dies?
- What does VR stand for?
- What is the Queen’s full name?
- Will Camilla become queen?
What if Charles dies before the Queen?
In the event that Prince Charles dies before the Queen, his son Prince William will take the throne as he is next in line..
What will the Queen be called when Charles is king?
Under common law, Prince Charles will automatically become King the moment the Queen dies. Prince William could only become King if Prince Charles chose to abdicate. That would require legislation, as happened with the Declaration of Abdication Act 1936.
Why did post boxes change from green to red?
The first British pillar boxes were opened for public use on Jersey on 23 November 1852. Shortly after, the Jersey Times, reporting on these new boxes to its readers, informed them that the boxes were “painted red”. … They are all Victorian pillar boxes and believed to be painted in an incorrect green.
What does ER mean for the queen?
Elizabeth ReginaDuring the Diamond Jubilee celebration, you may see the letters “ER” on the Royal Crest. These letters stand for Elizabeth Regina or Elizabeth the Queen.
What does ER on post boxes stand for?
Elizabeth ReginaThe ER stands for Elizabeth Regina. However ER can also represent any of Histories King Edwards, such as Edwardus Rex (Edward the King), as these are occasionally seen on the older style of postbox.
Why does Queen Elizabeth always have a purse?
Her Majesty’s personal bag is used as much to send secret signals to staff as it is to carry personal items. If the Queen places her handbag on the table at dinner, it signals that she wants the event to end in the next five minutes.
What is London’s ER?
E R is Elizabeth Regina – (latinized “Queen Elizabeth”) with the insert “II” being the Roman numeral for “2” – the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth the second. … The initials refer to the various Georges and Edwards (and a Victoria) that preceded Elizabeth. In the Kings’ case, the “R” refers to “Rex” – King.
What is the R in Queen Elizabeth’s signature?
As for that signature—Elizabeth R—the R stands for Regina, which means “queen.” Regina is not actually part of the queen’s given name. She was baptized as Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor.
What will er change to when Charles is king?
When Prince Charles becomes king, he could change his name. … If that is the case, he would choose one of his middle names instead and could be known as King Philip, King Arthur, or King George. Some experts believe he could change his name to King George VII out of respect for his grandfather.
Does the queen carry a gun in her handbag?
According to one of Her Majesty’s cousins, Queen Elizabeth carries a portable hook in her handbag. She’ll take the hook on visits outside of the palace in case she should need to hang her bag up. The source, Jean Willis, explained that the Queen took care of the whole process – as witnessed in one episode.
Why are some post boxes blue?
Specially decorated postboxes have been created by the Royal Mail as a way of thanking NHS workers for their efforts during the current crisis. The five postboxes are painted blue and bear the message: Thank You NHS.
What are those blue mailboxes called?
A USPS Collection Box – Blue Box is the familiar USPS blue painted street box you see in your community.
What does ER mean in British police?
Elizabeth ReginaER stands for Elizabeth Regina, the crest of Queen Elizabeth II.
What does the Queen carry in her handbag?
But Hello! did its own digging and discovered the queen carries regular daily items such as her reading glasses, a handkerchief, mints, a fountain pen, a small mirror, lipstick and a metal make-up case (which was a gift from Prince Philip).
Will Camilla be queen if Charles dies?
Will Camilla be queen if Charles dies? According to the line of succession, the answer is a hard no. Because the line of succession is based on birth order, not marriage, if Prince Charles dies before ascending the throne, Camilla Parker Bowles will not become queen and Prince William will ascend the throne instead.
What does VR stand for?
virtual reality headsetA virtual reality headset is a head-mounted device that provides virtual reality for the wearer. Virtual reality (VR) headsets are widely used with video games but they are also used in other applications, including simulators and trainers.
What is the Queen’s full name?
Elizabeth Alexandra Mary WindsorQueen Elizabeth II/Full name
Will Camilla become queen?
The Duchess of Cornwall will not become Queen. When the Prince of Wales married Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005, it was made known that when he ascended to the throne, she would not take on the title of Queen Consort, instead being known as the Princess Consort. |
On 20th March 2019, the seventh International Day of Happiness, United Nations released the 2019 edition of its World Happiness Report. This report ranks the happiness index for 156 countries based on various parameters.
The idea about Gross Happiness index, was initially floated by Bhutan, a tiny hilly nation in the foothill of Himalayas. Long before official UN resolution on happiness, Bhutan chose to adopt, gross national happiness instead of gross domestic product as their development indicators. This idea of giving importance to actual well-being of people instead of numeric well-being caught the fasciation of the world and as a result was adopted by United Nations (UN) in 2012.
The criteria of happiness
In order to calculate the happiness index, various parameters including gross domestic product per capita (total gross domestic product/total population), social support, life expectancy, freedom to make
Not so good for India
Out of 156 countries evaluated for happiness index, India with a score of 4.0 ranked 140 just above Liberia, Comoros and Madagascar. In fact, India has the lowest rank in the whole of southeast Asia. Pakistan secured a coveted (best in the subcontinent) 67th rank (better than Russia – 68th and China – 93rd ) with a score of 5.6 Our other neighbours like Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have ranked 95th, 100th, 125th and 130th respectively.
Out of 156 countries, India has ranked 140th. The lowest in whole south east Asia.
World’s top happiest countries
8. New Zealand
In the cutthroat competition of today’s globalized world, measuring the state of happiness is a positive and well thoughtful beginning. In our times of materialism, this helps to foster the spirit of humanism and give a hint to our respective governments that they have responsibilities beyond development index and GDP numbers. The fact that many developed nations are far outranked by their moderate counterparts, depicts that happiness is not directly proportional to development. |
Freedom of speech and expression are fundamental human rights that are protected under the u.s. every us research paper body paragraph citizen is protected by the first amendment in the constitution which guarantees freedom of freedom of speech essays speech and is acknowledging it as an important basic human right freedom dreams research paper of speech essay 872 words 4 pages the central dilemma for freedom of speech lies within the constitution itself, in childcare management services essay that how to write a good creative story an individual’s right what should i write my informative speech on to expression is simultaneously paired with the larger freedom of speech essays collective goal of equality for the most part, freedom of speech is permitted at college campuses. freeessayhelp is a platform for high-quality long essays. freedom of speech essays the enjoyment of how to quote a phrase in an essay right to the essay about a favorite book restrictions. free speech is a short essay on communication massive step in human civilization. matthew shuirman. apr 15, 2020 · get essay. introduction. whether this is true or not isa large controversy the first amendment also guarantees freedom of speech. 1869 words8 pages. freedom of the lottery shirley jackson essay speech was 8th grade writing topics first established in the first amendment of the united states constitution argumentative. |
Changes in the way we turn the food we eat into the energy we need to survive (metabolism) may be a cause, as well as a consequence, of many human diseases. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) offers a safe and non-invasive way to study metabolism, but routine clinical application has always been limited by an inherently low sensitivity, i.e. a very weak signal. We are developing a range of new imaging approaches, collectively called Hyperpolarized Magnetic Resonance, that can increase the sensitivity of MRI by more than10,000-fold, offering new clinical tools for the assessment of metabolism in diseases such as heart disease, cancer and stroke.
Damian Tyler and Stefan Neubauer
Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, and Oxford Centre for Clinical Magnetic Resonance Research, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Radcliffe Department of Medicine |
Trigeminal Neuralgia Association
TRIGEMINAL NEURALGIA is an extremely severe facial pain that tends to come and go unpredictably in sudden shock-like attacks. The pain is normally triggered, for example by light touch, and is described as stabbing, shooting, excruciating or burning. It usually lasts for a few seconds but there can be many bursts of pain in quick succession.
WE ARE Trigeminal Neuralgia Association UK (TNA UK). We provide information, support and encouragement to those who suffer this excruciatingly painful condition. Our aim is to raise awareness of TN within the medical community and the general public at large.
The trigeminal nerve is the fifth cranial nerve and its function is to send pain messages to the brain. When the nerve malfunctions, pain messages are sent at inappropriate times and the pains can be of great severity. In fact, TN is regarded as the most painful condition that is known in the medical world.
The pains are variously described as like a strong electric shock shooting through the face, or very intense sensations of stabbingand burning. TN affects more women than men and pains are normally felt on one side of the face only, generally the right-hand side. The majority of people affected are over 50 years old although young adults, and very rarely children, may also develop the condition.
As can be seen in the diagram below, the trigeminal nerve has three branches (or divisions) on each side of the face:
Illustration by TNA UK member, Ann Eastman
TN is unpredictable and therefore can be difficultto cope with, both for the patient and the carer. Not knowing when the next attack will strike can also cause fear and depression. However, there are mechanisms that can be used that greatly help in the management of TN and therefore improve the life of the patient and carer. These coping strategies can be found by clicking on the right hand menu.
It is difficult to realise when someone has TN and it is only when an attack occurs that any sign of the condition is visible. This may be the face contorting with pain, facial twitching and/or involuntary head jerks. Usually an attack is brought on by what is known as a trigger. For example, this could be a cold wind against the face, brushing one’s teeth or eating a meal. The patient will tend to avoid the triggers, not wishing to bring on the pain of an attack. Therefore, it is important to devise ways around these issues so that the patient can continue lead as normal a life as possible.
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Are you looking for an activity for your child that’s educational, that can prepare them for real-world jobs, and that they’ll absolutely love? Programming courses could be the perfect supplement to your child’s education! When you send them to coding classes at RP4K, they’ll be receiving instruction from highly-trained professionals at one of Canada’s premiere coding schools.
Learning to code could be one of the best activities your child ever engages in.
Our Programming Courses
We run courses in a number of majors centers across Ontario. Click one of our courses below for more information:
Programming Classes at RP4K Can Help Your Child Excel!
Turn Procrastination into Professional Skills
Most kids love video games… Unfortunately, most of the time, they’re playing games instead of doing things that could help their educational or professional development. But it doesn’t have to be that way! You can take your child’s love of gaming and use it to introduce them to a real-world skill set that could have them prepared for employment straight out of school.
Programming is and will continue to be one of the single most important – and fastest-growing – careers of the 21st Century. Whether your child decides to make video games, program business apps, or train the next generation of AI, this is a field with endless room for creative workers who can excel.
Boost Their Learning
Programming is about more than just “making computers do things.” Coding is pure brain fuel. It teaches both linear and nonlinear thinking, encouraging creative problem solving but within a structured environment. Plus, programming is a team effort. Learning to code at a modern school means learning collaboration skills as well – and those are skills which will serve your child well no matter what the future holds.
Even if coding isn’t for them, a background in computer science is also great preparation for just about any STEM-related field!
At Real Programming for Kids (RP4K) Your Child Will Have Fun While Learning Highly Important Skills
We welcome students between the ages of 7 and 17 and offer a range of classes from introductions to advanced professional-level coding. Any child, at any age, can reap the benefits of programming courses – so contact RP4K today to learn more, or sign up for a free class! |
1. Which word CANNOT go in the space? ____ are talking very loudly!
2. Complete the sentence. The girl ___ cycling to school.
3. Complete the sentence. My husband and I ____ staying here for a long time.
4. Which question is correct?
What you doing?
Where is she working?
Where you are staying?
5. Which is the correct reply? Where’s James?
He works in his office.
He’s working in his office.
He is work in his office.
6. Where can you write lives?
My aunt ____ in Scotland.
I ___ near Birmingham.
Alice and Emma ____ in Ireland.
7. Where can you write don’t?
I ___ have a car.
It ___ rain much in Mexico.
Paul ___ like coffee.
8. Which word goes in the space? ___ you live near here?
9. Which sentence is correct?
My parents does the shopping on Saturdays.
Maria haves a brown dog.
Tom goes to work on Sundays.
