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Piano tuning is a surprisingly simple process, though clothed in mystery by those "in the know." When I wanted to learn how to tune my piano, I could not find information on the web that clearly explained how to do it without insisting I buy a book or take a course. So after research and trying it myself, I have developed the method on this page, using the three pictured tools: mutes, electronic tuner and a tuning wrench.
Before we leap into the details, let me explain the expression "deceptively simple." At first glance piano tuning seems straightforward, but there's more you should know. While you can learn the basic mechanics of tuning piano strings quickly using the directions on this page, good piano tuning technique is very much a learned skill. It requires patience and practice. Good overall tone involves more than turning pins. Professional piano tuners and technicians spend years learning the nuances.
This page does not replace the professional piano tuner. The simplified approach given here can be useful for those who want to keep things going between professional tunings, those who wish to experiment, even performers who need to do an emergency fix before the recital. I have even heard from people who had a piano so neglected that a professional piano tuner refused to tune it. This method might at least make it playable once more.
The piano is a large and complex instrument. It can be quite a task to get all the keys in tune, and this gets worse the longer the piano has not been tuned. A piano that has been left untuned for a long time may not hold tune with a standard tuning and may need a "pitch-raise" (an extended tuning regimen requiring several passes tuning the entire piano until everything will finally stay in tune.) Beyond that, voicing and regulating the action may be required to restore the best tone. Some pianos will require repairs, like misaligned hammers or loose pins, which are beyond the scope of this page (though we do have some resources we can recommend.)
Know the risks. If you are careless in your tuning technique, you can break strings, loosen or bend pins or cause other damage. Too many loose pins, for example, may render the piano practically un-tunable and too expensive to repair.
Read this entire page! I occasionally receive remarks from professional tuners critical of this web site. Those remarks are welcome; I use them to improve the website, though sometimes it is clear that they have dismissed the site without reading it completely. Please read the entire website carefully to be certain you understand the details, risks and limitations of this simplified procedure.
This author is not a professional piano tuner; I was just willing to try piano tuning myself. I have an older student-quality piano, not a priceless Steinway. I don't think I'd risk anything expensive or precious. Still, I did it myself, and I am happy with the results. I think other piano owners can do the same. With that, let's get some tools.
MINIMUM PIANO TUNING TOOLS
You will need some special piano tuning tools. I used the following piano tuning tools, purchased from piano tool suppliers on the internet. I do not recommend homemade workarounds like socket wrenches or foam chunks. Get the right tools for the job. You will have better results, less frustration, and be less likely to damage the piano. A set of basic tools will cost less than a single professional tuning.
1Rubber tuning wedges or "mutes" made for piano tuning (only a dollar or two each, at PianoSupplies.com, for example) Assorted sizes come in handy. I use the ones with a wire handle most often. You'll need at least two rubber wedge mutes to get started. Several other kinds of mutes are available for muting whole ranges of strings and muting just the middle of three strings. You may find these useful as you gain skill. (A reader offers this tip about wedges for those tempted to save money here: "You cannot mute the strings with your fingers, even if you have three hands. The heat from your fingertips will make the string expand, so you'll tighten it, and it'll go sharp as soon as it cools!")
2Tuning hammer or lever or wrench (actually a specialized wrench to turn the string pins). This is the most expensive tool you'll need--and also the most important. It has a special "star" socket shape that is designed to fit piano pins. There is a variety of hammers to choose from at PianoSupplies.com. In most cases, the more expensive, the higher the quality. Better models like mine have an interchangeable head in case you run into an odd pin size. In order to feel the subtle motions, you need a solid tool with no wiggle in the handle and a secure fit to the pin. I have received comments from people who have purchased inferior tools, and they have trouble with the head slipping, binding--even unscrewing--or a poor angle on the head that interferes with the feel. I tinkered briefly with a standard crescent wrench (I can hear you pro tuners shuddering now!), but it did not work well. It slipped easily, tended to damage the squared edges of the pins, and was too short to control the turn anyway--not a good idea. The square shape of the pins ruled out proper use of a standard hex socket. Some people reverse a 1/4" hex socket, and use the 1/4" square opening that you normally use to attach the socket to the wrench. This can work in a pinch, but it does not fit the pin as completely and a socket wrench handle is too short for fine control. Furthermore, the star socket on a real tuning hammer will allow you to attach to the pin at more angles, which can be important for maintaining the delicate control needed to turn the pin just right. I do not recommend any improvised wrenches because you do not want to risk damaging, bending or loosening the pin. Please buy a proper wrench!
The KORG CA-30
The size of a deck of cards
3 Electronic tuner. I use a Korg Chromatic Tuner, model CA-30. This little fellow is KEY (no pun intended) to making this process as painless as possible. I tried using a tuning fork, but it was too difficult. The electronic tuner makes it much easier and faster. And it is inexpensive, less than $20.00 shipped from Amazon. (There are more elaborate electronic tuners dedicated to piano tuning, which many professional tuners use these days, rather than tuning forks, but they are hundreds of dollars. There are software piano tuning programs that emulate the electronic professional tuners, but even these are $100 to $300.) For the do-it-yourself method in this tutorial, any chromatic tuner in the inexpensive Korg lines will work. NOTE: Guitar-only tuners will not work as well, because they recognize fewer notes than a full chromatic tuner, but a chromatic Korg Tuner will tune all instruments, from guitars to brass and more! You can always upgrade your tuner, but a simple one will get you started.
4Light source to shine into the piano. It's pretty dark, and there are a lot of strings and other stuff in there. Easy to get lost...make sure a loved one knows where you are.
PIANO TUNING PROCEDURE
1 Clear the work area--indeed, the whole house if you can--of other humans. Lock the doors. Piano tuning requires concentration. Give yourself plenty of room by opening the lid all the way. You may want to remove several of the screwed-in cabinet members to give yourself more room. It's OK, they are made to be removed, but be careful not to remove those that hold the keys or the action in place. Position your light source.
In position to tune.
My piano has 2 strings per
key at this octave;
most pianos have 3.
2 Start with the middle octave (Middle C on up to C'). Each piano key strikes one to three strings. Pick one string to tune at a time; if there are three strings, start with the middle. Carefully find the pin that turns the string you want to tune. Stick the rubber wedges in to stop the vibration of the other one or two strings in the set. While repeatedly striking the piano key FIRMLY, turn the pin with the tuning wrench until the electronic tuner shows that it's in tune. The Korg CA-30 automatically detects the note you are trying to reach. If you are really off, it may show the wrong note, so make sure you know what you are looking for.
Tips about this process:
- Proceed slowly. Stretching a string too quickly can break it, especially an old string. If the string is really far out, you may want to tune it in several steps, allowing it to rest a few minutes between turns. (Thanks to a reader for pointing this out.)
- Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey! Turning the pin right/clockwise will tighten the pin and raise the pitch. Turning it left/counter-clockwise will loosen the pin and lower the pitch.
- Do not overwork the pin. Twist it gently, little by little, without bending it. Don't wiggle it side to side in any way. Move the pin as little as you can (you'll get better with practice.) Too much twisting and wiggling can loosen it; a loose pin will keep slipping out of tune. Rough technique may permanently loosen pins. Loose tuning pins will need to be replaced by a professional.
- About "Setting the Pin." Setting the pin means to move it in such a way that it does not easily slip back out of tune. To set the pin your final tuning movements should be:
This is where practice comes in. The better the tuner, the better he or she is at setting the pins, and the longer the piano holds tune. As a novice, your piano probably won't hold tune as long because of this important skill.
- a slight tightening/clockwise move to stretch the string just a hair above pitch
- followed by an even slighter loosening/counterclockwise to move into pitch.
- Loosen the tension a little first before tightening. Better to relax the string than to overtighten needlessly, especially if you happen to be on the wrong string! Overtightening breaks strings, and is a common error for inexperienced tuners
- Striking the key firmly is important. The vibrations this creates equalized the tension along the string. A string firmly struck while tuning will stay in tune lnger. If you tune by playing softly, the string may relax later when someone does play it hard, and it will slip out of tune. If you like, you can begin your tuning of each key with gentler hits; striking it hard all the time is exhausting and irritating to the ear. When you think you have it, hit it hard a few times as you finish the final touches.
- As you tune with an electronic tuner, particular an inexpensive one with its jumpy LCD needle, you will find it nearly impossible to hit dead on the frequency each time. I tend to stay just a shade sharp when in doubt, as my piano generally goes out of tune to the flat, not the sharp. Tuning a little sharp also gives a brighter sound, but do not overdo it.
- A good piano tuner may tune the middle register a little sharp on purpose, because the process of tuning the high and low registers can flat the middle sometimes. (Fast explanation: All those strings put a lot of tension on the sound board. As you work your way to the ends of the keyboard, the resulting tension changes can subtly alter the shape of the sound board, reducing the tension on the middle octaves, causing the middle octaves to flat.) If you tune the middle a little sharp, by the time you finish the upper and lower, the middle will, in theory, be in tune. I wouldn't worry about this as a beginner. This is an advanced technique that the experience of the professional can bring, and you can work toward as your skills improve. (When you really know what you are doing, then you will learn how to stretch the octaves. See Technical Sidenotes below.)
3 After the first string is tuned, move the wedges so that the first string and the second string are free, but the third, if present, is still dampened by the wedge. Ignore the tuner. Just put your wrench on the second string's pin. While repeatedly striking the key hard, turn the second pin until you can hear no more "beats"--that is, it sounds like one note, not two in disharmony. Repeat for the third string if necessary, with all wedges removed.
If you are not sure what to listen for, here is an mp3 (104k file) I recorded of a piano note being tuned. In the recording, I start with a middle A that is in tune, then use my tuning wrench to loosen one of the strings out of tune, then bring it back in tune again. Disclaimer: In order to demonstrate in this mp3, I have turned the pin much more than is healthy for the pin. Move your pins as little as possible to avoid loosening them.
Alternatively, you could tune all the strings in a key's set with the electronic tuner, but that's not as easy as you might think. Getting that little indicator to line up just right becomes tedious fast. Using your ear to tune the strings to each other is faster and will sound better (see technical note below)
4 Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each key in the middle octave.
5 Use the first octave as your guide to tune the adjacent octaves. Ignore the electronic tuner again. Tune the octaves above and below the middle by ear, matching them to the middle octave, e.g, A to A, B to B, etc. This is called "tuning the unisons." Tune one string in the note at a time (muting the others)--this time comparing it to the corresponding note in the middle octave rather than the electronic tuner. Then tune the other string(s) within the note to the first as described above. Repeat for all octaves, always using the nearest tuned octave to tune the next octave above or below. There you are--a tuned piano!
Alternatively, you could in theory use an electronic tuner to tune all the octaves on the piano. There are several problems with this:
- Just as above, getting that indicator on the electronic tuner to settle down can be nerve-wracking. You will find that watching the tuner all the time will just slow you down. "Hearing it" will be more efficient and less frustrating once you get the hang of it.
- The simple electronic tuner recommended here works best on the middle octave. It may work on a few keys above and below the middle octave, but it has trouble "hearing" once you get much further. A better tuner or maybe a remote contact mic might help. The Korg CM-100 Tuner Clip works with any tuner with an audio input jack, and is actually handy for tuning in general to help you get as close to the targeted strings as possible and thus less affected by ambient noise or the changes in pitch as the sound bounces around the piano or the room.
- In reality, a piano is 99% tuned to itself. The different lengths and types of strings in a single piano tend to alter their resonant characteristics from the ideal. The mathematically correct pitch actually sounds out of tune for many keys, especially in the extreme high and low octaves, and moreso on smaller pianos with shorter strings. If you tune the entire piano using a simple electronic tuner, the top registers will sound flat, and the bottom registers sharp. Putting the electronic tuner aside to tune unisons by ear will get you closer to proper adjustment automatically. This also more closely approaches what a professional piano tuner who tunes by ear does.
- If you prefer an electronic tuner to tune every octave, then you will need a professional piano tuner's electronic tuner or tuning software.
- Because of the peculiar harmonicities of piano strings, the ONLY note on a piano that is precisely tuned to an outside standard is "A" in the middle octave, that being 440 Hz. A professional tuner who tunes only by ear may just tune the "A" with a tuning fork and tune the rest by ear.
- To tune a piano exactly right, one must "stretch octaves," which is to intentionally tune the upper registers progressively sharp and the lower registers progressively flat. There is electronic equipment and software that can help a professional piano tuner calculate precise frequencies, but these are expensive. In my method, we are tuning the entire middle octave to an outside standard, which is not the best, but it's better than not being in tune at all. The middle octave is stretched the least of all the octaves, so the effect is minimized.
- The most popular modern model for the frequency for each note is called "equal temperament." Ideally, the "perfect" piano will be tuned with mathematically calculated frequencies that have precise intervals between notes determined by the equal temperament model. Tuning the entire piano with an electronic tuner that is not specially designed for pianos will be close to true equal temperament. But, as explained above, that does not sound right. Stretching the octaves compensates for this, in effect creating a customized version of equal temperament unique to each piano. There are actually multiple temperaments, or piano tuning schemes, really, that have been developed through the years. Some were experimental; others deliberately favored certain musical intervals. Interestingly, composers of the classical period composed for pianos that were not tuned to equal temperament but to one of several other temperaments popular in their time. Today, equal temperament is by far the most common, but you could say there is no one single right way to tune a piano!
How long will this take? That's extremely variable. Make of the piano, how badly out of tune it is, how good your ear is, etc. The first time you do it, it may take an hour to get through that first octave. Once you get the hang of it, I estimate that a careful tuning takes about 20 minutes an octave. As for a not-so-careful tune up, I have found that now I know my way around my particular piano, I can whip out the old hammer for a touch-up quite quickly--just a minute or two a note.
How do you keep a piano from getting out of tune? Aside from minimizing humidity, temperature and abusive-kid extremes, the best way to keep your piano in tune is to (surprise!) tune it. Once the piano is in tune, it is easier to keep it in tune with touch-ups and regularly-scheduled tunings. Don't wait until you can't stand the sound anymore. The more strings left untuned, the more the tension changes on the soundboard, causing a cascade effect where more and more strings to go out of tune.
What is missing in this piano tuning technique that a professional tuner would do? The main part of the piano tuning procedure this method short-cuts is tuning note-to-note within an octave, that is, using A to tune C, for example. This requires counting "beats," that is the loud points in the vibrations that two dissonant strings make. (Remember that when tuning the two strings of a single note, for example, you match them so the beats disappear entirely.) In addition, a professional will know how to stretch the octaves for the best sound. A professional will also bring experience, and will be less likely cause damage such as loosening pins or breaking strings. They may also make repairs. And, of course, they will be faster and better.
PIANO TUNING RESOURCES
Piano Tuning Equipment Sources
Basic Piano Tuning Kit
Click for description
I recommend PianoSupplies.com for most of the piano tuning equipment described in this tutorial. They sell kits as well as the individual items. I got the hammer and wedges in an "apprentice piano tuning kit." You could skip the "kit" and just buy the mutes and the hammer separately. I didn't end up using some of the items in the kit, especially the tuning forks
If you want more tools, a variety of mutes is probably the next thing to buy after the hammer, tuner, and a few wedge mutes. The temperament strip is a long strip of felt with which you can mute many strings at once by weaving it among the strings. Push it between the strings in several places with a screwdriver. It keeps other strings from sympathetically vibrating; the vibrations can make it difficult for your ear to isolate strings you are trying to tune. Professional piano tuners consider it essential; it often comes in basic kits. The long mute pictured in the kit is a "treble mute," which is used to mute the middle string of a triad. If you would like to try repairs, you'll need additional tools, such as this basic regulation tool kit. PianoSupplies.com also sells piano repair parts and accessories. They have great forums, too!
Korg tuners are available inexpensively from Amazon.com
Piano Tuning Books
This page presents an effective but very simplified approach to piano tuning. If you really want to be good at it, or are thinking of doing this for others, there is much more to learn. Here are several books that are among the most highly regarded resources in the field.
Piano Tuning: A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs by J. Cree Fischer. Here's a classic piano tuning text, recommended to me by a reader of this page. Written in 1907, so some of the information is outdated, but piano tuning has not changed much. While it is not the most modern text, it is very inexpensive. Browse inside the book and read the reviews at Amazon .
Piano Servicing, Tuning, and Rebuilding, Second Edition : for the Professional, the Student, and the Hobbyist by Arthur A. Reblitz. This book was recommended to me by a reader as a more recent alternative. "All the information essential to the art of restoring and maintaining a piano; from minor repairs and cleaning to major tuning and complete restoration techniques." More expensive, but it has excellent reviews. Browse inside the book and read the reviews at Amazon.
Piano Tuning Links
I have told you what you need to learn to get started with piano tuning, but when you are ready you can learn more information from these pages.
Chuan C. Chang's tutorial of aural tuning
A very, very detailed description of tuning by ear. Scroll down quite a way to get to Chapter 2 on tuning.
McCullough Tuning Tutorial
More details on tuning by ear.
David Anderson's web site
Dave is a professional piano tuner who has posted some good background info on tuning.
Precison Strobe's Tuning Page
All the technical details behind piano tuning. Not for the faint of heart!
Low End Piano Maintainance and Repair Links
More links to content-rich websites with piano information for the do-it-yourself piano owner and player, gathered and reviewed by me.
The Piano Tuning FAQ
Frequently asked questions about the general topic of tuning a piano.
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DEVELOPMENT REPORT - WHO/Infectious DiseasesBy Jill Moss
This is the VOA Special English DEVELOPMENT REPORT.
The World Health Organization says the spread of new diseases is increasing, as countries become more dependent on each other. The health organization is urging countries to accept an international plan to fight the threat of disease. The W-H-O released a special videotaped announcement to tell countries about the plan.
The message describes a world affected by both old and new deadly diseases. It also notes that old diseases, like tuberculosis, are becoming more common. Tuberculosis is curable. Yet the World Health Organization estimates that about two-million people die each year from it. W-H-O officials say more than ten-million people will be newly infected with tuberculosis by Two-Thousand-Five if nothing is done to stop the disease from spreading.
The message also reports that new diseases are very dangerous. Many of these new diseases do not have cures. During the past thirty years, the W-H-O says millions of people have died from such diseases as AIDS, Ebola, Mad Cow disease and Legionnaire's disease.
The W-H-O says international trade and the increased movement of people have increased the risk of disease. The group says infectious diseases can now spread around the world with ease and speed.
Robert Steffen is a Swiss public health expert. He is concerned about the use of infections as a weapon of terror. He says infections can spread through biological agents that are either natural or genetically created. Doctor Steffen says the dangers of this so-called "bio-terrorism" will increase if little is done to prevent it.
Peter Ndumbe is a professor of medicine in Cameroon. He says the greatest threat of disease is in poor developing countries. He says rich countries can help themselves by helping poor countries with their health needs. But Doctor Ndumbe says rich countries must give such support to countries in a fair way. For example, he says a few countries in Africa always get help from aid organizations working on the continent. Instead, Doctor Ndumbe says all developing countries should receive such aid.
The World Health Organization says the spread of old and new diseases has become a major international problem. It warns that no country -- rich or poor -- should fail to recognize this health problem.
This VOA Special English DEVELOPMENT REPORT was written by Jill Moss.
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Which elements of A View from the Bridge resemble Greek Tragedy? How does this change or affect the significance of the play as a modern drama?
There are several elements of A View from the Bridge that resemble Greek drama. Eddie is the tragic, mad character who is helpless in the face of his own terrible fate. Alfieri acts as the chorus in the play. He provides commentary on the action and articulates the greater moral and social implications of the drama. Eddie Carbone is an epic character; he makes bold moves and does things that are completely out of the ordinary. As chorus, Alfieri is key to distinguishing Eddie as a legendary figure because Alfieri gives Eddie epic proportions, "I looked into his eyes more than I listened—in fact, I hardly remember the conversation I will never forget how dark the room became when he looked at me; his eyes were like tunnels."
What imagined world or reality does Eddie seek to uphold? How does he see himself? How does this differ from the actual world of the play?
To justify his actions, Eddie creates an alternative reality to exist within. This imagined world Eddie constructs is evident by his irrational decisions. Eddie knows well the fate he will suffer if he betrays Marco and Rodolpho. In the beginning of the play, Eddie tells the story of a young boy who ratted on immigrant relatives staying in his home and warns Catherine that she must be absolutely silent about Marco and Rodolpho. Eddie knows that he will suffer greatly for calling Immigration, but does so anyway. In Eddie's imagined world he believes that putting his relatives in jail will stop the marriage of Rodolpho and Catherine. Eddie believes he can keep Catherine all for himself as a virginal prize. Eddie thinks that he can regain his name after Marco spits in his face. Eddie, driven by his suppressed passions, makes irrational decisions and denies his own reason.
How does Alferi function in the play? What values or laws does he represent? How does his presence alter the play or the audience's perception of the characters?
Alfieri is the symbolic bridge between American law and tribal Italian law. Alfieri, himself the son of an Italian immigrant, acts as a chorus in the play. He gives his perspective from his position on the bridge or meeting ground between Italian and American cultures. Alfieri attempts to portray the characters objectively, but, especially in the case of Eddie Carbone, narrates the play as if it were a great legend. Alfieri positions himself as the great scribe or teller of an epic tale: "the flat air in my office suddenly washes in with the green scent of the sea the thought comes that in some Caesar's year another lawyer set there as powerless as I, and watched it run its bloody course." Alfieri adds grandeur to the story and transforms the story of a Longshoreman into a larger than life tragic tale.
How are names important in A View from the Bridge?
What social codes or mores exist within the Red Hook, Italian American community of the play?
What is the symbolic nature of the Brooklyn Bridge in the play? What worlds does it bring together? What person also acts as a cultural bridge?
What laws do Eddie's actions infringe upon? What is the distinction made between tribal and American law?
Is Eddie a sympathetic hero? What elements of the play allow the audience to sympathize with Eddie? Overall, is the audience led to sympathize with Eddie or criticize his actions?
Who does Eddie betray in the play? How does betrayal work as thematic material? How is Eddie punished for his betrayal?
Characterize the relationship between Beatrice, Eddie and Catherine. What sort of familial taboos do they break? How does their relationship reflect on the American family in a general sense?
Eddie comes home in the first chapter and Catherine seeks his approval on a job that she has been offered and the clothes that she has bought. she is sad when he doesn't approve it because she looks up to him.
I found a typo in 'The Irrational Human Animal':
It is written as: 'Eddie looses control...'
When it should be: 'Eddie loses control...'
Thanks, and this page helped me a lot with my essay!
I think this quiz is terrible, this contains many typos. As you may realize this may cause confusion to GCSE students which I don't find very considerate; your lack of spelling and punctuation with these questions are appalling.
This makes me cringe once I read every single question, now as a professionals point of view, I'd remove this quiz, or at least fix this piece of work.
Thank you for your time, and I hope you make these changes as soon as possible, as it will get more visitors who shall appreciate this quiz more.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful
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PRINT THIS DATA
Tropical savanna climates have monthly mean temperature above 18°C (64°F) in every month of the year and typically a pronounced dry season, with the driest month having precipitation less than 60mm (2.36 in) of precipitation. In essence, a tropical savanna climate tends to either see less rainfall than a tropical monsoon climate or have more pronounced dry seasons than a tropical monsoon climate. Tropical savanna climates are most commonly found in Africa, Asia and South America. The climate is also prevalent in sections of Central America, northern Australia and North America, specifically in sections of Mexico and the state of Florida in the United States.
The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "As". (Tropical Savanna Climate).
The average temperature for the year in Aracaju is 78.8°F (26°C). The warmest month, on average, is February with an average temperature of 80.8°F (27.1°C). The coolest month on average is July, with an average temperature of 75.9°F (24.4°C).
The highest recorded temperature in Aracaju is 97.0°F (36.1°C), which was recorded in March. The lowest recorded temperature in Aracaju is 58.3°F (14.6°C), which was recorded in August.
There are an average of 174.0 days of precipitation, with the most precipitation occurring in July with 21.0 days and the least precipitation occurring in January with 9.0 days.
In terms of liquid precipitation, there are an average of 174.0 days of rain, with the most rain occurring in July with 21.0 days of rain, and the least rain occurring in January with 9.0 days of rain.
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Mother brings awareness to dwarfism through social media
Any Facebook user knows that scrolling down one’s newsfeed is a lot similar to visiting a yard sale – as in, you never know what you are going to find.
Some friends will post funny video that make you laugh, while others request needed prayers for their loved ones or use social media to inform you about changes in their job, relationship and political views, as well as day-to-day happenings.
Donna Russell uses her Facebook page to bring awareness to dwarfism.
Russell logs into her account almost daily and shares facts about what dwarfism actually is. One post recognized that October is Dwarfism Awareness month.
The information read: “Dwarfism is not an intellectual disability. Dwarfism is not a reason to assume that someone is incapable. Little people can do just about anything an average sized person can, just sometimes in a different way.”
The post went on to explain that terms such as little people, person of short stature, person with a form of dwarfism and dwarf are considered acceptable; yet, “Most people would rather be referred to by their name than by a label.”
Donna, a registered nurse at the Plastic Surgery Center of Nashville, and her husband, Paul, a professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, never expected to have such a passion for raising awareness for dwarfism. However, that all changed on April 7, 2010 when they welcomed their daughter, Ruthie.
Although Donna and Paul have no history of dwarfism on either side of their families, they learned on the day that Ruthie was born that she had achondroplasia – a type of dwarfism. “Although there are over 300 types of dwarfism, achondroplasia is the most common type making up 70 percent of all little people,” she explained. “Eighty percent of people with achondroplasia have average size parents, meaning it is a sporadic mutation. The chance of two average-sized parents having a child with achondroplasia is 1 in 25,000 births.”
The word achondroplasia means “without cartilage formation.” Cartilage is a tough but flexible tissue that makes up much of the skeleton during early development. In achondroplasia, the problem is not in forming cartilage but in converting it to bone in a process known as ossification.
All people with achondroplasia have short stature. The height of an adult male with achondroplasia is 131 centimeters or 4 feet, 4 inches and the height of an adult female with achondroplasia is 124 centimeters or 4 feet, 1 inch. Characteristic features of achondroplasia include an average-size trunk, short arms and legs, limited range of motion at the elbows and an enlarged head with a prominent forehead.
After Ruthie’s birth, the Russells were welcomed by the local chapter of Little People of America and continue to meet periodically with the group.
“(The group) was a wealth of knowledge for a mom trying to absorb any information she could get her hands on,” Donna told The Wilson Post. “It is a very fun group, to say the least. The last event we attended was in Chattanooga, where we visited the Chattanooga Choo Choo and the Chattanooga Aquarium.”
The Russells also journeyed to see the Egyptian pyramids, where they learned an interesting piece of history. In ancient Egypt, little people were very respected and held great status in the community.
“We even saw impressive tombs carved for them. It was fascinating,” Donna shared.
Donna said that the most important information she can share during Dwarfism Awareness month is that her daughter is just like any other child.
“It was a long and painful – at times – journey to this discovery. Ruthie is my little firecracker, my rock and truly my inspiration,” she said. “I have another chance in life to appreciate true happiness, love and acceptance of every precious person who walks this earth. Although we do receive stares – sometimes just those of curiosity, which we don’t mind, and sometimes the kind that follow with unwelcome comments – the world is kind.”
“I hope if anyone reading this article happens to meet an LP, they will not look away like they are invisible or gawk. I hope they will kindly say ‘Hi’ like they would to any other person,” she said. “I am so proud to be Ruthie’s mom. She has taught me so much more in these few years than I will ever be able to teach her.”
For more information, visit www.understandingdwarfism.com.
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Irvine, Calif., Dec. 5, 2013 Groundbreaking new findings by UC Irvine and German chemists about how cataracts form could be used to help prevent the world's leading cause of blindness, which currently affects nearly 20 million people worldwide.
"That's the dream, and this is a big step," said Rachel Martin, UC Irvine associate professor of chemistry and co-author of a paper featured on the December cover of the journal Structure. "Understanding the molecular mechanism of what goes wrong in the eye that leads to a cataract could lead to the development of better treatment options, including more sophisticated artificial lenses and drugs."
It has long been known that human eyes have a powerful ability to focus because of three kinds of crystallin proteins in their lenses, maintaining transparency via a delicate balance of both repelling and attracting light. Two types of crystallin are structural, but the third dubbed a "chaperone" keeps the others from clumping into cataracts if they're modified by genetic mutation, ultraviolet light or chemical damage.
The UC Irvine team painstakingly explored and identified the structures of the normal proteins and a genetic mutation known to cause cataracts in young children. They found that the chaperone proteins bind far more strongly to the mutated proteins in an effort to keep the lens clear. One major problem: Every human eye contains a finite number of the helpful proteins. Once they're used up, the researchers learned, weakened ones quickly begin to aggregate and form blinding cataracts.
Now that this mechanism has been mapped at the molecular level, the team is hopeful that organic chemists can create sight-saving treatments to prevent such aggregation.
While people with adequate medical care can have corrective surgery for cataracts, the World Health Organization has found that millions suffer major vision loss because they do not have access to laser surgery or other options. By 2019, the number of people older than 50 with impaired sight is expected to grow even higher, particularly in China, India, Southeast Asia and Eastern Mediterranean nations.
|Contact: Janet Wilson|
University of California - Irvine
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A major figure in the precisionist movement, Charles Sheeler was born in 1883 in Philadelphia. He studied art from 1900 to 1906, first at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, then under William Merritt Chase at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Several trips to Europe between 1904 and 1909 heightened Sheeler’s awareness of European modernism, influencing his developing style. His artistic transformation occurred when he traveled to Italy and France in 1908-09. Upon his return to Philadelphia, Sheeler discarded the Chase-inspired spontaneous, bravura brushstrokes and began employing an underlying geometric structure reminiscent of early Italian Renaissance Masters he had seen, such as Piero della Francesca and Giotto, and of French modernists such as Cézanne, Braque, and Picasso. With the intent to establish order and permanence in his work, Sheeler smoothed his brushstroke, eliminating evidence of gesture and of execution. This approach was reinforced by his frequent visits to New York and his participation in the Armory Show (1913), the Forum Exhibition (1916), and the Society of Independent Artist’s Exhibition (1917), events through which he came in contact with modernists such as Marcel Duchamp, who played an important role in Sheeler’s understanding of the essential structure of forms.
In 1912, Sheeler had also ventured into commercial photography, focusing on architectural subjects and eventually becoming acquainted with New York avant-garde artists and collectors. His pioneering photographs, using sharp-focus effects, were also instrumental in transforming his paintings into detailed and smooth-surfaced images that reject his earlier loosely brushed style.
After Sheeler moved to New York in 1919, he dedicated himself to clarity and order, imposing these ideas on a subject that was rapidly becoming an American icon: the skyscraper. Like the Pennsylvania barn, a theme he had explored in 1917 and 1918, the skyscraper was an architectural subject through which the artist could capture the streamlined grandeur of New York. The geometry of the buildings lent itself ideally to the creation of abstract designs on canvas.
As he developed his signature precisionist style, Sheeler’s simplified cubist compositions became more detailed, photograph-like images with sharp edges, dramatic light and shadow, and striking perspectives. A solo exhibition at a New York gallery in 1922 defined Sheeler as a central proponent of Precisionism. Commissions to photograph the Ford Motor Company’s plant at River Rouge, Michigan (1927-28), brought him international acclaim, as he presented a pristine view of American industry. During the 1930s, Sheeler focused his attention on painting, further developing a style based on strong geometric order for subjects of American industrial life. A retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in 1939 was testimony to his growing success and critical acclaim. Sheeler continued to live and work in New York until his death in 1965.
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- Historic Sites
THE DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION OF FLOYD COLLINS
October 1976 | Volume 27, Issue 6
The experts continued their own investigations. They sprayed banana oil into the downdraft of the cave and then tried to smell it rising from crevices that might lead to the original passage. They hung two darning needles to the depth of their rescue shaft and then crawled as far as they could into the original passage with a powerful electromagnet. They calculated the angle and direction in which the needles strayed from the perpendicular and, in this way, verified the progress of their digging. On Friday the thirteenth they discovered they’d been wrong; the shaft was now deep enough but too far to one side. The radio-amplified light bulb and the electric darning needles hadn’t worked. They sent a man named Ed Brenner, a miner from Cincinnati, into the passage to make a noise to give them a clue. While they listened to him he heard “somebody in a groan … like you hear a man that’s got hurt in a hospital. …” They uncovered Floyd the next day. Dr. Hazlitt said he’d been dead five days. Brenner said his “face was sharp and pointed; he had jaws like a bulldog. A sharp nose, a high forehead. His eyes were sunk and his mouth was open. His hair was black. I took his head in my hands and … washed his face.” The adjutant general fainted when he heard the news.
They left Floyd where he was. The people in Cave City figured there’d been sixty thousand tourists. Mr. Carmichael said operations had only cost twenty-five thousand dollars.
Each of the local papers that had carried Floyd’s story used his predicament as an occasion to tell moral tales. The Louisville Post had told a story about “Collins … trapped in a … grave more horrible than the weirdest imaginings of master fictionalists. Nature is moving against … human beings … like a master chess player. … It has been a desperate struggle for cheap fame … if Collins dies, a monument should be erected on the mossy wall of the cave … bearing the inscription: ‘A brave man died here … a martyr to the lust for glory.’” The Courier published an allegory in which Floyd was the protagonist of “a tragedy in several acts,” written by “Fate the master playwright,” whose subject was “the struggle between man and … Nature, unexorable,” and whose dramatic effect was heightened by “Ignorance … Jealousy … and Greed.”
During the first week of Floyd’s imprisonment the papers jointly elaborated a story in which Floyd was the victim, Nature was the deadly antagonist, Johnny Gerald was a traitor, and the engineers and National Guard were heroes in a battle. However, during the second week the Herald came out with its wildly paradoxical story, which could be understood only by an audience already critical of its own surroundings. The Herald was joined by three other newspapers in three other major cities of the region, but it was not joined by the Courier . The Courier refused to elaborate this new parable because the story denied the salvation offered by an archetypal young hero from the Courier ’s own staff. The Courier ’s version of events resembled a pleasant fairy tale in which a worthy man was helped by a young prince who, in turn, was aided by wise men and warriors, while the Herald ’s, version sounded like a paranoid delusion.
The adjutant general who fainted when he heard Floyd was dead blamed the story of the hoax on a Chicago A.P. man who wanted to sell papers more than tell the truth. The truth was that the people of the area had been exchanging gossip and spreading rumors long before either the adjutant general or the reporter had come near them. Sons accused fathers; neighbors blamed neighbors. They cheated and threatened one another; they envied and beat one another. They went into business.
The people who bought the papers in Louisville, Nashville, Cincinnati, and Chicago believed the rumors and the accusations because they had heard of such things before in their own cities. They had read many stories of betrayal and had learned much about suspicion. During the First War they had experienced government intervention and regulation of their food, their labor, and their thought that were more harsh than even their grandparents had experienced during the Civil War. They had suffered an inflationary increase in the wholesale price index of 108 points between 1914 and 1918 and a severe depression in 1921.
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What’s up with this distortion? This picture from the Cassini spacecraft shows some kind of twist happening in the F ring of Saturn. Scientists in fact have seen other strange shapes in this delicate ring, indicating that something is disturbing it from time to time.
“Saturn’s F ring often appears to do things other rings don’t. In this Cassini spacecraft image, a strand of ring appears to separate from the core of the ring as if pulled apart by mysterious forces. Some ring scientists believe that this feature may be due to repeated collisions between the F ring and a single small object,” NASA stated this month.
There’s a debate in the scientific community about where the rings arose in the first place. “It’s been going back and forth for ages and it still goes back and forth. Are they old, or have they been there a long period of time? Are they new? I don’t know what to think, to be quite honest. I’m not being wishy-washy, I just don’t know what to think anymore,” Kevin Grazier, a planetary scientist with the Cassini mission for over 15 years, told Universe Today in December.
While this picture dates from October, you can check out Cassini images as they come in to NASA’s raw image database. Even in unprocessed form, the planet and its rings look beautiful — as you can clearly see in samples below.
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Hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) is an uncommon condition characterized by frequent, persistent, and severe vomiting and nausea during pregnancy. As a result, you may be unable to take in a sufficient amount of food and fluids. It can cause a weight loss of more than 5% of your pre-pregnancy body weight. This can also cause dehydration and vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Treatment may require hospitalization.
HG is a more severe form of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (NVP), also called
. Morning sickness affects anywhere between 50% to 90% of pregnant women. HG is estimated to occur in 0.5%-2% of pregnancies.
There are many theories about the causes of HG, but none have been confirmed. HG is a complex disease that is likely caused by many factors. Some of these include:
The Brain May Be Cause of Nausea
Copyright © Nucleus Medical Media, Inc.
Some researchers have found that the following factors increase your chance of developing HG. If you have any of these risk factors, tell your doctor:
The following list of symptoms are general and may be caused by other, less serious health conditions. However, if you experience any one of them, call your physician to discuss your condition. Symptoms may include:
Your doctor will ask about your symptoms and medical history. A physical exam will be done. Tests may include the following:
Treating HG symptoms early in pregnancy can make you less sick in the long run and can decrease recovery time. Because HG is caused by many factors that vary between women, it is difficult to find a treatment that works for everyone. Talk with your doctor about the best treatment plan for you. Treatment options include the following:
Frequent small meals, bland or dry foods, high-protein choices.
Reducing nausea, and thus allowing eating and drinking, will hasten recovery. Due to the risk of stating that a drug is safe for use during pregnancy, very few pharmaceutical manufacturers will say that their drugs are intended for a pregnancy condition like HG (examples:
). However, doctors often recommend that women with HG take certain anti-nausea medicines, balancing the potential benefits and risks. Talk to your doctor about the right medicines for you.
A common and safe remedy is to take supplemental vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), to a maximum of 100 mg/day. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that first-line treatment of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy should start with pyridoxine with or without doxylamine. Pyridoxine has been found to be effective in significantly reducing severe vomiting.
In urgent visit situations, HG can be managed by IV fluids and vitamins. This can sometimes be done without hospitalization. Very rarely, some people require IV fluids throughout the entire pregnancy.
If you are unable to tolerate food by mouth, you may need to receive nutrition by vein. This is called parenteral nutrition. A special kind of catheter is placed in a large vein and liquid nutrition is given. This can sometimes be done without hospitalization.
may help to reduce nausea. Acupressure is when pressure is applied to
In extreme cases, induced abortion may be considered.
If you are diagnosed with HG, follow your doctor's
Many of the conditions that lead to HG are not preventable. It is unknown why some women without those conditions develop HG. You can try to reduce your nausea during pregnancy by:
The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologistshttp://www.acog.org/
Hyperemesis Education and Research Foundationhttp://www.helpher.org/
National Organization for Rare Diseaseshttp://www.rarediseases.org/
The Canadian Women's Health Networkhttp://www.cwhn.ca/indexeng.html/
The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC)http://www.sogc.org/index_e.asp/
ACOG issues guidance on the treatment of morning sickness during pregnancy. American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology website. Available at:
. Accessed August 20, 2011.
Acupuncture. EBSCO Natural and Alternative Treatments website. Available at:
. Updated January 2009. Accessed January 19, 2009.
Beers MH, Berkow R, eds.
The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy
. 17th ed. Whitehouse Station, NJ: Merck Research Laboratories; 1999.
Burrow GN, Duffy TP, eds.
Medical Complications During Pregnancy
5th ed. Philadelphia, PA: WB Saunders Company; 1999.
Cunningham FG, Gilstrap LC, Gant NF, Hauth JC, Leveno KJ, Wenstrom KD, eds.
21st ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; 2001.
Ferri, Fred, ed. Ferri’s Clinical Advisor 2010. 1st ed. Philadelphia: Mosby Elsevier, 2009.
Gabbe SG, Niebyl JR, Simpson JL.
Obstetrics: Normal and Problem Pregnancies
. 5th ed. United Kingdom: Churchill Livingstone; 2007.
Gastroenterology Clinics of North America
. Philadelphia, PA: WB Saunders.
Hyperemesis Education and Research Foundation website. Available at:
Kasper DL, Braunwald E, Fauci AS, Hauser SL, Longo DL, Jameson JL, eds.
Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine
. 16th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc; 2005.
Mahan LK, Escott-Stump S, eds.
Krause’s Food, Nutrition, and Diet Therapy
. 10th ed. Philadelphia, PA: WB Saunders Company; 2000.
Marx J, et al.
