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Most Active Stories News & Music Contributors Puget Sound Energy target of 'Beyond Coal' campaign The Pacific Northwest has made headlines for its efforts to become the first coal-free region in the United States. Washington’s last coal-fired power plant, in Centralia, is scheduled to be shut down by 2025. Yet one of the region’s largest utilities still derives more than a third of its power from coal. Puget Sound Energy, which serves more than a million customers in 11 counties, is a target of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Despite the utility’s profile as a leader in the development of wind farms and other clean energy, it still gets about 35% of its power from coal-fired power plants, chief among them, the Colstrip Generating Station in eastern Montana. “It’s an old, very, very dirty pant – the biggest source of climate pollution in the western United States,”says Josh Nelson is with CREDO Action, which has joined forces with the Sierra Club on this issue. “The pollution from this plant has been making local residents sick for decades. And it even affects air quality as far away as Yellowstone National Park.” He says they now have more than 5,000 signatures on a petition demanding an end to the utility’s reliance on coal. Puget Sound Energy says Colstrip has been updated since its construction in the 1970s and '80s and is now actually one of the cleanest coal-fired power generators in the U.S. Its size is what makes it such a big polluter. PSE spokesman Grant Ringel says coal is still part of the utility’s portfolio because it’s reliable and affordable. It costs about half as much as any other energy source out there. “The Colstrip resource actually produces by far the cheapest electricity that PSE’s generating plants produce." Ringel says. "And that’s an important component, especially in these tough economic times.” He says PSE knows many of its customers prefer clean energy. About 30,000 pay extra each month for green energy offsets that are invested in renewable resources. But until better technologies come to market to make it possible to store solar and wind power, he says Puget Sound Energy is unlikely to divest from coal and natural gas. The Digital Future
A risk factor is something that increases your likelihood of getting a disease or condition. It is possible to develop infertility with or without the risk factors listed below. However, the more risk factors you have, the greater your likelihood of developing infertility. If you have a number of risk factors, ask your doctor what you can do to reduce your risk. Risk factors for infertility in men include: The toxins in cigarette smoke negatively affect sperm quality. The concentration of sperm in semen is decreased, sperm motility (movement) is reduced, and the number of abnormal sperm is increased. Smoking also has adverse effects on hormone levels and may affect the cells in the testes that produce testosterone. Although moderate alcohol consumption does not affect male fertility, excessive alcohol intake alters hormone levels and reduces sperm count and sperm quality. Like cigarette smoking, use of marijuana also can adversely affect sperm count, sperm motility, and sperm morphology. It also reduces plasma testosterone levels. Use of cocaine negatively affects sperm parameters as well as the ability of sperm to penetrate cervical mucus. Opiates (heroin, morphine) may reduce fertility in men by altering hormone production. Anabolic steroids are sometimes used to increase muscle mass or strength, but they also influence production of reproductive hormones and can reduce fertility. Unprotected sexual intercourse (intercourse without a condom) increases your risk of developing a sexually transmitted disease (STD). Several STDs, including gonorrhea and chlamydia , often produce no symptoms, especially in men, so you may not know you are infected. Untreated STDs can cause scarring in the sperm-carrying tubes, which reduces the number of sperm in ejaculate and increases the risk of fertility problems. Use of lubricants during intercourse, however, may contribute to fertility problems since many of these products contain spermicides that are toxic to sperm. The testicles are easily damaged during vigorous sporting events or fights. These injuries can cause inflammation that reduces the blood supply to the testicles, which can permanently damage sperm-producing cells. Moderate exercise increases sperm production and may have beneficial effects on fertility. However, excessive exercise, such as that performed by long-distance runners, reduces sperm production. Numerous chemicals used in industry or found in the environment as contaminants have been linked to male infertility. These include organochlorine pesticides, lead, cadmium, aniline, dyes, dioxins (used to bleach paper products), and vinclozolin (a fungicide used on food). These chemicals are thought to reduce fertility by disrupting hormone function. Some evidence suggests that heat exposure, such as occurs when using a sauna or hot tub, may affect sperm quantity and quality. Underwear and clothing that is tight and constricting may reduce blood flow in the groin and adversely affect sperm production. Other evidence indicates that certain bicycle seats may cause circulatory and neurologic damage in the groin that can affect erectile function. Men with very poor nutritional status may have reduced fertility. Some recent studies also suggest that supplemental antioxidants may improve semen parameters, but it is unlikely that malnutrition is a significant cause of infertility in most US men. However, being obese or underweight may reduce fertility. Excessive and/or prolonged emotional stress may also reduce fertility. The following medications can cause subfertility or even infertility: cimetidine, colchicine, allopurinol, and minoxidil. High fevers due to flu or pneumonia can adversely affect sperm parameters, although these effects are generally short-term. Other infections, including viral infections such as mumps and prostatitis , can cause inflammation of the testicles and thereby reduce fertility. Tuberculosis can produce blockages in the sperm-carrying tubes. Antiobiotics that can lead to subfertility or infertility include: erythromycin, tetracycline, sufasalazine, nitrofurantoin, and ketoconazole. The long-term complications of diabetes can produce blood vessel and nerve abnormalities that lead to problems with erection and ejaculation. High blood pressure itself, as well as many of the medications (alpha blocker, calcium channel blocker, spirorolactone) used to treat it, can cause erectile problems. The build-up of plaque in the arteries, including those of the penis, can create erectile problems. These may be exacerbated by medications used to treat cardiovascular disease. Chronic kidney failure can reduce sperm quality and can also lead to erectile difficulties. Some cancers affect the brain or other hormone-producing tissues and can affect fertility directly. In other instances, the radiation or chemotherapy used to treat cancers at other sites may severely reduce or stop sperm production. Cystic fibrosis is an inherited disorder characterized by excessive production of mucus. Men with cystic fibrosis are infertile due to the absence of sperm, vas deferens, or seminal vesicles. Sickle cell anemia is an inherited disorder in which the structure of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in blood, is abnormal. It can contribute to infertility because the testes may be underdeveloped. Chromosome disorders, including conditions such as Klinefelters syndrome , occur in 2% to 20% of infertile men. These can influence fertility by disrupting cell division or by altering the development of the testicles. Some men are born with abnormalities of the reproductive organs, such as the absence of the sperm-carrying tube, which prevent sperm from being released into semen. Undescended testicles can also be a cause of infertility. - Reviewer: Adrienne Carmack, MD - Review Date: 09/2012 - - Update Date: 00/92/2012 -
Ice Hazards and Features Ice hazards come in many forms and many of them are more common at different parts of the season. Some users are impacted by specific features more than others. The following are lists of things to consider in different circumstances. New Ice: Ice Fever is tends to be strongest with new, smooth black ice. It is also the most common time to fall through. Some common hazards include: - New-ice holes-aka Warm water holes - Thin ice beyond frozen ice edges - Off edge wind driven breakup of an ice sheet - Contraction Cracks: - Pressure ridges - Reef holes and thin areas - Current Holes - Puddle holes - Wind holes (see glossary) - Drain holes (after a rainy thaw) - Mush holes (relatively uncommon)-See glossary - Ice-slush-crust-snow; layered ice (see Lake Dunmore Tragedy) - And, of course, thin ice Mid Season-thick ice (6" and up) - Pressure ridges - Tectonic cracks - Dry contraction cracks (tripping hazard) - Snow covering hidden hazards (gas holes, folded pressure ridges, etc) - Snow with slush underneath. - Ice over deep puddles , shell ice. - Jumbled ice, Ice sharks and other forms of disrupted ice.See Glossary - Pressure ridges of all types - Random thin spots associated with disrupted ice and fold down ridging. - Risk of large sections of an ice sheet blowing into open water, sometimes in supprisingly little wind. - Sieches and underwater currents may be a factor on some lakes. - Risk of large scale, rapid break up of moderately thin ice on big water - Polynays (big open areas) - For more see the Big Ice and New Big Ice pages Early Season Thaws - Thin ice thaws and weakens more quickly than thick ice - Gas holes deroof and can become holes up to several feet in diameter - Drain holes - Melted out ridges - Drift holes - Reef holes - Shell ice - Puddle Holes - Wind holes - Leads, interfingering (overthrusting) and other big ice situations - Re-opening of ice covered areas and holes. Thick Ice Thaws - Melted ridges - Thawed ice finger rafting and ice piles (big ice only) - Big pushdown ridges - Gas holes are deroofed - Puddle holes along cracks - Drain holes are less common but may occur if enough water accumulates on top of the ice. - Shell ice (dry (white) and wet (dark)) Snow Covered Ice - Snow is a good insulator so even a small amount significantly slows the growth of the underlying ice or allows currents to erode the ice faster than it thickens. - Submergence of ice by the weight of a snow cover over the ice often results in a thick slush layer under snow. This makes travel messy and difficult - Slush holes: slush over open water. These are usually not common but can be treacherous. - You can't see most of the things that would serve as warning signs on snow free ice. - Gas hole roofs are likely to melt with an insulating blanket of snow. - Some snow drifts may be snow caps on gas holes. These somtimes look a little more granular than nearby drifts. - Blowing snow fills open water at pressure ridges. This can make them look more solid than they are, especially in the first few days before the slush freezes. End of season - The temptations of nice weather and one more day on the ice. - Spring tectonic cracks - Porous ice-when the puddles disappear - Thaw progression - Thinning and melting along the shore - Weakened and broken ice at vehicle access points - Rising lake levels move the shoreline away from the ice sheet. - More gas holes - Weed holes (see glossary) - Big ice: leads, detached plates, etc. - Thin ice along the shoreline, rising water levels, - Large grain vs small grain ice - Overnight temperatures frequently makes the ice appear to be good in the morning. This lures people onto the ice one last time. A few hours later it can be so weak it will not hold up a person on foot, let alone a vehicle. This is more likely with small grain ice (S2). Ice over flowing water: - River and stream ice is complicated with currents, variable water depth and water temperature. This can result in highly variable ice thickness. - Even at low flow rates, impoundments tend to have thin areas in places where you would not expect them if there was no flow. This is particularly true early and late in the season. - Snow cover on river ice makes problems harder to find and insulates the ice from cooling by cold weather and enhances under-ice erosion. - Passages between large bodies of water are typically thinner and melt away more quickly than water with no flow. This is especially pronounced if one of the water bodies does not have an ice cover. - Stream/river inlets and outlets are common sources of problems. The ice thickness near them can be highly variable depending on the particular circumstances at the time. - Deltas may have under-ice erosion from the shallow water and/or the temperature of the incoming stream. Gas holes are very common in the underwater parts of deltas, often in areas that are not the current outlet for the river/stream. - Bubblers and dock protection systems often skin over at night or over a few days when they are turned off to save electricity. Approach docks and moored boats accordingly. - Shallow ponds tend to melt faster from the bottom than ice over deeper water - They often melt completely well before ice over deeper water. - They are generally not a good choice for late season ice activities. - Swamps are often riddled with thin ice when the ice on a lake adjoining the swamp is fine. - Swamps are often deeper in places than you might expect - The ice within 50 or so feet of the edge of a swamp is more likely to have thin ice, especially early in the season. - We defer to the Swedes as they have a great deal of experience skating on salt ice. - In general salt ice is weaker, thaws at lower temperatures and is harder to read than lake ice. - And there are tides, swells and shipping traffic.
Colon cancer is the growth of cancer in the large intestine. Cancer occurs when cells in the body divide without control or order. If cells keep dividing, a mass of tissue forms, called a growth or tumor. The term cancer refers to malignant tumors. They can invade nearby tissue and spread to other parts of the body. Factors that may increase your risk of colon cancer include: - Age: 50 or older - Diets high in fat, low in fiber - History of polyps , which are non-cancerous growths in the colon and rectum - Hereditary conditions such as familial polyposis or Lynch syndrome - Personal history of colorectal cancer - Family history of colon or rectal cancer, especially a parent, sibling, or child - History of ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease - Other risk factors include: Colon cancer often does not have any symptoms. However, some symptoms associated with colon cancer include: - A change in bowel habits such as diarrhea, constipation, or feeling that the bowel does not empty completely—Lasting for more than a few days in people aged 50 and older - Bright red or very dark blood in the stool - Stools that are narrower than usual - Abdominal discomfort, such as frequent gas pains, bloating, fullness, and/or cramps - Unexplained weight loss - Feeling tired frequently These may also be caused by other, less serious health conditions. Anyone experiencing these symptoms should see a doctor. The doctor will ask about your symptoms and medical history. A physical exam will be done. Tests to screen for cancer or precancerous polyps include: - Your rectum may need to be checked for lumps or growths. This can be done with a digital rectal exam. - Your waste products may need to be checked. This can be done with a fecal occult blood test. - Your rectum and colon may need to be examined. This can be done with: - You may need to have pictures taken of your bodily structures. This may include: Additional tests may be done to confirm the presence of cancer, determine what stage the cancer is in, and/or determine if the cancer has spread: - You may need to have your bodily fluid tested to check for anemia and markers of cancer in the blood. This can be done with blood tests. - You may need to have tissue samples or polyps removed. This can be done with: - You may need to have additional pictures taken of your bodily structures. This can be done with: Treatment depends on the stage of the cancer but may include: Surgery is the main treatment. It requires removal of the cancerous tumor and nearby colon tissue. Depending on the size and location of the tumor, the surgery may be done by: - Laparoscopy—Removal of early-stage cancer. - Open surgery—To remove tumors, colon tissue, and sometimes nearby lymph nodes. The surgeon will also look for additional cancer in the colon during the surgery. In some cases, the tumor and nearby healthy colon tissue will be removed. Healthy tissue is removed in case the cancer has begun to spread. The removal of a part of the colon is called a hemicolectomy. In most cases, the remaining healthy portions of the colon are reconnected. Sometimes, the end of the healthy colon is temporarily or permanently attached to an opening in the abdomen. This is called a colostomy. It allows body waste to pass out of the body if the colon cannot do so. Radiation therapy is the use of radiation to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. It is directed at the site of the tumor from a source outside the body. This therapy is aimed at the immediate area of the cancer. This therapy uses drugs to kill cancer cells. It may be given in many forms, including pill, injection, and catheter. The drugs enter the bloodstream and travel through the body killing mostly cancer cells. They can also kill some healthy cells. This therapy is systemic, meaning it affects your entire body. If you are diagnosed with colon cancer, follow your doctor's instructions. The causes of most cancers are not known. However, it is possible to prevent many colon and rectal cancers by finding and removing polyps that could become cancerous. Beginning at age 50, both men and women at average risk should follow one of five screening options: - Yearly fecal occult blood test or fecal immunochemical test - Colonoscopy every 10 years - Flexible sigmoidoscopy every five years - X-rays of the colon and rectum with double-contrast barium enema every five years - CT colonography every five years Be sure to discuss these cancer screening tools with your doctor to see which option is best for you. People with any of the following risk factors should begin colon and rectal cancer screening at age 40 or earlier and/or undergo screening more often: - Strong family history of colon or rectal cancer or polyps - Known family history of hereditary colon or rectal cancer syndromes - Personal history of colon and rectal cancer or adenomatous polyps - Personal history of chronic inflammatory bowel disease There are also lifestyle changes that may reduce your risk of colon cancer, such as: - Not smoking - Being physically active, including, exercising at least 30 minutes on most days of the week - Maintaining a healthy weight - Eating a high-fiber diet containing fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes - Making other changes to your diet, like eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, not eating a lot of red meat, and not abusing alcohol
If you’re one of the millions of people worldwide who suffer from cervical stenosis, which is the narrowing of the spinal canal in the region of your neck, you may be desperate to find relief from symptoms of travelling pain, localized pain, numbness, tingling, or weakness. However, what many people don’t realize is that there are a variety of treatment options other than surgery. From exercise to massage, nutritional improvements to knowledge therapy, non-invasive relief is possible. How Biofeedback Works The majority of cervical stenosis cases are caused by degenerative conditions, such as degenerative disc disease or facet disease, either of which can lead to bone spurs, herniated discs, bulging discs, collapsed discs, or other injuries that contribute to neural compression. There is a holistic form of pain management called “behavior modification,” or biofeedback, which strives to change the way your brain interprets and responds to pain signals. How does it work? Electrodes and other sensory equipment are used to find patterns in your body’s physical responses to stimuli. Once the relationships between psychological responses (thoughts, emotions, and behavior) and physiological responses (brainwaves, muscle movement, skin temperature, pain perception, and heart rate) have been established, the patient can, ideally, begin to change their outward behavior, thereby changing their ability to manage pain. For instance, if a patient is suffering from cervical stenosis that is causing bouts of muscle spasms or tingling in the neck, a doctor may put electrical sensors on the patient’s neck. The sensors, with the help of monitoring equipment, track the body’s responses to the spasms. In time, a patient may be able to use deep breathing, visualization, or other techniques to eliminate or reduce the pain. Additional Treatment Options Behavior modification in the form of biofeedback will not work for all individuals. If you have tried a variety of non-surgical treatments for your cervical stenosis, lumbar stenosis, or thoracic stenosis, and have found them to be ineffective, you may be ready for more progressive pain relief measures. If neck surgery becomes an option, consider contacting Laser Spine Institute (LSI). Our state-of-the-art, endoscopic procedures are minimally invasive and are performed on an outpatient basis, so you can get back to living an active, pain-free life as soon as possible.
The Chornancap priestess, the woman of the greatest hierarchy yet discovered in the Lambayeque culture, has the vestiges of her ancient power on show in Lima at an exhibition of grave goods found surrounding her remains near the northern Peruvian coastal city of Chiclayo. The exhibit was inaugurated by the Culture Ministry at the Museum of the Nation to give visitors a view of 62 pieces recovered from her tomb at the archaeological complex of Chotuna-Chornancap. The artifacts were previously preserved at the Brüning National Archaeological Museum and bear witness to the woman's elite religious status between the 12th and 13th centuries A.D. in Lambayeque society, whose best-known personage is the Lord of Sipan, who ruled the region during the third century A.D. The exhibition includes such items as her ceremonial scepter, earrings and crown, all made of gold, as well as metal urns, bracelets, necklaces, shell pendants and a large variety of ceramics in the Lambayeque and Cajamarca style, testifying to the close ties between those societies. The Chornancap priestess was discovered in October 2011 but not until April of this year was it discerned that the remains were those of a woman, who was interred "with the highest honors and accompanied by eight other people," the director of the Chotuna-Chornancap dig, Carlos Wester La Torre, told Efe last April. The archaeologist compared the priestess's preeminence as a religious authority in the area with the role exercised by the Lady of Cao in the Mochica culture during the fourth century A.D., the most powerful woman yet known to have existed in Peru's pre-Inca societies, a ruler who was also believed to have supernatural powers. Wester also noted the "fine quality" of the goldwork now on view at the exhibit that was found buried with the priestess, because in his opinion "it shows that goldsmiths of the Lambayeque culture mastered the art as well as their predecessors of the Mochica culture." He particularly valued her golden necklaces with anthropomorphic pendants, bracelets with contrasting gold and silver elements, and above all the details engraved in the very elaborate ornamentation. "This has revolutionized our thinking," Wester told Current World Archaeology as reported in its online edition world-archaeology.com. "It shows wealth and power were not a male privilege in this culture; this is categorical evidence of women involved in the political and ideological apparatus of the time. Her youth indicates the post was hereditary, and her grave goods suggest she performed rituals such as sacrifices, receiving offerings, and celebrating changes of the seasons, the moon, and tides." The team of archaeologists from Chotuna-Chornancap last week unveiled another tomb found beneath that of the priestess and her grave goods, and which held the remains of another leading figure from the region, buried with similar objects but with the oddity that this grave was constructed so it could be flooded with water. According to Wester, the time lapse between the Chornancap priestess and the newly found human remains, whose sex has not yet been determined, was very short and indicates a connection between the two, though he would not speculate on whether the link might be "familial, matrimonial or religious." EFE
Skip to Navigation ↓ Many images of the solar system do not do justice to how small the planets are relative to the Sun, or how distant they are from the Sun and each other. The solar system is really mostly empty space. The Toilet Roll Solar System activity helps give an idea of the relative distances between the planets. Some other fun things to try include finding your age and weight on other planets.
In our ever-changing world, a naturally occurring genetic difference in an individual can become an advantage or a fatal flaw in the struggle for survival. Those who live to reproduce pass their favorable genes to future generations. Certain characteristics become more or less prevalent over time as the group as a whole evolves. CHANGE OVER TIME Through the process of natural selection, ancestral life forms give rise to new species. Scroll through the span of geologic time from the Earth's origin to the present day. Natural selection has generated a diverse collection of eyes, from simple to complex, that help animals sense their surroundings.
Activity Two: Final Thoughts on Korea and the Cold War Watch Lecture Two. Use the questions to guide your reflection. Consider These Questions Did the experience of Korea make an impact on later foreign policy? If so, how? If a student asked you why they should study Korea, how would you answer? "Korea also provides an object lesson in how containment could work. The Soviet Union did not want to confront the United States, and Korea starts a pattern by which proxies fight the Cold War." Jonathan Chu
Japanese art, culture and the Yamabushi: Benkei and the loyal warrior monk Lee Jay Walker Modern Tokyo Times In Japanese culture, history and art, it is clear that Saito no Musashibo Benkei left a lasting impression and this continues today in modern culture. This legendary warrior monk belonged to the intriguing period of the 12th century. He was born in 1155 and died in 1189 after serving the famous Minamoto no Yoshitsune. The images in this article come from the esteemed toshidama (Toshidama Gallery), whereby you can feel the power of Benkei and visually understand how he was portrayed in Japanese art. Benkei is famous within the folklore of Japan because of his enormous strength which was matched by great loyalty. In the realm of Japanese art and the majestic ukiyo-e movement, then Benkei provides a wealth of images by many famous artists. It is noted that he was extremely tall because by the age of seventeen Benkei had reached two meters in height. This is still very tall by the standard of today. On top of this was many other great attributes which belong to his fighting skills and the knowledge he obtained during his travels to many Buddhist monasteries. Of course, within Japanese folklore and the mysteries of history and Shintoism, then many intriguing stories evolve around Benkei. He firmly belongs to the power and prestige of Buddhism and the warrior class that emerged during this period of Japanese history. However, just like Judaism, Christianity and Islam have all been influenced by the Pagan culture where they developed; this similarly happened to Benkei because the power of Shintoism was fused within many elements of Japanese Buddhism and folklore. Therefore, these intriguing stories about Benkei clearly have survived the test of time because he remains a potent figure today in modern Japan. Much depends on the Benkei which appeals to the storyteller but within Japanese art and the tradition of ukiyo-e; it is clear that the term Oniwaka is merged within the nature of this famous warrior monk. Oniwaka means the “demon or ogre child.” Of course, many other fascinating stories evolve around Benkei including his deeds on the battlefield. For example, it is stated that he defeated at least 200 military men during major battles throughout his life. This of course may be exaggerated or it may not; yet the point is that his fame within the warrior class appealed greatly when judged with his great physical strength and the loyalty that bestowed him throughout his lifetime. It is also reported that Benkei in time became a yamabushi (mountain warrior monk) and for this reason he is often depicted in a cap. This fits in well with the yamabushi who had many fine qualities. After all, the yamabushi were not only mighty warriors who were blessed with respective supernatural powers. Equally important, was the ascetic nature of the yamabushi and the exemplary knowledge they held related to the Shugendo doctrine. The Shugendo doctrine evolved around the fusions and integration of many powerful thought patterns. This applies to the school of Shingon Buddhism and the esoteric nature of this faith, the rich heritage of Shinto, the Tendai Buddhist faith and the great philosophy of Taoism. Therefore, the yamabushi were not just mysterious holy men who had mighty powers in the area of military strength; but equally powerful was the knowledge that each individual had obtained in this world and how they utilized this with the mystery of nature. His loyalty remains famous today and the Toshidama Gallery sums up Benkei extremely well when it comes to the loyalty of this esteemed individual. Toshidama states that “…he was raised by monks who were both religious and military. As a young man he positioned himself at one end of Gojo Bridge and disarmed travelers of their swords. On reaching his 999th sword he fought with a young nobleman, Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who won the battle of the bridge and thereafter Benkei served as his principal retainer. They fought in the Gempei Wars between the Taira clan and their own Minamoto clan.” If you are intrigued about Benkei then this article is providing just a snippet of the importance of Benkei within many aspects of Japanese culture, history and folklore.
view a plan A lesson on family structures and roles Families on Display: An Introduction to the Study of Families. Length of Lesson: The learner will be able to recognize that there are different family structures. They will be able to identify the different members in a family and the roles of those family members. They will also be able to understand the different activities in which families are engaged. They will do this through the creation of a Family Bar Graph, the production of a Family Collage, and the student’s thoughts contained in journal writings. - One large sheet of newsprint. - List of 17 family vocabulary words (provided). - Posters of different family types around the world. - Student Journals. - 11×14 sheet of colored construction paper. - Glue, pencils, markers, crayons, etc. Four family pictures from each child. (Children must bring these in ahead of time. Make sure that parents know how and what they will be used for.) Magazines with pictures of families in them. Complete on the sheet of newsprint, a bar graph showing the numbers and make up of each student’s family using the information obtained - How many people are in your family? - Who is in your family? - Number of children? - Who do you live with? Go over the family Vocabulary words. Discuss what each one means and make up definitions of words that are not on Give each student a piece of construction paper, their family photos, magazine pictures and writing implements. Say: Today we are going to make a Family Collage that shows your family and different types of families that can be found around the world. Ahead of time, complete an example of the collage using your own family photos, magazine pictures and drawings. Label your drawings with the names of the different members of you family. Discuss the different people in a family. Can these be different? How? Discuss the different types of families and the different activities that families participate in. Can these e different? How. Refer to the posters depicting families. Have the children write in their journals about the different family types that you discussed and about their own families. Also have them write definitions to the vocabulary words in their journals. Checklist for each of that students collages to be sure that they use four family photos, at least three magazine pictures and have at least two of their own drawings that are Read student journals and respond to the insights and thoughts of the students. Have children self-assess themselves by submitting a self-critique of their collage. Students can compare the different family types in their journals. Be sensitive to children who do not wish to share about their families. This lesson can also be used as a closing lesson on families as a way to access students’ knowledge of families. Herr, J. and Libby, Y. (1995). for the early childhood classroom. New York, NY: Delmar Publishers Carey Bohl (1997) - One-parent family
Vent Communities Under the Galapagos Islands Vent communities are animals and plants that are found deep in the ocean near hot water or geothermal vents. Vents are found where the tectonic plates crack. Molten lava lies deep within the cracks and heats up the water. This ecosystem is teeming with life. They are rich in biodiversity. There are many species found near the vent communities that are not found anywhere else at the bottom of the ocean. Scientists discovered that these vents have hydrogen sulfide coming out of them. The hydrogen sulfide provides nutrients for the plants and animals. Vent animals have strange characteristics. They are giants. An example is the tube worm which grows to be nearly 3 meters long. They grow at a much faster rate. Vent clams grow five times faster than regular clams. (click to enlarge)
Keyboard shortcuts are the easiest way to do things faster, but with the wide variety of software we all use it's hard to remember all the different shortcuts. In turn, even though we all know shortcuts are useful, few of us bother using them. Here's how to learn to make use of shortcuts, ranging from the beginner to expert. Why Keyboard Shortcuts Make You Faster at Everything You've probably heard about keyboard shortcuts, and you've heard keyboard nuts talking about how they're so much faster than using a mouse. They've probably even called you crazy for not using them. The truth is, keyboard shortcuts are great and fast. But that's not the whole story. Coding Horror's Jeff Atwood lays out the truth: I've long been an advocate of two-fisted computing—using both your keyboard and your mouse to the fullest. That's what keyboard shortcuts are to me. I'm not sure why this always has to be spun as a cage match between the keyboard and the mouse. Keyboard shortcuts don't replace my mousing; they complement it. Keyboard shortcuts get a bad rap because they're hard to remember, and learning one keyboard shortcut doesn't seem like it saves you a lot of time. But once you learn the lot of them, you'll definitely notice a boost to productivity because you're not unnecessarily reaching for a mouse. That is, you'll never reach for that mouse or trackpad unless it actually makes sense to do so. This makes you a lot more efficient particularly on larger displays, and feels a lot better than moving your hands around a trackpad. Photo by Samat Jain. How to Force Yourself to Learn New Shortcuts The reason most of us don't bother with keyboard shortcuts is because they feel like they require too much mental effort to learn. The most obvious way to force yourself to learn shortcuts is to disconnect your mouse (or in my case, grumpily refuse to go buy batteries for few days), but most people don't want to go to that extreme. Thankfully, you can grab a few programs that'll train you to use more shortcuts. You have a few different ways you can approach this. The easiest is to grab an application that shows you the keyboard shortcut every time you perform an action with the mouse. For example, if you use your mouse to click Edit > Copy, these programs will pop up the shortcut (Ctrl+C for Windows or Cmd+C for Mac). For Windows, we like Keyrocket and on Mac we like Eve. Similarly, KeyRocket for Gmail is a Chrome extension that does the exact same thing in Gmail. Alternately, you can run yourself through some drills to teach yourself the muscle-memory required to remember these shortcuts with Shortcutfoo. With Shortcutfoo, you run through a training program that teaches you shortcuts for programs like Excel, Photoshop, Gmail, and more by having you repeatedly enter them. Finally, if you want a quick reference guide to a ton of different keyboard shortcuts in different apps, Ultimate Windows 8 Shortcuts and CheatSheet for Mac pull up all the keyboard shortcuts for an app on the spot so you can reference them quickly. The cheat sheets are very helpful when you're learning the ropes and you might be surprised at how much you can do with a keyboard. Advanced Keyboard Uses The idea of ditching your mouse isn't just about keyboard shortcuts. It's also about making everything else you do on your computer simpler. You have a few different ways to do this, and with a little effort you can make it so you're almost never reaching for your mouse. Use app launchers to do just about everything with a keystroke: With software like Launchy for Windows or Quicksilver for Mac you can make your keyboard perform almost any action you want so you never have to reach for the mouse. YOu can also launch apps and perform actions with Windows and OS X's built-in search tools, but app launchers will give you even more options. Make your own shortcuts: Chances are you have a lot of unused keys on your keyboard. Maybe it's that totally useless Scroll Lock key, or the End key you never have a use for. On Windows we like to use AutoHotKey to customize these keys to your liking (as well as countless other great custom shortcuts). On a Mac you create custom shortcuts with built-in software. Use text expanders to save you hours of typing: Finally, if you really want to speed up your day with keyboard tricks, few things work as well as text expansion. On Windows we like PhaseExpress and on Mac we like TypeIt4Me for text expansion. In this case, think of text expansion like a word-based keyboard shortcut. Type out a couple letters, and the text expander replaces it with a whole word. It saves you a lot of time, especially if you're always copying and pasting the same text. Learn Your Favorite Program's Shortcuts Of course, you really don't need to go about learning every single keyboard shortcut for every application you use. It's more useful to learn all the shortcuts in the software you use the most, and don't worry about the rest. Here are a few different guides for doing just that. - The Best Windows 8 Shortcuts - OS X Keyboard Shortcuts - Learn all of Ubuntu's Keyboard Shortcuts with a Wallpaper - Master Gmail's Shortcuts - Highlight Text Like a Keyboard Ninja - The Power Users Guide to Chrome - The Power Users Guide to Firefox - The Facebook Keyboard Shortcut Cheat Sheet - Learn All the Microsoft Word Shortcuts with this Printable Cheatsheet - Quick Reference Cards Show All the Excel Keyboard Shortcuts - Become a Command Line Ninja with These Time Saving Shortcuts The 20 Most Common Shortcuts Everyone Needs to Know Even if you don't want to dig into the deeper recesses of keyboard shortcuts, and few of the most common shortcuts can still save you a ton of time. If you need to really learn these set the below image up as a desktop background, or print it and place it on your wall (click to expand or right-click to save): The trick with keyboard shortcuts is that you have to train your muscle memory to just automatically go for them instead of a mouse. It takes time, and it's not exactly a fun thing to do, but it's worth it in the end. Once you get the hang of it you feel like a cyborg ninja who can instantly jump to anywhere in a text document, launch a web browser and research a term, and then jump into a spreadsheet to quickly create a table without ever touching a mouse. You'll likely never ditch the mouse completely, but that's not the point. It's about making yourself faster with both.
Author: R. E. Batchelor Paperback: ISBN: 0521547601 Pages: 752 Price: U.S. $ 45.00 Paperback: ISBN: 0521547601 Pages: 752 Price: Europe EURO 24.99 Written for those with a basic competence in Spanish, this comprehensive synonyms guide is designed to help the learner find the right word for the right context - thus improving their vocabulary and enabling them to communicate more precisely and fluently. It contains around 900 lists of synonyms, each one classified according to its level of formality. Every synonym is illustrated with authentic examples, and the subtle shades of difference between them are clearly explained. The book contains four clear indexes: Spanish-Spanish, Argentinean-Spanish, Mexican-Spanish and English-Spanish, enabling the reader to instantly locate any word. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, and includes new material on Argentinean and Mexican varieties, including a useful comparison of Mexican and Iberian Spanish. It will continue to be an essential reference for college and undergraduate students, their teachers, and other language professionals seeking a clear, user-friendly guide to Spanish synonyms and their usage. 1. Introduction; 2. Spanish synonyms; 3. Index of Spanish items with frame titles; 4. Index of Argentinean items with frame titles; 5. Index of Mexican items with frame titles; 6. Index of English items with frame titles.
Parts of octagonal limestone column of a 1 meter height and 28cm diameter bearing Ramses II cartouche with his name and titles in scripted including The beloved of Amon, Horus of the two horizons, Egypt’s protector and conqueror of the foreign countries. The minister referred that the discovery was made by the Ministry mission and contributed to by the newly recruited graduates during their training of field work within the ministry’s plan to transfer expertise to them. Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim said that a plan to manage the site of Tell Habua and open it to local and international tourism as it is considered one of the important sites in Sinai as the largest fortified city of the New Kingdom on the Horus Road which was the main trade and military route from Egypt to Palestine. Meanwhile, The German Egyptian mission directed by Dr. Eva Lange working at the site of Tell Basta in Sharkia (co-operation between Egypt Exploration Society/ University of Göttingen and MSA) has found a pink granite statue of Ramses II of 247cm height, 200cm width and 92cm depth. The mission also found mud bricks structures dated back to late period at the Southern East of the temple entrance in Tell Basta. Adel Hussein, Director of the Lower Egypt and Sinai antiquities, said that the statue was found in layers of rudiment date back to Roman era. The statue represents Ramses II in the middle of Goddess Bastet and God Atom (Atum). On the back of the statue, there are remains of three columns of hollow inscriptions and in between them Ramses II cartouches. The statue was moved from the site to the Open Air Museum in Tell Basta.