10. Which is the correct answer to this question? Does your sister work here?
Yes, she have.
No, she doesn’t.
Yes, she do.
11. Which word(s) completes the sentence? Would you like ____ to my house for dinner?
for to come
12. In which sentence can you write would like?
I ____ like pizza. It’s my favourite food.
I ____ playing tennis with my friends.
I ____ to work with animals in the future
13. Which sentence is NOT correct?
I wouldn’t like own a dog.
I’d love some chocolate cake!
I wouldn’t like any more tea, thank you.
14. Which question is correct?
Your brother would like a new car?
Would your friends like to come to dinner too?
Do you would like a drink?
15. Which is the best answer to this question? Would you like a biscuit? I like tea.
I like tea.
16. Complete this sentence. My husband _____ bananas. He eats one every day.
17. Complete this question. _____you like listening to classical music?
18. Complete this question. When ________ to visit us?
you would like
would you like
do you like
19. In which sentence can you write like?
I ____ to study engineering when I finish school.
I really ____ scary films!
I ____ a hamburger and a coke, please.
20. Complete the sentence. This part of the city looks dangerous! I wouldn’t like ____ here when it’s dark!
21. Complete the sentence. I _____ leave at half past three.
22. Complete the sentence. My mum ____ work any more. She’s retired.
not have to
doesn’t have to
23. Complete the sentence. Alan ______ work on Sundays.
not have to
doesn’t have to
24. Complete the question. _____ to go to the meeting?
Does Laura have
Does Laura has
25. Which sentence uses have to incorrectly?
Visitors don’t have to feed the tigers, it’s dangerous.
You don’t have to leave yet, it’s only three thirty.
My uncle is so rich that he doesn’t have to work.
26. Which sentence is NOT correct?
Have you to catch the train now?
Do you have to cook tonight?
What time do you have to go home?
27. Complete the question. What time _____________ to be at the station tomorrow?
do we have
we do have
28.Which sentence is correct?
Which sentence is correct?
We haven’t to wear a school uniform.
We don’t have to go to school on Wednesday afternoons.
29. Which sentence has a similar meaning? You don’t have to fill in this form.
You must not fill in this form.
It’s not necessary to fill in this form.
You don’t have the correct form.
30. Which sentence has a similar meaning? I have to be home by eight o’clock.
I can’t go home until eight o’clock.
I must go home before eight o’clock.
I don’t have to go home until eight o’clock.
31. Which word goes in the space? How ____ is your Dad? |
The Battle of Long Island
August 27 , 1776 at Long Island, New York
The Battle of Long Island (aka Battle of Brooklyn and the Battle of Brooklyn Heights) was the first major battle of the war to take place after the United States declared its independence on July 4, 1776. It was a victory for the British and the beginning of a successful campaign that gave them control of the strategically important city of New York. In terms of troop deployment and fighting, it was the largest battle of the entire war.
After defeating the British in the Siege of Boston on March 17, 1776, General George Washington brought the Continental Army to defend the port city of New York, then limited to the southern end of Manhattan Island. Washington understood that the city's harbor would provide an excellent base for the British Navy during the campaign, so he established defenses there and waited for the British to attack.
In July, the British, under the command of General William Howe, landed a few miles across the harbor from Manhattan on Staten Island. They were slowly reinforced by ships in Lower New York Bay during the next month and a half, bringing their total force to 32,000 troops. Washington knew the difficulty in holding the city with the British fleet in control of the entrance to the harbor at the Narrows. He moved the bulk of his forces to Manhattan, believing that it would be the first target.
On August 22, the British landed on the shores of Gravesend Bay.
On August 27, the British attacked American defenses on the Guan Heights. Unknown to the Patriots, however, Howe had brought his main army around their rear and attacked their flank soon after.
The Patriots panicked, resulting in 20% losses through casualties and captures, although a stand by 400 Maryland troops prevented a larger portion of the army from being lost. The remainder of the army retreated to the main defenses on Brooklyn Heights.
On the night of August 29, while the British were digging in for a siege, Gen. Washington evacuated the entire army to Manhattan without the loss of supplies or a single life. Washington and the Continental Army were driven out of New York entirely after several more defeats and forced to retreat through New Jersey and into Pennsylvania.
Facts about the Battle of Long Island
- Armies - American Forces was commanded by Gen. George Washington and consisted of 19,000 Soldiers. British Forces was commanded by Lt. Gen. William Howe and consisted of 22,000 Soldiers.
- Casualties - American casualties were estimated to be 300 killed, 650 wounded, and about 1,100 captured/missing. British casualties was approximately 63 killed, 314 wounded and unknown captured/missing.
- Outcome - The result of the battle was a British victory. The battle was part of the New York and New Jersey Campaigns 1776-77.
On August 23, a sharp skirmish occured between the British and the Patriot advance guard about 4 miles inland at Flatbush.
On August 24, Gen. Sullivan was replaced by Major General Israel Putnam. Unfortunately, he knew little about the terrain of Long Island. Being in charge of the island's defenses, this would come back to haunt the Patriots in the coming battle.
Putnam was tasked with overseeing two defensive lines perpendicular to one another. The main line contained about 6,500 troops and were deployed around Brooklyn and faced southeast. This line ran north for 1.5 miles from the mill dam-Gowanus Creek area that emptied into Gowanus Bay to Wallabout Bay. The remaining 3,000 troops were deployed to guard four strategic passes cut by major roads leading to the top and beyond the heights.
About 550 troops were on the far left guarding Gowanus Road overlooking Gowanus Bay. About 1.5 miles to the east were 1,100 troops guarding Flatbush Pass. Farther east for one mile were 800 troops guarding Bedford Pass. Still farther east of the left flank of Putnam's line were 500 riflemen. Their job was picketing a small line stretching toward Howard's Tavern at Jamacia Pass.
On August 25, additional British troops landed southeast of Denyse's Point. This brought the total number of British on Long Island to 20,000 men. Howe then split his force into two 10,000-man wings.
On August 26, in the evening, Lieutenant General Leopold P. von Heister took post at Flatbush with his Hessian force. In the following night, the larger part of the British army, commanded by General Henry Clinton, marched to gain the road leading round the easterly end of the hills to Jamaica, and to turn the left of the Americans.
Clinton arrived about two hours before day, within half a mile of this road. One of his parties fell in with a patrol of Patriot officers, and took them all prisoners, which prevented the early transmission of intelligence. Upon the first appearance of day, Clinton advanced and took possession of the heights over which the road passed. Brigadier General James Grant, with the left wing, advanced along the coast by the west road, near the narrows; but this was intended chiefly as a feint.
The guard which was stationed at this road, fled without making any resistance. A few of them were afterwards rallied, and Brigadier General William Alexander (Lord Stirling) advanced with 1,500 men. He took possession of a hill about two miles from the Patriot camp, and in front of Grant.
Howe was finally in position and ready to launch his offensive against the Patriots. Howe's plan was to send Grant to the American far right flank above Gowanus Bay to divert attention to the western end of the line. In conjunction with Grant, General von Heister would move against and hold in place the Patriot center around Flatbush. While the Patriots focused their attention on their center-right, Howe would march east and then north with 10,000 troops beyond and behind Gen. Putnam's left flank. Howe would then roll up and crush the Patriots strung out along the high ridge.
The Battle Begins
On August 27, just after midnight, Grant led his 5,000-man column north along the Gowanus Road and began skirmishing with the Patriots.
At 3:00 A.M., Putnam was told of the British movement and he ordered Alexander to advance to the far right with reinforcements. Alexander deployed about 1,600 troops to meet Grant's troops. Grant stopped in front of the Patriot line and began firing his artillery. Meanwhile, Gen. Sullivan had reached the center of the line near Flatbush Pass, where he found Gen. von Heister's Hessians firing artillery. Sullivan sent troops west to reinforce Alexander.
At 8:00 A.M., Washington arrived on Long Island. When the British attacked the Patriot right and center, Colonel Samuel Miles moved west toward the attacking British. This left the Jamacia Pass without any defenders. Learning that the pass was not defended anymore, Miles was ordered back. He arrived just in time to spot the tail end of Howe's column of baggage trains moving through the pass. Realizing the dangerous situation, Miles sent half of his men (250 troops) toward the main line to warn them and escape. With the other 250 troops, Miles attacked the baggage train. Almost all of them were captured, including Miles.
At 8:30 A.M., the British turning column reached Bedford. They had managed to march completely undetected behind Putnam's line.
At 9:00 A.M., Howe fired a pair of signal guns to alert Grant and von Heister to attack the front of the heights while Howe advanced against the rear. Unfortunately for Howe, only von Heister made their attack. He moved north up the main road in the middle of the battlefield. He ran into Sullivan's troops and attacked them. Within a few minutes, the Patriot line unraveled as the troops fled to the main Brooklyn line. Sullivan organized many of his men and made a defensive stand at Baker's Tavern. They were soon captured by von Heister's Hessians.
By 11:30 AM, Alexander's troops were overwhelmed by Grant's superior numbers. Grant had moved forward in a decisive attack that broke apart the Patriot line. Most of the Patriots tried to escape and fled toward Gowanus Creek. When Alexander learned that General Charles Cornwallis was blocking his retreat, Alexander launched a series of counterattacks with about 250 Maryland troops, commanded by Major Mordecai Gist. Unable to clear a large enough path, most of the Patriots, including Alexander, was captured.
After sweeping Putnam's troops off the Brooklyn Heights high ground, Howe's senior commanders wanted to continue their advance and attack the last line of Patriot defenses. Instead, Howe halted his troops, reorganized his command, and ordered entrenchments dug facing the Patriot defensive works. With control of the East River, he believed that Washington was trapped and had nowhere to go.
On August 28, severe rain storms prevented any fighting between Washington and Howe. Both sides stayed in place. Also, because of the high winds, Howe was unable to move his warships behind Washington's position.
On August 29, during the evening, Washington called a council-of-war to consult on the proper measures to be taken. It was determined that moving across the river was the only way to escape. He ordered that all boats that could be found to be gathered up. The plan was to use the boats to ferry his troops across the river to safety. This way, they could escape the British trap and withdraw undetected from Brooklyn Heights. A heavy rain and fog kept the Patriot escape from being seen from Howe. Heavy winds continued to keep the British ships from advancing to Washington's position.
The withdrawal started soon after it was dark from two points, the upper and lower ferries, on the East River. The intention of evacuating the island had been so prudently concealed from the troops that they did not know where they were going. The field artillery, tents, baggage, and about 9,000 men were conveyed over East River, more than a mile wide, in less than 13 hours. Being only 600 yards away, Howe and the British army had no knowledge of the Patriot withdrawal that was proceeding.
On August 30, around 6:00 AM, the last of the Patriots left the shore of Long island. The withdrawal had worked without the British finding out.
At 11:00 AM, the heavy winds finally died down enough for the British warships to begin to move upriver.
At 11:30 AM, the fog lifted. Howe ordered his troops to advance and take the Patriot works. When they arrived, they discovered that the Patriots were nowhere to be seen. Howe realized that he had let Washington and the Patriots slip through his grasp. The British warships were finally able to move upriver, just a few hours too late to stop the Patriots. If Howe could have captured Washington and his troops, this would have effectively ended the war.
Western Long Island
On September 11, the British received a delegation of Americans consisting of Benjamin Franklin, Edward Rutledge, and John Adams at the Conference House on the southwestern tip of Staten Island (known today as Tottenville) on the former estate of loyalist Christopher Billop. The peace conference failed as the Americans refused to revoke the Declaration of Independence. The terms were formally rejected on September 15.