Rosen's Emergency Medicine.
7th ed. St. Louis, MO: Mosby, Inc., 2009.
National Organization for Rare Diseases website. Available at:
Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. EBSCO DynaMed website. Available at:
. Updated October 2010. Accessed October 25, 2010.
Quinlan JD, Hill DA. Nausea and vomiting of pregnancy.
Am Fam Physician
2003;68:121-128. American Family Physician website. Available at:
. Accessed August 12, 2005.
Sadock BJ, Sadock VA, eds.
Kaplan and Sadock’s Synopsis of Psychiatry: Behavioral Sciences/Clinical Psychiatry
9th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins; 2003.
Wise MG, Rundell JR, eds.
The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry: Psychiatry in the Medically Ill
2nd ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.; 2002.
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By plotting the locations of satellite-marked birds throughout the year, researchers gained a better understanding of the movements and habitat preferences of mallards at both continental and regional levels. PHOTO: Gang Wang, DU
While fall migration is of greatest interest to hunters, waterfowl habitat conditions during spring migration may be more important to duck populations. The observation of satellite-marked birds during our study revealed that mallard migration strategies are more flexible in spring than in fall. The average length of spring migration varied by year, ranging from 18 days to 48 days, with an average stopover time of about 12 days while en route. More than 75 percent of satellite-marked mallards from Arkansas either nested in the Prairie Pothole Region or migrated through the region en route to their eventual nesting destination.
This research has helped to fill in missing pieces of the puzzle of mallard movements and how the birds use habitat, including newly restored habitats. Since 1990, the NRCS has worked with over 11,000 private landowners to protect more than 2.6 million acres of wildlife habitat through the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP)
. The precision of GPS satellite telemetry units has enabled University of Missouri researchers to confirm that mallards use WRP wetlands frequently during migration and winter. Researchers have also documented that areas with large wetland complexes—especially those along the Mississippi and Missouri river corridors—are used more frequently than are more isolated wetlands. On a daily basis, local movements of satellite-marked mallards averaged only about two miles, and most were less than eight miles. For hunters, this would suggest that complexes of quality habitat will offer better hunting than fragmented habitat. For waterfowl managers, it suggests that restoring wetlands in close proximity to one another will likely be of greater benefit to waterfowl than spreading out wetlands across the landscape.
An unexpected benefit of this partnership was that it enabled waterfowl hunters to access the same information available to waterfowl biologists. The AGFC partnered with the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University of Arkansas to develop a website displaying locations of marked birds. While no longer online, this website provided a unique opportunity for the public to track the mallard migration as it unfolded across this continent. Tracking individual birds offers a fascinating look at the variation in duck behavior and the birds' habitat preferences. As hunters and scientists watched the movements of mallards across the landscape in nearly real time, together they could begin answering questions about duck movements and habitat selection that could improve hunting prospects and bolster future conservation efforts.
Luke Naylor is waterfowl program coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Dr. Andrew Raedeke is a resource scientist with the Missouri Department of Conservation.
Mallard Tracking Facts
- The average distance traveled by satellite-marked mallards during spring migration was more than 730 miles. The average distance traveled by individual birds during fall migration was almost 875 miles.
- One of the first mallards (a drake) ever marked with a GPS satellite transmitter in Arkansas flew more than 500 miles during spring migration, from Minnesota to Saskatchewan, in only four days.
- This same bird made a remarkable one-day flight in early fall from Saskatchewan to south-central Iowa—a distance of more than 900 miles!
- Although fall migration commonly is thought of as a one-way trip, several mallards in the tracking study made south-to-north movements during fall and winter.
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Glossary of Terms
Atrioventricular (AV) Node
Also known as the Aschoff-Tawara node, the AV node is a group of specialized cardiac muscle fibers located at the center of the heart, in the floor of the right atrium, between the atria and ventricles. The AV Node takes the signal from the Sinoatrial (SA) Node, slows the signal down and regulates it, and then sends the electrical impulses from the atria to the ventricles (bundle of His). The AV node regulates the signals to the ventricles to prevent rapid conduction (atrial fibrillation), as well as making sure that the atria are empty and closed before stimulating the ventricles.
Related terms: Atrial Fibrillation, SA Node, Natural Pacemaker
Share this page:
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What Is The Difference Between Freezing, Evaporation, And Condensation?
Freezing is when a liquid turns into a solid.evaporation is when a liquid heats into a gas,and condensation is when marine vapor forms a cloud.
Freezing is the changing of a liquid into a solid, evaporation is the changing of a gooey into a gas, and condensation is the changing of a gas into a liquid.
Who Invented Nylon?
In the past, people could only use stuff made from natural substances to make clothes, bedclothes and other household cloths. Cotton, flax, hemp, silk and wool be the main raw materials. Just over a hundred years ago, chemistry changed all that and science worked out ways to brand name artificial fibres...
What does lobular mingy?
The word lobular is an adjective used for something that is in the shape of lobe. Lobe is a kind of shape to be exact projected in a round way and usually it is a pendulous structure. So anything in the shape of a pendulous structure can be said to be...
What Is A Solutions?
The right question is: What are the solutions? Solution is a homogeneous mixture composed of two or more substances. In such a mixture, a solute is dissolved in another substance, known as a solvent. A adjectives example is a solid, such as salt or sugar, dissolved in water, a juice. Gases...
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When most people think of ferns, they think of feathery, airy fronds, but not all ferns actually look like this. The bird’s nest fern is an example of a fern that defies our preconceived ideas of what a fern should look like. Even better is the fact that a bird’s nest fern plant makes an excellent low light houseplant.
About the Bird’s Nest Fern Plant
The bird’s nest fern plant gets its name from the fact that the center of the plant resembles a bird’s nest. It is also occasionally called a crow’s nest fern. Bird’s nest ferns (Asplenium nidus) are identified by their flat, wavy or crinkly fronds. Their appearance can bring to mind a seaweed plant growing on dry land.
It is an epiphytic fern, which means in the wild it typically grows on other things, like tree trunks or buildings. When you buy it as a houseplant, it will be planted in a container, but it can be affixed to planks and hung on a wall much like staghorn ferns are.
How to Grow Bird’s Nest Fern
Bird’s nest ferns grow best in medium to low indirect light. These ferns are often grown for their crinkly leaves and the light they receive will affect how crinkled the leaves are. A bird’s nest fern that receives more light, for example, will have more crinkled leaves, while one that receives less light will have flatter leaves. But keep in mind that too much light or direct light will cause the fronds on bird’s nest fern to yellow and die.
Care for a Bird’s Nest Fern
In addition to light, another important aspect of bird’s nest fern care is its watering. Under ideal circumstances, all ferns would like to have consistently moist, but not wet, soil. However, part of the reason that bird’s nest fern makes an ideal houseplant is that it will tolerate soil that dries out from time to time.
Furthermore, this plant does not require the same level of humidity that many other kinds of ferns need, making the care for a bird’s nest fern far more forgiving to the occasionally forgetful houseplant owner than other ferns.
Fertilizer should only be given to the plant two to three times a year. Even then, the fertilizer should only be applied at half strength and should only be given during the spring and summer months. Too much fertilizer will cause deformed leaves with brown or yellow spots or edges.
Now that you know more about how to grow bird’s nest fern and how easy these plants are to grow, you should try giving them a place in your home. They make a wonderful and green addition to the less brightly lit rooms in your home.
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The subjects that are reasonably accessible after Calculus and Linear Algebra are:
- Real Analysis.
- Abstract Algebra.
- Elementary Number Theory.
- Elementary Set Theory.
- Elementary Logic.
- Combinatorics and Discrete Mathematics.
- Differential Equations.
Of these, 1-3 and 6 are "popular", so you want to discard them. 8 is popular among "users" of mathematics (engineers, for example).
While Elementary Set Theory and Elementary Logic will probably help with mathematics in general, they are unlikely to give you any particular insight into either calculus or linear algebra. The best possible insight into calculus will be given by Real Analysis; the best possible insight into Linear Algebra will be given by Abstract Algebra. Elementary Number Theory is the source from which many other areas of mathematics sprung, but it will give you no insight into either linear algebra or into calculus (from Number Theory and Real Analysis you can move on to Complex Analysis and Analytic Number Theory, which will likely be useful; from Number Theory you can also move to abstract algebra and from there to Algebraic Number Theory, which would also shed light on the development of a lot of Algebra).
Combinatorics and discrete math are quite fun and interesting, but again there is very little connection with calculus or with linear algebra. Likewise with Geometry.
Topology is a reach, without some real analysis "in the bag" to fall back on, or a lot more experience with abstraction than provided by one year of Linear Algebra.
It's not that real analysis and linear algebra are "independent of other subjects", it's that the gateways from linear algebra and real analysis to those "other subjects" that have intimate connections with them are precisely the subject that you want to avoid and discard because they are "popular." While "the road less traveled" may sound romantic, you may want to avail yourself of 100+ years of experience of mathematicians who have come up with, if not "royal roads", then at least well-traveled roads that help get you to your destination.
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Compiled by Julie Greathouse (May 1997)
• Time Line
Kurt Lewin is universally recognized as the founder of modern social psychology. He pioneered the use of theory, using experimentation to test hypothesis. He placed an everlasting significance on an entire discipline--group dynamics and action research.
Lewin was born in the village of Moglino in the Prussian province of Posen in 1890. He completed his requirements for a Ph.D. in 1914, at the outset of WWI. Two years later, in 1916, his degree from the University of Berlin was conferred. Lewin immigrated to the United States in 1933, where he became a citizen in 1940.
While at the University of Berlin, Lewin "found many of the department's courses in the grand tradition of Wundtian psychology irrelevant and dull" (Hothersall, 1995, p.239). His thinking was changing to emphasize social psychological problems. He is well known for his term "life space" and work on group dynamics, as well as t-groups.
Lewin's commitment to applying psychology to the problems of society led to the development of the M.I.T. Research Center for Group Dynamics. "He wanted to reach beyond the mere description of group life and to investigate the conditions and forces which bring about change or resist it" (Marrow, 1969, p.178).
Lewin believed in the field approach. For change to take place, the total situation has to be taken into account. If isolated facts are used, a misrepresented picture could develop.
Lewin authored over 80 articles and eight books on a wide range of issues in psychology. Although no prestigious university offered him an appointment, and the American Psychological Association never selected him for any assignment or appointed him to any committee of any significance, his everlasting presence has left him in the ranks of Sigmund Freud and B.F. Skinner.
"The creation of an empirically verifiable theory, Lewin knew, was the essence of science; research, therefore, had to be guided by the need to develop an integrated concept of the processes of group life" (Marrow, 1969, p.183). With this in mind, Lewin established the Research Center on Group Dynamics at Massachusetts's Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). The following six major program areas were developed...
(1) Group productivity: why was it that groups are so ineffective in getting things done? (2) Communication: how influence is spread throughout a group. (3) Social perception: how a person's group affected the way they perceived social events. (4) Intergroup relations. (5) Group membership: how individuals adjust to these conditions. (6) training leaders: improving the functioning of groups (T-groups).
"The chief methodological approach would be that of developing actual group experiments of change, to be carried on in the laboratory or in the field" (Marrow, 1969, p.179). Group life was to be viewed in its totality, not on an individual basis. Lewin vowed that C.C.I. would not just find working methods, but would not quit until these methods were put into action. The group dynamic studies should be carried out in real life situations, concentrating on fighting prejudice. Going along with these, Lewin and his colleagues established three major research areas of priority (Marrow, p.192):
(1) "The conditions which improve the effectiveness of community leaders who are attempting to better intergroup relations,"
(2) "The effect of the conditions under which contact between persons from different groups takes place."
(3) "The influences which are most effective in producing in minority-group members and increased sense of belongingness, and improved personal adjustment, and better relations with individuals of other groups".
Lewin's group dynamics has been utilized in such areas as educational facilities, industrial settings, and communities. Great improvements have been made in these areas of interest throughout the twentieth century. Examples of Lewin's Theory
(1) Gang Behavior: Religious services had been disturbed on Yom Kippur by a gang of Italian Catholics. Lewin assembled a group of workers comprised of Catholics, Jews, Negroes, and Protestants. The groups first action was to get the four young men who were arrested for the crime put into the custody of local priests and the Catholic Big Brothers. Next, they involved as many community members as possible to make improvements more likely. It was decided that the act was not one of anti-Semitism, but one of general hostility. Likewise, it was not a problem that could be solved by sending the men to jail. The solution was to eliminate the frustrations of community life by establishing better housing, enhancing transportation, and building recreational facilities. These would allow members of different backgrounds and groups to integrate.
Plans were put into motion to get the projects completed. The members of the gang kept in contact, and within a year, conditions had improved greatly. There seemed to be no change in attitude toward the Negroes and Jews, but aggression towards them had ceased.
(2) Law and Social Change: Lewin believed that prejudice caused discrimination, not resulted from it, and altering that behavior could change attitudes. "He held that if universities were required by law to admit students on merit and not on the basis of race or religion, the practice would bring new and more favorable attitudes" (Marrow, 1969, p.204). If the support of discrimination is taken away, the base will be weakened. Discrimination could be overcome by enforcing legislation with community education. Using this, the Medical School of Columbia University was sued for their quota on how many Jews were permitted to enroll. The case was settled out of court, which led to the revision of quotas in leading colleges and universities throughout the United States.
(3) Integration of Negro Sales Personnel: Facts were compiled about department stores not hiring Negro personnel because the customers may object to it. Customers were interviewed who had dealt with Negro clerks, those who had dealt with white clerks, and white persons on the street. Those twelve who responded in a prejudiced manor were asked if they would continue to shop at that particular store with Negro sales people. They said no, but previously five of them had been observed shopping at a counter with a Negro sales person. Over sixty percent of the others surveyed said they would still shop at the department store.
It was concluded that even if a customer is prejudiced, it did not influence where they shopped, or who they purchased goods from--a white or Negro clerk. Therefore, fear of sales declining was not supported by the evidence.
Time Line of Lewin's Life
1890 Born in Moglino, Prussian province of Posen
1914 Enters Army for four years during WWI
1916 Completed Ph.D., University of Berlin
1917 Married Maria Landsberg
1919 Daughter, Agnes, born
1921 Privatdozent, University of Berlin
1922 Son, Fritz, born
1924 Student Bluma Zeigarnik completes study on recall of uncompleted tasks
1927 Promoted to Ausserordentlicher Professor
1929 Remarried Gertrud Weiss
1931 Daughter, Miriam, born
1932 Visiting Professor, Stanford University
1933 Son, Daniel, born
1933 Fled Germany to United States
1933 Faculty, Cornell University
1935 Published "A Dynamic Theory of Personality"
1935 Professor, University of Iowa
1936 Published "Principles of Topological Psychology"
1940 Becomes American citizen
1942 President of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues
1944 Organized Research Center For Group Dynamics,M.I.T.
1944 Established Commission on Community Interrelations (C.C.I.)
1944 Mother killed in Nazi Extermination camp
1946 Published Psychological Problems in Jewish Education
1946 Published "Frontiers in Group Dynamics"
1947 Created National Laboratories Training
Hothersall, David. (1995). History of Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc. pp. 239-253.
Marrow, Alfred F. (1969). The Practical Theorist: The Life and Work of Kurt Lewin. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
Schultz, Duane P., and Sydney Ellen Schultz. (1994). Psychology and Work Today. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. pp. 204.
T-Group Theory and Laboratory Method. (1964). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Worchel, Stephen, and Wayne Shebilske. (1992). Psychology: Principles and Applications. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. pp. 604.
[History Home Page] [Psychology Department Home Page]
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Modern telecoms and internet technologies have bred a huge amount of jargon that is easily understood only by industry aficionados. Broadband is, alas, only adding to the confusion. Here we attempt to shed some light on the technology and its language:
Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL): The arcane telecoms lingo behind this technology makes it sound incredibly boring, but most major telecom operators have it and it is clever, as it enables the ordinary copper wire carrying the telephone signal to move information in and out up to 10, 20, 30 and 40 times faster than conventional links.
Always-on, a godsend that means a broadband internet connection is permanently open, eliminating the need to dial up every time you want to send emails or browse the web. Like a pub that's open 24/7.
Bandwidth determines how much information, usually measured in bits-per-second, can be sent over a communications link, whether a telephone line, cable, wireless, private circuit or satellite. The faster the modem, the more information can be transmitted. High bandwidth is good to have.
Broadband encompasses a range of technologies, including cable modems, ADSL and wireless data and it opens networks to provide virtually unlimited bandwidths capable of carrying the most complex multimedia content at high speed. If telcos are to be believed, it is an all-singing, all-dancing cabaret show of a technology that should signal an end to the world wide wait, the nick-name for the world wide web when its performing slower than a three-legged tortoise.
Broadband cable network is an alternative to ADSL and provides an "always on" unmetered and direct connection to the internet at broadband speeds over a cable modem linked to a fibre optic cable. Consumers who have access to this technology ought to be well aware of that fact - the pavement outside their premises will have been dug up to lay it.
Dial-up access is the (extremely frustrating) way most people connect to the internet over the phone line. Best speeds through dial-up are usually 56k, which means they are nearly 10 times slower than the slowest speed (512 kb/s) being offered through broadband services. Like an unwelcome guest, you'll be glad when it's gone.
Internet Service Provider (ISP): companies that give you access to the web and usually provide a range of services such as website design, web hosting and technical support by telephone. If it? a poor company, ringing their help line will let you listen to the most boring pop songs of the 1980s at a huge cost. Occasionally you may get to talk to someone and even get some help.
Kilobit/byte means about 1,000 bits or bytes and is usually measured in seconds kb/s to show the throughput and speed of information transfer. Usually used in association with modem speeds. Kilobit has a big brother, Megabit/byte, who is much more powerful, because he is worth a million bits. A cable modem can process an impressive two million bits a second.
Local Loop Unbundling (LLU): Do we really have to explain this one? OK, it's the process where an incumbent telecoms operator not a million miles from BT has had to make its local network available to other companies so they can provide rival services. The aim is to increase competition for the benefit of consumers. BT was ordered by Oftel, the regulator, to get a move on with LLU, because it was suspected of dragging its feet. Can't think why.
Streaming is the broadcast of sound and video over the internet in real time and is basically film, TV and radio on the web. A good technology for business applications such as training, where firms can access training material online.
Web surfing allows broadband users to hurtle around the web web pages arrive almost instantly and content is much richer. If you've got a slow modem (56K or below) you'll be more used to web crawling, where every page takes an age to download.
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| 0.945651 | 833 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Colonies are digitate clumps, sometimes forming large stands. Branches are not tapered and divide irregularly. All corallites are rounded, with thick walls. Axial and incipient axial corallites are large and dome-shaped. Radial corallites are short and appressed.
Cream or yellow.
Reef slopes and lagoons.
Common on the Chesterfield Reefs and Norfolk Island, rare elsewhere.
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Some curved surfaces may be defined as generated by straight lines which are thought of as moving and changing its direction continuously. Suppose that the line cuts a fixed curve , not in the same plane with straight line.
If is allowed to move so that it always remains parallel to its first position and always intersects the fixed curve , it will generate a curved surface, called cylindrical surface.
A cylinder is a solid figure generated by a straight line moving to its original position, while its end describes a closed figure in a plane. It is thus a limiting case of a prism whole ends would be circles, ellipse and parabola etc.
If the generating line is perpendicular to the base, then the cylinder is known as the right cylinder, otherwise oblique.
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Public health experts know the secret to effective, proactive disease surveillance is getting clues of an impending flu or other outbreak before it can spread far and wide.
To that end, their official surveillance tools have improved dramatically in recent years, but to gain an additional edge, they also are looking to the Internet, and social media in particular, as a possible warning system from the front lines.
“Public health agencies are limited by resources and funding. We can’t be everywhere, every time,” said Dr. Charles Chiu, an infectious disease expert at University of California, San Francisco. “Social media provides an excellent means of monitoring outbreaks before they spread. You could track the emergence of an epidemic before you even know the cause of it.”
Already, studies have shown that Google Flu Trends -- a project developed to monitor disease activity based on queries from Google users for subjects such as “muscle aches” and “thermometer” -- is able to produce results similar to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s, but a week or more earlier. The CDC surveys national flu activity based on reports from doctors, hospitals and laboratory results.
This month, a Bay Area company began promoting in San Francisco a new website -- FluNearYou.org -- that encourages users to check in every week and report whether they’re sick with flu-like symptoms.
Meanwhile, infectious disease experts increasingly are looking at Twitter to identify the earliest stages of cholera and dengue fever outbreaks in developing countries where public health resources for surveillance are extremely limited, but almost everyone has a cell phone and Internet access.
“I look at Google Flu Trends and see a blip and say, ‘Hmm, I wonder what’s happening there?’ “ said Lynnette Brammer, an epidemiologist in the influenza division at the CDC.
“The hope is that these systems might give us a little bit of an edge, time-wise, over virologic surveillance,” Brammer said. “You’re constantly taking clues from different pieces and trying to put them together. The more pieces you have, the more you can come up with a right answer.”
Disease surveillance has always been a critical tool in protecting public health. Health experts can identify outbreaks of contagious illnesses and, in turn, take measures to prevent illness in those who aren’t sick and gather resources to treat those who are.
For something widespread and highly infectious like influenza, it’s impossible to report and collect every case, as public health departments do for whooping cough, measles, meningitis and many of the most serious diseases. So public health officials rely on complex surveillance mechanisms to estimate the spread and severity of disease.
Surveillance tools have improved in recent years -- mostly because of electronic reporting, faster, more accurate lab tests and a better understanding of infectious disease patterns -- but they still often lag just behind an outbreak.
When the swine flu hit in 2009, for example, speedy surveillance systems allowed federal and state public health officials to identify the first case in the country and spread word to the public within a few weeks to take precautionary measures. Still, by the time that first case was found, the new flu virus already had spread.
Tracking social media or other online sources before the swine flu outbreak might have alerted public health officials to an unusual spike in cases weeks before it reached epidemic levels, according to a 2011 study.
“The closer you can get to the person who’s actually experiencing an illness, the sooner you’re going to find out that something is going on,” said Dr. James Watt, chief of the division of communicable disease control in the California Public Health Department’s center for infectious diseases. “There’s a lot of potential in social media. I’m sure we’ll find new methods we can use to track flu.”
Several studies looking back at recent disease outbreaks have shown that social media and other Internet platforms were able to accurately track activity faster than traditional surveillance tools.
During a cholera outbreak in Haiti in 2010, references to “cholera” on Twitter reflected the actual number of cases in the community, and had public officials detected it, they could have tracked the disease activity, according to one study
Online surveillance tools are unlikely to ever replace traditional reporting, mostly because they are too vulnerable to error and can’t produce real numbers or facts, infectious disease experts say.
Google Flu Trends, for example, has proven to be a good tracker of influenza activity overall, but can show false positives. Not everyone who searches for flu symptoms is actually sick with the flu -- they could have a cold or any number of flu-like viruses. Or they may not be sick at all.
Websites that require self-reporting, such as the new FluNearYou site, may never provide an accurate sense of disease activity if users aren’t representative of the community as a whole.
For the moment, public health officials who use social media and other online surveillance are usually treating it more as a curiosity than anything else, they say.
“Google might get an earlier signal about influenza than us. The problem is so many of their early signals will be false signals,” said Dr. Roger Baxter, co-rector of Kaiser Permanente’s Vaccine Study Center.
But in the not-too-distant future, many infectious disease experts say, social media could be integrated with traditional surveillance tools to develop a faster, more detailed method of predicting and identifying outbreaks.
“The ultimate goal would be to look for trends with social media and then get hard data to validate those trends,” Chiu said. “It’s very similar to monitoring for terrorist activity. What you’re looking for are spikes of data that will tell you where to pay attention.”
(Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: eallday(at)sfchronicle.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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Every year, approximately 1.5 million high school students nationwide experience physical abuse from a dating partner. It is also known that 3 in 4 parents have never talked to their children about domestic violence. In light of these alarming facts, every year during the month of February advocates join efforts to raise awareness about dating violence, highlight promising practices, and encourage communities to get involved.
There are many resources available to provide information and support to victims and assist service providers and communities to decrease the prevalence of dating violence among young people. Anyone can make this happen by raising awareness about the issue, saying something about abuse when you see it and organizing your community to make a difference. Take Action!
Teen dating violence (TDV) is defined as a pattern of abuse or threat of abuse against teenaged dating partners, occuring in different forms, including verbal, emotional, physical, sexual and digital. TDV occurs across diverse groups and cultures.
Although the dynamics of TDV are similar to adult domestic violence, the forms and experience of TDV, as well as the challenges in seeking and providing services, make the problem of TDV unique.
The National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and VAWnet have developed an Online Special Collection: Preventing and Responding to Teen Dating Violence. Recently updated, this Special Collection emphasizes collaborative and multilevel approaches to the prevention of and response to teen dating violence. This year's updates include additional resources for teachers and school-based professionals and a new section to support the efforts of pregnancy prevention advocates and adolescent sexual health practitioners in addressing adolescent relationship abuse.
For the past ten years, Break the Cycle and the Love Is Not Abuse Campaign have been hosting It’s Time To Talk Day. This awareness campaign aims to generate conversations about healthy relationships and prevent teen dating violence and abuse. This year, the NO MORE campaign developed a toolkit titled “How to Start a Conversation: Talking About Dating and Healthy Relationships Step-by-Step”.
Because starting a conversation with teens can be daunting, the toolkit provides parents with an easy to follow guide complete with sample open-ended questions to start a conversation about teen dating violence.
The Love is Not Abuse iPhone app is an educational resource for parents that demonstrates the dangers of digital dating abuse and provides much needed information on the growing problem of teen dating violence and abuse.
Circle of 6 app Circle of 6 is an iPhone app for college-aged students and their friends to stay close, stay safe, and prevent violence before it happens. The design is simple. It takes two touches to get help and they use icons to represent actions, so that no one can tell what you're up to if they see your phone. The design ensures safety, speed and privacy.
One Love Foundation app The One Love Foundation app helps the user determine if a relationship is unsafe and helps to create the best action plan by weighing an individual’s unique characteristics and values. In partnership with LoveisRespect.org, the app provides access to trained advocate support 24/7 through an embedded live chat function. This app is free and can be used anonymously on smart phones and other electronic devices.
The National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV) is sponsoring a series of events and opportunities for engagement throughout the month of February for Teen Dating Violence Awareness & Prevention Month 2014. Click here to view our calendar of events.
There are many organizations that provide direct services to young people who experience dating violence, as well as information to adults who are concerned about young people. National initiatives and campaigns are also in place to provide training, technical assistance, public awareness, and community programming focused on engaging youth, adults, and community members to address dating violence. For a list of key national organizations, click here.
National Dating Abuse Helpline This hotline provides 24-hour national web-based and telephone resources to help teens experiencing dating abuse. Young people (as well as concerned friends, parents, teachers, clergy, law enforcement and service providers) anywhere in the country can call toll free, 1-866-331-9474, text “loveis” to 22522, or log on to the interactive website, loveisrespect.org, and receive immediate, confidential assistance.
Break the Cycle is a national nonprofit organization that provides preventive dating and domestic violence education and outreach to teens and young adults.
Love is Not Abuse Beginning in 2012, Break the Cycle is operating the Love is Not Abuse campaign and grassroots coalition of advocates. The campaign includes comprehensive resources for parents, a digital abuse curriculum and tips for engaging men and boys.
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| 0.93525 | 935 | 3.375 | 3 |
Definitions for venerateˈvɛn əˌreɪt
This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word venerate
reverence, fear, revere, venerate(verb)
regard with feelings of respect and reverence; consider hallowed or exalted or be in awe of
"Fear God as your father"; "We venerate genius"
To treat with great respect and deference.
To revere or hold in awe.
Origin: From venerātus, perfect passive participle of veneror (worship, reverence).
to regard with reverential respect; to honor with mingled respect and awe; to reverence; to revere; as, we venerate parents and elders
Chambers 20th Century Dictionary
ven′e-rāt, v.t. to honour or reverence with religious awe: to reverence: to regard with the greatest respect.—adjs. Ven′erant (rare), Ven′erātive, reverent.—ns. Venerā′tion, the act of venerating: the state of being venerated: the highest degree of respect and reverence: respect mingled with reverence and awe: awe; Ven′erātor, one who venerates. [L. venerāri, -ātus.]
The numerical value of venerate in Chaldean Numerology is: 6
The numerical value of venerate in Pythagorean Numerology is: 9
Sample Sentences & Example Usage
As high as mind stands above nature, so high does the state stand above physical life. Man must therefore venerate the state as a secular deity. The march of God in the world, that is what the State is.
Images & Illustrations of venerate
Translations for venerate
From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary
Get even more translations for venerate »
Find a translation for the venerate definition in other languages:
Select another language:
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It’s not just your imagination. Providing the first-ever definitive proof, a team of scientists has shown that emerging infectious diseases such as HIV, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus and Ebola are indeed on the rise. The team – including University of Georgia professor John Gittleman and scientists from the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, the Institute of Zoology (London) and Columbia University – recently published their findings in leading scientific journal Nature.
By analyzing 335 incidents of previous disease emergence beginning in 1940, the study has determined that zoonoses – diseases that originate in animals – are the current and most important threat in causing new diseases to emerge. And most of these, including SARS and the Ebola virus, originated in wildlife. Antibiotic drug resistance has been cited as another culprit, leading to diseases such as extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB).
The scientists also found that more new diseases emerged in the 1980s than any other decade, “likely due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which led to a range of other new diseases in people,” said Mark Levy, deputy director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESN) at Columbia University.
But this team did not stop with determining the causes and origins of emerging infectious diseases; they took it a step further. To help predict and prevent future attacks, sophisticated computer models were used to help design a global map of emerging disease hotspots.
“This is a seminal moment in how we study emerging diseases,” said Gittleman, dean of the Odum School of Ecology, who developed the approach used in analyzing the global database. “Our study has shown that bringing ecological sciences and public health together can advance the field in a dramatic way.”
Over the last three decades, billions of research dollars were unsuccessfully spent to try to explain the seemingly random patterns of infectious disease emergence and spread. Finally, this research gives the first insight about where future outbreaks may occur – and next up is likely the Tropics, a region rich in wildlife species and under increasing human pressure.
“Emerging disease hotspots are more common in areas rich in wildlife, so protecting these regions from development may have added value in preventing future disease emergence,” said Kate Jones, Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of Zoology.
Emerging diseases have caused devastating effects internationally, with millions infected and billions spent. Some diseases have become pandemic, spreading from one continent to another causing massive mortality rates and affecting global economies and livelihoods.
“This work by John and his collaborators is absolutely first rate, as evidenced by its publication in one of the world’s foremost scientific journals,” said UGA Vice President for Research David Lee. “It brings novel insights and perspective to the fight against global diseases and illustrates the tremendous potential of this new field of disease ecology. It is vital that we better understand how environmental factors, including man’s activities, affect the spread of infectious diseases.”
But knowing where the next outbreak is and understanding the reason for its occurrence does not alleviate the entire issue.
“The problem is, most of our resources are focused on the richer countries in the North that can afford surveillance – this is basically a misallocation of global health funding and our priority should be to set up ‘smart surveillance’ measures in these hotspots, most of which are in developing countries,” said Peter Daszak, executive director of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine. “If we continue to ignore this important preventative measure then human populations will continue to be at risk from pandemic diseases.”
This study was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, an NSF/NIH Ecology of Infectious Diseases award from the John E. Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health and by three private foundations including The New York Community Trust, The Eppley Foundation and the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation.
With roots that date back to the 1950s, the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as a certification program. Founder Eugene P. Odum is recognized internationally as a pioneer of ecosystem ecology. The school is ranked eighth by U.S. News and World Report for its graduate program. The Odum School is the first standalone school of ecology in the world. For more information, see www.ecology.uga.edu.
Note to editors: High resolution maps are available. Please email email@example.com or call 706/542-6013 to obtain these images.
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Space is something that often fascinates kids (it fascinates me too!) and I definitely have some kids who love all things outer space! I love when I can take something my kids are interested in and give them fun learning activities that relate, like these fun counting on planet puzzles. We are getting some excellent practice in counting on for numbers to 50, while learning the names of the planets too!
These puzzles take just a bit of prep, and then if you laminate them, you can use them multiple times!
Just print (below), laminate, and cut apart on the gray lines to create vertical puzzle strips.
We use them in math centers, and I put each puzzle in its own zip top plastic bag. (The slider ones are great and quick for cleanup!) This helps the pieces to stay together and encourages kids to complete one puzzle at a time.
Each puzzle has 10 pieces. To start, we spread them out on the table and started putting numbers in order. We didn’t try to find the smallest, though you could begin that way. Counting on from a given number can be tricky, so do what works best for your kids and adjust as needed.
We started with one number and thought about what would come before or after. For example, we grabbed 43 and then decided to see if there was a 44, and so on. Once pieces started being placed together, the process of elimination helped us complete the puzzle!
We made Earth! The name is included at the top of each puzzle, that way kids know which planet they made.
Grab your Counting On Puzzles
More Super Fun Space Activities
Looking for more kid friendly outer space activities? Look no further! These awesome kid bloggers have 17 amazing ideas for you to try out with your kids or students!
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:
Outer Space Bingo // Playdough to Plato
Rocket Name Puzzle// Teach Me Mommy
Space Theme Sensory Bin // Pre-K Pages
Space Counting Mats: Addition and Subtraction // Liz’s Early Learning Spot
Solar System Scavenger Hunt // Mom Inspired Life
Space Themed Matching Cards // Powerful Mothering
Outer Space Pattern Block Mats // The STEM Laboratory
Google Drive Space Facts Activity // DIY Farm Wife
Stars in Space Sticky Wall // Modern Preschool
Space Theme Grid Games // Stay at Home Educator
Counting On Planet Puzzles // The Kindergarten Connection
Aliens in Underpants Save the World // Adventures of Adam
Play Dough Constellations // Play & Learn Everyday
Solar System Bracelet // Still Playing School
Space Sensory Bin // Sugar Spice and Glitter
Space Syllables // Fairy Poppins
Space Themed Number Writing Practice // Preschool Inspirations
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Play begins with social affective play, where in infants take pleasure in relationships with people. As the adults talk, touch, nuzzle etc.. to get response from the infant the child soon learns to provoke personal emotions / responses with such behaviours smiling , cooing, or initiating games
A non social stimulating experience. Objects in the environment like light & color, taste & odors , textures and consistencies attract children’s attention stimulates their senses & give pleasure Pleasurable experiences are derived from handling raw materials ( water , sand & food…), from body motions (swinging, bouncing , rocking… ) & from other uses of senses and abilities (smelling , humming..)
After infants develops the ability to grasp and manipulates, they demonstrate & exercise their newly acquired abilities through skill play. Determination to practice a skill may be evident Pain and frustration may be felt. ( e.g. bicycle riding)
Talking to her doll or a ny toy before going to bed.
She supervised children between two and five years old for intense one-minute periods. In these time frames, she could see the different children's behavior and documented them accordingly. She noted that most of the play is by themselves, in the first four stages. The latter two are more extensive sets of play, and occur in older age groups which involve more interaction between children.
Referring mostly to newborns and infants, the term unoccupied play refers to activity when a child actually isn't playing at all. He may be engaged in seemingly random movements, with no objective. Despite appearances, this is definitely play and setting the stage for future play exploration. Here children are not playful but focuses their attention on anything that strikes their interest. Children may daydream, fiddle with cloths(touch things with no particular purpose) / other objects or walks aimlessly. This is different from onlooker play (who actively observes others activity.)
Children spend most of their time watching others; may make comments but do not interact Also common in younger children who are working on their developing vocabulary , onlooker play is when a child simply observes other children playing and doesn't partake in the action. Don't worry if your little one is behaving this way -- it could be that the child feels shy or needs to learn the rules or maybe is the youngest and wants to just take a step back for a while.
Children play alone with toys; make no attempt to interact Just what it sounds like -- when your child plays alone. This type of play is important because it teaches a child how to keep himself entertained, eventually setting the path for being self sufficient. Any child can play independently, but this type of play is the most common in younger children ages two or three. Part of it has to do because they are still pretty self-centered, but a lack of good communication skills also plays a role. If a child is on the shy side and doesn't know the person who he is playing with well, he may prefer this type of play.
Children play beside but not really with other children Put two three year olds in a room together and this is what you are likely to see: the two children having fun, playing side by side in their own little world. It doesn't mean that they don't like one another, they are just engaging in parallel play. Despite having little social contact with her playmate, children who parallel play actually learn quite a bit from one another like taking turns and other social niceties, because even though it appears they aren't paying attention to each other, they truly are and often mimic the other one's behavior. As such, this type of play is viewed as an important bridge to the later stages of play.
Children engage in rather disorganized play with other children Slightly different than parallel play, associative play also features children playing separately from one another, but in this mode of play they are involved with what the others are doing -- think children making a city with blocks. As they build their individual buildings, they are talking to one another, and engaging each other. This is an important stage of play because it helps little ones develop a whole host of skills -- socialization (what should we build now?) and problem solving (how can we make this city bigger?), cooperation (if we work together we can make our city even better!) and language development (learning what to say to get their messages across to one another). Through associative play is how children begin to make real friendships.
Children engage in an organized form of play Where all the stages come together and children truly start playing together. Common in older preschoolers (or in younger preschoolers who have older siblings or have been around a lot of children), cooperative play brings together all of the social skills your child has been working on and puts them into action. Whether they are building a puzzle together, playing a board game , "house" or an outdoor game with a group, cooperative play really sets the stage for future interactions as your child matures into an adult.
Also known as symbolic / pretend play Begins in late infancy (11- 13 months) to preschool age. By acting out events of daily life children learn and practice the role and identities , modeled by members of their family & society
Many children who choose this type of medical play later progress to using medical equipment. No specialized materials are required for this type of medical play.
CHRISTIAN D. EVANGELISTA
MARIANNE T. EVANGELISTA, MSHRM
• Range of voluntary,
associated with pleasure
• Also known as “Work of the
Children” / Daily work of a
• Act as a tool for assessing
• Internally Motivated
• Unique to each child
• Active with Motion and Cognition
CONTENT OF PLAY
• This involves physical, mental, emotional,
and spiritual aspects of the play along
with the social relationships.
• It follows a directional trend of simple to
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF PLAY
• Play is child-chosen.
• Play is child-invented.
• Play is pretend but done as if the activity were real.
• Play focuses on the doing (process, not product).
• Play is done by the players (children), not the adults
(caregivers, teachers, or parents).
• Play requires active involvement.
• Play is pleasurable
• It is marked by flexibility
VALUES OF PLAY
• PHYSICAL VALUE
• INTELLECTUAL VALUE
• MORAL VALUE
• CREATIVE VALUE
• THERAPEUTIC VALUE
• Muscular & sensory abilities are
developed . Infants & young children
develop their sensory abilities
through the tactile, visual and
auditory sensations derived from
playing with rattles balls & other toys
• Toddlers & preschool children enjoy
large muscle activity such as running,
climbing & exploring the
environment . School age children
organize their movements into more
complex forms like bicycle riding,
• Children learn the differences
in sizes, shape, colours,
textures, numbers, & names
of the objects.
• They learn to understand
special relationships, to do
abstract thinking ,& to
engage in problem solving
• Distinguished what is real &
what is unreal/ fantasy.
• Cultural values like
honesty , integrity,
compassion are learned.
• They assumes responsibility
for their own actions.
should adhere to the group
values & can be expelled if
• Playing with materials
like clay , paper & finger
• Children are most
creative when they are
• They carry their new
discoveries to the outside
world of play.
• Play provides the release of stress and
tension. Children express their emotions
and test out frightening situations in a
way that peers and adults can accept.
They reveal themselves through play.
• Nurses can carefully observe the play of
children & determine needs , concerns &
feelings that cannot be put in to words.
Children should be protected if they
become aggressive & should be guided
into less aggressive type of play
• Social & emotional
enhanced through play.
• When they play with
adults , parents and
peers they develop
• Mildred Parten (1902–after 1932) was an
American sociologist, a researcher at University of
Minnesota's Institute of Child Development.
• She completed her doctoral dissertation in 1929. She
developed the theory of SIX stages of child's play
• Parten was one of the first to conduct extensive studies
on children for the case of play.
• The child is not
playing or watching
anyone or anything
• They might stand or
sit and just do
• The child spends most
of their time
watching others play.
• They might look or
talk to the players,
but will not engage
in the actual play
• The child plays
• No connection or
made with anyone
• The child plays alone
but with toys that
are shared with
• The child plays
beside other children
might be limited or
none at all.