By the end of 2004, an estimated 40.3 million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS. The year also saw more than three million deaths from AIDS, despite recent improvements in access to antiretroviral treatment. You can see theWorld HIV & AIDS Statistics here. In the United States, the CDC estimates there are 1,039,000 to 1,185,000 people living with HIV/AIDS and 24-27% of the people were undiagnosed or unaware they had HIV. Books for Adults The Guide to Living with HIV Infection: Developed at the Johns Hopkins AIDS Clinic by Bartlett, John G. New edition (2001) discusses tests, choosing a doctor, treatment options, and prevention of virus transmission, Books for Teens Pedro and me : friendship, loss, and what I learned by Winick, Judd In graphic art format, describes the friendship between two roommates on the MTV show "Real World," one of whom died of AIDS More books for: "In Their Own Words" (http://aidshistory.nih.gov/animation.html) AIDS history in the United States since 1981, in words and images, by researchers at the National Institutes of Health Caring Connections (http://www.caringinfo.org) From the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, Caring Connections helps to improve care at the end of life. Some of the topics it helps with are Advance care planning, Caregiving, Pain, Financial Issues, Hospice and palliative care, and Grief and loss. A valuable resource! HIV/AIDS Treatment Information (http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/hiv/treatment.html) From the National Library of Medicine - Specialized Information Services Detailed information in PDF files (requires Acrobat Reader) for all age groups. Includes "How to Find Reliable HIV/AIDS Treatment Information on the Internet." The AIDS Quilt (http://www.aidsquilt.org/) Dramatic photographs and news about the quilt. UNAIDS - Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (http://www.unaids.org/en/default.asp) Global perspective on the disease. AFAN: Aid for AIDS of Nevada (http://www.afanlv.org/) A nonprofit local organization providing support and advocacy for individuals and families in southern Nevada since 1984. Information source for care coordination and disease prevention. 2300 South Rancho Drive, Suite 211 Las Vegas, NV 89102 Clark County Coalition of HIV/AIDS Services Providers (http://www.atdn.org/access/states/nv/nv.html) Treatment and Care Resource Information or Providers. Access Project. Southern Nevada Health District (http://www.southernnevadahealthdistrict.org/hiv-aids/index.php) 625 Shadow Lane Las Vegas, NV 89106 AIDS Office: 702-759-0702 or en Espanol: 1-800-342-SIDS (1-800-342-7437) Your central resource for information on HIV/AIDS clinical trials and current therapy. Latest news releases on treatment; information on the disease; statistics; clinical trials, and other primary information from research institutes throughout the nation. National Institutes of Health - Office of AIDS research (http://aidsinfo.nih.gov/) Describes efforts in therapy, vaccines, microbiocides, prevention, and international research to combat AIDS. A service of the National Library of Medicine, it provides citations and abstracts to over 12 million journals from 1966 to date. Community Services (http://www.lvccld.org/library/hot_topics/topic.cfm?guideID=15) Diet & Exercise (http://www.lvccld.org/library/hot_topics/topic.cfm?guideID=9) People with Disabilities (http://www.lvccld.org/library/hot_topics/topic.cfm?guideID=11)
Contrary to what marketing campaigns would have people believe, a new scientific study suggests that brain training games only train the brain to get better at brain training games. The study, led by Adrian M. Owen and Adam Hampshire of the UK Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and published yesterday by the journal Nature, found no appreciable cognitive benefits from a six-week stint of brain training programs. "Although improvements were observed in every one of the cognitive tasks that were trained, no evidence was found for transfer effects to untrained tasks, even when those tasks were cognitively closely related," the researchers concluded. The study was conducted online with 11,430 participants divided into three groups. One group was given brain training tests that focused on problem-solving and reasoning, while another was trained on a wider spectrum of tests focusing on short-term memory, visuospatial processing, and math. A separate control group was asked to comb the Internet in search of answers to general knowledge questions. All three groups were given the same set of four benchmark tests at the beginning and end of the six-week program. As evidence of the inefficacy of the brain training, the scientists called out results from one benchmark test in particular. Participants were tested as to how many digits they could remember in sequence before and after the program. The average number of digits recalled by those who had been taking tests purported to improve memory increased by three-hundredths of a digit. Assuming linear returns and a steady rate of training, it would take four years for the average person to remember a single extra digit. By comparison, the group of people who had forgone training in favor of Internet surfing saw their average improve by two-tenths of a digit.
What is Athlete’s Foot? Athlete’s foot is a common fungal infection of the skin of your feet, usually occurring between the toes. It breeds in the outer layers of the skin and inhabits the feet because footwear creates a warm, moist ‘home’ that promotes fungal growth. The term ‘athlete’s foot’ was derived because this fungal infection was hugely popular amongst athletes who made use of public facilities. What Causes Athlete’s Foot? The fungus responsible for this condition is known as tinea pedis and it may be contracted from public environments such as showers, locker rooms, around swimming pools or spas and may also live in warm puddles of water on the tile floor. Diagnosing Athlete’s Foot This condition causes a great deal of discomfort and the skin may often be red, swollen and contain a sticky fluid. Itching is an extremely common symptom, particularly in the creases between the toes. A scaly, dry rash on the bottom and sides of the feet may also be experienced and this type of athlete’s foot is often referred to as a moccasin. Cracks, blisters or "fissures" can occur between the toes, sometimes accompanied by a soft white scale. When the blisters crack, raw areas of tissue are exposed that cause swelling and pain. If left untreated, athlete’s foot can spread to other parts of the foot such as the soles and toenails. It can also spread to the hands, face, groin and underarms – this occurs when the infection is scratched and you then touch other areas of your body. The toenails may also become thick and yellowish in appearance if the fungal infection worsens and may result in toenail fungus. The infection may also be spread by contaminated bed linen or clothing. Athlete’s foot can often persist for long periods. Other conditions such as disturbances of the sweat mechanism, reaction to dyes or adhesives in shoes, eczema, and psoriasis may mimic athlete's foot. Help for Athlete’s Foot There are a wide variety of over-the-counter anti-fungal treatments available for mild cases of athlete’s foot. For more severe cases, topical or oral anti-fungal drugs are prescribed to alleviate symptoms. If the fungal infection persists and there is no improvement from medication, it would be advisable to consult a podiatrist. Athlete’s foot is quite common and usually one does not have to be alarmed about this condition. However, sometimes fungal infections are an early warning sign of a more severe medical condition that may be associated with a weakened immune system – such as diabetes or HIV. Natural and holistic treatments have proven to be highly effective in the treatment of candida, yeast infections and athlete’s foot. Herbal and homeopathic remedies provide a gentle, yet effective form of treatment and can help to soothe irritated and itchy skin. Cymbopogon citratus (lemon grass), Calendula officinalis and Tabebuia impetiginosa are well known for their anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties. Remember to always ensure your natural remedies are sourced from reputable companies for maximum safety, therapeutic dosage and effectiveness.
Matthew from the Holy Bible Lessons from The New Testament Read and study these study lessons from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament. It is amazing at how problems we are facing today can be answered by Scripture written 2,000 years ago. and ministry of Jesus Christ is so relevant to our everyday situations if we will only take time to listen to what they say. Open your heart and mind to discover what God is saying to you today. Not only for Christians but for anyone who wants to live a fuller 1:1-17 - The Genealogy of Jesus Read through the ages of the line of Jesus. You may have, at one time or another, asked yourself the question; "Who is Jesus Christ?". This passage is about the family line from Abraham to Jesus but Christ is so much more if you study further. 1:18-25 - Angel Comes to Joseph Joseph and the Angel - In this Bible study lesson Joseph is visited by an angel telling him of the coming birth of his son, Jesus. The beginning of the Christmas story. 2:1-12 - 3 Wise The Three Wise Men ( Magi ) Visit Baby Jesus 2:13-18 - Joseph and Mary Escape to After the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary are forced to flee to Egypt because 2:19-28 - Jesus the Nazarine Joseph, Mary And Jesus Return 3:1-12 - Bible Study of John The Baptist Preparing the Way for Jesus The preparation of John the These passages in Matthew teach us how John the Baptist prepared the way for 3:13-17 - Jesus is Baptized In the verses listed here in Matthew, Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist marking the beginning of Christ's ministry. 4:5-11 - Temptation of Christ This world is full of temptation and we have to really be aware to avoid situations which might put us in compromising positions. In the time of Christ, temptation also abounded as we will see in this Scripture study of 4:12-17 - Jesus Begins His Ministry And Preaches In After John the Baptist baptized Jesus, he was later taken into custody. Christ made his way into Galilee where he began his 4:18-22 - The Fishermen Follow This is the story of how Jesus met and chose His first disciples. They were Simon AKA Peter, Andrew, James and John. 4:23-25 - Jesus - The Man From In these verses Jesus has started His ministry and is teaching & preaching throughout the land of Galilee. - 5:1-12 - The 8 Beatitudes from Sermon on the You've probably heard of the the famous sermon on the mount where Jesus gave the eight beatitudes including blessed are the meek for daily living. But, have you read what Christ has to say lately? This guide for living deserves repeated -5:1-3 - The Beatitudes Blessed are the Poor in Spirit. The sermon on the mount by Jesus Christ is well know by many, but there are also many people who don't completely understand it. Let's study 1-3 where Jesus states that blessed are the poor in spirit and the eight beatitudes together. 5:13-16 Jesus Explains the Meaning of Salt and Jesus teaches about salt and light. Salt And Light. The phrase "salt and light" is used frequently by Christians and is quoted many times during baptism services but what does it really mean to be the salt of the earth and a light to the world? Is your light shining for Jesus Teaches about the In these verses of Matthew, Jesus makes it very clear that he is not implying that his followers break the laws of the prophets (ten commandments and others) but that he came to 5:21-26 - Jesus Teaches About Anger And Personal Besides money and finance, anger is probably one of the most destructive forces when it comes to relationships, friendships and even business success. One point to remember is that, once a temper is lost, the damage is already Jesus Teaches about Many people don't like to admit it but lust and infidelity has ruined more relationships than any other except for finance. We all have feelings about adultery from time to time but most don't realize that thinking is the same as acting in God's eyes. Listen to what Jesus says 5:31-32 - Jesus Teaches about Divorce, a common word these days as at least half the marriages taking place right now will end in a matter of years, or months. Jesus did not take divorce lightly and this Baptist study of the Bible explains why we shouldn't 5:33-37 - Jesus Teaches about One word comes to mind -- Integrity. When I read this passage from Matthew about vows explained by Jesus, this word rings in my ears. Our word is closely related to our name so lets make sure and keep them unmarred See what this Baptist Bible lesson for daily study says about 5:38-42 - Jesus Teaches about angry I could ..." This thought ever enter your mind? Of course, we've all felt anger toward another person but most times we don't act out our feelings. Let's see what Jesus says about retaliation in this Scripture reading and application study from the New Testament. 5:43-48 - Jesus Teaches about Loving Your Do you love your family? your friends? Of course you do, so do I . But, what about those who have done you wrong? Do you love your enemies? In these study verses from the Gospel, Jesus says it's easy to love a dear friend and this warrants no effort for the most part but loving an enemy is cherished. 6:1-4 - Jesus Teaches about Giving to the Many famous people, including Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies quoted; "There's no better feeling than the joy that comes from giving.". Well, these verses from the Bible let us know what Jesus says about giving, and how we should do it. 6:5-14 - Jesus Teaches the Lord's One of the best known prayers for Baptists and other Christians begins with "Our Father, which art in heaven .. " . Growing up, I learned my bedtime prayer; "Now I lay me down to sleep" but, as I grew older, praying became a different matter to me. It's talking to God so needs to be done in reverence. Jesus teaches us how to pray in this message from Matthew. The passage became known as The Lord's Prayer. 6:16-18 - Jesus Teaches about Ever thought about what it means to fast? Some churches in the US and other parts of the world including the Baptist faith still practice fasting of some sort. During the time of Jesus, fasting was a common ritual done in order to bring people closer to God to find His will in their lives. Many of the religious leaders abused the procedure and used it to gain recognition and power. This is where the story begins. 6:19-24 - Jesus Teaches about In today's uncertain economic times it's a given that many people are worried about money problems and job security. This lesson for Baptist study is not a cure-all but will help put your financial situation in perspective. 6:25-34 - Jesus Teaches about With the downturn of the economy along with loss of jobs, homes and lifestyles, many people are worried, with good reason. This Scripture reading will not solve all your problems but will help you to deal with your situation by having God at your side. Read this lesson to see how. 7:1-6 - Jesus Teaches about Criticizing No matter what you do in this life, you will most likely be criticized by someone. But, what about you and I? Do we have the habit of criticizing others? Learn how to treat others as you would like to be treated in this 7:7-12 - Jesus Teaches about Asking, Seeking, Many people, including Christians, want to know how to ask God to help with their needs so Jesus explains in these verses that prayer is the answer. As always, read and study the lesson - then see how you can apply the Scripture to your daily living situation. 7:13-14 - Jesus Teaches about the Way to A speaker once stated at a cancer survivor's dinner that he had never met an atheist on the cancer ward at the hospital. With so many confessing at the final hour why not learn more about how to get to heaven today? In this Bible lesson Christ teaches how to get to heaven. Learning about Jesus is one thing, having a personal relationship with Him is another. 7:15-20 - Jesus Warns about False "Watch out for false prophets .." This is what Jesus says about false teachers in this passage from Matthew. But, how can we know if we are hearing the truth from God with so many deceptions in the world? This commentary and life lesson will help. 7:21-29 - Jesus Talks about Those Who Build Houses on Rock and Sand Integrity is a word often used but what is it and how do we achieve it? This New Testament Scripture reading and Baptist study is about doing the right thing when nobody's 8:1-4 - Jesus Heals Leprosy These passages in the gospel of Matthew tie in the miracle of healing leprosy to Jesus' ability to forgive sins. Both are diseases and, we learn that through Christ, both can be 8:5-17 - A Roman Centurion Comes To Christ In Also included is the healing Matthew writes about what it means to have faith. The Roman centurion was hated and had to overcome obstacles to ask Jesus for help; but he did as told in this Baptist study 8:18-22 - When Is The Best Time To Start Following These Bible passages from the New Testament are partly about fear and partly about faith. With Jesus, we can conquer one and have more of the other. But when should I follow 8:23-27 - Jesus Calms The The lesson is not just a story of calming a storm. It's a story about having faith and discovering the truth about Jesus Christ. Maybe it will help you find a way to overcome anxiety and fears. 8:28-34 - Jesus Drives The Demons Into Remember the calming of the storm? Is there a link between this New Testament passage from Matthew and the one that follows when Jesus drives out demons from the man into a herd of pigs? Maybe .. 9:1-8 - Jesus Heals The Paralyzed In this New Testament Scripture reading from Matthew we find Jesus healing a paralyzed man but there is much more to this story than meets the eye. Take a look at this Baptist study from the Bible and learn how to apply it to your life. 9:9-13 - Jesus Eats With When it came to people, Jesus did not discriminate against those who were not mainstream religious people. He realized that sinners are the one's who need God the most so He changed and forgave them. The Bible lesson studied here gives the verses and some insight about how to apply them toward our daily lives. 9:14-17 - Jesus Explains Fasting To Religious What is fasting? There are lots of variations of how to fast - and why but this Bible study lesson shows the right and wrong way - and reasons. Fasting is a tradition passed on by many religions and cultures and is still practiced today by many Christians. However, this Bible study focuses on why the disciples of Jesus did not fast when he was present. 9:18-34 - Jesus Heals Bleeding Woman, Blind Man And Restores Life To Young Girl Jesus healed many during his ministry and these chapters in Matthew show just a few. But, the most relevant healing Christ performed was the healing of our sin. This study lesson from the Bible tells the story of hope and faith. If we only ask .. 9:35-38 - Jesus Asks For Prayer For God could certainly do it all alone, without our help. He is absolutely powerful enough and has the power. But, as we will learn in this lesson for study from Matthew, He allows us to be his workers to help tell others about Jesus Christ as he commanded in the great commission. Isn't God 10:1-16 - Jesus Sends Out The Twelve In these passages from Matthew, we will learn the names of the twelve disciples and what Christ commissioned them to do. One focus is on freely giving. We will learn that there are mission fields in our own back yards and all over the world - even people who have never heard the name of Jesus - imagine 10:17-42 - Disciples Prepare For Christian Persecution - Should We? Many people don't know this but there are cases of Christian persecution throughout the world and even in subtle ways in the USA. Jesus warns and prepares the disciples of the hardships they will face and about turning them into opportunities to share Christ with others. 11:1-19 - Jesus Eases Doubt of John the In this Bible study lesson Jesus teaches about the Kingdom and eases the doubt of John the Baptist. John the Baptist preached repentance and the coming of the Messiah but was later thrown into prison. This shook him considerably and he began to wonder if Jesus really was the Savior. 11:20-30 - Rest for the We all have our own personal burdens we carry through life. Jesus promises rest for the soul to make these situations easier to bear. All we have to do is ask and believe in Christ. Read the study lesson from the Book of Matthew to see where Christ leads you ... 12:1-14 - Jesus and Working on the Christ worked in accordance with God's will but the Pharisees were so entangled in tradition they could not see that working for God on the Sabbath was acceptable. No compassion meant no forgiveness. This Baptist Bible study lesson takes a look at how we can become trapped by traditions too - if we're not careful. 12:15-37 - Pharisees Accuse Jesus of Being Under Satan - The Unpardonable Sin Large crowds began following Jesus after they learned of his miracles and great healing power. Some truly wanted to follow him and repent, some were just "part of the crowd" out of curiosity and some, like the Pharisees wanted to try and trap him as they had attempted many times before . What is the unpardonable sin ? Christ 12:38-45 - Pharisees Demand Miracles from Christ - Asking for Signs I constantly see on TV documentaries where scientists and others try to prove (or disprove) the Bible. It's all very interesting but they are missing the focus of the Jewish and Christian religion. Do you ever ask for signs or from God in order to believe in Him? Some people need proof for everything. If we tell something out of the ordinary, they'll respond with; "Prove it." Well, becoming a believer in Christ doesn't work that way. Although we have proof from The Bible, faith is the final answer. 12:46-50 - The True Family of In case you haven't thought about it lately, we are blessed with two families .. physical and spiritual. What's the difference? These verses in Matthew explains how Jesus felt about his spiritual family and how we should look at these two relationship situations. 13:1-23 - Jesus Explains the Four Soils Like Johnny Appleseed this parable from Jesus explains how we need to "plant good seeds" so that some will fall on "good soil" to reach those people who have not heard the good news about Jesus Christ. Learning more and studying the Bible is a good way to live a better life and find answers to the difficult 13:24-43 - Jesus Explains the Weeds and Mustard In these parables Jesus talks about the end times and what will happen to good and evil. The good people who are followers of God will be taken into heaven and the bad, the followers of Satan, will be thrown into the fire and burned. This Matthew Bible study passage does a good job of explaining heaven and hell. 13:44-52 - Jesus Explains the Kingdom of These parables from teachings of Jesus in the New Testament are about hidden treasure, the pearl merchant and fishing nets. Each one has a life lesson for us and teaches about the kingdom of heaven. 13:53-58 - The People of Nazareth Reject Ever been rejected - by people who know you? This Bible study lesson tells how Jesus was rejected when he went home to bring his message to the town he grew up in. Nazareth was Jesus' hometown and, just as it is today, people find it hard to believe someone famous can come from a small town. To these people, Christ was just the "carpenter's son". 14:1-12 - The Killing of John the Herod thought of Jesus as John the Baptist resurrected because of his miracles. He was afraid of harming the prophet because of the people so why did Herod kill John 14:13-21 - Loaves and Fishes - Jesus Feeds Five Five thousand people fed from five loaves and two fish. -- One of the greatest miracles in the Bible performed by Christ but there is at least one feat that was greater... Our salvation. Read the Bible study lesson to learn more about this miracle. 14:22-33 - Bible Study, Jesus Walks on This Bible lesson is about faith and hope when times are hard. Jesus walking on water is a miracle in itself but, when Peter did it, the power of God became evident. When we "sink" because of our situation, let's remember that Christ saved Peter and He will save us too. 14:34-36 - Bible Study about the Healing Ministry More verses about the healing ministry of Christ. 15:1-20 - Jesus Teaches about Purity in this Bible This section is loaded with guidelines of how we are to speak and act. Many of us become so concerned with going to church and being a "good Christian" that we forget the two most important commandments Christ gave .. Love God and love each other. Purity is not what we take in but what we show in actions and words. 15:21-39 - Jesus Performs Miracles and Teaches Us Jesus performed many miracles during His ministry and the crowds marveled. But, in this Bible study lesson we will focus on how Christ introduced a lesson for us about getting rid of prejudice within this passage. 16:1-4 - Should We Ask for a Sign from the Do you sometimes have doubts about your faith and wish you could see a miracle from the sky to prove Gods existence or to have a more stable belief in Christ? Me too. But, the key word here is faith which is based on belief and not always on seeing or hearing or touching. Jesus explains in a Matthew Bible lesson. 16:5-12 - "Beware of the Leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees" Warned Jesus Is there a such thing as a little bit of sin? Jesus explains here that, even as Christians, we can do small things that will affect a whole crowd of people.. Even a 16:13-20 - Peter Recognizes Jesus as Peter, like many of us, had trouble with faith and trusting who Jesus really was but he finally came to the realization that Jesus was the Messiah. Do we believe Christ is our 16:21-28 - Jesus Predicts His Own This is the first time Jesus foretells details about His death. What would you do if you knew the day and time of your demise? Would you live your life differently? Read this Baptist Bible study lesson to learn more. 17:1-13 - Jesus is Transfigured, Talks to Moses and The transfiguration of Christ gives Him authority as the Son of God. 17:14-20 - Faith and Jesus Healing a Demon Jesus heals a demon possessed boy and explains about faith. 17:22-23 - Jesus Tells about His Death the Second In this Baptist study Christ reveals the future to His disciples but they failed to grasp the concept of resurrection and what it truly meant. Do you? 17:24-27 - Peter Opens the Fish's Mouth and Finds a Peter finds a coin in a fish's mouth but there is much more to this Bible lesson. It's about tribute and whether or not taxes should be paid. Also, learn that God wants our participation in His will for our lives. 18:1-6 - Who is the Greatest The disciples were caught up in trying to make a high place for themselves in the kingdom of heaven and wanted Jesus to tell them who would have the most power. The answer Christ gave was one they did not expect, nor would we. 18:7-9 - Jesus Warns Against Causing Children to Have you caused a child to sin today? Have I? Read what this Baptist study from the Bible says about teaching children sinning 18:15-20 - What to do about a Believer Who Most of us have, at one time or another, been hurt by a friend or church member. Do we walk away in righteous indignation or gossip behind their backs? Here is what Jesus says we should do .. - All about Jesus talks about how many times we should forgive others who have wronged us. Peter asked Him a question and Christ answered with the parable of the unforgiving debtor. Jesus Talks about Marriage and When to This Scripture reading takes us into the world of marriage, civil rights of women and divorce. See what Jesus says about getting married and Jesus Loves the Little Sometimes we make things complicated as Christians but Jesus made it very clear as to how to follow him. Children trust others which is the way we should approach God as shown in these verses from Matthew. Jesus and the Rich Young I know you've heard the story where Jesus tells the rich man about the camel and the eye of the needle but, there is always more to learn when studying the Bible. The New Testament reveals many secrets and skimming the surface might be confusing about how to get to heaven. 20:1-16 - Jesus Talks about the Workers Who are The New Testament reveals many secrets about how to get to heaven. Christ explains about the kingdom of heaven in this parable about the workers hired by the landowner. Should everyone do equal work for equal pay? Jesus says this ethic does not apply to heaven seekers. Jesus Tells about His Death the Third Time The Easter story takes many turns and events happen on a timeline. In this portion Jesus predicts His death for the third time. The disciples do not fully understand this until the resurrection. Jesus Talks about Serving In our efforts to follow Christ we sometimes forget our main objective. Sure, we have to do the church things like attending regularly and maybe singing in the choir but what did Jesus tell us to do? Serve other people. This is a part of our commission from Him. 20:29-34 - The Miracle of the Blind The healing of the blind beggar brings a lesson that's more than meets the eye. When Jesus opened the eyes of the two men, their sight was restored but they received much, 21:1 - 11 - Jesus Rides to Jerusalem on a Donkey In these Bible study verses Jesus rides a donkey triumphantly into Jerusalem on a day which is now referred to as Palm Sunday. The famous ride was the beginning of the crucifixion of Christ from the Easter Story. Jesus Drives the Money Changers from the Temple In Bible times the people came from all over to worship in the temple at Jerusalem. So, foreign currency exchange was needed as it is in many countries today. The money changers were taking advantage and becoming rich by shortchanging the patrons with the rates they gave. Jesus became angry at this practice and we can see His frustration in this The Withered Fig This lesson from the Bible is not just about Jesus and the withering of a fig tree. It is about prayer and having faith. Many times we pray for something but don't really believe that God can answer. Have faith and receive the blessings God has to give. Chief Priests and Elders Question the Authority of We see it all the time. Our children are constantly challenging our authority and finding what they can "get away with". But what about us? Do we challenge the authority of The Parable of the Two This parable of the two sons is about earnestly following God and doing the work Christ laid out for us. The sons had different ways of answering their father just as we do. See how these answered a call differently and which was a Jesus Tells the Parable of the Wicked Tenants or Why Accept Christ Jesus told many parables for our benefit and this is one more, But it is compelling because it answers the important question of why accept Christ now and not later. As you will see, there will come a time when it is too late to ask Jesus into your heart. Jesus Teaches about the The parable of the wedding feast as Christ tells it in Matthew explains how God invites us to join Him at His table for the best dinner we could ever imagine ... Eternal life! But all will not accept His invitation. Pharisees Ask Jesus about At the time of this writing taxes are big news. Towns and states all over the US are holding TEA ( Taxed Enough Already ) parties. So, in this Bible lesson from Matthew we'll discover what Jesus has to say about paying the due tax. What Jesus Says about the Kinsman Redeemer and the What is a kinsman redeemer? In this Baptist study lesson Jesus talks about His resurrection as related to this Jewish custom and, as always turns it into a remarkable 22:34-40 - What is The Greatest Moses brought the ten commandments to the Israelites before he died and these laws helped to establish a nation from wanderers. But, over time the religious leaders began to add to the commands and explain every little detail in how they were to be obeyed. Jesus came and made them simple again. Who is the Christ? Jesus Asks the Pharisees Those who don't know Him and even some people who do all ask the same question of who is Jesus Christ. The Pharisees asked and Scripture tells us the answer in this lesson. Jesus Warns the Crowds against the Religious "The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses." What does this mean? Well, partially it means they had placed themselves high above the people and became leaders and Rabbis. But Jesus said there is but One Jesus Condemns the Religious Leaders and Grieves Over This passage in Baptist study gives us the 8 woes Jesus presented to the Pharisees and scribes. He called them "blind guides" because of their greed and pretentious Jesus Tells About His Second Coming on Mount Of Ever wonder or worry about the end of time? I don't dwell on it but yes, sometimes the thought does cross my mind. Jesus gives His thoughts here and tells the disciples what to look for. We should remain watchful but not worry about the end times as much as trying to live our lives for Christ. 24:26-35 - How Jesus Tells About His If Christ comes back today are you ready? Am I? Jesus explains clearly in these verses from Matthew what to look for and to ignore the false prophets. Let's renew our faith in Him and be ready when He Jesus Says To Remain This is a continuation of Jesus warning the disciples (and us) to be ready when He returns. You'll hear this sprinkled throughout the ministry of Jesus and again in Revelation about the end times. Jesus Tells About The Ten Our lesson today takes us to the parable of the 10 bridesmaids. Jesus explains how we are like the brides maids and He is like the The Parable Of Loaned Money As Told By Christ ( Parable Of The Talents Should Christians loan or borrow money? This is a strange question to ask in these times of mortgage foreclosures and high credit card debt but one that Christ took very seriously in this Baptist Bible study lesson from The Final Judgment As Told By Christ This passage about the final judgment of Christ can be misinterpreted as salvation being works based but goes much deeper than this. Here you'll learn how God will separate His people from those He does not A Woman Pours Perfume On Yes, this is a story of Jesus, the woman, the perfume and Judas Iscariot but it revealed so much more to the disciples. As always, Christ used this incident as an opportunity Judas agrees to betray For thirty pieces of silver Judas betrayed Christ. He didn't want to wait to receive the unbelievable amount of spiritual riches he would receive by having Jesus as his savior. Are Jesus Points Out Judas Iscariot At The Last Supper It is called communion by many Baptist and other Christian churches today, especially in the Southern USA but the last supper seems to fit in this case of deception and the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot. Communion is the word used by many believers today, especially in the South. We have the Lord's Supper at our church incrementally but many just go through the motions without thinking about what Christ did for them - and us. 26:31-35 - The Prediction Telling Peter's Denial of Peter, the man who had followed Jesus from the very beginning of His ministry, who had seen the miracles of Christ, Himself could never deny the Savior, could he? 26:36-46 - Jesus Prays in the Garden of This was the most agonizing time for Jesus before the crucifixion and He still prayed for God's will to be done in His life. 26:47-56 - Judas Betrays Jesus and He is After praying in the garden, the fulfillment of Scripture was happening quickly as Judas betrays Jesus and He is arrested. The disciples, who swore allegiance, ran and went into hiding while Christ suffered. Jesus Answers Questions for the High Priest, In this lesson Jesus is arrested and taken to the high priest Caiaphas for questioning. This is the fatal point at which Christ proclaims who He really is sealing His fate and the destiny of mankind. 26:69-75 - Peter Denies Christ The Easter story continues with Peter denying Jesus just as predicted. How about us? Are we guilty of denial in our own lives? Read before you answer. 27:1-2 - Who Killed Jesus - The Romans or the The question of who killed Jesus is covered in this lesson where the religious leaders of the council handed Christ over to Pilate 27:3-10 - Death of Judas In this passage of study from Matthew Judas feels deep regret for turning Jesus over to the religious leaders thus resulting in his suicide death by hanging. The priests play a large role now in two deaths. 27:11-26 - Pilate Sends Jesus Out to be Continuing the Easter story we see where Pilate, in fear, releases Jesus to the Jews to be crucified instead of Barabbas. 27:27-31 - Jesus Wears Crown of The Roman soldiers mock Jesus, give Him a crown of thorns to wear before 27:32-45 - Jesus is Crucified on the Read the story of the crucifixion of Christ on the cross and the horrible suffering He endured before dying and rising again. 27:45-56 - Jesus Dies on the This is it; or is it? Yes, it's true that Jesus really died on the cross that day. A sad occasion for the people then and for us. But the glorious awakening is just about to 27:57-66 - Jesus is Laid in the Tomb with Guards After Jesus was crucified He was taken to a borrowed tomb for burial and a guard was placed at the entrance of the grave. But, we know He didn't stay there. The Easter saga 28:1-10 - Jesus Rises From the Near the conclusion of the Easter story Jesus rises from the tomb and leaves Mary Magdalene and us with four lessons to ponder. 28:11-15 - Religious Leaders Bribe Guards to Discredit the Resurrection The resurrection of Jesus was spreading through the streets of Jerusalem so the religious leaders had to spread a different rumor that it hadn't happened. 28:16-20 - Jesus Gives the Disciples the Great In these final verses of Matthew and, in the final words of Christ, we and the disciples receive the great commission telling us to make Him known to all the world. What does that mean to us as Christians? are the Words of the Lord ... They are meant to change the way that we think, and the way that we Family Bible Study Online from the Book of Matthew If you are looking for study resources online making Christ known is one of the many places on the Internet to find Scripture readings with commentary. Although these lessons are written from a Baptist point of view, you don't need to be any one denomination to learn from them. My commentary on the verses is not the only way and I am the first to admit that I am not always right but hopefully you'll find some articles to help you in your daily life or maybe even understand more about becoming a Learning to be a Christian Having faith is not always easy but with these resources, you'll enjoy better spiritual health and the best part is passing your new positive outlook along to your family and With that said, I hope you enjoy these lessons for study and life application from Matthew and the New Testament of Jesus Christ. Find peace, hope and direction for daily living in your life.
When I think of bullying, I think of African Elephants. Actually it was a CBS News story some years ago called "The Delinquents." South Africa Game rangers discovered that a new group of juvenile delinquents had been attacking and killing the white rhinoceros, the rhino they've spent years protecting. The prime suspects were not humans, but elephants. A group of young elephants who were orphaned as young calves were now adolescents. They had grown up without role models. In addition to killing rhinos, they acted aggressively toward tourist vehicles. Researchers eventually decided to kill the elephants. They may have been juvenile delinquents but there's no reform school for elephants. But the rangers wanted to avoid killing the delinquents. The solution turned out to be the biggest Big Brother program in the world. The rangers decided to bring in some larger bull elephants. The bigger, older elephants established a new hierarchy, in part by sparring with the younger elephants to discourage them from unacceptable behavior. It was like a group of teenagers who have been acting up who are confronted by their fathers all of a sudden. In short time the juveniles got the message loud and clear. Since the big bulls arrived, not one rhino has been killed. Elephant or human, adolescents need mentoring. They need guidance on how to become good, productive citizens. During this month of Anti-Bullying Awareness let us, instead of seeking out vengeance against those who bully, recognize and celebrate those mentors who keep them on the right path. Martin Luther King Jr. said "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." The future of our community depends on having healthy men and women as opposed to overgrown boys and girls. So celebrate the mentors in our community during this time of awareness. Next time you see a teacher, a coach, a police officer or others who work with our youth let them know you appreciate their work.
A lot of the reason today’s teens engage in certain behaviors that previous generations didn’t, is that they’re exposed to technology which provides an infinite amount of information through just one click. And some of that information is harmful to young eyes and tends to rob teens of their innocence. What are the ways to combat some of those negative influences that your child will inevitably face? Many parents will say that keeping a kid out of trouble is all about providing him or her with options--activities to do, positive places to go and other kids to be around who want to stay away from trouble. A positive way to accomplish this is by allowing teens to volunteer or get involved with a website or company that creates programs around social change. DoSomething.org is one of those sites, as the New York-based organization creates a new national campaign just about every week, and provides teenagers with the resources to put together events, drives or anything else that will further the campaign's initiative and bring about positive change. The different selections of campaigns seem to cover just about every social need in our communities like teen bullying, homelessness, poverty, kids dropping out of school and a host of other projects. There’s a chance that you might have seen an ad about DoSomething.org or caught one of their online videos, as a bunch of A-list celebrities including everyone from Nick Cannon to R&B singer Usher have shot commercials for the organization while encouraging young people to get involved. And to show just how popular Do Something has become in recent years, take a look at these statistics: In the last year, over 2 million people joined the organization, and its organizers say about 7,000 additional people join each day. And the impact that young people are having in communities across the U.S. is evident in the statistics given by the organization on its website. Having teenagers involve themselves in places like Do Something, whether they’re well behaved or not, is great not only for teaching responsibility, but it also lets them know that even at their age they can contribute to good causes and make a direct impact at bettering their surroundings. Also, teens can receive monetary incentives for putting together a campaign in their town and also boost their college resumes and get scholarships through the organization if they volunteer. Another organization that links teenagers up with community service and volunteering is VolunteenNation.com, where users can do a quick search to find out where in their area they can volunteer and help out. For example, I plugged in my name and zip code and I was immediately linked to over 20 businesses, schools and agencies that need help in a variety of areas. And although all age groups can join Volunteen Nation, the organization encourages young people to get involved, hence the name of the organization and website. The way the site functions, it makes it easy for people to get in on the front-end of a new campaign, and with Volunteen being spread out all over the United States, it will be extremely hard for a teenager not to find something that they’re interested in and can lend their talents to. The organization also provides paid internships and scholarships for young people that choose to volunteer, which is yet another reason it’s a good idea to lead your child to volunteerism through a reputable establishment like Volunteen Nation. And just like Do Something, Volunteen provides the necessary tools for teens to start a campaign in their community and says it has over 1,500 lesson plans that will help train and prepare young people for volunteer work. Because all in all, there are way more young people who are up to complete good than young people who are up to complete bad, and anyone that has worked with kids knows an adult's influence is tremendous, even if the child doesn’t admit it or chooses not to act like it. So sometimes all it takes is a little nudge to push teens and young people on to the proper path, and there are few better paths for a young person to be on than the path of volunteering. For one, it’ll teach them valuable skills for adulthood, and two--it’ll keep them out of trouble, well, at least you hope. Story provided by ConsumerAffairs.