On September 15, after heavily bombarding green Patriot militia forces, the British crossed to Manhattan, landing at Kip's Bay, and routed the Americans there as well. The following day, the two armies battled at Harlem Heights, resulting in a tactical draw. After a further battle at White Plains, Washington retreated across the Hudson to New Jersey. The British occupied New York until 1783, when they evacuated the city as agreed in the Treaty of Paris,.
Eastern Long Island
While most of the battle was concentrated in western Long Island, within about 10 miles of Manhattan, British troops were also deployed to the east to capture the entire 110 mile length of Long Island to Montauk. The British met little or no opposition in this operation.
Henry B. Livingston was dispatched with 200 Continental troops to draw a line at what is now Shinnecock Canal at Hampton Bays to prevent the port of Sag Harbor from falling. Livingston, faced with insufficient manpower, abandoned Long Island to the British in September.
Residents of eastern Long Island were told to take a loyalty oath to the British government. In Sag Harbor, families met on September 14, to discuss the matter at the Sag Harbor Meeting House; 14 of the 35 families decided to evacuate to Connecticut.
The British planned to use Long Island as a staging ground for a new invasion of New England. They attempted to regulate ships going into Long Island Sound and blockaded Connecticut. |
Currently, there are over 2,200 clinical trials trying to find a vaccine or a therapy for Covid-19. The National Institute of Health recently halted its hydroxychloroquine clinical trial, concluding that there was no real benefit for Covid-19 patients. On the other hand, dexamethasone has recently shown positive preliminary results from the RECOVERY (Randomised Evaluation of COVid-19 thERapY) clinical trial.
The UK RECOVERY trial is a Phase II/III randomised, controlled trial that began in March 2020 and is testing numerous potential treatments for Covid-19, including lopinavir-ritonavir, azithromycin, tocilizumab, convalescent plasma, and low-dose dexamethasone. The trial also had a hydroxychloroquine arm, but the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) suspended this due to no significant difference in mortality rate and hospital stay duration. More than 11,000 patients were enrolled in 175 NHS hospitals in the UK. A total of 2,104 patients were randomised to receive 6mg per day of dexamethasone for 10 days and then compared to 4,321 patients that received usual care alone (patients on ventilation, patients who required oxygen only, and those who did not need any respiratory assistance). Dexamethasone was found to reduce deaths in patients on ventilators by one-third and by one-fifth in patients who required oxygen only. No benefits were found in those who did not need respiratory assistance. With these results, the UK government approved the use of dexamethasone for Covid-19 patients needing oxygen and those on ventilators.
Although these early preliminary results are very promising, only the complete results will provide a full picture and robust assessment. With 14 additional clinical trials investigating dexamethasone against Covid-19 and with eight trials expected to complete in 2020, this could provide additional evidence for the efficacy of dexamethasone for the treatment of Covid-19.
Latest reports from
GlobalData is this website’s parent business intelligence company. |
He threatened the press, joked about ruling for life and bullied everyone, including the allies who helped him get into office, while enjoying a cult following among his base. When a special judicial investigation threatened to reveal his financial corruption and complicity in criminal acts, he did not hesitate to destroy the democracy he led to remain in power.
Benito Mussolini created the world’s first Fascist dictatorship not just as a counter to the powerful Italian left — that’s a well-known story — but also as a desperate act to avoid prosecution. His time as prime minister of a coalition government (Oct. 31, 1922-Jan. 3, 1925) offers lessons in how democracies die and autocracies are born.
Read the entire essay at The Washington Post |
A database containing Henry's law constants, infinite dilution activity coefficients and solubility data of industrially important chemicals in aqueous systems has been compiled. These properties are important in predicting the fate and transport of chemicals in the environment. The structure of this database is compatible with the existing DIPPR® 801 database and DIADEM interface, and the compounds included are a subset of the compounds found in the DIPPR® 801 database. Thermodynamic relationships, chemical family trends, and predicted values were carefully considered when designating recommended values. Henry's law constants and infinite dilution activity coefficients were measured for toluene, 1-butanol, anisole, 1,2-difluorobenzene, 4-bromotoluene, 1,2,3-trichlorobenzene, and 2,4-dichlorotoluene in water using the inert gas stripping method at ambient pressure (approximately 12.5 psia) and at temperatures between 8°C and 50°C. Fugacity ratios, required to determine infinite dilution activity coefficients for the solid solutes, were calculated from literature values for the heat of fusion and the liquid and solid heat capacities. Chemicals were chosen based on missing or conflicting data from the literature. A first-order temperature-dependent group contribution method was developed to predict Henry's law constants of hydrocarbons, alcohols, ketones, and formats where none of the functional groups are attached directly to a benzene ring. Efforts to expand this method to include ester and ether groups were unsuccessful. Second-order groups were developed at a reference condition of 298.15 K and 100 kPa. A second-order temperature-dependent group contribution method was then developed for hydrocarbons, ketones, esters, ethers, and alcohols. These methods were compared to existing literature prediction methods.
College and Department
Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology; Chemical Engineering
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Brockbank, Sarah Ann, "Aqueous Henry's Law Constants, Infinite Dilution Activity Coefficients, and Water Solubility: Critically Evaluated Database, Experimental Analysis, and Prediction Methods" (2013). Theses and Dissertations. 3691.
DIPPR, database, Henry's law constant, water solubility, infinite dilution activity coefficient |
The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the benefit of offering a percussion ensemble class in secondary public schools. I looked at two elements of music education: playing time and relevant instruction. The research questions focused on the difference in playing time and relevant instruction between percussionists in the concert band and percussionists in the percussion ensemble, as well as differences between the concert band subgroups (brass, woodwind, percussion). 6 separate instrumental groups were observed: 4 concert bands and 2 percussion ensembles (N=6). Students were randomly selected from each instrument subgroup (brass, woodwind, percussion, percussion ensemble) for observation. A mixed model ANOVA was used to compare the playing time per hour of each instrument subgroup. A second mixed model ANOVA was used to compare the relevant instruction received per hour of each instrument subgroup. As anticipated, the concert band percussionists experienced significantly less playing time and relevant instruction than both the brass and woodwind subgroups. The percussion ensemble subgroup did not experience a significant difference in either playing time or relevant instruction from the concert band percussionstudents. However, informal observations of the rehearsals indicated a difference in the scope and depth of the playing time and instruction experienced by these two subgroups. Implications from these observations are also discussed.
College and Department
Fine Arts and Communications; Music
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Blodgett, Jedediah Alan, "Percussion Education in Secondary Public Schools: A Pilot Study Comparing the Concert Band vs. the Percussion Ensemble Approach" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. 5473.
Secondary percussion education, traditional concert band, percussion ensemble, playing time, relevant instruction, pilot study |
Gross' emotion regulation model, Porges' polyvagal theory, and other existing research suggest that regulation of emotions, tactics used to handle conflict, and certain physiological processes that occur within the autonomic nervous system (ANS) in response to stress are significantly related, especially in relational contexts. However, despite their pervasiveness and negative impacts, there is a noticeable lack of research on predictors of violent, aggressive, or abusive conflict tactics in couples. In the current study, the predictive role of emotion regulation in relation to conflict tactics was examined, in addition to the role of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and pre-ejection period (PEP) as mediators for these variables. Thirty-eight participants (19 couples) completed self-report measures of emotion regulation and conflict tactics, and RSA and PEP were measured during a three-minute baseline and 20-minute conflict discussion. Results showed no significant relationships between emotion regulation and conflict tactics, and no significant relationships between these variables and RSA or PEP were found. These findings may suggest that other variables aside from measures of ANS activity better explain the relationship between emotional and behavioral regulation skills, though additional research is necessary to confirm these findings. Clinical implications of this research point to the exploration of other contributors to violence and aggression aside from poor emotion regulation as it was measured in this study. Future research may benefit from investigating the impact of other variables such as sleep and exercise on ANS reactivity in relation to the use of maladaptive conflict tactics in married couples.
College and Department
Family, Home, and Social Sciences; Marriage and Family Therapy
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Orr, Natalie Gold, "The Role of the Autonomic Nervous System in the Relationship Between Emotion Regulation and Conflict Tactics in Couples" (2019). Theses and Dissertations. 7750.
couples, conflict, emotion regulation, autonomic nervous system, vagal tone, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, pre-ejection period |
Relocations of black-tailed prairie dogs have occurred both to save individual prairie dogs from urban development and to reestablish populations that have been extirpated. Unfortunately, however, many past relocation efforts rarely exceeded 40% retention. Many factors have contributed to very low retention rates in past relocation efforts including lack of (1) suitable habitat, (2) proper artificial burrow systems, (3) aboveground acclimation cages or pens, and (4) skilled people conducting the relocations. In an attempt to increase prairie dog relocation success, we developed techniques that are easy to implement, promote high retention, and effectively conserve labor, financial resources, and prairie dog populations. We conducted 3 relocations along the Front Range of Colorado in 2001 and 2002. Relocation techniques we developed resulted in at least 46%–92% retention. Our results suggest that a large percentage of prairie dogs can be retained by (1) ensuring that habitat is suitable, (2) using underground nest chambers modeled after natural nest chambers, (3) acclimating prairie dogs to the release site in large retention pens rather than in retention caps or other small acclimation cages (i.e., rabbit hutch), and (4) providing supplemental feed and water ad libitum to the prairie dogs.
Roe, Kelly A. and Roe, Christopher M.
"A relocation technique for black-tailed prairie dogs,"
Western North American Naturalist: Vol. 64
, Article 4.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/wnan/vol64/iss4/4 |
In the book and hit movie "The Martian," astronaut Mark Watney is knocked for a loop by a Red Planet dust storm and separated from the rest of the crew. One of his first survival challenges is to quickly patch a hole in his space suit with a kit that he carries for just that sort of emergency.
In real life, spacesuit punctures are a danger that's long concerned NASA, since astronauts on spacewalks are vulnerable to being hit by tiny pieces of space junk or micro-meteors. If that happened, you might guess that an astronaut simply could hold his or her breath, the way you could underwater. But guess again.
As this Scientific American article explains, the human body is accustomed to having atmospheric pressure to keep itself intact and in working order, and if it were subjected suddenly to the vacuum of space, all kinds of bad stuff would start to happen. Air already in the astronaut's lungs would expand, tearing the delicate tissues that enable gas exchange with the bloodstream. Water in the body's tissues would vaporize, and cause the astronaut to swell up grotesquely, like an over-inflated toy balloon. Water and gas in the blood would form bubbles in the astronaut's veins, and after a minute, circulation would stop. Without oxygen going to the brain, the astronaut would pass out, and animal tests indicate that after about two minutes, the astronaut would be dead.
That's why NASA has been trying for a while to develop an alternative to the conventional pressurized spacesuit, which uses tight-fitting materials rather than gas to protect a space traveler in emergencies. But now the space agency and a team of University of Michigan researchers may have come up with an even better answer — a new plastic that, when penetrated, instantly fixes the hole by itself.
Imagine the way that the T-1000 (portrayed by actor Robert Patrick) patches bullet holes in the sci-fi thriller "Terminator 2: Judgement Day," and you'll get the general idea — except that the new material fixes itself far more quickly than the robotic assassin did.
The breakthrough — or rather, breakthrough prevention — technology is described in a recent article in the scientific journal ACS Macro Letters. It was developed by a team that included University of Michigan assistant professor of chemical engineering Timothy Scott and Ph.D candidate and NASA Space Technology Research Fellow Scott Zavada, the study's lead author.
Just as the fictional Mark Watney in "The Martian" did, the researchers wanted to patch space suits with a plastic resin that would harden quickly. But instead of having an astronaut carry a resin kit, they put the resin between two layers of the plastic material from which the spacesuit would be made. They picked a resin called thiol-ene-trialkylborane, which when exposed to oxygen, reacts to form a solid substance. The idea is that in the event of a spacesuit puncture, the air rushing out of the suit would be the catalyst for the repair reaction.