• The child plays with
• The play is not
may talk and share
toys but they are
• Children come
together and play.
• A group of children
with a common goal
or similar interests,
acting out adult
situations or playing
OTHER TYPES OF PLAY
THAT CONTRIBUTES TO A
• While these stages are important and
necessary for a child's social development,
there are other types of play that also
contribute to a child's maturity.
• These types of play usually develop as a child
begins to engage in cooperative play and
DRAMATIC / FANTASY PLAY
• Got a kid who loves to play dress up?
How about pretending to be an
“Artist" or “Lawyer?" That's dramatic,
or fantasy play.
• Through this type of play, not only
does your child's imagination get a
workout, but they learn how to take
turns, cooperate, share and work on
• Through role play, kids are also able to
learn about functioning in the greater
• Whether she's beating her brother
at raceway and Ladders or playing
on a local soccer team, your child is
engaging in competitive play.
• Rules and turn taking are the big
lessons taken from this type of play,
but so are taking turns and
functioning as part of a team (if
that is the type of play involved).
• This can be a very fun type of play
if your child wins, but be prepared
to talk your child through it if she
• This type of play is less about
being social (although it certainly
involves that) and more about
being physical. Gross and fine
motor skills really come into play
here, whether your child
is throwing a ball or riding a bike.
• Physical play is important because
it encourages kids to be active,
something they are likely to do as
they get older.
• Building with blocks. Making a road
for some toy cars. Constructing a fort
out of couch pillows. All forms of
• Constructive play teaches kids about
manipulation, building and fitting
things together. Cognitive skills are
important here too as a child learns
to figure out how to make
something work best, whether it is a
block tower that won't stand up or a
sand castle that keeps collapsing.
• It is a type of play
on events in health
care settings such as
PLAY IN ILLNESS
• PLAY THERAPY – it is a form of psychotherapy since 1900.
Play therapy is generally employed with children aged 3
through 11 and provides a way for them to express their
experiences and feelings through a natural, self-guided, self-
healing process. As children’s experiences and knowledge
are often communicated through play, it becomes an
important vehicle for them to know and accept themselves
• THERAPEUTIC PLAY – It is the use of play specially as a
language for sick children to communicate their thoughts
CHARACTERISTICS OF MEDICAL
1. Part of its content medically themed and / or it includes the use of
2. Play may be offered or initiated by an adult/parent, but is voluntarily
maintained by the child.
3. Medical play is usually enjoyable for the child and is accompanied by
laughter and relaxation. However, the process of play can be intense
4. Medical play and preparation are not the same. They are not
interchangeable. When an adult attempts to prepare a child for a
medical event by demonstrating a procedure or familiarizing a
child with equipment, education may occur, but not necessarily play.
Play may follow familiarization if play opportunities are made
PURPOSE OF MEDICAL PLAY
• Provides diversion and brings interaction
• Helps to feel more secure in strange environment
• Lessens stress of a sick child
• Release of tension and expression of feeling
• Encourage interaction and development of positive
• An expressive outlet for creative ideas
• Means for accomplishing therapeutic goal
• Provide the child an active role
ROLE REHEARSAL / ROLE
• This is the most traditional medical play.
Children take on the roles of health care
professionals, acting out medical
procedures and events on dolls, puppets,
stuffed animals or other people (children
• Real medical materials and equipment
is used, as well as specially made toys
created for medical play, such as toy
doctor kits, a patient puppet, a doll
sized MRI or hospital bed. Children often
use this type of medical play to re-enact
events they have experienced.
• This also involves role playing
medical themes. However,
traditional play materials, blocks,
doll houses, cars, trucks and
stuffed animals are used to
create roles and stories for
medical play, instead of actual
• In medical fantasy play, children
avoid contact with feared
objects, but can still play out
topics of concern.
MEDICAL FANTASY PLAY
• Hospital themed activities
such as puzzles, games and
and education relating to
• This type of play also uses
medical materials in non-
traditional ways, such as
using syringes to squirt
water, and using IV tubing
as drinking straws.
INDIRECT MEDICAL PLAY
Indirect Medical Play
• This offers many different ways for a
child to express themselves, their
understanding of and reactions to their
medical experience. Art activities can
vary greatly, including painting,
drawing, collage and 3D sculptures.
• Basic art materials are appropriate:
paint, paper, markers and glue offer a
wide range of choices. Including some
medical materials, such as band aids,
plasters, gauze and tongue depressors
can enhance the medical theme.
MEDICAL ARTS PLAY
• The word “Toy” comes from an old English term that
• Toys are TOOLS for a child.
• With these tools, children are allowed to use their
senses, fine and gross motor skills, and their
• Cognitive and social skills are also increased as a child
plays with toys.
• Toys are valuable TEACHING tools.
TYPES of TOYS
• Soft & Cuddling Toys
– Dolls, stuffed animals, etc.
• Manipulation/Small Motor Skill Toys
– Blocks, puzzles, snap, gears, games, etc.
• Large Motor Skill Toys
– Tricycles/bikes, balls, jump ropes, scooters, etc.
• Dramatic Play
– Dress-up clothes, furniture and accessories, etc.
SELECTION OF TOYS
• Make sure the toy is DAP
Toys for age-appropriate development of the child
• SIZE of toy and pieces
• Larger than the child’s two fists
• No SHARP edges or points
• Broken toys should be fixed or thrown away
• NON-TOXIC materials
• Avoid all painted toys for babies & toddlers
• DURABLE, WASHABLE and CLEAN
• Toy’s that won’t break easily
• Toys that can be cleaned easily
• TEACH a Skill or Concept
– Aide in one of the 5 areas of Child Development
• Regularly check toys for damage that may have
created sharp edges or loose small parts. Damaged or
dangerous toys should be repaired or thrown away
• Keep toys intended for older children away from
younger children – such toys may injure younger
• Store toys safely. Teach children to put toys away so
they are not tripping hazards.
• Safe toys for young children are:
– well-made (with no shared parts or splinters
and do not pinch)
– painted with nontoxic, lead-free paint
– easily cleaned
TOYS FOR DIFFERENT
AGE TOYS GENERAL
INFANCY SOFT STUFFED
BALLS, BATH TOYS,
•BABY LIKES TO HUG TOYS
•IT SHOULD BE BRIGHT COLOURED
•IT SHOULD BE LARGE AND HAVE
AGE TOYS GENERAL
TODDLER POTS AND
PULL TOYS, DOLLS
ROCKING HORSE OR
•THEY WILL HAVE A
•THEY LIKE TO PLACE
TAKE THEM OUT
•THEY MAY INJUR
OTHERS WITH TOYS
SO IT SHOULD BE
TOYS FOR DIFFERENT
AGE TOYS GENERAL
LARGE BRUSH, FINGER
PAINT, DOLLS, DISHES,
HORNS, DRUMS, SIMPLE
•THEY ENJOY PARALLEL AND
•THEY WILL EXCHANGE IDEAS
•THEY WILL ENGAGE IN
ACTIVITIES , INITIATIVE,
•INTERESTED IN CREATIVE AND
TOYS FOR DIFFERENT
AGE TOYS GENERAL
SCHOOLER DOLLS,DOLL HOUSE,
HANDI CRAFTS, TABLE
GAMES, JUMP ROPE,
BICYCLE, DRESS UP
•PLAY IS MORE
•INTERESTED IN HOBBIES
TOYS FOR DIFFERENT
AGE TOYS GENERAL
ADOLOSCENT BALLS. TELEPHONE,
RADIOS, EASY PUZZLES,
•REQUIRES A GREAT
•PAY ATTENTION TO
TOYS FOR DIFFERENT
THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS
THAT PARENTS CAN PROVIDE ARE:
• Caring Adults
Ways to support play:
PROVIDE OPEN-ENDED PLAY TIME
• Allow your child the time that he/she needs to explore,
discover and control the environment. They need long,
uninterrupted periods for spontaneous free play. The
period should be at least 45 minutes to one hour
• Parents can involve themselves in play but should mentor
of coach rather than interfere
• Children should be the prime architects of play
• Create a playful atmosphere. It is important for the adults
to provide materials which children can explore and
adapt in play and to reach their full potential.
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| 0.911006 | 4,085 | 3.515625 | 4 |
noun (plural asyndeta /əˈsɪndɪtə/)[mass noun]
The omission or absence of a conjunction between parts of a sentence, as in I came, I saw, I conquered: [count noun]: syntactically unmarked but semantically connected asyndeta
More example sentences
- One particular quirk of syntax occurs remarkably often in both poems: duplication of a monosyllabic word with asyndeton, within a line.
- He is an innovator and experimenter; he is fond of antithesis, poetic vocabulary, the use of participles, and occasionally extreme asyndeton.
- The absence of run-on, the asyndeton of folk poetry may bear some relationship to Joyce's inability to develop a running line, the non-discursive quality of his writing.
- Example sentences
- My guess was that he understood ‘inside out’ as ‘both inside and out’ (asyndetic conjunction) instead of as ‘having the inside out’, and simply restored the conjunction.
- On this count, Edmund Miller remarked that Prynne's use of the device of asyndetic listing confers ‘a breathless urgency to Prynne's poetry that is exactly appropriate to his theme.’
- Instead, the asyndetic form of these texts promotes the opacity and disorientation of modularity.
Mid 16th century: modern Latin, from Greek asundeton, neuter of asundetos 'unconnected', from a- 'not' + sundetos 'bound together'.
For editors and proofreaders
Line breaks: asyn|deton
Definition of asyndeton in:
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed.
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en
| 0.892754 | 400 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Performance boost ... coffee experiment illustrates mind's power.
Tricking people into thinking they have been given caffeine before a workout actually makes them train harder, research suggests.
Caffeine is a well-known stimulant but very little research has been carried out into the physical and psychological effects of people thinking they have taken it.
Now an expert from Coventry University has shown the powerful ways the mind can force the body to work harder.
Twelve cyclists were asked to perform a series of trials to test the effects, with each trial containing four teams:
Team one - told they would be receiving caffeine and given caffeine
Team two - told they would receive a placebo and given placebo
Team three - told they would receive caffeine and given placebo
Team four - told they would receive placebo and given caffeine
Each of the cyclists drank 250 millilitres of fluid containing artificial sweetener and then either caffeine or a placebo before the 30-second trial.
Every person took part in all the trials, resulting in 48 sets of data.
Tests were carried out to measure power, heart rate and the build-up of lactic acid in the body, which is created during intense exercise.
The results showed that team one's sprint power was the highest out of all the groups.
Team two's sprint power was by far the lowest, but the scores for teams three and four were exactly the same and were in the mid-range.
The research was presented by a senior lecturer in applied sports science at the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences Conference, Michael Duncan, in London on Sunday.
"We found there's a psychological mechanism whereby the person will react depending on what they think they've ingested, rather than what they've actually had," Duncan said.
"The highest power output was when we told them they were having caffeine and we gave it to them.
"Then, at the other end of the scale, their performance dropped quite low when we gave them nothing and told them they had ingested nothing.
"It is almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy - they believe they don't have an advantage and so they perform worse.
"When we told them they were having caffeine but they had something like orange squash, they performed better.
"Their perception of how hard things were was also lower when we told them they had had caffeine - they thought the exercise was less intense than it actually was.
"Essentially, the trick in terms of athletes or even normal gym-goers is if you can convince them that some kind of substance is going to have a positive effect, it will have that effect."
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en
| 0.987482 | 536 | 2.796875 | 3 |
It has a square base so l=w
If you have done other Area/Volume optimisation problems you should be able to solve it form here
This is the question:
"A new fruit juice (like a Popper) is to be marketed in a new container in the shape of a rectangular prism. The cardboard container is to have a square base and is to contain 300 mL of juice. What should be the dimensions of the container be if the amount of cardboard used in its construction is to be a minimum? Disregard waste and overlap."
All I have so far is:
Volume = l x w x h
300 = l x w x h
I also know that the Surface Area of a prism is: 2(wh+lw+lh).
I have subbed l=300/wh into the SA equation and ended up with:
SA = 2wh + 600/h + 600/w
I honestly have no idea where to go from here (is what I've done correct?)...
Do I eventually have to derive an equation and then let that = 0 and then factorise?
I would really appreciate some help, guys.
Thank you in advance!
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http://mathhelpforum.com/calculus/215063-dimensions-box-if-minimum.html
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en
| 0.944277 | 248 | 3.03125 | 3 |
sustantivo[mass noun] Astronomy
The part of the apparent motion of a fixed star that is due to its actual movement in space relative to the sun.
Oraciones de ejemplo
- At perihelion, when proper motion reaches its maximum, it exceeds the diurnal motion, and the Sun turns slowly retrograde for a week.
- Because the l = 1 dipole term is usually subtracted out from the data because it has large components due to our proper motion with respect to the cosmic background radiation.
- In 1710, using Ptolemy's catalogue, Halley deduced that the stars must have small motions of their own and he was able to detected this proper motion in three stars.
For editors and proofreaders
Saltos de línea: proper mo¦tion
Definición de proper motion en:
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Los comentarios que no respeten nuestras Normas comunitarias podrían ser moderados o eliminados.
Muy popular en Reino Unido
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= de moda
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<urn:uuid:4b7bba9d-8662-4e18-9414-44c2ad9d94e9>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/es/definicion/ingles/proper-motion
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en
| 0.656591 | 258 | 3.21875 | 3 |
A new study finds that more than a quarter of all homeless adults on Los Angeles's Skid Row are infected with hepatitis C, a contagious liver disease that now kills more Americans than AIDS.
A UCLA survey of homeless who live on Skid Row found nearly 27 percent of them infected with hepatitis C, the most serious form of the virus. That’s more than 10 times the rate of infection among the general population nationwide.
The virus is spread mostly by contact with blood and the sharing of needles.
Researchers also found that almost half of those surveyed who carry the hep C virus were unaware of their infection. Of those who were aware, fewer than 3 percent received any treatment for the disease, which is the fastest-rising cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States.
Nationwide, more than 3 million Americans are chronically infected with hepatitis C (about 75 percent of them baby boomers) according to the Centers for Disease Control, which is urging all boomers to get a one-time test.
The CDC says most who are infected have no idea, partly because the disease gradually destroys the liver with few noticeable symptoms.
New treatments for hepatitis C can cure about 75 percent of all infections and could save up to 120,000 lives of people who currently have the disease.
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<urn:uuid:a6438186-773e-44f4-8780-3d94b268f4ec>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.scpr.org/news/2012/06/11/32774/more-quarter-las-homeless-adults-have-hepatitis-c/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00063-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.972356 | 262 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Last updated at 2:00 pm UTC on 16 January 2006
The Squeak .changes file is a file which is an exact copy of the Squeak memory content with all class definitions and objects.
(Is this definiton correct? Almost. Objects that depend on operating system resources may tweak their image saving/loading. For example, a network socket definitely won't exist when you reload an image, so mumble mumble happens.)
This .changes file of objects runs on top of a Virtual Machine. (This is generally true of all ClassBuilder s.) The image is a platform-independent file. In other words, the exact same image file can run on a Windows/Mac/Unix/etc platform, as long as the appropriate virtual machine for the platform is used.
The image does not contain the source code for the system, however. The source code is stored in the .sources file and the .changes file.
Where in the code is the image saved and loaded?
When the user selects 'save' or 'save and quit' from the World menu, then
ClassBuilder snapshot: true andQuit: false
ClassBuilder snapshot: true andQuit: true
is called. This saves the image file.
Actually the method #snapshot:andQuit:embedded: is called and there the primitive #snapshotPrimitive or snapshotEmbeddedPrimitive do the actual work of writing the image. When quiting the program execution stops in this method and when starting it resumes right at the point where it stopped, so actually the second part of #snapshot:andQuit:embedded: is the startup procedure for Squeak.
Also see The Squeak Image, SystemDictionary
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<urn:uuid:ac8e302e-560b-4f0d-aa0e-ebacb7140e5a>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2213
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00099-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.815089 | 358 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Saint Jerome declared, “We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the creator, but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore Him whose martyrs they are” (Ad Riparium,i,P.L., XXII, 907).
Father Luis Kondor*, Postulator for the Cause of the Beautification of Francisco and Jacinta Marto and Lucia Dos Santos presented a 1st class relic in November 2005 at his residence in Fatima, Portugal to Mrs. Judy Studer. She graciously accepted these sacred items of a piece of the holm-oak tree on which Our Blessed Mother appeared in Fatima and relics of Jacinta and Francesco. These sacred remains are encased in a small gold reliquary.
Father Kondor requested that this gift relic travel with the United Nations Pilgrim Virgin Statue. In a final request, Father Kondor asked that Ms. Studer use the reliquary to bring hope and healing to all sick people and especially to share the story of Fatima with children.
Father Kondor (d. November 2009)
The word relic comes from the reliquiae, meaning “remains.” A reliquary is a shrine that houses one or more relics.
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<urn:uuid:4951781e-78e4-4c0f-bc21-0d57b4c2aa07>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.thefatimastatue.org/the-relic
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00127-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.950239 | 279 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Volunteers beat back flames caused by a careless camper near Madison, Tennessee, during the drought of 1925. Their use of branches and burlap sacks to fight the fireespecially when water was scarceisnt so strange, according to John Ragsdale, a Nashville fire district chief. Ive used brooms too, he says. You can just sweep that kind of fire out sometimes. And if the bristles burn? You get yourself a new broom, he shrugs. Brush fires are less common in the region these days. Now that Madison has been absorbed into suburban Nashville, theres not much brush left.
This photo has never before been published in the magazine.
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<urn:uuid:0e5f5e4d-64d5-47d2-acd2-7b13102dd976>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/flashback/0208.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00182-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.965466 | 137 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Sometimes it is hard to understand how numerical expressions are evaluated. I remember reading claims by Wolfram on how smart the Kernel is to evaluate expressions trees numerically by recognizing patterns, yet I don't see how it applies in very simple examples.
This question is about numerics, but to see if symbolics can help in an elegant way.
It is known that when working with finite precision, the function $\log(1+x)$ should have a special implementation for small $x$. That is why functions like
log1p exists in many libraries (on top of
log). For example:
/*C code*/ log(1. + 1.e-15) == 1.11022e-15
/*C code*/ log1p(1.e-15) == 1.e-15
(The second version is more exact, the first is "wrong")
Log[1. + 1.*^-15] == 1.11022*10^-15
Mathematica doesn't have such
Log1P function. One can say, well, that is because it doesn't need to, because of the symbolic power. In fact one can know the answer.
N[Log[1 + 1/10^15], 100] = 9.999999999999995000000000000003333333333333330833333333333335333333333333331666666666666668095238095*10^-16
But this is not general, if I want to evaluate
Log[1 + x] and
x has machine precision then I can't force to use something like
1+x will evaluate to a machine precision number.
These are my attempts:
x = 1.*^-15; Log[1 + x] Log[1. + x] N[Log[1. + N[x, 20]], 20] N[Log[1 + N[x, 20]], 20]
All evaluate to the wrong answer (
Finally I find this expression,
N[Log[1 + Rationalize[x, 0]], 20] 9.999999999999995000*10^-16
But really? Is it that hard to get $\log(1+x)$ for small $x$ numerically?
Do I have to roll my own
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<urn:uuid:d140f6db-895c-4c78-baaa-197e0fa22ee0>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/39126/elegant-high-precision-log1p
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00142-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.799511 | 481 | 2.765625 | 3 |
|Click here to view the item|
|Creator:||Miller, Laura A.|
|Title:||Desegregation of Central High School|
Entry on the event of the Desegregation of Central High School, the crisis that followed the attempt of nine African-American students to enroll at the all-white Little Rock high school. Article includes moving images, photographs, and documents.
The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata.
|Types:||Articles | Photographs | Moving images | Texts (document genres)|
|Subjects:||Faubus, Orval Eugene, 1910-1994 | School integration--Arkansas--Little Rock | School integration--Massive resistance movement--Arkansas--Little Rock | African Americans--Civil rights--Arkansas--Little Rock | African Americans--Education | Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka | Central High School (Little Rock, Ark.) | African American high school students--Arkansas--Little Rock | High school students--Arkansas--Little Rock | Mobs--Arkansas--Little Rock | Soldiers--Arkansas--Little Rock | Students--Arkansas--Little Rock | Intervention (Federal government)--Arkansas--Little Rock | Federal-state controversies--Arkansas--Little Rock | Government, Resistance to--Southern States | Little Rock (Ark.) | Pulaski County (Ark.)|
|Collection:||Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture|
|Institution:||Richard C. Butler Center for Arkansas Studies|
|Contributors:||Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture|
|Online Publisher:||[Little Rock, Ark.] : The Central Arkansas Library System | 2006-04-04|
|Rights and Usage:|
copyright Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture 2007
|Persistent Link to Item:||http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=718|
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<urn:uuid:b59a10af-585c-457b-8500-d2678f7721c9>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://crdl.usg.edu/export/html/earch/eacr/crdl_earch_eacr_718.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00136-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.715297 | 437 | 2.6875 | 3 |
A series of star types to which most stars belong, represented on a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram as a continuous band extending from the upper left (hot, bright stars) to the lower right (cool, dim stars).
- The pressure from these nuclear reactions at the star's core balances the pull of gravity, and the star is now called a main sequence star.
- The Sun is an unusually variable star for its position on the main sequence, something that might explain why Intelligent life is found here, and not everywhere.
- Several million years is a long time in comparison to a human life span, but it is short in comparison to the life span of main sequence stars.
For editors and proofreaders
Syllabification: main se·quence
Definition of main sequence in:
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed.
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<urn:uuid:18dad9ad-8f90-4a50-b47d-3d18d9322696>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/main-sequence
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.908347 | 194 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Sambucol for Kids contains Black Elderberries & Vitamin C to strengthen the immune system. The Black Elderberries in Sambucol are among the most potent naturally occurring antioxidants available, with almost five times the anthocyanin level of blueberries and twice the antioxidant capacity of cranberries. The antioxidants in Sambucol strengthen the immune system and the compound AntiVirin prevents viruses from replicating. Clinical trials have shown that the Black Elderberries in Sambucol are effective in shortening the duration of flu A by four days, as well as being effective against flu B, Avian Flu (H5N1) & Swine Flu (H1N1).
Sambucol for Kids is a great tasting, natural berry flavour syrup that does not contain any artificial colours, flavours, sweeteners or gluten. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans and can be used by children between 1 - 12 years old. Sambucol was developed by a world renowned scientist who recognised the potential of the antioxidants present in the Black Elderberry. The unique preparation method for the standardised Black Elderberry Extract used in Sambucol preserves and maximises the naturally occurring health benefits of the berry.
Sambucol has been laboratory tested and the benefits published in international clinical trials. Sambucol has been used by millions of people worldwide.
Glucose syrup, purified water, black elderberry extract, vitamin C (ascorbic acid), acidity regulator: citric acid, preservative: potassium sorbate.
Recommended Daily Dose: 1 - 6 YEARS: 5ml (1 teaspoon) 7 - 12 Years: 10ml (2 teaspoons)
For Winter Use: 1 - 6 YEARS: 5ml (1 teaspoon) twice daily. 7 - 12 Years: 10ml (2 teaspoons) twice daily.
Not suitable for children under 1 year. Do not exceed the recommended intake. In the event of a fever or any other persistant condition, consult a healthcare professional. If you child is under medical supervision, please seek medical advice before taking. Keep out of reach of children. Once opened, keep tightly sealed and store in a dry place below 250C. Food supplements should not replace a balanced and varied diet and a healthy lifestyle.
Sambucol Black Elderberry Extract For Kids with Vitamin C
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<urn:uuid:eb4468a2-c144-44ae-9c67-a39732556394>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.nutriglow.com/product.php?xProd=85971
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00023-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.910056 | 482 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Is this technology really needed? The answer is sometimes yes, if the technology is assistive technology. Assistive technology (AT) is essentially any device that is needed by an individual with a disability to increase, maintain, or improve functional skills. Assistive technology helps individuals complete activities of daily living, communicate, use a computer, read, write, organize, complete math, hear, see, control their environment, and move around. For students who require AT to achieve in school, it is not just a 'neat tool' for them to use but also essential for success.
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<urn:uuid:19abdd66-40f4-48af-99e5-bcd9a4ed60f9>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.timesrepublican.com/page/content.detail/id/545029/Iowa-s-AEAs-provide-leadership-and-support-in-assistive-technology-for-students.html?nav=5003
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00073-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.960897 | 117 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Elegant and diaphanous, the jellyfish Pelagia noctiluca is pretty, but packs a punch. These jellies (also called “purple-striped jelly” or “mauve stinger”) produce bright bioluminescent light (noctiluca means “night light”) and feed by catching smaller plankton animals, or zooplankton,
on tentacles laden with stinging cells. Common in coastal waters of
most oceans, they can cause problems for humans—swarms of thousands of Pelagia plagued Mediterranean beaches in summer 2008, causing painful stings to swimmers.
(Photo by Laurence Madin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
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<urn:uuid:4f35d37b-9d5a-4635-ab16-afe849eaa221>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=80696&i=6021
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00145-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.829648 | 156 | 2.828125 | 3 |
The World Health Organisation has raised its global alert level, signalling the swine flu virus is spreading from human to human in community outbreaks. The threat of a global flu pandemic is growing. We take a look at how flu viruses change, leading to pandemics.
Swine influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza virus that regularly causes outbreaks of influenza in pigs. The classical swine flu virus (an influenza type A H1N1 virus) was first isolated from a pig in 1930.
The genetic make-up of influenza viruses A and B can and does change in two ways: a slight change known as antigenic drift and dramatic changes known as antigenic shift. Both result in new virus strains.
Like antigens of many other viruses, the surface proteins of flu viruses change periodically. These changes circumvent human antibodies and complicate vaccine development.
1. Small changes in the flu virus (antigenic drift)
Influenza A and B are classified by two surface antigens, haemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). These antigens are continually undergoing slight changes through what is technically known as antigenic drift. This is due to random copying errors in the viruses' genetic material during replication.
Persons with antibodies stimulated either by previous infection or vaccination are not protected from infection with new strains of the flu virus.
So despite a previous bout of flu, every year, but definitely every 3 years, the A and B viruses have changed sufficiently that they are no longer properly recognised by our immune systems, and one can be re-infected, with all the symptoms of flu again. This is why there are regular epidemics of winter flu.
2. Drastic changes in the flu virus (antigenic shift)
At irregular intervals of ten years or more, there is a drastic change in the influenza A virus when it replaces one of its genes with a new gene from a bird influenza virus. This is technically known as "antigenic shift".
Thus, when a gene of a bird influenza virus lands up in a human influenza virus, no human has appropriate immunity to this altered influenza A. The altered influenza A virus can be regarded as a "new" and very potent virus. A pandemic - a worldwide epidemic - of influenza will most probably follow.
The twentieth century saw pandemics of influenza A (as a result of antigenic shift) in:
- 1918, known as the Spanish flu even though it originated from Boston (Look at a map to show the spread of the epidemic in South Africa),
- 1957 (Asian flu),
- 1968 (Hong Kong flu),
- 1976/77 (Russian flu - the strain that caused this pandemic was identical to the one that circulated in the 1950's, and this pandemic primarily affected people younger than 25 years who had not been exposed to the 1950's flu virus), and
- 1997 (Sydney flu).
Researchers have recently determined that the very virulent flu virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic, was a H1N1 (where H1= hemagglutinin1, N1= neuraminidase1, two surface antigens) influenza virus. Virologists are still baffled why it caused such a severe pandemic - this remains a mystery. The closest known strain was Swine Iowa 30 - the pig flu virus isolated in 1930. Farmers in 1918 discovered that something was making their pigs very sick. Every autumn thereafter the American hog population got severe flu.
The virus probably came to people from pigs, not from birds. But research showed that the human viruses and the pig flu of 1930 may share a common avian ancestor. This suggests that sometime before 1918, a bird virus could have entered the pig population and, through reassortment, produced the pathogenic 1918 flu virus known to man.
This is how new pandemics will start: when parts of a bird virus get incorporated into a human virus, directly from a bird or via a pig.
The close proximity of humans, birds and pigs may enhance the possibility for this mixing of virus genes of different species.
A recent scare of a potential new killer virus
Small wonder that in 1997 Hong Kong doctors became frantic when they discovered that a 3-year old boy died from a pure avian virus against which most humans have no defense. It was a H5N1 avian virus, not readily transmittable, but if it reassorted with a common human strain it could have produced a new human influenza virus easily transmittable and very lethal.
In the end this avian virus infected 18 people and killed six, but luckily it did not lead to the birth of a new human influenza virus strain. This incident followed after 6 800 chickens died six months earlier on three farms in Hong Kong's rural territories, showing that this strain was deadly in birds.
This time it was not the start of a new epidemic.
The outbreak highlighted the success of the surveillance network. It also showed how dangerously mutable influenza viruses can be, and that they can be as deadly as Ebola or other killer viruses.
It is impossible to predict when the next pandemic will occur, but most scientists believe it is 100% certain that there will be one sometime.
In 1918, when transportation was still by rail and boat and painfully slow, the pandemic circled the globe in a matter of months. Travelling by jet, a new killer virus could circle the globe in 4 days, not 4 months as in 1918.
Flu pandemics then and now
||What could happen
|Primary mode of transportation
||Troop ship, railroad
|Time for virus to circle globe
||Gauze masks, disinfectants
||Vaccines (yet to be developed)
||Bed rest, aspirin
||Some antiviral drugs
Save the Pigs!
Sources: AP, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Reviewed (2006) by Dr Jane Yeats MBChB, BSc(Med)(Hons)Biochem, FCPathSA(Virology).
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<urn:uuid:02e7af8c-858e-4101-97e2-7f04374d89d5>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.health24.com/Medical/Flu/The-flu-virus/How-flu-viruses-change-20120721
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00059-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.94319 | 1,263 | 3.953125 | 4 |
MONDAY, Feb. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Antibiotics used to fatten farm animals pose a steep threat to global health, spawning drug-resistance genes that end up in fertilizer, compost and groundwater and squash antibiotics' ability to fend off human diseases, suggests a new study from China.
Collaborating to examine antibiotic-resistance genes at three large pig farms in China -- which uses four times more antibiotics for veterinary purposes than the United States -- Chinese and American scientists detected 149 unique resistance genes. The top 63 antibiotic-resistance genes were found in concentrations between 192 times and 28,000 times higher than "control" samples of manure or soil that were antibiotic-free.
"To me a big point is that the study was done in China, but this is not an unusual practice for many countries. The example is China, but the implications are beyond China," said study author James Tiedje, director of the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University, in East Lansing. "Because this practice of using therapeutic antibiotics in feed is widely used globally, we would expect a similar phenomenon [elsewhere]."
The study is published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Antibiotics and similar drugs have saved countless lives in the past 70 years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but the drugs' punch has been diminished in recent years by adaptive bacteria that have become resistant to their effects. Several potentially deadly conditions -- including tuberculosis, Staphylococcus aureus infection, pneumonia and malaria -- have developed virulent antibiotic-resistant strains that defy cures because of a lack of new antibiotics to counteract the problem.
"The huge, bulk use of antibiotics in [animals] creates a sea of antibiotic-resistant bacteria," said Dr. Stuart Levy, president of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics at Tufts University School of Medicine, in Boston. "You have this terribly active genetic exchange going on."
"This paper puts numbers on what we've talked about in general," added Levy, also a professor of molecular biology, microbiology and medicine. "The extent of the contamination of soils is what we expected, but we didn't have the data. So, I think this is a marvelous contribution."
China only weakly regulates the use of antibiotics in animals, and the practice occurs in many countries around the world at varying levels -- except Europe, where it is banned. Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced new rules requiring farmers and ranchers to obtain a prescription from a veterinarian before using antibiotics in animals.
Study author Tiedje, also a professor of microbiology and molecular genetics and plant, soil and microbial sciences, said the Chinese are worried about this health threat for their own citizens' safety, which is why the study was done. He said he hopes more countries will opt to ban antibiotic use on commercial animal farms, which would create a "level playing field" although likely spurring an increase in meat prices.
"Papers like this are really filling in the data needed to say, look, it's time to take stock of this," Levy said. "I find it an embarrassment that we're still doing this practice. This paper is timely -- now maybe something will happen."
The American College of Physicians has more information about antibiotic resistance.
SOURCES: James Tiedje, Ph.D., professor, microbiology and molecular genetics, and plant, soil and microbial sciences, and director, Center for Microbial Ecology, Michigan State University, East Lansing; Stuart Levy, M.D., president, Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, and professor, molecular biology, microbiology and medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston; Feb. 11-15, 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
All rights reserved
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<urn:uuid:918ef84d-a03f-48e9-ba49-f91d7bd939e1>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Chinas-Overuse-of-Antibiotics-in-Livestock-May-Threaten-Human-Health-99940-1/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00192-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.940139 | 803 | 2.859375 | 3 |
This news release is available in French.
Montreal, February 12, 2014 - Officially, the Islamic Republic of Iran has a 99% Muslim majority. However, Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian minorities are officially recognized, and have played important roles in Iran's history as well as that of the world's religions. This diversity is the theme of a new book by Concordia University scholar Richard Foltz, Religions of Iran: From Prehistory to Present.
"Despite the fact that Iranian cultural identity has been strong for over 25 centuries, it defies any kind of simplistic definition," says Foltz, who is the director of Concordia University's Centre for Iranian Studies and a leading expert on the subject of Iran's place in the history of religions. "Most of the cultures of Asia identify with Iran on some level, much as Westerners do with Greece and Rome."
Situated at the crossroads of East and West, Iran has been at the centre of world history for the past three millennia. Religions of Iran brings to light the connections between Iranian civilization and those of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. To many, these connections can come as a surprise.
Originating as one of the Indo-European tribes in prehistoric times, Iranians share much of their mythology with the Greeks, Romans, Norse, and Hindus. From this common past emerged the uniquely Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism, many of whose central beliefs were later adopted by Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.
"That sense of cosmopolitanism continues for today's Iranians," says Foltz, "especially for those in the educated urban classes, who demonstrate a powerful tendency toward spiritual eclecticism." He explains that significant numbers of Iranian Muslims supplement their spiritual lives with a wide range of beliefs and practices, many of them drawn from a variety of contemporary "new age" sources.
"At the same time," Foltz points out, "officially speaking, religion continues to be a loaded subject in Iran. The political climate is filled with contradictions and paradoxes, so that from one day to the next it can be hard to know which discussions are acceptable and which aren't."
Foltz, who visited Iran as recently as last month, doubts this will change any time soon. "But even so," he notes, "given that spirituality is clearly so deeply entrenched in the Iranian psyche, it is only natural that many Iranians will continue to pursue their curiosity about the world's various faiths in a spirit of objectivity and respect. "
Foltz's research is generating interest and sparking conversation among scholars as well as the public. Join the conversation: Religions of Iran is currently being featured by the University of Chicago Divinity School in an online forum for thought-provoking discussion on the relationship of scholarship in religion to culture and public life. This month, a number of top scholars in the field have been invited to comment on Foltz's research in a way that "opens out" to themes, problems, and events in world cultures and contemporary life. For more information, visit: http://divinity.
Senior advisor, media relations
University Communications Services
Phone: 514-848-2424, ext. 5068
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<urn:uuid:6cad0adf-c70b-4d8a-8cce-f9fb2ce0e581>
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One of the big themes that we’ve been covering for a while is ‘fracking’ – pumping in chemicals, sand and water to extract gas and oil trapped in shale. This process has already had a huge impact on America’s energy costs, and it could eventually do the same here.
But there’s another technology that could have equally large implications – underground coal gasification (UCG). Supporters claim that UCG could enable us to extract clean energy from coal seams too deep to mine. What’s more, it would do so with reduced carbon emissions and without the toxic by-products of conventional mines.
Best of all, it could also allow us to unlock the huge amount of coal at the bottom of the North Sea – a trove that is already being compared to the discovery of North Sea oil.
So how does it work – and how could you potentially profit from it?
What is underground coal gasification?
Like fracking, UCG is not a new technology. In fact, Sir William Siemens (the brother of the founder of the German engineering firm) came up with the basic idea in 1868.
He believed that if you set fire to the coal in a mineshaft it would produce gas, which could then be collected, eliminating the need for manual extraction. The first serious tests were carried out in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. By the 1960s, five plants were using the process.
The discovery of more accessible natural gas supplies dampened interest. But researchers kept improving the techniques. As a result, the technology is now much more sophisticated.
Instead of digging a mineshaft and starting a fire (as fraught with potential problems as it sounds), the more modern take on UCG is to drill a hole into the seam and then inject oxygen and water to set it alight. The gas then exits through another hole.
As with shale gas, this process has its critics. The big concern is that if the pressure is too high, tar can be formed, which can get into the water supply. The other big worry is that the underground cavity created by the destruction of the coal could also collapse.
However, if the pressure is strictly controlled, then the amount of tar produced is relatively small, and will be filtered out by surrounding rocks. Tests carried out in Spain in the 1990s seem to vindicate this approach.
There are also benefits to this approach, according to the coal industry. Harmful vapours, such as sulphur dioxide, can be captured during the process and stored underground for less than the cost of conventional mining. The World Coal Association reckons that UCG could reduce levels of particulates (such as ash) released in mining by up to 50%. They also point out that toxic waste, such as mercury, is kept safely underground.
A final benefit is that the disruption above ground is far lower than any other form of mining.
As a result, several emerging countries are starting to buy into this technology. China’s desire to secure its energy supply while reducing pollution has made it the leader in UCG, with more than 30 projects underway. India has also announced an ambitious scheme to tap into around 350bn tonnes of deep buried coal.
But it’s not just developing countries who are taking advantage. Linc Energy has been running a site for over 14 years in Queensland, Australia. After a competitor accidentally discharged chemicals, the company was investigated by the state government – but passed with flying colours.
In the US, meanwhile, conglomerate Peabody Energy has said that it will use UCG to reach coal reserves in Wyoming that are too expensive to reach with conventional technology.
Britain’s new energy treasure trove – North Sea coal?
However, the biggest benefits could lie closer to home.
In the 1970s, the sale of drilling licences in the North Sea saw companies spend millions trying to discover the size and location of the oil reserves. Tycoon Algy Cluff and geologist Eric Craig led one of the biggest independent exploration teams.
While looking for oil, they found that the North Sea also had a huge amount of coal in the seabed. They estimated there was enough to power the whole of Europe for the next 2,000 years.
Even if you just count the coal on the edges of our coastlines, they reckoned there was about the equivalent of four billion barrels of oil – a lot, in other words.
The problem was that the market was more interested in oil, and in any case, it was impossible to extract. But advances in UCG make such an ambitious project feasible.
Last year, the government granted 14 firms licences to start offshore drilling, plus grants in some cases to help with costs. The government also thinks that there could be 17 billion tonnes of coal on land.
It’s high risk – but it could be worth a punt
This is certainly not one for widows or orphans. Unlike shale oil and gas, UCG technology has not yet been widely adopted. Environmental concerns could derail the whole project. And as with any relatively new technology, something unexpected could happen.
But then, you could have said the same thing about shale gas four years ago. And the rewards could be immense if it does turn out to be feasible.
One company we’re interested in is the micro-cap, Cluff Natural Resources (Aim: CLNR). This is a new consortium formed by Algy Cluff. It holds five licences to drill offshore in North Cumbria, Largo Bay (Fife), the Firth of Forth, Loughor Estuary (Wales) and Dee Estuary (Merseyside).
With no earnings, it’s as risky as you could get, but given Cluff’s reputation, it’s worth considering as a play on a potentially very exciting technology.
By the way, if you haven’t clued yourself up on fracking yet and how it could affect the UK, you should watch my colleague David Stevenson’s video on the topic.
• The Fleet Street Letter is a regulated product issued by Fleet Street Publications Ltd. Your capital is at risk when you invest in shares, never risk more than you can afford to lose. Forecasts are not a reliable indicator of future results. Please seek independent financial advice if necessary. Customer services: 0207 633 3600.
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The violence in Venezuela is a sobering reminder of the risks investors face in Latin America, says James McKeigue.
The US dollar is currently the global reserve currency. But no currency remains the world’s number one forever, says Bengt Saelensminde.
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The interval between two successive passages of I he Moon through the ascending node is called a nodical month. It is of 27.2122 mean solar days. It is smaller than the sidereal month (27.32 days) because during a month’s interval Rahu moves backwards on the /.odiac towards the Moon.