Provided by: bootcd_3.08ubuntu1_all bootcdwrite - build a bootcd image from a running system bootcdwrite [-s] [-c <config_directory>] [-only_floppy] bootcdwrite is used to write a standard Linux Installation to cd. The Installation must fit on one CD. It is possible to copy a system mounted per NFS to a local CD writer. It is also possible to only create an image of the CD for later use. It is important that the kernel can access the cdrom on the system, where you want to boot from the CD, without having to load any modules. (Because to load modules from CD, the kernel must have access to CD before). If this is not the case you have first to create a new kernel with CD-support built in. If something goes wrong with bootcdwrite, the user will be given the chance to correct the problem. bootcdwrite starts many commands. If a command exits with an exit code != 0, or if a command produces unknown output on stdout or stderr, the command and the output will be shown to the user. He gets the option to exit, retry the failed command, or to ignore the failed command. -s means silent and canbe used to to disable interactive questions and to try to ignore errors. change the default path of the directory including the only a bootfloppy (to boot an existing bootcd) has to be Currently no other options can be specified on command line. All has to be done in the config files. Configuration for bootcdwrite. Here the image of the CD which will be created will be stored temporarily by bootcdwrite. WARNING - You need a lot of disk- space here. You can change this location with variable VAR in Documentation in bootcdwrite.conf bootcdwrite.conf(5), bootcd(1), bootcdflopcp(1), bootcd2disk(1) This manual page was written by Bernd Schumacher <[email protected]>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). Wed Feb 23 00:00:00 EET 2000 BOOTCD(1)
See also the Dr. Math FAQ: why study math? 3D and higher Browse Middle School About Math Stars indicate particularly interesting answers or good places to begin browsing. Selected answers to common questions: Art and mathematics. Law and mathematics. Medicine and mathematics. Music and mathematics. Poetry and mathematics. What is mathematics? Was math invented or discovered? - About Basic Geometry [10/14/1998] Who developed basic geometry? What is it used for? Who uses it? - Art and Mathematics [2/8/1996] Do you know ways that art can be linked to mathematics? - Definition of Opposite Sides [01/18/2001] What is the formal definition of 'opposite sides' of a polygon? Does a regular pentagon have opposite sides? Does a concave polygon have opposite sides? How can we define it consistent with our intuition? - Difference Between Math and Arithmetic [11/06/2001] My students haven't heard the word arithmetic. No one seems to be able to tell the difference, if there is one, between arithmetic and mathematics. Is there a difference, and what is it? - How Can Math Be Made More Interesting? [08/30/2001] What can I do to help me be more interested in math? - Mathematics in the Applied Sciences [02/24/1997] How do civil engineers and others use math in their work? - The Number e [6/3/1996] Is "e" a number like Pi? How does "e" relate to continued fractions? - Numbers: Cardinal, Ordinal, Nominal? [10/25/1999] Which group of numbers - cardinal, ordinal or nominal - does "time" fit into? Are there other types of numbers as well? - Purpose of Algebra [10/15/1996] What is the purpose of algebra and who came up with the idea? - Ten Commandments of Math [07/05/1997] What are the Ten Commandments of Math? - The Third Millennium [01/23/2000] When does the Third Millennium begin? Are there any inherent predictions or unverifiable assumptions within math? - What is Calculus? [05/06/1997] What is calculus and how does it work? - Why Does Math Need Proofs? [03/24/2000] Why does math need to have proofs? - Why Is Math Important? [01/02/2002] Some of it we don't need to know in the real world, so why do they teach us things we won't need to know? - Why Study Practical Geometry? [04/26/1997] What can I do to help my students to see just how important Geometry and all Math is? - Why There are 12 Tones in a Scale [12/28/2000] Why are there 12 tones in an octave? Can you explain the significance or the equation r^n = 2^m? Also, what's so special about a fifth? Why should the scale be based on the fraction 3/2? - Wording Division Problems [08/10/1998] How would you clarify the wording of division problems like "divide into" or "divide by"? - Year 2000 (Y2K) Problem [07/26/1998] Can you explain the Year 2000 problem in layman's terms? Why is it so hard to fix? - Are Calculators Smart? [06/02/2001] How come calculators are so smart? - Are Math Symbols Universal? [05/22/2004] Do Russian math students use the same math symbols that Americans do? For example, do they use '+' for addition? - Are Subtraction and Division Commutative and Associative Operations? [05/15/2008] I don't agree that subtraction and division are not commutative operations. If we define a - b as a + (-b), then it commutes correctly into (-b) + a. So why does everyone say subtraction is not commutative? - Avoiding Careless Mistakes [01/30/2002] How can I avoid careless mistakes? - Careless Mistakes [02/04/2002] When it asked me for the range, domain, and inverse of ordered pairs, I just put the inverse because I misread the question... - Checking Your Work [9/9/1996] I've had problems keeping myself from making little mistakes like not putting commas in, putting the decimal point in the wrong place, and writing down the wrong number... How can I stop doing this? - Chefs and Algebra [02/05/2002] I hope to become a chef someday, and I would like to know how algebra (specifically polynomials, the quadratic formula, factoring, etc.) could possibly relate to my future career and my life beyond high school. - Connecting Algebra and Geometry [07/11/2002] What are the mathematical connections between algebra and geometry? - The Difference between Science and Mathematics [09/18/2006] Is there any difference between a science project and a math project? We have a science fair coming up and I wanted to do some math, but my friend says that the scientific process is very different from math. - Doctors and Math [10/27/1998] How do doctors use math? - Don't Use Calculators [12/18/2000] When children should not use calculators to do math. - Do We Really Need to Learn Math? [11/19/2002] Why do we need to know math if we can have a calculator do it? - Estimation in 3rd Grade [12/16/1996] How do you learn to estimate? What is its importance? - Etymology of the Word Mathematics [12/10/2001] Why do you call maths maths? - The Fairness of Democracy [09/16/1998] What are some ideas to think about with regard to the fairness of - Help in Studying for Math [08/17/1999] I was wondering if you had any suggestions or comments that might help me out a little bit. - How Do I Learn Basic Math as an Adult? [08/02/2004] I'm an adult hoping to take a statistics course, but I haven't thought about math in 20 years and was never very good at it. How can I learn all those basic things I missed back then? - How Do Lawyers Use Math? [01/26/2001] I have to write a two-page paper on how lawyers use math. - How Many Formulas? [11/25/2002] How many formulas do you actually have to learn? - How Numbers Will Change in the Future [10/29/2003] I'm asking my students to develop new number systems. I was hoping to show them what other people are speculating about future number systems, but I was unable to find anything. - The Importance of Geometry Constructions [12/29/1998] Why are geometry constructions important? What do we learn from them? Where have they appeared in math history? - The Importance of Math [08/23/2000] Why is math a core subject?
There are a few things you can do to reduce your risk of prostate cancer : Watch Your Diet Studies have found an association between diets high in fat and an increased risk of prostate cancer. Also, eating foods rich in lycopene seems to lower a man’s risk of prostate cancer. Lycopene is a phytochemical that is found in certain fruits and vegetables , like grapefruits and tomatoes. Also, lycopene supplements are available at drug and health food stores, but their efficacy is uncertain. Exercising regularly may reduce your risk of prostate cancer. Choose exercises you enjoy and make them a regular part of your day. Strive to maintain an exercise program that keeps you fit and at a healthy weight. For many people, this includes walking or participating in another aerobic activity for 30 minutes per day. Check with your doctor before starting any exercise program. Talk to Your Doctor About Medicine Daily aspirin therapy and 5-alpha reductase inhibitors (eg, finasteride [Proscar, Propecia], dutasteride [Avodart]) may reduce your risk of prostate cancer. Talk to your doctor about your options. What About Cancer Screening? In the past, medical organizations recommended the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test as a screening tool for prostate cancer. But this has become a controversial topic because studies have found very little benefit with this screening test. Because of this, organizations like the US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommend against the PSA test, highlighting the potential harms, like having to undergo unnecessary surgery. What should you do? The USPSTF does highlight the importance of having an open discussion with your doctor about the risks and benefits of the PSA test, as well as your risk factors for prostate cancer. - Reviewer: Igor Puzanov, MD - Review Date: 09/2012 - - Update Date: 00/92/2012 -
Myrrh is the dried resin of the tree Commiphora myrrha . Native to Somalia and eastern Ethiopia, myrrh has a long history of traditional use in perfumes and incense. Additionally, it has perhaps an equally long history as a medicinal treatment, primarily for conditions of the mouth, such as canker sores , gum disease , halitosis, and sore throat . What Is Myrrh Used for Today? Modern herbalists continue to use myrrh for its traditional uses related to the mouth. In addition, it has been advocated for treatment of eczema and stomach ulcers . However, there is no meaningful scientific evidence that the herb provides any benefits when used for these or any other purposes. When used for mouth conditions, tincture of myrrh may be applied directly to canker sores or inflamed gums. It can also be diluted in water and used as a gargle. When taken internally, a typical dose of myrrh is 1 g of resin 3 times daily. In studies of myrrh for treatment of schistosomiasis, no significant side effects were identified. However, comprehensive safety studies have not been performed. Maximum safe doses in pregnant or nursing women, or people with severe liver of kidney disease have not been determined. - Reviewer: EBSCO CAM Review Board - Review Date: 07/2012 - - Update Date: 07/25/2012 -
Towards the end of every year tropical storm activity moves from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere. The South Indian Ocean has already spawned three tropical storms including the unusually strong early season Cyclone Anais in October. Attention has now switched to the South Pacific Ocean and Cyclone Evan. Evan formed near Fiji a few days ago and moved north-east as it strengthened. As it reached the equivalent of hurricane intensity (winds near 75 mph) it made landfall over Samoa close to the capital city of Apia. Although winds of this strength are not exceptional for a cyclone, first reports indicate considerable wind damage and flooding from a storm surge of 12-15 feet (3.5-4.5 m). This storm surge is of similar height to that experienced in New York City during ‘Superstorm’ Sandy in October. Although Samoa lies within the cyclone belt of the South Pacific Ocean, the island nation has been relatively storm free for many years. Cyclone Heta passed close by in 2003, but the last time Samoa received direct strikes from tropical storms was in 1997 and 1998 by storms named Tui and, coincidentally, Evan. To make matters worse, Cyclone Evan is expected to become slow moving near Samoa and American Samoa, producing large amounts of rainfall, before turning back south-west. Latest forecasts suggest Evan will strengthen some more and could threaten a strike on Fiji early next week. Regional warnings for Cyclone Evan are produced by the Fiji Meteorological Service. The Met Office routinely supplies predictions of cyclone tracks from its global forecast model to regional meteorological centres worldwide, which are used along with guidance from other models in the production of forecasts and guidance.
The Presidential Museum and Library on Tumblr! An old photograph of the historical marker the Philippine Historical Committee—precursor of today’s National Historical Institute—installed in 1941. This was the former site of a summer residence purchased in 1802 from Luis Rocha by Colonel Miguel Jose Formento, whose testamentary executors sold it to the Spanish Government in 1825. By Royal Decrees of 1847, this property was set aside as the summer residence of the Governor-General. The Palace in Intramuros having been destroyed by the earthquake of June 3, 1853. The Governor General moved to this place, then known as the “Posesion de Malacañan.” This building was reconstructed, new lots were purchased, old grounds raised, regraded and parked during American and Filipino administrations. Extensive improvements were made in 1929-1932 under Governor General Dwight F. Davis and in 1935-1940 under President Manuel L. Quezon, the first Filipino Chief Executive to occupy this Palace. The Executive Building adjoining was completed in 1939. The marker—now lost—relates, in a nutshell, the provenance of Malacañan Palace itself. Allow the official Tumblr of the Presidential Museum and Library the elaborations. 13 Notes/ Hide - philippinebritish likes this - robelynvreyes likes this - bobito likes this - mentisflatus likes this - joainejan reblogged this from malacanan - ellobofilipino likes this - lopeziana reblogged this from malacanan and added: - sashawantsmore reblogged this from malacanan and added: - toynbeeconvector likes this - malacanan posted this
Description: The stunning Blue Morpho Butterfly is one of 80 species classified as Morpho butterflies. The Blue Morpho Butterfly is a large butterfly with a wingspan that may measure up to six inches. It has iridescent blue wings with black wing edges. The upper edges are flecked with white. The butterfly’s brilliant blue coloration is the result of light diffraction from millions of tiny scales on the wings. Females are much less colorful than males. The underside of the Blue Morpho Butterfly is pale in coloration with large false eyespots. Today, the wings of the Blue Morpho Butterfly are often used in native ceremonies, jewelry, and woodworking. Significant numbers of these insects are displayed in butterfly gardens throughout the world. Range: Morpho butterflies are found in the rainforests of Mexico, Central America, and South America. Adults spend most of their time on the forest floor and on lower shrubs and branches of the understory. Blue Morpho Butterflies may sometimes be found in open fields and meadows sunning themselves, where they are most likely to be observed by humans. Life Cycle: The life cycle of the Blue Morpho Butterfly lasts for about 115 days from egg to butterfly. The female lays a cluster of tiny, green eggs that hatch in about nine days. The eggs are attached on the underside of a leaf with special “glue” secreted by the butterfly. Upon hatching, the caterpillars begin eating. Some reports have suggested the caterpillars will eat other caterpillars. The caterpillars are brown with large green spots. They have prickly hairs that irritate birds that try to eat them. The caterpillar will progress through four to six instars (periods of time between molting) before forming its jade-green chrysalis and beginning metamorphosis. Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar will actually become liquid that reorganizes into a butterfly. The chrysalis emits a repulsive, ultrasonic sound when touched by predators. When the adult butterfly emerges, it only has a life cycle of two or three weeks to feed and mate. Butterflies feed on fermenting fruit. The fermenting fruit contains traces of alcohol that actually cause the butterfly inebriation (drunkenness). This makes them easy to catch.
July 27, 2012 Timothy Wall, [email protected], 573-882-3346 COLUMBIA, Mo. – In a University of Missouri study, girls and boys started grade school with different approaches to solving arithmetic problems, with girls favoring a slow and accurate approach and boys a faster but more error-prone approach. Girls’ approach gave them an early advantage, but by the end of sixth grade boys had surpassed the girls. The MU study found that boys showed more preference for solving arithmetic problems by reciting an answer from memory, whereas girls were more likely to compute the answer by counting. Understanding these results may help teachers and parents guide students better. “The observed difference in arithmetic accuracy between the sexes may arise from a willingness to risk being wrong by answering from memory before one is sure of the correct answer,” said Drew Bailey, a recent recipient of a Ph.D. in psychological science from MU. “In our study, we found that boys were more likely to call out answers than girls, even though they were less accurate early in school. Over time, though, this practice at remembering answers may have allowed boys to surpass girls in accuracy.” The MU study followed approximately 300 children as they progressed from first to sixth grade. In the first and second grades, the boys’ tendency to give an answer quickly led to more answers in total, but also more wrong answers. Girls, on the other hand, were right more often, but responded more slowly and to fewer questions. By sixth grade, the boys were answering more problems and getting more correct. “Developing mathematical skill may be part ‘practice makes perfect’ and part ‘perfect makes practice,’” Bailey said. “Attempting more answers from memory gives risk-takers more practice, which may eventually lead to improvements in accuracy. It also is possible that children who are skilled at certain strategies are more likely to use them and therefore acquire more practice.” “Parents can give their children an advantage by making them comfortable with numbers and basic math before they start grade school, so that the children will have fewer trepidations about calling out answers,” said David Geary, MU professor of psychological science and co-author of the study. “As an adult, it seems easy to remember basic math facts, but in children’s brains the networks are still forming. It could be that trying to answer a problem from memory engages those networks and improves them, even if the answers aren’t correct at first. In time, the brain develops improved memories and more correct answers result.” The study, “The codevelopment of skill at and preference for use of retrieval-based processes for solving addition problems: Individual and sex differences from first to sixth grades,” was published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. David Geary is Curators’ Professor and a Thomas Jefferson Fellow in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science. Drew Bailey will be starting as a post-doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University this fall.
I keep thinking of Greeks playing Lyres - there had to be a point where someone added strings and the modern shape... The guitar originated from the lute. What's called a 'kithara,' (a type of lyra) which when pronounced sounds a bit like 'guitar' is why people and historians get mixed up between the two being related. The lute and the vihuela had their features combined in the 16th Century. The features that were combined were: Bass and treble strings were added to give the instrument a good range. Stradivarius produced some early models of this instrument. In about the 18th century guitar makers added machine heads the guitars making them easier to tune, and adding struts to the soundboxes of the instruments to increase the sound. Antonio de Torres Jurado is credited with finishing the design and layout of bridge, neck, saddle and body size on the guitar. George Beauchamp added experimental pickups to a 'frying pan' shaped guitar body in an effort to electronically amplify the sound. This became the first Rickenbacker guitar, and the first produced electric guitar. Inventors kept tinkering with electronics and experimenting with types of pickups on different types of guitars. An example of this is the Gibson ES-150, which is an acoustic guitar with a pickup in the neck. Fender cemented the popularity of the electric guitar with the original design of the Esquire - later the Broadcaster/Nocaster and finally the Telecaster, which is still one of the most popular guitar designs today. The redesigned Stratocaster introduced a few years later remains equally if not more so popular. \|show 1 more comment\|
Articles on photography: Speed By Shoot & Tellshoottell. Thursday, February 16, 2012 5:18:17 AM Originally posted 24. September 2010 for Speed theme by Orlando The first official S&T Theme was Speed. Shutter Speed! We hope that the few tips below will help to understand shutter speed and its effects. 1 - Use your Camera Modes Most of the cameras today have several Exposure Modes to take photos, not only Auto Mode. See if your camera has a S (Shutter Priority) or a TV (Time Value Priority) Modes. These Exposure Modes will let you set shutter speed, and your camera will set the Aperture automatically, so you can get a well exposed photo. 2 - No S/TV Modes? Use Scene Modes! Many cameras only have Auto Mode and Scene Mode. Although being a bit more harder to get things right, using Scene Modes can help you to achieve higher or lower shutter speeds. How? Action/Sports/Kids Modes: these 3 modes will set a higher shutter speed, that will allow you to freeze moving objects or actions taking place; Landscape/Night Modes: these modes will set a lower shutter speed, so you can get light trails, moving blurs or plain fuzzy mess! 3 - Remember Camera Shake You can hand hold your camera without camera shake only to a certain point. This means when shutter speed is low and you're hand holding your camera, you might get messy, fuzzy, blurred photos, due to camera shake. Use a tripod! The anti-shake system will only make possible to get a decent shot with a little lower shutter speed, but it doesn't operate miracles! 4 - DOF: Depth Of Field While using the camera in the mencioned Exposure Modes, each time you set the shutter speed the camera will automatically set the Aperture, allowing you to take a well exposed photo in 90% of the cases. If you set a high shutter speed (e.g. 1/2000), this means that light will have less time to reach the sensor. The camera will set a wider Aperture (e.g. f/3.5), that makes possible more light to get to the sensor in less time. On the opposit, if you set a lower shutter speed (e.g. 1/60) the camera will set a smaller Aperture (e.g. f/22): less light in more time. In the end, the amount of light reaching the sensor will be the same. When you have a wider aperture (e.g. f/3.5), DOF - Depth Of Field (let's simplify and call it the area in focus) - will be shallow. You have to focus carefully!!! On the other hand, a smaller Aperture (e.g. f/22) will get you a wider DOF, so more area will be in focus. But you'll have lower shutter speed, so beware of Camera Shake, ok ?
Knee pain may be the result of an injury, such as a ruptured ligament or torn cartilage. Or, certain medical conditions, including arthritis, gout and infection, may be at the root of your knee pain. Many relatively minor instances of knee pain respond well to self-care measures. More-serious injuries, such as a ruptured ligament or tendon, may require surgical repair. Although every knee problem can’t be prevented — especially if you’re active — you can take certain steps to reduce the risk of injury or disease. A knee injury can affect any of the ligaments, tendons or fluid-filled sacs (bursae) that surround your knee joint as well as the bones, cartilage and ligaments that form the joint itself. Because of the knee’s complexity, the number of structures involved, the amount of use it gets over a lifetime, and the range of injuries and diseases that can cause knee pain, the signs and symptoms of knee problems can vary widely. Some of the more common knee injuries and their signs and symptoms include the following: Ligament injuries. Your knee contains four ligaments — tough bands of tissue that connect your thighbone (femur) to your lower leg bones (tibia and fibula). You have two collateral ligaments — one on the inside (medial collateral ligament) and one on the outside (lateral collateral ligament) of each knee. The other two ligaments are inside your knee and cross each other as they stretch diagonally from the bottom of your thighbone to the top of your shinbone (tibia). The posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) connects to the back of your shinbone, and the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) connects near the front of your shinbone. A tear in one of these ligaments, which may be caused by a fall or contact trauma, is likely to cause: * Immediate pain that worsens when you try to walk or bend your knee * A popping sound * An inability to bear weight on the injured knee * A feeling that the knee might buckle or give way Tendon injuries (tendinitis). Tendinitis is irritation and inflammation of one or more tendons — the thick, fibrous cords that attach muscles to bones. Athletes, such as especially runners, skiers and cyclists, are prone to develop inflammation in the patellar tendon, which connects the quadriceps muscle on the front of the thigh to the larger lower leg bone (tibia). If your knee pain is caused by tendinitis, some of the signs and symptoms include: * Pain, in one or both knees * Swelling in the front of the knee or just below the kneecap * Worsening pain when you jump, run, squat or climb stairs * An inability to completely extend or straighten your knee Meniscus injuries. The meniscus is a C-shaped piece of cartilage that curves within your knee joint. Meniscus injuries involve tears in the cartilage, which can occur in various places and configurations. Signs and symptoms of this type of injury include: * Mild to moderate swelling that occurs slowly, as long as 24 to 36 hours after the injury * An inability to straighten the knee completely; the knee may feel locked in place Bursitis. Some knee injuries cause inflammation in the bursae, the small sacs of fluid that cushion the outside of your knee joint so that tendons and ligaments glide smoothly over the joint. Bursitis can lead to: * Pain, even at rest * Aching or stiffness when you walk * Considerable pain when you kneel or go up and down stairs * Fever, pain and swelling if the bursa located over your kneecap bone (prepatellar bursa) becomes infected Loose body. Sometimes injury or degeneration of bone or cartilage can cause a piece of bone or cartilage to break off and float in the joint space. This may not create any problems unless the loose body interferes with knee joint movement — the effect is something like a pencil caught in a door hinge — leading to pain and a locked joint. Dislocated kneecap. This occurs when the triangular bone (patella) that covers the front of your knee slips out of place, usually to the outside of your knee. You’ll be able to see the dislocation, and your kneecap is likely to move excessively from side to side. Signs and symptoms of a dislocated kneecap include: * Intense pain * Difficulty walking or straightening your knee Osgood-Schlatter disease. Primarily affecting athletic teens and preteens, this overuse syndrome causes: * Pain, usually worse with activity, especially running and jumping * Tenderness at the bony prominence (tibial tuberosity) just below the kneecap The discomfort can last a few months and may continue to recur until your teen or preteen stops growing. Iliotibial band syndrome. This occurs when the ligament that extends from the outside of your pelvic bone to the outside of your tibia (iliotibial band) becomes so tight that it rubs against the outer portion of your femur. Distance runners are especially susceptible to iliotibial band syndrome, which generally causes: * A sharp, burning pain on the outer side of the knee that usually begins after longer distance runs * Pain that initially goes away with rest from running, but in time may persist when you walk or go up and down stairs With this type of knee injury, there usually isn’t swelling and you’ll likely have normal range of motion. Hyperextended knee. In this injury, your knee extends beyond its normally straightened position so that it bends back on itself. Sometimes the damage is relatively minor, with pain and swelling when you try to extend your knee. But a hyperextended knee may also lead to a partial or complete ligament tear, especially in your ACL. Septic arthritis. Sometimes your knee joint can become infected, leading to swelling, pain and redness. There’s usually no trauma before the onset of pain. Septic arthritis often occurs with a fever. Rheumatoid arthritis. The most debilitating of the more than 100 types of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis can affect almost any joint in your body, including your knees. Common signs and symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis include: * Aching and stiffness, especially when you get up in the morning or after periods of inactivity * Loss of motion in your knees and eventually deformity of the knee joints * Sometimes, a low-grade fever and a general sense of not feeling well (malaise) Although rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic disease, it tends to vary in severity and may even come and go. Periods of increased disease activity — called flare-ups or flares — often alternate with periods of remission. Osteoarthritis. Sometimes called degenerative arthritis, this is the most common type of arthritis. It’s a wear-and-tear condition that occurs when the cartilage in your knee deteriorates with use and age. Osteoarthritis usually develops gradually and tends to cause: * Varying degrees of pain, especially when you stand or walk * Stiffness, especially in the morning and after you’ve been active * Creaking or popping sounds * A loss of flexibility in your knee joints Gout and pseudogout. Gout, a type of arthritis, is likely to cause: * Intense knee pain that comes on suddenly — often at night — and without warning. The pain typically lasts five to 10 days and then stops. The discomfort subsides gradually over one to two weeks, leaving your knee joints apparently normal and pain-free. Another condition, pseudogout (chondrocalcinosis), which mainly occurs in older adults, can cause: * Severe inflammation * Intermittent attacks of sudden pain and swelling in large joints, especially the knees Chondromalacia of the patella, or patellofemoral pain. This is a general term that refers to pain arising between your patella and the underlying thighbone (femur). It’s common in young adults, especially those who have a slight misalignment of the kneecap; in athletes; and in older adults, who usually develop the condition as a result of arthritis of the kneecap. Chondromalacia of the patella causes: * Pain and tenderness in the front of your knee that’s worse when you sit for long periods, when you get up from a chair, and when you climb or descend stairs. * A grating or grinding sensation may be present when you extend your knee. When to see a doctor If you have new knee pain that isn’t severe or disabling, a good rule of thumb is to try treating it yourself first. This includes resting, icing and elevating the affected knee, and sometimes using nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to reduce pain and inflammation. If you don’t notice any improvement in three to seven days, see your doctor or a specialist in sports medicine or orthopedics. Some types of knee pain require more immediate medical care. Call your doctor if you: * Can’t bear weight on your knee * Have marked knee swelling * See an obvious deformity in your leg or knee * Have worrisome pain * Have a fever, in addition to redness, pain and swelling in your knee, which may indicate an infection In the simplest terms, a joint occurs wherever two bones come together. But that definition doesn’t begin to convey the complexity of joints, which provide your body with flexibility, support and a wide range of motion. You have four types of joints: fixed, pivot, ball-and-socket and hinge. Your knees are hinge joints, which, as the name suggests, work much like the hinge of a door, allowing the joint to move backward and forward. Your knees are the largest and heaviest hinge joints in your body. They’re also the most complex. In addition to bending and straightening, they twist and rotate. This makes them especially vulnerable to damage, which is why they sustain more injuries on average than do other joints. A closer look at your knees Your knee joint is essentially four bones held together by ligaments. Your thighbone (femur) makes up the top part of the joint, and two lower leg bones, the tibia and the fibula, comprise the lower part. The fourth bone, the patella, slides in a groove on the end of the femur. Ligaments are large bands of tissue that connect bones to one another. In the knee joint, four main ligaments link the femur to the tibia and help stabilize your knee as it moves through its arc of motion. These include the collateral ligaments along the inner (medial) and outer (lateral) sides of your knee and the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and posterior cruciate ligament (PCL), which cross each other as they stretch diagonally from the bottom of your thighbone to the top of your shinbone. Other structures in your knee include: * Tendons. These fibrous bands of tissue connect muscles to bones. Your knee has two important tendons, which make it possible for you to straighten or extend your leg: the quadriceps tendon, which connects the long quadriceps muscle on the front of your thigh to the patella, and the patellar tendon, which connects the patella to the tibia. * Meniscus. This C-shaped cartilage, which curves around the inside and outside of your knee, cushions your knee joint. * Bursae. A number of these fluid-filled sacs surround your knee. They help cushion your knee joint so that ligaments and tendons slide across it smoothly. Normally, all of these structures work together smoothly. But injury and disease can disrupt this balance, resulting in pain, muscle weakness and decreased function. Some common causes of knee pain and injuries include: * A blow to the knee, either from contact during sports, a fall or a car accident * Repeated stress or overuse, which may occur from playing sports or if your work or hobby requires doing the same activity over and over again * Sudden turning, pivoting, stopping, cutting from side to side, which happens frequently during certain sports * Awkward landings from a fall or from jumping during sports, such as basketball * Rapidly growing bones, which are especially prone to injury during sports * Degeneration from aging A number of factors can increase your risk of having knee problems, including: * Excess weight. Being overweight or obese increases stress on your knee joints, even during ordinary activities such as walking or going up and down stairs. It also puts you at increased risk of osteoarthritis by accelerating the breakdown of joint cartilage. * Overuse. Any repetitive activity, from cycling a few miles every morning to gardening all weekend, can fatigue the muscles around your joints and lead to excessive loading stress. This causes an inflammatory response that damages tissue. If you don’t allow your body time to recover, the cycle of inflammation and microdamage continues, putting you at increased risk of injury. It’s not repeated motion itself that’s to blame, but rather the lack of adequate recovery time. That’s why current strength training guidelines advise against working the same muscle group on consecutive days. * Lack of muscle flexibility or strength. A lack of strength and flexibility are among the leading causes of knee injuries. Tight or weak muscles offer less support for your knee because they don’t absorb enough of the stress exerted on your knee joints. * Lack of neuromuscular control. Studies have shown that some people who have abnormal movement patterns of the leg during activities such as squatting and stepping off a step may be predisposed to knee injury. * Mechanical problems. Certain structural abnormalities, such as having one leg shorter than the other, misaligned knees and even flat feet, can make you more prone to knee problems. * High-risk sports and activities. Some sports and activities put greater stress on your knees than do others. Alpine skiing with its sharp twists and turns and potential for falls, basketball’s jumps and pivots, and the repeated pounding your knees take when you run or jog all increase your risk of injury. * Previous injury. Having a previous knee injury makes it more likely that you’ll injure your knee again. * Age. Certain types of knee problems are more common in young people — Osgood-Schlatter disease and patellar tendinitis, for example. Others, such as osteoarthritis, gout and pseudogout, tend to affect older adults. * Sex. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, your sex may increase your risk of some types of knee injuries. Teenage girls are more likely than are boys to experience an ACL tear or a dislocated kneecap. Boys, on the other hand, are at greater risk of Osgood-Schlatter disease and patellar tendinitis than girls are. Not all knee pain is serious. But some knee injuries and medical conditions, such as osteoarthritis, can lead to increasing pain, joint damage and even disability if left untreated. And having a knee injury — even a minor one — makes it more likely that you’ll have similar injuries in the future.
Red and Green Inequality and unsustainability are the twin curses of the current world disorder. It's not just a question of being 'rich' or 'poor', but of how much is being consumed by whom - at what cost to others and to the world's environment. The earth’s oceans and biomass can absorb 13 to 14 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. If this ‘budget’ were equally distributed between the 5.8 billion inhabitants, each of us would have the right to discharge a little more than 2.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. In the North an American discharges 20 tonnes, a German just under 12 tonnes, a Japanese 9 tonnes. In the South an Indian discharges 0.8 tonnes, a Chinese 2 tonnes, an Egyptian or a Brazilian 1.5 tonnes. - Five planets would be needed to process emissions if the entire global population discharged as much CO2 as the Germans. Who contributed what to global warming 1800-1988 (increases in CO2 emissions)1 In 1965 the richest 20% of the world's people already consumed far more than all the rest put together - about 70% of the world's income. Now it's nearer 85%, and still growing. The graph shows the consumption of resources by each fifth of the world's population, measured by income. - The difference between people who consume too much and too little is often at its most extreme in relatively poor countries. - However, high average incomes (GNP per capita) don’t necessarily create more equality. Measured in terms of how many times the income of the richest 20% of the population exceeds that of the poorest 20%, India, Indonesia (both 5 times) and Bangladesh (4 times) are more equal societies than Britain, Australia or Aotearoa/New Zealand (all 6 times). - The most recent figures given by the World Bank for the distribution of income in rich countries are extraordinarily out of date – a reflection of its distorted perspectives. In most of them, inequality has increased sharply since the figures quoted above were compiled in the 1980s. - In no country in the world does the richest 20% of the population consume less than twice as much as the poorest 20%: in Brazil – a relatively wealthy country – it’s 32 times as much. NIGEL DICKENSON / STILL PICTURES While cereals, for example, are consumed more or less evenly across the world’s population, the richest 20% consume nearly 90% of the total number of cars. Because the richest fifth consume much more of the things that cost the most (in resources as well as cash), they also account for over four-fifths of the world’s total consumption. Accidents of birth - where, and into which group, you are born - have a big influence on how much you consume, even in rich countries. 'Classes' develop - rich families accumulate and consume more and more, while poor families struggle to survive at all. In rich countries In Germany, less than half the proportion of 'nationals' compared with 'foreigners' live in poverty - 'nationals' escape poverty more easily and spend less time there. It's similar for 'White' and 'African' Americans - almost half the latter live in poverty and escape it less often. In a poor country A caste system still operates in India. Studies of rural households over a long period have shown that castes considered to be lower consume less - little more than half the national poverty line - and take three times as long to escape from poverty as 'others'. With the majority of the world’s industrial labour force now in the South – and the proportion of people employed in factories falling in the North – membership of trades unions is rising sharply in many Southern countries but declining in the North. - China – where ‘official’ union membership was almost 104 million in 1995 – prohibits independent trade unions. - The demise of repressive regimes has pushed membership upwards in South Africa, Spain, Chile; downwards in the former ‘Eastern Bloc’. - The ‘density’ of union membership in Britain still stood at 32.9% of wage and salary earners in 1995, but only 18.6% in 1994 in Spain. The highest density in the world (91.1%) is in Sweden. - There is an upward trend in union membership in almost all ‘newly industrializing’ countries like Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Malaysia. A thousand Germans consume about ten times as much as a thousand Argentinians, Filipinos or Egyptians – and produce that much more waste, too. Many of these resources, like oil or aluminium, are ‘non-renewable’ and can never be replaced. 1 Wolfgang Sachs, Reinhard Loske, Manfred Linz et al, Greening the North, Zed Books, London, 1998. 2 Trade and Development Report 1997. 3 World Development Report 1997, World Bank. 4 Human Development Report 1998, UNDP. 5 Human Development Report 1997, UNDP. 6 World Labour Report 1997-98, International Labour Organisation. This first appeared in our award-winning magazine - to read more, subscribe from just £7
Jack had a blocked heart valve A British six-year-old boy has become the first person in the world to have a heart valve widened using an MRI scan for guidance rather than X-ray imaging. Jack Walborn was born with the heart condition pulmonary valve stenosis, which reduces blood flow to the lungs. Using MRI means patients are not exposed to radiation - particularly important for children. The scan also provides a clearer image, and information about the body's tissues, in real time during surgery. Jack's condition meant that the flow of blood from the right side of his heart was obstructed. Surgeons decided he needed an operation called a valvuloplasty to widen the valve and increase blood flow. This is done by inserting a catheter into a blood vessel in the arm or groin and guiding it to the heart. At the tip of the catheter is a balloon which is gently inflated to widen the narrowed valve. Glass fibre wire X-ray imaging is usually used to track the progress of the catheter through the body. But a team at the King's Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre in London has developed a way to use MRI scanning instead. Previously, the magnetic field used in MRI caused problems with the metal guide wires used for cardiac catheterisation, making them move around inside the body and heating them up. The King's team have come up with a glass fibre wire alternative with small iron markers along it that can be seen on the scan. His mother Kerry said: "At first I was unsure about allowing Jack to be the first person to have this operation, but once I had spoken to the doctors I felt much more at ease as I knew he was in safe hands. "His surgery was a great success and within an hour of coming out of theatre he was running around and back to being his lively self." Judy O'Sullivan, a senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "Technology is advancing at a great pace and in the future we hope that many more patients will benefit from the use of MRI scans rather than X-ray imaging, as MRI avoids exposure to radiation."