"Our approach permits the development of materials capable of sealing a breach within seconds, far faster than previously described methods," the researchers wrote.
In order to test the material's ability to patch itself, the researchers took it to a gun range and used a bolt-action rifle to fire a bullet through it from 36 feet away. Check out this video from the American Chemical Society showing what happened.
Next, NASA will test the material in a vacuum and simulated low gravity conditions at the agency's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, to get sense of how it well it would repair itself in space. The material also might end up in spaceships and the exterior of the base that astronauts eventually may build on Mars. |
In Norms in the Wild, distinguished philosopher Cristina Bicchieri argues that when it comes to human behavior, social scientists place too much stress on rational deliberation. In fact, she says, many choices occur without much deliberation at all. Two people passing in a corridorautomatically negotiate their shared space; cars at an intersection obey traffic signals; we choose clothing based on our instincts for what is considered appropriate. Bicchieri's theory of social norms accounts for these automatic components of coordination, where individuals react automatically tocues that focus their attention on what the norm is in that situation. Social norms thus act as rules for making choices in a social world where people expect others - often unconsciously - to follow the same rule. Some norms enable seamless social co-operation, while others are less beneficial tohuman flourishing.Bicchieri is famous for her interdisciplinary work on game theory and most recently her work on social norms, and Norms in the Wild represents her latest challenge to many of the fundamental assumptions of the social sciences. Bicchieri's work has broad implications not only for understanding humanbehavior, but for changing it for better outcomes. People have a strongly conditioned preference for following social norms, but that also means that manipulating their expectations can cause major behavioral changes. Bicchieri has been working recently with UNICEF and other NGO's to explore theapplicability of her views to issues of human rights around the world. Is it possible to change social expectations around forced marriage, genital mutilations, and public health practices like vaccinations and sanitation? If so, how? What tools might we use? This short book explores how socialnorms work, and how changing them - changing preferences, beliefs, and especially social expectations - can potentially improve lives all around the world. It will appeal to an unusually broad range of readers including philosophers, psychologists and others in behavioral sciences, and anyoneinvolved in public policy or at NGOs.
Although the field of quantitative genetics - the study of the genetic basis of variation in quantitative characteristics such as body size, or reproductive success - is almost 100 years old, its application to the study of evolutionary processes in wild populations has expanded greatly over the last few decades. During this time, the use of 'wild quantitative genetics' has provided insights into a range of important questions in evolutionary ecology, ranging from studies conducting research in well-established fields such as life-history theory, behavioural ecology and sexual selection, to others addressing relatively new issues such as populations' responses to climate change or the process of senescence in natural environments. Across these fields, there is increasing appreciation of the need to quantify the genetic - rather than just the phenotypic - basis and diversity of key traits, the genetic basis of the associations between traits, and the interaction between these genetic effects and the environment. This research activity has been fuelled by methodological advances in both molecular genetics and statistics, as well as by exciting results emerging from laboratory studies of evolutionary quantitative genetics, and the increasing availability of suitable long-term datasets collected in natural populations, especially in animals. Quantitative Genetics in the Wild is the first book to synthesize the current level of knowledge in this exciting and rapidly-expanding area. This comprehensive volume also offers exciting perspectives for future studies in emerging areas, including the application of quantitative genetics to plants or arthropods, unraveling the molecular basis of variation in quantitative traits, or estimating non-additive genetic variance. Since this book deals with many fundamental questions in evolutionary ecology, it should be of interest to graduate, post-graduate students, and academics from a wide array of fields such as animal behaviour, ecology, evolution, and genetics.
Europeans in the nineteenth century were fascinated with the wild and the primitive. So compelling was the craving for a first-hand experience of wilderness that it provided a lasting foundation for tourism as a consumer industry. In this book, Patricia Jasen shows how the region now known as Ontario held special appeal for tourists seeking to indulge a passion for wild country or act out their fantasies of primitive life. Niagara Falls, the Thousand Islands, Muskoka, and the far reaches of Lake Superior all offered the experiences tourists valued most: the tranquil pleasures of the picturesque, the excitement of the sublime, and the sensations of nostalgia associated with Canada's disappearing wilderness. Jasen situates her work within the context of recent writings about tourism history and the semiotics of tourism, about landscape perception and images of `wildness' and `wilderness,' and about the travel narrative as a literary genre. She explores a number of major themes, including the imperialistic appropriation and commercialization of landscape into tourist images, services, and souvenirs. In a study of class, gender, and race, Jasen finds that by the end of the century, most workers still had little opportunity for travel, while the middle classes had come to regard holidays as a right and a duty in light of Social Darwinist concerns about preserving the health of the `race.' Women travellers have been disregarded or marginalized in many studies of the history of tourism, but this book makes their presence known and analyses their experience. It also examines, against the backdrop of nineteenth-century racism and expansionism, the major role played by Native people in the tourist industry. The first book to explore the cultural foundations of tourism in Ontario, Wild Things also makes a major contribution to the literature on the wilderness ideal in North America.
Products from the wild, also known as non-timber forest products (NTFPs), are used as medicines, foods, spices, and a multitude of other purposes. They contribute substantially to rural livelihoods, generate revenue for companies and governments, and have a range of impacts on biodiversity conservation. However, there is little information available for those seeking to develop effective policy frameworks and regulation. This book addresses that shortage with information and recommendations on the drafting, content and implementation of NTFP policies, and the broader issues of governance associated with these products. It reviews the diverse elements that combine to create laws and policies that promote sustainable and equitable management, trade and use of species. Drawing on a wealth of unique case studies from around the world, this volume examines experiences with NTFP regulation, including its sometimes unintended consequences. It looks at economic factors, the interface between traditional and western knowledge and legal systems, and relationships between NTFP regulation, land tenure and resource rights, as well as power and equity imbalances. The volume includes a review of available literature and resources, plus an annotated bibliography linked to the People and Plants International website (www.peopleandplants.org). Published with People and Plants International
What makes humans different from other animals, what humans are entitled to do to other species, whether time travel is possible, what limits should be placed on science and technology, the morality and practicality of genetic engineering—these are just some of the philosophical problems raised by Planet of the Apes. Planet of the Apes and Philosophy looks at all the deeper issues involved in the Planet of the Apes stories. It covers the entire franchise, from Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel Monkey Planet to the successful 2012 reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The chapters reflect diverse points of view, philosophical, religious, and scientific. The ethical relations of humans with animals are explored in several chapters, with entertaining and incisive observations on animal intelligence, animal rights, and human-animal interaction. Genetic engineering is changing humans, animals, and plants, raising new questions about the morality of such interventions. The scientific recognition that humans and chimps share 99 percent of their genes makes a future in which non-human animals acquire greater importance a distinct possibility. Planet of the Apes is the most resonant of all scientific apocalypse myths.
SOCIOLOGY, SOCIAL STUDIES. Afghanistan and its people, whether in Afghanistan or in its global diaspora, have generated substantial interest in recent years and the desire to understand more about the country is widely felt. International organisations, non-governmental organisations and journalists are key sources of information on contemporary Afghanistan, but their ability to undertake research is often limited by their mandate and the aims of their activities in Afghanistan. This volume brings together the work of some of the leading European specialists studying Afghanistan and its diaspora. It collates work that contributes to our understanding of modern Afghanistan, and moves beyond the caricatures of Afghanistan and Afghans that have their roots in European imperial texts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but can still be seen today. Topics range from the features of protracted conflict to the future of Afghan music.
Soon to be a show on Hulu! Rights to develop Wild Cards for TV have been acquired by Universal Cable Productions, the team that brought you The Magicians and Mr. Robot, with the co-editor ofWild Cards, Melinda Snodgrass as executive producer. Let the secret history of the world be told—of the alien virus that struck Earth after World War II, and of the handful of survivors who found they now possessed superhuman powers. Some were called Aces, endowed with powerful mental and physical prowess. The others were Jokers, tormented by bizarre mind or body disfigurements. Some served humanity. Others wreaked terror. Now, forty years later, under the streets of Manhattan an evil genius unleashes the powers of darkness—and Aces and Jokers alike must fight for their lives. Here, in the third volume of the Wild Cards series, seven of science fiction's most gifted writers take you on a journey of wonder and excitement. Includes stories by: Edward Bryant Leanne C. Harper George R. R. Martin John J. Miller Lewis Shiner Walter Simons Melinda M. Snodgrass The Wild Cards Universe The Original Triad #1 Wild Cards #2 Aces High #3 Jokers Wild The Puppetman Quartet #4: Aces Abroad #5: Down and Dirty #6: Ace in the Hole #7: Dead Man’s Hand The Rox Triad #8: One-Eyed Jacks #9: Jokertown Shuffle #10: Dealer’s Choice #11: Double Solitaire #12: Turn of the Cards The Card Sharks Triad #13: Card Sharks #14: Marked Cards #15: Black Trump #16: Deuces Down #17: Death Draws Five The Committee Triad #18: Inside Straight #19: Busted Flush #20: Suicide Kings The Fort Freak Triad #21: Fort Freak #22: Lowball #23: High Stakes The American Triad #24: Mississippi Roll #25: Low Chicago #26: Texas Hold 'Em At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
This textbook introduces the reader to the new and emerging field of Conservation Psychology, which explores connections between the study of human behavior and the achievement of conservation goals. People are often cast as villains in the story of environmental degradation, seen primarily as a threat to healthy ecosystems and an obstacle to conservation. But humans are inseparable from natural ecosystems. Understanding how people think about, experience, and interact with nature is crucial for promoting environmental sustainability as well as human well-being. The book first summarizes theory and research on human cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to nature and goes on to review research on people's experience of nature in wild, managed, and urban settings. Finally, it examines ways to encourage conservation-oriented behavior at both individual and societal levels. Throughout, the authors integrate a wide body of published literature to demonstrate how and why psychology is relevant to promoting a more sustainable relationship between humans and nature.
From cover: "Wild law is a groundbreaking approach to law that stresses human interconnectedness and dependence on nature. It critiques existing law for promoting environmental harm and seeks to establish a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship. For the first time, this volume brings together voices fromt he leading proponents of wild law around the world. It introduces readers to the idea of wild law and considers its relationship to environmental law, the rights of nature, science, religion, property law and international governance."
This study aims at investigating the important role that language plays as a medium of legal norms and cultural values as surfacing in documents in the United Nations system. The author focuses on diplomatic documents (bi- and multilateral treaties and correspondence) that simultaneously have official status ("authenticity") both in Arabic and in other languages. The investigation of the role of language as a window onto culture and religious background is especially relevant in the case of Arabic due to the interference of religion with law in most Islamic societies. More specifically, problems will be pinpointed in the realms of personal statute law, the legal status of women, the laws of marriage, divorce, inheritance, freedom of opinion and religion, and penal law. At the heart of this study Edzard applies Speech Act Theory to the analysis of the nature and consequences of textual differences between versions of one and the same document in several languages.
Norms, Values, and Society is the second Yearbook of the Vienna Circle Institute, which was founded in October 1991. The main part of the book contains original contributions to an international symposium the Institute held in October 1993 on ethics and social philosophy. The papers deal among others with questions of justice, equality, just social institutions, human rights, the connections between rationality and morality and the methodological problems of applied ethics. The Documentation section contains previously unpublished papers by Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Charles W. Morris and Edgar Zilsel, and the review section presents new publications on the Vienna Circle. The Vienna Circle Institute is devoted to the critical advancement of science and philosophy in the broad tradition of the Vienna Circle, as well as to the focusing of cross-disciplinary interest on the history and philosophy of science in a social context. The Institute's Yearbooks will, for the most part, document its activities and provide a forum for the discussion of exact philosophy, logical and empirical investigations, and analysis of language.