The interval required by the Moon to move from perigee to perigee is called the anomalistic month. Its duration is 27.5546 mean solar days.
When the longitudes of the Sun and the Moon become exactly equal the amavasya ends. The period between the ending of one amavasya to the end of next amavasya is called a lunar month. It is also called t he synodical month, i.e. 29.5306 mean solar days.
When the centre of the Sun enters from one rashi to another, it is the sankranti of the other rashi. The time taken by the Sun from one sankranti to another is called a solar month. The time interval of every solar month differs because the angular velocity of the Sun is not uniform. When the angular velocity is more, the Sun crosses one rashi or sign early and that solar month is smaller. Conversely, when the angular velocity of the Sun is less, the solar month is bigger. The … Continue reading
Lunar day or a tithi is the average time taken by the Moon from one tithi to the next tithi. Each tithi represents 12° phase difference between the Moon’s position from the Sun’s position, i.e. Moon’s advancement over the Sun by another 12°. This average time is 23 hours 37 minutes 28 seconds.
The time interval from one rising of a nakshatra to its rising next time is called a sidereal day or nakshatra din. It is of about 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds in solar day hours.
Nowadays, the time from one midnight to another midnight is a civil day. According to our ancient system, the time interval between one sunrise to another sunrise is called one ‘savan day’ i.e. civil day = 24 solar time hours. Mean solar day = 24 hours 3 minutes 56.5 seconds in sidereal time hours, etc.
The semi-major axis of the Earth’s orbit is known as astronomical unit. In other words, the half of maximum distance + minimum distance of the Earth from the Sun is known as astronomical unit (AU). One AU = 930 lakh miles In other words, the distance between the Earth’s two positions at extreme points is two AUs. It can also be expressed as the mean distance of the Earth from the Sun.
Light travels at the rate of 1,86,000 miles (or 3,00,000 km) per second. The distance traversed by the light in one year is known as light year. light year = 3,00,000 x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365.25 km. So, one light year = 9.46 x 1012 km. i.e. 9,460 billion kilometres or 5,880 billion miles.
Three systems for measuring distance in space are in vogue. (1) light year (2) astronomical unit (3) parsec
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In order for brand owners to compete in certain highly competitive markets – wine, beauty, specialty foods – image is everything. And the screen printing process provides effects that can bring a label to another level.
The printing technique is old, versatile and offers a range of graphic advantages over other print methods. The process consists of three elements: the screen (which is the image carrier), the squeegee and ink. Flat screen printing uses a porous mesh stretched tightly over a frame. The screen is placed over the substrate and the ink is deposited at one end of the frame. The squeegee moves over the course of the screen, forcing the ink through the fine mesh openings and onto the substrate. In rotary screen printing, the screen is formed into a cylinder. The squeegee is mounted in a fixed position inside the screen cylinder. As ink is introduced onto the squeegee, the cylinder rotates and the ink is pushed out of the screen onto the moving substrate.
Screen printing allows for printing on substrates of any shape, thickness and size. It allows for printing front and backside of a clear label to ensure that lettering shines through, and clear labels on dark-colored bottles or tubes are often printed with screen white. Also, a greater thickness of the ink can be applied to the substrate than is possible with other printing techniques, allowing for the creation of effects such as tactile and Braille, glitter, scratch offs and raised text. Also, gold and silver screen inks are often used in lieu of foil.
Most recently, the technology has been adapted for more advanced applications, like printed electronics, where it is being used in laying down conductors and resistors in multi-layer circuits using very thin materials as the substrate.
The process continues to evolve, and its become a mainstream form of advanced product decoration. Screen machinery and equipment suppliers are doing their due diligence to not only improve upon the technology, but also make it more affordable.
Gallus Rotascreen and Screeny
Heinz Brocker, Gallus’ vice president, Screen Printing Business, has been responsible for all global screen activities for St. Gallen, Switzerland-based Gallus Group since the 1980s, and was a member of the team that invented the company’s well-known Screeny printing plates. He points out that in today’s label market, replacing an existing print station with screening is a growing
trend. “Screen units can easily replace a printing unit of another process, for example, the plug-and-print concept on the Gallus EM280 or Gallus RCS, where a flexo or offset unit can be replaced by a screen unit,” Brocker explains. “The operation is on the same level as the other main processes, and is not on top of other printing units where the operator needs to go up a ladder to set in the screens, make adjustments and monitor the quality.
“These screen units have the same MMI operation procedures (with touch screen) like the other processes for easy operation, there’s just a little difference in operating between the various printing processes,” he adds.
Brocker emphasizes that adding screen printing capability is a great way for a label printer to enter markets that otherwise would not be accessible. “By combining the different processes, you can make really attractive effects, and give a printer the opportunity to go into new, high demand market segments.”
Screen printing applies more ink then all other processes. Brocker says, “From 5 – 300 micron (offset, digital), less than 1 micron, digital inkjet with special jet nozzles up to 3 microns, or even more if using an additional head with a special high volume jet nozzle for varnishing. Transparent labels very often need a high coverage backing. Consumers like the relief effect that screen provides, the gloss effect, and the deep color intensity. Security features or color-shifting effects can be achieved by applying ink with very large size pigments. And the relief effects by thick film of transparent varnish are ideal for printing Braille characters.”
Gallus offers label converters Rotascreen, a comprehensive rotary screen system. The system consists of its own screen printing units which can be easily integrated into modular Gallus printing presses.
Screeny printing plates, developed specifically for the label industry and manufactured by Gallus, offer a wide range of products for every need. For printing of very fine images to coarse Braille characters, the company has different product lines for both conventional plates and digital plates. The Screeny Standard line is designed for conventional short runs. The Screeny S-Line is for robust, long lasting and high speed printing and is ideal for long runs and multiple re-use for repeat orders. Screeny Digital Plates are coated with an ablation layer which is laminated onto the photopolymer. The ablation layer is applied digitally by a point laser. The screen is then exposed, washed out and assembled in the conventional manner.
“The demand for screen printed products is increasing. Screen technology offers huge potential for creative label solutions and gives marketers lots of possibilities for differentiation. Emphasis on branding is very important in markets with a lot of the similar products,” Brocker says. “To make screen technology more competitive, the main producers of screen plates are offering better products for longer runs and more re-use. Gallus as a system supplier offers one-stop shopping and develops continuous improvements on all system elements.”
Kocher + Beck’s TecScreen
Kocher + Beck, headquartered in Pliezhausen, Germany, focuses on allowing screen printed labels to become a more cost-effective option by implementing TecScreen, the company’s high quality screen printing plates.
John Fehrenbacher, product manager, TecScreen, says costs are always a major issue in the label market, and it’s also an issue when it comes to screen printing plates. “Kocher + Beck gives label printers the opportunity to produce the screen printing plates on a price level without blowing up the frame. In this case, our customers are able to use the advantages of screen printing at an affordable price.”
TecSreen has a number of design characteristics that make it, literally, stand apart. Available in most common roll widths, it features a high-contrast red coating that facilitates visual inspection and increases reliability. Special roll dimensions and sheets are cut to size at the request of the customer. A special processing technique is used for the formatting of sheets, which is based on the high precision production of K+B flexible dies and permits tolerances of less than 1/100 mm. “The register accuracy achieved by this is highly valued by the customers during welding of the screens and subsequent assembly,” Fehrenbacher says.
TecScreen grades offered cover all common printing tasks and are available for all machine types on the market. The product range includes wire cloth grades for fine line and text work, for example, those found in pharmaceutical labels. There are several grades with differing resolution and color application quantity to choose from for the classic screen printing applications such as a white background or the printing of decorative elements. “Spot coating and the printing of relief varnishes are enabled with coarser grades. The TecScreen product range is also an appropriate solution for printing Braille and hazard symbols,” Fehrenbacher adds.
TecScreen can be processed conventionally with films in a continuous printer, while digital UV imagesetters can be used for imaging. Kocher + Beck offers exposure tests to determine the exact exposure time in conventional imagesetters. In addition, it is possible to determine the amount of exposure with the aid of a UV measuring device in order to establish the exposure times under standardized conditions.
“Another important aspect of TecScreen is our offering of complete peripheral screen equipment. This includes the consumables such as adhesive, adhesive tape, screen filler and welding threads and the necessary devices for the screen production such as the dryer, washout box, welder terminal and assembly tower,” Fehrenbacher says.
Kocher + Beck offers customers the option of manufacturing the screens in-house to those customers who up to now have had to buy incomplete screen cylinders. This increases the productivity on the printing machine, as the platemaking only takes, on average, about 30 minutes to produce.
Using Stork Prints’ Rotary Screen Integration (RSI) technology, rotary screen printing can be combined with other printing techniques, including flexo, offset, gravure and letterpress. “Rotary screen printing offers the opportunity to add a new dimension to your label printing capabilities,” states Rieks Reyers, marketing and sales manager for Stork Prints, Boxmeer, the Netherlands.
The Stork Prints RSI module is a self-contained, single-color printing unit designed for easy integration onto an existing press, and the units are compatible with most any press maker’s machinery. Reyers emphasizes that Stork can accommodate most label press sizes and scope of operation. “We have dedicated screen units for many OEM partners, including Mark Andy, Nilpeter, Omet, MPS, Codimag, just to name a few. These units are mechanically driven. We also have universal screen units that can be mounted on any reel-to-reel press,” he says.
All of Stork’s universal units have their own servo drive. RSI standard units have a repeat of 12" to 25¼", and RSI compact units have a repeat of 12-18". “This allows slow rotation when the press has stopped, a great advantage for operators,” notes Reyers. “The servo drive, in combination with the optional automatic register control, is another great feature for operators. The equipment is versatile – just replace the screen for another application.” UV, water-based and solvent-based units are all available.
Depending on the press, RSI units may be fitted in a fixed position or on a cassette frame. For optimal flexibility, the RSI can be mounted on Stork Prints’ Flexible Positioning System. The system allows converters to move the RSI module to any print station on press.
Reyers notes that while the types of screen applications have evolve to include RFID, solar cells, mirror heating, bank notes, brand protection and scratch offs, the overall trend points to shorter runs. “Clearly, the runs are getting shorter. And we have responded by introducing RSI units for semi-rotary and RSI units for Rotaplate (on roll),” Reyers says.
Stork’s RSI units are easily shifted to the position where screen printing is needed using an optional sliding rail. The print units reach speeds of up to 100 m/min, and can be controlled through the main panel of the press. This provides simultaneous, centralized monitoring of all rotary screen positions alongside other printing and converting operations.
In addition to the units, Stork also offers its RotaMesh and RotaPlate screens. The RotaMesh screens are for RSI systems, and the re-usable RotaPlate screens are for non-Stork Prints systems. Both screen systems feature the ultra-stable, electroformed pure-nickel construction, offering easy handling, high stability and longevity at relatively high speeds. RotaMesh and RotaPlate applications include tactile, glitter, holograms, opaque whites, adhesives, glow in the dark, UV-active, thermo-sensitive, iridescent, security and brand protection.
Twenty years ago when Tom Kirtz started Telstar Engineering, one of his first press retrofit projects was building a rotary screen add-on to a customer’s existing Mark Andy 2200 press. Over the ensuing years, rotary screen has been an important and steady part of the Burnsville, MN-based company’s wide range of retrofit decorating and converting unit options. Three screen systems have been shipped and installed this year with another soon going into production. “These are no longer just for narrow web label production. We are getting orders for rotary screen sizes up to 28” from customers who want to improve the performance and capabilities of their existing equipment,” Kirtz says.
While rotary screen came into it’s own as a way of providing a heavy, opaque background for other decorating techniques, Kirtz says it remains the standard for this application even on the newer clear and “no-label” look products popular today. It is also used for specialized applications such as conductive inks for electronic patterns, thermochromatic and metalized inks, heavy deposits for special effects, tactile deposits of UV curable inks, specialty chemical applications; varnish over hot foil, medical salves and ointments for “patch” products, Braille inks along with other raised tactile surfaces and thixotropic inks.
Telstar points to its CadToGo on-site engineering service as a major factor in the continuing strength of its rotary screen retrofit units. “Virtually any brand of existing or new press can be outfitted with a retrofit machine from Telstar and can be bridge- or rail-mounted, placed within a stretched press path, or can be installed for first-down application. The retrofits accommodate woven mesh screens from suppliers like Stork, Kocher-Beck, Gallus and more,” he says.
Kirtz points to an industry exclusive feature of Telstar rotary screen units: they are available in both left-to-right and right-to-left operation. “Pre-engineering a custom-designed unit also means there is very little downtime at installation,” he says.
In continuing support of its rotary screen unit customers, Telstar also offers a complete line of peripheral equipme=nt necessary for quality performance and production including seamers, shear punches, squeegees, rings and gears. Its ink pumps can be both standalone single units or stackable. The pumps are reversible for easy cleanup.
“We see rotary screen as a staple product in the label industry, especially now that retrofit equipment has become widely recognized as a way to get more out of existing press equipment. It allows many printers the chance to compete in markets they were not able to reach,” Kirtz adds.
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PARENTS in Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire are being advised to look out for symptoms of scarlet fever among their children, after a rapid increase in cases nationally.
Public Health England (PHE) has received increased reports of the disease and Dr Theresa Lamagni, Head of Streptococcal Infection Surveillance, says parents should be aware of the signs.
Dr Lamagni, said: “We are continuing to see increases in scarlet fever notifications across England.
“PHE urges people with symptoms of scarlet fever to consult their GP. Scarlet fever should be treated with antibiotics to reduce risk of complications.”
In the past month, 868 notifications have been received in England, compared to 591 for the equivalent period last year.
Bristol has been named a hot spot and the Gloucestershire area has one of the highest rates of infection.
Councillor Dorcas Binns, Gloucestershire cabinet member for Public Health and Communities, said: “We are encouraging anyone concerned about scarlet fever to follow Public Health England’s advice and see their family doctor in the first instance, who may prescribe antibiotics.
"It’s important that you or your child takes the full course of antibiotics and stays at home for at least 24 hours after starting treatment to avoid spreading infection.”
Around 90 per cent of scarlet fever cases occur in children under 10, and it is most common among children aged two to eight, particularly among four-year-olds. Adults can also catch the disease, but such cases are rarer.
• Sore throat, headache, fever, nausea and vomiting
• A characteristic fine red rash after 12-48 hours, on the chest and stomach, rapidly spreading to other areas. It feels like sandpaper to touch
• Fever over 38.3C or higher is common
• White coating on the tongue, which peels a few days later leaving the tongue looking red and swollen
• Swollen glands in the neck
• Feeling tired and unwell
• Flushed red face but pale around the mouth
• Peeling skin on fingertips, toes and groin, as the rash fades.
To protect yourself from getting the illness you should:
• Wash your hands often
• Not share eating utensils with an infected person
• Wash, or dispose of, handkerchiefs and tissues contaminated by an infected person
• Be aware that you can catch scarlet fever by inhaling airborne droplets.
Dr Mark Pietroni, Director of Public Health for South Gloucestershire, said: “It usually takes two to five days from infection before the first signs of symptoms appear. However, the incubation period may be as short as one day and as long as seven days.
“The average number of cases in South Gloucestershire is generally very low, however they have risen from an average of 4 cases per annum to 11 cases in 2014, which is considered as a significant increase.”
If you suspect that you or your child has scarlet fever:
• See your GP as soon as possible
• Take the full course of any antibiotics prescribed by your GP
• Stay at home, away from school or work for at least 24 hours after starting treatment, to avoid spreading the infection
For more information visit www.nhs.uk and search for scarlet fever.
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Oct. 11, 2007
Last week, cameras in Iowa captured a giant atmospheric wave passing over Des Moines--see the movie in today's story. Atmospheric scientists believe these waves, called undular bores, may be more common and important than previously thought.
April 13, 2007
What happens to a hurricane when it gets hit by a dust storm? This is an important question because Atlantic hurricanes are born not far from the Sahara desert. To find the answer, NASA scientists recently flew into a dusty hurricane.
June 15, 2007
This summer, NASA will launch a robotic probe to visit two stange and giant asteroids--one is covered with ice while the other may have been blasted by an ancient supernova. The tales these Asteroidstell may reveal the true beginnings of our solar system.
Aug. 21, 2007
Earth and Mars are rapidly converging. Relative speed: 22,000 mph. Contrary to rumor, Mars is not about to swell to the size of a full Moon, but there is something eerie and Martian to look for in the night sky next week.
Nov. 15, 2007
How do you bring a 200,000-pound rocket booster back to Earth after it catapults its payload toward the moon? NASA has answered that question with a successful test of a giant "moon rocket" parachute in the Arizona desert.
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In an effort to curb “high priority” environmental problems along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) worked with Mexican officials last week to launch the "Border 2020 U.S.-Mexico Environmental Program." But while the program seeks to abridge pollution in many areas, it neglects to mention the 1,000 tons of trash abandoned by illegal immigrants crossing the border into the United States.
On August 8, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson met with Mexico’s Secretary for the Environment and Natural Resources Juan Elvira Quesada to green-light the new environmental program, which seeks to moderate pollution in air, water, and on land, as well as abate exposure to chemicals caused by inadvertent emissions or terrorism. The program is the latest effort administered under the 1983 U.S.-Mexico La Paz Agreement to address environmental and health concerns along the 2,000-mile border region. The Border 2020 Environmental Program hones in on five key areas:
Reducing air pollution in bi-national air sheds by promoting vehicle inspection programs and road paving, and encouraging anti-idling technologies such as diesel truck electrification at ports-of-entry.
Improving access to clean and safe water as well as improving water quality in the bi-national watersheds.
Promoting materials and waste management, and addressing contaminated sites as well as management practices for addressing electronics, lead acid batteries, tires, and trash.
Enhancing joint preparedness for environmental and emergency response.
Enhancing compliance assurance and environmental stewardship.
The Border 2020 plan asserts that “protecting the health and the environment in the border region is essential to ensuring that the U.S. continues to be safe, healthy, and economically productive.” However, the EPA and Mexican officials have neglected the more than 500 tons of trash and over 100 abandoned vehicles at just one national wildlife refuge along the Arizona border. They also neglect to mention the environmental and safety threats stemming from human and drug trafficking and other illegal activities arising from people who are illegally crossing the border.
According to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ), illegals who have been trashing the border have become a “huge problem” in Arizona, the most active corridor for illegal immigration. Last year, illegal immigrants abandoned about 1,000 tons of trash along the border, affirmed ADEQ spokesman Mark Shaffer.
Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says “illegal border activities” along the U.S.-Mexico border constitute “a threat to both public health and safety.” In a December 2010 report to the House Committee on Natural Resources, the GAO stated that such environmental and safety damage prompted by “illegal border activity” was “substantial.”
“Law enforcement officials told us that some remote federal lands along the U.S. border are often used to smuggle drugs or humans into the country,” the GAO report asserts. “According to these officials, such illegal activities can damage sensitive wildlife habitat and threaten public safety."
The trashing of the border has become a severe “environmental problem,” the GAO disclosed, and “officials at every unit we visited in Arizona reported substantial natural resource damage from illegal border activity.” Pointing to one national wildlife refuge that sits right along the Arizona border, the GAO described the social and environmental impact illegal immigration has imposed on the area.
“In 2006, for example, the Refuge Manager of Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge testified before the House of Representative’s Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies of the Committee on Appropriations that an estimated 235,000 people entered the United States illegally across refuge lands in 2005,” the report noted. “He reported that illegal border crossers had disturbed wildlife and created more than 1,300 miles of illegal trails, causing the loss of vegetation and severe erosion.”
Furthermore, illegal border crossers have ignited wildfires, either inadvertently or on purpose, to draw law enforcement away from certain areas. The GAO also noted that some endangered species are being harmed from illegal border crossers. “Officials at Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge [Arizona] told us that illegal border activity was damaging sensitive desert ecosystems,” the report continued, “including habitat for several threatened or endangered species, such as the masked bobwhite quail and Sonoran pronghorn — although the officials were unable to quantify the effects of illegal activity on these populations.”
But the EPA and Mexican government officials are ignoring these environmental and health problems, as well as members of the public and law enforcement employees who have fallen victim to rape, assault, homicide, and other acts of violence. CNSNews.com asked the EPA why the health and environmental damage that stems from illegal immigration is omitted in the agreement. The EPA’s response? That is “outside the jurisdiction of EPA and the Border 2020 Program.”
Photo of trash left by illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border: AP Images
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| 0.948023 | 1,042 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Remember last election when you got to the polling place and were turned away because you were a woman?
Of course, you don’t–thanks to the ceaseless work of suffragists for the 70-plus years before passage of the 19th Amendment! There are so many reasons to vote tomorrow, but one that tends to be overlooked is that casting your ballot pays homage to the women before us who cut a path to the polling booth so we wouldn’t have to. Women have only been able to vote in the United States for just over 90 years, and suffrage is a right we should never take for granted!
Here are some photos and cartoons illustrating the great struggle for the votes women will be casting tomorrow!
A group of Vassar women picket in front of the White House for suffrage rights in 1917.
Women in New York City march during a suffrage parade in 1912.
Back when masculine wear on women was considered scandalous, a woman wears trousers during a 1916 suffrage parade in Chicago.
This editorial cartoon ran in a 1910 issue of Punch magazine.
Another political cartoon from 1917 depicting suffragists on a steamroller crushing the opposition.
This 1915 pro-suffrage postcard by Katherine Millhous shows how ridiculous the arguments that voting would “masculinize” women were.
Photos from Wikimedia Commons
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en
| 0.949377 | 282 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
Public services is a term usually used to mean services provided by government to its citizens, either directly (through the public sector) or by financing private provision of services. The term is associated with a social consensus (usually expressed through democratic elections) that certain services should be available to all, regardless of income. Even where public services are neither publicly-provided nor publicly-financed, for social and political reasons they are usually subject to regulation going beyond that applying to most economic sectors.
It is also an alternative term for civil service.
Public services tend to be those considered so essential to modern life that for moral reasons their universal provision should be guaranteed, and they may be associated with fundamental human rights (such as the right to water). An example of a service which is not generally considered an essential public service is hairdressing.
In modern, developed countries the term public services usually includes
- public transportation
- electricity and gas
- fire service
- police service
- waste management
- water services
A public service may sometimes have the characteristics of a public good (being non-rivalrous and non-excludable), but most are merit goods, that is, services which may (according to prevailing social norms) be under-provided by the market. In most cases public services are services, i.e. they do not involve manufacturing of good (accounting)goods such as nuts and bolts. They may be provided by local or national monopolies, especially in sectors which are natural monopolies.
They may involve outputs that are hard to attribute to specific individual effort and/or hard to measure in terms of key characteristics such as quality. They often require high levels of training and education. They may attract people with a public service ethos who wish to give something to the wider public or community through their work and are prepared to work harder for less pay as a result. (John Kenneth Galbraith has looked at the role of such "public virtue" in economic growth.)
Historically, the widespread provision of public services in developed countries usually began in the late nineteenth century, often with the municipal development of gas and water services. Later, other services such as electricity and healthcare began to be provided by governments. In most developed countries such services are still provided by local or national government, the biggest exceptions being the U.S. and the UK, where private provision is more significant. Nonetheless, such privately-provided public services are often strongly regulated, for example (in the US) by Public Utility Commissions.
In developing countries public services tend to be much less well developed. Water services, for example, may only be available to the wealthy middle class. For political reasons the service is often subsidised, which reduces the finance available for expansion to poorer communities.
- Public ownership
- Public service broadcasting
- Services of General Interest (SGI)
- Welfare state
- Public value
- Daniel Chavez (ed), Beyond the Market: The Future of Public Services, TNI Public Services Yearbook 2005/6, Trans National Institute (TNI) / Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), February 2006de:Daseinsvorsorge
|This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors).|
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| 0.949553 | 679 | 3.25 | 3 |
Lots of animals use chemical cues to avoid danger. Mice will run from the smell of cat urine, for example. But one particular instance of chemical fear signaling has been stumping scientists for 70 years; the release of Schreckstoff by schooling fish.
For some species of fish, when a predator swoops in and injures one fish in a school, the rest will take off in fear. This much we know. In 1938, Austrian ethologist Karl von Frisch claimed that at the root of this behavior was a chemical alarm signal which he referred to as “Schreckstoff,” which means “scary stuff” in German. Since von Frisch’s seminal work, over 100 published studies concerning Schreckstoff have demonstrated that certain fishes have some substance in their skin cells which is released when that fish is injured and causes other fish to scatter. That much, we know, too.
This has perplexed scientists because it seems strange that any animal could evolve to give off that kind of chemical alarm. The other fish aren’t fleeing from blood or any clear signals of death, so what are they so afraid of? And if it’s not a signal of death but instead a signal of danger, as many scientists have argued, where is the benefit to the dying fish? You see, as much as we love the idea of altruism, it’s not very common in the natural world – at least not in its pure form. Doing something purely for the sake of others is of little benefit to an individual from an evolutionary perspective. So, hypotheses have been thrown around wildly to explain this kind of altruistic signaling – perhaps the alarm is to protect close kin, or, somehow, the chemical actually attracts the would-be-predator’s predators, thus giving the injured fish a chance to escape. Despite years of laboratory research, no hypothesis seems to be able to explain the presence of Schreckstoff. Furthermore, though some scientists have offered up potential compounds, what exactly Schreckstoff is has remained a mystery.
Now, a team from Singapore has identified that the elusive Schreckstoff as the same compound that we take to improve our joints and treat osteoporosis: chondroitin sulfate.
Chondroitin sulfate is a specialized chain of sugars that is a major component of fish skin, just like it’s a major component of our cartilage. Using zebrafish, a common laboratory organism, the research team found chondroitin from zebrafish tissues caused other fish to turn fin and run. They even took chondroitin from shark skin – the kind we take as supplements – and found that the zebrafish were terrified by it. The fish were also more afraid when the chondroitin was broken down by an enzyme first. The team hypothesized that when a fish is injured, enzymes released by the wounding break down chondroitin sulfate into smaller sugary chunks, and these bits and pieces, as well as the larger chondroitin molecules released by the wounded cells, are the smell that serves as a chemical alarm signal.
The best part of this discovery is that it solves evolutionary issue that scientists have had with the existence of Schreckstoff. The burden of producing a fear signal while dying doesn’t make sense unless that signal is something the fish already produced for other reasons which is only released in the case of injury – akin to some being afraid of the smell of blood. That way, the evolutionary impetus isn’t on the fish producing Schreckstoff to produce an alarm, it’s on other individuals to detect a sign of danger or death to save their own tails.
Here’s how it goes: once upon an evolutionary time, fish that were sensitive to Schreckstoff were the first to run in the face of danger, and thus were more likely to survive. Over time this would lead to an entire lineage of Schreckstoff-sensitive fish. Since chondroitin is a known component of fish skin for other reasons, but wouldn’t be released into the water unless that skin is ruptured, it perfectly fits this evolutionary scenario.
Because young zebrafish are see-through, researchers were also able to specifically examine what parts of the zebrafish brain are turned on by chondroitin fragments. They found that a specialized part of the brain called the mediodorsal posterior region was responsible for the fearful reaction. What is particularly interesting about this chunk of brain matter is that it is packed with a group of neurons called crypt cells which have no other known function. Scientists have been trying to uncover what these strange neurons do for awhile, and this new discovery may hold the key. Co-author Suresh Jesuthasan thinks that these cells are a part of a special brain circuit which mediates the fish’s innate fear response.
Together, the new findings, published in Current Biology, are the pieces to the Schreckstoff puzzle that scientists have been trying to fit for decades. There are still questions to be answered, of course – how do certain species only respond to injuries by their own species and not those of others, for example? – but this new study has provided valuable insight into fear responses in fish, and perhaps opened up new doors in our understanding of how fear originates and is processed in animal brains.
Article Link: Mathuru et al., Chondroitin Fragments Are Odorants that Trigger Fear Behavior in Fish, Current Biology (2012), doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.01.06
Here’s the researchers’ video of the fear response:
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| 0.959596 | 1,176 | 3.890625 | 4 |
Finding shark teeth can be a fun, easy activity to do when you're at an ocean beach. You just need to know where to look and how to identify a shark tooth when you see one. You can keep teeth as souvenirs, or string them on a necklace and wear them.
Selecting a Location
1Learn about shark migration patterns. Sharks migrate to and from different areas depending on the time of year. Some areas have lots of shark teeth because large numbers of sharks travel around the shores often. For example, sandbar sharks are found in large numbers off the east coast of Florida in spring when they mate. They move north at the end of summer and have their pups, so areas like Delaware Bay have a large population towards the early fall.
2Find a beach.Look up shark populated areas and select a beach to search for teeth. Sharks live in salt water only (except bull sharks who swim up into freshwater rivers that connect to the ocean). So don't go looking in your local pond. Sharks are more common in hot, humid places such as Hawaii and Florida. Although they can also be found at the poles.
- Many coastal regions of states near the ocean like California, Florida, Hawaii, Virginia, Carolina and Alabama were once underwater. You can sometimes even find shark teeth fossils in these areas on dry land or in river beds since large portions of the state were submerged. Sharks were often drawn to these shallow waters to seek food.
3Go after a storm. Big storms can bring in all sorts of debris from the ocean, including shark teeth. There will also be fewer visitors on the beach on days when the weather is less than ideal.
4Start early. Go in the morning when there are fewer people in the water. The calmer waters will make it easier to see any shark teeth.
- Weekdays are usually a less popular beach time, so go then if possible to avoid the crowds.
5Be prepared. You won't find a shark tooth in five minutes. Be prepared to stay at the beach for a couple hours. Bring sunscreen and some water to stay there properly without harm. You may also want to pack a picnic lunch.
6Ask locals to help you find the best spot. People may be able to tell you about shark tooth hot-spots or places where they commonly found teeth. If you aren't from the area, a local may be able to tell you which beaches draw crowds and when, and which ones have a lot of teeth. You can improve your chances of finding teeth right away if you find someone that can point you in the right direction.
7Get a permit, if necessary. Depending on what state or country you are looking for shark teeth in, you may need to get a permit before searching for fossils. In some areas, permits aren't necessary for shark teeth, but you never know what else you might find.
1Learn what shark teeth look like. Shark teeth have a pointy top and a thin body. Most teeth along the beach or shoreline are 1/8" to 3/4" but you can often locate larger teeth further out in the ocean. Some teeth look like a triangle without a top, some are more Y-shaped. Identification can sometimes be difficult because the tooth characteristics can change depending on the location of the tooth in the jaw, and the age or sex of the shark.
2Look for the color black. Many fossilized shark teeth are black. These are what you are most likely to find along the beach. Other less common colors of shark teeth are gray or brown. Modern shark teeth are usually white in color on the tooth and the root, they are seldom found along the shoreline.
- Remember everything you find that is triangular isn't a shark tooth, they could be rocks or stones so be sure that you know the looks of a tooth.
- Look for any souvenir shops near the beach. They may have some shark teeth for sale so you can see an example of what you are searching for.
3Scan along the shore and in the shallow waters. Shark teeth can often be found in easily on top of the loose sediment. It might be hard to spot among the shells and pebbles. If you just look on top of the sand you might not have a lot of luck.
4Scoop up some sand near the waters edge. If you do not spot any teeth on the surface, you will need to start digging. Bring some tools. You might want a shovel, trowel, or bucket. You will probably want something to sift sand with, like a colander or strainer.
- Dig in a place where sand is unusually elevated. Teeth won't always be on the surface. Sand constantly covers up old sand with new sand. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty.
5Search in the water. If you aren't having much luck on the beach, try moving out into the shallows. Bring your strainer and reach down below the surface and scoop up some sediment. Sift through the sediment to see what you find.
- While shark teeth are the big catch, keep an eye out for other cool items like stingray, porpoise, or crocodile teeth. You might find some cool shells, too.
6Consider renting some scuba diving equipment. You can search more terrain off the shoreline when you go diving and you might find some larger, older shark teeth by searching a little further from the beach.
7Be patient. Don't just glance at an area of sand and move on. Finding sharks teeth usually takes a bit of time and persistence. Waves may bring in new teeth, so it is a good idea to check areas multiple times. A single shark can produce up to 25,000 teeth over a lifetime, so there are plenty of them out there to be found.
- Once you find a shark tooth, keep looking in the same area. Usually, where there is one you can find more.
- Shark teeth are very fragile so don't break them.
- Be careful about the tide, it could possibly pull you in.
- Shark teeth can be sharp, so use care when handling them.
Sources and Citations
- ↑ http://oceanofk.org/tag/Tagmigrate/cfactorscause.html
- ↑ http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/discover/sharks/fossil-sharks/fossil-vs-modern
- ↑ http://www.fossilguy.com/sites/venice/
- ↑ http://www.authenticflorida.com/authentic-travel/southwest-florida/finding-shark-teeth-on-florida-s-gulf-coast/
- ↑ http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/evolution/guide.htm
- ↑ http://wbtw.com/2014/07/01/myrtle-beach-woman-offers-shark-tooth-hunting-tips-to-visitors/
- ↑ https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/fossils/fossil_modernsharkteeth.html
- ↑ http://www.colonial-beach-virginia-attractions.com/shark-tooth.html
- ↑ http://www.venicetravelplanner.com/sharks_teeth/index.html
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On This Day - 4 April 1918
Theatre definitions: Western Front comprises the Franco-German-Belgian front and any military action in Great Britain, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Holland. Eastern Front comprises the German-Russian, Austro-Russian and Austro-Romanian fronts. Southern Front comprises the Austro-Italian and Balkan (including Bulgaro-Romanian) fronts, and Dardanelles. Asiatic and Egyptian Theatres comprises Egypt, Tripoli, the Sudan, Asia Minor (including Transcaucasia), Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkestan, China, India, etc. Naval and Overseas Operations comprises operations on the seas (except where carried out in combination with troops on land) and in Colonial and Overseas theatres, America, etc. Political, etc. comprises political and internal events in all countries, including Notes, speeches, diplomatic, financial, economic and domestic matters. Source: Chronology of the War (1914-18, London; copyright expired)
Germans again attack in force between Somme and Avre rivers.
British pressed back near Hamel and Villers-Bretonneux, and French between Avre and Luce rivers.
North of Somme, attack near Albert is repulsed.
French counter-attack between Grivesnes and Noyon.
Germans claim 90,000 prisoners since 21 March.
Asiatic and Egyptian Theatres
Sarikamish (Transcaucasia) occupied by Turks.
Naval and Overseas Operations
Morocco: Reported German intrigues in.
British destroyer sunk in collision.
Petrograd reports sinking of three Russian warships in Finnish waters and destruction of others to avoid capture.
Mr. Lloyd George returns from visit to the front.
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Teacher of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge, England; born of Austrian parents at Uman, or Human, a small town in southern Russia (at that time Poland), in the year 1785. His father being a converted Jew, he was brought up as a Christian. He went to England in 1825; settled in Cambridge as a private teacher in 1830; and was appointed "Præceptor Linguæ Sacræ" in the university on Oct. 18, 1837, succeeding Josephus Crool. He died at Cambridge, aged seventy-two, on Nov. 15, 1857, after teaching there with marked success for twenty-seven years.
Bernard published the following works: "The Creed and Ethics of the Jews Exhibited in Selections from the Yad ha-Ḥazaḳah of Maimonides" (1832); and "Ha-Menahel" (The Guide of the Hebrew Student), 1839. During Bernard's blindness in 1853 appeared "Me Menuḥot" (Still Waters), an easy, practical Hebrew grammar, in two volumes, by the Rev. P. H. Mason (afterward fellow and president of St. John's College) and Hermann Bernard. Bernard's lectures on the Book of Job, edited by his former pupil, Frank Chance (afterward a member of the Old Testament Revision Committee), appeared in one volume in 1864, but the editor's promised appendix was never published.
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A chance to get it right
The Arctic is home to the Inuit, who have lived there for thousands of years, and to remarkable species – like polar bears and narwhal – many of which live nowhere else on the planet.
The Canadian Arctic is a special place for conservation. Where else in the world do we have the same opportunity to safeguard a place that is still, in many ways, pristine, with species living in ecosystems barely touched by human activities?
Here, we have a chance to learn from past experiences and get things right from the start with smart long-term planning based on scientific and traditional knowledge. There are few places in the world where we still have the same opportunity.
And now is the time to begin. We know that the Arctic is changing at a record pace, one unseen in previous generations. It is warming at twice the average global rate, causing sea ice – the foundation of Arctic life – to melt, changing the face and reality of the region. These changes are affecting wildlife and communities, offering both challenges and opportunities.
Opportunities and challengesThe opportunities are important for northern communities in need of economic growth and jobs. The melting Arctic offers new prospects for development, particularly in mining and oil and gas development. Accompanying any new industry will be increased shipping, as supplies and resources are moved in and out of the Arctic, and possibly greater cross-Arctic travel as shipping companies try new, shorter routes.
The challenges are clear: the rapid pace of warming puts Arctic wildlife at risk, as animals struggle to adapt to new terrain, changing food availability, and new predators and competitors. And while economic development is much needed in the region, it is not without risks, including oil and contaminant spills, increased noise, disruption from new traffic, and the introduction of invasive species. These changes can also put the wellbeing of communities – many of which rely on these species as a traditional food source and part of their culture, and on the sea ice as an important means of transportation – at risk.
Fortunately, it’s not an ‘either/or’ choice – both development and conservation agendas can be pursued at the same time, in balance. And, indeed, they must be, as conserving important ecosystems is fundamental to a creating a healthy long-term economic and environmental future for the region.
Director, Arctic Program
Last Ice Area
Oil and gas
What WWF is doing
Supporting Community Voices
Arctic communities face ever-increasing regulatory processes relating to major industrial projects and conservation areas. WWF-Canada will work to strengthen community voices for conservation by securing funding to support local interventions. We will also link communities with the legal and technical expertise they need to intervene effectively.
Renewable Energy Solutions
Diesel fuel is the primary energy source for Arctic communities—a dependency that has high logistical and financial costs, negatively impacts the environment, and also hinders the self-sufficiency of northern communities. WWF-Canada will work to build capacity for low-impact renewable energy, such as wind, solar and hydropower.
Sustainable Arctic Fisheries
Often, mining or oil and gas extraction is portrayed as the only solution to northern poverty. One sector that holds promise for stable, long-term employment is commercial fishing. WWF-Canada will work with communities to build sustainable fisheries, as well as monitor legislation and policy to ensure long-term sustainability of Arctic fisheries.
Protecting Habitat in the Beaufort Sea
We are working with local communities to prevent risky oil and gas development, protect habitat using science and traditional knowledge, and build cross-border collaboration between Inuvialuit (Canada) and Inupiat (Alaska).
This iconic Canadian Arctic region is a priority for WWF-Canada and overlaps with the last ice area, the eastern section of the Arctic Archipelago where summer sea-ice habitat will persist the longest as the planet warms. We will work with local people, as well as federal and territorial governments, to secure protected areas and conservation management. We will also focus on shipping and extractive industries to promote safe, sustainable Arctic development. We will also model the potential impacts of oil spills on wildlife and local communities to inform decision-making.
Lancaster Sound: Lancaster Sound, known as Tallurutiup Tariunga to the Inuit, is a unique Arctic ecosystem known around the world for its rich biodiversity and abundant marine life. An important refuge for marine mammals and fish, the region is also an important food source for neighbouring commmunities which include Pond Inlet and Arctic Bay.
WWF-Canada supports Inuit action for a Lancaster Sound protected area and have launched an interactive map to raise awareness of the importance of the region.
North Water Polynya: This area remains ice-free throughout the winter and is critically important for narwhal, beluga, bowhead whales and more. Canadian and Greenlandic Inuit communities are calling for a bilateral commission to consult on the protection and future use of this polynya. WWF-Canada will support these efforts and carry out oil-spill trajectory modelling to inform decision-making.
Everyone has a role to play in securing a healthy Arctic future today. We must all work together to slow the impact of rapid climate change in the region, and to choose the right future for the Canadian Arctic. It’s a land of great conservation opportunity, where we have a chance to set well-informed plans in place, heeding the lessons from past development successes and mistakes that have already happened around the world. In the Canadian Arctic, we have an almost clean slate, ready for us to make the right choices.