Tag: "microbes" at biology news Newly Discovered Bacteria Produce Magnetic Material ... "In 1994," Phelps says, "we determined that these microbes from theTaylorsville Triassic Rift Basin near Fred...ionth of a meter. "We also found evidence that the microbes can remediate groundwatercontaining chlorocarbon compounds, such as trichloroethylene andtetrachloro... Researchers Find How Disease-resistant Plants Recognize Bacteria ...stance breaks down. By learning how the plants and microbes recognize one another, we hope to create crop plants that have broader, more stable resistance." According to Martin, the findings will have wide application. "It turns out that plants resist diverse pathogens -- including bacteria, fungi and viruses... Ten Years of Progress For Superfund Basic Research Program ...to thegenus Mycobacterium. This group includes the microbes which causeleprosy and tuberculosis, but the strai...of work isneeded to find the best way to use these microbes in the fieldwhere they will have to compete with other naturally occurringorganisms. Environmental e... Munching Microbes Make A Meal Out Of Toxic Substances ...s. "We've known for decades that the soil contains microbes with the ability to degrade chemicals such as petr...perience." One of Nies' projects involves studying microbes that eat pentachlorophenol, a chemical used as a wood preservative. "We're investigating a contamina... Chesapeake Bay Sediment : Home To Pfiesteria-Like Microbes ...sent can be made. The presence of Pfiesteria-like microbes and their effect on aquatic life is a complicated issue requiring knowledge of fishimmunology, chemical reactions involving nutrients, stream dynamics, sediment loads, the life cycles of Pfiesteria-like microbes,water temperatures, and other factors.... Photocatalytic Air Cleaning System Promises To Help Allergy Sufferers ...he result is oxidation, which attacks and destroys microbes by disintegrating their DNA. The reaction also kills dust mites and mold. Goswami said that the photocatalytic process is superior to conventional techniques using filters, which must be changed and disposed of. "With this system, co... Limits Of Life On Earth: Are They The Key To Life On Other Planets? ...lve finding techniques for isolating and culturing microbes found in extreme environments, developing methods of studying these microbes in their natural habitats and devising technologies for recovering non-contaminated samples. HIG... Max-Planck Researchers Unravel The Structure Of The Methane Forming Enzyme ...ly carried out by a group of strictly anaerobic microbes called methanogens which use the formation of methane for the purpose of cellular energy generation. Within the microbial ecosystem methanogens participate in the final step of anoxic decomposition of complex organic materials thereby pro... Food Bacteria-Spice Survey Shows Why Some Cultures Like It Hot ...rld where -- before refrigeration -- food-spoilage microbes were an even more serious threatto human health an...evolutionary race between usand our parasites. The microbes are competing with us for the same food,"Sherman says. "Everything we do with food -- drying, cooki... Study Of Microbes May Hone Predictions Of Mining Impact ...-level ecological study of the naturally occurring microbes that mediate some of the most severe pollution eve...wing precisely where and under what conditions the microbes thrive in nature can be a powerful new tool to predict the effects of sulfide mining at a given site... Environmental Technology Breakthroughs Forecast -- Year 2008 ...c Northwest includes developing aprocess that uses microbes to break down sulfur in waste tire rubber, makingtires recyclable; working with other national laboratories and automakers todevelop a cleaner, more efficient automobile; designing a 190-liter-per-second(3,000 gallon-per-minute) jet mixing pump to st... Poison-Eating Bugs Strike Gold ...th-based mining biotechnology firm, of indigenous microbes capable of devouring toxic effluent from gold ext...rals have identified several new species of native microbes able to break down the thiocyanate formed from the cyanide used to extract gold. The project is ... Do Termites Use ...culates. Another possibleorigin, he says, is that microbes are making the naphthalene by acting onmaterial in the termite nest, the gut, or on the food. A nonprofit organization with a membership of more than 155,000 chemists andchemical engineers, the American Chemical Society publishes scientific journals,... Study At UNC-CH Shows Chlorinated Water Dramatically Cuts Strawberry Contamination ...le but efficient method of recovering anyremaining microbes to determine how effective washing had been. They found theirmethod "highly successful" in eliminating most viruses and bacteria. "Our work is important because it demonstrates for the first time thathepatitis A virus can be inactivated on st... Can Contaminated Aquifers Restore Themselves? ...e carriedoxygen below the infiltration beds, where microbes used it to convertammonium to nitrate in a process called nitrification. Biological activityin the aquifer now is high enough to consume most of the oxygen flowing inwith the native ground water and little oxygen is available fornitrification. As a... Georgia Scientists Study Salt Marsh To Understand Global Warming ...singlyhigh rate of carbon and nutrient turnover by microbes in one ofGeorgia's coastal salt marshes, a highly productive ecosystem. The team of researchers, all associated with the Georgia Institute ofTechnology, is conducting a long-term study at Sapelo Island, Ga., toexamine the marsh's biogeochemical proce... EPA And UC Researchers Find Bacteria That Can Destroy Giardia Cysts ...ms and rivers around Greater Cincinnatilooking for microbes which might be able to feed on the Giardia cysts. "It's always been known that the viabilityof cysts decreases over time in a natural environment. We wereinterested in knowing what kind of biological factors contribute." Rodgers' hunch paid off, and... Third Annual Awards For Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Recognize Innovations ...e University, East Lansing):genetically engineered microbes that can manufacture starting materials fornylon and other products from nontoxic, readily available glucose. Barry M. Trost (Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.): the concept of "atomeconomy," demonstrated by efficient catalytic reactions with wh... Banking On Safer Drinking Water ...er it is." The work is important because dangerous microbes and cancer-causing chemicals sometimes slip past traditional watertreatment. "We're worried about resistant pathogens created bythe overuse of antibiotics," says Bouwer, a professor in Hopkins'Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering. "S... Purdue Golf Course Serves Double Duty As Research Lab ...are caught in the thatch layer of the turf, where microbes digest them and break them down. Other chemicals in the water in the soil are taken up by the roots of the plants. When these plants die, the plant material, along with the chemicals, is broken down by the microbes. The Purdue Kampen course b... 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
for National Geographic News After spending weeks adrift in the ocean as tiny larvae, juvenile coral reef fish often return to their "home reef" to settle down, researchers say. The strong homing behavior shown by reef-dwelling butterflyfish in the waters near Papua New Guinea came as a surprise to scientists, and it may have important implications for the design of marine reserves. Researchers and fisheries managers have long sought better information on how very young fish disperse in the ocean. Tracking the fate of tiny larvae has been extremely difficult, since the fish are too small for even the smallest electronic tags. So a team led by Glenn Almany of Australia's James Cook University used a new method for chemically "tagging" fish while still in the egg stage inside their mothers' bodies. Later recovery of the tagged juveniles showed that as the fish matured, they returned to their place of birth. On a very small reef, the team found, more than 60 percent of the young, recently settled fish were offspring of adult fish living in the same location. "We were shocked to find that so many larvae returned to their parents' reef after 38 days in open waters," Almany said. The team's report appears in this week's edition of the journal Science. For their study the researchers tracked two fish species with different reproductive strategies. "Each represents one of the two dominant modes of reproduction found in marine fishes," Almany noted. SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES
Research Opens Doors To UV Disinfection Using LED Technology For Immediate Release Research from North Carolina State University will allow the development of energy-efficient LED devices that use ultraviolet (UV) light to kill pathogens such as bacteria and viruses. The technology has a wide array of applications ranging from drinking-water treatment to sterilizing surgical tools. “UV treatment utilizing LEDs would be more cost-effective, energy efficient and longer lasting,” says Dr. Ramón Collazo, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the research. “Our work would also allow for the development of robust and portable water-treatment technologies for use in developing countries.” LEDs utilize aluminum nitride (AlN) as a semiconductor, because the material can handle a lot of power and create light in a wide spectrum of colors, particularly in the UV range. However, technologies that use AlN LEDs to create UV light have been severely limited because the substrates that served as the foundation for these semiconductors absorbed wavelengths of UV light that are crucial to applications in sterilization and water treatment technologies. A team of researchers from North Carolina and Japan has developed a solution to the problem. Using computer simulation, they determined that trace carbon atoms in the crystalline structure of the AlN substrate were responsible for absorbing most of the relevant UV light. By eliminating the carbon in the substrate, the team was able to significantly improve the amount of UV light that can pass through the substrate at the desired wavelengths. “Once we identified the problem, it was relatively easy and inexpensive to address,” says Dr. Zlatko Sitar, Kobe Steel Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at NC State and co-author of the paper. Commercial technologies incorporating this research are currently being developed by HexaTech Inc., a spin-off company from NC State. “This is a problem that’s been around for more than 30 years, and we were able to solve it by integrating advanced computation, materials synthesis and characterization,” says Dr. Doug Irving, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and co-author of the paper. “I think we’ll see more work in this vein as the Materials Genome Initiative moves forward, and that this approach will accelerate the development of new materials and related technologies.” The paper, “On the origin of the 265 nm absorption band in AlN bulk crystals,” is published online in Applied Physics Letters. Co-authors include Benjamin Gaddy, Zachary Bryan, Ronny Kirste and Marc Hoffman from NC State, as well as researchers from HexaTech Inc., Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and the Tokuyama Corporation. The research was supported with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense. Note to Editors: The study abstract follows. “On the origin of the 265 nm absorption band in AlN bulk crystals” Authors: Ramon Collazo, Benjamin E. Gaddy, Zachary Bryan, Ronny Kirste, Marc Hoffman, Douglas L. Irving and Zlatko Sitar, North Carolina State University; Jinqiao Xie, Rafael Dalmau and Baxter Moody, HexaTech, Inc.; Yoshinao Kumagai and Akinori Koukitu, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology; Toru Nagashima, Yuki Kubota and Toru Kinoshita, Tokuyama Corporation Published: Online May 2012, Applied Physics Letters Abstract: Single crystal AlN provides a native substrate for Al-rich AlGaN that is needed for the development of efficient deep UV LEDs and laser diodes. An absorption band centered around 4.7 eV (~265 nm) with an absorption coefficient above 1000 cm-1 is observed in these substrates. Based on DFT calculations, substitutional carbon on the nitrogen site introduces absorption at this energy. A series of single crystalline wafers grown by PVT and homoepitaxially by HVPE were used to demonstrate that this absorption band linearly increased with carbon, strongly supporting the model that CN- is the predominant state for carbon in AlN.
When a cockroach scuttles into a dark corner as we flip on the kitchen light, we feel revulsion, not kinship. But a new study reveals that most humans share a basic trait with Kafka's creepy creatures: right-handedness. Researchers released roaches into a Y-shaped tube, where scents of vanilla or ethanol enticed the insects to venture past the tube's splitting point. The researchers then recorded which direction the bugs turned. Cockroaches with intact antennae preferred the tube's right fork 57% of the time. This right-side bias persisted even after the scientists chopped off one of the bugs' sensitive antennae, used to sense touch and smells. The finding, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Insect Behavior, adds to a growing body of evidence that even the tiniest brains show side-preference. The insight could aid bioengineers who hope to control cockroaches for search and rescue missions or pest control. See more ScienceShots.
Direct you to where you might find an Asian lorisine at the zoo? “Not a chance,” I would say—at least that’s what I used to say—until I was introduced to one as a professional zoo keeper. As a kid, enamored with zoos and zoo animals, I was impressed with charismatic megafauna and utterly unimpressed with anything less. It wasn’t until I actually joined the ranks of my professional zoo colleagues that I discovered certain critters even existed on this planet—like the fascinating and remarkable slow loris. Before the advent of zoogeographically-themed, immersion exhibits, members of these 5 species of extant lorisine prosimians, named after the Dutch word for “clown,” were typically displayed only in nocturnal houses and small mammal exhibits or viewable off exhibit. I only ventured into such buildings as a shortcut to get somewhere else. I couldn’t tell you what was inside them and I certainly knew nothing about the natural history of lorisids. Today people are drawn to these more “humble” denizens of the night, in part because they are displayed in more engaging naturalistic exhibits than ever before. They are also displayed as a part of an assemblage of South Asian fauna, which conveys the role of these little primates in their forested ecosystems. Through placement of animals in an appropriate educational context, these living institutions are teaching people to protect habitat as far away as Indonesian rainforests. And indeed, they are helping to conserve species on the brink of extinction beyond lorises and other flagship species that are found in prestigious zoological park collections. But zoos and prosimian biologists need more help to get the word out about these vanishing species, and fast. Lorises are insectivorous, lower primates that are disappearing quickly as a result of several factors, which impact a multitude of other faunal groups in the region. Habitat loss, collection for the pet trade, and use in Eastern Medicine are three primary issues influencing the demise of these prosimians. To draw attention to the plight of slender and slow lorises, we announce the celebration of Loris Awareness Week, which begins next week. Here is a link to the Los Angeles Zoo’s natural history profile for slow lorises. And to learn more about what you can do to conserve these rare creatures, visit the website of prosimian biologist Dr. Anna Nekaris and her team of researchers.
NIH Research Matters November 3, 2006 Staph Vaccine Shows Promise in Mouse Study Staph bacteria are a growing public health threat. Many have developed resistance to traditional antibiotics, and a new way to combat them is urgently needed. Scientists have now created a vaccine that significantly protects mice from diverse strains of the bacterium that cause disease in humans. This proof of principle is an important step on the way to creating an effective vaccine for humans. Staph bacteria magnified 4,780 times. Image courtesy of Janice Carr and Jeff Hageman, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Staph, which is short for Staphylococcus aureus, is the most common cause of hospital-acquired infection. It’s the leading cause of bloodstream, lower respiratory tract and skin infections. These infections can result in a variety of dangerous illnesses, including endocarditis (inflammation of the heart), toxic-shock syndrome and food poisoning. In the past few decades, staph has developed resistance to traditional antibiotics, thus allowing infections to spread throughout the body unchecked. Healthy people with no apparent risk factors have been infected by novel and extremely virulent strains recently that they acquired from sources other than hospitals. Dr. Olaf Schneewind of the University of Chicago led a research group trying, with funding from NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to develop an effective way to prevent staph infections. Their strategy was to create a vaccine that could protect against diverse strains of the bacterium. By searching through staph genome sequences, they identified sequences for 19 surface proteins that were “conserved” across staph strains — that is, they didn’t change much from strain to strain. They then tested these proteins in mice to see if they triggered their immune systems. The researchers published their results online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They identified four proteins — IsdA, IsdB, SdrD and SdrE — that provoked the strongest immune system reactions. They then combined them into a vaccine and tested the combination vaccine in mice. The resulting vaccine protected the mice from all the strains of the bacterium the researchers tested against them, significantly improving their survival. Using the individual proteins as vaccines, in contrast, provided little to no protection. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of NIAID, commented, “This finding represents a promising step toward identifying potential components to combine into a vaccine designed for people at high risk of invasive S. aureus infection.” - Microbes in Sickness and in Health: NIH Research Matters Bldg. 31, Rm. 5B64A, MSC 2094 Bethesda, MD 20892-2094 About NIH Research Matters Harrison Wein, Ph.D., Editor Vicki Contie, Assistant Editor NIH Research Matters is a weekly update of NIH research highlights from the Office of Communications and Public Liaison, Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health.
- Published on Apr 18, 2012 - Contact Laura Bailey ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Even two years later, Sarah Clark grimaces sheepishly and insists she mishandled the concussion her oldest son sustained in ninth-grade football. "I was woefully unprepared," says Clark, a researcher at University of Michigan and a self-proclaimed football mom at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor. "I did not do a good job at all. I made him do his math homework that night. I sent him to school the next day." Like Clark, most parents don't realize the staggering number of hard hits young players sustain each football season, says Steven Broglio, director of the Neurotrauma Research Laboratory and assistant professor at the U-M School of Kinesiology. Concussion gets quite a bit of media attention, but mainly at the professional level, Broglio says. Consider the latest to grab headlines: former Detroit Lions player and "Webster" star Alex Karras, named as the lead plaintiff in a head injury-related lawsuit against the NFL. However, most players who sustain concussions are high school kids who will never have a college or professional career. Broglio's research using helmet sensors to measure impact shows that an average high school player takes roughly 650 impacts, with a maximum of more than 2,000 per football season. A concussion occurs at roughly 90 to 100 g-force, which equates to smashing your skull against a wall at 20 mph. One misconception is that the harder the hit, the worse the outcome. But Broglio's studies show that the magnitude of impact that causes the concussion doesn't predict the severity of injury. Every kid and every brain is different. Also, there doesn't appear to be a snowball effect with concussion, he says. "We used to think that if you took a bunch of little hits, then you were more likely to get a concussion from a smaller impact," Broglio says. "But our findings don't support that." Basically, all it takes is one good hit to cause injury. When Clark heard about Broglio's concussion research, she helped connect him with Skyline High School administrators, who were happy to participate. Broglio's research laboratory is now the very same football field where Clark's son was hit. The football teams practice and play in helmets outfitted with sensors that record impact location, magnitude and various other measurements that help Broglio understand what's going on at the bottom of the pile, who gets concussions and why. These measurements are sent wirelessly to a sideline computer monitored by Broglio and his team. The next step in the research is to examine if there are any lasting effects to concussion. The University of Michigan School of Kinesiology continues to be a leader in the areas of prevention and rehabilitation, the business of sport, understanding lifelong health and mobility, and achieving health across the lifespan through physical activity. The School of Kinesiology is home to the Athletic Training, Movement Science, Physical Education, and Sport Management academic programs—bringing together leaders in physiology, biomechanics, public health, urban planning, economics, marketing, public policy, education and behavioral science. Visit http://www.kines.umich.edu/ for more information. - Steven Broglio: http://kines.umich.edu/profile/steve-broglio-phd-atc - School of Kinesiology: http://kines.umich.edu
The Story of Ruby Bridges Harvard professor Robert Coles recounts the story of six-year-old Ruby Bridges, the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Franz Elementary School in New Orleans in the 1960s. Title from disc label Based on the book "A picture book on DVD"--Container insert Study guide inserted in container AgeAdd Age Suitability There are no ages for this title yet. SummaryAdd a Summary There are no summaries for this title yet. NoticesAdd a Notice There are no notices for this title yet. QuotesAdd a Quote There are no quotes for this title yet. VideosAdd a Video There are no videos for this title yet.
How would you feel if you found out the red snapper on your plate wasn’t red snapper at all, but instead something illegally fished or potentially unhealthy? A new Oceana study found that 31% of seafood we tested in South Florida is mislabeled, keeping consumers in the dark about what they’re really eating. Our campaigners used DNA testing on seafood samples from grocery stores, restaurants, and sushi venues in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach areas. We’ve conducted studies like this in other cities, and the results from Los Angeles and Boston were even more striking—55% of seafood in L.A. was mislabeled and 48% in Boston. But just because the numbers are lower in South Florida doesn’t mean that seafood fraud is any more acceptable. Some of the fish being served under a different name pose risks to health and sustainability. The study found that king mackerel, a high mercury fish with a health warning for sensitive groups, was being marketed as ‘grouper.’ Sushi restaurants were the biggest offenders, with 58% of samples found to be mislabeled. All the samples of white tuna collected from sushi vendors were actually escolar, a fish species that can make people sick. The large amount of seafood coming into the U.S. market can make it difficult to trace each item to its source. Oceana is calling on the federal government to ensure that the seafood we find in our markets is safe, legal, and honestly labeled. By implementing a traceability system, consumers can make informed decisions about what they put on their plate. Sign the petition to fight seafood fraud and ensure you’re getting what you order. - Victory! Delaware Becomes Seventh State in U.S. to Ban Shark Fin Trade! Posted Thu, May 16, 2013 - It's Endangered Species Day! Posted Fri, May 17, 2013 - Stocks Show Signs of Recovery, But Still Work to Do Posted Fri, May 17, 2013 - Disabled Killer Whale Survives with Help from Its Pod Posted Tue, May 21, 2013 - U.S. Coast Guard Captures Illegal Fishermen in Texas Posted Tue, May 14, 2013
What food requires no fresh water, produces little carbon dioxide, does not use any arable land, and provides healthy, lean protein at a cost accessible to the world’s poor? This is the same question our very own CEO Andrew Sharpless will be asking audience members at The Economist’s “Feeding the World” conference this week in Amsterdam. In addition to Oceana, other experts from agribusiness, policy, science, and the NGO community will join the conversation by discussing and debating the future of food security as the world population grows toward 9 billion by 2050. Andy will contribute to this prestigious global conversation by presenting Oceana’s “Save the Oceans: Feed the World” initiative which details the benefits of wild fish as a food source. He’ll explain the many advantages wild fish has over traditional agriculture, especially in developing countries, as it’s cheap and accessible to anyone with a hook or a net and requires no ownership of land or access to fresh water. The best part is that we already know how to maximize the ocean’s potential as a food source. It requires the same steps we’re already taking to preserve biodiversity, such as reducing bycatch, protecting habitat and enforcing scientific quotas. We just have to do it in the right places. If managed effectively in the 25 countries that control 75% of the world’s fish stocks, wild fish will be abundant enough to feed 12 billion people by 2050, which far exceeds the current population projections. Andy will explain that by protecting our dwindling fish stocks and focusing on effective fisheries management in the top fishing nations, fish can become the perfect protein of the future. Learn more about how saving the oceans can feed the world. - Victory! Delaware Becomes Seventh State in U.S. to Ban Shark Fin Trade! Posted Thu, May 16, 2013 - It's Endangered Species Day! Posted Fri, May 17, 2013 - Stocks Show Signs of Recovery, But Still Work to Do Posted Fri, May 17, 2013 - Disabled Killer Whale Survives with Help from Its Pod Posted Tue, May 21, 2013 - U.S. Coast Guard Captures Illegal Fishermen in Texas Posted Tue, May 14, 2013
Two-day Consultative Workshop on the Hingol National Park by Taimur Mirza The Hingol National Park, largest National Park of Pakistan, is one of the three sub projects of the Protected Areas Management Project (PAMP). The principle objective of project is to achieve the sustainable conservation of globally and nationally significant habitats and species through community participation. The Hingol National Park Management is organizing a two-day consultative workshop on "Scientific Surveys for Park Management" on 2nd and 3rd of February 2007 at, Karachi, in order to finalize the management plan of the Park. Your expertise in this regard is required. By separate mail you will receive workshop documentation and guidelines for preparation of your participation for the workshop. For further information contact: Mr. Abdul Jabbar Conservator of Forest and Wildlife/Project Director Hingol Natoinal Park Phone No: 081-2820410 Mr. Muhammad Mazhar Liaquat Assistant Conservator Wildlife, Hingol National Park, Uthal: Phone No: Phone/Fax No: 0853-610539 Mr. Mohammad Saleem Shaikh Hingol National Park Phone No: 0853-610558 Cell phone No: 0300-2106662 Posted in Blog, January 24, 2007, by Taimur Mirza
Yevamot 55 - 61 Who Committed Bigamy? A kohen gadol, because of his sacred status, is severely restricted in regard to whom he may marry. A widow, a non-virgin and even a virgin bogeret (a girl half-year past puberty which usually takes place at age 12) are all forbidden to him, in addition to the divorcee and other women forbidden even to regular kohanim. How about bigamy? May a kohen gadol, according to Torah law, have more than one wife just like every other Jew? (The ban on polygamy was instituted by rabbinic decree almost a thousand years ago.) In Mesechta Yoma (13a) we find that he may not be married to two women while performing the Beit Hamikdash service on Yom Kippur. "He shall atone for himself and for his household" says the Torah (Vayikra 16:11) which implies, through the use of the singular term, that he can have only one wife, not two households. Although this seems limited to Yom Kippur, Rambam (Laws of Forbidden Relations 17:13) rules that a kohen gadol may never be married to two women at the same time. Ravid challenges this extension, arguing that the prohibition was intended to prevent a situation in which the kohen gadol should be the victim of a contaminating nocturnal emission as a result of thoughts about two woman and thus be disqualified for the Yom Kippur service. Although he concludes that it would make sense for the kohen gadol to avoid marrying two woman so that he will not be forced to divorce one of them just before Yom Kippur, Ravid cites the following historical example from Tanach to challenge this ruling: Yehoyada was the kohen gadol during the reign of King Yoash. "And Yoash did what was proper in the eyes of Hashem all the days of the kohen Yehoyada, and he took for him two wives and begot sons and daughters." (Divrei Hayamim II, 24:2-3) Regarding the Talmudic source for a prohibition on bigamy, the Maggid Mishneh, in his commentary on Rambam, points out that it is not the gemara cited by Ravid but rather our gemara which derives from the passage (Vayikra 21:14) "Only a virgin shall he take as a wife" that he is restricted to one wife. This approach requires an understanding of our gemara radically different from the one conveyed by Rashi, but it provides us with a source not limited to Yom Kippur alone. But what about the challenge from the bigamy of the righteous kohen gadol Yehoyada? A fascinating solution to this problem is provided by Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Chayot in the name of Rabbi Zalman of Volozhin. In contrast to Rashi's explanation that it was Yehoyada who married two woman, Rambam will read the passage as reporting that Yehoyada, who was the mentor of the king who ascended the throne at the age of seven, married Yoash, who was not a kohen, to two women. The historical example is no longer a problem and Rambam's ruling stands unchallenged. Who is a "Man?" "You (the Jewish people) are called "Adam" (Man), and the other nations are not called "Adam" (Man)." This Talmudic statement explaining why there is a distinction between the laws of tumah (ritual impurity) regarding the graves of Jews and non-Jews has often been exploited throughout history by anti-Semites as a weapon of incitement against the Jews. They deviously portrayed this as a putdown of non-Jews as being less than human. This is, of course, a patent distortion obvious to anyone familiar with Torah and Talmudic sources. We here offer explanations from three great Torah scholars in regard to this statement: The simplest approach is supplied by Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Chayot. In the literature of any religion, the reader bound by the laws of that religion is addressed as "Man" because it is to him that these laws apply. When the word "Adam" appears anywhere in our Tanach it therefore refers only to the Jewish nation bound by the rules of the Torah. This is not a comment on the humanity of non-Jews, only an exclusion of them as not being subject to those laws. A more sophisticated explanation is offered by Rabbi Yisrael Lipschitz, in his "Tiferet Yisrael" commentary on Mesehcta Avot (3:14). The spiritual development of the Jews is the result of the Torah which Hashem gave them at Sinai and not the product of their own intellectual search. In this they are similar to Adam, the first man, who was endowed by his Creator with a supreme understanding. The non-Jew who has developed spiritually and both past and present are replete with sufficient examples of righteous gentiles are self-made men who achieved what they did through their own intellectual efforts. When the phrase "the man" is found in our Scripture, it refers to all of mankind, as Tosefot points out, because this is a term of humanity, rather than of similarity to Adam. All nations are also called "bnei Adam" (sons of Man) because they are biologically the offspring of the first man, even if they are not similar to him in being endowed with knowledge rather than having to make it on their own. A third explanation, in a different vein, was put forth by the initiator of the Daf Hayomi which is the framework of this column. When Mendel Beiles was on trial in Czarist Russia on trumped-up charges of murdering a gentile neighbor, the rabbi of the Polish community of Lublin, Rabbi Meir Shapiro, was asked to explain this statement in a brief to the court which seemed to be trying all of Jewry and not just a single person. He called attention to the singular term "Man" used to describe a nation of millions. This, he explained, could only refer to the Jewish nation which is accused in its entirety, as one man, for the alleged crime of a single individual. It is also an expression of the responsibility each Jew feels for his fellow Jew, a sense which indeed makes them unique in combining an entire nation into one "Man."
Biography Pages of the: Mark Odom Hatfield's long career in Oregon politics began in 1951 when he was elected into the Oregon state legislature as the representative for Marion County. In 1955 he was elected state senator and in 1957, he became the youngest Secretary of State in Oregon's history. In 1958, Hatfield ran against the incumbent Democratic governor Robert D. Holmes and won the governorship. He was only 36. Hatfield was born in Marion County, Oregon, in 1922. He attended Willamette University and finished his degree before he was called to the Pacific Theater in World War II. His visit to Hiroshima, Japan, a month after the atom bomb had devastated the city, formed his moral, and later political, stance against nuclear weapons. After the war, he attended Stanford University for graduate work and returned to Salem in 1949 to teach political science. He was dean of students at Willamette during his first two terms in the Oregon legislature. He married Antoinette Kuzmanich in 1958 and the couple had four children. Hatfield was a Republican, but he crossed party lines often. As governor, he established a state-backed birth control system, worked to protect and maintain the sovereignty of Oregon's Native American communities, and helped pass a measure to repeal the state death penalty. He was reelected in 1962, the first two, term Oregon governor in the twentieth century. In 1966, Hatfield ran for a Senate seat. He had never lost an election, but this race was particularly close because of his stance on President Johnson's war policy. In July 1966, Johnson created a "Truth Squad" to garner support for his foreign policy from the nation's political leaders. At the annual governor's conference that year, each state governor voted "yea" or "nay" in either support of or opposition to the president's Vietnam War policies. Despite prodding by the Truth Squad, Hatfield voted "nay" the lone dissenting voice in the room. Following his vote, Hatfield returned to Oregon to campaign for a Senate seat. His opponent, and even members of his own Republican Party, labeled him a traitor for opposing the president. Perhaps more difficult to overcome was his endorsement by the Democratic Senator Wayne Morse. Still, Hatfield won the seat by a narrow margin and continued to serve in the Senate for the next thirty years, the longest term of any Oregon senator. His belief in non-violence, influenced by his strong religious evangelicalism and his experience in World War II, led him to co-sponsor a nuclear freeze resolution with Democrat Ted Kennedy. He argued for reduced armament spending and arms regulation and continued to push for an end to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. As a result of his political independence, it is difficult to put a strict political label on "Saint Mark," as his colleagues often called him. In 1991, Hatfield's good reputation was threatened by an ethics investigation into loans he accepted from people with financial interests in legislation before the Senate. He was also accused of using his influence as the senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee to ensure his daughter's admission to the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). He received a committee rebuke from the Senate as a result and was allowed to complete his final term in office (despite rumblings of a recall), finally retiring from public office in 1997. Oregonians' regard for Hatfield is evidenced not only in his success on the ballot, but in the many institutions and civic programs that carry his name. He teaches at the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. The Mark O. Hatfield Library at Willamette University and Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport are dedicated to him, as well as the Hatfield Research Center at OHSU, the Mark O. Hatfield Wilderness, the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, and the Mark Hatfield trailhead. He has also authored many books and continues to be an integral part of the state's civic life. Photo obtained from: http://www.ohsu.edu.com Biography obtained from: http://www.ohs.org
Last Modified: September 12, 2012 Classification: Immunomodulatory Agent Thalidomide is a type of "immunomodulatory agent", meaning it works by affecting the immune system. The mechanism of action is not clear. It may work in a few ways: by inhibiting blood vessel formation (called anti-angiogenesis), enhancing how the immune system functions against the cancer cells or by decreasing growth factor production (one way tumors are “fed”). Thalidomide is given in a capsule form. Doses range from 50 mg to 800 mg per day (up to 4 times a day). Patients generally start at a low dose and slowly increase. Thalidomide is best taken before bedtime because it can cause sedation or sleepiness. In order to receive thalidomide, patients will need to participate in a program called STEPS (System for Thalidomide Education and Prescribing Safety). This program educates healthcare professionals and patients about the dangers of thalidomide exposure to a fetus. This exposure can cause serious birth defects, and patients taking the medication will need to use two reliable forms of birth control. This includes male patients taking thalidomide, because it is present in sperm. The STEPS program places restrictions on who can prescribe and dispense the medication. Patients will also need to complete a questionnaire before starting the drug, as well as every month they are taking it. There are a number of things you can do to manage the side effects of Thalidomide. Talk to your doctor or nurse about these recommendations. They can help you decide what will work best for you. These are some of the most common side effects: When thalidomide was first introduced in the 1950's, it was used to treat insomnia, because drowsiness is the most common side effect in treating cancer patients. This can include fatigue, weakness, sleepiness, confusion and mood changes. It is best to take the medication at bedtime to reduce the tiredness during the day. White blood cells (WBC) are important for fighting infection. While receiving treatment, your WBC count can drop, putting you at a higher risk of getting an infection. You should let your doctor or nurse know right away if you have a fever (temperature greater than 100.4°), sore throat or cold, shortness of breath, cough, burning with urination, or a sore that doesn't heal. Tips to preventing infection: For more suggestions, read the Neutropenia Tip Sheet. While on cancer treatment you may need to adjust your schedule to manage fatigue. Plan times to rest during the day and conserve energy for more important activities. Exercise can help combat fatigue; a simple daily walk with a friend can help. Talk to your healthcare team and see OncoLink’s section on fatigue for helpful tips on dealing with this side effect. There are several things you can do to prevent or relieve constipation. Include fiber in your diet (fruits and vegetables), drink 8-10 glasses of non-alcoholic fluids a day and keep active. Your doctor or nurse can also recommend medications to relieve constipation. A stool softener once or twice a day may prevent constipation. These include dryness, itching, and rash. You should use a moisturizer on your skin and lips, but avoid moisturizers with perfumes or scents. Your doctor or nurse can recommend medication if itching is bothersome. If your skin does crack or bleed, be sure to keep the area clean to avoid infection. For more suggestions, read theNail and Skin Care Tip Sheet. Peripheral neuropathy is a toxicity that affects the nerves. It causes a numbness or tingling feeling in the hands and feet, often in the pattern of a stocking or glove. This can get progressively worse with additional doses of the drug. In some people, the symptoms slowly resolve after the drug is stopped, but for some it never goes away completely. You should let your healthcare provider know if you experience numbness or tingling in the hands and feet, as they may need to change the doses of your medication. See OncoLink's section on peripheral neuropathy for tips on dealing with this side effect. Include dizziness when standing up from a sitting position and swelling.