This text, specifically for AQA specifications, is designed to be easy and encouraging for students to use. The book contains updated material and activities together with a new chapter on study skills. It also indicates clearly where activities meet the new evidence requirements for key skills.
By examining Wild's philosophical development from realism and its search for objective truth to phenomenology, the author concludes that Wild brings realistic concerns to his analysis of existential phenomenology. Moreover, Dr. Kaufman argues that Wild's realistic version of existential phenomenology becomes problematic when Wild strives to establish metaphysical conclusions about the nature of the world and Divine Transcendence from a phenomenological analysis of human existence as lived from within.
Documents the friendship between an early 20th-century founder of American anthropology and a last surviving Native American, describing Ishi's adaptation to modern city life while retaining his inherent culture and Kroeber's subsequent questioning of his profession and civilization.
Wild Science investigates the world-wide boom in 'health culture'. While self-help health books and medical dramas are popular around the globe, we are bombarded with daily media images of DNA research, and news reports about cloning, the fight against AIDS, cancer and depression. With popular culture now the principal means through which the non-scientific population encounters science why do certain images of science get promoted above others? Contributors examine the public meanings of science, revealing the frictions and contradictions within popular representations of what medicine can and should do. Focusing on the visual culture of medicine, they show how representations of science have a direct impact on popular perceptions of the limits of science, and ultimately on health education, funding and research, and examine the belief that media literacy in popular representations of medicine makes an ethical public discourse on the aims of science possible. With sections addressing the new visual technologies which make the human body into a virtual territory, the diagnostic and medical practices centered around women's bodies, and popular debates around genetics and identity, Wild Science argues that science is a practice bound in values and institutions, and argues for a responsible engagement with the public cultures of science and health.
In 1936, the Nazi state created a massive military training site near Wildflecken, a tiny community in rural Bavaria. During the war, this base housed an industrial facility that drew forced laborers from all over conquered Europe. At war’s end, the base became Europe’s largest Displaced Persons camp, housing thousands of Polish refugees and German civilians fleeing Eastern Europe. As the Cold War intensified, the US Army occupied the base, removed the remaining refugees, and stayed until 1994. Strangers in the Wild Place tells the story of these tumultuous years through the eyes of these very different groups, who were forced to find ways to live together and form a functional society out of the ruins of Hitler’s Reich.
Kelsen, Hans. What is Justice? Justice, Law and Politics in the Mirror of Science. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957. [vi], 397 pp. Reprinted 2000 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-101-1. Cloth. New. $95. * Through the lens of science, Kelsen proposes a dynamic theory of natural law, examines Platonic and Aristotelian doctrines of justice, the idea of justice as found in the holy scriptures, and defines justice as "...that social order under whose protection the search for truth can prosper. 'My' justice, then, is the justice of freedom, the justice of peace, the justice of democracy-the justice of tolerance." (p. 24). |
Call admission control (CAC) is the practice or process of regulating traffic volume in voice communications, particularly in wireless mobile networks and in VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol, also known as Internet telephony). Call admission control can also be used to ensure, or maintain, a certain level of audio quality in voice communications networks, or a certain level of performance in Internet nodes and servers where VoIP traffic exists.
Most CAC algorithms work by regulating the total utilized bandwidth, the total number of calls, or the total number of packets or data bits passing a specific point per unit time. If a defined limit is reached or exceeded, a new call may be prohibited from entering the network until at least one current call terminates. Alternatively, a graceful degradation methodology can be implemented. This means that the audio quality of individual calls can deteriorate to a certain extent before new calls are denied entry. Another method involves the regulation of calls according to defined characteristics such as priority descriptors. Still another method prevents new calls from entering the network only if the resources of the central processing unit (CPU) of a particular computer or server would be overburdened by such calls.Content Continues Below
Call admission control can be tricky, because the volume of traffic in communications networks is inherently chaotic or "bursty," and traffic bursts are virtually impossible to predict. Another problem is that the actual content of a call may not conform to its descriptor. |
The Intelliglobe II Deluxe Interactive Globe for Kids is the educational and entertaining globe that contains 1,000's of fun facts, geography and general information that is truly interesting, useful, and thought provoking.
Touch the wireless Intellipen to the globe to play games and explore amazing facts about the world. The wireless Intellipen is easy to use for all age groups.
The included World Discovery Book features maps, world flags, landmarks, animals, dinosaurs, foods, explorers, moon maps, sky maps, and more!
How to Use Your Intelliglobe II Deluxe Interative Globe: The Intelliglobe II uses a wireless pen to "read" microscopic symbols on the globe and World Discovery Book. Touch the wireless Intellipen to the globe or book to play games, explore, and discover amazing educational facts about the world. The Intelliglobe II is one of the most advanced globe featuring thousands of facts.
Explore Features: To learn about a city, country or area, use the tip of the pen to touch one of the Explore categories on the feature panel (located on base), and then point your Intellipen to a place on the globe. Touch different categories to learn more exciting information about the world. Explore Features include: Geography - Continents - Cities* - Countries & Territories - States & Provinces - Population - Music - Language Spoken - History - Life Expectancy - Economics, Currency, Main Industry - Ecology - Climate - Area in Square Miles - Current Time - Tourism - Animals - Food - Geology/Natural Resource - Distance & Flying Time
* City Population includes greater metropolitan area.
Compare Features: To compare information between two places, touch two locations on the globe one after the other. Compare Features include: Population - Land Area - Life Expectancy
Games: The Intelliglobe offers a number of different games you can play. To play Find Games, touch one of the find categories with your Intellipen. The Intellipen will tell you to find a certain location on the map. Find the locations as quickly as possible to obtain the best score before the time runs out. Find games include: Find Continents, Countries, Capitals, Waterways, Cities. Locations and Landmarks
To play Trivia Challenge, touch the Trivia Challenge category. The Intellipen will ask you random trivia questions. Touch the proper location on the globe for each question. Try to achieve a perfect score!
To play Multiple Choice Challenge, touch the Multiple Choice Trivia Challenge category. Test your knowledge. To answer the question, touch the A, B, C or D button or a place on the globe. Try to achieve a perfect score of 10 correct answers.
Facts & World Records: Touch the pen to the Earth facts and Amazing facts category found on the base to learn interesting & amazing facts about the world we live in. Facts such as, "The coldest temperature on record, -128.6 F (or -89.2 C), occurred in 1983 at Vostok Station, Antarctica and the hottest temperature on record, 136 F (or 57,7 C), occurred in 1922 in El Azizia, Libya."
World Discovery Book: The included World Discovery book includes a tremendous amount of fun information, maps and more, such as: World Flags, Supplemental United States Map, Flags of the United States
Europe Map, Lakes and rivers, Landmarks, Oceans, Standard Time Zones, World Mountain Peaks, Olympic Games Host Cities, Animals, Food, Explorers, Internal Structure of the Earth and Moon, Moon Map, The Solar System, The Northern Sky (Constellations), The Southern Sky (Constellations) and much more!
The Intellipen has internal rechargeable batteries that are charged using the provided USB cable. The USB cable can also be used to download and install future updates to the pen! |
Nancy Itzel May 1, 2020 Money Worksheets
These examples of math games for kids will make them learn math in a quick way. You should always bear in mind that kids are learning if they play too. Also, math for most children is not enjoyable but including games on discussions can make them forget that they are learning already. Math games use skills that enable them to build confidence and competence. Hence, it is really true that learning doesn't only depend on worksheets and tiresome discussions. Games will surely make your kids learn willingly even on a tough subject like mathematics.
Once kids are able to multiply then they can use these skills to divide numbers. Hence it also helps kids to learn division, indirectly. So all four math operations are made easy with this skill. There is another very important elementary math topic named counting money. Counting nickels is skipping the numbers by 5's, similarly it can help kids to add dimes, quarters and fifty cent coins, easily. Many times, teacher or parents use the coins to introduce skip counting to kids. This is a good idea, but the counting coins is the later skill to be learned after skip counting.
Now for the fun part! Encourage your kids to spend their money wisely. Teach them how to shop for bargains and what value the toy or item might provide long term. When my kids were growing up, I strongly encouraged them to spend wisely on a hobby or a collection and learn as much as they can about the history behind the collection. My son at ages 5-9 years old, collected toy tractors and had every type, design, style, manufacturer, and specifications memorized. He knew more about tractors than most farmers! When he got older he repeated the passion with his train collection, later still, with WWII memorabilia.
One way to teach them about money is to make a game out of it. Have some change available and let them win the change when asked a question. Make each question a different value. An example would be question number 1 would be worth 3 cents. Lay the money out for them to choose the three cents and if they do it correctly the first time they get to keep the money. Have some prizes at the end of the game so that they can purchase items again counting back the money to you to make that purchase. This will teach them how to count with out them realizing they are learning. To them it is just a game but they will learn how to count money.
Math games teach vital principles to children by exploring things through fun. Most children find math subject frustrating and tiring. However, you as a parent or teacher, can take away their frustration and tiresome by introducing math games to them. We have math games for kids that will surely develop their learning habits. Here are some common examples.
In general, most K-12 schools do not offer education in personal finance, budgeting, balancing checkbooks, or any other aspect of how to become a good financial steward. It is up to us as parents to instill good habits, so that when our adult kids come to visit, we can enjoy their company and not feel like the "Bank of Dad."
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Governance of intellectual property for future city systems
Future cities need to be designed and built smart (Video Smart Cities). Their authorities depend on private companies to build and run the city. Such cities should provide a liveable environment for more and more people since urbanisation is growing fast. Thus, there must be a strong incentive for private companies to invest time, effort and money for building and running such a future city as effectively as possible. Strong incentives for innovation and development are intellectual property (IP) protection rights. Protection rights (Video 2 IP Basics), such as patents and copyright, allow owners to benefit from their efforts at least for a limited time and invest more time and money for new inventions/creations (Video 3 Future Construction) Thus, protection rights drive the economy (Video 4 The role of patents). In Fact, intellectual property is the foundation of the modern information economy and fuels the software, life sciences, and computer industries and pervades most products we consume.
In the future, not people, but robots (Video 5 Interview Robot) might build and run a smart city. Private companies, not governments will build these robots. As we already experience today, large international corporations (Google, Amazon, Apple, Samsung etc.) are not dependent anymore on national governmental rules, but create their own rules for controlling the market, finally yet importantly, with the rights to protect their IP. IP rights are issued today by national governments and thus have some geographical borders. The large corporations are no longer restricted by national borders but can move their work and money to anywhere in the world. IP rights give incentives to inventors/creators, but also allow the national governments to restrict these rights and the communities to benefit from the mandatory disclosure of these rights, but only within the borders of the specific country. Will this balance between exclusive right and benefit for the people still work in view of future developments in artificial intelligence and an even more cross-border interconnected world?
Open source or open innovation (Video 6 Innovation) is being articulated as an alternative to the intellectual property model to handle creativity. In open source, a community of individuals contributes to a body of knowledge, sets up peer-review systems for quality control and then nurtures and nourishes that body of knowledge. Open source hardly produces wealth for its creators. However, is open source an alternative to intellectual property rights? Can open source, without the prospect of becoming wealthy, provide enough incentives to motivate creators?