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The essential branched chain amino acids (BCAA's)
include leucine, isoleucine, and valine are of special importance
for athletes because they are metabolized in the muscle, rather
than in the liver (26). Theoretically, after digestion, once
protein is broken down into individual amino acids, these amino
acids can either be used to build new proteins or be burned as
fuel to produce energy. If the athlete's diet is adequate in
nutrition, then the above "essential" amino acids will
be used for protein synthesis which is optimal for advanced human
performance. It should also be noted that, essential amino acids
are not produced in the body such as non-essential amino acids,
but rather obtained through proper nutrition. Therefore, it is
often theorized that the supplementation of BCAA's are of essential
importance to athletes due to their ability to alleviate any
deficiencies that the body alone cannot produce. BCAA's have
also been known in reducing fatigue in both anaerobic and endurance
sports. It has also been noted that leucine may be the most critical
BCAA because of its anti-catabolic properties and vital role
in protein synthesis (83).
BCAA's have a great deal of thorough and conclusive research
surrounding them. Although there are a few studies which show
mixed results, it should be noted that most studies seem quite
favorable in regards to the supplementation with BCAA's. In a
study performed by Ohtani et al (27), the results showed that
the subjects who received BCAA's had a significant increase in
exercise efficiency due to the heightened levels of aerobic and
anaerobic capacity as compared to the placebo group.
Other studies of similar characteristics of supplementing with
BCAA's have also been consistent with the above results. For
example, in another study performed by Ohtani et al (29), a thorough
before and after analysis concluded that markers for physical
conditioning, fitness, and endurance greatly improved. In fact,
only 2.2 g of the amino acid mixture three times a day significantly
improved other physiological markers such as: red blood cell
count, hemoglobin, hematocrit, serum albumin, fasting glucose,
and a decrease in creatine phophokinase (p<0.05), suggesting
increased hematopoiesis and glycogenesis, and rapid alleviation
of muscle inflammation by the amino acid mixture. All of these
beneficial factors may be of huge significance in high performance
athletes especially in terms of overall conditioning.
Another study by Sugita et al (28) demonstrated the effect of
an amino acid mixture, mainly consisting of BCAA's on recovery
from muscle fatigue and damage after eccentric exercise training.
Twenty-two male college students were given 5.6 grams of the
amino acid mixture twice daily which resulted in a faster recovery
of muscle strength than that of the placebo group. The oral ingestion
of the amino acid mixture was proved to be effective for muscle
strength recovery after the eccentric exercise.
Perhaps, one of the most profound studies on amino acid supplementation
to date was done by Kraemer et al (30) in which 17 trained men
randomly assigned to either an amino acid group or a placebo
group underwent a 4 week training routine of total body resistance
training. The first two weeks of training was an overreaching
stage in which the total volume of training was relatively high
which was then followed by a two week period of tapering or less
total volume. Before any of the training took place, there were
baseline measurements taken to determine strength, such as 1RM
bench press and squat as well as a ballistic bench press and
jump squat to determine power output.
The results in this study were quite interesting. First of all,
it appears that both groups had significant increases in strength,
power, and resistance to fatigue after the entire four week period
which can be attributed to the training program. This would support
the fact that overreaching can be very beneficial to athletes
trying to improve performance. However, the interesting results
show that the placebo group experienced significant decreases
in strength in the first 2 weeks of the training program where
the subjects were in a stage of overreaching. However, the amino
acid group did not have any change in performance during this
period. This was obviously due to the anti-catabolic effects
that BCAA's promote in the body. Thus, for athletes interested
in peaking performance, through the use of strenuous and intense
exercise where initial decrements of performance can occur, these
negative symptoms can be regulated and possibly negated by the
supplementation of BCAA's.
BCAA's have a positive effect on reducing fatigue and help in
maintaining plasma levels of BCAA's in the body. Coombes et al
(84) examined the effects of branched-chain amino acid (BCAA)
supplementation on serum indicators of muscle damage after long
periods of exercise. They hypothesized that BCAA supplementation
would reduce serum indicators of muscle damage. There were 16
healthy males randomly assigned to either an experimental group
in which they supplemented with 12 grams of BCAA's a day or a
control/placebo group. Both groups participated in a two hour
cycling activity at an intensity of 70% VO2. The results of this
study clearly show that BCAA supplementation played a significant
role in reducing levels of plasma markers associated with muscle
tissue damage after intense endurance exercise. Of further interest,
there have been many other studies similar to this in which plasma
levels of specific compounds indicating muscle damage were reduced
with BCAA supplementation. Low amounts of BCAA plasma levels,
specifically leucine, have been correlated with increased levels
of fatigue and reduced markers of physical performance (85).
Another interesting function of BCAA's is their profound effect
on clinically diagnosed patients with specialized diseases or
health problems. First, BCAA's may support liver health in patients
with liver disease (31). Also, patients suffering from amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis, or ALA, may show improvement after using BCAA's
(32). Third, BCAA's may help support health and recovery in patients
who have experienced trauma, extreme physical stress, kidney
failure, and burns (33). Finally, BCAA's may aid in recovery
after surgery (34).
Dosage recommendations for BCAA's vary widely and more research
is needed before finalization is made for the best supplementation
dosage of BCAA's. However, the most recent research indicates
that dosages typically range from 200-300mg of each BCAA daily
to 2-5 grams of each daily. It however seems that the smallest
beneficial dosage of BCAA's is 150mg of each leucine, isoleucine,
and valine daily (35).
Summary and Recommendation
Although there may be slight contradictions in pre-existing
research regarding BCAA supplementation, there is enough positive
scientific evidence to warrant its usage in high performance
athletes. From numerous studies, it is clear that BCAA's have
a significant role in increasing overall conditioning factors
such as aerobic and anaerobic capacities, by improving physiological
markers such as: red blood cell count, hemoglobin, hematocrit,
serum albumin, fasting glucose levels, a decrease in creatine
phophokinase, increased glycogenesis, and even rapid alleviation
of muscle inflammation. Other positive attributes associated
with BCAA's as shown by current scientific literature includes:
increased muscle recovery, especially after intense eccentric
exercise, alleviation of short term decrements in performance
commonly associated with overreaching, improvements in plasma
levels of BCAA's (often linked with fatigue), and may aid in
the healing of injuries, sickness, and trauma. There may also
be strength and muscle mass increases accompanied by BCAA supplementation.
However, further research is needed to determine whether this
is a direct or indirect effect of BCAA supplementation.
According to consumerlab.com, there is no apparent toxicity or
danger associated with BCAA supplementation. ConsumerLab also
recommends anywhere from 1-12 grams. The typical ratio of BCAA's
is 50% leucine, 25% isoleucine, and 25% valine. This also lines
up with the most current research on BCAA supplementation. BCAA's
should be taken with water before and after training with any
other pre or post workout supplement.
According to consumerlab.com and other valid sources, some of
the best BCAA products include: Iron-Tech, Essential Liquid Amino
Complex, AST BCAA, MRM BCAA+G, Precision Engineered BCAA, Beverly
International Muscularity, Optimum Nutrition BCAA, Controlled
Labs Purple Wraath, and Ultimate Nutrition BCAA.
26. Whitney, E., Rolfes, S. Supplements as Ergogenic Aids.
Understanding Nutrition. 2005.
27. Ohtani M, Sugita M, Maruyama K. Amino acid mixture improves
training efficiency in athletes. J Nutr. 2006 Feb; 136(2): 538S-543S.
28. Sugita M, Ohtani M, Ishii N, Maruyama K, Kobayashi K.
Effect of a selected amino acid mixture on the recovery from
muscle fatigue during and after eccentric contraction exercise
training. Biosci Biotechnol Biochem. 2003 Feb;67(2):372-5.
29. Ohtani M, Maruyama K, Suzuki S, Sugita M, Kobayashi K.
Changes in hematological parameters of athletes after receiving
daily dose of a mixture of 12 amino acids for one month during
the middle- and long-distance running training. Biosci Biotechnol
Biochem. 2001 Feb; 65(2): 348-55.
30. Kraemer WJ, Ratamess NA, Volek JS, Hakkinen K, Rubin MR,
French DN, Gomez AL, McGuigan MR, Scheett TP, Newton RU, Spiering
BA, Izquierdo M, Dioguardi FS. The effects of amino acid supplementation
on hormonal responses to resistance training overreaching. Metabolism.
2006 Mar; 55(3): 282-91.
31. Poon RT, Yu WC, Fan ST, Wong J. Long-term oral branched
chain amino acids in patients undergoing chemoembolization for
hepatocellular carcinoma: a randomized trial. Aliment Pharmacol
Ther. Apr2004; 19(7): 779-88.
32. Plaitakis A, et al. Pilot Trial of Branched-chain Amino
acids in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Lancet. May 1988; 1(8593):
33. Sax HC, et al. Clinical Use of Branched-chain Amino Acids
in Liver Disease, Sepsis, Trauma, and Burns. Arch Surg. March
1986; 121(3): 358-66.
34. Braverman ER. The Healing Nutrients Within. New Canaan,
CT: Keats Publishing, Inc. 1997; 339.
35. NHIondemand.com. Branched Chain Amino Acids. Pharmasave
83. Kern, Mark. Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAA). CRC Desk
Reference of Sports Nutrition, San Diego State University. 20-21.
84. Coombes JS, McNaughton LR. Effects of branched-chain amino
acid supplementation on serum creatine kinase and lactate dehydrogenase
after prolonged exercise. J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2000 Sep;
85. Mero A. Leucine supplementation and intensive training.
Sports Med. 1999 Jun; 27(6): 347-58.
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Bell ringing on Independence Day is a tradition dating back to the birth of the nation. For the first century of this country’s history, it was the standard way to celebrate. After the Civil War however, fireworks gradually drowned out the chiming of the bells.
But during the Kennedy administration, a national campaign was begun by radio stations and news media to bring back bell-ringing and in 1963, This Week magazine presented the idea in an article, “Make Freedom Really Ring.” The concept was endorsed with a proclamation by President John F. Kennedy.
Across the country, bells were rung 13 times, honoring the first 13 colonies, at the same time (11 a.m. in Petaluma) and a Congressional act authorized the Let Freedom Ring National Bell Ringing ceremony.
In Petaluma, 50 years ago, Mayor Helen Putnam read the article and thought of the historic Korbel Bell housed in her garage. When the Korbel Lumber Company closed down, the bell was taken by Miriam McNear Korbel, daughter of prominent Petaluma businessman George P. McNear. Later, she gave the bell to Rutherford Putnam, Helen’s husband and member of a longtime Sonoma family.
The Putnams had the bell mounted on a small A-frame and attached a rope. On July 4, 1963, they invited interested locals to attend the bell-ringing. The American and California Bear flags were hoisted, the Pledge of Allegiance recited and a bugle was blown. Then, at 11 a.m., the Korbel-Putnam bell was rung 13 times. Afterward, everyone had a chance to ring the bell and Helen Putnam invited everyone to the rear garden for homemade cookies and lemonade.
On July 4, 2013, Petaluma celebrates the golden anniversary of this event, locally and nationally, on the steps of the Petaluma Historical Museum and Library.
The tradition has not changed since 1963, although it has augmented, beginning with a color guard flag ceremony. The Pledge of Allegiance is still recited, followed by a welcome given by Faith Ross, new president of the Petaluma Museum Association. “It’s my first official appearance,” she said, smiling.
Mayor David Glass reads President Kennedy’s bell-ringing proclamation and then historians
Bill Hammerman and Marshall West appear in costume, complete with top hats, as their historical alter egos: Hammerman as nurseryman William Howard Pepper, founder of the city’s first kindergarten; and West as banker Isaac Wickersham. Hammerman speaks on the city’s bell-ringing tradition and West tells the story of the Fourth of July. “It’s a little history lesson for the kids,” he says.
Hammerman, who talks on the signers of the Declaration of Independence, notes “while the country celebrates Independence Day on July 4, Congress declared the 13 colonies separate from Great Britain on July 2, 1776. And while the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, delegates didn’t begin signing it until Aug. 2.”
Finally, precisely at 11 a.m., West handles the 13-bell salute. “We watch the time closely,” he says, adding other city bells will ring at 11, the Elim Lutheran church bell and possibly the clock tower bell on the Masonic Building.
True to Helen Putnam’s tradition, after that everyone who wants to may ring the bell. “That’s the highlight,” West says. He leads museum tours for third-grade students during the school year and says they always want to ring the bell, which is kept permanently on the first floor of the museum. “I tell them,” he says, “You guys come back July the fourth and I guarantee you can ring it.”
West and Hammerman have been ceremony stalwarts since the 1990s, they say. Some years, says historian Kathy Fries, the ceremony includes music. “This is something we do for the community,” she says. “We keep it going for Helen Putnam. It’s our hometown ceremony and a nice way to start the day. So many people have parties, but this is more contemplative.”
After the ceremony, continuing the Putnam tradition, citizens are invited to the garden court behind the museum for lemonade and homemade cookies.
Hammerman jokes, “I thought that’s why we were here – that’s why I come!”
Later, West says, “The museum is open for free.” Ross adds the new exhibit celebrating the Petaluma River may be up by then. It’s a community exhibit, she says, with many organizations involved in creating it. “We’re supposed to have boats and kayaks on display, so it will be friendly for kids.”
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John F. Kennedy (1917 – 1963) [cite this] More images » Life in Brief: John F. Kennedy was born into a rich, politically connected Boston family of Irish-Catholics. He and his eight siblings enjoyed a privileged childhood of elite private schools, sailboats, servants, and summer homes. During his childhood and youth… more life in brief » Essays about John F. Kennedy Life in Brief Life in Brief: John F. Kennedy was born into a rich, politically connected Boston family of Irish-Catholics. He and his eight siblings enjoyed a privileged childhood of elite private schools, sailboats, servants, and summer homes. During his childhood and youth, "Jack" Kennedy suffered frequent serio… Life Before the Presidency Life Before the Presidency: Born soon after America's entry into the First World War, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the nation's first President born in the 20th century. Both parents were from wealthy Boston families with long political histories. His maternal grandfather had been mayor of Boston. Kennedy's father, … Campaigns and Elections Campaigns and Elections: The Campaign and Election of 1960: The election of 1960 brought to the forefront a generation of politicians born in the twentieth century, pitting the 47-year old Republican vice president Richard Nixon against the 43-year old Democratic challenger John F. Kennedy. Kennedy's chief riva…Domestic Affairs Domestic Affairs: Kennedy's domestic legislative program, often described by the umbrella term of "New Frontier" legislation taken from his July 1960 acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention, faced an often difficult passage through Congress. With the Democratic majority in Congress razor…Foreign Affairs Foreign Affairs: Once in office, it was clear that Kennedy would likely face several international challenges that could come from any number of directions. Recurring flare-ups in Berlin, periodical crises with Communist China, and an increasingly difficult situation in Southeast Asia, all threatened to erupt. …Family Life Family Life: The Kennedys had their first child, Caroline, in 1957; John Jr. was born a few days after his father won the presidency. A third child, Patrick, died two days after his birth in 1963. After a long succession of elderly Presidents, it was refreshing for many to see the Kennedy family's youth and …The American Franchise The American Franchise: During the Kennedy years, some groups that had formerly been discriminated against made great breakthroughs in realizing the American Dream. For others, the early 1960s proved to be another disappointing era. President Kennedy initiated the planning for a "War on Poverty" in 1963, after r…Impact and Legacy Impact and Legacy: John F. Kennedy had promised much but never had the opportunity to follow through. It was, in the words of one notable biographer, "an unfinished life." For that reason, assessments of the policies of the Kennedy presidency remain mixed. Kennedy played a role in revolutionizing American p… About His Administration First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Vice President Lyndon Johnson (1961–1963) Secretary of State Dean Rusk (1961–1963) Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara (1961–1963) Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall (1961–1963) Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (1961–1963) Postmaster General John A. Gronouski (1963) J. Edward Day (1961–1963) Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon (1961–1963) Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz (1962–1963) Arthur J. Goldberg (1961–1962) Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges (1961–1963) Secretary of Agriculture Orville L. Freeman (1961–1963) Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Anthony J. Celebrezze (1962–1963) Abraham Ribicoff (1961–1962) John F. Kennedy Presidential Recordings Kennedy Conversation on Oct 25, 1962 (38.1) Kennedy Conversation on Oct 27, 1962 (42) Kennedy Conversation on Aug 16, 1962 (12) Kennedy Dictabelt Conversation 4D.2 Kennedy Conversation on Apr 18, 1963 (81.3) view all recordings » Facts about John F. Kennedy Term: 35th President of the United States (1961 – 1963) Born: May 29, 1917, Brookline, Massachusetts Political Party: Democrat Died: November 22, 1963 Nickname: “JFK,” “Jack” Education: Harvard (1940) Religion: Roman Catholic Marriage: September 12, 1953 to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (1929–1994) Children: Caroline Bouvier (1957– ); John Fitzgerald, Jr. (1960–1999); Patrick Bouvier (1963) Career: Author, U.S. Navy Officer, Journalist, Public Official Buried: Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia WritingsWhy England Slept (1940); Profiles in Courage (1956) John F. Kennedy Image Gallery More images » John F. Kennedy Exhibits ‘The Ole Miss Crisis’ In the summer of 1962, James Meredith wanted to enroll in the University of Mississippi, the first black ever to do so, and the Kennedy administration was determined to make this possible. These excerpts from an all night crisis management meeting that started late on September 30 reveal the tension that gripped Kennedy and his brother, the Attorney General. September 1962. ‘March on Washington’ Following the "March on Washington" and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech earlier in the day, President Kennedy met with civil rights leaders at the White House. The topics under discussion were the event itself. the details of civil rights legislation then moving through Congress, and strategies for empowering black Americans. The NAACP's Roy Wilkens begins this segment, offering reasons for the march's success. ‘Bombs in Birmingham’ On September 15, 1963, four black girls were killed in a bombing at Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church. Four days later, President Kennedy met with civil rights leaders at the White House. This tape segment begins with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. describing the situation confronting Birmingham's black residents and urging federal action to remedy their plight. ‘The Civil Rights Act of 1964’ On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy gave a televised address to the American people and announced that he would be sending a civil rights bill to Congress which would outlaw racial segregation and make employment discrimination illegal. more exhibits » Kennedy White House Tapes “Fly Me To the Moon” “March on Washington” More » Citation Information Consulting Editor David Coleman Professor Coleman is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia and Chair of the Presidential Recordings Program, overseeing the John F. Kennedy project, at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. His writings include: Real-World Nuclear Deterrence: The Making of International Strategy (Co-authored with Joseph Siracusa, Praeger Security International, 2006) Depression to Cold War: A History of America from Herbert Hoover to Ronald Reagan (Co-authored with Joseph Siracusa, Praeger Publishers, 2002) More » Lyndon B. Johnson » « Dwight D. Eisenhower American President has changed! 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Classic osteosarcoma is a malignant spindle cell sarcoma that produces osteoids. After myeloma, osteosarcoma is the most common primary bone tumor. It typically occurs in patients aged 10 to 25 years and is more common in males than females (1.5:1). Osteosarcoma is often found in the distal femoral metaphysis (35%), the proximal tibial metaphysis (20%), and the proximal humerus (10%).1 Pain, the most common symptom, is often exacerbated with physical activity. Plain radiographs typically show lesions with mixed lytic and blastic areas in the metaphysis of a long bone.1 There is a wide zone of transition between tumor and normal bone, and often an extraosseous soft tissue mass with fluffy irregular densities of bone formation is seen (Figure 1).
MRI defines the extent of the soft tissue lesion and the involvement of neurovascular structures. Pathologic findings depict malignant cells producing osteoid.1 There is also a strong correlation between retinoblastoma and osteosarcoma; the retinoblastoma gene is mutated in 25% to 80% of cases of osteosarcoma.1 Chondrosarcoma is unlikely in this patient, as most cases occur in adults over age
40 years. Ewings sarcoma involves small round cells and is not associated with the retinoblastoma gene. Osteochondroma is a benign tumor with a characteristic large cartilaginous cap. Chondromyxoid fibroma, a rare tumor of the long bones and short tubular bones of the foot, typically occurs in the third or fourth decades of life and does not match the radiologic or histologic findings in this case.
1. Gibbs CP Jr, Weber K, Scarborough MT. Malignant bone tumors. Instr Course Lect 2002;51:413-28.
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Updated 3/20/08 nvf
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October 12th, 2011
01:00 PM ET
As the rains raged on in 1340s Europe, most of the crops rotted, leading to food shortages in a colder environment. Amidst the malnourished population, rodents, fleas and perhaps even lice were spreading a disease that had most likely never before infected humankind, and would wipe out up to half of Europe within five years.
This is the vision of the Black Death that scientists put forth in a new study in the journal Nature. For the first time ever, they have reconstructed the genome of an ancient disease based on skeletal remains.
They found out that the medieval plague is not so genetically different from its modern descendant, a disease that exists today in certain parts of the world. They are both caused by variations of the bacteria strain Yersinia pestis but the kind they discovered in the medieval remains appears to no longer exist.
"They’re almost identical," said the study's senior author Johannes Krause of the University of Tübingen, Germany, at a press teleconference Tuesday. "Even a mother and a child show more [genetic] differences than the ancient Black Death strain and the modern plague strain."
Researchers examined skeletons from East Smithfield Cemetery in London, where approximately 2,500 Black Death victims were buried in mass graves.
They looked at the inner pulp chamber of teeth of individuals buried at this site. That’s where there remains, even after hundreds of years, a dark black powdery material composed of dried blood and nerves. This is a gold mine for DNA excavators.
The next step is separating the DNA of the disease from human DNA, other bacterial DNA and whatever else might be in there from the soil. They then used the modern version of the plague bacteria strain, Yersinia pestis, to look for its ancestor.
They found the ancient Black Death strain in three individuals and a close variation in a fourth skull. It's expected that a pathogen will undergo mutations during an outbreak, Krause said.
Researchers published their initial proof of concept in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in August. This new study shows the nearly complete genetic reconstruction of the Black Death.
The new evidence suggests that the Black Death was the first time plague had infected humans. That would mean Plague of Justinian in 541 A.D. may have been an entirely different pathogen. Alternatively, it could have been caused by an extinct strain of Yersinia pestis.
The Black Death may have come from China and spread along the Silk Road to the ports of Italy and France, where it traveled throughout continental Europe. Most of the victims were poor, since many wealthy people fled to country homes and shielded themselves from the disease.
People at that time had no idea what this disease was or how to treat it. But in later outbreaks, cultural adaptations helped lower virulence, Krause said.
"They had developed quarantine, they had developed some kind of first aid and how to treat patients with the symptoms," he said.
Today, there are about 2,000 cases per year, worldwide, on average, of the modern version of the plague. Rats and rat fleas, like in medieval times, seem to spread it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the World Health Organization has called it a "reemerging infectious disease.”
Modern antibiotics can treat the plague today, and probably would have effectively controlled the outbreak of the Black Death, according to scientists. Unfortunately for millions of Europeans, tetracycline wasn’t invented until 1952.
About this blog
Get a behind-the-scenes look at the latest stories from CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen and the CNN Medical Unit producers. They'll share news and views on health and medical trends - info that will help you take better care of yourself and the people you love.
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"During the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, Peter the Roman will rule, feeding the flock through many tribulations, at the end of which the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the formidable judge will judge his people."
It is well-known that the city of Rome was built on seven hills or mountains, but did you know that Washington DC was also built on seven hills?
Yes, Washington D.C. really does have seven hills:
1. Capitol Hill
2. Meridian Hill
3. Floral Hills
4. Forest Hills
7. Knox Hill
In biblical prophecy, at the end of which the city of seven hills will be destroyed. Will this city be Rome, Washington, or some other city?
The word Washington is derived from the Old English words Weshington, Wessington, and Wessynton. Washington or "Wessington" is the combination of the two words, "Wessing" and "ton". The meaning of Wessing is an old Anglo-Saxon word "soaking" or "steeping". The German version would be Wasser" meaning "water".
Today, "water" and "wash"is the standard meaning in English. This is where we get 'Wash" in Washington. The definition of Wash is:
Water is an accepted symbol for the Word of God. Moses' name, meaning in Hebrew “to draw out of the water.” You will find many waterways in the District of Columbia. The Potomac River which is the main body of water, the Chesapeake, the Anacostia River, the Ohio Canal, and also the Rock Creek that all flow into the Potomac.
Now that we have established that wash means water, let us explore the word "ton."
The word "ton" comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word "torr" meaning "a prominent hill". The word torr had been derived from the Phoenician or Hebrew "tur" meaning "round tower." The Culdees had lived in a circular building or house, called the Culdees cell. Tor, Toir, Tore, Tura and Tur, do indeed signify in the Irish and ancient Celtic Tongues a Tower; they also signify any round hill, or any round elevated substance, a cape or headland, any round inclosed place, an island or place surrounded by water, a circular dun or rath. Holy Hill was sacred to Venus, and held special significance to the Druids who were descendants of the Phoenician bards.
One of the original five mounds of London, bore the name of Pen-ton, which also meant " the holy hill." Have you ever seen the Pentagon's headquarters with its pentagram shaped building...
Doesn't the Pentagon look very similar to Stonehenge?
So now we know that the word "ton" in the compound word Washing-ton actually means a"holy hill." When we combine the two, we then have a "holly hill" surrounded by "water."
The first President of the United States of America was George Washington.
It is well-known that President Washington was a Freemason. In fact, he helped lay the cornerstone to our nation's capital.
Therefor, it would only be common sense to understand that since the Freemasons are the founders of the United States, that they have had, and still have a huge role in the construction and instructions in how this country will operate from day one of naming the first President and Capital up until now. This is not a conspiracy, but a Masonic fact that can be easily researched once you connect some dots.
In studying the history of the Freemasons, you will find that they have a strong connection to both the Druids and Culdees. Therefor, the naming of the first President and of the Capital to signify a "holy hill surrounded by water" that was sacred to Venus, and which held special significance to the Druids; was no coincidence, but more prophecy.
"The Culdees of York was the name borne by the Canons Regular of St Peter's of York about AD 925." St Peter's of York, York Minster: Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St Peter in York (SOURCE: p.615, Volume V07, Encyclopaedia Brittanica 11th edition: 1911)
The Culdees of York were among the guardians of the Masonic tradition in the tenth century, and the Old Charges tell us that an assembly of Masons was held at York during the reign of King Athelstan, when a reorganization of the Craft took place. (SOURCE: A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry (Ars Magna Latomorum) and of Cognate Instituted Mysteries: Their Rites, Literature, and History, Arthur Edward Waite: 1921)
"Masons are our present Druids". (SOURCE: Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man: the Evolution of Religious Doctrine from the Eschatology of the ancient Egyptians; published by George Allen and Company Ltd., Albert Churchward: London England, 1913)
Now let's go back to the biblical prophecy question of, "What city on seven hills will be destroyed?"
Has this biblical event already happened in history? After all, Rome has been sacked and plundered, to where it was left burning on quite a few occasions over the last couple thousand years. Even the White House was burned down by the British. Could it be that the Vatican in Rome will be taken down once and for all eternity, or will it be the New Atlantis we know of today as the United States of America, with its capital on Holy Hill.
Who will become the sacrificial goat?
Photo Credit: Fine Art Print - Gerry Gantt
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A MiddleWeb Blog
I blinked in surprise. My oldest son sat across the table from me. He was finishing up his first year of college. In high school he’d made a 35 on the ACT (having missed a math problem because – according to him – he made a silly mistake.) He was acing his coursework in calculus, physics, as he always had in mathematics and sciences. And now at dinner, he had just announced that he’d decided on his major. He was going to major in English – specifically, creative writing.
His explanation was simple. He was tired of subjects with “right and wrong” answers. He wanted classes that allowed him to think. He wanted to wrestle with responses and ideas. After a physics test on which he made the highest grade in the large freshman class, he wrote beside his posted grade: “Anything a Physics major can do an English major can do better.”
This happened in the 1980s. I know that the maths and sciences require students to think, but at what level was inquiry-based teaching and critical thinking emphasized in ‘80s STEM-related classes? I don’t have a hard number, but in those days it didn’t seem to happen in most high school classes and certainly not in those supersized freshman level college classes.
Fast forward to today’s K-12 math and science classes. I wonder how many math and science teachers still expect students to follow a specific predetermined procedure that gets them to the predetermined “right” answer. And how well do these canned lessons prepare them for today’s world?
Before heaving a sigh of despondency, let me tell you another story. I recently watched a video of a teacher in Mobile, Alabama working with her 2nd graders. They were sitting on a rug in front of the board with nothing but their brains – no paper, pencil, or other tools. The teacher wrote the number 53 on the board. Then she told her students, “Think about this number. 53 is the answer. How did we get this answer?”
You could tell the kids had done this before. They studiously regarded the two-digit number, and when they had a response they put their “quiet thumb” up under their chins. One by one, the teacher asked them to share how they arrived at the answer, until all the students’ solutions were on the table. Then they talked about all the answers. The roads to 53 are amazing and creative.
STEM can grow better thinking
The point of my story, of course, is that these second graders weren’t being asked to recite the “right” answer — they were being encouraged and allowed to come up with multiple pathways to get to a satisfying solution.
That’s the part of the STEM process that can revolutionize our subject areas. In our middle grades curriculum designs, we want students recognizing that there are multiple ways to solve a problem, and then coming up with as many as they can. And we don’t have the corner on the market. Today this process is beginning in elementary schools! (I visited a kindergarten team meeting in Birmingham, AL where the teachers decided to pose this problem to their students: “The answer is 20 cookies. What is the story?” Delicious.)
I wonder what my son would have thought about math and science if he had been taught to tangle with a variety of approaches to solving problems and conducting investigations — to look at a possible math and science career as an a adventure and not a life filled with routine and predictability.
I expect he would have still majored in English. He’s a really good writer. But maybe his reason for majoring in English would have been different, and not reflected his discouragement with math and science – subjects that should engender wonder and excitement in young minds.
STEM needs to be about wonder
In my past blog posts I’ve attempted to describe various parts of the engineering design process, but I feel especially passionate about this one. This element of excited curiosity is critical to developing tomorrow’s workforce, but it’s also critical to developing students who enjoy learning, who can see possibilities, and who arrive at potential solutions. It’s critical to tomorrow’s society, when you get right down to it.
Today’s teachers do have to teach in a way that allows students to explore, create, and develop multiple solutions for problems before reaching consensus on the best one to try. That’s the only way we’ll ever put the “E” in STEM. And that’s the only way we’ll ever turn out students who can solve the problems our world faces.
Problem-solving, problem-solving, problem-solving. How do you help your students do that? How would you like to help your students do that? Regardless of your subject area, have you ever had really good professional learning opportunities — the kind that helped you learn how to support your students as they devise multiple pathways to problems? Just wondering . . .
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Issue No. 11, Article 4/June 15, 2012
Crops and Water
Illinois cornfields in areas that have had some rain continue to look good, but crop ratings are still sliding as corn shows visible symptoms of drought stress in the areas that have received little rain over the past six weeks. As of June 10, National Agricultural Statistics Service reports that the average height of the corn crop is a record 29 inches, but it is rated at only 56% good to excellent, and the soybean crop at only 50% G-E.
With few other problems such as hail, nutrient deficiency (except those related to dry soil), disease, or insects, most of the perceived deterioration in crop condition is due to the ongoing lack of rainfall and the crop stress symptoms that accompany it. According to data from the Midwest Regional Climate Center, rainfall between May 1 and June 12 ranged from 2 to 5 inches in Illinois, with deficits from normal ranging from 1 to 2 inches along and south of I-80 to 5 inches or more in extreme southern Illinois. Some rainfall on June 12 in some of the driest areas of southern Illinois moved these totals up a little, but dryness persists through much of the state.
While we all sense when we're in a drought, there are ways to look at dryness from the crop's perspective, which often differs from the human perspective. One way is through an indication reported weekly by NASS about how much of the surface and subsurface soil is dry. On June 10, 26% of topsoil was listed as being "very short" on moisture, 52% was "short," and 22% was adequate. Subsurface numbers were similar, with a little more (28%) listed as adequate in moisture.
Another way to look at severity of drought is through the Palmer Drought Index, a complex measurement taking into account both rainfall (as compared with normal) and anticipated effects on agriculture. As of June 5, most of Illinois, with the exception of the northeastern part of the state, was "abnormally dry," which is the mildest form of drought. A small part of extreme southern Illinois was categorized in "severe drought," which would be expected to reduce crop yields considerably if it persisted much longer. Parts of that area that received some rainfall this week will drop out of the severe-drought category by the time the next Palmer map appears. An area north of the severe-drought area and another in central-west central Illinois were in "moderate drought."
How are crops faring in this ongoing period of less-than-normal rainfall? As we've said before, water use and photo¬synthetic rates are closely linked, so a decrease in water availability means a decrease in the crop's daily dry matter production. So while cooler weather in recent weeks has decreased water use rates, and the corn crop can have its leaves out and active longer in the day before they roll up when the roots can no longer provide water fast enough, lower temperatures also mean slower rates of photosynthesis.
As the corn crop grows and expands its leaf area, water loss rates increase as photosynthetic rates increase. Figuring out how much water the crop uses as it grows is a little complicated, but it starts with knowing how much "demand" the atmosphere has for water each day, then using a factor called the "crop coeffi¬cient" to estimate how much of this demand the crop provides--that is, how much water the crop loses through the process of transpiration. Transpiration is loss of water vapor from leaves, and its rate is linked to the rate of intake of CO2 during photosynthesis, hence the close tie between the two processes.
The amount of water that evaporates from an open pan is used to estimate demand on a daily basis. This amount increases with wind speed, temperature, sunshine, and low humidity, and under central Illinois conditions it ranges up to about 0.3 inches per day. According to the Illinois Climate Network (part of the Illinois State Water Survey), open-pan evaporation was estimated at 6.84 inches at Champaign last month. This is a very high value for May--evaporation was only 3.91 inches in May 2011. Rainfall during May 2012 was 3.55 inches.
The larger the crop plant, the more water the crop uses; the crop coefficient ranges from 0 to 1 and is the percentage of open-pan evaporation that the crop uses at each stage of development. The crop coefficient for corn rises from around 0.1 at VE or V1 to about 0.2 by V3, 0.4 by V6, 0.6 by V11, 0.7 by V15, and 0.9 by the time pollination has ended and the canopy is full. So the corn crop planted in mid-April and growing from stage V1 to V7 with the 500 GDD received in May this year would have transpired about 30% of potential evaporation in May, or about 2 inches of water. Evaporation from the soil surface would have used a little more, but total use would not have exceeded the 3.55 inches of rain in Champaign during May. Such a crop is now at about V10, with a crop coefficient of above 0.5, and so is using about 1 inch of water per week. By mid-June, such a crop has used a total of about 5 inches of water.
In areas with less rain, soils that can hold 2 to 3 inches of plant-available water per foot of depth would easily have had enough water to keep the crop growing through mid-vegetative stages. The reason this did not happen in some areas, where plant leaves are rolling on a daily basis, is that the root system has not been able to tap the water that is available in the soil. "Rootless" or "floppy" corn with poorly developed nodal roots represents one reason for this. In some fields that were planted later or into drier soils, roots were unable to get into more moist soil zones early, and once soils dried between these zones and the ends of the roots, the ability of roots to reach these zones was lost. Insect or disease problems of roots are contributing in some cases as well.
Soybean water use follows a pattern similar to that of corn, with the crop coefficient increasing steadily from about V2 through R3 or so, reaching a maximum of about 0.8, so a little lower than corn's maximum use rate. Soybeans planted in April here at Urbana have reached V6 and are about 16 inches tall; their crop coefficient of around 0.45 would mean a daily water use rate of perhaps 1/8 of an inch, and water use up to now totaling perhaps 3 to 3.5 inches. Most of the May-planted crop is only at V3 or so and is using water less rapidly.
Some soybean fields planted into dry soils have poor stands in places, and others have roots that have not yet reached soil moisture. So the soybean crop is showing symptoms of lack of water in many fields as well. Leaves don't roll in soybean as they do in corn; instead they tend to lose turgor and droop, in some cases dropping to vertical orientation. This reduces the intensity of sunlight on the leaf and the heating that comes with it when there's not enough water to keep photosynthesis going, but it also means leaves are doing no photosynthesis and so will not show any growth for the time they are in this condition. Note that soybean leaves tend to drop to vertical during the night as a natural phenomenon--this helps protect them from radiational cooling and can be a benefit on cool nights. They normally reorient to horizontal as the sunlight increases in the morning.
Though we tend to worry a lot when the weather is dry, the best indication of how the plant perceives dry weather--that is, how much water it's able to extract from the soil despite lack of rainfall--is visible in how the plant grows. Many have commented on how well the corn crop is increasing its plant height even in dry weather. In drier areas or with the crop farther behind and lacking good roots, though, the current dry period will result in decreases in plant size. If this persists, those cells that make up kernels, silks, leaves, and seeds may also be restricted in size, with direct effects on yield.
Plant height and leaf area expansion occur when water moves into cells to push out cell walls. Cell walls harden after this expansion, after which no further size increase is possible. Cells have to attract water from the rest of the plant in order to expand, so this process is quite sensitive to water availability. This is why most cell expansion--what we see as visible "growth"--takes place at night, when there is no transpiration.
True growth is an increase in plant dry weight; this happens only during photosynthesis (so in daylight hours) and is often not visible to the eye. It of course powers, through sugar formation, processes that result in cell expansion, but taking water into cells is not really "growth." Still, the ability to photosynthesize and to form grain is affected by cell expansion, so having enough water that cells can expand fully is critical.--Emerson Nafziger
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“We are being afflicted,” wrote John Maynard Keynes in 1930, “with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come — namely, technological unemployment.” He elaborated:
This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour. But this is only a temporary phase of maladjustment. All this means in the long run is that mankind is solving its economic problem. I would predict that the standard of life in progressive countries one hundred years hence will be between four and eight times as high as it is to-day. There would be nothing surprising in this even in the light of our present knowledge. It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.
Indeed, Keynes thought it entirely possible that, by 2030, scientific and technological progress would have freed humankind from “the struggle for subsistence” and propelled us to “our destination of economic bliss.” Technology would be doing our jobs for us, and the economy would have spread material wealth to everyone. Our only problem at that point would be to figure out how to use our endless hours of leisure — to teach ourselves “to enjoy” rather than “to strive.”
We’re now within spitting distance of 2030, so a progress update on the Keynesian utopia would seem to be in order. A good place to start might be this chart from MIT’s Andrew McAfee:
For more than 30 years after World War II, McAfee observes, GDP, productivity, employment, and income all rose together in seeming lockstep. But in the early 80s, we began to see a “great decoupling,” with growth in employment and household income faltering even as output and productivity continued to shoot upward.
By the end of 2011, things had become much worse in two ways. First, median household income was actually lower than it was a decade earlier. In fact, it was lower than at any point since 1996. And second, the American job creation engine was sputtering badly. Between 1981 and 2001 the economy generated plenty of low-paying jobs. After 2001, though, it wasn’t even generating enough of these, and employment growth started to lag badly behind GDP and productivity growth.
What happened? It’s not entirely clear. Surely there are many forces at work. But McAfee argues that one of the reasons for the decoupling is that technological progress, particularly in the form of computerization, is pushing the economy’s bounties away from labor and toward capital:
Digital technologies have been able to do routine work for a while now. This allows them to substitute for less-skilled and -educated workers, and puts a lot of downward pressure on the median wage. As computers and robots get more and more powerful while simultaneously getting cheaper and more widespread this phenomenon spreads, to the point where economically rational employers prefer buying more technology over hiring more workers. In other words, they prefer capital over labor. This preference affects both wages and job volumes. And the situation will only accelerate as robots and computers learn to do more and more, and to take over jobs that we currently think of not as “routine,” but as requiring a lot of skill and/or education.
McAfee has been writing astutely on the economic consequences of computerization for some time, and I think it’s fair to say that, like Keynes before him, he’s an optimist when it comes to technology. He believes, or at least wants to believe, that we’re in another “temporary phase of maladjustment” and that we’ll be able to innovate our way out of it and recouple what’s been decoupled. But just how we get off the path we’re on, he admits, is far from clear: “it’s not going to be reversed by a couple quick policy fixes or even, I believe, by deeper changes to our educational and entrepreneurial systems.” We’ve entered a new “technological era,” and the old assumptions and solutions may not hold anymore.
It’s always been pretty clear that technological progress has an economic bias — that it tends to reward some folks more than others. Many economists have argued (and many politicians have assumed) that the bias is fundamentally “skill-based.” Progress rewards the skilled and punishes the unskilled. That’s a tough problem, but at least you know how to solve it: you broaden the reach and quality of education in order to shift more people into the skilled camp. But, as Paul Krugman recently suggested, what we might be seeing today is capital-biased technological change, which “tends to shift the distribution of income away from workers to the owners of capital.” That’s a harder nut to crack:
If this is the wave of the future, it makes nonsense of just about all the conventional wisdom on reducing inequality. Better education won’t do much to reduce inequality if the big rewards simply go to those with the most assets. Creating an “opportunity society” … won’t do much if the most important asset you can have in life is, well, lots of assets inherited from your parents.