There are a number of reasons why some countries publish more than others but it is no real surprise that the USA produces the most scientific papers. Over the period 1999-2009 there were 2.9 million scientific papers published in the USA according to Essential Science Indicators at Thomson Reuters (see infographic) (http://sciencewatch.com/dr/cou/2009/09decALL/). This is considerably more than the next two countries in the top 20 list, Japan and Germany, who each produced a respectable 0.8 million scientific papers. It is also worth mentioning the three countries that just missed the top 20 list:, Scotland, Denmark and Israel. These small countries have managed to punch above their weight, producing 0.1 million science papers each over the ten year period. To investigate the reasons behind these figures it would be necessary to compare a number of different factors between the top 20 countries including science funding, population size, GDP, education levels, facilities and language advantages. Perhaps more interesting are the doughnut and bar charts on the infographic showing the number of citations for each country and the number of citations per paper. This indicates that the work has contributed to subsequent research and can be considered as a mark of quality. Again, the USA has the most citations but Switzerland has more citations per paper produced. Thomson Reuters also listed some ‘rising star’ countries that had the highest percentage increase in citations for the first three quarters of 2011. These are represented by the flags at the bottom of the map. In honour of Open Access Week last week, we decided to produce an additional infographic. The open access movement has grown considerably over the last decade and they now represent 20% of all scientific journals. If this trend continues perhaps we will see a higher number of publications from less well funded countries?
Draft of FDR’s “Day of Infamy” Speech. December 7, 1941. A few hours after learning of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dictated a short address to be delivered to a Joint Session of Congress the following day. His handwritten revisions—visible in this December 7 draft of the speech—made the “Day of Infamy” speech one of the most memorable in American history. –from the FDR Library
Translate thrush \| into French \| into German \| into Italian \| into Spanish Definition of thrush - 1infection of the mouth and throat by a yeastlike fungus, causing whitish patches. Also called candidiasis. - The fungus belongs to the genus Candida, subdivision Deuteromycotina, in particular C. albicans - 2a chronic condition affecting the frog of a horse’s foot, causing the accumulation of a dark, foul-smelling substance. Also called canker.
The best resource on the very latest for Ubuntu users! Ubuntu is a free, open-source, Linux-based operating system that can run on desktops, laptops, netbooks, and servers. If you've joined the millions of users around the world who prefer open-source OS-and Ubuntu in particular-this book is perfect for you. It brings you the very latest on Ubuntu 10.04, with pages of step-by-step instruction, helpful tips, and expert techniques. The Ubuntu Linux Project Installing Ubuntu on Special-Purpose Systems Basic Linux System Concepts Using the GNOME Desktop Using the Compiz Window Manager Managing E-Mail and Personal Information with Evolution Surfing the Web with Firefox Migrating from Windows Systems Sending and Receiving Instant Messages Using Command-Line Tools Working with Text Files Creating and Publishing Documents Other Office Software: Spreadsheets and Presentations Working with Graphics Working with Multimedia Consumer Electronics and Ubuntu Adding, Removing, and Updating Software Adding Hardware and Attaching Peripherals Network Configuration and Security Software Development on Ubuntu Using Virtual Machines and Emulators Connecting to Other Systems File Transfer and Sharing Managing Users, Groups, and Authentication Backing Up and Restoring Files Setting Up a Web Server Setting Up a Mail Server Setting Up a DHCP Server Setting Up a DNS Server Setting Up a Print Server Setting Up an NFS Server Up a Samba Server Updating your Ubuntu? Ubuntu Linux Bible, Third Edition, is the book you need to succeed! Note: CD-ROM is not included as part of eBook file. Ubuntu is for everybody By G. Tairov - February 21, 2007 Like many other "Bible" publications, "Ubuntu Linux Bible" is an extensive study material and is a good addition to any Linux reference book collection. William von Hagen did a good job of dissecting the information into manageable chunks. The book is written in clear terms and reads easy. As any other Linux book, the intro covers a bit of Linux history. The installation of the OS is covered well. You will learn how to install Ubuntu on a special-purpose system or as a generic desktop. Ubuntu is a Gnome based distribution, so KDE is not presented here. You will learn how to use Linux command-line tools; some bash commands are included. Additionally, the author covered quite a few GUI applications such as: Evolution, office apps and a myriad of others, so your switch from Windows world will be rather painless. Subjects covered also include: multimedia, games, consumer electronics, file sharing, software development, and some systems administrator tasks. You will learn how to... read more ubuntu for desktop use By Richard E. Graves - January 30, 2007 This might be the best Linux "bible" book ever. The book is great from the perspective of those who want ubuntu for desktop use. Its coverage of ubuntu for server use is brief. It also does not cover kubuntu or xubuntu (but it does cover some KDE applications that beat everything offered under GNOME, like k3b for burning DVD's and CD's). The book is well written, includes some geek humor, and does NOT include any inadvertent references to "ubuntu core". This is an excellent book for someone who wants to get the most out of ubuntu on the desktop -- with ubuntu and this book, Vista is obsolete already! Not a bad place to start By C. Chartier - May 21, 2008 I'm a computer professional who is new to Linux. As Ubuntu seems to be what everybody raves about these days, I decided to take the plunge and bought this book as my guide. It's not a bad book by any means, but it certainly has room for improvement as well. I see a mistake that a lot of technical type books make. The author takes very simple topics and explains them to the level of a 4-year old who doesn't speak the language can understand (things like how to click the mouse). However, when it comes to more technical topics he seems to brush over them very quickly with much less explanation. The author spent more time explaining how to use a graphical file explorer (like windows explorer) than explaining hard drive partitions and mounting them. So the book is a good place to start, but I doubt it will be suitable for a true reference to refer back to when I'm facing more difficult tasks. As the ultimate resource on the basics of the Linux desktops, servers, and programming tools, this book is written by the ultimate author on all things Linux. This transition resource is ideal if you ...
The Great Blue Hole, a submarine sinkhole off the coast of mainland Belize, yawns wide in an image captured by GeoEye's Ikonos satellite on Dec. 8. The Great Blue Hole is one of the natural wonders of the world, lying off the coast of Belize in the midst of the Lighthouse Reef Atoll. It's a circular sinkhole measuring about 1,000 feet (300 meters) wide and more than 400 feet (124 meters) deep. It was apparently formed as part of a cave system tens of thousands of years ago, when sea levels were much lower. When the ocean's waters rose, the caves were flooded. The Great Blue Hole is part of the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, which UNESCO has designated a World Heritage Site. Archaeologists and historians say the reef system provided fishing grounds for Maya communities more than a millennium ago, and later served as a haven for 17th-century pirates and buccaneers. Today, the reef is a haven for scuba divers and for marine species at risk, including West Indian manatees and green turtles. This picture of the sinkhole and its surroundings was captured by GeoEye's Ikonos satellite on Dec. 8, from an altitude of 423 miles (681 kilometers). It serves as today's offering from the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which features outer-space images of Earth every day from now until Christmas. Sample these other goodies from the calendar: - 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar - Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan - Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon - Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm - Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh - Day 5: Night lights shine on 'Black Marble' - Day 6: Holy sites seen at night - Day 7: Blue Marble still leaves its mark - Day 8: Satellites look into a volcano's hell - Day 9: Jack Frost nipping at Alaska's nose - Day 10: Cosmonaut looks down on peaks - Day 11: Earth looms above moonwalker - Day 12: Skytree casts shadow on Tokyo - Day 13: Aurora sets stage for meteor show - Day 14: Apollo's last look at Earthrise - Day 15: A sobering moment from space - Day 16: Middle Earth spotted from orbit - Day 17: Mount Etna erupts ... in 3-D! - 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar - 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar - The Atlantic: Hubble Advent Calendar - Zooniverse Advent Calendar Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other science and space news coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered via email. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about dwarf planets and the search for new worlds.
Pavements designed to fight climate change could increase energy consumption in surrounding buildingsNovember 8th, 2012 in Technology / Energy & Green Tech A simulation shows that while pavements covered with new, heat-trapping materials remain cool, the building's facades facing them are quite warm. (Phys.org)—A push to replace old, heat-trapping paving materials with new, cooler materials could actually lead to higher electricity bills for surrounding buildings, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have found. Researchers published their findings Oct. 29 in the new Journal of Urban Climate. The new paving materials are designed to lower the overall temperature of the areas where they are used—something that the study, which was focused on local solar radiation and energy consumption, was not designed to measure. The study sounds a note of caution at a time when both federal and state legislatures have been pushing for increased use of the new highly reflective pavement materials. Assembly Bill 296, which became law in California this year, is designed to advance cool pavement practices in the state and requires the compilation of a Cool Pavement Handbook. The federal Heat Island and Smog Reduction Act of 2011, currently under consideration in Congress, would specifically require paving materials with higher solar reflectivity. "Our findings suggested that some benefits associated with reflective pavements are tied to the environment where they're used," said Jan Kleissl, a professor of environmental engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. "More studies are needed to determine where these new materials would be most beneficial." The new materials could have a positive effect in areas where buildings can automatically respond to additional sunlight because they are equipped with smart lighting solutions, such as dimmers run by photo-sensitive cells. However, buildings without these features do not fare as well. The increases in consumption of cooling energy due to the new pavements ranged anywhere from 4.5 to 9.5 percent for typical newer, and better insulated, buildings; and from 5 to 11 percent for older structures. That's because the new paving materials stay cool by reflecting significantly more of the sun's rays than traditional pavements. Many rays are reflected back into space, helping to cool surrounding areas—and the planet. However, a portion of these rays gets reflected onto the windows of nearby buildings. In the researchers' study, windows facing the reflective pavements got 40 percent more daily sunshine in summer as windows facing more traditional paving surfaces (in winter the difference was only 12 percent). That in turn increases temperatures inside the building, especially if the windows do not have solar-control coating. So the buildings' occupants turn up the air conditioning. Meanwhile, office buildings that have smart lighting or energy-conscious occupants may actually benefit from the additional sunlight by being able to reduce energy use due to artificial lighting. The worst-case scenario is when these new cooler pavements are used in office park settings with many mid-rise buildings with large window areas. The best-case scenario would be to use the new paving materials near buildings without windows; on roads or large parking lots that are not surrounded by buildings; or in warehouse districts where structures don't have air conditioning, Kleissl said. Kleissl and Jacobs School Ph.D. student Neda Yaghoobian looked at annual energy use related to air conditioning in both older and newer four-story buildings in Phoenix, Ariz. Yaghoobian used a complex weather and building model she developed, called the Temperature of Urban Facets Indoor-Outdoor Building Energy Simulator (TUF-IOBES). The model fills an important gap by allowing the detailed simulation of the interaction between indoor and outdoor climate. The program links indoor and outdoor energy balance dynamically by taking into account real weather conditions, indoor heat sources, building and urban material properties, composition of the building envelope (such as windows and insulation), and waste heat from air conditioning. Yaghoobian found that, as expected, temperature for the traditional, darker pavement was up to 27 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the temperature of the newer, reflective pavement. But the walls of buildings standing near the reflective pavement were up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. Specific results varied widely depending on the buildings' make up. Natural vs. artificial light A watt of daylight can replace up to two watts of fluorescent lighting, depending on the lighting needs of a building. In the best-case scenario, each watt of extra daylight could reduce lighting power demand by two watts. This would also decrease the building's heat gain by one watt (net), saving another third of a watt in cooling power. Further study is needed to quantify these potential savings. Technical background on energy simulating software Most existing building energy models do not allow modifying outdoor ground surfaces that radiatively interact with the building. On the other hand, urban surface energy balance models in the meteorological community usually treat the buildings as hollow cubes and exclude dynamic modeling of the indoor building energy balance. A new tool was necessary and created in TUF-IOBES. TUF-IOBES goes beyond previously available models; it is the first three-dimensional fully-coupled and computationally efficient indoor-outdoor building energy simulator. Given the complexity of solar irradiance fields in the urban canopy the surface temperature fields and energy use can be simulated more faithfully. TUF-IOBES provides unprecedented insight on urban canopy and building energy heat transfer processes. It can improve our understanding of how urban geometry and material modifications and the interaction between buildings and their surroundings and dynamic combination of all of these effects in three dimensions modify the urban energy use. Provided by University of California - San Diego "Pavements designed to fight climate change could increase energy consumption in surrounding buildings." November 8th, 2012. http://phys.org/news/2012-11-pavements-climate-energy-consumption.html
One fourth length of a Uniform Rod of mass $m$ and length $x$ is placed on rough horizontal surface and it is held stationary by means of a light thread as shown in the figure. The thread is brunt and the rod starts rotating about the edge, the co-efficient of friction of the surface is $μ$. Determine the angle between the rod and the horizontal surface at which the rod is about to slip on the edge. I am confused on 'How the friction force would act?'or basically the FBD (Free Body Diagram).
Easter lilies in black Easter lilies in blue Easter lilies in gold Easter lilies in purple Matthew 6:28 is the twenty-eight verse of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament and is part of the Sermon on the Mount. This verse continues the discussion of worry about material provisions. In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads: And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: The World English Bible translates the passage as: Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don’t toil, neither do they spin, For a collection of other versions see BibRef Matthew 6:28 Two verses earlier at Matthew 6:26 Jesus told his followers not to worry about food, because even the lowly birds are provided for by God. In this verse Jesus presents the example of the lilies, who also do no labor. Spin in this verse is a reference to spinning thread, a labor intensive but necessary part of making clothing. Spinning was traditionally women’s work, something made explicit in Luke’s version of this verse. This then is one of the few pieces of evidence that Jesus’ message is meant equally for women as for men. Many varieties of flowers grow wildly and abundantly in Galilee. The translation of lilies is traditional, but far from certain. Modern scholars have proposed a number of different flowers that Jesus could be here referring to, according to Fowler these include the autumn crocus, scarlet poppy, Turk’s cap lily, anemone coronaria, the narcissus, the gladiolus, and the iris. France notes that flowers were less specifically defined in that era, and lily could be a word referring to any showy variety. The verse could also just mean flowers in general, rather than a specific variety. “In the field” implies that these are the wildflowers growing in the fields, rather than the cultivated ones growing in gardens. Harrington notes that some have read this verse as originally referring to beasts rather than flowers.
The proposed Union Pacific Red Rock Classification Yard will be predominantly placed on already developed land. In the map below you will notice that the vast majority of the proposed Classification Yard and industrial park area is in existing farm land. Farmland poses more hazards to desert wildlife through pesticides, fertilizers and run-off. Compared to the land's historical use as farmland, the Classification Yard will actually reduce chemical hazards to wildlife. The Classification Yard will not be displacing wildlife or introducing foreign chemicals into the environment in the same way agricultural fields would.
\|previous article in this issue\|\|next article in this issue\| Document Details : Title: Theseus at the Gates of the Labyrinth Subtitle: Interpreting a Pompeian Painting Author(s): LING, Roger Volume: 84 Date: 2009 A painting of Theseus and Ariadne in the House of M. Lucretius Fronto at Pompeii shows the moment when the princess hands the hero the ball of wool that will enable him to find his way out of the Labyrinth; but the action of Theseus, who holds his arm over his head with a fillet dangling from the hand, presents a problem of interpretation. A recent theory has proposed that he is crowning himself after his victory over the Minotaur and, therefore, that the painting combines two moments in time: the preparations for the expedition into the Labyrinth and the celebrations after its successful outcome. The present paper suggests, by analogy with other Pompeian paintings of the same subject, that Theseus is actually removing his sword prior to entering the Labyrinth naked and unarmed. This is an iconographic variant found only at Pompeii and only for a brief period shortly before the middle of the 1st century AD.
Most people would not question the species status of the polar bear (Ursus maritimus). While it is true that polar bears – under certain circumstances – have successfully interbred with brown bears (aka ‘grizzlies,’ Ursus arctos)[see previous post on hybridization], there are many characteristics that distinguish each of these species as unique entities (see diagram below). Now, new genetic evidence adds weight to the balance on this issue. In this post, I’ll discuss very briefly the implications of this new paper: Cronin, M. A. and MacNeil, M. D. 2012. Genetic relationships of extant brown bears (Ursus arctos) and polar bears (Ursus maritimus). Journal of Heredity 103 (6): 873-881. doi:10.1093/jhered/ess090 http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/103/6/873.abstract
Who is Siyavula Siyavula works with volunteers to collaboratively author openly-licensed educational content. This means we grant educators the freedom to copy, edit, print and distribute the resources. Currently available titles include Mathematics and Physical Science for Grades 10, 11 and 12. In 2011 the Department of Basic Education (D.B.E.) approached Siyavula to curriculum-align these textbooks and in 2012 the D.B.E. printed and began distributing these books to all government schools across South Africa. Siyavula will soon expand the list to include Life Science and Maths Literacy titles. In addition, Siyavula offers an intelligent practice service which helps learners to assess their understanding of concepts in the books. A key concern for Siyavula is the integration of technology into the classroom and therefore the use of technology is supported throughout Siyavula’s products and services. Technology integration into the classrooms Technology can play a valuable role in the education process, and it’s potential impact cannot be ignored. Yet, when it comes to education in South Africa, technology is seldom integrated into the learning experience but rather used perfunctorily. Whether a teaching environment has the privilege of using laptops or tablets in class, or learners simply share hardcopy textbooks and have a few cell phones, there are tools available to educators that transform the learning and teaching experience. Furthermore no tool should be used in isolation. Rather, they should be incorporated in such a way as to enhance learner understanding and experience and increase the effectiveness of teaching. Engaging learners through mobile learning Mobile learning in the classroom is the easiest way to incorporate technology into one’s teaching; there is no need to set up equipment, it is always available and most learners will have phones on them, making this the most easily accessible technology tool for educators. Cell phones can be used to facilitate communication and collaboration among educators and learners. Learners can also use cell phones to source additional material, alternative definitions and explanations, and to test their content knowledge. The Siyavula textbooks for mobile Educators across South Africa use the Siyavula Everything Maths and Everything Science mobile textbooks as they are easily accessible, being free to read and requiring little data to view. The mobile textbook may be used to look up a definition or research a section of the textbook, thereby helping learners to engage with the work via an alternative medium, source and context. To ensure learners are being constructive on their phones it is advisable to set them a task, such as completing an in-chapter exercise from the Siyavula textbooks. When they are done, the class can view and engage with fully worked solutions for the exercise, available in the online version of the books. Here is an example of an educator incorporating cell phones and mobile textbooks into her classroom: http://vimeo.com/42929082 Integrating rich-media with the curriculum content Use of rich-media in conjunction with class-notes and textbooks can enhance learning. Unfortunately sourcing the relevant rich-media can be a painful task. Educators can spend days on the internet searching for appropriate content to show in class-content that learners will be able to relate to, and that will bring to life the concept being taught. In addition to this, educators need to ensure that they are legally allowed to use and share the content they find. One solution is for educators to share openly-licensed resources. As they create their own class-notes, and source appropriate rich-media for inclusion. Educators can share this content with their peers by uploading it to online platforms such as Dropbox, Google Docs and Slideshare. The Siyavula webbooks The Siyavula textbooks are filled with curriculum-aligned rich-media such as videos, simulations and slideshow presentations. This means that using the books online becomes a completely interactive experience. The printed textbooks indicate where there is rich-media available for a particular section. If an educator has access to a projector in class, the web-based books can be used as a powerful teaching aid. The interactive book is also available in an offline version, so no internet connection is needed to access that material. The Siyavula online practice service Siyavula has also developed an online practice service which is well integrated with the textbooks. Learners are able to assess whether they have understood the concepts covered throughout the curriculum-aligned Siyavula textbooks. The practice service is linked to the corresponding chapters, thus a learner can monitor their progress as they work through the textbook. The questions are similar to those found in tests and exam papers and progress is measured in terms of how well a learner does and how often they are practising. All answers are given as step-by-step worked solutions and are modelled on the worked examples in the textbooks. This is an example of the practice service for Maths. Your answer is required to be filled in rather than multiple choice: When you submit your answer you are given the fully worked solution: The Siyavula textbooks are openly-licensed and freely available for reading or download from http://everythingscience.co.za/ and http://www.everythingmaths.co.za/, Over mobile at http://m.everythingscience.co.za/ and http://m.everythingmaths.co.za/. As well as though MXit reach under: everythingmaths and everythingscience.
Pump. This interactivity allows you to observe the operation of the sodium/potassium pump and its role in maintaining the balance of sodium and potassium inside and outside the neuron. (straight To be able to function, the brain have a way of changing differences in stimulation or thoughts into different patterns of firing in the brain. This is called neural coding. This interactivity introduces a few basic types of neural coding. (straight
The following events in the history of psychology took place in 1890. - Introducing the notion of "Mental Tests", James Cattell starts the development of psychological assessment and psychometrics. - Francis Galton develops statistical correlation to explore the interrelationships of factors in intelligence. - William James publishes Principles of Psychology. - James Cattell publishes Mental Tests and Measurements. 1885 - 1886 - 1887 - 1888 - 1889 - 1890 - 1891 - 1892 1893 - 1894 - 1895
Individual differences \| Methods \| Statistics \| Clinical \| Educational \| Industrial \| Professional items \| World psychology \| \|Part of a series on\| Although the title "difference feminism" is a relatively recent addition to the feminist movement, the philosophies of gender relations undergirding this category have their roots as far back as the early Greeks. Forms of difference feminism often stress a fundamental biological, emotional, psychological or spiritual difference between the sexes. Reverse gender polarity Edit Reverse gender polarity is the form of difference feminism that asserts that women, per se, are superior to men. It developed as the opposite of traditional gender polarity that asserts that men, per se, are superior to women. Traditional polarity was espoused beginning with Aristotle. Reverse gender polarity, however, began in the medieval era with the exaltation of feminine virtue by authors like Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Lucrezia Marinelli. It became prominent again in second-wave feminism with women like psychologist Carol Gilligan. Gender complementarity Edit - Further information: Complementarianism Fractional gender complementarity Edit Fractional gender complementarity argues that men and women complement one another as separate parts that together make up a composite whole. This form of difference feminism was most prominent in the Cult of True Womanhood developed in reaction to other forms of feminism in the 19th century. It originally developed from a neoplatonic unisex theory that one sexless soul was incarnated into two different bodies: male and female. The two, when added together, were to have formed a single mind. Difference feminism has been criticized for claiming that the sexes differ in their style of reasoning by evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker. "If difference feminism is true," he writes, "it would disqualify women from becoming constitutional lawyers, Supreme Court justices, and moral philosophers, who make their living by reasoning about rights and justice." He also notes that many studies have not found significant differences between men and women in their moral reasoning. Integral gender complementarity Edit Integral gender complementarity argues that men and women are each integral, whole beings unto themselves whose result when put together is greater than the sum of their parts. Michele M. Schumacher, for example, believes that there is "one (human) nature, two modes of expression... Together they form a communion of persons..."to exist mutually one for the other" " The metaphysical foundation of this theory was developed by Dietrich von Hildebrand and Edith Stein, and later by Personalists like Emmanuel Mounier and Jacques Maritain. More recently, the theory was espoused by Pope John Paul II as a foundation for a new feminism. In regards to differences in emotions, styles or reasoning, those who follow integral complementary assert that the differences are not divisional - that women only feel or reason one way and men another. Rather, they claim the characteristic differences can be found in tendencies and inclinations rather than finite generalizations. For example, author Janne Haaland-Matlary asserts that it "is far more profound than simple biological reductionism...or... social constructivism." A woman may use her "feminine genius" in practically every profession and vocation. Pope John Paul II asserted that the challenge facing most societies "is that of upholding, indeed strengthening, woman's role in the family while at the same time making it possible for her to use all her talents and exercise all her rights in building up society." For feminists who believe in integral complementary, like the new feminists, biology is not "destiny", but it is essentially important. See also Edit - ↑ Allen, Prudence, RSM. The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution 750BC - AD 1250. Montreal: Eden Press, 1985 - ↑ Allen, The Concept of Woman. p. 89-126 - ↑ Allen, "Man-Woman Complementarity", p.3 - ↑ Allen, "Man-Woman Complementarity". p.3-5 - ↑ Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate, Chapter on Gender p. 342. - ↑ Schumacher, Michele M. "The Nature of Nature in Feminism, Old and New: From Dualism to Complementary Unity". p.17-51 in "Women in Christ; Toward a New Feminism". William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Grand Rapids, Michigan. 2003. p. 45 - ↑ Von Hildebrand, Dietrich. Marriage: the Mystery of Faithful Love. Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 1991. p. 53-55; Von Hildebrand, Dietrich. Man and Woman: Love and the Meaning of Intimacy. Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 1992, p. 91 - ↑ Stein, Edith. "Letter to Sister Callista Koph" in Self-Portrait in Letters: 1916-1942. Washington DC: ICS Publications, 1993. Stein, Edith. Essays on Woman. - ↑ Allen, "Man-Woman Complementarity". p.5-18 - ↑ John Paul II, "Letter to Women" in The Genius of Women (Washington DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1997) - ↑ Haaland-Matlary, Janne. "Men and Women in Family, Society and Politics". L'Osservatore Romano. Vatican. January 12, 2005. p. 6-7. http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=6309&longdesc - ↑ John Paul II, "Welcome to Gertrude Mongella, Secretary General of the Fourth World Council on Women", May 1995. No 8, as included in "The Genius of Women". \|This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors).\|
A brief history of public inquiries As was stated in the First Report of the Select Committee on Public Affairs there has been “a trend, from the primacy of parliamentary committees and royal commissions up to the second decade of the century to the dominance of 1921 Act inquiries until the 1970s, then the predominance of ad hoc or subject specific statutory inquiries subsequently.” Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 Before the Inquiries Act 2005, statutory tribunals of inquiry were established under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921. Oonagh Gay, in the parliamentary paper Investigatory inquiries and the Inquiries Act comments that public inquiries set up under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921, “were independent of Parliament, although their establishment depended upon parliamentary resolution and upon the willingness of the Government to find the necessary time to debate such a motion.” Sir Andrew Turnbull KCB KVO, Cabinet Secretary and head of the Civil Service between 2002 and 2005, in giving evidence to the Select Committee was rather more scathing in his description of “this rather clunking instrument of the 1921 Act, which assumes everything is in public, with full legal representation and so on…” The Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 primarily deals with the powers of the inquiry once it has been set up, rather than the determination of public concern that the Inquiries Act 2005 stipulates. Gay comments that “the tribunals were designed to replace an earlier system of investigation by parliamentary committee into matters of urgent public concern after that system was discredited by the unsatisfactory outcome of an inquiry by a Commons committee into the Marconi Affair in 1913.” The focus of public inquiries held under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 has been allegations of serious misconduct by the government or public officials. They have included investigations into allegations of political corruption, police brutality and serious disasters. The Salmon Commission opined that tribunals held under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 should “always be confined to matters of vital public importance concerning which there is something of a nation-wide crisis of confidence.” The limiting wording of the commission was not carried into the Inquiries Act 2005 however, which simply requires “public concern”. Since 1921, the British Government invoked the act around 20 times. Prior to four public inquiries, listed below, held in the 1990s, the Act fell out of use for some time. It is now repealed by the Inquiries Act 2005. Notable public inquiries held under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 include: - Aberfan landslide disaster - Dunblane School Inquiry - Harold Shipman Inquiry The Republic of Ireland The Republic of Ireland retains some United Kingdom legislation pre-dating independence in 1922. The Smithwick Tribunal of Inquiry, an inquiry set up to enquire into suggestions that members of An Garda Síochána or other employees of the State colluded in the fatal shootings of RUC Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and RUC Superintendent Robert Buchanan, was established by resolution of the Dail Eireann and Seanad Eireann and under the 1921 Act. The Salmon Commission The Royal Commission on Tribunals of Inquiry, ‘The Salmon Commission’ was chaired by Lord Justice Salmon. It made recommendations affecting the protection of witnesses, in particular the Salmon Principles. Since the Salmon Commission A useful and comprehensive narrative on the development of public inquiries can be found in the Report of the Select Committee. Inquiries held under other legislation Schedule 3 of the Inquiries Act 2005 repealed a range of sections or whole pieces of legislation that gave authority to hold a public inquiry. Inquiries that had been held under such legislation include: - Rosemary Nelson Inquiry (Police (Northern Ireland) Act 1998) - Robert Hamill Inquiry and Billy Wright Inquiry (Police (Northern Ireland) Act 1998 before conversion to Inquiries Act 2005) - Marchioness-Bowbell Inquiry (Merchant Shipping Act 1995) - Victoria Climbié Inquiry (Children Act 1989; NHS Act 1977; and Police Act 1996) - Ladbroke Grove Rail Inquiry (Health and Safety at Work Act 1974) A number of public inquiries have been held on an ad hoc basis. These include:
In the early fifteenth century there was no question of Bristol’s place among English commercial cities. Although it could not hope to match the wealth and distinction of London, it was at the very height of its vigor, as was manifest in the grandeur and elegance of the church of St. Mary, Redcliffe, beautified by William Canynges’s benefactions. Indeed, Canynges, probably the richest Bristolian of this period, easily rivaled any merchant in the realm. Many of his Bristol contemporaries, such as Thomas Strange, Robert Sturmy, or John Jay, though hardly as wealthy, were themselves great merchants capable of risking vast fortunes in ventures into untried waters. But this picture is somewhat false, since from the middle of the century the foundations of this medieval prosperity had been shattered by events the Bristolians could not control. Throughout the later Middle Ages Gascony was Bristol’s principal market. From the very start the demand for wine was at the heart of this traffic. It was imported through the city at least as early as King John’s reign, when it began to supplant the vintages of Picardy on the English table. During the fourteenth century, the relationship between Gascony and Bristol deepened as Bordeaux and other Gascon ports became major outlets for English cloth, with Bristol responsible for the largest part of this traffic. Indeed, in Gascony cloth and wine stood in symbiotic relation with one another, with the former serving as the principal medium of exchange used in acquiring the latter. In consequence, the trade levels in the two commodities displayed the same rhythm of upward and downward movement. To a large degree this pattern in Bristol’s trade persisted throughout the first half of the fifteenth century. To be sure, Bristolians were rapidly developing new commercial interests in the Iberian peninsula, especially in Portugal, but this expansion rested firmly upon the solid ground provided by the city’s Gascon trade. The key to this long-term commercial relationship was its security. So long as Bordeaux and its environs remained the possession of the English Crown, English and Gascon merchants were specially protected in each other’s home districts. In peacetime the trade was as certain as the changing of the seasons. Each fall, large convoys of English vessels, sometimes amounting to fifty ships or more, could be expected to arrive for the new vintage. Small communities of Gascon merchants resided in Bristol and nearly every other English port that dealt with the wine districts, while, for their part, the English enjoyed advantageous trading rights in Gascony. At various periods, including most of the first half of the fifteenth century, the English were even able to trade their own wares duty-free in Gascony. In addition, the English king was anxious to sustain close and friendly relations with his prized French dependency. In times of dearth he invariably licensed shipments of English grain, even when supplies were scarce at home. With this guarantee of necessary food supplies, and with the certainty of a large English market in which to sell wine, the Gascons were free to devote nearly every available plot of land to the cultivation of the vine. In turn, the English supplied cloth as well as grain to Bordeaux and its environs. This trade provided the principal market for Bristol’s cloth merchants. Cargoes sent to Gascony consisted almost entirely of woolen fabric, with only small quantities of hides, fish, and coal making up the exports used to purchase wine. At Bordeaux this link between cloth and wine was so intimate that the one was often bartered directly for the other by Bristolians. In the mid-fifteenth century, these ties were rent asunder by the English defeat in the Hundred Years’ War. The final stages took more than fifteen years to complete. Until 1438, the Bordelais itself had been relatively free of the devastation of war. But the destructive invasion of marauding bands of soldiers in that year ended this period of immunity, and an era of marked instability in trade ensued. In 1449 the battles were renewed almost at the very moment of the vintage. Bordeaux fell to the French in June 1451, only to be recovered in the autumn of the following year. Finally, in July 1453 the French again seized the city, this time for good. Although trade persisted at reduced levels throughout the period of fighting and immediately thereafter, in the fall of 1455 it was almost completely brought to a halt by French cutbacks in the issuance of safe-conducts to the English. The impact of this new policy was devastating. Between 1453 and 1455 Bristol had imported an average of over seventeen hundred tons of wine per year (Table 1). For the six subsequent years, however, imports were only half this figure. The cloth trade suffered the same setback, with an annual average shipment in the 1460s almost 40 percent below what had been common in the first half of the century (Table 2). \|Source: M. K. James, Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade, ed. E. M. Veale, with introduction by E. M. Carus-Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 112–15.\| \|1475–1480\|\|1,549 [o]\|\|2,592\|\|746 [n]\|\|336 [p]\| \|Mich.–Mich.\|\|No. cloths\|\|(% denizen)\|\|No. cloths\|\|(% denizen)\|\|No. cloths\|\|(% denizen)\|\|No. cloths\|\|(% denizen)\| \|Source: Compiled from E. M. Carus-Wilson and Olive Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 1275–1547 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 97–111.\| These events had profound effects on Bristol’s commerce, making the third quarter of the fifteenth century the low point in Bristol’s late medieval economic history. A stable traffic was replaced by a trade subject to unpredictable interruptions and sharp fluctuations of volume. With the end of the war and the period of reduced commercial exchanges that followed, the change in the framework of Anglo-Gascon relations solidified. Although trade with Gascony did not cease entirely, Bristolians now dealt with it as foreigners in the territories of a former enemy, not as privileged parties in the dominions of their own king. At the same time, the Iberian trades grew in importance. At the end of the century, they easily rivaled commerce with France, taking the bulk of the city’s cloth and other exports and supplying a list of valuable imports, including wax, sugar, spices, fruit, iron, and dyestuffs, as well as wines. On this foundation, the fourth quarter of the fifteenth century witnessed the last flowering of Bristol’s medieval prosperity. After reaching a low ebb in the 1460s, the city’s trade figures bounced back to new heights by the 1490s. In that decade woolen exports achieved an average of sixty-five hundred cloths per annum and wine shipments were significantly higher than they had been in any period except the 1440s (see Tables 1 and 2). Other valuable commodities such as olive oil, woad, sugar, and spices also poured into the port. When judged by customs revenue for this period, Bristol was easily the third most important commercial center in southern England, outranked only by London and Southampton. Following the loss of Gascony, the focus of Bristol’s trade had shifted southward. Although Bordeaux and its environs still remained important to the city’s merchants, the diverse commodities of Spain and Portugal now had a greater attraction than before.