Challenger | Heinz Müller, Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property
Professor of medical biochemistry at the University of Basel and Patent Expert at the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property in Bern. He was educated as a biochemist at the ETH Zurich, where he also received his PhD. He then moved to the US to work for several years at different research institutions in San Diego (Veterans Administration Hospital San Diego and UCSD, Scripps Research Institute) and Chicago (Northwestern University). He returned to Switzerland to work as a principal investigator in breast cancer research at the University of Basel. From this university, he received his Venia docendi and the title of professor of medical biochemistry. More than ten years ago, he started working at the patent department of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property in Bern while remaining a regular lecturer in biochemistry at the medical faculty of the University of Basel. At the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, he is responsible for training and continuous education at the patent department and the interaction with Swiss universities. He also teaches intellectual property law at different Swiss universities, including the Universities of Basel, Bern and ETH Zurich. This courses are aimed in particular for life science graduate students and students in medical technology. He also has written extensively on a number of pertinent articles for newspapers, magazines and other publications on the topic of intellectual property. |
Exceptions to Child Labor Laws
Child labor laws protect children from exploitation by employers. They help ensure children's safety in the workplace and keep employers from scheduling children to work during school hours. Wage and hour laws that regulate children in the workplace vary by state, but, in some circumstances, there are exceptions to federal child labor laws.
Children who work for their parents or other relatives in a family business, including a family farm, are not subject to some labor laws. A family business generally does not have to pay Social Security tax, federal unemployment tax or Medicare tax on the wages of its minor family members. The Fair Labor Standards Act doesn't apply to family businesses, so parents don't have to comply with the FLSA's wage-and-hour restrictions. These exemptions give parents the flexibility to allow young children to help out in the family business without having to worry about violating child labor laws.
The general age limit under the FLSA is age 14, and children under 14 cannot work for pay. However, certain occupations are exempt from the FLSA age limit. In the entertainment industry, for example, children younger than 14 are permitted to work as performers in television, radio and theater. They can also deliver newspapers to residential customers and do occasional babysitting. Young children can also work at home, gathering natural evergreen materials, such as pine boughs and pine cones, and making wreaths out of them.
Youth Work Programs
The FLSA does not allow employers to schedule 14- and 15-year-old children at work during school hours. Federally sponsored youth work programs are are exceptions to this rule. For example, the Work Experience and Career Education Program is a two-year apprenticeship program designed to prepare students for the real-life working world and help them stay motivated in school. The Work-Study Program helps college-bound children in preparatory schools pursue their college diplomas. Both programs allow children to work during school hours for employers that participate in the program.
Safety is the primary concern of employers that hire children. The FLSA prohibits employers from assigning dangerous work to 14- and 15-year-old children, even when they're working in a family business. These young teens may not do construction work or work that requires them to climb ladders or scaffolding. They may not work in mining or manufacturing or any of the other 17 occupations that the FLSA considers hazardous. State law may prohibit other types of work by 14- and 15-year- old minors. For example, many states regulate door-to-door sales by minors because they view the job as a hazardous occupation.
- SBA.gov: Running a Small Business Within the Law
- United States Department of Labor: Exemptions from Child Labor Rules in Non-Agriculture
- United States Department of Labor: Fact Sheet #38
- United States Department of Labor: Fact Sheet #37
- United States Department of Labor: State Regulation of For-profit Door-to-door Sales by Minors
- Kraig Scarbinsky/Photodisc/Getty Images |
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The human body is wonderfully elegant in its composition and operation, at once a complex assemblage of structures and an aggregation of simple, often intuitive, functions. The content of my Anatomy and Physiology course is organized around a central concept: Mr. Adu-Wusu’s 3 P’s of Anatomy and Physiology (Figure 1). The 3 P’s are as follows: Parts, Purpose, Peril. Alternatively, they can be considered in the framework of anatomy-physiology-dysfunction or structure-function-dysfunction. The basic principle holds that the body is comprised of structures whose compositions dictate the functions they can perform and thus, changes in structure can lead to dysfunction.
As an example, consider the skin. The outermost layer consists of tightly-packed, flattened cells filled with the protein keratin. The arrangement of these epidermal components allows the integumentary system to serve a barrier function, rebuffing transport of water, germs, and other unwanted foreign substances. Any event that breaks the continuity of this layer (e.g. penetration by a sharp object) diminishes the ability of the skin to function as a protective barrier. Necessarily then, remedies to address such dysfunctions (e.g. adhesive bandages, surgical stitches, scab formation, etc.) seek to restore the physical integrity of the epidermis that enables its appropriate function.
When considered in this way, the workings of the body are much less a set of enigmatic phenomena, and much more so a known or knowable system that can be understood through experimentation and data analysis: research. As my students come to internalize this fundamental construction, they can view various health ailments – disease, injury, aging, etc. – as just changes in functional capability owing to changes in structure. It follows then that solutions (actual and potential) for bodily infirmities result from restoration of normal structure and/or mitigating the effects of abnormal structure. Simply put, my goal is for my students to embrace the idea that we explore the parts of the body, so we can know how those parts work, because it is by understanding how the parts work, that we might be able to fix any problems that arise. In this structure-function-dysfunction framework, students can explore and better understand anatomical and physiological topics ranging from relatively simple skin lacerations and bone fractures to more complex gastrointestinal disorders and autoimmune diseases.
Throughout the course, the paradigm of the 3 P’s is applied to the various organ systems of the body. The curriculum unit presented here is to be a short segment taught within the portion of the course that covers the structure, function, and dysfunction of the muscular system. Prior to the curriculum unit, students have come to understand that the structures of the muscular system cooperate to perform several critical functions; muscles generate movement of body parts and help to maintain joint stability; muscles help to provide the shape/structure for the body and help to maintain posture; muscles produce heat to help maintain body temperature (homeostasis); muscles help to protect internal organs; muscle contractions enable movement of blood and food/nutrients through the body.
The curriculum unit establishes Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) as one of the representative disorders that students can explore in order to gain a better understanding of normal and abnormal functioning of the muscular system. The curriculum unit also presents a simplified framing device through which students can grasp the molecular basis of gene therapy. Advances in gene therapy for the treatment of DMD are presented as concrete examples to reinforce the central idea that even complex remedies fit the simple paradigm of regaining function by restoring structure.
My school is a high-poverty (100% qualify for free and reduced-price meals at school) neighborhood (non-application) high school in Washington, DC. The student body is predominantly black (62%) and Hispanic/Latino (36%). There is a significant international presence at the school. Several west and east African countries including Cameroon and Ethiopia are represented and many of the Hispanic/Latino students emigrated from Mexico and Central America. The school is in the midst of implementing an International Academy (starting with the lower grades), so the newcomer population is set to increase in the years to come. 30 percent of the student population are classified as English Language Learners (ELL). There are several of my students whose primary language is not English. In school, they generally communicate with peers in Spanish or Amharic and only use English to converse with administrators and teachers. Most of the ELL students in my classes have sufficient command of English and require only limited support, but there are a handful who may require substantial support (e.g. dual-language academic resources, translators, tutors, etc.).
Recent standardized test scores suggest significant deficits in English Language Arts, math, and science performance. Student surveys and anecdotal observations reflect a disinclination toward the sciences among the student population. Often the students’ lack of interest in the sciences is a substantial factor in lack of classroom engagement. An expectation for this curriculum unit is to increase classroom engagement by emphasizing the direct connection between the textbook/academic material that students might find abstract or even arbitrary ("Why do we have to learn this?") and the contemporary real-world applications of those concepts. The hope is that students will embrace the idea that the foundational principles being introduced in class are the basis for new, life-altering medical advances impacting the lives of real people. This is a version of a notion I introduce on the first day of school and underscore throughout the year with each new unit; in academia in general, but in science more particularly, the point of learning is not simply to come to know information that others have previously discovered or described, but rather to acquire skills and insight that will lead you to develop new knowledge to be shared with and advance the world.
The curriculum unit is intended for 11th and 12th grade Anatomy and Physiology students who may or may not have previously completed a high school biology course, and still lack mastery of some foundational concepts from biology. The curriculum unit incorporates Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for High School Life Sciences (HS-LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes and HS-LS3: Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits) and specifically emphasize the associated Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI) (LS1.A: Structure and Function, LS1.B: Growth and Development of Organisms, LS3.A: Inheritance of Traits, and LS3.B: Variation of Traits).
The performance expectations in HS-LS1 are intended to help students formulate an answer to the question, “How do organisms live and grow?” The content of the curriculum unit addresses whole-body effects of the muscular system and the roles it plays in sustaining the human organism (i.e. the primary functions of the muscular system presented previously) as well as the requirements needed to maintain life at the level of the cell. Students are able to draw a direct line from a protein (dystrophin) and the specific role it plays (maintaining the structural integrity of individual muscle cells) through to the organ system (skeletal muscles) and the variety of functions they perform (e.g. generating movement).
The performance expectations in HS-LS3 are intended to help students formulate answers to the questions, “How are characteristics of one generation passed to the next? How can individuals of the same species and even siblings have different characteristics?” The fact that DMD results from gene mutations provides the avenue to address genetic variation in the population and the location of the dystrophin gene on the X-chromosome allows for the opportunity to address differential modes of inheritance and gene expression.
The curriculum unit necessarily also incorporates NGSS Science & Engineering Practices (SEP); 1 - asking questions (science) and defining problems (engineering), 2 - developing and using models, 3 - planning and carrying out investigations, 4 - analyzing and interpreting data, 5 - using mathematics and computational thinking, 6 - constructing explanations (science) and designing solutions (engineering), 7 - engaging in argument from evidence, 8 - obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information.
The Curriculum Unit
The curriculum unit is arranged in three parts. Part 1 presents a review/overview of molecular genetics. There is a specific focus on how information encoded in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) results in protein products and how the mutations of various kinds can interfere with those processes. Part 2 introduces gene therapy and the mechanisms thereof. A general overview is presented, but there is also a focus on specific methods being developed and employed by researchers as potential treatments for DMD. Part 3 asks students to employ their scientific learning to engage with some of the ethical and moral topics that are raised by gene therapy research and the advances thereof.
Part 1 - Overview of Molecular Genetics
It is widely understood that DNA is a biomolecule that contains the blueprint for any living organism. Within the base pairs of the double-helical structures housed in a single nucleus is all the information needed to build the entire organism or any part therein. In short, DNA is the molecular basis for heredity. As such, DNA must both preserve the genetic information and facilitate the expression of the genetic information.
The information stored in DNA is the result of the arrangements of its four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). Akin to the manner in the which letters of the alphabet can be arranged to form words and sentences with an endless variety of meanings, so too can these A, G, C, and T bases of DNA be ordered to hold an array of genetic information. This framing device of using letters and words to construct complex sentences with clear meanings is the through line of the unit. In the end, and at points throughout the unit, students construct examples and models to show foundational concepts underpinning molecular biology and gene therapy.
According to the central dogma of genetics, the pattern of information occurring most frequently in cells is as follows: information within DNA is preserved when the molecule is duplicated through the process of replication and in order for the genetic information to be expressed, DNA is transcribed into RNA, then RNA is translated into protein. DNA molecules are arranged in a double helix structure in which bases pair complementarily with each other, A with T and C with G. In this way, each strand of the double helix can serve as a template to reproduce the entire molecule (replication). Replication is essential because in most cell divisions each new cell must have a complete copy of the DNA contained in the original cell. To facilitate gene expression, a DNA sequence on one strand is used as a template to produce an RNA sequence (transcription), which in turn is to be used as guide for assembling protein (translation) (Figure 2).
DNA is the molecular basis for heredity because the order of its bases, the gene sequence, determines the protein products that will be produced. Genes are the specific segments of DNA, a specific set of instructions, that encode particular protein products. Genes can range in size from as small as a few hundred base pairs long to as large a million or more base pairs. According to the Human Genome Project, the human genome contains approximately 3 billion base pairs divided among 23 pairs of chromosomes. Within these base pairs is encoded information for approximately 25,000 genes (Griffiths, et al. 2005).