The implications, writes Krugman, are “really uncomfortable.”
So maybe Keynes will be proved half-right. By 2030, technological progress will have freed the masses from their jobs, but it won’t have freed them from the struggle for subsistence.
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Case Study: Is Exercise bad for the digestive system?
Most fitness experts and personal trainers assert that exercise is good for the digestive system. Many nutitionists and physicians support this view. It has been shown, however, that many people develop occasional trouble with their digestive systems after moderate to strenuous exercise. Scientifically conducted surveys recently revealed that approximately 30% of all runners suffer from abdominal cramping during practice or after a race. The immediate need to defecate occurs in 30% of these people. Another 25% develop diarrhea during or just after the race. It is not surprising that strenuous exercise could cause intestinal problems at the time of the activity. After all, the parasympathetic nervous system that controls intestinal activity relaxes during exercise. Some physicians believe that this cuts off blood to the digestive system and may produce discomfort if undigested food is in the stomach or intestines.
Scientists now know that it is not the exercise alone that produces many of the intestinal problems. The surveys show that runners who suffer intestinal cramping very likely have digestive system disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome or lactose intolerance. Those without any underlying digestive system disorders reported having diets that are probably too high in fiber. Almost half of the runners who deficate after a race have a digestive system function that is modified by exercise. Scientists now believe that the condition humorously called "runners' trots" is caused by decrease in intestinal transit time. Intestinal transit time is the amount of time it takes for food to pass through the digestive system. So far, this explanation is not fully supported by research.
Studies have shown that people who start regular strenuous exercise routines have a decreased average intestinal transit time. People who normally took 35 hours to pass a meal from mouth to rectum reduced their intestinal transit time to 24 hours. The researchers did not take into account any significant changes in diet. Other scientists take the traditional argument that blood flow to the intestines is reduced by approximately 80% during exercise. This loss of blood may cause digestive system abnormalities, such as cramping and diarrhea. Then, there are scientists who believe that dehydration associated with execise could be producing the digestive system disorders.
Use the information in this chapter and the Web sites on page 523 in your book to answer ALL OF the following questions about exercise and digestive system health:
- How does the average intestinal transit time affect a person's health?
- Is there enough evidence supporting the negative effects of exercise on digestive system function?
- Should physicians caution people about exercise given the recent evidence supporting its negative effects on the digestive system?
- What warnings about exercise and eating should a personal trainer or physician give to people who are considering an exercise program?
- What, if any, actions should be a person take to avoid intestinal problems during exercise?
- Should people with preexisting digestive system disorders be discouraged from participating in strenuous exercise?
- Follow up question to #6: If people were discouraged to exercise, how would that impact their health?
- Should the government require people or agencies that promote athletic events or regular exercise to provide warnings about digestive system disoreders associated with the activity? (EXPLAIN your answer)
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A key behavioural priority for any sexual organism is finding a mate. Several Centre members investigate the dynamics of this process.
Martin Tovee’s research investigates empirically how aspects of the local ecology, such as resource availability and disease, might affect the judgements of attractiveness that people make. This uses an eye-tracker to measure which areas of the body are ‘hot-spots’ for making attractivness judgments.
John Lazarus investigates how judgements of attractiveness are affected by having potential mates that vary on several dimensions, such as wealth and beauty, which have to be traded off against one another.
Daniel Nettle tests evolutionary predictions about mate choice and mating success using large datasets from several human populations, including contemporary Britain, Guatemala, China and the USA of 1910.
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By the late nineteenth century steamboats had been traveling the Mississippi
for more than sixty years. They were as common to people then as
jets are to us today. Rivers like the Mississippi had long been important
means of transporting goods and people, but with the establishment of steam
power, they became the central way around America. Operating a steamboat
was a competitive business. During the height of steamboat use, there
were more than a thousand plying the waters of the Mississippi. Early
on, living conditions on board most boats was spartan for crew and passengers
alike. Ports often had a bustling, rough and tumble environment.
Along the Mississippi places like East St. Louis became crowded with travelers
and during the nineteenth century, many of the people who worked and traveled
on steamboats were slaves. The presence of slaves in such an unregulated,
busy and open environment often resulted in conflicts. Stretching
from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, the Mississippi was a popular route
for fugitive slaves.
Over time engineers and riverboat captains improved steamboats.
Engines became much more powerful than that of the New Orleans,
the first steamboat to travel the length of the Ohio and the Mississippi
Rivers. Boats grew in size and luxury. Steam power continued
to be used into the twentieth century. Oil and coal replaced wood
for fuel and later diesel engines would replace steam. Before diesel
engines however, steam boat life changed very little even as steam boat
The Steamboat Life
More than simple transportation, pleasure steamboats offered a traveler
every accommodation. A trip on a fancy steamer was an adventure in
itself. Passengers in First Class enjoyed luxurious rooms and fine
dining. A few boats offered entertainment in their grand ballrooms
and a very few offered gambling - a feature that contributed to the popular
image of steamboats as fancy and daring places to be. Travelers not
in first class fared much worse, with cramped quarters and few amenities.
Along with luxurious accouterments, steamboats acquired powerful engines
and with them competition developed among various crews to see which boats
were the fastest.
|Beadle's Half Dime Library Cover from July 24, 1879.
A Steamboat Race
The most famous race began on June 30, 1870 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Two of the most famous and fancy steam boats, the Rob't E. Lee and
the Natchez prepared to race from New Orleans to St. Louis, Missouri.
Thousands of people gathered to watch the race. It was a tremendous
event. People throughout the United States and Europe anticipated the outcome.
Thousands of dollars changed hands on various bets ranging from guessing
arrival times to which boat would win.
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Canada vs. USA Final Made Power Consumption Jump by Around 600 Megawatts in Ontario
Cool Statistic of the Day
Who knew a hockey game could be so energy-intensive? According to the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) that oversee's the power grid in Ontario and balances supply and demand, the final hockey game of the Vancouver Olympics (Canada vs USA) created a spike of about 300 megawatts in the province, with additional "similar increases" occurring during commercial breaks because at that time people usually open the fridge to get more beer, make some popcorn, flush the toilet (did you know your toilet uses power? water is pumped using electricity), etc.
The same phenomenon no doubt took place in the rest of the Canadian provinces, and to a lesser extend in the USA and other countries, and while not everybody's as crazy about hockey as Canadians, the Superbowl or World Cup have the same effect on power consumption.
"Electricity consumption dropped off shortly after 22-year-old Sidney Crosby scored the game-winning goal at 7:40 in overtime, approximately 5:40 p.m. in Ontario."
I guess that's not good for the talking heads who do endless debriefing at the end of such games...
Your Behavior Can Make a Difference, One Way or the Other
The IESO concludes with: "Consumer behaviour has a significant impact on the demand for electricity," said Mark Wilson, Manager of System Operations at the IESO. "The patterns we saw yesterday are very different from the demand profile for a typical Sunday in late February."
Via IESO, Clean Break
More on Energy
Sweden to Build 2,000 New Wind Turbines, Aims for 50% Renewables by 2020
Google Develops a Cheaper Mirror for Solar Thermal, Could Cut Cost in Half
New Solar Cell is 98% Plastic and Catches a Record-Breaking 96% of Incident Light
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Flowering shrubs create an eye-catching landscape, and planting tropical flowering shrubs adds an exotic, tropical beauty to a yard. Because the shrubs hail from the tropics, U.S. Department of Agriculture hardiness zones vary by type of plant and species, so check the zone before deciding on the right shrub for your garden.
Fragrant Flowering Tropical Shrubs
Fragrant shrubs fill an outdoor space with both perfume and blooms. Two scented tropical shrubs are night jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum) and gardenia (Gardenia jasminoides). Night jasmine, as the name implies, blooms and releases its scent after dark. It requires full sun and well-drained soil and thrives in U.S. Department of Agriculture zones 9 through 12. The gardenia is known for its delicate fragrant flowers. This evergreen shrub prefers full sun to partial shade and grows in USDA zones 8 through 10.
Tropical Shrubs With Colored Foliage
Shrubs with colored foliage provide interest year-round. Several tropical shrubs offer interesting foliage that changes colors with the seasons. Hibiscus has several species and many cultivars, some of which have colored foliage. "Kopper King" hibiscus (Hibiscus "Kopper King") produces showy light pink to red flowers as well as lobed leaves that range from dark green and burgundy to copper. It thrives in USDA hardiness zones 5 through 9.
Tropical Shrubs That Attract Butterflies
Butterfly gardens give hours of enjoyment as you relax and watch the delicate creatures make their way from plant to plant. Add tropical shrubs to a butterfly garden to enjoy the plant and its visitors. The bush clockvine (Thunbergia erecta), also known as king's mantle attracts butterflies with its violet-blue tubular flowers. It prefers full sun to partial shade and thrives in USDA hardiness zones 9 through 12.
Tropical Flowering Shrubs with Unusual Blooms
Shrubs with unusual blooms can be a conversation piece. If you're looking for something different, try the bird of paradise bush (Caesalpinia gilliesii), known for its bird-like clusters of flowers with yellow stamens. This shrub with showy, exotic flowers thrives in USDA hardiness zones 7 through 15. Yellow angel trumpet (Brugmansia aurea) is another tropical shrub that adds a distinctive look. It produces large, yellow trumpet-shaped blooms that dangle from the plant. Yellow angel trumpet prefers full to partial sun, well-drained soil and grows in USDA hardiness zones 10 through 15.
- Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images
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Pituitary adenomas are tumors that occur in the pituitary gland, and account for about 10% of intracranial neoplasms. They often remain undiagnosed, and small pituitary tumors are found in 6 to 24 percent of adults at autopsy.
Pituitary tumors were, historically, classed as basophilic, acidophilic, or chromophobic on the basis of whether or not they took up the stains hematoxylin and eosin. This classification has fallen into disuse, in favor of a classification based on what type of hormone is secreted by the tumor (though tumors which do not secrete any active hormone ("non-functioning tumors") are still sometimes called "chromophobic").
At present, classification of pituitary tumors is based on plasma hormone levels or immunohistochemical staining:
|Type of adenoma||Secretion||Staining||Pathology|
|corticotrophic adenomas||secrete adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC)||basophilic||Cushing's disease|
|somatotrophic adenomas||secrete growth hormone (GH)||acidophilic||acromegaly (gigantism)|
|thyrotrophic adenomas (rare)||secrete thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH)||basophilic||occasionally hyperthyroidism, usually doesn't cause symptoms|
|gonadotrophic adenomas||secrete luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and their subunits||basophilic||usually doesn't cause symptoms|
|lactrotrophic adenomas or prolactinomas (most common)||secrete prolactin||acidophilic||galactorrhea, hypogonadism, amenorrhea, infertility, and impotence|
|null cell adenomas||do not secrete hormones||may stain positive for synaptophysin|
The diagnosis is generally entertained either on the basis of visual difficulties arising from the compression of the optic nerve by the tumor, or on the basis of manifestations of excess hormone secretion: the specifics depend on the type of hormone. The specific area of the visual pathway at which compression by these tumours occurs is at the optic chiasma.
The anatomy of this structure causes pressure on it to produce a defect in the temporal visual field on both sides, a condition called bitemporal hemianopia.
Tumors which cause visual difficulty are likely to be macroadenomata greater than 10 mm in diameter; tumors less than 10 mm are microadenomata.
Some tumors secrete more than one hormone, the most common combination being GH and prolactin.
Prolactinomas are frequently diagnosed during pregnancy, when the hormone progesterone increases the tumor's growth rate. Headaches may be present. The diagnosis is confirmed by testing hormone levels, and by radiographic imaging of the pituitary (for example, by CT scan or MRI).
Treatment options depend on the type of tumor and on its size:
- Prolactinomas are most often treated with bromocriptine or more recently, cabergoline which, unlike bromocriptine, decreases tumor size as well as alleviates symptoms, both dopamine agonists, and followed by serial imaging to detect any increase in size. Treatment where the tumor is large can be with radiation therapy or surgery, and patients generally respond well. Efforts have been made to use a progesterone antagonist for the treatment of prolactinomas, but so far have not proved successful.
- Thyrotrophic adenomas respond to octreotide, a long-acting somatostatin analog, in many but not all cases according to a review of the medical literature. Unlike prolactinomas, thyrotrophic adenomas characteristically respond poorly to dopamine agonist treatment.
- ^ a Chanson, Philippe; Weintraub, Bruce D.; and Harris, Alan G. (1993) Octreotide Therapy for Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone-Secreting Pituitary Adenomata. Annals of Internal Medicine 119 (3), 236-240.
- Cancer.gov: pituitary tumors
- Case report of Bilateral Hemianopsia Due to Pituitary Adenoma. Clinical Cases and Images.
- Medical Illustration of Pituitary Adenomas by Frank H. Netter
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Once a heretic, Copernicus now re-buried with Catholic honors
Thanks to DNA analysis and radar, the remains of 16th-century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus have been identified. Now, the man whose ideas were once considered heresy is now being interred with special honors in a Catholic ceremony.
The remains of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus were reburied with special honors during a Roman Catholic ceremony, interred beneath the altar of Frombork Cathedral in northern Poland. Copernicus had been buried in an unmarked grave in 1543, and his remains were not conclusively identified until 2005, through DNA testing.
Although he was not the first to ever have the idea, Copernicus proposed that the earth revolved around the sun — contrary to the medieval belief that the earth was the center of the universe.
Copernicus is best known for his treatise "On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres." His theories were viewed with suspicion by the Church, and his treatise was not published until after he died.
Eventually the theory became the cornerstone for a future generation of scientists including Kepler and Galileo, but one of its ardent advocates, Italian cleric Giordano Bruno, was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600.
The DNA analysis of two strands of hair from a book that Copernicus owned – Calendarium Romanum Magnum, by Johannes Stoeffler – match the DNA of a tooth and femur bone taken from the remains at Frombork.
Radar was used to search for Copernicus' remains underneath the floor of the cathedral.
Nancy Atkinson blogs at Universe Today.
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MorphologyRead full entry
Adults of this species are about 2.2 to 4.7 inches in length. Crayfish are characterized by a joined head and thorax, and a segmented body. In the case of the species Procambarus clarkii, the body is a very dark red color, with a wedge-shaped black stripe on the abdomen. Crayfish have a sharp snout and moveable eyes on their heads. Like all arthropods, crayfish have a thin but tough exoskeleton that they shed during development. Crayfish have 5 pairs of walking legs, the first of which are large pinchers used for feeding. On the red swamp crayfish, the pinchers tend to be narrow and long. They have long antennae with sensory organs on them. This along with appendages used for feeding, are characteristic of the subphylum Mandibulata. There are also five pairs of smaller appendages called swimmerets on the abdomen. The carapace of this species, located on the dorsal side, are not separated by a space. The most posterior pair of appendages are called uropods. Uropods are flat, broad extentions that surround the telson, which is the last abdominal segment. Uropods are also used for swimming (Safra, et al 1999; McDonald 1996; Vodopich and Moore 1999; Barnes 1974).
Other Physical Features: ectothermic ; bilateral symmetry
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UPDATED JAN. 2, 2014. For those at high latitudes, this year has gotten off to a spectacular start, with many beautiful auroras seen already. Space weather forecasters at NOAA are now estimating a 40% chance of polar geomagnetic storms tonight (January 2, 2014) as the solar wind continues to blow and buffet Earth’s magnetic field. Visit the Space Weather Prediction Center here for more updates.
The aurora borealis, or northern lights, are the most spectacular light show visible. They’re caused by activity on the sun. They are bands of light, created when charged solar particles interact with Earth’s magnetic field. They glow, ripple and enchant those those lucky enough to see the phenomenon with their own eyes. Witnessing the aurora borealis is an experience not to miss. However, sightings are never guaranteed. Many factors can have an impact on whether the lights will appear. Follow the links below for answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about seeing the aurora.
How do I know when to look for the northern lights? Good news. The sun itself will make the announcement. Aurorae are the result of solar activity, where colossal storms take place on the sun’s surface. Sometimes during these storms, coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – charged particles from the sun – are released. If the solar storm erupts in such a way that the resulting CME heads toward Earth, the likelihood of seeing an aurora increases. It takes several days for the charged particles to cross from the sun to Earth, so there is plenty of warning. When the charged particles arrive, they interact with Earth’s magnetic field, creating what is known as a geomagnetic storm. To what extent these charged particles will light up the night sky depends on a variety of factors including the strength of the CME plus whether it struck Earth’s magnetic field directly, or just delivered a glancing blow.
Spaceweather.com is a reliable and readable source of information about activity on the sun. Meanwhile, a great way to stay informed about the possibility of seeing an aurora on any given night is to access one of the numerous aurora alert websites: follow this link to find a list of aurora alert sites. Check them out when you get a chance; some update their forecasts live on Twitter.
Those keen to discover more about Earth’s magnetic field, meanwhile, might like to check out SAMNET, the sub-auroral magnetometer network from Lancaster University.
How far south can I see the aurora borealis tonight? In general, the farther north you go, the greater the chances of seeing the northern lights. Alaska, northern Canada, Iceland, Greenland and Scandinavia are places where they’re often seen, but, you’ll be pleased to hear, the lights can on occasion extend down to lower latitudes. In the instance of very high geomagnetic activity, they lights can be seen as far south as England, the northern and even the southern U.S. (a sighting was even apparently once reported near the Mexican border), Northern Germany and Poland.
These more southerly sightings of the northern lights are rare, but as and when a strong solar storm occurs, you might be lucky enough to see the lights fairly far south.
Othewise, for some real-time aurora tracking, try Aurora Spy’s live data and aurora web cams page.
Will a full moon affect my ability to see the northern lights? Usually not. Naturally, a sky washed with bright moonlight won’t be as dark as it might otherwise be and thus the contrast between the aurora and night sky background won’t be as great. But only the very weakest aurorae will be completely drowned by the light of a full moon. Even in full moonlight, strong northern lights can still be seen clearly and photographed. In fact, LightsOverLapland.com photographer Chad Blakley, who regularly takes shots from the Abisko Aurora Sky Station in Swedish Lapland, has said that some of his best northern lights photographs have been taken when there was a full moon. For proof, see this earlier EarthSky article and marvel at the pictures that were snapped during a full moon.
What happens if it’s cloudy? The rule of thumb is, if you can see the stars, you can see the Northern Lights. Essentially, if the cloud cover is ‘thin’ enough not to conceal the twinkling stars, it shouldn’t make much difference. Thick cloud hovers underneath the aurora, so yes, it would block any sightings, unfortunately.
Can you hear the aurora? While not a concern, this is a frequently asked question. And the answer is … we can’t be sure. Many people say they have heard a sound when witnessing the lights, but the upper atmosphere, according to the University of Alaska, is too thin to carry sounds waves. Plus the aurora itself is too far away. Yet still observers describe whistling, bristling, swooshing sound. The only way to know is to experience the aurora borealis for yourself!
About the Author: Brand Journalist and travel-obsessive Elizabeth Smythe writes this post on behalf of northern lights holiday specialists Weekend a la Carte. Check them out more insights and guides into this most magical of wonders.
Bottom line: Answers to commonly asked questions about seeing one of nature’s wonders: the aurora borealis or northern lights. Updated January 2, 2014 when observers at high northern latitudes reported many beautiful sightings of the northern lights, and when space weather forecasters at NOAA were estimating a 40% chance of more polar geomagnetic storms. Visit the Space Weather Prediction Center here for more updates.
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Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD affects 3-5% of all children. It is often misdiagnosed and treatment plans are not always effective.
The condition is frustrating for the child, the parent and the rest of the family. Teachers, physicians and other health care professionals become frustrated, as well. To achieve the best results, everyone in the child’s environment needs to work together.
If your child has ADHD, he or she needs your help, guidance and understanding. I know from personal experience how difficult it is to raise a child with ADHD. My goal here on this site is to help you, the parent, learn about the condition and understand the treatment options, including available and safe natural adhd treatment.
Symptoms of ADHD
The most common symptoms of ADHD are impulsiveness, hyperactivity and inattention. But, your child might not have all of these behavioral problems. Some kids are primarily hyperactive. Others get sidetracked easily, become bored or daydream, when they should be learning a new skill.
Impulsive behaviors are sometimes difficult to identify. All of us act without thinking, sometimes. That’s one reason that ADHD is difficult to diagnose. The behavioral characteristics that accompany the condition are present in everyone, from time to time.
But, when a child’s impulsivity, hyperactivity or inability to concentrate begins to affect his performance at school or his relationship with family and friends, then professional help is needed. That does not necessarily mean that they require medication. Sometimes, doctors and parents quickly turn to prescription medications, without first considering all of their options.
Natural ADHD Treatment Options
You need to remember that the stimulant drugs that are used to treat ADHD are not a “cure”. In some cases, they help. In others, they create more problems. We tried the drugs, but even at the lowest dosage, my normally happy son came home from school in tears, every single day. Some kids simply cannot tolerate any stimulant, no matter how low the dosage.
A more holistic approach, treating the “whole” child using natural ADHD treatment, worked for us. Numerous studies have shown that medication alone is not the most effective treatment plan. It may be a quick and easy solution, but there are no “magic pills”.
Many factors may play a role in your child’s behavioral problems. Diet is often part of the problem. Too much sugar, artificial colors and preservatives increase irritability, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Good nutrition is of the utmost importance. Kids need to eat right and take a good multi-vitamin, as well as an omega-3 or fish oil supplement.
If your child is hyperactive in school, change your routine. Get up early in the morning. Go for a brisk walk or run before school. Get him involved in an organized sport, karate or other physical activity that will help him or her “burn-off” some of that restless energy.
Try natural herbal remedies for ADHD such as BrightSpark before you turn to prescription medication. It has always seemed illogical to me to give a child stimulants. But, there are many herbs and botanical extracts that are “soothing”.
Additional ADHD Treatment Options
Known to reduce restlessness and over-excitability, this homeopathic remedy showed positive results in a controlled study conducted in 1997. In general, the plant extract reduces outbursts, fidgeting and hyperactive behaviors.
This homeopathic remedy is traditionally recommended for those who need constant stimulation or change, in other words, for those who get “bored” easily. It is also beneficial for the relief of irritability, destructive behaviors and feelings of discontent.
This extract promotes balance, reduces temperamental outbursts or temper tantrums. It also tends to reduce frustration that can occur when learning new skills.
Used to soothe the nerves, verta alb is often recommended by homeopaths for hyperactive children.
Now, all of these solutions must be properly prepared according to the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia and you should only purchase the remedy from a reliable manufacturer.
We have had a great deal of success with the products from Native Remedies. They are carefully prepared in registered facilities and meet with FDA approval.
All of their products are backed by a one year, unconditional money back guarantee. The prices are reasonable and the quality is unquestionable.
If your child has been diagnosed with ADHD or you have noticed the behavioral problems that typically accompany the condition, visit Native Remedies, learn more about the condition and read the testimonials written by other parents. Both you and your child will be glad that you made the effort to find a natural ADHD treatment option.
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In 1856 the first handcart company of Latter-day Saint pioneers started its journey to the Salt Lake Valley. Over the next four years, more than 3,000 people pulled and pushed handcarts across the plains. To make your own handcart, follow these instructions. As you load the supplies, think about what you would have taken on the journey.
Remove these pages from the magazine, mount them on heavier paper, and cut out the pieces. To make the bed of the handcart, fold up its sides, front, and back, and glue the tabs. Glue a wheel and a pulling shaft on each side. Glue the crossbar to the tabs on the ends of the pulling shafts. Fold the tabs on the rest of the figures so they can stand up. Place the father and mother inside the crossbar. (Glue the father’s arm outside the shaft so it looks like he’s pulling.) Put the daughter and supplies in the cart, and place the son where he can help push. Don’t forget to hang the pot on the back!
Note: If you do not wish to remove pages from the magazine, this activity may be copied or printed from the Internet at www.lds.org.
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Ch. 7 – Discarding Unbiblical Methods – Shepherding A Child’s Heart (A Synopsis)
In this convicting chapter, Tripp moves from the goals of parenting to the methods. He looks at several popular, but unbiblical, approaches to disciplining our kids. He observes that as parents we cannot afford to be indifferent to methodology. Our methods are as important to God as our goals, and biblical goals must employ biblical methods. The following are some of the unbiblical methods prevalent in our society today.
1. I Didn’t Turn Out So Bad
In this method, a parent blindly employs those methods used by their own parents without any thought to whether or not those methods are biblical.
2. Pop Psychology
There is no shortage of advice out there on how to raise kids in our society. Some of the most popular ideas today involve bribing our kids or having them sign contracts in order to get things done. Tripp describes these as superficial methods of parenting and points out that they latch on to the evil in our children’s hearts and use that to motivate them.
3. Behavior Modification
This involves rewarding good behavior and ignoring, or perhaps punishing, bad behavior. Tripp offers his opinion that kids should not be rewarded for fulfilling normal responsibilities. Doing so only trains their tender hearts to be greedy and look out for their own self-interest in obtaining rewards. Eventually they become manipulators of the system.
This involves getting emotional in order to get our kids to do what we want them to. It includes statements such as “You hurt my feelings” and shaming a child. Contrary to shepherding their hearts, this method does not help them to learn the specific issues of the heart causing their behavior.
5. Punitive Correction / Grounding
Punitive correction includes the threat of punishment. The most popular form of it is grounding. Again, this issue does not address the issues of the heart which are causing the specific behavior. Rather, it is punitive in nature. Tripp believes this method is popular in our society today because it is easy. It does not require patient instruction and communication with the child. Unfortunately, kids subjected to this form of correction just learn how to cope with the punishment and never address the heart issues in a biblical way.
6. Erratic Eclecticism
This “method” involves no consistency. Parents freely draw from many sources and use bits and pieces of a number of different methods. I like how Tripp explains it: “Like a rolling snowball picking up snow, ideas are added along the way.” This method leaves children confused and not sure what the parents want. They are never sure what system is in effect.
Tripp points out that these unbiblical methods miss the real point because they are aimed solely at issues of behavior. Biblical discipline addresses behavior by addressing the heart. As parents, we must train our kids to be able to interpret their behavior in terms of the motivations of the heart that cause it. Tripp cautions that changing behavior without addressing the issues of the heart trains the heart towards whatever unbiblical method you are using. He also observes that when modern day “experts” tell you that you must find the method that works best for each child, they are really saying “you must find the idols of the heart that will move each child.” Furthermore, when our methods only address the issue of behavior, we never get to the need for the Cross of Christ. Tripp concludes that when we use unbiblical methods to punish rather than biblical methods to discipline:
“Children are not being trained to make ethical choices as responsible people living in reverence for God. They are learning how to jump through your hoops and avoid your displeasure. They learn to make choices based on expediency rather than principle.”
I found this chapter to be perhaps the most convicting chapter in the entire book. My oldest child was ten years old when I became a follower of Christ. We had plenty of issues with him, and by the time Christ became my model for parenting, a number of these unbiblical methods (if not all) were firmly entrenched in my parenting style. Even after becoming a Christian, I still employed many of these unbiblical methods figuring that there were no better alternatives. Even now that I have seen, in large part because of this book, a more biblical approach to parenting, it is easy to slip back into those old habits. When I am tired, it is easier to yell than talk. When I am stressed, it is easier to punish than discern, and on and on and on! My prayer is that God would continue to work in my heart to make me into the father that he wants me to be and that he would help to remember that my strength is in him and through him all things are possible.
<<LAST TIME: Chapter 6 – Reworking Your Goals
Ch. 8 – Embracing Biblical Methods: Communication: NEXT TIME>>
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EUROEVOL research reveals prehistoric agricultural hot spot
21 November 2012
The study, undertaken by the European Research Council-funded EUROEVOL project in collaboration with Plymouth University suggests that stone-age Scots were at the vanguard of an agricultural revolution 6,000 years ago that swept away vast swathes of forestry and changed Britain’s landscape. Wiltshire, home to Stonehenge, was believed to be the cradle of British farming, but this new research provides evidence that early Scots who lived during the Neolithic Age (4000BC to 2500BC) destroyed fertile, deciduous woodland to make way for cereal crops around the same time that large areas of southern England were being stripped of their forests.
The finding is significant because it challenges the widely held notion that Britain’s agricultural revolution started in England.
The research results, obtained using carbon dating of ancient cereal grains recovered from archaeological sites and historic pollen records to help determine the origin and spread of Neolithic farming in Britain, are receiving media coverage.
Stephen Shennan, who is leading the 4-year ERC-funded project investigating the cultural evolution of neolithic Europe, reported on how Europe's first farmers came, then went ('a dramatic history of booms and busts') in a presentation at the recent American Anthropological Association meeting in San Francisco, California.
The aim of the EUROEVOL project is to provide the basis for a new account of the role of farming in transforming early European societies, c.6000-2000 calBC, focusing on the western half of temperate Europe, where the available data are best, and integrating culture historical patterns, for example in monuments, with demographic, economic and social processes.
The European Research Council's mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-initiated frontier research across all fields of research, on the basis of scientific excellence.
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On Sunday, May 14, 1961—Mother's Day—scores of angry white people blocked a Greyhound bus carrying black and white passengers through rural Alabama. The attackers pelted the vehicle with rocks and bricks, slashed tires, smashed windows with pipes and axes and lobbed a firebomb through a broken window. As smoke and flames filled the bus, the mob barricaded the door. "Burn them alive," somebody cried out. "Fry the goddamn niggers." An exploding fuel tank and warning shots from arriving state troopers forced the rabble back and allowed the riders to escape the inferno. Even then some were pummeled with baseball bats as they fled.
From This Story
A few hours later, black and white passengers on a Trailways bus were beaten bloody after they entered whites-only waiting rooms and restaurants at bus terminals in Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama.
The bus passengers assaulted that day were Freedom Riders, among the first of more than 400 volunteers who traveled throughout the South on regularly scheduled buses for seven months in 1961 to test a 1960 Supreme Court decision that declared segregated facilities for interstate passengers illegal.
After news stories and photographs of the burning bus and bloody attacks sped around the country, many more people came forward to risk their lives and challenge the racial status quo. Now Eric Etheridge, a veteran magazine editor, provides a visceral tribute to those road warriors in Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders. The book, a collection of Etheridge's recent portraits of 80 Freedom Riders juxtaposed with mug shots from their arrests in 1961, includes interviews with the activists re-flecting on their experiences.
Etheridge, who grew up in Carthage, Mississippi, focuses on Freedom Riders who boarded buses to Jackson, Mississippi, from late May to mid-September 1961. He was just 4 years old at the time and unaware of the seismic racial upheaval taking place around him. But he well remembers using one entrance to his doctor's office while African-Americans used another, and sitting in the orchestra of his local movie theater while blacks sat in the balcony.
"Looking back," Etheridge says, "I can identify with what the white South African photographer Jillian Edelstein has said: 'Growing up white in apartheid South Africa entitled one to massive and instant privilege.'"
A few years ago, Etheridge, who lives in New York City and has worked for Rolling Stone and Harper's, began looking for a project to engage his budding photographic skills. During a visit with his parents in Jackson in 2003, he was reminded that a lawsuit had forced the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, an agency created in 1956 to resist desegregation, to open its archives. The agency files, put online in 2002, included more than 300 arrest photographs of Freedom Riders."The police camera caught something special," Etheridge says, adding that the collection is "an amazing addition to the visual history of the civil rights movement." Unwittingly, the segregationist commission had created an indelible homage to the activist riders.
Nearly 75 percent of them were between 18 and 30 years old. About half were black; a quarter, women. Their mug-shot expressions hint at their resolve, defiance, pride, vulnerability and fear. "I was captivated by these images and wanted to bring them to a wider audience," Etheridge writes. "I wanted to find the riders today, to look into their faces and photograph them again." Using the Internet and information in the arrest files, he tracked riders down, then called them cold. "My best icebreaker was: 'I have your mug shot from 1961. Have you ever seen it?' Even people who are prone to be cautious were tickled to even think that it still existed."
Most of the riders were college students; many, such as the Episcopal clergymen and contingents of Yale divinity students, had religious affiliations. Some were active in civil rights groups like the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which initiated the Freedom Rides and was founded in 1942 on Mahatma Gandhi's principle of nonviolent protest. The goal of the rides, CORE director James Farmer said as he launched the campaign, was "to create a crisis so that the federal government would be compelled to enforce the law."
The volunteers, from 40 states, received training in nonviolence tactics. Those who could not refrain from striking back when pushed, hit, spit on or doused with liquids while racial epithets rang in their ears were rejected.
As soon as he heard the call for riders, Robert Singleton remembers, he "was fired up and ready to go." He and his wife, Helen, had both been active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and they took 12 volunteers with them from California. "The spirit that permeated the air at that time was not unlike the feeling Barack Obama has rekindled among the youth of today," says Singleton, now 73 and an economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
Peter Ackerberg, a lawyer who now lives in Minneapolis, said that while he'd always talked a "big radical game," he had never acted on his convictions. "What am I going to tell my children when they ask me about this time?" he recalled thinking. Boarding a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, "I was pretty scared," he told Etheridge. "The black guys and girls were singing....They were so spirited and so unafraid. They were really prepared to risk their lives." Today, Ackerberg recalls acquiescing and saying "sir" to a jail official who was "pounding a blackjack." Soon after, "I could hear the blackjack strike [rider C.T. Vivian's] head and him shrieking; I don't think he ever said 'sir.'"
John Lewis, then 21 and already a veteran of sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters in Nashville, was the first Freedom Rider to be assaulted. While trying to enter a whites-only waiting room in Rock Hill, South Carolina, two men set upon him, battering his face and kicking him in the ribs. Less than two weeks later, he joined a ride bound for Jackson. "We were determined not to let any act of violence keep us from our goal," Lewis, a Georgia congressman since 1987 and a celebrated civil rights figure, said recently. "We knew our lives could be threatened, but we had made up our minds not to turn back."
As riders poured into the South, National Guardsmen were assigned to some buses to prevent violence. When activists arrived at the Jackson bus depot, police arrested blacks who refused to heed orders to stay out of white restrooms or vacate the white waiting room. And whites were arrested if they used "colored" facilities. Officials charged the riders with breach of peace, rather than breaking segregation laws. Freedom Riders responded with a strategy they called "jail, no bail"—a deliberate effort to clog the penal facilities. Most of the 300 riders in Jackson would endure six weeks in sweltering jail or prison cells rife with mice, insects, soiled mattresses and open toilets.
"The dehumanizing process started as soon as we got there," said Hank Thomas, a Marriott hotel franchise owner in Atlanta, who was then a sophomore at Howard University in Washington, D.C. "We were told to strip naked and then walked down this long corridor.... I'll never forget [CORE director] Jim Farmer, a very dignified man ...walking down this long corridor naked...that is dehumanizing. And that was the whole point."
Jean Thompson, then a 19-year-old CORE worker, said she was one of the riders slapped by a penal official for failing to call him "sir." An FBI investigation into the incident concluded that "no one was beaten," she told Etheridge. "That said a lot to me about what actually happens in this country. It was eye-opening." When prisoners were transferred from one facility to another, unexplained stops on remote dirt roads or the sight of curious onlookers peering into the transport trucks heightened fears. "We imagined every horror including an ambush by the KKK," rider Carol Silver told Etheridge. To keep up their spirits, the prisoners sang freedom songs.
None of the riders Etheridge spoke with expressed regrets, even though some would be entangled for years in legal appeals that went all the way to the Supreme Court (which issued a ruling in 1965 that led to a reversal of the breach of peace convictions). "It's the right thing to do, to oppose an oppressive state where wrongs are being done to people," said William Leons, a University of Toledo professor of anthropology whose father had been killed in an Austrian concentration camp and whose mother hid refugees during World War II. "I was aware very much of my parents' involvement in the Nazi resistance," he said of his 39-day incarceration as a rider. "[I was] doing what they would have done."
More than two dozen of the riders Etheridge interviewed went on to become teachers or professors, and there are eight ministers as well as lawyers, Peace Corps workers, journalists and politicians. Like Lewis, Bob Filner, of California, is a congressman. And few former Freedom Riders still practice civil disobedience. Joan Pleune, 70, of New York City, is a member of the Granny Peace Brigade; she was arrested two years ago at an anti-Iraq War protest in Washington, D.C. while "reading the names of the war dead," she says. Theresa Walker, 80, was arrested in New York City in 2000 during a protest over the police killing there the year before of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed immigrant from Guinea.
Though the Freedom Rides dramatically demonstrated that some Southern states were ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court's mandate to desegregate bus terminals, it would take a petition from U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy to spur the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to issue tough new regulations, backed by fines up to $500, that would eventually end segregated bus facilities. Even after the order went into effect, on November 1, 1961, hard-core segregation persisted; still, the "white" and "colored" signs in bus stations across the South be- gan to come down. The New York Times, which had earlier criticized the Freedom Riders' "incitement and provocation," acknowledged that they "started the chain of events which resulted in the new I.C.C. order."
The legacy of the rides "could not have been more poetic," says Robert Singleton, who connects those events to the election of Barack Obama as president. Obama was born in August 1961, Singleton notes, just when the riders were languishing in Mississippi jails and prisons, trying to "break the back of segregation for all people, but especially for the children. We put ourselves in harm's way for a child, at the very time he came into this world, who would become our first black president."
Marian Smith Holmes is an associate editor.
Photographer Eric Etheridge maintains a Web site, breachofpeace.com, that publishes information about the Freedom Riders.
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May 17, 2005
The Drug Testing Responsibilities of the Division of Workplace Programs
Most of the responsibilities for day-to-day operation and oversight were delegated to what is now the Division of Workplace Programs. SAMHSA is responsible for certifying laboratories that perform accurate reliable forensic drug testing in accordance with the Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing Programs.
These Mandatory Guidelines were first published as a Final Notice in the Federal Register on April 11, 1988, and the first 10 laboratories were certified to perform drug testing in December 1988. These Guidelines provide critical support for the overarching Federal Drug-Free Workplace Program that today covers 1.8 million non-military Executive Branch federal employees in 120 Federal agencies. The Guidelines include requirements for the chemical analysis of urine specimens from selected Executive Branch job applicants and employees to determine whether that specimen contained the parent drug or specific metabolic byproducts from marijuana, cocaine, opiates (with the focus on heroin), amphetamines, and phencyclidine.
Even in 1988, based on information from other drug testing programs already in existence, it was known that some non-federal employee specimen donors used household products and chemicals to try to beat the drug test and mask the presence of illicit drugs in their urine. A few examples of commonly used household products used at that time were drain cleaners (sodium hydroxide), vinegar from the kitchen (dilute acetic acid), and soothing eye drops (a dilute salt solution). Since the late 1980's, many more sophisticated products have been developed and marketed by those in business to sell products to illicit drug users to beat their drug test. The increased use of the Internet in the mid-1990's brought an explosion of new products to the marketplace, openly sold for the sole purpose of defeating a drug test.
The Scope of the Federal Agency Workplace Drug Testing Program
Under separate authorities, other Federal Government programs require workplace drug testing using the Mandatory Guideline-certified laboratories for their covered populations, including industries regulated by the Department of Transportation and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. There are over 11 million employees and job applicants covered by these federally mandated workplace drug tests.
Many of the same drug testing products and testing procedures are also used for criminal justice testing, school-based student testing, testing in the Uniformed Services, the U.S. Postal Service, and non-federal public and private sector employers, with some portion voluntarily tested under our Mandatory Guidelines. It is estimated that between 20 to 40 million drug tests are performed each year, with the accuracy of many of these test results particularly vulnerable to undetected adulterant use by those being tested.
Adulterants – The Marketplace
These products are primarily focused on beating the drug test for marijuana, since marijuana is America's favorite illicit drug. We know this information by looking at the percentage of U.S. workforce specimens that test positive for marijuana. Using information provided publicly by one very large laboratory drug testing system, of all the specimens that test positive in the general U.S. workforce, 55% test positive for marijuana. Cocaine positive drug tests make up 15% of the total and opiates (focused on heroin) follow with 6% of the total (Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing index, 2004). Millions of employed persons in Federal service and employees of federally regulated private sector companies are drug tested, and their urine specimens must be tested in laboratories certified by SAMHSA.