Paranasal sinus mucocoeles represent complete opacification of one or more paranasal sinuses by mucous, often associated with bony expansion. Clinical presentation depends on two factors: - location and direction of expansion - presence of infection Mucocoeles distort local anatomy and exert pressure on adjacent structures as they enlarge. Examples include: - frontal mucocoele extending into the front of the orbit, presenting as a mass - posterior ethmoidal mucocoele compressing the orbital apex - sphenoidal mucocoele extending posteriorly impinging upon the pituitary and brainstem - maxillary mucocoele may elevate the orbital floor and result in proptosis If a mucocoele becomes infected presentation is similar to acute sinusitis, with potential extension of infection into adjacent spaces: - intracranial - subdural empyema, meningitis, cerebral abscess - orbit - subperiosteal abscess - subcutaneous - e.g. Pott's puffy tumour Mucoceles most likely occur as a result of obstruction of the ostium of a sinus with resultant accumulation of mucus and eventual expansion of the sinus. Some authors (the minority) believe that they represent a mucous retention cyst which gradually enlarges, eventually filling the whole sinus 2. Chronic non-invasive fungal sinusitis has also been associated with the formation of mucocoeles 2-3. From the point of view of radiologists which of these hypotheses is correct is immaterial. The content of the mucocele is variable, and this impacts on the imaging appearances (see below). Most simple mucocoeles are formed by clear thick mucous. If the mucocoele has been infected (pyocoele) then the content is similar to pus. The frontal sinus is particularly prone to developing a mucocoeles, and up to two thirds of all mucocoeles occur there. The ethmoidal sinuses are the next most common, whereas maxillary and sphenoidal sinuses are infrequently involved 2. - cystic fibrosis - particularly if occurring in children 4 Mucocoeles are best imaged with a combination of CT (to assess bony changes) and MRI (to assess any extension into the orbit or intracranial compartment). Plain films do not have a significant role to play in the diagnosis of mucocoeles. If obtained they demonstrate opacification and expansion of the affected sinus. The affected sinus is completely opacified, and the margins expanded and usually thinned. Areas of complete bony resorption may be present resulting in bony defect and extension of the 'mass' into adjacent tissues 2-3. Peripheral calcification is sometimes seen 2. Following administration of contrast only peripheral enhancement (if any) is seen. The content of the sinus is variable, depending on the degree of hydration, ranging from near water density, to hyperdense as secretion become increasingly thick and dehydrated 3. MRI signal intensity is very variable and depends on the proportions of water, mucus and protein 1-3. - water rich content - low signal (most common) - protein rich content - high signal - water rich content - high signal (most common) - protein rich content - low signal - T1 C+ (Gd) - enhancement if present, only occurs at the periphery - DWI - variable It should be noted that colonisation with fungus can lead to very low signal on both T1 and T2 weighted sequences, mimicking a normal aerated sinus 3. Treatment and prognosis In general drainage and marsupialisation of affected sinus is sufficient. If large bony defects are present, reconstructive surgery may be necessary (e.g. orbital floor). If drainage remains impaired, recurrence may occur. There is often little if any differential, provided contrast has been administered. Differential includes: - paranasal sinus tumours e.g inverted papilloma or sinonasal carcinoma - most of these enhance mucus retention cyst - does not completely fill the sinus (by definition) - no bony expansion - does not completely fill the sinus - focally protrudes through the osteomeatal complex - no bony expansion - 1. Moritani T, Ekholm S, Westesson P. Diffusion-Weighted MR Imaging of the Brain. Springer Verlag. (2009) ISBN:3540787844. Read it at Google Books - Find it at Amazon - 2. Mafee MF, Valvassori GE, Becker M. Imaging of the head and neck. George Thieme Verlag. (2004) ISBN:1588900096. Read it at Google Books - Find it at Amazon - 3. Van tassel P, Lee YY, Jing BS et-al. Mucoceles of the paranasal sinuses: MR imaging with CT correlation. AJR Am J Roentgenol. 1989;153 (2): 407-12. AJR Am J Roentgenol (abstract) - Pubmed citation - 4. Guttenplan MD, Wetmore RF. Paranasal sinus mucocele in cystic fibrosis. Clin Pediatr (Phila). 1989;28 (9): 429-30. - Pubmed citation Synonyms & Alternative Spellings \|Synonyms or Alternative Spelling\|\|Include in Listings?\| \|Paranasal sinus mucocele\|\|✗\| \|Mucocele of paranasal sinuses\|\|✗\| \|Mucocoele of paranasal sinuses\|\|✓\| \|Paranasal sinus mucocoeles\|\|✗\| \|Paranasal sinus mucoceles\|\|✗\|
By Robert Evans GENEVA (Reuters) - New tests on a painting billed as the original version of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci's 15th century portrait, have produced fresh proof that it is the work of the Italian master, a Swiss-based art foundation said on Wednesday. The tests, one by a specialist in "sacred geometry" and the other by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, were carried out in the wake of the Geneva unveiling of the painting, the "Isleworth Mona Lisa", last September. "When we add these new findings to the wealth of scientific and physical studies we already had, I believe anyone will find the evidence of a Leonardo attribution overwhelming," said David Feldman vice-president of the foundation said. The "Mona Lisa" in the Paris Louvre for over three centuries has long been regarded as the only one painted by Leonardo - although there have been copies - and claims for the Swiss-held one were dismissed by some experts last year. But it also won support in the art world, encouraging the Zurich-based Mona Lisa Foundation - an international group which says it has no financial interest in the work - to pursue efforts to demonstrate its authenticity. Feldman, an Irish-born international art and stamp dealer, said he was contacted after the public unveiling of the portrait - which shows a much younger woman than in the Louvre - by Italian geometrist Alfonso Rubino. "He has made extended studies of the geometry of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man" - a sketch of a youth with arms and legs extended - "and offered to look at our painting to see if it conformed," Feldman told Reuters. The conclusion by the Padua-based Rubino was that the "Isleworth" portrait - named for a London suburb where it was kept by British art connoisseur Hugh Blaker 80-90 years ago - matched Leonardo's geometry and must be his. The Zurich institute, the Foundation said, carried out a carbon-dating test on the canvas of its painting and found that it was almost certainly manufactured between 1410 and 1455 - refuting claims that it was a late 16th century copy. Earlier brush-stroke studies presented last September by U.S. physicist and art lover John Asmus concluded that both the "original" version and the Louvre crowd-puller were painted by the same artist. The authenticity of the foundation's painting, discovered by Blaker in an English country house in 1913, has been fiercely challenged by British Leonardo authority Martin Kemp, who argued last year that "so much is wrong with it." Feldman and foundation colleagues retort that Kemp has never followed up on invitations to come to see it. Documents show that a painting of his wife Lisa was commissioned around the turn of the 16th century by Florentine nobleman Francesco del Giacondo. In French, the Louvre version is known as "La Giaconde" and "La Giaconda" in Italian. Supporters of the "younger" version say it was almost certainly delivered unfinished to del Giacondo before Leonardo left Italy in 1506 and took up residence in France, where he died in 1519 in a small Loire chateau. From the Giacondo house, it probably eventually found its way to England after being bought by a travelling English aristocrat, this account runs, while the Paris version was probably painted by Leonardo around 1516 in France. (Reported by Robert Evans, editing by Paul Casciato)
“It is through our speech that we are known, for it tells a story of our thought life and essential self. How we speak can open or close doors, heal or hurt, create joy or suffering, and ultimately determines our own degree of happiness.” This quote, from the foreword to Dr. Marshall Rosenberg’s book Speak Peace in a World of Conflict: What You Say Next Will Change Your World, kicks off a series on non-violent communication, or NVC. I first encountered Rosenberg’s work at the Chopra Center. I was there for the meditation practice, but as a lawyer dealing with conflicts every day, I was intrigued by Rosenberg’s book entitled Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. A clinical psychologist, Rosenberg has applied NVC in conflict zones ranging from Rwanda and Serbia/Croatia to corporate board rooms to interactions between family members. NVC is premised on the concept that everything we do is to enable us to meet some need. Yet we’ve been raised in a world where we’re discouraged from identifying our needs and feelings for fear of being labeled weak and dependent. This leads us to engage in communication that’s harsh, judgmental and critical, i.e., “violent” communication. This type of communication, laden with diagnoses and demands, provokes defensiveness and aggression instead of creating connections and relating to each other based on compassion. NVC guides us to shift our communication mindsets from violent to nonviolent by utilizing four skills: - Observing what’s happening within us and around us without judging or evaluating. - Identifying and expressing what we’re feeling, as opposed to what we’re thinking or how we’re interpreting the situation. - Connecting those feelings to needs that create them. - Making and responding to requests to take action that will fulfill our needs, without making demands that will be met with punishment if not satisfied. These skills are applied to enhance self-empathy (compassionate awareness of our own inner experience); empathy (listening to others with compassion); and honest self-expression (expressing ourselves authentically in ways that are likely to inspire compassion in others). This may sound like a strained form of hippy-dippy-trippy communication. But the focus is less on the four steps themselves and more on our intentions when we speak. Shifting our mindsets to nonjudgmental observations, feelings, needs and requests can be as valuable as years of therapy for our relationships with others and ourselves. Becoming aware of our own feelings and needs and transforming our own inner dialogue paves the way for us to develop empathy for other people in our lives and to listen to them with compassion, even if they’re not practicing NVC: “As NVC replaces our old patterns of defending, withdrawing, or attacking in the face of judgment and criticism, we come to perceive ourselves and others, as well as our intentions and relationships, in a new light. Resistance, defensiveness, and violent reactions are minimized. When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt and needed rather than diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion. Through its emphasis on deep listening — to ourselves as well as others — NVC fosters respect, attentiveness, and empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart.” (From Nonviolent Communication.) So how do we keep our attention focused on feelings and needs and avoid the seemingly natural drift into judgments and demands? This series will go over key aspects of NVC designed to help us do just that. Also, Rosenberg’s Center for Nonviolent Communication offers training in NVC. To get the ball rolling, here’s a video of an introductory class with Rosenberg on the basics of nonviolent communication. Hang in there with it. Rosenberg’s approach may be far different than what you’re used to, but the results can be profound. Next week: NVC 2: Making Observations Without Mixing In Evaluations
By Jake Landers Published August 2011 Sensitive Briar and Fern Acacia are cousins that have similar looking leaves that behave very differently. The leaves of Sensitive Briar fold up when touched while those of Fern Acacia stay put. Few plants have movements as quick as Sensitive briar, and it’s done without nerves as in animals. Botanists understand that these movements in plants come about by changes in water pressure, but they can’t explain the reason why. Why one and not the other! Perhaps the leaf movements might surprise a grazing animal to make it move to another plant for a bite. It’s a quirk in some plants that someday may entice a young scientist to find a good explanation. Both plants are legumes and are first choice for grazing by goats, sheep, and deer because of their high nutrient content. For this reason both have become scarce even in pastures where moderate to light stocking has been practiced. They persist in much of central Texas in parks, roadsides, and rocky sites where plants are somewhat protected from heavy grazing. The flower clusters are similar in construction, but quite different in size and color. Fern Acacia has marble-sized white puffballs too numerous to count on the multiple sprouts in a typical colony. Sensitive Briar has a few big pink ones at the ends of sprawling runners. Seed pods are quite distinct also, with those on Fern Acacia small and flat, and those of Sensitive Briar bean-like and covered with soft spines. I am having a hard time finding seeds to get either plant reestablished in my part of the ranch. The scientific name of Fern Acacia is Acacia angustissima var. hirta. In plain language this translates to “Thorny plant with the narrowest leaves”. Most of its other cousins are thorny, including Sensitive Briar, but Fern Acacia it is soft to the touch. Sensitive Briar is named Mimosa roemeriana, although long ago I learned it as Schrankia roemeriana. At least the name-changing experts kept half of the original which is in honor of Ferdinand Roemer, the German geologist who checked out the ruins of the old Spanish Presidio near Menard 150 years ago, and wrote a book about his adventures in Texas. Whatever the reason for the sensitive leaf movements in one and not the other, they are fascinating to watch. Several years ago one of my colleagues who also enjoyed teaching kids about native plants had a fun technique when he found a Sensitive Briar. He told the kids it was a “Scream” plant. “If you screamed at it, it would fold its leaves, and you had to get close to it because it was hard of hearing.” Soon all the kids would be on hands and knees screaming and watching the movement, not realizing at first it was their breath, not the sound that caused the movement. Kids and a few grown-ups like to be tricked, occasionally, so that they can pull the same trick on someone else. But you need to be smart enough to tell the difference between the two plant cousins.
An estimated 126,000 described species rely on freshwater habitats, including species of fishes, molluscs, reptiles, insects, plants, and mammals. With the inclusion of undescribed species, this number could rise to over one million. Species richness in relation to area of habitat is extremely high in many freshwater groups. Freshwater fishes comprise almost 45% of all fishes and freshwater molluscs about 25% of all molluscs. An estimated 15,000 fish (including brackishwater species), 4,300 amphibians, 5,600 Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies), and 5,000 mollusc species depend on freshwater habitats. Other major groups dependent upon freshwater include reptiles, insects, plants, and mammals. The importance of freshwater species, ecosystems and services to human livelihoods and wellbeing is increasingly being recognised, and the FBU works in a number of areas to provide the information to support decisions for the protection of wetland species and livelihoods. To conserve and manage freshwater biodiversity, the FBU works in conjunction with the SSC’s Specialist Groups (including the IUCN/SSC/WI Freshwater Fish Specialist Group, the Dragonfly SG and the Mollusc SG), the Species Information Service, the Global Amphibian Assessment Programme, regional scientists, experts in freshwater biodiversity and policy makers. We have a key partnership with Conservation International's Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, with which we are working to undertake regional and global freshwater assessments.
Shots - Health Blog Can You Learn While You're Asleep? Originally published on Fri August 31, 2012 8:44 am If you're a student, you may have harbored the fantasy of learning lessons while you sleep. Who wouldn't want to stick on a pair of headphones, grab some shut-eye with a lesson about, say, Chinese history playing in his ears — and wake up with newly acquired knowledge of the Ming Dynasty? Sadly, it doesn't work. The history lesson either keeps you from going to sleep, or it doesn't — in which case you don't learn it. But researchers may have taken the first baby step to making the fantasy come true: In an unusual experiment published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers Anat Arzi, Ilana Hairston and others showed that people are capable of learning simple lessons while fast asleep. The researchers sprayed volunteers with pleasant and unpleasant smells while they were fast asleep. Exactly like people who are awake, the sleeping volunteers took bigger breaths when there was a pleasant smell and a smaller breath when there was an unpleasant smell. The researchers also paired each kind of smell with a particular sound. After repeated pairings of, say, a pleasant smell with a high-pitched beep, the researchers played the high-pitched beep without the smell: They found the volunteers took a big gulp of air. At least subconsciously, in other words, they were expecting the pleasant smell. The researchers similarly paired an unpleasant smell – rotting fish – with another kind of tone. After repeated pairings, the tone alone caused the volunteers to take a smaller breath. The phenomenon is known as conditioning, a simple form of learning made famous by Ivan Pavlov and his dog. When the volunteers woke up, the researchers played the different tones to them. They found that the high-pitched beep caused the volunteers to take a big breath and the low-pitched beep caused the volunteers to take a small breath. In other words, the conditioning lesson learned while the volunteers were asleep stayed with them after they awoke. Interestingly, the volunteers had no conscious recollection of having learned anything while they were sleeping. Hairston said the research could help unlock the effects that sleep has on different brain processes. It's been known for a while that a nap can help cement things you've learned; Hairston said the sleep mechanisms that consolidate knowledge may explain why volunteers in the current experiment were able to bring what they learned during sleep into waking hours. Practical applications of the conditioning technique are still far off, of course. But speculating about potential future uses, Hairston said: "A medical student can learn a list of body organs. You can perhaps pair different organs with smells. So you pair the thalamus with the smell of lemon, and the hypothalamus with the smell of orange blossom. When you wake up, you will have a better recollection of that list!" STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Next, we have the real-world version of a widespread fantasy - the idea that you could somehow learn while sleeping; that students returning to school this time of year could prep for a test in bed; that busy adults might play a tape, and learn French during nap. Real life does not really work like the fantasy. But Shankar Vedantam, NPR's science correspondent who looks at interesting social science research, has found some research that points in that direction. Shankar, good morning. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Hi, Steve. INSKEEP: So what's the idea here? VEDANTAM: Well, we've known for a very long time that sleep can help you consolidate the things that you have already learned. So I spoke with a sleep researcher. Her name is Ilana Hairston. She's at the Academic College of Tel Aviv. Here's how she put it to me. ILANA HAIRSTON: If you learn something in the morning, in the evening your learning has improved. But it's also been shown, this effect can be actually enhanced if you take a nap during the day. INSKEEP: Wait a minute. So you're saying you learn something, then you take a nap; and after the nap, you better understand what you learned before the nap. That's what she's saying? VEDANTAM: That's exactly what she's saying. Now, the question that she wanted to answer is, it's clear that sleep can consolidate what you have already learned. But is it possible that you can actually learn something new while you're sleeping? And of course, that goes right back to the fantasy you laid out at the top of this - which is a fantasy that I had throughout my student days - which is, I could just stick a pair of headphones on my ears, go to sleep, wake up and say hey, I've learned the history of the Ming Dynasty. INSKEEP: OK. Has anybody tried this? VEDANTAM: So, Hairston has conducted an experiment that I would have to say is the first baby step in that direction. She's found that the brain can learn fairly simple things while people are fast asleep. So here's the experimental setup. She and her colleagues bring a bunch of people into the laboratory, a sleep laboratory, hook them up with meters. Now, when the volunteers are completely fast asleep, the researchers sprayed them with a pleasant smell - like the smell of shampoo or deodorant. VEDANTAM: And they found that the volunteers took a deep breath. And that's exactly what people do when they're awake. Now, every time there was a pleasant smell, the researchers also played a beep - like, a high-pitched beep, right? And they paired the pleasant smell with the beep, repeatedly. And they found that after 10 or 15 times of doing this, when they just played the high-pitched beep, the volunteers took a big breath. INSKEEP: This is like that famous experiment with Pavlov and the dog, and the dog's mouth watering when the bell goes off - and that sort of thing. VEDANTAM: Exactly. So it's called conditioning, and it's a very basic form of learning. Now, by the way, they also did the same thing with unpleasant smells. They used rotten fish, and they had a low-pitched beep. And this time, they found that the volunteers took a smaller breath when they had the unpleasant smell. Now, the million-dollar question is, it's clear that the brain can learn to associate smells and sounds while it's asleep. But does this learning carry over into when the people are actually awake? So the researchers waited for the volunteers to wake up, and then they played these sounds to the volunteers. And they found that when they played the high-pitched beep, the volunteers took a big breath. They played the low-pitched beep; the volunteers took a small breath. INSKEEP: OK. So it does carry, then, over to when you're awake. But that's a very, very simple - very, very basic form of learning; probably a little bit simpler than learning the Ming Dynasty. VEDANTAM: It is a lot simpler than learning the Ming Dynasty. There were two interesting things about this. The first is, the volunteers had no conscious recollection of having learned anything at all. They woke up; they heard these sounds and took either a big breath, or a small breath. VEDANTAM: Now, I asked Dr. Hairston about what the practical implications were; how quickly students would be able to utilize this research to essentially, supplant their entire educations. Here's what she told me. HAIRSTON: A medical student can learn a list of body organs. You can - perhaps pair different organs with smells. So you pair the thalamus with smell of lemon, and the hypothalamus with smell of orange blossom. When you wake up, you will have a better recollection of that list. INSKEEP: So they haven't quite figured out the practical applications. VEDANTAM: Well, I think the practical implications, in terms of actually supplanting an entire education, is way down the road. But what this is, is a proof-of- concept study that shows that at least at a basic level, the brain is capable of learning new stuff while you are completely- fast asleep. INSKEEP: NPR science correspondent Shankar Vedantam, who is refusing to confirm or deny whether he reported this entire story while asleep. Shankar, thanks very much. VEDANTAM: (LAUGHTER) Thanks, Steve. INSKEEP: Shankar Vedantam regularly joins us to talk about interesting social science research. You can follow him on Twitter @Hidden Brain. And while you're at it, you can follow this program @MORNING EDITION and @nprinskeep. You are getting very sleepy. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) INSKEEP: (Whispering) It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
With this special selection of honeys, we want to invite you to a sensorial trip all over Honeys from small and clever beekeepers fussing over their bees and cultivating their honeys in the most natural areas in While enjoying this honey, think that bees help to preserve the biodiversity of these areas by pollinating all the plants they visit during their tireless work. Why this honey? - It is kept below 20ºC since it is extracted until it is bottled. Thus, it preserves all its enzymes and biological value. - No zoosanitary treatments have been used, so there are no leftovers in the honeys. It is brought from apiaries located more than 30 km away from urban and industrial pollution areas. These bees have been treated in a sustainable way with the natural resources available.
Black Abolitionist Archive Title: John Sweat Rock Speaker or author: Rock, John S. (John Sweat), 1825-1866 Newspaper or publication: Presscopy -- Boston Athenaeum -- Pamphlet Collection The speaker made a plea for equal rights now that the slaves had been freed. He noted the heroism and patriotism displayed by black soldiers and emphasized the sacrifices they had made for liberty, freedom, and justice. All that they asked for at this point was to be granted the civil rights that every Union soldier had fought and died for. Description of file(s): PDF 3 page, 892 word document (text and images) Date published: 1864-10-04 The material featured on this site is subject to copyright protection unless otherwise indicated. The documents may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium, provided it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context. The source of the material, the University of Detroit Mercy Black Abolitionist Archive, must be identified and the copyright status acknowledged.
Driving the natural-gas-fueled version of the 2012 Honda Civic brought me back to my high-school chemistry class. As I thought about how Honda derives a miles-per-gallon figure for this car, I considered the physical states of a liquid versus a gas. That train of thought only explained why the natural gas tanks in the car impinged so much on the trunk space, yet still only carried 8 gallons. The 13.2-gallon tank in the 2012 Honda Civic EX-L used up much less space. As my chemistry teacher explained, a gas takes up more volume than a liquid. It took a little Web research to find that Gasoline Gallon Equivalent (GGE) is a commonly used measurement for compressed natural gas (CNG). A GGE of CNG contains the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline. Being a gas, that GGE of CNG takes up more volume, and means there is maybe room for three grocery bags in the back of the Civic Natural Gas. Given its smaller fuel capacity, the Civic Natural Gas does not boast the same range as its gasoline counterpart. A Civic EX-L goes an average of 422 miles on a full tank, while the Natural Gas version can only go, on average, 248 miles after its tanks have been topped off. Add lesser range and trunk space to the fact that CNG filling stations are much, much rarer than gas stations, and the question arises, how does the Civic Natural Gas justify itself? Not hurting its case is the fact that fuel economy is about the same between the CNG and gasoline Civics. Same amount of energy per gallon, remember? The most immediate tangible benefit from the Civic Natural Gas is that CNG costs much less than gasoline. A survey of stations around the San Francisco Bay Area, using CNGPrices.com, showed prices ranging from $1.99 to $2.80 per GGE, with $2.09 being the most common price in an area where gasoline is going for over $4.00 per gallon. That means a full tank in the Civic Natural Gas for $16.72. For those willing to think beyond the pocketbook, CNG produces less pollutants than gasoline. According to a Department of Energy study, the Civic Natural Gas emits 20 to 40 percent less carbon monoxide and 80 percent less particulate matter than an equivalent gasoline-powered car. It also reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent. Under California's emissions rating system, the Civic Natural Gas qualifies as an Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle, making it eligible for the car pool lanes. And the politically minded might want to consider that CNG is a domestic fuel source, so it lessens the pressure to become embroiled in foreign conflict. The Civic Natural Gas suffers a power hit compared with its liquid-powered brethren. Where the 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine in the Civic EX-L produces 140 horsepower, that same engine only generates 110 horsepower in the Civic Natural Gas. Torque likewise goes down from 128 to 106 pound-feet. That power loss becomes palpable when flooring the accelerator, either to merge on a freeway, pass another car, or through a misguided sense of fun. The Civic Natural Gas is not a fast car, taking its sweet time in the run up to 60 mph. Under this sort of acceleration, it showed a preference for very specific rev ranges, getting a boost after each gear change for a short amount of time. The five-speed automatic transmission is only remarkable for the three low ranges it offers. There is no manual mode, but I could practically choose gears by rowing through D3, D2, and D1, each of which caps the top gear the transmission can go into. A sixth gear might seem like a good idea, but I found the engine speed maintaining just over 2,000rpm at speeds of 70 mph.
unassimilatible writes "The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reports 'to impress your favorite lady this Valentine's Day, get her the galaxy's largest diamond.' A newly discovered cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallized carbon 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. It is 2,500 miles across and weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds, which translates to approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros. A cheesy, unrealistic simulation is also available. AP has a story as well."
Shipud writes "Insulin resistance is the harbinger of metabolic syndrome. Insulin resistance is when the body cannot use insulin effectively. As a result, blood sugar and fat levels rise. Therein lies the path to morbid obesity, diabetes, stroke, and heart problems. A group of Brazilian researchers have taken a strain of mice normally known to be immune to insulin resistance, and made them insulin resistant (pre-diabetic) by changing their gut bacteria. They then gave the mice antibiotics, and by changing their gut bacteria again, reversed the process, curing them of the disease. Their research shows just how influential the bacteria living in our gut can be on our health."
Gregorio Zara — Filipino physicist and aeronautical engineer Creator of the first videophone ( a forerunner of such video telecommunication applications as Skype, Webcam and videoconferencing) and discoverer of the physical law known as the “Zara Effect.” PLEASE SHARE IF YOU ARE INSPIRED BY THIS STORY! Back in the 1950′s, the videophone — a telephone device that allows you to see the individual you are speaking with in real (or near-real) time — was a mere dream of science fiction. But physicist and aeronautical engineer Gregorio Zara, one of the Philippines’ most celebrated inventors, began to change all that in 1955 when he introduced the first videophone. Gregorio, the creator of other early models of futuristic technology ( including a solar battery, a talking robot, and an airplane engine powered by biofuel), was born in 1902 in Lipa City, Batangas, a province in the Philippines. After graduating as valedictorian of his high school class, he enrolled at the University of the Philippines, and later went on the U.S. and France to complete his training in engineering and physics. Already he was formulating innovative ideas of the future that would hallmark his career. Why He’s Important: Gregorio is perhaps best known as the inventor of the videophone, which he patented in 1955 as a “photo phone signal separator network.” Five years after he invented the instrument, AT&T began work on commercial application of a video phone (or “picturephone”). The company introduced the video phone to the public in 1964 at the New York World’s Fair, but the device did not become a viable marketable item until about 30 years later when it was integrated with the internet as the digital revolution took off. Video phones are especially popular today with the hearing impaired, in addition to being rooted in such familiar technologies as cell phones, telemedicine, Skype, distant learning and videoconferencing. Other Achievements: In 1930, Gregorio discovered the physical law of electrical kinetic resistance (called the Zara Effect). “Kinetic electrical resistance is the resistance to the passage of electric current when contacts are in motion. Permanent electrical resistance manifests itself when contacts are at rest,” according to the online library Scribd.com in describing the Zara Effect. His other noted achievements include: inventing the earth induction compass (an instrument that is still used today in the aeronautical industry, specifically by pilots); contributing to the design of a robot called Marex X-10 that walked, talked and responded to commands; developing an airplane engine powered by alcohol, and introducing a solar-powered battery, and solar water heater and stove. Education: Gregorio earned his Bachelor’s of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1926 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), his Master’s of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Michigan (graduating summa cum laude), and his Ph.D. in Physics from the Sorbonne University in Paris (again, graduating summa cum laude, or “Tres Honorable” — the first Filipino given that honor from the university). In addition to writing books on science and physics, he taught aeronautics at the American Far Eastern School of Aviation, and at Far Eastern University. He also served as vice president of FEATI University in Manila from 1946 through 1962. At the year of his death in 1978 he was named the Philippines’ National Scientist. Discover other exciting role models in science and engineering at the USA Science & Engineering Festival by visiting www.usasciencefestival.org
Once oil has entered the Gulf Stream, it may stay offshore in the Gulf Stream. There is some chance that it could move toward nearshore coastal waters and even reaching the coastlines of South Atlantic states. The amount of oil — if any — that reaches shore depends on several factors, including: - the amount of oil in the Gulf Stream; - prevailing winds; - weather events such as storms or hurricanes; - effects from additional eddies in the Gulf Stream; and - influences from currents moving southward from the Mid-Atlantic Bight. The risk of having oil come ashore would be greatest along the southern portion of Florida's east coast, due to the close proximity of the Florida coast to the Gulf Stream. A second area in the South Atlantic that would be at higher risk for oil coming ashore is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and the neighboring Outer Banks beaches, especially in the September through April time frame. Cape Hatteras is vulnerable because of both its proximity to the Gulf Stream and by onshore eddies and currents that may interact with the Gulf Stream near Hatteras. Shorelines between south Florida and Cape Hatteras also could experience visible oil deposits, such as tar balls or oil pancakes, especially if coastal storms and/or wind patterns push the oil toward shore. Movement of waters from the Gulf Stream to South Atlantic shorelines can vary greatly. If you frequent these shores, you might notice that some years there might be great amounts of Sargassum seaweed carried onto the beaches, or a flurry of Portuguese man-of-war sightings. But in other years, there might be few of these floating organisms washed ashore. Other floating debris – such as surface oil – would also be subjected to this variable ebb and flow of coastal currents.
Time, stress take toll on presidents’ appearance Stress takes toll on presidents. Inside the body cortisol strains the circulatory system, battering artery walls. The hormone also thins the skin and makes muscles and bones lose mass. The immune system weakens, and viruses that cause colds and cold sores take hold. Sleep turns fitful. The Washington Post WASHINGTON - Time roughs up presidents. Photos of Barack Obama on election night in 2008 look like they were taken much longer than four years ago. Now his face has deeper creases and crow’s feet, while his hair is salted with white. “You look at the picture when they’re inaugurated, and four years later, they’re visibly older,” said Connie Mariano, a former White House physician whose stethoscope checked presidential hearts from 1992 to 2001. “It’s like they went in a time machine and fast-forwarded eight years in the span of four years.” That’s because of the unabated, unfathomable stress that presidents face. “You see it over a term,” said Ronan Factora, a physician specializing in geriatric medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. “It’s a good study of chronic stress on a person’s overall health.” Changes in skin or hair are gradual, he said. “If you do have a stressful event, nothing is going to happen right away.” Nothing visible, anyway. Inside the body, the pituitary gland jolts the adrenal gland, just above the kidneys. Hormones start coursing. Adrenaline cranks up the heart rate and blood pressure. Cortisol, another hormone from the same gland, causes inflammation and preps the body for converting sugars into energy. “It’s not intended that people would be chronically exposed to these levels,” said Sherita Golden, a physician at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Cortisol strains the circulatory system, battering artery walls. The hormone also thins the skin and makes muscles and bones lose mass. The immune system weakens, and viruses that cause colds and cold sores take hold. Sleep turns fitful. “Your cognition slows, you may feel more depressed, your ability to concentrate goes down,” Factora said. “And it just builds on itself — a real cascade.” There is one known treatment for stress: exercise. “It is the best benefit a physician can recommend,” Factora said. “There is no drug that can present as many benefits as exercise can.” Obama is a fiend for exercise. In hourlong workouts, he has been known to hit treadmills hard, weight train with arms and legs and build quickness through “plyos,” or plyometrics, exercises that involve explosive movements. He also throws footballs, shoots basketballs and thwacks at golf balls. His predecessors exercised, too, some of them fiercely. George W. Bush ran till his aging knees made cycling a better option. Presidents Carter and Clinton jogged, while Ronald Reagan rode horses and split logs with such vigor, he once cut his thigh. President Ford performed a daily exercise regimen in his robe and PJs. President George H.W. Bush “didn’t just work out, he worked out vigorously,” said his physician, Burton Lee, citing 4-mile runs and ball games with Marines at Camp David, Md. Once he played tennis with Pete Sampras. “He broke the StairMaster at Camp David; he pounded it till it didn’t work,” Lee recalled. “If I’m on it for five minutes, you have to take me out on a stretcher.” Good exercise leads to better thinking, brain mapping has shown. “Exercise actually brings more blood flow,” said Linda Fried, an epidemiologist and geriatrician at Columbia University. “Parts of the brain are activated, and they’re associated with complex thinking and problem-solving.” Workouts also force a president to — truly, finally, deeply — rest. Only then can the relaxed brain start to make creative associations. Obama had a fitness test Jan. 12, and the White House said the results would be released by February. Like all presidents since 1992, he is under constant medical watch: A military physician is on hand wherever a president goes, day or night. That firsthand observation started with former White House physician Mariano, and even with all her access, she recalled how difficult it was to determine on many occasions whether Clinton was just super-stressed or full-on infirm. “We were worried about Clinton when he was being impeached,” she recalled. “He looked like he had it all together, but we worried.” When she and her colleagues asked, all he would say was, “I’m tired.” Lee, whom the first President Bush brought to the White House to monitor his health, agreed with Mariano that presidents are a special lot. They push their bodies and minds, and thus develop a greater capacity to fight off infection. They shake enough hands to fell a lesser creature, he said. But the mental intrusions — the sense that someone needs something every moment of every day — are as insidious as the germs. “It’s just a phenomenally demanding job,” Lee said. “You never get one minute off.” The job has compounded certain human frailties. Most famous perhaps is the lethal case of pneumonia that William Henry Harrison, 68, caught at his inauguration. But daily habits also affect presidential well-being in lesser-known ways. Dwight Eisenhower was so dedicated to his form of exercise that he played 800 rounds of 18 holes over eight years as president, according to Evan Thomas, author of “Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World.” Then, in 1955, Eisenhower had a heart attack, and two years later, a stroke. Intestinal surgery came in between, all as he was staving off nuclear war and realigning Southeast Asia. “Toward the end,” Thomas said, “he was taking an extra sleeping pill at night” — the powerful, old-school kind, with barbiturates. And that was on top of a nightly scotch, never more than 5 ounces, except when it was, Thomas said. “A couple of times he says to his doctor, ‘Let’s get drunk.’ ’’ To the best of the public’s knowledge, recent presidents have not exacerbated their stress through bad behaviors such as drinking. Obama, however, admitted to kicking a cigarette habit of unknown intensity at some midpoint in his first term. The side effects of smoking might show up as those lines in his face, the doctors said. While sun exposure can also make a face look withered, Obama’s darker skin has melanin to alleviate UV-ray damage. That same coloring, however, can make his white hair look more pronounced. Like appearance, endurance is individual: One person crumbles in circumstances in which another thrives; what one person actively avoids, another embraces. “The one thing I noticed is that presidents have very unusual personalities,” Lee said. “Each is a different person, but for all, there is no easy day.” Despite the extraordinary stress, many recent presidents have lived well beyond normal life expectancy. Reagan and Ford died at 93; Carter and George H.W. Bush are 88. Doctors are coming to understand that stress may have an upside. “Human beings need some degree of stress to keep their systems tuned,” Fried said. “Some people enjoy the stimulation of it and the excitement and couldn’t live without it.” Plus, human minds literally seek reasons to live. “Many people, as they get older, deeply care about future generations and the world’s survival,” Fried said. “If they have a chance to make a difference, that keeps people healthy.”