With billions of base pairs and tens of thousands of genes, it is necessary to have a comprehensive coding system to organize genetic information. To recall the earlier analogy of the alphabet and sentence construction, it is necessary to understand how letters are grouped to form words and how the words of a sentence are read in sequence across a page to convey complete ideas. In an analogous manner, it is necessary to know that the genetic code is a specific (unambiguous), universal, non-overlapping, degenerate (redundant), non-punctuated code in which groups of three bases (codons) code for the amino acids used to construct protein products (Griffiths, et al. 2005).
To begin, there are 20 different amino acids commonly found in cellular proteins. These in a way are the words that form sentences (proteins).
When a strand of messenger RNA is read end to end, there is only one base at each position. As there are only four different bases in RNA (A, U, G, and C), amino acids cannot be represented by a single letter (base); otherwise the size of the vocabulary, four, would be far too small to accommodate the 20 words (amino acids), needed to form fully coherent, complex, and meaningful sentences (functional proteins). If pairs of letters (AA, AU, GC, etc.) were the basis of word formation, the vocabulary would be larger (42 = 16), but still insufficient. With triplet codons (AAA, CGC, AUG, etc.), 64 (43) distinct word combinations are possible, more than enough for 20 amino acids. Experiments by Francis Crick and other researchers confirm that the codon is indeed exactly three bases long (Griffiths, et al. 2005). The genetic code is said to be degenerate (redundant) because some amino acids are in encoded by multiple codons, however it is also specific (unambiguous) in that no codon codes for multiple amino acids (Figure 2). It is also important to note that the code is non-punctuated; once reading of the letters (bases) is initiated, each letter is read until a stop codon is reached – no commas, no spaces. Crucially, adjacent words (amino acids) do not share letters (bases); the code is said to have non-overlapping reading frames.
By applying these rules of genetic sentence construction, a DNA sequence such as ATGACGGATTAG, is transcribed into the messenger RNA transcript AUGACGGAUUAG and then translated into the polypeptide sequence Met-Thr-Asp (Figure 2).
The framing device of sentence construction is helpful beyond just understanding how a DNA code reliably determines how proteins are constructed. It is also useful for understanding the consequences of errors in those processes, mutations in particular. Gene mutations are lasting changes in the DNA sequences that code for a protein. The causes of mutations are many and include random errors in the DNA replication process. The source of a mutation can involve a single base, a few bases, of even large segments of DNA including entire chromosomes. For the purposes of this curriculum unit, it is important to understand several types of mutations and even more so to grasp the potential consequences for the protein product of the associated gene.
Missense mutation – Missense mutations occur when a single base pair substitution occurs such that one amino acid in the peptide sequence is replaced with a different amino acid (Figure 3). The severity of the consequences will differ depending on the role of the particular protein, the location of the mutation, and the differences between the amino acids; a relatively benign missense mutation might slightly affect the shape and folding of protein without resulting in significant losses or gains of function. In other cases, a single amino acid change in a critical domain of the protein might result in a very diminished protein product and/or critical loss of function. The mutation that is associated with sickle cell anemia, for example, is caused by a single base pair substitution in which a GAG codon in the gene for hemoglobin is changed to GTG resulting in an amino acid valine where there should be a glutamic acid (Kumar, Fausto and Abbas 2004). The consequence of this minor change in structure is a significant shift functional capability.
Nonsense mutation – Nonsense mutations occur when a single base pair substitution occurs such that one amino acid in the peptide sequence is replaced with a stop codon; a signal for the translation apparatus to stop building the protein (Figure 3). Like the single base pair missense mutations, the severity of the consequences of a nonsense mutation depends on the particular protein and the location of the mutation. In general, though, the closer a nonsense mutation is to the beginning of a gene, the more likely it is to have significant effects as it is more likely to disrupt critical domains downstream from the substitution. A sufficiently truncated protein might retain no function at all. Some of the most severe forms of DMD, for example, are the result of nonsense mutations early in the sequence of the dystrophin gene (Kumar, Fausto and Abbas 2004).
Insertion and Deletion Mutations– Insertion mutations add one or more bases somewhere in the sequence of the gene, whereas, deletion mutations remove one or more bases from the sequence of the gene (Figure 3). Very large deletions might even remove the whole gene. The potential consequences range depending on the nature of the particular sequences added or removed as well to/from where they are added or removed. These consequences are discussed further following the description of frameshift mutations (Kumar, Fausto and Abbas 2004).
Duplication Mutations – Duplication mutations are abnormal repetitions of one or more base pairs. As with other mutations, severity of consequences varies. These consequences are discussed further following the description of frameshift mutations (Kumar, Fausto and Abbas 2004).
Frameshift Mutations – Frameshift mutations occur when the insertions, deletions, duplications, or similar mutagenic events disrupt the reading frame of the gene sequence (Figure 3). Recall that according to the sentence construction analogy established previously, the genetic code is non-overlapping and non-punctuated. Also, amino acids are constructed based on codons defined by base triplets. As such, for mutations that change the number of bases in the gene sequence, mutations that add or remove bases in multiples of three and occur between instead of within codons are likely to be less consequential than others. For frameshift mutations, the protein product is often nonfunctional because all downstream codons are likely to be altered (Kumar, Fausto and Abbas 2004).
Along with the previous descriptions and the images in Figure 3, the sentence construction framework is used to emphasize how changes in gene sequences can have a range of consequences on the protein product associated with a gene.
To illustrate the utility of this framework, consider a sentence comprising a sequence of three-letter words. As described previously, the letters in the sentences represent individual DNA bases in the gene and the words represent triplet codons coding for amino acids. The complete sentence represents the protein. The meaning conveyed by the sentence is also essential for the utility of the sentence construction framework in illustrating and understanding the consequences of mutation. The intended meaning of the sentence represents the function of the protein. In this construct, a variety of mutations can be simulated by adding, removing, or changing one or more letters to/from/in a sentence and assessing the extent to which the originally intended meaning of the sentence is affected. The extent to which the originally intended meaning of the sentence is distorted is a stand-in for how much of the function of a particular protein is changed after a mutagenic event.
Consider the sentence and the consequences of the example “mutations” shown in figure 4.
Muscular Dystrophy and the DMD Gene
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a neuromuscular disorder affecting roughly one in every 3500-5000 male births worldwide. DMD is characterized by progressive skeletal muscle degeneration and weakness. Early symptoms begin with the legs and pelvis which are associated with the large muscle groups of the legs and gluteal region, but also occur less severely in the arms, neck, and other areas of the body. The first symptoms are usually observed between ages 3 and 5 and often include difficulty standing upright from a laying position and frequent falls. These boys also tend to have trouble climbing stairs. Over time the condition progresses and the motor skill deficits (running, hopping, jumping, etc.) increase. In time, even walking becomes too challenging and many of these boys are confined to wheelchairs by age 12. Beyond this point sleeping and breathing aids also become necessary. By age 20 most DMD patients are characterized by severe breathing difficulties and cardiac disease. Most do not survive beyond the third decade of life due to respiratory or cardiac complications (Blake, et al. 2002).
In this section of the unit, students’ comprehension of the primary functions associated with the muscular system (described previously) is reinforced through analysis of still images and videos made of DMD patients from around the world. Students analyze patient histories of people who lived or are living of with DMD. Students also watch and read, interviews and accounts by DMD patients and their loved ones and caregivers. Where the opportunity is possible, students conduct interviews with DMD patients, their families, and physicians who treat DMD patients. Gaining familiarity with a condition that highlights, in an almost visceral manor, the functional consequences of the living with less muscle, underscores for students the roles that their own muscles play, even when they are not thinking about them.
According to the 3 P’s, the functional consequences associated with DMD can be sourced to changes in structure. At the level of muscle tissue, students emphasize the connection between the small boys’ small frames and their diminished abilities to move. Students zoom in further to the level of the cell and draw connections between the mutated dystrophin gene and the reduced ability of muscle cells to remain stable during contraction-relaxation cycles.
DMD is caused by an absence of normal quantities of dystrophin, a cytoskeletal protein that stabilizes the plasma membrane of muscle fibers helping to keep muscle cells intact. Loss-of-function mutations in the DMD gene coding for dystrophin diminish the muscles’ ability to withstand physical stresses owing to lengthening and shortening associated with repeated muscle contractions (Kendall, et al. 2012).
DMD largely affects boys because it is inherited in an X-linked recessive fashion due to the location of the DMD gene on the short arm of the X-chromosome. At 2.4 Mb, the DMD gene is among the largest in the human genome. Even after introns (nucleotide sequences that are not included in the final RNA product to be translated) are removed from the precursor messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) transcript, the mature DMD mRNA transcript produced by splicing its 79 exons (regions coding the final protein product) is still 14 kb in length. The sheer size of this gene and its transcript make the DMD gene more susceptible to mutations, but research also shows that certain regions of the DMD are mutation hotspots (nucleotide sequences with a higher concentration of mutations (Rodino-Klapac, et al. 2007). These mutations exist in the varieties previously described and are associated with the ranges of consequences modeled by the previous sentence construction analogies.
Given these underlying genetic elements of DMD, the availability of locus-specific databases of DMD mutations is invaluable for research, diagnosis, and clinical care. Advances in gene sequencing technologies have helped in developing just such databases that can aggregate data from groups of DMD patients. The unit introduces students to such data from the United Dystrophinopathy Project (a multicenter research consortium) and the TREAT-NMD DMD Global database. Analyses of these kinds of data of known DMD gene mutations find that deletions comprise the majority, but duplications and point mutations are also known (Bladen, et al. 2015).
As modeled in the sentence construction analogy, the characteristics and locations of specific mutations affect the severity of functional consequences. The range of consequences associated with mutations in the DMD gene includes but is not limited patients who endure occasional bouts of cramping and myalgia, patients who live with a related but milder form of muscular dystrophy called Becker’s muscular dystrophy (BMD), and patients with rapidly progressing DMD (Bladen, et al. 2015). The availability of mutation databases, gene maps, and the DystrophySNPs resource developed by the University of Utah Genome Depot allows students to make direct connections between changes in the DMD gene sequences and consequences in the dystrophin protein. Students’ understanding of types of mutations allows them to explore the information in these data sets, then predict and describe consequences likely to occur in the protein. Students are also able to provide reasonable explanations to support the assertions they make. The sentence construction frame work helps the students develop their own understanding and then provides a useful way to communicate meaningful scientific information to science and non-science colleagues alike.
The example of DMD is used in the unit because it so clearly delineates the connection between a change in structure and a corresponding dysfunction. The exploration of gene therapy later in the unit is to emphasize the idea that even complex, cutting edge technological advances are rooted in the central idea that solutions for dysfunctions mollify the effects of abnormal structure.
Part 2 - Mechanisms of Gene Therapy
Whereas part 1 of the curriculum unit was concerned with elucidating the nature of the structural problems that result in the dysfunctions associated with DMD, the focus of part 2 is on how a clear understanding of the abnormal structures can lead to the development of remedies that regain function by restoring structure. This is the purpose of the 3 P’s construction.
The molecular basis for DMD has been known for more than two decades and consequential advancements in the management of the disease have been achieved in the that time. Indeed, DMD patients are diagnosed more readily and have available to them systems of interventions that allow them to live comparatively more robust lives for longer than in years past. Still, the treatment options for DMD patients remain limited. The interventions available are largely palliative, seeking to mitigate the symptoms of the dysfunction rather being able to address the structural root causes of the disease. Corticosteroids, cardiac and pulmonary medications, orthopedic supports and procedures, and several other factors are among the critical components of a thorough interdisciplinary approach to managing DMD. Improved muscular strength, prolonged ambulation, and improved respiratory function can be expected for most DMD patients presently (Bushby, et al. 2017).