Monitoring of Adulterant Products
In September 2002, an online Google search of "beat a drug test" revealed 158,000 hits in 0.4 seconds. In May 2005, that same search revealed 1,210,000 hits in 0.21 seconds; a Google search of "pass a drug test" revealed 3,570,000 hits in 0.06 seconds.
We developed and now maintain a spreadsheet of available products by website, in order to track the availability and evolution of these products over time.
Internet Product Advertising and Availability
Concerning marijuana use, the questionnaires ask just how much marijuana he or she uses and how frequent that use is to better advise them on which product to use and how much of that product to use. Advice is given to heavy drug users to use more product to beat the test, compared to light users. Additionally, some advertisements on Internet home pages state that the products work for all toxins and every testing method. They are so confident in the effectiveness of their products that they offer a 200% Money Back Guarantee!
The Types of Adulterants
1. Dilution Products
Efforts to dilute urine include those that add water to a small volume of the donor's urine and natural diuretics to expedite the elimination of urine from the body. Simply trying to dilute the urine internally to reduce the concentration of drug below the testing cut-off can be done by drinking very large quantities of water, on the order of 120 oz of fluid. This is a very effective method of beating the drug test, especially when the donor knows when the drug test specimen will be collected, as in the case of a pre-employment drug test.
2. Cleansing Products
Cleansing products, such as internal colonics, golden seal, psyllium husks, and specially formulated cleansing drinks, are marketed to "cleanse the body of toxins", more specifically in this case, illicit drugs. As an example, one product is advertised as a dietary supplement, guaranteed to "work" in less than an hour. The ingredients label lists very common items in many other drinkable fluids, such as filtered water, fructose, maltodextrin, natural and artificial flavors, citric acid, potassium citrate, potassium benzoate, potassium sorbate, ascorbic acid, red 40, and riboflavin. These cleansing products likely work along the same lines as products advertised to dilute the urine.
3. Chemical Adulterants
Some products are actually very caustic and corrosive chemicals, such as acids and aldehydes, chemical oxidants such as nitrites, chromium VI (a carcinogen), and bleaches. These harsh chemicals must be added to the donor's specimen, which is easily accomplished when the donor is given the privacy of a restroom stall to provide their specimen. These chemicals are purposely sold in easily concealable small vials and tubes, so they can be brought into the collection site bathroom concealed in the donor's socks or underwear.
4. Prosthetic Devices Delivering Synthetic or Drug-free Human Urine
The most cumbersome, yet highly effective, way to beat a urine drug test is to use a physical belt-like device hidden under the clothing which contains a reservoir to unobtrusively hold real human urine from another person that is free from drugs, and deliver that bogus specimen into the collection container through a straw-like tube, or through a prosthetic device that looks like real human anatomy, color-matched. This last described device is heavily marketed for workplace drug testing and criminal justice urine collection situations that require directly observed urine specimens to be provided. Synthetic urine can be used in place of real human drug free urine.
Concerns to the Federal Workplace Drug Testing Program - The Need to Require Specimen Validity Testing and Propose Drug Testing Alternative Specimens
In the late 1990's, it became evident that increasing numbers of federally regulated donor specimens contained chemicals intended to mask or beat the drug test. These compounds were identified through routine drug tests that were conducted but gave unusual and unreasonable chemical results. It then became necessary for SAMHSA to establish general testing criteria and issue guidance to laboratories to ensure more consistent analysis of chemicals added to the urine by donors with the intent of beating the drug test. In 1998, testing criteria and guidance were initially provided to the laboratories in an informal manner, with final comprehensive urine specimen validity testing requirements published in the Federal Register on April 13, 2004. This Notice also required that each and every Federal job applicant or employee urine specimen be tested not only for illicit drugs, but also to determine if the specimen provided is a valid one, i.e., consistent with normal human physiology. These criteria did not solve the problem entirely, because the very nature of some of the products, particularly those that deliver synthetic urine or drug free human urine, produce specimens that actually test negative for illicit and pass specimen validity tests because they are testing drug-free urine. Since the April 13, 2004, publication of SAMHSA's new testing requirements, the advertising for this prosthetic type of device has increased. Additionally, the number of specimens now being reported as "invalid" specimens by laboratories has also increased significantly. This is because the companies who produce and market the chemical masking agents know the chemistry of the specimen validity tests that are now required for Federal employee drug testing (and optional for DOT regulated industry drug testing programs). These firms are formulating new versions of the adulterants so they are not detected by these newly required specimen validity tests.
The Effectiveness of Specimen Validity Testing
In a September 1999 Washington Post newspaper article, a staff writer captured the following interview: "They detect it and we move on," (blank) is an additive that allegedly fools the tests." "Beating the labs is like fighting the federal government – they're so big and slow…..They can't detect the current formula."
One of the most disconcerting calls received by SAMHSA staff was from Perry Nuclear Power Plant located east of Cleveland, Ohio. In September 2002, staff at a drug test collection site at the Plant found evidence in a refuse container from a specific adulterant product. This product contains a small plastic bottle with a temperature indicator strip attached, two small plastic vials of white crystalline material, and instructions for use. Per the instructions, the user adds a microvial of urine to water and the product and mixes to dissolve. In about 30 seconds, the drug-free sample is ready to provide in place of the donor's own specimen. Since it was unclear who or how many applicants used this product, that entire day's applicants were retested, and 9 of them drug-tested positive for marijuana use. If it had not been for the careless discard of the package in a trash can near the collection site, the use of this product to beat the drug test, which was required as part of a pre-employment fitness for duty test in order to gain access to a nuclear reactor, would have gone undetected.
The Effectiveness of the Products
SAMHSA devised an experiment to evaluate how effective some of these masking agents really are. Certified negative urine was "spiked" with marijuana metabolite (THCA, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol-9-carbozylic acid), cocaine metabolite (benzoylecgonine), phencyclidine, opiate metabolite (morphine), and methamphetamine. The concentration of each analyte was twice the screening test cutoff. This standard analytical approach, taken with each substance that was added to the donor's specimen, was applied to more than 30 products purchased.
Several versions of one particular product were tested and found to be able to significantly mask a positive drug test, especially for marijuana and morphine. What is most noteworthy is that each successive version of this product is more effective in masking the drug test. Each version of that product has been somewhat effective in masking the presence of marijuana, cocaine, morphine, phencyclidine, and methamphetamine. The chemical composition of each of these versions also changes, which was pointed out in its marketing as an asset.
One adulterant manufacturer changes their product formula approximately every 6 to 9 months to stay ahead of the drug testing labs. It has openly stated that if a certain formula stays on the market too long, its product would be reverse-engineered by the labs and eventually become detectable. Older formulations are exchanged for a current formulation free of charge.
One product that was purchased in April 2001 contained chromate, an oxidant that became known after it had been used for a time. Another version, which was purchased in April 2002, contained hydrofluoric acid, a powerful acid that can etch glass, and sodium nitrite, a strong oxidant. Again, after a time, this combination became known, and the formulation again changed. A subsequent product, purchased July 2002, was a newly designed system, this time consisting of two vials of chemicals added sequentially to urine in the donor's specimen collection cup. One of the vials contained an iodine-containing compound, the other vial contained hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acids. The most recent version of the product is currently available and being evaluated by our staff.
Continued Impact of Adulterants on Public Health and Safety
Unless Stopped, the Next Marketing Opportunity for Adulterant Sales will Target Drug Testing and Specimen Validity of Hair, Oral Fluid, and Sweat
SAMHSA's current knowledge of the myriad of products to beat drug tests has forced the Agency to add specimen validity testing requirements for hair, oral fluid, and sweat in our proposed expanded Federal drug testing program. This is necessary because products are now being marketed and sold to beat any drug test, no matter what specimen is collected.
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to provide this information to you. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Last Revised: July 20, 2005
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FILM SCREENING IN HONOR OF THE
72ND ANNIVERSARY OF D-DAY
Thursday, June 2, 2016
6:30 - 8:45 p.m.
D-Day occurred during World War II on June 6, 1944, when more than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. It remains one of the largest seaborn invasions in history. In spite of heavy losses, by July, 1944 some one million Allied troops, mostly American, British and Canadian, were entrenched in Normandy. This accomplishment was crucial in bringing the war to the western border of Germany and ultimately helped guarantee the Allied forces' success against Nazi Germany.
In honor of the bravery and sacrifice displayed during this campaign, we will be screening Unbroken (PG-13), the story of Olympian Louis Zamperini, a bombardier in the U.S. Army during World War II. After his plane crashed in the Pacific, he spent 47 days adrift in a life raft with two fellow crewmen before being discovered by the Japanese navy. As a prisoner-of-war in Japan, Zamperini endured terror, torture, and hopelessness. In spite of this, he survived, and years later was able to forgive those who had harmed him.
The movie is based on the best-selling novel Unbroken: a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand.
Join us to witness the triumph of a human spirit against fear, hatred, pain and sorrow. Please register at the Children's Desk.
3D PRINTING MEET-UP
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
All ages welcome!
Meet us at the library to talk, share and discover 3D Printing. Bring your 3D Printers, printed objects, recent projects, thoughts, ideas, concerns and questions. We welcome everyone from beginners to experts. There will be several 3D printers on hand to learn more about. Register online or through your Meetup account to join us.
TEEN AFTERNOON MOVIE
Are movie prices getting you down? We have just the solution for you! Join us for our Teen Afternoon Movies, complete with popcorn! Movies will be shown in the Teen Reading Room using the overhead projector and big screen. Call the Teen Desk or check back at the website to see what movie we're showing each month.
When: 1st Friday of the month
Time: 3:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Ages: Grades 6 and up
Join us for great movies! Popcorn and snacks will be served -- see you there! Upcoming movies:
June 3, 2016: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (PG-13)
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Seals and Cod
Harp Seals and Grey Seals Have Been Blamed for Causing the Collapse of the Cod Fishery and for Preventing its Recovery
What is the truth about the harp seal-cod relationship and the grey seal-cod relationship?
Simplified food web of the Northwest Atlantic, including harp seals (David Lavigne, 1996) (a). Some of the metabolic pathways on which such food webs are based (from www.genome.ad.jp/kegg/). Printed in Ch. 1 Biosimplicity via stoichiometry: the evolution of food-web structure and processes, James J. Elser and Dag O. Hessen, published in Aquatic Food Webs, Oxford Univ. Press 2005.
In fact, the marine ecosystem of which harp seals and grey seals are a part is complex. It includes a complex food web, changing climate and weather effects, and interactions not fully understood.
To the left, is a simplified pictorial of the Northwest Atlantic food web, which includes harp seals and grey seals.
But what is known is that cod is only a small fraction of the harp seals' diet and that harp seals also prey on species that in turn, prey on cod. Thus a larger cod population may accompany a larger seal population.
In recent years, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has shifted the blame for the failure of the North Atlantic cod to recover to grey seals. The grey seal population has increased in parts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Since grey seals eat cod as part of their diet, the DFO has begun to focus on this seal species as the newest scapegoat.
Grey seals consume different amounts of cod in different parts of the year. Recent work suggests that, during the winter, cod may provide 60% of the grey seals' sustenance. Nevertheless, this is only one small part of the vast web of life in which the grey seals play a role in the Northwest Atlantic, and more specifically in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Scotian Shelf.
Here are links to other resources:
Marine Fish Population Collapses: Consequences for Recovery and Extinction Risk, Jeffrey A. Hutchings and John D. Reynolds, BioScience, Vol. 54 No. 4, April 2004.
On the potential impact of harbour seal predation on the cod population in the eastern North Sea, B. Johan L. Hansen, Karin C. Harding, Department of Marine Ecology, Göteborg University, Box 461, S-405 30 Göteborg, Sweden, Journal of Sea Research 56 (2006) pp. 329–337
World Fisheries: The Current Crisis, Alan Nixon, Canadian Library of Parliament, Parliamentary Research and Information Service, January 1997
Seals to the slaughter
16 March 1996
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
Beater harp seal pup (c) IFAW
"HARBOUR Grace is a pretty place, and so is Peeley's Island," goes an old Newfoundland song. "Daddy's going to buy me a brand new dress when the boys gets home from swilin'." Swilin' - the spring hunt for young seals on the sea ice - used to be one of the few ways Newfoundland fishermen could earn the extra cash for a daughter's dress.
This year, it is the only way many of them will earn any money at all. In 1992, the Grand Banks fishery, the region's main employer, closed after the cod stocks were destroyed by overfishing ("The cod that disappeared", 16 September 1995, p 24). In a desperate attempt to find jobs for Newfoundlanders, Canada is subsidising and enlarging the seal hunt. About now, the seals will be congregating on ice floes to give birth. In two weeks, when the pups have moulted, they are fair game. Fishermen are getting their clubs ready for the biggest legal slaughter of wildlife in the world, apart from fishing itself.
No one would bother if it weren't for the subsidies. Markets for seal products have collapsed, wrecked by public outrage over pictures of bloodied baby seals spread around the world by animal rights campaigners. But the subsidies aren't just intended to create a few thousand poorly paid jobs. The Canadian government insists that killing seals is the only way to bring back the cod fishery. Government scientists say seals eat vast amounts of cod and are hampering their recovery. Scientists outside the government call that nonsense. They say killing seals is just as likely to deplete cod stocks still further. And they charge that the government's seal science has been distorted for political reasons, while any government scientist who refuses to toe the official line is gagged.
The Newfoundland seal hunt killed 250 000 seals a year early this century, then 300 000 after 1945. Seal numbers fell, including harp seals, the most common species and the one that produces the white-coated pups. In 1983 Canada set a yearly hunting limit on harp seals of 186 000. But that same year, under pressure from anti-culling campaigns, the European Community banned the import of products made from seals under a year old. Fur markets died. In 1987 Canada evicted the Norwegian factory boats which had been taking most of the seals, and banned the killing of white-coated pups in an effort to salvage the hunt's image. But the price of a pelt fell from C$40 (£20) to C$9 and the cull reached a low of 27 000 animals in 1993.
Then the collapse of the fishery threw 30 000 Newfoundlanders out of work. The province called "The Rock" has few other jobs to offer - and a government relief package worth C$1.9 billion will run out in a few years. What to do?
In 1994 Canadian fisheries minister Brian Tobin decided to boost the sealing industry. The Canadian and Newfoundland governments started paying a subsidy of C$0.66 per kilogram of seal meat. Last spring only a late freeze that kept boats in port limited the catch to 61 000 seals. The Canadian Sealers' Association, an industry lobby group supported in part by the Canadian fisheries ministry, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), redoubled its efforts to drum up markets.
This was a popular move with fishermen. It was good for their pockets - they could earn a bit of money, though profits were still very low. And it was also good for their morale - the hunt suited the widespread belief that killing seals would rid the fishing industry of a ravenous competitor. "No one blames seals for the collapse of the fish stocks," says Tina Fagan of the Canadian Sealers' Association. "That was overfishing. But seals eat fish. The cod won't recover unless more seals are taken out of the system." Last December, Tobin raised the harp seal quota to 250 000, saying there was one major reason the cod weren't recovering: "His first name is harp, and his last name is seal."
Sealer ready to club seal. (c) IFAW
The DFO provided the scientific rationale. Garry Stenson of the DFO Science Branch in St John's, Newfoundland, calculates that the harp seal population in the northwest Atlantic grew from 2 million in 1980, to 4.8 million in 1994. Their total prey consumption grew from 3.6 to 6.9 million tonnes and would increase since the herd was growing at 5 per cent per year.
The stomach contents of killed harp seals show that cod only makes up three to five per cent of their diet, Stenson says. But this would still account for up to 142 000 tonnes of cod in waters near Newfoundland in 1994, about the size of the last commercial cod quota. Moreover, says Stenson, seals eat cod too small for commercial fishing. So they take more fish per tonne than fishermen. The conclusion for the DFO is obvious. "Harp seals are one of the factors impeding groundfish stocks rebuilding," it says in its home page on the World Wide Web.
But there are three things wrong with that conclusion, say scientists outside the DFO. One is the accuracy of the DFO's estimates both of the size of the seal herd, and of how much cod it eats. The second, more telling problem is that seals are just a tiny part of a complex marine ecosystem so, no matter how much fish they eat, there is no guarantee that culling seals will increase cod stocks. The third is direct evidence, from the DFO itself, that seals are not affecting the recovery of the cod.
Peter Meisenheimer, a fisheries biologist working for the International Marine Mammal Association, a conservation group based in Ontario, says "The harp seal population has probably increased, because hunting has fallen. But the DFO cannot say with certainty by how much." The DFO's methodology for counting seals, a notoriously difficult task at best, has differed from year to year, says David Lavigne, a seal biologist at the University of Guelph, Ontario. He says this makes it impossible to compare counts from different years, and find trends. "They simply haven't spent the money required to do a proper job," says Meisenheimer.
IN FROM THE COLD
To make matters worse unusually cold offshore waters have driven more seals inshore in recent years. Such changes in distribution make it trickier to extrapolate from samples to total populations. It also fuels popular perceptions among fishermen that "there are an awful lot of seals out there", says Fagan. But there is no proof that the seal population is growing at 5 per cent per year, says Meisenheimer. "The DFO uses this number without mentioning that it is the highest of a range of estimates based on old information, not an empirical measure of the present situation." Harp seals are having fewer young and later pregnancies, and are thin, says Lavigne - all signs that the herd is not growing rapidly, "but reaching its carrying capacity and stabilising".
In addition, says Meisenheimer, the DFO's estimate of the amount of cod in the seals' diets is based mainly on data taken in years when there was a commercial fishery. The proportion is likely to be higher then than now, as seals eat discards from nets when they can get them. One study by the DFO found large amounts of cod in seals' stomachs when there were trawlers about, but none when the boats were gone. Seals are especially unlikely to be eating much cod since it has now almost disappeared. They are far more likely to switch to something that is easier to find, says Lavigne.
MEALS FOR SEALS
Stenson is aware of the limitations of his data. "Studies are currently being conducted to improve our knowledge of both the diet and distribution of harp seals," he wrote for the DFO last year. "Until they are completed, these estimates of consumption should be considered preliminary and used with caution."
But if the DFO's scientists see a need for caution, its policy-makers do not. Jean-Eudes Hache´, a senior DFO fisheries manager, defends the increased seal hunt. "It is established that harp seals eat large amounts of cod," he says. "How many of these young cod would survive to maturity if they were not eaten by harp seals?"
But that is precisely the question the DFO is not addressing, says Lavigne. Cod have other predators and some of these also make a good meal for seals. "What else are the seals eating," asks Lavigne, "and what impact does that have?" The DFO's sealing model, he complains, is of limited scientific value, as it can give only one answer: seals eat cod, so seals reduce cod stocks. "But seals also eat animals that eat cod," he says. "Which is more important? Canada hasn't even begun to do the type of multispecies assessment you need to predict the impact of killing seals."
South Africa did its homework in 1991, he says, when it wanted to kill Cape fur seals to boost commercial hake stocks off Namibia. "South Africa asked an international group of scientists to consider the issue," says Lavigne. "We decided we needed a minimally complex model - one that contains enough features of the ecosystem that it isn't obvious what the answer will be until you actually run it." The Namibian model included the seals' impact on commercial hake and on a non-commercial species of hake that preys on the commercial variety. Seals eat both. The scientists concluded that killing seals was more likely to harm than to help the fishery, because seals ate more of the predatory species. South Africa called off the hunt.
The same relationship may exist between harp seals and cod. Illex squid eat young cod. Seals eat squid. Meisenheimer says a simple calculation, based on the DFO's figures for the different animals' population sizes and feeding rates, shows that, for every seal killed, extra cod do survive. "But depending on the assumptions you make about seal feeding rates, squid death rates, and the like," he adds, "the seal can rescue even more cod by eating squid. Under some conditions, a live seal can cause a hundred times more cod to survive than a dead one."
Meisenheimer emphasises that this is not a firm scientific analysis, but an illustration of principle. "The DFO is using similar calculations to justify the seal hunt, except they haven't even considered the most basic complexities in the system, such as the impact of seals on predators. Including that can give you a completely different answer."
Lavigne says it is "extremely naive to think we can tinker with the complex food web in the oceans, tweak one thing - seals - and have the result we want". He points to failed efforts to boost certain populations on land by killing their predators. Spanish hunters kill the Iberian lynx in the hope of boosting the rabbit population. But scientists reported last year that there are five to ten times as many rabbits in areas they share with the lynx, than in lynx-free areas: lynx also eat mongoose, which eat rabbits.
But oversimplified predator-prey models are only one problem with Canada's case for killing seals. Equally damning is the DFO's own research which shows no evidence of seals hampering the recovery of cod stocks. Ransom Myers, of the DFO Science Branch in St John's, reviewed data on 128 fish stocks worldwide that had been fished to very low levels. He was looking for evidence that the recovery rate for these stocks might be slowed by a decreased survival rate of young fish, perhaps because of increased predation. But no such effect showed up in 125 of the stocks, including Atlantic cod, Baltic cod, and every other example of fish similar to cod.
Jeff Hutchings, a fisheries biologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, says that seal populations around Newfoundland have increased since 1980, but the DFO's own survey data show no parallel increase in cod deaths in the age group eaten by seals. "We have no idea what percentage of the young cod seals are killing," adds Hutchings. "If this is not significant compared with other causes of death, he says, then killing seals will have little effect on fish stocks.
In December, the International Society for Marine Mammalogists stated that "All scientific efforts to find an effect of seal predation on Canadian groundfish stocks have failed to show any impact ... the evidence indicates that stocks will recover, and killing seals will not speed that process."
Some DFO scientists agree with that statement off the record. But they fear losing their jobs if they say so openly. They are told not to talk to the public about cod, or seals. Do it once and, they are reprimanded - do it again and they can be sacked. This year DFO scientists pleaded, secretly, with their bosses not to say the seal hunt was based on science. They were ignored. "The tragedy is that science is being used as a tool to justify a political decision. And scientists who disagree are muzzled," says Hutchings.
JOBS FOR THE BOYS
But in Newfoundland, the only tragedy that matters is the economic future. It is bleak. Before, fishing employed too many fishermen to chase too few fish - so even if it recovers, it should provide a third as many jobs as before. What will everyone else do? Some people think the government could create more jobs by investing in something other than dead seals. Boosting the seal hunt is at best a partial solution, as no one thinks the market will expand that much. But it has provided work for one Newfoundlander. Last month Tobin resigned as Canadian fisheries minister and became premier of Newfoundland virtually without opposition. One big reason for his popularity is the seal hunt.
Newfoundland is not the only place where sealing is popular. The hunt for grey seals in Scotland stopped in 1979, but fishermen are clamouring to start again. They say the seal herd eats large amounts of commercial fish. The Sea Mammal Research Unit in Cambridge disagrees. Fishermen admitted killing seals illegally in Orkney in October.
Norway never stopped killing harp and hooded seals, though the hunt dwindled to a mere three boats last year as markets died. In an effort to revive it, Norway will end a seven-year ban on killing pups this year. It told the European Parliament in January that it kills seals because they "compete with us for fish".
But nowhere is the seal hunt as massive as the one now planned in Newfoundland. The tragedy for Newfoundlanders is that it could further unbalance an already impoverished marine ecosystem. And once again, the culprit will be, not seals, but political mismanagement in the name of science.
Flipper pie, anyone?
The size of Canada's seal hunt depends on whether sealers can sell what they catch. That used to depend on the number of pelts the Carino Company of Dildo, Newfoundland - a subsidiary of the Norwegian firm Rieber - would buy. This year it says the market, largely in Asia, has grown to 230 000 pelts. Now new markets are appearing, says Tina Fagan of the Canadian Sealers' Association.
The oil rendered from seal blubber is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, a popular health food supplement. Newfoundland sells seal oil capsules in China and Japan, and is applying to sell them in Canada. But Vernon Thomas of the University of Guelph in Ontario has doubts about the market. He says fish are a more economic source of omega-3 fatty acids, and less contaminated with pollutants such as PCBs, while the World Trade Organisation may take a dim view of a product that will have to be developed with the help of extensive government subsidies.
Seal meat is already subsidised by Canada. At the Canadian Food and Beverage Show in Toronto in February, the Sealers' Association displayed seal salami, pepperoni, sausages, vacuum-packed prime cuts, stew, canned meat, and even an old Newfoundland delicacy - flipper pie. The rest of the seal ends up as pet food, says Fagan.
Animal rights' activists maintain that the only seal product profitable enough to make the hunt worthwhile is their penises, an aphrodisiac according to the Chinese. A dried, beribboned seal penis fetches upwards of $100 in Far Eastern markets, and in Canada's fast-growing communities of Hong Kong Chinese.
Fagan denies promoting penises. But the harvest of adults, as opposed to immature seals, jumped from 20 to 65 per cent of the catch between 1993 and 1994. Male carcasses fetch higher prices than female ones. Exporting seal penises is illegal in Canada. But the International Fund for Animal Welfare believes that dealers "get around that by selling them with the seal still attached."
From issue 2021 of New Scientist magazine, 16 March 1996, page Page 34
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They may not suddenly acquire a taste for fast cars and flashy motorbikes when they hit middle age, but some great apes - like humans - go through a midlife crisis, according to a new study.
The midlife crisis cliché is not uniquely human because our primate cousins go through the same emotions.
A team of international researchers has found that dissatisfaction in midlife may have evolved in our common ancestors rather than just from the stresses of modern life.
The well-being of 508 captive great apes from around the world was rated by their keepers, researchers or other volunteers who had worked with them for at least two years and knew their behaviour. The apes' happiness was scored with a series of measures adapted from human subjective studies.
Researchers found that well-being was high in youth, fell to a low in midlife, and rose again in old age, similar to the "U-shape curve" of happiness in humans.
Economist and co-author of the study Professor Andrew Oswald, from the University of Warwick, said: "We hoped to understand a famous scientific puzzle: why does human happiness follow an approximate U-shape through life?
"We ended up showing that it cannot be because of mortgages, marital break-up, mobile phones, or any of the other paraphernalia of modern life. Apes also have a pronounced midlife low, and they have none of those."
The study on chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and orangutans (Pongo spp.) is the first of its kind and is somewhat anthropomorphic, as it relied on humans rating the animals' behaviour. But the authors suggest that while a midlife crisis does not rule out cultural and environmental factors, it could have a biological root.
The apes may not have wanted sports cars, a second career or a chance to sky-dive but lead author Dr Alexander Weiss of the University of Edinburgh said the primates did experience similar stresses and social pressures to humans - their desires were more appropriate to their social group, such as better access to mates or food.
He said: "Based on all of the other behavioural and developmental similarities between humans, chimpanzees, and orangutans, we predicted that there would be similarities when looking at happiness over the lifespan, too. However, one never knows how these things will turn out, so it's wonderful when they are consistent with findings from so many other areas.
"We have to look deeper into our evolutionary past and that of the common ancestors that we share with chimpanzees, orangutans and other apes."
Dip in happiness
Researchers looked at four criteria: their overall mood; how much pleasure they got out of socialising; their success in achieving goals such as obtaining food and objects they desire; and how happy the keeper would be if he or she were that animal for a week.
Men and women have been shown to experience a dip in happiness from their mid-30s to late 50s regardless of their wealth or status. For great apes who live to about age 50 in captivity, their sense of well-being bottoms out in their late 20s to mid-30s before rebounding again in old age.
The study did not follow the apes over time, so some might argue it provides only a snapshot. Professor Frans de Waal, a world-renowned primatologist based at Emory University in Atlanta, said he would have liked to see a "harder measure" of ape happiness such as the levels of stress hormone the apes experience, but he added that if the conclusion is real it could have implications for understanding our own midlife crises.
The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Asha Tanna is Channel 4 News science reporter, and has a masters in primatology
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When we think of gravity, we typically think of it as a force between masses. When you step on a scale, for example, the number on the scale represents the pull of the Earth’s gravity on your mass, giving you weight. It is easy to imagine the gravitational force of the Sun holding the planets in their orbits, or the gravitational pull of a black hole. Forces are easy to understand as pushes and pulls.
But we now understand that gravity as a force is only part of a more complex phenomenon described the theory of general relativity. While general relativity is an elegant theory, it’s a radical departure from the idea of gravity as a force. As Carl Sagan once said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” and Einstein’s theory is a very extraordinary claim. But it turns out there are several extraordinary experiments that confirm the curvature of space and time.
The key to general relativity lies in the fact that everything in a gravitational field falls at the same rate. Stand on the Moon and drop a hammer and a feather, and they will hit the surface at the same time. The same is true for any object regardless of its mass or physical makeup, and this is known as the equivalence principle.
Since everything falls in the same way regardless of its mass, it means that without some external point of reference, a free-floating observer far from gravitational sources and a free-falling observer in the gravitational field of a massive body each have the same experience. For example, astronauts in the space station look as if they are floating without gravity. Actually, the gravitational pull of the Earth on the space station is nearly as strong as it is at the surface. The difference is that the space station (and everything in it) is falling. The space station is in orbit, which means it is literally falling around the Earth.
This equivalence between floating and falling is what Einstein used to develop his theory. In general relativity, gravity is not a force between masses. Instead gravity is an effect of the warping of space and time in the presence of mass. Without a force acting upon it, an object will move in a straight line. If you draw a line on a sheet of paper, and then twist or bend the paper, the line will no longer appear straight. In the same way, the straight path of an object is bent when space and time is bent. This explains why all objects fall at the same rate. The gravity warps spacetime in a particular way, so the straight paths of all objects are bent in the same way near the Earth.
So what kind of experiment could possibly prove that gravity is warped spacetime? One stems from the fact that light can be deflected by a nearby mass. It is often argued that since light has no mass, it shouldn’t be deflected by the gravitational force of a body. This isn’t quite correct. Since light has energy, and by special relativity mass and energy are equivalent, Newton’s gravitational theory predicts that light would be deflected slightly by a nearby mass. The difference is that general relativity predicts it will be deflected twice as much.
The effect was first observed by Arthur Eddington in 1919. Eddington traveled to the island of Principe off the coast of West Africa to photograph a total eclipse. He had taken photos of the same region of the sky sometime earlier. By comparing the eclipse photos and the earlier photos of the same sky, Eddington was able to show the apparent position of stars shifted when the Sun was near. The amount of deflection agreed with Einstein, and not Newton. Since then we’ve seen a similar effect where the light of distant quasars and galaxies are deflected by closer masses. It is often referred to as gravitational lensing, and it has been used to measure the masses of galaxies, and even see the effects of dark matter.
Another piece of evidence is known as the time-delay experiment. The mass of the Sun warps space near it, therefore light passing near the Sun is doesn’t travel in a perfectly straight line. Instead it travels along a slightly curved path that is a bit longer. This means light from a planet on the other side of the solar system from Earth reaches us a tiny bit later than we would otherwise expect. The first measurement of this time delay was in the late 1960s by Irwin Shapiro. Radio signals were bounced off Venus from Earth when the two planets were almost on opposite sides of the sun. The measured delay of the signals’ round trip was about 200 microseconds, just as predicted by general relativity. This effect is now known as the Shapiro time delay, and it means the average speed of light (as determined by the travel time) is slightly slower than the (always constant) instantaneous speed of light.
A third effect is gravitational waves. If stars warp space around them, then the motion of stars in a binary system should create ripples in spacetime, similar to the way swirling your finger in water can create ripples on the water’s surface. As the gravity waves radiate away from the stars, they take away some of the energy from the binary system. This means that the two stars gradually move closer together, an effect known as inspiralling. As the two stars inspiral, their orbital period gets shorter because their orbits are getting smaller.
For regular binary stars this effect is so small that we can’t observe it. However in 1974 two astronomers (Hulse and Taylor) discovered an interesting pulsar. Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that happen to radiate radio pulses in our direction. The pulse rate of pulsars are typically very, very regular. Hulse and Taylor noticed that this particular pulsar’s rate would speed up slightly then slow down slightly at a regular rate. They showed that this variation was due to the motion of the pulsar as it orbited a star. They were able to determine the orbital motion of the pulsar very precisely, calculating its orbital period to within a fraction of a second. As they observed their pulsar over the years, they noticed its orbital period was gradually getting shorter. The pulsar is inspiralling due to the radiation of gravity waves, just as predicted.
Finally there is an effect known as frame dragging. We have seen this effect near Earth itself. Because the Earth is rotating, it not only curves spacetime by its mass, it twists spacetime around it due to its rotation. This twisting of spacetime is known as frame dragging. The effect is not very big near the Earth, but it can be measured through the Lense-Thirring effect. Basically you put a spherical gyroscope in orbit, and see if its axis of rotation changes. If there is no frame dragging, then the orientation of the gyroscope shouldn’t change. If there is frame dragging, then the spiral twist of space and time will cause the gyroscope to precess, and its orientation will slowly change over time.
We’ve actually done this experiment with a satellite known as Gravity Probe B, and you can see the results in the figure here. As you can see, they agree very well.
Each of these experiments show that gravity is not simply a force between masses. Gravity is instead an effect of space and time. Gravity is built into the very shape of the universe.
Think on that the next time you step onto a scale.
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Revista de Salud Pública
Print version ISSN 0124-0064
ACOSTA, Orlando and CHAPARRO-GIRALDO, Alejandro. Biofuels, food security and transgenic crops. Rev. salud pública [online]. 2009, vol.11, n.2, pp.290-300. ISSN 0124-0064. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0124-00642009000200013.
Soaring global food prices are threatening to push more poor people back below the poverty line; this will probably become aggravated by the serious challenge that increasing population and climate changes are posing for food security. There is growing evidence that human activities involving fossil fuel consumption and land use are contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and consequently changing the climate worldwide. The finite nature of fossil fuel reserves is causing concern about energy security and there is a growing interest in the use of renewable energy sources such as biofuels. There is growing concern regarding the fact that biofuels are currently produced from food crops, thereby leading to an undesirable competition for their use as food and feed. Nevertheless, biofuels can be produced from other feedstocks such as lingo-cellulose from perennial grasses, forestry and vegetable waste. Biofuel energy content should not be exceeded by that of the fossil fuel invested in its production to ensure that it is energetically sustainable; however, biofuels must also be economically competitive and environmentally acceptable. Climate change and biofuels are challenging FAO efforts aimed at eradicating hunger worldwide by the next decade. Given that current crops used in biofuel production have not been domesticated for this purpose, transgenic technology can offer an enormous contribution towards improving biofuel crops' environmental and economic performance. The present paper critically presents some relevant relationships between biofuels, food security and transgenic plant technology.
Keywords : Biofuels; climate change; food security; genetically modified plants.
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| 0.929696 | 412 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Child sexual molestation and sexual abuse consists of inappropriate and illegal touching of a child in a sexual manner, or the sexual exploitation of children by taking pictures and videos of children posed or acting in a sexual manner. Child molestation ranges from having the child undress, to touching the child's genitals in a sexual manner, to forcing the child to perform oral sex, to actual sexual intercourse with the child. Chronic child molesters prefer either their own gender or the opposite gender as sexual partners. Many times, they understand that their behavior is both unlawful and morally wrong in our society, but they are unable to control their sexual impulses. Other child molesters, called pedophiles, don't believe their their behavior is wrong and that the child actually enjoys having sex with adults. In summary, child molestation is unlawful sexual contact of any type with a child under the age of consent for sexual acts.
A pedophile is a person whose sexual partner of choice is a child under the legal age of consent for sexual contact. Pedophiles are usually men, but there are documented cases of female pedophiles. Some pedophiles prefer same-sex child sexual partners, while others prefer opposite sex partners. Pedophiles tend to be very particular about the age of the children they prefer as sexual partners; they may prefer very young children (ages 5-10) and some prefer young adolescents. The exact cause of pedophilia is largely unknown; one theory is that they are genetically pre-disposed towards desiring sex with children. This, of course, usually rules out any type of mental health treatment to help them alter their illegal and cruel behavior; these pedophiles don't believe they are harming their victims. Another theory on the origins of pedophilia is that they themselves were sexually abused as children, either by a stranger or a trusted adult, and these experiences caused them to assume the role of "predator" rather than "victim" as they become adults. Pedophiles are extremely dangerous criminals who have no remorse for their actions; they truly believe that children want to have sexual contact with adults and that they are actually "helping" their victims by teaching them about sex. Pedophiles have very poor social skills with adults; they can relate to the emotional immaturity of children. Children as sex partners are appealing to them because with children, they don't have to interact on an adult levels with mature sex partners. Pedophiles pose serious problems in the criminal justice system. When sentenced to prison, they are not responsive to rehabilitation and they are always "targets" for other inmates. If paroled, pedophiles must register with local law enforcement as sex offenders.
You can access several Websites that host a national sex offender database, and many states also maintain individual sex offender Websites.
The purpose of a national sexoffender database is to inform the public of registered sex offenders that live in their area. These sex offenders have been convicted as specified in the Wetterling Act as any criminal offense against a victim who is a minor or any sexually violent offense. Typically, this includes information about those sexual offenders who were convicted of offenses involving sexual molestation or sexual exploitation of children, and anyone convicted of rape and rape-like crimes.
Since Megan's Law was established, every state is now required to list local sex offenders. The information may differ from state to state, and not all of it may be made public. Public information typically includes the following:
* Date of birth
* Physical description
* Current address
* Date of offense
* Nature of offense
* Any outstanding warrants.
There are several characteristics that may signal the personality of a child predator. These may include the following:
* Child predators are typically afraid of adult intimacy.
* Child predators search out children who are vulnerable and easily manipulated.
* A child predator may refuse to take responsibility for his actions.
* A child predator generally needs to control others.
* A child predator may have been abused as a child.
* A child predator often has a great desire for power.
* Child predators typically have a low self-esteem.
There are several steps you can take to help protect your child from child molesters and sexual offenders. Of course you should continue to check sex offender lists in your area on a regular basis, but you also need to protect your children in other ways.
* Don't leave your children unsupervised even for just a few seconds! You might be tempted to let your child be alone in a section of a store, in your yard, in a park, in your vehicle, etc. It only takes a few seconds for a child to be abducted, so don't leave them!
* Don't allow your child to walk home from school unsupervised.
* If your child is at a neighbor's house playing with a friend, ask that neighbor to call you before he or she sends your child home so that you can come and get your child.
* Don't drop your child off at a park to play with other children alone.
* Don't let your child play at video arcades in stores or malls without you.
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Definition of calabaza
: a large winter squash (Cucurbita moschata) that resembles a pumpkin and is typically grown in the West Indies and tropical America
Origin and Etymology of calabaza
First Known Use: 1970
Learn More about calabaza
Spanish Central: Translation of calabaza
Seen and Heard
What made you want to look up calabaza? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).
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| 0.85326 | 101 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Domestic violence can happen to anyone- adult women and men, teenagers, people who are mentally and physically disabled, and the elderly – regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender or economic status.
It is estimated that 33.4% of women, and 24% of men in New Hampshire have experienced a physical assault by an intimate partner.
Sources: 2007 NH Violence Against Women Report, 2009 NH Violence Against Men Report.
Domestic Violence is a pattern of coercive behavior used by one person to gain and maintain power and control over another in the context of an intimate or familial relationship. It may include: physical violence, sexual violence, stalking, verbal, emotional, mental/psychological, and economic abuse. It can involve threats, pushing, punching, slapping, strangulation, sexual assault, shouting, name-calling, harming or threatening to harm children or pets, and other violent or intimidating behaviors. Rarely a one-time occurrence, domestic violence usually escalates in frequency and severity over time.
Abusers batter to control and dominate their partners. Violence is a behavioral choice for which the batterer must take responsibility. No language or other act is provocation or justification for violent behavior. It is important to note that violence is often only a small part of the abuse. Many batterers use other controlling behaviors to gain control over their victims, such as a verbal threat. This can put the victim in fear and the abuser gains power and control.
A largely unreported crime
Domestic Violence is one of the most prevalent crimes in our state, in our country, and in our world and yet it often goes unreported. There are many reasons why victims of domestic violence may be reluctant to report this crime. Victims may fear that nothing will be done to help them; that their abusers will retaliate against them for making the report; that family and friends will blame them; that they will lose their children; that they will lose their jobs; or that their batterers will carry through on threats to harm or kill them, their children, members of their family, or their pets. They may be concerned that the legal system will subject them to an ordeal nearly as horrifying as the domestic abuse itself. Abusers use power and control to instill a sense of fear in their victims. Research shows the most dangerous time for a victim in an abusive relationship is when that person decides to leave.