Sheffield King James Project. Interpreting the Vernacular Legacy. 2011 marks the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible. Also known as the Authorized Version, this was the first English Bible to be commissioned for use in churches throughout England. Its publication shaped our language, history and culture. Based at the Department of Biblical Studies, the Sheffield King James Project offers a network of resources and opportunities both to mark this special anniversary, and to reflect on the relevance of the bible in the modern world. \|Exhibition resources developed by the department of Biblical Studies in association with Sheffield Cathedral. View Telling Tales in churches and cathedrals across the country.\|\| Learn more and produce your own exhibition with the Telling Tales DVD-Rom. Biblical Literacy and the Curriculum, 25th-28th May 2011. Educators, lecturers and researchers met to discuss the place of the Bible in the classroom. Conference papers will be published by Equinox.
\|Dodder on a Danewort\| about 100–170 species The genus is found throughout the temperate and tropical regions of the world. Most species live in subtropical and tropical regions. The genus is rare in cool temperate climates, with only four species native to northern Europe. Dodder can be identified by its thin stems. They look leafless, with the leaves reduced to minute scales. From mid-summer to early autumn, the vines can produce small fruit that take the same color as the vine, and are about the size of a common pea. It has very low levels of chlorophyll; some species, such as Cuscuta reflexa, can photosynthesize slightly. Others such as C. europaea are entirely dependent on the host plants for nutrition. Dodder flowers range in color from white to pink to yellow to cream. Some flower in the early summer, others later, depending on the species. The seeds are tiny and produced in large amounts. They have a hard coating, and can survive in the soil for 5–10 years or more. Life habit [change] If a plant is not reached within 5 to 10 days of germination, the dodder seedling will die. Before a host plant is reached, the dodder, as other plants, relies on food reserves in the embryo; the cotyledons are very small. After a dodder attaches itself to a plant, it wraps itself around it. If the host contains food useful to dodder, the dodder produces 'haustoria' that insert themselves into the host. The original root of the dodder in the soil then dies. The dodder can grow and attach itself to multiple plants. In tropical areas it can grow continuously, and may reach high into the canopy of shrubs and trees. In temperate climates it is an annual plant, restricted to low vegetation that can be reached by new seedlings each spring. Dodder is parasitic on a very wide variety of plants, including a number of agricultural and horticultural crop species, such as alfalfa, flax, clover, potatoes, chrysanthemum, dahlia, trumpet vine, ivy and petunias, among others. \|Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cuscuta\| \|Wikispecies has information on: Cuscuta.\| - Machado M.A. & Zetsche K. 1990. A structural, functional and molecular analysis of plastids of the holoparasites Cuscuta reflexa and Cuscuta europaea. Planta 181: 91–96. - David Tenenbaum (2006). "The Why Files". University of Wisconsin, Board of Regents.. http://whyfiles.org/shorties/216plants_smell/. Retrieved 2010-06-22. - "Devious Dodder vine sniffs out its victims". National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6160709. Retrieved 2007-07-21. "Some flowers release a pleasing fragrance. Other plants smell. And then there's the parasitic dodder vine, which has the remarkable ability to sniff out its victims. Farmers have placed the dodder on a ten most-wanted list of weeds." - The first leaves, which are stored in the seed - Macpherson, G.E. (1921) Comparison of development in dodder and morning glory. Botanical Gazette 71: 392–398.
Although the highly invasive water hyacinth was introduced into Florida over 30 years ago, the aquatic plant hasn’t been nearly as successful as it has been in other places such as Lake Victoria, South Africa. Despite this, Florida’s weather and conditions are optimal for sufficient growth of water hyacinth. The warm climate, high nutrient and light environment is very conducive to water hyacinth growth. Researchers Volin and Soti from the University of Connecticut and Florida Atlantic University sought to test various nutrient and herbivory levels versus water hyacinth growth to see if the specific amount of nutrients and plant removal found in Florida had a negative impact on the water hyacinth. Soti and Volin found that water hyacinth are able to survive under low amounts of plant removal no matter the nutrient level. This suggests the most effective method of removal of the plant is a high level of herbivory. This research gives great insight into future control of the highly invasive plant. Biological Control Vol. 54 Issue:1 35-40 July 2010 Researchers A. Bradley and John F. Mustard at Brown University have done research on the dynamics of invasive plant species in order to see if more effective land management can reduce the chance of future invasions. Specifically, they studied Bromus tectorum, better known as cheatgrass. Remote sensing was used to track how likely cheatgrass expansion was in relation to how the land was cultivated, elevation, roads and several other factors. There were positive correlations between cheatgrass invasion and high elevation, close proximity to cultivated land, roads and other areas already occupied by cheatgrass. These relationships were used to create a “risk map” for future cheatgrass invasion that can help change the way land is managed for the better. This study shows the importance of including how land is used in methods to reduce plant invasions. Ecological Applications, Pages 1132-1147(2006) Ever since this fish’s release into the Atlantic Ocean in the late 20th century, the lionfish (Pterois volitans) has invaded coastline areas from Belize to Massachusetts. Authors Isabelle M. Cote and Aleksandra Maljkovic in their article “Predation rate of Indo-Pacific lionfish on Bahamian coral reefs” demonstrate how these fish are simply taking over many of the reefs in the Caribbean. After doing several Scuba dives off of New Providence Island, Bahamas, the researchers made several important discoveries about lionfish behavior. They saw how Lionfish in the Atlantic mainly feed during the day, unlike the native pacific population that does so at night. Finally, the authors found that the predation rates of lionfish in the Caribbean are significantly higher than the presumed rate in the eastern pacific. This final observation brought the authors to the conclusion that lionfish could be much more destructive than many scholars think. (Cote 2010)
The first rule of high performance computing is speed. Program speed is critical for advanced applications. So users need fast, reliable, complete and convenient algorithms for their most important programming tasks. It's easy to see why the IMSL® Fortran Numerical Library* is the standard for high performance computing commercial mathematics and statistics libraries: - Superior accuracy and reliability through 40 years of refinement - Supporting parallel processing architectures since 1990 - Evolves easily with software and hardware upgrades - Easier use of popular open source technology The Gold Standard for Over Three Decades With over 1000 algorithms, the IMSL Fortran Numerical Library is the most comprehensive math and statistics library available. Highly accurate and reliable, it contains proven technology that has been thoroughly tested, well documented, continuously maintained and used by developers worldwide for more than four decades. Instead of writing, testing and documenting complex mathematical and statistical algorithms from scratch choose the IMSL Fortran Numerical Library which offers widely used routines that significantly help accelerate development time. Functional areas included in the IMSL Fortran Numerical Library:
Daily Extra : Astronomy & Space Word of The Day heliosphere: The space within the boundary of the heliopause containing the Sun and solar system. Today in History: 1972: Mars 3 - USSR Mars Orbiter/Soft Lander (launched May 28, 1971) stopped reporting this month. Mars 3 arrived at Mars on December 2, 1971. The lander was released and became the first successful landing on Mars. It failed after relaying 20 seconds of video data to the orbiter. The Mars 3 orbiter returned data until August, 1972. It made measurements of surface temperature and atmospheric composition.
National Science Foundation Media contact: Lee Herring, (703) 306-1070, [email protected] Program contact: Joe Stewart, (703) 306-1613, [email protected] NSF PR 98-79 November 20, 1998 High School Students Discover Distant Asteroid Using NSF Telescope and High school students have discovered a previously unidentified celestial object in the Kuiper Belt using images from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) 4-meter Blanco Telescope in Chile. Heather McCurdy, Miriam Gustafson and George Peterson of Northfield Mount Hermon School in Northfield, Massachusetts, one of six Asteroid Search Teams at the school participating in NSF's innovative Hands-On Universe Program, found and verified the distant object. It was approximately 100 miles in diameter and now is officially called 1998 FS144. Astronomy teacher Hughes Pack directed the students' search of computer images provided by the Berkeley National Lab's Supernova Cosmology Program. A collaborating team, Stacey Hinds and Angel Birchard, students from Pennsylvania's Oil City Area High School, confirmed the location of 1998 FS144 for their peers at Northfield Mount Hermon. The Oil City students were led by teacher Tim Spuck, a 1998 Pennsylvania Christa McAuliffe Fellow. How significant is the find? "Only about 72 such objects had been identified in the Kuiper Belt," says Pack. Kuiper Belt Objects, found beyond Neptune, are generally believed to be remnants dating to the formation of our solar system. "This is a fantastic piece of science, of education, of discovery," said Hands-On Universe founder and astrophysicist Carl Pennypacker of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and The Lawrence Hall of Science. He added, "The Northfield students' discovery has shown that all students from a broad range of backgrounds can make solid, exciting and inspiring scientific "These students had the opportunity to operate like real astronomers," said NSF program officer Joseph Stewart. Star images were obtained by the students via computer from Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, Stewart said. Students then used visual inspection and special Hands-On Universe "One of the historically limiting factors in astronomy has been simply not having enough eyes available to inspect all the useful images that astronomers collect," he said, "but, it's very exciting that these kids are contributing to real science, performing actual science in the classroom!" They are able to measure the distance of stars and track supernova, for "This generous sharing of data by the Supernova Cosmology Program scientists," said Pack, "is serving dual purposes, because scientists at the Supernova Cosmology Group are using the data to find supernova while students use the same data to search for very faint asteroids." "The Kuiper Belt has the potential to tell us a great deal about how the solar system originated and evolved and how it compares to others," says Brian Marsden of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Marsden received the data from Pack and confirmed the discovery. Begun in 1990, Hands-On Universe is now based at the University of California-Berkeley in the Lawrence Hall of Science. Cerro Tololo Inter- American Observatory is one of four divisions of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO), operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under cooperative agreement with For pictures of KBO 1998 FS144 see: http://astronomy.geecs.org. For more information on the Hands-On Universe Project see: http://hou.lbl.gov.
Known to be the proprietor of valuable natural resources in the world, the African region was expected to be a haven that would soothe the excruciating pains of tattered penury amongst its people. Contrary is the situation on the ground. With potentially large oil fields and abundant mineral reserves, poverty continues to have a firm grip on majority of the people. In Paul Collier’s “The Bottom Billion”, the scholar defines the ‘bottom billion’ as the lowest-income segment of the world’s population, living in countries with seemingly intractable economic and political problems and long track records of poverty and stagnation. Nearly a third of these people live in countries where resource extraction dominates the economy (World Gold Council, 2009). Against the backdrop of this paradoxical phenomenon, the polemic of the resource curse has been kept much alive in resource-rich economies especially in the African region. The issue of intrinsic consideration has been whether or not the presence of natural resources has been beneficial or detrimental. For centuries of gold mining and other mineral extraction in Ghana, it is widely argued that the prospects of these mineral resources have not left any easy blueprint for ensuring sustainable development and poverty alleviation. Though mining constitutes the largest source of foreign direct investment and that minerals are the leading export earner, the sector has not helped reduce poverty and other development challenges. With the influx of multinational mining companies, the situation has been development that largely benefits these companies to the neglect of people and the economy at large. Despite boom in demand and prices of minerals, the woes of people and countries in the African continent especially Ghana keeps deepening with no end in sight. The deserving question to pose is that what has been the devil in the details of operations of mining that has brought this untold hardship to people? In a report by DanWatch and Concord Danmark titled “Golden Profits on Ghana’s Expense – An example of incoherence in EU policy” in May 2010, “substantial growth has eluded the African continent by reasons of loopholes in the EU’s tax legislation, limited regulation of tax havens and lack of transparency in accounting standards for multinational companies. These have allowed massive illicit financial flows from Africa to tax havens in Europe and across the rest of the globe”. In that same report, it is stated that new research shows that over the period 1970-2008, Africa lost US$854 billion in cumulative capital flight just enough to wipe out the region’s total outstanding debt and leave US$600 for poverty alleviation and economic growth. From 2000 to 2008 the illicit outflows from Africa accelerated by 25 percent coinciding with boom in natural resource prices and international trade. In furtherance of this dreadful development, as stated in the report, on a global scale approximately US$1 trillion is now illegally moved out of developing countries every year, about two thirds of it due to commercial tax evasion. The capital flight from poor countries amount to eight times total global development assistance” In essence, these facts justify why poverty abounds in the African region especially Ghana even in the presence of potential mineral resources. These are the blunders associated with mining that has exacted huge costs on the region. Is there any hope for the future for economies in Africa? What about Ghana? Mining has brought in its wake funds passing under the bridge and has steadily plundered the country’s deserved wealth. BREAKING THE CURSE Even in the midst of identified challenges in the mining industry in the African region, evidence suggests that Botswana has been able to sustain its economy to the path of growth and stability using diamond. This indicates that after all, when prudent strategies are fashioned out, the sector can see a broad day light. The missing ingredient behind the doom of resource-rich countries is financial transparency. Transparency is perhaps the most innovative and most talked-about aspect of the global fight against the resource curse. Let us narrow the arguments to Ghana. Being the second largest producer of gold in Africa, it goes without saying that Ghana is a victim of dishonest capital flight and untaxed or under-taxed revenues. In her bid to fight the impacts of the resource curse, the country accepted to be a candidate of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), an independent and voluntary standard for creating transparency, in September 2007. However, the mining sector has experienced long periods of gruesome secrecy. There has been a milestone step towards financial transparency that would serve to benefit the African region and Ghana to be specific. The U.S. Congress has passed the financial transparency law as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which includes a provision that requires oil, gas and mining companies registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to disclose how much they pay to foreign countries and the U.S. government for oil, gas, and minerals. The provision was based on the Energy Security through Transparency Act (S. 1700), which was championed in the U.S. Senate by a bipartisan group of legislators led by Senators Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) and Richard Lugar (R-IN), with Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introducing the provision as an amendment during the conference negotiations for the bill (PWYP-United States). Now, President Obama has signed the bill into law on July 21, 2010 at the massive Ronald Reagan Building. The US President on that Wednesday said “Today, thanks to a lot of people in this room, those reforms will become the law of the land." This signals the turning point for the sweeping overhaul of financial regulations in the extractive industries around the globe. This has been described as unprecedented considering the nagging challenges the fight for transparency and openness have experienced. As part of the legislation, all oil, gas and mining companies registered with U.S. stock exchanges will be covered. According to Publish What You Pay-United States, the measure covers 90 percent of the world’s largest internationally operating oil and gas companies, and eight of the world’s ten largest mining companies. It will, as a result, provide citizens in nearly every country around the globe with much needed information. In Ghana, many mining, oil and gas companies that operate within the borders of the country are registered with SEC. For example, Newmont Mining, Anglo-Gold Ashanti, Gold Fields Ghana, Goldenstar Resources (and others) are registered with the SEC. There is therefore every reason to believe that the revenue distribution in the mining sector to sub-national governments will witness an enormous change with regard to the right amount these companies pay and the amount government receives. The local people would now be equipped with a unique tool to hold their leaders to account. It still remains a fact that mining in Ghana has rarely had a glorious history. Obuasi, Tarkwa and other typical mining towns with their huge contribution to mineral wealth have nothing special to boast of. Infrastructure development and livelihoods are in tatters and environmental damages have been rendered normal. THE MOMENT IS NOW! This is an opportune moment for the country to track all revenues in the sector to ensure that basic services like healthcare, education, job creation do not continue to be a mirage. The legislation requires that companies that engage in the commercial development of oil, natural gas or minerals, will have to include in their annual reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the type and total amount of payments made for each project; and, the type and total amount of payments made to each government for the purpose of commercial development of oil, natural gas or minerals. It is responsible that multinational and local mining companies operating in the country adjust their structures to best suit the implementation of this reform. Financial transparency would provide the right tool to check underpayments in extractive industry revenues, tax evasions and illicit financial flows from the country. These are precisely the issues behind the country’s underdevelopment hinged on the mining sector. In the light of these strategies, the institutions in charge of tracking revenue flows should be adequately capacitated to carry out better revenue reporting without any form of inducement or favour. It is about time the country restored the lost glory of the mining sector. Revenues that accrue from the mining sector should be channeled to providing basic services to the poor. It now behooves the civil society groups and organizations to shed light on revenues and overall operations of mining companies and government to set the stage for accountability and prudent management of the people’s money. The comprehensive publication of revenue flows will ensure a level playing field that would extirpate unwarranted contentions and suspicions. Certainly, Ghana ought to use the benefits of the sweeping US Congress financial transparency reforms to reverse the unmerited mining blunder. The transparency legislation will clearly provide momentum for sorely-needed changes in the mining sector and even the emerging oil and gas sector. Ghana can make it if we change the order of things now! World Gold Council (2009), The Golden Building Block: gold mining and the transformation of developing economies. With an economic life-cycle assessment of Tanzanian gold production, September, 2009 DanWatch and Concord Danmark (2010), “Golden Profits on Ghana’s Expense – An example of incoherence in EU policy” May 2010 Publish What You Pay, PWYP Press Push for U.S. Transparency Legislation – Some Points for PWYP Coalition Press Releases, July 13, 2010 United States
May 23, 2006 I’ve wasted a couple of weeks of my life tracking down a rather odd problem with the CLEO detector, and I feel a certain need to offload. So here follows a rather detailed discussion of the CLEO tracking system — actually, drift chambers in general, so if you’ve ever wondered how exactly we follow all the particles that we create in collisions, here you are. Say you have a particle whose path you wish to trace. You can’t really look directly at it; you’d need very intense light, which would disrupt the particle’s path, and at any rate isn’t easy to make. We instead put instrumented material in front of the particle. The aim is to use the interactions of the particle with the material to figure out where it was, while having those interactions be so gentle that the particle isn’t greatly affected (usually by using some sort of amplification of a weak signal). This is the principle behind detectors all the way from the cloud and bubble chambers of yesteryear to the silicon (and diamond?) detectors developed today. CLEO uses a technology called the “drift chamber.” These consist of a volume of gas with lots of wires, running parallel to each other, spread out through the region (the guts of one can be seen in this photo, and the sort of wire arrangement we use is depicted here). The wires are brought to high voltage, with some positive and some negative; this sets up precisely shaped electric fields. As a particle traverses the chamber, it runs into atoms and molecules of gas and knocks electrons off them. The energy required to do this isn’t terribly large, so the particle’s momentum is not affected much (although the energy loss is measurable and important for other reasons). The liberated electrons start drifting along the electric field lines towards the positively charged (“sense”) wires. Because they keep bumping into more gas, for most of the drift period, their speed is limited by the time between collisions; this “drift velocity,” which depends on the electric field and the type of gas, occupies a lot of some people’s time. As the electrons approach the sense wires, the electric field increases as the field lines get closer together. At some point near the wire, the electrons accelerate enough between collisions to liberate more electrons when they crash into the gas. These new electrons go on to free more electrons, and so on in what’s called an “avalanche” — this is the main amplification step, where a few tens of primary electrons from the particle are turned into a measurable signal. So what do we do with this information? The positions of the wires that were hit gives us very rough information on where the particle went, up to a couple of centimeters (a typical separation between wires): if we stop here we have a Multiwire Proportional Chamber. But we can do much better. As mentioned earlier, for most of their drift, the electrons travel at a determined velocity. You can design the field and choose the voltages such that the drift speed is pretty much constant over large regions. This means that the time the electrons take to drift can be translated to a distance measurement — you now know, to a precision more like 100 micrometers, how far away from the wire the particle passed. Of course, you only know the particle position to within a cylinder of some distance from the wire. At CLEO, the drift chambers are cylindrical, and we know the particles are supposed to come out from the center of the cylinder, so the ambiguity is essentially one of “left” or “right” as the point of closest approach is at practically the same radius as the wire. To break this ambiguity, we stagger the wire layers at different radii, so going “left” or “right” at a certain radius means you hit different wires at the next stage. (Incidentally, the way you do the staggering can cause interesting effects, since positive and negative particles are bent in opposite directions by the experiment’s magnetic field and so produce different stagger patterns.) One final word: you may have noticed that none of this information tells you where along the length of the wire the particle passed (in the usual experimental setup, this is defined to be the z-axis). We can get this information — at the price of breaking the cylindrical symmetry. Essentially, you give a layer of wires an angle to the z-axis, and tilt another layer in the opposite direction (these are “stereo” layers, as opposed to “axial” layers where the wires are strictly parallel to z). The resulting geometry is a hyperboloid. You can now intersect the two lines you get from the distance measurement, and their intersection gives information on the position along z. This is a really tricky operation, incidentally. So, on to my obsession for the last week. CLEO uses two drift chambers: an older one called the DR — technically DR3, it’s the third in its lineage — which, with 47 cylindrical layers, provides most of the track information, and a relatively new one, the ZD, which is inside the DR and has six layers. The outermost layers of the DR are stereo, but to get a good measurement of z near the particle production point (and to get a good lever arm to measure angles), the ZD was designed to be all stereo layers. The timing measurement is all-critical. Unfortunately, there isn’t a little readout telling us when, exactly, a given collision occurred. Collisions are separated by as little as 14 nanoseconds, and our electronics are nowhere near fast enough to react in that time period. We run all events through a “trigger” system to decide whether to take them or not; the trigger makes its choice quite a bit after the actual collision time, and with 42 nanosecond granularity. 42 nanoseconds is over a millimeter of drift distance — much worse than the intrinsic 0.1 millimeter of the detection method. How do we deal with this? At first, we take the trigger time as the truth. For every event, we then run a program which tries to find little “tracklets” with the DR information. Knowing the timing structure of the collisions from the accelerator, it tries different possible collision times (on the 14 nanosecond clock) near the time the trigger reported, and finds the one where the hits are most consistent with the tracklets; we then take this as the Event Time. In short, the actual time the event occurred, the zero time from which all the drift distances are computed, is obtained entirely from DR information — and this time is used for the ZD as well. This is fine unless the ZD gets, for some reason, a different time from the electronics than the DR does. As configured when the ZD was installed, the two detectors get their “record your times now” signals from two different circuit boards, so the possibility for a problem existed: if one of the boards broke subtly, the two might not always be in sync. If the two were always out of sync by a constant amount, we would calibrate it away and never see it, so we are only sensitive to one jittering with respect to the other, an even more subtle effect… And that’s precisely what we saw (and fixed this morning). A few percent of events from the last data run seemed to have much worse tracking in the ZD than they should have. After days of tracing the problem back (made worse because I had just taken over the procedure that raised the red flag, and so I thought I just didn’t understand what I was doing), we decided the timing system was probably to blame. Physical investigation revealed a broken board which output timing commands which jittered, in a random few percent of events, 42 nanoseconds away from where they should have been, in exactly the manner to produce the observed problem. We replaced the board, and the new one seems to be doing OK, but I think I’m going to be eternally paranoid about this. In the short term, I’m trying to repair the data that we’ve already taken to remove this effect, which seems quite doable. We’re also going to put monitoring in place to catch this quickly if it happens again. Hopefully I can go back to extracting physics results soon, though. Many thanks to D.P. and K.E. for teaching me what I know about drift chambers… May 11, 2006 I miss Suck. The back issues give me nostalgia for when the world (or at least I) was young (-er, the back half of the 90s). The dot-com bubble was inflating (with many e-foldings left to go), Netscape 3.01 Gold was the in thing, people believed that you could make webpage communities, OS/2 was still a viable operating system choice, and the grand spirit of Clintonian optimism roamed the land. Computer geeks were going to inherit the earth, and I expected to do CS when I got to college. Good times. May 6, 2006 Since everyone’s doing it, I’m going to make an attempt at a “generally-accessible” post about a physics topic of interest to me. The particle I’m going to talk about is very obscure, even in the particle physics world, so we’ll build up to it … CESR, the accelerator that feeds the CLEO experiment, collides electrons and positrons at precisely calibrated energies, and from time to time they will annihilate and produce a quark-antiquark pair. The quark produced has to be lighter than half the center of mass energy, since you have to make a pair. At the energies we are running at now, we can make the up, down, strange, and charm quarks. The first three aren’t all so interesting for us (other experiments study them better), so we concentrate on charm-anticharm production. One tends to have this image of antimatter as being on a single-minded mission to seek out the nearest bit of matter and annihilate with it, but that’s not really true. The quark and antiquark will only annihilate each other if, in a sense, they wind up at the same place at the same time. The way we produce them, they essentially go into orbit around each other, and this tends to keep them apart. Quantum mechanics means the orbits are fuzzy, and in any amount of time there’s some probability that they’ll meet up (or else the pairing would be stable!), but that behavior is “suppressed.” When this happens for charm-anticharm, the orbiting system’s lifetime, if it can only decay through annihilation, is on the order of 10-20 seconds — an eternity, particle-wise. States of this kind, where matter and antimatter orbit each other, get the suffix “-onium”: an electron-positron system is positronium, a bottom-antibottom system is bottomonium, and our case, charm-anticharm, is charmonium. (-Onia is the accepted plural…) Quantum mechanics dictates that certain orbits, and only certain orbits, are possible, and we refer to each one as a separate kind of particle (we can do this, even though they are composite systems, the same way we can call an atom a particle). The most famous particle of this family is called the J/ψ, for politico-historical reasons. It is the second lightest charmonium particle, and the lightest that can be easily made at our kind of accelerator. Other charmonium particles get names involving ψ, to remind us that they’re in this family. When the orbiting pair have enough energy, the system can fall apart another way. The strong interaction, which binds the quarks, doesn’t itself care what type of quark is involved, and is perfectly happy to bind a charm quark to a lighter antiquark, a combination called (for historical reasons) a D meson. When the charm-anticharm system is heavy enough, what usually happens is a light quark pair (down-antidown, or whatever) will be created out of the stew of gluons keeping the charm and anticharm in orbit. Since this can happen anywhere, it is much more likely to happen than the two original quarks meeting up and annihilating. The charm and anticharm then pair up with the lighter quarks, and the charmonium state basically falls apart. When this kind of decay can happen, it is by far preferred over the annihilation, and it leads to the heavy states living much shorter lives (as we pass the threshold, the lifetimes get shorter by a factor of a thousand). There’s one extra decay mechanism that has to be mentioned. A heavy charmonium state can change to a lighter one by changing the charm-anticharm orbit and dumping the energy somewhere. Depending on the details, it can emit light (exactly like the way light is produced in a neon light, for example), or it can put the energy into gluons, which after some rearranging and quark-popping show up as bound states of light quarks; in particular decays involving two pions are very popular. The particle ψ(3686) (the number indicates the mass in megaelectronvolts) is too light to decay by producing D mesons, but is heavier than the J/ψ, and its primary decay process produces a J/ψ and two pions. Its lifetime is roughly a third that of the J/ψ — the extra decay possibility doesn’t change things much in this case. Charmonium states that can decay to D mesons can decay this way too, but again they prefer not to because the D channel is faster, and so the probability is very low. So the overall picture here is charmonia heavy enough (above 3730 MeV, give or take) like to decay to D mesons, if possible, and have short lives; charmonia lighter than that decay by annihilation or emission of photons or pions, and last for a long while. Until last year, all the data we had agreed with this prediction. In July 2005, our colleagues at the BaBar experiment reported finding a new particle, christened the Y(4260) (4260 again for the mass, Y for “we don’t know what this is”), decaying to J/ψ and two pions. This transition would normally be taken as prima facie evidence that this was in the charmonium family. Now, the Y(4260) is heavier than DD threshold, which means it should really want to decay to D pairs; normally, if we could see the J/ψ π π transition, we would expect to see D pairs at rate orders of magnitude larger. Strangely enough, though, the Y(4260) sits in a dip in the production rate for D pairs; for that reason nobody had ever suspected there might be a charmonium state there. So the Y(4260) decays very strangely. But it doesn’t stop there. We understand the force binding the charm-anticharm system pretty well (we think), at least for conventional charmonium states, and we can predict what masses the different particles should have. We thought we knew what data objects corresponded to what theoretical objects, and the Y(4260) was an unwanted interloper (it is rather a “who ordered that?” situation). Even after rethinking the assignments from the theory, the Y(4260) just doesn’t fit in nicely, and although attempts have been made to explain it as a conventional (albeit very weird) charmonium state, these aren’t terribly well regarded; the prevailing attitude is that the Y(4260) is not your everyday particle. There’s the exciting possibility that it is a “hybrid,” a long-predicted but not-yet-seen type of particle, where a gluon is actually a permanent part of the makeup of the particle, instead of just an ephemeral messenger keeping the quarks bound together. So the Y(4260) is exciting. How is CLEO involved? BaBar’s result implied that the accelerator could actually tune to right around 4260 MeV and produce the Y(4260) directly. Since there was only the one BaBar paper, the result needed confirmation, and we were in a good position to provide it. So we ran there, and in a paper published a few days ago in Physical Review Letters confirmed the BaBar discovery and added some new information of our own. We searched for decays that BaBar did not have enough data to go after; we definitely saw one and had evidence for another, and in fact what we did see has already ruled out at least one model of what the Y(4260) could be. The hybrid explanation is still alive… And the investigations continue! May 3, 2006 The April meeting was a blur while I was there, and it’s still a blur a week after. Since the talks not given by Special People (e.g. Sean Carroll) are ten minutes long, you get through a lot of them. The number of sessions that run concurrently means that you’re always missing something. There’s also this grad student solidarity curse: you want to make sure that people you know have an audience, even if you’ve heard their talk before, which means you fail to go to sessions where you might actually learn something new. Very little of shocking significance was revealed at the meeting; you would have heard about it otherwise. So I’m not going to talk about the physics. However, I’ll mention the off-beat talk that I found most memorable: Yuri Orlov’s Sakharov Prize talk. While in the USSR, he became active in human rights monitoring issues, which got him sent to Siberia in the 70s. He was brought to the West as part of a spy exchange deal, and has since been with Cornell’s accelerator physics group. He’s kept on working on human rights since then, and his talk was about issues of contention in that community — where people who all share the same abstract goal differ on how one pushes for it. Is it ok for campaigners to take sides in a conflict and ignore the behavior of their preferred group (Chechnya, Palestine, Darfur)? Should oppressors and the oppressed be held to the same standards? What is the interplay of human rights, political freedoms, and economic improvement, and should one take precedence to lay the groundwork for the others? Should human rights activists also push specific political programs? (He pointed out that Sakharov, for his part, always remained a commited Marxist-Leninist.) To paraphrase a comment from his talk: “We know that there are many apparently simple problems in physics that are impossible to solve in closed form. Why do we then expect human interactions, which are so much more difficult to understand, to be optimizable by just sitting down and thinking really hard about it?” And now, some other highlights (lowlights) of Dallas: - S.S. and I rode all the way around DFW on the new SkyLink, then wound up being the last people to board our flight home. I saw a Lockheed L1011. - In other train-related activity, I rode on both the Dallas commuter rail and light rail systems. They were average. The Chicago Metra would never tolerate the commuter rail delays. - It was too late for us to ride the M-line streetcar, but we stood on the tracks anyway. - Ever wanted to sit in a steam locomotive engineer’s seat? You can, in Dallas. (It wasn’t even my idea to go to that museum, honest.) - In one of the sessions, the two non-CLEO speakers pulled out, and the number of non-CLEOns in the audience fluctuated between zero and one. The session was promptly dubbed CLEO West. - We did not, after all, go to the tower dome next to the hotel. The night we wanted to go it was “closed for a private function.” - Should a session on professionalism in a physics career really run two hours over? - My teams are now two for two in winning trivia contests sponsored by the Forum on Graduate Student Affairs. Unfortunately this year I wound up being given a youth T-shirt as a prize by mistake, and let me tell you, it does not fit. - It is impossible to leave the Hyatt Regency to go anywhere in downtown and not pass within sight of the JFK Memorial and the Book Depository, to say nothing of the Grassy Knoll. It is slightly unnerving, especially as those sites appear to constitute the entire Dallas tourist industry. And that’s that.
Acoustics: Beyond Mythology Sep 13, 2011 1:23 PM, Provided by InfoComm International Like no other, the field of acoustics is rife with myth, misinformation, and marketing tactics that belies the true science and legacy of the trade. Acousticians and acoustical experts have backgrounds rooted in math and science, and they spend years studying and honing their craft. Today, acousticians and acoustical experts work on venues as diverse as classrooms, houses of worship, performance centers, courtrooms, broadcast, and recording studios. “The motto at my firm is: We always design the third sound system. Acoustics is often an afterthought. It's a three-hour elective in architectural school,” says Ken Dickensheets, principal of Dickensheets Design Associates in Austin, Texas. “The biggest change to this job has been the computational and data collecting tools available to us today. It used to take hours of work to capture and analyze the reverberation time of a room. Now you can see data in different output forms in minutes, so analysis and data modeling have become vital and more accessible tools.” Dickensheets notes that an acoustician must understand much more than sound. He or she must also becoming well-versed in the behavior of HVAC systems, interior finishes, the different shapes of rooms, as well as many other environmental factors that affect sound transmission. “In acoustics, every surface and structure behind it is also part of the acoustics practice. Construction and materials, the room, duct work, wall thickness, and the way it's assembled and constructed,” he explains. “The architect or building owner sometimes assumes that an integrator can provide acoustics advice, but they are not trained specialists.” Patricia Scanlon, LEED AP and principal of Cerami & Associates of New York, says that the growing body of knowledge and case studies in the education market has greatly improved awareness over the science of acoustics. “It certainly makes our job easier by having informed, educated clients and not having to reinvent the wheel on every project,” she says. “Including acoustics on a project is becoming the rule; not the exception. ” What has also made an acoustician’s work a bit easier is advancements in different technologies resulting in quieter HVAC and air handling systems, as well as the tools to be able to look outside of the four walls of a room. “We can easily assess traffic patterns and flight paths to analyze exterior noise and use computer modeling to understand what’s happening inside a room,” Scanlon says. Despite new tools and advancements, Richard Schrag, design principal for Russ Berger Design Group (RBDG) in Dallas, says, “What we do involves creating spaces with appropriate acoustics to allow people to listen, to perform, to create, to enjoy. Technologies come and go, but the physics of a space and the human interaction with it remains the same. There are always new products for us to use in our designs, new toys for us to play with, but the essential part of what we do is to work with individuals, find out what they need from the spaces we design, and to align that performance with their budget and expectations. Technology advancements aren’t going to change that.” As with many other professions, the recent recession and continued sluggish economy has affected the acoustics practice, but not always for the worst. “Over the past four years, my firm has seen an increase in business. Every vertical market is up—live performance, higher education, industrial and manufacturing—except hospitality, which has cut back severely. This is unlike past recessions or dips in the economy. Usually during a recession, only houses of worship project increase since they see a spike in attendance,” says Dickensheets, who has been an acoustician for almost 45 years and whose firm works on approximately 200 projects a year. “There has been a dramatic increase in noise and vibration work. Clients are looking at expenses and getting back to basics. Bigger and better sound systems aren't always the answer.” This piece is an excerpt from an InfoComm Special Report on Acoustics. To read the report in its entirety, please visit www.infocomm.org. Acceptable Use Policy blog comments powered by Disqus
The CGI (Common Gateway Interface) defines a way for a web server to interact with external content-generating programs, which are often referred to as CGI programs or CGI scripts. Within Tomcat, CGI support can be added when you are using Tomcat as your HTTP server and require CGI support. Typically this is done during development when you don't want to run a web server like Tomcat's CGI support is largely compatible with Apache httpd's, but there are some limitations (e.g., only one cgi-bin directory). CGI support is implemented using the servlet class this servlet is mapped to the URL pattern "/cgi-bin/*". By default CGI support is disabled in Tomcat.