Strategies attempted in pursuit of curative rather than merely palliative therapies have included both the transplantation of healthy muscle progenitor cells into DMD patients as well gene-therapy mediated delivery of functional copies of the DMD gene into patients. Success with the former strategy has been limited by “issues of immune rejection and poor systemic delivery and viability of transplanted cells.” That is, the administered cells don’t survive after transplantation, and are not able to contribute to muscle function. Success of the latter strategy has been limited by issues associated with the large, complex structure of the gene (Lim, Maruyama and Yokota 2017).
Gene therapy is an approach to address genetic disorders by targeting the source of the disorder; that is, gene therapy refers to treating a disease condition resulting from an abnormal version of a gene by introducing modified DNA products with the correct gene into the cells of the patient. The most intuitive application of this broad concept is to introduce a functioning gene to correct the effects of a disease-causing mutation (e.g., introducing a functional dystrophin protein where none is present or it is present in insufficient quantities). However, gene therapy might also be implemented to inhibit a cell from producing a damaging product or even to completely destroy a problematic cell. In this sense, the basic concept of gene therapy is simple, but several challenges make implementation on a large scale more difficult; these include but are not limited to developing appropriate vectors to reliably deliver the genetic material to the desired sites, avoiding immune responses, and not disrupting the normal function of non-related genes (Rodino-Klapac, et al. 2007).
As suggested earlier, previous curative strategies for DMD involving gene therapy were unsuccessful at reliably delivering the entire DMD gene into all the necessary tissues in significant part due to its large size. Recent advances in molecular biology techniques have given rise to a gene therapy strategy that does not necessitate that the whole DMD gene be transferred into cells: exon skipping.
In this exon skipping approach, the translational reading frame of a gene is restored using synthetic nucleic acid analogs called antisense oligonucleotides (AOs). These AOs can bind to pre-mRNA sequences and interfere with splicing. Specific AO sequences can be designed to target complementary sequences in pre-mRNA. The cell’s splicing machinery does not incorporate the targeted sequence in the final transcript. In this way, whole exons or even multiple exons can be targeted for exclusion without disrupting the reading frame (Aartsma-Rus and van Ommen 2017).
In the parlance of the sentence construction analogy, rather than having to write a new, error-free version of a long complex sentence, exon skipping simply allows the reader to jump over the portion of the sentence containing the mistake. So long as the reading frame is kept intact, the resulting sentence, though somewhat shorter, may still be able to convey most of the intended meaning of the original sentence.
Figure 5 recalls the previously discussed example 5 (insertion of a single base resulted in a nonsensical protein product) and uses the sentence construction framework to illustrate how exon skipping can fix the effects of certain mutations.
In recent months, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted approval for the first gene therapy drug, using this novel exon skipping strategy, Eteplirsen. The drug uses an AO designed to bind in a complementary way to—and thus exclude—exon 51 from the final DMD gene transcript. Skipping exon 51 addresses structural problems associated with the mutated gene in approximately 14% of patients with DMD mutations (Lim, Maruyama and Yokota 2017).
In healthy individuals (no mutations), the 2.5-Mb DMD gene is transcribed to produce a 21-kb pre-mRNA transcript: 79 exons separated by introns. The cell’s splicing machinery then removes the intron sequences from the pre-mRNA and combines the remaining exon regions into a 14-kb mature mRNA transcript. This mRNA transcript is used as template to translate a normal 427 kDa protein of 3685 amino acids.
Patients who may be helped by Eteplirsen have a DMD gene with a consequential mutation in or near exon 51 (e.g. a deletion that introduces a premature stop codon or a deletion that shifts the reading frame for the downstream sequence). The RNA produced from these do not result in a functional dystrophin protein.
In Eteplirsen-treated DMD patients the action of the AO binding to a specific portion of the pre-mRNA transcript results in a mature mRNA in which exon 48 is followed immediately by exon 52 and the reading frame is intact. The end result of translation is a shorter, but still functional dystrophin protein (Lim, Maruyama and Yokota 2017).
The FDA approval of Eteplirsen is not without various controversies. This provides opportunities for students to engage with these and other issues from a more informed perspective. In one such issue, some scientists tout the available data from clinical trials and foresee an effective treatment option for certain classes of DMD patients. Other scientists raise questions about the methodologies employed by the researchers and cast a skeptical eye on the reliability of the clinical trial data and on the utility of the drug at this time (Kesselheim and Avorn 2016). Now armed with a clearer, more accessible understanding of the molecular mechanisms associated with the drug’s actions, students can now more meaningfully examine the published data from clinical trials and draw conclusions about the efficacy of the drug and reliability of claims made by the manufacturer. Students construct and communicate informed, evidence-based arguments related to contemporary issues in the scientific community. There is a direct and immediate connection between the students’ learning in class, and significant real-world implications and applications of that learning. In considering the effectiveness and viability of gene therapy as a treatment for DMD, students engage with the question “For whom and under what conditions would you recommend gene therapy as a treatment for DMD?”
Part 3 – Ethical and Moral Issues Raised by Gene Therapy
Although gene therapy seems to be an increasingly-promising treatment option for several conditions, it remains a risky and often controversial technique. In general, gene therapy is only being explored for conditions with no other curative remedies. In the last part of the unit students combine their learning about the mechanisms of gene therapy, their analysis of clinical research and regulatory data along with their capacities both critical and abstract thinking, to engage with ethical and moral issues.
Beyond questions of efficacy and safety, gene therapy is often considered controversial due to associated moral and ethical questions. As with other scientific developments, as the technology improves, questions shift from ‘can we’, to ‘should we’. Among other issues, students consider the following questions presented on the NIH Genetics Home Reference website: How can “good” and “bad” uses of gene therapy be distinguished? Who decides which traits are normal and which constitute a disability or disorder? Will the high costs of gene therapy make it available only to the wealthy? Could the widespread use of gene therapy make society less accepting of people who are different? Should people be allowed to use gene therapy to enhance basic human traits such as height, intelligence, or athletic ability?
Among the classroom activities to be incorporated in this unit are the following.
Molecular Genetics Sentence Construction - Students construct sentences comprising three letter words. The letters in the sentences are to represent individual DNA bases in the gene. The words are to represent triplet codons coding for amino acids. The sentence, as a whole, represents the protein. Most critically, the intended meaning of the sentence represents the function of protein. The individual letters of the sentences are to be transferred on to separate pieces of paper large enough to be easily manually manipulated (e.g. index cards). Students can simulate various mutations by adding, removing, or changing one or more letters to/from/in their sentences and assessing the extent to which the originally intended meaning of the sentences are affected. The extent to which the originally intended meaning of the sentence is distorted is a stand-in for how much of the function of a particular protein is changed after a mutagenic event. Students can work in pairs or small groups in which they exchange sentences, identify the types of mutations being represented and compare the effects of these mutations. Depending on the availability of technological resources in the classroom, the digital “Mutations” model developed by The Concord Consortium (https://concord.org/stem-resources/mutations) can also be incorporated in this activity. The “Mutations” model allows students to create and edit DNA sequences and observe the effects changes in DNA sequence on the peptide sequence as well as the interactions among the peptides themselves.
One possible assessment method for this learning activity also emphasizes the random nature of many mutagenic mutations. The instructor has two containers with slips of paper, one container with “mutation instructions” (e.g. “remove letter”, “add 3 letters”, “repeat letter four times”, etc.) and the other container with “location instructions” (e.g. 5th letter). Students chose at random one paper from each container, then must identify/describe the type of mutation resulting and assess the extent of the consequence on the gene’s function.
Students can also by assessed by creating a large size poster display that show the sentence construction framework and explicitly makes the connections to gene mutations (with examples).
Data Analysis and Conclusions – One of the emphases of this unit is analyzing and interpreting data, one of important NGSS Science & Engineering Practices. In this learning activity students are provided data sets, tables, graphs, etc. from published research journal articles. Students then are asked to examine the data and use a graphic organizer to make sense of the information presented. The graphic organizer is simple and contains three boxes, each with a set of sentences intended to guide the student’s exploration of the date.
Box 1 questions - Describe the data (what kind of information, how is it organized, where did it come from, etc.). Box 2 questions - What patterns/trends/correlations do you notice in these data? Which trends stand out the most? Do all the data fit these patterns (are there any outliers?)? Box 3 questions - What do the patterns/trends/correlations lead you to conclude? (what might the trends and patterns mean?)
In subsequent lessons and units, students will use the insights from data analysis done in this manner to construct scientific claims the supported by data and structured in a coherent way.
Letter to the Author/Editor – A goal of this unit, and indeed the course overall, is to develop students who are more critical consumers of scientific information. My students sometimes have a tendency to accept information presented to them without critical examination. I remind students that when assessing the reliability of information, it is important to consider how an author/speaker presents an argument, but it is also important to keep in mind that even well-organized data is sometimes flawed and eloquent speakers can be wrong. At the very least, scientists often disagree in whole or in part with information that is presented to them. In these cases, in is important to be able to assess the information presented to you and construct a coherent argument of your own.
The controversy regarding the recent FDA approval of Eteplirsen provides a useful example to emphasize this point. One of the important texts used in this unit is from the opinion section of the December 13, 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) – Volume 316, number 22. In the piece doctors Aaron S. Kesselheim and Jerry Avorn, make the case that the approval of Eteplirsen is problematic because of certain methodological and procedural issues (e.g. small sample size of the study group). In this learning activity students compare these doctors’ critiques with the data and arguments presented by the original researchers and then present their arguments as to the validity of the arguments of either party. Following this, students apply critical eyes to conclusions drawn from research data and write a “letter to the editor/author” in which the present critique the research and its conclusions. The emphasis here must be on the strengths and weakness of the research/data (“What was done well? What can be improved? What other questions should have been asked?, etc..) and crafting an evidence-based argument.
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Bladen, Catherine L., David Salgado, Soledad Monges, Maria E. Foncuberta, Kyriaki Kekou, Konstantina Kosma, Hugh Dawkins, et al. 2015. "The TREAT-NMD DMD Global Database: Analysis of More than 7,000 Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Mutations." Human Mutation 36 (4): 395-402.
Blake, Derek J., Andrew Weir, Sarah E. Newey, and Kay E. Davies. 2002. "Function and Genetics of Dystrophin and Dystrophin-Related Proteins in Muscle." Physiological Reviews 82: 291-329.
Bushby, Katharine, Richard Finkel, David J Birnkrant, Laura E Case, Paula R Clemens, Linda Cripe, Ajay Kaul, et al. 2017. "Diagnosis and management of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, part 2: implementation of multidisciplinary care." The Lancet Neurology (Elsevier) 9 (2): 177-189.
Griffiths, Anthony J.F., Richard C. Lewontin, Jeffrey H. Miller, David T. Suzuki, and William M. Gelbart. 2005. Introduction to Genetic Analysis, Eighth Edition. New York, NY: W H Freeman & Co.
Kendall, Genevieve C., Ekaterina I. Mokhonova, Miriana Moran, and Natalia E. Sejbuk. 2012. "Dantrolene Enhances Antisense-Mediated Exon Skipping in Human and Mouse Models of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy." Science Translational Medicine 164ra160.
Kesselheim, A S, and J Avorn. 2016. "Approving a problematic muscular dystrophy drug: Implications for fda policy." JAMA 316 (22): 2357-2358.
Kumar, Vinay, Nelso Fausto, and Abul Abbas. 2004. Robbins & Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease, Seventh Edition. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Saunders.
Lim, Kenji Rowel Q., Rika Maruyama, and Toshifumi Yokota. 2017. "Eteplirsen in the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy." Drug Design, Development and Therapy.
Rodino-Klapac, Louise R., Louis G. Chicoine, Brian K. Kaspar, and Jerry R. Mendell. 2007. "Gene Therapy for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: Expectations and Challenges." JAMA Neurology 1236-1241.
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