Some common barriers keeping victims from leaving:
• Fear of more violence/death
• Fear of losing custody of their children
• Cultural religious values
• The hope that the batterer can change
• The batterer threatens suicide or other self destructive behavior
• Lack of financial independence
If you are in an abusive relationship
• Call 9-1-1 if you are in immediate danger.
• Remember that batterers are abusive in an effort to exert power and control over the victim. Violence and abusive behavior is a choice for which the batterer must take sole responsibility. There is no justification or excuse for physical violence or other forms of abuse and the victim is NEVER to blame.
• Get connected to the crisis center nearest you by calling our statewide toll-free domestic violence hotline 1-866-644-3574; you do not have to give them your name. Trained advocates are ready to answer your questions, offer support, safety plan with you, and provide referrals anytime day or night.
You do not have to be in crisis to call!
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| 0.944763 | 700 | 3.5 | 4 |
Ongoing exhibition, opened April 11, 2008.
Throughout his life, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) collected books across a vast spectrum of topics and languages. Jefferson followed a modified version of an organizational system created by British philosopher Francis Bacon (1561–1626) to arrange the books in his library, then the largest private book collection in North America.
Divided into categories of Memory, Reason, and Imagination—which Jefferson translated to “History,” “Philosophy,” and “Fine Arts”—and further divided into forty-four “chapters,” the collection placed within Jefferson’s fingertips the span of his multifaceted interests. The books from Jefferson’s library are part of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress.
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| 0.941048 | 172 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The laying diets shown in Table 1 contain all the calcium needed by the layer under most conditions. However, if egg shell quality is a problem during hot weather, or if the pullets have come into production at a fairly young age and have peaked very quickly, it may be advisable to increase the levels of calcium by at least 0.4%. Research has indicated that a marked improvement in shell quality can be obtained by feeding part of the dietary calcium as oyster shell or limestone chips. This is especially true if limestone flour rather than a granular source of limestone is used. The hen’s requirement for calcium is relatively low, except at the time of the day when egg shell formation is taking place. The greatest rate of shell deposition occurs in the dark phase, when birds are not actively eating feed. The source of calcium during this period then becomes residual feed in the digestive tract and the labile medullary bone reserve.
In the first six hours of the 24h laying cycle, there is virtually no shell deposition. This is the time of albumen and shell membrane secretion, and the time of redeposition of medullary bone. From six to 12 hours, about 400 mg calcium are deposited, while the most active period is the 12-18 hr period when around 800 mg shell calcium accumulates.
This is followed by a slower deposition of about 500 mg in the last six hours, for a total of around 1.7g shell calcium, depending upon egg size. The voluntary intake of oyster shell or large particle calcium at various times during a normal 16h day is shown in Figure 8.
With the control diet, the hen had no choice as to the time of day calcium was consumed. However, when given the simultaneous choice of diets providing energy, protein or calcium (E,P,Ca), the hen was able to select calcium at any time. Under these conditions, the hen consumed little or no calcium until the afternoon. This is the time of the day that the egg is usually in the shell gland, and the requirement for calcium should be higher at this time. When feeding limestone chips or oyster shell, it is recommended that the diet contain 1 to 1.5% calcium and that the remainder be supplied by the supplemental source. The ideal time to feed this calcium supplement would be in the afternoon, since this is when the hen normally has a high calcium requirement. Since separate feeding of calcium is not very practical, the only apparent solution is to have the calcium supplement mixed in the feed. The hen has the opportunity of leaving the oyster shell or limestone chips until the latter part of the day when it is required. This type of feeding method is being used by a number of producers with very good results. The feeding of limestone or oyster shell on a continuous free choice basis, or on top of a diet containing the full calcium requirement, is not recommended. It has been shown that egg shells with chalky deposits and rough ends are probably a direct result of feeding too much calcium to laying hens. Feeding birds oyster shell ad-libitum can also result in the production of soft shelled eggs. This unusual circumstance is due to a deficiency of phosphorus. If too much calcium is ingested, it must be excreted, usually as soluble calcium phosphate. This can lead to a deficiency of phosphorus, which results in no medullary bone being redeposited between successive periods of calcification.
Calcium is the nutrient most often considered when shell quality problems occur, although it is realized that deficiencies of vitamin D3 and phosphorus can also result in weaker shells. Vitamin D3 is required for normal calcium absorption, and so if inadequate levels are fed, induced calcium deficiency quickly occurs. Results from our laboratory suggest that diets devoid of synthetic vitamin D3 are quickly diagnosed, because there is a dramatic loss in shell weight (Figure 9). The same situation is seen in Figure 10 when birds are fed deficient diets, and shell quality quickly deteriorates over two to three weeks. In this study, the basal diet was resupplemented with vitamin D3 after four weeks, and there was rapid normalization of shell quality (Figure 10).
However, a more serious problem occurs with sub-optimal levels of vitamin D3, where changes in shell quality are more subtle but nevertheless of economic significance (Figure 10).
A major problem with deficiency of vitamin D3 is that this nutrient is very difficult to assay in complete feeds. If it is only at concentrations normally found in vitamin premixes that meaningful assays can be carried out, and so if D3 problems are suspected, access to the vitamin premix is usually essential. In addition to uncomplicated deficiencies of D3, problems can arise due to the effect of certain mycotoxins. Compounds such as zearalenone, that are produced by Fusarium molds, have been shown to effectively tie up vitamin D3, resulting in poor egg shell quality. Under these circumstances, dosing birds with 300 IU D3 per day for three consecutive days with water soluble D3 may be advantageous.
Minimizing phosphorus levels is also advantageous in maintaining shell quality, especially under heat stress conditions. Because phosphorus is a very expensive nutrient, high inclusion levels are not usually encountered, yet limiting these within the range of 0.3 to 0.4%, depending upon flock conditions, seems ideal in terms of shell quality. Periodically, unaccountable reductions in shell quality occur and it is possible that some of these may be related to nutrition. As an example, vanadium contamination of phosphates causes an unusual shell structure, and certain weed seeds such as those of the lathyrus species, cause major disruptions of the shell gland.
Up to 10% reduction in eggshell thickness has been reported for layers fed saline drinking water, and a doubling in incidence of total shell defects seen with water containing 250 mg salt/litre. If a laying hen consumes 100g feed and 200 ml water per day, then water at 250 mg salt/litre provides only 50 mg salt compared to intake from the feed of around 400 mg salt. The salt intake from saline water therefore seems minimal in relation to total intake, but nevertheless shell quality problems often occur under these conditions. It appears that saline water results in limiting the supply of bicarbonate irons to the shell gland, and that this is mediated via reduced activity of carbonic anhydrase enzyme in the mucosa of the shell gland. However it is still unclear why saline water has this effect, in the presence of overwhelmingly more salt as provided by the feed. There seems to be no effective method of correcting this loss of shell quality in established flocks, although for new flocks, the adverse effect can be greatly reduced by adding 1 g vitamin C/litre drinking water.
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en
| 0.944261 | 1,384 | 3.21875 | 3 |
False cognates are pairs of words in the same or different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots. That is, they appear to be, or are sometimes considered, cognates, when in fact they are not.
Even if false cognates lack a common root, there may still be an indirect connection between them.
As an example of false cognates, the word for "dog" in the Australian Aboriginal language Mbabaram happens to be dog, although there is no common ancestor or other connection between that language and English (the Mbabaram word evolved regularly from a protolinguistic form *gudaga). Similarly, in the Japanese language the word 'to occur' happens to be okoru (起こる).
The basic kinship terms mama and papa comprise a special case of false cognates (cf. !Kung ba, Chinese bàba, Persian baba, and French papa (all "dad"); or Navajo má, Chinese māma, Swahili mama, Quechua mama, and English "mama"). The striking cross-linguistical similarities between these terms are thought to result from the nature of language acquisition (Jakobson 1962). According to Jakobson, these words are the first word-like sounds made by babbling babies; and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves. Thus, there is no need to ascribe the similarities to common ancestry. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that these terms are built up from speech sounds that are easiest to produce (bilabial nasals like m or stops like p and b along with the basic vowel a). However, variants do occur; for example, in Fijian, the word for "mother" is nana, and in proto-Old Japanese, the word for "mother" was *papa. Furthermore, the modern Japanese word for "father," chichi (父), is from older titi. In fact, in Japanese the child's initial mamma (まんま) is interpreted to mean "food". Similarly, in some Indian languages, such as Marathi, a child's articulation of "mum-mum" is interpreted to mean "food".
The term "false cognate" is sometimes misused to describe false friends. One difference between false cognates and false friends is that while false cognates mean roughly the same thing in two languages, false friends bear two distinct (sometimes even opposite) meanings. In fact, a pair of false friends may be true cognates (see false friends: causes).
A related phenomenon is the expressive loan, which looks like a native construction, but is not.
Full article ▸
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http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/False_cognate.html
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| 0.939032 | 566 | 3.84375 | 4 |
Family History and Research
Welcome to all interested in our family's history and our continuing research. There is a lot of history to be told and a lot to be researched, even in a family tree as well documented as the Poingdestre /Poindexter family. If you have stories to tell, research to share or want to help out, please contact one of the folks on our contacts list.
Improve your genealogical research skills: Family historians and genealogists spend a lot of time researching and developing their family trees. But how do you get started and learn more about how to research and document your findings?
Research Contacts at the PDA: who to contact to ask research questions, who to send your data to, share your questions or comments online.
GEDCOM Database: information from the PDA genealogical database, mostly America, but we are adding Jersey persons to the database, as well. Membership password required.
DNA Project: participate in our DNA Family Tree project.
Poindexter Archive at the Virginia Historical Society. NEW January 2010
Ellis Island is located in the harbor off the tip of Manhattan. Originally a fort, today we think of the immigrants that entered this country on Ellis Island. Our Poindexter immigrants preceeded Ellis Island and entered North Americal through Virginia, Maine and Newfoundland. But many of us have other immigrants in our ancestral trees, including those that may have passed through Ellis Island. You may want to follow our link to see if any of your immigrants did so. This link was suggested by grade school student Carrie of Ms. Ward's class (school unkown), Aug 2013.
Links to related web sites: to other Poindexter web sites and to other genealogical and family research sites. These have a lot of additional information.
Publications: a list of books and other publications made known to us that are about our family.
Email Lists and Message Boards researching "Poindexter"
Family Stories: a collection of oral and written stories about Poindexter's.
Photo Album: old photos of family ancestors, some current family and some ancestral homes and churches.
Occupations: common in Europe and early America and their meanings.
The Titanic: able bodied seaman Jean Poingdestre survived the sinking.
Biography Sketches by Howard Poindexter (you will leave the PDA web site with this link)
Royal Linages, the early Dukes of Normandy and Charlemagne to the Poindestres of Jersey. Also, information about William the Conqueror, Doomsday Book and the Bayeaux Tapestry.
Updated June 19, 2016
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| 0.947511 | 547 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Is there anything more luscious than a home-grown, juicy peach on a warm summer day? Growing big, plump peaches starts with growing a peach variety that is known to create large fruits. Then, by ensuring the tree is healthy and not stressed by drought, thinning out the fruits causes the tree's energy to be focused on making fewer but larger fruits.
Nurture the overall health of the peach tree. Place 3 to 4 inches of organic mulch or compost over the root zone of the tree. Irrigate the tree so the soil is moist in periods of drought, and apply a granular, slow-release fertilizer in spring in the dose recommended on the product label.
Monitor the flowering of the peach tree in early spring. Promote pollination of the flowers by bees by avoiding the use of pesticides or asking a local beekeeper to temporarily situate a beehive near the tree to facilitate better pollination.
Allow young peaches to begin to form on the tree. The small peaches will first become noticeable in April or May. Remove any pest-eaten or dead fruits with a pinch of your fingernails or by cutting them with hand pruners.
Once the small peaches are about the size of a nickel, begin thinning out the numbers of peaches in clusters on branches. For example, if there are four young peaches developing in one cluster, remove two peaches to allow the two remaining peaches to grow larger.
Monitor the peach growth, and when the peaches reach the size of a quarter or silver dollar, selectively remove peaches. Any malformed, damaged or multiple clusters of peaches should be again thinned out, so that one peach remains every 12 to 18 inches on each branch.
Harvest the peach when it is firm but fragrant. Peaches will continue to grow and enlarge on the tree up until the point the fruit becomes soft, fully ripe, and drops. The key is to not pick too early or too late.
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| 0.91667 | 413 | 3.5625 | 4 |
Thursday, May 24, 2012
BioFuel Resources on Google Maps
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has created a BioFuels Atlas using the Google Maps API. The map shows the locations of biomass resources in the U.S..
Using the map it is possible to view overlays of bioenergy and brownfield sites, distribution infrastructure, and power plants. The 'State View' option allows the user to zoom in on a selected state and view a summary of traditional and bioenergy infrastructure in the state beneath the map.
The map also includes an analysis tool that allows the user to select a point on the map and convert the biomass resources within a specified area into potential biofuel production.
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http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2012/05/biofuel-resources-on-google-maps.html
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| 0.838157 | 144 | 2.828125 | 3 |
This report has gathered sufficient evidence showing that As in irrigation water can result in land degradation, adversely affecting incomes and agro-ecosystem services in terms of their ability to provide a sustainable source of sufficient and safe foods. The soil contamination can cause contamination of crops and foods, resulting in risks to food safety and thus to human health. The continuous contamination of soil is a growing threat to crop production itself, and thus to sustainable agriculture, because As in soils will become toxic to plants and other organisms at a certain level. This would result in reduced crop yields and thus pose a risk to incomes and the nutritional status of rural farming communities. To date, the risks of using As-contaminated groundwater resources for irrigation have not received sufficient attention and have not been addressed within the framework of land degradation. The current and future extent of land degradation caused by As-contaminated irrigation water is still unknown.
An overview of our knowledge and gaps in our knowledge is given below. It should be remembered that a number of points are based on results from Bangladesh only. These need to be validated in other countries, taking into account differences in agricultural practices, environmental conditions, food habits and other factors.
Any risk to crop production is of serious concern as raising crop production is necessary to keep up with population growth. Also, raising crop production is regarded as one of the key elements in rural poverty alleviation. Land degradation caused by As-contamination could thus pose a threat to sustainable development.
With the continuation of uncontrolled use of contaminated water in agriculture, it is expected that the risks will increase over time. In the long run, this may offset the ongoing efforts in the drinking-water sector to reduce the adverse impacts of As.
Rice production systems are of particular concern because flooded soil conditions are most favourable for As uptake and rice is the most important staple food in the region. Other crops under irrigation with contaminated water need to be addressed as well as there are great uncertainties about the As mass balance under different environmental conditions.
It is important to note that once arable soils are polluted to an unacceptable level, rehabilitation is unlikely to be cost effective. Preference should thus be given to prevention and control over rehabilitation.
Considering the potentially serious consequences of As-contamination in agriculture, the identified gaps need to be filled, for example through an integrated regional programme covering both crop production and food safety aspects within the framework of land degradation.
Most importantly, the scale of the problem needs to be quantified. This should be based on scientifically justified methodologies resulting in reliable results, conclusions and recommendations. Close involvement of stakeholders of different sectors is necessary to optimize integrated and cross-sectoral programme coordination and implementation, including data sharing, human resources and funding, and to optimize dissemination and integration of the outcomes in strategic planning and programming, thus ensuring sustainability.
Agricultural production is under pressure from multiple factors including As. In Bangladesh, it has recently been noted that rice production per ha is stagnating and declining. Deterioration of soil quality has been mentioned as one of the main factors, including depletion of nutrients and organic matter. Another increasing problem is access to water. Boro rice production depends heavily on irrigation with water from the shallow aquifer, but the water table is decreasing rapidly at many locations because of overextraction. The high salinity of irrigation water is also hampering crop production in the coastal areas. Similar problems are occurring elsewhere in the region. The continuous addition of As to the topsoil may pose additional risks to soil quality and crop production and therefore to nutrition and income.
The extent of land degradation caused by As in irrigation water needs to be quantified and weighted against other factors causing land degradation. This will require in-depth understanding of As levels in irrigation water, soil and crops, the behaviour of As in soil, uptake and toxicity in crops in the relevant agro-ecosystems, the influence of agricultural practices including irrigation water management on As, and the establishment of standards for As in irrigation water, soil and crops. This information would result in an evaluation of the current situation and would serve as a baseline for the future. Further, it will be of great importance to develop an effective and efficient water/soil/crop quality monitoring system for long-term monitoring of land degradation in agro-ecosystems. This system should include both As and other physical, chemical (nutrients and contaminants) and biological parameters that together determine the quality of agro-ecosystems.
The integrated approach to address the issue of using As-contaminated groundwater resources for irrigation offers substantial opportunities to assess the overall status of land degradation in agro-ecosystems, develop a system to monitor future trends in land degradation, and assist governments and development partners in developing policies and setting priorities.
Depending on the outcome of the initial evaluation, management options to prevent or mitigate As input to the agricultural system can be developed. Exploratory studies are needed to assess the potential risks of As in the environment to livestock and fisheries.
Arsenicosis is commonly observed in areas with high As levels in STWs used for drinking-water, with thousands of people suffering in Asia. It is generally accepted that drinking-water is the main source of exposure, but foods could be an important and possibly growing source as well. However, foods are not only a potential source of As, they are also the main source of micronutrients. Micronutrient deficiency is prevalent in Bangladesh, particularly among poor women and children. Improved nutrition is therefore high on the priority list in most Asian countries. Most well-known deficiencies are vitamin A and iron deficiencies. In general, nutrient deficiencies make people more sensitive to diseases and toxicants. There are indications that this is also the case for arsenicosis.
To determine the risk to human health posed by As in foods a reliable and representative database on inorganic As in foods is a necessary first step. This database can then be used with data on food consumption to estimate the dietary intake of As through foods and the resulting exposure levels can be compared to health guidelines to assess the risks. However, health guidelines may need to be evaluated first as there are some concerns about their reliability and applicability. Considering the high prevalence of nutrient deficiency in Asia, it will be of great importance to take the nutritional value of foods into consideration when evaluating the risks of As in foods.
Depending on the outcome of the human health risk assessment, options to minimize As exposure can be identified at field level, e.g. adapting dietary habits and/or food preparation techniques. Such measures can be combined with efforts to improve nutrient intake. An improved nutritional status is regarded as one of the keys to strengthening the human immune system, thus making people less vulnerable to many diseases.
The technical capacity of many national laboratories involved needs to be strengthened to ensure the quality of the data. Within a laboratory, the quality of data depends on all activities that take place including pretreatment of samples, maintenance of facilities and equipment, training of staff, chemical analysis, administration, data processing, etc. All activities should therefore be described in standard operating procedures (SOPs) to ensure maximum standardization and transparency. This should result in a high level of QA/QC. QA/QC does add additional costs but unreliable data are more expensive. One specific requirement now is the use of CRMs during chemical analysis. This is not yet common practice in, e.g. Bangladesh, partially because of the high costs of CRMs. To overcome this, secondary reference materials (SRMs) representative of As in food and agriculture should be developed. As a start, SRMs for water, soil, rice grains and rice straw are suggested. This should be a mutual effort from a number of national research institutes and universities both from the health sector, the agricultural sector and the water sector, assisted by at least one established laboratory from abroad. Such an effort will not only upgrade chemical analysis, but can also strengthen inter-institutional planning and collaboration as a whole.
The behaviour and toxicity of As depends on the form in which it is present. In most cases, various forms of As co-exist in the environment. To understand the behaviour of As and assess its risks, it is therefore necessary to segregate As species during chemical analysis. The necessary techniques are, however, complicated and hardly available in the region. It is recommended that at least one institute in each of the affected countries develop As speciation capacity.
A first inventory reveals a substantial number of stakeholders. This can be attributed to the cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary character of the issue. Below is a brief overview of the key stakeholders.
Governments are the key stakeholder. The issue requires involvement from various sectors including agriculture, water, food, health, and environment, and thus the responsible ministries. Considering the many gaps in our knowledge, a number of national research institutes under the relevant ministries need to play an important role, and collaborate with the national and international scientific community. With most of the countries in Asia considered to be developing countries and countries in transition, risks to food safety and agricultural sustainability should be seen in the light of governments' development agendas. Providing governments with reliable and representative information, for example through the national research institutes, should stimulate governments to take appropriate action. At the same time, commitment from governments is needed to provide an enabling environment in which the necessary work can take place.
Since 2000, FAO, UNICEF and WHO have been involved in the issue of As in food and agriculture. With the Millennium Development Goals as a target, the agencies are promoting sustainable agricultural production and improved access to safe and nutritious foods, particularly for the poor and vulnerable groups. Since 1999, FAO has been involved in the issue of As in irrigation water. The issue is now part of the Regular Programme and FAO experts regularly provide information, advice and inputs on the issue to governments, development partners and the scientific community. UNICEF is strongly involved in providing safe drinking-water in Asia, including mapping of groundwater quality. Although the aim is to provide safe drinking-water in terms of numerous parameters, As has received special attention. WHO is strongly involved in water quality issues and health aspects of arsenicosis, and together with UNICEF, provides guidance on the supply of sufficient and safe drinking-water. Both WHO and UNICEF have expressed concerns about possible risks of using As-contaminated irrigation water. Recently, WHO, FAO and UNICEF started the preparation of education, information and communication materials on As in drinking-water, and As in food and agriculture.
There is some concern about As-contaminated irrigation water among donors, as can be seen by the few projects funded by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bangladesh. However, the potential impacts of As on food safety and in particular on agricultural sustainability should be made clearer to the donor community through awareness raising activities so as to raise funds necessary to address the issue systematically and in an integrated manner. It is important for donors to realize that the continuation of As-contamination of agricultural land may in the long run offset the progress made in the drinking-water sector, which they are heavily supporting.
Universities & international research institutes
Universities from the region and elsewhere have been among the first to raise the issue and, mostly through their own initiatives and commitment, have developed and funded As-related projects. They will need to continue to play a key role as there are still many scientific gaps to be filled. A major challenge for the scientific community will be to improve the translation of the knowledge obtained through research into messages understandable by policy makers, donors, and the general public. Most of the countries in Asia facing As problems are classified as developing countries. It is therefore recommended to put the research outcomes into the perspective of the development agenda of governments and development partners. Part of the work to be done is challenging and will best be implemented through consortia of national and international research institutes. Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) institutes such as the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) could play an important role in such consortia by providing leadership and/or contributing their technical expertise. Both IRRI and CIMMYT have already been involved in As-related activities in Bangladesh. IWMI has substantial expertise and experience in irrigation water quality issues in the region and elsewhere.
Farmers are facing multiple problems with regard to agricultural production. Strengthening their understanding and capacity to improve agricultural practices and minimize land degradation will enhance the sustainability of crop production and thus their livelihoods. This is of great importance to them and rural farming communities as a whole because agriculture is generally regarded as one of the keys to poverty alleviation in the region.
Throughout the course of preparing this report, a number of shortcomings and suggestions for improving future activities have been identified and are briefly outlined below.
LESSONS LEARNED FOR FUTURE ACTIVITIES
Methodology - Limitations in study designs including a localized approach and a lack of detail do not allow extrapolation of results and conclusions. Detailed information on the conditions under which As accumulates in the soil is still not available. Chemical analyses often do not comply with basic quality control principles, reducing the reliability of the results and conclusions. For Bangladesh, the limited technical capacity currently present in the country is a major constraint in delivering scientifically justified information on which policy can be based.
Data interpretation - The large difference in toxicity of the various forms of As present in foods has mostly been ignored. To evaluate obtained data on As in soil and foods, reference is often made to standards from other countries without evaluating the quality and suitability of that specific standard. In many cases, the use of those standards cannot be justified.
Crop production - By far, projects on As in irrigation water have only focused on As in the food chain, neglecting the threat to crop production. The issue has not been put in the necessary broader framework of land degradation. Management aspects related to the use of contaminated groundwater for irrigation have only received limited attention.
Long-term effects - Most projects have only evaluated the current levels of As in water, soil and crops, and have not considered future levels. Contamination via irrigation is likely to continue as long as contaminated sources are being used for irrigation. The problems are thus expected to increase over time, regardless of whether current levels in soil and foods are acceptable or not. This highlights the need for a strategic approach and the incorporation of the issue in long-term monitoring activities on land degradation.
Funding and coordination - The number and scale of activities/projects related to addressing As in irrigation water have been limited and there has been a lack of coordination between agencies and between sectors. This situation can be explained partly by a lack of awareness raising initiatives, limited project outcomes and little dissemination of these, and the low priorities of governments and donors in terms of addressing As related issues. It can also be explained by the overall management of the As crisis, for example, in Bangladesh. As was first identified as a drinking-water and health problem, logically leading to the establishment of coordinating and funding mechanisms in the water and health sectors. However, this focus on water and health is now hampering activities designed to address As in the food and agriculture sectors and so far there has been little collaboration between the water and health sectors and the food and agricultural sectors and little interest from the major donors in tackling the problem.
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| 0.948872 | 3,206 | 3.703125 | 4 |
A painting of slaves working on a Georgia plantation, picking cotton and harvesting sugar cane, will be removed from the walls of a government state building in Georgia, according to an order issued by the new agriculture commissioner.
The murals are part of a collection of eight works created by George Beattie in 1956 as an idealized depiction of agriculture in Georgia. The collection depicts the movement of food and farming in the Peach state, commemorating the prehistoric beginnings of food grown by Native Americans, and continuing up to the most recent developments in scientific labs. The paintings are troubling because they bring back to mind the imagery of forced slave labor. In the 1800s, before emancipation, more than 280,000 slaves lived and worked in the state of Georgia, making up 40 percent of the state’s population.
“I don’t like those pictures,” Republican Gary Black, the newly elected agriculture commissioner, told Associated Press. “There are a lot of other people who don’t like them.”
The murals in question depict two White men in top hats inspecting and weighing cotton that has been processed and produced by Black slaves. One slave is bent over, picking cotton buds by hands, while two other slaves use the Whitney gin to separate cotton fiber from seeds. There is no imagery of the whipping or beating that may have been used to harm or subjugate the slaves.
According to a department-sponsored article in 1995 before he died, Beattie defended his work, claiming that it is an important installment of Georgia’s cultural past that Georgians should not shy away from.
“As a human being, I am vehemently opposed to slavery, as anyone should be,” Beattie said, “but it was a significant epoch in our history; it would have been inaccurate not to include this period.”
However, Black claims that the images have got to go.
“I think we can depict a better picture of agriculture,” Black said, suggesting a less controversial piece to take the artwork’s place.
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| 0.964713 | 427 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Scott Linneman, Departments of Geology and Education, Western Washington University.
Short description of the course:
Five-credit (quarter system), field-oriented course in geomorphology that emphasizes locally observable (and measurable) geomorphic processes: rivers, hillslopes, mass wasting, glaciers.
Design Philosophy: How is teaching the methods of geoscience integrated into the course?
The list of course goals make clear that this is a SKILLS-oriented course rather than a CONCEPT-oriented course. Thus, the methods of geoscience are the focus of the course.
Key Activities: How do these activities address teaching the methods of geoscience?
Lab exercises include surveying, map reading, map making, aerial photo interpretation, spreadsheet manipulation, proposal writing, and scientific report writing.
Assessment: How are the methods of geoscience assessed?
We assess using student writing (lab reports and research report) and two short exams (essay and map&photo interpretation). Almost all of the lab exercises take place in group format, with individual accountability built into many of the assignments. For example, the early benchmarks of their term research project are group products (proposal, data, draft up through results), but the final product is individual (post-review re-writing and addition of Discussion section)
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https://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/workshops/methods2012/course_suppleme/linneman.html
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A government group is advising women to use hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to treat symptoms of menopause for only short periods of time.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), an independent group of health experts convened at the request of Congress, first hinted that HRT may be too risky for long term use in 2005. At that time, after reviewing the available data, the task force warned women against relying on HRT to prevent chronic conditions like heart disease and dementia. Some earlier studies had suggested that the supplemental hormones that women take to relieve night sweats and hot flashes associated with menopause could also protect the heart and brain from aging-related decline.
But use of hormone therapy declined after a 2002 Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study found little difference in rates of heart disease among women who used HRT and those who did not. Instead, it reported HRT may increase the risks of heart disease and breast cancer.
In its most recent analysis, published online in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the USPSTF confirmed its previous findings that the risk of HRT outweigh its potential benefits. The task force made its final recommendation based on a review of 51 additional studies published since 2002. Overall, the data show that HRT, which combines estrogen and progestin, is linked to increased risk of stroke, blood clots, gallbladder disease, urinary incontinence, dementia and breast cancer. Even among women who have had a hysterectomy, and therefore only need to take estrogen and not progestin to protect endometrial tissue, the risks remained significant.
The only benefits of HRT the USPSTF found outside of relieving menopause symptoms was a lower risk of fractures. But the risks far outweighed this improvement, the task force concluded. So for women at average-risk of heart disease or breast cancer, which make up the majority of those who might take HRT during menopause menopause, the panel recommends against long-term use of the hormones. For those who need immediate relief of menopausal symptoms, however, short term use of the hormones can be helpful and relatively safe. That practice is supported by a recent study published in the British Medical Journal that found estrogen-only hormone therapy shortly after menopause doesn’t result in an increase in heart risks.
Still, this recommendation isn’t likely to be the final word on HRT. The task force says more research is needed on the use of HRT among women who are transitioning through menopause, and the effects the hormones can have on women of different ages. They note that those involved in the WHI trial that found no long term benefits were on average 64 years old, which, the panel says, is “largely past the point of menopause onset.”
For now, major health organizations like the American Heart Association, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Family Physicians also recommend against long-term HRT use in postmenopausal women to treat conditions other than menopausal symptoms.
“I agree with the USPSTF guidelines that hormone therapy should not be used for chronic disease prevention,” Dr. JoAnn E. Manson, chief of the division of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston told WebMD. “The pendulum has swung to the more appropriate place of hormone therapy reserved for the treatment of menopausal symptoms.”
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| 0.949029 | 725 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Somewhere out there right now is somebody who could benefit from Job Corps. She's smart and young and terribly bored. Maybe she's been in some trouble and doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. But whatever it is, she wants to do it herself, even if it's hard. She's perfect.
"Initially, Job Corps only went to the age of twenty one," says Tom Zender. He's the director of the Columbia Basin Job Corps Center , and very familiar with the type of people who traditionally do well in the program. "[The intention was to have] a plan for kids who dropped out of school so that they wouldn't go bad, and could fall into a safety net." But since its inception, the program has opened itself to more than 2 million kids from 16 to young adults. The Job Corps Program is an off-shoot of the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930's, and through voluntary enrollment, self-pacing, and open entry and exit policies, continues to attract tens of thousands of young people each year.
"We take kids that are at risk, and that may mean several things," says Zender. "They may come from dysfunctional families, or because they dropped out of school, or because of low income or any of the other ills of our society." But, he says just because an enrollee might have problems doesn't prevent the center from pulling out all the stops to help them succeed. "We're allowed to ask for an extension if a student is progressing and profiting from the program," he says. "Some don't have the advantage of other students and those students need extra time."
The Department of Labor operates 82 centers while the Department of Labor operates another 29 centers in cooperation with the Department of Interior. Of those, the Bureau of Reclamation operates five centers. One center, the Weber Basin Job Corps near Ogden Utah , is a residential, vocational training program geared toward today's work environment.
Students at Weber Basin have the opportunity to learn a number of "hard skills" such as carpentry, painting and bricklaying. In fact, each center gears its curriculum to the needs of the local employment community, which can cover everything from construction to retail to computers. The emphasis is anything that figures prominently for local business. Since Job Corps centers work with community employers, what is offered to students at a particular center is tailored to the job outlook and employment needs for that immediate area. Corps management queries employers to discover what skills are needed.
But, they and other Job Corps members also receive a number of soft skills, says San Francisco Job Corps Region Program Manager, Anthony Zella. "We've learned from employers that we can present them with people who know the job and know the skill. But, those students must have the softer, social skills." Those skills include things like time management, dealing with personal issues and getting along with other people in work environments.
The Job Corps Annual Report for Program Year 1995, produced in cooperation with the Department of Labor, speaks to how the program has evolved. In 1977, there were about 22,000 participants in Job Corps. By 1982, that had increased to 41,000. Meanwhile, the centers themselves have grown and changed with their students. Zella says centers are ranked by performance, and some have sometimes suffered from high turnover, or poor matches which can cut into their goals for their student's wages. This is because the program keeps track of students for up to a year after graduation and follows their employment history, the level at which they're employed and their salary. Those results are then matched against the goals established for the program as well as individual centers.
"Ultimately, it affects a center when it goes up for procurement," he says. "Many centers are run by private companies in cooperation with the Federal Government. If a private company is running a center that isn't doing well statistically, it leaves itself vulnerable. So there is a financial incentive."
There is one more benefit to Job Corps that isn't often quoted in the statistics. It's calm.
"Parents will call us," says Zender. "I guarantee it'll happen in the next few weeks. It happens every year." Parents write him in tears, he says, "to say they finally had a chance to talk with their daughter or son and they had a meaningful conversation … without fighting, and it's because of the change and the social skills that we teach here." Zella concurs. "There are so many obstacles for a young person who decides to get away from, for example, a bad environment. It's particularly thrilling to see someone graduate and accomplish on so many different levels," he says.
So, for that bored, frustrated young man or woman, possibly in a bad situation, possibly wanting to make a change in their life they can claim as their own, they do have an option. They don't have to live the way you're living anymore. They can change. Two million other young people have done it. "They do it everyday," says Zender.
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| 0.983789 | 1,035 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Texas astronomers, others find dead stars collecting dust
8 September 2005
MAUNA KEA, Hawaii — Two independent teams of astronomers using telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii have glimpsed dusty debris around an essentially dead star where gravity and radiation should have long ago removed any sign of dust. The discovery might provide insights into our own solar system's demise billions of years from now.
The observations, made with the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) and the Gemini 8-meter Frederick C. Gillett Telescope, reveal a surprisingly high abundance of dust orbiting an ancient stellar ember named GD 362.
GD 362 is a white dwarf star. It represents the end-state of stellar evolution for almost all stars, including the Sun and more massive stars like this one's progenitor, which had an original mass about seven times the Sun's. After undergoing nuclear reactions for millions of years, GD 362's core ran out of fuel and could no longer create enough heat to counterbalance the inward push of gravity. After a short period of instability and mass loss, the star collapsed into a white-hot corpse. The remains will cool slowly over many billions of years as the dying ember makes its final, slow journey into oblivion.
In its former life, GD 362 may have been home to a planetary system. The dust disk may be evidence of that.
According to University of Texas graduate student Mukremin Kilic, who led the team making the IRTF observations, “The best explanation for the disk around GD 362 is that a planet or asteroid-like object was tidally disrupted by the white dwarf and ground up to tiny particles that ended up in a debris disk around the star. It is likely that we are witnessing the destruction of a planetary system and that a similar fate may await our own planetary system in about five billion years.”
These results are exploring new ground in the search for planetary systems. “This is only the second white dwarf star known to be surrounded by a debris disk,” Kilic said. The other is called G29-38.
“Both of these stars' atmospheres are continuously polluted by metals - that is, heavy chemical elements - almost surely accreted from the disk,” Kilic said. “If the accretion from a debris disk can explain the amounts of heavy elements we find in white dwarfs, it would mean that metal-rich white dwarfs - and this is fully 25% of all white dwarfs - may have debris disks, and therefore planetary systems, around them,” he said, concluding, “Planetary systems may be more numerous than we thought.”
The IRTF team also includes Ted von Hippel and Don Winget from The University of Texas and Sandy Leggett of the Joint Astronomy Centre. The Gemini team is led by Eric Becklin of UCLA, and includes researchers from the Carnegie Institution and Gemini Observatory.
The IRTF and Gemini data are “beautifully complementary,” Texas' von Hippel said. “Both data sets support the idea of a dust disk around GD 362, but they do so based on different evidence.”
He explained that the Gemini data provide “measurements at longer wavelengths that are more sensitive to the dust temperature,” while the IRTF results provide higher-resolution spectroscopy in the near-infrared, thus “excluding an orbiting brown dwarf as the source” of the excess infrared light from the white dwarf.
The teams will publish back-to-back papers in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The IRTF is a 3-meter telescope, optimized for infrared observations, operated and managed for NASA by the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. Gemini is an international partnership managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.
— END —
NOTE: A related press release and high resolution images are available from Gemini Observatory.
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This battle took place on the 30th of April 1863, during the campaign of Mexico. It is celebrated each year, on the anniversary of this date, by all the regiments of the French Foreign Legion.
History: The French Army was besieging Puebla. The mission of the Legion was to ensure the movement and safety of the convoys, over an 80 mile distance. On the 29th of April 1863, Colonel Jeanningros was informed that an important convoy was on its way to Puebla, with a load of 3 million francs, and material and munitions for the seige. Captain Danjou, his quartermaster, decided to send a company to escort the convoy. The 3rd company of the Foreign Regiment was assigned to this mission, but had no officers available. So Captain Danjou, himself, took the command and 2nd lieutenants Maudet, company guide, and Vilain, the paymaster, joined him voluntarily.
On the 30th of April, at 1 a.m., the 3rd company was on its way, with its 3 officers and 62 men. At 7 a.m., after a 15 mile march, it stopped at Palo Verde in order to get some rest. At this very moment, the enemy showed up and the battle began. Captain Danjou made the company take up a square formation and, even though retreating, he victoriously drove back several cavalry charges, inflicting the first heavy losses on the enemy . By the inn of Camerone, a large building with a courtyard protected by a wall 3 meters high, Danjou decided to stay, in order to keep the enemy and so delay for as long as possible, any attacks on the convoy.
While the legionnaires were rapidly setting up the defense of the inn, a Mexican officer demanded that Captain Danjou surrender, pointing out the fact that the Mexican Army was greatly superior in number. Danjou’s answer was: “We have munitions. We will not surrender.” Then, he swore to fight to the death and made his men swear the same. It was 10 a.m. Until 6 p.m., these 60 men who had had nothing to eat or drink since the day before, in spite of the extreme heat, of the thirst and hunger, resisted against 2,000 Mexicans: 800 cavalry and 1,200 infantry.
At noon, Captain Danjou was shot in the chest and died. At 2 p.m., 2nd lieutenant Vilain was shot in the head. About this time, the Mexican colonel succeeded in setting the inn on fire. In spite of the heat and the smoke, the legionnaires resisted, but many of them were killed or injured. By 5 p.m., only 12 men could still fight with 2nd lieutenant Maudet. At this time, the Mexican colonel gathered his soldiers and told them what disgrace it would be if they were unable to defeat such a small number of men. The Mexicans were about to give the general assault through holes opened in the walls of the courtyard, but Colonel Milan, who had previously asked 2nd lieutenant Maudet to surrender, once again gave him the opportunity to. Maudet scornfully refused.
The final charge was given. Soon, only 5 men were left around Maudet; Corporal Maine, legionnaires Catteau, Wensel, Constantin and Leonard. Each had only one bullet left. In a corner of the courtyard, their back against the wall, still facing the enemy, they fixed bayonets. When the signal was given, they opened fire and fought with their bayonets. 2nd lieutenant Maudet and 2 legionnaires fell, mortally wounded. Maine and his 2 remaining companions were about to be slaughtered when a Mexican officer saved them. He shouted: “Surrender!” “We will, only if you promise to allow us to carry and care for our injured men and if you leave us our guns.” “Nothing can be refused to men like you!”, answered the officer.
Captain Danjou’s men had kept their promise; for 11 hours, they had resisted 2,000 enemy troops. They had killed 300 of them and had injured as many. Their sacrifice had saved the convoy and they had fulfilled their mission. Emperor Napoleon the 3rd decided that the name of Camerone would be written on the flag of the Foreign Regiment and the names of Danjou, Vilain and Maudet would be engraved in golden letters on the walls of the Invalides, in Paris. Moreover, a monument was built in 1892, at the very place of the fight. The following inscription can be read there :
HERE, THEY WERE LESS THAN SIXTY
AGAINST A WHOLE ARMY
ITS MASS CRUSHED THEM
BUT LIFE RATHER THAN COURAGE
ABANDONED THESE FRENCH SOLDIERS
THE 30TH OF APRIL 1863.
TO THEIR MEMORY THE NATION BUILT THIS MONUMENT.
Since then, when Mexican troops pass by the monument, they present arms.
“The real reason liberals accuse Tea Partiers of racism is that contemporary American-style liberalism is in rigor mortis. Liberals have nothing else to say or do. Accusations of racism are their last resort.”
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| 0.980995 | 1,114 | 3.125 | 3 |
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