Key Points for Parents You play a critical role in your teen’s learning-to-drive process. Here are some important actions you can take at this stage. Evaluate your teen’s readiness. Talk with your teen about personal responsibility, ability to follow rules and any other concerns before beginning the learning-to-drive process. Get informed. A lot has changed since you earned your driver's license. Graduated driver licensing (GDL), driver education, license restrictions and supervised practice driving are all part of today’s licensing process. And the state sets parameters throughout a three-stage licensing process for young drivers, such as times of day they can drive and how many passengers they can carry. AAA can help you understand what is involved in earning a license in Kentucky. A great place to start is with Dare to Prepare, an online workshop that gives you the basics on the licensing process. Start talking now. You have acquired “road wisdom” over the years – insight you’ll want to share, because it could save your teen from having to learn things the hard way. Talk about the learning-to-drive process and various factors involved. - What does it take to be a safe driver? What do you do? - When will your teen start driving? - What rules and responsibilities, such as paying for fuel and insurance, will your family have once your teen starts driving? The more issues you address early, the safer and smoother the whole process will be. AAA offers StartSmart, a set of research-based e-newsletters you can use to guide discussions with your teen throughout the entire process. Focus on passenger safety. Even though your teen isn’t driving yet, traffic crashes are a real danger. Crash risks begin to increase at age 12. Talk to your teen about: - Always buckling up. - Not riding with a teen driver without your advance permission. - Being a safe passenger with teen and adult drivers. Be involved. When you’re behind the wheel, talk about what you see (road signs, pedestrians, other vehicles, etc.) that could result in the need to change speed, direction or both. Have your teen comment, too. Maintain an ongoing dialogue about your teen’s driving, appropriately restrict driving privileges and conduct plenty of supervised practice driving. Kentucky requires that parents and their teens conduct 60 hours of supervised practice driving, including 10 hours at night, but AAA recommends at least 100 hours. AAA provides tips and advice on how to conduct effective supervised practice driving. Be a good role model. Your teen has been watching your driving habits for the last decade or so. And as your teen begins the learning-to-drive process, that focus will likely increase. So, make changes in your driving to prevent any poor driving habits from being passed on. Show you take driving seriously. What You can Do - Always wear your safety belt. - Obey traffic laws. - Do not use a cell phone while driving. - Watch your speed. - Don’t tailgate. - Use your turn signals. - Don’t drive when angry or tired.
William Strickland's sketch of an unnamed suspension bridge crossing the Saone River. Strickland provides detailed descriptions of the bridge, as well as measurements. The sketch covers two pages in the sketchbook. World War 1914-1918; Soldiers; Battlefields France 1910-1920; War Photograph of a dozen soldiers of the 30th Infantry Division walking through the remains of a battlefield at Montbrehain, France in October 1918. There is also one soldier mounted on one of the two horses pulling a cart. Battle debris, in the... Soldiers; Military personnel; Uniforms; Military uniforms; Military vehicles; Trucks; Automobiles; Horses; Military facilities; Military headquarters; Campaigns & battles; War; World War 1914-1918; Vehicles "View in front of the 30th Division Headquarters, showing heavy traffic caused by the transportation of British, American, & Australian war material to the battle lines. Montbrehain, Aisne, France. October 14, 1918." Numerous vehicles, troops,... Three Alsatian women in native dress standing near a canopy of trees. The woman on the left has her hand on a wooden chair. The women are wearing boldly patterned dresses and have oversized bows in their hair. World War, 1914-1918; Sailors; African Americans; Warships; Arms & armament; Naval warfare Unidentified seamen aboard the U.S.S. Rambler during convoy escort duty. The men are operating the ship's 3"/50 gun. The inscription on the photograph incorrectly identifies the ship as the U.S.S. Rumpler. A promotional certificate for the memorial dedicated to the defenders of Verdun and Douaumont. It features a sketch by Georges Scott of a fallen French soldier being attended by a nurse. The broadside states it is a memorial to the French and... Two-barrelled revolver (pistol & short-barrel shotgun) used by Confederates and made in Paris, France. Ramrod intact. "1781 LM" incised in plate. "Col LeMat Bte S.G.D.G [French abbreviation for Brevet rank] Paris" incised on top of octagonal barrel. Civil War era field glasses made in Paris, France. The following markings are visible on the field glasses: Vendome, Paris; Day & Night; Signal Glass. The item may have been issued to the signal specialist working for Union forces.
Disclaimer: I do not claim credit for the code examples and much of the contents here, these are mostly extracts from the book by Chris Smith, Programming F#: A comprehensive guide for writing simple code to solve complex problems. In fact, if you’re thinking of learning F# and like what you read here, you should buy the book yourself, it’s easy to read and the author has gone go great lengths to keep things simple and included a lot of code examples for you to try out yourself. A tuple (pronounced “two-pull”) is an ordered collection of data, and an easy way to group common pieces of data together. A tuple type is described by a list of the tuple’s elements’ types, separated by asterisks: You can even have tuples that contain other tuples: There’s a number of ways to extract values from a tuple, there’s fst (first) and snd (second) functions if you have a two-elements tuple: And then there’s the let binding: But remember, you’ll get a compile error if you try to extract too many or too few values from a tuple. It is possible to pass tuples as parameters to functions: Whereas tuples group values into a single entity, lists allow you to link data together to form a chain. Doing so allows you to process list elements in bulk using aggregate operators. You can declare a list like this: Notice in the snippet above the empty list had type ‘a list because it could be of any type, therefore it’s generic. Unlike other languages, F# lists are quite restrictive in how you access and manipulate them — there are only two operations you can perform with a list: - The first is cons, represented by the :: or cons operator. This joins an element to the front or head of a list: - The second is append, uses the @ operator. Append joins two lists together: Declaring list elements as a semicolon-delimited list quickly becomes tedious, especially for large lists. To declare a list of ordered numeric values, use the list range syntax: If an optional step value is provided, then the result is a list of values in the range between two numbers separated by the stepping value: List comprehensions is a rich syntax that allows you to generate lists inline with F# code. The body of the list comprehension will be executed until it terminates, and the list will be made up of elements returned via the yield keyword: Almost any F# code can exist inside of list comprehensions, including things like function declarations and for loops: When using loops within list comprehensions, you can simply the code by using -> instead of do yield: Here’s a more complex example showing how you can use list comprehension to easily find prime numbers: List module functions The F# library’s List module contains many methods to help you process lists: The following example demonstrates the List.partition function, partitioning a list of numbers from 1 to 15 into two new lists: one comprised of multiples of five and the other list made up of everything else: The trick is that List.partition returns a tuple. Although lists offer a way to chain together pieces of data, there really isn’t anything special about them. The true power of lists lies in aggregate operators, which are a set of power functions that are useful for any collection of values.. List.map is a projection operation that creates a new list based on a provided function. Each element in the new list is the result of evaluating the function, it has type (‘a -> ‘b) -> ‘a list -> ‘b list The following example shows the result of mapping a square function to a list of integers: List.map is one of the most useful functions in the F# language, it provides an elegant way for you to transform data. Folds represent the most powerful type of aggregate operator and not surprisingly the most complicated. When you have a list of values and you want to distil it down to a single piece of data, you use a fold. There are two main types of folds you can use on lists, first is List.reduce which has type (‘a -> ‘a -> ‘a) -> ‘a list -> ‘a List.reduce iterates through each element of a list, building up an accumulator value, which is the summary of the processing done on the list so far. Once every list item has been processed, the final accumulator value is returned, the accumulator’s initial value in List.reduce is the first element of the list. This example demonstrates how to use List.reduce to comma-separate a list of strings: Whilst useful, reduce fold forces the type of the accumulator to have the same type as the list. If you want to use a custom accumulator type (e.g. reducing a list of items in a shopping cart to a cash value), you can use List.fold. The fold function takes three parameters: - A function that when provided an accumulator and list element returns a new accumulator. - An initial accumulator value. - The list to fold over. The return value of the function is the final state of the accumulator. The type of the fold function is: (‘acc -> ‘b -> ‘acc) -> ‘acc -> ‘b list -> ‘acc Here’s an example of how you can use it to count the number of vowels in a string: List.reduce and List.fold process the list in a left-to-right order. There are alternative functions List.reduceBack and List.foldBack for processing lists in right-to-left order. Depends on what you are trying to do, processing a list in reverse order can have a substantial impact on performance. The final aggregate operator, List.iter, iterates through each element of the list and calls a function that you pass as a parameter, it has type (‘a -> unit) -> ‘a list -> unit Because List.iter returns unit, it is predominately used for evaluating the side effect of the given method, meaning that executing the function has some side effect other than its return value (e.g. printfn has the side effect of printing to the console in addition to returning unit): If you want to represent a value that may or may not exist, the best way to do so is to use the option type. The option type has only two possible values: Some(‘a’) and None. A typical situation you’ll use an option type is when you want to parse a string as an int and if the string is properly formatted you’ll get an int, but if the string is not properly formatted you’ll get None: A common idiom in C# is to use null to mean the absence of a value. However, null is also used to indicate an uninitialized value, this duality can lead to confusion and bugs. If you use the option type, there is no question what the value represents, similar to how System.Nullable works in C#. To retrieve the value of an option, you can use Option.get. One thing to watch out though, is that if you call Option.get on None, an exception will be thrown. To get around this, you can use Option.isSome or Option.isNone to check before the value of the option type before attempting to access it, similar to System.Nullable.HasValue in C#. printfn comes in three main flavours: printf, printfn, and sprintf. printf takes the input and writes it to the screen, whereas printfn writes it to the screen and adds a line continuation. pinrtf has formatting and checking built-in (e.g. printfn “%s is %d%c high” mountain height units), it’s also strong typed and uses F#‘s type inference system so the compiler will give you an error if the data doesn’t match the given format specifier. Here’s a table of printf format specifiers: sprintf is used when you want the result of the printing as a string: Anatomy of an F# Program Most other languages, like C#, require an explicit program entry point, often called a main method. In F#, for single-file applications, the contents of the code file are execute from top to bottom in order without the need for declaring a specific main method. For multi-file projects, however, code needs to be divided into organization units called modules or namespaces. By default, F# puts all your code into an anonymous module with the same name as the code file with the first letter capitalized. So if you have a value named value1, and your code is in file1.fs, you can refer to it by using the fully qualified path: File1.value1. You can explicitly name your code’s module by using the module keyword at the top of a code file: Files can contain nested modules as well. To declare a nested module, use the module keyword followed by the name of your module and an equals sign =. Nested modules must be indented to be disambiguated from the “top-level” module: The alternative to modules is namespaces. Namespaces are a unit of organizing code just like modules with the only difference being that namespaces cannot obtain value, only type declarations. Also, namespaces cannot be nested in the same way that modules can, instead, you can add multiple namespaces to the same file: It may seem strange to have both namespaces and modules in F#. Modules are optimized for rapid prototyping and quickly exploring a solution, as you have seen so far. Namespaces, on the other hand, are geared toward larger-scale projects with an object-oriented solution. For single file projects, the code will be executed from top to bottom, however, when a you add a new file to the project, the newly added file will be run when the program starts up. For more formal program-startup semantics, you can use the [<EntryPoint>] attribute to define a main method. To qualify, your method must: - Be the last function defined in the last compiled file in your project. - Take a single parameter of type string array, which are the arguments to your program. - Return an integer, which is your program’s exit code.
Anti-obesity messages are everywhere – in news, in entertainment, and in public health campaigns. We are constantly being told that fat is bad for us, and that in order to be healthy we need to lose weight. But these messages don’t necessarily improve our health, and they certainly don’t seem to result in weight loss. Instead, popular ideas about fatness and health often reinforce social inequalities across class, race, gender, and ability. But the point of this article is not to engage in the frankly tiresome debates about whether fat people can be healthy (they can). Nor do I want to argue about whether being fat is correlated with an increased risk of certain health issues (it is, but as anyone with a high-school level understanding of statistics can tell you, correlation does not equal causation, and risk is no guarantee of outcome – otherwise we’d all be at the casino getting rich). Instead, I am interested in what these anti-obesity public health messages do, and who they do it to. This is important since obesity is much more prevalent amongst disadvantaged, vulnerable, and stigmatised groups, especially those of low socioeconomic status, non-English speaking backgrounds, and Indigenous people. Public health is generally seen as a force for good. Ideally, public health messages are a way for the government to educate the general population about potential health issues, and teach us how to best take care of ourselves in order to avoid illness and suffering. Over the last few years, the Australian government has run two anti-obesity campaigns: Measure Up and Swap It. The new and controversial LiveLighter campaign from Western Australia is another example. All of these campaigns convey the information that being fat is bad for your health, and that we should lose weight by eating better and exercising more. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Australia – or anywhere else in the Western world – who isn’t already well aware of this idea. So if these campaigns aren’t giving us new information about fat and health, it’s worth asking what they are doing, or trying to do. They are trying to do what every advertising campaign tries to do: change our attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviours. The Developmental Communications Research Report that informed the development of these campaigns categorises people according to “attitudinal segments”, and suggests that those with “undesirable” attitudes are over-represented amongst disadvantaged groups. The Developmental Communications Report, like much public health research, recognises that there are structural barriers that make it difficult for members of disadvantaged groups to simply change their lifestyles (and presumably lose weight as a result). But the campaigns don’t address these issues. Instead, they simply encourage individual weight loss. Leaving aside the overwhelming evidence that suggests significant weight loss via any method is nigh impossible to maintain over the long term, there are several problems with this approach. Firstly, diseases commonly attributed to obesity are more prevalent amongst marginalised populations regardless of their weight. Despite this, anti-obesity campaigns seek only to change the attitudes rather than the circumstances of those people deemed most at risk. By focusing on weight as the problem and weight loss as the solution, social and economic inequalities are made invisible. Health disparities between groups are blamed on individuals for not making “healthy” choices, ignoring the ways that the choices available to comfortably middle-class white Australians are often very different to those available to people on low incomes, to recent immigrants, or to Indigenous Australians. What’s more, the emphasis on individual responsibility amounts to a sort of victim blaming that allows structural inequalities to remain unaddressed. Individuals who don’t or aren’t able to lose weight are branded as non-compliant. Fat people are seen as having a “bad” attitude. And they are seen as undeserving of respect, dignity, or even access to medical treatment, since they apparently have only themselves to blame. If you don’t believe me, just look at the comments section of any story on “obesity”. As academic Anna Kirkland, argues, these sorts of ideas enable “the pretence that the elites are thriving because of their lifestyles while the poor are miserable because they are fat”. And that is a dangerous message.
Jan 22 2008 Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided to launch a detailed study into the nature of Morgellons, also known as unexplained dermopathy. On their website they write: Considering the complexity of this condition, we believe that a measured and thorough approach offers the best chance for finding useful answers. To learn more about this condition, CDC is conducting an epidemiologic investigation. Morgellons is certainly a very interesting medical entity, as the many questions I have received about this enigmatic condition indicate. Briefly, those who suffer from Morgellons have a chronic sense of itching and tingling under their skin. This sensation leads to scratching. The dermatological manifestations include open sores, and there have been reports of strange fibers extruding from these sores. Sufferers also often exhibit psychiatric symptoms, such as anxiety. There are two schools of thought about what is the true nature of Morgellons. One side, including the Morgellons Research Foundation, advocates the position that “Morgellons disease” is an infectious disease, primarily a skin infection. The infection leads to the itching sensation, the sores, and the strange fibers. The constant irritating sensation also leads secondarily to the psychiatric symptoms. They cite evidence linking Morgellons to Lyme disease, and note that sufferers often respond to prolonged antibiotic use. The other side believes that the psychiatric symptoms are primary, a form of delusional parasitosis – or the belief that one is infected with parasites. The skin sensation is therefore a somatic (sensory) delusion, leading to chronic itching that causes the skin manifestations. The strange fibers are simply fibers from clothing worked into open sores, and sometimes even healed into healing sores. Analysis of the fibers has shown that they are often consistent with various textiles, and that they are not biological in nature. Any bacteria found in the sores are incidental and not causative, and response to antibiotics is incomplete which is more compatible with a placebo effect than a true antibiotic effect. Those are pretty stark battle lines, but fortunately they lead to very distinct predictions. It should, therefore, be possible to sort out which hypothesis is correct with fairly objective evidence. This kind of debate happens within medicine all the time, and eventually they get sorted out with evidence. The CDC investigation is not likely to be definitive by itself – but it seems that it will add significantly to the discussion. Which side is more likely to be correct? First, I think it is important to note that neither side can be ruled out a-priori. It is certainly possible that an unknown infection (or other etiology) is causing chronic pathological itching in the skin. This can be what we call a neuropathic symptom – inflamed, damaged, or otherwise irritated nerves endings can generate abnormal sensory signals that are either painful or feel like itching or tingling. This then leads to scratching and all the other manifestations of Morgellons. This is a plausible scenario. However, we must assess the fibers as a separate question. I think the only plausible explanation for the presence of fibers in the lesions is that they are from clothing. I do not think we need to hypothesize any exotic biological process to explain the creation of these textile-like fibers. I also feel that the delusional parasitosis hypothesis is also very plausible and can explain all aspects of Morgellons, as I noted above. The evidence that proponents of the infectious hypothesis point to in order to claim that a primary psychiatric disorder is not a viable explanation is primarily the apparent response to antibiotics. However, this is far from definitive. I am suspicious of a partial and temporary response to antibiotics. I think this is more likely to be a placebo effect. It is very interesting that proponents link this to Lyme disease, since there is a similar grass roots organization of patients who believe they have chronic Lyme infection and need prolonged antibiotics that produce a partial and temporary response. The linking of one dubious chronic infection to another does not add credibility to the infection hypothesis. (Note that I am not questioning the legitimacy of Lyme disease itself, just a chronic undetectable form of the disease that requires prolonged antibiotic therapy. Here is a more thorough treatment of this topic.) Finding bacteria in the wounds of some Morgellons patients also is not very convincing, since any open skin lesion is likely to be teeming with bacteria. We must also consider that there may be some truth to both hypotheses, or that different patients identified as Morgellons may have different entities – it may not all be one diagnosis. So perhaps some patients have delusional parasitosis, while others have a chronic itching type of neuropathic pain syndrome. At this point I am most suspicious of the fibers as evidence – as I stated I think they are just fibers from clothing. I am also not convinced by the evidence so far for an infectious cause. It is important not to commit prematurely to either hypothesis nor to oversimplify – typically in medicine the full story turns out to be more complex than anyone initially thinks. It can be counterproductive for proponents of the delusional parasitosis hypothesis to fail to consider other possibilities because they are put off by fallacious arguments on the other side. It is also counterproductive for proponents of the infectious hypothesis to dismiss skepticism as closed-mindedness rather than a pathway to the truth, and I think that many of them are falling into this trap. For example, here is an exerpt from an editorial published by William T. Harvey, a member of the medical advisory board of the Morgellons Research Foundation: Serious students of the most basic sciences learn early that reality is the singular essence of each. “Truth” in this context is simply a semantic label given to current human understanding of that reality. Human truth never reaches reality, but as the Ancient Mariner, drifts forever, perhaps asymptotically approaching what is real. So it is with medical truth. Yesterday’s texts are already trash, placing an enormous burden on each of us to look beyond our passed-on guidebooks, created as best they could be with the tools and knowledge available at the time. He uses this high-handed discussion of “truth” as a basis to criticize all those who would dare to be skeptical of the infectious hypothesis. It sets a tone for counterproductive confrontation – not consensus building through objective research. I also think that at this point using the term “Morgellons disease” is premature and counterproductive. The term “disease” should be reserved for pathophysiological entities – where we have a known cause of a specific syndrome. What we have now is at best a clinical syndrome. Terminology in science is important, for it can often constrain our thinking about a topic. Proponents of the infectious hypothesis are trying to achieve through terminology what they have not yet achieved through scientific research. At this point my personal bias is that Morgellons will turn out to be mostly a primary psychiatric disorder. It is possible that some people with this label may turn out to have a chronic neuropathic syndrome, which may in turn have one of various causes. I give the infectious hypothesis a low probability at this point, I think the pattern is most consistent with a cultural phenomenon – a belief promoted at the grass roots level, aided by the Internet, driven more by belief than evidence and developing an unhealthy resistance to skepticism. However, I am also completely willing to change my mind as new evidence comes in. Researching Morgellons can theoretically be useful to resolve the debate. However, the rhetoric of the believers is concerning as it reminds me of other situations in which a specific belief or hypothesis became embedded within a group of proponents prior to being established scientifically. The group then becomes invested in the belief and is therefore highly resistant to change. They will likely have their day of reckoning – when fairly definitive evidence calls into question the infectious hypothesis. At that time they will either stay true to science and adapt to the evidence, or they will declare themselves to be a fringe ideological group (as have, say, those who believe thimerosal in vaccines causes autism). History teaches pessimism – but we’ll just have to wait and see. 20 Responses to “Morgellons” Leave a Reply You must be logged in to post a comment.
Robert Stetson and Honour Tucker were married in St. George’s Church in Modbury, county of Devonshire, England. During the period of turmoil preceding England’s Civil War, Robert and his wife decided to venture across the Atlantic Ocean for a new life in Scituate (Norwell) Plymouth Colony. Bearing in mind that the English military system was based upon social standing, Robert was able to bear arms in 1643 and served as Cornet, an ancient term referring to the standard bearer of a light horse, non-artillery military unit. He became a freeman in 1652 and was known as Cornet Robert. He served as a member of the War Board – during King Philip’s War – in 1658 or 1659, and as the commanding officer of the “Scituate Horse Troop,” a military unit formed in Plymouth Colony. There were only two other troops in the entire Colony. He met with the Native Americans both in warfare and as a commissioner, negotiating in the settlement of their differences with the colonists. Cornet Robert apportioned the common lands, laid out the highways and represented the Colony in establishing the line between the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay settlements. He was on the surveying party that chopped their way through the virgin forest and swamp land to mark this boundary line. The Angle Tree Stone, near the Rhode Island border, still bears his name and marks the western end of the boundary between Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies. The site where the line crossed the ancient nomadic “Sautucket Indian Path” (that ran from fishing grounds in Weymouth to their winter camps at Bridgewater) has recently been remarked by the Abington Historical Commission to comply with “a heap of stones” that the surveying party erected in 1664. In addition to his duties with the colony and town, he was also a business man, and built his first sawmill in 1656, later burned by Natives in 1676. He also acquired lands in addition to the original tract, and it is thought that he owned extensive acreage. In 1665, Cornet Stetson was chosen ‘First Selectman’ of the town of Scituate and given authority by the Magistrates to execute and enforce his judgment and try cases involving not to go over forty shillings. The family lived on the North River and he owned three sawmills in the Scituate area. He was 90 when he died on February 1, 1702. His oldest son, Joseph Stetson, inherited and lived in the homestead until he was 81, and then sold it to Cornet’s grandson Robert. This homestead property (known as the Shrine) has been in Stetson ownership continuously through the centuries and is now owned by the Stetson Kindred of America, Inc. For more information and related material, please visit the links below.
Murray says on page 21 in his book Real Education: "This point needs emphasizing. Educational measures such as test scores and grades tend to make differences among schoolchildren look as through they are ones of degree when in reality some of them are differences in kind. For example, a timed math test limited to problems of addition and subtraction, administered to a random cross-section of fourth-graders, yield scores that place children along a continuum distrubuted in a shape resembling a bell curve. Those scores appropriately reflect differences in degree: Some fourth-graders can add and subtract faster and more accurately than others, but they are all doing the same thing and almost all children can be taught to add and subtract to some degree. The same is not true of calculus. If all children were put on a mathematics track that took them through calculus, and then were given a test of calculus problems, the resulting scores would not look like a bell curve. For a large proportion of children, the scores would not be merely low. They would be zero. Grasping calculus requires a certain level of logical-mathematical ability. Children below that level will never learn calculus, no matter how hard they study. It is a difference in kind. Not only that: The child without the logical-mathematical ability to learn calculus cannot do a wide variety of other things in mathematics that are open to teh child with the requisite level of logical-mathematical ability.Ouch. That mindset goes against all the pop psychology and all the self-help books that tell you that you can be anything you want so long as you try. If you want a college degree you can have it if you apply and attend and do the work. The same distinction applies to linguistic ability. Having worked with kids, my own closely through homeschooling and with some other kids, it has been just in the last three years that I have repeatedly seen examples of kids who just don't get it and may never. It pains me to say that as I formerly held the above belief about "you can be anything you want and you can do anything if you just try". The advice to "do your best" is often assumed to be linked to the result "you will then fulfill all your goals and achieve all your dreams". I have seen kids who seem to have "the lights on but no one is home" and others who try very hard and can do work then the next day they cannot do that same thing. Some discuss these issues in light of learning disabilities where uneven performance is seen: what was mastered last month is absent from the memory this month, the multiplication fact that was memorized two years ago and used cannot be recalled today. If you read about these issues you may see references to things such as "executive function" and "working memory" and "recall". Things get complicated when LDs are discussed because at some point some people just cannot be cured or fixed, so their performance impedes their progress at achieving a goal such as learning vast quantities of academic material or even if learning is achieved, the student may be a "poor test taker" who cannot spew out correct answers at a fast enough speed. Thus their low test scores impede both class grades and standardized test scores which snowball into the fact that low scores may prevent a student's access to higher level courses in school that are college pre-requistes or the low grades or SAT scores may prevent them from being admitted to some colleges or to seek certain majors. Perhaps not getting in to the college of one's dreams is okay though as just college admission is not good enough, the college student must be able to do the work of that college. To state it another way, the issue is not just how to get in to college the issue is that the admissions process is set up so as to try to allow in only those students who are capable of handling the academic workload of that college. The true issue is when a student wants to have a degree from a certain college but can't do the work to get it. That is not unlike people who say they want to be the author of a published book but are unwilling to actually do the work that writing a book requires! We have seen the college competency issue in two types of examples. Sadly I have heard that some poorly educated poverty level minorities with hopes for achieving the American Dream that includes a college degree be taken advantage of with having taken out large student loans to pay for tuition, then unable to hack the academic coursework, drop out leaving them with the loan to repay. Regarding the recent high school graduates, we see kids who need five or six years to complete a four year degree since they need so many high school level remedial courses at college before their 'real' college coursework can begin. For some, the only real issue is the one or two years of extra tuition that the student or parents wind up paying. This whole discussion would be considered controversial by some, the idea that kids are different and another of Murray's beliefs discussed in this same book, that "ability varies". When I think about these issues I usually am left feeling sad that every person can't and won't be a scholar and frustrated by the so-common advice of "you can be anything you want" when in fact it just is not true. Murray wants education reform. Public school reform in America has been attempted in the last 110 years when it really began about 160 years ago, thus the system made it only about 50 years before there was serious criticism of it. It doesn't seem to me that real reform has been accomplished at all. I guess really all that matters to me, if I boil it down, regarding that philosophical discussion of "ability varies" and "a difference in kind" is how those issues affect my own life and the lives of my children. I, as an individual, am powerless to "save the world" or "help all children" or to try to reform American public schools but I can have a major influence over the education of my own kids. That is why we are homeschooling. The trick though, is to deliver a high quality home education while also meeting the legal requirements of the government (which varies depending on what state one lives in). Also, since my kids have aims to enter college, I need to get our ducks in a row to have my kid's education be the right type of college preparatory program that they need to do what it is they think they want to do for their career.
Shades of Persecution Past? Germany Forces 50,000 Roma to Leave Country Germany has decided to deport 50,000 Roma, better known as Gypsies back to Kosovo from which they had fled during the ethnic cleansing and wars of the 1990s. The Roma will be returning to a region which routinely limits Roma travel and freedoms and where just last year, ethnic Albanians rioted against the Roma, forcing 4,000 from their homes and killing 19. This is not a safe region. But the United Nations has signed off on Germany’s plan, claiming that Kosovo is now stable. Additionally, neither the UN nor Germany will be providing the Roma any aide once they return. Many who are being forced to return have lost all contact with Kosovo and have no homes or employment to return to. What is most disturbing is that while Germany is deporting the Roma refugees, ethnic Albanians who fled the same conflict have often been allowed to stay in Germany. This is why many human rights organizations are calling the German actions racist. In fact, Germany has a long history of severe prejudice against the Roma (as does much of Europe.) During World War II, the Nazis were determined to rid the world of Roma and an estimated 200,000 to 800,000 Roma were put to death in what is referred to as the Porajmos (in essence, the Roma Holocaust). Is the current deportation another instance of persecution of the Roma? Given the fact that Albanian refugees have received much better treatment and given Germany’s violent history toward the Roma, it is hard to think this current action is based solely on reasoned policy as Germany insists. In fact, what if these were Jewish refugees? Wouldn’t we then seriously question German intentions? Wouldn’t we, in fact, be alarmed? There are few news reports in English on the deportation. But what has been reported is deeply troublesome. The United States should take notice and either pressure Germany to reconsider or insist the UN provide real assistance to the deported Roma. The historic persecution of the Gypsies may not be as well-known as the persecution of the Jews. But that in no way absolves us of our responsibility to ensure the Roma are not being unjustly treated once again. Thanks to A Little Left of Centrist for alerting us to this story.
Why use paper and crayons when you can draw on windows with markers? My husband invited us to visit him during a class he’s teaching on the intersection of design and improvisation (oh how I wish I had time to take this class!). He brought N a dry erase marker to keep her occupied. Can you find little sister up there? He led her to the large sliding doors, and suggested that she could draw on them. Lucky kid! She loved it… And rose to the challenge. (Haha. I couldn’t resist!) A couple days later, just before breakfast, we found N sitting on our dining room table, drawing on the windows. Gasp! It was all good once we replaced the magic marker with a dry erase marker. Thankfully no Sharpies were involved! Thinking about her next drawing move. Idea in mind, she was back to the window. Sitting back to inspect and appreciate the handiwork. This activity is great for pushing the envelope of material possibilities. All you need are a dry erase marker and a good-sized window. Dry erase markers can stain porous surfaces, so be sure to give clear instructions about where the markers can be used. Windows can be wiped clean with a soft rag or cloth. For more on white board drawing, visit this related post: Wonderful Whiteboarding.
This post is from Dr John Bissell, a physicist researching tipping points in mathematical systems for the project. In a conference that had largely focused on `tipping points’ in human society, especially those involving the spread of `buzzwords’, `innovation’ and `trends’, Prof Richard Law‘s talk on ecological dynamics (for those who might not have a clue as to what ecological dynamics means this rather humorous rap might help) acted as an important reminder of the role `tipping points’ might play in natural systems. Perhaps the most classic–if not defining–example of a `tipping point’ is the fold bifurcation, and Law began his discussion here. Broadly speaking, fold bifurcations occur when changes in a system’s underlying parameters alter the number of its steady-states (solutions to the system that stay constant over time), for example, if the prevailing steady-state is destroyed, then the whole system may need to rapidly reconfigure to a new and often quite different equilibrium. These kinds of catastrophic transitions can be particularly important because they tend to exhibit what’s called hysteresis. Indeed, once `tipped’, large reverse changes to the governing parameters may be needed to return a system to its original steady-state. Law illustrated some transitions of this kind in terms of both desertification of scrubland following grazing by cattle, and the collapse of fish stocks due to over-fishing. Another `tipping point’ mechanism in ecological systems is the onset of chaos, which Law described using an example taken from the population dynamics of the Colorado potato beetle. In this case, small modifications to the survival rate of beetle larvae can lead to otherwise stable numbers of adult beetles oscillating erratically between relatively small populations and sudden large outbreaks. This kind of chaotic dynamic is notoriously difficult to predict. From Law’s discussion it seems that ecological systems can not only exhibit `tipping point’ dynamics, but that such behaviour may have significant implications for our understanding of the natural world. However, as Law pointed out in the conclusion to his talk, the evidence for `tipping-points’ is subject to ongoing debate, and warning signals of their onset are difficult to quantify. Nevertheless, areas of scientific uncertainty are often those which best lend themselves to further scrutiny, and I look forward to hearing of, and possibly participating in, future researches on the ecological `tipping-point’ theme.
The term control is refers to the precise control used in controlling the force of an attack. Control is one characteristic of Taekwondo and karate that sets ithem apart from other martial arts. Many fighting arts teach and train to strike with full force in every attack. Control requires the martial artist to precisely control the depth an attack penetrates the target depending upon the circumstances of the attack, the physical size and strength of the attacker, and the intent of the attacker. This type or control requires many years of training. For more information in this type of focus, see control. Control, also referred to as focus, is the ability to deliver a full-power Taekwondo technique to a predetermined point in space. With proper control, a martial artist may execute a full-power punch that breaks through a stack of boards or execute a full-power punch that just barely touches the tip of a young student's nose. With proper control, you may aggressively spar an opponent using full-power techniques and never hurt the opponent, even if he or she never blocks any of the techniques. The mark of a true martial artist is precise control of full-power, fully-extended techniques. Control comes from the proper use of range. The only difference between a full -power technique that kills and a full-power technique that merely touches is a difference in range. This difference in range is only—one inch, or less. This means the difference between fighting to kill and sparring to play is only one inch. This does not mean that during sparring sessions you stop your techniques one inch short—since all techniques are executed full-power and full-extension—it means you adjust your range (distance between you and your opponent) by one inch. Control requires one to develop an instinctive feeling of range through training. Just as your brain has been trained to make involuntary adjustments of your body to maintain balance while walking, control training trains the brain to make constant involuntary adjustments to range while sparring. - Next >>

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